Sep 20, 2016 City Council on 2016-09-20 11:30 AM

[inaudible] All right, I wanted to welcome everybody to this meeting of the Dent City Council. It is 1135 on Tuesday, September the 20th, 2016. We're going to move down through our agenda items. We've got a pretty full agenda today. Agenda item number one is citizen comments on consent agenda items. Do we have any cards? Public wishing to speak on consent agenda items? Seeing none there. Request for clarification of agenda items listed on the agenda for September the 20th, 2016. Anybody? Yes, Councilmember Hawkins. I got a few of them, but I'll try to go fast. Consent agenda item G, it's regarding the fees at the water park. And I just want to make sure I was reading it correctly. It said that next year's rates, they're not going to have a season pass for the non-res idents, right? That's just for non-residents. It will still apply for residents having season passes. I believe Christine Taylor is going to try to address that issue for you, Councilmember Hawkins. Hi. No, that's not correct. We are still going to have season passes available to non-residents and residents. They're moving from the family pass to an individual pass. Gotcha. Okay. Thank you. And then I got a couple more if that's okay. No. Jay, I just more wanted to give staff kudos on that for the attachment poll agreement. I appreciate you doing that. I know that it was tough the last couple months with the last one. So thank you for getting that done. On double B, I was a little confused how a reimbursement grant kind of worked. If Denton Tarrant PRW had already done the work and then the city was going to reimburse them, the two amounts on the wastewater and there was one other one there. Anyway, is the work done and then the city reimb urses them, obviously, and that's what the reimbursement grant is. Yeah, let me call on Chuck Springer, Director of Finance. This is a budget amendment, but what it's for is the grant out of the water and the wastewater fund, those development plan lines as part of the economic development package for the WNCO project. Remember we were putting money for water and wastewater lines? That wasn't budgeted at the beginning of the year, so we're budgeting that full amount to reimburse them, to have that available to reimburse them for the water and wastewater lines. So we simply needed to amend those two budgets in those amounts so we have that funding available to reimburse them . Thanks, Chuck. That makes sense. And on item double G, I think that this might be a typo, but in the ordinance that this money is to be used for the 2016 Day of the Dead Festival, and I believe in the ordinance it says to be used for the 2015. Let us take a look at that. Okay, that's all I have. Thank you. Councilmember Gregory. Thank you, Mayor. Agenda consent agenda item S is about accepting a competitive proposal for the load profiler web based service for the city of Denton. This is to provide. I think a dashboard for individuals, customers. Could somebody give a very short explanation of what that's going to provide for customers, and when it will be available. Okay. Elizabeth Rez will be addressing that question. Good afternoon. So the dashboard that we're proposing is an online tool for all DME customers to be able to look at their consumption, understand their patterns, and see a profile. They would also be able to see where benefits come in if they do energy efficiency upgrades. Right now, if it gets approved, we'll start discussing the formatting for implementing this. The goal date is January 2017. Will it be real time? It will not be real time. It will be the day after. So it will still be you can go anywhere from 15 minutes all the way to daily or even monthly if you wanted to to follow your patterns. But it will be imported on a daily basis. And so customers will be able to follow from the day before . So if a customer wanted to know what the impact of running their dishwasher was. Since it's not in real time, they're really not going to be able to see the impact. They'd be able to do so if they went, if they timed it correctly. So like I said, it's 15 minute intervals. So if you knew that you ran it from 2 to 2 30, you can check on it the next day and be able to see what that impact was. Okay. All right. Thanks very much. Any other clarifications? Staff has one. Okay. Is it is it possible to pull in in L and K so the public can see what the rates are going to be increasing to. Are you wanting a staff presentation or that is just simply a slide on what the rates are. A slide just something. Okay. Just something. Yeah. Only reason I asked is to help staff prepare for the meeting later on. Okay. Well, the rates. Yeah, just the rate increases from what what to what. Well, just the water, electric water and wastewater. Okay. So that K M and N. Which one is it? Okay. M is water. M is water and N is wastewater. Okay. So not L. Right. Okay. Okay. I'm sorry. You had. Yes, sir. Staff would like to pull item five B. Yes, to be scheduled at a later date. Also pulling it all together. Yes. We'll bring that back on the 27th. Hopefully. Five B. B is envoy. So that's a. Is that a consent? Yes. Okay. So we're pulling this all together. Take off. Okay. Any others? I'm staff. Yes, sir. Madam City Attorney. I don't have it as I'm speaking, but we do have an alternative ordinance, which we will be handing out here shortly. So as we look at that, we can address the changes that have been made from what's in your packet and we will be handing out an alternative ordinance here shortly. Additionally, staff has handed out this document marked exhibit A to an annexation area, which should be at your place right now. That relates to item 6A on the agenda. And so this actually shrinks the take area a little bit. And so we're going to ask counsel to act on this ordinance with this alternative exhibit. So that's item 6A. 6A. Okay. All right. Any other clarifications on the agenda? Tonight's agenda? Seeing none, we'll go on to agenda items three, which is work session report. Agenda item 3A, receive a report, hold discussion, and give staff direction regarding proposed chapter 380, economic development program grant agreement with Sally Beauty Supply LLC for a business expansion at 3900 Morris. Thank you, Mayor. Carolyn Booth, our assistant director of economic development, will be handling this item. Thank you, Mr. Martin, and good morning still, council members. I'm going to be bringing you some information about Sally Beauty's incentive requests today. I'm going to start with some background. Sally Beauty moved their corporate headquarters from New Orleans to Denton in 1982, and at that time they had 119 stores across the country. Today they are a leading specialty retailer and distributor of professional beauty supplies with $3.8 billion in annual revenues, 5,000 company stores, and 10 distribution centers worldwide. They've got about 1,000 full-time employees here in Denton, making them our community's largest -- sorry, not largest, fourth largest -- private employer. They have 27,000 employees worldwide. Just to give you a little bit of information about what their community involvement is here in Denton, Sally sponsors the American Heart Association's Go Red for Women annual event. They're a founding member of UNT's global digital retailing research center, and they also participate in the Denton Chamber of Commerce's Women in Commerce Committee. Some of you are probably aware that Sally Beauty has received an incentive from the City of Denton in the past. In 2003, they were granted a 10-year, 40% rebate of property taxes for their new international headquarters facility at 3001 Colorado Boulevard. The total rebate under that agreement was $662,730. The return on investment to the city from that incentive was 198%, and 450 jobs were created or retained through that incentive agreement. Yes, sir? I'm sorry. I know you've got your rate of return on there, but what was the total amount of revenue we received with the rebate in place? Do you have that off? Erica, do you have that amount? If not, I can get it later. Yeah, that's not... Can I ask you for the net or the... The net, well, the net to us after we've paid them to reb ate. Could you come up to the microphone, please? Yeah, come up to the mic. Thank you. Good afternoon. The net was $1.3 million, and the total property tax generated was $1.9 million. Okay, good. So since this has expired, then we're getting the full amount on the property tax. Correct. Okay, great. Thank you. Appreciate it. Since tax year '14. Yes. Thank you, Erica. Okay, the current request, you can see the map there. This facility that's labeled with Sally Beauty on top of it is located at 3900 Morse Street, and that's near the intersection of Morse and Loop 288. The request is for a full interior remodel of that facility , which currently has offices and warehouse space in it, and houses about 120 employees at this time. As I said, the project is a complete remodel of the interior office portion of the building. About 200 employees are going to be transferring into the Morse Street facility from the Colorado Boulevard facility, because they are at capacity at Colorado. So they're going to be doing this remodel to allow for additional employees to be relocated there. Plus, it's going to allow them to hire about 80 new positions to be housed in the Morse Street facility as well . They're estimating a total investment of $7.5 million, and we did take this item to the EDP board, and that board recommended a three-year 50% rebate, totaling $72,714. Just to give you an idea of what the scope of the project includes, they're going to be installing new windows, flooring, ceil ings, interior lighting, rehabbing the dining area and break rooms, doing data and phone cabling, installing new HVAC units and ducting, doing some electrical upgrades and roof repairs, and then eventually they're also going to be doing parking lot improvements and landscaping. Work did begin on this project in the first quarter of 2016 , and the estimated completion is in January of 2017. Just a quick reminder of what our 2016 policy for tax abat ement and incentives allows for. We are able to retain existing businesses which propose to improve or redevelop property within the city limits, and we can also offer incentives for the expansion or rede velopment of existing businesses that create new or additional professional jobs. The estimated fiscal impact on the $7.5 million investment by Sally is $48,476 of eligible annual tax revenue to the city of Denton, and that means eligible to be incentivized. And then we're proposing a three-year 50% rebate to Sally Beauty for a total of just over $72,000, and that's $24,238 per year. I wanted to give you an overview of the potential economic impact of the project in the community at large. I mentioned that there are going to be 80 direct jobs, those created underneath this project. Those jobs are going to be in the finance and accounting, e -commerce and web content, and customer service areas. The base salaries are going to range from $27,000 to $150, 000. Four indirect jobs are estimated to be created from this project, and indirect jobs refers to jobs that are generated by regional companies that are supplying goods and services under the project. We're also projecting 21 induced jobs, which is related to jobs that are created when new employees, the new direct employees use goods and services within the community, creating a ripple effect of jobs. We also put together an estimate of the sales tax impact from the spending of the new employees, the 80 direct employees. That estimate is $22,230 a year for a total of around $66, 000 over the three-year term of the incentive. Got a question? Council Member Gregory. I very much appreciate the numbers. Sure. I'm sure that there's some formula that you're using. Could you share with us where that formula comes from and the logic behind it? The labor impact information of the direct and indirect and induced jobs, we use a labor analysis program called Jobs EQ that has some proprietary formulas that they use to do those estimations. If you'd like to get some further information about that, I can ask Erica to come back up and tell us a little bit more about Jobs EQ, but essentially we rely on their analysis to provide us that information. As far as the sales tax impact formula, that was developed by UNT's Center for Economic Development Research, and that was a few years ago now when we first got that formula from them, but we still feel like it's valid at this point to use it. In terms of the proposed agreement, as I said, a three-year 50% rebate grant of city ad valorem tax revenue attrib utable to the improvements that are made at the Moore Street property, resulting in an increase of assessed value. The agreement includes the condition that the combined assessed value of both of Sally Beauty's facilities at Moore Street and at Colorado is at least $22 million, and Sally Beauty will submit an annual certificate of compliance prior to receiving payment, and the Economic Development Office does, of course, receive that certificate of compliance and verify with DCAD that Sally Beauty has paid their taxes and that the information they submit to us is accurate. Currently, what is the aggregate of both of those buildings on the tax rolls? Do we know? Erica, do you have those numbers with you? I'm just curious. Sorry, Erica. I have the one, but not both of them together. The Colorado facility is $33.3 million, and the Morris facility is $8.1 million, for a total of $41.5 million. So I guess my question is, why do we have it at least $22 million? Because that means both of them combined right now are over $40 million. Did I hear that right? $33 million and $7 million or $8 million? Yes. So there are a couple of interesting things about this particular project. I can tell you where the $20 million part of the $22 million came from our prior agreement with Sally. That was the threshold that they had to meet in valuation for their headquarters building under that prior agreement. Then the $2 million that we're associating with the improvements that are being made to the Moore Street property is because the interior remodel is likely to affect the assessed value less than it would if it were an exterior-based remodel. So what we're striving for is a threshold that is acceptable to the City of Denton in terms of demonstrating Sally's investment in the community, but that's also attain able by the project because that makes sense. If we're going to be offering them an incentive, we want something that we're comfortable with, that it is going to be met, and that they're demonstrating an investment, but that's also, they have the ability to meet it. That's not a gotcha kind of threshold. Sure. And I understand that. I guess my thought on that is the $ 20 million valuation based on the prior agreement, that was a 10-year agreement, so that's 12 or 15 years ago. In other words, you've got a $43 million aggregate or $41 million aggregate on the ground right now before anything's done. And we're saying if somehow you can get that reduced to almost half, we're still okay with this agreement, which if you knock that in half, which knocks our property tax revenue in half, I mean, that number just seems too low to me. I'm going to be honest. Okay. Because it's already met, and don't blame anybody for asking for it, but if we give an incentive and then something happens and all of a sudden those properties go down to 25 million, we're still giving the incentive. But we've lost 30 or 40% of the value from, so it's hard because you want the market to apply to this, but when you 're looking at tax values, sometimes there's ways that commercial properties can get their taxes reduced, sometimes lower the market. So I'm a little uncomfortable with that number. I'm going to be truthful about it. So that's just me, but I'm just only one person, so it's just simply because they already meet it, and then they've got another almost 50% that that aggregate amount could go down and still be receiving this incentive. To give you an idea of just what's eligible and what's not eligible. Sure. And I'll start actually with the final year for Sally Beauty. So in 2014, the total for the Colorado facility was 32.6 million, and then the actual eligible for rebate was 28.9. So there are a number of things that we don't consider eligible. Your inventory, your vehicles. Okay, so the number you stated at first was not. That's the total export off the cat. Isn't this when you say includes the condition that the combined assessed value of both Sally Beauty's debt and facilities is at least 20. So what you're saying is, it's the combined assessed value of the real property, the eligible. Which then if we did the combined of the two now eligible, it's not 41, it's what is it? It's about 30. That one's 28, and the other one was, what's the other one? I'll have to pull it on the other one. She's saying it's probably not all the eight. But there's another item for the Morse property. There's actually three real property numbers, and the facility's only on one. So when you take the export of the total Sally Holdings, it includes two additional. But we're only considering the two buildings, which are the corporate headquarters and this project. Yes, correct. So that's what I'm trying to understand is, so for this condition, what is the current value of the. The eligible. The eligible property, which I would say we probably need to put eligible. I'm sure eligible is in the agreement, but I'm sure that's given. Do you want to file that number? And you don't have to give it to me right now, but I do need it to have it before. We'll find it. Is this an action item tonight? It is. Yeah, I need to have it. Okay. We need to have it. Okay. In order to do that, we get a form that I have, DCAD fill out the verification form, and it breaks down the business personal property. If you were to look online at the CAD, you would just get the aggregate total. And I have them break it down by office equipment, plant equipment, computer equipment, furniture and fixtures, inventory, other than the total market. They also provide the free port. Yeah, I just need what what that current number is. Okay. Thanks. Okay, wrapping up. Sally Beauty is one of Denton's top four private employers. They've been in our community for over 30 years. This is a $7.5 million project that's going to yield about 80 new jobs. And the request is for a three year 50% rebate on new city ad valorem tax revenue attributable to project improvements . We also have with us today Ray Disprow, who is the senior director of construction for Sally. In case any of you guys have questions for him about the project itself, the work that's being done. So I'm glad to answer any other questions. We'll make sure to get you the number that you're looking for, Mr. Mayor, before this evening. Sure. That's what I have. And I guess my last question is on your last statement. So I might have missed it earlier in the presentation. Request is for a three year 50% rebate on the new on new city ad valorem tax revenue attributable to project improvements. So you said I think it was about how many two or three million dollars are looking at the improvements or how much was it? The investment is going to be seven point five, but we're estimating that it's going to increase their value by about two million dollars because of the interior nature of the remodel not yielding the kind of increases that an exterior remodel would. Okay. Okay. All right. Thank you. Any other questions. All right. Thanks. Thank you. If someone could maybe grab Councilmember Briggs as I think . Okay, we're going to go ahead and call the item three B. Which is receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding the FY 2016 city managers proposed budget capital improvement program and five year financial forecast. Thank you. Chuck Springer director finance be presenting this item. And I wanted to go through and kind of summarize where we 're at based on last week's meeting so I think the easiest way to do that is I'm going to pull up the AIS that's in your backup for the work session and kind of just go through the numbers where we're at. And to let you know everything on the evenings agendas is based off that. I've also got several other files on here so if there's some questions about something historical hopefully I've got to scan and fix that. Okay. So in terms of the property tax rate that's on your agenda for tonight. It's a three quarter cent decrease from last year's rate so a rate of point 68 to 25. In terms of I've broken down the changes from the proposed budget in terms of the general fund expenditures first for 1617 the proposed expenditures were 114 point 5 million. We've increased the parks foundation funding from the 35 to the 77 added the one time historic preservation plan, and then at the last meeting to go from a half cent to three quarter cent reduce travel and training in the general fund by $100,000. We're just proposed to do that across the board. Remove the plans examiner supplemental package, remove the pavement marking supplemental package and reduce Council contingency funding I think the council proposed 6500, but to make everybody kind of even. We did 6300 so the remaining is an even number for each council member, you mean I don't get the excess. I'm sorry. We're always open for discussion mayor. Very good. Very good. That's right. Yeah, I just see glares and crickets are your crickets. Yes count Mayor pro temp. I'm just just so I have this for my own kind of personal records if what would that tax rate be if it was a full set . What would the rate be or what would the point 679 75. And then what is it at a half cent point 68. 475. Thank you. Very good. These are tough questions. Council member breaks. Yeah. There's, there's been some issues are circulation going around about the police training budget being cut. And when I saw that I was taken aback because during the conversation I assume that since it was going up from 21 to 23,000 that we weren't really necessarily cutting the police training budget that it was increasing a little bit so can you kind of explain to me how that was interpreted and why this is, I can, I can open up there's a spreadsheet I think that was sent to the council. I can or do you want me to go through that. No yeah can we can we sort of, because I think you're going to present that anyway is that correct. Yeah, you are. Thank you. I think that's a point of discussion. So that's where we get to the expense, the proposed expenditures and this is what's in this evening's budget is the 114 333 930. In terms of proposed revenues, the original proposed revenues were 114.5 million. So that's a final quarter cent down to the point 68 to 25. That's reduction of about 228,000. And then there was also discussion at the last council meeting to increase the exemption for disabled from 10,000 to 50,000. We had discussions with the appraisal district and that can be done so it's effective this tax year. And that's what's in the proposed tax rate ordinance. The impact that would have on the general fund is about 48,000 reduction there's 260 individuals that qualify for that. The other sides on the debt service fund, there's about the other about 22,000 reduction would be in the debt service fund. So that's included in your packet and what's proposed tonight. In terms of the 1516 items one time items what was proposed was 1.224 million. We've added the emergency services grant funding breathing air compressors the parking lot fencing and the cemetery assessment for a total of 1.7. The other two changes before I go to the spreadsheet on training. We've also added an additional 207,000 in the T ERS fund, so that will have the option either to expend that money out of the general fund 1516 or the TERS fund. After some consideration by the TERS board and we've removed from the traffic safety fund the other portion of that pavement marking supplemental package that was equipment that was to be purchased one time equipment purchase. So with that I'll go over to the training file. Let me see how large I could make this. In terms of this. Here's the hundred thousand dollar proposed reduction in training and it's just kind of an across the board the proposed travel and training budget in the general fund was the 394,000. Just across the board. So what would be remaining now in your question was that for the police here started out at with the supplementals at 31 six prior to the supplementals it was 22 to 50. Those are additional training for the new officers in the supplemental packages and so the with the hundred thousand dollar reduction across the board they'd be at 23 595 versus the initial proposed plus the supplemental. Does that answer your question. Yeah, yes it does because when I saw the line out of 22 and then it was going up to 23 I was confused when they were saying cut, but I see that the supplemental has been reduced. But of that, it was my understanding that only 8500 last year was used. Well I think that was in in 1415 missus because I can see for myself here I mean I don't want to harm the police and in any way and cut their, their budget, so I'm just trying to figure it out. Thank you. So the reductions were based on. My guess is you took $100,000 from the proposed total figured what the percentage was and applied that evenly across the board. Correct. We took the 394 and just did it percentage wise across the board from this column. Thanks. So between police and fire, we're looking at 8000 for police 11500 for fire, because I'm the one that championed the 60,000 for the preservation plan. My proposal would be to put that training money back into the positive category. And since we don't know what that preservation plan is going to cost, we do know we're going to try to go after some grant money to help pay for that. So I would be in favor of reducing the preservation plan by the sum total what's at 19 five. So that both police and fire and their training budgets are back where they need to be. So I'd like counsel to give that some consideration please. Well, it's pretty clear last week that I was against cuts across the board for any of these training I think our employees are our best asset. And so, while I agree, please , and fire need to be fully funded. I think all the departments do I think they've got important things that they need to get trained on. So I guess my question is for the council is this this represents a recurring amount every year. So is the is the goal here to say we're cutting them this year and then we want this to be the baseline then for next year's as a recurring item is the idea that we're cutting them long term. And or is there some plan to build it back up in the future and what is the rationale for that if we're so easily able to cut them this year. What's our plan given that this would be a recurring budget item into next year is the direction we're giving to the city management. Bring it back up to full funding next year what Yeah, last Tuesday I agree with you, my Lego man just fell down. Sorry. I think that we need to stick at a half cent. I think that quarter cent there was a lot of decisions being made on the fly and there's some collateral damage that happens when you kind of dive into what that actually means. And I think I look at a bunch of items on that list and I don't want to reduce many of that. I think that we're like planning development economic development. A number of those items and I appreciate Councilman was bringing up a solution for those two line items. I really do. But I would just really urge Council to take a look at the original half cent manager proposed decrease. And I feel like this kind of was done a little bit late in the game. And I have not had. That's just kind of where I feel on that. That's my great. Thank you, Mayor. You know, as I was thinking about it also I was thinking about. I'm guessing that, for example, training for our health inspectors comes in one of those areas probably in building inspections I think that's their department. I was thinking, you know, they're being trained it up to date is just as important for the safety and the health of our citizens as police and fire training. So I'm inclined to agree with Mr. Roden and Mr. Hawkins that that we were working really hard to reduce the tax rate. And this is where we ended up focusing on doing so. And in doing so, we're, we're taking away from an investment and our biggest asset, which is our employees. Councilman was a question Chuck, the three hundred and seven thousand, which was on an earlier slide. Is that money that is now going back into the traffic safety fund. It will remain in their fund balance. Correct. So conceivably we could pay for something with that three hundred and seven thousand as long as it falls under the requirements that we have to follow on expenditures that were allowed by law to spend. Couldn't we spend that? I come back to my traffic light of three hundred and forty. Could we spend that on the traffic light because that would be a lawful expenditure that would then free up about three hundred and ten thousand that we see on the handout that came out today. Wouldn't that give us if we pulled that three hundred and ten thousand, which was funded in fiscal year 1516. It says three hundred and forty, but really it's if we pay for the traffic light with that fund, couldn't we move those monies to help solve the dilemma that we're in today, which is having to cut some of these big ticket items off of our budget. Well, again, I mentioned the 1516 items are one time expenditure out of fund balance. Correct. So we could do we could do the one time expenditure instead of fund balance out of the traffic safety fund. But what that does is you've you've reduced the tax rate by a quarter cent. That's a permanent reduction in revenue where the savings is a one time savings. So when we started the budget next year, revenues and expenditures, because it's a one time revenues and expenditures would be out of balance by that three hundred and seven or three hundred and ten thousand. So that's just a concern I have when you balance it with a one time expense. But you're permanently cutting your revenues going forward by reducing the tax rate. Well, I think that's a risk I'm willing to take considering the total size of our budget and considering what we're being asked to cut today while we head into a solution tonight. The assumption is growing economy, more tax revenue, which means more money coming in. We're talking about three hundred thousand and some change. So I think I've said it, I think, for the last two budget meetings and people think I'm redundant. I am. But that's three hundred thousand dollars that I think would solve this this problem. Chuck, Chuck, if you could go back to the training slide just for a moment. And I hear I hear my colleagues concerns about the cutting and about the half sand. And I think I want to focus primarily on this slide because when I look at this slide and take out the idea of police and fire and of course, after everything that's happened, we certainly want to make sure that we continue to to fund our first responders in a way that provides them the best training possible to to keep our community safe and secure. If we look at the totals there, we're looking at the historic and the proposed. So I look at the F.Y. 2014-15 budgets, 328. The actual was 309. So not much variance there, but you know, about five to eight percent. Look at the 2015-16. It's 359. And the year to date as of August 31st is 306. Give a few more training dollars because it's another month . It'd be the end of this month. And let me point out that's August 31st. But the way we account for that, a lot of training expenditures are on our P card or purchasing card. We've only booked the purchasing cards through July. So we've got two more months of purchasing card purchases just to just to make you aware of that. Sure. I appreciate that. And so we're still not utilizing all of our budget that we 've for travel and training that we've budgeted for those prior years. And then when you look at the supplemental packages that were requested, you see building inspections was 2000. I'm assuming because of the elimination of the plan exam or position in that extra quarter cent, they're taking off that additional 2000. And then the others are police firewall. Most of our personnel, most of our FTEs in the general fund came from parks, which was six primarily or maybe seven. But I know six for the addition of the wave park. But in police, I think it was seven. Is that right? Seven officers or seven FTEs? And then in fire, it was nine, I believe, eight for the medic unit and one for the fire captain. So if I'm off, somebody just stand up and say you're wrong. So obviously, I mean, when we talk about I guess I struggle , not struggle. I'm curious about how we apportion this training budget because we've added seven new police officers, nine new firefighters, one of them specifically training captain. So I would see that it's necessary that they would have proportionally maybe a bigger training budget than some of the other departments, especially if the other departments didn't add any FTEs. So I don't want to cut the I don't want to not add the police and the fire supplemental simply because we're adding seven to nine people in those those organizations respectively police and fire. But from a fundamental perspective, I think we can find a way to do this without necessarily harming the other departments because it seems like a lot of the departments don't utilize all their training budget. And it seems like we're I don't even want to use the phrase . Never mind. It seems like we're trying to be very prudent with our financial resources. So I think that's a good I think that's a good practice. How do we resolve this problem? I don't know if I'm willing to concede that the way to resolve this issue specifically is to is to fall back to the half cent. Now, I know there's some other concerns that the ones who are advocating for that have in other items that have not been included in the budget. So I respect that and certainly acknowledge that. I think here we can find a way to finesse this and massage it to where we can achieve our goal. Both of our goals, which seem to be let's make sure we provide enough training funding for fire and police. And also, is there a way we can continue to reduce the training? But now it may not be by one hundred thousand dollars. But if you've taken across the board cut that formula approach, I get that's the easiest. I do. And I can see why that would be the first approach. But it's like in our hot funds. It's like in our hot funds. We used to do that. We used to just sort of take a percentage approach. And if we had some we wanted to apply, we said everybody gets a three or five percent. But what we've done is we began to try to look more at what the need is commensurate with with the funding. So we may not be able to do it. I mean, because we're sort of at the end of the line here on this. But I guess if I think if council gave staff direction to say, hey, let's restore that funding. And if there was some direction of we don't want to do the whole hundred or I just think there's a way to do it without the half. I'm not saying that I'm going to bust the tax rate vote between a half cent and three quarter of a cent. But I also don't want to just sort of put it off because this one issue that is seventeen thousand dollars is causing me a concern. I know there's different concerns for you guys. So, yes. Well, and I agree with you. I don't want to bust this either. I mean, this. But when I think that we're setting a precedent for possibly if a department or a line item there has a budget amount and it's almost like they've been. They're getting kind of disciplined for not using all of the amount. And that happens sometimes like in the private sector, too. And, you know, they're at the eleventh hour and we've got to use up all of our budget or next year when they go to make the budget, they're going to decrease our budget. I'm not saying that's going to happen, but it just I'm trying to hear you out. I mean, it does feel like that, like we should have used all of our budget. We should have trained more, you know. And of course, fire and police, they're kind of, you know, sexy is not the right word, but they're the number one concern, it seems, for everybody. I just I'm worried about morale in the departments. I'm these are very important positions, all of these positions for and I know you're not saying they're not, but I just just wanted to say that. No, I appreciate that. Sure. No, absolutely. Councilmember. Well, I've got a question. We have our police chief and our chief here and I I appreciate the logic that you're using. I want to test it and see if if the theory plays out. In fact, you're smarter than me because I don't know what logic I'm using or what theory I'm proposing. So your logic is we're adding several FTEs in those departments, and that means that we're going to need to have more training dollars in those departments. So I'd like to hear from those folks to see if that's an accurate assessment. And I'm very well maybe. But sometimes those things don't play out. So if one or both of the chiefs, chief, come over, Chief Howell, you want to address the council members question? Do you remember it? Come on up. And if neither one of you wants to address it, that's fine, too. I'm sorry. The assumption is that that with adding new police officers to the field, that that that really requires an increase in the training budget is is a does additional officers automatically mean additional training dollars are needed. B, is it particularly true for new officers to the force? For the first year, it might not. Seeing as how we're operating our own basic peace officer academy for subsequent years after that first year, yes, it would. One thing, though, if I could kind of and I hope that answers your question directly. It does. And if you need more details, I'm glad to give you if I could stray from your question just a minute, though, on a couple of things that haven't been discussed in regards to our training expenditures. You've got a badge. You've got a guy. Well, and I just want to throw this out so that you're informed. I think you asked a question while ago about and it's been discussed about our expenditures currently in the last year or whether we didn't use the entire budget. Just so you'll know there are there are actually three additional funds that we spend from in order to meet our training needs, besides the general fund. One of those is our Academy fund is money that is taken in from the operation of our Academy and our training facility , which is a fairly sizable amount and amounts to several thousand dollars. There's also money that we get from the state that's allocated through an appropriation from ticket revenue that goes to the state and is reimbursed back to police agencies based on the number of officers or certified jailers that we have on staff on January 1st of every year. There's also the forfeiture fund, which we allocate money into and utilize for training purposes. We spend from year to year somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 to $60,000 at least in addition to the money that is allocated in the from the general fund. So we're already we're already maximizing all of those different funds to supplement. The general fund money. When you look at the difference between the the total amount budgeted for last year and this year or or or the forfeiture proposed couple of things there to when we submit our budget, but we're given a an overall dollar amount of discretionary funds that we then can allocate into line items as we see fit to in the proposal. And if we think we need an addition or supplement to that we have to submit a supplemental package. So, but when you see an increase from one year to the next in that line in that training line item, it's just a change in the way we allocated those funds not an increase in the overall bottom line expenditures that were allocated in their discretionary funds that that makes sense. So the couple of thousand dollars difference you see from 14 to 15 or 15 to 16. In the allocation is is just that it was taking from a couple of other line items and reallocating it to the training fund. So, to say that there's an increase. We did that, but through our discretionary granted to us by by y'all in the budget office in allocating that money. There's not a bottom line increase. Unless we added that supplemental package which was added in to buy the with the additional officers are different. And also, Mary, you mentioned we had seven officers. That's true. In the in the currently in the proposed budget, there's also five public safety dispatchers in addition to that so it's 12 total positions. That are allocated into in the included in the in the budget now. Yes, that's my wife. Considering the domestic terrorism that we've seen in the last few months, is there additional training that a local police force is encouraged to to get? Yes, there is. And in addition to that, to domestic terrorism, we have issues that we have calls from local community leaders and groups all the way up through suggestions from like the International Association of Chiefs of Police or the Department of Justice to add training curriculum to our training that we have now. So those are things like mental health awareness. You know, redo methods to reduce use of force. Cultural awareness, the idea of implicit bias and recognizing and being aware of implicit bias in policing de escalation techniques. All of those things are topics that are relatively new to to police training that we're trying to implement and add to our curriculum. So that will be that you know that will have the best trained police force we can have. So those are all things that we'd like to add that and we just brought in a de escalation class. We've got several other things planned for the for the next budget year that will be in addition to the training that we are to give. Before I before you ask your question, I think, first of all, are there any other questions for the chief? And then I think one of the questions is directed to Chief Palsworth. So if you if you have any comments on the question, that'd be, you know, you know, none. Okay. Okay. Thank you, Mayor. I imagine if we were to ask the head of every one of these departments, we'd hear similar stress of things that they have. And again, I don't know what problem we're trying to solve by jumping in. We're creating a lot of problems for every single department. I mean, so I guess my suggestion is that people are adamant about the need for another quarter cent cut. This was just thrown out ad hoc by one council member. We looked at it. We heard some pain points from some departments. I imagine we'd hear from each of them. I just think it's I strongly believe it's the wrong place to cut and it sends the wrong message across the city versus if somebody wanted to find $100,000 somewhere else that probably didn't create as many problems. I guess they can throw out those suggestions. But again, I imagine we can have every director come in here and they would they would express the same sort of thing. And so I continue to stand opposed to this. Any other questions on this? On this slide in particular, this issue or the budget? Yes. I'm sorry. I didn't see it. I believe the training is important and I go to Council member Wasney on the amount for the light and we just restore this budget here completely. If we could do that, I don't I know that I can look up here and I can see community improvement. You know, every everything I see up here, I know that training is really important. And if the budgets aren't utilized, I would like for them to be. I would like for any training that's out there for our employees to be better that they that they take that and use it. So I'm just going to put that out there. Questions come. My only concern with that process is the one time budget expenditure because we in essence, we would be back in the same place next year. And that's that's my only concern with taking I mean, you 're right. There's because I think what you're saying is the traffic light. Summarize again what you're what you're proposing or your thoughts. The Traffic Safety Fund is very specific in what you can and cannot spend money on. Sure. Traffic lights is one of the things that you can spend the money on. Because we've reduced a position or was it striping or it was something that was reduced. The go ahead, Howard, what was it that we pavement pavement markings, pavement markings. Thank you. We reduce that. So consequently, the accompanying three hundred and seven thousand was put back into Traffic Safety Fund because it's very specific on what you can spend it on. If you look at the sheet that was on your desk when you came in today, there's three hundred and forty thousand funded out of fifteen sixteen for a traffic signal. So my proposal is to take that three oh seven that is back in the city now in the Traffic Safety Fund. Allocated towards a traffic signal. So it frees up three hundred forty thousand dollars. It does minus minus about thirty thousand because the Traffic Safety Fund is three hundred and seven. This is three hundred and forty. But what it would do is to place approximately three hundred and ten thousand dollars. It is just money left over from fifteen sixteen that allows us to come back to this budget and restore some of these items that council members are asking to restore. Three hundred and ten thousand dollars back that we can we can solve some of these issues. But as I am as I understand the budget concern with that is the three hundred forty thousand dollar expenditure for the light that's coming out of General Fund now are suggested is a one time expenditure. We're trying to fix an ongoing expenditure with a one time expenditure this year's budget which won't be in place next year. So is that the concern as you see it? So let me let me try to show it this way. And you know this is all at the will of the council. I'm just trying to inform you of what may occur next year. If you look here if we were to restore these items here in other words restore these four cuts. Then the total expenditures would be about a hundred and fourteen point six million. If you add the hundred thousand here about a hundred and fourteen point six million your total revenues would be a hundred and fourteen point two. So that's where I'm saying you're drawing down in other words you're drawing down on the fund balance during the year. But you start off next year with the prior year of expenditures of a hundred and fourteen point six and revenues of a hundred and fourteen point two. So that's that's kind of the impact of it. You have it in the fund balance since we didn't spend it on one time you have it in the fund balance to draw down on. But your recurring revenues and expenditures have a little bit of a of a deficit. But again you know this is this is up to council's direction is three or four hundred thousand overly significant. No. But depending on what occurs next year it might make it a more difficult year next year to add some of the things that are already built in. One of the agreements next year is the Argyle Fire Station. So we've already entered into that agreement and know we have an additional four to five hundred thousand expense for that. It was that did that. What I'm hearing you say is the solution that I appreciate being offered for the traffic light doesn't really solve the problem that we're that this would mean a budget where we're we're approving expenditures that exceed our. Our expenditure proposal is exceeding our revenue estimate which doesn't sound like a good plan. And it sounds like what we're what we're suggesting is let 's reduce the tax rate and pay for it by going into our fund balance. And if we look at our long term projections what we see is that our fund balance will be decreasing over the next several years. If per chance we have a vote in May to freeze the property taxes for seniors and disabled then we've frozen our tax rate at a level that we reduced and paid for through our fund balance which means that the following year our fund balance is going to be hit even harder. Or we're going to have to raise the tax rate to make up for the difference and everybody else gets to pay for it. I can't I can't agree to to this kind of a solution of restoration of important items. Basically pass an unbalanced budget and having to go into fund balance. We don't need to do that. We haven't had we have not had 10s and 20s of people lining up saying you know reduce my tax rate. Everybody would like it reduced of course. But, but when you look at what what the cost is this year what the cost is in the future. It doesn't make sense. It's not the way I run my household income of saying we're going to spend more. And, and, and, and hope that maybe our revenue increases. We don't do that we we we try to set a budget that that that where we're spending actually less than we're bringing in. But, but that's not the suggestion that's being made here and I don't think it's a good suggestion. Well, I don't think we're certainly trying to spend less than what we're bringing in because we got to get a balanced budget. I'm real okay. I'm not stuck on a particular particular cent reduction or something like that just for optics. What my goal in this is to really look at this budget, really think it through. That's why we changed the process. I mean and the process I think has gone fairly well this year considering that it's a new paradigm that we tried to implement. So I'm okay if everybody's got some real heartburn about taking off the $100,000 and I know it was Councilmember Gary's suggestion and fortunately she's not here. So she can't really advocate for it. But I'm okay if we want to say well then let's just restore the $100,000 and we'll just leave it at that which will put us a little bit. Because if you, if you take, if you put it back to a half cent then we don't have the $340,000 because it's got to get spent because you got to get that piece of equipment because of the payment marker. So, but I think that's what I'm hearing is there isn't the objection that the training, the training issue has just become the symbol of the discussion here. And it represents the different philosophies as each one of us approach this budget. It's become the symbol. And I'm just simply saying if it's not a symbol and we care about training, let's restore it. It'll change those calculations a little bit and I'm real okay with the way everything else is on that budget if we just put that $100,000. There's not going to be much of a difference. It's going to be minuscule and then I'm going to wait to see who the first person I recognize that will say well we 're already almost at a half cent. Why don't we just go ahead and go down to a half cent because we're not talking much money out of a $114 million budget. So I have a prize for whoever's going to be the first one to chime in on that. I'm just teasing. But I do, I mean so I'm not going to get hung up on that. I mean it was a conversation we had and so it's going to be difficult for me to agree as well to take a one time expenditure and apply it to reoccurring one time revenue for reoccurring expenditures. That's going to be difficult for me to do. Yes. But I hear you saying because we have other items is put the $100,000, the full $100,000 back in training, adjust the tax rate to cover the cost and let's move on. I'm okay with that. I mean I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that. Yeah. I'm okay with that. Okay. All right. Okay. So that would put it somewhere between one half and three quarters. Yeah, somewhere in the middle. So you'd get out your calculator Chuck. Yeah, Kevin asked Chuck what that is. It's not the slide rule. I see Brian over there feverishly punching at numbers. We'll want to double check those numbers before this evening. And it would be somewhere between one half and three fourth s. Yeah, I'm okay with restoring that training budget because I really think it's important. Sure. It's important for employees in all departments. Okay. So I'm okay with that as well. So if you'll come up with that magic number that'd be appreciated. Thank you. Do you have any more slides? No. I just wanted to go over kind of the sequence of events tonight. I do have a substantive question instead of a process question. I know I had discussed, I was going to say we discussed, but I guess it's primarily me, about the restoration or the amount of restoration back into the utility funds. Is this a closed item? The water and wastewater. Is that a closed item? No? Okay. That's just not competitive for electricity. Yeah. So, you know, the original plan was to put 250 in each one of those funds. And did we have a determination on that or what? I mean, that's something that we can do. I don't know that. Oh, you're going to take that to the PUB. I think we're going to look at it some other. Never mind. I forgot. Okay. Strike that. Yes. All right. Sorry. Is there any sort of budget presentation tonight or are you just going to stand for questions? Sorry about that, Howard. As part of that. Yeah. I'm just going to summarize each one of the four items from the podium, but not make a presentation. You know, I think what unfortunately gets lost in the process through all this, and I thought this was a great process and appreciate my fellow council members for getting into the mud together at times and getting a lot of consensus most of the time on some things, is there's always a section of this proposed budget that's at the beginning. It's kind of your memo to council there that highlights kind of some big trends, big commitments, big investments, you know, that go into this budget. And it tends to get lost in the weeds in terms of what we 're doing. I mean, one that sticks to the top of my head is the fact that we've now committed over a 10-year period to take all the franchise fees and devote those into streets. And that required a significant hit this year on what would have been the $600,000, I guess. And that's a commitment we're making for the next 10 years, which is huge in addition to a lot of other commitments we've made over the years just on street reconstruction, street maintenance in general. And so, you know, I just encourage my fellow citizens who are watching, that first part of the budget, you can download it online. It really gives you a big picture of what we're doing and what we've been working toward as a council in terms of our priorities, our key focus areas and whatnot. And I think there's a lot of reason to be proud of this budget this year. So as we're wrangling over the last $100,000, I don't want to -- or the citizens to lose sight on all the great things we're doing this year. And I really do appreciate that reminder because when you think about it, we did make a pretty big priority statement. I mean, we've been talking about $100,000, but we took that $600,000 in one fell swoop and reallocated it to a priority that we believe is one of the major priorities for the community. So that's a very good word. And I've always heard the last $100 is always the hardest to negotiate. It's easy to come out here and get in. But anyway, but I really do appreciate that reminder because you were absolutely right on that. So in terms of the items tonight, individual considerations for budget, the first one is the adoption of the tax rate. Again, it takes a 60% or greater of the council, so it takes five yes votes to pass that. Based on this discussion that we just had, we'll come back to the council and hand out a hopefully new ordinance with that tax rate that's in between there. And just to let council know, and I'll hand this out at your seat tonight, there's a different motion that has to occur under state tax law versus just the caption of that ordinance. And I'll read what it would have been at the three-quarter cent reduction. It'll be a little bit different. It just says I move that the property tax rate be increased by the adoption of the tax rate of .68225, which is effectively a 2.85% increase in the tax rate. That's the motion that has to be made. You look at the effective tax rate, the percentage above it . So I will hand that out and mention that again on the first item, but I want to let you know that. And we'll make that an adjustment. The second item is just adoption of the tax roll. The third is adoption of the budget. And the fourth is ratification of the budget. Any time we adopt a tax rate greater than the effective tax rate, you have to have that fourth item and ratify the budget. We'll make an amendment to the first item and try to bring you back some revised ordinances with the new numbers between now and 630. I also wanted to mention briefly in terms of the item that I think Councilmember Briggs wanted to pull for those rates . I have one slide that shows the average impact and includes solid waste, but the impact on the average homeowner based on those. And I'll pull that up during those items. Okay. Any other questions on this agenda item? Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Thank you. Moving on to agenda item 3C. Receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction regarding the boundary adjustment agreement with the City of Corinth, Texas adjusting the mutual boundary of the cities. Thank you, Mayor. Ron Mangata, our long-range planning administrator, will handle this item for us. Thank you, Mayor. Members of Council, members of staff. A few seconds here while I pull up my presentation. As part of the introduction, this is a boundary adjustment with the City of Corinth. It's to facilitate the extension of Lake Sharon Drive. Just a reminder, this item will be a consideration as a first reading in tonight's agenda. So this work session is essentially to present the proposal and answer any questions that you all may have. Again, it's to consider the adoption of this boundary adjustment on first reading, confirming and improving a boundary adjustment between the City of Denton and the City of Corinth. The location of this boundary adjustment is in the southern part of the city, in this general red area here. Guyard High School is in this area. The Hickory Chopping area is in this particular area, and Corinth is to the immediate east. A little bit closer look. The subject area that we will be considering, where the boundary adjustment will occur, is currently in the city and is zone PD 111. It is a PD with a conceptual plan for some neighborhood service uses as well as apartment uses conceptually planned . The premise for this boundary adjustment is for the extension of Lake Sharon Drive, and that is shown here in yellow. The dash mark here as it heads west towards FM 2499. 2499, as you all know, is the roadway that's extending north-south, and that will hopefully be completed in the next couple years. And again, the premise of this is to facilitate the extension of Lake Sharon Drive. An even closer look is showing where this boundary adjustment is going to occur and why it's required. The City of Corinth approached the City of Denton earlier this year, asking that a portion of the city be adjusted to accommodate what you see here. Lake Sharon Drive, as proposed, will be extending west towards FM 2499, which is this swath here, which is currently not there, but you can see the alignment. It's a curve alignment in this particular area. So in order for Lake Sharon Drive to be able to be designed to hit a 90 degree intersection, it requires this curve that you see here. By doing so, it increased or it moved the right of way north, which now you see an area that's within the city that is affected. Therefore, the City of Corinth is requesting that the boundary adjustment reflect that the boundary move north in the northern portion of the right of way, which is this northern portion or northern alignment. In order for this boundary adjustment to be approved, there 's two readings required per state law. Today, this evening, we will consider first reading and that will be presented to you all. We'll do a reading of the ordinance. And after this, 30 days after, we will then present a second reading of this boundary adjustment. And at that point, the boundary adjustment, if approved, will be adopted. We won't go through the reading, but this will be discussed during our evening discussion. That concludes my presentation. I'll be happy to answer any questions that you all may have . >> Any questions? All right. >> Great. Thank you. >> Thank you. All right. Moving on to agenda item number 3D. Receive a report, hold discussion, give staff direction on the renewable dentin plant activities related to the future power supply plans to meet the city's growth and needs. This has been posted as a, with council approved, an extension for the review of some documents as we discussed last Tuesday. I've reviewed those documents and I think probably everybody else has too. So I really don't have any comments on them. I think staff gave out a presentation as well. And so just open the floor up for council discussion. Yes, Mayor Pro Tem. >> I too reviewed the documents and appreciated the staff response to it. After reading through that, I didn't have any concerns, so I'm comfortable with moving forward with the vote tonight. >> Okay. All right. >> Okay. >> Councilmember Briggs. >> Well, I wanted to bring my concerns to you and allow you to read those and if you have no issue, then that's good. Thank you. >> Okay. Any other, yes, Councilmember Wasney. >> Well, I know a lot of the question has been about the process. And so if there's an area for us to drill down on in the future, it's the process. As a continuation of that, we are doing a search for a new city manager. And so in terms of trying to go back and change the process , you can't go back in on a timeline. But we can go forward on a timeline with the new city manager in terms of process. But I read, boy, it's this thick. I read it all. And part of the narrative that's been left out with a lot of the discussion and emails that have come into my inbox is that the city looked at seven consulting firms. Seven. And that Denton Municipal Electric actually picked a different firm than our city manager. And our city manager is the one who came forward with Br attle. And Electric came forward with a different company. And I think that has to be a big part of this discussion. Because so much of what we've seen and heard has just been, you know, Brattle, Brattle, Brattle, Brattle. When in fact, Brattle was not Denton Electric's first pick. So also there's been some talk of charges of bribery and collusion. Those are real criminal charges. I don't see criminal intent in these emails. Did Denton Municipal Electric know the principles involved? You bet they did. If they didn't, I think they would be remiss as a city utility that they didn't already know some of the industry leaders in this field. Some of those industry leaders are now part of the Denton Renewable Plan. I come back to Denton Municipal Electric knew who these people were. Because if you are a professional in your field, you're going to go to conferences. You're going to meet people. I don't care what field you're in. You pick the field. You're going to travel. We just talked about a training budget up here. Every single department is going to go to training. And training is often in a different city listening to speakers who are leaders in that field. So it really comes down to where are we going to get our power? Where are we going to get our electricity? The other question is what are those rates going to be? Because we're talking about individual homeowners, but we 're also talking about business owners. Whether you employ five people or 500 people, you hold your breath when you open up that electric bill every month. Whether you're a homeowner or a business owner, you're going to look at that. So where does our power come from? I think we have a plan. And again, I read through, gosh, it took three days to get through all of this. I do not see criminal intent in these emails. So I see communication. And again, I come back to was it appropriate for Dent Municipal Electric to be communicating with the leaders in the field? I believe so. They were charged with coming forward with this plan. So it's been a week of a lot of communication with a lot of citizens. So I come back to the question on the process. And as we move forward, let's see if we can craft a process with big projects, with whoever this new city manager is coming in. So that, you know, when we have big projects like this, we don't wind up kind of in the situation that we're in. So that's my comment. Thank you. Councilmember Gregory. I don't say this often enough, but I agree with Council member Wasney. 100 percent. Because as I looked at the documents also, you know, there were concerns about ethics, there were concerns about conflicts of interest. There were concerns about improper relations, concerns of corruption. And there's nothing that I saw in the emails that indicated that there was any substance to those. What I did see was, as you said, Ms. Wasney, a lot of due diligence on the part of our staff to research a lot of different areas to fulfill a charge that was given to the department by the council to find a way to expand our renewable portfolio, find a way to do that. And that's what I saw in these. That's why they went to these conferences. That's why they knew about these different companies. Then I saw regarding improper relations, what I saw was staff offering common courtesies and hospitality that are extended to just about every consultant that comes into town that doesn't know the town, that doesn't know the organization. So the -- there was no fire. There wasn't, in my estimation, even a whiff of smoke. All right. Councilmember Hawkins. I too -- I don't believe that there was any criminal activity. This has been one of the most thoroughly vetted projects since I've been on council and in recent dent in history. And I just go back to when you host somebody from out of town, you want to show off your city, you want to show off your town. And so I didn't have a problem with taking them out to eat or anything like that. And I just -- it's time to move forward on this. It's time to vote on this. And everything that was presented at the Brattle Report was -- it was so much data. We sat here for hours reviewing all that data. And that's what I want to more focus on. The data that was presented in that report, was it accurate ? Was it vetted? Did we hire the right group? I believe that we did. And I don't believe that there was any criminal activity during that process. Thank you. Councilmember Briggs. People keep saying criminal activity. I didn't -- no one accused anyone of criminal -- from this seat anyway. It was a call for concern, emails that I read. And I didn't get any specific clarification, but it appears that my council members did. I did not know that until just now that Brattle was not DME 's recommendation. So I appreciate everyone looking at that. We're all different people. We have different ethics, as I've been told, and different values. And we see things differently. And so time to go. Time to move on. Thank you. Okay. All right, any other questions on this agenda item? If not, that concludes our work session reports. We will now convene in closed session at 1.03. 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 certain public power utility competitive matters under Texas Government Code section 551 .086. And deliberations regarding economic development negotiations under Texas Government Code section 551.087. Let's take a five-minute break. [PAUSE] I honor the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state, under God, one indivisible. I thought I did. Okay, well, I'm going to repeat. I'm going to call the meeting to order. It's already in order. But I'm just going to -- this is the meeting of the Denton City Council, 633, Denton, Texas, September 20, 2016. All right. I'm going to come down for some proclamations. Thank you, all. Okay. I have a proclamation for Live United Month, if you all would come on up. Mr. Saco, if you'd come over and get you to say a few words and introduce your people here. Good evening. How is everybody? So the folks we have today are from the Board of Directors of United Way of Denton County. We're here to basically thank the city for being so involved in United Way and for supporting the various projects that we've done and committed to, including some of the special projects of the mayor. So thank you all for all your support of United Way of Dent on County. Thank you. All right. Let's do that. Absolutely. Let's just go ahead down the row and introduce yourselves, if you wouldn't mind. I'm Ellen Painter. I'm Ernie McCloud. I'm Pat Sherman. Janie McCloud. Robert Placido. Lee Howell. John Cabrales. And Gary Henderson. Thank you all. Well, I will tell you, I appreciate you coming to thank the city. But I will tell you, what you do for our community and the people in need in our community is just stellar. I mean, the nonprofits that you support, the new initiatives that you support really make a huge difference in this community. So thank you, Greg, for your leadership as board chair. Thank you all for your leadership and just your undying commitment to what is happening in our community and to really make a difference. So thank you all very much. I really, really do mean that because you can really see it working and throughout our community. So thank you all very much. This is a proclamation by the mayor of the city of Denton. Greetings. Whereas United Way of Denton County achieves its mission to improve lives in Denton County by mobilizing community resources that identify and address critical issues in the areas of education, income and health. The building blocks for a better life. And whereas United Way of Denton County's collective impact initiative, the Denton County Citizens Council on Mental Health rallied support this past year to launch a Denton County behavioral health leadership team to develop strategies that will improve the behavioral health system in our community. And whereas across Denton County, one in three children are at risk of dropping out of school. I'm going to repeat that because I think that's worthy of repeating. Whereas across Denton County, one in three children are at risk of dropping out of school. United Way of Denton County and community collaborators continue to mobilize volunteers through mentor Denton to help at risk children succeed in school. And whereas United Way of Denton County serves as the backbone organization for collective impact initiatives including pre kindergarten readiness coalition bank on Dent on County Denton County works job interview training for youth. The mayor summer youth jobs initiative project blue project blueprint board training school based community centers and the volunteer income tax assistance program. And whereas this past year, more than 11,000 people were inspired by the mission of United Way of Denton County and motivated by the growing needs around us to donate $2,497, 000 to improve lives across Denton County. Now therefore I Chris Watson mayor of the city of Denton Texas to hereby proclaim September 2016 to be live United Month in the city of Denton and joins United Way of Denton County donors volunteers and partners and calling on all residents to live United and to give advocate and volunteer . Thank you all so much. Thank you. Our next agenda item will be presentation from members of the public. We're going to play the review proceed. 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. We'll move on to our first agenda item and agenda item three will be agenda item three a which is Sam O'Donnell regarding the skate park development. If you'll just state your name and address and your time will begin. Thank you. Do you have something that you had? Okay. And you sent it to our A.B. people. I sent it to Billy Matthews, who I was told by the secretary. Is it a digital file or is it a PowerPoint? Okay. Well, I'm not sure. Okay. Yes. Yes, absolutely. It's that right there. It's that handout. Okay. Do you have a hard copy and single pages on this? Because worse comes to worst. We can always put it on the overhead camera. Do I have an extra? Oh, no, I just so you have one of these . We'll figure it out. Yeah, we'll figure it out. Okay. No problem. Thank you. Thank you so much for your patience. Yeah. I did a little last second. So I understand. Okay. It's probably my fault. Now we now we understand. Yeah. No, I'm sorry. Okay. Well, I tell you, if you're if you want to, you can put this there on the table on the square and we can ask them to zoom in sort of as you're as you're talking. If you'll just sort of dress the size, if that's if that's how you want to work, that might that might be helpful for the people out in the public. I would need a copy that I only have mine with the notes on it. So I'm going to you guys. Yeah. Thank you, Sam. And if you'll just state your name and address and your time will begin, I appreciate it. My name is Sam O'Donnell. I live at 1512 McCormick Street, Denton, Texas. I'm also work at DSS. I'm a UNT alumni. I do skate lessons for the city here as well as for the skate shop. And I actually formed a committee recently, which I'm the chair of to help get this whole skate park, public skate park development going. My goal today was basically to update council on the research and plans that myself, my committee members and the parks and recreation employees, along with Spawn Ranch, which is a construction company that a few friends that work for have been helping me out. But we've kind of gotten a little bit of information together to kind of help and help kind of get paint a picture of what we're trying to do. And we're also here today to kind of ask for your help and your guidance and finding the funding and the resources we need to make this happen. So first off, there's a picture on the first screen is of Spawn Ranch construction company's skatable art, which I'll get to in a little bit. But next slide pretty much. There just kind of goes over the committee of formed with me as the chair. We have a co-chair secretary and then several members there, about eight now. Over the last few months, we've actually held several public input meetings with Jim Mays and Jason Donnell have been our our contacts for the city. We've been very helpful in kind of letting us know what's possible and what we can do. But over those last four meetings, we've essentially come up with a plan to hopefully first build what we're calling a skate dot or a smaller skate park. Because to our understanding, the election cycle for a park of the size and caliber we were looking for originally is going to be more of a 10 year project or something that would take time to get the funds to be approved in that sort of election cycle. So our hope was that we could build what we're calling a skate dot, which there's pictures and that portfolio and on the back of that presentation there of skate dots is what we're calling them or satellite parks. There's also a thing of called skate trails skate skatable art. Like I said on the very first picture is a kind of a way we were hoping to maybe find a few more funding options essentially kind of make the project not just about skateboarding, but maybe also being aesthetically pleasing to the community, not looking so run down. And this might also help us find more funding options. Also the trails concept, which essentially having skate obstacles on the side of a path or a sidewalk that are made essentially for skateboarding so that they'll be, you know, I guess the idea is to have several of these around town, which a little bit cheaper to do than a large regional skate park, but it'll provide several locations for people to come and to use that use those locations as a safe sk atable area. So over these last few meetings, some of the other points we've made is that we do want these parks to be with a master plan that focuses on a centralized location for the city is safe and respectable to today's standards, which is where spawn ranch comes in, they really know what they're doing and helped us with that. And also plans to sustain future growth for the sport and is caters to all skill levels. We've found and with the help of Jim and Jason, several locations that we would think would be beneficial to this plan. One being North Lakes Park, Everest Park and McKenna Park. These would be better. We said we feel best locations for the skate dot idea, they're all centrally located. And that would what we're hoping to be the phase one of a master plan which would maybe include that regional park we're hoping for one day, or the skate dots kind of easing us into that. To our understanding the current skate park we have will not be there forever. We believe that the water park is going to be expanding in the future. So we were told it would help to. Yeah, basically we're trying to kind of at least get the ball rolling, get a small skate dot is what we're calling it established so that then maybe doesn't have a skate park for an extended period of time. If that current park gets wiped out or really just the elements there do have an expiration there, kind of more and even when you try to res heet them over time they just kind of tend to fall apart and whatnot. Please. Have you met, Molly Tamki. I've not. Well she's sitting behind you over your left shoulder. And you might want to talk with her and and see about with your committee and her skills. If you might find some corporate sponsors that would help move this at a slightly faster pace than what we will be able to do as you pointed out with the, the procedures of waiting for capital improvements bond programs. But I want to thank you for the report and the update. Yeah . Councilmember Briggs. Hi, I wanted to thank you for coming back as well and updating us and being organized and I really like the idea of skatable art, and I really have a public art committee and I didn't know if you had reached out to them to talk about the art part aspect of it, which might be another option to do. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Thank you. You bet. Next speaker will be Willie Husband regarding closed session meetings and future city manager state your name and address and your time will begin. Council members, my name is Willie has delivered 623 Newton . The city manager's position is very important to the city, of course, and I just want to say that my, my main concern is that the city managers is a representative of all the citizens of all ethnic groups that that somehow he or she finds out the information that's needed to help all of us in the past. It doesn't seem like that's been taking place. It's just been a certain small group that has been covered in the management of the city. And I wish is that that didn't happen again. The other item is yes, the closed sessions. I'm going to ask you a question. When we left the meeting today at the leave out of the meeting that was held today, I noticed the number of people that were left in there after we left all of the city staff that was in there in the open session. They were still in their setting in the meeting. 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And I think that's the reason why the closed sessions are supposed to be talking about things that are not in the public. >> Okay. My name is Alfred Sanchez. I am 65 years of age. I have lived in Denton for 21 years and currently live in Southeast Denton at 711 Jackson Street. My three children all attended Denton Public School. And I think that's the reason why I am so proud of the public school system. That is why it is so important to me to give back to my community. The previous generation, the greatest generation, made sure that we, the next generation, baby boomers, had the tools to make America a better place to live. Every one of us in this room is indebted to the greatest generation. They paid their fair share of taxes in order to provide the next generation public schools, libraries, interstate highways and roads, and city infrastructure. In other words, the greatest generation always looked to leave a better world for the next generation. I am not here to bash seniors. I am a senior. I understand that many seniors need assistance, but so do many young couples with families and so do renters. We cannot focus on one group of the community while neglect ing another segment of our community. The idea that baby boomers have already worked for a better future for the next generation and therefore are entitled to pay less taxes is hogwash. Realistically, by demanding to pay less taxes, baby boomers are being paid back for their contribution to the next generation. As long as we are utilizing the city's infrastructure, we should be required to pay for its upkeep. If people are concerned that their property taxes are too high, let's figure out how to solve the problem, lower taxes, without putting others at risk. I think if you think your taxes are too high where you live , it is time to downsize. Many young families do this all the time. There are 18,297 owned and occupied single-family homes in Denton, of which 6,874 are occupied by seniors and 260 occupied by disabled. That means that over a third of the population occupying a home would have their taxes frozen or over a million dollars would be cut from the budget. As the senior population increases in the future and seniors are living longer, the tax shortfall will continue to increase with the next generation absorbing the tax shortfalls. One group left out of the equation, renters. This segment of taxpayers do not get homestead exemption, which is $25,000, or the over 65 exemption, which is $50, 000, or the $10,000 exemption for the disabled. I have been a landlord for approximately 26 years and have seen firsthand the struggle many renters have paying their rent. Salaries have stagnated for the middle class and the lower middle class. I would like to thank you for last week's decision not to freeze, not to go, for last week's decision. I believe that citizens voting on the tax freeze is the best, is the right decision. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker would be Deborah Lantrip regarding ending homelessness in Denton. My name is Deborah. Can you hear me? Yes, ma'am. Okay. My name is Deborah Lantrip. I live at 300 Coronado Drive, number 183 in Denton, Texas. First of all, I can't tell you how excited I am to be here. Until the 1st of August, I was homeless and I'm disabled. I've had three strokes. I have no Medicare. I have no regular doctor. I have no physical rehab. I have no insurance of any kind. My only income is Social Security, of which I get $1,027 a month and $70 in food stamps. Now, I appreciate that money. I worked as long as I could. I even worked after I suffered the strokes. While I had insurance through my company, Kroger, I went out on disability and lived on $100 a week so that I could go through physical rehab, and it was a great deal of help. But I'm not really here to talk about me. While I was homeless, fortunately, I was lucky. I was not out on the streets. I had a couple in California, Jan and Rex Davis and Mary R olison and my stepmother, who scraped together the money to rent me a motel room at $ 429 a week, and they were able to pay that for two months until finally , Congressman Burgess's office got me my Social Security money. I still probably wouldn't have it, even though it was approved in March. Now I have a home. I used all the money, all the back pay they owed me, everything I had in order to get into an apartment, and I am so grateful that I have it. I want to thank the United Way because through the United Way in 2015, well, I was evicted from my apartment because of nonpayment of rent, because of my disabilities, because I was fired for my disabilities. I have a lawsuit. I have an attorney. We'll see what happens with that, so I don't want to get into that, but through giving hope, which is part of United Way, my rent was paid for several months, and I want to thank them personally for that. Where are they? Thank you. Thank you so much. It would have been a lot worse without you. Anyway, I want to say that there are people, people like me , worse than me, blind people, people in wheelchairs who are living in homeless camps in Denton. And Mayor, I know that you were part of, or maybe you actually started the Denton County Homeless Coalition. I know you're part of it. I know that, and I want to thank you personally for that and all of the council for that, because it is a great organization. I plan to join it as soon as I can. I can't find out when the next meeting is, but I want to go , and I want to be a part of it, because I know that we're doing all that we can here in Denton. Now, I read two newspaper articles, one in the Dallas Morning News and one in the Denton Record Chronicle, that Dallas had built a small apartment complex called The Cottages at Hickory Crossing, I believe, and it's only 50 units. And they're small, but it's better than being out in the cold, and it's going to get cold again, or in the heat right now with the mosquitoes. It's better than that, and I believe that they're starting people moving in the 1st of October. And I just want to say, if Dallas can do it, why can't we find the money? Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. If someone could get some contact information from you, and we will get somebody in contact with you on the coalition in that regard, if you could get some, Brandon, if you could maybe get some contact information. Thank you so much for sharing. I'm sorry, yes, Councilmember Riggs, I'm sorry. I actually had my card with the contact person for her that I was going to pass down. Fantastic, yes. For the Homeless Coalition? Yes, ma'am. Oh, well, thank you. I would love to have it. I really would like to know how to contact them. Thank you. Because I want to be a part of whatever I can do. Yes, ma'am. I appreciate that. Thank you so much for coming down. You're welcome. Okay, I'm going to leave now. I don't want to take the agenda with me. Okay, all right. Thank you. Good night. Thank you. You don't trip her, Mr. Husband. I'm sitting on the front row. Just giving it back to you, sir. All right, we do have a speaker wishing to speak on the – I think it's open mic. Is that – this? All right. Donna Zalisco, if I pronounced that right. Yeah, and this is an open mic, so it's reserved for comments from citizens on issues that are not listed on the agenda. And then, you know, because of its open mic, counsel can't respond, but certainly wants you to share your thoughts. And once you state your name and address, your time will begin. Okay. My name is Donna Zalisco. I live at 3300 Belmont Street here in Denton. This is the forest ridge of neighborhood known as the Est ates of El Paso. I could choose to live at Robeson if I were so inclined. I lived here in Denton, also on Idiot Hill in North Denton, from 1976 through 2007. I'm giving this background so you know I'm a long time Dent on and I'm reacting to some of the letters that have been in the – ongoing here in Dent on. I do not support the proposal to freeze property taxes for the seniors and disabled that a group with ties to Robeson Ranch are advocating. I am a senior citizen. I've worked here in Denton for over 25 years for the DISD. I just disagree with this proposal for all the reasons that have been stated in previous Denton record chronicle letters from Bill Geese to Craig Hunter to the previous speaker. And I'm sure you're fully aware of all the considerations that have been stated in those letters. My additional points stem from aversion to the attitude that certain privileged groups need to be excluded from mainstream financial obligations, taxes, due to age. This attitude growing in our culture is only going to result in a future balkanization atmosphere that is becoming more prevalent in our country. Robeson Ranch advertises being an active community for adults over 50 years old. Their rules and regulations do not encourage a less than robust lifestyle and perpetuates an ongoing group add mentality of my way or the highway. As far as I know, all residents choose to live in this community on the outskirts of Denton. If someone chooses to live isolated and gated from the rest of our community, that might be wonderful for them. But why should the rest of Denton be allowed or forced to undertake the financial privilege that can financially hurt all of Denton? I love, I have loved living in Denton because of its diversity, its unpretentious intellectualism for the arts and for the support for those who are less fortunate. When someone chooses to live in this community, they are choosing to accept the civic responsibility which include taxes as well as voting. I expect that anyone living in this Denton community who believes that their property taxes need to be lowered based on any arbitrary characteristic like age or eliminated to a preconditioned leverage can find some place else to live or do business. Sometimes Denton and the country has a wide range of opportunities and we have the right to choose whenever and wherever we'd like to live. Thank you for the opportunity to express this. I figured it was better to do it this way than writing you all a letter. Live united just makes a difference in our community. I understand it. It's also a concept that we are all in this together. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, that ends our public comment portion of the agenda. Oh, okay. There's a card. Oh, okay. Mr. Zoltner, open mic. I don't, I don't see. Is David here? Okay. I think we're, I think we've completed that portion of the agenda. All right. Are we out of blue cards? Are we doing this instead of blue cards? Okay. All right. Okay, we're going to go on to agenda item four, which is budget items for individual consideration. Our first is agenda item 4A, considered option of an ordinance of the city of Denton, Texas, levying the, levying, excuse me, the ad valorem property tax of the city of Denton, Texas for the year 2016. Mr. City Manager. Thank you, Mayor. Chuck Springer, our Director of Finance. Chuck's going to handle these next four items on the agenda . Okay. All of the item, budget items. Thank you. Mayor and City Council, I've put it at your place based on the discussion this afternoon. Replacement items. The top one is the requirement for making a motion on the tax rate. As you remember, there was discussion of restoring the $100 ,000 in training to the same level. So at that, we've come up with a revised tax rate of .68334 to restore that $100,000. So the, all four items reflect that tax rate and that change in the budget. If it's okay with the Mayor, before the first item at the suggestion of Mayor Pro Tem Roden, I'd like to give a few highlights of what's included in the budget before this is considered, and then I'll answer any questions you may have. In terms of what's in this budget, as well as what's occurred recently, the priorities of the Council include public safety for this budget and public safety. In the fire department, we have medic unit number eight. Over the last two years, this will, we will have added two medic units. So a 25% increase in that service level from six units around the city to eight. There's also a fire training captain included in the budget , as well as some other items for the fire department that are necessary. In terms of the police department, the budget includes a police lieutenant and four officers for the downtown patrol, as well as the power shift during their peak time, two additional traffic safety officers, and five dispatch ers to meet the recommended staffing levels of a recent study on the 911 Dispatch Center. Also for public safety in the capital budget, it includes upgrading all radios to digital to communicate with regional departments and regional partners, as well as to upgrade or replace the computer aided dispatch system, the 911 system. Some of the other important items that the Council stressed is infrastructure maintenance, especially street maintenance. This budget calls for the first year of 10 years of transferring the remaining franchise fee revenues to the street improvement fund. This year we'll add 622,000, plus the growth to add total operating revenue funding in the upcoming year of 1.775 million for street maintenance. And also over the last five years, to give some comparison, 6.84 and additional operating funding will have been added for street maintenance. In terms of other infrastructure, which is also important, and an item in this budget, there's 352,000 for downtown sidewalk additions, replacement of two traffic signals that have reached beyond 30 years in age, and also to begin funding parking lot maintenance and replacement of a portion of the parking lot behind the Civic Center. With that, I would like to thank the City Council for all their work and time during the budget process for all the city staff. And if I could, I'd like to make a shout out to my budget team who does all the real work behind the scenes, Tony Puente, Nancy Tao, Mike Halsema, Dan Galizia, and Kristen Solaris. With that, I'll answer questions on each individual item as they come up. Sure. Mayor Pro Tem, Councilmember Gregory. Thank you, Mayor. Mr. Springer, in our discussion this afternoon, one of the things that we talked about was adjusting our budget, our revenue estimations and our spending estimations to accommodate what we discovered in the course of this discussion on the budget, that there was a group of people, the disabled folks, that were not included with the senior citizens that were provided over a period of time an increase in their homestead exemption that had been $25, 000 and had gone up to $50,000. And does this tax rate and does this budget reflect our intention to allow the disabled citizens in Denton that are homeowners to have that $50,000 homestead exemption? That's correct. The first item, the tax ordinance, includes that exemption. It's actually an increase from $10,000 currently to $50,000 . It would be effective this tax year. Is this the only action that we need to take or will we need to pass a separate resolution or ordinance? Just this action. We've spoken to the Appraisal District. Okay. Thank you. Councilmember Begay. Mr. Springer, thanks for your hard work this session and thank you very much to your team as well. You've been very helpful, educational. I learned a lot the past couple months and I credit you and your team for that. So I really do appreciate that. Thank you very much. Just briefly, remind me again how much additional tax revenue we'll be collecting this coming year over last year . Total tax revenue? Yes. I know I've asked you that probably three or four times, but I keep forgetting. There's a figure in the first ordinance here. $4.232 million will be the increase in collection and of that $4.232 million, $1.426 million will be from new properties added to the roll. That's at the tax rate of .68334. $4.32 million of additional revenue and how much was from the additional tax rolls? $1.426 million. Okay. Thank you. That was all. I just have a comment. I want to thank my colleagues for the discussion last week where we decided and gave direction to increase the disabled exemption from $10,000 to $50,000, partly because if someone is disabled but under 65, they're defaulting to the disabled exemption of $10,000, where if you're disabled and 65 or older, you get to choose between the over 65 or the disabled exemption, but you can't have both and of course we got one at $50,000 . So I appreciate the direction to increase that to $50,000 so that they receive the same benefit as the over 65 and those who are disabled over 65. That is a, I mean, it's $40,000. I mean, that's a large increase. So thank you all. Thank you all for that. Councilmember Wasney. And I think it totals to $55,000 because it's the $50,000 exemption plus the $5,000 homestead. So it would be $55,000 total. I want to thank my colleagues because you heard from me more than once that I wasn't going to cut fire and police. And so thank you for helping me with that. Our first responders come first in my book and we added some important things to the budget this year. And I just want to say thank you. Councilmember Briggs. So in our discussions, I was adamant in fighting for the one cent decrease. And I believe Mayor Pro Tem even asked me if I was going to vote for anything less and I said no. But I wanted to say that I am happy with the work that we 've all done and the compromises that each person, I believe , has made. And so I'm happy with this tax rate. So thank you. Right. We do have some people wishing to comment. So if we have no more questions for staff, we'll take that public comment at this time. Any more questions for staff? Seeing none. Thank you, Mr. Spinger. First speaker, Mr. Willie Husbeth. If you'll come up, state your name and address. Your time will begin. My name is Willie Husbeth. I live at 623 Newton. The meeting that you had today, I want citizens to view that, to view what you do up here at 1130 during the day. And you will find that what I found, looking at it not being here and looking at it later is not the same as being here. And I say that to say those meetings should be held in the evening. Who can come up here at 1130 in the daytime who needs to work? Heck, I need to work. I had to take off. Working in that 100 degree weather, I need to work. I didn't get the shower. I didn't get the change. Either I had to decide to come up here and participate in the political process or go to work and provide for my family and to look just awful at the meeting. And to add insult to injury, there were no chairs to sit in . Something's wrong with this process, this 1130 meeting. And most of the chairs are taken up by those who have an interest in financially getting something from what's happening. I want to say something about the process too. You were debating this $100,000 and you were talking about where the money is going to come and where the percentage of this and what will happen to the tax. I didn't understand half of that. I wanted to ask questions. But you know what happens at 1130? You don't get to ask questions. You don't get to say anything. You just sit there. That process is no good. You need to have meetings in the evening time so that we can all participate in this process. We need to participate in the process. Now, notice what you all do in those meetings. First off, you have a lovely lunch. And I don't have a darn thing. I'm sitting there and I'm hungry. 1130, who has a meeting at 1130? I'm sorry, I'm off track. Let me get back to the issue. Now you've passed this tax rate. And I notice that you put it under categories that it's darn hard to understand. Now, I've been up here for several of them and it's all the same. I guess with the time I have left, I'm going to talk again. The meetings need to be held when majority of the public can get up here that want to participate. And I'm one of those that would like to participate. We have a question. Mr. Hudspeth. Council Member Begheri. Well, I just wanted to commiserate with you, Mr. Hudspeth, because I too had to work today. So I couldn't go to our 1130 meeting, which I may dislike even more than you. That's not a question. It's just a comment. My other question would be, would you be willing to create a proposal so that we can feed everybody at our meetings? Because I haven't seen any spending proposals that have been rejected by this council. Thank you, Begheri. You're all right, my sister. Thank you. I'll make that proposal, even if it's a hot dog. All right. Thank you. Next speaker is Jody Ismert. Yes. Come down and state your name and address, and your time will begin. Jody Ismert, 819 Anna Street. And I just want to say also I agree with Willie. It would be lovely if the meetings were in the evenings, because I did have to take some time off work today in order to be there. But I wanted to be there because I wanted to hear what you guys had to say, and I wanted to hear about the budget. I wanted to hear about the RDP. But anyhow, so regarding the budget, so I had learned at one of the, I guess, citizen outreach by one of the council people here that we don't look at existing programs. We only look at supplemental programs as far as cuts are concerned. And I'm just curious, because it seems like perhaps there are some existing programs that maybe are obsolete or cuts can come from there. For example, instead of, you know, supplementals, which everybody wants, you know, everybody wants the supplement als because they're new and it's exciting. And it's things that we're adding, you know, to Denton to make it better. But I was kind of surprised to find out that you guys don't actually look at the existing programs to see how effective and cost effective they are. And I found that concerning. Also talking about, you know, people have mentioned like the tax burden as far as it's shifting actually onto my generation and the generation right below me, where wages are stagnating and we're raising taxes. So that's, I'm not really in favor of raising taxes. I wish that I wish that we could actually keep or lower the tax rates so that we could keep everything on par so that we wouldn't have to pay additional taxes because truly wages really are stagnating. Everything is getting more expensive. And I know I feel it. My family feels it. And I know that other families my age and, you know, in their late 20s and 30s, they feel it, you know, too. Also, I didn't like the way it was the discussion was packaged around the police and fire. It seemed like it was kind of packaged and marijuana made an excellent statement about how it was symbolic. I thought that was great because that's true. It was very symbolic because who's not for fire and police safety. You know, I mean, everybody is going to be for increasing monies for training for the police and firemen. I mean, it makes sense. Our city is growing. Our crime rate is increasing. Of course, we want them to be able to be trained properly. But there are existing programs that might where we could have cuts instead of having the focus be packaged around police and fire. I didn't think that really made sense. So I just kind of wanted to say that. And I wanted to say that I really I'm glad that you guys came to a conclusion. It seemed fair, but I am for lowering taxes a little further. Thank you. Question. Councilmember Briggs. Well, we made some changes to this year's budget from from last year in the way that we handled it and looked at it. We got it a lot earlier. And so I think taking in a suggestion of looking into the existing budget process for next year, I think is a good one. And maybe that's something we can incorporate and that might help us get back to a lower tax rate that that we can all get on board with possibly. Thank you. Next year. Thank you. See no further questions. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I have no more citizens wishing to speak that have signed up. Councilmember, Mayor Pro Tem Roden. Thank you, Mayor. Can I ask one more question and check before I make my motion? Sure. Chuck, to that last point, you know, from from a staff perspective and even council perspective, this year budget started much earlier. But in terms of that budget process, in terms of department by department, look at existing programs, look at suggestions for new programs and supplemental packages. There is a thorough review of existing programs as it relates to part of the process. Can you can you talk a little bit about that? And a lot of the review is probably, you know, out of the public eye or out of the council eye. But the budget process really starts for us in April and in May in terms of when departments turn it in and we look through each budget. There's some areas that we make. I don't know if you call them cuts. Let's say, for example, this year we bid out for the external auditor contract and the new contract came in about 35,000 left. So we reduced those funds out of the budget. So some things do occur like that. But large programs that the that the city has would probably have to come in front of the city council to make significant changes to large programs. But we do go through with the city manager, with the staff on a department by department basis and each department makes a presentation to the city manager each year. Not only the general fund, but all of the utilities and other funds. And it's also important to point out that a lot of these departments have existing feedback loops with their particular constituencies. Think about library, for instance, who's talking to families every day, parks and things like that, that they 're probably going to know a little bit more in depth than we will. Or even in the context of these meetings. So that process is in place. I appreciate that. Well, I move that the property tax rates be rate be increased by the adoption of a tax rate of zero point six eight three three four zero, which is effectively a three point zero one percent increase in the tax rate. Council member Begarry. I was going to reserve till there was a second and we opened up for discussion. Sure. Council member Hawkins. Yeah, before I second to I wanted to thank all my council members for the hard work they put in this time. This is my fourth crack at doing the budget. And it's a difficult thing to understand all the departments, everything that goes into it. And I especially wanted to thank our acting manager, Howard Martin. When I first got on, he tried to slowly teach me how you put strategies in the budget where the reoccurring budget will fund infrastructure and that sort of thing, such as the franchise fee. So you don't have to address that every year. Councils change and streets will always need improvements and that sort of thing. So what you try to do is you put in systems that will make sure that our streets are not ignored and that sort of thing. Kind of had that light bulb moment this fourth time around. So anyway, but with all that being said, I second. Okay, Madam City Attorney, have you had a clarifying comment? Yes, sir. Thank you, Mayor. Just wanted to clarify that this motion does relate to the substitute ordinance that we staff has prepared and handed out rather than the one that's in your backup. And it's my understanding that the really only difference there is the actual tax rate calculation of the tax rate number represented is that. Well, as I was examining the ordinance, there is just a touch of a change with regard to the the amount the budget will raise from property tax of last year's amount. And so there's a couple of little minor changes other than that. Thank you. Councilmember Gary, we have a motion and a second. So discussion. Denton has 124,000 people in it about give or take. And my guess is that all hundred twenty four thousand people aren't in favor of raising tax revenue. What I call a tax increase. So I'll speak for my portion of them, which is seventeen thousand people. And I'm going to vote no for this tax increase. Thank you. Councilmember Gregory. Thanks, Mayor. Just a couple of other comments. This tax rate also accounts for the fact that we're in a plan right now of designating more money each year from our franchise fee to go for road repairs. We're adding six hundred thousand dollars of road repairs from the franchise fee. That franchise fee would normally go into the general fund. And so we're having to cover for that in other ways. But that's another effort in this budget cycle to increase the services that our citizens continue to ask for. Regarding the comments about reviewing programs, at every department level, those are done all of the time. Because none of the departments ever get the kind of funding that they need to do provide all of the services that they would like to provide for their citizens. And so that means in each one of those departments, they're looking at ways of doing their programs more efficiently or that are dropping programs that are no longer meeting the needs of their citizens. Council -- Mayor Pro Tem Roden mentioned the library as one example. If there are library programs that are no longer getting a lot of attention, a lot of response from the library patrons, then they replace those programs with other programs that people have been asking for. And that happens department by department, all through the city, where our staff is working directly with patrons, directly with customers, directly with citizens. And they're doing it in a very effective way. And we get those updates from time to time. In fact, we received updates like that all spring from different departments, from the fire department, police department, parks and rec, and the library department. So that they were making us aware of the kinds of reviews that they're doing for the programs that they're offering. And even customer service and utilities. So this is an ongoing review, trying to find the best ways to provide services for the citizens. And despite the comments otherwise, that happens regularly in this organization. Thanks. Any other comments? Discussion? We have a motion and a second on the board for agenda item 4A. Let's vote please. Motion carries 6-1. Agenda item 4B, consider adoption of ordinance of the city of Denton, Texas, approving the 2016 tax rolls and providing an effective date. Do we have a staff presentation on that? Yes. As I mentioned, Chuck Springer, our director of finance, will handle all of these budget items. Right. Go ahead, Chuck. And Mayor, this is just a formality required to adopt the tax rolls in terms of the replacement ordinance. The only thing that's changed in here is the estimated amount of the taxes due to the slight change in the tax rate from the ordinance that's in your packet. All right. Thank you. We do have any questions for staff before we take public comment? No questions for staff. Agenda item 4B, Mr. Willie Hudspeth. State your name and address and your time will begin. My name is Willie Hudspeth. I live at 623 Newton. I want to make some observations of what has happened in this budget process. One is one of you suggests that the different groups within the city and their departments, they're suggesting how that their budgets can be reduced. I would like to see and hear from what group are you aware of that is in the city working that says to you, don't give us as much money. Reduce the amount of money that you give us. I want to know what group is that? I've never known in all of my years of working in public school systems and the being on the board ever has a group suggested reducing the amount of money that they get. It's almost always to add. I'd like to know what group that is. Secondly, the rate that you're coming up with to say that the citizens should be, I guess, happy to pay is something that it's developed and talked about through you. You talk about it. We don't get to say much at all about it. You say we do because you have these meetings where we can make a comment or two, but most of it is you. And that's really the way it's supposed to be. I'm sure of that. The council individuals were elected. So you're supposed to make comments and look out for the citizens of Denton. And I think that's the way it should be. I just questioned some of the things that you come up with that's good for the citizens of Denton. The discussion about the training today, you were talking about how the police need training. Let me just say one positive thing before I get to the negative. Some of the things that the police said they need training in, they really do need training. Not being so aggressive when they confront citizens. Ethnic differences. The perception. Those trainings are going to be added in this process. So I think those need to be there. So that's a positive thing. But don't by any -- don't assume that we believe that someone has told you the amount of money that they receive should be less. I'm not buying that. Mayor Pro Tem. Will. Good question. Mr. Esmere. Do you recall a suggestion you made to fund some new soccer and football fields in Fredmore Park? What about that? A couple years ago, do you recall a suggestion you made, a great idea to fund some -- Yes, right. You know, that made it into this year's budget? No. Well, yes, I did fund that. It's in there. Thank you for that suggestion and for participating in the process. Appreciate that. You bet. That's a very good thing that you did. One thing -- no, I shouldn't say that. We'll get lunches for you next year. There you go. And the other thing about the taking care of the dumpsters, to look into that. So that's right. That's something that you've done as well. I need to remember to do that. Councilmember Gary, a question for Mr. Hesbeth? Lunch. Yes, lunch, if you could tell us what it is that you like and when you would like it, ask and you shall receive. Chicken. Chicken and watermelon. Okay. All right. We have a motion and a second for agenda item 4B. See no more speakers wishing to speak and no more questions for staff. I'm sorry. I don't think I made my motion. Oh, I'm sorry. Councilmember Hawkins. Thank you, Mayor. I move approval -- Thank you. Yeah, of item 4B with the substitute ordinance. Councilmember Gregory. Second. Now we have a motion and a second for agenda item 4B. Let's vote on the -- oh, Mayor Pro Tem. Just real quick, and I mentioned this in the work session today, but, you know, for those interested in a good, perhaps, Cliff Notes version of the budget who might not have been participating or haven't had the time to follow along for these last few months, if you go onto the website, upper left-hand side will be a link to the proposed budget. But there's a great intro in there on pages 15 to 19, just four pages that gives you a good overview of the main chunks of this budget. The other thing that might be important to look at is a new thing this year, and this is a result of a lot of the work we've done with the Bloomberg's What Works Cities project. It's taken a lot of our strategic plan as a city council and put some real hard metrics onto those things so that we could tie some of those strategic goals back to the budget process so we can say, here's our goal to reach this by this date using X amount of funds, and the goal is to increase that over the year. So that's on pages -- I guess I didn't put it. That's a little bit later. Oh, actually on page 36 of that budget. So if you're looking into digging into it, those would be two great places to start. Thank you. Okay. Any other comment? We have a motion to second. Let's vote on agenda item 4B, please. Agenda item carries 6-1. Agenda item 4C, consider adoption of ordinance of the city of Denton, Texas, adopting the fiscal year 2016-2017 annual program services budget. Thank you, Mayor. This item is the actual adoption of the budget with expenditure limits as set forth within the budget. The only change from the ordinance that was in your packet relates to the general fund expenditures. It's $100,000 higher in the substitute ordinance for the replacement of the training. With that, I'll take any questions on this item. Any questions for staff? Seeing none, we do have some public speakers wishing to comment. Agenda item 4C, Mr. Willie Husspeth. My name is Willie Husspeth. I live at 623 Newton. Just one comment that I left off a few minutes ago. A point of order. When a motion is made, discussion shouldn't take place after that. So in the motion that was made to pass whatever the last thing we looked at, before the second was done, one of the council people, one of you, start discussing why you are going to vote this way and why that, and that's out of order. I think the order is motion, then the next thing that comes is a second or amended or a postponement, but something dealing with the motion. Then after, if there's a motion and then you second it, then you can discuss. That's a point of order. That's the way I learned it. But I don't know, maybe you all do it differently, but I think that's Robert's rules of order and I think that's the way it should have been done. Thank you. Jodi Ismert. Jodi Ismert, 819 Anna Street. So as far as the budget is concerned, something for this item we did discuss essentially what I was kind of talking about in my last comment, essentially about looking at maybe perhaps some of the existing programs, and I realized that libraries was something that was just recently mentioned. I was thinking more along the lines of like the Chamber of Commerce. For example, we pay $11,000 for their rent, but we also give them like $124,000 for their budget or something. I don't have the exact numbers. This is just what I'm remembering by memory. Why do we give them $11,000 for their rent? I mean, that to me doesn't really make sense. I think we should cut that. There's your budget for fire and partly for police right there. Why are we paying their rent? It doesn't make sense to me. I think we should cut that down to $124,000 when really a lot of what the Chamber of Commerce does is things that the citizens don't necessarily like. You know, like for example, making Denton more into a tourist town instead of, you know, instead of using funds for things we do want like bike lanes and better roads and things of that nature. I mean, there are things that we want to build this community on that's more community oriented rather than some of the things the Chamber of Commerce is specifically doing with our town. But yet we're paying their rent to $11,000, which doesn't make sense to me. And I realize there are going to be some comments. I hope you guys ask questions instead because I would love to be able to specifically say what I'm thinking instead of having comments and then coming down later. But yeah, that's kind of more specifically what I was thinking along the lines of cutting specific types of funds . Libraries we should keep. Those are good. Our children need libraries. You know, everyone's everyone needs libraries. That is a space for community. That is an intellectual space. Everybody needs to read books. I would never want to cut from libraries, but I wouldn't mind cutting from the Chamber of Commerce. So that that's that was more what I was thinking. What I'm saying we should look at existing programs and really figure out what makes sense along the lines of what the what makes sense for our community. Thank you. Thank you. That's all the speakers we have signed up for agenda item 4 C. Councilmember Gregory. Thank you, Mayor. I move approval of item 4C, the consideration of the budget for the physical year 16-17 with the substitute ordinances provided by staff. Councilmember Hawkins. I second. We have motion to second any discussion. Vote on the board. Agenda item 4C carries 6 to 1. This is a requirement under state law. Anytime where we adopt a tax rate above the effective tax rate, it requires a ratification of the ordinance under state law. Again, this this ordinance is a substitute ordinance. So a few of the numbers have changed in terms of the dollars showing in property tax collections. I think are the only changes on this ordinance from the original ordinance in your packet. All right. We have any questions for staff before public comment. Thank you, Chair. Mr. Hesbeth. We have no more speakers on agenda item 4D. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mayor. I move approval of agenda item 4D. Councilmember Hawkins. I second. With the substitute ordinance. All right. Okay. So we have a motion to for agenda item 4D for approval with substitution ordinance and we have a second for approval with the substituted ordinance. Any discussion? Seeing none, let's vote on the board. Motion carries 6-1. Agenda item number five is consent agenda. Councilmember Hawkins. Thank you, Mayor. I move approval of items A through double zero, but we're going to be pulling item B for another date. J is going to have the alternate handout that was handed to us in work session and items K, L, M, and N are all being pulled for individual consideration. Okay. Councilmember Gregory. Second. We have a motion and a second. Councilmember Gary. I had requested previously that we pull items T and Z from consent as well. Okay. All right. So let me make sure I've got this. We've got that we're pulling for individual consideration. We've got K, L, M, and N and then T and Z. T and Z. Correct. All right. And then consent agenda item B, we are pulling off the agenda altogether. Agenda item J is being motioned for approval with the alternative ordinance. And something about A. Was there something about A? No. Okay. All right. So and I guess Mr. Hawkins, does that accurately reflect your motion? Because we did have some additional items to be pulled by Councilmember Gary. Yes, I agree. All right. Who seconded it? Councilmember Gregory. Okay. We have a motion and a second. I'm not sure I'm going to try to repeat that, but I will just for clarification. Approval for all the consent agenda items save K, L, M, N, T, Z, which are being pulled for individual consideration. J will be with the alternate ordinance as handed out and B is being pulled off the consent agenda. So if there's not any discussion, let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 7-0. We will now take up the consent agenda items that have been removed for individual consideration. Agenda item K, consideration of an adoption amending the schedule of electric rates containing ordinance number 215- 292. Thank you, Mayor. Chuck Springer, our Director of Finance, will cover these items. Okay. And in terms of the request that came this afternoon, there was a request to look at the impact of these four ordin ances on the average residential customer. So I've just got one slide here to go over this, and then if you have specific questions regarding each of the ordin ances, I think we have staff from the utilities in the audience. Okay. But in terms of the impact of the electric ordinance, and this is a base rate increase of 4.5%, but a reduction in the ECA rate, which was done recently by PUB effective there. So you can see the increase on an average residential customer is just 10 cents, about .1 across the electric utility. The increase and the decrease offset each other, so it's about a 0% increase net across all customers. For the water system on an average residential customer, which is a usage of 9,200 gallons, about $2.22, 4.3%, I think across all the customers, the average for the water is about 5%. For wastewater, you can see the average residential customer is about 60 cents, 1.7 across all customer classes . It's about a 2% increase. And for solid waste, we've just gone over kind of the standard in recycle cart for residential customer going up 50 cents, 1.8%. When you look at the total bill for an average customer who receives all four services, the net is about $3.42, about 1 .3% in total. Okay. Councilmember Gregory. Thank you, Mayor. I read in the backup that these costs are designed to cover the cost for continuing to provide the same level of service that we're providing now, that this is a break-even bill that we send out. Net income doesn't change. This is not an attempt by any of the utility departments to add additional funds. It's simply to cover the cost for doing business. Is that correct? That's correct. And I should point out with having the ordinances before related to the property tax that the utilities are self- supporting. In other words, their fees that they charge support the utility. There's no support from property taxes for the utilities. So these changes are all necessary strictly to balance revenues and expenditures of the utilities. And before these recommendations for these fee changes come to us, don't they go to another citizen committee? The public utility board reviews all the budgets of these four utilities beginning back in about May and made a recommendation to council for the adoption of the four utility budgets and also review their rates and make recommendations for that. And that occurred at the end of July from the public utility board. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem. I think following along those lines, what would be the consequence if we didn't adopt any sort of cost to service increase, which is what this is essentially. What's the consequence to the budget for those particular utilities? Well, it would really be one of two things. Either they would have to draw down on their reserves or two, have to try to reduce their level of service. If you look across the country, and I hate to be Mr. Infrastructure, but if you look across the country, we tend to neglect our infrastructure. And one of the things that utilities are really stressing is to maintain their infrastructure. Some of their infrastructure is through debt. Some of it is cash funded. But that's a real emphasis. And I think with having the public utility board helps emphasize that, that they want to maintain the infrastructure so that we can provide these quality services and grow with the need for infrastructure as the city grows. And I'm glad you pointed that out. I think that's an important point that we don't see, right? Utilities, we don't get mad about to the extent that they work. The water runs. We're not having breaks all the time in front of our house. The sewage flows out properly from our homes. Trash gets picked up and not lying in the street. And we've seen some examples across the country. I mean, one can point to Flint as a good example of neglect ing infrastructure investment over a period of time is disastrous and stands for some egregious human rights problems. So it's always hard to increase anyone's budget by $3.42 a month. But it's crucial to make turning these services. So thanks for that perspective. Council member Briggs. Thank you. I had asked for this to be pulled so we can show the public exactly what, what to expect for next year. I know that taxes are a pain for some, but this is monthly and it is hard for some people to already pay their bills. So just an expectation of what you can expect. Next budget is what I wanted to show. Thank you. Welcome. We do have a request to speak on agenda item. Wait a minute. Is this 5K? Yes, 5K. Mr. Will the husband. Agenda item 5K. Yes, I'm sorry. Some of you might think that these increases are necessary as stated by some of the council people. My electric bill is very, very high. It's very high. My water bill is just unjustifiably high. I keep calling down there and asking, why is it so high? Why do they use that much water? I know they hear that all the time. I don't know where it's going. Where does, why does the bill get so high? Did you put that back up there, that breakdown thing that was up there before? Yeah, and if we could maybe just leave that up. Well, does it not show the time on there if that's up? I'm sorry, Mr. House, but he knows when the bell rings. Yeah, okay, you bet. All right. You bet. Thank you. I'm trying to stay with that. I won't have any idea because I get the rambling and I don 't know what I'm doing. But here's the assumption that some of you are making. The increases were justifiable. If we didn't have the increases, services would drop and things wouldn't work well. Well, that's one assumption to make. I'm wondering if they're not just like all the other departments. They want more money. So they come up with this scenario and then try to justify raising the price that they're raising it to. Question, how much of the electric increase do you assume is justifiable? And if it weren't, if you didn't collect that money, the electricity, and I don't know how that would happen, would start being worse. How about water, wastewater? And you charge me for wastewater and I keep asking, what does that mean? I have no control over the water that's running down in the street. Why am I paying so much for that? Here's what I'm frustrated about. You don't want me to ask the questions about, well, you want me to ask, but you want me to do it in three minutes and sit down and shut up. That's why I put my name on every item so I can talk. That's all I've got because you take all my money. You want me to pay for this dumpster at my building and I don't want the dumpster, but you make me pay for it anyway. What is justifiable up there as far as the increase? Why do you need those increases in order for this to continue? What is continuing? Maybe you can pay that 3.4% increase and it doesn't hurt you. You tried dealing with that with me and what I have to go through and most citizens, my friend who had her lights turned off because she couldn't pay the electric bill. It's a different world out here with us who work for a living. So I just want to know what would stop working if you didn 't, if you kept the price of the same, did not have an increase? That's my question. Thank you. Councilmember Gregory. Yes. Mr. Chadsmith, regarding wastewater, the city figures that based on your water consumption, how much water you're using during December, January, and February. And that's because what the figure is, during those three months you're probably not watering your yard or doing any kind of irrigation. And what the wastewater bill pays for is when the water goes down your sink or down your toilet or down through the tub, that water has to be treated at a water treatment plant before it goes back into the lake. And so that costs money to operate the sewer pipes and all of that. So that's what that's for. Regarding your discussion about your water bill being high, your electric bill being high, here's my question for you. Have you taken advantage of the opportunity that the city provides to do an audit, an energy audit of your home? And I believe now we're also doing a water audit. Have you taken advantage of those opportunities? I beg your pardon? No, I have not. I would encourage you to do that. I would encourage all citizens to do it. They also offer it for businesses. They'll come into your home. They'll use some infrared cameras. And they will determine where there are areas where you might be lacking in insulation in your ceilings or in your walls or there may be some gaps. And lots of people have had that done and spend a little bit of money to go to Lowe's. They'll hire a handyman. If you know any handymen, they might come out and do that for you at a reasonable charge, I'm sure, and add insulation or do caulking. And it makes a big difference in reducing -- And what group is this? What organization are you saying? The City of Denton. We can get you some contact information on that for who to contact for the energy audits and the water audit. Absolutely. Somebody before end of night. One other point. We've got a couple more questions. Can we do the questions? Yes. Councilmember Begheri. Regarding your electricity bill, I was also going to let you know that DME offers a rebate for attic insulation and it was not fully used last year. So there's plenty of money available to anybody who would like to get that low-hanging fruit in terms of reducing their electricity bill. I did it. It changed my electricity bill considerably. That was a question. Okay. And you are signed up for the next three consent agenda items as well. So we'll go ahead and give you an opportunity to speak more here. We just need to vote on this item because I see no more questions. Yeah, you signed up for K, M, and N. Okay. I can make my point anyway. You want me to do it after -- Yeah, if we could just state a protocol. You bet. Thank you. I'm sorry, Mr. Huff for that. All right. That's right. We have -- I'm sorry. Councilmember Gregory. And this is K, yes. I move approval of item 5K. Councilmember Hawkins. I second. All in favor of 5K, let's vote on the board, please. It carries 6-1. All right. On agenda item 5L, I think you basically presented these agenda items that we've pulled. 5L is considered option of ordinance of the City of Denton, Texas, amending the schedule of rates for solid waste service contained in ordinance number 2015-296. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mayor. I move approval of agenda item L. Councilmember Gregory. Second. We have a motion and a second. You didn't sign -- I don't think you signed -- I don't see anything for L here. Because L wasn't -- Wasn't included in what we did? Okay. You think on the next two consent agenda items you'll be able to get your points in? All right. Fantastic. Thank you. We have a motion and a second for 5L. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 7-0. Agenda item 5M, considered option of ordinance amending the schedule of water rates contained in ordinance number 2015-293. We have a speaker. Mr. Hussbett. Agenda item 5M. My name is Willie Hussbett. I live at 623 Newton. Here you have an ordinance that you -- are you voting on to increase the amount of money charged at the waste -- it's not -- the -- Water. Landfill. Is that correct? Water rates on this agenda item is the water rates, 5M. All right. Water rates. I have been -- my wife and I have been calling down here to the water department for I know five years about the MLK sprinklers. I'm telling you, five years straight, and you can go over there now -- you can go over there when we're riding our bikes in the morning at 6 o' clock in the morning and there's water in the street. Those sprinklers are in the street. Five years. Now, I'll bet you after I put this on this TV, I'll bet that water gets taken care of and that's unheard of. It shouldn't have taken that long. That's why my rates are going so high. That's the wastewater. Water we need to drink that we could use for drinking in other areas, it's going in the street. If you don't believe me, come over there with me at 6 in the morning and you'll see it's in the street right now. I mean, it will be in the street. And I want to comment on the fact that someone should be recognized for running that landfill. It is the best operation for recycling I've ever seen. And I've been going there for years. Still go there. It is the best operation I've seen, the equipment that they 're buying, the stones that are there that used to be just bulldozed over and covered over are now being crushed and reused. The tires, which everyone has a problem with, are being recycled. They're crushed and put in small pieces and I don't know what they do with it. They're getting methane gas. I think that's what it is. It comes out of the deteriorating landfill items that's out there. And they're using the methane gas for their vehicles. The land, the area, that area that they cover up is being changed into big hills or mountains and they look great. Grass is on them. And they're just doing a good job out there. Separating the items that won't decrease or that will take forever to turn back into dirt. Some of them would take a long time. And separating those and reusing the lumber and on and on and on and on. That is just a -- whoever that is needs to be said -- something needs to be said good about that leadership team, whatever's happening there. >> Thank you. Mayor Potem. >> Thank you, Mayor. And I appreciate your comments, Mr. Uttsmith. And I know the solid waste department, recycling department does as well. You know, we were just featured in an international magazine this last week for innovative technologies out there at the landfill. It's one of my kids' favorite thing to go there and see all those processes. So thanks for saying that. I appreciate that. On that point, I'll move approval of agenda item 5M. >> Councilmember Hawkins? >> Yeah. And to add to that, we're even mining now. They showed us -- they pulled a paper out that was 20 years old that we could still read. It was totally legible. But anyway, I second. Thank you. >> We have a motion. Oh, Councilmember Briggs? >> You can do the call -- >> Okay. We have a motion and a second for agenda item 5M. Councilmember Briggs? >> This is just for clarification. This is on the water rate increase that we're voting on, not on the recycling center or anything like that. >> That's correct. Agenda item 5M. Yes. >> Thank you. >> We have a motion and a second. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 6-1. Agenda item 5N. Consider adoption of an ordinance amending the schedule of wastewater rates contained in Ordinance Number 2015-294. Mr. Hussbett, are you able to speak on agenda item 5N? >> No. >> Okay. All right. All right. Thank you. Council discussion. If not, Chair would entertain a motion. Councilmember Hawkins? >> I move approval of item 5N. >> Councilmember Wasney? >> Second. >> We have a motion and a second for agenda item 5N. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 7-0. Moving on to agenda item -- consent agenda item has been pulled for individual consideration. Item T is considered option of ordinance approving an agreement between the city of Denton, Texas and the Denton Chamber of Commerce regarding economic development partnership. Any staff presentation on that? >> No, sir. Staff doesn't have a presentation for that. >> All right. >> We're available to answer questions. >> Any questions? Councilmember Begay? >> I'll wait until the motion. >> Okay. Sure. Mayor Pro Tem. >> Thank you, Mayor. >> I move approval of agenda item 5T. >> Councilmember Gregory? >> Second. >> All right. We have a motion and a second. Councilmember Gary? >> This is an interesting agreement that the city has. I found it interesting anyway with the Denton Chamber of Commerce to provide economic development assistance. We do have our own economic development department. And recently we had a consultant come in at the cost of approximately $100,000. And the conclusion of that consultant was that there are some redundant services among the two organizations. And that was one of the conclusions, I should say. My takeaway from that presentation and from reading the report was that perhaps we don't need to give as much money to the Chamber of Commerce to be doing the same things that the city of Denton is doing. We have different spheres. We are complementary in many ways. However, there is redundancy in my opinion. What I suggest doing is reducing the amount that we give to the Chamber of Commerce by the amount of $18,000. And that is the amount that the Chamber pays themselves in rent for the space. That would reduce our contribution from $238,000 to about $ 220,000. And it would increase their portion of this agreement from $64,000 up an additional $18,000, which would be an in-kind arrangement. So with that, I will move to modify this agenda item. Okay. Before I move on to discussing with the movement amendment request, we've got a request to speak. Councilmember Briggs? I was just going to follow up and I guess second. I'm not sure the order. No. What you're saying is you support her comments and then we 'll process through the order. Process through the way that it goes, yes. All right. So Mayor Pro Tem, there was an amendment made. I'm not sure friendly or anti-friendly, but it's an amendment. And I think this similar suggestion was made when we had this as a workshop session. And my suggestion at that point was given that this contract is a result of a partnership between us, the Chamber of Commerce, which is manifested in an economic development partnership board who, from a process perspective, would have to weigh in on that sort of request. Certainly, if not by ordinance, certainly by courtesy of the fact that we have that partnership and the spirit of that partnership. So I'm certainly okay in moving forward in this year if we want to have conversations to that effect and open up this conversation as a partnership. But to leave them out of that discussion, I think would just signal some perhaps not the best faith moving forward. So I won't amend the motion. Okay. All right. So the motion on the table is for approval of the agenda item as presented, agenda item T. I will say that I share your sentiments, Mayor Pro Tem, but I also understand that maybe next year we might need to make this discussion a little earlier with the Chamber and the EDP board to say, okay, that those are some reasonable observations that Council member Begarry makes. And so I think it's something that we should be willing to discuss because we did modify the contract for the city to either take on more services or create a different order than what we've been doing in the past. So I think that's a worthy discussion. Yes, Councilmember Begarry. Just so I'm clear, point of order, if there's a motion to modify, shouldn't that be in a second? Wouldn't that be voted on first? No, I think the movement is standing by the motion on the table. I think he's declined to modify. So I think a motion to postpone would take precedence, but I don't think a motion or modify has been accepted from the movement. So I think it stands. And I'm going to have to rely on the City Attorney for that Robert's Rules of Order point because I had no idea. So Mr. Huss with me. Yes, Councilmember Begarry. Can I follow up? I did meet with Mr. Oh, goodness. Who did I meet with? Chuck. Carpenter. Thank you. I'm sorry. My day started very early today. I met with Mr. Carpenter and Adam. Sorry about the last names. In June, one of the first meetings that I had with the Chamber, and this is something that I've brought up since June at probably four work sessions, if I'm correct. So if there was interest in taking this route, it was never expressed in those four work sessions, but I'm happy to hear it now. Okay. Thank you. All right. We have a motion and a second for agenda item T. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries. Six one, I believe. Did I vote? Or five one. Who didn't vote? I didn't get a chance to vote. All right. Let's call for a revote, please, because one. One. No, that's that's sorry. One didn't work and if it doesn't, we'll take a vote by hand. Mayor Pro Tem made the motion. Who seconded the motion? Councilmember Gregory. All right. Try again. Motion carries five two. We'll move on to a consent agenda item Z, which was pulled for individual consideration. Consent agenda item Z is considered option of an ordinance of the city of Denton, Texas, authorizing city manager to execute a professional service agreement between the city of Denton and solutions for local control. Councilmember Gary. Yeah, I'm moving to amend this motion. Okay. And as follows, it's a four year contract. I'd like for it to be a two year contract. I believe these services are redundant. That's the reason for it. However, I recognize that we haven't had a full work session on the topic of lobbyists. Okay. We have a motion by Councilmember Gary to amend agenda item Z. And they only change is to change it from a four year to a two year contract. Everything else remains the same. Is that correct? That's correct. Councilmember Briggs. I second that. All right. We have a motion and a second. Let's vote on the board. Oh, Councilmember Rodin. Mayor Pro Tem. So this particular agenda item is the contract with solutions for local control. We have a local control officer who helps us and advises us on significant issues heading into the legislative session, which we know is going to be coming up this spring. And we know it's going to be a doozy. We talked about local control as a city with great gusto over the course of several issues. You thought last session was bad. This session is gearing up to be even worse in terms of cities being the target on both the Senate and the House down in Austin. So I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. 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I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. Yes, it's just the contract terms. It's not the amount of money. I would assume that they would still be active in protecting our local control for the two years and that it's up for reevaluation. The amount of money has not been decreased. And when I met with Focused Advocacy, they sat in a room with me and said that they will fight for our local control as well. So that's why I felt comfortable, I mean, with the reduction in the term from four years to two years. Council Member Hawkins. Yeah, I was trying to skim it real quick. What was the term of the last contract? Was that four years? Lindsay Baker's here to answer questions on that. This contract and previous contracts are actually two-year contracts with an option to renew for an additional two years. So this contract is a two-year with a two-year option. Correct. Okay, thank you. Council Member Wasney. And some comments on the whole budget, all of the contracts that we've seen and are seen. Budget next year, we'll have a new city manager. We will also have a new internal auditor. So that those are two very foundational building blocks for 2016-2017. The search for both of those are in earnest with professional search firm and they're going to be on board sooner than later and the public will be happy to see that the whole process did not take as long as some of us thought it might . But with all of these numbers and all of these contracts and all of these discussions, new city manager, new internal auditor and it will make for an interesting 2016-2017. Thank you. If Lindsay can come back up now. In light of what you just said, I guess I'm confused as to what the motion is. It sounded like the motion was to modify the contract from a four-year contract to a two-year contract and what you said was it is in effect a two-year contract. It is. So what we can do is in response to Council Member Begarry 's request is perhaps remove the two-year option to renew. That may satisfy that. Well, Council Member Begarry, you're the movement. First of all, Mayor Pro Tem, does that answer your question or are you waiting for a response? Explain to me a little bit more effectively how an option to renew works. Does Council get a chance to chime in on that? Typically what we have done in the past is we will draft up a letter, submit that through the purchasing process and it continues to move forward as such. So it's not something that we would necessarily bring back to the Council for review. But if the Council wanted to not renew, we would have the ability to do that after two years? Correct. Absolutely. Is there one more question? I'm sorry. Sure. You bet. Is there a change, if there were a change in the terms of the contract, does that change the cost? In other words, do we have to go back to them and say we're changing what we seem to have at least agreement on their end to do by not, by taking out that option, are they going to increase their annual cost as a result? Well, I will say Mr. Hill has never, well, he has not increased the amount of his contract since 2010. This is the first time that we've done an increase of 10 percent in his contract since then. So based on the history, I would say he probably would not be doing that. However, that's simply hypothetical and it's very possible that he could. So this is our typical process is we get contracts signed by the party we're contracting with prior to us approving it, as I understand it, or at least we get there. In other words, from just a contract perspective, if we approve what the motion is, they could come back and reject it because it wasn't what was originally offered. Is that correct? They have already signed the contract, I do believe, and so they would need to approve council's modification to the contract. That would be accurate. Or they could choose not to. And then I would just, just for clarification purposes, point the council to Article 1, which is the contract term. It is an initial two-year period and then there is a one- year, there is an extension for two years. It is by mutual agreement of the parties pursuant to the terms of the contract. Okay. Mayor Pro Tem, any more comments? Council Member Hawkins. Yeah, the contracts that we have with EDGE in DC and Focus Advocacy in Austin, are they structured the same way with the options at the end? They are. Thank you. Council Member Wasney. Well, I'm happy with the two-year contract. Just to go on the record with that and just leave off the two-year options, just go with two years. Let it be performance based. We have an Austin session in 2017. And two-year contract, give them a modification of what they've signed and just take off the option to renew for two. I, you know, we had a contract on, and I'm still on posting , I'm just giving an example of my logic. We had a contract for tax collection that we decided a few weeks or months ago where we modified that. I don't have an issue with the two-year contract without the extent of renewal because I think that what we have in front of us is pretty much the same thing as it was originally planned. Now if the process in executing that two-year option is that unless someone brings it up, that it's automatically renewed, which that's not my understanding of how options necessarily work, but that's how we've done it. I would say if we do have contracts where we have options to renew, I would not want us to sort of extend them unless there's an affirmative action not to extend them. I think that needs to come to council. So I don't have a problem with that. And I think Mr. Hill has done a great job for us. I think that he'll continue to do a great job for us. In essence, this is the same contract without the option period. And I think as it comes back before council, depending on the makeup of the council and the times, you know, the context at the time, don't see an issue with that. So I'm okay with the – if my understanding is the only change is based upon what I've heard this – and seen that the contract is. In essence, we're making the contract the same except we're taking out that with a two-year option to extend it by mutual agreement. And we have to modify the cost too because I believe the total cost reflects the 42 – is it 42,000 a year? 49. 49. 49.2. Oh, so we don't need to change it then. Oh, yeah, we do. We do. We do because it's four years. So we would need to change that amount to the 49.2 times 2, which is whatever that is, whoever's the math whiz. What is it? 98.4. So I don't think that's going to – I could be wrong, but I don't think Mr. Hill – I mean, he'll probably be disappointed because he'll see this as some kind of vote of – potentially of a lack of confidence, but I want to assure him that my vote to be okay with this in no way reflects that. It just reflects we got two years. We come back and we negotiate in two years with the caveat that he could raise the price. But then at that time, we also can decide if we want to continue to move forward on that. So it's just contracting. It's just negotiating. So I'm okay with that. Mayor Pro Tem. Perhaps a bit of the irony with all of this is that there's movement in Austin among legislatures to say that cities can't have these sorts of contracts, that cities can't have representation down there, that there are state legisl atures that are already filing bills or putting bills together to be filed with these sorts of things targeted. And so I think it's a bit ironic that we are starting that process a little bit early by going after these representations. This is the second time we've had a conversation like this. I don't know why we wouldn't want to retain that sort of right. So a question for you, and you're aware of those sorts of legislative actions that are in place. Again, to take away the city's right to representation, take away local control, that's the whole goal. If there was legislation – and I'm just asking if you know any of the details of any of these – to that effect. When legislation came about that took away a city's right, and a city had an existing contract for another two years beyond when that action was taken by the legislature, are you aware of any of the bills that speak to that one way or the other? Does the city get to retain that? In a way, are we able to be able to grandfather ourselves with representation in the event if we're at a four-year deal, in the event that the legislature takes this right away from us? Mayor Pertham, I do not have an answer for you right now on that. I'd have to look. I do know there are multiple legislators who are interested in filing similar legislation to that, and preventing our ability or restricting our ability to even go down there and educate our legislators, even ourselves, in addition to being able to retain hired guns, so to speak. Councilmember Hawkins. Thank you, Mayor. If we revise this contract, I'm sure we have to ask Mr. Hill, but will his rate stay the same at 49, too? That is a good question. I would imagine. I don't know, though. I just don't know. I'm confused by this, because if he has been doing a great job and we extend the same sort of contract to other lobbyists during this climate that we 're in, I'm confused by this. So anyway. Councilmember Berger. Thank you, Mayor. I'm not going to support the motion as it's stated. I understand part of the logic, and I agree with part of the logic, and I don't agree with the other part, specifically the idea that this consultant for us represents redundancy. I think when you're talking about the state of Texas, a very large bureaucracy, a lot of staff, a lot of different committees, the more folks that we have working on our behalf, the better off we are. And if the same person is lobbied by a couple of different people, I think that that benefits us. I think it does not hurt us. So there are times when redundancy repetition actually works to the benefit of the city, and I believe for certain that this is one of those times. Councilmember Begheri. First of all, I'd like the record to reflect that Council member Gregory agreed with me partly. She said that she agreed with her partly. Let the record reflect that. Glad to do that. Second, Ms. Baker, while I have you here, how hard would it be during the legislative session to get a report as to who exactly, which of our lobbyists are contacting whom, because I think that would help us determine if there's redundancy or not. I don't know how we could do it besides really getting reports back from them. You know, I can tell you that I can certainly sit down with you and they can sit down with you and have conversations about the types of conversations that they're having down in Austin and with whom on a regular basis. I can tell you Mr. Hill and even members from Focus Advoc acy, they do a lot of things behind the scenes that are very strategic, and that is something that I want to be able to respect, but that is certainly something that we would want to have an opportunity to sit down with you one-on-one and talk about. Would it be possible to do a postmortem after the legislative session is done and then, you know, at that point the strategic concerns are out of the way and we can actually see who spoke with whom and what was achieved in some type of quantifiable way. And I would just also ask that it's not really for me. I personally don't really care that much. It's more for them. I would say, again, I think that we can certainly have an after-action report from the legislative session talk about the various issues that we looked at, the various issues that we advocated for and against on the various committee hearings that we testified at and then, of course, the members that our consultants spoke with on a fairly regular basis. Will we be able to quantify that specifically? I don't know if we can, just because when you see the action down there every single day, the times that you touch a member in the hallway, when you're having lunch at the cafeteria, when you're, you know, sitting down at a committee hearing or you pop into their office, we're going to have to have somebody, you know, with one of those little clicker things every time they talk to somebody and I don't know how realistic that is, to be quite honest with you. However, I do think that we can give you a very good overview of what they have done, how they have done it and what has been achieved over the legislative session. I do want to say, Councilman, Mayor Pro Tem, when you were talking about the legislation to prohibit cities from engaging lobbyists and you asked about if we, in an agreement with them, are we grandfathered in or my hunch is if they get enough support to cut that, they're cutting it all, but you said that if we're in a four-year deal, this is not a four-year deal. I mean, even as it's structured, even if we accepted it as it was, it's a two-year deal with a two-year option. So that's really the only, I don't see it as redundancy. I don't see it as redundancy either, but now we might get a post-mortem and find that there is more overlap than what we think, but I suspect that won't happen because I've been down there for many, many years and I've worked with Mr. Hill for many years as well. So to me, we're just giving a two-year contract and when the two years is coming up for renewal or for renewal, we'll have a specific item before the council that will do that and so that the caption itself is a little, when it says annually for a four-year not to exceed, I think that's anyway. So those are the extent of my comments. Council Member Gregory. Thanks. And I know it's just semantics, but I hope at the end of this legislative session that something other than a post-mortem, in other words, checking out the dead body, I hope that we survive a little better than that. I will tell you that that's how it feels at the end. Okay, so we have a motion and a second on the floor to modify. Madam City Attorney. Can I just clarify and make sure that I know what the motion is and how the contract is going to read. So it would be a motion to approve the item with a two-year contract in the amount of $49,200 per year for a not to exceed amount of $98,400. Would that be accurate? Yes, Madam City Attorney. Council Member Hawkins. Yeah, question for legal. If this motion does fail, is this item then dead or do we vote on it as is? Or any other way? If the motion should fail, then the Chair can entertain a different motion on the item. Thank you. All right, we have a motion and a second on the modified motion as described by our City Attorney. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries four to three. Well, we're through the consent agenda items. So let's take about a 10-minute break and we'll pick up with the rest of our agenda. Thank you. Second of two readings and take final action of an ordinance to annex an approximately .375 acre tract generally located on the north side of Craw ford Road. Thank you, Judge. Julie Wyatt, our senior planner will be taking care of this item. Good evening. Good evening. Let's get to the beginning. All right, the request is to conduct a second reading and adoption of the ordinance to annex approximately .375 acres. The subject property is located on the north side of Craw ford Road, approximately 675 feet east of I-35W. We had a public hearing regarding this voluntary annexation . We've had the first reading on August 2nd and today we're here for the second reading and the adoption of the annexation. So the ordinance, an ordinance of the City of Denton annex ing approximately .375 acres of land generally located on the north side of Crawford Road, approximately 675 feet east of I-35W Crawford Road on-ramp. More specifically described in Exhibit A and illustrated in Exhibit B, which area abuts and is adjacent to the city limits so as to include the property within the city limits, granting to all the inhabitants of the property all the rights and privileges of other citizens and binding the inhabitants to all of the ordinances, resolutions, acts and regulations of the city, providing for a correction to the city map to include the annex lands, providing for a severability clause and providing an effective date. And it was brought to your attention in a work session that you got a new legal description that slightly shrunk the area to be annexed. So I'll stand for any questions. Any questions for staff? We do have a speaker wishing to comment. Mr. Wheeler-Husband? No? Okay. All right. Council Member Hawkins. Thank you, Mayor. I move approval of Item 6A with the alternate exhibit we got in the work session. Okay, cool. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem? Second. Second. We have a motion and a second for Agenda Item 6A. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries, 7-0. Moving on to Agenda Item 6B, consider nominations, appointments to the city boards and commissions. Yes, Mayor. Jennifer Walters, our city secretary, will address this item. Thank you, Mayor. And members of the council, you have just a few nominations left in your annual process. I'll let you know which board and which member and maybe we can get these finished this evening. Our first is our airport advisory board, Mayor Watts. Boy. I've dropped the ball on that. I'll get that taken care of. I apologize. Thank you. Community Development Advisory Committee. Council Member Wasney is nominating Ann Patterson. Health and Building Standards Commission, there is an alternate position that's available. You did get some information that the current member in this position is Glenn Ferris. He is eligible for reappointment and this is a nomination for any council member should someone choose to nominate. Council Member Gregory? Then I'll put his name up for that position. And while I've got the floor, I'll say that I'm awaiting a phone call for my nomination for parks. Okay. Thank you. For the Human Services Advisory Committee, Council Member Hawkins has nominated Connor Morgan. And for the Zoning Board of Adjustment, there are two alternate positions. Currently Greg Price serves as an alternate too and is eligible for reappointment. And then I also noted that there were several other people interested as noted on the applicant's preference chart. And this is a nomination for any council member. Council Member Hawkins? I'd like to nominate Greg Price for the alternate position. Okay. And if you don't mind, I'll move him to alternate one so we 're moving them up closer to being a regular member. That'd be fine. Thank you. Does anyone have another alternate? Anybody have any more alternatives? All right. And these nominations can be voted on at this meeting. I believe we have applications for all of them and if not, we'll double check to make sure they meet all the standard qualifications. Okay. Council Member Gregory? Move approval of the nominations as discussed. Council Member Hawkins? I'll second. We have a speaker requesting to speak. Council Member, Council Member Hutsmith. Move out. Mr. Willie Hutsmith? God forbid. My name is Willie Hutsmith. I live at 623 Newton and I'm the greatest. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have a speech. I want to say every time these come up, let the council persons nominate. Let's not have what has happened in the past ever happen again unless there's cause, that there is a viable cause to reject someone that someone is nominating. Not because they shouldn't be rejected just because you don 't like the way they present here at the council. You need diversity in these organizations. There should be different people who think differently. It makes it stronger. I notice that when I speak, there are several of you, you 're nice to me because I'll come back and get you later on. I don't know why, but you're nice to me. But you come up with some good ideas at times. I mean, you really do. That one that you did, Councilman Gregory, about the housing and the utilities, I'm going to do that right away. Many of you commented on what I said about the landfill. We can disagree, but every once in a while, we probably say something that helps each other. I just wonder how many of those nominations that you just made are people of color or different ethnicities or women or just somebody that you think might add something to these boards. You don't necessarily agree with what they have to say. I think that strengthens the city. It's a good thing. It's not bad. So each time we are dealing with appointments, I'm going to say the same thing. Don't let what happened once before about not letting someone be on one of these boards because you don't like them. There should be more of a reason for saying someone should be on the board than that. So I hope that you remember that. Thank you. We have a motion and a second. I have recognized that. My mind is going. So we have a motion and a second. Let's vote on the board, please. Carries 7-0. Agenda item 6C, consider an adoption of an ordinance establishing an economic development program under Chapter 3A of the local government code for making grants of public money to promote economic development to stimulate business activity in the city of Denton, approving an economic development program grant agreement with Sally Beauty Supply. Caroline Booth, our assistant director of economic development, will be addressing this item. Good evening, mayor and council. I'm here to present to you an incentive request from Sally Beauty. To start with some background on the company, Sally Beauty moved its corporate headquarters to Denton from New Orleans in 1982. At that time, they had 119 stores across the country. Today they are a specialty retailer and distributor of professional beauty supplies with $3.8 million in annual revenues, with 5,000 companies, stores, and 10 distribution centers worldwide. They have about 1,000 full-time employees here in Denton, making them our fourth largest private employer. They do have 27,000 employees worldwide. Sally is involved with the Denton nonprofit and higher education community. They have involvement with the American Heart Association, Giving Hope, Denton Community Food Center, UNT, and the Denton Chamber of Commerce. Sally Beauty did receive an incentive from the city of Dent on in 2003. It was a 10-year, 40% rebate of property taxes for its new international headquarters facility at 3001 Colorado Boulevard. The total rebate they received was $662,000. The net property tax revenue to the city from that agreement was $1.3 million. We calculated the return on investment at 198%, and 450 jobs were created or retained under that incentive. The current request from Sally is an incentive for a rem odel at their 3900 Morse Street property. It is marked there on the map with their logo, and that property is near the corner of Morse Street and Loop 288. The facility there is about 114,000 square feet. It currently houses offices and warehouse and distribution space, and 120 employees work there. The project is a complete remodel of the interior office portion of the building, and the scope of the project includes new windows, flooring, walls, ceiling, interior lighting, data and phone cabling, HVAC units, and some other things. It's also going to eventually include parking lot improvements and landscaping. When the project is finished, about 200 employees are going to transfer to the Morse Street facility from the Colorado Boulevard facility. And Sally estimates that about 80 new positions will be hired and housed at the Morse Street facility in addition to the 200 that will be moved. Their total investment into the remodel is $7.5 million. The Economic Development Partnership Board heard this item and recommends a three-year 50% rebate totaling $72,714. The City of Denton's policy for tax abatement and incentives does allow for incentives to existing businesses to retain existing businesses which propose to improve or redevelop property within the Denton City limits, and also for the expansion or redevelopment of existing businesses that create new or additional professional jobs. We had a question from the work session earlier today whether there was a precedent for interior remodel incentives. The one that is most closely related to the project that we have before us now is the Safran facility. This is formerly Labinal. It's located on Russell Newman Drive off of Loop 288. That company moved their North American Division headquarters to Denton in 2013. They invested almost $6 million in building and site improvements and they brought 700 employees with them. They received a three-year 50% rebate on the incremental increase in value attributed to their investment in that remodel. Their threshold that they had to meet to receive their incentive was $5 million over the base value. We did have two other projects that we found within the last five years that had an interior remodel component, but it also involved an expansion in addition to. The Safran Labinal example is the closest one that we have to the Sally Beauty example. We had a question, Councilmember Bailão. The Safran moved here from out of town, is that correct? Yes, ma'am. They moved from Corinth. So it's not as if they were already an established business here? Correct. Thank you. Councilmember Berger, you have a question now? Yes, go ahead. Thank you, Mayor. I don't recall from your presentation this afternoon if the incentive before us includes any performance indicators before the rebate begins, and I 'm thinking in terms of proof of the amount expended for the remodel or because we were given information as part of the justification about numbers of new jobs or the average salary, are those included that the number of new jobs that would come as part of the performance measures before the incentive happens? In this agreement, we have tied the performance measures to their demonstration of their $7.5 million investment plus their meeting a minimum valuation for both of their debt and properties of $22 million. Sally will be required to fill out an annual certificate of compliance demonstrating both of those items, and then economic development staff will verify their compliance with DCAD and checking their receipts on their investment before they 're allowed to receive a rebate. But there's nothing in there regarding the number of new employees. We didn't opt to go with that threshold this time. Okay, thanks. I did not ask a question earlier, and I apologize. I have a question. Yes, sir. You may have a slide about the number of jobs or salary ranges. Do you have a slide on that? I do. I'll ask that question when you get to that slide. Okay. You go. Okay. So, in terms of the impact of this particular project, Sally's $7.5 million investment would yield a little over $48,000 in eligible annual tax revenue to the City of Denton. And when I say eligible, I mean eligible to be rebated to them. A three-year, 50% rebate would be a total of $72,714 or a little over $24,000 a year to Sally. The economic impact, we wanted to delve into that a little bit further. As I mentioned earlier, they're anticipating about 80 direct jobs generated by the project. These are going to be in the fields of finance and accounting, e-commerce and web content and customer service. The base salaries range from $27,000 to $150,000 with an average salary of $61,900. Our software that we use for this analysis indicates that four indirect jobs will be generated and those are jobs that are jobs that are created by regional businesses or companies that are supplying goods to the business creating the 80 direct jobs. And then 21 induced jobs will also be generated based on the analysis. And those are jobs that are created when employees from the direct employment spend their wages on goods and services within the community. We also did a sales tax impact based on the hiring. That's estimated at $22,000 a year or $66,000 over the three-year term of the incentive and again, that's due to employees spending their wages within the community. The proposed -- sorry. >> Do you want to hold your question till the end? Okay. The customer -- okay. I just wanted to make sure there wasn't anybody waiting on the question. >> The proposed agreement again, a three-year 50% rebate grant of city ad valorem tax revenue that's attributable to the improvements on the more street property. As I mentioned in response to Councilmember Gregory's question, the agreement includes a condition that the eligible combined assessed value of both of Sally Beauty's facilities is at or above $22 million and they will submit an annual certificate of compliance prior to receiving payment. To wrap it up, Sally Beauty is one of Dutton's top four private employers. They have been a part of our community for 34 years. They're making a $7.5 million investment in the interior remodel of their more street facility which will create approximately 80 new jobs. Their request is for a three-year 50% rebate on new city ad valorem tax revenue attributable to project improvements and I'm happy to answer questions. >> Councilmember Begheri. >> So with -- I saw your slide about the maximum -- the minimum valuation of $22 million. Is it still possible for Sally to contest their property tax valuations and receive reductions in their property taxes? >> It would be. >> Okay. >> Councilmember Wasney. >> I'm just not comfortable with this. They've already had a 10-year tax rebate. They're here. Remodeling your building, your business is the cost of doing business. So I just want to go on the record that I don't support this and I'll be voting no. Thank you. >> Councilmember Hawkins. >> Thank you. >> Councilmember Begheri, on the personal property tax amount, that is not eligible for abatement. Is that correct? >> I'm sorry. >> On personal property tax? Personal property? >> Oh, business personal property. >> Business personal property. >> Well, that is eligible for a tax rebate and we are -- that is included in the $7.5 million total. They're estimating an investment in business personal property of $2.6 million and that will be part of what's eligible for rebate. >> Okay. And it looks like the sales tax that will be generated by new employees is close to the same amount as the abatement amount for over those three years. I mean, it's not the same. >> It's close, yes. >> It's close. Okay. Thank you. >> I -- first of all, I appreciate the average wage calculation because we asked for that. Do you know what the median income is for either the City of Denton or Denton County? >> For Denton County, it's $34,900, I believe, is what we came up with related to another request. So it's close to that, $34,000. >> Okay. Because I know there's several different -- you have median , either two families, so I just want to make sure I'm getting the right numbers. Councilmember Gary, I brought up the issue that you sort of raised in the work session, talked about that I thought that that minimum value was too low because currently right now I think, if I remember correctly, the total eligible value that they have on -- that are on the tax rolls is about $36.35 million, $36.7 or $8 or something like that, basically $36 million. And Councilmember Wasney, I understand what you're saying about it's just this is the cost of doing business. For me, the big kicker in this is if they're able to bring in 80 jobs at that salary. So to make the benchmark having an assessed value that's 30 or 40 percent or 60 percent or whatever it is lower than what they currently have, that to me is not a very good benchmark. But if they're able to keep 80 new jobs for a certain amount of time at that salary level, I can be more on board with that, but that's not part of this agreement. It's my understanding, is that correct? Correct. Okay. All right. Councilmember Gregory. 80 jobs and the average salary for those 80 jobs is what? $61,900. $61,000. And do you have the slide that you showed this afternoon showing the impact, labor impact, the indirect impact? Yeah. Would you go over that just again? Certainly. So just the indirect and induced part of it or the whole thing? The indirect. Okay. The indirect jobs are jobs that are created when local or regional companies are supplying the company who's doing the project. And then the induced jobs are those jobs that are generated when the direct jobs spend their wages within the community on goods and services. You know, we had in the last election cycle, there were I think maybe the most regular question asked in forums had to do with what the city is doing to support small business and to support makers and startups. And it did not connect with me until our discussion this afternoon that these kinds of incentives where there are new jobs, new spending, a lot of which happens in the city, those folks help support those makers because that provides customers for those folks. That provides customers for the brick and mortar businesses that we have in town. And I'm embarrassed that it's just today that I'm connecting those dots together. That even when we do incentives for large businesses, corporate headquarters, international corporate headquarters, that it has an indirect impact on the entire economy of the city including makers and startup businesses, restaurants, clothing stores , the works. Mayor Pro Tem. Yeah I think those are some important points Councilmember Gregory. I mean I hear from a lot of my friends have to commute to Dallas or Fort Worth or somewhere else to have substantial jobs in town. If you think about the number of incentives that we give are great and greatly matched to what we have in terms of assets as a city when you think about manufacturing, industrial users, distribution centers because of the keen transportation network that we have. But a corporate headquarter, and I was just looking online, revenues of more than 3.8 billion annually. The opportunities of thinking about how we can't continue to build relationships with these folks like we've seen with Peterpill where they continue to invest, continue to move more assets into the city. When you're at 3.8 billion annually there's a lot of opportunity to kind of move some things around and move some things closer towards your corporate headquarters. And they produce significant jobs that match with the types of degrees that are coming out of our colleges and universities. Not a lot of those folks are getting out looking for an industrial job, but they're getting out looking for in this case e-commerce, web content. And I know folks that do design for them, finance and accounting, those are all lining up with our base of students who now don't have to leave Denton if they choose to. So I think this is strategic. I'd like to see more incentives along the lines of these sorts of jobs. So I would be in support of this. And I appreciate that. I guess my only thought is this incentive agreement is not tied to a specific number of jobs at a specific, I mean they're saying that this is what they're going to do, not saying they're not, but if they fall below that or if those don't materialize, that's not a condition of this incentive agreement at least as it stands today. That's correct. Is that correct? Yes, Council Member. And I appreciate that, Mayor. And I think if this was a standard agreement where we're looking at 10, 20 years of kind of tying ourselves to that, I think I'd have a little bit more concern of wanting to tie it to those metrics. But we're talking about kind of a quick three years. And then after those three years, the city is taking in all of that extra revenue as a result of what they bring. So I think that gives me more concern. Okay. You bet. Council Member Begari. I'm having trouble following the logic here. So is the idea that if we don't provide this tax incentive, this project will not go forward? No. The project has actually already begun construction. We met with Sally for the first time in December of 2015. A number of us on city staff went to meet with their leadership. They had some questions and concerns for us. And after discussing what their potential project was and understanding what their level of investment was, they realized they would be eligible to apply for an incentive and they decided based on the information that we gave them and their understanding that they would have to go through the EDP board, there would be a contract negotiation, and then the council would have final approval, they decided to go ahead and begin their project anyway. And I think that's a timing issue on their part. They wanted to have their construction finished so that they could begin moving people in January of 2017. So this is not a but for incentive. That's just the bottom line. Thank you. We do have a member of the public wishing to speak. Any more questions for staff? All right. I'll almost say it again. Mr. Willie Hussbuth, come forward. State your name and address and your time will begin. I'm sorry. The Colorado Street Facility. I think this is the one that you want. Where is that? The 200 employees. If you want, it's probably easier for you to see it here on this screen. The 200 employees will transfer to Morris from Colorado. And then there will be 80 new positions that they're going to add to the company as a whole that will also be at Morris Street. Okay. All right. That's what I need. My name is Willie Hussbuth, 11623 Newton. I agree with Councilman Wasney. The cost of business should not be incentivized. Why? If you're going to make a profit, I hope, by making these changes, why then should municipalities pay you to do what you should do anyway to make a profit? I hear the argument about what this will do in the future, but I don't see that that will change. If you're making a profit, the future is still going to be there. This profit, this potential for profit and for people to gain employment. Surely they're not doing this just so that they can get the incentive. That would be backwards and that doesn't seem like a good plan for making a profit. Just as a thought and just something to just add a little humor to this, I need an incentive for my business. I need to make some repairs. You know what the difference is? I know this, but you're thinking, "Well, I don't know." But I'm guessing. It's the amount of money that we're talking about. That should never be ... Well, I don't know if that should be the issue or not. The reason I want this slide up there is I'm thinking, if you have 200 employees that will transfer from Morris, then you didn't increase that amount. You just have 200 moving from one building to the other and there's still the same amount of employees. The 80 is a guesstimate. There's no way of figuring that out. Well, they're guessing, but they're probably adding more to that than what should be added. I don't know. I shouldn't say that. I don't know. Bottom line is you shouldn't incentivize or give incentives ... Incentives. I don't know if I'm pronouncing the word right. For making changes to make your business more profitable. That's my point. All right. Thank you. Council Member Gregory. I move approval of Item 6C. Council Member Hawkins. I second. Question for staff. Question for staff. I'm sorry. Have we ... Has staff thought about ... Question for staff. From the perspective of the process, let's say for instance , votes taken, this does not pass. Would you rather ... Do you think staff would rather want to talk about a continuance of this to try to see if there's some additional items that ... Oh, somebody's here looking at them. Additional items to maybe talk to Sallie Beauty about or just sort of vote up or down? Because you can't ... If it fails, this might be a question for the city attorney. If it passes, this is all moot. But if it doesn't, at least on this, is there a time limit they have to wait or can they come back with ... I mean, can you enter into some more negotiations and they come back with a different agreement two weeks from now, a month from now? I mean, is that possible? Of course we can go back to them with a renegotiation if it doesn't pass tonight and bring it back to you again at a future meeting. Okay. Council Member Gregory. If that's the case, it would be probably handy if there was some discussion that took place at this particular moment to indicate to staff what ... From folks that are voting no, I suspect some folks are going to vote no simply out of principle. I don't want to give any incentives to any businesses. In that case, there's no renegotiation that's going to make any difference. But if there's some folks who are thinking that are voting no now that might change their vote to yes if we tied this incentive to a number of jobs. It might be good to give them some notion as to what that is. Otherwise, there's no point in them spending time going back and having that if that's not really what's going to make the difference. So are you pointing that to me saying, "Hey, I need to speak up"? I think you raised a good question, but we need to know. That's certainly ... I'm looking at the slide that was up there. The actual dollar amount is $72,000, which is $24,000 a year. So I can say, "Oh gosh, let me just throw that out." I've got to be careful not to use the same word we used last week. In the grand scheme of things sometimes in a $100 million budget. However, when I look at what they're saying they're going to bring ... I mean, if this were strictly a remodel, I'm out, quite honestly. Because I agree that there's people who remodel their businesses all the time and small, big, medium, and they do that because it's time to do that. But if they're bringing 80 new positions, and these positions are good salaries, they're $61,000, that's before benefits is probably usually how these things are quoted. So you bring benefits along with that. That to me is the most important part here, but it's not based upon that. It's not based upon ... I know it's only three years, but once you get them here, once you get that established, it's here. Because they can get it remodeled and realize, "Well, you know what? We really don't have any risk here. We can only go to $22 million." Which is ... They're already at 36, so they could go a long way down before they have to worry about defeating that. So to me, the 80 jobs is the most important. So I'm going to have difficulty supporting this with that just being sort of a, "This is what we're going to do," instead of it being tied to some kind of performance in that regard. So I want to point something out about the jobs and the hiring of the 80 positions. That's probably something that's going to be phased in, I would say, over two or three years, which is the entire term of the agreement that we're talking about. So I wonder if we go back to them with a proposal to include jobs if they would ... I don't know how that would affect their perception of the length of the agreement. I'm just not sure how that would change the side of it that we've already got settled. Let me provide maybe some observations on that. Because I think sometimes we get tied into thinking about things the same way we always have. And so if they're saying, "We'll have 80 jobs at this salary level by the end of the incentive period," okay, if you don't, then we can call back. That's a little bit more difficult way to do it. You have to verify. You have to then say, "Hey, you got to pay us back money." And I get that. But the point is, if that's what it comes to, then that's what it comes to. So I really struggle with this if the jobs are not part of that and if it's a $22 million threshold amount. Because I could turn around and say the same thing as far as, "Well, it's not that much money. We should go ahead and give it to them." I can flip that on its head and say, "It's not that much money. It's not really going to make a big difference to them." I mean, if they walk out of Denton for $24,000 a year over three years, anyway, I'll leave my comment at that. Council Member Hawkins. Well, Mayor, I too wish that the language was a little bit cleaner with this agreement moving forward. I hope that we address those issues. I want this to be tied to the jobs. But when did Sally move here? In 1982. In 1982, and they're going to invest another $7.5 million. I think moving forward, I'm excited about being on EDP here moving forward. I want to address some of these things. But it does seem like a small amount. I think that they've been involved with our community in a number of different nonprofits. So I'm comfortable with this. But you're right. I want to move forward, we need to change the way we do some business. But I hope that we vote for this. Mayor Pro Tem. How long has this discussion been going on between us, them , and EDBP? Well, we had our initial meeting with them in December 2015 . They submitted their application in December 2015. We had some weeks of clarifying their application with them . This went to EDP in March. And then we had a number of months of negotiating back and forth. And there was delay on their side and delay on our side. Sometimes things move a little slower than we all would have wanted. Not for any particular reason. People travel on their side a lot. So it has been in process for a while. So it went to EEC in March. And then based on their recommendation, it went back to negotiation. Yes. Did it go back to the Economic Development Partnership Board? No, because what they recommended, the 50 percent for three years, that didn't change. And so we didn't need to bring it back to them because that was what their recommendation was. I mean, part of me too, and this isn't the first one where I've seen this process play out this way. I thought the point of having council representation on that board was to carry our concerns forward to the board and somehow work these things out at that level. And then once that gets worked out, and knowing there could be some disagreement at the end of the day, but that my experience throughout the years has been those reps would come to council and advocate for the position of the Economic Development Partnership Board. Now we're in a situation where our member is advocating against the decision of the Economic Development Partnership Board, which is fine. And that can happen at any point. Let's clarify something. Let's clarify something. The terms we see here on the board tonight, the only term really that the EDP board recommended, and correct me if I'm wrong, was the 50 percent three year. A lot of these other ones of valuation, the number of jobs being created, those, I mean, because I thought you said at the work session that most of the negotiation occurred after the EDP recommendation. Right. The EDP received the information about the number of jobs and the impact that the number of jobs would have. So they got that information. But no, the $22 million threshold was not presented to them because that was a part of the negotiation after they gave us the go ahead for the three year 50 percent amount. And that's what allowed us to start the conversation with Sally for the specifics. But the EDP board did receive the information about the job numbers. Yeah. And I will tell you, first of all, I don't believe I was at the meeting when they considered this. And the EDP board representative, council representatives are there in their own individual capacity because there's no discussion with council prior to it coming to a vote here. So I think this process, we've run into this a couple of times where we've gotten ahead of a negotiation process, seemed to indicate that things were fine and we've gotten to a final agreement to come to council. And then there's been some tweaking that seems to cause a little bit of consternation. So I think we're still, we still have some work to do on the process. As far as this specific one, I don't recall that and I'm not on the EDP board anymore. So sure. Yeah, sure. And at some point, I think we need to think about that process because to go forward to this degree and then to get to a council that may that I'm sensing to some degree has differing philosophical or changing at least philosophical basis for economic incentives. What's our policy as a council? Perhaps we need to discuss that because I'm sensing that shifting over the last few years, which is fine, but we need to clarify that. And it may be a departure from what's happening on the board, which was probably council initiated at some point in terms of what that philosophy is. And now that philosophy enacted and then stopped at the council level is giving, I think, a bad message to our corporate partners who are trying to enter into a program in good faith that we've kind of set some certain programs up. So look, this is we do so much in terms of encouraging businesses all across the board. I think with small businesses, we've got a lot of good things going. I think with our investment in the community market, you got the smallest businesses that can invest for 12 bucks a week to get off the board. And we've got a significant investment and perhaps growing in that area with the co-working space and the tech investment that we've been doing to invest in startups and whatnot. That's the next level. And as I mentioned, we do a lot when it comes to industrial space out near the airport. This target area of corporate headquarters is such a strategic point that for us to walk away or even signal that we're going to wrangle at this point over $72,000 over three years, I just think doesn't put us in the best situation as a council. So that's my appeal to anyone else who might vote for this to say if we're going to do a lot of hand wringing for that to come back over something that may not. I think the symbolism is unfortunate. Council Member Begheri. Thank you, Mayor. I find myself in the position of agreeing with Mayor Pro Tem. It is difficult when the council doesn't have representation. Stop for a second. Could you repeat that first statement? Yes. That's right. I agree that it's hard to have a board that doesn't have council representation, which is why I brought up the point that we only have one sitting council member on the EDP board. We have a former council member on the EDP board. And I think this problem could continue as we move along when we could potentially have no people on council representing council on the EDP board. Your point is well taken, Mayor Pro Tem. I'm not really sure if that's an agreement or not, but I'm going to take that statement. I'm going to take that statement. Council Member Wasney. And the big difference between the Economic Development Partnership Board and this council is that they are not elected, and we are. So just because they bring something forward doesn't mean that we are obligated to just lockstep and say, yes, it's our question to ask those questions. It's our obligation to vet it and to vote it up or down. So that's a real difference between the two bodies. Mayor Pro Tem. Point well taken. I agree. But imagine with another board, say Historic Landmark Commission as a board, if everything they were forwarding to council, we overrule, which we would have the right to do given that they're appointed, they aren't elected. I think that would be indicative of some policy tension between the two bodies that would best be resolved rather than continued in that fashion. So that's my whole point is we've put this board together to help forward strategic economic development goals. That was the whole point from a policy perspective. And if there's divergent policy goals between that body that was originally instated to be a partner with the council, then there's a bit of dysfunction and we just need to work that out. Councilmember Wasney. Boards and commissions recommend we vote. And that's the difference. And I will say, Mayor Pro Tem, if there was a glaring divergence of policy, but I don't see that because most incentives that come before this council have been approved with some minor tweaking. So I'm not so concerned, at least at this moment, that we have such a divergent maybe policy direction. That doesn't mean that couldn't happen. And so it is good to be vigilant and to maintain that communication level. So any more discussion on this item? We've got a motion. No, we don't have a motion. Wow, I'm really... Councilmember Gregory. Thank you, Mayor. This is where this is the numbers area where as an elementary principal, I've got it. I've kind of I think I've got the count figured out. And to pull this thing out of what appears to be a stalem ate. I'm going to move to postpone. And to move this to take this back to executive session, I think that what we could do in executive session is give staff direction for modifying the conditions for this request for the incentive to put a couple of other caveats in it that I think I'm picking up and that the staff is picking up from our discussion. So I move to postpone. Councilmember Hawkins. I'll second. All right, we have a motion to postpone. Is that to date certain or is that just to event certain? I actually reread our rules again today. Okay, good. And we can actually postpone without any conditions. Fantastic. Okay, we have a motion to postpone and a second for agenda item motion to postpone for an executive session on economic development agreement. For agenda item 6D, let's vote on the board, please. C. I'm sorry. I'm looking at I'm sorry, 6C. That's correct. Thank you, Councilmember Hawkins. Motion carries 6-0. If someone could rank up Councilmember Briggs and let her know that we've completed this agenda item. All right, we'll go on to agenda item 6D. Consider adoption of an ordinance of the City of Dent, Texas on first reading, confirming and approving a boundary adjustment agreement with the City of Corinth, Texas. Thank you, Mayor. Ron Mangata, our long range planning administrator, will handle the boundary adjustment discussion. Mayor, members of Council. Hold on, Brian, did you need to? Okay, so you need a minute to get the computer back up and running, which will be important for our present. Yeah, let's just take five. Let's just take five so we can get this computer glitch done and then we'll come back, stretch our legs. I'm always one of the same. Confirming and approving a boundary adjustment agreement with the City of Corinth. Ron Mangata. Thank you, Mayor, members of Council, members of staff. This request is to consider an ordinance for a boundary adjustment agreement with the City of Corinth. The subject site is on the south portion of the city where we abut the City of Corinth. Closer look is in this particular area that's outlined in red. The subject property is zone PD 111. The purpose of the boundary adjustment is to facilitate the extension of Lake Sharon Drive as it extends east and connecting into future FM 2499 . This here illustrates the subject area where the boundary adjustment is to occur. As you can see, the alignment heads a little north and then south to hit a 90 degree angle, which will be this area here, which will be FM 2499 future extension. The area we're talking about is outlined here in red and orange and the boundary adjustment will move from its current location south here to the northern line, which is in this alignment. This is the first reading of two. After tonight's reading, there'll be a second reading and that's scheduled tentatively for November 1st of this year. With that, I'm going to read the ordinance, an ordinance of the City of Denton, Texas, confirming and approving a boundary adjustment agreement with the City of Corinth, Texas, adjusting a mutual boundary of the city's not exceeding 1000 feet, providing for a civility, providing an effective date. That concludes my presentation. I'll be happy to answer any question that you all may have. Any questions for Council Member Gregory? Do we need to take action tonight or do we need to adapt for the second reading? I believe there is action if I'm not mistaken. Yes, sir, we would adopt the ordinance tonight. Thank you. All right, any questions for staff before we hear from the public? We have a card wishing to speak, Mr. Willie Husbeth, to 960 . All right. Council Member Gregory? Move approval of item D. Council Member Hawkins? I second. Any discussion? Seeing none, let's vote on the board, please. All right, we've got approved unanimously, 7-0. Calling agenda item 6E, consider adoption of an ordinance authorizing the city manager or his designee to execute a real estate sales contract between the city of Texas and Texas Home Rule Municipal Corporation as purchaser and Eagle Far ms, Inc., a Texas corporation, and John Porter Auto Sales, Inc., a Texas corporation. Thank you, Mayor. Galen Gillum, our executive manager of administrative services for DME, will be doing this item. Thank you, Mr. City Mayor and manager. Thank you, Mayor and Council Members. Before we tonight's ordinance to purchase a piece of property that we'll show you a map of in here a second, it's 340.469 acres, sales price agreed to of $11.5 million, and the property serves multiple uses for the city, and you can see them listed here. An airport runway project, in other words, a safety zone at the end of a new runway that's being scheduled for the airport. The Denton Energy Center is part of the renewable Denton plan. A switchyard and substation, part of that is for the Denton Energy Center, part of that is a substation to distribute power to customers in the area, and future Loop 288 will also be carving through that property, and I'll show you on the map. The color-coded map here, the red area in the bottom right- hand corner shows the land needed for the airport project. The blue area shows the area for transmission lines and for the substation and switchyard for the power plant. The green property shows the property for the Denton Energy Center power plant, and the yellow property shows property for Loop 288 carving through in the future, and excess property that the property owners chose that they wanted to sell when they negotiated with us. Here's a breakdown of specific numbers. The amount of property for the Denton Energy Center, 90 acres of 3.9 million square feet at a cost of 81 cents a square foot calculates to 3.193481. The area for the substation property and transmission lines , 32.8 acres, listed there as well in the blue, the yellow property, future Loop 288, and the red dish-colored property, the airport property, 25.6 acres to be paid back if I'm not understanding the funding mechanism through a grant. This chart here is to show you that there's different funding mechanisms to put the money together for the entire transaction. Part of the substation property is a transmission project to help serve the reliability of the ERCOT grid, so part of that property will be reimbursable under what we call T-cost reimbursement. What questions do you have? Councilmember Hawkins. Hale and if you can get that slide back up. So a future Loop property, we're going to be selling that to TxDOT. Portions of that will be sold to TxDOT in the future if they continue with their plan. That's what we call a line on a drawing right now plan, but if their plan continues in that general area, a portion of that property will be sold to Tx DOT. Thank you. I do have a question. On the airport property, we're still in the process of, I mean, acquiring that airport property is not conditioned upon this particular agenda item. In other words, we're in the process of doing that now, I believe, or is that correct? The airport property, or am I thinking of something different? No, this agenda item will acquire the property needed for the airport. But I'm saying if it does, if somehow, let's say just hypothetically, if this doesn't pass, the airport property is still on a separate track. Is that my understanding? That is accurate, yes. That red piece is still on. Okay. That was my question, yes. All right. Okay. Any other questions for staff? Seeing none, we'll start the public hearing. Mr. Roden, can I have everything all right? Screen. Okay. You okay with moving forward? Okay. All right. Okay. I don't see any other questions for staff. Thank you very much. There's only one page. All right. We'll go ahead and start taking public comment. For agenda item 6E, please come forward and state your name and address. Your time will begin. I will call the first name and then I'll call the next name who's on deck. Mr. Ken Gold. And after Mr. Gold is Matthew Messer. Oh, I'm sorry. Did I do something out of order? Matthew Messer came up to me during the break and he said he's stepping out, but he'll come back. Okay. All right. Well, then after Mr. Gold is Jody Ismert. Thank you, Mayor, members of the council. And thank you, council member Briggs, for postponing these four items related to the RDP as the aftermath of a lot of new revelations came out in some emails. I can count heads as good as anybody knowing the outcome already. I still plea for a continued postponement on these four items until there is a full and complete disclosure of all the ties between DMA and Br attle, including a public explanation as to why Brattle received 45,000 more than the council approved contract. This entire issue is because of the painfully slow selective release of important and relevant information that sheds a little light on the previously und isclosed extensive substantive pre-selection communications between Brattle and DMA. From what I've learned, it's clear this is not a non-tri vial relationship, but instead it is an ongoing and substantial relationship. That's why this issue of bias versus neutrality is more than a mere appearance of partiality. It goes immediately to our lack of an ethics ordinance. When I appeared before the council asking for a second opinion on the RDP, I was seeking an independent, neutral, third-party review. In the words of George Campbell, the Brattle group, quote, "would clearly represent an objective assessment of all the elements of the scope of work to be performed." An objective assessment. That's not what we got. Important and relevant facts and disclosures continue to trickle out. It's time for full disclosure. I'm concerned about spending so much money under these circumstances. This failure of complete disclosure is what's being disruptive to this process. It's unfair to the public and unfair to the council members who themselves undertake serious responsibilities to the public. The council relied on the Brattle report. We need to have continued confidence in the process. These recent revelations indicate to me a compromised ability of the Brattle group to act impartially. A reasonable person would have serious doubts. The council relies on a relationship of trust with the public. Is there any doubt now that the Brattle group was disposed towards the RDP? Looking at the information that we're only now getting is reasonable to me that the facts we have now, and with more coming, suggest that Brattle was interested in the outcome. The public and the council are entitled to receive full disclosure of each and every fact that might affect the objectivity of these consultants . Brattle's role should not have been to support the RDP. Thank you. Thank you. All right. I'm going to ask that we've got a long night ahead of us. We've got a lot of speakers, so let's keep the -- let's maintain some decorum, please. Jodi Ismert's up, and then Deb Armater. Jodi Ismert, 819 Anna Street. Earlier during the daytime work session, some of you had mentioned that you didn't believe criminal activity had taken place. I also don't know that criminal activity has taken place. Collusion can be criminal or it can be non-criminal. The FBI investigates both instances under the umbrella of public corruption. I believe that -- I believe that some form of public corruption has taken place, and I welcome the FBI to come and investigate it. You and I don't know, and we need to rely upon the authorities to take a look at the situation after the emails were released. Corruption is improper secret agreement between two or more parties or entities to defraud or deprive others of their property or rightful share or to otherwise indulge in a forbidden illegal or illicit activity. Our tax money was spent for an independent review to the Br attle Group. The citizens were promised that the independent reviewer's scope would consist of A, reviewing of the RDP as it was, B, review of alternatives. We never heard about the review of the alternatives. So only half of the work was really truly completed. It was all in support of the RDP. And that's pretty much all that was asked according to the emails that were disclosed earlier last week. And it appears that the instructions through the email for Brattle to primarily support the renewable debt and plan by DMA employees. I didn't see any serious effort to look at true alternatives. Furthermore, it was made very clear through the emails that everyone knew that Ira Shaville from Brattle was a salesman pushing the Wartsilla engines at the convention that DMA employees went to. They knew. And now we know. Ira Shaville and Brattle should have been eliminated as a choice to conduct an independent analysis. Because of this bias and because of the conflict of interest. However, in the emails, it also becomes very clear that the purpose was for Ira to continue to push for Wartsilla engines in his review. And he even asked the city if they had any interim suggestions to include in the finalized independent review. This doesn't sound very independent, does it? Furthermore, it was made very clear by the emails that no other group was seriously considered to do the independent review. Only Brattle and Ira Shaville. Special attention was given to the relationship with Br attle and Wartsilla and not to other companies and I believe it was done unfairly. Taxpayer money was used to potentially deceive the public. This is potentially a very corrupt situation. And on the heels of learning about serious mismanagement of funds by a former city employee, where this person gave money above and beyond what was legally contracted to her friends who gained a nice city contract, I believe something is wrong with the culture in our city staff. It's a problem. Please investigate the situation. Please hold back on the situation. Do not vote on it. >> All right. Thank you. Thank you. Deb Armitage and then Mr. Willie Hutsbeth. Thank you. >> Deb Armitage, 2003. Misty Woodlane. I agree with the comments made by Ken Gold and Jody Ismert so far. I signed up to speak on all four DME items. I have something to say on each one of them. This one is for the purchase of property, 340 plus acres, for the purchase price of $11,500,000 and no cents. And those words, no cents, are kind of to me the theme of this whole renewable debt and plan and the point that we're at now. We had question -- we, the people who are concerned, have been having questions the whole time and the answers have changed. Now in this particular item, the land has changed. And by coincidence, this looks a lot like the original plan to have a gas plant that would power up industries in this particular area. And it certainly looks like that's what's going to happen. We have all this empty space. We're going to expand the loop. Why would we want to expand the loop? Who would want to go there? I can only assume that they would want to go to these companies that whatever you're going to put in there. And unfortunately, my trust is so broken now that if you said to me -- you plural, nobody in particular -- we don't know what companies are going to come there, I would have no reason to believe you. And that's nothing personal. It's just a matter of pattern and practice. I saw just a little while ago with the Sally Beauty situation a scenario unfold that reminded me a lot of this Wurzula situation. And I was very pleased to see one of you say, "It sounds like you just started rushing into this way too soon." There was a narrative about this Sally Beauty meeting with some people, economic development, and then Sally Beauty found out, "Hey, you can give us money. We would like money." And then, you know, and they started the ball rolling already. This is what happened with Wurzula in 2014, long before the renewable dent in plan was unveiled, long before the request for proposals. So if you have a problem with that Sally Beauty deal and that little bit of money, and I'm speaking to everybody and I hope you do, then you should really have a problem with this and vote no. I know that Ben Hatash and I met with one of you a long time ago and were reassured when you told us, when this person told us that this person would vote no on something on a big expenditure unless they had all their questions answered. So I hope that, I think that's a good thing for all of you to hold true to. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. Mr. Willie Hesbuth and then is it Dan Winshew or Unshew? So I apologize if I did that. You'll be up next. >> I want a clarification before we get started. Would you put that map up there and let me find out where the location of this property is? >> Oh, it's up there. Okay. >> That one. >> Can someone help me see where Luke Highway 35 is? >> Can you show me? >> This part right here shows the general area, but the airport is over here and this is Jim Cole, Jim Cole, I'm sorry. >> Jim Crystal. >> Jim Crystal. This is Tom Cole Road and that's Jim Crystal Road right there if you know those roads. >> Where is 380? >> 380 would be to the north. >> Up there. Okay. So 35 is over here. >> 35 is over there and this doesn't really show the highways, it shows kind of the rivers. >> Okay. >> The airport is right here. >> Where is the airport right here? Okay. >> That would be a runway extension. >> All right. Now I understand where it is. Thank you. My name is Willie Hesbuth. I live at 623 Newton. The work session that took place today at 1130, this issue right here proves my point where that discussion should have taken place tonight and the things that were shared there so that the public can see what you're thinking as our council people and that's okay. You're elected to do that. You should let us see and hear you now when you're discussing that, not at 1130. For this reason, the way the one council person who just questioned part of the process and what was happening, the way you treated her is something that shouldn't be done to anyone. She constantly said this is why I'm doing this. And her explanation that I heard at 1130 was to get clarification. It just seemed like to her something was wrong and it needed to be looked into. What she got from three of you was bashing. Let me define bashing. You changed the way she worded it to and then you made it what you wanted it to be. You changed and you said I don't see criminal intent. That was never mentioned by the person when she brought this up. Never. We don't see that they did something on purpose. You changed that and then that became the discussion. And then it was just constantly you three bringing up issues that had nothing to do with what the reason was that she brought this up. Now what it has done that you don't know about is I get those emails. Hallelujah. Let me read those emails. Then I'll be able to make some thoughts here about what I 've read. And then maybe we can get an investigation from some authorities that will say whether or not there's something criminal. The good part about this is these things are being brought up now before you make a decision that really is not a good decision for you or this city or this council as a whole. I don't know. I just think that these the kinds of things that I've heard took place lends itself to a little bit of some questions in my mind as to whether or not it was an arms length negotiation. One of the people who are talking about accepting this contract, it seems like they had a vested interest in some equipment that is being sold. And that raises questions in my mind. Thank you, Mr. Hesmick. Dan, if you'll come down, state your name and address. And then Ben Hattash is next. Hi. My name is Dan. I live at 1922 North Locus. I didn't have really a prepared statement. I read I'm on the didn't matters Facebook group. I check that sometimes. It's pretty good. There's some interesting people on there. Someone posted a letter that they had written to you. And I just wanted to play that into public record and try to talk really quickly. He says I didn't think I would ever come before council again. I didn't think I could offer anything new from what has already been said, emailed and blogged on. That is until I read these emails that have recently been made public, which have opened a window into the intersections between city and DME staff, along with some private consultants and energy source suppliers. I started pouring diligently over these emails yesterday and haven't been through them entirely before I started reading them. I avoided listening to anyone else's opinion about them because I wanted an objective as an objective and assessment as I could without any bias from other perspectives on both sides of this issue. There does indeed seem to be some disconcerting information in the emails that I could speculate on, but I won't. I'll leave that to the others to do. But there is one clear fact that does come from these emails that anyone here would be hard pressed to deny. The so-called competitive bidding process for consultants was seriously tainted here when it became clear that the Brattle group was getting the greatest attention. There were links to Brattle and Wartsilla within DME long before this council sought an independent third party consultant to study DME's RDP as far back as May 4, 2015. Lance Cunningham met with DME asked Dan Shellady, kind of funny name, Shellady, with our Wartsilla if a meeting with Wartsilla's CEO, Bjorn Rosengren, could be arranged. Again, this was May 4, 2015. Mr. Shellady responded the next day confirming that everything is a go from the meeting where Wartsilla's CEO in America is for PowerPlans, new Vice President Marcus will be given a tour of DME's market operations center to discuss how Warts illa can optimize DME's portfolio. On June 16, 2016, the same Dan Shellady with Wartsilla invited DME staff members to a flexible power symposium in Portland, Oregon. August 11, 2013, 2015, speakers at the symposium comprised of three of Wartsilla's North American division and one speaker from the Brattle Group, Ira Shevin . While it awaited consideration that may have been given to other competitors up to this time, quickly disappeared after DME's Jim Maynard. William Buntzelmayor returned from the symposium heavily weighted in favor of Wartsilla's rice units and their avid cheerleader, the Brattle Group. In this stacked-deck scenario alone, that should prompt you to forgo the RDP and all that this council is considering tonight to move it forward because clearly, leveraged by a few has impacted the decision to move forward with a renewable energy plan that eliminated some of the competition before their voices could be heard. And then very quickly. Very quickly. Very, very quickly. So if this is the desire of DME to create these plants, I think that's fine if they generate money. But I think it shouldn't be on the backs of the citizens. Please vote no. I don't want to set a precedent, so thank you. Ben Hutash and then Marshall Smith. And then if Matthew comes back in, if somebody could alert me because he said he might be coming. Okay. All right. Thank you. Hey, my name is Ben Hutash. I live at 925 Sierra Drive, Denton, Texas. I'd like to thank Councilwoman Briggs for postponing all these items until tonight. I ask again that you postpone the purchase of these items until we have full disclosure as to the nature of the relationships between the Brattle Group, DIN Municipal Electric, and Warzilla. Warzilla published a book titled Smart Power Generation that clearly laid out a path for using its engines alongside renewables. The Warzilla studies and papers allowed them to sell many smaller power plants, most of which seem to be around the 25 megawatt size range. It wasn't until the Brattle Group started releasing studies and promoting the Warzilla product at conferences that the Warzilla finally had its big break in the American energy market, selling the larger 200 megawatt power plants and up. The big break came in the form of the Brattle Group building off the work of the Warzilla engineers, publishing studies on behalf of the Texas Clean Energy Coalition that opened the door for the role of reciprocating engines as part of the mix of the ERCOT energy supply. These same white papers were used by DME when considering the future of Denton's energy future. By hiring the Brattle Group to look at the RDP, we essentially hired them to double check their own ideas. This I consider to be a conflict of interest if they were to speak critically of RDP, they would be undermining their own credibility. Thank you. Oh, okay. Thank you. Thank you, Ben. Marshall Smith and then Cindy Spoon. My name is Marshall Smith. I live at 2016 Redwood Place in Denton. I've been here all evening and we've been just witnessing talking about dollars and cents and hundreds and thousands. This is more ideological than money, but I just want to remind the council about global warming. The science is in, global warming is happening. Nobody's talking about it much, but it's going to take us all out. One thing that the people that are trying to hold it to a limit is that all the carbon that's in the ground needs to stay in the ground. These gas-fired generators are not going to help keep gas on the ground. It encourages more gas development in that whole nine yards . The whole idea of, and it's been explained to me, well, we just have to do this because we can't afford to fill this gap in our energy with more renewable sources. I'm sorry, but it's just, I've got grandkids that are going to be really dramatically affected by the patterns in our weather, which is disrupting, already is disrupting crop and food production. It's been linked to the big problems in Syria. The civil war in Syria has been attributed partially to the global warming thing. I just would like to see Denton have nothing to do with encouraging more fossil fuel use. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Marshall. Cindy Spoon and then Matthew, state your name, address, and your time will begin. Hello. Cindy Spoon, 2210 Westwood. I agree with everything Marshall just said. Can't be underlined enough. I am opposed to this ordinance. I think this proposal is the worst one of all of them as far as 12 engines on one site is the worst option of all of the options if we have to have gas plants because of the concentration of the pollutants that the gas plants will be releasing into the air in one spot. So for air quality, this proposal, one site, 12 gas plants is the worst one. And yeah, that's important for all of us that breathe air. I'm asking council, specifically Mayor Watts tonight to restore trust in this process. We're talking about an $11.5 million land deal. It's a lot of money. That's a lot of our money. And it feels inappropriate that this deal involves so much of our money and will also be permanently impacting our air. And the fact that we were not -- it's inappropriate that we weren't brought into this process sooner. I want to know why the first time we heard about this proposal for gas plants was at a press conference when the press was hearing about it. We're talking about a public that was working very hard to ban fracking, that is organized, that is obviously concerned, that wants to be involved in these issues. So I don't understand why we were brought in so late. We were left out of the process while this was being developed while DME and Brattle and Wurzilla and whatever everyone's talking about were all working on this plan. And it feels inappropriate because it feels like you all have created this environment where public involvement and our concerns are now made to feel like huge inconveniences. Like every delay is so much money and we have to do this right now. And George Campbell telling us every day this is $30,000 that we don't vote for this. But you all created that environment. It didn't have to be that way. You could have brought the public in sooner. So yeah, I think it's unfortunate that this plan was being worked on at the same time that we were all working so hard to ban fracking and going door to door and talking about concerns with air quality. So I'm asking you all to vote in opposition to this ordinance. I think that a vote opposing this plan is a vote that would restore trust in City Hall. I think a vote opposing this plan is a vote that shows that you are concerned about that you care and value the concerns of the public. Thanks. Thank you. Matthew and then Jennifer Lane. Well, I feel short. All right. So my name is Matthew Messer. I live over at 1200 Buena Vista here in Den. I just want to go through with section 6F through H really. As far as addendum E, I know it pertains to this situation, but I think that this could be an opportunity to actually look at alternative resources like you all are trying to do currently. Because right now there is a Tesla generator that does not create emissions. And then you also on top of that have sorry, I'm really tired at this point. I can't stand where everybody's tired. But you have Tesla energy generator and then you also have the solar energy. And we can actually use this plot of land for solar energy since it's out in Timbuktu. There's nothing really there except for flat land. Why not? Now as far as why I understand why you all are doing this is because of ERCOT and because of the REC, which is renewable energy credit. But as other people have already said, we ban fracking. I think that this may be going under the public because we don't want to have another issue across the world where they are all recognizing we banned it and then putting an upset to the Texas legislator and the Texas governor who said, well, what's wrong with this picture? Why did you all ban this? Well, it's because there was a public outcry. I believe that this should be put to a public vote and that people need to be informed as far as the energy that is actually being implemented. As far as Vartzilla and those type of individuals that have been primarily working on this, I would say that was good technology about 10 or 20 years ago, honestly. The reason I say that 10 to 20 years ago is because it would have made it to where the CO2 emissions would have been down. But now we're facing another different crisis where we're looking at the fracking ban. We're looking at things that we're trying to create renewable energy. Why not actually look at solar? Why can't we look at, I mean, I understand wind turbines. I completely understand that because there's not much wind here in Denton, just saying. So that's why I'm specifically saying there's the Tesla energy generator and then there's the solar energy generator. We do have options. I do not believe that these things need to go into practice . Now since it's actually on this situation, it's on the add endum, I think that it needs to be put at rest. I think you all need to vote no currently or just stay in and put it to a public vote. Inform the public through flyers as far as what the energy does and what it will do. But I believe that there is better solutions than just going behind the back of the public because as I can understand, the public doesn't actually know. I didn't know about this until recently. So thank you very much for your time. Thank you for coming back. Next up is Jennifer Lane. Hello. My name is Jennifer Lane and I live at 1526 Willowwood in Denton. And I am a member of Mr. Howard Martin's fan club. I want to thank you Councilwoman Briggs for postponing these items till tonight and for your due diligence in looking into this unfortunate situation. As the approximately 50 documents attached to the recent Denton Record Chronicle article about the power plant delay clearly show insider dealing and greenwashing were going on from the get go and began during the 2015 City Council elections if not beforehand. This demands further investigation. The following quote which shows disdain for the public was expressed by a senior city staff member and appears in that attached document number 4911-001 Mr. Howard Martin to Irish shovel of the Brattle Group on May 2nd 2016 also an election period. Quote the rest of the attachments represent articles that our fan club has referenced in their communications and questioning of the RDP. The attitude that I'm hearing lately towards the ethics ordinance that is much discussed including from one of those proposing it is disturbing to me. It's basically phew we don't have one yet so we'll wait till we get one. If we do that, if we do it that way what I know and when I knew it might not come back to bite me. So many mistaken decisions are made because the first couple steps are improperly handled in a power over manner. We've got to get it done. Yes, you wind up with a huge structure but it's a negative one with a weak foundation. Please do not vote tonight on this matter or vote no. Hire a truly independent analyst and consulting group. It is clear that the choice of Brattle was not a clean process. Now $40 million have been moved just last month August to general obligation bonds. Others can speak to this bonds issue but the price tag is a moving target and is very, very high in dollars and in impact. What Mr. Willie Hudspeth referenced regarding treatment and twisting words was one of the many logic rules that are far too often ignored by some on council. Numbers two, four and seven of this list of commandments of logic have been used consistently throughout this entire process especially in direction towards the concerns of the fan club. Number two, thou shalt not misrepresent or exaggerate a person's argument in order to make it easier to attack. Straw man fallacy. Number four, thou shalt not argue thy position by assuming one of its premises is true, begging the question. Number seven, thou shalt not argue that because of our ignorance a claim must be true or false. Ad ignorantum. Although only a few of us can consistently come to these meetings or are inclined to write to you, every one of us represents a wide circle of friends, colleagues and family. In marketing I'm told that one letter equals a thousand people. To give an example of this comparison, the recent post of a letter on the Denton Police Facebook site brought forward many comments from people comparing what they see as the very poor government choice to build gas plants as compared to supporting a core function of government such as police training. Please do not vote or vote no. Thank you. Thank you. All right. We have no more people wishing to speak but we do have some cards that have expressed a sentiment. We have five in support and we have five in opposition. I will read these into the record. Patrick O'Connor, support. Shelby Malloy, support. Shane Wallen, support. David Wright, support. Michael Ackerman, support. Christina Harris, in opposition. Carrie Crothers, in opposition. Larry Beck, in opposition. Topher Jones, in opposition. And Candice Bertrand, in opposition. Councilmember Hawkins. Thank you, Mayor. I move approval of item 6E. Mayor Pro Tem. Second. Councilmember Begheri. It's open for discussion. Yes, of course. I'm really uncomfortable with not just the emails. That's not really my -- that's not my focus. It's more the pricing. And I did speak with DME. They were gracious and spoke with me yesterday morning. We discussed the pricing, that it's not truly a market exchange. I understand that. That said, I still can't force myself to vote yes when I know in my head we could save some measly pennies here and there. So for that reason, I'll be voting no. All right. You know, I don't mind expressing the sentiment. I've read the emails like everyone else, and I'm going to be voting no for this, but for the very reason that in the beginning of this process, when we approved the bonds, I voted no as well because I was wanting a different extent of the plan, not in total opposition of the plan. So I wanted to make sure that I explained that because there's a lot of difference of opinions on these emails and what they mean, and I don't share some of the opinions that have been going around, but I'm not in support of the extent of the plan as it's proposed, and I just want -- and that's consistent with what I shared. I guess it was two or three months ago when we had the financing. I don't even remember when that was. So I wanted to make sure that that was clear, and I will not share that sentiment on every one of these votes, but it would apply to the votes that come forward as far as if it's a negative vote. So any other discussion? We have a motion and a second on agenda item 6E. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 4-3. Move on to agenda item 6F, consider adoption of an ordinance of the City Council of the City of Denton of Texas Home and Municipal Corporation, providing for, authorizing, and approving the execution by the city manager is designee of the equipment supply and services contract for the purchase of 12 reciprocating internal combustion engines. Thank you, Mayor. Bill Williams, the general manager of DMA, will provide this item. Thank you, city manager, mayor, and council. It's been a long year. October 6th of 2015, we had the press conference to announce this plan. Since then, we've had two open houses, two meetings, neighborhood meetings coordinated with council members at their locations. We've had a question and answer period meeting on Saturday, the citizens were invited to. We've had two public utility board meetings that were open to the citizens, and that's public utility board voted to recommend this plan moving forward with these items tonight. And we've had so many council meetings about this subject, I lost count, but it's been numerous. Staff brought this plan forward in response to council direction, in response to council direction to maintain rates, competitive rates, maintain service reliability and financial reliability, and to also improve a challenge to greatly and significantly increase our presence in renewable energy. This plan does that. This plan stabilizes rates in the future and enables future rate decreases because of the $500 million of savings it will produce over a 20 year period. It provides financial reliability as we sign purchase power agreements in the future that with these plants, these engines that are on your agenda tonight, will enable backup so that we can go and procure renewable energy that is becoming increasingly affordable in the Erecop market and that we can sign long term contracts that will again bring price stability to our citizens. It also provides for a significant reduction in emissions, a 75% reduction in emissions. It provides a reduction in the use of gas. These new units, these new engines are so much more efficient than what's available in the market that when these units are running, something less efficient, something that would use more gas, other units in the market will not be running and it will reduce the use of gas. So with these contracts, if you approve those tonight, we will have locked in with the land purchase and with the design build contract that we have as the next item. By approving those items tonight, if you approved all those , we will have locked in 85% of the cost of the project. By locking in that, we can feel confident that we will be within the $225 million that we originally proposed for this project and achieve those savings. So it's a significant project. It's one that's history making. So with that, I'll proceed on to talk about the subject at hand of this agenda item. Talk about the evaluation criteria we used to pick the top respondent, the evaluation of those respondents. The proposed contract that was posted with the agenda item, I believe, had the dates from last week. Those dates have been changed to reflect the current dates. Also a page has been changed out that reflects the change due to the first payment that's due and reflects the change to October 3rd for that first payment. So that has been changed and of course our recommendation. The evaluation criteria is compliance with specifications. The project schedule, project schedule of course is important because in this case time is money. What was very important to us as direction given by the council was the emissions guarantees. To ensure that these units would deliver what we were promised and you'll see in this contract as I go through the details of it, does provide guarantees of reduced emissions. And of course looking at the cost, not only the initial capital cost but the total cost of ownership including the initial capital cost, the fuel cost and the operation maintenance cost going forward. Respondents were GE, Mann, Rolls Royce and Warzilla as the top respondent. As Warzilla has come into this environment with their units , other companies of course have gotten to see their success have come in but we haven 't seen that they've had the experience. 2200 megawatts of Warzilla engines installed in the continental United States alone. They have over 50 operating plants. No other respondent had operational units within the continental United States at the time of the RFP issue. All of those respondents, their units are manufactured in Europe. So of course the euro and the reason we discussed the euro being an item that was pressing us on making the decision because we saw a time in the past year where the exchange rate has been very favorable for us to transact. The contract details reflect what we believe would be the direction of council to make sure we have improved emission controls, to be a good neighbor, to have ultra low noise fans so it would not disturb our neighbors, to accelerate delivery schedule, the testing commission as you can see the list goes on, warranty training, early acceptance incentives, late acceptance penalties and of course the spare parts that are involved in this. What it would be if council gives notice to proceed tonight , then we would immediately sign the contract and engines will start to manufacture the engines. This would reserve our place in their manufacturing of the engines and they would ship from the factory in June of next year, arrive at Houston next year in 2017, be transported here, go through startup testing in summer of 2018 and become operational in summer of 2018. The characteristics of these are huge. These engines are almost 20 feet high, 17 feet. There is a person standing right here that gives you a scale here of what size. I have some other pictures here that just shows how they are transported in different pieces. It's a challenge just to get them here. They will assemble a temporary building to assemble the engines in, put the engines together, have a gantry trained to do the heavy lifting to move them in place. When they are assembled and ready to move, they would be moved into another building that would be the engine hall where all 12 units would be placed. Staff recommends approval of the proposed Resilient Contract purchase of 12 units, 18.75 watts, reciprocating internal combustion engine. We stand ready for any questions. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mayor. You mentioned the timeline that the goal is to get these operational by July 2018. Yes, sir. The value that these units can bring, generation in Texas brings the most value in the summertime. And so it's very important to gain the most value that we get those on by summer. By fall, they would not have as much value as they would during the summer. What's your estimation? At what point do we get to say when these new wind contracts come online, new solar contracts come online to the point where we can officially say we're 70%? So we've already put out a request for proposal for wind contracts. We received those proposals back. We're in the process now evaluating those contracts to reach back out to the finalists to ask for best and final offers. And then at that point, we would bring back those proposals we would estimate in late October, November to the council for approval. The actions of the wind contracts, the timing is very good. Production tax credits related to the wind power contracts are expected to start expiring at 20% a year starting at the end of this calendar year. And so the timing is they must start those projects by the end of the calendar year to be able to qualify for full production tax credits. So it's given us some very good pricing. So I guess my more specific question was what year, what month do you think we'll be able to say Denton is now at 70% powered by 70% renewable energy ? You think it will be by that summer 2018 or is it going to be back 2019 to seem to be what we're talking about? I'm thinking that by the time they get the wind power projects assembled and by the time they get the solar contracts which will come next year for us to propose those, that it may be 2019. But certainly as early as 2019. I don't know that we'll have them all on. I don't know the exact date when they'll be on if they'll be on by 2018 or not. They should be sooner than a lot of people in the industry. A lot of people have said it goes to be this far along by 2025. We're certainly going to be ahead of that. That's right. And I hear the concerns of folks and I share that climate change and what are we doing to invest in the future of energy. Nationwide we're at 13% renewables. Half of that is hydroelectric. Hydroelectric meaning you either have a river running through your town or you don't. So that's about 7%, 6% of renewables of wind and solar nationwide. In the state of Texas it's about 10.6 or at least according to the internet, about 10.6 renewable energy. Denton's going in four years to 70%. So folks concerned about how are we tackling climate change ? You can count on two hands the number of communities perhaps in the world that are taking this aggressive stance. Folks are given all sorts of resolutions. These cities are getting on the front page of magazines to making a resolution that someday by 2030, 2050 we're going to have some plan in place that we don't know anything about yet to be 100% renewable. Denton's going to get there in four years. I appreciate you. I appreciate your staff. I appreciate the innovation. I appreciate the ambition that you've applied. I appreciate the fact that you've been pummeled for a year with character assassinations and allegations of corruption. Thank you for what you do and serve our city and putting us on the map. Councilmember Begay. Well, first I just wanted to make the same point that I've always made which is that somebody's going to purchase that coal plant. Someone's going to run the coal plant and it's going to keep spewing whatever emissions it has. Could be cleaner. We're hoping. Fingers crossed. That just because we as a community become 70% renewable doesn't mean that suddenly that energy isn't being pumped into the air. It's still going to be there. The emissions will still be there. Just kind of take issue with the whole idea that anyway. I do have yes. Yes, please, Mr. Williams. Go ahead. I respectfully disagree. Okay. And I disagree about the basis of ERCOT's only going to have so much generation. Generation is going to equal low. So at any given time there's only a certain amount of generation that's going to be generating. When these units are on, that means there's 220 megawatts of capacity somewhere else that is not running. It may not be the coal plant that we have at Gibbons Creek, but somewhere else, somewhere in ERCOT, something less efficient that is because of its less efficiency is more polluting than these units is not going to run. Doesn't that assume that we have a steady amount of energy demand? I'm just saying that the generation has to equal the energy demand. And if these units are on, somewhere in some unit that's less efficient will not be running. Okay. I agree with that. I would just say that if we're putting 600 or 1,000 houses in these various developments, we're putting more demand online, which would then draw even the dirty energy as well, wouldn't it? And so Texas has growth. Denton has growth. And what the best approach for that is the approach this council is taking to adopt most current energy efficiency code, most current account that the city of Denton has ever had. And so that helps address that issue of, yes, there will be increase in demand. And that's what we're trying to do is meet the demand of a growing community. Okay. I appreciate that. I don't want to take up a whole lot of our time. So I have some questions about the RFP for the- Request for proposal. Yes, the request for proposal about the engines, if you're okay with that. Certainly. I may dial a friend here for help. What's that? I may be dialing a friend for help. Okay. That's fine. AT Phone Home. All right. So I reviewed all 1,000 pages of just the Wurzala bid. I did a view of the Burns McDonald. And what I came away with was that in parts that are very important to me, which is the total cost of these units, the scores were very close between the top two contenders. And so I kind of want to go into, without going too far in there, just talking about why certain things were weighted the way that they were. And if you could help educate the public about that, I think it would help in terms of understanding the process of selecting these engines. With that very long preface, to what extent did any warrant ies or support packages provided by the manufacturer get factored into the calculation? So Council Member Begari, I'm going to look to see attorney here from time to time as I answer these questions. Sure. Because the state laws on revealing bid information until the bid is awarded are very strict. And so at times I don't mean to evade your question, and certainly a question I can answer in closed session or in private, but something that is not, some of those things are not public information. As far as the, something that was not included in the bid, but just additional information gained outside the bid was the future availability of service level contracts. That was not considered in the bid. Okay. And then regarding, I have a question about emissions as well, because that was a huge part of the metric, the matrix that was used to evaluate. The emissions guarantees for these various products had some differences, but in our RFP, they were weighted in ways that I didn't quite understand. So for instance, DFW is in non-compliance for VOCs and for NOCs. That non-compliance and the importance of meeting compliance for those two specific emissions didn't appear to me to be weighted in any way. Can you explain that? So the emissions requirements are determined by the TCEQ. So the emissions requirements of these units was determined in our air permitting process by TCEQ. This respondent was the only respondent that could meet all those emission requirements. No other respondent could meet all those emission requirements. Okay. And then regarding other emissions that were, I'm trying to think if I can talk about this, regarding other emissions that all of the engines produced, there was no calculation, for instance, for ammonia. That's one of the emissions that's going to be produced. Why is it that there was no calculation or metric for that particular source of emissions? If these units ran 100% of the time, they would not exceed the ammonia requirements except by the TCEQ. And that was true for all of the respondents. All the respondents use ammonia the same way. And so all of them are going to have the same, that piece of equipment is common and is manufactured for all the respondents by the same manufacturer. And so all of them would have had the same or similar ammonia output. So there wasn't a differentiation for ammonia between the respondents. Then I have a question about probable performance indicators. You had discussed, I think you discussed it, that Wurzla has 2200 megawatts of generation online in the United States and the configuration are close to the configuration that DME is proposing. And as I understand it, that was an advantage for Wurzla in this process. I guess what I took away from this was we're purchasing ship engines, essentially. And the place that you're going to see ship engines is usually in ships. So if we're giving preference because of the configuration of the engines as opposed to where they are, why is that? So our preference here wasn't because, certainly they've had their beginning in long history of this company in building generation four ships. But their preference in this market is because the long list of ongoing generation for electricity purposes that they've currently installed. Those are 50 units that they have currently installed, not on ships but in generation type facilities. The other respondents did not have that kind of history. I think over time they will get there. But again, they're new in the market. They don't have the proven track record that Wurzla has in producing and putting these type of units on the ground and operating and having a history of operation and meeting the requirements that they said they would meet. >> And I'll just conclude by saying that in reviewing all of the documents and speaking with people and just kind of the whole process, bird's eye view, my sense is that everybody thinks that they're doing the right thing, whether it's DME or the people in the audience here today and those of us up here. So in light of that, I would just say thank you for the work that you've put into your project and I'm not judging or begrudging or however you want to put it. I appreciate all the time and effort that went into this. Might not agree with everything. And I definitely have discomfort as it comes to -- especially when it comes to, you know, pricing of equipment because we're really not talking about $72,000 anymore. We're talking about a couple extra zeros added onto there. So we disagree. It's okay, at least in my book. It's all right. I still appreciate the work and effort that people put into things, especially a project this large and that has lasted this long. And I appreciate the citizens that take the time to actually come to these meetings very late in the night. So I'm just making some conciliatory comments. Thanks. >> Thank you. Councilmember Briggs. >> So did any of the other respondents come to Denton? >> No. >> We did have -- none of these respondents to this RFP came to Denton. Like I said, there are new entries into the business. >> Yeah. >> Let me confirm that with staff. Did anybody else come? Did anybody else -- did any of the other respondents come to Denton to come for a visit? We did have other -- certainly other generation projects that approached us. We had one project that is in the North Texas area that was a new gas generation project. It wasn't reciprocating engines. It was combined cycle. And at the early on set of this project, we did tour their plant and review that. So we were looking at other possibilities. I mean, the issue with how do we go out and obtain this much renewable energy and what's the most economical way or reliable way to find to back that up, that's what we were researching and looking for. So we looked at other options to do that. And not only other generation options, but other innovative options. It's just a matter of how much risk you want to take or projects that would make or not make based on their capabilities in the market. So there was some news lately about the Warzilla engines and some of the -- I don't have -- trying to put the article up about the numbers on the emissions and I think it was the ship engines. Is this the same thing or is it different? Because I'm pretty confused about that. My understanding is that was in the ship engine business segment they have. That this was some employees they had that falsified some test results as far as the emissions. That they -- the company found that issue out themselves and went to the market, went to their customers to indicate that they had this issue, they were addressing it and of course they wanted to address it with their customers as far as how they rectified the situation. Any contact I've had with the other -- this one utilities or other co-ops that have put in these engines, contact with Greenville, South Texas Electric Co-op, Golden State, cooperative that has put in these engines to their management team. They've all responded that the company has responded to any issue and has responded appropriately and done -- they produced what they said they'd do, met the emissions requirements they said they would and we're very comfortable dealing with them. South Texas Electric Co-op to the point that they're putting in their second plan. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Gregor. Thank you, Mayor. You've talked in the past about how our contracts, issuing new contracts for buying renewable energy, both solar energy and wind energy actually impacts in a positive way the -- not only our emissions portfolio but the entire ERCOT market because of the economics of a company that's considering building a set of wind generation turbines or a field of solar panels. Would you explain how the city of Denton issuing a contract like that impacts the entire market? Yes, sir. The deregulated energy market in Texas, 70 percent of the energy market in Texas is deregulated and so there's not other entities in the electric -- wholesale electric market in Texas that can go sign a 20-year contract with a generation provider. And so by us being the credit level we are, signing a long- term purchase power contract with a wind power generator, they can then take that contract and go to the bank and get financing of, hey, here's my revenue source I have coming forward that's going to pay the debt to pay off the loan I'm going to incur to go build this wind project or to go build this solar project. And so by doing that we're enabling renewable projects that without our contracts would not happen. So and then go over the numbers again because I absolutely agree with Mr. Smith's concern about global warming and the imperative of us as quickly as we can reducing air emissions, especially greenhouse gases. And by building these backup plants, these quick start plants in Denton that use natural gas, we actually reduce our portfolio for using natural gas by what percent? We reduce our natural gas usage by 30 percent, by over 30 percent. And we reduce our overall air emissions by what percent? By over 75 percent. Okay. And then we increase our use of renewables by -- well, we 're going from 40 percent to 70 percent. Correct. All right. Thank you very much. >> I just wanted to address Councilman Gregory's point. So I'm just going to talk with him. The way I understand it is if the price of something goes down, then the demand of it will go up in general. And that's kind of what's driving my analysis of this. We're going to have a lot of really cheap energy available, right, by our industrial area, which will probably lure some heavy energy users here because we have cheap energy. That will then drive up demand, which will then increase emissions. That's my understanding. >> Okay. All right. Any other questions for staff? All right. We're going to go on to public comment for agenda item 6F. Mr. Ken Gold, you're up. And then Matthew Messer is on deck. If you state your name and address, your time will begin. >> Mayor, members of the council, my name is Ken Gold. Live at 2512 Natchez Trace here in town. I don't have really much to add. Everything I meant to say I said earlier. I have a profound doubt about the integrity of the process. The bridle group being used to direct the weight that certain items are given in the decision was like, as somebody said, asking a barber if I need a haircut. I'm just not comfortable with this. I think the numbers on the 70% renewable are just as fuzzy as the 40% renewable actually turned out to be 10%. I'm not sure where we're at here, but it's pretty obvious to me. >> Thank you. Mr. Messer and then Michael Hinnan is on deck. >> Matthew Messer at 1200 Blanavista. Okay. So they admitted that they like manipulated tests, correct? I mean, like from what I understand, they actually admitted that they went up in their company from a sister company out in Finland. They actually admitted and maybe he didn't say this, but I looked it up online, but they manipulated tests and they went and actually took care of that. Now my question is what makes them not manipulate the tests that will be implemented for the CO2 emissions? Also as far as what I saw online, it says low startup cost reciprocal engines, which is great. It means less gas to pump into these engines, right? Which is why I believe that 20 to 30 years ago it would have been fantastic. Now I don't think that it's a viable option. I think that a 20-year contract with this company would be detrimental, especially when there is, like I said before, Tesla generators that have no CO2. We can go straight to 100% renewable energy with no CO2 emissions. Why would we not go for that? Why would we not look at that product when Tesla already said that everything that they put out there is free? We just have to investigate it and figure out how it works from my understanding. So I also want to say one more thing about this, and this is actually from the Brito group and actually this is going to be my final comment for tonight because I'm exhausted and I need to get home. Sorry. But there is a comment from the Brito group, pages 139 to 142 or something like that, that I looked up online. It says, "Jurisdiction across the globe are implementing CO 2 emissions reduction policies. These policies typically ignore most locational issues probably because the consequences of greenhouse gas emissions do not depend on the exact emission location and options to be reconfigured by allowing flow gate and point to point obligations and the options to be reconfigured and exchanged. The market can decide what combination of financial rights are most useful to the power generators, consumers and traders." That means to me that I'm looking at my electric bill now. We actually can say we can raise it 10 cents like we just voted on, correct? So by doing that, we no longer have viable option to raise or lower those costs. It's all dependent on a market, oil market, which fluct uates very much. All right. So thank you very much for listening. Thank you very much. Get some rest. Thank you. Mr. Hinnon is up and then Jody Ismerk is on deck. Michael Hinnon, 724 Thomas Street here in Denton. Thank you, Mayor and Council for the opportunity to speak. I join Councilwoman Begarry in applauding the Council and applauding the hard work DME has put into the 70% goal for renewable energy. That's a very laudable goal and very few communities in the United States. I know of are trying to reach that goal as quickly as we are. The renewable Denton plan has that as a goal. I also share one of the previous speakers comments that I hope that's a real goal of real renewable energy instead of some kind of a credit that exists somewhere that we may or may not actually be producing renewable energy. So I certainly hope that that's where we go with our 70% renewable energy is in actual renewables. So that part of the plan excited many of us going to 70%, but the plan contains for many of us a poison pill. And that poison pill is these plants, power plants that are powered by natural gas. This is a community that voted almost 60% to ban the production by fracking of natural gas in our community. I suspect that if our citizens had a chance to vote on it, we would see a similar result with regard to these gas driven power plants. But Council has chosen a means of financing this project that does not allow the citizens to express their opinion on this very expensive, very expensive plan that will be a debt for our community for decades. And I am very concerned that a project of this size is not going before our entire community for a vote and that the community that clearly expressed its opinions about natural gas fracking in this community doesn't get a chance to vote on whether natural gas should be burned in our community for production of power. This will be a process that does pollute. It's cleaner perhaps than some of the previous types of gas production or power production we've had. However we know that the entire process of fracking, transporting and using natural gas leaks VOCs and other types of greenhouse gases into our atmosphere and will contribute to further global warming. And this is a process that we must stop. We have to stop using fossil fuels and we have to stop investing in fossil fuel technology. Thank you. >> Thank you. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Jodi Ismert and then Zach Youngblood is on deck. >> Jodi Ismert, 819 Anna Street. So I'm kind of floored here. I mean did we read the same emails? I mean did you guys really thoroughly read them? Because there were a lot, a lot of emails. Did you really look at them? And did you look at the notes and what was highlighted and underlined? Because I am absolutely floored that you can read them and not see some kind of umbrella of corruption in them. It's amazing to me. Ira Schavel was the salesman that the DME employees went and saw up in the Northwest pushing the Wartsilla plants and you all hired him to do an independent review, an independent analysis on alternatives because the community requested that using our tax dollars. You paid him to only support the RDP. We didn't get an independent analysis. That is unbelievable to me and you guys don't see a problem with this? Really? That's unbelievable. I mean it's unconscionable. The fact that no other company that put in a bid even bothered, even came here, that we didn't woo any other companies. That's unbelievable to me. It's unbelievable to me that Brattle was the only group that we had numerous, numerous communications with. There was no other group. And you guys don't see a problem with this. That's crazy. I can't believe that. Is this how you conduct business on a regular basis? Is this just the normal culture for our city? Is this what we do and so it feels normal to you? Because this is not normal. This is not okay. Every citizen, hundreds of citizens came to the chambers to tell you guys, "We do not want these gas plants." Nine hundred letters hit your doorsteps saying, "We do not want these gas plants." There was a recent comment by somebody who said, "If every single citizen came to your door and said, 'We don't want these gas plants,' that you guys already have your mind made up and you are voting for it." And that is ridiculous to me. This is our community. We voted you in to represent us. That some district that's going to become an industrial complex so that they can have cheap energy, so that UNT can have cheaper energy, we want you to represent the community, the citizens that live here. You read those emails and you didn't see what the rest of us saw. That's unbelievable to me. Go back and read them again, please, because I think you're just seeing what you want to see so that you can push this through as quickly as possible because you're tired. And that's unacceptable. Thank you. Zach Youngblood and then Deb Armator. How are you folks doing tonight? Zach Youngblood, 836 Hawes Drive, Copper Canyon. So Mr. Williams is being a little wishy-washy about your 70 percent. I will tell you that according to RFP 6187, there is a 200 megawatt wind request that is to not be delivered before the 1st of December, 2018, as well as you have already signed a contract for solar whose delivery begins on January 1st, 2019. You're going to need a lot more energy if you're not going to use RECs. I have up here a study that has just been completed. It is dated August 17, 2016, from the New York Independent System Operator, demonstrating capital costs per kilowatt for 200 megawatt nominal GE aer odirivative turbine, PEECR, Siemens 245 nominal industrial turbine, and the 12 count Wardzilla 18V50. And as you can see, it's really confusing as to why nothing seems to have been looked at besides reciprocating internal combustion engines fired by natural gas, since not only are they the most expensive in a capital basis, but they are also the most polluting in terms of VOCs and NOX in terms of our noncompliance with the ozone standard. And as you can see, this is the hourly emissions rates for the whole plant. So with 12 engines, that would give us an emission rate of 2.65 pounds per hour of NOX and 4.8 pounds per hour of VOCs. If you would do me a favor, I'll remind you again when I come up on the next item, but I'll bring that up again later. I also have Mr. Schavel's resume that was presented to the Council on March the 2nd, 2016, in which we can see his many, many publications. He's a very, very widely published guy. But there is a slight difference between that dated March and this one dated February of 2016, in which specifically he has the value of reciproc ating engines in the future ERCOT market and the value of flexible generation in ERCOT with high renewable penetration, which is prepared for Wardzilla. And at the same time, at the time I found this out, I made Councilwoman Briggs aware of it, and I know that she brought it up with the Mayor and George Campbell. And the first paper that Mr. Campbell suggests when he says he does not see a conflict of interest would be the value of flexible generation in ERCOT with high renewable penetration. And yet, for some reason, the word "Wardzilla" doesn't appear on this one. It's mysterious. I know I've wasted a lot of breath on this. I've lost a lot of sleep. This has been in the can since y'all hired Schavel. I just wanted to get some things on the record. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. All right. Hey, please. Let's have some decorum. I mean, it's late and we've got a lot of people left to speak. Thank you very much. Deb Armator, you're up. And then Willie Hutspeth. Okay. Sorry for clapping. It's hard to have decorum when gas plants are being voted on that nobody wants. Let's see. Wardzilla was, as Phil Williams said, the top respondent. It seems to me they are the only group that was even looked at, the only manufacturer. Not only that, but the fact that the city's relationship with Wardzilla goes all the way back to 2014 shows that even as far back as February 2014, renewables, that is, renewable generating infrastructure was not even considered. In those emails, it says that they weren't considered because you don't get tax write-offs. They don't have to get tax credits for them. Well, do you get tax credits for these Wardzilla engines? I don't think so, but somehow those were considered. So many lies here. So much deception. So much collusion. I have my request, since you're obviously going to vote on this anyway, is that you please not call it the renewable dent in plan. It just feels like such an insult when it's really just about, you know, some of you are getting really excited about we have these percentages and our percentages are looking really good on paper. Most of us, we want our kids to be able to breathe and our grandkids. And we're concerned about global warming and to me, it doesn't really matter what our percentages are. Anyway, so I would like if you could change the name from renewable dent in plan to the rescrewable dent in plan because that's really what we feel has been happening to us from the very beginning. And we just keep finding out with these new emails that it 's even worse than we thought it was before. So anyway, so sorry that I clapped to hear some truth. It was really nice to hear that truth. And it was sad to me to hear Mr. Williams' presentation where he gave a narrative that was contradicted by the very emails that you've read. He said in the beginning we started out and we presented this plan in 2015 and, you know, whereas we saw that their mind was already made up in 2014. Anyway, so, yeah, I have some other things to speak on including my thoughts on the work session but I'll save that for the next item. >> Okay, thank you. Mr. Hussbett, you're up and then Jennifer Lane. >> My name is Willie Hussbett. I live at 623 Newton. I am so tired. Man, I'm so tired. All of you look like African Americans to me right now. Anyway, I've learned that you can't beat a dead horse and get them to get up and run. So, it's pretty obvious you've already decided what you're going to do and there's no need in just saying the same thing. I don't agree with the plan. I think I'm thinking about my kids, my great grandkids now that, man, they're going to have to live here and that's not good. But there's no-- it doesn't seem like you're going to do anything other than that. It's sad but that's the situation. So what I'm proposing is I will change for the record my view or my vote or my thoughts if I could get that candy that you all were passing around down here. >> Thank you, Mr. Hussbett. Here you go. Jennifer Lane and then Ben Hutash. Hutash, I'm sorry if I mispronounced that Ben, where is Ben ? >> This is just a short one because I got most of what I had to say-- said before. But I do believe that as long as we're talking about the subject of researching past email and so forth that there's really a lot more that if it isn 't uncovered now, it will be later and maybe regretted the decisions that are made tonight if you don't wait. Unfortunately, you voted already but we ask you to withdraw that and to really do this right and to stop using the same premises over and over and over that don't have a factual basis to them such as that number one that we will really have 70%, number two that 70% actually represents something that somebody wants other than a talking point and that number three that there is no expertise that could be helpful. Thanks. >> Thank you. Ben and then Marshall Smith. Oh, there you are. Got a couple pages I wanted to hone in on here. All right, thank you. I'm Ben Hattash, 925 Sierra Drive, Denton, Texas. So this is all the information that the citizens have access to about the pricing of these plans. We have no way of knowing how close it approaches the budget and if we're at risk of runovers from delays or anything and I think it's kind of ridiculous to expect us to sign a contract when we don't know what we're signing. But to the point, I'm here to speak on behalf of my fellow taxpayers of the City of Denton and to praise my councilwoman for standing up against this foolishness. The taxpayers of the City of Denton were informed by Phil Williams, the general manager of Denton municipal electric, the only general manager in the City of Denton and the City of Denton's highest paid employee that originally this measure was only to operate two to three hours a day to fill in the shortfalls from West Texas green energy. Phil Williams himself said that he could build a better 100 % renewable plan than Georgetown. Why hasn't he? Instead he brings forth this plan to put the taxpayers of the City of Denton in debt to the tune of $300 million backed up by such shenanigans as SB 776. I'm still trying to figure out who paid for all the lobby ists to pass SB 776 but I kind of wonder if there's a trade that happened where the city chose not to fight HB 40 in lieu of this. To inform those of you on the City Council who are not made aware of the ramifications of SB 776, what this does is to allow Denton municipal electric to form a deal with ERCOT and Encore to build a high voltage direct current interconnection system that will allow this scheme to transmit the power that is subsidized by the taxpayers of the City of Denton well beyond the borders of the city limits and even well beyond the borders of the state. How much are the taxpayers of the City of Denton expected to subsidize the customers of other states? That's my question. And again, when we're deprived of certain forms of information, our eyes sometimes straight at that which we can find. Thank you. Thank you, Ben. Marshall Smith and then Carol Soph. Oh, I'm sorry, I did see you. Thank you, Marshall. Carol Soph. Carol Soph, 1620 Victoria, Denton. When the gas plant was first proposed last fall, the public asked many questions concerning the cost, environmental impacts from its emissions and how over a 30-year period the plant would pay off its debt. After a lengthy public meeting, these questions were not satisfactorily answered. Other questions came up about the cost of building our own clean energy plant such as a solar or wind farm to supply clean energy at peak times when needed the most instead of using a gas plant. The Brattle Group was employed to answer these questions and under the assurance of the city manager compare over a 30-year timeframe what our options would be. The report was incomplete. It only addressed the investment of the gas plant and only over a 20-year period. Thus, the council had no information to base a decision on whether a clean energy source or a gas plant would be a better choice over a 30-year period. Basically, it was a one-sided study. The monetary investment and environmental evaluation of a solar farm over 30 years would tell us that there would be zero environmental impact and after producing enough energy to pay for itself, produce energy for no cost, offsetting costs of backup from the grid. I can tell you this because that is how our solar panels have worked for nine years with no fuel costs or upkeep. As rates go higher, our panels reimburse us quicker and we will have 35 to 40 percent of our energy for free. We pay a green sense rate for the remainder of our electricity cost receiving 100 percent clean energy. An expert in renewable energy could answer the questions you have in much greater detail. You are doing a disservice to the public if you vote to purchase Wasella gas generators without evaluating the full scope of the project, comparing it to a renewable source over 30 years. We, the public, asked for this and it wasn't done. By comparing and doing the math, you will find the gas plant is not fiscal or environmentally sustainable. It's not the way to go. I have here five years of data of what we paid for our electricity before we got solar panels and five years of data after we got our solar panels . It's broken down monthly and daily. I received this from the DME. This is what the Brattle Group could have used to show how renewable energy could be much better than a gas plant, but they didn't ask for it. The DME has all of our information. Ask them for it. Thank you. Ed Soph and then Cindy Spoon. Good evening and thanks for your patience. I'm Ed Soph, 1620 Victoria Drive in Denton. The question I have is that I wonder if initially you folks would have passed the renewable Denton plan on the basis of the Brattle Group if you had read these emails that have been recently released. If you would have had second thoughts back then, you should certainly have second thoughts now about spending $265 million for the Denton Energy Center. The emails reveal that the process was flawed and that the Brattle Group report is neither objective, independent, or comprehensive. As my wife pointed out, a 30-year comparison of alternative energy technologies and the Quick Start plan was requested by the public, given to George Campbell, and sent supposedly to the Brattle Group. I'm not blaming Mr. Campbell. I'm not using him as a scapegoat because it's obvious that the Brattle Group simply disregarded the information that we sent. That is seen in some of the emails that were released. I ask that in the interests of the public good and the fiscal responsibility of the city that you postpone your decision tonight on this until there's been full disclosure, until we can do this with a good conscience. I couldn't, not at this point, and that we have an equitable assessment of renewable energy utilization over the previously disregarded 30-year timeframe. Thank you very much. Thank you. Cindy Spoon. Okay. Cindy Spoon, 2210 Westwood. I'm in opposition to this ordinance. I think we should not move forward with the proposed budget . I think we should not move forward with the proposed budget . I think we should not move forward with the proposed budget . I think we should not move forward with the proposed budget . I think we should not move forward with the proposed budget . I think we should not move forward with the proposed budget . I think we should not move forward with the proposed budget . I think we should not move forward with the proposed budget . I think we should not move forward with the proposed budget . I think we should not move forward with the proposed budget . I think we should not move forward with the proposed budget . 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That is what this plan does. We have to make real progress. We cannot just keep slowing the rate of moving backwards. That is it. Thank you. You have six seconds. Another thing is it is really disappointing to hear everyone come up here and be like, I know you are not going to listen or I know you are not going to change my mind or I just wasted my time. It is really disheartening to see Zach Youngblood do all that research and present stuff and there is no questions. Nobody wants to know anything. I am very, very sympathetic if you are tired. I took the GRE today. I am very, very tired. But like, then postpone this until we can have a meaningful discussion and you can care what people are saying because it feels bad for us to be like, I don't care but here is my three minutes. Thank you. Thank you. All right. We don't have any more that are wishing to speak on this agenda item. Oh, no. This is F.E.I. We have a couple more. Shane Wallen. Shane here. Oh, yep. And then up will be Tony Roybal. Shane Wallen, 2708 Frontier Drive, Denton, Texas. Like Kevin and Sarah and a couple of other people said, I want to thank you guys for doing what you guys do. I don't know, maybe my wife will say something about this but I hope my name is up there one day and I can do service for the city. Thank you to DME staff as well for -- Shane, no. For the hard work. I want to speak in support of this plan to be -- I recently moved to Denton. My house is brand new as of November, I guess. And, you know, the City Council passing regulations on, you know, the types of homes that are built and the environmental -- you know, the efficiency standards and DME offering the programs for older homes, a great part of, I think, a global picture of being stewards of the environment and energy efficiency. And I think RDP is a giant leap in the same direction for reducing emissions while also being stewards to Texas market and global environment and reducing emissions and keeping rates down for citizens of Denton. So I just wanted to say thank you and speak out in support of that. >> Councilmember Gary, is there a question for the speaker? >> Yes, I do have questions for the speaker. Okay, Mr. Wallin, thanks for coming up. It's really late. Appreciate it. Just full disclosure, are you an employee of DME? >> I have the honor of living here and working for the city , yes. >> Okay. And were you a part of the evaluation team that had to do with selecting the engines? >> Yes, I was. >> Okay. Thank you. >> I didn't get any extra money or anything like that. So -- >> Thank you. I appreciate that. >> Whatever the little comments are, but -- >> You bet. >> You guys can search all my -- >> I didn't want to impugn anybody's reputation or anything . I'm just trying to make everyone on the same page because I know things and then other people should know who people are. I know who people are here. That's all. >> And Councilmember Gary, I appreciate that, but I think -- and I totally support that. Unfortunately, I think that there's states of mind that will assume the worst in some of those statements, and I can't control that, neither can you, but I appreciate you, you know, sharing with us. Thank you. >> I understand. >> I hear you, and I'm not trying to stir anything up. I just really do like for people to -- everybody to be on the same page in terms of what's going on. I think it's helpful and not to be crappy or anything. I'm just trying to -- let's open it up. That's it. >> Well, my response wasn't to dispute that. Thank you. The next speaker will be Tony Robel. >> Hi, I'm Tony Robel. I live at 911 Smokehouse Circle, and I, too, am an employee of DME, but I represent myself, not DME. Prior to working at DME, I lived in Austin and worked at E on Climate and Renewables, a completely renewable energy company. And so I know how important engines like this is to a renewable portfolio, and so I support this plan. And I mainly wanted to come down here because since I do work at DME, I've heard a lot of people I work with be kind of criticized and called incompetent and say that they're corrupt and stuff like that. Everybody I've worked with, DME is one of the places I've been most proud of that they are open and honest and that they are highly intelligent people. I just want to let that be known. >> Thank you. Appreciate that. I don't believe I have any more wishing to speak on this item. We do have a couple of cards. Larry Beck in opposition. Topher Jones in opposition. And Candice Bernd in opposition. Is that how you pronounce that? Okay. Thank you. Okay. Councilmember Gregory. >> Thank you, Mayor. I move approval of item 6F. >> Councilmember Hawkins. >> I second. >> All right. We have a motion. I'm sorry. Councilmember. >> I'm sorry. >> Mayor, can I clarify? Mr. Williams indicated that there were two issues with regard to the contract. So if I could clarify those at this point in time, the date on the contract would change because this item was delayed. So the proper date would be September 20th. And additionally, there was a negotiation on a term of the contract to make the first payment due October 3rd. >> Okay. >> Then I move approval of the item 6F with the changes in the contract as indicated by the city attorney. >> Councilmember Hawkins. >> I second with the changes. >> We have a motion and a second. I just want to share that I will republish the same comment I did before. But I, as mayor, will be signing this contract as a ministerial act because as mayor that's what I will do even though I may be voting against it. I don't like to say I want to put this on the record very much, but I just want to make sure that everybody understands that and also that that's on the record. I do want to say and echo the sentiments about the work that has been put into this plan. I believe everybody's pursued it earnestly and diligently with the best interest of denting in mind. I appreciate the citizens coming out because I believe that they have the best interest of denting in mind as well. And it just goes to show that we can see things differently . And that's what this republic is about. So thank you, Phil, and your staff for that even though sometimes I may see it differently. In no way does that mean that I think that that work was less than stellar and you're coming forth with what you best know is the plan for dent ing. So I do appreciate that. So we have a motion and a second for agenda item 6F. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries four to three. How long have we been going for without a break? Two. Yeah, let's take a break. We'll go on to agenda item 6G. Let's take about a 10 minute break. Thank you. Council of the City of Denton, Texas Home Rule Municipal Corporation providing for authorizing the execution by the city manager is designee of the engineering procurement construction agreement for the construction of electrical power generation facility. Thank you, Mayor Phil Williams. Our general manager, DME, will address this item. Thank you, city manager, mayor, and council. This item before you is for the design build contract for the Energy Center. I'd quickly go through the evaluation criteria, the respondents, post contract and recommendation. Just a quick comment about the design build procurement method. We have found research on this has shown that this designed build is compared to a design bid build strategy is faster as far as being able to work through the process of being on with the construction of a project. The design build firm takes all the procurement and price risk instead of the city. So it mitigates risk with the project. It's less expensive approach. It's found to be 6% cheaper. There's more certainty to the city. It creates an environment where there's less opportunity for change orders. The designer and contractor are the same entity, so it also eliminates issues of the design firm and the contractor building firm pointing fingers at each other if there's an issue later on after the build. The evaluation criteria for these firms was their ability to meet project schedule, their understanding of the project, experience of the firm, and experience of key personnel. We had three respondents. Burns and McDonald Engineering was the top respondent. They're one of the top firms in the country. The design build revenue in 2015 was over a billion dollars . They had built over 8,500 megawatts of power generation since 2000, and they've designed build over 1,000 megawatts of this type of generation. No other respondent had built more than 50 megawatts of this type of generation, so they stood out. They've certainly had experience with a number of these projects in the Midwest. Stac is South Texas Electric Co-op. GUES is Greenville Electric in Greenville, Texas, the closest one to here. Modesta Irrigation District is in California, and Lee County in New Mexico, and the list goes on. So certainly they have the experience and have shown a proven performance record of being able to design and build these type of projects in a timely manner. This contract is for 12 engines at one site. We're talking about July 1st, plan operational date. There are penalties if they delay construction if they're not on a timely basis. There are incentives for them for early completion. Tonight, Council issues notice to proceed. They would immediately begin to design efforts and then get things in line to begin a January 1st, 2017 construction testing and commissioning starting in March and become operational in July. Staff recommends approval to propose design-build contract, Burns-McDonald. Again, I would state that this contract, along with the land, along with the Warzilla contracts, the total of these contracts generate a significant portion of the total project and puts us in place where the project comes in as originally proposed at $225 million. Any questions? Any questions for staff before public comment? Yes, Councilmember Riggs. On the list of projects, all the ones that they built, were those all Warzilla engines similar to the -- all similar to the exact same thing? Thank you. Any other questions? All right. Thank you, Phil. Appreciate it. Ken Gold and then I think Matthew left. Matthew Messer, he left, did he not? Yeah, he -- okay. So then after Mr. Gold will be Michael Hinnon. Michael Hinnon, 25-12, Natchez Trace, here in town. I'll be very brief. I don't have anything to add other than just to restate once again my concerns with the integrity of the process. There's no smoking gun, but there's lots of smoke. And I think it's worthy of a little investigation into the procedures here. And I've said it all already. And there's another item. I'm on the list. You can take me off. I'm your husband. Okay. All right. Mr. Hinnon and then after Mr. Hinnon is Jodi Ismert. Mayor, I'll pass. Okay. Jodi Ismert. Jodi Ismert, 819 Anna Street. I'm sure you guys are starting to memorize this address. Anyhow, okay, so it appears that this company only uses W artzilla. And this was also another situation where this is the only company that was really contacted or looked at. So again, I mean, that's another conflict. I consider that to be a conflict. Moving down the same vein, essentially it was also brought to citizens' attention that the bonds are now shifted. Many of the bonds that are shifted into general obligation bonds suddenly. So it seems like we -- that -- if it was general obligation bonds, citizens should have taken this to a vote. But you guys chose to put it -- I can't -- I'm sorry. I'm really tired. You guys chose to use a different form of bonds, essentially, which were citizens were not allowed to vote on this massive expense. And now all of a sudden we are seeing bonds being shifted to general obligation bonds. So along the same vein, I mean, it just seems like the citizens have been cut out completely again. In addition to that, the investment company, apparently, that you're using to deal with the bonds has 46 regulatory issues, 20 of which went to arbitration. I mean, it just seems like there's a pattern here. You know, I mean, there are really bad decisions being made . I can't -- who does that? I mean, who uses an investment bank that has that many regulatory issues? That's crazy. Anyhow, so there's a pattern again. The company you're going with to build this only has dealt with Wurzilla. It's pretty much the only company that has been looked at at all. Bonds have moved into general obligation bonds. Citizens should have gotten a vote since that's the case, but we didn't because they were shifted after the vote. And the investment companies that's handling the bonds is pretty much corrupt. They have 46 regulatory issues with 20 that went to arbit ration. So good job. Thanks. Thank you. Zach Youngblood and then Deb Armator. Zach Youngblood, 836 Hawes Drive, Copper Canyon. I said I would come back to this slide during this discussion. I'd like you all to note this figure, 4.8 pounds per hour of VOCs per engine for the Wurzilla 18V50SG. And I will say that I have this source, and I also have three other sources with the variance anywhere between 4.6 and 5 pounds per hour of VOCs from those engines. I also have here the air permit, the original air permit for the Denton Energy Center, sent in on September 11, 2015, written by Mary Hounder Davis at Burns McDonald, which -- I know this may be technical, so feel free to ask any questions you may have. Where we have a claimed VOC emissions rate of 2.07 pounds per hour and a NOx rate of 1.33 pounds per hour, given our annual operations time of 38,400 hours for all engines, that would give us 50 tons per year of NOx and 92 tons per year of VOCs. However, somehow with this significant 40% drop -- or 60% drop of VOCs, 50% of NOx, we end up sitting just below the non-attainment threshold, which would have led to public comment and an air study, and it would not have been issued as a permit by rule. Now, I've been told that there are VOC controls, but that is not described in the project description, which discusses only the selective catalytic reduction via ammonia, reducing NOx to nitrogen, N2, and water, H2O. So I'm just saying, I mean, I spoke to TCEQ about this a few months ago, and they really did wonder why somebody would do that, and I said, you know, me too. And then I saw this contract for the build. So you're proposing to pay Burns-McDonald somewhere on the order of $100 million? Okay. I'll see you folks in the funding papers. Enjoy your vote. Good night. We have a question. Yes. Councilmember Briggs. So it was technical. It's very technical. Is there -- can you go back and -- can you explain what you 're saying again slowly, like as far as the emissions and the permit? Like, is there an issue? Okay. So the typical way that we look at NACS pollutants, we find our emission rate for our source, which would be the entire plant, and we have an hourly emission rate, and then typically we would view it on 8,760 hours for the full operation. Who is "we" you're referring to? When you say "typically we " would view it as. I mean, are you saying -- That's how pollution control engineering works. And that's what your field is? I have studied it at a graduate level. Okay. I'm just trying to understand from what perspective we're coming in. That's fine. Yeah. Sure. I also spent six months working at TCEQ, so I'm pretty familiar with this whole thing. So we have that, and -- what was your other question, Councilwoman? So we have emissions limits on a ton per year basis for our NACS pollutants, and those are actually extremely high for everything except for VOCs and NOCs within the non-attainment area. If either of those pollutants from a new source, it will be categorized as a major source if either of those pollutants is at a level of 50 tons per year or more. Okay. And so the engines that we're using, do they match the permit? Yes, ma'am. They are Martilla 18V50SGs. The emissions that they put out, do they match what we've been permitted for? Not in any other source that I have seen. Okay. That's -- thank you. You're welcome. Any other questions? Thank you. Appreciate it. Good night. Deb Armator and then Lily Hutzpeth. Thank you to Zach Youngblood, who's no longer here. It's always nice to be reminded of these facts that he has found a while ago, knew for quite some time and told to Councilwoman Briggs. And anyway, she reported them and, you know, none of you seem to be very concerned and nobody seemed to be concerned now except the people -- the few of you who are already voting against this. I wanted to note that there was a kind of unusual sign-in process today, the card filling out process. I guess there were no cards left or something. And there was a table and it was very nice. We were asked, you know, which item are you here to speak on? And we mentioned that. And then a staff member filled out our names and gave them to you. And I didn't realize until, I don't know, a few items ago, hey, wait a sec. We were never asked, are you for or against? We were never asked. When we fill out these cards, we check yes or no. Are you opposed or in favor? We were never asked when we signed in. And I kind of chuckled to myself and thought, well, that's pretty consistent because we don't get to vote on this either. It doesn't matter. We're just here to kind of state what we want to say for the record. I just wanted to say, you know, Burns and McDonald's, same situation as with Wartzilla. As Councilwoman Briggs suggested in her question, they are linked together, Wartzilla and Burns and McDonald 's. And the discussions with and about Burns and McDonald's go all the way back to 2014, which is really a problem, especially when you consider that they're the most, you know, so we have Wartzilla, the most expensive and most polluting, and Burns and McDonald's, the most expensive. So this business about not taking bids and not looking into all the possibilities, even if you don't care about the environment, this is costing us so much money. It's bad business, bad, bad business. Yeah. I also wanted to say that this, well, you know, you know, I have just 45 seconds left. I'll say my final remark from the last item I'm going to talk on. So anyway, that's that. Thank you. Mr. Husbeth and Ben Hattish. No. Okay. Ben, you're up. It's been here. Ben's not here. Okay. Marshall Smith, I don't believe is here. Cindy Spoon. Okay. All right. Those are the names we have wishing to speak. Oh, I'm sorry. Who's coming? Is that Ben? Okay. All right. I have a couple of cards. Larry Back, opposition. Oh, this is the right one. Oh, yeah, but he said he didn't. Ben, did you not want to speak? Okay. All right. I just want to give you an opportunity. Candice Byrne and Tofer, Candice Byrne in opposition, Tofer Jones in opposition. Those are the only cards that I have on rest on those items on 6G. Councilmember Hawkins. Mayor, I move approval of item 6G. Mayor Pro Tem. Second. All right. Thank you. I do have one question for staff and it's regarding the emissions in the air permit. And I believe I've asked you this, I don't want to say in private, but in just passing conversation. What would be the result or number one, what would be the result? And number two, do we have a plan? If once it seems like these things are being approved and they're going to get built, what happens if they exceed the emissions standard for our permit? In other words, something happens, they don't perform according to whatever specs they've sold it on, which we have other remedies potentially. What happens with the air permit? I mean, what are our options? So there are some of the emission requirements that there are incentives for the company, some there are penalties for them. There are some of the emissions that are must meet, and if they don't meet those, they're in void of the contract. They would be a contract violation that we would be able to sue over. But their remedy really is initially to tune the engine to make it to where it will meet the emissions requirements. If not, then replace the engine, and if they can't, then there would have to be some type of settlement. I mean, whatever damages we had, we would be able to take to them. So it sounds like if, for example, you got all 12 running, and I'm assuming, are these self-reporting emissions reports or are these periodic reports that are mandatory for our permit? So after the installation, they'll be testing. Then there'll be an independent party brought in to test the units for the emissions requirements. Once that independent review is done, then that determines the emissions requirements. You have to do that testing again every three years. We would report each year, such as if you tested your vehicle to see what the miles per gallon was, then you'd report on an annual basis how many miles you drove, and that would be a mere calculation of how many gallons you used. Same thing for emissions. We'd test initially, see what the emissions rate was. That rate times production hours would equal how much the emissions are per year. Every three years, we retest the units to see what the emission level is by an independent test. Okay. All right. Thank you. I'm sorry, Councilmember Hawkins, you made a motion, and we got a second by Mayor Pro Tem, Madam City Attorney. Just to clarify, the date on this contract also needs to reflect today's date, which I think is a rollover to September 21st. So that can be included in the motion, please. I include today's date, please. I second that. Okay. All right. We have a motion and a second. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries four to three. Next agenda item is 6H, considered option of ordinance of the City of Texas, amending the fiscal year 2015-2016 budget and annual program of services. And it's my understanding that this agenda item is, we've had some, Minister of State Manager, if you could explain. This item has continued from the last meeting, is the reason it's here. Yes. As our city attorney indicated in some of the changes from the Watsilla contract, they've extended the date to October 3rd, in which we need to make initial payment. That puts that into next fiscal year. There's really no need for this particular budget amendment at this point in time. So really, there's no action to be taken on this particular item. Is that my understanding? The item was continued and there was a motion and a second on it, so if the motioner and the seconder could withdraw that and you can allow this then to die and the matter is taken care of in the Watsilla contract. Before I do that, before I recognize anybody who may do that, we do have some people wishing to speak on this issue . So I'm going to call your name and come down and state your name and address and your time will begin. You've heard the explanation that this item is not really an action item for today, but you've signed up and I wanted to give you an opportunity to share with us. Mr. Gold, you're okay. Matthew Messer has left. Michael Hinnan. All right, thank you. Jody Ismert. All right. Deb Armitter. [inaudible] I wanted to thank the three of you who've all for very different reasons have voted not even necessarily because you disagreed with something, but because your questions were not all answered. I have so much respect for that I can't even tell you and so you all should be proud that this has been recorded and is down for posterity. I wanted to, I was thinking about the Brattle payment and the fact that Brattle ended up getting paid 25% more than y 'all had voted to allow George Campbell to spend on. And you had voted on an ordinance, which is a law that says that the city manager can spend up to such and such amount, I think 150,000, maybe 148,000, I forget what it was. Say 150,000 and then you added to that, I don't know, around 50,000, somewhere between 43,000 and 50,000 anyway. And so I just grabbed on my way out of the house, I grabbed a dictionary, I was looking for a better one, but the only one I could find was one of my kids' ones, it just says a student's dictionary. And I looked up ordinance to see what it says about ordinance and it says it's a local law and edict or decree, a prescribed practice or usage. It doesn't say recommended. And I know you all know what an ordinance means, but I felt that I just needed to let you know an ordinance is a law. And so if you make a law that says the city manager can spend up to this amount and you want to spend more and he wants to spend more, then that needs to go back to council. And so that seems to me that a law has been broken and it shouldn't make a difference, the fact that the person who did that is no longer here. This is your work you have to do and you should want it to look really good on paper and to be able to say proudly that no laws were broken. Anyway, just by coincidence I found in this dictionary, turns out this is a dictionary that was donated by the Dent on Morning Rotary Club to my daughter, probably to everyone in her class. And it says here, I'd never seen this before, at the beginning it says, and I'm not a member of the Rotary Clubs , but it says at the beginning, there's a little sticker here, it says the four-way test of the things we think, say or do. One, is it the truth? Well, does this pass the four-way test? I think that y'all have voted on things that are not true. Is it fair to all concerned? Will it build goodwill and friendships? Not with the citizens. Will it be beneficial to all concerned? No. So I think that those of you who voted yes, you voted yes to something that fails. Okay, thank you. Anyway, so, anyway, thanks to those of you who voted yes. Mr. Willie Hespeth. My name is Willie Hespeth, I live at 623 Newton. I think I still live there. I don't have to check my wife first. I'll be out this late. Mayor, how is this different? And Councilman, this ability to speak to something that you 've already stated is not going to be an issue. How is this different than the other meeting when you didn 't allow me to speak to something that you said wasn't going to be an issue? I'm researching with the state or whoever controls these meetings to see if you acted appropriately not letting me speak when it was on the agenda. Tonight gives an example of when you now say that you can speak when something is not going to be an issue. I would like to know which way is it going to be so that in the future when something happens, again like this, I'll know whether or not I get to speak. But it's going to be based on what are the rules. What is the rules for that procedure happening? And I think I was right. It's on the agenda. I should be able to speak to it. You can ignore it like you do me most of the time. Just give me my four minutes and you'll be done with it. When you deny me justice, that reminds me of the way I was treated when I was a young boy and the way the citizens treated me when I came back from Vietnam. And I don't like it. I don't think it's right. So that's why I comment on that. Thank you. Councilmember see, let me read these cards. Not wishing to speak. Topler Jones, opposition. Candice burned opposition. And I believe that's those the only ones. Councilmember Gregory. I withdraw the motion. Okay. Second needs to do that too. Oh, the motion for the yeah. I'll second. All right. So we have a we're drawing the motion for agenda item H and we have a second. So we vote on the no no he's just withdrawn. So it's no action. If you'll just take no action, then the item will fail, which is where it needs to go. Okay. No motion. No second item fails. We'll move on to agenda item seven, which are public hearing seven a hold a public hearing considered option of an ordinance granting approval and accordance with Chapter 26 of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Code of the non park use of part of North Lakes Park for the purpose of installing maintaining a subsurface drain pipe and outfall for the North Lake Shopping Center. I will go ahead. I'm sorry. Thank you, Mayor. I ask Jim Mays our superintendent of planning and parking racks to address this item. I will go ahead and open the public hearing. I appreciate the opportunity to address Council regarding this issue. I know takes parts of wildlife, chapter 26 provides that any public land that's designated for uses a park when it's not going to be used for a part purpose. As to go through a play public hearing. As long as the Council finds that notice and hearing that there's not a feasible or proven alternative that the project includes all reasonable planning so as to minimize harm to the park resulting for such use, and that the all additional areas around the improvement be returned to prior condition. Once the improvement has been installed. Also, the hearing has to be advertised for a period of 30 days in advance, and newspaper of general circulation. Today's case is that North Lake Shopping Center requested to obtain a subsurface easement from their development to the outflow of concrete 225 feet south of the M 16 a. This request represents of the combined area of 0.04 six acres and body break pond in North Lakes Park. The purpose of this easement is to ensure direct drainage to pecan Creek. background this year consists of 2000 square foot area to say that 0.46 acres, the drainage easements will be subsur face and not impacted park Lincoln property. Company commercial will pay $1 44 per square foot or $2,820 for the easement. During the course of the installation the easement there will be three trees will be impacted a total of 28 cal per inches will be impacted Lincoln property commercial will pay $3,500 into the treatment mitigation fund for removal these trees. This item was approved by the park board on September 12 of this year with a vote of five to zero. Here we show an arrow overview, showing the dam here at Bonnie break part body break pond in North Lakes Park, it's at the intersection of Bonnie break and, and university. And I note the natural resource conservation service, which regulates both of these high hazard flood control dams has reviewed this request and has concurred that this is the most favorable connection for the outflow from the this North Lakes Park Center, this area that surrounds the old billetter Ford, and the old catfish King runs up here adjacent to the goodwill property and over here behind, you know behavioral health of the direct connection of the concrete carries storm water and runoff away from the dam, it was the parks contention that we need to make sure that that the dam was reviewed by in our CS USDA, and that all the all of the intricacies of this transaction had been reviewed as such. Here's an overview of what the proposition is. Here we show the proposed 21 inch concrete pipe going to a headwall that ultimately spills out into concrete, excuse me, double click action was late. Here's a superimposed view of the development of North Lake of North Lake shopping center, and in red it shows the area that will be impacted at 2000 square feet. This is a detailed view of the plan these will pipe out flow, and all of the pertinences will be maintained by Lincoln property commercial and subsequent owners or science, as time goes by. For the intent of the ordinance. Here's a legal survey of the item that we're discussing. The applicant is here. Mr. Joe McCoy, if we have any technical questions. And also, I don't know if it's the principles, but if there are any questions during the course of the hearing. One of us can, you may can address those as such. Have you come. So you completed staff presentation, because we have some questions. Yes, customer breaks. So just to the tree. The three trees you mentioned were hack berries all three of them, three hat berries 112 inch one six inch one 10 inch. Okay. And so will the, will the drainage will it be concrete or will it be natural underground. I'm sorry. You finished. It'll be an underground subsurface 21 inch reinforced concrete pipe. Okay, so then it'll be the grass will be on top, you know, just regular. Basically, just connects the two dots, all the flood water all the drainage water coming off that large retail space will go under the park a little 2000 square foot easement and daylight right into the concrete away from our damn. Can I follow up. Sure. So, will there be any environmental issues without water going straight into the, to the pond. All those have been reviewed by USDA, and in our CS natural resource conservation service, our internal engineering. Everything. If there was a, an I left to dot or T left across. We haven't seen. Right. So I guess I'm assuming that the business that's going there isn't going to produce anything harmful that can drain off into the, I can let Mr. Okay. So, good morning, I guess at this point, again, thanks to the mayor and the council members answer your question. The drainage flow rates of the matter runoff will be mitigated through our detention facility. So the, the precondition flows will be matching will be released from the site and post condition. And then we also have several items in place for water quality treatment. Okay. Yeah, I was just concerned about the water and the because people fish and there's stuff in there. Thank you, Councilmember Gregory, can you go back one more slide to that area photograph. One there right there. And would you move the cursor up for the catfish king was back behind to the north of there where that clump of trees is this. Yeah. Those going away. Some of those are going to be going away. Okay, I object to the whole project because back when I was about five or six years old. Mrs. Briscoe on that property, and she would let my brother and I go out there and go fishing. And where those trees are now that used to be a tank, and we would go and that's where I caught my very first fish. And I just find this completely unacceptable for you to take away that memory of mine. This town is changing. This is it. We've gone past everything I can. Who would do that? Who's crazy enough to take away my fishing tank. Nevermind. Is there some chocolate over there? Is there some chocolate over there for Councilmember Gregory? This is a public hearing. We have opened the public hearing . Staff, you're here. Mr. applicant, if you want to speak or we've got some people wishing to speak. You just want to wait to see if there's any questions. Be happy to answer any questions. Any questions for the applicant? Seeing none. All right. Thank you. Mr. Willie Hutspeth, item 7A. This is a public hearing. Anybody wishing to speak, please come down, state your name and address and your time will begin. Anybody wishing to speak on this public hearing? Agenda item 7A. You want to speak on agenda item 7A? Yes. All right. Come on down, state your name and address. My name is Ben Hutash. I live at 925 Sierra Drive. I've had this long-term fantasy. I think I've emailed everyone about it of having a wood chip stockpile at North Lakes Park where citizens could gather wood chips for free self-loading and put them in their gardens or walking trails and stuff. I think these three trees we're losing might be an excellent time to start that project. Okay. That's my feelings. Thank you. All right. Thank you. This is a public hearing. Anybody else wishing to speak? One more time. We will now close the public hearing. Council Member Begher i. Move to approve item A. Mayor Pro Tem. Second. We have a motion to second. 7A. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries. 7-0. Agenda item 7B. Hold a public hearing and consider adoption of an ordinance of the City of Denton regarding a rezoning request from Plan Development 138 PD 38 District to Regional Center Commercial Neighborhood. Thank you, Mayor. Julie Wyatt, our senior planner, will address this item. Good evening. All right. The request before you is Z-16-9 Ranchview Specialty Hospital. The request is to consider a rezoning from Plan Development 138 Hunter Ranch District to Regional Center Commercial Neighborhood on approximately three acres. The subject property is located on I-35W, approximately 710 feet north of Crawford Road. And as you can see, the property right here, it's got the frontage on I-35W. And the intent of the request, the applicant is pursuing it in order to develop the site with a specialty hospital as well as some medical offices. A little background on the property. The current zoning is PD 138. That was approved in 1991. A detailed plan for the site was never approved. And most of the PD has now been taken in with the Hunter Ranch MPC. So this is actually the last tract of PD 138. It remains undeveloped. And one more thing I want to point out, the subject property that they want to develop actually includes this property as well as the property to the south and actually the parcel that was considered for annexation earlier this evening. So the adjacent property here is RCCN. As I said, we've got Hunter Ranch in this area and then Country Lakes West is in this location. Just to let you know what the previous boundaries of Hunter Ranch were, this was the original Hunter Ranch that was approved. And as you can see, our subject property is down here in the bottom. The future land use designation of the property is low density residential. And that doesn't meet the future land use for RCCN. So when that happens, staff takes a little closer look at the request, the future land use to make a determination to make a recommendation. In this case, we took that closer look and we looked through the comp plan and we looked at the preferred growth concept. This was actually a map that was prepared that actually informed part of our future land use map. And the purpose of this was to determine where growth should go. And through our public hearings, they determined we want a compact, purposeful growth clustered around distinct locations. Our subject property is down in this area. And as you can see, there's nearby moderate density, which includes moderate density housing as well as employment uses and commercial uses. So that kind of is centered on that I-35 Crawford intersection right there. So considerations that staff looked at when we analyzed this request is we've got a lot of development, a proposed development in this area. Future residential development of ropes and ranch, you have Hunter Ranch, NPC, Country Lakes. That's all going to induce demand for more retail and services in this location. The proposed RCCN is a logical extension of the adjacent R CCN. And by rezoning to that designation, we'll provide consistency in regulations regarding the development of the site. Although the RCCN doesn't conform to the future land use map, it is consistent with the future growth concept. And we feel it's appropriate in this location given the visibility and the access to I-35 and Crawford Road, which is an arterial. We also determined that commercial and office development should be clustered in areas of greater access and distinct centers, such as the subject property. So you would have your intense commercial development in this location at the intersection within it transitioning to a lower density or a different type of development. Public notification was sent out. We've received no notices back. The Planning and Zoning Commission did recommend approval of this request. And based upon the consideration, staff also recommends approval of this request. And I'll stand for any questions. I think I opened the public hearing, but I'm going to open it again because my mind is literally gone. Councilmember Hawkins. Yeah, and Julie, the original plan for this piece of property was medical facilities and just there wasn't a detailed plan approved. That's right. It was supposed to be an industrial center with the ancillary uses like medical or retail commercial uses. Cool. Thanks. Sure. Any other questions for staff before we take public comment ? All right. Thank you. We've got a card wishing to speak, Mr. Willie Husspeth. This is a public hearing. Anybody else wishing to speak? This is a public hearing. Anybody wishing to speak on this agenda item? All right. Seeing none, we will now close the public hearing on agenda item 7B. Councilmember Begarry. Well, since I didn't hear Councilmember Gregory say that he shot BB guns on that property when he was a little boy, I'm going to move to adopt. All right. Councilmember Wasney. I second. You know what? I'm the chair. I don't have to recognize you . Councilmember Gregory. I have no history on that property. All right. Though down the road, I did shoot a raccoon once. All right. Now you're a wildlife killer. Mr. Solomon, he was a county commissioner. He let us go out and camp on his property. All right. We have a motion and a second. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 7-0. We'll move on to agenda item 7C. Hold a public hearing and consider adoption of ordinance of the City of Denton, Texas regarding a rezoning request of approximately 80.49 acres of land from neighborhood residential 2 NR2 district and a neighborhood residential mixed use NRMU district to a community mixed use general CM G. And I will now open the public hearing. Thank you, Mayor. Haley Zagurski, our assistant planner, will provide the staff presentation. All right. So this is case Z1610, Teasley Lane High School edition. So as you said, we're going to consider adoption of an ordinance regarding a rezoning request on approximately 80. 5 acres from a mix of zonings, neighborhood residential 2, neighborhood residential mixed use, community mixed use general, as well as an initial zoning of 1.67 acres that are currently designated rural residential to a new zoning of community mixed use general. The property is located on the east side of Teasley Lane, approximately 825 feet south of Montecito Drive. It consists of three parcels, all of which are owned by Denton ISD. Just a more recent aerial of the property. You can see it's currently developed as Geyer High School. Surrounding uses are rural residential. There's a lot of single family development going on in the area. There is a small industrial development across Teasley Lane from them. So currently the property, the three parcels have a mix of zonings assigned to them. The primary high school campus is located in an R2 zoning district. A portion of the property was rezoned in 2008 to NRMU, but the development that was intended there never occurred. And then a portion of it was just recently annexed and was given the RD5X designation. So their proposal would be to consolidate all three parcels under one zoning district. The future land use for the area shows this as an area of community mixed use, which allows for predominantly commercial uses, but does allow for complementary residential service and other uses. So the intent of community mixed use is to complement the existing uses in the area, raise design standards, accommodate greater connectivity and mobility, as well as create a sense of place. So the staff's considerations for this were that the CMG district they have proposed is consistent with that future land use designation. This location is in close proximity to many single family neighborhoods that are currently supported by the high schools being there. So their plan to expand the high school campus would just further support those neighborhoods as well as new neighborhoods coming into the area. And it is an easily accessible location for students that would be walking or biking to the campus. I did want to note that private high schools are not permitted in the current zoning districts NR2 and RD5X. However, as a public school, Denton ISD is allowed to develop in any zoning district. What this would do for them, however, would eliminate the nonconformity that currently exists on the portion of the property that is RD5X. There is a minimum lot size of five acres. The portion of it is about one and a half acres, so that currently is nonconforming. So this would eliminate that issue. They are planning to replant these three parcels as one lot , and they could do that with the mix of zoning designations . However, the general regulations for all of those zoning districts would apply to the different pieces of the property, which could complicate development moving forward . This unified designation would consolidate all of their development requirements, streamline the process for them as they continue their expansion in the future. And we do consider it necessary for them to be able to comply with all of the standards to have this unified designation. So this table summarizes the regulations that currently apply to the lot under its three zoning districts, as well as what they would be required to follow if they are rez oned to CMG. So you can see, especially for lot coverage and landscape area requirements, they have a wide range of things that would be required with the current zoning. Moving to CMG would give them a standard across all three parcels. Just some images of the property here. A notification was sent out about this. We received no comments on that. The Planning and Zoning Commission does recommend approval of this request. And staff also recommends approval of the request because it is supported by the surrounding properties and is consistent with the Denton Plan 2030. So I'll stand for any questions. Mayor Pro Tem. Is this your first time to present to Council? It is. Congratulations. Thank you. And you stayed up with us after midnight. Way to go. Great job. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. I was wondering the same thing. Yes, good job for 1243 in the morning. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Briggs. Are there applicants or anybody here that is with this project? Yes, I believe so. I just wanted to say thank you for hanging in there and I'm sorry that you're going to get home after one o'clock. I didn't mean to do the sign-up. Well, anyway, thank you for hanging in to the end. This is a public hearing. Mr. Willie Husbeth, your request to speak. Anybody else wishing to speak? This is a public hearing. Seeing the rush down to the front. One more time. Anybody else wishing to speak on this agenda item 7C? Seeing none, we will close the public hearing. Council Member Begarry. Move to adopt. Mayor Pro Tem. Second. We have a motion and a second. Let's vote, please. Carries 7-0. Well, I guess I should wait till it pops up to call it, huh? That would help, wouldn't it? Call agenda item 7D, hold a public hearing and consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton, Texas regarding approval of a detailed plan of plan development 174 PD 174 district to depict an amenity center on approximately 3.26 acres. Thank you, Mayor. Senior planner, wrap things up this evening. This is a detailed plan approval for Country Lakes North Amenity Center. So the request before you is to consider approval of a detailed plan for a private amenity center on approximately 3.26 acres. The subject property is located north of Crawford Road on the southeast side of John Payne Road, approximately 110 feet northeast of Athens Drive right there. It is within plan development 174. Just a bit of background. PD 174 was created under the 1991 Denton Development Code. At that time, we did have plan developments and there was a staged development process. First, you had the concept plan and then second was the detailed plan. The concept plan for this PD was approved in 1999. The detailed plan for the residential component was approved in 2000. I'll show you a picture of that. So here's the residential component. You see the blue box and the red box. Those two areas were purposefully left out of the detailed plan. They were to come back at a later date. The blue box being a school location and then the red box being the amenity center. So this amenity center has been proposed for this location for quite some time. We'll take a look at the site plan. First, they're proposing a cabana building with restrooms and shade area. It's a masonry building. There are also six-foot wrought iron fences that will secure the pool area as well as the dog park area. There are also some recreational facilities. The purple is playground. The blue is pool. This is a putting green, a bocce ball, and then a play area . There are also other elements, pedestrian elements, associated with this request. The red is the pathways for pedestrian sidewalks or otherwise. You see they have access on John Payne as well as to the neighborhood behind it. So there's that cut through access for pedestrians to make it easier to access the amenity center. They also submitted a landscape plan with the request in order to increase compatibility with the adjacent residential area. They are proposing a line of trees along the back end of the property. They're also proposing significant tree canopy at maturity. The 1991 code has the considerations for approval based upon those and staff's analysis. The detail plan does meet the criteria for approval. We did send out a public notification. We received 12 in opposition and then 19 in favor. P&Z recommends approval of the request and staff recommends approval with the following conditions, that they are all original conditions of the approval and subsequent modifications associated with PD 174 shall remain valid unless specified herein. The detail plan and landscape plan submitted shall guide the development of the site. And the elevations and site details submitted shall guide the development of the cabana building. And I'll stand for any questions. Councilmember Wasney. That's a lot of opposition votes. What were the reasons why? There were and they should have been included in your backup. But there were concerns about security at the pool. There were concerns about whether this was traffic generated, whether it was a public park or private. There were also concerns about HOA dues. Councilmember Briggs. That was my question. Okay. Councilmember Hawkins, you withdraw. All right. This is a public hearing. We have a card. Mr. Wille-Husbeth, would you like to speak? All right. Thank you. This is a public hearing. Anybody else wishing to speak? Not sleep. Boy, that's a-- Anybody else wishing to speak? Please come down and state your name and address and your time will begin. Anybody wishing to speak? All right. Seeing none, we will close the public hearing. Councilmember--oh, we got a couple questions. Councilmember Briggs. So I just have a follow-up question. I don't know if he knows about the--it's the HOA. It was a concern. Was it a concern that it was too high and they couldn't afford it or that they would have to pay it? Like, I'm just-- There were concerns that the HOA dues would be increased because of the additional amenity. Okay. Councilmember--oh, I'm sorry. Councilmember Hawkins. Yeah, thanks. Well, I noticed that too, but in the original plan, the amenity center was gonna be built. It was shown in the concept plan. It was shown in the concept plan, so thank you. Councilmember Gary. Move approval for this item. Councilmember Hawkins. I second. I would have a motion to second. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 7-0. That--we have one more agenda item concluding items. Any concluding items from councilmembers? Councilmember Wasney. Highway 380, it's deadly, and we just had a horrific day the other day. I know that it's TxDOT, however, it's still our city, so I implore city manager and transportation to communicate with TxDOT. They've just gotta do a better job out there in notifying residential neighborhoods when conditions change and people are pulling out that there's adequate notification. I've also had some requests of the traffic lights around K roger and Locust and Elm where the construction is located further east on 380 that the timing of the lights is just really, really not conducive to traffic movement. So if we can put some heat on TxDOT and just--we've gotta figure out, you know, the traffic safety issues out there on West 380. So thank you. And I have a follow-up to that. We need to make it our goal as a city because I believe we 're collecting exaction fees for a signal out at Cindy Lane and Western Center Boulevard. We've tagged Western Center Boulevard to be our major thoroughfare. So I really want to--I'm committed to getting a light there . We've got to get a light there. So I appreciate that, Councilmember Wasney, because that's --you're absolutely right. It's not a good situation. So thank you for that. Any other concluding items? Councilmember Briggs. So in light of the recent events with, you know, severance money and then the $45,000 overage, I have a genuine concern at the lack of council authority to control costs and would like to see if we can have a council review of the ordinance which allows the city manager or his designee the right to negotiate the $100,000 with general fund and $250,000 with the DME contracts. Okay. At some point. Anything else? Just that people are concerned about me being on my phone. And so tonight I was getting a play-by-play of my child's baseball game that I missed. So if anyone out there is concerned that I'm on my phone, that's what I was going on. Thank you. Any other concluding items? Seeing none, it is 1.53 on-- 12.53. On Wednesday morning we will stand adjourned.