Oct 10, 2017 City Council on 2017-10-10 2:00 PM
October 10, 2017 City Council
Full Transcript
Tuesday, October the 10th, 2017 is 2 o 1 p.m. We do have a
quorum. I'll call this meeting to order.
Our first agenda item is citizen comments on consent agenda
items. Seeing no cards, we'll move on to our next agenda
item.
Request for clarification of agenda items listed on today's
agenda from council members. Council members, any
clarification?
Council member Ryan.
Thank you, Mayor. On consent agenda C, we can have somebody
give us a little clarification on what the board of
directors of the
Denton Central Appraisal District are responsible for. I'm
just looking at this from the perception of a conflict, of
putting someone who is on a
elected board that collects taxes on the Central Appraisal
District Board.
Brian Langley, Deputy City Manager. The Appraisal Board is
responsible for doing all of the appraisals for Denton
County, so they don't actually
collect the taxes, but they assess the value of the
properties that taxes are levied on. And so the charge of
the board is to carry out all those
duties for the appraisal district across the county.
Okay. I think with that, I'd like to pull that item for
individual consideration so we can have some talk about it.
I mean, I like Charles, got nothing
against me. He's a great guy, does so much for the
community, but it's just, I would feel the same way if it
was one of us nominated for that board.
Okay. Look forward to the discussion. Thank you, Brian.
Anybody else? I've got one. Yes, Councilmember Hutsbeth.
I have that same issue, so I'm glad he mentioned that, but
I also have a question. Some of my questions have been
answered, but I'd like to pull E,
which is the RFP for the parking lot, and specifically, the
cost is top of mind, and I just don't know, I want to
discuss that.
Sure. So we'll just keep it at that. Yeah.
And I was going to pull E as well for a different reason.
Mine was going to be to have a discussion on the source of
that funding, however it turns out, based upon the cost,
and that is, of course, we had a major meeting with the
public regarding the TIF and the funds, and we're going to
have a TIF discussion, I think, on the next agenda.
But these are monies that are for a parking lot within the
TIF, and I understand that they were already allocated a
year or two ago from a different council from the general
fund, but I want to revisit that discussion
based upon some of the discussion that we heard during the
meeting a couple months ago. Yes, Council Member Gregory.
I have a question on item D for our auditor.
Frank Hammett, nurse city auditor. Thank you. We've already
discussed in a work session your annual audit plan, but I
was wondering in light of some things that have happened in
the past couple of weeks, if there, before we consider this
for a vote today, if there might be an opportunity for you
to provide an amendment to it, estimating the number of
hours it might take for you to review,
the tip line program and what we might do to ensure that
when tips come in and an investigation is going on, that
that investigation remains confidential, because we've got
an investigation going on that's clearly not confidential
now, and as you may recall, I raised concerns about it when
we first talked about the tip line.
I think confidentiality is important because if it's not
confidential, it could impact the quality of the
investigation.
If one's information gets out, there might be pressure felt
to speed up the process and therefore not get all of the
relevant information that's necessary.
There might be pressure to find fault if none exist or
pressure to exonerate if there is fault.
And I think that there's also concern about confidentiality
in terms of the fact that an investigation often will cast
a cloud of guilt or suspicion over people that may not have
any reason to have that, but because of the vagueness of an
investigation that happens.
It could hurt individuals, it could hurt groups, it could
hurt departments.
So I think it's important that we figure out a way that the
tip line investigations can be conducted in a thorough and
a fair manner.
And I think that that requires confidentiality.
So if you would consider maybe the possibility of the
number of hours it would take to review the process to
ensure confidentiality and if you can modify the annual
audit plan before we consider it later, that's fine.
And if it means that you need to come back with an
amendment later on, that would be fine also.
Yeah, I think that right now I probably would have enough
hours in there to look at that issue that you're speaking
of.
Well, I would certainly like for it to be memorialized that
we address that because I'm quite concerned about the
breach of confidentiality.
Okay, do you want that part of the annual audit plan or is
that going to be okay?
Yes, sir.
All right. Very good.
Yes.
Mr. Mayor, husband.
Two, I don't know if now is the time to have a discussion,
but I would like to have the discussion because I think
Council Member Gregory makes a good point.
Those two worlds colliding with transparency, with advance
notice of what we're going to be discussing and anonymity
don't really mesh well, you know, because we have to post
what we're going to talk about.
There's things we need to do in advance of, you know,
actions, that sort of thing, or investigations so that we
can be in proper position.
So I don't know when that conversation and how that fits,
but I think that is a great conversation to have because
those two are - have competing interests.
Yes. Okay.
Yeah, and I think we've got a closed session today about
specific issues, which some of that conversation may be
able to take place, but also in an open session when we
probably come back with the change in the audit plan.
Or you can ask for it in concluding items.
So just however you want to handle that.
Yep.
Okay.
Anyone else?
Great.
All right.
We'll move on then to our work session reports. Receive a
report, hold discussion, give staff direction regarding the
establishment of steering committee as part of the small
area plan and implementation strategy.
Thank you, Mayor, members of council, city manager, members
of staff.
As mentioned in the introduction, this is an opportunity
for staff to seek direction on establishing a steering
committee for the small area plan.
As you all recall, back in August, we approved our council
directed staff to move forward with a contract with Freak
and Eats Associates to develop a small area plan and
implementation strategy.
As shown on this map of the area, key challenges that we
are hoping to address with this small area plan is traffic,
parking, and building compatibility.
Just real quickly, the small area plan is part of a series
of small area plans that we have currently. The Frey Street
is one that we're updating as part of this effort.
There's a small area plan for Dena, for the downtown, the
downtown massive plan, and associated with that is the
implementation plan.
All in these, all part, as part of these small area plans,
there's community input, there's steering committees, and
there's a shared vision and development of policies.
We hope that we, at the end, will have recommendations for
actions and our vision for this area.
So with that, we are seeking direction from council to put
together and establish a steering committee.
Our consultants, Freak and Eats Associates, have consulted
with us and asked that we look to create a 21 to 24 member
steering committee
made up of the following stakeholders or represents of
residents, property owners, neighborhood group association
liaisons, business owners, UNT students and faculty,
as well as local builders, bicyclists, and other
stakeholders that we feel would provide the input and
guiding, guidance that is to develop this small area plan.
That concludes my presentation other than we've got next
steps, but I want to hear from you all as far as a steering
committee.
Staff's recommendation is that through our stakeholder
interviews and past meetings with council and with other
stakeholders,
we have a list put together of the stakeholders, again,
that represents these individual stake representations.
We can go forward with our list, but we again are here to
hear from the council.
Okay. Councilmember Briggs.
I know on the Fry Street small area plan, the council
recommended individuals, where I know I sent names in and
that's what Munal asked of us.
And it's been like that for the other small area plans or?
Right. And then the, yes, that's accurate.
The downtown one, I believe we asked the downtown task
force to serve in that role.
Well, I wouldn't necessarily be comfortable just saying,
sure, go ahead, make the committee and then not know who is
in it.
So I would prefer to know who's in it.
Sure. We, what we plan on doing, again, we've developed, I
've developed a list with other members of staff of, you
know, potential steering committee members.
We haven't reached out to them yet.
Our plan, if the direction is to go this route, is to
communicate with these individuals, develop that list, and
then obviously bring it back to you all for your approval
or consideration.
Councilmember Briggs.
I would like to be able to nominate or ask at least one
person to sit on the committee, a council.
Okay.
One person each maybe, just so that we have somebody there
that can communicate back with us.
But that's me.
I don't know.
Yeah, again, we're looking at 20 to 24.
And the idea there is that we hope to, in our meetings,
that 16 to 18 individuals show up.
And so that's why we're over asking for representation.
So any number that you all provide us, we can then
supplement that with our selection as well.
Anybody else have a comment?
Just one.
Yes, Councilmember Gregory.
Does your presentation have a timeline for the process?
I don't.
I did include a timeline in the backup.
I can go over that if you'd like.
As far as when.
Just remind me when we expect to have the plan completed.
The summer of next year, 2018.
Thank you.
Yes.
My preference is for the council members to appoint the
committee members.
Okay.
Because the first question is, do these categories, are
they limited to the small area plan boundary?
My first question.
Is that?
That's correct.
Yes.
Okay.
It should be within the boundary.
Yeah.
I really struggle with that.
I mean, because I think that it continues that sense of,
because I think people outside
that boundary can have good ideas as well.
But notwithstanding that comment, I think that I would
prefer that the council members
have an opportunity to appoint all the members because I
know that staff works with a lot of
people, but I think staff tends to also maybe work with the
same people.
And there's a lot of people out there that may not be
involved at a certain level to
where it rises to an interaction with city staff that would
still be good participants.
Some of them could have a very contrary view to some of
these things.
And I just want to make sure that, and I just think with
council members appointing those,
then I think you're going to get a good cross section of
people who have very different
ideas on the small area plan.
And with those differences, I believe you get a better plan
.
I mean, I didn't vote for the plan because I thought it was
too big.
That doesn't mean I'm wanting to stack it with people who
will oppose it because if
it's going to happen, it's going to happen.
You want the best thing to happen that could be for that
area.
So I really struggle with, not staff because I don't think
staff can do it, but I just like
the ability for council members on these types of
committees to elicit the participation of citizens.
- If I can add to that discussion, again, like I said
earlier, we've drafted a list,
and I can certainly share that with the council.
- Sure. And there may be common people on that.
Absolutely.
- Right. If there's a common number or common number of
people there that you all may want
to nominate, then we should be okay.
- Yeah. Probably most of those people on that list may get
nominated anyway.
But I just like that process better.
- And will your list include that this person is UNT
administrative or staff member?
- Yes, sir.
- So that we would understand why they're there.
- Yes, sir.
- Thank you.
So is council okay with council members choosing the
steering committee?
I'm assuming it's be three to three to four.
You said 21, 24. So it's either three or three and a half.
- Let's do three each and then we'll fill in the three
remaining.
- Everybody okay with that?
Yes, council member Hudson.
- I have a different concern and I don't know if anyone
else shares it, but when I served on the
2030 plan, it was a larger group, something like this. And
it really seemed to be driven
by the consultants. I understand the consultants have to
push it, but I think when you
have conversations and the consultant is like, "Hey, here's
the information, here's..."
All of a sudden it takes it away because I think a group
that size can tend to get disinterested
if it's not the active engine piece of it, then you're just
going along for the ride and consult.
So I don't know how to fix that. I don't know what the
narrative is with the consultants,
but it really does. For example, if the citizen stalled,
then it needs to reflect that. "Hey,
you've got to give me this information," not, "Hey, we'll
plug it in for you since you didn't
give it to us." And I don't know what that looks like
contractually and timeline and all that good
stuff, but that's my concern.
I think we can certainly sit down with the consultant and
let him give him that feedback.
This is going to be a little bit more structured than the
2030 plan because you've got... It's
basically thinking of as a small comprehensive plan for
this area. So you're going to have issues
regarding traffic, bicycle, pedestrian type usage designs,
that sort of thing. And so the
classifications will be much easier to direct people in,
but we will definitely get the point
across that we want them facilitating not doing the work.
And in terms of, if we could, then
perhaps get the information to council and maybe on
November 7th have something where we
appoint a committee. Does that work?
That's fine. Just before we leave this item, I'll email out
or forward you all the list. And I just
ask that we set a date of when we get the nomination so
then we can start working on contacting these
individuals and making sure they're first available and
second interested in serving on the
committee moving forward.
You're saying you contact them or the council member?
But eventually we'll formalize the list and just want to
make sure that we have ample time to make
the November 7th meeting.
Right. All right. Good. Any other questions on this agenda
item? Fantastic. All right.
We'll move on to thank you. We'll move on to 3B. Receive
report, hold discussion, give staff
direction regarding the Waterworks Park wave pool and con
cession stand project and preliminary end
of season numbers.
Good afternoon, Mayor and council members. My name is Laura
Behrens. I'm the assistant director
for Parks and Recreation. And I want to just give you a
brief update on to some financial
information that you received in April regarding the water
park. Just a quick recap on some
important dates for our water park operations. The water
park opened on May the 20th of this year.
Our new wave pool opened on July the 8th. The new fee
schedule was implemented on July the 10th.
And then our season ended on September the 4th of this year
.
That information represents our seasonal operations in
attendance. We had a total of 86 days
in operation for the water park this year. That's three
days fewer than last year. And that was
as a result of a change in the district's school schedule.
46 of those days we had our water,
our new water pool, I'm sorry, our wave pool in operation.
And we had a total of 77,371
attendance for the year. And that's about 4,600 more than
last year. During that time that the
water pool was open, or the wave pool was open, we had an
average of 88 more patrons visit the water
park during the same time as last season. So some financial
information that you received back in
April. The detail is in your backup. But we had for the
fiscal year 16-17, we had an estimated
48,757 net profit in April. After looking at the delay of
the wave pool and concession stand opening,
we projected a loss of 128,000 after reviewing our
attendance and the revenue that has been collected
and continues to be evaluated during the close of the
season for this fiscal year.
We're now anticipating a net profit of 34,808.
And that's the update on that financial information. Of
course, this is a significant
difference from the information that we had in April. This
revenue will offset
our total an auditorium and water park budget. We've got
council member Brigham and council member
Gregory. So in April we had, I can't really, I don't have
it, but there was an estimated
daily increase in, was it a hundred or over a hundred? Well
, budgeted for the 16-17,
there was an estimated 200 daily increase for a full year's
operation of wave pool and concession
stand. Of course, we didn't have that. The wave pool didn't
open until July the 8th. And then our
concession stand will not open until next season. So during
the time that it was operational for
those 40 plus days, we saw an increase of 88 people a day
for the same timeframe as last year.
Okay. And my follow-up question to that is how many coupons
or specials did you run
after the wave pool opened? Because I do know there were a
lot of buy one, get one. There was a lot of
marketing to get people out to the, to the wave pool. Do
you know how many of those things were
used to get people? I don't have that information with me
right now, but I can definitely follow up
and get that to you. Okay. And you're just wanting total
number of all the coupons and marketing
after the way promotions that were done. The promotions
that were done. Absolutely. Thank you.
To cut the, right, because you did that. So the entrance
fees were decreased. Correct. Right.
Mayor Pro Tem. I have a quick follow-up to that also when
you're assembling that information,
if you could include the summer reading program. So I know
that the participants in the summer
reading program, if they reach certain milestones, they
could get free admission. Yeah. I think there
was like a day at the water park or something like that. So
if you could kind of break that out for
us as well, I'd appreciate it. Okay. I can see if we know
how many received. Okay. Great. Thank you.
That would be great if that was high, right? Right. Yeah,
it was. That means a lot of kids
read and got to go to the water park. What a great summer.
So just to clarify the additional
$34,808 profit that goes to offset the expenses that the
water park and the natatorium incur.
Is that correct? Correct. So that's so if there's a loss at
the natatorium, that basically goes to
that goes towards that deficit. Yes, sir. Okay. Any other
questions? Yes. Will we know what that
deficit is? Yes, we continue to work with finance and our
accounting who help us prepare that
invoice and that those numbers for DISD also our partner in
this program. So but we anticipate that
you know being in the next couple well actually the right
after the first of the year at close
out of the fiscal year. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. And I
think that usually comes out in a
separate report, does it not? Yes, sir. Okay. Thank you.
Appreciate it.
All right. Thank you very much. We'll go on to agenda item
three. Receive report,
hold discussion, give staff direction regarding a policy
and application process to review
housing tax credit requests. Good afternoon, Mayor Watts,
council members. By quick way of background,
the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs admin
isters a housing tax credit program
for the development of affordable housing. Cities play a
role in this program in that they can
approve resolutions of support, no objection or opposition
for projects that are applying for
housing tax credits. In May of 2017, the council considered
two resolutions of support and after
that council asked staff if they could develop a process to
review these requests in the future.
So staff went back and did some research of how other
municipalities handle these requests
and presented that information in June of 2017 and really
it ranged from just a very basic method of
collecting information about the project all the way until
having minimum policy thresholds that
an applicant would need to meet in order to get a council
support. So we drafted an application
and policy that was more based on the general criteria and
factors approach. Here's some things
that council may consider in reviewing these projects but
of course it's still left up to
council's discretion. So what we heard during that June
2017 work session was that council
supported an application process and for a couple different
reasons. One, to establish
expectations with the applicants in terms of what
information about the project needed to be
submitted, when it needed to be submitted, how many
meetings they could expect, as well as to
increase transparency about these projects to gather all of
the project information especially
the financial information related to the project if it
would be tax exempt and then also just to
streamline the review process so applicants aren't making
you know repeat presentations to
the council that we can streamline it and get it through
faster. Council also asked for some
additional additional information to be included on the
application and they also asked if a point
system could be developed to evaluate applications and
provide clarity to the application to the
applicant. So what staff has done since then is we decided
as we had indicated in June of 2017 that
we were going to go meet with the Denton Housing Authority
representatives to get their feedback on
the process and application. So we met with them in early
September. They were appreciative of
having input into how this application and policy looks and
they provided some feedback in that they
thought it was a little burdensome. There's a lot of
duplicate questions. They felt it could be
streamlined a little bit better and overall they opposed
having anything a additional step be put
into place that they had to go through that the city would
implement. Can I ask you a question on
that? So when you say you met with the Denton Housing
Authority who exactly did you meet with?
We met with Sherry McDane who's the executive director
Christian Inglis who also works for
the Denton Housing Authority. One of their board members, I
'm sorry I forget his his name.
Was it Salty? Salty, yep. Okay. And then as well as a
consultant that they work with often
on these type of projects. Okay. And then in addition to
meeting with representatives from DHA
we also received feedback from potential developers. During
this time period there were a
couple developers that had called staff and asked you know
I have an interest in housing tax credit
project in your community is there a process and they were
actually happy to hear that the city may
be implementing something so that they knew the
expectations up front of what needed to be submitted
and how to go through the process. So that was very
positive feedback received from those potential
developers. So what we did based upon feedback and just
taking another clean and fresh look at
the application is we went back and we tried to condense
and streamline the checklist and submittals
got it down to two pages. We also removed some of the
duplicate questions that would be addressed
through site plan review and planning and zoning review.
However they they must still as part of
the application submit a letter of zoning verification or
the status of their zoning request. So that is
still part of the the application. Staff is also
recommending revising the submittal schedule. So
last time when we had come to you we said everything would
be on the same schedule for four percent and
nine percent. We're actually recommending based on the
feedback that we had gotten from DHA and going
back and looking at the other municipalities is to have
that deadline established for the nine percent.
That matches what the the Texas Department of Housing and
Community Affairs requires is that
everything needs to be in generally on March of each year
they have that time frame. However the
TDHCA accepts application for four percent year-round. So
we kind of wanted to be able to
match that and the DHA had said you know sometimes if you
don't get a nine percent you might go back
later in the year and try to apply for a four percent.
However we'll make it clear to applicants
and clear in the application that even if you're doing a
four percent you should still expect the
same time frame that it may take two to three months to go
through this process. You're still
gonna have to fill out the application. You're gonna have
to review it with staff first and then
come to a city council meeting to present your request. And
the last thing we were asked and was
to research the point if there could be an evaluation
criteria that we put into place for
these applications. So a staff team met this is an interdep
artmental team with the city manager's
office community development and planning and we really
went kind of around around how we could
develop evaluation criteria and we had a lot to be honest a
lot of difficulty confidently recommending
what we could have put into place for scoring criteria. We
looked at the other municipalities
again El Paso did have something similar however they had
it very directly tied to their value
statements and affordable housing policies and we don't
have that guiding policy document right now
to go off of. You know there was some we were worried about
the potential subjectivity of that
and maybe narrowing what applications could come through
and we see right now a minimal volume of
applications coming through as well. Did you have any
conversations with the legal department?
No we did not yet. On these challenges? Okay. There was
just you know as staff that might be
scoring these applications we were we could come up with
general categories but then you have to
come up with subcategories and you want to link them to
policies and without having a lot of
experience of even going through an application process yet
we were struggling to really give you
a confident recommendation of how that could look like but
we did come up with another alternative
hearing from council that maybe there's something we want
to do besides just a baseline application.
Both Councilmember Gregory had a question. Well and I may
be anticipating what your next slide is
but in the backup you have for the 2018 policy you said
that we we don't have a document
that expresses our value statement regarding this but it
looked like in the backup
for for the 2018 request for support that you sort of or
maybe recommending a set of values like
maximize affordable units in the community? Correct. We are
recommending four and this is
still kind of a long let me scroll down here to have this
is still the general evaluation criteria
type of method where here is things that the council may
consider and last time we had just
had a list of 10 or 15 bullet points and what we tried to
do is go back and put these into
a little bit more categories so that even if we're not
assigning points or ranking to these
categories that staff could provide an analysis for you
based upon these different areas whether
that be it we feel it meets meets these objectives it
exceeds it does not meet and kind of just
provide that overall analysis and summary of the project.
And I think just to add to Sarah's points
most of these areas in one one through three are
specifically based upon the questions that the
City Council has been asking of the petitioners as well so
these these continue to be very common
themes as far as notification the the availability of the
the units to the broader public you know
what kind of benefits are so we've tried to sum that up and
create a policy statement based on the
common questions that are being asked. Is so policy
statement or set of values or goals that
we hope to achieve through affordable housing? I think
these are more guiding principles to a
in direction to a petitioner based upon the the questions
that have been asked in almost every
instance that we've had a tax credit application council
has basically gone right down these
particular themes so really what we've got is an
application process right now that is doing some
vetting up front without necessarily scoring it but
collecting that data so it's not being collected
at the 11th hour which has really been I think the
frustration of council but a an affordable
housing policy would be far more in depth than this in
terms of specific goals programs that could
be used incentive criteria that sort of thing to where you
're it's you're really pinpointing what
it's a toolbox basically for affordable housing. If I may
to follow up I would think that that
that this list would be very important for for the staff
and for the applicants to to know
what what our what our goals are what we're trying to
achieve and I think that it requires a good bit
of discussion on our part to make sure that we're agreeable
with all of those bullet points as to
what we want to see if we think that there's something
missing if there's something that's
there that maybe you know second thought we don't want it
to be there so so maybe sometime and I
don't know if today's the day but but it's October and so I
suspect if we have a March
deadline coming up that we probably ought to finalize this
fairly soon so that we're prepared
when the next round of applications come in so so I'm going
to yield the floor back but hopefully
we'll have a chance to discuss this. Yes one of the things
that I have a question about is
if in these other cities they have policies regarding
whether the developments will pay
property taxes or not or if there's something in lieu of
property taxes that come in are you aware?
So there in a couple of the other cities they do have um
let me go to my final slide here sorry if
you don't mind um they do have policy preferences sometimes
in these other cities where they'll
state they'll have some general criteria like that they're
going to look at but then they'll state
we have a policy preference for those developments that pay
property taxes I have seen that in a
couple of the other communities um so what what we tried to
do is put together two options for
council um the first option being we could do just the
baseline kind of application and policy and
here's some general criteria and factors for consideration
and we can talk further about that
that list if we'd like to change or modify that list and go
back to it. The second option would
be to go one step further and I think council started to
have some of these policy discussions
last time but if you really wanted to make it clear if you
choose one or two or three policy
preferences um and these are just examples there's some
others from other municipalities as well but
this is kind of what we heard out of the discussions is
that council may be interested in requiring
some of these not requiring but having a preference stated
outright. So one of the things that I found
interesting about our last round of applications was that
the properties are typically a mix of
market rate and affordable housing units yet the entire
property is exempt from property taxes
um so I think that's something that deserves to have a
little bit more um attention paid to it
and um just reading the letter from the housing authority
it doesn't seem like well I'll just
read it because I don't like to paraphrase it says non-
profit developers such as DHA should not be
required to quote pay pay to play unquote in order to
develop affordable housing in Denton when state
law not the whim of council has determined that a housing
authority is a political subdivision of the
state and therefore exempt from property taxes just like UN
T, TWU, school districts, counties,
etc. So I just wanted to put that out there because from my
pers my perspective um I think it's
a part of the discussion that we should be having about
whether or not we agree to give resolutions
of support is what is it that the whole the holistic view
of what these developments provide
the community and the residents so I think taxes are a part
of that um I guess I'll just say if
it's a non-starter to go there then that's problematic from
my perspective but
Any other questions at least at this point I didn't know if
you
had finished your presentation or not yep that's all I have
at this point I'm just the option one
and option two we tried to lay out to go to give an option
two to go a step further than what we
had presented last time in terms of general criteria um
with option one you know after we
get some better experience with these types of applications
and review we could always come
back next year and modify the process or go a step further
as well well and I think what I'm going to
do is uh obviously we need to decide on some of the
criteria I think that's a good idea to revisit
some of those priorities and preferences for the city but I
'll just give you a preview in concluding
items I'm going to ask for a joint work session between the
city council and the board of the
Denton housing authority because the only when you're
talking about property taxes versus tax
exempt the only reason is is because it's a partnership
with the Denton housing authority
and we've all talked around this you've had meetings with
people who are executive director
of the board one board member I've talked to the board I
mean we need to all get in the same room
and see if we can figure out what each other's saying to
see if we can't get on a little bit
more similar page and if not that's okay too but I think we
've we're doing some very fragmented
communication and that's not a fault of anybody it's not
the housing authority not you it's just
time to we got to get everybody in the room and around the
table because I think there's just some
misunderstandings about what's going on uh so I'll be
asking for that but I think once we do that
I think will help us give us a lot more clear direction on
where the council needs to go as far
as policy considerations so any other questions for staff
on this topic yes did you need an option
today or were you looking for a direction today on one of
those thank you that's a good question I
don't need an option today however um probably by late
November early December we would want
to bring back a resolution to adopt an application and
policy so then we could publish it sometime
on in December on the city website and let applicants know
if there is anybody interested
in a nine percent one that period would be for quarter one
of 2018 yes no I've already spoken
so make sure everybody else is in you're recognized okay
thank you um on item number two about
improves the quality of housing and neighborhoods I think
maybe another bullet point that that might
be appropriate would be to to consider the fact that we don
't necessarily want all of the affordable
housing units in one part of town and that that there for
me personally it would I think it would
be important to have a bullet point that suggested that
that distribution of these units throughout
the city would be would would be more favorably looked upon
and that's just my own point of view
others may have a different point of view we can certainly
add that in and there is um part of the
checklist does require a map submitting where the other
properties are so that we can see throughout
the community where they're located and where the proposed
development would be located
okay any other questions and we'll we'll uh well we'll have
the future announced concluding item
coming up in a fairly recent agenda so I can't really talk
about it too much because I'm off
posting but um so anyway all right any other questions for
staff thank you Sarah appreciate it
okay the next agenda item is agenda item 3d receive report
hold discussion
give staff direction regarding text open meetings act as it
relates to section 3b
um Aaron Liao and I'm giving this presentation regarding
section 3b as it relates to the text
texas open meetings act a way of background at some of your
past meetings there have been
some citizens that express concern regarding section 3b of
your regular meeting agenda
just so that you all are on the same page 3b involves the
citizen reports that are provided
during the public comment section and the the concern that
has been expressed a few times is
that there is a belief that the council can deliberate and
take action on the section 3b
items so what do the section 3b items look like this is a
little snapshot of your august 1st 2017
agenda specifically section 3 if you look down at 3b what
it's the way it's the caption is worded is
it's received scheduled citizen reports from members of the
public then the actual speakers
who have signed up in advance will actually there's
reference to the speaker as well as the
general topic that they're proposing to speak and just for
your information 3c your additional
citizen reports is the open mic comment section now before
we get into and try to answer that
question as to whether or not you can deliberate and take
action on 3b items you know let's look
at what exactly the texas open meetings act requires of you
section 551.041 requires the
city to provide written notice of the date hour place and
subject of each meeting held by the city
the subject includes each agenda item and basically what
you would use the city council and the city
is required to do is to provide sufficient notice to alert
the general public of what is being
considered by you on a particular meeting on in on sept
ember 29 2017 all of you receive the city
manager's friday report and in that report i included i
believe it was item j 3j or 2j that
actually discussed the section 3b issue and in that report
i cautioned that deliberating and taking
action on 3b items would be contrary to the texas open
meetings act the reasoning that i relied upon
in that in that post in that uh little memo was that the 3b
items do not follow the custom
that the city has used for years with respect to its
regular action agenda items the language that
you use in your regular agenda items where you are taking
action typically include the words
consider adoption or consider approval what i this slide
incorporates the section three from august
first as well as four items on your consent agenda which is
only there for example to show you that
the magic words that is used for each a b c and d is
considered option considered option consider
approval consider approval this is your custom for action
items that you've had for years compare
that with 3b you don't have the same type of of magic words
considered option or consider approval
listed with each one of them and that is and so that was
the reasoning that i relied upon that
as as you have posted 3b that is not the does not follow
your custom and practice of how you
take action on action items now in that same report i
referenced a case involving the san
antonio isd school board and that case is actually called
the river road neighborhood association
versus south texas sports this was a decision that was
delivered by the san antonio court of appeals
in 1986 this is the case that introduced the concept of a
city's custom providing notice of
the subject of an agenda posting and i'll give you the
background of what was going on in this case
south texas sports was the local franchise owner of the san
antonio gunslingers and some of you
may remember they were san antonio gunslingers as part of
the united states football league
it's going back to the early 80s south texas sports was
looking for a venue in which to
play all their football games in san antonio at the time
before the alamo dome the most logical
place to play the games was at alamo stadium and alamo
stadium was owned and operated by the san
antonio isd so south texas sports reached out to san anton
io isd and asked to enter into a lease
agreement with san antonio isd to allow them to basically
take over and play all their games there
as part of that lease proposal south texas sports gave the
san antonio isd a may 31st deadline in
which to act upon the proposed lease that they had
delivered to the school board for whatever reason
it's not apparent in the case the san antonio board house
isd school board delayed and taken
action and as that deadline was rapidly approaching about a
month a little over a month after before
may the 31st the school board started holding what are
called emergency meetings they held five now
i'm not going to get into the emergency aspect because the
court shot that down in another part
of the of the case but they held five emergency meetings at
the first four meetings what they
used in their caption to describe what they were contempl
ating they used the magic words discussion
and action in relation to the lease at the fifth meeting on
which was held on the final day of the
deadline day they only used the term discussion however
they took action and and basically adopted
that lease and that's what the case was all well part of
the uh of the the the case that was brought
by the river road neighborhood association included an
attack as to the validity of that action on the
fifth meeting the san antonio court of appeals on appeal
basically held that the the last meeting
where action was taken departed from ice the san antonio is
d's custom and just i wanted to read to
you a portion of that case so you can get an idea of where
the court you know why the court ruled in
this way and i'm quoting the actual opinion the testimony
is uncontradicted that of the various
emergency meetings which were called in connection with the
alamo stadium lease only the notice of
the may 31st meeting limited the purpose of the meeting to
discussion in the case of the other
four emergency meetings the purpose was described as
discussion and action the superintendent
testified that he could not explain why the word action was
omitted from the notice the record
further reveals that in so far as the san antonio isd is
concerned the distinction between discussion
action and merely discussion was well understood if the
notice limited the purpose of the meeting
to discussion this meant exactly what it said no action be
taken if the possibility of action
as distinguished from mere discussion was contemplated the
notice always stated the purpose
in the terms of discussion and action considering all the
facts and circumstances present in the
case it can only be concluded that the notice of the may 31
st meeting which described the purpose
of the meeting only as discussion was deceptive because in
view of the well-established custom
and practice of the district it did not alert the public to
the fact that action might be taken
and so with that is applying that analysis to your section
3b items if you were to take action
deliberate and take action on those items that you know the
san antonio case would be would be very
relevant to that action where you you would be departing
from the custom of using the magic
words where you're intending to to take action on an item
which is considered option consider
approval yeah so one of the citizen complaints that i've
heard is that we're not allowed as
council members to discuss i haven't heard so much about
taking action but why is it that we cannot
have a discussion so the way that i read the holding on
river road neighborhood association
is that action can't be taken without proper posting
regarding action so in that case there
was a discussion it was posted for discussion but there was
also action and it wasn't posted
right my question is and i don't think that i guess is are
you saying that we can't have
a discussion because of river road neighborhood association
if it's posted as a discussion only
the i'm not saying that i'm taking that when you deliberate
and take action is is what i'm
referring to now when you're actually taking discussion and
and one of the reasons why the
the video that is shown at the beginning of your public
comment when it talks about that
council members will refrain from answering asking
questions and deliberating with the with the
actual they signed uh speakers is because you know that it
could possibly lead to an opal means act
violation and by that i mean is as you all have noticed
that sometimes the speakers will actually
sign up for a particular posting and they go off topic when
you start engaging in deliberation on
that off topic item you expose yourself to an open meeting
that true for every single item on
the agenda that is correct but the usually we will um i or
the mayor will notify the actual council
member that we're straying off topic why couldn't we do
that during a discussion on one of these
topics well the other the other thing that um when you
actually start deliberating about this
the general we we know i guess going back we know from if
you look at the right hand column exactly
what the discussion should what what is the parameters of
discussion is going to be held
we have a properly posted caption we have an agenda
information sheet we have backup that's
provided so that we are all aware exactly where the nature
of discussion is going
when you get to the 3b items you have something very
general and it's harder for myself or for
the mayor or any other council members to determine when
when do we actually go off posting with
respect to that to that uh uh to let's say 3b1 when do we
go off posting on that and it's harder
to determine that when we don't have the backup or any kind
of agenda information as to sheet as to
what exactly the speaker is really trying to get you to
discuss quick follow-up so if we have the
speakers provide any type of presentation that they might
be making during the citizen reports
would that address the concern that in a later in the
presentation i do give you options because
you do control the agenda and there is a way to actually um
overcome the the the dilemma that is
posed by the river road association case neighborhood
association case to actually fix it so that you can
clearly engage in deliberation even possible action and i
will explain that a little bit later
in the presentation as part of your options well maybe if i
can just get fellow council members i
i didn't understand this to be a discussion about taking
action on these items and maybe i just
didn't understand i thought the the concern was we can't
have a discussion about the items well
we've got council member riggs and then council member greg
ory in the queue so i'm sure as we move
through this we'll probably have some feedback from other
members on that issue right that was
my understanding as well so taking the action out of the
situation so can you explain the
difference then because right now we treat open mic and the
citizen reports the exact same
and one is just on a blue card that no one knows about and
the other is an actual item with number
posted with a topic and a person and we can't respond to
either so no i um i know that on three
b items you know you will engage into asking clarification
questions and some of the things
that they do when you get into the open mic where you have
no idea of what they're mentioning uh what
they're going to discuss with you you know we have taken
the position to advise you that you know you're
limited in the type of response you you actually state a
factual information response to an inquiry
from them or the other a state recite your actual policy
with respect to an item and then you can
always in concluding items take that whatever they they
discuss in the mic and put it on a future
agenda with the three b in those cases sometimes you know
we've um basically given our agreement to
ask the clarification questions on something that might be
posed that may may have been asked with
respect to the three b like in this case one two or three
it's still in either way depending on how
the discussion goes and the deliberation you could expose
yourself and so i can give you an option to
get away from that so that you feel comfortable as well as
i feel comfortable and everyone else on
the council that you can engage in those in that deliber
ation and any action if you wish to go that
far so so i'm i do i am proposing options for you to
consider yeah just uh right now i do wait till
the end on um presentations and open um mic to respond i
wait till the end anyway currently
because that's what i felt like that's what i thought that
you said we should do so and that's
always the safest course to actually bring it in to have a
full discussion and post it properly
customer gregory so my understanding is that that our
custom has been and you as our attorney
and our previous attorney has if you would put that last uh
there you go i'm sorry
that that what we've been advised is for item 3b where we
received scheduled citizen reports
that that we are free to ask questions of the presenter for
clarification questions if you
don't understand something they say yes and i think but but
but for 3c additional citizen
reports where there's nothing posted we have no notion as
to what they're discussing that
that even questions for clarification might be uh on dicey
ground because it could be interpreted
as engaging into a discussion it could be i mean there is
no subtle case law it's just the cautious
route to take to make sure that you don't venture into un
chartered territory and my guess is is that
you're going to say something about like for 3b if we if
you revised the language in the posting
based on what we direct and what we prefer we could either
remain where we're simply
receiving reports or we could receive and discuss the
reports yes we could receive and discuss and
take action yes okay
uh
since uh river red was decided uh i know that's from 1986
and says some of you may be wondering
this is still good law i did do research and find some
references in an ag opinion as well
as a case and a couple of seminar materials that help
support the notion that is still good law
in 2008 the greg abit who was the then texas attorney
general uh in an opinion written in
2008 when he was looking at some captions that corpus
christi city council was concerned about
and before before i go before i let uh have you continue
just real quick question of the council
because you're basically going to tell us why it's still
good law and so if we're going to have
options look i mean i don't think that i mean you can go on
i'm just saying if we're going to go
into a lot about trying to justify why we're doing this i'm
i i don't necessarily need to hear that
especially if we're going to be given options unless we
keep the status quo okay so if somebody
wants to hear the the case law and the attorney general's
opinion go ahead and go through that
but it sounds like you're going to ask us for some
direction yes and if the direction is stay the
same and somebody has a question is it still lawful we
might can do that um and then i want to also
address council member or mayor pro tem vigari's question
but anybody i mean i'm not trying to cut
the meeting i'm not trying to cut the presentation short i
just if we're going to be looking at either
changing this keep the status quo there might be some
questions but um that's fine so yeah not not
trying to cut you off just wanted to sort of get to the
chase and if we circle back around to that
we can because i i agree with you when i this bullet point
as i point out you can amend it to
follow the same format as a regular meeting and action item
or a work session agenda item if you
and this is for regular meeting and action items it would
follow the same process that you know that
we would take action upon we'd have to reword 3b to
actually say something along the lines to include
and also consider taking action and then modify their
captions to make it a little bit more
detail an ais and possible backup or you could take the
work session route where you actually
create an actual work session a public comment work session
agenda items where you would be doing
the same thing that you would in your your early afternoon
work sessions where you're getting the
the information from from the member of the public any
backup and actually wording it to say
something along the lines like receive report from you know
joe citizen hold a discussion and
give direction to maybe city staff regarding whatever the
topic might be and that would also
both of those options even if you don't take action just
deliberating it would give you the
ability to feel comfortable to address and deliberate with
the individual public members
of the public on any items they want to bring forward to
you
that's that's the option so we can get there the second
option of course is up to you as a policy
decision body decision-making body is continue the status
quo or delete section 3b altogether and
that eliminates whatever concern or controversy they may be
i'm not advocating anyone but since
you want an option an option as to how you can make sure
that you can address and have
it deliberations with members of the public that the first
option is it will get you there
well i'm going to tell you what i'm not for taking action
on a citizen report we don't have any
information other than what the citizen is bringing that's
not to say that they're not
bringing good information as far as discussion we still i
mean we're basically creating an ad hoc
kind of work session where staff is not i'm certainly not
going to instruct staff to research
what a citizen report subject is especially when the
council has the opportunity to ask for that
in a work session so to answer your question as far as what
we thought the whole issue was
this issue is coming from primarily a couple of sources a
couple of people citizens i fully agree
with the presentation that our custom has been that long-
held custom not for meetings like in
san antonio but many meetings where this has been what's
presented the question has been
the accusation has been that it's we're doing it wrong i
don't i don't agree with that to me the
question is do we want to try to make it more clear do you
have a more definitive policy direction
on what can really take place based upon this all comes
from the introductory video that is
that is played where they're saying you cannot engage in
discussion so if we didn't have the video
we'd be even more on solid ground as far as i'm concerned
with how we're posting it i don't mind
changing it me personally i just assume and if we if we're
going to have this kind of i would just
assume if we don't need to have all open mic where people
come and talk to us but to sit there and
have a full council discussion and deliberation on a
citizen report item i think is premature
we can put in there that we can discuss it but we don't
have any of the information that we need to
certainly take any action they've given ample opportunity
to describe to us what their concern
is we do have the opportunity to ask for questions of
clarification which then the citizen has a right
to give us a question of clarification i just don't think
this is an action item where this is
an item on the agenda where council because to me
discussion is debate it's not clarification
right it's debate it's how do we you know what decisions
are we going to make what kind of
policy directions are we going to we just don't i mean good
heavens we people tell us all the time
do you have enough information to make a decision on i mean
so in four minutes the first time
all of us may be here an issue i think is hardly not the
time to be able to figure it out
right there on the fly so i'm not trying to take away any
citizens ability to come and share with
us their concerns i just don't want that portion of the
agenda item to be turned into a debate when we
lack a total lack of information regarding whatever the
subject matter that is being presented
so those are just my thoughts on if we want to have
discussion i'm not going to sit here but
i think that the discussions could really go off the rails
pretty quick if we don't have the
information necessary those are just those are just my
thoughts council member ryan and then
council member gravery thank you mayor i think i would not
oppose us changing it right now we can
on our concluding items we can add it to a future agenda
and i know of other cities that all that
the way that they read it for the posting allows them to
the ability to add it to a future agenda
so rather than having to wait till the concluding items to
where we would have it posted in such a
way that we could add it to an agenda right there so people
don't feel like they've talked at the
beginning of the meeting they don't watch till the very end
when we do concluding items because a
number of reports do end up on future agendas because we
add them at that point i would just
like to be able to add them right after the 3b items so and
that's that's a good point so city
attorney does our current posting the way it stands prevent
a council member from saying after
a citizen report in the real time part of the agenda i
would like to schedule a work session on
this mr city manager for this this and this does our
posting preclude that as far as it being outside
the posting the the posting isn't worded in that in that
manner to us to allow that but under state
law the same the same section about you know what kinds of
questions you can ask there is an
allowance to for the council council member or the whole
council to put this on a future
agenda and so just to mention i would recommend to make
sure that we're on safe ground that we
would add that little language at the very top that any
items you presented here any council member
has the right to risk to add it to a future agenda and then
we would have that ability as council
member ryan suggested okay well that was going to be one of
my suggestions also thank you mayor
because i have found it awkward to to have a person that
brings a very legitimate concern
maybe somewhat time sensitive and it might be a very
emotional presentation and we're
we're limited to waiting to the very end of the meeting to
ask the manager to put that on or to
get a staff report or whatever and and in having that
ability and and it might mean by saying
receive a report from citizens and give staff direction you
know in the in the
caption might allow us to do that and i wanted to so i i
like that idea because i think that would be
more respectful to the citizen if that's what we wanted to
do rather than delaying until maybe
three or four hours later at least and regarding three or
four hours i'm a little bit concerned
about about changing the posting to receive a report from a
citizen and hold a discussion
because if we don't know what the report is if we haven't
had a chance to have information or if
some people have that discussion may end up being 30
minutes maybe an hour right there and and i know
on a number of occasions we have we have as a group
expressed some embarrassment that that there
are other citizens that are waiting in the audience for a
public hearing on a zoning change that
affects their property and they're here till 11 30 or 12 at
night for that and by by setting this up
to where we might be also holding a full-fledged discussion
on a citizen report for which we've
not been prepared for not which we've not received any
backup information i think that it could
derail the meeting had a significant amount of time to the
meeting and put other citizens who
are waiting for other agenda items at an even larger
disadvantage because they've been waiting
even longer for those so i'm reluctant to add a discussion
section to this and i agree with the
mayor that i certainly would not want to put in to any kind
of a caption taking action
although we it doesn't require us to take action i think
that taking action on an item for which
we've had no backup for which we've had a very little
opportunity to have discussion for which
there have not been any opportunity for other citizens to
to to be aware of what's going on
and have a chance to weigh in i think that would be
premature and i would be opposed to to any
section that would call for action and i have heard one of
our citizens that continues to bring
this up talk about yes if it's posted we could take action
on the citizen report i've heard that
on a couple of different occasions and i think that that
would be wrong council member riggs
so i would like to suggest that we take that section out of
the video that says we can't
ask questions in the video before and i would also like to
be able to ask questions
from the citizen report and so you're saying currently
right now i can ask questions and have
a discussion with that citizen but not with the council i
think was the clarification topic it was
a clarification the the remember that a discussion is is a
deliberation under the open meetings act
and that deliberation is itself a meeting under the open
meetings act and so with that the posting
that you have must be sufficiently alert the public what
you're going to be discussing having
a q a back and forth with the actual person when the which
may stray off the the limited posting
that they provide to us makes it very difficult to make
sure that you stay on posting that's all you
know we can we can cure that by having greater specificity
in their posting or which i'm hearing
from some council members they don't choose to want to go
in this direction adding some some language
about deliberation as well in the 3b report to give you
that flexibility but again that is your
decision as a council to make and i if you want to go in
that direction i will draft it in that way
but if i if i as a council member ask a question to
regarding the citizen report that's on topic
i can then receive an answer yes if you if you want to
clarify something that they mentioned yes or
don't understand something that they said in the
presentation yes and the city attorney is there to
help me get back on track if i veer right yes and
especially if they were to put my little button
as request to speak to work again yes i would do that
it's currently off i can't press the button that you all
can
so i'm in favor of adding a section for discussion or
adding a language discussion and here's why
because i'm sorry i missed what you just said i'm i'm in
favor of adding the statement that this is
for discussion and here's why first of all i don't see how
we can give any type of staff direction
which i think is a good idea without a discussion i mean
you can't give staff direction on
clarification alone at least that's not how i understand
our staff direction to have been if
the concern is that we don't have enough information to
take some type of direction i don't know what
we would be telling staff without at least having some type
of cursory discussion that's the first
my first reason for wanting the discussion part the second
is you know from a i guess optic
standpoint or just even from a open communication
standpoint if i hear a presentation once every
couple weeks about how there's no black firefighters i
would like at least once to be like i agree with
you that's crappy and you can't make that statement the way
that we're talking about this posting
because it's an opinion statement it's not a question for
clarification it's not anything
related to an exception to the open meetings act the only
way you can express your opinion
is if there is a posting for discussion i don't think that
necessarily draws the meeting out but
i think from the perspective of a citizen who's coming to
make a report sometimes repeatedly
there's something to be said for just saying i agree with
you that's and i would like the flexibility
to at least voice my opinion so that is why i'm in favor of
adding the discussion portion
yes i guess my my problem with with opening the discussion
is i'm afraid we we could very easily lose control of
things because you may have a lot of people
coming in many more than we have now and i just don't think
we can keep control of it
yes well we have a limited number of people that can speak
and they have to sign up so we can't really lose control we
have to stay on topic as well and so
adding the discussion would would allow me to ask those
questions that i want to ask right yes so
yeah so i am i'm in favor of that not necessarily you know
taking action per se but being able to
feel comfortable enough to communicate with a citizen who
has signed up put their name on
the agenda the topic on the agenda um i i think that's fair
the only way i would get comfortable with that is if we
have a time limit on it
that's the only way i'd get comfortable with it i mean if
we have it if we have a time limit on
the the discussion you know once the presentation is
finished we have a time limit on it i'm okay
with that as far as expressing your opinion um i understand
that i think that if we have also have
an opportunity to put it on additional i'm going to use
your example because you use that example
and i think we have hasn't somebody i think somebody
requested either a work session or i
or no i can't remember if somebody's requested a work
session on that particular item that's been
brought up at a citizen's report so it might just be the
example that you used all right so i find
that to want to be able to say i agree with you that's
crappy but in the so many times that this
has been brought up nobody's asked for a work session on it
it just seems a little contradictory
to me but uh um so i don't have an issue with limiting the
discussion because really to me
clarification questions are almost a discussion deliber
ation is when the council begins to
deliberate among themselves what is the appropriate policy
if any that is applicable to the issue
that's being stated so if i'm asking the person there i don
't really understand what you're saying
please help me understand that but when you do go into i
agree with you that's crappy okay well we
can say that but then it's the next question is well is
there anything we want to do about it
and then that's when we get into to me the deliberative
process of that so i don't have a
problem with it on on discussion if there's a if there's a
time limit on it and we can incorporate
that into the uh into the agenda uh council member husbeth
thank you i'm just trying to
process the question so that i can come to a reasonable
answer and the question continues
to come back to me what what can't be accomplished so the
the citizen is going to talk for four
minutes on a topic so i disagree that you wouldn't have
enough information to then communicate to
staff hey i want to look into this further so for example
uh citizen donnelly speeches on speaks on
trees then he get he surmises what that is in that four
minutes and we would say hey we need to look
into that can we please follow up with him i don't
understand the additional back and forth would not
necessarily elicit new information it may some more details
some more fact patterns but if we're
going to have that in a work session then we would get all
that then so i just don't i don't see the
the value in that conversation then and that all this forgo
es the fact that if a citizen speaks on
tuesday we're not back till the next tuesday but my point
is you can call them up you can meet them
you can talk to them you can visit with them you can have
coffee with them you can have lunch
dinner there's all these other avenues where you're free to
talk to them and explore everything you
want and email the city manager staff directly get answers
outside of this this all these rules and
so i need someone to help me understand if you give me the
option of this thin this thin narrow
window where i can talk to them versus hey can you meet me
wednesday and we can absolutely explore
everything and we can pull every record you want uh you
know on on thursday that i don't what is the
value in having that conversation when you can't do
anything versus hey i can help you all day long
thursday so that that to me is where i struggle the
discussion doesn't i need i've not heard anyone
give me anything that can't be done wednesday morning one
two i don't think that if you talk
for four minutes and your your point isn't made and i ask
you a question for clarification and
your point still isn't made then that's troublesome but i i
thought i've never seen that be the issue
the issue is they make a clear concise statement in four
minutes and then we could then say we want
to take that to um uh staff to review to look into to get
answers but i guess that i leave it with at
my question is on tuesday you have this thin rule on wed
nesday you're free to do whatever you want
to help that citizen to the fullest why why why are we opt
ing for tuesday to hide no so why don't
we aim for wednesday and be real helpful that that's my
thought i think if we amended the posting
to allow for asking staff for uh to follow up on on a
citizen concern it would be easy
remember from tim less it would be easy to say well well
citizen a i share your concern about
staffing issues uh city manager please uh put this on a
work session or city manager please do a
follow-up uh and we would be allowed to do that at that
particular point rather than waiting
till the end of the meeting uh we could we could get in our
little uh statement of opinion uh to
endorse or you know whatever that we want to say and then
just pass it on so that we could have
further discussion later on uh so so that's what i'm most
comfortable with in terms of an amendment
at this time okay so uh what i'm hearing is there's a
couple council members who want it to be posted
specifically for discussion um and then what i'm hearing
there's a couple council members
who are advocating for a modified posting that will allow a
council member to ask city staff and
of course ask city staff to put it on a future agenda and
if there's any questions of clarification
that the council needs to ask of the citizen uh making the
report in order to provide clearer
direction to staff they have the opportunity to do that i
believe based upon the current posting
is that is that correct it's my understanding that that's
correct and that's what i'm hearing
for the first one the suggestion that council member ryan i
believe you suggested yeah but
if you're if you're going to instruct city staff to to put
it on a future agenda item if you need
more information in order to help staff out you can either
do it right then asking a question of
clarification or you can call them up the next day and uh
have a much more at-length conversation
with them in depth uh that so um so it seems like we have
two different objects council member
breaks so just back to the discussion work for me that that
means conversation legal terms it means
a discussion um having it on there allows me to ask a
question and to follow up with that
individual who has taken their time to come to a meeting
present on the record something to council
what i say in that meeting goes on the record and that
means something to me what i say on
wednesday can be anything well i'm just i'm just saying it
makes it legal for me to do that by
having that little word in there because right now we're
hearing that it's it's dangerous right it's
risky it's risky it's risky so we don't have to have
discussion or conversation but if it's on
there and we choose to it protects us as a council that's
why we're having this meeting today
if i may sure yeah so i don't understand record versus not
record i just i just don't understand
because i went out to a neighborhood by myself sat there
for an hour talked worked talked worked
came back with staff for about 30 minutes talked worked and
got about four or five things done and
then i sent a text message another time and got about three
things done and all of that off the
record and so for me i think that carries more weight as
far as getting things done for the
citizens and resolving the issue right because and i'll go
back since everyone's uh since i'll
switch gears so the fireman issue i i'd challenge citizens
to bring me to applications that were
denied right i mean i mean so there's there's opportunities
outside of this to say hey submit
what what i'm missing you know and so uh for me that that's
my that's my key i don't understand
the value of on the record maybe someone can explain that
to me and then two um i'm more
focused and hypersensitive on getting getting the issue uh
resolved to the satisfaction of the
citizen uh and until i understand the value of that
conversation on record versus meeting with
them wednesday and having it resolved by end of the week
that's just important to me sure
yes councilmember gregory well i'm wondering if if we're
ready to give staff direction on uh
councilmember ryan's recommendation to make an amendment so
that we could ask
give staff direction at that particular point uh yeah i i
really i'm not sure where the other two
council members went but i'd certainly like to have them
present when we give direction on this so
um if someone could maybe tell them that we're trying to
have a discussion here and if they want
to be a part of it to come in and participate i think that
they were aware of the discussion going
on and depending on the direction given there may be a
strong possibility that section 2-29 your
council rules procedure would likewise have to be amended
to because your agenda some of the postings
and wording is also appears in section 2-29 i can't tell
you for certain but if that's the direction
and you see an amendment to 2-29 that's that's that's the
uh the basis for that okay so question
of clarification yes go ahead no no i was going to ask a
question generally but to to kill time but
um you can go ahead no no i mean it was on it was on topic
but it was let time live yeah yeah no
i guess my question is when councilmember briggs talks
about asking a question and having
she refers to it as a conversation all right so my
understanding is you can ask if you're giving a
report mr leo i really help me understand what you meant by
x or help me understand what you meant
here or this is a question i have about this problem are
you in other words this isn't i mean
we are allowed to ask questions of clarification is that is
that correct that is correct i think
the reason why you get there is the because there is an
actual posting that's actually there and so
that gives you some flexibility but it's still risky
because those postings are not very well
worded or these sometimes the speaker's straight you mean
the postings for the individual report
items yes sir the actual like 3b1 3b2 are you talking about
3b the caption on 3b on the 3b
and then one two or three kind of if i go back right let me
go back and show you
you know um so you know let's let's take the one by miss ar
mentor regarding gas
plant contracts it's just a very general term what specific
is you know what contracts issue
referring to may get off topic into something related
issues right and then the discussion
devolves and so you know it's sometimes when they word it
they don't they're not very clear
another one that's out there that's commonly posted is
somebody wanting to speak about city
corrupt city government i it's it's too broad of a topic to
really understand what exactly
the discussion is going to entail so that but so even with
that i mean that that's the risk you
take if you engage in any type of discussion with the with
the person the clarification question i
think that's you have sufficient leeway to make sure that
you understand what they're trying to
get across or or something that you didn't understand but
if you start just having that
general discussion with them then because that does that is
part of the uh the definition of
a meeting where you yourselves have a discussion with a
third party which would include a member
of the public that's where you start going into risky
territory and so it my advice was to add
something to give you that comfort so that you have
assurance you can engage in that and i think
that's um where some of the council members are coming from
to add you know if they wanted to to
engage in something that you know at any one of these items
council members may ask questions
and engage in discussion with the applicant for to make
sure they understand the the actual item
they're presenting you know something like that if you
choose but okay it gives you better comfort
all right so council member briggs i'm trying to understand
what so what i heard you say city attorney
was that we do allow questions of clarification but as it's
currently posted it's still a little
i don't say gray but it's it's not as clear as maybe we
would like it to be is that my understanding
yes i mean when you compare with all the other ones that we
do as city staff i mean we're very
clear of what we're going to discuss with you and we have
the backup so we limit that okay that's not
okay this is all stemming from this video yes this video
which says that the council members
cannot discuss or that they can only ask questions of
clarification so we've got two different things
that we're getting sort of conflated here we've got the
video that says we can only ask questions
of clarification but then when we try to nail that down in
what a posting would look like in order to
provide that opportunity that is less risky that mitigates
this risk of an open meetings violation
i'm not getting a whole lot of clarity it seems like what i
'm hearing is
in order to do what the video is saying we can do the video
is saying we can ask questions of
clarification okay but what i'm hearing is in order to do
that with less risk to do it more cleanly
we need to have some different type of posting with the
word discuss in there to try to make that more
clean more legally palatable is that is that am i saying
this correctly no that's exactly
correct and once you start you know at what point does a
clarification asking clarification
clarification questions turn into discussion and that that
's there is no bright line because if you
if you keep going back and forth asking the clarification
questions have you now crossed
the line into a discussion under the open means that okay i
i don't know but but it's possible
all right so councilmember briggs a couple of things couple
of clarifying questions i would
like to ask you sort of a joke so you had asked that we
remove from the video i think it was the
line about that the council cannot do anything but asking
clarifying questions is that did i
hear that right or was i incorrect in that well if we add
in the discussion we would need to
remove that part from the video because then we could have
a we could ask other questions
okay all right and so then the other one was you had
mentioned in response to councilmember hudspeth's
comments that um the difference for you is not so much the
content of your discussion or question
and answer session it's that it would be to use your words
on the record meaning part of the legal
record of the meeting as compared to you could have the
exact same discussion outside the meet
outside the meeting and that's really one of the also del
ineating factors for you is that is that
understanding both of those right right yes those two that
content and the information and it being
public record okay all right of that conversation okay
fantastic all right thank you i appreciate
that councilmember gregory thanks i think one of the
important things that we've got to get
step back and remember is that this whole conversation is
not just about following the
letter of the law but it's about the item that comes up all
the time which is transparency
and that we do not want to be engaged in a discussion on an
issue that we haven't notified
the citizens that we're going to be engaging in that's
transparency to to to have a full-fledged
discussion on an issue that that hasn't been posted uh says
to the public we're meeting we're
meeting and we're discussing stuff and we're we're we're
giving directions and maybe taking action on
something that hadn't been posted and that's why it's
particularly important in section c where we
have additional citizen reports where there's no posting at
all that that we simply listen because
anything else we're starting to go down the path of deliber
ating on something that hasn't been
posted that the citizens have not been given notice of you
know as far as asking clarification
questions and you know would it be if a citizen came up and
said i'm concerned about the hiring
practices you've not hired enough of this category of
person in this particular department could a
clarifying question be can you give me the the information
now or at a future time on people
who have applied that have not been uh you know who have
been rejected could you ask that kind of
a question to the citizen if it was posted that that's what
the citizen was going to be speaking
yes you could ask it that yes okay the the concern i have
is when everybody starts asking
clarification questions on one speaker or multi questions
between back and forth a council member
and the speaker that can get us into yeah i mean i think it
's just i'm talking about yes question
just clarification yes okay that's my right thank you very
i don't know if this is something you
feel comfortable replying to right now for something you
want to look into a little further but 551.042
which is what we used as part of our ending items is about
inquiries made at a meeting
and the section b talks about any deliberation or
discussion about the subject of the inquiry
shall be limited to a proposal to place the subject on the
agenda of a subsequent meeting
that and i think that that's where we're kind of heading on
this is that we need to make sure
that we're following that particular section right and that
's great that earlier you had when i was
asked the question about could we mention i think was
council member gregory who suggested this can
we actually add some take the opportunity to put it on a
future agenda item i said on agenda doesn't
say so but under the law and that's what i was referencing
this as you can go ahead yes council
member griggs so on the um citizens report right now they
are posted it gives a topic
what if we ask the people when they sign up if they send a
powerpoint in
would that help i mean if that was loaded and they could
click on it and that wasn't i mean
people are worried about not knowing what to discuss i mean
that would be the information
that we would be seeing i mean i'm just asking i'm seeing i
mean and those those you know just
like a court i'm going to take the same position that a
court judge would take we didn't review it
on a case-by-case basis i can't give you a definitive
answer it depends on what what is being submitted
oh i'm talking about the the presentations that they they
do for us right and in the meeting
right but it also depends again what what is in there you
know if it's um if it helps narrow the
focus of what the topic is to the caption you know maybe
again it'll just have to just have to depend
what they're submitting and what they they show us at the
meeting it may be okay it may not i i
can't tell you that right now okay council member gregory
because you're saying that that a citizen
might say i want to speak on i'm taking the first item up
to the renewable dentin plan
but their powerpoint has two slides on that and seven
slides on something that's totally
unrelated and therefore it wouldn't really follow the
posting is that what you're kind of referring
to that that is part of the process they can be talking
about renewable dentin plan and they have
they start varying into the discussion about the portzilla
engines right which is you know
remotely related to the plan but it's it's a separate you
know item
so i'm going to i'm going to make a a suggestion we've had
we've heard that y'all want to proceed
with just the agenda part that we can put it on the agenda
at this time in the spirit of collaboration
because this is something that we would be trying that
outside of y'all's this is what i'm saying
is be something new that we would be trying what i'm going
to propose so i like to do things very
incrementally so i have no problem with if we posted this
to where obviously we can put it on
the agenda if we wanted to i think that's given in what i'm
going to say that that we could post it
for discussion provide five minutes total between the
presentation and discussion right now they get
four minutes so that would give us a minute for deliber
ation if the presentation not deliberation
discussion let me back up use my words very clearly and
precisely discussion if they use two minutes
or three minutes then you've got if people want to discuss
it for a couple of minutes they can
that way it would allow us to take a look at it see how it
goes i don't want to leave any impression
because i don't think it's the impression of any of the
council members that we're trying to
stifle discussion or i'm not going to say debate but
discussion so i don't mind trying it with some
limited discussion some of that would be dependent upon the
presenter because they would still
i'm not i don't want to give them five minutes of
presentation i'm saying you've got four minutes
as you do now and if there's a minute worth of discussion
that's fine if you only take two or
three minutes if there's a discussion of up to a couple of
minutes we're not out any more time than
what we would have been normally other than a minute for
each speaker and i would the council
would have to rely upon me and the city attorney to make
sure that we stay within posting i think
that we've had a i think sometimes we do give some leeway
where we could probably tie it back in a very
distant way but we do that because we don't want to stifle
but i'm okay with
the just limiting it to the agenda posting but in the
spirit of trying to get others
you know to give their voice part of this discussion that's
the reason i'm trying to
find some some common ground council member rataspey i'm
going to ask you to
track him with you okay i'm gonna but i'd like to go about
it a different way because i don't
that that just never i want to work on that video and some
other things and narrow it to what we're
going to rent we're going to constantly enforce because i i
listened to recent cases and that
that vacillating and enforcement is the wiggle room that
gets people in trouble you you told this
person five minutes succinctly you gave this person because
there's an eight-year-old kid's
five and a half there opens a window for someone to start
pointing so i'm trying to
get rid of all those kind of chinks in armor i would almost
ask that we insert a break
so to your tears to the spirit it's a three minute break
whatever four minute break after the
comments so four minute comments each of those three people
four minute break that then each
individual council member can go interview converse do
whatever they want in the meeting it's not on
the record i don't know i still have not had anyone speak
to me on on the the the value of that and
that's just an ignorance on my part maybe i'm missing it
but no one's explained it to me and so
but i think it satisfies the spirit of what you're doing
keeps us consistent in our in our
enforcement and allows for anyone to go have all the
conversations they want you round us back up
we get back started with the regular meeting i mean that's
that's a thought just off the top
of my head piggybacking off what you said understanding
that no one wants to cut off an
eight-year-old kid that's talking and say hey that's five
minutes gotcha you know that that's not
going to happen regularly just because it's not and so i
want consistent enforcement or we don't
need to enforce at all okay well if i may respond to that i
appreciate that and i will tell you
unless you sat in the chair and had to make those decisions
on the fly i can i'm not one who's going
to when the bell goes off turn somebody's mic off obviously
if they're at their stopping point
then and most people stop if they're in the middle of a
sentence or a thought so yes could
somebody say you're treating someone differently i'll have
to say i'm the the chair of the meeting
and those are my sort of executive decisions and i've not
had too much pushback on that i try to be
as consistent as possible and i understand what you're
saying consistency is always always the
best rule and i really try to do that so it is difficult
when the bell rings just to say stop
and that's it i can certainly try to do that better but i
don't think there's ever going to be a point
where that's going to happen that rigidly so point well
taken point well taken yes councilman gravey
i'm really uncomfortable with the five minute break or four
minute break if somebody's out there
and all of a sudden four of us go up that's a that's an
open meetings violation because
it's not on the record at all and we're we're all meeting
with this person in a quorum in the middle
of a council meeting to get more information i don't think
we can do that i'm not i'm not sure
that five minutes total you know four minutes of
presentation in one minute of us asking questions
or giving staff directions is going to be quite sufficient
maybe we we dial it back to a three
minute presentation and three minutes of questioning
something like that i was on behalf of the city
making a presentation at the state committee and we we went
from uh i had written out four minutes
worth of talking points because that's what they were going
to allow us and by the time uh it got
to me they had reduced it down to two minutes and i found a
way to x out the extra verbiage and i
got in all the points in two minutes i wish that everybody
could make their points in four minutes
sometimes at four minutes i still have no idea and when i
ask for clarification i still have no
idea what they're really trying to to to ask us for i think
that's just a problem that some
that we all have with communication sometimes it's a
receiver of the message and sometimes
it's the sender but but i like your general idea of a trial
basis of having a little bit more
discussion okay so i think we any more discussion on this i
think we've come to a point where
so really uh since you guys made your recommended or your
ask first about so let me make sure i
understand it that you want to be able to have the posting
such that if a council member keep at the
status quo with this one modification that a council member
is able to place it on the agenda
or he asked for it to be placed on the agenda at that time
instead of waiting till concluding items
that that is your that is your desire so what i'd like to
do is just sort of get we're going to have
to give the city attorney direction and so the council
members that are are okay with that
direction having heard my thoughts because that's going to
be an alternative unless there's four
who think that the direction is let's try the first
recommendation first so what what are the
thoughts on the recommendation has just stated that we keep
it the status quo we clean it up to
where we can add an agenda item i really do think so let me
make sure i understand keeping it the
status quo with the agenda ability to what do we do with
that sentence in the video
because i'm really concerned that puts us in a double bind
that sentence in the video about
clarifying questions i'm hearing if we have that right now
our posting does not really give us
cover if we decide to ask question we've got ourselves in a
double bind and so uh council
member gregory uh i would like to add in the posting
something that allows us at that particular
time to give staff direction i'm not saying that that's the
only thing that we need to do
and i don't think that we need to wordsmith the video here
after we give staff direction as to
what they do they can review the video and make the
necessary adjustments to make everything
properly aligned okay so is councillor ryan is that what
you understand your proposal yes and i
think the the statement that's in the video concerning
asking clarif questions for clarification
also falls under the 551042 because it says a statement of
specific factual information given
in response to the inquiry a recital of existing policy to
that inquiry it i don't i'm not looking
at taking away our ability to ask them specific questions i
'm just asking to add our ability to
not have to wait until the end of the night okay to put it
on the agenda so question uh erin if we
if the posting incorporates all the provisions of 551. what
oh 42 oh 42 okay specifically in the
posting does that give us additional uh not cover that has
a sort of an apharius assurance it gives
us a more assurance that the video is more in line with our
posting saying yes you can ask questions
with clarification and if we didn't even have the line in
the video we still could do it based upon
551. oh 42 what i had suggested was as as council member r
yan was heading was to add that to the
posting as well we can add some some of that language onto
the posting and then you're okay
okay because i mean council member gregory when you said
that you that staff could adjust the video
but what i've heard and so correct me if i'm wrong what i
've heard today is that our current video is
uh opposition might be too strong a word somewhat contrary
to our legal posting as far as it creates
some gray areas in other words it's saying we can ask
questions of clarification but a current
posting as i'm looking up on the slide here puts that into
question it's possible the argument can't
be made okay well then we need to clean that up no matter
what we don't we don't want this gray area
i mean and so if taking the the the line out of the video
but putting in this 551. oh 42 which does
allow council based upon state law to ask questions of
clarification and receive a response
okay so does everybody understand what council member ryan
and council member gregory are
requesting and is that reflective of what you're requesting
okay so this isn't so much a vote
because we are not taking action we're trying to give staff
direction on how we move this this
this posting issue forward so is the direction from the
council and however y'all want to
express your opposition or approval of the direction we've
obviously got two that are
asking for that in direction okay okay so we have we have
four people that are asking for that
direction which i believe is a consensus based upon the
council and so that is the direction we
will move but what i would like to request is that we put
this on a a three or four month
look okay that we come back sooner than later to see how it
's working to see if it's giving us what
we need and if not then we can we can make another
modification but i want the video and i want that
all cleared up if because first i've heard today that our
video and our current posting is somewhat
in conflict or creates more gray area than it does creates
more certainty creates more uncertainty
than certainty so i want that i want that resolved okay yes
one more question here i hate to belabor
this but when we're talking about the video it's also been
brought up that that this may be an
issue with open meetings law that the part of the video
that says profane and pertinent comments or
comments directed towards an individual council member are
not allowed and my understanding is is
that the council city council can can establish rules for
the conduct of its meeting as long as
they don't violate texas open meetings law does that rule
violate the texas open meetings law
in the rules of decorum that we have in my opinion no they
you have that authority under case law in
the charter to enact rules of decorum most cities have that
and so you have to deal the same the
video that you're referring to that's also part of the
confusion where it says you know direct all
comments to the council's a whole not that's a rule that's
a rule of decorum that's being mixed into
with the texas open meetings act and it's not very clear
and it can create confusion okay thank you
for the answer yes council member briggs so on the rules of
decorum is that something that council
as a whole can change yes they're found in two dash 29 of
your council rules procedure okay
because okay when when will we address those i've not
received any requests for work session
okay any more discussion on this agenda item if not let's
take a five minute break five or ten
minute break right we are reconvening in the meeting of the
dent city council on
october the 10th 2017 it is 359 i should have done this
before but we finished our work session
item report so now we will convene a closed session at 359
we will consider the following items
consultation with attorneys under text government code
section 551.071 deliberations regarding real
property under texas government code section 551.072 and
deliberations regarding personnel
matters under texas government code section 551.074
all right welcome everyone to this special call meeting the
dent city council at 8
7 57 p.m. we do have a quorum and we'll move on to our
consent agenda
any chair would entertain a motion i know we pulled a
couple i believe
e was pulled and c was pulled yes may protein motion to
approve consent agenda items except for c and
e okay we have a motion uh council member gregory thank you
second we have a second for approval of
the consent agenda items for all the items except for c and
e all in favor please signify by raising
your right hand passage unanimously six zero will now take
the pulled items as items for individual
consideration agenda item c consider approval of a
resolution nominating members to the board of
directors of the dental appraisal district and declaring
effective date i believe we had some
questions or just some uh comments about that um council
member ryan do you want a presentation
or did you have some comments or questions or what well i
guess part of it is how is this even
determined i mean it's coming before us and the last date
that we can get it in from what i
understand from the backup is the 15th has this gone
through any committee i see nothing about
that or is this just an automatic uh no sir i i do want to
clarify this is nominations for the board
and so the way the process works is each taxing
jurisdiction is given an opportunity to make
nominations for the board and then there will be a vote
that will be taken by each jurisdiction on
who they would like to vote for for the for the board seats
that will be done before december 15th
so we'll bring that back to you on december 5th for a vote
and that would be amongst all of the
nominations that are received by dcat across the county of
different organizations different
taxing entities of who they recommend be nominated for the
board and then you'll have a number of
votes that you get to cast based on our assessed valuation
so there's 5 000 votes within the entire
central appraisal district and they're divided up amongst
the assessed valuation last year we
had about 192 votes of of the 5 000 and dist had about 658
votes so each taxing entity gets to make
those votes for um for the membership up to five members
sure thank you mayor and would you explain
how those votes are um vivid out to the various uh taxing
entities uh it's done the votes are done
based on the percentage of the tax levy across the county
and if you look in the backup um
an exhibit two in your backup there is a distribution of
the votes for a 2016 levy and
you can see the the different votes of the 5 000 that are
there so in other words if you have
50 of the the tax levy across the appraisal district then
you're going to get 50 of the votes
and if i may yes so i think it would help for people to
understand what the role of the board
of directors for the denton central appraisal district is
because i think that some of the
concerns that have been raised over the years about uh for
example disd having a representative
on that board is that they may somehow influence um what uh
individuals uh tax valuation is
does the board of directors set valuations for people's
property the role of the board is to
oversee the appraisal district hire the chief appraiser and
to make sure policies are set in
place so uh that market value is achieved that's the goal
for the appraisals so they do all handle
all those processes there's also an appraisal review board
if you have a dispute on your property
on the value of that there's a process you can go through
and dispute that and go through that
process but their general role is to provide guidance as a
policy making board for the
appraisal district and how they operate do they review the
uh denton central appraisal district's
budget yes and where does their budget come from where do
they get their money to operate the
revenue their budget is paid by all of the different taxing
entities and it's also a
proportional share of of the tax levy so whatever their
budget is is divided amongst all the taxing
entities across the county okay and so we pay a portion of
that um i think that portion is about
350 000 per year that we pay okay and customer services
that are probably i'm sorry it's
customer ryan yeah i'm not sure if i if i quite got the
answer to you how did we pick these nominees
in in in the process the nominees that that we use were
ones that have been voted on by the council
in the past and so we've submitted these to you for
consideration but certainly the council as a
body could pick any other nominees that you'd want to to
bring forward to the appraisal district
okay and i think i stated earlier that i've got you know
personal problem with who it is it's more
of the and i see no legal problem with it it's just from a
an overall transparency i wouldn't
think that we would want anybody from who is got the power
to influence or to vote on what a tax
rate is for an entity to also have the power to hire the
the chief appraiser who is going to
determine what the values are of the property so that there
's there's not any appearance that if
you don't get it one place you can get it the other side
okay question on that these appointments
for are for how long therefore two-year appointments
yes mayor pro tem so um would you be willing to nominate
the slate of candidates accepting the
two that are elected officials i believe there's two
elected officials on there uh well and i'm
only aware of two people on that list aren't there um there
um let me go back there five
five board members five board members the two that we had
recommended for you in this resolution is
david terry and charles stafford simply again simply
because those are the ones that you'd
previously the councils that previously indented
recommended and voted for and those are the two
elected officials correct i know uh charles stafford is
elected official i don't know about david terry
oh i'm yeah i believe david terry is on the colony city
council if the internet led me correctly
yeah i'd be fine with with that with the non-elected
officials again i just feel like we've
i mean we're a county of a million plus or close there too
at this point that i think we can find
enough individuals to that we don't have to double up on
and take put out a perception of possible
conflict and so i'm looking at the back up the agenda
information sheet which lists the five
and then the one ex officio member where it says the
current board of directors is as follows
and so we're not necessarily voting on those tonight i don
't believe is that right that's
correct uh the vote would be taken on december 5th for
which of the nom which candidates are
nominated by all the taxing jurisdictions so there could be
20 that are nominated or more or a large
number you would then look at the slate of nominees and
cast your votes for the candidates that you
felt like we're most so then what we're doing is just
making a nomination and those have to be in
by when october 15th uh you make a nomination to the board
for someone to be considered for the
board position and then on december 5th i'll be bringing
you back in autumn to ask you to vote
on those candidates the slate of candidates so then the
only two nominations that we're voting on
are the only nominations that we're putting forth today in
this ordinance are the two that we've
been talking about that's correct or it could be any any
that you would like to bring forward as a
nomination okay go ahead councilman graver i was thinking
from the background that we were
nominating one two three four five people are we not uh no
sir uh what we had recommended for you
that uh the resolution uh that's in page two of the
recommendation that uh charles stafford and
david terry be nominated you certainly could nominate all
five if if you chose to do so
but the resolution uh would be for just those two
again that was just consistent with what we had done in the
past
oh what got me i'm going to try something and it may lose
the vote sure i don't know but i'm i'm
not at all uncomfortable with with the process as it is
given the fact that these various uh taxing
jurisdictions provide the budget for the the central app
raisal district to operate uh and they're
simply uh helping to oversee the operation to make sure
that it runs smoothly and that it follows
state law the state law requires that the central appraisal
district follow state guidelines as far
as assessing property at market value they can't while
people may perceive that that somebody on
the city council or somebody on the school board or some
other taxing jurisdiction might try to
get it the other way it just doesn't work that way and i
think it's our obligation to try to
explain it so i would i would move that we approve the
resolution as stated it may win it may fail it
may not even get a second but that's my motion that we that
we approve the resolution as presented
okay council member deft well i i've dealt probably for
about 10 years now with with d cad
and i'm not really sure how much influence these people
have really on on the whole process of
determining uh what the property values are what happens is
they use something called mass
appraisal and i've asked several times please explain that
to me i still don't understand it
what happens is is that they do raise the appraisal values
probably close to 50 go up in protest
and virtually every one of them gets them lowered down if
you don't go and protest
you know so i don't know how much influence these guys have
on the whole process but i'm sure they
are important to be there but but you're absolutely right
about the state has that pretty well
regulated but there's a lot it there's a lot of loose
things the way you do it a lot of
a lot of counties just do it every you know every other
year but uh didn't does every year
okay thank you thank you council member duff yes council
member hudspeth
just briefly i'm going to agree with john we just for no
other reason than one the look of it to
the fact that we do need uh it's it's termed for a reason
right it's two year terms it's not open
ended and it's not unlimited terms for a reason that's
because uh it is a new experience fresh
eyes fresh look at it i just think to to just blindly grab
the last two that were there um
we have a list of five here uh and i think we could we
could utilize that list better are you
talking about the five in the uh the agenda information
sheet i just wanted to clarify
efforts uh connie smith david terry mike haslund robert gal
gar are those the five we're talking
about those are the five existing board members i just
wanted to clarify okay all right okay all
right um well i don't have a i think being this late in the
game first of all if we don't nominate
these then i don't know if we are submitting any
nominations so we could submit no nominations
that's correct um and so uh i certainly think that this is
something that we could look at
in the next cycle and try to get a little bit more in front
of than the last meeting before
the deadline i don't think i'm going to have an objection
at this particular time i mean i've
i think i probably nominated charles stafford several times
the the board the chief appraiser
is the mayor of the city of lewisville that's correct so um
i think that i'm going to
um agree with the sentiments that i think next time is a
good time to take a look at this
and say hey do we need some additional eyes that may have
some different perspectives
having not addressed this with mr stafford or mr terry up
to this point i would hesitate to
necessarily do that on this timing if i thought there was
something really egregious with with
what's happening i would agree with it but having been on
this council for many years and probably
and made these appointments in the past and mr stafford for
sure being one of them i think it
would be a reversal for me that i would feel more
comfortable with doing it on the next cycle what
kind of have i can have a conversation uh and those kind of
things so i i don't disagree with
the sentiment i just maybe have a difference on the timing
of it um so those are my thoughts
but we do have a mo any other comments because we do have
at least a motion and uh
and so if if i will call for a second and not leave it open
very much longer
if there's going to be a second to the motion
the motion to approve the motion to approve these people
okay i'm going to what's what's the deadline that we have
october 15th is the deadline to
submit uh nominations okay which is next week yes sir okay
all right well if if by the time
i finish this sentence with my breath somebody hasn't
called in we are going to the the motion
will die for a lack of second so it's official that
particular motion dies for a lack of second
and the chair would entertain any other motion or inaction
on this item altogether it just depends
on what happens uh council member ryan i would move that we
not submit any names at this time for
for this list and that we ask staff when this comes up in
two years that in a year and six
months that we start getting involved at that point and
looking at okay our nominations might be
and uh do we have a a second on that second all right and i
just want to make a point of
clarification i think it's important for me to say this i
've been told many many many times
that as chair i cannot make a motion nor can i second a
motion so i just want to make sure that
i make that statement that i'm not able to do that by the
rules so we have a a motion and a second to
not submit a slate of candidates for nomination which would
then be voted upon in december is that
my understanding that's correct we'll bring back all the
nominations from the district and we'll
submit those to you for your uh your consideration okay all
those in favor of that motion please
signify by raising your right hand all those opposed to
that motion signify by raising your
right hand uh well that is a that is a tie and in my
estimation mr city attorney that means that
that motion fails is that correct actually under your
council rules of procedure when it's you have
six members and it results in a tie it automatically goes
to the next council meeting at which a full
okay body can i stand corrected that's why we have a city
attorney of course the point will be moot
right at that point because it will be after the deadline
so basically uh the motion resulted the
the vote resulted in a tie and pursuant to city attorney
yes council member mayor pro tem well i'd
like to make my own motion and see if i can get four votes
for it okay sure sure sure we haven't
closed the agenda item out yet i'd like to nominate robert
gallagher and mike has it as our
two nominees for this particular position because i would
like to see us nominate people
i have a question yes council member uh are all of the
board members
terms up at this time or do these tag with those terms do
are those people even needing to be
nominated at this time all five of them expire after two
years so they're all in the two-year
cycle so they're all subject to be nominated do we have any
do we have any biographical data on those
people i don't have that uh what available but well i guess
um we do have a motion on the table
yes according to the internet there's one dentist and one
attorney and neither of them are elected
to office that i could see okay so i thought that might
satisfy a need to nominate somebody and also
not have an elected official mayor if i if i could i would
suspect that all five of these members
will be renominated so you'll have an opportunity to vote
on them the question is do you have any
additional nominees beyond what's the current board is that
that might be the better question
is so there's anybody else because i suspect all five of
these will be renominated by their entities
okay well we do have a motion on the table um for mike has
what i believe in robert galgar
is that correct and so the chair would entertain a second
on that i understand what you're saying is
that no matter what happens here the people that we're
maybe choosing to choose someone differently
may still succeed in getting on the board but will be
available for vote yes yes so yes
consider husband second okay so we have a motion and a
second to nominate mike haslet and robert
gallagher uh as our as the nominations from denton all in
favor of that motion please signify by
raising your right hand uh that's three votes all uh
opposed to that motion please signify by
raising your right hand all right we do have a tie which my
understanding is it will go to the
next council meeting and so unless we have another motion
um we will i guess mr city attorney if it's
going to be mute do are we moot are we even going to uh
post it for the i guess we have to but or
we would have to post no because there's no possibility of
any action to meet the deadline
okay all right you also could adopt a higher motion to just
lay on the table and then by the
end of the meeting all that it'll automatically die okay i
mean if you'd like council member uh
i think it's pretty much dead anyway yeah okay yeah we'll
take those two votes that ended in a
tie so we will close this close out this agenda item unless
there's any more discussion all right
thank you you bet i forgot about the time going on to the
next one i apologize for that
agenda item consent agenda item which is turned into an
item for individual consideration agenda
item e consider adoption of an ordinance accepting
competitive proposals and awarding a public works
contract for construction of cedar street parking lot etc
good evening mayor members of council appreciate the
opportunity to visit with you this evening on
cedar street parking lot um got a quick presentation to to
walk you through a couple of
key points and objectives of the uh of the particular
agenda item
so again this is in reference to the reconstruction of the
cedar street parking lot
essentially awarding a contract to uh to quality
construction
so uh this is uh the particular parking lot uh you see city
hall west here uh just on the
right side the parking lot is in this location here the
dark shadow area is actually recycled
asphalt where you can see where the former uh old central
fire station was uh demolished in
the early part of 2016 uh we added some asphalt uh recycled
asphalt in that location to provide
a temporary parking service to uh to allow for additional
uh public parking in the downtown area
until we could get the design completed and move forward
with construction
so uh back in 20th uh early part of 2016 we looked at a
couple of three different options three
different options uh low medium and high uh council at that
point in time um directed staff to move
forward with the high uh option which was the complete
which was the demolition of uh old central
fire station and the reconstruction of that parking lot uh
to include specific components
funding was a was made available in fy16 and then we
initiated design in the early part of 2016
essentially uh 86 parking stalls uh enhanced streetscape
around the facility has about uh four
ada parking spots got uh amenities for um bicycles uh
pedestrian enhanced street uh street and
pedestrian lighting and then we've done some enhancement as
it relates to some of the uh
landscaping to include some bioswales and then with the uh
solid waste preventant we enhanced
the capacity of the um of the solid waste preventment so
that it could take on additional
capacity as you may recall um many of the uh merchants
around the square have their uh solid
waste uh containers on the street so uh we use this
opportunity as part of this design to pull
some of the uh solid waste off the street so direction or
what staff is looking for this
evening is uh moving forward with uh adopting this uh
particular ordinance which would uh
award that to quality excavation uh two other options would
uh obviously not not to advance
that or uh stand down at this point in time this time i'll
take any questions that you may have
let me uh go ahead and open up with a comment the reason
why i know two of us pulled this i
believe you did council member huskies you want to just
pull i'll share with the reason why i
wanted it pulled uh obviously we've been having some
discussions about uh the tiff downtown tiff
and what those funds are used for and we had a major we had
obviously a public meeting about
i guess a couple months ago two or three months ago i can't
even remember and one of the things
that was brought up by the citizenry was well we don't even
have paid parking and the city would
never let people do that i i would prefer my preference
would be to we do have a new tiff
board i believe that's been constituted i mean some people
have rolled off and we've got some
new people my preference would be to you know send it to
the uh tiff board and let them take a look
at this and see if this is a project that they would think
would be a candidate for some of those
funds and if so what amount of money if any they the tiff
board would recommend contributing to
this because these are funds coming from the general fund
that will be directly benefiting
the downtown area and that's sort of the whole tiff
discussion that we've been having so that's
that's my thought on it that's the only reason i pulled it
is to try to give this another look
on do we want any tiff participation in this because it it
's one of the issues specifically
brought up by the public three or four months ago or
however long it was ago when we were talking
about you know the disposition of the tiff so those are all
the comments i have on it council
mayor pro tem i think you had some observations or
questions so can we use at this time can we
designate funds from the tiff towards this project
you mean legally uh financially or from a procedural
standpoint or is that an action
that we're entitled to take and not under this posting but
to answer your question we do have
a downtown tiff board that that request would have to be
run through even though it ultimately benefits us
councilmember hudspeth yeah no i don't
i pulled it for a different reason and so if you could i
have a question so depending on the use
ultimately arrived for city hall west that could affect
that parking lot is that is that actually
um the parking lot would support correct parking lot would
support city hall west facility right
but if there was so if it was used for let's say a some
sort of gathering space whatever that that
would it could increase the number of parking spots needed
it could decrease it could it would i think
tell me if i'm wrong but i think that would vary based the
use of that parking lot and its intention
would vary based on what we ultimately do with city hall
west or city hall west at worst could
affect that parking lot if you have a large crowd downtown
and you have a large event at city hall
west and you know so it they they kind of go together in my
mind but you tell me if i'm wrong
certainly that's an option i mean the the other option to
it would be to to redesign it and pull
out some of the the streetscape and landscaping amenities
and and go with a little more high
intensity but i don't think that that garners much more
than about uh 10 to 15 percent additional
parking spots got it and so my my thought in that would be
it's it's a quarter of a million dollars
being proposed the only thing about it that i like is the
dumpsters being uh set out i think that's
good i think the other part i get it that it's important
but i also understand that we have
sidewalks that that need to be repaired in the downtown
area uh we have lighting issues all up
and down downtown area and so to to i have a hard time it's
a functioning whether you like it or love
it it's a functioning parking lot right now i think a pared
down version that gets us to the
dumpsters because that's a significant issue it gets that's
new and and and affects that i i've
not seen a rendering of what it would look like i saw the
area um but i didn't see um a rendering
so if you have that i'd like to see it but that's that's my
main concern is i can i can give you if
you want to give me um 250 000 of that i can easily show
you where we can light up downtown and
affect a general area downtown versus spend three quarters
of a million dollars on one area downtown
and and get a few lights there i just think it's um it's
absolutely important but i think it's just
not good to in a time when there's so much need for example
uh there's there's no sidewalk uh we
have people going to the um community market and there's no
sidewalk that connects on sycamore
there it just stops right by the the the um um just past
the carol and so there's there's so
many other things where there's pedestrian issues that we
can address uh so i just have a hard time
and that's why i pulled it because i don't think it's a
good uh use of if we have if we've
allocated and again conjunction with the tiff funds sure if
we're talking about an entire swath of
area now we're lighting up locus of locus or pardon me yes
locus coming uh north from the square
there's businesses all along there down the post office and
there's no lights to be seen you know
and so i think uh when we're talking about uh spending
money downtown to to take uh that amount
of money and and invest it in one particular area i have a
problem with but for again the trash cans
and and that that component is is key all right did i see
yes thank you yes a couple of questions
um the money was allocated has already been allocated right
it's been program which budget
it was uh cl funds and uh cl funds and uh fy 16 so so the
funds have already been allocated
certificates of obligation from 2016 2016 correct right um
the bids that we got
they're good for how long i believe we've got 120 days 120
days we have some time is it possible
that we authorize this to move ahead now and um and if the
tiff board decides that they want to fund
this then then uh they could do that at a later time and uh
simply reimburse the uh the city from
the so that we could pay off the co's early or or maybe not
even have to pay all off
maybe not even have to borrow at all or have we already
borrowed the money
bonds have been sold the bonds have been sold so we already
have the money so if the tiff fund
decided to fund it if the tiff board recommended to fund it
or if the council recommended to fund it
how would we handle the co's that have already been sold
those might be applied to other parking
lots um on an identified needs list that we have okay uh do
we have all of the members on the
current tip board i think that we're missing uh that we're
one council member short on that board
i thought that we had a member that that got off no you
didn't get off
yes i believe gerard and i have been are on the board as a
support okay we haven't had any
meetings though but my concern about i appreciate the
issues that council member hunts with raised
and i i agree that that that the trash revetments are very
important this does actually enhance
lighting in an area that needs some enhanced lighting uh
just just a block away from the square
the the question that i get as often as any other question
of the concern that i get raised as often
as any other is parking downtown and uh and a regular
concern that gee the city has built a
parking lot that doesn't meet city requirements and we need
to do that we need to move ahead and
get those get that parking lot done as soon as we can um
the um i think that we need to keep the
design the way it is to squeeze five more spots or six more
spots out of it uh would mean taking
away some of the landscaping that provides some shade that
provides some uh respites for people
that are walking or riding bicycles uh so i think i think
that the design was important to do the
way that we did so that it provides not only for parking
but a little bit of green space in an area
that needs to desperately uh council member hussle yeah i
i looked at google maps and i couldn't find city hall west
and then there's a stretch of of
businesses there that kind of face out that's an alley uh
that it if you go straight up there's
there's an alley so there's no businesses that face out
that if you drive out of that parking
lot and go towards oak there's that's an alley there's no
businesses that face there so and if
you're talking about gravel lots then we're just going to
leave the one directly across from this
building and say that we've i mean so we're not going to
eradicate gravel lots tonight and by
approving this that that is a factor and it is parking and
so i'm going to move uh that sure i
think i can be on board with the um mayor watts that we
move the head send it to the tip board
it's got to go there anyway and let them uh consider it and
then that will give um time for
and it still works within 120 days i believe uh if we could
call a meeting for them to to meet
review it and get some get some input because i just it is
not it's not an area that is i get it
that it's used but it's not highly foot trafficked and will
more people use it sure but also the other
caveat i have is that the reason i'm moving that is we're
going to spend the total cost is going
to be five million dollars whatever that cost to the
citizens is is what it is but we're making
decisions on a parking lot before we finalize the building
directly across the street from the
parking lot and that to me is short-sighted it's just short
-sighted so you made a is your
motion to postpone until and yes and to until i'm sorry
this could be routed through the tiff
board to get their recommendation as to any contributions
towards this project yes sir okay
okay so we have a motion to postpone to move this uh agenda
item to the tiff board for any
recommendations therein uh is there a second on that motion
again i can't make a second
okay any other last call all right okay yes council member
greg reagan then i would move
to approve item one e as presented council member duff all
right we have a motion to
approve account agenda item one e is presented all in favor
please signify by raising your right hand
discussion oh oh yes go ahead yeah i want to have a clear
record that we're going to invest
five million dollars across the street from a brand new
parking lot and we don't know what
we're going to do with it i just want to make sure we're
all on the same page with that i'm not
okay all right so i'll call the vote one more time we have
a motion and a second all in favor
please signify by raising your right hand all opposed by
like sign the motion carries four to two
all right we'll move on to an individual item item for
individual consideration 2a i believe we have
some handouts from staff
and these handouts are the result of the discussions in
closed session regarding
contract for a city council appointee
okay and we're giving two we're giving two handouts one is
a clean handout of an employment
agreement and an ordinance and then the the first handout
was the employment agreement with the
changes and the highlights made regarding our discussion
and things such as that
so take a moment if you would to look through that
and if any questions we do have
human resources here to help us answer that
question yes where does it show the car allowance
page four page four section seven i see it thank you
okay
we have um you know just to go over it we've got the the
date of the agreement the commencement
date the name uh erin lee alp for the for the employee
council appointee initial term
for two years and we see in section three
different various forms of termination and then section
three c which is the 90 day
notice of non-renewal on page two and that if the council
does not give a notice of non-renewal
within 90 days the contract renews automatically for two
years section four defines involuntary
suspension removal section five talks about severance
separation severance pay and note
section 5c which gives some clarification on what triggers
severance and what does not
section seven is automobile allowance we have performance
work hours retirement section 11
talks about the contribution to the icma and how the
employer retains employers still responsible
for paying his percentage into the tmrs those are some of
the major conditions yes councilmember
gregory there seems to represent what we discussed in
closed session i would move approval of this
employment agreement and welcome mr leal to the staff we
have a motion do we have a second i will
second council member ryan we have a second any questions
for discussion any questions comments
do council members need more time to review the contract
all right we have a everybody okay with
all right we have a motion and a second on the employment
agreement for agenda item what was
that i just lost my agenda uh 2a all in favor of that
motion please signify by raising your right
hand all opposed by like sign carries unanimously thank you
all we'll now move on to our agenda item
of concluding items yes um just wanted to be sure that when
we have our uh tiff discussion that we
have some different items that we can present to the tiff
board that may be good uses when it comes
to sidewalks you know i know we have a sidewalk ranking um
system so if we could just pull some
of those things that we've already quantified as being high
priority and bring them in that's my
request okay any other concluding items uh council member r
yan yes i'd like to and i'm not sure how
wide this goes but when it comes to public meetings there
was one on the uh the development code
about a week or so ago and no emails went out to council
members letting us know that that was
taking place and just when there's a public meeting that's
i'm not talking about something that's
being had at pnz or something like that but just a general
town hall that we get noticed so that
when constituents contact us we're aware of of what's going
on and we don't look foolish we have
spoken with the management team about that already thank
you great all right yes council member
gregory i would i would love to ask the city manager to do
even more things to help me from
looking foolish but i'm not sure if it's possible any i've
got a couple anybody else yes customer
husband yeah thank you just just the one thing about the
transparency we discussed earlier with
regard to notices of uh investigations slash making sure
that process is transparent how those two
worlds okay come together just want to have that
conversation and kind of have a process okay
discussion on the process i've got uh several one is uh i
think it's on the agenda when we're talking
about nominations to the city hall west committee isn't
that that's on a hard agenda item isn't it
that will be coming up in the next meeting or two yes so
council members be sure and start thinking
about i think it's three members per council member that we
can nominate for the city hall west
committee uh i want to talk about like a work session um
and it could probably be in combination
with something else on the development code on conveyance
plats had some information about it
conveyance plats today that i'd like to review and
regarding what the city is requiring if you do a
conveyance plat and then the second the last one is what i
mentioned earlier in the meeting
i'd like to get a council a joint council meeting work
session with the denton housing authority
board all the board and uh to go over these uh these
policies and procedures you know having
read the letter from the housing authority um i think it
would be best if we're able to all sit
down and communicate at the same time on what we're all
trying to accomplish here because it
seemed like that uh i'll leave it at that i'd just like to
have a joint meeting with the
denton housing authority board yes thank you are you
thinking about that as maybe one of our luncheon
meetings first monday luncheons or or another meeting no no
that's fine i mean because i want
to we've been um batting around this policy for a long time
and i think there's a lot of
miscommunication i think there's a lot of difference of
opinion on what are the needs and and just
different interests and it's just time to get it aired out
and um we got to we got to get it
taken care of because this is too important of an issue to
not to let it go uh the way it's been
going any other questions or items for concluding items
well so much for a sec is this second
tuesday is this what a second tuesday is we will now stand
adjourned at 8 45 in the evening thank you