Aug 15, 2017 City Council on 2017-08-15 2:00 PM

Good afternoon. I wanted to welcome everybody to this meeting of the Denton City Council. It is Tuesday, August the 15th, 2017. It is 2 p.m. We do have a quorum. Let the record show that Councilmember Duff is not present at least at this time. We'll move on through our agenda. Agenda item number one is citizen comments on consent agenda items. I don't see any blue cards, so we'll move on to agenda item number two, which is request for clarification on agenda items listed on the agenda for today, August the 15th. Councilmember Riggs. So I would like to request to pull A for a brief presentation to the public so we can highlight this great project and show the process for which this project has to go through. And on Q, I'm just curious if there are other cities denying the increase as well. My understanding is that all the cities and both the groups have denied it since they refuse to meet the cities in the middle. Okay, thank you. Okay, so on Q, that was satisfactory. We don't need to pull it or anything like that. Councilmember Gregory. Thank you, Mayor. On item D, I just have a question. I was happy to see that there are some individual investors wanting to build some hangars out at the airport. But I wondered, given that, what is the update on the hang ars that the city built? Are we finished with those? Are they all rented? Do we still have a waiting list? I'm sorry that I didn't get this question in early. As far as the hangars at the airport that the city constructed, they have been completed and they are 95% occupied. We've got one vacancy. And at one time we had a pretty big waiting list. Is there still a waiting list? We're actually walking through that waiting list in terms of the administrative process given those folks three to five days to respond back and forth. So it's just a matter of time before we get that last hanger filled. Okay, thank you very much. Any other questions, clarification on the agenda today? Yes, Councilmember Husby . Thank you. Just wanted to quickly point out on the consent agenda just the fact that I, J, both of those being local companies, Ray McCain, my family's known for a while. And so I'm just encouraged by those things and just wanted to thank, one, them for going through that process, but two, for staff for evaluating those things and any chance we get to, I mean that's close to $700,000 invested in our community and local companies and I just think that 's an important thing to do for us to kind of give back, and especially someone like Ray that's been at it for as long as I can remember. So that's just for what it's worth. I just think that's important to not to pool, but just wanted to call attention to those things that we're continually trying to highlight local businesses. Sure, thank you. Appreciate that. Any other questions on the agenda item two? Request for clarification? All right, seeing none, we'll move on to agenda item 3A, which is receive a report, hold a discussion, and give staff direction regarding the Denton Chamber of Commerce economic development contract. Yeah, and let the record reflect, Dr. Duff is in attendance. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council members. I am here this afternoon to speak with you about a draft contract for the Chamber of Commerce's economic development activities. So I'm going to walk you through a draft of the contract and then ask for your direction regarding the agreement. To start off with some background, the city and the Chamber first entered into an economic development partnership agreement in 1986, and the city provides general fund and utility fund dollars for the administration and operations budget of the Chamber's Office of Economic Development. The funds that the city provides are used for personnel costs, prospect generation activities, and marketing activities, along with supporting the Small Business Development Center that 's located at the Denton Chamber of Commerce. This year, the Chamber has requested $238,000 in funding for the upcoming fiscal year, and each year that the city has provided funds for the Chamber, the parties have entered into an agreement regarding the funding amount as well as the duties of the Chamber's Office of Economic Development, among other things. And in the past, the agreements have been broad in general, but this year I'm proposing an agreement that has some significant changes, and I'll walk you through those right now. To start off with, the main changes that I have made here to the agreement add specific goals, deliver ables, and metrics for the Chamber's Office of Economic Development, and then we've also proposed some changes regarding financial reporting, insurance requirements, and indemnification. And I did have the assistance of several different departments within the city as I worked through this. The internal auditor and risk management and legal all provided some assistance and consultation on this. So starting off with section number two of the draft agreement, the duties of the office. We started off with developing an annual comprehensive marketing plan for the Chamber's activities. This is something that has been included in past contracts, but what we've done here is enhance it with goals related to the website that the Chamber maintains and their social media activities. We are requiring a deliverable of a written marketing plan that's presented to the Economic Development Partnership Board in November of 2018, and in the agreement it actually outlines the specifics of what that plan should include. And as far as metrics that are attached to this item, we're asking them to provide us monthly or quarterly reports on the website activity as well as their social media activity and usage. Yes, Council Member Briggs has a question. Is there a reason it's November 2018 and not November 2017? That's a mistake that I made. I intended it to be 2017. Thank you for catching that. Yes, sorry, no. No, you're right. Thank you. Yes, November 2017, and I'll make sure to get that corrected in the draft too if it's misstated there. Continuing on with changes to duties of the office, the Chamber is required to recruit prospective companies in Denton's target industries of aviation and aerospace, advanced manufacturing, renewable energy, research and development, information technology, and supply chain, logistics, and distribution. And what we're asking them to do this time around is to collect baseline data to establish next year's goals related to their monthly marketing trips. Are they attending trade shows and events that are aligned with those target industries? And then I've also added a year-end marketing trip outcomes report. So as we go along through the months, they're reporting monthly on the activities that they're undertaking. But then at the end of the year, what I'm asking them to do is pull together something that demonstrates the outcomes of these trips, not just the outputs of them attending the trips, but actually linking results to their marketing trips. And you can see there under the metrics, the expectations for the report are to include the expenditures, contacts made, follow-up activities, et cetera. So, oh, did you have a question? May I approach you, Ms. Go ff? Sure. So were these agreements, I'm sorry, were these changes to the contract proposed by the Chamber or were they proposed by our City of Denton office? They were proposed by the City of Denton's Economic Development Office. Okay. Thank you. The Chamber serves as the point of contact and coordinates responses to leads from brokers, site selectors, and developers. As you'll recall from the budget presentation, we've split that responsibility. They take care of this side of the initial contacts while the City's Economic Development Office handles RFPs and requests that come from the Governor's Office of Economic Development in the Dallas Regional Chamber. For the goals related to proposals and site visits, we've set that at 42 engagements or proposals and six site visits. And Councilmember Baggieri, these numbers were provided by the Chamber. I asked them for a reasonable estimate of how they would set their goals and this is what they provided. Deliverable would be a monthly report detailing the lead activity, including source of the lead, the company type, and actual conversions of proposals into prospects or additional follow-ups after the proposals are submitted. We've got a question. Councilmember Briggs? Is that six different companies for site visits? Yes. Because I do remember in the presentation they said that there were lots of visits, but that was only a few companies. There are often multiple site visits, but we'd like to see six different site visits from different companies. And would that be in the contract? I can specify that. Okay. Thank you. Wrapping up the changes to the duties of the office, we're specifying that the Chamber prepare monthly activity reports to be presented to the Economic Development Partnership Board and there are some specifications about what those should include. We want them to present an update and a budget request to the Council annually, like they did this year for the first time they were here to present that to you themselves. And then we're asking them to provide financial information, including quarterly profit and loss budget performance statements and their annual audited financials along with their Form 990. Any questions about that? I have a question. Are you talking about just for the Economic Development Department of the Chamber? Is this the whole Chamber budget ? This is for the entire Chamber. The financial information for it all? Yes, sir. Moving on to the support services and funding section, I added in language that's underlined there regarding maintaining records of their deliverables and their metrics that are specified in the contract. The language around keeping accurate records of their funds received and expended was already there, but since we're adding in the metrics piece, we enhance that section to include the metrics and deliverables. And then last year's Chamber contract specified that the Chamber would solicit and contribute $64,000 of private sector funds for economic development activities and this year we've changed that number to $70,000. Wra pping up, we added the standard insurance provisions that the City typically has in contracts now and additional insurance requirements per the Risk Management Department and we've updated the indemnity clause that's in the contract per legal. And that is the end of my presentation, so I'm happy to answer any questions or facilitate a discussion regarding the agreement and any direction you all have. Good question. A couple of them. On the development of the metrics, do we, because in essence, we've split this sort of into two different functions. The economic development, what is it called over there? Economic Development Partnership? The Office of Economic Development. The Office of Economic Development, okay. Office, okay. So the Office of Economic Development, they're doing certain things and then our economic development department is doing certain things. Yes. So do we have similar metrics within our own department regarding site visits and things so we're going to be getting that kind of information from both the Chamber and from the City Economic Development Department, is that correct? That's correct. Yeah, this year with the new way that the budget process was done and all of the departments being required to present a certain set of information to you, our office developed a new set of metrics for our own activities that we'll be tracking throughout the year and we'll be able to report on for you. Okay. And my last question, that's probably just not so much a question. If you'll go back to, I think it's going to be slide seven is the question I asked you about, sorry, eight, slide eight. Where we're talking about quarterly profit and loss budget and the reason I asked you was that for just the Office of Economic Development at the Chamber or is that the entire Chamber budget? And you said the entire Chamber budget. So I struggle with that a little bit and let me tell you why. Because we're really only improving the budget of the Office of the Economic Development Department and that's really the only thing that we have, not any, not say or we do because we're funding it. They're asking us for this budget request. So that seems like an expansion of our duties or our scope and so I'm just, help me understand what the rationale is for that. And have they agreed to that? Are these, have they agreed to what you're presenting here or? So I have provided this draft agreement to them. I sent it to them last week and told them I would be glad to answer any questions or engage in a discussion with them about it. They acknowledged receipt of the draft agreement but I had not, I have not heard any questions from them about it. The reason why we included that financial information was on the advice of the internal auditor because we already require, in the current agreement we require them to provide quarterly financial information solely about the Office of Economic Development. But the auditor felt like it would be a way to verify their expenditures, that they're reporting for that particular office if we had access to the financial statements of the entire organization. So that was his advice. Because the, is he here? I don't think so. Because it's just sort of a double verification like well if they 're showing it as an expense in the general budget of the chamber then we have certainty that okay that's, if they've categorized it as that. Okay. Okay. Yes, go ahead Council Member. Just to follow up with that, do we require a look at the entire budget of every one of our vendors? Because I see this is really that we're hiring the chamber to do a specific function for us and are we doing that for our other vendors that are performing services for us? I'm not able to answer that question. I just, I don't know and I don't know if someone from purchasing or finance might have some insight into that. Looks like somebody from finance is wiggling in the back row. Slowly but surely he's making his way to the podium. With his hands in his pocket. Hey I'm up next, be careful. I want to say like for the the HOT committee all of the organizations that we give money to out of the hotel occupancy tax we require them with their application to turn in their their their financials every year. For the the complete financials. Yeah okay. That's helpful. Okay. Yes, Mayor Pro Tem. Since this is a contract I have some kind of purchasing questions I guess but maybe city manager can answer it. I know that when we were talking about recently there was a look at reprographics and there were bids put out for reprographics and the idea was are we doing reprographics as efficiently and as cost-effectively as the private market can? And it turned out that in-house was the best and most cost-efficient way to do it. How, can you just walk me through the steps of if we were to take this function and go through the same process that we went through with reprographics what that would look like? Well I guess there would be probably two or three different options we would look at. The first one would be the scope, status quo scope. The second would be folding it all under the city operation and the third option would be there are private development economic development companies out there that we can do deals with. I've certainly had that relationship in Chicago with larger real estate firms that will go to ICSC all the major economic development trade shows that sort of thing. So in this particular case it would probably be more of a choice of options whereas the reprographics was much easier because it was apples to apples and we knew exactly how many pieces of paper we needed. Whereas economic development is going to be similar to hiring a legislative consultant. It's going to be more difficult to pin hard numbers on. I think that's going to be the challenge. It would probably focus more on a pro-con analysis of the cost of doing it in-house. Are there natural efficiencies there? Is it worth the, you know, and how do we value the value add from the Chamber of Commerce or an outside firm in terms of being able to present the business community there to bolster any recruitment efforts. I'm not sure there's a way to monetize that and weigh it accurately but that would be sort of the way we would walk our way through this. I appreciate all of this information and especially kind of tightening up the deliverables and the reporting requirements. I know that when we're interviewing the auditor, this is exactly how he described the audit function for third-party contractors. So I appreciate that. I am concerned and maybe a little bit troubled even that these were items that the city brought forward and I'm happy that the city brought forward but I'm just wondering why a vendor wouldn't want all of these deliverables and all of these items identified in their own contract because then you have accurate measuring of what it is that you're providing. So I'm a little bit, I guess it's just kind of a little bit of a red flag for me that this is just now coming up and at the behest of the city as opposed to at the behest of the Chamber. It just gives me pause. So in general, I'm critical of this contract. It's not a secret that I'm critical of giving $238,000 to the Chamber every year. I think there's different ways to do this and we really haven't investigated that and I would like to see us investigate that before we commit another quarter million dollars to this project. Well I guess just to clarify on the, I guess to provide Mayor Pro Tem a little bit of an answer. Carolina and I have met with the Chamber staff a couple of times, the Executive Director and I don't know that there was necessarily any concern about the measurables, that sort of thing. We had what I thought were pretty good discussions on how do we measure their effectiveness and get the council, the community more comfortable that the dollars spent on recruiting trips, that sort of thing, are actually producing results. Economic development, I would explain, it's sort of a funnel. You might reach out and for every hundred visits you might do you might get three or four contacts that would be very interested in the community and how are they articulating how they're doing, how they 're spending money, how are they assessing whether the money they're spending is worthwhile. I just want to reiterate, there wasn't any necessarily pushback. I think it's not really been asked of them in the past, it was more the answer that they got, but I just want to go and ensure you that there was no opposition to heading in this direction, especially as we explained where we're taking all the city departments through the exact same exercise, but you're right, it wasn't necessarily proffered up proactively to us. I'm sure they would agree to any other metrics or data that you think is interesting. I understand the philosophical issue, but I didn't want to let you know that it did surface. Caroline's not just imposing standards, it was agreed to and trying to get them to tell their story to all of you a little bit better. I understand. Okay. Councilmember Hussbuss. Thank you. Thank you. I think that's the take I have as well. I think that I'm comforted by the city having an approach and setting a milestone and asking them to reach our request versus more of a back and forth or a kind of a negotiations like here's where we stand and I think that's an important point that the city manager makes that even internal departments are having to now justify and provide matrix where they have not in the past and so I think it's consistent with the kind of the move that we're making as a council and as a city. My question though is understanding the requirements, what if they don't solicit and contribute private sector funds of at least $70,000? I think that's a really good question and I've been mulling that over in my mind and where I come down on that I think is that that's going to be a policy decision should the metrics be set and there is a genuine effort put forth to meet all of the terms of the contract and fulfill the requirements. Should the contractor fall short? It seems to me like that would be a decision of the council if they would want to renew a contract if the metrics hadn't been met. If I may. Sure. That's my concern. It follows last week. We're outlying rules that have no actionable actions tied to it and even in this instance you're talking about a year later so it's money's expended you fell short we'll talk about it next year versus having something where we're kind of beginning with the end in mind or at least having something for example we're going that way with the CIP projects. We're going to say you have this many days to get this done if not then we start taking money off the contract whatever that is so those have actionable items so that's what if there were anything I'd like to see I'd like to see how we can hold them accountable fairly so because I don't want here's what I don't want to do I don't want to press such that they we've all been to events and I don't want it to be we're collecting business cards that have no meaning says I had got to get 38 cards so here you go let me go meet everyone and get 38 cards and shove them in the bag and say I'm done I don't want that I want it to be actual hey we're helping each other out and so I don't know what the answer is to that but that 's my concern is that we don't have anything I've not seen anything in the presentation that says if you fall short or in the quarterly reports first quarter here's what's supposed to be some sort of meeting that says hey we're we're we're 3% off our pace what's the plan that that sort of thing so I would like to see I don't again I don't know what that is but I'd like to see something in the agreement that stipulates that if if possible again I don't know that's doable can I make a quick comment on that I understand exactly where you're coming from and my thought on that is if if the council's direction is to try to tighten that up and and put some kind of attach some more numbers to things I'm happy to work on doing that my initial thought on that is is this is a radical departure from the existing contract in terms of asking them to provide any kind of deliverables or metrics and so in my mind in in a way and I know that this puts it out a year but in my mind this is a way of baselining and tracking what they're doing in order to then get more specific about what we might want them to do differently next year and I know it can be frustrating to have to wait a whole year but in in consideration of the partnership and the meetings that Todd and I have had with them and talking to them about how we'd like to see things done differently my personal opinion is that this is a fair way to get started down that road but I I'm here to implement the direction that you you all give that's my personal opinion about where we are with this agreement yes thank you great point and and to that point though I I think I'm I'm good with that I would just like it noted some somewhere there'll be here 's our goals and we're going to revisit them you know down the road but at least it it gives them some comfort I would think also that we're not going to be at quarter two if they're off pace we're not going to then retroactively say we're going to be heavy-handed on this you didn't do this that other we all know up front here's a year of baselining and then we will reevaluate the next contract but it gives them some protection that we're not going to be reactionary mid way through that we're committed to seeing this thing through and understanding where we all are with this new path councilmember greger and then councilmember riggs well I I appreciate having some specific measurements that we can use to compare to give expectations and then to compare when we're making a decision for next year we said that we were just giving them money that would be like saying that we're giving money to our concrete contractor we're getting something back for it we're contracting them to do a service and we're providing money for that service to be rendered so it's not just a gift of money to the chamber of commerce I think one of the important things about this relationship is that we're talking about attracting new business to town and when new business people are coming to town they need to talk to more than just city officials they want to talk to more than just city officials they want to talk to other business people who are doing business in this town they need to let's face it those business folks are going to trust other business folks to get a picture of the climate in this town for doing business more than they're going to trust the words of any elected official or any staff person they need to know that and we need to have that partnership and a lot of the chamber members are invested in bringing new business to town because new business to town coming to town means more business for the businesses that are already established so they not only have a rationale or reason for performing so that we would renew the contract in the next year but they also have a reason for doing it because of their own vested interest in seeing the business climate of this town grow and expand so i think that the metrics are a good way to go i appreciate you doing it and it sounds like that that our partners at the chamber are comfortable with the metrics that have been presented councilmember Briggs so i'm back on the the six site visits it's uh who says to recruit prospective companies in denton target industries and the six site visits the site visits are actually what matters the website stuff is good calls are good but the site visits are are key um so i would i would like to see more specifics on those so that the six site visits aren't from like fast food companies or gas stations or something maybe divide that up into i'm not sure how but that would be something i would prefer to see maybe we could add six site visits from target industry businesses because the target industries are the desirable ones that the council has set as the priorities and wouldn't include something like a fast food restaurant yeah okay a couple questions on um and i know they went through their budget a couple weeks ago a few weeks ago but just so that i have clarity if we're looking at the requested budget items and you may not know the answer to this so i might have to just get a little clarification but like for instance on the telephone slash dsl which is 4600 dollars i'm assuming all the numbers on this budget are either directly attributed to the office of economic development in other words it's a totally separate line totally separate dsl where somehow they've done like the city does with transfers and saying well this is our total how much percentage of this is going to the office of economic development how much is going elsewhere do you have any understanding because there's a couple questions on all these numbers but that's so i had a question i do think that for some of those things like the telephone dsl that's portioned out to this office because if you think about it the chamber also houses a cvb and so the cvb will pay a portion of the expenses like telephone dsl and other things so this office would take their share of that okay well then then i do understand the internal auditor's approach because now you're trying to verify is the apportionment something that seems to be equitable and reasonable okay all right that's fair enough on that and i would concur with your your sentiments on that this is a radical departure from the past kind of contractual relationships we've had with the with the chamber and that doesn't mean that we can't do that that doesn't mean that if we want to do something totally different we can't but we have enjoyed many years of attempting to try to find what works the best what is the best approach to this trying to get because we all have the same interests we want to get businesses into dentin that are providing good livable wage jobs jobs that provide people an opportunity to thrive not just survive and so how do we do that so i see this as an attempt to try to figure out some additional pathways and do some experimenting to see what kind of data can be generated and i have to be truthful i i'm going to i think we need to look just as hard at our internal city economic development department as far as the metrics and and things such as that if we're going to hold somebody accountable that's an outside contractor we're spending two hundred something thousand dollars on where our departmental budget is what i forgot excluding the economic development since it's about 1.2 or something like that million dollars so i think that we need to ensure that we're doing that as well nothing about the internal department but if we're going to ask someone else to have those standards we need to make sure we're able to do them ourselves and i do see this as a we'll see how this works and if somehow the numbers don't come in i see it almost as a not a probationary period that's a that's a that's not a good term but sort of to try to establish what is it that we can expect what is out there and the site visits are important but really what's important is is turning site visits into companies who want to who do relocate into this city and not just for the chamber but for our own internal economic development department so that's really what i'm interested in is how do we do that and we've only got a finite set of dollars to budget towards that both externally and internally and how and i think we're finally getting the point we're able to try to find some ways to measure that i'm not sure in the past we've really been able to measure that very accurately and as far as who's coming what prospects what's working what's not working i think this gives us a good pathway to do that did you have a comment that was a valid point about turning the the site visits into companies on the ground and so is that something that was that a metric that is not included as a metric because there are there are so many factors about a company's location decision that are truly outside of the control of anybody in any of the perspective communities and there are things that factor into their decision that we will never know about that we would never have the opportunity to influence so when when we're thinking about how we set up goals and metrics whether it's for our department internally or for contractors i think it's really important to look at the most controllable factors so that people aren't being judged on something that it is that they truly don't have an opportunity to influence and i hope that doesn't sound vague or like an excuse but the other part of the other part of that is is that a location of a company could take from a year to two years to five years to nine years and so work that you do at one point in time might be very important in influencing that decision or you know you've put your best foot forward you've done everything that you can but for some reason they decide oh well now is not a good time for us to relocate but four years down the road they decide that they are ready to go forward with it and they say denton is where we want to be we had this great experience with them four years ago and so if you're doing a year-to- year contract someone might have taken an action that that will lead to a location in the future but it wouldn't occur within that calendar year so that was another thing that that i was thinking about when when we were deciding what metrics to include yes do we have or could you provide us or myself with history of those companies that have the site visits that i guess five years maybe six years that the chamber had the site visits that ended up locating and didn't i can tell you one off the top of my head is peter build i think that was a nine year long process and i can investigate other instances of that but that that one i do know of for sure is that it took almost a decade for that to happen council member we talked about target industries i wonder if we have any target properties or target zones that we work on i became aware of the situation where there's a fairly heavily trafficked intersection where business bought property on two corners of the intersection and they built on one and they didn't on the other because they don't want a competitor building right across the street from there so it's it's somewhat of a an underused corner now it's a good plan but not for the city to just have a blank property sitting there do we ever have any plans for for properties like that to work with with those kind of owners and say can we help you find a business that's suitable to you that would maybe bring value to your business or or at least bring value to our tax rolls and liven up this corner rather than leave it there do we ever do anything like that we do provide information and resources to land owners about what types of things would work for their property you know trends that we might be noticing in requests for site locations for different types of businesses it sounds like you might be talking about a retail or a service location to my knowledge that's not something we do regularly it's usually more with manufacturing or distribution type businesses okay thanks all right any other questions are we ready to give direction on this that's what you're asking for i believe yes sir and that is any modifications or changes that you want to see to the draft agreement before i bring it back to you on i think the 19th of sept ember for a vote on the contract any comments to her question i did make a note of council member briggs requests for some more specificity on the six site visits okay i mean i'm okay with the presentation moving forward with it with the changes you know both changes of maybe a little bit more detail on the site visits and things such that i would like if you could maybe get from the chamber of that list of expenses which one of them are proportional and then just to provide maybe a total of what that total cost is and then this is what we're saying is budgeted for the office of economic development that would be helpful to be able to see that okay any other okay i'm not getting too much i've got anybody opposed to this okay all right direct the direction in other words to not give direction to move forward on the contract i'm trying to figure out where we are as far as consensus where are you guys no i'm i'm uh i'm good with moving forward the only i mean i don't know that it has to be done i would like something in there that says you know no one is is this is the course for this period of time type some sort of language so they will not we get an annual report it's abysmal okay yeah we're going to complete whatever that is i just want to start that conversation of or the process of having some actionable items tied to these type things but i don't if there's no traction there that's fine i just that's that's my only i'm good with moving forward as is but if there were one caveat that would be it well i think that that might could be taken care of in the recitals and the contract and the whereas is to try to just state here's here's part of the environment in which this contract's being contemplated and it is part of that language um yes i do have one question maybe for legal um it has been mentioned oh don't okay sorry don't go ahead it's been mentioned a few times this meeting as um the chamber being a vendor or providing a service and um usually we do have competitors vile for that and so i'm just wondering why they haven't done that or why they don't do that is it because they're professional services or are we required to to issue that or this could fall under one of the exceptions of personal services exceptions of the to the bidding statute okay thank you i'm sorry that 's why i'm deaf i apologize yeah i guess i'm good but moving on and you know i'm saying listen to this and i guess what my concern is is how the heck do you measure i mean we're spending quite a bit of money how do you measure what the results are uh and it doesn't look like to me that that's an easy answer right i think you're right it's not an easy answer but i think we're taking the first step in a direction of being able to have more information to try to make that judgment call that's good yes ma'am how long have we had this contract was it 86 89 86 yeah so for 20 30 was that 29 years we've been with the same contractor for this particular service um i'll just register my disappointment at the idea that only one there's only one provider of this type of service that um we're all content here to keep going on with this exactly how we've been doing things um and i guess hoping for different results that's kind of what what we're where we're at i'm in favor not just in this contract but in general of having an open process where we're saying hey can people do better for me on this side of things or on that side of things and maybe that we'll get better results with outside vendor or with some other arrangement but it seems like everybody's made up their mind and we're going to keep doing what we've been doing for 30 years so whatever i'm cool with it well as you know mayor pro tem i really respect your opinion i have to respectfully disagree that i we've we're doing the same thing as we did for 30 years i think this is uh because if if i thought this was doing the same thing now from a perspective of process and those kind of things i may agree with you there but as far as the the kind of contractual terms that we're using are very different but so yes at some level same process uh but as far as doing the same thing with this particular contract with this particular vendor i think it's a it's radical departure but i do appreciate your input yes during the city manager's options earlier to mayor pro tem but gary's question um one of the the measurements was to compare it to an internal and i'm wondering if we can have something like that for the next for when this comes up like if our internal department which is has an over one million dollar budget takes on some of this what that would look like just so we can compare it okay is that enough time i think so okay thank you did you have it yes yes i too i too respect the the the conversation but i do i would fall into the dissenting opinion uh as far as doing the same thing i think you run the risk you know we have the same paving company we have the same sidewalk company i think really it comes down to exactly what what uh mayor watts touched on close rate how often are you closing deals regardless of if you bring in one you close one you bring in six you close five it really just comes down to that for me and and i think that the difficult part city manager pointed out is i would like to see those that that want to see a change in that department i'd like to see an email or information on what your matrix are to measure that change because my concern is you have an institution that has the buy-in of companies to to councilman gregory's point of the local companies so what is that matrix is it someone to come in and tell us what we want to hear so that we can then have a year of no results no relationship to then say uh we better go back then and then i'm concerned about that but again it goes back my same issue with the contract if we're going to challenge the contract i want to understand better what are you looking for in a different company you know so if you're talking paving materials and here's how much we're getting per square foot if you're talking about an economic development change what what are you looking for i mean and that really is is what it boils down to for me i don't understand what that is what tangible difference uh because my argument to the contrary would be we have a random percentage 60 of local businesses are part of this institution and there's value associated with that in in my estimation when i'm when i'm evaluating okay there's these these businesses in this environment thriving currently that are participating in this institution and we have an opportunity to partnership with that and and yield benefit from that and and so someone that comes in from a different area from this area different perspective what value brings that what is the tangible or perceived value uh that we're looking to evaluate and that's really um i'm not i mean i i look forward to to that information but i'm happy to evaluate it but it's it's like hey let's get that out front what are we looking for okay council member duff and then i would i would think uh you know because i mean they're they gotta be listening to this discussion so i i think i think what they're going to get from this is that we're kind of at least putting more notice that things are need to get better and we need to have better results so and i think from that standpoint that should help because they they they know that we're looking at it thank you well i'm just thinking about um you know the concerns about status quo and i think you have to think about it in terms of of it takes time for company to relocate to establish to build but i look over the last several years where we've seen p eter built say we want to stay here and we want to expand our operation here tetra pack said we want to expand our manufacturing operation we want to move our corporate headquarters here fasinol has moved here as a distributing center target has moved here as a distributing center winco has moved here as a distributing center saffron is a manufacturer of aerospace and they've moved here to denton mayday is an aerospace manufacturing operation and they have expanded here all of those and several of those are well above average pay sally beauty has decided to stay and expand here so so i think that over the last several years there's been a lot of good done by by our economic development office by our partnership now could it be even better maybe so could it be worse yeah those are the things that are hard to measure but to say that that things are not going well i think is is not acknowledging a lot of good things that have happened a lot of good new businesses have come property values added sales tax added and a lot of jobs some of which are well above the average so so i just wanted to put that in as we're talking and reflecting on how things have been going over the last several years well and towards uh i'm sorry towards mayor pro tem's observations i think it would be beneficial if um if it's not done in this cycle which it sounds like part of it is i think we hit it maybe a time constraint as well but i think it's a valid point if in six months we're not satisfied with the metrics i don't even know what if there are outside companies who do this kind of thing there are okay well then i think it i think it would behoove us to during the next budget cycle before then to really provide the council with some examples and things such as that so that if there is a desire to maybe move in that direction next year based upon the deliverables and the metrics that we're not sort of flying right here at the end trying to make that decision because it is a good point it's a valid point as far as uh and it's a valid point to ask for us to do the same thing internally to say if we if we were to do some of this and say can somebody do the job that we're doing with an internal economic development department as far as some of that not all of it there's some other things that aren't associated with that uh how does that look so those are all very valid questions and uh situations so an observation so i wasn't trying to disagree with the mayor pro tem in total but i think she has some very valid observations on moving forward how we might need to look at this and do it and look at that process to make it a little bit more equal to some of our other processes mayor pro tem i'm sorry to interrupt you just a point of clarification about the items that uh council member gregory mentioned about expansions and all that i think the cost the total cost of all of those was about 11 million dollars of tax incentives if i'm remembering the agreements correctly over the course of the agreements so um point taken just wanted to point out that there was a price tag attached to all of those and that's in the form of tax rebates thank you okay any other comments i think you have this direction and and i agree with council member duff i'm sure there's others who are will have observed this conversation and and take note of it so i look forward to a robust and discussion and economic development activity moving forward in the next year yes sir thank you all right thank you okay we'll move on to our next agenda item which is 3a receiver receiver porthole discussion give staff direction regarding the fy 2017 18 budget thank you mayor be quick it's be fast we've got all the questions answered for the budget i'll go over a few things real quickly we sent out another uh budgetary response memorandum dated the 15th that was in your packet so answering questions you may have on that give you a projection i wanted to try to give a a little bit more analysis on cash funding of vehicles or cash funding versus debt funding and some additional information on the tax limitation impact i've been asked to provide i've highlighted here kind of the changes in bold since the proposed budget came in with the safer grant and the decision to at least bring back for consideration no transfer to the downtown fund and on the expenditure side i heard the two items for fire the explosive security and the early warning sirens to include those and i've put vehicle funding for discussion as a tentative item in there so those are kind of the changes the two changes i've heard about and the other one for discussion in terms of the proposed budget the questions any questions so what you're saying is uh when looking at this slide that because of the safer grant we had um i will say additional monies i'm not sure exactly how to determine but more revenue than what we had anticipated during the original budget discussions and so the questions now based upon last week's discussion was uh two things that were mentioned were to go ahead and fund as a one-time expense the fire explosive magazine and security and also to fund as a one-time expense at least the the proposed ph asing of some new sirens it doesn't mean all the sirens that they listed up on that but the ones that were in blue i believe it was for 92 000 and some odd change and then it seems the major discussion left at least based upon this slide is funding for vehicles for discussion of you know the basically escrowing that i guess is what you is that or is that actually putting money out to buy vehicles yeah it would be buying them by cash versus issuing debt to buy the replacement vehicles all right any questions thoughts i'm just going to say this is what you're not proposing but unless you hear opposition consensus that says no we don't want to do this then this is the direction will be moving so does anybody have a opposition to at least what's presented up on the screen which means our fund balance would change and it would add 113 000 dollars and 67 cents correct all right yes council member just a running point on the 100 000 transfer okay yes go ahead no that's it just i was i want to hear i want to get into the public portion of those conversations so i may come back okay and make a request there i'm not prepared to do so currently but just again giving a heads up so is it is it primarily help me understand is it primarily because right now as it's as it's presented that fund would no longer be available for the stated intentions as it has been in the past with nothing taking its place in other words it just sort of comes into the general fund is your concern primarily well if we're taking this away what has it been doing and are are some discussions to try to see if we can achieve that with other some other type of funding mechanism is that or is it or is it you you're just a matter we keep it this way or no way at all well for me i think the the attract attraction or the the desire to keep it or what i want to hear more and learn more about is i think there's value in allowing the city manager one to make those kind of one-time options without having to come before us sure i think there's value in that i think there's value in the way it's structured and the way it's set up whereas we have a tiff board that's kind of lacking some structure we're trying to get that established but we have this other board that has some structure it's all kind of interested parties downtown and so i think i think it serves as a great model for for how we want to perceive it but the key component for me is i think to give the city manager the option to address things on the fly those shorts burst is there's value there i think versus having to wait for t uesday having to put some stuff together having to i mean if there's an instance where he needs to act or the city needs to act they can do so and so that's kind of my there may be other avenues for that but for this particular segment of our community i just think that that that's handy to have if it's if ultimately we get restrooms downtown and and we need to do something to kind of support that i mean it just really not knowing what wells fargo is going to look like not knowing some of those needs are going to be in the future it's a real value to have just from my perspective okay great mayor protian a point of clarification so are you saying that you want the manager to be able to make decisions with the hundred thousand for the downtown fund i'm saying i wanted to stay currently that's what he can do so no well if it's if it's under ten thousand dollars i believe that's correct the downtown reinvestment grant if i thought if it was under ten thousand dollars that if the main street association or the or some group there makes a recommendation if it's under a certain amount of money the city manager could sign off on it so with the downtown reinvestment grants if it's under ten thousand dollars the downtown task force approves it and then the city manager has final approval if it's over that amount it 's downtown task force edp board and then city council and then council yes so if it's under ten yeah so you're saying keep the de minimis amount that doesn't go through the edp board and through the council correct what i'm saying keep the it's it's it's currently been functioning that way so i'm saying don't change it and whatever that is and so how you how you characterize that i don't know but the fact of the matter is it's existing right now and so i'm that the the request is to change how it is currently so i don't i don't know that i need to articulate how it currently is structured moreover to remove it changes how it's currently structured and how you want to phrase that i don't know but currently it's functioning as is as as it was just pointed out so so is that a yes well how do you want to change it i guess is the question because it's currently functioning so i'm not asking for anything to be changed okay so then you so you just want to keep it okay i think i got it so you want to keep it the way that it's been we've been having it this whole time which is under 10 000 goes to city manager and then we keep the grants essentially which goes to the edp board for the larger amounts correct okay so status quo correct okay that's i'm just trying to understand thank you okay so as far as notwithstanding councilman husb ats comments and desires to keep it the status quo that particular no transfer to downtown fund anybody else had that same sentiment yes so i think i'm understanding the conversation this proposal would say that we're not putting any money from the general fund into the downtown fund mr hudspeth is suggesting that we continue to put money from the general fund into the downtown fund i would agree with him okay all right so anybody else have an agreement on that particular are there any disagreements with any of the rest of the the proposals on the budget doesn't sound like there was so as far as the no transfer to downtown fund we've got two council members that desire to leave that as the status quo so councilman briggs just for clarification that downtown fund came up during our discussion for the tiff right as a way to maybe fund as an alternative funding yes it was mentioned in that public hearing yes okay thank you okay all right uh well i i'm okay with not transferring it i've advocated for that for a couple years uh so if we want to find other sources of funding that are more appropriate for the downtown area that's great uh but so we have two council members who wish to keep the status quo i wish to have it as it's presented here we need some other people to weigh in i want to keep it as presented that we take that out if we need to look at the downtown tiff that that's the direction that what has been funded through this hundred thousand in the past would now be funded through through the tip if that can automatically happen if there's some change to the ordinance we need to make then let's make it um but this puts the money back to the general fund which makes it easier to use even in the downtown area if we needed to add a police officer for that downtown trying to trying to put that person in from tiff is is more difficult and and as i understand it we've got a fund balance right now of 106,000 i believe in there so really there's enough to run another full year even though we're not funding right right so that's correct you're you're saying as it's proposed on this case okay and mayor oh i'm sorry go ahead let me just point out that this takes an ordinance change from the council i plan to bring that back for council consideration on the 12th so the council will make that decision official vote this is just trying to give you some direction before before we adopt the budget so we'll know exactly how to structure the budget on the 19th and from what i've heard yes you know i'm firm as as proposed okay then what i'm hearing is bring the budget bring the ordinance drafted as proposed and then if there's further discussion or people can obviously vote how they choose to on that ordinance if it's as proposed okay all right i do have a question oh i'm sorry go ahead i'll ask you at the end of the presentation yeah are you sure yes okay because you may answer it i i want to give a little comparison on vehicle cash funding in terms of the two columns show the debt service savings since the debt is issued over five years it takes a while for that savings to build up beyond the cash funding and i've just shown if we had 10 years of cash funding what's the debt service impact so you can see the savings is on the interest component of the debt service the three million versus the three million 219 the difference is the interest we paid on the debt service the other portion of cash funding is it gives you more flexibility in terms of debt service for additional debt capacity for future bond elections if you're issuing five-year debt for vehicles it restricts your debt service when you come around to bond election times like that potentially can come around in 2020 the more that you cash fund those short-term things the more you have capacity for longer 20- year debt so i'll just mention that one oh yes thank you mayor uh chuck when you talk about interest is that an all-in that includes whatever it costs us to to get the bond sold and all of the expenses yeah that and evolve around those bonds right now at about three percent now interest rates are historically low but i've just left it at kind of current interest but it costs the cost of issuance and and those type of things usually the competitive sale that 's kind of built into the interest cost the underwriters cost so to speak okay all right i had a question one of the council members in terms of the impact of the recent tax limitations so i've got an estimate i went through this last year too but just this is just kind of a summary of what the tax limitation that was passed covers homesteaded owner occupied properties those over 65 are disabled disability is based on social security law and the tax year in which the limitations enacted for denton it will be this tax year sets the maximum property value to be paid to the jurisdiction so the limitations kind of a dollar amount in terms of taxes paid and it's after any other exemptions are taken a property owner may pay less than the limitation any given year but not more it can be passed on to the surviving spouse and the other information here i think i've gone over this with the council in the past this was a chart from last year i've just added the 2017 so this year's tax roll has 7259 that would qualify for one of the two areas in terms of number of records you see low and high value and the average value about 221,000 the averages of these since 2008 is the average value has gone up about 3.86 percent and the number of exemptions on an annual basis a little over 5 percent i give you those because when i do the estimates of the impact i'm going to look at those numbers and discount it below those and i'll try to explain that so here's an example of year one which would be the current tax year with an assessed value at the 221,000 the average less the city's homestead exemption over 65 they pay a little over a thousand dollars year two and the following year if they had a two percent increase in value you could see their tax would be at 1088 but the limitation the maximum is that amount that was set so i've got two tables to try to give an estimate and i i want to give a caveat in terms of these estimates they're extremely difficult to do because of those factors but what i've done here is look at the city of lewisville their tax freeze was set in year 2004 it started tax year 2005 i could only go back in d cad records to 2008 but really the column that you look at here is the loss in revenue you can see for several years it stayed about the same mainly probably because home values for all of us who are around during that period home values stay pretty flat and then you've seen what's happened in the last couple of years as home values have increased significantly the loss in revenue all i did in the bottom was take the lewisville accounts and project them for a larger number of counts for the city of denton and the proportion to the tax rate so that's all that's been done there in terms of that and i've done a second estimate and again lots of caveats on these estimates what i did here was exempt the number of exemptions start off from 2017 and go forward at three percent a year the average has been about five and a half but three percent a year and the values at two percent one of the probably most difficult things is as people move in and out the tax limitation goes away so you can't assume that everybody gets it the first year is going to own that property 10 years later there's a lot of turnover and and we've seen what the values over time they can stay flat for several years and then increase and go back down so you can see that over time it probably will increase but this is just an estimate based on those those factors if you go to one percent growth the the the impact is half of what it is at two percent here and not knowing that turnover but just just to to give an estimate and with that i'll open it up for questions i've got a question and you know there's a lot of discussion about the state legislature senate bill one i believe is about capping uh not capping uh decreasing the rollback rate so what would our if we were to have to go down and say this is what our rate was this year if we approve if we if we approve the budget as it's presented with the corresponding decrease in the tax rate when you take out the new value um what what would that percentage be that people would be comparing to in other words well the city of denton is x whereas the rollback rate was either six or eight percent do you have any idea what that would be and if not if you could maybe calculate that and well i mean this year's rollback rate was a little bit over um i think it was about 68.9 cents was this year's calculated rollback at eight um so at six percent you'd probably looked about a penny less than that in terms of our rollback rate would have probably been about um just under yeah i might have i might not have explained my explained my question well enough um because down there testifying those they got charts of every seat this is how much the amount of taxes that you collected increased from let's say last year excluding new value because that's the rate you compared to the the rollback rate it's that rate excluding the new value right yes so are we looking at two percent three percent i mean what are we looking at from last year's collections to this year's collections excluding new value are we at we're basically the same is am i making sense on my question yeah because it yeah we're required to put a statement it's kind of in the front of the book in the front of the budget book okay and um it says this budget will raise more property taxes than last year's by about 3. 7 million and of that amount about two million is tax revenue to be raised from new property added to the role so about 1.7 million and that would be what percent i mean what were what were our ad valorem tax collections last year but in about 30 this year oh yeah i mean it's a small percentage i guess is what i'm trying to to fair it out i've got a page here that's our total tax collections for the year our total tax collections for this year are estimated to be about 66 million so at 1.7 into 66 about two and it's less than three yes but that total tax collection includes new construction value yes so you'd have to back that out would you not to to really get that percentage you're saying the total the total increase is three percent or so well it's 3.7 million right yeah well it's 3.7 million right 3.7 million of that two million is from new construction okay so our rate increase about two or three percent from what we collected last year is that in terms of dollars it is in terms of the calculation of the effective tax rate we're at the effective tax rate so it'd be zero in essence yeah the effective tax rate takes into account some different things it takes into account new exemptions this year and some loss value during the year and those types of things in the calculation so while we get more in property taxes the effective tax rate calculation it's a it's a complicated calculation but the whole discussion about the rollback rate is because the argument has been taxed cities and counties have been increasing their taxes too much and we need to cap them without an automatic collection fine my point in bringing all that up is our assessed value is increased by over 13 13 percent so given that if and this isn't about the local school district or school board but looking at the school financing based upon our tax rate because i'm going to stay on on posting the point being that if you have a tax rate that stays the same let's just say for example some independent school district their tax rate doesn't change but the assessed values go up 14 percent excluding homestead caps at 10 percent then that means it's a 14 percent increase in tax revenue if they if they use the same rate with the same assessed values in assuming no new value you might back out the new value and say it might be 11 or 12 but correct okay i just want to make sure that i have an understanding that when i get my tax bill that the portion of that that this city is is solely responsible for regulating is going to be outside of new value pretty much a very small increase on average and individual properties are different because some go up more some go down don't go up as much but the portion of the tax bill that i in this body have zero control over and the local institutions have very little control over that's going to go up quite a bit as is what i'm anticipating at least what i've read is that the budget that the state passed assumed a seven percent statewide increase in property tax collections for school districts in order to balance their budget so anything that's and so anything that's received above and beyond that that's budgeted in the state any more dollar collected at the local level saves the state i mean the state doesn't have to pay i mean given some nuances the point being yeah my point is the city has done a great job and continues to do a great job and what we're charged with doing and what we only have the control to do and that is set the tax rate we don't set the assessed values we do we approve a budget for the city this body does and it appro ves what that tax rate is based upon the amount of money that we want to collect that we think we need to run this city and this year we're saying the effective tax rate we're almost bringing it down to the effective tax rate which means the same taxes we collected last year save that additional revenue from new construction which we are allowed to do based upon the formula that the state has crafted for effective tax rate that's correct okay thank you yes mr springer you said the state is assuming that school districts are going to increase their revenue by over seven percent i think the the law requires that they increase their revenues by over seven percent this year and by over six percent next year even if school districts wanted to lower their revenues below that the state's requiring them to do that because by the state requiring them to do that it means that it reduces the burden on the state to fill in the gap for funding schools at the state level so i it doesn't assume it requires that mayor protein um so i'm aware of kind of our timeline here we have a a notice posted for the tax rate and the tax rate is at last year's tax rate is that correct the notice was for a maximum tax rate that the city council could consider um the tax the first of two tax rate public hearings are this evening and it stated on your agenda the proposed tax rate which is the effective tax rate but up to a maximum of the current tax rate correct just making sure about that and then from a perspective of our discussions maybe i missed it but i don't believe we've actually had a discussion about the tax rate that we want to set as a council explicitly have we i mean i think we've all been operating under the assumption that we would be approving the manager's proposed proposed budget which is at the effective tax rate but i don't think we've had an explicit discussion about it do we need to or i guess i'm just trying to seek some clarification as far as how that discussion would happen because what i don't want to happen is we're at our actual tax hearing or whatever and that's the first time we're having a discussion as a group about the tax rate and and i and i appreciate that and i think that's what happened last year as well because obviously the discussion of the budget implies what tax rate do you need to approve that budget so based upon our discussions in council's direction or at least council's observations or comments we've come to some almost consensus on the budget which would then necessitate a certain tax rate so if someone's thinking about a different tax rate well that means we're going to have to start talking about specific budget items and the money and so so yes if there's a if there's a discussion to be had about well i don't want it to be an effective rate i want it to be a penny less than the effective rate then that means we we need to have that discussion because that means it affects the budget and and how we expend those funds so that's that's what i want to so yes yep okay councilmember graver in my assumption on that i think that's a good point to bring up my assumption on that is with us having what i perceive to be accepting the manager's proposals for spending we were also accepting the manager's proposals for collecting revenue and we wanted more spending we would have had with that it would go without saying that we would have to collect more revenue if we wanted to spend less then it would probably allow a decrease in revenue so that's been my assumption all along and i assumed that everybody else was operating under that same yes yes yeah yeah i mean i read that whole budget proposal and i'm good with all of it and i think we need to you know follow your recommendation i think i think they've i think you've done a fantastic job so mayor pro tem i mean you you brought that up is it would you like to have a discussion about that or do you have some comments about that i just wanted to be clear that we were all in agreement on the tax rate before we got to a point where we're voting on it that's that's the only thing that and i don't think we had an explicit discussion about it so that's that's the only reason why okay all right any other questions or comments for it's just just for my clarification since i'll be bringing those items back to council you want us to propose the effective tax rate for adoption on the budget that's proposed in the city manager's proposed budget i mean yeah that's my understanding is if we're all in agreement about the effective rate then we should have it posted for the effective rate it is it's going to be posted as part of it with a range are you saying not have the range no we when when we propose the budget on the third the council voted on an item for those notices and what we did was we had the notice at the the maximum tax rate to be considered at the current tax rate and that's what requires the public hearings anything above the effective but that was just for the publication purposes in terms of adopting the tax rate that has no impact on what you can adopt or not adopt other than within that range so we're holding the tax rate hearings it was really to give council any kind of flexibility on the third once they heard the budget but we will bring back the proposed tax rate at the effective rate for adoption on the 19th okay great all right okay any other questions or comments for chuck on the budget all right thank you so we started it too let's just take a little five minute break we'll just sort of plow through a little break 2017 it is 335 we're moving through our work session reports we are now on work session report 3c receive a report and hold the discussion give staff direction regarding the proposed renovation and adaptive use of city hall west located at 221 north elm street good afternoon mayor members of council appreciate the opportunity to come before you this evening to uh visit a little bit about the old or city hall west old city hall built in 1927 before i get started i did want to introduce craig meld craig meld is senior principal with arctic texas and that is the firm we have engaged to work with us and taking a look at some of the renovation options i'll walk through a little bit of his resume or his firm's resume and then kind of turn it over to him to walk through some of the options that we have here so so in terms of the presentation this evening this afternoon i really want to kind of take a look at you know what's the status of the facility some of the requested use of the facility over the past six to 18 months review of renovation options again we went out and took a look at a couple well three different renovation options kind of walk through those and then seek direction maybe what's what's the next step with uh with whether one of those concepts work or whether there might be a different direction or a hybrid approach so with that the facility was built in 27 as already mentioned it has about 24 000 square feet in it but roughly about 14 000 of its usable i was vacated last year last fall the staff that were there development services have moved over to 215 hickory and it is a registered texas land texas historic landmark got about 1.1 and it's deferred maintenance costs over the past few years there's been some discussion as to what's what's the next phase of this facility whether in fact in the 2014 time frame there was some consideration where whether it may be sold to a developer and did we want to invest at what level so and so forth so we've we've not made substantial investment in certain components and systems so previous renovations again 1927 to 1967 when this facility was built it was the city hall served also as a central fire then it was converted into a central fire station for a number of years after that as the police headquarters and then in the 90s was converted over to the planning and development it also housed their engineering offices for a little while and then went through another renovation in 2001 which was a little bit less extensive than the 95 but certainly 1984 renovation when it went from the fire station to the police station was the most substantial so this just gives you an idea of some of the elevations and brings us back to focus a little bit this north elevation which is off of mckinney you can see here some of the old bay doors from the previous use as a fire station here again evident from the northwest oblique this is the from the south southwest side this is part of the hvac system here on the back side excuse me and so then this is the this is a south elevation and you can see here and this is the actual 80 current 88 entrance to the facility but this was an addition here basically from between these two gutters downspouts back here to to the west about when was that when was that addition that addition was in night was with the police station when it was when it was converted from from a central fire into the police in the early 80s 83 i think was the actual renovation and it occupied late 83 early 84 so some of the requested use as as you may recall there was a proposal to look at a portion of the facility to assist with some va services here in our community primarily on the lower basement floor and then there was also there's been a request by the disd for their adult education esl education outreach program had some conversations with denton community theater i think their needs have been satisfied i don't know that they're too much interested but certainly they had an interest in it if it could be renovated could you bring back the old auditorium and city council chamber that was in there serve denton had approached us a couple of different times and in fact the last time in june i submitted a proposal you know generally for office space type activities and and maybe some joint use for some other non-profits but i understand that they've have other other needs at present time time wouldn't work with for them then also a museum artwork space art artisan workspace maybe a gallery those are all things that have been suggested in terms of their other types of uses so quickly arctic texas they've been active in the historical renovation of texas courthouses and have quite a number of projects that they 've completed we've got one here in the downtown area they call it the 1896 county courthouse they they were involved with that they've also done the 1927 renovation of the 1927 courthouse in collin county another facility they've done is the great vine city hall down on historic main street so they have they have quite a bit of experience and not only the restoration restorative activity but you know setting up master plans and moving a project forward and so we engaged them and started engaging them in june contracted them in and in july to to do a conditional analysis for us and then take a look at as i mentioned earlier maybe a high medium and low again what we were looking at there's many different requests on the use of the facility so moving forward what what or how do we want to use that facility short term and then in the out years and so in doing so do we go back and take a full-on restore restoration of the facility to the 1927 original as close as possible understanding of building codes ada accessibility etc then the other one was a middle option and it would have some adaptive adaptive uses so maybe take that old auditorium area and bring it back to use as a theater maybe find some other larger office space or rooms in there to create create other workspace whether it's a an event center artists and workspace so on so forth or maybe educational opportunities and then certainly a low option might be okay we know we need to do some rest we need to do some some work to the facility it is a historic registered historic landmark so we'd have to preserve the exterior to to meet the historical integrity of it and so ensure that the exterior is maintained and restored to its original 1927 and then maybe basically take the interior at its current layout or as close to its current layout and and do the renovation associated with that and so with that i'm going to turn it over to craig at this point in time and kind of walk through each of those in a little more detail and certainly along the way if there's some questions he would be the expert to have the detailed answers as as we might want to go through that i'll just move this forward with just left click and left click okay all right well thank you all mayor and council members again my name is craig meldy i'm senior principal and firm of architect sys started our firm in 1978 and before that i was actually working at the planning department the city of dallas and that's where i got very interested in historic preservation because they were putting their preservation program together and then started our firm on that basis and have been working in that area since 1978 and also i wanted to mention that i also do some small development of historic properties so i kind of come at it from not only an architectural standpoint but i look at feasibility and development opportunities for for historic buildings as well so yes and so we were asked to take a look at this and and incidentally yes we did do the denton county courthouse and i consider it it's actually on our website is the number the finest in in texas and and that that even above ellis county and all the others i think it's really one of the finest we do we're asked to look at the building and i so our approach usually is to take a look at first of all its historical significance which it it's it ranks very high in historical significance it is a recorded texas historic landmark it has been fairly well preserved to a certain extent except i'll talk a little about the 1980s intervention which really was probably the most dramatic change the building had we look at its structural systems we look at the mechanical systems we look at the life safety and so forth and so we have looked at those we take those into consideration when we put our budgets together we had a mechanical electrical plumbing engineer had a structural look structurally the building i think is in is in very good condition the exterior envelope is in good condition other than the windows the windows were replaced in the 80s and they're really not performing at all they really need to be replaced and that's a that's an ongoing problem with water infiltration and so forth so i think that's a very high priority item and then the mechanical systems date back to the 80s and actually the we learned that the mechanical system that's there was a reuse even in the 80s so that needs to be replaced and i did notice some building code issues and certainly accessibility if you've ever been in the building it's a little awkward in terms of levels and and actually it's just in the 1980s kind of by the intervention that took place the clarity of the original design was altered significantly yes have a question council member breaks i'm sorry yes just a comment does that have something to do with mark he mentioned that out of 24 600 square feet 24 600 square feet only 14 000 is usable yes it's like i was surprised by that is it just it's not an efficient building in that sense a lot of it the basement area is really could be used but isn't it would have to be some conversions done to it it's hard to get to and so forth so there there are areas that really aren't accessible but i have come up with a way to use those okay that was my next question use a lot of it it become a lot more efficient okay if if in these three options but yeah so we were asked to look at three levels of potential reuse of this building there i think the building can adapt a number of different uses really but we just took a look at these three and we'll start with option one and we call it a higher level and that concept is to really take the building back as close as we can to its original 1927 design and and i think that there's a lot of things that we can do to get it very close to that but we will have to address the building code issues the accessibility issues the mechanical issues the exterior the windows and so forth and i found that there actually were two additions done in the 1980s one of them actually i think has some value and i think that we were going to keep those in our plan i might move forward i might so we were looking at keeping some of those the addition to the south but we're removing the addition to the north because it has the area for elevators in the bathrooms are are accessible and so forth so this plan would get you back fairly close to the original design of the building and reuse it for city offices and i think that that's and we took a look at that and the original fire truck hall then would be on the first level would be restored the original council chamber auditorium would be restored if you've been in there you've gone up to the top floor and you see the arches and so forth i mean we 've got some historic photographs of that and it was quite a grand space and so what we have factored into this cost estimate and i'm and incidentally what the way we approach the cost estimate is we get a restoration contractor that we use to come in and help us put these costs together so they were very good at coming in quickly and helping us put these costs together but the construction cost estimate as you can see is for around 4.62 million and that includes some site work the exterior restoration and the interior adaptive construction and i say adaptive construction because i actually came up with a way the entry to the auditorium is six feet above the entry lobby so that and no elevator access to it possible so i actually found a way to add an elevator on the ground level or that level and take you up to the auditorium level so that you can have accessibility to the auditorium so we're not going to be able to achieve the full letter of the law but i think we can get close enough to where it's acceptable to to the state. Councilmember Gregory. Yes . On an issue like that if the only accessibility for the auditorium is through an elevator a handicap accessibility well anytime you see anything about a fire or an emergency they say don't use the elevators. Yeah well in this case you would yes. Well what if it's rendered unusable? Yeah well it wouldn't be i mean we can wire and make it to where that particular elevator is usable that's the challenge with this building i mean it we're not going to be able and as a matter of fact i met with your fire chief at the building and walked through with her and she said well we just need to work together to get it as safe as we can possibly get it and i think that and and i think there's a way to make it a lot safer than it is right now in terms of egress and so forth and she was great we walked through and she said i know that we won't probably be able to meet every last code but we'll get so much further into making it a much safer building with this. In there yeah go ahead because somebody listening may say so the city requires everybody else to to meet code but the city doesn't require itself to meet code there's an exception because of the historic nature. Exactly and as a matter of fact because it 's a recorded texas historic landmark you have some flexibility in the building code for historic properties. Like we were mentioning we do a lot of historic courthouses there's just no way to make them all exactly meet the code to the letter of the law and you make it you make it a safe condition but the contemporary codes don't always apply to historic buildings so we do the best we can and make them safe in that sense. The building is sprinkled so it's got some good things about it already but we just need to do a that major renovation to get it bring it up as close close to code and accessibility as possible. So that was option number one and that was to again restore it back as close as we can to the original design. Option two is pretty exciting to me because we did do the courthouse in McKinney on the square for the city of McKinney. The county gave them the courth ouse and we adapted it to a multi-purpose multi-use facility which is really right in the center of town and it's and it's highly used by a number of different entities and it has been quite successful. So this strategy would be to adapt the do pretty much what we did the first option restore it back is fairly close to what it was originally but allow for maybe an event center, museum, theater, multi -purpose, some non-profit offices or something like that so I'll go to the plan. The only major difference is that the fire truck call on the first floor could be an event space for lease and I showed a little courtyard out to the north side where you could maybe lease it for weddings or receptions and so forth. Maybe have your wedding in the auditorium and go down there for a reception so that's the kind of adaptive use idea. Yes one question of course I've originally was asking for the renovation a couple years ago. One of the reasons was there's a there's an old dent in the fire truck that is now in either the county county's hands and it's been partially restored or almost fully restored by so that was why the fire bay even if it was just one because we could probably either get that back or at least be loaned to us to be able to I mean so it's probably one that was even older than the ones in the photos that you had so that would be my only thought about that space there was could it be adaptive I don't that's okay but if if we could still have an opportunity even if it was just one bay to be able to show that this is because I think that's the uniqueness of this building is it's been the police station in fact one of the people were officing in one of the jail cells just didn't have the jail bars on it so that was my only thought about when I saw your plan you know when I say adaptive use for this I mean it could adapt to a lot of different uses again we've come up with a way to get you very close to getting your accessibility getting your building code and bringing the buildings you know really architectural integrity back particularly on the interior and so this this particular one we priced out at a construction cost of 4.86 that again is all the site work that actually included that courtyard area we had the exterior restoration interior adaptive construction and the mechanical electrical plumbing and FF&E I put in and soft cost about five point let's say 5.7 million for that budget and then option number three then really was to basically take what's there do do an exterior restoration upgrade the just upgrade the interior don't don't take out the don't restore the auditorium don't restore the truck hall clean it up get it again closer to accessibility and tune up all of that and put in the mechanical electrical plumbing systems and we priced that at about the 3.315 million for the construction cost the total project budget of about 3.77 for that for that option so those are the three options we took a look at and again I wanted to say that the building structurally is in good shape it needs a lot of work as you know but can be adapted to a number of different uses if if that's what you choose oh all right questions council discussion yes council member Gregory thanks well I'm excited about the proposal and that we're finally getting some real solid numbers to look at I've worked to try to I've always been in favor of preserving this building giving it historical designation and finding a way to reuse it I'm it's to me it 's another way to provide another enhancement for a downtown that's already great to make it even better and that there are a lot of different opportunities for for how to go about using it but to maintain the historic nature of it the authenticity of it and it provides a lot of opportunity one of the questions that comes up with the money immediately for me is back on slide eight mark you showed five different groups that were interested in maybe using the building how many of them have offered money to help us restore it none none I would mention that the Denton Independence the DISD approach they were open to participating on the maintenance costs the main because they had their they have their own maintenance and facilities management group so obviously they've got quite a few of the the same technicians and specialties that we might have have we uh so just a couple of questions are so my guess is that that either based on what we would decide to use it for that there could be some hotel occupancy tax funds if it was an event center that that actually attracted people to town I understand that but okay yeah it also would be uh is this in the the the downtown uh tax increment finance zone I believe it is yes so it would be eligible for terse money uh we could maybe get a partner or would it be eligible for simply getting bond money to do it if I understand if it's a city if it maintains um and it's continued if it's owned by the city yes then then it could uh have bond funds applied towards it and the final question is have we asked other organizations I don't know how some of these even found out about it but have we invited other folks in town to offer up ideas for how this might be used um in any way no sir we haven't um essentially as you may recall we were working um a little bit more closely with the VA group and then the DISD came in and then a couple other three started coming in and that's when we kind of backed up we kind of asked to hey let's let's take let's take a broader look at what is it that we want to do with it or how we want to do that so I think that might be part of the next step approach it might be helpful for us as a council after our discussion to figure out what what goals do we have for this building and then see which of these organizations might be the best partners to help us achieve those goals well I can tell you what my goal is it's pretty simple in 10 years this building will be 100 years old all right and what cities can claim that they have a courthouse that's almost 100 and what 30 years old or whatever it is 18 something and their city municipal building which was probably one of the original ones that was actually more of a modern building so if we can my only goal in bringing this up was to restore the architectural integrity of the interior the arches it's it's insane to cover those up if you don't if you're not going to have council meetings there you certainly can have a stage and it can be used for different types of performances and things such as that you've got this fire bay that if you only use one of those bays you could still have a little bit of meeting space if you've got offices that people can use either the city or someone else that's fine but for me this is this is a treasure for the city of denton and in 10 years it will be 100 years old and to and to leave it in the current state and i know it's a lot of money but it's something you could put in as a bond program for the community or it could be a partial bond program in partial city you know just co funding but i'm open option one or the low option is not an option for me option one is not the low option is not an option because good grief why would we even do that we are spending four hundred thousand dollars on lease space right now and we we didn't do that in lieu of spending the four hundred thousand dollars a year on lease base so either one or two for me it's it's to get it back to a point where when people walk into that building they can see the time as it passed in this city in that building and we will that will be a treasure for the city i mean we asked i asked hey what do we cost to put the christmas lights back on it as we have in the past understanding all the things ramifications about that but so that's my goal is to restore the fire bay to restore the city council and the arches and the the seating areas and if we're able to restore some of the office back to the way it needs to be but clean it up get i mean that thing is so cut up it's just been just uh just things and it served a need it's served a need we're looking at a new municipal complex maybe somewhere down the future so we can get those people out of the lease space but this is in downtown it's literally caddy corner across from another major historic attraction i just think it would be a just a horrible horrible waste of historical context and just treasure to not do anything other than either option one or two with this building and the details of that i'm open to but when you walk up into the top of that building and you see those arches as they're just sort of coming out from different walls and you just think what would it be like if those were were exposed restored you can't you can't build that stuff these days you can't build those kind of those kind of structures with that kind of historical significance and if i may i'm jumping in and have it but this picture is a great picture because those windows above the fire trucks see those are two story high windows yes yes for them for the main auditorium that was quite quite dramatic oh yeah and it was a great space inside there yeah yes mayor protein i apologize i was on a phone call i had to take so if i am going over things that have already been touched on then yeah i apologize um question for you first of all i'm in favor of the high option which is option one this is a little treasure that we have to protect with everything that we have um the exterior on option one yes versus the exterior on option two it's almost identical okay i just i saw the green space on option two and i didn't see green space on one yeah the primary difference the reason i added the courtyard uh is that if you have an event facility in that lower truck bay you probably would it'd be great to be able to open the doors up to a courtyard area because i think that would enhance the leasing uh possibilities of the building um so that's why i added that and that's mainly the big difference in in in in the exterior so it is a part of option one the high option correct having that green space in no no that's the difference is two two has the green space one is just improving the landscape around the exterior so i guess i'll just um i'll adjust my statement because i really think that what's lacking in the original and how it is right now is the green space i mean if you go to decatur their courthouse has almost no green space at all and that the the presence of the green space has a huge effect on the ability of people to enjoy a space especially in an urban or urbanizing environment so i would like to see what option one would look like with a green space and maybe with greater discussion of how else we can include green space in the layout okay um that's that's something that would interest me is having more of a showcase kind of effect on it yeah so option one is again almost very similar to two only i added that courtyard pretty much and then certainly we could enhance the landscaping around it i think that's a good idea well i'll even be a little bit clearer i'm talking about perhaps taking some parking out that's kind of my thought is that maybe we don't need all of that parking on the side and there's even more green space i like that well i would also can i get a clarification when you say on the side are you talking on the west would you say west side or the south side south i think you're pointing to the south side correct yes on the south side so what i'm thinking is you know enhancing the court with the courtyard from option two and perhaps including another green space on the other side of the building just to increase the amount of pedestrian and people use i think that's that's fine usually parking is something we don't touch no no i think that's i think it's a nice idea council member ryan thank you mayor yeah i i love the ideas that council member greg ory came up with for potential funding one that wasn't mentioned is uh you know people of denton are very generous and we've had you know our animal shelter was paid for partially by private funds the courthouse in the square was taken care of partially about the private funds so that's something else we need to look at and we need to get this out into uh you know town hall meetings into public events to to try and get some input and try and get a group put together whether it's especially if we go to the museum type style that can be a continuous funding source to help uh keep up the maintenance on the facility as well but i'm definitely in favor of option two well and also uh you know peggy rick oh go ahead oh okay well what's what we got just for a point of clarification the way the options are listed you've got option one and you're calling that the high and actually that's yeah but actually that's more the middle of the price range yeah so option two is actually the highest price the most extensive renovation that's correct okay and the county and i i think the county would also be a prime partner just to because they they certainly uh have the historical department peggy riddle there and so i think certainly to talk with them and to get their ideas and because this will be as much just like for the city the courthouse is is a big draw for the city and it's a treasure for the city we would want this hey this is indent you got two of these structures in denton county in the county seat um so that's um that was that's one other thing i would suggest yes council member that would be in favor of the full renovation um for me right now the potential uses aren't as important because i feel like there are plenty of things that we can do with it it's just that we need to start moving on the okay the renovation my question would would we qualify for grants well i was just going to mention that uh part of your what you're talking about is financing uh how do you finance something like this and you do have some opportunities if it isn't a tiff yes that's great um and they're the other ones you mentioned but you are eligible for not only grants but the uh texas uh state um uh historic tax credits which are pretty substantial the legislature just recently opened that up to non-profits uh and municipalities so how do we since we don't how does that work since we're not paying taxes i'll tell you i do it as a developer all the time to raise the help raise capital for the project um what you do is you and incidentally it is 25 percent of the qualified rehabilitation expense so that's pretty much all the exterior restoration the interior renovation the mechanical systems the only thing it does not include is site work and furnishings so other than that it's eligible for this 25 percent tax credit what you do then is you get a partner and you sell those tax credits to an entity like say a corporation that pays franchise tax state franchise tax you still you sell them to them uh and usually they discounted some like 85 percent of that total value um and a company like say sherwin williams buys them from the city and then they can then it's transferable to them to use so they give you a big check up front gotcha to okay eventually get their tax credits once the project's completed and approved but you have to you have to go through and we do this a lot through the state historic tech uh state historic commission is the ones that review it uh but the standards that they apply are standards that you would want to use anyway so it's not like it's it's a problem i wouldn't think so that's another contributor potentially to the capital stack let's just say and so we can all those details certainly can be worked out as we move forward but as far as direction councilmember you have a question yes go ahead no that before you go yes that's kind of my concern i'm not okay with a standalone let's have a plan for this building that ignores what else what else right because if you're talking about making pecan street a more complete street you're talking about incorporating some other facets to it but to sit here and say we're going to dedicate x amount of money to a building that we don't know what we're going to do with and start organizing funding and then we'll figure it out later that to me begs more problems because then that list of entities grows because it's finished and and i just think it it's short-sighted it's do we want to remove the welcome center from downtown that we're paying for and and move it in there what what are we going to do and what are we going to do to enhance the area that's that for me is is the begging begging question i couldn't i can't see redoing a building that we i mean it's almost the if we build they'll come and we'll figure it out later that to me is incredibly short-sighted and and it doesn't enhance the area so we have a great building we have a great courtyard we have a tiny street behind there we have no access to downtown there's no i mean i mean i say no access you're blocked away i get it but there's no lighting uh people are talking about the lighting from the parking lot behind it so i and what offices are we going to put there i mean at some point i need i don't i i get the question all the time which city hall am i going to right is the city hall west is the city hall in the middle of the town is the city hall east i mean i think at some point you got to back up and say wait a minute what are we going to do about all this and then how does this building flow into that plan not let's let's read let's build and then figure out how it fits see and i hear that and i can understand that i disagree with the short-sightedness of it this isn't so much about enhancing an area this is about a building that is an historical asset to the city uh and i don't have a problem with saying how do we get this ball rolling which includes the discussion of all the things you just brought up every one of them to have that discussion you also you almost have to have what is what option are we going with because then when if we if we know that it's going to be let's just take this option too in the middle let's say that's the floor plan well then that's going to guide our discussion of who's going to possibly be using it the city may put offices in there but to have to figure all that out especially if you're looking at it from a comfort this isn't a new construction if there's a new construction i agree with you how does it affect the street this is a building that is sitting there it's almost 100 years old it's it's it's it's worthless to the city right now either functionally or historically as an asset so we've been having this conversation for a couple years quite honestly i mean that's why you've had some people come forward in this but i'm i'm real okay with saying hey let's get some design let's let's have let 's have these further discussions that will play into how do we design put some of these things in here but um it my approach to this building isn't comprehensively to that whole area it's saying how do i preserve a building that has been a function of almost every piece of part of city government and it's a hunt it's almost 100 years old how do we make that something that is is an asset it's already historical marker well it's a historical marker because of the exterior so i hear what you're saying i don't i don't necessarily see that that is as big of a problem but that's just me we can we can certainly differ on that there's there's no problem with that yes so absolutely so but if that's the case then let's take the money out of the general fund and pay for it right now if it if it's that important then let's just fund it ourselves and and so i see i see people talking about funding mechanisms and prolonging it and waiting and planning and that sort of thing so i say let's do that versus but if i take you at your word that it 's pressing then why would we wait well because pressing when you're looking at a project like this when you're looking at the life of a project it this is different than taking three hundred thousand dollars out of the general fund to put up wrought iron fences and to fix cemeteries all right but it's almost the same principle and the principle was it's they'd been neglected the principle was it was the right thing to do and we also but of course you're going to have different levels of persp... perspection and an approach depending on the numbers to say are we going to take five million dollars out of the general fund to do this when we might be able to find grant money that we don't necessarily have to repay when we find in tax credits now that apply to the city that now you've got a whole level of funding that other people may be providing that the city is not necessarily having to ask the taxpayers for so that to me that's why you take the time to explore those options to me and i'll leave it at this it ignores the fact that the city has been the occupant of that building so any any disrepair any neglect falls on us that's our that that we did that we moved out we left it in the condition it is sure we didn't make plans to to keep it up it wasn't some some tenant that moved in there and did and neglected it let it fall disrepair the city did that yep and so um again i'll be odd man out but i just cannot see whatever that mechanism is and whatever it is i just think to me um there's other areas uh part of downtown there's other things if you're looping it into something and you're and we're removing something we we have we're we're not purchasing dcta um we're we're leasing there discover the the the um not the the bank so the bank building we're leasing there we're leasing the discovery center downtown where and so it just becomes at some point you've got to consolidate and have a plan even even if it's incremental but before we spend whatever the number is i i just sure i mean i'll again i'll be i'll be odd man out but i i just i can't see um something that is our neglect then being fast tracked or being advanced at this number without some kind of plan to to what are we i mean because the ideas that have been thrown out now we we have an issue at stoke where people say we're competing with with interests and so we're going to put something in a building that then it may be a rental facility well there's a new rental facility that opened up down on the square i don't know that we want to compete with them it could be a museum that's not in competition with someone but i think those things i think at some point we were just um overstepping it's we there's other things that we can do that can enhance our downtown and this building could be part of it but i don't think it too exclusive just say hey we're going to start here i understand where you're coming from i i just disagreed with that that's the approach to get there understand mayor pro tem well um you brought up a lot of good points so i took some notes one thing is in one of our isrs maybe two weeks ago or three weeks ago there was a and city manager will you please correct me if my dates are wrong i think there was a staff report about reeval uating the square foot requirements for the entire city municipal complex in general because we we 've had a presentation on the comprehensive plan for consolidating the uses at city hall it's one building and it sounds like from the isr that that was maybe an overestimate of square feet so we're reevaluating what what it is our actual square feet need is so i think that that particular point is well taken and it's actually in process at least according to the staff report that was just put out so i don't know if that helps kind of like settle that side of things um the other thing i wanted to point out was and maybe the architect can help me if i remember correctly i was like 20 when this happened or something so i don't really know the details but when they remodeled the downtown square courthouse that was a public private was that not public private or was it all funded by the state i i believe it was the majority was funded by uh the grant from the state and matched by the county okay so that was the majority of it they may have had some additional funds but the primary funding source was from the state grant program right as well as uh now earlier i think uh it had sort of two renovations and we came in on the second one to do the exterior and some of the interior work i'm not familiar with the first one we were part of the site yeah i was referring to the 2001 time period that could have been more uh private and public i don't i don't know okay i seem to remember that it was a mix of funds that could have been it could have been wrong um i could be wrong i know that in other cities when they remodel these historic sites and they bring them back up to par or even better sometimes that it's typically a public private partnership and part of the reason for doing that is to get not just money investment but people care about where they put their money and once you've actually committed to something it creates more investment from a social matter into the project as well so i think when we're going forward with this we really need to think about maybe creating a task force or a focus group on what are some of the uses that the community wants to see out of this space not just you know we're the city and we're gonna use it however we want i think it needs to be a public discussion um as soon as we decide what it is we're doing so i would i mean your point is taken on that well that we need to include we need to have a comprehensive discussion about what we're doing i disagree that we need to do that before we decide what the improvements are i mean i think we can decide what the improvements are and then get started on the task force so any other comments questions yes councilmember craver i like the idea of trying to make a simultaneous move forward of starting restoration while also talking with the groups about about the potential use the fact that we're going to if we restore the auditorium to its original appearance you almost require it designates certain kinds of uses and it eliminates other kinds of uses so so i think that that that helps in our discussions with potential partners i'm really happy to hear and be reminded of what was in the backup about the the tax credits yes but also the grants and the gifts as being potential ways for for moving forward and and if you'll go to the the rendering of the middle option the floor plan i'm sorry yeah can you tell me about the interior square footage on the bottom floor about about how many square feet would that be well i know that um let's see the event space in the kitchen was 3420 uh rest rooms it's probably about a 5 000 square feet or so see i i'm leaning towards option two maybe maybe six with mayor pro tem suggestion for the green space on the south side instead of the parking spots because i think that adds another enhancement to it and we 're going to be adding more parking we've already added more parking west so i think that we're pretty much covering our parking issues more landscaping is good with me i mean i love it so that's where i am here i might mention if that in mckinney when the city decided to take over the courthouse there was a number of they didn't know exactly what they were going to do so we had a number of community public meetings to listen to the the community and put pull together ideas and then we tested those ideas on how to go about doing it and you could do something similar to that where you listen and i think i think councilmember gregory's point for me it 's about the building it's not about how much revenue we generate off of it who's going to be using it if we if i look at it and say okay this floor plan looks good because it restores it to its uh as much of its original intent as can be then that certainly governs the discussion on who can use it or what uses do we have i mean if we said this is what it's going to look like well then the city manager is going to look at it and go well we can use this this or this we'll have some groups coming to us well we can use the auditorium some by having these little you know black box theaters or something like that but for me it's it's the the historical significance of this building and i think the public policy by the state sort of reinforces that because if they change the law to include municipalities that could sell tax credits in order to restore historical buildings i think they were saying these things are significant these things are important and we as a state are willing to help with that in the funding because you don't want it necessarily to rest all on the taxpayers so and i don't disagree with mayor pro tem councilmember husb ett that all your points are good i just don't think to me i think they can move in a parallel fashion in no way am i saying those aren't good questions because those are all questions we're gonna have to answer this the differences seem to be the timing of that and that 's that's really because i don't i don't disagree that all those questions are gonna have to be had yes oh sorry yeah you're gonna have to raise your hand just because you do this and i can't see it sometimes so i'm gonna let i'm gonna let council member de ffco no one thing i'm you know i'm looking at and and you know the exterior is going to be done regardless of what we do with it and and that in and correct me if i'm wrong but i think all the windows oh well they'll have to be replaced but that's not going to make any difference on what you do inside i don't think or maybe something it might it would depend on what floor plan if you recall there's a discussion of taking out some of the elevator uh shafts on the north side and some restorative stuff so yes the windows could be seen as a catalyst issue in terms of needing to be addressed and in a date certain time yeah but yeah you'd probably want to understand how you might use that in the out the out years before you engage with the window replacement yeah council member riggs so would the tax credit um guide us more to one option than the other i mean would we have to do the full restoration like say option one to qualify no uh it's amazing uh the federal tax credits require you to have a certain level of spending but the state tax credits you have to spend five thousand dollars or more and i you know oh yeah yeah you'll well up that no there's no no minimum uh requirement from the state to tax credit program okay so um on that um i am in favor of public meetings along with the process um more green space if we're looking at that and coming back and making sure there's access for at least one fire truck okay yes oh did you i'm curious about our historic preservation officer for the city if he wants to weigh in in any way or are making any comments would that be appropriate no yep everything is great conversation i appreciate it i just with all due respect there's one con part of the conversation that i think affects the uh what we think going forward on the financial side i know it was discussed at the uh legislature to add municipal excuse me municipalities but i don't think it passed nonprofits nonprofits we do have and so you need a partner with a non-profit and you have to have a 39 year lease with that non-profit and then you'll you work that out financially but it didn't just just one caveat that it because it was desired by a lot of municipalities to have it go to be able to for a municipality on its own cleanly to participate in the program but in the end i don't believe that passed and i just checked with the preservation taxes director and he kind of confirmed that for me so but i think that's an opportunity though to get back to reaching to maybe a a charrette and the idea i 'm thinking about is that we design some have a gathering with a few options and some charrettes with the community and all the possible participants and that would give us an opportunity to figure out who that partner might be and what it might look like so to me it's an opportunity that's all i wanted good yeah i'm glad you clarified that i'm sorry yes councilmember hosswood then councilmember brix again outside looking in what i what i'm going to pay close attention to is the cost of planning because we've had other projects and and i make it looks for postings i don't know but the fact of the matter is we paid people upwards of 750 dollars an hour for several hours to look at a project to then say we're going to go a different direction so for me again it goes all goes back to it's it's it just it it is painful to me that we're the we are we're the tenants that punched holes in the you know that did this and then we're going to say we didn't keep up with it we didn't maintain it we add the additions if the additions aren't done right we did it if they are done right we did it and and then so i just have it just pains me to watch this planning budget go up as we're figuring out what we might do who we might partner with it just if it's all internal and it's all staff planned and that's one thing but if we're talking consultants and and architects and engineers and then down the road we say oh we don't have enough because the tax freeze did this or that then then we've we've spent that money and i've seen it in other projects and it and it just we have a lot that we can do with the city and i think when you're talking about getting the public behind you if you have a concise plan versus we're going to do this part and then we're going to come back and ask you for more money for the complete street then we're going to ask you for more money to do this and then we're going to need to raise this it just i i think you you ask once you plan once and you manage cost going up to that that building process i mean i just um i'll just i'll i'll just keep a tally okay all right so um direction um i'm in agreement with uh councilperson briggs on we're going to take this to the public as well on that app board having those community meetings to to get their inputs again i think in the animal shelter is a prime example of where the community can come together and they are a non-profit that is a non-profit that could be formed specifically for this and and set up that 39 year lease to do that tax credit okay so to make sure i understand are y'all in councilman briggs because you said you agree with her center to move this project forward and to move it forward to definitely include public meetings early on but but i think i think they've they've given us it sounds like we've ruled out the the lowest option which is just do the renovation on the outside and leave the inside the way it is so it sounds like we've landed on i'm going to call it the middle option which is the restoration with adaptive use so you're saying move down that path and in the process of moving down that path pull in the community meetings try to see if there's uh any desire to form a non-profit that can you know and if you don't get the tax credits yeah there's they sound great but i mean it's just one vehicle i mean there's some other opportunities okay so and i don't disagree with that as far as the green space the fire truck and all those kind of things so and i understand that you would like to see it maybe done a little bit differently but you're going to sort of keep tabs on what we're doing and how we 're going forward and yes yeah that's what i'll get with mr city manager now i'll get a running count good okay fantastic so i don't know how this works financially but you do when you do the tax credit you can either have someone like me write that application up the part a of the application which gives the state kind of the blessing but it would be nice if you could engage with if you had someone help get that part of it done because there is a part a where the state blesses the idea of the project and they say you go forward and uh and you're good and you're good to go but that first step doesn't cost anything to do uh to apply to the state but the background work the research and presenting a nice document and saying we would like this building to participate in this program that takes a little bit of money and uh that might be a nice first step i'm just going to suggest that's the consulting work that counselor hudson doesn't want to spend with just a little bit of sure no extra time i can get that done and i can work with i'm just saying yeah that's a detail i mean obviously that's that's sort of in the weeds and and that's i mean that's sort of operational yeah uh but from a policy perspective it sounds like we have direction to move forward down that path doesn't mean we're not going to run into other questions we're going to have to answer the city hall or the city manager uh and and obstacles but at least to get the ball rolling in that and down that particular path any other questions comments on that all right fantastic any questions or comments from staff or from the consultant i think we have okay all right fantastic all right thank you okay we're going to move on to uh agenda item number 3d which is receive report and hold discussion give staff direction on the mobility and bike plan okay apologize for that so um another great opportunity to talk a little bit about some of the things that we do here in the community to improve the community so um this afternoon what i'd like to visit with you a little bit about we've got a couple of staff members here but we'll talk a little bit about the uh the dentin plan 2030 specifically the mobility element of that plan uh and more more refined to that is the mobility plan and the bike plan we do have uh pre-tem dashmook our who is our uh traffic engineer he's going to visit with us um and kind of do an overview as it relates to the mobility plan and then uh julie anderson our bike and pedestrian coordinator uh will focus on the bike plan so the general uh intent of this presentation is is a general overview of both of those plans and talk a little bit about um you know how streets are classified different facilities that have been put in play as it relates to the bike plan uh and how and when some of those um those plans are amended or changed uh as we as we move forward so with that i'd like to introduce pre-tem thank you mark uh good afternoon everyone mr mayor council members uh as mark mentioned this is just an overview of uh the mobility plan i'll touch on the first aspect of it which is uh the roadway network and uh june will take from there with the bike component so here's a little bit of background where does the mobility plan come from it is uh basically embedded deeply into this document which is the denton plan 2030 uh it's a city-wide comprehensive plan um it forms an overarching uh framework for um and also a guide for growth and development throughout the city we're talking about um development as far as um housing uh commercial as well as a street circulation system this plan was adopted in february of 2015 and it comprises of eight distinct elements these are all the elements and you can read all of them i'm not going to spill them out but the one that we're focusing on this afternoon is mobility and what mobility element contains is it focuses on the circulation network which is the roadway network which has everything it has four primary goals and each of these goals actually relate to different aspects within the circulation element so the first goal relates to the roadway component it is uh well known as mobility plan most of the people understand that to be the mobility plan which is not necessarily what it is it's a roadway component of the mobility plan the next goal relates to freight how how do you do goods movement and how do you create access and routes for goods movement the third one is pedestrian bicycle and pedestrian linkage component it's quite a mouth ful name there but julie will talk about that it's the bike plan essentially and then the last one is the transit component those are the different components of this mobility element what mobility plan the roadway component entails it's a network of roadway segments throughout the city and there are all the streets within the city are classified into different categories functional classes based on the use the the size of the facility the characteristics of the roadway and also the average daily traffic in there streets are typically classified into four classes and they're listed there starting from the local neighborhood streets to collector secondary and primary arterial i'll go in a little bit deeper in each of these and understand what they mean so starting with the neighborhood local streets they're the access between houses and commercial development to connect to collector and arterial streets those are the access points typically the average daily traffic on these streets is between 400 and 1500 vehicles a day the size of the street which is the right of way required or the width is about 50 feet and typically these are only two lane facilities with parking on either side collector streets they're the next step up they actually connect the local areas with primary and secondary arterials their average daily volume is slightly higher he's they range between thousand and eight thousand vehicles a day the right of way or the width width is slightly higher too it's between 65 and 70 feet and they're typical two lane facilities one lane each direction the next one is a jump up these are actually bigger facilities that transport people to smaller geographic areas and they collect the arterials to the collector streets and local streets and the traffic on these streets is typically between 2500 to 15 000 vehicles a day and these are large streets if you see the cross section they have two lanes on each direction with a with a large median or a medium lane the last one are the primary arterials these are typically tech stop facilities these are streets that could be university carol boulevard teesley all those are primary and they provide major traffic movements through the city typically design 80 t is above 15 000 vehicles and the width of the street is between 110 and 135 feet four to six lane facilities typically mobility plan is updated every five years that's most of the cities throughout the nation have a five -year plan where they go back and revisit their mobility plans last update for a mobility plan was done in 2016 as part of the roadway impact fee program and the reason these mobility plans get updated is new annexations new streets and included in the city change of classification due to change in traffic pattern and then you know some streets are downgraded some streets are upgraded depending on their functionality so that's why they're updated and last but not least there are some few projects that are related to all of these these were either in construction completed started or near under design near term construction so if you see the top ones most of them are text off facilities as you know 380 is completed 377 will begin soon that's currently utility relocations are happening they're planning on starting end of this year fm 2181 which is teesley lane is going to start soon i think it's on similar track as 377 2499 is close to completion they're currently saying the completion date is around october this year mayhill and bon nie bray are out to bid so there i mean they're currently under construction they've already given pulled the plug on that one now i'd like to mention hickory creek road we have this project completely designed but we wanted to get the street on the sidewalk portion of this project up and running so that's under construction currently so this is the segment between teesley or fm 2181 and river pass which is the extreme west edge of the city and we're currently constructing the sidewalks for this particular project and the construction of the street will follow shortly after that and then mckinney street we're going for the design build component where we'll come up with the 30 design by end of next year and then project completion by 2020 i think that's all i have if you have any questions for my part i can do it after julie's done or i can answer them council member ryan i have a question you talked about the neighborhood streets 50 foot right away that's not the actual street with no that is not what is the street with and is that dictated by a state level because i know there's a lot of neighborhoods where there's a car parked on both sides it's it's tough to get one car through the middle level and when to to meet it is not dictated by the state it's typically what the design standards are adopted by the city our design standards we require a 27 foot for local curb to curb which means if there's parking on either side then it does provide a small lane in between but that's it was part of the philosophy that if we have parking in front of a single family resident which is every once in a while you'll find a parked car then you will which is not the case anymore but then you will have a traffic calming effect that seriously helps reduce the speed so it was a balance between do you want to have a speed or wide street that people can speed on in front of residential neighborhoods or do you want a street where you know people are going slow and you have to weave through parked cars and there is a yeah this is for single family and i know that there are some streets of that i've been on in town that are well designed that two cars can pass you use calming devices by by having the curb come out every so often and get to where it was like there was a car parked on each side but still allow ample parking for other cars and two cars to pass is there a design standard that is that something that's just outdated that's not being used anymore is that correct those streets we are still getting complaints but some of the streets that you're looking at are collector streets and they have a higher larger cross section as i mentioned so for example um uh Camino Real down in um down by Parker's page that's a collector street some of these streets are wider and they have these um traffic calming devices come in the the reason being that they have traffic calming device because it is anticipated that speeding will occur and there needs to be every once in a while there needs to be a break or something that will help reduce speeds so when you have a wider section there's a chance that cars are going to use that as a faster means to get away yeah but if you use the traffic calming where you bring that curb out and allow for some for some tree planting allow for more landscape that's traffic calming as well that you 're not setting up a situation that if there's one car parked you can't go past at the same time that I mean that's that's how when you're looking at 27 feet if you park one on each side that 's nine foot eaten up you got nine foot left in the middle so it's a that's very much traffic calming when you get down to that point that's correct I mean that's the reason the local streets are really narrow but you get collector seats we we have to have some traffic calming in there so what um we had a discussion about um the mobility plan and the committee on the environment about roads um going through ESA so my question would be what percentage of roads are not accounted for on the mobility plan is it low or high or would that just be like new developments like residential developments I believe it's a it's a high quantity of streets because all the local streets are not technically concerned considered on the mobility element the plan that you look at normally if you go back it it has a background map but that background map is pretty old so some of the local streets or the new neighborhoods that were developed those local streets are not even in the plan so anything that is less than a collector technically is not on the it's not considered on the mobility plan and will that background map be updated yes as as part of the mobility plan update it will be updated every five years okay so then it be the background map with the smaller streets becomes part of the mobility plan correct okay it will be updated and it will be and yes so then this okay thank you thank you okay any other questions for this portion of the presentation all right thank you thank you okay I'm going to talk about the bike portion so thanks for sticking around for the most important part um I'm Julie Anderson the bike ped coordinator um and so the bike plan is what we affectionately call it's actually the update to the linkage component of the mobility plan so the bike plan was first we had one back in 2001 and this update was done in 2012 so this speaks to the goal of the mobility element to focus on active transportation so this plan guides the city in our development of our bike network so this is just a little snippet of what the bike plan map looks like and there's a legend to go with it so what's a bike lane what's a shared lane what's going to be a wide curb lane so it also designates what type of facility we're going to build so if you want to know what kind of facility the bike plan does talk about bike lanes and charrows so a bike lane is a dedicated travel lane for a person who was on a bike in an ideal world where we were building a brand new street a bike lane would be five feet with a one foot buffer but we don't always live in ideal ideal situations so sometimes we have to compromise we like to put bike lanes on streets that have a lot of traffic not a lot of traffic but more than a like a neighborhood street pre-town was talking about we don't put bike lanes on neighborhood streets but anything that's usually above 30 35 miles per hour we're going to want to put a bike lane there shared lanes which we also call as a share it's a shared arrow lane marking that's basically the bike symbol with the two chevrons we put these on low volume low speed streets such as the neighborhood streets congress alice streets like that this is where you're sharing a travel lane with somebody who's in their vehicle that's why we put them on low volume low speed neighborhood streets yes i'm sorry when you say low speed what is the maximum speed for a share we try not to go anything that's over 30 miles an hour because like i said you're sharing that road way with somebody on their bike so we don't want it to be high speed we would never put a share on carol or university we don't want right so 30 is the max 30 is the max um depending on context it could be 35 but generally we go with 30 thanks uh to give you an overview on the infrastructure that we've been able to accomplish since the bike plan was adopted we had about five miles in 2012 before the bike plan was adopted and you can see these pink lines here it wasn't even a connected network it was just a bunch of random infrastructure since then we've been able to do a lot of work implementing the bike plan so this says 25.3 miles but it's actually updated i made this presentation back in july when we were originally going to present and i haven't updated it i apologize but bell avenue was completed and then the section of oak street from carol to fulton was also updated um i mean completed so that's 26.7 miles that are complete right now and we have 6 .4 that are funded or planned so you can see we've made a lot of progress since our bike plan was adopted um just to put those miles into some pictures if you want to see what it is we 've done um this is just a small sample of some of those projects um paisley we did a nice side path there by lee elementary school highland drive was a road diet with a contraflow bike lane i'm sorry it wasn't a road diet it was a contraflow bike lane um some good projects that we're really proud of um this is uh giving you an overview of what types of facilities we've completed so this top one that's a facility type that's actually what 's on the ground right now so we have 12 miles of our charrows and signs nine miles of bike lanes and four of other other includes an urban shoulder or a side path so and this map's actually um the immediate and the complete are inverted i apologize about that um the black is everything that's um designated as immediate in our bike plan so the bike plan is separated into immediate projects short range and long range immediate is what we've been working on it's the very first projects to work on um and so that's what we have there in the black everything that's uh got purple over the black is what we've completed um since the bike plan was adopted you can see that there's some purple that are included in the immediate that's because we were piggybacking on another project that was already going on um so it made sense to go ahead and do a bike project there um so this um the bottom table that's actually completed slash funded so immediate um total there's 40 miles we've completed or have funded 25 um in short range of 39 we've done six and the long range it's actually not two it's actually more like four that's including bonnie bray and mayhill which will have bike accommodations with those projects um so our immediate projects if you take out about the four miles of element locust which those are text dot roads um so we don't quite have as much control over what we're going to do with those projects we're at about 75 complete of our immediate projects um we anticipate we can get a lot of that done this upcoming fiscal year and just to bring it back to our strategic plan and why we work to implement our bike plan it is a goal of ours to increase our our mode share which is those people who commute by either biking or walking to get to work um our goal is to increase it from 4.7 to 7 percent by 2020 and it's in our strategic plan so that's why we work towards implementing this bike plan to get to that that mode share percentage um we also track other items such as um education events out in the public number of bike lane center lane miles we do um and other items like that so right now you can see our mode share is that we have 0.9 percent people who bike to work and 4.1 percent people who walk to work um 2016 census data has not been released yet so we 're just waiting on that but um we have a lot of work to do we get there by not just doing our bike infrastructure but we're also doing other things like education encouragement evaluating our program doing bike counts that's what we do to make denton more bike friendly if you guys have any questions for me one quick question on the previous slide um from on 2009 to 2012 well from 2000 and i'm not sure how these are how do you how do you count i mean this 1.7 is there some kind of you count put some counts down at some point somewhere in different locations this is actually census data oh okay yeah so this is tracked by the census okay so then so do we know what the drop at what's precipitated the drop i mean from 2009 to 2015 it's almost as far as on the bike is is almost half right my guess is um that was during the recession perhaps people are choosing to bike more to save money gas was really expensive okay come out of the recession gas is less not gonna cost you as much you're not biking as much i mean that's my guess for that okay good all right thank you council member briggs so i'm more of a specific question yeah about a street um so like immersen there it's a a lot of kids use that to go to school to walk to to woodrow from nottingham and it's actually being redone now okay but i guess the time before last it was redone it had speed bumps and we know that's not you know um gonna happen again are is there plans to put a bike lane on immersen or anything like that i don 't believe so immersen's not on the bike plan that doesn't mean we can't do something that's not on the bike plan we certainly can um i have talked with i think the parks department a couple of times i only remember because immersen is immersen street and immersen's instructor parks um that we had been looking at perhaps putting charrows or something to connect to some of their their trails in that area um but actually i don't know where we're at with that people drive too fast for charrows it's not really safe so okay i was just curious i was having trouble with my map getting pulled up so i was ensuring so if if somebody say a citizen request those is there a process for that to happen or are they just out of luck or we don't have a formal process if you were to email me then i could talk with noreen noreen's our transportation engineer she's the one i work with implementing the bike plan and we could discuss it um a good example is ector street e ctor's not on the bike plan but we felt like that would be a really good connection from the university up to 380 where they're building that new aldi so we're doing something on ector even though that's not on the bike plan okay so we could definitely look at immersen and see if it warrant ed some sort of bike infrastructure or it was possibly sidewalks or something like that okay thank you okay yes thanks for the report you're welcome uh and thanks for the work that's been done and thanks for the work that you've done because uh it was a couple of years ago after we had been putting money in for engineering that we started putting money in for a bike coordinator bike and pedestrian coordinator and the fact that you've been able to work with the north central texas council of governments and get grants that has more than covered your salary for the next several years but don't stop keep on what i want to encourage my council members to realize is that of course this is about quality of life it's also about health and safety bike tex as has a conference every other year and i met a council member from brownsville who had got on the council she's a medical doctor and she was very concerned about the health of the citizens of brownsville because they had a extraordinarily high number of their citizens who were obese and suffering from diabetes and so they started to promote bicycling and pedestrian activity simply for the health of the community and it's made a difference it's also become a factor of their economic development by and tourism their convention and visitor bureau has has marketed brownsville for biking and brownsville is remarkably flat so it's it's an easy place to bike and uh and bike to uh nature trails and bird watching and things like that i think biking has helped us here in denton as an economic development because uh it has enhanced the sense of place and it has encouraged folks uh who are looking for a place to live where they can have a choice of not having cars and and living in a certain areas of town it's easy to get around by by walking or by biking and i like to ask folks when i meet folks that are moving to town or businesses that are moving to town why i was talking to the folks at gissadi when they moved when they decided to make this their location and they said their employees wanted to work here because they wanted to live here because the downtown they could live and work downtown they could bike to work they could walk to work and um and and it sort of confirms what was going on here in denton when mayor ulean brock was mayor and she started passing around this book required reading by the economic development department the rise of the creative class by richard flor ida it was written in 2002 and it was talking about the importance of place for people in the creative economy and that that one of the the importance of place was was the kinds of amenities that a town has to offer including trails and active lifestyle and mobility options rather than just having to depend on a car so i think we're moving in the right direction and and the reason that you're making this presentation is you're wanting direction on what it's just to give you guys an update on where we're at with the bike plan we know we have some new council members so it's just really a status update thanks okay any other questions any other questions comments all right thank you very much appreciate that we'll go on to agenda item 3e which is receive report hold discussion provide staff direction regarding the dent municipal electric community sponsorship program okay good afternoon mayor and council last but certainly not least i wanted to talk to you a little bit today about some community sponsorships that we 've had in dentin middle school electric in terms of background dme currently has about a hundred thousand dollars budgeted for community sponsorships these funds have typically been used for non- profit organizations and sometimes other city department functions across the city and really the purpose behind this was to provide a similar benefit as what was found in investor-owned utilities iou's and over the past few years as i as i've shown you in the exhibit which is attached to these uh your account agenda materials dme has spent approximately 42 000 to 64 000 each year on these types of sponsorships so other sponsorships in the city typically require city council approval in fact tonight you have a sponsorship that's seeking your approval for the blues festival here in quaker town park in september these sponsorships also have a formal application process their selection criteria and guidelines and a formal agreement that's entered into between the city and that entity that you're coming up with a sponsorship with dme does not have such a formal process they've really only followed an internal approval process looking at these organizations on an annual basis so today we're first trying to seek direction from the city council on on whether this is a program that you think has merit and should be continued i did present this yesterday to the public utilities board they felt like it had merit but they had requested that we come back and try to provide some criteria selection criteria and application process that they could they could consider but wanted to get the council's reaction to that to see if that would be appropriate and secondly if you'd also like to have some guidelines about what types of entities would receive these kinds of dollars would it be restricted to only non-profits would you want to have it go to other departmental operations across the city or did you have any other specific guidelines that you want to look at so with that i'll be happy to try to answer any questions you have again i do have an exhibit that's included in your your materials for your consideration mayor pro tem so i was looking through the backup with all the community organizations that have received funds and it's just it's just about everybody that you can think of and i think it's a good thing that we're providing those funds um i would just maybe present a different way of doing this at co-serve i know that they have a charitable foundation and basically they will provide a lot of the same types of organizations throughout their service area with um these gifts essentially but it's funded through the rate payers election to fund these things so you round up your bill and then the money goes into the charitable foundation and then the charitable foundation writes a check to the local school or wherever it is that the money's going to go um i think that's a good way of doing things for a couple reasons one you may get more money just in general for these organizations um two i think it could probably have a little bit more of an investment in terms of the rate payers themselves they get to decide how much money they're going to spend on these organizations since it is their organization it's their electricity company um so i guess i only had a one and two but i'm sure there's a three somewhere that's that's my suggestion is you know maybe we we do this in a different manner as opposed to having it be a part of the operations of the electricity company this may be more of a question for aaron but i know there's a constitutional provision that says we can't provide a gift of funds but perhaps there's a way if that was provided to a foundation with some requirements through a contract of what we'd ask them to do with the funds that might be a way to get there aaron would that be i would agree with that okay councilman brig do you have a question and then councilman gregory so i was under the impression that dme donated money to non-profits um to help others um pay their electric bill is that yeah is that something different that's something different and we do have that arrangement with it's with all of the city's utilities um i don't recall what that amount is off the top of my head but i can certainly get that to you and we do provide that kind of funding that program isn't in danger i mean is not no that's completely separate yes ma'am okay thank you and isn't that along the lines of what mayor pro tem was saying you can elect to pay either a dollar or some other plus one you sign up for it and i think there's something there is something we had a plus one program there's not many funds that there's not much funds that we get from that so it's really a payment from the city to this organization to do that's the vast majority of the funds yeah that's what i was going to follow up on mayor pro tem's gary's suggestion because i was i was really disappointed a while back when we were having some discussions about rates rate increases and we wanted to increase the amount of money that we were providing to interfaith ministries to administer those funds for folks who were having a struggle for a month or two months in making their utility payments and with our 50 000 meters we weren't we were way short of a hundred thousand dollars to to provide the one plus program so so i think if we wanted to pursue mayor pro tem's suggestion we would want to see the the actual numbers for the one plus program and exactly how much we're bringing in and how much we've had to supplement in order to hit that hundred thousand dollar mark i i like the program of of the donations to non -profits i'm disappointed that it was all uh staff directed i would prefer to see uh some type of a program where the the money was distributed after consultation with the public utility board or some other citizen group one suggestion suggestion i might make too is for those of you who've been on the hot the hotel occupancy tax committee we have an application process all those are brought back to that committee and then brought forward to the council for consideration we could have something similar to this where we bring bring those forward to public utilities board and then come to the city council if that's a direction you'd like to have yeah council member brian i don't know that we necessarily need because we most of us know most of the organizations that we're giving and we know they're good quality organizations but i do like the idea of the process of it going through pub much like our contingency funds that it might just go through pub and then come through us in case there's any question on what's going on with the funds it just that transparency of where the funds are going to okay did you have a comment i i'm really prefer it to be a different type of process um personally i mean i think that if we could build to the amount of money that we could or we could increase the amount of money that we give for those who need help paying our their utility utility bills instead of unt golf tournaments i mean i would i would prefer that i'm not sure how to to go about that i know it is two different programs but i would like more detail on the program that we do have the amount that we contribute and the amount of people we help and that would really help me make a decision on on these i'll be i'll be glad to get that to you and the council yeah and and i would i would agree with that sentiment i mean we we certainly have two two committees the health and human services committee and the community development community community anyway we have two committees that make recommendations yes sir and so i certainly and and i think council member brig's point is a good one that is do we need to prioritize what we want sort of discretionary funding to go to i mean because you do run the gamut in this list all the way from people who are very much in need to some incident some programs or events that we might go okay uh whereas i 'm of the inclination that if i had to decide and say look i want to make sure that we are providing enough funding for people who if they have a problem with the utility bills or even with their deposits because i know council member husbick you brought up we still need to review that that ordinance that we passed a few years ago about the security deposits and those kind of things and to ensure that we're are we really because there are some people that really struggle out there at times and so for me it's prioritizing it as well but i think we need to have a different process in order to evaluate them we've got great examples of that within the city and so you could emulate that with a different committee who makes recommendations or there's all kinds of things but i don't i don't think it's a bad thing but i think that we need to i would like to reevaluate what the criteria is to receive funding um so yeah absolutely and i think one suggestion staff would have is that other city departments in the city not receive these funds i think that's something if there is a need in another department whether it's police or parks or whatnot sure that there's a budgeting process for that that we can bring that request i agree if you could consider okay i uh as i was talking about a group to review it and i mentioned public utility board but i think your idea of maybe the human services advisory committee because they're already dealing with an awful lot of that anyhow right and an application process and uh and and it's already maybe getting them to help with setting up the criteria for that any other comments questions do you have enough direction so if i understand the direction we'll take it back to that committee the human services advisory committee for direction as these items come forward and then directly to the council and then i'll get you a report on the plus one program for the funding that we've been having for those that need assistance with their utility bills um so i 'm clear is there are there certain types of things that we don't want to be included i mean are we taking certain things off the table for instance like golf tournaments and things of that nature because it sounds like if it's going to human services it's going to have that focus and maybe we should direct it a little bit more than i mean maybe i'm just not tracking well yes thank you mayor i would i'd like to to send it to them to ask for some criteria remember it's it's if money is going to a golf tournament the golf tournament is supporting some charitable cause it's not just it's not just to to pay for um guys to go out or people to go out and play golf it's it's for a charitable cause so so if we could get some have the human services advisory committee look at how the money has been spent evaluate uh what criteria has been used by staff give us some some suggestions on a new set of criteria or revised set of criteria that we would ultimately approve at the council level and then ask them to administer that's that's what i was thinking of okay yes mayor pro tem i'll just add to that then that maybe we put a cap on how much any organization can receive because there's a lot of different numbers here and maybe we decide you know this is the maximum amount that anybody can get i think we can do some research for you at a staff level and bring back a recommendation for you to consider with with that absolutely well i think one example is the uh debt and convention of visitor bureau welcome center sponsorship is ten thousand dollars and i'm not sure i mean we're paying the rent on that and so is there a mission like what is on paper with this program like is there a mission statement because that really can guide charitable donations well unfortunately i don't have a mission statement on paper i think that's one of the reasons i wanted to bring this forward is is to see if if the council feels like it's something that's worthy and you have a mission that you want to accomplish with it i think it's been case by case uh depending on each request it's been looked upon as a sponsorship kind of marketing opportunity for the city and dme okay well i'd really like to see this focused on low-income residents of denton um if that's if we're going to take the route where we keep this in house and it's something that's overseen here i'd really like to see it focused on where the need is greatest and i and i oh i'm sorry go ahead council member breaks no go ahead and so on on that note as far as um the amount because it's gone up from in 2012 um around 42 thousand to um 2016 63 almost 64 000 is there a set amount anywhere or is that something council would do is it a budgeted item or is it just where it was budgeted it's a budget item 100 000 dollars annually for the program so we've never spent all of those funds um but it would just depend on each year who would who had requested the funds okay so we could have a we could change the expenditure amount the budget amount the the amount per uh entity or organization that receives it there's a lot of different ways to control it perhaps okay thank you council member i i understand the idea of focusing on low-income folks or folks more in need but i'd love to get some input from the human services advisory committee because for example some of that money goes to the denton public school foundation and uh and that money could be specified for students low-income students but it also uh could be specified for teacher scholarships for continuing education they might not qualify if it was uh i don't think most of our teachers are considered low-income though some probably are uh given the number of people they might have in their family but but let's ask them to give us some input on that but but they may not want to completely restrict it that way because there are some other very useful programs that are not necessarily just focused on low-income well i think though what the direction was to if if we sort of put this in the hands of the health and human services committee as far as if we were to say hey here's some extra funding that you may be uh recommending a different organizations they already have the process they have the application process so anybody can apply then they make the recommend i don't think it's limited to who can apply for that for that grant funding i think it's just a matter of they they look at them they look at all the grants they look at the need they look at and then they make a recommendation to us so i don't think it's naturally excluding anyone from applying that's my understanding as well mayor that could be just an alternative process as we want to make an additional contribution funds into that program and ask for their recommendations yeah and and really not have something specific from dme that that's being performed yeah any other quick so i'm not sure i have the direction now what is it oh i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm late what i'm kicking around and tell me if i'm off base here what i'd like to see the good will associated with the gesture right and understanding there's there's going to be some hey there may be some dissenting opinions to that but i think when i say when we say a golf tournament would say using that as example or better said the the welcome center what branding does dme get for that right i mean i think there needs to be some sort of branding some sort of you know something should go with that so that we we can we can then if it's if it's a koozie whatever it is i mean i just think there needs to be something or some other than a brochure because we all know what we do with brochures from events you know so it's just there needs to be something that that kind of not that they need the marketing but but it should there should be some sort of uh that way i can see more of it's an investment versus this this grant when with another large bucket of grants and the the net result is we don't know you know i don't know how to i don 't know how to draw that straight line but i think there needs to be some roi associated with that or some goodwill or some you gotta take out you know take out an ad that says or i don't know what that looks like but that's just kind of my thought is some leave behind other than something that that's going to get in the recycle bin councilmember hudspeth i would agree with that and one of the things that we would propose be done is that we would actually have a formal agreement if that's a sponsorship that we wanted to enter into just that said in exchange for these funds these are the services that we receive back the marketing materials that we receive back going back to that comment about there's the city's not allowed to give funds to any organization so we'd have to provide the funds in exchange for something so we could certainly look at that if that's an opportunity that you wanted to pursue if it's i think i heard a different option though of providing funds perhaps to the human services advisory committee and having them allocate them using their process and i don't recall the figure off the top of my head but i think it's about 250 000 or so dollars that we provide from the general fund to that program so it could be supplemented with this hundred thousand or another amount whatever the council felt appropriate that they could take through that process if that's a direction that you wanted to go so i think there's two different things perhaps on the table right yeah to that point i'm now i'm trying to are we talking about sponsoring sponsorships or marketing or is it one of the same are we talking about non-profit you know i'm i'm just kind of everything's j umbled here and i'm not sure if we should designate certain funds to to certain things because marketing is important you know but you know when we have events and there's tables and it's a sponsorship table it shouldn't be a city of den table and a dme table because we're one in the same i mean we should you know so i mean it's a i'm not sure well and that's a good point and council member husby you bring up a good point in distinguishing between a sponsorship in other words what what are we getting from that like if you sponsor a chamber banquet are you getting notice in any publications are you getting some kind of and that's a very different approach to this funding than hey is this funding to provide us with more funding for community services as may be recommended by the human services committee so very different that that may be the first question we have to answer i mean and i think your point is well taken that is not knowing what some of these sponsorships are providing it's hard to understand that particular how do we answer that question how do we say we don't want to sponsor we may want to sponsor depending on the rate of return and so i think what would be helpful is if we could get and it's going to be difficult i know it 's going to be you know hard but it would be nice if we could just have sort of a cursory inventory of these that have been sponsored on this list if they were sponsorships if it was a table bought or if it was a like the the groundhog gala or the i think there's one for the north texas fair and rodeo what does that sponsorship level provide okay and then that will help us look at what is that rate of return what is can we do with that in other words we'll be able to prioritize what the council makes as a policy decision because this is even though it's the rate payers money which it is but it's also still within the budget of the city of denton so but i think that's a good i think that was a good delineation of and you picked up on it what they're two different they're two different approaches and they're two different ways to policies in order to fund so that's not necessarily direction specifically on this but i think we have another discussion to have once you receive that information i can bring back the plus one information that you've requested and bring back some of this information on what types of sponsorships that we have maybe at least a scoping of guidelines if we were going to do this kind of program what we might recommend to you and then have that discussion and so based upon it being and i don't know how quick we'll have that discussion but based upon it being part of the because you're saying right now it's in the dme budget is for a hundred thousand dollars yes sir all right so we can either go ahead and leave it like that and then upon discussion i mean it let's say we decide to do something with it other than sponsorships are we able to do a budget amendment that says we'll take this and put it in the health and human services funding is there is there i mean we don't have to make the decision whether we zero that out mount out or if we leave it at a hundred do we have to write that decision today no sir you would have the expenditure authority for the hundred thousand if you decided to direct it to some other place through another agreement we could certainly do that so then maybe the question becomes until we get this resolved do y'all want to either freeze any more of those or those sponsorships those requests come directly to the city council and the pub freeze it i'd like to see the requests come through because i'd hate for organizations that plan for that time period but is that for the upcoming budget or is it for the current it's already are that we are we getting requests for this current budget or are we getting requests for the new budget both both you're going to have some for the rest of the rest of the fiscal year and you'll have some that'll come in very soon for the october time frame november time frame so we can certainly bring those forward to you i think we would need to see that list yes sir i think that's we need to see that sooner than later okay yes councilman one last question does our city charter allow for our dme funds to be spent on charity i mean is it is it allowed within our charter because i know that i'll ask there's not anything in the charter that really addresses that particular question oh okay so i heard mayor portin you said freeze it yeah we can do it from a date date in the future so that people have a heads up because i think it's going to take some time to work through the process so if you will have a couple months to plan that these funds may not be available for some time until we work through so what about getting a list of the requests so far today and being able to because if somebody's made a request and then we decide if there if there are events next month and they're keep counting i think i can bring this back to you relatively quickly and and in the intervening time if there is a request i can also bring that back to you to have a discussion with the council we could perhaps have those with the same work session um maybe early early september yeah i mean i'm looking at the list and there is nothing in here that causes me uh anxiety about about money being inappropriately spent and i would agree with john that i hate to freeze it and cause some concern for some organizations but but we need to do some work on it we may need to decide of is 100 000 right should it just be 75 should part of it be designated for sponsorships and the other part of it for more charitable issues you know we just have some things to work that's that was the whole point that was brought up yeah that's yes when i served on uh human services advisory committee council member gregory appointed me just fyi um one of the things that was the most difficult part of that process was we had limited funds and there were a lot of competing organizations that um were all deserving of the money so we had to weigh their applications against one another and my concern with dealing with these on a one-off in a one-off way is that it's a rush to get your application in and then you don't have to compete with anybody you're basically doing one-off without any type of um competition and i i just i can't get in favor of that because i think it's i don't think it 's the way we want to go but i understand not wanting to put people out when they've relied on things which is why i think maybe we just set cut off date at some point but that's just me the oracle will speak thank you sir uh this better be good manager i'll pay for that i will pay for that trust me i'm wondering if a way to facilitate the conversation you know is to kind of break down the hundred thousand dollars and because a we haven't really been we haven't been spending it all anyway uh but to really to break it down into three pools along with the application and uh process that brian's going to be suggesting and one would be taking a look at our um our rate payer assistance program you know could we bol ster that putting a pool together for more social programming and then also a separate budget for the sponsorship and you know we can maybe divide it in thirds give you a starting place like that but it it may clean this up a lot as i look at the the organizations that have historically been funding there's such there's such a mishmash um i think it would be fairly easy to divvy up the budget into three buckets with their own sort of rules and mission statements and and give you something to respond to in that manner maybe make this easier for you if you want to alter the dollar amounts or whatever that's fine but uh it seems like that's where where we're hearing i think we've got the ability based upon past spins to accommodate everybody's concerns is that a you want to bring that back and then we can see that we need to tweak it we can do that we can go back and try to categorize each of these in those buckets that we were talking about sponsorship the ones you categorize in there just what what we have anticipated what was it yes sir if there's an organization that's receiving city funds from somewhere else for instance the convention visitors bureau can you can we identify what additional funds they're receiving just so that we have a good picture of where money is going from anybody on that list yeah like i saw several organizations that already have a designation of funds in different line items so i'd like to know you know how much is it really that the city is giving them okay we can start my do yeah council member husband yeah that's that's an interesting point because and not i mean i think not to add to the list just thinking out loud because my first pass through the the hot funds request a lot of these entities are on there so it almost seems like if we kind of had a total as a council if we had a total so this particular event is getting funds from dme from hot funds from general budget it seems like we could maybe kind of do some consolidation and and say if what's the number and what's the the resource versus the entity feeling like they have to go to all these different things and hope and and kind of go through all those different hoops i think if we say hey what's the number and here's how we get there i think we can kind of clean that up a bit because yeah there are a lot of duplicates kind of around as you look at the different resources and funding that it's available maybe we compartmentalize those and kind of take some pressure off those entities that know hey here's here's a source and you can kind of be at peace with that yeah and so yeah i think that's a good to bring back with this presentation a total of these organizations that are receiving funding from elsewhere do you have a question just the last comment i would like for our legal department to review section 12.03 regarding excess revenue excess utility revenue and our charter and give council a written response on on the delineation of these funds just okay certainly the legal department yep right i think i have the direction i'll be back probably early september and we can talk further about this all right thank you for your time fantastic all right this completes our work session following the work session we will now convene in closed session at 5 34 p.m we'll be considering pursuant to texas government code section 551.086 and i believe that's the only one uh nope and let's see and deliberations consultation with attorneys under texas government code 551 .071 you you good evening wanted to welcome everybody to this meeting of the denton city council we do have a quorum i want to call this meeting to order it is 6 30 6 33 p.m on august the 15th 2017 our first item on the agenda is pledge to the u.s and texas flags and if you're able to stand please join us okay to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay we'll be down we've got a couple proclamations okay the first one is for the americorps vista program if y 'all will come down give you some recognition and some and hear a little bit about the program and if we could introduce ourselves once we all get down here all right everybody here fantastic well i'm kathy schaefer i'm the youth services program manager and uh the americorps vista's which stands for volunteers and service to america are members who serve non-profits or local government agencies to build the capacity of these organizations to carry out programs of work with low-income individuals and this summer we are really fortunate to be able to work with the americorps vista's we have free camp scholarships and also also half-price camp scholarships and so we serve a lot of low-income youth in our summer camp programs and the vista's this summer helped us so much getting camp prepared getting our vans in the place they needed to be helping the kids mentoring the kids just being this positive role models to this to the kids in our program so we're really excited to partner with the americorps vista's and they were just a tremendous asset to our our program this summer and so now yes if we could just have everybody introduce themselves um my name is marcella and i'm the vista leader i'm here for the north texas program basically i have a year of experience doing vista already um so i serve as a support for the new vista's hello i'm christina pennland i'm the americorps vista project director for chism trail rsvp um i help non-profit agencies build their vista programs recruit their vista's and um support the vista's throughout their year of service or their summer service uh my name is josh and um this is my first year doing i did the summer associate program with the vista's and it was just a great opportunity to volunteer and uh help mentor the kids hi my name is jessica hayden um i also was a summer associate for the vista program this is my first year um i really enjoyed spending time with the kids and um getting to know them one-on-one and taking them to their different activities hi my name is jordan coats and this is my first summer associate term i'm currently going on my third term of americorps i'm actually moving to austin this week i just started a food bank but i really enjoyed the time i had here in the city of denton thank you well thank you all so much for serving our city to our parks and recreation department because the vista group serves not just the parks department recreation department but i've known of many organizations who have profited from your your service to the community over the last several years so thank you so much thank you for helping the kids yes let's give them some recognition and we look forward to seeing you again next year during the program thank thank you all very much i appreciate it and the next one we're going to be honoring the texas health and human services foster grandparent volunteers in partnership with the parks dent parks and recreation come on down well the foster grandparents are role models mentors and friends to children with exceptional needs the program provides a way for volunteers ages 55 and over to stay active by serving children and youth in their communities and this is exactly what the foster grandparents do in our camps we have worked with the foster grandparents for about six years now and we just had a great relationship with them it is amazing to see the children when some kids need a little more one-on-one care and so there's times where the kids are having a really bad day and one of the foster grandparents will come up to them and say do you just want to sit with grandma for a little while and it is need to see their face light up and they'll go spend some time and then go back and join the activities and they just need that little extra love and care and nurture and that's definitely what the foster grandparents provide to our children but also they help with the camp operations serving summer lunches the snacks i mean we are so fortunate to have each and every one of them and we just love having them part of our program thank you all so much for serving the kids of our community especially those that have special needs and just bringing that extra love and tenderness into somebody's day so thank you so much and we certainly want to honor you here today so let's give them a big round of applause and now we're going to get to and i want you to introduce yourselves and make any comments that you like i'm beth ro ach with the foster grandparent program i've been with them for seven years and i'm so happy to be part of the city of denton camps and recreation kathy has been very beautiful wonderful person for us and we have some great grandparents go out to the school system and help out kids that need the help extra help so here's one of our grandmas my name is k fowler and i worked at the civic center with i worked at the civic center with kathy and i had a great time the kids were lovely and very sweet i can't wait to go back next year i'm jean woods and i'm took a pretty uh did my first summer with the camp and i have really enjoyed it and working with the grandparents working with the children was awesome i mean they just brighten up your day and like k athy said that one-on-one is a blessing to them but most of the blessing to us too hi my name is adrienne la sacra and i've been with the program four years and i really enjoyed the summer camps this summer and i work in the district during the um school year so i really enjoy it hi my name is sue lasseter this was my first year with foster grandparents and of course my first summer civic center it was really a thrill to work with the children and be able to remember what joys we had as children before we had the worries of the world on us and hope to be able to do it next year thank you let's give them another round so much appreciate it thank you okay the next item is a proclamation by the mayor for the dentons mayor summer youth job program if we could have anyone here associated with that come on down this is in partnership with diesd dent independent school district united way of denton county and the dent chamber of commerce so any helpers students who participated helpers students who participated and how are y'all great they wouldn't have you introduce yourselves gary you're not going to be saying anything okay all right okay all right well um just to give you a little bit of information about the mayor summer youth job program about three years ago when i got elected i was visiting different conferences with us mayors and many of them had summer youth programs in their cities now many of the cities are large cities philadelphia new york was hington dc and they would have literally thousands of children but i thought just because of our size we could try that here and our pilot program i think originally had about 11 students which you think that's not a lot but that is a lot for for beginning city our size and just for a new program in fact and i think last year we had about uh 25 or so and this year close to 29 or 30 but um one of the stories last year and i'm sure there's stories up here like that this year was that uh one of our ex council members kevin rodin was mentoring one of those students who were in the program and because of his experience in the program he is able to get a job during school because of the experience and the licenses that he obtained during the summer in order to uh to get the job that he did so we just wanted to give an opportunity for for students to get out and to explore different avenues of occupation to get exposed to the work environment to get exposed to having bosses and peers and things such as that and also to be able to experience managing money i think that's a very i think that's something that's very important is to just fiscal management and just to learn those skills so i wanted to have everybody go by and introduce yourself and if you would tell us where you were placed we'll start with you i'm Monica Dries and i was placed in the planning department i'm jocelyn mcgill and i was part of the united way of denton county i'm Brianna lees i was part of the waterworks i'm sierra williams i was a part of the emily fowler library my name is natalie parks and i was in the community improvement services department my name is sosia gassaw and i was in finance my name is elise batal and i was in the planning department my name is brooke poplin and i was in the parks and recreation department my name is amber luke and i was a part of the achievers gymnastics my name is alicia freudel i'm the director of education and workforce initiatives for united way of denton county i help organize the program my name is daniel gorski and i helped in the fire department my name is gala nelson and i was placed in the animal shelter with four of these students actually four of the students in the program worked with us and i and they're not here tonight and they their lives take them other directions but i can tell you that this is a the i guess the third year that we participated in this ourselves and we have benefited from that greatly with that brand new huge animal shelter that we can't seem to get it all done at the end of the day with just the amount of people that we have designated on each shift but i can tell you that this program gave us some great kids they learned a lot we kept them moving so they learned how to work and you know i i can't i can't thank you enough for letting this our department be a part of this because it helps us so much and i'm ready for four more next year so thank you sir well i certainly want to thank our partners the dent independent school district dent chamber of commerce and united way united way spearheads this this this effort and gets it organized gets the students to get the applications the interviews and does the placement so i really want to thank you all for that because it's it's really in the people that really get it moving and they're on the ground that really make these ideas work so thank you and thank you all for participating and i'm going to read a proclamation then i have one for each one of you that we'll hand out at the end this is a proclamation by the mayor of the city of dent on texas whereas in the summer of 2017 the city of denton united way of denton county denton chamber of commerce and denton isd continued their partnership to support the mayor's summer youth jobs program and whereas working a summer job as a young adult is a rite of passage that provides valuable experience to prepare young people for their future careers and whereas providing summer jobs to youth in the community is important in establishing professional and personal character for young people and developing the leaders of tomorrow and whereas 21 students were placed in jobs in the city of denton organization and throughout the community and whereas these students committed eight weeks of their time to performing jobs learning about various career fields and developing professional skills that will serve them as they enter adulthood now therefore i chris watts mayor of the city of denton texas do hereby proclaim august 15th 2017 as the mayor summer youth jobs program day in the city of denton and ask all residents to honor the 2017 participants of the mayor summer youth jobs program for all their accomplishments and admirable adm irable representation of denton let's give them a warm welcome and congratulations so we had fun that's that's the meeting so let's give them one more one if we could review the video for procedures for addressing the denton city council has adopted rules of procedure including a code of conduct which applies to citizens as well as council members these rules were enacted to promote an orderly process and to preserve decorum here is a brief review of the rules that apply to citizens reports citizens will have four minutes to give a report there will be an electronic beep when time has expired if the remarks are not concluded by that time the citizen will be asked to stop speaking if the citizen does not cease and a second request is made the mayor will request to have the citizen removed from the council chambers citizens are asked to not approach the dais if a citizen has papers or other materials to hand out to the council please let the city secretary know and she will have a staff member distribute the materials to the council the attorney general has ruled that council members may listen to citizens speak and may ask questions of citizens for clarification of the issue council members will not engage citizens in discussion of a topic because to do so could potentially be a violation of the open meetings act when speaking to the council citizens are to direct all remarks and questions to the council as a whole and not to any individual member please refrain from making abusive personal impertinent profane or slanderous remarks anyone who violates this rule will immediately be removed from the council chambers citizens adherence to these rules will help make an effective presentation and will preserve the order and decorum of our proceedings copies of the rules of procedure are available from the city secretary three which is agenda item 3b1 which is uh public speakers mr donnelly regarding city incompetence if you'll come up and state your name and address your time will begin my name is robert donnelly i live at 3900 quail creek road denton texas and i came to you today for two reasons one is a couple of months ago i uh made a presentation to y'all about a document that the city of dentis city of denton furnished me that had been changed and uh i asked for an explanation of how a document got changed sent to me when the actual document was not changed that was over two months ago and i haven't had an explanation i've had apologies that i got a changed document but i haven't got an explanation of how that happened i would appreciate something in writing by the end of the week as to what happened uh secondly and i would like to address the dent landfills the dent landfills operates under an sup it's currently in violation of that sup and has been for quite some time i've been working with the landfill for well over a year just in regards to the landscape requirements of that sup and have gotten absolutely nothing uh it's my understanding that the sup was granted and part of it was to to make you know i'm sure to make citizens feel good that the landscaping would be done because it's right there on mayhill road uh the basic premise which you'll need to look into it of course is the sup requires 20 trees every hundred feet all of you feel free to drive down mayhill road and take a look there's nothing close the first time i asked about it i was told it was in the summer they said next planting season we'll take care of it i let it go next planting season they did nothing this year i've been working with them and basically they have manipulated the landfill to the point they cannot i don't believe uh confirmed conform to the sup and so i'm here for an official putting you on notice or filing a complaint or whatever the official is i believe your options are to find them on a daily basis or close them down and i'm happy with either one you'd like to do uh because as i say i've been dealing with this for well over a year uh and at this point they've stopped all communication with me and and so uh you know if you're going to grant sup you need to enforce them or do away with them and i would appreciate on this i would appreciate a response of what you're going to do if you're going to do anything or if we're just going to ignore it and not worry about it and now any questions on either one of them any questions seeing none thank you very much mr next speaker is mariela nunes janes regarding senate bill four good evening evening as a researcher of migrant education professor mother and denton resident i know that the threat of sp4 is having a detrimental effect in our community so i want to share with you tonight three reasons why dent on should join the lawsuit to stop ssb4 number one because sp4 makes denton less safe number two because sp4 creates fear and number three because sp4 feels hate sp4 makes denton less safe a common argument in favor of sp4 is that it will keep communities safe from criminal activity yet by detaining individuals based on the suspicion of their own awful status sp4 only contributes to encourage racial profiling it is well known by agencies and scholars who specialize in immigration that a similar federal program 287 g has been used primarily to target offenders including naturalized citizens who do not pose a threat to public safety the addition of campus police as enforcement entities covered under sp4 is also of particular concern because university campuses are already designated by dhs as sensitive locations for enforcement actions law enforcement agents already agree that sp4 will have a detrimental effect including adding an additional layer of burden on already strained local police and campus police this is why many chiefs of police and sheriffs have already opposed this before sp4 creates fear sp4 feels a climate of insecurity putting all denton residents at risk regardless of immigration status for undocumented students and those in mixed status families this year's back to school is met with fear rather than with optimism fear of persecution and deportation from the threat of sp4 is already preventing immigrant families in texas from reporting criminal activity to police because they see police as ice agents students now have to contend with a psychological trauma caused by fear in addition to the legal and economic consequences that result from the actual detention and deportation of a parent or a loved one sp4 fuels hate we have already seen in denton how anti-immigrant rhetoric and federal executive orders targeting immigrants fuel a climate of hate just this spring and and this summer flyers by white supremacists appeared on our university campuses and in our city these flyers erroneously encouraged and i quote all citizens of the united states of america to report illegal aliens end quote encouraging vigilante attitudes and allowing persecution of immigrants as as an excuse for what they call civic duty it is no coincidence that the tragic events of charlottesville began in a college campus and culminated in the death and serious injuries of anti-hate demonstrators yet in denton our empathetic and compassionate residents and schools have already taken a stance against big a tree we dentonites have held vigils and rallies at the square we dentonites have consistently called attention to the history of our cities our city's confeder ate monument we dentonites have welcomed and established a bond of friendship with the city of musk ies mexico it is now your chance to take a clear and definitive stance against hate on behalf of all dentonites please join the lawsuit against sb4 thank you thank you is is there any questions for the speaker from from the council any questions thank you thank you very much and typically uh you know our rules provide for no demonstrations like such as that uh just ask you to respect that but i certainly understand the next speaker will be crystal bonitas lopez regarding senate bill four hi my name is crystal benitez lopez i live in district three i've grown up in denton and i'm a student at unt i am here speaking to you today to emphasize the effects that sb4 will have on students and to ask denton to join the lawsuit against senate bill four this racist piece of legislation was passed and signed into law last may i want to remind you that this law affects everyone one way or another whether you're losing money your sense of safety or even members of your own family everyone stands to lose something or someone with discriminatory laws like sb4 and programs like 287g with the implementation of sb4 on september 1st we will see results like lower attendance rates on students parents will fear taking students to school they can be pulled over and detained for something as minimal as not having a driver's license and once you're detained you can be questioned if there is reason to believe you may be undocumented which again will be profiling people are even picking up and moving to neighboring states to avoid these violent and discriminatory laws we're losing texas students and this is interrupting students education for many families also a parent being deported can mean losing the breadwinner in the family this forces students to have to drop out and provide for their families at young ages instead of again focusing on their education schools of course will lose money because attendance is tied to funding and this law also makes schools unsafe denton is d has officers in their schools and with them being able to act as ice agents it will become an unsafe place to be for immigrant families they won't be comfortable going to campus for fear their immigration status may be questioned this also applies to us as college students our campus police are real officers that will also have the power to inquire about immigration status which will lead to higher crime rates and make us victims to more crimes because we'll be an easy target and there's already fear of ice coming on campus we no longer have the power to become sanctuaries to offer the protections that this community needs as before does not allow for sanctuary campuses or cities and it gives fines for universities and cities that do choose to become sanctu aries this makes a plate this makes places of higher learning a dangerous environment to immigrants as the students will have less trust for our campus police we know we will be subject to racial profiling people's immigration status again can be questioned or reporting crimes and we don't want to be targets and then this just adds stress on students they fear their families will move away to other states they fear their families can't come to visit they could be pulled over and then that's the end or vice versa they can't go home they can't go home on holidays and then this adds guilt to them because they feel like they might have should have just stayed home to protect their families again instead of being able to focus on their education please do not even let them consider joining into a 287 g agreement with ice sp4 is bad enough please use the powers that you have as city councilors to join the lawsuit against sp4 instead i will continue to fight alongside my community for dignity and respect for all these laws and programs are more are morally wrong and unconstitutional these laws are discriminatory and attack our most vulnerable community our people deserve more and the people of denton need to know that you care about them thank you any questions any questions thank you our next speaker will be deborah mendoza regarding a fight against senate bill four the sanctuary city's ban good evening my name is deborah mendoza i am the prime minister of the carnalismo national brown berets um i work for my people i'm here to represent my people the people who were here before borders crossed us my ancestors were here hundreds of years before colonizers came to our and still to destroy it still and destroy it i'm not here to give you a history lesson i'm here to talk about the racist law that's threatening the very people that have been here for hundreds of years with this law you will not only destroy families but you'll impact it your impact the impact that will have on all the children will have a long lasting effect these children that are legal here will grow up they will remember how their country treated them this will eventually come full circle they will grow with the hurt and will eventually become men and women men and women with the hurt they saw as children think about what will become of these men and women i plead with you first of all and then i give you the certainty that you if if you are in favor of this law we as people united just as you see us here today will seek a way to put the right people in office that will defend us you do have a copy of the lawsuit in front of you is that correct okay yes please join us thank you any questions for the speaker thank you thank you thank you thank you we'll move on to our next section of agenda item three which is 3c which is the additional citizen reports this section of the agenda permits any person not registered for a citizen report to make comments regarding public business on items not listed on the agenda this is limited to two speakers per meeting with each speaker allowed a maximum of four minutes such a person should have filled out a blue card requesting to speak during this period prior to the calling of this agenda item we do have two cards and we'll just give a couple minutes for those that want to exit the council chambers to do so thank you very much thank you all thank you thank you thank you okay we'll go ahead and resume our first speaker will be david zoltner if you come down stage your name and address your time will begin good evening mayor council members my name is david zoltner i live at 2501 timber trail in denton last week i sent an email to some selected council members and staff on the topic and the subject of the texas open meetings act and where citizen speakers might fit into this scheme of rules of procedure and current law several days later i finally had an opportunity to to watch the video of that meeting and respectfully but in all honesty i don't know that i can recall ever hearing more half truths fairy tales straw men arguments and frankly tortured legal advice and that coming from a city attorney half truths such as city council meetings are limited public forums meaning our current agendas aren't written to allow for open discussion fairy tales such as council can't deliberate an item without a separate posting that says you intend to deliberate straw man arguments no one has ever suggested that the tex as open meetings act obligates anyone to deliberate if they choose not to only that you can't use the texas open meetings act as an excuse to clam up also or the texas open meetings act has never had anything to say about whose citizens may or may not address on this dais i replayed that video a second time and made a transcript before dialing up freedom of information foundation attorney and director joe larson in this houston office some of you may remember mr larson by name or reputation from those two dash 30 repeal days a couple years ago newer council members and citizens should know that joe larson is probably one of the most highly respected and often quoted legal authorities in texas on both the texas open meetings act and the texas public information act joe and i discussed my email and reviewed dialogue between deputy city attorney and council during that work session summarizing joe's position dave i have honestly no idea what's going on inside your dentin legal department but everything in your email to them was factual and consistent with current law and the texas open meetings act good luck the foift has your back on this you can quote me and share my contact information with anyone on council if it will help a day later another foift board member tom williams weighed in with identical thoughts from his fort worth law office by telephone so i'm going to have to leave it right there for now since we can't take this any further as an open mic topic so we'll just call this part one of two in the very near future expect to see a legally posted agenda item reading as follows receive a citizen report hold a discussion and give staff direction regarding the texas open meetings act parliamentary rules and consider repeal of rule of procedure 2-29c3h to be continued thank you next speaker is mr willy hutzpeth you'll come down state your name and address your time will begin council members my name is willy hutzpeth i live at 623 newton wasn't able to speak in the uh citizen not the uh work session today uh you you you have your way doing that work session you get to do all the talking and all you ask questions that you would like information about and you just have a real good time citizens can't say anything in that meeting that should change so i'll take my time tonight to talk about what you talked about today some of those areas number one i think we spend we give a lot of money to the chamber of commerce denton chamber of commerce that we do internally for ourselves they do very little if anything to my way of looking at it to help improve on the industry or people coming to this city to relocate very little they certainly don't do enough to be paid what they're being paid that's my thought secondly and i agree with some of the count a council member who said you should figure out what you're going to do and how the the old building where the the city was located to figure out how it fits in with your master plan before you start renovating it and then the question that i have is why does it need so much renovation when it was the city was in it operating in it and had made two well at least i know i know one major renovation to it all of that money was spent and now according to the guy that's going to renovate it this time it needs a lot more well what was the money spent on for the renovation before so the two issues you're spending too much money on the building and you that's one and number two you don't know how it fits in with the master plan parking was talked talked about landscaping well you ought to wait until you see what the rest of your your ideas are for what are you going to do to that area and lastly i've been talking to council member duff about a plan he has about the fire department i agree with council member duff he he has a good a good idea about how we can get some firemen added to the fire department raise money to get scholarships to pay for individuals to get the training that they need and i think that would work but what i want to address is what the city has done for years to keep minorities from being in on the fire department and now i just have a problem with me now having to go and try to straighten it up so all i'm going to do is keep saying in the history of this city we have two firemen that means from the beginning of of this city and when it was actually incorporated to today two firemen and that's a shame that is why you have people who say enough's enough and they don't know how to handle that and so they do what i normally would do used to do uh start using violence to try to take care that's not going to work so i'm just going to keep saying what the facts are two firemen in the history of denton that's a shame thank you go on to our next agenda item which is agenda item number four consent agenda chair would entertain a motion because i know we have some that are going to be pulled as some i'm not showing any requests to speaker oh okay oh okay is it not oh there we go okay there it is no we still don't have an option is it ready council member hospice i move we approve we pull consent agenda a item a and then i move approval for b through oh i'm sorry correction i move we pull item a and item q and then no oh got it okay take three yeah i move we pull item a and approve b through q of the consent agenda okay mayor pro tem i second that motion all right so we have a motion to approve the consent agenda items b through q and we're pulling agenda item a for an item of individual consideration is that correct correct motion all right all right uh let's vote on the board please motion carries seven zero we will now take up agenda item four a as an item of individual consideration do we have a staff presentation or just oh okay we've got someone coming down all right good evening mayor and council members i'm jess ica rogers i'm the energy services manager from zenton municipal electric i'll be walking you through item 4a which is the interconnection agreement with the target corporation and i'll quickly go over the process and the application that we received from target our recommendation and what the next steps are in this process so this is the first time that you've probably seen an interconnection agreement come in front of you and what you'll hear used a lot throughout this presentation is the term distributed generation and when i say that i mean that's any remote generation that's installed on the customer side of the meter that can include wind and solar distributed i'm sorry generators natural gas diesel generators in this case we'll be discussing a solar installation and the process that a customer goes through when they want to make a solar installation is they'll submit an agreement for interconnection an application for the interconnection and then supporting documents such as the drawing the engineering approved drawings and those applications will get reviewed by dme and if they're acceptable they'll be moved through the building inspections process once that installation is made and our metering and our department will go through and verify that the disconnect for the system and the anti-islanding tests are successful and then the customer will be allowed to generate electricity through their system okay sure you might speak a little bit closer to the mic too and if the control room can maybe raise the volume just a little or maybe if jessica just speaks a little louder into i'll be louder i'm sorry okay the interconnection agreement that you have in front of you and will have the following terms it will identify the system which i'll go through details of that system on the next slide it'll establish the point of interconnection it'll set the testing and approval procedures that dme will go through with the customer it sets our access rights and our inspection rights it establishes customer requirements such as the maintenance of the system that they have to undertake it also determines the city obligations to accept or pay for produce energy the agreement has a term that all systems over 50 kw have to have a separate agreement in order for the city to pay for that energy pushed back on the grid this particular system that we'll be discussing is 660 kw and it also establishes our risk and insurance requirements and it sets procedures for any time that there needs to be a disconnection or termination of the agreement so the system in question tonight is a 660 kw rooftop solar photovoltaic system that it will be located at the target retail facility on the loop and this is the largest solar installation that we have within the dme service territory and this particular system required a pre-interconnection study under the puct rules and we require through our permitting through building inspections that they have an approved agreement prior to the approval of the building permit so upon successful or an affirmative vote tonight they'll be able to move forward in the building inspections and permitting process staff recommends approval of executing the agreement and it was also approved by the public utilities board yesterday morning on a vote of five to zero and just to give you some context once the interconnection agreement is executed they'll move forward with that permitting process and we estimate that they will have the installation complete by the end of 2017 i'm having to answer any questions that you have specific to this installation okay there are a couple questions council member gregory thank you i have just a couple so in order to get the approval from dme and the pub is there some engineering examinations that go to make sure that these are compatible yes sir and this particular agreement we had both an internal review with our engineer dme engineering department as well as an external review of the inter through an pre-interconnection study and before it's connected there would be an inspection to ensure that the compatibility is indeed yes accurate and does built his design and that goes through both the building inspections department and through dme staff so you're coming to us with this particular proposal but we 've heard that there are also a number of solar panels on the rooftop of the new hotel connected with the convention center the embassy suites hotel but that didn't come before us is that because of the size no we've had a change in procedure how we're going to be handling these going forward we want to make sure that where is transparent and open with how these agreements are executed and the systems that are being interconnected through the grid so this is the first it just happens to be a special one but we plan on bringing these forward in the future well what is the size of the one on top of embassy suites as compared to this i believe it's two oh and they 're getting off yeah we're a little we're a little off posting okay okay never mind yeah uh councilmember briggs thank you for the presentation um i asked for this to be pulled because it is a great project and it's um it's a big one in our community and i would uh like our citizens to see how the process works and encourage other customers to to do the same and to know that there are grants or rebates available if they choose to do it to um to just contact and look on the website yes anyone can contact um the energy services department we can help you through that thank you it would did target estimate um how much of the energy it will this will provide for their facility as far as i'm i'm sure that's in the engineering study but i couldn't tell you it's off my head just curious all right any other questions on this item this is an item for individual consideration so chair would entertain a motion yeah no it's not we might okay councilmember briggs i move approval councilmember gregory second all right we have a motion and a second let's vote on the board please um motion carries unanimously we'll move on to agenda item five our agenda item five items items for individual consideration consideration of the use of em inent domain uh we got agenda item five a consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton finding that a public use and necessity exists to acquire various permanent easements and temporary construction easements generally located along smith street and we do have a card wishing to speak so we will take the public comment before we uh read the the motion good evening mayor councilmembers i'm brent heath executive manager for energy delivery i'm here this evening discuss property related to the 138 k v conversion of the transmission line between locusts and spencer substations the executive summary we've had these on other cip projects that you've seen before but just to remind everybody that's here and that's watching dme has performed transmission uh line engineering analysis we uh have identified a problem in denton associated with growth growth and agent infrastructure we do have a responsibility to respond to those identified issues both from a regulatory perspective as well as a reliability perspective we followed a citizen public involvement process that encourages citizen input and feedback we consider all that input in the engineering analysis and recommend moving forward to council for your consideration of the most feasible and economic option that has the least impact to the public uh just as a reminder there are several external to the city uh regulatory entities that we deal with uh FERC is the name that you'll hear f-e-r-c stands for federal energy regulatory uh commission we do submit annual FERC 715 studies which are detailed engineering analysis of the transmission system that identifies the weak areas in dent on associated with the statewide transmission grid NERC is the north american electric reliability corporation and they're responsible for enforcing the regulations put forth by FERC t-r-e the texas reliability entity is has the delegated authority from NERC in order to monitor compliance and the reliability standards here in texas the public utility commission of texas the p- e-c-t that jessica talked about just a few minutes ago has authority to review and approve these projects ERCOT the electric reliability council of texas manages the electric flow to the majority of the electric customers in texas now to the specific project in question this is a copy of our transmission map of the system and the uh just to kind of help orient you that north is up on this map this is interstate 30 five right through here 35 w wise off here in that direction and 35 e goes down through this direction to help everybody locate where we're at 35 e 35 w and i-35 the area in question the segment is within the blue clouded area locus substation and spencer substation the project histories we had a public involvement open house to solicit uh information from the public on june 27th 2016 at the greater denton art council at belle avenue in east hickory uh previously it was known as the visual arts center the public utility board held a public hearing and recommended the transmission line route on july the 25 th 2016 and then the city council held a public hearing and approved the public utility board recommended transmission line route august the 16th 2016 the location map a little closer detail than that other map this cyan colored line shows to the right our spencer substation and to the left the locus substation in the route of the existing 69 kv transmission line that will be converted to 138 kv there are several tracks associated along this entire route and this is a little bit different than what we did a few weeks ago there are going to be multiple tracks on this one agenda item all related to the same project and so i'll go through each of these and answer any questions that you may have track seven and track eight is shown on this map the green line running east and west horizontally across the page is the location of the existing 69 kv transmission line the red shaded area shows the additional easement that's required to convert that line to 138 kv 138 kv we have appraised this property and have already sent out initial offer letters on this property at the appraised amount track 9a is to the west of that on the west side of duncan street once again the green line shows the existing location of the transmission line to be converted and the red line shows the easement acquisition area a property easement has been appraised and initial offer letters have been sent at the appraised value to the property owner this is track 10 at 600 smith street easement is shown in the red area across the parking lot area the green line once again runs through the middle of that track 11 is the northwest corner of smith and hill street the green line is the transmission line that exists today the red line is the easement this tract particular because there are some mobile homes that are there you'll notice that two of them are in the easement area and so they're already kind of encroaching to the street so those two mobile homes will have to be relocated in this process track 12 is the northeast corner of dallas drive and smith street and there's the red shaded area across the parking lot track 13 is to the west of d allas drive initial appraisals have been done on this and we do have a pending agreement with the property owner at the appraised value it hasn't has not closed yet and the last two tracks 14 and 15 adjacent to each other the red area shows the easement area right there next to the green existing transmission line and there are some title issues that need to be cleared up through this process so this is where i will stop in this eminent domain portion and have y'all any discussion that you have and then upon a favorable motion by the council i will proceed and show the legal description of each of these properties all right we've got a couple questions from council and then we have a public comment council member briggs so for clarification are are we talking about acquiring the whole subject the whole track or just the the easement that's a very good question it's just the area that's shaded in red just a very small portion of each of these tracks thank you council member gregory thank you mayor in a couple of the early slides it appeared that that easement zone that was shaded in red actually touched or went over the roof line of some of the buildings does that mean that some of the buildings might have to be modified in order to allow for the easement no the all of these red shaded areas and the easements being requested will meet the clearance requirements required by the national electric safety code the existing buildings that are slightly encroaching into those easements they are at such a distance they all can remain except the two mobile homes that i mentioned that's helpful thank you very much yes any of the questions at this time for staff well thank you we have a card wishing to speak mr william hudspeth who come down state your name and address your time will begin mayor council member my name is williams for delivery 623 newton i had a request to speak on that item that was pulled and i wasn't allowed to speak i was at the meeting today and listened very carefully for any what you were going to if you're going to pull anything and i didn't hear anyone say anything about a would be pulled question if you can answer it who requested that that be pulled mr we can go back and revisit that item just answer that question yes yeah uh council member breaks was it at the very beginning when we went through the because i don't know how i missed it okay must have been when i was sleeping uh okay now to the item here you can start the time i don't have any questions or i don't want to say too much uh it appears to me that this the areas where you're getting acquiring the easements are in the low income area of the city is that but no i can't you can't answer the question i'm wondering if that's by design if you are taking advantage advantage of the people who live in those areas and not considering what it is that is going to be good for the citizens are you you can't answer that i just want to address the fact that it might be you might be taking advantage of of the people would you go back to the first slides on here if i still have time yeah first slide yeah let me know how far back you want to go this is the very first arrow photo or you want to go further back yes no that's the first one yeah we have the red yes sir okay the next one then the one after that is okay that right to the north of up close to where the track indication where it says track sl09a right further up is a community it's a a housing area is for all of those houses up there so that's what my main concern is that that whatever you're going to put in there and i don't know what you what the easement is going to provide or allow you to do but i'll bet it's something that's very dangerous but maybe not so my only concern is that you don't take advantage of low-income citizens in that area with whatever you're planning to do i have no more cards wishing to speak i do have a couple questions brenton on that this is a good slide as an example and certainly and this may be for legal on this particular one we show the easement going through a parking lot i think that's what it looks like is that going through a parking lot yes and what you're saying is there's enough clearance from where the line is going to be located to where the building structures are quote-unquote within the footage requirements or offset requirements setback requirements for the utility line but any parking spaces are within that easement those i presume that those would not be continued to be parking spots no they can remain to be parking they can be parking spots and so these are going to be the 138 kv towers the tower tower the silver i say silver tower still galvanized yes and those are uh what's the diameter of those do you know at the base it's a couple feet in it they vary but anywhere from a tangent pole maybe 12 to 18 inches in diameter and go up to the corner poles which could be as big as four or five feet in diameter okay and what's the spacing on those typically uh typically in these top areas we try to go around 250 300 feet so most likely on some of these tracks maybe several of them there's not going to be three or four poles in those tracks i mean you 're talking that'd be 800 feet or close to a thousand feet like this one right here uh do we know what the the length of that is what the dimension of that is there'll be two poles on this particular property one there on the west side of duncan street and one a little bit west of midpoint we will be doing a little different construction here where we hang the conductors of 138 kv out over the parking lot further away from the buildings than where it presently hangs so it will have improved clearance to the buildings with the conductors okay all right thank you all right um thank you council member brings do you have a question before motion well i was are there old poles there now currently yes this existing wood 69 kv transmission line that is operational at this time with distribution circuits underbuilt and the distribution will remain and the transmission will be converted all in new new infrastructure and so then the old holes will be taken out is there there's nothing else attached to those that would cause those to stay okay thank you all right mayor pro tem i move that the city of denton having made the offers required by state law use the power of eminent domain if needed to the various permanent easements and temporary construction easements situated in the sc high room survey abstract six two three and the alexander hill survey abstract six two three city of denton denton county texas and more particularly described on exhibits a a1 b1 a2 b2 a3 b3 a4 b4 a5 b5 a6 b6 a7 b7 a8 and b8 to the ordinance now under consideration and on the overhead screen being now displayed to the audience all of which is for valid public use necessary to provide the expansion construction maintenance operation and improvement of electric transmission lines facilities and structures including substations to serve the public and citizens of the city of denton texas councilmember greg ory i second all right and we're displaying we're going to need to display all those legals through okay i'll go back and redo that oh you were doing it as we were doing it yes i was be happy to do that again yeah please just one more time this is a summary matrix of all of them i'm sorry about that that's the last one got there councilmember gregory and mayor just for clarification all of these tracks that are on display right now were in the backup that was available to council and to the public before this meeting is that correct okay thank you okay we have a motion and a second see no more questions let's vote on the board please agenda 5a passes unanimously we'll go on to agenda item 5b considered option of an ordinance of the city of denton a finding that a public use and necessity exists to acquire permanent easement covering a 0.901 acre track of land situated situated in the eugene pochowski survey this is a different line section different project and this will be for property located west of bonnie bray street at stella street and it relates to the h ickory to locust transmission line and it's only one property the exact executive summary is the same as we previously showed on agenda item 5a tonight i won't go through this unless you have any questions once again the same entities for the regulatory and the reliability requirements and why we must do this project these are the entities that we work with to make sure we're and within compliance this transmission line map is the same as the other one it shows a different line segment a little bit to the west of the previous one between our loc ust and hickory substations the area in question or segment is clouded within the blue line at bon nie bray and stella the project history on this is there is an existing 69 kv pole line it's on wood pose presently at this time coming out of hickory substation running down stella because it only goes a couple blocks it will be rebuilt and upgraded to 138 kv in place a legal briefing was sent to council on september the 16th 2016 the specific property in question night was appraised through an apartment complex at 222,865 initial offer letter was sent to the property owner at that amount they did go ahead and counter they went up slightly from 222 up to 580,810 further negotiations discussions occurred they came down slightly and we're still over 150,000 separation difference on that so we need to go ahead and bring this project forward to council for your consideration zooming in on the specific location this once again is west of bonnie bray street at stella just south of oak street here this is the apartment complex in question the green line is in the previous agenda item 5a shows that it's running through the middle of a parking lot of the apartment complex in the green line running north and south right here and then turning east down stella street on the south side right there the request to convert this to 138 kv is essentially in the same alignment one note an exception from that is this corner pole will be moved from this median to the median to the north because it does improve clearance to the buildings and will get the conductors further away from the apartment buildings and so this is where i will stop and respond to any questions that you may have and then upon favorable motion by council i'll proceed and show the legal description of this property council member graver so it appears from this photo that the easement impacts the parking lot only that it would not require any substantial changes to the building to the apartments that is correct thank you all right any more questions before we have public comment saying none mr william hudspeth i.b. wish to speak okay all right council member gregory thank you mayor i move that the city of denton i'm waiting for you to to start showing those things i move that the city of denton having made the offers required by state law use the power of imminent domain if needed to acquire a permanent easement interest covering a 0.901 acre tract of land being situated in the eugene palaski survey abstract number 996 city of denton denton county texas and more particularly described on exhibits a and b to the ordinance now under consideration and on the overhead screen being now displayed to the audience all of which is for a valid public use necessary to provide the expansion construction maintenance operation and improvement of electrical transmission lines facilities and structures including substations to serve the public and citizens of the city of denton mayor pro tem second all right just just to remind us again this is replacing an existing line yes sir existing 69 kv line being converted to 138 kv in this same configuration so there's the existing 69 kv line already in the parking lot of that that is correct okay all right okay we have a motion and a second see no more requests to speak let's vote on the board please motion carries unanimously thank you move on to agenda item six six a consider adoption of an ordinance ordering election to be held on november 7 2017 for the purpose of submitting to the registered voters of denton texas amendments to the denton city charter good evening mayor and council brian langley deputy city manager i'd like to spend some more time today talking to you about the charter amendment process that we spent several weeks visiting about tonight i'll be asking for your consideration of an ordinance to actually call the election on november 7 in terms of background back in october of 2016 the council appointed a charter review committee this was 21 citizens across the community to look at seven different areas for possible revisions to the charter they met on a number of occasions from december of 2016 through may of 2017 they created a final report back in may of 2017 and on june 27th of this year chair of the committee joe morroy presented the committee's findings and recommendations to the council and then we've been meeting over the last few weeks july 18th to 21st and most recently on august 1st to talk about the specific recommendations and any amendments that you might make to those recommendations so here are the seven charges that the committee looked at charges one and two related to districts and terms they did not recommend any changes to the current charter language related to those two particular issues but issues related to district residency recall percentage the city auditor ethics and stipends they did recommend changes to those after extensive discussions the council agreed with all of the committee's recommendations with the exception of ethics and i'll talk just in a moment about some of the changes that the council requested so charge number three was related to district residency that the recommendation from the committee was that they clarify that a person running for office must have resided within the corporate limits of denton and within the district or at large place in which they're elected for at least a year preceding his or her election and then they changed resided to domiciled and that's a legal definition as which is defined as a principal place of establishment to address concerns about to address concerns about multiple residencies or addresses that someone might have charge number four was related to the recall petition and after a lot of discussion the committee had recommended that they increase the signature requirement for a recall petition from 25 to 35 of votes cast related to the city auditor charge number five the proposed amendment would clarify the internal auditor's main duties and responsibilities in the charter they would clarify that the internal auditor position is to be held on a continuous full-time basis which was something that was not clear perhaps in the previous language and then related to charge number six related to ethics we probably spent the most time in the committee and with the council talking about this particular charge in particular language in the in the charter their recommendation was to repeal the personal interest and nepotism provisions and replace it with provision which requires the adoption of an ethics ordinance by the city council that addresses four specific components at a minimum and lastly charge number seven was related to stipends their recommendation was to adopt a new provision providing for stipends for city council members which would begin at 750 a month for a council member and a thousand dollars a month for the mayor and the council could vote to increase this amount to a maximum of three percent annually and anything over that would require a two-thirds vote by the city council i know this this last part is probably a little difficult to read but from our last discussion on august 1st we have recommended a slight change in some of the language in the actual charter ordinance and this was a recommendation of some outside council we've been using bob heath essentially just combines two sentences into the one that's highlighted here any increase in the amount of the stipend shall not exceed three percent of the then current stipend unless approved by two-third vote of the council same meeting just same meaning it just makes it a little bit more readable so a detailed ordinance has been included in your backup material so this is something we circulated with the council previously and went through all of the red line changes part of that ordinance also includes the ballot language that we've also discussed with you back on august the first the draft about language was reviewed with council at that time as just a reminder it must be simple easy to understand so all of the the red line changes the specific language related to the charter amendments that's contained in the ordinance but won't be found on the ballot so to make sure the public is educated about all those issues we will we will be creating an educational brochure for voters to see what all the facts are what are the specific changes that are being recommended we'll have that on our website and have that available in print format as well and we'll also be placing notices in the newspaper according to statute so in terms of next steps we're asking for your consideration of an ordinance to actually call the charter amendment election with all the changes that i 've outlined for you the deadline to do that is august 21st to get that on for the november 2017 election as i mentioned to you in september we'll be promoting that educational brochure and informational materials we're making sure that we get that out on social media that it's on available on our website and november 7th will be the election day so with that i'll be happy to try to answer any questions that you may have i know this has been a long process for all of you and i appreciate all of your help and patience as we work through it any questions for staff thank you thank you we do have some cards wishing to speak mr willie hudspeth just state your name address your time will begin okay hey mayor councilman my name is willie hudspeth i live at 6 23 newton this number five was one that we we talked about quite a bit we meaning those who are not happy with the charter and the things that i wasn't happy about the things that i was concerned about is that it the charter seems to favor one group and not all citizens the favoritism comes from what i would term the haves and have nots now we worked real hard to get this auditor and now uh i'm not sure if the language here communicates what well i'm not sure let me just say it doesn't say what i would hope that it would say in clear language the auditor reports to the council not to the city manager to the council and i don't know that that says that that's one concern the ethics uh portion of it this was another big push that we had that we meaning me and some others that we wanted added to this the the charter because again it didn't favor to the way i see things the uh can you put our question for time it's saying um what i favored that would cover all citizens it doesn't seem to do that the ethics portion was really a concern and it's seen by some of the hirings that have been made with certain members still is not clarified in this ethics community this charge here there's one other thing i need you to bring up another slide if i have time can you uh oh the percentage the word says the percentage of uh what it would take yeah that one very inspirational recall my question is why was that added what what was what were you well i shouldn't say i already know i don't think you ought to increase the number of vote on the uh the signatures required to recall someone if you're doing your job you don't have to worry about that so that's my only thought there let me see and the residency uh provision here we are going to i'm going to need some education because i don't know what that means right there that's not communicating in a way where i can understand who gets to run what are the requirements for someone to be able to run it should be simple but to my way of thinking if you live in denton and that means you own a house that you pay for and you reside in it then you you get to a year before the election and then you get to run i that paragraph there those two bullets are not very clear to me so i that's my thought thank you next speaker is deb armatar come down state your name and address your time will begin deb deb armatar yes hello can you put the would you mind putting the timer up so i can yeah i think that the timer oh it's start okay sorry okay uh deb armatar 2003 misty wood lane um i support uh an ethics ordinance very strongly i have for a long time um it is taking a long time uh for it to come before you and i'm very glad it's here i have a few specific um concerns that i would like to address about the ordinance uh recommended by the um committee and tweaked by y'all as it currently stands um number one i wanted to thank you for granting sub poena power i think that's really really important very critical um uh i was disappointed and surprised to see that there's no mention of employees or an economic review board in the charter language um it's my understanding that almost my understanding i i've seen that it's a fact that um in the uh fort worth in san antonio ethics ordinances and in other cities that language is in the charter um i'm getting some looks so is there something did i get that did i get that wrong have you added that to the charter in the the the ethics ordinance the ethics language that's before you no okay i was misreading faces sorry um so it's my understanding um that the norm is to put that language in the charter uh so we have not only subpoena power but a subpoena power that belongs to an ethics review board uh and that the fact that employees are covered is something that cannot be uh taken away uh by the next council or you know years down the line but something that would be really difficult to change that would require a charter election this is not just my opinion it is my opinion but it's also uh the opinion of many other cities that have uh well functioning ethics ordinances and because of the um relative permanency of charter language i know it's not permanent but more permanent than than an ordinance because it's harder to change it it seems pivotal to me that we have employees that is the fact that the charter covers employees be mentioned and the fact that we have an ethics review board that has the subpoena power that that i believe has to be in the charter also i would like whistleblower protections um in uh in in in ethics ordinance that seems something pivotal too um we used to have a culture here uh maybe some of it still remains i don't know but i think it's largely gone where uh whistleblowers were punished and there was or kicked out and the result of that was that the problems they were blowing the whistles on were as long we're allowed to linger um i understand we do have state laws that protect whistleblowers but i believe we need city uh language in there in our city ethics ordinance as well so thank you thank you appreciate it uh don't see any questions requests to speak thank you next speaker is jennifer lane please state your name and address and your time will begin thank you very much sorry i asked you about that i had just unusual for me i'd gotten here very early so i thought oh did the card wind up in the wrong place my name is jennifer lane i live on 1526 willowwood in denton and um i'm caught here to talk about the recall portion of the um the changes there um the committee the subcommittee and or not no one has reached out to anyone involved in the recent recall efforts and that's a bit of a surprise because there's a lot of on the ground information that you all might like to know and certainly the committee might like to know among other things um i'd like to point out to you that when the vote counts were incredibly low and i mean really low in 2013 kevin rodin for example was re-elected um with under 200 votes unopposed in 2015 joey hawkins was re-elected uncontested by 302 votes and the other two votes by 302 votes that no one was afraid of recall at that time no one was talking about it no one was worrying about it no one was concerned with the charter um also at 25 even which is the norm for most cities some have 20 percent 35 is quite high um at 25 even at those low numbers with those low voting voting totals it's actually very difficult to canvas neighborhoods and find registered voters and sign petitions and verify and so forth particularly in a climate when the city takes advantage of the tiniest tiniest error and even though uh holt v tarantum which took place it's a a court case that settled um this situation that went that the mistakes of circulators should not disenfranchise voters that the city nonetheless took takes advantage of even the tiniest error and does not invite these errors to be cured and there's nothing in the charter that says they shouldn't be cured or anything like that they just don't um so that makes it all rather difficult to even do this and then um the only time denton has had recall efforts is when the council had 40 years apart as far as i know maybe in the ninth century i don't know early 20th who knows but the ones that we know about are 40 years apart and they were both times when the council was or some members of the council were exercising tremendous over reach with regards to energy efforts and energy business money-making ideas gibbons creek coal denton energy center gas plants and the recall efforts woke up the community woke up the electorate a little bit on the heels of the fracking ban vote which was a november vote so there were more people voting at that time anyway but the recall effort on the heels of that during the district races from 2013 to 2015 the vote the total vote almost doubled and from 2015 to 2017 it more than doubled if you take a look at the numbers and not all of that this year can be attributed to then the recall effort was in 2016 not all of that effort can be attributed to the tax freeze measure for example in denia there were only seven more votes for the uh tax reason there were for the for the counselors that were running and the number of votes in district four went up extraordinarily um there's quite a bit more but i would i would sum up by saying um reach out to people who know what this is and recognize it as um actually something that brings votes to all of you if you could wrap it up rather than suppresses them thank you so much thank you next speaker is jodie is mer state your name and address your time will begin jodie ismer 819 anna street um i too would like to talk about the recall effort as well two two things stipend and recall effort but um so i'll get stipend out of the way really quickly 750 a month is not going to bring in new people to council it's just not um so if you're looking to have a more diverse council i mean it's throwing 750 dollars that people is is not really worth it i mean you really need to raise it um to a wage a living wage maybe even the average uh wage of denton itself um otherwise you're still going to have the same people running for council who you know either are either retired or um you know uh own their own business and and can actually be present you're not going to have you know people who uh are required to be at work at specific times um okay talking about the recall effort um moving it up to 35 percent that is extraordinarily high um actually there is a city that is lowering the rate from 35 percent down to 20 because it's considered to be difficult to get 35 percent and we don't really want to remove democratic rights we actually kind of want to keep them as citizens um so i disagree with the recommendation to raise the bar from 25 to 35 percent on required signatures i also think that um this was not brought up as a result of making it more difficult to recall people i think that the reason why this was suggested is because of the low voter turnout voter turnout is always going to be a variable factor it's variable so it's going to change um we are actually working to get more people to vote so you should not punish citizens for having a low voter turnout and and that's what i feel like this does um moving it from 25 percent to 35 percent punishes the rate of people that actually go to vote it's looking at that rate it's saying oh this is low so it's easy to capture which it is not um so we're going to punish this democratic right we're going to take you know we're going to make it more difficult for people to to actually be able to recall leaders um another thing is that it's not common um like jen lane was saying this is not something that happens all the time um it's happened you know over two election seasons within denton in 1978 and then obviously the most recent one it's a very difficult endeavor i this is not something that 's going to happen very often raising the rate to 35 percent is i feel like it's reactive um i feel like it's a it's not a smart well thought out decision um it's reactive to a certain set of circumstances that are going to change that's all thank you thank you all right i have no more cards wishing to speak mayor pro tem i'll move approval of this item a um i just also wanted to make a brief statement i i did run on a promise of an ethics ordinance it took a while to uh lay the foundation for it so i'm very pleased with the work of the charter committee i'm pleased with the work of staff so i want to thank them for doing all of that um and i hope that once hopefully the ethics portion will pass and we can begin the actual substance of the conversation of what goes into that ethics ordinance um and the momentum isn't lost hopefully it'll be very quick when that starts that discussion starts as to some of the other items of my own opinions i'll vote them up or down when it comes to ballot time um i did want to mention that there were two things that i had requested that weren't able to go on to the election this time around um one was moving the municipal election date to november or keeping it in its current position in may the other was the length of term of the public utility board committee members um the public can still vote on those things as a matter of their own uh petitioning so just because you don't see something on this election coming up in november doesn't mean that that's not something that can come up by citizen initiative as a charter amendment and that's that goes for anything so i just wanted to clarify some of those points and with that i'll move for approval councilmember gregory then we'll take discussion i'm sorry no go ahead yeah go ahead thank you mayor i second and i offer my thanks to the 21 uh citizens who served on the charter committee that offered the wording most of which is accepted and will be presented as stated to the voters thanks councilmember breaks so i wanted to say that i was not in favor of a few of these amendments however i will be voting for this item and allow the citizens to decide um with their vote on on each one councilmember duff well i for one i'm very happy to see this on the on the charter because i made a commitment when i was running that if this did not happen there would be a petition so i'm very happy to see this and we still have our work to do for the ordinance thank you brian i've got a question just for clarification because i know we've talked about it in the work session but just wanted to get it out into the public meeting the propositions for the charter amendments will be singular they will be voted on individually yes sir so it's not a corporate vote it's a it's a vote on each individual particular charter proposal yes sir that's correct okay all right thank you okay any other questions comments all right we have a motion and a second let's vote on the board please um motion carries unanimously we'll go on to we'll go on to agenda item 6b and then we'll take a little small break before public hearings agenda item 6b is consider nominations and appointments to the city boards and commissions mayor and council at your seats you have a revised list of um nominees uh nominees and vacancies that are still needing a nominee and i'll run through those with you and then um you'll be able to vote on those uh nominations this evening uh airport board is mica hope nominated by councilmember hudspeth animal shelter advisory committee councilmember ryan has renominated kathleen duffy community development advisory committee councilmember hudspeth has nominated michael redwine now there's a vacancy for council member briggs no councilmember ryan health and building standards commission councilmember hud speth has nominated michael swigart and i apologize if these people are listening because there's a couple more names that i'm really going to cremate um mayor pro tembe gary has renominated brooks stoy historic landmark commission councilmember hudspeth has nominated john morris mayor pro tembe gary has renominated kenneth williamson human services advisory committee councilmember hudspeth has nominated angela benet engel mayor pro tembe g ary has nominated laura sorry laura and uh mayor watts has nominated roy on the other tour thank you library board councilmember hudspeth has nominated uh laura canto zoning board of adjustment councilmember hudspeth has nominated william house and there is an alternate position available if any of you have a nomination mayor pro tem i'd like to nominate jenn ifer lane to alternate one on zoning board of adjustment okay great okay any others just two nominations left that's the double shame i have one i'm checking on okay thank you okay any other additions all right councilmember briggs i move approval mayor pro tem second all right we have a motion to second let's vote on the board for agenda item 6b motion carries unanimously let's take about a five or ten minute break we'll reconvene around 8 20 all right welcome back we're going to reconvene this meeting of the dent city council august 15 2017 it is 8 23 we're moving on now to our public hearing portion of the agenda agenda item 7a which is hold a public hearing consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas regarding an initial zoning of employment center commercial zoning district and use classification on approximately 16 acres of land generally located on the north side of barthol road staff and i'm going to go ahead and open the public hearing so come on up just so i won't forget to do that good evening mayors members of the council city manager the request before you tonight is for an initial zoning designation if you recall this property was recently annexed into the city it was within the etj and it was recently annexed it is approximately 16 acres in area and this is just east west of i-35 and off of barthold road this property to the adjacent east or the abutting property to the east is part and parcel of this site when it's ultimately incomprehensibly developed with a truck bay wash facility to give you some additional site data i mentioned the current zoning if you notice the 16 acres which is in that hatched area in the black in the bold area to the north of that is again rd5x zoning it is undeveloped and then the proposed use is commercial in nature when we look at the surrounding land use pattern and the zoning pattern we have a mix of retail and employment center designations if we were to zoom in and get a better synopsis of what's out there we have some undevelop ed property which is further west which is in the etj we have undeveloped property that is rcr1 rcc n which has some commercial development and then we have the ecc with proposed commercial development and existing travel uses there's also an existing travel stop or travel use to further southeast if you if you want to call it that as it relates to accessibility of the site you can see there are some enhancements that would occur at that underpass or that intersection of 35 and barthold slash elm on the property as it reflected on the mobility plan as i discussed very briefly the surrounding area is comprised of travel center commercial developments and large undeveloped tracts of land we discussed the access which would be off of i-35 and we also discussed the existing zoning districts and these zoning districts permit large scale commercial and employment uses the proposed use is appropriate it is also a continuation or extension and a logical transition of these immediate zoning to the east and it is also under similar ownership and would be used to develop the property for the use i mentioned earlier which was a truck wash public notification was sent within 200 feet the courtesy notice of 500 feet was also sent seven and four notices respectively and we received one response in favor of the planning and zoning unanimously with a 60 vote recommended approval and staff is also recommending approval of this request it's a logical extension of the existing zoning and land use pattern and i'd be happy to try and answer any questions that you may have questions for staff seeing none all right thank you we have one speaker is it danah morse come down state your name and address your time will begin my name is danah morse um 500 graze boule vard slant of kansas and stop me if my comments are not appropriate for the public meeting i just wanted to say that i've been at this work of appearing in front of planning commissions and city commissions for about 25 years and i've seen good and i've seen bad the staff at the city of denton have been very professional in dealing with us very straightforward and your answers very helpful in getting us through text dot and the questions on access i've been in front of the planning commission several times and you guys several times and very pleased with your pro- growth attitude as long as we were following the development regulations which i don't always find across the country blue beacon looks very forward to becoming a part of the city of denton and bringing 50 to 60 people here as new jobs if you have any questions any questions just got a couple so you were asking us to stop you for telling us that we're doing a good job that's right okay all right well and i haven't listened to the rules for the last no no i understand i understand well i want to thank you for your diligence and your patience and and how long have we seen that site like that so uh really appreciate you coming into town and and uh being easy to work with and thank you so much for your kind words thank you all right this is a public hearing that's the only card i have but you do not need a card to speak so this is a public hearing anybody wishing to come down and speak on this agenda item please come down state your name and address anybody else wishing to speak on agenda item 7a seeing none we will now close the public hearing mayor pro tem i feel like i may have voted on this three or four times already but now that i think about it was the annexation so with that i'll move for approval council member ryan thank you mayor i will second that all right we have a motion to second let's vote please motion carries unanimously okay move on to agenda item 7b hold a public hearing on a proposed tax to adopt a tax rate of 0.637856 with a maximum allowable rate of 0.683340 per 100 value i'll go ahead and open the public hearing and take staff presentation thank you mayor chuck springer director of finance i will mention this is just a public hearing there's no action at this time the as stated in the introduction there the proposed tax rate for this year is the same as the effective tax rate 0.637856 this also shows the rollback tax rate that has to be calculated and the growth in taxable value this year was about 13.3 percent excluding the city's tutors just to highlight real quickly a few things in terms of the budgetary priorities this year number one was to reduce cost ineffic iencies and duplications of services we had cost containment strategies for all the funds in the city's budget and assumed no increase in rates fees or taxes and as part of those cost containment efforts we there's some reductions and positions in the general fund this list about 12 positions and grand total across the city through these efforts we've been able to propose the tax rate at the effective tax rate this chart just gives a little bit on general fund revenues you can see what comes from property or ad valorem taxes at about 37 percent and about 30 percent for sales tax in terms of the two largest and in terms of expenditures in the general fund public safety is over 50 percent with police animal services and fire and community improvement the total budget across all funds for the city is about 1.14 billion the largest two items broken down in terms of the capital budget new funding which is in the light blue and in the orange available funding then you see the third largest is the electric fund and in terms of the total net city budget because of transfers between funds that take place the total net budget is proposed at about 9 29 million in terms of the next steps in the budget process we're required to hold a second public hearing on the tax rate on september 12th also a public hearing just on the budget on september 12th and then it will come back to city council for consideration of adoption on september 19th and that is all the presentation i have a couple questions mayor pro tem well i i just wanted to thank you mr springer to thank staff and especially to thank mr city manager this year's budget process was completely different than last year's budget process it was eye-opening um it it exceeded all expectations and i think you you all did an outstanding job of showing that we can maintain or enhance service levels in our present tax environment our present valuation environment and still reduce or at least freeze the amount that tax of taxes that have to be paid and i think over the past several years with all the tax increases that we have people will start to feel this and the more we can do of this i think the better so i just want to thank you all from a personal note um i kept my sanity during this budget season for the most part um so thank you for the effective rate i appreciate it councilmember breaks i want to echo mayor pro tem but gary 's um thoughts and and also just as a reminder i think she also mentioned it but this um even though the hearing is allowable to the highest evaluation um we are going to approve a budget based on the effective rate so just a reminder there okay any other questions for staff before public comment thank you chubb we have a couple cards wishing to speak and then after that we'll take comment from the public deb armatar if you come down state your name and address your time will begin step here okay well we'll go ahead and uh we'll come back to her uh jodie ispere state your name and address your time will begin jodie ismart 819 anna street and um now that i wasn't aware that we were solidly going with the effective rate but i i do want to say thank you um last year when i had learned for the very first time that the way the budget was done there were no cost containment efforts and that nothing was looked at in the existing budget and only supplementals were looked at only adding to the tax rate was was truly looked at i was very very surprised that was something i was completely unaware of until actually sarah baguerre sorry i realized i 'm not supposed to say names but she came to office and actually did an education effort and i am so great greatly appreciative of that because now i you know this year it's wonderful that you guys actually did cost containment and we are going to get the effective rate because i can tell you my generation feels it we have student loans we have higher health care costs if we even have health care at all we feel it you know we are struggling it's it's hard to even get housing for most people my age and a little bit younger as well it is so very important to you know keep an eye on the tax rate because it does impact us it does impact our ability to be able to afford our homes so thank you very very much for choosing to go with the effective tax rate yeah thank you deb armatr just come down state your name and address your town begin deb armatr 2003 misty woodley this will be very short i just wanted to say i i am a huge supporter of the effective tax rate and i wanted to thank council and staff for bringing us to this point this is a really big deal we need this and thank you i'm a huge supporter thanks thank you this is a public hearing anybody wishing to speak on this agenda item please come down state your name and address and your time will begin hi there jennifer lane i just want to concur with my fellow speakers this is terrific and i really appreciate it as one who worked really really hard to try to prevent the tax fees i think the those most who felt that they would be squeezed the most really appreciate it and so thank you thank you anyone else wishing to speak please come down state your name and address your time will begin anybody else wishing to speak all right we will now let's see we don't take any action on this right and we so we do close the public hearing all right we'll go ahead and close the public hearing and and i do want to say a big shout out to staff to to city manager and to this council and to the council before we started this sort of new budget process about a year ago i mean the council really wanted to make sure that we had a good look at the budget that we participated in the budget and we weren't just handed some funds that we could choose whether to add to the budget or not so this was a great budget work work session you know that everybody worked hard staff certainly worked hard to find cost containment without reducing services and and that's tough to do so i really want to thank staff for that and thank my colleagues for all their their good input up to this point on the budget process so thank you all very much all right we'll move on to agenda item 7c hold a public hearing and consider adoption oh i'm sorry council member duff didn't see you the process go ahead you know i i i wish i could take credit for this uh because it's kind of some things i ran on but i really appreciate you know uh what our city manager and all his staff have done they did a fantastic job and i i wasn't here at the previous year but but i had a lot of input on what on what happened and i really appreciate the fact the way it was handled this year thank you anybody else on this agenda item all right thanks moving on to agenda item 7c hold a public hearing and consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas regarding a specific use permit for a drive-through facility in a downtown commercial general dcg zoning district and use classification on approximately 1.1 acres of land generally located on the east side of north texas boulevard between i -35 and willshire street and the city of denton now open the public hearing for staff presentation and public comment good evening mayor members of the council request before you tonight is for securing an approval the applicant is requesting approval of an sup to enable the construction of a mcdonald's restaurant with a drive-through the current zoning on the property is dcg downtown commercial general which requires approval of an sup when you introduce a drive-through facility associated with the subject use as you can see the location of the property it's off of m35 so to speak the service road and it has frontage on three additional rights of way and i'll dive into that a little more as we prolong our presentation what i wanted to provide to you was a scenario as you can see that we have provided a map that's referenced as 20 to 15 and then one that says post acquisition and what i'm trying to describe or illustrate here for yourselves in the viewing audience is that with the i-35 expansion right of way acquisition has occurred so what you see on the left in terms of the image which is 2015 title 2015 you can see that this what's bold and yellow is the subject property and this area that was developed with a gas station if i'm not mistaken if you look at post acquisition no longer exists because the i-35 expansion corridor actually acquired that area so the subject property in essence is this bold area here with the same frontage along or or adjacency to wilshire kendoff the service road as well and of course north texas boulevard along here just to give you a little more idea of what was around or what was developed at that time on the subject property we had a there's an exist there was an i-hop here and a mcdonald's restaurant here and then a gas station and then obviously we have some unt facilities such as parking areas and other unt facilities that surround the property the request tonight before you is approval of a specific use permit and that includes their the site plan the landscape plan and the elevation plan what you see in front of you is the site plan highlighting an approximately 3900 square foot building with a drive-through lane 40 parking spaces are provided and of course that's based on the seating area they are reflecting to freestanding or ground signs that are permitted by code the parking area complies with the dentin development code they are providing bicycle racks what you see highlighted or hatched in blue and black on your site plan is in fact pedestrian crosswalks and then of course there are four access vehicular access points to this site i do want to add that the the site plan has been vetted through the through our technical team and of course if there are any refinements associated as well as long as they're not any major amendments then it would comply with our current code yes sir the red dash on that last slide what is that what are these red circles these red circles are reflecting the monument signage okay gotcha i just i'm sorry no that's my fault i'm sorry oh uh councilmember gary has a question or mayor pro tem but yeah you uh you said that there were four pedestrian crosswalks that's in the blue hatch yes and then can you just with your mouse show me where if you were going through the drive-through where you would be going in and out in and out where the ingress and egress for vehicles okay bear with me one second as i mentioned there are several points of access to this site which are reflected here here here and here if we did have a vehicle a vehicle that would come in then it would come in along here and follow these this pattern and then either exit out in this manner or actually go right around and exit out in this manner so it's it's almost a wrapar ound synonymous to some of the facilities that we have existing facilities that we have thank you the i'm sorry no i i just want to tell my colleagues i'm looking at the presentation on my screen so if you request to speak i'm not necessarily going to see it right away so somehow get my attention if i don't if i don't acknowledge you just want to let you know that the landscape you have one you have question okay council member briggs it was on the board but i don't know what happened so it's in regard to the square footage how is this larger than say a normal mcdonald's would be council member briggs i would actually have to defer that question to the applicant i don't know if this is a prototype and it's the same square footage but they would be able to answer that and they are here tonight to answer that any other questions that you may have okay all right in relationship to the landscape plan the site does comply with the dentin development code they are proposing 30 landscaping and tree canopy within the parking lot they are also providing street trees and screening of parking adjacent to the right of way at majority the tree canopy would be approximately 56 percent and the requirement is 20 percent so they've tried to add some aesthetic detail and soften or mute the site by adding some additional landscaping to the menu boards as well with respect to the elevations of the and the exterior facade materials they are proposing masonry with stone accents as you can see on on the screen in front of you want to talk a little bit about the specific use permit criteria requirements and has to be consistent with the zoning regulations and we've discussed that that the site plan and the landscape plan do comply with the dentin development code and it is important to also have complementary uses with surrounding development it's important to have consistency with surrounding development in terms of accents access nuisance prevention and scale of the development one thing to consider is that this area has always been developed with restaurant type uses we've had the i-hop and then you've had the mcdonald's there so really it is a revital ization of an existing area post acquisition of the i-35 corridor as i mentioned the property is zoned d cg restaurants are permitted the only time that an sup is is necessary if a oh go ahead finish i 'm sorry the only time an sup is required if a drive-through is being proposed with it it's the proximity to i-35 with the adjacency to i-35 and then again the orientation of the property in relationship to the other rights of way it is apt for auto-oriented uses as well mayor pro tem so when you're mentioning the prior use and the compatibility of uses with the drive with the drive -through i can't remember but when it was the old mcdonald's the drive-through exit onto willshire or kendall for any of those areas i i would actually have to ask the applicant to answer that i don't recall it it exited off whatever that side road is between the old second save and then the old mcdonald's kendall yeah and then you had it coming in on i-30 on the service road okay yep and i think you could have gone around the uh uh gas station as well yes council member r yan did the uh the old mc pre-existing mcdonald's was it prior to the requirement of an sup or was there an sup for that mcdonald's i believe it was prior to the sup requirement if i'm not mistaken thank you council member greg rey oh no okay council member riggs could you go back to the the map with the surrounding buildings so are actually i'm going to put this one on it will make more sense if you'd bear with me okay so are all the buildings surrounding um unt buildings are they are they like dorms or do you know we have some unt facilities there's some parking areas as well i believe unt acquired a larger big box style development as well i'm not sure what the use is of that but we can definitely ask unt okay and that is around it all right thank you this would give us council member brig some idea of what's happening you can see that again the zoning is predominantly and in the the zoning is dcg when we look at a 200 foot radius of the subject site you've got unt parking unt facilities across the highway we have single family development if we were to pan out a little bit to 500 feet or 500 foot radius you've got unt housing parking and offices retail and commercial development a little bit of a mix and then you will see another unt facility and this gives you the broader picture of what is happening in that dcg district and what the surrounding land use pattern is which we've already addressed and discussed when we look at the future land use map that's referenced in our denton plan 2030 the area is you know concentrated with commercial development it is or has oriented auto-oriented uses such as drive-through facilities deemed to be appropriate and of course this was one of the underlying factors that that led to staff's recommendation mobility as we've discussed you've got um north texas as a secondary arterial and then you've got i-35 as your primary or arterial roadway and then of course the collector streets as it relates to um willshire connecting into avenue c public notifications were sent within 200 feet nine notices certified um mailers were sent out and then of course 34 within 500 foot as you can see um we received one letter in opposition and it became when we tallied the percentage it was 41.58 percent which is greater than the 20 percent which warrants a super majority by the council to um recommend favorably on this request question on that map are all the hatched properties the one in opposition correct so the whole side is surrounded by the hatched properties the single okay yes sir all right thank you and the applicant is also here i'll be happy to try and answer any other questions that you may have any questions for staff before we take public comment because i have opened the public hearing i'm seeing none all right we'll go ahead and go through the public hearing and madam city secretary you'll have to refresh my memory on the group request to speak on an agenda item uh we do have one from m cdonnell's and we have the names here greg massey ben aguire jimmy lopez sojourn brooks i apologize for that if i'm incorrect and they get how much time applicants and their agents for public hearings get 10 minutes per speaker with a total of 20 minutes for all speakers okay so uh if they're representing four people you're saying it's a total of 20 minutes this is sort of a group representation is that correct right and is that is that an accumulated time like if they only use 10 if they come back for a bottle or is that is that total time within the public hearing it just says 10 minutes per speaker for a total of 20 minutes okay all right so are they want to divide it up all right well they've got so mcdonnell's whoever's going to be representative or if you've got various speakers who are going to speak within that time frame um you got 20 minutes so you can take it all thank you my name is greg massey with red planes professional i'm sorry i think it reads you get 10 minutes per speaker okay okay there's four okay for a total of 20 minutes for all speakers so if they have five speakers they can do 20 minutes total but only 10 minutes per speaker okay okay thank you for that clarification so 10 minutes per speaker total of 20 all right yes point of clarification they don't have to use all of that time do they i will try not to no i just want to make sure that we we understand the the procedure you bet good evening my name is greg massey i'm with red plains professional the civil engineering consultant for mcdonald's on this project with us the other speakers that may or may not address council we have the owner operator we have mcdon nell's general council and then their construction management group so with that being said i'm not going to try and reiterate everything that was discussed at the planning commission meeting i'm going to assume you have copies of those minutes so you know the majority of that discussion i would like to reiterate that this mcdonald's was originally constructed and operated in 1974 so it's occupied that location for 43 years they did not demolish the site of their own accord that was a direct result of the taking by the texas department of transportation in a condemnation hearing in 2014 they condemned the building they being texas department of transportation did the demol ition on the site in 2016 that got us to the site you saw with the vacant lot none of that work was done by mcdonnell's themselves it did operate at that time during those 42 years with the drive-through facility it had two points of access onto the i-35 frontage road it had one driveway on kendolph which we are retaining in its same location it also had an additional drive out to north texas boulevard that's in addition to the driveways that were there for the convenience store and the i-hop so overall we're taking three drives that were previously located on the i-35 frontage road and reducing that to one point of access on i -35 three drives that were located on north texas boulevard and reducing that to one access drive and then maintaining one point of access from willshire on the north that originally served the i-hop as well with that being said i'd be more than happy to answer any questions mayor protin so the access point for willshire was for the i-hop and and the mcdonald's no the access point on willshire only served the i-hop there was no connection between the two okay um let me ask another question so if for instance you were to take away the willshire access point could you continue with this plan from just a technical standpoint yeah that access point would not be detrimental to the site if it went away um okay well just at some point i'd like to hear from our staff as well so thank you thank you any other questions for the speaker yes could you comment on the square footage of this mcdonald's in relation to other typical mcdonald's that you see yes this this is one of the mcdonald's prototypical buildings uh it's similar in size to the mcdonald's that was there on the site originally unfortunately due to the amount of property that was taken through the condemnation they were unable to rebuild that same size structure within the mcdonald's tract that brought the i-hop track into play so those two tracks are being combined and the orientation of the building had to be rotated in order to facilitate the drive-through circulation and the fire access around the building um and and again there was no sup required for the previous submittal uh had mcdonald 's been able to get this same prototype on their original site the sup would not have been required it would have been allowed under special exception um any other thank you council member uh hudspeth thank you mayor mcdonald can i trouble you for the slide early on in your presentation that has a side by side then and versus now if you would please third slide i do believe yes um massie right is that mr mr yes thank you so can we agree that there's much there's there's not a ton of runway where it used to be to get off i-35 and get across to your driveway but it's been reduced significantly with the new exit uh off of i-35 can we agree there that that that exit when you're coming off i-35 is much closer to the entrance now than it used to be i don't know that that's actually the case here no no um it it was much closer to kindle originally i think that's saying the same thing but maybe just maybe no but that was and that's okay that we can't agree i just i'll just tell you i think it's a lot closer i need to revisit that but let's say it was as before two lanes two lanes on the service road and a short runway coming off i-35 and someone that is not willing to wouldn't we'll agree that there's other entrances where we may disagree is i think i don't know that people are willing to see the future i think they're saying hey there's an entrance and i'm coming off this highway and i'm getting in there and that concerns me but that's just that's that's my soliloquy i i get it that we may not be on the same page i just wanted you to i wanted to put that up there and show you that i'm concerned about the distance and a driver's willingness to go ahead wait ease over make the right hand turn turn in uh and and i think that is a lot closer i'm in that area quite a bit and that's just my you know for whatever it's worked that's just my thought okay got some member gregory mr headsworth makes a great point but my question is has anybody from engineering looked at this because my understanding is is that a lot of the entrance ramps and exit ramps are going to be recon figured in this area as we are doing the as they're doing the widening is text on so i'm not even sure if that ramp as it's currently configured will be in the same way does anyone know did did anybody from mcdonald's talk with texthout about the location of the ramp or does anybody complaining of that we did not talk to them specifically about where they were locating the ramp we did talk to them about the location of the drive the location of the drive that you see on the image to the right is where it was placed by texas department of transportation they decided on that access location okay thank you councilman breaks has a traffic study been done on that corner there and and also there used to be a gas station there that is no longer there does someone else own that property in front or is that text dot right away that i'm not certain now okay what okay but a traffic study there was not a formal tia provided on this site we did provide to the engineering department traffic estimates based on the type of store the double drive-through the volume that's expected based on national studies over the last 20 plus years engineering agreed that it was not necessary at that time to do a traffic study based on the fact that we were reducing a location from three uses to one and eliminating half the number of drives that originally were were accessing those roads okay thank you you're welcome yes mayor pro tem so let me see if i'm understanding the engineering situation so there's not a traffic study needed because there's one use as opposed to three uses that's correct yeah the existing someone engineering's chom ping at the bit over here so i'm sorry i didn't realize you were behind me maybe you can explain it more good evening everyone i'm jim jinx with the city's drc engineering division the applicant did provide us a traffic analysis with some projections they did acknowledge that there would be some increase in projected traffic to the mc donald's given the second driveway that or drive through the parallel drive through however our development code has thresholds beyond which or once they're hit that a traffic study is triggered a full-blown traffic impact analysis that's 1000 average trips per day or 100 trips per peak hour and their projections fell short of both what were the projections they were they projected 25 increase in their traffic given the second the parallel drive through which brought their total to 906.25 anticipated trips per day and then for the peak hour they had a total of 96 so it's close but it is below both thresholds wait so tell me again what the trigger would have been for a day peak hour and then day for peak hour it's 100 100 for peak day it's 1000 okay now having said that mr mas sey is correct that we also with those numbers we also took into account the fact that the gas station is going away that site is what's left of that site is far less than what was there originally i have another question sorry to interrupt you um so when i don't understand how um the methodology for these types of estimates are made so i'm just trying to understand what gets us there so is this based on a projection of five years out 10 years out how does it work is it a projection of the first year well it's based on the capacity of the store and it's based on um information provided by mcdonald's so that's the maximum capacity of the store yes i mean it's for the it's am i correct oh yes it's it's not based on traffic in the area it's based on the store the square footage the demands associated with it the number of drive-throughs okay thank you council member breaks sorry i was asking him to do math for me um so on the um estimate it's 906.25 cars per day yes ma'am total okay and so how that is 25 percent more than what that restaurant had previously in counts of service um how does that relate to say the store on university how many um the mcdonald's on university do you know um or can you find out how many trips per day go into okay well yeah we'll figure that the one the one by tw closest to texas women's yeah one on okay defer to the operational feature good evening council my name is jimmy lopez i reside at 2020 laurel valley drive uh keller texas uh so the one on uh that you've mentioned it's about the same is what we're looking at but the double drive-through peak time would mean that in any given hour you'd only be able to push 95 cars through there uh so i don't foresee that it's going to be the thousand cars per day or whatever again that's just at its absolute capacity or maximum uh which obviously you're not always going to be running at 100 maximum with mcdonald's you have morning then you have lunch and then you have the dinner rush and that's really about it council member hi but okay did you have follow-up i i did okay go ahead if you have fun so so on that one on university i live by there and traffic backs up so people wait on university actually to turn into mcdonald's during some of those hours uh so he so you're saying that um only 679 people visited um visit per day at the mcdonald's location before it was torn down again approximately that's an analog number but i can tell you with this site plan you won't have cars backing up into any uh driveway and and if you if manal will bring up the site plan i'll kind of show you how mcdonald's has uh basically used the staff to come up with our stacking and i can show you how we would enter and how we would stack up the stack and would actually wrap around uh the building and never into a driveway is you want to say that oh that's fine no that's okay that's okay i'm good thank you yeah that's okay uh council member hudspeth thank you mayor sorry uh if i could borrow you staff for a second please um because i'm caught a little off and i don't i mean i don 't know if this is the time to to manage that but i don't know that i'm comfortable with an interested party providing numbers for us to run with just on its face taking that a step further it ignores the type it ignores the lay of the land and it's concerning even more so like i was concerned now hearing your explanation i'm concerned about my concern because you take away an exit to carriage square right i 35 if you go google maps it's you're taking away that exit where you could go you could exit short of carriage square and turn right uh in between carriage square and um uh what used to be sack and save i do believe that exit's gone so now the only exit well i think i'm right because i think you have mccormick well that's that doesn't show it you'd have to pan out right because if i'm correct me if i'm wrong if anyone's driven it lately but i think you have mccormick and you have that exit in question i think they took away that short exit between carriage square and sack and save so you're increasing traffic to this exit that we didn 't evaluate and we're basing our traffic pattern on how many cars they can get into their mc donald's and that's what we're basing our concern about this intersection on that that that's troubling and i don't know that there's an answer for that today but i'm saying that is troubling that we're using the number it's in no one spoken on the fact that it's increased there's an exit gone doesn 't it doesn't decrease traffic it decreases options so if you miss mccormick and you want to go to mcc arridge square and you don't want to go to bonnie bray you're exiting right there and i'm done okay all right any other questions for the speaker councilman ryan thank you mayor uh actually it's again the staff while they're up there and it could be speaker either one kendolph based on the picture that's up there it appears that it no longer has access to 35 is that correct that is correct okay so so the only way that their exit in and out from this property to kendolph will only allow them to go back towards the university yes sir not okay okay any other questions for staff at least at this point we're still in the public hearing we still have public comment to me and i'm sorry could i chip in one thing there were a clarification sure okay um your your concerns are valid i appreciate you bringing them up i will just say and we didn't only look at the numbers that mcdonald's provided we also looked at the fact uh that the gas station is going away and the ihop will go away as part of this project and then also the we talked about the the driveway is going away there's a driveway that was serving the mcdonald's in the past uh it was their western driveway on the service road that's going away as well as the southern driveway that served them before we always like to reduce driveways especially uh when they're close to intersections so we saw that as a net positive so there were several things that we took into account all right thank you okay is it for a speaker is it for for staff staff okay mr jinks yeah if you'll yes i think it's for staff because you clarified the methodology for the traffic survey correct i believe i believe so anyway so if it's 95 cars per hour is the peak peak but it's under 1000 vehicles for the entire day is the idea that it's only peak for a couple hours a day and the rest of the time it's at 20 cars an hour or something like that because it averages out to about 40 cars an hour right right well those thresholds are per our development code um the the thought is if either one is triggered then either one if either one is exceeded then a tia need for a tia would be triggered what they've listed is their peak hour is from 12 to 1 pm they've got 80 seconds per vehicle so there's one peak hour identified yes okay yes that's what they've determined is they're going to be their peak okay that's helpful thank you okay any other questions for staff hold on just yeah hold on just a second um okay madam city secretary the first speaker um how much time is left on that there with his 10 minutes he has um seven minutes and 41 seconds okay for mr massey mr massey do you have any more comments on that well he'll be a separate speaker so he'll get he'll get time but he'll be a separate speaker i just wanted to see if you had any more um no i don't have any more um any more statements or or anything to offer um i was going to let jimmy take the rest of my time so we didn't have to yeah and and is that is that part of our rules that they can do that no he would get his own time his own 10 minutes 10 minutes yes okay because we've only spent three minutes and some seconds so okay not near the 20 minutes yet okay all right so any questions for mr massey at this point all right yes sir you want to come up and state your name and address and your time will begin so he's his is 10 minutes as well is that correct all right apologize again jimmy lopez 2020 laura valley drive uh keller texas i do want to make it very clear that staff has been you know great to work with but realize this not only went through staff we still own a portion of this property uh all of our submittals went to text dot through staff uh and realize text dot has got more analytical information than we know what to do with so if you look they're the ones that place to drive on our property and obviously kindle streets closed off but if you look further south you can kind of on the on the right hand picture you can see whether there's an entrance to the old sack and save the text that left in place that you know is obviously also a danger but don't think that we just proposed to drive and says we need this drive here the analytical i mean this went through text dot through staff through our team uh so there were a lot of folks not just you know uh the local municipal coach taking a look at this because you know text dot won't let this happen especially for this type of development so i wanted to make it clear that we over communicated on this uh with not only staff but text dot and all of our own internal folks okay any questions and any questions for the speaker council member ryan yes thank you mayor kind of looking at the i'm looking at the uh i'm sure which the the map and so if somebody was turning in off of the service road they would actually have to circle the entire building before they could enter the lane so it would actually be beneficial to them to go up to the stoplight and turn and come in off of north texas that is correct you know we try to train the customer but obviously that takes a bit regardless there's still a drive off 35 but you are correct uh they they would tend to do that but obviously i couldn't state my opinion there okay all right council member gregory thanks so mcdonald's this is probably not the first time in the history of this franchise that they've had to uh raise one building and build another one i mean they did that on university drive close to boliver street when that happens does it significantly and the new building goes in does it significantly increase the amount of uh customers during a day or does it stay pretty much the same is it a 10 20 increase in customers when when one building goes away and another one comes i don't think most customers when they're driving up think about two lanes for uh getting drive through or one lane they're just there's a mcdonald's it's lunchtime so what is it what does it change it doesn't change significantly i mean uh as far as you know the sales increase you're looking at a 10 to 12 percent uh it's not significant if anything with our double drive through uh you actually get people in and out faster in a safer safe safer manner i really cannot believe that you use the word in and out you've got to think of a different way of talking about this thanks all right thank you any other questions for the speaker any other comments okay all right thank you all right we'll go on to the next cards uh jennifer lane come down state your name and address your time will begin oh yeah uh miss lane how would you say i guess jennifer as far as time left do they still have i need to stop watch here i think yeah they've used about five minutes this is there anybody in the applicant's group that wants to come down and speak uh because i think it's 10 minutes per speaker maximum of 20 and so correct neither speaker has taken their 10 minutes so anybody else wishing to speak on the applicant's portion just want to make sure and and if there's questions and we need and we think y'all are a resource we'll certainly call you back up to answer any questions sure that's fine uh dr smatresk you want to come down state your name and address your time will begin i just took these in the order they were handed to me well hello i'm mayor watts and members of the city council it's great to be here tonight although i might have hoped for other circumstances my name is neil smatresk i'm the president of the university of north texas and we stand in opposition to granting a special use permit uh to the mcdonald's for this purpose and our case is fairly clear and based off essentially two points let me remind everybody that our campus has grown significantly over the last few years we now have approximately 38 000 students we'll see what this fall brings but if you've ever driven on this road as the fall semester starts i think you'll know what kind of traffic congestion there is in addition to traffic and the 38 000 students we have approximately 7 000 staff members all of these people going in and out the majority of them coming in and out through the exit onto north texas boule vard this creates a situation where there's pedestrians bicycles and cars while i heard the arguments of the city engineers i believe that this represents a significant hazard i believe that the traffic situation here is deserving of further study i also believe that we will hear a tremendous amount of discomfort around the traffic volume with any interruption of flow across north texas i noted that the city has indicated we are there's a 41 percent of the ownership around the region and yes in the broad map but i think it's also very fair to point out that we own all the contiguous property including the sliver of the exxon mobile station and that this property and this is the second part of my protest over this granting the special use permit this property is property that has been for over 20 years in our master plan for acquisition and i will leave it at that we would like to make sure that this is safe we would like to make sure that a traffic study would at a minimum would be completed and we want to point out that we believe currently that this isn't in the best interest of the university as the traffic that would be diverted through and up given the closure of the road would all be diverted up through the university campus and would contribute i think to quite a mess so with that i would like to yield the rest of my time to bob brown who has further details from our studies and from uh we'll call mr brown and doubts that are available any questions for dr smothridge president smoth ridge none okay thank you all you bet thank you state your name and address your time will begin i'm bob brown 3500 falcon court here in denton the university's primary concerns have been addressed with dr smatresk we are worried about the entrance off of the 35 axis road our reading of the text dot plan two phase two for that area would take that ability to have that entrance away if if their plans were met we're also concerned about the flow of the traffic back through campus north texas bou levard is has a landscape median and so if you exit out of north north texas boulevard or out of the restaurant to north texas boulevard you have to make your way back through the campus the campus has taken a lot of effort with the dcta to remove the large buses out of the center of campus and to change routes to increase pedestrian safety and vehicle safety and this would be counter to our efforts to make the campus a safer place any questions for mr brown councilmember gregory lots of times when developers come in and request an sup they meet have neighborhood meetings so did mcdonald's have a meeting with the university of north texas to discuss any of their site plans to find any kind of alternative that would be satisfactory to the university the meeting i know know that was held was between and i don't know was a phone meeting or face-to-face meeting with our vice chancellor of facilities to describe what their plans were the university opposed those plans at the time at that time and there wasn't a meeting of the minds thank you thank you councilmember duff i guess it appears to me that the main reason that you're objecting is because you want want to acquire that property the university has two purposes the first is as stated we are very very concerned about vehicle safety and that and the safety of the campus that's evidenced in items that the university has undertaken and decisions that the university has made over the last a couple of years but we do have an interest in the property and there's no any other questions thank you thank you next speaker is uh jennifer lane jennifer lane 1526 willowwood and in listening to this when i heard that the solution was to turn onto north texas boulevard i sort of jumped because i am one of many who does exactly what the two gentlemen before me describe this is my daily life i live in the neighborhood of dinia looking you know pretty much straight at the at the location i've written to the council about my concerns about this and i can't express strongly enough how much more dangerous it will be there's always cyclists going if i'm driving if i'm cycling there's always cyclists there it's a crossing it's a tricky crossing anyhow because it's a highway and yet there's many living on my side also coming in and around there is not some place that can be more congested very safely and i would say also that i noticed that these round numbers for sort of triggers having round numbers like a thousand and a hundred or what have you is you know i've heard this before these numbers sort of they stick in people's mind let people think that it's a thousand but set your number at something like 912 so that people don't remember it and come in with just you know a few inches or a few emissions or a few a few cars or a few details below that because they will and you know so as to not set off the trigger but that that per ked my ear up as well it's too close to the trigger to be considered reasonable in combination with the daily life factors for people who live in denia and who work at the university of no texas or go to school there besides which i i believe i don't know what the university has planned for the rest of the area but i personally miss sack and save it was our you know not a glamorous store but a big one and we don't have a walkable rideable you know the students don't have grocery store anymore we don't have a grocery store anymore you know maybe there's something in the plans for that but that's the kind of you know a little bit slowed down traffic you know i'd love to see a cosco go in there trader joe's hint hint something great that would serve the neighborhood and the school thank you thank you see no questions next speaker is that dev arm atara state you know okay sorry yep yes yes all right those are all the blue cards this is a public hearing anybody else wishing to speak come down state your name and address your time will begin good evening council my name is sage and brooks 808 new ac es osman texas i represent mcdonald's and as we make our decision on behalf of mcdonald's and on behalf of the owner operator who's owned this store for 42 years i'd just like to express on map the owner that during those 42 years we've employed 50 students every year we'd employ over we'd actually employ a hundred if we could but we actually employ 50 students during those 42 years of operation we paid taxes to the city you understand that unt our neighbor is seeking to acquire us or would like to acquire us however what we would like to have is our restaurant back we were condemned by the state of texas the state of texas took away our building as mr massie explained to you the state of texas actually came in through their petition to combination and removed the building themselves and all we'd like to do is get back our building and get back our restaurant and get back to servicing the university north texas population that we've done for the last 42 years i've got a question and i really appreciate the the rock in the hard place between texas text dot coming in taking your bill but my understanding and correct me if i'm wrong of condemnation laws is that they come and take your your property they pay you fair market value and if you're an ongoing business they have to compensate you for that as well as am i correct on that or no no under texas law they do not compensate you for business loss they pay you for the part acquired and they pay for damage to remainder if any which means in this case when they remove the building they did compensate for removal of the building but that also compensate they did not compensate us for the remainder of the property and that compensation is under compensation on under condemnation law designed to allow us to rebuild our structure on the remainder okay all right thank you any questions for the speaker all right thank you thank you this is a public hearing anybody else wishing to speak please come down state your name and address your time will begin one more call anybody wishing to speak okay we will now close the public hearing council any questions i see uh council member duff i'll recognize you council member well you've got you you're showing on motion is that is that not you yeah okay do you are you withdrawing that or do you have anything all right you ready for a motion council i mean i've got a few comments but we can make the motion if there's a second we can have discussion so i'll just recognize you oh okay didn't okay uh any discussion i've got a few comments um there's been a lot said and there's been a lot of speculation about that just because unt has a desire to purchase this property that somehow that is sort of a king's x on this but i will tell you my analysis of this really has nothing to do with that if you look at the history of my votes in highly pedestrian areas with drive-throughs i think it's pretty clear that i'm very hesitant on those we did one on fry street we we denied a fry street drive-through at cbs there it's a corner of fry street and hickory and then the cbs there on oak street they didn't have a drive-through but they want an extra drive and i voted against that i believe because of the highly pedestrian nature of those particular locations and i don't see this location as any different especially with what has happened now with textdoc it's very difficult from this corner track and it was difficult when the existing store was there to get out onto north texas boulevard i mean and now they've got a median there it's almost impossible secondly when you look at those crossings they improved the bridge at north texas boulevard to improve pedestrian traffic in other words they got a huge sidewalk there a huge thoroughfare to get people across that highway you've got the pedestrian bridge on down by the stadium but also you've got that to really connect the the other side of the highway to this side so they've increased the opportunity for pedestrian traffic there when i look at the all the ingress ingress and i look at the drive-through configuration it reminds me and i won't say the store of another store that's in an area that isn't highly pedestrian at all and it's a it's a mess inside that sort of area and then you've got i-35 traffic coming off so i'm it's going to be difficult for me to support this sup not because of who the opposition is but because i've done this on several other situations and properties where a drive-through was requested in a highly pedestrian area together with vehicular traffic this whole intersection has been changed and modified based upon the new highway configuration in the new tex dot configuration with that new north texas boulevard bridge so it my understanding is if if the council has denied an sup it's not denying that there's not an opportunity to build a store there just like with the cbs down at oak and hick ory and fry they built it up this road and i think it's probably been highly successful so those are some of my rationale in that regard so those are my comments any other council members see council member hudspeth yes sir i think i arrive at the same point but a different way um one of the key things for me and i was trying to find it i just could not find it we've asked staff to engage with unt on a traffic study of that entire area so for me i think it's it 's a little i would be concerned to put something in place without i think we get to stacking efforts and we're kind of fighting against ourselves i think it's important to make an educated decision on the overall area of that overlay and i think that's with that's the same approach we took with the bike lanes coming through unt we took that same let's give it a few months to let this plan execute before we decide if we're going to put the bike lanes on oak street i mean so i think it's consistent again ignoring the the parties in in this in this particular uh institution and then i think the actual process is how we arrived concerns me i i think i didn't hear anyone talk about the exit that closed i didn't hear anyone talk about game day if you're going to the stadium you're going to exit north texas boulevard that increases traffic i just i didn't hear a lot of you got graduation football games basketball games there's the the uh shows there at the armadillo i mean they're just i didn't think there was enough conversation about real life in that area uh especially when you're talking about a very active neighborhood indigna that that um is is willing to be heard on these things i just i think we could have done a better job considering all persons that that take advantage of that area and to the mayor's point no one speaks of the the the the overpass that's increased uh so i just i i'm i really am disappointed in in the due diligence that was discussed uh for us to get here and then on top of that um i too i mean i think it's a i grew up here i understand it's always been there and that and and i wish uh circumstances were different but i just don't think i can get there with the current configuration the current active use patterns in that area and and um i forget what speaker brought it up um it was mr brook no no no not mr sagan rooves but the the gentleman the second gentleman sir brown i do believe with unt again staff didn't mention phase two of um tech stop plan because if that's accurate that that's going away and staff didn't tip us to that i'm concerned about that that we're not we're making a permanent decision based on a temporary configuration of a highway if we knew something else was coming down the pipe i think we should have been uh that should have been fact ored in i don't know that to be accurate we'll see but but so even excluding that i'm concerned about the traffic patterns in that area council member ryan thank you mayor i'm concerned with the the new bridge for north texas boulevard the amount of pedestrian traffic and now you've got a point of ingress egress on north texas that has been there but the new bridge is going to is going to create more traffic going across there i'm also concerned with if you are under a thousand cars a day why you would actually need four ingress egress points i mean yes you're taking away some that you've got but you know i'm backing my college days i managed for a competitive competitor restaurant and you know we we pushed them through at 30 seconds apiece we 'd ring the bell when we when we got 100 cars through in that hour time period so i have some trouble with the numbers because i know mcdonald's is one of the fastest out there so to say that you're not going to push that many cars through just is difficult for me to believe without a traffic study but my biggest problem is the pedestrian traffic that's going to be on north texas boulevard to have a point of ingress egress that's going to be the main area that you're going to want that people are going to actually go to because they don't want to have to circle inside the parking lot they're going to go around to that as an entrance and that creates a hazard so i have a very difficult time supporting it the way that is presented councilmember breaks it sounds like everyone has said what i had planned to say but i will just say that i will not be in support of this sup due to increased traffic and an increase in pedestrians without a traffic study due to my comfort with the numbers provided and also not knowing the future text up plans councilmember uh we agree well i'm not a fan of mcdonald's and i am a fan of unt but that doesn't have anything to do with this uh because um i'm just having to look at the metrics and the analysis and i see that there were three businesses that were generating traffic and and now there's only one business that's generating traffic i think there's going to be less traffic than there was before so that doesn't i'm not concerned about the traffic issue um so because mcdonald's has been there for a long time because that you know i haven't heard issues of of and i read the blotter every day of pedestrian issues with pedestrian conflicts with cars or bicycle conflicts with cars because of that mcdonald i would probably move for approval it looks like i might not even get a second and it doesn't mean that i don't like the university in north texas because i do uh and it doesn't mean i love mcdonald's because but that's not the issue it's the issue about about the appropriateness of this sup and it seems to me to be an appropriate sup at this particular time may pro tem did you say appropriate or inappropriate i well i don't know what i said but i meant to say appropriate oh it was an appropriate suv i think it is an an appropriate okay i'm sorry i'm hearing problems i apologize i'm mumbled too one of my concerns obviously which i brought up during the questioning was how did we arrive at those numbers for the traffic study and um i'm i share everybody's concerns that's brought it that has brought it up the numbers don't i'm sorry i don't believe them it doesn't add up for me that there would be one peak hour of 100 cars i just i can't see that the other thing i think council member hud's was brought up a really good point about the small area plan that we discussed and if we're going to be having a large-scale discussion about that the university redevelopment walkability the whole thing we need to have a comprehensive discussion it may be that as it stands right now the it's a compatible compatible use the way that i look at the parcel the front part of the parcel is compatible the back part of the parcel is not an automated automotive compatible use in reality the de facto position is there's a lot of pedestrians and when we sit up here if somebody dies from a pedestrian death or they're injured from a vehicle pedestrian or vehicle bicycle accident we hear about it i mean we really feel it so i'm i want to proceed with caution i don't think it's appropriate especially not without a traffic study maybe a traffic study would change my mind but we definitely at the very minimum need a traffic study to figure out what's going on with this and have the text dot second secondary plan see a bigger picture and place it in the context of the small area plan council member briggs i have a question about when an sup is denied do they um just a legal question about how that is if they can reapply for that or if there's other information requested and and they have that information and they come back with it yeah they're gonna have to wait if i'm not mistaken well now it's a year from the same if they file the same type of application because it follows the same procedure as the zoning amendment procedure so it would have that same bar but if they came back with a totally different proposal which uh that could that would be a different situation what if no action is taken if no action is taken an action has to be taken this evening whether it 's a motion to approve or to deny something there has to be an action in order for it to be a record vote of this entire item council member gravery no there could be an action to postp one or there could be an action by the applicant to withdraw that is correct uh thank you mayor for and and and if the applicant is counting uh we might want to give them a shot second to see if they want to withdraw and maybe do a second sup at a different time uh mister city attorney what's the well before we before you answer that we've got a somebody council member gravery you have indicated a desire to make a motion so are you withdrawing that motion at least at this time or what is your what is your motion well um i could even tell a story if they if they want to take a minute to it looks like they were conferencing to see if they want to withdraw something do you i think i'd like to hear from the applicant one more time to see if they want to move forward with this request or if they're wanting to withdraw okay uh who's going to be the spokesman for that and pretty limited question so come yeah come on up yep you've heard the discussion i have uh you know i think at this point we uh mcdonald's would like to postpone uh our application and possibly work with the city and reach out to uh the unt and so we can't all get together and huddle up and see if we can come up with an amicable whether it be tias or whatever we need to prepare and everything um so we're more than willing to do that okay uh council member gravery i move to postpone until uh we hear back from the applicant with a revised request is that a date certain or an event certain it's an event an event uh hearing back from the applicant with a revised plan okay question of clarification you say revised plan what i heard was traffic study i mean some information but what you at least what you said was until we come back with a revised plan which means not the plan that they're putting forth tonight is that am i not correct in that thank you i move to postpone until uh the applicant what's the right wording manol why don't you do a date certain out a little ways and that gives them time to get any information if they think that council has requested that i mean because that you're i mean until november 2nd is it it's a tuesday it's an election day i know that that 's so what's your motion is that enough time it's enough time sir okay all right so we have a motion uh to postpone till november the second 2017 is that correct nope wait a minute okay i want the second okay november the seventh seventh let me get the second on and then we'll go to discussion okay so the motion has been made to postpone till november the seventh 2017 council member duff you are second all right so we have a motion a second council member i mean mayor pro tem but gary discussion so will that will that next discussion include a traffic study will definitely yes it will include a traffic study and i think we're not opposed to closing any drives or a specific drive we've just submitted this and unfortunately on our end we assumed we were okay but we're open for discussion saying hey let's minimize this to two drives or what about i mean we're open to everything again we've submitted this and met you know text dot and staff's you know requirements or city requirements but it sounds like we need to take a bigger look at this and all that so all right yes ma 'am tia will be included okay so we have a motion and a second to postpone till nove mber the seventh at which time applicant will bring forth additional information let's vote on the board please now question that this doesn't take a super majority no just a simple majority all right okay motion carries seven zero all right we'll move on now to our next agenda item which is agenda item thank you folks d thank you thank you very much d which is hold a public hearing and consider adoption of an ordinance to rezone approximately 5 .21 acres good evening mayor members of the council city manager the request is to consider a rezoning from ice to rccd the subject property is reflected in the yellow bold on the map in front of you and you can see the surrounding land use pattern you've got a physical separation of this property by this railroad right here we have i-35 this is the razor ranch development along here this is already built out this map does not reflect it but this is right here caliber collision qt is a convenience store c store with gasoline and then of course cavender boots is coming here as rezoning came before you last year if i'm not mistaken and they're proceeding with developing the site this property right here was recently rezoned and a two rcc d from icie and the request before you is an extension of that zoning designation as you're well aware the rcc district permits retail sales and service type uses and what's surrounding in the surrounding land use pattern i've just iterated that to you and provided some detail as to what's happening in and around the area when we look at the property within 500 square feet i pointed out the caliber collision cavender boots razor ranch development and if we look at about a thousand to fifteen hundred square foot if we pan out to that radius it gives us a good idea of what's actually happening in terms of development and transition of zoning patterns and compatibility of zoning patterns into the site was originally or is rezoned for this type of industrial use however the land use pattern and the proximity to i-35 actually promotes a more retail intensive retail regional type use on the subject site and as we've been looking at our comprehensive plan and future studies and trying to see what is what is best we we do anticipate that this entire area this area will slowly transition into more of an rcc zoning district eventually anyway so it is a logical extension of what is directly to the north it's a logical extension so to speak to what's to the east regional mixed use is what the future land use map reflects this area as which promotes mixed use development as we see with the razor ranch development it has an urban character it's regional in nature so it has a regional base and it promotes moderate and high density residential commercial office and entertainment uses it is supposed to or intended to be a highly trafficked regional commercial area as well again all assessment and analysis does point towards this being a logical zoning designation and staff is supportive of the request notifications were sent out we received one in favor staff recommends approval of the zoning it is compatible with the surrounding land uses and immediate zoning to the north it 's consistent with the dentin plan 2030 this was presented to the planning and zoning commission at their last meeting last week and they recommended approval 520 a unanimous decision and i will try and address any questions that you may have any questions for staff before we open the public hearing seeing none thank you we will now open the public hearing i have no cards but this is a public hearing anybody wishing to speak on this item please come down and state your name and address your time will begin anybody wishing to speak one more time all right we will oh got it right under the wire oh wait till you get the mic yeah yeah my name is ryan i work with greenberg pro representing the actual engineering firm and what's that and what's your address uh it is 11903 coit road dallas thank you and just wanted to be available for any possible questions or concerns to relay to my fellow colleagues okay any questions for the applicant seeing none thank you you bet i'll save it for concluding items uh anybody else uh public hearing anybody else wishing to speak we will now close the public hearing council member ryan thank you mayor i move approval of agenda item 7d council member hudspeth second we have a motion and a second for agenda item 7d let's vote on the board please motion carries seven zero we got to start watching these seven zero decisions uh concluding agenda item a concluding items we just get feet concluding items council member gregory i would like to get some information from our legal department a briefing or maybe a closed session or maybe a work session i don't know what's most appropriate to at least get some advice on the discussion about the city joining the lawsuit on to oppose senate bill four okay all right council member br iggs so i have a few items um to request and then i also have a statement that i'd like to read if i may so statements are okay right in concluding items okay yeah okay so falls under as a report about an item of community interest okay bearing which no action be taken fantastic so i'm a landfill sup requirement we heard a speaker earlier just some information on that what's going on and if that is an issue and what we can do but the work session on section 35.12.10 p regarding musicians and artists studio sup's in the code staff report on on the lawsuit against sp 4 and what cities are in it just as council member gregory said and then regarding recent events i'd like to make a statement i know that some believe that hate has not entered our community but i know for a fact that it is here and so i'm just an elected official representing one district in one city of thousands in this country there is a disturbing lack of leadership in this country willing to do and say the right thing so i'm going to go on record tonight with these words sorry i'm getting emotional and promise to match these words with my actions in honor of the people i have been elected to represent the rising tide of hate hate groups white suprem acists and nazis is not right it is pure evil and it cannot win the good people of our community and all other communities in our nation need to stand together against this sorry but put love in your heart and be brave when you see bigotry racism fascism call it what it is and put it in its place when you see people if friends attacked defend them like our parents and grandparents grandparents who fought in world war two we are going to have to fight hard to keep the ideals of freedom liberty and justice for all alive and well in this world so be strong and be brave and remember we're all in this together thank you thank you councilmember duff yeah one of one of uh one of the things i learned about the uh new power station one of the things actually what uh the amount of energy that goes into generating electricity is about 45 the other 55 is heat now i understand that it is possible to take that heat and drive steam turbines i don't know what the cost is but i think that's something that should be investigated because a steam turbine can get another 15 percent of the energy into electricity and you know to get an additional you know one third of the power you know is pretty substantial um a couple of other observations down there is they have a they have to have an oil and water separator and why in the world they buried that i have no idea and the and the guy the plant manager didn't didn't know either because they have to take that water out and and send it out into a pool and let it evaporate but they didn't have enough slope slope to get it there so it so what does your your request as far as that goes i mean are you i just i'm just bringing that out that's probably something that that you know the people are going to be aware of right uh there's there's a great deal of heat obviously a lot of noise generated in that thing and one of the things i didn't notice is you know they were getting the heat out just through openings and uh then you might want to take a look at putting uh you know fans on the top to suck that air out but you know that's just some observations i had uh and i think i think uh i'm sure that some of the other people that are going to be working on on dc are going to be going down there and they need to go down and talk to those people because they're actually operating one just like this one great all right thank you mayor pro tim i have a couple items to carry from north texas council of governments at our last meeting on thursday there were some specific requests for denton um they're looking for uh increasing regional traffic signal data and so there's a specific request that denton participate in their pilot for regional traffic signal data i believe fr isco almost every surrounding community is participating now so um if we can get transportation maybe a transportation transportation work session grants have already been awarded to eight cities in the amount of 25 000 which i realize is not a lot but this is something that could revolutionize the way that traffic flows and consequently change the course that we're on for our air quality in the region another issue that was brought up was ways reporting i know that there are privacy concerns about ways so i'd like a informal staff report on different cities implementation or ways w a z e it's an app oh okay it's a it's an app that that shows where there are road hazards the opposite side of it is it's a serious privacy issue but i'm on cog and i'm carrying forward the request that we look in two ways at the very least um there was also another issue at cog about electric charging for trucks there there seem to be funds available for kind of garbage trucks utility trucks things of that nature for electric charging so if we could get an informal staff report about perhaps our eligibility for that um last two i 'm sorry there's there were a lot there was a lot at north texas council of governments that i'm just going to go through it there's a minor improvement program as well so if we could take a look at that as far as if we qualify uh regional traffic signal re-timing i think i talked about that um and then that's the conclusion of the north texas council of governments section a few weeks ago i brought a flyer that was put in front of my family's business and the organization um that put that flyer out is called blood and soil they're a fascist organization i'm not just using that term loosely there are as there's a facies on the sign and one of their members is the alleged perpetrator of the murder that happened in charlottesville they their members are recruited on university campuses and in january was when i was first made aware of blood and soil um spreading flyers on the university of north texas campus again they spread flyers again in july and now we're in august and there was a murder on a near college campus so i am sounding an alarm please please before we get there let's have some coordination with unt police let's really figure out what's going on on campus and in the city because i don't take warnings lightly i mean to me that was a warning so um i think maybe a couple of weeks ago i might have taken it lightly but when i realized that they were the same organization that was involved i'm just not i 'm not playing anymore so that's what i'm asking all right thank you council member hudspeth thank you um few things not much actionable just want to kind of report on some things so i went out to waterworks to see the new wave pool after yesterday evening and i i just want to whoever took part in that process that is a fantastic product i mean it is really well done uh well placed and and i just think that um i want to congratulate whoever kind of came together made one made that decision to make the addition you see the numbers increase and the the concession stand is going to be fantastic i just think whoever kind of looked at that project and said here's how we can enhance it i think that's fantastic uh then i want to kind of point out how great uh in the grand scheme scheme of things how well our police department has done across the board and and specifically i keep saying this but there's an instance where the where a young man allegedly robbed a subway and and made his way into someone's apartment and and was held up in a closet you can't see him and and we know how scary that is as an officer you can't see you know this person's committed armed robbery before and other police departments on the news saying please and thank you directing the man out of the closet and and taking him in the in the custody and i think even in that where you could be your worst you know are they come out head and shoulders above what you would expect in that tent situation i think not enough um great things are said about how well and the amount of patience they continue to exhibit in in these times where it is absolutely uncertain for that particular um department and so i think they're doing great things and i appreciate them and all they do for us and then lastly uh just want to remind everyone that uh school starts tomorrow so slow down uh 20 miles per hour around schools avoid uh bay flashing lights uh and all that fun stuff but i just i think it's always difficult kind of getting back in the swing of things so just want to remind everyone that that uh watch out for the the kiddos and and thanks to all the teachers administrators all those that that have abundantly more patience than i do council man ryan thank you mayor uh first off i want to give a uh shout out and thank you to the firefighters from fire station seven i had my town hall there yesterday evening and all went well and they were helpful in in uh getting the place cleaned up beforehand and i forgot my ipad there so they were helpful in letting me back in this morning to get it um and then on another note with with the amount of uh construction we've got going on there's a lot of people taking side roads in a lot of neighborhoods that are being infiltrated with people speeding through uh that's probably the number one email i get right now that i'm passing along there used to be and i don't know how long ago it stopped but i've still got it on my phone a denton pd app that allowed you to to put in tips and i was going to try and instruct someone how to get to that app and when i went to the app store it's no longer available so if it's something that would still even work you know i'd like for us to look into how to get that up and going or uh when you go to our website and go to report crime uh the one thing you can't report is uh vehicular uh motor vehicle items traffic items are strictly bikes being stolen pedestrian type situations it doesn't allow for you know i guess you could but it's not the box specifically says that this is not for vehicular issues so if we can get something on there that it might give some time frame as to when these things are happening to to let the police develop kind of a you know okay it looks like if we're in that neighborhood from 4 30 to 5 you know as that as time goes on that i think that would be helpful to get that up and going thanks all right i've just got a couple one is i wanted to announce and i'll announce a couple times before the event september the ninth out of ch collins is the denton heart walk sponsored by the american heart association starts at eight o'clock would encourage all groups all people to come out register support them financially also support them by supporting your health and that is to come out and walk it's a it's a really great time we expect to have a lot of fun out there and and it's it's good for your health so really want to start putting that out there secondly as far i think and this was asked for as far as the landfill sup and also the mobility plan what that's i mean if we have a speaker come and wants to talk to us about other things that's great but if it's still the same thing over and over let's let's see if there's a way to resolve it if not that's okay but if there's some explanations that could could be helpful let's let's try and do that and lastly i you know council member briggs i i was going to try to make a statement and i will but i i just have to echo your sentiments and i want to contrast that with what we saw here tonight we had people here tonight that were advocating for what they believed in what they wanted they were respectful they were passionate and and they were peaceful and i just really appreciated that kind of decorum here because i will tell you it sure makes me listen it sure makes me listen a lot more because i'm not distracted by the rhetoric and and the hate and the violence that has has occurred in other areas and and i think that and i want to thank the police department for this evening to really just do what they always do and that is they work with the community they talk with the community they're honest they're they're they're professional and they just they want to do what they can to help and i think that really helped to make this a very productive evening in the beginning of the the session with with the issues that were brought before us tonight so thank you for that statement i'm not going to it stands on its own so i really do appreciate that and appreciate your heart in that matter any other concluding items all right we will stand adjourned.