Apr 18, 2017 City Council on 2017-04-18 2:00 PM

Good afternoon. I wanted to welcome everyone to this meeting of the Denton City Council on Tuesday, April the 18th, 2017. We do have a quorum. It is 2 p.m. in the afternoon. First item on the agenda is citizen comments on consent agenda items. We have one card. Mr. Willie Hutsbuth, if you'll come state your name and address , your time will begin. Is it three? Yes, sir. Mayor and council, my name is Willie Hutsbuth. I live at 623 Newton. Very quickly, agenda item A on the consent agenda. I think that there the citizens need to know a little bit about what's happening there, so I would ask you to remove that from the consent agenda and discuss it. Agenda C, that's having to do with hiring or getting issued a contract. I want to make sure you have minorities considered. I believe that's right. D, I was at the meeting where we talked about closing the street. I think it needs to be discussed orally or now so that the citizens can see what you've decided on that instead of putting on the consent agenda. And G, that's hiring again, I believe. I'm not sure. I have to go fast for three minutes. I think that's hiring. And then L, I don't think alcohol. I just don't like alcohol. I have a bad experience. Not me. My dad was an alcoholic and he really abused us and my mother and I don't like alcohol of any kind being sold to anyone. It's my preference, so I would say don't. Let's discuss L. And lastly, one of you council members, or maybe more than one, but I think just one, told Brandon, the officer, two things. One, to arrest me on the spot and drag me out of here. He didn't do that. He just laughed. Thank goodness. But secondly, you told him to stop filling out the cards and assisting us for that, for in that process. What on earth could be wrong with that? He was helping us to figure out how to do that and one of you stopped him. You said don't do that. Because if you do it for one, you should do it for all. Well, he was doing it for everybody that I saw him do it. That's just petty. And if you want us to talk in these areas, if you want us to say anything at all, then you should allow him to do that. But that's okay. You don't have to lie. I just want to make sure it's on the record that one of you told him to stop doing that. Shame on you. Secondly, thirdly, that, that, that. Turn this one more thing. Oh yes. City manager, you're doing an excellent job in many , many areas. The closed session for sure that there's one thing that I have a problem with the closed session. I'll talk about that tonight, that I'm, I have a concern about. But I need to just give you your props. You, since you've come on board, things are going a whole lot better. So is the city, the attorney is doing well and the auditor. Here's what I mean by doing well. You allow citizens input. You try to steer things to where citizens can have input and you seem to, to allow us to say things and to question things and you're not threatened by that. So I think that's good and I wanted to tell you that my son told me, he said you got to quit complaining about stuff and you ought to say something that's good sometimes. So now I'm saying it. Make, mark that down. It won't happen again. All right. Thank you, sir. Okay. Request for clarification of agenda items for this agenda, April the 18th, 2017 from council members. Council member Hawkins. Thank you, mayor. On consent agenda item H, the noise ordinance exception, they applied for it from Sunday from noon to nine and staff is recommending from noon to six. So if this stays on the consent agenda and is passed, what are we passing? Is it the one that staff recommended then? Okay. I just wanted to be clear on that. Okay. I didn't see the, is that, what's that answer to that question? Dalton shook his head at me because he's my mentor. Go ahead. It would be the staff's recommendation. Okay. So we're going to be voting on noon to six. Yes, sir. All, all further questions, I'll point towards Dalton for the rest of the day. Okay. But thank you. Anyone? Yes, council member Gregory. Thank you. Maybe Joey can answer this question. On consent agenda item F, the cost for the police motorcycles. Is that fully equipped with all of the necessary additional items that would be required for the police to do their job? I couldn't tell from the backup if it was or if it was not. Yes, sir. In this particular quote, that includes all the auxiliary equipment. Okay. Thank you. Council member Wasney. Since we've had a citizen request on item A, if we could just have a brief explanation on what this ordinance and agreement is on TMPA, staff can do it now if they're here. Thank you. Good afternoon. Yes, this is a interconnection agreement with Texas Municipal Power Agency. Since 1975, I believe we've had a power sales agreement with Texas Municipal Power Agency. Within that power sales agreement, it addressed all issues not only related to providing power from the power plant, but also covered areas of interconnection on the transmission. As we look forward to TMPA, we look at possibly separating those businesses, those functions of generation and transmission, and we identified the need to have an agreement for interconnection that would cover the transmission part by itself. In other words, if the power sales agreement goes away, this agreement steps into its place to address the transmission issues. Any others? I've got you. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mayor. Can I request that item U be removed from consent agenda for individual consideration? No staff presentations needed. Item U. Okay. And also, I've got a couple. Anybody else? Now, it's my understanding there's going to be a recusal on agenda item S. Is that right? So do we need to pull that? Yes, sir. Okay. And also, on agenda item, I'd like to pull agenda item C, which is the parking issue that we talked about in work session, because I know that staff was going to bring back sort of what that looked like once we did all those measurements coming in from the side. So that will give us a chance to at least view that data. I don't expect it to be a long presentation, but just so we'll have an understanding of what it looks like on the ground as far as what we talked about last time. And then on agenda item-- okay, so we're pulling so far C, S, and U. Is that correct? Okay. C, S. And then on agenda-- on items for individual consideration, this is just sort of some questions I'm going to have in advance. So just if we could have staff that maybe will have some answers on that. But this is the Enterprise Pipeline Texas LLC, I believe. I think we probably all got an email just sort of with some links to different types of data for this company and some of the monies that have been paid out based upon whether you categorize them as accidents, spills, or whatever. So I'd like to sort of get some information on that. And if that type of data for a company is part of the RFQ or RFP process-- I don't know how this was actually solicited-- but just where does that factor in into that whole process? That would be helpful to have an understanding of that if it does at all. And if-- because I 'm not sure-- Phil, if you don't mind, was this one that was bid out so we had other people respond? We only have two pipelines we have access to in that area. Okay. So we dealt with one that was more favorable to deal with in that area. The other one's going through it being bought out at that time. Okay. So we have done some research and would have that available now or tonight? No, tonight will be fine, I think. Because yeah, this is different. I mean, if it's a pipeline that's there and we either connect with them or someone else, then it's not-- that's good. That's good information. No, it's a 36 inch pipeline that runs through all across Denton County. Okay. It was there before, it'll be there afterwards. And we'll have some data on that. Okay, thank you. All right, any other clarifications of agenda items? All right, then we will move on to agenda item three of our work session, which are work session reports. 3A, receive report , hold discussion, give staff direction regarding downtown reinvestment grants for 112 West Oak and 421 East Oak. Good afternoon. He told me it was at the lower bottom. There he is. All right, we're gonna get started here. My name is Julie Glover. I'm with the Economic Development Department. Our objective today, bringing this forward, is to just give you the information and get some direction on two pending downtown reinvestment grant applications. I will tell you that one of the applicants is present today. So earlier this year, this fiscal year, we were given authority to spend $100,000 during fiscal year '16-' 17. Our commitments to date are $20,000 to JT Clothiers, which has been paid, $25,000 to Armadillo Ale, which is approved, and we're just waiting on their completion of the project so we can get all the documentation that they did what they said they were going to do, and $25,000 on Denton County Brewing across the street, which is hopefully going to open next weekend before Arts and Jazz. That too is just waiting on the completion. So that gives us a balance of $30,000 right now. 112 West Oak, which is kind of dead center on Oak Street, straight across from the courthouse, is applied for a grant. This is what it looked like pretty recently. If you've been by there lately, you've seen that some of these panels are coming down and they're exposing the historic brick that's behind there. They're trying to get back to how this looked in the 1943 tax record photo. So what they want to do is remove the existing facade and restore that exposed original brick, open the upstairs and the transom windows that are covered up right now in this area, replace the awning with the historically correct awning, reroute the electrical and plumbing, which is now in between the existing drop ceiling and the original tin ceiling. They want to expose that tin ceiling, add fire suppression. They do not have a current tenant, but they have talked to several people for this use , and Mr. Withers is here. So they submitted that application on January 10th of this year. The task force reviewed it on March the 9th and Economic Development Partnership Board looked at it last week. Their eligible expenses total $98,445. The total cost of the project I still think is a little low because once they get a tenant, that number is probably going to go up and they have asked for a grant of $25,000. 421 East Oak you may know is the Monroe Pearson building. Real quick question on that. If we could go back to the timelines of okay so we it was in our last budget where we talked about the $100,000 or that we froze the $100,000 I believe. So if we could go back to the probably one of your first or second slides. Okay right there. So the remaining so these were in the hopper, the 20, the 25, and the 25 when we did the $100,000 or they got in the hopper when we did the $100,000? Technically they should have come out of the previous fiscal year, but because the projects were not finished in that fiscal year, they rolled over because the way I understand it we can't take money out of a previous year. We have to keep it stay in the year we're in. Okay so that's good information. So then let me make sure I understand that right. So when we gave direction to just spend $100,000 these were sort of in the queue, but they extended past the fiscal year timeline which means we couldn't reach back and take it out of where exactly do we know what what that lag was was it when did they get in right at the end? Well JT Clothiers was pretty close. I want to say they they were just right after October 1. Okay. Now Armadillo Ale has obviously been going on for a while since they're still not open yet. Okay okay and then so then we've got this remaining balance which was as of what what was that balance I mean the 30,000 are the the total balances no it says 30,000 was the remaining balance was was all this was that did this 100, 000 or this what is that 70,000 because what I'm trying to find out is when these other two grants came in at what point were we in the disbursement of these three grants that you're talking about in other words were they already basically all fully dispersed so we got a 30,000 balance and then these two grants came in and people just decided well we're going to go ahead and prove for the 50,000 or whatever it is and even though we've got 30,000 left. So the the JT Clothiers and Armadillo Ale were approved in the previous fiscal year but because the work was not completed that money wasn't taken out of that year. Okay. These were the two that you guys looked at specifically and at that point you said we're going to free up 20,000 look at the grant you have right now both the task force and the EDP board looked at these and said they're both really great projects so if the grant becomes available again we would like to give them the full amount that they're entitled to so this is how they bumped from 10,000 each to these two numbers. Okay. But they did happen in the previous year. So it helped. Councilmember Gregory. Thank you, Mayor. Refresh my memory because it seems to me that while we authorized 100,000 that there was actually a balance of more than 100,000. Yes sir. They're right at this moment there's 204,573 that's technically in that line item. Okay thank you. Fund balance is that what we would call a fund balance? Yes sir. Okay. Yes, Councilmember Gary. I guess I'm confused the backup said it was 300 something from the fund balance. And I'm sorry I did check some of that that money has come out it was 224 I think and then we had 24 come out and Chuck's going to answer that. Chuck is standing in the wings anxiously, passionately. We had at the end of the fiscal year the 224,000 and some change fund balance. We just budgeted 100,000 in the current fiscal year. The council had some discussions about whether or not to budget that full amount of fund balance or just budget the 100,000 and they decided to budget the 100,000. We also have not transferred that fund is set up as a special revenue fund where we transfer 100,000 of revenues that come in from the alcoholic beverage tax over to this fund. We have not made that transfer yet and we'll hold some budget discussions on that. Okay. And in terms of the questions when the council approves those those fundings it's not until they complete the work that we're actually authorized to pay them so that's why that money couldn't be we couldn't accrue it toward the previous fiscal year. We had to meet certain requirements of the agreement so really for accounting reasons that's why it's paid out in the current fiscal year. Yes, Councilmember Waske. And if my memory serves the discussion also included do we just spend this on downtown or do we also take a broader look at other areas of the city and other businesses in the city and so I believe that 's why we agreed to the 100,000 and the 100,000 only. Thank you. Okay all right thank you so much for that clarification. So 421 East Oak as I said is at the dead end of Oak and the railroad. You might know it as the Monroe Pearson building. It's a very old building. They submitted their application on February 28th. Task force looked at this on March the 9th and EDP looked at it last week. So what they are going to do with this building is renovate the dock on the west side, repair and renovate the south dock, enhance with ADA ramps and stairs to the front door, replace the overhead doors and all original openings with new windows, clean and preserve this original brick, put onings in all the original locations on the east and south side. The new use is going to be an event center which is expected to have a lot of weddings, a lot of weekend business there. They will accommodate approximately 1200 occupants. They also think that they're going to have a lot of weekend people coming for the entire weekend using hotels, restaurants, etc. And the parking which is currently shared by Twice as Nice Resale and Zara Coffee which are kind of over to the back and side and two apartments are going to be improved and they're going to bring that up to 239 total spaces for this project. So their eligible expenses come to $736.396. The total cost of the project is about $1.2 million and they are asking for a $25 ,000 grant. So both of these projects scored really high. They scored in the 25 to 30 point range out of a possible 30 which gives them the opportunity for the most amount of money. This information was presented to the downtown task force and the EDP saying here's the money, here's what we spent, here's what's left and both of them asked that we come to you and ask if you could adopt a budget amendment for that additional $20,000. So the options for these two particular projects today are just to accept that recommendation of those two bodies or to divide that balance of funds evenly or to award the maximum amount to the higher scoring project. In this case was 421 East Oak or award the maximum to the project with the application with that was submitted first which is 112 West Oak or any combination you can think of thereof. Councilmember Wasney and then Mayor Prodean. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Sorry, Councilmember Begay. I have a question about the Monroe project. That's in the TIF district or the TURS district isn't it? It is. So I'm curious why they applied to the downtown reinvestment grant fund as opposed to the TURS board. Probably because that's a more well-known funding mechanism especially on the TIF things when it's a private property it gets a little, I think a little more complicated. The TIF is primarily set up to do things like public improvements, streets, sidewalks, etc. and when we start getting into the private sector it's just a little more complicated as far as the incentive process goes. Thank you. Councilmember Wasney. I have questions on the Monroe project as well with parking . If it's an event center for 1,200 people parking is just such an issue and I know you talked about the how does planning weigh in with all of the parking requirements and all of that? Nobody for planning here. Okay so I'm not positive this may be in the central business district if it is it is exempt from parking but I don't know that without checking the zoning on it. I know there will be requirements for parking they also have access to another lot that Mr. Beatty owns that is on that's kind of to the side and south of of this project that he owns that the property all the way up to East Hickory behind greater Denton Arts Council building so if you include that where he has access and it's easily walkable between those two buildings. And Roman may know the answer he's no. Sure. I just want to add one thing that the facility is pretty close to the terminus of the rail line and I remember when they presented it was one of the meetings that they've already have a lot of bookings already so it's looks like it's going to be a really successful enterprise but I think you know Denton is is uh here at that terminus is such a critical great place to be and so you could imagine people from town south of here wanting to come and have their event up here and a lot of people could just take that rail up here and avoid the parking all together and stroll over to the business so that's just one added thing on the parking I want to make. Yeah if there is parking required I'm sure that they have already submitted their plans to planning so I'm sure that's been brought to their attention if there 's extra parking required. I'm hesitant to approve funding until that question is is totally solid. Thank you. A question as to how this would normally go out if this wasn't a year in which we've given a pretty strict expenditure relating to this and and specifically said don't spend other previous year's funds just spend a hundred thousand dollars would we have counted something that was approved in a previous calendar year like the armadillo project as part of that next year's expenditures and wouldn't have allowed this to go because it would have come gone over that hundred thousand or would we have how would we have approached that in another year I guess is the question. How would we approach this? In the past we have not because we haven't had that hundred thousand limit the money if the money was there we could just go ahead and move forward with it and and let it go through the budget process. So if we so when we approve the hundred thousand dollars cap we either consciously or unconsciously or however we had whatever we had in our mind armadillo was on the books as a pre-approved project already so the third was it thirty thousand dollars or twenty five and then JT Clothier's also was already a pre-approved prior to that hundred thousand dollars so to me this is a bit of a kind of an accounting shell game concept if we're talking about staying true to the to the direction we gave which was don't spend over a hundred thousand dollars. The fact that we're attributing those to this year because technically the projects aren't completed in the previous year it seems like if we were to go ahead and grant this we're still technically under that hundred thousand dollar limit that we gave them understanding that those two were already there prior to that so to me these two projects are kind of the quintessential reason for this I mean you've got one which had an old facade it's I think there's only one more left that has a facade it's the McNeil building right it's it's remarkable the change that that creates on the downtown area and there's we really don't have any other tools to encourage that. This one has been one everyone for years has been saying how do we create this into something finally we've got an investor who's willing to spend upwards of a million dollars plus to do something it seems like a great way to really spark some more continued interest east of Bell so I'm certainly in favor of giving the leeway to be able to fund both these projects I guess one I got another technical question you list out the business names but from what I understand this grant specifically ties to the building correct? You're right. Not to the business. I did that because most that's the way most people think of it. If I just say the address you might not immediately know what they are. Which is why we're able to say it's not really a small business loan per se it's a place it's it's a preservation it's really a preservation grant. And on the one that's the one facing the square I'm sorry I forget the address. How did this come to be a request was there conversations with the owner were there other possible conceptions of what they might do with that facade that this conversation kind of came about talk to me about how it works. So when they first came to me about this and we talked about the grant and I'm sorry I don't know what happened to my my current picture it's just kind of gone away. So we did I did some research I called the courthouse we found this picture from 1943. Roman accompanied the owners and the contractor we literally went upstairs and took a crowbar and tore things off the wall to see what was behind there where the windows were looked up in the under the acoustic tile ceiling to see the tin ceiling is up there and pretty intact. What the shape of these windows were and then Roman went home and got a saw and came back and climbed up on the awning and he cut a little square I don't know if you didn't notice it from the street but he cut a little square about like this and they pulled that out and we could see the brick was behind it the brick was still there it wasn't really sometimes with these slip covers they're they're really pretty stickily attached to the old brick and it damages the brick. We saw that on 102 locust where the foot clinic is now they ended up having to do a veneer. So that was the first test to see is the brick back there can it be saved and or do they have to do a veneer over it which would lessen the historic impact in my mind. The brick looks to be in pretty good shape there are some places where it's a little rough there is a technique where they can flip those bricks over and put the shiny side out and if they're they're really damaged so they're they're really they were very excited when we came up with this picture because what they intended to do is really put another slip cover over it and so the fact that we can go back to how this was in the 40s is pretty significant. So I guess my point in asking that is it seems like we have limited tools in our toolbox in terms of kind of preservation downtown it's not a historic district so save for them being an actual historic building there are some cases in which somebody could come in and tear down a building and we would have no tools to encourage otherwise and it sounds like what happened here was an iterative process going back and forth with the property owner saying what if what if we did this oh by the way we have this very small grant in the big scheme of things to help encourage and I'm aware of another project in the downtown area that potentially could be bad and we don't have much tools to incentivize people to do otherwise so that's why I continue to be in favor of this grant and thinks it's done wonders so anyways I've made my case for this. Council Member Briggs and then we'll go down the line. On that building the Moreau did you say that they're going to be doing new sidewalks? I'm sure they will be required to do some sidewalks. Does that count as public improvement? Maybe from that part of it. Maybe it's on private property so I would have to check about that. I know they have to bring it up to the American Disabilities Act the current standards on that so I'm sure some sidewalks and ramps and things will be included. So let me and my next question is with with all of the preservation grants that we're giving which which are great once those grants are accepted and the renovations are done are there is there any restrictions on the on that property that would prohib it say if that building sold another person coming in and just wiping out all of that preservation that we had granted and that the previous owner had been done? I believe they sign if they if there's any changes if they undo the changes they made within three years they have to pay the grant back to the city. Okay thank you. We haven't had that happen. Council Member Hawkins. Thank you Mayor. I sit on the EDP board and so I'm one of the people who voted what my hope was is that council reconsider what we had decided back then just JT Clothiers was so close to that deadline with council freezing that fund the there being plenty of money in the fund balance and both of these projects scoring so highly and especially that 421 project I think that that could really spur some development in that area and they are putting over a million dollars into that project. I didn't want the other project though to not get as much because of the timing of it or just because of the other project too and it scored so high. So I just really hope that this council does reconsider just I don't know just amending it or I don't know what to do about the dating of those other funding of those other projects but when somebody's willing to go into these old buildings and they just need a little bit of help I applied for five grand myself and it was a great help at one of the restaurants so that was my hope of recommending or trying to encourage EDP to recommend this this way to council so anyway. Could you go back to the photo of the building up on the square? I remember no the one with photo there you go I remember that that in that building you know it's a hardware and seed downstairs and because of the lawyer's office upstairs this was a great synergy because they had a chute that went straight from the lawyer's office down to the manure fertilizer area. It's great synergy. There's no parking that those folks are providing up there is there? No sir they are in the CBD which is exempt. And yet at the other site Mr. Beatty has over 200 spots available so I'm not I'm not really concerned about the parking because people figure out a way to park to go to the events that they want to go to and use those facilities. I think that we ought to follow the EDP board recommendations of supplying the full $50,000 there's there's money in the fund balance to do that and I think that what we ought to do is schedule a work session as soon as any council members or citizens come to us having identified some other area of town some other neighborhood some other district that that they feel like is worthy of us targeting grant money for renovations like we've done downtown that's clearly worked it's clearly continuing to work and I think that that you know we've been kind of we didn't give directions to a particular place because we haven't we don't know of any other place that that that calls for the attention that downtown does. There may be one I've tried to go through my mind but I but I would invite citizens to come up with ideas also maybe we could even put something out through social media asking for folks to give input because there will be money left to do that from this fund balance and and more money coming in according to what we do in next year's budget so I would recommend that we go with the full recommendation of the economic development partnership board. Any other I've got a couple comments anybody else have any comments? The reason I can support this is because of the timing element otherwise I wouldn't support it because we decided on the hundred thousand dollars and that is what we budgeted what what we were deciding in the last budget cycle was to not dip into the fund balance we were saying no if we're budgeting a hundred thousand then that's what we should stick with but because of the timing issue on them I'm okay with that because I can see that you don't necessarily want to penalize people in a fiscal year who have good projects because another project in the previous fiscal year overshot its completion date if it were more than just a de minimis amount of whatever it is what is it 20 000 then I'd be more concerned but I think the parking issue is a good question I don't know if I necessarily predicate my position on that but it is a very good question because there are a couple hundred spots around there but there's also other businesses there that who use those spots and if you've got a thousand people and you got 250 spots let's just say you need 600 spots somebody's going to need 400 more spots and we've heard from DCTA that there's not enough parking at the downtown terminus and so that that that is a question I'd like some clarification on and I don't think this is an action is this an action item tonight I don't believe it is just to give us advice about how to okay okay should we proceed with these or do you want to reallocate that 30 000 between the two just I need some direction so that when we write up the agreements and the the policies between the property owners and the city that the numbers are accurate sure and maybe so correct me if I'm wrong but I hear I certainly hear your your concern with approving that moving forward without those questions being answered from I'm sorry you're okay with with moving forward okay it seems like the consensus is to move forward in the preparation of the grants but when we present them for approval I want to have some more clarification on the parking issue and some of those developmental questions as far as what of any of the four is it 21 for 21 is is any of it categorized as public improvements or is it all categorized as as private improvements so that that will help us have a little bit better understanding of the data yes councilmember Gary that's a really important question for me because I do want to know if this project is going to be eligible for other economic incentive monies because I think that's relevant to the money that they get from the downtown group so right do you have your direction yes sir thank you okay thank you any other questions on this no all right thank you we'll move on then to agenda item 3b receive report hold discussion and give staff direction regarding why I cannot talk today fire sprinkler tap fees and now I'm not going to be able to talk at all now that I've said something about it good afternoon mayor members of the council I'm here to talk about everyone's favorite subject fire sprinkler tap fees this afternoon can't think of any what better way to spend a Tuesday afternoon want to go over kind of what a fire sprinkler tap actually is there was a request for work session item on this topic made on February 14 2017 and a fire sprinkler tap is a form of a water line tap fee so if we have to connect to our water system we do so by making a tap into that system that can be either a tap for domestic supply it can be a tap to supply a fire sprinkler system there are fees associated with making that tap and those depend on the size of the tap that is actually made into the line and then whether that tap is made in a situation where paving has to be removed and replaced or whether it's in a situation where we do not have to remove paving the fees themselves are set in the rate schedule each year and they're based on a average installation cost so when we're doing this work we actually calculate the cost associated with it for equipment personnel all aspects of cost needed to install this tap and then we base our fee on the average cost assorting according to that tap size so each year they're adopted these tap fees are adopted in the utility fee schedule that you see as a part of the adoption of the budget and that is adopted by ordinance and if site conditions differ substantially from average conditions or if there are specific requirements requested by fire for the installation of these items then the charges are based on those actual cost of installation so there's a lot of history particularly with denton with regards to the fire sprinkler tap fees we charged fees prior to 1991 and then there was a new fire sprinkler system ordinance that was actually adopted in 91 during the adoption of that ordinance because of the perception of the council of the hardship associated with these new requirements and new systems that were going into place as a result of the adoption of the fire code there was a desire to waive the fees for the taps for a period of time unfortunately that period of time was not specified and so at the time the sprinkler tap fees were more stringent than other metroplex cities back in 91 they exceeded the uniform building code and the uniform fire code when adopted and language was added as a part of that ordinance that basically stated upon written request to the superintendent of the utilities department or written request to the superintendent the utilities department shall waive the installation charges for water taps exclusively dedicated to fire sprinkler taps the superintendent shall have the sole discretion in the application of this subsection that language has remained in our utility code of ordin ances and it is there to this day and similar language has been included in the utility rate and fee schedules since the adoption of the fee schedule following that time frame in 1992 and has remained in every fee schedule to the current one in 2000 there were some conversations between the fire department and and water staff indicating that the fire sprinkler ordinance that had been adopted in 1991 in Denton was consistent with other metroplex cities in other words during that time period other metroplex cities had had caught up to the Denton fire sprinkler ordinance in 2001 the water department surveyed 41 cities 21 of these were from the state of Texas nine were in the metroplex and the remaining 20 were around the United States all of these required the developer or the building owner to actually pay the fire tap and connection fees and using this information an item was brought forward to the public utility board in March of 2001 with a recommendation from staff to charge for fire sprinkler taps based on the direction that staff got at the time of the 2001 meeting staff began assessing those fire tap fees for all fire tap installations however that code of ordinance language and the language that remained in the rate schedule was never changed and so that language is still there to today because this information in 2001 was was fairly dated we took it upon ourselves to conduct a new survey we used 19 area cities here in the DFW metroplex during March 18 of these charge fire tap fees as a part of their regular tap fees they make no distinction between the two one charges a separate fee for each element of the connection so the connector box installation the tap fee itself and they also have layered on top of that a one-time demand charge that's based on the tap size yes sir what is the connector box installation what is that that is just simply the the box in which the connection is made to the the facility itself the building that's correct and the spring cord sort of system okay all right that's correct so in terms of recommendations staff does recommend to continue to collect the fire tap fees as we've been doing since 2001 however for consistency sake staff does recommend removing the 1991 language about waiving fire tap fees from what is now currently section 26-126 one of the code of ordinances and removing that similar language that occurs in the the rate schedules there's a lot of information back behind these slides be glad to answer any questions on this issue related to the fire sprinkler taps mayor protein a couple questions about costs and I saw in the the backup it specifically says the last couple years how much fees were collected I'm not sure how many projects that's associated with in 2015 which was included in your backup that was the that's the year that we have a complete set and that cost of 35,000 yeah that that cost was associated with 11 projects okay so I'm trying to that's what I'm trying to get a sense is average cost yeah and I can address that it may be easier to address it just with this particular slide this will give you a sense of what you're looking at in terms of a paved or unpaved this is actually right out of the rate schedule and you can see the installation charge waiving language that I talked about earlier as a part of that yes has anyone taken advantage of that the weight fees request to my knowledge not since about the 2001 time frame go ahead councilman washington seeing that we're in line with the majority of cities because she stated 18 of 19 cities surveyed charge for the sprinkler tap fees so we're in line with other cities in collecting that fee I see this as a housekeeping issue and we continue over the course of time to see these things come up and so kudos to staff when these things do come to the forefront so that we can you know kind of clean clean things up and so I support staff's recommendation and thank you thank yeah yeah well and I support staff's recommendation as well but the genesis of this discussion was a specific project the denton brewery denton brew house or denton brewery didn't brew the one across the street here and that they well let me get into the specific so I just couple questions on this slide since you have it up just for clarification these are the so these tap fees are for I know that they're for your domestic water supply right that if you have a domestic water supply this is what you're going to pay for two inch tap you can pay $2,400 and they will hook that up to your meter on your property but if they have to go across the street is there an additional charge for that is that included in that if you're dealing with a situation where you're talking about a domestic supply of water right basically the city owns as a part of the public infrastructure from the tap at the line until it actually connects at the meter at the at the facility fire lines are not metered and so the city the public infrastructure component of that system stops at the tap sure and that's an important that's an important distinction based upon the facts I'm going to share so if you just give me a little indulgence for a couple minutes so they were doing the project over there and so they were required based upon their original configuration of the building to have a sprinkler system because of their size open space use and the like and if I say something that is not necessarily totally accurate somebody please correct me and so there were they met with the city departments and long story short there were it was very difficult because the line that had enough capacity to meet the fire suppression element of water requirement was across McKin ney street on this side of McKinney street so there were some options go get a private easement from other owners to access the line on oak street yeah come across private property that's very seldom going to work I mean private property owners aren't usually going to do that the other options were well we have to bore under east McKinney street or we have to do an open trench all right now and I'm trying to verify with the owners what they thought the costs were going to be for a trench so if they needed let's say a six inch fire tap they'd be charged 3800 right and then they would be responsible from getting that water however it needs to get there over to their particular connection that box connector that's correct okay so here and long story short basically I'd heard that they had thought that the cost was going to be considerable now there's been some informal quotes nothing you know firm that were much less than what I had heard originally which I think if they would have known that it might have been a different story but they changed their whole configuration of their building so that they would not have to sprinkle it because it was too difficult and then they still have had to really work hard to meet fire code requirements for other types of access things such as that so I wanted to have this conversation about to make sure that first of all do we have a written policy somewhere which we do not have a written policy that says fire taps you're paying for the tap at the line all other routing costs access costs for the for the piping is born at the cost of the developer because here underwater line taps typically those are born by the city for just regular domestic water so I think we need to clean that up as well if that's going to be the policy of the council and secondly I just want to make sure when we're talking to people about projects that we're giving that we're giving them very accurate information and that we're trying to be as accommodating and helpful and if so and if it was if they were going to have to trench it I mean if they were going to have to open trench it sounds like it would have been a far more expensive and just disruptive process than than boring so I don't know if they ever really got a quote on boring but that's not really a policy except to say when we have people come to us who want to develop things like that in our city let's make sure that we help them as much as possible because I don't know what the actual boring cost was but from what you showed me right and what I've heard very very different and if if if it was even more accurate even higher than what you show but more accurate towards that I think it would have made a huge difference in their building configure they would have probably kept it the way it was because it just was more of what their environment they were trying to create I don't know that haven't even discussed that with them this is the first time they're here in this discussion because I haven't been able to reach it so that was my reason for bringing this is because the downtown areas are going to be especially challenging but if we're requiring a sprinkled building we need to ensure that they have very clear policies on who's paying for what and how do we get them how do we get their needs met as economically as as they can and that doesn't mean we're paying for it but we can certainly help them do that as far as you know consulting or you know brainstorming problem solving because this issue in the downtown area is not going away based upon what I've heard you say that and and the fire marshal that the way it's built and you have buildings back up to each other you don't have access and these kind of things so I really want to staff recommendations I agree with but if we need to continue to make other policy create other policy that's that's very definitive on that I think we need to really start considering that because we don't want to get people who are coming into our city trying to develop these things stuck in a vicious cycle of not really knowing what to do and where they eventually have to redo their whole building if they don't have to and I just don't know if we got to that point so that's Council Member Gregory. Thank you so according to the 2017 surveyed that staff did of the 19 area cities of the 1918 charged the tap fee and are the tap fees fairly consistent with what we're charging? Yes they are of course there are variations based on cities I can I did not run averages for all of the tap fees I picked a one inch tap fee as an example and our one inch tap fee is almost identical to the average of the 19 that we surveyed so that I believe that the our tap fee was $1,300 and the average of those 19 was $1,315 so very close. I'm curious if waterline tap fees for a fire suppression system is an eligible expense from our downtown reinvestment grants. Somebody can check and maybe do a follow-up. It seems like on the oak the oak street one on the square they she included that as an eligible project water tie into water tap yeah it wasn't a fire I don't think it was a sprinkler issue but it was just water lines. Well and again I think that's more of what I'm talking about is you know sort of an holistic I think sometimes we get very siloed in our approach to development you know we've got solid waste looking at solid waste we've got water looking at water we got fire looking at fire we've got grants looking at grant when there might have been a solution here but this is really the genesis of this conversation is what I just described to you because it was a very long drawn-out process and I don't know whether the best outcome was had based upon you know some conversation but I hope it was but I think we can really work on so question that I have is would staff be in support of a policy that that really clearly states if this is the council's direction that because water tap fee water taps and fire taps are distinctly different in what is included in that cost from what I heard you say in other words right the right of way for going to the meter that's city's expense right we're going to charge you this we're going to get it over to your meter right if it means born under a road it means born under a road or cut open trench with fire it's different you pay for the tap that's the extent of our costs and our duty it's your duty to get it over so that's not memorialized anywhere to my understanding is that correct that's correct all right so council needs to number one is that is that one thing we want to do is memorialize that and number two memorialize if we have well I guess that was the main one yes well that that makes me want to see a side by side if you have this or if you know this off the top of your head the cost of service for a fire sprinkler tap versus just a regular water line tap are they about the same in in terms of the that would be a difficult question to answer off the top of my head tim do you have something you want to add on that yeah tim if you could just help me understand your questions I'm not sure in other words if as you just elucidated if when I'm paying for the tap fee as it relates to the fire sprinkler all I'm doing is getting access to something tapped on the line wherever it is and there's no cost I'm bearing the rest of the cost if a normal tap just tapping into the water line is includes that are we overcharging for the tap fee relating to the fire sprinkler got you if it's similar to the water line because we're doing more work that's my yeah and I think my clarification response would be the the taps are really more for extensions we don't really install four inch service taps for those things very often those are usually the standardized connections and a lot of times that means developers extending the line and has to tie to it and that's the physical connection to it and so that's very analogous to what we do for a fire line tap and that's how we collect those costs they're based on those average costs and they represent just that physical connection not necessarily some portion of an extension we have another rate code system that involves a tap in a meter set and so that 's a different schedule and that would tend to relay more to the smaller diameter meters so when Kenny was trying to do the survey most cities do not standardize these larger diameter connections and so you don't find that information directly online in in fact 15 years ago we used to do individual price quotes for airy physical connection that became kind of tedious and expensive and when we adopted impact fees back in 99 impact fees were kind of up in this level and tap fees were down here so we simply standardized our tap fees and streamlined that process and made it much easier for someone to know exactly what they were going to pay for for those connections. Well let me try let me try and rephrase my question okay it seems like for other sorts of things where we're charging fees for one obvious example is when we're looking at the gas bill ordinance and we're trying to get very clear on what was our cost of service versus what we're charging are we confident based on history or whatever that the the amount we're charging at each of those levels for paved or unpaved is a is it covering our costs and b is it is it over covering our costs and how confident are we on that do we need to re-look at? We're reasonably confident on that we look at it every year keep in mind we may only do two or three of a given size so we don't have tons of data recent data so what we do is we take a look at the data that we do have look at our existing fees and then we also try to be sensitive to whether we increase them so to the best of our ability we feel we're generally recovering our costs but more importantly we're standardizing our costs so it's a lot easier for people to know what what to charge and how to pay for it. Gotcha thanks. So question of clarification so I want to make sure I understand this if you could go back to the tap fee slide so now if I've if I've got this if I don't understand this just correct me so I'm going to say a six inch tap I'm a business and I need a six inch tap for a in a meter set I'm assuming these things include I mean it doesn't say and meter set here but it that's hooking up to a meter is what I'm no these are just the physical connections so we have a separate schedule that deals with a tap in a meter set so which and this is not that schedule this is simply connections okay so of that so I've got a six inch tap for $3,800 I brought you a check for $3,800 give it to you and you put it in and I need a meter set over on my property because I've got a six I need a six inch water supply for domestic water used in some manufacturing so I got a six inch meter so where in either this fee or in the meter fee do what's the cost of a six inch meter yeah we do not have a fee set schedules for four six and eight inch meters those are very unusual they're very specific to a commercial application it's usually a fire rated master meter for an apartment and they build that according to our standard okay so my question is to go from the tap to a six inch meter which is built to whatever your specs who bears that cost if it's just domestic water going from a six inch tap to a six inch meter built to city specs based upon its uniqueness we don't have a standard fee there we would charge for the tapped and then would require the developer to build the meter according to our standard and who pays for the connection between the two depends on the situation it usually is going to be if it's a very short distance we'll clear the curve okay this this is exactly what I want to avoid is this kind of subjective approach because I don't see any difference between somebody asking for a six inch fire because there's not a meter on the other end of it I mean it is going into the building but there's no meter and we're not getting necessarily sales off of so I want us to clear up this kind of ambiguity or kind of gray area I mean we can have some flexibility it can't be but so the question really is the answer to my question was it depends on how the negotiations go and what their specific facts on the ground are is what it sounds like every situation is a little bit different and we have to use some judgment as to whether it's appropriate to charge the standardized fee and what it was based on from a standpoint of similar events or whether this is something that really needs to go over to the end user as their responsibility and that's again the very thing I'm trying to address is we I would like to see some fairly clear criteria okay in making those decisions if it be linear footage if it be paid unpaid what I mean we've got it here we've got some criteria here so we can do something like that okay Councilman Wasney we're not a sleepy little town anymore where staff takes a look and says well yes on this case and no on this case and so I support the mayor on a real standardization of policy on this it keeps it transparent and fair for whoever is coming in and looking at what's it going to cost to develop makes it easy for staff because it's clear cut there is no subjective decision to be made my opinion there shouldn't be a subjective decision to be made it should be absolutely open up a chart open up a book here's the here's the rhythm and flow of how it works so I would ask staff to go back and work on this and bring it back with exactly that plan of standardization for the tap fees and the meter with development but also the fire tap fees so that we don't just remove a little old language because I think we fixed some of the problem but not all the problem if we're if we've opened it up let's really fix it and so that would be my recommendation sure well and I think that will tremendously reduce we're already going to have enough questions in a development process especially a very complicated one one in our old part of our city but the closer we can get to some kind of defining parameters it really cuts back on having meetings and people misinterpret what it is or show me in the code where I have to do that and we can't and then and it just really creates a situation that becomes that can spiral out of control very quickly and so I think it would just and we have these kind of examples in a lot of other areas of our code but we're just dealing with this one at least at this particular yeah the tool that we've been using is a non-standard tap where we're saying this is a unique situation and we will price it specific to that and give them that price okay so so we do we do that it's I think what you're looking for is some better clarity of when we would make the decision to go to and how we make those decisions and part of this again was is before we used to price everything and the attempt was to try to streamline things by standardization yeah okay any other questions comments did you have any oh I'm sorry go ahead council member Briggs no I'm good with the the recommendation and the clearing of the language but when you're a small business owner you have a certain amount of money to work with so the more clear you are and what you have to spend going in I think the better I agree definitely I mean people want to upfront know what they're getting into and I think that's I haven't heard it a ton but one of the complaints I have heard being on councils they get into a project and they just wanted to know upfront what they were getting into and then there was a cost or something so I would have grew the recommendation also well we'll take a take a stab at that okay thank you mayor yes I'm sorry it's connected to a lot of this conversation about understanding costs and I I don't know whether it's being used or used effectively or not I know about a year or two ago economic development adopted a tool where you could go in kind of put an address say you're interested in starting a new business and the goal that I 've seen it used in other cities was that you could put a lot of these specifics on there so you can almost just from your your house get a sense of oh I'm going to need that I'm going to need that I'm going to need that I'm going to need that and it's just kind of you know it's not no one's tied to it no but if we can look into that are we still using that tool could that help out with things like that so people can get more assurance great all right thank you is that thank you is that presentation yes um I saw a picture there I want to see that yeah yeah that's just a fire tap okay just so we know what we were looking at so and just as long as I've got it up to address councilman rodent's question this is the the number of of meters last year in 2015 that 11 number that I spoke about earlier the total bill was 35.5 actual cost for us to do that installation was 33.586 so we're about a five percent so pretty close staff is seeking a recommendation from the council to make these changes as have been stated so if that's the recommendation for the council we will bring that information back in terms of ordinance language and rate schedules and then together with council members wasney's summary of sort of some different policy objectives and memorializing those yes yes we can we can do that through the rate schedule would probably be the easiest way to do it and adopt that by ordinance okay great all right thank you very much I appreciate you you bet all right we'll go on to agenda item 3c which is receive report and hold discussion regarding update from the capital projects department on the status of key projects and overall program update thank you mayor I gotta I gotta do this first when you watch on tv or the internet you see these pins behind somebody you can't tell what they are so I'm gonna be the first one to make a presentation without very good pins behind you my name is Galen Gillum I'm the interim director of capital projects for the city of Denton now did you emphasize that because uh anyway go ahead I'm sorry I do appreciate a little bit of your time you know I asked the city manager for four hours to do this he said no Galen you can have about 30 minutes you're just gonna have to get in there and tell them how the cow eat the cabbage and get on with it and he's he's pretty folksy like that sometimes anyway so introduction I've introduced myself I've got a couple of more points to make during the introduction we'll talk about selected specific projects and let me let me begin my disclaimer here I do not have information in here about every project that's recently completed I do not have information in here about every project that's currently ongoing right now it is it is selected information if you have a favorite project or a pet project or a particular one you're interested in by all means ask but I've been doing this job for 50 days as of today and I'm certainly not an expert on every single project that we have I've been trying to take a little bit more programmatic look at what we're doing then get try to get smart enough about the specific projects to to give you a little bit of information about them I'll do my best to answer answer your questions okay so we'll talk about some specific projects what their status is and talk a little bit about the methodology again I said I've been taking kind of a programmatic view or an overview of what we're doing to get capital projects done we'll talk about that and then what some of our next steps are there are two other updates that have been asked of my department recently they're about what some of the engineers do and I wanted to try to jam it into this but I didn't quite get it jammed into this presentation so I will try to get you that information later this week and another request about what do we expect when we repair a street how long should that last we do maintenance or repair work on a street what does that mean is it good for six years is good for 50 years whatever and so I'm going to try to give you that information very soon as well apologize it's not into this presentation here okay so why do we do capital projects well we got a growing city in fact if you look around the city if you look around all of north texas you see a lot of growth a lot of activity a lot of projects are going on things are going on in the freeways buildings are being built houses businesses all kinds of growth and we've got aging infrastructure we've got streets that have been around for a long time and so some of them need need work so there's a reason to do a capital project there the the departments and divisions that I'm working with have a duty to respond if you're the water department the wastewater department the streets department the drainage department you've got a duty to respond that's your mission that's your whole reason for being in existence is to fix those problems those challenges for aging infrastructure and growth so projects and solutions are developed by numerous different ways uh citizens participate in bond uh selection staff comes up with ideas consultants you know and they come through the governance process we get budget ed for projects we get bonds approved etc that that ensures that the projects are reasonable that they're the right projects that the city wants that city management wants that need to be done to meet the needs of the city for growth and aging infrastructure and we do listen to public input as mentioned on bullet three above citizens get input on what types of projects we 're working on and we also take take direct input through meetings and emails phone calls discussions interviews things like that we want to know what's important to the citizens okay a couple of specific projects bell avenue project north through the tw campus this is one of the ones that i've gotten to to know pretty well and spend a lot of time on we've had some meetings with some folks at tw university they're very excited about this project uh it's it's actually got a little bit of an earlier start date than that that's the start date for the actual streets work the repaving of the streets there's some wastewater work that's going to begin probably before the end of this month to replace some of the wastewater lines underneath the road so it will start a little bit actually before that so that's that's a date that the street rep aving would start uh we think we're going to be finished by the end of july this year and obviously that's is our effort to try to meet the schedule during the summer session we know there's there's students there we know there's faculty and staff there year-round but we there's less people there during the summer than there are during the spring or fall semesters there's an estimated cost the source of the funds and then a description of what will be done a five inch mill and overlay from texas street up north to u.s 380 replacement of 4200 feet of curb and gutter and then i mentioned some of these concerns obviously there's a lot of pedestrian traffic around there so we want to take that into account and try to have the work done as safely as possible we don 't want folks jumping over trenches or walking into equipment etc so we'll use concepts like safety fencing to to try to control where the pedestrians walk we are doing it during the summer when the the foot traffic should be a little bit lighter utilities are now a risk or a concern with this project is that we're not doing an entire redesign and reconstruct of all the utilities underneath the road we're doing the road on top so we're taking a little bit of a risk realizing that we're going to invest this money and then do that redesign down down the road a little bit later tw graduation is coming up in may i think 11th and 12th right about that time so whatever condition our work is at that time we'll put it in a safe condition and then obviously there's long- term planning as i talked about earlier about about redoing the utilities under that road sometime in the long term but if you do if you've driven down this road you see it it 's going to be a very good improvement to get this road a little bit smoother i had a question council member i think you answered it as far as long-term planning because when chancellor fain was here her her vision of that area was a little bit redesigned in the street and so i think this is probably what you're saying is something to bro to keep it from looking like i think her quote was third world country road when she was here is that correct and then in the future i didn't hear that actual quote but that is your assertion is correct and that this is a this is a solution to get us a much smoother road through this campus for a period of time to allow some long-range planning to happen okay that's good thank you exactly what's intended to do that's my regary can you do you know when this road was last completed because i feel like it was kind of recently but maybe i'm blurring my decades together i do not know unless someone's here that has that historical fact may approach him well i know south i live right around the corner south of bell from texas street on down was just kind of read some i don't know what all they did but it ended up in resurfacing i was done last summer uh which caused some work on that but i will say that i noticed yesterday there's a sign out there which is great communicating works about to begin uh but i i'm almost 100 sure that it said it would be done june 6th um so we might check on that so expectations are tempered and that yeah that may be for the wastewater portion only not for the pavement but yeah citizen if i'm reading they don't know the difference it's all construction absolutely we'll check on that that's my gary follow up okay so what i'm thinking of was back when they installed that median on that northern the part that's north from bell going up to university i thought the university installed that and then they put landscaping and all that so i guess i'm confused about who did the median and the landscaping and all that stuff on bell i'll have to look into that unless someone in here knows i don't know i don't okay this is probably 15 years ago now now that i'm looking around it was a while back i thought it was a couple years ago yeah you were probably in high school or something so in the pool whoever had how long will it take them to stump gail and first question you got it okay here's a real quick question back on the the text slide that you had you have a combination of o and m and bond funds help me understand because i know o and m can't be used for street reconstruction bond funds can't own him can 't be used for street reconstruction and bond funds can't be used for maintenance help me how this works sort of as a hybrid help me understand that one one thing i've learned is that for a lot for projects where we have bond funds then obviously that part of the project that was intended with the bond funds can be paid for by the bond funds sometimes when we go to do a project there's other pieces that can be done or should be done or it's really a good idea to do those at that time with that project then we can have we can take money from o and m and do that piece of the project the the portion of the the block that was going to be done by wastewater is is bond funds the street portion is is not this is not in the bond program right now except for one block is it because it's an overlay that's really more of a maintenance an overlay is more of a maintenance activity even though it's a it's a relatively deep overlay it's it is more of a maintenance activity that 's helpful thank you the map shows the uh oops the extent of the project north is laid down towards your right but it begins on the south at texas street and goes up through the campus to to 380 that's the extent of this current project that we're talking about doing this summer okay yeah roll along we'll interrupt if you if they've got questions we'll just the bell avenue sidewalk over here just a little bit from where we are right now the sidewalk that runs next to the civic center we began working on that in march that project was uh i would say close to shovel ready when i came over obviously if i came over 50 days ago uh just needed a little nudge a little push a little direction to keep it going our intent is to complete it by tuesday april 25th if that 's not feasible we're going to put it in a safe condition and resume that construction after arts and jazz fest and i was i was down there i was by there yesterday during the rain and it was the the word they had dug out for the new sidewalk was all full of water but today it's dry and they're working away so they've done a very good job of keeping the pace you know they got set back by a rain day hopefully we don't have too many more rain days and they can keep that construction pace going cost source of money bond funds so we're adding a sidewalk to the existing piece that ended a little bit south of the senior center add a pedestrian rail across the bridge i think by the time of jazz fest this permanent rail will not will not be in place but there will be a temporary rail to provide safety as folks walk across that bridge and then the permanent rail will be fitted back fitted later restriping some of the parking spaces at the civic center was a big concern you know one wants to lose parking but kind of fortunate timing as the county building's being taken down we've gained some of that parking on a more permanent basis from where that building was so you know trading off a little bit of parking so we'll be restriping the spaces and adding street lighting you know one of the one of the main goals here was to preserve the trees well it's very dark under those trees at night so we need some lights in the area to try to make it a safe place to to walk at night i had a question council member riggs do you know what took this project so so long because i remember you know two years ago when i was elected that we were talking about it they were talking about in mobility and it had been in mobility um for a while and i remember council or mayor pritton wrote and you were talking about it as well so i'm just curious because it seems like it got started and it's you guys are doing a great job moving right along and it's going to really improve that area there for pedestrians so i don't know if i can speak to all the reasons why it took a while i know there was you know concerns about taking up these parking spaces and then the initial plan did not account for leaving the trees in place so we had to do a little bit of redesign to kind of meander the path around the trees it is a busy area with a lot of things in it that would that the project needed to go through so i don't know if it got put on a back burner so we could keep working on some other things because we made some sticking points on this project but but once i got started and heard about it and heard about some of the concerns i said hey let's just hit these straightforward and address these concerns with different departments and get this thing moving and that's that what that's what we've been able to do okay follow up well i appreciate that and thank you for saving the trees you're welcome i love trees too councilman wasney thank you mr. taut heilman who has placed as a priority working on our roads our sidewalks and specifically using the bond funds that have already been approved and to create the system in place it's going to get the job done so i just want to publicly thank our new city manager the reason these projects are moving to the front of the burner is that it is a priority for our new city manager so thank you and he has he's made that very clear to me he is oh yes council member bighair two things one the sidewalk bond funds is that the 2010 or 2012 do we know i do not know okay the second thing i since you think manager howman i have to let everybody know that somebody who wishes to remain anonymous but is in a position to know was set was both speaking very very highly of galen and his capacity as interim oh thank you so i just want to let everybody know that the word's getting around that you're good at that job thank you i'll entertain any other compliments i learned that from brian daskops yes i like your tie thank you just a quick map of the project you can see it it connects up to an existing sidewalk again north is to that side and it comes all the way down to mckinney it 'll it'll actually complete a path that allows you to walk from from that area of town back down to here toward other amenities and things that are that are down here so it is a great project and i've been i'm happy to have participated in getting it going hickory street project a relatively large project that we want to keep our eye on obviously work has already begun on this work work began with some some wastewater line sanitary sewer line replacements back in january of this year we estimate will be complete with the entire project in february of 2019 it's it's a relatively large project compared to some of those others we looked at 3.8 million again it is a combination of funds so much like we answered the question before a lot of this work when we do it we've got bond funds for certain pieces and we use some o and m funds that were set aside and budgeted for for doing the other little pieces of the project sanitary sewer line replacement water line replacement and then repave the street lastly to make a smooth ride down through there obviously on a large well traveled street like that we've got traffic and vehicle and pedestrian issues that we want to try to be sensitive to we might have to do some detours and getting folks off the street on during particular work sessions and things like that there could be a problem in this area you know it's kind of an older area of town with abandoned lines and when we come across those during construction it's a little bit of a hey wait we need to figure out what's in this line and we don't have any other record of it none of the utilities in this area have a record of it you don't just cut it open and see what's in it you know it's a you take a little bit of a cautious approach but abandoned or unknown lines can can cause a little bit of a slowdown it's a little bit of a risk and then the dme substation that's going in on on bonnie bray at hickory and oak we want to be sure we coordinate with that that's another special concern and risk a map of this project with north to the top now it shows it extends from bonnie bray on the west side all the way over to carol boulevard on the east bonnie bray bonnie bray road widening say that fast three times uh we're getting some bid responses in we put out an invitation for bid or an ifb those responses will be in in may the estimated completion date june 2023 didn't think we'd ever be saying numbers that high for dates of when things will be done a very large project if you if you trust my math it had a lot of different components and i did use the calculator and i added the numbers up and i got to that total a little over 75 million uh regional toll revenue bond funds county contribution have all come together to to set aside the money for this project conversion of a mostly two-lane road into a four-lane divided secondary road from us 377 on the south end up to windsor road on the north end their concerns with text dot permitting railroad permitting fema comes into play we want to be sure we coordinate with with unt and we have at a meeting with them uh last week to talk to them about this project and schedule and the different things we'd be doing so they'd know what was going on they shared with us their graduation ceremonies that they're holding at their facility for example so we want to know when those are happening to try to arrange construction activities to allow flow of traffic into those graduation ceremonies and back out uh and in land rights it can always be a you know a concern or risk a challenge for any project thank you council member gary do you have a question do you have a map for this one i do okay and north is to the right so it's like it's laid over on the side because this is north south can you talk a little bit about how this project is going to relate to the airport road widening because my understanding was that these two projects are very interrelated i do not have details about that right now so i'm sorry i can i can look into that and give you some information so a specific question of how this interrelates to the airport road widening okay absolutely and this is if i'm not mistaken this is phased i mean it's you're starting at one end working towards because of just some infrastructure get some gas lines and things like that that still need to be relocated is that correct it will be phased like a lot of linear road projects you don't just take the whole road out and work on it you work on it in pieces as you go along do you know what the phasing is on this i don't have that don't worry about it now i find that out somewhere well i find that somewhere i can get that detail to you if you want to see it that's fine don't yeah it's it's not that critical just curious okay mayhill road widening and another another road project kind of similar in scope and size a bit to the bonnie bray road widening this on the east side of town same same bid response state there in early may we'll be getting those bid responses in from companies to construct this road a little bit short of a project completion date is estimated to be june of 2020 56 and a half million dollar project same relative source of funds regional toll revenue bond funds county made a contribution conversion of mostly two lane road from us 380 on the north end down near i-35 on the south end and i think in the in the backup i had cut and paste got me a little bit i didn't it didn't say coordinate complex utility relocate that said coordinate with unt obviously this is on the far east side of town and so i made that correction on this presentation but it's not in your backup it says i think it says coordinate with unt there council member bridge you had a question is this road only or do you know will there be some sort of pedestrian improvement it does it does have pedestrian pedestrian improvements as well thank you there's the map showing the extent of the project from down near i-35 again north is is laid down toward the right up to 380 up to university mckinney street project this one has a little bit more complicated of a of a of a bid process and i'll try to explain it as best i can it's we're doing a contract with a design some someone called a design criteria consultant and we get them on board and we should have that back to you within your next couple of meetings we should have the results from that and bring that back to you to help make that choice they will help us create what's called a 30 plan and we'll take that 30 plan and they're a consultant working with our input on how the road needs to be designed we'll put that 30 plan forward and we'll have design construction companies bid on finishing the design and actually constructing and so sometimes you get one company that's got the capacity to do that sometimes you get a couple of companies that come together to do that it's it's called the design build process and it's an example of how we're trying to do some different things different methodologies to get things done in a different way hopefully faster hopefully cheaper estimated completion date june 2020 about a 20 million dollar project and we're going to talk about sources of money on this we've gotten the huge vast money for this from tech stop obviously this is about safe pedestrian walks and about widening the road making a better road from wood road lane to grissom road if we have available funding that's why that notes there that parenthetical note is right there about available funding so we're working on an east west road here we're working on mayhill and north south road we obviously need to coordinate those projects together and it may be much like what you're asking about with airport i'm sorry i don't have that information we want to coordinate with existing traffic and pedestrian uses especially toward the high school then there's an issue about funding to complete the project west of 288 so let me show you the map and i'll show you a little bit easier about what that means we have the money from text dot to do the blue part so from the loop 288 loop over east toward the high school down to grissom road we have that money and it may be enough money to do partially or do part of the road back to the to the west that's the green on the map but we don't necessarily feel confident right now we have all of the money to make it a four lane road all the way back but we are going to go ahead and start with the project that we do have the money for and then we'll check under the couch cushions or whatever we have to do to come up with some other money yes i want to express my gratitude on this project this is extremely important and close to me in my district and have had a lot of people reach out and on concerns of safety for the kids getting to school so i just want to say thank you and i'm glad to see that this is on the fast track even though it is still several years away it's still the best that that we can do it and we need to get started now yeah so we are thank you working hard oh council member gary so with the text dot funds those are i mean correct me if i'm wrong but we have a timeline on when those have to be the project has to be started and when it has to be finished correct do we have any money people that might know that i don't know that we'll find out okay well i'm pretty sure we do have a timeline based on um how monies are distributed from text dot so just want to be sure that as we're talking about different capital projects if we have like deadlines for some monies let's bump those up in our absolutely our list it'll be a milestone in our in our project schedule can't say wasn't yeah i think there is uh use it or lose it because if a if a municipality doesn't do it those funds go away and it goes to a city uh that that can trigger sooner so um i'm i'm almost certain those funds have a have a timeline yes ma'am i would i would consider council member gravey and then council member brief from mobility when when the road was a state highway on the state highway system the money was connected with that when it was transferred to the city the funds were transferred to the city and uh we got them i think this past month and and according to the timeline we're gonna i don't think there is any deadline on it from what i've heard from mobility committee but if there is it i mean that money's been sitting there for like seven years with the state funds and they hadn't done a thing with it and we're going to be spending it in the next two or three years to to do the work so i don't i don't think there will be an issue uh let's see who else anybody else i was i was just going to mention the same thing okay all right so some recent completions again as i mentioned earlier this is not a comprehensive list but the mckinney street crossing uh project the flashing lights that you can push to get to the parking lot across the street or just if you need to trans verse across the street mid-block windsor crossing at north lakes eagle drive is recently reconstructed with some bicycle accommodations but utility relocations for some different tech stop projects that we've been involved in uh ranch estates out in that neighborhood the streets and drainage are complete and then several other streets and lanes in in the city uh have been completed recently i've got a longer list of ongoing things so boliver street is ongoing more street extension for rudel uh again i don't want to just read the list to you just there it is in addition to this list some others that came in kind of late and didn't didn't make the list mingo road there's a there's we did a temporary fix to get uh the the bridge back to the standards that it was at before that the flooding event some time back uh then there's a longer range project to perhaps uh do some more rebuilding on the road and definitely to to upgrade the bridge uh magnolia drainage project it's tied to work on on hinkle drive and windsor so if we can just figure out how to make water run uphill over that area will be good to go but we are working on that drainage project we've got that out to a consultant right now to create a plan for us are we using any bond money or sidewalk funds on um us 77 elm street out there in front of discovery park uh that that side path has been widened to about 12 feet 13 feet also on the other side on the north side of north lakes park or was that all money connected to the extension of the grant money that we got from tax dot for the extension of the cooper creek hike and bike trail yes i 'm getting a lot of head nods yes that's what it was that money for the for the sidewalks in front of the connected to that okay thanks because that's coming along great okay but it's not in your report because it's not a cip program it's not it's not a cip and some of these are some some of these are cip and some are sometimes doesn't matter to us you fix the street fix the street is it a big o and m thing or is it cip and so sometimes this this update is a kind of a combination of the two uh two more that didn't didn't make the list that came in very very late cindy lane and i think you might have seen a press release on that the the traffic traffic signal at sydney lane at us 380 we've worked with tex dot in the county to fund that project that should be done by the end of may that traffic signal put in into service middle of june so that was an important project and then downtown storm sewer improvements have begun uh i'm sorry are scheduled to begin in march of next year they're being designed right now so there is a a project in progress right now for downtown storm sewer improvements and i want to just take a moment to thank uh city staff thank county especially commissioner edes also text out because that 380 light unfortunately the genesis of that was a couple very tragic accidents one fatality and one major injury in fact that i think that i can't remember if there were two fatalities but it was a really bad bad accident bad situation and with all the truck traffic coming from western boulevard really do appreciate everybody pulling together to do to do the right thing together with the county and text out so again thank you guys for that and fast tracking that as well because those things take a little time when you're working with text dot so thank you sure yes mayor pro tem um this is a great update i think something that tying it to a couple of things if you remember when we had the what works city project and we had citizens pitch some ideas one of the ideas was kind of combining all the data we have associated with bond programs and other sorts of projects going on in town put that in a very user-friendly way where somebody can go online and find out what's going on here i've thought for years since we've invested millions in street reconstruction in 2012 starting with that program and then 2014 bond program that there ought to be a way a citizen could very easily go in and type in any street in town we have all the oci data we can find out all the conditions of it whether or not it's scheduled as one of those bond programs and what the status of that is even if it's you know pending and i think that the concern has been over the years as i've made this request was people don't want to get too uh clear with some of the projections that are out several years for fear of it's but then citizens have no insight one of the number one questions i get at the neighborhood meetings that i've been involved in over the last six years is street questions and it's very hard is it just even a council member with inside track knowledge to go in and sort that stuff find that get that information out what's the latest stuff so all that to say as we're doing all this great work two things one i think checklists for people are incredibly motivating being able to that hormonal response i think when you check off a checkbox and get this sense of uh done something i think for folks to be able to see here's our 2012 here's our 2014 bond programs nice here's the checklist here's what's been done and here's what's been going on i know we have a pdf of an update that's out online that's a quarterly report it's not the most user-friendly way of getting that information i think this is due for a tech upgrade and then relating to the streets too for people to just be able to go and search i think as we're selling future bond programs and before you know it you're going to be here in 2020 perhaps with another one to be able to go back and say we're celebrating the the money that you've authorized us to spend and here's all the great work that's been done around the city so that's one thing the other thing is relating to what we feel like we've learned as it relates to especially the street projects from i know the issue and joey's neck in the woods earlier this year with a lot of projects going on at once and tying some folks up and you even had to call some neighborhood meetings just to kind of get some information out have we learned anything from that i know that was before you sat in the seat that we're now applying in terms of public communication as it relates to these projects i do have a slide we'll get we'll get into some oh i'm sorry no that's okay we'll get into some of the communications things that we've done i think john cab rales is going to come talk a little bit about some of those things so hopefully if we don't address your point at that time please please re-ask. Councilmember Briggs had a question. Well just more of a comment to piggyback off something you said is it is it possible or is there a way to do like an interactive map where you can hover over a street and something would pop up like completed or in completion just an idea so one of the things i was asked to do was to come and look at some the methodology how do we get capital projects done and so one of the things that was underway a little bit before i got there was it was a process review we had a an rfq out on the streets or ready to go out on the streets to get a consultant in to do some some process review for us map map how things are look look for pinch points look for wasted time look for problems and things with the processes obviously we want to lead to process improvement we want to do the best job we can at getting things done one thing that you began to ask about councilman councilman rodin was about improving communication so that's we've taken some early look at that we've tried to make some improvements already we'll address that in a little bit more detail one thing i've done is i've established some project management minimum standards if you're the manager of a project here's what i expect from you for your project and a lot of that has to do with communication and creating creating documents and creating things that help people know about the project and keep track of the status of the project give timely updates to city management and city council about the project things like that so i'm rolling out those standards now in fact i just sent them out yesterday and i'm getting some good feedback from them and from staff on that so somehow i got this reputation as a guy i can get stuff done right so i was i tried to think well what does it take to get stuff done well it takes it kind of takes a formula and the number of people you have the amount of money you have the amount of time you have is proportional to how much stuff you can get done so i wanted i'm a simple guy so i wanted to put it in a simple formula and if something's if something's not going right what do we not have that we need do we not have the people that we should have or are we short of money or time time is a real interesting concept right is it is how much how soon do you expect it to be done is that a reasonable expectation some of the projects are multi-year projects and they take a long time okay so people money and time come together in some proportion and help get stuff done well there's a little bit more to it than that because you could have a lot of those things and not really get that much done it's an overlay of processes what processes are put in place what processes do those people have to get things done and so that's really the overlay that's the that's the focus we have sure we're going to look and see do we have enough money to do the things that we want to do we're going to spend some time talking about time are we setting reasonable expectations are we constantly throwing in smaller projects and pushing things down on the priority list that has to do with time how much time it'll take to get something done you know do we have the right people in place to do certain things and you know i've worked on i've worked on multi-b illion dollar nuclear plants i've worked on power plants in texas uh california nevada arizona and i 've worked with a lot of good people on projects and the folks i've met in these 50 days they're tremendous the dedication to the city and wanting to do a very very very good job is is just amazing in the staff that i've worked with so far their knowledge the how much they know about how things affect the city and how things go on their desire to want to do a good job is tremendous i just really can't say enough good things about the people i've been learned to work with over the last couple of weeks just tremendous so those that's why i wanted to know about this and know that's what we're focused on a lot of our effort is what are the processes and how are we getting things done uh specifically some specific things we've done process wise part of our process is before we can begin work on a certain area certain street is utilities have to clear the area in other words they have to go through and check and see where where their utilities are we had some some struggles some some challenges with with atmosphere gas for example they're a franchise utility they've worked with us in a tremendous way to do more clearing of these streets so we can move forward with our projects they've brought some other folks to to to bear on this effort they've got another truck going we've worked hard with them to be sure they get the water they need to to go out and do these these wet suckback things where they they they draw the dirt and the mud out of the the ground to see where the utilities are and then they've got a way to get rid of the mud very easily so we work with them to streamline that process and make it as easy for them we're not just telling them to do more we're trying to help them do more and they've they've responded very very well it's a tremendous success story an early change that i was able to try to help implement there to get things done at a faster rate again i mentioned earlier some some project management standards i want to empower the project managers to feel like they're in charge and they are in charge of the whole project we're not piecemealing it this this person is in charge of this part this person's in charge of that part i want a project manager over the whole thing we've held a capital project workshop i i got john whitmore alone over from hr to come over and lead us through this effort and trying to find out what are what are the processes that we're doing and what are the opportunities and challenges there and it was very good discussion to get folks thinking along those lines of how we do things we've reviewed the submittals for the process review project again to get an outside consultant in to help us map things out the way that way we can make sure it's not just our ideas of how things should be but someone that's an expert in the field can help us hey here's how these processes should be done so some of the next steps we're going to continue on that process an organizational structure review project obviously with the goal of identifying areas for improvement and we want to work hard on scheduling okay scheduling is one of the challenges that i've learned over there we want to ensure resources are available to work on projects when we need them we want to try to be able to show the impact of special requests i'm not here to tell you don't make special requests of us sure that's fine you need to know something to answer a citizen's request we understand that's part of the job but at times when those pile up on an individual working on projects he's not available to work on projects so we need to manage that process better that's what i'm saying internally we need to manage that process better of how we deal with special requests and we want to be able to establish realistic expectations for how long things should take the big one then communications continue to increase and improve communications tremendous amount of data there's a tremendous amount of project information budgetary information schedules and things like that how do we package it up so that the people that want to know and need that information have it available when they need it so that that's one of our challenges how do we let the public know what we're doing i'm going to turn over to john cabrales for a moment or two to talk about some of the communications bullet points here is that moment doesn't that mean minute yes sir i can do it in one minute if you like good evening mayor council members i just want to take a few minutes to just give you a little bit of an update on the communications improvements that we've been working on with the capital projects and public communications and a few other departments we have started to put some effort into refining the internal communications process that galen alluded to so that we are communicating better between departments as well as getting the information that is critical that we need to know about projects so that we can turn around and disseminate that information appropriately one of the ways that we're refining the process is we're developing a public works information sheet which is going to have all pertinent data when does the project start when the project's supposed to stand what does that involve where does the funding come from things of that nature in this information sheet which will help eliminate a lot of duplicative efforts as well as various forms that are currently being used there are advisories there are memos there are different ways that we're communicating we're trying to get everything standardized onto one sheet so that we know we've got everything that we need there and we can easily find it we've also started to work on some guidelines that we will help us better determine the level of community outreach that needs to take place with a project for example if you have a million of a street of a neighborhood street that's maybe only one or two blocks it's going to impact a lot less people than if you are in a major feeder street uh curl boulevard an eagle drive uh bell avenue is going to impact a lot more traffic so there are different ways that we probably are going to need to react to getting information out there on those two different projects so the guidelines will help us categorize the different types of projects as far as the impacts to businesses to major centers in our community as well as traffic and and then that'll give us some guidelines as to how we should go and and do the outreach the good news is we do have a lot of communication methods that are currently being used our public communications office so everything from very robust social media to our website to press releases to brochures the information that goes inside the bill stuffers that get mailed out there are a lot of good good ways that we can currently are using to communicate and so we're going to make sure we 're availing ourselves of those forms of communication we're also working on a public works construction report remember I mentioned this public works information sheet so what we 're trying to do is get that information get a map combine it all into a public works report that will be somewhat interactive in that you'll be able to click on any particular project that you see on the cover page and I'll take you directly to that information sheet and then the map will be right behind us you'll be able to see just whatever project you're interested in we plan to start providing that information to you on your friday reading files as well as put that up on the website so we'll have a little bit more of interactive features to that report okay we got council member Briggs and then councilman wasmack just another idea something I don't see on there is the district D I S D like for instance Coronado drive is about to be closed and we have a lot of kids from Strickland walking to school using that pathway so maybe a suggestion maybe to contact the district and they can inform the schools in that way and then the parents can be notified to send their kids a different route or safer route to walk to school that's a good suggestion we do currently have a list of entities that we copy in on projects like DCTA D ISD transportation obviously public safety is notified if we're near TWU UNT we send information to them I'm not sure that we send it to the individual school campuses but that is a good idea that we can reach out to them as well because they'll be the ones impacted and a suggestion when we reach out to the public we can call it public works and we know what that means but when we're talking to our citizens talk about roads and sidewalks that's what they're going to come and look for you know public works it's just again if you're in government or you work for government you understand that if you're a citizen you're not sure what public works means but they know what roads and sidewalks means and so whether that's the headline with public works in parentheses make it crystal clear so when they come to the website when they look at a flyer when they look at something roads and sidewalks that is crystal clear that's what people want to know thanks John yes ma'am and you're right we we do we are going to try and make sure we make it very clear for example the bell one's a little more complex and that's what we're trying to distill down so it's very clear people understand it's a milling it's also some wastewater work as well as curb and gutter work the reason I think public works are selected is because we also have for example traffic control device projects that will impact we also have drainage projects that will be impacted so we have bike lanes sometimes that are just something being done on a road related to alternative transportation mode so we try to make it very clear when we use the heading public works but we make it very clear at the very top whether it's a road milling a road reconstruction a traffic signal replacement whatever the case might be so that it's plain language english people will know what it is that's going on I have one heading roads and sidewalks and then under that talk about millings or whatever it is that you want but have something so uniform and so recognizable that it doesn't matter whether they see it on the website they see it as part of their utility bill they they see it roads and sidewalks update so they they will look for that don't get caught up in the in the detail you know roads and sidewalks that's what people want to know and then under that have all of your other explanation and details and what's going on but you know that's what people will hone in on and make that so clear and so easy to find because on the website sometimes you really have to dig I'd have something just so easy and so clear roads and sidewalks update so people can get in there and really find out you know what it is that that they because it impacts their business it impacts where they live it impacts getting their kids to and from school it impacts their commute it's just so important and I think we all hear from citizens but keep it crystal clear or it's just going to get lost in the shuffle. Will do thank you. So the the public works construction report we're hoping that we will be able to get start putting that on the friday reading file as well as put it up on the website we're also working with the public communications office and tech services on revising the capital projects web page where we want to put the information of these different various projects that are going on including one of the things that we are looking at Mayor Pro Temeroden is an interactive map feature like you talked about we also think that it would be good to have something there where somebody could click on whatever that link is we know we've already got the information it's just a matter of linking that now from that map to whatever the information sheet and any more detail that can be provided so that is one of the one of the features that we're trying to look at adding and enhancing the capital projects web page that we currently have right now so whether it's a a traffic signal whether it's a a road million or whether it's a alternative mode bike lane project you should be able to quickly if you know what what's going on the street or you see orange cones or you just see some sort of activity and you're curious you should be able to just go to the map click on it and it'll send you directly to whatever the project entails yes Mayor Pro Temeroden thanks and I saw one in fact I just sent an email to Council Member Briggs because she was the one who suggested the map which is it seems like there's a prototype there's a concept that just needs to be flushed out I will say this is this is an opportunity I think to get fun with this and to get city tech up to speed with what normal people expect with every other tech experience they have in their life on Amazon on Google and stuff like that you know if you go up to a house that's for sale the savvy real estate folks now will have something like text this number to this number and you get immediately on your phone from sitting in your car pictures costs who to contact they now have your phone number so they can reach out to you and all this kind of stuff I mean we're putting signs up everywhere with these things and I think the typical government approach is go to this website search for this which no one's gonna remember to do and won 't remember the website it's just maybe we can explore texting options where you can get this kind of not that you're doing it from your when you're driving your car maybe the passenger can do it or maybe you're walking on all that to say I think there's an opportunity to get really kind of savvy and and I say fun but that maybe that's not the right adjective to describe anyways just some thoughts moving forward maybe the committee on citizen engagement and the future can kind of help explore some of those things all right the other the last item that we're working on right now is we have a community contact master list that we've been working on for the last year or so that has contacts for the various neighborhood groups for hoa's for apartment groups faith-based organizations and we are revising that revamping that making sure we've got current contact information because that's another way that we want to use to be able to communicate projects particularly if it's located in a certain section of town or an area or a neighborhood just another way that we can actually push information out to them in a way that they currently communicate as opposed to making them come to us so any questions regarding the communications any question on this part of the presentation okay I'll turn back over to gabe that is it that that's all I had for slides I wanted to just give you kind of a summary statement and one of the things that I'm trying to become known for is a guy doesn't take no for an answer I want to hear I don't want to hear no we can't do that I want to hear yes we can and here's how so that we can make policy decisions at this level so we can we can make management decisions at my level I just want to become known known as that kind of person it doesn't take no for an answer and let you know that I'm very excited about working on these projects and pushing them as hard as I can to get done and it's it's it's been a great experience great any other questions yes just a comment it just feels really organized and I really like that you know I feel trying to remember some other presentations that we've had like this where this is what's going on this is what we're going to do this is how we're going to move forward and I just I appreciate that so thanks thank you okay with no more questions that concludes our open work session reports the council will now convene the closed session at 357 we will consider the following items consultation with attorneys under Texas government code section 551.071 and deliberations regarding real property under Texas government code section 551.072 and welcome everyone to this meeting of the Denton City Council will now call it to order we do have a quorum it is Tuesday what's the date April 18th 2017 at 6 30 if you would stand with me to pledge allegiance to the US and Texas flag if you're able to stand by I pledge allegiance to the Texas, Vermont state, under God, one, and indivisible. We don't have any proclamations or presentations on this agenda item so we'll move to agenda item three which is presentation from the members of the public if you could roll the rules of procedure 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 item three which is presentation for members of the public agenda item b we do not have any scheduled citizen reports but for agenda item 3c additional citizen reports which we sort of commonly refer to as open mic where the citizens can come talk about what they desire within the first within their time frame that's that's not addressed on the current agenda the council members are prohibited from interacting with them due to potential open meetings violations so we do have two cards first one is mr willy hutsmith if you'll come down state your name and address your time will begin mayor and city council members mayors will ask for a little bit 623 newton i want to state what i said in the the uh work session today about the the city manager um i think that's haddle men had a little bit hillman how do you say it i don't know i think you're doing an excellent job in in many many areas that from that's that you are responsible for and and i want to commend you for doing that and i said also that the seat attorney and the or acting seat i'm not sure if we've chosen him to be the permanent one or not it would be my vote and the uh auditor i think they're doing an excellent job i wanted to as i commented in the work session i want to talk about the closed session and one of the things that i'm still concerned about the number of closed sessions have have decreased and that's good but i just have a question and observation and and i'm going by what what we had to operate from when i was on the school board two terms and as it would explain to me and as i got clarification for it so i want to make that same point here with the rest of you the closed session is for items that you just it wouldn't be good for you to devose or let people know about them in the public meeting because it would h inder what you're trying to do and it might embarrass someone and things like that so it was explained to me that it was there are specific things that you need to consider as you're having these sessions second thing and this is the one that concerns me the most it seems like the subject matter is where it's supposed to be it is there are things that you really need to talk about in the private but the number of people that you have in the room is what differs so much from what i was taught when i was on the on the school board i don't think those rules have changed much since then but there are people in that room that are left in there that for instance today there were eight to talk about the this is excluding the council members and the city manager and the attorney to talk about something to do with the elect electricity situation and i assume there's something of that you need to talk about in private so i i get that but the assistant managers that were in there what does that have to do with that issue the uh and there's one thing that you do every time that when what you're doing is legally challenged that's going to be one that i think you should have you should have taken care of that one before we got to this so it's the number of people that you have in there and how does how does that tie in and then you had several people from the electric company what it was playing to me is that you need someone there to to bring clarification to a question that you have and that person's only brought in when you have a question you don't just have them in there just in case you have a question that's what was explained to me so that's the only thing that i see the number of of closed sessions have been reduced and the seems like the items that you're covering seem to fit within the rules of the closed session but it's the number and the people and the individuals that you have in there with you that gives me some concern thank you sir next speaker is ginger cain say your name and address your time will begin ginger cain 1600 churchill drive and first of all i would like to thank the council for the crosswalk light that you put in at north lakes gym to cross over to the park that has made it much more safe for uh for the blind to cross there but i also wanted to find out when the walk is going to be extended from uh in front of the church uh just past where the model airplanes are on that side so that you don't have to unsafely cross with no cross walk and no light to get on the walk on the other side which is still quite dangerous for someone who can't see so i know that i've contacted and talked to some people i know that that's in the works but i'd kind of like to know when a timeline is for that and also to keep in mind when uh construction is being done on the sidewalks once that's finished if workers could move those things rather than leave them set there because i don't mind moving them and i've been doing that to to make safe passage but sometimes they sit there for months once the work's complete so if that could be kind of looked into i'd appreciate it thank you thank you okay that's all the cards we have for that agenda item three we'll move on to the consent agenda council member hawkins thank you mayor i move approval of consent agenda items a through you but we are going to be pulling item c s and u for individual consideration okay council member gregory second all right we have a motion and a second for approval of the consent agenda items a through u save agenda items c s and u which we will take up as items for individual consideration uh we have a motion to second let's vote on the board please motion carries seven zero we will now take up those items under individual consideration agenda item c which is considered option of an ordinance of the city of denton texas prohibiting parking on the south side of texas street from 150 feet east of vine street to 150 feet west of frame street we have uh yes good evening council members my name is pretem dashmukh i'm the uh traffic engineer for the city and we have discussed this item and i'll quickly go over the background just to uh let everyone know what's uh what we're doing i'll pull up a graphic so everyone looks at it we're talking about a section of texas street between vine street and frame street this is just north of bell avenue uh and that's the border of twu uh the issue started when an apartment building one of this apartment building was hit by lightning and a developer came back and he had to redo the whole building reconstruct the building from ground up and the height of the building currently or before the lightning was 34 feet and they're constructing it back to 34 feet but due to the change in fire code between when this building was built and now the height restriction of 30 feet requires anything above 30 feet requires enough space to deploy an aerial equipment and the aerial equipment requires more that uh close to 26 feet of space for you know all the stabilizers and everything to be deployed we looked at several places where we could use the space on the back side in the parking lot area on this on this side along vine as well as on the front side along texas and based on the review we we came up to we came up with a conclusion that only tex as street was a viable option for equipment that size to be deployed we during the work session discussed different alternatives and between fire and engineering we came to a consensus that we have to come midways as to because parking is a big issue in this situation in this location and we had to come to compromise where we have to see that we don't impact parking to a greater extent but still achieve the safety requirements for fire equipment to be launched so based on that we've come back with an alternative which looks at 150 feet from vine street and 150 feet from frame street leaves a really small section technically if you measure 150 feet from frame street and somewhere in the middle of this driveway and because of this driveway where parking is not allowed this segment that actually we're going to restrict parking is down to 100 feet now so we're talking about four cars at the most okay and that's the alternative that we have tonight okay got a couple questions councilman brig's and that is in front directly in front of the building that it is allotted for okay thank you i have a question um just sort of hypoth etically speaking if for some reason i don't know how the boat goes but let's say this plan isn 't accepted what's plan is there a plan b i mean or is it is it oh i see the fire marshal moving this is is there is there a plan b that if and you said it's down to four cars it's down to four cars okay all right good well that's that's great that's appreciate you on the apartment side of the street only so yeah if somehow what's what's the alternative in this particular case we've looked at all of our options that are available and this seems to be the one that can accommodate not only our needs but also you know keep the needs of the community intact as well or that neighborhood again you know we responded there once before and we in took care of took care of the incident great so this is just to put things in place if we have any future incidents there that apply with the code good okay thank you councilmember gregory i appreciate the work that staff did to respond to the concerns brought by council during work session to bring back a plan that's more acceptable i move approval uh and we do have public comment we'll take that after councilmember hawkins i second all right we have public comment uh mr will hudson if you'll come down state your name and address your time and begin if you could maybe you want the map back up yes yes that was okay we need to yeah if we could get the map back up on the screen thank you get uh mayor and council members my name is willy haspeth i live at 623 newton i don't think you could do this there so i was at the work session and of course we're not allowed to talk there i wanted to bring up some points there but so i'll just bring them up here if this building right here is the main concern that you can't get the and for the public to know what what's being talked about is that fire engine with the long extending boom to put water on a large structure they're talking about where do they where do you park it so that that you can do that and there's no room here so we are told you can't park here because as you can see their car is there so you can't get in there all right that's understandable but this is the structure that that is a concern is of concern so you can't this one's not okay either you can't get the same problem for this structure is the same that you have for this one as well all of them have the same problem why would you inconvenience the people on the street and their parking right now for just this one structure if and the fire marshal has already said and they and and their department said they're going to get in there and fight this fire no matter what so my point is then why would you inconvenience all of these people over here and here that park here to take care of this structure which can be fought in the with the with the existing situation that you have now i think that that's probably not it's not a good thing to do to inconvenience all of these people for the long period of time for what if and this structure is the one you're talking about fighting when you have the rest of them to fight that's my point i believe those are the only cards we have so we have a motion and a second let's vote on the board please agenda item 4c passes unanimously go on to agenda item 4s as in sam i'll read that caption considered option of ordinance of the city council of the city of denton texas authorizing the city manager to execute a professional services agreement for architectural design services in support of the design of the new city of denton fire station do we have a presentation or was that just pulled just that was just pulled okay and council member briggs has filed appropriate papers of recusal with the city attorney's office thank you mr city attorney okay we have no presentation we do have a card wishing to speak mr william hudspeth if you'll come down state your no okay all right um council member hawkins i move approval council member gregory we have a motion and a second let's vote on the board please 4s passes six zero we'll move on to agenda item 4u which is consider approval of a resolution of the city of denton texas amending resolution by expanding the scope of review of the ad hoc city council committee to include all employee benefits and to advise the city council with regard to these matters we have a card wishing to speak mr what mr husbeth would you we having a presentation on this i don't think mr roe may report to me to national uh no sir i don't believe we are again at the work session this was discussed and discussed and we didn't get a chance as citizens don't get a chance to say much there uh what i did want to say is that one of the council one of you council members and if you want to know who that is citizens look at the tape seem to indicate that why would you need this was their concern why would you need a committee looking at this issue of employee benefits when during budget time you 're going to look at it anyway had i had an opportunity to speak when this was being discussed and what i would have said to the person is during budget times and you watch and see if that 's not the case these items will be discussed in general very general in fact when they're presented it will be presented in a way where it says this is what we think is there this is what was there before do you see any problems with it but what was presented at the work session was just good questions about maybe we ought to look at some of these items and a little bit more in detail one in particular was the time of leave the time you're off for an emergency or something that that you need to be off for is that what kind of compensation would compensation should need to be provided there and retirement issues some other things that came about in that discussion can't remember what one of the other specifics were but these were things that one of the council members said why don't we do this because it'll be more in depth i thought that was a good idea and again when you look at it like the council person was saying we need to look at it you will discover things that will probably benefit the the whole community of or the operating workforce in the city and the city as well one of the one of the things that was compared was how much is going to cost us what's being paid in the other areas other surrounding areas thought that was good too those things don't come up during budget time so i think uh i think that what the council person said was not a good thing you do need to evaluate this i'm glad it was it was voted on i hope you passed it tonight and you look at these let that committee look at these more specifically like they had requested that they be able to do thank you sir council member oh council member hawkins sure i'll be voting for this tonight but i do feel like i am struggling with that vote a little bit i just wanted to publicly say that i think that the original intent of this ad hoc committee changed a little bit but since it is dissolving in on may 16th i'll be voting for it so all right thank you council member wasney a little history and a little background we did a salary study last year and compared the salaries of employees with several north texas cities but at the same time we did not study the benefit packages and so staff worked very hard to create a comprehensive overview comparing the benefit packages that are here at the city with nine other north texas cities and so the committee initially only looked at vacation and sick time and we were limited to that and the committee wants to open the scope just to include what staff has already worked on already prepared they worked hard to take a look and then any recommendations or comments will come back to the full council and with that i move approval of this item we have motion council member briggs i will second we have a motion and a second for agenda item for you let's vote on the vote on the board please okay agenda item four you passes six to one moving on to agenda either there are no agenda items under general heading five moving on to general agenda item six which is items for individual consideration six a is considered option of an ordinance of the city council the city of dent texas providing for authorization improving the execution this is by the city manager an interconnect agreement between the city of dent and enterprise pipeline texas llc thank you mayor and council my name is phil williams general manager dent municipal electric i want to talk about this item tonight for approval the topics would be the fuel supplier for the dent energy center major fuel components the budget items and cost and their pb and staff recommendations the fuel supplier is texas enterprise pipeline llc their domain transmission line is located on the project site they were the uh although there 's two transmission lines on the site they are more familiar with serving power plant situations like this some slides that weren't in your backup before that we put in to respond to questions we got last night to explore a little more information about enterprise enterprise texas pipeline llc is a parent company is enterprise products operating llc they're the largest u.s pipeline partnership they own approximately 49 thousand miles of pipeline so they are large operating like 27 states we did look back at their incidents that they've had over the last 10 years they did have one fatality i remember this fatality because it's close to my hometown in johnson county it was between cleaver and glenrose where a backhoe operator contractor not not a enterprise employee but a contractor dug into their pipeline and exploded the pipeline and and was killed and injured others co-workers on that site they did put in a sherman extension between fort worth to sherman went through denton during that extension and saw that line there were no incidents reported in that installation that construction activity we did look at their safety performance as reported their instance while they will certainly because of their size you would see them having a larger number of incidents but if you look at a per ratio side their size comparing to other companies they are below the industry average and have been now for several several years so they have shown improvement from their lost time injuries and in their incident rate this is a budget item that was presented to council before in in that listing i've highlighted here what was shown before in march i believe march 7th to the council as far as the budgeted estimated costs for the project good news is that the proposal we got from the pipeline company for the air connection is less and we'll have some under budget savings here on the project project does include a 15 percent contingency in the in the project it is time materials based the major supply components this is the engineering permits the transmission line tap this is a 10 inch lateral pipeline to the plant all this pipeline to 1050 feet keep in mind this company is reported earlier has 49 000 miles of line this is going to be 1050 feet so less than one fifth of a mile of line that will be all be on our site anything that's above ground will be inside a 10 foot high concrete wall around our plant site the equipment is located in the concrete fenced area meters separators the skater equipment and then of course the measuring devices the public utility board and the staff recommended approval to the city council for an air connection agreement for an amount of 1.1 million 386 thousand dollars for the fuel supply infrastructure staff stands for any questions council member breaks um on the um there's a there's a website that has the incidents reported in the amount of money for the property damage and from 2006 to 2017 there's two separate one is the gas transmission systems which is um accounted for 7.2 million in property damage and then the gas gathering system which was 70 million um in property damage do you have any idea what that what kind of property damage that that may be or when we're talking about that type of thing yes uh after your question earlier i did look back at the 70 million in the gas gathering system and that was in like i said this company is very large and has a lot of different operations several limited liability corporations operates under their umbrella and this was in the offshore operation was where the majority i think 67 million dollars in the year 2008 where that was uncovered was the in the offshore operation they had the listing i saw the number of incidents there was like four or five incidents they were 17 to 25 million dollars added up to the 67 million dollars for that year okay okay so would this be classified under a gathering system or transmission line the gathering system was in the offshore uh the operation we're connecting with is under the the gas transmission side so there's already that one has not incurred the 70 million that one didn't that has incurred millions of dollars but not but we consider the whole industry uh over the past years has incurred 7.7 billion dollars worth of damages uh for their size operations okay there as i said the sector report looked at their below industry uh standards on the incident rate do they have a is it because there's one of their pipelines in close proximity to this location or is this just a separate segment of pipeline that they're installing no the reason uh we chose this site was because it is a cross section between a gas pipeline that already existed in denton county so the only amount of additional pipe to tap into this 36 inch transmission line that's already on the site and already existed before and would exist regardless of whether we put a plant there or not is the thousand feet of 10-inch pipe we're tapping into this that will be all in our site the the one of the prominent issues that the gas transmission systems have is people digging into and so by having all this on our site we would be have more control of that uh certainly won't have any more exposure than what we would have already from this gas transmission line being there but the reason the site was chosen because the gas transmission line was already there and the electrical infrastructure was there so it minimized the construction of both to interconnect so then most of that thousand feet will be within the footprint of the energy center or how much or is it a thousand feet to get it from their pipeline to the property line it's a thousand feet but all that's located on the property we purchased that's okay that was my question all right thank you can't remember actually yeah no okay all right any other questions for staff we do have people wishing to speak any other questions for staff thank you all right our first speaker will be carol soph if you'll oh oh sorry it's sorry i'm not reading uh in opposition carol soph is in opposition there we do have a white card wishing not to speak michael henn and 724 thomas street is in opposition as well uh so then we have two cards mr ed soph good evening my name is ed soph 1620 victoria drive in dent on i just put together an overview of possible real cost categories of this pipeline and what it represents versus the costs of more renewables so i'm gonna jennifer i'm gonna put a real fancy thing up here for you yeah have the overhead yeah is it on yeah they'll they'll pop it up here in a second there you go okay rate payers of denton shoulder the debt of this one million three hundred and eighty six thousand dollar cost of a gas supply pipeline and meeting metering infrastructure in addition to this cost there are possible unknown costs the cost of the natural gas to run the denton energy center's engines the cost of safety inspections the cost of maintenance the costs of environmental impacts on the air and land and private property the cost of impacts on the public health and safety the cost for emergency responders equipment and facilities the costs of supporting and prolonging the use of a fossil fuel in the aircott grid rather than greening the grid the costs of climate change disruptions and mitigation the costs of precautions given the troubling safety record of the proposed builder of this pipeline as for renewables first of all obviously there's no cost the one million three hundred and eighty six thousand dollars for a gas supply pipeline and metering metering infrastructure there are no costs incurred by environmental or public health and safety risks there are no costs for regulatory inspections no costs for air and water monitoring there are minimal maintenance costs there are no costs associated with exacerbating climate change and there are no costs due to explosions fires spills or toxic emissions in closing i simply would like to refer you back to something which was sent to council i believe it was before mr heilman took over so if you don't have a copy i'll send you one a paper that was put together by cyrus reed at the lone star chapter on some next steps that can be taken by denton municipal electric city council and future city councils to make denton a leader on clean energy i trust that you all receive this it was sent to you and if you haven't read it i would robustly request that you go back and look at it because there are some great ideas that would help denton's future remarkably thank you very much thank you next speaker is mr william hudspeth come down state your name and address your time will begin and council members my name is william hudspeth the letter 623 newton mr salford makes a a lot of sense he's not an employee of the city he's a citizen but you can examine the things that he's done at his place his house his location the things that he's telling you about and you'll see that he's trying to save us money lots of money did you just hear the figures maybe they're not true but they sure are impressive our electric bill and i've told you mayor several times and bless your heart you don't have much to do about it you're just a man and thank you for at least listening you do listen and i mean you really do try to figure things out i keep saying my electric bill keeps going up what is going on why is it so high and you said you didn't know you were going to check it out and you've tried you've tried to figure it out well let's just say for just funsies some of what mr salford saying is true now i know the the part about having regulatory agencies to have to regulate what is happening is that's true we don't have to do that with with the proposal he's talking about we should do and there's no emergency anything that we have to plan for the difference is will it in fact save money and can we as citizens benefit from it and you're sitting here elevated so that you can see us i guess i'm not sure why you're elevated or maybe so we can see you've got to listen to us citizens now i don't know i don 't know what is the truth but you know it might warrant if you can put this vote off and do some checking check and see if what he's seeing is true heck what are those million dollar expenditures just part of a million surely if we got some of that back maybe we can reduce my light bill maybe a dollar or 50 cents well that's something but i think we ought to listen to what he's saying he's talked about this for years these things that he's he's told us to do uh to that we should look into i would say maybe you ought to look into some of them maybe there's something to it thank you thank you sir those are all the cards that we have to speak councilmember hawkins oh okay councilmember hawkins i move approval of item 6a councilmember briggs i had a question for staff one more question was there another option um for the for company besides this one the did we do like a what was did we do the traditional way like an rfp so we have two we really we had three options of gas pipeline companies two are on site one would require additional pipeline to build two i believe of like 10 miles so because of having to build additional pipeline we excluded that one the the second choice uh the pipeline system is not as robust we were worried about them uh being able to have adequate pressure maintain adequate pressure for this service and this pipeline company uh is has had a past history of being able to supply power plants and so they had a history to do it plus to have the pipeline system installed this pipeline was put in i believe seven or eight years ago and so it's more current and uh just seemed like the best option from based on the uh adequacy of the history of the company and the facilities they had so i guess this might be a question for legal since there were three companies doing the same thing is it okay that we didn't issue any kind of rfp or under the scenario the staff has identified that they used one of the exemptions to avoid doing the rfp certainly if that that option is always available okay but the staff proceeded under one of the exceptions okay thank you i would say that staff intends to uh we don't tend to operate this whole this plant for the entire length of time that's available with just one pipeline serving it our intention is we will uh eventually build a pipeline to the other to the other service so we can bid those two against each other in the future it's just not needed for initial operation okay councilmember gary that was kind of my same question about the procurement aspect so typically when we have an exemption to purchasing it's placed in the description of the item i was just wondering why that wasn't in the description that i couldn't answer i know it's it's identified in the eis and but but not in the actual caption usually we'll put that when it um we usually see it with the sole source um but in this case i i can't answer that question i guess the follow-up to that question is that that doesn't does that make the posting defective in my opinion it does not okay all right thank you okay uh we councilmember hawkins i've recognized you and i believe you made a motion for approval is that correct mayor pro tem rodin we have a motion and a second for agenda item 6a let's vote on the board please uh motion carries five to two we'll move on to agenda item 6b considered option of ordinance considering all matters incident and related to the issu ance sale and delivery of up to 102 million dollars in principal amount of city of denton certificates of obligation thank you mayor i will just summarize this item for the council and be available for questions we're proposing an ordinance allowing the issuance of up to 102 million city of denton certificates of obligation this will fund really three city functions 18.9 million for general government i'll give a little bit of detail on that 17.6 million for solid waste and 65.46 for the electric utility i do want to point out that this is less than what we budgeted for in the capital budget we're putting off the issuance based on current cash balances of water and wastewater debt and we've also reduced the issuance for the solid waste by about seven million from what was advertised and what was in the capital budget in terms of the major projects in the 18.8 million for general government for police and fire radio upgrades and upgrades to the computer aided dispatch system of about five million and the matching funds for the bonnie bray and mayhill road improvements the council heard about that today in terms of the capital program this is our matching funds for the rtr grant also for solid waste projects i mentioned 17.45 million a couple of the larger are for materials management equipment for the mining diversion program and cell development of an additional cell and lastly the 65 million for electric projects i want to break down that about 69 percent of that sale is eligible for the transmission cost of service recovery that we recover from other utilities within the state i do want to highlight that we issue debt based on the life of the asset so some of this debt will be five ten twenty years and for the electric utility 30 years the ordinance in front of you sets the parameters of the sale the maximum principal amount 102 million a final stated maturity of february 15 2047 maximum net effective interest rate of four percent and this delegation would end in october of 2017 we plan to sell these co's competitively in may with that summary the staff recommends approval of this ordinance councilmember briggs i have a question in the the electric list there it says denton energy center subst ation and when we had our our update on everything that phil said that that was scheduled to be regular updated as a substation but with the gas plants it needed to become a bigger better i guess transmission kind of station since it's next to the gas plant instead so my question about that and also the arco so that's the 1.7 million for the denton energy center substation and the 1.3 million for the arco which are two that he mentioned are going to be different than the regular transmission projects that we had originally looked in were those included in the bonds the 225 million bonds or is this something separate i think this is just some improvements to the substation separate from that project but i'll let phil clarify that so the uh denton energy center substation is a new gem crystal substation and that substation was scheduled to be rebuilt we moved that up because of denton energy center and expanded it because of that this is uh part of that expansion that we would have done we're just doing it earlier the arco substation the the line it was a transmission line that had to be upgraded sooner and was dent north to arco but not the arco subst ation that's an entry question okay yeah well i just was going back to that conversation and was trying to place the the money in the issuance so thanks councilman bagari i have a question about solid waste so if memory serves we just rolled some debt on solid waste and that released a lot of funds that we placed into reserve for the various utility funds we did a refunding of debt but that was um of outstanding revenue bonds and we released some reserve funds for the um electric utility water utility and wastewater but um solid waste issues um debt that's tax supported they did not issue any revenue old revenue bonds so none of that kind of released reserve savings went to um the solid waste fund that was my question okay thank you all right we've got a card wishing to speak mr willy husbeth agenda item 6b is in baker american my name is willy husbeth and council members i live at 623 newton i cannot imagine what one just one of these items 102 million dollars i just can't imagine how much i don't even think i've made that much in a lifetime i guess yeah i have made that much but man after talking to mr soph someone's got to listen to that man or at least check out what he's saying i'm going to start saving some money on this electricity mayor i'm going i have to my law place which is 14 by yes 14 by 30 my electric bill only in june and july is 500 dollars 14 by 30 500 dollars when i install my solar panels which i'm going to do i'm going to tell you how much money i save we have got to stop spending this kind of money we're not checking out some things to make sure we're not wasting our money i remember the question that uh one of you asked to the uh the person that's in charge of the electric here and i'm pretty smart about contractual stuff i didn't even understand what he was talking about that's got to stop you all have got to well the next council i hope they do their work and check out some things i think the auditor is going to show us show some things and perhaps we'll get some of this stuff turned around well so that's my point thank you council member wasney i move approval of item 6b council member gregory we have a motion and a second for agenda item 6b let's vote on the board please okay motion carries six to one we'll go on to agenda item 6c consider adoption of an ordinance considering all matters incident and related to the issu ance sale and delivery of up to 30 million 700 thousand dollars in principal amount of city of denton a general obligation refunding thank you mayor this item is also a parameters ordinance it includes refunding some outstanding city debt as well as new money issuance the refunding would be about 13 million dollars of a portion of the city's 2007 a general obligation refund ing bonds that are callable we would refund those for savings to reduce our total principal and interest payments on that outstanding debt also includes about 17.1 million of general obligation bonds from voter approved debt about six million the largest portion would be for street improvements and street repairs also for fire station number three remodel rebuilds about 6 .4 million for a total of 17.16 in terms of the parameters ordinance it sets a maximum sales amount of 30.7 million a final stated maturity of february 15 2037 maximum net effective interest rate of three and a half percent the refunding must produce present value savings of at least three percent from the refunded debt and the delegation authority ends october 18th again with with these bonds we plan to sell in may be a competitive sale staff recommends approval of the ordinance available for any questions you may have councilman grigory thank you mayor well it's april and it's another election year in denton and so that means that during the candidate forums there's lots of discussion about debt and a certain amount of misinformation that happens and so when people see on a on a agenda item that we're refinancing they think of that sometimes the way that they think about you know maybe refinancing a car or refinancing a house where they're having trouble making the payments we're not having trouble making the payments army are we no the refinancing is strictly to lower our costs for savings we can issue the refunding bonds at a lower interest rate than the existing bonds so we save that delta so it's like a lot of people that at times refinance their house they're not extending the maturity date of the of the loan they're just fine refinancing at a lower interest rate and according to the backup we're going to be saving about seven hundred thousand dollars just from this refin ancing that's our current estimate okay also one of the comments that that is people raise concern about you know being righteously indignant is that we're so far behind on on spending the money like the 2012 bond issue we're going to we're we're authorizing you're asking us to authorize here the last fourth million dollars of a 20.4 million dollar authorization why did we not authorize the whole 20.4 million dollars back there in 2012 after the voters approved it why why are we doing this in smaller segments can you explain that we're basically trying to issue the debt based on how quickly we can get the capital program out you don't you don't just like with your own mortgage you don't want to enter enter into debt until you need the funds so with this we try to issue the debt as we need the funds this was really planned as a five -year program when it was sold to the voters just like the 2014 election was planned for a six- year program so we try to issue the debt as we can complete the project so we're minimizing our debt service based on that if we'd issued all 20 million upfront it would have taken several years to complete those projects we'd be paying debt service before we had completed the project there's also that staggered issuance of debt have to do with retirement of other debt so that we are sort of replacing some debt that's retired with new debt and we're not having to raise interest rates that we're just using that money to some of that and it's kind of planned to keep the debt service tax rate to try to keep that level and not increasing so you really look at what's your existing debt what's your plan over the next several years for issuance what's going to be the impact on your taxpayers trying to keep that rate relatively level to your total tax rate well i certainly appreciate the staff being diligent in refinancing when we can save our taxpayers money thank you thank you that's member riggs i'm really glad to see the the work in the city getting done and uh thank you mr helman and with that i would like to make a motion to approve council member wasney we do have also a public comment we shouldn't speak after we take this motion i second the motion all right any questions for staff seeing none mr willy hudspeth any you're up okay all right we have a motion and a second for agenda item 6c let's vote on the board please motion carries seven zero moving on to six d conduct the first two readings of an ordinance to annex approximately 16 acres generally located on north side of barthol road approximately 350 feet west of i-35 southbound service road do we have a presentation on this just an aerial of the landing question okay just an aerial okay and am i supposed to read this yes sir all right you tell me when i'm supposed to read it after after a few seconds after everybody can see the area of the property okay we're ready we're ready okay item 6d an ordinance of the city of denton annexing approximately 16 acres generally located on the north side of barthol road approximately 350 feet west of the i-35 southbound service road more specifically described in exhibit a and illustrated in exhibit b which are which area buds and is adjacent to the city limits so as to include the property within the city limits granting to all the inhabitants of the property all the rights and privileges of other citizens and binding the inhabitants to all the ordinances resolutions acts and regulations of the city providing for a correction to the city map to include the annex lands providing for a separability clause and providing an effective date we do have a card wishing to speak mr william hudspeth all right chair would entertain a motion on this item is there any more presentation from staff is there any action required no actions required actual next rating okay all right well we'll sorry about that council members all right so no action is required on agenda item 6d we have closed that agenda item we now move on to public hearings public hearing agenda item 7a is hold a public hearing and consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas adopting standards of care for youth teen programs administered by denton parks and recreation department pursuant to hexes texas human resources code section 42.041 good evening mayor and council members my name is dilly williams and i work in the parks and recreation department the standards of care are the guidelines that we follow for our recreational care programs such as the summer camp program and the after school program the standards of care cover such items as staff qualifications and training discipline procedures staff to student ratio training uh transportation fire and safety drills programming etc the standards of care require a public hearing each year and have to be adopted by the city council annually we made two changes to the standards of care since their approval last year by council the first change was as part of the city's compensation study we had some position titles and descriptions change and so we reflected those changes in the standards of care and then the second item that we changed in the standards of care was we listed the specific names of programs that operate under the standards of care those were the only two items that we changed this year i can answer any questions any questions for staff before we open the public hearing seeing none thank you we will now open the public hearing this is a public hearing anybody wishing to speak please come down state your name and address and your time will begin anybody wishing to speak okay state your name and address and your time will begin my name is willy hesworth i live at 623 newton what i really want you to consider is that certain percentage of the youth that this program is supposed to assist is is not helping the kids that it really should help now this is i guess this is staffing and trying to further program itself but it's an opportunity to say we've got to quit putting band-aids on what's the the situation that 's before us on my way over here in the neighborhood that i live in those kids it's the 16 to 22 year old black male who is not being addressed and he is the one that really should have the attention given to him by these programs and you're talking about staffing and and i guess personnel to run the program and it's sponsored by the parts department something's got to be done for these young men now the women are getting into it african americans the ones i see i'm sure that they're more than just my race has to be these are just the ones i see in my neighborhood and to get an example of what i'm talking about i want us to have come with me on a field trip i want you to go with me on a field trip you won't go but i'm just going to see it just so you can think about it what maybe you might be an eye-opener for you uh come go with me on a field trip it'll start at the park fredmore park now you can't bring anybody guards with you it'll be at night it'll be it'll start at seven o'clock you 'll just go with me and we're going to leave the park and go up hill street and right down hill street toward the end we're going to stop at a neighborhood over there and you'll see what i'm talking about you sit there and you look at these programs you think you 're doing something well if that's not bad enough or not bad enough if that's not enough difference for you then we will go to there's a a apartment on mingo a big large apartment complex on mingo we'll go there about eight o'clock and we'll just walk we 'll just walk in that neighborhood and in the big parking lot that they have out there and you'll finally see what i'm talking about this program only helps those as far as i can tell that a parent gets them there and they're the ones who are just kind of somewhat having a problem now you're going to you're talking about funding the staff for that group and i'm over there in my neighborhood on ru dail and the in the areas in that area by fred moore park and an mlk center something's going to have to be done should something pop off there which means happens and we have got a crisis here like we've had in other places i will be right back here if i survive it and say to you i told you we need to do something about that i think we ought to do something about it before we get there thank you sir this is a public hearing anybody else wishing to speak please come down state your name address and your time will begin anybody else wishing to speak seeing none we will now close the public hearing uh counselor any questions for staff or chair would entertain a motion councilmember gregory thank you mayor i move that we approve uh the ordinance that adopts the standards of care for youth and team programs councilmember wasney i second the motion we have a motion and a second for agenda item 7a let's vote on the board please okay motion carries seven zero moving on to agenda item number eight concluding items concluding items items of new business councilmembers anybody councilmember briggs i i would like for um with all the historic preservation we 're talking about downtown and all the updates that that's going on i would like for council to consider um discussing an overlay in that area um as soon as as soon as we can to protect our downtown historic um area and also we we talked about recording closed sessions once before but that whole discussion um got away from us so i would like to to bring that up again at some point okay councilmember gary uh probably two months or three months back i had requested an update on um you know we had our wage study and then we had people whose salaries went up and then there were some it wasn't uniform so i'd like some type of report i don't know if it's going to be in our little small ad hoc group or if it should be at the large group but just re-bring that up because i don't think we've had that discussion maybe at the small group and then up to the large group what do you what are you exactly remember we had the wage study wages were adjusted yes i had requested a follow-up on that specific point of what was the change in wages from the follow-up so i'm sorry from one year over the next because typically we would do like a percentage like three percent everybody gets three and we would know what the cost of that is but for last year i don't think we actually have a cost of what the change was so the net incremental change of that decision to adjust wages yes please that's that's exactly what i was trying to say in 1 000 words 500 any other concluding items seeing none we will then adjourn this meeting the dent city council at 7 37 p.m.