Jan 24, 2017 City Council on 2017-01-24 2:00 PM

All right. Wanted to welcome everyone to this meeting of the Denton City Council Work Session, Tuesday, January the 24th, 2017. We have a new member sitting on my right, new city manager, Mr. Todd Hyman. Thank you. Good to see you. Welcome aboard. Thank you. I appreciate that. Look forward to it. [APPLAUSE] Howard is-- I'm just kidding. He's been smiling for two days. He has. Yes, he's been like he's been floating on air. We do have a quorum. We have a couple. Council Member Wozni has said that she's stuck on the highway, believe that or not. And so she'll be here shortly. And Council Member Rowan is absent at this moment. We'll go on to our work session reports. Agenda item 1A, receive report and hold discussion, give staff direction regarding proposed state of the city event and Denton Citizen Academy. Let the record reflect it. Mayor Pro Tem Roden just arrived. Thank you. I'm Allison Ream, administrative services manager. And I am here today to present to you some proposed citizen engagement programs. We previously presented this to the Committee on Citizen Engagement and are here today to get the feedback of the full council. Before I go through those specific programs, I wanted to give a bit of an overview of our current citizen engagement efforts. As you know, we recently relaunched a new city of Denton.com where we have tried to make it easier to access information for citizens, but also make it easier for citizens to contact the city and have access to staff. Social media is a second important engagement strategy for us. Across Facebook and Twitter, the city has 21 active accounts and over 100,000 followers. That is a way that we can share content that folks then organically share with their friends. And so while we have 100,000 followers, our reach easily expands when we are able to share material that is engaging. In 2015, we did a citizen and business survey. We used that to help update our strategic plan and develop measurable outcomes, strategies, and goals. And beginning this year, we will start to do those on an annual basis so that we're able to check back our progress and check in with citizens and business owners and make sure that if we need to recheck what our goals are and what our outcomes are, we can do that. We've updated our open data portal this year. You can go there now, data.cityofdenton.com, and download 157 data sets. And you can also subscribe to those data sets so you get updates when those are uploaded. And you can request data sets that aren't available. Each year, we send out a printed piece, our annual citizen update, that gives citizens an overview of a variety of programs and efforts that have gone on throughout the year. This is mailed out every year in March to every service address that the city has. So that's over 45,000 addresses in the city of Denton. And then we have generally, on a department level, outreach efforts that may be programmatic or they may be issue specific. And those are done at a department level in digital and face-to-face. But what we noticed is that we are missing sort of opportunities to connect face-to-face, person-to-person with citizens on a broad scale. So if it's not program driven or if it's not issue driven, we're missing an opportunity for citizens to access us and get information about what's going on in the city. So I want to talk to you about two programs that we're proposing today. And the first one is a state of the city event. And this is an event that would be open to all citizens and stakeholders and really an opportunity for us to share information about the city, about growth and development, about capital improvements, budget information, and city-wide accomplishments. We're thinking about this event format in terms of two components. And one is an open house engagement fair type atmosphere where departments that have citizen-facing programs would have a booth or a table there and be able to provide information. Residents can ask questions about those. They can sign up to volunteer. They can sign up for programs. And the second piece of that is a formal presentation where there would be welcoming remarks from the mayor and a formal presentation of the city's progress towards its goals and looking forward what's coming up in the future. Denton Television has been working with you all on scheduling interviews for a video piece of that presentation. And that video will be structured around the five key focus areas of the city strategic plan-- so organizational excellence, public infrastructure, economic development, safe, global, and family-friendly community, and sustainability and environmental stewardship. We think the video piece is important because it allows you to share your message with people beyond those that are there in the event. So this is the part of the event that bridges that divide between a physical engagement opportunity and a digital one. And we're targeting March for that event to be held at the Civic Center. Yes, sir. Let's be sure and get to it because I'm going to be out probably about a week and a half in March. So I just want to make sure I get that to you guys. The second program that we are proposing is a Denton Citizen Academy. And the idea of this is that it's made of classes and workshops that give citizens an interactive experience in their local government. Registration would be open in March, and classes would be held over several weeks in the summer. And class sizes would be limited probably to about 25 or 30 so that we can control the quality of the experience. And those classes would include presentations, tours, interactive experiences on different topics such as public safety, growth and development, parks, recreation, libraries, utility streets, solid waste, the airport, sustainability, and just general information on their form of government. And the idea of this is really to give citizens access to aspects of their government that they wouldn't otherwise get to have. And so finally, really the targeted outcomes of these programs are to provide an opportunity for you all to communicate the priorities and goals of the city. That was something that the council had identified in your last retreat that was important to you was a broader scale effort to communicate what your priorities and goals were. Citizen access to the council in a fun, casual environment that is different from addressing you from the dais. Those two words sort of. To build connections between citizens and their council and staff members to foster a greater understanding of their city government and to encourage more public involvement in the city. And with that, I would like your feedback and any questions that you have. - Sure, Mayor Pro Tem. - Go back to the outcome page. Was there any thought given to, so thinking about things like a pipeline for greater leadership in the city in various capacities. Maybe it's a neighborhood leader in an existing or forthcoming neighborhood group. Maybe it's a board or commission member. Those would be some interesting things to track with folks. I know with the Chamber's leadership dent and it seems to be to build capacity in future leaders to try and get them into certain positions throughout town. Ultimately, whether that's board leadership or whatever. Was there any thought given to look at some specific metrics along those lines of leadership opportunities throughout the city? - I think we absolutely can track that. The idea around this encouraging more public involvement, whether that's volunteering, whether that's serving on a board or in some other aspect. I think Denton is right for having people who feel empowered as ambassadors to their neighborhoods. That they kind of know how the city works and can feel like they have access in a way that some people may not 'cause they haven't seen that behind the scenes look. - And along the lines, those lines, I think there was some, again, I don't know the status of it now, but the planning department was embarking in an attempt to encourage more neighborhood groups, to instill more leadership opportunities for growth. There was a neighborhood summit that was going on every year for a while. Are we working together with some of those existing programs that maybe have similar goals to this that we could kind of align efforts? - I can't speak to where they are on those initiatives. - Just a suggestion to maybe kind of circle back and see if there isn't some opportunities to-- - The police department, they have a Denton Police Citizen Academy and they've done a really good job at keeping alumni of that academy involved and engaged and using them as ambassadors. And so I think the graduates of this academy would be a resource for their community, but then also for the city if we're, you need contacts in a certain area to keep those people close. - Council Member Reed. - So did you have, for the Denton Citizen Academy, did you have an age in mind? Mayor Pro Tem was talking about leadership and we do have the teen council. And so in some way that they can be included? - I didn't have a specific age in mind, but I can look into opportunities for the teenage group. - Yeah, thank you. - Yes, Council Member Geary. - Do you have any knowledge of other cities are doing something along the lines of the Citizen Academy or the State of the City address? - Yes, I did some research on cities that do both and there are quite a few cities in this area that do both a State of the City or an annual event and a Citizen Academy. - Okay, and kind of dovetailing on what Council Member Briggs said, I think it might be a good idea to take a certain number of the seats and reserve them for certain parts of our population, for instance, age 18 to 25, just to ensure that we have a good mix of people in each class. The other thing I would suggest is that the Citizen Academy include some type of classes or comprehension about how our finances work at the city. And lastly, regarding the timing of the March event, I'm not sure if the open house was supposed to be in the, was it gonna be in March for the open house? I would just suggest maybe that we move it to when we have the new council members here and no offense against our current sitting council members but we're gonna have at least three people that are new so it would be good to have interface with the three new people as well. That's my only suggestion on that. - You have a, I'm trying to read your face Mayor Pro Tem. - Yeah, I'm sure there's gonna be a lot of that between now and May but I don't care one way or the other. I also don't think there's any harm in doing this multiple times a year so I'll leave it up to them to brainstorm that. - Yes. - Yeah, my thoughts on that this was gonna happen almost monthly or every two months just to really get a lot of people. Kevin, don't laugh at me, it's just a mustache. Two, have we had a state of the city address before? I thought we had it one time. - My understanding is that the mayor at times will go on tour and do, (laughing) and do as requested. - Where'd you go? - State of the city addresses to specific community groups so like at a rotary club or Kiwanis club by request and has a presentation titled State of the City. Is that accurate? - Yeah, loosely, yeah, very loose. - I wish I knew that you had done that. - I've done it at your club. (laughing) - Okay, that's all for now. You know the great thing about, 'cause I had a niece who graduated when she was attending University of North Texas, she graduated from the Denton Police Citizens Academy. She subsequently went on to the police academy in Houston and served there as a Houston police officer for a year and now she's back up in Plano. And so you just never know the kind of exposure that these kind of things will give it. And I think Denton, quite honestly, is probably one of the few cities, larger cities in this area, that don't have a state of the city address. I hear some of these, it's a big deal for some of these cities. I mean, it's a huge production, which I'm not a big, huge production guy. That's why I go on the little tours. (laughing) The little tours, the little venues. Any other questions? Great. - Indeed. - And I think that's a good point about on the open house, obviously the state of the city is more about just an annual event, but the open houses, I think those could be more than just maybe once a year as things come up. So that's a good comment. Thank you very much. - Thank you. - I appreciate that, thank you, Allison. We'll move on to work session report 1B, receive report and hold discussion, give staff direction regarding the coal ranch development. Mr. Langley? - Thank you. Brian Langley, Assistant City Manager. Today, Council, we'd like to talk to you for a few minutes about the coal ranch development. As you know, we've had a number of conversations about this development over the last two years or so, but it's been about a year and a half since you've heard directly from the developer on this project. So today, the developer of the project, Stratford Land, has asked to come before the Council and talk about the status of this project and where they are and their requests for city participation in the project. We have with us O.C. Vest, Senior Vice President with Stratford Land, and so I'm gonna turn it over to him to make that presentation. He's got a lot of information, but he's planning on about a 15-minute presentation or so for you to bring you up to speed. So O.C. - And if I could just set sort of the, no, come on up, come on up. The stage for this is the Council had a meeting, I guess, a month or so ago, and there was some direction given, and as it was communicated, there was a request from the developer to come share. - That's correct. - Once again with, okay. Just wanna make sure I understand the context. - Thank you, Brian. Mr. Mayor, members of the City Council, my name is O.C. Vest. I'm a partner with Stratford Land out of Dallas, Texas. I'd like to also introduce Jason Cooper, my colleague with Stratford, who's the Director of Investments for Stratford for Texas and Colorado, and Rick with DPFG and Ike with his law firm. I think these are faces that you know very well, so you probably need no introduction. And the new City Manager, welcome to the City of Denton. Glad to be here on your first day. Nothing like bringing a 3,000 acre project on your first day, right? We met with this group several times, several work sessions, and we've talked through the Coal Ranch project, kind of where it is and where we're trying to go with it. And we talked about a public improvement district and a TIF to help with some of the infrastructure costs to develop the property. And September of '15, we did a presentation with this group , and the consensus with the group was, let's move forward with preparing documents to show what the PID would do, how the PID would work, how the tax increment financing would work, as we had presented it that day and as the discussion had gone that day. So we proceeded with that work and prepared those documents. We submitted those documents to city staff in May of 2016. And as of May of 2016, we've been working with staff to review the proposal, review the documents, the information was there, and to get some feedback. So just recently, Brian and his group have given us some feedback about the project. And Mayor, you mentioned the work session y'all had just recently, where there were some thoughts and some concerns about certain aspects of the project. And we thought it would be a good idea for us to come before you today to try to answer specifically those questions. And I know we're on a very short timeframe today, we'll be very cognizant of that. So what we're not going to do is spend time talking about what a PID is. I don't think we need to have that conversation unless the council says, can you back up and give us a refresher on that? Happy to do that, if we need to do so. I'm also not gonna run through the exhaustive numbers that we did back in September. I think you have that as a backup in your package to show how those numbers work. None of that has changed. And all the documents that we prepared and submitted to the city are all consistent with what we presented in September. So what I wanted to do today is spend the time that we have to address specifically the questions that we've gotten from staff as a result of your meeting. And again, I know we're on a timeframe to do this today. If anybody has questions, we can stop and answer questions or we can hold them to the end, just whatever you would prefer, be great. This is the coal ranch, that's a picture from the property. You can see the T and the C for Tom Cole on those columns there. Those are vestiges of the original homestead that are still there today and plan to be preserved as a part of the amenity package for coal ranch. We think the history of the property is as important as anything else that we're going to do out there. People love to know that where they live has a history and what it is. So we're doing our best to preserve what's preservable on the property. And there's more things than just this old stone wall. There's also the old stone house and stone silos in that same homestead area. So we are preserving all those things. We're in a partnership with the Coal Trust family and they've asked us to be the group to entitle the property and to develop the property. As you know, we zoned the property several years ago. This is one of the first master plan community zoning projects that we went through. And since then, we've been working on, number one, trying to get the economy back on its feet, which I think we're there now, and second, to develop a finance plan to go along with our land plan. As you know, Coal Ranch, 3,100 acres roughly, bordered also by the Hunter Ranch, which also has very similar NPC zoning to ours, and then, of course, the existing Robeson Ranch to the west. Robeson being an active project out there today, it's an age-restricted project, golf course community. It's private. It's gated. It's a great project. And they've weathered the storm through the economy cycles very well. If you look at Coal and Robeson and Hunter, it's almost 10,000 acres of land. So what we're talking about is the first project, first master plan community project, coming to the city that is really going to make a huge impact on the western side of the city . This is a slide of basically highlighting the open space, the regional trails where parks would be located, and then just some visual ideas of the amenity package that Coal Ranch is intended to have. So just as a refresher on what Coal Ranch is, a few slides there to get you refreshed on that. Now, the question of the day, of course, is why does Coal Ranch need a pet? And so we just wanted to ask the question and address that and try to answer that question head on. A master plan community is much different than just a series of neighborhoods, of subdivisions. It is a very different kind of animal. It requires a different kind of financing, a different kind of commitment to not only the land plan, but the financial plan and the staying power to stay with it. A master plan community requires an extraordinary level of amenities that set it apart from just your everyday subdivision, which is the next subdivision. So that's why a master plan community-- that's why all the master plan communities in our area. And if you look at all of them, every one of them has some sort of special district that allows for public financing. Additionally, infrastructure costs have more than doubled over the last 15 years. One of the questions we heard or comments we heard was, well, here's a project over here that did pretty well, and they didn't have a pet. So why can't you just do it the way they have? Well, you probably couldn't do that project again today for various reasons. And infrastructure cost is one of the big ones. It's just not economically feasible to invest in the infrastructure and the level of amenities with just a competitive home price. As we said, all master plan communities in the coal ranch market area all have some form of public financing vehicle. Harvest just down the street has several. Lantana, as you know, to your south, has freshwater supply districts. Paloma Creek and Savannah out on 380, both have special assessment districts. And of course, Castle Hills a little further, still in our market area, but has public improvement districts and freshwater supply districts. That's the large master plan community competitive set to coal ranch. And so just by example, I think it shows that some form of public financing is necessary. So the next question becomes, well, OK, if we did this, what does the city get out of that? What are the people who are going to live there in the city itself? What are they going to see that's going to say, yeah, this is really worth it. It's a good idea to do these things. For the people who are going to live there, they're going to enjoy a higher level of architectural standards that will be written into the architectural standards for each neighborhood. You don't have that in your typical subdivision design in the city of Denton today. It's not required. Whether a developer wants to do that or not, it's really up to them. The MPC requires that, or the MPC will require that, that those things happen so that architectural articulation , more variation of elevations, colors, materials, all those things come into play. We've also agreed with city staff that we would increase the minimum square footage for each residential product type above what the zoning requires today in order to demonstrate a commitment to quality that the city is looking for. Another comment we heard was, we don't want to see a lot of multifamily out there, especially in the early days. We think that's a great comment. The market typically doesn't work that way, but it could. And so we're willing to commit to maximum multifamily to single-family ratios that we would not exceed throughout the development of the property. And we could work with staff to figure out what those ratios should be. We believe that development of a community like this requires infrastructure that is more imaginative, a little bit more creative than what just the subdivision code requires. And we believe in what we call smart streets. They have bike lanes. They have LED lights. They do all these things that the city standards don't require, but allow us to have a higher level of quality within the development. We design neighborhoods that connect to parks and amenities, and not just shoehorning the last lot into a neighborhood to get the highest yield, but making sure that they live appropriately. We know from experience, because we do this all over the country, that master plan communities, the homes there, they gain value and they hold value at a much greater level than just normal subdivisions. And there have been a tremendous amount of studies to bear that out. And a comment, too, that I always recall from one of my architectural professors, even though I'm a civil engineer, that's a long story. But in master plan communities, in planning like this, what you always strive for is something where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. And that's really what a master plan community does, is if you do it correctly, then all these pieces add up to something that's much greater than the individual pieces. And that's something when we talk about home pricing, especially we've had a lot of conversations in the past about, well, what are the home prices are going to be? Well, we're already getting subdivisions with prices in that area. We'd like for it to be higher. It's not the price point of a home that establishes value in a master plan community. That's not the point. The market's going to drive price point. Square foot is going to drive price point. And demand's going to drive that. The point of the master plan community is to provide that living environment that people look for, the access to open space and amenities that they don't get in a normal or just typical neighborhood. Well, what does the city get out of that? We talked about what the neighbors, what the people who live there are going to feel. What about the city itself? Well, Coal Ranch is unique in that it has a tremendous amount of open space. Over 600 acres, which is-- it's just hard to believe that when you look back at this map, that the green area is 600 acres. But you've got to remember, this is a 3,100-acre piece of property. But the open space and parks would be over 600 acres, which I think is tremendous. If you look at the lot count for Coal Ranch and you use the city's normal calculation to figure park land, parkland requirement would be 74 acres. So the commitment to open space is much, much greater than what you would get in a normal subdivision. We're planning a regional trail system, which we showed on this earlier map also. And the idea here is this connects to the city's trail system along Hickory Creek and along Roark branch back across I-35 so that you have a trail that actually goes somewhere. Now, individually, in each of these neighborhoods, there will be smaller trail systems also. The idea is that they would all connect back to the regional trail. So that's how we plan for that to work. There's three large lakes on the property that are NRCS lakes today. The lake themselves are owned by the federal government. The land is owned by the landowner. Who's responsible for maintaining that? That's a big question. In a lot of cities in our area, it's a big problem. The Public Improvement District allows us to finance the reconstruction of the dams and spillways for these three lakes so that the property can be developed . It's a huge cost that we can take care of with the Public Improvement District that otherwise could fall on the backs of the city because there are already public improvements. The central community centers for each development, each of the three major areas of development are intended to have their own central amenity. Now, typically, those are private. And those be open only to the residents. We've also been talking to the school district. We have sold them a high school site and a middle school site. And we've committed to providing three elementary school sites. So five school sites total for Coal Ranch. A library site is something that we talked about. They would be necessary. We're willing to dedicate land for a library site. We're willing to dedicate land for a fire police EMS site here on the west side because we believe that's important. It'll be needed. And we've also learned through the utility group that an elevated water storage tank site will be necessary over here. We're willing to dedicate and convey all those to the city all at no cost. Now, what is that worth? It depends on how much value you put on amenities. But it's in excess of $50 million in value easily. And so the next thing we want to talk about is, well, that's great. Those are all good things that the city will get and can enjoy out there physically on the property. What about revenues to the city and the school district and the county? What does that look like? Well, the numbers are huge because it's a big piece of property. Now, these numbers are all at build out of the property, which is projected to take 30 to 40 years. Will not happen overnight. But if you look at what the city of Denton would be getting, $2.2 billion over the build out of this property, these are huge numbers. If you say that's a 30-year project, well, the average annual to the city is a big number. And that's just ad valorem tax revenues. Denton County Transit Authority is also in there. Denton County, a huge number. And then Denton ISD, slightly less than what the city would be getting, but also $2.2 billion over the life of the project. These are huge numbers. And I know it's kind of hard to kind of put those into perspective with respect to your budget. But the development of Coal Ranch can make a huge impact in several different ways to the city of Denton, both in lifestyle and financially. One of the questions we've heard from staff was, well, you know, we have a lot of people come up here and tell us a lot of things and make a lot of promises. And sometimes it happens. Sometimes it doesn't happen. So how do we know that we're going to get what you guys are promising us? Well, you have the power to review this project a number of times before the first building permit is ever issued. The master plan community zoning is already completed. So you can see we've got nine more steps to go through before we can ever build the first house. So there are a lot of opportunities for the city, the planning, P&Z, for your city staff, to review the project, to make sure all these things are consistent with the vision and with the master plan community zoning and the PID finance agreement before the first house ever gets built. So we want to make sure that you understood that approval of the public improvement district today doesn't mean that you will never see this again. You just got to hope it happens. You'll get to see this thing a number of times all the way through. The PID finance agreement, that'd be one thing we would do for the entire property. So that happens once. But the service and assessment plan, the preliminary plan, construction plans, landscape plans, trails, amenity, final plan, building permits will happen with each phase. And there's likely to be six to eight phases of this project. So you'll be reviewing pieces of the coal ranch and big parts of the coal ranch 80, 90 times over the development of this property. So there will be a lot of opportunity for the city to have questions and comments. And then the final thing we wanted to address was we heard -- we want to know how are you going to conform with the gas well ordinance. And I apologize, just now I realized that we misspelled ordinance. We do have a surface agreement on the property that limits the gas pads to the existing pads that are there today. There can be no more and they can't be moved unless we agree that we would allow those to be moved, which we would not do. We have agreed with staff, even though our MPC zoning calls for a 200 foot setback, reverse setback, we've agreed that we would increase that to 250 so that it would be consistent with your current code, 2015 -233. It's also important to note that all the gas pads, if you look at these on the map, you see that they all have direct access from major roadways. What we don't want is the maintenance crews for a gas pad to be driving through a residential neighborhood to get to one of these gas pads. That will not happen. There's only three of these that don't have direct adjac ency on a major road. Those will have dedicated roads to them, not through a neighborhood. But the other 12 will be directly adjacent to a major road. We will comply with the gas well notification disclosure requirements. We understand that. It's something we typically do. We're doing other projects in the gas well environment. We've got one in North Fort Worth right now that we're developing very, very similar situations. And we believe that a unified compatibility plan would not be needed for Coal Ranch because we're complying with the access and the setback requirements in the gas well ordinance. We've also been asked about Stratford land. OK, you're in Dallas. But what do you guys do? What have you done before? So we did just a really quick compilation of projects that we've done across the country. This one is in Phoenix, Arizona, 4,600 acres. It has a community facility district, which is a special assessment district very similar to a P ID. It's just the Arizona version of that. And it was used to finance the amenity centers and the trail system for Vistancia. Hamlin is in Orlando, Florida, almost 900 acres. It has a CID. Again, that's a special assessment district, just a different kind of name. And you can see the lakes, trail system, and open space. They're connected to the Hamlin project. Vistancia Hill Country, a little closer to home down in Austin, Texas. We have a public improvement district very similar to what we're proposing here with trails, lakes, and open space. This is a 600 acre property that has over 100 acres of open space in trails and parks on it. The Canyon Oak Cliff, even closer to home, this is in Dallas. We have both tax increment financing and a municipal management district. Municipal management district, again, different acronym, very similar to what a public improvement does. This is a 200 acre project. And we have over 50 acres of open space and amenities that are available in this project because of that financing. And then Waterstone up in North Carolina, smaller project, 300 acres, with the first of its kind, a special assessment district there that was needed to finance those amenities. So where are we? September 5 of 2015, we had the three work sessions. We got the direction to work with staff to develop the documents. In May of last year, we submitted those to city staff for review and comment. We've gotten some preliminary comments. But I think staff is feeling that they need more direction, better direction, more clear direction from council in order to take this to the next step. Going forward, what we'd like to do is get those comments and address those, and then bring these documents forward to city council for action, ideally in April this year. Councilmember Gregory. A couple of questions. If you would go back to page four of your presentation. The last bullet point there at the bottom of the page says that a gated age restricted golf course community-- maybe you're referring to ropes and ranch-- are not MPCs, and they do not provide any public benefits. So exactly how is an MPC in ropes and ranch? How are they different? How are they different? Ropes and ranch is a private gated community. So the roads inside there are private. They don't connect to their neighbors. Parks in ropes and ranch are not available to the general public. Any amenities there are not available to the general public . Ropes and ranch, the utility infrastructure for ropes and only serves ropes and ranch. Those utilities are not oversized to serve any of the adjoining properties. So none of the infrastructure for ropes and benefits any of the property around them. And none of the amenities are available to the public. If you don't live there or not invited guests, you're not going to be able to enjoy those things. I don't want to make it sound like Robeson's not a good project. Robeson Ranch is a very successful project. Ed Robeson has a very clear vision for what he does, and he does it very well. And that's been a very successful project. It is not a master plan community. There's no retail. There's no place for people to work. There's no place for people to shop there. There are no schools. There's no churches. Those last comments are maybe the most instructive to me. On page seven, where you're talking about revenue, did you do any calculations about the number of people? Build out, you're talking about ad valorem tax. You had to have calculations on the numbers of people to figure out your projected sales tax. I've got it with me, but if you go back to the September presentation, we did a slide especially for that. Full build out of the three projects, Coal Ranch, Hunter Ranch, and Robeson Ranch, the full build out there would be about 32,000 people. But I'm just saying-- I'm sorry. 32,000 units, which is about 74,000 population. I'm just talking about Coal Ranch. Coal Ranch would be about a third of that. So I think we're projecting about 9,000 units. I'm just thinking-- because that slide makes it look like that that's just all new revenue to the city and no expense to the city. But I suspect that there's some expenses attached to that, because the fire station is going to have to have crews, and there's going to need to be more police officers, and there's going to be street repairs and things like that . So I think it would be more informative if we compared the projected revenues with projected expenses that would come with the city needing provide services to all of those new residents. Yeah, one easy way to compare that would be to look at your city budget today. Good afternoon, Councilperson Wiseney. Sorry we started without you. But you've seen this movie before. 35 was just shut down, so I apologize. Thank you. One way to maybe put that in a way that we can compare would be to look at the city's budget today, divide that by the number of population or households, and then compare that to these numbers. I'll ask the staff to do a follow up on that. The final thing is, when you originally got the MPC approved, I think that before any of that-- were you in the council? What year was it? No. Before all of us. At that time, were you talking to the council about the anticipated PID? We were not at the time. So at this particular point, if-- somebody's going to have to remind me of what our direction was. I've slept a few times. I can remind you. Because I thought I heard you say that staff said they needed more direction. I thought we were pretty clear that the direction was we weren't-- at least what I recall is that we weren't wanting to do PIDs on residential development this size. So-- But that we were OK with PIDs for the commercial and retail areas, right? I don't know about that. I know we talked about the TIF for commercial areas and retail areas. So I just need to be-- I just need to be reminded. But I suppose my question for you is if this council or the next council says no to a PID for the residential or no to a TIF for a residential, what's your plan B? Plan B will be to sit and wait and try to explore other options. The development of a property like this is not possible. The way this property has been envisioned in the things that the city would like to see as part of a master plan community are not possible without some form of public financing capability. And that wasn't anticipated in 2004? Well, it's a step at a time. You zone the property. Now you have a plan for-- a master plan for the land use. So now based on that, you go out and try to figure out what does the infrastructure look like. We spent 2 and 1/2 years doing traffic studies, water studies, wastewater studies, drainage studies, environmental sensitive area studies, FEMA 404. I mean, you name it, we did it. Sure. And that took us 2 and 1/2 years. And then once you finish that, then you got to figure out what all that stuff cost. And then you have to start figuring out how you're going to pay. And all of those FEMA studies and those kinds of studies is what resulted in that 600 acres of green space, right? No, there's only about 275 acres of floodplain. Oh, OK. Thanks. That's all my questions. Council Member Carey. Thank you. I have several questions for you. First, and I don't believe we had this discussion. And for anybody watching, we didn't have a work session. We had a closed session. So if you're looking for the video, there is not one. So regarding the term of the PID, what position is it that you'd like a continuous term or a fixed term? The way we've structured the PID or the way we're proposing the PID is that it's one PID over the entire property, much like we have one zoning over the entire property. We need a financing plan over the entire property, just like we need a land use plan over the entire property so that we know where our path is and how to get through the development. So the idea is the overall PID would probably have a term of 30 years. And the PID would likely be broken into three sub areas to match the three developing areas, which are primarily residential. And regarding the tax rate on the PID, how is it that you plan to calculate the amount of tax that's going to be levied on these future residents? We're using a $0.40 equivalent tax rate, which is consistent with your PID policy. That's the maximum. So what we did is in all the numbers that we ran and presented back in September, all use the $0.40 equivalent tax rate based on a initial sale of a residential home. Here's the beauty of PIDs in where they're actually, I think, superior to like a mud or a taxing district. With a PID, the $0.40 assessment would be $0.40 calculated on day one when you buy the house. But your assessment is fixed. It's a fixed number. When you pay it off, it's gone. It doesn't come back. It doesn't get reupped. It doesn't get increased. So as the property increases in value, which we've seen a lot of that in this area in the last few years, the equivalent tax rate for the PID assessment actually goes down. And so as you go through the PID years, that number shrinks and shrinks until the point where it goes to zero when they pay the assessment. So for an average home that you envision for Coal Ranch within this PID, what is that fixed assessment that you have in mind for the home? Yeah. Rick, do you have-- I've got a lifeline to Rick Rosenberg at DPFG. Rick, do you call with the average? If you could, if you're going to-- yeah, instead of relaying, if you want to speak, come on up to the mic, if you wouldn't mind. Good afternoon, Rick Rosenberg with DPFG. We are looking at an average of assessment per home of around $20,000 that will be amortized over that 30 year basis. And we're actually not even using the full $0.40 allowable within the city policy. We're actually using-- right now, we estimate $0.32. Are you familiar with any other developments that have an assessment at above $0.30? We have projects that have assessments at $0.50, $0.60, $0.70, $0.80, around the state. In this area? In the Dallas area, yes. OK. And if you'll just give me one moment. Last question. You've talked a lot about the benefits of the PID. Do you see any drawbacks of the Public Improvement District ? I'm sorry. Say that again. You've talked a lot about the benefits of the PID. Do you see any drawbacks to it? What are the drawbacks of a PID? The mistakes that we've seen other people make with Public Improvement Districts is try to do too much at once. And so what we've learned through the years and through the projects is to put assessments on property incrementally as you go and not assess the entire property day one. So for example, in Cole Ranch, even though the PID is created globally so we know we have a plan of finance for the entire thing, the first assessment district would likely just be the first phase. And so only assessments on that area would cover that area. And if we get into an economic cycle or another recession, like what we've gone through, only a small part of the property is affected. And it doesn't have a negative impact over the rest of the project. Economy comes back, and you can start back up again. So what we've learned is I think the biggest drawback with PIDs is if you try to do an assessment over too large of an area too early. I think that's the biggest problem I've seen. Mistakes, lessons learned, if you will. Can I follow up just briefly so I understand? So you're saying that with the three separate areas of assessment, you foresee a staggering of the actual assessment itself. So 30 years maybe starting in 2020 for one, 30 years starting in 2030 for another one. Did I get that right? I don't think they would stagger quite that much, but the high to low stagger from one neighborhood to another could be five or six years. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem. And this is kind of a question for staff too, not for right now, but for a future along the lines of Dalton's question. And that is because we know cost of service to homes, to residential areas in terms of fire, police, library, all the city services, as I understand it, is more expensive than cost to commercial because of the types of use of that. So whether or not we have some analysis in the city of Dent on of the price point of which a home breaks even in terms of its ad valorem contribution to the city and how that would play into a similar understanding as we're looking at price points of home at this moving forward because it's so heavily residential. But I also wonder if there is-- and this is probably-- you can chime in if you want on this too. And I don't know the answer to it, although I've heard some anecdotal evidence. And that is what this does to the citizens within one of these special finance districts long term. So they might be excited. They find the home they want. They're willing to abide by this extra assessment. But then five years later, a city comes with a bond program or a school district comes with a bond package. And understandably, their situation is tighter than your average citizen in the city because they have these additional assessments. And we've seen that. So I don't know if there's any evidence, if anyone's ever done a study in the state of Texas or elsewhere as to-- we're drawing in thousands and thousands of new residents. And if the trend lines are such that these types of communities tend to vote down school bond programs because of this or tend to vote down city bond programs, then there's also-- we have to account for a detrimental effect to the rest of the city as a result of that. So I don't know if there's any evidence studies one way or the other, but that would be certainly something worth looking into. Kesserman-Pockets. Is it OK? I really appreciate you coming back for this presentation. But I do remember very clearly our discussion in executive about this project and direction we were given . I mean, it was all seven of us on board that at that moment, we didn't feel like a PID for residential was going to work for us. And so there's no changes to the original proposal that you were giving us. This is more just a friendly reminder of what the project is. And am I clear on that? Well, what we hope to point out to you today is why it is critical to the success of the project to have some form of public financing vehicle in place and the fact that these projects don't happen without it. What we had hoped is to demonstrate maybe more clearly than we did before that that is the case. Now, when I hear we don't use PIDs for residential, that's what they're primarily used for across the nation. These special assessment districts are primarily used for residential master plan communities. So if there's a reason why the city wouldn't think that's not a good idea, we would certainly love to hear what your concerns are and try to address those. Any other questions, comments? I appreciate it. Thank you very much. Yes, thank you. Brian? Yes. Mayor, if I could, one of the things we wanted to try to do today is get direction from the council as if you want us to continue with any discussions with the developer about bringing this forward or if this is truly a project that you're not interested in pursuing at this time with the packages and incentives that have been offered. We can certainly bring back the other information that's been requested today if you'd like, but we're trying to see what's the direction of the council and how do you want to proceed. I guess my question to the council is, is there any different direction than what we had given in executive session, which was we weren't comfortable at this moment in time with PIDs on this size of residential development? Has that changed? Yes. Well, I think there was a bifurcated discussion as to, is this off the table for you? Absolutely. Across the board, there are some people who said yes. There's nothing that would change my mind. Then there was a question of, are there other things that would cause you to change your mind? I think across the board, we're all like, isn't state not acceptable? I was one of the ones who said, well, one of the things we'd have to track is what are some of these metrics we're looking for, one being what's the average cost of a home? One of the things that's changed since the last time we heard this discussion is the average cost of new homes in our community, the price of existing homes that are going for sale, which is going up and up. And so it became a really real question as to whether or not we're getting something that we couldn't otherwise be getting in our community without offering any sorts of incentive. So I guess to clarify, my point of view is I'm not unsellable on this thing. I'm probably in the minority on that point. But if there's something that's actually helping us move our community forward, those metrics become the important selling point. Any other comments on that? Yes. I'm uncomfortable with the term of the PED. We didn't talk about it when we were in executive session, but 30 years seems like a really long time to me as far as the manageability of this particular development from a city standpoint and services that we provide. And I think-- you'll correct me if I'm wrong-- but if we have an extra assessment, that affects our ability to leverage as a city as well. No, it'll be separate from the city's tax rate. It's not considered an obligation. But I think, as Councilmember Rodin was pointing out, just from an impact to those people that live in a PED, they're seeing it as an assessment as a tax, along with whatever city taxes are there and the school district taxes. And so that's the total impact to them that politically could be an impact for us down the road. All right. So just the duration, I'm really uncomfortable with that duration and, frankly, the assessment. I would need to see a lot of different special districts to figure out, is this in line with what's happening around us? And we can certainly bring back details on that. But I think the overriding question, are you interested in pursuing it at all? I guess, for me, the door was fairly much closed on a PED for the residential without hearing something new or different that would compel me. And I don't think I've heard anything new or different. It doesn't mean that the door is bolted shut or in any way like that. But I'm not hearing anything different. And it may be that I'm just not remembering that this is what we're being proposed today as something significantly different from what it was before. Is it pretty much the same? Oh, it's the same presentation, essentially, yes. OK. I mean, I think what we heard then and what I'm hearing now is that you're asking a pretty sort of on or off question. Are you on or are you off? And if you're on, what does that constitute? Except for Mayor Pro Tem, who would like to see other information, I think what I'm hearing is that the PED at this size, on this size of project for residential, this council as a whole, consensus at least, is uncomfortable with that. Now, does that mean that if there's some other way, then-- I mean, the statement has been made. This is the only way to do it. Well, this is the only way to do it. If we say we don't want to do it this way, I think you can have your answer. But if there's other ways to do it that seem a little bit more viable, at least from where we sit here at this day as today, I mean, I'm open to hearing. I'm not saying I'm shutting the door on the project. I'm saying I'm uncomfortable with the form as it's been presented with the public improvements in the financing. Because my concern is, look, I was here when all these muds came in down I-35, and people started getting their houses foreclosed on because they didn't know that these assessments were going to be as high as this multigenerational kind of buying and selling of these homes. People come in, and yeah, when you first move in, you know about it. But then you get the two or three homeowners down the road. And so I just-- if this is the only way it can be done, well, then time's going to have to prove that. Because right now, we're going pretty strong. Do we have all these types of amenities necessarily? Maybe not. But I don't know if in our market right now, people are wanting to pay for it in that regard. So-- and this is still on the outskirts of growth. I know we're trying to go out that direction, but it just may be timing. I don't know. But I'm hearing if this is the only way to do it, then that's problematic. Whereas if there's some options, other options, we're certainly-- I mean, I'm open to that. But I'm not hearing that that's not the situation from the other side. So is that-- do you have direction? I think so. If I understand correctly, in this present form, we're not interested in proceeding. However, if there is some kind of significant change to the proposal from the developer, we could bring that back and have a subsequent conversation . Is that the direction? I think so. But also, I think that Mayor Pro Tem asked for some data. So if it's something that could be done without a whole lot of trouble, I think that's good data to have in general. And then if it changes the complexion of the conversation, I think that's something that we could certainly instruct you to pass along. OK. Yes, sir. The only other thing about the conversation-- I think you've got it right, Mayor. The only other thing about the conversation that I've been thinking about since we've had a couple of conversations on development is that when I heard the developer talking about increasing the square footage, my thought was, if they're going to keep the price points pretty much the same in order to follow their business plan, probably the only thing that increasing the square footage means is less-- more impermeable coverage of a development and probably decreasing the appointments in the construction. To keep the-- because they're going to need to keep price points pretty steady. So if you increase the square footage, you've got to take out the marble countertops and replace them with something else. And I'm not sure that, from my point of view, that the city staff needs to always pursue that as the best solution to quality. Because I'm not sure that just increasing square footage increases the quality of the development or the product, nor does it improve the price point. OK. Any other questions? Councilman Wasney? This 15 minutes turned into almost an hour. I think it's a sheer size. It's a sheer size of this project that is daunting for this city. We have a population of 130,000. This master plan community will add 40,000 people. And so it could be kind of a back to the drawing board for planning for the sheer size. Because this was approved in '04. I think Hunter Ranch was approved in '06, '07 time frame. And I will circle back to infrastructure costs that are being paid for by a developer in the city. Ropes and Ranch is not built out. They will probably be building for the next 20 years. They have paid for every road, every sewer, water, everything. They continue to build. New sections continue to be opened. And that infrastructure is laid down. But they're not here asking for a PID. They're not here asking for a public-private partnership. They set their plan in motion. The plan is still in motion. And they are still self-supporting when it comes to infrastructure. So it could be that maybe this is just too big. That if things were scaled down in that whole huge area of land, it might be easier for the city to look at a smaller plan. So I'm just adding some of those. I do want to add as well that I've been asking for a fire station location in Cole Ranch from day one, and it's still not there. And that was even before I was elected. I asked for a fire station land. And that's not unheard of either. That new station that's going to go in in southwest Denton, the developer supplied the land. Another developer paid $350,000 towards its buildout. So there are things that are not included here. And so I'm uncomfortable with a bid on this big of a project. Thank you. Mayor, I did see a request from the developer to say another couple of words. I don't know if you want to make time for that. I know we're way over on time. Yeah, I mean, a minute. You got a minute. I mean, this is sort of consistent direction as before. This is great feedback from each of the council members. I really appreciate that. And we've heard a couple of different, very specific concerns. What I'd like to get is-- there are a lot of different ways we can do this. We picked a public improvement district because the city developed a policy for it and said if we're going to do infrastructure out in the developing areas of the city, that's what we want to use. So that's why we've gone down the road with this. There are a lot of other vehicles available to us. So if the concern is the liability of the PID bonds themselves, there are other districts we can use that totally remove the city from the responsibility of issuing bonds. So if we had more clarity over what your concerns are, I think we can probably find something to custom fit this to fit the project. Well, if the members so desire to forward those items more clearly to staff, they can forward them on to you. So you have a little bit more clarity. That would be great. And again, thank you all for your time. Thank you very much. You bet. Thank you. All right, agenda item 1C, receive report and hold discussion regarding the debt issuance associated with the Denton Energy Center. Chuck Springer, the director of finance. In preparation for the budget season, Mayor, I've just got one slide. You got how many 50? One. Oh, OK. So let me just summarize. We put information in staff report, and we'd attach the informal report that went out to council on Friday is attached to this item. But let me give a brief summary and then take questions from the council. As you remember, the parameters ordinance was passed in June, ordinance 201(6)-187 that called for the issuance of revenue bonds up to $265 million. You can see that first column, the estimated proceeds that we've put together in terms of the maximum to be sold. And then we've got what we actually sold net proceeds of a little over $247 million for the project. The sale occurred on January 19th and is scheduled to close on January 27th. The bond sold at a true interest cost of about 3.53% with a final maturity of 20 years out, 12/1/2036. We met all the requirements of the parameters ordinance. There were some interest limitations, maximum dollar amounts, those type of things. So those are all within it. So with that, I'll answer any questions the council has on this revenue bond sale. Yes, Council Member Riggs. I have a few. OK. OK. So on this, can you just remind me-- because I thought when we were talking about it, we chose a certain type of bond so that it could be paid back with revenues from the electric-- from the rates. Is that correct? That's correct. So whenever I was going through and I saw that this was backed with water and wastewater, I was a little concerned. I mean, is there a way to-- When the city has issued revenue bonds and all our prior revenue bonds, they're backed by what's called the pledge of the city's utilities. So the pledge is of the revenues of the utility system of the city, which is electric water and wastewater. How these will be repaid is they'll be repaid from the electric system, from electric revenues. When we issue revenue bonds, we repay-- if a portion of the proceeds are for water, a portion of the proceeds for wastewater and electric, then each of those funds repays their allotted proportion of those bonds. And we do the same thing with COs. But the pledge is a united pledge. That gives a better revenue source and a better rating for those bonds. So may I follow up? Oh, sure. Absolutely. On that, a concern I had while reading the report was I saw the term reduced leverage and reduction in leverage with rate increases. So does this mean that we have to agree with the rate increases to keep our rating? And was the rate increased-- it was talked about several times. Was that just in reference to electric, or was that also water and wastewater? Well, I think they looked at some of what they were talking at as they looked at the five year projections that we have in the budget. And there's kind of some-- especially the water and wastewater inflationary increases. There were some projected within the electric and then actual staying flat or decreases within the electric. But if there's no covenant for the city, we just have to set rates that meet our needs for each utility. There's no covenant or restriction where we have to raise rates. That was just one of the rating agencies' reports based on what they'd seen in the five year projections for the three utilities with some inflationary rate adjustments. I have a few more, but go ahead. Anybody got a question? Throw in. Yeah, go ahead. And so in August, I recall we moved some utility debt to the general obligation of the city when we refinanced some bonds. So did moving that over to the city help us with this rating? And let's see. In the future, can this debt under discussion be refinanced as general obligation as well? OK, so two questions. One, we did refinance the outstanding revenue bonds of the city. This ordinance is kind of setting a new ordinance or a new pledge of the utility system revenue bonds. The old revenue bonds required a reserve fund. They required some other funds set aside. When we did that refunding, we were able to release all of those funds to the three utilities in doing that. The second part of your question is, yes, we have the ability to refund these under federal tax law. We can refund them with revenue refunding bonds, or we could refund them with general obligation bonds in the future at the pleasure of the city council. That would all be up to city council approval. But even the revenue bonds that were refunded with general obligation bonds, those are still paid for administratively by each utility. So that proportion of that refunding is still paid for by each utility and carried by them. The pledge is just a little bit different. So I have a question here. What happens if the revenues do not meet the debt service levels? Who will the burden fall upon? Do we increase rates at that point, or how do we handle that? If the revenues from the electric system can't meet their debt service, well, once we pay operations of the utility system, then the remaining funds are pledged for the debt service. So if we were to have a shortfall in that, we would probably pull from the excess balance in that utility. In any one year, if revenues didn't cover operating expenses plus debt service, then we'd look toward the fund balances of each of those utilities to cover the shortfall in that year. I mean, over a long period of time, if that occurred, it may be necessary to increase rates. But again, that'd be at the council's discretion each year. Yes, Mr. Speaker. Well, that goes along with the projections, because we projected the cost to be $240 million, and it turned out to be what? Well, they haven't completed the project. I mean, we've got proceeds to put for project cost of $225 million, which includes some contingency funds. OK. And then that means that the capitalized interest dropped also, correct? Yes. And so the issuance cost dropped also. Correct. So based on what we had projected, a grand total cost of $265 million turned out to be $247 million, or a savings of $17.8 million. Is that correct? Correct. Over the projections. Over the initial projections and the maximum amount that we were authorized to issue. So my guess is that we were very conservative in our projections on what the impact would be on rates also. I believe so. In the five-year projection for the utility fund, especially for the electric utility fund, I think they've been pretty conservative in terms of that. You know, the big change to get over is when we finish 9/30/2018, we'll have paid off all of the TNPA debt. And so really, the rates are built on that. Then after that, our costs go down significantly in the electric utility because we've paid off that debt. Right. So I think what's happened is the informal staff report that went out when folks were reading that. And they were reading basically a lot of information that was part of the analysis of the rating agencies in determining the bond rating that set our interest rates. They became concerned because they saw all of the utilities lumped together. And so there have been some statements floating around in the interweb that says that we've got-- isn't that what you call it, Kevin, the interweb? It's going to mean that people who don't live out at Robeson Ranch who just buy city water and wastewater are somehow going to be paying for this project. But that's not really the case, is it? No, this is going to be paid for out of the electric utility. It's simply the pledge to receive the rating is the three utilities combined simply to have a better rating and a lower interest cost on these bonds. You bet. OK, thank you. Council Member Begayre? OK, so one suggestion would be that in the backup materials to put the underlying ordinance with the backup materials, because I had to look it up. It was June 21, 2016. That could help people understand what authorized this particular purchase. The other thing I just wanted to clarify about the savings, if I remember correctly, the savings happened because of the contracts that we entered into regarding purchase power. They didn't happen because of any decrease in cost from the Warzilla engines or Burns and McDonald. It was specifically because we waited for a longer period of time than anticipated, and we saved quite a bit of money. That, in my mind, isn't necessarily related to cost projections of electricity rates. Those are two different things, so I don't want to mix those two things together. I have a question about within the ordinance, it says that there's a balloon debt. And I don't think I understand. Does this bond allow for balloon payments? The way we've structured it, no. There's principal each year. I think they're probably just putting in the ordinance, the ability to do that, and recognize that this ordinance that was passed is kind of a new revenue bond pledge. So if the city were to issue future revenue bonds, it would be underneath that ordinance. So they've structured the ordinance to have some flexibility in other issuances, if that makes sense. OK, so it's a very broadly written resolution, our ordinance allowing a variety of different bond purchases, is what I understand you're saying. It has that flexibility in the future. OK, thank you. That's all. One, just for clarification and reminder, this was one of the first revenue bonds that we've issued in a while, because we have a policy where for utilities, whether it be wastewater, sewer, or electric , we would issue COs and then take the delta of that revenue bond that would be projected, charge on the revenue bond projected interest rate, but take that delta of savings, because it is a lower savings, because of the credit rating of the city, and move that into the street fund. Correct. This deviated from that. From what I heard you just say, so it also created a new revenue bond issuance policy. So I would really like for us to, at some point, come back and revisit all that. Well, it's not a policy. It's set a new ordinance under which we could issue revenue bonds in future. And I'd like to just have some clarity in the future on those two paradigms. I mean, if this was a one-time thing, because of the nature of the project, or the nature of COs, and citizens' ability to file petitions, or whatever, just if we're going to deviate from the one pretty established policy that's helped funding most of our street maintenance fund. And we planned in the budget to continue with the CO issu ance for kind of the standard utility project. So this upcoming May, we plan to issue COs and follow what we've been doing in prior years. This was just kind of a different project and plan to do it as revenue bonds. Great. Thanks. Any other questions? Yes. I just have one more thing. Sure. I would like for this council to consider possibly putting on an annual cap on rates to protect our rate payers, just in the future. OK, could you ask for that in concluding items? Maybe a discussion about that? Yeah, because I-- Oh, OK. OK, yeah. OK, any other questions on this agenda item? Seeing none, thank you. Appreciate it, Chuck. Thank you. OK, I had a question for my colleagues. We have an open session scheduled for the recruitment process for new city attorney, but we have a closed session scheduled just to talk about that in general. And so I think it would be-- I would behoove us to maybe go into the closed session first in case some of our discussion impacts the open session work session. And is that something that everybody would be OK with? Just taking it out of order? You look puzzled, Councilmember Wozni. Give me the justification for that. Because I think in the closed session, it talks about we're going to discuss a possible-- what are we going to do about an interim city attorney? And then the process whereby there may be some discussion on-- because to start the process now means we want to potentially have that recruitment process begin immediately. There may be some discussion around that particular item. So I mean, I don't mind saying it. I'm not so sure that I-- we've had a lot of changes. And to all of a sudden change to have a new city attorney in the next two or three months, I think it would be-- I want to have the discussion of an interim appointment and the length of that possible interim appointment. And so that was one reason why I wanted to have the closed work session first, because if there's a decision made on that, it's going to impact what we decide on the recruitment process. Does that make sense to-- I think it does, but I don't see why that has to be in a closed session. Well, and it doesn't. I mean, I'm just-- Yes. Because we may end up being talking about personnel issues. And that has to be done in a closed session. Appreciate that, yes. OK. Because we're talking about hiring an interim. Thank you, Dalton. Is that your comment? OK, yes. All right. So is that-- are we OK with that? I'm OK. All right. OK. All right, then we will go ahead and move forward to closed session item 1A. I will convene the closed session at 322 PM. [AUDIO OUT] Good afternoon. Wanted to welcome everybody. We're reconvening the open session at 5-- no, 448. And this is still in our work session report. So we're going to move on to agenda item 1D. [AUDIO OUT] Good afternoon, mayor and members of the city council. Carla Romine, director of human resources. With the city attorney and emergency announcement of retirement, I'm here to seek direction from council if you want me to do a search, if so, the timing of that search, and if you'd like to use a search firm. We were asked to get a quote from Waters and Company since they've done our recent city manager and city auditor search. That proposal's been included in your backup. OK. Any comments on this portion of this particular work session? All right, well, we also wanted to make an announcement that we have offered Aaron Leal the job of interim city attorney and would so direct the current city attorney to draft a resolution stating same. Any other questions? Comments? All right. So we're going to hold on to search for now? Yeah, I think we're going to hold on to search right now. Yes. Yes, that's great. How far down is this? Until further instruction by council. OK, thank you. Thank you. OK, council, we do have a couple of closed session items, but we have one-- actually two concluding items. The item for individual consideration, which is the employment contract for the internal auditor. So we have a closed session agenda item for that if there's any questions that you have that would be better entertained in closed session. So I wanted to give you an opportunity, if there is, we can move into closed session. If not, we'll just go ahead and move right on through the agenda. All right, seeing none. OK. We will now convene the city council in a special call meeting at 4.50 on January the 24th, 2017 . Our item for the agenda is agenda item 1A, which is considered an adoption of an ordinance approving an employment agreement for the city auditor and authorizing the mayor to execute said agreement, setting the compensation terms of that employment, et cetera. Yes, Councilmember Wasney. I move that we-- Oh, we also have two cards to speak, so yes. OK. Yeah. Let's go ahead and take those cards first. Mr. Paul Melter, if you'll come state your name and address , please. Sorry about that, Kathleen. Thank you. I didn't either, obviously. I'm Paul Meltzer of 1914 West Oak Street. A future city auditor may be interested in this topic. This needs to be said. At least one of you ran on the premise that there should be no big ticket city expenditures without a citizen vote. The Denton Energy Center is the single largest city expenditure in Denton's history. I think it was evident, certainly reasonable, that you would expect there to be significant opposition to that, given that this is a city that voted for a frac ban. So you might expect there to be opposition to building a fr ac gas plant. Knowing that, you elected to pursue the one funding mechanism that would enable you to not have a citizen vote. I urge you to restore the public trust that you have broken . You have the opportunity to do that. It would be unexpected, but appropriate to make a tender offer at a market clearing price, to buy those bonds back, and put the matter before the public. Thank you. Thank you. We've got one other speaker, Mr. Willie Hutzpeth. Is Mr. Hutzpeth still here? OK, he's not here? OK, all right. I'm sorry, Councilman Wozni. I would like to move to accept the contract for the new city auditor with the changes that have been presented. And is there anything else that I need? Madam City Attorney? Just a point of clarification there, if I might, Mayor. Before you, you do have a signed employment agreement. And that is the terms that the council will be approving by this motion by Councilmember Wozni, just in order to allow the council to see any very, very minor deviations from your other standard contract that you considered very recently. I went ahead and put a red line in front of you. But I assume the motion is to approve the signed copy. And so that's why you have both the red line and the original signed copy in front of you. So moved. Councilmember Geary. Second. OK, we have a motion and a second for agenda item-- I just lost my agenda-- 1A. 1A. All in favor, please signify by raising your right hand. I'm sorry, just now I'm noticing that there's a lot of changes. So I was trying to go over them really quickly. OK, all right. Passes unanimously. See no opposition? We're going to go ahead and ask for concluding items. And then we'll go back into closed session just so we can wrap up all the open session items. Concluding items-- any concluding items for the council? I have a couple, but wanted to-- anybody? Yes, Councilmember Hawkins. Thank you, Mayor. A couple weeks ago, I had a meeting with a gentleman named Brad French. He's with a company called-- I'm probably mispronouncing this, but it's Mobilty. And we were discussing the importance of getting wireless infrastructure in place to be prepared for the upcoming 5G transition. And I think we had talked about that in an executive session, probably a couple months ago. I was hoping to get a work session item on something like that. And I could provide a little bit more detail or direction. But I know that work session is pretty valuable real estate right now, but late February, early March. So thank you. Thank you. Yes, Councilmember Gregory. Thank you, Mayor. Two items. A former volunteer who is doing work, volunteering at the senior center, had expressed some concerns and has declined to volunteer anymore because he was asked to fill out a new volunteer form that included his social security number. He said he didn't think that that was necessary to provide. But my understanding is maybe that the new vendor that is doing background checks is requiring social security numbers. So I was wondering if we could get an informal staff report on what's required to get information from volunteers. And I think that we certainly need the background checks. But can that just be done with the driver's license number? What's the minimum amount of information that we need to procure from volunteers in order to do an adequate and thorough background check? So that's item number one. Item number two is I would ask for another informal staff report from staff on the status of the southern portion of our green belt along the Elm Fork of the Trinity between Farm to Market Road 428 and Highway 380. Seems to me that in the original agreements between the city of Denton, the city of Dallas, State Parks and Recreation Department, or the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, and the Corps of Engineers, that the green belt was a mitigation activity. And so that there is an expectation for it to be open. And I know that the flooding of a couple of years ago has closed that portion of the trail. But I need to know, are we in violation of our agreement with the Corps of Engineers, B, what is the status of getting that repaired from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department? Because I think it's their responsibility. And is there anything that we as a city could do to move that repair forward? So those are my two items. Thank you. - Council Member Begay? - OK, I have a few. Let's see, sorry about that. Regarding the obligations of city council members. So several cities have requirements, for instance, for open meetings training that happens every year, as opposed to one open meetings training. So I'd like to have a discussion about what training we're asking of our city council members, whether it has to do with the newly elected, or budgets, or open meetings. I'd like to have a work session on that. Let's see. I'd also would like to have a work session or discussion, at least, about adding a CIP committee as a subcommittee of the council to discuss upcoming capital improvements and the way that we evaluate those capital improvements. Sorry, I have a list. I apologize. Give me just a moment. Last budget cycle, city council approved recommendations of a compensation consultant to change our pay structure here. I'd like a work session to report on updates to that changed pay and classification structure to include the costs and how many employees were affected by those changes. Like a report on best practices and transmission spacing, transmission substation spacing. There may already be some informal report on that, but I didn't find it in our drop box. So if we have it already, please forward it. If not, then let's, I think, have a work session just to discuss that topic. And lastly, a particular issue came up regarding what I think should require outside council for review. And I'd like for that to be heard, preferably the topic of hiring outside council to be heard as soon as possible. If it's possible to have a special called meeting and that's something that the agenda committee can discuss, then if everybody is OK with that, then I would like to have it at a special called meeting as opposed to our next meeting, which would be February 7, I believe. I think it's pretty time sensitive. All right. So you would want to have one before the 7th? I would like to have one before the 7th because of the time sensitive nature of what we're talking about. OK. Yes, Council Member Briggs. I have a couple. I mentioned during our earlier discussion that I would like for council to consider putting an annual cap on the rates to protect our rate payers, especially for water and wastewater. So I don't know if that comes in a work session or a staff report, what that would look like. And if it's possible, I think we should do that. I would also like to request a report on our new website. I sent in some feedback and suggestions from the public. And I'd like to know what changes have been made of those. And also, I would like to hear comments and feedback from our different departments on how it's working for them with turning in information and updating their page. And I am OK with a special call meeting. I will be available. OK. Anyone else? Yes. Council Member Wasney. Last week, I asked for a work session on open closed meetings. And so I'd like to dovetail that with Councilwoman Begari's permission with her discussion on open meeting training for council members and make that kind of an all-inclusive work session. Yeah. Great. Thank you. I just had a couple. One is to just announce that the Denton Black Film Festival is coming up from January the 27th through the 29th at the historic campus theater. So I want to invite everyone out to come out. And they had a great inaugural success last year. So really expect big things again this year. And on the work session to discuss city council compensation as far as the compensation study, if possible-- which I don't know if it's going to be-- I'd like to get a summary or a survey of some of those cities that we use for benefits for salary comparison to get an idea of what some of their benefits packages are. Because I think that also plays into salary. I mean, when we talk about what the city of Denton does as far as TMRS and social security contributions and things such as that, to see if those are similar in other cities or if there's a-- because salary and benefits go hand in hand. And so if one is less than the other, then it could sort of affect one or the other. So if that's possible, it would be nice to just get some basic information on some of the cities that we were comparing salaries to that we-- how do our benefits stack up with them as well. Any others? Anything else? OK. We still have a couple of closed sessions items. So I will adjourn the open session at 5.04. And we will convene in a closed session at 5.04 regarding deliberations regarding real property under Texas Government Code section 551.072, consultation with attorneys under Texas Government Code section 551.071. It's my understanding closed session item agenda C has been pulled. So we then will be considering-- well, we've already done-- so we only have one closed session item, item B. All right.