Dec 13, 2016 City Council on 2016-12-13 1:00 PM

All right, thank you. Welcome everyone to this meeting of the Denton City Council on Tuesday, December the 13th, 2016 . We do have a quorum. Council Member Wasney is en route. I will go through our first item on the agenda, citizen comments on consent agenda items. We do have a couple. All right. Mr. Willie Hudsbeth? State your name and address and your time will begin. Thank you, sir. My name is Mayor and Council Members. My name is Willie H udsbeth. I live at 623 Newton. Again, the agenda, the consent agenda . The problem with that is there's not enough time to address what is on the consent agenda, so it's just a moot issue. I think the reason that troubles me is each one of you, I 've heard your speeches as you're running for office. And to a person, you say, for the people, I'm going to help the people. I want to communicate to the people. I want to be the kind of council person and mayor to help the people. But when it comes to things that where you can inform us, you cut us off. You don't help. You shut down that communication between you and the people. I.e., here's a perfect good example. The consent agenda is supposed to be a place, I think, where you talk about what you're going to just vote for. You're not even going to talk about it. You're just going to say, all in favor of the consent agenda, and you raise your hands. You don't discuss it anywhere. I come to these meetings. You don't discuss what's on the consent agenda here either. I don't know when you talk about them. Secondly, look at this room. Now, we have a lot of places where we could be. And there's a lot of room in some place in this city. You keep spending money coming up with all these places. But look how you have us all packed into this place where there's no place to sit. That's ridiculous. You should have somewhere for us to sit. You should stop having these meetings in places like this where there's no room to sit. And that's my other concern. For the people, you keep saying. This is for the people. Well, here's what the people says according to me. Get a bigger room where we can sit down and enjoy this, or not enjoy. So that we can sit through these meetings. Get a bigger room. >> Thanks, sir. Next speaker is Greg Paulus. Is it Paulus? Paulus, yes sir. Taste your name and address and your time will begin. >> Council people. My name is Greg Paulus. I reside at 503 Fulton Street with my wife, Natalie. We're two blocks from UNT and one block from the Oak Street Historic District. So you can just, it's District 2. We're 20 year residents of Denton and four years ago we downsized from a nice home into the area that we live now. And what attracted us to the area were the historic properties and being in walking distance to shops and restaurants and what have you. And we love it there. However, over the past four years, I've made multiple calls to the Community Improvement Department to address what I believe to be hazardous living conditions of multiple single family dwellings and I'm on a first name basis with Donnie Denny. He's a fantastic employee of the city and we work on issues of dilapidated homes and there's a lot of them in the town center. And right now we're limited to just looking at visual inspections outside of these properties and there's no certificate of occupancy or requirement to pass any kind of inspection. >> Mr. Paulus, if I could just interrupt you just for a second. This agenda item is to talk about items that are on the consent agenda. >> Yes. >> Which consent agenda? >> Well, the first item on the agenda is the rental inspection program. >> Right, and I'm going to take some latitude and let you go ahead and finish. But the consent agenda starts on- >> I apologize. >> No, that's okay. So you're basically commenting about a work session. Which, because you've started, I'm going to go ahead and allow you to finish. But in the future, this part of the agenda is limited to comments on the consent agenda. >> Certainly apologize for that. >> No problem. >> Okay. >> Thank you. >> So, well, I'll shorten it then because I certainly don't want to take up more time than is necessary. But because of the over 50,000 students that we have in our community with UNT and TWU, and a large percentage of those are living in these single family dwellings that are rental properties. And rents are high, and they really have very low standards as far as what they'll live in. I think we have an obligation to ensure that the living conditions are acceptable for all citizens of our community . And on the agenda today, Lansing Bentley will be presenting a study of other communities that have certificate of occup ancy restrictions. And I would suggest that you thoughtfully consider those, not only to ensure that we have healthy quality living conditions, but also that the property values of our community remain strong. And if you look at a lot of these historic areas where we have beautiful homes from the early 20s, right next to these homes that are being lovingly restored like my wife and I have been doing, there can be a lot of blight. And this would go a long way to ensuring that overall community is maintained and is a safe place. >> Thank you, appreciate that. Seeing no more cards, we'll move on to request for clarification of agenda items listed on today's agenda. Yes, Council Member Hawkins. >> Thank you, Mayor. That's on item U. I'm sure that there's a reason for it, but on this request for proposal, there are two bids or two submissions from Ratcliffe constructors. There's one from Lanks and there's one from Schmalt. And I was curious, first off, why there's two, if they were given the opportunity to amend their first one, to come in with a lower bid, and if they were given that opportunity were the other people. And maybe I'm just not reading the data correctly, but if somebody could clarify that, please. >> Yes, let me call on Elton Brock, our purchasing manager for that component of you. But Mayor, staff also wanted to provide some clarification on consent item 1U also. And so if we could take a few minutes before we move on to- >> Sure. >> Have Robin Palsgrove, our chief, come up and clarify some things. >> Okay. >> That would be very helpful. >> If you want to go first, that's fine, if it'll clarify. >> Let Elton go ahead and answer that question. >> I'll clear up the procurement aspect of it. Council, Mayor, the state law currently allows the city to negotiate with only the top respondent. So they go through an evaluation process first, ranking all the firms that responded. And once that evaluation process is concluded, law allows us to actually negotiate pricing and any contractual related item that we deem necessary. So we can only ask for a best and final from the top respondent, and that's what we did, and I believe they lowered their price. So what you're seeing is that I showed you what they originally proposed and what they proposed on their best and final offer. And so that's basically what we're restricted to by law. Usually we could compete all of them. About three years ago, four years ago, a couple sessions ago, the law changed and restricted us to only the top ranked respondent. >> Well, thank you for clarifying that. I, you know, on a $5 million bid, when they're, you know, the difference is $90,000, that's not a lot. And so you would always want a local vendor be able to get, you know, the work, but I appreciate you. >> We definitely appreciate that too, and it's unfortunate we're not able to go back and ask that for a second opportunity. >> Okay, well thank you. >> And Billy, when we put that out, the vendor does not know that they're been the only one we're going to ask. So we send that out in a way that they've been ranked as the finalist, because it's not final. It's not final until it comes here. >> All right, Council Member Gregory. >> Thank you, Mayor. >> Since Council Member Hawkins brought it up, you might talk a little bit more about the fact that when we're getting bids like this in, that there is a certain preference that's given to local bidders. But what's the percentage, what triggers that? >> That preference is limited on construction to $100,000, I believe, if that's correct. >> I think that's right. >> And so it really hardly ever comes into play. Our construction bids are so much. And so it just doesn't, I know there is a preference for local firms. >> I thought there was a 10% preference. >> 5%. >> 5%, okay. >> Well, it's called something, it's but normal. >> All right, thank you. >> Again, that was a state law. >> Right. >> Keeps it. >> Let me ask Rob and Paul Scroff, our chief, to discuss the implications of this particular consent agenda item as it relates to funding. >> Thank you. Mayor and council, at your seat today, we provided a one page summary of the number of construction projects that we 're managing concurrently in the fire department with a brief update statement. On your agenda today, item U authorizes the construction contract for the CIP bond funded replacement of fire station four on Sherman Drive at Kings Row. And your agenda at your next meeting, January 10th, will be an item authorizing the construction contract for the C-O bond funded training drill tower at fire station seven at 4201 Vintage Parkway. In addition, that agenda will include the design contract for CIP funded replacement station three at 1204 McCormick Street. You will recall that council has previously approved the purchase of the Royal Inn Motel Tract for that reconstruction project. The purpose of our clarification today is to offer absolute clarity to you that as anticipated, these projects costs are exceeding our projections. With respect to our professional staff and their expertise, forecasting in 2012 and 2013 in advance of the 2014 capital bond election, what the cost of 2017 land acquisition and professional service contracts and construction costs is at best in exact science and we've, as we all know, are experiencing a boom in construction that has certainly impacted our costs. Our agenda item today, fire station four construction, is $382 per square foot as compared with the almost completed replacement, fire station two on McCormick and McKinney that was $326 per square foot when that project was bid in 2014. The shortfall in this project is 1.1 million. The shortfall for the training drill tower construction that will be on your agenda January 10th is approximately $ 200,000. Now these shortfalls will be met by transfer from the available funding in the remaining CO project fund station three on McCormick Street. After deducting the land purchase for fire station three, previously approved by council, the design, the construction contract for station four on your agenda today and the drill tower construction project and the design project for station three on your January 10th agenda, our balance, our available balance in that project account will be just under 5 million. If we assume what we would describe as a worst case scenario of construction costs that could come in in late 2017 on the fire station three project at $400 a square foot, our potential maximum shortfall when we receive actual bids will be approximately $1.4 million. Which would be the cumulative shortfall in all of these projects. As indicated, we manage these carefully with a competitive bid process followed by value engineering to negotiate with the low selected vendor. Our actual shortfall cannot be accurately identified until that process is completed in late 2017 for fire station replacement three. Strategies to address that shortfall will be identified and fully vetted with the city council at this time. We wanted to be absolutely sure that in approving the construction contract for fire station four today, you were absolutely aware of the potential shortfall as we move forward with these cumulative projects. The finance staff and I will respond to any questions that you may have. >> A couple of questions, anybody else? Yes. >> If there is a shortfall, does that take an amendment from this budget to, how does that work? Then I mean, is that in the next budget we factor that in or? >> What we've done before, excuse me, we would propose to the city council to issue some COs. This is part of the general obligation program to issue additional COs to cover that, depending on when we knew that exact amount. If we're not going to bid it till the end of this calendar year, it would probably be during the budget process that we would go through and have an estimated amount to issue COs. And then we'd adjust that based on the actual numbers when we sold not in 2017, but in 2018. >> I gotta tell you, I don't want to sound like somebody else who talks about things costing too much, but it's hard for me to believe that some of these facilities are close to $400 a square foot. I mean, and when you've got municipalities that go out for bids, and I guess it's such a rigid bid requirement of, I just cannot believe that that's the case. And so I guess my question number one is, so what you're saying is on this particular deal, you only asked the first bidder to give us a quote unquote best and final, but we didn't ask the second bidder or the third bidder, is that correct? >> Yes, Mayor, that's correct. >> And so is that because we are prohibited by law to do that? >> Yes, Mayor, we're prohibited by state law. >> So state law says you identify your number one candidate and you can ask them for a best and final. >> Yes, sir. >> Okay, well I think we need to talk with our representatives to make sure, because I don't think that gives us any flexibility. I think it ties our hands and it's driving up the cost of municipal facilities. $400 a square foot even for a commercial building. I mean, I don't even know how big are these. I remember we looked at it, but they're what? Four or 5,000 square feet, 6,000 square feet? >> It's above 5,000. It's greater than 5,000 and some of that might be attributed to the lead cost and construction. That has driven some of those costs. >> You mean lead certified? >> Yes. >> And what is that costing? >> It is more, Mayor. I would have to dig down into the details. >> Scott, I think what, half a million or something? >> We've gone through this discussion before that we pay extra for lead certification for basically a certificate. >> Yes, sir. >> When you can build the entire building quote unquote according to lead certified specifications, you just don't get the piece of paper that I guess gives bragging rights. And so we've got to think of a different approach here. And if we have to do something at the state legislature to do it, because we can't keep paying $400 a square foot pricing. >> And also not to be able to say that you've got a bidder that's a local person that's after your best and final is $ 100,000 off. But my hunch is if they were given an opportunity to do a best and final that you would have probably it being much closer. And- >> I personally spoke to them on the phone. They wanted that opportunity. >> So, Madam City Attorney, you're telling me that there's no other option. So even if we sent this out to re-bid, if we did it all over again, which could say, well, you know what, we're not going to accept any of them. Y'all go ahead and if you want to re-bid, you can. Can you do that? >> Mayor of the council can always reject these proposals and then we can start anew. That's always a possibility. If that's the desire of the council, of course I know there 's, I see the chief over there cringing when I say that because I'm confident that he- >> Well, and I understand that, but I think we also have a duty to make sure that we're, number one, getting our best value. Because what you're saying now is we're going to be short, who knows how much. This isn't about you guys. This isn't about you guys. This is about the systems we have in place to evaluate these bids. I can't imagine that when people see a municipal RFP come across, since there's not shareholders, even though we have taxpayers, but let's face it, philosoph ically, our hands are tied to be able to get the best value for the taxpayers because based on procurement laws, I think, from the state of Texas. And that concerns me greatly. >> My entire career, Mayor, we were always able to take the top three or those within the competitive range and seek out best and final offers from them, give them that opportunity. And you can probably think the associated general contractors for lobbying the state legislature to change those laws. So it restricts us now. >> Okay. >> That's number one. But I would like to say that we might have to think about putting that back out to bid again, because then you're going to get the community that bids on these projects, well, are they going to accept it or not? And so that should weigh heavily on what the decision is today. Because you really don't want to set that precedent out there. I would like to get a white papers informal staff report on some history of this particular procurement statute and its evolution that has gotten us to the place we are today because I think that needs to be changed. Council Member Gregory. >> Well, I was going to pursue what you ended up discussing with our attorney about the possibility of simply rejecting all of these bids and going out for re-bid. One of the questions that I have with that process is, does that trigger a requirement for us to in any way change the scope of the work or to delete lead certification if that's a consideration? Or can we simply reject all of these and go out for re-bid without changing any of the scope of the work or any of the specifications that we have? >> What do the rules say on that? >> The rules allow you to reject all bids. >> Council Member Briggs. >> So on our status, it says that the construction, if approved today, would begin next month. >> Yes. >> So this is my district. I know that people are looking forward to this and it's desperately needed. So how far out would it push if we did cancel this and restart the process over? >> If you were going to go back and adjust the specifications and go back through the designer or the architect, they would probably take six to seven weeks to probably get us back a new set of design plans. If you were going to change the lead requirement. And from that, 60 to 90 days in order to get back to city council with bid results. >> Thanks. >> The statement goes to Council Member Foster. >> Well first I want to thank our fire chief for being proactive in recognizing the need for fire and ambulance upgrades in the city of Denton, which have not taken place for a very long time. I think the reality of the landscape is that construction costs are not going to go down. We're in a boom here in the state of Texas and every single trade group is in demand. They are increasing their cost. I don't care if it's concrete, drywall, roofing material, framers, everybody is building, whether it's residential or commercial. So a thought instead of just saying, no, we're going to take this out to bid because quite frankly, I don't see bids as coming back as less expensive. Is it possible, because I did question the lead increase in costs with fire station three. And asked what that would add onto that station to. Surely there is a ballpark figure on what it would cost to have the lead certification and to remove that from this station without having to take it out, back out to bid, and still preserve the timeline to get this done. And I will come back and say that we have a great need for an upgrade to our fire station and ambulance needs in this city. And this fire chief from day one has understood that and has worked hard to put a huge plan together for this city. And public safety has to be at the top of our list. So I come back to problem solving on this fire station. How do we reduce the cost without having to bump it out six months? >> If it's the direction of the council, we can always go back and renegotiate the price and remove that. But it's designed that way, so. >> That would be my recommendation. If we have, if we're- >> But you would be limited to only the top rank respondent at this point. >> Exactly, understand that. Because state law changed. We go back to the person in the company that won that bid to say, what can we cut out in terms of cost, maintaining the timeline to try to reduce the cost of this fire station. >> Let's see, I, council member, let me get everybody in line. Council member Hawkins, and Mayor Pro Tem, council member Gary. You all might have to help me remember that. Go ahead. >> Sure, I don't want to prolong this project. I mean, this has been needed for a while now. So I think that as long as the building was built the same, I would be fine with removing the LEED certified, whatever. If it truly is just getting a certificate, I'd be fine with that. But what is concerning to me is I think that there might be an art to getting some of these contracts. I don't know, like change order percentage, what is that, too? Is that like up to 10% or? >> Change order share are basically owner approved. And so any initiated change orders must be owner approved. If there's a- >> By council. >> Well, not all of those. If they're above $50,000, they come back to city council. If they're $5,000, they're approved as a change order on the PO. >> And all these companies, I'm sure they're honest and they're legit. But I do think that there is an art to getting some of these contracts and it was pretty close there. I don't know what to do at this point. I think that this building is needed and construction costs are high right now. But I'm with you, Mayor. We need to get with our representatives and this law needs to change or be tweaked or something. >> Mayor Portem. >> Perhaps someone from the council committee on the environment can educate me. I recall we had a couple years ago a pretty extensive conversation on a policy that led to the fact that we go out and get these buildings LEED certified. And that was a policy decision by the entire council. Now this council has changed, but I'd hate to just nitpick particular buildings because of a particular bid that comes in and just change that policy because we're talking about just paper. And there's more to it than that. And there's more to it that goes along with our sustainability plan which we have in place and the policy that goes along with it. So I wouldn't be comfortable just throwing that out without that corresponding policy conversation that got us here in the first place. I think in terms of our long term policy in terms of how we build out our city, I think it's worth that conversation. So I don't want to be such knee jerk as it relates to that. Is there a cost? And along those lines, I heard you say this between the lines, it seems like there's a cost to redesigning the plans in and of itself, going back to the architect in order to even know what to show back to our highest bidder to say, now what would this cost again? Two things with that, am I right? And what does that cost? And then, aren't we technically changing the scope of the project significantly enough once you've removed that? That would we require it to then have to go back to bid? It seems a little unfair of the process to change it and then just give that to one person. So thoughts on those two questions? >> Mayor, if you don't mind, let me try and take a stab at answering that question as well as Councilmember Wasey's question. Yes, there will be a cost for us to go back and take it back to get redesigned and take out whatever the lead features that we have currently in the design. I will tell you that most of the expense when it comes to lead certified buildings really comes in the design phase. So we've already paid for that. Now we're going to pay to have it removed all over again. When it comes to the actual piece of paper or plaque, I think somebody mentioned the fee there. We're just talking a couple thousand dollars, I think, at the most. So really, on the front end, the money for the lead certification has already been spent in the design of this building, of this structure. And that has been designed consistent, you're correct, with the policy that was adopted by the past city council on the recommendation of community environment as to what size buildings we're going to look at, recommending lead certified and which ones were not. For fire stations, we have recommended that not only because they're above the 5,000 square foot, which is the line that is drawn as per that policy, but also because of the intense use of this facility 24/7. So I tell you this because understand if you direct us to go back and redesign this, there will be some cost to do that. We're basically going to pay to undo what we paid them extra to do. And the actual savings for the construction is not going to be much at all at this point for this particular facility. We have not brought to you yet the construction documents or design documents for station three. So that may be one that you want to have this policy discussion as to whether or not you want us to bring that one forward to either a lead design standard or not, or at least have some features in it without going full blown lead certification. We have some of those options. If you want to understand the difference between those, I know I see Dr. Banks is here and he can definitely explain it more in depth than I can as to what the differences are. >> We're not going to have that policy discussion here right now. Wait, Council Member Begarry, and then who was over here, you, and then, yeah. >> I agree with Council Member Wasney that public safety has to be paramount. One of the things I struggle with is we have an obligation to our constituents now, but we also have an obligation to our future residents of Dent on that will be having to pay off the costs of our decision making. So what I'd like to see is some type of frame of reference for how much fire stations are supposed to cost. And just in doing this research, I haven't seen anything over $245 a square foot in Texas for 2016. So it seems to me that we're pretty far off, just a very cursory look at how much we should be paying for these fire stations. So I'd like that information, especially as we go forward, we have a lot of capital improvement projects coming online . It would be helpful to know what is the average cost as we have been able to find for these particular projects so that we know when we get something back, this is in line or it's not in line. >> Council Member Briggs, and then, did you have something? I think it was Council Member Gregory, yeah. >> Okay, thank you. >> And I'll get to the last one. >> I have a couple more questions come up. Number one is, are we using the same design for each of our fire stations or are they all having to be designed very differently and specifically for the site locations? >> There is an engineering cost of a redesign based on each site. There was a savings in this particular project by being able to use the same configuration and same footprint design that is in the fire station two replacement on McCormick. Simply downsized, we simply removed a bay. So we made it a smaller design, so there was a lot of savings in this particular architectural contract. Yes. >> So generally, an architectural firm will give you a percentage. We're going to reduce just because we're using the same basic, we're not having to redo every wall structure, every window design, all of that. So what was the savings that we got from our professional cost? >> I looked at some documents yesterday, I believe, for the next fire station. And he had reduced his fee from 13% to 9% overall of the project. >> All right, that sounds pretty difficult. >> And I believe that's pretty consistent with this project as well. I have to go back to the actual document. >> Since there is some discussion about the possibility of delay, another question that comes to me is, we're not talking about affecting by delaying the building of a new site by six months. The old site's still operational, correct? >> Absolutely, Council and Mayor. I want to be sure for all of our citizens listening and certainly for you and your constituents that we're very clear. This is a replacement station and engine four will continue to operate out of station four until we complete this reconstruction process. >> Along with that, we're being asked, another item on the consent agenda, to purchase some replacement fire trucks. And I know that at station four, we had a problem because the new fire truck didn't fit and that we had to reconfig ure the door. >> Are we replacing that apparatus? Well, if there is a delay to this, are we creating another situation because there's a new apparatus that's coming in there that won't fit? >> No, we are not. >> Okay. >> If we had to ballpark what the LEED certification adds to a construction project, if we used a construction project of $1 million, what would be the LEED approximate add on? And this is energy efficiency, correct, in terms of windows , the air conditioner, heater unit, the insulation, the type of shingles on the roof, 2 by 4 versus 2 by 6. A lot of different construction differences. So on a million dollar project, what would a LEED certification approximately add to that cost? >> That would be really difficult to estimate, and especially the city council just changed the energy code for the city of Denton. And so the way that, I've been talking to the contractors and trying to ascertain that figure for you. So I would know myself, and I have not been able to arrive at that yet. So I know there are some increased costs to get to that energy efficiency. I just don't know exactly what they are. >> So we're still at the conundrum of what do we do today and what decision do we make on this consent agenda item. But it also, if you look at the schedule from the fire chief, January 10th, we'll be looking at council approval for the design contract for station number three, which means that design contract is in. So as it stands now, we are, anything 5,000 square feet and above, we are looking at the LEED certification. So until this council changes that, that's the rule of the land. So I come back to what do we do today? I come back to, I think construction costs are going to do nothing but increase and spiral. We may hope for a new bid that comes back cheaper. The very real possibility is that we can have bids come in that are actually higher. When we talked about some of these new projects, it was 2012, 2013, 2014. We had our estimated, guesstimated costs. Construction costs as we enter 2017 are very different and we're seeing that. Not just with the fire station, but we're seeing it across the board with commercial and residential pricing and construction costs. So I come back to this council, what do we do today? I'm just going to be big and bold and say we've got to support our fire chief and let's move forward with this project and crunch some numbers and figure out how to pay for the short fall. We have an excellent finance department. We're talking about some CO bonds, is that correct? >> Yes. >> To pay for that shortfall. >> No, I say move forward. >> Councilmember Briggs. >> So I'm looking for a little clarification on the whole lead process. I've heard a few things. So I've heard that at the end, there's you pay for a certificate and that's where the money is. I've heard that at the beginning, you design and that's where the money is and we're going to have to- >> Dr. Banks, come over here and ask him. >> Redesign. >> If we get Dr. Banks up here, there are some initial costs initially with the design. You see that when the contract comes across, the lead costs are separated out in that contract. >> Well, I don't want the building to be compromised. I want it to be energy efficient. I want it to do what our intentions were when the previous council set the standard. But if it's something that can be billed to the specifications and then in the end, we just don't pay $500,000 for a pretty certificate, then can we do that is my question. >> Yeah. Dr. Banks. >> I think I can address that. >> This does not have to do with mosquitoes. >> Okay. Thank you. >> All right. >> Cold weather's here. >> Okay. All right. Good deal. >> Yeah. That's why my eye doesn't twitch anymore. >> Okay. >> This particular contract actually specifies the cost of certification for lead. If you look at exhibit four, it is going to be on page 11 of 131 of that exhibit, but the cost for the certification, the piece of paper is $ 5,000. So that's what Mr. Cabrales was talking about a little bit earlier. The actual cost of the certification is not very large compared to the overall cost of the project. >> But that's, I think, what I heard was that to get lead certified, it gets designed into the building that there's a lead certification design and then there's an energy code design . >> That's correct. What I'm hearing is we don't know what the delta is of that lead certifying design compared to the other design. >> In the design phase, you actually had on this particular project a bid that came in from Kirkpatrick for a base and then a base with lead certification. And basically that was taken forward on February 16th. The base bid, non-lead bid as they called it, was $317,200. The bid with the lead design elements was $399,200 with a difference of $82,000. That money's already been spent. That was what Mr. Cabrales was talking about. >> That's de minimis. What is the delta in construction costs for lead certified and non, I mean you're just talking about the design of the bluep rints. >> Correct. >> But that means those blueprints are going to be built differently than if it was not so. >> That's correct. And on this particular project, because the design specifications with lead included as provided by Kirkpat rick were used for the purposes of this. It's all in the base of the project. So it's not itemized out. >> Okay, sure. >> And I can tell you on lead certification, one of the struggles with it is that there are a lot of different elements that can lead to that certification, bad choice of words. The location of the building and its proximity to public transportation is one example of some points that you can gain for lead certification at a particular level. The type of paint that you use inside, low VOC paint. There are air exchange elements. There are energy efficiency elements. There are storm water design criteria. There are landscaping criteria. And so why it's difficult is it all depends on the mix that is used. What is being done now is we are looking at feasibility studies associated with these types of projects. And we are working on one currently for I believe Fire Station 3. And so we are trying to get together some additional details to look at that actual cost differential. But because it all depends on the type of lead points that you're going after, and that in turn depends on where your building's located and what points would be the most cost effective to gain. The mix for any given building is going to be different. And so what we're hoping to do through this feasibility study is get a better handle on what that cost differential actually is at the development stage. >> Okay. All right. Did you have a follow up to that? >> Well, so did I hear you say that the design was around, a little over, it was $300,000. Is that what we would be required to pay for a redesign? Is another? No? >> I couldn't speculate on that. >> So we would just make up that delta of $82,000. >> No, those fees have already been paid. >> Okay. >> Right. So if we were going to go back in and redesign and take out the elements that are lead that we think are increasing the cost, then we're going to have to go back and figure out what that cost is going to be to pay for that redesign and then try and offset some savings. Hopefully, in the bid document, we'll be putting out that they'll come back with some savings. Can you help? >> Well, I will just say that I would prefer that we start the process on three with that and just continue with four as is today. So that's it. >> I would agree with that and Councilwoman Wasney, knowing now that we've spent that much money in lead design, taking council direction once again from us and then we're about to knee-jerk pivot, and I'm guilty of that too. It's just time to move forward, probably look at some, if we want to change direction, change direction later, via some policy discussion, but I don't want to prolong this. And knowing those two bids, although they're expensive, we 're close to each other. >> Right. >> That gives me a little comfort of just what the environment is that we're in right now. >> Well, I mean, first of all, if we have a problem with moving forward, I think we can still support the fire chief if we don't move forward. Chief, I support you wholeheartedly. I built a project, I had a bid on a concrete project parking lot that was double what one of my other bids were. So while construction costs, we can say, will keep going up , I don't know where this $250 or $300 a square foot number comes from, but I'm having a hard time getting over this hump. And if we got to do it this time, I'll tell you right now, I'm not going to vote to approve a $400 square foot building, unless I have some evidence that that's all we can get. It just, because I do know construction costs are going up, but also know that when you get bids, I had bids all over the place on my project. It's a different project, but you have different bids from different people. And people do charge more. I mean, look at the one bid that's $5 million, a couple hundred thousand dollars more. So I just cannot accept that it's costing $400 a square foot to build a 5,000 square foot building, that probably 20%, 30% is an open bay to hold the equipment . So it's not like that's all sort of completed living quarters and things such as that. A large part of that is a parking area for those vehicles, I believe, as they sit inside there. That's nothing against you, Chief. You know that. I mean, that's nothing against, and I have full confidence no matter what our decision is here today, your department will continue to provide the same level of service that it's provided today, and for the 25 or 30 years that this has been existing like this. I'm just, I mean, I'll move forward with this, but this will be the one that I say, okay, we got to do this differently. I mean, if we're building two or three more fire stations, we need to look at what do we need to have just to build it ourselves. I mean, good heavens. I mean, this is unbelievable to me. Especially not knowing or knowing that there may be some things, and we don't know what the designs are and specifications are for that. But I mean, I hear us all talking about we want to make sure that we get at the lowest tax rate, and we want to make sure that we do the best for the citizens fiscally, and how do you balance that? I don't think we balance it with $400 square foot construction costs. And if that's what the tower's costing us, we need to know that ahead of time, because that's, I don't know if that's what it's going to cost, but. So this isn't about anything about the fire department. It 's not about the procurement department. It's about I don't have much confidence that when people see a bid from municipality, that they know they can pad that a little bit, because is it going to get the scrutiny that it should have gotten in the past? And I'll be truthful. We've had a couple of examples of that, whether you agree with it or not, at the national level. All right? People wondering how much do these things cost that we're doing? And so I really want to understand this law. I want to understand because we did the RDP with a design build. We had one bid, basically. We had one contractor we decided on before we even got the bid. And then we decided we were going to work with them in a design build. Is that not that process and that procedure? We didn't get an actual number, but we decided who we would choose based on their qualifications. And then we would negotiate the contract after that. Of course, when you're dealing with architects and engineers, that is the law. You must do that. So there are different processes and procedures. Basically, that process that didn't energy center was completed with an RFQ process request for qualifications, which required the contractors submit their qualifications. They went through evaluation procedure. And in accordance with the text of the government code 2254 , the second step was happening with the highest rank responded. So what you saw the legislature do a couple of years ago was move that more in line with the RFQ process. So that's why we're being hamstrung and not being able to go back out to all parties the way we used to. So there wouldn't be an advantage to do an RFQ process for the fire stations? No. Well, and the RFQ process is really mandated because when you're dealing with an engineering firm or an architectural firm, that's the process that you must use. In other words, you choose the most qualified firm and then you negotiate the price. That's what the law is in our local government code. So it's a different process. And there are various procurement processes that we employ depending on the nature of the goods or services that we are acquiring. That one was allowed under Texas local government code 2269 and which allows the RFQ process for design, build project. That project had both an engineering aspect to it and the construction all tied into one. And the city was required to also hire an independent engineer, which we're in the process of doing that now to oversee to make sure that the value was obtained. Okay. Any other questions on this? Let me make one more comment. With that research of the law and sort of a history of that , if we could get staff to look at some similar facilities that have been built in other cities more recently and what some of the differences are, I mean, they may not be LEED certified and things such as that, but I really want to make sure if I'm making this kind of a decision that that's because this is what everybody else is paying given similar kinds of designs and construction materials and construction processes. And I don't have that confidence that has nothing to do with anybody at the city of Denton. It has to do with the process. So, Mayor Pro Tem. Well, it's the assumption I get that. I mean, this is a blind process. So it's almost like the assumption is that there is there is coordinated effort on the part of the contractors to fix prices and to go together to bid these things out at a certain price to full municipalities and to paying more money. That's an out that's that's an if that is our allegation that goes much deeper than just the process. I mean, if there are people out there in the state of Texas that are bidding lower than there's probably something different about those projects. So to just say that there's something going on and where people are just gouging us, the process seems to be in place to protect us against some of those things. Because if somebody knows that somebody is intentionally going out, they're going to make a great living out of going out and undercutting all those folks. That's why the process is blind. You don't know what other people are doing it. So is the allegation that people are getting together and actually fixing prices and trying to run? Are you asking me that question? Yeah, because it seems like that's what I don't know. I don't know how you got that. I'm making an allegation on anything. I'm just simply saying I don't buy that it's going to cost us four hundred dollars a square foot has nothing to do with an allegation. It has to do with if someone knows that this come on, let's all be real. Does the city pay typically more than what probably you and I would pay out there on the street or do we pay less? Well, we also have a much longer process of procurement that involves a lot of risk to concrete is concrete steel framing, steel framing, wood materials or wood materials. There's no allegation that there's any kind of collusion or conspiracy or malfeasance going on. It's just simply saying by the very nature of the process, it doesn't encourage true competitive bidding, especially when you limit it at the end to say, hey, that'd be like having three offers on a house. And you've got to go with the lowest offer to say, hey, give me your best deal. And you've precluded anybody else from being able to enter in that process. So it's not an allegation of any kind of malfeasance. It's the process is set up to not encourage true competitive building and a transparency of the issues. If I guarantee you, if links knew that they were getting another opportunity and this other construction company knew we got to give them our best and final offer and you know you're competing against someone. What do you think you're going to be more inclined to do? But if you're saying if I come to you say, I want your best offer, aren't they competing against them by going into the process to begin with understanding that they're going to be picked based on their Kevin. I mean, there's a competitive nature to the very process. If you know, no, no, no, a myriad of possible contractors coming to the coming to the table. And then you know that if you're told that if you get a call saying, I want your best and final offer, they know by state law. Correct me if I'm wrong. They know by state law. That means we're the we're the best bidder and they're coming back to us to get the best and final offer. That means there's no one else who's competing with us in this particular negotiation, which to get to that point, you had to compete with everyone else with your initial offer. So there is a competitive part to the entire process before you get to that point. That's my point. I understand. And I appreciate that. But I will tell you, I don't know how many negotiations you've been in on real estate deals and all those kind of things. But when people know the process, they can manipulate the process just enough to get the award of that bid. And that's not an out. That's just being smart based upon the process that they're entered into. So my beef isn't with the people who made the bids. It's with this process that somehow encourages not the best deal. So, yeah, if anybody who is listening to my voice thinks that I've made an allegation, I want to make sure and clear that that I'm not making an allegation towards anybody. I'm saying that the process is, I hate to use this term, potentially rigged to not let us have the best price. So what I'm hearing is that there's a consensus. We're not voting, but we're moving forward on this deal. And I don't know if there's a consensus for Fire Station 3. I want to make sure that we can get some tightening of this and at least some evidence moving forward of, yeah, guys, this is what it costs. Instead of, well, this is what they're telling us it's going to cost, but we don't know what anybody else is paid. Do we ask these people for their last few projects that are similar in nature and their pricing on it or who they built it for in these RFPs? Yes, we get three projects that they built recently as for the evaluation team to consider. Okay. And they were fire stations? There are some similar projects. Yes. We asked them for that. So they provide whatever they've worked on recently. We don 't want something that's 10 years ago. Okay. But we do get three projects that they have and those are tied to their references as well. Okay. And so the evaluation team goes through those documents to make sure that, you know, what they've done in the past, that they're not falling behind on their schedules and their price didn't go way above on the change orders. That's the sort of the documentation they're looking for. I'd just like to make note that Fire Station 2 is being completed by Smolt Construction, which is on your bid. They bested 11 others on that project. There were 11 bids that came in on that project. And you saw Smolt submitted the highest price on this project. Right. And talking to him, he also was awarded several projects around the city. And he's a really great contractor and has been really pleasant to work with at the city. And he just knows that those projects cost a lot. And, you know, he was not happy he wasn't the lowest on that project. And so I followed up with all of them. Yep. Anybody else? Okay. Thank you. Any other clarifications on agenda items? I have one. I have one. Clarification on agenda item 2D of the work session. I'm just going to state it now so we can just move on to that. I've learned last week, last Tuesday, that when people have conversations with people, I need to make sure I document them, that people document them for me. I mentioned to Lindsay when she was giving the presentation on why was this not a work session and the timeliness of it . And she very professionally reminded me, she refreshed my recollection that she and I had a conversation about that. And this was sort of the plan to proceed. So my comments that were made to her should have been comments that were made into a mirror reflected towards myself. So for that I take responsibility, Lindsay. And so I can certainly admit when I need to do something different. All right. Moving on to agenda items 3A. So that was 3D I was talking about. Receive report, hold discussion, give staff to -- oh, I'm sorry, yes. Did I miss one? Go ahead. On clarification for agenda items, let me just make a comment about item B. And this is a contract. I don't know if Paul Williams is in the building. I think he is. I think I saw him. But this is a contract of sale. And I would point out to the council, this contract does not have a signature on it. Typically we would want a signature on a contract before we put that in front of council. I hear from Paul that he is confident that the terms as written in this contract will stand. A signature is forthcoming. And so we -- since we have limited council meetings, I think the request is from the real estate department that council go ahead and act on this. In the unlikely event that there is a change to the contract that the other signatory requires, we would of course be obligated to bring that back to council for a consideration of that change. So I want to point that out. And if you're okay with acting on that without the signature, we would endorse that and ask that you do so. Okay. Yes. I'm fine with that, but just to make it cleaner, should that be pulled and voted on as an individual item? Or does it not matter? Well, the item is before you without a signature on that contract. And so if you approve it as it currently stands, there's no signature there. So I think it would be appropriate just to go ahead and act on it like you see it in your backup. Okay. And it will then go to the other party for signature. Is that accurate, Paul? Yes, I mean, I've spoken with the local land folks here in Texas, and it's we thought we might have it forthcoming that we could pass out the council meeting, but there's some administrative elements in Nashville they're working through. So we're hopeful to have it by the end of the week, the signed contract. All right. Great. Any other questions on that? So that's staying on the consent agenda with that explanation. And if the contract changes, it's sort of the signatures mood anyway, because it's no longer. Right. If that act is a counter offer, we would have to bring that back to the council to consummate the contract. All right. Great. Okay. Agenda item 3A. Receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction on a rental inspection program. Thank you, Mayor. I'm gonna ask Lansing Bentley, our community and neighborhood services manager to address this particular item. I know I'm sweating. No, no, I thought you were going to go ahead and proceed. Go ahead. Okay. All right. Good afternoon, Mayor and council. I'm here this afternoon to present information to you. The PowerPoint that I have in front of me is rental program information from other cities. This was this is our presentation objective today. This was by request from a council member who just wanted information from other cities about rental programs that they may or may not have, what those look like, how they compare to what we are or are not doing. And also, we specifically wanted to look at some of the Texas college towns. So the information today is just going to be, well, the presentation today in your backup is just information. You'll see that there's not any slides in here that have recommendations going forward. So we just wanted to kind of provide you an overview. I contacted 22 cities, and you can see the list of the cities that I was able to speak with. You'll notice that in that first bullet that I put in there that I did not get to talk with Dallas and Grand Prairie. I did contact them on several occasions. I just did not get information back from them. I know that both of those cities do have some form of a rental program. I actually had a lot of information from 2006 on Grand Pra irie, but of course that information would be really dated at this point. So I did not provide it. So if in the future, and if you want me to, I can go ahead and try and continue with these cities because I do know they have programs. Of the 22 cities surveyed, I talked with 29 staff members. And so I actually had conversations with these people, and a lot of them sent a lot of emails, and a lot of good information also via email in terms of their ordinances, their policies and procedures, the forms that they use, that kind of thing. And just to give you some kind of idea who I was speaking with, I talked to assistant directors and directors of co- compliance and code enforcement departments, code enforcement managers, building officials. I talked to a court administrator, and I also talked to two deputy city attorneys for two of the cities. So that was basically how the research was done through conversation and via email. I'm going to start with the multifamily programs and just kind of give you a high level overview. In your backup, you have a document called Exhibit 1. And in that exhibit, there are 17 cities that have some form of a multifamily program out of the 22 that I was in contact with. Proactive exterior inspections. There are five cities, Allen, Bedford, Denton, Lubbock, and San Marcos, that have proactive exterior inspections. And essentially all that means is that they have a district officer who is a part of their every day going down those streets, and they can actively look at the exteriors of all structures, regardless if they're a business or an apartment or a rental or single family home. So you have proactive exterior inspections. Of those five cities, four of them, Bedford, Denton, Lubb ock, and San Marcos, do interior inspections on rental units by complaint. So if these four cities get a complaint, they can go in and do an inspection. The city of Allen does not even do any interior inspections , whether they get a complaint or not. And actually that's something when I talk to their code enforcement unit that they are looking at at this time and going to talk about bringing back before their council. Of those 17 cities that had some sort of multifamily program, the 12 that I have listed here had both proactive exterior and proactive interior programs. And I'm going to give you just a real kind of overview because you have all those individual pages in your exhibit one that give some detail on what each city is currently doing. If you're wanting more information, I can get more information. But just on a very high level, most of them have some sort of registration and some sort of inspection. The fees vary. Not all cities charge fees for their registrations. Some cities charge some fees for some inspections and not other inspections. They inspect both occupied and unoccupied. With regard to those that are occupied, they always get consent. And that was the main thing that every single city talked about. They always get consent. Most cities get written consent. A few cities get verbal consent. If there's not a consent to go into a unit, whether it's single family or multifamily, they do not go into that unit . They opt for another unit. With regard to the level of inspection for multifamily programs, it really ranged, and if you'll notice in your backup, somewhere between 5 and 10%. But a lot of them try to look at most of the vacancies or the make-readies. And then they try to do a percentage of occupied, again, with tenant consent. And that ranged somewhere between 5 and 10%. I'm trying to think of an example. Louisville. Louisville has a program, and they prefer to do occupied inspections. They really do not like doing unoccupied inspections, so they were a little different in that way. But that was kind of their procedure, their policy. But if they have an apartment complex and say it's five stories, what Louisville wants to do is look at an occupied unit on every floor. So in a five-story apartment complex, Louisville wants to see five occupied apartments. That's just kind of their standard, if they can get consent for those five. So it's kind of all over the board, but it's about a 5 to 10% viewing of between occupied and unoccupied. That's kind of the general overview of the problem. Councilmember Gregory. Yes. I don't want to be one-winded. Okay. I was looking at the proactive exterior inspections, five cities. Two that I'm looking at, three that I'm looking at. Built charging inspection fee, any kind of registration fee . Is that the case with all five? You know, I'd have to look at these individually. I know for sure with Denton, I believe with Bedford, I'd have to look at them. It looks like Allen only does for a re-inspection. If they score below 80. If they score below 80, and one thing that Allen said is that they work so closely with their property managers that it is very rare to get a score below 80. He was just very honest about that, and he said, but if we do, there's a $5 per unit fee. And he said it's very rare that that occurs. So for the proactive, I mean, it's just an exterior inspection, but it doesn't seem to be 80. That's right, because that's really going to be a standard part. I'm understanding your question. That's going to be a standard part of what code enforcement is. You drive down streets, and you're looking at exterior properties. And so I put this here because of those five, four do then have some sort of a program where they then go into inter iors by complaint, where Allen still doesn't do that. And so, even short answer to this, I can go back to the interior, the inspections. Do they charge fees to the-- I know we don't. I don't believe Bedford does. I'd have to look at each one of these in here. I don't believe San Marcos does. San Marcos says no fees. I know Bedford doesn't, Denton doesn't. Lubbock? No fees. On the second bullet point, okay. On the second bullet point, yes, we can look at these individually, but a number of the ones that do proactive exterior and interior and have registration and inspection, there are fees. Not all of them have fees. They're all a little bit different. Some will have no fee at all for that very first inspection , and many of them don't have a fee for the reinspection to see if you've gained compliance. And after that, as you continue to come back, that's when several cities add fees. Okay. But that is all in here, and I don't mind-- And I'll try not to-- No, no, that's all right. I don't mind looking at it, but I don't recall some of the details. Councilmember Baguieri had a question. Let me go back just for a minute. Oh. I guess I'm confused because, first of all, I don't know what precipitated this being brought before us. The second question that I have is what is lacking in our current enforcement program? Okay. Well, what precipitated it is that I got a council request to actually to bring this information forward, a council member request. Okay. All right. And then what's lacking in our ordinance, basically, we have in our Chapter 17, all of this about interiors the way they're supposed to be. We have that in there because we do have an interior inspection program by complaints as well, which I'll review . What we don't have is an ordinance or the council needs to decide, and we don't have an ordinance that then tells us that we can actually go in and do these proactively if the city wants to go in that direction. Right now we can do it by complaint and we do. So this would allow the city, without a complaint, to go into a rental unit? This would allow, right, this would, whatever the program, if a program got set up, whatever the ordinance specifies, is there an annual inspection? Is there, you know, a biannual inspection? There's an inspection every two or three years. It sets up the actual program. And are complaints not being addressed? Is that the kind of underlying motivation? Well, the complaints that we get are being addressed, and I can get into that in just a little bit. When we get a complaint on an interior, we go inside and we get that addressed. So that's what we are addressing, and all exteriors. Okay, thank you. Yeah, I think some of that will probably be spoken to as you move forward in your presentation. Right, right. So as you look at all of your backup, there is a lot of information on each city, and I can, like I said, gather more information on these cities if you would like to have some of it. So, but as you look at it, I think eventually it got a little bit confusing, because a lot of them have a lot of similarities in terms of registration and inspections and consent forms and only going into places that someone actually did consent. So what I wanted to do on this next slide is just pull out some of the things that when I heard them, they seemed unique to those cities that made their programs a little more interesting. I listed them as best practices, and maybe some people may consider them best practices, some may not. And maybe what they should be categorized as is maybe they 're kind of different features that those programs have than what I found in other cities. There were two or three cities that their multi-family program did not really kick in until a multi-family complex was five years or older. So if a brand new complex was built and they have a CO, there are no required inspections during those first five years. And some of these cities, the actual inspection, registration and inspection process kicked in past the five year point. The waiver program is a program that the city of Plano has, and what they do, essentially they have done a multi-family inspection on whatever number of units they did in a complex. And they do grade A, B, C and D. And if they find that a complex has a grade A and they have some criteria set for that, they don't want to find anything that's dangerous or egregious existing at that complex. But they can have minor issues that can be abated. They can still get a grade A. It's a good complex. It's well maintained. If they get a grade A, they don't have inspections for the next two years. So they have a waiver for two years on inspections. The third year comes around, they get that baseline reass essment again and they may be a grade A again, then they have two more years of waiver. So I thought that was kind of, that stood out. I didn't have anyone else talk about that, but the city of Plano does that. The third bullet is about the city of Carrollton. And they instituted their multi-family program in 1995. And they were just concerned that there would be a lot of concerns expressed about what would the program be like, how often would there be inspections, how egregious would the inspections be, just all of the questions that come about when you really haven't done it yet and you don't really know what's going to happen. So that very first year, they did a full-fledged program, but they didn't do any fees. There were no registration fees, no inspection fees. It was ongoing education. They're going in and saying, here's what we're looking for, here's what we're not looking for. They did an awful lot of inspections that year. And according to the director of the division over there, they said this was very helpful in the first year for them. Annual meeting. City of Garland does an annual meeting. And they were the only ones who mentioned it. And I just thought it sounded interesting. They, it's not mandatory. So apartment owners, managers, the Greater Dallas Apartment Association and different departments in the city get together once a year. It's 8 o'clock to 12 o'clock. It's a morning meeting. And they talk about ordinances and policies and procedures and changes that people feel need to be made and any services that the city's offering that they're offering to multi-family managers or tenants. It's almost like a small kind of conference, annual conference. And at that annual meeting, they get their registration packets so that they can sign right there and change the name of the owner and change the phone number for the landlord and kind of get that turned in and set up their inspection for that year. Anyone who doesn't attend just gets their registration packet mailed. Recognition. It's possible that a lot of these cities, maybe all of these cities have some form of recognition for complexes that are really offering a good standard of living. But two of them talked about it and really kind of pressed on it. And that was the city of Richardson and the city of Ar lington. And what they do, it's almost like our health inspectors when they do restaurant scoring. It's very similar to that. They list the apartment complex, possibly the address. It's on the city's website. And their score is listed there. And so it's promotional for those that are really doing good work and compliant with the code. And the code is a minimal code. We have the same minimal code that most cities have. One thing that Richardson did mention is that if someone doesn't have a very high score, I mean, you just don't leave that like that's the final score. As they continue to work and improve and abate the violations, it shows that and the score improves. So it shows that they've passed and that they're in compliance with city codes. The great update rebate, this one was Plano. And they just started this this year. And so I would have to call back and kind of find out more of how it's going. It's different. It's for apartment complexes that have done some external renovations. The city, if they have the funds available and they pull the funds from city property that's sold. OK, so if there's funds available, they will provide up to $20,000 in funds to that complex for work that they have done up to $20,000. It's something they just started this year. So I can't tell you how they feel like it's gone or how many takers they had or how much money they spent. But I can look into that. Act is from San Marcos. It's achieving community together. And really, it's it's more of a program the way I viewed it between Texas State University and the city of San Marcos. And what they have is that when they have students living on campus, as they get ready to leave the campus, the students have to go to the off campus living office, I think is what it's called. And they have to let them know they're leaving campus. They're moving out into a rental in the community. They provide instruction. And I think in the cities involved in that, how do you how do you independently live when you're 18, 19, 20 years old? How do you independently live in the community? What makes you a good runner? What makes you a good neighbor? Whether you're living in single family or living in multif amily, how do you interact with your landlord? It also informs them of the ordinances that the city has. You have to mow your grass. You can't park on the lawn. These types of things. And so there was a lot of that. Also, their legal services at the university is willing to look at the lease that this student is getting ready to enter into to try and assist them if they're making a good decision, if the lease is a good lease. And then finally, the other thing that they offer to the student is that that code enforcement from the city is willing to go and look at the unit that they're getting ready to move into before they do to check to make sure that everything's okay in that unit. The way that the multifamily community is involved in this is that if there are multifamily, and there are many in San Marcos, is what I was told, that have, are considered, what am I trying to say? A clean record is what it was referred to. And since they don't do interior inspections except by complaint, a clean record means not a lot of police calls, no issues with the police department, not a lot of external violations, code violations at your property, and not a lot of legitimate interior complaints that San Marcos code had to go inspect. If you are, if you kind of meet all that criteria, you're considered, you have a clean record, they put you on a list . And that list is of the good complexes that are, that they deem to be good at that point. And they give it out to the students. And so those students can know that those are locations that they might want to look into. Those complexes also have the ability to have free booths at any of the university's health fairs, student orient ations, housing fairs, that kind of thing, whereas other complexes can't put their names on that list. So that's called ACT, and it's between the city and Texas State University and also the multifamily community in San Marcos. Residential programs, your exhibit two has information, details about the residential programs that I found. And there are 13 of them of the 22 cities that I talked with. And residential essentially is single family, duplex, triplex, in some cities quadplex, and townhomes and cond ominiums. So I'm going to, you probably noticed there's a similarity in the residential programs in your backup and your detail. So I'm going to kind of review, just do an overview here of that. Austin, registration is required and interior inspections are required, but only for repeat offenders. They have what is called a repeat offender program and they have very specific criteria about what makes someone or a complex. And theirs is not just complexes, there's a single family as well. It's across the board in Austin. They have one program for all rentals. And so the registration that's required and the interior inspections that are required are for those that are in the repeat offender program where there's been a lot of violations, citations, that kind of thing. You stay in that program for two years. If at the end of that two years, everything's addressed, everything's fine, you're out of the program. If it's not, you're in for another two years. Below we notice the city of Carrollton, Richardson and San Marcos require registration, but they only do inspections by request or by complaint. Farmers branch, Garland, Lewisville, Mesquite requires registration, but they only do interior inspections when tenancy changes, so between tenants. And many of them said many times it doesn't end up between tenants. There'll be a new tenant in and they're fine with that. They'll just need to get a consent form signed. And it could be that that next tenant will refuse it and then they don't go in. College Station had something kind of interesting. They require registration, but they do not do any interior inspections even if they get requests. And they do say they get a lot of requests. They do, of course, exterior inspections, which is proactive. They do that regularly. And what the registration is for is that they want to have a contact with the landlord or the owner of the rental properties in College Station. And their requirement is that the landlord, that contact, has to be within 30 miles of College Station City Hall. So what they're trying to eliminate is absentee landlords. And also working with LLCs where you cannot put a name on a landlord. You don't, you have a registered agent, you have many members of a board, but you don't have a person that can meet you on site or that you can talk to on the phone or send a text to or whatever. And so that's why College Station did this, but they do not do interior inspections even by request they don't. Frisco has voluntary registration. They also don't do inspections even by request. And I found this odd. I really didn't know why anybody would voluntarily register when they told me that. They have 1,010 voluntary registrants in their residential program. And so what that turns out to be, those are homeowners who have their property up for rent. They may not live in the city, but they want to know what's going on. They want to know if the grass is tall, if the cars are on the lawn, you know, if the shingles are missing off the roof. They want to know about it. And so there is no cost to it. And so 1,010 of those single family or duplex homeowners who run out their property in Frisco went ahead and put themselves voluntarily on this list so they could have contacts. And of course the goal, too, is to decrease the number of citations that they would issue to them if they couldn't contact them timely. Plano, Bedford, and Denton, there is no registration and there are no interior inspections except by request. These three cities will do them by request. There are no fees associated with the -- no registration and certainly no fees associated with the inspections. The next slide, again, is best practices. As I mentioned to you all earlier, maybe I should have named this unique features. But these are some of the things that came out in the programs as they were explaining them to me. Annual registration. The cities that had annual registration liked them. The cities that didn't have annual registration wanted them or wanted it. And one or two of those cities are kind of looking with their councils right now looking at it. And it doesn't mean that a fee has to be charged because many of them weren't interested in the fees. What they wanted was the contact information. They wanted to be able, again, like College Station was talking about, to be able to locate some body that you can talk to about tall grass and weeds, trash and debris, those exterior things. So that's what annual registration was for. And when you say residential, you're talking about single family homes? Single family, duplex, triplex, condos, townhouses. Do we not have a, and it may just apply to multi-family, do we not have a code in the city where you have to put an emergency contact number on your building? I mean, I thought that I was, I had to do that. Do we not have a code that requires that? That there's some- I'm not aware of it. Well, then I had bad information. I spent a lot of money putting signs. I didn't need to. Yeah. Because I thought there was. That's why I have numbers on my buildings. Okay. All right. So, and the second one is something that's done in the city of Garland. And again, this might be up for debate whether it's truly a best practice or not. But the city of Garland, once they're an inspector, has ins pected a unit, and say they found a violation in that particular unit, the property manager can decide that they don't want a re-inspection. They're going to comply. They're going to abate it. But they don't want a re-inspection. So what they will do is that they have to, they fill out an affidavit that states that I've abated this violation. I've made this correction. They attach receipts for the materials that it costs and for the labor, the person that they paid to do it, and they attach a photo to show the completed project. And so that's something that Garland did. I don't know how often people use it, but- No, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Yeah. Council Member Walden, you had a question. Okay. In the current system, coming back to your comment about tall grass, something that needs to be done, the complaint goes to, or the citation, goes to the property owner. Is that correct? Normally on tall grass and weeds, it goes to the tenant. Now, we will also send a notice to the property owner so that they know that an issue is existing on their property. But my point is, the property owner is still being notified . They are being notified. They are being notified with a notice that there's tall grass and weeds out there. The fact that they're not registered really doesn't have anything to do with whether or not they're contacted, because we're contacting them right now saying, you have a problem with your property. So it doesn't matter if they're registered or unregistered. We are still contacting the property owner, which is record of property ownership through the county records. We make our best effort to do that. There are several corporations that own rental property, and that's really difficult to make the proper contacts there. And we rarely speak to a person there about what the issues are, trying to come up with a time frame for them to get the work done. So it works in general. If I own a piece of private rental property and I live in town, then yes, it will get mailed to my home that my property over here has tall grass and weeds. Or if I live in San Marcos or whatever, I'll get it. But where we find some issues are with corporations that own rental property. It's difficult to actually speak with someone, talk with someone to make sure that they're actually getting the information. And we end up, those turn more into citations than usual, and then that's very difficult. You really, that's difficult to do. May I approach him with another question? Well, sometimes, and I've heard this from residents and neighborhoods in my council district, that say they have college students running rampant in their neighborhood at a particular house, hosting parties a lot. They may be able to go on the county records and find some address of somebody living in California, but that doesn't give them any means or ability to contact them, surely not on any short notice or certainly no phone number associated with it. So some of the concerns I've got from owners of single family properties who are concerned about unkept properties or unruly neighbors in some of these rental houses has been , where do I go when I want to lodge a complaint? Or just have a neighborly conversation like I would have with my neighbor and go to, and I'm stuck talking to some 19 year olds who aren't being that responsive. And I think that's where some of the concerns in it seems like in some, I'm not advocating for it necessarily, I'm saying that tends to be what some of the interest is with that. There's a difference between bad behavior, which is a police call, or unkept property, which is code enforcement. So it's, they're both problems, but they're also solved two different ways. Because the police are going to show up at a rental property, it's two o'clock in the morning, they're having a wild party, if people need to get arrested , they're going to be arrested because they're the offender who are, they've had too much to drink and they're loud and abusive. But in terms of you need to mow your grass, then that falls under code enforcement. So it's two different problems, both problems, but two different jurisdictions in terms of solving the problem. >> You know, kind of following up on what you're asking me, you know, we can contact owners, and so we do. I mean, we mail notices to owners about different issues that are occurring outside on the exterior of the property. But a lot of times, if they are a long distance owner, like you mentioned California, they have someone locally, they have, or hopefully they have someone locally, a property manager or property management company. A lot of times we don't have that information. And so what College Station said, they want a designee who resides within 30 miles of College Station, someone that they can actually meet with, talk with, show, because that's the person who they really need to be talking with. Having a conversation with this long distance owner, they 've really left someone behind to maintain their property. That's the person who needs to be contacted. And one thing that we found in years past, and it was frustrating to property managers, is they really didn't like the owner to get the notice. And at some point when owners were actually getting cit ations, it was because we didn't know who the local property managers were, because it's not, there's one or two in town that actually designate, we can tell who that property is managed by. And we also have a few property managers in town who work with us really closely. So when we see an issue, we just text that person, we just call that person. And so that's kind of what this registration was for, was to find the local property manager, the local contact, if it changed from one year to the next, that you just have a phone number on that person, someone you can just call up and let them know what's going on, or someone who can meet you on site. So it's more having the manager information, because sometimes the owner's nowhere nearby. So I don't know if that, okay. The neighborhood commission came out of San Marcos. This is, it is a council appointed, nine member commission. So it is a board and commission, just like PNZ or PUB, that kind of thing. And there are nine people on it, and they represent what this gentleman called a neighborhood district. And it kind of sounded like to me it was a council district , I would need to check. But the neighborhood district would have maybe a lot of neighborhood associations, homeowners associations, might have a lot of homes in it and different residential subdivisions. But this is one person that represents that entire district . And anything that the city's considering that impacts neighborhoods is brought before this neighborhood commission. And so the neighborhood commission in San Marcos is the one who recommended to the council that just this past year that they modify how they're handling their rental program. San Marcos has no registration and only does interior inspection by complaint. What they wanted to modify it to, to look a little more like Austin, is that if there are continued violations at a location, exterior violations, a lot of notices, a lot of citations, they are now put on, they have to register. So they are the only properties in the city that have to register those that are basically non-compliant, and they just go year by year if they stay on that list. And so this commission is the one who made the decision and promoted that to the council, recommended to the council that it's what they wanted for their community. I thought that was kind of interesting, it was most different than anyone else I had talked to. Quickly I'll go through Denton's program because we do have a program. I talked to Rodney, I didn't talk to Rodney Patterson, but actually Donnie Denny, and I'll introduce him in a moment. I'll introduce him now. Senior Officer Donnie Denny does our interior rental inspection program. And just to give you a little bit about him, before we hired him, he's been here five years in May, before we hired him he spent 14 years in the apartment industry. So he was a leasing agent and he also did property maintenance, supervised and managed property maintenance at Denton and Dallas apartment complexes. So he's our person that does this. He spoke with Rodney Patterson recently and Rodney said that Rodney began building inspections in 99. And even at that point, citizens could call in and request an interior inspection if they wanted to and they would go in and check those out. In the summer of 2014, that was transferred over to community improvement services. So we've had this program in our division for the last two and a half years. It is complaint based. We ask for a signed consent form, else we don't go into the unit. We conduct at least one inspection, and many times only one , because there is no violation. And I'll talk to you about that in a minute. After that, we may have two or three additional inspections to complete before the issue is remedied. There are no fees for the inspections. Management notification is verbal for us, because if they 're on site, he goes downstairs or goes across the complex and talks to them, takes them the photos that he has taken to show them to them. So we do hours by verbal notice. We think it's better to meet with people in person, talk to people on the phone, even send an email without writing a notice to them. We've written one notice, and I'll tell you about that in a moment. We have a very high voluntary compliance rate. We've gotten a lot of favorable response in terms of remed ying these issues. So since September 1st of 2014 and November 30th of '16, we 've had 368 interior rental unit complaints. When Donnie inspected them, 134 were nonviolations. So the tenant may consider it to be a problem, but it's not a violation of our ordinance. Remember, these are minimum standards, so it's not a violation of our ordinance. We just closed that case. I had a question from Councilmember Briggs. Oh, okay. Regarding this slide, earlier you talked about Austin Avenue program for repeat offenders. On these violations, are these repeat offenders or do they come from the same landlord? On these 368? Is that what you're saying? Well, the 234. The 234. I mean, do you see that very often? Going into the same unit over and over again? Yeah, or the same unit or the same? We had one where I don't think we're going into the same units over and over again. Sometimes it will be the same complex. Be the same complex. Right, well, that's what I mean, yeah. Yes. Yeah, if we're going to -- he'll need to come to the mic so he can be heard from the television broadcast. Okay. Yeah, or the same landlord. Same complex. Same complex. We did have one complex, and you'll see some photos in a minute, where we had quite a bit of increasing complaints and issues at that one complex. So it would kind of fit into that repeat offender program that Austin has. You're correct. So we found 234 actual violations. 232 of those violations were addressed via voluntary compliance, meaning given the time, the property manager remediated the problem, addressed it, abated it. We did issue one citation. Any time you issue a citation, you have to issue a notice. So this is the one that got the notice. This was for a sewer blockage, and this was a woman in an apartment. And it's not the recent article you saw in the Denton Record Chronicle recently. This is in the past. There was a sewer blockage, and the toilet could not be used, could not be flushed, could not be used. So this person was using neighbor's apartments and was actually using a convenience store down the street doing this kind of thing. So he got with the owner. It did not get abated in the timeframe specified by our ordinance, because it is a critical health and safety issue . Once the citation was issued, it responded within 24 hours, and so we did get that issue abated. And through November 30th, there was one current case open, so that equaled to 368. I'm sorry, Joey had a question on this slide. Okay. Just before you move on, I didn't want to interrupt you. You're about to move the slide. I think out of everything that I saw in the backup, this is the slide that just stood out the most to me. In the AIS, if I'm understanding it correctly, there's 20, 753 units, right? Right. Rental units. Yes, multifamily units, yes. Okay. So to get 368 interior rental unit complaints, and out of that, really only 234 were violations. And then 232 out of the 234, they voluntary compliance there. Only one citation, and I appreciate any conversation, you know. And I don't want to -- we can wait until the end, but this was the data that was just -- I was confused, kind of as Councilwoman Baguera had said. And I totally appreciate visiting any of these items, but I wish some of the other things we were doing in our city worked as well as this. Right. I really do. Like when you really do a percentage breakdown, like 368, it was like less than 2%, and that's not even ones that counted. So just while you were on this slide, I just wanted to make that comment. Of course, later we can talk about it. Yeah. That's what -- not confusing to me, but -- No. And all I'm going to show you -- a few more slides -- are just photographs. They're actually photographs of the work that got done in the deck. Before you move on to the photographs -- Okay. We talked about how this program got moved over into your department in 2014, I believe, and that Donnie is the inspector there. Correct. Is there a different set of qualifications? Like you have your code officers who proactively drive around and look for violations on the exterior. Of course, you have building inspections who go in and inspect for COs and inspect for new construction and things such as this. So if someone's going in to inspect an interior of the building, is that more of a building inspector qualification function, or are code officers qualified and trained to do that as well? I asked every city that question, and most cities have code enforcement doing it. Louisville has building inspectors doing it, because the issue is -- and as you'll see in your backup -- well, let me finish on that for a moment. Most of them have code enforcement doing it. I know Louisville has building inspectors doing it. Some of the code enforcement officers that are doing it are actually those who have taken the IPMC test. Well, we have two officers actually studying for that and getting ready to take that test. IPMC stands for -- International Property Maintenance Code. See, we don't have the International Property Maintenance Code, but our Article 13, Division 2, Chapter 17 in our ordinance, mimics that. It has some of the same things as the Uniform Housing Code has, as the IPMC has, and we already have it standardized as part of our code. So we have two officers that are in training for that that can go and test out of that. Some cities did that. Some just had standard code enforcement officers. But the thing that I asked -- and, you know, what are they looking for? They said, you know, you go in and you check, does the heat work? Does the air conditioner work? Do you have hot and cold running water? Do you have an infestation of rodents or roaches? Do you have holes in your walls? That kind of thing. And several of the cities said -- and I asked -- and again, I asked this question -- is that if you have something that looks more complicated, you walk in and you're like, wow, this is really -- I need to get someone else in here. Some of them call an engineer in. Some of them call a building inspector in. That kind of thing to come in and look. But they didn't find that to be that common. Once a complex or a unit is so egregious and so bad, it's normally in a dangerous buildings program. I guess, Madam City Attorney, are you aware of anything that -- I mean, so what I hear is that if you're a code enforcement officer without this training or taking this test and passing this test, then you couldn't go in and do quote, unquote, these interior inspections. So there is a different level of -- I don't know if I'd call it training or awareness or education. Right. Is it a certification they get if they pass that? Yes. It's a certification. It is. Right. It is. It's through the International Code Council and it is a certification. Thank you. It's a property maintenance and housing certification. Council Member Gregory. To build on what Councilman Hawkins said, when I saw that -- this particular piece of information, my thought was, do we really have a problem? Because especially when you see 232 violations closed through voluntary compliance, which is maybe even a higher rate than for regular -- It is actually. Yes, it is. Pardon me? Yeah, people owning their own homes. And I walked into one of my neighbor's homes the other day and it was egregious. They're not watching this, are they? They invited me. Okay. But in every respect, it was like this would not pass any inspection for anybody. Right. The only question I have as far as is it reasonable to draw the conclusion that we don't have a problem is that I suspect that there are some violations that are not being reported because renters don't know that they have that option. Right. As a city, we don't actively promote this program at this time. And this is probably word of mouth and just people that know. And with the new website going up, we were working on, we 're going to work with Alice and Reem on at least informing people that this exists, that if they want an inspection, they can get one. So we haven't as a city actively promoted that that's a service that we can provide. But, but I'm just saying I think my conclusion is right now this suggests that we don't have a problem. But I don't think it's conclusive that we don't have a problem since I, my intuition just tells me that there are that there are problems that are not being reported. That's my right. Yeah, I believe people don't really know about this program because when I have received some complaints and forward them on, they had no idea that it was an option for the city. So speaking of that, what are the ways right now where someone can make a complaint? Is it online? Do they call on the phone? Is it? Both. I mean they can call our main line and file a complaint or they can just go on. There's a form on the city's website where you can just file any complaint on that form. Okay. Yeah. Call, email, or that submission form. Well the last. Yeah, just a comment on that. I'm sure there are people that, you know, do not know the avenue to take when something in their apartment or their living structure isn't up to code. But when you take that 368 and we go look at them and 134 of them are nonviolations, that's when, there might be a small issue. I'm just, I totally, I agree with you. But we could make policy for a number of things for somebody who doesn't know that. But when you take 368 and we go look and we kick out a third of them or whatever that number is, more than a third of them for nonviolation, that's where I started struggling . So. Mayor Pro Tem. And let me be clear, when I requested this, it wasn't out of a assumption that there is a problem. Since I've been on council, which is almost six years now, we've never reviewed this. And so I was curious. Meanwhile, I get questions from folks in the neighborhoods that I represent, often neighborhoods who'd like to start their own programs, who have issues and have questions, see what other cities do. And you also see from time to time some clearly bad eggs get unveiled through media reports and NT Daily. I think we have a couple of reporters here that might have wrote on some of those stories. Whether it's TV reports that are just egregious situations. I mean folks having kids with wiring that's exposed and plumbing that doesn't work and no toilets and buildings. I mean, we would all call those extreme situations and bad eggs. And so when I asked for this, my question was pretty clear. It was, what are we doing now? What are other cities doing? What are the problems we see? How are we able to solve those problems? To see if we even have one to begin with that needs further action. But also to see, even in those extreme situations, do we have the possible tools in our toolbox to be able to reasonably protect the renters in our community, which is a lot. And growing ever since I think the economic downturn by all accounts. So a couple of you have asked, what's the problem? Why are we addressing this? Well, we didn't know these stats until we had this review of this. So a lot of this is just to say, where are we at? And hopefully we can have this discussion to see what else, if anything, needs to be done. Council Member Walsh. The term voluntary compliance jumped out at me too. So, you know, that's just big. The fact that one citation was issued since September of 2014. But I think we come back to just a basic need to let our tenants know that the service is available through the city for an interior inspection. So it comes down to I'm happy to hear you're going to put something on the website. But for tenants who pay a light bill, they get a little notice from this city every month with interesting information that comes in and maybe quarterly put that in. It just has to be a little blip. Did you know that you can, you know, ask for an interior inspection? Let them know. I would also reach out to UNT and TWU, their housing offices, and let them know that that option is available as well. So if they have some kind of program where students are saying, I'm, you know, I'm finished with this, I'm moving off campus, that they actually are proactive in letting their students know that that program exists because I think what we have at the city is working and it's working well. And to try to have some massive registration program, I just see as government overreach. And so but those would be my recommendations that education and information to the tenants. And so many of our tenants are students. But we also have a lot of people who rent who are not students. And so to, you know, have something in the city is, you know, we have our avenues for notifying people with Denton TV and our website. Just lots of different avenues. Let people know so that I think tenants know then that they can call the city and get an interior inspection. But to do anything further than that, I think it's just and ultimately in a college town, you're always going to have some problem, you know, tenants. You're just going to have it's the nature of the beast. And that's when neighbors, you know, have the ability to either call the police or call code enforcement, which I'm sure they do. So I think we have systems in place. But this was good information. Kevin, this was good information. So we learned a lot, I think, as a council and appreciate that. And Lansing, you certainly did a lot of homework and really compiled a lot of information. And information is important to policymakers and to citizens alike. So I want to thank you for working so hard. Thank you. I learned a lot. Thank you. Councilmember Gregory. I think we've had the best idea of the day of getting those notices out on a quarterly basis in the utility bills to let because then renters would know that those inspections are available. There's a lot of ways to get the information out. It's just as a city. We haven't done that. So I'd be glad to start working on that. This has raised another question for me. And I'm wondering is during any of your research, if you found out about any registration or inspections regarding short term rentals. Yeah. And what I'm talking about is those 300 or so dwell ings in Denton. That are being rented maybe on a nightly basis or a weekly basis, a shared room by the room or the whole house is rented for a short term basis through these Internet rental sites. Austin has a program as an ordinance has a program. It's actually on their website. I have quite a bit of information on it. And I went to a training recently and talked to one of their attorneys about their program. So I can provide that information to you. But they do because they have Airbnb's and they have a lot of homes that are being rented out on short term a lot in Austin. And so they've got a program and an ordinance and and in my in my concern about that. And I don't want I don't want to cause any staff to do a great deal of extra research. If it's if nobody else is interested or cares but but our council has taken a stand regarding political issues regarding marketplace fairness that that we feel like that that if somebody is selling a product, buying a product through the Internet, that they ought to be paying sales tax because our local businesses play sales tax. And it seems to me that that we have a situation now where we have people that are renting hotel rooms or motel rooms and paying a hotel occupancy tax fee. But people who are paying renting through Airbnb or not. And and so there's a marketplace fairness issue that's going on there regarding those two different issues. So I would be interested in exploring that more if there's enough interest on the part of council to do that. If not, then I don't want to waste time. Yeah. Getting the virtual paper way. I was I was giving you just a little it was tied in to to to rental inspection. Was there any. Okay, I think you did you have your hand up a second ago. Yeah, and then we'll go to Mary Pro Tem. I wanted to thank you for this presentation. It's very thorough and very educational. And it was good to see these numbers. You know, we saw and had a couple of articles in the paper that were pretty frightening. But it's good to know that that's not consistent and happening all the time. I do know that there are a lot of incidents that aren't reported. So I do believe that education is critical here for tenants to know their rights and maybe we could do some sort of education on that. But my I think for now I don't know about the registration of voluntary registration may be good just if somebody wants to do it, they can. I mean, you know, I don't know what the harm in is that in that. But for me, a repeat offender, if somebody isn't is constantly getting a citation and they're not fixing something that that's when it would become an issue for me. But if that isn't happening very frequently, then I don't know that we should talk about it today. So if that does become a problem, I would like to hear about it. Okay. I think this has been a good discussion and I think additional education will be telling for us. I think you're going to get more data. So if you if we're authorizing you to go out and spread the word about this program so that folks can get some relief, perhaps, perhaps we're going to see problems that we didn't know crop up. Maybe not. I also like the the example you gave, although not in all the details, but in San Marcos, at least where there seemed to be some sort of working together between the city, the universities and the property owners, because it sounds like it was educational on two fronts. They're saying to the students, here's how to be a good ren ter. And that's what this means. You pay your bills. You don't have loud parties. But also things that I think are helpful for students that I wouldn't want to see them get taken care of if they could take advantage of university legal programs that help them review leases and what all that seems like great voluntary programs that if I don't know what sort of conversations you have with the two universities, but I think would take part in that education. But I have a philosophical question for my colleagues. And this is just because it sticks in the back of my head as someone who's just kind of put a lease on a new space for commercial property. You know when you when you get commercial property, and you want to open up a business in a new location or a new business in a new location. Even if it's not a change of use, you're still required to get a CEO prior to opening in the city and they come in and do a basic inspection on the things that are required for that use of property. If you change use, for goodness sake, you're going to have to abide by a whole set of new codes that go along with it. But anyone in the town, anyone in the city can vacate a single family home and turn that into rental property for any number of people to come in. Could be young family, could be college students. And there's no requirement whatsoever. So philosophically, what causes us as a city, what governmental need, I'm asking my colleagues here, is in place that causes us to think we need to ask a commercial user to get a CEO. That doesn't also apply to someone who wants to rent to a young family. Because ultimately, I think the answer is, we always say it 's for the health and safety of the public that's going to be coming in and frequenting this business. Is that not correct? Is that not the governmental desire? What I want to make sure is we stay on post. I'm asking a philosophical question as to why we don't think the same applies. And I'm not saying I haven't been- You're talking about CEOs, and this is about a discussion about a rental inspection program on residential multifamily. So if you can tie those two together- Sure, because a CEO involves an inspection, and part of these processes involve , at some part of the process, an inspection. Before new tenants can come in, or perhaps when this is first initiated as a new rental property out of a single family home, for the sake of the protection of the folks. So I'm just curious as to our thinking, because I think there is a gap philosophically in how we think through those two things. And I'm just curious as to what everyone else is thinking. I know Councilmember Gary had a question that may- I don't know if it applies to the philosophical question. So if not, I want to go ahead and get to you. And then if you- Is that- Yeah. So I want to see if she has something that's- Sure. So one thing that we didn't discuss was the Texas Property Code, section 92.056, which delineates exactly what renters and residents are entitled to have, and basically they're entitled to have an ability of their space. I think that's really the difference between a commercial space and a residential space, is that you have all of these protections in the Texas Property Code. You have triple damages for violations. You have contracting ability between the tenant and the landlord. Albeit sometimes it's really not arm's length. I don't know why we didn't discuss that, but I think it is worth mentioning, given these complaints and some of the pictures that you showed. Mold, for instance, black mold falls under habitability. And all it takes is a handwritten note to your landlord, and they have five days to respond to you in writing. And that repair process starts right then and there. The Texas Property Code is incredibly powerful for tenants. And a bunch of do-gooder young lawyers even made a handbook called the Texas Tenants Legal Handbook that essentially walks a tenant through the entire process of making sure that their residence is habitable. In this day and age, I'm really surprised that people wouldn't be able to find that information pretty easily. But we can make it easier and put it on the website, and that should really take care of just about everything that we need in terms of habitability. >> And that was to my point that single family homes and renter landlord relationships are already well defined. State law, federal law, and also that property in terms of CO received a CO when it was built and those people moved in initially. And so I think to tie a single family home to a business that's going to serve the public. And I think that is probably the big delineation to answer your question. If you're going to open up a business, you're going to serve the public. So it's a whole different set of regulations than if you're going to move out of your house and rent it to somebody else. So I think one arena, i.e. the single family home, already has a whole set of protection and laws that are on the books. And in terms of commercial property, a lot of those rules and regulations are also tied to state and federal laws. What's it going to take to open a restaurant? What's it going to take to open a nail salon? You've got rules and regs that go that are very industry specific. So I'm not in favor of having another layer of government regulations in terms of rental property here in the city. Because I think while it's not perfect, I think we're doing a really good job. >> Councilmember Hawkins. >> Just thinking quickly about your question, I think the difference for me between commercial and residential is even if a space that I rented was a restaurant before me and then I go in there and I put in a restaurant, there typically are changes that I want to make. I have to move a stove. I have to do some structural things sometimes. That electrical has to be approved. You need to make sure that I have a sales tax permit, an E IN number. I'm going to be handling money. I think some things like that that put it on a different level than residential to me. >> Councilmember -- >> Well, I can't answer your question because I got a BS in education, not philosophy. >> Well, I think too, Councilmember Gary's right that the Texas property code is very specific about tenants remedies . The problem becomes do they have access to that information in a form that's easily understood? And secondly, if there is an issue of potential retaliation , if the tenant makes a complaint, landlord fixes it, but then later on down the line decides to either raise the rent outside the lease or gets a little bit more. Before our friends from North Texas leave, I just want to be sure and share that part of the way that students can understand that there is a voluntary compliance inspection program, that if they have an issue with a landlord, they can call the city and get an inspection. Additionally, that if they have an issue of a legal nature with a landlord, and I've had students call me and I've referred them to the attorney at the University of North Texas to help with those situations. So sorry to call you guys out specifically. I just wanted to make sure that if you do report on it that this is another form of being able to disseminate this information to really the genesis of this discussion to begin with. So thank you all. So I appreciate the information. This is good data. I mean, we make better decisions when we have good data. I think there probably are violations that aren't being reported for the very nature of the reasons that I stated, and that is there might be a level of fear based upon potential circumstances, living circumstances, afford ability, things such as that. So while we have a system in place, we cannot be unaware that there's also some pressure that landlords have an extreme amount of power over those that rent from them, and that's a responsibility and a duty that should be taken seriously. And if it's not, then we need to make sure that we have the information available to people to take advantage of. How do they have a safe place to live? This is an example in Dallas. I mean, you know, the guy, he was investigated by code compliance in Dallas and East Dallas, and, you know, they really -- he had some very inhabitable homes, and instead of fixing them because of the cost, decided just to sell them all. And there's a big brouhaha around that. We certainly don't want it to get to that situation here, and I don't think it will. But the data's good. To answer your question, Kevin, on the philosophical question, so shake a piece of paper at me if I'm wrong. I think it depends what level you want to answer that question, because if you -- at one level, you're saying for a CO, it requires maybe a change of use. Basically, it doesn't matter if it's a change of use or not . If it's a change of a tenant, you've got to get inspected. I think part of the reason is because the city wants to just get in there and look around and see what's going on to make sure somebody hasn't done anything that's against the code. So if that was simply the criteria, that if you have a change of an occupant, a change of the entity or person occupant, then yeah, if you've got a single-family rental and they move out, the use is still the same. But if you look at, as Councilmember Wasney pointed out, that there's a different level of scrutiny for invitees and guests. In other words, the public that's coming in, there's a whole different level of law regarding liability and the duties and responsibilities surrounding that for commercial resid ences and invitees, commercial properties, and then your residential. So it's a good question. But I think the property code and our code provide enough teeth that in residential -- like let's say you're converting a single-family home that was owner-occupied to a rental. What a lot of people don't realize is for every rental property, you have to have a peephole and a keyless locking device on every entry door. I went and looked at an apartment building that was probably five or ten years old that didn't have it on any of them, which let me know somebody doesn't know the law. That's important. How do you get that information in the hands of the people that are renting? That's really the key here. And so when I heard that we're not -- that was sort of news to me that we're not really promoting it, that we're not really doing anything with it. So certainly before we implemented something that was a little bit more in-depth and I won't say onerous or puts a lot more duty on a landlord, I would want to think that we've gone through the necessary steps to first put out there with some kind of certainty and confidence that you do have an option, you do have a remedy if you have an issue. So if you get social media comments that people who have -- there's another form of education. It can start one person at a time. So good presentation, great comprehensive -- You don't need to see the photos then because there are photos of the work he's done. Yes, okay, sure. You've got them in the backup. We do have them in the backup, yeah. So you do or don't want them. Yeah, well, I mean, we've got them in the backup. So yeah, and that's -- some of those are -- I thought I recognized one of them. I'm just kidding you. Well, it's kind of what Councilwoman Briggs is talking about. Two or three of them in the same unit, the same complex. Yeah, I'm teasing. We do have kind of certain complexes, yeah. Any other questions or comments before we terminate this work session report? Thanks again. Thanks, I appreciate it. Thank you and your staff. Let's go ahead and stand for about a 10-minute break. We'll come back at 3.15. Thank you. All right, welcome everybody back. We're going to reconvene this meeting of the Denton City Council on Tuesday, December 13, 2016 at 3.25. We are moving on to our work session item, agenda 3C, which is receive report, hold discussion and give staff direction -- and give direction to staff and Waters and company on the city auditor. Oh, have I missed one? Oh, did I miss one? Well, I'm sorry. I thought we'd gotten further than that. I forgot the first one was a consent agenda item. I apologize to everybody. I've still got that on my head. Agenda item B, receive report, hold the discussion and give staff direction regarding valley parking in the downtown area. Thank you, Mayor. I'd ask Carolyn Booth, our Director of Economic Development , to address this particular item. Thank you, Mr. Martin, Mayor and Council members. I'm here this afternoon to present some information about downtown valley parking. Our objectives today are to review the current valley parking arrangement with Queenies Steakhouse, to cover current considerations of downtown valley parking, and to discuss how to proceed toward adoption of a valet ordinance. In early 2013, Queenies Steakhouse approached the city to request a permit to valet park their patrons' cars. At that time, staff explored options with them under existing ordinances, along with other possible solutions, such as designating a loading zone, leasing spaces in the public right of way, or allowing Queenies to use public parking spaces until a valet parking policy or ordinance could be put into place. And that was, in fact, the solution that was settled on was to enter into this temporary arrangement with Queenies. There were some terms put around that temporary arrangement , and they are that the valet service may place the valet stand facing public parking in front of Queenies on East Hickory Street. The valet service may use one or two public parking spaces to facilitate valet parking if the spaces are open and available. The valet service may politely ask citizens if they would move their vehicles from a parking space in order to accommodate the valet. And the valet service may not require a citizen to move their vehicles and may not block any public parking spaces. In October 2013, the council received a work session briefing and was presented with a draft valet ordinance at the time, along with conditions for the temporary arrangement that I just shared with you. At the time, the decision was made to postpone further discussion about the valet ordinance until the completion of the East Hickory Street capital improvements. In December 2015, the council received another work session at which staff was directed to move forward with updates to the draft valet ordinance. And staff continued research into practices in other cities , including Dallas, Fort Worth, Plano, and Austin. As far as current considerations, Queenie's request is for a valet ordinance that with the proper application will allow a valet company to obtain a permit to execute valet operations within the city of Denton. Queenie's hopes that the ordinance will include provisions for signage, including the hours of operation of the valet service that will be placed by the city to eliminate confusion over the use of right-of-way. We've also had inquiries from another entity regarding a shared valet concept in the downtown area, which would involve placing a stand somewhere near the square and providing a service to park people's cars in a lot, in a private lot, which that entity has contracted with for that purpose. That was, I believe we've had one or two inquiries, just one related to that type of service. As you all heard last week, there are some legal risks to continuing as is without a valet ordinance. And it's important to consider the effects of a valet ordinance on the overall picture of downtown mobility and parking. As far as what economic development wants to see happen, we 'd like to enable businesses to provide a valet service to their patrons under an ordinance that is equitable, simple to administer, protects the city, and is also congruent with the overall mobility and parking needs downtown. If we step back and look at the bigger picture, valet is only one aspect of overall downtown mobility and parking. Downtown is going to continue to redevelop, and that's going to bring both opportunities and challenges as we strive to promote optimal conditions for growth and development. A valet parking ordinance is going to have a direct effect on that overall picture of downtown mobility and parking, and as such, should be considered in that larger context. The Department of Development Services Planning Division is currently in the process of evaluating the parking parameters of the Denton Development Code and specifically reviewing and evaluating the Downtown Implementation Plan parking strategy. And the intent of that comprehensive parking study is to examine existing parking supply and demand and expected future demand, deficiencies of existing parking and expected future parking, the impact of bicycle and pedestrian traffic and transit activities, as well as special needs parking for businesses and special events. There are some options before you. One of them would be to continue valet parking downtown as is. I think it's important to consider putting a pause on the discussion of the valet parking ordinance pending the completion of that comprehensive parking study by planning. And after the session briefing that you received last week, we were asked as staff to draft a proposed ordinance prohibiting valet parking on public right-of-way in the Downtown Implementation Plan area until the time a valet ordinance can be drafted based on the results of the parking study. So these are some options before you today. And what we're looking for is your direction on your preferred path toward adoption of a valet ordinance. Councilmember Wasney. I believe we should wait for the comprehensive parking study that is being compiled because with information, it just helps us make better decisions. And until that study is completed, I'd like to see a prohib ition of valet parking in the city effective January 1st, 2017, and have that prohibition in place until such time as we come forward with a valet parking ordinance if that in fact is what comes out of the comprehensive parking study. But I think we're just kind of in the ozone right now without a proper ordinance. And so to just make it fair to all parties in downtown Dent on, just have a prohibition of valet parking effective January 1st. We work on the parking study. And at that time, you come back and give a presentation to council. And council at that point then decides what avenue to take regarding valet parking. Any other comment? Madam City Attorney, go ahead. I might point out to the council that we do have such a prohibitory ordinance on your agenda for your action tonight. Is it double E? We have written that with an effective date beginning January 2nd, 2017 at 12 o'clock a.m. to accommodate any kind of holiday celebrations that might be ongoing at that time. So that's currently how that's drafted. And we need to -- council to be aware that it's not January 1st. It is January 2nd pursuant to some thinking that we had. So if that's acceptable. And not everybody reads the consent agenda, so it's why I wanted to be verbal and bring it up. Thank you. Yes, Councilmember Gregory. Regarding that, does that just apply to downtown? The ordinance? It is prepared to prohibit valet parking in the downtown area. There are also some exemptions from the application of the ordinance, including the two universities. Okay. Just wanted to make sure. Councilmember Gregory, can I also clarify that this ordinance, even though it applies to the downtown implementation plan area, would still allow for valet parking on private property? That was my question. If private property was included in it. So thank you. Any other questions? So just to summarize, the ordinance is in the consent agenda. It applies to the downtown area or is it citywide? DTIP only. So is that? Okay. And then the universities are excluded, but they're not in the DTIP anyway. Correct. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Any other questions? Comments? And this is a consent agenda item and it was not requested to be pulled at the beginning of the council discussion. So I don't see anybody desiring to pull it at this time. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. You bet. Now we'll get to, I was in such a rush. Agenda item 3C, receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction and give direction to staff and Waters and Company on the city auditor interview process. Thank you, Mayor. Carl Roman, our director of human resources, will provide the introduction to this item. Good afternoon, Mayor, members of the city council. As you know, we contracted with Waters and Company to do our search for a city auditor. We posted the position in mid-October. We've had 12 applicants and nine of those have been referred to you as semi-finalists. Miguel Azuna with Waters and Company is here to discuss this finance with you later today. And Shark War will be available by phone. But prior to that and the purpose of this specific discussion is to seek direction from council on the interview process and the timeframe in which you'd like to do the interviews. Now that the city manager has been hired, staff didn't know if council wanted to include the city manager or other stakeholders to be more involved in the interview process. And if so, what role you'd like the stakeholders to play. We did include a suggested interview process as part of your backup. The schedule is based on discussions that we had with Shark War and some experiences that he's seen as a successful process with similar positions. But if the council does want the city manager or other stakeholders to play more of a formal role in the process, we'd probably need to consider another interview schedule. And if the council would like the city manager involved, we 'd probably want to look at that interview timeframe to be on or after January 23rd when Mr. Todd Hyman starts. Before turning that over to discussions with the council, Miguel is here. I think he may have a few thoughts for you too, unless you... Go ahead, Councilmember. This is to address your question, and I know you sent an email out that asked, did we want to wait until the city manager was on board to be a part of this interview process ? And I said emphatically no, that the city charter specifically calls for city council and city council only to be involved in the personnel decision making for city manager, city attorney, internal auditor, and municipal judge. So I just feel strongly about that, that this is a council, so I don't want to delay it, and I feel strongly that this should follow the same pattern that we followed for the city manager. I do believe Miguel had a few comments, if that's okay? Good afternoon, Mayor, Council. Certainly, you know, the process is one of what city council wants to do, and we can follow that process for sure. I know that we've had discussions with Chuck on particularly, you know, should we wait and recommend on involving other key stakeholders as well, but certainly that's up to the council if they want to include other people. I think the position is important enough just really because it ensures the processes, programs, projects that are out there run with the utmost efficiencies and effectiveness. With that in mind, obviously I think that position also has to have key relationships with management just to ensure what those processes are and be able to amend some of those processes if need be in order to be more effective, more efficient. So sometimes we see positions like this that do have some sort of input from staff, not necessarily a recommendation as to what person would be the sole finalist, but certainly we've seen processes where key stakeholders, city managers, assistant city managers, finance directors, or city attorney, give some sort of input into a particular position like this. Obviously at that point that input is given to city council . They do their interviews on their own, and they can make a decision based on that. But that's certainly something that we've seen out there that I think it's key, just really because of how the position works and what that position does. But that's something that we've seen and we suggest, but certainly we're still amenable to whatever process the council would like to take. Comments, questions? With the city manager, did the council just decided on the finalist and that's when we started engaging the public. Am I remembering that right? I believe so. It was once the semi-finalists were identified. Okay, I was out of town for a little bit there, so thank you. And I come back to our city charter because that's our constitution here, and it's very specific that council h ires and fires those four positions. So I feel strongly that it needs to follow the same pattern as we followed for the city manager. Just some clarification on that, because I know you don't want any delay and I don't either. So are you saying that if the city manager elect or hire, what do you call the new city manager? Yeah, I guess he can't start to. So are you opposed for him even seeing the information on the candidates or if he wanted to reach out and if we had finalists, if he wanted to reach out informally in that regard, are you opposed to that? Well, I heard that that was January 23rd, so that's a whole month away. Well, that's if we waited. What I'm suggesting or asking is if he gets this list that we eventually decide on and if he decides while he's still in Chicago or in Glenview to make a call, you know, phone call or to not formally have to wait till he's here to have any kind of contact with them. Is that I mean, are you opposed to that? I guess if it didn't incur any delay in the process or change our schedule, I come back to it's a council decision . Hi, higher and fire. And while I appreciate he still doesn 't know us, he still doesn't know our city government. He's coming in. He's new. So we understand our city. We understand our city management. We understand personalities on council. We have, I believe, a much better grasp. I'm not saying that I feel strongly yes or no that he reads the biography of the four finalists or however many we come up with. But I don't want undue influence coming from a future city manager because that internal auditor is responsible to this council. OK, so what I'm hearing is that you don't want the process to be whereby he takes some kind of action to get to know the finalists and then forwards to us either his recommendation or feedback. Or in other words, you don't want any input into the process from the city manager. I think these are two independent hiring processes because they're handling two totally different responsibility job descriptions and internal auditor. We have not had for a long time. And I think it's just key. And I've I've hammered this from day one independent and internal auditor so that this person understands from the interview process forward that he or she is responsible to this elected body. Right. OK. Everybody else OK with that? OK. Yes, there is a question on something else. We received videos for eight of the candidates. We did not receive a video interview for Rory Galter. We tried to work with that individual, but certainly at this time had not just been able to. OK, that's thank you. Council member breaks. So back onto the city manager involvement here in the I understand what you're saying and I agree with that. But did we decide that we would send information just for his knowledge on who we're thinking about or or just not at all. Just he comes and says this is who we've we chose. I don't have a problem with. I mean, that's public information. I believe finalists are. I mean, so I don't I mean, he could request it. But I think it would I mean, I don't I don't personally have a problem with forwarding that information. I would like to share it with him is what I'm saying. Yeah, exactly. Any issue with that? OK. Anybody have an issue with that? I don't. And and if and I. I'm I'm for moving right ahead with the process. I I'm not sure if there's an intention to to say that we want to exclude the city manager from any comment to council members on on the selection process. We've hired a person that we trust. We've hired a person that has a lot of experience and if the new city manager has any insights to offer us as we make our decision, I would not want to exclude the city manager from from the opportunity to do that. It's clear that it's our decision. But it's also clear that I mean, the city charter does not say that we that we can't that we cannot get input from other people. We got input from the public on the selection of the city manager. So I think that we if we get input from the city manager on the selection of an auditor, if I knew city manager wants to to offer that, I would I think we would be. Cutting ourselves off from from a lot of knowledge and experience to to say you may not comment on this. And I don't know if that's what you're proposing, but I thought I might have heard that in some of the comments you made. Yes, it's it's public information, so he is certainly going to have access to it. I just don't want it to weigh in is undo influence as this council interviews and makes a decision on internal auditor . I come back to the fact that while we trust him and he's coming in as our new city manager, he doesn't know because as I was listening to the candidates with the videos, you know that's that's all a big a big piece of the puzzle that you're trying to find someone who's going to be a good fit with us knowing you know who we are. The people who work and lead this organization currently. So that was my comment, but he certainly welcome his public information. I just don't want it to have undue influence. And that I understand that helped me understand as far as when you say undo influence. Do you mean undo influence on us as a body undo influence on the candidates both what are on this body as we as we make a decision. Okay. Yes, Council member for the city manager. There was a survey. I'm assuming that's not going to we're not going to do that for this. Okay. And I think that was part of the question is, because if if we did it exactly like we did the city manager, then there 's a public perception there's all these kinds of things and is that is that what we're wanting to do. Okay, so go ahead. I'm sorry. I'm just talking about how everyone cleared the room. And it was his counsel that made the decision on who to hire. Okay. And we don't do the survey, because the internal auditor is not a real public face, like the city manager is. So it's a, I'm just talking about to clear the room and have these seven people or six if someone happens to be out of town. Make that decision on hiring. So, I appreciate that comment so was the undue influence was that thinking that was your thought is he, the city manager would be in the room with when we were making that or no I just comments just you know, if he picks someone. I just don't want counsel to feel obligated. That well the city manager likes this guy, you know, we need to trust our acumen and our past history and the interview process on deciding who's the right fit for our city. Okay. Great. Thank you. So then as far as the, you've given us sort of a proposed timeline for the interviews with with the council. And as, as far as meeting with. I know I think the city, the city manager candidates met with staff but we're doing something different I think for this is that correct. We did include a reception with just the department heads and city, city council, just again it'll give them a chance to learn more about our organization and ask the department heads if they, if there's any questions that they may have. It's really not an interview. Okay. All right. So the, the interview schedule that is in our backup. Everybody okay with that. Okay. That's memory Gary okay. No, this is the process and that's the process. That's what I meant. Yeah, sorry. We would want to give the candidates at least probably two weeks to be able to get any flight arrangements or travel arrangements together. That puts us in the first week of, or around the holiday still. So we were thinking possibly the second week of January. That fit your schedule. And the candidates are different this time than city manager that we have the vast majority within the state of Texas. So that travel is much less of an issue than with the city manager candidates who are kind of flying in from all over the country. So second week of January, you know that works. So you'll send out a email sort of checking schedules and I know I've got actually second week of January I'll be out of town. Yes, Conference of Mayors pretty much all week. So are you wanting to try to pick a non council day or you want to pick an existing meeting that you already are planning to be here. We do have a meeting scheduled on January 10th and we have one scheduled on January 24th. We can arrange to have those interviews part of those days on the 10th. There's there's several other items. So that might be pretty crowded. The 24th is a fourth Tuesday meeting. We can reserve that entire day for you to have the interviews or if there's another date that you want to have . I know trying to find you all seven of you who can be here on a non council day is difficult sometimes. Just a question. Yeah. Well, and if we could if you maybe could send out an email with those specific dates as a proposal and let us sort of reply with what works best for us and probably make it a council day. I mean, and if we have a we have an idea of what's going to be on the what you say was the 10th. We just if you would when it's not an agenda, but somehow if you gave us some indication of how full it was that might be important for us in making a decision between those two dates. Oh, I'm sorry. Councilmember McGarry. Also, I don't think we have a meeting that week of Martin Luther King Day. So that might be another possibility to just see if anybody 's available that week. I see USCM. I don't know what that stands for. But there's something on here as to maybe why it was canceled. Oh, yes. That's probably US Conference of Mayors. Is that what that is? Yeah, that's that's when I'm out of town. Yeah, the other date that we had inquired amongst the members is to whether you'd be available as January 3rd. We were looking at maybe 10 o'clock on January 3rd. Now, that was for a different purpose. But there were, if I remember correctly, at least five of the seven that could be together on on the third. Yeah, I would. Yeah, I would want to make sure as many people can be here. Go ahead, Councilmember Hawkins. I'm not going to be here then. Yeah. Well, you weren't here last month. That's what I'm saying. I'm going to be here at this one. A thought for the 10th also. I know that our interview process went a little faster for city manager than we anticipated. And it may be that we could interview in the morning, for example, and then Duke Council may be starting at one. So that's a possibility, depending on how many finalists that we have. So when we finish with our work session, closed session today, we will know how many finalists we have. And at that point, that that allows us to kind of hone in and fine tune. But that's a possibility as well for January 10th. And I did take that into consideration for this agenda. I only scheduled an hour and 15 minutes with a 15 minute break versus an hour and a half with a 15 minute break. OK, all right. That also gives us enough time also to do our background checks, reference checks with plenty of time and getting that information to you ahead of that meeting as well. Great. Any other questions or comments on this agenda item? Yes, ma'am. Can I have a show of hands just to get a feel? Are we all in town on January 10th? I am. We're all here on the 10th. Kevin, he's out right now . So we'll check with Councilman Rodin. And maybe that's an answer to do the interviews in the morning and then council in the afternoon. Would you also be available on the 9th for the reception at 515? Sure. What is that, Monday? That's a Monday. So it would be a Monday, Tuesday process. That works. OK, good. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all. All right. Moving on to agenda item 3D. Receive a report. Hold discussion of staff direction regarding the Denton 2017 state legislative program for the 85th Texas Legislature. Yes, let me call on Lindsay Baker, our Intergovernmental Relations and Public Information Officer. And we have not had any meetings about this, so I can't mess up and miscommunicate. No comment. Good afternoon, Councilmembers, Mayor. Thank you also for your comment earlier. I greatly appreciate it. I'm pleased to have the opportunity to bring this forward to you in a work session setting and get into a little bit more detail than probably we would have last week. With your indulgence, I'm just going to kind of skip through a couple of these first slides that we had discussed last Tuesday, just some of the basics. And kind of jump right into why we're here and exactly what we're doing. So the purpose of the legislative program primarily is to serve as your policy document. And it provides clear and pre-vetted position statements on a variety of potential bills that will be filed in the legislature. These are based on kind of what we are seeing from past legislative sessions to discussions with TML and other stakeholders that we meet with regularly. And so we're able to put together a good group of items that we feel strongly are likely going to be seen in the next legislative session. And of course, this is not exhaustive, all of the position statements that we see in here, but it is a great start. And it also allows staff to move very quickly on proposed legislation. So when things are filed, or especially as things get really moving quickly in the legislative session toward kind of the April, in the March, April, May timeframe, things are just crazy down there. And what we don't have time to do necessarily is come to you mid-session when something is filed or something gets a committee hearing and request a position statement on that. So this gives us the opportunity just to go with our marching orders and advocate for against items that we know are moving along quickly. One thing that we do have that helps us in that also is on page six of your legislative program in the backup is the general legislative policy. That's the general statement of purpose, statement of preservation, and statement of support. And so any of the policy position statements that we have all throughout this program, like I said, they're not exhaustive. This sort of is the foundation of our program and makes sure that we can cover just about anything that we're going to face down there. And again, gives us the opportunity to advocate for, against, or even educate on items without having to come back before this body necessarily. So it primarily talks about opposing anything that would er ode our home rule authority, our basic functions of raising and setting revenue rates. Talking about land use regulations and pretty much all the basics. So again, that's sort of our catch all statement. But how do we get to all of this first and foremost? So developing that general legislative policy statement as the foundation and then everything else that comes after it in terms of the individual position statements, it's a pretty thorough process. And then finally, I don't remember exactly what month we met, but I know we brought in focused advocacy. We met with the council individually and had those conversations with you early on to share with you what we were seeing during the interim session and for interim studies and hearings that were going on and what we were anticipating that we would be facing in the next session. And kind of listened to you all and got your priorities and hopefully included some of those in here. We also met and coordinated with city staff. So I reached out to staff regularly to solicit their input on anything that they might want included, anything that they're hearing from their professional associations and just generally as experts in their field, anything that we might need included in here specifically. We also do quite a bit of coordinating with Texas Municipal League. In fact, I want to say starting in May, we are attending their policy committee meetings that they hold during the interim session. So this is to develop their legislative program. We actively participate in that. We have members, both city staff and council members. The mayor, I know, has sat on one. I believe Councilmember Rodin was on one. And we've also had legal staff sit on them. Where we go down to Austin and we participate in these conversations where we talk about a variety of position statements that TML will likely take up related to revenue and taxation, utilities and transportation, land use regulation, and other general government items that may not fall under those others. And so we're actively participating in all of that, gathering all of that information at the same time. And then also we coordinate with other cities, especially those big cities that we work with regularly during the legislative session. I may have mentioned this to you in the past, but we work very closely with a subgroup of TML called the Big City Lob by Group. And that gives us the opportunity to work with other cities like Austin and Fort Worth and Dallas and El Paso and other large cities that even though we're maybe smaller in population as a full service city, we have a lot to offer and to bring to the table. So we're able to work with them and learn a lot from them also and kind of coordinate on what our various position statements will be. Do you find that we have a lot of the same issues that we work on when you're talking to the other communities? We do. We do. And that's one thing. You know, if anything comes up here in Council a lot of times, or if I hear staff talking about certain issues, the first group I go to is I'll shoot an email out to that group of people and say, hey, what are you hearing? What are you seeing? What is your experience with this? What have you all done with this? And so that's very helpful in strategizing where we can go with a lot of this. Okay. So I've already kind of briefly touched on the general legislative policy that we have again on page six serving as the foundation of our legislative program. And then after that, we have what I consider our top three priorities. These are the items that we feel are probably going to be the most resource intensive for us. So obviously protecting our revenue sources and budget setting authority. This gets into the discussion that we held with Fred Hill last week with the joint school district board meeting where Mr. Hill spoke about the revenue cap issue and Senate Bill two that's been filed. And so we'll be working very heavily against this and protecting your authority to set the budget and provide the services that you require for this community. Protecting our land use regulations and authority. I mean, obviously in a fast growth city, we need to be able to protect our zoning regulations and everything that you are able to do right now. The last thing we want to see is, you know, a school next to some, you know, CD establishment, which happens. I could name off some, but I won't. I'll be discreet. But we again, we want to be able to retain your authority to properly zone and rezone properties. So each of these items has an accompanying white paper. And then we also have as the last one listed here, preservation of DME as community owned and operated. We want to ensure that that continues as it is at its current governance authority continues as it is and that they're able to maintain a diversified energy portfolio. Quick question. The first item you referred to Senate Bill two. Yes, ma'am. Item two and item three. Are there any Senate bills that have been proposed that are tied to those as well? You know, to be honest with you, I haven't had the opportunity to get into all of the bills that have been pre -filed yet, which started on November 15th. And there are lots of them. And there are, yes, more than 700 have already been filed. And so we're kind of in a bit of a transition period right now. And fortunately, we've got some assistance coming in for me to start looking through those bills and be able to report back to you on more specifics. Thank you. Yes, Councilmember Hawkins. And like protection of land use authority. Are we ever have you found that we're drawing attention to that? Do you really think that's a threat? I mean, a real. Oh, absolutely. Wow. Yeah. Land developers, builders, vested rights, all of that. It's a big issue. It's a huge issue. I mean, if you think about what we dealt with in last session with our gas well situation, I mean, that was all land use regulations, what we can, you know, regulate on the surface versus subsurface and zoning and all of that. So absolutely, it's very much at risk. Okay. So moving along, we'll get into the general legislative agenda. This is where we have everything broken down into topical areas, revenue and taxation, land use resources, utilities, transportation, public safety and general government. These are where specific policy statements are. These are the things where we feel that we're probably going to see something filed in the legislature related to these items. And again, it's not exhaustive, but we think do a pretty good job at getting a lot of things that we'll be facing. So I wanted to see before I go into any specifics, because the next slide you'll see here, I'm going into the proposed policy statements that I have in your backup to discuss. So before I move on to that, I wanted to see if you all had any questions on what I would consider the 2015 program or the existing program or anything that we had already in there before we go into what we're adding. That's member Gary. I did want just a little bit of background. When did we start creating our legislative program in the format that it's currently in? That's actually a good question, John. I don't know. That was before my time. That's a good question because somebody else has to answer it. Thank you. Yeah, I'm the one that worked on creating the first one, and I'm sorry, the mind's going. I want to say it was probably the 2009? It was before I was here. 2007 maybe timeframe, because we really started to come under attack as local government and our ability to have our own local control in 2005. When initially the whole revenue cap issue was brought forward, we were already under attack for land use and our ability for cities to even annex, particularly on the house side, we had a very aggressive chairwoman out of Tarrant County that thought cities had no right, should have no rights to annex so we had a lot of land use issues already, we've been coming under attack. We had just also started to deal with the telecom industry that was trying to take away and successfully. They were able to be successful in taking away authority to regulate cable television. So that's why we no longer have cable franchises. And also the other utilities were trying to take away our ability to charge rent for them to have infrastructure in our rights of way so 2005 was a very contentious year for us and was really the beginning of what we've begun to see each session get worse and worse. And so I want to say it's probably 2007, when we first implement our first state legislative program. Does that answer your question. It does. Thank you. I should have done that. Okay, so any other questions on the existing program if you will. Okay, go into these proposed policy statements and again these are all developed from either speaking with council members, speaking with staff, working with TML and other cities and again these are proposals for discussion to be included in this. Now I know last Tuesday when we started the presentation, we did get into this very first proposed statement regarding HB 40. I left it in here it seemed like there wasn't a lot of interest in having it but I know council member Briggs was interested in maybe having something related to HB 40 specifically and so I wanted to leave that on here for discussion purposes and see what direction you may want to go in. Whether we whether we keep this or change it or do something entirely different. If I remember the discussion around the first one was do we want to raise that. I mean, there was some discussion about that. So, my concern that I raised last time is the way that it seems to be worded. It almost sounds like that we're endorsing HB 40. And I don't want that message to come across, because it says, we're opposed to legislation that would erode local control of existing authority gas wells as articulated in this bill. Well, I'm opposed to that bill. And I think several number of people on the council are so it sounds like we're opposed to you guys changing house bill 40. And that's what it looks like. And I really would be in favor of them. Revoking house bill 40. I don't know that I want to put that in the proposed in the legislature program because I don't think it's going anywhere. And I'm not sure that I want to expand capital, political capital on something that that we have no chance for. But if I was going to say anything, I would want to say we don 't like house before. And I don't think that really says that. Councilmember breaks. Well, I brought it up because I didn't want to see it completely taken out whether we reward it or or what have you. There are a lot of our citizens that are against it even those that are not necessarily for I mean, they're for fracking I mean, HB 40 rubbed a lot of people the wrong way . And so, whether we say, I mean, we just don't like it or we don't want any more legislation, you know, like that I think we should it we owe it to our citizens in our city, just to make a statement that we. I mean, if that's how the council feels, I know that's how I feel. So, you know, that's, I just wanted to put that on record. You know, one thing that HB 40 did do is it did put in statute, some of our authority that otherwise was not previously in statute. And so I guess that's kind of what I was going with on this and so did not get there, obviously. But I don't know if we can wordsmith it or again, we do have a support statement in here, existing that support legislation that would allow governments to enact ordinances relating to health and safety regulations. As applied to gas drilling and production activities and to reduce the effects of oil and gas development on city residents. So we do have something very specific to oil and gas drilling it just doesn't address HB 40 specifically, but it absolutely has the spirit of that in there. So I don't know if that is sufficient. Okay. Yes. Mayor I do have a comment on that item. I know many of them. It would seem to me that this is apt to occur this legislative session as well so in that respect, I might suggest that we don't limit ourselves to as articulated in House Bill 40 I suspect it's going to be articulated in a multitude of bills again. We might want to stop where that comma is located, oppose legislation that would erode local control of existing authority and regulations of gas well operations. And, and then we might add and support legislation that would enhance local control of regulations relating to gas well operations. We may have a piece of that in that item that Lindsay just read but I would hate to see us limit ourselves to House Bill 40 in our position statement I would like to see broader authority so we can oppose any kind of erosion of our authority in Austin. So what I have here then is oppose legislation that would erode local control of existing authority and regulations of gas well operations and support legislation that would enhance local regulations related to oil and gas operations . Casper Gary. Along those lines I was going to suggest that on this particular topic because it is a bit of a dog whistle topic that we phrase it in terms of a supportive statement first. So perhaps just switching the clauses and starting with supporting the ability to have local governments to improve the health and safety, etc. Sort of what you said. I hear what you're saying, Madam City Attorney and, and I think there will be. That is a dog HP 40 is a huge dog whistle for the city didn 't. And so, if we can pose what we're asking for in light of a support statement, you know to support the expansion of local control you know I just think people are. I don't know I haven't heard that it's going to be I mean with a probably will be bills but that was a big fight down there and to me I think a lot of that hard issues were settled. Okay, and have you want to words method to get the spirit of reposing this by supporting this. But, so we could simply say just what I need I had mentioned support legislation that would enhance local regulations related to oil and gas operations. I think we already have that in there. We do. And on page 12 we do. I mean that's that's broad enough to where we're not trying to poke anybody in the eye. So, and it would certainly I mean the inverse we would still have the opportunity to oppose anything that would be filed that would harm us. I mean this is just our official statement but we provide testifying anything we want down there so this is not limiting us. No, it's not. Okay, so, then I'm gathering then instead of wordsmithing it here we'll just take that out and go with what is already in the. I'm okay with that. I'm seeing head nods is that okay. Is that semi okay. I just wanted to go on the record that I oppose HB 40. Thanks because I wasn't clear up until this point. Yes, my protein. I get the political nuances here that we're in, and I'm not sure who the dog whistle is for in this discussion of this. It's complicated. What I do know is, I think as we all sat, some of us, and made that difficult decision to repeal a ban put in place by our citizens. And we were attempting to redirect the very justifiable anger of some of our citizens by saying, we're not the issue here, the issues down there in Austin, let's go give them hell. The sense of the message. It comes around time for cities to be able to now say whatever we want to the legislature. And the message from the city of Denton, I'm saying I'm saying this in full knowledge of all the nuances that play the mess from the city of Denton is, well, we don't want to expand that political capital this year. And so, that's that's that's. I get I get the overall landscape. But, again, I think this is we got to understand the nature of this discussion in our city. And I for one, made statements, I think a lot of us saying, we're going to fight the legislature on this, we're going to seek to overturn HP 40 and all these sorts of discussions. That's why I asked last time beyond this, at some point cities go into proactive legislative modes, sponsoring legislation, getting people to help pass bills for us do something that is of a larger interest to us when we need something. And so, I don't know the right answer on this. I agree with you that this is probably not going to be the live issue. And certainly from the perspective of cities, this is probably not going to be at the top of the priority in terms of what's there and what we're going after or trying to get accomplished. I just, I guess, from the point of view of dog whistle or even what this means as a message to our own citizens. What are we doing after the, frankly, the beating our city and many other cities took as a result of this legislation? And so I guess I concur with your sentiment because I think there is a desire from many in our community to say, stick it to them. Or at least do something that demonstrates that you're going to fight for the rights of cities. So, I say all that saying I don't know the right answer and I understand the nuance of political waters and I understand that this is probably not going to be the lively topic. So I guess I just put that out there for greater reflection . Well, I mean, I appreciate that. I think that outside of proactively submitting legislation to send whatever message or fight this fight that you're talking about, we pretty much fought the fight. What I don't want to do is open this back up for discussion that could make it a lot worse. I mean, we know what the sentiment of the legislation is. And I think back in 2000 and when was that? 14. Because we're coming off the heels of the election, which, you know, and the narrative of you are overturning an election by the people. That was very powerful, I think, in allowing us to mitigate some of what was being proposed. So I would just if if what you're saying is the citizens want us to proactively go in there and and refight this fight. I'm not sure that I'm necessarily want to do that at this point without something proactively coming from the legislature. Sometimes you just got to let things if you raise a flag, then somebody is going to take it and then the oil and gas industry is going to take it and then they're going to mobilize their hope. So to think that we aren't fighting for it, we did fight for it. Now, if somebody has an idea of what we can continue to be doing, do you continue to poke the bear? OK, well, there's a risk in that. And I'm not saying I don't want to take risks, but right now, the time for that probably will be when natural gas prices start to increase. And we begin to see the possibility of increased development. This was a this was a tough fight down there. I mean, and I know the citizens hated it and I hated it and it was overturned. We got something I think that was better than what we could have. I mean, what they were proposing at first was horrible. I mean, just so it's a matter of what do we want to do? I mean, yes, we could we could pick up the fight to send a message to the citizens that we are fighting. But if I'm going to pick up a fight, I want to have at least a half decent chance of winning of winning something instead of going into something so out whatever outweighed, outnumbered sort of as the underdog. And I mean, this is I don't know how else to say this, but yes, these are policy statements. But in some sense, we don't need this sheet of paper to advocate for what we want. And if something pops up that we want to we want to do, then we can do it. I don't mind fighting. I think I demonstrated that when I went down there so many times and got tangled up with a couple of the representatives. But I don't want to necessarily pick a fight. And that may not be what this does. I don't know. So it's really just a philosophical question. And yeah, there's a phrase in politics. Pick your battles. The battle in this legislative session for cities is going to be the revenue cap. It's that's the battle. It's why a bill is already circulating down there. It's being advocated by some really powerful Austin office holders. And it's a move from 8 percent to 4 percent. That's going to be the fight in this legislative session. It's the fight that cities are going to have city versus state. Coming back to any type of gas well legislation, it should have started six months ago. Because that's when anything that goes on that's going to come forward in Austin, you've got to find somebody. First of all, you've got to write the bill. Then you have to have a sponsor of the bill who's willing to put their name on it and to champion it and to move it forward. And to have already submitted it in this flurry of bills going down. So anything that Dent would do right now would be a day late and a dollar short, quite frankly. So I just want to look forward and to say what are some of the fights that are going to impact this city moving forward. And that's the revenue cap. So it's something that you and I spoke and it's really the hot button down there right now. Having had the conversations that I've had in the last couple of weeks, that's the hot button. Yeah, correct. Thank you. Councilmember Poplar. Yeah, too. What I'm trying to weigh is how to make this the most effective tool that it possibly can be. And I think where I finally landed, we need to give our stance on what we want future legislation to look like, not our opinion on what past legislation happened, I'm guessing. So I think not mentioning House Bill 40, but still giving a statement about gas well drilling I would be comfortable with. And I think they know where Dent stands on House Bill 40. I don't think we're giving up the fight on that. Go ahead. And it doesn't mean that the city can't weigh in as bills are because there are bills down there that are being prepared as we speak that are just ready to launch. They found a sponsor, they're ready to roll. And so as things come forward down there, then it doesn't mean that we can't react because we don't know what's coming. But we do know about the revenue cap. So we know that's coming for sure in terms of proposals coming forward down there. Absolutely. Well, and I think too, as I think back on it, we had a tremendous amount of support from TML, from other cities. And as crazy as it sounds, we even had support from some of the legislators who were willing to compromise and to put something together that was a little less onerous. I'm not so sure. I think that the sentiment has become more, I don't know if it's anti-city, but it's more anti-city. And therefore, if somehow this issue gets raised, I don't think several of those people that were hearing, present in those hearings, those legislators represented, they retired . Two key ones that I know for sure, Keffer and the Senator. Darby. Yeah, no, the Senator. Frazier. Yeah, Frazier. So you've got to really also understand what the climate is down there. And you're right that the big battle will be the revenue caps. So that's those are just thoughts. And I would agree on something this complex, doing it at this stage in the pre-session, if you will, it would be an uphill battle. And I think it would be pretty risky at this point, given everything else that we'd be doing. So then in summary, we're going to remove, it may not be a total unanimous consensus, but item number one, and we're going to stick with the support, whatever you read before. Support legislation that would enhance local regulations related to oil and gas operations. All right. So I will that will be added in. So the next item on here would be to oppose legislation that will restrict MOUs from building transmission infrastructure outside their service area. This is obviously not my expertise, but I do have expert staff here in the room if you all have any questions about the statement. Any questions for the expert staff? Of course it is. So no questions? Yeah. The third one, actually three, four and five are all somewhat related, especially it relates to our rights of way. I know John even just mentioned this was kind of one of the reasons why we got into the legislative fight to begin with , because our rights of way were at risk and our ability to regulate those and protect those and charge reasonable rent for them. And so legal requested that we include these. These are also statements that are found in the TML legislative program. So support legislation that would protect the ability of the city to be adequately compensated for any use of its rights of way. So specifically being able to charge that rent, if you will , for oppose legislation that would erode the city's authority over the management and control of its rights of way. And then being able to oppose any legislation that would er ode the city's authority to require utility companies to pay the costs of relocating their facilities in a timely manner . What is that exactly referring to? What's the law there? Jennifer, would you like to address that one? That was what Larry added specifically. It is, right now I know we have the authority to require utility companies to pay for relocation of their facilities if we have a public works project. So if we go to expand a street, for example, and we need a utility to move their lines, you want to be able to retain that authority. I thought the utilities meant our utilities, but this is someone else. No, no, no. Okay, gotcha. All right. Yeah. Oh, Mike, if you'll come to the microphone, yeah, because I 'm sorry we're transmitting. A lot of that's referring to pole attachments. And just to give you an example of that, if you drive down, I think it's like a 380 down University, you see where the road's been widened. And you'll see poles that have been topped off. And you'll see a big black cable. That means that those poles are no longer DME's and that's typically one of the other like a communication company or whatever that has, whether it be cable or whether that sort of thing is on that. And those still have to be moved. And so bottom line is for the city, not only for beaut ification and whatnot, you want to get those moved back and relocated onto our poles as quickly as possible. In some cases, it's years before it's moved. So, okay, great. Thank you. I misread it. I apologize. Oh, I'm sorry. Councilmember Gregory. Thank you. So the five items that we see here, are those the only five new policy statements that that are in this book that are different from two years ago? I have one more slide. Okay. Yes. Okay. I know a few more here. Let's see, the very first one, this is regarding solid waste collection vehicles and other municipal utility vehicles. Getting the Texas Move Over Law extended to them. This was brought to me for your consideration by some of our safety staff that deals with our utilities, frontline folks, and Vance Kimler. This is an item specifically being advocated by the Texas Solid Waste Association, also the National Solid Waste Association. And so we wanted to bring this to you for your consideration. This is something that, as we know, extends to our public safety officials when they're in the line of duty and working and they have their vehicles pulled off to the side of the road and they're working something. Vehicles are supposed to slow down or go move over into another lane. We'd like to see that same kind of consideration given to our frontline workers as they're doing their work on our roadways every day. Do you know on the ones that we have support by, if there's someone who is proposing a bill or if a bill has already been proposed to address these, are we aware of that? This one in particular, TexWanna is considering proposing this and actually getting something passed. A lot of the others are based on issues that we've seen and that we imagine other cities, and we've spoken with other cities that are having the same issues. And so there is a potential that legislation could be filed . So the next few are all public safety related. And if you recall last session, HB 910 was passed, which allowed open carry municipally owned facilities. And so anybody can just walk in with a firearm, openly carrying. And an issue that has come up with this is it says municip ally owned facilities. Well, that extends even to, for example, the Patterson App leton Arts Center. We own that facility, but a nonprofit is operating out of it. So technically somebody can walk in there, open carry, and if they ask them to leave, they can't prosecute that. And so we would like to see some clarification. If there is any legislation filed that would clarify those regulations, we would like to lend our support to that. The next one is related to the open carry situation. Legislation that would clarify where open carry is prohibited in a municipally owned court office building. I've spoken with the chief about this in particular. For us, you know, it says that somebody cannot open carry in a municipal court. But what happens in our situation, we have a municipal court housed in a municipal facility already. Where does that line, where does that threshold of the open carry end and begin? Is it the lobby where the municipal court is located? Is it near the metal detectors? Is it as you cross into that? That's not clear. And so, again, if legislation is filed, that would address that. We would like to lend our support to it. The next item goes back to what you did last week regarding the handheld device ban. And so if a statewide ban is, bill is filed, we would like to support that. More than likely one will be. One is filed every session. One passed a couple sessions ago, but it was vetoed by the governor. And so I would imagine it's going to be filed again. We do want to make sure, though, that whatever is filed and whatever we do support doesn't prohibit us from enacting a stronger ordinance. And would prevent us from being preempted. >> Councilmember Begay? >> Yes. >> Well, obviously, everybody knows where I stand on this one. But I have more of an overview policy comment about this. It seems to me the entire document is really one based in the governing philosophy of local control. Yet this particular item is asking for centralized control over something that traditionally cities have been in charge of. So how are we getting there? >> You're absolutely right. And I know we also view things like this, things like the Uber issue, ride sharing, things like that. That we, some items, especially in our conversations with T ML, we feel that it would be better for the community as a whole, for the state as a whole, to have something that is consistent throughout. I mean, especially if you think about our highways that are going through our cities. If there's something that is statewide, somebody can go from El Paso to Dallas and they know what the regulation is . It's a little bit different than a bag ban, for example. But it's something that would be consistent and applicable to everybody without them having to guess what the regulations are as they're passing through each community. >> Well, for the record, I can't support that, so. >> Okay. >> All right. >> Is it, with that comment, is this something that you do want included in this program, or is this something that you would like to see removed? >> That's been a while. >> I very much support leaving this in. And I know it was a six to one vote, so I'm sorry. But I agree with you that a statewide ban would certainly clear up going from city to city, because some cities have it, some cities don't. And a lot of states are moving in that direction to have a statewide law on the books. So yeah, I very much want to keep it in. >> Any other comments on this? >> I'm seeing head nods to keep it, so. >> Mayor Quintana. >> In the spirit of trying to find more than consensus, unanimity, I guess, on this. It might not take too much away from it if you were to say, oppose any statewide effort to limit the rights of cities to enact handheld devices, which would be in the spirit of the local control thing, but is most silent on the statewide ban or not. I don't know if that gets too many people off this, and then I don't know if it even brings in your support. >> I could support that, I mean, because it's a governing statement, but I don't think that's what we're talking about. >> Right. >> We're talking about a statewide ban. And there isn't a law in the books right now that tells cities you can't do that. Cities can do that, and the city just did. So this is directed at support legislation on a statewide ban of handhelds. So I do support it. >> It's interesting because the fear is that they will pass a, they may pass a bill that is less stringent than ours and that we don't want it to be preempted. >> Right. >> The exact opposite could happen. They could say, we're going to pass a bill that bans everything. And it puts us in a much worse position than what we are. So personally, I don't have a whole lot of heartburn about a statewide ban. I mean, they're going to do what they're going to do. Is it the new proposed energy secretary that V told that? Is that my understanding of that? Okay. I'm sorry, I've been watching too much television. So I like keeping it in the spirit of the local control because that seems what it is. But what I'm hearing you say, Councilmember Wasney, is regardless of that, you want cities to advocate for a statewide ban. That's what I'm understanding. If it comes forward, I want it part of our policy statement . >> Okay. >> All right. Yes, Councilmember Robinson. >> What I'm hoping by keeping this in too is that other cities will have that in their brochure too or whatever. So enough cities get that going and then possibly a statewide ban would happen eventually. So I'd like to leave it in. >> Any other comments on this? Yes. Mayor Proctor. >> And again, I'm just looking for a parallel example and do we have anything in this year's, I thought we did, that talks about statewide attempts on payday lenders regulation? >> We do. >> Is it pretty similar parallel in form to this? That has the same kind of governmental? >> Support provided that. >> It's not different in a way that would be more amenable to my colleague, I guess. Okay, thanks. >> It's on page 15, the first bullet point under general government. >> Yes, Councilmember Riggs. >> A question about that. If something was passed, we would immediately have to go to that one and our ordinance would not be enforceable anymore . Like if the state one was stronger. >> Well, it depends if it's preempted or not. >> Okay. And so that's what I want to focus on. >> Okay. >> Okay. >> Let's see, so the next item, excuse me, and just to remind you all this evening, we do have an item for individual consideration regarding this. So any changes that we make here, I can make very quickly and then have ready for you for that item. So number 10, this is the last of the public safety items. Oppose legislation that would prohibit use of association business leave or ABL by authorized public safety association members as provided in our existing main confer agreements. This is something that we know is important to our fire association, for example. This allows them that to, while they're on duty, 24 hour shifts, they're able to attend association meetings and other association related business. This is something that has come to our attention in the media. Ken Paxton, Attorney General Paxton has identified this as an item that he would like to work against and remove from the association's ability. And so this is something that we want to be able to retain in our main confer agreement that we currently have and support the association in their efforts. Okay, and the last item here, this is sort of the hanging chat of the items. Oppose legislation that would increase state regulation of local ballot language. This is something that we've talked about a lot with TML. And in particular, we're concerned about this notion of trying to educate the voter in the ballot box. And so as we have local bond elections and things like that come forward, local referendum, we're seeing a move by the state to want to inundate our voters in the ballot box with technical information that isn't always helpful, where this education needs to take place prior to them getting there. They're also wanting to, some degrees, start looking at, for example, any kind of petitions that come forward to a city at a local level to be placed on a ballot. That it would have to go through a review process by the state. And that's something that, again, in the spirit of local control, we would ideally oppose. And so that's why I wanted to include this in here for your consideration. Ms. Councilmember Begay. I can't support that. I ran, I mean, I basically held out to myself and I still support this position that we need more information on ballots, especially as it relates to the total cost of bonds, interest rates, variability, all of that stuff I think needs to be on there. So I really can't, I can't get on board with something that would actively be against more information for voters, whether that's a lot of information or a little information . Councilmember Wiesnay and then Mayor Pro Tem. I think the question is allowing the state to intrude on our local ballot. And that's what we're trying to stop them doing. And even though the state may say, well, we want to just have some more information, it may in fact not even turn out that way. What it does is allow someone who does not know us, take a look at a local petition and put their two cents into it. But this really comes down to a real baseline of local control that a petition going on in one part of the state, very different than a petition going on in a different part of the state. And what does the state know about our cities on such a level? So I do support it because I don't want the state telling us how we put things on our ballot here to have one more layer again of government interference. So I do support it. Mayor Pro Tem and then Councilmember Gregory. >> Madam Attorney, when it comes to ballot language, and I know a lot of times those are put before us as we're putting something on a ballot. And we have wordsmith things in the past as a council to some degree. What latitude do we have or do we not? So say Councilmember Begarry was successful in convincing a majority of her colleagues here that we needed to put such things on the ballot. Could we legally add those ourselves? >> It's interesting. We do have a charter provision that relates to that, that I had the opportunity to deal with fairly recently. Actually, it was with the initiative petition relating to the ban on hydraulic fracturing. I think that the council has a lot of latitude as far as what goes into the ordinance itself and what information might be provided to the public through the ordinance and any public education process and whatnot. But the charter gives the latitude to the city attorney to craft the proposition language. And that became an issue. There was a bit of a challenge. We ended up working through that. But I read that very closely and that by charter resides with the city attorney to craft that ballot proposition language. >> So in terms of, okay, I understand that. The whole context of any ballot proposition coming before you is either going to be initiated by the citizens or us as councilmembers. So even the direction to craft that language. So if there was direction, hypothetically given that said, I'm speaking purely hypothetical, that said we want to include some more financial information on this as it goes before the voters. And we charged you with that. Are you saying there might be some sort of legal conflict in our charter if you had a different opinion? >> I think it's not likely there would be a conflict there. I do have certain charge under the language in the charter. It's got to fairly represent the item that's going before the voters. There are a few other matters resident in our charter language that direct me as it concerns my duty in the manner in which I craft that proposition. But I can't imagine that factual information are going to create any kind of conflict and that would be something that we couldn't go ahead and include. >> My whole point for asking was in the spirit of this, I think, is we have the ability to do that now. And so I think all we're saying is let us retain that and should you be successful in convincing us of your position, perhaps we'll find that happen. >> Councilmember. >> I don't think that number 11 says that we're making a position that we want to restrict information from voters. That's not what it's doing. But what it is saying is that the voting booth is not the place for a person to try to get educated on an issue. It's too late by that time. And if you're in the voting booth, there's too much of a chance for the language to be crafted in a way that favors one side or the other. And ballot language ought to be as neutral as possible. If you write ballot language in a way that only talks about the amount of debt and the amount of this and the amount of that and doesn't talk about all of the benefits that would come from the new fire stations and increased efficiency and time of response, then you've tilted the ballot one way or the other. Those arguments have to take place. But not in the voting booth. The voting booth is the time to simply -- and the language in the voting booth needs to be as clear and as unconfusing as possible and as neutral as possible. And let's be honest. Those that are wanting to add a bunch of language to the ballots are not interested in neutrality. That's not what's going on. If it were, I would. But that's not what's going on. There's a concerted effort to do with some groups to do everything that they can to limit local governments from providing the services necessary to do their business. Well, the good thing about this discussion is that there is an opportunity, the ballot proposition comes up that you would like more information on it to bring that before the body, and the body gets to decide. So that's something that I learned. I think that's some information that -- I mean, obviously, it can't be something that you feel goes against the law or somehow is not fair, neutral, and communicative of the issue. But there is that opportunity, and you certainly can weigh in on whatever that would be. Right. I reach the conclusion that the reason that is included in the charter is because that duty had to be placed somewhere , and the desire was to address the very thing that Mr. Gregory is speaking to, and that is there needs to be a fair statement of what the proposition is. It needs to be neutral. It doesn't need to be based on what one side or the other of the issue desire the language to say. All right. Good. Okay. So I'm sensing that there is some more or less consensus on that to go ahead and include that. More or minus one. Okay. Okay. Okay. So our final item to discuss, this is kind of a little bit more of a complex issue. Well, hang on before you get to your point. Yes. If I may, I think that there's one other policy statement, new policy statement that I would like to see added. Okay. And it would be this. I'll just pitch it out there and then folks can talk about it. Oppose any legislation that would restrict a municipal government's ability to regulate short-term lodging rentals and their online listing platforms. So I'm pitching that out there to have some discussion about that. And that this relates back to what I was talking about earlier in terms of our concerns for marketplace fairness. And the idea is that right now our hotels are having to charge hotel occupancy taxes. And if we decided, and I don't know that we would decide that, but if we decided that we felt like that folks who were renting a room or a house for a couple of days in Dent on for an event, that those rooms might, it might be appropriate for them to get the same charge so that there's an even level playing field. We might decide not to, but I would rather the state allow us not restrict us from the opportunity to do that if we chose to do that. Okay. Comment. Two part of that conversation I was there too, that the industry is just going to go ahead and circumvent the city, make a deal with the state. All that tax is going to go straight to the state and there 's not going to be any tax going to the city when they're operating in our city limits, having to compete possibly with other hotels. So I would like to include that too. Councilmember Watson. Yeah, I support that also and I believe in some other cities they do tax the Airbnb. So yeah, I support that. Thank you. I didn't read about a tax, but I have read recently that cities are limiting the number of rentals like per year say like this can only be rented 60 days out of a year. So, I've heard that cities are doing that. But I don't know that I would, I would support this because I don't really know too much background on it. Could you read the statement one more time please Council member. Oppose any legislation that would restrict a municipal government's ability to regulate short term lodging rentals and their online listing platforms. We're just asking the state not to restrict cities, if cities so chose to, to, to do a regulation and the regulation, most likely would be imposing occupancy tax. There might be other. I don't know that I mean, but but if that's what a city needs, or, or maybe a district within the city because of there's some issues in the neighborhood . That's, that's up to that city to do I'd rather the state. Not, not intervene in that. I guess that that's why I had you read it again because I'm assuming that the word lodging is the operative word because when you say short term rentals I mean there's some apartment units that rent for 30 days for. So, I guess we're distinguishing between a residential or multifamily lease or rent as a dwelling to the Airbnb type applications that word lodging is sort of what is becoming the distinguishing term. Okay. I mean I'm okay with that. And again, it just tells the state, don't limit our ability to regulate, if we so choose. Okay, so it sounds like there's a consensus of council, minus at least one I don't know about Councilmember Gary. Minus two, okay. And maybe that's something. Yes, you can. I'm a big fan of marketplace equity, but we're talking about really different things and without having kind of a background discussion or background understanding of, you know, the taxing is different for Airbnb. It's 1099 versus working out of a corporation or having ded uctions for various expenses. There's so many different things that affect the bottom line that I'm not comfortable signing on to this without really being clear about what the marketplace position is of Hilton versus a marketplace position of Ashley renting the bedroom out. So. I think I'd probably agree with you on what we should do in Denton, which I would say nothing at this point. I don't have any reason to think we need to jump into regulating this market. As it stands, I think, again, what's before us is just simply to say, we don't think the state ought to be telling any city what they should do. Austin may have unique demands that they have people buying up properties for the sole purpose of using them as hotel rooms like this. That's a unique set of circumstances that we don't have. We don't have to struggle with that. And I guess I'm signaling my support of this is simply to say, Austin, do what you want to do. San Antonio, do what you want to do and then we'll do what we want to do. Yeah. Well, that's that's exactly right. And then to just to add to that, if they're going to be operating in our backyard, we need to have some sort of control or regulation on that and collecting some sort of tax. They're going to be some kind of expense. And that's what the threat. I think what he's saying is he's in he's in this is a discussion we'll have later as far as whether we should have a regulation or not. The point here is being we get to control that discussion instead of the state controlling it. And the regulation may be we're not going to regulate at all or the regulation may be all we want you to do is register so that your neighbors understand that as these people keep different people keep coming into the house every day that this is a more legitimate operation than what it could appear to be. Or, or it could be for hotel occupancy tax files. You know, that's a different discussion. It's just, let's, let's allow local, local cities to have this control and state. For goodness sakes, you know what, what I would hate to see happen is for the state to come in and say, Well, all of these airbnbs and these different types of operations, you are going to do a hotel occupancy tax, and 100% of the money is going to go to Austin. That's memory. Is this an issue, is it something that we should. It is, it is I can assure you Airbnb will be working if they haven't already gotten a draft done it will be filed soon I'm sure that would prevent cities from regulating Airbnb type facilities. Absolutely. All right. Okay. So it sounds like it stays in with a couple of the sense. Yes. Okay. Thank you. I'm going to put it down and since you repeated it I've got it. Thank you very much. And so I'll get that included for this evening's consideration. So this last item is actually an initiative that was brought to me to put together for your consideration by chocolate ball us in the parks and recreation and I know we were talking about how, you know, if you want to. Yes, sir. I'm sorry to you. The city attorney had a good point. Yeah, because it sounds like we have a few of these, these policy statements that some don't agree to so I think it's a good idea how can we find a way because if you don't agree with them, you didn't have to vote up or down on the whole thing. So we've got to figure out a way, even if it's by just making a notation on it. You know all these were approved unanimously except because I don't I don't want you to think you have to say no to all of them because you want to say no to a couple of them so I just raised that to if that 's even a concern for anybody who's expressed an opposition to some of the policy policy statements so I guess I would ask that question. Councilmember Gary is that something that you would need or like to sign on to the whole document but I don't want it to be onerous for Mr Baker and I don't want a lot of special accommodation when I can just as easily just do what I do best. That is, but no. Okay. All right. Let me go with Council member Briggs she had a question or comment. Well, yeah, I was curious is there a reason why it would affect us one way or another if it was like a five to vote on a no no I just think it's just as indicative. If you vote against it, it's like nobody knows it's like well I'm voting against the whole thing. So, okay, that's my only thought that was, I think, city attorney so yes, Mayor pro tem. Well, I think about what we're doing with this, I mean we're presenting it to our legislators, and we 're saying we have a split council on this. Right. So, how easy is that to ignore. I in terms of the representatives of the people of the city of Denton. By and large all these things we don't know that there's any consensus in the city so it's an easy document to ignore so my suggestion would be if we can have consensus on 80% of this 90% of this. And we could develop a process whereby we pull out the items of contention. Something like that and then you can just notate past five to two past six to one whatever it happens to be so that there's thrust to the document. I have no idea what you just said. I just told the mayor that there is a parliamentary way to get there it's just a motion for a division of the question . And so you would just divide out those things that it appears there's not unanimity on and vote on those separately. We have a coaching document that we can present to our legislators that says we are unanimous with all of the remaining items. So that if there are three items or four items on which there's not a unanimous consent, then they could be separated out. Otherwise, I mean, it's always stronger. It 's always stronger. It was, it was stronger to be able to for the mayor to be able to go down to Austin and say, 59% of the citizens voted to ban fracking and didn't. That's a stronger statement than if 50.1% passed it. So, so our legislative initiatives will be stronger. If there's a unanimous vote for for the majority of the package and if there's three or four items on which we can 't agree, then let's separate those out and and and say these passed with less than unanimous support. This item, five one or six one or whatever or five to whatever they are. If there's one that's a four three, we may want to just drop it because there's not much point in in doing it at all. I think that would be stronger for the city. It would help us to do a better job of representing the citizens. Have you kept track of? I have. Okay. Yes, I have. And so I think there are two items only. It was the local ballot language and then the Airbnb or short term rental. Those are the two items I believe that were not a full consensus of the body here. The handheld, thank you. Yeah, the handheld device. So those three. So that sounds like a plan and so you can sort of pull that together before we vote on it tonight. Yeah, I can put those in a separate document. Okay. Yes, Councilmember. Is that more of a concern to the majority on those than it is? I mean, I'm not trying to put you all on the spot, but it's okay to put them on the spot. Okay. Well, I mean, if we're going to do this, I mean, I'm not guess we need to vote and go ahead and vote then. But my question to the ones who are going to possibly vote against two of the items. Is this a concern to you? How this is presented to our legislators. Do you know what I mean? I think she said she would she would vote against the whole thing if that's what if that's what she was forced to do. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So if we are able to pull out the items that sure. Yeah, then I would vote up or down on the individual items. Okay. I guess my only question about that is from Lindsay from your Ms Baker from your presentation. You there were some things that were in the proposed legislative program that weren't in this presentation, which you couldn't go through. I mean, this is really oner ous, honestly. So will this be something separate from the proposed legislative this right here? Yes. It will. It is going to be while it's being proposed as part of the document as a whole. So it'll be the first couple pages of the document and then it'll go into it. This one, the Hot Fund Legislative Initiative I have under the revenue taxation under the general legislative agenda on page 12. Okay. So not as a priority item, which is unusual for something that we would be seeking introduction and passage on. And this is one thing where I was going to mention as part of the discussion where as we're discussing seeking introduction passage of legislation. This is where I'm really going to be seeking full consensus because when we are down in Austin, if we're asking a representative or a senator to sponsor legislation for us, their first question to us will be what is your counsel feel about this? And you know, does everybody agree with that? And so we'll have to be completely honest if one or two members don't agree with that, we'll have to let them know. Same thing goes for the rest of the program. One other thing before I forget because I may earlier we had talked about adding lobbying and Austin for allowing the city to have more flexibility in negotiating contracts. Is it related to the firehouse discussion? And so I'd like to include something in here that gives us a better hand when we're in our purchasing mode in terms of how we can negotiate for lower prices. Okay, what I might recommend with that because that is such a complex issue and I think we need to do a little bit more research on it in order to craft a proper statement of support or whatever the case might be that you may be seeking is I might suggest that we go through tonight's process with the program and then what we can do I can get with purchasing staff and I can get with TML and work with them in our legislative consultants and see kind of vet the issue. A little bit further and come with you with some more information so we can adequately address it and then maybe at the January 10th meeting I could bring something for your consideration in the form of a resolution that we could then roll into this program. That could be one way to approach it. That would give us a chance to get the white paper from city trying because it was it was switched to something that was more favorable to us with taking it back for because as the purchasing director said it used to be you could go back to more than one and ask for a best and final offer. Somehow it got changed. But we've done this in the past where an issue comes up after this package has been passed and we've done resolutions that then you have in hand and that we have in hand if we want to go down and lobby. Absolutely. Okay so in summary we'll take that up at a different meeting and then we'll include it if that's the consensus of the council on the proposed legislative program that we just discussed. You're going to prepare the ones that we can vote on unanimously and then you'll prepare a separate one or however it's configured to where we indicate that there was not a full consensus and now we 're talking about this. Okay. So this again just reiterate this was brought to me to present to you from John Cabrales in the Parks and Recre ation Department. This is dealing with I know you're familiar I believe you get informal staff reports on a quarterly basis. Our Parks and Recreation Department hosts a number of sporting tournaments throughout the year that bring in you know tremendous amount of tourism if you will and so we put heads in beds. We have a lot of economic impact in 2016 alone. These tournaments generated more than a million dollars in economic impact to our community and that included restaurants retailers hotels the analysis that have been done on this show that we've had 800 room nights and that's just in 30 tournaments that we've hosted in 2016. So but what we are facing right now in maintaining our ball fields and our sporting facilities is a lack of resources right now to keep up with the pace that we've been operating under and so we're out of position right now in order to maintain our ball fields and everything to host tournaments. We're actually going to have to kind of pull back on the number of tournaments that we're able to host so we're going to go from about 30 tournaments a year to about half of that for next year, which is going to significantly impact the number of people coming into our community spending their tax dollars in our downtown area staying in our hotels. And so we've seen for example San Marcos was able to get a bracket in the tax code that would allow them to utilize hot funds it's just an alternative funding tool that the council has available to them to take hot funds and apply them to the maintenance of it for enhancement specifically enhancement and upgrading of city owned and existing sports facilities or fields. And this is would not be taking away from existing hot fund recipients. And again this would just be a tool at your disposal during the budget setting process, you could choose to allocate hot funds to this. We do have parks and rec staff here to go into more detail if you would like to. I also wanted to let you know you typically if we engage in something that's going to hit on hot funds, you want to engage the associations and your CBB and other stakeholders in this and so I reached out to Kim Phillips at the CBB and she actually is here this evening. She has indicated her support for this provided that we work with the Texas Hotel and Lodging Association in Austin which of course we would do as a, you know, important stakeholder dealing with hot funds. And so again, our intent would be to provide you an additional funding tool and not to take away from existing hot fund recipients in our community. I would be remiss in saying that it would not be an easy thing to do this session, knowing that it is a session very focused on revenue and taxation, and this would be a bill that we would be seeking passage of seeking introduction passage of that deals in the word tax it could raise some red flags. But, you know, it's also important to remember that one of the hardest things to do is to pass a bill, and our resources are going to be so heavily involved in a lot of other things so I just want you to be aware that if we do choose to move forward on this that we will be using resources on it. Not that it would necessarily take away from other things but I just want you to be aware of everything that would be that we'd be considering so again, we do have parks and rec staff here if you'd like to hear more about this to assist you in a decision of whether or not you'd like to move forward with it, and we'll see that questions comments. I would be in favor. I'm in favor of it I've had some experience with it because a couple of our daughters have played on select athletic teams, and we've gone to tournaments in other cities and stayed in hotels and bought meals and gone to the grocery store and bought extra bags of ice and in bottles of sports beverages and drop a lot of money. And, if your team goes to a tournament, and the fields are not good. If they're not well maintained. Then you don't go back, you find other tournaments to go to you're looking for great facilities not good facilities because you're spending a lot of money. And I've been impressed for several years with the reports that we've gotten from our parks department on the impact of visitors to the city because of the tournaments that we 've hosted. The nice thing is is that this is a an appropriate use because this puts heads in bed. The other nice thing is is when these dollars also benefit locals, because the tournaments don't happen every weekend, and then our local citizens get a chance to benefit from this, the quality fields that that attract the tournaments. Councilmember was needed. I know that round rock attracts a lot of tournaments, because I've been in hotels down there and the hotels are full of kids and moms and dads and so immediately you know you start realizing what a big business is really is, but then is in competition with a lot of other cities in the state. So if we're going to keep our fields, you know in top flight condition. Restaurants and, but even more important than that it brings people to downtown, and they see our city sometimes for the first time. And, you know, that's going to make them want to come back and do other things so yeah I'm all for this, and I think it's a great, a great thing to try to try to chase and get done. One last question when they talk about bracketed list of municipalities. There are some of those special cities around the state who are part of that special bracket so we want to get denton into that bracket, so that we can utilize some of those hotel tax fees to help keep our fields in top flight condition. I have a quick two and I was just relieved to hear that you had reached out to other hot fun recipients, and I think that they understand that we're not going to be just splitting up hot funds that exist right now but we're actually going to be growing the hot funds is almost an investment. So I'm definitely for it. Yes, I'm sorry. Sorry Kevin. In principle I don't have any issue. I mean, I think the hot funds committees, even when this comes through that's going to be a policy, because we're talking about 10 $20, 000 being given to local entities doing things, upgrading facilities is big ticket items. And so, I think as a city if this is needed and we're talking about having the half the number of things we can host and we need to make some budget. Beyond just waiting on hot funds, there needs to be some discussion, we need to invest one way or the other. So, I don't think it would be that easy. I think you're going to have a big arm reaching into a small pot and I don't think that pot just automatically grows because you pass this. It grows when people start saying in Denton more, which hopefully this contributes to. But my question. All I'll say is go for it. Good luck who's ever on the hot funds committee. My question is, I thought you just said, and maybe I didn't hear you wrong, is that it's too late to support legislation that bills already filed the deadlines gone and passed and we talked about that earlier so there's no way that can get. What's different about this. No, so pre filing started November 15 I think it was and so everything that's going on right now those are just pre fil ings now, if we were getting into something incredibly complex, then now would probably be too late. This is a would be a very simple bill very simple legislation I know our legislative consultants have helped draft similar legislation so we have experienced staff extension of staff to assist us in this. And because it would be a bracketed bill it also be a local bill so it's something that we could probably get on a local calendar so the process is a little bit different than if it were just one big bill that would affect everybody, because it's a local specific to Denton type of bill. The process is a little bit different it's a little bit different it's a little bit faster. Already existing legislation that allows us for other cities it's just adding a name, adding us into the tax code bracketed. Yeah. So, there's a whole policy discussion as you said later on about. Okay, so if what is our projection, how many, how many tournaments are we missing. What's it. There's a whole discussion around this but as far as this goes, nothing wrong with included in the list. Okay, Councilmember Gary, I'm sorry, I just wanted to be sure because this is since we're seeking legislation I want to be sure I know where everybody stands. I like that we have more control over how our taxes are used so plus one. Okay. Okay. Well that is. That is all I have. Okay. So again I'll have handheld device Airbnb and the local ballot items as a separate. And this will be included in our main body of the unanimous ones. Yes, I'm sorry, Mayor Pro Tem. Just, just from my perspective being here a few years and going down to Austin, as we do with our overall contingent of folks from the chamber school board local community members. Just another plug as we talk about the power, unanimous vote on this thing is each of those bodies are doing the same thing. And they're passing, not only are they passing their own historically by unanimous vote, but we're also asking each other to, hey, set aside some of your personal differences and let's go shoulder to shoulder down there. I've been shoulder short of the folks that I have significantly disagreed on some local issues before. And as we step into that office, we're advocating for each other's positions in a way that that we're able to, and it 's powerful, I'm sitting beside business folks I'm sitting beside school, folks community members and so just another plug and why I think that's a, it's important message to send. Great. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes our work sessions items will now convene the closed session. Oh, I'm sorry. If we don't have the things that we have to vote on. When we come back in for our called meeting are impacted by the closed session. Could we do all of those things now and get those votes done so that the TV crew could go home and, and I mean I don't know. Yeah, well the only thing to put that we're actually voting on is consent agenda and the item for individual consideration which is what we just discussed it is that my understanding. We only have that one one item now, and that's the item that we have to vote in other words it's presented sort of it's bifurcated she needs to do a little work. Yeah. Okay, nevermind. We'll get through the closed sessions quickly. We will get through the closed sessions quickly. I will convene the closed session at 517 p.m. We will consider the following items consultation with attorneys under Texas Government Code section 551.071. All right, thank you. Welcome back to this meeting the Dent on City Council on December 13 2016 it's about 747. We have completed our closed meeting so now the city council will convene in a special called meeting, which will consider the following agenda items we do have a quorum. Our first agenda item is the consent agenda. Councilmember Hawkins, thank you mayor and move approval of items a through double E. All right, we have a mayor pro temp. So, we have a motion for the consent agenda items a through double E as an Edward. All in favor please signify by raising your right hand. All opposed by like sign. Consent agenda passes unanimously. Moving on to our items for individual consideration agenda item to a consider approval of a resolution of the city of Denton Texas adopting the city of Denton's 2017 state legislative program for the 85th Texas legislature. Thank you, Mayor. I asked Lindsay Baker our intergovern mental relations PIO officer to address this item. Thank you. Mayor council members I have placed at each of your seats an updated legislative program. It's stapled and the only thing that I added to that was the statement regarding the gas oil and gas operations excuse me it's on page 12. And it states it's at the very bottom of page 12 to support legislation that would enhance local regulations related to oil and gas operations. And that is what we had discussed. The other item at your seat is this piece of paper that has a three additional position statements that we had discussed that you would like to consider separately. And that includes the local ballot language position statement handheld devices and then the one regarding short term lodging rentals. These are not currently in the program here that you'll approve separately. So if you do approve these individually what I'll do is I will add them to this program under a separate section stating to some effect. You know miscellaneous items not approved unanimously I'll figure out a way to to wordsmith that but Mayor. Sure. I'm sorry. Councilmember was knee. I would ask that instead of not approved unanimously to actually give the vote count. And I wrote it was five to one or yes ma'am or I'm sorry. Six to one or five to two. Okay. Yes, I will do that. And so, Madam City Attorney we will take two separate boats that are indicative of the city's 2017 state legislative agenda for the 85th Texas legislature. It's just the last set will be three policy state position statements of which we believe there will not be unanimous consent. But on the first one that's that's why we're separating those and they will be incorporated as one document stating the difference between the two. Right mayor I think we would certainly consider the main document under one motion and it might be that as to each of the other three items we need to consider each of them separately. Okay. Yes. Okay. We'll do. Absolutely. We do have a couple of cards wishing to speak before we take a vote. Councilmember Gregory did you. All right. First speaker is Mr. Willie Hesbuth. You'll come state. Okay. Mr. Hesbuth wishes not to speak. Mr. Paul Metzler if you'll come state your name and address and your time will begin. Yeah, I'm Paul Meltzer. I'm sorry. Excuse me sir. That's the barbecue people. They spell it wrong. Okay. All right. And I'm at 1914 West Oak Street. I'm speaking specifically regarding the item that initially referred to HB 40. First of all, I'd like to say that I was very heartened to hear the discussion this afternoon to realize how keenly aware you are that it's very much still an open sore, you know, and a very live issue for for people in Denton. Regarding strategy and mentioning it or not, you know, you responded to the aphorism of pick your battles and I don't know exactly what you all are up against, you know, when or were up against when you went down. So, you know, I can't judge that. But I would offer a couple of other aphorisms at least for consideration that may apply. One is don't negotiate against yourself. And the first time when you make an opening offer, ask for the sun, the moon and the stars. If you negotiate against yourself, you only have one strong position, you've got no place to go. So if you have, you know, many things that, you know, that you strongly, firmly and truly stand behind, you know, you 've got a little room to maneuver, especially if you have other things you don't feel strongly behind. So, you know, I'm not sure I, again, I don't know what all you're up against, but I don't, the wisdom is not apparent to me in backing down off that. Lastly, I would just share with you my perception as a citizen because I'm, you know, there was some discussion about how does this look. And I would say that from the time that some of you voted to repeal the ban after HB 40, you know, to this moment of, you know, thank goodness, making a stand that we want to control those issues. But, you know, sort of being afraid to remind them that, you know, that we don't accept HB 40 is a good thing. It's not a profile in courage. Again, I don't know what the reality is behind it, but that's how it looks to me. So I would just ask you to consider whether you might want to reconsider stating clearly in a way that we would really applaud. I'm confident, if citizens would really applaud, that, you know, our stand is that we would rather not have HB 40. I know they know it, but that's not the only audience. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Gregory. Thank you, Mayor. I move approval of the basic legislative package as presented to us in the revised document. Okay. Councilmember Weisner. I second the motion. All right. We have a motion and a second for the approval of the basic legislative document that was handed to us at the beginning of this meeting. All in favor, please signify by raising your right hand. I had a really hard time with it. Well, then you get 40 out. Yes. Well, we can we can add that we can pull that. Yeah. Yes. Go ahead, Kevin. I was actually going to ask that Councilmember Briggs because I thought in our discussion that that was one we were going to pull out first for a separate vote. So I don't see. I have no problem with pulling that out. So if you want to make an amendment to remove one of these and now we can discuss and vote on that separately. Yes. Go ahead. It was completely taken out. So I'm not sure what I'm supposed to pull out as an amendment. I don't have anything to read. What what remains in the document is on page 12, I believe. Well, but they're looking for what was what was removed. Yeah. Okay. Bernita. Yes. So in order to include an item that's not already in here, is that also most motion to amend? Yes. Okay. So I would like to make an amendment to add to the statement that we removed to oppose legislation that would erode local control of existing authority and regulations of gas well operations as articulated in HB 40 and add that to our additional position statements for consideration. Okay. All right. So, go ahead. I'm sorry. And Councilmember Gary had a question. I think the way the council woman has addressed her amendment, it's not truly an amendment to the main motion because the main motion was to approve the overall agenda item. But I think that's the vote that is is now before the council. But it appears to me that the council is not objecting to adding that to the individual consideration items if I'm if I'm hearing that correctly. Yeah, so we'll, we'll, we'll add that to that list of three so I make four that will consider individually after this, we take this vote. Okay. So we have a motion and a second. Oh, Councilmember was any yes. The page 12 support the preservation of municipal authority . We just leave that in as it is and add the other one to this one so we can have. Yes. And I guess I have a question because I know we talked about adding one about short term lodging, did we. Oh, it's on this one. Okay, gotcha. Okay, sorry. So we're back to we have a motion and a second on the legislative agenda for 2008 2017 state legislative agenda for the 85th text legislature, all in favor of the one that was handed out to us, signify by raising your right hand. All opposed by like sign carries unanimously. Now we will pick up the four items additional provision statements for consideration in the 2017 legislative program. The first one is opposed legislation that would increase state regulation of local ballot language. So we will need a motion and a second to consider any of these items individually. Council Mayor pro tem mayor of approval of adding that first bullet point of post legislation that would increase state regulation of local ballot language. Councilman Gregory. Second. All right, we have a motion and a second on the first bullet point that was handed out to us at the beginning of this special call meeting. All in favor of including that please signify by raising your right hand. All opposed by like sign. Carry six to one. The next additional position statement is support legislation that would provide a statewide ban on the use of handheld devices while operating a vehicle provided more stringent city ordinances are not preempted. I said Councilmember was he makes a motion. That's my second. We have a motion and a second. All in favor please signify by raising your right hand. All opposed by like sign motion carries five to two. Next additional position statement oppose legislation that would restrict the municipal government's ability to regulate short term lodging rentals from online listing platforms. Councilmember Hawkins. Thank you mayor I move approval. Councilmember Gregory. We have a motion and second. All in favor please signify by raising your right hand. All opposed by like sign motion carries six to one. And Councilmember Briggs if you could read the one that you were wanting to add to this list because I don't have that specific language please. Opposed legislation that would erode local control of existing authority and regulations of gas well operation as articulated in HB 40 84th legislature. Chair would Councilmember Rodin. Mayor I move approval of adding that language into our document, or she moved approval. I think she just read it, but I'm fine with their moving approval. Okay, you did you move for approval. I move. Yes, I'll second. We have a motion and a second. I'm going to take just a couple of seconds to call for the vote because I'm going to try to decide what I want to do on this so yes Councilmember Gary. While you're deciding can I just make a statement. I won't be voting in favor of that not because I love HB 40 I hate HB 40. And I'm probably the only person here who had the privilege of oil well exploding on their street 1100 feet from their house and enjoying watching that fireball all night. So it's not for lack of distaste for this particular law it 's more for what I feel can be effective in the legislative session so that's why I'll be voting no. Okay. And I will, as I articulated in the beginning of the meeting I'll I will be voting against it on more sort of language grounds, not necessarily the spirit of it but it just it doesn't reflect necessarily how I would want that to be worded so that's not a very good articulation but that'll have to do. Councilmember road. Well, I know even Councilmember Gregory pointed out some potential confusion as to the way it's wording as if it's indicating that there's some sort of support to HB 40 so is it, is it that sort of language that we can clean up to get your support mayor. And that plus just, I mean, I think if I think there was a recommendation to put a period after something and just take out the reference to HB 40 not that I'm afraid not that I don't have moral courage for HB 40 I spent a lot of time down there, taking a lot of flack. I just think that right now. That's just my own personal preference. So, Councilmember Hawkins in the original document that we voted on we tried to address the city's concerns and attacks on local control especially towards. Gas drilling here locally to the only reason I'll be voting against it too is I just didn't want that the HB 40 part in there the same way like we had discussed in the work session. Sure. Okay. So, so we have. Yes, Mayor Pro Tem. Well, just to appeal. I'd like to see this pass. And before somebody else falls out. Here's my appeal look. This is a document filled with a lot of, a lot of things, there's nothing by including the language of HB 40 that's putting us pressing down the gas pedal and going after it. I mean, it sounds like we have a lot of leeway to determine how we want to approach that either as individual council members or as a city or however we want to deal with that. So, I just don't think the inclusion of the phrase HB 40 is going to cause anyone to stop talking to us down in Austin. So, if that if that's our concern. I just don't imagine this documents can have that effect. So I'm comfortable with it saying in there what you're saying is no harm no foul. No harm. I'm saying what I said. Okay. Yes, Councilmember Riggs. I wanted to bring back up the fact that this bill was created for us because of the thing that our citizens did. And it made us take action against them. So that's why I was fighting for it. And when I saw this, I really didn't think it was, you know , a fight. I just thought it was a stance and a belief, you know, so. Okay. That's fair enough. I'll go with it. I mean, it's not it's not it's not a it's you know, it's not a game changer for me. I mean, Councilmember Wasney. Well, one of the things that was discussed today was that if HB 40 went away, something much more onerous could come back in its place that we still have some things we can control. And so, you know, that was part of the discussion this afternoon as well. Yes, Councilmember Hopkins. The original vote on the original document here that passed 7-0 on page 12, the last bullet, it does say support legislation that would enhance local regulations related to oil and gas operations. So I just wanted to read that into the record too. But Keely, you're right. I'll vote for it. So just let me know. Okay, so we have a motion and a second. All in favor of adding that language as read by Council member Briggs before her motion signified by raising your right hand. All opposed by like sign. Motion carries unanimously. It's a Christmas miracle. Yes, I would hope that the staff would just go ahead and pull that back into the regular. Okay. Which movie is that? Oh, it's Seinfeld. Never mind. It's a festive miracle. Yeah. Okay. All right. We're down to concluding items. I just have a couple. Any council members have a concluding item? I don't want to keep us here. Okay, we'll start over here. Councilmember Briggs and go to Mayor Pro Tem. A concluding item. If we could get a staff report or some kind of go ahead on making city hall a landmark. There was an article in Dallas where some older buildings were getting torn down, O'Neill buildings. And so we had some emails about that. And so just starting a process on seeing if we can get the city hall landmark. Councilmember Pro Tem. There's been a lot of discussion about irregularities during this last election with Denton County. And I asked and it seems like we paid them a little over $ 20,000 to run our May elections, which is insignificant. And so we have an interest in the status of that process. And I'd like to request a report from them giving that we contract with them to do that as to what were the causes of those irregularities, what's being done to fix that prior to May, that we could get that from Denton County so we can understand that contract that we're about to get into, which is going to come around pretty soon. Thank you. Councilmember Wasney. I had a request some time ago for staff to look into and the clock is ticking now with Denton County to add an additional voting location in each district. So that we'd look at the cost, what would it cost to add one additional and where possible additional locations could be because the same voting locations on election day have not changed. But the city has grown a lot. And so I think it behooves us as we try to encourage voter participation. And this wouldn't be for early vote. This is for actual election day and have staff take a look at that. And it needs to be a phone call to Denton County to see what the deadline is because I inquired last year and I missed the deadline. So the clock is ticking. Okay. And is that for the May and the November general election or is it just the May election or which? Just city. City election. Okay. Yes, Councilmember Gregory. Thank you, Mayor. To add on to that, another question I would like to have the county ask is to ask the county is would there be an additional charge if they could contract out for our services, the use of paper ballots that are electronically scanned. I think that they have those on election day but not for early voting and that would be a possibility so that if there was ever a question, there's a hard copy that could be verification in case there were questions about the electronic -- the clearing of the electronic counters. Did you have another one, Councilmember Hawkins? I'm not getting as many emails as I used to but I'm just here recently some complaints again about charter and frontier and that sort of thing, especially in the South ridge area. And I don't know if anybody was successful in holding a meeting with any of their representatives but if staff could maybe give me a, I don't know, update on how that went or help me organize a meeting maybe mid-January after the holidays, that would be very helpful. Thanks. I've got just a couple and I may be mistaken but when I drive over on 380 between Bonnie Bray and I-35 on the west side, I don't recall seeing any street lights. So if somebody could verify that, I don't know if it was -- I may be blind but I remember it was thinking it's not very lit over there along that stretch of road. Secondly, I want to have a discussion about one of our legislative policy statements which is the short-term lod ging on certain online platforms. I want to have a sort of comprehensive discussion about that to see if there's anything, what and if anything we wanted to do on that. And secondly, I wanted to ask for a work session, Howard, this is about years in my discussion about fire lines, about getting fire -- getting water lines to a property which is primarily or exclusively used to provide fire -- water for their fire suppression system. And just our policy on that as far as who pays and do we have a written policy and just to try to tighten that up a little because I think we're going to -- we've got some issues that are currently outstanding but I think we might have more as we move more into downtown development. So it would just be good to have a real clear, concise policy on that so we can review what we're currently doing. That's it for me. Anything else? Thank you all very much for your patience. We will stand adjourned at 823.