Oct 11, 2016 City Council on 2016-10-11 1:00 PM

Council on Tuesday October the 11th 2016 we do have a qu orum so we'll call the meeting to order. Our first item on the agenda is citizen comments on consent agenda and we have we have a couple make sure consent consent eight we got we got two we go we've got two cards wishing to speak the first speaker for and I guess well we'll just we'll just take it in order. Mr. Hutzpeth you'll come forward state your name and address your time will begin. It's agenda items consent agenda items 1A B and C and Mr. Hutzpeth are you going to be speaking about all these at one time are you going to be considering them individually because you have three minutes you can either do three minutes for all three you know for all three total you get three three and three that's I'm gonna let that be your call. Three three and three. Okay all right. My name is Willie Hutzpeth I live at 623 Newton mayor and City Council. I'm just against alcohol period I know that that's just that's just my choice I don't want to put that on someone else I don't want to say that others shouldn't have alcohol I just don't think alcohol should be permitted in places well anywhere and that's just a preference that's my three minutes I get to say that that's just my preference I don't I think it distorts your decision-making of course it does if you take too much of it with too much of anything heck I like peanut butter and I eat a lot of that and it distorts everything on me but anyway so I'm not saying that that's even the main reason but if you I was in court the other day for with someone who was in the city that had a problem the young lady didn't speak the English very well and from Africa and the police wrote up for citation and they weren't very nice to her and I wanted to speak about that they thought she was being mean she was being mean but it was because and you let me know how much time let me know when I have one minute or something and it confused her she she she'd been sexually abused as a young person and so men really bugged her and so the police didn't know that of course and he was just rude he was just a policeman who's like Barney Fife and he's just mean to her and so she freaked out she got a ticket now the point of telling this about alcohol is then I went to court to try to help the let the judge know what happened and why she reacted one minute what happened and there were the the attorney would have him come back and talk about the case and see if they could settle it half the court was filled with people drinking drinking and having drinking problems young people young women and men just drinking and driving not having license and things like that but the most of it was because they drink so I don't think drinking is something that you should do well yeah I just don't okay B well now B I don't have a problem with the noise so I don't really object to that one it's uh I like music and I like it loud so I guess I'm in agreement with that one that they are to let them have the the music now when you combine the music with the drinking and you got a problem I think the other thing the reason I have a problem with the drinking so much as my dad drank and as a young man about ten years old I can remember when he he would have this brown substance in this glass and he was this way before he started drinking it and he do a few sips of that thing and that stuff and and about an hour later he was so mean I mean mean and he he would beat my mom I'll never forget how he would physically abuse her so bad and that went on until we got to be I was 15 my brother was no I was 13 my brother was 15 my other brother was 16 and we were big like him big and muscular and this you could always tell when he drank this brown stuff and he start getting into this different person we knew the beating was going to start and we were about that age and we walked to the bedroom door and I could remember we were just shoulder to shoulder standing there looking at him he knew if he hit her again we were going to take care of him so he didn't do at that time so that's all I know about alcohol just people get crazy noise is fine see I think you this should be discussed see are adding this alternate member committee member to the ethics committee this more to that story than this this is showing there's more to it that's what I mean that is more to it there's some of you on the City Council that see the city and the citizens one way there are a lot of other people who see the city and want it to be another way so if you start manipulating that one minute if you start manipulating who's going to be on the ethics committee what has happened in the past like the tree ordinance which started me on my rampage of dealing with the city in 2000 in 2008 yes when they tore down all my trees this is the kind of manipulative moves that were made oh we just want to add another citizen to the committee and sure enough it was a city who a committee member who supported the way that most of the City Council at that time wanted things to go I think this one should be discussed openly and not just put on the consent agenda as Britain just discuss a resolution this is the the consent agenda you just say all in favor and there's no discussion I don't think that one should be there I think we ought to be talking about why is this alternate person being selected what's the situation how are they going to be selected and there's all the council members have an opportunity to talk about who that's going to be or who that person is going to be the bad part about how you do the ag endas in here in this session here which I don't agree with either mean that one o'clock who doesn't work well I guess I don't think you should have this this at one o'clock so now I'm talking off the fly I'm thinking this says talking about adding someone to the committee an extra person I guess it's the ethics committee we've been talking about that for you for months now and now you 're just going to do something and then vote to do it one way or the other well I know what else is that is my that I have the opportunity to do too one minute okay that's all of them yeah and mr. Hussburs for future reference I was wrong the city attorney showed me the rule which I don't have an issue in this case but on the clarification for consent agenda items as far as the public speaking it's three minutes for however many you want to talk about so that's my mistake I'll own that but I appreciate your input yeah okay I'd like to see deciding okay you better show where that's no problem three minutes to talk about three things yes okay all right thank you sir we'll get that to you he bet you thank you Deborah Armator agenda item 1c on the consent three minutes state your name and address your time will begin hi my name is Deb Armant ara 2003 Mr. Woodley I wanted to talk about item C which mr. Hutzpeth was just speaking about a resolution amending resolution by adding an alternate committee member to the City Council Ethics Committee this is the first that I've heard about our ethics committee a long long time I don't know how often the Eth ics Committee meets I'm curious to know what the grounds are for recusal one of the conditions is I'll just read from it whereas the City Council of Denton deems it in the best interest of the city to add an alternate member to the Eth ics Committee in the event a committee member is unavailable due to absence illness recusal or other legitimate grounds I understand that say that a conflict of in would be a recusal if you're on the Ethics Committee and the meeting is about you but I would imagine because the Ethics Committee consists of council members that everyone on council would have a very good reason to recuse themselves from an Ethics Committee and that is that you're all colleagues with each other you're either friends with each other or you know political allies on some issues political opponents on on other issues this sounds like a good change to me however I before I would see this resolution passed I'd like to know what the process is for selecting an alternative I don 't see any process here it shouldn't be arbitrary and but however that question is answered it's such an imperfect process because as I said every single one of you has grounds for recusal I don't believe in self policing on ethics I look forward to an actual ethics ordinance that you all will be passing soon was that one minute and I I would just encourage you to do that as as swiftly as possible so that you don't find yourselves in encountering this problem every time and ethics issue comes up again self policing is not the way to go about handling ethics complaints there should be an independent committee there seems to me an easy fix to bringing about an ethics ordinance more swiftly but I understand that that is an another issue not on the consent agenda so I won't be speaking about that thank you very much all right thank you all right those are the cards we have we'll go on agenda item number two request for clarification of agenda items on the agenda for October the 11th 2016 any clarification yes just one question on item 1b on the last time that we did a change in the ordinance for sound I got some emails from folks living fairly far north north of University Drive saying that they had had some concerns with noise from the last music festival that we had here Octopia a couple of years earlier on 35 Denton I was at a another festival that was taking place in the Civic Center and could hear clearly inside the building all of the lyrics to the songs being sung so I guess my question my regarding this change is do we assign anyone to to be there to do some sound monitoring to use equipment that has been certified and they can go up and tell the people to turn the volume down when it's too loud I'm gonna ask John Cabrales our assistant city manager respond to that councilmember we do have our police department that is present at these festivals and they are equipped with the device that monitors the the noise just so you'll know there was a noise violation with the Octopia festival they exceeded the desk allow decibel limit and they did not immediately lower the sound so there will be a citation it may already have been issued to the organizers of that event but yes whenever we have any kind of a large festival and particularly there's a noise variance we make sure that the officers that are there on site policing the festival have the devices and they'll go to the appropriate distance as required by our ordinance and determine if in fact there is any kind of decibel violation if there is I'll take care of it immediately by asking them to lower and most times they will comply well I don't think I want to get into any more of the details here unless you just want to share them but I would love to hear a see a an informal staff report or some kind of information on the details of that I can't imagine if a police officer walks up to the guy at the soundboard and says it's too loud that the person wouldn't turn it down so I'd like a little more information on that and and well the citation is nice after the fact that doesn't help the people that that could have had relief immediately if it was turned down I mean I'm curious if they don't turn it down can the police officer just go pull the plug turn it off because I mean that's good and I don't think I want you to answer that here but but if you could just kind of provide some information yes and you should know we already are working on informal staff report so we hope to have it to the council by this Friday on the details of okay that's great incident as well as other issues that we've had with the varying the requirements of our noise ordinance because I'll tell you if if I I'm gonna go ahead and vote yes this time but I think unless I get some satisfaction that we have some better things in place I'm not gonna vote to approve any more changes in the sound ordinance thank you for that oh is this regarding his is this regarding yeah well it's just for clarification it says from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. and so at 9 p.m. the music is going to cut off correct I mean well I don't know what's going on back down so they're not asking for an exemption for the time just the sound until 9 okay okay thank you for our citizens announced about the ethics committee and at adding an alternative member item to see is an item for individual consideration that will be held in public and council will be discussing that so it is it is out in the open for discussion on today's agenda I've got a question back on the noise ordinance so our standard decibel is 70 that is that the ambient noise or is that that's that is what we people can do without having to come to get a variance if they're under 70 or below that for amplified sound that is that is correct there is variation of times depending on what day of the week it is I believe Sundays you need a variance for any type of amplified sound on a Sunday Saturday the cutoff time is I think a little longer in the evening as opposed to and Friday as opposed to Monday through Thursday okay so the the 70 to 75 notwithstanding the day which I think is what a Sunday that a Sunday 29 Saturday I believe so that's typically what we see people requesting a variance from 70 to 75 or people requesting from 65 to 70 no we typically see a request of increasing about 5 decibels 70 75 and then also an extension of the time requirements we get from time to time as well okay because I sort of shared councilmember Gregory sentiments we we received you know several complaints about that and so these decimals are just sort of numbers on a page but I do understand that as decibel goes up it can be quite a big difference you know if you go up five or ten decibels so I presume in your informal staff reports you're going to be outlining you know some of the complaints on the last festival some of the I don't know if the police monitor this on a time interval basis or a complaint basis only or if they receive a complaint they do the monitor or do they monitor it at different time intervals throughout the event because I don't you know I certainly think that festivals are good in downtown but if people can hear it all the way up to University Drive and I understand there's some funding effect or whatever but we just need to be cognizant of that so if that's going to be included all in your informal staff report I appreciate that and I share the same sentiment I don't mind voting for this now but in the future you're going to look at it a little bit more closely because we have to respect everybody's quality of life you know even during events so yes councilmember Begheri I just add one thing to the informal staff report can you kind of make a survey of how many noise variances we have because one of my concerns is that we'll have a piecemeal approach to how we're which festivals have what what noise decibel requirement so if you could just kind of give us an overview look these are the festivals or the events that have variances these are how long they last these are this is the decibel amount that would help yes and I think our report goes back I don't know if it's one year or two years but we do go back and cover other events as well as whether we had any complaints when those events were going on from any any recorded complaints I should say at the police department regarding those events so that should be in there as well thank you. Mayor Pro Tem. I certainly love all of our festivals that we have that are outside and you know ever since I've been on council which is almost six years now every festival we have draws a certain amount of complaint it's almost an expected thing that we understand and it's part of kind of part of building the sort of vibrant community that we are that there's gonna be some of those unintended consequences so I do appreciate that we're having a discussion about how to how to tighten things up so that we can mitigate to the extent that we can but I want to add also to this staff report probably gonna put you guys back a week with all these additions this one in particular there were some complaints about explicit lyrics and so I'm not sure what if anything gets vetted in the process as I've told people in discussing this I can certainly defend some extra noise with these things as it relates to it it's hard it's very hard to defend explicit lyrics where families and kids and children are exposed to that so if there can be something added to that both in terms of how this gets vetted at the staff level previously and what if anything police can do if that starts happening in an amplified way and then secondly the and I just may be confused and I think the distinction probably rests on amplified versus non-amplified because I seem to recall a long conversation when we made some changes to the sound noise ordinance as it related to sound coming from fracking operations and I think as I'm even saying that I think it's the amplified distinctions but I believe we've stepped away from a decibel criteria into a state standard of reasonableness which required the sound being taken or an officer going to the place where the complaint was lodged versus at the site of the origin of it anyways if there's any way in which this report to us can distinguish if there is a distinct if there is a distinction between those two things because I thought we walked back from decibels as a criteria for sound violations but I may be wrong on that thank you John this day that specific to the day of the dead event this is going to be the sixth year that it's happened can you speak a little bit just about the relationship between the event in the police if there ever is a complaint or just how that's been okay for this particular event I know that the organizers this particular event have worked very well with staff in the past as far as making sure that we have all of our public safety plans and measures in place street closings always is a concern to public safety is to be able to access some organizers are much better about understanding that than others and actually I'm trying to think back I don't know for sure don't hold me to this but I don't believe we've actually had a complaint for this festival like we have in the past for Octopia specifically I know that one comes to mind I will tell you that it's it's it's very uncommon to get the number of complaints that we got during the incident during the last festival we from time to time may get one or two but as I told you most organizers are very quick to comply when we when they're told by the police department to lower the music because we have now gotten a complaint but they are as I mentioned there are some festivals that work very well with city staff in making sure all appropriate steps are followed all permits are pulled and and I believe this is one of those events and I just appreciate that I just want to make sure council is not making it a possible knee-jerk reaction to something else kind of grouping everything together that's but I appreciate you saying that okay any other questions yes is this for this same issue okay there's something called quiet enjoyment of one's home and we all receive the complaints on the noise and the graphic language from the last festival so if the police department feels they would like some extra tools make sure you bring that forward as well because we're not the boots on the ground trying to ask somebody to turn it down you know let us know what you need to do your job in terms of monitoring the sound and the language so I don't want to move forward give somebody a slap on the wrist and then have a year from now be in the same boat so if it takes longer than a week that's fine because we've asked you for a lot but I would sure like to hear from the police department to hear what tools do you do you think do you have enough tools or there are any other tools that you would like to have so thank you thank you thank you one other question for the report I'd be curious to know if part of our criteria for cooperating and working with groups that are doing festivals is looking at the previous performance because there's some festivals that that are worked very hard to cooperate and and have a great track record and others that that may have a blip every once in a while and then some that don't so do we have any kind of a track record as far as seems in the past that we've we've sometimes been as we as these requests have come to us we we've been told this has had a history of problems in the past or it's not or or telling festival operators you could lose your opportunity to conduct a festival in Denton or in this location if you have a complaint if you continue to have complaints okay well I'll include that as well any other on this thank you John any other questions of clarification on agenda items seeing none okay we'll move on to our work session reports which is agenda item 3a receive report hold discussion and give staff direction regarding the downtown reinvestment grant thank you mayor, Colonel Booth our director of economic development will be handling this item thank you Howard good afternoon mayor and council members I 'm sorry I should call you mr. Martin mr. city manager so what we're going to do this afternoon is revisit the downtown reinvestment grant item we're going to review background on the program we're going to talk about the feedback that we receive from the economic development partnership board and the downtown task force and then receive council's direction on the item to quickly revisit the background for the program the downtown reinvestment grant program provides reimbursement grants between five thousand and twenty five thousand dollars for capital improvements made to buildings in the downtown area eligible expenses include facade rehabilitation new awnings and signs impact fees and utility upgrades the grant program is currently the only financial assistance the city of Denton can offer to small businesses the program preserves the history of Denton by restoring downtown buildings promotes infill redevelop ment and reuse and enhances the taxable value of downtown properties real quick question yes you just made a statement you said this is the this is the only grant available for say that one more time about something about small business this is the only financial incentive that the city of Denton can currently offer to small businesses small businesses just in the downtown area or in the entire community anywhere all right yes so to clarify if there was a small business out of this zone right here that needed help for anything just say one block away they wouldn't qualify not currently no okay so to remind everybody what the broad or rough outlines of the program area are it's bordered by Carroll Boulevard in the West Parkway and McKinney in the north exposition to the east and sycamore to the south $100,000 of mixed beverage tax revenue is dedicated each year to fund this program which entered the current fiscal year with a fund balance of about $224,000 over the past nine years these grants have directly and indirectly contributed to increase property tax revenue and increase sales and mixed beverage tax revenue generated in the downtown area Hickory Street Lofts and Mellow Mushroom that you see up there on the slide are just two examples of the significant increase in property values associated with projects that receive downtown reinvestment grants to summarize the city has exp ended about $446,000 in total funds since the inception of the program and the current total public and private investments on projects under this grant program is about 17.5 million dollars real quick question yes sir is the the mixed beverage tax that funds this just the tax that's collected from the downtown area or is it citywide no sir it's citywide okay yes mayor protein on that point I just ran some stats because I thought it was interesting and I pulled up one month and it was in August so school wasn't in session of just this year and just went up and tallied the amount of contributions just from the downtown bars that are in the D tip area and in just that one month those downtown bars contributed through their mixed beverage taxes eighty eight thousand dollars so thinking about the contribution of the downtown bars in one month they give eighty eight percent of this total fund just in one month so I thought that stat was just interesting to see as we think about how much they actually contribute to that overall fund then the rest of the year that obviously gets to the benefit of the entire community councilmember Gary did you say eighty eight thousand or eighty eight percent of the total eighty eight thousand in the total per year is a hundred thousand so if my math's correct that one month contributes eighty eight percent of the total cost okay something you're saying oh never mind you're talking about a hundred thousand of the debt the grant the grants only under that you go ahead any other questions yes all right okay so you went to the mixed beverage sales tax receipts that's in the back of the Denton business time business Chronicle magazine yeah okay and then you tallied up the numbers that were for the downtown bars that's correct and of that total for August the downtown bars constituted eighty eight percent no okay of that total the downtown bars of that month anyone's willing to go you can go check my math contributed eighty eight thousand dollars my point is saying is that the total funding for this is a hundred thousand I'm just I'm simply making the point that the downtown bars who are in the D tip within a month when schools not in session almost contribute the entirety of what we use for that grant on a year's basis so that's my only point and bring that up okay after suspending the grant program for review on September 30th of 2015 staff presented a work session on January 5th of 2016 to bring back recommendations that addressed council members varied concerns expressed during that work session on January 5th staff presented a second work session on July 21st with the following suggestions continue the grant program for capital improvements only continue to grant within the current program area but expand the geographic scope to add commercial properties in other targeted redevelopment areas and to rename the grant to the small business improvement grant program during that discussion on July 21st council members shared concerns about how expanding the scope of the grant would affect downtown's continued redevelopment and question the specificity of goals associated with the expansion of the grant program to other targeted redevelopment areas there were also inquiries as to what members of the downtown task force and the economic development partnership board thought of the proposed changes further two members of the council were absent from the July 21st meeting and in order to bring the item to the downtown task force and the economic development partnership board for their review and to allow the full council to participate in the discussion of this item we scheduled a third work session for today before we talk about what the downtown task force and the economic development partnership boards feedback were on staff's recommendations I want to remind the council of the history behind the downtown task force and the economic development partnership board in 2003 the city of Denton along with multiple institutional and individual stakeholders created a strategic plan for economic development the plan featured four key focus areas and recommended the creation of the economic development partnership board to oversee the implementation of the strategic plan council created this economic development partnership board in 2003 since downtown was one of the strategic plans for focus areas a downtown task force was appointed as a subcommittee of the economic development partnership board to administer the plans activities for downtown to encourage the redevelop ment of land and buildings downtown the downtown task force worked with city staff to create a redevelopment grant program which was adopted by the council in 2007 and is now called the downtown reinvestment grant I'd like to point out this time that we do have some representatives from the downtown task force here in the audience today we have Bob Moses of Bethmar ease we also have a couple of members of the Main Street Association in attendance we've got Monty Jensen who's currently the president of the Main Street Association we also have John Cartwright money I'm sorry money Jensen is the owner of M ellow Mushroom and John Cartwright is the owner of Cartwright's restaurant on the square we also have Mike Barnett of Denton County Brewing Company who is one of the recipients of a downtown reinvestment grant and I know that many of you have received some feedback from members of the economic development partnership board the downtown task force and the Main Street Association to regarding this topic so now to the concerns that were expressed by the downtown task force during their August 11th 2016 meeting this group's major concerns were that broadening the geographic scope of the program with no additional funding will lessen the positive impact of the program in the downtown area and the downtown task force does not feel like they should oversee grants made to other parts of the city since their mission has been since their inception to deal specifically with downtown programs that being said they do support continuation of the downtown reinvestment grant program with no changes and they also support creation of new separately budgeted and administered programs for other older or historic sections of the city yes before moving on to the EDBP go back to one of your first slides where you talked about kind of the goals of this program and I have a question as to the discussion on downtown okay it's that it's the third slot this one yeah facade rehabilitation new onyx signs impact fever reimbursement utility upgrades as part of their discussion did was there any discussion of saying well what are the circumstances on the ground today in terms of the needs or challenges of setting up shop or rehabilitating a building in downtown and as such as part of kind of perhaps retooling the existing grant program to maybe meet those new goals or targeting more specifically is there any discussion about that with this group in terms of specific feedback from the group I think they all felt like the way the program is set up and administered right now has been effective for downtown particularly as it relates to the challenges with rehabilitating older buildings impact fees and utility upgrades are often a big cost when you're rehabbing an older building and so they they felt like that was very applicable and and a helpful tool or a helpful thing to be able to apply for reimbursement for Julie of course Julie Glover our downtown program administrator is here so please feel free to add anything if you think I'm missing something but in terms of the in terms of what the downtown task force said they were really in favor of leaving the grant program as is not necessarily targeting it any further to certain types of businesses was there another aspect to your question covering all at the same I guess we'll probably continue to have this discussion as we get through this work session item but it strikes me that all of this stuff of our goals are just kind of ripe and ready for some data to put on it in other words for looking at new awnings perhaps what percentage of the immediate square sidewalks are covered by awnings and would we like it to be this percent and so therefore we're gonna kind of strategically go after things or is there an approach by saying here's a building that hasn't been improved in as far as we can tell 90 years and we're gonna have a program that's gonna take some of this funding go to them and suggest a matching grant fund and us take the initiative to try and meet one of those goals because we're trying to up our percentage on something that or the other all that to say just as we're thinking through this and and what we're trying to accomplish I just throw out that there that perhaps a follow-up to this could be that sort of discussion maybe it yields something maybe it doesn't thanks thanks because remember Hawkins before you move on is there gonna be a slide on the return on investment you know money that we've invested in this program that any time I thought I saw that before that was in one of the prior presentations and I don't I don't have it included here but if you like for me to grab that I can yeah well and if you could go back to the slide because I hear what you're asking for I disagree with the concept if you'll go back to the slide that shows the amount that we've paid over this grant program and the amount of money that's been invested four hundred forty six thousand seventeen point five million dollars now that's total public and private investments so I think councilmember Hawkins what you're saying is how much new investment have we had because it's going to be impossible to determine truly what the rate of I mean when you think of rate of return or rate of rate of return on investment from a true pure real estate perspective it's going to be somebody getting a twenty five thousand dollar grant and it's got a million dollar project I don't think we can say twenty five million dollars twenty five thousand dollars has created a million dollars or the tax revenue the tax revenue for well the only reason I brought it up it was staggering the the small amount of money that was actually given away relatively right and but just that's all I bring it up for I hear where you're coming from but I'm saying I don't know that those are caught that those are necessarily an absolute cause and effect and I've always everybody will test who's been in economic development I've struggled with this concept from the very day we've started having it in presentations that even with our incentives that we put forth to Peterbilt and some of these other big incentives where we say this is the rate of return we spent this money to get this money back in it just it just doesn't work that way the way this is configured so so that 's why we can get that figure I don't think it I think it skews or it gives a an inaccurate representation of that but for this money we wouldn't have this and I'm not saying okay all right I got you all right okay Joey I can't tell you I'm sorry councilmember Hawkins I can tell you that the ROI of city dollars invested to private money invested over the life of the grant program is one city dollar to 30 private investor dollars and that is over how many years over since 2007 and that that is an analysis strictly on how much does the city invest and how much does a private investor invest in the project not Jan it's not saying that if we didn't invest it that we wouldn 't have those $30 right and I'm not saying that okay well I know but that's that's sort of how that gets presented sometimes so I just I mean and y'all can agree with it I just disagree with that approach go ahead yeah okay we took the item to the Economic Development Partnership Board on September 21st 2016 and their major concerns included losing sight of the fact that this grant program was intended to be an economic development tool and the example that was brought up was not a beaut ification grant they also were concerned about diluting the grant funds that are available to downtown either by reducing the funding to the program or by opening the program to other parts of the city they were concerned about having the downtown task force oversee grants made in other parts of the city and they didn't want to grant funds for anything other than capital improvement project reimbursements they did have some recommendations to keep the downtown reinvestment grant program unchanged if similar programs are desired for other areas of the city they would ask to provide additional and separate funding for those areas of the city allow the EDP board to recommend which areas to focus on and set up separate task forces to oversee grants for those areas and they would also like to recommend a joint City Council Economic Development Partnership Board meeting to discuss these and other economic development related topics that is the end of my presentation and what we're seeking direction on today from council is the best path forward to restarting the grant program. Council? Mayor Pro Tem. Well all along I've been in favor of maintaining this I've also been in favor of seeing other parts of the city that can't benefit from grant funding as well. I think what gets difficult as we look to other areas of the city is what is our goal? As you elucidated on your third slide there there was clear goals in place and a lot of them are you mentioned EDBP had a problem with the term beautification grant but it seems pretty clear from the outset of this is it's a place making type of a grant because we have a pretty special place that encourages walkability and encourages people to hang around and linger it encourages people to come and hang out with their family spend some money dine etc. So there's a real clear goal to what our investment there that's why we're talking about facades it 's why we're talking about awnings that's why we're talking about some of these other helps to kind of get these projects off the ground. I think as we look at additional areas which I and I've suggested on my website several of them over the last several years that I think are ripe for interesting new cultural centers in the city that we should be focusing on each one of those is going to have its own separate set of goals that should probably involve stakeholders that are involved there certainly some philosophical discussion as to what our goals are but to just open it up and say any business can apply well for what are we concerned about the facades or the historic preservation of Dallas Drive? Possibly. It's unclear given the types of buildings that there are on Dallas Drive that that makes any sense and so if that is our concern we 'd have to have a discussion about that. What sorts of businesses apply if it 's not a walkable type of a situation which is the whole goal of this. So I think that's a good discussion to have I just think that involves a whole different set of criteria that in my mind justifies an entirely different fund and a group of folks that will be developing that criteria determining how to divvy up these grants kind of how we have set up with the downtown task force. So I think downtown still has a long way to go it looks great it's certainly been successful since this was initiated but if you look at the side streets a lot still to be developed you look at the arteries leading into it that are in the D tip area north and south on Locust still a lot to be developed and redeveloped and preserved there so I think we're just at the beginning of a fantastic downtown area so I don't want to rest on our laurels I want to continue with what's been successful. Yeah I think the downtown rein vestment grant fund has been a huge success and I want us to continue forward with it. If we were gonna pick different areas in the city I'd like to look to EDP to do that. I would like them to identify two to three different areas in our city and bring that forward to council with mechanisms on how to fund that . I don't want us to dip into this fund and have it feel kind of watered down I think the effect would be much less and if we're gonna continue to encourage inf ill development and that's those sorts of things downtown there's a lot of times when you get a building it's old and you go open it up and you don't know what's going to be there and I know that they would probably still come there 's a lot of factors why our downtown is the way it is this is not the only reason and I get that but I don't think that we are all the way done with downtown and especially there's you know on the backside of Austin Street that's the back door to Jupiter House you want to look at a place that 's not done at all yet there are many parts of our downtown area that could still really use a facelift and I'd like to encourage some infill development there so once again I'd like to throw this back to EDP they're there for a reason have them identify two to three areas and how to fund those areas. Councilmember Gregory. Thank you Mayor. I always like to approach these kinds of things with looking at what the original goals were and to see if we think that those original goals have all been satisfied or if we even still agree with all of those goals and in the backup for the for this report not in the slides but but in the backup it said there were three primary purposes or goals for this program one was to preserve the history of Denton by restoring downtown buildings is that still a good goal have we accomplished all of that number two to give the downtown task force economic development partnership board and the City Council control over the design of rehabilitations and new construction because there is an absence of design standards in the downtown area do we have those design standards yet do we still want to have some kind of influence over what kind of rehab and new design is going on the third goal is to enhance the taxable value of the buildings adding to the tax base is that still a goal are we satisfied with where we are I think that those are all still three go that those three goals are still very viable that while we have made progress we certainly haven't accomplished at all I agree also that that diluting this money would make it that much longer and harder to achieve these goals now if we want to change these goals if we don't agree with these goals we ought to have that discussion but if we and if we think that we've satisfied these three goals we're all good with all of those then then I think that that maybe we ought to do that I think that most people believe that that that we have had success that the downtown area is better now than it was before this program was in place now how much of this program caused to that is certainly up for discussion but I've talked to a lot of business people downtown who've invested a good bit of money and they said it made a difference for them it made an impact for them and I'm gonna have to take their word on it I was at a storytelling festival a few years ago and there was a person from outside Denton that was helping to run the festival and they were inviting people to go downtown and they referred to Denton they referred to our downtown to our courthouse area as Denton's front porch now storytellers like to talk in metaphors and they talked about going out and sitting on the front porch and having a coffee or another beverage and telling some stories because that's what we like to do and with a lot of folks if you have only a certain amount of money and you got to decide whether you're going to keep working on making your front porch look better or put all the money into the back porch you put money into the front porch because that's what the neighbors see that's what your visitors see and I think our front porch still needs some work. I have a question I was I missed the last meeting so this may have been answered does the task force in any way help steer or qualify the grant applications for the amount of money? There is a scoring criteria that is applied to each of the applicants applications and they can receive a certain number of points. Julie maybe you can help me with exactly what the point scale is. Sure it's and I didn't bring that piece of paper it's design quality so we used to say for historic accuracy but we've now added design for a new construction as well does it go along with everything else they get points for location so at and it's been discussed that we may want to change this at first it was if you were close to the square or close to the transit center you got a few more points. Being adding to the economic development adding to the walkability of downtown what we're calling the population daytime nighttime population there's an other category so if they just feel like it's a great project that deserves there's five categories five points each 25 points is I'm sorry 30 points six categories so they have criteria we have some people that grade very hard we have some people that grade very lenient so it kind of kind of works out. And so the task force is the one doing the grading? They do they review the the grants the person usually seeks me out comes to me and says I'm gonna do this project I need some more money I tell them about the grant program they fill that out they do the budget there's a pretty lengthy application process at that point if I don't think it's a strong application I can give them hints on how to improve it or sometimes say I don't think this is going to score very well maybe we can think of something else but the the task force are the ones that look at it first and up to ten thousand dollars the city manager has the ability to approve that if and most of our grants are five to ten thousand above ten thousand ten thousand one and up that then goes to the economic partnership economic development partnership board and to you guys to final approval. So follow up on that are there any checks and balances for when a member of the task force is a recipient or applicant yes for the yes they they must recuse themselves if they have any interest in the project. Thanks. Some observations and some comments. 2007 to 2016 downtown has changed dramatically people who had not watched the progression of this city if they came back today they would be pleasantly surprised at how it has grown and so sometimes the city has to pivot when they grow to change decision-making so one of the numbers that jumped out at me on the overhead was that property values in downtown downtown have increased over 2,000 percent since 2007 not 200 percent not they haven't doubled 2,000 percent it was 2,361 in property value from 2005 to 2015. I bring that up because the cost to purchase a piece of property now has changed dramatically so when I look at five thousand to twenty five thousand dollars for a grant to put up a new awning that's not a make or break for a downtown business my opinion so you say well moving forward how do we target some of the areas an area that we are talking about now with the city through the planning department is something called small area plan and my suggestion would be to use that small area plan model as we look at areas that we focus on to develop or redevelop and use that as a jump- off point because a lot of cities have used small area plans to decide where do we want to go and what money is what funds would we like to target for that small area these small area plans will come forward not from the city but from citizen committees who live and work in those small areas so they're going to come forward with some solid information because they know it best. We've also funded a preservation plan the preservation plan is going to look at our historic district which will include downtown the preservation plan may very well come forward with a recommendation for a preservation code so again the city is growing we are going to start looking at the rewrite of our Denton development code so that as well could encompass a preservation code that would include downtown because one of the fine lines that we have downtown is that we do have historic buildings and we have modifications happening to those buildings that put their historic designation at risk because we don't have design standards so I just bring all of these things up because I think we're right on the edge of a lot of planning for our city and it's not just about planning for downtown it's planning for these also small area plans. If I'm a small business owner in this city of Denton and I'm not eligible for one of these grants I don't think that's that's fair to small business owners and other parts of the city because downtown is booming and it's booming just looking at that property value increase of 2,300 percent in the last ten years so my gut on this is if we're going to do it do it right I think it's going to need some some more dollars in it so that we can work with other small business owners across the city to encourage them these are people who have invested in our city just like people in downtown have invested in our city so my encouragement to the council is to take a look at a bigger picture a bigger plan a bigger city we don't have 20 ,000 people anymore we have a hundred and thirty thousand people and these population growth spikes are right at our doorstep so it's a it's a tough decision to make but I just don't think we have all the pieces of the puzzle right now these small area plans are going to come forward preservation plan new development code I would love to see design standards in downtown so that we are able to maintain our historic designation on a lot of these buildings so like I said comments and observations on this thank you may I clarify something quickly councilmember was knee the over 2,000 percent increase in property values that is just related to the Hickory Street lofts Weinberger deli campus barber development and that was an empty lot before that development went in so that's why that's a big reason why you see that huge increase in that particular property value that does not intended to indicate an increase in property values over the entire area but property values and rents have dramatically increased in downtown they have so the point is still solid if you don't have the money to purchase and develop you're not going to be able to purchase and develop because it's in demand costs are going up to buy it to fix it up to rent we've seen businesses just move out because they can't afford the rent s anymore and I do want to thank you for bringing up the small area plans the corridor plans and the preservation plan because economic development has been working with folks in the development services department in the course of developing the initial recommendations that we made working with them on what their schedule is for bringing forward some of those small area plans because we did have the thought that that would be a natural tie between possible changes to this grant and what they're planning to do in those particular areas of town so thank you for making that connection just to respond to that two and a half years ago I opened up hoochies on a shoestring budget so not like some out-of-town guy opening up a million dollar restaurant and the whole grant that I applied for was for awnings because I didn't have any money so if I got the grant I got awnings if I didn't I didn't have awnings and we still were gonna open so I'm just saying it's not just always you know million dollar businesses coming in now it was still we got to get open we're out of money and it was a it was a struggle but I'm saying that struggling business owner across the city should have consideration and not just downtown my only issue with that is I am concerned that if people live in one area they're gonna focus on the area where they live I think I agree with you except for how the money would be divvied out if we're gonna have a small area plan for a different section that the money needs to be allocated by people who represent that area not not the same group and I agree the small area plan came into focus with the list that we saw up there fry Street I 35 and Dallas Drive I'm saying instead of just taking those three we need to take a look step back at the small area plans and use those as a pivot to take a look at if we include other areas that could give us a guideline I agree with you that you can't have that area giving themselves that money because we're gonna have business owners in that committee deciding hey I'd like some of that grant money so I agree with you but I do think the small area plan is a really good vehicle to get to that decision on where are we gonna spend grant funds and use those those plans thank you I've got a couple comments I've said all along and I'm gonna stay consistent I cannot support the full hundred thousand dollars coming out of the general fund for a couple reasons one is when I look at these three primary purposes that councilmember Gregory enumerated which ran her back up to preserve the history of Denton by restoring downtown buildings I guess I'd like a report on how many of those buildings were consulted with the historic landmark Commission and I know that historic preservation costs a lot more than five or ten thousand dollars so I think that there's a way to accomplish that fact without necessarily spending general funds in the downtown area for that specific purpose to give the downtown task force economic development partnership board and City Council control of design of rehabilitations and new construction in the absence of design standards in the downtown area I'm not really sure what that means because I can tell you that a five or ten thousand dollar grant is not going to decide how someone designs their building we've got building codes that do that we've been working on I thought the form-based code for many many many years that has yet to come forward to help us have some design criteria in the downtown area so I don't think that these funds give us any more control we're not going to say okay in your example with the awnings all we're simply saying is well you wouldn't have the awnings or you have the awnings other than how you constructed Hoochie's interior how you complied with code that's all pretty much set out in our building code standards and the biggest one to me is the one that's sort of in opposite that really is the most kind of ironic to me and that is to enhance the taxable value of the buildings adding to the tax base and I made my comment very carefully when I said I don't want all of the downtown funding for this grant or all the funding for this grant to come from the general fund because we have a TIF in place that the very purpose of that when you look at some of the things that people are saying are their biggest struggles in the downtown or impact fees well everybody pays impact fees and I didn't think we could reimburse for impact fees I thought we had that discussion a while back that we couldn't either waive or reimburse for impact fees so I could be wrong in that regard but so impact fees and utilities which are some a couple of the very things that the TIF financial plan you know there's four or five different categories that that TIF funding is supposed to so what's happening is we're using general fund money to enhance the taxable value of properties that are in the downtown TIF and that additional taxable value which results in a corresponding additional tax revenue is sequestered thank you madam attorney councilmember Baguerre I couldn't remember that word is sequestered in the downtown area for projects to enhance the downtown area specifically so that's why I struggle with this I don't have any any problem with downtown businesses having a set of funds that they can look at to help with various things like awnings things that would provide a direct enhancement to their business don't have an issue with that at all what I have an issue with and what I've had an issue with all along is that we've created an environment we've drawn this line around the downtown area that says this is the most important area in our city and we're going to provide additional funding for this from the general fund additionally and we're also going to sequ ester all the additional tax value that is created in the downtown because of its explosive growth for only being spent in the downtown area yes we I hear we got project funds so I can't give direction to move forward with this program from a funding perspective I don't have a problem with the program I have a problem with where it's being funded and I also have a problem that as you stated in your first couple of sentences your first few minutes this is the only small business development grant that we have available in this city all right and I understand mayor pro tem do we want to have a set of criteria do we want to have a set of goals for specific areas when I look at these three criteria that are in the backup preserving history historical Denton enhancing the tax value and providing design standards there there are good arguments to say that this program really doesn't have much control over that and it's probably not the precipitating cause of those three elements in proportion to what may be created from those three points so I don't have a problem with the program the reason it sounded like I had a problem with the program because it seems like the only funding mechanism the council has been open to is money still coming from the general fund into the downtown area when those funds are going to enhance businesses in the downtown area whose tax value goes up all this synergy that 's been created raises the value I don't know if you have it off the top of your head but I'm sure values have gone up overall I know they all haven't gone up 2,000 percent but they've gone up quite a bit and all of that value is captured all that additional tax revenue revenue is captured to be spent only in the downtown area based upon the project plan as created by the TIF so I certainly want to see us have a grant program that could provide some additional incentives to small businesses I councilmember Gary that's one of the things that you have talked about is that you're against incentives number one but number two where the incentives for small businesses this is the only one we have and it's very limited in its scope and its geographical area so I think there's a way we can meet both of those interests we can meet the interests of the downtown test and I wouldn't expect the Main Street Association or the downtown task force I mean of course they're going to want to maintain the program because it helps the very area in which they do business I totally get that I would be doing the same thing so I'm saying why don 't we challenge ourselves to find a funding mechanism that can sort of meet everyone's interests because I think we can because if we're afraid to dip into the TIF to even fund half of this or three-quarters of this which is 50 or 70 I got a real problem with that because the whole purpose of that fund is to make sure we have funds available for the development of downtown and parking was only one of those elements in that project plan there was infrastructure which is utilities because of old utilities and also for impact fees that could come under that that particular program so I don't have a problem with the program I want to find a more creative way to fund it that that takes into consideration the immense growth in downtown to say that don't we're never going to get to a place where we feel satisfied with historic preservation with design and with improving the tax values there's always going to be room for growth so you could say that about any particular place in town you could say that about any particular program that expends money I 'm just simply saying let's give other people in our city a chance and let 's if that downtown is doing well it's doing well I mean when you look at the businesses that are coming down there your business obviously you operate it on a shoe string my understanding it I mean when I go into your store you're it's busy I mean it's overflowing people are down there all the time so I don't think if we find another way to fund this it's going to all the sudden mean the demise of the the meteoric growth that the downtown has seen and you know this sound I got beat to death when I posed the tip I'm anti downtown I'm not anti downtown but for me this is a matter of principle we've got a hundred thousand dollars that we're using from a general fund that could go for other particular businesses in the area outside of the D tip we have I don't know what's the balance in the tip fund now about seven eight hundred thousand nine hundred thousand close to a million dollars it's growing at about four or five hundred thousand dollars a year I believe or something like that if for four hundred thousand dollars a year I know we want it for bigger projects we don't have a bigger project yet so that's where I am on this I don't have a problem with the program let's find a way to get it funded that sort of acknowledges that there's other small businesses in town that would like to have the same opportunity to grow and to and to provide some revitalization to Dallas Drive I don't know if I agree with your sentiment that is Dallas Drive when I mean Dallas Drive I think could stand a lot of improvement and it may be a different set of criteria than the three here but obviously regulating or having some control or influence over how things are developed we all want that all the time and to ensure that our taxable values are increased that's what it's all about so don't have a problem with the program even as it's structured with how much money is given what's what are the criteria for me my biggest hurdle is the funding of it so that's that's where I am on that councilmember Gary do you have a question how much is provided how much is allocated for this particular fund every year a hundred thousand dollars of mixed beverage taxes okay and then councilmember wrote it mayor pro time rodin you piqued my interest with your mixed beverage comment so I went and did some rough math it turns out that for August what I got with those boundaries was the total downtown mixed beverage taxes was approximately seventy thousand dollars on those boundaries the rest of Denton had 130 thousand dollars of mixed beverage taxes so that represents 35 percent mixed beverage taxes coming from downtown 65 percent coming from outside of town now you're correct mayor that I'm not a fan of incentives but what I'm less a fan of is ideas of inequity when it comes to taxes I think it's great that we've spent as much money as we have building up the downtown area but frankly it's patently an inequitable that a group that has 35 percent of the tax contribution is able to capture 100 percent of the available funds if we're gonna expand the funds and make it so that that other 65 percent of town that's contributing to this fund can also have that tax money then you you get some equity there but it sounds like the mayor's not a fan of this particular general fund allocation and if we're gonna continue I would just ask that everybody please consider this the way that tax monies are being allocated right now councilmember Gregory from what I've heard let me see if I can propose what maybe sound like a consensus said like folks for the most part are comfortable with the notion of continuing to support downtown with this fund but not always in consensus on where the funds are coming from so maybe what could happen in the meantime if we could agree to to keep the funding as has already been budgeted from the budget this year and have the TIF board the downtown TIF board meet and maybe make a recommendation to council on what portion of the TIF funding they would like to send to the downtown program get input from that board as part of as part of planning ahead for next year with the notion of talking about other areas of town let's let's invite the businesses in different locations to to start to start their own initiatives of working together and informing the task of whether it's a Fort Worth Drive task force or Dallas Drive task force or or whatever kind of task force to to start working on coming to the planning department for a small area plan and looking at getting this moving right now so that when we start our budget discussions here we are October the 10th 11th we're starting to talk about next year's budget mark that down mr. city manager so to remind us if we've already started working on next year's budget so that we could start working on that for next year in terms of the next area or two or three that need to be targeted and if there is and it may be that there's a whole nother notion about about supporting small businesses that are not in any of those target areas though it would seem to me from my own personal standpoint that that you get more efficiencies by targeting a specific area for improvement because it it it's an area that you can look to and you can see the entire area increasing rather than then scatter shooting so broadly that that you don't have that kind of an impact so is that a is that an idea for a way to get a question first of all how much what was the budget amount this was a hundred thousand in this budget what's the bet what's the fund balance in that account about two hundred and twenty four thousand see yes I personally would rather just I mean we've got a hundred thousand dollar spending limit I believe on this fund on grants anyway on a yearly basis is that correct or no I don't think I think we can if the fund balance carries over can't can it be spent from year to year because it does carry over Chuck you're walking up there very gingerly what we try to do is we try to also budget the fund balance of funds so we budgeted I have to look some of the fund balance that's remaining in addition to the hundred thousand but at any point we can amend the budget to increase it up to that fund balance but I think we budgeted about an extra hundred thousand in fund balance plus the hundred thousand so I'm saying is I don't know if I want to allocate the hundred thousand dollar in this year budget back there because we have a fund balance of two hundred and twenty thousand dollars that so we we would we have enough to fund because I know we've got some that are told right now what's the total amount of the ones the grant requests that have been told I think it's 45,000 25 to one entity and 10,000 to two others so I would rather not personally I would rather go ahead and use the fund balance because that's what it's there for I mean it's there I mean it's not there for an emergency it's not there for a contingency it's there to be spent on grant applications so I'm all for that just moving the forward moving the program forward with the available fund balance okay so it can be opened back up to new applications but the money that we have to work with is what's currently available in the fund balance is that what I'm hearing that's what that's what I'm suggesting okay yes that's what I'm suggesting and that way it'll give us time to be able to come up with some of these more comprehensive approaches because if we budget the hundred thousand it's going to increase that to 300,000 and I just what's the what's the largest grant year that we've had as far as the amount of grants that we've given has it gone over a hundred thousand or fifty thousand or no because until just a couple of years ago it was like if you didn't spend it it was gone they that changed about three years ago I think so for a long time we had fifty thousand dollars and we were spending every dime right in five or six months probably seventy five eighty thousand is about as high as it's gone in recent years okay so I understand what you're saying I agree with it in constant most of it except I would just assume use the fund balance to take care of this budget year and then as we come back to address the more comprehensive approaches if we find a different way to fund it that's great and moving forward but I just I think we have enough fund balance to cover it quite honestly that's my suggestion okay I also wanted to mention to the council that we are looking at scheduling a downtown TIF board meeting in November to address some of the ideas that are out there regarding larger projects but we'll make sure to add this particular issue to their agenda to discuss so the only difference I would have in what you suggested is that funding mechanism as far as moving it forward as far as addressing you know different areas of the city identifying some goals and those kind of things in a hundred percent agreement well my goal was to simply unfreeze these funds for the for the businesses that have been waiting and waiting for this so I'm fine with that adjustment yes Councilmember Gary I just want to clarify it so you said that you're not comfortable with general fund monies paying for this particular reinvestment program correct yes that's part of the larger philosophical perspective but yes okay so if we're expanding this to another small area other small areas are not privileged with the tip so where would those funds come from well but you're right what I've got to see what kind of conversation what I'm saying is is that the primary opposition to it is because within the TIF any increase in value that tax value doesn't go to necessarily promote general fund services or other incentives it stays there so if you've got an area I don't know pick one but that's why I struggle with with limiting it to just here it is right here because then we run into the same issue of what these people don't over here maybe don't have it so that's all part of the discussion that I mean I don't know if I have a really clear answer except that at least on this particular issue that's where I stand on on that funding mechanism yes we'll go to councilman Wasney and then Mary Pro Tem I'm comfortable with a hundred thousand of that two hundred and some but I'm not comfortable with the whole 220 did you say was in that fund yeah until we figure out what the future plan is that's what I meant was just that's that's my balance would stand instead of the budgeted one hundred thousand dollars what I want to clarify so that we would have something set aside then when we do pivot if we pivot to make a decision on some of these because I know the Fry Street area already has a Fry Street overlay for example so that could be a jump-off point for you know that that area so but I'm just not comfortable with the 220 Mary Pro Tem well I don't think we're on the same page here so what I think was suggested is we've got 220 in the fund balance that's already been earmarked allocated for downtown reinvestment grant I'm getting a head shake back here yes that's correct yes that's correct no no the 220 the 220 carried over from prior budget it does not include does not include this year's correct right and I think what she was saying is even out of the fund balance you're only comfortable with a hundred thousand of the fund balance is that what you were saying that's correct okay see well and that's a difference in well no and I'm okay with that because what I was trying to say was we could use the phone balance to substitute for the budgeted $100,000 as we've heard the largest allocation year was 75,000 we've got 45,000 that's currently drawn up I mean I wouldn't want to say we spend all that $ 200,000 in one year I mean especially if somehow we we still are having this discussion next year you still have money in there to keep the program moving forward until you you really nail down a more consistent funding source so what did we do in this budget cycle someone remind me did we set aside $100,000 at all for this okay so we've already got that queued up well no we said we set it aside it's your mark to deter no no no I I mean it's not say we did go ahead and give them the authority to spend the two right and said spend it all if it comes it goes into it goes into the fund balance we set the hundred thousand dollars aside to make a determination of what we're going to do with this now the options discussed were we fund the program or we add it to this economic development fund or we do something else with it but you don't really have to do anything with it I mean you can just go down to the fund balance I'm just suggesting if we have fund balance in this fund let's authorize them to spend it if their requests come up to that amount and not carve out a hundred thousand dollars from the fund balance which is what she seems to be suggesting look I'm all in favor of saying let's create additional grants for other parts of the city and to anyone in this community in another part of the city that wants to invest in something like this make a pitch this came about from years and years and years of vision and we're seeing that come to fruition and that can certainly happen in other areas if we were to take that other what did you say percentage that's not downtown I'm sure that's not all consolidated in one particular area and it's probably spread out all throughout the city which is to the point with only 10% of the funding out of the mixed beverage tax allotment each year from downtown that's funding this program now whether or not another area has that much spending capacity and I know it's not even in your your discussion of that you're still drawing a lot you're still saying hey they're bringing this much into the city so therefore they should be able to sit we can't start segmenting our city from a financial perspective I'm not saying therefore what I'm saying is this is a special part of the city cities all over the country are starting to figure out how do you find these small portions of the grid that are left over from a century ago that made sense and make cities so vibrant yeah we've got that and they're be investing in that so I'm saying let's continue to invest in this and if we or anyone else in the community comes up with a new area or a new grant program pitch it bring the vision to the table and then let's invest in that as well I don't see why we have to dil ute what's working may order to be able to find other areas in which we can invest in mayor protein either or we are investing close to what's the yearly TIF allocation now to 400,000 which next year is probably gonna grow to another 50 to say we're investing four to five hundred thousand dollars a year right now in downtown so the notion that we're not investing and we're still investing infrastructure potential infrastructure and floodplain reclamation so this notion that this hundred thousand dollars a year downtown is gonna stand or fall on it that's what it seems like you're trying to say and I just know I just disagree with it's a tool in a large toolkit which includes those other things you and I were both in a meeting this morning which we saw a big price tag for a downtown parking garage yeah yeah well we're never gonna get to those things if we keep peeling off from the TIF in order to fund a hundred thousand dollar program that's that's the no no what I'm saying is that first of all I'm not gonna make decisions today on decisions that we haven't even discussed that are ten years out as far as what's gonna fund a parking garage what 's not City Hall that all has to go to the voters and also who knows about all that I have to deal with what's happening today and looking to the future and understanding that the future is the downtown is going to continue to grow as you say there's a lot of areas around the downtown that still need vast improvement so I'm not gonna a hundred thousand dollars I think we can find somewhere within that that TIF allocation and I'm just simply saying I don't even know what the answer is I'm saying we have enough money to move the program forward right now and we probably have enough money to move the program forward another year and let's move it forward let's release the freeze and we've got time to to resolve these these policy issues and then in that time some of these discussions we had today we'll get a little bit more meat and bones to them so we'll have a little bit more better idea of what's coming down the future what's coming down in the future and how do we fund that because that's really the key it's all about we have limited resources how do we best maximize those resources in our city throughout our entire city so I'm not I think we 're saying the same thing we just have a little bit minor difference on perception violent agreement go ahead okay just so I have clarity here there's 220,000 in the balance in the fund balance there but we may have spent 45, 000 of that already yes okay so really what's the math 175 180 you math guy so that's what it really is so I'm for unfreezing that as we move forward and I definitely I'd like the TIF to look at what if maybe every year 10% of it goes into a grant 90% is for that big ticket item I hope the direction of the TIF board is to get the big ticket item and I know that so whatever that is I mean who knows what that I hope that that item is a parking garage well I think I'm just gonna say it well the number one complaint downtown is it rocks there's festivals there's great businesses my own mother can't eat at my restaurant because she can't park anywhere sometimes just want to go on record saying that so I hope the TIF fund is able to buy a parking garage someday did you have a comment so as the council moves forward just so there's consensus that we will in fact look at other areas of the city and have a further discussion in terms of other small business owners and their availability to tap into a grant program sponsored by the city of Denton so when you say a program is you know being run by the city it should really be for all the city and I understand Councilman Rodin because you represent downtown so understand that Councilman Hawkins owns a business downtown so you know I understand I understand the conversation however I'm saying that it's out of fairness to every small business owner America is built on small business America's small business employs the majority of people in this country so we can't just look at downtown we have to look at businesses across the city how we get there is yet to be determined but I would like council consensus that we really take a good hard look at that in terms of where do we go from here customer Gary do we have a consensus to rename this the small business improvement grant program I don't think at this moment I think that's in the further discussions moving forward so I haven't heard that I think at this point based on what you all are having consensus on right now now is not the time to think about changing the name well yeah I think that's to be in the discussion about a more of a downtown city wide okay and before before we wrap this up Brian Langley has something important to tell us okay well I was just gonna say it's important to when we think about investing in small business the downtown grant only really helps certain types of business downtown again because it's a placemaking grant if you've got a facade it 's typically you're a service industry type of a place your retail you're something like that there are hundreds of small businesses even downtown that never would qualify for this because they're holed up in an office working in some tech company or doing I have an office downtown of a business that I own will never call I would never ask for it because it would never make sense the goals of this wouldn't align with that so it's important when we start talking about down investing in small business that's why I think it's such a it's a much more complicated discussion when we say broadening it outside of a certain place where there's those clear goals so just some food for thought as we're continuing this discussion I agree with you Wow alright hey Mayor Langley had somebody out in the creek turning over rocks he might have found some money in terms of renaming it I think as we move forward and include other businesses in the city it's very appropriate and the issue if we rename it right now is it it's the downtown task force that allocates the funds so they have said if this goes citywide then we don't want that as our job description because we are focused just on downtown so it would and it could be in the future we end up with two programs one finance by the TIF and one finance by something else so you know that's that could be part of the conversation but when that conversation does move forward to include the rest of the city or small area plans then renaming it small business improvement grant program would make a lot of sense but I think it's premature right now okay thank you mr. city assistant city manager mayor I just wanted to clarify I heard a few different conversations I want to make sure I clarify the dollars yes there are different conversations a few different threads there's approximately $200,000 at the end of 15 16 and fund balance and that fund right and then we've had planned to budget another hundred thousand dollars for that fund so at the end of 16 17 is about 300,000 or so total dollar so I just wanted to offer that because I think there's been some discussions about is it a hundred thousand is it two hundred thousand it's really three hundred in total resources by the end of this year so September 2017 that you would have there's a hundred thousand dollar budget so if you wanted to spend 150 or 200 or 300 I need to come back to the council with a budget amendment so just when that's not that's and that's fine I appreciate that clarification because that's not really for me if I recall correctly we budgeted this money we said we're gonna hold this money we're gonna freeze it until we decide what to do with it which means there were some options that we could that we have we could move forward status quo and your scenario plays out if we decided to go a different direction and allocate it somewhere else yeah then so I'm simply saying the 200 that we have currently will cover the grants that we have currently pending and grants that will probably have coming in prior to the next year's budget I think that's correct I don't know how many are pending 45 did you say 45 okay yes so I think that's correct but it would require a budget amendment to do all of that $200,000 if one is an example well if I understood you correctly okay well no I'm just trying to make sure you had the right numbers no no but but that but there's a big distinction there you're saying that in the fund balance of this fund the way the current budget quote-unquote reads is that there's 300,000 and I'm saying I don't want to put that hundred thousand back in that fund right now that's what I'm saying okay yeah okay well that's a budget amendment then so be it because I I thought that we were going to wait to see what we wanted to do with that so then what I'm understanding is when we had that conversation that would have required a budget amendment no matter what if we just said take it to the economic the incentive fund the economic development incentive fund if we wanted to put that hundred thousand dollars in there that would have taken a budget amendment is that correct we don't want to reflect that in the budget and we can certainly do that it really just the intention that we had at least as I understood it is that we would transfer another hundred thousand dollars in this fund and if that's not the direction of the council we can make that change well there's two separate funds as you I'm going to be out voted on that I wouldn't I wouldn't agree to that but I don't I don't you're not out voted because we with 200,000 so do a budget amendment if that's what it takes to hold that 100,000 until we decide so that we still have it set aside until we decide what that pivot is and what direction we move forward it's still what we have funds the program because that that money is sitting in there so thank you for that clarification mr. Langley I appreciate that yes well that was my assumption as well that we were going to unfreeze the current funds that were in there which was the 200 plus and then the hundred thousand that I thought was on hold would go in somewhere and would be available for any other we decide to do I'm I'm okay with self-funding this grant you know in the future and keeping it as as it is but so that as far as the money goes that's what I thought we were talking about anyway all right do you have direction okay so that was for to do a budget amendment this is we're gonna find out of the fund balance what we have and we're gonna come in until the next budget year when we'll already had these subsequent conversations about what do we do with other okay areas and so so out of the fund balance that that's gonna be unfrozen the the hundred thousand for this current year we're not to use that that's correct okay yes all right so the program is moving forward okay unfrozen yes okay thank you very much all right any other questions comments all right we'll take a break five ten minutes all right we're reconvening our meeting Tuesday October 11 2016 at 2 54 p.m. moving on to agenda item 3b receiver report whole discussion give direction to staff and waters and company on the city auditor recruitment process thank you mayor I'm gonna call on Carla Romaine Hague mark our director of human resources to kick this thing off and do the introductions good afternoon mayor members of the City Council as you know we contracted with waters and company to do our search for our city manager they began the advertising after council gave direction on the brochure and approved it at the August 23 rd meeting also in August 23rd council gave us direction to begin the recruitment for a city auditor and so we contracted with waters and company to do that search as well I have Chuck war and Miguel Zuna with waters and company here today to talk to you about this item as well as item C so the first one we will be talking specifically about the city auditor recruitment Chuck was here in September to meet with the various stakeholders to develop the broch ure we'll be seeking your approval on that brochure to begin the advertising as well as the there are some minor revisions that are being recommended to the job description so we'll be seeking your approval on those changes he also has as part of the backup tentative timeline for the auditor recruitment so we want to make sure that council is comfortable with that timeline and then item C will be specific to the city manager interview process when Miguel was here on August 23rd let me let me go ahead and call that item so that they can come so because I haven't called see yet let me call just real quick we're gonna take items B and C together because they're dealing with the different hiring positions here for the City Council's receive report hold discussion gives direction to staff and waters and company on the city manager interview sorry I just wanted to get a call make sure we thank you so I didn't see Miguel on August 23rd he shared with council what the process would be like that they they use for recruitment and he also shared some different interview options and then Chuck supplemented that with a letter that's been included as part of your backup for this meeting so again we're hoping today we 'll get some specific direction from council on maybe some potential interview dates and what the interview process will be like so we can start coordinating that so with that unless you have questions for me I'm going to invite Chuck up to the podium bless you mayor and council we appreciate the opportunity to be here let me address the job description first if I may for the city auditor I think generally it seemed to accurately describe what you said you were looking for it seemed to be essentially complete there was one area that a recommendation it appeared that the experience requirements were relatively like compared to the caliber of individual you said you were seeking it required an individual with a master's degree in appropriate field could qualify with two years of experience or I take that back a bachelor's degree could have qualified with four years of equivalent or like experience with a master's degree two years that did not seem to accurately describe the person so we suggest changing that to ten years of auditing experience with a bachelor's degree five years with a master's degree and that's reflected in the document other than that there was just a few minor language modifications we have also prepared a a marketing piece or recruitment brochure which is intended to describe the candidates the the community describe the municipal organization describe the role and duties of the city auditor it describes the compensation parameters it describes how to apply in other words it more or less packages the the recruitment it's very similar to the piece we did for the city manager recruitment and it reflects an apply by date or a closing date of November 14th as far as the timeline goes we have staged if you will the closing November 14th we'll collect documents from the most qualified candidates and this would have you interviewing candidates very early in January the thought process being you're going to have a very busy time evaluating and interviewing and selecting city manager candidates and gives you something to break between those so I think in terms of B those are my specific comments on item B and be glad to answer any questions when we had our meeting we met I emphasized that it was critical that this internal auditor was an independent internal auditor so I have a few questions about some of the wording under job functions if we can all right and my point is that this is one of the few positions that council hires council fires and this independent auditor should be responsible to council first without having to reroute and go through staff before reports or findings come to council I think for the credibility of our city that's just really important so to look under and this is page one if you're looking at your backup on the iPad under essential job functions it says the position will have two distinct roles okay job description there's a word or in there that I want to change where it says the results are reported directly to the City Council or the audit finance committee no I'm sorry these reports need to come to City Council first and then council can decide what then goes to audit finance and from there my concern is that if things go to the audit finance committee first they could get filtered through and before they come directly to council to give this man or woman the independence that they're going to need they need to know that they are going to come not to staff first but that they come to council first councilman was need yes the question clarification the audit finance committee are council members so are you saying that they're they're made up of I think three council members audit finance committee it's not the whole council that's correct so you say okay bring make sure yeah so that it comes directly to City Council understanding how important it is for that information to then go to audit finance what I'm saying is that when reports come in that information needs to come to this City Council first and then it goes on to committees and staff Councilman Gregory then may put in well then what we ought to do is have all of the reports from the staff on mobility come to council first and then go to the mobility committee and all the reports that on the environment go to the whole council first and then go to the committees on the environment the council committee on the environment no I anticipate that there are going to be a lot of standard and regular reporting that goes to the to the committee to the audit finance committee made up of three council members that we all select and then they're going to forward things on they may send the way I would have pictured it happening is that that committee may sometimes say no madam auditor or mr. auditor this is not a sufficient report you need to go back and do some more work on it before it goes to full council otherwise there's no need for an audit finance committee may protein yeah I agree I mean I think the structure of our committees is meant to help make more efficient the work of this body and so we very intentionally divvy divvy that up I mean right now if you think about what the audit finance committee hears and I served on it for a couple years the caper caper of reviews that come out every year that's all most of the work on that and the nitty-gritty is done at the audit finance level and as a council member I appreciate that because we can't all get into the weed and we certainly don't have time at this agenda to always do that so and I also make a point about the ability of them to report directly to staff not from a hiring and firing point of view but to the extent that we may want them to be able to be used by city management who's looking at different systems that they want to get tested out or audited or whatever we may want to think about how that works as well to be able to do that without someone saying oh I don't want to look into this system because it means it's got to automatically go to council first just for me as a senior staff member to try and get some work done we might want to provide some leeway to have that sort of relationship brought I think we're just setting ourselves up into some potential political messes down the road so at the end of the day I don't want to get caught up on that because I think we'll have time in terms of how we're ultimately kind of giving this person direction as a council but those are just some of my thoughts yes you can't compare the environment and the mobility committee to an internal auditor and the risk assessments and the reports that are going to come forward from an internal auditor this is foundational for this city it's foundational and this independent auditor needs to know coming in it's why we need to fix this verbiage right now so that that person comes in and knows that they are accountable to this council that they are accountable for the reports that come in because some of those reports may be good some of those reports may not be good in which case this council needs to hear all of it first and in terms of being in the weeds that's our job to be in the weeds for accountability the city needs an auditor I know that we had some council members who were not in favor of an internal auditor and so when some of those people are actually on the audit finance committee so I come back to you I think going forward whoever it is who is looking at the job that they're going to take here that they understand clearly from the outset that they are accountable and answerable to this council councilmember Gary second that also I wanted to add in preferences if we if everybody would be in agreement if we include in there a track record of waste prevention and fraud detection and where are you I'm on I'm sorry page three of three on the job description under preferences if we could add track record of waste prevention track record of fraud detection and strong commitment to transparency or however you want to word that okay got a question I want to come back to councilman wasn't here your thoughts and your your suggestions on the wording reports directly to the City Council or audit finance committee I don't know how else to say it but to say it I mean it sounds like that in some ways so correct me if I'm wrong that there may be a sense that if it goes to the audit and audit finance committee first that somehow it might get scrubbed to where when it comes to council that there's some kind of that you don't see the entire report is that is that is there a fear of sort of I don't want to say dist rust or but is that help me understand that we are rebuilding the trust between this city government and our citizens right now talk to anybody out there on the street and there's just and in the past in the last 30 to 60 days I wasn't the first one to know and as an elected official in this city I should have been one of the first ones to know so as this auditor comes in and digs in and comes forward with reports I'm saying let's be open and transparent and bring everything to this council first okay well then I don't even know why we would need to go to the audit finance committee I mean I mean that's I mean I hear what you're saying I don't know what you're referring to on 30 to 60 days I don't know if we have I mean there are some of our citizens who have a more cynical view of city government right now and I get that and that they're certainly entitled to that I don't know if there's a wholesale distrust of the process I don't I'm not gonna sit here and not agree to that necessarily I just don't need to understand but I don't want to make a decision because I think I can't trust if I 've got three colleagues sitting on a committee that they're going to somehow withhold or or not tell me something that I need to know so I just want to try to understand and that helps me it helps me understand where you're coming from I do appreciate that because I don't know other than that why you would even need to take anything from an auditor to the audit finance committee if council sees it first because whatever directions needing to be given would be vetted at that you know you're gonna have to go through all your other and that's fine I mean if we want to do that if this council wants to do that but there doesn't seem to be any need to even include the audit finance committee in it because unless you're what you're saying is you want the council to see it first and then it go to the audit finance committee and I get that but the same thing could still happen if it went to the audit committee first and that is so I guess I don't I don't necessarily share the same sentiment you do about why you might want it to come to council first but I understand it I can I can see where where you might how you might feel that way. Mayor if I may to Ms. Wasney's point under on page two of three under operation performance review functions we did add previously it read tracks and provides follow-up or implementation feedback to the city manager and we added City Council and city manager to that point. Where is that exactly? Page two. Last bullet under operations performance review functions on page two. Okay yeah okay well let's sort of take these one at a time because I know we've got a couple of suggestions and I don't I don't know if you were finished with your your let's just take one at a time yeah okay yeah all right so Councilman Wasney you're suggesting that on page one under essential job functions how are you saying you want that to read? Directly to the City Council period. Okay all right. Mayor are we done on that point or may I add to that? Of course yeah I'm sorry I didn't see you throw something at me. Sure I'd like to keep it as it is I don't agree with that at all I'm not on the mobility committee so I in my on my iPad here I just click on mobility committee I see everything that they talked about I see the AIS the whole nine yards I'm probably miss on the discussion part but I don't feel like I'm lacking anything that happened in the mobility committee if this is one of the issues that you are very concerned with you can I don't think you're allowed to attend the meeting because then it's a quorum but the backups right there so I don't I don't see why we do this for this one topic. Okay anybody else? Councilmember Reed? Well I guess I'm the next one the next bullet point down I know we're doing them one at a time but it it has the second role and the results are reported directly to the city manager in management so if we're going with reporting to council hired by council report directly to council then that we may need to look at some other things as well if that's an issue is was this the job description for the last city auditor that we hired and that's with the modifications that are in track language by interviewing some of us yes okay so that's why okay yes councilman Watson. I think it reads that way because these are specific requests coming from management so it's not going to be something that is coming from the auditor it'll be a request from the city manager hey will you take a look so to your point maybe we add city manager and city council so those reports you know all come through to us as well. Yeah I really struggle with cutting the audit finance committee out of this only because all of that backup is available I believe all the committee backup is available and because if anything if they're gonna do reports for the city manager they they they're gonna have to go somewhere I just don't know if as a city if that's how we're gonna structure the city auditor that and I guess question for our consultants is how do other cities handle this function do you do you have I mean I'm sure you've placed city aud itors before how do they is this a typical discussion that council has or is it how do they handle it do you know? In most cases I could just use the city of Dallas as an example because I happen to have met their auditor they post all their findings on the city website you know audit of the auto pound the audit is posted on the website in its entirety on the website so it you know that that's how they maintain transparency. Yeah okay. Go ahead I'm sorry council member. So if on essential job functions could we say first bullet first roll results are reported directly to the City Council and audit finance committee would that help because we are not abdicating any of the City Council rule we're not abdicating any of the audit finance committee role. Okay I'm sorry council member Mayor Pro Tem I apologize. Just logistically speaking I mean this is expensive real estate right here that we have there's plenty of things that I've asked for that haven't gotten on here that I've asked for a year ago that are important things but just not queued up takes a while to get here there's a lot of priorities of the city. To say all of a sudden this one position which I understand for everyone this is the most important thing for some of you guys but I think as we dig into it I think we're gonna get some interesting helpful reports but it's going to hopefully if everything's working as it ought to be it's gonna be pretty routine and we're gonna find some fires we need to put out we're gonna deal with some things we're gonna get some systems in place but to say whenever this person speaks it's got to get on the prime real estate I think we're setting ourselves up for some just logistical problems which is the very reason why we spread out government into a series of committees and even spread it out further into citizen committees beyond that to help the functioning of the city on these topics move along and furthermore I think to silo this person and say they only talked to council only talked to council all of our appointees I hope we're talking to one another there's they're the experts if I can't trust my city manager to have conversations with the city auditor both of who we have hired then we are majorly dysfunctional as a city and we've made horrible decisions in terms of who we hired so I think to be able to allow this sort of conversations to be able to work together to be able to rise things up to council as is appropriate as the policymaking body and for us to still have that direct oversight to trust our committees to trust our other appointees we're setting this up from this view of skepticism of local government that everything's broken and we need to micromanage everything and I think that's inappropriate and it's not going to work it's not gonna be sustainable long term and I think we're just setting ourselves up for unnecessary political battles and we need to make this work can ask you a question you may is and okay instead of war for you on that language where it says directly to the City Council and audit finance committee okay and it's just about transparency and accountability and I love the thought of posting those all the audits online I know that there are many cities throughout Texas who do that as I studied this internal audit position throughout the state and that's accountability and transparency so of course this person will have a conversation with staff I'm saying when those audit reports come out that those audit reports are risk assessment reports they're important and they can't be buried in a staff meeting they have to come forward to council so there was a recommendation of a changing an or to an end so do I is there a okay we got no I think you got what you need yeah okay all right so we'll change that to and the second point I'm sorry councilmember was needed you have you did you have others well I'd like to add under job functions a review of city contracts and we may want to put some kind of number on that because we sure do a lot of contracts in this city and so I'm open to suggestions but I know the Dallas City Auditor does review contracts down there he found several contracts askew with Fair Park and those contracts had to be rebid so miss was me if I may under financial internal control and compliance auditing functions the second bullet addresses third-party contracts third-party contracts so is that adequate to have it in that section and not that's a council decision okay I mean it is that where they're reviewing I mean that's fine with me if that's it's what it's saying and that's fine with me yeah I think the intent there is anytime there's a major contract it's part of the compliance review make sure that all bidding requirements are properly followed that that the letting procedures are adhered to and I think unless the council has some specific need to put a dollar figure on it that seems to cover that yes ma'am but I wanted to go beyond just compliance with the bidding process I actually want those contracts reviewed so that's where I'm talking about because we do a lot of contracts large and small councilmember Gregory my only concern about it's in there to review third-party contracts given the number of contracts that we see coming across our desk my guess is you would need to have one or two at least another staff person under the city auditor just dedicated to that given the number of contracts so I would I would suggest it before we after we hire a city auditor in that city auditor does a first job which I think is a risk assessment we could get some feedback from that person regarding you know and where they would take us that person would take a sample of some contracts different amounts different levels and and maybe let the auditor come to us with a recommendation about if every single contract I mean we have contracts that are just renewed on a yearly basis that are for photocopying I mean we might be able to save ourselves some money by by not necessarily having both the legal department and the auditor review every one of those contracts every single year maybe maybe we need to do that I'd like to defer and have the expert that we hire give us some advice I guess help me understand exactly what you're saying by review because when I read this sentence it says to ensure that the city is operating within federal state and local regulations in accordance with city policies and in accordance with third party contracts so when you say review a contract what do you what do you mean by review I mean especially after we voted on it or before I guess I'm not sure what exactly you're trying to interest you're trying to satisfy there legal looks at a contract and look it looks at the legalese an auditor is going to look at the math and again the policies and procedures in terms of how these bids were were let so I come back to city of Dallas and Fair Park because we're talking about big big contracts with the vendors that come into Fair Park and so right now without an internal auditor a lot of contracts come to legal at the last minute they are having to review quickly and get through them and to have another set of eyes on those contracts but I defer to Councilman Gregory in that the verbiage is already in here reviewing the contracts and to allow this new city internal auditor to get their feet wet and see how the rhythm and flow goes with their risk assessment it may be that part of the risk assessment comes forward that we don't have adequate review of our contract so let's let that process play out and cross that bridge when we come to it thank you any other changes I just want because I know we 've had a couple people make some additional ones and I wanted to get yours squared away first let's see it's under financial internal it was a fifth one down page one of three conducts financial internal control and compliance audits or special reviews as requested by the city manager or City Council I'm I'm comfortable with that either either entity can request a report we've already said at the top now that those those results will be reported to council so whether the city manager orders it or we asked for it the results will come to council so I'm comfortable with that verbiage okay any other changes that okay Council member Riggs I think somebody had mentioned the second bullet point under essential job functions right mention that right that's that's in regarding the reports that the reports that management request that City Council sees those okay so we've changed that okay all right and yes okay all right mayor protein again and I guess I'm gonna ask some of our city management to maybe chime in if they want to maybe they don't want to on past experience either in our city or other cities as it relates to this question if I'm in city management and I'm trying to kind of take this massive organization and I find a need to kind of look into something for whatever reason good bad maybe there's no reason to be alarmed and everything that I asked this person to do as an auditor means that before it even gets back to me it has to go to this political body which may be looking for something to kind of you know look for something to embarrass the management or something like that as a result I'm probably not very likely to take advantage of that city auditor very often because there's let's just face it in organizations you need to allow things to work and function and folks to kind of see things and look at things and decide kind of when something's a cause for alarm and something else it sounds like with the review of contracts and all these things we're saying we've got all these departments that do all these things and this superhero city auditor is going to come in and micromanage all of them because we think it's all broken and I I just don't think that's what city auditors do I think they look at anyway anyways so on this issue of the city management I'm I don't know if any of the city management wants to chime in we have past experience with working with a city auditor under this sort of an arrangement where there 's some ambiguity as to how they work with city management and with City Council and what their role is and being able to kind of task city management with things because now they come with the full thrust of I get to come in front of City Council whenever I want you guys don't and and they're asking me for this so I think there's I'm looking at this as somebody who's managed folks for the last 20 years and see some real potential pitfalls and how this is going to work and I don't want to fall into a similar political situation that we had with the last city auditor by how we're setting this up on the front end so I throw that out there to see management to see if there's any wisdom that can be gleaned as it relates to the specific question of how this auditor relates to both council and management I think there are times that city manager when we had our past auditor use the auditor and that audit function for very specific things in the organization that may or may not rise to the level of council concern but it meant improving efficiencies it meant a variety of different things if I think back to your point if if everything is is going to go to council and an open forum the manager will be very careful on how he uses that audit function all right okay so any more questions on the city auditor material that we have in our backup because I think he had finished his presentation asked for questions we had a couple of changes that were made it seemed like we had a I'm gonna say consensus noting some opposition to that it wasn't it wasn't you know unanimous how do you say that unanimity wasn't unanimous so any other questions on on B item B oh okay on the second one yeah let 's make sure we have a direction on that on the second bullet point on page one under essential job functions where it talks about for which the results are reported directly to the city manager we have a recommendation or a proposal to add in and council and the appropriate members of management what where are we on that the one you the one you had suggested yes so obviously you're okay with that right well I made the request for that because I must my understanding that the auditor was directly to report back to City Council no matter what and so I thought that if something was worthy of looking into then it would be worthy of the council to hear it that was my rationale for requesting that okay and I think that's a logical move because the first bullet point talks about those reports coming to council and then to have the second bullet point if it's triggered by the city manager or other management that those reports come to the city manager and council and basically so we're not left out of the loop with any of these reports okay mr. mayor if I may just for consistency sake under financial internal control I can't I saw it to the fifth bullet down I think to be consistent with the earlier verb is that needs to be manned and that's great so back to the second bullet point on essential job functions you know first of all if these are all going to be displayed on the website all right so and I don't know when people say reported to the City Council I don't anticipate that means that we have to have a meeting and all these reports are given to us these reports if they're going to be made public on the website we certainly have access to them there if they're given to us in our status report we have them access there and you know whatever we decide here when somebody comes on board I doubt very seriously that this is going to be something that won't have to be looked at and tweaked based upon our experiences in the past so I mean I'm okay with that change and it gets to the point where it becomes unworkable and if somehow city management folks but what I want to be careful about is that we don't do things that really act in opposite of what you're trying to accomplish and that is what we're trying to do it seems that we're trying to fair it out to specific language in the in the fraud waste so so forth and so on well I can tell you as a sitting City Council member and mayor I've been on for six years I've been mayor for two I don't know everything that's going on in the city I don't know exactly every little piece of information because that's not my function so you do have to rely on staff to some degree to be able to look into things to figure some things out maybe identify a problem so if we create an environment where you're not going to want to do that because there's going to be so much of a oversight and you don't know what the political objectives are for people on council well then we're basically defeating ourselves because then nobody is going to look into anything we don't know enough what to look into and we've set ourselves up I'm not saying that this is creating that I'm just simply saying that we want to be careful that we don't provide a disincentive to do that through management so and and however you want to couch it however you want to see it well no they shouldn't be that they're if they have a disincentive then they shouldn't blah blah blah blah that's fine I'm not taking any side on that I'm saying we just need to be cognizant of we're trying to teach even objective here with an internal auditor and we want to make sure that what we do allows for the creation of an environment to do that and we won't know that until they come on board and they they they operate within this Rubix that we are creating so I just I mean I 've seen it happen where we sort of shoot ourselves in the foot I'm not saying this is it I'm just saying I hope we're open as someone comes online to making some tweaks so that we can obtain and move towards the objective that we 're trying to trying to achieve so I'm okay with that change and if it gets to the point where I'm in undated with reports and they mean nothing and I don't understand them or they don't show anything we'd always come back and address that so I don't think that's one of those that is going to be a big headache for me anybody else have any comments or thoughts on that so go ahead yes are we going to revisit this because if you look at the posting it's more specific to the wording of the recruitment of the city auditor and so documentation yes okay so I want to revisit I don't feel like I was fully prepared for that conversation you know are we going to bypass audit finance is city manager going to have any kind of relationship with their city auditor okay is our potential city manager who's watching right now does that person want to work here anymore well and that's being honest like so I I just was are we okay with the brochure and that sort of thing so if we're gonna revisit this I would like that okay Councilmember Briggs yeah well well my understanding is this is for the documentation and the materials that will be sent out to prospects is that my understanding yes sir ideally the the recruitment brochure would match the language here because this is your foundational piece okay all right so then I'm okay you're okay okay with and rather than or yes and adding in and city council yeah then I'm okay okay thank you okay yes mayor for pro tem just have to point out that behind us are three student journalists from UNT and I was talking to him at the break and I asked him what they thought in each one of them pointed out they didn't know local government was so exciting so I'm glad we're giving yes nice I didn't need a discussion yeah yeah welcome guys okay so from the the backup that we have and the documents that you're asking if there any changes we've made those two changes three changes I think I have that all record all right and that wraps it seems to wrap up our discussion on agenda item B all right so then we'll move on to agenda item C and I've called it but it's the discussion of report and hold discussion about the waters and company on the city manager interview process you want me to go first miss Burgess do you want to do your piece first or you want me to go different okay all right make sure I understood in the short term we 'll be providing you information about a group of candidates from which you might select semi finalists and then in the next few weeks ideally you will be selecting finalist candidates some number of those four or five six ever what that number may be and then you'll need a process to interview evaluate assess come to terms with one of those candidates all of that there's a number of ways of going about that certainly almost every City Council hiring a city manager is going to interview those candidates for an hour hour and a half whatever the time frame may be with standardized questions take notes and then at some point discuss there are additional elements you can utilize if you desire public input staff input there's several ways of doing that one is you could potentially utilize a panel of departmental directors they wouldn't be interviewing the candidates in a technical sense but they could provide you feedback on this individual might fit well with the city of Denton team or this this individual seems to be overbearing or this individual didn't seem very prepared it didn't seem to know much about Denton like that sort of feedback as opposed to you might be assessing the candidates how well could they accomplish your mission in terms of public safety economic development financial sustainability and all those other objectives you have you could also have receptions have a public reception where staff and community are invited you can use comment cards an individual comes in contact with a candidate might record I was very impressed by this candidate was very engaging energetic seemed to know a lot about Denton or unfortunately and they get the opposite comments about some candidates they didn't seem very prepared they weren't very cordial they were rude when I asked me whatever the concern maybe that's another way of doing that but I guess the couple of fundamental questions you might ask is how much time you wanted to vote for the interview process you want to do a two-day process or a one-day process it's sometimes hard to cram all that into one day but again that's an individual decision on the part of the council and then the other fundamental question question regarding the idea of receptions when that's used is it generally when you've gotten down to the finalist but what I'm concerned about with that is if that happens in a situation where a candidate who is currently a successful city manager in another city but has not notified his current city that she or he is looking for a different position that that that that might cause a candidate that seems very attractive to us may may decide I can't do that and put myself in an awkward position with my current employer in case I'm not hired. Well one of the conversations right now the candidates can remain relatively anonymous but when we get to if they accept the invitation to interview we do have the open meetings and open records conversation with them and the fact that I have their resume doesn't shield them from the open meetings law according to the Secretary of State and several different rulings so we do have that conversation that when we get down to the final few candidates most city councils believe that their public has a need and a right to know who they are and what they're all about it's even stronger in some states as an example I've done several recruitments in Colorado recently and there the names have to be publicly posted for 14 days before a job offer can be made so that we you know pretty serious candidate to put themselves through that much like the Texas law or superintendent's name schools super to have to be posted same. But I think once you get down to selecting final candidates most of them are going to be at that point where they're going to be okay with their names and there has to be a point in the process where they have to subject themselves to that scrutiny. Okay thanks. And I would assume that we're talking about finalists maybe three people? That's really a council decision I've had councils interview as many as nine and I still have nightmares over that. Most councils seem to believe that personally my best experience is when when councils select four to six finalists I don't like to see three for a couple of reasons one might come and odd as this might seem the counselor the spouse the candidate or the spouse may decide well I just don't like Denton and you bring another candidate in you say well I just don't like that candidate and then you're picking by default I certainly don't want you you don't deserve to be in that spot you don't want to be in that spot and I don't want you in that spot. So we believe that if you have four to six finalists you have a good menu to interview you have some choices and if there happens to be a candidate who doesn't perform well you still have other good choices or if a candidate selects him or herself him or herself out of the process you still have good choices so I would say four to six would be my recommendation. To continue so with the semi-finalists my recommendation would be to just have council and staff talk to these people and I welcome comments from staff however I don't want filters coming from staff so that whoever makes that semi-finalist list also comes in interviews with council so that we have council making and driving this decision but I do welcome the comments coming from staff because that's an important piece of the puzzle in terms of communication and people feeling that they can really work with someone. The other is that the public piece and and a lot of the city employees across the board so I like the idea of a reception with that four to six and put just a blanket invitation maybe have it at the Civic Center and have people come and do a meet and greet with this four to six and I presume that's what you're talking about kind of a public meet and greet. I actually had a recent experience with a client who it happened to be a police chief recruitment with same principle they did have a public reception scheduled I mean I'm sorry a staff reception. Police department and other city employees who come in the first hour was devoted to staff I think it was from like 530 to 630 then 630 to 830 or whatever it was was for the community and that gave the the employees a good opportunity to meet and interact with the candidates and gave the the community and it didn't dil ute either one I thought it was a good approach. Yeah I like that suggestion . You're talking about on a finalist. Okay right and when I talked about department heads that would be with finalist also the department heads would not be involved in selecting those finalists from the semi finalists but just at the end then the department heads could give you some feedback about the candidates in terms of how they felt they would fit into the environment fit into the organizational culture. Okay so I've got a question on the posting it says to give you direction on the interview process so what exactly are you needing from us regarding the interview process? Well Miss Romine and I are gonna have to develop an interview schedule for you so do you want to devote it to a day a day and a half two days do you want to have some type of a social interaction with the candidates now that would have to be a posted meeting if you did so yeah those sorts of things are all options but if that you're talking about semi finalists no I'm talking about the finalists. Oh okay so all this discussion is about the finalists right okay and you're thinking it's gonna be three to four two or three or most likely four to six okay I'm getting four to six I don't know if it's a time we're talking about or four to six people so I'm confused okay so those those are the questions before the council two days of interview process two days okay okay so over two day stretch social interaction I don't necessarily have a great need for that I mean if I've got four four six people I'm trying to decide from then I don't know how you're gonna coordinate that but I mean I don't necessarily have a need for it but if everybody else decides they want that then I don't that's okay with me yes so since it's going to go over two days that social interaction could be over a lunch yeah I don't even know what's what you mean by social interaction in the social interaction so you mean talk about being out in public in some recruit ments the the City Council perhaps has a a lunch or a dinner where the candidates all of them right all the candidates and the the entire council and in some cases perhaps the interim city manager that sort of thing all have a lunch just a social interaction some find value in that others don't yeah I'm indifferent to that I mean if that's what council wants I'll do it but I don't see my I think the reception can provide that same opportunity for the social interact yeah okay I'm sorry yeah Keely and then Sarah you had a question okay so who else Ke ely councilmember Briggs councilmember Gary anybody else Dalton okay good we're stretching this out to dinner I'm kidding go ahead I like the idea of a reception I think that's it's a good idea for employees we have thousand employees and to leave it open if they want to come in and meet the candidates I think that's a great idea okay all right Chuck do other cities do the the social function with all the candidates at once or what are you seeing in some of the other cities well I've had a number of different ways it's done I had one recent client that they as I recall it was a seven- member council so to two council members took this candidate out and and two other count took a different candidate out and they kind of compared notes it's just a more intimate environment that learn a little bit more about the candidate socially and how well he or she interacts with the in that environment again some councils find that illustrative and instructive and others don't okay so interview process two days some type of social interaction either reception or a lunch or something is that a consensus okay yeah yes usually to with this there's some sort of introduction and a welcome and we didn't know if the council would be open to allowing if the mayor and our mayor pro-tem wanted to do that welcome an introduction or is that the interim city manager so he also needs some guidance how do you want to kick this off welcome an introduction to the candidates that come in tell them a little bit about okay didn't what they can expect of course checking myself and Miguel would be here to help guide that process and go ahead I mean this should be a red carpet approach I mean we were trying to sell these folks and their families on the city so get them picked up in a nice vehicle from the do whatever get them a tour of the city and see everything take them to downtown restaurant I mean treat these folks I mean they're coming we want them to want to stay here so however you think it would be best to involve us in some of those activities but from my point of view yes let's come up with a plan that really makes this this let's show dentin for all it is heck we have so many things going on in this town even as we kind of finally pick those two days there might even be some really cool festival going on that we might align it to I'm thinking of that Chevy Chase and funny farm where you kind of get the city out to yeah if we are lucky I mean if we're able to select the can the finalist at the November 1st meeting we were targeting November 14th and 15th for the council interview and I think on the back of you have a sample schedule day one day two in there so want to direct council to that what page was I think that was on page yeah yeah so yeah that's I mean I'm good with that yeah and that included there was essentially three stations for each candidate one would be talking to the City Council another candidate would be talking to the department directors and another candidate would be on a city tour and just rotate that until you've talked to all the candidates good yep all right what else any more direction that it I think I have what I need I appreciate it very much thank you all right thank you appreciate that we 'll move on to work session item number 3d receive report and hold discussion provide staff direction regarding the establishment of a charter review committee thank you mayor Aaron Lee our first assistant city attorney will handle this item mayors and councilmember councilmembers I am here to present to you the charter review committee or continue the discussion that you had two weeks ago including the resolution that is included in your packet so I'm going to highlight all of that as I know that you have some public hearing scheduled so I'll try to move a little faster than not as I said two weeks ago you all held a work session discussion regarding potential revisions to the Denton City Charter including but not limited to ethics during that discussion the council identified seven areas of potential revisions to the charter and you also asked for a resolution to establish a charter review committee and then you asked the staff to prepare the resolution for this meeting as as I mentioned that resolution is included in your agenda backup and I'm just going to highlight the the specific revisions that you requested for the Charter Review Committee to consider that we've labeled them as charges and and I'll also describe briefly the process in the formation of the committee as well as some other duties and procedural process that they're going to use first the charts that you provided or asked for was the the created six single member council districts and one at-large mayoral districts as you know section 2.0 one of the charter currently provides for four single member districts and three at-large districts the second is to potentially replace the three consecutive two-year terms currently the City Charter limits council members terms to two years and the most consecutive or the maximum consecutive terms that a council member can apply for be eligible for until they have to roll off is three for a total of six years one of the suggestions raised by one of the council members on two weeks ago was the possibility of two three year terms the third charge and then the current one-year district residency eligibility requirement section 2.02 of the City Charter provides that a any person who's running for a council member seat has to have lived in the city for one year and must also have lived in the district in which they're running for one year as well and this could can create some unintended consequences I know recently there was a situation where a person who's lived here for most of their life happened to move and wanted to run but the district residency eligibility requirement is a is a is an issue yes sir I thought we talked about moving in for two year terms to three year terms. One of the things leaving it open and leaving it to what the what you'll see in the resolution is to provide for an alternative term that is one of the suggestions that will be carried to them but we wanted to give the Charter Review Committee as much discretion as to come up with the possible solutions which we may not have discussed two weeks ago and I think it needs to be abundantly clear to our citizens to this council and to staff that these are all things that the Charter Review Committee will discuss they 're not necessarily charged with changing so that their their charge is to examine all of these things and then to bring forward their recommendation so that has to be very very specific because Charter Review Committee may take a look at some of this and say we're fine with the way it is and they they have to know that you know that's part of their charge as well. And that's correct Councilmember Wasney that they do they do analyze and try to come up with potential solutions also listening to citizen comments during their their meetings which will be open to the public and to bring those recommendations to you and that is correct they don't adopt it you don't adopt it you know what you made the recommendations if you agree with them then those will be placed as valid propositions for the citizens of Denton to vote upon either the May or the November election which you're correct yes. I just I might point out to the council that Mr. Leal has crafted the resolution with the following language as to each charge and that would be whether and in what manner to revise and so that would give the option of not revising or revising and determining how to do so so there's good latitude I think in all that draftsmanship. So on the point of the charter which the ethics ordinance which this whole conversation was built around that it's going to be listed under a proposed charge as well and may or may not change what if there's a majority of the council that wants to see an ethics ordinance but then say the Char ter Committee comes back and says we think we should leave it there what happens then? I guess at that point I mean that's an interesting point because usually the past charter revisions that have been made you know the council has gone along with the recommendations but certainly I guess the ultimate dec ider would be the council as to whether or not to go with a recommendation or to propose an alternative ballot proposition for consideration. Okay oh I'm sorry Mayor Pro Tem. Yeah and that would I guess just be in our discretion which if we want to go against I mean we always have this discussion with the bond committees as well as ultimately you're picking folks who not only are going to kind of help you kind of think through this but at the end of the day this is going to a ballot and so hopefully these are people of stature that are also going to help sell whatever changes that we decide we think ought to be made to the to the Charter so to the extent that we don't take their recommendation we've we've just cut off our perhaps the people that are the best people to help sell whatever changes but it sounds like we have that full discretion as a council one way or the other. My question is I was on the last one I think Kathleen was as well it was fascinating for me I mean it was several years ago I got to learn so much and there were so many folks of great history in the city of Denton talking about a great political conversation back and forth but I remember up front of course we were looking at a specific small portion of the Charter and there was some help in terms of framing the discussion and some of the members helped do that but I remember Anita was up there helping frame that I think some other staff as well as we're looking at just this laundry list of potential items in terms of that education piece once we get this committee together who's tasked with unfolding what the potential issues are on each of these things just so people are aware of the context jumping into it is that is that is that something we allow the legal staff to elucidate? Mr. O'Aall has crafted that into the into the resolution as well tasking the city management team and the city attorney's office with full support the Charter Review Committee so that would continue to whatever they need whatever background they need we can do the research gather it and present it. Okay so I have a question about that is it possible since we all get three individual nominees to each pick one that we want to be on an ethics revised report committee and then the other two go to all these other extra ones and that way the charge can be you know if there's something to change change it and then come back with a you know with a draft ordinance at the same time so we can kind of do so the ethics part is to get lost and all of these is that possible? I do plan to discuss as far as the composition of the committee the Charter Review Committee and and how subcommittees are being formed okay to study because we do understand that there are multiple charges that it's possible that some committees may have more than one charge to consider and discuss as a subcommittee and so I'm if you'll bear with me I will get to that and I possibly answer your question. Thank you. Any other questions? Yeah, Councilmember Geary. Along those lines is it possible to structure the I 'll just tell you I'm having difficulty getting people to commit to an open-ended commitment without any end date and no idea of how much work is going to be involved and so what I'm wondering is if we can stagger this committee so for instance the ethics issue is addressed first no later than X date then we address this following issue no later than X date that way if people can 't commit to an open-ended discussion at the very least we can get certain items on the May ballot and then we can continue the progress along the Char ter. Point on that. Yes. We can only have one vote for a change to the Charter every two years so if we do part of it in May then we have to wait two years before we do the other part so I don't think that would work. When these go before the voters they're all gonna need to go together otherwise some of them don't go at all for two years and I and I would rather not wait two years on on on that kind of a thing. When I've been talking to people I've said it's probably not going to be able to be done in time for the May election so I would imagine it would be on the November ballot. I would imagine that the committee would want to finish up their work by the end of May because of summer vacations because of Denton being such a on such an academic calendar so so I've said I don't I can 't promise you it would be over by May but I would imagine that it would so it's not open-ended it's this is to be done by at latest the November ballot so so and when you count back the days from that it's going to need to be done pretty soon in May so I haven't had a problem with the open-ended nature of the question. Okay you've got a follow-up. Were you you had the floor? You okay? Okay and then after after Councilmember Briggs. So I have the same issue but during our last discussion I remember people saying oh it could take a year it could even take two years and that was so I know okay yeah I don't think it 's gonna take that long I mean people are gonna want to people lose interest after right that's yes. We also have a lot of time constraints to put this on the November ballot so there's a 78 day backup for that. Council is gonna have to take the recommendations and have time to kind of chew through those and make decisions themselves so this Charter Review Committee I like Council man Gregory's timeframe that they need to be pretty much wrapped up by May before the summer because it allows some time then for you know 78 days that 's two and a half months so you're backing down that calendar. Council will be looking at this next summer to get ready even though it's a big distance of time between June July and November there's that much time required legally to get all of this stuff on the ballot so that's item one. Item two with makeup of and I know you're going to address this but it's a comment to Council man Briggs that I think some of these committees may only have two people some of these committees may have four. Ethics is the the most work of this Charter Committee and so I'm anxious to you know kind of discuss that as a council in terms of you know the committee makeup and all of that but you know I'm open to all of that at this point in time. What we did in this one recognizing that there are several different charges and I jumped over to the committee composition is that to know that there are there are a lot of items for them to consider so what we did differently was to actually spell out the subcommittees and the form you know how they're formed the membership since there's 21 citizens that that the that are listening the resolution they would be appointed by the council based on you know the respective districts of each council member that you know that you know once they came together as 21 that they would break out in sub committees of seven people so the total there would be three subcommittees that and also knowing that there was a strong possibility that each subcommittee would have possibly more than one charge to consider with seven members especially if the time needed to to address an ethics related provision that they had sufficient membership in the subcommittee to give you know maybe have four members study that issue or five and the other two on the other issue or three members so that's what we're trying and we've recognized that it's a lot of tasks for them and that you know we wanted to make sure that they were able to sufficiently dive into each charge and give us a very good and fully vetted recommendation. Councilmember Begarri. Oh. Go ahead. [inaudible question] No, as we were going through and discussing the appointments and building upon what the city attorney discussed with you two weeks ago, is the charter is our city's constitution. And that's a very important document for us to have. It guides the policies and the future ordinances that you and resolutions that you adopt as a council. Since these charges and the changes to the charter impact all the citizens of Denton, all of them should have fair and adequate representation as to who comes before you. And the best and most efficient way to create some type of fair and adequate representation was to base it on the districts because your districts are broken up to represent the entire community. Yeah, so. Oh, yeah. You got a follow up to that? I do. And then we've got Councilmember Wasney and then Councilmember Briggs. Yes. Well, I guess I disagree with the analysis because my district is the whole city. So, and same for Councilmember Gregory, we're at large so we represent the entire city. The entire city can vote for us. And that is correct. What we did was we took that in your, for example, your place, the person who runs for the place six has to either reside in place three or district three or district four. And so that's how we kind of base that or that representation. But sure. But if the council wishes to restructure the place five and place six representation to be throughout the city, we'll be happy to change the resolution to that. I would like that because I feel that that's fair to the at large seats. That's what I would like. Well, I take exception to limiting district representatives to only their district. When we nominate for boards and commissions, we're not limited to just a district. We nominate from the entire city. This is the city's constitution. So if we talk about fair and equitable representation on this charter committee, then it's fair and equitable to take a look at the entire city to appoint people. So I want to be clear that this has come up from legal. This has not come from this council. So I do want to challenge that part of the resolution so that all seven council members are free to nominate charter committee members from the entire city. And they're limited to three three picks, but they do have the entire city. You may have a business owner who owns a business in your district but doesn't live in your district. So therefore they're excluded. So I take exception with this coming out in the resolution from legal and not from this council. Well, we're going to probably decide that today. So it'll come from the council. Councilmember Briggs. Well, my question was, was this last time the charter committee met, was this a requirement? I was not here in 2009. I don't know the I know who the members are. I have the list of who the members are. But where they resided at the time, I don't know. There was nothing in the resolution that specified they come from certain districts. But that charter amendment was one issue, a specific issue, where as opposed to the seven. Councilmember Gregory. I thought that it was a good idea to to push for geographical equity and balance in the committee. And let me share with you my personal look at it. And I prefer it to be since for the at large five position, you have to live in either district one or district two. That that I would be limited to nominating folks from district one or two. And the reason why is because when I did my original list, I wasn't thinking about where people lived. And then when I saw that, I went back and looked and and I was looking at the possibility of appointing several people that had been former council members. And people that had lived in district two when they were council members. Now they live in district four. In fact, a couple of people. And all of a sudden, it appeared to me that that had I done this, maybe if you'd done this, it would have been that that district four had was overly represented and other parts of town were underrepresented. And and I found no problem once I saw the draft of of re working my list of potential nominees to be people that live in district one or two. I didn't find that hard at all. But I find it very important for us to have to have a diversity of geographical representation because people are seeing this city from different perspectives. And one of the big perspectives is the neighborhood where they live. Let's see. That's a mayor. Yeah, I like this and we tasked legal to come up with this. So I think they've got to get something started. And I'm sure they thought through on all these items, how you word anything and how you think through the makeup. And so I appreciate that we didn't write it. We didn't sit down and do it. And we fully have the ability to change it. But to this point, I think the only way to ensure that geographical distribution is to require council members of those districts to submit names from those districts. And I think it makes sense, especially when you think of I know for some of you, you think the ethics piece is going to be the biggest piece of this. But I think that discussion of six single member districts is perhaps the most potentially disruptive, not in a bad way, political change in our city makeup. So I think if there's anything people are going to spend a lot of time thinking through thinking through the consequences, unintended consequences. It's going to be that particular item and to the extent that we are asking people to think through and potentially change the representative makeup of their city council. If we do not ensure through the process of selecting folks on here that each district, each geographical area of the city is adequately represented, then I think that's potentially very harmful to the city to do that. Because you might have a particular area of the city get beefed up on that committee. And then they make some changes to the rep or suggested changes to the representative makeup of the city council and a whole swath of the city could have been disenfranch ised from that initial discussion. So I think it's such a crucial discussion. And I think this is the way to make that equitable, fair, democratic. And I trust the people district one and I can find three very adequate professional individuals that will serve our district well. So I look forward to doing that. That's more than you could take that same argument and apply it to boards and commissions to say, well, you can only a point from your from your district. I'm saying for this city to be consistent with the Charter Review Committee. They need to maintain the same selection pool that they do for boards and commissions. And that's seven council members can pick from the city. The requirement is that you have to be a resident of the city of Denton. The conversations that I've had in the committee, the ethics is a big one. But the biggest one really is the single district issue that's going to come up. I mean, right now you can vote for four spots on council. You can vote for the majority of council and going into that single district that brings up both sides. I think that's going to be a very weighty topic. So along with the ethics too. So I do think the best way to get a representation of our whole city is to pick out of our district. I really I do. So I have no problem doing that. If we do want to talk about boards and commissions moving forward, being the same way, I'm open to that conversation. So yeah, I I'm okay with it. The only question I have is and Council Member Gary pointed this out. It's really a you know, how the what was the basis of this particular provision? Because it's either how you were able to be elected, which means you either had to live in the district or live in districts two and four or one and three. Or it's who can vote for you. Well, these seem to it seems to be that it could have both of those. I'm okay with consistency of each single member district rep, you know, appoints three people from their district and on the at large because everybody can vote for the at large positions. I have no issue being able to pick from the entire city as far as on on representation. So simply because I think that would represents if whatever the basis or the policy was to try to get to this. Because what you're saying, Council Member Gregory is you 're choosing from how you're able to even run for the office . In other words, if you're running for district four, yeah, and I'm saying to me it's more of who can vote for you. And so if who can if I'm using the who can vote for you, then it's it's the at large would would need to have a they could choose from statewide. So that's that's sort of where I know. So to confirm legal does not know how the Charter Committee positions were chosen in 2009. We didn't pull that document back up and look at it. Sorry, my recollection, though, is I don't think that it was related to districts at that point in time. I don't think that that resolution at that point was crafted to pull from the various districts. So that's my recollection. I could stand to be corrected, but that's what I remember. So I come back to number one. Why are we changing it now? Number two, make it consistent with boards and commissions as boards and commissions stand now as they stand now. It is citywide. So to pick a charter committee and say, no, no, we're going to change the rules and you can only pick from your district. I just have a real issue with that. And I understand that. And I appreciate that. I don't necessarily think how we chose in 2009 is necessarily dispositive and determines exactly how we do it . Now, if we want to have a board and commission review on that, we can do that. This is a this is eight years later or seven years later. We're dealing with a wholesale rewrite potentially of the charter on some very, very important decisions. And this is what's before the council is how do we choose this committee? And so I'm not sure. I mean, I've agreed with Councilmember Baggierre on the at large portion. I don't know where she is on the single member districts, but I'm OK with choosing from the single member districts and the at large positions, choosing from the entire city. And so obviously, that's not where you are. I don't think Council Mayor Pro Tem. I'm just trying to get an idea to give them some direction. Yeah, I'm comfortable with it as written. OK, well, is it written as the at large? I think it's written at the at large can only choose from the two districts. I think the wisdom of this is I think through it is as three at large folks. I think, again, the whole purpose of this was to make sure there's geographical representation. So to the extent that you all maybe belong to the same country club and hanging out with folks at Forest Ridge. That's not happening, probably, and would be likely to kind of bulk up with that, that this kind of forces us even at the at large levels to say, let's make sure that's distributed between two of the districts, two of the districts. And then you you're only three. So it's not going to bulk up too much. And you can go the entire city wide. So, again, if that's the goal to to to ensure adequate geographical distribution, I think as it's written, it achieves that. So let me let me ask Councilmember Gregory a question. As far as on the that particular issue, choosing from either your districts or an at large city wide. I mean, because we are that large, so I would think that our thoughts on this would carry some weight. So I prefer the way that it's presented that I would be limited to selecting people from District one or District two. This would be Gary from District three or District four. You from all over the town. I think that that's that particular strategy is the one that that does the most to ensure geographic diversity, a more equal geographic distribution and representation around the town. So that's what I would prefer. As I'm counting, I'm thinking that it may be three folks that that like that better. Three folks that prefer everybody to be able to choose anything from from anywhere in town. And you're feeling like that we that we ought to modify the at large. Well, I haven't heard from Councilmember Hawkins or any of the other. No, as written is the best way to get a representation of the whole town. It just is. There's no other way to try to figure that out. I can't anonymously turn in your person there. Whatever. So just it is. I would like to be able to choose from the whole city. But I understand where coming from. I understand that it's just two here that feel that way. But I would like to support Councilmember Begarry in in that I feel like you three if the whole city can vote for you. I think you should be able to choose from the whole city. And I think it's important to to to realize that at the end of the day, we can suggest people. I mean, if you know someone in District one that you think would be great for this and can suggest that to me. And I might say, that's great. I only had two people on my list. I'm willing to take that. Likewise, I think with the district folks. So I don't think this is a word completely siloed in this until we eventually kind of put these folks forward for a vote. So just realize that I think if you've got kind of particular person, you can lobby each other to to get them on. Yeah, I think the at large should be able to select them from the city because they they're voted on by the whole city. So if the mayor is voted on by the whole city, let the two at large also have the whole city in terms of a pool. If you're going to limit the district people to their districts, then allow our two at large council members to select from the whole city. Otherwise, it's only the mayor who can select from the whole city. So let's spread that around and have three of the seven who can select from the whole city. Right. So trying to tally up what I'm hearing. Okay. So I want to come to the two of you all because you all are opposed to the limiting to the single member district. But sounds like what's before us is limiting to the single member district. And the question then becomes, do the at large only choose from their districts that they have to reside in in order to run for office or can they choose from the entire city? And it sounds like you're in favor of the choosing from the entire city. You're saying from the entire city. So you're okay with the single member district? I mean, I know you're not, but I don't think you are. But I'm putting words into your mouth. Sorry. So for the at large of like, groups being from the entire city, I think that's what's starting to this. Just for the record, I am in agreement that everybody should be able to pick from the entire city. But I don't want them running from the water. Okay. So, and then the three of you all are more of picking from the districts in which you live. See, I learned at the Fry Street debate eight years ago not to be the last one to talk. And I haven't followed my own advice. But I'll stand with what I stood with before. And that is, I'm okay with the at largest choosing from the city. Because that's basing it upon who is voting for you instead of what criteria are used to determine if you can actually run for that office. And I think if we're talking about representation, if we're talking about trying to get equity, then that's my position on it. So it sounds like that the direction, and so it sounds like there's a consensus of only maybe four to three that the single member districts will choose from within their district and the at largest have the entire city to choose from. Is that Charles' understanding of the numbers? Yes. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. Let's see. Just to go quickly, the actual Charter Review Committee, presumably at their first meeting, will elect a chairperson by majority vote. All committee recommendations that come to you as far as the different charges shall be made by majority vote of the entire committee. That would be 11 of 21. Subcommittees, which is where we believe the bulk of the work will be done. In this resolution, there's authorization for the Charter Review Committee to create the subcommittees. The chairperson, what we've drafted in the resolution is the chairperson selects the chair and the members of the subcommittee. Each subcommittee shall consist of at least seven members. And recommendations will also be made by majority vote of the entire subcommittee. And as a- Regarding that? Yes, sir. If the- just for clarity purposes, it could be that the majority of the subcommittee votes one way for a recommendation to the entire committee, but that before it comes to council, it's a majority vote of the entire committee. That is correct. Okay. So they could have a recommendation coming out of the sub committee, but the large committee- It's modified by the entire committee. Yes, that is correct. So that's why the single member breaks. Is there any way to- for council to say, okay, well maybe since the two big issues are the ethics ordinance and the single member districts, for those- that one subcommittee not to have both of those? Like, or is that- So one- So the one committee doesn't get tasked with both of those issues? Two of the big major issues. In that, I think I trust the committee. I think as the committee gets started and they recognize that, surely they'll take that into consideration. I don't know if I, as a council member, want to already be trying to structure the committee before they even have a chance to meet and talk about it, but I understand you don't want to be over-tasked is what you're saying. Right. I think that at their first meeting when these chargers are put before them, they're probably going to quickly deduce which one are going to be the more tougher charges to work on, and they may not want to overburden one committee, sub committee over the others. Mayor Pro Tem. Well, they might. They might, and I think we just have to be open to all sorts of possibilities. They may, depending on who's chairing this and how they want to do it, might say, okay, let's hear some background on each of these. Okay, let's take a quick vote. Which one of these should we move forward for further investigation? And they might trim this list to three right off the bat after one meeting. And that's entirely possible. I mean, they don't want to waste their time if they realize only three people want to move this thing forward while we 're going to create a subcommittee. So I think for us to try and pre-assign things doesn't allow for that opportunity. So I think the way it's set up helps give them that latitude. And then as the city attorney had mentioned, the resolution does take into account that the city managers to provide support to the committee and subcommittees is necessary. And the city attorney will provide legal counsel to the committee and subcommittees. And then once the subcommittees and the committee have rev isions that they can agree on by vote, then we will draft the charge revisions for them, the city attorney's office, to make sure that it's clear, understandable for everyone to be able to understand what exactly they're proposing to you. I didn't get a chance. I wanted to go back and just to let you know, I didn't finish the charges, but to let you know that the city auditor position is one charge. The conflict of interest and nepotism provisions, whether they should consider in what manner to repeal those and recommend alternative ethics provisions and also the establishing of a salary or stipend for council members. Any other questions? I saw your miscellaneous slide there at the end. Any questions? Any other further questions or discussions on this issue? All right. Thank you very much, Aaron. That concludes our open portion of the meeting. I'll go ahead and call the closed session and then we'll take about a 10 minute break. I will convene the closed session at 430 p.m. on October the 11th, 2016. We will consider the following items. Consultation with attorneys under Texas Government Code Section 551.071 and deliberations regarding certain public power utilities competitive matters under Texas Government Code Section 551.071. We will consider the following items. Consultation with attorneys under Texas Government Code Section 551.086. All right. Wanted to welcome everybody back to this special called meeting of the Dent City Council. It is 618. We do have a quorum. We'll move on through our agenda. Mayor Pro Tem. Mayor, I move approval of agenda items 1A through C understanding that there is a substitute to the Charter Review Committee resolution here. Although this is actually later, isn't it? Yeah, sorry. Okay. All right. So just 1A through C. Okay. Council Member Hawkins. I'll second, Mayor. All right. We have a motion and a second for the consent agenda items. All in favor, please signify by raising your right hand. Passes unanimously. We'll go on to our agenda item 2, which is agenda item 2A. Consider approval of a resolution creating a Charter Review Committee to consider and advise the City Council whether and what manner to revise various provisions of the City Charter and providing an effective date. Thank you, Mayor. Aaron Liel, our first assistant city attorney, will be handling this item. Yeah, I mean, we've, I guess we went over this in open session. I just wanted to point out that I've distributed, based on your direction in the work session, I've distributed a substitute resolution to each one of you. It's labeled at the top right hand corner, I/I, item 2A. If you all have that in front of you, the correction that you asked me to make was, it appears in section 2 of the first page of the resolution, line 4 towards the right hand end begins with the substitute sentence is now, in the case of the Mayoral, Place 5 and Place 6 districts, citizens may reside in any district of the city, and I believe this is consistent with what you directed during work session. With respect to the appointees, by the Place 5, 6 and Mayor al councilmembers. Okay, quick question I have. And you had, Councilmember Geary, you had. Okay. Very just, maybe it helps me understand just because when we say Place 5 and Place 6, are those districts? They're still, they're places, but in the charter, they're still listed as districts. Okay, just wanted to make sure. They're at large districts. Gotcha. Okay, any other questions on the, Councilmember Geary? I'll move approval. Chair, do you take, Councilmember Hawkins? I second. All right, we have a motion and a second for items of individual consideration for agenda item 2A with the substituted resolution, I believe. All in favor signify, oh, and we do have some cards. Yes, we can have discussion. Councilmember, Willie Hutspeth has requested to speak. Is Mr. Hutspeth here? Mr. Hutspeth had prior engagements if you want to hear this . For any of the cards? Yes. Okay. Councilmember Wasno. I will vote in favor of this resolution, but I just want to go on the record that I still have a strong objection to the district council members being restricted only to their district for appointments to the charter committee. But I also understand that it is council's majority to move forward with this as it stands. And so I will be in favor of voting for this, but I do want that concern noted on the record. Sure. Okay, thank you. Any other questions? We have a motion and a second. All in favor signify by raising your right hand. Okay, I'm trying to ascertain Councilmember Briggs. Is that a vote? Yes. Is that a raising of the right hand? Okay. All right. Well, what I'm going to do then, I'm going to call for anybody who's opposed. Please signify by raising your right hand. Okay, it passes unanimously. Thank you. Okay, agenda item to be is consider appointments to a charter review committee. Mayor, Jennifer Walter stands available to take any nominations that you may have that council may have. Okay, council members have any nominations for the charter review committee. Councilmember Hawkins. I have two. Adam, I did have three. But anyway, out of my district, Phil Gallivan and Cheryl English. Okay. Any others at this time? Seeing none. Okay. We will post that. We will have an ongoing posting for that agenda item until those positions are filled. Agenda item to see appointment of an alternate to the council ethics committee. Leave. I need a Burgess. Our city attorney is going to have a mayor. Mayor, this is actually your appointment with an approval by the city council and this is an alternate position to the city council ethics committee. Okay, well, I believe the way we've done it historically at least, I mean, the way the ethics committee got populated this last time as people expressed an interest and there weren't any objections. So I certainly don't have any problem appointing those people. Anybody want to serve, particularly as a as a alternate on the ethics committee? Nobody. Okay, I have a question. Yes. My understanding is that this is coming to us now because there is a pending meeting and there is a recusal of a member or a member of the committee that wants to recuse himself. Is that correct? Madam city attorney. Yes, sir. There is an issue on the table with regard to recusal. So an alternate would be in order to step in and take that place. Okay. Well, if nobody steps up, I mean, I'll, I'll serve as that alternate. Yes, Councilmember Gregor. I move that we do we have to do the mayor to serve as the alternate. I don't have to take a bow. All in favor signify by raising your right hand. All opposed it passes unanimously. I will go on to public hearing public hearing three a hold a public hearing consider approval of request to amend the razor ranch overlay district to reclassify approximately 10 acres from the South mixed use district sub area to the South are our dash to district sub area. Thank you, Mayor Mike Bell our senior planner. We're taking this item. Thank you, ma'am members of the council. This is a fairly simple request to change property within the razor ranch overlay from one sub district to another. That would require the amendment of two exhibits to the ordinance exhibit be one which is a concept schematic plan and exhibit before which is the zoning overlay. Essentially the request is to change this property right here from what would be the South is currently the South mixed use district. Which permits both retail and residential to the South are two district, which is which is common along I 35 and 380, which is purely kind of a commercial district. This table kind of shows what's permitted in both. As you can see, it's all commercial non residential districts permitted in both districts. And then these are the differences so permitted and the current district are on multifamily single family and in the South and the proposed district. They're no longer allowed. The general regulations in terms of lot coverage and landscape areas are the same. And then here's the the big difference is that under the current district that does not have design architectural or sign standards, this change would allow them to follow the existing landscape architecture and sign standards of the South are two district. These are some examples of elevations that have already been approved for that district. There's a public hearing we've sent notice and received nothing in favor or in opposition. Planning and zoning Commission recommend recommends approval and so does staff and I'd be happy to answer any questions. Okay, I'll go ahead and open the public hearing. And now that we've public hearings open any questions for staff before we take comments from the public. So in essence, they're just saying we need to move the residential component out and just make it consistent with the commercial that's going to be up and down there, especially since you have the Convention Center right there . All right. Thank you, Mike. Appreciate that. This is a public hearing. Anybody wishing to speak on this item, please come to the podium, state your name and address and your time will begin. Anybody wishing to speak, Wagner no comments. Okay, you bet. All right. Okay, one more time. Anybody wishing to speak? Seeing none, we will close the public hearing. Chair would entertain a action. Councilmember Gregory. Thank you, Mayor. I move approval of public hearing 3A. Councilmember Gary. Second. We have a motion and a second for public hearing agenda item 3A for approval. All in favor signify by raising your right hand. At the record reflect its unanimous decision. We'll move on to public hearing agenda item 3B, which is hold a public hearing, consider amendment to the razor ranch overlay district to provide design standards and criteria for multifamily development within the south mixed use district sub area. And I will go ahead and open the public hearing. We'll take staff comments in public here. Okay, Mike Bell, our senior planner will handle this last item. Thank you. Again, this is a request to provide design standards for multifamily development. In the south mixed use area currently there are no standards for multifamily that have been approved. This would be all new. And it requires an amendment to exhibit C3 of the ordinance . The proposed ordinance is exhibit C3, which applies to roughly this area here. The south mixed use district. The way this was prepared is it used our citywide standards as a baseline and kind of increase from there. These are all the sections that it's provided. It's comprehensive, as opposed to what you typically see in for razor where it has architectural landscape and sign in different exhibits. You just combine them all into one and exhibit C3. It's an example of a site plan that we have in for razor that complies with the standard as proposed. These are elevations that comply. I did give you in your backup a comparison of the standard code to the proposed ordinance. I'd be happy to go through that if you wish. But we didn't notice this as it is a public hearing and received nothing in favor of horn opposition. And the planning and zoning recommended approval 7-0 as well as staff. Councilmember Begheri. Could you go back to the prior map? Yeah. So we just change that bottom left hand corner to RR2 , correct? Correct. Right here. So with that little portion of RR2 have a different design standard than the rest of RR2? No, it would follow the RR2 standards now that it's been approved. This showed the old layout. Okay. So the new the south side mixed use will exclude that portion of the RR2 we just changed the zoning on? Correct. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions for staff? All right. Seeing none. Thank you. Thank you, Mike. This is a public hearing. Anybody wishing to speak? Please come to the podium. State your name and address. Anybody wishing to speak? All right. We'll go ahead and seeing none. We'll go ahead and close the public hearing. Chair would entertain motion for action. Councilmember Hawkins. I move approval of item 3B. We have a motion. Do we have a second? We have a second by Councilmember Gregory. We have motion and a second for agenda item 3B. All in favor, please signify by raising your right hand. That the record reflect 3B passes unanimously. We will now move on to agenda item number four, which is concluding items. Any councilmembers have concluding items? Councilmember Was ney. I call for a review of our SRO single resident occupancy because it currently falls under apartments. So I would like to ask for that again and in the interim have council discuss at a work session sooner than later a moratorium on SROs until the council can decide, do we need a separate classification for SROs? And if we do, what's it going to look like? If we don't, then we don't. But in that gray zone, and it's not a vote that we can take tonight, but I would like council to consider that moratorium. All right. Anybody else? Yes, Mayor Pro Tem. Not unrelated, I guess, to that request for a discussion. You know, it strikes me that oftentimes specific zoning requests, or even our discussion today about downtown, we end up kind of getting, trying to get into a larger philosophical conversation about a specific issue that's in front of us. So when something like an apartment development comes up, it's a zoning thing, but we end up philosophizing on our opinions of where apartments should be or whether they should be and things like that in town. An interesting thing came out from the White House in which they waded into local zoning discussions as it relates to affordable housing and the economic development of the country moving forward. So they produced this thing called the White House Housing Development Toolkit, in which they're suggesting that in some senses cities are actually getting in the way because of their standards of affordable housing, because there's a lot of their standards. All that to say, I think it would be interesting to have a discussion on just that topic in general. I think that's a very healthy read as it surveys the issues facing our country as it relates to housing. What topic are you talking about? Affordable housing or how zoning might be? Well, the specific question, I think, for us is as it relates to multifamily housing. I'd like to have a conversation that intersects that question with a return to what our comp plan that we just passed has to say on that matter and have some council discussion so that we have context when we do get these projects coming before us. Good. Great. Yes, Councilmember Begay. On the 13th of September, I had requested a new item to review the use it or lose it policy for sick time and vacation and the HR department was kind enough to get us an informal staff report. I do appreciate that. All the time went into that. I'd like to have a meeting work session on that subject and in addition when we have that work session meeting, I'd like to be able to compare what we do to cities and counties, other local governments to have a conversation in context. So that's just kind of a follow up on that 913 agenda item. I'm sorry the 913 new business, the second item that's new would be a review of the exotic animal displays. I think that's separate from zoos but we may have to review the zoos as well. All right. The others. To come on to what this is Wasney and Mr. Roden suggested that we have a discussion about. I think part of that discussion I'm glad, Mr. Roden that you included a discussion of what we have currently committed to in our comprehensive plan. I think that's important. I think there has been a good bit of discussion about possible amendments and special districts or special areas to our company to our zoning to allow for in certain areas. Housing units that are smaller than 900 square feet. I suspect that that's going to be coming to us as a proposal I've heard several citizens talking about that. So if we could have that as part of our discussion. I think that would be helpful. I have one I'd like for it to come forward maybe with the request from Councilmember Gary as far as on the vacation. Different rules and regs and how they do it requested or I guess it's probably about a month ago. Discussion for Council to consider policies regarding severance packages for at will employees and I just think that would be, you know, a good combination just because they're sort of city policies regarding benefits and the like. So maybe we could pair those together and be a little bit more efficient. Any other questions concluding items. Fantastic. We will now adjourn at 637.