Aug 08, 2017 City Council on 2017-08-08 2:00 PM

Let the record reflect that Councilmember Briggs and Councilmember Gregory are absent today. It is 2 o'clock on Tuesday August the 8th 2017. We'll move on to our first agenda item which is Work Session Report 1A . Receive a report and hold discussion to give staff direction regarding the FY 2017-18 budget. Thank you Mayor. I've got a few items of follow-up from the last meeting and then allow for some additional budget discussions of the Council. I think it's only five slides for those who are counting in case you're concerned. I did want to highlight we sent out a budgetary response memorandum trying to answer questions. Some of them are carried forward to the next meeting. We've had some questions on the over 65 exemption on KDB and some others that we're putting together for the next meeting. But I did want to point out in that memo one of the questions was regarding funding of sidewalk replacement. And within there there's some information kind of from our street maintenance staff in terms of sidewalk replacement. So I wanted to point that out. It's page five of six, question seven. And it talks about the funding that's available for this is replacement not new sidewalks. But sidewalks and ADA ramps and then there's an attachment at the back that kind of gives some historical larger projects that have been done with that. So I know there was some questions last week about do we have at least an identified funding source for sidewalk replacement. So I want to let you know that those increasing funds to street maintenance also help cover that. And I know as they're doing replacements of streets they also work on those sidewalks along with that. Secondly I'll go over the current general fund projection with some of the decisions the council made. We have the safer grant but also the additional hundred thousand that will be in remain in the general fund of alcoholic beverage tax. Because of the change in the downtown reinvestment fund. There were some questions on homestead exemptions. I've got a little bit of information. And then there were questions on the supplemental from the fire department on warning sirens in the coverage map. And they'll be coming up to address those questions. So I just wanted to give this is just kind of a one-year look. The only change from what the council saw last time is I've got no transfer to the downtown fund. Which is really kind of an additional hundred thousand in revenue staying in the general fund. So right now we have about five hundred and nineteen thousand revenues greater than expenditures for the proposed budget. That remains at the effective tax rate. And I can pull up if the council would like to on the discussion pull up the unfunded supplemental packages. There were some questions last time. I can pull up that file when we get to the end if you'd like. And I think there was a request to mark on that the one time expenditures as compared to the ongoing. Yes. And there's a column on there when I open that up that should show that. Hopefully it'll show up pretty well on your screen. So in terms of the homestead exemption the question was relating to increasing it. The current homestead exemption is point five percent of the value of the property or five thousand. Whichever is greater. So for the most part on most properties it's the five thousand dollar figure. And we have eighteen thousand eight hundred and ninety properties that qualified for that exemption. In the twenty seventeen tax year and we have you see the number of single family homes so about sixty six percent qualified. It has to be your owned residents to qualify as a homestead exemption of that. We've got seven thousand two hundred and fifty nine of those homestead properties that qualified for the sixty five or older exemption. And two hundred and forty five qualified for the disabled exemption. If you remember last year we raised that disabled exemption to match with the over sixty five. So about forty percent of homestead properties receive one of those two exemptions. In terms of raising the homestead exemption I do want to point out to council unfortunately the state law requires any changes. In that exemption have to occur before July first for the current tax year. So the council could not change that for the current tax year they could change it for the next tax year anytime before July first. But just to kind of run the numbers if we increase from a five thousand to a ten thousand level. That would reduce in seventeen eighteen the property tax revenues by about five hundred and seventy four thousand was the estimate. And another question was could this be offset by any change in the exemption for disabled and sixty five and older. And offset that property tax revenue loss you would have to decrease the other from about fifty thousand to thirty eight thousand. And with that I'm going to bring up the fire department to go over those two. And then if the council would like me to after that I can open up those general fund supplemental packages. Mayor Pro Tem has a question. So does the five hundred seventy four thousand dollar number represent every five thousand dollar increase in the homestead exemption. Yes I mean at some point it might decrease just because the values everyone might not hit that maximum. But in terms of that it's an estimate for every five thousand increase. And how does the offsetting process how would that even affect the senior tax freeze because the taxes will be frozen as of this year. Yeah it would in order to impact any of them that were frozen this year the change would have to be made this year . If you make the change in a following year it just impacts those who taxes are frozen for the first year that year. OK so then would it still be that would that number still be correct because we're talking about. The number would not be the offsetting number would not be correct because you're really only probably talking about a few hundred properties. OK. OK thank you. Yes. I'm going to call up Mike Penaluna who is the emergency management program manager to go over their request. I'll let you open it up. Mike Penaluna the city's emergency management program manager in the fire department mayor and council members. I was asked to give a presentation on the city's outdoor warning siren system specifically what we have currently and a proposed new locations. And so what you see on the current map is where the American Signal Corporation sirens that we use that are called Tempus T one twenty eight decibels. Sixteen locations throughout the city just real briefly. West Windsor at Westgate Evers Park Kings Row at Mary Ann Schmitz at Mingo Mockingbird at Paisley Ector at Sena Sena Bonnie Bray at Willowwood Fort Worth Drive at I-35E Teasley at Hobson McNair Elementary at the Lake Lewisville water treatment plant. There's one at Robeson Ranch and there are four on the UNT campus parking lot 36 South Welch at Maple the campus power plant in our campus drive 1921 Chestnut Drive the building and one at Discovery Park. And so you can see gaps in coverage as the city has continued to grow and expand. And so that's current. What we would like to propose is to implement 10 new locations to help with some of that coverage area with the first year being three new locations at Ryan High School. Those in blue Ryan High School C.H. Collins Stadium ATC area and Pecan Creek Elementary and then seven locations in red in the subsequent years to cover additional areas that don't have a siren at those neighborhoods right now. And so each siren runs about twenty five thousand each twenty four thousand seven hundred dollars and for three additional seventy four thousand one hundred dollars. But the package also includes new software to activate the sirens, including an automated feature similar to code red. So when a tornado warning goes out, for example, and the National Weather Service determines the path of the tornado and draws that polygon that you see on TV. The same system that sends out that notification that activates code red to call those homes and cell phones in that area would trigger the sirens in that warned area to automatically activate. So that's part of this system is to upgrade our software program so it matches current standards. And for that feature is eighteen thousand one hundred twenty five dollars. And so the total package and requests that we're asking for is ninety two thousand two hundred and twenty five dollars. Yes, Mayor. Real quick question. I'm looking at the ones around you and the cluster of three or four. Yes, sir. Did they did they help provide some of the funding for that? Yes, sir. Those were you and he had those initially. And in 2002, the city of Denton and University of North Texas entered into an interlocal agreement where you and he paid for the cost to replace three older sirens on the campus with the same ones we have now that American Signal Tempest T one twenty eight and add one additional siren and entered into a maintenance agreement for the sirens. The city and our vendor, Gifford Electric, paid for the cost of the siren and you and he reimbursed the amount back to the city. The four sirens were turned over to the city to be maintained. The sirens are located on property, as you mentioned, but the city and the maintenance vendor are granted access to the sites for maintenance and repair. Now, that's my main question was the funding, because while I mean, it seems like there's a tremendous amount of overlapping coverage, especially on that three cluster. Yes, sir. So but since it is their money, doesn't matter. I was going to say, gosh, I mean, could we not use one of those somewhere else? But they paid for it, so it seems like they're right on top of each other. But and they're the same decibel as the others that I mean, that that that circle represents the decibel. Yes, sir. OK, great. Thanks. Any other questions? Was that was that that's the presentation? Yes, sir. OK, good. All right. Any questions? All right. Thank you, Mike. Appreciate it. Thank you. You bet. Let me just pull up that table. Yes, please. I know the council has several other items, but if they would like to have some discussion on that, we 're available to do that. Well, that's right. There was that column. Keep forgetting. Mayor Pro Tem has a question about the hom estead exemption. Yes. So if the homestead exemption is five thousand or. Wait, oh, five percent of the value. Some of the properties are going to be valued at, you know, three hundred thousand dollars or four hundred thousand dollars. That's a twenty thousand dollar homestead exemption. It's whichever is less, I think it has its five thousand. Whichever is greater. Whichever is greater. You're talking about one half of one percent. Oh, point oh five. Yeah. OK, zero five. Yeah, I thought I saw point five. I'm sorry. I think it's point five percent. So half a percent. OK. And you were talking about the one time cost, Mayor, in terms of the one time cost. They're in this column here and that's where the early warning sirens were. And there was some discussion last week about the explosive magazine and security. So I wasn't sure that 14000 if that was a yes from the council to be included. I didn't get fully clear direction on that one. Well, I mean, just my comment is, first of all, what a great job that the fire department did in securing this grant. And that it does provide a little bit of I mean, like it was discussed last time, we could just let all that savings in there to the benefit of the general fund. Or we could say, well, if we didn't have this grant, we're limited in what we could do. It's all still the same. So how do we increase our efficiency of that? And so for me, I mean, when I look at the fire department's supplemental request, one time costs, we've already heard from about the early warning sirens. And then the others are 24000 plus 450. So 24,450. Of those, as far as the explosive magazine and security, I think that's very important. And if that's a one time cost, I certainly don't have an issue with both the sirens and the one time cost. And in no way am I trying to say, hey, we've got newfound money, I'm going to spend it all. But this is public safety and it was a public safety grant. And so I think that we should look at how do we improve the public safety based upon the requests by the fire department first, I think, because they secured the grant. I mean, I think that's I think that's to me, that would only be fair. And then we can look at the police department to say, hey, if we were to look at this as a public safety issue, sort of as an umbrella category, then we could look at what would be helpful in that regard on a one time cost. And so my two that I'm just throwing out there for discussion and certainly open the floor up to any other discussions on any of those or none of them is the early warning siren and the explosive magazine and security. Any other comments, questions? I'm in agreement with that. I agree with that. OK, yes, I do, too. OK, well, and that's great. I guess I'm also throwing the question out. Is there I mean, because that's going to leave still another I think three hundred thousand dollars or something like that from the grant. I'm not using the hundred thousand for the downtown incentive. So that's all you want to do. I'm OK with that. Just wanted to open it up. Yes. Chuck, you mentioned cash funding for capital projects, mainly vehicle purchases. What would it take to do that for the the general fund vehicles, the vehicles that are purchased back into that? Well, the general fund vehicles in this upcoming year, about three point eight million. What we talked about doing was trying to reach at some point at least the replacement of police vehicles, which is about seven hundred and fifty thousand a year, because that's something we do every year. Some of the others are more intermittent in terms of some of the fire equipment when it's replaced is pretty large. And as well as you've got, we do the street improvement equipment replacement out of that and all the other general fund equipment. OK, so and we've got basically about what percentage are we paying by debt financing, how much extra if we had if we were able to cash fund one hundred thousand. Is that about an eighteen thousand dollar savings over that ? That bond period or is that? Well, I mean, you save it over time over a five or six year period. You can come out even on the tax rate. But over a five year period at one hundred thousand, you're probably a little bit less than twenty five thousand a year in debt service savings over the five year period. A lot of the equipment is financed over a five year period. The police vehicle, so you're probably five year period at twenty five thousands, one hundred and twenty five thousand , maybe a little bit less than that with interest. But somewhere around that figure for every hundred thousand that you cash funded, you'd save that much on the debt service side on an annual basis. And I guess where I'm going to is whether we're saving the taxpayers today or we're saving we can save more by maybe moving some of this money into cash funding of in replacement of debt in the long term. So in order to undertake cash funding, would we need to specifically designate those funds for something or could we put it in reserve and then use that as cash funding later? You mean leave it in the general fund balance? Yes. My recommendation would be to designate it for cash funding of a specific item like vehicles and then we would show it within the capital budget. We'd reduce the debt issuance for that and show cash funding of that by a hundred thousand or some kind of figure like that. What on a five year bond, what's the rate, interest rate? Right now we're somewhere probably around the twos to two and a half. Two to two and a half. That's my only, not hesitation because you're not talking about a whole lot of money. I guess my thought is how many police cars do we typically purchase a year? You said it's $750,000. Did you say a year in police vehicle replacement? Generally, I think that's probably about 12. It's probably somewhere around 12 to 15 per year. I'm getting nods from over there that I came close. There's Lee, I was looking for the police chief. Because I guess we could either do that or we could not lower the rate by four and a half cents. So I would just say a penny was a million dollars or something like that. Because I like the idea of, hey, can we just start out with police vehicles? Maybe cash funding those. How do we get to a point of doing that? Because when you're looking at cash funding five million, it's going to take a while, sort of bite off in little chunks. So I guess when I look at the general fund balance, and I think, okay, we've used it sometimes to make up for the cemetery issue. We thought, well, let's do that. We've certainly, every year that I can remember the last at least two or three or four years, our fund has grown beyond what we had budgeted for in the forecast. So even like this year, I don't have an issue with maybe leaving the 100,000 in the general fund, but why don't we say, well, maybe we'll start out buying two vehicles this year, just cash, just take it out of the fund balance. I mean, instead of trying to set aside this little account for 100,000, because I know it's there to cover our expenses, to cover our bond ratings. But it's also there to, I mean, if we have a need that we really feel needs to be addressed, how do we do that? So I'm okay with the 100,000, I just don't, it's going to take what? Six, seven, I mean, how many years are you talking about to get to where we're funding something that cash funding that? I mean, if we're going to do it, let's do it. If we're not, if we need to buy them, let's just buy them, two or three of them and finance the rest. I mean, start somewhere. That's sort of my thought, so go ahead. >> Well, and I used 100,000 just to get a feel for how much interest we would be paying in what our long term savings to the taxpayer is. >> Right. >> But looking at it, if we've got 519,000 of so-called found money in the budget. >> Well, 419, if you're not counting the 100,000 from the, it's 419 plus the 100,000 from the trend, we quit taking that. >> Right, right, so that's 519,000 in between the fire department items, you're left with about 400,000. >> Right. >> That maybe we designate 300,000 or something to that extent that would at least get the ball rolling on the cash funding because again, that's savings to the taxpayer long term. >> Yeah, whether we do that or we take out a general fund, doesn't matter, same thing. If we left it in there, it comes out. >> Yeah, and so yeah, that $100,000 that I don't consider that necessarily found money, we just reallocated it. >> Yeah, we reallocated it. >> So I don't really, for me, I would really want to stay within the boundary of the grant that was really truly money that's come in through the work of our fire department that has given us a relief of 419,000 that we're not funding with the fire department. But the 100,000 was money that in the past we've been putting into the downtown reinvestment grant that we said now, if we're going to fund that, it's gonna be through the TIF or the TIF could actually handle. >> Right, so it just comes back to the general fund. >> Less money spent out of the general fund that was assumed when the budget was put together was going to be spent. >> Yeah, well, fair enough, I'm just saying, me personally, I'm not necessarily wanting to allocate that to something specifically. I was wanting to do it, but that's just me. >> I'm just saying thank you. >> Okay, all right. Council Member Hesbitt. >> Chuck, can we go back to you, I think it's your second slide, the figures you have there, please, and thank you. Yes, thank you. So the downtown fund transfer, I thought we were still gonna have conversations about that . And I'd like to have that at least carry over to our first or second, probably second citizen comment period personally. Now, where that goes, that's just me. That's my preference. And a lot of that kind of comes from information gathering. I want to understand the Jack Bell's plans better in that zone. That changes that dynamic quite a bit, depending on what he 's doing there. And so there's just some new stuff that I'd like to research and explore before I agree outside looking into that. So that's my only note initially is it sounds like we're walking away from that, but I want to put a bookmark there that I still would like to discuss that further. And I don't have all the information I'd like to have regarding options there. Thank you. >> What you're saying is whether it stays a transfer or not , you're not wanting to necessarily use that 100,000 to say we have this additional money to provide for supplemental funds. You sort of want to set it aside saying, hey, I don't know what the disposition of this money is gonna be yet. And so we don't want to allocate it if we need it somewhere else. >> Yes, and I guess to do that timely. I wasn't sure where we were last week on it, but this week sounds like it was further along than I understood. So I wanted to at least put a bookmark there that that's where I am in my thinking. >> Okay, good, thank you, appreciate that. >> Well, I will include those one time items in next week's presentation and give you new numbers. And if you'd like me to, I'll drop in a little bit for cash funding of vehicles and just to show you how it looks. >> Sure. >> And I'll try to analyze a little bit if we did the 300, 000 that remains, how much that would save us in debt service. I can do that analysis for the next meeting. >> And Mayor Pro Tem? >> Remind me how much, we did a budget amendment recently to reallocate funds towards police vehicles, correct, for this budget cycle? >> No, what we did was based on some of the reductions that we've done in personnel, we authorized the police to go forward with the hiring of five personnel in the current fiscal year, five patrol personnel and one crime analyst, kind of based on the time it takes for them to go through training and get on the street so that we authorized them to kind of move forward in June at the next testing time to include that in the testing. >> Okay, so there were no vehicles, it was just- >> No, the- >> I think I'm confused with the vehicles because it was the confiscation fund, maybe? >> We planned for new vehicles out of the general fund and the confiscation fund that are proposed in this budget as packages in terms of new vehicles for patrol and then some new vehicles for the criminal investigative bureau. And those are kind of split between the general fund and the police seizure fund, but that's within, would be approved in this budget. It hasn't started yet. If approved in this budget, that will go forward. >> And the part that the general fund paid for would be debt paid for is what you're saying? >> No, these are initial purchases of vehicles, so it would be cash funded. What we're talking about is replacement of vehicles that we do the debt funding for. So usually the initial purchase is with a supplemental package, so to speak, but then it's the replacement of all of those vehicles that is done through debt funding. >> Okay. >> Well, I think too, if the fund balance represents a percentage of our expenses, and our revenues and expenses continue to go up, then we almost have to have built in to the budget some excess of revenues to expenses so that the fund balance can continue to stay at that certain, as we saw out in the five year forecast. So I guess, yeah, drop something in, a couple hundred thousand or whatever, see how it works out. And if you could go back to the list on the chart if you don't mind, because I want to make sure that we do have some kind of sustainability in the fund balance, which you have to build in excess revenues over expenses. But if the police chief could maybe, the police department had three, is that three, yeah, three supplemental requests, I guess, one time at least, is that right? >> Well, just a portion of it. >> A portion of it. >> If you look at the personnel, we'll have a portion of that that's one time, but it's related to the whole package . >> Okay, but there's still an ongoing out of that. >> Yeah, an ongoing expense. There's just, when you hire someone new, there's some one time up front, and then the majority is ongoing. >> Okay, great. >> Yeah, I think that's a good plan, Chuck. >> Okay, I will come back. >> Is that okay, Council Member Ryan? Is that okay? >> I'll come back at the next meeting with that information and some other data that's been requested by the council. >> Thank you. Okay, we'll move on to agenda item 1B, which is receive information and updates and hold a discussion on the Texas Open Meetings Act and associated relevant law. >> Allow me to just pull up my report here. >> Okay, thank you, Mayor and Council. Today we're going to talk a little bit about the Open Meet ings Act, and I know you are all familiar because you're government officials with the act. Since you do have to take a training class in it. But we were requested to just focus on a couple of areas of law regarding the act that perhaps there was some confusion on, and so we went ahead and put together some slides for you that were in your backup, and so we'll go ahead and go forward with that presentation . Obviously, you know that all government meetings are subject to public scrutiny. So they need to be in the open. They have to be officially recorded. There has to be a notice at least 72 hours in advance as to the particular items that you're going to discuss. But what we needed to talk about was how that particular act is actually triggered. And the act isn't triggered unless there's a quorum of members and unless there's public business being deliberated or discussed or there's a formal action being taken. We're going to get to what constitutes a quorum and how and what's considered deliberation and discussion. It is not triggered when you're discussing an item of community interest, as you know. When you're giving an expression of thanks, holiday schedules, recognizing an individual, upcoming events, whether the government sponsors it or not, or announcements involving imminent threats. Those are considered items of community interests that are not subject to the act. Additionally, you can participate in a social event and so long as any public discussion is just incidental to that event, then you don't have to post it. If you're in a state or national sponsored workshop, a convention, you're giving testimony in front of legislature or at a press conference, you don't need to abide by the TOMA regulations. This is just a little bit of a refresher screen so that we can remind you that you have to have a quorum to convene an official meeting. You can only take actions on the items posted. There are matters you can discuss on the agenda. That's when you're answering a question from the public or just giving a general factual information response or you're reciting existing policy or placing an item on a future agenda. You have to vote in public. Obviously, we went through this and you were provided a status report on straw voting and what that is. That requires an official determination at a later time that you're actually voting on. Giving direction to staff or anything like that is not considered straw voting. And the quorum itself does not require a physical presence of each other. So you can have a quorum of members without being in the same room. And a lot of times people mistake that. I know that the AG opinion came out with some cases regarding email correspondence. And if there's a string of emails where you're discussing public business, then that could also constitute a quorum. It doesn't have to be verbal, it can also be in writing. >> Councilmember Hussbett has a question. >> Yes. >> If you're going to touch on it, then ignore my question. But my question is regarding what you just talked about. What is the process to get an AG opinion? So what is that? I guess two things. What is that process? And then are those only challenged if someone takes issue with it? And what is that process? >> Well, there's two types of AG opinions. There's an opinion on existing law and then there's opinions on a specific open records request. Are you discussing the first type of opinion? >> Give me my options again. >> The first kind of opinion is when they're actually issuing an opinion on the state of the law, on the existing law. Whether something is, it's almost like an advisory opinion. But it has to do with a current situation. The second one is when a member of the public has made an open records request and you're saying, hey, I can withhold some of these items from these documents. >> Got it. No, the former. >> The former. >> The former cannot be done by a council member and can't be done by the city attorney's office. We would have to have a representative, a state representative or a congressman of some sort ask the question for us. They would forward that request to the AG's office and then the opinion would issue according to that request. And we're going to talk about this a little bit more in detail because we're going to talk about social media, which is a new thing that really hasn't been addressed thoroughly in the law and it's in a matter of flux. So we're going to discuss what we do know and perhaps how we can analogize this to current decisions that are currently out there. TOMA can be applied to meetings even less than a quorum and we're going to talk about that a little bit more later and what a walk in quorum is. Just to refresh again, you can go into executive session when you're in an open meeting. There's discretionary closed meetings and there are mandatory closed meetings. The first part just runs down some of the more common closed sessions that you've seen and I think we beat this to death. So you pretty much know what those are. A walk in quorum is what we have to be most concerned with. This is also called a daisy chain. When you have say three members who get together, sure it's less than a quorum, a quorum for you all is four. But if one of those members consults with another member at a later time, then that's actually a quorum that could be a violation of TOMA, especially if you're discussing city business. That's considered a walk in quorum because it doesn't have all of you together in one space, but eventually it equals a quorum. And there was a case called Esperanza Peace and Justice Center v. City of San Antonio. And in that case, it was found that there was a walk in qu orum. The city manager actually called in certain members of the council in his office individually so that it was always less than a quorum in order to discuss budgeting arts funding for LGBT arts. And that was considered a walk in quorum because there was an intent to circumvent the act. >> I just had a question on that. >> Mm-hm. >> If we go back to the last slide. Just- >> As if I know how to go back to the last slide. >> Okay, that's all right. Because it says, and I know this has nothing to do with the presence or lack thereof of a walk in quorum. I'm just, this is just more of a question. So my understanding, at least on your summary of that case, was there was a walk in quorum. And then the city manager prepared a memorandum basically expressing that some kind of consensus had been, I mean. >> Yeah, so and there was an agee opinion that was similar to where a letter was signed on behalf of all the members when they didn't have an initial meeting to talk about what was going to go in that letter. It's sort of the same kind of deal here where the memorand um, there wasn't a meeting on which- >> But it was expressed that council had sort of come to a consensus. >> Come to a consensus and the quorum was in agreement with what was going on in the memorandum. Now this followed a case that was actually, because this one was out of San Antonio, but there was a case out of Houston called the Hispanic Education. I call it the Hispanic Education case, but in that case, it was determined that if there's no quorum, there's just no meeting. And if there's no meeting, then the act's not triggered. And so that's been a split in the law that hasn't been clearly determined. So if you say you're on a social media website or email and you have three individual members, well that's not a quorum , so therefore the act's not triggered. Well in Houston you'd be okay, but in San Antonio maybe you wouldn't be okay. They distinguish it by saying if you intend to circumvent the act, it's your intention, it makes the difference. But you would have to do it with the hope that there wouldn 't be any intention found. That's not going to keep you from getting a lawsuit. One thing that the legislature did do, because it didn't address social media, was that it put in in 2013 these online message board rules , and I think we're all familiar with that because we had a session on that, perhaps Mr. Duff and Mr. Ryan. I don't think we're involved in that session, but we were given the opportunity to actually do this for the city, and I think that the council declined in that case. But in this case, you can do it on a web page so far as it 's one click away, and you can all participate. But you can't have any other page that's considered a formal page for the city or an official page. So as we go into social media, one thing that you have to keep in mind is the Public Information Act, which is associated with relevant law to the Texas Open Media Act. Because it requires that we retain certain information and only destroy it according to the act. What isn't known is that under both acts, it specifically defines the government body as the government body as a whole, but the law has interpreted that to mean the actual officials as well. So it applies individually to you, and you can see that here by the, I believe this was a 2013 amendment on number three, where it says, any information collected is symboled or maintained by or on behalf of the government body by an individual officer or employee of a government body and the officer's or employee's official capacity, excuse me. Any information pertains to official business of the government body. So that just means that any of your information, so long as it has to do with city business, is subject to the Public Information Act. And that can be on a smartphone, that can be your personal email, that can be your social media account. And this is the next section of that. And it describes what's considered public information. And C, it actually includes email, internet postings, text message, instant message, and other electronic communication. So that's going to include your social media. So basically to extrapolate that, we're going to say that TOMA and PIA probably do apply to Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, and LinkedIn, any type of social media that you're involved in. In fact, I did notice that there was a proposed rule that was filed in May of 2017, it was May of this year, for the Texas Library and Archive Commission. They're actually requiring retention of social media now, as far as the proposed rule. It hasn't been adopted yet. So anytime you're making a post that's having to do with city business, then it's probably going to be subject to disclosure under PIA. And you have to be extremely careful whether or not you're going to be wrapped up in a quorum. Any of your posts as well fall squarely in the definition of a local government record. And that's under section 201, 03 of the Texas Local Government Code. These records can only be destroyed in a certain systematic way. And if you do it differently, it's a class A misdemeanor. And that leads you to think, well, what if I delete one of my posts on social media? Is that destroying a public record? Well, it very well could be. You do have a right of privacy under the Public Information Act. But when it has to do with city business, the Attorney General has determined that that outweighs the rights of privacy so long as it doesn't get into your, what we call the 552-101 exception, which is a privacy exception under industrial foundation. Another thing that I noticed regarding the social media is when there are posts out there, we talk about certain matters with just a certain sect of the public. And really, those matters need to be open to all of the public. And that could be considered selective disclosure, which is also a problem under the act. Having said that, and I do have case law down here, there was a case, and I think it was Rangarie Brown that concerned the city of Al pine. And I don't know how many are familiar with the case, but in that particular case, the members of the city council were indicted under the criminal provisions of the Texas Open Meetings Act for, I think it was email infractions, it was a daisy chain of emails. And they actually brought a challenge against the Attorney General on the criminal provisions of the Open Meetings Act, saying that it was content-based discrimination under First Amendment rules. And the court actually, the Fifth Circuit, the district court actually found that elected official speech was not considered under First Amendment. And then the Fifth Circuit came back and said, wait, yes it is. And it's considered under a standard in law we call strict scrutiny. And that just means that we have to show that we have narrowly tailored our law to compelling government interest . And so they had remanded the case to have it kind of re- looked at under the strict scrutiny standard. There was a request for re-hearing on bonk because it was just a portion of the Fifth Circuit. And before that could be done, one of the council members fell off the council and so it was mooted out. So we have no idea what the result of that would have been. >> Councilmember Ryan has a question. >> Yeah, on your fifth bullet point there on 552007. >> Are we talking about closed groups on Facebook? If it's public information already and you are just discussing something with somebody on one of those closed groups, you're not in violation at that point, are you? >> You could potentially be in violation. If it's something that's already passed and it's not likely to come in front of you again, you might have a little bit more of an argument. But if you have public information that you're disclosing, then it's going to be probably a public record. If it's passed what we call administratively valuable, say you're just giving information regarding an event of some sort and that event has passed, then it doesn't matter if you delete it or anything like that, you don't have to retain it. >> And I guess where I'm going to is if there's something that's in our standard backup that a question's asked and the public hasn't read through the backup portion of it, and the question's asked of us, can you explain what's going on on this and we've made a post on a closed group? If it's in the public realm on the city website, is it then in violation for us to post on that closed? >> Well, it depends on what the violation is. If you do post that, then it becomes a public record. So you have a public record. If you delete it or anything like that, you could be in violation. If somebody requests it, you don't turn it over, it's potential violation. And then you have the open meetings aspect of it. And if you have other members of the council on the same website also timing in on that particular city business, then you could have a problem with Open Meet ings Act. So it really depends on the facts and the courts have determined that it is a question of fact, not a question of law. >> May I approach it? So regarding the, did you change the slide? I'm sorry. >> Yes. I'm using my up and down. Was that the one? >> Okay, sorry, I'll pull it up. The, what Councilman Ryan is saying regarding the closed groups. If you post something on a personal account, it's only view able by your friends. So isn't that a closed group already? >> It is a closed group, but I think I put it down here too . It's about as private as your least private friend. There was actually, that was made into a case with the AG and they had in DICTA kind of determined that just because you think you're in a closed group, that friend could be friends with another member who also shares that information. And so they said even though it's restricted by a password and your own personal account, that it's still subject to the AG, both acts. >> So your personal account is considered an open group? I'm not following you. >> It doesn't matter. It's just there's another provision saying you can't select ively disclose. So it would be that and you would also fall under, if someone asks you to hand over the records, that violation. Or if you, you probably wouldn't have a quorum in that respect, but you could have a quorum potentially if you have enough people linked. >> Okay. >> It's just a separate violation. >> It just doesn't make any sense to me, that's all. So, okay, thank you. >> Well, if we find additional information on that, we can include it in your staff's report. What a lot of people don't realize is that when you have a chain of council members on the same website, that even though you're not talking to each other, it can still be considered a deliberation if you're talking to a third party. We've already gone over the public records. And what I didn't realize, yes? >> Yes, Mayor Portem. >> In order for it to be a deliberation, wouldn't the other people have to know that you're communicating with a third party? >> I'm sorry, let me rephrase that. It can be with a third party, but the third party, if they share the information with other members or discuss it with them, they're acting as a conduit. >> Okay, that's, I just want to clarify. >> I'm sorry, yes, yes. What I didn't realize is that Twitter had actually, has sent its digital archive over to the Library of Congress since 2006. So all of its public tweets are stored at the Library of Congress, which is interesting. So that's sort of more of an argument for that they are under subject to some sort of scrutiny or regulation. And I believe the President's tweets right now are being argued as a federal document, a federal government document . And we've gone over that it doesn't have to be verbal, it can be in writing. And the retention time for any of these is going to be along the same retention time as emails. And the way that we do those in the city is that we do it by subject matter. So we don't say all emails are held for two years. We say, what is the email about? Is it about an event that's passed? Okay, that can be deleted. If it's about certain other city businesses, that substance is going to go toward the retention schedule. And these are just some of the penalty provisions. If you meet in less than a quorum, these are all class C misdemeanors when it has to do with the Open Meetings Act. That's if you go into a closed meeting when you know an agenda's not being kept. If you call a closed meeting where it's clearly not permitted. And we've already gone over that to a great extent. Again, if you knowingly disclose a certified agenda or tape during a closed meeting, then that's a class B. So that's treated a little bit differently. There's also the ability for a civil lawsuit. And any acts, any official acts that you take that are in violation of the Open Meetings Act are considered voidable. So depending on the facts of the case, it could be voided. >> Question. >> Yes. >> So help me on this first bullet point. >> Yes. >> So there's probably a distinction. I know that we changed something. We changed our provisions where we used to have that if you disclosed the content of a closed meeting, that that was a violation under city ordinance and that there was an argument brought that it was free speech. And so we took that out, if I remember correct. I guess I'm the, we took that out, I believe. >> Yes, we did. That was the former 2-30. >> Yes. So here, I see an individual who knowingly discloses the certified agenda, which is a document. Or a tape recording of a closed meeting to a member of the public is blah, blah, blah, blah. So it's only under those two circumstances. If you go out here and say something about what was said, even though you haven't tape recorded it, you're okay. And because you also haven't disclosed the content of a certified agenda. Is that, am I right on that thinking? >> I'm not sure how you distinguish the first and last items that you said. >> Well, what I'm saying, we took out a provision in our local ordinances that said that we were saying, you can't go out and disclose what was talked about in a closed session as a council member. Or you faced, I think it was a, what was it? >> It was a class C misdemeanor or censure. There was different types of penalties, yes. >> So in essence, and we changed that because there was a- >> Free speech. >> Saying, okay, free speech. So help me understand how the free speech argument doesn't apply to that first bullet point as well. >> Free speech is a little bit more esoteric whereas certified agenda tape recording are more tangible. >> So that's what I'm saying. It has to be either one of those things, very specifically. >> Yeah, so for example, when a council member wasn't here and they want to review the closed session tape, they can't even take it for themselves and go to another location. And they have to review it at the city secretary's office for that reason. >> So you can't disclose a certified agenda, but you can talk about all day long what you talked about pertaining to that certified agenda. >> Barring any other confidentiality provisions. >> Sure, right. >> That's true. >> That's correct. >> That absolutely makes no sense to me whatsoever. I mean, am I wrong in that? >> First amendment is tricky. >> Okay, all right. Okay, just making sure that I'm thoroughly confused. Go ahead. >> This was meant to provide more information, not less, but we can actually put that in. >> No, I'm not saying that's probably the correct information. I'm just saying it seems inconsistent with the action that we took about free speech and content. But I do get it. They're saying, if I handed you a certified agenda out of a closed meeting, I could be a violation. If I walked out of a closed meeting and said, hey, this is what we talked about in here, I'm okay. So that's my understanding of it. >> All right, that's good. >> Fantastic, yep. >> The Public Information Act, which is the most concerning with the social media. In fact, I think we had a request for Facebook post of a council member last year that we had to look for, I believe. And so the council member was made to turn over those posts . So this is reality right now. The problem is that we have, the courts have determined that there's no compelling way that we could force the information to be turned over. So although it's subject to the act, all we can do is request it, and that's due diligence enough. Another thing that we received was an email from a citizen. It was posing a couple of questions regarding our agenda items. And I don't know if all of you have had the opportunity to read that email. It was from Mr. David Zoltner. In that email, he asked that whether or not the different types of speakers were able to ask questions, receive answers. And I think talked directly to one particular council member instead of the body. And in looking at the rules, and he admits that open mic that we can regulate that. But in looking at the rules on B, I'm not real sure that I do agree with his assessment. The city council meetings have been determined to be a limited public forum for the purposes of the First Amendment. And so that's been well settled in law. And that just means that we're opening up our area for a limited purpose, for limited discussion that's specifically stated. And the way that our current agendas are written, it does not allow for any type of discussion or a requirement that you answer questions or anything like that regarding the citizen reports. Now I know that I think that they are registered, they're pre-registered in advance. But the way that the agenda is stated, there is no obligation. So I don't know there is a potential where you could rest ate the agenda if you so desire to allow for that. I don't know how you want to handle those things. >> Okay, I'm not sure, because I did read that email. And so are you saying that the way that we post our, and you're not referring to any other part of the agenda, you 're specifically talking about the citizen reports, agenda item B that we have a posting that says, Mr. and Mrs. Smith are coming to talk to us about X, something specific. There's a specific subject matter on that. My understanding is because of it being posted that if the council wanted to discuss, have an interaction with the speaker, that they could. Because it would be a proper posting in order to not violate the Texas Open Meetings Act, I guess. Whereas agenda item C, which is the open mic, it has really no posting. I mean, there's really nothing there, so to have any discussion would be in violation of that. Is that my understanding? We just don't have an obligation to engage, but if we needed to engage. >> In my opinion, it allows you to ask questions. A citizen report, you can ask additional questions for yourself. But as far as deliberation as a board, you cannot, or I'm sorry, the council, you cannot do that without particular posting saying you're going to deliberate it. >> Okay. >> Or discuss it. What we would say would be discuss or take action. Receive report, discuss or take action. And the whole point of the C, of course, is that you wouldn 't have any notice and the general public at large wouldn't have any notice as to what you're going to say. You wouldn't have the most updated and accurate information in order to respond. Okay? Okay, all right, okay. All right. Thank you. >> So I think that's all of the information that I was asked to cover, but if you have any other questions. >> Well, I know in that email he did also, and we've talked about this, I think, on several different occasions, but just as a refresher. I thought we had on a couple different occasions. On the review of citizens' procedures where it talks about what can be said to whom or not to whom in the little video we play ahead of time. >> Mm-hm. >> That that particular video as far as addressing to the whole body, not addressing it to a single council member, slanderous or defamed kind of language. >> I believe that Mr. Zoltner has said on a couple of occasions that that might be a violation of free speech to restrict that kind of speech during that particular agenda item. Do we have any thoughts or research or anything on that? >> Well, because it's a limited public forum, we're allowed reasonable time and place restrictions, so the timing would be important in that discussion. Like I said, this is a fact intensive question, so it would depend on what the subject matter is if it conform s to the item that's been posted on the agenda. To me, you're representing a report to the body as a whole, so it wouldn't be right to specifically sort of pinpoint one council member in your discussion. But I think free speech would call for that in certain circumstances. In certain circumstances, it may not, which we can actually provide to you in a staff report. >> Yeah, could you provide some additional, on that specifically? because that's been a question that's been raised a couple of times here recently. So I'd like to really get some, I don't know if it's going to be clear, but some differing observations or research on that. Because we certainly want to make sure we're within the bounds of the law. And I just think it would be nice to address that specific question of that particular video and what the instructions are, how does that comport with the limited forum, with addressing someone singularly, if we don't allow them to do that, if that is or is not a violation of free speech. Obviously, what can you say that might come across as sl anderous or, I mean, just a review of that video and how that- >> I did look at the transcript of what the video states and to me, there was no errors in the transcript. What it states is factually true. If there are additional facts for that specific situation, it may be different. But as a general rule, that provision is okay. >> One of the things I want to add to the, if you listen carefully to that video, it doesn't say that if you engage during those public comment sections that it will be an open meetings act. It says it may lead to an open meetings act. And as Jennifer had mentioned earlier, how the, I'll call them the 3B items, which are the actual posted public comment items are worded . In some cases, it may be sufficient to ask the questions. In other cases, you don't know where, if you go beyond asking questions, you could potentially head down the road to open meetings act. And that's how that video is worded. It doesn't say that it definitely will be a violation. As far as the addressing the specific council role procedure that addresses the, requires that citizens address their questions and comments to the councils as opposed to individual members. That is a rule of procedure that the constitution granted the city through its charter to adopt rules of procedure and decorum at its meetings. And so I know in the past I've heard individuals say that there's nothing in the open meetings act that covers that particular rule. That's correct, because it's not an open meetings act rule. It's a rule of decorum that you've, or your predecessor council years ago passed. And so I just also wanted to make that distinction because there was a misconception in the past that it's somehow related to the open meetings act, but it's not. >> Okay, and I agree with that. I think what I'm asking is, and that's good to know the history of that. I haven't heard the historical context before. But I think the question has been raised. Do those rules that say, hey, address it to the body, you can't say certain things, obviously. Does that violate a person's rights of free speech if they 're coming up to talk to us? That's what I want a little, I mean I understand about the transcript part that says it may be a violation. It's not saying that it is. I'm talking about these restrictions that we put on people who come up during citizen reports to address us as far as what can they say? That's really what my question is as far as they address, they address me, the mayor specifically. Well, Mr. Mayor, this is the citizen's report and I think you're doing a sorry job and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, I mean, according to that video, somebody could call out of order, please address it to the council as a whole. Please refrain from any personal or slanderous remarks. If that happened, and you probably can't answer that because there might not be case law on that. But I'm just wanting to have a little bit clearer understanding of that because it's been raised. I mean, people don't, it's been raised not very many times. But it just seems like it's a lingering question out there and I'd just like to get some better foundation for it. People are very respectful. People are very courteous when they come. They also can be very passionate. And I certainly want people to feel that they have the opportunity to come share with the council what it is they really need to say. And I just want to understand as the person who runs the meeting what the rule is. So that's really what I'm asking about. We can certainly take a look at that specific issue and provide a future update. If there's definitive case law out there, then we'll be happy to present it in an open session. Sure. If there isn't, which I suspect that might be the case, we can do that in the legal status report. Okay, good. All right, thank you. I appreciate that. Yes, Council Member Hudsworth. I may be writing the dissenting opinion here. But for me, all great information. What's the mechanism to trigger it? Right? I mean, what is that? What are we going to actually do? Right? So if someone addresses me individually, am I going to have one of our officers remove them? No. But we have it in there, right? So for me, if it were me, I'm more of a, let's just get down to the just of it. No expletives, and we reserve the right to remove you at any point for anything. And I mean, really, let's tailor to actionable things, right? Because we have a rule set out that says, well, this may be that. This possibly could be this. This might be that. And it's all based on attorney general decisions that say, hey, this might be that. And this might be this. And that position changes. The time changes. I mean, so for me, I'd rather have something actionable that we're going to do, right? If someone goes over time, we don't summon the officer and have them removed. We let them finish because that's courteous to do. But if someone were to go into an expletive tirade, we would probably have them removed. Comfortable with that. So I think it needs to be, in my opinion, tailored to actionable items that remove those questions versus trying to nail down the questions. And I'll go back to this every time because I don't know that I still understand the definition of is, right? And so we can argue over words and actions and intents and have attorney general opinions and have that run up and down the flagpole, but I would just narrowly tailor it to, hey, comport yourself and use polite language. And we appreciate you being here and we appreciate hearing from you. Now on the posting side of things, I understand that component. But again, what's the punishment for that, right? So for every rule we have, I'd like to either, we're either going to consistently enforce it and start a line of running people out of chambers or we need to remove it. If we're not going to enforce it. To have it there to use it when it's advantageous for us makes me nervous. Because now you're talking about, well, you let the other 13 people in front of me do it. And now you're singling me out, right? So now we have this issue that now you're getting the federal issues that we don't want to be, right? So it's either we're going to enforce it all the time and let's start running them out of here. Or we're going to change the instructions to stuff that we 're comfortable enforcing 100% of the time. So that's just me versus trying to nail down all these moving parts that aren't static even at the state level. I mean, so we run the risk of when we do enforce it, someone ringing the bell saying I know why you did and now we got to fight a different fight that's not advantageous. >> That's my thought. >> You bet, thank you. >> Any other questions? >> Yes, Mayor Pro Tem. >> With respect to the message boards, I just wanted to clarify something that you mentioned. We did discuss it at a work session. The former council discussed it at a work session and there was not a consensus to move forward with the message boards . For you, I just wanted to clarify a question for you. It's not required that the message boards allow public comments, correct? >> Correct. >> So it can just be something that's posted and comments are disabled. The council members can ask questions of staff, essentially . >> I think that's true, yes. >> Okay, I guess I'll just drop that little morsel there because I think you did a good job of explaining all of the pitfalls of using social media to try to get messages out to people. Whereas a message board is a much cleaner way to get information to the public and probably a much more polite way, frankly. Because of the lack of the comment feature. So I'll just put that out there again. >> And if the council would like for us to bring that forward again in a work session, we'd be happy to do so, or even a status report. >> I just wanted to add to Mayor Pro Tem's comment there that if there's anything you've taken from the social media discussion that Jennifer's presents today, is that the law is struggling to keep up with all the new social media platforms that are coming out. That it makes it much more difficult to really keep abreast of all these changes to be able to adequately advise you. So that's part of the reason why the state created that allowance for a social board for the council to actually do something like that because of all the changes. As you all know, the law can't keep up with all these changes. >> Well, when you don't have Facebook or anything, that works out really well. >> Go ahead, Councilman Hussman. >> Yes, no, I would entertain a presentation of what that message board is so that I can better understand the components of that. And aside from that, Aaron, if you could make a note, just like we get kind of updates on different legislation going through, because Supreme Court down here in Texas, they're all elected. I'd really like to see something that kind of gives us a report of, I mean, you mentioned the Fifth Circuit. What's the makeup of the Fifth Circuit? What, kind of that sort of thing. I mean, we're going to run into it, and just for me, maybe. But I'd like to understand what that is, because, for example, the Railroad Commission dealing with the Atmos Energy. I'm hyper sensitive to that now. I mean, when I'm looking at election, now I understand better who fills that role and what they do in their hearings, and I understand that makeup better because of what we're having to deal with. And so I'd like to understand the makeup of the Texas Supreme Court, if we're going to get there, who's there? That sort of thing, maybe a election cycle type publication that tells us here's who won, here's their makeup, and kind of your feel for those that occupy those positions. Because they're going to be making decisions that affect us , I'd like to better understand in advance who's there and what their path, what their leanings, that sort of thing, in your opinion. So, just a request. Thank you. >> Mayor Poutine? >> I just want to see if I understand. So you're wanting staff to create kind of a dossier a little bit on all of the different elected positions and what their positions are? >> No, so specifically legal, specifically Fifth Circuit appeals, I assume we go that way most of the time. So those that would have, so for any of these decisions, they would make those decisions. And I don't know who's there. So instead of saying, hey, at the time the challenge comes in, who's there for? Better example, Atmos Synergy comes to us, right issue, we have all these questions. I was not up to speed on who's on the railroad commission. And their leanings, their understanding, their decision making, but that comes up in our presentation. So legal points out to us, or whoever it was, the staff member points out that, hey, here's the railroad commission . Here's the decisions they've made in the past. Here's when they did not make those decisions. And I think last week we had something similar where they were like, here's the decisions people have made in the past. Here's their leanings in the past. Here's how we got here. So I'm just saying I want that in advance versus in a presentation when it matters. So that I can understand in advance that. That's just me personally. I mean, eat the meat, spit out the bones, but I want it. >> I know that there's not an issue with us compiling the names of, let's say, when the Texas Supreme Court, all the members, when they were elected. And what decisions have been involved in, major decisions, and if they were actually wrote the opinion. But to be able to tell you how they would lean or how they would rule on a given situation, and that would be speculation. But everything else that is pretty factual is pretty easy to obtain and provide it to you in a report. >> If I may, and I'll leave it at this. But the fact of the matter is, if a legal decision is in front of us, you're going to give us an opinion on how you think things will proceed. And I'm just saying I want that sooner than later. What you can give me, I'll take. What you can't give me, don't give me. >> Okay. >> Councilmember. >> Yes, Councilmember Brown. >> Yeah, I guess I've got a question regarding public meetings that are either run by a citizen or citizen's group or by city staff. If a quorum of four people, four council people, attend that meeting but do not take part in the discussion whatsoever, they're just strictly trying to see what the public input is, is that, are we considered a quorum at that point? >> Obviously you're a quorum, but you might not be a meeting if you're not discussing city business. >> If we're not, and the question is if we're not, but- >> Deliberation requires a verbal exchange, which the courts have interpreted to be two ways. >> Okay, so all seven of us could be at a meeting as long as none of us say anything, and we're just trying to get public input of what the citizens are saying. >> I think if you use that information and an official determination at a later time, you could be in trouble. But the way that you state it, yes. >> Well, I'm thinking in particular of a situation that happened recently and there was one person sitting in front of me, I didn't know two more were behind me. None of us were talking. One person did make a statement of fact, correcting a time of what was going on. But there was no discussion by any council members, but there were four present in the room. And it was a citizens group making the presentation. And yet, at least two of us probably didn't even realize there were four people in the room. Would that have technically been a violation? >> Potentially, if it's used at a later time. I think it was Washington. There was another state where they had the exact same fact pattern. In one of their cases, they determined there was no verbal exchange, therefore no deliberation of city business in order for there to be a meeting. I think that in some jurisdictions that would still be a violation. If you used the information that you gained and talked about it and discussed it in open session and had a subsequent official determination, I think that might be a violation. >> Okay. Any other questions, comments? Which is why we always want to go ahead and post when you 're going to be somewhere in a quorum. Of course, if it's a social event, that's different. So long as it's not discussing city business. >> Great. I'll go to social events. >> No more social events. >> Any other questions on this? Thank you. Appreciate it. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> We'll move into item 1C, receive report and hold discussion regarding an update from the capital projects department on the status of key projects and overall program update. >> Thank you, Mayor and council members. For a few minutes of your time, I've been in this job about five and a half months and I started off really knowing nothing about our capital projects and I've got pretty much all of that left, not quite. Or as I've heard Todd say before, if I had an idea about it , to think it would have died of loneliness. Just trying to go from the abstract to the concrete here a little bit. One more. Okay. I'm dying up here. Let's go. >> I'm hearing crickets. >> Okay. So I'm going to give a quick introduction. We'll talk about some selected specific projects, what their status is, talk about improvements to our methodology and what some of the next steps are. Why do we do capital projects? Well, we have a growing city and we have aging infrastructure. So as the water system or the waste water system or the roads get older, they need to be upgraded or fixed or replaced. And people move to this area. The city's growing. Some of the departments and divisions have a duty to respond. It's our mission. The streets department's mission is to build streets and repair streets. And the drainage department, drainage system and water and waste water and on down the line. The projects and solutions that we develop are developed with input from citizens, city staff, consultants approved by the governance process. So we try to ensure we have a reasonable solution. A solution that most stakeholders would agree is a good reasonable solution. And we do listen to public input. Public input shapes the direction of our projects quite a bit. So a couple of specific projects. One recently completed project is the Bell Avenue project up through the TWU campus. We started on that. The actual streets work began in June. There was some wastewater system work that was in April before that. We completed it toward the end of July. The cost so far is $667,000. There are still a few more bills coming in. So that may not be the final cost. That's why I don't have those final cost numbers yet. TWU participated in funding the project. There's some O&M funds and some bond program funds for a portion of that project. Five inch mill and overlay from Texas Street up to US 380. Nearly two lane miles. Almost a lane mile of curb and gutter, a quarter of a lane mile of sidewalks of various widths. 20 ADA ramps, a couple of utility vault lids, and we removed the pedestrian bridge. And some of the concerns and risks, you can see there are obviously a lot of foot traffic on a university campus. We wanted to be sensitive to their schedule when they had graduations and other events and things like that throughout the summer. This is an example of a project that can get us off track if we're not careful. So we have to work very hard to try to stay on track. If we're trying to get a bond program done within a certain window of time, this project only partially fit under that bond program. Only really one segment, one block, one intersection to intersection part of this Belle Avenue project was covered by a bond program. The rest of it was through some various other funding sources. And so I hadn't been in the job very long. And I used to work in a different part of town. And I took Belle Avenue to cut up to 380. And I said, hey, this road needs some help. This road's a problem. And I said, what's it going to take to get this road fixed? And so we began scoping out and planning this project. Keith Gabbard and his staff did an excellent job of laying out what it would take to get it done. And we worked very closely with TWU, very closely, because it was going to be on their campus and impact their activities, et cetera. And we got the project lined out. We began the work. The scope creeped a little bit. Some sidewalks weren't in very good shape. It doesn't make sense to fix the street, the curb, and the gutter and then have a bad sidewalk right next to that. So we had some sidewalk repairs that were added as we went along the way. All in all, I would say it's a very successful project. If you've driven up through the campus, it's a much better product. It's a much safer pathway for students to walk across Bell right now. It's a much better drive to drive up Bell. Here's a picture of the map just to show you north at the top, 380s, that kind of dark gray line at the top. And then it goes down that blue line down to the south to Texas. Questions? Any questions in this project? The Bonnie Bray project is in phases. Now there's an error in your backup. I had transposed the names of the contractors working on Bonnie Bray and Mayhill and in your backup material that went out with the agenda, it said Zachry right there. And so I apologize to the Zachry Company and to Regal for getting their names transposed. That was my error, but I fixed it on the slide. But they were awarded the contract for what's called phase one of Bonnie Bray, which I'll show you on a map in a moment. They began last month and began by clearing a space for their construction trailers, by getting some of their lay down areas set, et cetera. The kind of cool part about the phase one of this project is it's a couple of bridges over Hickory Creek and it's really, it's kind of like it's not going to be a bypass of Bonnie Bray, but it is a bypass now. It's beside the old Bonnie Bray. So they can work on it without worrying about traffic concerns, et cetera, because they're working on a road that's parallel to the old road right now . Low cost of all the phases of the project is listed there. Some of the different sources of the funds, regional toll revenue, conversion of a mostly two lane road to a four lane divided secondary with space that would allow us to go up to six lanes along the way if we decide to make that upgrade in the future. Permitting is always a concern, working with Textile, the railroads, or FEMA, et cetera, and obviously coordinating with the University of North Texas as we, as the project, overall project phases progress up toward the stadium and the other sports facilities there. We've already begun those meetings with UNT to make sure we are very sensitive to their schedule and do the best we can to accommodate those times when there's a big inrush of people to an event and then an outflow of people after the event. We want things to be set up as well as can be done in a construction area for those types of events. So the portion that's being worked on right now is in yellow. Along there are about two thirds of the way down from the top. It's a couple of bridges over Hickory Creek. The existing road can flood during extremely heavy rain events and so the new bridges are going to be built to withstand the 100 year flood and they won't flood during those extremely heavy rain events unless we exceed the 100 year flood, et cetera. So that's the phase that's being worked now. You see in some ways it's a little bit of a misnomer, that red line at the bottom that runs east-west and kind of curves around to the south, that 's Vintage Boulevard. That is part of these phases of the Bonnie Bray project and there are actually some more phases up to the north of there all the way up to Windsor but this is just sort of a blow up to show you this part of the project. Questions? Timeline on each one of the phases? I don't have that right now in front of me but if you'd like an update on that we can send that out. No problem. Okay. Just curious. The Hickory Street project. Several different phases of work, wastewater work, water work and then eventually streets work. The overall completion date has changed to April of 2019. We've had to, we found some unexpected water system work on , in the Bolivar Street area. We've had to divert some resources to that temporarily. We think we may still be able to meet our original schedule which was two months sooner than April but we put that just as a caveat to say we may have some schedule slippage here I'd rather get the potential bad news out now and maybe do better than that than come closer to that date and say hey we've got a problem we 're going to slip a little bit. So again that's sort of a worst case estimate right now. We do think we're going to exceed that. It's a little under a four million dollar project. Sewer line, water line, repaid the street as I mentioned. Obviously it's a high visibility, high traffic area so it's a project that we have to pay a lot of attention to. Not so much by size. It's not huge compared to some of these other projects but just based on location and the things that are in that area. That project, this is east west, runs from Bonnie Bray over to Carroll Boulevard over on the east. McKinney Street, the McKinney Street sidewalk project. There were meetings on this with engineers last week and they started talking about the best way to do this project and they said hey these utilities are a problem. We got to get these utilities first and then we'll do the sidewalk and I said no I'm going to overrule that. We're going to do the sidewalk then the utilities. If you have to make some cuts or repairs to the sidewalk you're going to fix them that's fine but the sidewalk to get the kids to the school is really the crux of the project. It's why we're doing it. We're doing it with this design build process which is new to us. I'm informed that that process hasn't really been around all that long even. Just a handful of years. We expect to start construction in January 2019 and complete the work in 2020. It's about a $20 million project through tech stop funds. I'll show you a map that shows the extent of the project. Obviously we worry about coordinating with the Mayhill project. This is an east-west street, Mayhill is a north-south street and they intersect. So at that intersection you can't have everybody working at the same time. We want to coordinate with existing traffic and pedestrian uses especially with the school district etc. There is a concern about funding to complete the project back to the west and I'll show you that on the map. Councilman Ryan has a question. When you say construction starts January of 2019 will the sidewalks be done by that point? No that's actual construction start. That's sort of our best guess right now. We'll try to exceed that if we can and start earlier than that if we can. But that's actual the first construction package to be released will be for the sidewalks. Part of the design build allows us to release the work in packages. You don't have to have the entire project designed and ready to go. You can do parts of the project and get the work done on those. That's supposed to be one of the benefits of design build is that you can get some design done and get started on that part of the project as you finish designing the rest of the project. So that's been the mandate that I've given the staff is hey get the sidewalk design first then the utilities then the street. Hope that answers your question. Yeah it does. Okay. Councilmember Hussbuss. I'm along those same lines and I've asked for clarification on the I know there's bus routes to Ryan that to kind of fill that need until this is completed. But are there I guess my concern is there's got to be and I know you've researched it but I'm just going to give you my thoughts just thinking out loud. There's got to be fill dirt from someplace. There's got to be something where it's not going to make your job more difficult. I'm not for double work along McKinney but I am for some sort of impervious if you will space that allows a kid that does not catch that bus to get from McKinney to Ryan High School without walking in the street. I don't know I've driven it I know what I would do but I don't have that option but I just that's what I struggle with if a kid does not jump on that bus wherever that bus meets and wherever it drives if a kid if it runs late if the schedule doesn't work right if they're running late to school and missed it if faced with the fact of walking from McKinney to Ryan High School I mean there's nothing I can do about it but I'm just telling them not okay with waiting two years to hopefully get some sort of I mean grand salvo I don't care if the shoes are dirty I mean it's just a matter of getting them from point A to point B without having to walk in the street because you have on some segments you have a little space on I mean you've driven it probably more than me so on some levels if that's for me tell them I said hello if there's if there's some space there in some of those segments that's great but where there isn't I'd love to I mean something feel dirt but I'll leave that to you I know you working on it I know you 're passionate about it I'm just I'm just thinking out loud absolutely and if it's okay with you and the rest of the council we'll take that as a challenge to do the best we can to get a safe path to that school as soon as possible that's my pledge to you that we'll do that. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you. Well I hate to be this person so forgive me Galen I believe the construction starting at the end of fiscal year 2017 if I got it correctly because of the text dot funds situation so we're actually if I understand it correctly based on mobility earlier today we're going to start that earlier than what that states. And we probably are you sent us a letter that indicated that the funds needed to be start being spent by a certain deadline and so we're going to we 're going to meet that so that that date will be updated. Okay I just want everybody know it's going to be before 2019 and well before then as well so we'll probably be a lot earlier than the July 2020 completion. Thank you. Is that from a mobility committee meeting? Well it's from two things one was RTC the regional transportation council because that's where the funds came from and then the strings that were tied to it came from RTC as well and then today mobility we had a kind of a group well we didn't have the mobility meeting because we didn't have a quorum but we I did have a group meeting with everyone to confirm that the project is actually starting per text dot timeline . Would you mind sitting out or have somebody send out a little memorandum on that to the rest of the council? Sure. Just just as an update that'd be great thank you. Sure. Here's the extent of the project is in blue the McKinney Street where it crosses 288 and runs to the to the east and angles off to the south a little bit that is what there's funding for I'm searching for funding for the green section as well and so McKinney Street would be complete all the way from Woodrow all the way out past the high school so again the blue part is funded that's the extent of the existing project the green is a possible project extension. Belle Avenue sidewalk over here a little bit to the east of where we are was started in March and really you could say the completion is either yesterday or today although there may be some painting they still need to do on the final elements of the bridge rail again there's a gleaming new bridge rail on on the bridge that goes over the creek there along the Belle Avenue sidewalk but it completes it completes a path so we added a sidewalk from the existing sidewalk south of the senior center and it goes all the way to McKinney Street added the pedestrian rail across the bridge at Pecan Creek so that folks as they walked across there could be safe from the traffic because they're very near the traffic but the rail should keep them safe did some restriping in the Civic Center parking lot added some lighting etc. The map of that project is shown here the kind of blue squ iggly line and the reason it's squiggly is because we go around some trees and so the path kind of meanders through the trees a little bit we were able to save the trees and still get the sidewalk in place it's really a very pleasant walk it's a nice little nice little walk if you have to walk from there to McKinney Street for any reason. So from that relatively small project to a larger one here 's where I had the names reversed again I sorry I apologize for that but this is actually a contract that was awarded to Zachary the activities are underway I think you'll see some some information about them with a construction lay down area coming up soon on your council agenda for example 56 plus million dollar project some of the same some of the same sources of funds conversion of mostly two-lane road to a four lane divided road from 3 80 to the north down to near 35 really should say near IH 35 on the south and actually ends at Edwards Road some of the same concerns we have on our other projects FEMA, TxDOT , railroads and permits and land rights has been a challenge as well. This map shows the project that has been led to Zachary that we are working on now from the from the blue end down there near Edwards Road up to the 380 at the top. This chart shows you some some of the progress that's been made on the bond programs 2012 and 2014 bond programs and what it what it took for me to do this was working with with Keith Gabbard and his staff and really we did a month by month breakdown of what segments of street were done within a certain month within a certain year and then added them up for the year and just as a reminder a segment just means from intersection to intersection so all if you drive around town you realize all segments are created equal sometimes the intersections are closer together sometimes they're further apart over time it kind of averages out so if you count segments you if you're counting enough of them it kind of averages out to a certain size. The 2012 bond program was was voted on in November of 2012 and bonds weren't actually sold until on into 2013 and during that year under the 2012 bond program we did 30 segments of street and that was in a way you could probably say well that's probably the easier projects more like the low-hanging fruit the easier ones that you could jump on and get done right now you see that that productivity faded a bit the second year as all the easier ones were done there wasn't as many that was easy to do and we ran into some problems interfacing with Atmos gas during 2014 as well. 2015 or at into any in 2014 toward the end of 2014 another bond program was begun and so now there's stacked or overlaid bond programs two years apart and normally if you think of a bond program I think expectations are this about five years worth of work well this shows ten years worth of work and the question is really or the it's not really an accusation but the question is are you behind and are you behind well we're going to compress ten years of work into eight years and so I think I'm going to show you a way that we're not behind we're actually compressing the schedule because if we took these two bond programs and laid them out end to end instead of stacking them on each other we would be working on them for approximately ten years I believe that's the expectation it's about a five year program when you have a bond program but these were stacked and so in late 2014 the 2014 bond program was voted on and passed and we go into the next year 2015 though some of those funds began to accumulate and be in those bonds be sold and we're ready we're still working on the 2012 bond program we accelerated our pace from 16 segments up to 26 and then we really started to get traction in 2016 you can see in 2016 we go from completing 26 segments or 16 or 30 the years prior to 58 and so now what's happened what have we done well I'll show you in a couple of slides the kind of things that were done to help accelerate the pace of getting road segments completed under these bond programs now that are that are stacked on top of each other 2017 we estimate we'll get 65 done and then there's the totals over to the right after I put this presentation together and posted it with your agenda I added some information so all the information in red was not posted to your agenda so it's a couple of added things to kind of summarize some new numbers and some of it is estimates okay so we estimate that if in 2018 , 19 and 20 we complete street segments at those paces we will be done with all the segments by the end of 2020 so this is the plan forward and we think it's a reasonable plan it 's a it's a difficult goal it's a stretch goal to get more and more done every year but you do see kind of a ramp up in the numbers from 58 to 65 to 68 and on etc. so that that's our plan that's how we plan to get things done numbers wise specifically what does it take to do that it takes some of these things how do you get more streets done well we have added staff if you'll remember from the budget presentation on the streets department historically over the last couple couple of years not this year fiscal year we're in but over the last two we've added ten people so we've added staff to the streets crew to help get more work done we have contractors that have added crews to help support the work that they're doing for the city so they've committed more resources to getting these projects done sooner we've worked very closely with franchise utilities to increase their clearing rate everything we can think of doing we brainstorm we think what can we do to help them we need to feed them information but we need to clear the path for them to clear the path for us what do we have to do to make it easy for those franchise utilities to get their things out of the way so we can do our road projects we've added a second asphalt supplier and we 've begun the process of bundling certain segments of the streets to keep we'll keep all of our crews busy we'll have some contractors busy and we'll have yet some more contractors in here working on combined drainage projects bundled up with street segments as well so we're taking kind of a multi-pronged approach we're looking at all the different ways we can think of to try to get more streets done to keep ramping that pace up to get everything done by 2020. Any questions so far? Just a kind of a selected list of some other recent complet ions Montecito some utility relocations an interceptor for wastewater project ranch est ates area paisley street widening etc. there's some other projects that have been completed recently some other projects that are ongoing in some various form from being in the design phase all the way through in construction nearing completion of construction are listed here Bolivar Victoria North Texas roundabout is more in the design phase Shady O aks turn lane is in a design phase etc. so here's some here's some projects to look look forward to coming up. Any questions? Just curious how do you pronounce that street under Hickory Creek Road West? I say Allen Adale. Okay I just wanted. You're from the south too right? Yeah okay. Allen Adale? I'm not sure where that is. One of our street supervisors said there's an Allen Adale in several different towns around the area so I don't know if it means something specific or not. So some other things that we're doing to help increase the pace of capital projects we're doing process reviews and process improvements we're always looking to improve our communication and public engagement to get not only just public input but also public support for our projects you know. No one likes their street to be bad they don't like it when we're working on it either but we need that engagement and we need to know we need to hear from the public and we've established some project management minimum standards. New City engineer Todd Estes is helping us roll out some of these standards and just really take a review and a look at our organization and how we do project management how we do the design of the projects that are correct for us to design but also how we manage projects once we start to build them. So just a couple of things we're going to continue that process review probably through the end of this month and same thing as you know looking at an organizational structure who needs to report to who who's doing this type of work who's doing that type of work. We want to put out a consultant RFQ and get some consultants lined up that are pre-qualified or qualified to do the services that we need. We're doing we're going through a project by project evaluation some of it is more toward the end kind of a lessons learned what can we learn from this project to do better some of them are in the beginning how can we evaluate things and do better as we're implementing the project. We want to continue to coordinate with stakeholders like text on the universities and the county etc and increase our involvement with interest groups there 's it there's engineer interest groups over public works over roads over water projects way water project etc. great source of information for our engineers to get out and meet with their peers and our other folks that work in utilities and streets and drainage to get out meet with their peers and learn new techniques and things like that. Any questions? Yes Councilmember Huchbert. I had I have a few so the I'd be interested I think you mentioned mockingbird but I didn't see it on your list I think you mentioned it last week so I 'm curious about that about the quiet zone crossings I'd mentioned I would like to know more about that status and then I saw Moore Street and I'm curious about that because that 's my timings off but I think it's under 10 years that that whole street was redone in the sewer as I'm gonna say sewer lines because I'm I don't I could be wrong but there were some lines replaced along the whole line of the street so I'd be curious. I think I can I might be able to address that the Moore Street expansion was part of the 2014 bond program I believe. I believe so too yes sir. And that's Moore Street from if I'm correct that's where it goes from the loop over to Mayhill Road they're widening that to be so it's not the segment that was done down there by the school yeah and by the MLK Center it was it's it's on the from the loop to Mayhill perfect yeah thank you. But the others I think there's a short update on those on your project chart that's in your backup material but if you want more specific information on those other two the quiet zones and mockingbird we'd certainly get that to you. Yes I would like that and then if I may I would ask that you reach out to Barbara Ross on that funding portion of McKinney that you're seeking and maybe that's something if it falls in low and moderate income areas we could use those community grants or at least apply for the community block grant money because that that ranks mayor that ranks pretty high on my list of things because if you if you imagine again starting with the county courthouse kind of getting people places to eat places to kind of take in our city that would be another avenue to kind of facilitate that as you I mean it 's a straight shot from here to there and kind of bringing someone that's here for jury duty in to kind of visit our city and then kind of get a taste before they go back but that that kind of main corridor I'd be interested in kind of making that more of a complete street and inviting the people to to kind of come downtown. Okay great. All right fantastic any other comments questions. All right that's thank you very much appreciate that update very good. Thank you. Let's see we'll call our next work session agenda item. Y'all want to take about a five minute break let's take a break I'm just sort of rolling along. All right welcome back we're going to reconvene this meeting of the Denton City Council Tuesday August the 8th 2017 it is 3 57 go on to our next agenda item which is which is agenda item 1 D receive a report hold a discussion and give staff direction regarding the use and potential disposal of real property tracks owned by the city of Denton. Sell them all I'm just kidding. Good afternoon mayor and council members. Also have I'm Paul Williamson real estate manager for the city Amy Parrish is our seat one of our senior real estate analyst and she'll be leading the presentation today and I'm going to be helping her with the slideshow. So the first five properties we have are potentially available now if they're deemed to be surplus property and the remaining properties and you'll see on your matrix in the left hand column are shaded slightly and those are near term up to five years maybe that they before they would be available but we wanted to go ahead and let you know about those those tracks the first track to 602 Rose Street. It was part of the Paisley Street drainage improvement project and it's a vacant lot that's been replatted is ready to go it has electricity it has meters has everything there are we supposed to do these individually we could take feedback if you wanted to give or just why I tell you what I'm patient how we got the chart in front of us let's take the first five as a group because I mean we've got that we 've got all the data in front of us. My first question would be just procedurally let's say for instance we say okay these first five are ready to go if we gave that direction do we does it go out to some kind of bid process or something like that. We would take it through the purchasing department it would be a basically a request for proposal of to purchase it I mean that's one way we could do it I know there's been some recent changes in the statute that allows the city to engage a broker to go out and market the tracks these first five may not necessarily lend themselves to that because of if we can go through them if you want but a lot of them we would be retaining easements in the track so there has been interest on some of these that on the first five even this we've had several calls about this track once we remove the houses there's been a lot of folks like hey when you're going to auction that off we're interested in buying it so this is probably the best candidate for just putting it on the purchasing web page and seeing what the market would bear. The rest of them are a little bit more complicated because we have to reserve easements in those tracks for the you're talking about on this of this group of five yes the first one is pretty easy in the sense that there's nothing you think you 're wanting to reserve strictly a straight market transaction yes correct okay and 2910 East University is more than half in the floodplain okay all right one percent or 100 year floodplain okay which increases the difficulty there and Belle Avenue has some large footings from the former water tower okay I'm not sure why my lights coming on but my mic 's on so unless somebody's is y'all's mic on yes it is okay yeah yeah yeah all right thank you sorry about that thank you control room very good wonderful I love that toy thank you good good point thank you Jennifer that's good good call good read okay are there any this does council have any questions on let's just deal with the first five because obviously these are going to be subject to easements which would be all part of the disclosure process if anybody were to come and make proposals and things such as that yes councilmember Bryant is the zoning consistent with the area in which all these are or are there any of these I haven't looked at the map and I'm thinking the water tower being in MRNU in our MU 12 may have been something that was rezoned to have the water tower there that's actually possibly more of a residential district that I think that's the one that has the apartment buildings by it is the Oaklawn Gardens it's about at the corner of Sherman and Belle if I'm if I'm not mistaken and peach yeah Melon Peach yeah so it's and I guess my point is just to watch to make sure we're not releasing a property for for public use that's for sale to the public that could potentially look like a spot zone from sure something happened from previous councils you know we can certainly have our development director look into that and make sure that she signs off before staff releases those yes mayor protein I mean since we own the property would it make more sense to rezone it prior to putting it for sale is that what you're saying yes if there's anything in conflict we can certainly rezone it before it is put up for sale but it's I guess it would only be in those instances if it was in conflict with the surrounding zoning and we were put into a position where for some legacy zoning leaves it in a spot zoning circumstance I don't know that that's the case with any of these but we will certainly ask them all the way in before anything's out there if there's any issues or we think it needs to be rezoned we'll bring it back and then as far as the easements are y'all aware of the eas ements that are already being needed on these specific tracks yes the ones downtown down on maple and south locust you know that was and we can look at the maps if you want to kind of look at see where the drain structures are we've already got those identified right right and so we would just reserve those in a conveyance okay drainage easements so the way we would set market value I mean because this is this is appraised value doesn't necessarily reflect necessarily market value didn't soon for a district do we typically get an app raisal prior to marketing it or would we get an appraisal during the process how would that in when you're auctioning or requesting proposals for you could set a you know you could staff could determine a minimum base you know bottom of the floor if you will of what what you know would be something akin to market but you would in a in a in an auction or proposal situation that's that's really one of the best indicators of market value is what will the market pay you for it well yeah elements possibly I mean because I mean somebody's only I mean land right now in town is expensive I mean you're looking at like on this this one lot even though it's a it's it's a vacant probably be a lot for residential construction it's 0.27 so that's about a 10 almost an 8,000 square foot little over 8,000 square foot lot it's the DA's the county president has it a little under three dollars a foot I'm not sure where you're gonna find a plat a lot ready to go three dollars a foot so I just but they will each one of these come back to us yes yes and and you know the way that the way that would work would be you know we would take proposals we could roster them up and and you know the council it's at their discretion as to which one makes the best sense for the city to sell it's not necessarily it 's not necessarily the highest offer it's whatever makes the best sense for the council so any other specific questions on the first five and or is there let's just start with is there any reservation about putting all or any one of these out to the marketplace as we determine how that goes yes councilmember Duff just one comment you know my experience with decad on their appraised value that doesn't really have a lot to do with the value of the property and it's even it's even probably worse here than it is with with single family homes okay all right so we need to find some way that either through I don't know if we wanted it I mean I don't know what it would cost to get an appraisal on these but sometimes we get brokers opinion of value or things such as that so if you could maybe let's do one thing at a time are we okay with moving forward with the first group of five maybe putting those out as surplus property to see what what we can capture on a market sale is that yes councilmember I mean mayor pro tem just I'm trying to find 2910 East University that's not the loop is it yeah that's what I wanted to be sure of there's a slide on the screen if it's a on the south side of 380 okay so it's across the street basically by the come the propane propane and propane accessories yeah it's just just a little bit to the east of that is such situated between a storage facility public storage that's all I wanted to make sure of thank you have any other questions on those so if it sounds like council's okay with moving those forward as surplus to dispose of and maybe there are an informal staff report on something of just the step-by- step process and then if council has any questions we can ask staff report on that all right so then on the other ones the two through seven and be sure and talk into the mic too if you would mind thank you yes sir yeah no no he's gonna start lighting me up if you don't we don't want that the next parcel is 1105 South Loop 288 at Audre Lane it's the location of the DME Cooper Creek substation the substation takes up part of the tract the area shown on the map here will be three separate tracks that could potentially be available in the future they are currently being used by the DME contractor as a staging area okay so on these on these next five or six five six what direction are y'all looking for on this are you just is this sort of a summary an update or what what exactly mayor it's really just informational we went through a process of identifying either near-term or long-term potential disposals and these are the ones so these might be ones that come up later as ones that hey we can get rid of these now right now we're not really able to you're just giving us information on okay great yeah you can just go through each one yeah okay yes yes the next tract is on South Mayhill Road it is part of the Mayhill Road widening project it was recently acquired through the Nelms Grubb exchange agreement and it is slated for council consideration on August 15th for contractor offices so that would be in use through the Mayhill project okay pending council approval the next tract is 1204 McCormick Street that's the site of the existing fire station number three which is building a new fire station moving the plans are still coming together from what we understand and they may be using all of their existing site there may be some residual area left on that tract existing tract in the future okay okay next we have two at 2110 East Sherman Drive which is the existing fire station number four and the adjacent well tract the well tract is actually we could sell it now it might be beneficial to keep the two tracks together before determining you know keep them together until we determine a future use then we have 709 South Locust it's part of the Bell and Wainwright drainage project and that is the planned contractor staging area for the upper peck for stormwater drainage project and last but not least 401 East McKinney Street at the corner of McKinney and Mayhill part of the Mayhill Road widening project at this moment also slated for council consideration for contractor staging area and then it may also be used after that for the McKinney Street staging area okay great yes mayor Brot in can we revisit the 2910 East University I have a question about the required amount of land for new fire stations we've had discussions about the need for a fire station on this eastern quadrant of town so I'm wondering has that has that been discussed as a potential candidate for the new fire station I believe the new fire station location is right across the street is that correct right across university yes the yes manager the there the Prescott tract is across the street on the north side the one you all visited about the this tract you know it there there has been some just very high altitude discussions that that took to possibly entertain this as it could be but but nothing nothing other than just the fire department understanding that we owned it and you know that it could be something but but with the the floodplain in the existence of the trans overhead transmission power line quarter it it may not prove to be you know get the kind of best fit that they need they the idea that it's that it has really good access to 380 either way is a plus certainly okay so it has better access to 380 than the other track that word and I didn't I didn't understand that we had designated that track for fire did we I'm sorry I may have forgotten no it's you know the track the track across the street council gave us direction basically to hold off on making any decisions for the time being but it would be multi the idea would be multi use fire department as police substation and potentially a way of connecting up our park trail system that is the idea at the time and as you know DCTA had also asked the council to entertain some thought of possibly sign off some of that parcel but we could certainly study either one I think the only real difference here is part of the connectivity because there's a substantial floodplain issue on the north side as well. It goes on like to change my vote on that particular track just to explore the potential of putting any of the items that we've discussed needing on that particular track I mean it may not work but I just want to be sure that we've added it . I'm okay with that. Yes. Yeah I'd like to know how y'all have considered it in the past because Mayor Pro Tem raises an interesting point and considering all the then conferences it's probably easier for us as a city to manage that and make that work versus the diminished value we'll get for it. Just a thought I just don't know how you've kind of recon ciled those in the past so that's something we can talk about kind of in downtime but I'd be curious how you've kind of drawn reconcile those two options in the past. So we'll pull that one off and ask that the fire department take a look at that and see do a little bit more careful analysis about that site as well. All right I did have a where was my question oh I lost my question. It wasn't on those it was on oh I know what it was this is a finance question. So let's say for instance whatever properties we sell are those funds just going to go into the general fund or are they encumbered by any bonds that have to be repaid is there any debt that has to be repaid or what's the status of that on these first five excluding the one on University Drive. I think the answer is it depends it depends on how they required if they were using bonds bond funds and those bonds are still outstanding that's that's an issue we'd need to address. Some of these may be in may have been acquired with general fund or general tax dollars and then those are certainly dollars that can go back into the general fund. Some may be have been utility fund purchases and they would need to go back there are some common so whatever source of funds is basically where these funds need to go back to those accounts. Okay I don't know off the top of my head which ones these came from. Okay that's fine I appreciate that that answers my question . Any other questions on this yes Councilmember Hudsbeth. Yeah I would like to kind of tag the McCormick Street project I know it's down the road but just a note down the road that's a great location and so I see that as a mechanism to make maybe depending on what a fire station goes offset some of those future costs for I mean someone's going to jump at that location so the more of it we can preserve if you will and even if the I think it would absorb a lot of that cost construction costs for whatever is going in and I know we're negotiating with the other property and it's not formally solidified what the plan is but just if I had my druthers I'd almost if we're going to take over some property then preserve enough of that to make it useful for someone because I think it will draw a premium that's a that's a great location. Okay great yep any other questions on so we've got four sort of move forward on the 2910 East University will hold out hold out and have the fire department fire chief and etc look at that a little bit more careful analysis and then the others you'll just keep us updated as the projects get moved forward and as they may be released from use. Okay fantastic all right oh Mayor Pro Tem hold on don't. Oh no I was I just wanted to thank Councilmember Ryan for bringing this topic up and new business so I think it's an important discussion to have. Thank you thank you all appreciate it. Okay in our agenda we have concluding items before we go into closed session anyone have any concluding items? Seeing none all right seeing none we will now I will now convene the closed session at 4 18 p.m. on August the 8th 2017 we will consider the following items consultation with attorneys under Texas Government Code section 551.071 the deliber ations regarding real property under Texas Government Code section 551.072 and deliber ation regarding certain public power utilities competitive matters under Texas Government Code section 551.086.