Aug 16, 2016 City Council on 2016-08-16 11:30 AM

August the 16th, 2006, it's 12 o'clock noon. We're gonna move down through our agenda. Our first item on the agenda is citizen comments on consent agenda items. Do we have any body who's filled out a card for comments on consent agenda items? I don't believe so. Okay, then agenda item number two is request for clarification of agenda items listed on the agenda for August the 16th, 2016. I'm gonna start over here. >> That's fine. >> That's member Gary. >> I would like to move a few items from consent agenda to individual consideration. >> Okay. >> Agenda item, consent agenda item A, ID 16-858. >> Good. >> Consent agenda item K, ID 16-988. And then going through agenda item L, M, N, O, P, and Q as well. >> Okay, on the L through Q, well, first of all, on any of these, are you wanting a staff presentation or? >> If possible on agenda item A. >> Okay. >> And agenda item K. >> Okay. >> And L through the remainder, I'd like to just reserve that issue until after our meeting. >> Okay. >> For the session. >> Okay, all right. But still pull them. >> Yes. >> All right. Okay. >> Thank you. >> Yes. >> Was that L through what? >> L through Q. >> Okay. Anybody else on this side of the room? Move over here. Councilmember Hawkins. >> My questions were on L through Q, also not, I didn't need to pull them or anything like that. I just was curious if there was a review process that was put in, that's kind of in place. Does this happen once a month where we review an ordinance or something, or is this just kind of found out? Whenever we're reviewing an old ordinance or how does that work? >> These particular items related to recent annexations. >> Right. >> And I believe each of these corrective items related to a situation brought forward by a citizen indicating that they had some issues with regard to the annexation. >> Okay. >> Prompting a review by the planning department in the legal area. >> So we do not have an internal process that just once a month or something reviews random ordinances to just something like that. >> Certainly not relating to this particular annexation issue. >> Okay, thank you. >> I have one. It's agenda item six, I'm sorry, seven C, under public hearings for the rezoning request, corner bell in Windsor. >> And our backup didn't really give a percentage of what the opposition was at least at the time of backup coming to us. I mean, I know that that's fluid and it can change during a public hearing, but I just was curious what that is as far as just right now. >> We typically reserve putting the information out until the public hearing or until the item because it is a fluid situation. But as of right now, it's 14% for property owners are in opposition. >> And just sort of as a clarification, because I know in the past when we've seen zoning changes and the percentages have been in our backup, is this sort of a new thing that's not going to start being included in our backup at the time of publication of the backup or is this? >> I think it's typically handled on a case by case basis. And if it's one of those situations where it's changing regularly, we may refrain from putting it in there, but that's something that we can revisit if need be. >> Okay, great. All right, fantastic. Any other questions on clarifications on agenda items? Seeing none, we'll go into our work sessions then. Agenda item 3A, excuse me. Receive report, hold discussion, and give staff direction regarding ordinance number 2015-074, relating to the Economic Development Partnership Board and its members, qualifications, and tenure. >> Thank you, Mayor. Carolyn Booth, our Assistant Director of Economic Development will be handling this item for us. >> Excuse me. >> Thank you, Mr. Martin. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council members. I'm going to be speaking to you today about the Economic Development Partnership Board ordinance and its members, qualifications, and terms. Start off with a little bit of background. The City of Denton and the Denton Chamber of Commerce first entered into an economic development partnership in 1986. At that time, the city initially created its office of economic development and the chamber created the position of vice president for economic development. Since then, the city has funded the operating budget of the chamber's economic development program from both the general and the utility funds. And the chamber also solicits private sector donations to support other economic development activities. In 2003, an economic development retreat facilitated by TIP strategies was held and included representatives from the city, the chamber, University of North Texas, Texas Women's University, North Central Texas College, DISD , and Denton County. A commitment to proactive economic development efforts and a financial partnership resulted from that meeting. And one of the consultants' recommendations was forming an economic development partnership board to oversee those activities. So the board was created. The consultant's recommendations were reported to the city council in May of 2003. The ordinance creating the board was adopted in August 2003 and the first board meeting took place in October of 2003. The original ordinance that established the EDP board, established it with seven voting members, two city council members, two chamber board of directors members, two members from the top 20 city of Denton, ad valorem or sales tax payers, the president of UNT, and then the Denton city manager and the chamber president were also added as ex officio members. The EDP ordinance has been amended three times since 2003. In 2011, it was amended to add two members, one with general aviation knowledge or experience, and one with specific knowledge, skills, or abilities to assist in the functions of the board or what we refer to as the at large member. In 2014, the DISD superintendent was added as a non voting member. And in 2015, the board added two members, one nominated by the black chamber of commerce and one nominated by the Hispanic chamber of commerce. So the EDP board currently has 11 voting and three non voting members. During its July 2016 board meeting, the board voted unanimously to add a seat for the Texas Women's University Chancellor and President and that will be under the same terms of service as the president of UNT. This is going to require another amendment to the ordinance and we'll be bringing that to you all at your meeting on August 23rd. To go over the terms of service quickly, all of the voting members except the president of UNT can serve up to three two year terms. The president can serve unlimited terms but has to be re nominated on the expiration of each of those two year terms . Since the adoption of the original ordinance, both city council and chamber board members may serve out all three terms even if they are no longer members of the city council or the chamber board after their original appointment as long as they serve out those terms consecutively. Only one city council member to date has continued to serve on the EDP board after their time on council ended. That was Eileen Brock. She was on council from May 2000 to May 2006 and she served on the EDP board from 2003 to 2009. I checked with Chuck Carpenter at the chamber to see if he had had any board members who had served under that particular clause and he said he could recall two that had at least. And just as a reminder to all of you, a nominating committee formed from two city council members and a chamber appointee is charged with putting forward the slate of economic development partnership board nominees each year. >> Yes, question. >> On that last bullet point in the last line. So if they have their three two year terms. >> Yes. >> And so they would still need to be nominated. So if they went off council and their term was their, say their first two year term was up. The council would have the ability to change that council spot if they want. You're saying that by rules it just allows for that person to continue to go. >> Correct. >> They're not required to. >> Correct. >> If they want to stay for six years they have to. >> Yes. >> Every two years you get a chance to change. >> Yes, that's right. >> Okay, thanks. >> So, sorry. The direction that we're looking for today is your thoughts on changing the EDP board members terms or maintaining the current term structure as it's laid out in the ordinance as it exists today. >> Well, I would weigh in just to say that I'm fine with adding the TWU president and chancellor's position. Thanks. >> Thank you. >> I would agree with that. And just so I know, the three non-voting members right now are who? >> The three non-voting members are the city manager of the city of Denton, the president of the Denton Chamber of Commerce, and the superintendent of the Denton Independent School District. >> Okay. >> Councilmember Begay, no one vote, Mayor Fortin. >> I am also in favor of the TWU chancellor obtaining a seat on the board. And I would like to change the current structure so that city council members who are no longer on city council are not eligible for the seats any longer. >> Mayor Fortin. >> Well, it seems city council may want to keep someone on. I think retaining the right as the council to do that. I mean, say if you got on and you were turned out in city council but did a great job on that board. The current city council may want to continue that. I wonder if there's a way to put in a clause that allows the council to rescind somebody even midterm. If they so choose, in other words, let the council have complete control over their seat to allow for somebody to stay on. If we want, we may want that and we may not want that. But to be able to retain that seems to be, so maybe a clause that allows us to be able to say even midterm, if they've been in for one year, we're able to kind of pull back on that. >> I like the idea of giving the council flexibility. And we have some presidents for that. When our mayor termed out of his seat as district four, I believe it was, he was still serving as our representative on the TNPA board. He had a lot of experience. He had taken us through some very interesting times. He had more experience than anybody that was on council. He had an interest in continuing to serve. And it was the will of the council to do that because it was a good position for us. He knew where the city was hoping to go and he represented us well. On the Economic Development Partnership Board, former mayor Eileen Brock had been appointed, I think, one of her last years on council. And she continued to serve on the Economic Development Partnership Board for several years after she was no longer serving on the council. And continued to represent the interest of the city well and continued to be re-nominated by the council to serve. So I think with that provision, after two years, if that person's no longer doing the job that the council desires him to do or doing it well, that that's certainly possible. But necessarily moving somebody off simply because of they're not being on council anymore. You may be losing someone that has a lot of experience, that has a lot of insight, and that is contributing greatly to the overall effort. >> That's my offer. >> I agree with Kevin and Dalton. If we wouldn't have had Eileen on the board the length of time that she did, we would have lost out on a lot of just institutional knowledge and just vision for our city. And so I'd kind of like to keep it the way that it is. >> Yes, Councilmember, I'm sorry. Let me get Kathleen since she had a comment. Yes, Councilmember Wasney. >> I think maintaining some flexibility so that council can vote it up or vote it down. And take it on a case by case basis. Add some flexibility, add some strength to council's ability to guide who they want on that partnership board. So I hope that helps staff. >> One of the things that Councilmember Gregory, I think what you're really referring to is the role of an ex offic io. And a lot of boards have a designated ex officio seat so that they can retain exactly that institutional knowledge that we're talking about. In this particular case, we have two actual council seats. So I mean one way you could do it is reserve one for an ex officio if you so choose. But really the idea I think on these boards is to have somebody that represents an elected role be a part of the E DP discussions. And I think there's value to that. It's hard when you have somebody that has as much experience as somebody like Eileen Brock. That said, you really can't make decisions based on one really good performance. It's kind of like good facts make bad law, bad law makes bad facts. I mean, you don't want to base your policy decisions based on one person being really good at something, let's put it that way. So I would again either say designate somebody as an ex officio or stick with people that are elected sitting on those seats. >> Question about the voting status of this board. Do they have jurisdictional authority over anything or does all of their votes put forward to council as a recommendation? >> All of the votes are put forward to council as a recommendation. >> So that gives me less heartburn. I mean, I think he offered up a couple examples there as good examples, but not saying let's set a policy that makes sure that stays in place. I think what we're trying to argue is let the council always retain the ability. If we took away somebody's position, that might be really good for the city to be in that. Just simply because they've termed out of council or something like that, we might be losing out on that sort of insight. So I think if we retain the ability, even I think beyond even I think what Dalton was suggesting, my suggestion is even midway through their term, kind of similar to discussion we've been having about boards and commissions, whether or not council members have the ability to make a change midway through somebody's two year term. I think if we retain that ability, then every year we'd have the ability to say whether this person was good or whether this person just we needed to see a change in that spot. So it's my suggestion. >> First of all, I certainly support adding the TWA chancellor and president, which is, as I read the backup this weekend, I found it fascinating that TWA was part of the original sort of group put together to facilitate. And it was sort of the genesis of the EDP board, but they weren't included in the original membership. That's interesting. And as far as the discussion about mandatory exit based upon, I mean, I think this is a tough issue because at one point we do want to maintain flexibility. But also when we have boards and commissions where council members are specifically mentioned or that they're supposed to specifically occupy that board, I think it's tough when you have non council members because, and that was an example with the TMPA and if it would have been where the TMPA said, you know what, Chris, you need to be a council member. I would have been okay with that because that's how it would have been written. So I'm not as conflicted as I sound, but I understand Council Member Baguerre's approach. And I think it's worth taking a look at because sometimes what this council is doing and the direction it goes may not be the same direction as someone who's been on council previously and is maybe two or three years out. I would like to maybe look at is there a way to figure out a formula that says, well, so if somebody comes in and they're originally appointed to their two year term and somehow they decide not to serve on council or some other reason they're not serving, that they can serve out their full six years. I probably would struggle with that because it's like you 've got one council representative on that board. Even though the council is choosing those people, council members are elected. So I'm okay with it staying the way it is in that regard, but I think it warrants a little bit further discussion, maybe creativity to see what are really the interests we're trying to protect. We're trying to uphold, we're trying to seek from any of these positions. Because it always behooves us to tighten some things down and really revisit why we've made the decision in that policy that was created, what is that, 13 years ago now. So it's always good to revisit some of those interests. But as far as making a change right now without having that conversation, I would probably feel a little less comfortable doing that. But I certainly would like to have the conversation just to reexamine that in general. TMPA board, wherever we have that kind of language, it'd be interesting to just talk through that again and see where we are. But I'm okay with it the way it is for now. >> Okay. >> Okay, so because I have to bring back an ordinance to you next week, in order to facilitate the TWU seat being added, we've already got a draft prepared that covers that change. So I heard a couple different things. I heard leave it the same. I heard maybe add another clause. I also heard this needs to be a topic for further discussion. And I guess I'm just curious dealing with next week. >> Can I give you direction on that? >> Yes. >> I think the only change you need to make is to add the new member. >> Okay. >> And then I think it would be appropriate to include the conversation of the language, just a revisiting of that with the revisiting of some of the discussions we've had with boards and commissions in general as far as the terms and if somebody's midterm and how do you do that. So I think it's a more comprehensive approach. So I thought I heard for right now relating to this particular ordinance, add the new member and then maybe and keep the language maintaining current term and structure the same. But there's some discussion, maybe some further discussion. Yes, Mayor Pro Tem. >> Well, and I think certainly the change bringing on the TWU President as part of it was discussed at the board itself, correct? >> Yes. >> And a recommendation was brought forward. So I would certainly not be inclined to make any unilateral changes. I mean, this is by virtue of its name a partnership. And so the board might have something to say about this. So I think at the end of the day, even if we do revisit it at some point, I think it needs to have its genesis from that group. If there's an interest in making changes to that, of course we always will be able to have the final say on the ordinance, but we certainly need to hear what they have to say. >> Okay. >> All right. >> Thank you. >> You feel like you got direction? >> Yes, thank you. >> All right, fantastic. All right, at work session 3B, receive report and hold discussion, provide staff direction regarding the Planning and Zoning Commission Rezoning Subcommittee. >> Ron Mengida, our long range planning administrator will be handling this item. >> Thank you, Howard. Mayor, members of the council, today brought forward to you is an opportunity for me to present to you the rezoning subcommittee, which is made up of the Planning and Zoning Commission, three members. On an opportunity to inform you of who they are, why they were created, what their roles and responsibilities are, and how often they meet. On October 21st of last year, the Planning and Zoning Commission nominated and selected three members of the Planning and Zoning Commission to serve in this subcommittee. They are Devin Taylor, who is the chair, Frank Dudowich, who is the vice chair, and Andrew Ruzel, who serves on that subcommittee as well. March 2nd of this year was their first meeting. Due to the holidays and conflicting meeting schedules, our first meeting was in March. Their primary role and responsibility is to assist in the city initiated rezoning efforts that the staff is bringing forward. They receive a report, hold a discussion, and give recommendation to the Planning and Zoning Commission, which in turn, the Planning and Zoning Commission will then forward their recommendation to the city council. So why are we engaged in city initiated rezoning? Two main reasons, the first reason is to be consistent with our comprehensive plan, our DEN Plan 2030, the Future Land Use Map specifically. And in our DEN Plan itself, there are several actions. Three actions here, 2.2.1 through 2.2.3 identify the actions of first revising the procedures for rezoning decisions to be consistent with the Future Land Use Map. Also to be consistent with the Future Land Use designations . And lastly, that the zoning map needs to be consistent with the Future Land Use Map involving citizens and the general public in the notification process. The Future Land Use Map, as shown here, is part of the DEN Plan 2030. Back in February of 2015, when the council approved the comprehensive plan, they also approved the Future Land Use Map. And per Texas Local Government Code, the zoning regulations have to be consistent with the comprehensive plan, which is our DEN Plan 2030. >> Real quick question. >> Yes, sir. >> And how is, on the membership of the sub committee, and those are all Planning and Zoning Commission members? >> Correct. >> Okay. >> Three members. >> Okay. >> Yes. >> All right, thank you. The second main reason for staff engaging in city initiative rezoning is we've seen several instances where an applicant of a property would come in and rezone property, and you've also seen this because they would have to come through the city council. And they would do just their property. However, several months later, or three months or so later, a second submittal would come in, in generally the same area, and we'd have to go through the same process. Staff's task is to work with these property owners to identify an area, and we've identified several areas where this has occurred and where we think we can be proactive in engaging the property owners in actually zoning their property more comprehensively as one project, and coming to the city council as one time versus several meetings and several processes. >> Yes, Mayor Wasney. There's talk at the planning department about the small area plans. And the small area plan membership for those small area plans are people who live and or work in that small area. >> Yes. >> Is there a plan to incorporate this committee with the small area plan groups once they get organized and up and running? Because as Denton grows, these small area plan citizen groups, business owner groups are going to be increasingly important because they understand the quadrant of the city that they're in. They understand the needs of the residents. They understand the needs of business. And they're seeing it at ground level, not from a 30,000 view. So is there a plan to incorporate the small area plan groups in with this committee? >> Not this specific subcommittee, but rather it would be a larger committee, a group that will be identified just for that specific area , that small area plan area. And could involve some planning zone commissioners, but not this subcommittee. This subcommittee is charged just for looking at city initiated rezoning requests that staff brings forward. >> Thank you. >> So in addition to the planning rezoning subcommittee, staff put together a list of criterias in which we, the city, would be bringing forward staff initiated rezoning, I've identified seven of these. And this will be covered in the next couple slides. First, of course, we want to look at properties that are inconsistent with the future land use map. Here identifies just one of those locations. There are several throughout the city that we've seen. This one is actually one of a more simple one because currently the future land use identifies this area as regional mixed use. So this currently in the area shown in black is industrial or employment center industrial. So the proposal in this case would be to go to a more suitable zoning district such as a RCCD. So another criteria. >> Yeah, Mayor Pro Tem, go ahead. >> I guess piggybacking off of Council Member Wasney's question. I think when you hear about this and you hear the term city initiated rezoning, right? In some cases, this might be very welcomed by property owners, right, especially if you're doing it in a way that makes their property much more marketable. And less, it costs them less going through a process of having to rezone it themselves. But I can imagine in other situations where maybe property owners aren't. So how along the lines of these processes as you've identified these, has there been or will there be as part of the process an involvement of those particular property owners? At least a heads up that we're talking about this or something. I mean, have they all been notified already? >> Yes, the ones that we've taken to the planning and zoning subcommittee, the three that we've done so far, they have been involved in just being informed. If the direction was to move forward, which we've received direction from the planning rezoning subcommittee to move forward, we would obviously go through the notification process, letting them know the same process that we would do for any rezoning request that is brought forward by an applicant. But it is our opportunity, as you mentioned, to look at these areas, work with the property owners, identify the best zoning districts that again is suitable for that area and go forward with it where we're taking a proactive approach. And again, this would be at no cost to the applicant. We would do the research and bring this forward to city council. Okay. Another identifying criteria for identifying properties would be just properties that we know that are incorrectly, that is, zoned. This area here, shown on this exhibit, is along Fort Worth and Brush Creek. The area is zoned NR2, NR1, and recently we've seen several zoning requests in this area. As you can see in the upper portion of this area that's shown in black, we're seeing a lot of more commercial zoning that's requested. This would be an opportunity to visit this area and research how we can zone this property to be a little bit more in line of what the development activity is for this particular portion of the city. Yes, go ahead, Council Member Gregory. >> Thank you, Mayor. So as this process goes forward, if there was a property that was zoned, I can't read it. >> That's the NR1, NR2? >> NR2, okay. And this committee, or planning and zoning, is recommending that it become more of an industrial zoning or a commercial zoning. But the property owner does not wish for that to happen. How does that work? What exchange goes on between the city, this committee, planning and zoning, and the property owner? >> I'm looking over illegal. I know that question has come up and I've asked a similar question. If not all the property owners are willing to rezone to a proposed zoning district, what legal matters do we have, again, I'll turn it over to Anita. >> We did post a closed session item with regard to this, so if it's okay with you, we'll defer that and have some discussion as it concerns those questions and others we would like to talk to you about in closed meeting . >> Okay. >> I do have, and I think that's good to talk about them in closed session. I guess I want to make sure I understand that I understand the scope of this subcommittee. because I thought what I heard you say was this sub committee is for city generated rezoning requests. And these are the criteria you're going through. I mean, the city could, I struggle with, we did this in 2002, I think. >> Right. >> And it went okay for the most part, but also in a large number of areas we didn't get it right. >> Right. >> And so then we created a lot of legal nonconform uses and all that. So I'm just going to tell you, I don't know, I would say I 'm skeptical of this, but to me this is really going to take for me a strong sense of due process. Because if we're going out there changing, let's take this one for instance. Okay, you got a lot of activity out there, and so why don't we just come in and look at it, rezone it to what seems more consistent. Well, you could do that with a lot of areas. And individual property rights are really going to be param ount here. And in the first rezoning, the citizens also had an opportunity to submit rezoning requests. One time that didn't go through all of the, but that it was presented to council. I mean, in fact, to be quite honest and full disclosure, I was one of them that took advantage of that. So I'm just going to be, I want to be very careful about this process. >> Sure. >> Because this could really change property values. It could change neighborhoods. It could change a lot of things. If someone doesn't want it, we need to figure out the due process for that. So that's sort of piggyback on, and so, and I say that to say, yeah, we can have a closed session. But I'm not so sure that some of those discussions, I mean, I'd want to hear what they are. But I think in some respects, I think it's good for the community to hear, here's what we're doing. >> Right. >> Because we should be almost wholly transparent with this process because we're the ones initiating it. So I just get a little nervous when cities do that. Go ahead. >> Well, and that's why I brought it up in the first place. And while I think that there's some things where we need to have some legal advice in closed session, I don't think that we ought to be having any policy discussion in closed session. We try very diligently to avoid that. In my concern, the reason I bring it up in the first place, I'll just go a little more in depth since you did, is that there are people that buy properties that actually conduct due diligence. And they actually look and see if the property's in the floodplain or if it's in an ESA. And they look and see what the zoning is, and they buy it with those things in mind. And for the city to come and simply unilaterally change that zoning, because our practice has been that zoning change happens at the request of the property owner. So for all the reasons that the mayor had mentioned, I'm concerned about, I'm as concerned about the process that happens here for the sake of those people who own property so that they don 't get backed into a corner. So that they don't all of a sudden have a property that becomes legally non-conforming. And they can't make any changes to it without jumping through a number of hoops at their own expense, because of something that the city initiated. So the process in this is going to be extremely important for me to make sure that everybody has a chance to have input, rather than unilaterally the city making a decision like this. >> No, I agree. And when we went through the comp plan update, one of the actions spoke to that specifically. And I'll just go back a few slides here. 2.3, involve the affected property owners and general public in this effort. We need to make sure we notify them in every process that we go through in the staff initiated rezoning. So that was a concern and we as a staff understand that. And when we work with property owners, we want to make sure that they're fully informed, first of all, to know what zoning districts are available and what we're considering. And they'll be part of the process of public hearing opportunities through the Planning Zoning Commission as well as City Council. >> Mayor Pro Tem. >> Well, you're going to have two sets of property owners that are going to have concern during this process, right? In normal zoning processes, you have concerns sometimes come up and that's always from adjacent property owners or folks within who think it's changing the character of their area or something like that. And that's fine, and that's part of the process and they get notified. It's not their property, but they get notified since it's in the area. But the thought that we would entertain a city initiated rezoning if the property owner themselves is not on board. To me that seems to be, my thought would be, it might be different if we're looking at 20 properties and 19 of them are on board with it and one's a holdout. And then we have some criteria saying, okay, it's worth looking at. But if we're talking about a couple properties and they're both opposed to it, why we put anyone through that process, unless there's some really compelling reason. Now, I say that with the caveat that I think there's some real good reasons to do this. I mean, we thought, I remember a couple years ago we were looking at some properties along Mesa Drive. That I think even the comp plan was out of touch with in terms of what was redeveloped and it was really almost tying our hands in the zoning request for just kind of this. That needed to be restructured and so unilaterally from the city to save folks money and to get it to where it needs to be makes a lot of sense to me. So I don't know if there, when it says they'll be properly notified, I almost think we should create a process that says, can we get their consent on the front end? And if we don't have it, that's off the table until we can make a compelling case on some level to say we're willing to push that issue. To me, that would have to be a pretty compelling case. >> Sure. >> So I don't know if that's part of the process, but saying they can come through and they can talk like every other adjacent property owner just doesn't seem appropriate. >> Right, Councilmember Wilson. >> I think it's very clean and easy to look at an app and say, we need to clean this up because it doesn't conform. However, life is more than just cleaning up a map. And while you have a plan to notify the actual property owners, we're talking about neighborhoods and neighbors here who also need to be part of this process. Because you may have an individual property owner who says, yeah, let's get rezoned. But we're kind of bypassing now getting that neighborhood into the process to help determine what's best for their neighborhood. So I have a real concern about that. Another concern is who is the gatekeeper? And government programs are always open to subjectivity on who's eligible and who isn't. So there could be undue pressure placed on this committee by a certain landowner or other land owners, plural, who come in and say, well, we want to change this zoning. So I have a real question about changing the map and who's going to be the gatekeeper. We have a rezoning process. >> Right, yes we do. >> It's strictly controlled by the law. The law is multi-leveled, including going all the way to the state of Texas. So those laws are in place for rezoning for a reason, for all the reasons that we've talked about. So I have real hesitation with this as well, to hear that the small area neighborhood groups are not going to be directly involved with this, I think, is a huge red flag. So I mark several boxes that are red flags to make this work. And I think it's going to involve a lot more discussion than today. >> Okay, Councilmember Geary. >> I have a question for you. So if we were to bifurcate this process and have the first part of this rezoning be just voluntary, people who are willing to sign up, is that something that we could do and then later revisit the not willing? Make a coalition of the willing. >> Certainly that's an option. People that we've approached so far, the property owners have been willing to go forward. And that's how we've been approaching the first few. Certainly there will be others that we haven't yet done that would pose that question. What do we do when those situations occur? That's something that we can discuss further as a staff or as a council. >> That would give me the greatest comfort if we, addressing Councilmember Gregory and I think everybody else's concerns about being forced into this process. If we can get the low hanging fruit first and help people rezone their property when they want to rezone their property. I think that's a great value to them. At the same time, I do not want to be pressuring people into rezoning without a really thorough discussion with stakeholders. >> Go ahead and then Joe. >> I would like to just clarify one point that Council member Wasney made. And this proposal or this process is not in lieu of following all of the existing public hearing processes that we have in place. This is an additional layer of protection where there's a subcommittee to vet potential city rezonings to meet certain criteria that we 've established before determining whether or not to even bring it forward to the Planning and Zoning Commission. So every public engagement effort that we make today for every zoning case would be used in all of these instances as well. We would just have an additional layer added. And so while the small area plan groups aren't going to necessarily engage directly with the subcommittee on every zoning case, if there is a potential city initiated rezoning that's tied to a small area plan, they would absolutely be involved in that. And it would be at their recommendation. >> But I think the difference is that the rezoning process, it's the applicant owner who comes forward and requests rez oning. This is the government knocking on your door saying we know what's best for you and let's look at rezoning. So it's another layer, but it's a very distinct difference in the process that we have currently. >> Councilmember Hawkins. >> Ron, can you give me an example of a few of the property owners who you have approached that have been more willing to do this? >> Yeah. >> Like what was their zoning when you started it? >> I've got those on a couple slides. >> Cool. >> Unless you want me to go, now I can do that. >> No, it's okay, I can wait. >> Okay. >> Thank you. >> We'll get to these discussions at the end, so I apologize for my partner. >> Here's another criteria. Identified in this map are properties that are recently annexed or were recently annexed and they receive a designation of RD5X. They're not truly zoned, but they have that designation, so if they were to develop without having to zone, they fall back to the RD5. We are trying to identify what these zoning districts should be as a criteria, again, for identifying properties that we take forward. >> And when we do annex somebody and they get the RD5X, is there a discount on their first zoning change or is it free already? >> I thought we talked about in the past being a free process. >> A free process. >> This, when we provide this opportunity to bring forward, it would be no cost to them. So it's an effort, again, to look at an area comprehensive ly, such as an area here that you see in black, to identify the zoning and do this at no cost to the property owner. Another criteria that we could consider as far as identifying property are situations where we didn't foresee major constructions, such as the widening of I-35. This area was back in 2002, the zoning was placed. I don't know if back in 2002, the widening was a consideration in the zoning of these properties. So again, this would be another area that staff would look into as far as proposing a city initiated rezoning. Another criteria for identifying properties would be an opportunity for economic development. In our future land use map, this area shown in black is designated business innovation. And as you can see, identified around or within the black area, you've got numerous zoning districts from NR2 to ECI, RD5X of course of properties that were recently annexed, R CCD, a couple PDs, NRMU. So there's a lot of different zoning districts here and are these suitable for this location? Can we propose a zoning that would help the development of these areas, the redevelopment of these areas? And if the city is looking at business innovation as an opportunity, this would be an area that we would look at zoning properties, maybe considering employment center as a zoning district for these areas northwest of the city. Corridor plans, small area plans we talked about briefly. We are currently looking at some small area plans that you all are familiar with. We're also looking at some corridor plans. And based on those corridor plans and those small area plans, there may be some recommendations for staff initiated rezoning again to be consistent to what the stakeholders at those areas wants that area to be. So we would look at what type of zonings that we can propose to help meet those goals of that small area plan or that corridor plan. So that's another area of consideration for identifying properties. Lastly, looking at environmental sensitive areas, areas that we know that we want to preserve. Right now, there's a portion of the city that has significant ESAs that is zoned, RD5, or not zoned, but rather has an RD5X. This would be an opportunity to identify a property zoning district that would protect this area and enhance that area . Currently, this property is owned by the Army Corps of Engineers. Some of it is city property. So again, an opportunity not to clean up, but just find the true zoning district that this area should have. With that, these maps here illustrate how the future land use map informs the zoning map. Again, as I stated earlier, per Texas local government code , our zoning regulations, which includes our Denton Development Code and zoning maps and zoning districts should be in line with our future land use , our comprehensive plan, which is our DEN Plan 2030. And this just again illustrates that. I've prepared a number of slides, and I think it's included in your backup of what our future land use designations are and what zoning district, what related zoning districts would best fit within that future land use designation. I'll be happy to go through that. If not, you have that in your backup, and if you have any questions, I can certainly answer those at this time. It's just an illustration or a slide of each future land use designation and what the proper zoning district should be as we look at moving this process forward. >> I mean, I don't necessarily need to see that level of specificity at this stage. I still have some concerns, reservations. I mean, there's just some pretty fundamental policy issues that I feel challenged by in this. I mean, truthfully, if this was going to be a city initiated process, I would hate to get these properties that are recommended by the subcommittee going through all P and Z before this council even got a chance to look. because if I'm as a council member, as a policy maker, going to be making, somebody's going to be saying you're going to be initiating these things. I would rather see that on the front end than the back end. But I still struggle with the concept because we have rules and regulations in place that if somebody wants to, in fact, you say we want to conform the zoning to the future land use map. Well, whenever I read the zoning backup, part of the criteria that staff analyzes is, is this rezoning consistent with now it's the new one, but it used to be the old one. >> Right. >> So we have a process in place that defines that. I just, I get really uncomfortable when the city gets involved in doing these things without, I mean, when you read that requirement of notifying the owner, I mean, Mayor Pro Tem, I'm right there. That notify leapt out at me, hit me upside the head a couple of times, because all you get is notification, we've got to go beyond that. There's got to be something more than that. So I really struggle with this, quite honestly, based upon at least what I've heard is its purpose. >> Sure. >> So I'm going to go down the line here, Mayor Pro Tem. >> I don't struggle with the concept. I think it's a good idea. I think we're a growing city. I think you've got a lot of changing areas that have evolved over the last several decades. There's certainly, at least since 2002, that we need to look at. And I think it does some, from an economic development perspective, I think as there are property owners looking to buy a piece of property, this could spark some things. I think in the vast, my sense is the vast majority of cases , these are all up zoned. In which case, that adds value to property. So from a property, my guess is most of them are probably going to be on board with this. All of my concerns go away if, as these suggested properties get on the docket for P and Z, that they get on the docket on the basis of, at least the first round, like Sarah was suggesting, we know up front that we've got consent from those property owners. I have no concern at that point. Then it's just we're helping a certain area get to a certain point. And to me, if there's other ones then that we need to look at and you need to bring back to us and say, we've got some property owners not on board, but we still think the city has a compelling interest in seeing these changes. Let's have that discussion, but let's not make that difficult on the front end. >> Gotcha. Yes, and then I'll come over here. >> This needs to come to council, and this needs to be a council decision. This needs to be a council policy movement. Who made the decision? Was it staff at planning and zoning to go forward with this ? >> There was a request by one of the planning and zoning commissioners to establish a subcommittee to focus again on the issue of having multiple rezonings in one location not comprehensively done together. And so this particular planning and zoning commissioner asked that we establish a rezoning subcommittee to address those particular matters. >> Okay, I understand that. I respect that. This is the body that makes decisions in the city of Denton . This is a city policy decision on whether or not the city is going to knock on your door and say, we think you need a different zoning. So I'd like to just put the skids on this right now until this council, as a full body, can make a policy decision on whether or not this is something the city is going to do. And I would ask for council to postpone all of this until we have an opportunity to really dig through this as a council and decide whether or not this is going to be city policy. >> Mayor Pro Tem, I'm sorry. Pass Mayor Pro Tem. >> Councilmember Gregory. >> I'm passed a lot of things. I feel like I kind of started all of this with the question that I raised. And I have a feeling that part of this is a communication issue. That we're having a little trouble understanding and maybe there was a little trouble in explaining the genesis of this and what the purpose is. As I have heard questions raised by the part of council members and I've heard staff answers, I'm getting the idea that this is not, as my first reaction was, this is not simply some staff in an office looking at a map and saying this is what we need to do and going out and telling people this is what we're going to do to you. I think that maybe more of what we're talking about here is a process where the city and property owners are actually working together to make it easier for property owners to get the best value out of their property, to see the highest and best use to come from their property. But I think that what you've heard from the part of the council members is some concern to ensure that that process ensures that not only for them but council member Mayor Pro Tem Roden brought up the notion of what about the persons who own property close to this? Where we normally for zoning change would notify people the mandatory and the courtesy notices. >> The two and a half. >> Because we would certainly want to have those folks engaged in the process and having an opportunity to speak their mind and to discuss this earlier. And who knows? It may be that they're delighted and say, not only do I want you to change that guy's property zoning, I won't mind change too. But that's just part of the, I think that that's going to increase the level of comfort on the part of all the staff, council members. If we see more details about the process that goes on, the assurances that this is more of a collaborative effort than it is an imposition. >> Sure. I think what we envision is when we bring forward these res otings, city resotings, working with the property owners. And I've got a couple slides that identify three that we've done so far and analyzed and it's been part of your backup. When we tell applicants that you need to hold a public meeting with your applicant before bringing it to planning zoning or ultimately city council. Staff envisions on doing that same thing, making sure that we have a public meeting not only with the property owners but with the surrounding properties sending out those proper notifications that we have a discussion and address those concerns that they may have. And of course we do want to bring forward a rezoning request that's consistent with everyone's needs. So that point is as well received. >> Councilmember Hawkins. >> Yeah, at its roots this is a great idea I think. It's ultimately trying to get us to that future land use map if I'm understanding it correctly. >> That's correct. >> Which is in the Denton 2030 plan which is our vision of Denton here. So I think but being a big property rights advocate, they definitely have to have a seat at the table the whole. >> Understood, yes. There can't be ever a time where you just go up to somebody and your new zoning is this now and that sort of thing. I'm dying to see the slides with the examples. >> Yes, I'm dying to see them on the show. >> So we can just get to that. >> No, no, not yet. >> We're not there yet? >> Okay. >> Well, I think as a matter of it being a policy decision, I think when we passed the Denton plan, I mean you quoted to us what we all voted on with the exception of one of us. That this was our goal and that part of that process was going to be trying to get things in conformity and this is a tool of doing that. To be honest, I don't think council has time to dig into every single one of these areas in the specificity that would need to be done to vet these properly. Which is why we appoint a planning and zoning commission. I'm proud of them in fact for being forward thinking and thinking about these things. I want them to be that robust. I mean to think about beyond just we're hearing these sorts of things from week to week but to think, hey we're seeing some gaps according to this thing that we spent so much time on. Can we get a committee to look at it? I'm totally fine with that. I think that committee as you described them, I think is quite diverse and they're thinking and I think that's healthy. And so I'm fine with this process. I've expressed my concerns about the property owners. And I think us as a council have already spoken as to the policy considerations here. Now we're just talking about what's the best tool to achieve it. This is sort of a related question and I don't know if we have time or if it's completely within the posting. But I'm thinking about future land use, our comprehensive plan. You had shown a picture of a particular corridor that we wanted to work on. >> Right. >> And I'm thinking about the fact that a property owner came to me recently and was concerned that his business because of evolution over the last 30 years is probably legally non- conforming business. And that it would be hard for him to ever expand that business because of the status. >> Right. >> But it's a growing business. He would like to grow. And in a situation like that, do we know of cities that work with businesses? Property owners that are in a legally non-conforming status . That need to relocate maybe to a place that's more appropriate like an industrial park. To conduct this business and to provide assistance for them in making that transition so that we can move forward with this corridor change that is in our comprehensive plan to do so. >> Is there anything that cities do besides zoning? >> Right, I don't know if there's any economic development incentives, but certainly Amy may have an answer. >> And if we're straying too far, this may be something for another. >> I'll tie it back to the corridor plan and small area plan if that helps. One of the things that we've talked about recently in a work session is changing one of our existing incentive grants to a small business assistance grant. Where we're attempting to tie the performance measures and criteria of that grant back to the comp plan implementation . And so that would be a way, a vehicle by which we could do that. If we have a corridor plan that says that this particular use is not one that we'd like to see continue in that area. We could have a small business assistance grant program that would assist with relocating them. In order to accomplish the goals of the comp plan. And in fact, the last time we talked about that particular grant program, we got some direction from you all to get more specific in some criteria. And that's what we're working on is tying it to the comp plan specifically. >> Thank you. >> Couple of things. And Mayor Pro Tem, I hear what you're saying about the tool and I think as I sit here and think about it. This reminds me of the difference between, let's just take a university. Going out and exercising power of eminent domain over a neighborhood for its growth or soliciting people who want to sell their properties in order to facilitate that. So if our purpose, what I'm hearing the purpose is, is to try to get as much of some important areas to conform with the new future land use plan. So that down the road, we've sort of taken care of that. Well then I would say, again, I go back to when it first happened. That if I'm looking at this future land use plan and I have a piece of property. And I think, well, it's not currently zoned to meet this criteria that I have an opportunity, just not by the initiation of the city, but that I also have an opportunity to come and say, you know what? I want to participate in this process. I want to make sure that if this is really what our stated goal is, then I think we need to open it up to, quite frankly, any property owner who feels like that they want to conform to that to get involved with this process. Because if that's really the goal, if the policy really is to further us moving towards the correct zoning to match this, then that low hanging fruit is the easiest to do. And it may be ones that you all have identified. It may be somebody that you don't know about, but that they can come forward. And there's some kind of accommodation either through the fees. You're still going through the same P&G process. >> Yes, yes, that's true. >> But there's some accommodations say, well, instead of us dealing with a different property, if somebody's willing to do this. So if we're going to do that, which will open it up to broadening that policy objective to people that we may not identify, I'm okay with that. I just don't like the idea of we're not picking and choosing, but we're identifying what's the best. But if the policy really is, we want to sort of migrate from this zoning map to this, and how do we move to this future land use map and our current zoning map conform? I'm okay with that because it allows the general public and the general property owner to say, hey, I want in on this. And then if we're identifying people who aren't interested and we're initiating it. >> That's different. >> Got a really huge problem with that because we just passed, I mean this has been passed within the last couple years, I guess last year or so. >> Right. >> So we do have some time, and if we can get those all that are willing, we are way ahead of the game than for those who may not be as willing. So I would say, I don't think it should just be limited to what the city identifies or this subcommittee identifies. And Mayor Pro Tem, I hear what you're saying about, we set this policy, but no. When I voted for the future land use map, the Denton Plan 2030, I wasn't voting that somehow the city would take the initiative to rezone property. It may be a tool, but we have a long held process in place. But if we can open it up to everybody, because our state of objective is to conform this quickly and as consistently as possible. I'm okay with that because I think you'll get people coming out like you're the person you spoke with. They may not be identified in that. But the city may benefit tremendously, and they may benefit tremendously. And then it gets these legal non-conforming uses out of the way which are the worst things to have to deal with. Because they're so subjective in determining what's the use , how long you've been there, has it been abandoned, and so forth. So I'm okay with the expansion of it, if that can be part of that, because I think that would be the most helpful. >> If I can use that to go to my next- >> You sure can. >> It would be really helpful. So, to talk about property owners that are willing, this is a property we've seen before, in the previous slide that is . The property that you see here in black, from here, that's currently RCCD. This was a zoning that we did, the council approved several months ago, maybe more than that, for the Cavender Boot retail shop. In this current zoning district, which is ECI, it would not be a permitted use, because it's strictly retail. We made that notice to, or we brought that attention to the property owner that, while the surrounding areas, or the areas to the south, could also see a potential rezoning that could invite or introduce more development. The property owner that owns the Cavender lot, or at the time, owns all of this south of this property. And he's willing to rezone this property. We've spoken to him several times. The nonconforming uses that the mayor mentioned, we also, and it's difficult to see and I apologize, is we've got some offices here and some retail, we've got Quick Trip over here. These uses would be nonconforming under the existing zoning district, the existing retail shops that are here, that is. So we're trying to clean that up. So those existing uses that are on the ground that are non conforming would be cleaned up with this proposed city initiative rezonings. It will also help the property owner develop this site, because we know that the site is really narrow. It's got a railroad on one side and I-35 on the other side. So the type of businesses, the type of development would be more in line of a retail, restaurant, or a small office building rather than an employment center industrial type development. So we acknowledge that this area could or should be more in line with a regional center type zoning district. And that's what we're considering and brought forward to the planning zoning commission as part of their consideration subcommittee, that is. So does that help illustrate a little bit of what our goal is and our objective is with these staff initiative rezoning or city initiative rezoning? Okay. Another area is Den Center. Den Center is a key focus area. We also know that the area in red is where the North Texas State Fairgrounds is located. There's also an area just to the west of the State Fair grounds that's currently undeveloped. Looking at the future land use map, we looked at this area as part of our consultants work and identified Den Center could potentially grow and redevelop. And one way of doing that is identifying a proper zoning district that could enable and help that process. So this is an opportunity that we can see maybe expanding the CMG further north to the area that you see here. And that again is another opportunity that we can see. And we've spoken to the North Texas Fairgrounds folks and this is something that they would be in favor of as well. So they're not in opposition. They're willing to work with the city in getting the proper zoning district. >> Yes, that's my agreement. >> And then would you anticipate then reaching out to the neighborhood, the residential neighborhoods to the north and to the east also before this progresses very far? >> Yes, we would propose a neighborhood meeting, a public meeting. Of course, like I've said earlier, when we have applicants that apply for zoning, we always recommend that they have a neighborhood meeting, a public meeting. We would do the same thing, to vet out what issues they may have in regards to proposal. If it turns out that there's some things that we can't resolve, then maybe there's options that we can bring forward other than the current proposal. So, yes. Lastly, this is another one that you've seen prior. It's an area that's currently, I'm sorry, not rezoned, but rather annexed and has an RD5. We recognize that this area is, there's an opportunity to zone these properties to a proper zoning. And the reason why we identified this particular area, because we do have a number of other areas throughout the city that has the same RD5 designation, is that we have received several applications or at least interest from property owners in this particular area that want to plat their property. But they can't plat it because they have an RD5, which means that their property has to be at least five acres. So rather than having them individually apply for a plat or a rezoning to a proper zoning district, we thought let's look at this collectively and we initially focused on this area here because that is where the interest was in. However, the Planning and Zoning Commission subcommittee suggested that we look at all the other RD5X area and come up with a zoning. Of course, work with the property owners. And I think it would be in their best interest to get a zoning district that's more in line of what development they foresee their property being, as well as what other properties that are in the general area. >> I'm confused on that. So we annexed the property and then it by default was RD5X. >> Correct. >> Then they went into the property. >> They went into plat and we were not going to allow them to plat the way they wanted because lots were less than five acres? >> Correct. >> Yeah, that's weird. >> I know. That's the, they fall back to RD5, which their minimum lot size is five acres. So that's the conflict. And that's what we're trying to fix. >> Okay. >> Or at least trying to zone it so that they're in the proper zoning that allows them. >> Well, we were thinking just for your information, possibly an NR2, NR3, that would then reduce their number of lot size to be able to plat that to roughly 16,000, which is in line with what they currently have. >> So when somebody is, when a property is annexed, they cannot, that initial rezoning, there are limits to that. >> Correct. >> Where we are right now. The opportunity to zone that property is obviously after the annexation, should be soon after. These properties that we have here did not go through that process and that's what we're trying to do. >> Gotcha. >> Well, and I think though this also, I think we need to figure out a process outside of this process on annexations to alleviate. Because if we're going to annex somebody in. >> Right. >> And we're going to say you got to, we need to give them some flexibility. So outside of this city initiated zoning, we need to look at annexations and that's part of this discussion. But anyway, we'll talk about that later. I guess, and you'd mentioned to it, and I'll revisit it in the back up about the different zoning classification, or uses, did you say? >> Zoning districts. >> Maybe you said zoning districts for these different areas, but of course, zoning districts have designated uses. >> Correct. >> And I know that that's one of the big issues is we've thought, do we need to revisit our zoning uses? Designated use of zoning classification because some of them are so large. So that's my only thought here is as we're doing these zoning changes. >> Right. >> Are we also looking at, because let's face it, most of the zoning cases that come before us now, those things sort of get pushed and pulled and you either get overlays or restrictions because people, we've done straight zonings before. >> Right. >> With a presentation that says this is what it's going to look like and it's not what it looks like. Totally something different. It's another use that wasn't represented. So how do we, I guess not how do we, but I would like to see there's a way that we can limit that potential impact because some of these zoning classifications go from single family to a horse barn. >> Right. >> I mean, there's so much in between that it's really hard to understand. >> Right, and in the slide presentation that provided you all. >> Right. >> There are some zoning districts where in parentheses specify revise or new. So those are the ones that you had mentioned, Mayor, exactly what we want to do as well. >> Sure. >> Is make sure when we zone these properties, when we go through the zoning process that we identify the proper zoning district and it does not cause other uses that are not suitable for this location to be there, say in the future if it ever becomes developed. That's something that we're cognizant as well. And if we need to revise the zoning districts, we will do it as necessary. >> I guess what is staff's position on my thought of allowing this to be open to people who are not necessarily the object of a, as you call it, city initiated zoning. But they have looked at the map or they can call you and say, hey, I just want to ask you this. And if they say sure, you go, hey, sure. I mean, is that something the staff is open to entertaining that? >> I think we're open to that. I think that's some of the reasons why we have some of these currently because they did come to the city and want to develop or want to zone their property and we just are wanting to make sure we get a more comprehensive analysis of the area. If that's the case, we certainly would be welcome to that as well. >> So they would get the same accommodation or the same process or discount. Whatever you're offering to the city initiated owners, if someone came and said, hey, I'd like to do this. And you say, you know what, this is a good fit. Then they would be afforded the same process. >> Exactly, it may take a little bit longer because we probably need to go to the zoning subcommittee and have those public meetings. But yes, certainly they can be included in any process that we have with us. >> We would have to take a look at it from a workload standpoint as it relates to if we got 100 requests for free rezonings because they want to be consistent with the future land use plan, how would we handle that volume? And also, there would be an opportunity for a developer who was looking at a rezoning case to say, hey, this is consistent with the future land use plan, so I should be able to get this done as a city initiated rez oning. So we just have to look at policies to manage typical applicant requests for rezoning versus a special case where they're requesting it, specifically to become consistent with the future land use plan. I hear your direction and I think it's a great approach. We just have to, we might need to come back to you with a methodology for how to accomplish that. >> Okay, Council Member Wood. The plan may be to actually put the city into a pie and take different sections so that you're only looking at one section of the city at a time. It manages staff time. It also allows the city to really notify that area well so that people understand what the opportunity is and understand that they're up or they're up next. And so that could be a process that keeps it, that area is really heads up, this is here, this is coming. The next neighborhood is heads up, you're next. So you're not just doing a canvas blanket over the city saying here's what we're doing. Cuz I think you guys will be just buried. So that could be a process that may make it easier and keep our citizens in the know. >> Point taken. >> I do have a housekeeping. I'd asked earlier if all the members of the subcommittee were planning and zoning members. And I think they are because, but I think is one of them- >> One of them is going to be leaving the planning zoning commission. So his seat would be filled once we get the new commission ers in place. >> Okay, so that person will serve on the subcommittee until at such time. >> That's correct. >> There's a new appointment and then somehow this planning zoning commission will choose- >> Select a new member. >> Okay, thank you. Any other questions? So I'm gonna ask staff to repeat the direction. >> Okay. >> What do you hear? >> We, well, let me- >> I'm not trying to pull a fast one. >> No, no. >> I know sometimes we- >> Yeah. >> What I heard was proceed with the holding of planning zoning commission, rezoning subcommittee. However, identify that the areas that we are looking at are vetted and with the consent of the planning, I'm sorry, with the property owners. We also need to make sure we do proper notices, not only with the property owners, but with the adjacent property owners in having a neighborhood meeting or public meeting before we get far along in the rezoning process. We also talked about identifying some specific areas that we may want to just advise the citizens that we're looking at these areas. And lastly, open it up to if a property owner looks at a property, that has a property and wants to be involved in this process, they can certainly approach the city and the city can look at how we can accommodate accordingly. Again, looking at what our workload is and the schedule that we have. >> Okay, anything different than that? Yes, Mayor Pro Tem. >> Just a question in turn. We saw some examples here. >> Yes. >> And as you're pointing out the different reasons for pursuing this, is this exhaustive or is there a lot more examples that you're looking at than what we saw? >> There was a map exercise identifying those particular areas that we see that could potentially be rezoned. And yes, so there is a more exhaustive list of what we are proposing. >> And the only thing I would maybe add to that is that when the subcommittee gets to the point where they're making some recommendation or something, moving to their own body, I think just some backup to council to give us a sense of what those areas are, in case we hear some concern about that. >> Okay, Councilmember Wasney. >> And the direction also has to include that this is something that's going to be open to the whole city. And not just a planning and zoning commission subcommittee that is out cherry picking different areas to rezone. But this will be open so that it's not just driven by our local government, but it's driven by property owners across the city who have the opportunity to join this program. Because it changes the whole complexion of this process. And again, to be clear, so it's not just areas hand picked by a committee, but opens it up to the entire city area by area. >> Understood. Any other comments? Seeing none, thank you. >> Thank you. >> Appreciate it, Ron. Thank you for that discussion and conversation. Next item on the agenda is item 3C, Receive Report, Hold Discussion, Give Staff Direction Regarding the FY 2016-17 City Budget. I presume this is a placeholder, is that anybody have any questions? >> No, actually, Chuck Springer, Director of Finance, has a couple slides he wants to share with you. >> Love it. >> I think there's only four slides, four or five, so I'll keep it quick. >> Four slides. >> Four. >> Big slides. >> [INAUDIBLE] >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> In terms of what I wanted to cover briefly, we gave the council another memorandum in response to questions from August 4th. So there's a memorandum in there, wanted to open it up to the council in case they were follow up or wanted to go into further discussion about some of those questions. We did a memorandum and we had several exhibits to it, but attached with the council backup. If you click that exhibit, it will take you to that information. I've got a slide following this where I want to go over discussion of proposed changes in the recommended budget to date. I'd heard some changes over the first couple of meetings, but wanted to kind of clarify those changes. And then this is just an opportunity for additional budget discussions. So in terms of the changes that I'd heard on this slide and the next one, in terms of these are supplemental packages to be funded out of the current fiscal year. The packages at the top in black were proposed by the city manager. I've also heard four additional ones for consideration. I think the first one, the replacing the emergency services grant funding at 200,000. I think I heard a majority of the council was supportive of that at the last meeting. But there's some others that I've heard recommendations or consideration of that I wanted to open it up to the full council. One was the breathing air compressors for the fire department, which would be 45,000. Another one was fencing for the police department. Initially, this was proposed at 60,000. We gave a little bit of additional information to the council of what we would recommend and have increased that to 90,000. There was also some discussion of the council as looking at the traffic flow in that area. And I think we would recommend that go to the mobility committee, but there are some private businesses that would be impacted if we looked at kind of road closures in that area. So we would have to look at that with the mobility committee. And there was also a, excuse me, assessment of the cemetery that was requested by the parks department. And that was another area that I'd heard wanted to be added . So I just kind of wanted to clarify, do all of these want to be added? I've put a total net cost of 1.5 million. That total projected balance is really looking at for fiscal year 15, 16. The current fiscal year, we're estimating revenues to be higher than budgeted and expenses a little bit lower. And what we've estimated in terms of additional funds available is about 1.6 million. So that's where that number is at the bottom. >> May I put in? >> I apologize for not being here in the last couple meetings. Participate live in these, but I did get a chance to watch them, which is always fun to watch. >> Sure. >> Quarterback from the- >> What was that sarcasm? >> So I guess the question, and I'm certainly in support of what you guys ended up talking about in terms of the helping out some of this funding that was lost. Just the details of that, understanding that the rules of the game to get that sort of grant in the future have changed. There's part and parcel to the reason why we didn't get it in the first place. And understanding that it sounded like the council request was to do this as a one time only. So what's been the determination as to how that gets divv ied out and according to what sort of principles. If we have the opportunity now to guide some of, get us in the right direction so that we don't have to fund this year after year and perhaps we get that grant in the future. But who's making the determination of where those funds go so that we're making sure that we're not putting ourselves into a dependency situation year after year? >> Senator Burke, we're having conversations at the staff level, specifically the community development division. We are working with our partners as part of the homeless coalition. My understanding is the county has also now stepped up and is going to bring forward some funding, I think in their next fiscal year package, as is the city of Louisville. So we are putting all those funds together. We are talking with the members of the four agencies that were going to be the ones that were going to be negatively impacted by the ESG grant not being funded. We're also looking specifically at those initiatives that will better position us for when we go to apply for that ESG grant next year, understanding there are some challenges as it relates to the housing stock. That HUD has now made it a prerequisite, so to speak, to get higher points in that whole ESG process. >> No, I appreciate that. I mean, that was my concern moving forward with that is just to make sure if we were funding the same things that got in the same position as this year, then they're going to lose funding again next year and we 're going to be stuck with the same. And then, furthermore, it'll be the city pulling the funding out, which puts us in a difficult position. So I think as much as we can strategically, and it sounds like you got the right people thinking about it, so I'm comfortable with that. >> And again, I just want to be very clear, we're trying to reach some of those objectives that'll better position us. But understand, we'll probably still have to fund some of the things like the sheltering operations that are going to take a hit in funding if not given some sort of support. So I don't believe that everything that's going to be recommended to be funded will help us get a better position . But I do think that that is being looked at. >> Well, my only caution for us as a body is we could be in the same position next year. And it's not the federal government or the state of Texas taking away the funding. It'll be the city of Denton taking away the funding. And the commitment I heard last, or I guess it was the 4th of August, was that this is a one time only. And to me, unless we're willing to have that conversation moving forward, I mean we just need to put some things in place to understand that unless we're willing to continue year after year, give $200,000 or more. Whatever decisions we make now to me are pretty paramount as to what position we're put in next year. >> All right, Councilmember Gregory. >> Well, I think you make a great point. And along those lines, I had the chairman of the Denton Housing Authority contact me and say, they feel like that there could be even more partnership on the issue of housing stock, specifically on housing stock. I think that the sooner that we can get city staff and the Denton Housing Authority and the homeless coalition and members of council more in tune to this so that we could all, I know that we've funded that position and we need to hear a report back and brainstorm and maybe have a joint meeting with the board of the Denton Housing Authority. Simply because it's a vital organization to the city and we have meetings with other, luncheon meetings with other boards and this would be good for us to know and strategize and figure out who is in the best position to address some of these specific concerns. And go into great detail with our city staff on how we earn more points to correct this in the future. >> That's a great point, Kevin. Where I made my decision last week was this was more just emergency funding. And I think even from the presentation, they had already even spent all of last years and they were already needing this money even just to operate in the immediate. So I definitely, this was a one time expense type thing and looking forward I hope that we're able to figure out the granting situation. So, but it was definitely emergency funding. >> Yeah, and I mean, I sort of at least brought it to the surface, to the council in general. And if somebody next year tries to make, take the position that the council is responsible for either continuing the funding or responsible for pulling the funding, please direct them to this meeting and the one prior. Because that's not in any stretch form of the imagination that I heard this council say last time. It was, this is a situation where if something isn't done, people will lose their rental assistance. People will lose the ability to house some of the homeless. And so I will just make myself very clear. This is not something that I see that the city is committing to nor should commit to on a yearly basis without substantial changes in the paradigm. Because that's why we got to where we are. And I look forward to the conversations with the Denton Housing Authority. I will tell you, I've been working on this for a year. And we do need to have a report because it is very complicated, it's very convoluted. HUD's, you know, housing first initiative and what that means and what it doesn't mean. So that was really the reason for my bringing it forward was because there have been some real quick changes in the paradigm that created this. But make no mistake that to me this is a one time thing. I believe the city of Louisville has agreed either in their next year's funding or budget or I'm not sure where it's coming from. So everybody's stepping up to the plate and I won't speak for them but I probably surmise they've had similar conversations regard to this level of funding. That doesn't mean if we have a different reallocation of our grants and human services grants and all that. We have policy decisions or discussions but we're getting there. But you're right, we can schedule a report to try to really go over and earnest the progress we're making and quite honestly the challenges that come up in order to do this. So I'm glad that you were able to watch it and I'm sure you were talking to the television screen and drawing faces on the computer monitor. But yes, this is simply a one time thing and that to say that somehow we're pulling the plug. I mean as you said that I just sort of thought wow, I hope somebody comes up and says that to me. Yeah, well it does and I can say no. Go back and watch the tape. So but I think it's a good thing we're doing. Especially we had at our Denton County Homelessness Task Force. We had the four agencies come to the committee to share what the impact is. Friends of the family is losing a crisis counselor that they used to have 24 hour service. Giving hope is having to release people from rental assistance. I mean it's pretty extensive. So I really do appreciate my colleagues thoughts and their approval of this because I think it's going to go a long way. But it's also going to go a long way to help us address the real issue and that is we've got to change direction. We've got to get some direction. So thank you all for that. Appreciate those comments. So I totally agree with you. I totally agree with you. Thank you. Chuck, I have a question on the cemetery assessment. Is that is that doing work or is that just simply saying the work we need to do? If I can call on our parks director to go over that package in a little bit more detail. I'm surprised the poster is not up there somewhere. That's the developing the work that needs to be done. It's mapping. It's GPS. It gives us a full report of condition of all the stones in both cemeteries and gives us some recommended direction of which way. So it's basically consultant. Yes, sir. Okay. And another item there on a similar question on the sidewalks. That's just a study to or we actually is that fixing the sidewalks? I'm trying to remember back the study. Right. That's really a comprehensive study. It's looking at our streets, our rights away sidewalks signals in terms of what needs to be done to bring us up to a standards. But that's just the study. I'm sure in future years, there'll be additional funding that will go along with that as we're developing. But as we're replacing signals, that would be part of it. Replacing sidewalks, all the necessary changes in curb cuts when you think about it and those type of things. So that's just the study to set a plan forth, kind of a long term plan to address the ADA needs. We do have some funding like for our buildings. We have funding every year to make changes to our facilities to go in line with ADA. So we have that ongoing funding, but we don't have ongoing funding for streets, sidewalks and rights away other than what we're doing individually for those areas. Well, we had some conversation about the sidewalks around the courthouse. Is that right? Or what were the sidewalks that we were talking about repairing? Where did that fall in? I mean, that's not on this list or next year. I'll get to that for the downtown sidewalks. Once again, I'm off a slide. But we do have some funding for certain segments of downtown sidewalks to kind of link those together. And that's funding to actually do that. OK. Thanks, Chuck. If I may, Mayor. Yes. Sarah, ahead. Yeah. No, no, no. Go ahead. Yeah, you. OK, questions about this list first. Some of these are funded by capital improvement funds, correct? I seem to remember the traffic signal replacement was bond funded for that one replacement. Well, we kind of have-- we have two annually that are done through the bond program. So through the bond program, 12 will be done over the six year bond program. But in addition to those two through the bond program, we had proposed one to be funded out of this 15, 16 money, and then one to be funding out of the traffic safety fund. So we had proposed kind of four for the upcoming fiscal year, two out of one time funds, and two out of the bond program. So does that $340,000 then represent the non-bond funded traffic signal replacement? One of the two, correct. The other one would be out of the traffic safety fund. OK. I thought for some reason that we had discussed that already and opted against doing that. But maybe I'm not following along well enough. The other question I was going to ask is if there-- well, two more. If there were any other items on there that are bond funded ? Or is this all from supplemental general fund revenues? This would all be from general fund revenues on this list. So there's nothing else on there that's bond funded. So we would do a traffic signal replacement that's not bond funded. If you remember before, I'd shown the number of traffic signals and the age. So it would be in addition to what we're doing in bond funding. OK. Then my third question was if we-- this isn't a priorities list. This is just a clarification of the numbers, correct? Well, I mean, this is a clarification as to what the council would like to include in the budget within this area. In other words, those four that are in red were not in the initial proposed budget. So this is a clarification. Are these the changes the council wants to make from the proposed budget to include these four that are in the red? OK. So my question is-- one of my questions is can we take money out of reserve to pay for one-time expenses, for instance, parking lot fencing? Take it out of the general fund balance? Correct. In a sense, that's really what we're doing. What we're saying is at the end of this fiscal year, I estimate that we're going to add to the fund balance by 1.6 million. So what we're proposing to do instead of adding to the fund balance is to take that-- those funds and use them for one-time purposes. Yeah, that's not what I was saying. What I was saying was that we take it out of the fund balance. So for instance, if there's 27 million in the fund balance, we take out 1.5 million to leave 25.5 million in the fund balance and then do not collect additional 1.5 in revenue. That's my question. I think that's what we're doing because what I'm saying is if you look at the beginning fund balance, what we started at the beginning of fiscal year '15-'16, so what we started October 1, what I'm saying is at the end of September, if we don't do these one-time items, we'll add a million six to fund balance. So it will go from 25 to 27. If-- But what we do with these items is-- If we choose to increase the tax rate. So this represents a 0.5%. >> This is in-- this is simply-- we could do it this year or next year, but this is simply amending the current year budget to expend these funds for one-time items based on we think we have additional revenues in the current fiscal year and expenditures being below what was budgeted. So we're talking about-- for these items, we would amend the current fiscal year budget to include these one-time items. >> I guess I'm confused because these were on our supplemental list as well. >> Correct. >> So-- >> But some times with supplementals that are one-time capital, historically we funded it out of the current fiscal year. If we have excess revenues or expenditures below what was budgeted, we take some of the supplementals that are one-time and say , let's fund them out of the current fiscal year because we think we have these funds available. >> Where did these funds come from? Like where did you find 1.5 million? I'm just curious. >> As I stated, our revenues are stronger in the current fiscal year than were budgeted and our expenditures are planned to be less. We had a little bit more-- you know, the main items are sales taxes higher in the current fiscal year, salary savings are above estimates because of more turnover in the general fund and our fuel savings are higher than budgeted for the main. Those are the three main areas where expenditures are below what was budgeted and revenues are above. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Yes, Mayor Proctor. >> A couple of questions, if I may. One is when you look through this supplemental request and there's a section for things that are recommended to be funded under other funds. And I'm just making sure things are tracking from week to week and things aren't taken off that I think are in. And so an example of those of that, it's under council initiative, it's Fred Moore Park Soccer and Football Fields, which is 76,000 coming from other funds. I assume that's not coming out of current year funds. What fund are we-- >> Yeah, I think that-- >> Is that still in the works? >> Yes. And-- >> If so, where's that fund coming from? >> There's a little footnote for-- I know we make typing extremely small. We like to do that in finance. Half would be coming from the community development block grant, so what was recommended by that committee. And the other half would come from the park development fund, which are, you know, money is put up during the development process. So that park is planned to be funded and split from those two different sources. I need to pay attention to the footnotes. >> I had the very same question, you made the same answer. >> Yeah. >> And I had the very same response. So you didn't watch that tape too well. >> I may have been multitasking. So a couple of questions on some supplemental package issues and one has to do-- and I've just got to say, is this section that highlights some specific strategic plan, strategic outcomes, that's a new part to the budget, correct? At least in the way it's putting on more specific data, more specific benchmarks and whatnot. >> Correct. Council Member Roden, that's an outcome out of the What Works Cities project. So we identified-- >> That was called a softball. >> Right. We identified those strategic outcomes and all the different things that we're going to try to do to achieve those. And we also had a separate strategic planning document which has a lot of that information that we gave to the council as well. >> So I appreciate that. And I think what's helpful about this is as we're thinking about looking at the massive requests and our own personal interests and here's a strategic plan that we've approved with specific goals. There's some of them that had supplemental package requests but yet aren't recommended to be funding, yet has things like target date September 2017. And the question is how does that-- how do we reach that goal? So I'll give you a couple of examples. Well, one has to do with what we did with What Works Cities . And we started this goal, we were identifying some areas in which we can tighten up our strategic goals and planning. We also looked at open data initiatives. Part of that process, we looked at platforms to be able to continue to move this ball forward so we can take advantage of everything we worked on this last year. Yet there's no recommended funding for anything relating to some sort of platform or something to put this data in a way that's available to city staff, to council members and then to the public. Is that just a matter of-- didn't make the cut or are there other ways in which we're helping to achieve that goal outside of additional funding? >> Each item that we had included in the strategic plan, the outcomes and all of the key action steps that we identified, the proposed budget has funding for all of those to achieve all those on the particular one that you mentioned, the open data initiative. We have identified an open source product that's going to allow us to make a lot of improvements in that area. We've actually Melissa Craft, our CTO, she's demoed that with the technical group and we've gotten preliminary very good responses from that. We need to probably circle back with you and show that to you and the rest of the council. But we're working on that product but we don't think there 's really any cost impact to do that. But we tried to identify each one of the KFAs for the budget implications. We identified what the packages were related to those that would require us to fund it. So as an example, streets is probably the one that has the largest kind of fiscal impact is that we weren't going to proceed with having the additional funding for streets. We would need to make a change to that outcome. But all the other ones that are included, they do have, some of them do have packages that were submitted to achieve them but they're all in the proposed budget. >> Okay, good. Well, and one I want to point out too because I don't see where that's the case. >> Okay. >> There's a few relating to neighborhoods. So there's one has the police collaborating with community improvement services to build relationships with neighborhood organization. There's community improvement services implement formal program to facilitate development neighborhood associations increase engagement and whatnot. I know that there was a supplemental package for a position to be like a neighborhood liaison. And I know at some point planning had someone in that role and they were kind of guiding those sorts of things and helping guide that neighborhood empowerment grant. I don't know that that position still exists in planning. So I'm worried about how we're moving those goals forward if we didn't fund that and we seem to. >> I'll ask Andy to come up and address that position. >> Thank you. >> In the planning department currently we have a vacancy that we are recruiting for right now, which would be implementing the neighborhood empowerment grants and the neighborhood summit, as well as other programming related to neighborhoods. And the request that was made by CIS was for a separate type of position that would be a boots on the ground neighborhood coordinator to work on facilitating neighborhood meetings and the creation of neighborhood associations and things of that nature. That we saw them as working together, but being distinct functions within the city. >> Okay, so the answer to that question is at least from the planning side, you have a vacancy. Under current budget you have the ability to fund that and get that in place. >> That is correct and we're already in the process of planning this fall. >> Great. >> This fall, is that correct, Ron? >> Yes. >> That answers my question. And then one more on this strategic plan. Again, this is helpful because it's guiding our goals. >> Yes, sir. >> And it relates to the library's expansion of their mobile library, which we saw a presentation on a few months back. They have current funds in place to be able to expand that. >> Yes, we think we can continue to do that. Obviously, to have another position would allow us to do even more. But even with the existing funds, we think the program can be expanded to do more services in some of the underserved areas in the community. But certainly they would have liked to have had the position to do even more than that. That's true. >> Okay, thanks. I've got more, but I'll let other folks talk. >> Questions? Thank you. >> And this is again some questions on this particular slide. Back to the discussion about the sidewalk survey, the ADA comprehensive study. This is going to lead, I'm imagining, to either a plan for future funding out of the general fund, or maybe some planning down the road for some CIP money in the future bond election to help address some of these rather massive needs for pedestrian accommodations. Is that correct? >> Yes, yes. And I think it gives us the ability to have a long term plan in place and start looking at funding it versus an alternative if we don 't kind of have a long term plan in place and start funding it. We may be forced to fund it much sooner at a higher cost. >> Okay. And the parking lot fencing, is that amount for the chain link or is that for a solid fence that gives a little bit more security? >> Mayor Pro Tem, our code does not, I'm sorry. Council member, our code does not allow for a chain link fence. >> Yes. >> What we're looking at, this cost will have some sort of opaque type fencing, either metal or wood. >> Good. >> And we also looked at masonry, but that's just too expensive. This also includes security cameras, lighting, and gated access points. >> We just need to, we need to expend enough money to do it right the first time. >> And this is the best estimate we have right now of doing it right. >> Okay. >> And regarding the last issue on the cemetery assessment, this is going to count Mayor Pro Tem Roden's question. You know, does this come under safe livable community or do we need a new category? Thank you, thank you. You all could laugh a little more so that he could get caught on the camera, otherwise everybody thinks that this was a completely stupid comment. >> And it mostly is. >> Another supplemental package question, and this relates to tackling some of our fiber connectivity issues for businesses and for neighborhoods. Particularly some of our underserved neighborhoods. And we've had a lot of discussion this year about that, and we've heard from some citizens. I think we're going to hear some folks tonight come to council at the meeting to discuss some issues. I noticed there was a supplemental package request to do a study of where the holes are in town. And I don't think that was recommended. I would just suggest to my colleagues on council, I think I'm hearing from a lot of folks at Denton ISD talking with folks at the university. I think that time is probably ripe where we've got a lot of partners with a lot of assets from a fiber point of view at the table. I just hate to enter into another year without us being able to invest at all. I don't know what we need to invest in at this point, but to not have something earmarked to push that issue a bit further. Or at least explore it a bit further. Or is there something that I'm not aware of that's already existing in the budget? >> We don't have any funding per se identified in the budget for this purpose. But what we have been doing, staff has been meeting with a lot of these different telecommunications companies that are expanding their network through the DFW area and Denton in particular. And so we're talking to them about how do we give them better access to our right of way. We're making improvements, we're widening roads or reconstructing roads. How do we add conduits so that they can put in their fiber in those areas and add other connectivity points around the community. We're looking at some wireless options that are out there. So we're doing a lot of different things to try to enhance connectivity. It is a bit of a slow process. Some of these things take time to get that going. But that's, from a staff perspective, that's the way we've been trying to facilitate that is work with our partners to do that. And try to identify areas that we feel like there's an underserved population and how can we try to provide better access to them. >> So there's priority to it from a staff working on the issue. >> Yes. >> But outside of identifying a need for funds, you 're not there yet. >> That's right. >> Yeah. >> And I think if there was a need that we wanted to do some type of study to facilitate that, we could certainly take a look at that. But that's the approach at least we've been taking so far with the various companies that we've been working with. >> Thanks. >> And my last on supplemental packages is relating to the Parks Foundation request. And I'm curious from staff's perspective because I don't think it was recommended to go beyond the 35,000. And at least from what I've seen, the work that's been done the last couple years, I mean we got Eureka Park built largely on the back of private donations. Thanks to that foundation doing its work. So it seems like a pretty significant return on investment from public funding in order to unlock hundreds of thousands of dollars in private donations. Why at the end of the day did the staff not agree that an additional, I guess 35, I think it was an additional 35 was being requested, would help us achieve that goal to a greater degree? >> If you recall, the agreement that was reached between the city council and the Parks Foundation Board was initially for a three year agreed funding of 35,000. That was going to go away completely this next fiscal year. They came back and asked for not just that initial 35,000 but also wanted to increase that half FTE up to a three quarter time. Wanted to have some additional admin support as well as some funds for supplies as well. And in return, they were also committing to, you're right, raising additional funds for other projects that they're working on for the Parks Department. In our discussions we were talking about at least bringing them back to the current level, the 35,000 that had gone away and at least put it back on there. So that they would continue to at least have that half FTE for the executive director that they enjoy today but would not enjoy next fiscal year unless we added it back in. >> Do they or are they able to fund that position through donations? And could they say, well, we want to bulk up the other 35, 000 and we'll raise the funds to do so? >> We've had this discussion with the board, some of the leadership on the board. And I think they have the same philosophy that the United Way Board has. And that is they want to make sure that when they reach out to someone and they're soliciting donations that the money is going to where they're soliciting the donations for. If they were going to raise any kind of funds for admin costs, that would be a separate campaign that they would engage in is the answer that has been given to us. >> Well, I'll just put forward to my count that you guys can chime in as you will. But to me that's a very cheap investment for what, at least historically, what we've gotten for that. And I think the plans that they have moving forward to invest in everything they invest in, it's a city asset. And it's being funded by private donors in large part. So to me that seems to be a pretty easy, in my opinion, no brainer request to fund. >> I'm going to go over to Mr. Hopkins. >> I totally agree with you. That is not a part time position. That's a full time position that was shown. So I would be willing to do that. I did have a question probably maybe for Chuck. I don't know if you want to stay on that one. I can come back. So this is, we had some leftover money this year. And you're projecting it to be $1.6 million. And so we're going to take this year's supplemental request , some of those one time costs, and that's totaling 1.5. So we're going to have about 117 left over. Are you trying to be careful that you don't get too close to that because that number could change? Or is that still kind of on the table? Does that just go to the fund balance next year? >> Yeah, it would just, whatever is not spent during the current fiscal year, revenue is greater than expenditures would roll to the fund balance. So in terms of that, yes, we try to be a little conservative since those are just estimates. But again, council can increase or add to that. It's your budget now. We just gave you recommendations to start with. >> Well, and I'll just maybe a segue to the next slide. We were talking last time about funding some of that sidewalk improvement out of the TERS fund. But I know that we hadn't had a more high level conversation about what we should use that TERS fund for. And I would just throw that out there that if there was some money left over there in this year's budget, rather than taking 207 out of the TERS, if we could use that remaining amount to fund that. So we don't dip into the TERS as much if we decide to go that route. I wanted to also throw that out because just leaving the T ERS there, I've just given that more thought over the last year kind of for a big ticket item rather than getting in the behavior of starting to just dwindle it down. And just wanted to throw that out there to council. And so. >> Yes, council member. >> Thank you. A couple of items. I agree with Mr. Roden and Mr. Hawkins regarding the Parks Foundation. That's a great return on investment. I think it would continue to be. If it turns out that it's not, then we could certainly come back and reconsider it. If we're not getting the same kind of return that we have been getting. And because it's a no brainer, I'm in. Also, if you're looking for direction, Mr. Springer, on that list that's on the slide right now. I would say go forth with that list. I think that that's a good reflection of where the majority of the council is. >> Okay, thank you. Yes, council member Roden. >> I guess it's the next slide relating to that TERS. >> You ready for me to flip? >> Yeah, I am. I said I only hit four, but I'm not moving very quickly, so I apologize. >> Good thing you didn't have any. >> This is one of those that I cussed at the screen when I was watching the discussion, not really. >> I felt it. >> And the only reason, and I don't have any necessary heartburn with doing that. I just think we have a process in place and a TIF board in place who we're supposed to be leaning on for those sorts of recommendations. And we need to hear from them as to whether or not there's some other recommendations for big ticket items for things. Are we just draining this unnecessarily to find some money in this particular fiscal year? I just think there's goals in place for that TIF. Sidewalks might be appropriate. I just think us doing that unilaterally, while I know at the end of the day we're going to have that ability to say so, I think it's leaving one of our appointed boards out in the dark on that. So I'd be uncomfortable with making that decision without putting that through that official process, which may even be by law we have to do. >> We've looked at this recently in another context and we do believe that a recommendation for the TIF board is appropriate. I would probably also look at, and I assume we stated our projects broadly, but I would want to study and look at our project documents also to make sure that this item fits. >> If it's within that, so I would at least want to look at that. >> Even philosophically, anything you do with mobility, with sidewalk is one of them, is not necessarily for folks who live and work our own businesses in that area. What you're doing is allowing folks to connect to that area in a way that doesn't involve a car. I don't live in that ter zone, but I walk downtown, ride my bike downtown all the time. And proper infrastructure allows me and facilitates me to do that better. And there's a number of folks in these surrounding neighborhoods who do that as well. So I think even philosophically thinking through that, does that need to be something funded by property taxes there? I think citizens from all over our city benefit from that. So anyways, it sounds like we're going to need to go back to them anyways for recommendation. >> Yes, Kestrel. >> I'm on board and thank you for remembering and pointing out the Parks Foundation. And I would assume this is a continuation now of a new contract, so it's a three year contract? >> I think that's what we would propose is another three year contract. >> So this would be the full time position for three years. >> Well, I think it's three quarters time. >> Three quarters? >> Three quarters time, some, I apologize. It's going up from a half time to three quarter time, getting some administrative support so that three quarter time position can actually be out doing some of the solicitation that apparently needs to be involved. And some funding for some, I think it's some office supplies. >> Well, when you look at Eureka 2 and what they were able to do, I'm in awe because my grandchildren love Eureka 2. So let's support the Parks Foundation and give them what they've requested. >> Yes, Councilmember Begay. >> I actually requested some information about the Parks Foundation on July 18th and Mr. Voral was kind enough to give me a breakdown. The three quarter time position represents, the request represents, as you mentioned, going from half time to three quarter time. It's a 17% increase in pay with approximately 5.6% for each year that the director has served. For me, that's difficult to swallow even given how great the Parks Foundation and all the great work that they do is because that exceeds any type of raises that most of our staff have received during that time period. It's also a one time increase of 17%, so I'm not in favor of that for that reason. The other thing is I did speak with some members of the Parks Foundation board about fundraising for that position. And my familiarity with non-profits is that they do fundra ise for administrative positions, that's a normal part of the non- profit world. So I'm a little bit perplexed as to why it seems out of the ordinary for a foundation to fundraise for their administrative positions. Typically, non-profits will show how much of your dollar that you donate goes to administrative. I think 20% is a good rule of thumb. So I'm in favor of supporting the Parks Foundation at the same level that we were supporting them and encouraging them to organize themselves as other non- profits do, which is to fundraise for administrative costs so that they can grow. >> Okay, thank you. Yes, Councilmember Hawkins. >> I think with that big of an increase, this was kind of a test year. And they went over and beyond working way more hours raising funds. I mean, I have no idea how many hours Molly put in, and it was easily over 40 hours. So I think that's maybe why that's a little skewed if I was guessing. So I just wanted to throw that out there. >> Yeah, as far as the TURS conversation, I'm okay with that. But I've been asking for it for some time. We need to have, we need to revisit, even if it's in a joint meeting with the TURS board, the downtown TURS, because these assumptions of it's going to fund a parking garage for a city municipal complex, it's going to do all these kinds, there's no foundation for any of that. And I mean, look, I'll make no bones about it. I was the only one that voted against it when it was formed . And I voted against it because of this very thing, that it 's all of our own money. And so I think we just need to have another policy discussion about this, because I really struggle with, that's a very articulate argument you made about, well, people are benefiting who are coming to downtown to walk on those sidewalks. Fair enough, but also anything that, because if that money could go to also fund some sidewalks who aren't getting funded. I'm just saying we've segregated the downtown by the creation of this. So I just, I'm not quite out of post, I'm talking about the budget. So in the budget, we need to have a hearing to talk about T URS budgets. But so I'm okay with that because of just going through the policy. Now you said it was appropriate to have a recommendation. I believe his question was, would we legally be required to have a recommendation? So was that appropriate and legally required the same thing ? >> I think that the state law is looking to the TURS board as a recommending body and the council as the determining body. Additionally, as I indicated, there's a financing document and there is a project document. And I don't have in my, I fixed in my memory right now how we set forth those projects that would be looked at by the TIF board. So we need to look at it and be convinced that this particular project is properly listed as a project that would be considered by the TIF board. And that's another reason to have the discussion because that's so broad. I mean those project categories are so broad that, but I really would encourage staff, Mr. City Manager, let's get that on the docket unless we get through the budget so we can really have a comprehensive discussion about that. The, Council Member Geary, on the 35,000, so let me make sure I understood what you were saying is that you're not in favor of giving the additional just because you thought that the amount reflected a raise situation that seemed a little bit high for you. And then also you just felt that they could do the fundraising on their own. >> Yeah, I'm in favor of keeping the 35,000 as they've had it for the reasons that you just stated. >> Yeah, okay. And I'm okay with the additional but with one sort of observation. Because since this is something new we're doing and the E ureka Park was a, I mean that was a pretty big project and that's something that needed to be done for 20 years, so I don't want to just gauge that. But also would like to, I'm assuming part of this contract will be a report. I'd like to see a report to the council in an informal staff report or something that says here's what we're doing . Here's the dollars that are being either saved from the city funds. I mean because Eureka too was a, the first one was a parks fund initiated project. The city kicked in some money but it wasn't a playground that was constructed by the city. And I don't know if it was going to be or if it was just done by the community. But I'd like to see a little bit more tracking of the metrics of if we're saying it's a good investment, it's a no brainer. I'd just like to see the data on that as it moves forward. And do we know if in the contract there's anything that says if before the three years something happens that, or if it's not the way we anticipated that that's either party can terminate that or is it three years and that's it ? >> I'm not sure where that term is in there, but that can certainly be added. >> No, no, I'm not saying, I was just curious. I mean because the money, I just, I don't mind, $35,000 in the grand scheme of things isn't a whole lot compared to this budget. But if we're going to fund it based upon the policy or the assumption that it's a good return on the investment which is a financial term, I just would like to see that. >> Well, I guess a couple of things. One, in discussions not just with the current board chair but also the previous one. Staff has made it very clear to them that this is all based on how city determines their budget. So they know on any given year that item could end up not getting funded. They're well aware of that. So we've made it very clear to them that if for some reason we fall on some economic downturn and we need to make some cuts, that could be one of those things and they get that, they understand that. >> Well, and that's not the thrust of my question. It's not to say, hey, how can we get out of this agreement? It's more of, let's make sure we have some metrics in place or some reporting metrics in place and say, okay. And it may come back and we go, golly, this is better than we even imagined. >> And we did recently send out that informal staff report on the return on investment going back, I think several years before they had their executive director and then the three years that they had it. And the types of projects they took on that we then did not have to fund in the general fund. So those metrics are being collected and we'll continue to collect those going forward, obviously for the next three year period and we can give you, if you're asking for more. >> No, no, it's not. >> Timely updates, we can certainly do that. >> Well, and also when we say that it's money that the general fund did not have to spend, I just, I get that, but were we going to spend it, number one, and had we already approved it, had we already started moving just maybe even just in discussions in that direction. I just don't want to, it's like do we give economic incentives for people to come here, but before they come here, we do it, they come here. I just want to make sure we have some substantiation of those kind of ideas. So that's it, just that continued staff report be fine. >> Okay. >> Any other questions on this particular slide? So it sounds like, correct me if I'm wrong, sounds like the funding coming out of the TURS is something that is not the direction of this council, at least at this time, is that correct? Go ahead, Council Member Gary. I just want to go through point by point. >> I'm still in favor of it. >> Okay. >> I'd like to hear from the TURS board and I like Mr. Haw kins' idea of possibly, if we do it, that we don't necessarily need to take 207,000 , that there may be some more money left from the budget this year that we could do that as a one time expense. >> I'm in favor. >> Okay, of taking it out. >> Yes. >> Well, again, I don't think we can or certainly ought to move forward without consulting the TIF board. >> Okay. >> So I might be in favor if they are. >> All right, well it sounds like that we can't make that determination unilaterally without a recommendation or some policy decision from recommendation from the TURS board. So then I would say we need to maybe put that on the agenda of the TURS board to give us that direction and their recommendation. All right, funding of 145 downtown sidewalk improvements from the traffic safety fund. Okay, I see heads nodding. >> Yeah, I just put that one because those were the two areas where we were funding it out of. >> Okay, yes. >> Just wanted to let you know the full amount was still in there. >> All right. >> I'm sorry, Mayor Pro Tem. >> Is it possible, and this could just be in your next list of answering budget questions, of putting together comprehensive look at what we're doing as it relates to sidewalks this year. I know there's a few different requests coming out of different pockets. I'd like to get a comprehensive plan. And I also know that transportation had requested, which wasn't part of the recommended budget, but to update the bike and pedestrian plan to include a robust pedestrian component. And if there's anything that any staff member can point to of here's how we're able to accomplish what was being sought with that, outside of actually funding an update to that plan. Because I'm mostly, I guess to give you a sense, I'm mostly concerned with us getting a good comprehensive picture moving forward, not just of ADA issues, but sidewalk issues generally speaking. So that we can develop a plan once and for all for sidewalk funding moving forward in the same way that we've done with streets. So if we're already accomplishing that in this budget cycle some way, let me know that. If not, let me know that too. >> Yes, Councilmember Wasney. >> The compensation study that we had, and there were dollars that looked like we needed to fulfill that study and city manager indicated that there were some funds available. Where did that all wind up? >> In terms of that, there's some funds that are budgeted to cover two items. One would be increases due to the compensation study, those people that fell below the minimum. And we estimated that, I think the last number and memo from the human resources department in the general fund was about 130,000. We also had set aside funds in the meet and confer agreements. There's some new incentives, wellness incentives that kick in during the upcoming fiscal year 16-17. So between those two, we have about 300,000 set aside for the additional wellness incentives for civil service personnel. And then to bring individuals up to the minimum in the general fund if they fall below the minimum of the new pay range. So that's within the proposed budget currently those funds are. >> Thank you. >> Go ahead, I've just got a question on the memo. I'll wait to get through with your slide presentation. >> Well, my last slide was just next steps to let the council know what's coming. We'll have the public hearing on the tax rate on the 23rd. I'll also have a work session placeholder like I did today. And then September 13th is a public hearing on the budget and a second public hearing on the tax rate. Those will both be evening in the council chambers, but all the meetings now through and including the 20th will have an item on the work session agenda to discuss the budget. Adoption scheduled for the 20th and that's all I have. >> On the airport fund, the enterprise fund, I read it in here and I'm trying to find it. But if I remember correctly, it said that we're going to discontinue the ROI payment which was correct my history if I'm wrong. That's from I think Keep Denton Beautiful, no, Keep Denton Beautiful went to the wastewater, nevermind. >> Solid waste. >> Solid waste, yeah, solid waste. I don't know why I was thinking that, I just saw ROI. Because it said that given the changes where the city, where the general fund debt service will pick up about $400 ,000 a year of that debt service plus or minus. What the $60,000 of waiving that ROI contribution. That the airport fund stays sustainable up through 2021, I think it was, or something like that. Does that mean if we didn't do those things that it's not sustainable now or by next year? >> I don't think it's next year. I think it's a few more years out in terms of a projection. >> Let me get to that answer and there's an attachment that shows. >> What page is that? It was 2018, 19 fiscal year. >> It's number three on the question and answers. >> Is that the page three or is that? >> Question number three on page two and you click on that attachment three and it takes you to that attachment and I think we've got a kind of a with and without those changes. >> I guess in regards to the budget, I would like to have some type of either informal staff report or maybe even a report from the airport council committee on the airport council committee. Just because this is a dramatic shift from where we were three or four years ago as far as looking at self-sustaining ability . We had the gas well funds that we were using to fund things . So when we start picking up half a million dollars a year of debt service, I just want to see is that just the beginning? I really want to look at that comprehensively. And secondly, having not to do it at the airport switch tracks all together. We've been talking about the budget with an assumption that it's a half cent decrease. Am I correct on that, Chuck? >> Correct. >> If people have a strong objection to that half cent, in other words they believe it should be more, I would encourage us to have those conversations sooner than later. And I'm not saying that I've heard of anybody having those sentiments, but I'm just encouraging my colleagues. If that's what we need to do, then let's have those conversations. Because if it comes down to when we adopt the tax rate, correct me if I'm wrong, that we have to have five affirmative votes to do that. If we don't have that, then it reverts to the effective rate, which means everything we're talking about right now is basically null and void. So I say that just, and if we don't hear anything in subsequent meetings, then I'm going to believe that that's okay. But I just want to put that out there just as another encouragement that if we do have some issues with that, that we talk about it. Council Member Hawkins. >> Yeah, I know I missed the first meeting I think where you all were talking about this. But I think I'm comfortable with the half cent tax decrease . What I'm mostly comfortable with leaving it flat. I still think that there are a number of needs that the city needs, that the city just needs to address, and in 2014, overwhelmingly the citizens voted that they were going to be okay with a possible tax increase. And I know that the assessed values of some properties have gone higher than maybe they had thought at that time. But I think that it's going to be more difficult to raise taxes here in a few years than to leave them flat right now . And to change behaviors rather than just, and correct me if I'm wrong, a half cent decrease for a $200,000 home saves an average resident $10 a year. Did I remember that correctly? >> Yeah, I think one cents, $20. >> So I'm not trying to be insensitive that, I know that utilities are going to be going up a little bit. And I just want everybody to just think about that. I'll be okay with a half cent decrease. Any more than that, I would not be okay with. But I think that this is a prime time for us to change behaviors rather than just save $10 per $200,000 home. This city is still old, it still has a lot of old infrastructure, has a lot of things that we need to address . And when we're talking about where to get money for sidewalks and should we use the TURS and should the parks and rec position go to a three quarter position, she's still going to be working 50 hours a week. I mean, we're stealing that. So I just want us to think about that. I know it's just right now, I know things are good right now and I'm not trying to be insensitive to anybody out there. But I do think it is much more difficult to raise taxes in a few years than to just decrease. You know what I'm trying to say, I'm confusing right now. But anyway, I wanted to say that I know that I had not said it at that first meeting and wasn't there. So thank you. >> Okay, great. Councilmember Gare. >> I think the first meeting was the one where I had to leave right at like 2 PM or something like that. >> I think so, yes. >> I wasn't here for the remainder of it. I mean, I maintain the position that if we're going to be increasing the amount of revenue that we take from taxpayers, that's really a discussion that needs to happen in terms of how much more money do we want to have. So effective rate is my starting point. That's 0.663, I believe. I'm willing to go a little bit above that for the right programs, one time expenditures. But I think that we can get there using reserve funds for one time expenditures. And I also think that we need to, if we're really interested in changing behavior, we can't constantly be increasing taxes every single year. That's not how you change behavior. And I understand that the city has plenty of needs. There will always be needs. So sensitive to that, I think that if we continue to increase taxes on our citizens, you're going to completely turn over the city at some point in terms of who is owning what. And it's not going to be the city that it once was. I can't get on board for that, so. >> Okay, so what I thought I heard you say was in the discussion where I think you did have to leave early, that the assumption of the presentation was a half cent sales tax. Given what you just said, that's still one and a half cents really below the effective rate. So for all intents and purposes, a half cent sales tax reduction is not going to be something that you can be on board with. Okay, all right. >> Just help me out. What kinds of behaviors are you wanting to change? >> Well, I think that we could improve our culture in terms of finding efficiencies. So for instance, every year we get supplemental requests. Alongside that, it would be nice to see ways that we could decrease our spending. Just right next to one another. Not saying don't give us supplementals, I'm saying show us how we can save money as well. So I haven't seen that so far when I've been here. I have seen some efficiencies that have been achieved through contracting and procurement, which I've been very impressed with. But in terms of how we approach budgeting, I think the way that we approach it is constantly increasing and expecting an increase. So that's the behavior that I'm referring to. >> Okay. Yes, I'm sorry, may I approach him? >> I'm certainly comfortable with the budget as recommended and the tax rate as recommended. I don't think we're increasing taxes. Property values have gone up. I got two properties myself and that means that two of the main assets in my life are worth more than they were before . And do I have to pay more taxes on that? That comes with that. We're a very fast growing city with a lot of needs. And to not invest now when we have the opportunity to do so , when the economy is such, to invest in sidewalks, to invest in streets, to invest in necessary infrastructure, to make sure we're not in the same position we are when it comes to streets 20 years from now that we are now. Because we failed to invest. So I think this is reasonable. I think a half cent decrease, which is what is recommended, is completely appropriate. So I'm on board with that. >> My overall comment on the budget, when we see all the new hires every year, new hires, new hires, new hires, it's not just the salary, it's the benefits, it's the retirement, it's the whole package that comes forward. And council is always reluctant to question all those new h ires, to ask for a real justification as to why are they needed? And to justify the new hires to this council. The other issue, of course, is with the 0 to 5% pay raise every year across the board. We're now going into what, year five? And I understand that we had a compensation study that were competitive, and I get that. I also know that it's still on the backs of the taxpayers. And so I will vote for the one half percent decrease. But coming forward next year, I would like to see staff department by department. And we will have a new city manager on board, by the way, who may restructure how all of the budget is presented. We'll see what happens there. But I would like to see justifications in terms of all the new hires, because that adds a lot of money to the budget. And I understand we're growing and that we need to grow along with that. It's just always a hard pill to swallow every year, looking at those numbers. And again, I stand firm on that 0 to 5% because this is year five of that. So if somebody has somewhere in that 3 to 4% pay raise each year, that's 12 to 15%. I know a lot of the private sector just doesn't have that. Wages in a lot of parts of the country are stagnant. Inflation is 1% right now out there across the board. So it's easy to spend somebody else's money. But the somebody else's money are the taxpayers who work so hard to pay their taxes. So I don't have a majority on this council to change the pay raises. I tried last year, it didn't go anywhere. There's not the vote here to change that this year. But I do want to make that clear that I see that as over the top, that it's just a given in the budget that comes through. There's not even a council discussion and a council policy. It just comes forward in the budget every year. Thank you. >> Yes, Councilmember Gregory. >> Well, you're trying to get the sense of the council. I'm okay with the half cent tax decrease. I would be okay if we did not do it. It's an interesting argument that keeping the tax rate the same means that we're raising taxes. That would mean that for individuals who are spending more money on sales taxes, that the state's raising their taxes. Same argument, same logic. Or to say that if a person gets a $5,000 pay raise, then that means that the federal government has increased their income tax. It just means that the system that we have is set up such. Certainly folks are paying more if their property valu ations went up. And lots of folks did. Some folks didn't. Some folks' property valuations went down. If I had my druthers, I would always like to see my investments go up in value. And so while I'm not always thrilled about the property taxes, I'm always happy to see that my property that I own, the real estate that my wife and I own, that the values went up . That's good. That's good for the entire community. And so it's an interesting, but I think very flawed logic to suggest that that means that folks are somehow being overburdened with taxes. We do have to be absolutely conscious. And we're not spending their money, we're spending our money. I mean, every time I approach a budget, it's my money we're spending, because I'm a taxpayer. Everyone at this table is a taxpayer. So I think that we have to be really cognizant of that. And I think that the notion of every one of those increases needs to be justified. And every time that we've asked questions on justifications , they've been forthcoming and solid. So I feel comfortable with it as it is. >> Councilmember Gary. >> Just want to recap of realized gain versus unrealized gain. The difference in your example was that that was a realized gain. When you increase property values, that's not technically realized. It's not money in anybody's pocket, and it can certainly be lost at a later time. The second thing is, when you, for instance, have a commercial property, that increase in tax is passed on to tenants. Tenants are paying far more than $10 or $20 per year because of tax increases. So when I talk about turnover in a city, it has to do with tenants more so than homeowners. That's really at the forefront of my mind. And having managed a commercial property, I can tell you that there is absolutely no way to keep up with tax increases for your tenants. The owners will eat up the taxes. Two things, so realization and the tenant issue. The other thing I wanted to point out was that since 2000, you brought up the population growth. And I agree with you, we need to invest in roads and sidewalks. The problem isn't the investment, the problem is the prioritization. For many years, roads and sidewalks were not a priority. So I think we can have this discussion in terms of what is a priority for us for budgets. And that's the way to approach it, rather than saying we constantly need to have more tax revenue coming in, in order to prioritize it. Those are two different things. So I looked up the population increase in our city since 2000, and we've increased by 56% since 2000. That's 16 years, which is a lot of growth. I'm going to tell you that our budget has increased just kind of spitballing way more than 56% since 2000. So the idea that somehow we have to spend this to keep up with the growth of our city, I think that's a little bit of a flawed argument when we look at the data. The farthest back I could go was 2010, so if finance could indulge me please. And if you can go back a little bit farther on the budgets, we can get more of a historical view of how the budget has grown since 2000. Kind of track it with population. I think that would really help the discussion in my own understanding. >> Yes. >> I'd just like to add that I am a tenant of three commercial properties and I'm still okay with a flat tax rate. Just wanted to add that right now. Thank you. >> Well, and obviously this discussion has a lot of different tentacles. And it's something that's also being talked about down at the state legislature. So it may come to a point depending on how things go, whether we have much of a choice in that or not. But the whole point, I mean, it's interesting to listen to the different discussions because we talk about increase in taxes. Well, that's not an increase of taxes. So I'll just tell you from my perspective, if I paid $2,000 last year on the piece of property and this year I'm paying $2,500, I'm paying more taxes. That's just the way the system's set up. I think for me, it's just making sure that we're as efficient as we can be. The prioritization issue question, honestly that's why we have elections locally. Because at this table are varying different philosophies approaching growth, approaching fiscal responsibility, approaching priorities, and that's why we have them. So I mean, this budget, I would have liked to have seen something a little bit more substantial in a tax rate decrease. But quite frankly, we had assumed in the earlier discussions of the budget that there would be a 10% growth and we didn't quite have that. Just to give you an example, and I won't go into too much detail, but I had a property. My initial appraisal was doubled. If I didn't protest, I would have had to have charged my tenants $100 more in rent a month to cover that, which that would have almost probably been impossible. So the great thing is we have a process. If people think that their property's overvalued and they want to reduce their taxes, they can do it. But also, we as a body want to make sure that we spend money efficiently and effectively and try to meet as many of the priorities as we can. And I have to tell you, this has probably got to be one of the biggest challenges that staff faces in their year. Is trying to understand how do you do the budget? How do you create a budget that seven people from various backgrounds, various philosophies, various ideologies can come together and agree on? So my hat's off to you. My hat's off to you staff, Mr. City Manager, because that's just got to be a beating, quite honestly. And so I appreciate the hard work that you do, because in the end, we get something that is very workable. And we don't always agree on all the budget components. I certainly don't all the time, but also know that in the spirit of the common good, sometimes I'm not going to get everything I want. And I appreciate my colleagues, because you know what? It's just as difficult for us to try to make these decisions. So I appreciate the spirit of the conversation and the hard work that everybody puts into this. So thank you, Chuck. Thank you, Brian. Thank you, Howard. Thank you, staff, because anyway, yeah. Job well done. Thank you. Any other questions on the next steps on this work session item? Five slides only. I'll cut it back next time. That's all right. It doesn't matter. We were on the first slide for an hour. Yeah. OK, well, that takes us to the conclusion of our open meeting work sessions. We will now convene in closed session at 2.37 PM. We will consider the following items, consultation with attorneys under Texas Government Code Section 551.071, deliberations regarding real property under Texas Government Code Section 551.072, deliberations regarding personnel matters under Texas Government Code Section 551.074, and deliberations regarding certain public power utility competitive matters under Texas Government Code Section 551.086. Let's take about a 10 minute break before we-- [MUSIC PLAYING] Good evening, everyone. Nice to see a full house. Welcome to this meeting of the Dent City Council at 6.30. On Tuesday, August the 16th, if you would stand with me if you're able to pledge allegiance to the US and the Texas flag. [INAUDIBLE] Honor the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to the city of Texas, one state, under God, one community. Thank you. Under agenda item two, which is proclamations presentations , we have no items there, so we'll move on to agenda item three, which is presentation from members of the public. If we could now roll the review of procedures for addressing the city council. The Denton City Council has adopted rules of procedure, including a code of conduct, which applies to citizens as well as council members. These rules were enacted to promote an orderly process and to preserve decorum. Here is a brief review of the rules that apply to citizens' reports. Citizens will have four minutes to give a report. There will be an electronic beep when time has expired. If the remarks are not concluded by that time, the citizen will be asked to stop speaking. If the citizen does not cease and a second request is made, the mayor will request to have the citizen removed from the council chambers. Citizens are asked to not approach the dais. If a citizen has papers or other materials to hand out to the council, please let the city secretary know, and she will have a staff member distribute the materials to the council. The attorney general has ruled that council members may listen to citizens speak and may ask questions of citizens for clarification of the issue. Council members will not engage citizens in discussion of a topic, because to do so could potentially be a violation of the Open Meetings Act. When speaking to the council, citizens are to direct all remarks and questions to the council as a whole and not to any individual member. Please refrain from making abusive, personal, impertinent, profane or slanderous remarks. Anyone who violates this rule will immediately be removed from the council chambers. Citizens' adherence to these rules will help make an effective presentation and will preserve the order and decorum of our proceedings. Copies of the rules of procedure are available from the city secretary. Moving on to Agenda Item 3B, which is Received Scheduled Citizen Reports from Members of the Public. We'll go on to 3B1, which is Shirley Johnson and Shirley Martin regarding a property tax freeze for seniors and the disabled. If you will come forward and state your name and address, and your time will begin at that time. Thank you. Good evening. I'm Shirley Johnson, 9904 Crestridge Drive, Denton. Shirley Martin, 8717 Franklin Drive, Denton. Good evening, Mr. Mayor and council members. In 2003, the Texas State Senate and the Texas House overwhelmingly passed House Joint Resolution 16. It was followed by 81% of Texas voters voting in favor. This legislation and vote by the people of Texas set in motion the option for a city or county to freeze property taxes for the disabled and for seniors 65 and over. It can either be passed by a city council, a county commission, or by a petition that places it on the ballot. As of June 13, 2016, taxes for seniors and the disabled have been frozen in 208 cities, counties, and junior college districts. Surrounding cities that have frozen their taxes are Fort Worth, Grand Prairie, Mesquite, Rowlett, Burleson, Cleburne, Granbury, Hillsboro, Plano, Ro anoke, Trophy Club, Westlake, Arlington, Bedford, Benbrook, Colleyville, Crowley, Ulysses, Hazlitt, Haltem City, Hearst, Keller, Mansfield, North Richland Hills, Richland Hills, Southlake, Watauga, Denison, and Sherman. Since 2003, across the state of Texas, all of the petitions and subsequent elections have passed the local initiative to freeze city property taxes for seniors and the disabled. When used, the petitions were never defeated, and the vote carried by no less than 70 to 30, with the majority of cities passing by 80 to 20 or higher. We are here to represent the many seniors and disabled who are unable to do this for themselves. To be clear, this tax freeze will help the seniors and disabled manage their fixed incomes and allow them to stay in their own homes as long as possible. In 2000, the median property value in the city of Texas was $98,000. Now that median property value is $197,000. This is a 99% increase. We know the state of Texas has capped property valuations at 10% a year. We want to emphasize that fixed incomes do not allow for continuing tax increases, even with the 10% valuation cap. The law states there are two ways property taxes can be frozen for seniors and the disabled as long as a property qualifies as their homesteads. Option one, by you, the Denton City Council, you can vote this tax freeze into place, agreeing this is the right thing to do for the disabled and for property owners of age 65 and over. Or option two, the citizens of Denton circulate a petition getting signatures from 5% of the registered voters in Denton. This action, once a petition has been verified by the city of Denton, would place a tax freeze on the ballot for a vote in Denton. We are appealing to your sense of compassion to choose option one. We are respectfully requesting that this council give this matter their immediate consideration to help our seniors and disabled in the city of Denton, who by the way, vote at twice the rate of the general public and our entire need of tax relief. We are not asking for a free ride. We are asking that property taxes be frozen because our incomes are fixed. Please consider your elected position when you place your vote on this proposal. We expect, as well as all the seniors and disabled in the city of Denton, to know your position by no later than September 13, 2016, as we are prepared to move forward with our petition. Thank you to Mayor Watts and the Denton City Council for allowing us to present this much-needed tax freeze proposal. Respectfully, Shirley Martin and Shirley Johnson. Great. Councilmember, yeah, perfect timing. Perfect timing. Councilmember Wasney. I have five questions. The first one, is the petition ready to go? Yes, the petition is ready. We have our electors and everything is ready to go tomorrow if needed. If anyone wants to volunteer for this petition drive, how do they get in touch with you? They can email me at Shirley, as it sounds, S-H-I-R-L-E-Y, at 3, that's a numeric 3, G, properties, plural, dot biz, B-I-Z. Please repeat that. Email me at Shirley at 3G, properties, dot biz, B-I-Z. Third question. Would the property-- Just a minute. I want to get my email address. Okay, go ahead. S, as in Shirley, A, as in Apple, Martin, 8717@hotmail.com. S-A, Martin, 8717@hotmail.com. Thank you. Third question, would the property tax freeze include all of Denton's disabled and all seniors 65 and over if they own a home that's homesteaded? Yes. Question four, does the Texas law also cover spouses ages 55 and over if their spouse dies while they're in the home? Yes, as long as they remain in the homestead. And do you see this change allowing more spouses to remain in the family home after their spouse passes away? Yes. Thank you for coming here tonight. Council Member Gary. Madam City Attorney, just so I'm clear, I can ask questions since this is a posted comment, is that right? Right. So there is a posting here relating to this property tax freeze and so I think you can certainly ask some questions, certainly clarifying questions and you may be able to go a little bit farther than that. Okay. Mrs. Martin and Mrs. Johnson, thank you very much. I have one question. Would you be in favor of a property tax freeze for the entire city or are you here just advocating on behalf of over 65 and disabled? We're advocating 65 and older and the disabled because of their fixed income condition. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Gregory. Thank you. You've done some studying on the law. Does the property tax freeze for people of 65 or older or disabled? How does that benefit folks who are 65 and older or disabled that rent? I believe this is attached to your homestead so at this point I don't think I have the legal answer for you and I'd have to investigate that. Do you have any idea, have you done any studies about the census regarding the percentage of people 65 and older that own a home that might be eligible and the percentage of those 65 and older and disabled that live in apartments? Do you know what those percentages are? I do not. Okay. If you happen to come across that, that would be beneficial for us to hear. I would be very happy to share that with you if I can get that. Any other questions? Seeing none, thank you all very much. Appreciate it. Thank you for coming down. You bet. Our next speaker will be Lavonna Durier regarding Internet service. If you'll come down, state your name and address and your time will begin. Mr. Mayor and City Council members, thank you for the opportunity to speak this evening. My name is Lavonna Durier. I am a voting citizen of the City of Denton. I live at Lake Forest, Retirement Village on Montecito Drive and Ryan Road, and I also represent many other voting citizens of my community. Depending on this description you use, we are referred to as elderly, old, ancient, over the hill. However, we do still have working brains, and most are more computer savvy than the younger generation would like to give us credit for. If you think we all have one foot in the grave, then I invite you to come visit us and you will find a very vibrant campus. So just what do old people do on the Internet? We delight in the vast amount of educational information available on the World Wide Web. Some residents are not ambulatory and do not have individual transportation, but can shop until we drop and the merchandise is delivered right at our front door. Many residents do banking and other business on the Internet. Social Security and Medicare are mostly accessed on Internet portals. Medical appointments are made and test results are accessed on Internet portals. Many residents keep up with children and grandchildren and watch their activities that are streamed live on the Internet. Some residents still work part-time from their home and are forced to go to the high-rise to hook up to Wi-Fi Internet and sit in the dining room among much commotion and low privacy because Wi-Fi Internet service is not available to residents who reside in independent living outside of the high-rise at Lake Forest. The sign at the front entrance of our community cannot operate because of the lack of Wi-Fi Internet service. Pretty primitive. Denton is a city of almost 200,000 people and should make Wi-Fi Internet service available to all. As a retirement community with most residents on fixed incomes, we must be cost-conscious. We are informed by our administrator that Denton Commercial Internet Service is equipped to provide our community with an IFP. It is my understanding that all necessary legal documents have been completed and all the I's have been dotted and the T's crossed. The delay seems to be with the legal department of the City of Denton. This request has been ongoing for several months. And so I tonight respectfully ask the Council to take whatever action is necessary to get this done as quickly as possible. Thank you Mayor Watts and the Council for hearing us and a special thank you to Joey Hawkins who has given us much support and assistance in this manner. Councilmember Hawkins. Thank you for saying that. I wanted to thank you for coming out too. Just wanted to make sure that you were aware that this is supposed to be on the agenda next week and so I have to form everything in a question. How long have you been residing at the Good Sam there without internet? About two and a half years. Wow. Charter was there at one time. They pulled out from Lake Forest and have elected not to come back out there because of the size of our community. They say it's not cost-effective for them. Well once again, thank you very much for speaking tonight. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Frank Klug regarding internet service. He'll state your name and number and your name and address. It's an ongoing message. Yes. Hi. I am Frank Klugy and I live at 3901 Montecito in one of the Twin Homes. Mr. Mayor and members of the Council, thank you for letting me come tonight. My purpose is to present the concerns of the residents of Lake Forest Village with the lack of internet connectivity. Our community has currently close to 200 citizens with a potential for future growth. Many senior residents are very computer savvy and utilize any method possible to obtain internet access. Many of us do our banking online, utilize social media to keep up with our children and grandchildren from around the world, purchase items online, surf the web, and even watch the council meetings. In this day and age, just about everyone uses internet technology, including a very large percentage of senior citizens. At our community, we have infrastructure ready to connect to the internet and provide wifi service to all residents. The missing link is connecting to the ISP or internet service provider located in the Opera House in downtown Denton. Equipment is available, but authorization is needed to permit the installation. ISP administrators have approached the city to get permission to mount this on a tower located in the path to Lake Forest Village that will provide the missing link. Tonight we are here to urge the city attorney and legal staff and council to sign the contract allowing the ISP to install the needed equipment on the designated tower to complete the link to Lake Forest. Once the equipment is installed, it is a matter of days before all residents of Lake Forest will have access to the internet at no cost to the city. Internet wifi will finally become available to the community and the neighborhoods of Lake Forest. As voting and participating citizens of Denton, we're asking for immediate consideration of this request. The delay has become a costly burden on the citizens of Lake Forest Village as we have to locate internet connections any way we can possibly do it. Perhaps a trip to the library or McDonald's or using bandwidth and a wifi provided in the mid-rise building on our community, which is a very slow provider. Some residents have even purchased their own hotspot, a very expensive entity. It's to provide their need to the internet. So there is a better way, and that's providing campus-wide internet for the residents of Lake Forest Village. So I want to thank you very much for your time for allowing me to speak. This is a first for me and I am excited to do it. So that finishes it. Mayor Pro Tem has a question. Thank you, Mayor. Thanks for coming down and speaking. A couple questions and just, it sounds like we're going to have a more robust discussion so we'll get more insight into understanding this, but we may not hear directly from the residents out there. The previous speaker mentioned you guys had charter previously. How long ago was that when they pulled out? I am not sure of the exact timeframe. I have heard that charter had been in. They pulled out their cables or whatever they had and left. The reasons, I cannot speak to that. When that timeframe was, I cannot speak to that. Okay. I'm sure we can get some more information on that. But you said the main building has internet. Do you know who provides that? There is a company providing it and I've heard two names, but there is a provider that provides a wireless internet connection to the members or residents of the high rise or mid rise, if you will, which is very, very slow. In order to use it, you either reside in that building or you go to the dining hall and in that dining hall you must sit amongst the chatter and et cetera and try to find your banking statements online. That sounds pretty third world. Thank you for coming and sharing that with us. My pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? Seeing none, thank you. Our next speaker will be, is it Danny McComack? Come down and state your name and address. Your time will begin. Mr. McComack, before you get started, I just wanted to give , on these agenda items that are citizen reports, typically they're for items that are not on the agenda. And so I know we've got some things that may relate to this . So if you could really try to keep them separate as much as you can, but I'd appreciate that. So yeah, if you want to state your name and address, your time will begin. Yeah. Danny McComack, 1303 Campbell Road. And I believe that you all have this survey of the eas ements, the problem about, but this is to include the purchase of the substations with the moving of the TMPA power lines along 288, just south of Shady Oak. And we've been talking about this since May of 2014. And it's important for us to tie in the substations with the moving of the power lines at the same time because of the missed opportunity that we've had with creating the sales tax for this property to bring retail development there. We're looking at selling the substations, the 34 acres. And we would also like to get these power lines moved and have, we, the owners, would pay for the power lines, but look at some sort of reimburse ments through the tax that we do create on this property through sales and property tax. We've outlined and dedicated a new power line easement to go to the new substations. And so we propose that we'd like to move these power lines with the substations. I've got a couple of questions. Anybody have any questions? Just one, have you all done a study on, and if you have, if it's not proprietary, if we could get that, but the difference between what you think could go there with the current power line configuration as far as retail or something, and then what you anticipate would be the opportunities if those power lines were moved. Have you all done a study like that? Yeah. The thing with that is, as many of you may know, but retail is all about the visibility. And the power lines are actually 185 feet off of 288, which pushes it back. You can't put any buildings in front of it because you're too close to the power lines. And so you won't have the visibility needed to compete with the adjacent retail. And so we've talked to the retailers and they're just not willing to go there. Okay. So that really puts a damper on your retail opportunities. Okay. Any other questions for the speaker? Thank you very much. Thank you for coming down. All right. Now we're going to go on to our portion of the agenda, which is 3C, which is additional citizens reports. And these are the blue cards. Now during this time, it's my understanding from the Madam City Attorney that because of the open mic portion of this, that council really is unable to ask any questions or things such as that, that it's just a presentation by the public. Is that correct? Right. There is no posting on this. This is an open microphone period. So there is no posting at all. Thank you. All right. Our first speaker is Donald Duff. If you'll come down, state your name and address. Your time will begin. Donald Duff, 10012 Countryside. And I'll be very brief. I think you've already got a pretty good presentation on the freezing the citizens, senior citizens. Comment I want to make. There are 3,700 signatures of voters to put this on the ballot. There will be at least 5,000. And my point is, is that gee, guys, it's going to happen. Why don't you go ahead and do it and take credit for it? I would like to see the city council take an up or down vote on freezing the taxes. Thank you. You bet. Next speaker is, is it Rob Atherton? If you'll come down, state your name and address. Your time will begin. Thank you. Rob Atherton, 1001 Grandview. I appreciate Mayor and council members, Ms. Burgess and Madam Secretary allowing me to speak briefly on the issue of the freeze. I'm one of your newest citizens, having retired after 32 years as city attorney of another somewhat smaller university town. And having sat through and occasionally been the pinata in 750 city council meetings, I will also try to be brief. I think the point that I'd like to make here tonight is that one of the few things in the new normal that you guys have to budget for, and I know you have to make some very hard decisions, one of the few things is that the interest rates are somewhat low. And so hopefully that will help on your bonded indebtedness , your certificates of obligation if you have any, your lease purchases and that sort of thing. But I would like to flip that because the other side of that is that if people are fortunate enough to have a CD or a 401(k) or other savings, their interest rates that they receive are almost non-existent. And so I think that you have a lot of citizens here 65 and older or who are disabled who are not able to live on the income from their investments, their retirements. They are eating into their principle. If I am permitted an analogy, that would be a little bit like the city of Denton having to go into its reserves without the ability to change the tax rate because those citizens can't change what they're receiving. They can invest as best they can. It's just the citizens' eye view of it. I do like being on this side of the dais better than on the other side. But I appreciate you very much for your attention. If you have any questions, I'll be glad to answer them as best I can. All right. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. That looks like that concludes our presentation from members of the public. So we'll move on to consent agenda, agenda item number four . Oh, sorry. Yes. Council Member Hawkins. Thank you, Mayor. We're going to move approval of items B through CC, but we 're going to pull items A and K for individual consideration. But on items L, N, and P, we're going to substitute what the ordinance has given to us. Okay. Mayor Pro Tem. Second that. All right. We have a motion to approve the consent agenda items B through CC, save A and K, which will be for items for individual consideration, and L, N, and P will have the substitute ordinance as presented in the work session. Is that correct? All right. Let's vote on the board, please. That motion carries 6-0. We'll now move to the agenda items that were pulled, beginning with agenda item A, consider adoption of ordinance to the City of Denton authorizing city manager to execute a professional service agreement between the City of Denton and focus advocacy. Thank you, Mayor. Let me call on Lindsay Baker, our governmental relations and PIO officer, public information officer. You got the title just about right. Good evening, members and Mayor. Again, Lindsay Baker, city's intergovernmental relations and public information officer. This evening on your agenda for your consideration is a contract for legislative consulting services for the 85th Texas legislative session with the firm, Focus Advocacy. We have worked with Focus Advocacy since 2010. We've been able to do a couple of extensions or renewals with their contracts. This evening's contract before you is a two-year term, similar to what we've done in the past. It is in the amount of $332,000, which is inclusive of the $8,000 in reimbursable expenses. There is an option included in that for an additional two- year term, again, which is consistent with what we've done with our previous contracts with them. Focus Advocacy consults not just for the general government side of what we do, but also consults with DME and utility issues. So we're able to do some cost sharing there, which is beneficial. I think, as we all know, going into this next session, we 've heard over and over again how difficult it's going to be. I just want to press upon you all the assault that we're facing from state government and elected officials and special interest groups on local government and municipal authority in general. Home rule authority is even being questioned right now across the state, which I think is of great concern. Our ability to raise adequate revenue for the services that your constituents would like to have in their community is also coming under assault as it has for many sessions, and it's just going to continue and continue to get worse. So I think, again, it's critical to have a partner with whom we have worked, who knows our business, who understands what we do, our operations, not just cities in general, but our operations specifically, who has and has maintained significant relationships in Austin that we can benefit from. And I certainly hope to continue our relationship with F ocused Advocacy into the next session. They are here this evening. We have Kurt Seidlitz and Snapper Carr, who are partners in that consultant group, and they are happy to introduce themselves, answer any questions you might have. And I am also, of course, happy to stand for questions. Council Member Begheri. Thank you for your presentation, Ms. Baker, and thank you for the backup materials that you provided in response to my request. I do have some questions about some of the posted backup materials. You mentioned that we also have a contract with Fred Hill's group, is that right? That is correct, Solutions for Local Control. And are they also a lobbying agency? Fred Hill is a, yes, he is a registered lobbyist for, in the state of Texas. He is also a former representative in the house. So in terms of the scope of work of this group versus Mr. Hill's group, what is the difference between the two groups? Fred Hill, Solutions for Local Control, that's a very narrow, focused contract. He looks at revenue, taxation issues, sales tax issues, and community housing development issues specifically. And would that mean that then our group here today wouldn't be focused on those issues? Not necessarily, but he has a tendency, again, just with his experience, he's a former chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. So he's able to come in and offer just another layer of perspective and access to various legislators. And currently we have a contract with him, is that right? We do, and it expires at the end of this fiscal year. And are we on a yearly or two-year contract? That one is also, I believe it's also a two-year contract. Do you know the amount of that contract? Yes, it is $42,000 annually or $84,000 for the two-year contract. And then regarding the two-year contract, the legislature obviously is in session for six months every two years. Bills are already being filed, as I understand it. Starting in November. Okay. So clearly there's work to do ahead of the legislative session. After the legislative session is over, what work is there to do in terms of lobbying? Well, for example, right now we're in the interim session. And so there are a number of committee hearings that are taking place based on the interim committee charges that are issued by the Lieutenant Governor and the Speaker of the House. And so there are constantly meetings taking place on both sides of the Capitol. So we have our consultants down there day in and day out attending those hearings, sending us briefings on what's taking place and alerting us to anything that we might need to be aware of and take action on. And then we also have TML, the Texas Municipal League, al erting us as to items that have to do with local and municipal issues as well, correct? That is correct. And as a reminder, TML represents some, you know, 1,200, I might be, don't quote me on that number, cities throughout the state. And so they have a very broad approach to things. And they have to take a neutral stance on a number of issues where there may be conflicting positions between cities. So discussing the conflicting, kind of conflicting issues between cities, one thing that I struggle with is, you know, we're funding our lobbyists through taxpayer money. And the assumption is that we're all of one mind in terms of what it is that we want advocated for. But I don't think that's an accurate statement, whether it 's this body or the actual city as well. So I struggle with using one person's taxpayer money to advocate essentially against them politically. So that's the reason I pulled this. I wanted to pull this item from the agenda. Not any, it's not anything, it's not a reflection on our lobbyists in any way. It's more of a philosophical consideration. The other reason was because we do have TML and we do have Mr. Hill's agency as well, it did seem a little bit redundant having three, essentially three sets of lobbyists advocating for us on overlapping issues in Austin. So I also wanted to highlight that. The last thing, did we have an RFQ for this, for either Mr. Hill's group or for this group? The last time that we did, and to be honest with you, I don 't know if it was an RFQ or an RFP that we did back in 2010 where we chose focused advocacy. We have not done one since then. We chose to do a professional services agreement this time because of the expertise that they offer that other agencies, lobbying firms do not offer in terms of being able to provide services for both DME and general government under one roof . Okay. Thank you. I appreciate it. Okay. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate those questions, Council Member Begarry. And it does highlight, I think for any of the citizens watching this, it gives us a chance to talk about what we do in Austin, because you're right. There's a big fight on our hands. I've had one state senator tweet at me saying, "Cities do not have rights." That's what she said, talking about local control. That's a big issue coming up in the next session. Talk to us about how we come as a council to consensus on our legislative agenda, because I agree there are differences of opinions. But what exactly do we do as part of that process, and how do we arrive at that, and then what do we do with that once we come up with it? Well, I guess, gosh, I'm losing track of time. I guess it was a few weeks ago we had focused advocacy down here to meet with council members to talk about what are your priorities in this next legislative session. That's kind of the first step, is trying to see where you all are, what are your interests, and also sharing what we're seeing in the state and where we might need to be active. Then we go and we meet with city staff, and we learn from them what they're hearing from their associations, what their key issues are going to be, where we might be at risk for things in the state legislature, or where we may need to propose legislation if there's a legislative fix that we see, and we need to be able to identify those opportunities. So in addition to that, we also work with TML. We attend their policy committee meetings throughout the interim session and discuss what their policy positions are going to be. Then we take all of that information together, and we put that into a proposed document, which is our legislative program or legislative agenda that we then bring to you for review, for revisions, and for final approval as a policy document. And that's the policy document that I use. It has all of our stated positions supporting or opposing a variety of issues, ranging from the revenue cap issue to solid waste issues to supporting grants for homelessness. It's a whole range of things, especially as a full-service city. You can only imagine the amount of information that we have to have in our program. So that's what I use as my marching orders when we're down in Austin, and when bills are being filed and committee hearings are taking place, I then know what I can go advocate for or against on. And that same document is also, of course, used to direct our lobbyists. So we as a council have plenty of time to vet that document , to take things out, put things in, come to some consensus on it. Absolutely. It is your document. Just as a statement, it's also nice that parallel to that, the other institutions in town, UNT, UNITED Way of Denton County, Chamber of Commerce, all come up with their own legislative agendas as well because of sometimes similar interests. And we do have a process of getting all those entities together to work together to say, what's our commonalities? We're all kind of fighting for the best interests of our city. And we actually go down to Austin in lockstep, sitting with business owners, sitting with folks from UNT, saying, here is what's best for Denton, and give our legislators the chance to hear from all of us. So that process is pretty robust, a lot of public involvement in it. So I appreciate getting the chance to shed some light on that. Thank you. Councilmember Gregory. Thank you, Mayor. I got on council originally in 2009. I don't know if you remember that year very well, but we had some revenue issues. We had some what? I'm sorry. We had some revenue issues that year. In the following year, because of the state of the national economy, the state economy, the world economy. So I was looking at all the items on the budget that might be available to cut in order to keep providing those basic government services. And when I saw that we had money for consultants in Austin and lobbyists, I was surprised. And I thought, well, that's something that we could cut. And then I started learning a little bit more about it. And I really was surprised that one of the biggest jobs that they have is simply to play defense, that there are so many bills that are filed that are actually antagonistic towards the cities, where not only does the state not provide any revenue for the city on a regular basis, but they find ways to skim money off of our revenues that we take that they use for themselves. Could you talk a little bit? And after I heard all of those things, I became convinced about the importance of us having representatives in Austin who are working for us, who can not only get phone calls returned and meetings with our state legislators, which has never been a problem, but other folks around the state, especially committee chairs and vice chairs. So could you talk a little bit about some of the big issues that we've had to defend ourselves on in terms of the state's proposed legislation that would have been harmful to Denton? Well, I mean, I can tell you that the very first thing off the top is going to be the revenue cap issue. Whenever we look at the potential negative impact that that 's going to have to our bottom line, the ability to raise, again, adequate revenue for our city and for our budget, we've done the analysis pretty significantly. And when we look at that over a 10-year period, if they take the rollback rate down to 4%, we're facing a loss of potentially $48 million, I think it is. That's a significant amount of money. Where do we cut? Where do we make those decisions? Where do you decide to cut as a governing body of this community? And that's going to be really difficult to explain to people the position that you're in. And that's one thing that they've been a huge player in in helping us to defeat that legislation. In addition to that, as you're talking about, the state is skimming off money. We basically act as a collection agency on behalf of the state, especially as it relates to our municipal court. I think it's the first $84 of any traffic fines taken right off the top and sent to the state. We don't benefit from that at all. But we have our police officers out there on the streets. We have our municipal court clerks processing all of that. We have our municipal court judge and everything that goes along with that processing that docket. And we're not able to recoup all of that money, and yet we 're sending all of this money to the state. And the state's constantly trying to put additional fees on top of that. And that's another thing that focused advocacy is able to really watch for very closely and help us get in there and hopefully stem the tide of some of those. >> Councilmember Hawkins. >> Thank you, Mayor. The main thing that I've appreciated about focused advocacy is their professionalism. And two, a concern, I think, when legislative session is in , they're down there fighting for cities' rights, is there's a lot of turnover on city council. And I'll even speak for myself. When I went down to Austin for the first time, you don't have a clue how this all works, or at least I didn't. And what I greatly appreciated was how they taught you kind of what was going on down there, and they definitely listened to individual council members who are elected by the people, by the way. So I do feel like they still represent the people, even if there's a diverse opinion to that, because we are the elected body. And I just wanted you to speak a little bit about that, some of the struggles even for staff. And the elected officials, there's turnover here. And you're trying to navigate through that every year here in Denton, and especially what it's like then to also fight for cities' rights, especially local control has been under assault now since I've been on council, maybe longer than that. So I know that's a weird question, but if you could just speak a little bit to that, the importance of having lobbyists represent a city down in Austin, especially when you're not down there a lot. Well, I mean, absolutely, I'm not able to be down there every single day during the legislative session. And I'm not able to be in 10 different places during the session when there are five committee hearings that we've got bills in that we need to be monitoring. And as much as I might be able to sit in my office and watch it on my computer, that's not going to be effective. Or if I'm down there in one hearing, I need to be in three others. And I may have an additional staff member down there with me to attend a hearing. But having a group like Focused Advocacy, who has a whole team of people, they can go and spread around the capital and one, attend those hearings, two, be talking to legislators and chiefs of staff and getting those meetings for us all at the same time. So it really enhances what we're able to accomplish down there. And I can tell you, it has been a pleasure working with them. And I've learned a tremendous amount from them. And so it is nice to have that consistency down there. It truly is. Thank you. Council Member Gary, I certainly understand your sentiments . And I guess as you were talking about that we're using tax dollars to go down there and maybe lobby in a manner that wouldn't necessarily the opinions wouldn't be held by all of our citizens. I thought, okay, that's, yeah, I get that. And then I thought, gosh, when we do our budget, when we do allocations, we do that all the time. The thing that came to my mind was the Dent Renewable Plan, a 200 and something million dollar project that obviously not everybody agreed with. So I have worked with Focus Advocacy, I guess as long as they've been on. And in 2014, we all remember that, which was House Bill 40. I spent more time down in Austin even before the session. And see, a lot of those meetings took place before the session. Because if you're waiting until the session gets there to begin to advocate for your interests, no matter what they are, you're behind the eight ball. The way that it's set up down there, especially with the complications that we have as a full service city, I don't have a problem with the contract as presented. I do know that it may seem that there's a redundance with Fred Hill's contract. Mr. Hill primarily focuses on local control, i.e. the revenue caps. I mean, that's really, it is that narrow for him as far as everything that I've worked on him with. Focus Advocacy has a wide range of experience. And I believe, and correct me if I'm wrong, they only represent municipalities. They don't necessarily have other clients. Is that? My understanding is that they do have some private clients, but the good thing about their contract is that they have an assurance of no conflict of interest. So if something were to come up that were any kind of conflict of interest, they would absolutely work in our favor. And it's my understanding as well that within this contract there's a 30-day termination clause, really for, not even for cause. I mean, it could just, is it, I'm sorry, is it 60? I think it's a 60 for no cause. Is it 60? Okay. Well, in other words, if we're dissatisfied with the performance, then we certainly have a position there. So I really understand that we want to make sure that we watch every one of our dollars. And I guess as I think about that, I think about in our discussion today during the budget, we approved two consulting services, one to study ADA sidewalks and the other to do cemetery assessments that totaled about $300,000 for this year alone . So I think it's a good value. And quite honestly, if they don't, if they don't perform, we have an opportunity to change direction. Council Member Gregory. Thanks. Well, I did want to make one other comment because I know that if I was in the audience listening or if I was at home listening, I would say, but wait a minute, we elect a state representative and that state representative just is for most of Denton County and certainly all of Denton. And that's true. And we've had great, great success working with our past state representative, Mayor Cronover and whoever our next state representative will be. I feel like that those folks will work with us. But the fact is, is that they represent not only Denton, but Pilot Point and Sanger and Crum, cities of varying sizes and unincorporated areas. And sometimes the issues that are important to the citizens of Denton and to the organization of the city of Denton are not necessarily the same interest or the same concerns of some of the smaller cities, some general rule cities, some unincorporated areas. So while we certainly, this is in no way to suggest that we don't have a good working relationship with our elected officials in Austin. It just is that for some cases we need special help to work our way through the labyrinth that is the state capital in order to make sure that the concerns of the city are well represented. Council Member Wasney. The reality of the political world is that Denton does not revolve in a vacuum. We don't just get up in the morning to go to bed at night ignoring what the rest of the world does. Denton is very powerful and we've got to have representation down there. I'm working 50 hours a week. There's no way I can be in Austin. Dogging committees, dogging committee chairs, reading legislation, reading 500 page bills, trying to decide what stays and what goes. We've got to be represented. This is $166,000 a year. We have employees who make more than that in this city. If we can hire a firm, a law firm, to represent us in Austin for $166,000 a year, I think it's money well spent because there's no one on this dais who has the time or the knowledge to be in Austin all the time to keep a finger on the pulse. Much of this is behind closed doors in small committees, small meetings, and there's always one or two powerful people who are going to control the path of a bill. That's where these gentlemen come into play because it's the information highway that you provide for us as elected officials and we absolutely have to have that. So I am voting in favor of this. Thank you, Councilmember. I see no more requests to speak. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mayor. I move approval of agenda item 4A. Councilmember Hawkins. I second. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries, 5-1. We'll move on to the individual, I'm sorry, for consent agenda item K, which was pulled for individual consideration. Item K is considered option of an ordinance of the City Council of the City of Denton, Texas, establishing an economic development investment fund , defining and committing certain revenues of the city, providing a severability clause, et cetera. Thank you, Mayor. I'm going to call on Chuck Springer, our Director of Finance, to cover this item. Thank you, Mayors, members of City Council. I'll try to summarize this real briefly. In order to comply with accounting standards, the City Council must adopt an ordinance defining the scope, funding, source, and purpose of the Economic Development Investment Fund, which is considered a special revenue fund. Under accounting standards, during the adoption of the 2015 -16 budget, the Council approved the creation of this fund and dedicated $150,000 annually in mixed beverage taxes to this fund. The purpose of the fund is to provide cash grants to companies that meet at least two of the three criteria that I'm going to list, providing higher wage or knowledge-based jobs, making a substantial capital investment, and/or addressing a recruitment or supplier target. There's a little bit more defined definitions of those three areas in the attached ordinance, but again, it's a requirement of accounting standards that we set forth and define this. So with that, I'll answer any questions the Council may have. Councilmember Gregory. Thank you, Mayor. Would you speak just a moment to the issue of accountability so that if a cash grant is provided that we have to have some assurance that performance has been accomplished before that happens? In terms of that, normally with this, there's an agreement that the Council enters into that must be approved by the Council, and we usually set standards in terms of, like an example would be the wages. The company would have to report every year what their wages are and how many high-paying jobs they had. And normally in those agreements, they're called a 380 agreement. There's kind of a recapture clause. So if the company doesn't meet their standards that are required, the City can recapture those funds. Councilmember McGarry. What mechanism does the City have to audit the self-report ing of companies? In terms of the details of the self-reporting? Sure. Can we verify that what companies are self-reporting is true? In terms of the agreements, I think we have the ability in the agreements, the 380 agreements to go out and audit so we could send somebody out there to look at their records. We have that ability in the agreements. Has the City ever done that before? I'm not aware of that. And I'll look over to the economic development staff that might be more aware of the ongoing handling of these agreements. To my knowledge, and I hate to then throw it back to one other person, but I don't think that we've ever actually had to go on site to conduct an audit. So we do have the ability to verify things like the values of properties by using DCAD records, and we have a close working relationship with them to do the verifications annually before we make the payments. We do have, as Chuck said, we do have the ability to contact HR departments to ask questions about employment numbers, but I don't think we've ever gone forward with an on-site audit of any of that. And I will tell you that there are very few agreements that we've actually attached a metric of number of jobs to. It's typically based on capital investment and the verification of those kinds of investments. Amy, did you want to add something? Okay. That was it. Councilmember Gregory? Thank you. I would say to add to that, while it's not exactly on this particular topic, the City has conducted audits, for example, of our hotel occupancy tax funds to determine whether or not hotels are accurately collecting those and accurately reporting those. And so we've done that from time to time. And so it's certainly something that the City does do in order to ensure that our agreements are followed through. Councilmember Wasney? Isn't it true that if the City had an internal auditor, that they would have the authority and the power to oversee some of these 380 agreements? Is that one for me or the City Attorney's office? Whoever wants to answer it. In terms of that, I think the internal auditor would have the ability to go out and look at those, but I don't think it specifically would have to be the internal auditor. I think in those 380 agreements, any City staff has the ability, whether it was economic development or the finance staff. And I should mention one of the other areas we look at are incentive agreements related to sales tax. We generally verify all that information from the compt roller's office for those agreements related to sales tax. So we get a separate report from the comptroller's office on verification of that. But I think an internal auditor or any other City staff could go out and look at their records to verify that information. And it's not so much their records as it is our 380 agreements as they're being written before they're passed by this council that we have one more set of eyes who is a numbers person to really take a look at the 380 agreements and then follow it in terms of compliance from the other side. All right. Councilmember Gregory, seeing no more requests to speak. Thank you, Mayor. I would move approval of item 4K or ID number 16-988. Mayor Pro Tem? Prior to seconding, I would just say, you know, one of the number one things I get talked to about by citizens is the desire to have more substantial and robust jobs in the City of Denton, especially young people who want to stay here. You know, Denton is at a loss compared to a lot of other cities who have a lot of tools in their toolbox to attract and retain significant businesses into their community. And this is $150,000 a year, which is not a lot. That equals probably just a small fraction of a monthly amount of the alcohol beverage tax that comes in. So it's a really small amount. It's coming from a good source to draw from. So I think it's important that we as a city have a lot of tools that are disposal. So I appreciate I know the mayor had suggested this along the way. I know other folks had talked about this over the years, and I think it's a great tool to add to our tool chest. So on that point, I gladly second it. All right. We have a motion and a second. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 5-1. Are we just now through with the consent agenda? Okay. All right. Fantastic. Thank you. Agenda item 5, which is item for individual consideration, consideration of the use of eminent domain to condemn real property interests. We'll go on to agenda item 5A, which is considered adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton determining the public use need and necessity for the acquisition of fee simple title to the surface estate, including a waiver of surface use to the mineral estate of a 38.889 acre tract described and depicted in exhibit A. Thank you, Mayor. Galen Gillum is going to handle this particular item. Galen is our executive manager of administrative services for DMA. Good evening, Mr. Mayor and City Council members. This item before you is an ordinance making findings of public use and necessity, authorizing staff to make offers to purchase and, if necessary, to use eminent domain to acquire the subject property tracts for the budgeted, approved, and site-select ed Brinker substation. Including easements to get power lines into and out of the station as all part of the approved DME capital improvement program. I've got a couple of slides that show the location of the property. And then if there is a motion, I've got the legal descriptions, and I'll warn you it's eight pages long. It's just going to take a little bit of time to scroll through those. Well, once you make your presentation, before the motion we 've got a couple of cards of people wishing to speak publicly, so we'll do that at that time. Before the legal description? Madam City Attorney, what is the appropriate time for them? We need to take the public comment certainly before the vote is taken on this, so wherever it would appropriately fit. Okay, then we'll just get through the end of the legal description, motion being made, and when we're ready to consider the item, we'll have the public comment. That'll work. All right, thank you. You bet, sir. A summary of the need for our project, the growth and aging infrastructure in the Denton area, the electrical system is getting older and the city's growing, so to meet that demand, we're adding substations to the system. It's the responsibility of the department DME to respond to those needs. We've gone through a public involvement process, considered practical options, this site was actually selected by city council on the 16th of February earlier this year. Here's a map that shows electrically where this substation will be in the system. The clouded area, you see it's kind of to the south and east of the inner loop, which is the kind of light green loop. That's the inner loop around the city, and then it's where the outer loop, which is the red and blue loop, comes in contact with the inner loop, so it's where quite a few transmission lines come together. Just a map to show the general location, and then a more specific map here. The curved road on top for point of reference is Shady Oaks . The road that comes around on the right-hand side and curves around is a 288 loop. Spencer Road is along the bottom. The property for the substation is in this general area here. The next drawing will show it a little more specifically, including the next drawing will also show the easements, which are here. The shaded areas, one tiny little area in this triangle here, this green area, these are pink colored areas, this small one here, the conifuchs ia, a purple area here, and then the actual substation site is located right here. You can see an outline drawing of a plan of what the subst ation would take up on the site. After a favorable motion, I'll show the legal descriptions on the screen. >> Councilmember Gregory. >> Thank you, Mayor. I move that the City of Denton, after having made the offers required by state law, use the power of eminent domain, if needed, to acquire the following property, interest, and related rights, which are all located in the Mary Austin Survey, abstract number four, City and County of Denton, Texas, and described in the ordinance under consideration, and which are all for a valid public use, necessary to provide for the expansion, construction, maintenance, operation, and improvement of the electric transmission lines, facilities, and structures, including substations, to serve the public and citizens of the city. One, fee simple title to the surface estate, including all waiver of surface use as to the mineral estate of a 38.889 acre tract, described and depicted in Exhibit A, now being displayed on the overhead screen. And number two, six electric utility and communication eas ements, described in Exhibit B, 0.800 acres, shown as electric easement. >> I'm sorry. Hold on. We need to get the legal description up on the screen. >> I'm sorry. >> Let me give me just a second here. >> All right. Is that it? Is that the right one? >> That's the right one. It's about eight pages long. >> Okay. >> So I'll just -- >> Sure. >> -- slowly scroll through it. >> -- shown as electric easement number one in Exhibit B, and of 0.046 acres, shown as electric easement number two in Exhibit B. Exhibit C of 0.919 acres. Exhibit D, 0.642 acres, shown as electric easement number one in Exhibit D, and 4.636046 acres, shown as electric easement number two in Exhibit D. And Exhibit E of 0.040 acres now being displayed on the overhead screen, all of which are for a valid public use, necessary to provide for the expansion, construction, maintenance, operation, and improvement of electric transmission lines, facilities, and structures, including substations to serve the public and citizens of the city. And doesn't the seconder have to read the whole thing again ? >> I'm going to wait to call on the seconder when we finish the legal description. All right. Is that it? Councilmember Geary. >> Second. >> All right. We have a motion and a second before we vote. We have a couple of cards wishing to speak. The first one is William Nicholson. If you'll come down, state your name and address, and your time will begin. >> Mr. Mayor, members of the council, my name is William Nicholson, and I'm 6'6". And I live at 121 North Post Oak Lane in Houston, Texas. I was the original partner with the McCormick's in 1991 and '92 when we purchased this roughly 500 acres. It was then being marketed as the North Texas Research Park . About two years later, the mayor called and said, "Would you please come to Denton? We have something to show you. And would you please hold off developing this property because we've presented it to the federal government and we're one of the finalists for the Silver Bullet Project." The Silver Bullet Project never came about, and now 24 years later, we think it's time to sell an acre of land. If you told me back then that within a mile of our southern boundary, there would be three to four million square foot of development, I would have bet you that we would have at least sold one acre in 24 years. And the reason we haven't is because the power line's in front. We've had many lookers, tire kickers, even people that did major layouts. And we've had great cooperation with the Denton Municipal Electric. We've moved transmission lines. We're giving them permission to move them across our property any time they wanted. They needed an access road once for construction. We certainly made that available to them. We found them to be delightful to work with, and we don't think you'll have to go to eminent domain to work a relationship with us. But starting back in October of 2014, the really important part of this to us was to be able to move the major power lines that Danny McCormick talked about, being about 165 feet in from 288, being able to move those to the north side of Shady Oak, tie them into the new substations, free up probably one of the most valuable pieces of undeveloped commercial property you have in Denton, and get the jobs and the tax base in that 70 to 110 acres. So I'm here to speak to the subject of saying we'd like to keep those coupled, and we would appreciate your encouragement to DME and the city to try to make sure that we get something out of this too, which we've certainly been very patient and very cooperative today. So that's all I have to say about this. Thank you. >> All right. Okay. Thank you. See no questions. Next speaker is Rob Rayner. If you'll come down, state your name and address, your time will begin. >> Good evening, Mr. Mayor, councilmembers, attorney, city manager. I'm Rob Rayner, 607 South Locust in Denton, Texas. I wanted to dovetail a little bit with what Mr. Nicholson talked about in that when you leave I-35 north on the loop and heading north, you see retail, retail, retail until you get to tractor supply. And then you see a very nice mowed grass area all the way up to Shady Oaks. The reason is, is you have a TMPA power line. The reason that it is so important is you have retailers who look at that, and as Mr. McCormick had talked about earlier, the visibility is very important. We have other issues there, but the visibility, you had asked about some kind of study as to how that would affect. Just imagine taking two football fields, stacking them vertically on top of each other, heading towards UNT, and that would be the beginning of any kind of construction of a building because of that TMPA line with the easements and setbacks and things that are necessary. So that kind of gives you a picture versus what you see as you're heading down south with all the 7-Eleven and all the different retails that are there. So it's important that we're asking that on this ordinance, when it talks about the initial offer, we would like to have in the initial offer discussion of the TMPA line, which would be paid by the owner and ask that tax abatement would be given to them, but only until the retail begins. So they're going to be out of pocket during that period, and they're willing to do that because it's important not only for Denton, but for them as well. This is different from other types of tax abatements and constructions. This is not the size of Razor Ranch, but it's a similar type of situation in that you're going to have some retail growth, and so that's why they're asking for this kind of abatement, but not something that is asking right away as far as reimbursement. So I wanted you all to be aware of that as well. In real estate school, many years ago, there was talk of there are several barriers that curb growth. One of them is railroad tracks, another one is loops, and another one is crossing loops, that is, and then lakes. And so now I look forward to notifying my professor, if he 's still alive, that possibly TMPA lines can also be a restriction of having retail growth in Denton. So I bring that up not as more of a tongue in cheek, but it is a very important issue, and if we can move that, and the reason we need DME to help us with it, because they're the ones that actually do it. It's going to be about a nine-month period to get all the material necessary. I don't see my clock, so I'll wait until it beeps. It'll take about nine months for them to get the necessary material and then move the lines, but you will have easements already in place to go along shady shores to turn back south onto and connect with the Garland Power Plant, and so that's what we're asking for. I appreciate your time. Glad to answer any questions you all may have. How about that? Good timing. Any questions? Three-minute egg. Sorry. All right. Thank you. Thank you. I'm just saying no more cards. We have a motion as Councilmember Gregory. I do have a question for staff to report back to us, not here tonight, but report back to us in a fairly timely fashion. We've heard several comments about the TMPA power line, and interestingly, we're partners in TMPA, but not the sole owners. So if someone from staff could report back to us in a memo or something regarding our relationship to TMPA in terms of that power line and the issues of relocating it, we simply need to know what our responsibility is in terms of that, and I'm asking for that tonight, because that's not the issue. Yes, sir. I'm here to acknowledge your request. Yes, sir. In other words, yes. Okay. Any other questions? We have a motion and a second on agenda item. I believe it was 5A. All right. Yes. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 6-0. Next item for individual consideration for eminent domain is item 5B, consider adoption of the ordinance of the city of Denton, determining the public use need and necessity for the acquisition of various permanent easements and temporary construction easements generally located along US Highway 377 for overdrive. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. Paul Williamson, our real estate manager, will handle this item. Mayor, Councilmembers, before you tonight is an ordinance considering the authorization of eminent domain for the Fort Worth Drive utility reloc ation project. The limits of the project, the city is undertaking in concert with TextDOT. TextDOT's, this road's on tap for a widening initiative and the city is with them relocating all the utilities that are in conflict with the proposed TextDOT improvements, widening improvements, namely water and wastewater lines and temporary construction easements that will allow that work to be done. The limits are to the north, bounded by I-35 and then to the south, FM 1830, Country Club Road. And before you, we're asking for the authorization for staff to make offers to purchase and, if necessary, use eminent domain to acquire the subject eas ements for the project. Upon a favorable motion, I will proceed to display the affected property tracks on the overhead screens. How many tracks are those? There are 110 slides. I will be very quick. Yes, no, no, I'm just going to do it right. Councilmember Hawkins, how slow am I supposed to read this? Go for it. I move that the City of Denton authorize the use of the power of eminent domain to acquire the easements as defined as the property interests in the ordinance now under consideration consisting of various tracks along US Highway 377, Fort Worth Drive, the limits of which being bounded to the north by Interstate Highway 35 East and to the south by FM 1830, Country Club Road and being situated in the A.Hill Survey abstract number 623, the S. Huram Survey abstract 616, the W. Daniel Survey abstract 378, the A. Hickman Survey abstract 521, and the BBB and CRR Survey abstract 196, City of Denton, Denton County, Texas, and being more particularly described in Exhibit A to the ordinance now under consideration, all of which are for a valid public use necessary to provide for the construction, operation, and maintenance of both the municipal water system improvements and the municipal sanitary sewer system improvements necessary for the Fort Worth Drive utility relocations project. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mayor. I second that. All right. Council Member McGregor, are you going to entertain us while we go through the other 60 slides? No. I don't think it will be very entertaining. Like all of my jokes in work session, it seemed to not entertain today. But a question for staff, given the fact that we're scrolling through 110 pages of documents in a rather short and quick timeframe, maybe our City Attorney could explain this procedure a little bit and can -- and I'm guessing that if a citizen wanted to see the details of this, that they could go to the agenda that is posted online and see each one of these 110 pages. Yes, that would be correct. We are following a process that is dictated by state law with regard to the use of eminent domain. We follow this very closely. It does require that these property descriptions and these legal descriptions be displayed during the course of the adoption of these eminent domain ordinances. And so we follow that diligently if there is a desire to look in some detail at these items. They are available. They are available as part of the agenda backup. And so a citizen could go and find those associated with this particular agenda item. But at this time, we are in fact displaying these on the overhead screen for the purpose of the -- And to go along with that, a follow-up question, because we 're not authorizing the staff to immediately go and exercise eminent domain. But first, we're authorizing staff to make offers for the purchase of property. But in case that we cannot come to any kind of a reasonable conclusion, then eminent domain would be an option available if resolution is not available . That's accurate. And so certainly in each and every instance, we do try to negotiate acquisition of the property without proceeding to eminent domain. But this particular item would authorize us to negotiate, and if necessary, and as a final action, then move to eminent domain. And in this particular -- why not? In this particular action that we're taking, it's regarding right-of-way for what? This particular action relates to the taking of right-of- way on Highway 377 as part of the expansion of that roadway project. These items are the taking of easements for the relocation of some of our utilities, which are currently placed in that roadway. And that would be for TextDOT to widen Fort Worth Drive from the current configuration to a six-lane road. Is that correct? That's right. Okay. We've got a motion. And we do have a second. You did second it, Mayor Pro Tem, correct? Yes, sir, I did. Okay. Thank you. We have a motion and a second. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 6-0. Thank you. We will now move on to our agenda item 6, which is items for individual consideration. 6A, consider nominations, appointments to the city boards and commissions. Thank you, Mayor. And our City Secretary, Jennifer Walters, will handle this. Thank you, Mayor and Council. We have just a few boards left to finish, so let's see if we can get all of them done tonight, right? Okay. Airport Advisory Board. Mayor Watts. Still deliberating. Okay. On health and building standards, Councilmember Hawkins has nominated Sam Ortiz. Is there a spot available for an alternate? Okay. Human Services Advisory Committee. Councilmember, or excuse me, Mayor Pro Tem Roden. Thank you. This is actually a great story of citizen persistence. I still had yet to fill that position, and as we were coming out of our closed session, I heard there was a citizen that had come here tonight, had put in an application before, and was looking to see if there was any openings available, and wanted to be a part, so I was able to do a quick interview and vetting out there in the hallway. She's sitting in here, Sarah Swanson, who's moved back from Austin. She works for Peterbilt and wants to get more involved in her community. So I appreciate a citizen actually showing up, volunteering , and so I'm happy to appoint or nominate Sarah Swanson to that position. Thanks, Sarah. Councilmember Hawkins. Still courting. There is a, Councilmember Briggs has nominated Pamela Barnes for the opposition. It's on your list. And she also has a new nomination that came in after we sent out your agenda backup, and that is for Kent Boring for the Parks, Recreation, and Beautification Board. Councilmember Gregory, do you have that? Not prepared. Recreation Board of Adjustment has two alternates. Thank you very much. And you are able to vote on them that we have at this time. Approval will be contingent on completion of their confirmation process. Okay. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mayor. I move approval of the nominations for the boards and commissions as stated. Councilmember Hawkins. I'll second. We have a motion and a second. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries, 6-0. Now moving on to our public hearing portion of the agenda. Public Hearing 7A is hold a public hearing and consider adoption of ordinance providing an initial zoning district designation of Employment Center Industrial District to an approximately 23 acre, 23.24 acre property generally located on the west side of Giesling Road. Thank you, Mayor. And when we visit, our Director of Development Services will provide this. And I'll go ahead and open the public hearing prior to staff public presentation. Thank you, Mayor and Councilmembers. What you're considering tonight is an initial zoning designation of Employment Center Industrial on an approximately 24 acre piece of property. This is going to look very familiar to you. This is the project that has petitioned for voluntary annex ation and you have initiated and completed that annexation and now they are seeking their initial zoning designation of ECI. It is located west of Giesling Road, approximately 700 feet south of East University Drive. It was annexed in June of this year. It is currently zoned RD5X and the proposed zoning is ECI. The future land use plan calls for business innovation in this area. ECI and ECC are the districts that are consistent with business innovation. So this is consistent with the comp plan and our future land use plan. The City Council approved the annexation in June. The applicant's intent to develop the site with light industrial uses was presented as part of the annexation proceedings and the ECI district is consistent with the future land use designation. Public notification was given and mailed on June 22nd. There were eight certified public notices sent within 200 feet of the property and five courtesy notices sent and to date we've received no response. The Planning and Zoning Commission does recommend approval 7 to 0 and staff recommends approval as well. I don't know if the applicant is here tonight but they may wish to speak if so. Alright, any questions for staff prior to taking public testimony? Seeing none, thank you. This is a public hearing. We have no cards that have people signed up to speak but this is a public hearing so if you want to come down and state your name and address your time will begin to address this issue. Anybody wishing to speak on this issue? This is a public hearing. One more time, anybody wishing to speak? Alright, then I will close the public hearing. Mayor Pro Tem. I move approval of agenda item 7A. Council Member Wasney. Second. We have a motion and a second. Let's vote on the board please. Motion carries 6-0. Agenda item 7B, hold a public hearing, consider approval of a resolution regarding the proposed route for construction, expansion, and use of the electric power transmission line located in the area bounded by Fort Worth Drive and Elm Street. Robinson Street, northern boundary, the DART/DCTA rail corridor. Thank you Mayor. Brian Dascombe, our manager of external affairs for DMA, will be handling this item. Brian, before you start I'll go ahead and open the public hearing. Thank you. You may proceed. Oh no, you didn't. I just have to. It's a formality. I just have to open it up prior to staff. That's a quick presentation. Well, good evening council and members of the public. As you mentioned, we're here to discuss the Spencer Locust transmission line. And you can see on the map on your screen there that those two red dots signify our Spencer substation and our Locust substation and this transmission line segment needs to connect the two. Now we have an existing transmission line that does connect these two substations, but with the need to rebuild this transmission line it gave us the opportunity to bring forward to you and to the community alternate routes to see if there was a desire to reroute this transmission line. So you can see here in green is the existing route and indeed this is the route that we're recommending to council this evening. This matrix provides some summary information on various of the options that we showed to the community. And again, that green option is the one that we're recommending tonight and that is the one that is currently existing. So far we've had a public open house and we sent out inv itations to everyone within 500 feet of any of our recommended routes or any of our optional routes for that meeting. And then last month we had a public hearing with the Public Utilities Board. At that public hearing and at that open house we heard from members of the community who were generally in favor of the existing route and of course we're here this evening with another public hearing on this item. Based on the information that we've received so far both from the public and from the Public Utilities Board we are recommending that green option which is again the existing route. Happy to answer any questions. Council Member Hawkins. Just to reiterate, this is the existing route right now so we're just mainly improving upon that. There's some easement being taken over but this is the existing route. Yes sir, that's correct. And one, the one place that that's not, that it differs from the existing route is right here perhaps you can see a faint, a light orange line and that represents where the existing route goes. In working with the landowner of this land right here we've determined that it would be better for us and favorable to them to let the transmission line go straight through this property rather than taking the jog to the south there . So in that way it differs. Okay, thank you. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you Mayor. Brian, can you go to the slide that has the table? I think that's the first I saw that. I didn't see that in our backup. Can you just keep it on there while we continue on? I just wanted to take a look at that. Thanks. Okay, any other questions for staff? Before we take public comment. All right, thank you Brian. This is a public hearing. We do have a card wishing to speak. Craig Freeman. If you'll come down and state your name and address, your time will begin. Good evening, Mayor and Honorable Council. My name is Craig Freeman. I'm at 10655 Smoot Lane in Argyle, Texas. So I'm here to talk about this proposed reconstruction. My family has owned 610 Dallas Drive for more than 30 years . In fact, my father, O.C. Freeman, who's here with us, has been an active member of the community, the business community, since the 1950s. So he's been here a long time. Served on a bank board and owned a lot of property. So our tenant is a countryside Montessori and that is, they 've been there for five years. The executive director is also here tonight as well. There's 60 students that are a part of that school. It's got a, from what I understand, a waiting list of a couple of years. I think that's true. So there's 60 students and it's right, the existing route, which is true, is immediately adjacent to this property. So that the, and you're talking about going from, from what I understand, from 69 KV to 130 KV. So that's a significant upgrade in the utility carriage, you know, in the electrical that's going to be carried along that transmission. So the, I just wanted, just became aware of this just a couple of days ago, this Sunday night. I was sure that there was a letter in the community involvement, but that it was invited to do some of the participation. We weren't aware they'd gone this far. And being in August, which is a lot of vacations, our associate, John Atomy, who is an associate on several properties with us, is moving his kid in school currently and not able to be here tonight as well. But the, I'm pretty sure that the proposed route is not the shortest route. Which true it is, existing, but you're talking about a significant amount going right by this daycare with all these families that are there. And I just respectfully request a continuance on this and just ask that we just get a few more questions and a little bit more exchange before we, before you make a decision on that. And thank you very much. Any questions for the speaker? Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. Thank you. You don't need a card to speak. Anyone wishing to speak, please come down, state your name and address and your time will begin. Yes, come on down. My name is Carmen Borland. If you could speak just a little, walk a little bit closer to the mic so we can hear you. My name is Carmen Borland and I do own a Gaston Mobile Home Park that is right in there. 515 Smith Street. I was told they want to go ahead and buy part of my property. The park is not very big. I had some trailers that I was asked that I had to remove. I don't have no place where to put that trailer. So really it's going to be up. And I am actually making a living from there. And I was planning to keep that place at least for ten more years for me to survive, let's put it that way. So I think it will be really, really a big problem for me. I think they're talking about 20 feet on my front and I had to remove I don't know how many trailers. If you see any other one, you know, there can be change around. And I think the gentleman who spoke a while ago, he asked for you to do more studying before you agree today. So I will appreciate that very much. Because I really don't know. I'll be honest to you, I lost my husband five years ago. He used to do all the business. This is all new to me. So I don't have no one to guide me. I said that until my situation if I had to remove all that because they are talking about at least five trailers and that is a loss of my income going away. >> We have a couple of questions for you. Councilmember Begheri. >> Hi, Mrs. Borland. I'm your neighbor on Westgate. Has anybody spoken to you? First of all, let me ask you, would it be easier for you if somebody spoke to you in Spanish? If they interpreted the legal documents for you in Spanish? >> In Spanish? I really don't need to have it done in Spanish. I'm sorry. This is very emotional for me. >> I understand. I'm just making sure you have everything that you need in this process. >> I really actually I do not need to have it done in Spanish. I understand I can read, I can write, and I can understand English very well. Except maybe my pronunciation makes it a little bit difficult for you to understand me. But I do understand everything that's going on. >> The second thing I was going to ask is if somebody has talked with you about any of the relocation expenses that you're going to have? >> No, no one talked to me anything about that. I just found out all that, you know. >> Okay. Well, I'm going to make myself available to you if you ever need help kind of guiding through this process. I will be happy to help you with DME. >> I will appreciate that very much because I will need help. Thank you. Appreciate it, y'all. Thank you. >> Councilmember Hawkins, do you have a question? >> Sure. It was kind of similar to what Councilwoman Baguerre had said. DME can sit down with you even just tonight and they can kind of explain a little bit more about relocation expenses and how that won't be put on you during this process. And they're available tonight to talk to you right away. >> Okay. I would like that very much. >> Yes, and I appreciate you speaking. >> And thank you for letting me do this. >> Sure. >> Any other questions? All right. Thank you. If this is a public hearing, anybody else wishing to speak, please come forward, state your name and address and your time will begin. Anybody else wishing to speak? One more time. All right. We will now close the public hearing. Councilmember Gregory. >> Thank you, Mayor. I wanted to see if staff could come back up and if we could see that chart that we had up on the screen just now. Thank you. It shows that the green route is actually the shortest route, but that the purple route would actually be less expensive for upfront cost. Yet, there's an asterisk there. Could you explain that asterisk? >> Yes, sir. These costs represent our estimation of what the final cost would be for the various routes. And it does get more complicated with the purple route because we anticipate that it would include annual lease payments to the railroad that own those easements. And so that's not figured into that cost. >> And so that over time, those lease arrangements would end up running the cost probably significantly past because those could be ongoing cost for 40 years. >> Yes, sir. Absolutely. >> Okay. So that explains why the recommendation of the green route, even though the initial cost is higher. >> Yes, sir. >> Thank you. >> Councilmember Hawkins. >> Thank you, Mayor. And explain why we're just not doing the existing route right now, that little square. And if I'm already supposed to know that, I apologize. You know, on the beginning little corner there? >> Yes, sir. Do you mean there at the end where it deviates from? >> No, as I understand it came to light from discussions with the landowner there to the west, that it was their preference and favorable to us as well to continue on straight. >> Okay. So DME's preference to and the landowner? >> Yes, sir. >> Thanks. >> Mayor Pro Tem. >> Thank you, Mayor. Brian, you've heard concerns from two property owners in this area. Can you give us some history and background on what our outreach has been, not just to them but to others in the area, and if there's anything in particular of communication that will help kind of fill out what we heard tonight? >> Yes, sir. >> That would be beneficial. >> You can see there's a -- on this map that happens to be on the screen right now, you can see this kind of highlighted area. And everywhere within that dotted black line, we said if anyone's within that area, let's make sure to contact them. And so they would have gotten a piece of -- they would have gotten a letter in the mail if they were either a resident or a property owner. So if they're a property owner who didn't live there or a resident who didn't actually own the property, either way they would get a piece of mail . We also put notifications in the local newspaper. And we did that for an initial open house, which is an informal meeting that we hold for these types of projects. We sent out another one of those mailings and put another notification in the paper when we had a public hearing with the Public Utilities Board. And then again for this meeting, we sent out the letters and did the notification in the paper. Now for that Montessori School, it was something that we certainly noticed this Montessori School on our route and wondered what impact this would have on them. And so early on we brought them into our offices and discussed the project. And I should say that's the proprietor of the school rather than the owner of the property was the ones we had some of those discussions with. And just recently I've spoken on the phone with Mr. Ferguson regarding this property. But we don't anticipate needing to take any property from the school. And I guess a follow up, has there been any discussions with the owner of the mobile home park that we know we might need to take a couple of those mobile home units? We had the opportunity to speak with her at the public hearing. She came to the Public Utilities Board public hearing and I 'm glad she was able to come to that and to this tonight. And there certainly will be, there were discussions at that meeting and we anticipate having ongoing discussions to explain what the compensation would be like for that and how we can make sure that while this may change her business it should not signify a financial hardship for her. Ron, when you talk about the school and that you don't need to take any right away because I know and correct me if I'm wrong that if we're in from a general sense if you have a 60, 69 kv is that what it is? Energized line. There's a certain easement requirement with that. If you have a 138 there's a certain easement requirement with that which I presume is larger than the requirement for the 69. Is that correct? Yes sir. Okay. So right now you're saying that you have sufficient eas ement in the 69 kv to accommodate the 138 and also because you're able to do something with the poles that changes. Could you just take a brief moment to say what those things are if that's something that you guys can talk about? Yes sir. So they're very non-technical so if you like more technical explanation we'll certainly have Brent and Heath come down and give that. We currently have three conductors on that pole. There's three arms coming out of the pole and we stagger those. One's on the left, one's on the right and then there's another one on the left. So it kind of balances out the pole and that's just engineering wise it makes sense to do it that way. It makes for a more sturdy pole. But when we need that extra easement one thing that we can do is to shift all three of those arms on one side of the pole, hang those over the street and that gets us back the easement that we would have lost from having one on one side, two on the other side. And so to do that, to engineer a solution it seems, now of course we haven't done the final surveying but it seems that that's going to allow us to upgrade this line to 138 kv and to be within and even to exceed national electric safety code to make sure that everything is done safely. Okay, Council Member Wasney. I'd like to task DME with sitting down with our speaker tonight that owns the mobile home park and explain in detail the reimbursement process that the city doesn't just take it away that there is money that comes to you. But we need to work hard at setting up that meeting and making time so that she sees real dollar amounts and what that's all going to look like so that she understands. And it's not 20 trailers, I believe it's three out of the trailer park. And so she understands the real dollar amount that will come from the city to her as property owner. Yes, ma'am, we'll certainly do that. Any other questions for staff? Seeing none, Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, this is, it's always difficult when we have these major infrastructure projects, especially transmission lines, because it's going to interrupt some things. As you look at this map in the area, there's obviously a big heart of the southeast neighborhood that could be affected if we chose to move those lines somewhere. So you'd have new homes, new properties that would be impacted. So where possible, it's always best to be able to find an existing line to see how you can't augment that and get that without the least amount of disruption. So it's difficult to have no disruption. But I think after looking through this, I think this is the best path. So on that, I will move approval of agenda item 7B. Yes. Council Member Begheri. Second. We have a motion and a second for agenda item 7B. Let's vote on the board, please. And carries 6-0. Before we go on to our next agenda item, let's just take about a five-minute break. I mean, yeah. Five or ten. All right. We're reconvening from our break for our City Council meeting August 16th, 2016. We're on to a public hearing agenda item 7C. Meeting of public hearing considered option of ordinance of the City of Denton, Texas regarding a rezoning request from neighborhood residential 3 district to neighborhood residential 6. Thank you, Mayor. Julie White, our senior planner, will be presenting this item. And I will go ahead and open the public hearing as well. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, it was already open. Yeah. Thank you, Madam City Attorney, for that correction. I'll go ahead on myself. Good evening. I'm Julie White, senior planner with the City of Denton. And tonight I'm presenting Z163, Belle Avenue Duplex. The request before you is to consider a rezoning from NR3 to NR6 for approximately .6 acres. The subject property is located on the corner of North Belle Street and East Windsor on the northeast corner. Just a little bit of background on the property. This was originally part of PD72. This was a horizontally mixed use plan development. The original concept had low density uses to the north, single family to the north here, that was separated from more high density uses to the south with this floodway and open space. There were multifamily, there was a multifamily component, duplex component and garden home component as well as neighborhood services. As the PD evolved, some of these portions to the south here were rezoned or the PD was amended for more low density uses instead of those higher density uses. And then in 2002 when the Denton Development Code came in, the PD was rezoned to, and the subject property was rezoned to NR3. So in 2002, was that when the city did its comprehensive rezoning? Yes, sir. And so this was a zoning that was done probably by the city . That zoning, new zoning classification wasn't asked from an applicant, it was what the city decided to do. Correct, correct. And yep. All right, thank you. Appreciate it. All right. So just a comparison to see what was originally planned to what's on the site today. So you can see up to the north, those single family uses developed as well as that open space is it correlates with that original plan development. The multifamily component was built here as well as the neighborhood services. This is a library now. The subject property is here. There were some more dense developments that came in here, some duplexes and some town homes. This area ended up being zoned to a lower density than what was originally proposed and developed as a single family neighborhood. And now the current zoning for the subject property is NR3. The applicant has applied for a rezoning in order to develop the site with two duplexes. So it would be a total of four dwelling units on the site. You can see there's a mix of zoning districts that reflect kind of what's on the ground today. We've got the multifamily here. There's NR6 that has the duplexes in the town home developments as well as NR3, which is in this neighborhood. What is that? I guess the black squares that's the subject property? Yes, sir, it is. And then behind that to the right, are those duplexes? These are fourplexes. Okay. So what is the zoning designation of NR6? The fourplexes? Yes, sir. And then so behind the single family that are going around the curve are also the fourplexes and then duplexes up there? Okay. Correct. Correct. All right. The future land use designation in the Denton plan calls for low density residential. The Denton plan defines this as one to four dwelling units per acre. And new development should respond to existing development. So you think of low density residential more of the typical suburban development pattern. So the considerations that staff looked at when we analyzed this case, first the proposed rezoning is not consistent with the future land use designation because NR6 permits six dwelling units per acre. It doesn't match the definition of that low density residential. And when that happens, we have additional criteria. We take a little deeper look at what the request is. And part of that is looking at what the current development pattern is. Nearby development as we've discussed includes duplexes here, fourplexes, fourplexes to the south. But in these cases, there are physical barriers that separate the property from that type of development. You've got Windsor, an arterial street. You have a treeline buffer behind the development or the proposed rezoning that separates it from the fourplexes. You have an alleyway that separates these single family homes from the duplexes. So there's some physical barriers there. However, the zoning pattern that is at the street, the block level of the development is the single family development. This subject property, where it's located in the neighborhood at the corner of Windsor and Bell, serves as a gateway for this neighborhood. It's a first impression when you come in that neighborhood. And so in this neighborhood, it has that NR3 zoning designation. So by rezoning it as NR6, that gateway wouldn't be consistent with that existing zoning or existing development pattern. You can see that there is a mix of zoning districts and there's a mix of development around it. However, when you look at the block level of this development, of this established neighborhood, it really is consistent in zoning and in the development pattern with the NR3. By adding an NR6, you could potentially alter that existing land use pattern within this low density single family neighborhood. Julie, can I ask you a question? Sure. Okay. So how can you alter the land use pattern, first of all, I guess what other lots are available in that neighborhood that aren't developed? It is all built out except for these two. And so this is really an infill. I mean, this lot has been in this configuration for many, many years. So I see the bullet point, but I'm not sure that's a pretty big stretch to potentially alter the existing land use pattern within a low density, because there's nothing else to be developed over there. So anyway, I just, okay, thank you. Appreciate that. Here are some site photos. This is looking across the street from the subject property on Bell, on North Bell. This is one of the fourplexes across Windsor. So you can kind of see the development of how those four plexes look. And then this is looking up North Bell toward that single family neighborhood. The next photo is a Google Maps street view photo, which is much better than mine. But it shows, it kind of shows the single family development pattern and where the subject property is in relationship to that. Public notification was sent out. We received four notices in opposition, which is 14%. The Planning and Zoning Commission did recommend approval of their quest, four to two, based upon the considerations presented and the requirements in the DENT Development Code. Staff recommends denial of the request. And I'll stand for any questions. And the applicant is here. Let me get my screen back so you can see. Okay, Council Member Hawkins. Yeah. Julie, can you go back some slides there? There was a zoning map and it showed, there we go. And can you explain to me kind of how there's consistency in this area right now? You know, originally I was pretty on the fence with this and, you know, I want to go towards the future land use typically. But I'm really struggling with that because, you know, I could see, what are we going for, NR6, that being there too and it's still being consistent. And I'm just trying to get your interpretation of how the consistency works in this area here. I would say staff discussions mirror that same sentiment that at first blush it looks like well, you know, there's NR6 adjacent, there's a mix of densities and land uses here. It makes sense. But then when we started looking more closely at how this curve and how this street has developed and that these are all low density single family homes, we felt like NR6 would be an inappropriate zoning district fair here because there 's a real consistent zoning pattern in this kind of block level development that is that although there is a lot around it, we felt like in order to maintain that integrity of that zoning and development pattern that we felt like NR6 was inconsistent. Do you know when the majority of that NR3 that's surrounding it was built? How long has that been a vacant lot on its own? The applicant would probably have more information regarding that. But in my research with it, you know, it's developed over time. And I would say a lot of these homes were probably built maybe in the late '90s. So okay. I'll ask definitely. Okay. And then just last question. So just so I'm clear, if this were approved, there's going to be two duplexes. And which way would -- from my understanding with newer code, the doors are -- they have to point towards the road now so they still look kind of single family-ish, but they're connected. Yes. The code does require that a duplex has to appear as a single family home from the street. So it would have that appearance. Okay. Cool. Per code. Thank you. Councilmember Gregory. Thank you, Mayor. A couple of questions. Did the planning and zoning commission in their recommendation to approve this application put any conditions on the -- their approval such as these could not be fourplexes, these could only be duplexes? The zoning wouldn't -- a fourplex in the city of Denton could be considered multifamily. And multifamily is not a permitted use in NR6. So a duplex would have to be the one. That would be redundant. Yes, sir. Did you discuss with the applicant, or was there ever any discussion regarding instead of that being two lots of it being replanted into three lots so that there could be single family homes? Well, and I know that the applicant has looked at several ways in order to figure out a way to develop this property. So that might be better for the applicant to respond to? Yeah. The applicant's here, so I think she can probably -- Okay. Thank you. Councilmember Gary. Can you talk a little bit about one of the Denton plan's goals of infill development and how you reconcile staff's recommendation against this with the promotion of infill development? The Denton plan 2030 does encourage infill development, and we want that. We want all -- you know, the interior core of Denton to develop, and then we have staged growth as we move out. And those were conversations we had in staff as well, but we had to balance our feeling that we wanted to protect the integrity of the zoning of this neighborhood in the development pattern. And we weighed that against infill, and we really felt that the current land use pattern and the wisdom within that was a more compelling argument. Mayor Pro Tem. Sorry, I'll withdraw that. I'm sorry? Oh, okay. All right. Any other questions for staff? Councilmember Gregory. It's more of a comment. Given the fact that 50% of the property is surrounded by NR 6, it's surprising to me that the staff recommended denial. I would expect -- wouldn't have expected that unless at least more of the contiguous property was of a different zoning classification. So that -- I guess I get your logic of looking at driving down that street, though I would imagine that as you drive down that street, it's not going to be obvious that those are duplexes. So just a comment. Councilmember Wasney. And to confirm staff's denial and justification, because I heard you use the word gateway to the neighborhood, and that neighborhood is comprised of single family homes. So there's a lack of compatibility when you're driving into that neighborhood and expect to see a street of single family homes to have duplexes on the corner. And while I respect infill, the neighborhood compatibility for me has to override a desire or a drive to infill. And I have to say I share that exact opposite sentiment. This is a prime example of what we've been talking about today, and that is these lots were rezoned by city initiation. It was a PD, which would have been allowed. Now we're looking at these lots through the eyes of the Denton 2030 plan, which is something different. And so we've got the public hearing, so we're going to hear public sentiment. But I'm familiar with this neighborhood. I grew up right around the corner from it. I'm familiar with Wolf Trap. I'm familiar with all of this. And I'm building duplexes on some lots. And what I had to do to make those look like single family homes, so the gateway to this is going to look most likely like a single family home. And I think it's going to be interesting when the applicant comes down to talk about what some of the alternatives would be that the applicant can do in this regard. I think we're going to find out that there may not be some alternatives. So while I respect staff's denial recommendation, I'm still trying to struggle with the rationale for it. And as I've seen some of the language, it's just -- but anyway, we've got people who have some public comments, so we'll move on. Any other questions for staff? All right. Thank you. Thank you. We have one -- no, we don't have any cards to speak. So this is a public hearing. Anybody wishing to speak? Come on down -- well, yes, she raised her hand, so come on down and state your name and address and your time will begin. Thank you, sir. My name is Noda McAlib. I live at 3113 North Bell Avenue, Denton, Texas, diagonally across from the proposed -- Could you pull the map up for her so she can maybe point out where her house is for us, please? Sure. The aerial or the -- The aerial that -- something that -- no, the aerial that would show us -- she could point directly to her home. Yes. All right. Can you use the cursor to maybe show that? Can you show me where the alley is? Which one? Are you second or third from -- Here's the alley. Okay. So here's that house right there. That blue -- that -- with the brown room? Yeah. Okay. Okay. That one right there. Okay. Thank you. I just wanted to get an idea of what we're looking at. And we are really concerned because what's being proposed is our four families moving into duplexes, four families. Right now, none of the families on our -- like, we just have a -- I'm nervous. I've never done this before. And I didn't know I would be standing here today. But I have to speak because you all are planning to have a driveway off of Bell Avenue that goes right by this little boy's bedroom for four people who are -- Let me finish speaking. No, no. I'm just asking you to stay close to the mic so people can hear you. Thank you. Nobody has one car. Nobody. So you're going to have -- on this street that gets parked up when the school over -- Strickland School has meetings that that street's filled up. Kids are scared to death walking across the street. Adults don't walk on that street to cross because traffic goes like this down Windsor. And there's no stop sign there at Windsor and Bell. There's no school guard crossing. There's no nothing. And you all are preparing to make four families with at least -- the people who are renting next to us, they moved in. They have two cars and a vehicle that they park in back. A mom and dad, two cars, one for each of them. And then the guy drives the truck for his business. So we've got that right there. We already have some people parking a semi-truck on the street. So you're bringing in four families with at least two cars all driving in this little driveway that's going to be -- because you're going to face the buildings to make it look like it's really a house when it's not a house. And the space that you're going to put all of that on is comparable to what our homes are on. And it just is real -- so what's going to happen is you're going to have everybody parking on the street. When our neighbors that just moved in with three vehicles, I got a citation from the city because they put their stuff on my property. And so the city drove by and I got the citation. I called. I didn't get a ding, but it went on my record and I had to call about it because they don't have any place to put their things because they're parking on the street in front of their house. And I can just see that happening with four families with multiple vehicles all parking on the street. Plus, it's not a safe street to cross in the first place. You come down there at 8 o'clock in the morning on a school day, you can't even get across the street. If you're on Bell Avenue, you can't cross Windsor because people don't stop. My dog and I almost got hit crossing at the library on the light. >> Any questions? I think there's still some time if you have anything else to say. >> I just think you may have grown up there, but you have an interest as a developer. I have an interest too. I have an interest that we don't lose our property values. If you walk over on Olympia, you'll see it's a different world over there. I walk my dog on that street. It's a different world. People who are renters move in and out. They leave their stuff. That's what they do. That's all. >> Okay. Thank you. Public hearing, anybody else wishing to speak? I know the applicant is here. If the applicant wishes to speak, please come down and state your name and address. Councilmember Hawkins? >> I was going to ask you a question. >> Okay. >> Thank you. >> Mr. Mayor, Councilman, members of the council and staff, my name is Yolanda Vorle. I'm Tim Beatty Builder's lead designer and Tim Beatty is the owner of the property that we're talking about tonight. I reside at 2201 Geneva Circle in Denton, Texas. I think we've already seen where the property is located in the surrounding zoning, so I won't bore you with that. I'm here tonight seeking approval of a zoning change from NR3 to NR6 for the two infill lots addressed as 3104 Bell Avenue. The lots are in the northeast corner of Windsor and Bell and are described as 55R1 and 55R2 in Cooper Landing, Section 3, Phase B, Block A. The property is currently zoned NR3, which allows for residential building but not duplexes we're proposing. This is a zoning use map for the properties or the uses within 500 feet of our property. The purple is multifamily, the pink residential, the blue duplex and the yellow is Strickland Junior High School. The surrounding uses are a mix of all of these and the future land use, as Julie told you, is low residential. Although the current uses have a higher percentage of multifamily and duplex than they do with the residential at this time. There's about 46%. My calculations don't add up to 100. I use AutoCAD and I'm not including the right of ways where the streets are. To give you a little background you were asking about on the plat, Cooper Landing went in in the mid-80s and was built out through the mid-90s. The houses to the west and to the north were built in '94 and '95. Originally our lot was one lot, 55. It's larger than all the other lots. In fact it's 25,132 square feet is originally platted. In 2000 the property was replatted and this might be the concern of the citizen who spoke. In the Breit Platt there was a 12 foot private access eas ement on the north side of the property with a 20 foot radius which is normally required for fire and then it comes down to connect to the lot at the intersection. This is not common for this neighborhood. Neighborhood compatibility would typically have the driveway shared between the two properties as it is across the street. The owners that are talking about 3101 and 3105 are a good example of this. You say across the street. So there are some, are you saying there are single family homes out there that share a common approach? That's correct. That's correct. Okay. So that would be more compatible with this neighborhood. We're not sure why it was platted like it is today. It's undetermined why this property was originally such a large lot compared to the lots across the street which are about 87 to 8800 square feet. One might assume a higher density was considered or an amen ity center might have gone in. We're not certain. Regardless, the current platt, the lot size has been larger than those across the street and the combination easements off Windsor Drive being 35 feet, pose difficulty in developing these lots. This is the zoning use within 200 feet. We studied the neighborhood and determined the best use of the infill property would be duplex and we made this decision based on the surrounding uses to the east and the south being multifamily and we hope that the duplex would be an acceptable buffer for the neighborhood. We presented the project site plan and elevations to planning and staff and although we could not gain their favor, we decided to go ahead and present it to PNZ because we really believe in this project. Prior to our PNZ hearing, we mailed out 116 surrounding properties within 200 and 500 feet. We received one phone call in favor from the property owner to the east and then we held a neighborhood meeting on April 25th at the North Library branch and had one family attend. We presented site plans and elevations to that family. They were more in favor of the second site plan which we showed to move the driveway. I'll show you both. This is the first consideration which leaves the drive approach where it is right now as it's currently platted. Our preference would be to work with staff and move the driveway to the adjoining property line to be more compatible with this neighborhood. On that building A up there at the top, that dotted line that's going across the top, is that the setback line for the adjacent lot? That is actually the 10-foot building line. We actually came back and studied this a little bit more after planning and zoning and hearing one of the property owners speak in opposition. What we determined was it would be better for us if we not only moved the driveway to the center in a replat, but we also provided a 15-foot landscape buffer as part of that plat that would be a type C buffer as opposed to what's normally required which is a type B buffer. So it's actually more trees. What's the difference between type B and C? You know what I'm asking? Okay. Never mind. I do know. I do know. Okay. I think the type C requires deciduous and evergreen trees. Okay. And understory shrubs. I have it here somewhere, but I won't fumble for it. We presented the project to planning and zoning on May 11th and while one neighbor spoke in opposition and the card was read by the chairman in opposition, based on the location of our site, the current zoning uses and the difficulty in developing this property, the zoning board approved our project. These are the elevations that we presented. That would be the first elevation. There's one just as handsome. The structures are designed to meet DDC requirements for lot coverage, height, architectural elements, and landscape. The duplex units will appear to be single-family residences and are compatible with the existing homes in the subdivision. The parking will be screened from Bell and Windsor. The east property line will be fenced to help buffer from the multifamily to the east and we will construct the missing segments of sidewalk on Winds or and Bell and recreate or rebuild the ramps at the intersection as required. The proposed project has adequate utilities, neighborhood amenities, public transportation by DCTA route 5, schools, and the library. Each infill lot will have adequate open space for its tenants and the target tenants are families with long-term leases seeking an affordable property to rent in this area. We're here to offer a well-designed project that we feel will buffer the neighborhood from the existing multifamily and will also be compatible with this neighborhood. We're willing to continue to work with staff through the replatting of this process to relocate the driveway and to add additional buffer. And we're here to answer any questions you may have. Wow, that's great timing. Councilmember Hawkins. On site plan B with the driveway, when the cars are going in or out, is there enough width there for two cars or kind of how does that work? Well, to be compatible with the neighborhood, all the drive ways are about 11 or 12 feet, 10 to 12 feet standardly. What I did was I didn't want to have a 24 foot wide in and out there so I widened the drive here and pulled the visibility clip back. We'll have a little bit of landscaping, maybe some low f encing. But if you're pulling in and you see someone just like any other apartment complex, you can pull off to one side and let that person in. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mayor. Do you have any sense of, and you mentioned affordable, and I don't know if you're willing to share this, but do you have any sense of kind of what does this run for if I'm a family that's looking to rent one of these units? I don't have the numbers yet. That would be the owner. No, that's fine. That's fine. And you answered the questions that I had about parking, so thank you. Councilmember Gregory. Do you know if, since it's planted to have the driveway on the north side serving both of those lots, if this is going to be acceptable, if it would be approved, or if you have to do some kind of replatting to make that happen? If this is approved, we will definitely have to replat the properties and we'll add the buffers and I think that will take care of it. The other question is, are these going to be rentals or would these ever be situated to so that they could be divided and sold as individual units? They will not be sold as individual units. Okay, thank you. Well, I mean, you could sell the duplex as a whole, but you can't split up the duplex and sell one or the other based upon like a townhome situation. That's correct. So the buffer to the north, you're saying that that's, and have you talked with the adjacent, I mean, what I heard you say was the problem with that, the concern that that neighbor had was here's this driveway coming right down the fence line, basically the property line. So whether these are single family homes or not, as it was originally configured, those cars are going right outside, 10 feet away, bedroom windows and things such as that. Whereas this, so if nothing changed and even somebody wanted to put two single family homes on there, that driveway is still going down at least according to the current plan. That's correct. We could build two single family homes without replatting, without going to P&Z, without coming to council. We could just go straight to permit. Yeah, but the driveway would still be servicing both of those homes. That's correct. Yeah, all right. And I'm trying to think. And so now you've got a 15 foot buffer, additional buffer, plus you're going to have additional vegetation that will also be either light absorbing or sound absorbing because you're not going to have any drive there. You got a couple parking spaces there, but they're on down there. Okay. That's really just a turnaround, each unit would have four spaces and then there's just a backup area where you're sitting there. Okay. All right. I did find the class C. The class B requirement is 10 foot planted strip that includes a combination of five evergreen and deciduous trees and 30 shrubs per 100 linear feet. While a class C is a 15 foot planted strip that includes a combination of six evergreen and deciduous trees and 25 shrubs per linear foot. Could you go back to the elevation? Yes, sir. Where's the other door? In the back. It's not visible from the street. Okay. So it's a rear, you've got an entrance in the back on one unit and an entrance in the front on the other. That's correct. Okay. All right. Fantastic. All right. Okay. Any other questions for the applicant? Seeing none. All right. Thank you. This is a public hearing. Anybody else wishing to speak, please come down, state your name and address and your time will begin. Evening, Mayor, Council. I'm Tim Beatty. I reside at 2459 West Blackjack Road in Arbery, Texas. And I really, Yolanda has covered this thoroughly, but as the owner, I felt like I should come up if you got any questions. We've worked hard at trying to make this work. We feel like that it will be an enhancement to this area. And if you pulled up the Google map, if you look past about three or four houses, it's really a picket fence on this road that we're talking about the gateway on at least on one side. The houses face the opposite direction. So I'm not understanding what you're saying. Is there a way we could pull up? On Belle Avenue, I don't, Julie, on Belle Avenue going north after about three or four houses, the rest of the houses back up to Belle Street. Let me show you a bigger area. No, that's not better. That's better. They're right here. Oh, because of the cul-de-sac. Yeah. All those houses going north there, you're looking at a six foot picket fence when you're driving on Belle Avenue. Okay. But, so anyway, I- Well, I didn't know that. At the end of the day here, you've seen the elevations. They don't look, the other one looks a little bit different , but they complement each other. They are not going to be two twins. I just feel like the architecture of these duplexes will enhance this neighborhood. We even looked at doing two group homes, and that would fall under the zoning that's there now. But this is, to me, a way better compatible situation than that, which would create more traffic. So I want to make sure I understand this, because I wasn't- so when you've taken that curve, where that cul-de-sac is, those are people's back yards that we're seeing. Yes, and they're all facing that cul-de-sac. And so as you get down to where that next street comes in, does it then convert back to front entry drives, or- It's- Do you remember? It's further down? It's quite a ways down. Oh, here we go. Okay. Okay. Wow. So that's- Belle Avenue are people's backyards. Correct. Correct. Okay. Okay. All right. Okay. So any other questions for the applicant? Thank you. Seeing none. Thank you, Tim. All right. Thank you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's against our rules. I do apologize. Yeah, we have a- this is a public hearing. Anybody who hasn't spoken is allowed to speak. You're getting the whole picture. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, ma'am. This is a public hearing. Anybody else wishing to speak? Please come down, state your name and address, and your time will begin. I'm going to call it one more time. Anybody else wishing to speak? Okay. I'm going to close the public hearing. Council member- I mean, Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mayor. You know, if you look at this area, and it's pretty- it's pretty- it's got a number of attractive amenities to it when you think about raising a family or whatnot. There's two parks within walking distance, plenty of ball fields, Cooper Creek Trail behind there, obviously a school, a public library. And the concept that how we think about a neighborhood, I mean, if my kids were living there, they're not going to be playing just with kids that live in single family homes. They're going to be playing with kids that live in the apartments, that in the duplexes, as they're all kind of emptying out, just like in the neighborhood I live in. Everyone's kind of playing together. And I don't think of my neighborhood as just the single family homes. The neighborhood is the entirety, just like this is as well . So this looks very appropriate. We know in this town there's a lot of interest in seeing more housing stock come on. That's probably going to entail, to some degree, higher density in certain areas to get that. I know this area in particular, there's a lot of people trying to get in because of the schools in that area as well. So it may be nice to see this develop. So I'm in favor of this project. Councilmember Gregory. You know, there are always reasons why those last few lots don't get developed. And we've sort of seen the story of that and the size, the change of size, the difficulty in zoning, rezoning, the planning with the odd configuration for the driveway for two homes on the north side. And we have a local developer who has a proven track record of quality work and honesty. And it makes it very comfortable for me to agree to this, especially given the fact that this is not spot zoning at all that they're asking for. NR6 and there's NR6 directly adjacent to it to the east, directly across the street to the south. And that in fact all along Windsor to the west, there are duplexes and compatible housing. So this, while it's not completely ideal, I'm not sure that we could get much better. So I feel very comfortable with it. Councilmember Hawkins. Yeah, I got to admit, I was on the fence at first about this. But I think that once it was explained, the zoning, the different zonings that are around the neighborhood, how there are the backs of homes pointing towards Bell, too, it's that seems more consistent to me now that this is proposed the way that it is. And seeing the quality of project that they're proposing to do with those elevation pictures and changing the driveway to go to the middle of them, I'm going to be voting for this project. And it too, it's been vacant for 20 years now. I mean, it's been waiting to be developed for a while. So seeing no more requests to speak, Councilmember Begarry. I'm moving to approve this project. I'm really impressed with everything that's been done, the elevation, the plans for the building. I've ridden my bike around every single street in that neighborhood. I probably drive by it three times a week, and this is perfectly compatible for that lot. And I'm happy to hear that we have some infill development. Weighing our planning uses and infill, I am absolutely weighing in favor of infill, in favor of having families and walking distance to schools and walking distance to libraries and in favor of having access to public transportation. This is everything you should want in an infill development . And I vigorously move to adopt it. Mayor Pro Tem. I second that. We have a motion and a second for agenda item 7C. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 6-0. We'll go on to agenda item 7D, which is hold a public hearing to receive input from the public on the proposed adoption of the 2015 International Energy Code with proposed amendments. Thank you, Mayor. Rodney Patterson, our building official, will be addressing this item. Thank you, Mayor and members of council. I'm Rodney Patterson, I'm the building official for the City of Denton, and we're back for you tonight for a public hearing on the adoption of the 2015 International Energy Conservation Code. I have a brief PowerPoint. We're here tonight. The objective is to hold a public hearing to hear input from citizens on the proposed adoption of the 2015 International Energy Conservation Code with the proposed amendments. Some of the key points from my previous presentation, the residential requirements of the 2015 IECC increased between 16 and 20% over our currently adopted code, which is the 2012 IECC with the COG amendments plus a 4% above code requirement. The cost of compliance from the current code to the 2015 I ECC would be approximately $1,650 for single family residents. Basically, we're seeking direction to move forward with adoption of the 2015 International Energy Conservation Code as proposed with local amendments. And I'll stand for any questions. I forgot to open the public hearing. I will now open the public hearing. Council Member Gregory. It does not show on the backup, but this came before the council committee on the environment, and I believe that there was a motion and a recommendation. Do you recall that? Yes, sir. There was a motion to approve the code as written with the proposed amendments with no above code requirement. It was passed or recommended by a vote of three to nothing. Thank you. Council Member Hawkins. So the 2015 IECC appendix, that was not added in addition to committee on environments recommendation? No, it was not. And the appendices are only enforceable if you adopt them specifically. Okay. Council Member Gregory. And in previous years, the committee on the environment and staff has recommended requirements that go beyond the international code, or at least the part that was amended by our North Central Texas Council of Governments. That for several years, it was at 10% above. Yes, sir. The last time it was at 4% above? Yes, sir. And refresh for the public's benefit why there was a recommendation to pass as is with no additional requirements this time around? Basically the changes from the 2009 IECC to the 2012 IECC were approximately 30% increase over the 2009. With the CAWG amendments, CAWG took a look at the code and thought that 30% increase was too much to absorb in one code cycle. So when they passed the CAWG amendments, that resulted in a 10 to 12% increase over the current code. The Council Committee on the Environment at that time looked at it and said, well, they're getting closer to what we want, so we'll bring ours back to 4% above the code since they're moving forward with thoughts in the future that that additional 20% would be a big jump in the future anyway. And then how does this current code recommendation compare to those past ones? Basically as we stated in the previous slide, a house built under the 2015 code would be 16 to 20% more energy efficient than a home built under our current code. Thank you. Council Member Hawkins. So sorry, explain to me again why these amendments are in place and why we're not adopting the Texas state code just as it was adopted in 2015. Basically there are several reasons. There are regional amendments. CAWG is a 16 county region where, and we are one of those counties, basically they take a look at the code. They look at things that for our region make sense. One of the things that made sense for our region was also a part of actually the law passed by the state, which was the new ERI alternative, which is the last portion of your amendments. That's actually in the state law. That is not straight from the CAWG. That came from the state law. It's an amendment to the code made by the state. There are very minor revisions as far as CAWG amendments. The major CAWG amendments are no longer valid because the state went to the 2015 code. The state law provides that any municipality located in a non-attainment area must adopt a code that is at least as stringent as that code adopted by the state. The two big changes to the amendments were they went from three air changes per hour, CAWG amended that up to five air changes per hour. The envelope insulation was at R20 or R13.5 or R13 plus R5 continuous. I apologize. And CAWG amended that back to R13. Those amendments are no longer valid. So those amendments went away. So the CAWG portion of those amendments are very limited. The rest of those amendments are actually what's in House Bill 1736. Just follow up. Sure. So the CAWG amendments that are on here now. Correct. Are mandatory. Are by state law. The last half of those CAWG amendments. Okay. So the last half of them are just they're adopted for a non -attainment area too. I'm just I got a little confused here. Basically what happens is CAWG presents any amendments that they propose, they present them to Energy Systems Laboratory for assessment. Energy Systems Laboratory has to go through those amendments and validate that they are at least as stringent as the code that's currently adopted by the state of Texas. So those codes have been through ESL. They've been validated to be at least as stringent as the 2015 IECC. Okay. Thanks for explaining this to me again. So Councilmember Gregory. And since it's a public hearing, when we discussed this, we 've discussed the fact that this new code has higher requirements. It will be a greater cost to the builder. That the builder will pass that cost on to the buyer of the home. And we did some analysis or some analysis has been done about the cost range, the increase in cost range that would happen. What is that? Basically as in the previous slide, the cost benefits analysis was done basically on the difference between the 2009 to the 2015. And that was a difference of approximately $2,450. When you look at the percentage improvements, about a third of that was absorbed from the 2009 to the 2012 with the Cog amendments and the remaining two-thirds was absorbed with the 2012 with the Cog amendments moved to the 2015. So that's the $850 on the front end and $1650 on from where we were to where we are now. But the home buyer that ends up paying that extra money is going to get a more energy-efficient home. Yes. So there's also been some calculations done on how long the payback is for that additional cost. What do you recall those? I don't recall what the time period was, but it was a Department of Energy presentation that was done and we did have that in your council backup on the previous presentation. I don't know what the years were, the number of years. Something like four to six years. I was going to say three to five or four to six was my recollection. Okay. Thank you. Question on let me make sure I understand this. So because we're in a non-attainment area, we have to adopt or we have to have code that's at least equal to the state adopted code, the energy requirements. If we were not in a non-attainment area, that's sort of a weird double negative, then we wouldn't be subject to that. In other words, we could have the 2003 code, the 2009 code, whatever. But we don't have to conform to whatever the state has adopted because we would be in a non-attainment area. I mean, we're in an, we're in an attainment area. Correct. Just, just to clarify, there's EPA non-attainment areas and affected counties. There were some affected counties that were listed that were outside EPA non-attainment areas as a part of the original Senate Bill 5 that also had to comply. Sure. But I guess my point being that some would say that because we're in a non-attainment area, we should go above and beyond the current code. But because we're in a non-attainment area, we have to do that code. If we weren't, we could do something and we're not in one of those affected counties as well. We could basically be at whatever standard that the governing body wanted to adopt. Correct. The state holds us to a higher standard than the rest of the state. Yes. Okay. All right. Council Member Hawkins. Yeah. So neighboring cities that are in non-attainment, that are, that are in the non-attainment area, they're going to have to adopt a very similar code if I'm understanding this correctly. Correct. So it's not going to be, is everybody just going to stop building, you know, in Denton and move on to the neighboring city? Because their code will be very similar or if not the same. Yes. Correct. Okay. Okay. Any other questions before we take public comment for staff ? All right. Thank you. We have a card, a white card wishing not to speak. Michael Hennan do not wish to speak but has checked support . Ken Gold, if you'll come down, state your name and address. Your time will begin. My name's Ken Gold. I live at 2512 Natchez Trace here in town. Mayor and members of the council, thank you for letting me speak on this. I was one of the letter writers that got this to go to a public hearing and what I was after was a full and public discussion of this. And I'm no expert on energy efficiency and I'm fixing to prove it. I just thought that it needs to be stressed that being in a nonattainment zone and doing the absolute minimum required by law makes me a little uncomfortable. I'm not able to fully recommend what the best answer is but I do know that in the past when we were just a moderate nonattainment zone, we did 10% above what the code required because that's what was closer to what, as Rodney said, closer to what we wanted to see. Now we're in a severe nonattainment zone and we're going to do the bare minimum. I would just like some time spent on analyzing exactly what was done in those previous codes and which sections of insulation or windows or whatever it was. I don't know what those changes were. But I think it's important to note that as far back as 2006 , it was 10% above the code and now it's not going to be anything above the code. And that's just, I don't think, the effort that we need in a severe nonattainment zone. And I also think that we ought to do a little more consideration on appendix RB about the solar ready provisions. I think that's something to look at. I don't know that it should be an offset against insulation requirements, for example, but I think it's a worthwhile opportunity to look at some changes in that code. So I just want to say that we ought to do at least better than the bare minimum like we have done in the past. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Gregory has a question. So Mr. Gold, it's your understanding that in 2006 and 2009 that our nonattainment zone had a different classification than it does now? I think in 2008 it was a moderate and starting in like '11 it became severe. I'm not sure about those dates, but just looking at some things that COG put out on that a while back. Okay. I would hopefully that staff could get us some information on that because I just saw some recent, I mean, like in our last packet from the North Texas Commission showing that expansion rates in the North Texas area have actually been dropping over the last 10 years. So I know that we're in a nonattainment zone, but if we could get some information from staff as far as if there have been any changes in those designations because I wasn't aware that there had been changes. I understand completely. I'm not sure about my numbers. I did read that from 8 to 11 it went from moderate to severe. I got nothing else. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Ken. David Letty, if you'll come down and state your name and address, your time will begin. Mayor City Council, my name is David Letty, Director of Government Affairs for the Dallas Builders Association 5816 West Plano Parkway. We serve a seven county area including Denton County and the City of Denton. The association is a participant on the North Central Texas Council of Governance Regional Codes Coordinating Committee. We're the committee that looks over and evaluates the amendments that you have before you. They are from those amendments, some of them that Rodney pointed out before have been removed due to the effectiveness of the new state code in 2015. In summary, Dallas VA recommends the City of Denton approve the city staff's proposed local amendments package as presented in the August 16th City Council agenda as well as the Regional Codes Coordinating Committee's recommended prescriptive tradeoff code equivalency compliance options regarding air changes per hour requirements. This is something that he did not have in the original package that was sent to you. This is something that came out through the committee at CO G after the amendments were done when we found there were problems with the air changes per hour issue. The tradeoff options have been determined to be not less stringent than the residential provisions of the 2015 IECC and the 2015 IRC. As a result and published by the Energy Systems Laboratory, the state of Texas ESL is laboratory charged under the health and safety code under the state of Texas to evaluate code amendments to see if they are as stringent as required and equivalent to the state code. In layman's term, what this prescriptive tradeoff does, it 's really, you think of it kind of as an insurance policy. In the state of Texas' eyes, if a builder does, and I can probably put this up here to give you an example, what ESL presented, if a builder does all these items you see here which are extra insulation for roof, ducts, extra ceiling for windows, et cetera, and granted there's quite a bit of things on here they have to do, then they have made up for the issue regarding the three air changes per hour. The prescriptive tradeoff allows for the prescriptive to be four air changes per hour because the building market quite frankly is not ready to be able to handle three air changes per hour. I have members who build high performance homes, and I mean really high performance homes and they were running models of getting it, you know, 4.1 on the scale. So basically it's saying that it is the equivalent to the energy efficiency. I use the phrase cost effective. This is still going to cost them probably $2,200 to do at least, but it is less than all they would have to increase in price to do a fully foam encapsulated house, which is something that's usually an option of a home buyer because the home buyer generally has that disposable income to afford it. Foam encapsulation generally runs double the price of normal insulation on a home. So this is one thing we recommend you consider as well. This information is on the COG website as well as the form, and I've sent you a letter and attached is the letter from ESL regarding that. The reason we feel this is important and along with the amendments is that it affects the housing affordability issue. I'll put something else up here real quick. He had given you DOE numbers as he probably should regarding his position. National Association of Home Builders with a lab that does modeling for homes has done the numbers, and this was based in the 2012 versus 2009 IEC C, and it gives you an example of a cost increase that we found when you look at actual costs incurred during construction, and you can see it gets over $7,000. As Rodney pointed out, there were amendments before that eased that back a little, but with the 2015 code, many of those go away. So the rest of the price starts getting absorbed now, so we 're looking to make sure there is energy efficiency required by the state, but also match those items. Regards to an issue that he mentioned about non-attainment areas, really what you see there from that example I gave you, it's really based on the EPA zone, and where you were at 10% above the 2006 code for class 3, you're now past that with the 2015 code. I realize this is a lot to wrap your head around. Trust me, I have experts that I hound almost every day on this. There's a couple of requests to speak. Do you all have questions for the speaker? Okay, I just want to make sure. Okay. Go ahead, Council Member Gary. Can you go back to that last sheet that you had up? Our analysis on the 2012 IECC? So you're saying to comply with this, it would add $7,200 to the cost of the home? If you were basing it against the 2009 changes, and this is what I'm putting this at. This is an example to show you how far we've come. Over 2009, it's a considerable increase in energy efficiency, but there does come a cost, which is why COG had done the amendments to help kind of phase it in. So the increase, and Denton had done 2012, had taken the CO G amendments and added a percentage, and they were basically kind of doing a scale. So the absorption rate here will probably be a little bit less, especially if you can get the prescriptive tradeoff. It will help a lot. We're not making any bones with our builder members. We have let them know in some cities, they were at 2006, and their jump is going to be significant. We've spent the past year and a half doing everything we can to educate our members, have classes on building science. Here's what you need to look out for. Here's the things you can do. Here's the best practice to do it. There may be some growing pains as this rolls out September 1st, so we're doing everything we can to try and get ahead of it. Denton, because you're a little higher up, it'll be a little easier to adjust, but there will be some price increases. Okay, so my follow-up question to that is, let's assume that it's $7,000 extra to build a house in compliance with COG now. In your letter, you stated that Texas A&M Real Estate Center said that every $1,000 increase in the price of a new home removes more than 20, 000 Texas families from the market. Okay, so if we have a $7,000 house increase in price, that equals 140,000 people being priced out of essentially being middle class is what we're talking about. That's one of the reasons we've mentioned the prescriptive tradeoff was to help ease that back. It might have been helpful just to do the 215 to 212. Rodney's got the numbers where it shows it's a smaller jump , but still when you get $2,000, $3,000, it is a sizable jump. That's a lot to do with mortgage qualifications, what they have to do, what they have to spend. We've seen regulatory cost in recent history grow at twice the pace we have seen of the average American's disposable income. So the other thing I wanted to mention from your letter was , and this really stuck with me, we're talking about requiring solar ready homes and requiring all of the conduits to be put in place. There's a huge assumption attached to that, which is that the people who are buying the homes can then afford to drop $15,000 or $20,000. Let's call it $15,000. Maybe the price will go down in the future. Maybe it'll go down. So that's our assumption here. We're adding on to the price of the homes, pricing middle class people out, and then saying, "Yeah, by the way, add $15,000 or $20,000 for the price of solar ready." I want to have a very clean energy future as much as everybody else does. I don't think that further stratifying our incomes and disc repancy in housing is the way to do it. So I appreciate you bringing these figures to light because it helps me place my desire for energy efficiency into a price context. And if I may, I think the solar request was something that came from public comments. It's not part of the city's package, but we do have concerns about that. We see the numbers anywhere on a five kilowatt solar system to be about $15,000. If you run the numbers, basically it averages for retail about $3 per watt. So on a $10,000, you're getting up to $30,000. If you're owning a home a long time, there may be payout, but some people may not be able to afford that. They may not use it. And they may want to have a chimney in a certain location and things like that that may be better the decision of the homeowner. Also the appendix also affects orientation of the property. One question I have, Councilman Gregg, because it's for the speaker. I just lost it. I just lost it. Oh well, I'll come back to you. If I have to ask you, I'll come back to you. Yes. Oh, I know what it was. Yes. So what you're saying about these tradeoffs that you had analyzed by the ESL, which is the same group that analyzes the cog codes and all those kind of things. And the state code, yes, sir. That is not a part of what is being presented right now as a recommendation for approval. Yeah. I think this came in, I'm guessing it came in after. So I had reached out to Rodney to make sure he'd had it. We got this recognized through an RCCC vote last month. But I guess, again, so if we were to approve what is before us just as it's been presented, this would not be a part of that or it would. It would not. It would not. And so we recommend that this be added. Again, it still meets the equivalency of the state interchange. I just wanted to make sure what we have as far as options. Okay. Any other questions for the speaker? Okay. All right. Thank you. Appreciate the opportunity. Any questions you have, I'll drag my guys up here and we'll make your eyes glaze over with the information. Council Member Gregory. Well, do you have a – because this still is a public hearing. So do you have a question for staff or do you want to – I can wait. Okay. All right. I just want to make sure we take all the public comment. This is a public hearing. Anybody else wishing to speak, come down, state your name and address. I think that's what – those are all the cards I have. So, hi. I'm Deborah Harmentar, 2003 Mistywood Lane. And I just wanted to speak in support of adopting this code . I was really excited to look at the attachments to the agenda and to see the solar companies who were interested in this, too. I think it was a neat example of new kinds of businesses just gravitating towards us without even having to actively seek them out. And I would just encourage you to, you know, build relationships with those people. I don't have any personal connections to those businesses, but I'm just thrilled to see when that happens. I just wanted to speak in support of the appendix, appendix U, I believe it is, for solar readiness. I share the concerns mentioned by Councilperson Begarry about cost of homes. And so what I would encourage you all to do – and I don't know if there's time to do this. I don't know what the timeline is on adopting this code. But I think it would be great to look at the planning permit process as it is now and to use this as an opportunity. Again, maybe the timeline on this isn't right. Maybe you would have to do this way down the line. Maybe this would be for next year. But it seems like a great opportunity to look at the costs and the permits that are in place right now and to see how can we cut these down to lower the costs and to get rid of some obstacles for builders and home buyers and homeowners. Because if we could do those things, then homeowners, if they had that energy savings, it comes from solar. And it seems to me – and I'm no expert on renewable energy – but from everything I've seen, the cost of solar panels are going down and are expected to continue to do so. So anyway, it would be a great opportunity, I think, to bring a bunch of different people to the table – homeowners, people who would like to buy homes but can't afford to, builders, experts in renewable energy – and to have everyone sit around the table and to figure out how we can make this whole process greener and also more affordable and easier for everybody instead of just adding on to what we already have now. Let's see. Yeah, and just in my remaining time, I just wanted to say – this is slightly off topic, but I guess I could connect it talking about zoning issues. I had a chance to look up that near Strickland on the Bell and Windsor and to look at the Google Maps view to see what that woman was saying over there. It seems to me that she's right, so I would encourage you all to check on that, that those homes on Bell, that the backyards don't face the streets, that that's front yards facing the streets. Again, I'm not saying that under oath, I'm saying that just having heard her concern, it felt very real to me. My son is about to start middle school at Strickland and I, too, am concerned about the traffic on that street. So, anyway, yeah, that's all. Thank you. Thank you. This is a public hearing. Anybody else wishing to speak, please come down, state your name and address, and your time will begin. Good evening. Jim Strange, 3613 Falcon Court. Good evening, Mayor and Council members. I'm here to speak in support of the 2015 energy code without the appendix RB portion of it. I would also encourage Council to consider the prescriptive options that were mentioned. I think it's always a good idea to give people options of how they want to comply with the code rather than one way. And depending on their particular project, I think it gives flexibility and ways maybe to be unique in a way to comply with the code. One thing about the appendix RB, I don't know if there's any cost that's associated with that in the 2015 numbers that were proposed, but I would say that there would be some additional costs that builders would incur to get those plans sealed to support the load of the solar panels, to have the electrical conduits from the roof down to the panels. Same thing with water supply, and I don't know exactly what those costs would be, but I think some of those could be significant. And I think some of those things will also impact the design of a perspective home with the requirements as far as where you can put chimneys and shading and all those things of where those panels have to be located if you consider that as an appendix that you want to adopt with this particular code amendment. I would also bring back to the attention of counsel that I think within the last several weeks the traffic impact fee has been adopted. I think it was $2,000 per lot, so that cost is going to go on top or right before now these additional costs to now comply with the 2015 code. And if there's concern and support to try to make energy codes even more stringent or to comply with maybe appendix RB if somebody wants to do that, I would ask counsel to look at ways to incentivize builders to do that. If that's the purview of counsel to say we'd like to see these, maybe it's not mandatory, but you can put it in as a voluntary that you'll cut building permit fees, you may cut traffic impact fees, some type of fee to say, you know what , if you'll go above and beyond to get the ball moving in that direction rather than it's mandatory, it's voluntary and we'll incentivize you to do that by reducing some fees at the city permit level. So I would encourage you to do those types of things. And I'll stand for any questions. Thank you. Any questions? Mr. Range? Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. This is a public hearing. Anybody else wishing to speak? Please come down and state your name and address and your time will begin. Anybody else wish? Oh, no, there's people in the room. There's another person in back there. He's already spoken. Okay. Anybody else wishing to speak? We will now close the public hearing. Councilmember Gregory. Thank you, Mayor. So just for our purposes tonight, this is a public hearing, but we are not to take action tonight. We have an action item that would be coming up when? I think it's 14 days, hence at a minimum. Okay. Just my own personal comments. I'm pleased that the state has finally caught up with Dent on so that we don't have to continue to increase our requirements past what they have been doing . And this is not in any way the city relaxing. It's the fact that the other areas have actually come up to our standards. The next item is I did a good bit of research after looking at the backup regarding the cost involved in making homes solar ready. And I would not want to put that requirement in at this time for several different reasons. Number one is we have a very small percentage of our homes that have opted to put in solar panels. And to increase the cost of every new home just for the possibility that that might happen seems unnecessary. If a person wants that, they could contact the builder as they're building the home and build that in or that could be a part of the retrofit. Another part of that is that I am pretty sure that we have some neighborhoods in which there's a good bit of construction going on right now that if we required solar ready, they would never be used because there are HOA restrictions that don't allow solar panels. So it just doesn't seem like a reasonable thing to do at this time. So I'm ready for us to move forward and as we do so, Mr. Patterson could bring to us the information about that alternative that Mr. Leedy discussed. Councilmember Hawkins. I agree. You pretty much took everything I was going to say. So well said. Councilmember Gregory. That's it. That's all I got. Councilmember Wasney. I mean, I have to agree as well. So I'm feeling good. But I do ask Mr. Patterson to bring forward those amendments, additions that we heard from our speaker so we could really study that. So I think council needs one more go with this to really study the final package that we're going to move forward with. But I agree on the solar ready homes. It just adds too high of a cost and if there are some incentives that the city wants to pursue, we can certainly go after that after the fact. But I appreciate all your hard work on this. And like I said, one more round at council before we're finished. Thank you. Yeah. And let me say that on the solar ready, we do provide incentives. I mean, we're incentivizing people to put in solar panels. I mean, I forgot what the percentage is, but it's pretty substantial. So I think we do provide some incentives for people to do that if they so choose. I just can't say I agree with you. I almost say I disagree with you, but I will accept your proposals. So anyway, any other comments or questions? So this is not an action item. Staff, do you feel like you have direction? Yeah, I too would want to see an examination of the amendments that were brought by the Home Builders Association, especially if they're a trade off and offset. Any other questions for this agenda? And so we've closed the public hearing, so this will just be an item for individual consideration coming back. Okay, good deal. All right. That brings us to our concluding items. Any concluding items? Council Member Wasney. I have four. I've been gone a week. The first one, I want to bring the ethics ordinance back, and I am requesting that this be an open meeting, not a closed meeting. And I'm going to ask for a date certain September 27th, because the calendar, we will have voted for the budget already. And it looks like there's some room on the calendar. So if we could have some consideration for September 27th, that would be most appreciated. In respect for our speakers and seniors who came out tonight on the tax freeze, they have requested council direction either up or down by September 13th, because if there's no support at council, they are going to move forward with their petition. So I'd ask for the tax freeze to be on our September 13th work session. I would also request that the city issue a press release. We passed an ordinance two weeks ago. It was about dogs, and it was about bees. And the bees made it into the newspaper, but there was a very important part of that ordinance that needs to be in a press release, and that was about the electronic fences in the yards not being a legal means now of keeping your dog in the yard , that you need an actual fence to keep your dog in the yard. So that was part of that ordinance. And for the public to understand that that law has changed, I think we should issue a press release so that that's clear. And the fourth, I would like to have a work session, and this is anytime, on planning and zoning's plan that we heard about today in work session to target properties to rezone within the city. And we had a big discussion at council, and I think we need to revisit that to really study the policy behind it. And I'd appreciate that. Thank you. Okay. Council Member Gary. I also have four items, and I was here last week, so I don 't know what that says about me. Okay, first, in response to Ms. McHaleb's statement regarding the danger at the intersection of Bell and Windsor, if we could have a work session on the possibility of installing a four-way stop at Bell and Windsor and a pedestrian or school crosswalk in that area. Second, at my newly elected officials class, they mentioned facilitating open government by use of an online message board. So I'd like an inquiry into the online message board, if that's feasible or not. Third, there was an interesting program implemented at Albu querque regarding homelessness prevention by the mayor there, and it involves hiring homeless people. So if we could get a legal briefing on if that's feasible, if that's even something that we can potentially do. And fourth, something actually that council member Rodin brought up was, and I don't know if you want to claim it or not, so I'll claim it, the possibility of having something like a sunset committee where we're regularly reviewing city programs for efficiency, scope, et cetera, similar to what the state does, but on a city level. Anybody else? I've just got one. I'll come up with some, but Mayor Pro Tem. I'll come up with some. I did just want to get clarification on the request just from the perspective of the agenda committee on the ethics ordinance. And it seems, my recollection was the last time we had a work session on that, that what we were waiting for was there was some sort of unofficial committee that was going to actually produce a sample ethics ordinance that once that was done, we were going to reopen that conversation, and we were kind of waiting for that to be done. Will that be, just so we know, is that the expectation that that suggested ordinance will be presented at that time? Well, I've talked to legal about that, and quite frankly, legal writes the ordinances in this city. Citizens don't write the ordinance of this city. So while there is a draft that is about three quarters finished, I think based on discussions that this council has had in the past, we're still at the 30,000 feet level in terms of charter review, in terms of how do we want to structure pursuing this ethics ordinance, because there are different, yeah. That clarifies my question. Yeah. Thanks. Thank you. Oh, and what I'd like to ask staff to look into the feas ibility of this, and it would be something that's sort of, I don't know if it's a ways out, but certainly not something that has to be done tomorrow, is we've got a lot of talk about the homelessness and housing and loss of grants and refunding and what are we going to, I really would like to put together a homeless summit that we've asked for us to meet with housing authority or a dent affordable housing, to where we can get a lot of these groups in the room at the same time, and I'm talking about a half a day or a full day seminar, and it doesn't, I mean, it can be a full council meeting or it can be a subset of council members if there's a committee, but I want to try to structure something where we can really have a comprehensive discussion because there are a lot of moving parts to this, and I just want to make sure we're all sort of coming at it with the same information. I think we're getting ripe for that kind of seminar on that because we're really trying to find some solutions, and we can talk about it for a long time, but until we start identifying some possible alternatives, we're not going to make much progress. So just, you know, and I can talk more about that with staff offline about my vision of that, but I just really want us to start thinking about that. Council Member Hawkins. Well, and revisit the Monsignor King, you know, outreach center and maybe get an update how they're doing and invite them to that summit. I think that's a great idea. So. All right. Any other concluding items? A lot of people scoffed at me when I said 10 or 1030 or 11. A lot of people scoffed. So anyway, we'll stand adjourned. Mayor. [Laughter.]