Feb 21, 2017 City Council on 2017-02-21 12:30 PM

and 17 it is now 1 p.m. We'll go on to our first item on the agenda which is citizen comments on consent agenda items we do have one speaker mr. Willie Husspeth if you'll come forward and state your name and address your time will begin thank you sir Mayor and City Council my name is Willie Husspeth, City members, City Council members, 623 Newton. I want to applaud the council for the first time since I've been attending these meetings that there's not a closed session on the agenda and I've been attending these meetings since 1986. First one I can remember. Thank you for that. City Council meetings really mean the council meeting in front of the city the citizens of the city. I don't know where the concept of closed session and working on city business that should be an open session that this ever was a sanction it shouldn't have ever been sanctioned. Meetings that should be open but actually being met or the the process of keeping the citizens out is just the opposite of what's been taken what should have been taken place and I think that I think the city again members City Council members for allowing that to happen for the first time that I can remember. Secondly I talked to my son who's running for this position and he knows that I'm not gonna give him any slack I've already started giving him hard time right now but the thing where I've raised him is he gives it right back so anyway he's I told him that you better not fall into that trap of meeting in closed session for things that should be an open session. The other thing is the the consent agenda is the next big item that I'm struggling with. Now what I have to do I found is I've just got it I'm retired so I can do it but I just think it's not the way it should should happen and that is I've got to get this backup package that you all have I've got to get to that I don't know where it is but I'll figure it out where do I go to get that information then I'll read the thing me and my team I've put it put together a group that we're gonna just read it we shouldn't have to do all that for city business why should citizens have to do all of that the people well I know why my representative in my district which is the poor district doesn't give us information like we need he gives that information but it's not what we need so I've got to go do that for my citizens they don't have computers they don't have the wherewithal and they don 't know what what to do so I've got to go and do that that shouldn't take place either my representative should be doing that instead of just smiling in front of the camera instead of actually going to do something so now I 've got to do it I don't have to do it I'm going to do it so again thank you for opening up the sessions which they should be open should have been open a long time ago work on that consent agenda where you're hiding things that we don't need to know about or we need to know about you don't let us so I'll be trying to get that squared away but thanks again thanks sir moving on to agenda item to request for clarification of agenda items listed on the agenda for February 21st yes Councilmember Gregory thank you mayor it's probably easier for somebody else to understand than me but in item a as I'm reading the information in the backup which you can get on the internet I it looks like we 're exchanging one easement for another easement and I can't tell what what which part we're giving up what part we're getting I couldn't tell that from the backup could somebody just help me with that who's handling agenda item a consent agenda item a that DME I'm just asking it looks like that we're that we're exchanging one tract for a different tract for the easement correct but I couldn't tell which which track which rating for which track so the track that's at the corner of Ronnie Road and Bonnie Bray is a house and property that we had to acquire as we're expanding the easement along that track the easement expansion would have gotten into the house that was existing on the property so it was just an economical to buy the whole piece of property and so we did so now we find ourselves owner of a piece of property at the corner just so happens the landowner to the south of us that owns all the land between there all the way down to the fire station at Windsor we need to expand it easement from there so the appraisals came out about equal as far as the expansion the easement along Bonnie Bray for that corner piece of properties and we will record our easements on that property also so now I think I understand the map because up there at the corner there's encumbered transmission eas ement and unencumbered so we're trading what we bought of that unencumbered eas ement to the to the owner of the rest of that easement correct that's all I needed to know thank you yeah sure yes go ahead yeah mine's on consent agenda item in and not not really a question but I was curious about blanket electric easements and it said kind of in the backup it I thought that this was interesting he said it was simpler more simple practice for simpler times back then to grant somebody and I was wondering what that meant I was just curious maybe we could go back to those times yes this would have been back in those times when that was rural property that was really wasn't I was on the edge of the city and a lot of rural coops did business that way and that's how we originally got this easement was from brass's electric power co-op that originally acquired this easement we bought their line years ago we got their easement okay and their easement was a blanket easement because essentially as it said in the write-up that was a traditional way going across rural properties that instead of simply identifying and doing a survey is where the easement was going to be they would do blanket surveys and say I'm gonna put a line between the point a and point B across this property I get a blanket easement to do that and how the train looked you kind of dictate where that line went correct okay and then does DME or the city of Denton have an inventory of these blanket easements anymore do they just kind of come up randomly we don't usually acquire easements in that way the ones we do have once we inherited by buying another people somebody else's line or one that was done many years ago okay thanks Phil mayor Pro Tem thank you it's not you Phil item C this is the Wells Fargo parking lot I think this is an innocuous observation and I understand this is based on Dodd-Frank rules in terms of what they have to do with anything that any leasing structure they have but my question is when I saw this come on the agenda during an agenda committee almost the very next day I saw a for lease sign pop up right in the middle of that parking lot and I think it was for the building the property manager of the building so my question is I don't know who can answer this one are we leasing that parking lot so just to be clear for the community are we allowing someone to lease it secondly if not did the does this agreement was Wells Fargo that we're digging into today does it allow for a property manager of a building to advertise in that space oh Julie okay and I apologize for not giving you heads up on this question hi I would just I have not seen the sign they are leasing office spaces right now so I would assume that's for the office space and if it's in their parking lot I would say they are allowed to put it in their their half of the parking lot which is the one closest to their building ours is kind of right in that middle line back toward rusty tacos the city's property and I just asked legal and you to maybe double check on the policy for that even as it relates to our sign ordinance it's a large sign and like I said it confused me that we were selling off that property is what they gave the impression to so to avoid confusion and make sure that that's on the up and up if we could just get a report on sure that's my bridge well my question was also about item C and I just wanted to counsel to know that I had questions of the legality of regarding leasing public parking spaces those concerns have been addressed and this is not necessarily a renewal of contract so I'm okay so you did get your questions addressed okay all right okay thank you Julie any other clarification for agenda items yes customer Gary I have a question about our work session item sorry D D is in David yeah okay my understanding is that the DHA has withdrawn a request of theirs to partner or to be the clearing house for developments are we still having a presentation on D my understanding is that they are still requesting the council act on the two nine percent considerations those two requests well the two okay so my question then is will the two nine percent go through DHA I believe that's correct okay let's make sure we have absolutely accurate yeah yes councilman Gary the DHA is still in negotiation with those two nine percent what we want here is the resolution that they were proposing from the meeting last time we were here with that resolution was that maybe the clearing house essentially okay I understand that thank you so my request would be to have a closed meeting item on on the legality of certain resolutions that the enabling resolution for the Denton Housing Authority I just like I would like legal advice on that particular resolution okay and we can handle this couple first so let's take one at a time so is is the council still wanting to see a presentation on item D given the fact that even though the Housing Authority has pulled the request for it to be the exclusive clearing house from what I've just heard they're still wanting the resolutions that are moving forward currently to be in partnership with Denton Housing Authority I personally would still just like to see what presentation they have on the numbers and those kind of things so that I can because that's whether you're the clearing house or it's these two projects the facts are still the facts yeah and so then that brings the second question which is for the closed session Councilman Gary are you saying that you would like to have that closed session prior to the presentation on item D yes I'd like legal counsel prior to the council giving direction to staff all right then with counsel's indulgence and if you have any objections please don't hesitate to speak up why don't we move item E in front of item D so there are order will be ABC Edward and upon the completion of work session item E we will then adjourn into closed session for the item D agenda and then come back into open session is that is that okay councilman Gary is that all right perfect okay thank you very much all right okay great any other clarifications for the agenda items okay seeing none we'll move on to agenda item three of our work session which your work session report 3a receive report and hold discussion give staff direction regarding the Stoke Denton Entrepreneur Center and if we could with counsel's indulgence I think we've got a presentation two presentations one's about 15 minutes the other's about 10 or 15 so if we could get through the present the president oh yes okay thank you if we could get through the presentations and hold our questions to the end unless it's just something that is just on fire about so okay thank you thank you mayor and council members I'm Caroline Booth I'm the director of economic development with the city of Denton and I'm going to be bringing you an update on the Stoke Denton Entrepreneur Center today I'd like to preface my presentation with a couple of remarks there have been challenges with the implementation of this project I think it's important to acknowledge that however despite those challenges the underlying goal of supporting technology and entrepreneurship in our community is valid and valuable from an economic development standpoint I think that in most challenges there are some inherent opportunities on the flip side if you take some time to examine what the challenges have been and and try to find out how you can learn from them I've had the opportunity to do that and what I have learned is that our challenges here have led us to examine our processes and determine ways that we can improve them and it's also led to some really good enhancements to inter departmental communication and collaboration and I think that those are all positive things for my Department of Economic Development and I think for some of the other departments that we work closely with within the city so with that I'd like to dive in and tell you what we're going to be doing so my objective is to brief the council as well as the folks who are here in the room from our local tech community and people who are watching at home on the background of Stoke Denton on its occupancy and activity as well as fiscal information related to the project and then I'm going to make some recommendations on project metrics as well as amendments to the management agreement that we have in place with the Dallas Entrepreneur Center. By way of brief background the Tech Denton Economic Development Initiative was funded in the fiscal year 15 budget and it had a number of objectives but they can be summed up under the headings of supporting technology entrepreneurship and innovation and enabling business and job creation particularly the creation of knowledge based and high income jobs in the community. It was conceived of and executed as a collaborative effort among the business technology education government and nonprofit sectors in Denton. Some significant points along the project's timeline October 1st was the date of its funding on September 15th of 2015 the commercial lease and grant was approved by council on October 30th of 2015 the management agreement was approved with the DEC. June 17th of 2016 the certificate of occupancy was issued for the space. On August 1st of 2016 the doors of Stoke Denton opened and then on January 9th of 2017 the full-time Stoke director began work. In terms of an activity summary since August 1 of last year more than 400 attendees have been in the space for events and tours. Membership levels currently stand at seven offices which is a hundred percent occupancy of the offices nine dedicated desks and twelve co -working desks are occupied and the mentorship program has launched with I believe 20 mentors and counting I think they're in the process of adding more every day and at this point in the presentation I'm gonna stop and turn it over to Trey Bowles for a report from him. Trey is the co-founder and CEO of the Dallas Entrepreneur Center he's also co-founder of the Dallas Innovation Alliance and co-founder and chair of the mayor's star council in Dallas. He's an appointee to the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship and T rey has started and built companies in the music entertainment and technology business and he's here to talk to you today about what the Dallas Entrepreneur Center's model is related to technology and entrepreneurship as well as give you a summary of the progress that has been made with Stoke Dent on since the beginning of January of this year. So Trey come on up and I 'll get your presentation. Good afternoon council thanks for having me here today. I'm excited to talk about what's been going on and what our expectations are and excitement is around the future. Before I start though real quickly how many people on the council have either owned a business or currently own a business? Consider yourself entrepreneurs. So imagine me too I've started several but imagine what would have happened if when you started your first business someone was there to help you to help you with education with mentorship connections to service providers helping understand what your needs are gonna be really helping you get a step in the right direction. So most businesses fail not because people have bad ideas most businesses fail because you don't know what you don't know and so what we've tried to do at the D EC is really create this opportunity to help people move in the right direction . This is what our headquarters location looks like in downtown Dallas one of the many events that we have down there. We started the DEC with the concept of helping entrepreneurs start building grow businesses and this came from the idea of as I was traveling around the country with a gentleman named Steve Case who had started AOL he had this nonprofit called the Startup America Partnership and the idea was how do we help entrepreneurs that don't live on the two coasts they don't live in Boston New York they don't live in San Francisco or LA but what can we do to help those entrepreneurs be successful and as I looked across the country I didn't see anything that really helped do that in Texas not just in Dallas but in Texas so in June of 2013 we launched the Entrepreneur Center to help do a certain amount of things for entrepreneurs education training mentorship access to capital promotion all the things that being an entrepreneur myself I knew were important to entrepreneurs because being an entrepreneurial led private nonprofit organization we have the ability to customize the programs to the needs of our individual entrepreneurs since then we now have announced nine different spaces across Texas there's two in downtown Dallas one in Addison Stoke and Denton we have one in San Antonio called the San Antonio Entrepreneur Center and then four that we're launching in low-income and underserved areas of Dallas South Dallas Fair Park and Southern Dallas Oak Cliff area what we do is really called co-working plus we call it co-working plus because most people don't really know that know the definition of an entrepreneur center but the way we define that is think of the concept of co-working and incubator put together the difference is that we don't take equity in the companies we're there to really focus on the entrepreneur being the center of the ecosystem so often when you when you look at entrepreneurial support organizations they tend to be silo ed in different areas not collaborating effectively not working well together and so we thought if we put the entrepreneur at the center of the the hub and made all of our organizations the spokes then we really could do what was best in order to support and make entrepreneurs successful we believe that in order to build a robust ecosystem for entrepreneurs you need to have a couple key components first you have to recognize that building this robust ecosystem is about having the right stakeholders in the room and that doesn't just mean the stakeholders you'll initially think of the investors and the entrepreneurs although they're crucial parts of that but it 's also including things like accelerators incubators academic institution municipalities chambers of commerce media outlets all of those different groups have to be playing the role that they can play to support the growth of the entrepreneurial ecosystem and one of the things that we've seen as we've expanded the deck across North Texas and all of Texas is recognizing the role that each group can play to support an ecosystem and recognizing the value that this has to a community to entrepreneurs in that community to mentors in that community to investors in that community and old overall economic development because what we've seen at the leadership of some of these economic development groups is that they recognize that economic development is a two- sided coin and the first side of that which is what we typically think of is how do we get Toyota to come live in Plano or how can we build a huge get a huge business to come to our area because we know what that economic impact is but the other side of that coin is what about the small businesses what about the startups what about the entrepreneurs which 95% of our country works for a small business in some way shape or form so recognizing the priority that that economic development initiative should have on a city is a lot of the reason why we do the things that we do we started with one in the Dallas Entrepreneur Center as you can see I put some of the examples of what's going on across the rest of the country we didn't create the idea of an entrepreneur center but there wasn't anything specifically going on in North Texas to support this after that we launched the through a partnership with the town of Addison the Addison treehouse then we launched the San Antonio Entrepreneur Center then we worked with you guys to put up Stoke Denton and then we launched the Innovation Hub which is also in downtown Dallas and then just most recently launched four locations in southern Dallas to support the community there the three things that we do if we can break it down our education mentorship and community education is teaching things to people that they probably could Google how do I legally structure a business what's a balance sheet what does it mean to me how do I develop a marketing plan with no money but the reality is we bring in local subject matter experts to help have interactive conversations with those entrepreneurs so that they can have a conversation not just a research process on Google and what that allows them to do is really learn practically the things that they need to do for their particular business second of all one an issue we think is exceptionally important is mentorship we believe that entrepreneurship is not an intellectual thing rather it's an experiential thing and what I mean by that is doesn't necessarily matter how smart you are it matters how quick you how quickly you can learn from the stakes that you've made and those of you who own businesses know that that's true but you can earn experience in one of two ways you can earn it which takes time money and a huge number of mistakes most of us make too many mistakes that we don't and we don't have enough money to actually get our business launched or two you can learn it and that's why the importance of the mentorship community coming in to support entrepreneurs is so helpful third its community it's recognizing that these organic collisions that are created by people coming into a space by people working out of a space by people interacting with each other and helping each other is a game changer for what the community can accomplish here's some of the programs that you see throughout our network of affiliate organizations specifically project edu we developed our own education platform to help make sure that we're helping companies from the first step which is is my idea company to the last step which is how do I effectively communicate that idea to somebody else we've been in bass ambassador program which allows us to bring in volunteers in the community that will actively participate in supporting the ecosystem not everybody who comes into our centers are entrepreneurs some of them are aspiring entrepreneurs some of them just want to be around entrepreneurs and so we've developed a program that many great things have come out of that as well what have we accomplished in the first few years of our existence we've had more than 53,000 people come through our space more than 3500 mentor hours more than 650 events which is great but what this really means is we know how to throw a party the question is what's the actual impact on the companies are these companies succeeding we did a report at the end of 2015 on our growth for the first year and a half and what we saw and I'll show you a different graphic of this later if you want to see it is that the companies that office in our space had raised in a year and a half a hundred and fifteen million dollars they had done nearly a hundred million dollars in revenue and created almost a thousand jobs with another 500 jobs slated for 2016 so when you look at that we went out and hired a professional third-party economic impact firm to tell us what that meant that's an annual economic impact of a hundred and thirty million dollars a year that was at the end of two 2015 we're now in 2017 the companies that are coming through this program that we've built and programs like this across the country across the country are working and what we like to see is a recognition of the idea that in the impact and the development that can be created from an economic perspective in these communities is exceptional and these companies although we think of entrepreneurs early stage entrepreneurs and startups as cute little concepts are actually growing at a much faster rate than we're used to seeing which necessitates capital and an introduction into the companies it necessitates commerce opportunities they're able to work with already established businesses and they're really able to grow and develop job opportunities in a local community so what's been going on at Stoke since August 1st you can see some of the events that they've been having there specifically most of the events that have occurred are happening in the last month since we brought on a full-time director in the space we've got some great organizations many of which you're probably familiar with this especially a tech mill which has been in Denton and supporting the technology community for a while now this initiatives was a part of the code Denton project that was started a few years ago and there's some amazing things that we have already done in the space and what we have planned for 2017 I'll just quickly reiterate some of the numbers the Caroline shared in terms of the number of people through the space you I think you've received a presentation on what our expectations are for this year and what plans we have in terms of events tours activity that's going to happen there but I think one of the most interesting pieces is since we've brought on a full-time director we've more than doubled monthly attendees and nearly tri pled the number of events that are happening in the space with a 30% increase in dedicated memberships 200% increase in virtual memberships and 160% increase in co-working memberships and so having someone who's dedicated to that position full-time is really making a difference now I do want to say as a side note specifically as it pertains to the work that Julie and Caroline have done in the space in the last years that it's exceptional they didn't start 2016 knowing that they were going to get to spend a bunch of time working at Stoke but they stepped up and did a phenomenal job so I want to thank both of you guys for that role that you played and I know the entrepreneurs in the room appreciate that as well here's some of the faces of Stoke just some pictures of things that have happened in events in the in the community it's important to know that the community and the faces of Stoke are the people in our community one of the most important things that we've seen as we've expanded is that is that when you grow a location in a different geographic community it's got to be about that community it's got to be about the needs and requirements of entrepreneurs in Denton it's got to be about how do we engage the community and the mentors that exist and how do we pull together the right stakeholders playing the role they need to play in order to move this forward that's the end of my section do you okay all right good thank you oh sorry yes my project Trey thanks thank to both of you for the presentation I've had a chance to co-work there a little bit myself when I needed a place to go and have some quiet and it's a it's a great place I end up talking more than I do getting things done because you end up mixing it up with folks which is a good value of it I'm curious and I saw some news stories as to your report and I thought we were gonna hold questions till the end of she's got one half presentation left two or three more slides okay thank you I appreciate it okay a quick overview of the fiscal information of the project as a whole you'll see there that we have a grand total budget for the three fiscal years which the project has been in existence of a little over six hundred and seventy five thousand dollars I want to point out that that number excludes the money that's coming from the downtown TIF fund that is going as an incentive grant to the rail yard limited which is the property owner that we're leasing the space from then want to point out also that that budget number of six hundred and seventy five thousand does include a line item for ninety six thousand dollars for an FTE in fiscal year 2015 as well as a hundred and sixteen thousand dollars for an F TE in fiscal year 16 and 17 city that city staff hire of that FTE utilizing that money was not made okay so that's what's reflected in the budget now what 's reflected in the expenditures and this is fiscal year 15 through 17 estimated is expenditures of a little over six hundred and fifteen thousand dollars I want to point out at this point that a hundred and three thousand dollars in fiscal year 15 and a hundred and twelve thousand dollars in fiscal year 16 was transferred into a capital projects account and expended out of the capital projects account I would also like to say that our friend and colleague Chuck Springer is in the house to answer any budget related questions when they arise at the end so thanks Chuck estimated revenues for fiscal year 17 a little over sixty thousand dollars and that is inclusive of the ad valorem taxes for the rail yard development as a whole that includes the commercial building as well as the multifamily residential as well as the decks remittance under the existing agreement of 10% of the membership fees that are collected finally we're back to the grant that comes from the tax increment reinvestment fund also called the downtown TIF to the rail yard we've got two fiscal years worth of that grant made for a total of a hundred and fifty two thousand dollars all right in terms of recommendations we do have some of those related to establishing baseline metrics for a first year of operations for Stoke Denton we think that it would be appropriate to track metrics around the number of events held and the attendees at each of those events the number of visitors into this space and those are people who are there who are looking at this space with an eye toward becoming a member in the space mentor sessions available versus those that are used as well as entrepreneurs assisted which could mean connecting entrepreneurs with others in fields and areas that they're looking for collaboration with connecting them with media connecting them with funding am I missing anything as far as assistance okay so what he's saying and since you can't hear him if you're not saying he can't hear us if you're not sitting at the mic is assisting entrepreneurs entrepreneurs who might not even come into this space but that might have a need for for assistance it over the phone on on the email that kind of thing we also do have some recommendations regarding contract amendments to the management agreement with the deck change the term the wording related to the term of the agreement from will be renewed annually to may be renewed annually these changes are primarily designed to bring this agreement language in line with the standards that we have with other contracts that the city enters into we do want to change the expiration date from March 1 2017 to September 30th 2017 that brings the term of this agreement into alignment with the city's fiscal year and also if the council does decide to go forward with direction on metrics that would allow for an approximate six month period from now until the end of September to track and and and look at those metrics and then decide how we would want to change them or set goals going forward also to bring the contract in line with standard practice we want to add a general 30-day prior written notice termination option and an appropriations clause and then we want to specify that the remittance of that 10% of the membership fees changes to going directly to the city instead of going back to the landlord for buy down of the triple net that's unworkable in terms of administration key points Stoke Denton is an economic development project to help technology entrepreneurs start build and grow businesses and create high quality jobs in Denton Dallas Entrepreneur Center provides education mentorship and community for entrepreneurs at Stoke Denton baseline metrics need to be established for Stoke Denton and amendments to the management agreement must be made so at this point we will take questions and then I will be seeking direction from you specifically on metrics management agreement amendments and any other concerns that you all have that you want us to address mr. pro tem thanks for your patience Tray I'm curious about the force South Dallas locations you recently launched and the reason is is this is that certainly in your downtown location you've got a different demographic you're serving perhaps has more funding accessible to them and whatnot so your price points can kind of be met appropriately what have you learned as you're heading into South Dallas with seemingly the goal of reaching a more underserved population how is your approach differently different there in terms of programming or space you provide or something like that I asked because we're on the the doorsteps to Southeast Denton right there which historically is a underserved neighborhood and a great culturally diverse mix of folks but a higher level of poverty than what we have in other parts of cities and so I see a lot of promise of this space there and want to learn from what you guys have learned in South Dallas one of the one of the things that we've seen is that there is a difference in the entrepreneurs and their needs in every location so the entrepreneurs needs in Addison are a little different than the entrepreneurs in downtown which are a little bit different from the entrepreneurs in Denton or San Antonio and so every single space is going to have some nuances obviously I think when you're looking at low-income or underserved communities those nuances may be greater and so our focus specifically down there was it was a response to the request of the local community to come and create an incubator solution the differences that we'll see is that will the programming will probably have some different components as it as it pertains to workforce development as it pertains to training on certain skills and specifically as we look at the future and what job requirements are going to be in skills are going to be for different job requirements we're going to focus on that the billing will probably be a little bit different to fit the needs of the community and every single community that we're in we want to create a scenario where there's a sacrifice to participate but that that sacrifice doesn't make put undue stress strain on the entrepreneur to be successful and so what we are but what we do in all of our space is as we look at building this community in this ecosystem is recognizing that the deck does certain things really well we don't do all things well and so when we talk about education mentorship training and things like that that that means bringing together the right resources to do that so when we look at the concept of entrepreneurship we look at it as a pond and on one side you have an idea and hopefully if you get to the other side you have a successful profitable business there are for the analogy there are stones that need to go in the pond to get you across that several of those stones we can put into place and we can make available to get the entrepreneur going but we need to bring in partners and organizations that support companies along that way and so what we're going to be doing specifically in southern and south Dallas is finding those collaborative partners that can do the things that we don't do well but in the end regardless of industry focus regardless regardless of geographic location we have seen the needs of entrepreneurs to be similar especially at the early stage so when somebody so where we really help differentiate companies based upon entrepreneurs based upon specific industry focus is through the mentors that we bring in so if we have somebody that's launching a landscaping company and we don't have a mentor that that focuses on landscaping we go find one does that answer your question customer Gary mr. Bowles thanks for coming today have a couple questions for you what's the difference between what you provide and what a maker space for instance would provide for a community in terms of entrepreneurship so I would say hardware to some degree the tools that exist there I think what we're focusing on is really supporting and helping the business elements of building a business as opposed to the training behind how do you use a saw how do you build a study sculpt something those particular skill sets so one of the reasons I asked that is because I noticed that there was some shift in the event programming towards more of a maker a maker type facility which I think is I personally think is great but I noticed that that was something that's different between Stoke and for instance Dallas entrepreneur sorry isn't center entrepreneur center just call it the deck it's easier yeah so I noticed that was some of the difference was you know for instance you guys don't have a 3d printing machine you don't have any of the maker space item so how how what is the plan to reconcile in terms of programming having maker space programming versus not having a maker space so the so the answer that and one of the things that I think makes our model interesting is that we don't have to have a focus on maker space or non maker space what we're doing is creating the hub the entrepreneurial hub so that people can come in and support the entrepreneurial initiatives that they want so that means one day there may be a woman who code event and the next day there may be an entrepreneur class for artists it isn't limited to one particular need of entrepreneurs we believe that all entrepreneurs deserve the right to be served and supported and helped regardless of whether they're building a high-growth tech company or they want to build more of a small shop for the kind of things that they 're doing and and so we don't limit ourselves to any particular programming only but in a perfect example of this is that the partnership we have with TechMill TechMill puts on some of their own programming that we don 't create ourselves and we don't determine ourselves but what we want to do is ensure that the members in the space and the programming in the space are focused on entrepreneurial initiatives regardless of what they may be so if I can just follow up with that about what it is that you guys provide in terms of the actual substance of what you're providing you receive 90% of the rents that come in for the space you don't pay rent at the space you also receive funding for the staff at the space so given that you've received about I think it's 39,000 give or take what has been done with that those funds to this point sure so the so the way that it works is that every location that we have requires a substantial amount of work and support from our headquarters in order to provide value to that location and that's programming support and entrepreneurial management support and all the different things it takes to run in essence a an affiliate network of locations and so as a nonprofit we don't we don't make more money one way or the other but what we 're trying to do is develop a model that allows us to be able to sustain locations in different parts of the community and and so the money is used to support the the staff that we have in the space to support the staff supporting initiatives that we have to do from the home office that supports you know some of the the cost of doing business as it relates to snacks and events and things related to that but if but part of the reason we've developed the model that we have is that in order for it to not lose us money as a nonprofit organization we have to develop a scenario that allows us to do what we do well and create the economic development components and the economic impact that we need in order to make it successful for the city so if I can summarize what you said it's administrative costs is that correct in administrative costs well there are administrative costs as a component of that but in terms of the programming and all the other elements that come into play the full-time director affiliate director that we have that integrates into that supports that comes out and is a part of the operations a part of the planning a part of the event delivery it's more than I think just administrative costs but it's the cost of the orbit of the entire organization to run the individual programs to participate in making sure people get paid and get the benefits that they need but if I can interrupt you for just a second so when we're on the topic of money you mentioned and it was in your presentation that one of the one of the things that you support is access to capital would deck be opposed to a metric that measures how much capital is accessed by the entrepreneurs that are in their Center would we be opposed to measuring that sure as a part of our contract amendments we would not be opposed to measuring the amount of capital going into companies at all okay would that be opposed to tying that to the renewal of the contract so we're looking at year-over- year changes or increases to access to capital for the companies that come through your doors so if I understand you tying the amount of capital that goes into companies is not a direct reflection of the decks involvement in the community providing access to capital when a company is ready for access to capital something that we do we do not make the determination on which companies get capital versus don't get capital we become a conduit towards capital and fusion organizations be it institutional be a bank be it whatever and making those available and opportunity opportunities available to the cup to the entrepreneurs but it would be difficult for us to be able to tie companies a's ability to raise money to whether to our success as an organization so I guess help me understand how it is that deck acts as a conduit for access to capital so first of all we create relationships with capital institutions venture capitalists angel networks angels themselves banks CDF eyes all the different components not just locally but all across the country and then based upon those investment mandates of those individual organizations or into individual people were able to send them quote-unquote deal flow that represents the things that they're looking forward to to invest in and then our job is to try to help the companies get into a position to create traction revenue profitability things like that where they become a more likely candidate to receive funding from those organizations okay that's helpful appreciate that last thing in terms of the metrics that we have for the contract how do the metrics that we have proposed here differ from the metrics that are used in your other contracts with Add ison Dallas etc so the the metrics that we track we we track the same in every single location so you're saying that the metrics that have been proposed are the identical to those proposed in Addison for instance okay thank you I've got a thank you very much for your presentation I think Caroline these might be for you these questions I've got a couple of them I guess and it's more of a a structural they're more along structural questions of the program itself that we currently have I guess I've been a little surprised at well when I when I voted for this there was extensive conversation about what is it what's it going to be I think a mayor pro tem you really spearheaded this and I took I visited the tech mill group when we were trying to get this off the ground and so my understanding was this is supposed to sort of be a an entrepreneurial center for high-tech kind of startup companies that seemed to be what the thrust was and so as we moved forward and we voted to have a new full-time employee but when I look at who's leasing the space now somehow we've gotten off track and so that's really my concern it doesn't seem like that we're we're le asing to the people some of them we are as I've looked at the leases and I thought there's gonna be a presentation of the different types of leases that might be proprietary so I understand that but as I look at the leases they don't seem to fit into the intent and the spirit of what we what I believed we had started back in 2014 and so I'm not gonna relive the past even though I have a lot of questions about that and I have a lot of questions on we didn't hire somebody apparently because the money got moved because we were over in some other budgetary item so but we got to start somewhere so my question and focus is more on how do we get this back on track to be what was voted for $200,000 a year and a lease of five years representing what's the lease amount about 8,000 a month or something like that just about so I mean 400 500 thousand bucks to get people who are in that space that are taking advantage of the programs that you have and the mentorships and the things for the companies that we originally intended it to be for because I won't list I won't list off the individual leases that I have a question as far as whether they meet that intent but I know some of them are already we're already existing businesses that just moved to that space well that's so that's really my concern how do we get this thing back on track because this is a lot of money and and if we want to have some revenue set aside for other types of businesses entrepreneurial startups other than the high-tech that we sort of really spearheaded this to be I'm okay for that but that's a different policy discussion but here we've I think we've set the table for what we wanted in our economic development agreement which I mean I just and this is just what is governed what we were voting on back when we says whereas the project will involve grantees investing approximately 12 million and it's and is expected to provide co-working and incubator space for an economic development program focused on the creation of high-tech companies and jobs to me that's the purpose here so I think we're a little off from that so my real question is I'm okay with discussing metrics and management agreements amendments but that's all under the umbrella of it becomes more of what it was intended to be as far as how do we get the kind of companies and entrepreneurs in there that we started out with this program so if there's any kind of recommendations or because I know I don't know does the city have any kind of I don't know if it's a proving authority but do we look at and sort of give a blessing to the leases as they come in to ensure that they sort of meet the criteria of the program is that something that we've been doing or is that something we haven't been doing so up up until the full-time director came on economic development staff was picking up what was needing to be done related to membership in the space and if you'll recall back to the way I preface the entire presentation saying that we face some challenges sure frankly I think the loss of continuity of the thread between 2015 budget approval and kind of when when we hit the ground a little bit unexpectedly getting the space going I think we lost some of that continuity and I think that this is a good opportunity to recheck and reset some of that if that's a fair way to put it I understand that there have been some frustrations around that and we want to make sure that we 're being responsive to the concerns I think that there are some possible options and number one I absolutely think that the city can have some discussions regarding members and as members are approaching and we're vetting I think that's a possibility I know that it's it's gonna be something that will be important going forward based on what I'm hearing from the community and from the council members I also think that Trey might be able to speak to a little bit of how we can plan to help some folks who are maybe currently in the space or have some discussions about successful exits or graduations moving on and can kind of bringing in the next group of folks that maybe are more tech focused I think that every business that's in the space is valid I think that people work really hard to build those businesses but again I want to be responsive to your concerns and the concerns from some of the members of the community that we're staying true to what the council wants this project to be yeah and in no way am I saying that any of the businesses in there are not valid I mean obviously they are I'm simply asking us to take a more closer look and because we are spending 300 to 400 thousand dollars a year between the lease payments and the 220 thousand dollars or whatever the budget is going to be now that we've hired we've done something different with the FTE and and I just want to ensure that what we intended that to be is what it is and what it continues to be so it's not anything about who's there now or you know kicking anybody out it's how do we refocus you know get back on track and because it sounds like there's a lot of promise in this model and in this particular kind of incubation that we set out to try to achieve and and so I want to be able to give it an opportunity to succeed and that will only happen if we really commit to the original intent that we had and this has nothing to do with the deck obviously I mean this is something that council and staff and it's sort of our job to help get back on track and then to forward those kind of initiatives and amendments metrics to to our provider so that that I mean this is all good I appreciate the information but that's been really my main concern was how do we reset this to because what I've seen is it's very there 's a large potential here especially for incubation of high technology innovative innovative jobs that's what I want to make sure that we get the best opportunity to succeed sure so if I may respond to some of your questions I'd say first of all I think you're right in terms of the question of intent and making sure that we're on the same page moving forward as to what is the intent of the city of Denton and how can we make sure that those expectations are communicated and that they're being you know responded to and met as much as possible I think that for us as it pertains to the process of members coming in we have a we have a specific process on how we determine who gets into a space we have a process for how we want to help them grow what types of people that means what types of companies that means I believe that most companies are moving to be high-tech companies one way or the other but what we've learned and what we're seeing is as occurring across the country is recognizing that that you can support many different groups and many different focuses without compromising the value or the contribution of what we're trying to do specifically for those businesses and so the question is do you do you only allow high-tech companies that check these five boxes to come in to be able to support them as entrepreneurs or do you create a methodology that supports entrepreneurs of all types not not all those people will be members in the space and work there daily day to day but our goal is to bring these people to a point of graduation where we celebrate the growth and then there are certain inflection points when you build a business that you want to get excited about one of them is the day that you you know file your LLC another ones the day you get your first customer and one of them is the day that you exit stoke into your own office space in order to in order to grow to the next level and we and I know that already at stoke we've reached out into the community trying to send people that we did not feel were the right fit for stoke into office spaces all around the region and so we look at the local landlords and real estate owners as partners and an opportunity to expand and grow and serve the community as we as we continue to do that but I think for us and obviously this is not the right the right location but I would love to go through specifically how we determine who gets in how we determine how long they stay how we determine how we can best support them in order to make sure that you guys have all the information we have in order to do that moving forward well and I think it's impaired because you're right you can I don't think there's been much guidance on what meets that criteria of that intent and so I think it's incumbent upon us as a policy body to ensure that we don't make it too restrictive but that we also don't make it too broad to where we really are using this space to promote the high technology jobs that and entrepreneur high technology entrepreneur companies sure that we set out to do so councilmember let's see did you councilmember Hawkins go ahead you've been waiting patiently thank you I appreciate you saying that you feel like you're in partnership with local landlords and owners because I think that's part of where my concern is too is that original intent you know when I voted on it too I did believe it was more of a high-tech kind of job workspace and so you know earlier I don't think it was specific to the Denton location but you know if a landscaping company comes in and there's not a mentor for that we'll go out and find that so in the other locations that you have it's not just specific to high-tech stuff it's more entrepreneurial is that correct correct and you tend to see more high-tech people and companies come in to rent office space and office sitting next to somebody else small businesses don't do that as much okay but you know the reference to the landscaping was specifically like a southern Dallas and sure but regardless the point being if there's somebody that comes in that's building a high-tech biomed company well I've never built a high-tech biomed company so we're gonna go find somebody that can support the needs of that individual company and/or entrepreneur but the goal is how do we help these people and these companies grow from the stage there and to the stage where they can graduate and go into the community and whether that's specifically in only high-tech I think you miss out on an opportunity to serve the broader entrepreneurial community but there are certain but there are certain roles that we play in the ecosystem that necessitates having partnerships and connecting with other organizations and other institutions along what we call the lifecycle of an entrepreneur well and I agree with that I you know the Chamber of Commerce I went through a program called the small business development program before I started a business too and they were very helpful I did think though the intent of this one was to attract some higher paying jobs or tech kind of company so that's that's why I brought that sure and the only thing I would reference in the numbers I said before about the economic impact of Dallas that hundred and fifteen million dollars raised a hundred million in revenue full-time average salary of sixty thousand dollars part- time average salary of forty thousand dollars was was not specifically focused only on high tech companies that was all the entrepreneurs that we have but the other side of it I would say is if you are if you're not focusing on integrating yourself into being some sort of high-tech organization and international organization day one then that's part of what we're going to be encouraging those companies to do as they grow thanks trey councilmember Br iggs well a lot of my questions and concerns that I have been writing down here have been addressed in in some way or or another my my concern and I think that my mistake but was approving the the rent and utilities I think that is a really large cost and I think that is kind of the focus of the expense rather than the management agreement with the deck and so I didn't really realize that I just kind of saw the large figure of what we were in for and then I started looking at the the budget and that is the the rent and utilities is a really large part of it and so that's just more of a statement than it is a question thank you for coming today I do have several questions for both of you so Carolyn today I know we saw the number of dollars budgeted what have been the dollars spent since 2014 2015 is it around 400,000 so the second bullet there the grand total expenditures for the life of the project through this fiscal year the end of this fiscal year estimated is just over six hundred and fifteen thousand dollars so I just want that to soak in for a minute it's a lot of money so my question for deck is return on investment because it looks like you're tracking some metrics in Dallas Addison do we have any idea if any businesses have been created any jobs that have been created and how much angel funding that has come through your partnerships with angel funding I'm just looking for return on investment specifically in Denton or yes our organization so we we have technically had our staff person in in in Stoke for the last month so what we're we're what we've tracked for the last nine months is the metrics of access not the other metrics those other metrics we tend we tend to wait at the end of the year once we get enough companies through the space and then we actually go do our own economic development survey with them to ask those types of questions but that's absolutely something that we do in our different locations we have not done it in the last month now but you've been open I get it that your supervisor of the space is new but deck has been on board with the space for how long the space opened August 1 st August okay so six months so I'm just saying that's important to a council when you're spending that kind of money on a project so I also want to mirror my concern on the leases that it was my understanding as well that part of the discussion was the graduates from our two universities in the tech fields leave Denton because of you know they're able to find tech jobs and at Stoke would help encourage keeping some of those people here to and I understand the tech world my nephew is part of the San Francisco tech world so been part of it since the 80s from its onset so we get a lot of a lot of startup stories from out there so moving forward with the leases we talk about metrics I really think we need to have it and this is for Carolyn a litmus test for our businesses coming in in terms of because what we've seen these are existing businesses some of these leases who've left other lease space because they could get it for cheaper at Stoke because the city is underwriting the lease space so that that just doesn't fit with me there has to be a litmus test somehow that whoever is coming into lease space is truly some kind of a startup that they can't just move from that they have an existing business and I know we've signed leases so we're you know we are bound to those leases but I have a real concern with just the lease space and I know it was kind of an anxiousness to get space leased but I think we need to drill down on who it is who's actually coming because if this is going to be a tech incubator and that's what we're talking about we need to really focus on tech incubator because that's why I voted for it as well because that was our intent and purpose so I think we really need to drill down on return on investment so I do approve that wording on May versus will because in a year we are going to be looking at return on investment and so actual costs I still want everybody to listen to that six hundred and fifteen thousand dollars so thank you okay we've got we got four I'm just going to tell them who's up in the queue okay and if we could you know everybody's gonna have a second round and then if unless there's anything burning we're gonna go ahead and move into the direction based upon the request made from staff so we got councilmember Hawkins councilmember Briggs councilmember Gary and then mayor pro tem and then you wanted I think you actually I did want to make one clarifying comment I appreciate the importance of noting the amount of money that's been spent on the project but I kind of want to marry up what council member Briggs's comment is with what your comment was the expenditures were for capital improvements to the space and are for the lease and triple net payment because the piece of the expenditures that has gone directly to the deck what is to contract for the employment of the full-time director but the other expenses are for capital and ongoing operations so just to clarify all right I think I'm on deck I'm ready to give my direction here you know what's frustrating about this you've only been open six months and here we are pressing it on you already like you're not doing a you know good enough job when we voted for this we were okay with all this what I would like this council to do is just to get a little bit more focused and figure out you know is the was the building empty and we had to fill it up you know was it kind of like it felt just get some people in the in the space I just think it's way too fast and knee-jerk of a decision to all of a sudden start diving into numbers and start critiquing everything when I did vote on it though I do want to say I thought it was for kind of high-tech startup type businesses like that so I don't know if that's enough you know for me so that's what yeah we'll address that okay as we move into the it's nine months right not six months so I'm I was just curious I'm curious since we opened how how often or how many times the deck has been to stoke like physically since I mean do you do you make do you physically come down is that how you so I'm just so the way because we're geographically dispersed across North Tech all of Texas we can't come to each location every day which is why we why we think we see the importance of a localized director to be there and that person is essentially our staff member our representation in that space and that person is there every single day and managing and running the processes and all of the strategy for what's going on there and then we support that person we come out from time to time we do have a full-time director director of affiliate networks that come in and is available to each of the satellite locations to support them as well we came out several times during the six to nine month period that there was no staff person here but it was it was our hope that before St oke had launched originally that there would be a director in place and that didn't happen that was one of the challenges that we that we saw and are just grateful to have a great director there now. Can we clarify on this particular grand total expenditure that's the expended city funds correct? Yes. Okay so there were some other expenditures in this space namely the tenant finish out if I remember correctly so it's about five hundred seventeen thousand dollars of capital expenditures into the space yes okay so that was this closer to 1.2 million for the actual capital or closer to 1 million for the capital expenses in the space correct? Am I getting that right? I think so I mean with the TFI and what's been expended here. Okay oh Chuck's hovering. Chuck's in the house come on down . Thank you Mayor. I think the leasehold expenditures at five hundred thousand that was done by the firm that owns the building to make improvements to the building the six hundred and fifteen thousand are direct city expenditures. And does that number include the rents that were sent to deck directly or no? You mean that the rents no that does not include that we included us that in the revenues the 10% that the city gets from those rents and kind of an estimated amount through current but it does not include the rental income that's paid directly to deck from the office leases. Okay that helps me understand kind of the value that we've put into the project in general so that I appreciate that thank you. The other thing I wanted to ask was on slide seven or eight there there was a list of suggested metrics I think it was eight I'm sorry. Right appropriations clause what is that do you know? Now I'm getting into Aaron territory but I'm gonna say in general that that means or Chuck is gonna come back now. We need a bigger pony. And I'll have Aaron correct me under Texas state law the council's not authorized to enter into what's called a debt without issuing debt so we can only enter into a contract where we appropriate money annually based on the council's approval in the budget. So if any given year under a contract if the council doesn't appropriate money for that contract then the city can exit that contract because the funds weren't available and therefore we didn't enter into a debt beyond the current budgeted year. And that's not currently in the contract correct? I don't believe so. No it is not. Okay so in addition to having thank you for that in addition to having the that appropriations clause that means that essentially on August 30th this council has to decide if that budget item is going to be funded or not if I'm understanding it correctly. I think in terms of an appropri ations clause yes but then also in terms of continuing to fund the entire line that exists and has existed in the ED budget for since fiscal year 15. Okay sorry one last thing apologize. Would you have a problem with and I'm speaking to Mr. Bowles here providing us with your contracts with Addison and Dallas. What I'm concerned with is just I don't want to reinvent the wheel in terms of what what it is that we're saying is going to be provided by your company and so I'd like to see what those contracts are mirror them and then provide our own council directed items as well. So first of all to clarify we don't have a contract with the City of Dallas. The City of Dallas does not fund the D EC. They gave a 380 grant early on to support the initiation and are looking at other ways to participate in partnering with us in our expansion strategies. Second of all I'd have to talk to Addison because our contract with them is covered by a confidentiality agreement but I would imagine they wouldn't have a problem with that and I would say in addition to that the contract we signed with Addison was a subtenant contract versus what we signed with Denton at Denton's request was a management contract. So I'm happy to help and try to get you any of the information that you want but it's I think it's a little different scenario. Well I'm confused now because when I asked you prior about what the metrics were for performance. The metrics are the same but the contracts are different. Where are the metrics memorialized? In which in you're in the contract for Addison for instance. It's in the I think it's in the exhibit A I've got to look at the contract. Okay if you just wherever it is that that that is memorialized if you could provide it to us if if it's allowed. Sure. Thanks. Happy to do. And we can do initial or additional research on contracts that exist with other places too just for samples. Thank you a couple questions too on any of your satellite locations I know your nonprofits you have your own nonprofit board I'm sure. Correct. Do any of your other locations have a more local board or steering committee or something that kind of helps ensure the local flavor and direction of it? Typically there's an advisory board put together locally that gets to speak that doesn't have to deal with the responsibilities of governing the nonprofit organization but gets to help be advocates for and supporters of the the local organization. Some of our locations have that others don't. So you wouldn't be opposed to that at all. Okay. I would love it. Yeah and I think I think that might help us in terms of kind of keeping the ball moving and as the mayor said rightly I think in the right direction and make sure I think he said getting on the right track which is right by the train station so that's good. In addition I know that you you guys when you kind of brought a leasing structure into this which incidentally I think a lot of the problems we're seeing is as somebody who's leased a couple spaces downtown and was looking for space at the time that all these people were kind of looking at the deck opening up there's just a lack of types of spaces in the downtown area for early stage businesses and so of all types so I think what you saw was a rush and to be honest look comparing square footage costs this isn't cheaper than what's downtown necessarily there might be some examples of that in some cases it's more expensive than what you can get downtown so I I hope that we're reporting this back to our development community to say there's a high need for this and I still see people circling around downtown trying to figure out how to get into it so I think that probably reflects that but in terms of the flexibility of the leasing options how do you guys you've had a few months to look at kind of what's coming in and what's not coming into the deck and that might be a key to determining how we're getting the right mix in there how often do you look at that and make adjustments well so we evaluate our members monthly in terms of who's coming who's leaving where they are what their what their contracts are what their needs are we we believe that it's helpful that although we are in the early stage space that we don't have all companies of people who just have an idea and they're trying to figure out how to make that work but we have companies all along that early stage spectrum because one of the greatest things that we've seen support entrepreneurs in our spaces is an entrepreneur that's around their same stage but does something really well and so they learn sort of just from being around them they learn from that interaction so I think a lot of the reason that people at least anecdotally the people choose a deck location a stoke location isn't because it's cheaper rent it's because of the amenities associated with that as it pertains to the education the training the mentorship and just the openness of the community to support and help each other grow as businesses so we do look at it often we're trying I mean it's it's an interesting model for us because our goal is to build companies and have them leave which is not a normal normal business goal right is to build up a customer base and then have them no longer be a customer but for us that's important that's why so much that's part of the reason why we're a non-profit because as it differentiates from a standard co-working space which is just trying to constantly optimize revenue rent space by the foot and sell it by the seat worked we're really interested in supporting companies that want to build their business and grow it you know to the point that's just a comment then I got one other question to the point of the makeup and I totally get I mean the focus I agree there needs to be a high tech component to this and that's where the high paying jobs that's where the new economy is coming from that's what our younger people tend to be focusing on and I'll just throw out my wife as an example she started a company with a bunch of elementary school teachers my wife can't figure out how to open up Facebook but understood in order to scale her idea she needed to find tech folks right so it's that collision that interdisciplinary focus if she would have been blocked out of a space like this of course this was way before this happened that would have been unfortunate because she's an elementary school teacher right and so I think we need to think about that collision of focuses okay I got a question about your scenario but go ahead sure no this is a question for you Caroline and it relates to I think of this as we're talking about I think talk about metrics and kind of where do we go from here this seems to be situated in terms of what is the city's overall goal as it relates to tech economic development which just should be from my perspective one of our initiatives that's getting us down that line do we have at this point a in this might be what needs to be part of the conversation a focused statement on what our economic development strategies are as it relates to tech initiatives the short answer to that is there a nice paragraph that I could email somebody and that's a that's a no I think again to be frank we've been addressing this particular aspect of operations and getting this stabilized in terms of what we're doing to support our local technology industry you know leadership Denton suggested a local tech council last year I have been in initial contact with them about reviving that idea working to bring that to fruition in some other areas of our economic development policy both the general policy and the policy that surrounds the economic development investment fund we have referenced knowledge-based jobs jobs that are higher income and you know made that a qualification to be able to qualify for those types of funds so there are bits and pieces that are in play but haven't really been brought together in a cohesive way so I understand what you're driving at and I think that that's that is very important and we can get there but do we have that today no and by no means am I pressing you to have that today but I think I think is worth thinking about this question I think that's where I think we could get really strategic is to kind of broaden up that focus get the right players at the table to help us get in that direction and then ask the question how to stoke fit into that because to me that's going to give us the metrics because we're going to understand what are all the needs in our community to foster this on all sizes of types of tech businesses from an infrastructure point of view to a programming point of view and then how does this work and that's where the metrics become but you know I'm excited I mean if if the magic that what you guys are seeing in Dallas tray is able to translate into other communities and it seems like you're starting to do that by replicating this model that's a game-changer for the city of Denton to even be thinking about economic development in those terms in terms of numbers of jobs like that looking at angel funding coming into our community you talked to some of our early startups they will all say that's an obstacle to getting ahead in Denton and what makes them want to perhaps think about moving to the east or west coast so anyways I think this is a great conversation hopefully that can spark that larger conversation I think this is definitely the the beginning of you guys hearing a lot from my office so that we we make sure that we have the continuity that's required and I just want to clarify to that the metrics that I'm referencing are what I would consider and I think probably what Trey would consider to be really year one I mean sort of first six months second six months type of metrics that can be used to establish goals going forward and that we would want to look at more significant ROI based you know access to capital can overall economic contributions in a little bit later of a stage so okay one question of clarification I guess because when Trey you'd said that really of all the from what I understood the centers that you are present in all different forms that this one is unique in the sense that it's more of a management agreement where it sounds like the other ones you have a different you have a different paradigm of involvement is that right so we have moved more to a management style agreement with all of ours so Addison was the first okay so after Addison it's just a 20 something page contract it doesn't necessarily make sense in it and it just was complicating the issue as opposed to what is the deck really providing and how can we write a contract with that rather than having sub tenant related issues that refer to a tenant lease between the city and it was just really complicated we still have some of the same elements for example we we put we have we hold insurance at our different locations we do things like that but but it's just it became an easier way for the city and economic development group to understand to do that so okay well then let's move forward with the staff's requests or the needing direction on if you could put a slide of what you 're actually asking for okay well that's broken well well the management let's start with the management agreements because that you've got some specific requests or suggestions there change term from wording from will to be renewed into may and I'm assuming that just allows everybody an opportunity to rethink it and sort of renew it on a yearly basis if that's if you want to move forward any I mean I'm okay with that everybody seems to his direction all right okay on that yeah change expiration date to match the fiscal year that makes sense to me everything okay add a general 30-day prior written notice termination upon option and appropriations cause sounds like that's something that really really need to be in there just from a statutory perspective as far as I mean no no it's it's a common contractual provision okay all right so we don't have to do it by state law it's just we need to do it because we can't as Chuck said something another about debt yes all right Chuck you need to be in the house more often so everybody okay with that moving forward on that remittance of the 10% of management fees directly to the city of Denton s to compared to where it's going where's it going now well currently it's coming directly here but in the contract it says that it's supposed to go back to rail yard partners for them to apply to buy down our triple net which they don't want that they don't want to deal with it so we have a verbal agreement between okay all of us that we're just doing it all right so we're just memorializing that to make it easier for everybody all right I'm okay with that okay now I guess one for me would be as far as go to metrics yes these is this the metrics here okay events held attendees are we supposed to give you specific things on this is that what you're looking for what you can just say yes oh you're saying generally yes baseline metrics for the next six months in particular and then using these to establish future goals related to increases and then even adding in more goals related to harder numbers about companies that have exited amount of capital so think of this as sort of the first within the next six months this is what we want to be looking at to establish a baseline okay so we're gonna be looking in six months to see what it is and we're gonna decide if that's our baseline or not we're not trying to set a goal right right yes can I add something to it I don't know if this makes sense from you all's perspective but I think it does since we've started having these conversations and they've really been community driven with some folks back here that are part of the tech community tech mill whatnot that have been talking about this really for five years you've seen over that time what's been fostered in that if we've seen some significant companies kind of come up I mean you think about Kubo's who's sending things into space getting funding from Silicon Valley I mean this is they have the potential to bring billions of dollars into the debt and economy I mean quite literally so we've got a lot of great people at the table that have been involved in this does it make sense to get a snapshot of the entrepreneurial tech landscape in Denton that's kind of surrounding this even if they're not geographically located in Stoke and I say that because a number of those entities are represented as part of your mentors so they become part of in your words the ecosystem that that to me gives us a community snapshot of where we're at in terms of tech that to me becomes really a more important metric rather than just simply as it relates to this and I don't know if that's easy to capture or not Caroline we'll look into it you know what I mean by that okay okay and if you could when you figure out what that is send it back so I'm so if you had to put a another bullet item up there do you know what that would be yeah I would be broadening it to kind of a community baseline of what's happening in tech in Denton currently all right sort of an overall picture yes okay and I think in open this up to my colleagues for just some input because I think we've talked about how do we ensure that the businesses or the entrepreneurs or the people that are there really conform to what our the spirit of our intent was in in fostering technologically innovative entrepreneurship so is what what do you all need or we can do I have to craft it right now but obviously we need to start thinking about what are some guidelines to help with the decision-making process and I don't necessarily want us to you know micromanage but obviously several of us have said well we're not sure some might agree or disagree with if we had specific leases we talked about so what kind of guidance can we come up with so if you maybe wanted to put some of that together that's what I was gonna say if if we could take some time to work on that and bring it back to you in all of the different options that are available to us up to and including another work session we can do that because it's clearly important and we'll get that compiled and get back to you all so do you feel like moving forward from here before we have that information that as individuals or companies come to you wishing to lease that you've heard enough discussion to give you some direction on who might be who might fit there based upon the conversation that do you feel like at least generally you have enough of that to make that determination yes and I think our next step when we leave this meeting is probably to schedule a time for staff on both sides to sit down and make sure that we are in complete alignment on okay where how we're gonna move forward councilman Bragg's just one last comment on on that I know at least two people that were turned down in the beginning because they didn't fit certain criteria so I know that they're not just leasing to everyone or at least they weren't in in the beginning so just a comment sure I mean yeah I don't think my point isn't to try to make this sort of dark kind of process it's here 's our intent and how do we make sure that everybody understands that and if we need to change it if we find that there's a challenge and it's sort of is leaving some people out or it's it's not providing those collisions that we're talking about well then let's let's have a conversation about that we all want this to be successful you know in the way that we've we've sort of set it out as a policy yes mayor pro tem that point I think this is a really good discussion y'all are having and there's something unique about this space as it relates to these permanent offices versus the co-working versus the dedicated desks because that's really when you're talking about a real business versus kind of some individuals or some loose association kind of on a very early front stage to me that's an opportunity for us to really think about this I mean at the end of the and this is just my thoughts as you guys are thinking about it those become some prime spots for some people who really need it because they're starting to scale up and maybe need some more privacy or whatnot that's what I'd want to hold pretty sacred so as you're thinking about lease agreements and if there's a lot of openings and someone's coming in you know maybe it's a agreement this is month-to-month because if that new company comes in that we need the support you guys are out we're bringing them in so I think there's room for creativity and some targeted ideas on that sure and I mean I what I'd kind of say in response to that is I think we're open and willing to hear what you guys the true intent is and going to be and respond accordingly but but I do want to say this to the council we didn't come to Denton because you asked us we came to Denton because it's Denton because of the community of people you have here the entrepreneurs you have here the mentors and the people who are willing to help and get involved we saw this as a community that was ripe for entrepreneurial support and so I would you know I would mention that to you guys that as I look across a landscape of cities all across Texas that are asking us to come into their area we chose this one because of those things I think you have some amazing assets here to help your entrepreneurs be successful and I think that you will see through some of these initiatives we're talking about measurable differences in measurable growth in your entrepreneurial community that will provide some of the goals that you're hoping for and I appreciate your point of recognizing a business isn't built in a day a month or even a year if I was judged after six months in being a business it would be very sad so councilmember Bosney quick question for Carolyn what is the lease term of the current leases that are signed there so we were verifying that earlier are you talking about just the office space well let me back up leases in the space can be either month to month or on a six month basis or on a 12 month basis but I think that everybody in the space now is either under a six month lease or a month to month lease so with that information in six months some of these leases will be ready to turn and that's when I think we need to have a concrete policy and guidelines on I just call it the litmus test on you know people coming in I think that will help the space so I appreciate that thank you councilmember Hawkins brought up the chamber small business development and I would like to see maybe a list of differences kind of what what they do as opposed to what deck does okay so so that I'm clear when we 're talking about metrics we're also counting events that other outside groups put on in this space is that correct that would go under attendees to events that's really interesting to me because I mean what is decks involvement in those in a tech mill presentation for instance so depending on the the partner tech mills a little bit different because they've been here for a while we're in charge of putting on the events organizing it making sure that everything's handling there our staff is there during the event making sure that it sort of supports the goals that we're trying to develop and the things that we're trying to do for the community is essentially is this really supporting and helping entrepreneurs or is it a meetup group to talk about Seinf eld I mean we have to ensure that we're which would be a good media group right thanks any other comments are we okay with these metrics and then the ones that mayor pro tem it's sort of alluded to and then we're gonna come back with some more guidance on that well I appreciate you being here appreciate the conversation it's a great conversation thank you colleagues but I think this is important sort of helps us make sure that we're still moving in the direction and if we need to change course we'll come back with the data that will help support a change if one is so warranted so all right thank you all very much I appreciate it thanks to all of you I appreciate your time and patience let's take a quick five-minute break before we go on to the next work session , thank you. I wanted to welcome everybody back to this meeting of the Denton City Council Tuesday February 21st 2017 it is 2 43 I wanted to let the record reflect that I failed to mention that Councilmember Gregory had recused himself on agenda item 3a so my apologies Councilmember Gregory for that but I want the record to reflect that we'll move on to agenda item 3b receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding multifamily development standards. Mayor members of council, city manager, city staff this item brought forward to you today for discussion is a follow-up to our discussion from November 8th of last year and to talk about multifamily and specifically also collegiate housing and single-room occupancy often referred to it as well we heard from the council back in November about what we had proposed earlier about creating a new use and also a definition for collegiate housing during that discussion the council directed staff to do an alternative research to look at how the existing development code standards develop multifamily development standards could be analyzed to further address the issue that we are dealing with as far as collegiate housing and multifamily in the more urban areas of the city. So for background information we do not have again a definition or use listed in the then development code for collegiate housing they fall under multifamily as it is currently and multifamily is defined as a structure that has three or more dwellings on a single lot and those are those multif amily uses are permitted per the zoning district that they're in the list here that you see on this slide identified those zoning districts that permit multif amily either by right or by SUP or through limitations those limitations that you see here L4 L5 and L6 are in your backup L4 essentially states that multifamil ies permitted with a specific use permit part of a mixed-use development a part of a master plan community and if it was permitted prior to the adoption of the code back in 2002 L5 is the limitation that each bedroom equates to half a dwelling unit so that's another limitation and L6 is a limitation that the bottom floor of that structure if it's along a street road or arterial must have a non-residential component to that multifamily development. We the staff went back and looked at not only the zoning districts that multifamily is permitted but also looked at the maximum building heights the lock coverage and all of this is under section 355 of the D DC it governs what the maximum height is what the maximum lock coverage is but we also know that there's special overlay districts that also govern height and lock coverage one of course specifically is the fry Street overlay district that has a separate and special maximum of height and lock coverage. We also looked at the parking requirements in my presentation to you all back in November I roughly went through what was required for a efficiency one bedroom two three and four bedrooms this here illustrates what each is required per the DDC and again if it's part of a special overlay district or a plan development whatever it may be NPC they will have a different requirement for parking but this applies to all development that's not part of a special purpose overlay district it's part of the DDC. Ron this real quick question and I think I understand a little bit of the history on the on the three bedroom units it's only two spaces per unit and then when it jumps to four it's one per bedroom correct what was the rationale behind that that skip so I know we still don 't allow it we don't require two for a two-bedroom but it seems like that push more people out on the street for street parking is that yeah well I think that that would create more parking on site right but if you don't have it on site then it could push them I mean if you got a three-bedroom unit you don't have two spaces they got to park somewhere else correct and I think when these parking ratios were developed you know three bedrooms thinking that there were families so a three-bedroom I could fit okay bedroom okay would have a family so two beds two parking spaces would be sufficient for that okay but obviously now we know that you know there's a lot of developments that we were seeing that are geared more towards or marketed towards students and that may not necessarily apply in this particular situation so taking into consideration what we 've looked at as far as height lot coverage parking as well as the compatibility we are proposing planning division staff is proposing that the zoning districts DC I'm sorry dr2 DC and in DCG the areas that you see in what we were referring to as the urban core where many of the multifamily is or currently being proposed is located would require a specific use permit and the reason is the specific use permit will allow staff and the council an opportunity to fully evaluate the use and its functions and how it can or address and mitigate potential impacts that may result from that particular use which is the multifamily in this particular case now specific use permits are used in other zoning districts other uses multifamily as well and in the past we've used that to mitigate height we've we've also mitigated you know compatibility standards creating more buffers create more setbacks those are the things that can be put on as conditions with a specific use permit that in relationship to massing compatibility that's really what we're trying to address with what we're trying to present here and we believe that the specific use permit is that tool and really that's that's the genesis of this discussion and we would like to hear back from the council and seek your direction on this recommendation I have a real quick question sorry Mary Pro Tem so this is probably a legal question so I'm looking at the map and I see some zoning dr2 there between the UNT and downtown sort of labels so if someone's currently zoned dr2 and let's say this goes through let's say but if they're currently zoned dr2 and they don't need rezoning and they just simply come in and apply for a permit then they're not subject to that SUP because they were vested in that earlier zoning class how does that help me understand the vesting and the yeah well the zoning is in place if the use is not there currently then they're there they have a new current they will have a new zoning they would have to comply with that zoning district so let's say I got a property zone dr2 vacant land thank you and so this passes correct and I want to come in and put multif amily so I'm not vested in the prior uses or lack thereof restrictions and and so I guess then you can change zoning rules and regulations people aren't vested in their zoning rules and regulations they're just vested in like if you changed if they wanted to come back and get a dr2 zoning with the SUP then then it automatically applies but okay I think I get it so you can change the regulations in a zoning classification the types of uses SU P these kind of things and if somebody hasn't maybe pulled a permit or got into the vesting process of the development then okay that's question all right I'm sorry Mary protein good question so it sounds like the goal is to have more oversight in this area where we might have some more concerns which I don't disagree with my I have a couple concerns one is this also is in the air very area in which in my view makes the most sense for more density you're in the urban core right here you're next to our two universities there's more and more of an interest in a lot of places for this more and more of a tolerance for greater density look at downtown for instance right another tool you see some communities used to tackle these problems is I think is form-based codes and I know we've talked about that ever since I've been on council and I don't know where we are with that talk to me about that as a tool whether or not we are looking into that and whether or not that can achieve some of the goals as well form-based code is primarily establishing the form of a building rather than the use of fronts so it really doesn't change I mean you you you don't really generate a ability to evaluate the use because you know it's kind of like zoning but taking a different look at it so it's more form than the use and I don't believe in my opinion that that would help in regards to what we're trying to achieve with the student housing or the collegiate housing that we're doing or that we're dealing with here well I'm not sure I mean as I hear the community concern for them of course there's some that talk about parking and we can debate whether or not we think that that's as much of an issue as it sometimes is or whether we can tweak other things to tackle that but what I hear oftentimes is what does this look like you know the beauty of old downtowns isn't in their uses it's in the fact that you have a certain feel of it and so it seems like that's how communities tend to use that tool well in the other tool and I think you you you kind of brought it up in one prior council and I know that Councilman Wasey mentioned before you know overlay districts you know the Fry Street you know that was a tool to address that concern and in that scenario you were able to direct the form you basically height you know the parking as well so that that in one sense is another tool that could be potentially implemented my other my other question and then I'm done with this round is I heard that and I don't know and I kind of gonna peel to the mayor here too because he's in this business he knows it certainly much better than I do when you create a layer like this of of oversight with SUP does that cause your would-be investors who are coming into a market do they is it like water where they're looking for the least the easiest spot in other words are we are we discour aging density where I think we need it and encouraging density on the outskirts where we're actually causing real traffic problems the chance your question the difference is the density is still what it is per the underlying zoning district the SUP is just a process for evaluation it is a to a dual public hearing process but it does not change the density am I I guess that's not my quit I get that I get what the SUP does my but my point is is if I'm coming in with a project into a town and I've got one spot that says yeah you've got to go through this process but then you also have to go through this SUP process to do that am I more inclined in other words are we incentivizing multifamily student housing to go outside of this area and if that's the case that's another policy question that I think we need to tackle and I don't know the answer to that so I'm asking I know councilmember Gregory's been waiting so I want to address that after he poses his question well this is going along with that I'm thinking about the discussion on appropriateness of use masking and scale you know from the 60s to 2000 40 years the the scale the massing of apartments it was two-story apartments around the university area that 's about as what it was and some of those according to an earlier discussion that we had have become exclusively rent by the bedroom rentals there there are two bedrooms there one bath they they weren't built to be rent by the bedroom they've just become that and nobody seems to care that that the use changed because the form it's not a massive building it looks the same as it did before it doesn't feel much different now now if it's ripped by the bedroom you're for sure going to have different individuals probably not related the parking requirement is only 1.75 spaces per two bedrooms so there may be a lack of bedrooms but we haven't heard any complaints about that either so in in one sense we almost have in some cases a de facto form- based code anyway because because there are there are different ways that that that those multi-family apartments can be rented and and it seems to me like you were saying mr. rodent when when the issue comes up is when it's a new structure that's more than three stories because it's the scale in the massing that seems to create a lot of concern for folks yet our long-range plan says that 's what we're interested in is having more density in the urban core so I look forward to hearing how you're going to solve this problem well let me just to address your comment it really comes down to I think also just economics I mean some developers don't want to put a development and improvement on every square inch of the land that they can most of them do because the economics bear that out so if you're looking at an SUP where you've got to convince a neighborhood it's just to me it's another check on to get public input where if it's just zoned and you have by right to come in there you can go in put whatever you want up and there's really you've cut out sort of any type of opportunity for the neighborhood to to provide any kind of input but if you're building outside you're not gonna possibly get your rents you're gonna create an issue around the University of another parking issue unless you're on a DT DCTA bus route it comes down to what kind of rate of return do they want what kind of hassle do they want to go through in order to try and achieve that it certainly will create a just process that is takes more time and may require some more accommodation for the neighborhood don't necessarily think that that's a bad thing but I understand that it is it is going to be a disincentive it just really depends on the market I mean right now it's I mean you know if all of a sudden the market was depressed and people you know nothing was going on it may be a different story but right now it's it's pretty you know robust real estate market I saw so yes I'm sorry councilman was I want to thank planning for bringing this plan forward as a policy-making council the question is what do we want our city to look like as we move forward and I understand adding density to the core but there's a difference in a five-story to the sidewalk building versus some of the condos downtown which are attractive so it it's neighborhood by neighborhood and I know we're going to talk about small area plans in the upcoming weeks and I think long term that's a real good thing for this city so that neighborhood stakeholders get to help craft what it is they want to see come forward just like the fry Street overlay so the issue hasn't been the two or three story apartment that's been converted to an SRO it's a five-story building that is encroaching into a residential neighborhood and the term residential compatibility comes in development compatibility five-story single-story homes it's I come back to what do we want our city to look like in 20 years so the SUP does bring in the people it allows a little more time it brings our citizens into the discussion so and I had asked council to consider a whole separate category of development code for SROs because they are different than a standard apartment but this is kind of a compromise so that we have some more say over something that is is going to be built and then we're also writing a new Denton development code which is going to come out in 2018 and we're going to talk small area plans so I think all of those things are forward motion from where we are now I think they're all very positive so I would support the idea of an SUP in these areas and I thank staff for spending a lot of time on this thank you any other questions or direction I'm sorry councilman Gary no little yeah go ahead SUP requires what in terms of an appeal if right if it needs to go through the zoning planning zoning Commission they make a recommendation to City Council and I'll see the City Council will then make the ultimate decision on the SUP as far as appeal of the SUP well are there I guess here's my question are there certain cities where SUPs go through ZBA it always goes through PNC okay that was that was my okay yeah just direction I think this is a good compromise for right now moving forward with this until you know other things are figured out so and I definitely like the public input process of this okay yes mayor Pro Tem just to understand you have three points under alternative requirements for an SUP is that the extent to which we can now that the those are just examples and just talking about what we've had discussed before chapter 6 of the DDC there's there's multiple conditions or potential conditions that could be applied to a specific use permit as conditions and is one of those that you're allowed to apply the requirement of mixed use say first for retail first one and says regulation and limitation of uses so it can fall in potentially I'm looking Aaron what you're referring to is a limitation that we have in sub chapter 5 for certain types of multifamily developments to go if I remember correctly depending on where they're located and what zoning districts it's something that's separate and apart from the SUP it might be addressed simultaneously during that process but it is technically a separate requirement fire if I remember correctly right that's that's the L6 limitation that says that there has to be non-residential uses on the bottom floor but the conditions that are available and these are just these are not complete lists I believe it's something that if we feel the council feel that that is that a condition can be imposed because it mitigates a certain condition or potential impact or justice compatibility I believe that's something that's fair to present as far as considering and I'd like to get in I feel like I 've had this briefing a couple times in my career on council and that is the the jurisdictional options available to a council as it relates to approving or specifically denying an SUP this came up quite extensively when we were in the gas drilling discussion and I don't mean that now but I think if we're if we're looking at this as a tool and I think we need to understand the limitations legally as to how we could deny one so that both us as a council but I think more importantly the community who's looking at this as a level of protection understands that you can't just deny for anything and so I think that maybe as a briefing would be helpful until we get the development code revised to make sure that there's a lot of clarity regarding the requirements for revetments for both garbage and for recycling I'm assuming that we could use an SUP to be more clear and specific about the expectation that the apartment would provide for recycling accommodations that's correct good okay direction I'm okay I'm okay with it I just I think this will create different outcomes in the area because it's gonna be very facts fact intensive scenario for each particular piece of property so we have there could be a time when we have different people in charge different people in pansy it's all gonna be very subjective going forward and I just want everybody to realize that this becomes a very subjective process now that's okay just pointing it out I thought it was all subjective okay it sounds like we're okay with moving forward on that correct with the SCP to those three zoning categories that's correct okay okay thank you thank you next work session item is 3c receive a report and hold discussion give staff direction regarding the council pointy performance review committee good afternoon mayor member City Council Carla remind director of human resources as the council prepares to discuss the caper committee I thought it might be helpful if I gave you a little bit of history the council was looking for a more formalized process to do the performance reviews for the council pointies so they formed a temporary subcommittee in February 2004 consisting of three council members and myself serving as the ex officio they formalized the committee as a standing committee through a resolution that they adopted on April 20th 2004 the duties at the time of the committee were to initiate the performance review for the council pointies and to review the job descriptions in April of 2005 the council adopted another resolution that established a standing process for the reviews with the review period of March 1st through February 28th and this coincided with the review dates that we had for other management positions in the organization we kind of had them staggered based on the job family then in December of 2007 council adopted another resolution that changed the review period so what had happened in 2007 as we implemented another pay plan and we eliminated the staggered review periods we we were doing it for on our anniversary date but the council thought that it would be helpful to do the review process for all of the council pointies at the same time and again at this time it was just for the city manager city attorney and municipal judge in November of 2006 the charter was amended to include the city auditor so this 2007 resolution also recognized the auditor to be included in this review process and then it expanded the duties for the committee to also look at employment agreements including the renewals there's not been another resolution but over the years the review date got changed and I believe in 2012 may have even been even though it wasn't approved by resolution I think the chair at the time council council member Engelbrecht he brought a new timeline to the committee I'm sorry to the council recommending an October 1st through September 30th review date to coincide with the fiscal year and there no set meetings it really just depends on what's going on and what council would like the committee to do even though it wasn't in a resolution in the past the council had asked the committee to initiate the interview process for the city manager city attorney and city auditor. Councilmember Briggs I think you requested this so you had the floor. Yes I requested it I asked for this work session it came to my attention through questions and staff questions to staff and committee members that the contract of our now past city attorney automatically renewed and when I looked at the caper duties part of that was recommendations regarding employment agreements including renewals of council appointee positions so I did not recall any council discussion on the matter or a review of recommendations on the renewal of the contract coming out of the committee and so I was curious about the breakdown what the responsibilities of the committee were to this council so I just wanted to have that conversation. Okay yes. How are these subcommittee meetings called is it by a chair I don't understand that. Yes historically the chairs contacted me and asked me to put together a committee meeting. Okay and then are there reports I guess I don't really it's not really for you but for the caper committee members have there been reports to the council at large at following a caper committee meeting? Well I mean my experience of being on the caper committee I was think I've been on for two years as mayor. The experience that I've had is most of the reviews that we've done have been at the behest of the council I mean you know the the city managers contract the past city managers contract and the like have been at the council's request so it wasn't so much that we had meetings that were called on an interval basis but anybody at any point could ask for the caper committee to look at something. As far as what happened on that don't have an answer for that it might have been an oversight in that regard I know we did the city managers contract we did the city municipal court judges contract and I believe if I'm not mistaken both of those I know for sure the city managers contract was requested by council members to take a look at that because it was really quite a ways away from the renewal date so that's that's my recollection of it in that regard so that's I mean if it was a yes councilmember Rodin mayor pro tem. Well I don't know what I can divulge short of getting into a closed session sorry really because it came up in context of another personnel discussion in which discussion was had relating to I think your specific concern and I don't know if there's been a lack of recollection on your part or we just need to but I can't communicate that in open session because of the context within which that discussion was had and I'm happy to retreat into closed session if you guys want to have that but I think there's an answer to your question. Well anyways being on council like you said we had previous discussions on the city manager and the judge and I didn't request any of those so I wasn't sure that that was the process that had to be specifically requested so I was waiting and waiting and you know in hindsight with the retirement I mean I just wanted to review the process. Sure well let me let me say first of all it is not council does not have to specifically request that. Okay. I mean I'm not gonna I need to make sure that you understand that you know the CAPRA committee is in charge of reviewing the council appointees and then bringing any recommendations to council I think that what mayor pro tem referring to is you know had we gotten some direction but in no way am I trying to say hey Kings X it's not on us you know we could have probably done a better job of that absolutely and the good thing is that had that contract still been enforced we could have come forward and reviewed it and if there was a different direction that needed to be taken at that time we could have done that as well so there's no question that we could have done it a different way I don't know if it created a lot of harm because we could have corrected that if that was the desire of any one of us sitting here so I certainly will take responsibility for that and and and say that you don't have to have a specific request for the CAPRA committee to look at specific contracts yes so to that point because we're a seven member council it is just odd that a sub committee of City Council then is reviewing that so to make sure that we don't have a repeat of what we had for council to actually have a process that is it 90 days before a contract is up that it automatically comes to closed session council to actually begin the discussion so that it 's not just passed by because it is one of the positions that we're looking at that council hires or fires so in their strength in having a process and because seven members are here their strength in having seven members weigh in on that decision so that would be my recommendation to have 90 days prior so who's ever keeping track of the contracts make sure that winds up on the agenda for the council to discuss in closed session prior good idea councilmember Gary I like that idea I was going to suggest something similar what I noticed though is if we do that and we bring it before the entire council that kind of absolves the need for the caper committee itself because you're engineering a time for the full council to review every year which is 90 days before it would be before a budget cycle I think all of our contracts are set like that so I guess my question then would be what is the purpose of the caper committee if we're going to engineer a specific time which I'm okay with that by the way sure mayor protein you know I 've seen iterations of that's just during my time on council in different ways in which it was approached I might make a suggestion here and I think instead of triggering it by contract date because I think that always puts this in a posture of we're gonna renew the contract or not which isn't the posture we want to be in with our appointees which is let's have ongoing conversations about performance goals where are we heading as a city how can we work together things like that which puts us in a more positive and I think something that I think we've had on and off just again my short history with the city has been times where we have triggered regular review discussions that we're able to have an executive the session with our council appointees to talk about those very things and sometimes and again this is punctuated throughout the time of my time here that has involved the individual council members as liaisons for each one of the council appointees in terms of having in-depth conversations before or after those whole council discussions with them as a way to kind of have a larger two-hour conversation about goals and where we heading and things like that and then that's been brought back so perhaps what we can do instead of just simply say three months or whatever prior to a contract term being up we could and it probably healthy for us especially with new folks coming in is just say let's just put in place quarterly or maybe it's twice a year whatever we think makes the most sense pacing wise conversations with our appointees that can then because council will have the leisure to have discussions on a whole range of things relating to our relationship with those appointees trigger those very conversations so if somebody's got a concern or somebody wants to weigh in on something now we 're set to meet regularly regardless of contract terms I think quarterly is too often that's just times four people that's just too much but maybe every six months but I come back to solving the problem of what happened last summer and sailing right over as a body of seven and not having the discussion here so the process is still 90 days prior that it's it's just part of the process it automatically gets triggered so we're never back in this position of how can we didn't talk about it I'm sorry in the past I've advocated for the notion of there have been times when we have had reviews of all three when we've had three appointees of having reviews of all three of them in the same day and it was horrible because we just didn't have enough time to give to each one of those folks and so I have I proposed from time to time that we look at being more methodical about it by having at least three meetings a year that would be closed meetings to talk with the council appointees now that we have four appointees probably need at least four of those sessions and it may be two meetings and we have two at one time and two at another time to sit down and hear their reflections on since we've met with them before and hear what their goals are it's a it's a very helpful time to hear from our appointees it's a time when we can give them some candid feedback also and and indeed it it may if we did that on a very methodical regular basis we had it in our queue of council meetings we might not need the cable committee but we might also need it because having served on it a couple of times I've also found it useful being we have divided ourselves up and assigned ourselves to be the liaison with one of the appointees to have longer one-on-one conversations with them about how they're feeling about the organization our you know the the feedback that we've been hearing on their performance so that we can talk to them about ways of either communicating better with the whole council or creating a greater level of satisfaction among the whole council so you know I don't think it it's not that it hasn't worked but I certainly think that there's room to to do a better job and and I think the way to do it is by regularly scheduling meetings between the entire council and our appointees to review goals and that would be a personnel issue and that would be in closed session customer yeah I would agree with that I think you know we could possibly set these dates the meetings up at the retreat you know maybe what we're gonna do throughout the year and I would like to just more regularly meet main thing that I'm concerned about is I want to make sure we're getting feedback from our appointees that council is giving them consistent direction and I think sometimes I want them to feel like they can be candid with us too that well you said this at the beginning of the year and then you said this you know I think that getting that back and forth would be good so but I come back to the 90 day prior because contracts expire different times higher dates are different and some contracts are for five years so you know there won't be a 90 day so if I come back to the strength of the process to just and I'm I'm all about the communication with the because that just helps your organization get stronger it helps our city manager our city attorney our internal auditor and our municipal judge but I still like to have just so there 's just something set that it goes into that matrix 90 days prior because it you know it'll be five years out yeah and and I well and I think we're talking about really two different issues we're really talking about two different issues we're talking about a time frame where council regularly sits and talks with their appointees about performance and goals and touches base since that's a good thing and the other one is putting in a memorialized process where whether it's 90 days or whatever we have a set time where the council gets together gives the caper committee direction this is what we need to do this is who we need to talk to a lot can happen in 90 days you can give some direction of well this is where we want to go with renewal or non renewal and then some things can happen in between that but to have a set time to where it's on the radar you can have a discussion and then the caper committee members can go back to their respective appointees as liaison and communicate that and begin to set a date for the process where you decide what you want to do and if it's that you want to you don't need to you can renew it automatically you don 't have to do anything you don't have to have a meeting you don't have to have a council ordinance it just automatically renews but if you want to do something different you have to do that so yes you are right these are two different things I was addressing more what we're the caper thing here but maybe this is a responsibility of the new city auditor maybe we get something in our Friday packet these contracts are 90 days out something like that I don't know I guess so I would make a proposal let's make a hybrid and and Carla you can bring back some recommendations for I think we need to have a hard date whether it's 90 days or whatever whatever human resources feels is that is the most timely to really know when the contract is going is coming up for renewal and so that we can address that and then we can have some alternative dates or some hard dates of getting together with the appointees on a regular basis and we can come back if human resources would like to make some recommendations on that how often do we want to get in front of them talk to them about goals specific issues things such as that which do come into the performance stage you know that the the sort of an analysis of the of the contractor for review or not renewal or not renewal is that is that something that we can live with yes okay Councilmember Gregory said something okay yes go ahead I like councilmember Gregory's suggestion of three times like I just want to make sure that whatever we do we're having three meetings and I like your suggestion of the 90 days three meetings is that three meetings of the council for all three he said I think you split them up thinking now that we have four appointees probably two meetings of two okay well bring back some specifics and then we can we can get because I think we have some different alternatives as far as those meeting but I think the hard data let's look at it let's look at it coming up for a new one okay that answer your questions councilmember yeah I appreciate the discussion I mean my intention here was just to ensure that full council gets a voice and our four point teachers absolutely appreciate that thank you all right we discussed that we're moving agenda item E before agenda item D excuse me and that agenda item is receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding a possible funding allocation for the employee to empower program to assist the homeless and gaining the skills experience and confidence needed to find living wage jobs so mr. Cabral's good afternoon mayor council members today today's discussion is regarding a response that was made of staff by some council members to look at a program that was initiated last year in Albuquerque New Mexico called there's a better way it was an effort by the mayor in Albuquerque to try and provide some jobs for panhandlers that were in their community since that time Amarillo Texas has also launched a similar program and so we were asked to see if we might be able to model something similar to that here in our community so in November of 2016 staff began visiting with several of our nonprofit nonprofits that are located here in our community that address homelessness in some form or fashion and as a result they have come up with a proposal that they would like to present to you today on what might be the model for Dent on and then after they're done I will come back up here so that I can receive any direction that you might have okay I do want to go ahead and introduce mr. Michael Pertle he's with vision ministries and he is going to be the one I 'll be making the presentation on behalf of the group thank you thanks for having us my name is Michael serve with vision ministries we work with some of our homeless clientele here in in Denton and what we want to talk about today is as John mentioned was a homeless program a jobs program for some of our homeless individuals when we think about our homeless issue housing of course is is an issue but what this is is kind of a back-end approach to the housing issue housing does us no good if we can't get folks with living wage jobs to where they can keep the housing once they get in and so this is a program that we have come up with to discuss some of the barriers we want to address some of the unemployment barriers that many of our homeless individuals have in the community as well as give them some skills to help them be successful in the in the program assuming this is it yeah so this program will help those that are literally homeless gain the skills experience and confidence needed to find living wage jobs we hope to where we plan to do this by helping folks develop a job history a lot of the homeless individuals that we work with haven't worked in some time or if they do they don't have a job history that's that's appealing to any potential employers we also plan to develop or provide training and experience to develop some soft skills many of the folks that we work with in the homeless community lack some of the skills that oftentimes we take for granted whether it's just how to get along with with a boss how to get along with a co-worker that is difficult these are these are a direct thing topics that we hope to address and then thirdly we want to connect folks to long-term employment opportunities and that's a big component to this prop program it's not just a jobs program but it's it's what can we do after what can we connect them with and to help them be successful in the long term according to some data from the 2016 point-in-time count 32% of our homeless stated that their reason for homelessness was due to unemployment 53% indicated they were unemployed looking for work which I think sometimes helps dispel the myth that they're homeless because they're lazy or they don't want jobs 10% of those were indicated that they weren't looking for jobs so and then 50 about 51% stated that what was needed was some sort of job training and placement as a service that was that was needed our goals at the end of the program is we want 10 individuals to complete the the employee to empower program they will have been given 25 hours of soft skills training to each candidate to that completes the program and then 50% of those that enter we hope to to move on into long-term permanent employment after graduation but one of the kind of side benefits of the program is that everyone that enters is going to get some soft skills training they're going to get some resumes some interview skills that they're not currently getting they're going to expose to programs like bank on Denton and talk about financial issues and then one of the things that as a as a committee as that we've discussed one of the major benefits of this program is is there there's some self-confidence that that gets brought into this because they've been believed in many of those of us that work with our homeless that one of the challenges that they face is some self- confidence they've been told that they're nobodies and and this is a program that communicates to them that we believe in you we want to invest in you and we think you have a future as John mentioned this is there's some some things that we discussed we discussed the there's a better way program that was modeled out of Al buquerque and later Amarillo some of the benefits of that is it does provide opportunities for individuals to work rather than to the pen handle and in Al buquerque one of their goals was they wanted to connect all of their individuals to other social service agencies we don't really see that as a necessary issue here in Denton many of our homeless are aware of the social service agencies that exist or if they don't know it's there's a there's a network where it's really easy to find out where those exist and then it just a benefit of the of the program is it provides an opportunity for a large number of people which I think is also one of the drawbacks to the to the program is that it limits the income to an individual to $600 a year so they want to help as many people as possible without going very deep with them and our program that we 're proposing is a little bit different where we want to help a select few and go a lot deeper with them we want to be a mile deep in an inch inch wide versus what they propose there in Albuquerque and then also if if the issue is addressing pan handling there was a dowson news editorial a couple of months ago that brought up the issue of panhandling and if we're proposing a nine dollar an hour job professional panhandlers are essentially able to make more than that so a job like this is not appealing so for us our program is not a panhandling program it's not meant to address panhandling but what it's meant to address is homelessness and more specifically some of the causes of homelessness which is a lack of employment we view our program as a springboard to self-sufficiency you know we recognize that that we'll get into kind of the details in a second we recognize that that work in two days a week doesn't pay rent but it's a step in the right direction if we can take a guy or a girl six weeks and teach them 24 25 hours of character development and give them an opportunity to work 400 hours then we feel that that puts that person in a better spot in a better position to be hired for permanent employment than when we started for them it's a it's a resume builder that they don't have our proposed guidelines for the program is the program costs will be shared with this city and participating agencies whether it 's cash and or in in kind it's a multi-agency governance structure from the very beginning this has been a collaborative effort this has not been a one one agency deal but we have a number of different agencies that have committed to the programs we have a steering committee that looks as it as it is we have representatives from vision ministries which is where I'm from from Monsignor King outreach center from our daily bread from the United Way and served in on our steering committee all of those have a vested interest in the homelessness issue here in our in our community those accepted in the program would work for two days a week for up to six months and so what we're asking for is forty two thousand dollars from the city of Denton to support ten individuals over the course of the next twelve months what that looks like financially is for two days a week working 25 weeks it's 52 days and eight hours at nine dollars an hour is about thirty six hundred dollars or is thirty six hundred dollars per person forty two thousand dollars would support ten people there would be six thousand dollars that served in which is interested in serving is our fiscal agent for the program there were six dollars six thousand dollars that they have indicated that they would use out of that forty two to cover some of the some of the administrative costs and so it's thirty six thousand dollars is going straight to salaries or to pay individuals in six thousand going to some of the admin costs what the program would look like some of the guidelines that we've discussed as the appointed steering committee will review and approve all applicants into the program the applicants must be 18 years older they must be currently homeless they must be willing to attend and participate in a job skills development course and then they must agree to take a drug test we had some some discussions on the drug test issue but if we're talking about setting folks up or wanting folks to be successful after the program we feel that that's a to some degree it's a non-neg otiable for us for them to be successful and go on to long-term employment that's something that they're gonna have to have under control before they enter into the program so there will be an initial drug test to get into the program if they end up failing that we have we will refer them to other agencies that would work specifically with them on and counsel them if they are interested in receiving that there would be another an additional random test at a later date within their time of employment as well to make sure that we're heading down the right road applicants will complete an application and if accepted they're gonna sign a term of employment not to exceed six months or about 400 hours is what we would cap it out there would be a program manager that would work with the city departments to identify work requirements and determine what the work schedule would be for week for the week and then one hour a day would be spent participating in a paid job life skills training program which they would receive a certificate upon completion this is a rough proposed schedule of what the day would look like at 730 in the morning we would have a training class this is where we would discuss some of the character development this is where we would discuss some of the job skills necessary and it's would be for an hour they would travel to a work location and from 9 to 12 work break for lunch and work from 1230 to 44 30 but cap it at about eight hours cap it at eight hours per day lunch would be provided for them by our daily bread and we would provide housing for them each night that they are working in Monsignor King Outreach Center has agreed to house and are to give preference to those that are in the program and so if we work on a Tuesday Wednesday schedule Monsignor King is open Monday Tuesday and Wednesdays of the week so that they have a place to go at the end of the workday and shower and they can also get a good night's rest the day before work early on in the process we kind of identified there's eight categories that we needed to address eight partners that we needed to be a part of the program we needed someone to serve as a fiscal agent and served in has filled out a letter of intent a letter of interest to serve as that we needed someone to kind of oversee the project and serve as a project manager we would have someone that that goes that drives folks to the work site is they're kind of serving as a supervisor and making sure that the work that we're saying is getting done is getting done we needed some assistance for workers if workers needed gloves still towed boots anything like that that's keeping them from working then we needed some folks to provide those those items for them we needed a job skills training a partner transportation served it and has is in the process of getting a 12 passenger van that we would be able to use to transport the candidates to and from the work site from Monsignor King to the work site we wanted to be able to provide lunch for our workers and our daily bread has agreed to provide that and then they there is a workforce connection piece didn't ISD their adult education department has agreed to to help us with this piece if any of our candidates are lacking a GED if any our candidates are wanting to increase skills in certain areas then didn't ISD has agreed to come on board at any point in the process and help them achieve those those things whether it's a GED class or getting them connected to some other cohorts that are that they can fund through NCTC and some of our other other programs housing for workers would be provided by Monsignor King outreach center and then we have other partners first refuge has indicated they would like to help we don't know how but they want to help in some way across church Texas workforce NCTC and the United Way we aren't just asking for money we're we're we're interested in in contributing ourselves we believe that that homelessness is an issue in our community and so this is kind of a breakdown for our contribution as a group of what this looks like and so from the agencies that we have that have committed we're committed to contributing about $27,000 out of our pockets to make this happen this doesn't include any GED testing or anything that didn't ISD might might provide there's quite a few unknowns but there's a commitment on on their side of things as well so what we're asking for is $42,000 to fund part-time positions for at least ten people and within a 12 month period we would take five folks on the six months and then five more folks at the end of that six month period so that we can address some of their employment issues a proposed timeline what this looks like for us we are shooting for a May 1st launch to get this up and running by May 1st and what that would look like we'll start notifying our partners if the program is approved in April late March to finalize some of the MOUs and things like that any questions we got some questions I believe councilmember Briggs councilmember Hawkins that's my McGreg ory mayor pro-tam okay we'll go in that order for now first I want to say I'm really glad to hear you say this wasn't a panhandling program because there's other issues that you know surround that aspect I was at the Dallas meeting when they were talking about that so that that's really great thank you for this presentation so I have a couple of questions as far as the Monsignor King the place they're staying because you said for six months so they have committed those beds for those people for six months for as long as they are enrolled in our program they have a place to stay the night before they go to work yes am I speaking out if you answer you'll need to go to the microphone please okay we see head shaking head so it's just during the pit count you know I spoke to someone who wanted to work but and would get a job but having a you know clean clothes and a shower were really big issues of maintaining that job right and finding those things so say you know walk me through it that they would go the night before so what we check in the proposal that we're that we 're looking at right now would be work days would be Tuesdays and Wednesdays okay Monsignor King is open Monday nights so they would the night before work they would have a place to stay they would work all day Tuesday have a place to say Tuesday night and work all day Wednesday and have a place to stay that night as well okay so that's good all right and my other question is really about money management are we paying cash are you paying by the day and then you said served it is a fiscal agent does that mean that they manage the money for them or or did do they get bank accounts I'm just kind of curious how they how that part works so what we what we have discussed they would be an employee essentially of served in during that time and how they would be paid would be on a debit card every whatever served in its payroll schedule is so I think it's every two weeks so every two weeks they would be paid on their debit card so they would not get cash necessarily I mean they can obviously withdraw that but it wouldn't be a paycheck because we don't want one of the issues that they're gonna have is if they don't have a bank account we don't want them necessarily to go and take it to some of our check cashing places and lose a percentage of that so they would get it on a debit card to be able to use it at their discretion right because yeah because I've also heard of people you know conning other people out of their cash and money and using it and spending in on and there's the the training component to that the hour before each workday that we spend not all of that's in necessarily going to be job skills related some of that could be walking them through the bank on didn't program to where they learn the importance of getting a checking account savings account some some financial management education things like that so those that those are all part of the part of the program as well okay thank you thank you what type of work will be done you said they were working for serve Denton so is it served in projects no so what what we have discussed early on is it would be work for the city and whether it's in in city right-of-ways or parks or things like that stuff that has to get done from the city's perspective anyways okay we would just come alongside and work in those areas councilmember Hawkins I've been reaching out to various departments particularly community improvement services parks solid waste and drainage and they all have litter removal either along rights away some of our drainage ways along our landfill we also have paint projects like some of our soccer goals and basketball goals as well excuse me as well as some of our trash barrels there's a lot of low skills type of jobs that are either performed currently by city employees or by contractors and so what we're hoping to do is allow these volunteers to be part of those low-skill types of jobs that need to be performed in our organization and then maybe free up staff or contractors to do some of the higher skill level work that that we also have in place so it sounds like the city has a need to to to get some of this work done too already yes sir absolutely we've just I've also been asking them for some financial impacts on how this will help us out from part from what parks is telling me is just helping them clean up one of our trails will save us about $1,800 that's about a 72-hour project there's another one we're just painting trash cans and we'll save us around $900 so we've got some cost savings here jobs that again need to be performed but are these volunteers can do it and there'll be a savings system as well cool thanks thank you on the on slide 18 of the presentation where you're talking about community agency contributions are those in kind contributions or those actual dollars some of those would be actual dollars so for for I know for us vision ministries we would be paying someone to serve as the program manager for the for the program if I can go back to it for you if there's assistance required for workers and they need to spare steel-toed boots well then we would go and purchase those still to close and I'm familiar with most of those organizations except vision ministries I was assuming it had something to do with helping people who didn't have enough money to get glasses no no vision is we're local outreach minister didn't Bible Church okay serve low-income families and in our homeless individuals the idea I think behind our name that 25 years ago was to be a vision of hope for folks and so yeah don't you know yeah that that actually wasn't intended to be fun but another question along those lines regarding that I guess the picture that I'm getting is that this group of workers goes out together in the van that's provided by serve Denton and so there's there's some foreman yes that that's kind of helping supervise this operation as it's going on and we would provide that that would be the program manager for the program we kind of serve as the the foreman the supervisor at the job site is there is there any anticipation that among these workers that you discovered that there's somebody who prior to the situation that they're currently in might have had some rather sophisticated skills in one area or another and getting them plugged in to take advantage of their skill set and that's part of the application process we have some some questions on the application that I believe were provided in the packet and and we want to enhance that even more I think but part of the application is to identify what are your goals what are your skills and then the conversations that we've had with Denton ISD and their adult education would be to once we identify those are there lanes that they can run in with with the adult education department to get them the necessary training certifications or whatnot that could be provided and then the ISD could help with that so that is a component of what we hope to do it's not just the six months but we want to have a view for what happens after the six-month period and help them prepare for that okay thank you mayor Pro Tem what a remarkable city we have to see these sorts of projects come up and I applaud my fellow council members who I think kind of initiated the idea and you see that similar players coming up time and time again doing these great works we started off today's conversation talking about how we can accelerate high-tech jobs to improve our local economy at that level and here we are kind of at the other end of the spectrum saying how can we support folks at the lowest point of their life and I think that's the beautiful thing I think what we're doing so thanks for your work on I do have a couple questions is it possible is there any opposition to seeing someone from the city city on the steering committee given our participation financially in this I noticed they were not on that list member Cameron yes we've had asking you John we've had that conversation I've had conversations with our legal department and we feel that it's best if we keep at arm's length and on this project so not being on the state committee I think it would be better for the city our interaction will be to provide them with the funding if council so desires but it 'll also be to provide them with the job opportunities and and then they take it from there well but it's it's it's to that very point I'm confused as to why we feel the need to keep it at arm's length given our participation so maybe you can describe that but given that they're going to be working for city and city there's probably a lot of the feedback and this is working this isn 't working is going to be during that eight hours of the day that they're working for folks so just help me understand why we want to keep this at arm length from that planning point of view sure and there may have to chime in here but my understanding is for probably more for liability purposes as it relates to not being conceived as being a contract or contract worker for the city of Denton it's best if we just handle it like we normally do would do on when we handle volunteers that come in and do for example our string clean or our various keep dead beautiful type of cleanup projects so that helps me understand then another question I had which was when you were talking about cost savings and we would normally go out and pay someone for this my thought is well why don't we treat this like thinking about contracting out and not think of it in terms of those costs cost same perspectives because we're actually paying here versus paying here but it sounds like we're not trying to conceive of it in those terms that is correct we're just trying to contract with someone and they in turn will be the ones that will find the volunteers and all we're doing is providing the job opportunities for them to come in okay that's fine and a couple other questions here is there anything and this is sensitive and we're talking about homeless folks so that even the question sounds absurd but is there been any thought given to residency requirements for folks participating in this in other words to keep someone from saying hey Dens got a good jobs program I'm gonna go take advantage of that from my place in Dallas and I think that's why it's important for our steering committee to be comprised of folks that work directly with the homeless population and so the folks that were accepting into the program we all will know them we'll all have a pretty good handle of who they are kind of what maybe their motivations are we all have conversations with with our homeless residents daily and so if it's someone new that's coming up from Dallas that we never have never heard of chances are they probably wouldn't be accepted into the program just because we would have no idea who they are gotcha so if you had all of a sudden 50 applicants for this and you know you've got ten positions you have a list of criteria upon which you're gonna kind of determine their ability to follow through with this and right for this particular we want we want this to be successful we don't want it to be something where at the end of six months they're not any more prepared for a job as they were at the start of it so for us it's it's we want to get the best candidates given our town our pool as best we can and last question and in terms of as you how you guys are thinking about this long term so I say let's see what happens in a year this is great but say your metrics go off the chart and you're at a hundred percent people getting out of this getting in the full-time employment they're getting job I mean you just beyond your wildest wildest expectations is there some thoughts as you 're planning this out to thinking about scaling what the possibility of scaling that would be we've had some initial conversations about that I don't know that we've given a whole lot of we don't necessarily have a developed plan for that we've kind of from the very beginning kind of taking the mindset of we want to start small and improve the concept and then if if we get a hundred percent success rate then maybe we'll be back here coming back looking for 84, 000 next year like it all right thank you so I think to Councilman rodents point to not be on the steering committee who is the gatekeeper for who's in and who's out it just adds a layer of protection for the city so that somebody can't come back and say well I wasn't approved and then try to sue the city so I think that's and the other thing is they're volunteers so you know they're not city employees and so that's another reason they have kind of a layer of separation from the city because then you get into kind of a workman's comp question and liability question and so I think you've set it up wisely and in terms of scaling I think the real issue would be housing with Monsignor King and the number of beds so it's just a matter of a couple of years ago we didn't have Monsignor King either so you know it's just compliment to our community that we are we are taking steps on so many different levels to try to figure out how to help and so I think that would that would be the scaling dilemma in terms of how many beds are available I don't know that that would be an issue for Monsignor King at this point they have 45 beds available 42 beds available and so we would have the capacity to grow up to that point the problem is is then all the beds would be taken up by candidates right which would be a wonderful yeah yeah yeah yeah so thank you get to the question and then we so thank thank you for bringing the program and appreciate it thank you since we're being televised if there's comments outside of the microphone that nobody can hear it back home that's the only reason I bring that up councilmember Briggs so back to the jobs you mentioned or you mentioned low skilled jobs are there higher skilled jobs available I'm just curious I mean during the you know point count I spoke to a few people one one guy who had 30 years carpentry experience he just during the bad time got down on his leg and hadn't been able to get back but I mean had like you know really good carpentry skills so I mean I guess in the interview process that'll be taken out but are we offering are there jobs besides just painting that can accommodate those type of skills there are those types of jobs that are available in the city however we've decided we wanted to keep it low skills at this point first to figure out what the capacity is and then there's also the supervisory shift that needs to occur from vision ministry so it might be difficult to have one or two employees off on a different job site and then the rest of them at a current job site so the actual management and supervision of the volunteers is also something that'll have to be taken to consideration so at this point we're just trying to keep it making the opportunity available for them to have some established that that jobs program experience and then we can always reevaluate and reassess to see if it turns out that maybe we have higher skills and there may be something higher level that we might be able to work out with the volunteers and vision vision ministries so I know that the city is kept at arms lengths but at the end of the six months would with that worker qualified for a city reference if they had done a great job and we're moving on to a different job within the city that's a good question I don't know I guess I'd have to check with our human resources department to see if we might be able to give them some sort of reference based on the experience that they have with the city I'm not sure but we'd certainly look into that thanks anybody else just member Gary I just wanted to mention or ask I guess solutions of North Texas are they still going to be providing the day scholarships so we looked into the day scholarships a little bit more it's a little bit of a cost for them that's more than what we can handle there's not they aren't their day scholarship program oftentimes is covered by insurance is which how they are able to do it so what they have agreed to do because it's a it's an expensive program program for anybody that goes through it what they've had agreed to do is meet with anybody that comes through the program and maybe fails a drug test and then they would offer offer their counseling or referrals to other programs that they may be able to qualify they're the kind of experts in that field and so but they would kind of serve as the case manager for someone if they wanted to get the help okay that's that helps me a little bit um I just wanted to tell you thanks tell the steering committee thanks this type of project is exactly I mean I didn't know what we wanted but when we talked about it with staff it's you you manifested it perfectly so I just want to thank you for all of the time and effort that you all put into it I think it's fulfilling a need that exists we have the work available it's just a really good fit and I wish you all the very best success also want to give a shout out to Laurie McLaren who emailed me in August and asked if you know I would look into the Albuquerque program and the mayor and I met with staff I mean you guys did a fantastic job and such a short amount of time putting all the pieces together I'm just gonna give a shout out to Barbara and John thank you so much for and there are others as well but thank you so much for doing that I think especially because this came from a citizen it's a pretty good example of what can happen if you're paying attention to your city government so thank you yeah thank you and thank you councilmember Gary for also just being the one to sort of spearhead that on the council and and including me in some of the meetings and thank the steering committee and and John Cabrales thank you all for that and and I really this is right along with what we've been working on for the last year and that is how do we holistically approach the problems we have because housing is an issue and we've got a lot of people working on housing issues in this town and so then the next issue is okay you can give somebody a place to stay but then you also need to find them some gainful employment to be able to sustain themselves so I'm excited about this and I want to make sure I understand from our meeting last time that this is split out over two budget cycles it's my understanding is that right and so half would be in if the council moves forward half would be in this budget cycle and the next half of that is that is that correct yes if the council decides to move forward you want to start the process immediately we will start the RFP process to get the actual nonprofit that we will contract with that'll take us a little bit of time but we'll get that off the ground soon as possible so we should be able to cover half the program this fiscal year and then we can cover the other half of the program next fiscal year okay all right any other questions comments yes councilmember Bosney and I think it's because I am tuned into your comment on resume building and so at the end of six months what it gives them is a track record a history to say I was there showed up on time I was there all day I did my drug tests and so they actually have something to provide an employer on the other side to say I was there and so yeah what a program thank you if I could address that that piece already happens and talking with Betty Kay with Monsignor King they already have employers that come to them and ask them if there are folks that they could recommend for for for work and so for us yeah we may have some some higher skilled folks that are painting a trash can but the selling point from us to them is if you commit six months when you graduate from this program we are currently partnering or and trying to engage our business leaders in the community that would be willing to to go off of a good reference if you put six months into this you show up to class you show up to work you're good worker you do you know you do what you're asked to do then that gives you a leg up on most other jobs you know that they would be applying for thank you Pat you want to he looks like you got to say something good afternoon counsel Pat Smith executive director of served in I help write the initial proposal I think this whole program is completely aligned with Sir Denton's mission the requirement for an RFP is really new news to us from a city perspective I understand why you have to do it but from a served up perspective that's not what the started out as the started out it says really gonna be a grant okay you've lost me so this RFP is a this is a new subject that so yeah you know I are equally confused okay so somebody's gonna share that with us I'm sorry go ahead I didn't mean well my point is is no discussion of an RFP where we'd have to go out and put together a formal proposal and be treated as a contractor to the city which I understand there's contracts with nonprofits all the time through human services grants I get that but now we're basically gonna have to put in a proposal and like we would if we were D&D landscaping in essence and I think that's gonna be a major issue for our board I'm just being honest with you okay and so I don't want everyone to walk out of here saying oh this is a done deal and then the served up board comes back and says you know we feel like we've gotten so far away from where the started out that we're not comfortable with it you know are we gonna have to do performance bonds I don't you know there's a whole host of questions that come sure as we go down this path so I want to make sure everyone understands that I appreciate that thank you and I understand that we have staff that will address that so Mr. Cabrales city attorney I could address that the based on how the city came into contact with the with serve Denton as part of an informal quote process you know what there were issues as to you we know is this a personal services that is exempt from procurement law under the general list of exemptions and so we thought that you know to be safe yeah we could suggest to the council if you wish to do an RFP on this project just to make sure that everybody is feels comfortable with it then we can we can do that again this is a in our opinion a personal services type of arrangement that would be exempt from that but we just wanted to make sure that everyone on this council is satisfied what's my lights are all lighting up let's see we'll go with Councilmember was even then Councilmember Gary so the council has the power to say no RFP yes that is correct that would that would be my my vote so that served denton board does not because I don't blame them at all you know if we want a partner then we put it under personal services and we don't need an RFP is that correct that is correct that's that's my wish cast member Gary question for mr. Lail isn't an RFP required for contracts over $50,000 at the time I hadn't seen the actual amount of money that was in question but even then nothing prevents us from even doing the RFP depending on the program but here I mean we do have that that exemption as well but the personal services is the one that came to mind it was this is the first personally the first time I saw the actual budget number they were requesting okay well I mean this is the first time I've heard of the RFP as well appreciate the option it's just I understand it to apply to over $50,000 of purchases yeah I mean it doesn't sound it sounds like the direction of the council is let's move forward without an official RFP and we'll just find and also I would say we need to start thinking about if this depending on the success of this is this is something that continues and we want to continue to be a participant this is some program that would be ripe for our funding grants out of our different was it health and human services and community development grants so that would alleviate I believe they might have to fill out an applicant I don't know what he's all goes on with that but so council direction is move forward no RFP required as presented and it'll be split out over two fiscal because that's another thing if it's split out over two two fiscal years then you got half of that value did you have a question okay all right fantastic thank you all very much I appreciate your your hard work in this thank you Pat thank everybody for putting it together thank you sir okay we are now to our closed session for agenda item D so I will now convene closed session at 410 we will consider the following items consultation with attorneys under Texas Government Code section five five one point oh seven one deliberations regarding economic development negotiations under Texas Government Code section five five one point oh eight seven and this is for our open session agenda item 3d all right want to welcome everybody back to this meeting the Dent City Council at 440 455 we are reconvening our open session we'll resume with work session item 3d which is received report hold discussion on the housing programs and other activities carried out by the Denton Housing Authority and give staff direction regarding quest for resolutions from developers applying for state tax credit before we get started in the corner mr. Cabral's before we presume with the resume with the presentation of course we just had a closed session about some legal issues and economic development issues and based upon that I just want to sort of seek the council's direction on as far as the presentation here do we do we have enough information before us either in the backup or in questions that we've asked and based upon our closed session conversation to to move forward at this time with this discussion in a way that can give clear definitive direction to staff including regarding the two resolutions that we have pending on the the agenda today councilmember Gary I think there's some probably some things that we need to do as far as housekeeping for our own internal policies as to when we issue the letters of support there's also some overarching issues that we have to address with respect to our relationship with DHA so I don 't have an objection to moving you know having a presentation but I think it might be premature at this particular juncture that's my take okay I would I would concur with that I think there's some some further discussion on some pretty high arching policy issues regarding resolutions either partnered with or not partnered with DHA and I'm not sure that the presentation today would give us any more clarity on that but if there's a consensus of the council that wants to move forward with that with the presentation this afternoon certainly willing to do that that's that's not my call but just wanted to share some comments as well as councilmember Gary I think it's premature okay anybody else wishing to weigh in I'm struggling with this decision because I think people waited a long time you know here too but after kind of learning we're talking about what we had just talked about enclosed I do feel that way but I know people spend a lot of time sitting here waiting for their turn to speak so do it to do a presentation so a little torn okay all right sorry any other council members out any other council members mayor Pro Tem want to you know the issue on the table okay yes I would I would be open to hearing the workshop presentation and that might help me decide whether whether that I'm prepared to take action tonight in the open meeting in the action items okay so your preference is to move forward with the presentation all right we have I think we've got a couple of council members who have said that the is the pre is the presentation premature given some of the issues that we we 've put on the table during closed session with the resolutions tonight are we able to give clear concise direction moving forward tonight and in the future regarding these or do we have some policy issues we need to craft and develop as we move forward considering these tax exempt status properties yes I think I agree with council member Hawkins that we do have people on this day that that we do have people who've waited for an hour to come back in so out of respect for our citizens and our guests let's go ahead and have the presentation sure now again out of respect for them no problem all right mr. Rouse you 're up thank you mayor council members this is a continuation of the discussion it 's been ongoing with the Dent Housing Authority to better understand their housing programs and their activities and specifically their request for support of two resolutions for 9% tax credit housing developments that are being proposed for Denton you had council last time didn't have some authority was up here council had asked for some financial information and that was prepared with their assistance and provided to you as part of the backup for this agenda item Sherry McDade who's the executive director of Dent Housing Authority is here today to answer more questions you might have or to further refine their request of the city okay or something yeah whoever's making the presentation thank you hope you feel better sharing mayor council members I'm Maddie Jones council for Denton Housing Authority and its affiliate entities I would like to read the following statement for the record with respect to the work session reports item number three on the posted agenda which is letter D ID 17 - 221 if I could please sure the Denton Housing Authority wishes for the city to table discussion and direction to staff at this time with respect to housing programs and other activities carried out by the Denton Housing Authority as it pertains to any policy to be adopted by the city of Denton on those matters however the Denton Housing Authority encourages the city to consider and approve requests for resolution from developers applying for state tax credit specifically during the regular meeting of the city of Denton City Council there is a posted item number 5d entitled ID 17 - 243 regarding considering approval of a resolution evidencing support for the proposed new construction of palladium Denton apartments in Denton and authorizing such other actions necessary or convenient to carry out that resolution secondly there is a posted item number 5e entitled ID 17 - 245 regarding considering approval of a resolution evidencing support for the proposed new construction of reserve at Sherman and Denton and authorizing such other actions necessary or convenient to carry out that resolution the housing authorities long-time mission has always been to provide decent safe and sanitary housing for low-income citizens in Denton the housing authority provides this housing either through one of the properties they own and manage or through the rental assistance program which essentially is a section 8 program not conventional public housing not to be confused with public housing it's section 8 the housing authority spends over 10 million dollars a year in rent subsidies to private landlords throughout the city and county assisting over 1,500 families annually these families include children elderly and disabled households the Texas Department of Housing Community Affairs also known as TDHCA is the housing finance agency for the state of Texas that administers the competitive 9% low-income housing tax credit program the Denton Housing Authority urges the city to consider and approve resolutions to support the two aforementioned developer applicants the housing authority has been briefed on the proposed developments and support their development plans the qualified allocation plan also commonly known as the QAP is administered by TDHCA and the TDHCA governs the 9% low-income housing tax credit program and outlines the selection criteria through that QAP that's the document that governs the program that's approved by the state through the signature final signature of the governor's office there is criteria promoting community support and engagement in that QAP the resolutions from the city in order to be considered by TDHCA in the selection and award process must accompany the submission of the full application of the two applicants to go to TDHCA on March 1 2017 without that support it would essentially those applications non-competitive to repeat the Denton Housing Authority urges support of the posted resolutions the resolutions are needed to get to the next step in the application process without the requested resolutions it is very unlikely that the two applications will be competitive thus forgoing the additional new construction affordable housing in the city of Denton the housing authorities current waiting list for housing assistance is over 3,000 families market data currently shows that there is a lack of affordable housing in the city didn 't and the Denton area excuse me and that the number of families on the waiting list will continue to grow with the increase in population school district data shows that over 800 children in Denton schools are homeless there is no new funding for housing assistance programs and HUD's forecast shows that those funds earmarked for Denton Housing Authority will be reduced this means that DHA will be assisting fewer families and may have to terminate others currently assisted in order to minimize the impact of those families currently being served and to those on the wait list it is crucial that the housing authority support the development of properties assisted through the 9% tax credit program DHA is committed to continuing to work with the city on ways to address affordable housing and to continually brief the city regarding DHA's role in the community there will be several opportunities to further explore and discuss various development related issues for the two 9% light tech applications after the submission of the applications to TD H CA and prior to the construction of these developments in conclusion DHA urges support of these resolutions for palladium didn't apartments and reserve at Sherman during your regular council meeting posted items today February the 21st 2017 thank you probably couple questions councilmember Riggs are either of the the posted items are either one of those the senior communities that that were mentioned in the presentation the last time so these two properties are I don't remember which of their seniors are multifamily it's both are multifamily yes okay and both of these are them are mixed income one is mixed income which is the palladium okay and that's a percentage of those are market rate and some of those are light tech support it and the other property is all light tech or low-income housing tax credit sorry about the acronym the reserve at Sherman yes the one you're speaking yes okay and when I when I said multifamily versus senior they're all considered multifamily property some of them may be senior only and some of them may not be senior only I just I recall that there was one specific property that was senior earlier in one of the presentations but okay thank you mayor pro-tam and then councilmember Hawkins oh you didn't okay thank you thank you and some of this might be for John to to jump in I'm just trying to understand what you're requesting you're requesting that we not have the policy conversation in terms of our relationship with the Denton Housing Authority and some of the policy questions we asked the last meeting we met but to move forward anyways with the proof of those and then have those policy discussions subsequent yes to those things and I think the message that I am asked to relay through this statement is simply that it is clearly germane issues that were raised and the Housing Authority attempted to provide all the data regarding their operations and those are truly policy issues that you all have deliberated about that we would hope would not be confused with the need to deliberate those further and get more details and better craft your go-forward with respect to that that policy or resolution for policy but it's very time-sensitive for the two applications for the tax credit which is just a way to support the projects to move forward sure they'll be underwritten and I get that I think I think as we're thinking through this and I think this is what we talked about last time too which was I don't think we easily separate these because of the potential consequences I mean there's a lot of things that came up to us for the first time these are necessarily all off the tax roll what does that mean to our city so we had some questions relating to that we had questions relating to what's the school board's perspective on this what's the county's perspective since they also will be hit with the tax exempt project as well in these might all get resolved there's a lot of other questions in terms of how we understand this relationship to just all of our all servicing of these things where are they located in the city in relation to schools and roads and things like that that I think at least from my perspective I can't talk to the rest of my colleagues but I understand this all with part of a holistic conversation that gets me comfortable as to whether or not I want to move forward with a resolution of support so I guess in light of that you're saying you guys aren't prepared to have that larger policy conversation and I mean we had a list of questions I think some of which for you some of which for the city to give us some information that I think at least my goal in that was to get me in a place where I can make a good decision as a policy maker on these requests so if I could I think the objective regarding the the policy was really centered around a congruent perspective on how to vet all properties that are going to be considered for 9% tax credits that role may or may not end up being as presented there and and also developers are very receptive to desires and needs of the local communities in which they operate so if there are concerns in any of the list developers are receptive to that as they move forward to get a final development plan that's my 25 years of experience with respect to the 9% applications the 17 points that they're requesting gets them to be vetted to be competitive without which they will not be competitive no I I get that I'm just I'm bringing that up just as we're probably gonna have to make some decisions here coming coming on that I really need some answers to questions that I don't yet have in terms of this overall impact of these projects and what our relationship is with y'all what does this mean to our community that I can't make a decision on this tonight on those particular projects because they still have those policy impacts without having so that's I'm just letting you know my perspective if I could the structure of the application is subject to several different responses from TDHCA so it has to be underwritten and then they communicate back to the developer and the developer response to those concerns also with respect to being prudent and all the questions regarding location amenities and services that is part and parcel of what gets vetted not just from your local perspective but also from the state's perspective and also when it gets ready to get closed the investor is not gonna invest or loan money in properties that they don't think are gonna work well so there's a lot of safeguards the marketplace in particular with respect to the issues you raise the taxes that's a business model that's the best practice across the state of Texas and other parts of the country understand the concern about tax dollars but the legislature has adopted a process where the counties will provide that Avalorum tax exemption and that is part of the public facilities corporation act and this is not public housing and it's totally a different animal so this is a true and proven practice and you have many opportunities I would implore where you can share and request the things that are important to you. Councilmember Gregory. So what I 'm hearing is that it's pretty essential for these projects to go forward for the City Council to approve these resolutions. Yes sir. And here's my conundrum . It was at our last meeting when we had a discussion on this that I that it just clicked with me that these properties would be tax exempt the property taxes and so the question that I have is what is the impact on the revenue for the city now if the if the impact is such for example if we're losing $ 500,000 of revenue to the city but if the Denton Housing Authority is gaining $500,000 of revenue that it can't that will benefit people in the city that are having issues with housing and it provides $500,000 worth of new housing stock or support for those folks then I'm pretty good with that but if we lose $500,000 of revenue to the city and then the Housing Authority gets $50 ,000 or maybe even $100,000 then I'm not sure that that's a good deal and I don't have the answers to those questions. Well the answers are the the developer fee percentages are negotiated between the developer and the Housing Authority co-developer partner. The reason that the tax exemption process is there is to encourage the partnership process. Right. That was all part of the legislative spirit of that. I get that. I just need to understand the impact the real impact of my vote and I haven't been given that information yet and I'm not sure. Well to be fair some of this is premature on hard numbers post presidential election the the pricing of the tax credit has now fluctuated. No one really knows today what they can anticipate as the hard expected number for tax credit rates . The size of your transaction will be determined largely on the tax credit equity with respect to income to either developer partner but it will be one that is prudent whereby you share the percentages of the developer fee. The guarantees are being done by the private developer. All of the risk is being bor ne by the private developer so it's an appropriate percentage and then the Housing Authority they are a mission driven organization it's not a private enterprise so everything they do is board approved and board vetted and they only do things that discharge their mission which is for affordable housing. I want to say a few things. I had a couple of questions that I think would be helpful. Yes sir. From what I'm hearing you say the resolutions that you're asking to be approved would be approved in a partnership with the Denton Housing Authority than these two developments in other words that the ask is approve these so that the DHA can partner with these developers pursuant to their memorandum of understanding and any other contract hard contracts they may they may negotiate. Is that my understanding? It's not to that level of detail specifically. They have shared their structure that they would like to have with the Housing Authority. They intend under the MOUs to partner and have the abalone tax exemption. The actual resolution does not go to that level of detail. And I think that's because it's not required. Well it's not required but I think that's the struggle that at least I'm having and that we're having at this council table because and let's face it we're all here all for affordable housing. There's no question about that. I mean I don't think it whatever decision this council makes is indicative of our commitment to or non-commitment to affordable housing and helping the homeless here in Denton. So the 3,000 people that you're talking about that are on the waiting list the housing waiting list I believe is what that is. Is that the voucher list? That is the housing choice voucher list that 's administered by the Housing Authority. Okay and so when I look at these so when I hear that first of all that's a lot of people all right and I participate in that program as a landlord. Can't take any new clients because it's conflict of interest but but I do participate that and have participated in that for 15 or 20 years because I think it's a good program. I think though when I hear that we need more affordable housing that is like the ones that are being proposed which are income restricted on one of them is totally whatever the acronym you called it. It's a LIHTC low income housing tax credit 60 AMI okay 60% of area medium income. Okay and so my question on that is some information that would be needed is of the of the people who are on the housing vouch er program are on the waiting list how many of those would even qualify for that kind of program because I know all of them well but they have to pay but you're saying the rent if they pay the full market rent even if that came from a voucher they could do that. Yes. Okay so the concern that I have or not the concern but this whole discussion of policy originated from that it was brought to council's attention through the Denton Housing Authority that partnering with these developments can provide additional value as far as developer fees and things of the like that in the past weren't being realized. In other words we're able to maximize the value of these projects in some other way that 's that's that's very good opportunity. So when I got the information back from the in the backup about for some of the questions I think they used the ver anda as an example and if I'm not mistaken I or no it's these I think it's these two that are coming up is Ola or Yala that's four percent that's proposed. Okay but there was like a 1.268 million dollar sort of new income stream coming into the housing authority based upon this partnering of these couple of projects and so they had a breakdown of what that would be allocated to and that's really why I wanted to have the policy discussion because when I saw the breakdown number one didn't quite understand it. It was like 50 or 60 thousand to United Way 150,000 to a pilot program 450,000 to a fund to buy Renaissance which is another program that's sort of coming to the end of it's where you have to make that decision. It's election day and then the rest which is about 650,000 went to operations DHA operations and I've got to have more discussion on that because to and I'm gonna be truthful and I don't want people to be angry but I feel like I've been put sort of in a tough place from a timing perspective because the deadline is March 1st and we sort of started talking about this about a month ago month and a half ago with all these policy considerations overarching policy considerations so I don't feel an urgency to try to fix a timing issue if I think that some way my decision may thwart some larger goal that we in the city may have regarding our affordable housing and our homeless project. So the question becomes for me and I don't know where I stand on moving forward with the resolutions but I know it's going to be difficult for me to move forward with the resolutions if there's that partnership with Denton Housing Authority only because I think we still are needing information the policy discussion to really come to a good conclusion about that not just the exclusivity but we've got one project now we've got two others so is if there if there was an opportunity to pass those resolutions and make it to where there it wasn't the partnership but they could just proceed as is that something that people are okay with? Well first of all if I could Mr. Mayor yes you don't have to decide today how you're going to disperse any income first and foremost the Housing Authority is a political subdivision autonomous of its own. With respect to partnering with other partners i.e. the city you will have that opportunity to discuss the percentages for United Way and all the other things you just mentioned at any time you so choose which is why I think the Housing Authority wanted to table today because there were a lot of questions so that could change however you negotiate or discuss with the leadership. But that's a really big question mark I mean that's I mean how you how those get allocated if you run into a situation where you can't come to an agreement because if half of those fees go to operations of the Denton Housing Authority currently that's a lot of money that is and we've got to have that discussion so I hear what you're saying that we can sort of put that off and sort of have those negotiations on down the line but it is an autonomous political subdivision and once we pass the resolution technically the city of Denton really unless people voluntarily invite us into the process we don't we don't really have any more say over that unless it's a zoning issue if there's a zoning issue then yes we do have an issue of the zoning. Well and I would hope that we could examine this where the bigger objective is providing the product and with that if there's a co-development then they share the fee which is an advantage for having a richer higher amenity property when you have a better bottom line because of the tax exemption so there's a lot of values with the product and the end user which are the citizens of Denton who will actually reside in those properties because they're going to be richer in amenities and etc because of the relationship with the Housing Authority as the groundless or in those deals. Okay all right yes Councilmember Begay. I think the mayor asked one specific question which is if I understood it correctly Palladium this developer that's bringing these two resolutions forward are they willing to move forward without the partnership with DHA I don't believe I got an answer to that. I don't know the answer to that. Okay. The developer has approached the structure with a tax exemption the tax exemption is afforded because the Housing Authority would have to be the fee owner of the dirt and the controlling member of the GP. Say that I'm sorry say that again. The controlling member of the GP and the fee owner of the dirt is the structure that begets the Aval on tax exemption. Right. Okay so that that it's a very attractive model because it supports the project it's just a best practice across the state of Texas it's very common. So I guess maybe perhaps having the developer answer that question might be the the best thing. Okay well council before we do that is there any other question from council on this regard? Yes Councilmember Wiseman. So for clarity with the Denton Housing Authority comes the tax exemption without the Dent on Housing Authority then the apartments would be on the tax roll is that correct? Yes. Thank you. Any other questions before we hear and get that question answered from the developer? Anything else you'd like to add? I would. Yes. Okay sure. I would just like to impress the time frame the QAP has to go through a very public process with the development community and the TDHCA staff. So the earliest that it came out this year was December and accordingly everybody in the whole industry is responding to the time frame. Probably every city that there's an application on that log is having a meeting either today or tomorrow and they're having to get that done by March 1 and they're in the same situation as you are with respect to timing and I would just like to leave you with the the fact that the developer fee and sharing that the Housing Authority is a very transparent organization that's quasi government and so their mission driven objectives will always be open to public comment so anything with respect to how they do their business is subject to public comment they start their meetings off just like you do with comments and feedback and they vet that. So I would hope that we would consider having the developers be able to be competitive and then proceed with the necessary vetting on details as the development process proceeds. Thank you so much. I do have one other question I forgot because I know they there was a slide last time that showed the points that are available. Yes sir. Between the different 4% or 9 %. I think there was like 17 that a resolution of support gives you in this program how many points? So we're seeking 17 points the developers are and that every point matters because there's five or six developers that 'll be the tiebreaker together and they're all looking at what is the priorities of the state. So the 17 points comes from the resolution of support. Okay now I thought I'd heard and and I'm not sure I heard it correctly so correct me I could have it wrong that are there more points given if you 're partnering with a Housing Authority or is it just if you have the resolution from the city you get the 17 points right regardless of whether you're partnering or not. Correct. Okay and then when you said 4% the 4% program doesn't have points it just has threshold on an application they come automatically with bonds. Okay all right thank you. Yes. So you had just said that if we were to pass the resolution tonight some of the details later would be v etted typically if timing were not an issue the details are worked out and then the resolution is passed is that correct? Not necessarily because you don't really always know and particularly in the market right now what you're gonna be facing with respect to issues surrounding pricing because of the credit prices going down responding to the corporate tax that we think is going to happen but details regarding development plans resources etc that's very receptive between the developer and whomever is in that community be it the city if they were partnering with the Housing Authority etc. Okay then what is done when those details are are not agreed upon when they're... So what I'm hearing the only thing that's not really settled is how the Housing Authority is going to spend its developer fee that's what I'm hearing. No there's there's more to that that we discussed in close session so yeah yeah well taken yeah I just wanted to be responsive to the issues that you might consider and again there's several entities that that underwrite the transaction the TDHCA the private market etc . Okay thank you thank you thank you. We had a question posed to the developer is there someone who'd like to speak just real quick question with Councilmember Gary you would you like to repeat that question? Yeah come to the microphone please. Yeah and just state your name and address for the record. Ryan Combs 7738 Laca Beza Drive Dallas Texas. Thank you Ryan. Mr. Combs thank you. When you first came here I recall if I remember correctly we had a work session you weren't partnered with DHA at that time we tabled it to discuss DHA issues essentially then when it came back to us as I understand it you are partnered with DHA correct? We are working with them and the simple answer to the question is we can do that we can do it either way you know we you're correct when we came we came on our own there is a benefit to partnering with with DHA which is that tax exemption and in return they get to share in the revenue of the development and it does come back to answer your question you know is that $50,000 or is it it comes back to being very close I don't have exact numbers but it 's not a lopsided deal it comes back to being very very close we are in an uncertain time right now as Maddie said we've got a new president who has said that they want to lower corporate tax rates we don't know exactly where that 's gonna land and so we don't know exactly where our equity is going to be it helps us to have that tax exemption however the very simple answer to question is we can do that either way. Okay we got a question Councilmember Briggs. So on those same lines so if the resolutions of support passed does that confirm and lock in that partnership with DHA or? The resolution doesn't have anything to do with with that ownership structure the resolution simply is asking the City Council to support our efforts to pursue this funding now we do have to kind of lock in our ownership structure so we have to tell the state whether DHA is is going to be a general partner a part of our deal by March 2nd now the percentages of all of those things. March 2nd is in the day after the applications are due? Well March 2nd is when the applications are due. So you have to tell them they have to know because that's a part of our big application they have to know if they're in the ownership structure now the percentages of how all that split up can still be. Okay that's very helpful to know. So it's all sort of contemporaneous. The application and ownership structure is known at the time you make the application. Yes the members of the ownership structure now the percentages and how that works is not necessarily fully v etted out at that point. Any other questions? Okay thank you very much appreciate it very helpful answers thank you. Mayor, Council, hello my name is Chris Applequ ist I'm with Miller Valentine we're the other developer so we're reserve at Sherman a couple items I just wanted to clarify. Well okay I think you want to go ahead and answer her question as far as moving forward on the partnership. Absolutely sure yeah I think Ryan answered it very well. Okay so you would concur with his his answer. Absolutely right we you know when we approach a city we want to move forward with what makes the most sense for the city a lot of times it is to partner with the Housing Authority and they seem like a great group and we love to partner with them if it's in the best interest of the city to to not have that exemption we can we can make it work financially. Okay so yeah okay thank you appreciate that thank you for your answer. And just to just to clarify a few things. If I give you this time to clarify I've got to give the other developer time to clarify so I'm gonna ask the council you know I want to move forward because I didn't know that that was part of the presentation was a presentation from the developers is that was that part of the presentation I don't so council I mean yes. I have my questions answered thank you. Okay any yes Councilmember. I'm open to giving them a couple minutes to talk because I think we're all still seeking some answers and maybe I want to make sure that I give the same amount of time to the other developer. Yes go ahead. Absolutely and I'll make this very quick our development will not be a hundred percent affordable we will have 24 market rate units we will have five units set aside for homeless populations also we do have to go through a special use permit so there is a zoning component and as was mentioned earlier there's a lot of time we have available essentially when we look at closing we wouldn't actually close until March of 2018 and deliver units sometime in 2019 so we have a lot of time between now and closing our permanent financing construction financing to work through these issues to make sure it's a development that you want in the city I think that's that's about it really. The unit makes it how many how many total units in this one? 120 and there's 20 that are market rate? 24 24 and then 5 okay and then 96 that are affordable. Thank you. When you say that five units would be available for the homeless what does that mean? They're set aside they're set aside specifically for homeless populations and we also have and how do you how do you decide who gets those? Well typically we work with you know local nonprofits we were actually selected recently by the city of Fort Worth for their their program to combat homelessness in the city they noticed that they spent around 45,000 to 50,000 dollars per homeless individual every year for emergency services police services things like that what we did is we built a 300 unit development it is tax-exempt we're partnered with you know similar to a housing authority it's actually the city of Fort Worth it's the Fort Worth HFC and that development will have 15 units set aside for homelessness with a caseworker. Okay and I'm not trying to cut you off I just want to make sure it sounds like you answered his question for Denton at least in other words you're gonna work with a nonprofit here locally absolutely to provide the clients for that for that building okay all right anything else? I wanted to give the other developer a few minutes if you want to come up and share thank you. Sure and I realize this is not the time that you've set aside for us developers to to give our sales pitch and so I don't want to do that but I do appreciate it we we do think very highly of the Denton Housing Authority in the time that we've gotten to know them we can do this either way we we would like to work with them because of their their goals in the city and even if we don't have an ownership structure with them we currently work with them on a sister property of ours that we have in Aubrey which is just east of here we're going to continue working with them to facilitate the goals of the city because that's something we that's what we do that's what that's a part of what we want to to help house people that need great housing and so we want to do that and ask for your support tonight so appreciate it thank you thank you you bet mr. Brown's yes sir any direction oh well first of all I want to say that and I know this these are difficult conversations these are difficult conversations because we're trying to merge some very high-level policy questions with some some new information that we've sort of seen this today in our closed session with a specific request and how do we either untangle those or how do we make them work and that's difficult so in no way is I hope this conversation isn't construed as some kind of you said you think highly of the Denton Housing Authority so I think there's everybody here it's how do we with this new paradigm that was requested and it moving forward under these two projects even though we might not have a policy in place there's still the request to have it move forward under that same paradigm we're just trying to figure out where we go from here so but I really do appreciate the backup and the information from the Housing Authority I appreciate staffs questions appreciate my colleagues it's a good discussion it's a hard discussion because we're sort of under a gun as far as timeframe for these two specific projects so I just wanted to make sure that I made those comments yes Council member Gregory one of the developers said that he felt like that it was a pretty close relationship between the amount of money that would go to the Denton Housing Authority for their partnership and the amount of money that would not go to the city in terms of property tax revenue is there anybody on staff that can verify that no sure what all we had as far as actual numbers to go off of us what we gave you and that was the Miranda MOU that's already been executed between the Housing Authority and that developer as it related to what the value would be on the tax rolls had it been a taxable entity and then as you also saw from the financials that DHA disclosed on their MOU with the developer of the veranda what they were going to be getting back over that 15-year window which did not necessarily always equate to a offset of the ad valorem taxes that were city was foregoing any other comments from council okay we do have those two action items on the agenda and we will move forward with hearing those this evening all right thank you okay I believe that ends our closed session of this work session so we will now adjourn adjourn at 540 and we will reconvene at the council chambers at 630 thank you good evening everyone wanted to welcome you to this meeting of the Denton City Council on Tuesday February the 21st 2017 it is 633 and we have a treat for us in the pledge of lease we've got I think it's service unit is at 416 416 of the Girl Scouts if y'all come down and lead us in the pledge to the US and to the Texas flag and if you're able please stand invisible with liberty and justice for all on the Texas flag I pledge allegiance to thee, to the Texas, for which it is today, under God, one, indivisible. okay the first proclamation is the fourth annual Bula Harris day if whoever's gonna be receiving this proclamation come on down good to see you again what tell us your name Elise Clements well I'm gonna read the proclamation and give you an opportunity to share with us a little bit about Bula Harris all right this is a proclamation by the mayor of the city of Denton whereas Bula Harris was hired in 1914 by president William H Bruce to be the first woman's physical education teacher at the North Texas State Normal School now the University of North Texas she retired in 1960 after teaching for 46 years and whereas in 1917 she started the first Girl Scout troop in Denton Texas and in 1922 she became the commissioner of the Denton Girl Scout Council in 1967 she was awarded her 50-year pin and was made a lifetime member and whereas in 1925 Bula Harris started the green jackets organization which is still in existence at the University of North Texas and whereas in 1936 miss Harris along with 12 other professors started the Denton County Teachers Federal Credit Union currently that cube and where she helped organize the North Texas chapter of Delta Psi Kappa the woman's professional physical education fraternity and whereas after retiring from the University of North Texas she was a charter member of the Flo Memorial Hospital auxiliary where she volunteered she volunteered over 6,500 hours as a pink lady and whereas on October the 25th 2015 miss Harris received a Texas Historical Commission under told story marker that is located in the city of Dent on Quaker Town Park where the Girl Scout little house once stood and whereas on March 18th 2017 didn't girl Scouts will be several celebrating their 100th anniversary of the first troop miss Harris started 1917 now therefore I Chris Watts mayor the city of Denton Texas do hereby declare and proclaim February the 27th 2017 as the fourth annual Bula Harris day in the city of Denton and urge all citizens to recognize and honor the many contributions for Bula Harris and I want to thank you so much because you've been bringing this to us for a few years now and thank you so much for that and continuing to educate us on the contributions that miss Harris has made to our community and to the Girl Scout so you want to say a couple words so as it is the 100th anniversary of the first Girl Scout troop Girl Scouts is doing an event on March the 18th from 10 to 2 at the historic Park of Denton County which is where all the yeah the house and anybody who was a Girl Scout in the past or is a Girl Scout now can come and what we're gonna be doing is just celebrating the history of Girl Scouts throughout Denton thank you you said you have a collection of my hair probably as gray ing as yes yes okay all right if mr. Quentin Hicks could come down this is a bittersweet day for the city of Denton because we have two very long-term employees who have contributed mightily to our city who are planning to move on to hire and I don't know better things I'm gonna say better things different things that is there you go and Quentin is one of them so Quentin I've got a couple of plaques I want to read and give you an opportunity anybody on council that wants to share any thoughts with you for your contribution to our community first one is the city of Denton expresses its gratitude to you Qu entin D Hicks for devotion and invaluable service to the citizens of Denton serving from June 2003 through May 2007 and February 2009 through February 2017 as an employee of the city of Denton water department and the Denton Enterprise Airport employees such as you are a valued asset to our community your contributions to the city of Denton are greatly appreciated got one more to read for you yes absolutely we can clap absolutely I'm only I think I've just known you when you've been out at the airport yes yeah this is a resolution in appreciation of Quentin Hicks greetings whereas Quentin began his Quentin Hicks began his career his service with the city of Denton Texas as an intern on June the 12th 2003 and was promoted to the position of gas well development coordinator on April the 5th 2004 on February the 16th 2009 he began his work at the Denton Enterprise Airport and whereas mr. Hicks director of aviation will retire from DTO that's the airport city of Denton Texas on he's gonna retire on in Denton on February the 28th 2017 and whereas mr. Hicks administered over 20 million dollars of airport infrastructure improvements including a major runway extension paved ramp for large aircraft movement and revenue generating hanger development and whereas director he achieved approval from text out aviation for 22 million dollars of new grant improvements to be constructed over the next five years including a second runway at Denton Enterprise Airport and new taxiways and infield ramps and whereas mr. Hicks managed the private development at DTO to include Greenpoint aerospace Careflight regional headquarters and MedTrans helicopter medevac training facility and whereas mr. Hicks was instrumental in aviation expansion from 280 to over 400 based aircraft as well as an increased airport revenue significantly whereas mr. H icks served as the chairman of the North Texas Commission aviation marketing committee chairman of the North Central Texas Council of government's aviation transportation advisory committee and president of the Texas airports council now therefore the City Council of the city of Denton Texas hereby resolves that the sincere and warm appreciation of Quentin Hicks felt by the City Council and staff of the city of Denton be formally conveyed to him in a permanent manner by reading this resolution into the official minutes of the city of Denton and forward him a true copy thereof and be it further resolved that the city of Denton does hereby officially and sincerely extend its thanks to Quentin Hicks for his successful career as the director of aviation for the Denton Enterprise Airport city of Denton Texas well deserved I want you to have an opportunity to say a few words okay well first wow I'd like to meet this guy seriously I think it should be me saying thank you to the citizens of Denton the the City Council and executive management for allowing me the opportunity to manage the airport over the past decade we've we've had a lot of success it's it's been a good run there's another decade of exciting development at the airport and I wish the city and the management well with that so thank you very much please here of the City Council Airport Committee we work together a lot and it was my honor and privilege to work with such a professional and I was just in awe of your ability to go after those big number funds that were out there to help make the improvements that we see at the airport and more improvements coming so on behalf of a grateful city as a council person and as it's just a member of Denton we were lucky to have you Quinton Hex and I wish you all the best thank you that was a resolution wasn't it so I so moved that the council approved that rebel resolution we have a motion to second all in favor by signifying by raising your right hand eyes have it yes absolutely I also I got to serve on the airport committee the four years that I've been on council and Quinton you've been awesome to work with you just always seem so calm and you just had the coolest job and you and your wife were the nicest couple that one of the first couples that I met when I was on council I went to the airport to the air show and you guys watched my crazy son for like three straight hours and that just was always stuck in my brain but it was a just great to work with you and I wish you all the best so thanks a lot yeah well and and I've only known I've been on the airport board before but you've been the only person really that I've known out at the airport and you've done such a great job with that I mean I think it's your vision your tenacity your advocacy that has really made that what it is today and so I thank you for that I thank you for the commitment to the airport and what you brought to that and I wish you luck on your new endeavor I he's a motorcycle guy I think and and so just wish you just just all the best in sort of your new direction in life so thank you very much Quinton thanks again you bet is mr. Howard Martin in the house yeah do what sure is grinning big well well I'm gonna tell a story on Howard you know one time I was invited to lunch by Phil Williams the director of Utah and I'm not gonna tell the whole story I'm not gonna tell the whole story so you know and of course when he showed up Howard's with them it's like okay it's not a problem I always enjoy talking to Howard he's so smart and he's been I think with the city of dent since he was about five years old and so it was just interesting because Howard is a very he's a very calm spirit I mean when there's you feel like everything is crumbling around you Howard's there okay yeah we can we can do this and but it's nice to see Howard sometimes when he does exhibit a little passion so it was good to see that passion in Howard because I tell you one thing Howard represents the consummate city employee that has been as dedicated literally his really during almost entire work life here to to this community and probably knows more about this city than anybody that lives here as far as the operations I'm hoping we're going to talk about a lot of the things that you've done over the years and well yeah it's pretty short actually but the the the institutional memory that that he has and the knowledge that he has it it's almost just going to be irreplaceable that's why he will be getting a lot of calls when he's out there doing whatever he'll be doing for me and some other people to try to figure out where are these files that we need and what do we do with these kind of projects but Howard it's been a it's been a pleasure to serve with you it's been a pleasure to get to know you and just your commitment to the community and the quality of life that we that we have in this community is in large part due to your leadership and all the various different departments that you've run over your years so I just want to thank you for that and I want to read this and then we're gonna have all anybody that wants to talk and talk and tell stories and I want you to say a few words too because this is really quite yes okay well I can't see him because I got my glasses off so that's either they're all right down there and if any well I will tell you if some of your staff wants to say something they just feel no I'm being serious this is their shot yeah they'll sing it and all kidding aside resolution appreciation of Howard Martin jr. all right greetings whereas Howard Martin jr. has served as the assistant city manager of the city of Denton Texas and director of utilities since November of 1997 he began his career as a chemist for the city's laboratory on March 29th 1976 I always knew he was smart I mean a chemist you know I never I didn't do very well in that whereas mr. Martin will be retiring from the assistant city manager position on March the 31st 2017 and whereas mr. Martin has held various positions in the utilities department including environmental services administrator director of environmental operations and director of environmental services and whereas while serving he has served supervised a number of operations including water and wastewater treatment general pollution abatement and control industrial pretreatment solid waste residential and commercial collection recycling drainage development of water rights licensing agreements for hydroelectric development financial administration rate design and contract administration and whereas mr. Martin's duties and responsibilities have also included the management of street traffic control engineering parks and recreation and library services and whereas mr. Martin holds a grade a certificate of competency in water and a class a certificate of competency in wastewater operations from the Texas Commission on environmental quality his dual certifications earned him special recognition by the Texas Water Utilities Association in 1983 and whereas mr. Martin is a member of the American Public Power Association Texas Public Power Association Texas Municipal Power Agency American Water Works Association Texas Water Ut ilities Association Water Resource Council North Central Texas Council of Governments board member of the region see water planning group and the ex board member of the Solid Waste Association of North America Texas chapter now therefore the city of this the City Council of the City of Denton hereby resolves that the sincere appreciation of Howard Martin jr. felt by the city council and staff of the City of Denton be formally conveyed to him in a permanent manner by reading this resolution into official minutes of the City of Denton and forward to him a true copy thereof but be it further resolved that the City of Denton does hereby officially and sincerely extend its thanks to Howard Martin jr. for his successful career as the citizen city manager for the City of Denton pass and approved well it's not approved yet we got to get that 21st day of February so we're going to take care of the the political business first so I have a resolution chair would entertain a motion councilman was knee councilman Hawkins a second we have a motion to second for approval of the resolution all in favor by raising your right hand what did you just say it passes unanimously so Howard thank you so much for again all of these areas that you've served in the city that's why I said folks there's no way anybody could know the inner workings of a city and its operations more than mr. Howard Martin so you will be sorely missed you'll still be in town you'll still be available so I appreciate that and I wish you just the most happiness and success in whatever you choose to do in your retirement so thank you Howard thank you very much I appreciate that I tell you what anybody that's going to work for an organization for 40 plus years needs a lot of help and support and I want you to know a lot of that support is has been the responsibility of the Denton staff there's no way you can survive in an organization for 40 years and not have the support of the Denton City staff and so I appreciate that thank you guys very much and anybody's watching on TV at home but a couple other areas too that are responsible for much of what we do across the city one of those is the Denton Public Utility Board for 20 plus years I've reported to the Public Utility Board and it's made up of a lot of great people and Council's been very thoughtful over the years to appoint good people to our PUB they oversee the all of the utility operations and I've worked with many board members great people but at the end of the day none of that gets accomplished if it's not for the Denton City Council and so again I've worked with many people over the years many councilmen council members over the years and I've always gotten great support from the Denton City Council so I want this group to know and those that may be out there that I appreciate that support from the Denton City Council because at the end of the day nothing gets accomplished if the council doesn't support it and then overall for the Denton citizens I've enjoyed working for the citizens of Denton I feel like the work that we do is important makes a difference in everybody's life every day and I can assure you that Denton is a great place to live work and raise a family so thank you if anybody has anything to say we'll go council member Haw kins yep Keely and I were doing the math when you started here in Denton Keely was one I was two but Dalton was 60 you really you've been so awesome to work with you've been a great friend and just such a mentor to me and Chris is right you are very calm under pressure and that's been greatly appreciated some nights I'm just gonna miss you man I think you're great so good luck and Mr. City Attorney I'm gonna file an age discrimination suit next week if he remembers he said if I remember I think that's what you said I got to work with Howard a lot when I was with the school district and I was on the planning team for the school district and always appreciated his insights and and when I first ran for council I had to sit down with several of our senior staff to to try to know what it was I was talking about or somebody would bring up what what was a great question and I thought I don't know but I'll bet somebody knows and I'd come to City Hall and they'd say go ask Howard he's been around forever so one day I went and said so people are concerned about the growth in the city and do we have enough water planned and and Howard gave the same smile he's giving right now that smug oh if you only knew and he pulls out a notebook like this and he says yeah that's half of our 50 year water plan I said half he said yeah and and I said could you tell me what's in it and he goes into all of the projections for growth and all of the the contracts that we have and and that we've had this in place we've had a 50 year water plan that gets renewed regularly before it was even required to have those kinds of plans and and that's when I understood what a consummate professional he was and is and what a great public servant he's been to the city so thank you for all of the work in all of the areas that you've done and for being such a steady influence and helping out staff and I don't think that the resolution even mentioned his several stints as interim city manager which which during a period of transition it's very important to have a steady hand so thank you again Howard thank you for all the different positions but for me it was when you were assistant city manager and captain at the ship for several months while we transitioned and again your history with the city your calm demeanor you know we had a few rough patches and captain of the ship stepped up and I just appreciate you for that so blessings to you and your family and Godspeed with whatever comes down the pipeline and grandchildren that's it me too so again thank you Howard Howard the more I'm in this seat the more I know what I don't know and realize we're just a bunch of dumb politicians trying to lead a city well me okay but you you know I think your greatest role at least for me has been just a great educator calling me into your office sometimes maybe it's me initiating or you initiating you got stacks of papers there walking through the intricacies of streets and infrastructure and electric grids and things like that that are so crucial to us to understand because that's that's what a city does when I talked to elementary school kids about a city I say it's those things that you never pay attention to because they work you turn the light on in the morning it works you flush the toilet thank God it works you turn on the water and it works and it's those sorts of things that we never really understand it's that's the bread and butter of a city so thanks for making all that work for our city all these years and thanks for your role in being just a great patient educator with us as we're just kind of trying to figure things out but I think that you serve a great role and thanks for all you do well Howard thank you so much I'm gonna reiterate what everybody said just second it and if that resolution was really accurate it would be a long list of disasters that you averted for the city and there's plenty of them I think that's truly where the credit is owed not just what you did but all of the things that you stopped from happening and helped us with so unsung unsung victories over there I just want to give you credit for those fun fact I got to sit next to you while you were the interim city manager I also sat next to Howard's daughter in high school so I got to sit next to two Martins in my life they're both very very smart and I was lucky to sit next to both of them but especially you Howard these past several months thank you and good luck so I also want to say thank you for your service to the city and I want to add that we will miss you on our environmental committee and enjoy your grandchildren well and Howard doesn't realize it we did have this brief conversation but I really couldn't ask him to do it while he was still an employee here but he's gonna help me figure rig up a solar panel for my deer feeder and so he just he's smart enough to do that because I wouldn't know what the heck I'm doing but Howard thank you so much for your commitment and your humility because I know it takes a team but you know what it takes someone at the top to lead them and to lead them with strength so you have done that so thank you very much okay we'll move now to our next item on the agenda which is presentation from members of the public agenda item 3 if you could roll the introduction please the Denton City Council has adopted rules of procedure including a code of conduct which applies to citizens as well as council members these rules were enacted to promote an orderly process and to preserve decor um here is a brief review of the rules that apply to citizens reports citizens will have four minutes to give a report there will be an electronic beep when time has expired if the remarks are not concluded by that time the citizen will be asked to stop speaking if the citizen does not cease and a second request is made the mayor will request to have the citizen removed from the council chambers citizens are asked to not approach the dais if a citizen has papers or other materials to hand out to the council please let the city secretary know and she will have a staff member distribute the materials to the council the Attorney General has ruled that council members may listen to citizens speak and may ask questions of citizens for clarification of the issue council members will not engage citizens in discussion of a topic because to do so could potentially be a violation of the open meetings act when speaking to the council citizens are to direct all remarks and questions to the council as a whole and not to any individual member please refrain from making abusive personal impertinent profane or slanderous remarks anyone who violates this rule will immediately be removed from the council chambers citizens adherence to these rules will help make an effective presentation and will preserve the order and decorum of our proceedings copies of the rules of procedure are available from the city secretary on to agenda item 3b1 Doug Campbell regarding recent road improvements and new bicycle lanes on Eagle Drive if you'll come down and state your name and address and your time will begin my name is Doug Campbell my address is 1010 Alice Street in Texas and I have a PowerPoint okay yeah commenting on the road improvements thank you council for allowing me to speak to and I'm also speaking on behalf of the Denton bicycle coalition the 337 members which some of them are in attendance if they would raise their hand maybe you could see them here so thank you for coming I'm commenting on Mayor Watts comment from a couple of weeks ago where he stated in part there have been times when the traffic on Eagle Drive is backed up from Carroll all the way back to Avenue C to Chicken Express and I want to revisit that configuration and then he says I hardly see anybody use utilizing those bike lanes and I just want to say that people cyclists do use the bike lanes and these images are since Mayor Watts comments that I've asked people to share I've also want to show that the traffic while it may have from Carroll to Chicken Express may have occurred I think it's probably an anomaly and but what concerned me the most was what Mayor Watts did not say was that safety is the priority of a road diet which Eagle Drive was reduced from four lanes to two with a turn lane and bicycle lanes and the primary reason for doing that is traffic calming but also to create safe movement for all users of the road this is a comment from a bicycle commuter and a UNT student she posted this today actually that she rides her bike on Eagle every day safe from cars and one driver actually waited for her while she was in the turn lane today to to continue on before the car turned right without the bike lane that may not have happened. Secondly what's going on I couldn't think of any other image but this one and so my comment there is I'm glad that we're counting the bikes on Eagle Drive I think that's important to know what kind of usage is there but what are we counting are we counting bike usage traffic backup and if it is traffic backup why is it the bike lanes or is it something else so what is the purpose of collecting data on Eagle Drive and my assessment is that it's not bike lanes it's causing a backup if there is a backup at all. Thirdly moving forward exactly five years ago tonight the bicycle and pedestrian plan was adopted unanimously by you guys City Council and including in that part of that was the Eagle Drive road diet and bike lanes and thank you for doing that and I just want to say that cyclists do use Eagle Drive cyclists do use the streets in Denton and this Eagle Drive road diet was part of that I just want to say please continue to implement the mobility plan and the bike and pedestrian part of that plan it's so important there are hundreds of cyclists in Denton in fact we're number three in the state of Texas as far as percentage of bicycle commuters so I think that's important and we need to keep moving forward so thank you that's all I have. Yes and we do have a card not wishing to speak of Brandon is it Babbit who is in support of your presentation ? Thank you. Thank you. All right we'll move on to agenda item 3C which is commonly referred to as open mic we have one card wishing to speak which is Deb Arm atar if you'll come down and state your name and address your time will begin. Can I have the overhead projector show? All right so Deborah Armatar 2003 Misty Wood Lane in Denton I wanted to speak oh thank you that's great that's perfect I wanted to speak to you today excuse me about a concern I have about some astonishing news that I learned about the plans for the new DME gas station that you all voted on of course you all you know that you some of you anyway not all voted in favor of a 265 million dollar bond for a gas plant and some renewable contracts I am strongly in favor of the renewable contracts I think they're great I and many other citizens who came to public hearings have not been convinced that we need a gas plant but that's not actually what I'm here to talk about today what I'm here to talk about today is the hidden costs hidden to the public and as far as I understand it to yourselves for the new substations that will be put in so this is my so this is where around where the energy center will be here's where the Jim Crystal substation is this is the old TMPA transmission line that has existed for a long time and the so the the energy generated from the gas plant is going to be transmitted along here and you know this with the substations kind of help helping it along and preventing congestion this so I met with Phil Williams and asked and he was very helpful in meeting with me he's head of DME and I was asking about the cost and what's the cost of these substations that are needed to transmit this this energy from the the gas plant along the old TMPA line and I also wanted to ask him am I right in my understanding that just by reading this map it looks like the energy is going to go along the TMPA line routed around around Denton and then outside of Denton so these substations in here are about serving the city and these ones out here are about helping to get the energy push the energy along outside this way to ERCOT to the grid he said yes that is correct and he said that he couldn't tell me offhand the cost of these additional substations and they're listed here and anybody can get this map you can just request it from DME and they'll send you one these here are the substations that have not yet been procured and the properties for these substations have not yet been procured he said he couldn't tell me the price for each but he could give me a range he said the most expensive one would be this one right here number nine that's a Denton energy substation he said about 12 it's already about 25 million dollars he said and I know that that's kind of an unprecedented amount for a substation and he explained that that's because it will be unprecedentedly big there are seven or eight transmission lines coming out of it I asked what's at the low range he said this one the mash branch sorry not mash branch the Mayhill substation at about ten million dollars so we're looking at eight new substations ranging from 10 million to 25 million plus the properties needed for that that's a lot of extra cost and I asked if council had been given some sort of estimate for either a substation by substation and property by property costs or for some sort of overall estimate and I was told no and I wrote to anyway and I have not heard otherwise that is deeply concerning to me it looks like it'll be at least a billion dollars total for the total cost and again I include this as the cost of the gas plant because you need those substations to push the energy along thank you thank you appreciate it thank you okay that concludes our items for agenda item three let me get back to my page okay we are now at agenda items four which is the consent agenda councilmember Hawkins thank you mayor I move approval of consent agenda items a through V councilmember Gregory we have a motion and a second for the consent agenda agenda items a through V let's vote on the board please motion carries unanimously move on to agenda item five items for individual consideration 5a consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton Texas setting dates times and places for public hearings on the proposed annexation of certainties with property generally located north of Ryan Road thank you mayor members council city manager and staff for your consideration this evening is a request to approve an ordinance to set the dates times and place for a annexation that is shown here on this slide it is approximately 4.7 acres this journal area here shown in in outlined in black that is as as the annexation will proceed notification has been sent out and publication of public hearings will also be forwarded so that is the request quick background of this property there was a non annex ation agreement that was approved by council back in March of 2015 there were several extensions and then after it expired later this year or later last year council directed staff to proceed with the voluntary annexation this is the annex ation schedule it is includes two public hearings a first reading of the annex ation ordinance and then a second reading of the ordinance which will be the adoption of the annexation ordinance that concludes my presentation it's really short again what we're trying to prove here approve here is a ordinance that will set the time so that we can proceed with the public hearings as required by Texas local government code okay we don't see any cards to speak council have any questions for staff if not councilmember Hawkins I move approval of item 5a a mayor pro tem second we have a motion and a second for agenda item 5a let's vote on the board please motion carries 7-0 agenda item 5b 5b consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton Texas nonk pro-tunk correct in an inadvert ent mistake in ordinance number 2016 - 341 good evening mayor and council members Caroline booth director of economic development I have a short item for you this evening on November 1st 2016 the City Council approved an economic development program grant agreement with Sally Beauty equal to 50% of the increase in the city's ad valorem taxes generated by improvements to the property at 3900 Moore Street for three years and an earlier version of that agreement that you guys heard on September 20th 2016 was inadvertently attached to the adopted ordinance so the staff and the grantee requests that the correct agreement and nonk pro-tunk ordinance be used to fix this error and I will answer any questions if you have them before we take any questions just wanted to let the record reflect that councilmember Briggs has recused herself for this agenda item and was not present at the presentation of this item any questions for staff okay seeing none chair mayor pro tem thank you mayor move approval with agenda item 5b councilmember Wasney I second the motion we have a second a motion and a second let's vote on the board please a motion carries six zero moving on to agenda item 5c considered option of an ordinance accepting competitive proposals and awarding a contract for the city of Denton employee health clinic and operation management surfaces and providing an effective date sorry good evening mayor there was the council my name is Scott Pam the risk manager for the city appreciate the opportunity to come before you guys tonight to talk a little bit about something that's near and dear to my heart and that's our employee health clinic the clinic for short specifically tonight want to talk to you about requests for proposal 6198 which is for the operation and management of that clinic so if the council indulged me I have about six short slides after this opening slides it just kind of give you a little bit of background about the city's self-funded health plan and the clinic and then certainly glad to answer any excuse me any questions about the RFP or kind of where we're going from there so back in 2008 the city approved us moving to a self-funded health plan so prior to that we were fully ins ured and that was more kind of like what you guys are with your homeowners insurance or with your automobile insurance where we were paying premiums to an insurance company to transfer the risk like we transfer the risk of us being involved in a car accident or our house burning down to the insurance company we were transferring the risk of being involved having our employees need to use the doctor to get prescription medications or have to have surgeries and in doing that basically we were having to pay our claims whatever they were we had to pay administrative costs to the TPA or the health insurance carrier to manage that piece of it and then slowly there was their profit and overhead were built into that as well so by moving to self-funding we're still paying for our claims we're still paying that administrative fee but essentially what we're saving every time is that profit and overhead costs that go into it so even with good or bad years we still tend to win each year because we do have that savings that are going on there so what that does is allows us in the years where our claims are less than what we're bringing in to retain that savings as reserves versus passing it on to the insurance carrier who would get to keep that conversely when we have bad years we protect ourselves through stop-loss insurance which is essentially excess insurance that takes care of us for catastrophic claims so we have both specific insurance on each individual member of our plan so every dependent retiree and employee at $185,000 per individual and they also have aggregate stop-l oss on the plan as a whole so the insurance stop-loss insurance carrier will calculate for us what they expect our claims to be and they pick a corridor above that that if our claims exceed that then we have stop-loss protection there on the plan as a whole so you know knock on wood thankfully we've never had to go to our aggregate stop-loss the plan as a whole we do fairly routinely have individual claims who go over the $185,000 mark and we receive reimbursements in the stop-loss carrier so between the reserves and our stop-loss insurance we're insulated and protect ourselves from those bad years those catastrophic years and it helps us not to have to make you know gut reactions or dramatic changes to our health plan to be able to kind of deal with those peaks and valleys so the effect of being self-insured pretty much just kind of smooths our claims and allows us to be better planted for what we're trying to do and all the years we that we were fully insured even if we had minimal claims increases we never saw decreases in our premiums they always were going up and so we've been able to win since we became self-funded to the tune about nearly five million dollars in reserves we've been able to build up in our self-insurance fund so that helps to take care again of those catastrophic years so moving on to the next slide even though we do have peaks and valleys like I mentioned before we are able to weather those a little bit better because of our self-funding so this chart I know is a little bit busy but the dashed line is kind of how our claims have been as far as a percentage increase since 2012 so we had a 17.7 increase in 2012 total claims but then we have a 17% decrease in 2013 and on through the line the darker line is what kind of the industry trend is when it comes to medical so that's between 8 and 10 percent depending on what study you look at there are folks now because of the increases of prescription drugs that say the prescription drug trend is more like 12 to 15 percent but on average that's about where we fall the line here is what our trend has been you know going back to 2012 since we opened the clinic so we still have had some increases in our health claims we're still fortunate enough to be below the industry trend when it comes to our overall health increases and I certainly won't say that the clinic has all to do with that I wouldn't be so that presumptuous there are lots of things that go into that factor the fact that we just have a cycl ical nature to our health insurance we make plain plan changes from time to time that also benefit us but the clinic is a piece of that puzzle so back in 2011 we open up our employee health center the clinic and it is open to any employee retiree independent that is covered under a health plan and they basically can access all the services that a family care clinic provides a primary care physician at no cost to the employee the dependent or the retiring since we've opened it we've been able to consistently increase the number of visits available and the number of fills of visits that our employees and dependents are taking advantage of as the tune of about 35, 000 patient visits over that time period it's also a very key component to our healthy incentive program or the HIP program which is a program that helps kind of drive our employees to the clinic to take advantage of the health risk assessment which is the questionnaire the blood draw the follow-up visit with the clinician to find out you know what's going on we constantly have employees say I appreciate you guys have this available for us because had it not been for this I wouldn't have known that my cholesterol was you know through the roof or that I had high blood pressure and so we're able to intervene and help our employees and their dependents make positive changes to their lifestyle so that's a big piece of that if they qualify for the healthy incentive program they receive a premium differential on their monthly health premium about $40 a month so to be part of this program saves them almost $500 per year on their health insurance so there's an incentive to participate and be part of that we also have been able to establish that we 're able to provide an office visit at the clinic for a cheaper amount than what it would cost for folks to access that care through UnitedHealthcare we get data from them on a regular basis as to what a primary care visit and what preventative care visits cost what we were paying to through UnitedHealthcare to the providers if they were going out to the health plan to get that same care and we're always able to do it a little bit cheaper than that so we figure out that through care diversion in other words someone choosing to come to our clinic because they have the sniffles or the flu versus going into our health plan has saved the city about 2.75 million dollars over that time period by diverting care to the clinic and then there's an ROI number based on those type of statistics so that brings us to the RFP our current contract with care here who has been our clinic management and operations provider since we opened expires at the start at the end of December and we extended it to the end of February in order to complete the RFP process that just took longer than any of us expected to do the RFP we received seven proposals detailed in some of the information that I presented to you and we had a four- person evaluation team that looked at those proposals it was myself our benefits administrator our benefits and leave coordinator that deals a lot with the return to work and with our clinic and then also the chairperson of our employee insurance committee so we have an employee insurance committee that has representatives from the various departments that we meet on a monthly basis to share data about the health plan to talk about trends and emerging issues that we're concerned about so that they're very much up on what's going on with our health plan they're also a great conduit and vehicle to share information with our employee base and to be a representation of our employee base to bring questions and information back to us so we wanted that representation on the committee as well so the RFP basically looked at three main factors and I know you guys have seen a lot of our fees and so you're probably kind of familiar with this idea but the first one was price or the total cost of the service which was basically 50% that's obviously a very objective evaluation because we know what the cost is compared to everybody else's cost and we can look at that then we looked at compliance with specifications quality reliability the characteristics to meet the state or implied needs and that was about 20% and then indicators of probable performance on the contract was 30% yes sir. I have a real quick question when I read the the second bullet point the compliance with specifications quality reliability characteristics to meet stated or implied needs I sort of got sort of curious on implied needs because that seems very subjective so help me understand what that what do you what does that mean by that I mean I understand needed stated here's what we have what what is the implied referred to you know we developed a very comprehensive RFP where we tried to list out you know all the individual services and expectations I guess of the vendor and of what we want to try and do at the clinic but there are other some things we may miss in that process and so basically those things would be customary and usual to providing clinic operations in a similar setting is basically the way I would have you that implied and you know we can't cover everything but sure you know if we're going to do this then it makes sense that this and this would also be done so how I guess how do you have to identify or distinguish between the stated needs and the implied to be able to compare each proposal because if they're implied then some but I'm here you say correct me if I'm wrong some may have something in there that you think is implicit in a proposal like this and some may not is that where am I is that just inaccurate on my part I wish I could say it was you know that details as far as the elevation that piece of it I think that's sort of a caveat to the RFP that if we do happen to miss something in the proposal that you know we're not bound by saying well it wasn't explicitly in the proposal and therefore we're just not going to do it or if we're going to do it it's an eccentric fee so we tried to evaluate all the proposals based on the information provided in the proposals to the extent that we could okay all right councilmember Haw kins in any of the proposals is there an extra point or two given for a locally clinic locally held clinic or so there's a couple of cases there's not really because in this situation our clinic is housed here in Denton the staff are here in Denton that are providing the services and so you know the management piece of the clinic really could be performed almost anywhere as long as they were able to do it well and be able to communicate with staff be there frequently enough to you know check in on staff answer their questions be available those types of things and so we didn't have a true component of it it must be a local vendor or not now as we were looking at the third part of that the indicators of probable performance you know it was a very small piece of it I want to say about five percent of the total 30 points that they could get for that section we we looked at the clinic management piece if it was on site if it was in didn't it was in the state of Texas if it was in the throughout the country because I think one proposer was out of Washington State and they were proposing to manage it from Washington so you know we gave them a little bit lower score than we did for the folks that had a Texas presence or a DFW presence but again even if getting maximum points I want to say it was maybe one point five points of the total 30 that were available so it was a very small weighted piece of that total evaluation process. Councilmember Briggs. You mentioned just a little bit ago that it took a long time can you expand on why why it took so long the process? There's a lot of reasons behind it. It had been five years since we had done a clinic RFP and so we kind of remembered how long the process took and so we sort of built that into our timeline but we forgot how long it took the first time around and so I think we're a little ambitious with our initial timeline to begin with and then getting the seven proposals that are hundreds of pages and trying to go through and evaluate them just took a long time then as we started looking at the pricing component of it we realized that we some people proposed what we kind of asked for was the true per employee per month fee so that's a fee based on the number of employees for that administrative cost but a couple of proposals proposed a PEPM that included everything so the administration of it the supplies the salaries were all in that PEPM fee and so it was very hard to get that kind of apples-to-apples comparison and so there was back-and-forth dialogue with the different proposers to make sure we had the information we needed to be able to do that true apples -to-apples comparison and then to be very honest with you the holidays hit and that bogged down things as well. In those conversations there the apples-to-apples the the original numbers stayed the same like it was just translated in a different type of formula is that what you're saying? Right and I apologize for being more concise on that so the PEPM fee was designed to capture the administrative costs so the cost to have the management staff there to run the facility but then most everything else is a pass-through cost to the city of Denton so every time we give a flu shot or run a strep test or whatever those are pass-through cost to us as are the salaries and benefits costs are passed through to us without markup so some people proposed all those things particularly the salaries and the admin fee rolled up into the PEPM fee so their PEPM fee was much higher than everybody else's because they were including the salaries that were gonna be a pass-through cost to us and so in order to allow us to make that apples-to-apples comparison we went back to them and asked them to split that piece out and it just took some time to get it back. So they just itemized it? Correct. Okay, thank you. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you mayor. As I understand this the the only way this makes sense financially is if our employees use it over time because you're saving money the more they're utilizing that versus some other option that they're making a claim against. So to that question do you have any feedback loop from the employees in terms of their level of satisfaction with the care that they're getting under the current clinic and does that and does that play a part of this at all obviously when one of your proposals is coming from the existing clinic that do you do you use employee satisfaction as a as a gauge? We do and I alluded to a little bit in the AIS backup about some of the we do a satisfaction survey every every year and report those statistics as part of our stewardship report with care here and so you know we see very good numbers as far as the utilization goes you know like I said we've been like increase utilization and and the vast majority of employees who go there enjoy they talk about it being their primary source for health care that that's where they go every time that's their first choice that they would recommend it to co- workers that they feel the staff is caring and cares about their needs those types of things. We're always going to have those folks who just don't utilize the clinic for whatever reason I know we still have a mindset of folks that feel like the clinic is going to know their business and that somehow is going to be translated to management that we're somehow going to know their health condition which is absolutely not the case and that's another reason why we have chosen to contract with a third-party administrator there are some clinics in Texas where the clinical staff are actually employees of the entity City of Garland is one example of that we didn't feel like that made sense for us and so we have that layer of protection to insulate that more and so there's some people who just aren't going to use it from that there are some people who feel like our health risk assessment in the HIP program forces them to go to the clinic and so they're only going because they want the discount and they're not happy that they're there for a lot of relative reasons and so you know that gets reflected in the scores as well I don't that answers your question but we certainly have been a partner with care here for a long time and we see issues like that we address them when they happen and we try and fix them and resolve them when we can so moving on there are p evaluation after we went through the initial valuation of the RFPs kind of got the clarifying questions back and forth answered we felt that concentra and care here the incumbent sort of separated themselves from the rest and so we brought them in for a face-to-face interviews and a chance to clarify their proposals a little bit further one of the interesting things about this process was is that we thought when we first saw concentra's price that we might be missing something because if you guys looked at the evaluation matrix but it was like ten dollars it was like half of what anybody else proposed and so well I understand wanting to you know get the business that seemed a little light to us and so we wanted to have a thorough conversation with them to make sure that we were again that apples apples a comparison was everything that we were expecting the RFP included in that PEB in fee and as we went through the best and final offer proposal the BAFO we realized that and they realized that they were not including everything in that fee and so typically when you go through the BAFO analysis the price usually goes down or stays the same but in this situation actually went up because again they realized that they were not including everything in it and so that's why that price went up and so after all that shook out that was the final rating that we came up with and so that's why we're recommending the care here contract to you guys tonight you know to be perfectly honest with you you know they were care here we did not have the cheapest proposal concentra's was about three hundred seventy five thousand dollars estimated over the course of the full contract so not per year but over the course of the contract we are getting a cheaper rate from care here than what we had the previous five years that we've been in a contract with them they did lower their PPM fee so that's about a hundred and thirty five thousand dollar savings over that five year time period as well however there were some things that were a little bit harder to quantify that concern us a little bit about the concentra contract one of the things that was very important to us was retaining our existing staff because again they have the relationships with our patients you know we've gone through provider changes at the clinic before it does happen and it's going to happen in the future but that does disrupt our employees comfort level with their physician they just feel like they've gotten to know someone and they know their health condition and are working to help improve it and now we've changed physicians on them so we wanted to try and ensure that we would be able to keep our staff and while concentra said they would you know kind of work on or whatever they didn't really give us a commitment or make us feel confident that was a priority for them consider doesn 't have an after hours call center or nurse line which we currently have through care here if someone has a question for the clinic or wants to schedule an appointment it isn't doesn't have internet capability or whatever they can call the clinic the call the 800 number at the call center to schedule that appointment or leave that question for a member of staff I don't have an exact figure but they literally receive a hundred hundreds of calls every month after hours you know for our clinic and so that would be something that would be lost if we didn't have that capability another area was that we currently see children aged two and up at our clinic we have about 37 children in that age range that we do see at the clinic and concentra's standard was really five years or less five years and up excuse me they would see them if it was an urgent need but they didn't want to be there treating physician moving forward and the one thing that kind of concerns us was all aspects of their wellness platform from the the website the health coaches were all outsourced in their vendor they weren't actually employees of concentra and so again it was a very close consideration but those were some of the things that really stood out to us as being differentiators in the two proposals real quick question are you gonna the ranking sheets probably not in your presentation I wouldn't think and it's okay if it's not because I know that the three hundred seventy five thousand dollar savings I believe is from the the administrative services prices is that it yes sir it's the top part the estimated lab costs all together yes so then the bottom part which is services proposal pricing you have care I don't even remember their names care here I want to say something else but I don't want to give me a free advertisement you've got 1.93 million down there at the bottom and then you have the other one is 1.582 so are those two added together to get the total proposal the first half the cost like if you go up there you see 1.8 to 6.3 to 5 and then concentra is 1.449 904 you see those yes sir so if you add those two sort of summary cost to get the total proposal just make sure I'm following you like let's look at the concentra proposal like you said it's the 1.449 for example if there that's the per employee per month administrative cost with the escalator that they requested and that's the total over the five five years correct and so then that means that the care here is the 1.8 to 6.3 to 5 yes sir for the five years for the administrative piece of it yes and then we also have the section down below that has not not so much the salaries but then dropping down to the lab work and everything which is like the hundred and thirty two thousand and the hundred and four thousand we basically oh the 1.93 that's all of it added together yes sir gotcha okay never mind my mistake because each vendor has different negotiated rates for their lab work and so even though that is a pass-through cost to us if one provider can get something for five dollars less than the other provider and we do a thousand of them you know that that does add up and so we wanted to capture that piece of it as well in the evaluation yeah I was just reading it wrong thank you appreciate that councilmember Gary we do have some speakers to we'll get to them before okay in the contract are there provisions for changes to prices for services over time I know it's a five-year contract so is there a built-in adjustment for instance for x-rays or a built-in adjustment for the office visits we built that into the overall five-year cost we understand that this is a per employee per month cost as we add employees that cost is going to go up so we built in an increase of employees over the time period and then a small increase for the salaries and kids we make sorry adjustments to our existing staff and for the labs x-rays all that piece of it as well so what was the change in the prior contract on an annual basis what was the built-in increase to be honest council area I don't remember okay well I'm trying to compare it to you know I guess what I what I want to figure out is did our built-in increases match up with reality and is what we've built into our next five years going to match up with the history that we have for the past five years I feel more comfortable that moving forward we've built in some of those allowances for increases than necessarily our older contract there's been a lot of changes the way we do purchasing and contracts as far as building those things into it and so we probably didn't do as good a job as we probably should have or if we were doing contract today in spelling out with those escalations were going to be what were some of the escalations that you encountered in the last five-year contract really it was mostly just the staff you know trying to be competitive in the marketplace and reward our existing staff with pay increases you know each year and so we tied those to the level that our city employees were getting and then allowing them to give them performance based increases for the staff and then there's always the fluctuation of medical inflation that applies to the various tests and if we have to buy a new a stethoscope that we bought you know three years ago is going to cost more you know now if we purchase it so so what is the built-in increase over the course of this five-year contract just pick a line item and tell me what the increase is for the PPM fee we built in a 2% increase to the growth of employees so a 2 % increase in employees each year and we built in a 3% increase for salaries and consumables and equipment okay you don't know how that compares to the last five years to be honest with you I don't believe we had an escalator built into it so what happens then if there's no escalator built into it in terms of the costs we would run the rest that we would exceed the maximum allow able under the contract before we got into year five and we need to have to come back to you guys to amend it or I'd have to defer to purchasing route with it all rest of those processes would be able to take it out to back out for better or what okay so my question is this was there were there incidents during the last portion of the five-year contract that just completed where the cost exceeded what we had allocated for it in the contract to be honest I'm gonna have to go back and look at that piece of it to see like I said I know we have changed the way we do contracting and trying to bring counsel a true in this case five-year estimated cost I'm not so sure that five years ago we necessarily did a good job of doing that and so you know to be honest with you we may have I have to go back to look to see what the five-year total was we may have exceeded it or maybe under it I would have to go back and look okay thank you customer breaks so speaking of five-year contract how was how is the length of the contract decided is it just what what was done before so it's kind of why why is five years important first officer point out it is a one-year contract with four one years for renewal so it could be five years it could just be one year and so that's kind of the maximum contract that I believe that you as a council have you know sort of said that's really as far into the future as we want to commit ourselves but even this case it's really just a one-year contract and our previous contract was a three-year contract with two one-year renewals for a five-year total any other questions all right we do have some public input go ahead and go through the cards the first speaker is Deb Amartar if you'll come down state your name and address your time will begin Deb Amartar 2003 Misty Wood Lane I have some questions about this and I understand that you can't answer my questions directly and I'm hoping you that you know the answer so when I saw read the backup that was presented to the public and I saw the list of the the seven applicants for this RFP I noticed that only one of them was a local Denton facility the Dent on community health clinic which I know has really proven itself and provides many services to the community I I went in and checked with that that ordinance that about giving you know you know preference to local vendors for contracts and I did and I noticed that that doesn't apply to RFPs so you know my next question was well who who is this the the doctor and the staff that this city is currently working with for its employee health clinic and I couldn't find that information anywhere in the backup that was or the attachments that were available to the public the reason why I wanted to know that is because when I go see a doctor you know I make my decision based on is this a good doctor and do as you know and somebody had mentioned earlier that was another question I was going to ask how do our staff satisfied with this doctor and this staff I noticed that they are I think one maybe two but I think one doctor and some staff and that and they're local and going to be retained and if this is a great doctor with great stuff then that's great but I just I find it kind of mind-boggling that we're considering you know all these financial factors which are of course so important but that not considering who is the doctor that they're going to be working with and why is this person not named this facility you know if this is a facility that sees other patients outside of the city I don't know why is it not named you know because I wanted to be able to look them up so anyway I'm hoping that this will come out I'm hoping that at least that you all know and it had the opportunity to look this person up and that there I hope they're a very good doctor anyway you know if if not and if they are an unknown entity then I would say you know why not go with the you know the doctors that we know are excellent doctors who are here local doctors who are known entities anyway that's all thank you next speaker will be Tim Swenson you'll come down state your name and address your time will begin and one of the things I'm really want to address today is the clinic is a very exceptional great place to community clinic and they are people that really help with the people that are maybe disabled they may have mental issues may have any type of disabilities of any kind and today I had the issue right down there and scared a lot of people today and some of the people in here saw it and when I had it in front of him he had no problem whatsoever just like Deborah was talking about you know is the doctor the right kind of doctor did you need and is it going to meet the needs of the client and he is a doctor that can handle it because he handled my case and he is a doctor that gives to the community he helps people like groups like able disabled which is a peer-to-peer group which we're trying to get peer-to-peer within the community and we're trying to get the community where we help people like our daily bread things in that nature which is very crucial and if this is not up and going it is really going to affect the community with our daily bread it's going to affect able disabled and it's going to end affect me because I'm not going to have a position that actually understands my condition that I just had just right down there just a few minutes ago or maybe an hour ago and it's gonna be very unfortunate and I really like to keep this clinic up going and be progressive and it's gonna be very excellent for the employees you want to have a doctor that you can be proud of for the employees and that's what you want it's not the dollar it's about being proud that's all it's a sure councilman breaks yeah I'm sorry could you state the doctor or the clinic that you're you're speaking of right now Dr. Masserelli okay thank you thank you excellent he did you know I have seizure right there right in front of him he handled it perfectly down to T and I'm even been had seizures and image of Ma and the doctors named in tomorrow froze up and didn't know what to do but Dr. Masserelli had it right there and handled it perfect and you don't find doctors like that you really don't thank you Tim appreciate it thank you Claudette is it fit fatty apologize state your name and address and your time will begin I'm Claudette Fetty 2708 Glenwood in Denton I'm speaking in opposition to the contract with care here over our local didn't community health clinic in essence I'm so I'm speaking out in support of the didn't community health clinic I don't know how they didn't make it to the round where they got to be interviewed because I think there's a lot of qualitative value there that we would lose that that we can gain from they are local they're a member of our community they provide a lot of value added they serve people in Denton that would not be served otherwise so keeping them here whether you do it through this contract or whether you decide to fund another contract I think we need to support the didn't community health clinic they are comprehensive unlike somebody who might be adhering to the bottom line of a contract what I can tell you is that they go above and beyond and they meet people's needs because those those are the needs that they see and they are mission driven toward addressing the needs that they see they are comprehensive they include mental health support they include vocational counseling counseling they include nutrition and health I'm an occupational therapist I teach at the Texas Women's University in the school of OT and I work with them to provide the able disabled group and community based occupational therapy as a partnership across the clinic and and TW school of OT I do that because they're a nonprofit mission driven kind of entity so I'm willing to partner and do that all of those resources are available to your employees and I'm not sure they they I don't know the other clinic I'm not sure that they are looking at a profit kind of contractual model that that's limited to that so I want to urge that you support the didn't community health clinic they are a public good and we need them in Denton and I support them with my time and as a taxpayer I'd like to support them with my public dollars as well thank you thank you the next speaker is Anne Cleveland state your name and number name and address your time will begin thank you Anna Cleveland I'm sorry 1721 T.C. Lane Denton Texas I am a regents professor and is a Sarah low kennedy and our professor and director of health informatics in the College of Information at the University of North Texas I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak as a patient of the dental community health clinic I would like to sub to voice my support for the quality of care my husband and I have received from the clinic when our primary care physician closed her practice in summer 2014 we have to look for a new health care provider after consulting with friends in the health care profession dr. Masarelli and his staff came highly recommended there were two common things of our friends comments one the quality of doctor and patient relationship that dr. Masarelli established and secondly his ability to quickly respond to communication I have to agree with those two points I want to add another point dr. Masarelli not only treats his patients but he educates his patients by providing health information in a way that health consumer can understand a diagnosis treatment etc and then they can make informed decisions based on my professional position in health information management and informatics I was asked to join the governing board board of the clinic and they have provided me a closer view to the operations of the clinic and specifically I want to chair the clinic how these clinic have impacted on my personal level on January 2nd 2017 my husband and I returned to Denton after spending time of town during the holidays upon our return I noticed that dawn was developing symptoms related to fluid bronchitis etc and I tried to make an appointment with the clinic don't being so weak and feverish fell down on the way to the car and I had to run off several individuals to get him up don't insist that even though he have fallen to go to the clinic to see dr. Masarelli and when I got there there was no way to get him out of the car I went upstairs and it take help us with a wheelchair but dr. Masarelli from the fourth floor and his office window saw what was happening and ran four floors down to help us he acted on the spot help us and he was transported in an ambulance to medical city of Dent on that evening dr. Masarelli visit dawn in the hospital and in the following days sent several text to us to find out what the condition was I can tell you that this is an example of his dedication dr. Masarelli and his staff are advocates I say for his patient I hope that you at City Council members can give the Denton community health clinic an opportunity to serve the city of Denton's through the health information clinic thank you very much thank you next speaker is Jeff Scott state your name and address and your time will begin my name is Jeff Scott my address is 9704 Meadow Creek Drive in Denton and I appreciate this opportunity to speak to you I'd like to give you the story of my association with the Denton community health clinic my wife and I grew up in Arlington and I worked in the area for many years and then my career took me out of the state for several years 2004 we returned to the area and needed to because grandchildren started happening and aged parents needed some help our son lives here in Denton so I asked him who we should engage our primary care physician and he told us dr. Masarelli without question and we liked him and became his patients we were saddened when they sold their practice but stayed with a physician that bought their practice until I turned 65 and was eligible for Medicare he she didn't take Medicare patients and so I researched options and found out that they had opened the Denton community health clinic and we quickly signed up as time passed I became interested in volunteering there and primarily because I was moved by their mission of providing compassionate health care to all whether you had insurance or not for the past two and a half years I've done what I can do which is largely sweeping and cleaning and about a year and a half ago Alice asked me if I'd like to be a member of the board of directors and I said yes and now I'm currently the chair and I guess you could say that's a promotion in one sense in January of 2014 I suffered a broken ankle and the next day I painfully hobbled in to see dr. Masarelli while sitting there in his exam room he called the orthopedic surgeon for me and made an appointment for me later that day I left there with a pair of crutches they provided and a sense of what I needed to do to recover on another occasion I started noticing what can best be described as lightning flashes in the periphery periphery of my eyesight he recognized the potential seriousness of this and again while there in the exam room he called an ophthalmologist and made an immediate appointment for me fortunately it turned out to be a minor problem the point of sharing these two episodes is that successful outcomes are what makes for successful health care outcomes and patient- centered care are mantras I hear continuously at the clinic I'm not qualified to speak on how the rating of the Denton Community Health Clinic was determined I will say based on my experiences and observations I'm very surprised and somewhat shocked I strongly recommend the council review the current recommendation before approving the contract for city employee employee health care after all is said and done the entity for providing the best possible possible health outcome for city employees as the Denton Community Health Clinic next speakers house Masarelli don't state your name and address your time will begin my name is Alice Masarelli at 525 South Locust in Denton I am the executive director of the Denton Community Health Clinic and I want to thank the mayor and council members for listening to my comments and concerns about the untapped potential savings at the city clinic I have an RN with 40 years experience with a doctoral degree in health care executive management and a certification in health care quality and thus feel qualified to make the following comments how are quality and cost-effective primary care defined in the in the complex beast that is health care one meeting national standards for chronic disease management offering real tangible cost savings by having processes in place to reduce hospitalizations emergency department visits the proposal being considered actually admits that employees are sent to the admit to the emergency department for admission what an increased cost also quality is the judicious use of medical testing and avoiding duplication using specialists that are specialists and not become the treating medical provider mid levels are associated with higher numbers of specialist referrals and mid levels are with managing or providing care at the city clinic preventing overuse of medications I think it be hooves a progressive city like Denton to ensure that their employees receive the highest quality care possible and that the taxpayers monies are saved based on documented effective methods it is known that the fact that cost of a health care alone does not equal quality just look at the US statistics health care trends are addressing this by shifting the focus to enforce national quality measures in order for providers to be paid hence the method used to score the proposal seems rather inappropriate 50% was allocated to cost alone while the actual bitter description of how quality is defined and will be delivered only had a weight of 20% City Council is not provided a summary of the vital information that outlines how cost savings will be generated quality described as I've described leads to savings which we call money not spent and therefore reduced cost how can we justify to the citizens of Denton that city offers basic health services to its employees and does not max out the savings that are possible how current how is the current and proposed management of the city clinic truly one that provides the highest quality of primary care and cost savings thank you again and please consider what taxpayers can be set the taxpayers dollars can be saved thank you those are all the blue cards and blue cards meaning those that are wishing to speak I do have some white cards that people fill out not wishing to speak but I 'll read their name and address into the record with a summary of their comments Charlene Myers 1317 Eagle when Lane opposes this item to the City Council which I'm assuming is the recommendation of the contract to care care here Thomas Emmerich is in opposition read a couple of sentences on comments you're trusting a firm with no current established reputation in the community to provide unknowns for health care didn't community health clinic is both an established entity for health care but provides more to them as a community focal point for overall health and he's in opposition of the current recommendation Michael a red one red wine 202 one Holly Hill Lane is in opposition of the recommendation councilmember Gregory those are all the cards that I have yes a question for staff I don't know if mr. Payne can ask answer this or not but what I'm curious about is the care now clinic am I using the name right here here here here here here care something or another is that clinic open to other patients other than city of Denton staff no sir it's only open to employees their dependents and retirees who are covered in the city's health plan and when dr. Masarelli was working as the clinician for the city of Dent on was was that program open only to Denton staff or was it open to other folks that's been our model since we opened the clinic then it was just open for Denton staff okay thank you any other questions councilmember Gary like to move to postpone this particular deliberation to a date certain in order to give council a time to have a work session item to answer some unanswer ed questions and the date certain would be March 28th yeah council okay yeah we'll go ahead because I have a couple questions not of your motion but what you're looking for councilmember Br iggs I will second that motion if it needs a second okay councilmember Gregory a delay like that how does that affect the current status of our contract in the operation of the clinic at this time I have to defer to purchasing illegal but I was assuming either would have to extend the contract another month till the end of March to allow the operations to continue because the contract current contract runs out when I mean in the February okay thank you and is that I see the head shaking heads nodding and is that something that's doable at the staff level or is that something that council has to do or is it even allowed pursuant to the contract or to a state law we have to negotiate with care here about that extension the short-term extension that you're asking for okay fantastic councilmember Gary you talked about to answer some questions that and I presume there's some of them the ones that you asked about the historical context of some of that is that correct that's right and just wanted to be clear the contract ended in on December 31st correct so this is actually an extension that we're in of the contract is that right okay so I believe there's some precedent for sure extending the contract I can't speak for them but it does seem like that's happened once already so yes I'd like to have some of those questions that I mentioned about some historical data just to give me a better context I honestly don't feel like I have enough information to truly understand some of the metrics that were in the backup so I would just like the opportunity to educate get it get better educated about it and I think a question I had is just sort of an idea of because the price did go up considerably for the second you're the second person of the best and final was a concentra or something like that yes sir and so I'd like to understand the sort of the pathway to that apparently there were some conversations and did y'all include this or how it looked from their first one to their best and final to understand the difference in in that specifically can I try to address a little bit of it right now or would you sure what yeah that 's fine that'd be fine right now sure their initial proposal was for like $10 and three cents per employee per month and so what we realized was a lot of the wellness things that we were expecting some of the health coaching were not included in that price and so they came back and extended that up to the $12 and 82 cents p.m. p.m. and then they also wanted a believe a 5% increase each year and that's reflected in the numbers going forward so that's how we arrived at that number it came from them after they heard kind of what our expectations were open conversations about you know what was we didn't feel were included and what wasn't part of it and they came back with that number so there was I mean there's no I mean it's just a couple conversations they sort of read between the lines that oh they're looking for this as well and so this is the first time you saw this addition to the numbers when you they received you received their best and final correct we they came in for one of the finalist interviews and that was one of the specific questions we had for them was making sure tell us exactly what is included in your fee and we realized that there were some holes there and so we said please come back to include that because most everybody else's are included in that those components are included in their PE p.m. fee and so they came back to us about a week later with that number okay thank you councilman was me does a delay impact the RFP and if so explain that mayor council the responses are good for 120 days we can spend extend those by email and so as long as care the respondent is willing to agree okay okay any other questions for staff okay we have a motion to postpone till date certain and the date certain again councilmember Gary was it was the last meeting in March 28th 28th I assumed we were having a meeting that day I don't want to call a meeting just for that okay we can we can add an action if we need to okay and we have a second let's go ahead and vote on the board for postponement to a date certain motion carries what was that five one I think it was five one all right we'll move on I tell you what let's take a five or ten minute break before we move on to the next agenda items all right we are back in session meeting the Denton City Council on Tuesday February 21st 2017 at 823 and mayor pro tem had to exit early so he he is not with us right we'll move on to agenda item 5d which is consider approval of resolution of the city of Denton evidently support for the proposed new construction of palladium Denton apartments in Denton and authorizing such other action necessary convenient to carry out this resolution mayor and members of the council I'll be very brief since you've already spent some time discussing the proposed project approval of this resolution will allow palladium of Denton to submit along with their application the resolution which as you know now will provide an additional 17 points as the applications are scored Ron Mangida has a couple of slides with the location of the palladium apartments in Denton if you'd like to see that and again if you have any questions Ron and I are here and can hopefully answer those just so real quick you've seen this part presentation before these are just details of the project it's a hundred eighty units of multifamily development location is on the south east corner of loop 288 and Sherman Drive and I'll be happy to answer any question you may have now correct me if I'm wrong I thought when I when in the work session we talked about the number of units for each development one was 150 and one was 120 something this is 180 is that has there been a change on that or is that the amount of is that the the next one is 120 I don't recall okay so the palladium is a hundred and eighty unit development is it well well yeah if it councils and dozens can I get a clarification from the developer if you'll come down and state your name and just give us that answer that'd be fine Ryan combs with palladium and we actually you're correct we were at 150 and so just about everything else here is the same it's just 150 units okay all right thank you very much appreciate that okay any questions I guess Ron if you can put that map back up because I see zoned community mixed-use general is that the current zoning on that track that is the current zoning yes and so is that a neighborhood that it backs up to there that is yes there's subdivision to the south okay those are townhomes are really um smaller lot homes but they are currently developed okay all right okay councilman Briggs that is district two knows our single-family single-family homes in that neighborhood okay yeah all right okay any other questions councilmember Gary the way I see it we have a couple of options in light of our conversation during the work session one we can proceed with the resolution as it's written and with the understanding that palladium will enter into a partnership with DHA which would then take the property off of the tax rolls the other course of action is that we can table the motion and not not provide our approval and not provide any disapproval the third option that I see is that we can amend the motion I'm sorry amend the resolution to indicate that we will support a letter a resolution and support however it's contingent upon there not being a partnership with DHA therefore the property is not being taken off the tax roll and because of the need of public housing that we have I'm sorry not public housing but low-income housing that we have I would like to proceed with the third route and see where council stands on that particular avenue so it would be a motion to amend to include language that indicates that the resolution is contingent upon palladium acting individually and not in partnership with any public housing authority councilmember Hawkins I second all right thank you I have a question for that and I'm not sure and with councils and dozens I'm not sure if staff can answer maybe staff can answer if not maybe there's there's a resource in the audience that can help me answer that so it's my understanding that the application is due on March the 1st and that at the time of application submittal an org chart of ownership has to be submitted together with that application is that is that my understanding yes I believe that's correct okay and is it also my understanding that there is opportunity during the application process that if that org chart if there's a desire to amend it to either change the components of that organs of that ownership structure by either deleting or adding is that is that an is that something that's available I do not believe that you can after submission of your application I believe everything that's in that application I do not I don't think it can be changed our palladium sure he's okay I'd like to hear the answer that question yes sure it is the technical answer is it's possible to change it however to change the ownership structure you have to go in front of the board this is a competitive process and anytime you go in front of the board all of the competitors are going to come out and say you can't change things okay and so it is possible it would be better to follow councilman Gary's to know up front if that's the structure that we want to go with and that's what we need to do that the other issue though is that resolutions of support need to be resolutions very clearly for the application to move forward they cannot be conditioned however if that's the intention of the council is to move forward in a capacity where we do pay full property taxes then just let us know and that's what we'll do because our org chart will have to show that okay all right okay councilmember Hawkins did you have a yeah if this were to pass tonight if you can speak a little bit how many more times you could possibly be in front of council for I don't know SEP zoning that that's right so so currently this side is owned CMG I believe anyway it's a it's a use that that would allow multifamily under an SUP but I believe that there's a certain stipulation in that SUP that requires a commercial component and tax credits will not allow a commercial component to be a part of that so we will have to come back for a zoning discussion so there will be a land use discussion we will have to come back and talk about our use on that property and and reaching out to the neighbors and all of those types of things and so there's another six months to this process this resolution of support is simply allowing us to submit our application to be able to get the points in order to be for us to be competitive yes did I understand you correctly that you can't have any contingencies inside of your letter of resolution or your resolution of support is that correct that's correct okay so that would kind of throw out the motion to amend in my mind because it would create a type of contingency in your resolution that's correct okay and so we would need just just the resolution as written for clear support but direction from council that because we do have to come back for zoning and so if we come back for zoning and we've got a structure that's tax-exempt then obviously we're not going to be approved and so there so so when we come back that's why I need to know tonight if we are if the reason that council will support is because they're under your understanding is that we will pay full property tax exemption I need to know that so I can structure it right now so that when we come back it's exactly what you expect okay in light of that I'll withdraw my motion to amend okay all right okay so the right now we have no motion on the table councilmember Gregory I'm looking in my backup and I did not see that map and so I looked in the back up to see what the map is for item E and while it may it would help me to consider this in light of where the because I believe that there's another proposal coming up next for a for another apartment that's pretty close to this I'm not sure though yes can you show me just where that is so I can get this in context just it's just north of 288 and it's just in this general vicinity right here okay thank you say that one more time just north of loop 288 in this general vicinity actually let me show a map real quick yeah and this is just for informational purposes for this agenda item so that's why we're not calling the other one yeah so that's that one oh and you already showed the other one so it's just across what is that loop 288 just across loop 288 okay all right yeah maybe a question for legal how do we do this if we know well I know we can't pass the resolution with conditions it needs to be pretty much as written here as is correct and the developers here on record or something stating how the it's going to be structured I would assume that's how the council would vote on it on that the application is being turned in the very next day or that same day and that's when that's when the application that's when okay that that is that's when the applications do you write at the very beginning of March and so you know what legal tool can the city guarantee I don't does the city have to approve property tax exemptions I guess I don't I don't know the answer to that question no it's the county apprais al district okay but would that be a part of the zoning is that is that a reason to deny zoning no okay so this is a handshake deal more or less you would be taking the developer on his word at his word that he will structure this without going into a partnership with DHA when he submits his application on the ownership structure on March the 2nd that's basically what what is before you if you choose to go down that option or as council member Bagheri mentioned it could be tabled and so if we obviously we would ask the support for the resolutions that's the only path that we have to move forward and just know that as we spoke very briefly that you know we would like to begin a long relationship with the city of Denton and we have no intention of of misrepresenting something because that would that would be very counterintuitive for us I have a question of staff for information purposes and I don't know if Barbara you may know this the current property that's being built on McKinney Street it's called the veranda veranda huh yeah and this is sort of to provide some historical context for what we're talking about sure when was that brought before council for a resolution do you because anybody recall that just even ballpark Sherry Mcdain may recall but I believe it was brought during the same time frame before applications were due two years ago okay so and it's a four percent so that there is no deadline so I know I don't remember do you remember when we okay it's been probably a couple years because I know it's because it yeah because I was okay yes I'm sorry Barbara do four percents don't need letters of resolution though is that correct they do I believe get additional points on their application if they have a resolution of support but there there's just no specific time period in which it has to be submitted and it's not competitive I'm wondering if because I saw some heads sort of shaking I'm wondering if it's I don't know if they get points but it has to be a requirement I think to for that is that right it's not competitive so there there are no points involved right correct I'm sorry but I do believe that we did pass some supportive documentation and that and that currently is in partnership with the Denton Housing Authority I believe okay okay thank you councilmember Hawkins I'm gonna move approval of shoot item five is a D I apologize I flipped the page it's the yes sir five D is five D David councilmember Briggs I will I will second on the developers word and and I want to say a couple of things here you know we had some good conversation yesterday first of all it's certainly we have a need for workforce housing in this community there's no question about that we need workforce housing and through nobody's fault we're sort of again as I mentioned there we have sort of a collision between some policy requests that have since been retracted at least temporarily or maybe permanently I don't know and then this specific resolution with a partnership or not so I need to make it very clear that in no way did our conversation in that work session item agenda item we were not making any comments about or any kind of assumptions about any agency here in town either their their effectiveness or non effectiveness it's a matter of we've got some policy issues that were brought forward in a closed session and also as we discussed an open session that we need to iron out before moving forward on that so first and foremost we need workforce housing I just think that's a given and I would certainly suggest and recommend that this isn't the last 9% or 4% that's going to be coming to the city of Denton and we need to figure out where we move forward in these partnerships how do we structure them take care of those policy implications because it's my understanding I'm just gonna put it out there it's my understanding that you know didn't housing authority wants this partnership all right they want this partnership and and I think what we what they heard in the council meeting at least in a sense is that you know we've got some policy considerations that we want to try to iron out before moving forward in that not because of anything didn't housing authority is doing but how do we as a city craft a policy to do this well we've obviously voted on one a couple years ago where we didn't have that policy and we voted on it to do that and I don't remember what it was so I don't know who voted on it that's sitting sitting up here but I'm probably sure I did unless it was in 2014 or yeah 13 so that's the dilemma and we have a motion and a second the problem this is my fear first of all we've lost a council member you know he had to leave early so this will either get adopted as it stands and if that doesn't make it then if there's a motion to proceed with the partnership I don't know if this so we're just gonna have to see what I mean I'm just hypothesizing about the steps if this doesn't pass because the motion is to pass this resolution and it sounds like the motion intent is to pass that resolution as just a taxing development tax collecting development okay all right wish I could state that into the record no well I think I think it's clear the intent it's just not it's not made an official part of the resolution I mean and it's not it's not a contingent this isn't a contingency on the resolution when it goes before whatever group it goes before in the application there will be no contingency in that resolution it's simply whatever the org chart submitted with that application will be the or the ownership chart is the one that will prevail yep okay council member Briggs are there are there cards to speak on this no yes you're right there are sorry thank you y'all need to just throw something at me so before we go any further we will hear from the community we've got several cards we've got Ryan cones oh you've already spoke yes come to my home please yeah well you you you filled out a card and you've got was it three minutes or well I will gladly yield my time I want to be very respectful I've already answered a lot of questions I think okay thank you is it Matt is Jones you pass okay and Sherry McD ade good evening I'm Sherry McDade I'm the CEO for Denton Housing Authority I do apologize with my voice I do want to let you know that the Housing Authority is in support of this development because at the end of the day it provides some additional affordable housing for some very needy families in the community we the Housing Authority will continue to work with the council and work with the city staff and coming back with some more answers that to some questions that you had to iron out a policy that we can all work with our mission is to provide you know housing and assistance for low-income families and that's who we are and that's what we do and so I'm hoping that even with this decision today that this is not going to be the practice of the city that you don't allow us to be able to do what we do so thank you very much and we'll appreciate the time well and thank you mr. McDade and I'll tell you I don't I think this whole conversation the genesis of it was to craft a policy whereby the city partners with the Denton Housing Authority to provide that sort of backbone support for workforce housing in the city of Dent on and I can only speak for myself that's still my intent I'll be honest I was prepared to vote for this motion even if it meant the partnering because I 've worked with this organization for many many years and I believe we could figure it out we've had much more tenuous decisions to make but so I would have been willing to do that and so I will be also voting for this because in the end we need affordable housing all you got to do is look around and look at the waiting list and look at the prices of rents and these developments as you can tell by the ones that are going up these are not your old tax credit housing these are very fine finally constructed well amenitized units that are being built all around the country so councilmember Wasney I just want the record to show clearly that this is a project that will be taxed for property tax and that that has to be part of the record thank you thank you okay I believe I had a motion by councilmember Hawkins and a second by councilmember Briggs is that correct with all the accompanying testimony to indicate the the will and intent of the council all right let's vote on the board please motion carries six zero moving on to agenda item numbers 5e consider approval of a resolution of the city of Denton Texas evidencing support for the proposed new construction of the reserve at Sherman and Denton and authorizing such other actions necessary convenient to carry out this resolution members of the council I don't know if you need any other information about this project mr. Applequist from the Miller Valentine group is here and can answer any of your questions and again this resolution will provide additional points for the reserve at Sherman application as submitted for low-income housing tax credits thank you I do have a question if you could put the map up again because these two projects are in very close proximity to one another and also what is the current zoning on that parcel CMG as well okay community makes use general all right and so that's 120 units correct okay do we have a breakdown of the unit makes it says one two and three bedrooms do we know what that breakdown is well when you speak if you wouldn't mind answering that question that'd be great councilmember Briggs you have a question I'm pretty sure but the the loop divides those into two different school districts correct so that the children living in either one of those units will all be divided I mean I'm sorry I don't know that the school district boundaries on this location like one goes to Jennings or Woodrow and the other one goes on the other side yes ma'am in my conversations with a superintendent this one that's on the north side of loop 288 will go to hodge and the one on the south side will go to Jennings okay thank you thank you okay any other questions for staff we do have cards wishing to speak make sure you get them right yep okay miss Jones you wish to speak thank you Sherry McDade good evening again I do want to let you know that we do still support the development and the opportunity to have additional affordable housing in the city thank you very much thank you and Chris Applequist say pronounce that sorry if it's not mayor council thank you very much for your time today Chris Applequist Miller Valentine group so a little bit I have a suggestion I think in the resolution if it did make council more comfortable we could say whereas the owner will be a for-profit company we can put that in the religion resolution it's a factual statement I think that would be fine and it really you know I could go through the the whole spiel of our company being a 50 year old company and operating 17 states and and the track record we have but really we would still like to work with the Housing Authority we can still pay full property taxes and we can figure out a way to work with them one way or another we've been talking to them for a couple months now they're a great group great organization and we will work with them even if the property is fully taxed councilmember Gary I'm not able to move on my board so I wanted to make a motion that's not by accident I see what's happened here I'll move to amend as indicated by the developer so we'll be adding language that says whereas the developer is a for-profit company correct okay you you said developer I believe you said owner I'm sorry the owner thank you right yeah yeah owner owner would relate to the property tax okay and Chris well you're here in the work session you had stated that was 120 units that right 24 our market rents right that's good then there were five that you're proposing to hold open for sort of units to for nonprofits who assist the homeless correct is that is that my understanding right is that part of the 24 is it 24 is that would be part of the 96 okay 96 affordable units and then there's 24 market rate units and is that what you've done in other similar developments that you've developed some on the country okay fantastic of course that 's not part of the resolution I just wanted to reiterate that okay we have a oh councilmember Bosnia I'm sorry and just to be clear that the record shows that the developer agrees to move forward with the project and pay property taxes absolutely thank you yes ma'am councilmember Briggs just for clarification that those five units that you mentioned are still going to be included in the project whether the partnership whether the property is taxed or that is correct right that is correct yeah we will have special needs units set aside do you get extra points for that type of thing we do yeah yeah it's really it gets to a point where it's almost a threshold item because everyone takes those points anyways okay thank you thank you okay we have a motion did we have a second I will second councilmember Br iggs you second all right any other questions thank you thank you Chris very much you know the questions for staff or seeing none we have a motion in a second let's vote on the board please motion carries six zero we will now turn to agenda item six a you know I'm six which are public hearings 6a hold a public hearing and consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton Texas expressly repe aling section 34 - 35 34 - 36 etc of the didn't code of ordinances relating to annex ations and amending sub-chapter 35.3 thank you mayor members council mr. city manager this item is a code amendment partly to add annexation criteria into the Denton development code and also expressly repeal sections 34 - 35 34 - 36 and 34 - 37 of the den code ordinances as it relates to annexation as you know from a prior work session back in October we presented the criteria for annexation we currently have or we we have in place sections in the court of ordinances that speak of annexation however back in 2002 when the ordinance was sorry the development code was updated there there was an intent to repeal those but no actual wording or language was included with that ordinance so we are expressly or we requiring or requesting expressly repealing this section so that we can create a new section in sub chapter 35.3 on procedures to create a periphery development annexation criteria which will have a list of criteria for annexation as to when and if we should annex a staff review threshold of what we need to look for a procedure section and as well as a continued use section Plaint's own Commission recommends 6 1 of the proposed code amendment staff recommends approval of the code amendment to clarify when property should be annexed to clearly and create more efficient procedures for annexation and lastly that it is consistent with the damn plan 2030 that concludes my presentation I'll be happy to answer any question yeah I'm gonna go ahead and open the public hearing as well so the public hearing is open Councilmember Wasney so in a nutshell this is some housekeeping that we're doing with the because with annexation I just want to make certain that the public still has an opportunity to come in because that policy and procedure is dictated by the state that's correct and that these annex ations will still come before Council and that the public will still have an opportunity to come to public hearings so this is housekeeping that we're taking care of that's correct thank you okay any more questions for staff before we take public comment thank you this is a public hearing anybody wishing to speak I have no cards for agenda item 6a but it's public hearing anybody wishing to speak one more time seeing none we will close the public hearing councilmember Hawkins thank you mayor I move approval of item 6a customer Wasney I second the motion we have a motion and a second for agenda item 6a let's vote on the board please passes five to one all right moving on to agenda item 6b hold a public hearing consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton Texas to change the zoning classification from regional center residential one to employment center commercial and this is a public hearing so I will now open the public hearing thank you mayor members of the council city manager the request before you is for a change in zoning from RC are one to ECC and I 'm just gonna dive into the presentation bear with me one second here we go as indicated the request is for a public hearing to consider a change in zoning as well as adoption of an ordinance associated with the change in zoning should it be approved tonight I did want to talk a little bit about what is in the surrounding area and what the request is before you tonight as you can see the property that's light blue is in the dark bold area is currently zoned RC are one and it abuts I 35 the surrounding property development a majority of it is undeveloped but we do have a travel center across I 35 we have some ETJ property we have some RCC and property and we also have another travel center use and just south of the property across Bar thold we have ECC zoning as well and one of the things that I wanted to point out if you look at the zoning map one of the elements that we considered as part of a land use analysis was the RC are one zoning of this subject property right now and it is fronting 35 one of the parameters of the RC our zoning is to allow and accommodate residential uses for example but limit the type of commercial the intensity of commercial and that's why those types of zoning districts are actually typically not found along frontage properties such as this the request for a zoning change before you tonight is to facilitate the development of a drive-through facility for a travel wash facility truck trap wash facility and the RC our district RC our one district does not permitted but the ECC district does permitted hand in hand and in conjunction with that we have the comprehensive plan which basically discusses the future land use to be business innovation business innovation is a broad brush as it relates to what business innovation is and it allows primarily office uses research R&D research and development like manufacturing large-scale office developments but it also supports complementary uses commercial uses retail uses along side with it when we look at the proposed rezoning it does meet the requirements with the criteria of the Denton Development Code the future land use designation of business innovation which we've talked about it permits the ECC does commit a diverse range of commercial uses which I discussed with you earlier it is the property and subject property is adjacent to the I 35 corridor therefore you would anticipate or one would anticipate commercial uses that transition to perhaps the employment development component of it the ECC also permits uses which is consistent with the growth current zoning designation permits a myriad of those commercial uses which I discussed and as a result it would be a continue a logical continuation of the ECC zoning district to the south public notifications were sent per the Denton Development Code within 200 and 500 foot radii of the subject site and no responses were received the planning and zoning Commission did recommend favorably and approval of the request and staff also recommends approval I'll stand for any questions should you have any Councilmember Hawkins. Menal can you pull up the map I think you had in the beginning of the presentation please yeah I think so is was there a traffic impact study or anything like that I mean it seems like it 's just gonna be a similar use to what's going on there but you know or is the the off ramp off the highway is that just gonna be I don't know that little road there can you just walk through all that sure so just to illustrate the technical aspects or requirements associated with the request would be analyzed once that building permit or site plan is submitted for review at this point we've analyzed the zoning request to see if it indeed works now they would the applicant should they develop the site with the permitted use would have to make sure that all the infrastructure obligations are met. I got you this is just a zoning change. Correct. Okay okay all right any more questions for staff seeing that thank you this is a public hearing we do have a card we'll go ahead and take the card first Dana Morse he'll state your name and address your time will begin. Good evening my name is Dana Morse I'm with Blue Beacon Truck Horses. I mean I make this for a taller person here. Okay I'll lean down I'll lean down. 500 Grays Boulevard, Salina, Kansas. As pointed out by staff we're our desires to build a truck horse on this site. Blue Beacon has been in the truck horse business for 45 46 years. We have about a hundred truck horses across the country. We'd like to be a part of your community and bring about 50 jobs here. The question Mr. Hawkins had I'd kind of like to address and if you could back up previous one slide. Oh I'm sorry. Yes. Obviously the site we're looking at is the site in yellow and as we started to work on this we find that Textot has involvement and Barth old Road and what comes underneath the underpass and with the truck stop development that's proposed south of us they're going to realign Barthold Road and make it straight as it come underneath the underpass and then loop back up and realign with existing Barthold Road which subsequently cut off our access to this piece of property that's currently inside the city limits. So the short of that is we'll be back again because our contract is for 21 acres and we're going to have to annex the remaining 16 and rezone it so that we can have access that aligns up with the truck stop that will be to the south of us. We didn't want to do that we certainly understand what staff is working on on traffic flow. If we were allowed to go straight out south Textot and the city of Denton has proposed raised medians in that area and that won't work for us because that would be a ride out. So we would appreciate approval tonight but this won't this won't be the end of this. Any other questions? Thank you. Thank you. I just have a question of curiosity. The yellow is that the property we're talking about the yellow outline property? Yes sir. Is the property just south of that the it used to be a truck stop that it was no longer there? Is that right? Yeah. Well and I think that's the same road Barthold Road was affection ately called Thrill Hill and when I was in high school but not for the reason you think because as you're zooming down that dirt road all the sudden it drops off into a hill and you look like you're literally flying out into space but I digress so anyway. Anyway okay this is a public hearing anybody else wishing to speak? Anybody else wishing to speak? We will now close the public hearing. Councilmember Hawkins? I move approval of item 6B aka Thrill Hill Road. Thank you. Alright alright alright. Councilmember Wasney? And I second the motion. We have a motion and a second let's vote on the board please. Motion carries 6-0. Don't you kids try that out there. Moving on to concluding items. Any concluding items? Councilmember Gregory? Thank you Mayor. A couple of items. I'm hoping to hear for staff to put on a work session soon a report from Dent on Municipal Electric regarding the connection between transmission lines and substations and the Denton Energy Center. I have a feeling that there were some misunderstandings and some information that was presented during the citizens report tonight that was inaccurate and I think that it would be helpful to have one of those presentation from DME. Councilmember Gregory I 've asked Director Williams to put he's working with Brian Langley on a overall picture of DME finances the CIP substation obligations with and without the energy center and we are planning on teaming that up on March 7th. Okay also I think it would be good in light of the ongoing discussion that we've been having regarding affordable housing workforce housing and solutions for homeless housing if we could invite Pat Smith to provide a report for us at a work session regarding Shiloh village it's a housing first initiative for homeless veterans I heard the report recently the presentation recently and I think it would be interesting for council to hear we're going to be I suspect that in order for it to happen there's going to have to be some things that happen through our planning department and but it's a very interesting proposal that that I think would be good for all the citizens and them to hear. Thank you. Councilmember Briggs. I have a list I'll go pretty quickly I would like a report on the city vehicles that we have that include a lift or that are handicapped accessible I heard that we have zero and so I thought that was a pretty interesting statistic and if we do not have any what what we can do to get those at least one retrofitted for kids who may be disabled that want to come to camp or who need to be picked up from school for an after- school program next I would like to request before the renewal of the rental parking spots of the in the William Square that we have a work session on that for discussion also an update on City Hall West an update on the community market has that's been a while and also a work session establishing a fund for the taxes collected on the workforce property workforce housing properties as we discussed and passed earlier tonight and what types of projects we could fund with with that also request a council discussion on if we need to expand the notification areas and finally I'd like to thank Chief How ell and Phyllis Finley for from MHMR for their presentation the district to discussion on Sunday on the mental health in Denton it was very informative and I appreciate their time coming out councilmember Begheri we have elections coming up I was wondering if we could collect data at early voting sites and at election day sites about people's preferences on their voting locations I know that at our last meeting we had discussed potential different voting sites and I would just like to be able to quantify that information if we can about where voters want to be okay I also had some reminders about prior requests back in September I had requested and information about a food for finds program modeled on Lexington Kentucky in October I requested information about exotic animal display ordinances one more sorry scroll here give me just a second oh I'd like to have a discussion about whether we should be limiting our 3 80 incentives as a policy have time limits for the actual 380 agreements just as a matter of course and perhaps a larger discussion about what are some of the ways that we can put parameters around our economic development agreements by ordinance would like to add when on the March 7th tee up on the transmission lines I had requested a report on best practices and spacing of transmission substations so hopefully that will be included in the March 7th presentation and I think that's it thank you I believe that in our packet this past Friday we got information on food for fines that was there I don't know what I did with my packet from last Friday you could borrow mine okay thank you I've just got a couple one is because memory sort of brought to my attention I'd requested oh gosh it's probably been a while back about City Hall West you know it used it's it's an iconic building in our city and has been almost a function of police station fire department amphitheater and you know we talked about what do we do with that is there a way to maybe restore some of that to be a an attraction for the downtown so wanted to revisit that I did want to thank Chief Howe and John Cabrales for meeting I believe it was held last week to discuss just sort of the immigration issues and to answer questions from the from the citizens about that and police policies and procedures and what we do and I really really appreciate them being proactive about that and I really appreciate the the residents as they came out everybody was respectful is dissemination of some great information so it was really really a good a good meeting and I really appreciate their commitment to that and willingness to do that also wanted to get a staff report or maybe even a work session on you got a call that a building operator had gotten a sign ordinance violation and in the midst of that was discovered that they either didn't have a CEO or that their city never had one or never requested one and so then that triggered inspections for GF eyes and all kinds of so I want to make sure that we have a real clear understanding of when you know what requires a CEO and if there hasn't been one because the city hasn't requested one and then somehow there's something that happens a permit pulled or something that shows that one is required but the property has been there for what standards do we use in order to have compliance with that CEO because you know what I don't want to do is have that turn into a de facto inspection program so I'd like to have some information on that I'm trying to think if there's anything on the DME work session and I would if we could if I know that the Housing Authority pulled the request the policy discussion at this point I'd like to sort of get some verification of if that's something that's a permanent position or if we need to continue to discussing that in that regard so those are all I have councilmember Wasney so the st. Lucie West discussion months ago I discussed in that context a partnership with Denton County and so when we do a work session if we could have Peggy Riddle from the county come because she's an expert at grant finding so that it's going to be millions of dollars of restoration in that building and if we could pay a lot of those costs with grant dollars because it is a historic building it would be a win-win and something I believe the county has interest in partnering with us in order to save that building so if we could incorporate them in the discussion that would be great and then to expand councilwoman Briggs on the notification from the planning department we've been talking about this for a long time so it's not just an expansion of the distance or the radius circumference around a project but to actually have a council in-depth discussion on how we notify people why we notify people and we live in an age where we have a lot of notification tools online and that we're not using to to notify so that it's not just a flimsy postcard in the mail it's not just a little flyer tucked in your front door that when we're notifying the public on a project that's going to be built in their neighborhood it's critical that people are notified and we have multiple tools that we're just not using so that was again we've been talking about it for a while so thank you for bringing that up and I think we can really it's been the same old same old for a very long time and I know we can raise the bar and we can do a better job so thank you all right any other questions fantastic thank you we will then stand adjourned