Aug 22, 2017 City Council on 2017-08-22 1:00 PM

. , . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . >> Good afternoon, everyone. I'm the chair and council members and thank you for having me here today to present. I am going to be presenting on the metrics that Caroline just addressed and some of the other programming and partnerships that Stoke has managed and done in the first year of operation. So August 1, 2016 through August 1, 2017. I'm going to start with the mission of the Dallas Entrepreneur Center, which is also our mission at Stoke, which is to help entrepreneurs start, build and grow their businesses by providing access to professional space to work and meet, educational programs, access to mentors, and a supportive community to work among. So really everything that we do in terms of programming and partnerships has this mission in mind. So this is to address the baseline metrics that are in the management agreement. So the number of events that was held at Stoke in the last year and a half, the number of operations is 40. And the total number of attendees at those events is 1146. Beneath that, you can see, I wanted you to be able to see the diversity of the types of events that we have at Stoke. So it shows the number of events and attendees at networking events, at our lunch and learn, which is our educational series of events, at tech events, workshops which is a benefit to Stoke members that we have once a month. It's a great opportunity for people to come together and grow as a community. And then other events. And those are really primarily rentals of our members that they have used the space for different -- for their purposes, they fall a little bit less under our mission. So I just kind of wanted to differentiate those events. There are still people that have come in, seen coworking in action and been exposed to our coworking space and entrepreneur center. Visitors, we've had a total of 168 tours in year one. I would also like to note that those are tours that are given by a Stoke staff or representative. There are a number of times where people -- where our members are bringing in their clients or their colleagues or a committee that they may be working with that come into Stoke and again, they get exposed to the space. They see our members working there. But they're not Stoke facilitated tours. So that 168 is the tours that Stoke has given. The mentor sessions available is 97 and mentor sessions used was 41. To date we have a total of 28 mentors. So this is a program that was launched in March of 2017. So we have a diverse range of mentors that are volunteering their time to help our members and they include CEOs and executives from tech startups, professors from UNT and TWU, people that are experts in investment, startup law, finance, big data, product development. And so that's -- it really shows the diversity. I'd like to address -- so the utilization rate of the 41 session used and the 97 available, it puts us at about a 42% utilization rate. We would never expect a 100% utilization rate because we really want to provide plenty of opportunities for our members to be able to tap into those mentor sessions. So even if we were to start approaching 100, we would add more mentor availability to make sure that we were able to accommodate the need of our members. And then the other entrepreneurs assisted is 674. So we wanted to capture all of the touch points that we have in the community of Denton and the greater Denton area where we are able to assist entrepreneurs that aren't captured in any of these other metrics. So that includes people that are signed up on our monthly newsletter list that get exposed to our programming and events, job opportunities that are available from our members, other member spotlights. It includes people that have heard me speak. I have gone to UNT and TWU. I've spoken at the Denton Chamber of Commerce breakfast, at a Hispanic Chamber lunch and other events. So it includes those people that I have gone out into the community and reached through speaking. And then to the right you can see a picture of our ambassador class that's a group -- not all, but a number of our ambassadors. And they are also brand ambassadors. And so they're also out in the community educating people about STOKE and the programming that we offer. And so it includes the individuals that they have also reached and taught about what STOKE is there for. To just the additional monitored items, our occupancy rate currently is 57%. Our graduation rate is 36%. The recruitment of tech sector members is -- we have recruited 12 companies in the tech sector since January of 2017 when I was hired on the job. And that includes a company called FLIP, which is a telecommunication and app company, Upventure, which is a social platform and booking platform that helps connect people to outdoor adventures. Both of those companies, FLIP and Upventure, moved to Denton from surrounding areas to have their company based in Denton. And then business generation and growth. So in total, there have been 83 jobs based out of STOKE in the first year of operation. And that number of 83 includes eight jobs that have been added since just May. We've had three companies that have grown, have hired employees. And so there's a total of eight new jobs created. And then to the right, you can just see a graph that shows some of the different membership types and how they have changed over time. Another thing that we were asked to monitor was member satisfaction. So you can see here questions that we asked our members. And then the net promoter score is specifically that second question of how likely are you to recommend STOKE to others that are starting a business. And the average response for that was 9.45. And I'd just like to tell a quick story here about that the pictures on the left kind of depict. The top picture is from our birthday party that we celebrated on August 1st. And the gentleman in the middle is named Step. And he was a member at STOKE in the early days before I was even on board. And he was hired to be the chief technology officer at Ready Rosie. We offer free Friday co-working every Friday. And he happened to be there working on a Friday out of STO KE. The bottom two pictures are Terry Thomas. And Terry has been a member at STOKE since day one and continues to be a member today. And he changed careers to development. And he has been engaged in the STOKE community and the tech community from programming that we offer. And on this Friday where these two gentlemen were working in the space together, Terry, who changed careers and took a really big gamble on becoming a developer, was hired for his first development job ever at Ready Rosie. So it's just a big success for us. And I think it helps speak to some of that member satisfaction. So these are the programs that have launched at STOKE in the first year. I mentioned free Fridays. That's something that we plan to be ongoing. STOKE Lunch and Learns is our educational series. So we provide educational opportunities for the community as a whole. It's not exclusive to STOKE members to come and learn different entrepreneur skills. So we've had workshops that include building a Squarespace website, cybersecurity, small business taxes, a wide variety of education. The Ambassador Program is a volunteer program where we recruit people to be volunteers and to be brand ambassadors and to help build the startup community of Denton, and then the Mentor Program that I mentioned before. These are some of our partners. We love working with entities in the community that can help. It's mutually beneficial. We can help them achieve their mission, and they can help us achieve ours. TechMill and Women Who Code provide a lot of really great programming and education, community building around the tech space, and they use STOKE as their location. And then we have different partnerships with all of the higher education entities that are in Denton. Some of the upcoming events that we have, again, they include a number of our community partners. We are a title sponsor and working to help organize the next mini Maker Faire, which will be in February. The Startup Weekend is something that has happened for three years in Denton. It is a weekend long. Basically, you come the first night, you pitch business ideas, and then the group that's there works over the weekend to develop the business , create a product. And so that was a project that one of our ambassador groups worked with TechMill on, and so that will be happening at STOKE in November. And then in September, we have what we're kind of calling a mega mixer that is the Chamber of Commerce, but also other professional organizations, including Main Street Association, the Hispanic Chamber, the Black Chamber, Rotary Club, Kiwanis Club, and Denton Young Professionals will all be there. So it will be kind of the professional entities of Denton will all be there to be able to connect with each other. And that's what we've done in the last year and some of what we have coming up. And that's the end of my presentation. A couple questions. Sure. First of all, any other council questions? Go ahead, Mayor Pro Tem. Thanks for your presentation. I have two questions. One, the mini Maker Faire, that was held in Denton before STOKE, right? Correct. Okay. So we had it, I guess, at the Civic Center or somewhere around the ground. Correct. Okay. And then the second question I have is, what is the average salary for the STOKE graduates that you've been tracking? We have not tracked an average salary. It's not something that we have captured to this point, but I could go back and try to get that information. Excuse me. Sure. So when we were here before the council in March and getting some feedback from you all about things that you were interested in related to the space and some of the outcomes, we were asked to conduct a survey of STOKE members to try to capture things like average salary, capitalization of their companies. And while those were a couple of components of the survey and there were others, a number of employees, how long your company's been in business, that kind of thing, what we found was that people were very willing to answer questions related to some of those more nonspecific things. But when it came to salary and capital investment that people have garnered for their companies, there was some reluctance to share that information. So that's what we found when we went out to ask for it before. That doesn't mean that we can't ask for it again, but we cannot force people to respond to survey questions even though we think the information would be helpful to have. Were those surveys anonymous? They were, but would you like to -- They were anonymous, but the concern was that it wouldn't take too much investigating to figure out which company or person had responded to the survey because it's a relatively small community and some people who might have had some venture capital investment, they felt they would be easily identifiable just by their response to the survey. That was their concern. If you could go back to the benchmarks, the number of people and things such as that, and I'd probably say this with each specific one is, like to get -- and you don't have to do it now, an informal staff report or something would be helpful. What exactly is entailed in the events? You mentioned with -- I think it was -- go to the one with entrepreneurs that have been helped. Okay. If I remember correctly, you said that that includes anybody that's had -- it's basically almost any touch point, whether it's a newsletter , like if you went out and spoke to a group of people who were -- let's say 100 people, that would be included in there. Any other groups, that would be accumulated. So just like to get an understanding of what some of these categories actually entail, what they mean, like mentor sessions available, what does that mean, as far as what do they do, entrepreneurs assisted, is that just people that have heard presentations or are on a newsletter, just so I can have an understanding of what these numbers really represent. Sure. That'd be great. And then if we could go back to the slide that shows the graduation rate and the like. So when I see occupancy rate, I'm not so sure that's based upon what is the -- if it were 100% occupied, is that the number of companies, is it the number of spaces leased? It's the number of spaces. Okay. Go ahead. I'm sorry. So we have seven of seven offices leased. We have a certain number of desks available for coworking spaces, a certain number of desks available for dedicated. So this is -- the occupancy rate is based on what members hips are sold at each of those membership levels versus what is available. Okay. So that's aggregating them all together. Correct. That's your desks, your offices, all that. We've got this many -- this much availability for someone to sit somewhere and to occupy a space, and it's 57%. And then as far as -- so that represents then what? 57% represents how many -- what does that represent? In terms of individual people? No, just in terms of how many -- so we have seven offices that we can rent. So that's seven. We have so many other -- and I know this was in a backup, I think, in the last presentation a few months ago. And so we have a total number of what as far as that we're able to lease out? So 24 coworking spaces, 30 dedicated spaces, and seven offices. Okay. So that's 61 spaces, if I do my math right. Correct. And for something like an office, we consider one office rented as, you know, one space occupied. Right. But all of our offices have more than one. It's a company that's renting an office that might have two or three or more employees bathed out of that office. No, I understand that. Yeah, and that's fair. So then the business generation and growth is 83 total jobs . What exactly does that mean? We wanted to address the -- we wanted to address the idea of business generation and growth with the number of jobs that have been based out of Stoke within that first year of operation. So in total, the number of jobs that have been at Stoke in year one is 83. And then that -- the eight jobs added, so that's included into the 83. So it shows essentially a 10%, a little bit more than a 10% growth from the 75 jobs that kind of were there to the growth of the companies to the 83. So kind of a little bit more than a 10% job growth at Stoke in the last year. And so when you mean jobs, you mean like let's say of the seven offices, you said some of those offices have multiple spaces. So let's say you've got one of those spaces has a couple chairs. Would that be two jobs if there were two people in that company? Correct. Okay. So this represents how many people have filled those business either offices or desks or something like that. Not necessarily what they're being paid, whether they're interns, whether they're -- it's really more synonymous with how many -- not people, but if somebody's got a company there that they've rented a space from, we consider that a job. Correct. Okay. All right. And then as far as the graduation rate, what exactly do you mean by that? So this is really -- I mean, graduation we calculated as move out. Okay. So that 36% shows the total number of businesses that had been members at Stoke that moved out divided by the total number of individuals that had been based out of Stoke. So it's kind of synonymous with a move out rate. And for example, a couple of the individuals that have graduated, one of the Stoke graduates just opened a blue bag grocery store, and another just launched his urban tribe bicycle company. So that's what we're monitoring there with the graduation rate. So it's referred to as graduation rate. So is that sort of the goal of Stoke is to -- for this to be sort of a temporary resting place? Or is that -- I mean, is it the goal is to move people in and then move them out as something, if an event occurs or something? I think that some businesses very naturally will do that. Flip, one of the companies that I mentioned earlier, they started as co-working members. They increased their membership to dedicated membership because they needed more access. And now they're moving into one of our offices. I would love to see them, you know, eventually when it's time, move out and to need their own space in Denton. Upventure is the same thing. They're members at Stoke for now until their space in Dent on is ready. So I think that for some companies, absolutely, that is a natural path. For others, I would say less so. They're just tracking at a slower growth rate. Or we have quite a number of remote workers who are working in the tech industry. And they're working at Stoke. They're choosing to live here. The last time that we were here, actually a few of them spoke before council. So they're working in the tech industry. They've chosen to live in Denton. But they're working remotely. And so a member like that would be very likely not to graduate to their own office because really they're there for the community, for the support, for the programming, and to have a professional place to work. >> Okay. Right. Council Member Briggs. >> So on the side with the occupancy rate and the graduation rate, do those go together? Like would you add those two and say you had a very high occupancy rate at one time? Or is it kind of consistently 57% or is that-- has it been higher than that, the occupancy rate? >> That's a good question. I would have to go back and track month by month to let you know. The chart to the right kind of does visually speak to occup ancy rate. In a way, it's slightly complicated because as I mentioned, you can see that peak in yellow where dedicated membership in about May was very high. When Upventure originally moved in, they moved into a number of dedicated spaces and then they quickly moved into an office. So you see-- so just the way that we track our memberships makes this chart not quite consistent with individual people but you can see-- you can clearly see that there is a growth trend over the last year of membership increasing and occupancy increasing at Stoke. But the specific benchmarks month by month, I would have to go back and collect that. >> Okay. >> That's great. Council Member Doe. >> Does that graduation rate, does that include people that just gave up and left? >> It would include all of the move outs. >> Okay. I guess the other question I have is how does your real space, the cost to rent it, how does that compare with, you know, in general office space in Denton? >> You know, I haven't done a side by side comparison of that. So that's something if you would like to see, I could do that and I could, you know, I could try to give you a comparison. I would like to say the graduation would also include some of those members who have gotten jobs, you know, maybe they were freelancing or working out of St oke and then they were hired or started their own business with their own space and so no longer had any. But yes, I would include all of the move outs. >> I think it would be helpful on the graduation rate either if you're able to do it in an informal report with some of this other information. But certainly moving forward, if we had a better breakdown of what that means, because some of it may mean people who just tried and thought I got to do something different. Some is they got a job somewhere else which, it's my understanding this whole initiative is to try to get people to start their own businesses and grow their businesses. And then the other would be people who have actually started their outgrown it and moved on to bigger facilities. So that would be, I think, helpful if we could get a breakdown of what that really represents. Yes, Mayor Pro Tem? >> So with UpVenture, are they, I guess it's like a way station at Stoke for them. They're going to have their own facility and then hire people once they have the space. >> They signed a lease in one of the last spaces available in the rail yard development. But they were so excited to be in Denton that they chose to move. They were at an entrepreneur center, a co-working space in Frisco before that. And they didn't want to wait, so they moved to Denton to become members at Stoke. They have hired, some of the jobs mentioned here, they have hired while at Stoke. They launched their platform a matter of weeks ago. And so they plan to continue to hire. I don't know how quickly that's going to go. But some of the jobs added at Stoke are represented by the hiring that they have done. >> I'm sorry. So Mayor, I guess I was unclear. So are they going to have a separate space? >> Yes. >> Okay. All right. Thank you. >> Any other questions for this? Yes. >> I think. >> Mayor Hussman? >> So I'll start where you left off. I'm curious. So up venture in Frisco, who generated that lead? Who? >> I'm not sure. It could have been the economic development department. It could have been -- I know that they worked with -- I do not know the answer to that question. >> I can fill in a little bit more detail on that. The founder of up venture was familiar with the Denton community because of the universities here. And as they looked at what they were going to be needing in terms of a talent pool to hire from, as they launched and scaled their company, they decided that the kind of talent that they wanted to access was here in Denton. And so they contacted local brokers to begin looking for an appropriate space to move into in order to be in the area to access the kind of employees that they wanted. So they were working with a broker. The broker contacted me. I was able to interact with them, explain to them about the city's targeted recruitment of technology companies and that there was the support of that type of industry via the Stoke program, showed them the space. They ended up settling on a space that's adjacent to Stoke and then because their tenant finish out is not finished yet, moved into Stoke as Heather described. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. And then if I may. >> Sure, absolutely. >> Thank you. I want to go back, conversation, kind of looking at space. So we have seven offices available. I just want your thoughts on that process of turning that space. >> Yes, we're not going to ignore elephant in the room. Initially I guess there's a conversation about should it all be tech companies, should it not? There's some tech companies, some not. But what is your overview on turning that space? And so right now someone was a technology company that wanted to be in that space, they could not. Because it's occupied potentially by non-tech companies. So how do you, is there, I guess the better question is, is there a waiting list to get into one of those spaces? And then two, what is your outlook on how to move someone along that doesn't fit or do you think anyone that is currently there fits? And so there's no need to move. >> So and you're asking about turning over specifically the offices. >> Yes, exactly. So from the point that I started, all of the offices were full. A couple of them were rented to not tech companies. And I have, whenever I have had tech companies move out, which I have had a couple, I ensure that the spaces are filled with tech companies. So I have, I do try to ensure that the proportion, I heard the council very loud and clear in the spring that those were sort of sacred spaces for tech companies. As the other less technical companies choose to move out, it would be my desire to fill them with more tech and tech- enabling companies. I do have a very, very short waiting list. And I do not currently have anybody on that waiting list that is a tech company that is not able to access office space. Does that answer your question? >> Yes. >> It does, I guess the follow up question to that would be how do you vet those two, right? If you have two, is it, or I guess in general is a better question. If a tech company comes up that wants to be in that space, would you put them on the list or would you make room for them? >> In terms of kicking somebody else out of an office, I at this point I would defer to my employer and seek their guidance. But that hasn't been an issue. It hasn't come up where, but I will say I very intentionally when I had companies move out of offices, I recruited and I tried to make sure that, well I did make sure that there were tech companies that were filling those office spaces. >> If I may. >> Absolutely. >> Thank you. Well, I hate to do it. Either, I guess there's more presentation, but at some point before today I'm going to ask you to come back up and answer that. So I'll give you a chance to visit with them and I want to know if we have a tech company that wants that space, what 's the plan? Because assuming we're successful, assuming we're going to draw more companies to that, I'm going to assume that's going to come up. And so I think it's only fair to have a plan going forward of what our approach is as we're evaluating our approach for this space and how we're going to go forward. I think we need to plan for success. And those are tough decisions, but that's what we have to do every week and you do every day, make tough decisions. So I want to understand your employer and yours mindset on how committed and how, not committed, but just what's the plan? What's our target audience? How are we going to, because obviously changes need to happen. You've kind of seen that through the past year. So how do we facilitate change other than by making some tough decisions? So I know there's more presentation to go that will give you time to visit, but that's going to be, if I could reserve that question for later, I'd like to. I'd like to address part of that now. Seven offices is a small portion of the space that's available for technology or tech-enabled companies to use in the facility. As Heather said, we haven't approached the issue where we 've got a tech company versus a non-tech company wanting the same office space at the same time. I think sometimes it's a little bit hard for some of us to understand, and I include myself in this. This is a different kind of work environment than I'm used to. I like to have an office. I like to have a door. I like to be able to have my peace and quiet when I need it . But what I've learned over time and getting to know some of these companies and getting to know some of the other members of our tech community is that office is not necessarily what they want. They might vastly prefer to be in a pod of dedicated desks or out in the general co-working space. And that's not intended to dodge the question, because I agree, we all get to the point where we have to make tough decisions about how we're going to allocate our resources. But I think maybe narrowly focused on the office with doors part of the equation is not necessarily taken into consideration the full picture of what a co-working space is designed to be. And the kind of resources that it can provide to people. So Heather and Trey are still welcome to further answer that question, but that's my perspective on the situation. Yes. Well, I understand that. But let's look at the other side of that equation. You have someone that's not a tech company. You have someone in that space that understands this presentation is going on today. You have someone that doesn't have another office space plan. And so you're continuing to not divulge what you're going to do, leaving that individual on a bubble, right? So if that company is not a tech company and this body's asking questions, they're nervous. Can we agree that they don't know if they're going to have an or maybe I'm just hyper sensitive to that and I'm wrong. When we discussed this in the spring, the council the council's direction was to be more focused on tech, tech recruitment and locating tech companies. There was a reluctance to say. Kick out non tech companies. Nobody wanted to say that. I don't think that's what anybody wants to do because technology is the driving force behind this. But so is facilitating entrepreneurs of other kinds in our community and not being exclusive to tech. So if I may. Yes, you may. Thank you. And then we've got a couple other council members who. Yes. Yeah, he did. So my only my only point is. If we're hesitant to say we're going to put people out and we're hesitant to say that they can stay in perpetuity, then. What does that put us? I guess that's my that's what I'm just looking forward to to give some closure to and you'll have to answer now there 's other questions. But but my point is that's just my thought. It's it's you're not giving anyone any peace of mind. And so where's the resolution in that we don't want to put people out. We don't want to leave them there in perpetuity. We don't need it until we need it. And so I'd just like to see some some focus, some finite focus on when if this than that, you know, just very clean because I think it's doable. In this instance, it's not always doable, but I think it is OK to have a plan and a path going forward when these two worlds collide. And if we're going to have a mix, what is that mix? No more than this or around. This is our target area for mix. And so I've not seen any data that says how we're going to mix and match those two entities, how we're going to the current mix and where we hope to be. I just don't see anything. And so I want to give everyone some peace of mind instead of kind of keeping them on. We'll make decisions as they come. So that's that's it. No no answer needed, I presume. And we'll just go. Thank you. And before I recognize, I just want to make sure that I heard you correct because I'm not for respond. I thought I heard you say that in the last council meeting that there was a focus on tech, but that this space was also for other companies to promote entrepreneurism and all those kind of things. I think I remember fairly clearly, at least I thought I'd I think I do that in the last meeting, the last meeting was called because there were so many non tech companies in there. And we felt that we got away from the original mission. And therefore, we wanted to try to write the ship, so to speak, to say, let's get back on our mission. And we're not saying we needed to boot people out who currently have leases, but it was to say, we want to make sure that this stays on track for the tech. So I wanted to I thought I heard you say if I stated something different from that, that was not my intention. Fair enough. What I said was there was a reluctance to say kick out existing companies who are not tech. Of course. So I think you and I. Yeah. And they have leases that eventually over time will expire and we can write. There would be attrition and replacement, right? Technology. Yes. Okay. Great. At that point, we Councilmember Ryan and then Councilmember Duff and then we'll take anybody else. Yes. Are these for Heather or me? This is probably more for Heather. Okay. On your graduation and I know other council members have already asked for a little breakdown on that. But if up ventures taken the last space available at the rail yard, how are we mentoring them to make sure that they 're finding spaces in Denton when they grow and need additional space so we don't end up with that venture moved from Frisco to Denton? How do we make sure that somebody else doesn't do the reverse? Because that's the idea behind this is to promote the growth of companies in Denton. Absolutely. I think that that's a great question. It's one that quite honestly I don't have a great answer to right now. I think that that involves a number of community players who can help as time goes on, as Stoke continues to grow, our membership grows and the companies there grow and grow out of Stoke. I think that definitely needs to be considered to help create places for them to move into. I think that that needs to be part of our matrix and seeing how this is actually working for Denton. Absolutely. Council Member Duff. Yeah, I'm kind of sitting here thinking like if I'm going to start a tech company, is this something that I want, is this somewhere I want to go? And I have started tech companies several times and I really haven't been able to answer that question in the affirmative at this point. All right, thank you. Any other questions for Ms. Gregory? Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you for your presentation. And we'll resume now, I believe, with the rest of the presentation. Yes. Okay, Mayor, the commercial portion of the rail yard is approximately 32,000 square feet total. Thank you. Okay. Now, on to the fiscal information about Stoke. So you have a breakdown here in the spreadsheet format of the 2014-15 and 2015-16 actual numbers for Stoke, along with the 16-17 estimate, and then the highlighted column is the totals of those three preceding it. And then we have also included the proposed 2017-18 budget for your information there. Pulled out some things to the side for some additional information. The budgeted amount that was approved in those three fiscal years for Stoke is highlighted there in totals about $675, 000. Okay. So then the net expenditures, which are coming directly off this line of the spreadsheet, total $577,000. So if you look at that based on what was budgeted and what has been expended, we are under the budgeted number by about $98,000 in total. Okay. We're also showing up there on the top the revenues, which is the income from the 10% remittances. And please keep in mind that the 16-17 numbers are estimates at this point. So I think what this illustrates, I know what it illustrates to me, is clearly the vast majority of the expenditures for the overall project and economic development program of providing the co-working space. And associated support in the community that is going to rent and operating expenditures. And was also, there was a significant investment in rental space improvements. Okay. So that kind of takes us back to what I said earlier that took you a little bit by surprise, Mayor. That when this was initially presented to the council at the time, those expenses for rental space improvements, for branding and marketing, those were not called out separately in the discussion. But now that we've been on the ground, we've had operations , we've been able to analyze what went where, this is the picture that we're presented with. Okay. However, in the 2014-15, 15-16, 16-17 budget of that $220, 000 and we went up to $235,751. Correct me if I'm wrong. My understanding is of that budgeted amount, about $100,000 of that was for a full-time personnel, FTE in the economic development department that was never hired and that we decided to do the arrangement we have now. Yes. Which, so, honestly, I don't know if I, I hear what you're saying, but when I look at these numbers, what I'm seeing is we've got $300,000 under the Stoke budget that was sl ated for personnel that went somewhere else. And that's as big of a concern of mine as anything else. So, that -- I agree that it's concerning. I mean, it's done. It's done, yes. And this was, this program was not budgeted out. Clearly, the expenses that it was going to take to get it done were not properly anticipated. And you're seeing that here. I would like to say from a personal standpoint that I've spent a lot of time with this when I came to you in March to talk about what we needed to change. We acknowledge that none of this rolled out the way any of us who are currently here would have wanted it to. In digging through this, I see the value in it. I understand why the council at the time wanted to approve something like this to diversify our economic development portfolio to support our smaller businesses, entrepreneurial tech businesses. That has value. And so, from my standpoint, we've tried to correct things that needed to be corrected. We've gotten a handle on the budget. We understand what it's going to cost to get it done now. We made the best decisions that we could at the time to not blow completely past what was budgeted. You don't need to defend that because you weren't here. This was not under your watch when this occurred. Right. And I know that. Okay. So that aside, what I want to focus on now is how we make this a program that everybody is pleased with and we can all feel good about going forward. That's what is important to me at this point. Sure. Do you all have any other questions about this particular slide before I move on? Yeah, we'll go to Mayor Pro Tem and Council Member Briggs and then anyone else. So I hear what you're saying about the program overall having value. What I'm struggling with is how do we even quantify that because we don't know how much anybody's making. We don't know what the capital investments are. So we're talking about potentially continuing this program on and that's in the order of $2 million after five years of rent and all the whole investment. So what are we getting for $2 million? When we give $2 million as an abatement, for instance, to Sally Beauty or I think the last one was to Peterbilt, they 're usually making a $20 million investment. That's the ROI that we're doing. We're giving it's a 10% type situation typically. I haven't seen anything even in the realm of ROI on this project. It just kind of strikes me as unquantifiable, first of all. But I would like to quantify it is what I'm saying. We need to quantify it. I understand. And we can work on other ways to get at the information. Straightforward surveying was not successful. And I do understand your concern. And so what I'm going to be showing you as far as metrics for a potential agreement going forward, they don't get, it doesn't get at that. But what it does get at is the performance of the management company as relates to things that are under their control. So here your concern, I'd like to try to find another way to address it. But at this point, we do not have that information, though we tried to get it. I think it's very easy to address it. I mean, just like any other, to me, I see this as an economic development incentive and a program and initiative the city has undertaken to help small businesses. I can tell by, you may disagree, but I'm just simply saying we're expending $2 million over five years to help people start businesses. And so if we're going to be paying rent, subsidizing rent, subsidizing utilities, just like we asked for when we give other economic development incentives, we ask for information in return for that. I'm not saying we can go back and do that retroactively. I'm just saying we can structure this where if this council wants the quantification to be how do we verify job generation, capital investment, or potential capital investment in our city. We can do that because we are supplementing the space for these businesses to occupy, which I don't have a problem with, at least up to this point as far as I haven't seen the rest of the presentation or the direction. So I think there are ways we can come a lot closer to getting the information that will help us understand the reluctance. But I will tell you the businesses who come here and ask for economic development incentives, they provide the information that we request. It's not reluctance to quantify. My concern is that this is a very different situation. The bulk of the expenditures that are made for this go for rent and operations. We've already signed a lease agreement that states that we 're going to be paying those expenses. So are we putting all of the onus on meeting metrics on the management company, though only 0.08% of the expenditures so far for this project has gone toward the entity in which we're engaged with the management agreement. I don't see my question. No, no. Again, I think the response is, and if I'm way off, somebody let me know. But I'm not saying we put it off the management company. This could be part of, you know, if you're going to be a member of STOKE, there's certain information that we can ask that you provide. So it's more in the membership requirement and application process. So that's not putting it off in a way of saying the management company has to strong arm someone. It's a requirement that we may have under whatever type of agreement, whether it's renewal with the deck or whether we bring it in-house or whatever we do. Okay, moving forward, if you're going to be a member here in this particular initiative, this is the type of information that we would like to have access to. And I really don't think that's unreasonable because I think Mayor Pro Tem makes a good point. And that is we're spending valuable tax dollars and we do that a lot. And I understand Mayor Pro Tem, she doesn't like incentives and I understand the reasons why. But yet her point is well taken in that if we are going to expend them, we'd like to be able to have some type of indication of the value that they may be bringing. Even though I don't necessarily agree with all the rate of return calculations we do, but we still want to know what are you putting into the company? What kind of jobs are you going to have? What are the average salaries? And we can structure membership requirements that would help maybe capture some of that data. Because if not, how are we going to really determine the value of this other than just from a kind of feel good type of perspective? So that's not a criticism, it's just more of an observation . Okay, well I definitely appreciate the thought on how to do that. And I'm sure that the DEC will have some thoughts about the feasibility of that and other experiences they've had in other locations. Councilmember Riggs. So I was more of a specific about the personnel payment. Down here it has $48,750, but the proposed is increased to $65,000? Yes, because the agreement with the DEC to provide the personnel payment was for $65,000 for this fiscal year, which would be reduced proportionally per the amount of time that they did not have the position filled. So this is a quarter short in this fiscal year. So we split the 65 into four parts, but they only got three of the parts. Thanks. On the building rent, is that, that includes triple nets? It does include, well. And I'm guessing that, because on an earlier slide you said it would be a 3.5% increase per year. Per square foot. And that's a 25% increase right there. Okay, so the building rent and the triple net, we had to pull out, because we had a request to pull out the utilities. So we had to go into what we're paying to the rail yard company, pull out the parts of triple net that had to do with utilities like the solid waste and that portion of it. We had to pull that out and combine it with the gas and electric utility for this line. But then, so we pulled it out, so it's not all triple net, it's not all of the triple net costs in there. Am I misunderstanding your question? Yeah, because triple net doesn't necessarily include utilities. It can, but it depends on how. In this case, it only includes solid waste charges under this lease, but not gas or electric utilities. Yeah, and because triple net is your taxes, your insurance, and your common area costs. But again, I'm seeing it. Utility is basically the same. There's a slight uptick and that's just a budgeting purpose item, I would think. But to see a 25% increase in the cost of the rent, that I'd like to see the breakdown on. I can get you a breakdown on that. I'd be glad to. Thank you. Councilmember Ryan, where are you seeing the 25%? From building rent going from $125, $115 to $156. Okay, the proposed, okay. Yeah, it goes from $13. I didn't stop at that. It's $13.58 a foot in '16-'17 and $17 a foot in '17-'18. Okay, and so taxes and insurance. Okay, so the 3.5% increase was on the per square foot cost. And then the triple net estimates change, right, with the people who are more tenants move in. There are more people contributing to the common areas. There are more expenses on things that would be included in triple net. So I also want to mention that that's an estimate for our proposed budget. Just that we worked on with finance, but I can't give you the complete breakdown of what went into that estimate. At this point, I can later, but not right this second. Okay. Yeah, so as far as what is estimated that our portion of the adorm tax is what our portion of the insurance and things like that. Yes, because the taxes are going to go up because it's going to be fully valued. The development and the building are going to be fully valued in the coming tax year. They're only partially valued last year. So I think that might be part of what's driving that increase. So I just have a question on the actual layout of the presentation. Because when you talked about the STOPE budget and STOPE net expenditures, what you -- and of course, it's clear on the observation, no matter how you -- notwithstanding my comment, that we budgeted, quote, unquote, we've got a net positive. But that's based upon a budget, which means the city's set aside money for that. But on your city STOPE revenue and expenditures, and this -- so this is just sort of -- is this like a P&L of this particular kind of initiative? In other words, here's the revenues, here's all the expenditures, and so this budgeted amount is what we're doing to subsidize this, because obviously we're at $244,000 in the red. Right. I think you can think of it as a profit and loss. I think it's probably closest to that. Okay. Even though, again, as I mentioned before, the program itself was approved as a program to subsidize these types of activities. No, I understand. Of course. Yes. Okay. All right. Anything else? Not on this slide, I wouldn't think. Okay. Okay. So a little bit of analysis here. As we said before, the program was originally presented and adopted as a public-private subsidy -- public-private partnership subsidy program to support entrepreneurship and innovation. As you heard from Ms. Gregory in her presentation, the program is doing that very thing. I'm pulling out particularly the 994 event attendees that were at tech events, meetups, workshops, educational types of activities and events in the space, intended to help create, recruit, and retain successful innovative businesses. They had 56 member companies located in the space in year one. The intent was to provide high-quality employment opportunities for local college graduates. 83 total jobs in year one in the space. And to encourage infill redevelopment and development, the rail yard commercial and multifamily residential development is fully leased at this point. It's my opinion and my analysis that eliminating Stoke as an economic development program would be detrimental to the city's targeted efforts to grow local entrepreneurial and tech businesses and recruit new ones to the community. There's been significant expenditures in the technology and finish out of the space for the purpose of coworking activities. And there are three more years remaining on both the commercial lease and the grant agreement. We've seen the momentum that has been built around Stoke as a hub for Denton's tech sector, not only for members, but for people who are mentors, for people who attend open educational events in the space, and citizens who value this kind of resource in the community. We've heard that it's clearly been an attractor for tech businesses who want to move to the community or for those who want to grow in the community. They use it as a way station while they're waiting for their own space to be finished out. They use it as a place to learn and grow before they launch off into a space that's completely separate in the community. Eliminating this program could have negative impacts on the existing members that are in the space. And it could be negatively interpreted by both members currently and the wider tech and entrepreneurial community in Denton in terms that they could view that as a city is not being supportive of their contributions to the economy, both the current and the future economy of the community. After a slow start, Stoke Denton's performance in year one has been successful based on the baseline metrics that you -- August 1 of last year to July 31 of this year. Year one of operations. You've got 56 member companies in year one, but that's part of those companies are the ones that we came back last spring to say, hey, we've got some in there that don't seem to necessarily fit our initial intent. Right. So-- This is comprehensive in the space, regardless of sector that the company was in. And I really appreciate that, but I have to tell you that I 'm getting a little frustrated only because the whole reason for this program was to do what we stated back last spring, this spring about trying to get this back on track. And so--and I'm not even sure--I mean, eliminating Stoke, I don't know if that--I guess that's an option, but I haven't really heard anybody talking about that much. But what I'm really interested in is if it's 56 members and some of them are real estate agents, one of them is a social transformer, one of them is all those people that we talked about, quite frankly, I'm not really interested in that being in that number because it's a little skewed. It's not representative of what we really have tried to get this on. So I understand that in this first year, we sort of had to make a decision. Uh-oh. Sorry. We had to make a decision halfway. We sort of had to shift halfway in. So the metrics, per se, of this first year are going to be a little skewed in the sense of, well, there's sort of a pre kind of let's get back on track and there's the post let's get back on track. I'm really focusing on if we're spending the amount of money that we're spending for a program that we approved specifically for tech innovation, and you call it a tech enabled or something, something that--and I don't mean stretching it--way thin to where, well, somebody's using a computer--I'm not saying you're going to do that, but I'm just saying that it's easy to get into that to try to make the numbers look good. And I just want to have an accurate representation of what this is happening, not because--and you shouldn't be afraid to do it, because we want what's best for Denton here as well in the tech sector and all those kind of things, but we also want to ensure that we are spending the money in a way that effectuates that goal, because as we've seen over the last few months--not in this area--we've seen over the last few months how many areas of this city we have spent money in that really hasn't been towards what we're going to do. And quite frankly has taken us in a different direction. So that's the only reason I sound passionate about this is that we had a specific meeting about this last spring, or this spring, to get back on track. I'm real okay with--I mean, I'm not going to hold these numbers like, oh, it's got to be done. It's the first year. We're first year trying to do it. But it's the metrics, it's what are we spending the money on. But if I continue to kind of hear a indecisiveness about what our real mission is there, it just makes me a little concerned. So--and concern's too strong of a word. I just want to make sure that we're all clear on moving forward, what that looks like. I hear what you're saying, and my intent was not to try to make numbers look one way or another. These are the numbers for the first year of operations. And what I'm hearing from you is we need to break them down further going forward, and we'll do that. Yeah, and it's not a criticism. It's just I'm not that fixated on that number, per se. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Let me look over here. Did y'all have any comments? Councilmember Duff? On those 56 member companies, how many of those companies are basically one person? Are they really a company, official company, or are they just an individual? Heather's telling me that we will get that information for you. We're keeping a good detailed list of all the follow-ups that we need to get. So we'll get that for you. Move on? Yeah. All right. So slow start, but Stoke Denton's performance in year one has been successful based on the baseline metrics that this council approved as an addition to the management agreement in March. Those additional changes to the management agreement that were approved in the spring, they added accountability for the deck, which was not part of the agreement before, and they increased flexibility and protection for the city by changing the agreement from a five-year term to an annual term so that we can have these kinds of discussions before we decide to enter into another agreement. The deck has been responsive to council's direction from March about focusing on recruiting and supporting tech and tech-enabled businesses, and the deck has also been flexible and responsive when working with city staff. The current management agreement terminates on September 30 th of this year, and so we have some options in front of us for you to consider to make decision. We can renew the annual management agreement with the deck, adding new metrics and continuing to outsource the Stoke Denton director position to the deck. We can renew the annual management agreement with the deck and reconfigure an existing city FTE to include Stoke responsibilities. We can choose not to renew the annual management agreement with the deck. We can reconfigure an existing city FTE to include Stoke responsibilities and issue an RFP for activities related to Stoke marketing. And finally, the option exists to eliminate the program in its entirety. The staff recommendation at this point is to renew the annual management agreement with the deck, add baseline metrics, I'm sorry, add metrics based on the year one baseline, which was the intention, grow event attendees by 15%, increase the number of tours given or visitors by 5%, grow mentor session utilization up to 50%, increase the number of jobs based at Stoke by 10%, and maintain a net promoter score of at least 9.0. And I heard some tweaks or additional metrics based on our conversation here that could be added. And then we would need to formalize the city's funding of the Stoke director position in the management agreement itself because it's currently done via a letter of understanding or a memorandum of understanding between the two parties. So at this point, I'm seeking direction regarding Stoke Denton's management for the upcoming fiscal year. I do have a question if my colleagues will just indulge me just a moment. We got a handout, I believe we all got a handout, which was the deck profit and loss by class. And don't necessarily need, I just have a question. Okay. Is it their generated document? Yes, it is. Okay, so whoever would have an answer to the question on the profit and loss August 2016 to 2017. Okay, I'll ask Trey Bulls to come up and answer your question. Hey, good afternoon. How are you? Thanks for coming up. Thanks for having me. On the Denton Stoke, I see that we have Denton's contribution, Denton director 48750, $40,750 on line item 4250. And so when I look at the expenses, I'm looking for a corresponding expense and I'm assuming what are these payroll expenses here? The wages, Social Security, Medicare, so forth and so on. Is that for that Denton director? Yes, sir. Coming out of the 48,000, but we're paid that money in quarter segments and so we haven't finished the quarter. It hasn't shown up on this quarter yet? Correct. Okay, so they'll be equal. Yes. Okay. That's questions I have on it. Does anybody have any questions on the profit and loss while we have him up at the podium? Yes. I don't know if it's necessarily for Trey. I just wanted to -- so yeah, no, it's not a question. We'll take it in discussion. And can I add one thing to this P&L that is not included that I wanted to make sure to talk about here today? The other cost that the deck incurs that's not illustrated in this P&L is that it costs us $60,000 per year of our headquarter staff time to operate each satellite location. And so that's not a cost that we put in here or that we repay ourselves, but it's yet still is a cost that we incur to operate a location. So the net income for us is actually closer to $33,000 than it is to the $93,000 as a result of that $60,000. Okay. So make sure I understand that. So you're saying that of your costs that you have for your overall organization, you allocate sort of like what we do with transfers, I think, $60,000 per deck location, whether it be Denton, Dallas -- I think you have one, Jason. Addison. Right. It's $60,000 for exactly what is that providing? All of the components come with that, whether it's my time spent working on the STOKE process or the COO's time in management and allocation. We have an events and program director who helps plan and organize the events to support the STOKE director and all the other pieces that come into that. It's our time spent specifically on STOKE versus the deck versus Addison Treehouse versus San Antonio Entrepreneurs hip or whatever it may be. Okay. All right. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Council Member Hutz, then we'll go to Mayor Pro Tem. I'm sorry. Yeah. Sorry, Mayor. Okay. Thank you. So that's a perfect segue. I was asking -- I was curious, so how much time do you spend there? So you did -- you know, in your presentation, I know you -- You mean there at the -- At STOKE. In the space? Yeah, at STOKE, working, managing, whatever that is. Just -- I don't spend a lot of time in the space every month. I do have a monthly meeting with the director, and we typically meet at STOKE during that time. I pop in and out, I have meetings with other people there, but are you asking just how much time I'm physically there, or how much of my time I spend working on the entire project? You answered it. It was that, the latter. Okay. Yeah. Okay. And then, if I may have -- Mayor? Of course. Thank you. I guess, specifically while you're there, my question is -- and it's a direct question, so forgive me. I don't know any other way to put it. What is the value add for the management company? If you're going to pitch me on staff's recommendation to maintain this relationship with DEC, my question would be why. Because they have a national reputation for success in running these types of facilities, as illustrated by the fact that they have a number of them across the state, and they're recognized for developing programs and a method of programming to support entrepreneurs. That includes education, mentorship, supportive community atmosphere. That's the value add. And I think it's important for those of us who weren't here when this project was first brought forward, city staff at that time actually pursued the DEC as a partner. The DEC didn't come and pitch the city. The city looked at options and decided that the DEC was the best fit for what the city wanted to do here. Okay. So if I can reconcile that against what you said in your statement, that the first year has been a bit rocky, right? And so for what portion of the first year were they an active participant, the management company? So that sounds like a simple question. The answer is not really that simple. As we have heard in my explanation of some of the other complexities of this project. It was not rolled out by city staff in an optimal way. The deck, in my opinion, was a little bit of a victim of that too. They were promised some things by staff at the time that did not come to fruition. They have been a patient partner through this as we worked to try to rectify the situation. So I hear what you're asking. Why was it not successful from day one when it opened? Why was it a slow start? And I don't feel like the responsibility for that is solely on the management company. Sure. So as a follow-up, I don't know what that looks like. What looks like? Because I wasn't here. So I'm looking from outside in, but I watch very closely. But my point is this. I would like to see some sort of Excel. They suggested we put doors on the front and staff did not put doors on the front. Is there anything like that? Is there anything linear that says they had a -- It's primarily that staff didn't hire the employee that they were told would be hired. Because the capital costs for the project were so grossly underestimated that what was intended to be salary, the salary part of the budget was being used for capital expenditures. That's the most straightforward way that I can say that. We did not hit the ground running with the employee that had been conceived as the original part of the project. Okay. So I'll get back to the response. But I'll just say this. Yeah. I'll come back to it. Thank you. Mayor Proctor. Can you go back to slide -- I think it was 12. Okay. So the goals -- these were created by DEC or created by us? They were created in conjunction. We talked about them and worked on them together. Okay. So increase the number of jobs based at Stoke-Denton by 10%. Currently there's 83 jobs at Stoke. Is that right? 83 total. So we want to add eight more jobs. And the cost to us is hard cost of $250,000, plus the revenue from memberships, which is about $90,000 that's going to DEC under the current arrangement of the contract. Am I getting all of that right so far? So that's $340,000 for eight additional jobs. Is that right ? That sounds right. Okay. That's about 40 -- I'm having trouble even saying it -- $43,000 per job. If we calculate it that way, if we calculate it just by looking at the entire picture of jobs, we're spending about $4,000 per job, assuming that they meet this metric. So I'm just trying to hang my hat on any type of number, quantification of what we're spending to bring these jobs in, and we still don't know, you know, are they high paying, what's the capital investment, et cetera. That's all I have to go by, but for me, I cannot live with $43,000 per job. I just can't live with it. So. We'll go over here. Councilmember Ryan and Councilmember Br iggs. On page 11, where you've got the options, kind of following up on Councilmember Hussbett, the money that was used for capital that we didn't hit the ground running to get a person hired, what was the original thought pattern? Was it to have DEC hire a person, as what has happened, or was it to use a city person? It would be a city FTE. It would be an additional FTE in the economic development department. Okay. And that was the original intention? That was the original intention. Do you have any idea why that's not the direction that it followed, that we ended up going? Because we looked at what the total costs were going to be to hire somebody into that position. It was between $90,000 to $116,000 for a city FTE. We knew that we had exceeded the expectations for capital expenditures. And so there was discussion with HR, legal, and there was a management decision made at that time that it would be more cost efficient to contract the job out to the tune of $65,000 instead of having FTE in-house for at least $90,000. Does that answer your question? Yeah, that answers it. I guess it would be followed up with , you said you meet monthly with them. My question earlier of how are we tracking whether these actually lead to these businesses when they leave, locating in Denton? Is that part of that monthly discussion? That hasn't been part of the monthly discussion. It's really been more focused on recruitment into the space than where they go when they leave the space. But that's an aspect of the entire process and it can be part of the discussion. It's just primarily been focused on recruitment. Okay. Again, I'd definitely like to see that moving forward as part of the matrix. Okay. Councilmember Briggs. So on the options, I'm for option three right now and that 's mostly because right now we are proposed to lose $243,000 as a loss to the city. So just bear with me. I added up. So we have rent and utilities, which is $181,000. And then if we were to collect the memberships, the dues, the rents, quite a bit of money would go to the city. And if we had in-house someone from the economic development department who would be able to relocate those businesses, like you said, get leads and then recruit tech companies, that would be beneficial to Stoke. We are looking at closer to about a $25,000 loss to the city instead of $243,000. And that for me is easier to accept. Okay. So that's just my, I may be the only one thinking that. I tell you, I have played poker in the past and one of the things you learn when you're playing poker, even though you have a whole lot of money in the middle of the pot, when you got to losing hand, you don't throw good money after bad. So I think you understand where I am on this. No. Which one of those options would that translate into? You fold your hand. So you find something else to do with the property. So you're saying you're more for option number four, which is eliminate the program. I think that's probably what we need to do. There's too much money and we're not getting a bang for our buck at all. Sure. Yeah, I don't play poker a lot, so I was just trying to understand where you were. Yeah. So it's eliminate the program. Okay. All right. Yes, Councilmember Hutspeth. I have comments and I'm going to start with something if I could bounce off of you, Mr. Mayor, I'd greatly appreciate it. So to those in the community that would say view Stoke as a library, right? You're not looking to recoup costs from a library or something kind of along those lines of the service, but there's not really a, there's benefits that aren't necessarily financial. So I wasn't here during the, I wasn't at the table. I was active. Sure. But my thought is, can you share with me kind of what is your response, what is your reflection, or when you evaluate Stoke seeing kind of as a library, a service to the community, so you can't hold those metrics to it. Again, not saying I'm in line with that, just I want to understand that from a kind of inception perspective. Well, I'm not sure where that analogy came from, but I don 't see it that way either. Okay. I don't see it as like a rec center or something like that where you just provide services to the entire community and you just know that that's just the cost of providing that core service and to improve the quality of life for the community. There was a very specific mission, a very specific goal for this initiative, and that is, you know, it was brought to us by TechMill and some of the tech groups here in town. And so I see this more as an economic development play on, to use a poker term, an economic development play to see, not to experiment, but it sort of is an experiment because we only got a five-year lease. I mean, it's to say, hey, can we do this? And is this going to be beneficial to our community because of the two universities that we have with the engineering degrees at the University of North Texas and some of the degrees at TW U? How can we provide some opportunities for those graduates to stay in town and to provide those in our creative class here in Denton the opportunity to have some assistance, quite frankly, some support that might help them launch a company that would be very beneficial to town. Now, if we, if people came here and they said we've done great, we know what we're going to do, and they move outside of Denton and they start this big company, that's not what we want. We want to encourage and foster this homegrown type of approach. So this is, to me, I see this more as an economic, and I'm going to be truthful, I wasn't the biggest fan of this, you know, moving forward. I approved it and I voted for it because of the very nature of this is something new that we're trying and there's other cities that have tried it. So I don't see it in the same analogy of that sunk cost of just providing an asset to the community to improve their quality of life, like a library or a rec center or a water park or an auditorium or things along those lines. Thank you. And so I'll rattle off my comments just so that I can be out of the way. So I initially in the conversation, I asked staff to help me with some numbers and I want to just give that to the rest of the council. It speaks volumes to me. I don't know if you'll take anything from it or not, but when I see the line item that jumped out at me on this profit and loss for DEC that we provided, we're actively trying to get people into space to look at it, to kick the tires, that sort of thing. And what jumped out to me was the venue rental income at $5 ,000, you know, flew over. And then so I looked at other facilities in District 1 that kind of would meet that need or have that kind of traffic. And gross numbers I'm going to round around. So 2015, 2016, $43,000 for the Civic Center. MOK, $48,000 plus. And for the Legion Hall at Fred Moore, which is a tiny space that we're redoing, $15,000. And so that kind of when you're talking traffic in a space that we're trying to get traffic there, the amount of traffic going through other areas in that same general area is noteworthy to me. So I thought it was wanting just kind of in that area. I don't know if that's a direct matrix, it just spoke to me , so I wanted to share that. My other comments are I am a little troubled that Upventure is in the presentation by the facility manager, if you will . Forgive me if that's the wrong title. But it's utilized as a point of reference as a win, but then staff has to come explain how that got here, right? And so to me that was telling and it's concerning. Where I put that I don't know, but if someone is there 100% of the time and this win comes in the door, how did you find this? How can we replicate that process? Who did you talk to? How can we grow from this? Are there other assembly situated that you know? Kind of a probing almost in a sales approach. Like hey, we need to get more people like you. How did you find us? So I found that interesting. I'll go on to say I think the initial agreement was tailor- made and I know that the management company was involved early on. And so even if we didn't get the right FTE in place, when you talk about cost of infrastructure, that sort of thing, I don't put that on them. But I just think overall from its inception, from the beginning, I think in my mind they were active probably well before a lot of the council members were all up to speed. And that's just based on looking at some of that initial group that vetted it, looking back at those meetings online . And so I think for me, again, that's troublesome just because I'll use a football analogy. And if you have a Deion Sanders that's a very strong teammate, then he should be able to help shut down one side of the field so we can focus on this one. So I just don't see that value add. I don't see the strength. I understand the reputation. I understand that. But I just have a hard time turning that into a tangible, enough tangible pluses that says, hey, we're going to help you even though we're not up to speed. We didn't get you the right staff. We can overcome that with our experience and be successful. So that's just, I mean, that's just me again looking outside in. I just, I don't see it. And so I'll end with this. I think as a council we need direct accountability, direct hands on, more hands on approach to this. And not to say run in it, but we're accountable for the $2 million over five years, whatever that number is. And so for me, I think the option would be one, I'd like to see it as everything else we've done in consistency. We looked at the printing to see if we were getting a great value in the house versus bending it out. We looked at another, a couple of weeks ago we were going to go under look at that at the convention business aspect. We're going to look at that. So I think this is consistent. We need to, again, you listed TechMill, they're here in town. And so do they have a component that they can bring to this table that could add value to that space and that management? And so those are things, so I'd like to see it, different partners to manage it, evaluate it. I'd like to see a structure change that holds us as a council more accountable and available to be more accountable versus a contract that kind of limits that accountability. And so I fall with the, so option three is the closest to what I'm thinking. And they may be the best value. I'd love to be proven wrong, but I want to see it. So whatever that is going forward, that then they bid and they provide value adds tangible and say here's where we are, here's where we've been, here's where we're going. But kind of to your, I'll tell you a matrix I'm going to look at is some kind of forecast percentage. If you'll, can you go back to the proposal percentages you provided? Yes, yeah. So I don't see anything to Council Member Ryan's point. There's not a close out percentage. There's not, and there's still, I mean I know it's coming because we just talked about it today, but there's no percentage of the mix. And do we ever turn that mix over? Is it ever 100%? Is it never the goal to be 100%? I just, I want some clarity going forward on what our target audience is for that space or what that mix is. But I'd like to see that nailed down, whomever is managing it. So that's kind of where I, I don't know if that's, if you 're able to kind of process that in your opinion. Sure. No, I, option three is the one that's closest to you. Yes, sir. Okay. Let's see, Mayor Pro Tem. Did you have a comment? Yes. Yes, Council Member Dove. Actually, we, you know, we have to do something with it and option three makes sense to me. Say eliminate it, no. We need to see if we can salvage it. Okay. Can we put that back up, the different options? Oops. There you go. So what did I miss? We have Councilwoman Briggs for option three. Okay. Well, I mean, I think my preference is honestly to eliminate it. I didn't come in here with that, but doing more close, a closer look makes me feel that that's the best option. The second best option would be to bring it in-house. I think we can minimize our losses. I can think of a thousand things to do with that money that we really, really need to use that money for. I just don't see this as being a priority for public dollars. Okay. Council Member Ryan. I'm kind of, I mean, part of the way I look at this whole thing is we really didn't start until six months ago with the program running right. It's tough to take a year's worth of data and see what's good. That probably happened in that six months. So I'm dubious between the first two. And I guess I could use an example of we're looking at bringing in more solar power to the city. We're not going to try and build those solar panels ourselves. We need an expert that's going to build them and provide them to us. That's the way I see DEC is the expert in this, that they 've had one rough year. And so I'm willing to give them another year to get a matrix on what really goes on and what's really happening. Although I do think that's why I debate between the first two, because I think we should have some management from city personnel in there that make sure that our economic development team is fostering these people to stay within the city, helping to locate them. And maybe that's happening through DEC and we just don't know it. That's the matrix we just don't have right now. All right. So, Mayor Pro Tem, your first one would be to eliminate, which is I haven't heard any. I think Council Member Dove said that, but then he sort of came back. So yours is to eliminate and then to fall back would be the bring it in house. Right. Bring it in house. That way we can minimize the loss on a year over year basis . I'm trying to get you to say option number three. Oh, option number three. So that I don't have to weigh in on this. I'll take option number three, Mayor. Okay, so I'm sorry, option number three, not option number two. Wait, no. Yes, option number three. Okay, got it. Yeah. And no, I'm just sort of, because I don't mind weighing in on this. The first off, as far as eliminate the program, we still have a lease space that we're paying three years on, which I believe was $154,000 a year, plus or minus some triple net and utilities. And so we could be upwards of $160,000, $170,000 a year. That's over, how many years we got left, three? Three. That's $500,000. Could we find somebody, either staff to move in there or your sublease it? I don't know. We'd have to reconfigure it and there's more money. I'm for option three only because, and I have to say, and this is what, when I saw the net income of $93,000 on the profit and loss from the deck. And first of all, let me say, this is nothing about the deck. This is nothing about the management company. It's nothing about thinking that there's some kind of, you know, that's not doing a good job or something. I think from the beginning, unbeknownst to counsel the last couple, two years ago, this thing got off on a track and it got derailed before we even knew it got derailed. I mean, with the, and that's not based upon you being there . It's not based upon, but when I hear that it's, that there 's an allocation of $60,000 a year for sort of support from the deck organization for this particular location, I mean, that's equal to, in essence, if another full-time person. And we're paying $65,000 if we move forward with it as it is for a full-time person that we're paying the deck and they're hiring someone. So I think that it would be, I would be remiss if I didn't think that we could bring it in-house, that we don't have the staff available, if we need to have one other person to do to help, even if we didn't, we might issue an RFP for the marketing or we might try to see what we've got that we're doing. Because I don't know what the marketing involved is here. I don't know what's been happening. So for that kind of money, I think it's a good program in the sense of it needs to have a chance. We have a five-year lease, which is most of the expense of that law. So I'm really for seeing how we can configure this in-house and give it the same kind of attention and quality that we need to, to make it work. I mean, our goal here is for it to work. Our goal isn't for it to get through the five years and it crumble. Our goal is for it to work. And right now we're trying to figure out what the best way is to do that. And I feel that option three, I feel comfortable with moving that direction, primarily because we also have a different climate here at City Hall. We have a different climate and a different approach to accountability, to customer service, to quality services that we're providing to our citizens, and also financial accountability and maximizing what we're doing. So I feel very comfortable in those arenas. And I think this fits right within that wheelhouse. So I'm okay with option three. So from what I'm hearing, that is the direction of the council is to move forward with option three. So I'm assuming that would mean somewhere we're going to have a work session on what would that look like from a budgetary perspective, if you've got the kind of personnel you need currently, or if we need to, you know, add additional personnel and those kind of things. Yes, we'll put together a budget outlook, revenues, expenses for you to consider as well as take a look at different ways of staffing it and managing the Stoke. All right. So the Stoke is alive and well. We're just maybe taking a different administrative approach to it. Any other questions on this particular agenda item? Yes, Councilmember Hutsbeth. Will that analysis entail other management companies to see if there is a value or is that not what I'm hearing? Yeah, we will definitely test the market, both from other management companies, marketing companies. I mean, even if Caroline restructured her current staffing to oversee this, there's still not a technical proficiency there in this particular area. So if the council really wants to maintain the tech focus here, we're going to need some assistance in that particular piece. Whether that's a different kind of agreement, whether it's a marketing agreement, I think we just need a little bit of time to kick it around internally and bring you some options. Okay. Thank you. Well, and having you said that, I do want to see, though, an option where we bring it in-house. If we need some technical expertise, we can find it or we can either hire it or something like that. I don't want that to be kind of the thing that throws us off because I feel comfortable and confident that if we need that, we can find it. We'll bring you back some options very similar to how she set up today and might be some slight variations. Okay. You bet. All right. That concludes this agenda item. We're going to take a break. But before we do want a housekeeping measure, we're going to move agenda items 1D for the next item. I believe that's the benefit discussion just because we have people here that are wanting to hear that and don't want to keep them waiting. And so we'll move that up to the next agenda item. All right. Let's take about a five or 10 minute. All right. Welcome everybody back to this meeting of the Denton City Council on August the 20th, 2017. It's a little bit after 3 p.m. We're going to go down and alter our agenda just a little bit to move on to work session item number 1D, which is receive, report and hold discussion and give staff direction on the city. City Council employee benefits ad hoc committee recommendations for vacation and sick leave changes. Good afternoon, Mayor, members of City Council, Carla Rom ine, director of human resources. I'm here today to provide a report on the council ad hoc committee's recommended changes to the city vacation sick benefits. But before doing that, I wanted to remind you how we got to where we are today. The committee consists of Mayor Pro Tempegeri, Council Member Briggs, Council Member Ryan, who replaced Council Member Wasney. So he was able to join the last meeting. Then we have the staff liaisons of City Manager Todd Holman, Deputy City Manager Brian Langley, myself and Scott Payne, our risk manager. We did a comprehensive review of all of our positions and pay last year, implemented a new pay plan October 2016, but we did not do a review of our benefits and council had been asking for some information about how our benefits compared . So on February 14th, Brian Langley did a presentation on TM RS and fire pension and I did a presentation on the sick and vacation benefits. During that presentation, I provided some information on other cities in the Metroplex and how our benefits compared to theirs. The council looked at that, started talking about if things should change, but then decided that they wanted to form an ad hoc committee to review the benefits further. So on March 7th, we brought back a resolution. Council established the ad hoc committee with that resolution and the scope was to review the sick and vacation benefits to come back to the full council if there were going to be any recommended changes. The ad hoc committee had their first meeting on March 24th to start talking about the sick and vacation benefits and some potential options that maybe they'd want to recommend changing. But around that time, I'd also prepared a comprehensive report of all of our benefits and how they compared to other cities and Kathleen Wasning was very interested in talking more about information in that report. But we reminded her that that wasn't the scope of the committee and we weren't posted for that discussion. So she came back to the council on April 11th and recommended that the scope of the committee be expanded to allow them to talk about any benefits, not just sick and vacation. The council approved that through a resolution on April 18 th and then the committee had another meeting on April 27th. At that time, they were talking again about sick and vacation, but they also started talking a little bit about health insurance. And it was at that meeting that they had asked us to go and get some employee feedback. We talked about the best avenue to do that and we specifically talked about using our employee insurance committee. They're a group of employees of about 30. They represent all the departments and they're used to funneling information and getting feedback from employees, especially when we're going to be making some benefit plan changes to our health, dental and vision, those types of benefits. So again, we all agreed that that would be the best avenue. And I'll talk a little bit more about the employee comment process on the next slide. But we did want the comments back by June 9th. Staff compiled the information, but we realized that the ad hoc committee dissolved per the resolution in April on May 16th. So in order to be able to provide that feedback to the committee, we needed to reestablish the ad hoc committee, which was done on June 27th. And then they had their final meeting on July 10th where we were able to share with them the feedback. They were able to take that into consideration before making the final recommendations that I'm going to present to you here today. So the ad hoc committee, excuse me, the employee comment process, again, we agreed to use the employee insurance committee. The next regular scheduled meeting was... Could you just briefly, if it's real easy, just identify what was there a representative from major departments on that committee or what who comprises that committee? Yes, sir. Scott Payne. Okay, I just want to understand. I'll let him talk a little bit about that. Just briefly, just who is? This is going to get awkward. Yes, the employee insurance committee has made up about 29 representatives from the various departments. So not every department has a rep on there. Some of the smaller departments may be represented by multiple, but one rep may represent multiple departments. But all the major ones do have a representative on the committee. So then how it would work is whatever is discussed in that committee would be the responsibility of the representatives to go back to the respective departments they're representing. Does it communicate that and is that typically how that works? I don't know how these work. Okay, good. I appreciate that. Thank you. So their main meeting was scheduled for May 16th. So what staff did is on May 12th, went ahead and emailed the agenda. One of the agenda items was the ad hoc committee and talking about the different options. And the email is basically giving them a heads up that the meeting would run longer than normal. And that we wanted everyone in attendance and if they couldn't be there to send a backup. Then on May 15th, we emailed a packet of information. There was a cover memo explaining what we were doing, why we were doing it. It had the survey results from when we were comparing our benefits to the other Metroplex cities that specifically sit in vacation. It also had all the options that the council ad hoc committee had been reviewing in their meetings thus far. Then on May 16th, we followed up face to face in that meeting, went through the packet, gave them opportunity to ask questions, gave them an opportunity to weigh in. We also asked them specifically to go back and get feedback from the employees or the representative groups and provide that feedback to us via email. We told them we'd follow up with some talking points and other information that we thought could help facilitate that meeting, which we did in an email on May 24th. I requested the feedback back by June 9th, as I already mentioned, and then compiled it, shared it with the ad hoc committee on July 10th. Then I sent an email back to the EIC last Thursday in preparation for this meeting. We were waiting for the green light from the ad hoc committee, making sure that we captured their recommendations correctly. I know Brian had an opportunity to meet with Council Member Baguerre. She's the chair of the committee, again, to make sure we had a green light for dent today. Then finalized the PowerPoint presentation and sent it out on Thursday. A couple of questions, then I'll... So you met with the EIC, that's the employee insurance committee on the 16th. Yes, sir. Tendence was everybody well represented there? Okay. And then, and so these ad hoc committee meetings, the city council benefits, whatever it's called, those are regular council committee meetings. So they are posted pursuant to whatever we need to post them. Yes, sir. And all those meetings have been posted pursuant to state law? Yes, sir. Okay. And we did have one person attend the second meeting, a representative from FHIR attended the second meeting. Okay. Council Member Briggs? Well, that was just, I was going to ask for point of clarification. It says all departments. I just wanted to make sure civil and non-civil were represented within those. Yes. We verify that today with the sign-in sheet. Okay. Thanks. Okay. There's no other questions on that, then I'll move on to the vacation benefits. This chart, you actually saw the February council meeting. This is a chart of our current benefits. Anything in yellow is statutorily required, specifically mandated by Chapter 143 of the Texas Local Government Code. Our non-civil service employees, they accrue 10 hours per month of vacation. Police and fire, by statute, they're required to have 15 days, so that equates to the 10 hours and 15 hours for fire . And the reason why there's a difference is because when we 're calculating the fire benefits, we're using 12-hour days for that calculation, versus everybody else, we use 8-hour days. Our policy allows for bonus accrual. So on our fifth anniversary, we accrue an additional 4 hours of bonus time. And so on the sixth year would be 8, seventh year would be 12, et cetera. Fire, again, because our days are calculated differently, they get 6 hours. The policy allows for maximum annual carryover on our anniversary date of up to 320 hours, except for fire shift, that's 480 hours. So just a question so I understand, because I really don't know a whole lot about all this. On the monthly accrual, let's just do the 10 hours, and it 'll apply the same, just different number. So what you're saying is after five years, if someone's been with us five years, they're going to accrue the 10 hours per month. >> 120 hours a year. >> Yes, and so then the bonus accrual is an additional four hours for each year of service. So on that fifth year, or maybe the sixth year, it's four hours for that year. >> Correct. >> And then it just goes up four. >> So 124, 128, 132. >> Yes, okay, thank you. Payout, again, according to our policy, as long as they meet certain criteria, which is footnoted on the bottom of the slide, we will pay out accrued hours up to 320 for everybody except for the fire shift, that's 480 hours. So again, that's our current benefits under our policy and under statute for police and fire. Questions on that? >> So that's about what is that? If nobody takes, if they 've accrued the whole, if they got 320, what is that? Is that eight weeks, basically two months? >> Eight weeks, yes, sir. >> Yes. >> So maximum annual carryover, the 320 for non-ci vil service employees, that's simply a policy. >> Yes, sir. >> For our police and fire, is that a policy or is that part of our meet and confer agreement? >> It's policy. Sick and vacation is not covered in meet and confer. >> It is not. >> Not currently, yes, sir. >> Have we ever had discussions during meet and confer regarding benefits? >> There was on the far side for fire pension and a defer red comp, but not related to sick and vacation. >> Is that by law, is that by convention? >> I'm sorry, is what by law? >> Are we not allowed to discuss benefits on meet and confer or is that a potential for, our lawyer is starting to- >> I think we can agree to discuss anything we'd like at the table. It's just never been a management issue and I don't recall it ever being a labor issue. >> Okay, thank you. >> Okay, so as I mentioned, we shared the various options with the EIC, asked them to get feedback and the options that I'm referring to, they were outlined, the same options that are outlined in your exhibit four for this meeting. Option one was no change in accrual, but cap the bonus. Option two was to do a graduated plan based on years of service, three weeks, four weeks, five weeks. EIC, they were opposed to changes in the current vacation benefits, but consensus was that if changes were going to be made, can we grandfather existing employees and start this new for new employees? But if we chose not to grandfather, then what they felt would be most palatable is to not change the accrual, but cap the bonus time at 20 years. As far as carryover and payout, we'd implement a graduated plan based on years of service. So essentially, if people had been here 10 plus years, there would not be a change in the carryover. Anybody 10 years or less, it would change from 320 to 240 for the non-civil service and the police. And then for the fire shift, it would go down to 360. And then that option included matching the payout to carryover. The committee considered this before making their final recommendations, and I know there's a lot of information on this chart. This is a comparison chart showing you the current benefits to the recommended benefits by the ad hoc committee. It's in your backup too, if you want to see it a little bit closer, easier to read. So we're going to focus on the right side of this chart. Again, remember anything yellow is required by statute. But you can see on the very first row after the green line says monthly accrual, there's no change. But they are looking at recommending the bonus accrual, ca pping that at 20 years so that the maximum bonus time for anybody is 60 hours per year. And the fire shift would be 90 hours. But the committee was interested in trying to minimize the impact, and so they were looking at a two-year phased implementation. So instead of just dropping all the way down to just the 60 hours for anybody past 20 years, they would still accrue bonus time. But instead of the four hours, it would be two hours. And on the police, it would be three hours instead of six. And then on 1/1/19, anybody at that point, we would eliminate or we would cap it at the 60 hours. Does that make sense? I see a lot of- No, it makes sense to me. I guess I'm just trying to understand. So the bonus time, regardless of the recommended changes, or if we keep the status quo, that's just to promote longevity, to encourage longevity. And so it's like having extra vacation time, they can either decide to take it, or if when they leave, either retire or through attrition or the like, if they haven't reached that cap, that bonus helps them. At least they can get paid for that. So it acts like vacation time. I mean, in essence, it's just okay. Yes, sir. Okay. So the maximum annual carryover, the committee is recommending a bifurcated system where there's no change for anybody, 10 plus years. Anybody that has 10 years of service or less, that would change from 320 to 240. On the fire shift side, that would go to 360, excuse me. And again, a phased implementation, so instead of dropping all the way to 240, anybody with an anniversary date 1118 to 1231, 18, they would drop to 280. So basically you're splitting the difference for year one. So they drop to 280, and then year two, 1119, they go to 240. On the fire shift, it would be 420 to 360. Okay. So you're absorbing this? Well, yeah. Is this the last slide for the vacation? Because we have sick time as well. We have sick time as well. Do we have another slide on vacation? The impact, yes. But this is the slide that talks about all the recommended changes. So before we go to the impact, I think I've seen that, but I'm just curious, what was the impetus to decrease it to 240? I mean, and I'm not trying to put him by the spot. I'm just trying to understand when we look at 320 as it is now and 480. I don't think 480 can change. I wouldn't think, but maybe. But because that's 80 hours, and that's what, two weeks? Is that two weeks? Okay. Yeah. So just curious as to our other cities, is that what other cities are at or what? That was kind of the median when we were looking at the other cities, but I don't know if -- Okay. So it's based on data? Sure. If you go to exhibit three on the backup. Okay. I have it here too. There's a survey of all of the different cities for vacation. Okay, exhibit three. And it also has years of service. So we looked at those, and then there's an average that's highlighted in green. Yes. And so this was what we spent the most amount of time after the employee surveys looking at. And I believe the employee -- did the EIC committee have access to this? Yes. We sent it in our packet. All right. So if I may ask a question. Yeah, of course. So then I think what I'm hearing is the reason for proposing this change is that we had -- for our vacation, above average benefits, and we're wanting to dial them back to average benefits. Is that -- That's my understanding from the committee. Of course, Mayor Pro Tem. We're actually still above average by a lot. So the exhibit three, this is currently as it -- with the status quo, is that right? The status quo, is that right? When I look at this exhibit three on the backup, it shows the average, and then it has Denton. Is this what Denton's is after the changes, or is this with Denton's as it is now? This is Denton as it is now. Okay. All right. And so if I'm -- it helped me understand this. So I'm going to just take somebody from nine to ten years. The average is 121 hours that they have total that they -- I guess -- is that yearly, or is that -- That's per year, yes, sir. Per year. Whereas with Denton, it's 140. So that's 18 hours or whatever it is, which is two or three days. Okay. All right. And then as we get down to let's go to 35 years, the very last one, the average, which some of them are higher or lower -- I mean, some of them are at 200. McKinney and Mesquite are at 200. Is 172, but Denton is 244. Yes, sir. Okay. Yes, go ahead. I'm just trying to make sure I understand this. For clarification, Carla, does this include the bonus time as well? Yes, that's why you're at the 244. Otherwise, it would be a base 120. It would be what? 120. We need to create 120 per year. This includes the bonus time. You can see it going up each year. So beginning on the fifth year, it goes to 124, 128, 132, 136. So this adds the bonus time per year -- by year of service. Okay. But we don't know if they've got it in some of these other cities structured with bonus time or anything like that. I'm not aware of any other city having the bonus time structure that we have. Okay. So that's helpful because when you look at the Denton column, then you see clearly the bonus time. I mean, that's what -- as longevity -- as people stay here longer, they're really accruing those hours based -- Okay. All right. That's helpful. Yes? If we see the average, we see what Denton is now, there's not a column for what the new proposal is on this chart. There was an Exhibit 5, I believe it was. Exhibit 5? No, sorry. Exhibit 6. 6. Which I can actually pull that up if you'd like. Sure. Sure. This is showing the current over here. This was the proposed and then it shows you the impact on the hours. Okay. So then in Exhibit 6, what I'm seeing is that what we start seeing is that Year 20, we start dialing back. Yes, sir. And we're doing that because -- why? No, I'm sorry. Yes? I apologize. What was the question? So the proposal keeps it at the same for employees until Year 20 for vacation, but then at Year 20, we start dialing back. And I'm curious as to why we're doing that. Why is that the proposal? You want me to go ahead? Okay. So if you'll notice, some of the other cities, I would say all but -- actually all of the other cities, at Year 20 or earlier, that is the end point of the vacation time accrual . So that was the reasoning was at Year 20 because there were no other cities that were continuing to accrue after Year 20. So what the other cities do, they don't do the yearly accru al. They do kind of in steps, it looks like, like every five years, they add a larger amount of number, a larger amount of time. We do it annually, but nowhere do they go past 20 years, at least on this particular survey. There might be other cities out there. So what I've done in my mind is on this exhibit, what's exhibit 6 is the proposed versus the -- so if you go to exhibit 6, so this column, which is the far -- your left hand, my right hand column, which starts showing the negative, the hours lost. Well, I'm sorry, it's the next column. We could take that next column. If we were to put it beside exhibit 3, where it has our -- what we currently have are those hours exhibited, then that tells us, like, if we used Year 20, we show 180 hours here, and we've lost four hours, but if we go to Year 20 on this one, we're at 184. Basically all the -- correct, but all -- with the proposed, all of this would be 180. Right, right, because the bonus is still in a play on the recommended ones from years 5 through 20. Yes, sir. And they're saying after 20. Just caps. Okay, all right, okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Very helpful. Okay. Okay. So we talked about the carryover. Termination, payout at termination, the committee was recommending that employees would be paid accrued hours up to 240 hours maximum. That's 360 for a fire shift. Can you go to full screen? Oh, sorry. Yes, sir. I was wondering why I couldn't see it as well. Sorry. Thank you. Changing back and forth too much. And again, this would be a phased implementation. So on one -- anybody leaving 1118 or late to 1231, 18, there -- they would be paid accrued hours up to 280. Then on 1119 would go to 240. On the fire shift side, it would be 480 to 420 to 360. So again, they're just looking at splitting the difference over the two years on all of these implementations. Questions on the recommendations of the committee? Okay. So the impact of these changes -- and now this is a snapshot using information as of 7/12. So, I mean, these numbers have already changed based on acc ruals and people using time. But capping the bonus accrual at 20 years affects 190 employees. This is non-civil service, police, and fire all combined. Changing the carryover hours, remember, this only affects employees with less -- or 10 years of service or less. That's 103 employees. Changing the payout to 240 or 360 for fire affects 404 employees. So we were trying to figure out any cost savings with this. And I'll tell you, it was very difficult with the carryover hours. There's just so many pieces of that puzzle. Some employees can take off and they don't need people to cover their jobs. Others do. If they're not exempt, there could be an overtime implication. We just don't know who would be covering who. And again, just too many pieces of the puzzle to figure out a cost. On the payout, we looked at what was actually paid out this year, 10/11/16 through 8/11/17, looking at anybody that was paid out the maximum of 320. And if we assume that this year we were paying out 240, you 're give or take 96,000. But I don't think this is a real dollar figure for you because if employees knew that they were only going to get paid out a maximum of 240, they'd probably be taking hours to take that balance down so they don't lose the time. So this was a very difficult exercise in trying to give you some potential cost savings. Sure. Yes, customer husband. Thank you. Before I forget, I want to bookmark that thought. Because I think that's spot on is people would adjust based on what they're being paid or what the compensation is or what this contract reads, people would adjust. So people that applied here wouldn't have if adjusted, right? So I think I'll just, I'll come back to that. But I think that's noteworthy in my analysis. My question is, I've not seen anything, and forgive me if I missed it. Why are we taking these as though they're all the same, right? Because a police officer is more likely to get hurt. And then you got to go through the evaluation process of how much time you need to rehab. And there's a disagreement there sometimes with that. So now you have to use your vacation time as you're rehab bing versus a traditional employee that may not have those concerns or a fire fighter that will have those same concerns. I just don't understand why we put all the employees together as though they're the same. And that to me ignores the fact that they're not the same. I understand early on in the process it was pointed out that someone requested for them to be taken, considered. But I didn't see where it said they had to be all considered as though they're equal because they're not. I mean, they're just not. So my question is why, even if you're going to fold those in, fold in the civil service, I get it. Why take them as one giant? I don't understand. I guess because really, at least from what I hear, so correct me if I'm wrong, the jest of your question is, to me that answer is this is strictly affecting vacation. What you talked about is if someone's injured, and it doesn 't matter whether it's a firefighter, a police officer, a lineman, a parks worker. I mean, anybody that works for the city could be injured in the course of their job. And therefore, what constitutes, there's probably a whole process around evaluation of, I'm going to call them work man comp claims. That address how much time is off, how much of that is work man's comp, how much of it is sick, how much of it is vacation. So I think just from a generic perspective, the committee only looked at, because this is a very general classification of vacation benefits, and that was really the charge of it. So as far as, I think you could get down into the minutiae, but there has to be a base level of benefits. And then if you have an injury, there's a whole, isn't there a whole process for, could you just elaborate on that just a little bit? To maybe address his concern about if something happens, just his concern, so correct me if I'm wrong. His concern was, why aren't we taking vacation benefits as if everybody's the same. If someone got hurt, that means if we disagree with how much time they need off, do we require them to take vacation or sick time? In other words, how does vacation benefits, how are they integrated into, I'm going to say, an injury type of situation? Is that? >> Yes sir, because I know it, not only this department. I mean, I was in Grapevine three weeks ago, and an officer was saying, hey, I had to take my vacation time because of this injury, because of a disagreement with workers comp, and while you 're sorting that out, you got to get paid. So it happens, it affects every department that I've ever interacted with, and it was just two weeks ago that I heard someone, again, not associated with this. This very issue came up. >> And Scott is a workers comp expert, but as far as just general sick and vacation, if people are injured or they're ill, we want them to take their sick first, and then once they 're out of sick, then they can take vacation and lose sick. But I'll let him speak to the actual injury piece of it and how the workers comp and sick work together. >> Yeah. >> Councilman, you're correct. I mean, there are certain times where there can be disputes about the workers comp process. The majority of the claims that we deal with, there are a lot of disputes, and so they are able to be paid their full salary through workers comp. Civil service mandates that if someone's injured in the line of duty, they get up to a year of full salary and can then petition the council for more than that, kind of commiserate with the injury. For our non-civil service employees, we give them up to 960 hours of salary continuation if they're hurt in the line of duty. So after that point, then they begin to receive workers comp benefits that are required by statute, which is typically going to be 70 or 75% of their average weekly wage. In those situations, we do allow our employees to use their sick or vacation to make up the difference, and that's so they are still getting a full salary. But they're only having to use a few hours each pay period or whatever to augment that. So now going back to your kind of the worst case scenario where we do have a dispute, then that's going to be handled within the confines of the Department of Insurance, Texas Department of Insurance, and the Division of Workers Comp. There are hearings that we go through to determine if it's compensable or not. I mean, disagreements do occur from time to time, and ultimately the legislative body that regulates workers comp in Texas is going to tell us and the employee whether or not it's compensable or not. If it turns out to be compensable, then in most cases, I know we will go back and reinstate sick or vacation. But if it's turned out not to be compensable, then it could still be on the employee to use their sick or vacation. And as Carl said, we would look to sick first and then vacation at that point in time. So I hope I've answered the question. Again, there's lots of different scenarios that play into that, obviously. Yes, sir. No, that's absolutely perfect. But again, I'll just leave it, it takes it back to even he made a distinction between civil service and non-civil service in the amount of time. So we're not making that distinction. And again, that's by Chapter 143. So it gives them more time than our normal employees. No, I understand. I just don't know why we didn't say civil service, non-ci vil service. I know it's covered in a chart separate, but it was not consumed separate. And by his explanation, he delineates. Well, no, I can tell you from that council, the council made a decision not to separate them because we wanted to treat all the employees equal when it came to vacation and sick leave benefits because it's under the general employee handbook benefits. If it were in meet and confer or something like that, then that's a totally separated negotiated position with police and fire, however that works out. Now it's part of just the general benefits package of all employees. So civil service does have their own pathway to negotiating various different types of agreements and arrangements for employment. But the council didn't give the committee the charge to separate them because they didn't they wanted to address the benefits package from across the board with all employees. So that that's the main reason for that. Yeah, thank you. But sure, I take a look at it. Sure. It's a different. Yeah. OK. But the important thing you said was during a dispute, it's not the city that makes the determination of compensable or non-convincible. This is another administrative body. What is it? It's a department's comp, whatever type of administrative agency or hearing mechanism that each side, each party is able to proffer their evidence and their and their concerns and someone else. We don't make that decision, do we? Correct. I mean, we may disagree, but ultimately the Texas Department of Insurance and Divisional Workers' Comp is going to make that decision. OK. All right. Our part of law, if it goes beyond that. Yes. Yes. Thanks. I'm thinking, well, maybe, maybe potential savings is what this is about. That when people retire, when they resign and they they they have a lump sum payment that pays for these unused sick days, they were trying to save that money. And I guess that's what that ninety six thousand is. Unused vacation days, not sick. I beg your pardon? You said sick. I just want to clarify, it's vacation days. That's what I mean. Vacation time. And then I got thinking, well, yeah, that's really difficult to calculate because a lot of these jobs, if somebody's out, they have to, we have to have a substitute. We expect our garbage to get picked up on that day. And we expect two people on the ambulance crew and three people on the fire crew and we expect a full complement of patrol officers out. So when when those folks are taking a day off, a vacation day, we got to have some notion as to how much that costs. We either we either paying somebody overtime to cover for them or we have hired some additional staff to float and fill those positions. So we've got to have some notion as to what what a day off cost financially to the city, don't we? We could probably get that from the overtime information and talking specifically with department heads. I think that would be helpful because I mean, you know, ninety six thousand dollars is a lot of money. But but if we if we do, you know, that per capita figure, you know, and I rounded it up to one hundred thousand dollars and I rounded our population down to one hundred and thirty thousand dollars per capita. We're saving our residents, I think it's seventy seven cents a year. Can't buy a Coke. Well, I remember that again, this figure, I don't know how true it would be because again, if we were only paying out two forty instead of three twenty, people would probably be taking their hours. Oh, yeah. Get it down. So which would which is what I'm curious about because I think it adds to the cost. Right. Another question on that. I don't know if we can answer it now is how are we doing right now when when when our police officer is out for whatever reason, scheduled vacation leave or sick leave. Do we have enough folks to cover so that we have a full compliment on patrol and then especially if we if we have several people out and then we're having a special event, a festival, a fair that requires folks. Are we getting all of those positions covered or are we are we short. Do we do we have days when we don't have a full compliment of folks on duty. I would have to ask that question of the police chief. I don't. I think that's an important question because if clearly, Mr . Is right, if we cap vacation, then people that might not have been using all of their vacation will and and if they do, I'm curious as to what the cost will be if if they do use it all. And I'm curious as to if we're even at this particular point covering all of it because I've heard that we on some weekends, we have several special events going at the same time. And we're having a lot of trouble getting enough people that are off duty to take overtime to cover all of the assignments. I want to say something here, and I'm not trying to. We got a brief an email from Brian, I think yesterday or last night. And so correct me if I'm wrong. I'm trying to find it where because this is ninety six thousand. That's we have. We don't know how many people this include. This may be because when I saw the email that when you looked at the recommended payout compared to what we're currently doing, it amounted on civil service about three thousand dollars, I think different. And then on non civil services about eighteen hundred or two thousand. Is that right? I can't find the email. And if you if you just sort of kick. Am I am I totally off? Maybe so. Just so you know, this ninety six is eighteen people. Again, that's taken from three twenty down to two forty. So about four thousand or five thousand or something like that. So that's this is my point. And I'm not I'm just putting my own thoughts out there. First of all, I really appreciate the committee doing what the council asked, you know, asked in the sense of, hey, look at this and come forward and based upon what I've seen . And I know I haven't seen the sick leave, but from what the backup I've looked at, the sick leave hasn't really been changed that much. I mean, it's almost still the status quo. This seemed to have been one of the major differences in the recommendation. And I guess I really don't need a whole lot more information, at least. We continue this discussion, but I'm OK with the status quo only because I understand that we may be a little bit higher. We also have people who have been with this city for a long , long time and we want people to be with the city. I mean, that's you know, how many times we talked about institutional memory and experience. Now, we want to make sure that our salaries and our benefits are commensurate. We don't want to be so far out of whack. But to me, to lower it, at least on this particular proposal, is it are we really accomplishing something? Is the financial cost a greater benefit than maybe some other intangible cost that we might incur in the city? And I don't mean just with the employees. I mean, this is so that's just where I am on this. And again, this isn't about having an issue with the recommendation or the committee. I think they've done exactly what I asked them to do back when we requested that. I just having looked at the data may become to a different conclusion. So that's where I am. And so we can if if if there's four or five of us or six of us that are under that same inclination, I mean, I just if we if we we can keep going on the presentation, I have a problem doing that. And we can gather more data and we can ask for more questions and those kind of things. But we do have a little bit more payout than we do from other cities. And from what I can tell, most of that's from the bonus. I mean, it's that bonus accrual, which I mean, yeah, anyway , I'm sorry, Castle memory breaks. So I was on the committee. Yes. And I just wanted to go on record that these recommendations that we made were not made with feedback from the fire and police department somehow. Apparently, the communication broke down somewhere. And I'd like to address that whether or not we go on with any kind of communication here. But regarding police and fire, set that aside. I asked for some information. And from October 1, 2016 to August 11, 2017, our payout amount for non civil service employees for vacation was six hundred and twenty nine thousand five hundred and forty two dollars. So that was a significant amount. And so what you're saying is that only ninety something thousand dollars would be saved a year per se with these changes from credit because of that full list. Only 18 were at the max of three twenty. So that's taken that three twenty max down to two forty. Yes, Mayor Pro Tem. I have a question about what what fund this is paid out of as a general fund or is it the utilities fund? If it's a utilities employee. It's the fund where the employees budgeted. So if it was a D.M.E. employee, we pay out the D.M.E. budget. If it was a general fund employee, we paid out a general fund. So when we get our budget, our proposed manager's budget, does it include an estimated amount for this line item? No, we do not specifically have a line item that's budgeted for this. And the reason for that is they're random. They change from year to year. You never really know exactly how many employees are going to leave. And we also have attrition. And when those employees leave, there's some time it takes to hire another employee. The salary may be different with employee that you hire in versus the incumbent that you had. So typically we've never had a reason to budget it because there's never been a shortfall in the personnel services budget. This is a component of the overall personnel services budget that you guys have seen, which is roughly $150 million across all funds. So it is a part of the personnel services budget. It's paid out of salaries, that salary line item. And there's enough savings in that salary line item for att rition from those employees to typically cover that. Okay. And then thank you for that. And I just wanted to clarify, when we were given our charge for this committee, it was very specific that the focus should not be financial. And so when we were going into this, we didn't spend a lot of time on cost savings or anything even related to finances. I think I mentioned I had requested that it would go to audit finance, and that was not acceptable for the council at that time. So I really appreciate all of the financial information. I just want to be clear that the idea behind this sub committee was to look at comparisons with other cities because we had completed an employment study that compared us to both private and public employment. That was the purpose, and it was not a cost savings factor. It was simply to place us where are we in the North Texas map. And I just wanted to clarify something. We did get the police representative did provide us feedback. In fire. Fire we found out today that the representative did not disseminate the information, but he was under the impression that the association knew about some of the discussions, they didn't know about the recommendations that were coming forth from the committee, but they knew about some of the options because of the somebody being at the second meeting. So later on, I'd like to have a broader discussion about that. Okay, issue. Yeah. Thank you. So as far as and and I agree with you, the charge was not the financial component. So that's why I'm saying I think the committee has done exactly what the council asked them to do. And in the process of the recommendation, it allows us to look at other aspects that have been brought to this council today. So I don't see this as a any kind of a flaw in the process or what the council asked. Quite honestly, I see it as just I think there's a lot of information that has been disseminated that didn't have a whole lot of basis and in fact, and I think that's been the problem. And so I really do appreciate you bringing the facts to us. And I'm I'm okay with the status quo. So is there any other council member that need that has a different perspective? And if so, we'll continue discussing it and we'll continue getting information. But so I not necessarily what I want. I just I just put that out there. So I'm going to go. Council member Briggs, you had your hand up first. Well, we added sick time to non-sip. Did you want to look at that? Yeah. So what you're saying is you increased it. Right. Okay. Yeah. Look at that. But it went hand in hand with the takeaway of the vacation. Okay. That was what I was going to bring up. And another item that I brought up was back in the 90s during the huge construction boom. I was in that business and I worked for a company that if you weren't putting in 40 hours overtime, you were a part time employee. And so vacations were not allowed. So I thought we also need to look at adding a component. And this didn't get it. Get very far that would allow management. I don't know how it would happen for salary, but for hourly employees to allow when they start hitting that cap and they are unable to schedule their time off that they are either allowed to somehow carry it over or for hourly employees that they could cash out. I don't know how that would look on a salary employee. But that was well as the city manager about that that I wanted to look at as well. Okay. To build on what you said, I would be concerned if we had hourly employees who were unable to schedule time off if they needed time off. And that goes to that issue of do we have enough systems in place so that folks that need time off need to take a vacation for mental health or whatever. Can do that. And, and their jobs get covered, or they don't come back, and they're there. Now they've got to take sick leave because they're, the desk is so piled up that they know they can't get the work done without take doing overtime that they don't get paid for I'm concerned about that. Regarding, I'm glad that the committee looked at and compared our benefits packages with other cities. And it appears that we're going to have at some point a presentation that's where we found out that our sick leave benefits are a little below average. And there's a proposal to bring them up to average. I like that. And I would like for average to be the baseline for the way we treat our employees, not our aspirational goal. I don't want us to, to, to find where we have benefits that are above average and, and say, well, no, we can't do that. Let's, let's knock them back to average because that's not how we ask our employees to perform. Our goal for our employees is go out there and be average, folks. We don't ask them that. We ask them to be above average. We ask them to be exemplary. And, and we can't do that and at the same time have as our goal average compensation and average benefits. That's, that's a, that's a contradiction that I'm just not willing to be a part of. So I'm not interested at all in, in adopting a new vacation leave policy at this time. But I think I'm going to be interested in adopting the new sick leave benefits once we get to hear them. Okay. All right. Sick leave. Okay. Okay. So again, this chart is a reminder of our current benefits. Remember anything in yellow is statutorily required. So our non-civil service, they accrue eight hours per month or 12 days a year. The statute requires 15 days for police and fire. Again, the change because of the way we calculate the hours of the day. I'm sorry, the hours for the benefit calculation for fire. Maximum annual accrual for non-civil service is 720 hours. And I mean, this, as soon as we hit 720, we don't accrue anymore. So there's not a carryover. It's truly a max accru al. The statute requires unlimited accrual for police and fire. Payout upon termination. There are none for non-civil service with a couple of exceptions that are footnoted for you on the slide. The statute requires up to 90 days. That's where you get to 720 for police and at 1,080 for fire shift workers. Again, providing the different options to the employee insurance committee. The consensus was that if changes were going to be made, change your accruals from the eight hours per month to 10 hours per month. That's equivalent across the board of 15 days for all employees. But they also said after looking at or studying the survey results, seven of the ten cities had some component of sick leave payout, whether it was for retirees, whether it was based on years of service, but seven of the ten cities had something. And so they were recommending that if we're really trying to compare to other cities, why don't we pay out sick leave as well upon termination? But more so if we're going to take away any of the payout for vacation. That was probably their biggest issue. If you're going to take this away, then at least bring this one up. So again, very similar chart to the vacation. The recommended changes are on the right. And you can see here the only change we have on this chart is the ten hours. That's what the committee was recommending, increasing from eight hours to ten hours. No other changes for non-civil service and of course no changes to civil service because it's statutorily required. So the only difference is two hours monthly accrual? Yes, sir. Payout. And all those are still the same. Well, they're still the same as the status quo. The only difference for the sick leave is the additional two hours of sick leave. Yes, sir. Any questions, comments on that? Yes, Councilmember Hutsbill. Not this specific, just to get out of the way. I have a running issue with city comparisons because they 're not accurate. So Frisco is on the tollway and it's easier to get to Dallas. So if my spouse works and she works in Dallas, it works out well. It's easier to get there. Denton is not as, whatever that is. But it doesn't show up on a chart. And so I have to have a running objection to just looking at cities and just grabbing an arbitrary number. Now if we send someone to go apply there and they get an actual packet and they bring that back, but there's a lot of I don't knows and I think. And you know what I mean? I just, I don't understand. I understand that people do it. It just, to me, you're relying on bad information if you don't have the packet. If you don't factor in the fact that they're closer to Dallas, further away from Dallas, close to this, close to that. I mean, there's just a difference. Not everyone wants to live in Denton and there's not everyone that wants to live in Frisco. And there's a difference. You can't just take wholly and say, hey Denton versus Frisco, here's what we get. You know, it's not that clean. And so every time I see one of these presentations and no one factors in reality, it just is hard to consume. Because I make that drive from Denton to Dallas and it's not pleasant. And so, and as much as you don't want to talk about making financial, we don't take into consideration what are they paying. So you're getting 120 hours, but how much are you making per hour? Are you able to set that aside? Are you able to, how many times are you getting called in? I wish there was someone would at least pay as though they 're working in some algorithm when they throw up a city. And that way at least I'd feel better about the information we're providing. Mr. Manning, do you want to? I just don't know how long I want to talk on this. I would disagree with your premise there. I think it depends on the, it depends on the department you 're at. We've had a huge outflux of building inspectors, public works folks, contract folks center on the ground. In fact, we sent you a status report a few weeks ago talking about how we were having to adjust our salaries because we were losing so many of our construction oriented employees to other cities, the private sector. We're seeing building inspection trades. So it's very real and people will leave over a couple dollars an hour here or there. I'll tell you on the public safety side of the house, I think our pay is pretty competitive. A couple things that really drive them, they do value the benefits and they value quite frankly on the police and fire side of the house being a growing city. It's very applicable to compare us to the Frisco's and some of those other communities, McKinney, those communities that are growing because people actively take into consideration what their promotional opportunities might be here after five or ten years. And they look at very different things than you might be looking at right now because fire and police are probably two of the last professions where they intend to stay for 20 years. I mean, it's just not how most people think anymore. And so it really depends on the employee group, what they value and how they're looking at the world. Public safety will definitely take those things into consideration. And it's not to say that the other departments won't, but we have seen frontline employees leaving here, significant transition over just a couple dollars an hour over benefit packages. So it's real, it's going on. We just hired a new employee today, a mid-management employee, and he's set there literally line by line. This is what I'm giving up in my community. Where are you standing on that? So they pay much more attention to this than you might realize. But the issues are a little bit different depending on how they see, if they're seeing as a long-term engagement. Your public safety will see it that way. In fact, your DME employees, those times, they will see that the same. So I understand that it's a little bit different, but I will tell you our employees do look at these things through that lens. And to the extent you can retain them long term and they're coming in saying, we really like the benefit packages, we like the compensation packages. And by the way, we really like the fact you're growing. That's going to mean instead of my community where maybe one deputy chief, maybe down the road there's three or some other promotional opportunity. So all those things are given much more conscious thought than you might realize. No, no, I think you're spot on. I agree with you, actually. We don't disagree. And so I think to your point, that's why I have a problem with just Frisco 120 hours, straight comparison. I think it's deeper than that. And I think that's what you said. But if I heard you wrong, forgive me, but I think we agree. Well, I was going back to your premise about comparing to other cities because that is certainly what our employees do. Yes, yes. No, I'm with you. So as far as so this is the primary changes on the sick leave. Yes, sir. All right. You've got three slides left, I believe. One's a question. So I have two. And this is a request of one of the council members wanting to know and looking at our budget, what percentage is police and fire? And so this is the I think you maybe have seen this in a budget presentation. The general fund by department police and fire make up approximately eighty four percent or so of our general fund budget. And then the other question was what the proposed increases are those shades of blue or shades of gray? The blue on my chart. Yeah. Move on. Yes. And then the proposed budget for 17 18 of the increases that are being added to the budget, what percent are going to police and fire? And this is the police department, 50 percent fire department, 30.9. So that's 81 percent approximately. OK, good. Questions. OK, questions, comments. Yes, Mayor Pro Tem. Can you go back to the last slide? So for this proposed fiscal year, we're going to add two point three million dollars to the police department budget. Is that am I reading it correctly? That's my understanding. And for the fire department budget, it's one point four. How much of that is the safer grant? And I'll let Chuck bring it back. Sorry. I don't believe the safer grant basically doesn't cover the personnel. This this was often the proposed city manager budget. So I think the safer grant will probably reduce that needed increase in the fire department. It's a little over 400000, I believe. OK, so the numbers not going to change. It's just going to be the source of where the funds come from, essentially, is what I'm hearing. OK, so the reason I requested this information, it's difficult to hear people say that you don't support police and fire when you look at the numbers. So that's that's the reason I wanted to bring that up. So I appreciate whoever put that together. Thank you. OK. Yes, Councilmember Ryan. Thank you, Mayor. I do think we might want to look at brought this up in the committee, the fact that the non civil service on the sick sick leave, it's kind of used or lose it from a management standpoint. It's an unscheduled time off. It's you calling on the day that it happens. If there's no way to get that benefit without just calling in sick, even if you're not, you're forcing employees to to take that sick time off. So whether it's some payout at the end, you know, when they leave after a certain number of years or the ability to move some of that into vacation time so they can be scheduled time off and continue to accrue sick hours, I think would be a good idea. So summarize what you're what you're asking for. We can go back a couple of slides here. Yeah, on this one, because we cap non civil service at 720 hours, which basically if you don't if you've been with the city for six years and you haven't taken a sick day, you've hit your cap. And that's by state law. No, is that not a policy that policy. He's referring police and fire unlimited by. Okay, gotcha, gotcha. Yes, yes, yes, yes. By state law. I was thinking of payout. Sorry. Yeah, I see him pay out. So on on the payout, what's going to happen is you have an employee who knows that three months from now they're going to they're going to leave so they're going to be calling in two or three days a week sick to use up as much of that time as possible, which can create a huge problem for management that's trying to cover that. Obviously, the manager is going to want to call them in and say, are you really, really sick and address it in that manner. But there is an issue when you you allow a benefit to accrue that can only be taken if if you're calling in on the day of or scheduling for someone got for big gets cancer and they need some time off for that. That is a legitimate way that you could end up using some of that. But someone who is who's healthy all the time is getting a benefit that the only way that they can can can receive that benefit is to basically lie to their boss and say I'm sick today. And I hear that. But I guess that is sick time. This is a cruel sick time for sick days. And if I guess I'm not I'm certainly okay with adding the two hours that that to me is and I think it would help address some because if someone's sick, they need to have sick time to be able to help them when they're sick. And if an employee is going to I would put an employee who 's going to manipulate the system like that in a very, very small minority because I think people just really operate with a level of integrity that may avoid that kind of situation. But if they do, it's still sick time. And I think to I'm really okay with the status quo with the vacation. And I'm okay with changing the two hours, the eight hours to 10 hours and then everything else being the same because I think that would be a major departure from our and that would the flip side of that would be people would accrue sick time and they may be at work when they're sick. And therefore they could expose people to some type of you know either flu or cold or something plus their productivity goes down just for looking for that payout at the end. So I feel very confident that people will use sick time the way they see fit based upon their values. And that's why I really don't have it. I don't have a desire to start paying out. We have to pay out statutorily for civil service. And I think that's a public policy that the state felt was important. And I think that's the treating of the I think that's one way that the employees in that particular area are treated differently at a state level. So I appreciate that and I understand what you're saying. I just I probably just have a different perspective and I'm okay with just leaving it as it is with the two hour additional accrual and then the vacation being the status quo as it currently exists today. Okay well I'll just just want to point out it on exhibit three page eight shows the other cities and there's three other cities that don't pay but most have some type of program that after a number of years they can collect some of their sick time. Sure. Well they also we saw in the presentation on the vacation that most of the cities have a lower vacation acc rual so I mean if we're gonna if we're going to use the cities for one thing then and I in the other cities, it's the cruel we're close to the other cities but the actual hours earned every year is is where we are above the other cities. Right. Right. Yeah, it's really a matter of whether you're looking at the accrual or the annual, and I would probably just sort of goes along with Councilmember Hussbett I mean, if I'm going to use sick time. If I'm going to use the city survey is something that really helps me fact you know, create my decision on the overall issue, then, but I mean, two hours. I mean, I don't be okay with leaving today but I don't think you can come in this presentation say well, we could do to and so we'll just, I mean that's not to me that's in it plus it's going to sick time, which when people are sick that's one thing they need to know that at least they have some type of financial stability because there's nothing worse than being in a situation where you're, you're ill, or your family members ill, and you've got to worry about finances from your job not not withstanding the medical bills and things such as that so I think that I feel real okay with, with adding two hours to those sick time accruals. Councilmember breaks and then cast my I just wanted to mention again that if we have a. We do not have a maternity leave policy so that when you do have a baby in the city you have to use your sick and vacation time to do that. Just putting that out there. Okay. Thank you. That's my Gregory. Well, I would do we have a slide that shows. Again, this shows where we are compared to the average, but where we would be with the new proposal. And well these would all be 120. This 96 all of them would be one time. That's good. And I want to echo what Councilmember Greg said, I thought I'd asked at one point that the committee considered that, but I don't limit it to maternity leave because I'm an equal opportunity person here. I think it ought to be parental leave, and I really would love to look at. We might have gotten this sometime ago, a comparison to if there are other organizations that do have paid parental leave, either for biological birth or for an adoption of a young child. I think that would be a good benefit to add. Okay, as far as this particular issue, this particular agenda item. It sounds like and correct me if I'm wrong. The consensus on this is to keep the status quo and the vacation pay as it is today and go with the committee's recommendation of adding the two additional sick time hours to the monthly accrual across the board. And then however that plays out with civil service and non civil service. The statute has that and we'll keep the non payment and that the same. Is that. Is that what I'm hearing, other than some different requests and different opinions. I'm seeing head shaking. Any. I see enough head shaking I believe to move forward on this unless somebody feels that I'm inaccurate in that then . Please speak now. Can I click you said the two hours across the board or for the non civil service. Whatever the committee recommendation was. Yes. So we'll we'll revise the sick leave policy and we'll put that back on a consent agenda item for your approval to make this change. Yes. Can you post it for public meeting please. I would prefer to post it for public meeting. There's been accusations of secret meetings. I would like it to be a public meeting. The policy change will do individual consideration. Okay. Any other questions comments. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you to the committee for your work. And thank you Carla and the employees committee for their feedback and sometimes the road gets a little bumpy but we wind up. It's smooth highway. So thank you very much. All right. We'll move on then to agenda item number one B. We're going back to our sort of normal order on the agenda. Is conduct the second of two reading. That's an item for individual consideration. We're not doing that. Holy cow. Receive report and hold the discussion and give staff direction regarding Williams Square. I guess nobody wants to hear about Williams Square. Guys gonna stay. Come on. I'm sure this is a very quick presentation as well. It is the presentation is quick. You have more important things to do sir. Okay. We are going to have a quick presentation on Williams Square and then we will answer questions. I'm going to talk to you about the current uses and possible future uses of Williams Square. And then I'd like to hear from you all in a general sense about how you would like us to proceed regarding those uses going forward to get us oriented. Again this is Williams Square outlined in yellow bordered by the Wells Fargo parking lot on this side and then on the other side by some commercial and residential development. Williams Square was purchased by the city in 1925 and it has been used as a public parking lot since that time. For a time it was used as a venue for a farmers market but that ceased in the mid 60s and since then it's been a parking lot. The current uses include leasing 58 spaces to Wells Fargo Bank. That agreement was a seven year agreement that terminates in 2018. 15 spaces are currently leased to Denton County. That agreement terminates on September 30th of 2017 because Denton County has chosen not to renew that agreement with the city. A little over a thousand square feet of land was leased to Rusty Taco for a patio. The rate on that is adjustable. There's more detail about it in the AIS. And then it is also occasionally used as a space for festivals and events. The rates on that vary from a half day to a maximum of four days. As far as potential uses, I was recently before you to share a project that is being pursued by Jack Bell Proper ties. To purchase the four parcels of land associated with the Wells Fargo Bank building. As part of that redevelopment, Jack Bell Properties is interested in a long term lease of Williams Trade Square from the city to construct a parking garage to serve the Wells Fargo redevelopment. And provide some public parking. City legal and an outside council who was engaged to do a review concur that the city does have the ability to enter into such a lease. And if you have legal questions, Larry Colister has been heading up the legal review and coordination of outside council review on that. And you did get the details about that in your legal status report on Friday. So essentially seeking direction from you all on potential uses of Williams Trade Square. And I guess that what that basically means is are you interested in economic development or other departments bringing forward projects to you that would involve the lease or the potential sale of Williams Trade Square. Council Member Riggs. So there's been a little confusion and questions regarding the legality of what we can and can't do with the law because of the deed. And I know that we've had legal written opinions on that and those were shared with council. When I was told that if we wanted to make those available to the public it would take four council members to do that . And of course I'm one of them so that the public knows what sort of knowledge we have to base our decisions on going forward. So I just wanted to bring that up to council at this time. If four people agree I believe that could be released on Friday or something like that. I'm not quite sure when or where but I just believe that the public has the right to know the same information that we do in regards to the deed. And as far as the uses I would like to keep it as is. This must be my day for status quo because I think I'm fine with the way it is. As far as potential I mean if you have something certainly there's no I have no problem with you coming back and if there's somebody that has a proposal certainly not saying I don't want to hear anything. I'm just saying right now I don't know what's happening with Jack Bell's properties. I hear all kinds of things. There's a restaurant on the top that's being done. There's a but as far as the development that was presented to us I've heard nothing else about that. And so therefore I really don't have any comment on that. Okay so but that's what I need is just to gauge an opinion of should a project be more solidified with that developer or another one. Well I'd say I'd want to see it but that doesn't mean I'm going to agree to it. Of course. Yeah. Yes, Councilmember. It seems that one of the proposals that I remember from Mr. Bell was a long lease and he would build it and he would provide however many public spaces we currently have available. I don't think that that's enough. Okay. I think that we need more spaces. And I think that, well, on the one hand, I think we have plenty of parking spaces downtown, if people will be willing to walk a block, because I come down to town to downtown two or three times a week, and I never have trouble finding a place to park. Often right in front of the place I want to be. But sometimes it's a block away, and I don't care, because it's not that far to walk. But if you have a parking garage downtown, people, it's part of the, the, the psychology of things. Oh, well they, they have a parking garage now, plus there's lots of other parking lots. People will feel more comfortable that they will find a place, even if it's not going to be that much easier but I would be okay with entering into a discussion with Mr. Bell . If he wanted to build a parking lot, a parking garage on our property. And we could not only have our 120 spaces, but maybe even partner with him to to double our number of parking spaces that we have available for the public. He could have his spaces, we could have ours. I don't know how that works but they're smart people I think that can figure those things out. So I wouldn't, I wouldn't be opposed with, with having some more discussions with him, as long as it meant more public parking that's free. Is that, I guess I'm trying to understand the nature of this posting. Is this to talk about specific uses or is this just to try to get an idea. I mean, so help me understand when when we were here specifically with Mr Bell's project a council member asked for a general work session and an outside council review of the ability of the city to lease or sell this property. So, we had the legal opinion. And this is the general work session that was requested. Okay, well okay that's very difficult. Anybody else. I just wanted some clarification on Councilman breaks his request. Can you rephrase it again. So we. So the deed was sent to outside legal for an opinion on if we could rent or sell the Williams Square. And the public has interpreted that in different ways, and we have a legal interpretation and I wanted to share that opinion with the public so that if we decide to do anything in the future. They know the same information that that we have. So basically a waiver of the attorney client privilege. I'm okay with that for just that one for that particular for that reasoning. I'm all right with that. Okay, any other questions comments. Yes. Two other things. I think I'd be okay with the waiver. Here's what's happened with me. I've had people tell me that the deed restriction doesn't allow it. And I just show them the actual bill of sale. And they say, oh, that's not what it says at all. They don't need a lawyer to tell them that. So I'm not, I'm not, I think, and my understanding is that we can show them that deed of sale that that transaction is a public transaction right when you're referring to the 1920 transaction. Yes, of course. The other thing I would, I would think that I would be open to for people to talk about if we want to talk about a parking garage, and I'm not sure that there's enough interest on the council to do that. But there are there are other property owners downtown. Who would welcome the opportunity to go into a partnership with the city that own property to if the city wanted to build a parking garage, and there to be some type of a joint use agreement where where it's available to the public. These hours and available to the or so many spaces available to the property owner at these hours. And, and it might well be that we don't even need to funding to do it. You could sell the Williams Square property and have enough money to build a parking garage at another downtown location very close by. So, I think, I think we ought to be open to some of those kinds of discussions that might come up. And I can think of actually more than one entity that would be interested in having those discussions, I don't think I'm going to say it out here in the public. But anybody on the staff that wants to know I'll whisper in your ear. I bet I already know who they are. Okay, because remember death. Yeah, you know if somebody's willing to build a parking garage down there I really think that that's something we should pursue, you know, I'm not I'm not positive that's something that will end up wanting to do but we certainly should look at it. Yes, customer rates so on the current uses it says that the , the Denton County, we're not going to renew the agreement with them for the 15 spaces can you, I read the letter, but we are still giving them parking permits for parking but it 's going to be free parking. So I'm just wondering the income loss on that is there. I might have to defer to city manager Hileman on that question, because the county did decide they decided not to renew the Williams Square lease so there will be the loss of whatever, frankly, a minimal amount of income but this was part of a negotiation for a larger goal I believe. So, those 15 spaces go back to just generally so that's an extra 15. Yeah, in terms of the negotiations of county. We are still in the process of papering everything that's been agreed to but this started out with the ownership of the sidewalks around the county courthouse. And all the streets that surround the courthouse the rebuilding of the for traffic signals and some easements that we need from the county. They've also asked us to relocate some of our infrastructure out from underneath the sidewalks and certainly making an investment in updating those. And we're working with them on ADA compliant ramps as well so there are a number of issues that got tied up in this one particular agreement that is has yet to be papered I'm still waiting for their, the county attorney's office to, to provide us a sample agreement to work through but it was a lot of trading a lot of clar ifying who owns what, a lot of agreeing to work with one another in terms of our whose infrastructure was in whose space, we are going to also agree to take over maintenance duties and in the particular areas where we have the trash cans so there's probably eight or 10 issues wrapped up into one agreement this was a big deal to them. And in terms of the revenue loss, de minimis on an annual basis. But also as long as I speaking according to, you know, just kind of address the questions or the concerns by a couple of our council members. We have certainly not shut down any discussions at all in terms of parking, parking lots or parking garages I'm sorry in this particular area, anywhere else in downtown. What we have asked folks for is, you know, basic pro forma is what's the business deal behind the business deal, it gets thrown around a lot about the parking garage and I don't think any of us are really arguing, you know that, whether it's a bad idea. I think it gets down to what folks are willing to pay and how they're willing to set it up, I think the Councilmember Gregory's position we have had a couple of conversations recently but we've had business interests wanting to profit off the parking garages and it's just not something right now that we've seen a pro forma we feel comfortable bringing to you yet. So before we actually continue those discussions, I think Councilmember Brains, you know, had asked us to clarify whether or not we could, you know, we felt comfortable we could even do a deal like that. Once that question is answered and the council is comfortable with it, we can start pursuing potential, I wouldn't say pursuing, but we can certainly entertain any other deal that comes before us . Okay, anybody else? Yeah, I don't, go ahead, Don. Yeah, I'm comfortable with releasing that attorney's report on that. That's forward. That's good. Okay. Yeah. Yes, Councilmember. Yeah, for me, I just want to speak out against, I think, a parking lot downtown because we want to make it more walk able. I think it is a surge parking issue. I think you hit it at the wrong times, and it's cumbersome or during events , but I just think if I look at the Christmas tree lighting downtown, and I think a block from where all the kids are, there's a whole bunch of cars trying to get in to park and I just think it is, I know it works in places and I'm certain we could make it work. I just don't know if it's ideal. In my mind I continue to shift more towards the city parking near City Hall East. It's some different options to make it easier to cross Bell , light that area up a little bit, and do some things on the fringe like that, and we've already started to do that, kind of, you can see as a city we have the different flat lots, and I think I've seen a lot of downtowns do that successfully and not bring in kind of that. I just don't know that we're there for that, but I look forward to proposals as they roll in. I think really with the new project with Wells Fargo, I think there'll be some partnership things where we can maybe mix in green space, etc., etc., and make that really nice. Just to ask Councilmember Hatsbett, did you mean parking garage or just parking lot? Parking garage. I'm not for a parking garage. Okay, thank you. Okay, any other questions? Alright, so, City Attorney has their direction? Yes we do. Alright. What exactly? And so I guess we didn't hear from City Attorney's office either as far as, you know, what are your thoughts about, number one, that request and just releasing that, and then number two, do we need to draft something differently? Just what are your thoughts on the waiving of the attorney- client privilege in general in this regard, and then also the specific situation? As you all know, when we provide legal advice to you, especially when we're asked for legal opinion on a certain subject, we provide it to you under the attorney-client privilege exception to whether it's the Public Information Act or some other statutes that apply up there, it's a privilege that you all hold. And you, as the voice of the client, the City of Denton, are the ones who are authorized to release it, and not the City Attorney's office. We don't control the privilege, you do. With that said, when you waive the privilege, which is your right, you always take into account, you know, how can this , is this waiver something that would come back to expose yourselves to litigation or impact or negotiations on a real estate project, on a particular economic development deal? You know, those are the kinds of things you take into consideration when you want to waive the privilege. And sometimes it may be unforeseen. You do not know now what may impact you in the future. On the other hand, there are certain types of legal opinions that we provide to you, which, in my opinion, would be more open to be released to the public. In this regard, I mean, it is an interpretation as to where that, this property could be, does the deed hold us to only limit it to this use, or does it allow us to sell it? And with that, you know, that specific legal question to me is one of the types that, as I think forward about how this could impact the city from a negotiation standpoint, litigation standpoint, is something that would not be detrimental, in my opinion, if it is released. Okay. Any other questions, comments? I believe there was a question as far as exactly what is going to be released. Is it just the opinion that was received? That is correct. Since the opinion that was requested by one of the council members back in May was to go to an outside legal real estate expert to get a second opinion, that was provided to us by that attorney. And I will mention the name Ruth Brock, and we will gladly release that opinion, if that is what you are requesting, that outside council's legal opinion to be released. Right, it just interprets and evaluates the deed, and it says that city council has the right to sell or lease or convey the property. Well, let's make sure we get to it, because I'm going to tell you, I have a hesitancy to do this, and so since you said you don't have a problem with it, Mr. City Attorney, I 'm going to, number one, I'm outvoted, so it doesn't matter what I think. But since you said that you don't think it's an opinion that may come back, because this could be something that eventually we wind up in litigation about, depending on who makes proposals, who does this, who does that. But I'm okay with it, if you're okay with it, but my question comes down to, this isn't an open-ended request from what I understand you're saying. This is a specific document that was released to the city council by our legal department, and you're asking for that to be an open record by waiving of the attorney-client privilege in the creation of that document. That is correct. Okay, so we do have a specific document, a specific letter, a specific that we are able to do that with. Yes. And you're looking at it right now? That is correct. Okay. And just to add to that, it's for any decision or anything we make in the future regarding that, I would like for my constituents or the city to know the information that I had when making my decision in regards to the law. So, well, my understanding is the waiver of this privilege is for this document alone in this particular circumstance. Right. That's what I mean. Okay, because I thought what I thought I heard you say was, so it's not broader, it's just saying that after this release, whatever else they may give us in regards to if there's a potential litigation or anything like that, may be different information that you make your decision on, that that's a different story. Right. Yeah. All right, is that the understanding from those who have agreed to release this, Mayor Pro Tem? Specifically to this document. All right. Yes. Yeah, I'm trying to get my head around, so not that it matters, but Council Member Gregory said he just releases the deed. What question comes up? I guess that's my thing. I don't understand what question. Are we on the posting, Perlis? We're going beyond the posting, but I'll be happy to discuss that with you in a meeting or after this meeting. I'll be happy to tell you that. But it will be self-evident in the attorney legal opinion that was submitted to us. If I may, tell me if I'm, the topic here is give staff direction regarding Williams Square, right? Yes, including what was the last slide that was posted about questions as to the use, potential uses for. And sometimes when, stop me mid-sentence, poke me if I'm going too far, but there are folks that say you can't do this or you can't do that with Williams Square because of the deed restrictions when we bought the property. And so I just show them the deed. I just show them the contract. Because there are some people that have been misquoting the restrictions for a long time. Yeah, I think what your, it sounds like what your question was. So what's the big question with the deed as to how this, the discussion of the uses moves forward? Yes, because it does, listening to you and Aaron speak, it 's noteworthy that yes, if we make some document available and then someone else takes that document, and says here's your position, you're stuck there, and then we're going to work around you and use that document to kind of pin the city into some sort of, what's the word? You know what I'm talking about. Sure. Where it doesn't work well for us, then that is noteworthy, right? And so I'm always leery of that. And so I just wanted to understand kind of what was out and about. But that answers my question. I do, we'll do it in concluding items. Okay. Okay, so it's the council's direction to make available the memorandum that was issued regarding the council question on the deed, legal memorandum. So that will be done. Yes. Yes. Do what? Oh, you're welcome. Okay, any other questions on this agenda item? Yes. Sorry, so the council direction for this particular agenda item is, besides the legal memo, is what? Like I'm really not. I think it's, well. To proceed with potential options? Well, that's why I asked about the posting, what the purpose of the posting was, because the primary purpose seemed to be this notion of the attorney-client privilege. Because we're all, I know what it was, and that is to say don't bring us anything. To me it's, okay, we are using it now. If somebody has some issue that they want to address with the council or propose, I'm not opposed to coming. I don't think it was for the council to come up with specific uses. That didn't seem what it was. Okay. Does that make sense? Yeah, so we're not saying don't do anything or do anything with respect to, it's just, got it. Okay. Yeah. Just confusing, that's all. Yes, all right, good deal. All right, any other questions on this agenda item? Seeing none, we'll move on to agenda item. We've already done agenda item D, well, C. C is the Receive Report, Hold Discussion, Give Staff Dire ction regarding the FY 2017-18 City Manager's proposed budget. Is this placeholder, do you have actual, two slides, okay. [laughter] More slides. [inaudible] Oh, there's probably a lot. Just real quickly, and one thing that's not on the slide, I wanted to mention the Hotel Occupancy Tax Committee met today, and the fund that was in your proposed budget for use of the hotel occupancy tax, they voted that that's what they wanted to propose, so what 's in the proposed budget is what the Hotel Occupancy Tax Committee has recommended. I wanted to let you know that. Secondly, I mentioned that we went through an exercise to look at all the special revenue funds. There was one special revenue fund, Police Academy, that I had our external auditors look at to see if it met their requirements under accounting standards for a special revenue fund. They did not think it met the standards, so they were going to recommend we roll it into the general fund. So what I've done here, which is highlighted with the two reds, is just revenues and expenses from the Police Academy will just be rolled into the Police Department budget. The revenues come in when outside agencies use that. The expenses, a lot of them are related to just maintenance on that facility, supplies, those type of things. So that's just going to be rolled into the Police Department budget within the general fund. So with that change, that's all I have from last week. And just here to answer any questions you have on the budget. Any questions on the current budget? Any questions? Seeing none. All right. Thank you, Chuck. Appreciate it. Thank you. Agenda item 1E, receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction regarding compressed natural gas fueling facility at the intersection of Mayhill Road and Spencer Road. Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, members of the City Council. I have a brief presentation for you this evening. I want to issue a quick disclaimer, though, that if I cringe or wink or anything, it's not because I'm getting fresh. I have an earache. So it's not a reaction towards you. It's just instinct. So bear with me. As you recall, we had a brief discussion with you as well as the Public Utilities Board late last month talking about compressed natural gas. We have a compressed natural gas component of our fleet, about 24 vehicles or about 40 percent of our fleet that's on this fueling platform. During that presentation, we talked a bit about options. Obviously, the fuel markets turned a bit against us since this proposal was issued and pursued back in 2013. During that discussion, we talked about a few options, and our understanding was that council wanted us to pursue the construction of the CNG station. But we also wanted to go out and look and see whether some other alternatives in the community that we may be able to pursue, specifically, are there existing CNG stations that we could tap into. So we did conduct that due diligence. Members of our staff reached out to about 15 or 20 different firms. It was a mix of retail fueling stations as well as other governmental entities, businesses. We really didn't find any existing CNG fueling stations in this local area, in fact, the closest that we could locate. It was in the Great Vine and Irving area, which is about a 40-mile round trip. We really didn't see that as feasible. We did talk to a few that was mentioned by council, DISD in particular. They do not have a CNG fueling station, but they do have a few of their vehicles on propane and some propane fueling tanks. So that wasn't really an option either. And I also believe that DCTA is using a fueling facility in Fort Worth for their fleet. As we were doing that due diligence, we did come across one possibility for a retail fueling station on the outskirts on the north side of town. So we did run some numbers on that, and that's about a 20- mile round trip. Basically, what that would equate to in terms of additional operating expenses is about $3.2 million for us to age out the fleet using that option. That is not as financially appealing as some of the other options that we discussed during the last meeting. In addition, there's some risk associated with pursuing that option. Number one is uncertainty. That's not in the ground yet. And in talking to this retailer, they're not certain that they're going to do it. In addition, the timeline associated with it, I believe we talked last time that our mobile fueling platform, which is what we're currently using, we're losing about $40,000 to $60,000 per month compared to diesel. And so we want to try to get off that platform as quickly as we possibly can. So with the uncertainty attached to this, the project could drag out a little bit. Transit time, driving out to that facility, we estimated about 30 minutes per day per driver. It doesn't sound like a lot, but whenever you start putting that to 24 vehicles, that's 12 hours of lost productivity under the best of circumstances. And then we would also be competing with the general public for access to those fueling stations. So with all that said, it's not a recommendation that we would pursue or that we would recommend to staff. We'll certainly entertain council direction if you want us to explore that further. We brought this back to the Public Utilities Board last Monday, August 14th, with a similar presentation. Our recommendation at that time was to, again, pursue the CNG fueling station at the landfill facility. Again, we have an alternative fuel station out there that already exists, so we'd just be adding on to that. Our recommendation was also to move forward without the public sales component. During our last presentation, we talked a little bit about there's some challenges and some unknowns and some risk factors associated with sales to the public that we don't necessarily feel comfortable with pursuing. The PV recommended approval as proposed with a sale or with a vote of five to zero. If you'd like a little bit of a refresher on the options that we discussed during our last meeting, I have those posted up here for you. Again, the one that we are recommending is this third one right here. It's not a terrifically pretty picture, but at the end of the seven years that it would take us to age out our fleet, we'd be looking at about a $1.1 million loss when compared to diesel fueling. The public sales component, the big difference here because we believe public sales would be de minimis is the $600,000 grant that we'd be returning to TCEQ. That was given to us for public sales through the CNG station. During last meeting's discussion, we also talked about what is the debt service and everything associated with this. This $1.1 million figure does have the, it's fully loaded with all the debt service associated with the vehicles, the lines, the construction of the facility, and so that's a complete figure that you have there. I'll hold on this slide if you have any questions. >> Any questions? Because I know we went over the difference in the station public sales that there's some uncertainty there that you can't quantify, that's why. >> There'd be some additional administrative costs, some additional and end that we haven't anticipated, security, things like that, that if we get serious about public sales , we would recommend that we go take a deeper dive at those things. >> Right, which, because what I don't want to have happen is the public see this slide and the council say, well, we want to go with the one that we sort of shell out $1.1 million over seven years when we could have done $154,000. And there's other additional costs in there that most likely would drive that up. We just, to do the deeper dive, as you say, would continue to exacerbate this problem. >> Exactly. >> Does that make sense? >> You're absolutely right. And our estimate is that with the administrative work that 's associated with public sales alone, we're probably going to eclipse that $600,000 over the next five to seven years. Then you start throwing in security and public access issue , advertising, and you get past that figure pretty quickly, we would imagine. >> Yep. >> Councilmember Briggs. >> Was there a required amount of time with that grant that you had to remain open to the public? >> It was three years, yes. And there was also some requirements in terms of access to the facility. I believe our operating hours, I'm going to look at staff over here for a nod of approval, is at least a 10 hour day or an eight hour day, Monday through Friday. And so we were somewhat restricted and we also would not be able to restrict access to certain customers. What we've seen in the news press or in the press is that the sales associated with these, even in the best of circumstances, is negligible. They're not getting a lot of traffic. And so our estimate would be that it would be a lot of operational expense for very, very little sales that we'd be actually seeing. >> So I just want to confirm and maybe get this in the public domain. So the 1.134 million includes us repaying the grant or no? >> It does. >> All right. >> So we've only expended about $200,000 of that grant. >> Okay. >> So that would be the portion that we would be. >> So we almost, okay, gotcha. That makes sense. All right. Thank you. Any other questions on this as far as for the slide and then we're going to need to give direction? >> I'll go ahead and move to the next one. >> Oh, sorry. It's exactly what you're talking about. So the options that we have on the table that we talked about, option one is to pursue the COD fueling station as proposed without public sales. If we pursue that option, we believe it will be about a six -month build for the project to be complete. We'll exit the mobile fueling platform and be saving the $ 40,000 to $60,000 per month. Option two would be we're happy to take council direction if you have other options you'd like us to pursue. Council? >> It's a pleasure. >> I want to proceed with the option that they recommended. But I have a question. Is there any savings if we were to almost pay in advance? Is there any additional savings you think that they would allow us to realize if we said, hey, here's the end of the road for us if we paid in advance? If we paid in certain increments or advanced you money, assuming everyone's kind of looking at the same forecast, maybe there's some value add in advancing that money. I don't know. >> In terms of the debt service and paying the debt service off early? >> No, sir. To the fueling station. So we're currently under contract to have them bring it out of that. Am I understanding that right or am I looking at the- >> For the mobile fueling platform? >> Yes, sir. >> You may have to give me a little bit of help in terms of the question. >> So I may be understanding that wrong. So the station we currently have there at the landfill, am I? >> We have a station at the landfill, but it's not outf itted with CNG currently. So what we're proposing would be to build out the CNG component of the station, which is these last two options here. >> Exactly. But I thought we were under contract with the mobile fuel ing. There's some- >> We are, but we're not under any obligation to finish out at a certain level. It was extended on a three-year basis, bumped up for additional spending authority. But once we exit the mobile fueling, we're not under any obligation for a volume standpoint to purchase that. >> Got it. Then that answers one question. Thank you. >> Councilmember Briggs. >> So on the-I'm just looking. If you could just recap for the public, for those watching, this is for our vehicles that run on natural gas. >> That's correct. >> And currently we're doing a mobile fueling. >> Yes. >> And this is your suggestion to do that while the natural gas vehicles are rolled out, right? Because we're not going to purchase anymore. >> Right. So what we're currently doing right now is really option one in this column right here, the mobile fueling option. So what you have on this slide is basically aging out the fleet over seven years. If we were to stay with what we're currently doing, which is the mobile fueling option, it would be a $6.3 million loss over that period of time compared to diesel. So what we're recommending is to go ahead and build the station, which is this option right here, and reduce our loss from the mobile fueling platform to the station. Alternatively, a few things that we didn't add up here that we talked a little bit about last time is could we retrofit our fleet? We've done a little bit more due diligence on that, and that's not an option. There's a lot of risk and a lot of expense associated with it. Furthermore, if we were to just convert all these back to diesel as quickly as possible and extinguish the debt service, that's about a $3.2 to $3.9 million hit that we would take. And so in our estimation, these last two options are really our best options in terms of getting out of this relatively unscathed. And I just wanted to clarify, I think that the PUB brought this up, and their point is a good one. And I think it's something that all of you are concerned about with the perception here. But should the head of the city staffed up and purchased the fencing, the security equipment, that sort of thing, that delta probably wouldn't be there between the $550,000 and the $1.134 million. I think at the time, there just wasn't a lot of thought given in terms of what were all the various costs and ongoing expenses, one-time expenses we would have to enter into simply because we just didn't feel that was an option. But I do agree that it is a little misleading to the public . But setting up that retail component, my guess is that $500 ,000 delta that people are saying would not exist. Right. Despite over a three-year period. The other thing that I would add on to that, if I might, is we do have the option under this proposal, the scenario three here, is we can always have public sales but on our own accord. So if we see an opportunity, say for instance, a transportation company says, hey, can we fill up at your facility? We can entertain those on a case-by-case basis. We're not obligated to sell it. But if we see something that might make sense and that's something we could bring back to council in terms of an agreement. So you're asking for direction on the option. Any other questions before direction? Yes, Council Member Bates. I have one more question on the chart. Can you? Sure. I mean, as far as the CNG, the natural gas, is that the fuel cost savings, does that include the pipe and the actual gas itself? So that's the difference there? It does. Okay, so that's all included. Yeah, so the $313,000 that you see there, that is basically the cost that we would save CNG versus diesel based on today's market prices or average market prices over the last three years. All right, I'm okay with your option. I think was it one, option one? On this slide it is. Yes. Are we okay with option one? Direction option one. Okay. All right. Yep. Thank you. Thank you very much. Appreciate that. Okay, before we move into closed session, I believe we had closed session B is being pulled. So the only closed session we have scheduled is A, which is DME budget questions. It's more of a placeholder, are there any DME budget questions that we need to move into closed session for? All right, seeing none, then we will not be moving into closed session. I tell you what, let's take a five minute break and then we 'll move into our special call meeting. And I believe our sandwich is here. Well, I thought you said they were coming. Welcome back to this meeting of the Denton City Council. We are now going into a special called meeting at 5.04 on August 22nd, 2017. And our first item on the agenda is 1A, consideration nomination appointments to the city's economic development partnership board. Hello. For the third and final time today, Mayor and Council, I'm going to present the nominating committee's slate of nominees to you for your consideration for appointment to the economic development partnership board. Quick background. The EDP board is appointed by council and serves as a recommending body to council regarding economic development incentives and certain specific other matters as outlined in the ordinance governing that board. Members fall into specific categories. There are two each from the council, Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors, and the top 20 taxpayers within the city. The UNT president and the TWU president and chancellor both have a seat on the board. There is a seat for a nominee from the Denton Black Chamber of Commerce and the Denton Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. One seat is reserved for someone with general aviation knowledge or experience, and then there is also an at large seat. The terms are for two years and members can serve up to three terms. The nominating process begins with the city council appoint ing a nominating committee of three members, two of which are from the council. And this year were council member Hudspeth and council member Biggiery. The chamber also furnishes a member to the nominating committee. And this year that member was Joey Hawkins. The nominating committee confirms the candidate's willingness to serve and compiles the slate of nominees, which is then presented to you as the council for a vote. This year's slate of nominees include Bob Eames in the aviation seat, Jill Jester in the chamber of commerce seat, Keely Briggs and Gerard Hudspeth from the city council. Did you not get that confirmed by the nominating committee? OK, you can take that up with your friends on nominating committee. OK, and then current members Jim Fikes from the top 20 taxpayer category and John Baines from the Denton Black Chamber are eligible for renomination and both would like to serve again. So that is your slate of nominees. I'm happy to answer any questions that you have. Any questions? Chair would entertain a motion. Second? Anybody have a second? Second. We have a second. All in favor of agenda item 1A, please signify by raising your right hand. Passes unanimously. Let the record reflect that 6-0, Mayor Pro Tem had to step out for the meeting. Agenda item 1B. Thank you, Caroline. Thank you. Conduct a second of two readings and consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton voluntarily annexing approximately 118.041 acres. And so this is an action item, is that correct? All right. Thank you, Madam, members of council. This item is read into introduction is the second reading of an annexation request for a property located on McKinney, north of McKin ney, just west of Trinity Road. It's for approximately 118 acres for voluntary annexation. Proposed annexation meets our criteria for annexation. It was initially part of a non annexation agreement, but due to a proposed development, it's triggering annexation. Following annexation, there'll be two more applications that will come forward for this property to be developed. Below here are shown here are the dates of what meetings we 've held to date. And of course, today will be the second reading and consideration of the adopting ordinance. So for the record, I'm going to read the ordinance caption, an ordinance of the city of Denton annexing approximately 118 acres of land generally located north of McKinney Street and west of Trinity Road. More specifically described in exhibit A and illustrated in exhibit B, providing for a correction to the city's map city map to include the annex land, providing a savings clause and an effective date. That concludes my presentation. I'll be happy to answer any questions. This is not approving the zoning for a manufactured housing development, correct? No, it is not. Chair would entertain a motion if there is one on this item . Councilmember Gregory. Yes. Do we have to read something? I just read it. It's a record. I move approval. All right, we have a motion to approve. Councilmember Ryan. I'll second. We have a motion to second for agenda item 1B. All in favor , please signify by raising your right hand. All opposed by like sign. Carries unanimously. Thank you. Agenda item 1C conduct the second of two readings and consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton for involuntary annexation of approximately 6.71 acres. Thank you, Mayor, members of council. This is a non annex ation second reading and consideration of an adoption of an ordinance to involuntary annex approximately 6.7 acres of a property generally located north of Brush Creek and just east of Fort Worth Drive. This property is consistent with the criteria for annexing the property. It's adjacent and contiguous to the city. It 's a future development of a mixed use development. It will also require initial zoning and a zoning change if when it comes to the city council. Here's the list of meeting schedule that we held for this annexation. And again, this today is the second reading and adoption of the annexation ordinance. And for the record, I'll go ahead and read the ordinance caption an ordinance of the city of Den, Texas, and it's in approximately 6.71 acres of land generally located north of Brush Creek Road and east of Fort Worth Drive. By the city of Den, Texas, more specifically described in exhibit A and illustrated in exhibit B, providing for a correction to the city map to include the annex lands, providing for a savings clause and an effective date. That concludes my presentation. Again, I'll be here to answer any questions. Mr. Ryan, I'll move approval. Because my husband. Second, we have a motion to second all in favor please signify by raising your right hand. All opposed by like sign passage unanimously 60. Thank you. Thank you. Agenda item 1D consider approval approval excuse me of a resolution by the city of Denton, Texas approving the grant application for Denton specialized regional response teams sustainment. Yeah, agenda item 1D staff presentation. I have a representative fire. So, is this simply a grant application? Is this us to approve a grant? This is the this is the appropriation of a grant from the Department of Homeland Security designed to enhance the ability of local governments to prevent protect respond to and recover from terrorist attacks and other disasters. The office of the governor is requiring that this resolution be passed by Denton since we're receiving $130, 000 in grant funds. Which will provide chemical detection and operational equipment for the city of Denton's bomb squad and hazardous materials response team. This program is this grant will be 100% funded by the state with no matching funds required. All right, customer breaks. We have a motion. customer run. Second, we have a motion to second for agenda item 1D all in favor please signify by raising your right hand. All opposed by like sign. Passes unanimously. Item 1E consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton adopting and approving a design manual in accordance with Chapter 284 deployment of network nodes. Public right of ways. Mayor members of the council Mario can is our city manager here to present with you an overview of Senate bill 1004 that was recently passed in the fifth legislature. It was signed in the new law by governor Abbott and this new law is take place on September 1st 2017 so I wanted to go over with you just some of the little bit of background in history of the of the bill itself and highlights that the bill covers and then our implementation plan that we've been working through the last number of weeks. Senate bill 1004 deals with the advancement of small cellular antennas small cells, if you hear the word small cells or now nodes. They're used the words are used interchangeably is just so you're aware, but I'll just keep it the small cells within the city's right away. The small antennas will increase cellular network coverage in areas where the signal is weak causing frustration for the consumer. The rollout is way is a way for the cellular industry to meet customer demand customer demand for video and other multimedia and builds the framework for future technology, such as 5G. The new law also requires that cities comply with the needs of the cellular industry by applying a one size fits all approach. In this arena, the other provisions of the law requires compliance from cities, but prescribing that cities must allow these devices in the right of way, the timeline in which these devices are approved by the city and how much the city can charge to allow these devices in the right of way. So the next few slides I was going to show you just just some highlights of the bill and the components that we've been working on for the last number of weeks. As mentioned, it is a one size fits all for the entire state for all cities within the state of Texas. And whether you know it or you don't know all cities around us around the state are basically in the very same position that we're in the working feverishly to get these things across the finish line because of the September one deadline to make it to make it to make it a passable here in each community within the state of Texas. To give you an idea of what a small cell looks like, these are just some examples that have been provided by one of the cellular network providers. Kind of that gives you a framework of what they might look like. The image in the middle, the two square rectangular devices , those are actually the radio devices and then the cylind rical devices, the antenna. So the antenna was what's going to be at the very top of a pole, for example, and the radio devices, what may be attached lower down the pole or even potentially on the ground. And so on the left image that you see is just an example of a device of a pole that's actually specifically for the cellular industry. And then I'll give you a couple other slides so you can kind of see what they might look like. They do vary in size, but based on what we've been told by, say, AT&T or Verizon, that these devices, especially radio devices, are relatively small in nature in comparison to some other devices that you might see. And what they're doing is they're moving away. They're still utilizing the large cell towers that you've seen scattered around the region. They're still utilizing those, but what this allows them to do is to incorporate those areas where they've had dead spots or coverage has been minimized. And so, again, it's all based on consumer demand based on what the consumer wants to have, especially when it comes to video downloads and multimedia downloads. Here's some other examples of what they provided, and as you can see, they can morph in a number of different ways. They can utilize existing streetlights. And if you see the bottom picture, there's an existing streetlight on the left and then a modified streetlight on the right where they've incorporated the antenna at the very top of the streetlight and the radio device is kind of halfway down the streetlight as you see. And these aren't examples here in Denton. These are just examples that they've used around the region , around the country. On the top, there is actually a TWU light pole with the TWU banner. Again, that is just for existing conditions and what it might look like if they utilize the technology in which they have the antenna at the top there where the cursor is, if you can see that, and at the bottom is a radio receiver at the base. So that's how they're looking at trying to camouflage this technology within the existing, with a new pole. Another example, this is actually in Farmers Branch here on the left where they actually have installed a pole in the median there in the city of Farmers Branch. And these are some examples in the city of Dallas that they 've actually utilized an existing utility pole, a wooden utility pole where again the antenna is at the very top on both sides and then you've got the radio device down towards the middle of the pole. Just to kind of give you an idea of what they're looking at and this is something that they've been working with our staff to try to make happen not only in this city but around the state. So the players in the field are the ones that you're pretty familiar with, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint. Mobility on the bottom right is actually a third party provider that's actually working on behalf of Sprint to incorporate these devices around the region. A lot of times you see mobility at football or football stadiums or even indoor basketball arenas where they need that either that Wi-Fi connectivity or the LTE connectivity and you have a large mass of people in a concentrated space . And so this is a way they can create that capacity for those small spaces when people are using again whether it's social media or multimedia downloads or uploading to the cloud and try to communicate back and forth from the fans in the stadium to folks outside of the arena. Question. Yes, sir. So, would you go back to that slide? Yes, sir. So let's say Verizon and AT&T are both applying and they both want the same pole on this same corner. They can't fit both of them on their KEM, they? Well, that is one of those things that needs to be discussed because the intent would be that each entity may have its different coverage requirements so they might not necessarily need the same pole on the same exact location. They may use one pole at one intersection or one area of the right of way and another company may need the intent of place at a different pole in a different section of the right of way. But what if they both want the same one? Then we have to work through that. The law provides that that the the tallest the pole can be is 55 feet tall. So if it can fit, they will try to make every way to make it work. The law requires 55 feet. Maximum 55 feet. So we have to do this because the state says so. We just have to put this into place. Yes, sir. And we've had some problems in the past with some of these actual companies, one of them, with when we when a pole gets old and we need to remove it, we put another pole next to it and they won't take their stuff off the old pole. So we have these two poles next to each other. Are we doing anything to fix that problem here or is the state keeping us from doing that? Well, as far as maintenance of poles, it's hard to say because it's this is new to us and new to this region. But the information that I've been told with these providers is they want to work with the cities. They want to be our partner, not our adversary when it comes to things like this. So again, we for the most part, well, we own the poles, we own the poles if they want to work on existing poles. There are some restrictions that that DME may have, especially on the utility poles to allow or not allow this to happen. So I don't have a clear answer for you, Councilmember, outside of the fact that we've been told that they want to work with us. And if we have to do maintenance on a pole, we have to notify them, work through, make sure that they can we have to turn off their devices because of the radio frequency issues that that these radio devices emit. So we have to communicate with them and let them know that we've got to turn off the device, maybe even remove the device if necessary to replace a pole. We would remove the device or they would remove it? Well, we would coordinate with them for them to remove it. But we definitely want to turn off the device and do maintenance on our own equipment. But if if there comes a situation where the pole needs to be removed, what I've been told is they want to work with us and they would help us through that effort. Does legal have any any we're going to address I think these issues probably as we look at agreements and ordin ances here in the upcoming agenda item. So let's make sure we have an answer that yes go ahead. So again, some of the key provisions of the poll, excuse me , of this new bill is again it mandates mandates the way excuse me mandates that sell nodes and poles be installed in cities right away. It includes all utility poles, including the traffic poles within the city's right of way. So anything that has any kind of height element is in play in the right of way. So it's again it's very favorable to to the the cellular industry. It establishes the way cities conducts its permit requirements. It also establishes a timeline. So it creates a shot clock mechanism for how long it can take a city the cities these cities to to approve a request from the from the provider. It establishes the maximum fee in which a city can can charge a provider. And to keep in mind, for example, the city of Dallas, the city Arlington, we're negotiating with some of these providers at the rate of $2,500 per node site so per cell site. That fee has been reduced to a maximum of $500 and a grouping of five, or you can charge $250 beyond that grouping of five per node site. So it's substantially reduced the amount of compensation the city can generate through the use of the right of way. So as I mentioned, it creates a shot clock. This kind of gives you an example of the shot clock component of the law. So, for example, if if a cellular network node just basically an attachment to an existing poll that an AT&T wants to come in and do, they the company files one day, then the city gets has 30 days to complete to review the completeness. Meaning, does it meet the structural requirements, any of the engineering requirements? Are there any encumbrances in the right of way such as underground utilities? It has those requirements within that. And as long as is some of those are met, then it's it's considered complete. Have they filled out the application correctly? Have they done all the things that they required to do per the law as far as the network provider? And if so, we have 30 days in which to make that happen. And then we have an additional 60 days to actually allow the permit to to issue the permit to the network provider. If they want to issue if they want to install a new poll, then the maximum amount of days that we can that we can hold that within the city's review is 150 days. So it's very prescribed in the way the law dictates how this is done to meet compliance. And this is not just in this is across the state of Texas. As I mentioned, the fee structure, we can charge up to five hundred dollars per five network nodes. So, for example, if AT&T wants to install 55 of these devices, they can apply for 11 different applications with with a cluster of five grouping of five. And the most we could charge be five hundred dollars times 11 times. So just so you give you a perspective of the amount of compensation that that the law dictates, we can we can charge, as you mentioned, that's a thousand dollars for a new poll. And then there's an annual poll rental amount of two hundred and fifty dollars per per year that we can charge the entity. To kind of give you an idea of just and this was not in the slide deck that was presented with provided for you in the in the council back and we received this yesterday afternoon. So I wanted to close this include this in the presentation, but just kind of give you an idea of the process and it's a very simplified process in a way which we would make this happen. But but the vendor, the AT, for example, the network provider, the cellular provider, it submits is an optional application, maybe just a phone call, has some conversations with our folks from Public Works where it will be where it would reside. This process asks questions of I want to incorporate. I want to install a node at X X X location series of question questions from staff would occur as far as is it a D.M.E. poll is a new poll is it on a is it on an encore poll if it 's if it's residing here in the city is it on a traffic poll or traffic control device. So just some initial questions and if it is a D.M.E. poll that it wants to go on that they want to go on, then we would refer them to the D.M.E. staff so that D.M.E. could then go through his respective requirements, whether it's engineering, any appropriate clearances. And then and then at that point, if D.M.E. deems that the request is approval, it can be approved, then we are notified that this specific location has been deemed cleared and then they can then start the process. The actual official process where the shot clock begins. This is very important for us because again, most cities in the region don't have their own electric utility. So we want to make sure that the shot clock is not started when the product when they go to the D.M.E. to D.M.E. review. We want to make sure that that shot clock begins when it comes to public works. It's very important so that we don't get caught in a situation where we're not complying with the law. So again, if they get clearances from D.M.E., then our staff is notified. So is the cellular provider, cellular provider. And then at that point, the vendor can file their application. We have a 30 day window in which we review that and make sure all the clearances are appropriate. If not, then it's back to the application or assumed to the applicant for their revisions. And then it's reapplied resubmitted back to the city. But if all goes according to plan, then again, 30 days, then we have an additional 60 to 150 days, depending on what they're applying for, for us to review to finally issue a permit. So there's some nuances with the law. And the key thing is we want to make sure we're obviously in compliance. And so we want to we've been actually talking about this process internally, that the process does not start until they actually engage our public works inspections department. And so that needs to be very clear to the network provider so they don't go making assumptions. And then they deem that we're not in compliance with the law and then things happen from a noncompliance perspective . So so we want to make that crystal clear. And part of that is that communication aspect between our staff and the AT&T's, Mobility's, Verizon's and and and the other providers. As far as some of the things that the law does allow cities to do, it does allow some zoning restrictions. And that's where the design elements to the ordinances that you hope will approve here in a short while. It does require provide some zoning restrictions on what is and isn't allowed in certain areas. For example, there are some restrictions that we could deny those devices to be installed in city parks. So to not again to affect the aesthetics of our city parks. However, that is up to our public works folks. And as long as those they meet the requirements, there is some allowances for that. But it does provide some restrictions. The law does allow some restrictions for cities. In addition to the residential areas, in essence, they are not allowed to install new devices. They can maybe hang off existing devices, existing infrastructure within the right of way. But again, there's some some some restrictions that they are that they are required to have before they can go into that in those areas. And then lastly is those historical and design districts. And and they do have to go through a process that that meets the design guidelines of our historical areas. So they can't just prop up a device on an existing pole, especially if we have poles that are that are have a certain design element that may not withstand the load of these devices. They're not allowed to do that. The least they could do is install new devices. But again, they would have to go through the appropriate design guidelines that's been established by the city in this historical and design. And well, while we don't have a design district, we do have a historical districts. It was just that the law allows design districts to be included into real quick question into your breaks. So in regards to the the zoning restrictions. So municipal parks, residential areas. So that's just saying that we do have the right to say no or that they're prohibited in that we have the right to say no, as long as it excuse me, as long as it meets the appropriate design guidelines that set by the city. So each city is different. So they're not allowed just to install a new pole in a residential area. What they could do is install it on the existing pole. Okay, but again, as long as it meets the appropriate design guidelines set forth by our public works department, then it can be allowed. But it does allow us to say no, especially if we have, as Councilmember Gregory said, the clustering. If it's if it's unsightly, we may have the ability to say no. And I would imagine we'll get challenged by the cellular industry when those when we make those denials when other cities make those those denials when those applications. But as far as we can tell the interpretation a lot allows us to say no. Well, I'm really I'm really glad to see this for one that a poll doesn't end up in the middle of a park where kids are running in playing and it can be a safety hazard. That's correct. Or issue that way. So in in the process, you're saying public works. So there is just one person who's going to be well, it's a department. It's our it's our was a public works inspections. It's our public works inspections, folks. So there is a there is a division manager in that department and then he has his staff within that. So and then we have in this in this again and it's coordinated to the city engineer Todd Estes in Galen. So so I mean, but the main point is our public works inspections division manager. OK, thank you. Yes, ma'am. The other thing, too, that the law does allow cities to do is well, the law that states that can't be the poll cannot be higher than fifty five feet tall. It does require it does allow some maximum size of the nodes and also allows for certain enclosures to camouflage the devices. So it doesn't look as insidily. For example, there are some configurations where like the support infrastructure as far as the power supply to the radios can actually be incorporated within the interior of the pole. So the pole pole is has a hollow component to it and the and the the electrical element is in the middle of the pole . So it doesn't show on the exterior of the pole. So there are some camouflaging elements that allows us that allows us to incorporate, especially in those design areas or in those residential areas. So but it is going to have a device on top of a pole. Yes, does the state allow us to charge electricity? Yes, actually they do. And that's one actually that's one of the areas that we'll be talking about with DME is is again, if you're attaching additional devices that weren't there before on these poles , do we want a secondary meter or another meter device on on these on these units to to again charge them electricity? Or is there an opportunity where we know what the draw is electrical drives of these devices and just charge them an amount on a monthly or quarterly basis, whatever the most appropriate way is to to again not just add more clutter to these poles. So there's a lot of different ways to do it. But yes, we can charge them for the electricity usage. Again, just some other design elements as from a camoufl aging perspective. Again, these are examples that were provided by about one of the industries providers and they've incorporated some part benching around their radio devices and some other seating here an example of a of a of a of a just of a light pole that you would typically see in a variety of different areas and where they've taken that again. This is just an example and where they've taken that similar look and feel and incorporated that that that that element into the intent at the top and the rated device here at the bottom. So to kind of keep it camouflaged and also keep it more within line of the design standards of that area in which it's being installed in. So, in essence, what we've been doing over the last number of weeks is that we've been visiting with AT&T's, Verizon's , various cellular providers to get you to get an understanding as to what their plans are. My understanding that initially their plans are to install between 120 to 125 of these devices. Initially, so over the next 90 to 150 days you'll be seeing devices installed in the city throughout the throughout the community. We were working on drafting the ordinances, which will be hopefully reviewing and adopting here shortly. The design standards, which are also part of the ordinances that you 've been that you have reviewed, which you have reviewed, drafting license agreements, application forms, the internal processes that we've been working through to make sure that everyone's on the same page. We've been attending sessions at this Council of Govern ments. Council of Governments have had two sessions so far since at the end of the legislative session to give cities guidance because everyone basically in the same boat. They've been incorporating a lot of different best practices that they've seen from around the state. They've used design guidelines from the city of Arlington, from the city of Corinth. And so they brought in outside experts to help cities guide cities on how to best approach this. And we've been doing a lot of sharing and receiving of information we've received information from the city of sugar land. I know we've been in contact city of McAllen, city of Austin, city of Arlington, city of Flower Mound in Louis ville. So, I mean, we've been a lot of cities have been kicking this, this, this new law around to kind of get an understanding as to how we're all approaching it. And so really we're coming up to the end of August. And so if you look at if you scour various cities agendas, council agendas over the last couple of weeks, you will see this very top this this type of item on their council agendas for adoption because it's because the law is imminent. The other things that we've done is we sent an informal staff report to council at the end of July. The same presentation was made to the planning and zoning Commission in early August, the public utility board back mid August, and the historical land commission, landmark commission was also made that that same that same day that evening. We're here before you today to make that make this presentation and get an ordinance adopted by you all. If you all approve the ordinance which we hope ordinances which we hope you do, then we'll begin publicizing this information and sending the ordinances and design guidelines to the, to the various players in the industry so that they're aware of what, what to expect here in the city of Denton. And our expectation is that we'll start receiving our first set of applications, September 1 based on some of the comments that I've heard from these vendors so. The items that we have before you are the next four items, which I believe are items E, F, G and H. They're all within the same framework of Senate bill 1004, or in this case local government code to chapter 284, so that we we asked that you adopt those ordinances as being requested And in conclusion, and then I'll be happy to answer any question is, as I said, it does go into effect September 1. This is a very favorable piece of legislation for the cellular industry. All Texas cities are affected by this as a one size fits all. This is a work in progress and one of the things that we'll be doing and I would imagine the council of governments will take a role in this is as we get more experience in this arena. As a proliferation of these cell devices come into our cities, I would imagine that our design guidelines will have to be modified to make sure that that is that these providers behave in appropriate way within our right of way . As counselor Gregory mentioned, if we have instances where we're clustering these devices and it looks unsightly. Those are the things that we'll have to deal with over the coming months, if not years. It does dictate the way we do our business. So again, it's an unfunded mandate by the state. And unfortunately it provides very limited options that the cities can do as far as regulating the right of way is to continue erosion of the city's right of way. And it will just continue to happen in future sessions. Councilmember Gregory. My lawyer's Mike's. Mine's on. I don't know why that's on. Maybe I'm sitting back. Have we gotten suggestions from TML or has the state city attorney's organization gotten together and all crafted a very similar ordinance that all cities are looking at passing or are we all freelancing it? I'm going to direct that to Larry Colister who's been working closely with Mari on that. One of the groups that I'm a member of and now on the board is the Texas Coalition for Cities for Utility Issues and we 've retained an outside attorney, Clarence West, who's worked with the legislature for probably 30 years on all these issues and he drafted a template set of documents for all the member cities which we've worked off of and that's where the initial franchise agreement comes from for the service polls. But as far as the design manual goes, he really didn't draft anything like that and we having a municipality owned utility or a bit of a disadvantage and we have to custom draft a lot of it because of DME because it allows, the legislation allows us, it really pulls the MOU polls out, which would be streetlight polls and the utility polls. That's what we've had to draft around. But yes and no. I'm just, I know that the companies right now are pledging that they're going to work with us but our experience is that after, they don't. And I'm very, I'm really concerned that the lawyer has drafted it with the concerns of our municipally owned utility and the issues of those devices interfering with the operation of our utility or blame game starting if we have to wait an hour. We have to wait an unduly long time for them to remove theirs, so that we can replace a poll or do whatever we need to do. Now all that is covered in both the license agreement and in the design manual, those scenarios. There will be scenarios that no one's anticipated that may come up, but I know you're talking about Verizon and what they've left on polls and now it's right here in charter and it's built into there that if they don't remove it, we can remove it ourselves. We'll take it down and we'll own it. But we don't. Well now, he's saying in the new agreement. I'm going forward. One thing I want to mention is being a lawyer I'm a pessimist by nature. And the city of Austin has already filed a lawsuit in federal court about this Senate, Senate bill 1004, calling it unconstitutional and a number of different things so this is anything but over right now but, you know, I'm going to kind of echo what Mario was saying. And there's, there's, I'd say it's more likely than not that we'll be back up here amending some of these. And one of the ordinances has to do with license agreement with DME polls. And that's really, you know, we passed one for wired poll attachments here a while back, we're gonna have to do another one for wireless and those are going to come to you initially on a kind of one off top situation depending on who's attaching because liability issues but I know DME is highly concerned that someone is going to end up getting killed, because you're going to have they're going to have. We required in these documents qualified electric workers that that's a term of art that's defined in there that we have people up there that know what they're doing they're gonna be on bucket trucks over what they call the power zone or there's a. And so they're gonna be working in that. And these could be people that, you know, eight bucks an hour 10 bucks or who knows who's climbing up there. And so we're wanting to make sure everybody's got plenty of insurance we're identified. But everybody's very concerned about this but this was sho ved down the city's throats. But any other questions. Yes, I was, I have some notes I'm just gonna power through real quickly. Yes, so just not the questions that I have that I'd like just to kind of hear back from you from but don't want to hold anyone up today but my questions would be, what about text out for old so we don't necessarily have control over those and let's say, if it comes to where crosses those two roads, or comes where it's a city road and it takes that road, how does that work infrastructure wise. As far as I know sir it's, it's all within the city's right of way so they're going to come to us first just because that's what the legislation says. Okay. But, so just because I don't know we don't have control over you know, I just like to know, kind of what our plan, if it intersects. If they give us carte blanche to do that that's fine. I would ask for consideration for access timing, given that we have the 30 days so what I mean by that is some sort of way to trigger, even if we generate more applications than we want but if sprint says hey we want this particular corner, and it looks like it's going to be 30 days from now they're going in. So, that's their way to get all commerce hey if there's anybody else that wants this section of the city sprints going to be here anyway let's get it all done one fatal swo op. I don't know if that makes sense, but for me, I just think if there's a way to get them to kind of, hey they're going to be there anyway, so try to coordinate right there right if there's some kind of mailing or something that triggers if one entity asked. It triggers the rest of say you to that sort of thing. I don't know if that makes sense here but that's my thought, and then I think Larry touched it maybe it's already accounted for but I'd be curious about car accidents. If someone unfortunately hits a pole it's on there, we don 't have time to notify you that come get your stuff we got to fix it. What is what's kind of our plan so that we have something written that covers us there. I'd love to see us in conversation with other cities that have already been doing it have some automated application process that makes it easier on our employees so if there's a standardized electronic application that they fill out that then kind of is always the same regardless of provider and kind of teaches them our processes. I'd be all for that. This is just the loophole in me. What is the enforcement process? So assuming the state says we denied something wrong, is there, what is that process? Do they have to give us written notice and do we have a number of days to reply? How does that work? You know so I'd like to know the quote unquote punishment phase of things just so I know what we can work around or what's coming. I'd like to see the city have someone that details the installation process because I can see kind of like what Councilman Gregory is talking about. We have these issues with them installing or doing damage to our property and we have no capture of that. We have stories to tell. We have hey here's the damage but then it 's their word against ours. And you know and you have those wireless cameras that cost next to no money. They're battery operated. Stick them on a pole while they're working or recording. Some kind of way to document their installation process and protect us or at least when we're going to the state complaining we have photographs, pictures, that sort of thing versus just this happened. You know so I'd like to see us come up with something that kind of protects us. Larry Tuckstone the insurance coverage and then I'd like to see two more things. I'm almost done. So one liability for damage to each other. So there's two on a pole and sprint guy knocks AT&T guys off. Some kind of where that's not our fault or however that works that again that C comment before about cameras. But two the last thing is now this is this is really out there but it's the way my mind works. If we're going to have these things on the pole. I'd love to see the city take some kind of initiative to turn that into a marketing type opportunity. So if we there 's a banner that can go around it or something so instead of it hanging on a pole. If I know we have a banner law but let's say we're going to hang something for a parade or something so on a pole there 's a way to mask that with city announcements this that or other something that just kind of. I don't know it's an opportunity not just have a to screen it if you will and also be it some just a city of didn't logo something just kind of I don't know if that sticks out more or less or maybe make a bad situation worse but it was it's a thought. So that's what I got. Thank you. I saw in there that it's for a new poll $1000 yes. Does that cover our costs on the average. That's a good question because we have none of those types of devices in our city now that I know of for as far as any of these these type of. So, I don't know I mean I guess we can probably check with you. Yeah, some point I'd like to get get some information on that. And then my, my other item is on traffic signals. Did you say that they could put them on the traffic signals. Yes sir. I would encourage our traffic control department to look at wherever we need to add additional traffic lights, so that we have that plan so that we know what's going to go in there so when when they asked to go on that traffic signal we go wait a minute I've got to put this on there too. So better coordinate just coordination. Yeah, just well just to make sure that they're not going to take up space that we really needed for something else that we've got to add additional devices to our traffic signal that this is going to interfere with us being able to put that on there. That's all I had. Okay. Any other questions. Now was this a presentation for the remaining agenda items or is each one of those agenda items have a presentation. No sir this is the whole. This is the FG and H. EFG and H. The last four items. Okay. So, all right we'll take them separately. Any other questions on agenda item E. And this is to consider adoption of an ordinance adopting and approving a design manual so this is the design manual ordinance. Councilmember Gregory. Councilmember Brueg seconds. All in favor please signify by raising your right hand. All opposed like sign carries unanimously. We'll go on to agenda item. So one F I believe. Yes, one F consider adoption of an ordinance of the city didn't adopting and approving these related to implementation of Chapter two 84 any questions on the fees that were proposed here at during the presentation. Seeing none, chair would entertain a motion or action. That's my Ryan move approval. That's my Gregory. We have a motion to second let's vote on the board. All of all in favor please signify by raising your right hand. Motion carries unanimously agenda item one G consider adoption of an ordinance. Oh, I thought I heard somebody said consider adoption of an ordinance of the city didn't adopting and approving a uniform Chapter two 84 service pole wireless network node collection attachment license agreement. Hope that's not the title of that thing. Any questions about the licensing agreement. Chair would entertain a motion. Councilmember has this move approval. We have motion customer Ryan second. We have a second. Let 's vote on the board. All in favor please signify by raising your right hand for agenda item one G. Didn't didn't catch your breath. Yes. Okay. All right. Passes unanimously agenda item one H considered option of an ordinance of the city didn't authorizing the city attorney to negotiate and draft municipally owned utility pole wireless network node collection attachment license agreement with network providers is needed. Authorizing city manager does he need to execute an effective date. So this is just authorizing. So the actual draft is not I mean, or is the agreement. This is authorizing you to negotiate and draft. Are they already done, or you just. Okay. And what they have to do is they have to get the agreement sign before they make their applications. We would work with DME staff on doing these on getting able to take stuff and then sign off and then take them to see manager sign. Okay. All right. Fantastic. I move approval. Have a motion for approval we have a second for agenda item one H. All in favor please. Please signify by raising your right hand. All opposed like sign motion carries unanimously moving on to our next agenda item concluding items. We'll start over in this side of the room any concluding items. Yeah, I'd like to know what the loss in revenue is from property and sales taxes, if the city of didn't does not let that McDonald's go forward. I guess I guess I'm not too happy with the way you and he did that either because they came in and said that it was all about the traffic. And I don't believe it was about that at all. Because I mean, immediately this the next day they write this conclud ing items I just want to make sure we don't switch. Okay, so you're wanting to know what the estimated property tax revenue and sales taxes revenue that would be lost. If they propose McDonald's did not materialize. Okay, all right. I didn't know if you had any sort of. Yeah, no. So on the posting, can we get a, I'm sure we've had one in the past, but I just don't. It's difficult for me to process the posting when you're talking on post off post, etc, etc. That entire process because using today's an example. There 's council members here that have a legacy of information about a parking lot. I knew on Council I don't have that legacy information, yet you have it. I don't, and we can't talk about. And so I think it's all want to know, I want a proposal presentation of what it is. And then I want to hard count on when it's been challenged, because if we're trying to avoid being challenged and we've never been challenged. That could be an indicator of success, but I could be were overly broad. And so that that's my analysis that I'd like to see the legal you got that. Okay. Okay. Okay. Anybody over here. Councilman Ryan. Thank you, Mayor. Good. Just two items one is on our website or council subcommittees. The agendas are posted in different spots. And I'd like to see if there's any way we can get those all put together into one area. I know some are in the ad hocs are in a different spot than the others and if we can get that. When the general public goes in also know the airport committee is not listed in with the others. So that's that 's one that needs to be moved in there. Okay. And then the other one, other item, we get facilities to put some WD 40 on my chair and work on Councilmember Br iggs microphone so stay up. Okay. Councilmember Briggs. Okay, I have a few. So after the traffic study was requested, there was some communication about Buc-E's and how one was not requested. But there is a significant concern about traffic there. And I would like to request some sort of traffic study or something regarding Wind River and how when Buc-E's opens how that traffic will affect the Wind River area. There's some neighbors over there concerned about that because it wasn't ever looked at. Also a staff report on how the wave of retirement and people leaving the departures will affect this year's budget. And also, speaking of polls, the things that we can do to minimize all the extra utility polls around. I know that on Dallas Drive was just one area that I brought to the attention where there were several groupings . But it's like that in other areas of the city. What can we do if anything? We just plan to leave them there. And last, because of what happened today with the EIC committee, just a report on how we can prevent a communication breakdown again in the future. Because apparently something happened where the fire department didn't get what they were supposed to do. Anyway, if we can figure out how that happened, I would appreciate it. Thank you. That's it. I want to echo that, just sort of a -- investigation is too strong of a word, but sort of a fact finding on what happened, if there was a communication breakdown, how that happened. And just so that we can avoid that in the future, because that was unfortunate. Microphone on the dais out in our regular work session. That thing is always just sort of falling down. People are trying to adjust it. Make sure we try to get a -- that it's functional in the sense of when people come up and need to move it up, it doesn't all of a sudden come back down. So just make that a little bit more effective piece of equipment. Any other questions concluding items? Yes. I just want to say, Monday, a week ago, after a 14-hour drive back to Denton from Colorado, I drove the whole distance of University Drive from 35 all the way across town. And we had just had a meeting a few weeks ago talking about our agreement with Textod to put lighting on 35. I noticed -- I was just thinking that we were missing some lighting on University Drive through TWA U. We don't have regular street lights through town on University Drive. There are areas that are pretty bright because of businesses, and there are areas that are not. There are street intersections that do have light at the intersection, and I thought that was required by Textod for all of those intersections. And there are intersections where we do not have a light. So I'd like staff to look into that and maybe as we look into the lighting situation there, do some checks and see is this just an old guy shouting in his front yard, or do we have some really higher-than-number issue of traffic accidents at night on the road? I mean, it may be that it's just -- it's not a problem, except aesthetically. But I was surprised at how dark some of the spots were through town. I do have a couple that wanted to give a shout out to the Adoption Center staff and the new director there for Clear the Shelter Day. I believe it's our first time to participate in that, and it's my understanding that all but just a handful, six or seven or ten animals were adopted. And so thank you to the staff, and thank you to the citizens who came out and adopted those pets. Thank you so much. What a very, very successful day. Again, the Heart Walk is September the 9th, I believe, at C .H. Collins, starting at 8 o'clock. And also wanted to congratulate Health Services of North Texas for the opening of their new medical facility. Last week, as far as just a tour and things such as that, what a great facility to help meet the medical needs of those in our community, both who are able to pay and those who are also unable to pay. So really congratulate them on that feat. So that's all I had that sort of jogged my mind. I want to make sure I got those presented. Any others? Okay. Oh, yes, Councilmember Hutsbeth. Reminder for those listening, the fair, what a great opportunity for the city. And I went out yesterday and they're doing great things out there. Really appreciate all they do. Okay. Fantastic. Fantastic. Any others? All right. We'll stand adjourned. Thank you.