Jun 06, 2017 City Council on 2017-06-06 12:00 PM

Good afternoon. Because it is afternoon, this is a meeting of the Denton City Council on Tuesday, June the 6th, 2017. We do have a quorum. Call this meeting to order. First item on the agenda is citizen comments on consent agenda items. No blue cards. All right. Request for clarification of agenda items listed on the agenda for June 6, 2017. You have something Mr. DeMantra? Oh yes, Councilmember Egs and we'll go around the horn. I would like to request to pull item K for presentation for the public. It's Splash Park. So Councilmember, you want the presentation in the 630 meeting? Yes please. Okay. Councilmember Ryan, did you have something? Yes, I'd like to request item B on the consent agenda be pulled for presenting to the public. I'm fully in support of it, but it's information that I think the public needs to be well informed of. Did you say B is in Baker? B, yeah. Okay. Councilmember Gregory. Well, on item D, I don't want to take time during the 630 meeting, but I was wondering if we could have some staff explain how the signal light there on US Highway 77 works in conjunction with some trails that we are doing for pedestrian and bicycles. And then you'll have one. Yeah, Emerson will answer his question. Oh, you must have given a heads up. See Councilmember Gregory did it like I need to and that is give him a heads up so they'll have a PowerPoint presentation ready for you. There might have been some prior communication, yes sir. I'll start and if there are specifics on this agreement, pre-TAM will pick it up. What you see here, the green portion of this, the green line is the grant funded trail that's currently under construction. It starts here at Evers Elementary, works its way up north, winds up. This is Hercules, Nicosia. This is Highway 77. One leg of it goes up to the UNT Discovery Park. We cross this Highway 77. This is where the signal will be. That will become a fully signalized intersection for pedestrians and for traffic. And then that trail runs down through North Lakes Park, connects to some of the trails that already exist in North Lakes Park, gets you all the way down to Windsor and some of the bicycle trails that are down there on Windsor. So this is all part of that project. So in that regard, thank you for that. It looks like we're getting quite a bit of our bicycle lanes, bicycle routes, and trails connected up now. Yes sir, we're all working on that. And while we have a paltry amount of money in our yearly budget to help with that, maybe we can correct that this year, the staff has done a brilliant job of stretching that money by grant. So could you talk a little bit about the grants that we've gotten to help facilitate all of this? This particular trail was funded with a $1.3 million grant through TxDOT, federal money. We have taken a little bit of ribbing about this trail because we have to build it to federal standards, which means it's a 12-foot wide trail. We've had folks accuse us of building roads through the parks. That is not the case. It is indeed a pedestrian trail. But yeah, this one was, the most part of this was grant funded. So $1.2 million for the trail, and then a TxDOT is paying for the light? I don't think that's quite accurate. I think that's a good point. Thank you, Tam. Let me get a couple of visuals up here. But I believe the signal is funded through the grant, and that was part of the TxDOT deal. We went back and forth a lot. It wasn't warranted. It was not? It was not initially when we just looked at that one neighborhood that's currently built. But there are several neighborhoods. There are subdivisions getting built. And as we looked at projected volumes, as we looked at new connections, I think we were able to convince them that it's required. The primary issue there was pedestrian and bicycle connectivity. Let me pull up one little slide that will tell you. Okay. All right. So awesome. So when we were looking at this project, we were able to convince TxDOT that there are two separate things going on. There was a trail in the north side of 77 and then a trail in the south side of 77. And actually, this thing connects to the UNT North Campus. And the real separation issue was the safety of folks, bicy clists, pedestrians trying to cross at this intersection and connecting between these two trails. So that being said, safety was a concern as well as we were able to convince them for the warrants. Once we were convinced, we were able to get two crossings. One is across this driveway and one across 77 with a full blown signalized intersection that will protect. And that will have a pedestrian button also? It will have pedestrian buttons, phases, detection, everything. Well, there was a time not too many years ago when we struggled to get staff working on some of these things. And you guys have taken a lot of initiative, very pleased. And I wanted to take the opportunity of this being in our consent agenda to say thanks for a job well done and for finding money outside of the city dollars that are helping to make Denton more walkable and more bikeable. I want to make sure any clarification for agenda? Oh, did you have a question on this? Oh, I'm sorry, go ahead. It's really for Emerson, the future dog park is also located on the opposite side of that intersection as well, right? That is correct. So, okay. Right in there. Yeah, it's a little bit tough to pick up on this scale of a map. But it would be right here where the cursor is. This is the animal adoption facility and the dog park will be built here. So we will also be protecting our pets as they cross. Yes, ma'am. Yes, thank you. And on a leash for sure. Yes, you might point out where the soccer complex will be. The connectivity to that. The area up here on Riney Road. This is where the Vela soccer complex is being constructed. Thank you. Any other questions on this agenda item? I'm sorry, go ahead. Really a question so much as a comment. I went up there on Sunday to use the new Wildflower Trail extension and there were actually quite a lot of people on the green extension on the North Lake section. I was very surprised. There were more people than I've seen there in a very long time. So I think it's getting used pretty well. Great, thank you. Anyone else on this agenda item? Seeing none, thank you all very much for your presentation. Okay still moving, still on the agenda item for clar ifications for agenda items. Anyone have any clarifications? None? Okay. All right, we'll move on to agenda item three which is work session reports. Receive a report and hold discussion on the Denton development code update. Good afternoon. I'm Shandrian Jarvis, I'm the development review committee administrator for the city. If you guys recall, the city council approved a contract to rewrite the land development code back in December of 2016. And so since January of this year, we've been working with the consultant, Clarion Associates, to actually start drafting that document. And so I'm going to actually invite Matt Gobble, who is the team lead up to provide an overview of the project as well as the current status. Hello Mayor, council members. Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to be here. Let me start my PowerPoint. All right. We're excited to be here. This is a very important project for the city and so we're anxious to give you an update on our progress so far, give you an overview of the overall schedule of the project and tell you exactly what we've been up to. What we would like to do in this meeting is I'm going to introduce our firm. I'm going to remind you about who Clarion Associates is. I recognize some of your faces. I've met some of you in the past, but I think some of you are new. So I'm going to just bring you back up to speed on who Clar ion is. I'm going to then talk about the overall project background . I'm going to then go a little bit into the weeds and tell you a little bit about the work that we've actually done to date. We've done a good bit of drafting and I'm going to just give you a high level overview of the drafting that's been done. And then finally we'll talk about next steps and where we 're going from here. Briefly, Clarion Associates. We're based in Denver. Actually, we're a land use consulting firm based in Denver. We do zoning work around the country. So I'm a planner and an attorney by training. I've been doing this over 20 years now. We have done a lot of work in Texas actually. I've done a lot of work in Austin, San Antonio. We did the San Antonio historic design standards. Working in Cedar Hill right now, Irving, Rallat. So we know Texas, but we also know best practices around the country. So I think we bring a good base of experience both region ally and also from around the country. There's going to be three of us on the team and two of my colleagues might show up before the end of this meeting. Their plane just arrived this morning. So now let me just briefly get into the project goals and the scope of work. And you might be familiar with the Denton Development Code and what's in there. And you might really not have a chance to use it very much. And I think it's important just to take a step back and just think about how important the Development Code is to the life of a city like Denton. It's the regulations for all land development. And so it's got the important rules about who can build what and where. And the types of buildings that go in to the neighborhood next door or the vacant commercial building. What does the redeveloping corridor on a place like University Boulevard look like? Also the procedures for evaluating development. All of those types of things are contained in the Development Code and all of those things are potentially up for rewrite and improvement as part of this project. So we have a fairly big mandate. When the city initially scoped out this project, you all said that you had some important goals for the rewrite project. And those are summarized here. First of all, make sure that the process is open and inclusive. Denton has a tradition of strong, active public engagement in land development activities. We want to respect that. Make sure that we are transparent and open as much as possible so that people know how the rewrite project is proceeding and what their opportunities are to contribute to the work. Respect Denton's past efforts and decisions. You've already done some great work in terms of planning and zoning. And it's important for us to build on that foundation and not view this as a start from scratch effort. Focus on solutions that work. I think one thing that distinguishes our firm is that we're fairly pragmatic. We don't have kind of canned templates in terms of form- based codes or anything that we come in with. It's very important to us that we develop a very specific Denton-based set of solutions to zoning and planning. So that's an important part of our work. And then finally, create a Development Code that's clear and easy to use. We've seen worse codes than the current Denton Development Code. There's a lot of good things about that document. But it could be improved. It could be made easier to use. Could you say that one more time? We've seen worse codes than the Denton Development Code. Much worse. You're not in bad shape. But we have an opportunity to really move the ball forward substantially. So these are our overall goals. But this is a big one here. Implement Denton Plan 2030. You have adopted a city-wide set of policy goals regarding planning and land use. You've thought very carefully about how your corridors should develop over time and how new development should be compact and environmentally friendly. You've thought about important themes like improving community health and sustainability. You don't have all the tools in place in your current Development Code to get you where this plan calls for you to be. And so an important part of our job is going to be to keep this open in the background, this on our desks, and make sure that we're giving you the tools you need to implement the new plan. So that's an important part of the foundation for the overall project. So let's just talk about logistics now. In terms of tasks and timeline, we kicked off the project at the end of 2016, really came out and started in earnest in January with meeting with stakeholders, meeting with re-engaging with a lot of the stakeholders in the community and the staff to kick the project off, and then to actually start the drafting. We're in the drafting stage now. I'm going to talk with you more about that in some detail in a few minutes. But the drafting is going to continue on very aggressively so that by the end of 2017, we've actually got a consolidated first draft of a new code in place. That will leave you the whole first half of 2018 to actually work through that document and refine it and to engage the community and make sure that they understand what's in the code and to work through the adoption process. So it's actually a relatively aggressive schedule for a project like this, but we think it's very doable. We break the drafting down into chunks. We call them modules. But there's three components or modules to the code drafting that we do. And I'm going to talk with you today about module one, because that's where we are right now. Module one is the zoning districts and the use regulations. So this is all the regulations that divide the city geographically into zoning districts. Your residential districts versus your commercial districts versus your, you know, maybe mixed use districts. Maybe there's existing districts carried forward. Maybe there's some new ones as well. What can I do on my property? Where can I do it? How much? How big? These are all fundamental questions for people as they think about kind of zoning. This is really the heart of what most people think about zoning. But development standards is important as well. The second module is going to deal with all the things that influence the quality of development in Denton. How do I lay out my site? How do I protect the floodplain? How do I protect environmental resources? Where's the parking got to go? What about the landscaping? What about the vertical development? What does the quality of the building have to look like? All those types of quality issues are in the second batch of material. And then finally, how do I work through the process in Dent on? How do I work with development services? How do I get an answer to my proposal? How do I rezone my property? How do I get a specific use permit? So that's the category of issues that we're going to be going through. And for each one of them, we're going to walk through a very structured process where we produce, first of all, a staff draft where we work with your staff to make sure that we've gotten the issues right. We've got a clean version in place that's ready to go to the public. Then we turn around the public draft and we come out and we do a series of meetings with the public and we engage them. So right now, we're at the stage of the public draft on module one. We'll do the same thing for modules two and three. The goal is that we finish and we get all of those three modules printed, prepared, and communicated to the public so that by the end of the year, we've got a consolidated draft in place. Again, so the 2018 first half of that year is for the adoption process, the refinement. Let me talk a little bit about the high-level reorgan ization that we're proposing. I'm going to start talking about substance now. This is your current organization. This is the current subchapters that you have in the DDC. And there's a lot of good work here. There's a lot of, you know, important thinking and planning and work that's been done. But in terms of an organizational structure, it's pretty frustrating. You know, you've got -- it's hard to find things. You've got some chapters devoted to very big ideas with lots of information. You've got some chapters devoted to very specific kind of micro issues. You've got a confusing structure that leaves a lot of opportunity for improvement. It's hard to find stuff here. We're going to clean that up. We're going to clean it up by consolidating everything into a new structure that just has 10 subchapters. And we're going to accomplish this by consolidating like information. So we typically put all the procedures in one place, for example. All the procedures will be in subchapter two. All the development standards will be in subchapter six. So that's a lot of opportunity for consolidation right there. That's going to be everything from the drainage requirements and the land disturbance to building design. All that material can be consolidated into a cleaner organization. You've also got definitions that are scattered throughout your current ordinances right now. We can put all those together, just clean them up, and make sure there's not any overlap, any inconsistencies in those definitions as we carry them forward. This framework is a much more user-friendly tool for finding information. It's going to be easier for you all as a basis to make decisions, easier for the staff to administer on a daily basis, easier for the public to figure out what the rules are for development. Sir? Is this -- because when you go to try to find some type of term for our code, it typically directs you to muni code. So this will be the copy that's out there. Is that correct? Is that how this all works? This -- sorry. Yes. Yes. Okay. All right. Okay. Good. Because I know that when I search for things out there, it 's very difficult. Yeah. If you don't get the search term right. And so I'm hoping that this will allow a little bit easier access to what you're trying to find. Very much so. Yes. User-friendliness is one of our main goals. So I talked about these modules. This just tells you kind of the sequence in which we're going to be drafting them. The material that we've drafted so far is three, four, and five. That's what we'll talk about today in some more detail. Then we'll come back in module two and we'll get the development standards, signs, nonconformities, and subdivision. And then administration is typically last. We're kind of getting the hard stuff out of the way first. We typically like to go ahead and jump into the hard stuff first. And then by the time we get to procedures, the terrain's moving. Should be fairly straightforward and easy. So that is the high-level overview of the overall reorgan ization and of the process that we're going through. I wanted to just give you a heads-up or an overview right now of the materials that we have drafted so far. I want to start jumping into some substance. And I want to start with zoning districts. Again, the way that the city of Denton is divided on the map into different geographic areas. And really, all I wanted to emphasize with this slide is just to talk about the difference between base zoning districts and overlay districts. And you've got a series of base districts now in our neighborhood residential. And you've got the set of overlay districts as well, some of which are kind of area-based, like Fry Street, some of which are specific one-offs for individual smaller areas, not the overall corridor, say. These are both potentially on the table for change, but we 're really focusing on the base districts for cleanup as part of the new code. What you've got now is summarized on this slide. It is a relatively lengthy, complex list for a city like Denton. There's opportunities for cleaning this up. I say that because there's some districts that are kind of very similar in terms of standards and purpose. They could potentially be consolidated. You also potentially don't have the right mix of tools to get at all the land use types that are implemented in Denton Plan 2030. So there's opportunities for cleanup here in a lot of ways. Just in terms of the number of districts that you've got, 23 base zoning districts is a fairly high number. Add on to that the 12 special purpose and overlay districts . Then you've got 35 districts in total. What are we looking at changing? Well, this is the proposed lineup of new districts, which is simpler. You've got four residential districts, three mixed use districts, several urban corridor districts that are new, and then finally other non-resident ial. Now if you look at the materials that we distributed that are on the project website, you see a table and it actually compares all the existing zoning districts down one side versus these new districts on the right side. You can see that most of these districts are simply consolidations of districts that you have now. For example, R2, the residential low district, is a consolidation of a couple of NR districts that you've got now that you saw on that prior map. And we could go down and for each one of these, we've explained the origin and the draft of how these new districts are designed. Now the corridor districts are new. That's a good example of how you don't have really good tools in place in your current code to get at the various different types of corridors in Denton. It's historically been driven by auto-based development. You've got different flavors of corridors. You've got Elm Street more in the core. You've got Teasley and Brinker and Colorado that have more of a suburban feel in some ways. So the code is going to need to call out different types of development standards for those different types of corridors moving forward. Same thing for mixed use. Mixed use neighborhood, mixed use downtown core, mixed use regional. The code will have different development standards that are designed to accomplish the purpose of these different districts. Council Member Gregg. And then Council Member Gregg. Should you have a question? Okay. Thank you, Mayor. So since this is not your first rodeo, I'm looking at these reduced code zoning districts and thinking, well, what do you do with the current zoning districts? What is the process then that happens in cities when we have NR4s? Does that become NR3? How does that process take place? And so that's question one. And then I have another one regarding corridors. But answer that one first. It's a great question. So how do we get from where you are to this new system? And it's going to be a process of us working carefully with your staff and really going line by line and figuring out what the transition strategy should be from your current districts to the new. First of all, our first task is to figure out what the right lineup of districts is, where you need to go. And then we'll figure out for each one how you need to get there. For many of these districts where it's a simple consolidation, oftentimes you can accomplish that just with a conversion table in the chart. And it's just very simple. And it just says the name of this district is going to change to the name of the new district in the future. And does that require notification of all of the people, all of the property owners that are in a certain classification that's going to be changed? Because they might have recently petitioned to have a classification and now it's going to be changed. How does that work? The notification process, you know, it varies by community and it varies by state law. And so we'll be working with your planning department and with the attorney's office to make sure that any potential changes are noticed in the proper way. But I think, you know, the fact that there was a recent petition to a different district is a situation that we would look at when we're saying, you know, whether or not that area should potentially have a new designation. The focus really of the code drafting process is just to make sure that we get the lineup right. But there are a separate set of issues involved in putting the map in place. And sometimes that gets a little more -- that's where the public, you know, starts to get more involved sometimes. And so we'll work carefully with you all to make sure that that process goes smoothly. And then the follow-up, if it's okay. Regarding the corridors, there was a time when I guess Planning 101 said there's all these gradations, you know, from less dense to more dense, from less intense to more intense. And now you might have an urban corridor that has a different zoning that backs right up to a rather low density, low intensity residential neighborhood. How do you handle those kinds of transitions since it's not the other way of doing things? That gets into the second module that I talked about, the development standards. Because we often have a set of -- we call them residential protection standards or buffering standards or things. Basically standards that kind of trump the base zoning district standards. And they say if you're coming up right next to a single- family neighborhood or a single-family home, you might have some additional restrictions that apply. It could be architectural restrictions. It could be a low height. Yeah, it could be controls on things like lighting poles. Or it could be restrictions on uses. You know, you can't have the drive-through squawk box on that side of the site, something like that. So we have a whole kind of menu of standards that could apply in those situations to protect residential areas. My anxiety level is going down. That's my job. Just wait a few minutes. It seems to me that when you're talking about combining -- that's really what this is all about is in our zoning districts we have certain permitted uses and uses that are not permitted. And that's really what you're saying you're trying to recon figure, reorganize, because residential -- NR1, NR2, NR3, NR4, really the only difference there is some of them may allow different uses as you get further out. So to me that seems like that's going to be a challenge in the sense of that's really where these new zoning districts are going to be important. We can call it whatever we want to call it. The real question is what's allowed there? And so how closely is the goal to match the current zoning configuration of the city with this new transition? And I say that because back in the early 2000s we rezoned the entire city. And for the most part I think it was a good exercise, but we did find situations where things were zoned in a way that certainly didn't match what it was on the ground and didn't seem to be very conducive for a zoning that was more appropriate for it. So how -- is that really the biggest challenge is trying to find how you match the current permitted uses with the permitted uses that are allowed in your new zoning classifications if I'm understanding how they work? We're going to talk about the use table in a few minutes, so I'll show you an example of that. >> No, but it's a great -- it's relevant here as well. And I would say, you know, the general trend with codes around the country is that communities are starting to care less about that use table. They're starting to be broader and thinking at a much more kind of gross high level with the use table as long as they've got higher quality development standards. They don't care as much what the use is that goes in as long as they know that the building and the way it's laid out is going to look good and kind of be a good fit with the community. So that kind of tradeoff between specifically focusing on uses in exchange for higher quality standards is a dynamic that's always in our minds as we're writing the code. And the transition from old to new is part of that. >> I'll be interested to hear your discussion because on sort of a general basis, I understand what you're saying, but when you start saying that it's not going to be so much about uses but about development standards, you can just think of the examples about what's going to be next door to this and are development standards going to be enough to protect that? So I'll be interested to hear how we resolve that. >> It's always a balancing act. Yeah. And I'll give you a couple of examples when I get to that slide. So this is where we're going with the districts. And I think I've already summarized this mostly, but in terms of the district changes, we have some new districts that are being introduced. I talked about the new corridor districts. We are doing some consolidations, and that's just a particular example of some of the consolidations that we've been able to achieve. I see my colleagues are coming in shortly, so you'll see them. Eliminated districts. You've got some districts that you're just not using. Rural commercial, for example. So those don't need to get carried forward in the new code. And then finally, I'll talk a little bit about the master plan community's issue on a slide in a few minutes. >> Plan development. >> Yeah. >> It all comes back around, doesn't it? >> Yeah. >> One of the real improvements of the document is just the way the districts are being laid out. And so we're trying to be very clear and consistent in introducing the new districts in terms of establishing a clear purpose statement and mentioning the language from the Denton Plan 2030 where we need to, and then illustrating what those standards look like. And then finally being very transparent about what the standards are themselves. Minimum lot dimensions, setbacks, etc. This is easier to understand on the next slide. This is a screenshot of the draft that we've produced right now for the new districts. And you can see this is the mixed use neighborhood. This is the MN district. It's got a clear purpose statement. It's got a general illustration that shows you at a high level kind of the intended character of a building in that area. We're not showing everything here. We're not showing landscaping or parking spaces, things like that. But this is the intended character of that district. It's keyed with these A's to a table over on the right hand side that show you things like maximum building height, minimum lot size, things like that. This is just a draft. When we clean this up moving forward, those A's will change to A, B, C, etc. So those will all be keyed to the table on the right hand side. We also have a lot of footnotes here. So there is a good paper trail to show you how, if we are consolidating to the neighborhood regional districts, for example, or neighborhood mixed use districts, what our thinking is. Which setback we took, which front setback, or which lot size. Those footnotes are a really helpful tool for you moving forward to know how we came up with the standards that we have. Now once we get further in the process, those footnotes can go away in the final adoption draft. And we can probably put all this on one page. So you're going to have a nice clean districts chapter that 's really attractive. And it's going to have a purpose statement, an illustration , and a table all on that one page. And it's going to be very simple, easy to understand, illustrated guide to the zoning districts that you've got. Let me talk about PDs real fast, because I mentioned that. You're doing a lot of PDs, master plan communities right now. You're doing a lot of plan developments using that tool. Our proposal moving forward is to still allow that type of creative development. But hopefully you won't need to use it as much. Hopefully you won't need to do that type of plan development, that negotiated approval, when you've got a better set of foundation districts and standards that we're talking about everywhere else. Limited scenarios when beneficial development is not otherwise achievable under the base zoning districts. We're going to draft the bulk of the PD material later moving forward. But I just wanted to reassure you here, there is going to be a PD tool. The existing master plan communities are out there. Those are existing entitlements that the city has approved. Those don't go away. But moving forward, the goal is that you don't have new master plan communities. You might create new PDs in the future. Hopefully you won't have to go to that well as often because the base tool will be a better foundation for you. We'll talk more about PDs when we get into the procedures in particular because that's where we really talk about the requirements of that tool. So that's the districts. And let's now jump into the use regulations, which is the flip side of this coin. We talked about the way that the map is broken apart into districts, but what about the uses that are allowed there? The organization of this material is on this slide. It's anchored by a table of allowed uses. I'll show you a picture of that. Then we've got use specific standards. These are the standards that apply to a particular use regardless of which district it's located in. So bed and breakfast. You've got standards for those. You've got the same standards that apply to B&Bs regardless of which district they're in. Accessory uses, things like home occupations or accessory dwelling units. Temporary uses as well. And then wireless and gas well. These are just kind of uses on steroids. You've got a lot of standards that you've adopted already for wireless, and so those will get their own section in the new draft. Same thing for gas well drilling. In terms of organization and structure, that material gets folded into this draft. We are not touching the substance of that. You've already had that discussion in Denton, and that material just gets carried forward in its current format. This is the sample of the use table that I mentioned, and it's intended to be a very clear user-friendly summary of what's allowed in the different districts. And I'll just kind of walk you through some of the different elements there. First of all, you see down the left-hand side that we've got broad categories of uses that are identified. Residential uses first of all. Within that you've got a category of household living. And then within that you've got specific use types. So you've got within that category duplex, live work, and multifamily. A lot of footnotes here. So again, that's our paper trail. We're telling you how we built that use. Is it new to this code? Is it something new we're introducing? Is it a new name for something you've got? Live work is a new use, for example. SRO, single room occupancy, is something we're potentially talking with staff about introducing into the new code. Importantly, each one of these is defined. You don't have use definitions in your current code. And so one of the values of a project like this is to come in and to have a clear definition moving forward of all the different uses that are allowed. Now then, you look over to the right, you get through the columns, and you can see, okay, in the mixed use districts, for example, you can see where those uses are allowed. P, permitted by right. S, specific use permit. If it's got a little star there, that means that you've got some use-specific standards that apply. So those are those, say, bed and breakfast standards that might kick in across the board. There's a lot of discussion here about the appropriate P's or S's or blanks to put in a cell. If it's blank, that means prohibited. But this is the core of a zoning ordinance in a lot of ways . What you allow where. This is the heart of it. So this is the element of our work that is refined and discussed all the way up to the end. So that communities continue to discuss and debate the use table up until the end of the process. And that's healthy. Sure. Question. And this may be too a little bit micro, but this is a good example of what we may face in the future with this as this project develops. Single room occupancy dwelling. You said that we're working with staff to decide if we want to include that as part of a -- in the code. Well, the council has had pretty extensive conversation about that. And unless I'm incorrect, at least the old council, not the new council. The old council. The old council from just about three or four weeks ago. Are you getting personal? No, and I'm just saying that I'm not going to put on to the people who are new here that they agreed with that position. So we had quite an extensive conversation about that. And it seemed that the consensus at that time was we didn't necessarily need to have specific codes addressing quote unquote single room occupancy. I'm not saying we don't want to do it, but I'm saying if we 're including something new, number one, has the council had an opportunity to discuss it from a policy perspective? Number two, if they have, how does that impact the conversation with you guys? I mean, y'all aren't aware of the conversations we've had. So I guess the question is more for staff. How does that play out as we move forward here if council is given some type of direction if there's a need for that direction to be changed? Personally, I would not want to see something like that pop up at the end of when this project's done because that's a whole, we've had that conversation. So how do we address that? Okay. Thank you. Mayor, members of the council, city manager, thank you for bringing that up. The SRO discussion when we were having it is when we pointed this use out to Matt and his team. Obviously, since the discussion, we then talked about potentially creating or revisiting our multifamily development standards. We came forward with an ordinance. So at that point, it was still in discussion. Absolutely. Some of the uses that maybe we've discussed in the past where the council has unanimously agreed that it is a use that we should not proceed with, we will then fine tune that. This today is merely a status update. Secondly, we do not intend to have any surprises along the way. So if there is something new, we will vet it even before it gets to a certain level. So today, what we wanted to discuss was how we intend to lay out the DDC, what to look for in a schedule of uses such as this chart that Matt had shown up to provide to you and the audience today. And of course, then the DRC administrator and the rest of the team, we will then go through the uses one more time because at that point, it was still in discussion when we received this. So we had already done our editorial on it, but we will do a double editorial, so to speak, and then start striking us through it. Yeah, and my question wasn't specifically that issue, trying to re-litigate that issue. It was more of we're going to run across those things moving forward. Anyway, so what process do we have to address those instead of, as you said, no surprises at the end? That's really the thrust of my question. It wasn't about pointing that out specifically, but he just brought it up, so I thought that would be a good chance to ask that question. So what we will do is when we look at some of the uses that are new or don't fit based on the old categorization, then we will bring that forward. Okay. One, in a work session to explain that and then seek your guidance and discuss that at length so that we can determine how to proceed. Great. Thank you. Appreciate it. Yes, Council Member Hussbinder and Council Member Wasner. Well, then, if, thank you, Mayor. If Mayor Watt, I do think that's a conversation that needs to be had just because it's so polarizing on planning for developers, if that word comes up, it triggers an off switch for certain people. So I think it is needed just so they have ground to stand on, because if it's not clearly defined, been there two years and this being more prevalent last year or so, but if that word comes up and there's no written support for it, it automatically will get rejected by certain commissioners, and I think they, by right, they should have an opportunity in the right area, right mix to do that, and without it being expressly written, I don't know how they get there past that, because oftentimes we're not even supposed to consider that. That's not even our task to consider what's going there. It's more is that permiss, is that overall zoning applicable, and it's difficult for people to hold themselves to the topic at hand. So I think those, that is, that's something I would start having weekly meetings now in anticipation for next year. And if I may, some of the uses, you know, we want to make sure that we try and define as many uses as possible, because this permitted use schedule will then show whether it's prohibited or not anyway, so that if someone does come to us and say, well, we're proposing X use, at least we know that definition, and we're saying, well, it's prohibited in our ordinance, so that's very clear. And secondly, we've already established a PNZ subcommittee that would be the Clarion subcommittee or the DDC subcommittee that will be looking at this, and we will be bringing forward to you those discussion items on a very regular basis. So at the time we kicked off this project, we've had, you know, a big concentration on getting this ready, and we wanted to present it to the council to show you what progress we've made thus far, and should you have any further input with it. >> Sure. >> Councilman Wasney. >> And I would just like to remind everyone that this is the very beginning, the very start of this project. This is the view from 30,000 feet up, and what we have today, and thank you, Clarion, because this is a project that is much needed, and Denton is not the only city in the United States who has grown quickly and found that the development code that they have on the books just doesn't fit anymore. That as cities grow, they need to come back and reexamine, and it will happen again. I mean, at some point in time, a council will sit here and say it's time to rewrite the development code, because things change, and that's just the nature of the beast. But again, I just want to emphasize that this presentation is an introduction to the process. The process is going to take a very long time. We are going to engage with developers, with the citizens, with staff, with council, planning and zoning commission. This is a team effort to get to the finish line, because at that point, people will know that they have had a say in what's important to them, whether they are a developer, or they are in an overlay district, or a historic district, or a growing part of town. So master plan communities, I'm sure they are going to want to get involved, because we have a couple of really big ones that have not come online yet, but they have been approved as master plan communities. So I just want to emphasize that to council, that this is first blush, first look, and thank you for being on board. And I was born in Denver, so I know that area well. Thank you. See, that's why I said the old council, because people have different perspectives on the new council. So yeah. And I bring this up not to address that specific issue, but because this is the introductory, if we can find a process whereby we can avoid having these kind of discussions as this is wrapped up, it sure would save us a lot of time. Sure. Yep. Good. That's a great discussion. It's a good illustration, honestly, of how the sausage is made in terms of writing these things. It reflects our initial work, talking with staff to understand where you all are coming from, the discussions that you have all had so far, so that the code reflects where you want to go. It's a good illustration. The use table in particular is designed to be a tool for the next generation. So recognizing that communities don't get a chance to do a full update on their code for 30, 40 years, we're focusing on making this more general, like I said at the beginning. So the general trend with communities is that these categories get a little bit bigger, a little bit more broader. You used to see, for example, in the retail section, you used to see zoning codes that said stamp shop versus hat shop, you know, versus book shop . But communities have realized, well, those all have the same land use impacts, and so we can consolidate all those into a general retail category . So that's an example of how the tables evolve. I think we've summarized this. There are a variety of new uses that we are going to be working with you all to suggest, to talk through with your staff. And we're going to be redaming uses where we think that makes sense and consistent with best practices. You've got a lot of very specific use limitations. And you saw on that table all those little stars in the uses. And we're going to be trying to think through how to clean up and simplify your system of limitations, expand them where we need to, to address new issues. And then finally, we are beefing up your sections that describe and regulate accessory uses and temporary uses. Your codes will thin on describing kind of what those should be, the controls that you need to have to ensure that accessory uses are really sub ordinate to principal uses on a site. So we're working on beefing that stuff up. That's my substantive overview. That's really the presentation. I did want to call out the city's website. There is a new Denton Code 2030 website that's just in the process of being rolled out. I said at the very beginning that we're committed to being open and transparent. So we're going to be using that as a resource for the community to find information, to find out about when meetings are scheduled. Shandrian is our overall coordinator and we're working with her carefully to ensure that we're talking with all the different stakeholders. For examples, the master plan communities, we've already talked about setting up meetings with them to talk about our process moving forward. Yes, Councilmember Griffith. Do you come back and do we have another discussion when we 're talking about design standards? That's actually the next draft. That's September 2017. So that's module two. So if you remember that earlier slide I had with the three modules. The design piece is part of that. So should I reserve my comments about the developmental standards and design standards for that conference for September or should we talk about it now? I think if you have any initial comments about that, we'd love to hear. That'd be very helpful. If it's all right then. One of the things that we've run into is questions about street size. And street size seems to be pretty much determined by the designation and the mobility plan as to whether it's residential or it's a connector. It's a secondary arterial, primary arterial. Yet what we've run into is in some of our oldest neighborhoods in town with some of our narrowest streets that have homes that were built 90 and 100 years ago with very little driveway or accommodations for off-street parking. Then we've had rather tall apartments, three, four-story apartments coming in on the same street close by. And that's created some real issues in terms of the streets not being wide enough for our trucks, the apparatus to set up to fight a blaze on the fourth floor or the roof. And then it gets competing with parking to have those streets designated for no parking. So how do you deal with street size in your design standards? What triggers it and what might we do now in those terms to safeguard against those kinds of problems down the road? Well, that's a great question. There's a lot of issues embedded in there. The zoning code, in a lot of ways, it's going to focus on redevelopment. It's going to focus on existing areas with existing streets , and so it's not going to really get at the layout of new streets. It will to an extent. The subdivision rules will be in here. And so if someone comes in and does a greenfield development and lays out new streets, that might have something to say about street layout. Oftentimes the specific widths and the specific street requirements, the design requirements, are outside the code in the design manual. And you've got a lot of that stuff in your separate design manuals already. So in terms of laying out new streets, that's that issue. But in terms of development that goes in on existing streets, I mean, sometimes some communities adopt standards that key things like building size or building height to the character of the adjacent street. And so you can't do something that's potentially supersized on one of those urban corridors that I mentioned. I think one of our goals moving forward is to work with those new corridor districts that we have and work with those new mixed use districts to think about the standards as we're drafting those new design standards and to think about, do we need to calibrate those new design standards at all to reflect the street environment or the neighborhoods or any other issues that are there? So that might be then in the redevelopment standards and talking about height, not necessarily in terms of density, not necessarily in terms of aesthetics , but simply in terms of street width and being able for health and safety standards. Could be, could be, yeah. Okay, thanks. I like the way the direction this is going. Since I'm also new from the SRO comment to me is I see SROs that fall more under a dormitory. So I think we do need a much better definition of those. They're not really multifamily. I do very much encourage our staff to keep us very well informed as this goes forward because as it goes to the public, it's going to come back to us. You know, we will have the public coming back to us with questions and if we haven't been informed of what stage we're at and what the changes are, we're not going to look too good. So I look forward to working with you all for the next year and a half. Thank you. I'm sorry, Councilmember McGarry. Mayor Pro Tem, I apologize. Thank you. I just had a suggestion that maybe we put this presentation on the Denton 2030 website because it's very helpful and also that website is great. I just went on there right now. I mean, it has a section for Euclidean zoning, which is really nerdy and I love it. So staff did a great job with that. That's a big word. I don't know what that is. Any other questions for the presentation? Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you all very much. You bet. Thank you very much. Did you, you had a couple of colleagues come in? I did, yes. This is Tarek Wifi and Jim Spong. Good to see you. Thank you guys. We'll be here for a couple of days. Yes, thank you. Moving on to the next agenda item, agenda item B, which is Receive Report, Hold Discussion, Under Staff Direction Regarding Tax Increment Financing Re investment Zone Number One. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor, Council Members, Mr. City Manager. I am going to be speaking with you this afternoon about the downtown tax increment financing reinvestment zone number one, or the downtown TIF. Today I'm going to give you some information about the establishment of the downtown TIF, the types of eligible projects in the TIF, currently committed funds, and the fund balance. And then you're going to have an opportunity to discuss the use of the TIF funds in accordance with the project plan or other alternatives. I also want to draw your attention to the fact that at your seats I placed a substitution for exhibit six in the backup. That just includes an extra column to show the actual tax increment revenue, and you'll see that up on a slide here in a minute. Tax increment financing is authorized under Chapter 311 of the Texas Tax Code, and it's used by local governments to publicly finance improvements and infrastructure within a defined area. Essentially how that works is an ad valorem valuation base is set in the first year of a tax increment financing plan, which in this case was 2010 , and then the revenue from the increased valuation in subsequent years is dedicated into a TIF fund to support the eligible projects. In order to establish a tax increment reinvestment zone, there must be certain criteria met to be considered, and under the statute only one of these criteria has to be met for the establishment of a zone, but I've just listed out some examples here. It has to be a contiguous area within the city limits. The area's present condition has to impair the sound growth of the municipality. The project plan includes the use of land for commuter or transit rail system, and less than 30% of the property in the proposed zone is residential. There's a full list of those criteria in exhibit seven of your backup, but these are just a few. Quick background on the project timeline. The downtown TIF was established in December of 2010, and the project and feasibility and finance plans were adopted in August of 2011, and then the project plan was amended in August of 2014. So that we all have a visual of the area that is under discussion today, this is a map of the downtown TIF. The eastern boundary that you see here that's not labeled, that's actually along Bradshaw Street, if y'all are familiar where that is, off of McKin ney. The project plan eligible categories for the downtown TIF are parking and transportation, complete streets, downtown projects, and utility drainage, and you can see there are some examples of the specifics underneath those different four categories that are eligible. I'm not going to read them all to you, but I'll leave it up there for another couple of seconds for you to look at it, and we can come back to it if you want to discuss it further. Quick question. I just need a memory refresher. Last year when we were talking about potentially using some fund money for sidewalks around the square, was that the TIF or the TERS? Okay, so TIF and TERS are kind of used interchangeably. I know, and I can't remember. So the TERS actually stands for Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone. So it's the zone that's drawn that you can use tax increment financing or TIF within. Does that make sense? So it's a TERS. TERS is the zone, and TIF is sort of the tool and the fund that you use. But your question about the sidewalk funding, it was out of this downtown TIF, TERS thing. Thank you for the refresher. You're welcome. Okay, quick overview of the fiscal information. These are the percentages in the years of the TIF that the percentage of the increased valuation that's actually allocated into the TIF fund. So you can see for the first five years, 100% of the increment went into the TIF fund. And then we're in year six now. So this is the first year that 95% will go into the fund. And you can see then in subsequent sets of years that it decreases down to 85% in the last years of the fund. This chart here is the estimated cost for the different types of eligible projects under the adopted projects plan, which totals $24.8 million. Question on that. Yes, sir. And Brian might be more able to answer this, because I know I asked this question. There's two of us that were on council, I believe, when this was adopted back in Lyft. Weren't you on council? Yeah. So this is if these projects can be completed if these were paid out of cash at these levels. But Brian, if we issue debt to where the principal and interest payback was $25 million, what I mean, obviously a ballpark, it's usually about half or something like that as far as what principal and interest is. So is it safe to say that if you got $25 million of total principal and interest funds available to repay the debt, you're looking at about $12 million of the actual cost of the project, $12.5 to $13 million cost of the project. So this is a little it's an interesting representation, because you're not going to get if these were the estimated cost based upon cash, you're not going to get that dollar amount of project development. If it's financed, you're going to get half of that, because that represents the actual total dollars available for either cash funding or the repayment of principal and interest on the debt. Is that a correct sort of analysis of that? I think so. I think your math is about right. What Chuck and I were just discussing is we probably need to go back and look at the documents themselves when it was formed. This contemplate all of the P&I coming out of the $25 million, or was it project money and interest could be in addition to that? I don't know the answer to that. We can look at that and bring that back. Well, that's that would certainly be very interesting because it was just the principal amount and the interest got to come from somewhere else. That means it's going to come from the general fund. I suspect it's all out of here, but I think so. I need to confirm that. Okay. All right. Great. Thank you, Caroline. You're welcome. So here is a representation of some of the details of the fiscal information about the Downtown TIF. You can see over here in the base value column, this was the base value as of year 2010 and that remains constant down through the estimated amounts of 2017. The existing growth column here, new construction, and then you'll see the total value of existing growth and new construction. This number is the total value minus the base value to get the increment and then the final column is a representation of the actual tax revenue that has gone into the TIF fund. This doesn't include interest. It's the actual tax revenue. Does that include any withdrawals from the TIF fund as far as I know we've got some economic - Right. For the Stoke or something like that or something like that ? It's actually for the rail yard and it does, this is the revenue that's gone into the fund. So the fund balance I'll show you on the next slide. Oh, great. Okay. Fantastic. Yeah. So council did approve a chapter 380 incentive grant for a total of $380,000 over five years for the rail yard transit oriented development, which included the redevelopment of the building that houses Stoke and other buildings plus the apartment complexes that kind of surround it. Two payments of that grant have been made to date. And then the downtown TIF fund has a balance of 768,000 as of September 30th of 2016. The projected fiscal year 16-17 end of year fund balance is 1.15 million. And I see Mayor that you're looking there at the difference between the 1.29 on the prior slide and this one. Because of the estimations that we have to do without having some of the final numbers, it makes some of these numbers look like they don't match up. No, I was looking at the September 30th, 2016 number. So that's all good. So everything has been verified and checked through the finance department. And some of these are just estimates at this point. So that is the end of the presentation. And the direction that we're seeking from you all today is regarding the use of the TIF funds in accordance with the project plan or discussion of other alternatives. Okay. All right. Well, I'll kick this off because this was my request. And I know it's been received by some as positive and received by some as not very popular. And that's unfortunate. Let me dispel right now. I heard it back six years ago and I'm sure I'll hear it again that if you're opposed to the TIF, somehow you're opposed to downtown. That's a ludicrous narrative, at least from my perspective. In no way am I opposed to downtown. In fact, I think I've been involved in many policy decisions including allowing multifamily downtown and various other policy decisions that have certainly promoted the downtown. This is to me about a financial decision and about financial planning for the entire city. I have a lot of things I want to say but I'm not going to say them all at once because obviously there's a lot of people here at this table and they want to talk. But what I want to start out with is first of all, I believe that back then I believed it and I certainly believe it now based upon the numbers. This is largely symbolic. We've basically expended a couple of payments out of the T IF for the 380 Stoke Grant. And when I look at this table, which is very interesting, I didn't know these numbers, quite frankly, the ones that the extra one, the new sheet that you passed out. So as far as my comments here regarding this table, I'm going to go ahead and include the estimated 2017 numbers and just assume that those are, that's how it's going to turn out. It's probably going to be a little lower possibly. I don't know. But I'm just going to go with those as far as my analysis of this. So when I look at this in conjunction with the project plan that was approved back in 2011, and I'm primarily going to be looking at page 27 of the electronic backup, which is the City of Denton Tax Increment Financing Reinvestment Zone number one, cumulative total value increase in the millions of dollars. Before I get started, my foundation is... What exhibit is that? It's exhibit four. I'm sorry, exhibit four. Page... But it's page 27, I believe, of the... But it's exhibit four. I believe that's what it is. I don't think that... I think that the city can do anything for the downtown that the TURS can do. We can do complete streets. We did that with Hickory Street, and that debt service is coming out of the General Fund Debt Service Payment. We can do incentive economic development incentive grants. We can do drainage projects. We can do anything that the TIF is able to do. So when I look at this table, I look at $79 million is what the increment has been from the origination of the TIF. So what I've done is I subtracted out from that the new construction of $22 million, which that's the new value based upon new projects, not redevelopment projects like... Let me make sure I understand this. The new construction is not the rehabilitation of existing buildings. It is actually new construction. Guess who's in the house to answer your question. Okay. Shucks in the house. I think I'm gonna volunteer somebody for some budget discussions. It's just new construction, so it's kind of on vacant land. If you think about some of what's been done downtown where there's an existing building and they improve it or that, the appraisal district doesn't consider that new if there was an existing structure. And I'm assuming when the project plan, at least if I recall correctly, when the project plan was developed back in 2011, it had catalyst projects which were new... I mean that's scraping the ground on some of these catalyst project locations and rebuilding when you look at the catalyst projects and where they were located. And then it also had new development, other development, which was other new construction. So when I look at that and I subtract that from the current increment, we get a 57... It's basically 56, 9, 57 million dollars is the amount of growth in the downtown area. Primarily the majority, 99% of it is associated with the assessed value increase of existing buildings. Some of that includes ones that have been reconstructed, redeveloped and remodeled. So of the increment, the 79 million dollars, 27%, 28% has been for new construction. If you look at these new construction projects, I will almost guarantee you, every one of them are apartment buildings. You could just almost figure out which apartment building was the new construction by realizing what new construction has happened in downtown in the TIF area. I don't recall any new construction of office buildings or new construction of retail. These are primarily all apartments. In 2015... Not that I'm against apartments, but I'm just saying that's what it primarily is. In 2016, new construction was $334,000. My hunch is that's because the rail yard apartment and the apartments associated with the rail yard, what are those called? The apartments are called the rail yard. Oh, the rail yard. The apartments associated with the rail yard were in the construction phase in 2016, so January 1 of 2016 when the assessed values are set. That wasn't on the books and therefore in January 2017, they're finished, it's full value. So then I look at the assessed growth is about $80 million, which is 72% of the new increment. When you look at the project plan back in 2011 and you look at the 2017 number, and these are all estimates, but I think it goes to show what the foundation of this TIF and the project plan was supposed to achieve. It's turned on its head. When you look at 2017, the general assessed value was estimated at $12.8 million of existing buildings. $12.8 million. That number is about $56 million today is what that new growth is, excluding maybe some very minimal growth in the new construction in the prior years. It's not going to be 10%, it's not going to be 5%. New construction they hold pretty evenly. The catalyst projects were estimated to be $39 million and the other projects were $13.5 million for a total of $52.5 million. And new construction, catalyst plus new development, other development. To date, that equates to about $22 million. Well first of all, the downtown is flourishing. Let's face it, it has some of the highest real estate values in the city outside of Razor Ranch, which Razor Ranch was a green field five or six years ago. It was nothing. Well, the K-Mart, yeah, but it got torn down. So my concern is that we're sequestering, love that term, tax funds for a use or a project plan that really is not needed. I've had a couple emails already today about this, obviously people who don't want anything to happen to the TIF and I understand that. One was it's to help small businesses in downtown, okay. The other was economic development. Any of those things we can do without the TIF. I'm just saying we got $1.2 million, $25 million going into that TIF. That's if the valuation continues to grow. My concern is we've got 266 acres we've drawn a line around and said that this area, the only way that we can preserve this area is to give it special treatment and to accumulate tax dollars based upon the project plan, which is $60 million or $50 million up to this point of new construction. When you look at that map, if you'll go to that map, if you go back to that map of the actual zone, the TIF map, you don't have the project plan, do you? Not on -- Okay, that's fine. When you look at this map, first of all, if you look at your old -- if you look in the backup for the project plan, the five catalyst projects where those are located, there's already existing property. So those catalyst projects to be realized, that existing property would have to be scraped and would have to be redeveloped. Right now, that's almost an impossibility simply because land prices are so high in the downtown -- you can't afford to buy a big piece of property and scrape the ground. It's very difficult. It's very difficult to do that. So then you're thinking, okay, well, what's left? What vacant land have we got left in downtown? Truly vacant land. Not a whole lot. We've got some on Elm Street, which is owned by the Denton Housing Authority. There's a couple acres there. You've got some probably on Oak, between Oak and McKinney. And this is my last point as far as at least this filib uster. When I think about the discussions we've had, it's always a fight. Like you brought up, Mayor Pro Tem, was the TIF supposed to pay for those sidewalks? This is all our own money, folks. This is all of our own money. The county is not participating in this. I fully support the other TIF we have out at the airport. It's raw land. The split is 50/50. And we're reimbursing the developer for putting in the infrastructure that will allow projects like Wynco and others to come out there. We can do anything, whatever we need to do to downtown, we can do it. And we don't need to necessarily sequester those funds because when I look at the project plan on page, what page is it? Well, it's page four, section two. I'll just read it out loud. It says, "This plan presented to the community adopted by the Denton City Council in August 2010 focused on parking, complete streets, solid waste, a form-based code, and planned transit-oriented development." Complete streets. We've done Cedar Street. It was done when the TIF wasn't in place. We did Hickory Street. It was started when the TIF wasn't in place, but it was completed within the time of the TIF. And it's directly in downtown. And it was done directly to improve that corridor from the transit to the downtown area to give all of that an opportunity to rise in value. Solid waste, I don't know what we've done with solid waste. I know we've combined a couple of dumpsters, but I think we 're still trying to figure out how we do that. And I may be wrong on that one. Form-based code, you asked about that, I think, a couple weeks ago, Council Member Gregory. We've talked about form-based code for seven years. We don't have a form-based code downtown. Plan transit-oriented development, okay, you've got the train down there. Based upon my numbers, and I've talked with DCTA about this , the train is averaging about 1,000 people a day, split between three cities. So we've got to do something. If we're going to have planned transit-oriented development , we've got to figure out how we're going to increase that ridership. So in no way am I saying, "Let's do this because I'm anti-d owntown. I'm saying I'm for the entire city, and I think that we can do exactly what we need to do in downtown, probably for less money." Most of the people think this TIF fund is for a parking garage. A parking garage was put before the bond committee back in 2014 as a project. It was rejected solely because it wasn't vetted. There weren't any costs associated with it. There was no location associated with it. And that's really why it was not included in the bond program. So and this is a great example of why I struggle with this, and I've struggled with it for seven years. Hickory Street, this is a great example. Hickory Street was $3 million, if I remember correctly. The debt service for Hickory Street gets paid from the General Fund Debt Service. Is that correct? Okay. It gets paid from the General Fund Debt Service. Now if Hickory Street had been done by the TIF, okay, then the TIF, according to the project plan, would be paying for the debt service on Hick ory Street. So right now we've got debt service from the General Fund Debt Service account paying for a complete street within the TIF. And the TIF's not paying for it. So therefore, if the TIF was paying for it, and this is the assumption I'm going to make, if the TIF were paying for, hypothetically, the Hickory Street, that would free up $3 million of a project of the debt service to be paid for a project within the rest of the city. That's my whole problem with this. How are we going to regulate? This is not a self-sustaining fund. You do floodplain reclamation inside the TIF. There's no way it can pay for it. But it's going to increase the value in the TIF, which means those tax dollars that are used from outside the TIF, and that's the language I have to use because there's a line drawn right there. They don't get reimbursed. There's not enough money. So it's like, why are we doing this? We can all be in this together. This does not mean that we are opposed to downtown. It means we have a lot more flexibility. And we don't have to sit here and fight about an economic development incentive to the Stoke. We don't have to fight about sidewalks, which we haven't even fixed. We haven't even fixed the sidewalks. So to me, the data is clear. And from a philosophical and psychological-- the only thing I hear to keep this is, you got to help the businesses downtown. How can we not do that? How can we not do it? So helping them is allowing a certain fund that only they access. One I've heard is, this money will compete with other interests in the city. I say, so what? I mean, we all have priorities in the city. This is obviously our number one priority. Does that mean we have to create a special line around it? We can still give the money and the support, financial and other policy decisions. And this council-- not this council-- previous councils have rejected TIFFs for residential and multifamily development. Well, so far, the only new construction in the downtown, which good for them because it increases traffic, it increases the buying power of the community down there. So this isn't a saying that we've not done a good enough job. What I'm saying is, this thing is thriving with only-- what 's the payments we've made to the Stoke? Two payments of $76,000 a piece. In the last two years? That is to the rail yard for the whole development, not for Stoke. OK, that's to the rail yard. So we've paid $152,000 to basically-- you're saying the rail yard is the whole thing, not just-- Correct. OK, which is the apartments included. Yes. And there's been $21 million, $22 million worth of new construction. The thing is, this is a hot market. People are going to build down here. You've got three developers who have primarily-- you've got a lot of people who invested a lot of money, don't get me wrong. But you've got Sparky, who's spent a lot of money remod eling some of the buildings. Got Jack Bell Properties, who's basically built probably half of these apartments. And you've got the Martino Group, who's built the other half of the apartments. Those are three large investment developers who will definitely make sure that the downtown thrives because they have a tremendous financial investment in that. I'm just saying, why do we have to have a line? Why do we have to have a boundary? Why can't we just erase the line and say, we're all committed to the same thing? You want a parking garage? Guess what? We can put it before the voters. Voters can vote for a parking garage. You know what you need? You need floodplain reclamation? We'll reclaim the floodplain. And everybody will be part of the repayment of that and the benefit of that. I just absolutely reject this notion with no participation from other political subdivisions of using all of our own money and sequestering it like this . And so I'm going to be quiet because I really want to hear the other side of that story so that we can have a really strong-- because we didn't have it six years ago. I was the lone dissenter. And these numbers don't surprise me because the downtown is a tremendous real estate market. Anybody that's tried to buy down there or lease down there understands that. And I don't think that's because we have a TIF. I think it's because of the market. I think it's because of the many policy decisions that this council, previous councils have said we want to ensure that we give this the best opportunity to exceed. And as a policymaker, I mean, why would I want to continue to create another level of bureaucracy if it's not needed? So that's where I stand on it. And if the council feels differently, I'm real OK with that . I just wanted to be able to have this conversation and get these facts out on the table. Council Member Wasney. Would you go to page three of your presentation? It has the word background. This one? Yes. OK. So one of my concerns-- well, let me preface this comment with. The landscape is very different in 2017 than it was in 2011 . In 2011, we were crawling on our hands and knees out of the recession. Everybody was still scared what's going to happen to our economy. This was on a nationwide scale. Real estate values were still flat. Capital was still tight. Being able to borrow money to do anything was still starting to recover, but not quite. So I understand why and how this was developed in 2011. So we're halfway through 2017 now, and our downtown is booming. Prices have skyrocketed, and everybody is thrilled to see the success of our downtown. So I brought you to this page because one of my concerns is that this whole structure, this whole policy and procedure is structured under chapter 311 of the Texas Tax Code. Please go to item two where it says the area's present condition impairs the sound growth of the municipality. I'm sorry. Downtown is booming. It's not in trouble. I have lived in cities and watched parts of cities absolutely come back. I've watched it firsthand. I have watched it again in the city of Denton. But my concern is it's strictly letter of the law. I don't think we comply with number two. Area's present condition impairs the sound growth of the municipality. The present condition down there, it's booming. So I think if the state came in and really took a look at this, I don't think we're in compliance. Well, now I can understand your concern, but I do want to reiterate that this is just a partial list of criteria that only one of which has to be met for a zone to be formed under 311 of the Texas Tax Code. These were some that were used at the time of Denton's formation of this TIF. But I don't think that moving past that present condition being, impairing the sound growth, I don't think that moving past that as the zone develops is a legal issue with the continuation of the zone. And I don't know if Erin or Jennifer has any information about that. But I know they're both here and Jennifer and I have worked on this together. So she might be able to lend some light to that. Thank you, Mayor and Council. The only requirement is that it meets the criteria at the time that we create the zone. And the zones themselves can last for five years and then they can be renewed for up to a 10-year period. And as long as it's that way at the beginning and then it continues throughout, we can make it as long as we need to for the actual agreement. But only if council agrees to that extension. That's for the zone to be extended. But it only requires a zone to be created at the time that the agreement is entered into. So it doesn't have to be present for the entire duration of the agreement. Okay, I get that. That was a condition in 2011. It is not the condition in 2017. So I'm going to back the mayor up on this one. And one of my concerns with the map is that, and we've had this discussion before, that it takes other business areas around the city and it tells them, well, you're not as important. You're not as protected. What happens if you have a business and you're two blocks out of this area but you're still a business that wants to open and thrive and hire people and pay taxes and be a part of our community? So I'm going to back our mayor on this one and say it's really time for us to reexamine this. Our downtown is thriving. Our downtown is important. Nothing is going to change with that. But it's time for us to change this TURS district and this TIF and step out of it and send a message to every single business owner in this city. Send a message to every single business owner who is considering coming to this city that you are important, that the monies that you're going to come here and invest, the people that you're going to hire, you're becoming part of our community, you are important no matter where it is that you decide to buy property, to build, to hire, you're important. And I've had an issue with this too and this is a healthy discussion and I support you. Yes, Council Member Pritzker. It's interesting the interpretation of if you're going to move a business to a TIF area, we have how many of them? We have two TIFs. Then we're saying that a business in either one of those T IF areas is more important than businesses anywhere else. I don't think the businesses are hearing that message. I don't think that's a message that the Council, when the different TIFs were formed, were intending to send that kind of a message. So I'm not sure that the interpretation is accurate in terms of message being sent or intended to be sent or the message that's being received. The downtown is thriving. And it's because, as the Mayor said, of policies and it's because of investments made downtown. We had a number of years ago a downtown master plan. Then we had a downtown implementation plan for how we were going to implement the master plan. And then we invested money in several of those areas, not done yet. We've done some of the streets that we wanted to do, the M ew streets like Cedar Street. We took money from a couple of the other Mew streets, I think Walnut and Austin, to divert to East Tickley because we needed more money to get that done. The TIF never intended to be the exclusive fund to help reinvest in downtown, never was intended to be that. But it was intended to be a way of us in some way discipl ining ourselves and ensuring that there was going to be a pot of money that was growing. You know, we've done the same thing in other areas. We've taken the franchise fee that we collect. And we've said we're going to start dedicating the franchise fee on a year to year basis, all of it to the road maintenance fund. We don't have to do that because otherwise the franchise fee goes into the general fund. And we could just take money from the general fund and put in there anyway. So why did we do that? We did it as a way of disciplining ourselves and trying to give some direction to future councils to exercise some responsibility in terms of roads are important and maintenance of roads are important. And they've been neglected. They had been neglected for over 20 years. And so we wanted to start putting more money into it. And that was a way to do it. But the downtown is important. And by the way, I don't think that if you're against continuing the TIF that you're against the downtown. Thank you. Never said that ever. No, I heard it though. Well, I'm sure. But I do think that the downtown is important. And I think that the TIF does communicate a message that policy-wise, we consider the downtown to be important. You know, our cute city, we don't have a lot of natural beauty. We don't have a great mountain that we can look at from some location. We don't have a beautiful riverfront going through the town . We don't have a grand forest. We don't have a lakefront. We've got the cross timbers forest, or what's left of it. And while it's interesting, it's not, in a lot of cases, picturesque. But what we do have is what was created a number of years ago by some visionary folks, which is a very interesting and authentic downtown. And I called in preparation for this yesterday, I called several people in the economic development office and I said, "So when you guys have a prospect coming to town that you're wanting to show around, sell Denton, where do you take them? What do you see?" And the first answer was, "It depends on who they are." Second answer was, "Always we take them to the potential sites that they might be using." And the third answer was, "Downtown." They don't take them to Unicorn Lake. They don't take them to Denton Crossing. They don't take them to Golden Triangle Mall. They don't take them to Denton Center. They take them downtown. I said, "Well, why?" Well, because it's unique. It's the unique thing that sets Denton apart. It's because there's always activity going downtown. People are impressed by it. It's because of the diversity of what's going on. There are entertainment venues. There are retail shops. There are offices and professional offices. It's an excellent reflection of the culture and the personality of the city. You know, when you have a home and you invest in it, you buy a new home, you continue to invest in that home. You do the maintenance that needs to be done. You do the repairs that need to be done because you're wanting to protect your investment. Even if you take a home and remodel it and change the uses somehow, you still don't stop investing in it after you've done the remodel because you need to protect that investment. To me, the TIF is just simply a way of setting aside some funds to help protect the investment. We set them aside for some broad categories of specific use , but these uses are rather broad so parking and transportation. I still hear people talking about concerns about parking, complete streets. We can use other money for these things, but this is available for it. Some projects, utility and drainage improvements. We've got some projects that we're just getting ready to talk about. We have a beautiful, historic building that was the City Hall, then was Firehouse Theater, and then was the Police Department, and then it was City Hall West. It could be redeveloped into something very useful to help attract and bring more people downtown. It's going to take some money, and TIF money could be used for that. It could be used. It doesn't have to be used, but it could be used. Or the parking lot back behind it, or any of the other parking lots. I think there's a whole different discussion about parking garages and the value of those and the cost of those. We had a few months ago the latest count of on-street parking and off-street public parking and off-street private parking. I don't know if that ever got finished or not. I think some of those projects are still of concern, not only to the business owners downtown, not only to the residents downtown, but to those many of us who don't live downtown, who don't own a business downtown, but feel as much ownership of the downtown as any of those folks do. Because it's where we go. It's where we bring our friends. It's where we go for our own entertainment. I think that we don't have to fight about it when we talk about it. It doesn't have to be a fight. But it's a way for us to discipline ourselves and to make sure that we're setting aside some money so that when that project comes along, whether it's City Hall West, whether it's a green space, another green space to help accommodate the many new residents that are living downtown, or any of these projects here, it'll be there available for us. It probably won't be enough to do it, but it will be there to help do it. And we know that there's something there for it. And it says to the community, we still know that downtown is one of the strengths of this city. And we want to continue to invest and make sure that we've disciplined ourselves to invest in that strength. Oh, I'm for keeping the TIF. I don't know if that was clear. I have a couple of questions. One may be for the city manager. I know that later tonight there is an agenda item for wayf inding signs. And since I see that this is an allowable reason, are we paying for those through this, or is that coming out of a different fund? We're not paying for that project using TIF funds. I believe there was $600,000 if members sort of set aside in a previous bond election to cover that. And then the balance of it will be in a future phase, which the council will need to appropriate funds then. Okay. Also, on the mobility committee, there is an intersection at Locus and Sycamore for Pecan Place. It's an elderly place there. And I've been asking and talking about there's not a pedestrian crossing there. And there hasn't been. And so people are reaching out to me to cross safely and not once. And I see here that pedestrian lighting and crosswalks is in here. And that is within that allowable zone. And not once did anyone bring up that it could be funded with a TIF. And so I'm just trying to look for practicality of it and daily uses of it. And I've been here for two years. And it doesn't come up that often. So I don't really have -- I don't really feel one way or the other. I just don't feel like we're using it as much as we could for the projects that come up. And there's also other ways that we're paying for them, obviously, through other means. So that's just my two cents. Okay. Thank you. >> Kismar. >> Yeah. I was noticing the wayfinding as well. It's a later agenda item that we couldn't use down the road because the portion of that item is not in the downtown area. And so that's a huge concern to me. I see this quite a bit as -- or quite similar to our tree fund, that it's a fund that was growing and we weren't making use of it. And some people see it as just sitting there. And some people say we want to hold on to it until we get a bigger fund to do a larger project. And as I look through here and just try and estimate, you know, if we were to do these downtown items that are listed up here right now, you know, 25 million is not going to cover a third of what needs to be done in downtown. So I think we need to get a more specific idea and start looking at the items. You know, I think a bond package proposal for the parking garage is probably the only way we're ever going to get to the point we can do that. But we have a lot of sidewalks, you know, to make downtown more pedestrian friendly is extremely important. I had brought up previously on council the sidewalks along Oak Street from the parking lot across the street here on up towards east side and in that block that they weren't very pedestrian friendly and was later told, well, they're walk able. I don't see what your problem is that I see a need for several projects that could be accelerated in downtown by this. I've always pretty much been TIF neutral. I can go either way, but I see projects that we think are going to happen that will never happen out of this fund. And I see projects that we could get done and could get moving on quickly coming out of this fund. So that's at this point, I think we need further research. If you can go back to the map on this. Sure. I haven't looked at maps of other parts of Denton, but the amount of exempt that's up there to me seems proportionally quite large, compared to most of the rest of the city. So that throws everything off too. That means our growth is exempt up there. Looks like it's probably about 40% of that map that we could have had a whole lot more growth. I don't know. I might be off on that percentage. Do you mind if I check with one of my staff members who's here? Do you know what the percentage of exempt land is, Julie? You need to come up here, please. In the TIF. In the TIF. Yeah, in the TIF. Not exactly. Okay, that was quick. We'll get that. We'll find it for you. But that's some of the information that would be helpful in moving forward. Great. Mayor Pro Tem? Oh, yeah. No, no. Council Member Hutsbitt? No, no. I'm collecting notes. As you know, I'm going to - my email box is going to fill up after I get loose here. So I'll let everyone else go and then I'll put a bow on it. May I? Oh, yes, Mayor Pro Tem, please. I want to add something new to the conversation, but also for the benefit of Councilman Hutsbitt, Councilman Ryan, agree with you about the sidewalk situation. And we specifically requested that funds be taken out of the TIF to pay for sidewalk improvements around the square. And the board had a meeting, I believe it was in August. And Ms. Booth, can you - if I'm wrong here, well, you can just jump in and correct me, because I'm doing it by memory right now. Okay. I'm like, okay, so far it was August? Well, the last TIF board meeting was in January of this year. And sidewalks - there were sidewalks and a municipal garage that were discussed with the board. And the board's feedback at that time was that they would prefer to preserve the bulk of the money to go toward a garage project. And there was a funding alternative for the sidewalk projects. That's correct. So that other alternative source of funding was used. So if - okay, help me with the timeline. We had this discussion during the budget cycle. I believe it was in July. We had - we requested that the TIF board meet and have a discussion about specifically sidewalks. And so am I correct in understanding that they didn't meet until January? That was the last TIF board meeting. When was the prior one, Julie? Probably September. And what was discussed at that meeting, do you recall? I'll have to report the reference of the states. Okay. So if I'm getting it - if I'm kind of gleaning a little bit here, the consensus was that they didn't want to use the money for sidewalks. And so for the benefit of the new members, I just want to read one of the emails that I got from one of the board members about using TIF money for sidewalks on the square. Number one, the most pressing concern mentioned by most folks who come to the downtown area is parking, parking, parking, not sidewalks, et cetera. Number two, the possibility that once the TIF funds amount ed to a meaningful amount, some part of the city would want to siphon off part or all of the TIF funds has been a continual concern of the TIF board. Number three, obviously that time has come. Number four, I would suggest that the city should arrange for city staff to present to the TIF board an in-depth review of the various plans and alternatives being considered for downtown Denton improvements, including - and this is under lined - including the possibility of a parking garage, end of underline. As part of this presentation, the investment cost aspects of these projects should be presented, including what participation the TIF funds might play in these improvements. Number five, the city - I'm doing this because it's in quotation marks - the city should not raid the cellar without a thorough look at the kitchen and pantry. So that's just to share with you the perspective of the TIF board about using TIF funds, at least for one of the members. But obviously the consensus reached was that we're not using those funds for sidewalks. We're waiting for a big project. So that's for the benefit of your own consideration. And I want to thank the people who reached out to me from the downtown group. They're all public servants of a high order, and they helped me, even though we disagree, they helped me kind of clarify my own position on this particular issue. In particular, I want to thank Ms. Linus because her email really helped me - it helped distill my thoughts. And she's a public servant of a high magnitude in her own right, but I want to publicly thank her for her email because one thing that she mentioned in the email - and I'm paraphrasing - she said, "When people talk with me about coming to downtown, they always say they're coming to Denton for downtown. They never say they're coming to Denton for Loop 288 or for University Crossing or fill in the blank." And I thought, okay, that's the difference between my position here and the position on the downtown board. When I hear comments, it's 27 comments about how we would really like to see money spread around town because it's from residents who have to utilize Denton Crossing or they utilize the city, they utilize other parts of town. They want to see tax money go around town because they want the benefit of that in their daily life. From the downtown Denton perspective, I absolutely understand it because you're there catering to visitors and you want more visitors to come in, and that 's a high, great goal. That's a good goal to have. However, I represent the citizens of downtown and I'm here to enhance the benefits of the city for them. So the consensus that I've heard from people who are following what's happening at City Hall on my end of things is that they would like for money to be funding areas around town, not just the downtown area. And so I'm here to advocate that position because the reality of the situation is that the TIF is, for whatever reason, not going to be used for these important projects that we've been discussing like Pecan Place Crossing or sidewalk s. That's the real politic of it. It's not happening. So we need to take steps to make that happen, which includes dissolving the TIF and making that general fund money and dissolving the board. That's what I'm advocating for. Thank you. I want to respond. You may put a goal on it, but at the end, there's going to come a time when we can't be TIF neutral at this table. There's going to come a time when we can't be TIF neutral at this table. There's going to come a time when we've got to make a decision, and no decision is a decision. So I've got a couple, and I mean, my head was about to explode when you were reading that email, I'll be quite honest with you. And that's the whole attitude that I've heard is that somehow, if you are wanting to do something with the TIF, that somehow you don't have the interest of downtown, you don't recognize the interest of downtown. And I appreciate Ms. Lyons' email as well. And I responded back to her. My response was very simple and was very true. I said, "Look, I share the same sentiments that you do with downtown. The discussion today is this the best tool in order to achieve that with the overall interests of the entire city, or just the best to achieve that." So I want to address some of these examples that have been brought up. The street fund and the tree fund. That those were created because of the TIF. And I want to say that the TIF is a very important tool in order to achieve that. And I want to say that the TIF is a very important tool in order to achieve that. And I want to say that the TIF is a very important tool in order to achieve that. And I want to say that the TIF is a very important tool in order to achieve that. And I want to say that the TIF is a very important tool in order to achieve that. And I want to say that the TIF is a very important tool in order to achieve that. And I want to say that the TIF is a very important tool in order to achieve that. And I want to say that the TIF is a very important tool in order to achieve that. And I want to say that the TIF is a very important tool in order to achieve that. And I want to say that the TIF is a very important tool in order to achieve that. And I want to say that the TIF is a very important tool in order to achieve that. And I want to say that the TIF is a very important tool in order to achieve that. And I want to say that the TIF is a very important tool in order to achieve that. And I want to say that the TIF is a very important tool in order to achieve that. And I want to say that the TIF is a very important tool in order to achieve that. And I want to say that the TIF is a very important tool in order to achieve that. And I want to say that the TIF is a very important tool in order to achieve that. And I want to say that the TIF is a very important tool in order to achieve that. There's another thing in the project plan that showed that a portion of these funds would go to the city as the TIF years moved forward. I hardly consider 90 percent a portion. To me, that's the vast majority. We are a city that is united in a lot of common goals and a lot of common interests. The downtown being one of them, airport development being another, street reconstruction, all kinds of priorities that we have. This certainly is one of the top of the list. And I just haven't seen over the last 10 years that there's been an opposition to funding the downtown. I'm really, really disheartened by that email that you read . I'll be honest with you. I'm really disheartened by that because that's the fight. That's the fight I'm talking about. We're waiting to get a parking garage. We're not going to spend these funds for a parking garage. The city of Denton is spending $400,000 a year. I'm going to say that again. $400,000 a year for a lease at the Dacu building for facilities that we needed. One of the justifications used to expend that kind of money in that area was that we could acquire that parking capacity from Dacu to help with downtown parking. The city of Denton tore down the old central, not the central, what was it called? Central fire station? We didn't tear down the one over there off Bell Avenue. Yeah, the old central fire station. We tore that down to do what? To provide parking. We reconfigured Hickory Street when we spent the $3 million to do it and put in back-end parking, of which I'll admit, I voted for it. I don't know how many of you have heard recently, a lot of people don't like that back-end parking. But we did that to increase parking. Look, we're going to have to make a decision on this because if you're going to do something different with the TIF as far as you want to dissolve it, you have to do it when there is no debt on the TIF because if there's debt, you have to pay the debt off. So we cannot make a decision that, you know, quite frankly, what happens is I'm just glad we're having the discussion. I'm glad we're having the discussion because I think this is an important discussion for the rest of this city. So I sound passionate about it because I'm so frustrated that to me it absolutely makes no sense to have this in place simply for discipline because we're afraid that future councils aren't going to realize that priority. When I look on that map and I look at these numbers and I see the amount of money that Mr. Moses is spending down there in downtown in his business, when I see the ones at the Oak Street draft house or Oak Street, West Oak Coffee Bar, the apartments, Barley and Board, when I see all that investment, they're coming because that 's the place to be. So it wasn't meant to supplement the needs for downtown. That's my biggest struggle with it because if it's not meant to meet the needs in downtown, so we're going to spend a $5 million drainage project to bring downtown, some of downtown, let's go with me on this, track with me on this. We're going to spend three or four million dollars to bring , to reclaim some floodplain in downtown. What will that do to the land? Value is going to go up, right? What happens with the tip on that value increase? It gets captured. How is the debt being paid on that five million dollars? If we issued bonds that weren't in the TIF, in the TIF paying form, then the community from the General Fund Debt Service is paying for that floodplain reclamation, which means the TIF is accumulating those funds for something else, and that's a floodplain project that can't be done somewhere else on a neighborhood that might be having flooding issues. This is all about, let's not bifurcate our community. I mean, I understand about the, I understand you want to make sure there's funding. If that is the only way that we as a council can take an area that's almost fully developed, that has grown in value of almost 100% in the last six years, if that is the only way we know how to accomplish that goal , folks, we're in big trouble. Because we are way out of our league. When I look at the airport, vacant land, we've been working on that for what, 15, 20 years? 15 or 20 years, we finally have an owner that was ready to do a TIF. The county participated, so county funds are coming in. I would have voted for that all day long. So for all you that are TIF neutral, you're going to have to make a decision at some point, and no decision into decision. We don't have to make that decision today because there's another question. If we do something different with the TIF, we have to decide what to do with those funds. That's not a question today that I think we can answer. But we certainly have to decide, is this the mechanism that we want to continue to accomplish the goals? I've been on council for 10 years, and part of it is what a great opportunity to go back and revisit plans and change plans. How many plans have we put in place that we haven't followed? Probably more than we have, and the biggest example comes from the master plan, which you said complete streets and those kind of things, Walnut and Cedar and Austin and -- well, that money was coming from the General Fund Debt Service, but we had a ceremony where we had dignitaries there to do a ribbon cutting on Cedar Street, because this is a big deal. And it totally changed that street. But guess what we didn 't do? We didn't solve the solid waste problem when we did it. So literally, the dumpsters were moved off site for the ribbon cutting to avoid debt picture. And that's probably a little -- that's probably a secret we would like to -- but you know, folks, it's time that we put everything out on the table, and if the TIF continues in place, I will accept that. No question about it. I will continue to support the TIF, the downtown. I will eat down there. I will buy goods down there. But I just think from a policy perspective, this is -- without other people's money, without other leveraging -- it's just -- it's outdated for this specific factual situation. You want to, Todd, put a bow on it. Put a bow on it, sir, and then I'll -- we'll wrap it up if we don't have any more questions. Oh, Keely, let him speak and then -- yeah, because he hadn 't spoken yet. So I'm real good at whole numbers. Other than that, it's a little out of my range. So -- but what I'll say is there -- I count four easy votes to do away with it, right? And so that's a reality. I don't know about that, but -- I think we can get there. I believe that. This is just me. Okay. Fair enough. Yes, sir. And I say that to start -- to -- I'm going to use the word -- stoke the conversation that things need to do better. I take -- I have a couple of questions. So first -- so there's two pavements. First, I need someone at some point to draw me a picture of the rail yard and draw a line item as to who owns what, because that is the most confusing thing that I've ever tried to take in, because you have the -- somebody owns the leasing rights. Somebody owns stoke. The city pays for some -- I just don't understand it. And that could just be me not understanding, but I'd love to -- Glad to talk to you about it anytime. Yeah, just pictures. And so -- but we've paid $78,000? Twice? Yes, $76,000. $76,000 twice. We're four years behind on a splash park in southeast Denton that's $200,000. So the better cost of a splash park that's going to be a benefit for everyone, we put in the stoke area rail yard. Yes, it's the rail yard development. Okay. I stand corrected. So for me, I guess my question is this. We've talked about money that went out. What money has been requested and denied? Can I get that list? Julie, please come help answer that question. Thank you. Julie Glover is our downtown program administrator. Thank you. And I'm going to work -- I'm working off memory here, so I will get you an accurate list later. I know at one point when the rail yard project was beginning, they had some overhead wires out front that the developer came and requested money to bury the wires out front. The TIF board felt like they had already been given this incentive and that they should find a way to do it themselves, and they did. We did have that discussion on sidewalks. I've texted someone in the office to find out exactly when and what was said about the sidewalks. But at that same meeting, it was presented that the money was already in general fund for that project. And so the TIF board went, well, the money's already there. Let them use the money that's been earmarked. I hear tales of an awning. I'm sorry? An awning or something like that? No, that didn't come from TIF. I understand that I'm talking about stuff that did not come from TIF that was requested. So that's right. Out of the downtown reinvestment grant, perhaps? I'm not sure. I'm flying blind here. I don't believe that an awning was ever discussed. We did talk about when we talked about the lighting and the wires in front of the rail yard to look at the other side of the street where the trees and things were at City Hall and that whole discussion. I mean, there hasn't there haven't been many requests for funds, honestly. There haven't been many formal requests to the TIF board. So I'm assuming that's somewhere. And are they subject to the open meeting requirements? Yes. Okay. And so there's... We have all the minutes. Okay. And we distribute the minutes from all of the meetings of the TIF board to you guys so that you have them and can see . And if you'd like us to make a summary of the projects that have been requested, we'll do that to you. Okay. And the... I need a lavalier mic so I can walk around. I hate sitting down. Can I...the board members? Yes. Who are they? Okay. I can tell you that. We have Bob Moses. We have Kevin Roden. We have Chris Watts. We have Melissa Lineberg, Hank Dickinson, and Marty Rivers. We know...how many of those are minority members? How many of those are the state would call it hub, historical and used business owners maybe, or Latino or African American? One of them is a woman. And that's it. Okay. All right. Got it. That goes...that leads me to my next point. When we're talking about downtown and we're talking about representative of our community, you look from the street level. If I go to the courthouse on the fourth floor, I have LULAC representation. The street level, I do not. Street level, I have a Confederate statue for historical purposes. I have a lot of questions about why there's liquor stores and bars downtown and I'm... Well, if there's support, extra support there that's not in the other city, why wouldn't they migrate to that area where there's extra support? So I question that. I question the size, the area of...I just don't...I don't think we're serving our community well by that. I understand why it's that small because it needs to fit under a threshold. But I don't understand the benefit to the entire city. And I'll use an example. I don't know what the funding mechanism was for the sidewalk, the rail yard walk trail, whatever that is. I don't know the technical name of it, but what was that? Rail's a trip. Yeah. But that has kind of like council member, Mayor Pro Tem McG arry mentioned in North Lake has created traffic. Now you can walk from downtown to Louisville. And I think that's fantastic. That kind of brings the city together. And so that's generally where I struggle is we are...all of a sudden we have a...that board is appointed? Yes, it's appointed by council, correct? Right. And there is in the TIF establishing ordinance. There are categories of membership of the board members. Yes. For example, two of them have to be council members. Some of them have to be downtown business owners. So there's that structure that's part of the ordinance. Right. And details, but we don't have two council members on there . We're going to get to that. For me, let me get to my other questions. Yeah, can you explain to me, because I've read it a couple of times and I may just be missing it. The five catalysts, that's...I don't understand what that is. I understand generally, I mean, it basically covers everything. In my humble opinion, I mean, there's not much that I couldn't shoehorn in any of those categories. But what does it mean at its core? What are they getting at? Okay, so I have to say I don't have a copy of the project plan that talks about the catalyst projects in front of me. I don't know if that's something that we need to...I mean, I'd like to get you the information, but that was before I was here. I'm not well versed in it. If you would like me to ask someone to come up who has more background on that, I'd be glad to. Well, no, I just...down the road, if we can boil that down to what its true intent was. And then another thing I struggle with is I've heard the term walkable downtown, and I think we agree on that. But then if it's walkable downtown, do we want to bring a parking garage so people drive through the walkable downtown to walk downtown? Or do we want to put it on its edge and have a complete street into downtown? And so I struggle with that, and then I'll just kind of further think out loud. It doesn't, to me, serve everyone, and I think if we boil down the owners and the people that it's benefited, I don't think it's representative of our community. And I think it then begins to generate conversations about why them, why...I mean, it almost invites conversations we don't have to have. And I don't think that's productive for this council. And really, it boils down to me, and I'll leave it at this. I'm not willing...I'm here for guaranteed, unless I get recalled, I got until 2019, right? And that's the mode at which I function under. And I want to do as much for the citizens and as much for the entire city, and that, a lot of time, is possible. And I'm not willing to hope and wait for the right opportunity that we can maybe get for a parking lot that I don't want downtown because I want it walkable, and I think most of the city does. And I'm not willing to continue to treat one part of the city different than the rest, especially when you've had numerous opportunities for the T IF board, if you will, to act like their active participants , and they've passed on those opportunities. So I think, you know, there's...I remember somewhere in some sane past year or so, follow the money...I heard it someplace. But I think that's where...I just think that's where it is. They did not participate in opportunities. The sidewalk should be paramount. We've all learned that from mistakes at TW. That should have been a no-brainer safety issue. We've learned it at Loop 288. I don't think we need to learn any more hard lessons as a city. I think we need to get proactive. I think we need to act in the two years. And there's three people that have...that are up for election in less than a year that are going to have to answer this. Why are you waiting? Why aren't you taking action now? What are you waiting on? And that's up to them to have those conversations. But for me, I mean, that's...at this point, I'd like to see that information, and I'm going to recall through the minutes, and I'll answer questions that come to me via email and understand it better. But at this point, I don't understand the benefits. The benefits don't exceed the negatives. And I really would challenge this council to look at it from a diversity perspective, because there's a great number of diversified voters that are underrepresented, and they have a potential to take that out on someone. And that's just the facts. And so I want to be inclusive. So I look forward to more spirited conversations. I enjoy it. Okay. So we will get you that follow-up information that you've requested by the end of the day today. Okay. Council Member Brayes, a couple of questions. Sure. So in regards to the rail yard, we've paid them, I guess, $ 152,000. Do we require any basic building maintenance on that building, like say, before we pay them? Well, do you have a specific instance in mind? Like an old roof, like they have a very old roof. You are concerned there were some leaking this weekend. Yeah. I mean, is there -- We don't require them under the terms of the Chapter 380 agreement to perform specific maintenance. No. The threshold was a dollar investment on their part that they had to meet before that grant would be made to them. Okay. But as the city being tenants in two of the units in that development, we do hold them to what their responsibilities are as a landlord. Okay. Yes. And let's see, I have some notes here. So, Mayor, you said that today the decision cannot be to dissolve it. Is that right? Today the decision cannot be to dissolve it because of the debt? No, no, no, no. Is that what -- No. No, there's no debt on the TIF. Right. I didn't think so. Yeah, no, there's no debt. But once there is, it cannot be dissolved. You have to pay the debt off. Right. Okay. All right. So, the next direction, it says seeking direction regarding the use of TIF funds in accordance with the project plan or other alternatives. So the other alternative presented here today was to dissolve it in the board. My question is about the funds because there's 1.1 or 1.2 million in there. If it is dissolved, does that money stay within that project and get used in that area? Is it a requirement of that or does that come back out into the general fund? I don't know. I believe it goes into the general fund. It does go into the general fund. So I have a little bit of information about that here. Essentially, since we do have some funds committed, though it's not debt, what we would do would be move the outstanding balance of what we owe under that agreement with the rail yard folks into an escrow account to cover that. And then the rest of the accumulated money in the TIF fund would go back into the general fund. Okay. Councilman Ryan, did you have? Yeah. Just a little bit of follow-up. Because again, I agree with you that the parking garage is what everybody thinks this fund is for and it's not -- I mean, it's one of many listed and I don't foresee it actually happening. I would like to see what our goals list is, what our wish list is for that downtown, almost like a pre-bond package list of projects that this is what we expect this to be. But one of the big things to me is transit-oriented development. And without good sidewalks, without -- I mean, I recall seeing an overlay of where they took Golden Triangle Mall and set it over downtown map to map and the size of it. And when you walk one end of the mall to the other, it's like walking from the civic center over to the square. It's not as far as what people think it is. We have parking in the downtown area. Leadership did and did a project on that a couple of years ago that was great, showed us where our areas were. And so, again, I see the parking garage as being something long-term, but I just think that we have too broad of a list currently to ever expect to make anybody happy. When you walk away from the table and you're not happy, you must have had a good negotiation if nobody's happy. That we need to boil this down a little better. I also see downtown is the oldest area of Denton and for many years did not get any type of updates. We've done some great updates in the '90s, the square itself proper, opposite side of the street from the courth ouse was done. We've done the Hickory Street. But if you try and walk many of the other streets in downtown, it's impossible. So if the decision does become to get rid of the TIF, we need to have a game plan as to how we are going to handle these other projects. And what are these other projects? And maybe once we see that list of other projects, we'll be more comfortable with pulling the parking garage out and saying here's these little things that we can do to make downtown great. We're going to present the parking garage in a different manner to all the citizens and see if all the citizens are willing to pay for it on a bond package. But again, the downtown, this also goes back to the DDC discussion earlier. The development that's going to happen in downtown, the urban style, does it match our 2030 plan? How is that working? And all of that has to be very pedestrian friendly in that sense. And right now I only see a few streets in the downtown area that fit that pedestrian friendly scheme. And those are the most active areas. And we have plenty of room in there to make other areas very active. I forgot a couple of projects on the parking issue. We purchased the tax building across the street from City Hall. Before, admittedly for potential expansion of City Hall and /or a parking facility. We purchased that. I think it was 890,000, 900,000 or something like that. Close to 900,000 dollars. And what we did is we tore the building down and we recon figured it. We didn't pave it with concrete or asphalt, but we did create parking because we were responding to the needs that were expressed for parking in downtown. So we did do that. We also put in the crosswalk out here at East McKinney because there was also the availability to, if we made it easier to cross East McKinney, we could then make available the parking out at the Civic Center parking lot, all the parking spaces here at City Hall. So I think if you were to take the totality of what the city has done in the last five or six years by listening to the concerns of the downtown business people and listening to the concerns of the citizens, the city of Denton has been more than responsive. And it hasn't been any TIF money, I can tell you that right now. Now the TIF stops at the south side of McKinney Street. So it doesn't jump the street. And just as a little historical context on the size of the TIF, the TIF originally was larger. The boundary was larger back in 2010. The problem was that it violated that you cannot have more than a certain amount of residential properties within the TIF originally. And so they had to shrink it because it violated that. So that's how it got to the size it is right now in understanding that residential and state code is defined as five units or less. They had to come up with something. But I'm pretty certain multifamily is a residential. So and they're right, correct, Councilman Wasney, that of those four areas that were chosen to sort of justify the T IF, one of them was the transit area. And so they only have to be present at the time that the T IF is created. But the policymaking body always has an opportunity to come back and review. I guess you would call it like a sunset review, similar to what the legislature does of things that we've passed. Are they working? Are they not working? And in this case, you have an opportunity to change directions if there's no debt or you can change directions to decrease the percentages of that, of the split. So I don't have this burning desire. If I was going to be totally political about this, quite honestly, and I thought I want the TIF dissolved no matter what, I would say let's give direction today. I don't have a burning desire to do that unless somebody on council does. If somebody on council wants to do that, I'll certainly give my direction. We've got a new council member that's going to be coming in in a couple of weeks. So in no way am I trying to manipulate this in a way to achieve my personal desired outcome. I've stated my case. I've stated the facts. If four or five of you agree with that, that's great. If four or five of you don't, that's okay, too. So I'm open to what it says give direction. And so I open it up for the conversation on direction. I think you had, okay, we'll start over here and just come around. Yes, Councilmember Waschmeyer. Well, I'd like an up or down direction today because I think this needs to be a two part. One is do we dissolve it? Do we not dissolve it? And then in question on policy and procedure, is that followed by a different day, a discussion on what to do with those funds? Or what I heard our city attorney say is that those funds go back into the general fund, minus whatever is already obligated in terms of projects. Yes, ma'am. That is correct. So it's really just one vote from this council or direction because the funds, it's already established what happens to those funds. It's not as if we can take what's left and then allocate those funds to whatever projects. So I am going to call for an up or down today on dissolving the TIF. So -- Yeah, I understand. And really what you're saying is you're asking for an up or down on direction because an official vote comes later based upon the direction. Yes. Okay. And so that was seeking direction. So that's my request. I am going to ask for seeking direction from this council. Okay. Okay. Yes, customer. Thank you, Mayor. A couple of things that I missed that I think were being a little short-sighted. One, the county didn't participate and they meet in the center of this TIF every Tuesday. I mean, that's their office. That's their area and they didn't participate. That sends a signal to me as far as, again, team work or the desire or the advantages of participating. And again, also, I think downtown does itself a disservice. And I'm going to follow up on a comment that Judge Sherry Shipman made when she was talking to the commissioner's court. And she points out how many people are brought in to Denton . The average person in Frisco, how often do they come to Denton? It's sparse. But those people are brought into our downtown area because they have jury duty or business at the county courthouse. And they're introduced at the county courthouse to 7-11, the county jail, Salvation Army. They can renew their tags across the street. I think we could do downtown a good service by enhancements down there that make that path while you have a break at jury duty. I don't know if you've ever been there, but you have time. Why not enhance that path to downtown up Hickory Street? So now we're bringing new business into downtown. And we have this pool of unutilized new visitors to town that we're not drawing at all. They stay in the courthouse. There's nowhere to eat. There's no restaurants near there. Why not bring them downtown and make that an easy walk or easy drive while they're visiting our city to then kind of make an impression on them? So I think we still can downtown benefits by utilizing these organic visitor trips and pointing them that way versus enhancing the area if they get there. So I think there's still ways to benefit downtown tremendously by using these some unrealized talents to get people there. Okay. All right. Councilmember Begheri. Actually, I was going to ask Councilman Hedgesmith. I actually I didn't understand your direction. So what was your. So for me, I'm absolutely at peace with dissolving it without the information. I mean, if we have to do that vote today. But I want to look at the information and justify it by the projects that they've denied. And just on a general philosophy point, I don't like that that board, the public can't get to that board, right? So if I make a decision, well, if you're confused, they don 't get the vote on that board. I mean, because you seem like you're disgruntled. And my point is they can't vote on those individuals. Those individuals are appointed. And if I if I'm a citizen that I'm not happy with how the T IF is performing, I don't have direct access to those board members versus an elected official that I could then take action against and say, hey, I want to recall that person. I want to write them every day. I want to do something to to affect their their decisions. Well, if I could respond by the TIF board makes a recommendation, they don't make a decision. Well, let me let me finish. Sure. The the board is appointed by elected officials us. They can make recommendations to the council, but the council makes a decision. The council can agree with their decision. The council can disagree with their decision. The council can act, I believe, probably with without direction from the TIF board. If we so choose to to to use the money in some way, it would be silly to do that if we appoint a board to give us direction, to give us advice and not use it. But my my response was simply there. They're answerable to the citizens through us because we appoint them. And the final decision on what's done with the TIF or the money in the TIF is a council decision and we're directly answerable to the citizens. So so I think that that that that there is accountability to the citizens. That's all I was reacting to. Well, if I may. Sure. And I disagree because I think that is an absolute core shortcoming of the boards and is something I want to change as best I can. They are to give advice, but I want them to own it. I want them to give me a decision as though it's their responsibility, not just, hey, I'm going to go through the motions, understanding that city council ultimately makes a decision. I would I want those board members to take a personal stake in it and act as though they are the final decision maker because that gives that elicits all the discernment that I would expect from from board members that I point. Okay, Council Mayor Pro Tem. I think I heard a paraphrase that was a no. Was that a no? On. Dissolving the TIF. No, no, if we had to vote today, I would. We're not voting. We're giving direction. Yes. So I would yes, Linda. Yes. Vote to giving direction to make an decision. I mean, whatever it is, whatever that process is. So yes, dissolve the TIF. Okay. Yeah, I'm a yes. And I would just encourage us to be clear about the direction that we're giving to staff because they have to live with our decision. So to the extent we can make it clear for them, I know that they would appreciate it. Sure. Well, my direction is a yes, understanding that that's direction to create an ordinance that will come before the city council for a vote. Understanding that you're going to get some information, understanding we're going to hear from the citizens. So I'm saying that none of us here are tied to our direction. I'm just being honest and realistic that if something happens that so it's the direction. But the but an official vote comes later based upon, you know, just the setting of an agenda. So, yes, I'm in position. Yeah. Yes, Councilmember Briggs. I'm OK with it. An ordinance coming before us. That's a good way to put it. I like that. Yeah. I mean, y'all don't have to give. I'm not polling. I'm just if people want to talk, they can if they don't, that's OK. Yes, customer breaks. But follow up on that. I would like the conversation to ensue because one of the the reoccurring themes I've heard is historic preservation in downtown. And I know that there are many other ways that we can get that accomplished without having this tip. So I'd like for a conversation to come up in conjunction sometime in the near future. OK. All right. About that. OK. Anybody else have comments, questions on this? I guess my direction would be more to let the TIF board know that the direction of the council is not to to move forward or my personal direction is not to move forward with parking garage, but smaller projects. And if those if there were smaller projects, what would that look like to kind of get their input is to because if they've been gung ho for a parking garage all this time, and don't want to spend the money on anything else, they might have actually wanted to. But they they just stuck with their guns for that parking garage. And if that's something we possibly that we'd be willing to put before a bond committee, which I believe it actually went before the twenty fourteen and just wasn't far enough along that that they could go in that route. Well, I'm hearing that at this particular point, a majority of the council is interested in dissolving the tip. I'm wondering if the council at the same time wants to simply allow the money to go into the general fund to be used for whatever purpose or somehow be an understanding of the spirit of what the tip was for and in that ordinance give directions regarding how the funds that are currently in there would be used, especially understanding that there's certain funds that are already committed for the next two years. So do you want to have that direction as a part of this ordinance or do you want to leave that up to chance or whatever? Yes. I think she's got a question pertaining to your. Yeah, along along the lines of what Councilman Gregory is saying, I have the same concern. So when you say that the money has to go to the general fund, is there a way to create, for instance, a designated fund with that money? That's something that we're going to look into. Chuck's coming. Hold on. Exactly where that money. I just got a look. Here we got. Yes. So are you wanting to create a downtown fund? Well, we're getting rid of that. The reason I ask is because we're in budget season right now. So if we wanted to create, you know, if we had some policy goals that we wanted to achieve with this money in a more structured way, we could potentially do it at this time with the understanding that we're dissolving it, but the money is going somewhere else as we discuss it further. For accounting purposes under accounting rules in order to designate that money separate from the general fund, the council has to pass an ordinance and identify the specific source of funds and the specific uses for those funds in order for it to be designated in a special revenue fund and separated from the general fund for accounting purposes. That's what we do with the other funds where we come to the council with an ordinance. Just one comment, though, Chuck. It would be possible if there was, I think, taking Council member Ryan's position on this, that if they wanted to designate a specific CIP for the downtown area, we could simply show the in and out of that, the funds. If there was a million dollars available, we could certainly show however a four or five year period. If we wanted to dedicate it to capital projects, we could make that transfer. It's possible without creating another fund, which is confusing for the public. We'd have to do that all at one time once those funds were available in the same year to do that, to designate it for certain projects. Would it have to be at the same time that we enacted ordinance dissolving the TIF or just in the same budget year? Same budget year. Okay. Thank you. No, I agree with you, Councilmember Gregory. I'm not trying to siphon off or raid or, I mean, I hope that what everybody has said is attributed to what those people said. Because there's some things that have been said that I agree with and some that I don't agree with. I've pretty much stated my position. I stated it six years ago. I have no issue with having those funds set aside to account for some of the things that we had. But we can have that conversation. I'm certainly in favor of having that conversation. I mean, I don't know where everybody else sits on what they want to do with it. We don't have to answer that question per se today. But I personally don't think the TIF ordinance to dissolve needs to also therefore pull all those funds into the general fund. And then we just sort of, because we can already, there's another lively discussion available to figure out what we want to do with those funds. And I'm assuming that those funds would include the ones that will be going to the TIF. I mean, I would want to make this active to where the funds that are already, the TIF valuations that are forthcoming that will be certified in the next few weeks, that those will still be a part of that. In other words, we're not retroacting it back to 2016, but that's just me. I'm indifferent to that, but I'm certainly in favor of the spirit of do we want to preserve those for things that, you know, they were meant to be for. And we could have voted on them and we could have. I don't recall, and I could be wrong. I know that we have taken several requests to the TIF board as a city saying, hey, would you pay for some of this? And I mean, on Stoke, we pay in 78 million dollars, or 78 thousand dollars a year. But the city is paying an additional how much? It's for the lease and for the economic, 100 and something thousand, or it's total of about 200, isn't it? Yeah. Okay. Okay. So it sounds like the direction is to draft an ordinance for a vote to dissolve the TIF. And I certainly understand that I've seen things change between direction and vote, but that's the direction. Okay. And then we'll have another discussion moving forward from there. And when we bring that back for another discussion, you would like to have some details about the option of moving the existing funds, should it be dissolved into some kind of CIP plan? Well, yes. The ordinance to dissolve will be separate and apart from the other discussion on what do we do with the current funds in the account. And that'll give legal and accounting and the community an opportunity to sort of weigh in on what those thoughts are. Okay. Councilmember? Yeah, I see two separate actions here. One is to dissolve because a discussion on what to do with the funds may take a while to make some smart decisions and to get different stakeholders involved in that, including business owners downtown and citizens who love downtown and are down there a lot because I know they have some lists and, boy, sidewalks are at the top of that list. So two separate actions. I think it's just a real smart way to take this. Okay. All right. Any other questions on this agenda item? Okay. Seeing none. We will take about a five or ten minute break and we'll move on. Welcome, everyone, back to this meeting of the Denton City Council on this day, Tuesday, June the 6th, 2017. We're back from our break. It is 2 53 moving through our work session agenda item agenda item 3 C receive report hold discussion receive departmental presentations and preparation for the 2017 18 budget capital improvement program five year financial forecast. Which ones are we going to see? Which ones are we going to have today? We will start with the customer service presentation, then move to technology services, human resources, risk management, and then an overview of the health insurance presentation. So six. Yes. I know yesterday they were about 30 minutes apiece. So we've got a little bit more condensed version. There'll be a little more condensed today. Okay. But be sure and ask questions if you need to as the presenters. And what we might do is save the questions for the end of the presentation unless it's just so burning you can't you can't concentrate on anything else that said unless you get it answered. So that would help the presenters, I think, move forward. All right. So whoever's up. Good afternoon. I'm Tiffany Thompson, the customer service manager. I appreciate the opportunity this afternoon to speak with you. As mentioned yesterday from Dr. Banks, the customer service budget is housed under the water budget. We have 42.5 FT ease. We take care of all the customer service for all the five utilities. We also take care of the switchboard calls are the main operator calls coming into the city. Last year we built 645,000 bills. We took 188,000 calls and we accepted and reconcile 259 million dollars worth of revenue for the city and the utilities. Our customer service mission is to help serve and educate our customers. We really take pride in providing a hometown experience when you contact us with along with providing big city services as well. So we make sure that we have a simple mission statement that our staff can point to with all of our interactions that we have with our customers. Our accomplishments for 1617 is we did a meter to bill improvement events where we collaborated with DME and water to look at processes, how we could clarify roles, see if there was any redundancies being done. And what we gleaned from that was an estimated 1,000 hours of saving times for our staff. We also implemented an automation platform which transitioned a lot of our manual processes into an automated process and we got 1,417 hours of savings from that. We did a business process management system that took many of our processes that have multiple touch points with our staff and put it into a streamlined system so we could get more visibility and also analytics from that to see if we had any type of bottlenecks and how we could address those. Our goals for this next year is to launch a prepaid utility program. This will allow our customers to pay as they go for their utilities. It will be a voluntary service. It's not something that's mandatory. We are going to launch a new payment website that has enhanced payment features for our customers. Some of those features include being able to set up recurring payments with credit and debit cards, being able to establish what frequency type they want to make their payments for utilities so they could do a one-time payment, they could schedule a future payment, and also be able to sign up for electronic billing. They'll have the availability to do that all on their own with this new payment website. We also are going to launch a self-service connect module. Right now our customers do have to reach out to us by phone or come into our lobby operation to establish utility services, and so we want to give them another self-service tool for them to be able to establish utilities through online. And then at-home agents is a program where we will be able to gain more responsiveness and flexibility with scheduling for our staff to make sure that we continue to be responsive to our customers' needs. In regards to our performance measures, the ones I wanted to highlight is our self-service adoption. This is the percentage of self-service payments. So customers don't have to contact us to take care of their business. They're able to do it on their own. We have a goal of 59%. Right now we're close to 60% on that. First contact resolution, I'm going to spend a little bit more time coming up on that, but what that is is percentage of observations, but we were able to help that customer in their entirety the first time they contacted us. And right now we're achieving 94.20% on that. Average speed of answer is how long it takes us to answer that phone call. We have a goal to answer our customers' phone calls within 60 seconds. And right now we're averaging 34 seconds for us to answer that phone call. Customer service, our goal is to maximize value while limiting and containing cost. Our biggest key drivers of our budget is our customer base, what the behaviors are of our customers, how we respond to those behaviors, and how we try to reduce volume. So we try to reduce volume and also improve customer satisfaction by investing in those self-service tools that I talked about. We have the payment kiosk at our lobby. You're able to make your payments online, establishing utility services online is another one that we're trying to implement. So we want to make sure that we continue to invest in those tools. First contact resolution is a critical performance measure for us. Again, that ensures that we're taking care of our customers ' requests the first time they reach out to us. We're not creating redundant or more effort for them or our staff. And the way that we actually capture this is we pull eight to ten interactions of our staff per month and we grade those. And we make sure that we're meeting our key performance indicators and are offering that holistic solution whenever that customer calls into us. So we actually have a very robust quality assurance program . So when you call into us, you're getting that continuity of service each and every time. We also want to make sure that we're getting our customers where they're wanting to go as quickly and effectively as possible through automated routing. We want to continue to improve efficiency. And what we utilize is a workforce management model. This takes historical data and forecasts where we need to deploy our resources to make sure that we're there when our customers, when that volume comes in. And so that helps us determine when we should send staff on breaks, lunches, how many staff we can allow off for that day to ensure that we're meeting our service standards. And then boosting staff productivity. We have a performance measure based off productivity. And what we want the staff to focus on is the things that they can influence, like being ready to take that phone call or the interaction when the customer comes into the lobby. Taking care of them in their entirety that first time they contact us. And then also as soon as they're done with that interaction , being ready to assist that next customer that's coming into us or calling into us. I wanted to show you some of the changes that we've had in our customer base and the behaviors. And so from '08 to '09 to now, we've had a 14.38% increase in our customer base. Our lobby volume has decreased by 61.06%. That's significant. And that's directly tied to those self-service tools that we've invested in. So people are able to take care of what they need to do without actually reaching out to us or coming into our lobby operation. Our call center operation did have an increase of 36. Yes, sir? On that point about lobby volume, there's a dollar attached to that savings, isn't there? Absolutely. Could you expand on that? For our lobby operation, we have an average per cost of that transaction of $5.45. So if you take that per transaction cost times what our savings is, I'm not going to do that math. You don't want me to do that math up here. But that's about what it costs. Just being honest. But it does cost approximately $5.45 to take that lobby interaction. So yeah, it is significant savings. And that means with the lobby volume going down, that you could probably decrease staff there and maybe reallocate them to some other-- Absolutely. We used to have close to, I would say, eight lobby representatives. And what we've done, going back to our workforce management and how we deploy our resources, we've actually shifted our resources from the lobby operation into our call center operation because that is where our volume is right now. And so with our call center operation, it did increase by that 36.9%. But we also took on additional duties. We took on the operator calls. That's the main city phone number. We took that over a couple years ago. And we also do a lot of billing for miscellaneous departments as well. So because our staff has been productive, we've been able to take on additional functions and truly become a customer service for the entire organization and not just utilities, but we're gradually getting there. Our average handle time has increased by 18.77%. Our goal is 300 seconds or less. I don't consider this necessarily a bad thing because going back to that first contact resolution, we're spending more time with our customers. So we're delivering that quality interaction experience. They're not having to contact us back. And so we're investing in them, spending a little bit more time with them. And we think that adds value to them. Interesting enough, average speed of answer, we decreased that by 18.51%, even though our customer base has increased by 14.38%. Again, that's a direct reflection of how productive staff has been, how we've been more efficient and effective. In terms of our budget highlights, we do have a proposed reduction overall. This is due to the elimination of three positions in our department and also some project savings that we're going to have. On materials and supplies, that is directly tied to our bill production and postage to send out our utility bill. So that's what that line item is. And then cost of service is for our internal transfers, general fund, tech services, and human resources. And then operations, our line share of our operation cost goes to being able to take those credit and debit card payments. There are the costs associated to do that. And then also the maintenance and support of our customer information system. So that's what makes up the majority of that. And so with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions. I want to thank you. If you'd go back to page seven. The kind of data that you all are collecting is extremely impressive. It suggests, despite the rhetoric that you hear sometimes around town, that folks are keeping data and that we're using data to make decisions and that we're trying to work very hard to improve the customer experience and to save funds and to become both efficient and effective at the same time. And I think some of these numbers that you've shared, we get three numbers now in our quarterly report on percentage of first contacts for resolution. That's great. And average time and percentage of payment transactions completed electronically. But I think that some of the other information that you have here about call time handling. And, and, and I don't have any problem at all with the average handle time going up. Because people would much rather get it resolved in that first phone call than have to do a second or third phone call because sometimes it's hard. It's hard for them to take time out of their day out of their work schedule to do that. So thank you very much for the for the specifics. This is excellent. This is an example of what we and to have a little bit more of this data reflected each time would be great. Thank you. So I have a few few questions going back to the first slide under prepaid utilities. That seemed interesting if you could I know it might be self explanatory but if you can go into that just a little bit. Is that to benefit low income everyone if there's a balance you not get your electricity cut off. I mean how does that how does that work. Absolutely. We're real. The goal is to have improved customer satisfaction. And so when you are calling into established utilities and sometimes there's a deposit associated with that. If you fall behind on your bill there may be late fees associated with that with the prepaid program they're paying as they go. So they're able to avoid deposits. They're able to avoid some of those fees and they feel like they have more control of being able to pay that. So it is kind of like the prepaid cell phone or the example we tend to use is the analogy of filling up your gas tank. You're only going to go as long as you have gas in the car. And so they feel like they're more conservative as well as some of the information that we've gotten back on that. Right now we are in a testing phase and integration phase but we're hoping to go live with this potentially in the fall. Does that answer some. Yeah yeah that's that's really neat. Couple more please. OK. Also on the phone service sometimes when I call automated numbers they say would you hold or prefer to take a survey at the end. Do you ever do that in the city. We are actually looking into offering a survey after that call for our customers. We're just trying to figure out the integration right now with it with our current system because we do want to be able to calibrate that with our quality assurance programs. Because right now internal staff is scoring that based off of our scorecard and our key performance indicators. But we would like to bump that up against what our customers are saying too so we can calibrate it with our customer a survey component as well. So we're actually betting that out right now. And could you go back to the slide where the money is. There we go. You mentioned that part of the increase in material and supplies was billing and postage. Is that a fun transfer from like DME. Do they help with that or how does that. We allocate all of our services for customer service because we're internal department we allocate that out to the utilities. So based off if they're represented on that bill then they would get a portion of that cost to be represented on that bill. So that's how we allocate that back out but materials and supplies is strictly just bill production and postage and we reallocate that to the utilities. Thank you. Thompson very good presentation so concise I really appreciate it. My question I think is actually going to be for the city manager. So in the on the money page we have a reduction of the budget which is great from my perspective especially considering how much you're accomplishing with what you have. Question regarding personnel services. So is the idea that that assistant manager position is going to remain empty for some time. Is that where the savings is coming from or. Yeah I will I'll defer to Miss Thompson on that. I know a couple of the positions have been reorganized right before I started. So but I believe that is correct with the assistant manager position. We just recently had a reorganization where the assistant manager position which was previously myself actually. We do plan to fill that position just because they have such great support and oversight especially over our customer facing operations. So we do intend to to fill that position where we gain the savings is we had one position that we had a vacancy through and we were able to find efficiencies and distribute out those duties and give other staff in our operation. Some challenges and opportunities to advance in their career so we were to get a saving from that. And then two of the positions last year during our budget we were proposing that we would move over with planning and potentially help them with their cash operation because we do it so well. Had to put that in there. Because we were very effective at it. So what we do is a bread and butter because we did not ultimately end up moving over there because it did not become cost effective. We eliminated those two positions that we had proposed last year. So those are the three positions. Understood. Okay thank you. And then a question regarding the billing and I don't know if this is properly directed towards you or what who it should be directed towards. But I wonder if there I mean I'm sure there have been some discussions about how to reduce the paper billing and you know achieve more of the electronic billing. Yes we actually have just met an all time high for what we call it you bill adoption and that is where customers opt out of the paper bill and go to the electronic bill. About fifteen point seven percent of our customer base is on electronic billing and so that actually saves us ten cents per bill for that because it costs ten cents to produce that. And so we actually also have like summer contests with our staff where we really try to promote that and our you know promoting signing up for electronic billing. We also anticipate an increase with that because it'll be easier to sign up for electronic billing with our new payment portal that's coming in the next few months. I mean it's like a click of a dial enter in your email address and you're done and you don't even have to reach out to us. So we anticipate that adoption to continue to grow so we can have additional savings with that. Okay thank you. That's really an interesting little factoid. Fifteen percent on e-billing. I would have thought it's like 90 percent or something but. So when that portal is open I would ask you know press releases and to really kind of push that because when you look at materials and supplies that has to include postage to mail all of that out. And we're quickly moving almost to a paperless billing society and so if that's our goal to really increase and get above that 15 percent. The key is to really put the word out there and you're solving the problem because you're going to make it so easy for our customers. So thank you for that. But let's do a real shout out so that people know how easy it is and kind of get it out there. So thank you. Thank you. Just a follow up. Thank you for doing this and I really enjoyed these presentations because otherwise we wouldn't know. So thank you for being here. Just a follow up question. I'm obviously not part of the 15 percent. So on the not yet. I can help with that. Billing. E billing part. So we do a lot with the inserts. So if you do sign up for e billing does that the copy of that insert with the knowledge and dates and does that come to you as well. Yeah we have a version of that that we send out to our e billing customers so they still get that information that we're sending out to them. Good. Good. Thank you. Is it customer service or technology that picks the music when we're on hold because I feel like this is a trap. No it is not because I was on hold yesterday and I loved the music. It was super. And all I'm hoping all I'm hoping is that that was a UNT ensemble that was performing. We just need to get that identified. You've been listening to the University of North Texas jazz band. Now that it is good. I've noticed it. First of all I want to thank you personally for helping me on some of my customer service issues that were mainly my fault. But I will tell you one of the things that is so great about having your own utilities is the customer service that you can get. If you try to call to get your electricity turned on from one of these other providers that you're outside of the it 's virtually impossible. So you guys do you guys do a great job and I can attest that unfortunately I'm not on a billing and I have a lot of accounts. So I'm just ancient. It's just I just like the paper. Thank you. So great work. I know you had some very big shoes to fill and it sounds like you're doing a very good job for Mr. Cox. He you know but I really appreciate how you guys really respond to the community to the citizens because I do not wait on that phone. I mean they don't know what's me calling. So it doesn't matter. Somebody answers the phone. I get it taken care of. I do have a question about the self connect because that's something that's very I'm very intrigued about because that 's part of what I call about is to get things going. What I'm interested about is to get things connected because of as people move in and out. So what does that what does that mean? So I could actually once this is launched get online and schedule a connect of whatever the utilities I need without having to make a phone call. It'll be for residential only because certain stipulations with commercial. Yes. You'll be able to go online and put in the address that you 're looking at and then we'll run like a soft credit check to make sure you are who you are. Sure. So if you have the deposit needed we'll let you know what that deposit amount is or if it's not needed then you'll continue on in the process. So and we're hoping to have that up hopefully in the next probably six months is what we're looking at right now. So then the the portal or the connection between let's say myself on my computer to the Internet and your system because to do a soft credit check you're going to need important information. You know personal identifying information. So as far as the security of that information from from an Internet perspective and from a storing perspective real comfortable that that's we're up to speed in that regard. And that's why we want to make sure that we take time to get out this integration and implementation. So it has taken a little bit longer than we would have liked to. But we want to make sure to your point that that all of that is solid and secure before we accept that information. But yes to your great. Well you guys do a great job. Every time I call I'm answered quickly. It's done professionally friendly and it gets taken care of . So thank you so much for what you guys do. Thank you. Any other questions for the presentation. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you. And I do want to echo Councilmember Gregory sentiments on the music because I remember when I first I was stunned. I was like this is wonderful because it was that old kind of generic the girl from Iponema. I mean let's get over it. It was great. I was wanting to change it for a long time. Great. Great choice. Great choice. Good afternoon Council Mayor City Manager Melissa Kraft from the chief technology officer for the city of Benton. So today I want to talk about tech services total were thirty nine of T.E. So we've recently did add some staff here recently we added a dedicated staff for solid waste that was transferred from their budget to ours. And also what we're requesting for fiscal year 17 18 is a dedicated staff for the cat administration cat administrator position for public safety. Currently the duties are being fulfilled by the current dispatch supervisor and also police officers. So we're taking those duties away and have it dedicated to an IT staff for that. So here's tech services the way we're broken down is in specific service delivery areas. So we have our enterprise infrastructure team. So they're responsible for storage cameras servers backups phone system phones call center that kind of stuff. Then we also have our enterprise applications. They're responsible for all hundred eighty five applications that we support throughout the city. We also have our enterprise operations division. These are the folks that are responsible for some of our security compliance requirements for instance for customer service. We help them with PCI and HIPAA sieges for public safety and so forth. We also have our support staff. These are the people that are responsible for your computing needs. So your peripherals desktop printers cell phones that kind of stuff. We also have a dedicated a person staff for electric technology division. So here's some of our accomplishments for fiscal year 16 17 . We finished our first tech services strategic plan. We also completed our Cisco equipment refresh phase one. So tech services does have a five year capital asset plan. So we try to keep our equipment on a constant life cycle. So we're still trying to catch up from the 0 8 0 9. So one of the things you'll see as part of our plan we have certain phases we try to keep equipment up to date. We also have performed several software upgrades to include our new open data portal. Cartograph OMS office three sixty five. Our Kronos payroll timekeeping system. Our laser fish. We also implemented a P.I. middleware to make systems talk a little more concurrent. We also upgraded our call center SharePoint and Internet Explorer. We had several upgrades as well too. We replaced our Cisco phone system and Cisco handsets. We upgraded our firewalls our backups and security camera system. We also updated our budget allocation model as well too. Some of the things that will be upcoming. We have our JD Edwards ERP upgrade. This is a significant cost around four hundred thousand dollars. It helps us to keep up to date with our ERP system. We're also upgrading our Cisco equipment refresh phase two. So currently we support connectivity to 40 different buildings. This all requires things to connect them to. So that's around half a million. We're also needing to refresh our backup data center. That's around two hundred thousand. And also our PCs and computers are approaching almost five years. So we want to again keep in mind the life cycle of some of the equipment that we need to keep up to date. We're also in the process of upgrading the DME SCADA system as well too. Question. Can you refresh my memory? Did we I thought we just got the SCADA system for DME or was it a patch or something? So there's there's two SCADA systems. There's a SCADA system for the transmission distribution side, which we're in a process now of upgrading. Then there's also a SCADA system for the energy management organization. OK. So the energy management organization SCADA is the one that we just the council just approved. Correct. You proved both. I think you proved one back in December and then another one in January. OK. And so number five here is just what is that? So as far as the upgrade for the energy management organization, the kickoff starts in July, but it's going to fall into next fiscal year. So it's just continuation of the project. So is that related to the Den Energy Center then or is it just an entire system wide? So it's it's related to the energy center. OK. So then I have a budgeting question. Was that a part of how you know, is it calculated as a part of that budget or I guess it's part of your budget? It's a part of their budget. And it's part of a project account. OK. And so they're basically re reimbursing you. OK. Thanks. It may be there and I just don't recognize it. But where do we where do we have our goals for continuing or even making more robust our security functions? So that's part of a tech services budget. So, for instance, we do track how many attacks we've had. I will mention we went from thirty three million to fifty five million attacks this past year. So it does include, for instance, this past year, we upgraded our firewalls and it's also part of the Cisco Equ ipment Refresh Phase two. We're going to be upgrading firewalls as well. So that's built in as part of our refresh. So it's really good that you come from a military background if we're having that many attacks. Yes. Thanks. So. OK. You can be very brief. I just would like to know what those consist of as far as how that's defined, because that's you don't have to say now. But if we could just get in form with this, what that looks like, you know, because that's obviously it's very important, especially given some of the recent news in the last month or so. And some of the I guess malware because I don't know nothing about these kind of things. I mean, you could tell me you don't do any billing. So you can just put something together, something informative for counsel that just sort of describes that and what they consist of. And I can do it now or I can. We're good. Yeah, just inform would be great. Yeah. So here are the tech services performance measures. So we do take into account the employee rating of overall IT service. So we do that several ways. We do survey after every ticket and we also do a yearly survey for all of the city. So our goal is a 98 percent satisfaction rate. So you can kind of see a recorders what our rating has been . We also look at our business critical services. We want to determine availability of infrastructure and application needed for service. It's very important to make sure that things are available when people need it and need to consume it. Our goal is 99 percent. And we've met that. You can see that there. We also look at the percentage of calls resolved within five days, one day and half day. Our goal is 95 percent. You can see we average well over that. Also, I want to highlight between Q1 and Q2 last year, we really changed our user support intake process. As a result, you can kind of see we average 10 percent more than what we've had previously with how we were doing business. A big component of our program is the open data portal. So currently we have 159 data sets. This past year we've added over 85 in Q3 and four in Q1. So our goal is to continuously to add data sets over time to make sure the data is automated and also fresh. Councilmember Gregory. So your goal was four? Yes. And you got 85? Yes. 85 plus four. Well, if you set your goal that low, you're going to clearly overachieve. I'm pleased that you have 85. What is your goal for this coming year? So our goal is around 10. And as we're pulling that data set, we want to automate it as well too. So it doesn't take manual intervention. So that would definitely help. I think that these would be good performance measures to see in our quarterly report. We also take into account users per IT staff member. This kind of talks about as far as the investment in IT. So for every IT person, we support 43.47 employees. We also benchmark against other cities. Here's another electric utility. You see Garland for every IT person they have. They support 34 people. You see McKinney here for every IT person they have. They support 23. You can definitely see Irving kind of sticking out a little bit at 79. And you also see the average midsize organization around 42 . So this indicates that we run pretty slim. We really use technology to assist us. We also look at the IT operational spending per user. And Denton is 6,300 with DME. I want to highlight that is 7,135. You can kind of see the average for Garland is around 10, 000. McKinney is around 10,000. The average midsize organization, they spend around 13,600. And also Plano is around 16,000. They're doing a lot of big CIP projects this year. So I want to highlight that as well. So here are some of the cost containment strategies. We do a time audit every year. So we take into account where we spend our time as far as how we deliver our service. Are we being proactive versus reactive? Are we just keeping the lights on? Are we bringing innovation? Are we helping departments like customer service with their business process management and automation? So we just redistributed duties from an application manager and streamlined our budget allocation process. So if you look at that, that was over 900 hours we were previously spending on. We eliminated some of the process and simplified it, resulting in a 57,000 cost savings. We also automated our quarterly system audits. This is something we have to do for compliance. On average, we were spending around 1,500 hours performing this. We were able to automate that process with the cost savings of 80,000. We also reduced our subscription of desktop administration software through consolidation. That was a $35,000 cost savings. One of the things we're trying to do is bulk purchase and standardization of equipment. As a result, with buying everything in bulk, we got bigger discounts, which was $130,000 in cost savings. We also looked at our anti-Mauer anti-spam solution. We went to a different platform and used the same solution for both servers and workstation. That resulted in around a $15,000 cost savings. We also looked at consolidating databases for the ArcGIS system. We saved around 40 hours for that. We also decommissioned 15 applications. So one of the new efforts we'll be working on this upcoming year per TOD's direction is looking at streamlining and centralizing a lot of applications for application consolidation strategy. So we're actively working towards that. Previously, it was a little more decentralized. So we're looking at that. I have a question on that. Just go ahead, Phil. In the past, there were some concerns about that because some of the applications seem to be very, very specific for certain types of functions. As we are decommissioning those, what feedback are you getting from the users of departments about the replacement applications? It seems pretty positive because we were able to kind of put them on a similar platform as everyone else. So they've been able to continue to function at least as efficiently and effectively or maybe even improve? Yes. They're probably a little reluctant to change? Yes. So here are some of the completed projects. As far as process improvements, we standardized our change management process to improve efficiency. Communication and reducing risk to customer. We also standardized our tech services project tracking. We also reorganized our active directory to assist with aud iting and reporting. We also standardized equipment across the DME SCADA and the city equipment. That way we can leverage the same technology resource and the bulk discounts and consolidated licensing. We also did a lot of automated management of the DME SCADA infrastructure. So when we're reading logs, reading reports, it's a little more automated. We replaced the archive system to simplify e-discovery. Hopefully that minimized the time as far as any open records requests that we're currently a part of. We also provided a new feature this year, self-service password reset so people can reset their own password instead of having to call. We still provide that as an option as well. So some of the future projects we'll be working on is automation of purchasing fire and streets reporting. We're looking at automation of business processes for purchasing in HR. We're also looking at business process management tracking critical processes between departments. So you can see customer service is one of our case studies to try to work with them first and then try to take that to the other departments as well. We're also looking at camera replacement for storage efficient cameras. Currently we provide infrastructure for 400 cameras throughout the city. So that takes a lot of storage. We're also looking at consolidation of firewalls and also consolidation of applications and automation of some of our virtualization tasks. So here are personnel services. Our numbers do fluctuate quite a bit, so I'll probably spend a little time talking about it. I'll start off with 16, 17, 17, 18. A lot of the differences in personnel services was that new solid waste position that was transferred from solid waste over to tech services. And also the dedicated CAD administrator position for public safety. If you look over under maintenance, it did increase a little bit by 90,000. Around 60,000 was for public safety in regards to the fire training solution, some of the police's tactical analysis support, the police interview room, and the tri-tech vision air maintenance. It also includes 50K increase in some of our infrastructure , which includes network hardware and some of our Microsoft licensing. Our operations did decrease quite a bit. This was because our Dell lease payment dropped off, and we 're about to pick it back up next year. Some of the fixed asset projects, again, we're trying to do a five-year capital asset plan, just keep it consistent over time to try to keep up to date with the technology. A lot of that includes a $400,000 ERP upgrade, $200,000 for our disaster recovery facility, $100,000 for public safety for their MDC replacement, around $500,000 for PC refresh to refresh some of the computers throughout the city. Also $130,000 for public safety dispatch recording system. I just want to highlight some of the differences between ' 15-'16, '16-'17. It's been a challenge throughout that time. We had four open positions we were unable to fulfill. So hopefully we're slowly filling those positions. Could you -- Oh, yes, I'm sorry. Could you elaborate on why that was so hard to fill? It's -- with the technology field, when the market's really good in Dallas, it's hard to recruit some of that talent for government-type jobs. So we're competing with the private sector for those employees. Absolutely. And I'm wondering, we just had a -- within the last 12 months, an evaluation of our pay. I'm guessing that technology has just moved so fast that we can't -- Yes, we're definitely seeing two areas in the city right now where that's occurring. One is technology, the other one is with the EMO. So I've asked our HR department to go out and resurvey EMO, and we're having discussions about technology as well. And you'll give us a report on that? The energy management organization. In the last few months, we are continuing to see our employees given significant offers to leave. So we're going back and double-checking that our salary updates were in job descriptions were properly benchmarked, which in DMA is a little bit more challenging than this area. But, yeah, you're right, these skill sets are very valuable right now. Well, it could just be the volatility of the market. I don't think it necessarily reflects -- or does it reflect poorly on the entire evaluation? No, I don't think so. IT in particular, my whole career has been like this. There's times where it really gets hot, and there's times where it'll cool off. So I don't really view this as that unusual. You'll see this every four or five years where it does this . It's also a big difference between '15-'16, '16-'17. You can see maintenance was $1 million. A big portion of that was our Office 365 implementation. That was around $380,000. And also public safety, also $180K for the DME tech services. They finished out their AMI deployment that alone was around $180K. Yes, that's my question. Thank you. Just one other question. Is it your department that helps work with the downtown Wi- Fi system? Yes. If it would be possible for you to give us an update on -- and maybe including a map of what areas one can connect to when you're downtown, if we have a notion as to how much it's being used, if we're needing to upgrade capacity or if the capacity is okay, if you're getting any comments from people that we need to expand the geographic area. I think the original -- when the original Wi-Fi was designed, it was designed for up to 100 users on the Wi-Fi at the same time. So it was really built out for low to medium quality. So as far as the connectivity, it is a challenge downtown because some of the buildings, the facade is cement and you got a lot of trees. So to get the signal across can be a challenge. We would have to look at potentially adding additional Wi- Fi components out there to make the coverage. It might be good to do that before -- as we're getting into the budget. Before we get too deep into the budget cycle in case that has an impact. Or it may just need to be put on hold for next year, but it would be nice to get an update on that. That certainly impacts the quality of the experience of our visitors downtown. -Councilmember -- Mayor Potem, Begayri? -Yes. I had a question about the open data portal. So you mentioned that the goal is to have 10 new data sets uploaded and also to automate the process. How much time would you say is being spent on open data endeavors? -Over the past year, probably a month's worth of time. -For like one FTEs a month? -Probably spread amongst different FTEs. -Okay. So one of the things that I've gotten feedback on from the open data platform is that it's not very user-friendly because it's in a lot of spreadsheet form and there's codes. I'm wondering, you know, looking at some other cities, I know that they use platforms like Socrata and different platforms. We did our platform in-house, correct? -We actually use OpenGov as a platform. -Okay. So I'm wondering if there are add-ons or things that we can -- things that we can do to make more synthesized data for people. Typically what you'll see in open data portal is our charts and, you know, year-over-year information. So what are your thoughts on that? -So we actually put in as a supplemental package to expand our open data platform to include visualizations. I think that was roughly around 45,000. -Okay. And that's for this year? -Yes. -Councilmember Hutsbuth and then Councilmember Waston. -Thank you, ma'am. I think I saw a note on e-discovery platforms. What have you explored in that regard? Because I'd like to see more -- I think that would ultimately pay for itself down the road, and it gives legal more control. And -- because there's unnecessary costs with that. When you get to a third-party vendor, it being marked up, you lose control over that, and especially if a large case were to roll around, it gets really expensive. So are there platforms you've identified that you're comfortable with looking into, or are you still kind of in the information-gathering phase ? -We actually implemented the software called Commvault. So the usability is more Google-like. As far as the selection, we did involve our legal department to help us kind of pick the platform they wanted. So that platform is going to be more of a self-service. So it wouldn't really require a tech person to do open records, and they can set up logins and areas in which they can query. -And what's it called again? -Commvault. -How do you spell that? -C-O-M-M-V-A-U-L-T. -Okay. -I think the second phase is to export some of the historical data from our old e-discovery into it, so that's what we're working on now. -Okay. If I may. -Oh, sure. -And then just -- I'm just not familiar. What do we do with old computers? -So, previously, we had donated to the jail for use, or we sell it through auction. -Okay. Got it. Thank you. -Counselor Walshney. -So, for the future council discussion on what to do with this TIF money, if you would put together an itemized list of what it's going to cost to upgrade the downtown Wi-Fi, and that could be something this council could take a look at with using those funds, because it's truly dedicated to downtown, and I just heard the phrase, "Enhances the downtown experience." So I think a very applicable use of those funds. Thank you. -Okay. Well, Dean? -Any other comments, questions? Well, thank you. I stand in awe -- This presentation reminds me of when Dr. Banks talked about mosquitoes. [ Laughter ] Do I? Because I've got a computer science degree from a long time ago, and you put a slide up there, and I was looking at it, and I thought, "I have no idea what any of that stuff is." So thank you, because you guys perform just a critical function for this organization. I mean, you're behind the scenes, but it keeps our data secure. It helps us get efficient reports. So thank you and your staff so much for -- bless you -- for what you guys do, because IT is really the lifeblood of an organization these days. I mean, not just from getting things done, but to keep data safe, as we've all seen here recently. So thank you. Thank you so much for that. Yes, sir? -But if anybody in your department needs help with slam cards, you used to use those, right? -What? -Punch cards. -Punch cards, yeah. -Punch cards. -Yeah. Fortran punch cards. I don't like slam cards. I don't know what that means. -That's what they called them down in Austin. -Oh, did they? Okay. -I also want to toot our own horn. We were recognized as a digital city last year across the nation. We were number seven across the nation. So I want to point that out. -Great. Congratulations. Thank you so much for all that good work. -Give us more information on that. -Yeah, yeah. Yeah, because I didn't know that, so any -- Yeah. Get that. Thank you, Melissa. I appreciate that. -There was a press release. -Was there? -Yeah. We took pictures. It was pretty cool. -I saw it, I think. I'm getting old. My memory's fading. -Good afternoon, mayor, members of city council. -Good afternoon. -Carla Romine, director of human resources. There's actually three budgets under the HR umbrella, so I'll be doing the human resources budget, which falls in the general fund, and then Scott Pam will be following up with the risk retention and the health insurance fund. So briefly, I just wanted to talk about some of our functional areas. Hiring -- While we're not the ones who make the hiring decisions, those are the supervisors. We're the ones that are behind the scenes processing all the paperwork and making sure that the process is done fairly, legally, and consistently. Once a hiring decision's been made, we're the ones doing the pre-employment and post-offer checks. On the training and development area, again, departments are responsible, and they have in their own budget job-specific training, but we deal with the soft skills and interpersonal training . We have a very robust training program with three different certification tracks, and then we have tuition reimbursement that falls under this umbrella. Employee relations -- This runs the gamut from employees asking questions about policies, having issues in their workplace, personal issues, and helping supervisors with disciplinary actions, and even formal complaints and investigations. Benefits and wellness -- I'm not going to talk about, because Scott will be talking about some aspects of this when he talks about the health insurance budget. Compensation and classification -- while we do hire consultants to help us do large surveys or pay plan studies like we did this last fiscal year, we are the ones that kind of manage it on an ongoing basis, and so as jobs change and need to be studied and reclassified, we do that. Or if there's questions about certain positions and what the market is, we'll reach out to really public sectors, because it's hard to get private sector information. Risk management -- This is the workers' comp, the liability claims, segregation claims. Again, Scott will talk about that when he does his risk retention budget. Employee events -- some of you have already participated in some of these, like the Service Awards Banquet. We also have employee appreciation, and we have benefits and wellness fair, and a financial wellness fair. Compliance -- as you can imagine, there's a lot of employment laws that govern what we do. We try to ensure our policies and our practices are in compliance with those laws, and if we're running afoul of any of those, we try to jump on those very quickly and correct those, and then we work with legal when needed. And then last but not least, you can imagine, we have a lot of records that come into human resources, so we ensure everything is in their personnel file, and we have to respond to those open records requests when we get them. There are 20 of us in human resources and risk management. 11 are budgeted in human resources in the general fund. Nine are in risk management and risk retention fund. Here's our org chart. Everything in blue is the general fund under HR. Everything in yellow is budgeted in risk retention. Quickly, to some of our accomplishments for '16-'17, you know that we did that-- our compensation study, UM Global HR helped us with that, so we implemented the recommendations that came forward to the council from that study. We implemented online performance management learning management systems, so this is where employees and supervisors go online, do their own performance evaluations, streamline the process a lot. Our learning management system, employees can sign up for trainings that we provide in human resources. They can look at their transcripts and all the trainings they've been to, and then if supervisors want to know, they can run their own reports, and then they can do evaluations online as well. We're in the infancy stages, but we began developing online documents with laser fish forms. I know Melissa was talking about helping us with some of our business process improvements, and this is what she was referring to. And then we secured services in an executive search firm assisted with several high-level searches. You can see that list here. Some of them are in progress. As far as the goals, we're going to continue working on online forms. I mentioned we're the infancy stage. We have 70 to 80 forms that come through human resources, and again, we're trying to make that easier for not just HR staff, but for our users. We're looking to aggressively improve records management practices, so we're already pretty good about this, but again, we have a lot of records. We still have some old records that are in storage areas that we're trying to go through, and we're going to purge them as allowed by law. And then we're trying to make it easier. We have some 24-hour operations. We're not here 24 hours, and they have questions from time to time, and even during the day, we're trying to make it easier for our staff as well as employees and supervisors in the organization being able to find information on questions that they have through our SharePoint site, our intranet site, and we're going to put some more educational information out there. As far as performance measures, there are two performance measures. They're here in bold with an asterisk that we actually report to counsel in the quarterly reports. This is our employee turnover rate. I believe Q2 you all have was like 5.6%. I recently received a termination report looking as of June 2nd, and I think we're up to about 8.7%. Our goal is less than 10%. And then we're looking at a percent of employee reviews completed within 30 days of the due date. Our goal is 100% there. Lagging a little bit, we're at 67% as of Q2. We track a lot of other information, which you can see on this chart. We do this for our own purposes and to be able to respond to questions we may receive from management. But we're always asking, is this the right information to track? So we're talking internally, and we'll be talking with the executive team as this year progresses about some of the potential new performance measures such as absenteeism rate. So all the time that people are out except for vacation. Average employee tenure, looking at civil service, non-civil service, time for higher training effectiveness, and employee satisfaction. Question? Oh, yes, question. Could you go back a page? Sure. So in '14-'15, the percentage of employee reviews completed with 30 days was 75%. And at the mid-year point, at '15-'16, it was 77%. And now it's down to 66.6%. So that means a third of our employees are not getting their reviews done, even 30 days late. How -- what's the longest that any of our employees have gone without a review? We've had a few instances where it's been a couple years. A couple of years? Yes, sir. Those are minor, but we've had a few. Well, that's probably not minor to the person that's -- Correct. Because that feedback is very important to the employee. It's very important to the organization that that employee is not going in the right direction. But it's also important to the employee in terms of -- they can't experience a merit pay raise without that review. So it seems -- what can be done to fix that problem? Because the goal of 30 days late is not a very aggressive goal. So what can we do? Is that HR? Is that management? What do we need to do? It's both. In fact, I can tell you that I did a couple myself that were two years late. So recently, and what is occurring now is we're asking Carl and the HR team to provide us updates on a periodic basis in terms of every department where reviews are outstanding, and meeting with the directors to ensure that those employees are reviewed in a reasonable amount of time. It's also being built into their own performance reviews. Well, I would hope so, because if they're not doing one of their basic functions in a timely fashion, then when they're performance review, that would certainly be a factor against a merit increase in their salary. I completely agree with you. It's a basic respect. So we're dealing with it on a case-by-case basis. I hope that we continue to see that report and can see some improvements, significant improvements. And the online performance management system is supposed to be helping. Remember, we just recently implemented this, and so we're still in the first year of it, and so there's still a learning curve, but again, it's designed to make it an easier process, and so hopefully that will help facilitate a quicker turnaround time. Do you mean to remind the supervisors this is due? Well, we're starting with the employees, where they do a self-evaluation 45 days from their due date and giving them an email reminder, and then there's some follow-up emails if they don't respond within a certain timeframe. Are you saying that part of the responsibility is the employee that's being reviewed? The employee starts it with a self-evaluation, then the supervisor adds to it. So we're trying to bring the employees more involved in their own development, too. Okay, thank you. And that was a recommendation from one of our lead groups. All right. As far as cost containment strategies, you can see the different strategies that we have here. Most of what we look at-- I mean, we're constantly looking for ways to improve our processes and procedures to save money and/or time, either HR's time, our supervisors' employees' or both. Again, a lot of what you see on here does save time. I've already mentioned the online performance management and learning management system. So just an example for--I have a staff member that does a lot of the administrative stuff for training, and the learning management system right now, even in its infancy stages, is saving her about four weeks. So, again, a considerable time saving. Online forms--I mentioned we have a lot of forms. As we move through and get all these up on LaserFish forms, it's going to save a considerable amount of time and cost printing. So, again, you can see some other savings we have here with RFP process and some program-specific cost containment strategies. Process improvements--again, some of you are going to see a common theme here, the online performance management and learning management system. We also have some procedures that we're trying to improve, like our offboarding. This is when people leave the organization trying to do checklists and creating an HR terms email to improve the communication and quicker turnaround time of us getting that information. Other forms that we have, job requisitions--probably a big thing that we're looking at helping internally is, again, the HR SharePoint site. I mentioned that as far as a goal. It is in progress, again, in the empathy stages, but this will be another big time saver. And, again, you can see some other examples on the screen. We have some future process improvement needs. Again, the online forms is going to help us with a lot of these areas, so I won't go into any details about it, but we're talking internally and meeting with some of our stakeholders to see about ways to improve these processes. So our budget for '17-'18, a little over $1.7 million. 67% of that is personal services. The next largest part is almost 22%. That's operations, but that's where we have all the licenses for our systems. The increase that you see is largely driven by the average merit increase that's in the personal services and the benefit impact from that increase. And that is all I have for human resources. Questions? Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Good afternoon. Scott Payne, risk manager. I appreciate your time today. I know it's been a long day, so I'll try and rock it through this. As Carlos said, I do have a couple of presentations for you . The first is going to be the risk retention fund, and the second will be the health insurance fund. Now, the health insurance fund, I mean, we're going to have a lot more discussions with counsel as we go through the budget. We've already had some discussions with the council ad hoc committee, so I'm not going into a lot of details about that, just really looking at a big, you know, high-level overview of the health insurance fund. So starting with the risk retention fund, I already had this slide up there. We have eight people last year, and then we've added a new person for this year, a dedicated claims coordinator to help with that process. So we're calling it nine employees. This is our org chart. This section over here is the folks that directly report to me, and then we have two folks in the HR that are funded out of our area but report to other individuals. So we have three employees that are dedicated to the benefits process. We have one employee dedicated to managing leave, that's workers comp, FMLA, long-term/short-term disability, and then two folks focusing on the safety and claims part of the organization. So most of our other presentations, you kind of have a general understanding of what they do, whether it's HR, library, IT, but I wanted to just give a couple of minutes about what the risk retention fund is all about, because maybe not everybody is familiar with it. So essentially it's funded through free sources, that's allocations from the various departments, that's damage claim reimbursements, so if we have a vehicle accident and we're not the responsible party and we have damage, we cover that damage from the insurance company that comes back into our fund, and then the little interest income that we get. The main source is the allocation piece, and that has three separate components, the commercial insurance, the self-insurance and operation, and then the workers compensation. So commercial insurance is really what it says, it's the various insurances that we purchase for the city, we allocate those back to the departments on various different ways, some of it's on a per vehicle, per employee , or on a square footage basis to be, what the insurance is. Some of the ones that are specific to a department, like our airport liability or our emerging management services liability are charged back directly to that department. The self-insurance operation are those items that we're self-funding, like our liability claims litigation, our damage to city vehicles, and then the overall risk management operation budget is part of that process as well. Our losses are typically allocated back on a three-year average loss history, so we're looking at trends within departments as far as the charge back to them, and then other things are just allocated on an FTE basis, and then finally the workers' comp piece of it is also on a three-year loss history basis. We'll go into detail with a lot of our accomplishments for '16-'17. The main one is that we've been working with the police department to do some active assailant, actor shooter training for our departments. Again, that was in the news yesterday with another shooting in Orlando, so very timely training for our employees, and then doing a lot of work with DME on their dent and injury center with their contracts and insurance requirements and making sure that we're protecting the city as best we can in that regard. As far as our goals for '17-'18, another piece of that is regarding the dent and injury center and making sure that we have adequate property insurance protection for that. To give you guys an example, we basically have property insurance on about $390 million worth of property and contents. The dent and injury center is going to be about $220 million, so that one piece of property is going to represent about 26% of our total property budget, so we need to make sure we've got that thing adequately protected. Does the payment for that come out of the general fund? The risk retention fund will make the payment, and then we will allocate that back to DME. And we're not a general fund department, we're an internal fund department. I just wanted to clarify, I know that Chuck is working on a slide, it's a good question that you asked, Councilmember Briggs, and we're working on a slide to try to make it visually a little easier for folks to understand how that works. Tax services, HR, risk, those types of departments are basically all, they're basically costed right back out to the departments for which they provide the service. So the idea at the end of the day is that they're zeroed out every year. So there's simply a cost center for those areas. And we'll try to visually describe it. It's really difficult for someone in the public to wrap their mind around governmental accounting, but I think that hopefully this visual will be showing here shortly, we'll clear that up for you. As far as performance measures, I don't believe there's anything that we're currently tracking that gets reported up to you guys in your quarterly dashboard. We're really counting a lot of things, number of vehicle accidents, number of injuries, number of liability claims, how much things are costing, but we're trying to get into more meaningful measurements that have more value. So looking at workers' compensation cost per $100 with a payroll, focusing more on workers' cop injuries with lost time versus medical only, and then at fault vehicle accidents versus all vehicle accidents. Cost containment strategies, one of the main ones we feel like is that we have an overall conservative approach to our claims handling. We try to defend vigorously those, the ones that we don't owe and compromise and sell the ones that we do and take care of the customer when we have caused them damage and it is our fault. We've also, as you've heard throughout a lot of these presentations today, we're trying to use more technology. We've streamlined our contract review process by providing more online approval of bonds and insurance, and we're also fully implementing our risk management information system to help with online accident reporting and then better data gathering to help with trend analysis and those types of things. As far as process improvements, I mentioned the electronic insurance and bond approval and our remit system. We want to try and continue to move our claims process to a more paperless process. I'm an old school adjuster. Tom is an old school adjuster. We have a millennial now that we just hired, and so he's kicking and screaming into the paperless world, which will be better for our processes. And then District Committee did a better job of safety perceptions and those types of things with our employees. Finally, my budget is there. It's about $3.5 million. About 72% of that are the things that we're allocating back to the department, so that's the various insurances that we purchase. That's our workers' comp claims, our liability claims, our litigation expenses, and our vehicle damage. So with that, I will answer your questions. Yes, sir. On the workers' comp side of things, specifically firemen and police, is that a third-party company we use to evaluate the individual, or is that person, as far as how much time they need off in the treatment to get them back to where they're back on the job, is that a third-party person, or is that internal? We self-fund the expenses regarding that, but we hire another company, a third-party administrator, to manage the workers' comp process for it. So we have another company's adjuster interviews the employees, takes the statements, evaluates the medical bills, all those things. But then, since we are self-funded, it is our money, and then we're very much involved in that process as well. Okay. And what is that employee -- kind of how is that process if they -- because I've heard from those departments, some of those departments, that there's a disagreement with that time, the time needed to recover. So is that -- I'm trying to understand how that falls as far as that on the city to kind of say, okay, we'll cover those discrepancies, or is that on the -- I guess if the third party gets it wrong, who fixes that? Well, first off, workers' compensation in Texas is governed by the Workers' Compensation Act. So there are certainly rules and regulations that we have to follow, both us and the employee, as far as reporting things, and if there's a disagreement, the process that goes through. So we're working hand-in-hand with the adjuster. We're relying a lot on what the doctor is going to tell us. They're going to evaluate the employee, and they're going to tell us what they can commit to work, full duty, light duty, or they can't work at all. So we really have a very aggressive light duty program where we really work with the employees and the supervisors to try and get that employee back to work, because it benefits the city by having them back at work. It benefits the employee having them back at work, but always being cognizant of those restrictions and making sure that we're being true to those. So if we ever get into a disagreement about that, hopefully we're going to have some dialogue and be able to resolve it, but if not, then we unveil ourselves of whatever hearing process is through the workers' compensation process. So we're not going to have a benefit review conference or a contested case hearing and opt the chain of command. Now, we have very few of those. I mean, we typically are able to resolve our issues and move forward with trying to get the employee back to work. Okay. And how long is that contract with that third party? We go up for an RFP. I think it was a five-year contract. It actually is going out for a bid this year. Okay. If I may. Sure. And then looking forward budget-wise, I don't know if anyone does this, but it always pains me that we'll have a first responder injured on duty and there's only a certain amount that insurance covers, right? I mean, there's a cap where the insurance is exhausted or they are covered in perpetuity. When it comes to medical expenses under workers' compensation, there's lifetime medical. So if they continue to have problems with this injury 20 years from now and they can relate it back to that original injury, then the city will be continuing to pay for those medical expenses. Now, we're going to compensate them for the time that they're off of work in accordance with the law. There's also civil service statutes that say we have to pay them their full salary for up to a year commiserate with the nature of the injury. They can sort of petition for more than that, but there are lots of things that go into that process. So there's no set time other than what the law tells us that we have to do. And that's what we -- there's no city policies other than our wage continuation program that we do for non-civil service employees. There is a cap on that. Okay. And if I wanted to read more on that, where's a good resource to kind of read those -- the laws, the statutes that govern that process? Right. The Texas Department of Insurance governs workers' comp in the city of Texas, and then it's the Division of Workers' Comp, or the DWIC. And I can certainly send you some links if you'd like me to, to those places. I hope you got a lot of time to read it because there's a lot of stuff about the law. That's the beautiful thing about the iPhone and iPad. You just swipe down with two fingers and it reads to you. But yes, if you would, I'd appreciate that. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Thank you. Are there any other questions? All right. So now we'll move on to the Health Insurance Fund. So the Risk Criticism Fund is typically more your traditional risk management operations. The Health Insurance Fund are going to be all of our non-retirement-based benefits for the employees. And like I said before, we'll have many more discussions, I'm sure, with counsel about the health benefits before we actually get to the approval of the budget. So this is just kind of a high-level overview. It was established in fiscal year '07-'08 when we moved to a self-funded plan. Basically, the revenue comes in in form of employee contributions or premiums for the different insurance policies they choose, and then from city -- excuse me -- city contributions. So essentially, the things that come out of the Health Insurance Fund are those medical-related expenses, so medical claims, pharmacy claims, our administrative costs to manage the plan that we pay our third-party administrator for that, our stop-loss insurance, which is essentially excess insurance to protect us from catastrophic claims, dental vision, short and long-term disability, our life and supplemental life benefits, and then our employee health center costs are built in that as well. A few accomplishments from '16-'17 just to highlight. One of the big ones is we collaborated with the fire department to conduct all their lab work for their mandatory physicals at our health clinic that saved them some money and also helped facilitate our firefighters qualifying for a healthy incentive program without having to have blood drawn twice, which I think was a great thing. As you guys know, we just finished up the RFP for the employee health clinic management company, and then we have a bunch of RFPs that we're going to be doing the rest of this year for our health TPA employee assistance program, our flexible spending account, and on and on and on. Some of our goals for '17-'18 is to really evaluate our healthy incentive program. That's our incentive program to drive employees into our wellness program, to utilize it, to incentivize them to live a more healthy lifestyle. I feel like it's gotten a little busy and it needs to kind of be retooled or revamped to get back to what the core things are trying to promote with that program. And also part of that would be just to develop a better branding and marketing program for our overall benefits. So that they pay attention when they're first in process or maybe during open enrollment, but they really don't think about it until they need it. And so just figuring out better ways to get information to our employees so that they have it when they need it and be more engaged in that process. And then we have a litany of RFPs we'll have to conduct in '17-'18 as well. This is another area where I don't think that anything that we're tracking right now rolls up to you guys and your quarterly dashboard. These are things that we are tracking internally. Again, it's counting numbers. It's our HRAs, it's our clinicalization rate, medical claims paid, our fund balances. One of the ones we're able to track from our clinic though is the percentage of our patients that are either maintaining or lowering risk factors. So if they're overweight, have high blood cholesterol, cholesterol, we're able to check year after year how many people are making improvements or at least not getting any worse. And so I think that's a valuable indicator of what's going on in our clinic. As far as cost containment strategies, I already mentioned the firefighter physicals. That saved about $31,000 for the fire department by doing those through our clinic. We moved to a non-mandatory open enrollment process this year. We put more things online for our employees. That saved a lot as far as printing costs for the materials and also not having employees missing time for work to be at those open enrollment meetings. They could do it on their own time. I think I've covered all these already. Again, we're partnering with Carla on the HR page to make sure that we're putting valuable information on the SharePoint page for employees being more engaging and a better customer experience because I know our employees struggle with trying to actually find the information they want on the page as it is right now. And then finally, the budget numbers, about $29 million next year. The vast majority of that, $26 million, is the health plan itself, both the claims cost and the stop loss and the management fees that go along with that as well. So that was quick and fast, I know, but I will definitely stand for any questions. Any questions? I do have one question. Is there a program in place where employees can get a discount on their health insurance if they complete certain health prevention measures? Right, that is our healthy incentive program that I mentioned before. So if they get their health risk assessment done at the clinic and go back for the follow-up, if they complete certain activities, they earn points toward that. And if they qualify, they get about a $40 per month reduction on their premium. So it is about $480 a year savings if they qualify for the healthy incentive program. And do you find that there is good enrollment in that? There had been, and then I think we have just gotten to the point where the program has gotten to be too busy. And so it is just not of value. And that is why we want to revamp it and retool it so that it is more valuable to our employees to get more people engaged in it. Is there some goal, like target goal, for a number of people that should be, that you would like to see using that program? I mean, I do not understand why, you know, at least 70 to 80 percent should not be utilizing it. I mean, if we make it, there is going to be some people who are never going to engage in that. I understand that. Sure. But I think if you can save a significant amount of money and still accomplish what we are trying to do is driving healthy behavior without being too onerous, I think we can get there. Okay. Councilwoman Briggs? On that point, does it save the city money the more people that sign up, the more discounts they get with their individual plans? This is again being on the city's health plan. We incentivize them through the Healthy Incentive Program, so it is actually saving the employees money, we hope, because they are modeling healthier behaviors, that overall we are saving money on our health plan's costs. I got you. Thanks. Councilman Gregory? Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. There has been an ad hoc committee of the council to discuss benefits, and we broadened y'all's scope of work. I assume that sometime early in these discussions of budget you are going to come back to us with some recommendations. Yes, the committee did meet a couple of times. There were some, and staff was directed to meet with employee committee regarding potential changes to vacations, sick leave accrual rates, as well as health insurance plan design changes that could be implemented. So the HR staffs, primarily Scott and Carla, have been meeting with our employee insurance committee to try to gain that feedback, so we've got a good cross-section of the organization. We owe our council committee a report back on the feedback, and they'd also tasked us with potentially putting together a couple of options for them to consider. So operationally, after our new council person is elected, we need to have that committee probably reinstitute for at least one more meeting to make a formal recommendation back to the group. So we're using the employee insurance committee to review and give some feedback on the benefits recommendations. Yes, and there's I believe about 30 employees, Scott, is that right? Yeah. Okay, thanks. And the idea, I guess, to further clarify that thought was I've actually spoken with several of them, and the idea is that they would speak with their coworkers, supervisors, that sort of thing, aggregate the comments so we can share that with the council. And we requested that feedback back to us by this Friday, so we should have that at the end of this week to start compiling and putting together to get to the ad hoc committee. And as chair of that committee, it was important to reach out to our employees and get their feedback so that it wasn't just a small committee coming back to council. It was a small committee listening to a very large committee of employees to come forward with kind of a group consensus on what may work, what may not work, and then let the future council take the information and do what they want with it. So appreciate that. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. That's all I have. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. That's great. I'm Lynn Carter. I'm the Patrol Bureau commander over at the police department, and I'm here today seeking direction on a proposed ordinance to prohibit engine braking or jake braking. It's more commonly known as jake braking. Before we get started, we've all heard jake braking. I'd never heard the term myself before this, but we've all heard it. I'm going to just play a really quick video so you know what I'm talking about. Let's see. You guys know how to get the volume up on that? Oh, really? That's the sound. Let's see if I can get the volume up here. I can hear you. Do it one more time. I can get loud. The external speaker. I don't think the speaker's -- Well, I think we've all heard it. It's the -- Yeah. Okay. That is preserved for eternity on YouTube. Okay. So it's -- like I said, we've all heard it. It sounds like a loud commercial lawnmower is the sound that the trucks make. And it's made when they hit the jake brake switch. It's a switch meant to supplement braking. It's almost the equivalent of in your car if you were to be driving and then downshift into a lower gear that -- when it does that, it makes a really loud sound. I don't recall -- it's mostly for emergency situations, downhills or you have to make a sudden stop. So I talked to a couple of truckers in anticipation of this, and none of them could really say why you would need to do it in the city unless it's an emergency. However, I don't recall any citizen complaints for this in several years. I know that we had one citizen about 2010 along 380 near Malone who would complain about it every now and again, but I think the construction along there probably solved that problem more than anything. It's mostly a problem on highways and rural roads. The residents that live along there probably hear that quite a bit. It could become a problem in the future as we expand out in Tenton. The ordinance prohibits shake braking unless it's an emergency. One of the problems with enforcing this ordinance is that it would have to be on-site enforcement, and many of the complaints that you get about something like this would be someone calling to say, hey, there's a truck that came by and it's really loud and they may give you a license plate or something like that. And you're likely to get the address of the owner of the truck or the company, but not the actual driver who did the shake braking. We would also have to have about 55 to 60 warning signs on the truck routes and highways to let everyone know that we did have an ordinance in the city. So that would be a cost of approximately $10,000. So I'm basically here for your direction on that. Would I answer any questions? >> Mayor Pro Tem? >> I brought up -- I asked for this to come up because I live near I-35 and it's really loud. So I'm the complaining party. So I would like to see this. I realize that there's real difficulties with enforcement, but I think the signs could have deterrent value. And as we do have more traffic on I-35, we're going to have an expanded I-35 on both up to 380 and then again from 380 north. I'd really like to see us kind of try to create some type of noise buffer for the neighborhoods there. So I also want to propose a Deputy Chief Lynn Carter Award for shortest presentation. >> That looks pretty short. >> Maybe we can make that like an annual thing. >> Absolutely. >> Okay. Any other questions, comments, direction? Yes, Councilmember Brie? >> I'm okay. >> Yeah. I don't have an issue with this. Understanding that enforcement is difficult, but I think your point is well taken that maybe the signs will act as a deterrent. And then if for some reason -- because we do have enforceability on the highways within the city limits. >> That's right. >> The PD does. >> Councilmember? >> What are you saying you're okay? I'm okay with nothing. >> Yeah. We're trying to give direction. Do we draft an ordinance for council consideration? And I'm okay with moving forward with an ordinance. I think that's what Mayor Pro Tem said. It sounds like you're saying you're okay with not moving forward with it. >> Correct. I would be against -- yeah, no, we have -- I'd rather take that $10,000 and apply it to the train that's in the center of our town and focus more on that and enforceability of it. I mean, because then you're looking at -- it was an emergency. And then we're forced to say no, it wasn't. And how do we prove that? I mean, it's -- again, we go down the road where it's unenforceable. >> Sure. >> And so do I want to spend $10,000 or something that is unenforceable that I want the -- I don't want them to hesitate, just like the train. Even when we get the quiet zones, if it's an emergency, they can use the horn. And so I think it's $10,000 wasted. >> Okay. All right. Yes, Councilmember Weiss. >> I agree with that statement that I feel as though if you're not going to be able to enforce an ordinance, there's no sense in putting on the books. If it's simply to see if the signage is going to stop the people from doing it, then it doesn't make sense to spend that kind of money and even just to have the ordinance there, period. >> Councilmember Weiss. >> I agree with Councilman Hudspeth and we've already heard from our police department that they can enforce this on highways that come through our city. And so that's where the problems seem to be on the highways and not in a residential neighborhood or -- so I'm in favor of not doing a thing. So I also think you have your hands full. And so -- >> You can't enforce it on the highway without the ordinance. It's not against state law or the transportation code to use a jake break. So we would have to have the ordinance to enforce it on the highway. >> And I still want to pass. I just still want to pass. Thank you. I don't think it's a problem. You just said how many complaints? It's been -- seven years since it was a citizen complaint. >> Yes. >> And I'm the first councilman in pro tempi Gary. >> So without a documented citizen list that it's an issue, I just don't want to go there. Thank you. >> Anybody else? I mean, I -- go ahead. I'm sorry. Yes. >> I'm rather agnostic about it at this point. I'm curious how often we have police officers doing anything on I-35. >> Our traffic unit does quite a bit of work on I-35 speed enforcement packs and things like that. The average patrol officer doesn't do a lot of enforcement on 35. They take calls within the city usually. >> So you're generally called out if there's an accident. >> That's when patrol -- a patrol officer -- the traffic officers, once they don't have lights on the top of their cars, they actually work speed programs and speeding on 35. >> And I suspect that they position themselves over the hills so they can't be seen. That's -- that's -- that's my experience. >> So they would be on the hills where -- if a truck's going down the hill, they might be likely to use that way of stopping or slowing down. >> That's right. >> Have you talked to those people? Have they reported hearing that as an issue? >> No, I haven't heard this issue. This issue hasn't come up within the department. >> Could you ask the folks that have worked 35 if they hear that, that would be interesting because it might be enforceable. If they're out there and if they're, you know, checking on tickets and speeding, they might be hearing that also. So I'd be kind of curious to know that before I make a final decision. What the heck is going on? >> What are you doing? >> I'm sorry. >> Okay. >> Is that annoying you? >> All of a sudden I hear some kind of video playing. I'm like, am I losing my mind or something? Yes. >> We can't go very fast on 35 in Denton, so I would doubt seriously that it's an issue. >> Since it seems to be closed right now, we might want to wait and delay this discussion until after our new council is completely seated. >> I'm okay with that if you just want to schedule it for the new council if we can have an up or down. I don't know if we even have the direction to have the ordinance in front of the council. I'd like to have an up or down in front of the full council in our 630 session. Just wanted to mention I did my homework on the Jake break issue beforehand. And so the signs, it's believed that the signs have deterrent effect. It's not just a matter of, you know, you're spending $10,000 for nothing. The other thing I want to point out was there's quite bit more than $10,000 allocated for the trains. It's in the bond package and it's scheduled to start in 2018. So that money is in the works and it's going to be happening. I don't really see how spending $10,000 would stop that money from happening and being applied because it's been allocated from the bond already. So we're not taking from the trains. Just wanted to clarify that. I need to move to y'all's neighborhood because it is quiet over there. But a lot of people live within a half mile of the highways and more people will live within a half mile of the highways because the highways are expanding and they're having more traffic. The Jake break is unrelated to the speed of the traffic. Completely unrelated because people will ride the Jake break when it's full speed or at 25 or anything. And I think, you know, you probably ask our police officers about that. It just -- it'll go at any speed. Yes, it does. So this may be unrelated, but I do know that we are getting lots of complaints about the vehicles going on the energy center on Moss Branch Road. I don't know, is it possible that they are doing this and we just don't know? Or is it different? No, those complaints that we received, it's probably been from one homeowner out there, has been related to speeding. So we're actively working on that. Okay, thanks. So, yes, Councilmember Hesbitt. So, no, directly I think it does line up with the train because one, we have a bond package for a lot that's not done and there's going to be overages and there's going to be other costs. And so that's how I see it lining up. And then two, again, I don't know how loud it is. I know the sound. I don't know how loud it is, but it can't be louder than the train. It just can't. I mean, and that train is two in the morning, it's one in the afternoon, and it's just -- they're just going nuts on that thing. And so I -- it can't be -- so I can't -- if I say even Stephen, then we don't have the signs for the train, so I just don't see -- I see them as the same and I don't -- and I have citizens that complain about the train. That's the biggest component for me. The lack of -- if it's impacting people, they -- I've met precious few people in Denton that are shy. I mean, they'll tell someone. So for the police not to hear about it, for other Councilmembers not to hear about it, I mean, I'm probably opening the door for a lot now, but up to this conversation, it has not happened. And so I think we're just -- we may be on the front end of something. Maybe it's coming. But again, once we get the train quieted, then I'm interested in quieting other noise, but I'm singularly focused right now. So it sounds like there's two questions. One is, do we give direction to draft an ordinance? And your question is, do we have enough -- my brain just went blank. Interest. Interest, yeah, to move forward, you know, direction. Do we have enough consensus to move direction? And then we -- or we also could say, ah, draft it if you want up and down vote at 630, we can vote. I mean, we're not -- when we give direction, that doesn't necessarily mean that we are -- that you are tied to that vote, that you are tied to whatever direction you gave. Because things happen, things change. So, yes, Councilmember Gregory. In line with that comment, let's just move forward. The new council will be in place by the time that there's a vote. There can be more discussion at that time. People can vote yes or they can vote no. Okay. All right. I'm okay with that. I mean, because everybody gets a chance to vote on it. Sure. All right. Is that your -- you got your direction? I have the direction. You bet. Okay. That concludes our open work session. We will now convene in closed session at 430 -- or 427 to consider -- we will convene in closed session pursuant to Texas Government Code Section 551.074 and Texas Government Code Section 551.072, which is consultation with attorneys -- I'm sorry, real property, Texas Government Code Section 551.071, which is consultation with attorneys and deliberate regarding personnel matters under Texas Government Code Section 551.074. Good evening. I wanted to welcome you to this meeting of the Denton City Council on June the 6th, 2017. We do have a quorum. I will now open the meeting. If you would join with me for our first agenda item, a Pledge of Allegiance to the U.S. and the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I pledge allegiance to the United States of Texas for one state under God, one indivisible. Our next agenda items will be proclamations and presentations. Our first proclamation is Denton LGBTQ Pride Month. Who will be receiving that proclamation? Just give us your name if you wouldn't mind. I am Edra Bogle and I am the president of the Stonewall Democrats of Denton County. All right, thank you. This is a proclamation by the mayor of the city of Denton. Whereas we recognize the June anniversary of the Stonewall uprising in New York as the beginning of the modern lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer LGBTQ equality movement. And whereas we recognize the tireless efforts of LGBTQ and Alliance groups who have pursued equality for all citizens in Texas and abroad. And whereas we recognize that on June 27, 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Oberfeld et al. versus Hodges, director of the Ohio Department of Health, ruled that the Constitution grants same-sex couples the same right to marry that heterosexual couple has. And whereas we recognize former President Barack Obama's declaration on June 26, 2016, of the 7.7 acres surrounding the Stonewall Inn as a national monument. This is the first National Park Service unit dedicated to the gay rights movement and includes the Tavern, Christopher Park and several other streets where protests were held in 1969. Therefore, I, Chris Wasserman, of the City of Denton, Texas, do hereby declare and proclaim the month of June 2017 is Denton LGBTQ Pride Month in the City of Denton and ask for all citizens to celebrate the work of the LGBTQ in the promoting diversity and tolerance in our community and throughout our country. Thank you. [Applause] And I thank you very much and all the people here very much and all the people of Denton very much. You have been -- this is the second time it's been the whole month that was so proclaimed. It was then before that several -- for several years a week and then it was just a day. And you probably don't understand how much difference it makes to young people who feel that there is something just a little wrong with them. I could give you examples of people whose lives have been ruined by the fear that they have felt. So we really appreciate it so much. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. You bet. [Applause] Anyone here for Men's Health Month? I'll read it. I'm good for men's health. [Laughter] Whereas -- this is a proclamation by the mayor of the city of Denton. Whereas despite advances in medical technology and research, men continue to live an average of five years less than women with Native American and African American men having the lowest life expectancy. And whereas educating the public and health care providers about the importance of a healthy lifestyle and early detection of male health problems will result in reducing rates of mortality from disease. And whereas men who are educated about the value that preventative health can play in prolonging their lifespan and their role as a productive family member will be more likely to participate in health screenings. And whereas the Men's Health Network worked with Congress to develop a national Men's Health Week awareness period as a special campaign to help educate men, boys, and their families about the importance of positive health attitudes and preventative health practices. And whereas the Men's Health Month website has been established as menshealthmonth.org and features resources, proclamations, and information about awareness events and activities including Wear Blue for Men's Health. And whereas Denton Men's Health Month will focus on a broad range of men's health issues including heart disease, diabetes, mental health, prostate, testicular, and colon cancer. And whereas the citizens of this city are encouraged to increase awareness of the importance of a healthy lifestyle, regular exercise, excuse me, and medical checkups. Now therefore I, Chris Watts, Mayor of the City of Denton, Texas, do hereby declare and proclaim June 2017 as Men's Health Month in the City of Denton and encourage all citizens to pursue preventative health practices and early detections. So I will accept this on behalf of all the men of the City of Denton. [applause] Our next proclamation will be, well, spring 2017 graduating class of Denton Forester. Come on down. I'm used to a certain format and it was a little different format so that's okay. It's all right. I'm flexible. All right. Oh wow, great class. Come on. So I want each one of you to introduce yourself and who's going to be the spokesperson for this group. Okay. So once they introduce, we'll want you to introduce yourself and just tell us a little bit about the forestry program. I'm Lauren Barker. I'm the program manager of Keep Denton Beautiful and we have been the host of the Denton Citizen Forester class for the last couple of years as part of the Denton Tree Initiative Campaign. This is our major education component, one of the big education pieces of the initiative and this year we had 20 citizens who completed the class and are graduating from that class as the cohort of 2017. So we're really proud of them and all the hours that they've put in and we have both class members and their spouses and loved ones here tonight to be recognized and commended for their volunteerism and commitment to our community and its trees. Yeah. Jerry Beder, new citizen forester. Shelby Laboe, new citizen forester. Carol Brantley, new citizen forester. Terry Brantley, husband supporter. Shirley Manfredi, new citizen forester. William Manfredi, support group. Reagan Branstetter, new citizen forester. Mary Branstetter, a supporter. Celia Splotter, staff member at KDB. Well thank you all so much. I know one time I was walking by the work session room when you all were holding classes in there and what great information that you're learning about just how to be better stewards of our community here. So it's my pleasure and honor to read this proclamation, whereas the Denton Forester Training is a volunteer training program offered through a partnership between the Cross Timbers Urban Forestry Council, Keep Denton Beautiful, and the City of Denton. And whereas the Cross Timbers Training Program was first introduced in Fort Worth, Texas in 2006, whereas the program is now offered in Denton with funding from the city's Tree Mitigation Fund as part of the Denton Tree Initiative, an ambitious campaign to engage Denton residents, residents, excuse me, businesses, and neighborhoods in tree planting and care. And whereas the Citizen Forester graduates have completed 36 training hours in advanced tree biology, planting and care through hands-on field activities, classroom instruction delivered by top urban forestry professionals, and whereas Citizen Foresters are thoroughly trained to assist with a variety of tree-related activities, including educational workshops, tree plantings, and tree giveaway programs, making them a true asset for our community. Now therefore, I, Chris Watts, Mayor of the City of Denton, Texas, do hereby recognize the spring 2017 graduating class of the Denton Citizen Forester trainees and applaud them, applaud their commitment to Denton's urban forest and all the benefit it brings to our community. Thank you all so much for volunteering your time. [applause] Thank you all so much, and thank you for directing that program. Great group. Thank you so much, Mayor. Thank you. [no audio] Councilmember Gregory? May I have a permission to speak on personal privilege regarding this forester? Sure. I run across poems from time to time. I ran across a poem this week written by Lucy Larkin. She was born March 5th, 1824, died 1893. The title of the poem is "Plant a Tree." I'm just going to read the first line of several stanzas. "He who plants a tree, plants a hope. He who plants a tree, plants a joy. He who plants a tree, he plants peace. He who plants a tree, he plants youth. And he who plants a tree, he plants love." Granted, it's a little biased in terms of the pronouns, but give her a break. She died over 100 years ago, but I think it's a great thought and a great thought for our new foresters. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Gregory. We'll move on to our next item on the agenda, which is presentations from members of the public. The first item is review of procedures for addressing the City Council. 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. Okay, our first speaker is B.C. Groves regarding the police departments. Refusal to take complaint? B.C. Groves? Come down and state your name and address, and your time will begin. My name is B.C. Groves, and I live at 2018 Bowling Green Street here in Denton. I've been here about six and a half years. The first three years when we first came here, my husband was in the later stages of Parkinson's and dementia, and oftentimes he got to the phone and dialed 911, and I would have police men at my door and didn't know why. We can't thank the police department enough for getting us through those early stages. At the present time, he's been two years in a nursing home, and very recently came home, first night film goes on. At any rate, we appreciate also the fire department. More recently, I have been the target of a hacker. And he has hacked my phone, he's hacked everything on the internet, and I have been to the police department five times. The first time I was told there was no law that they could use, I just handed the secretary the law in Texas. The second thing he went on was to hack a course I'm taking on the internet, $686, and he locked me out for two months. Finally, Frontier and Gmail, who he completely deleted, were able to fix it, so I call them and say, "Let me in," and they let me in. But this is a problem because the police department refused to take a complaint. The last one I talked to was a police officer, I told him my story, and I said, "Are you going to take a complaint?" And he said, "No, I don't believe you." He is the same one I had talked to before that, and Officer York also talked to me about changing phones, which I did, $400. And before that, the first two contacts at the police department were with a crabby officer, and they were able to get me out of the car with a crabby officer, I don't know his name. At any rate, I'm asking you to look into our police department. We have a problem that they don't respond to the citizens. And once again, I want to tell you, I really appreciate what they've done in the past, but there are some problems now. Thank you. - Thank you. The next speaker will be Robert Donnelly regarding trust and confidence in the city. [Page turning] You name an address and your time will begin. - Thank you, sir. - Yes, sir. My name is Robert Donnelly. I live at 3900 Quail Creek Road , Denton, Texas, and I'm here to finish the presentation of May 23rd. From the information I sent to all of you on Friday, the three emails with September dates show my efforts to try to correct a mobility plan and the city's response that I got confirmed by the council that shows a culture and place at the city that they don't seem to listen to the citizen, they listen to staff. Unsatisfied with that response, when I ran into the acting city manager at the time, I asked him if he would look into it, and he said he would. The December 8th, 2016 email that you have shows that I was told the problem was corrected and the new mobility plan was attached to that email, which I got. And I thought everything was fine. It was not until I happened to find the mobility plan on the city website and looked at it sometime a month or so ago that I found out this was a lie. It had not been changed. The city had not changed the mobility plan. They just sent me a changed copy to either satisfy my complaints or to silence me to stop bothering people. To this day, an hour before I came, the site that the city has of the mobility plan still has the road running directly through my property, and that continues to create the issue that I stated in those September emails. I'm asking for an explanation. What happened? I got a copy, and if you all could not tell, it's a very small change, and I don't even know if you knew where to look. That's why I brought this, if I can get the document camera . Except I think I'd probably better finish before, so I don 't run out of time. The culture in Denton allows this to happen, just cannot or at least should not exist between a city and their citizens. I know there have been some major changes recently, and they look good. It looks like things are changing for the better, but only time will tell. I will continue to bring you issues, because there are other things, to show this culture that the city has of we do it the way we want to do it, or that the ends justify the means, and just do it, and we 'll worry about it later, that exist in the city. To me, the September emails show this perfectly. An issue was raised, staff was asked about it, and told the citizen what they were going to do, not how they could fix it, but what they were going to do. This was backed up by council, and the citizen is dismissed . This can't continue. You've got to work with the citizens. If you all have any questions as to what change we're talking about, I can point it out if they can zoom in as much as possible on the thing. But if you all know where the change is, as I say to this day, erroneous information is one thing, but to maintain errone ous information, and then to send me a copy of the mobility plan that's been changed when it wasn't, I don't know what's going on, to be honest. I'm asking for an explanation, and to do what you all can. I know you're making strides at it, but it's got to change. This can't continue. This was basically a simple mobility plan change, more or less the straw that broke the camel's back. Because you all haven't seen me for a while, but you're going to start seeing me again. So if you have any questions, I'll be happy to try to answer them. Any questions, Mr. Donnell, at this point? Seeing none. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. We're moving into our Agenda 3C, which is presentation for members of the public, which is what we call an open mic, and it's limited to two speakers. I've got a card for Kim McKibbin. If you'll come down and state your name and address, your time will begin. Hi. I'm Kim McKibbin. I own the building and the business at 1306 West Hickory Street here in Denton in the Fry Street Overlay District. Last month about this time, I came and told you about a meeting that I had been to the day before of the Traffic Commission. It was kind of a surprise for us, and a lot of us have not been really pleased with the way we've been treated through this. So let me just catch you up a little bit. The last time I came back, I just found out that their intention was to remove 29 parking spaces from the south side of West Hickory Street. And just for a little information, there's 34 businesses in that basic Fry Street District. Right now there are 115 total public parking spaces. Okay. Their intent is to remove 29 of those spaces, which will take us from having 3.3 public spaces for business down to 2.5 public spaces for business. Now, this includes the people that work for us that have to park down there somewhere. So just to hang on to that for a minute, you can understand why we kind of sounded the alarm last month. I came and asked when it came before you to take serious consideration in what they were asking for. So finally, we started to pull this thing apart a little bit because the parking meters were there, and the city of Denton had half the parking meters, and North Texas had half the parking meters, and they wanted to install these new meters and run it from being 50 cents an hour to $3 an hour. Well, we've kind of been pulling at that and working with that. The city has had a couple of meetings with some people which were poorly advertised, very hurried. It was an hour and a half for like six or seven different things to happen during that period. So there was a lot of information. So some of us in the community decided, okay, we don't like any of these options. We can actually get together and look at some other options that might be more helpful. So some of the people in the business district had meetings . Some of the bicycle people had meetings, and we all got together and we sat down and we drew out possible solutions . Not one, not two. We were offered two by the city, by the way, at that first meeting, neither one of which was acceptable to very many people. So we kind of reached out to the city, the traffic commissioners, and we were told that they would not meet with us, that that's not the way they do business in Denton. We were also told that certain people being in the room was not appropriate. There was a lot of things that kind of irritated us more than just a little bit. So I wasn't able to be in the meeting yesterday when the city's plan, without input from all the citizens that had been working on it, was voted on and it's on its way to you guys. So I went today to get the minutes from that meeting and found out that the meeting's not recorded. And there's no video. And there were no attachments to the announcement in the website. So I have no information. I know there were six proposals brought forth. I have no way of seeing any of them. I've called the city today, the parking people. They don't know when those meetings are going to be available. Please be very careful that you are not -- I know you're legal, but shining a bright light on things is not a bad thing to do sometimes. And maybe in your new budget you can find a spot for someone to at least tape all the commissioners' meetings so we can get some of the information that we might need. So there's a lot of people out there that want to have some input into things, but the city's got to let us. We can't be told no. We can't do it that way over and over again just because they want to say, no, that's not the plan we came up with. At least let the people be heard. Thank you. We have two cards left. I can only accept one of them, but the first one was Deb Armatarr. Is she here? Okay. And so we've got the third card that if you could continue that to the next council meeting, that would be great. Well, I've got a note on here that somehow there's a -- are you going to take your time to speak? I'm going to try not to take the whole time. I was actually told just a few minutes ago that someone named Kathy Lusgarten also wanted to speak on the same subject. And so if it's okay with council, I wanted to invite her to come join me here. Okay. Well, that's -- I don't know if that's in violation. Yeah, basically we've got a card limit of two. And so I mean, if you can speak, then I just don't know if I want to start a precedent of splitting up time, if that's okay. I mean, that's how I want it. So if you want to yield your entire time, that's fine, but if not, then if you could just take your time, that would be great. Yeah. Okay. Well, would you like to -- would you like to come speak? Okay. Okay. So then you're not going to speak, Ms. Armatarr. Is that correct? Mm-hmm. Okay. All right. Then we'll recognize Kathryn Lusgarten. If you'll state your name and address, your time will begin . Hi. I'm Dr. Kathryn Lusgarten. I live at 11809 Sutherland Drive, zip code 76207. Mr. Mayor and honorable council members, I'm so proud to live in a city like Denton that has such great respect for environmental issues and has been such a leader in environmental concerns over the years. I only moved here a year ago after I retired, but I've lived nearby for 35 years and I've had my eye on Denton all that time. What's not to love about a city that has dino dirt? You know, the landfill that has figured out a way to capture the methane gas that's produced and burn that and convert it into an energy source for the city. I remember when Denton first began to use biofuel in its city vehicles, biofuel including reuse of cooking oil, sustainable Denton. I mean, on and on, Denton has long and consistently been a leader in environmental issues. I look forward to the city continuing on that trajectory. And I hope one day soon that we'll be a city of 100% sustainable or renewable energy. To that end, Mayor Watts, I want to encourage you to join the Mayor's National Climate Action Network. That's Mayor's National Climate Action Network. Membership in that group is skyrocketing. As of today, there's 257 cities around the country. As of Sunday, there were 180. So you can see rapidly accelerating interest in this group. These mayors are dedicated to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in their cities. And they share with and support each other in that endeavor . It's my understanding that Councilmember Keely Briggs will be introducing a proposal to that end this evening. Mr. Mayor, I want you to know that many Denton cities would support that view in taking that action, including members. Many of them are here tonight and including members of Ind ivisible Denton. If it's okay, I would like to ask that those folks that are here in support of this concept just stand for five seconds . Just for so, oh wow. Thank you. So Mr. Mayor, I hope you will join with other world and national leaders in support of the Paris Climate Accord and take an active role in the Mayor's National Climate Action Network. Thank you so much for your consideration. Thank you. You bet. Moving on to our next agenda item will be the consent agenda. Councilmember Wasney? I move approval of the consent agenda with exception of items B and K. Mayor Pro Tem? Second. All right, so we have a motion for the consent agenda items , but we're pulling items B and K, which will be for individual consideration upon a vote for the consent agenda item. Yes. All right. And before we take the vote, I want to remind everyone that if you're wanting to speak on an item of individual consideration, and those being these two that are fixing to come up, that the rules are that you provide the card before the item is called. So if you want to speak on agenda items for B or for K, please go ahead and get your card in before I call the agenda item as an item for individual consideration. So without further ado, we've got a motion and a second for the consent agenda items except for B and K. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 7-0. I'm going to give Mr. Husspard just a moment if he's signing up for either one of these so that he's not going to be in violation of the rules. So we'll just go ahead and continue to slowly move forward. All right. Well, he's there filling the card out, so I'm going to take that as turning the card in. All right. We've got our first item for individual consideration pulled from the consent agenda is agenda item 4B, which is considered option of an ordinance of the city of Denton amending Chapter 18 of the code of ordinance by modifying Section 18-73 to change speed zones on Country Club Road. Do we have a staff presentation? All right. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Good evening, everyone. My name is Pritam Deshmukh. I'm the traffic engineer for the city. I have a short presentation that talks about this item and discuss speed limits on textile facilities. First couple of slides, I'll talk about how speed limits are set on roadway facilities throughout the state of Texas as well as throughout the nation. And then I'll move on to three facilities that are owned by Textod, but within the city limits. So first, the process is simple for setting speed limits. It started with data collection. You conduct spot speed studies on several segments of the roadway. Then the next step is to determine the 85th percentile speed. I'll get into a little bit detail in the next slide on this one. And then based on the 85th percentile speed, they recommend the speed limit for a roadway. So why 85th percentile speed and what is it? 85th percentile is the main criteria that's used throughout the nation as well as the state has adopted that for establishing speed limits on roadway segments. 85th percentile speed is the speed at which 85% of the cars or vehicles are driving along any given stretch of the road . And many studies and research has shown that this is used for setting speed limits because any prudent driver that's driving on a typical roadway tends to be comfortable driving at that particular speed. And that's why that's considered as the -- for the posted speed limit. Now, the TextDOT facilities that are being considered by TextDOT to modify the speed limits are the main ones on the south side. The first one is Teasley between I-35 and the southern boundary of the city. The second one that's under consideration is Fort Worth Drive from Lindsay Street, which is just a smaller street just north of I-35 East and then all the way south to the city limits. And then the last segment is Country Club Road FM 1830 between Sanders Road and city limits. These facilities are not considered entirely for speed modifications. There are small portions of these street segments that will be modified, not the whole street. So I'll go one by one through all of them. So the first one is Teasley Lane 2181 and the portion that 's considered for modification is reduction of speed limit along the segment between Wind River and the city limits. And currently the speed limit is 50 miles an hour and it will be dropping down five miles by five miles to 45 miles an hour. The result of this change is going to affect the school speed limit zone down at Gaurd High School in Ferngaurd. We as a city are allowed to drop the speed limit down there during school hours from 35, which is currently what it's set at, to 30 miles an hour. So it actually makes it safer for kids. The second segment is Forward Drive. Forward Drive has two portions that will be modified as far as speed limits. The first one is a small segment between I-35 and just north of Massey Road. We're dropping the speed limit from 45 to 40 miles an hour. And then the second segment that they're looking at is a longer stretch between Country Club Road and south of the south boundary of the city. We're dropping it from 60 miles to 55 miles an hour. And then the last segment is Country Club Road from Sanders to the southerly city limits. It's been lowered by five miles an hour from 55 to 50 miles an hour. So that's the proposal and ordinance and that effect has been written under the item B, which is under consideration . Thank you. Councilmember Gregory? I understand from your presentation that there is a limit set by the state on how we can set the speed limit and the limit from that speed limit as to what we can set the school zone limit. Correct. The school zone is typically 15 miles lower than the posted speed limit. Is that typically or is that by law? That is by law. TXDOT has adopted it. Okay. So when do you take those traffic surveys of the typical speed going down there? Because I've driven down T's several times and I don't even get close to 40 because there's too many cars on there. They're taken throughout the day. So it's recorded for a period about a week and then they skip a few weeks and then they do another week. And it's a lot of data. They take surveys in the middle of the night throughout the day. So during congested peak hours, the speed might be slower, but for the rest of the day, which is more than 20 hours, the speeds are up to the speed limits. Thank you. Any other questions for staff? We do have one card wishing to speak. Thank you. Appreciate it. Mr. Wille Hedspeth, if you come down and state your name and address, your time will begin. Mayor and city councilman of the city council members, my name is Wille Hedspeth. I live at 623 Newton. I'm old. I've been old for a long time. You guys drive too fast. You just go too fast. You're going to all of you. You're going to get there. Just slow down. I've driven all these streets that there are these streets and I'm driving and doing the times when people at work or school or somewhere. It's 10 o'clock. It's just before lunch, about 1130. And then in the evenings, it's about two to three right in there. You it is just dangerous. Those streets you go so fast. There's no for most part, there's no shoulder. There's no way to to avoid a situation that's happening in front of you. I've seen several of these almost and accidents there because they're going too fast. And I've seen a lot of these accidents. I've seen a lot of these accidents. And I've seen a lot of these accidents. And I've seen a lot of these accidents. And I've seen a lot of these accidents. And I've seen a lot of these accidents. And I asked a fireman, why do sirens almost every time there's rain somewhere, it starts in the area where the rain is in the five to 10 minutes after it rains, the s irens go off. And I asked him, why is that? He said, people ignored the speed limits and they drive like streets are slick. I've seen them. And I drive pretty safely, I think, for the most part. Every once in a while I drive like them so I don't want to act like I don't. They are meaning people are going too fast. And I was exiting. It was a two lane highway this time and I was exiting and the car was in the left lane and cut in front of me to exit . You've heard all these stories too. I'm just saying to you, I agree. Speed limits needs to be reduced on those streets, three streets for sure. Main reason again, there's no shoulder for you to escape. Thank you, sir. Seeing no more cards, we have a, oh, we haven't had a motion. Chair would entertain a motion. Councilmember Ryan. Thank you, Mayor. I had asked for this item to be pulled for individual consideration since most of these roads are in District 4 and we are reducing the speeds on them. I wanted to make sure the public was well informed of the changes in the speed limits so it would cut back on the number of emails that said the only reason you changed it was to increase the amount of tickets that were being written. This is a public safety issue and these roads are going under construction. And with that, I would like to make a motion for approval of item B. All right. Councilmember Briggs. I will second. All right, we have a motion and it's, oh, Councilmember Gregory. Another question for staff, because I think that we were talking about school zone for Guyar High School, but there 's another school on that roadway, LA Nelson Elementary School. Does that speed zone affect that school too? It does not because the speed in front of that school has not changed. Well, what is the speed in front of that school? The speed zone along LA Nelson is set at 30 miles an hour already. So then the school zone is 20 miles an hour there. Is that correct? Don't answer if you're not sure. Yeah, I'm not sure at this point. Okay, thanks. Councilmember Hudsbett. Thank you, Mayor. Question as well. If we look at exhibit three, that's Teasley Lane, FM 2181. Can you explain why we go from 35 up to 45 and then coming around the corner, it drops back down to 40? Why is it not 35 and 40 consistently? Why that spike in the middle? I mean, because it looks bad. You're coming around a corner, which is a great hiding spot, and all of a sudden it drops by five miles per hour. Yeah, we, the issue there is it starts at 35, closer to I- 35 East. There are a lot of driveways and commercial areas there, so people aren't really picking up speed there. But as they go south of Londonderry, speeds pick up because there is no friction on the side. There is a big park on one side and very few streets that air sac. So based on vehicles picking up speed, the surveys come out to be around 45. And as they're making the turn closer to the school, then they slow down in front of the school. That's why we're able to get 40. So it looks that way, but there is a reason for the vehicles being comfortable driving at a particular speed, and that's what the 85th percentile speed is. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions for staff? We have a motion to second. Let's vote on the board for agenda item 4B. Motion carries unanimously. We will now consider agenda item 4K as an item for individual consideration. Mayor, members of council, this is a project, construction project that we're all very excited about. It's Denton's first spray ground, Splash Park, whatever you want to call it. What you see in front of you here is a rendering of what will be out in Carl Young Park. Just to give you a little bit of background on this, here's a drawing. The circular area there represents where the spray ground will be. You'll see Sycamore Street, Carl Young Park. This is a project that the citizens have been asking for in 2013. They helped raise over $10,000 in donations through a grassroots effort to help fund this park. $200,000 of GEO bonds were approved in the last CIP to help us build this park. It will be located in Carl Gene Young Park at 327 Southwood Street. The fountain will contain spray jets and water features like you saw in the picture. Now the funding for this, as I stated, $10,493 came from the citizens. $200,000 for this project came from general obligation bonds that were sold. In addition to that, we need a little more funding to make this project work, so we have identified $41,600 from park development funds. We call that fund the 916 fund. That's the fund that developers pay into every time they pull a building permit. For a single family dwelling, they contribute, I'll get my numbers right, $291 for a multi-family dwelling, $187. Those funds are specifically identified to be used for neighborhood parks to construct and to make improvements to neighborhood parks. Those funds are to be expended within a half mile to a maximum of a mile of where the funds are generated. These particular funds are coming from when the Phoenix apartments were constructed, or reconstructed I should say. And $13,550 will come from interest that has accumulated on those funds for a total of $252,000, $252,093. This project, the contract is being led by the use of a buy board, which is a cooperative agreement that has been pre-b id. Just to make sure that the numbers were good on that buy board purchase, staff went out and obtained bids from two other vendors for the same project. And this was indeed the low bidder on this project. I'll take any questions. >> Councilmember Gregory. >> Thank you, Mayor. Mr. Vorall, where is this splash park in relation to the athletic field that's going to be built in that area? >> Well, the athletic field will be built over at Fred Moore Park, which is about two blocks away from where the spray ground will be. >> And that's going to happen when? >> The football field. We're shooting for playing football on that in September. >> Okay, thank you. >> Councilmember Briggs. >> Hi. >> Hi. >> So I asked to have this item pulled. I know our citizens are really excited about this, and when you look at the original date of 2013 and then 2014 and we 're here in 2017, can you kind of explain why it's taken so long, this process, to get here to this point today? >> Well, this is the first spray ground that we've done. And we've had a few stumbles along the way. Actually, the process has changed a little bit along the way. At one point, we were required to plait this park before we could move forward with it, and that actually changed in the middle of this process. So we did a little bit of work that maybe we didn't have to do. Bottom line is we're here today. >> Any other questions for staff before we take public comment? Seeing none, thank you. >> Thank you. >> I'm going to call your name. If you're wanting to speak, just come on down and state your name and address. Is it Rhiannon Price? Is that correct? In support, 1618 Handolf Drive. Anna Lamb. Come down and state your name and address, and your time will begin. >> Hi. My name is Anna Lamb. I'm from the North Lake Park District. I live at 1205 Amherst, 76201. I'll keep this short. I have a 6-year-old son and a 2-year-old daughter. And we really enjoy going to all the parks. Bowling Green, North Lakes are the closest to us. But we all know summer in Texas is very hot to the point where it can almost be dangerous to be outside at the parks . So we're going to be out in Zanger, and we would just really appreciate having the splash park rate in our own community. Thanks. >> Great. Thank you. Mr. Willie Hatsbeth, come down and state your name and address. Your time will begin. >> Councilmembers, my name is Willie Hatsbeth. I live at 623. I'm sorry for anyone who has the same last name as I do. Sorry. Anyway, if you grew up in an area where I grew up, you would be so happy that something, somewhere where you can get out of the heat, the low income areas are the ones that suffer the most in the summer. And there's nothing to do. So you get into trouble. I'm going to get in the splash park. I'm going to a park. Oh, get that image out of your head right now. I'm not going in the splash park. But, so I'm just happy that you've done it. Finally, I'm glad that you're doing that. That's going to be a great addition to that area over there . It's shaded. It's in an area where there's not much traffic at all. And the kids are just out there all the time. Now, what Councilmember Hatsbeth said is to me, now, we're going to have to keep that thing cleaned up. The citizens around there is going to have to help us. We can't have that place trashed out. And I'm going to say this to the citizen. We've got to behave. We don't want older kids out there pushing kids around and things like that. I don't think they will. I'm just hoping that they don't. And to the question of where is it located, if that was a question just to help get the word out to where it is, then that's a good question. That question was asked because you don't know where it is. And as a council person, you need to get from behind those podiums and where you are and come to where I live if you 're going to represent the city and all the people in it. Come over there and visit us. Again, thank you for this addition. Thank you. I have a card wishing not to speak. Mr. Adam Bruegel, 1315 Dartmouth. You still not wishing to speak? You still not? Okay. All right. My card says I support this project and future ones like it . Splash Park ever more than AI or the future. Splash on Denton. Thank you. Last card that I have is Amber Bruegel. If you'll come down and state your name and address, your time will begin. Before I begin, I just wanted to thank you for the LGBTQ proclamation. Name and address. Yes, sir. Amber Bruegel, 529 Malone Street. I had a business there. I just wanted to thank you, too, for the proclamation. After seeing the governor's press conference today, it's really nice to know that the city of Denton will stand up for my family, even if Austin won't. So thank you. I support the Splash Park, and I am here to ask you to also support the Splash Park and to support future Splash Parks in the city of Denton. This project began back in 2013 after another long, hot summer day after the pools had already closed for the summer. And I had my little Lulu, who was only a year old. She wasn't in school. What was I going to do with her all day? And having another conversation with another mom at another park, jeez, I wish someone would build a Splash Park in Denton. And you have enough of those conversations after a while, you're like, you know what? I'm going to try. I'm just going to at least try. And so I brought this idea to a couple of people on city council, just some informal conversations. I also spoke with Emerson, just, you know, is this something that we can even do? Everyone was in support. They thought it was a great idea. But like all great ideas that come to Denton, where do you find the money? And so I thought, well, maybe if we could at least, you know, get some financial support behind this project, it can also drum up just kind of just some excitement about this and move it forward. I'm disappointed that it's taken four years, but it's better late than never. Basically, we hosted a lot of different fundraisers over the course of a year. We raised about $10,000, just a ragtag group of moms and small business owners just emptying our pockets any chance we could. We had a -- we partnered with the Denton Community Market on one particular Saturday when they had their water slide. We just threw up a booth and asked for donations. We got $600 bucks in an afternoon. One time we had the -- we asked local businesses to support a free pool party at the Civic Center pool. And so the melon mushroom, like, donated the money to rent the space. We opened it up. It was free for everyone. We asked for donations at the door. We raised $1,500, just like that. We had -- actually, we raised an insane amount of money selling water balloons for a dollar, which I then let people throw at me. That was -- I got more than one black eye and raised a ridiculous amount of money for that. Apparently, I'm an easy target. But there was a lot of excitement about this. And in the end, the bond committee decided to include it in the 2014 bond, which was then approved by a big majority here in Denton. And I'm just asking you to fulfill that promise that, you know, we worked so hard for so long to bring this forward. Lulu was only a year old. She wasn't even walking yet. And look at her now. So we're just really excited to move this forward. And please not only support this splash park, but future splash parks because it's really -- I think we could use a whole bunch of them all across the city. So that's it. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Briggs. I make a motion to approve. Councilmember Fabry. Second, with thanks to all of those citizens, including Ms. Briggs, who did so much to help make this happen. All right. We have a motion and a second for agenda item 4K. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries, 7-0. Okay. We're moving on to agenda item number 5, items for individual consideration, consideration of the use of em inent domain to condemn real property interests. Agenda item 5A is considered adoption of an ordinance of the City of Denton, finding that a public use in necessity exists to acquire fee simple title to .119 acre track of land situated in the Eugene Plochowski survey. Thank you, Mayor and Council. Come to you tonight with the item we need for electrical infrastructure, Hickory to Loc ust transmission line. You'll notice here it's labeled two different ways, Weston track, also known as Weston. The reason we have both names there is because as we research the legal documents, we found it listed under both names. So this was under advice of Council. We refer to it as West on track, but also refer to it as the other name Weston, because on the survey I'll show later, on that survey it listed names spelt both ways. So that's why it's listed as it is. This project is part of the total CIP capital improvement project that we have for our replacing the inner transmission loop. We're doing that because of growth. We need to increase the voltage on that circle, that loop from 69 kV, 69 volts to 138,000 volts. And we're also doing it because it's over 50 years old. So both for growth and aging infrastructure. We have a responsibility to respond. We do have a public involvement process, which we've utilized in this process, in this project, and we consider all the practical options. We get lots of help, at a federal level, the Federal Inter regatory Commission, the North American Electrical Reli ability Council, and then from also Texas entities, Texas Reliability Entity, Public Utility Commission of Texas, and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. This is where the project's located, Hickory Oak and Bonnie Bray. As I said, we have a public involvement process. We've had an open house. And part of what's caused the need for this project was the direction from the Public Utility Board and from council, recommended using a gas-intellated substation, which is not frequently used in Texas, and also to enhance the wall and structure around the substation, since it is at an entry point coming into town, coming in between Hickory and Oak. Again, this is the location of it, Oak Street, Hickory and Bonnie Bray. More detail, this is on Oak Street. The requirement to have this property is because we're putting in a new gas-intell ated substation across the street here, and coming across underground, and coming up, the transmission line will come up behind the gas station, and we need to link that line, that transmission line, back into the transmission system. Therefore, we need to place poles across the street there for those lines to connect in. That's why we need this eas ement for this site. So, Mayor, City Council members, before you tonight is an ordinance making findings of public use and necessity, also instructing staff to acquire the necessary land rights via eminent domain regarding a partial land affected by the H ickory to Locust transmission line project. Upon favorable motion, I will proceed to display the affected track of land on overhead screens. We've got one car wishing to speak, so I want to take comments from the public, and then we'll do the motion, and then you'll display the legal description. Deb Armentar, come down and state your name and address. Your time will begin. Deb Armentar, 2003, Mistywood Lane. I wanted to thank council for including the appraisal for this property in the agenda. I don't remember seeing appraisals in the past, and it was really good to see not just an appraisal value, but the justification for it. I had a concern and a question that I wanted to put out there, and that is just to say that I've noticed that in the past, the city has paid two, three, even in some cases, four or five times more appraisal value for properties purchased for DME. And I just wanted to implore you to try to stick closer to the appraisal value this time around. I realize that this evening is not the evening when the amount you'll be paying is determined, but I understand that part of what you're voting on tonight is to authorize the expenditure of funds and provide an effective date. So I just wanted to--I'm not sure what the timeline is on that, or even if you know, but I just wanted to say for the record when that time comes, to please try to stick closer to the appraisal value, and if you do end up paying more than the appraisal value, to justify that. And again, thank you for including the documentation on app raisal value. Thank you. We have one more card. Ms. Kim McKibbin, 1306 West Hickory, do you not wish to speak? Okay, but she's in opposition. Notation on the card, never take it, negotiate. All right, so those are all the cards we have. So the chair would entertain a motion. Council Member Gregory. Thank you, Mayor. I'll wait until he gets--sign up. I move that the City of Denton, after having made the offers required by state law, use the power of eminent domain, if needed, to acquire fee simple to a 0.119 acre tract of land, being situated in the Eugene Pulaski Survey, abstract number 996, City of Denton, Denton County, Texas, and more particularly described on Exhibit A, to the ordinance now shown under consideration and on the overhead screen being now displayed to the audience, all of which is for a valid public use necessary to provide the expansion, construction, maintenance, operation, and improvement of electric transmission lines, facilities, and structures, including substations to serve the public and citizens of the City of Denton, Texas. All right, Council Member Wasney. I second the motion. We have a motion and a second. Mr. City Attorney, we have waited long enough for--I know we've got a request to speak, but we can take a vote once we get through the staff discussion. Yes. Okay, thank you. Council Member Briggs. So I just wanted to go on record and say that this doesn't mean that negotiations have ended, that if this is approved and passed, that negotiations will still take place and eminent domain is only if an agreement cannot be reached. That is absolutely correct. Okay. As we've probably over the past five years have acquired 200 approvals from the City Council for use of eminent domain, and we've only used it a couple of times, that we've gone all the way to eminent domain, we try to negotiate a price with a willing landowner before we go that far. This is basically just a time saver, so you don't necessarily have to get on the agenda and come back if for some reason you have to have it. Correct. Thank you. Yeah, I think there's some confusion sometimes about what we're doing with an agenda item such as this, and this is required by statute. So that we start the eminent domain process, that doesn't mean that we run right out and file a lawsuit necessarily. It means that we have certain things and procedures we have to follow, that being an initial offer followed by that process. So that's what this agenda item does is to authorize us to begin that process, which includes negotiating once that first initial offer is placed. Is that correct? Correct. All right, thank you. Council Member Gregory. And the motion actually contains the language to use the power of eminent domain if needed. Right. And all of that language is again required by state law. Yep. All right, any more questions for staff? Seeing none, we have a motion and a second for agenda item 5A. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries unanimously. Move on to agenda item 6, which is items for individual consideration. Agenda item 6A, consider adoption of an ordinance accepting competitive proposals and awarding a public works contract for the manufacturing and installation of wayfinding signage for the City of Dent on. Thank you, Mayor. Members of council, Mr. City Manager of staff, as part of the introduction, this is a consideration for a contract for the manufacturing and installation of wayfinding sign age within the City of Denton. By way of background, this project, this wayfinding signage project began with the downtown implementation plan. It is a recommendation from this plan that a wayfinding signage plan project be implemented. In fact, it was part of the parking discussion because the idea here is that we've got parking throughout the downtown, but there's not any visible signage for these parking. So the recommendation was to introduce parking. Through the exercise of starting the project, we began to work on this project, and it grew more than just the downtown implementation plan area. It became citywide. With that, staff began drafting themes of what these signs would look like as a comprehensive package. We developed three themes. We brought those in front of boards and commissions. From those input and feedback, we modified it and created a modified theme, which was used on an online survey where we receive additional input from the citizens using that information. We started looking for ways to fund this project. In March of 2011, went forward as a proposal to the CEDG over site committee to request that funding from a CIP bond program, which was dedicated for Dallas Drive and Fort Worth Drive to be reallocated and used for wayfinding signage, and that amount was approximately $ 741,000. And again, that was approved by the committee or recommended for approval by the committee in March, and that moved into a project account specifically for the wayfinding signage project. In December of 2012, the city solicited and selected a consulting firm, Marge Design, to help design the design intent drawings as well as develop the programming document necessary for this wayfinding signage project. Between that work and the implementation of the DEN Plan 2030, the city paused in order for us to confirm the plan-- place making and branding strategy for the city after the DEN Plan 2030 was adopted in 2015. We began work again with the wayfinding signage project. And that work included work coordination with these following entities that you see here, including TextDOT and the two universities. We've met several times with these entities and provided them with drafts. They've provided feedback and input, which further refined our product, which is again the design intent drawings and the wayf inding signage program. So what's included in this wayfinding signage project? It included a large gateway sign-- set of signs, but that is not part of this contract. And the reason why it is not part of this contract is these large signs are a lot more expensive, and they are also proposed along I-35, which is currently being-- in the process of being widened. So the plan is to put a stop or not stop, but a hold that is on these signs until we have the widening of the project be completed. And then obviously as we find more funding, we can then proceed with the large gateway signs. What is included in this contract are vehicle directional signs, historic district identification signs, downtown gateway signs, parking lot trailblazer signs, a parking lot identification sign, and as well as pedestrian directional signs and kiosks. So what do these signs look like? This is the vehicle or signs, and you can see that there are different types and sizes, specifically due to the location of these signs. If they are within text dot right away, they will have a non-base, and again this is to meet the text dot standards that they have. However, if they are on non-text dot right aways, they will have a more decorative base, which you see here. And again, you see different sizes based on the number of destination that is proposed, and in some instances you'll have three destinations, in some instances two, and then others one. These are our parking trailblazer, parking lot trailblazer signs. We also have gateway signs that mark that you've entered the downtown. Again, the parking lot trailblazer, as well as a parking lot identification monument sign, which would be placed within our existing public parking lots and so forth. We also have pedestrian signs, which are shown here. The text is a little bit smaller because again, they're not intended for vehicleers. They're more dedicated and intended for the pedestrians. We have also a kiosk, directional signage, which includes a map. We also wanted to continue the kiosk that you see around the square. So where this would probably be introduced is within our parking lot. So as people exit the parking lot, they would walk towards this kiosk and other signs and be able to see where they are in relationship to their location, and then hopefully be directed to a destination within the downtown. And lastly, we also show here a historic district identification sign. So what's the phasing plan? Where are these going to be located? How many signs and what are the costs? We've broken this down into three phases. The first phase, as you see here, will be primarily within the D-tip area, and it will include the parking lot trailblazer signs, parking lot identification signs, pedestrian directional signs, kiosks, again, within the D-t ip. And the reason why we're starting with the downtown D-tip area is because, as I mentioned earlier, with the D-tip, the issue here was parking. And so we wanted to focus on that first and show where parking is located. And these signs that we have identified as part of phase one will do that in our opinion. We've got approximately 56 signs identified. Proposed cost is approximately $193,000, and we anticipate this being completed within the year, December 2017. Phase two, we're working out from the downtown area, still within downtown core, but we're introducing vehicular signs. So these signs would capture the vehicles as they enter the downtown area. These include the historic district identification signs as well as the downtown gateway signs. We've identified 51 signs within this phase. Proposed cost is $207,000, $100,000 that is, and we're looking at June this next summer for these installations to occur. Last phase is the vehicular signs throughout the core of the city. This is, again, further out, away from the core, away from the downtown area, and you can see, hopefully, you'll see some signs spread throughout the area here. Now, again, these would capture vehicles as they enter even further out of the city. Now, it is important to note that these signs don't include the signs along I-35, and we purposely did that primarily because of the widening project. We understand that there's two phases. The widening phase one is due to be completed, phase two is further down, and again, this is a text-dot jurisdiction, and we felt that we can concentrate more on the areas within the city that we can install signs in a more timely manner, and so that's why we identified these 54 signs, which is proposed to cost $198,000, and again, we're looking at a year from now, or I'm sorry, a year and a half, December 2018 for these signs. Now, these signs can be installed sooner, but we wanted to make sure that we had time to meet with the different entities in this particular one. There will be some text-dot, as you know, universities, a text-dot roadway, 77, Elm, and other, Loop 288 would be another area that wouldn't be focused on getting those permits. So that's the presentation. I'll be happy to answer any question. -Got a couple. Councilmember Briggs. -So looking at the designs, there's two, I saw two, I saw the top of the courthouse, and then in one of the slides in the backup, not in the presentation, it had the City of Denton logo. Was that City of Denton logo ruled out in the top of the courthouse, the one that's consistent? -The idea there is that these signs that you see with the courthouse would be within the downtown or DTIP area. Those that are further or outside of the downtown, primarily the DTIP area, would have the City logo. -Okay. So when I just, I look at this from a distance, it kind of looks like a poop emoji, and so I'm just curious, will it be bigger and more consistent? -Unfortunately, it didn't come out as nice as it should have. -Okay, so it doesn't. -It would represent the top of the courthouse, and it would be a little bit more graphically pleasing. -Okay, I hope so. -Yes. -Thank you. -All right, Councilmember Gregory. -What? -Go ahead, repeat it. -A poop emoji. -Well, I look at the timeline for this project, starting in 2010 with the downtown implementation plan, and then later the work, and it makes the speed with which we have accomplished the splash park look like a bullet train. But we may have to go back to the drawing board because of the emoji issue. I hope we don't. I hope we can improve it tonight. -All right, Councilmember Hutsmith. -Thank you, Mayor. Quick question. Does the cell and the eventual use of the Wells Fargo building, whatever that's going to be, affect placement? I'm just getting up to speed. I'm not sure if we have signs arranged in that area. -No, they will be all within public right of way, and it won't affect any of the programming associated with any future development of a private development. Mostly all of these signs are destinations towards public entities, universities, parks, public parks, and the like. -Okay. And then has there been a discussion regarding the prototypes? What is that going to be? I'm curious about the graffiti end of things, if it's going to be the weather that storm, or just kind of what are they going to bring us as a prototype? I saw that in the contract. -Sure, yes. The consultant or the contractor that we've selected, one of the reasons why we've identified this individual contractor is because they've done other works in other municipalities within Texas. Fredericksburg, I think, is one. I'm sure there's some other closer ones. So they're familiar with the weather as well as the graffiti treatment of these, and these are meant to last. So that is one thing that we did look into and ask that that specifically be addressed. -Okay. Thank you, sir. -Councilmember Ryan? -Thank you. I'm glad to see this project coming forward. I was on planning and zoning when it went past them in 2011 and thought it got lost in the mix. I do have a question in regards to phases four and five. Are those only the large signs that are in phase five? -No, those are the phase four. Phase four is signs that are going to be located along I-35 . We identified those because, again, of the widening project . So we identified those out of this contract because we know that that's still being in place. So those are the signs. It will be primarily the signs that -- it's kind of hard to see, but the signs that are along the frontage road along I -35. Those are what we were referring to as phase five -- phase four. Phase five, our signs identify -- are for parking lot ident ifications. And these are for signs that we hope to include as part of any future parking redevelopment lots that we have in the downtown. We have exposition as one. You know, the property across the street here on Oakland and McKinney. We also have the Cedar parking lot, which is off Cedar and McKinney, and then the property off of Bolivard -- Bolivard , that is, and McKinney. And these signs that are identified as phase five are -- pardon me -- these parking lot identification signs here. So that is what we're referring to as phase five. And we did not put that as part of this contract because we know that the timing for those parking lots won't be in the near future. And so we wanted to identify those as a separate phase. Okay. Well, and I'm looking at your slide for phase three. And unless I'm mistaken, I'm counting about 19 signs on 35. There's 21. 21? I missed a couple of them. Right. So you say we're not going to do the ones along 35, but that's part of phase three, according to your map. Phase three. Phase three includes 54 signs. And I know it shows on this map, but the intent of this map was to show that all of the signs not along I-35 is included in part of phase three. I apologize. I know it shows up on this map, but it wasn't intended to be included in phase three. It's included as part of phase four. Okay. So none of the ones showing on your map for phase three along 35 are actually included in that? They're part of phase four? Phase four, correct. Okay. And so if the -- we had a discussion earlier on the TIF, and if that continues, and the TIF could pay for wayfinding signs, and when it came before planning and zoning in 2011, that was the intention as to how to pay for it, as I recall. But now we're doing the phases that hit all of downtown, and we're leaving the stuff out of downtown, so we would not be able to use TIF funds other than those few parking lot signs. Is that correct? Well, yeah, again, the idea was to work in and work our way out. I don't think that was the intent, but we hope that when we look at phase four, we'll find funding for that, but that is still for future discussions. Okay. But I guess my point is that we're paying for something that could be paid for out of the TIF out of these funds, and what we are not paying for now, the portions phases four and five that are not getting funded at this time, are not in the downtowns that could not in the future be paid for out of the TIF. I understand what you're saying, Councilman Ryan. When we started this project, of course, and with the funding that was available, we already identified those funding, so. Can I comment on that? Sure. Councilman Ryan, I think this agenda item is to award the contract. As far as the funding, I mean, before somebody writes a check or issues payment, I guess funding could be decided from somewhere else, because what I'm hearing you say is if there were partial funds paid from the TIF to cover the downtown signs, then that would leave enough money in the original allocation to fund phases four and five, which right now we don't have money to fund. Is that correct? Is that what I'm hearing? Okay. That's correct. Yeah. So I think that if that's a policy decision that council wants to make together with the TIF board, depending on how the other discussions go, then that's certainly something that can be considered. All right, Councilman, Mayor Pro Tem. Yeah, I noticed on the list of items or the list of locations that the signs would be placed. It didn't include the Denton Community Market, but it did include the Denton County Historical Park. Correct. So I was wondering if that could be added, because I know that that particular area gets a lot of foot traffic. We could, and I think we had initially included that at one point, but because of them moving, we didn't really identify them as part of this program, but we can certainly look into adding that if truly their location is at the historical park. If not, then it would be something that we'd have to remove . So it was the reason why we didn't include them is because of their movement at the time that we were drafting this. Understood. I think they're pretty secure in that location, but it might be a good idea to include that in the future. Okay. Okay. Do we have any more questions for staff? This is an item for individual consideration. I see no cards for agenda item 6A. And if no more questions, the chair would entertain a motion. Councilmember Gregory. Move approval. Mayor Pro Tem. Second. I have a motion and a second. Let's vote on the board, please, for agenda item 6A. Motion carries unanimously. Agenda item 6B. Hold the discussion. Give staff direction on recruitment process for a new city attorney. We do have a couple of cards wishing to speak. So no, no, go ahead. Yes. We're going to do staff presentation first. Oh, yep, you do. Sure. Sorry about that. I had it in this 5A card. I apologize for that, Mr. Husspitz. I apologize for that. Come on, staff, come on down. Good evening, mayor and members of the City Council. Carla Romine, director of human resources. Tonight I'm here seeking your direction on the recruitment process for the city attorney position, specifically seeking your direction on if you'd like to use a consulting firm, a recruitment firm, to assist us with the process and if so , if you had a specific firm in mind. Okay. Any questions for staff before we take public comment? Seeing none, thank you. 6B, councilmember Husspitz. I've got to get used to doing that. Mr. Willie Husspitz, come down and state your name and address. Your time will begin. My name is Willie Husspitz. I live at 623 Newton. I just want to say for the record, I think the attorney we have now is doing an excellent job and we can save ourselves a lot of money and a lot of time with this search that you're proposing and just move him into position permanently. That's my thought. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Deb Armentar, come down and state your name and address. Your time will begin. Deb Armentar, 2003, Misty Woodland Lane in Denton. I hate to disagree with my friend Willie Husspitz. I very rarely do disagree with him. But I wanted to urge you to go with the recruitment firm. There were, as I'm sure this staff presentation will explain, there are three options you all are looking at. One is contracting with an outside recruitment firm. The other option conducting the search in-house with the assistance of HR staff. And then the third option to forgo a search and a point from within. Without getting into too much detail about the previous city attorney, there's a lot of public distrust, particularly regarding the way that the previous city attorney interpreted the Texas Open Meetings Act. And even though the -- an outside recruitment firm would cost money, it would be, I believe, money well invested in the public trust. And no disrespect to the current interim city attorney. And I very much appreciated him stepping in and doing what he's been doing. But I think for the matter of public trust to have somebody come in who was not trained by the previous city attorney, somebody who represents a new way of interpreting the law, that takes into account the citizens' point of view. That is to say, Texas Open Meetings Act, well, any form of law is, of course, a matter of interpretation. And although it is not the job of the city attorney to represent individual citizens, they are representing the city government, which itself represents the citizens as a democracy. So again, just for the sake of public trust, I believe it would be best to look without instead of within. There are already a lot of concerns about the legal team as it currently stands. We have a number of lawyers in-house, and yet we end out contracting out for so many things. It's not clear what each of them does. So I think we need more attention to exactly what our in- house attorneys are doing and to clean that up and then to look outside. So that is my recommendation. Thank you. Thank you. I see no more cards. I didn't have anything else. Yep. Okay. Council Member Wasney. I'd like to make a motion to hire Waters & Company to conduct a professional search for a new city attorney for the city of Denton. Mayor Pro Tembigheri. I second that motion. Okay. We have a motion and a second to hire Waters & Company for a recruitment action for city attorney. Council Member Gregory. Just one comment. We have used these firms before. We've used them recently. And sometimes when we use those firms, all it does is confirm that maybe an internal candidate turns out to be the best candidate. And by hiring a search firm, it does not preclude anyone from within the organization from applying. So a vote in favor of hiring a search firm does not in any way suggest that anyone is being excluded from consideration. Okay. Thank you. Any other comments? Let's vote on the board for Agenda Item 6B. Motion carries unanimously. Agenda Item 6C is to consider approval of an appointment of Council Member John Ryan as an alternate member of the Regional Transportation Council. We do have a card wishing to speak. Mr. Willie Husbit, Agenda Item 6C. All right. Thank you, sir. Council Member Hudspeth. I'm going to get that really hard, too. Council Member Hudspeth. Even though I've known John for a while, I move that we appoint him for this position. I got it. Council Member Gregory. Second. And just as a little background, I believe, just to -- because this is sort of out of the order -- orderly process of our council appointees, it 's my understanding that the Mayor Pro Tem, you're unable to make the RTC meeting, I think, on the 8th. Is that correct? That's right. I'll be at the Budget and Tax Workshop in Rockport for TML. Okay. And I believe the previous Mayor Pro Tem, Roden, was the alternate. And since right now the City of Denton does not have an alternate, so that's why we're doing this particular motion for an appointment out of order. So if that changes in the next round of appointments, that 's all right, but we need somebody there to represent us. And Council Member Ryan has stepped up and expressed an interest. Appreciate him doing that. So that's sort of the background on this particular agenda item. We have a motion and a second. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries, 7-0. Let's take a five-minute break, five or 10 minutes. All right, we're going to reconvene. This evening at about 8.15, my earpiece on my glasses fell off, so it's hard for me to see the clock back there. All right, we're moving on to agenda item 7A, and this is our public hearing portion. And I'm going to go ahead and call it. It's 7A, hold a public hearing, consider adoption of an ordinance to rezone a property in .4 acres from downtown residential DR1 to downtown residential DR2. I believe we have an announcement from staff regarding the presentation of this particular issue. Members of the Council, City Manager, the applicant has approached us and is requesting a continuance of this item for a month, possibly a month and a half. They had a schedule conflict and were unable to make it to the meeting tonight. All right. So, okay, Council, we do have a card wishing to speak. Ms. McKibbin, I have not opened the public hearing yet, so my question is -- I'm going to have to do this. This is going to look a little funky. I'm not going to do that. Lord, that looks insane. So, we can open the public hearing, Council, at your discretion. We can postpone the public hearing and not open it, or we can open it and continue it and then read into the record the card that we have as far as regarding this particular item on the public hearing. Mr. City Attorney, what do you think -- what would you recommend in this situation? Given that the applicant has requested a month, a month and a half of postponement, it might be best for this Council to simply postpone it until -- and have -- that gives staff sufficient time to re-notice it and members of the public to also come out. Okay. All right. Mayor Pro Tem. Motion to postpone to a date certain. Council Member Briggs. Second. Okay. So, we're going to postpone to a date certain? Well -- What was that date? Do we have a date as far as when we know that they're coming back? To an event certain? What do we -- It was a rather rushed message that, you know, they communicated with us, so we will visit with them hopefully this week and come up with a date that they can absolutely commit to. So, it would probably be July or mid-July. I think given that, maybe I'll make -- I'll change my motion. I'll withdraw it and make it a motion to table. Not table? No. A motion to table, where then if it's not picked up by any other meeting, then the item is denied. Oh, the next meeting, right. Okay. You said mid-July? Yes. We'll look at the next subsequent -- we'll look at the ag endas in July and place it on the -- Okay. I'll renew my original motion to -- what was it? A motion to postpone? I can't remember. Yes. A motion to postpone to date certain July 18th. Perfect. Thank you. Councilmember Briggs? I will second that. We have a -- Councilmember Hussbett, you had a question? Thank you, ma'am. Yes, sir. I'd like to -- the citizen's already here. I'd like to open it and leave it open as an option. Just -- they're here, they're noticed, and I'd like the insight to then kind of get a feel for which way the wind's blowing. So, Mr. City Attorney, as far as if I open the public hearing and we entertain the motion currently as it stands, does that mean we -- the motion would need to change to continue the public hearing to the date certain? Is that correct? That is correct. All right. So, Mayor Pro Tem, it's your motion. I guess it's -- we can vote on this motion which would then -- we would not open the public hearing, or we could open the public hearing and then hear citizen input and then you can make a motion to continue the public hearing until that date's heard. I mean, I'm okay with continuing the motion. Like -- To open the public hearing and then continuing the public hearing? No, no, no, to vote on the motion. Okay. All right. So, I just have a procedure question. If the citizen speaks on this item tonight, can the citizen speak on the item next as well? No. No, once I've spoken on the public hearing, then that is their opportunity to speak. Okay. Council Member Gregory. And here's the problem. Without hearing the proposal, the citizen's comments may want to change her comments after she hears the proposal. If the applicant is wanting to postpone, the chances are the nature of the request is going to be changing, and for her to speak tonight burns her opportunity when she might want to wait and speak after she has a chance to hear and comment on what the proposal really is rather than what she might think it is. We might not be doing anyone a favor by allowing them to speak tonight. Council Member Hedspeth. Thank you, Mayor. My understanding is we've done it at least at the planning and zoning level where they have, but because it's continued, they are allowed to speak again. So that's my understanding from experience on planning and zoning, but if that's not the case here, then I'll leave it at that. But that's just my personal experience is that they have been able to speak when we've continued things, but either way. Okay. All right. So we have a motion on the board, and I believe that the speaker has heard the explanations here, the proposed public speaker. We have a motion on the board by Mayor Pro Tem to continue to a date certain of July 18th, and seconded by Council Member Riggs. Any other discussion? Let's vote on the board, please. Passes 6 to 1. Going on to 7B, hold a public hearing, consider adoption of ordinance to rezone approximately 1,862 acres from neighborhood residential mixed use NRMU district to CMG district. And I'll open the public hearing after staff presentation. Thank you, Mayor, members of the council, city manager. The request before you tonight is for a public hearing to consider adoption of an ordinance in line with the change in zoning from NRMU to the CMG district. Just to give some perspective, the location of this property is what's highlighted in yellow here, and just to give you an idea of the surrounding zoning pattern, just recently the council approved an ordinance approving a change in zoning to CMG right here, and of course we have neighborhood residential zoning along here. The property has frontage along Hobson Road. A better perspective in terms of what is surrounding the property within 200 feet, as I've indicated, we have this highlighted property in yellow and red that is the isolated NRMU district, which is surrounded by recently re-zoned property to CMG and then residential zoning. To the east of it, partially to the south, and NRMU to the west with some ECI and ECG zoning to the west as well. And that's what I was referring to. When we zoom out a little more to 500 feet, we can assess the surrounding land use pattern. And based on our land use compatibility study and looking at the overall zoning pattern in line with the future land use map that's stipulated in the comprehensive plan, the proposed zoning district would be a logical extension of this CMG zoning to encapsulate or incorporate this zoning as well. Just a brief update on this, when the property to the west came under consideration before 2022, we had indicated to the applicant that it would create an isolated zoning district of NRMU. And that's why they have come forward to consolidate the zoning on that property. We have provided for your analyses just some basic regulations as it relates to the nature of the NRMU district and the CMG district. With the exception of the maximum density, all other criteria are pretty much the same. As it relates to Hobson Lane, it is currently developed as a two-lane undivided roadway. It is a secondary-- secondary arterial roads require eventually 110 feet of right of way. Fort Worth Drive and Country Club Road are text art road ways as well and both are currently under improvement. Additionally, there are development plans. There are none in the pipeline around here, which is the residential zoning district, but this CMG district is proposed for development for a convenience store with gas sales. We did notify within the required 200 foot notification area and the 500 foot notification area. We received one letter in opposition. It was signed as opposition, but there was no reasoning provided with that letter and one in favor. Again, no reasoning as to why they're in favor of the request. Staff does recommend approval based upon the line juice analyses that I've presented because it is compatible with the surrounding zoning and the line juices. It eliminates an isolated zoning district and it is also consistent with comp plan 2030. The planning and zoning commission also recommended of the request unanimously and I'd be happy to answer any questions. Any questions for staff before I open the public hearing? Seeing none, I will open the public hearing. We have a blue card. Nathan Tune. If you'd like to speak, come down. This is a public hearing. You do not require a card to speak. So if you'd like to come down and state your name and address, your time will begin on agenda item 7B. Mayor and council, my name is Willard, 623 Newton. I wonder what kinds of things this re-- this zoning change to-- what possibilities-- I'll look that up but I just want to state them now. What possibilities are going to go in there in that area of the buildings and businesses? It surprises me that those-- the people in that area would be in favor of the zoning change right there from looking-- thinking about where it is exactly. Wonder about that. I think it's good if you have more input from citizens in situations like this, much like the citizen who wanted to speak a few minutes ago or the issue a few minutes ago about the upcoming request that was made even though the postponement took place. Citizens need to have more input in these kinds of decisions. I wonder what was the reason, what was the true reason for not allowing the person to make the decision A, to speak or not speak in that last situation? I wonder if the same kind of procedure is happening here. Citizens-- the citizens that live in that area who-- I'm wondering if they got notification this happening would have had-- would like to have said something. Your reasoning was since we're not voting for it, we shouldn't allow them to speak. I think what needs to be considered is you're there representing the citizens. The citizens-- you have an opportunity. Well, do I let the citizens speak or not? And you-- just like in this case, I wonder if the citizens had anything that they want to say. You voted to not let them speak. You only get four minutes and you're a citizen. You are the representatives for the citizens. You are serving the citizens. Why would you ever vote to not let citizens speak? Are you doing the same thing in this motion here? Are you not allowing the citizens who would like to speak a chance to speak? Well, how are you doing that? You didn't get out enough notices. I don't know what you did. But it makes me wonder if you won't let the person speak here and then you came up with this rule, how in the world can you justify that someone can't speak again if it's on the agenda? That's not-- you can't do that. If it's on the agenda next time, you can-- we could speak to it. So whenever it's on the agenda, I'm speaking to it because I know I can. I have four minutes and I have to abide by those rules you put up there on that screen which was intended to stop people from speaking, I think. So I don't agree with that motion that-- or the motion is your business. But not to let the person speak, I think, is not the way you're supposed to be servants of this city. Thank you, sir. This is a public hearing. Anybody wishing to speak on this agenda item? Come down, state your name and address, and your time will begin. Anybody wishing to speak? All right. We will close the public hearing. Councilmember Hutsbeth. I was going to wait for the motion and then-- during discussion. So I'll let the motion and then the second-- OK. --process through. Mayor Pro Tempigari. I move for approval of the rezoning ordinance. Councilmember Ryan. I'll second. All right. Councilmember Hutsbeth. Thank you, Mayor. I want to just point out this one is-- well, first, the Planning and Zoning Commission, what an outstanding group that was when they initially heard this. But in addition to that, this is pretty interesting because the property owner lives directly across the street. So I think that's really neat when you have someone that is in that area that's across the street. It's in his front yard, and he's OK. Then I think that's fantastic and sends a good signal. And I appreciate that. So question of clarification. When you said the property owner lives across the street, are you saying that the property being zoned is owned by the person who's living across the street who indicated a sign of approval? Yes, sir. OK. All right. OK. Any other questions? The question I do have is, how does this-- I know that we 've had several complaints and concerns about the intersection of Country Club Road and Ho bson. And so is there a traffic impact study being required for this once it gets developed? And on the rezoning, I guess the issue of right of way and road widening or improvement would take place. Is it at the platting process? Is that when that would take place? OK. So those questions are a little premature. OK. I appreciate that. Thank you. Councilmember Hudspeth. I'm sorry, but I will answer part of your question. It'll be fantastic because it hops and it adds a right turn lane. So instead of having to sit there and wait, you'll be able to go ahead and turn right into it. OK. Again, I learned that from that outstanding planning and-- I did catch that. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh. Just like the outstanding council. Absolutely. All right. So we have a motion and a second for approval of agenda item 7B. Let's vote on the board, please. OK. Motion carries, 7-0. We're moving on to concluding items. Councilmembers? Council-- Mayor Pro Tem Bagary? Well, they all just went away. Go ahead. This is for new business, correct? New business, yes. You actually mentioned something. I don't know when today, but it was regarding how the legislature has a sunsetting process. And I'd like for us to talk about having something a little bit more organized, like a sunset process, for some of the different contracts and programs that we support externally. I can't remember if I've brought this up before, but I've definitely thought about it before, because I know that some other cities are starting to implement it. So it would just be a more structured way of reevaluating the external agreements and contracts and support that we provide. So if we could just set that up for a work session. OK. Councilmember Waschny? Yeah, I was concerned tonight when one of our citizens brought to the fore that when she went to find minutes or a video of a meeting that they didn't exist. So if we could just track through all of that, I know that our city manager is working to bring a lot of these meetings into the work session room so that they can be videoed. If they can't be videoed, we at least need to have minutes so that there is a record online and easily accessible for citizens to go and find that. So if we can work on that, I'd appreciate it. Thank you. Councilmember Briggs? So I have a few, and I think one that some people are staying for this evening. First, I would like to request a staff update on our pilot work program for the homeless employee to empower. It's been a while since we've seen that presentation. Also I would like for us to, during the budget talks are coming up, to look into water conservation grants similar to our energy grants that would help citizens put in items such as low-flow toilets, rain barrel systems, and zero scaping their lawns. And last, I would like to ask for our mayor and council's consideration to sign on along the list of 257 cities that have committed to the Paris Climate Agreement. And if we do that, what that means for our city. Are you wanting a work session on sort of what is that, what are some implications? Is that what you're sort of wanting, is a discussion on that? Yes, sir. Okay, great. All right. Any others? Councilmember Briggs, anymore? Oh, yeah, I would like to just let the public know that our summer reading challenge, the libraries have kicked that off. And the goal is to help Denton read one million minutes this summer and all ages can sign up. So get to your nearest library and sign up. Great. Councilmember Ryan. Thank you, Mayor. First off, I want to compliment our parks department. Over the weekend, I'd seen on Facebook a leaking irrigation line that someone had posted and sent an email with the picture over to our parks director. And by 8 a.m. on Monday morning, the line was fixed. So along with that, I was doing a little investigating on the – I hope I'm pronouncing this correctly – the Granicus system that we use. And there are a couple of cities out there that have an app that ties in with that, that allows citizens to report such things as potholes or irrigation problems or anything on that line. They can pay their bill through that app. There are several items that they can do that I think that that's something I'd like to see staff look into the possibility down the road, especially as we go more and more paperless and everyone does most everything they do through their phone nowadays. The next item, the item number 6A that we consider on the wayfinding signs, on the funding of that, it appears that we were about $102,000 short from being able to do the entire project. And I would like for us to look at the possibility of using TIF funds to be able to complete that project because I think those wayfinding signs are very important to showing the outside of Denton what we are as a city in directing people around town. And then my last item is my potential outdated code of the week. This one is – it's kind of segmented because I definitely understand the electrical utilities department but 26-2 allows our utility departments to enter any house or premises. And that was the reason for my question yesterday with our wastewater department if they ever went past the curb and they said no. So this 26-2 allows wastewater and water and electric. I can understand electric because the meters are generally attached to the house and there are ways to kind of bypass that situation that someone might be stealing but everything else is in the right of way that I'd like an evaluation of that code. Mayor Potem? Councilman Ryan reminded me of another Granicus update. I think that you can add on something to have the votes show up. So it shows, you know, is a 7.061 vote on items. I had brought that up also in a prior new business so if we 're on the topic of Granicus add-ons if you could add that on. Thank you. I certainly want to get an update from staff and I think staff is working on it on the mobility committee issue that was presented at the citizens report. So I'd like to get an update on that. I think we're working on that. And also if somebody could communicate to Mr. Donnelly. We are working on it. That's something we're doing. Okay. All right. Second, this is coming to us I think is what was reported on the parking on the south side of Hickory. So I certainly don't want to do anything out of order but I mean if that's something that the Traffic Safety Commission is reviewing then that will also come to the City Council for consideration. So I'll be interested to see how that's vetted and some of the information on that. And secondly, lastly, in the discussion this afternoon regarding code developments, one was mentioned about the fire lanes or the width of streets and things such as that and it was stated that the subdivision rules determine street width for residential. I think we really need to have a work session or some dialogue about you can go through old parts of this town and the streets are pretty wide. I mean you're parking on one side, you get cars parking on both sides of the street, you can still get some modicum of traffic through there without it being a big situation. Somewhere down the line that changed so that now the streets are as narrow as they possibly have to be in order to accommodate whatever we're trying to accommodate. I'd like to have a discussion about that because some would say that that's going to deter from market value but I'd like to have a discussion on that because I think even the new streets that are being built are pretty much impassable if you have two cars parked on either side. So work session on that. Let me look and see if there's anything else. To sort of dovetail on to Councilmember Briggs' request for just an overall update on first of all what is the Paris Climate Agreement because I don't know all the ins and outs of that but also during that discussion to bring forward what the city is doing currently for sustainability to sort of have that as a really comprehensive conversation about how are we approaching sustainability, energy conservation, reduce greenhouse gases, to incorporate all that information sort of into the same conversation so we can discuss that. Any no more requests for concluding items? We will stand adjourned at about 840.