Apr 04, 2017 City Council on 2017-04-04 1:00 PM

Good afternoon. I wanted to welcome everybody to this meeting of the Dent City Council. It is Tuesday, April the 4th, 2017 at 103. And we do have a quorum. We will proceed through our agenda. Agenda item number one is citizen comments on consent agenda items. We do have one speaker. Mr. Willie Husspeth, you'll state your name and address. Your time will begin. Hello, Mr. City Council. My name is Willie Husspeth. I live at 623 Newton. The last meeting someone commented on, and I thought he was making a joke, but it turns out he wasn't. And then he ran away hurriedly. And as soon as I see him again, I'm going to get in his face and I'm going to ask him about that. So I'll probably be incarcerated after that. But anyway, moving on to another subject. We talked about that I talk too much. Well, here's the problem with that. No one's reacting to what I say. Let me tell you about civil disobedience. Until someone reacts or does something to answer the question or talk to me, this is what you do. I want African Americans to be on these consent agendas for hiring. The very one person I question is A. For A, are there any African Americans who can do this work? I don't know. Again, if you don't respond , I keep talking. Secondly, just answer the question for me. Send me an anonymous email to help me with this. Why aren't there African American firefighters? Why aren't there? Why don't we have any? Why don't we only have one in the history of this city? You know I keep asking this question, don't you? No one's answered it. No one spoke to it. You know what's difficult about this, I figured out? During slavery, that was a bad time. That's some history that no one wants to remember. We didn't come over here as one of the presidential candidates said, as a vacation. Why not vacation? That's why when my people were enslaved, we don't want to talk about it. It's horrible to know that someone will bring you here under the situations that they did. You try riding anywhere and you can't get up. Whatever you have to do, you have to do it for months at times laying down. Then when you die, they just throw you off the boat. It was a bad time. No one wants to talk about it. We need to talk about it. We need to talk about it. Now, so then they freed us. No education, no possibility of anything for us relief. Just let us go to try to fend for ourselves. Now, so I'm bringing up the question again in 2017. Why aren't we being hired? And I'm trying to say that as nice as I can because God's told me, hey, I created everybody. Quit trying to say that we're different from anywhere, anybody else. We 're all human. So I'm asking you fellow humans, why aren't there African Americans being hired at the fire department? Someone answer that for me. I can give you my text address and my email address . Do it anonymously. But if you just keep sitting here and you don't answer that question, I'm going to keep asking. All right. Thank you, sir. I will go on to agenda item two, which is request for clarification of agenda items listed on agenda for April 4th, 2017. Any clarifications? Yes, Councilmember Briggs. So I have a question about item A. So in the backup, it said the reason for this, a couple of things that they would do would be energy market related contracting matters and negotiating agreements to buy or sell wholesale energy. So my question about this is, is the extension and the $75,000 extra for till the next year, for the next year, does this have to do with the Dent Energy Center, the gas plant, or negotiating gas contracts for that? Is this something separate? Mike Gremble. Okay. Address that. Not sure if answers the word, but he will address it. Just kidding. The answer to your question, Councilmember, is no, it is not for the Dent Energy Center. It is for the energy management organization. And the contracts that we develop, and very complex contracts with other counterparties, and this is the attorney that we've used. And he developed, along with other attorneys, a template that is used nationally. And so that's why we have him, but it's not directly related to the Dent Energy Center. So the $75,000 is just because there's more work to be done than anticipated on that. Yes, ma'am. And as you saw in your backup, there's a list of counterparties that we've worked with. And there are some more counterparties to go. We have power contracts there, and we'll have some more. The more counterparties, the better. So that's why we asked for the extension. Okay. Thank you. Does that answer your question? Yes. Yes, Councilmember Wasney. This is on a consent agenda . D is in David, and it's the resolution about Encore. And I just need a two -minute kind of summary, and just explain kind of a little of the history and how that may or may not impact rate payers in the city. Okay. I'm not familiar. Councilmember, if I can just read it. Okay. Oh, there's John Knight. Okay. Thank you. You might want to repeat your question. Mr. Knight, yeah, we've got a question on consent agenda item D. Council Wasney has a question. Yeah, just a brief explanation, please. It's a resolution, and it regards Encore and some rate changes. And so just a little history, and also how and if this would impact City of Dent and rate payers. Okay. The history of this, we are operating under a procedure known as the rate review mechanism right now, which is different than we've done rate cases in the past. We had a thing called GRIP in the past, and that was the city had very little input or control over what was going on. By agreement between the utilities and the city, and by city I'm also talking about the coalition of several cities that are involved with this. We have this procedure, which is now set forth in this agreement, and this is what we followed here. Once the company feels as though it has sufficient grounds to request a rate increase, then they will file with the Public Utilities Commission their request, and they'll set forth what they want in the way of additional revenue. The city has three options it may follow. It may agree, it may suspend, which is what we have before you and what we recommend, or it may do nothing. If it agrees, the rates go into effect. If the city does nothing, the requested rates go into effect automatically as a matter of law after a certain time period. I believe that's April 17th is the deadline for the current request. The third alternative, which we recommend, is that the city suspend these rates. This has a couple of effects. One, it allows time to review the rate request in much more detail, and when we talk about these rate requests, we're talking something, a massive stack of paper. These are rather complex issues. It allows the law firm that has been retained historically by the coalition to review the application, to dig up any expert witnesses that may be required, and then represent the city in proceedings before the Public Utility Commission. And really the heart of the thing is to enter into negotiations with the utility company in an effort to find some sort of middle ground on those rates. The history of this is that we follow this procedure now for quite a number of years every time we get a request coming in, and there's a similar procedure also for the gas utilities. Then we will negotiate, and we usually come up with something in the middle as far as what the new rates will be. The last thing we really need to do, one thing we really cannot recommend at all, is to do nothing because it will get their full request enacted as a matter of law if we don't take some action. Will there be an impact on business and residential customers in the city? In all likelihood, yes, there will be. The worst impact would be if we did nothing or we were to approve the rate request, we'd get the full impact. We've tried to give you in the AIS some sort of a feel for how that may work. It's difficult to say what the impact will actually be, because it will depend on what the end result of the negotiations are. But I hope that got close to answering your question. So in a nutshell, it's about numbers crunching, and we don't have a clear path in terms of what those numbers are. Is that correct? Yes ma'am. This gives us the best chance that we have under the present procedure to come up with, to go for, here's where we are right now in our rates, here's what the company has requested, and this gives us our best chance to find something in the middle. This may be a situation where you apply the old saw that if you have an agreement that nobody really likes, maybe you come up with something that's reasonably fair to all parties, and that's what we're trying to do, is come up with something that recognizes legitimate complaints or claims on behalf of the company, but at the same time does not have an undue impact on the business and customers within the city. One point I might make, if I may, is that there is a procedure in the law for us to be reimbursed. So as we go through this process, the illegal expenses of the law firm Herrera & Boyle will be reimbursed by the company. Thank you, that helps. Thank you. And I'm not sure that this is necessarily your question to answer Mr. Knight, but could somebody tell us what large areas in our city have Encore as their utility provider? Do we know sort of just, I mean, I know that there's some that's dual certified, but do we have any idea? Is Robeson Encore? No, they're closer. Do we have anything in the city that's really Encore? Mike, do you know of any big areas that are Encore? Any large areas that are Encore? No, I don't. Okay, all right. Okay, good, good. Well, and I think it's it's good to point out that, I mean, their rate as requested, at least from what I can tell by the backup, for residential was almost 12 percent, and of course that's why we're asking for the suspension to try to negotiate that a little bit better. I think this is one example of why that it is a positive to have our own locally owned utility, because we have much more control over the rate setting instead of having to fight them at the state level. So 12 percent's a large increase. I mean, it's probably not going to turn out to be that, but that's what it is. So yes , Mayor Pro Tem. Just from the point of view of public communication, a heads up to whoever's doing that in the city. In the past, as we've had these negotiations with these other cities and then a rate has been settled upon, we've gotten reports for folks who are calling complaining about the rates to the private entities, and then they push back and say, well, this is what the city settled on. Push it back on us as if we were doing the ones pushing up the rates. That's happened in the past with, I think it was Atmos who was giving that sort of line to their customers. So if we could just get a heads up on that and maybe have some communications between our communication folks and theirs to make sure that doesn't happen again. Thank you. Great. Okay. Thank you. Yes, Councilmember Begar i. Item F, if we could just put that on individual consideration with a very short presentation. Nothing complicated, just something to have it in the regular meeting. Item F. It's the audit plan . Yeah. Okay. Any other clarifications? Oh, did you need a presentation? No, for tonight. Pardon me ? A presentation for tonight. Oh, okay. Very short, very brief. Yeah, it'll be in the regular meeting. Yep. Thank you, Craig. Any other questions, clarification on the consent or the agenda in general? Seeing none. Okay. We'll go on to our agenda item 3A. Receive a report, hold discussion , give staff direction regarding any support for the Denton County Historical Park. Commissioner , are you leading this discussion? Oh, sorry, John. Good afternoon, Mayor and Councilmembers. The item before us is a presentation from the Denton County on their plans for their historical park, which is located there at Sycamore and Carroll Boulevard. This was started as part of a discussion that the Council Committee on the Community Head Center had late last year. If you recall, that committee has been working with staff and the Denton Community Market and others on the Community Head Center. We were looking at trying to build at exposition, and it was around November, October timeframe that we heard from the Community Market in the county that they were trying to keep the Community Market at their historical park location where they currently are located now. So staff was directed to reach out to the county to find out what their plans were for that park so that the Council Committee on the Community Head Center could decide what they were going to do at that point. And so we reached out to the county and we have Commissioner Andy Eads who's going to be making the presentation to you on the historical park. We also have representatives here from the Denton Community Market if you have those questions as well. So Commissioner Eads. Well, thank you, John, for that introduction and thank you, Honorable Mayor and Councilmembers, for the opportunity to visit with you about partnerships. And I was thinking today on my way over here from the courthouse about the theme for today and I really think it is the word partnerships. And I think Denton County and the City of Denton have a very rich history of partnerships, obviously in mobility. That's one of our things that we have a very rich legacy in partnering on, advancing our mobility . This morning we voted today, just today, to install and partner with the city on an installation of a signal light out on 380. You know, and so I think those are quality of life improvements that we work together on jointly. And I think that advancing the historical park here in the heart of Denton also improves that quality of life. So what I thought we'd do today is kind of briefly go through some of the scope of services and some of the things that the park has done recently. This is not by any means an all -inclusive list of all the activities because it would be a very long list and I know you have other agenda items. But what I thought I'd do is kind of give you a brief rundown on some of the activities the park has been involved in over the last few years. One of the things that we do is we have tours and that's not only for residents of the city of Denton or residents of Denton County, but actually residents across the region, across the region. Our Office of History and Culture under the direction of our wonderful director Peggy Riddle, they partner with the local school districts and their curriculum departments to tailor custom-made tours of our courthouse and the historical park to where they really fit in with the curriculum guidelines as outlined by the state of Texas. And so when kids come up here or book clubs come up here they really learn the rich history of not only the city of Denton, but Denton County. And so we continue to have a wide variety of tours. Obviously we have Juneteenth celebration in the county's African-American History Museum. The Quaker Town House, that was a partnership with the city and that serves a rich legacy and it really tells the story of the Quaker Town community right here in the city of Denton. It's many times an under-told story and we work to tell that story and I think this is a great demonstration of the city and the county's commitment to communicating the history of the Quaker Town community. Archaeology Day, that's something we do annually and that's under the guidelines of the Texas Historic Commission and they have broad guidelines that we follow and we teach students and other adults that are interested in archaeology. The next one, this is kind of a fun one, this is Park After Dark and this is where tour groups can explore the mysterious demise of Mr. Bayless that the Bayless Selby House is named after. And so that's kind of a fun activity. Obviously our holiday lighting and obviously the square is a cornerstone of the holiday lighting but we're really wanting to expand those activities down to the historical park which we have done a great job of doing that with partnership with the city and our historic preservation groups. Obviously our biggest user is the Denton Community Market. We're very proud of that partnership and proud that we've hosted them for the last eight years. V icki and I were talking earlier today about the attendance. As you read in the paper, many times I think we're a victim of our own success and so I think that the community market has really exceeded everyone's expectations and we're, the Commissioner's Court is very proud to have the community market be a fixture at the park. That is something we vote on annually as we extend their lease and Vicki was saying they had a recorded 3,300 visitors this Saturday for the opening of the season. I think it was closer to 4,500 or 5,000 if they had enough volunteers actually do a complete head count. But 3,300 is a very good showing and we're very, very pleased to have that. I thought I'd give a structural update. If you look at this, at this map and the south is at the top of your map and so if you'll start at the very bottom down there you see our welcome center. That was a ma ids quarters. That was at the Spencer home in Louisville and just do north, do south of there on 16th. You see that that is a designated spot that we're reserving for a future general store. Then you have the Bayless Selby house which is fully restored Victorian mansion. Then you have the Qu aker Town house which is our African American Museum of the county and I'll tell you it speaks not only of the Quaker Town story, if you haven't been in there I encourage you to do so. It tells the story of African American communities across the county in addition to the Quaker Town and it is housed in a Quaker Town house. The next structure it is to be relocated there through a partnership again with the city of Ditten and Ditten County and Habitat for Humanity. Habitat for Human ity approached us and this is the last last known Quaker Town house in the eight acres that they bought here in southeast Ditten and we we could not let that building go away and so we're partnering with you. That's a great partnership over this year and next year to help relocate that and have that restored here and so that will serve as another structural there. The next building up is some proposed bathrooms which are very much needed and I think that will help expand the the usability of the park as it grows and especially for the community market. And these other buildings here is kind of down on the farm scenario so we have a log cabin that is relocated from the city of Corinth . We have a smokehouse that was actually here from the city of Ditten. We have a an outhouse a four- hole or outhouse which we plan on you never thought you'd hear that in a council meeting did you? So we have that and a potential for a barn so that is those are some of the structures that we have that are off-site that can be easily relocated in addition to a windmill. And the building with the white roof there as an image that could be a potential barn which could also house future exhibit space, future learning opportunities, and also some bathrooms. And then we have an opportunity to get some silos from the Louisville feed mill as that's being redeveloped and we could relocate those to the site. We've been talking in conversations with the owner and he's excited about dedicating a couple of those to the county to the park and we can use those as vendor space as well. Again utilizing our historic structures to tell the rich history of Ditten County. And number three here is the gaze bo which is one of our items to talk about today and that was where our Ditten County Fireman's Memorial used to be and we had a 99 year lease with the Fire Chiefs Association and we reloc ated that several years ago to a more prominent spot which is over at a memorial island where our Ditten County complex is. If you've driven by there you see that island. So we have a we reloc ated the fireman's memorial there and we're about to install a police officer's memorial there as well. And so it's on that memorial island connected by those two historic bridges. So the very special place by relocating that allowed us to move that gazebo over there and and still preserve that open space but have that utilized for special events and so forth. Again this is just some images of the Taylor Law Cabin and the Woods Home which again will be relocated here to the park and the law cabin is already there and the foundation will be completed shortly and we'll get that installed. Again these are some photographic images of some of the structures that I earlier referenced. I'll tell you this is some of the investments that the county has has made in this park and these are these are it's really a combination of some of the current appraised values of some of the structures and some of the contributions of the county. We've also had private donors as well but obviously you have your historic park maintenance at 113,000 is just some of our out of our general fund just for the last few years of painting and maintenance and repair to the structures utility cost. The perimeter fence that is not an accurate number that's 600,000 we think it's going to be about a third of that. It's about a third of that so I wanted to point out that number to you all that's we're going to get that for about 200,000. We want to make sure the park is fully utilized but it's also secure. So we've got to balance out the accessibility and then security of the park. These are wooden structures you know one match one cigarette could burn up these historic artifacts and so we want to and so they can't be replaced and so we need to secure the fence to allow accessibility and really what we view this park as because it's in the heart of Ditten for all the neighboring adjacent property owners it really is many times a backyard for them. This public space really is an extension of their property and we want people to utilize it throughout the day. Obviously at Bayless Selby House, our African-American Museum, the Welcome Center so that kind of outlines some of the financial commitment that the county has made. Commissioner I think Councilmember Briggs had a question. Okay. I'm curious about the type of fencing that that you're proposing or that you're thinking. Sure it would it is going to be a very attractive fence. We realize that Carroll Boulevard is a gateway into your community. We want it to look attractive and have a heavy landscape. It would be a wrought iron fence with stone columns stone columns so to tie into the park so it'll look it'll look great. Thank you. Good question. Next is some of the electrical improvements and so let me tell you how we got to this point. Obviously we have a significant partnership with the community market. They're one of our biggest users. They're one of our the biggest drivers to attendance to the park and to our structures and so we said what what do you all need to make the park your market as successful as possible and so working with Vicki and her team our staff and this and your wonderful staff here at the city we we worked up a couple of options here that we'd like to visit. One of those is the electrical improvements. So along the main spine road the walkway here to install electrical outlets that are at grade so that they are flush mounted so to reduce the tripping hazards at the park. We have a lot of people there we have a lot of extension cords there. That's not a good situation. People aren't familiar with the where they are and so we want to number one increase the safety and also clean up the air pollution from generators and so forth that are that are that are being utilized. So that would be to create electrical outlets there and also to fully wire the gazebo so that so bands utilize that space and different groups utilize that space and so to get electrical outlets to there and also on the rear of the property on the far eastern side so if we had food trucks there we envision being able to have food trucks are not only for the community market but during the week during lunch hours and so forth you could have food trucks and increased foot traffic and again the quality of life here in downtown Denton. And obviously we would run electrical over to this we're calling it an awning that's really a covered parking structure. It's a covered parking structure so that would be covered parking during the week. We want to maintain as much parking in downtown Denton as possible. We realize that parking is at a premium and so we would fully electrify that structure and on weekends and for special events that could be vendor to be electrified for the vendor space and this is kind of an overview of what that that looks like. So the first slide is about 93, 000 for electrical improvements and 101 for the awning and that kind of is an artist rendering if you can see the Carroll Court's building there in the back. Okay so I'll be happy to entertain any questions you all may have and thank you for your time. Thanks very much for the presentation and I love the partnership. A couple of questions that come up. Okay. On the structure itself the awning that would be covered parking during the week and then the community market on the weekend. Do you have an estimation of how many vendors it would hold? How many booths? I don't know Vicki have we done a calculation on that? If we could if there's an answer yeah we could it's been televised we just need to relay it to me. Yeah come on up Peggy. The parking spaces under the awning are 9 by 18 and they're vendor spaces are 10 by 10. So do you know how many parking spaces are under there? I don't think he gave me that but we're not gonna lose any I was I've got a parking audit that we did. We could get that later. I'm sorry I don't have that with me right now. Okay I would imagine Commissioner that that part of your suggestion of a partnership has to do with us partnering with some funds. Yes. I thought that. Could you could you be more specific about what the ask is for the funds? Sure so I think what we would I think what we would be asking for today would be the electric the electrical improvements and the awning structure. I think that's what we'd be asking for today. I think that would be a very good first start. One question that I have at times we've ended up with discussions with the community market folks because as you alluded to in your comments that there's an annual vote on the lease. Right. And there have been years when they have felt like maybe that vote was not going to be approved. So I would be a little bit reluctant to spend about 200,000 for a partnership to accommodate the community market if right after that the lease went away. So you understand my concern? Absolutely and I can't speak for the whole court here today and make a commitment for an extended lease at this time. What I can tell you is we've been doing this eight years. We've had a great partnership. Part of the hesitancy quite frankly in the past has been where are we going to fit the market in relation to bringing in buildings, temporary structures and so forth and how and we 've had to work with Vicki as we're bringing in structures. I said Vicki you're not gonna have a bigger footprint as you did last year because we've got this other structure and then it's got until it gets in place and so I can tell you that I'm supportive of the community market and having it at the at the historic park. It's really in the best interest of the county to have users at the park and so I think that there's a broad agreement and sentiment to that effect that it's good to have people at the park. Well the great thing about it is that people who come there for the historical park then discover that there's a community market there. People who come to the community market discover there's a historical park. Exactly. Well I will tell you that I would be certainly open to serious discussions about about the city's contributing significant funds to help with this but but for me personally I would want to have some assurance that that there was a longer term commitment rather than an annual contract that's reconsidered every year. Sure. I could also make some comments about about do you really need to spend all the money for those new restrooms if you have a working privy but I'm not gonna go there. No don't and I don't anticipate it working. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you Mayor. Thank you for the presentation. It's exciting to see the developments there. A couple questions along the lines of Councilmember Gregory's comments. I share those sentiments. I also know that the community market could find another space and leave in a year too if they found something. So exactly I think if somehow this between staff if we can kind of hammer out something that gave us that assurance because our commit would be as I understand a one-time commitment right and I'd want to see a certain amount of years of use out of that in order to justify that expense so you guys can work out some details along those lines. The other thing relating to parking because I would imagine if you're utilizing the awning structure during market days now for market vendors which now it's being used as parking that's at base and also looks like you're greening over existing parking to the south where there's now parking too. So where does that leave the gobs and gobs of 3,000 folks coming in to to park for this event? Well I don't have a direct answer for that. I think that what we're trying to do at the park is reclaim some of that parking as you said for green space to complete the park and to the on the southwest corner there okay so we're gonna lose we are gonna lose some parking there obviously but we're gonna be reclaiming some on the what the info and I'll back up the presentation. If you look at the site plan here you're gonna see well we're gonna be we're gonna be it's actually quite narrow this this driveway and this parking lot comes to here right now we plan on opening it up and increasing additional parking on the on the eastern side of the perimeter of the parking so we are gonna be replacing some parking over here on this in this gray area labeled number 14. I'm not that concerned I think it's an opportunity for us to kind of get creative about this I mean I talked to a friend who he comm uted over from he lives on two lane you guys know where that is over in those it's like a couple miles away his old family strolled him over so we see more and more families walking from longer distances but the other thing I saw this weekend is a bunch of folks parking downtown scooting on over there and then where do you think they were going for lunch afterwards or where do you think they were shopping afterwards so I think all that to say I think the the parking problem becomes an opportunity if we're creative about how we market that. Well I think we needed to work together on a wayfinding plan between the courthouse and our museum there through the city over to the historic park you know I think we could do some really something creative I don't know what that looks like right now but I think we could put our heads together in a partnership to say you know it's only a thousand steps down there so that people know you can park down there and come up to the courthouse or vice-versa or vice versa and so it really kind of connects the two historic structures and your your commerce downtown and so that I think there's a way we can be smart about that so we'd love to explore that. Okay the queue is councilmember Gary, councilmember Briggs, and councilmember Hawkins. Two things first I need to brag on Commissioner Eads because the very first year that the community market went up to Commissioner's Court I think it was 2010 was that right I was on the board at that time well we didn't have a board it was just three of us anyway a theoretical board. I remember those days. Yes Commissioner Eads and Commissioner Coleman were really the reason that the community market is in existence right now they're tremendous advocates and there were we didn't have three votes if I remember correctly it took some work so I mean I can't stress enough how important Commissioner Eads has been to the continued success of the market. We've you know the market has always had an advocate on Commissioner's Court which is a huge deal and you can see now the success of the whole the whole thing not just for the market but for the historical park as well so that's my brag. Question we last time this came up for staff from staff we had talked about expanding some of our tree funds to create more of a canopy in this area so I'm wondering if that's still if that was discussed or if there's an interest in that because I know that shade is very important at the mark on the market days especially in the summertime so I'm just if I can get a staff anything on the tree tree fund and potential there. I don't have an answer for you today Lauren you have an answer okay Lauren has an answer well played. Good afternoon Lauren Barker Keep Denton Beautiful. The county actually did work with us last year through one of the Denton Tree Initiative programs the trees mean business program to place trees on several of their properties that were in alignment with the zoning that's permitted through that program to receive trees and if the zoning was in alignment for this property if it's commercially zoned then we could certainly provide trees through that up to five per property for the next couple of years so. I guess my suggestion would be that we kind of demarcate something separate from the trees mean business because this is going to be park zoning and not commercial and that way we don't have to go through the whole process of rezoning or whatever if we can just have a specific designation if the council is open to something like that. Okay perfect and what we would envision along our western property line as it abuts Carroll is to have a landscape buffer there with trees with shrubbery with flowers and then have that fence set right back behind there while we still maximize as much parking as we can okay so we realize like again this is an entry way into your community it's not as attractive as it could be to be quite honest as you walk in you drive in and here is this big parking lot right there it's just a hot spot in the in the heart of your city and so I think creating a vertical element with a monument sign maybe on a southwest corner there and or a windmill or something that's some kind of signage so that we create a sense of place here instead of a collection of two or three or four historic buildings there we need to let people know what this is that this is open to the public it's not just some restored buildings they drive and I said what is that we need to have prominent signage prominent landscaping so we really are we really are from an urban planner's standpoint really creating a sense of place and I think that that'll drive users to the park not just on Saturdays for community market but throughout the week that's really what we want to do. Councilmember R iggs. About the parking so currently last last season there was the farmers market which was a little separate than the community market is that still going to be in place taking up in in the parking lot or does this eat into where they are? So along this rendering so if they parked where that grass is they would be moved up here some in some fashion so we'd work out a partnership with the with and the I will tell you the community market and the farmers have been getting along much better than years past to be quite honest and so we can work out a relationship with them so that there's proper adjacencies there. I'm just didn't know if they were planning on returning or you know that was going to come back absolutely okay yeah and great traffic there for their vendors just just a comment there are still people that do not know they can park in DATCU property that we lease on Saturdays and so just if there's I don't know if there's proper signage that says that it's available or not but that is also some place where people can park now. Good point okay. I'll have an answer to your question. Peggy. I believe it'll be about 50 parking spaces that will be under the awning. The county when we did this audit two years ago when we took away some of the asphalt parking we came up with 251 shared parking spaces that includes over at the Carroll building too. Okay thank you thank you Mayor. Council Member Hawkins. Thank you Mayor. Yeah this is exciting I have to admit when we talked about relocating the market you know we would try it felt forced at different you wanted you didn't want it to die but and I think there are a number of reasons why it's been successful but definitely one of them has been the location so I think that this is awesome and the economic impact that this event is making on Saturday mornings I can just tell you personally I do the my QuickBooks is big even this past weekend Amy came home it's like community market open on Saturday and it was on again it was it's a great thing so my only hesitation is wanting to be feel really reassured about the lease the city's going to put in two hundred thousand dollars just two years from now something happened but this is a great thing and I'm excited about it so yeah thanks for bringing this up. You bet. Yes I'm sorry Council Member Wasney. Thank you for the vision thank you for your passion thank you for your hard work and partnerships work and so city and county I would encourage future councils who sit in this room and number crunch to help preserve and protect this whole concept because it's an asset for the city it's truly an asset it's an asset for the county we are growing and this is a time to grow with it and to you know we really wrestled with what to do with the other location by the police department and we just we knew that just wasn't a good fit and so the good fit is right here so for everyone who has worked to pull this together and to really plan and eventually parking you know it's an issue in downtown and it's going to have to be addressed but it doesn't have to be addressed right now along with this sometimes things take time and you have to take steps this is building the good bones for this park right now good bones so thank you you bet thank you Commissioner Eads and we've partnered on a lot of projects and I just want to say thank you for all your hard work for Denton and for the county thank you thank you thank you very much a couple of comments again thank you for this I know that we we considered a relocation of the market and those were some difficult conversations and we had also budgeted some money for that and I believe some of the if I recall correctly some of those initial outlays were not a whole lot less or more than what the request is here so I don't have an issue with with the money I feel certain the longevity of the lease issue that 's I mean right because you came into play after we had those difficult conversations and say look so there's obviously a commitment on your part in the county's part to really continue to make this a community space and so I thank you for that I know some of the the things that you talked about were future like the restrooms and things such as that so do you have an idea my hunch is and you know this is sort of and asked for the city at this time to really get some of these infrastructures off the ground like the the barn and then to fix the electrical system what do you perceive in the future other type of partnership opportunities that you might you know need the city to help you you know in some some financial resources sure so I think uh it's a good question and I think one of them is to help with the installation of the bathrooms additional bathrooms so we could do a couple of different things one we could do a more of a modular bathroom that's that's pre-made that we could bring in and drop into the far south east corner there and we could res kin it to where it looks age appropriate okay so it looks like it's in keeping with the rest of the structures apart or we could go over and build this barn structure which again it has more exhibit space more covered area also helps tell the story of our agricultural background here in the county and we can put bathrooms in there so I think on the the the prefab bathrooms we're talking about I think that could be 200,000 and that's something we could that's a future partnership that we could discuss so that's so so 200 now for this phase one between the electrical right and um um the covered parking and then come back and have future discussions about the bathrooms you know one thing I was thinking was and I'm okay with all that I think this is a great opportunity for us to really work together to create a synergy that standing apart we couldn't do right I mean we tried it down at the other location we were considering and and and that made it very difficult and I just throw this out there for everybody's amusement amazement but if we're going to have this this barn structure which is going to primarily house during the market days people who are going to require electricity we're trying to fix you know it'd be interesting to see how much it would be to put solar panels on top of that thing to either help provide some of that during the uh during the market or at night when there's when there's some lights there that are going to illuminate that I mean that it just just been interesting just to see what kind of numbers that that would create uh but that 's just my thought on that certainly not a requirement obviously yes councilmember one a couple of other thoughts I don't know what time you got to the market Saturday but by the time I got there everyone had discovered that the the public parking behind the old datku building that we're using for planning well they were there it was full but but uh commissioner each did bring up um uh the the issue of wayfinding yeah which which we have had a wayfinding plan since before I got on council so uh I'm sure that we're right on the cusp of making all of that happen right mr manager yes sir well I would love for us to have a detailed dialogue about that between the county and the city and how do we connect these two to venues and and I'll tell you um I I watched y'all's process as you're going through trying to to to look for a new location and vicki and her team was partnering with you on figure out what's what's what a relocation looks like and those calls associated with that and I watched from afar that whole deal tonight as mayor said I picked up the phone call and says why don't we have a detailed conversation about y'all the market staying here and it would be a considerable savings to y' all to partner with us to improve the existing infrastructure what you don't want to do in my humble opinion is have improve a site that's utilized one day of the week that's not fully utilizing your tax dollars or the site and there's nothing worse than driving past an empty or vacant structure and people say what is that oh they use on weekends for part of the year I think having it and investing the dollars precious local dollars here in a site which can be used seven days a week in the evenings you saw we had stuff during the weekdays with school groups we do stuff in the evening times night times weekends sunday afternoons so you're investing in something much broader than just the community market which is great but you're looking at tourism dollars being rein vested here in your city throughout the week throughout the year even when the market's not open you know so obviously our biggest tenant and our biggest partner as far as user driving that foot traffic is the market but that's not the only reason we're doing this I think I think it's important for us to understand it's really creating a venue that can be used throughout the year good council member Briggs so thank you mayor for bringing up solar panels I actually was thinking about that when you um because I know for a fact they have covered structured um parking parking structures with solar panels on them and when I saw that I thought well that would work really nicely but um so just a question about money I know that not this budget but last we had approved some and then some was spent on a design if we could just get an update if what's left of that that would be great sure yes ma'am if you're if uh you recall during the uh last fiscal year uh the city council approved approximately six hundred and fifty eight thousand dollars that was earmarked towards the community event center that we were working on for exposition and the breakdown is as follows four hundred and five thousand that amount is in co's that was issued for parking lot improvements 103 000 of that came out of our general fund for last fiscal year and 150 000 of that came out of hot funds that council authorized for us to use for capital projects over there in discussions with the legal department and with our bond council it appears that we can use the 150 000 of the hot funds towards capital projects over there of course the general fund is does not have any kind of stipulations the 103 000 for the journal fund and 405 000 we're still talking to bond council but it appears some of that may be able to be used for at least the uh awning over the parking we're still not clear about whether or not it can be used for the electrical infrastructure but we're still having those conversations to make that determination there was a contract that was approved by the committee with pacheco coke who was the architect that was designing the event center the contract was in the amount of about eighty six thousand dollars but we had just started the first phase of the design and so only approximately 24 000 of that has been spent so the majority of the 658 000 that was earmarked for the exposition parking lot is still there minus the about 24 000 that we've paid for pacheco coke's initial designs does that answer your question yeah i when you said 600 000 i think i saw commissioner edes almost fall out of his chair no i'm just kidding so real quick question though on the hot funds of the 150 000 that we had allocated you said it could be used for capital improvements for something like this is that my understanding yes in in conversations with jerry drake over at the legal department we've been talking about how the council under the resolution that you used to establish the 150 000 for the capital projects over in the parking lot that's resolution 2015-268 we could turn around and use that for capital projects not services but capital projects right over at the this other side because there you have that tourism sure link that we were to have with the community event center well and on the 400 000 for the parking lot now that we had planned on spending that anyway i mean that's really part of that needs to be done so in essence what you're saying is about a couple hundred thousand if we since we didn't go through with the event center concept over there we had about 400 we still are going to have to redo the parking lot regardless of what happened you're correct mayor the 405 000 was what had been earmarked for the parking lot sure improvement sidewalks curving all of that there was 103 000 and 150 000 they had been earmarked for what we were terming so 253 000 so 253 and then right now we've taken the initial design money the 24 000 out of that 153 but we can move it around as needed so okay so so you really have right now 253 minus that had been earmarked for that event center without having the negative impact to the parking lot funds okay i think councilman wasney and then mayor pro tem and then councilman briggs so in other words the money basically is there from last year's budget is that correct that is correct so my question for staff is how do we move this forward and expedite this what's it going to take a resolution yeah we'll put together a some talking points memorandum of understanding i'll meet with the commissioner deeds office on that to make sure we've got all the deal points addressed that have been brought up by council members today and then we can mostly assume they were in agreement we can bring it back as a resolution or resolution most likely is that correct here i would recommend it comes back as an interloc al agreement similar to another issue that we're working on okay yes so i would ask that that is sooner rather than later so that things get lost in government they get swallowed and it just goes into the you know the great the great government machine i think this is important and what's important is that the funds are there commissioner it's the funds are there so um let's let's make it happen i would also ask staff that once this whole plan is moving to try to exped ite a lot of the permitting process because i also don't want to hear from my county commissioner that they're tied down and bogged down with just permit issue and and issues in terms of approvals this is a community that is behind this project let's get it done in a timely fashion and um i just was so happy to hear the money um that was left over so good thank you you made my day if i might comment on council member wasney's remarks um i think i've been here two or three weeks and uh commissioner eats reached out to me right away and i got a thorough history lesson on the uh issues between the county and the city and some of the things that have been kind of fallen in that uh area and had not been resolved we've had a couple great meetings since and we're working on the um the county courthouse issue this issue and uh based upon the feedback that i got today uh we'll be bringing forth a couple of uh agreements relatively soon for you so mayor pro tem i would just like to get some clarity because you said the four hundred five thousand dollars could be used for this project and i think we need some direction to make sure that that's still going towards the parking lot over there which you know part of that project was you got many things at once and even the initial design that cost around 20,000 the vast majority of that initial design was surface type improvements so weren't any major structures or anything like that um so part of me thinks that that can be folded back into that 405 as part of that project so that we free up the 150 or 253 to look into this so i don't know what the rest of the council feels about that but i'd hate to dive into that parking lot fund since that seemed to be what we were trying to get at with that particular project in addition to providing space for the market yes sir you are correct and that money is is still earmarked right now for that parking lot improvement just i made the comment because if you were wanting to move money around that was also within the realm of possibility but certainly the need is still there as you recall from the discussions we've been having with the event center committee on the parking needs that we have out around city hall east and the euling brock transit center and this parking lot is uh going to be able to alleviate a lot of that pressure if we're able to make the improvements that we'd like to make and along those lines and maybe you can get me this back in a report i'm not sure where the funds were coming from that when we were thinking about the the fixing the stretch or adding a stretch of sidewalk that connected euling brock uh and the rail yard project over to there because there's a missing piece we were thinking about that again in two two angles one was community market pedestrians the other was dcta uh users who had to walk that stretch to go park there is that part of the uh encumbered funds for the four hundred and five thousand dollars for no no that's separate that's actually that project is funded and it came from the sidewalk funds and engineering takes care of it's actually on their off topic project list so so that's getting done customer breaks well thank you for the update on the money i knew that we had discussed it um before and so um i'm i'm all for this project the 200 000 um seems good and then even up to the 400 000 that's a lot better than 600 000 to the million that you know was proposed so i think we're doing a really good job here customer gary i have a question for commissioner aids about the phasing of the project so when i guess when are we when are you contempl ating uh taking the pavement out and installing grass and the perimeter fencing i think that we 'll have exact time frame on that right now what we will do is install this electric if we work out this partnership today i think the first things first would be installing the electrical obviously to the gazebo and along the main corridor there the north south work on the structure and then come back in weather permitting and we usually use our our county crews they've been great and it's been a considerable savings to us and and have them excavate that and we'll work with the with the um the market where it really does not impact the construction does not impact their their use of the park and so um we will i think that would be the last thing that needs to be done we're still working on some issues along the for the fence locations and where that's going to be and so i think once we get a spirit of agreement from the city about that which is very important to us as far as where exactly we're going to put the fence and so then i think that would all follow immediately after that yes well commissioner edes has a quite a way with him he came and asked for 193,000 and we're offering him 250 uh you you are a charmer man i don't know about that uh i i i'm a receptive audience i don't know that we need to give him more than he 's asking for um though he probably deserves it uh but i do want to make sure that that um i think it's important that we not invest this money for a specific purpose of the community market if if they're still on a year to year i i think that something needs to be tied to that uh and we might use that extra 50,000 or whatever for the solar panels who knows okay so uh let's address this issue i want to if you could i would i would say part of the annual um discussion and renewal that's two it goes two ways council member we didn't know they were wanting to leave as well so i mean i think that i think that's fair to i mean it's not the county wanting to restrict them they were also shopping actively and we were working with them on we're going to renew again they were looking at a variety of sites all over the city i mean so um the equation is a two-way equation where they were they were looking for to grow the market and look at other greener pastures and so i mean so that i don't think that point is your point is well taken and and i didn't say it but but i would expect a commitment from the community market if we're putting that right i mean it really it goes it's kind of a three-way partner sure it does councilman boston so i would ask the community market to come back to the county commissioners and um and and actually present a resolution back to you with a multi-year commitment having heard the discussion today right and having heard the commitment not just from the county but by the city um and at that point then bring that resolution after it's been presented to you back to this council so that we actually have in writing um an extension and agreement because you know i think we all agree that we we want that comfort level as well but all the players are in this room right now so everybody is listening so community market that's what we'd like to see and we appreciate that any other questions it sounds like to me the direction of council is forward with the request and that in the meantime of tying up all the the legal documents and the timing of getting all this you you'll probably be able to have those discussions with your colleagues on absolutely this is a priority for the county it's a priority for the market and again we're obviously talking about the electrical installations of covered parking the bathroom is part of the discussion you know so it would i would love for y'all maybe not at this moment but be looking towards that future discussion sure so that we can be planning accordingly because there's a lead time and as as council man wasney talks about there is lead time involved in all these kind of projects and so if we understood that that would might be part of a second year commitment we could we could start making plans accordingly and getting things so as soon as the funds are available we 're ready to go to construction i think that'd be wise use of our time yeah i think what would be helpful is if as y'all continued your discussions because obviously there's some issues with location of the fence some easements and things that we've got to work out between the city and the county but as we continue this dialogue to try to get some little bit more firm dates on because that's going to be very helpful because i think that that alone that fence will just transform it will that whole that whole park area so so is that is council agrees that that's the consensus we're moving forward they're going to have discussions about the longevity of the leases and and multi-year commitments there and we can sort of keep updated on that as we move forward i'm seeing nods and yep and i would like to address yeah councilman wasney's comments about working with the staff and i want to echo mr howman's comments we've we've had great relationship building moments as we and talking about some just issues as along with the mayor and i am pleased to report that it has been wonderful and so and i'm very pleased and i think we can execute this this as a continued partnership so it's been it's been very refreshing so thank you and i want to echo that about the trees as well is there a way that we can that we can working with the county on locations and things such as that and just in the spirit of the partnership i want to thank you for what you mentioned in the beginning and i know i'm going to get a rattle from the city attorney but that's okay i'll take the risk thank you for your commitment to the light on 380 oh you all know about that and so i really appreciate you and your advocacy for that over the years for that whole corridor yeah thank you yeah thank you very much today all right thank you all thank you you bet all right we'll move on oh yes mr koraus i'm sorry clarification on the amount to put into the interlocal agreement what they requested from what i understand from what they were at least at this at this point yeah what they've what they've asked for sure just want to make sure thank you all right we're going to move on then to agenda item b thank you all very much for coming receive report and hold discussion provide direction regarding house bill 2445 concerning the allocation of hotel occupancy tax funds to the purpose of enhancing and upgrading existing city-owned sports fields baker mayor council members good afternoon just wanted to provide you today with a very brief update on our huffin initiative that we've been pursuing this legislative session and also inform you about an action item that is on your agenda for consideration today in the 2017 legislative program as you may recall you directed staff to seek introduction and passage of a bill that would allow the council to allocate funding to upgrade and enhance existing city-owned sports facilities and as you know these enhance ments would allow us to continue to host sports tournaments that bring heads in beds to the city and continue to promote tourism which is exactly what hot funds are intended to to accomplish through our efforts this session representative lindsay from district 64 who represents our area down in the the state legislature filed the bill on february 27th as house bill 2445 the bill has since been referred to the house ways and means committee which is the committee to which all of the hot fund legislation has been referred to this session a hearing has not yet been set but we anticipate one being set fairly soon and in preparation for that hearing representative stuckey's office has requested the council pass a resolution in support of house bill 2445 we do have you know a very clearly articulated statement in our legislative program in support of this initiative but they do request something as a standalone document in the form of a resolution so that is on your agenda today as an item for individual consideration and finally i just want to let you all know of the latest development on this item is last week the denton chamber board of directors unanimously voted to endorse the passage of house bill 2445 and according to their letter which i believe you received in your friday packets but i also passed out a hard copy just in case you needed to view that today the chamber board advocates the city of dentons express purpose to add another option for the promotion of the local hospitality industry without jeopardizing existing hot fund recipients so i'm very pleased to have their support on this initiative i think that goes a long way to being able to pass this bill in a state legislature and so just want to publicly acknowledge them and give them our our thanks for that um with that i'm happy to stand for questions and further direction any questions comments yes council member more just a comment i just appreciate how you've been fighting the good fight down there i know it's been pretty hard so anyway i just appreciate you and i know i'm rolling off council so i wanted to publicly tell you that too so thank you council member hawkins sure thank you anything else okay thank you thank you yep all right we'll move on to work session item three c receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding monument assessment and restoration slash preservation services at oakwood and i double o f cemeter ies the graduate while queuing this up i'd just like to make my personal three council market and restrooms in particular that we worked at through the facilities management side of the organization is the most expensive yes i agree yes very comfortable all right we're here today talk about the you might get a little closer to the mic i'm not sure how all right we're here today to talk to council about the this contract for the the cemeteries for the assessment and the mapping a little bit of background in 2016 council directed us to identify funding to do some enhancements at the cemeteries a little bit of background you can see that the cemeteries and the oakwood cemetery was established in 1857 it's been owned by the city since 31 i double o f was established since 1860 and been owned by the city since 33 we do not have complete and accurate records for either of those cemeteries due to a couple of fires over the years that's not a knock on our fire department at all there's some challenges out at our at our cemeteries right now with headstones and monuments monolium mausoleums and crypt s that are in disrepair just as an idea the the two cemeteries encompassed about 38 acres 10 000 current burial sites approximately 3000 of those are unmarked so when we get a request when staff gets a request to locate a specific grave in a lot of cases staff has to go out and walk the cemetery to try to locate that particular grave site oakwood cemetery is 13 acres 4704 burials sandstone monument that you see here is one of the last men executed on the lawn of the denton county courthouse some photos of some of the headstones tombstones out there at the cemetery right now you can see what kind of condition we're talking about just to bring the point home some of the older stones you can see how some of them were cracked and broken one of the methods that's been used that center picture when stones were vandalized or just due to age broke one of the methods that has been employed in the past was just to pour it into some concrete so that at least it was preserved and there i'm sure that doesn't meet historic guidelines but that's what was done there's a crypt at oakwood iwf 25 acres 6904 burials that's one of the old crypts out at iwf there are some of the headstones you can see what kind of condition they're in there's a crypt and yes that is a void at the bottom of that door i'll just leave it at that a mausoleum out at iwf another shot of a mausoleum out there some headstones or headless stones as the case may be on that one so as far as the assessment goes the improvements that are needed out there are beyond the scope of staff's capabilities we sent an rfp out to 10 prospective suppliers specifications were posted online in the newspaper and we had one bid that came back the proposal that they submitted was evaluated what we are suggesting at this point is that we spend 79 872 for the preparation of the detailed gis and gps mapping for both cemeteries that will be a cad computer aided design database for all of everything at both of the cemeteries then of the funds we would use $57,060 for an assessment of the approximately 9500 monuments to evaluate those and provide a priority-based monument repair schedule in other words those individuals would pick out the ones that were in most in need of repair those two pieces of the services the proposed services would equal 136 932 that would leave some money left on the table of that what staff is proposing is that we would use some of those dollars to start some of the most needed repairs we would go ahead and add the division markers and the block at oakwood and the block markers at i double o f those are stainless steel four by four markers that are set into the ground they are as permanent a marker as we're going to get so that we can use those as a reference in the future and that we would this is a better breakdown of what we're proposing you can see the division markers the block markers and then expend some dollars to start the repairs monuments at both oakwood and i double o f for a total of 152 596 dollars certainly the option here should it be council's wish would be to we could just take all of those funds and apply them toward going to work and starting to fix monuments right now i mean we could skip the assessment and go to work and spend it all fixing stones and crypts and at the cemeteries right now should that be council's desire that's why we're here to to talk this through with y'all today and see what your desire is what direction y'all would like to go council member breaks and then council member gary and then council member on the on the gis mapping i know that we purchased lidar data not this budget but last and i know that that can be used for many different things i did a quick google search for lidar cemeteries and some things popped up have you looked into that or asked our technology department if that was something that they could do or is that am i yeah come on up come on up i'm way out of my league here introduce yourself so my name is rusty brenda with texas cemetery restoration we provided the information for the quote of this project the lidar information could be augmented into the data of drawing the cemetery out ultimately what's missing is the record keeping so who's where who's buried in what plot what block what lot what grave number so the lidar could help augment what's there as far as physical structures but it doesn't give us anything about what's in the particular cemetery in what position so as well as give us any information about the condition of the headstones okay that top line there the the 79 almost 80 000 so of the gis mapping and then how much of that 80 000 is that component as far as the mapping that's the total on the mapping side and that's going basically monument by monument collecting the names that are off of the dates that are off and putting together a catalog of the burials that are in the cemetery in their exact position based on the gis that we get or the gps positioning the lidar then could augment that if you've got lidar data to go with that it may be possible to use that lidar data to find where some of the unmarked burials are depressions in the ground things like that that may show up from the lidar data so that could be a useful tool for augmenting the information that we put together here so what you're saying is is that line is completely different from something that i'm suggesting yes but it would help if you already purchased the lidar data that would definitely help could add to it okay thank you council member baguerre okay i have a couple questions first uh the i-o-o-f ceremony or the i-o-o-f cemetery is not full yet correct it is correct okay do we know how full it is teresa how many this is teresa abram she's one of our field supervisors and the resident expert on both of our cemeteries are as close as it gets we'll go with as close as it gets because i'm certainly not the expert i-o-o-f is not full we do have division z which is a new area that we started where the old sexton home used to be we have the capability to put in a little over 600 burials in that area we have not hit that number yet we're a bit less than 100 and we do have other areas plotted off that were previously not utilized there were roads end at a fence and are between blocks we haven't gotten to those yet but we have the ability to do so oakwood is very nearly hitting to where i would like to call it full it's an older cemetery even more destroyed records less less records for the cemetery when he was talking about walking around looking for stones that's you might get a burial location that says oakwood old part that encompasses 10 acres so for me to go out there and find somebody i have to take a walk and if i get lucky and they have a tombstone i can find it but then i've got to flag it because in that old area the divisions aren't marked on the oakwood map it looks very clear can you back up to that oakwood map for me it looks nice and square and clear i just want to know how many there are that's out of the left there you go where you see like block 10 block 8 those look nice and plain like it ought to be readily there but if you walk out there it's not that way you can see where you're a map but there's no marker to delineate where you're at like for instance i'm sorry i'm gonna get off camera here this is block 8 there are four quadrants in block 8 1 2 3 4 i might get a burial that says oakwood old part 81 so i walk out to what looks like would be 81 on this map and i survey that area that's not where i'm finding in my burial at so it might be further over an 82 it might be back in the block behind that that's the importance of these block markers so that we have a record as to where this is at and what we 're looking for so my question was about how full the cemeteries are so you're saying oakwood is basically full pretty much and then the iwf has 6900 burials already and there are about 600 left so it's about 90 full approximately yes okay um all right so that answers that question so then my next question is you said that we know about 70 percent of the burials in the iwf we know who they are it's just about 30 percent that we don't have records for etc so the maintenance i my what i'm trying to wrap my head around is what part of the maintenance of the cemetery is a public concern and what part is a private concern so if we know who you know the records are for certain grave sites is it the city's responsibility to repair that headstone or does it become the family's responsibility to maintain the headstone i know we have to mow and we have to keep things tidy but how does that work well because we've sold the plots technically it is the family's responsibility um the difficulty becomes um although we we may know the family name we know the person who's buried in that site they may have been buried 100 150 years ago it's a little difficult for us to trace who the relatives are now who do we talk to today okay so i guess there's not like an ongoing agreement when you sell the plot it's uh it's a we sell the plot um but there's no ongoing maintenance agreement i mean the family goes out and buys a headstone and installs it it should be you're absolutely right it should be their responsibility to maintain so then i have a question about pricing because if if it if in effect the city is having to maintain you know what is essentially private property are we pricing the product in accordance with uh perpetual cleaning and administration of of the land we could certainly look at that i mean as far as covering full maintenance costs we're nowhere near it at this point so are we priced competitively then like how i mean i don't know anything about how final resting place pricing i've never thought about it but it is interesting like are we in a market rate are we lower than market i mean well i mean our our competition if you will is rose lawn cemetery and our sites are less they're below their cost i think as council member gragery and then that's my wasney and then i think the problem with those agreements and i don't know how the private cemeter ies are run because i think probably the additional cost helps that they get put something into some type of a perpetual fund to help uh maintain that down the road uh the problem with this being private property is um you know if they're not if if they're violating the code we have no one to serve there's no way to there's no way to hold them accountable if they're if if it goes to you know goes poorly a question that i've got about the the the money um do we know yet looking at all of the the stones that are that are damaged do we have any idea of what the total repairs would be well we've not done the assessment so no we really don't and at one time there was some discussion i think there were even some votes about fencing uh i think the historical groups had some involvement in that in terms of either updating the fencing or replacing the fencing what's the story on that has there been money dedicated to that is there a design for fencing do we need to be thinking about that in the long run for this there was cip money identified um to in believe it was the 2000 cip to fence both cemeteries to refence both cemeteries um the intent was to go back with chain link fence just upgrade update i should say the existing fence um as we started to move forward with that project um the historical commission became involved and told us that that project would require a certificate of appropriateness as far as the design of the fence would go so we worked through that process and actually have designs done for both cemeteries of course we expended a significant amount of the money on the design by the time we finished doing it um and got one that was acceptable to the historic commission it's our intent right now there is one section of the oak wood cemetery it would be the the pieces along prairie and bradshaw that that's the only portion of the cemetery either cemetery that's not fenced we think we have enough funding left in that cip that we're going to go ahead and fence that one piece um again that's prairie and bradshaw that will be stone columns um stone and brick jim there's seven brick columns in a raft all right so it's so it's that we'll see stone stone columns and a steel fence an ornamental steel fence um it's our intent to try to do that project um that'll be an example of what we could do and that way we'll also get a chance to nail down a very specific very accurate cost that we can use to apply to the rest of the cemeteries the final thing i would say is i i think that council member gary brought up a lot of good points problem is is that probably all of those weren't completely thought through in the 30s when the city agreed ownership of these two and and at this particular point they're ours we have a responsibility and um i think that that it's probably a good thing to move forward with the plan that you have because i suspect that we're consuming a lot of staff hours over the years going out and searching for grave sites and we might in the process of doing all this discover that there are a few more available and we might want to reconsider our pricing yes those that are left to to help cover at least a little bit more of the actual cost let's see council member wasney it's already gone you can go so let's back up and just review some of the history for all of this during the budget last year and the supplemental package that came forward and supplemental package are basically extra pieces or extra asks kind of department by department and your department came forward and and made an ask for 150 000 for cemetery restoration or whatever it is that you want to call it and council members champion different things that are important to them and so i really balked at the 150 000 for cemetery work but i only approved 150 000 in that budget what brought all of this forward was that an agenda or two ago tucked away in consent agenda was double the amount and it was 300 000 on cemetery and i let my i shouted out to our city manager and said whoa we only approved 150 000 in that budget for this why are we consent agenda item here for 300 000 so it's why we're back here today so you know and i get it with cemeteries they're old i get it and i have walked old cemeteries all over this country there are broken headstones there are monuments that are because they're 150 200 years old sometimes on the east coast older than that they're not restored back to pristine because part of the old history and charm is that they are 200 years old they are 150 years old so it comes back to well how much is the city going to spend on cemetery restoration i i just want to go on the record that i'm good for 150 000 and i'm done so the additional funding is going to have to come in an additional budget because we didn't approve 300 000 and so that's why we're here today but there are so many things that and part of my concern is that it really becomes quicksand that you start this whole project you start repairing and then where do you stop and when do you stop stop you know these cemeteries are decades old some of these um headstones like the one we're looking at what does that say 1854 so you know it's just at what point and also who makes the decision who makes the call on how far we're going to go to repair and restore and it just really becomes quicksand in terms of financing so to your point where you said do we go through all the mapping issues which is difficult at best because the records are gone there are in some cases it's going to be impossible to know who is where it's going to be impossible to know and quite frankly families who have forgotten it's just forgotten and if people are doing ancestry searches it's to the courthouse digging through records trying to put all the pieces together and it can be difficult at best to try to find a headstone so to your point i think the money would be best served to spend lock stock and barrel at this point on trying to restore and trying to make make best of a bad situation in terms of going back in there and i understand that it's hard for staff i think even after the mapping it's going to be hard for staff because the records are gone and trying to go back if if mr johnson's family comes back and he passed away 80 years ago and and those were part of the records that were burned we're never going to know where that plot is irrespective of spending 80 000 on a gps map system for cemeteries so i do have people in a cemetery and when there is damage i get a letter from them that says this is has happened and you need to come to colorado and check this out asap and you know what we're up there and we do whatever it is that we need to do to bring it back to but i understand that trying to contact people after even it can be a short period of time because if there's no true family record of contact then it's it's hard to to do all of that but i come back to congress congress back to councilwoman baguerreys that there is there is responsibility of the family there is it has always been that way and so to say it's the city's responsibility across the board to make everything right for you know forever i i just i just don't see it i think it's just going to be you know so much money so i come back to your ask and i agree with you in terms of if that's your ask i agree and to just launch immediately and take that money and start doing what you need to do thank you okay we had council member hawkins and then councilmember riggs yeah i'm kind of on the fence about this one pardon me once just give you the money and go do what you can with it but i think something like this probably does need an assessment ultimately i think we need to know how far that money will go i know it is the responsibility of the family but they're not doing anything and it's ultimately our responsibility these are very visible areas so we're always worried about in the previous presentation we talked about gateways how to how do we improve our gateways this is the same i mean we can't contact all the family and say come fix it's just not working so as much as i want the families to take care of their plots and headstones and all that they're just not doing it and i hate that i hope it's not a we're not hiring a consultant to do this are we doing this on our own or how does this work if we do we would hire a consultant repair work no to get the assessment the assessment is to hire a consultant yes that's nothing against you but my four years on council i would like to know how many consultants i've hired just and then part of me just wants to give you the briefcase of money and go go fix this up but i do think as much as i do not want to i want to know the inventory what the plan is what it's going to look like is this worth doing those sorts of things so ultimately that's where i landed and if we could uh yeah just hand those out and then if you need to come make a comment there's more pardon me well and let me before you get started because the presentation is really from the parks department so i want to make sure do you have any questions for the consultant at this time i was just giving direction ultimately i mean i'm i'm struggling with this one on both ways yeah but it's ultimately not so no we're gonna go ahead and just yeah thank you very much appreciate it you bet yes council member riggs so to your point i was thinking the same thing council member hawkins as far as especially the i double o f cemetery being a gateway you come right in to our city and i think you know nice fences on both will go a really long way on on those cemeteries and looking back at you mentioned f encing and the amount i had for that was for the oakwood fence was 138 thousand 414 dollars i'm not sure how much the i double o f fence was approved for these were the bonds the unencumber ed um bonds that were approved right those were the dollars for both cemeteries okay and so of that 138 you said a lot of that has been used for the design or i believe the 138 is the remaining balance the remaining balance okay okay just a question i saw on facebook a friend of mine posted this past weekend her and her family took in a walk through an old historic cemetery the town or the historical society is hosting walking tours um is that something that we've ever thought about doing or could do if this was you know i think it's something we we we certainly can do could do it would be a little bit easier for us to do with some updated information but i mean do it either way just thinking about you know all the the people that come into our town and the other tours that we have um it could be something you know just just a thought yes ma'am councilmember gary um by way of direction i'm in favor of using the 150 000 for actual work to the cemeteries such as f encing or just visually identifying the locations most in need of repair my guess would be that that's the mausoleums or the crypts because of the condition that they're in i'm not in favor of hiring a consultant no offense present company um so that's where i was at when we did the supplemental request as well i was concerned that we're allocating 150 000 for a consultant as opposed to the actual work and i think at that time what i brought up was that the county was spending ten thousand dollars to complete some type of repairs to their county cemetery and pilot point and there was such a huge difference between what the county was spending and what we were spending the second thing is i'm really not comfortable continuing to spend money without having some type of analysis of how much we're charging people because if our pricing is not covering even basic maintenance i think that's a real disservice to the living frankly and that's who we're here representing at least most of us third thing there's never been a time when i felt more culturally different than everybody here than a discussion about death because western and eastern approaches to death is very different and things decay after you're dead i mean that's a part of death is that things decay it's okay for things to look decayed in my opinion and that i know that that's a cultural difference that it's all right for places that house the dead to look like they house the dead and i know that that makes people uncomfortable but i just want to point out that that really is a cultural difference so mayor pro tem thanks dulton for getting us into this conversation uh but it's it's not an unimportant one and i guess the my my take on this is at some point we're gonna have to decide as a city what are we going to do with this and if we just say go spend money on haphazardly going to repair what you think needs to be repaired and get your staff to do it because we don't want to hire any outside people so we've got a bunch of untrained people putting together tombstones i don't know where that goes but we're going to be back here in a year and you're going to give us some report and we're going to see some sense of what you did with that money and the next question is going to be well how much is it going to take to tackle the rest of this stuff you're going to be like well i don't know the answer to that question you wouldn't let me do a study on figuring out what is the comprehensive problem and what could be a plan we don't have to spend it but at least we know future council members who might be interested in that would know and we can have a plan it's like saying we have a road problem but we don't want to study the problem we just want to start getting asphalt out there so i know we don't like those sorts of approaches but any business would do that so i'm in favor of the assessment so that we at least know what we need to do if we choose to do that in the future i guess i i'm not so sure if the difference in cultures that you were talking about i fully i think there's a lot of similarities at least from what you said i don't disagree with a lot that i'm going to make this simple for me i think one of the things we needed with these cemeteries number one is i i think for me if i got to choose what to spend the money on i would say we need some at i double f in oakwood we need some nice solid decorative fencing if you fenced i double o f and if it had a wrought iron fence with these columns and all that first of all it's a gateway into the city it may discourage people from going in there number one as much as we can to create damage but number two that is on one of the perennial corners on our in our city i'm not so sure when people drive on caro and eagle they look there and say oh look at that all these headstones are falling over all that it just so that's what i would spend the money on first as far as get some nice fencing around the historical cemetery for sure and then this one that's at the gateway of our city that we've tried to do and we've been in the planning process now from what i remember here correctly some of the bonds were approved 15 years ago yes sir almost 20 years ago yes sir and i know there was at least an attempt by some to raise private dollars through some of the families and some of the buried in the cemetery to see if they wanted to contribute to that and have some kind of you know maybe a name marker in one of the columns or something like that so that's where i would start because we can go in there and fix these up and that's great do we have a plan to do it i don't know i think the plan though mayor pro tem look like there were two things one was the gis survey which just simply is a mapping of location that's not really an assessment of what do we need to do to bring these up to par as far as from a maintenance or repair slash restoration perspective then there was another assessment for that if we only got 150 000 we could do something that's very concrete that does have a an endpoint from a cost perspective and i think it would go a long way to setting these cemeter ies aside as far as what the importance is for the city and also providing just an aesthetic appeal and an historic appeal for here's what this is some people may drive by the corner of carolyn eagle and not even know what that is until if they just look around because you got that big retaining wall on the south side of i double o f that just goes up pretty high i think that's not very consistent with direction that's been given here in fact the direction is all over the map in in this regard okay well all right well we still have three yes i just have one more quick question sure can you go back to the recommendations please okay so the direction in question is do we just take the the 150 and go straight to the um to fixing or use some of that for the assessment is that that 's correct what you're searching for okay well i'm just curious on the assessment of monuments um like what if if we just say here's your 150 go fix things how would you do the assessment would it be um just can you walk me through that that decision process or well in talking this through a staff we would probably go for one of the the crypts that's in the worst condition at this point which is that one repair alone is going to take up a very significant amount of that money okay all right so it wouldn't necessarily you would need to get a list of priorities of all these it would just be one for now more than likely yeah one large one and then we would we would we would we would go through and assess and say okay let's pick that one and pick that one based on condition okay i don't think we should make a decision today what i would ask staff to do in line with the mayor's um very sensible comment would be to get a bid on what fencing and are we talking wrought iron um i think it's whatever they 've already yes yeah yeah that will be required by the certificate of appropriateness and um and to to see how far 150,000 would go towards because that's a very large piece of property over there and uh postpone any council direction today until we get a bid on that f encing so that that becomes part of the conversation okay well let's see council member gregory just a couple of reactions i don't think there was ever a suggestion to uh take the current cemeteries and uh somehow restore them to a pristine level i'm not sure where that came from but that's not what the suggestion was because it is a historic cemetery uh it was never the suggestion to do that it was it was to do restoration to protect these a lot of these rather tall monuments over graves that are at a precarious angle and will be falling and will be damaged and probably beyond repair that's the kind of things we were talking about not not going back and rebuilding brand new head stones for every one that we could i think it would be probably more expensive for us to go back and try to do the kind of research that we would need to do on that gravestone of the man who was executed to find out if there were relatives to contact them to make sure that they restored that site then it would be for us to do it ourselves in terms of cost that that seems like a pretty much a no- brainer that that it would cost us a whole lot more to to go to the effort to try to contact those folks to take care of those sites assuming that we could even be successful in in half the cases i think that the fencing is important i think that repairs especially to those headstones that are still in one piece that could be saved and salvaged really needs to be done but what i've heard our staff say is that they don't have the expertise in house to do them that's when we go out and hire a consultant i know that hiring consultants is not popular but if you don't know how to do it yourself you go ahead you know if you don't know how to do a plumbing job yourself you go hire a plumber that's a consultant that does it for you so good luck staff trying to figure out what it is this council wants uh i think the final question of who makes the decisions you had asked ms wasney who makes the decisions the council makes the decisions uh this council or future councils or the people that make the decisions that that's because the city is the owner of the cemeteries and the council uh is the board of directors for the for the city so i think that that answers that question in terms of down the road you know what we what we choose to do or what we choose to left be left undone is is completely a council decision council member hawkins just to rebuttal to that my only comment about the consultant was i just think that this money could possibly go a long way i think that it's necessary so i just wanted to make sure i was understood carefully so jessima wasney and as far as who makes a decision you you are totally incorrect on where i was headed with that it is who makes a decision when you are looking at 6 000 monuments and which ones need repair and which ones don't which mausoleums need repair and which don 't and and to what extent to what repair because there is an by pristine it's not recarving head stones but if you are looking at a massive project like we're looking at currently with the age and condition of a lot of these headstones if the decision is made to go in and repair it is boots on the ground who will decide which ones get repaired and to what extent they get repaired and so that's what i was talking about in terms of making a decision the other issue is it still leaves open the money pit consideration that we get started and where where is it going to go and how much is this thing going to cost ultimately over the course of time to your point when you said a lot of this money could be spent repairing just one mausoleum so are you talking about a hundred thousand dollars to repair number i've seen is 120 000 to repair one mausoleum yes ma'am thank you yeah i think um you know several wanted to see what the bids were on the f encing because the fencing has been a discussion that has occurred over 17 years in fact there was even a bond program to allocate some funds for that but somehow it lost steam or the historic commission got involved and then we had to reduce some reason so that's been something that historically has been a desire at least of the community back then and and i would like to see the bit and that in this conversation will give us an opportunity to mow it over in our heads more as we come back and get those bids because i'll be honest with you i mean money's short let's face it i mean and it's probably going to get shorter if depending on how certain things go uh legisl atively and i'm not opposed to doing what we can do but i want to make sure whatever money we allocate we're going to get the most productive use of those funds and make the biggest impact of those funds as a community for a community replacing one mausoleum for a hundred and twenty three thousand dollars at least at this point in time it's nothing against the maus oleum i don't see that that would be necessarily the wisest use of our funds in that regard but i think to to really provide a more comprehensive discussion if we could maybe revisit this with a bid on the fencing and you could just say even on i double o f the eagle side and carol side because those seem to be the real prominent visible size and then what could you do on the other and oakwood however you wanted to do that the streets providing that but to give us some some better ideas and numbers to work with and i think we'll be able to come up with a solution uh that will that will provide the maximum efficiency for those funds spent in those cemeter ies i'm sorry and plot pricing yes sort of how do we do that sure yeah because i don't even know just curious if you know of those 600 that the new ones in i double o f i think they said that you have 600 what are those i mean is that a flat rate of what are those what does something like that cost 600 okay are you saying 600 dollars 600 dollars per site yes okay okay all right okay good fantastic is that council okay with that i mean i know it's been a a robust discussion i'm dying to move on to something yes okay i think this is because sarah's back yeah no we're gonna we're gonna on that on that note we're gonna take a on dalton's uh cricket joke we're gonna hear we're gonna take about a five or ten minute break we'll come back about 305 okay welcome everyone we're we're back in our meeting of the dent city council of tuesday ecra fourth 2017 it is 3 12 we are now moving on to work session item 3d receive a report and hold discussion give staff direction regarding the acquisition of property for the purpose of tree preservation morning good afternoon mayor city council mr city manager so we are here today to visit with you about a set of evaluation criteria for identifying real estate property for the purpose of tree preservation and this is a project that we've been working on for a few months now we have a team of staff members from parks and recreation development services legal real estate and keep dentin beautiful along with our city's urban forester who have been working on this project and we are well represented here today in case you have questions in any of those areas of expertise and i'll start out by giving you just a little bit of background on how we got to this point our process as we're putting together this set of criteria and then we'll actually go into the criteria set themselves and talk through those and how we came about those at the very end we'll be giving you some options for consideration to take action in a number of ways so i'll go ahead and get started this item is actually in response to quite a few citizen inquiries and concerns that we've heard gosh i don't even know how far back it goes but i know it keeps it in beautiful we've heard quite a few and then also council requests for discussion not only on the use of tree mitigation funds through our city's tree fund but also specifically the issue of tree preservation properties and whether the city can acquire property for the purpose of preserving trees in our community the tree fund just to give you an update as of the end of fiscal year 2016 the balance of that fund was just a little over two million dollars 2.3 million and we did complete at the end of last year the state of the denton urban forest report which you all may remember found that 46 of our tree canopy here in denton was located on undeveloped land and that was actually a point of concern for many council members it became a point of concern for many citizens just the idea that some of our community's trees could be at risk for being removed and 3.4 million trees to be exact or what our city's tree canopy is estimated to be at overall those trees have a value in the forestry industry they term it the structural value and what that means is the cost that it would take to replace those trees if they we woke up tomorrow and they were all gone 2.06 billion dollars would be the replacement cost to replace those trees and then they provide an additional 7.2 million dollars per year in environmental benefits so things like storm water mitigation and air quality improvements things like that and we also found through this study that the trees that provide the greatest relative benefit for our community like post oak and pecan are also the ones that are the most difficult to replace or regrow and so we have trees like the post oak which don't do well in a cultivated environment so once we remove those trees it's very difficult to replace them but interestingly in the study we found that relative to other species they had a pretty substantial benefit to our community in terms of environmental benefits so we're talking three times as much as some other species the topic of tree preservation is well aligned with the city's strategic priorities namely key focus area 5.4 which references preservation of open space natural areas and specifically the tree canopy here in the city the dent in 2030 plan echoes this priority and we're looking at things like the tree canopy and as an essential element of our green infrastructure here in the city and also retaining these essential ecosystems and habitat as part of our land conservation approach preservation i'll mention is one component of a comprehensive tree management or urban forestry management strategy so that would also include things like tree planting which we are doing through numerous programs through the tree initiative and the city's public parks plantings that have been going on for the last year or so and so preservation is an element of that it's not the end-all be-all it's one one aspect of that so our goal in approaching this issue was to develop a more comprehensive and practical strategy for identifying properties that we could evaluate for tree preservation purposes we do have a set of criteria under the dent and development code that's been outlined by a previous council and that outlines how tree fund money can be spent on the purchase of wooded properties and other uses but in terms of actually applying those criteria we didn't really have a practical means to do that to identify property that would be a good fit for this purpose and so our staff team started working in january of this year to develop this system which we're going to be going over now and the first category as part of this criteria system was most importantly the species composition and the quality of the trees found on a piece of property and so we're talking abstract ly right now in terms of the criteria not you know specific properties obviously but things like the canopy cover of the property in question and then also is it located in the cross timbers eco region of our city as many of you know we have a couple of different eco regions represented here in denton prairie grasslands are on the western side of town and then we have the cross timbers urban forest or forest that's represented kind of more on the eastern side and so we wanted to make sure that when we're looking at properties that that was a priority that we are identifying properties that have quality trees that are native to the area the second category of evaluation was land use and the potential for development of the property so was it available on the market what's the potential to use it for a public park or a trail system have there been residents requests to preserve this specific property and then also is the property threatened by development so when we're looking at things like current protections and and zoning of the property if it was in a heavy flood plain or a conservation easement already those properties would probably be a little lower on the priority list simply because they're not as likely to be developed anyway we also looked at things like future planning for the property is it consistent with mobility and utility plans what about the park's long-term plans for developing those systems and then things like impact on the tax rolls if we were to preserve the property and remove it from use potentially in a commercial sense would that impact the city's tax base so these criteria were weighted based on level of importance and achieving the overall goal of tree preservation as we are looking at specific properties and we will have a list that we'll be bringing to you in closed session here shortly but we narrowed specifically to those that had a canopy cover of 50 percent or greater and we were able to identify these properties conveniently enough through the mapping component that was provided to us as a deliverable of the urban tree assessment the state of the dentin urban forest report so that helped quite a bit in identifying these properties with 50 percent or higher canopy cover we then cross-referenced with the central appraisal district or cad and also our city gis records to look at things like i was mentioning before with the mobility and utility planning as well as ownership of the properties and then we just removed those that were in heavy flood plain or had existing protections or were otherwise already difficult to develop there were 105 possible points as part of this criteria system and as a team we each ranked the properties individually and then compiled our scores to get an average score per property so the forthcoming list that we're going to be looking at you have a few options today in terms of what your consideration would be for future action on this item we could the city could purchase a property for consider purchasing a property from the forthcoming list and then take action to limit future use of the property so that it would continue to be preserved to do this based on the current market rates of many properties in the area it would likely require an increase in the expenditure limit under the tree fund and to refresh your memory there was as part of that criteria under the dentin development code there's a set of percentages for how we allocate the tree fund money 15 is the cap for the purchase of wooded property category and then we have other things like tree planting and a city -wide tree inventory that are included as options under that tree fund so with the current balance as of the end of fiscal year 16 that would give us about 350 000 to work with increasing that to either temporarily or permanently to a 40 cap for the purchase of wooded property would give you a little bit under a million additionally i'm sorry yes yes ma'am so the tree fund expenditure criteria that cap and it's that's part of the dentin development code yes ma'am so a logistical question for our city manager what would it take for this council to expand that could we do a resolution that would would up that cap well i believe that it would i would need to defer the city term my assumption is that this is my ordinance you'd have to amend it my ordinance but i'm sure if there's any other dedicated uh uses of these funds that we'd have to study first so there for instance is there some allocation percentage that uh to some other point if not likely would be able to amend it through an ordinance sorry hey what morgan urban forester uh that criteria was actually not a part of the dent development code it was criteria that was approved here in council back in i believe the spring of 2015 per council's requests so if council put it in and council could change it by either ordinance or resolution go ahead i was overhearing the conversation but it appears that that 15 was a result of direction given by council in the work session is that correct so there is not there's not an ordinance or resolution out there so we could i apologize for that confusion we could this council if it chooses to do so can amend that by giving direction here or if it wishes to do it more formally we can do it in the form of a resolution or a ordinance whatever your preference is thank you and you have those expenditure criteria in your backup for this item so in addition to a temporary or permanent increase to that percentage cap on for the purchase of wooded property for preservation we also have an option that we've been exploring to leverage additional funds through other city departments for example the parks department could potentially work with us to provide funding for any properties that allow a potential for public use or that would give them any sort of connectivity issues to existing long-range plans that they have for parks and trails and we've been talking with dent municipal electric as well and mitigation funds could potentially be used for a property purchase yes so instead of calling it leveraging additional funds from other city departments i'd like to do an offs hoot and call it cooperation yes ma'am from other city departments because a lot of cities will save those trees and create a mini park it may be small it may not have a lot of structures or anything on it other than a couple of benches for walkers and but it creates a tree canopy and a little bit of green in the urban environment and so that's kind of yeah that's kind of my that's my question yeah well i'm going along with that it's a question that i have and this may be something that that is going to take some collaboration from the parks department and our urban fore ster to answer it is how how good of a match how good of a fit is preserving a natural area with a park because i think that that that there are a lot of expectations when it becomes a park that there's a parking lot and there's playgrounds and there's open fields in addition to some trees so so do those do those always fit or are there certain situations where they fit well together i'm not sure you want to i i think as we were reviewing properties there were different levels of fit as you say that some properties were more suitable to that than others i don't know if they want to elaborate on that but i and i also think there are levels of park development that you get into where we're not looking at things like a playground necessarily but maybe a trail or something pretty minimal do you want to i think it's a great fit but we need to be very careful as you said councilmember gragery when we talk about these properties as a park they're not going to fit the traditional view of a park you typically i mean you're buying the piece of property because it has a great you're using tree mitigation dollars to buy property that has tree cover it has tree canopy that doesn't lend itself well to athletic fields or the the typical amenities that you would see in a neighborhood park we've had some preliminary discussions and and within staff and there's a real strong desire to even avoid hard surface trails for instance in the canopy under the canopy of these trees so if you're going to talk about it as a park it's going to have soft surface trails it's not going to have concrete trails we can fit a shelter in if if there is a clearing we can fit a playground in if there's a clearing that will allow it but all those pieces are going to have to be worked out so i would use caution that's all so this would maybe be like like we have some park facilities that are very much intentionally athletic recreation yes sir and there are others that are more playground and there are others that are extremely passive yes sir and so this would this would be considered an extremely passive park exactly and and would there be a way to if the city purchased it to memorialize it for future councils you know like we're dealing with decisions made by councils in 1933 that that that it's clear that this that this property was purchased with tree mitigation funds and therefore it's restricted for tree preservation or or that sort of thing is there a way to do that to memorialize that sure i'm sure there is mayor pro tem well i i i've often thought we were approaching this percentage thing in a strange light i mean if you think about the history of it it seemed like we got to that discussion in 2015 because we wanted to start spending money we saw that kind of pot start to grow and we're wondering why aren 't we doing it so what criteria are we using to do it we had a proposal from parks that came down and we see the results of that it's pretty aggressive planting you put together a lot of great initiatives relating to this and to even look at this we might keep coming back to well how much did we spend last time when we when we did that planting project why isn't that a part of we're always looking at what's the fund balance and it seems like we ought to look at this fund like any other fund and almost have a what's our projection over the next five years what's our goals generally speaking and then any year you guys come back to us with a budget request saying parks wants a certain amount of this you want a certain amount of this we've got and i we've identified some tracks we want to go after is council interested in that and get away with percent that's so arbitrary in my opinion to approaching this i'd much rather say you've got some great ideas the departments have come together with some interesting options for this do we want to go after this or not this year with spending you know one and a half million dollars to start drawing this thing down and then here's our plans moving forward based on our pro forma anyways that's my thinking on this i'd much rather if you you guys have done a great job up to this point i'd hate to get it boggled down in our arbitrary percentages okay okay did you have a question council member i just i agree okay all right go ahead the one so um option two would be um if if we don 't want to go the route of increasing that and i apologize for the error on the ddc reference there but on the criteria that council had allocated by percentage for this type of purchase if we don't want to go um to increasing that then we can look at the opportunity to um for a partial acquisition of property and that would reduce the cost overall and then the final option um that we're outlining for you here today is to consider properties with less acreage that we could go back and actually look at another um set of properties to review that would be smaller in size and they might preserve fewer trees but the cost would be less um so we we really with this round of um analysis we were looking for properties that would provide the biggest bang for the buck so to speak of of finding those properties that had a lot of tree cover um that would preserve the most amount of trees and as a result we did end up with some larger size properties on the list today and i i really like your sort of philosophy on this mayor pro tem um because i think we've we're sort of still struggling to find what we really want to do as i think through this let's say for instance if we just sort of go with what the model has been presented we got a certain amount of money i think in the backup it said tree mitigation fund grows about 400 000 a year i believe that's correct that's sort of what you're talking about hey we have an income stream how do we do this keep it sustainable but so i'm looking here thinking we're going to spend i mean i got to be honest with you i'm not for spending two million dollars on preserving a plot of trees that uh because preservation is one thing but trees die forest fires happen um and most of the trees are out from what i understand in undeveloped and undeveloped areas correct is that is that right 46 percent of the trees are in is that what the study according to the study 46 percent of our overall canopy for the city however the properties aren't all on in areas that are undeveloped so for me it's also how do we increase our canopy and the only way you increase canopy couple ways you reduce the number of trees that are being knocked down for development but you also plant new trees you plant new trees and so while i'm all for buying a nice piece of property that has some really nice trees on it that would really provide some a great community asset whether it be just aesthetics or a park as it's been defined throughout this you know people walking on soft surfaces or whatever but it's also i mean we've planted a lot of trees i think i mean i think you know you look at some of the along the parkways at south lakes park and north lakes park and that takes a long time i don't want to get stuck in sort of a now position of where the short-term vision because trees take a long time to grow but if you plant a thousand trees today you know i don 't know what the survival rate is but if people take care of them 20 years from now you're going to have a lot a lot new canopy that you're going to have preserving trees they do that's helpful but it seems like and maybe it's just because this is the the agenda item is looking to preserve but i just i don't i don't want to because when you start buying acreage especially in this town in this real estate market you're spending a heck of a lot of money and i'm not sure what you 're really getting and so i really want to make sure that i mean when you're talking about spending 500,000 or six or seven hundred thousand dollars to to buy a piece of land that has trees on it i certainly would hope that however the number of trees that are on that plot that we can't go out and replant that many of those trees at the same or less price so it's just a matter of balancing those they're not competing interests they're collaborative interests they're collaborative and your point is well taken and it's it's very accurate in terms of course you know it is a combination of preservation and planting yes sir yes go ahead oh okay um regarding the the notion of preserving tree stands you're right mayor there are trees in there that will die and there could be subjects some of those areas subject to forest fires but but a healthy stand of trees is regenerative sure and and the important thing about that is that post oaks and blank jack oaks do not work we we don't have a very high success rate of all at all of planting those and growing them in a nursery and transplanting them into an area you can't purchase them wholesale they the only way that they regenerate is in these native stands that are left those are the trees that are most um emblematic of the ecosystem that that we are in and didn't which is the cross timbers uh bio so so the only way that they those get preserved the only way that we're going to preserve those is by by purchasing and preserving uh native stands that are that are remaining so so you know how effective that is don't have any disagreement that but post oaks are not the only trees that absolutely we're here in the city of denton absolutely but but that but that's what was native you know and there were red oaks also i just got a book called the cast iron forest which did who did you tell me have you it's it's an outstanding book on on on the the cross tim bers area it's great thank you for recommending it got it for christmas um wow that's what about wait we need to take a moment here this is the moment the bridges we're building the bridges we talked about let's do that for people i asked a question about another option uh for purchasing i 'm sorry i'd i'd ask uh uh staff to talk about or be prepared to talk about a fourth option which is um um conservation easements okay i'm prepared to cover that if that's okay i think council member gary had a question or comment i was surprised without getting too much into the closed session and breaching that that needs to stay private i thought there would be more emphasis on rip arian areas because of the water the flood plains it's really not developable developable in a lot of ways so i was surprised i guess my question is was there um a point criteria given for riparian areas we did look at areas that were in riparian zones and really the the general consensus in the group was that those areas were unlikely to be developed anyway because of the challenges of developing in a floodplain and so we removed those from the priority list um pretty early on in the process to answer your question but the other question that's helpful thank you the other question i had was regarding trail connectivity that was another thing that i didn't really notice um and our list was you know attaching or building upon the parks that we already have and increasing the amount of use that we could have on foot or bike or whatever so was there a criteria or a point system for trail connectivity there was we looked at the potential to develop as a as a park but really we were looking at park and trail connectivity and the long-range plans for the parks department um connectivity between park areas that kind of thing so so yes we did look at that thank you you're welcome yes i just want to thank you for your presentation and staff um for all the work on this this is it's really important team and um i do know because i have several constituents who have reached out to me as a concern of preserving you know old tree stands and um i think i think this is great so thank you thank you great so i'll cover um councilmember gregory's question um that is really the the end but i did add this on um after we received that question prior to the presentation so uh what councilmember gregory had had asked about was the potential for conservation easements to preserve the property as a tree stand and to prevent future development on the property am i characterizing that accurately okay so um we looked at conservation easements and i'll probably rely on a little bit of help from from legal here um if i get in the weeds a bit but uh really when you're looking at a conservation easement that's a voluntary restriction on the use of the land and the landowner agrees to put this protection in place um it binds current and future landowners to the use as a conservation easement and it can also provide them with tax incentives by doing so uh deed restrictions are really similar to this but they're more general in their permitted use and so it's not going to be as specific i guess to the purpose of conservation um so when we were looking at this really legal came back with the concept of a city policy that could be drafted as a protection for the property uh because of a conservation easement wouldn't uh typically be a property that we would own so if we're going to go and purchase a property after the fact we would uh put together a city policy that would outline the permitted uses for that property the purpose or the intention of the city to preserve the property and the trees on it and then you could add a provision that would retain a conservation easement in the future should it be sold thank you for doing the research the reason i bring it up is because i think not for the discussion that we'll have closed session today but as we look ahead one of the things that we ought to consider is the possibility of using conservation easements now the idea is in both austin and san antonio i'm i'm very familiar with have done this and they have gone way outside their city limits and and i and i'm thinking about in terms of us looking at properties on the elm fork the clear creek and the hickory creek watersheds where we have an interest in preservation to simply protect the the water that's coming into those creeks and streams to keep silt down and things like that but also the further out the property is the less expensive it is and it's not always going to be further out someday those properties that are in our etj are going to be inside the city the other thing about these is that that um what austin did and i went out and actually went on some of these properties they they bought up conservation easements uh the the people who own the property still own the property they're able to live in their houses that property is able to uh be uh move down from generation to generation uh and they can continue to live in there and enjoy that property uh in a very natural state but it has to remain in a natural state the city has an opportunity to go out on some type of basis however it's decided in the agreement and inspect the property to make sure that it's not being developed but it costs less and it allows the owners to continue to enjoy the property is voluntary because i suppose you cannot use imminent domain for conservation easements but but what it does it it achieves the same purpose of preserving these these and there's there's several in in the state law it allows you to preserve it for several different reasons and i think down the road when we talk about long- term uh getting the most uh four hour dollars looking at those types of of options would be would be helpful for us in terms of getting actually larger parcels of undisturbed undeveloped riparian buffer or or just across timbers upland habitat that we could that we could preserve that would be of great benefit to the city we did look at austin's program when we were researching the question and they have a very ambitious conservation easement program they've even used they've even used either austin or san antonio had put it before the voters and they used bond money they had voter authorized geo bonds so they offset the costs for the property owners any costs that would be incurred to go through with that conservation easement the county or the city it was my understanding they and the nice thing is it it means that the the people who own that property aren't pressured to sell it to a developer uh for uh for for you know hundreds of homes to go on it because they they've received a monetary benefit uh that allows them to stay there okay that that's what i have for you before we move into closed session any other questions on this presentation okay thank you very much i appreciate it oh mayor pro tim well it he just couldn't it sounds like we're gonna have a closed session to look specifically at properties right which we can't do an open session due to real estate reasons but it sounds like you're asking for some policy direction which we can't give in closed session are we planning on having a subsequent discussion in open session to answer the questions that sounds like she's asking or you mean as far as the direction on which one of these options yeah just how to approach the whole policy moving forward in terms of the staff even your question how do we that's right that's right um are you talking about going back coming back into open session after our closed session i'm just legit i'm just logistically it sounds like we've got some unanswered questions that our policy at nature that aren't closed session right i don't want to deal with we hadn't planned on that but i think that it's appropriate given that you know you probably need to talk about the properties specifically that we have before you can decide what you want to do so i mean any based upon the direction we receive in closed session we're definitely going to need to come back to you again to your point and put some structure around this particular fund be it for you know specify the uses we can certainly do that from a policy perspective sometime in an upcoming meeting or two it doesn't have to be done today the real question today is whether or not the council had any interest in in staff pursuing some of the available properties that's the only question we need answered uh beyond that we can refine the the policy in the next couple of meetings but i think you bring out some really good uh policy questions and we owe you a framework well just to get i'm sorry go ahead well just to to that point and again i think i think we've got some good people thinking about this yourself yourself included i think we we spent some money on an assessment um we've talked we've kind of talked around the question of do we set a goal of what that canopy is to the mayor's point you know we want to be aiming towards increasing that canopy so to me i mean i feel from a policy perspective like anything else i'd much rather you guys take some lead on this every year as we're looking at expenditures of funds saying here's our recommendation includes a little bit of property acquisition includes a whole lot of spending on trees in parks or whatever here's our and here's how we think it's getting us toward this goal we've got a 10-year plan we're going to knock this out we want to keep 300 000 in reserves at any given time in case something comes up from here i don't know i'm just thinking broadly of a framework that keeps us from having these kind of what i think are probably ad hoc approaches to tackling this issue i would agree with you i think the one difficulty is depending on where the council actually ends up you know when these opportunities present themselves you might you know have a particularly good deal it's not always possible a budget for it but we could certainly put into a you know a policy that the use of reserves at that point would be something to be permitted you can always amend your own policies and but yeah i think to sort of build the fund out a little bit more to answer your questions we can certainly do that once we decide on whether you want to move forward or not well and the goal of the work session too is to provide you with the structure for evaluating properties which wasn't previously available so if you're okay with that then that would be the main policy direction i would think for today council member breaks so during our conversations one item did come up and uh council member wasney brought it up and so did mayor r otham rodin about the 15 cap is that something that we can do later or do we need to i mean i think it was a council direction that's all we needed to give to increase that or or get rid of that is that something we need to do before our closed session or we can no i don't i don't get that sense no okay no you're correct we i don't think we need to answer that right now we can we can bring you back a policy that's a little bit more vetted out and provides you some more flexibility down the road okay thanks yeah because i think mayor pro tem was saying do we even want to approach it with that methodology maybe we want to even have a totally different approach if i remember correctly any other questions before we go into closed session all right thank you for the presentation great presentation thank you very much okay we will now move into closed session at four oh what is that 350 uh oh here it is thank you i will convene the closed session at 350 with attorneys under texas government code section 551.071 and deliberations regarding real property under texas government code section 551.072 so good evening everyone welcome to the this meeting of the denton city council on april the fourth 2017 it is 633 and we do have a quorum so if you would stand with me if you're able to pledge allegiance to the us and texas flag on the state of america on the land of the people denton arbor day who's here to come on down denton arbor day i'm going to give you if you'd introduce yourself and just tell us a little bit about this and i'll read the proclamation sure i'm lauren barker i'm the program manager of keep denton beautiful i'm cortney blevens i'm the regional forester with the tex as forest service i'm heywood morgan urban forester for the city denton and also uh on the board of directors for keep dent beautiful yeah just tell us okay so uh we're here to um commemorate the 26 year of denton as a tree city usa certified through the ar bor day foundation and also to honor arbor day here in denton which will be celebrated on april 22nd at the denton redbud festival at quaker town park from 10 a.m to 4 p.m so we'll be doing lots of tree related activities and hope everybody will come out and join us to celebrate the day and uh cortney blevens from the texas forest service has been out here to celebrate with us to commemorate denton's arbor day for the past few years now and so um he's actually will reveal i guess you want to go ahead and show him the flag it's so cool though okay great thank you well thank you and how appropriate that in our work session we had a conversation about how can denton be more proactive in preserving trees and encouraging tree plant ings to increase our tree canopy so this really works in good with that so this is a pro clamation by the mayor of the city of denton whereas in 1872 jay sterling morton proposed that a special day be set aside for the planting of trees and whereas this holiday called arbor day was first observed with the planting of more than a million trees in nebraska and whereas arbor day is now observed throughout the nation and the world and whereas trees can reduce erosion cut heating and cooling costs clean the air provide habitat for wildlife and serve as a renewable source of wood and fuel and whereas tree serves as green infrastructure by increasing property values and enhancing the economic vitality of business areas and beautifying our community and whereas the city of dent on is celebrating its 26th consecutive year as a tree city usa through the national arbor day foundation and whereas in celebration of arbor day keep dentin beautiful annually holds the dentin redbud festival and children's arbor day programs as well as numerous and other community forestry programs to encourage the planting and care of trees and so therefore now i chris watts mayor of the city of denton texas do hereby proclaim saturday april the 22nd 2017 as dentin arbor day in the city of denton and urge all citizens to support efforts to care for the betterment of our community for this and future generations so thank you so much for your work and keep it beautiful work on encouraging us to understand the value of trees and how many have we how many have we planted we've had a couple new programs started anything off the top of your head that you're aware of more than 3000 in the past year including our keep dentin beautiful programs and then the parks department has also planted quite a few so it is a true partnership it's a public private partnership between keep dentin beautiful the non-profit and the city of denton we work together with the forest service and other partners throughout the year and so even though you may not see that behind the scenes there's lots of players that work on this and that come together to try to make free trees and tree related education available to our citizens every year so fantastic so we have an unve iling yes great uh this be real brief tree city usa awards a national award and at 26 years y'all are one of the older tree cities in the state uh fort worth the oldest uh dentin was one of the first 10 in the state and it's still pretty exclusive club there's only about 60 communities in entire state of texas that have received this so it's uh my privilege to represent the state of texas in the texas forest service and presenting you your 26th award if i can unfold it correctly backwards is it oh i'm dropping it now come on come on now i'm dropping the trees congratulations fantastic thank you very much thank you fantastic thank you lauren thank you very much i appreciate it thank you thank you so excuse me okay our next agenda item is presentation for members of the public if we could roll the procedures for addressing the city council 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 decorum here is a brief review of the rules that apply to citizens reports citizens will have four minutes to give a report there will be an electronic beep when time has expired if the remarks are not concluded by that time the citizen will be asked to stop speaking if the citizen does not cease and a second request is made the mayor will request to have the citizen removed from the council chambers citizens are asked to not approach the dais if a citizen has papers or other materials to hand out to the council please let the city secretary know and she will have a staff member distribute the materials to the council the attorney general has ruled that council members may listen to citizens speak and may ask questions of citizens for clarification of the issue council members will not engage citizens in discussion of a topic because to do so could potentially be a violation of the open meetings act when speaking to the council citizens are to direct all remarks and questions to the council as a whole and not to any individual member please refrain from making abusive personal impertinent profane or slanderous remarks anyone who violates this rule will immediately be removed from the council chambers citizens adherence to these rules will help make an effective presentation and will preserve the order and decorum of our proceedings copies of the rules of procedure are available from the city secretary all right our first presentation from the public will be agenda item 3b1 harry edie regarding the denton black film festival if you'll come down state your name and address your time will begin thank you my name is harry edie my address is 29 wellington oak circle denton texas okay so um on behalf of the denton black film festival and as the festival director i would like to thank the city council for your support of dbf over the last two years uh we appreciate the investment and we wanted to give you an update on the festival itself uh dbff grew year over year for the overall festival by 36 uh so that's over 3,400 attendees uh one of the things we're most proud about is that the festival itself uh is about 22 non- black which is really important to us because we want to make sure that we do meet some diversity within the festival the highlight of the festival was the uh texas premiere of the screening of the james baldwin film documentary i am not your negro which was an oscar-nominated uh film uh we screened that to uh over 450 attendees two screenings the mayor on the behalf of the city council was there to provide the opening comments which we really appreciate in terms of film screenings we grew by 44 percent year over year so we're really proud of that we had a women in entertainment panel over 150 attendees there we collaborated with the unt texas women's university as well as women in commerce with the city of denton which was good and lastly uh there were there are over five black film festivals in the state of texas and we have the privilege of having the largest black film festival in the state houston has two uh dallas has one and austin has one so i think we should all be very proud of that i do appreciate your appreciate your time for allowing me to speak thank you well and i want to tell you thank you so much for the work that you guys started two years ago and it was a great screening the opening film this year so thank you so much for what you do in bringing that that gift to our community appreciate it thank you very much thank you you bet any questions all right thank you next speaker will be margaret neal regarding gas leaks in the guyar neighborhood let me pull up my presentation for you sure when you're ready to begin just state your name and address and that's when your time will start all right my name is margaret neal and i live at 731 hillcreston denton i'm here to speak about a situation which was brought to your attention at the last council meeting regarding a leaking gas well close to guyar high school i was unable to attend the meeting because i was at speaking at the disd school board meeting about the same thing letting them know about the clear and present danger that may still exist at guyar the school board in the district are now looking into the situation and i'm hoping that the city will do the same however this isn't just a problem at guyar this is a problem for all the schools in the city that are within 1500 feet of the gas well at guyar the problem which has yet to be abated is that methane from a nearby leaking well migrated and we do not know where the situation is not only one that has occurred in our town this situation is not the only one that has occurred in our town which illuminates the precarious position we have placed our children and remember this from may of 2015 so this is what i'm asking for one a viable evacuation plan for the students staff and i would add the community members taking into account construction on the roads an increasing density of businesses homes and apartments work with the school district and outside consultants to develop and practice and that's an important part of it a viable plan for community wide dangerous events these again need to be practiced prepare for multiple contingencies what is the plan for after our events such as a baseball game number two monitoring and surveillance 24/7 video surveillance connected to an alarm which activates if there's any activity at the site also it needs to monitor for methane inside all of the school buildings methane and other volatile organic compound monitors need to be placed at the well heads which are ideally paid for by the operators but maintained by either the city or the school and these are pictures at the guy or gas site that sign that you're looking at actually faces teesley and it is not seen by any of the people that are at guyer so it's kind of hidden so behind it is the baseball field so you'll have a baseball game going on and they are completely unaware of what danger is present and that there is a gas well right there number four no i think it's number three monitoring and surveillance 24/7 video surveillance connected to an alarm which activates if there 's any activity at the site monitor them oh i'm sorry i'm reading the same thing again sorry increase the number of inspections is number three city should have quarterly inspections of any of the wells within 1500 feet of a school or daycare the gas well inspector needs additional support to adequately monitor the 501 wells in the city he's able to help with the surface issues but doesn't solve any of the subsurface issues you need to put pressure on the rrc to increase the number of their inspections as well because that's a different type of inspection the city should also purchase a flur camera and train the city gas well inspector to assist in determining if there are leaks this is absolutely necessary yes this camera is expensive but both the school district and the city's responsibility is not negated due to the expense this next one a notification inform all of the stakeholders at the school and in the community of any issues the city was not notified neither was the school of the gas well league that was close by that is a major concern it has been advised at the individuals i would love to talk to you more in depth and hope to meet with you individually thank you very much appreciate it thank you we'll now move on to agenda item 3c which the open mic report and based upon procedures and state law council can listen but because of the open mic cannot respond with questions or or answers so first uh speaker is mr willy hudspeth if you'll come down state your name and address your time will begin mayor and council my name is willy hudspeth i live at 623 newton would you bring up the camera please good i'll turn it over when i get to it uh miss neil yes this is for you miss neil told me that uh in a nice way but she still got her point across and she was right my property at the corner bonnie bray and oak is an eyesore i know it is i'm trying to clean it up my reason for being before you is your code enforcement people they make things almost citizens like me can't do it all they are very difficult to work with i've worked all my life since i was 13 i'm only telling you this is i've never asked for anything i've never stole yes i have i haven't stole much after i became a christian and uh been honest i've worked hard over 40 something years i haven't asked for any anything without working for it and so i'm working over there i'm african-american uh business owner and i can see it's hard especially when i have rich parents who took care of me and left me anything worked hard to get it got this business is trying to trying to do the right thing miss neil said my property is is really affecting her and it's a negative situation i plan to clean it up anyway but then i decided i just dropped whatever i'm doing just to help her because she was nice about it and i i agree with her and i began working on it here comes code enforcement this is the property if you'll notice here the people have to walk in the street on this grass area here to get up this direction and they go to walmart this way i'm cleaning that off it is the city's property it's not mine but it needs to be cleaned off i think so that people can go that direction so i begin to clean it off and here comes the white trucks with the people who act like they own everything i guess they do stop working on it not only that miss neil you know that trash area in the back that you told me about and i agree it's an absolute mess now this is the area here i'm talking about it's really bad now part of the problem is people dump out there they dump every day i try to clean it up but they dump again and so what i 've done i've had to put it here because you make me pay for a dumpster 75 a month whether i use it or not i've told you if you just let me have a trailer i can put it in the trailer and take it to the dump myself for a whole lot less money but i want to put up a fence they said if you can't see it it's a it's not a problem so i want to put up a fence from here to here to hide all of that it will match my building code enforcement man they won't let you do anything that that i'm trying to help so i'm just telling you that somebody needs to talk to them about at least trying to to work with citizens especially in my case i'm trying to clean the place up that fence would solve all the problems i think you can't see the trash all the stuff is put away it's at my expense i'm trying to clean off the sidewalk and you should see the people trying to make that turn with those cars especially bikers anybody can't walk down there you have to be in the street it's an improvement i i so my wish is that you let me clean it up or you city you clean it up but i'm going to do the back if i can ever get the city to allow me to put up the fence thank you thank you the next speaker will be janis hildeberger you'll state your name and address your time will begin so um madams and sirs council members um my name is janis heidel heidelberger apologize 425 bernard street department 907 i read to you from a book called earth and word classic sermons on saving the planet edited by david rhodes published in 2007 from a sermon by carren fletcher to live as people of dust and spirit and as i read i think it'll become apparent why i'm reading this today it does tale onto what margaret and neil read presented to you all then the lord god formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living being genesis chapter 2 let all things in creation praise the name of the lord psalm 148 truly i tell you just as you did it to one of the least of these you did it to me spoken by jesus matthew 25 for each child that's born a morning star rises and sings to the universe who we are we are grandmother's prayers grandfather's dreamings the breath of the ancestors we are the spirit of god from a poem by yase barnwell carren fletcher writes my maternal grandmother loved poetry and literature she could recite poems and she herself wrote poetry and short stories she had a beautiful soprano voice and sang songs about beauty nature and children she was poet laureate of her church and of the local ywca growing up i was very fond of both my grandmothers and like to spend time with them learning all that they knew about the mysteries of life whether they were sewing planting praying or writing one of the mysteries of life was that each human being has the potential to fulfill some of the best dreams of our ancestors including yours and mine we all too easily though forget who we are we are people of dust and spirit the problem is we too easily disconnect ourselves from the land and the spirit we too easily disconnect our children from the land and the spirit when we forget our integrated relationship with both such disremembering leads to callous relationships with the earth and one another when we separate ourselves from the earth by ignoring it by not growing plants and such we lose touch with something deep in our own spirits and the spirit of god there is something healing about planting and whatever piece of soil one can find the healing connection that takes place is not just physical or earthly it is spiritual to give the tradition of connecting dust with spirit of planting with prayer this increases the abundance of life promised by jesus christ for all people i am a christian by the way there is something about planting on earth that symbolizes the ability to survive and in and revitalize desert places such revitalization is necessary for the well -being and survival of all peoples and life forms that make up our planet that we cannot romanticize traditional acts like gardening during an era in which the soil available for planting is often contaminated to continue traditions of connectedness to the land in abundant way requires not only revitalizing traditions but revitalizing the environment active concrete commitment to god who is the strength of life psalm 27 as empowering spirit makes revitalization possible the strength and endurance of all that lives the way it survives best when its inner power is respected as sacred along with the rest of creation reminds us that it what it means to be created in the likeness of god jesus who is god as dust and spirit on a ma adam is the exemplar of god as incarnate embodied spirit who loves both the earthly bottled illness of creation and the spirit that god has breathed into all life to love ourselves body and soul to the fullest requires loving god who is revealed in the earth and in our own dusty earthly bodies by loving one another indeed by loving every sentient being we love god by loving everything in creation and all people across creation we love god this means we're called to resist the poisoning of peoples and earth thank you thank you we'll move on to our next agenda item is the consent agenda councilmember hawkins thank you mayor we move approval of consent agenda items a through f but f is going to be uh pulled for individual consideration okay councilmember wasning i second the motion so the motion is to approve consent agenda items a through e with f being pulled is that correct all right we have a motion and a second let's vote on the board please okay motion carries seven zero we'll now move on to the consent agenda item that has been pulled consent agenda item f now for individual consideration which is considered option of an ordinance of the city council of the city of tennessee approving the f y 17 audit plan and providing for an effective date i believe councilmember g ary you pulled this and we have a short presentation i believe from staff is that correct yes i just pulled it so that we can uh give the public a very brief overview of what the plan is for the auditor's office okay good evening mayor members of council i'd like to go over that annual audit plan with you one of the first things i have to do is i have to come up with the subject matter for my audits and i did that through inquiries with council members and with members of management and my own observations and from that uh notations that i made i assign a likelihood and impact to each of those notations uh and then that provides me with my subject matter once i have my subject matter then i've got to allocate my scarce resources and my scarce resources have to be allocated between administrative time time off time and audit time and you see here the allocations uh that i have done i based this plan on six months which we've got left in this fiscal year my estimate of administrative hours are 175 my time off time is estimated at 40 hours and that left me with 825 hours for engagements and so here you see the uh engagements that i have on my audit plan for the six months left in this fiscal year uh the first one is a contract administration audit that's to evaluate the process and determine accountability the amount of hours estimated there are 400 the next item is agreed upon procedures engagements and that deals with that gives the council the opportunity to provide me with procedures and i file those procedures and report on them so i've allocated 150 hours for that uh and then the vendor master file audit that's to determine if the controls are designed properly and operating effectively the vendor master file is a file that is very important it's a repository of all information on people who we pay so it's the key to the door for payments so i've got the 750 hours for those engagements and then what i've done is for investigations advisements and when i say advis ements i'm and some of the things that the internal auditor can provide to the organization would be items such as if a department has a question on an internal control item they can call me up and i give them an advisement another form of that would be serving on committees such as an rfp committee or a risk advisory committee and so i've estimated investigations advisements and the rest of the risk assessment annual audit plan for fy18 at 75 hours so that comes out to 825 hours so that gives a brief overview of this annual audit plan i'd be happy to take any questions sure and we do have a card for public comments so just wanted to let the council members who've requested to speak that we still had that coming all right council member gary thank you for that um i have a question about the vendor master file audit is there um an inventory of all of our outside vendors is that the vendor master file that should be the vendor master file and uh that that's what i'd be looking at but that should be the inventory of all the vendors that we pay okay yes council member wasi welcome to the city of denton thank you and just to clarify um for citizens when we talk about scarce resources we're not talking about money we're talking about just it's a one-man shop right now and so when we talk about scarce resources there's only so many hours in the day in the week in the month and that's why you've outlined the hours uh for the first six months correct thank you any other questions for staff before we move on for craig all right thank you we do have a card wishing to speak on this agenda item about the audit plan mr willy hus beth please come down state your name and address and your time will begin mayor and council my name is wood has with the liver 623 newton i want to applaud the council for hiring the external auditor and when i was at the workshop this first one in a long time i've ever attended and i thought something very good happened uh he outlined what he was going to do one of the keys for me who keeps who for years have said transparency transparency share with us what's going on don 't cover it up let us know as citizens what's happening i was so impressed with the auditor and what he said that he would do and some of you council members who made sure that the that you were clear clear on what he was going to do here's one of the main things that i thought that if you have an auditor he or she needs to have this power or they can't do their job and you as i said clarified it you made sure you asked questions and got that clear and he responded and what the key things that i think an auditor needs is he doesn't need to report to the person he doesn't need to be he doesn't need to to go to the person or persons that he's auditing auditing that he's looking at the books to make sure everything is the way it should be he doesn't need to report to that person and in the meeting you were very clear there was one situation that some of you wanted to change it around so that he would have to report to management or the administrative staff he can't have an audit if the if that's over his head to get either a permission or to get information as to how he needs to do his job who would do his job i think the city of denton has done it right he will do what needs to be done as he sees needs to be done and listen to him listening to him i noticed that he's done this before so he 's not it's not new to him this was a good hire and i'm very impressed with him and the ethics work that's taking place and i think we're going to move in a direction where we can finally get some things done that i think need to be done for this city i like what the city manager is doing he's he seems to be trying to get the city on the right path and he's not upholding to the good old boy system that we've had for ever since i've been here since 1970 he's trying to get the city and the funds that we have moving in the right direction and also kudos to the attorney as well i've seen how they're operating and i think they're doing a great job thank you all right that's all the cards we have on this agenda item council member gary i'm going for approval council member hawkins i second we have a motion and a second for uh 4f let's vote on the board please motion carries unanimously moving on now to our agenda items five which are items for individual consideration 5a is considered option of an ordinance approving a fourth amendment to an economic development program grant agreement with allegiance hillview good evening mayor and council members i'm here to present information on a request from red development for a fourth amendment to their economic development agreement with the city of den i'm going to start with some background in 2007 the city entered into a chapter 380 agreement with allegiance hillview for the razor ranch development this is a 400 acre mixed use project on both the north and the south sides of university drive it's a ground up construction project that has required significant public improvements including the widening of university drive from bonnie bray to i-35 water and wastewater infrastructure and drainage sales tax revenue generated by the project is used to reimburse the developer for the costs of these public improvements oops i think i went too far okay in 2010 red development partnered with allegiance hillview on the project to date the developers have invested about 55 million dollars in public improvements that's on both the north and the south sides of university that are eligible for reimbursement they currently have eight million dollars in reimbursable public improvements under construction as of 2015 that was the last year that economic development compiled the return on investment report the razor ranch development has generated 11 million dollars in net sales and property tax to the city red development currently has a deadline of january 1st 2018 to meet 300 thousand square feet of retail and commercial space in the razor ranch town center which is on the south side of the road and that's to initiate their sales tax reimbursement for that particular portion of the development if that deadline is not met red development will not be reimbursed for any public improvements it's made in the town center so to put that simply this is an all-or-nothing deadline for the south side reimbursement for infrastructure the request from red development is a total extension of six months to meet the 300 000 square foot threshold in the razor ranch town center that's needed to initiate its reimbursement this extension will allow time for them to finish the city processes for projects that they currently have in progress and to begin construction some information about the development status of the project 75 percent of the 300 000 square foot threshold for retail and commercial space space excuse me either either has a certificate of occup ancy or is currently under construction two projects that total more than 81 000 square feet were approved by the planning and zoning commission in january of this year and are currently in process with development services six to eight more prospective new projects are either confirmed or in negotiations for location in the development i do want to clarify a couple of things that have raised questions since the work session last week the two projects that i reference that are already in the development process are lmo draft house and rooms to go neither one of those projects are receiving incentives directly from the city nor is red development passing through any of its incentives to either of those two projects the details of the request include an immediate lead deadline extension from january 1st 2018 to april 1st 2018 if at least 90 percent of the minimum threshold has received either a certificate of occupancy or has foundations certified by the city by april 1st the date may be extended to july 1st of 2018 but prior to receiving the second three- month extension red development has to submit a certificate of compliance and documentation to back it up to the city finally this amendment will memorialize the assignment of razor ranch marketplace or the north side the rights title interests and obligations to razor ranch 380 associates staff recommends approval of this request with the stip ulation that no further amendment requests related to deadline or threshold changes be considered by the city the economic development partnership board also recommends approval to reiterate some key points the chapter 380 agreement allows for the reimbursement of costs incurred for razor ranch's public improvements as a new construction development red development is requesting a six-month deadline extension and their performance must be verified in order to receive the full six months 75 percent of the threshold has already been met and the square footage of the projects currently in the city's development process will exceed the threshold edp board and staff recommend approval of this request so this is the end of my presentation but at the request of council members during the work session last week we have representative from red development scott wagner who is here to provide some information about the current status of the project and if it's amenable to council i'll ask sc ott to come up now and then i will stand for questions after his presentation or do you want to do it now i see there are several questions queued up um y'all want to go ahead and ask the questions now wait for the president and so council's okay with red red coming up giving a presentation yeah go ahead yes the the square foot requirement what what percentage of that is met by the convention center and the hotel i believe the convention center they're allowed to count the convention center itself in the first floor of the hotel and i i think that's about 117 000 square feet i don't know the percentage sure and then what's the total amount of the square feet again was it 150 of what's their threshold right their threshold their threshold is 300 000 300 000 okay all right thank you you're welcome sure sure just for clarification when somebody is reimb ursed for public improvement versus private improvement can you just kind of walk through that what that actually means because there's been chatter you know that this is just an incentive to pay them back just and it all goes in the same bucket and just to add to that how do we know when they've spent the money as a city okay so public improvements are um moon all our director of development services might get on me for my casual definition but it's it's infrastructure that benefits the public as a whole such as the widening of i uh i'm sorry university drive because everyone whether they're using the development or not uh benefits from that improvement same thing with interior public streets in the development itself or putting in the necessary water and wastewater lines to serve the development in the area around it does that help clarify so those those are things that ostensibly the benefits do accrue to the community at large and not just the the users of the development itself and then the second part of well and in general when they turn in the receipts for those that is how the reimbursement happens right so they turn in documentation of their work completed uh i mean invoices from contractors things like that that they turn into staff that is verified by ed staff and in some cases with finance before the reimbursement payments are issued so there's there has to be documentation that's provided before we can make a reimbursement payment right so up front they spend the money on this public infrastructure that's correct and then they have to meet the threshold of the square footage in order to receive that back that's correct okay thank you you're welcome councilmember gravery thank you well this is along the lines of councilmember hogan's questions uh talk a little bit more about some of the public infrastructure public improvements that that they have to pay for uh would that include like impact fees for upsizing water lines or wastewater lines or uh storm water accommodations i don 't want to speak out of turn about that i i think the answer to that is yes but the representative from red development might be able to better answer that question about the impact fees and okay do the does our um the money that they're getting back in reimbursements uh is it is it equal to uh all of the public improvement money that they put in or is there a set amount that that is limited the total reimbursements are capped at 68 million dollars and the developer estimates that they 're going to actually spend closer to 90 million dollars on public improvements and the reimburse ments do those come from sales tax and property tax or just one it's just from sales tax so the city receives all of the tax revenue from property taxes okay so once the trigger starts um well what is the start of the trigger for the sales tax coming in on the south side i know it's already started on the north side well what would trigger that would be the completion the verified completion of 300 000 square feet so once the 300 000 feet gets completed the trigger starts and the sales tax that's being generated off of the south side will start going to reimburse for the public improvements is that correct correct upon verification of the expenditures okay and does that go until all the money is paid back or is there a time limit there is a 20 year time limit on it i'm sorry it's either 20 or 25 years i'd have to look back at my notes to make sure because there's there's a different time frame on the north and south side and i can't remember which one is 20 and which is 25 sorry okay thank you thank you mayor all right mayor pro tem thank you mayor i just want to clarify a couple stats so and you just answered a couple which is helpful but did you say it was 55 million in public improvements already uh already built out that's correct and another did you say eight million in the like currently in the works that's correct and so that's 60 63 and the max that they can get is 68 correct already okay thank you very much all right seeing no more questions thank you council member gregory i just saw that it's 25 years on the south side are we ready for yeah council uh for staff a presentation from the developer please come down state your name and address and we'll just do the whatever the time limit is but we'll have also if people have questions so got about what is it three four minutes or something like that get through it okay all right as big as it goes all right good evening uh mayor and council members thank you my name is scott wagner i work for red development one of the partners at razor ranch uh responsible for developing and improving the land out there and bringing retailers and other commercial users to the city of denton scott what's your address just so we my address is one east washington in phoenix ari zona okay thank you um and every week or two i'm here at uh the hotel um i've been coming here for about seven years now every week or two uh we've been working hard at the project and tonight i just want to go through um a presentation showing more of just kind of the progress of our continued commitment our performance on the north side and the south side and some of the investment in the community as it relates to the project so you guys can have a an idea of what we've been working on uh real quick red development been around for 20 plus years we are a owner and a manager of real estate um primarily primarily retail we have uh 34 properties that we own and developed in uh 11 to 13 states it changes as we go a little over 34 million square feet under management in texas we have three projects that we're working on the union in uptown dallas the shops of vinyard village and ulysses and of course razor ranch here in denton tonight we'll spend obviously today tonight talking about razor ranch um we've been before you folks city council numerous times a few new members back in 2014 we put together a presentation where we went through the project the regional draw where the project will reach to there's a map here showing kind of our trade area map as high as gainesville and over in decatur and hopefully grab a little bit of residents and some shopping interest and entertainment from either even as far south as flower mound and past lewisville the circle there is a 10 mile radius that's kind of the core and then some of the outer cities that come to den for their entertainment and shopping previously this map has been presented and the good news is we are still performing and still executing to the map this is a map of razor ranch a graphical representation on the left of the screen is the far left is some residential then in the light blue you'll see razor ranch marketplace much of those buildings are already built and open and doing very well and then you have university in the middle there that kind of divides the north side of razor ranch that we call the north or razor ranch marketplace and the south side which we call razor ranch town center obviously i-35 there on the bottom of the screen and north is to your left in razor ranch we've had several districts one of the districts that we've been working on is the neighborhood grocery which we've brought to market and following the plan some of the retail along university has come to market and have opened last year and then we have an apartment project in the pink that we're working on with a group that has been through the council and then the blue area at the time this map was originally created was called the entertainment mixed use area it included a theater there you'll see at the top of the blue area or the left side and then we sold a nice piece of property to a hotel and convention center in 2016 and they broke ground for an opening here in 2017 and now we're working on rooms to go and some other restaurants i'm going to show you some other maps but this is the lay of the land and i mainly put this up there this is what we send out to the leasing people out in the market nationwide this is what we execute this is what we work on we think it's a good mixed use project it does have retail it has some commercial it has residential office medical multi-family single family so it's it's a plan obviously it changes from time to time but that's what we're working on from a general concept an overview of razor ranch marketplace obviously in 2010 we opened sam's and walmart and then in phases kind of from the left to the right we opened up phases of coles ross boot barn joanne fabrics they opened up in 2013 continue to develop the pads and the shops and we opened academy in 2014 to kind of complete that run that lineup that's nearly 700 000 square feet open and operating doing very well we triggered the economic development agreement in 2012 when we met that 400 000 square foot threshold and we've been getting our 50 percent of the sales tax generated to help pay back its share of the public public improvements to date been very very happy and the project's performing very well another view here showing mainly phase one what we worked on in 2015 and opened in 2016 you'll see in the yellow highlight as part of that project we built the regional water line a 16 and 20 inch water line that connects the east side of the project to the north we built heritage trail which is a five lane public road arterial street and numerous drainage improvements and water and sewer improvements to serve those projects that you see there when co-foods raising canes chilies and in and out and some shops buildings you also see on the map where we in proximity where the hotel convention center is located the mbc suites box there down towards the right side of the picture or the bottom or the south end of the project and then the proposed alamo draft house a later slide will show more of the south area here that's opaque at the time of this we did not have the south side being worked on just a few photos when co-foods opened in july of 16 raising canes was right before them chilies is that same time frame may of 16 chipotle and shops buildings have been open since february and some of our last tenants have just moved in this past february and in and out is our newest edition of a pad user that opened up in february of this year 17 the next slide this is a now a graphical this is a site plan and i did this to show kind of the relative public improvements necessary to support these buildings these are the buildings we just saw pictures of and it's in in that yellow highlighted area phase one we're building this project in phases phase one focused on um honestly kicking off the public improvements necessary to support the project generating traffic with a major neighborhood grocer and some of the street retail and the restaurants the infrastructure necessary to support that first phase is also shown in yellow so those there's public streets there's public water lines there's public drainage line drainage pipes and then there's also public sewer the blue shows the next phase this is what we started construction on this year along with embassy su ites for roads water sewer access to and from the convention center and then most recently we got our permits for the driveways out to tex dot i-35 we've also sold the land tex dot acquired the right of way for the future freeway expansion from us late last year and in addition last year the right side of the project we initially closed on 100 acres of property in 2010 we purchased an additional approximately 30 acres in 2016 to facilitate the hotel and convention center and just today we closed on additional six acres for some of the right of way and the detention base and that will serve this this project so the blue is what you would expect to see constructed and opened with the embassy suites that is under construction if you haven't seen it you can see it from very far away we're very happy and they're happy as well they're getting bookings currently you've seen the um i don't have any photos i do but um you've seen the elevations um i believe planning and zoning have seen the elevations i apologize these were in front of the city last year the next slide um the pink kind of shows the phase that we're working on currently the design of the roads the plats the easements have all been submitted to the city the building plans the site plans have been submitted to the city the building plans um have been approved at pnz last uh i believe just this past january we were anxious to get under construction on the theater as well as the furniture store and the furniture store closed their transaction today they own the property they should be starting construction in the next week or two in addition to the furniture store and the theater the infrastructure that would have been completed by the time we complete that area in the pink it supports a few other deals we've been working on and having the contract and planning stages including the apartments which are immediately south of win co and east of alamo those apartments have come through pnz and council last october you guys approved the elevations and the site plan for that project we're also working on three restaurants an entertainment center a large format entertainment center they're immediately adjacent to the convention center on the south side east of rooms to go and in other shops building out in front of winco these are the elevations you saw for the apartments um last year at pnz and council in support of the project and following the razor ranch ordinance uh overlay for design standards and then just a shot of some entertainment uh an example of what the the entertainment user um the large format entertainment user would look like when the map is colored up with the additional site improvements you'll see all the acreage that would be improved with this phase we intend to start construction on the buildings of alamo and rooms to go immediately they're about 11 to 12 month build out and the site work and the roadways will follow prior to their cfo a lot of those costs are proportions of the cost of public improvements last four slides i don't know how long that was did i go 10 minutes yeah yeah if you could and then if we have questions we can extend your time so just a quick glance so 2006 before red was involved uh bare land um a couple buildings 2010 at the end of 2010 early 2011 uh sam you'll see sam's and walmart open the stormwater basin which is a stormwater quality basin and a few of the pads and then we built the first phase running to the left of that picture from walmart we built joanne's uh boot barn ross and coles and a few more shops buildings then our last phase on the north um we have one pad in one building area open uh included academy sports and another restaurant and some more shops buildings that was completed near the end of 15 and then here's a photo from today now sorry march 15th uh showing the progress the near side the bottom picture is razor ranch marketplace and you'll see in the distance there is the hotel convention center uh in the in the bottom right is in and out next to it is chile's chipotle and some shops uh raising canes and then went and go and that's all i had a couple questions uh council member hawkins thank you mayor thank you scott for coming out it seems like the project is really starting to gain some momentum here and so just you know bottom line why do you need this extension i guess i just wanted to ask um we're really close we've been working through the plats and the easements and the plans and the site plans there's a lot of process to go through i would say the time issue we didn't put things on hold but we had a pretty major year last year in opening what we had out there and making the transaction for the hotel convention center as well we acquired an additional 30 acres in april sold the hotel convention center 12 acres and then had to get our arms around another eight to ten million dollars worth of infrastructure to support their anticipated opening so it takes some time and some resources and some finances away some of the retailers retail is tough retail is a hard market in the nation ground up retail is even harder building the infrastructure up front prior to the retailers being able to come in takes time it takes investors to plan it takes lenders to plan so it takes some time so we've been working on that and the construction durations are another another aspect okay thank you mayor potem uh in in the uh current discussion on our community about this since we kind of announced or you announced a couple of the tenants alamo drab house being one of them one of the concerns out there is that we are incentivizing or the city is incentivizing this specific use so in this case alamo drab house which i think um we we talked about and there is no incentivization towards them coming from us uh we've got an agreement with you for public infrastructure projects but talk to me about this notion of your ability to pass on some of those cost savings to possible tenants and and whether or not that's taking place in this case well we really don't have the ability to do that and we have not been doing that um as mentioned earlier our public improvement costs far exceed our reimbursement amount um we have 90 to 100 million dollars total costs we have to spend the money on public improvements to get the money back we get the sales tax back we do not share that sales tax with any of our tenants if we had extra money then you could ask that question but as of right now we submit call it 40 million dollars of cost of eligible costs we get 40 million dollars so there's no additional monies to to pass along they're all spent on public improvements thank you council member gregory i think i understood you to say that you had acquired some more acreage we have i'm not aware of that is it is it in this uh area is it oh yes it is part of razor ranch so uh when i said acquired i should clarify red development acquired an additional 30 acres from the underlying land owner allegiance hillview that owned the 400 acres so we we started an additional 30 acres of razor ranch which is i do this which is we current we previously up until april of last year we owned the hundred acres that pretty much split the hotel convention center and went all the way up to university and i-35 we owned that hundred acres for the core of a commercial center in order to make the hotel and convention center project and its required infrastructure and drainage we acquired this additional 30 acres here on the south half of the project so now the shopping center is not 100 acre shopping center it's 130 acre shopping center thank you okay thank you see no more questions thank you scott appreciate it all right we got some blue cards wishing to speak if uh when you come down state your name and address and your time will begin roger albright good evening uh mr mayor members of the council roger al bright 3301 elm dallas excuse me i'm trying to get over this colon so i'll try not to be coughing through this i'm here before you tonight uh representing the denton center i sent a uh the correspondence out to everybody on the council yesterday don't know if anybody 's had an opportunity to uh review that yet i'll try me quick because i know you have lots of speakers and not much talk uh denton center is owned by uh retail plaza inc they've owned it for for 20 years it's one of the largest taxpayers in the city of dallas one of our maker anchor tenants is movie tavern uh movie tavern's been there's 10 years we've just uh completed a nine million dollar upgrade on that adding now we have a total of nine screens all of that was done without a tiff agreement with the city without any kind of subsidy coming from the city that was done like any other developer does it with real live developer money not with with city money uh we've been successful movie tavern has been successful we're a successful employer for the uh city of denton we're a successful taxpayer we add to the culture of the fabric of the city quite frankly raise ranks has a 10-year history of not meeting its goals we're on the fourth amendment trying to get there and i understand the city trying to spur development i understand the city trying to support and foster that the convicted center those are all great things to do and and we we applaud all those but our infrastructure is paid for by us there isn't a reimbursement coming up coming from the city down the road and i understand the issue that no tax dollars are not going directly to alamo draft house but every dollar the developer doesn't have to spend on infrastructure just like all the rest of us have to spend means he has extra dollars to offer keeper rent a lower percentage rent all the kinds of things that in the absence of of this process he would not be able to to do and and again the idea of we aren't anti-competition we're anti-subsidized competition and here's the bottom line right now denton already has 23 movie screens in this town industry rule is you need one screen for every 10 000 people that means we can supply movie entertainment for 230 000 people which covers didn't adding additional screens is not going to increase the number of folks going to the movie i'll certainly suggest it's not going to increase the number of people coming to a conviction i don't know any of you i've never gone to a conviction and then turned around and said gee i think i'll go across the street and see a movie as opposed to attending the conviction i came for the idea that somehow this is going to increase the size of the tax base for the city is just not so we are now going to have more theaters same number of people wanting to go with those which means every one of those theaters at cinemark movie tavern alamo is going to be splitting the pie now three ways instead of two ways and it looks like i'm on the verge of being out of time we do have a couple questions mayor protem thank you mayor i really do appreciate the reinvestment we've seen in part of that project is there is there some plan in place to do some major redevelopment of that center that would involve public improvement projects no okay thank you councilmember gregory well the the redo of the movie tavern and i've been it's great i love the new facility did it require any uh improvements to hinkle or to university drive kate may be able to answer that that better than i so if i can defer to the uh representative of movie tavern when he comes comes up because he's going to be a speaker i'm sorry i don 't know that answer do you represent the movie i i represent denton center yes sir okay um i've got to tell you councilmember rodin reminded me of this uh we're doing improvements textodd is doing improvements on university drive and uh we're trying to have sidewalks on both sides of the road the only place that we're having trouble fitting sidewalks in is in front of denton center uh when when when y'all look for improvements and you need some uh i think there's some rooms to deal here in terms of of some rebates if we could get some land for some uh sidewalks or something going along university drive on the north side because we can't fit it in because of your private property there but uh so so i think that there would be time when when uh public improvements could happen that would benefit you and benefit the rest of the city and obviously my client is is certainly not against uh public improvements not against improving uh its own property as seen by again what we just did with the uh with uh with movie tavern it is harder for us to do if we think one of our anchor tenants is now being undercut by the the city of denton and that we have to look look long term as as to what happens because one thing that we have and this is i'm sure is uh is probably true for uh for razor rank and we haven't even talked about uh the golden triangle what the impact of this may be but in in commercial leases shopping center leases there are things uh uh that are are known uh well i think you you answered my question i wanted to and i'm and i appreciate the fact that our lawyer didn't jab me in the side that i might have been doing some negotiations that i'm not allowed to do but we're just talking thank you very much thank you all right the next speaker will be kate pitman if you'll come down state your name and address your time will begin kate pitman 3210 carlisle street dallas i'm the head of real estate for movie tavern obviously i'm here in opposition to this and for many of the reasons that roger just covered uh he spoke about the industry standard this market is completely over screened if it weren't cin namark would have kept its deal at razor ranch cinnamark has the largest market cap in our industry they didn't back out because they're dumb they back out because there's really no more room for another theater particularly that close to us um and and you know i would further say that regarding razor ranch i don't think the theater offers any appreciable appreciable uh cross retail synergy which which he also spoke to um and retail is tough for every developer i do these things nationwide i've been doing for over 10 years every developer faces challenges with retail and the market changes and so forth and so on not every uh developer gets the type of package that red is getting so i think that's kind of a static issue uh in a market like this you know amc was announced and mark was announced they both backed out of this project for one reason or another um there's not room for three theaters there's going to be there's going to be a loser uh i think it's it's very reasonable to suggest that one of us or two of us aren't going to make it and a dark single-purpose building either in denton center or in razor ranch is probably not an attractive thing for anybody so i think that while i do i do appreciate where razor ranch is i do appreciate the the city's desire to uh to develop i certainly have an appreciation for that it inadvertently is creating a hardship for us as a tenant and an operator in this market we've been here over 10 years and we did spend the nine million dollars because we we adequately screened the market and thought we secured our position um and i would stress money is fungible it's a fungible resource if if you cover a cost for me it just fre es up capital that can be transferred to whatever else and i don't know if uh i i've sent a letter to the council suggesting that someone at some point have reviewed the lease is the is the alamo draft is that lease hard or is it like the amc and cinnamark lease where it's announced it's done and they back out is there still have all contingencies been waived or fulfilled and and then what is it even so what are their termination options are there are there operating covenants do they have the ability to ever go dark as as the centerpiece for the that phase i mean it's a very critical piece do they have the ability to go dark um and those are just reasonable questions that i think when you're putting this much resource into a project you should know i i could strongly question whether or not there is a reasonable roi on on that deal is the rent commensurate with the investment and if it's not then that tells you that money is in fact fungible and they're beneficiaries of the public resources got a question council member baguier i don't have a question i just had a comment once everybody was finished oh okay all right i do have a question uh the previous speaker said that the industry standard is 10 000 people per screen is that correct that is correct okay and denton's got about 130 000 people correct so 13 screens is what the industry standard would say need to be in denton is that is that correct uh bear in mind that that you would have a more regional draw as as uh the denton theater serve more than just denton there people in suburbs so it people no no i understand that but that's but but that caveat that you just described wasn't discussed when that's interesting interesting industry standard was was uh was mentioned so my question is when you guys first of all how many theaters were you before the remodel how many screens you're four four so you increased it by five correct and so before you guys remodeled to add five screens tell me if i'm assuming this incorrect with it if i took five off of 23 that would leave us 18 screens so before your remodel there were 18 screens correct which is over the industry standard at least as enumerated by the previous speaker understanding your sort of expansion of that that standard so i appreciate that i'm just trying to understand the math and things such as that correct yeah okay thank you uh sarah you're still on for a request and you're not okay i'm queuing up so i'm first okay okay all right thank you very much i appreciate it thank you mr uh the next speaker is matt ludman state your name and address and your time will begin okay matt ludman golden triangle mall sorry about that i didn't see the r 2201 south interstate 35 representative of golden triangle mall good evening mayor council and staff i appreciate your time this evening and i appreciate the time you've given us over the past month or so um i come to you tonight to request that you deny this extension over the last month i've done some thinking through the past 10 years when this was put together and i pulled out the original lease plan to the town center from 2006 that i brought in in 2007 when at that point in time the entire project was gorgeous it made sense other than the fact that it couldn't be completed unless they were able to duplicate or pull existing anchors at golden triangle mall across town we argued that point we went on a few items and 10 years later none of those anchors have duplicated in this market we're fortunate in this market to have not lost an anchor yet as there's over 300 anchors closing across the country and on a side note some small shop space payless shoe stores filed bankruptcy today could affect up to a thousand stores nationwide so at this point it's been 10 years we haven't seen what was originally promised with this incentive i understand it was for public improvements but after 10 years why aren't the public improvements complete okay we we may be taking the wrong direction here an economic impact study was never completed on this project or an independent through the city that would be unbiased as to what denton needs and where we stand why wasn't that done why can't that be done dillard's is still on the lease plan for razor ranch if d illard's shifts across town because they will not duplicate their existing store that stands to significantly damage golden triangle mall moving forward will it survive maybe it's going to be in a different capacity and it's going to be a long long-term project to get to another positive level denton crossing built 300 000 plus square feet in 03 they received an incentive of 7.25 million the extension tonight is for 48 million again i understand it's for infrastructure but that's not complete the project's not complete it continues to drag on and you haven't you haven't received what what you were promised 10 years ago would council tonight approve the town center and a 48 million dollar incentive knowing the past of denton crossing getting just over 7 million golden triangle mall received an incentive that was for redevelopment we accomplished our minimum requirements in our first granted period asked for an extension to spend additional dollars to maximize the incentive received a one-year extension came back again and asked for an extension and some additional funds but were completely denied without it going to council or even the knowledge to go to council so i appreciate your time i'll be more than happy to answer any questions councilman garry are you not supposed to be cute i'm just queuing i'm sorry i can take myself off of yeah let's do that if you're not going to have a question because you're confusing me thank you well when you want to be called on let me know and i'll be sure and call on you all right any other questions or any questions you didn't have a question uh i believe that's it thank you matt appreciate you thank you very much the next speaker is gar hearing state your name and address and your time will begin good evening i'm gar hearing i'm president ceo of the mg hearing group i'm at 5710 lbj freeway in dallas i'm one of the owners of golden triangle mall i always want to first start out by thanking the city of denton and economic development for their support and of our economic development agreement because without it golden triangle mall would be failed today we'd have closed anchors and a lot of other closed stores but through our good partnership we've had a successful mall i'm really here to speak that uh from the beginning from the very first meetings we had with staff with council with economic development they said look we get the dilemma that we have two projects we're trying to support and so we're going to be equal with both of you a lot of the provisions of our economic development of the sharing and how it's paid and what it's for and the amount was made to exactly match how razor was treated as far as percent of cost and all the other components length of time and so forth we needed more time to fill our obligations we asked economic development for an extension we were denied we understood we ate it we you know it was a damage to our project but hey that was the way things were excuse me the way things were razor asked for extension now it's being granted it's difficult enough as it is in this economic environment in this retail environment to be successful i can't tell you how many cities across the country would love to have golden triangle mall in their pride in their cities instead of their failing mall we asked to be treated equally by you denying the request to uh to red and to raise a ranch the same way ours was denied and also because we said hey we got nine million because that was 15 percent of the our total costs they're getting 22 million because that was supposedly 15 percent of their cost that's no longer equal the plan you see before you now is a shade shadow of the original plan that was approved in that amount and what it was based on and today it's been stripped back to a theater that's not needed a discount grocery store that doesn't need economic development some fast food pads but you know uh and a furniture store none of those guys need economic development that's not the type of thing that's generating new taxes and new jobs when you're just splitting the market furthermore the real end goal here is for let me touch back it is a misrepresentation to say that those economic dollars are not going in retailer pockets it absolutely leads to reduced rent that you that you get retailers to pay you it is a very easy business rent you have so much cost you have to get so much rent to justify that cost when you have too much cost you get economic development to support it and you charge less rent to tenants so while they may not actually be taking your economic dollars and putting it in the pocket of the retailer exactly what they do is they just charge them less rent and put the old money in their own pocket so don't be fooled by this that somehow they're not actually subsidizing the tenants or using those dollars to eventually track back to uh to a tenant like Dillard's to try to pull the mall apart so we request that you deny the request question council member Gregory you said that after you got an economic development incentive from the city then you got an extension we had one extension we were asking for an additional right and the council denied the second extension economic development denied the request and so it never went through economic development it was made very clear that it would not be supported at city council to us at that time we're so were you we never took it we never had the impression that you were not allowed to take it on to council anyway um i don't know if we were it was made to say that we were somehow prohibited uh but we in wanting to keep a good relationship with economic development i think we felt that that would sour our relationship and that they would deny um recommendation to city council and therefore influence council to decline it because we do have applicants that that go through boards economic development or planning and zoning and they get denied and they they bring it on to council anyway sure because because it sounded like that we had denied it and i was thinking i don't remember that no i apologize it was economic development that denied that request okay thank you council member Gary when you say that it was implied was it implied by a staff member or by members of the economic development board jimmer uh who was head of economic development at that time it was Amy at that time and you know and and i don't know if it was fed through the entire council or it was it was uh presented to us that had been presented and discussed with economic development as a group i think that's accurate yeah if we could yeah the comments from the outside they can't hear they can't hear them on the screen that's the only reason but uh it was reflected to us that they had taken it to speak about it internally and we came back and said i'm sorry that provision that you're looking for will not be supported by the economic development another question for you regarding the edp board was miss missa did she make a recommendation to the edp board regarding your extension i don't not sure i would say uh she was not in favor of it personally i know that i don't i can't really speak to what exactly she may have said because it was a uh but what she said to the group without us there okay thank you that's very helpful council member hawkins when economic development uh denied the request where when you got feedback was it more because of the additional time that was being requested or the additional money that was being requested uh it was the time it it was reflective as hey this was the agreement we made you had a certain amount of time to fulfill it you didn't meet your goals and you know that's the deal you know so sorry i mean and uh that's why we you know again we didn't like it and we took a reduction in our economic development because of that but we said hey you know we're big boys you know if you we asked for the request but if it's denied we'll live up to what we agreed to and and move on okay thank you all right thank you appreciate thank you next speaker is janice hobbleberger if you come down state your name and address for time again thank you mayor thank you council janice heidelberger 425 b ernard street apartment 907 um i do want to ask you um i agree with sort of the people from golden triangle and from denton center and from movie tavern and i want to ask you to oppose this um request um i i do lament not having the longhorns in the grass there um i remember that well um having lived in in crom and then moved into and always having either gone to school and worked in the city of denton and i meant and i lament that but um i've gone along with the flow you know with our city as we have developed this area um what i would like to see is trees trees trees not parking lot parking lot parking lot i think we can even put more trees there i think we could be requesting them to put more and more and more trees than than what they're required to do in the zoning that they're already doing more walkable spaces um and bringing some small businesses in because this is a time for this in 2017 this is a time when you know we see payless go bankrupt we see radioshack go bankrupt we see other large franchise type places because it doesn't they've worked for a while you know but this is not the time that we're in now we're in a time when when it's a small business time and we in the city of dent on love our small businesses um the movie tavern is a little bit smaller business i think there 's like four three or four things around the country but in our town i look at the movie ta vern as an icon in this town it's it's part and parcel of this town and i don't want to see it um i want to see it thrive and become more of who it who it has been also um i don't know how much lead certified buildings we have in this town but maybe that's something that we could be doing instead um bare land is not always bad it reclaims the carbon out of the atmosphere um it's it 's spiritually it it helps our inner it's healing to our inner gyroscope of our of our beings to be in a in a place of natural beauty um so i think that encouraging some of those things instead of a draft house from the elmo draft house that's an icon of another town this town has other things that that are part and parcel of what make denton den and i want to keep that that so trees um and um walkable um and not turning renewable energy solar wind even lead certification on razor ranch is what i would be encouraging thank you thank you next speaker mr willy hudspeth come down state your name and address your time will begin council mayor my name is willy hudspeth i live at 623 new ton originally i was going to speak to this issue based on what i heard in the work session and so i guess i'll just go ahead and state that you're planning to well you've already given an incentive to someone to build something out there or to build the whole project i would just like to get some of that incentive money i wish i could get some money for my little shop and the improvements that you're going to make out there i know there's something else you do you're talking about you can't get sidewalks on university do you remember this council and what you've done on bonnie bray how you just took the people's land i think you call it eminent domain i think it's just em inent strong arm and we're going to take it and you did you put all those power lines up and down that street so i'm just wondering what's the difference in the sidewalks on university and the power lines on uh on bonnie bray that's just a thought now what i wanted to say is when you make an agreement let me explain something to you because maybe you're not getting this when you talk to someone and you say this is the agreement do you agree or not agree i'm talking about this one thing of wanting an extension you've never given me an extension when when i didn't want those trash cans at my place i didn't have a choice you just said they're going to be there and you need to have them here and you're going to pay for i've never heard of anybody getting an extension as much as you do now it's it's this this area what you're saying you're in favor of that you want to do the extension so you're just kind of wishy-washy you you kind of go this way or that way now i didn't know the tavern was in trouble and the mall i hope you're listening to these people you're sitting there and i you you should you should see what you look like when when you're you know agree agree with the speakers you need to listen to them and if one of those gas wells blow up by those schools i hope you're listening to these people who are telling you the main thing that must be done is an evacuation plan you know what their plan plan is for guyar just in case a a well is leaking they're going to put those kids in the auditorium think with me for a minute 16 17 18 year old 15 16 17 year old kids you're trying to get them in a bus now there's gas leaking out there you're going to take them all the way to ryan's school no you need to come up with a different plan so i hope you're listening to these people out here uh and what they're saying what we're saying thank you sir mr bob clifton come down state your name and address and your time will begin please um oh you can't talk willy bob clifton i have all kinds of addresses i bought me an rv so whoever's driveway wants to let me park in it we'll be there how are you mayor you don't have an address that you're wanting to state mr clifton it's uh 20 i think it's 2052 is where it's parked uh collins road okay thank you oh bar bar fence from district two uh guess my time is going to start you can't talk with me i 'm interested in this tonight because i used to be in the theater business i owned a movie house and it was in denton and back in those days you couldn't buy any alcohol and then and we survived without any subsidies we had a lot of fun we had 20 shareholders that owned that place all of us are in college and we learned a lot about business learned a lot about y'all giving away the store too uh young lady that spoke about the long-armed cattle i often wonder newton razor is spinning in his grave but uh this mess at razor range when are you all going to say enough's enough you know there's i don't have any movie screens there are at the golden triangle mall i think they got one or two over there that's two dollar movies you know poor folks can go to those why do why do we need another movie house these people just spent i don't have any millions building another beer joint over there and denton center and i don't see any need subsidize anybody out there and it's a subsidy there's no question about it they'll pass that savings on they'll pocket the money whatever it amounts to and you'll get stuck with the bill as usual never failed i'm very disappointed i didn't come down here to talk about this tonight i came down here to talk about a consent agenda item that i thought was going to be pulled for individual consideration and obviously you all don't care about the money so it wasn't pulled and it went on through we'll get back to it a lot of y'all not going to be here for much longer which is a delight to me and i'm sure it's disappointing to those that won't be but uh i'm looking forward to a new council an honest one and uh i think denton will turn around so i've got 45 seconds left to i suppose discuss the weather but i won't do that i'll just go ahead and relinquish time because i'm going to come back on another item this evening but i am disappointed y'all pulled that consent agenda item but we'll talk about it thank you sir next speaker is deb armantar please state your name and number and your name and address your time will begin deb armantar 2003 misty wood lane i'm speaking in opposition to this extension as previous speakers have said there's no proven return on investment for this so-called public improvement reimbursement as a previous speaker mentioned there was no economic study done that that shouldn't surprise anybody who's familiar with the old way of doing economic development under the the former city manager and former head of economic development fortunately now we have new people in charge and what i hope is a new way of doing things and not what what appeared to the public anyway to be a kind of free for all and an arbitrary picking of winners and losers at private gain and public loss i understand that you consider this a a public improvement i understand why you think that i disagree that this is a public improvement colloquially speaking i see this as paying a private developer for essentially and for creating a problem in our public infrastructure that is to say we wouldn't need these so-called improvements if there weren't this you know going to be this gigantic movie theater convention center rooms to go chilies all this other stuff that's there i didn't even grow up in denton i've only been here since 2002 but i remember when this area was actually actually was a ranch it wasn't even called razor ranch then now we call it a ranch but there's there's no sign left that it used to be an actual ranch and when it was that it were just cattle we didn't need all these road improvements um i'm concerned about additionally about the message that this sends to future developers the message being in my mind if you want to come to denton and fit within our existing infrastructure good for you you're on your own free market capitalism but if you want to come in and mess with our existing public infrastructure and create um and you know a need for new roads and and um all kinds of new expenditures then that's even better because then you're going to get paid for it that i don't think is a good message to send i don't think that that's the kind of development that we should want i understand growth is inevitable development is inevitable i'm deeply concerned about this again we are no longer under the old regime of city management and economic development um let's use this as an opportunity to show that we're not arbitrary that we're going to stick to our word you're going to stick to your agreement and say no to this extension thank you very much thank you next speaker is jennifer lane please come down state your name and address and your time will begin thank you jennifer lane 1526 willow wood street denton tex as 76205 this subject is being discussed in an environment of basic distrust due to the fact that city council had a project a little over a year ago that it titled internally project cartoon project cartoon would be a perfect name for a movie theater we might get it the public might know what what is on the agenda when a movie theater is called project cartoon but uh instead a tax incentive was approved for something that as soon as the public has been finding out about it it hates it still hates it wants it withdrawn it wants that repealed and it wants it gone it's in the wrong area of the city it would be approved by the public if it were not intrusive it's intrusive this project i'm not sure i'm on the fence i am listening closely to what those involved who have been here a long time in that business are trying to tell you about their business and about their concerns at the same time i don't know that necessarily i grew up in a big city so i know that the street that has all the korean restaurants gets the korean restaurant business that the camera store street gets the camera business and that it's not necessarily a problem for two movie theaters to be in the same area as one another if they're known as an area for that on the other hand i would if it were me having to make the decision i would listen to those long-time contributors first i hear what others are saying about the public infrastructure and i also remember that i'm fighting for this and that you guys aren't going to be able to afford these tax incentives if that freeze passes it's a devastating and dire situation for the city when you combine that with the potential state cuts and the city block development grant cuts you know more about it than i do and mr hillman knows more about it than probably anyone in terms of budgeting so i would be very careful about this i would make it open to a public hearing first obviously it's not a neighborhood in the way that project cartoon was talking about it's a business area but there are still people over there who care and it would be a good idea to make sure that they know about it before you go ahead thank you thank you is katie reynolds come down state your name and address your time will begin hi i'm katie mcbride reynolds 1819 laurel wood drive denton texas 76209 i'm here to speak in opposition to the extension for the tax incentive for razor ranch i'm speaking as a long-term denton person and a business owner along 380 i don't know if i haven't heard any other small business people speak they own businesses along university drive but what razor ranch there's some great things about razor ranch but the construction along university drive has been horrific and just plain awful for a lot of us so sorry i'm kind of nervous let me go over my history here we opened our business on university drive in 1994 when that was still if you're from denton that was the strip where you turn around at my business that was where you cruise the strip our business burned down on the square in 1994 and we had to move to university drive we've been there ever since since the construction started on university drive it has killed our business i don't have the numbers on me but it's not good and i was hearing someone ask about the easement with denton center and the the sidewalks i don't know why that would be an issue because we had to give some of our property as an easement for sidewalks and so there's sidewalks in front of our property on 380 and also just from my own personal perspective when i was a kid my parents owned a house on 910 north bonnie bray and so that was my front yard razor ranch was my front yard it was beautiful i went outside and i saw the longhorns and when that plan was proposed it was touted as a beautiful outdoor mall there's going to be shopping and really cool single family homes and everything and an outdoor park for kids none of that has has come to fruition and i think that all needs to be considered and as a small business owner when i get an extension i don't get an extension these people are asking for an extension and they're going to get 47 million dollars more 47 million of our tax dollars and they're not even if i ask for an extension i get a fine as a small business owner i see this as if we give them another extension i think denton is saying we're closed for small business and we're open to big big business so come on in and i have plenty of examples of businesses that have closed down and moved along university drive sorry so fish and chirps used to be located on my side of university drive after the petco opened they moved to denton center um weldens just closed that's been a huge issue boot barn came in that hurt weldens bad that's another retail space um the music store guitar center also part of that subsidy um i'm a music store i glens pawn shop music store we've been in business for 40 years here guitar center is kicking my butt every single day so there you go that's a question council member breaks my question was in regards to the good the guitar center you answered it thank you okay thank you appreciate it we have a card wishing not to speak uh ann su llivan is opposed at 2225 pembroke lane those are all the cards council member gary wanted to make sure that you had the opportunity to well i'm i made a motion so my motion is to can i go ahead and proceed with motions yes absolutely yeah i'm moving to deny this request and i have my reasons um first 39 percent of the total threshold for the convention center i'm sorry for the um built out space for this incentive is met by the convention center which is itself a beneficiary of tax subsidies i think kati really touched on the the kind of psychological aspect for other businesses it is so incredibly demoralizing as a business owner to put all of your time and effort and energy into a business decade after decade and then have somebody come in brand new to your city and get the royal treatment it is just it's it never ceases to stop making me sick that's just my take on it um the third thing the third thing that i want to mention is that i've heard a lot about um that we're in a pay-to-play environment and we have nobody said it here but who is it that we think created a pay-to-play environment it's government entities every single time we take up one of these incentives and we approve it we're reinforcing the pay-to-play environment so we actually have to withdraw from that in order to end the pay-to-play environment it takes a step each single time um so i just the whole pay-to-play discussion is so worthless to me um the other thing i want to mention which i think the gentleman from uh golden triangle brought up was when when the government gets involved in distorting a marketplace it is such a good opportunity for influence ped dling to take place and i i mean he described it better than i could ever put together in a sentence but we're basically setting the stage for really stinky things to happen and i'm not saying that it's happening now i'm just saying that we set the stage for it and it's something that we should not be involved in as a government so for those reasons i am just asking that we please at some point we have to show the fortitude to stop a really a really what i think of as an immoral business environment and deny these types of requests. Councilmember Briggs. I will second um i believe that Razor can meet the deadline they still have nine months to complete their construction and do all this um this is a premature extension i believe and so with that i will second to deny. Okay we have a motion and a second to deny uh the uh the extension so i want to make sure i get it clear okay i want to make sure i get this clear so a vote yes means you're denying the extension a vote no means the opposite okay just want to make sure that i understand that yes means no and no means yes okay and i'll probably put the wrong thing down when i okay mayor pro tem did you have a comment well i did are we are we allowed to ask staff questions for clarification prior to a vote seems like we certainly have discussion i do have a question because the the last speaker was bringing up the issue of 380 construction and i know we touted that as one of the public improvements but correct me if i i'm wrong 380 generally speaking in terms of the widening project going on from well west of the highway all the way out through town that we're seeing now that has nothing to do with Razor Ranch correct that's a text dot project that's correct text dot has made all of the improvements the the only part that involved Razor Ranch was the segment between Bonnie Br ay and I-35 so anything to the east or west of that segment isn't necessarily related to Razor Ranch or involved any investment on that part queued up for years and years yeah thank you very much council member Hawkins yeah and Carolyn just remind us how much has RED put in to invest in the public infrastructure thus far they have invested 55 million dollars so far in public infrastructure and the cutoff is that 68 that's correct and there's another i'm sorry to interrupt there's another 8 million in reimbursable expenses under construction right now okay and this is all pretty much performance based reimbursement if you call it that because it's based on sales tax so they have to sign up retailers that perform that do well in order for this to work for them too right the the only money that is rebated to the project or reimbursed to them is generated by the project Razor Ranch itself thank you council member Briggs for clarification we are re imbursing them for the widening of 380 that they did but are we reimbursing TechStot for the widen ing that they're doing i think that there's an initial investment that has to be made and i would have to ask a representative from the project to to get that 100 right but there there's an investment on the part of of the city or the developer that has to be made a match or a contribution to the project is my understanding of it okay thanks councilman Gregory we heard from citizen that there was no metrics at all that suggested that there was any kind of a return on the investment that the city's made by reimbursing these public improvements but did i understand you to say that we have some metrics on the north side um the the number that i provided you with was an 11 million dollar net return to the city for both sales and property tax i don't have the roi figure from the 2015 report at hand and i wouldn't want to tell you that some of its property tax some of its sales tax that's correct it's the entire project and of the the property tax we got 100 of that yes school district got 100 yes county got 100 yes and then dct a also uh benefits from the sales tax they get the sales tax and we got 50 of the sales tax yes okay okay any more questions before we have the motion vote on the motion so we have a motion in a second to deny the extension let's vote on the board please motion fails two to five council member hawkins i move approval of item 5a council member gregory second all right we have a motion and a second for approval of agenda item 5a let's vote on the board please motion carries five to two it is eight 25 let's take a 10 minute break and we'll re-adjourn at 8 35 thank you good evening reconvening our meeting here at the dent city council meeting for what's the date april the fourth 2017 it is now 8 40 we're in our agenda item five which is items for individual consideration we are now proceeding to agenda item 5b which is considered approval of a resolution of the city of denton texas supporting house bill 24 45 related to the allocation of hotel occupancy tax funds good evening mayor council i will make this very brief out of consideration for the remaining items you have on your agenda as we spoke about in the work session earlier today representative lindsay is filed house bill 24 45 on behalf of the city of denton this bill will give the city council authority to allocate hot funds for the purpose of upgrading and enhancing existing city owned sports facilities in order to allow parks and recreation to continue to host sports tournaments which benefit the local economy the bill has been referred to the house ways and means committee it has not yet been set for hearing but in preparation for a hearing representative stuckey's office has requested that the city council adopt a resolution in support of house bill 24 45 and that resolution is before you this evening for consideration and finally just briefly i want to share publicly that the chamber of commerce board of directors sent you a letter last week they took a vote and unanimously voted to support or endorse rather house bill 24 45 in the spirit with which we're moving forward on this legislation with that i'm happy to stand for any questions and we do have a comment for a public question to speak but we'll take questions councilmember gragery just for the benefit of those in the audience and those watching on tv just speak for a moment about the fact that hotel occupancy tax funds are restricted to begin with and the fact that any funds that would be used by the city to upgrade recreational facilities have significantly more restrictions could you talk about that just a moment that is correct um there are a number of restrictions placed on hot funds we're very limited in how we can utilize those and allocate those any for example any current recipient right now has to apply to the hot fund committee for to receive funds and so it is a pretty onerous process that they have to go through and they have to be able to show that it's going to encourage tourism and actually put heads in beds that is the whole purpose of hot funds to begin with as it relates specifically to the provision under which this bill would fall that we're pursuing related specifically to sports facilities it there are more accountability provisions in that than there are in the other in the other portions of the tax code that relate to hot funds specifically we have to have hosted a minimum of 10 tournaments in the last 10 year i'm sorry in the last year so we have to be able to account for that and then we also have to look at the amount of hotel revenue generated over a five-year period and that amount the amount that we allocate for these sports facilities upgrades and enhancements cannot exceed the amount of revenue that was generated as a direct result of those funds being allocated and if it happened to exceed what happens then the general fund will have to reimburse the hot fund account for so we need to be careful in our estimations exactly we have to be very judicious in how we allocate those funds and the estimations as we move forward on those projects and then what just one follow-up question which is to be clear because some people are maybe saying or what are we talking about building a minor league baseball so we're talking about enhancements to current athletic facilities in the city that are currently being used for tournaments athletic tournaments that attract teams from outside the area that we know some of those teams are booking hotel rooms to stay for the weekend for those tournaments is that correct that is correct in fact we host sports teams from oklahoma and arkansas louisiana i believe so we have an interstate program here as well and absolutely we were able to show that we are putting heads in beds with these sports tournaments and bringing in sales tax dollars from from the tourism that they're bringing in hotels allow people from oklahoma to stay in them it's shocking isn't it okay all right we got a long night councilmember briggs so you mentioned that there hasn't been a hearing yet will the city be sending someone to the hearing or will we need to somebody need to testify upon this when it goes yes absolutely so what the plan is whenever the bill gets set for hearing of course i will keep the council and management apprised of that development but our current plan is to have mayor watts present and this is not the first he's heard of this i will have mayor watts present as well as our parks and recreation director emerson borle present as a resource witness the houseways and means committee has received been referred basically all of the hot fund legislation that's been filed this session and so it should be a pretty quick process in addition the bill is bracketed meaning it's specific only to denton so it should be a fairly quick hearing with the need to provide minimal information just because that's the pace at which the legislature functions on bills like this thank you okay seeing no more questions thank you we have a comment uh hard wishing to speak mr willy husbeth come down no all right thank you sir councilmember gregory i move approval councilmember hawkins second we have a motion to second for agenda item 5b let's vote on the board please motion carries seven zero agenda item 5c consider nominations appointment of city boards and commissions madam city secretary thank you mayor there are several boards that have vac ancies and i'll run through them real quickly with you one is the animal shelter advisory committee there's a nomination by councilmember briggs and she has indicated that she would like to nominate paul o'neill correct can you just can you let everyone know that my specific seat is required to nominate someone right um that particular nomination is for a person who is employed by the city of denton animal shelter and mr o'neill was recommended by um yes the animal shelter as an employee who would be good on that particular board okay thanks um there 's also a vacancy um nomination by mayor pro tem rodin yes i i nominate uh charlie hunter for that position charlie hunter okay i will forward you his contact information okay thank you um the human services advisory committee uh nomination again with mayor pro tem rodin i'll get back to you okay and then on the zoning board of adjustment there's one alternate uh position that's vacant and anyone on council could make a nomination we'll get back with you thank you you are able to vote on these nominations at this meeting okay all right uh mayor pro tem you were requested to speak oh okay all right councilmember hawkins thank you mayor i move approval uh the names presented uh councilmember briggs i will second we have a card wishing to speak mr will hesbeth um mayor and city council my name is willy hutchwith be prepared uh god's already told me and i'm watching those steps as closely as i possibly can but he says because you're talking and you haven't learned how to love people you're going to trip and fall so i'm telling you right now i'm trying my best to avoid that i know i'm going to fall i'll just try to do my little football role and survive it um a couple of things i haven't ever seen an african american at that animal shelter not ever doing anything maybe there have been but i haven't seen any denominations that you that you select for that department there's no people of color there do we not have pets can we take care of pets why is that just a question secondly miss wasney no i should i can't do that um is this one of the times where we're not nom inating people on the council to do something i'm just i'll just state that to myself i'm assuming we're not nominating for you to do something like i did the other time complaining about these nominations so if that's the case i reiterate what i said before because i know you were just doing that to stop certain people from being on that committee to deal with the charter no no i shouldn't say that because god said don't say that i wonder if that's what you were doing with the charter you made a ruling that you you had to you can only submit or suggest people to be on that committee from your district and that was the only time you've done that i think that is just special that you did that so my suggestion is if that was okay then you should be doing that right now you should be nominating people right now for that you do things like that you just frustrate our citizens let me tell you something else that you've done you talked about the i double o f cemetery let me just give you an update there is not one african-american buried out there before last year you finally there was a part of the agreement that gave you the property that said black people cannot be buried out there i've been here for 40 see 47 years give me my taxes back to where i paid for that cemetery where you can't i can't even be buried at and you guys voted to spend money on it i think whoever made the suggestion to put a fence around it and that those are the improvements that you need to make do that and this is another one of those thank you all right we have a motion to second for agenda item 5c let's vote on the board please i'm sorry oh there we go councilman gary councilman was moved for approval yep okay motion carries seven zero agenda item 5d considered option of ordinance of the city of dent texas authorizing the approval of a first amendment to a professional services grant between the city of dent and teak and all perkins mr phil williams do you mean thank you mayor council glad to be here tonight to talk about t nogam perkins talk about the background current status and staff recommendation we've been using t nogam perkins for three four years now and it's very very glad to be able to spend money with a someone that has a local office here in denton and utilize their services you can see a list here of the services that we've used them for goes through the application process permitting process surveying these are functions that in the past we've had some staff perform we've had some staff turnover we've had vacancies our engineering department and we've been using t nogam perkins to backfill that position plus those positions plus provide us the additional manpower we needed to push through the process that we discussed earlier last month of increased transmission distribution construction projects in august 6 2013 we started contract with them for 4.1 million dollars we've completed 15 projects in process of 22 projects and projects we started are nine projects this is a list of those projects i don't have it there for you to read each one individually but just to give a demonstration of the list of activities that have been done on the left side the projects in progress in the middle and future projects that this contract would cover public utility board and staff recommend approval of the proposed amendment and it would take the total amount to exceed eight and a half million dollars this would be spent over several years of our transmission distribution capital improvement plan stand available for any questions any questions we do have a couple cards wishing to speak any questions for staff before we take public comment seen that thank you mr wade mr bob clifton come down state your name and address and your time will begin please bob clifton let's see what i give you 2052 collins road and you're mr clifton right did you say your name i thought i did okay maybe you did i 'm not very well known so i try to stay in the shadows uh i guess we're ready to go i just noticed something walking down here for us old folks it's a little difficult to get down here but about the third row up the people start getting above this council which is the way it ought to be and there are two of you sitting up there that are not elected officials and neither one of you should be up there now that i've made that observation let's move on please thank you this is very confusing as to whether we're going to do four million three hundred and sixty thousand or whether we're going to do an additional 200,000 i'm not sure how it's read and i looked at the backup today and this is more of this let's hang some transmission lines for urcott this is what all this engineering work is about has nothing to do with supplying city didn't with electricity they think it does but it doesn't that's what this whole thing is about is paying engineers to put up some more ugly poles that they've totally destroyed the view of them with those silver poles all over the place i mean it's just absolutely horrendous what else can i say i'm waiting for them to do the connection between bonnie bray and south locus and i want to see how they're going to go through north texas property because they ain't got no easements over there so we'll see how it plays out somebody has got to look into this electric company it is so out of hand it's unbelievable we now have a new city manager and hopefully a city auditor but what has to be done this is hocus pocus all of this crap is just hocus pocus denton is just about to go belly up if it isn't already a billion dollars in debt just for the electric company a billion dollars how you going to pay for it well we pledge now all the revenues for all the utilities just not the electric so how's that going to play out all i see are higher property taxes because that's who's guaranteed the note a billion dollars for this electrical that's all probably in the last two or three years now got 23 seconds the scam coming from encore is about those transmission lines from west texas into this area is what it boils down to of course they're going to fight a rate increase they don't want to compete with that cheap power out there it's all it's all a scam over there you people have got to wake up to it thank you thank you mr willie hess with state your name and address and your time will begin mayor and council my name is willie i live at 623 newton i 've heard of uh the uh organization by name and we had something to do with them when i was on the school board the teague the teague teague nail and perkins i don't remember why i remember name but i do question i ask is are there any women in leadership positions at that organization are there blacks in the leadership of that organization or hispanics i'd be interesting it would be interesting to find out if they are so if they're not then my suggestion is get some firms that utilize other races that have a diverse employment pool i think i've talked about this for at least three months and my wife says to me when i go home why do you keep saying the same thing i've learned about politics you you have to keep getting the information out and somebody will finally take it and do something with it now den record chronicle they don't print stuff i've been talking for at least eight months they don't print anything that i say or but they put what you say in there i noticed so that's not my out when i was demonstrating today at somewhere who didn 't hire blacks somebody came up who has a new news format and it's the internet the lady told me internet news and they took a picture of me and they're going to put it on that in that source so i guess that's what i need to start who i need to start talking to any rate i would hope you would not choose this firm until you find out if there are minorities in leadership position at the firm thank you sir council member grigory i move approval mayor pro tem second we have a motion and a second for agenda item 5d oh council member briggs i was going through the the backup and had a question for staff sorry i tried to push it before oh sure i might have not seen sorry about that so can you walk me through like i went back and saw the original agreement was in 2013 right so 2013 we approved 4.1 million and so this is just the first amendment since then and we're approving another 4 million correct and you said you didn't really give a date you just said a few years or so so yes uh so the contract started in august 6 2013 uh-huh so is this eight not to exceed 8.5 million does that have an end date or is that just until we run out of money until we're until we uh exhaust the funds but what we've done is estimated this that's the amount of funds it would take to complete these projects that we've listed to complete them all okay thank you okay any other questions for staff saying none thank you we have a motion and a second let's vote on the board please for agenda item what is this 5d motion carries six one we're now moving on to the public hearing portion of our agenda and during the public hearings you do not a card is not required to speak so if you want to speak you simply come down state your name and address once we open the public hearing and we then call for public comment agenda item 6a is hold a public hearing on the petition for voluntary annexation into the corporate limits of the city under texas local government code section 43.028 d who staff come forward to make the present and i will go ahead and open the public hearing so the public hearing is now open we'll take staff presentation and we'll begin public comment after council questions if any good evening i'm julie wyatt senior planner with the city of denton and i'm presenting a 17-2 the request is to hold a public hearing on the voluntary petition of annexation for a property that is located just west of i-35 and it just north of barthol road if you remember back to february the property adjacent to that a rezoning request came before you and it was approved it's for a triple bay truck wash when they're when they were doing their conceptual site plans they realized they needed some additional property in order to manage the access on barthold so the adjacent property is the 16 acres and it's actually within the city's etj and it's subject to a non-annexation agreement that was executed in march of 2016 this naa requires that the property owner maintain farm ranch and single family uses on the property and any development inconsistent with that would require an annex ation to the city since development is imminent uh platting and that development is imminent they went ahead and filed for a voluntary petition of annexation on the annexation schedule is tonight first uh the public hearing on april 18th the first reading of the annexation ordinance and then june 6 the second reading and adoption of the annexation ordinance so the applicant is here and i'll stand for any questions any questions for staff i have one for the uh interstate attorney so there's no action tonight it's just public hearing no yes it's just a public hearing okay thank you thank you oh councilmember gregory i'm sorry and to be clear this is for a voluntary so so the people who own the property have asked to be annexed yes sir that's correct okay all right okay we this is a public hearing but i do have some cards just wishing to speak and then i'll go through those and then we will uh take any public comment of anyone who has not filled out a card dana morse if you'll come down state your name and address your time will begin and it shows that you're the applicant is that correct i am okay yes mayor and councilmember again my name is dana morse 500 grays boulevard salina kansas i do live in oklahoma though sorry we purchased the entire 21 acres our intent was to develop on the five that was already in the city limits but with text dot realigning barthold road our straight out access would not work and the city staff had already asked that we line up our access across from where the new loves truck entrance will be and so we're asking to have this 16 acres annexed and then we'll be back to ask to have a rezone our intent is to put our entrance right across from the loves entrance and then the remainder of that property will sell for development okay any questions for the applicant all right thank you thank you appreciate we do have a couple of cards uh wishing not to speak i'm going to call your name and and state uh your opposition or support on the card so if i call your name and you want to speak just come on down uh nona mccallis is in opposition address is 3113 north bell avenue didn't texas cliford saw one is in opposition address is 3113 north bell avenue those are all the cards i have but this is a public hearing anybody wishing to speak please come down and state your name and address and your time will begin anybody wishing to speak at this public hearing do i close the public hearing or or yes okay yes i'll give one more call anybody wishing to speak on this agenda item i will now close the public hearing on agenda item 6a and there's no action required on that particular agenda item so we'll move on to agenda item 6b agenda item 6b hold a public hearing consider adoption of an ordinance to rezone approximately 1.39 acres from downtown residential to a downtown commercial district i will now open the public hearing so the public hearing is now open and we'll hear staff presentation take any questions from council for staff and then move into the public comment portion of this agenda item thank you may members of the council city manager the request before you tonight is to hold a public hearing and consider adoption of an ordinance to rezone approximately 1.39 acres from the dr2 downtown residential 2 district to dcg downtown commercial general district if you look at the map in front of you on your screens you will notice that the area that is highlighted in yellow bolded in yellow is the subject property it is just south of scripture it's approximately 1250 feet north of the unt campus just for bearing and it's located between normal and scripture streets the subject property as reflected on this map to give you a better illustration does contain a split zoning on it a portion of the property that is under consideration is dr2 and under same ownership or single ownership is the dcg district and the intent is to consolidate the zoning on the property to dcg therefore if approved the zoning would be consolidated to the dcg district wanted to provide an analysis as it relates to the surrounding land use pattern and the compatibility of the proposed request as it relates to the built out conditions and the zoning designations of properties within a few radii so i started off with a 200 foot radii and 200 feet around the subject property you will notice that there is d cg district where you have vacant buildings which is this property to the north under the same ownership to the property to the south you have commercial development you have some single-family homes as well to the north and along the north of scripture you have nrmu and nrmu 12 districts which is a plethora of uses multifamily medical and single-family uses and then to the south and the east of the property along brian across brian you have dr2 which is a mix of single-family uses primarily multifamily uses as well and a lot of single-family converted homes for multifamily use if we broaden that radii a little bit and then we start doing our now a deeper dive into the analysis and we look at the 500 foot radii you see to the west of jago or a lot to the west of the subject site there is an r3 zoning district which is primarily which is your single-family designation and supports that development there are well-established residential homes in that area that being said let's look at an even broader picture and the reason why i 'm doing this is to give you a very good idea of what is happening in terms of the existing land use pattern the zoning districts associated with that land use pattern and again we will compare this with the comprehensive plan if you note on this map we reflect in the pink historic designations we have the oak hickory historic district and we have the west oak historic district we have the fry street overlay district as well that is hatched there and then you can also see the unt properties so the physical separations between this subject site and the nearby neighborhoods include the use of scripture jago and ponder avenue and that provides you that physical separation as reflected in your analysis when we review the future land use map or the or the future land use plan the area is considered neighborhood university compatibility area the sense is to create compatible form and land uses for areas that serve both the established neighborhoods and of course the university which complements this area density and commercial development within proximity to unt is envisioned in this area and you can see that the unt is categorized as government or institution which is the dark blue and you have the light blue transition that is primarily the supporting uses associated with that the zoning should foster walk ability livability and vibrancy on a track which has been in disuse for several years if you recall this this property especially property the south should the zoning be consolidated has been in dis repair it could also be considered a catalyst for revitalization in the area between unt and the established neighborhoods the zoning pattern and physical barriers they provide the necessary transition between the subject property and the nearby neighborhoods i want to provide your synops is of the mobility component related to the subject site and when i say speak of that i'm referring to the walkability i'm referring to ingress and egress from the site and and then out to major thoroughfares so the if you see we have a couple of roadways reflected for you we have our two road ways collector streets and we have our neighborhood streets and this provides you an idea of the vehicular land use the vehicular patterns i beg your pardon and then there's a green radio circle which reflects the radii of walkability so there's a five to ten minute walk a quarter of a mile radius and in relationship to the unt campus in relationship to the square and then of course the razor ranch development that being said based on the staff analyses as it relates to the zoning request the districts the associated districts the compatibility of zoning districts and of course the built out environment staff recommends approval the proposed rezoning would consolidate as i mentioned earlier the zoning under one district and of course it is compatible with denton plan 2030 wanted to touch a little bit on the public notification aspect we did notify within the 200 and 500 foot radii the red and the blue reflected there on your maps and we received one letter in opposition i do want to add the that the planning division received a significant number of queries and of course input via email in opposition to the request outside of the notification boundary this item was heard at the planning and zoning commission and they recommended denial of the request to change the zoning from dr2 to dcc gcg and as a result a super majority would be required of yourselves for approval of this request and with none i 'd be happy to i'd be happy to answer any questions that you may have okay i thought i was hearing something um all right we've got a couple couple uh councilmember hawkins thank you uh manal for staying up here and i was kind of going through the pnz minutes uh there was a couple meetings and just trying to make sense of some of the sticky issues there and height of buildings seems to be one of them so just for clarity for me too i want to know if one parcel remains dr2 or i'm sorry i'm getting sleepy uh nr2 and the other dr2 and then the other one's dcg what is the height requirement and now if it becomes consolidated sure just talk through that please sure absolutely if we if we go to the zoning map you'll recall that the there's the dcg district to the north and the dr2 district to the south the dcg district permits a maximum building height oh there it is i apologize yeah it's it's correct of 100 feet and then um correct and the um dr2 district has a maximum height cap of 45 feet 45 feet okay thank you councilmember craig thank you well it appears from the maps that we saw that that there is a piece of property with a building on it and there's a line going right through the middle that it's that that one one plot of land plant of land with a building on it is partially zoned one way and partially zoned another way am i am i seeing that correctly right so uh let me the subject property is what's highlighted in the black outline and you're correct there is a single ownership which has split zoning and when i reference split zoning i'm stating that the property to the north and the dark green just abutting scripture is zoned dcg which is under the same ownership and the property owner is wanting to consolidate the property they own to the south which is in the black bold and incorporate it into um the d cg zoning district here's my question it appears if i'm if i'm seeing that correctly that that that black line this part of the square that they're asking for a zoning change goes right through the middle of an existing building correct am i seeing that i don't believe if it goes through yes you're correct it does go through the existing building i don't know to what extent though yes so is that existing building sitting on two different lots it sits on a split zoning correct it sits on two different lots two different zoning districts yes no i'm asking does it sit on two different lots i am again if the property i'd have to verify if the property is platted into two separate lots i don't believe the property is platted as two separate lots it's the zoning district that's the designation well i understand that so if we have a situation where there's one lot and there are two different zoning districts on that lot let's say one of them is on the north side and one of them is on the south side do does the lot get bifurc ated and half of it can be built one way and half of it can be built another way one lot right in this case if i'm not mistaken depending on where that property line falls as it relates to the zoning district design differentiation if you typically have a split zoning on a property typically the most restrictive zoning district rules and regulations are applicable in this case again it would have it would depend and we would have to review what it is that is being developed and how that would fit under the zoning district designations but if the city splits a lot it would seem like that that that the lot that the part that zoned one way could be built one way and the part that's owned another way would be built another way absolutely in terms of the permitted uses one element to add is that they're very close in terms of the uses that are permitted there are very few differences as it relates to the types of uses that are permitted in both zoning districts the differentiation would then occur with your criteria as it relates to the development such as your building height or your lot coverage or your maximum permitted lot coverage which goes to council member hawkins question correct about height in my understanding is then that that in the north lot the height could be how many feet 100 feet maximum right up next to the scripture correct they could do that now yes okay thanks mayor proten thank you mayor can you go back to the notification uh map there's something confusing on the way you explained it i just want to get clarity or at least the way i understood it let's put it that way um so the 200 feet is where you're getting your calculation of opposition and in favor right because that legal consequences in terms of what kind of vote is required based on that okay so i understand that you're also noticing 500 feet so you've got some feedback from there and says that accounts for the other greens and oranges the the two that are outside that that zone uh there's one green on fry street and then there's one orange uh looks like over on congress street how did those get registered if those weren't part of a notification are they just kind of on their own submitting feedback what we've provided to you in terms of what was registered is the 200 foot notification but we had received additional responses and what we did is we tried to graph ically illustrate that to you so that you could get an idea now i know they don't have a relationship to the 200 foot notification but it goes to to show um the distances or separation between subject property and the responses received and the blue circle that you see there is the 500 foot buffer so we just wanted to ensure that the council was aware of all that was all the comments we received gotcha and just to be clear you'd shown a map earlier kind of showing the different historic districts this this area in question is not in either of our two historic districts that reside to the east and west of there correct you are correct okay thank you got a question i know what um repeat what you said when you said that there's if there's two zoning classifications on a lot that something along the lines that the most restrictive zoning classification is applicable typically now there are avenues or alternative mechanisms that are available let's assume that the property is platted into two separate lots of record and because these two zoning districts do not have a specific setback in terms of interior lot lines sure they could build specific to the zoning districts within those lot lines but as far as that statement is applied to this fact pattern that we're talking about is there any does it apply at all in other words they're asking for a rezoning yes so we've got a dr2 zoning and we've got a whatever the other one was it seems like we've got two zonings and let's just assume we're still trying to confirm if it's on one lot or if it's planned but let's just assume it's one lot for now we've got two zoning districts on one lot what i heard you say was that the dr2 zoning district would be the one that's applicable because it's the more restrictive correct typically yes so in this particular application given that just how we approach it you know sort of the the the policy is here's the policy and then there's some exceptions that may apply but the policy is this then if they go to develop this without there being a rezoning in other words they just come in we say no planning zoning said no they come in to develop it it's all one lot two separate zonings then staff's first initial interpretation is it can only be developed under the dr2 restrictions correct unless it's replatted or that or the property delineation is different from what i have reflected and i have julie here it is one lot so it depends if let's assume there is an entity that wishes to develop this site in this case and if they want to choose that perhaps the frontage along scripture is more favorable in terms of the height that they need they need the increased height they could then plant this property as two separate lots of record for example and use the two zonings however if it was one lot as you are inquiring then it is my understanding from legal that it would be the most restrictive zoning would be applicable to the comprehensive development of the site if it were one lot of record and right now it seems to have been reported that it is one lot of record yes well one lot is it plotted julie yeah well yeah well do you have an answer to that question is it planned if you could come well no they're going to have a chance to talk we'll ask them that question i'm just trying to flush out exactly because that this is i mean i've understood that concept before but as it applied to these specific facts because i think that's important because i think part of the concern at least what i've heard is that well first of all they don't want the rezoning but then the community several people i mean we've got probably 20 25 cards up here all right so if somehow this council does not approve the rezoning then in order to develop under the dcg zoning classification they would have to come in and replat the property in other words carve out that part that is under the dcg umbrella zoning umbrella do we know how much area that is is it about an acre or something or i believe it's a little more than an acre if i'm not mistaken it's about 1.5 acres so there's another step so because what i 've heard is there's a there's a zoning by right to build this massive apartment building that right now from what i'm hearing from you without some other step taken there's it would be it would have to be developed under a dr2 zoning classification if nothing else was done if they just came and said we want to develop this two acres no more platting we want one lot then the interpretation of staff through legalists you have to go with the most restrictive zoning on that property correct and we can verify the um lot differentiation and distinctions as well okay good because i just want to make sure that that's well defined and explained because i think that's critical in the analysis of just this whole question because they don't really have a right to develop it with 100 units per acre right now with nothing else being done at least pursuant to this more restrictive zoning rule correct okay all right council member was it currently stands as it currently stands that's correct absolutely thank you for that yes could you go back to the slide please on notification you've heard me speak for a long time about this system and that i consider it archaic and ineffective and just kind of a half attempt on government's part to kind of reach out to citizens but it's what we have right now it's a sincere hope that future councils will improve this system dramatically but for now this is what we have however you made a comment about the planning and zoning meeting and could you do you have a record of the number of cards that came in in favor and in opposition that evening with citizens on this project i watched the video but i can't recall specifically what the opposition numbers were in relation to the in favor of um i don't know the number at the top of my head i believe julie white our senior planner is going to try and dig up that information i know that there were approximately 10 people 20 people who did speak in opposition whether they um their card was read out where they did not want to speak a white card so to speak and then we had the um we had individuals actually come in and speak so we'll double check that information and provide it to you as soon as if we can yeah i appreciate that because there were people in opposition who signed cards who did not speak correct and so i'd like to make part of the record tonight just verification of that planning and zoning meeting and the numbers of people who came out to speak to planning and zoning or to to write a card in terms of their vote so when we have that if you'd bring that forward if you give us a few minutes we'll dig that up for you if you don't mind thank you that's member hawkins but also i think what you were telling saying to the mayor is that the part that is zoned dcg even though the height can go up to 100 feet and the part that is dr2 can only go up to 45 feet that does not necessarily mean that since there is a split zoning that that other part can go up to the 100 feet because that softer zoning is what takes precedent and then you say typically am i understanding that correctly so i have to be honest with you i have not seen any plans personally that have been submitted related to the development so in terms of what would happen how would this build out there are several avenues that are available one being that you would go you would retain the split zoning and where there is a split zoning in terms of if you know where you see the building the black line so to speak that bold line going through the building if you looked at that lot then that element of the development would follow the the more restrictive development criteria so the more restrictive would apply however there are several avenues that are available where one would be how you plant or how you define the boundary or the limits of this development and from there discern which zoning district would then be applicable so you could actually split through a hard line through plotting what those in zoning districts would be and in that case you could then have your more restrictive to the south and your lesser restrictive development criteria to the north it would all depend on on what is being submitted okay thank you councilman breaks this is new information for me tonight i'm wondering if p and z did this topic come up about the the applicable zoning no we did not specifically discuss this at least i do not recall having this specific conversation we did discuss the development criteria as it relates to this two zoning districts the discussion primarily hinged on a specific use the multi-family use and again in relation to this request a land use analysis as it relates to the zoning district is what is coming forward tonight so in terms of p and z's recommendation the primary discussion hinged around the specificity of the use the specific use itself and what options were available as it relates to the use okay any other questions for staff all right thank you i have already opened the public hearing we've got we've got 10 blue cards that have requested to speak we've got i'm not sure how many which will read into the record of the white cards that are not requesting to speak but this is a public hearing so we're we've been going about an hour since our last break so when i ask my colleagues we can push through this and it's going to probably be another 45 minutes to an hour or we can take okay all right okay all right just want to make sure okay we're moving on we're going to go ahead and now what we'll do is we'll go through the blue cards first and then we'll take those who have not filled out blue cards we do have applicants and they're going to have to explain to me sort of what they wrote on their cards as far as something about time i can't read it because i know the applicant gets i believe is it 10 minutes so i have four different cards from the applicants so i'm going to go ahead and just start start calling the names with lee allison and then you can sort of describe and define as we move from there so lee allison if you'll come down oh you don't look like lee allison okay all right state your name and address and and you are hi i'm paul lev ine from park seven i'm the developer okay got you yes sir paul all right you bet so will you be taking up to 10 minutes are you going to be splitting your time i'll take 10 okay because i show an applicant two is there two applicants or one applicant is there only one applicant one applicant if you if you'll come yes so i will start i'm lee allison well now just trying to get before we get started i want to understand the procedure because i know we have some time limits and i want to make sure i get it right we had four representatives we understand that up to two applicant reps can speak 10 minutes each for a maximum of 20 minutes is that is that correct uh madam city secretary or yes the applicant gets 10 minutes no more than 20 okay according to the rules all right so so uh the applicant cannot the applicant cannot get up to 20 minutes and how they split that time within that pool of speakers for the applicant is what we're talking about is that correct thank you mr that is correct okay all right good want to make sure so we'll start the time when you um state your name and address if we could restart that time when he starts sure um just okay can you get up to our presentation thank you park seven is that it so what i'm going to do mr allison is i'm going to call these four names that have been listed as applicants and just so that we'll have it on record uh mike dallas 4401 north i-35 so they're allowed to speak within the 20 minutes ron butler 4401 north i-35 number 102 they're allowed to speak within the 20 minutes lee allison 4401 north i-35 number 102 and then also paul levine uh 4401 north i-35 all four of those are allowed the 20 minutes have y'all divided up yes sir sorry about that yeah thank you good evening mayor and councilman thank you for hearing our our application um my address 461 park avenue south new york um i'd like to first just touch that issue that you were just discussing with me at all and my understanding of the code is how it reads is that as long as the structure is not crossing a zoning boundary then the least restrictive does not apply that's how the code currently reads okay we'll get verification on okay thank you great thanks um let's see here to our second slide um first of all let me give you a little bit of a background on park seven we're a national multi-family developer over the last 15 years we've we've developed over 8 000 units around the country about 13 14 states now and what we're proposing here at the location is a four and five four four and five story structure where it's four stories along uh scripture and normal where it'll step up to five stories but uh i want to give you a little bit of an idea of how we typically manage our properties that's often a concern uh of council um is that at this project we'll have five full-time employees which will be a you know a full- time property manager and assistant as well as a full staff uh uh maintenance staff and bookkeepers that kind of thing in addition to that we'll have at least 10 uh part-time employees to help with leasing and so forth okay uh here's a slide that uh shows where the site is in location to the university border in blue and then uh again as uh we now point out earlier the two historic districts so uh the walking distance from the site to the blue line there is a five minute walk and takes about seven minutes to get to the actual center of the academic core um and one thing i do want to point out as far as having this level of walkability to campus is that um we believe it it is going to you know reduce uh the need for cars to get to campus so should uh certainly help with a situation of of congestion uh immediately around the campus on the you know west oak and hickory um in addition to reducing the demand for conversion of existing single- family homes to to student rentals i just want to show you uh a few quick slides here on sample projects that we've done around the country to get an idea of of you know materials and and so forth uh this one's in baton rouge again a pedestrian uh site it's uh six stories uh with structured parking uh this is one we're doing in columbia south carolina it's also uh six stories uh 227 units uh this is uses a mix of stucco masonry metal panels fiber cement panels with retail at the base this is one we're doing in lobak it's uh also six stories 245 units uh pedestrian to campus similar materials masonry and uh stucco here are a few interior shots of uh inside our clubhouse area uh kitchen coffee bar we've got a game room we have a movie theater we have these are the courtyards a typical courtyard in a project with uh you know outdoor amenities barbecue uh gaming uh here's another photo of the lounge and this is a uh swimming pool with a fitness center overlooking on the top of a parking uh structure this is a project we're doing in uh w aco currently at valor um it's five stories 265 units with a parking garage um this is the first uh the rendering we brought to the neighborhood meeting to give them an idea of just you know the massing of a five story building and to get uh solicit some feedback as to what they did and didn't like about this particular uh design and um after input from them we came back revised the the drawing to this is what we're currently proposing which is the 229 units 620 bed project where we were able to you know again reduce the height along uh norman and scripture to four stories it's about 40 uh i think it's 46 feet in height there and then it steps up to five stories which is about 56 feet in height we did also incorporate some of the materials in the area which is uh the brick masonry lap siding some of the trim details um we were able to also uh we set the building back farther created large uh courtyard areas you can see here off scripture as well as off of normal um they're as deep as i believe 60 feet from the curb uh the recessed areas along scripture and uh they're 40 to 60 feet wide here is a overview so you can see plan view of the project and get a better idea of those courtyards along scripture as well as the ones along normal street with a central courtyard to the south the central area is the parking structure so that would be a five story parking structure which would accommodate the required parking for the project one thing to note too is the uh the sustainable design practices that uh that we follow we'll have you know additional insulation we'll use recycled materials like all the fiber cement panels are using recycled fiber light colored roofs for less solar heat water-sourced heat pumps low emitting paint energy star appliances low flow fixtures led lighting we'll have a couple electric car uh charging stations um we'll use the uh water coming from the roof drains to use for irrigation um so those are just a an idea of some of the practices uh we'll do um let's see here so these are the uh things i just mentioned here up on the screen um now i want to show what what we were talking about as far as what the current zoning allows and this goes back to how i was trying to describe the zoning between uh the split zoning on the parcel this contemplates two separate buildings uh so the building would not span the two different zoning districts where uh and we did this exercise to know what what could be built on here and that's why we're we're providing this information just to you know educate you all as far as what what could potentially be on here and we needed to know that uh as as a company to to uh basically follow through and invest in the land so um let me let lee come up he can talk a bit uh about the neighborhood engagement process that we went through you want to ask it now okay all right thank you okay good evening lee allison with allison engineering group denton texas i'd like to back up a slide first partly to answer your question mr gregory there's actually four lots or four tracks of land because it's not germane to us i believe all four tracks would be considered lots of record and would not require platting but we're needing to bring this into one or two tracks of land possibly if need be one tract would be if i can work this right on the corner where that small medical office is another tract would be a shape similar to this where the current building is that has the zoning line going essentially through the middle of it and then there's two residential tracks here with homes on them that are being brought into the project we went in and october 5th prior to even having our pre-des ign meeting with the city we initiated a neighborhood meeting and presented the waco building to get an idea of what the feeling of the area would be and using the city standards and miss was ney understand this isn't as great as you would like to see but we went ahead and noticed out to the 500 feet and we sent notices to both property owners and residences residents uh residents aren 't necessarily property owners in these cases i'm not sure who got everything through the mail but we had that meeting to get feedback then on october 19th i had a meeting and ron but ler the architect met with the city's historic preservation officer roman mcallan just to walk the area to get a feel for what is in there what's the immediate surroundings the the eclecticness of it the variety of buildings from office buildings with tile roofs to homes converted to taco shops to other apartment buildings etc then on december 7th we came back with our proposal and had another neighborhood meeting and to get additional feedback now i'm going to keep going the wrong way neighborhoods the concerns were mentioned at the meeting proximity to a historical districts well we're 660 feet away from the closest insufficient parking in the area we're meeting the code we're not requesting reduced parking we're putting all of our parking off so we're not going to to add to an already exasperated parking situation there there are plenty of people striving for parking places here and parking even further north and walking to campus insufficient enforcement of parking we're not answering that with a with the garage though we're proposing one but that enforcement is up to the city and to unt building height right now our maximum allowable building height is 100 feet we're proposing a little over 60 and we 're setting the building back stepping it back as we get away from the street the parking block solid waste access we've brought that to the attention to city representatives and all of our solid waste is not going to be on the street where the dumpsters are on there now for other facilities traffic we're not going to generate additional traffic the big traffic driver out here is unt the number of students coming to unt they're going to be the same the question is how do they get there drive to campus take mass transportation or live in the area and walk we'll be paying impact fees we did a traffic generation study to determine or maximum of about 800 vehicles a day that's under the threshold for a tia in the city however we've said we would do a tia when we get ready to get into development future improvements to scripture the neighbors ask about it we contacted the city and found that there's not any plans in the capital improvement plan to improve scripture at this time but it is a collector street dust and noise during construction that'll be mitigated by the building permit process code enforcement we've heard a discussion about code enforcement tonight capacity of existing infrastructure initial indications are it's basically sufficient but as we go through the planning and the building permit process there'll be additional detailed analysis of all of that impact upon surrounding businesses it's i think the taco shop would like it the fry street area that has businesses it's highly in walkable area and we think this would help support local businesses that are there now that are maybe somewhat struggling we looked at the community city university impacts will address demand for student housing it's going to be private development on the tax roll as opposed to to university housing i keep looking up there i guess ought to look right here property value will increase from about 1.3 to over 30 million dollars it'll reduce the need for student-occupied home rentals we did a quick study based on university growth if no additional student housing is provided and single-family homes are converted to student housing which we're seeing a lot of that it would require all of the land from university south to 35 and from carol west to bonnie bray to house all the the students that the university is not going to house based on their master plan if they all went into homes instead of apartments it'll reduce the number of commuters no public assistance requested getting rid of some abandoned buildings with that are vacant with crime current entitlement allows for 100 foot building we're looking at 68 foot and that's at the top of the rec center that's in the center of the building that 's not on the edges of the building parking meets code fully wrapped hidden garage aesthet ically pleasing it reduces parking footprint by five times because your parking footprint is now multi-story instead of two stories they can't put in garages and have to spread their parking out the full width and it reduces the parking pressure on the neighborhood and i gotta admit it's a drop in the ocean you know when unt is going to 25 000 or 45 000 students and we're providing 640 beds and a like number of parking places that's not going to make a big change in the in the issues of parking in that area guiding documents we looked at existing zoning staff has talked about that the dentin plan 2030 works with that then development code is compatible didn't criteria manuals we've used those to look at we've got with the historic districts and landmarks in the area the unt master plan and we did a tia and a pia in the immediate area we looked at the land uses around us the blue dark blue is businesses the yellow or homes that have been converted to businesses the red are apartments the pink color would be homes that are being used as apartments to several students now the blue are single-family rentals we don't know if they're students or individuals but the best we tell are probably maybe an individual or family there's a single-family owner occupied we determine that by looking at the dental central pastoral district status statistics and they have a homestead exemption so they got to be owner occupied and then there's a vacant lot we looked at the unt master plan again their enrollments 45 000 by 2020 they're only going to house 25 percent of their students the current occupancy rate in the area is at 95 percent and better saw an article the other day to where occupancy and apartments in dentin county are 94 percent or better and they attribute that to the university of north texas influencing the entire county not just the area immediately around the university we looked at bicycle public transportation and that was it i'd i'd like to go back to this slide only because we spent quite a bit of time with staff determining the concept for this you know and the understanding was that as long as the uses were similar or the same in other words both student housing and neither of the buildings crossed the zoning line then the building on that side of the zoning line had to comply with the zoning of that area and that's the discussions we've had we've looked at the buffer requirements the residential proximity slopes and discussions with staff we could plat this to create two different lots and platting is a ministerial process that the city cannot unreasonably withhold approval as long as we meet the city requirements that are not asking for variances for zoning efforts so that's where we are we did have a i'm going to go the wrong way again a discussion with planning and zoning commission they wanted to know if we would put some kind of an overlay on this and that was difficult because you can't put an overlay on the dcg when your zoning is for the dr2 but they asked for some statistics and i think this helps show that's the building footprint with the uses at the first floor second floor very similar maybe an elevator change when we get to the third floor we're there the fourth that was third and fourth by the way that's the maximum allowed in the dr2 this is when we go to the dcg which is what we're asking for this helps show how we're stepping the building back in the areas adjacent to the street and the residential proximity slopes from across then we go to the very top floor level six and that is really just an amenity center that's restricted to that rectangle as indicated so that's what we are proposing on this site hopefully i've used less than the 10 minutes paul i don't know if you have something else to say but we could stop and respond any questions at this time if you'd like we do have one question request and then i've got one as well council member riggs so on um it was mentioned that there were eight foot sidewalks on three sides what is on the fourth side uh the fourth side is the neighboring apartments okay to the other side of us and right now the code requires eight foot sidewalks on scripture but being a pedestrian oriented area we wanted to go ahead and put eight foot sidewalks on uh brian and i'm losing my mind right now the other street so on brian because in the in the image it looked a little smaller it looked like it went closer to the street in this image no no on the other well i'm going to get in trouble and say like that's because some architect drew it up but us engineers are going to make eight foot sidewalks anyway okay i'm sorry i don't know which image to go to but my proposal and intention is to put eight foot sidewalks on all three sides even though five foot or what's required on on brian and normal streets okay do you have i really i like the the image that you have of like the the second option how you have it imposed and it's we're viewing it from above and the impact on the neighborhood do you have one of your of the current project that's like that where we can see it in an image i think the only image we have in the proposed project it's like a lower one yeah and unfortunately that's more from okay all right i'd ask thank you sorry mayor pro tem thank you mayor uh i don't know how long you 've been involved with this project or maybe you know the history the the two vacant properties there do you know how long they have been vacant i don't if you don't know that's fine i'm just curious doesn't matter of history it's been several years quite a few years yeah that's my recollection too i just didn't okay thank you councilmember gravery thank you mayor mr allison there's um the setback from the street from the curb there's a varying setback some of it is closer to the street and some of it where you've created those alcoves or courtyards is further back can you tell me what the distance is at the spots that are closest to the street what's the distance between the building and the street or the building in the sidewalk 21 feet from what from the back of curb the code requires no setback from the property line on the street side we have planned a 10-foot setback from the property line and there's typically an 11-foot parkway between the property line and the back of curb so the closest to the part of the building to the street will be 21 feet from the back of the curb or 10 feet from the property line okay and then part of that 21 feet includes that improved sidewalk the white that is correct sidewalk and we 're in hopes to get some street trees in that area as well similar to other developments in the area couple questions you had mentioned and might want to have staff up here as well just so that because i really want to get a clear understanding of this mr alison you had said that these were four different parc els of record prior to 1960 i think is what the rule is or something so it's that stat you know we were talking about if there's zoning on one lot then you had this rule so help me so what what what is staff's understanding as far as the facts on the ground again i want to iterate that one aspect that we're looking at is purely the zoning change that's before us as it relates to the development i would have to verify the lot differentiation of districts if they're true lots that have been defined since 1960 i believe or 63 then we would probably acquiesce and enable them to then use the zoning districts it wouldn't be a less restrictive over it would just be the zoning districts that apply but i would have to verify that with what they turn in and submit as part of the plan review element sure do you have a slide that shows the entire project with the split zoning classifications over the lot in other words you've got your whole whether it's the dr2 then and that shows it instead of you just showed the little black part right do we have a slide that does that i don't know i think lee maybe you have a better slide than i do i may have a slide that i can show it to you sure i just want to see what the there it is there is the does that help here is the zoning line right here okay and where's the building the crossed hatch area is the building no i'm talking about the existing building oh the existing it's not on there okay it's right about so is that and what you're saying mr allison is that's that y'all believe without any verification from staff that this site that we're looking at here is comprised of several different lots of record that have these zoning different zoning overlays on those lots is that not quite correct but close there is an existing lot right up here that has a medical office on it and it's all within the dcg zoning okay there's another lot right about here that has the retirement center and that zoning line goes through the building and then there's two lots here that each one has a single-family residence on it okay so that's that's helpful so even in your let's say for example your configuration bears out to be accurate so now my question is for staff so i want to really understand this i think this is critical i mean because i know you're going to want to replat this and all that but so the lot that's got the medical building seems to be let's say for the sake of discussion fully within the dcg zoning the other lot that you mentioned sort of comes down makes a little l and sort of wraps down that one has sort of a combination of dcg and dr2 zoning based upon what your belief of the lot configuration has so in that instance without replatting or anything then that would require the the most restrictive rule application for that particular if they were just going to develop it by itself my point being they're going to have to replat this whole property notwithstanding what the decision is here today true and the other element that we can consider at this point is if these are if these lots or delineations can be deemed as lots of record given when they were developed and what happened we can prove up that they indeed qualify as lots of record then automatically the least restrictive zoning district application would not apply because it was before the 1963 correct if it's after that correct then this rule we're talking about does it sure and again we would look at what's been turned in all right i mean this is this is very tricky stuff here i mean these are i mean that there's a lot riding on that definition of lot of record and even when you go to replat there especially there's a lot of restrictions and there's a lot of things current code that have to apply for platting that may alter potentially the concept drawing that we saw that if the council doesn't provide the you know doesn't do the rezoning this 10 story thing that may or may not depending on what requirements are required for platting current code rules and things such as that so i'm just trying to flush out as much of the facts as we can this is a critical decision and mayor watts i do concur and one other element that i want to bring to the forefront is when we look at the development criteria as it relates to setbacks that's to an advantage to the developer because they will be none as it relates to interior property lines as well okay all right okay good thank you that's all i have at least on that subject council member wasney this is for the developer so we've confirmed that number of students 620 and you used 800 trips a day how did you reach the 800 trips a day we went to the institute of transportation engineers manual on traffic generation and found they had nothing for student housing they had items for multi-family housing so we did some research and found a few studies that had been done around the country generating or studying student housing type projects both dormitories and multi-family type facilities we use those studies to come up with numbers to generate the trip generations with we submitted that to the city in a report and it's my understanding that earl escobar and someone else from engineering went out to a couple of the most recent similar type projects in the city to do some traffic counts and determine that the trip generations that we came up with per student were very similar with what they're seeing in housing projects here in denton as well to help confirm the studies that we used and we talked about one mile to razor ranch currently there's no access if you're going east to west to get into razor ranch it's really longer than a mile because you have to go north on bonnie bray west on university and come in to razor ranch off of university my point is i just feel there's going to be more than 800 trips a day with these students they may walk to campus but they're going to hop in their car and head to a job they're going to hop in their car and go downtown they're going to hop in their car and go grab some groceries or a coffee or something so i'm just saying the 800 trips a day is is an unscientific my opinion total without a true traffic impact analysis you talked about doing a tia after the decision on this council why wasn't a traffic impact analysis done prior to bringing it to this council it wasn't done for a couple of reasons one is because we do not reach the threshold of trips per day that generates the requirement for a tia and number two until we know what product we're putting there because we're not maximizing the density that we're asking for typically you would do at this stage in zoning a tia based upon the most intense use which might be eight or 900 bedrooms we're not proposing anything like that so we want to do a tia or recommend doing one even though it's not required by the city based on what we're going to actually generate versus what could conceptually be generated if the maximum density was provided there and my my point is that scripture is a two lane sleepy road i'm on it all the time and to dump 800 to a thousand trips a day on scripture my opinion is just unacceptable i can understand that and that's why we also like to point out that it's unt that is the driver we're not really adding the traffic in this area this is all traffic that's coming to unt for various purposes and going back and forth and living in the area so there is site specific but there 's also the general driver of the area that that i think we too often tend to ignore but i think that's the crux of the issue here that there's an assumption that it's the city's responsibility to provide student housing for unt and i maintain that it's not the city's responsibility when it comes at the cost of residential neighborhoods and that's what's happening and so we can blame unt you know all day long they can say we have a goal of 45 000 students that's fine i don't run unt i help run this city and those are the decisions that this council has to make and to encroach in residential neighborhoods and use as an excuse well unt is growing and therefore it justifies the the means justify the end it doesn't it just doesn't so you know where i'm headed on this but i feel passionately about this and i i hear this often oh unt is growing and therefore you know we're going to throw neighborhoods under the bus and i just i'm just so uncomfortable with that because we've got to look 20 years out in this city and ask ourselves what do we want this city to look like in 20 years because you make the decision now there's no going back there it's there's not and people will say well it's an old neighborhood the key is the word neighborhood the key isn't old the key is that it is a neighborhood and i'm just not prepared to sacrifice neighborhoods in our core just to put up five story student because these aren't multi-family even though the city hasn't classified sro single resident occupancy as a separate category and i think they should but they haven't done that they classify it under multi- family there's nothing family about these buildings at all they house students they're in they're out they're in they're out there's no family there's no couple there's no mom and dad and a couple of kids it is just student housing i know it's lucrative they're going up all over the country i just maintain i just refuse to sacrifice the integrity of our neighborhoods to put up a five story or a four story student it's just not compatible with the neighborhood well when it comes to providing housing for the unt we couldn't agree with you more the city doesn't owe that it's just that the unt is the elephant in the middle of the room and they are the economic driving factor that's going to put the economic pressure on rather houses get converted to student housing eventually down the road or whether other things get built and where they get built and that's a tough tough stewardship responsibility for y'all as council members and i know each one of you are are grappling with that and many other things as we sit here and speak tonight we do have a couple other questions council member gregory thank you i think this question is for staff and i and i suspect that it can't be answered tonight but i know that we did you were talking about some concerns about planning in the 60s but i know that we did a rezoning of the entire city around 2000 2001 and and i know that that building is was there long before 2001 that that was last used as a retirement home so i would like to hear some research and not tonight but i think that we need to get some research on why in the world a planning or a zoning that happened in 2001 would bisect not only a piece of property but a structure on a piece of property that's very concerning to me and i think it's very concerning to me about the the the potential liability that the city faces uh through having uh zoned bifurcated a piece of property bifurcated a building so not tonight but we need we need some follow-up on on on how that might have happened and it may be just conjecture because um howard martin's left so you know who was here back in 2001 but but um and i need a really clear understanding as to the to the legal um restrictions that we have regarding a bifurcated uh lot not tonight yeah i think he's what he's saying is you don't necessarily need to respond he he's asking for further research on that provide that information um councilmember hawkins i'll be fast uh if can we go to the picture that down shot that looks at the building um which this one no it's the other one where the white one second yes the white one if uh if the zoning is not passed tonight is are you and the developer going to try to do this project here that is my understanding i'd have to refer that to paul is i mean that's a lot of what ifs but but that's why we did this to see the feasibility of developing this site under the current zoning i can answer that um yeah the reason why uh this study was done was we we are going to we're going to move forward with a project of seeing what our options are and this is one of them we'll continue to investigate what what we can do um so if you wanted to do this project initially you wouldn't even have to be here tonight that's that's our understanding okay the codes are all right thank you um oh one thing um that we wanted to add i don't know if you you covered this is that i understand that there's some concern about if you rezone something that what's going to ensure that we build what we've got in front of you tonight right so we're talking about some way to put an overlay um and that is something we are certainly you know willing to do and to even fine tune that overlay so that certain percentages of the building cannot exceed a certain height so you're going to get what we're showing you today so we're certainly willing to do that as well as cap density and those kinds of things so okay all right cast member hawkins any other questions okay any other comments from the applicant because your time's probably i mean the question the question's doesn't necessarily count into the time but i'm sure that how much time do they have left just on the okay one minute 34 seconds any other comments okay all right good thank you fantastic thank you what i'm going to do is read the cards wishing not to speak first just so we can get those out of the way uh for the public hearing and so when i call your name uh and we're through with that you can't speak so i'm just letting you know ahead of time so if you put on here you do not want to speak then i call your name and it goes into the record then you won't be able to speak if you just change your mind uh tim garinger 1108 west congress street is in opposition uh john h morrison 918 west oak street in opposition emily klein 824 blue bonnet place here in denton is in opposition david caplan 308 i think that's marietta street uh in opposition no sro enc roachment please and sullivan 2225 pembroke place denton in opposition michael hennan 724 th omas street in opposition christy coons 3318 clisdale drive denton in opposition no rezoning please b rian morris 305 mounts avenue do not rezone i urge you to support the decision of pnz of 52 to deny rezoning of this site for the park 7 sro clifford e salwin excuse me if i pronounce that incorrectly 3113 north bell in opposition known to macalus 3113 north bell and denton in opposition john wright 912 west oak street denton in opposition becky wright 912 west oak street denton in opposition andrea schreiber 308 marietta street in opposition okay we'll go through the blue cards and state your name and address and your time will begin janice heidelberger you'll come down state your name honored council members i'll figure out what's the right way what do i say honorable council members we have in toast masters we have to say something so janice heidelberger 425 bernard street apartment number 907 and i'm freezing cold so i am so grateful to all of you guys here and you're rock stars because this is hard work scripture is a sleepy little street and i've i love that street and it's just part of what i love about denton somebody said her just a while ago development is inevitable several issues back and i asked myself is it well because that's kind of like saying cancer is inevitable well sometimes it kind of is but it doesn't always have to be that kind of growth that is you know inevitable especially when you're talking to city growth so i think that as we think about city growth we need to think really carefully i am not against growth i have a growing daughter but i'm for healthy growth well thought out growth growth that greatly values diversity growth that cares for the least of these and put small businesses first and that is environmentally sound supports clean air and water incorporates solar wind energy and power into its things and produces that solar and wind power in partnership with dme back to our city some way and forward out from our city growth that nurtures community and has walkable areas and growth so the developer said that they see some struggling things going on and they see repurposed housing i you see struggling i see community i see small business a repurposed house repurposed to be a small business like a taco shop that is community that is so valuable to our town that means that that that tells me there's a young new business owner there that's repurposed a perfectly good space for a place that brings even more community into it think about seven mile cafe oh my word the community that goes on at that place our rep urposing of our existing buildings is a good thing it's not necessarily the case that we need to have apartment complexes come in and just raise and eradicate what's there and build something new i think six feet is way too high if this is already partly a done deal i think four four stories is plenty enough i think even more green space needs to be added as far as the amounts of grass and trees around that area in the architectural plans and as an apartment live liver a person who lives in an apartment right next to the unt campus i very much know that it's not just students that live in the quotes quote unquote student apartments i'm a single mom that's why i live in an apartment i'm a single mom and i'll be happy to share that story face to face with anyone who at another time and washer and dryers inside of apartments are crucial a lot of time adjunct adjunct professors live in those apartments and they're raising families in those apartments even tenure track professors live in those apartments so it's not just students who go home on the weekends and take their laundry home they're raising families in those apartments that's just part of our day and age that's part of the the types of professors that are being hired at our universities more and more and more their adjunct professors as i think you all know so thank you for hearing me and i urge that this council would support our planning p and z commission and recommend denial we have a question yes by the way adjunct professors couldn't live in those apartments they couldn't afford them unless they got a good job like delivering pizzas good point i i got paid as an adjunct for a while are you aware that that it that one of the things that we're facing is that there may be a real possibility that based on the current zoning that there could be a 100 foot apartment building right on scripture street without any zoning change without any action taken by the council are you aware that that that that may be a possibility that we're facing yeah i heard that and so i heard that the outside part was going to be a certain height and the inside part could be the 100 feet tall did i hear that i'm not really was kind of confused that's not what they were proposing i'm just asking if you were aware that that what it sounds like is that right there in scripture that it could get up to 100 feet that's not acceptable i agree that zoning seems to allow that right now right now it does so is that what you're saying so it's the cg it's g now if you were aware of the current zoning and what it would allow no okay i guess i wasn't so then why is p and c saying no we'll be able to ask maybe some of those questions at least of staff to get a little bit better clarification so that everybody understands that that's sharing tonight what the proposal is tonight and what has been shown is what if it doesn't pass tonight if council turns this down they may do what was proposed with the 100 foot higher density so we'll make sure we go back over that so everybody understands that yes thank you for your time you bet thank you donna morris now state your name and address and your time will begin donna morris 918 west oak i wasn't going to talk tonight but i had two neighbors that said i can't be there so you go talk to them and they said mention my name and that was starling maulwag and and uh mary thomas uh sometimes you feel like you're standing on a railroad track holding your arms out trying to stop the locomotive that's what's happening in our neighborhoods over there north of the square west of the square ever how many times have we been here saying no to sros no no no they bring in more traffic they bring in more cars they come with their pretty pictures with their great beautiful designs and we can do this and we'll do this and we'll do that and it doesn't happen the way they say we have we live on oak street we can't back out on oak street half the time the other half we do it and take our lives in our own hands you put something like this on scripture next year two blocks down on scripture somebody else is going to come in well you've got their one already and it's going to be 45 000 students and we've got to do something so we'll put another one up scripture is not going to hold 800 extra trips what's it going to do with 1600 or 2100 this is ridiculous when my husband and i came to denton we came opening a small business we came and we talked to planning department building and we said what are your rules and regulations and we made our plans according to those we did not come and asked for any variances we did not come and ask for any tax abatements or anything like that we have in the years that we've been here saved three old houses on locust street two on oak street one on vine three half a one on vine wasn't it and we didn 't ask the city for anything we paid hotel taxes we paid he real estate taxes we've paid we joseph is up there paying taxes every day thank god we're retired we aren't part of it now but i'm not going to retire from fighting for the neighborhoods in this town this is a beautiful town my mother played on the courthouse steps when she was a child and i owe it to her to do some saving here thank you thank you all right next speaker is kim mckibben come down state your name and address and your time will begin please good evening my name is kim mckibben 1306 west hickory street and i'm getting to be real familiar standing here in front of you guys in the planning and zoning committees i own a building down there in the five street district in the five street overlay district i have fought about it battled there and i continue to fight a battle there a lot of times we see these beautiful drawings and they're always drawings they're not necessarily of the buildings placed and where they really are and i have to tell you that they don't look like that in real life and to put this building in the middle of this neighborhood is inappropriate yes the planning is probably there i think what you're getting from the developers are an idle threat that if you don't let us get this rezoning we're just going to do it this way anyway so they're showing you the worst case scenario the skyview living center that's there where that they want to tear down the doctors report the doctor's things the zoning was originally made because flow hospital was sitting there where the student apartments are now that's why that zoning was done okay i worked at flow for years when it started turning over and hca wanted to get rid of it that's when you'll find your zoning changes but the problem i have is not so much with development it's where it is and what it is once again we're being asked to put um very narrow niche housing on valuable property for the developers to i'm sorry siphon off of the students at 700 plus per bedroom what they're doing is they're taking the the kids that want to get out of the dormitories and into an apartment to find out that they're still in a dormitory and not only that they're in a dormitory with possibly three other people that they don't know and those three other people's mates boyfriends girlfriends whatever they 've got and children i'm very much opposed to single single room occupancy i don't think it's appropriate i don't think that it is a long-range plan for anything i disagree with some of the stuff that was presented unt is taking responsibility for their housing they're breaking ground for a thousand new beds in dormitories on unt the area that they're wanting to put this is totally inappropriate that area is the inner is the area that is supposed to be between the communities and the university you've got smaller use plan things going in there and all of that if they think they can build a 10 story no it's an eight stories 100 feet is eight stories i got that clarification the other day on that tiny little sliver it's a threat it'll never pass the fire things and all those other things and to say that oh we're going to contain the parking is ridiculous because the people that live there have to have friends that come and things like that i'm asking you not to make this not to approve this and i'm talking about i understand the zoning i understand that basically what we're talking about is the zoning and if you refuse the zoning and you look for an overlay district that does not allow single room occupancy you're going to have a different beast so you have to think about what you're what you're doing because it is the single room occupancy you'll hear everyone back here behind me mention that that is not they can only be used for students if they want to put efficiencies if they want to put one and two bedroom apartments in there you would have a lot less objection to this project i believe because once again it goes back to neighborhoods it goes back to families didn't needs housing the associate the the adjunct professors need a place to live single parents need a place to live so may i have a question yes sir i think thank you very much for coming in just had a coffee at your place the other day very good um you know the the question of sros is no longer theoretical to the city of dentin in fact right in that area there's a pretty sizable sro project that went in mixed use project right across from your coffee shop what now that we've had it there for a few years what's been the negative results that have some of the fears that people brought to the table back then played out what what would you point to so that i can understand this fear of sros that that project has brought to that area i don't know well there is a great deal of fear of the sros and some of that is bonafide i mean it's real if you look at the crime reports at the uh the u center and the number that there are there's been some studies done on what's increased i'm not sure where i saw that published but i know i read it somewhere but the sros themselves i mean there was a lot of rigging that went on to get to get the u center in there to get the fry street thing in there i mean you had they took the historic fry street overlay district and slaughtered it to get all that stuff in there but the the sros the single room occupancies what i see you said you were in my shop earlier i see students come to my shop and say i know that we don't have we don't have any money to buy coffee but can we stay here for a while because there's a party going on in my apartment and i'm afraid to go back up there i've had that happen multiple times and yeah that's a fear we get bottles thrown at the dumpster from the fourth story uh we have people who basically you know wind up being shot by the north texas police in the street because there is no community in an sro there's nothing there for these very vulnerable citizens that we have to learn what the community is to meet neighbors and those sorts of things now i was one of those people that got out of the dorm and went into one of those houses not here but when i did that and then when i was a student a graduate student here yeah i had to find a house to live in because the apartments were just too expensive so yeah i'll try and find that information for you but i'm not sure why i saw it thank you thank you see no no more questions yep thank you very much dan is it cruda creda creda i'm sorry come down state your name and address your time will begin Dan Kretke i'm in 316 west hickory apartment number 316 i'm in one of those tiny terrible apartments that bring such terrible people to denton i'm in a 500 square foot apartment uh and when i came to denton i guess when i think some good questions have been brought up tonight about what do we want this city to be in 20 or 50 years um what do we want our neighborhoods to look like and i don't know if you go back and look at the history of of cities throughout history all countries everywhere dense development has always been the the norm until about 50 years ago where sprawl was introduced i think sprawl's done a lot of harm to our communities we've developed a suburban aesthetic that has made us think somehow that having density and diversity within a small space is somehow detrimental to our society whereas i really think it's the strength i live in denton i had a bunch of choices i got a job at a university here in 2013 and i was choosing where to live and i was thinking am i going to live in denton or live in a surrounding community the hardest thing was finding good dense housing i want to be able to walk i don't drive i walk everywhere i live in h squared i walk bike everywhere i don't use my car during the week at all and there's a lot of people like me and there's a lot of statistics to show millennials also are really um moving in that direction and we're not meeting the demand of it i there's hardly any good options in denton there's very few i've looked everywhere and there's almost nowhere where my wife and i can choose to live and we don't want a house we don't want to live out somewhere where we can't walk to the local community we want to go into our local businesses and so i live in one of these developments and i feel like i have a sense of community i know the people we go to the restaurant same restaurants all the time on the square and in the area we walk to the coffee shops over at unt and on the square i'm hoping we can get more of these because we need these around the developments unt is part of the city i don't know how we can say that we're not going to meet unt's needs too that's natural economic development and so i'm really in favor of of rezoning because i think you know this can help build up community too there's a lot of businesses right in right near here that could start to benefit from people walking to them people when you know i don't want to get in my car and drive if i don't have to and a lot of people feel the same way if they can walk out their door and go frequent these local businesses they 'll do so and this this is going to allow them to do that in the area so i hope that we can start looking at these developments and not just looking at the negatives that they potentially bring which i think a lot of them are unfounded and i think you'd see that with i think there's a ton of positive what's happened on fry street with that development in terms of safety too i'd love to see the safety statistics actually because jane jacobs talked 50 years ago about the eyes on the street theory when you have dense developments you get eyes on the street and it reduces crime in the immediate area and so there's a there's a lot of reasons to think this will make a healthier more walkable dentin and i hope we'll consider rezoning but not just on this development but consider future developments that are dense and like this one couple questions councilmember breaks that you and you and your wife live in an sro uh yeah we live in a we live in a single room it's a we 'll say it's a one room one bedroom so 500 square feet total do you live with other people in your apartment no we live in a single no i mean we're in our own apartment the 500 square feet is that what you're asking okay okay i thank you yeah thank you councilman wasney and that's the difference you're in an apartment these are not apartments these are one room student and they share a kitchen so that was my point that multi-family is about a family because it it's a unit you and your wife are a unit and you're in an apartment these are not standard apartments these are student housing one room you rent you rent one bed one room has a little bathroom and then you share a kitchen and and it's a totally different concept than because you go into any big city and you're going to find a lot of apartments because that's how people live because it is the dense urban core but these are not apartments these are single room single bed just it's student housing very different than apartments all right thank you uh see no more questions thank you very much appreciate it uh next speaker is mr larry beck please come down state your name and address and your time will begin hey counselor let me speak my name's larry beck i live at 915 east sherman drive and as was pointed out uh part of the land this applicant owns on scripture is already zoned dcg and to your question uh councilman um i have to ask what were city officials thinking back then when they when they zoned this this little strip on uh scripture street dcg um it's in the heart of a settled neighborhood with their older classic style buildings i think they are in doing this then and i believe it would be an error in judgment to allow it again today along with the dent development code and the dentin 2030 plan we also have the intangible element that has to be weighed beyond mere definitions laid out in laws and codes parameters that sometimes fail to encompass the entirety of a given situation by denying this request the p nz took serious the intangible element of how a high rise would impact this neighborhood growth is seen by different people in different ways and it was a majority view that they strongly felt we should prohibit any action that can allow high-rise dorm style complex to coexist with this particular neighborhood the inevitable growth we are faced with shouldn't dictate terms in all situations we have to restrain that growth and measure the amounts unless we lose control of who we want to be preserving elements for our past helps us grow with an understanding of where we came from the applicant they have a very good product that will serve dentin's need preserve dense infrastructure allowing neighborhoods to thrive and flourish in close proximity to shopping and entertainment venues and i for one sincerely hope to become a part of dentin's future but i don't want to see it done at the expense of losing part of our heritage the north side of the unt campus encompasses two of our historic districts in this area where the zone change request lies has recently excuse me been given staff approval from the texas story commission to have a national register district with about 350 structures in according to randy hunt who's with the historic dentin organization building a five-story high rise in this area will diminish the value the historical value of these homes and eventually could lead to complete loss of older classical homes that once housed some of dentin's earliest leaders some areas simply should be off limit to this type of development i believe we can accommodate these kinds of multi-family high rises by zone changes in other areas around our college campuses the west side of the unt campus which is more affectionately known as cement city is one of these areas that such a zone change can and should occur to encourage developers to build their park seven developments while keeping them in harm's distance from the neighborhoods that hold greater historical value for us likewise we should preserve sensitive neighborhoods like this with small area plans that will once and for all discourage any future high-rise development there so i ask our city council to deny this zoning change request and consider these options work to provide a direction on this issue that will benefit all parties and eliminate any future contestations regarding high-rise development and sros on the north side of the unt campus thank you thank you council member gary had a question i have a question about overlay um are you in favor of an overlay district and if not why not i'm not sure at this point if i am i thought i might have been at one earlier conjuncture at one earlier juncture but i'm not sure it is the best answer now uh again the overlay um my main concern for an overlay was keeping the height limit to three or four stories uh and there's going to be a problem doing that with the way it's just currently zoned right now so um i don't have a specific answer for you on that right now okay yes ma'am gregory and i think it's interesting to think about that area west of campus but as you probably know the city does not for the most part institute zoning changes on people's properties that do not request them do you think that that would be a good idea for us to go in where a property owner has bought a property with a particular zoning and the city goes in and unilaterally changes that zoning uh without without the consent or the approval of the property owner or those around them no of course i wouldn't suggest that but i am saying that if those properties sold and the new buyer wanted the zoning changed then i sure i could see where we'd be more be able we're straying a little bit off topic here so um yeah as far as the post uh he was talking about changing zoning sure yeah okay all right any other questions all right thank you sir thank you uh jennifer lane state your name and address and your time will begin jennifer lane 1526 willowwood street and this is referencing uh the university on january 28th 2016 nt daily reported uh unt president neil smatresk recently outlined the university's plans for 2016 he goes on to say um among smetresk's plans are visions to build new dorms soon he's confident the university will be able to meet the demands of student residents with the 500 beds currently on the drawing board and this has now gone to a thousand um he has spoken this and then it goes on to describe if you want to look up the article or i can send it to you from january 28th 2016 this many millions here that many millions there what is being projected to be spent um smatresk has also said i don't speak for him but i've seen him in print on the importance of on-camus dormitories i myself served for six years as a resident fellow at stanford university in a town the same size as denton palo alto palo alto grew tremendously because of silicon valley it was almost impossible as it's getting to be here for students to afford apartments and so on you know the same kind of issues were arising but they were much more severe there the campus very much fostered an on-campus living environment and part of that was the resident fellows house masters that sort of um work we did this in addition to our um departmental jobs and the university recognized and had a very beautiful um way of housing students that involved creation of community within a kind of environment that was very different from what they had come from and what they would go to after they graduated namely more family apartment community you know individual units as kathleen was calling it style living it was this time during college that people live in dorms and it's clear that now that university of north tex as is r1 research one that there's more movement in this direction also the pressures from the town the pressures the growing pressures of expense that there is a desire by uh unt to have the students as much as possible live on campus and to create an environment where that is a pleasant thing to do and there's a structure and infrastructure there and faculty involvement and so on and so forth um i also would say that uh the other college towns that i have lived in and i have lived in several have not had sros near the university for the obvious reasons they've had faculty housing nearby some very very close to the university and much like denton has older houses that students rent there's a very similar type of environment here and i include lexington kentucky there as well as stanford palo alto and i strongly recommend that you reject this plan to have an s ro and so close to the campus it's not meeting i object and i also object to the representation of unt as needing this i think that would have to be explored much further before uh that could be said thanks thank you thank you next speaker is deb armantar name and number i mean name and address is deb still here oh yeah there you yep somebody left this here what is it somebody left a notebook so just yeah just leave it there yeah just leave it there hi deb armantar 2003 mist y wood lane um i'm against uh this zoning change and i want to urge all of you uh to please if you have not already watched the video of the planning and zoning meeting uh where planning and zoning did the right thing and voted against this zoning change for a number of very good reasons um at uh at that meeting a number of citizens of which i was one came out and spoke about many many reasons why this zoning change is a terrible idea you've heard some of those reasons tonight but i honestly feel that if you have not watched the video of that meeting of planning and zoning then you have not done your homework for for this vote today and that you if that's the case that then you are not prepared to vote today because you have not heard um the uh the citizens reasons against this including your own appointed citizen um commission uh who made a very wise decision you should all be really proud of them the work that they did you you appointed them um and they did a phenomenal job um your job as you know is to serve the public it's not to serve developers it 's not to serve unt i happen to teach at unt i'm an english professor there i love our students like they're my own children these um sros uh do not serve them well the university and by the way i don't speak for the university i just happen to work there um but i know that the university does not want these private sros and you know that too because if they did want it you would be hearing from them um if the if unt wanted it i'd still be against it but i i just wanted to say because we keep hearing the developer saying unt is driving this um uh but you know how can they be driving something that they don't actually want as somebody said earlier unt is uh building dorms for students that's unt's job that's what they should be doing um yeah you know you all should be concerned with affordable housing for uh for for families for all kinds of residents including for you know for students who you know who want to live in apartments um i i strongly object to the way this developer has uh has been handling this from the get-go um i'm aware that uh that this developer or someone on the team has invited at least you know several of you uh individually to um uh to lunch or coffee with them um you know i i know at least one of you refused which was i think the right thing to do um i don't like these threats that i'm hearing from them and yes i do think it's a threat to say if you don't grant us this uh uh zoning request we will build something even even bigger and worse and there's nothing you can do to stop us um that is cater ing to bullying it's a kind of it's a kind of non-violent terrorism it's being held hostage don't let them don't let yourself get played for suckers like that um you're not suckers you're our public officials and we need you to stand up and say no to this bad idea and then when the next bad idea comes down it comes in front of you if you have the power to do anything about it then you say no if you don't then you don't but your job is to represent the public good uh not developers thank you thank you paul melzer if you'll come down state your name and address your time will begin uh okay my name is paul melzer i live at 1914 west oak street uh and i'm just going to frame the issues in a way consistent with what you heard from commissioner beck you'll get some pictures at least with this this is uh from a presentation that some of you have seen before um you'll be here about dentin 2030 is evoked as uh validation of one view or another there's actually quite a lot in dentin 2030 and and it doesn't all it's not all in agreement with itself there are more than one objectives expressed and there are two opposing goals you know that we hear played out here and i i think they all bear our our our they all married our our consideration i hear that in the downtown core we need to grow compactly and you've heard a lot tonight about how we need dense infill otherwise we have sprawl we know sprawl is bad for traffic and air quality and i can't very well argue with the general logic that you might expect students to want to live near unt so i i get all that uh and yet we also hear in dentin 2030 plan that we are that we want to maintain and strengthen neighborhoods that single-family neighborhoods should be protected from abrupt contrasts of scale and intensity and and the abrupt contrast is really the uh a key point there we we hear that we won't we read that we want to protect dentin's historic character through thoughtful preservation and uh even this area that's called universe neighborhood university compatibility is described as uh as one that should be characterized by gradual transition in scale use character and intensity so these goals seem to be opposing and they clash you know right in this area around unt so i ask uh you know can we find a little more guidance uh for how to sort out that conflict within dentin 2030 well there's the flum the future land use map and we see that it treats all the area in light blue and this was uh presented by manal as well as the same it's university compatibility area but dentin 2030 also says that it's not the complete view that we need multiple small area plants right multiple small area plants so what are the small areas within this you know how are they different is it really all the same well here's where you get some pictures here's some of this area that's north of unt in the light blue area it's you know obviously i've cherry picked it there's some you know apartments as well but uh there is there are many single family type structures it's well treed historic structures and it does have a traditional neighborhood feeling now let's go west of unt that you know commissioner beck referred to it looks rather different this is what's commonly referred to as cement city and you know clearly it need not be painted with the same brush it's it's essentially all two-story multi-family no single family no historic structures minimally treat now i don't know why it's two stories i haven't found anyone who remembers why maybe there's someone here who does but that's what it is and it's all dr it's all dr2 uh and you know that's just an imposition that this that the city has imposed at some point so uh very much in conformance with what commissioner beck described i say there are at least two different neighborhood appropriate sap's within the university compatibility area to the west i say absolutely have dense infill i'm not opposed to things being urban i say make it urban rezone it from dr2 to dcg and to your to your uh to uh one of your points about you know whether the city should initiate zoning not if you're taking something away but here you're adding something you're not preventing any use that's currently there and you're opening up tremendous economic opportunity for developers uh you know who want but in a way that would be consistent with community goals so have six floors if if our fire codes can then can do it i'd be happy to take more questions if especially if you'll help me complete the thought here uh council member gary so regarding the western part of town with the well you said cement city so let's call it cement city i think we renamed it university city sure how do you propose that we get people to develop that when we don't own the land well can i can and i need to ask the city chair because we're i mean i gave you some latitude in your presentation and i have with a lot of people as far as are they on topic to what so i don't have an issue doing that but to start a discussion about an issue that's not really on topic here as far as another part of the city i think we need to we need to maybe move away from that from from a posting situation what does council say i agree okay council member rodin i'll try and stay on topic with my question add to the property in question here and there's been a lot of talk of compatibility compatibility with the neighborhoods what we have on the ground are two vacant buildings along scripture street one of which is reported to be housed by homeless folks who go in and out of there who break in certainly not compatible for good residential living what what's the suggestion of what happens to these properties should this project go away what what becomes what's the is there any consensus on that at least from what you've heard absolutely there is and you know i sort of didn't get to the right hand side of my slide here which is what to do in that area but i've been at all of the meetings pertaining to this project and you know there's a false dichotomy that we fall into routinely in dent and i don't really know why but your battle lines are drawn and you have the impression that people are against development there that's far from the case in fact i heard every person who spoke at those neighborhood meetings in favor of development the question is just doing it at a compatible scale in a compatible style you know if you look at the illustrations that i've got here you can't see them anymore but you know townhouses would be appropriate village scale retail it's it's the gradual change in intensity and scale that is called for in dent in 2030 that we all you know at least uh you know agree to try to abide by in spirit so no one's saying don't develop no one in fact explicitly neighbors said we want development there kids hang out there they get into trouble there nobody likes it being vacant it's just a question of doing it compatibly so i guess to just clarify is it so apartments are okay there and is there a story that's okay a three stories okay oh when i heard in fact what i explicitly said the first time i'd be happy to reply uh what i said in the first time we met was uh i asked for permission to articulate a consensus to the developer and you know you just i'm just gonna ask you to accept my version of the truth and if others here could back me up but i said if you were to develop here but if you were to but if it were two or three stories and it were architect urally compatible you would have no opposition here and i looked around and the heads were nod ding all of them and so if someone wants to say that wasn't the case you know that's fine but i you know i swear to you everyone would have been fine with that it's scale and intensity thanks all right thank you appreciate it next speaker is craig clifton please state your name and address and your time will begin all right i have the time to state some information that came up tonight we might want to mention it you might want some answers here well if you could state your name and address and then your time is going to begin is that what you well i mean if you guys want to know why the two zones on the one property are that way okay if you'll state your name and your address and your time will begin and you can you can talk about you can share with us your information okay my name is craig clifton i live at 407 normal street the two zones were zoned that way for one lot because they were only going to build medical buildings there it was going to be an annex because we were there when they said hey we're going to build this thing way up here but it will never be an apartment it's certainly not an sro and that's why they divided it up so they couldn't make an apartment out of it and that's why next that's because the most restrictive if it is put together zoning is applicable so that they would not build apartment there i don't know why these guys think they can do that if you can go back into the records of that zoning and how it was presented to us in the neighborhood it was never going to be for an apartment at all that's that's why they have that lab built right there next to it also i'm glad they put up these things so you can see the four five story buildings they're planning on being they are so the planning and zoning deny them and this is why it's so incongruous to the neighborhood over there go over and see everything built in the 21st century over there's just two stories with 50 people in those apartments at the most because the superstructure of those streets they can't hold that that's why city park sro isn't applicable to this that was already a hospital they had the superst ructure for it they had the parking they had everything you need that is not this is going to destroy our neighborhood one mentioned the parking hey obviously they're going to have friends coming by they're not just going to sit there without friends all the time parking is going to be astronomical because there are no parking places there all right traffic yes they're going to have to go eat go all these places the traffic they're not walking everywhere but the biggest problem because the infrastructure there is not for an sro or anything this big they're going to be tearing up the streets putting in new sewer lines because we're right next to when it was a rest home and every two or three months their medical waste would wash up in our yard they're going to have to tear up that street to put in a brand new sewer line that that was without you know washers dishwashers showers they're going to put in a new water line and tearing up that street anybody with any kind of breathing problems my mother who has emphysema they're going to have to sell their homes any of those businesses along there when those streets are torn up which are are some of the oldest nicest rental properties that was when it was didn't normal college that's how far it goes back running to teachers they're going to go out of business so if this thing is built what's going to be the massive monetary compensation for all these homes that are going to be destroyed that we're going to have to move out of because you can't live in that type of environment there's no doubt that they will be tearing up streets i mean it has to be and when they show you these buildings go in there look around just imagine four stories there's nothing there it's quiet imagine all the noise all the traffic in city park there are no longer any families with children living on our street normal now down from there because of the traffic and we miss having kids on the street you know there's a buoyancy in color to them and a lot of noise but it's good noise now we just got college students you know zombie around looking at their phones wandering up and down the street it's already changed the environment of our street what kind of people can live on our street and that's just city park where they already had all the environment for that this kaboom and that's what the planning and zoning said and when they told park seven that they had a fit and they said well you don't like this plan how are you going to like this one and it was with the contempt and arrogance and bullying that they've showed us at every one of these meetings that we've had with them hey here's four stories sure it's going to be the same population it's going to destroy your environment but just go along thank you very much appreciate it thank you janice popper at londt please come down state your name and address your time will begin oh my name is jane piper londt i live at 42 11 north 35 in denton i originally had a little more professional calm speech but i forgot that i had watched the workshop on this and how it took me two days to get over it and all of those feelings have come back i appreciate the developers benevolence to want to serve denton and all the students and all unt without any consideration for profit um as a business owner whether we're working in denton or dallas or plano or crumb we find out the codes we advise our customers of the codes and we design and produce our products according to codes and we get the proper permits we do this because we try to be honest people what we produce is a reflection of who we are we want our product to enhance an area yes we do it for the money and we want to get as much for our product as it's worth but we do it with integrity even if we don't live there where we're working we want to be spoken well of by other people of integrity and we certainly don't threaten our clients i believe that this development and their reps have shown us the type of company they are they are in this for one reason alone to exploit nitten and these are the types of people that codes are written for and i will add contracts please vote against this voting change and the attitude of people who don't care about them direct your staff to do everything possible to stop this developer this is not just a concept this is people who run a business who have shown their attitude and contempt for this town and their reason for being here and it's money alone uh if you cannot vote against this tonight at least table it until you find out the specifics of this zoning thank you thank you all right those are all the cards i have but this is a public hearing anybody wishing to speak come down state your name and address and your time will begin mayor and councilman's i'm willy hud spith i used to be married to a lovely wife she's probably going to cut me in pieces so you'll see me on the front page please don't laugh anyway this is a no-brainer come on planning and zoning said that they don't they denied it if you pass this after planning zone in which you always seem to follow and rightly so i mean it's the group that does a lot of the work that keeps you from doing it they look at stuff it's specifically for this they get the rules they uh they they go by the rules that's all they do they're not elected they're appointed and they they only look at properties as they fit in with what you tell them to look at why in the world would you vote against them with the little limited amount of information you have and i talked to my son about this who's on planning and zoning and i grilled him because i didn't agree with what he said at first and by the time he finished with me i got it and i see he said it just doesn't fit it doesn't fit it's nothing wrong with the the department itself if it were someone else it doesn't fit why in the world are we or anyway so and then when i hear this many voters you gotta you gotta kind of understand that voters then they stay here until 11 o'clock you had better heed that message because we've been here before i've been here when some of you ignored them gas wells and some other things you've done you saw what happened when you do that you need to listen to us and lastly uh you're you're evaluating what we need in denton and around north texas and you listen to that and you you realize that we do need housing but what you gotta listen to the voters and planning and zoning is it doesn't fit and i don't like bullying bullying just really drives me up the wall you know that's coming from a person who was a bully in high school i was a bully i should have been locked up that's another story anyway so don't don't let that threat well i know you don't you all don't so i'll just say vote your conscience but listen to the people thank you anybody else wishing to speak please come down and state your name and address and your time will begin no you've already you've already spoken i think yes i is it possible to add something no okay no yeah i'm sorry all right yeah my name is uh hayden mooney i live at 1019 eagan street and i am um for this for a couple of reasons one i've lived in denton for five years now and when i moved to denton particularly to where i live and my neighborhood i knew that i was moving within walking distance to the university of north texas and the impact that that would have on my life and my family's life i knew that i was going to be around college students and while i appreciate the the idea or the notion of you know trying to preserve um the single family occupancy idea and believe me i appreciate that and i value that but at the same time i live in a neighborhood that has a unbelievable amount of rental properties which in essence is the same thing because you have a large number of college students that are living in those homes and so to say that just because they're single or because they're the single resident occupancies to me that that it doesn't really it's no different than than all of these rental properties that we have in town with these college students in them so anyway i don't i think that this is a good thing for our neighborhood and i think that it's it's going to give students an opportunity to live in these homes and as opposed to and and maybe create an opportunity for families to come into some of these rental properties so anyway thank you it says a public hearing anybody else wishing to speak ken you've been trying to get up come on down my name is kim gold i live at 2512 nitches trace mayor members of council thank you for letting me speak i just want to say i support the p and z and would ask that you all do not overturn their decision i think uh the one thing that brought me to the microphone tonight was the false dichotomy presented to one of the speakers in that if you are you aware that a hundred foot building could go in here if this project fails just because you have a really bad idea as an option doesn 't make this a good idea that's a false dichotomy there's many other choices there might be a good idea this is one specific option in front of you it's been turned down by the p and z please stick to that the hundred foot option may come up later but there's other options out there for something that could come up if this in turn fails so i would very much ask you to stick with the p and z this time and turn down this proposal thank you thank you public hearing come on down if you haven't spoken or if you didn't fill out a white card yep okay thank you state your name and address and your time will begin margaret neill 731 hillcrest and i'm coming to you because i do live in that neighborhood in addition i own several rental houses also in that neighborhood i own one on oak i own one on senna i help manage one that's over on congress that is very close to that so i travel in and around that area all the time this is not acceptable this does not fit in with the neighborhood and as the last speaker just mentioned well he said that the houses like my house for instance where i have students that yes do live in it there are only three students on in that house it is knocking it does not have the same impact as an sro additionally i will also say that um i have given i know people that live in um in the university courtyard departments which are sros and i've talked to them and they've said that those aren't necessarily students that are moving into that so i don't even think that we need to say it's just students um they have said that um they've had um it'll be students and then randomly like a 50 year old man was was moved in with them so and those have already started to deteriorate that was something that i brought up i think to one of you that the shelf life of these apartments that's what you see in cement city the ratty it's gonna it's not gonna stay the same as some of the homes um and that's really it i i really hope that this time y'all pull through for the city thank you thank you public hearing anybody else wishing to speak please come down state your name and address i'm gonna close the public hearing before mr clifton gets here it wouldn't surprise me nothing's legal in this town anyway state your name and address once again please before i start can you put up the aerial view of that development it's just the aerial view with the yellow not that one with the yellow marking that's it okay thank you uh bob clifton uh let's see let's see i think it's 2052 collins road but it may be moving okay if y'all take a good gander at this catty corner from where they're going to build there used to be the flow hospital i call it the euline brock graveyard because there were 150 beautiful oak trees that went down the tubes to build that junk that's now called park five they couldn't pronounce they couldn't even spell it correctly and it houses supposedly 4 18 people in an sro now across the street they want to put another 640 in so that's going to give you a thousand people over there and even if they walked it'd be panic it's crazy that's kind of interesting another guy named clifton maybe we're taking over coming in all right let's get on first of all i don't know these developers from any other developers but i do know the developers are like a till of the hun and they come in and they just rape pillage and loot that's all they do i've never met one yet that didn't do it so there's that aspect now they've threatened you with a good time if you don't do this we're going to do that call their buff don't give them a curb cut can't get to putting in you sewer line for at least 15 years you're the city of dent for god's sake you think they can outlast you i don't think so people have got to stand up for the people of didn't that thing belongs nowhere close to that part of that one time was an old pharmacy caught a kid in the 60s was sitting in the middle of the floor doped out because he had broken through the roof and come on in so it has a history but that was all there because of flow hospital those doctor's offices that pharmacy over there and then new had a pharmacy back behind there at flow and there's still a little neighborhood area because it was a little hospital so there's you know they just keep encro aching and crouching and crouching if if north texas needs housing they got plenty of land they can go up they can go out they can go west they can go anywhere but this is not the place to put that it's totally inappropriate they're telling you oh oh oh don't worry about the cars these kids are going to drive cars my god i've seen what have i seen in the last two years in dent with traffic so when i went to college you couldn't have a car in dent college students couldn't have cars if you want to solve the problem of parking in dent i'll give you a drop one on you tonight you go to zone parking if you don't live in that neighborhood you can park there for two hours check dc that's the way it works they got little mechanical tools they come and get the cars pull them out of parallel parking pull the car out and they tore it off if you don't have a zone sticker that shift the burden to north texas it's their kids it's not the people of dentons kids all that chamber of commerce propaganda about north texas bringing this this this and that the other that's just more hype north texas needs to understand it's a guest in this town we're not the guest they are how much time do i have left 16 seconds so i'll wrap it up look into zone parking solves lots of problems and it's also legally up three lawyers up there somebody i'll be able to figure it out thank you sir we it's public hearing by all solution to speak please come down state your name address your time will begin one more call all right we will now close the public hearing mayor pro tem thank you mayor i move approval agenda item 4b all right council member wasney i'm sorry 6b i just want to go on the record that i do have just real serious concerns about the number of cars on scripture and if a conservative estimate is 800 trips a day we all drive scripture it's not built for that kind of traffic i also take an exception that the developer because this happened to planning and zoning and i agree that if you haven't watched the video you really need to watch the video that there was a veil threat that if you don't approve this then we're going to build you know the hundred story and so i have questions is that even economically feasible for the developer i used to build i don't think it is well 100 feet even pass our fire restrictions on how high a hook and ladder can go i'm not sure about that either i just don't like being intimidated as a public official and that's what i saw at planning and zoning it's it's what i've heard tonight i will be voting no against this it needs to be in a different part of town it does not need to be in a residential neighborhood council member breaks so right now tonight i'm prepared to vote no i know that this requires a super majority and and so this would be denied i'm struggling honestly i have to tell you because if for some reason they do pull through with this threat and your our community has to live with a hundred story building right there is that no i'm sorry 100 foot building right okay sorry um i i i would have to live with that and carry that with me um so what i would like to do is i would like to have more information i would like to know the consequence of my vote um we learned more information tonight um so that that's where i stand i i would like as of now i'm in now but i would really like to have more information um regarding the uh the zoning and the information we found out tonight um so i don't know i'm sorry oh did you did you have a question for staff for more information or is there well i don't know if they have the information tonight okay all right okay councilmember gregory well i think there's a motion on the floor but there's no second but there is a parliamentary move of moving to postpone that supersedes a motion to approve and i would move to postpone so that we could uh there are several questions that we have asked staff especially regarding the bifurcated property and uh with the zoning and so i would move to postpone to an event certain which is after we get that information okay um all right we have a motion to postpone to a date certain to an event event certain um i'm gonna let that motion sit for just a few more seconds we do not have a second at this time i don't i don't see a second okay all right okay we have a motion to say i i've got a we've got a couple other comments too so we have a motion in a second but we're going to take some discussion now on uh well can if we have a motion is the discussion limited to just the motion on the table that is correct am i able to clarify the motion yes well you're saying can you clarify the motion well yeah i guess i'm trying to under ascertain the questions it was the same question asked of councilmember bragg's same question to you is we're moving to postpone to get to date certain of getting answers to questions we don't think we have and and can we be clear about those because i thought i heard answers to some of the questions you've just raised and i thought they got clearer as the night went on but it seems like we had answers i just want to clarify what questions you still think are unanswered since it pertains to your motion okay sure either one needed a motion the question that i that i am not certain that i have an answer to is a definitive answer on the bifurcated property a single lot that has two different zonings in which zoning prevails we've heard some comments that it may be one way or it may be another way and i don't know for sure and i would like staff to have time to research it and give us what they feel like is a um a considered answer on that that's that's the question that i have okay so thanks for asking council member gary well mine was for something prior to this so i'll just reserve it mayor pro tem you still have another you're still on oh and it's a i guess it's more of a procedural question we've closed the public hearing so if this comes back after we get the answers to the questions is this a public hearing again is an item for individual consideration do we allow public comment from the people who comment again i'm just curious as to what happens then it would come back as an individual consideration item on that date and according to our rules of procedure in two dash 29 individuals can fill out cards to speak on that item like any other individual consideration item council member wasney two things so to clarify the postponement number one i would definitely want i would definitely want a date certain so i'm looking at my calendar and i would ask for tuesday april 18th which is two weeks from tonight that's adequate time and specifically to clarify the question because it it is an elephant in the room tonight that the developer believes they can move forward with developing the front half of the parking or the the property irrespective of what happens but we heard from staff tonight that with two pieces of property contiguous to each other the zoning defaults to the lesser of the two which is dr2 is that correct and it's it's possible and i think that's the question that we have on what is what is hardcore fact what is hardcore policy and if it's a gray zone we need to hear that as well because it'll impact whether or not we vote to postpone tonight councilperson wasney at this point it it is a gray zone because i haven't done the research on dcat to ascertain the property and how that split is i do know there's a split zoning on the overall tract so i would have to verify that in terms of developability of this property and with zoning district would apply i would have to then come back to you and say this is where we are and this is the zoning category or district that would apply if we were to look at if you recall my previous statements if indeed we can discern that this truly is a lot of record or there are specific lots of record on this property and they would then default to those you could ascertain that they default to those zoning districts so in terms of developability if they were to design or develop the site comprehensively and then the northern portion would have to could comply with one zoning district and the southern portion could comply with the other again as it relates to the request it was purely for a change in zoning and the analysis that was conducted was to ascertain the appropriateness of the request so two weeks is adequate time yes the city manager has a comment about the schedule and the agendas yeah i would i would urge the council if you're going to move it out that way i would consider moving to the 25th your meeting on the 18th is very heavy we've tried to apportion some of it out on the 11th to try to spread out a little bit but you've got a very heavy meeting agenda probably equal or or exceeding what you did today so i would suggest moving that at least one more week so date date certain april 25th yeah okay if we can have that as part of the motion council member gregory i'm amenable to uh that modification for the motion can a second okay council member gary i had a question for miss maladad and this goes to the i guess answering questions before our next meeting is there any specific reason an overlay district hasn't been proposed for this these two plots um as it relates to the i believe you're referring to a mixed use protection residential protection overlay district um the overlay district there are two separate issues so i'll address both because just to clarify for the for the audience as well to place an overlay district on this specific site would not incorporate the site to the north and an overlay district gives you an opportunity is typically looked at larger expanses of land it's over a corridor and there's more specificity associated with the uses yes it can be a little more restrictive in terms of development criteria there is also an opportunity that we have in the denton development code that allows you to protect provide a mixed use protection overlay district and that too gives you the ability to enhance landscaping increase your setbacks reduce your building heights it gives you that opportunity again the request before you is only for the subject property so it does not include the property to the north but if you were to do that you would have to notify for the property to the north and i would lean on erin here to discern if we could do that prior pre-notification would we have to notify for that piece to the north if the applicant was amenable you're asking if we have to give additional notice to the property owner of the north to impose a overlay restriction and not a district but a restriction on this parcel that is subject to rezoning i don't see why we would have to as a courtesy most definitely but as part of requirement to in imposing the restriction i don't see that we would need to do that just to clarify for the piece that is not part of this request tonight right okay thank you councilman mayor pro tem another request of the motion i apologize it's just the order of things as this has gone out i have a a standing trip out of the country that will take me out of here on the 25th i'd like to be a part of this vote especially given that other requirements of a super majority i think to the extent that we're able to get a full council hearing i would benefit all involved in that so even if it might be busy the 18th and then i guess another i guess legal question relating to this we have a vote on the next item on our agenda relating to sup requirements in this area should we vote to approve that does that now apply to this project or are they kind of grandfathered in because they were already in the pipeline that's also an important consequence to what we're doing right now if all they've filed is a rezoning request and this is postponed and then the next item is approved yes they would be subject to the sup requirement if but i don't know if they've usually developers will file multiple applications and some of them may be an actual some the actual plat document and in that case the vesting statute would apply and the and my answer would be the opposite so it depends on what what applications have been filed it is my understanding that a plot has been filed so so so the plat has been filed which would vest them into not having an application has been yes okay thanks councilman wasney oh i'm sorry councilman grager here i i don't i don't care when we do it i think the staff has to have enough time to to prepare i think that it would be better if we're all here um the other thing i would encourage is that uh so that we don't delay this come and have another meeting and have new questions if there are council members that have questions that they want to have answered that we need to get those either out on the table now or submitted to the city manager within the next few days so that the staff would have a chance to answer all of those questions and we would be in a position to be prepared to make a decision one way or the other i don't think that we ought to keep the neighbors uh or the citizens uh at in the balance hanging for a long time nor the developer councilman wasney so back to point in the motion march 18th i'm sorry it's tired i'm tired um april april 18th not april 25th yeah i don't care the only place that we travel is uh obri or pilot point yeah and just to our city manager if there are a couple items on the 18th that maybe could go to the 25th or something like that if that's possible we will review that in the morning thank you well i'm gonna i'm sorry it's late and i'm probably i'm getting a little a little honoring i'm going to vote against this motion i think we can vote now i've got enough information to vote today um i think that the question of whether and and i have to say that i don't necessarily characterize them putting what a potential option is as far as a development as a threat or an intimidation or bullying it's just simply trying to say hey here's some information and and and this is this is maybe an option they don't know for sure if it is or not this is just information that you know there's some choices here that we can make um i've met with these developers and i've shared with them my concern with the development on the ground uh it's it's as dense if not more dense than the property at bernard and eagle which i voted against um and so i would vote against this tonight fully understanding that if the properties are as they say and they're a property of record and these zoning classifications could stand they could come in there and they have a right to build whatever will fit on that property consistent with that zoning classification and i think we all know that that's been represented here there's some variables i don't know if we're going to get the answers that we're asking for because to get those answers is going to take a tremendous amount of research on lots of record which are very difficult there's a lot of different interpretations that can go into that um but these people have they've they've come they've made a request we've had the neighbors here and uh i don't know if the answers to the questions are going to necessarily put us in a different spot and to council member briggs you're absolutely right if if we vote no and they do and they are able to do something different but that is what we 've heard from the community that's what as far as for me it's it's very dense what the current proposal is but the rule of law says if it's in existence to the point where they can they can plat it and they have a zoning by right they're not going to come back before this body unless certain other things occur on our agenda this evening that may be may be applicable in some subsequent type of filing so that's my reason why i'm going to vote against it the motion to postp one because i i don't think it's necessary i think we've got enough information on the ground to to make that decision and then the developer will have enough information on the ground to be able to make the decision moving forward to determine what they can do or if they want to come back and re look at it based upon some other opportunities and some other configurations they can do that so we have a council member gregory well i lost the second and i'm reading the writing on the wall and there's no point in carrying on a discussion and having staff do a lot of research if this is going to fail so i withdraw the motion let's vote okay all right well we we now have no motion on the table did we go back to the other motion yes okay we go back to the other motion mayor pro tem had a motion to approve this this council member gregory okay all right have a motion to approve and a motion for a second for agenda item six b let's vote on the board please point of order my screen okay jennifer changed it okay motion to adopt okay okay so the motion is to adopt the rezoning and it does require supermajority the motion fails because it is four three and that does not pass the super majority requirement thank you we're going to move on to the next agenda item agenda i tell you what let's take a break let's take a five minute break i know we've been here a long time but we'll take a five minute break okay all right wanted to welcome everybody back to this meeting of the dent city council uh it's the uh tuesday still what is the date april the fourth 2017 for about another 15 minutes or less it is about 11 47 we'll move on to agenda item six b no six c see i'm i'm losing it folks it's getting late uh hold a public hearing consider adoption of ordinance of the city of dent texas regarding amenities sub chapter 35.5 that didn't belt my code by adding a specific use permit requirement for multifamily dwelling units in downtown residential dr2 downtown commercial neighborhood dcn and downtown commercial general zoning district i will go ahead and open the public hearing so the public hearing is now open we'll hear from staff take questions from staff and then public comment thank you mayor members council i'm city manager staff uh as presented in the introduction this is a request to amend the ddc sub chapter 35.5 to add a specific use requirement for the following zoning districts for multifamily dwelling units dr2 dcn dcg and also to add a limitation l44 to further clarify the request and last something that was added not including your backup is the removal of l5 which pertains to density and the reason that we are also including this in the request is that the sup would address density and therefore eliminate some confusion if we kept the l5 in the ddc and you're going to explain that in your presentation yes okay yes again the proposed request is to add a sup for multifamily dwelling units just for background on november 8th we met or we had a city council work session we discussed collegiate housing at that time also referred to as sros at that meeting staff presented an option to add collegiate housing as a use in the sub chapter 35.5 however council directed staff to take an alternative approach and to look at multifamily and the development standards that are related to that that use as it pertains to height density and compatibility and so on february 21st staff presented again to the city council in a work session and presented the option to again add a specific use permit staff reviewed the ddc and felt that the specific use permit would be the appropriate tool to address again the building height parking and density as well as compatibility per the ddc multifamily is permitted in the following zoning districts as you see here for the most part most if not all of the zoning districts have a limitation however dr2 dcn and dcg are the only zoning districts that permit a multifamily without an sup every other one requires an sup or must have a mixed use development component to that development and so with that we are requesting again the following zoning districts have a specific use permit requirement this is really a quick slide to just show what the dcg dcn as well dr2 their regulations in regards to height lot coverage as you can see here the height for d cg is 150 i'm sorry 100 feet 100 feet for dcn and 45 for dr2 the density is 30 for dr2 72 for dcn and 150 units per acre for the dcg zoning district design standards are all covered under sub chapter 35 13 and in that sub chapter under multifamily there are categories in relation in relationship to orientation proximity slope building materials open space architectural requirements and just a note that in addition to the design standards in the ddc if there is a special purpose overlay district there could also be additional design standards that pertain to that overlay district parking requirements this again applies to multifamily and as mentioned earlier the collegiate housing also refers to sro would have to follow these parking requirements and again with a special overlay district if there is one they that particular area would have to comply with whatever parking requirements is established with that overlay district could be less it could be more specific use permits are covered under sub chapter 35 13 6 it includes procedures approval criteria submittal requirements as well as conditions that could be applied to a specific use permit and if a specific use permit is approved and such site plans landscape plan for architectural element our elevations are condition and if there are any changes to the specific use in regards to their conditions after it has been approved it must come back to the planning zoning commission and city council the same process it was approved at the initial time staff looked at again the the existing zoning districts in referred to as the den core or then urban core are shown here and the majority of the area that is shown is dcg dr2 there is a small area of dcn in in the core not many but again the majority is dc i'm sorry dcg as well as dr2 uh staff felt that the specific use permit requirement for these areas zoning districts would address the issue with multi-family and again i keep referring back to the single room occupancy or the collegiate housing that particular use is considered multi-family per the ddc as it is today so if we're talking about multi-family that type that use is also included with this uh this requirement or this particular code amendment so looking at any potential development of multi-family a specific use permit in the dcg dcn and dr2 staffs recommending a specific use permit requirement and that reason is it provides the additional tool that we feel would address the not only the land use analysis but the building height looking at that compatibility is an important review as well as parking in any other conditions that the city council or planning zoning commission may recommend be included as a condition i included this illustration here to illustrate where the existing established neighborhoods are located where there are existing historic districts where there is the also the existing overlay district so just roughly going through here obviously we've got west oak oak hickory there's the pecan neighborhood in this general area here the bolliver area ana just north of downtown we've got the area just south of tw often referred as to college heights the neighborhood to the east which is the college view addition southeast den stroud neighborhood and the hillside addition all of these areas are areas that we feel that the specific use permit could help when we look at compatibility and to an introduction to a multif amily development and that's something that that was the the reason why we recommended or are recommending a specific use permit for those zoning districts real quick again to summarize the code amendment it's amending sub chapter 35 5 to add a specific use permit for the the following zoning district and also to add limitation l44 which is stated here per minute subject to the approval of a specific use permit using the criteria which is in sub chapter 35 6 of the den development code which may include a discretionary analysis of height density and compatibility again the reason why we're introducing or adding the l44 is to further clarify the intent of adding a specific use permit now with regards to the removal of l5 which is within this zoning district the density of apartments will be calculated as one bedroom equating to half a unit now that 's that's an added density requirement for the zoning district we felt staff felt that it would cause some confusion if if were to remain this is something that could be addressed with a specific use permit on a case-by-case basis oh Dalton did you have a question i'm sorry yeah could you go back a couple of slides sure i'm headed on the screen on the i didn't see it which that one right there yes so this amendment requiring an sup would be for any apartment correct in those classifications and those classifications are indicated by the green the green yes so every new apartment that that is applied where there's an application in that green area would have to have an sup would have to come before planning and zoning and city council for an sup correct they would have to follow this the the dual public hearing process holy cow that's a lot of sup's considering multifamily just yes specifically family but a couple of times in your presentation you referred to sros or collegiate housing is this supposed to be you know i i when i hear people when we have the discussions like we just had i think some people are reacting to an apartment complex no matter what size that has where they intend to rent by the bedroom single room occup ancy for others people they don't care about that what they're concerned about is the density for others they're they're really concerned about the density but they use the sra as sro as the argument because there seems to be a lot of emotion involved in that so but but what you're saying is any apartment in that entire zone has to come before us and before and it and it has to do with density and it and there's no real criteria it's just the way people feel about if it's going to fit right the scope and scale right the the idea is to look at the existing area and address compatibility now that could be through height it could be through site design it could be a number of different things council may feel that or sorry the planning zoning commission or the council may feel that the proposed development does not require any conditions and may move forward with a specific use for it but you're correct any multifamily this is defined as three units or more any of those developments would require a specific use permit if a four plex yes and we got a couple of questions a couple of people queued up and we're still in the staff presentation it's a public hearing so we do have the public waiting to speak sure so if your questions are appropriate for this presentation or if you want to wait to after the public comment just sort of use your discretion in that regard mayor pro tem okay council member riggs well i during councilman uh gregory's comments i saw some in all and shaking her head no to some of the comments and so i just kind of wanted to ask or address that um he said there's a lot of sups it was a no so if you could come clarify is that the i'm not sure what you're referring to but she 'll she'll know yeah council president briggs i was um listening to the conversation and trying to discern when we say how many sups are going to be out there in these zoning categories for multifamily development again there won't be you know a plethora of them it all depends on the development patterns and the continued growth however the sup is a very favorable tool both for municipalities as well as developers because it gives you the flexibility and it also gives you the ability to provide additional protection protections or protective measures and what ron was explaining was that this sup requirement although it requires the dual public hearing process it would still enable the community to be more engaged when we're talking about density let's assume that it was a small piece of property that warranted for the fire protection for example and there was no other way to do it we knew that it was you know something that we had to tackle and challenge through an sup for example the sup gives you the ability to look at setbacks you can you know you can look at those set backs and you can discern how they fit where they fit you can look at your density you can look at your scaling and your massing you can enhance landscaping or you can go a completely different route and reduce or eliminate for example landscaping and have a more hardscape feature associated with it it's a tool that enables especially when you're looking at an urban design concept a more it's a hybrid tool that enables you to do a further a deeper dive into your land use analysis associated with the appropriateness of the use a lot almost most communities in the metroplex do utilize sup's for these types of measures thank you okay you can continue okay that's my wasney yeah this was um for um our planning director yeah thank you and you tagged it right at the end because my question was it's my understanding that many cities across the state of texas many cities across the country use this tool uh in their in their planning process because it does give them the flexibility that you're not going to find in a lot of other avenues the other thing it does is create another layer of citizen input and that's a good thing and so this isn't just a tool or an idea that you pulled out of your hat this is a standard tool that is used city after city after city after city i've seen it you've seen it and it's extremely effective thank you councilmember hawkins well and i understand that i think that it could be used as a tool but what my concern is is that could also be used kind of as a weapon to be really nitpicky and possibly something getting through pnz being denied as a four three and then needing a super majority as a six one that's the my only hesitation on this and and we haven't even gotten through the presentation yet and nor the public comment so um sure no i understand that i understand but i think we're we're getting ahead of ourselves here i want to get through the presentation and i want to get through the public comment i'm just sorry no no i understand i'm probably signing a little short but i'm just trying to get us get us moving yes go ahead well um i'll think down to my last slide here and that is the recommendation the planning zoning commission recommended denial five one and the reason were that the sup they felt wasn't the right tool to address collegiate housing or sros we tried to explain to them that we don't have a separate use for that particular type of development rather we have to look at it as a single use in this in particular case it'd be multifamily they also stated that the specific use permit would add more time and cost to developers that would be looking at developing smaller multifamily and so those were the reasons i felt that they were recommending denial five one staff is recommending approval of this request we feel that again it is a good land use analysis tool addresses height density and compatibility and it's consistent to the goals and objectives of the plan 2030 and that concludes my presentation okay seeing no more questions for staff at this time we'll take we have opened the public hearing i noticed a couple people are not here so i'll go ahead and read their cards craig clifton in support 407 normal i don't see craig here janis hodl berger uh the card shows opposition that's just what it shows 425 bernard street department 907 we have a card wishing not to speak brian morrison 305 mounts but says support please support planning to please support planning to zoning decisions in the small area plan we do have a card kim mckibben if you'll come down state your name and address your time will begin and we'll open it up for other additional public comment thank you guys for doing the job you do and being here this flight i appreciate it well you're here too thank you i know my name is kim mckib ben 1306 west hickory and uh you'll notice that i put a question mark on my card because an sup might be the the way to go and there might be another option what i do know as a stakeholder in the community here and someone who wants to come back to denton to live is that you're going to have to do something because we can't keep staying here to midnight multiple times throughout the year dealing with um you know what's going to get built and if it's going to fit if an sup would give you the um i don't know the ability to make decisions that don't come down to you know what are you going to do with this what are you not going to do with that you know you heard me speak earlier i am opposed to single-room occupancy because denton needs housing and we need housing for everybody and people my age or my friend's age don't want to live in an sro you know you put us in a in a one-bedroom apartment a two-bedroom apartment we're fine but i don't the sros will take up space they'll take up resources and that's all they're ever going to be used for where if you build other apartments the students are going to live in those apartments as well so once again it comes back to looking for appropriate housing for everybody not just the students um if if the special use permit will will do that you know if it will give these guys a tool in the planning and zoning commissions to to know what works and what doesn't work you know i looked at the thing and i said well you still haven't gotten you know the community over next to what we call idiots hill what's going to keep somebody from walking in there and putting up a great big apartment building so you know my question is if you're going to do that why are we restricting it to just these specific areas and why not the whole city um so i don't know what the answer is but i do know that as the city of denton we have to look at something and you guys got elected to do that sorry or i'm pleased that you're here but sorry that this falls on your on your shoulders in this way but i think the citizens are looking for some guidance and we need some things in denton we're growing really fast and it's not just students so maybe we can do something please or at least try something and if it's not right we can do something different but we really do make need to to have some kind of tool that we can utilize as a city to make some decisions about the development all right thank you thank you that's what that's what the cards are having by wishing to speak public hearing come down state your name and address and your time will begin Paul Meltzer 1914 west oak street uh i want to offer a medium term recommendation and a short term recommendation uh medium term i mean really the solution is not for y'all to have to basically micromanage every you know every property in denton so medium term i think you know the goal is to have a fully fleshed out plan so that people know where density is sought and where it's not sought and you know you don't have to micromanage every decision so so you know getting to small area plans you know getting ultimately this is not a long-term solution i guess is what i'm saying so short term i think this is you know a good thing but way too much of a good thing and my suggestion would be to limit it to say projects that are greater than i'm going to make up a number 10 units you know so you don't have to look at every single little project that comes through i mean the the intention of having some kind of a backstop uh you know where oversight is needed and there is no real plan you know it's good but i'm sure you want to manage the workload to where your attention is really warranted thanks thank you public hearing anybody wishing to speak come down state your name and address anybody else wishing to speak we will now close the public hearing mayor pro tem and i just want to clarify the consequences of this i think i'm pretty sure i know where i want to vote on it but you so i so i can own a property in the downtown area generally speaking we're we see apartments going up right pretty frequently i now currently can do that by right if i have the the right zoning i don't have to go through the public process in order to get that this would now trigger me to go through pnz and through council for what end what goal what are we trying to protect or what are we trying to probably trying to solve we're trying to solve the issue that we've been hearing just this evening and and others in the previous council meetings and that is how do we balance you know provide compatibility with these developments that come in and into the established neighborhoods the effect that they have with regards to traffic parking height you know shadow and all that this can be all addressed through the specific use permit analysis so we're trying to protect the established neighborhoods the historic districts the existing overlay districts and frankly my thoughts on that the historic districts have the most robust protection out of any neighborhood in the city by virtue of the fact that they came under that willingly right the thought that all of a sudden we're going to allow people in an historic district to apply those standards i think this will have a chilling effect not where we want it we want density in the downtown area in my opinion and i think the vast majority of citizens agree with that but this will create the possibility of someone having something zoned properly get 30 people out here to show up to these meetings not representative of the feelings of the 120 000 people we represent and this will be a tool to kill good projects and that that's what i think it's being introduced to do it's let us come down and kill this kill this kill this kill this and i think that's the unfortunate effect it's not i don't feel like we have a spirit of let's work together to create better projects frankly speaking with some of the folks that come here for these sorts of issues if i thought that was the case and i've thought there was a legitimate concern relating to density relating to form relating to these sorts of things instead i'm hearing what's the concern with sros parties beer bottles i don't know what we're trying to solve here so anyways i'm not wondering where you stand on this yeah sorry i'm just kidding if i can just clarify one thing we're not saying that this applies to the historic districts it would be affecting the historic districts of course the historic districts aren't zoned dr2 dcn so it's outside of it okay okay councilmember gregory i'm so mesmer ized by mr rodent i can't even remember what i wanted to say okay we'll move on then no okay yeah the the notion this seems to be as much started by sros as it is by density and i don't see how it addresses sros at all because and i i sort of understand what miss wasney's saying but then i don't because you know you're saying that that these are not multi-family they're sros but we have a lot of apartments that were built 50 years ago two story apartments two bedroom one bath 30 in a unit or 40 or 60 that used to be rented by the apartment and now they're renting by the bedroom they become sros they don't look any different there's not any more people living in them than there was before there may still be uh people that live in them where they're where their boyfriend or girlfriend comes over and stays but that was happening before anyhow you know so i don't see that that that the proposal here that has to do with density and things like that address the sro situation at all and frankly i'm not sure that we i don't know how we address it you can take a a house in a neighborhood in idiots hill my neighborhood we're all here because we're not all there uh you know and and uh it's a three bedroom house and it's two bathrooms and you can you like that thank you uh and you can rent each one of those bedrooms out separately and all of a sudden that house on emerson lane is an sro and and the city would never know and the city can't control it and as long as it's less than no more than four unrelated people it's it's not an issue that the city deals with at all and and even if it was more than four unrelated people the city has no real way of you know effective way so far of really checking on that so i don't i'm not sure what we're solving but what i think we're doing is adding another um another hurdle and and at the same time it's a hurdle that doesn't give very much guidance to developers as to what they need to be doing and what they need to be avoiding so that's but that's my initial thank you councilman wasney the question has been asked several times what problem are we trying to solve and the problem that we're trying to solve are these monster projects the projects that are five stories that house four or five hundred students create an issue on roads and so it's not the triplex that has been converted into an sro it's not the duplex or the sixplex that's been converted into an sro that's not what's bringing the citizens into this chamber to talk about it i'll just call them monster projects because they're the they're the big big so months ago i brought to council i i want to talk about sros and we did at a work session but it didn't go anywhere and and possibly because we didn't refine it into maybe we need to talk about just the monster sros and not all sros because i agree a lot of the smaller buildings and units are being converted into the single bed concept but again that's not what's making my phone ring or my my emails blow up or what's filling the chamber because that doesn't dump 800 cars a day onto a roadway that's a two lane sleepy road it's the monster projects so what i would like to see staff work on and come forward is some kind of proposal not just a blanket sro but actually something that deals with and not to say they're not welcome in our city because they are but if we look at that green map that we had up there and refine that a little bit in terms of because that's the area that's around the two universities to establish because it is much more fair to a developer if they come to the city because a lot of these developers are from out of town or out of state and if they come and they have a very clear and concise road map here's what's allowed if this is what you know you do here that here are places in these university neighborhoods that you know it's it's compatible because it it meets the city's guidelines so that could be a path for the city to follow so that it it creates that fairness for developers it gives our citizens also that comfort that we've made some decisions on where these behemoths are allowed to come in and where they're not allowed to come in and i think that provides some balance because development is all about balance and i think it's common sense but i think it also addresses the concerns that just having a blanket sro or a blanket sup on anything adds just a lot of extra work and anxiety for the small developer who's going to go out there and build you know an apartment with three or six or eight units so that is certainly something i'd like to see in as an alternative to just a blanket sup council member riggs so we've heard small area plan come across several different times tonight is this something that can be addressed with a small area plan is it the same type of thing i think it's heading in that direction uh ultimately a smaller plan is a guiding document uh what we probably need is overlay you know an overlay district similar to the fry street overlay district which establishes the standards and the regulations that i think we're trying to get to and then we wouldn't need an sup for all of these different developments if if we had if we wanted to establish standards that you know is getting to where we want to an overlay district would be that sup is just a tool that allows you to have again the flexibility to identify what those standards are but if we were able to draft those in advance and that could be included as part of an overlay district okay thank you i'm going to have the last word on this before the motion because we're getting it's getting late i'm not going to vote for this i'm going to tell you why this isn't the problem the process has worked we've talked about sros which i still have an issue with that but there were there been two of them that have come before this council in planning and zoning both of them have gone down so we're trying to find some way to fix an s ro problem but we're fixing it by the process that we have in place i'm not being hostile towards you i just uh and so because it's late i'm short-tempered so i apologize i'm glad there's not a whole lot of people in here um so and in last in the last agenda item we heard follow the p and z recommendation well the p and z recommendation on this one the same people who voted against this are voting against this as well most of them probably there's might be some so i'm going to vote against because i think if if you really want to take care of this issue from the standpoint of maybe not even have to have this conversation which i don't mind having the conversation i don't it's our job to sit here and listen to everybody concerned and to listen to the developer and to make a decision what we think is in the best interest of the community your density of 100 units per acre is the problem it's not sup it's not anything else it's when you say you can put 100 units on an acre now it and that's a really big policy this that's a policy question i mean that's when you you're going up and then what you do is you get people who are buying land and they got to put parking garages on these places to be able to satisfy the parking requirement what does that do the cost shoots it up how do you recoup that cost you increase the density and and the like so there's way too many small we've never had this conversation about a 10 unit a 20 unit a 50 unit a 90 unit we we've not had the conversation on those in the dr2 zoning which is 30 units per acre i believe dr2 is 30 units per acre so this is an attempt to address an issue number one that i think our current process addresses pretty well at least by the experience that i've seen in the last two times when these big apartment communities come before this council i mean they've and some of us may think that we should have them that's fine that's part of the process as well but to have an sup say well we're gonna we want to address this issue which only applies to 300 unit apartment buildings that have 700 people in them to apply an sup across the board it's it's it's an overreach of and and i think we're just trying to satisfy some kind of we're trying to throw something out there to the community to say this is what we're doing i think it's working i mean no nobody likes to sit in here and talk for three hours but it works we heard everybody's input this whole zoning issue if somehow they can get by but so that's why i'm going to vote against it because i think it's it's it's an overreaction and i think we can find more narrowly tailored ways to specifically address the problems that we've heard in these last two what people are calling as sros which was and if you look at them they've been on about two acres of land and they've been wanting to put about 200 units 100 units per acre that's been what has really caused the consternation because you're trying to fit all that and in some communities it works i mean you go to you know i was just in london it works i mean you have these high and indenting it may in some areas that may work but i really trust the process on this and if a neighborhood doesn't want a development with 100 units per acre and you say well they can do it by right try building 100 units on one acre of land it's not going to work period i mean you can't build enough underground but you're going to go underground for parking and it's just so i think this is a an idea that is appreciate staff's work on it so it's not anything about staff i just think we need to not overreact to a problem that i think we have already seen by our experience really can take care of itself at least in my opinion so that's why i will be voting against this motion or i don't even know there's not a motion on the table yet but council member gary i'm really confused because y'all brought this to us at a work session like three weeks ago i want to say and everyone here gave staff direction minus me i said i didn't like sups everyone gave staff direction to bring it to us so i'm confused as to like what happened because if we didn't want it the time to tell them would have been three weeks ago can't answer that i mean it i don't think we had this in depth of discussion i think it was a it was a discussion that was sort of piggybacked on an sro discussion it came about from the sro discussion and so but we're here now and this will take about 10 minutes depending on what we do so i'm not i'm not too worried about i mean if we had staff do work i apologize for that but if i can add just two comments or two responses to your comment these two sros that we heard today and in prior they came to us because they were requesting a rezoning yes one and they were looking to amend an existing overlay district right so if there was one development that didn't have that then they can go and develop you know like you said by right the other thing i heard was you know our concern or what we're trying to resolve here is these large you know multifamily development either sro or multifamily it could also ultimately also be multifamily so we're looking at large multifamily i just want to just summarize what i heard yeah okay uh any more questions for staff comments council member hawkins yeah thank you mayor i move denial of item 6c but i do appreciate staff's work on that and i don't know what happened in that work session to be honest right now i can barely think straight so mayor protan thank you i was opposed during that work session as well and i second that all right well we have a motion to second to deny agenda item 6c let's vote on the board please motion carries six one all right are we down to concluding items yes concluding items councilman wasney june 1st is hands free and i still haven't seen any announcements coming out reminding our citizens that you know june 1st it's the law changes so if we could kind of beat the drum on that a little bit i also want an update do we have the signs ordered that are going to go out you know um yeah yeah so if i if i can get an update on that um and then i would like to circle back to the discussion we just had that we need to address the the monster project and so maybe staff can kind of brainstorm a little bit because that seems to be the the hot button on the the issue and so doesn't have to come back right away and i probably won't be in this seat when when it does come back but it's i think worthy of another work session discussion so i appreciate that thank you council member briggs so earlier tonight we approved our auditor our audit plan um and in that plan there was a section carved out for 75 hours for him to serve on boards or committees um or what have you my question is um he mentioned rfp committee what do we need to do as a council to decide how or where he spends those hours um and do we nominate him to committees does he choose is it so just some more information and clarification on that to get started um and second i would like a crime report on sros please crime report sure well yeah okay okay all right i'll address that in a second council member gary yeah i'd like a legal memo uh regarding age discrimination and how we are allowed to specifically exclude student zoning from certain areas um i'd like a work session on our mowing policies at the park i know we got a a work a memo on it but i'd like to have an actual work session about it in conjunction with the discussion about our tree policies like to have a legal look into the possibility of no compression engines breaking on the highways so no jake brake ordinance um have a question about the development code and if it requires family fun family friendly bathrooms um on new construction so like breastfeeding rooms basically and then i'd like to also have a work session discussion about the possibility of adding fitness equipment to the walkways at our parks i know a lot of cities have those they're like stationary um so just you know cost feasibility locations and additionally like at least a memo about the possibility of putting blue lights on the square there's been some discussion about safety there and the blue lights where you have you know you can call 911 right away if something happens like somebody's getting creepy um that's it okay i just have well i wrote it down on my other agenda packet i have one for sure i just wanted to get an update on the city hall west discussion we've talked about what to do with that and i know the county's mentioned to us about a an old fire truck that they have from the city of denton and we've talked about several different things that we could do with that facility and just want to re-engage that because i think it's sort of lost a little momentum so would like to have a work session or something on that and on the the crime report just sort of a sort of a clarification because sro we don't have properties that are that are either by certificate of occupancy or some other kind of legal categorization that's more of a leasing mechanism so there are a lot of apartment buildings that in fact we had a i guess we had a list of apartments that were sros some of them are the ones people are commonly referring to as these big ones that have been built recently but then as councilmember gregory referred to there's several i mean hundreds of units if not thousands that have been bought and converted to that so what i guess if you maybe could get offline with with the city manager to give them some parameters on what what that looks like well i i heard it mentioned tonight and i was just looking for some actual data and facts to to back that up so however that let me know i'll talk to him about it yeah yeah okay good all right anything else 12 35 we will stand adjourned