Mar 06, 2018 City Council on 2018-03-06 1:00 PM

Good afternoon, welcome to our City Council meeting. Today is Tuesday, March 6th. The time is 1 o'clock. Mayor is at a Kiwanis Club debate. So I will be assisting until he gets here. First item is citizen comments on the consent agenda. Today we have Mr. Gold coming up. Ken Gold. [inaudible] Hold on just a second Ken, if you don't mind. Ken, were you consent agenda? No, no. I was right. Go stand over there for a second and I'll call you. Call the next two items. Seeing no citizen comments on the consent agenda items, we 'll move on to number two, request for clarification. And if this takes too long, Ken, feel free to sit down. Any requests for clarification? Yes, Councilman Hussbett. One thing, let me find it. Wrong piece of paper. Bear with me. Here we go. With respect to, let me get a letter. So it's the, what letter is the thin line thing? Help me out. E. E. There you go. So E, I'm okay with where we are, where we are timeline, but my request of staff is that we look at this process to, I wasn't, my concern is the lack of detail in the application and the lack of ability to weigh it against other requests and forward to point succinctly to a spending mechanism. So, or what they're going to spend it on. And so that's my request that we kind of look at it like hot funds where they have to qualify and give succinct kind of guidance where the money is going so that then we can weigh that against others that would make similar requests. Are you referring to the sponsorship application for the D utton utilities? That's correct. Okay, so you'd like some, you want an informal staff report or? No, just a request for it to come. So, I don't know if informal staff report is the answer or just for staff to look at it and present options on a better way to, to provide more transparency. Okay, Brian's walking up. Excellent. Thank you. Yes, Councilmember Hudson, but we can certainly come back with some perhaps some criteria and a process that we could propose to you consistent with the policy of the council adopted on the sponsorships but to give you better information as it comes forward and maybe outline some criteria which might make it easier to understand if these are a value to the council or not. So we can certainly do that at a future item maybe a future work session. Bring that back to you. Excellent. Yes, thank you. Thank you. Anybody else for clarification. Okay. Now we're on item three. Citizen comments on ethics related work session report items. Ken's turn. Lawyers are notoriously bad at math. This clearly. I'll be very brief on the ethics that you can get bogged down in a lot of detail all I'm really interested in. And a fast reading of the ethics draft that I saw with the agenda is that I would like to see much more emphasis on full and complete disclosure of elected officials in particular board members, city employees, maybe exactly how you do that I'm not going to go into I'm mainly interested in the public officials that are on the top of the heap. Full disclosure, any director indirect financial interest in any proposition before the council. How, no matter how remote get a respect the taxpayers and let us weigh, whether it's important or not but if I don't know it exists, I don't get that option. Full and complete disclosure of any familiar relationships is this guy you're, you're second cousin twice removed on your mother's side, I don't care how that relationship. Actually plays into the particular proposition before you but I need to know that this guy's a relative, and then I 'll weigh it as I see appropriate. Full and complete disclosure of social relationships is this guy, the president of the Rotary Club that you're a member of and you're the vice president, what weight I give that I'll have to wait and see but I need to know, I can't make a decision if I don't know it exists. That's my request is to put a direct section in any ethics ordinance that requires full and complete disclosure of any relationship that might impact the proposition before the council I need to know if you have a business relationship with the person bringing it, I don't know if you're on the actual issue before you but are you in another LLC with this guy that's unrelated to the specific land deal. I'll give it whatever weight I need . But that's up to me, and I can't decide what weight to give it if I don't know it exists. So, again, it's a respect for the taxpayers kind of a concept. Thank you. That's all I got. Okay, we're moving to item number four which is work session reports. Item A is receiver report hold a discussion and give staff direction regarding a draft ethics ordinance from attorney Allen Borges. I decided to roll my R for that one. We have to stop meeting this way. Come on, we're just now starting to have fun. Good afternoon, council, we're here on module number five, which is our first look at the first draft ordinance. This is our attempt to take all the feedback you've given me over the previous four meetings and put them in some sort of order and show how they inter relate to each other. The PowerPoint that we'll go through today doesn't cover every word in the document, but it covers the big concepts in the document. And even then it's probably 50 something slides. And so I'll go through it in order it follows the document in order draft a that you've received. And if there's no issues, well then we can breeze past them . If there's some issues that require more discussion we can linger a little bit longer. For the sake of the public who may be watching viewing this by remote. There was a preface to the ordinance you may have seen I called it editors notes, but try to give them a little bit of history about how we got here and proclaiming that there 's more work to be done. And so I've already started work on what will be draft be just based on some of the written comments we've gotten from citizens from staff from council members. And then of course I won't finish draft be until we finish incorporating today's feedback from this meeting. So if you're ready, we'll go ahead and proceed. I think so. So, the purpose clause I think is one of the more important parts that section 3106. And I don't know if you want to wordsmith it here today but certainly I welcome Council's feedback on this sort of thing. Because I think we talked about the purpose and then later we talked about the expectations. I think it's some of the most important aspects of this ordinance, because when you as the city council set the purpose and you set the expectations, you're communicating to everyone, I think oftentimes people get caught up in the regulatory aspect of ethics codes and get caught up in the enforcement aspect of ethics codes. But really it's a conversation. That's an ongoing dialogue about your values that matters the most. So based on your feedback, I tried to encapsulate some some issues regarding the purpose, but what this is something to help create an environment of integrity or foster an environment of integrity that may already exist. But also I close that section by saying what it was not this is not meant to be a political tool. This is not meant to give folks an extra avenue to harass those that serve city hall. So do we have any feedback or comments on this portion. Councilman Gregory. Thank you, Mayor pro tem. I think it's, I love the wording. You're a good wordsmith. And, and I particularly like the first sentence about fostering an environment of integrity. I think that the second sentence certainly addresses a lot of the concerns that have been raised about increasing public confidence. But I think one of the other main reasons for having an ethic or ethics ordinance is to ensure that those that are making decisions are doing so in a way that is provides responsible stewardship of our city resources and assets. And I don't think it. I've read it a couple of times and I don't think it really says that. Yet there are several sections of the ordinance. As we get down in there that really address that. I think that that if we can get something of that wording in in this in this opening section section 106 I think it would be helpful. Yeah, unless there are people here that object to the notion. The mayor showed up just in time to object right. No, I think that makes a lot of sense and I'm willing to add that in there. Hearing nothing else from Council on that point. Just could you just very briefly just that in that opening section on purpose, that we add a statement that that this ethics ordinance is also about ensuring responsible stewardship of city resources and assets. Skipping over the definition section in the cumulative language, getting to the applicability provisions. This is where we left it on my notes that the code is to apply to city officials, which we define as the mayor and members of the city council. Apply to those former city officials for that two year period vendors to a limited degree and to complainants themselves for a limited degree. Yes, sir. I'm sorry. Do you have a question. Go ahead. Go ahead. My question is, because I, we had a conversation about employees and staff, whether or not to be included or not. And then there was a conversation about the city manager having a policy and we were going to that policy was going to be directly correlated with with this somehow. Can you go over that and how that's going to work out? And if in this ordinance, it'll say see attack or if it references that at all or we are we are working on an ethics ordinance that will mirror many of the provisions and what the council does in our personnel manual. Also, we will apply to a number of purchasing procurement issues as well. So there's some some overlap with HR and procurement. And what I'm likely going to do is bring that forward and have the council adopted via resolution. That's typically my experience how we adopt, you know, personnel handbooks and purchasing rules, either through resolutions or ordinances. I need to talk to the city attorney about that, but that is definitely the intention. Is it possible to do those council to do those on the same this and that on the same? Sure. Yes, go ahead. On item B there. I'm assuming that that's like a former city council member who, who turns off or doesn't get reelected. So, what types of limits are imposed upon someone in that situation based on this. For example, that that they, it will apply to them in a couple ways. Number one, an ethics complaint could still be brought against a council member. After they left the city council. But, you know, adding clarifying language that that's within the two year statute limitations period. So two years from the date that the city council member did something that that individual who's now in the private sector, no longer in public service, could still be the subject of an ethics complaint could still have the Board of Ethics rule that they violated the code when they were a council member for that two year period. The other type of restriction that would exist under draft day would be the prohibition on representing private parties for pay. They still couldn't do that for two years after leaving city service. Okay, I now remember that discussion. But just for a little further clarification, let's say a council member. He was a year and a half out of office, maybe even just six months. And now there's the city is condemning a piece of property on by that council member, because that former council member, and the former council member wants to negotiate for more money, because the city always offers apparently can does that prohibit that person from from those kinds of interactions with the council or no there's nothing in draft day that would prohibit that okay. The only the only provision that we have in draft day, when it comes to representing someone before a city board or commission, or with city staff is doing so for compensation . So it wouldn't, it wouldn't prohibit the current city council from nominating a former city council member to serve on a, as a representative of the city to a regional council of some sort or, or no there's nothing in draft day that would do that. Okay, thank you. A couple thoughts on that. I don't remember. I don't remember a lot of things so obviously as I increase I'm having a birthday this month so that's probably why I don't remember the actual two year on the, the prohibition against representation, which I think that's a good thing. I'm not so sure that two years is something that I mean council agrees with I can agree with it. But to me that seems. I don't remember number one having that specific conversation about two years. And wanted to open that up a little bit to understand exactly what what the, I know what the purpose is. But want to make sure that as Councilmember Gregory alluded to that this does not preclude a former council member from advocating for their own projects, or for things once they 're off council for you know if they're coming for whatever it is to talk with staff or to talk with city council members or to talk with the city manager for projects that they are personally involved in that it's not a purely representation capacity. Am I correct on that. No I don't know that if they're if they are no longer on this. First of all, they're no longer on the city council. They're no longer a city official. So, 99% of this ordinance doesn't apply to them. The only provision of the ordinance that will apply to them is the prohibition on representing parties for compensation before city boards or commissions. And I suppose if your hypothetical is that they're involved in some post public service business venture for which they are compensated. They could not come back to City Hall and advocate for a permit for a variance for a contract without the risk of an ethics complaint being brought against them during that two year period. Okay, I'm saying, I'm just using myself as an example because I'm not gonna use anybody else. I'm off council, and I've got a piece of land that I want to develop personally, that it's my project or it's a project that I'm affiliated with a corporation or something that that's there. This doesn't prevent me from advocating for my own projects for city council for coming before the planning and zoning, where you're having to, you know, advocate for your projects because if it does I have a real problem with that because in some ways that saying, I want to represent someone for pay that you're that that's part of your business but if you've got your own project. How can we say that you don't have the ability to come and advocate for what you, what you're trying to achieve that is not representation of a third party. It's representation of your own project, which may include partners let's say, I'm just, I want to, I just don't I want to make sure that whatever is here is very clear about that, because that could. The whole way that I'm going to agree to say that if somebody serves on council, that when they get off for two years, they have to stop their business, if it's something that they're not representing anyone, they're simply representing themselves in a project coming before staff, or before any other border commission for the council because that that would be a very significant deter rent for people. I don't think draft a does that. But I think it's worth adding some language to the next draft to make it clear that it does not do that. Yes, and I've got a couple more comments go ahead and Councilmember Gregory. Yeah, I'm trying to, is this is jogging my memory about the two years past. I think that there's a two year time frame where somebody could look back at my behavior while I was on council. I wasn't sure that this applied to my future behavior. So, was that another discussion, evolving two years or is that part of this discussion. The two years came from two different sources. Okay. First of all, the city council and one of our work session said that a two year statute of limitations made sense. Six months from when you knew about it two years from the date that it occurred. The other source of the two year mark is from the state statute that governs state officials and state employees, which has the revolving door clause of two years. So that's where the two years came from, whether that's something that makes sense or you want to have in draft be is open for debate and discussion. So to follow up on that so so I'm imagining a situation where a person who is an architect decides to run for city council, they're well trained people, they have a lot of good professional information that would could be valuable during discussions at this table. They turn out of council. But they're an architect and their job is to represent folks and projects. And so they're working on a project for pay. And part of that project is going before a city. Zoning board or, or the planning department to try to get a project through, and they're being paid to represent the owner of the project. But maybe what I'm hearing you say is that they would be in eligible to conduct that kind of business for two years here in the city. They based on draft a that is correct they would be prohibited from coming before you before planning and zoning before Board of Adjustment during that two year. What about before the, the, what about a colleague in their office okay I can't come before you but there's another architect that I'm a partner with, could that other partner come before there's nothing in draft a that would prohibit that other representative of their business would it present that person from meeting with the planning staff working on zoning changes. And so I think that's the nature of their business that you 're, you're really going to risk hurting your business. While you're on council and after you're off because you can't you can't do do a lot of your business that you would normally be doing. And I appreciate you sharing the sources of those because one I do remember discussing which was the two years that you have limitations per se. Once you should have known I can't remember exactly what it is, but I don't remember and you help clarify that that the two years for the exclusion. The time frame the the blackout period so to speak of two years comes from the state ordinance. Okay, I get that. My understanding from that is that's primarily to address people's ability to leave state office and become a lobby ist to go now use all their contacts to begin to represent companies and hold themselves out as someone who 's, which to me is a very different kind of service than if you are here in the city, and you're even if you're a lawyer. I mean even if you're a lawyer or if you're a banker. So I understand the fundamental interest trying to be protected and I don't have a problem with that. There might be some wordsmithing that needs to be done because I certainly want there to be clarity that the, as you said, Alan, the only thing that this applies to if you 're a former city official is in basically two instances, and that is a look back when you were serving. You can't have an ethics violation against you after you've gotten off or something that occurred after you got off, except for what we're discussing on the two year blackout time or whatever time frame we use. So I want to make sure I understand that that if you're a former city official. Or, and or you are running a foul of the prohibition to represent people for pay within, I'm going to use two years because that's what the draft says two years. Other than that, if I'm off City Council, and I don't even know what I would do, I can't even think of an example, but someone can't say hey, six months off to you after you were on Council, I noticed you did this, I'm going to file an ethics complaint against you, it wasn't while I was on. And it wasn't because I'm representing somebody within that two year period, you're saying that there's no jurisdiction for that for a city official I just want to understand if that's what I'm hearing. That's correct. The violation. When, when, when a city official allegedly violated the code would have to take in place while they were a city official. And we could still have jurisdiction, the Board of Ethics have jurisdiction for two years after that, or they violated this representation of another party for compensation provision. I would like that really, and it probably may be spelled out I've read through this thing several times but I'm the two year violation of representations pretty clear. The other one, and also just that these are the only two ways that a formal official can have an ethics violation filed against them once they're off once they are a former city official. I just would like that to be to be clear and that really goes to my question I'm sorry I missed it. It's under definitions. And we talked a lot about it and I don't know if I really got a clear understanding on page five under accused. It says a city official who has been charged in a complaint with having violated this article. It's written out there. At what point does this occur in other words, the charged, because we talked a lot about when does it a complaint is administratively complete if it 's just checked all the boxes. But at what point do we say, you have been charged with an ethics complaint is that I was looking to try to see if there's a specificity that so help me understand that when does that. Somebody could look at me and say, you've been charged. We don't use that terminate terminology. In here obviously, but I think when there is an actionable complaint that is under draft day, when a panel has reviewed it and said if you were to assume that everything in the document is true. It would add up to a violation of this code of ethics. I think that's the same thing that you're saying. Is that what you meant. Yes, and it would be helpful if somehow we in your great talent of wordsmithing. How we can I'm not being for see I'm being very serious. How can we inject from charged, we can sort of capture what you said, because charged has a, you know, an impression that people have based upon you know the criminal fields and, and those kinds of things. If you're saying, yeah, once it passes this benchmark, then it becomes an actionable complaint and maybe that's just it maybe it's a city official who has established, whereas been an actionable complaint establish. I think that may be in the definitions and section 108. Okay, I don't know if that's really addressing what you're saying. Yeah, I think you I think you understand. I think so and I can, I can try to clarify that. Okay, one thing I'll mention is that it's been my experience my own observation that a lot of good people go into public service, whether it's at the state federal or local level. So they learn how the system works so they learn that body of law, with the intent of going private first chance they get. I think that's probably a lot of agencies recruitment slogan come work for us fresh out of school you learn the ropes, then you can flip private side and earn a good living. And I've seen nothing wrong with that system as a fellow who studies and teaches ethics. I don't necessarily think that yields bad conduct, but you get these revolving door provisions because some folks are afraid that an architect an engineer or a lawyer is going to do public service just long enough to flip, and then trade on those relationships trade on some sort of insider knowledge curry favor the fact that they were friends are in the trenches with these people will help get their clients permits approved or contracts voted on. I don't know what the answer is for Denton, and I also don 't know if two years is too long. And that's going to deter good people from serving. Should it be one year. I don't know, but we needed a placeholder of some sort, and I use two years based on those two sources. It's certainly something that we can debate in the future or, or have hearings on, you know what I think would be as I'm saying I don't disagree with you. That there are people who can do that so I guess for me. The point of debarkation would be. Is what you're doing after city service. Different demonstrably and materially different than what you were doing before. In other words, if I am getting on city council, and I haven't been a lobbyist. I've never represented people for pay in front of the city council, and then, or anybody, and all of a sudden, I start doing that. Well, that certainly does raise a question, but if before getting on city council, I'm an architect, and I come before the city, and I have relationships and I do things. And then after city council. So, I'm trying to find it, so I don't mind the two years if somehow we can give us some guiding principles or because what I'm hearing you say is, we just don't want people to have an intentional heart to come in, I'm going to play the system. I'm going to learn the people, I'm going to learn the facts , and I'm going to use this and build upon it so I can go make money afterwards. Immediately. After two years it doesn't matter. But if they're doing those things prior to that, if they're representing people you know advocating, and they're wanting to do the same thing afterwards, I don't know how we've. That hasn't really addressed the issue because they were doing it before does that make, I mean, it does, and I'm not necessarily in favor of a strict revolving door clause that last two years, that's just somewhat common. And if we, you know, I think, and how we get to someone's intent I have no idea in that regard. I think some folks come into city service or county service with no intention of doing it. They like it. They like understanding how the system works. And so when they get out they see some business opportunities and they do that is six months more realistic . Is it a year, I don't know, but I'm certainly well open to plugging in a different number. Councilmember has been. Well, correct me if I'm wrong. But if they're serving on council, they're subject to those rules, as is right, I mean, so if that given the scenarios they've laid out that person is precluded from doing those things for the length of their service. Is that correct. Yes. So, they've already signed up to remove themselves from those prohibited activities for the period of their term. And then you it's just extending to you. My point is it's not brand new. It's not all of a sudden I've been doing this, this entire time and all of a sudden I've got a pivot now that I'm out of office you've pivoted. Once you were elected, and you're just extending that that buffer period, if you will, I mean so it's not that that's where I get lost is it'd be different if while you're elected you're allowed, you're not prohibited. If you leave office, and you are prohibited, our saying is, there's this buffer period between the time you can re engage. And so that it doesn't seem that onerous on me, because you have those conversations with your employer in advance at least I know I have I couldn't be here, if not for my employer saying hey, you know, I'm willing to lose your productivity on Tuesdays, Mondays, whatever that is you know you have those conversations in advance. And so I think that's a little lost on, and just the, and it's evidence by, I mean we're reaching, trying to come up with a, a example that fits right it's not, I give you a ton of readily examples for stuff that I have concerns about, but we're given, I mean our hypothetical is a mile long trying to find something that applies. And so it tells me it's not going to be a regular occurring incident, and and I think there are, unless you're, you're, you're an army of one in your in your business. There are people, other people just step up and cover you just like they have been doing for the past two years. So you're saying you're okay with the two years. Yes, I'm saying I'm okay with it and I don't understand the conversation against it right I'm trying to understand where I'm wrong. And I don't understand that because someone's been covering for you for two years already. Yeah, or four years or if you run you know six years whatever that term is. You have a substitute in place current. And so you're just saying hey continue to substitute for me for this buffer period. Well, I wouldn't categorize it as a right or wrong. I think it's just a matter of, you know, different approaches and different thoughts so I don't think your approach is wrong. I don't think mine's right, because I don't even know if I disagree with you. I just, I didn't understand where this this came from and I just, I just want us to be careful on the unintended consequences that's all I mean that's I'm just wanting to make sure we have a mindful discussion of this. I would like to ask the city manager as far as the staff policy on the revolving door because I know that there's some certain private businesses that have non compete clauses so when you, if you in an industry when you leave that industry you can't go back in so is there a revolving door in the, in the staff policy. At this point, I don't believe that there is. So if you, if we had an employee leaves and it's possible they could come back and do exactly what Alan is stating and try to lead somebody through the process I've had that happen with a number of employees over the years. So one example I can think of is that there was an employee here, and then helped a company get through the system, and then left immediately wanted to go work for that company. This is the kind of thing in my mind that this would prevent that would they would have to wait a year or so two years to go. This doesn't prevent. I mean, this doesn't prevent that if you're saying somebody got a company through the system that employee left and then went for the work to work for the company that they helped to get through the system. Now they can't come to the city and represent them for pay but they could go work for them. I mean, that's not stopping. And this doesn't stop that and or counsel. Okay, yeah, yeah , this doesn't stop that. It's like a non compete. This is just saying you can't come back and represent someone for pay for two years which I don't. I don't have an issue with it. I have probably a little bit more of issue with it than Councilmember husband does, but it's not one that I'm going to hang my hat on I just wanted to understand some, some ideas, I still think if you were doing it, and you decided not to do it. You made a decision of, I'm not going to do it for the two years that I'm are four years or six years I'm on council. So now, what we're telling people is, so you sign up, you add two years to whatever you're wanting to sort of move out of. And I still think it's new for a city our size. And for the kinds of people that we are, you know, inviting to serve all kinds of people. I just think that if you're an architect, great example if you're an architect before and you're representing people and you get on council and you decide not to, you can't because of the ethics, and you get off, I just don't. I don't think it's a dark heart to say I want to now come back and help you guys do something I've already done but. So I'm okay I'm okay with the two years, I would like to see if we can't get it a little bit more tighter. Because this does not say with city staff. Does this mean you can't meet with city staff. I mean, yes, Councilmember Ryan. Well, I guess. One of my concerns I mean, the two years I can kind of adjust a little bit on that but because city official also includes planning and zoning commission members. And Board of Adjustment. That's where my concern is that maybe those two might need to be a little bit less of a time maybe a six month time period for those two that are not quite as deeply involved as a council or a city manager city attorney police chief, those types of people yeah there you want that closer to the two year but zoning Board of Adjustments. I don't see why they would need to have that to your time frame as much or maybe it needs to be more that they can't go before the board that they were on in that time period. That's where they can't they can't lobby in in the area in which they serve. Okay, thank you, Councilmember Gregory and then Council member just as a for clarification. We have a question here. One of our boards and I don't, I don't know but it may be zoning Board of Adjustments. We, we, one of the boards we call for people representing some different trades. So that they have some specific clear knowledge of electrical or plumbing or building is that zoning Board of Adjustment or is that another. That's haps go. Okay, nevermind. Your example of an architect, I think later. There's a provision that somebody can come in and basically ask. Okay, it's what I'm going to do okay. Yeah, yes. So I mean that would be a way that you know for an architect they can come in and do that, and then get the okay to go ahead and, you know, represent them self before the council or, you know, yeah, that's if the panel gave them an advisory opinion state is correct. Yeah, yeah. So I want to follow up on something the mayor mentioned later in your ordinance it's actually on page 12. There's this provision about subsequent work on prior projects. And as it's worded a city official for two years after leaving city service, could not perform work on a compens ated basis related to a contract for the provision of goods services or real thing, or real things of value with the city. That if when they were on the city's service, they substantially participated in the negotiation ward administration of that contract. And so, there is, you know, not. There's the provision about representing before boards or commissions. There's also the provision about working on a project that you actually voted on or help negotiate. And so there's that that third part. Okay, and I'm whole heartedly on board with that. So I guess my question, my outstanding question is, does this preclude meeting with staff. I mean, we talked about specifically before boards and commissions who have legislative authority or advisory authority. Does this preclude having consultation with staff. If you 're called into a meeting and you know their staff there and you're there and you're, you're representing someone, I mean you're there to is that because if it is, I don't remember that that was. It may be in part of it but I don't recall that that was part of the wording. I believe under draft a yes it would cover coming in and working with staff. And so if we need to back that out, clarify that it does not include talking to staff, or that it doesn't include that for Board of Adjustment, bless you and PNC, then we can do that. Well I'm raising the question is not necessarily implying that I'm wanting to change it. I'm just sort of wanting to make sure that I have clarification on it. Sure, if it's not practical or not workable. So, so let me see. And this issue is pretty much down further in the body of the text but since we were dealing with the two years. Is everybody okay with the two years of basically a blackout time before someone can come back for paid representation. I know Councilmember Ryan you had suggested these two different groups. Honestly, I think those could be. I mean if you're PNC member, you yield a lot of influence and you 're sort of in the thick of things and rezoning and, you know, those kind of things so I'm not sure that. You're also legislative in nature that you can. Your opinions have legislative weight. And I'm not saying to eliminate completely I'm just saying if we want to look at someplace we might put lesser than two years. Those would be some areas to. So I tell you what let's do. Because I know that particular statute section is coming up later in the discussion. So, instead of us trying to make a decision on the fly. Let's see how the rest of it pans out and will continue to move forward. But I will say from my perspective, I do want clarity on X officials prior city officials whatever whatever the term is that you use that these are the situations that they're held to the jurisdiction of this code. It happened while you were a city official, or you're in violation of this particular statute. I think that was right. Okay. This will be a fun exercise. Good stuff good stuff. It is, yes, it's important. Moving forward to the expectations I alluded to this earlier in my opening remarks. I think this is important, just as is the purpose clause. This is viewed as more aspirational. But I think it's good data to lead with, and to have as a regular part of your conversations. Do we have any comments or feedback on the expectation provisions which were all on page seven of the ordinance. You know I'm really sorry, I mean when we start getting into the actual drafting my legal hat, I just it's not avoidable me I apologize. Not a problem. When I read section 310 D, which is city officials so place the municipal's interest and concerns of those the city served about personal and individual interests. In essence, that's a fiduciary duty that that's almost the definition of fiduciary. I've got written down here, constitutional rights. So, I mean we changed one of our ordinances on closed sessions that prohibited disclosure disclosure of executive session material that had a quasi criminal wasn't quasi I guess is a criminal penalty on it. We said that that was violative of the right of free speech , constitutional, you know, of the Constitution. So, I'd like to play something in there that says that. Because I also want that for the public that says yes this is what a city council member is is expected to do but it doesn't mean to the waiver, or to the, you know that you're saying somehow I'm relinquishing some of my rights afforded me by. I don't know how you want to say it. Because I think that's important. I mean, because then we could say well you can't talk, you can't do this you can't do that. I'll share that and I'll search for some words to add in there for draft be. I wanted to point out that we got an email from someone talking about the duty to report in section 311 mandates. So I want to make sure I understand this, that report to the fraud waste and abuse hotline. It says shall be considered to be a report under this section. So that doesn't mean of course, if the report is made to the fraud waste abuse hotline my understanding is it can be anonymous and and or confidential and my correct, or does it stay confidential my correct in that any city attorney or my understanding that the person who reports it could be anonymous. And depending on the information submitted it may be confidential as well. So my observation is, if it's known, so if a report to the fraud waste and abuse hotline will satisfy the duty to report. I don't want to call it an affirmative defense but you know you have a duty to report if you know something. And so if the report to the fraud waste and abuse hotline satisfies that. If it's anonymous. How do we, or is it just you take somebody's word, oh I made this report, and therefore. Do you see what I'm saying. I do and I specifically recall Councilman Hudson getting into the point, okay, when we covered it in a work session, which is why I purposefully left this worded as vaguely and as simply as I can. Okay, because I, there was no consensus on the council at the time to have things like a deadline or specific punishment language. And as I recall, where we left it was if if someone is accused of having known about a violation of the ethics code and not having reported it. They could raise it to say I did I called the hotline, it was anonymous. It was you know Thursday around five o'clock , which I understand your system also notes that record. And so I would think that would be enough to get them off the hook for this provision. And that's why I didn't put any more details in it. Is that your understanding. Yeah, no that's, that's spot on I was trying to get it tossed, because, because you can't. This provision talks. Yes, because the, and I was, because you can't, in my mind for someone to do the right thing, you know, and, and, and so to answer your question, where I found a happy space is I segregated the two, you can file a no report that's going to require your name and all that other other stuff, or you can file an anonymous report that is not official doesn't trigger the ethics board, but it makes it satisfies some that requirement to do something right so you've done something. It will be validated or not, I don't know, but you can always cling to hey I did something. But the other side of you want it to be official you want it to be documented you have to go through the process which requires you to rel inquish your anonymity and come forward. Okay, so real quick question just to clarification so I understand. I, I know of something that happened. Instead of filing an official report with a notarized signature of testing to it. I call the fraud waste and abuse hotline and issue a report you know fill out or leave a recording or however it's done . And I don't, you're not required to leave your name so you don't leave your name. In your mind, if someone were to say, Chris you violated the duty to report, because I filed with the fraud waste and abuse hotline, does that therefore clear me of that duty and based upon how you're perceiving the code. Yes, above and beyond because I would, that's not a question, I would, or that's not a requirement, I would put on my elected official right if it's just me evaluating the candidate, whether they reported something that was wrong or not, you know, does he want the whole reporting duty almost thrown out. Absolutely. Okay, because it's just unenforceable it's it's ambiguous and you know, so yes. Okay. All right. Councilmember Gregory, I'm just curious about the mechanics of the whole thing. If, if I decided to use the fraud waste and abuse hotline. I don't have to be anonymous. When I'm when I'm talking into the phone in the messages being recorded I can say, this is Councilmember Dalton Gregory and this is such and such date and such and such time and I'm calling, because I have a duty to report. And here's my report. But my question is, those that process these. If somebody does give their name. Does that, does that stay with the record somewhere. To me that that would seem to be a way to to to have your documentation in your record that you fulfilled your duty to report, but I don't know the mechanics of, you know, it may be anonymous in that they don't release it unless I authorize them to release it. How did you, does anybody know, Mr. City Attorney, do you know how, how, how it works. Are we still learning how to use this tool. I haven't seen any of them from the telephone call in I've seen the ones that are filed electronically, and the print outs will show certain information related to that complaint , you know, if they identify themselves the date, the time, and the substance of the complaint that that's what I've seen there may be other parts of I can't recall right now. But another ones you don't have a name at all. Okay, so on this one. Understand Councilmember husband would like the whole duty to report in general stricken. Anybody else up for that or agree with that. Okay. And then as far as leaving this in I just want a clarification on this duty to report that if a report is made to the fraud waste and abuse hotline that does count and fulfill that duty, so on somehow you can tie it back to the person who's being charged with that duty. Yes. Okay. Yes, sir. So, in my email questions. I wanted to get your thoughts on one in section 311 requiring adding the language in the process, about it and has proof, you know that's under a, you know, because it doesn't. Advance in the process. So it seems like that would need to be a component of it because it's a false notion that you 're going to proceed, if you okay why I have knowledge. Okay, then you get to the next step. Well, do you have proof. No. Well, you have to have that to move through the process. That's just my thought would jumped out at me. All right. Any other questions on the 311 mandates. Oh, yeah. Yeah, go ahead. Oh, thanks. And then I also noted a definition for interest . I don't know if that falls into definitions. If I missed it , forgive me, but says if you have a couple of times it'll say if you have an interest in the issue but I don't know that we have it quantified, is that only when the obligations are triggered by what's, what's been termed a conflicting interest, then that is defined. Okay. All right. Thank you. Councilmember Briggs. Earlier we had a comment from a citizen about complete and full disclosures. Would that fall under the B for financial disclosures. There are disclosures in two forms in this draft day. The first is what you're referring to draft be, which is to firms the requirement to follow state law and to file those . The second one is when we get to conflicting interest a conflict of interest. There's a requirement to file an aff idavit with the city secretary at that point. So we have those disclosures in two places, two different types of disclosure. Okay. All right. So no more questions about the financial disclosures, we get into the substantive meat of the ordinance which is the , the prohibitions and the first one is a conflicting interest. Any questions on three dash 112 or comments on conflicts of interest. Yes, Councilmember Briggs. Is there a way, because we know what defines the conflict of interest, but for some even conflicts are perceived and not documented is there a way. Going back to the statement earlier about complete and full disclosure. Some of the conflicts of interest, I filled out were just perceived. Is that, is that just personal choice or is there a way to go ahead and put that in here, so that anything that we have related will be transparent. I think you can, we can try to have a standard that says anything that you have shall be disclosed. I think the definitions here under conflicting interest are as close as I could get to what the council showed consensus on at a previous work session. I know that I have observed city council members elsewhere, who look at the conflict of interest provision and say yeah I'm not sure that I fall in this definition, but I'm filing an affidavit anyway, I want everyone to know that I have this relationship, and therefore, I'm stepping off the dice and going to get a cup of coffee. And I think that's their own personal sense of ethics and integrity which is to be applauded. If they feel like they cannot objectively decide a matter, or if they're afraid that there'll be a perception out there that they're not objective, and therefore they don't want to tarnish the system. So if we're going to try to craft an ordinance that captures everything we can we can do that. That's not what this does this does provide some very well I'll say pretty low thresholds. I'm sure there are those in the public who don't think this goes far enough. But this is requires far more disclosure and abstention than anything at the state level does, or any other level that I'm aware of. I think the concern with trying to avoid all perceptions of a conflict of interest is a fairly high notion, and probably an impossible notion. You know we talked about one recently where was a question on a zoning change for the University of North Texas had taken a position, and anybody who had ever attended one, one citizen wrote in and said, well, you went to the University of North Texas therefore you have a conflict of interest. Well that's that person's perception. But one person's perception does not constitute reality. It 's just a perception for them. And, and so, I mean, people have perceived that that if you 're voting for a tax rate. You have a conflict of interest because you have to pay taxes but there's a. It's, it applies to everyone. So, so I think sometimes it ends up being just an individual decision. I don't feel uncomfortable about what someone might perceive someone else on council might not feel uncomfortable about that. I just don't know how to address everyone's perceptions because everybody. Everybody's perceptions are based on their, their whole life story. And how they come to a particular point of view. Yes, may put in. When I was looking through this conflict section I didn't see any time period specified. So for instance, what would be the time period that's applicable to ownership of a business entity, or having served on as a board officer or something to that effect. Is it the prior year the current year. I know with our, our state level disclosures I think it's the year before. Yeah. But I'm wondering if it's somewhere in here and I just missed it or if we just never really talked about it, or for reverting to the state guideline. I don't think we talked about it, and I did not include anything in draft day on that it's wise to do so. Normally, you know when you're talking about gross annual income is as reported in the previous tax tax year is the standard that's normally used. What standard we use here is open for discussion. Otherwise, as it reads now, it's at the time it's at the time that the matter is pending before the city. I'm okay with it being. I mean, I'm okay with the way that the state handles it in other words, we're required to file as candidates and office holders by March the sixth or ninth or not the sixth ninth or something personal financial statement and it covers last year. So, I'm okay with saying, maybe the year before up to including the president in other words, give it, because if if it's where it is now if it's only last year then if it's current, then you certainly want to be able to disclose that I don't know what the advantage would be to go back. I mean I guess you could go back two years but when you start going back I mean that might get to be when they're not even on counsel, so, or a candidate. But, so I just throw that out there for discussion and I too I share council member. Gregory sentiment of. I understand about perception of conflict but this is an ethics ordinance that we need to be tight. We need to give a real clear picture of predictability and guidelines. And I think that would throw a level of subjectivity that would would make it difficult because what I perceive to be a conflict somebody might not and vice versa, but here's pretty clear here the rules. Stated, they're much much lower than, and that's not a lower standard it's a higher standard than than the state, the current state laws which is what we were what we were aiming for, from what I understand lower and lower thresholds in the state for sure, you know I mean just because someone may have a conflict as perceived by a member of the public. And that that is always out there, of course, the ability of citizens to say that something don't think something's right and to call someone out on it is always going to remain, but I agree with you mayor when it comes to triggering the enforcement mechanisms of this ordinance. It's always going to be my recommendation that there be some clear standards for that. Yes. Did you have some. The, of conflict of interest talks about ownership of 5% or more voting shares of stock receipt of more than $600 gross annual income from a business entity. And there are a couple of others with business entities, but it doesn't say anything about if you're employed by the school district, or if you're employed by the university, or if you're employed by a business entity. So have we created a gap. Because in the past what we've said is, if you're more than 10% of your income comes from some. Any entity that's doing business. Then, that's a conflict of interest, have we have we om itted something that we shouldn't be omitting. That's a good question. When I look at to it says, and so maybe business entities not what you're talking about was says receipt of more than $600 and gross annual income from a business entity, the university is not a business. So you're saying, what's the definition, do we have a definition of business entity, there it is right there. Okay, so we might could just add to that. Whatever. Or any state agency. I think we've created a loophole that we don't intend to create. Well, I would think that a university is an entity recognized by law, which is in the definition of business entity. But your question is good, and it's easy to add something along the lines of political subdivision or government agency into the definition of a business entity, because it was not the intent to exclude that. And the mayor's right that would fall under B to $600 of your gross income, which we chose $600 because of the IRS 1099 rule. We'll go to Councilmember Ryan and then Councilmember Hussb ett. And I guess one of my questions is on conflict of interest. I guess the only term I can come up with is bundling. I recuse myself on a particular entity or particular nonprofit getting hot tubs. Well, how far up the ladder does that go that I that technically should be recused. Is that you can look at that that's part of the budget so it could go all the way up at what is there something we need to put in there so that when we're looking at a particular entity being that we're voting to give them the funds or that does that exclude me now from any discussion whatsoever on any type of hot funds issue or budget. Yeah, that's that. That becomes the question on. So on what level of does that conflict. How far up the chain is that conflict trigger. So let me make sure I understand so I'm looking at three B six. And I'm going to use the nonprofit as an example serves on the board of director or as an officer of a nonprofit corporation so under this disclosure required definitions that it says has a conflict interest in a pending matter the city official cell disclosed as nature of the conflict by filing a sworn statement of everything. So your question is, you serve on giving hoping board. And we're going to allocate to giving hoping board $10,000 in the budget, which is part of like you said that cumulative grant funding for health and human services. Do we have to like we do it see I liken this to consent agenda. Where, you know, if we have a conflict on the consent agenda, that item gets pulled off and deliberated separately. So that you can recuse so no, your fear is not going to be workable in other words we can't bundle. We can't find a way to pull it out, right and say, you just can't vote on the entity that is requesting the funding, but that doesn't preclude you from voting on everybody else that's requesting funding under that grant program. Right, or when it comes through as a budgetary item, all of those are included in that one and there's no way to separate it at that point. Yeah, and that's a, I think, I think once. And that's maybe something procedurally the council needs to do that maybe at a, at a, when we're a proof. Well, we don't do it really separately, we approve the budget all at once. We take the recommendation but we don't vote, except together so that's a good point. Go ahead. In the past if we've had conflict items and the budget we voted on them separately. Yes, but what I think he's saying is let's say health and human services has 15 agencies in it. And he's conflicted out of one of them. It comes to us to vote as an aggregate amount. And so then we'd have to say okay we're going to vote on these 15 except Councilmember Ryan's got to recuse himself, and we 're gonna have to vote on his separately or we could just say he's recusing and we still leave it in there and vote on it. I mean so whether we split it out. We, we generally will vote on things as a budgetary, you know we plan on on funding, all of this together and then we individually vote, you know to recuse yourself for that individual is is what we have traditionally done, but you still always vote on that big bundle at some point. So, so he could recuse himself from from our deliberations on the human services Advisory Committee recommendations where we vote on that. But after that's done. It becomes part of the whole budget. Does he have to recuse himself the whole budget. This is to me the discussion we 're having now is beyond the scope of the ethics ordinance this is a policy and procedure for city council rules and procedures so we need to somebody flag that we need to address that, because that's a good question. We're not going to, we don 't want to solve that in this ordinance. We want to figure out a way as we do our deliberations. Having encountered that numerous times typically is what I 've seen happen is the council will go ahead and bundle the approval but it will be clear in the minutes of that sub committee or wherever there will be a record made that there is a conflict that had been notified to the rest of council that there was no official position taken on that by that particular person and they'll go ahead and vote. There are times when you have multiple. You can have multiple business relationships all throughout the budget and most of your council and some cities conflicted out if you took that approach so as long as it's well stated in the minutes it's pretty typical protocol that call it out memorialize it in writing so there's a record and then go ahead and vote is a bundle. Okay. Yes, Councilmember. Regarding gifts. We got well received an email and I think that's the noteworthy for the meals side of things to exclude that I don't know if there's any traction for that, but I think that that that makes good common sense. So one, I'd ask for. If there's, if there's agreement there or if there's not, that's fine. Well I just had a question still on on before we went to gifts but go ahead. Well, I think that's all we 're at 312 right I mean it's all in there. Yeah, okay. Yeah, so, forgive me if I'm ahead but no no no you're good. And then, again, still ahead but be so gifts, be for F. I can't get my head around that paragraph. So can you help me I mean I understand that the lead in is that it is. Where's the lead in. Okay. Tell me where you are again gifts which page nine. Okay, it's gifts. Subsection B. Number four. Okay, here. Super subsection, yes, that's how you. Okay. Yeah, that's technically correct but. And so, you know, if I read for it says anything monetary values such as personal property real property services meals entertainment and travel expenses. And then it gives the definitions and then I just don't understand what F says F creates an exception so you could accept a gift, if you're a longtime business partner gives you a gift, or your uncle gives you a gift, or your best friend from high school gives you a gift. You have those relationships that exist outside of in addition to anything you do at City Hall, and so you 're allowed to accept those, and this code doesn't touch them. That's what F is striving to do. Thank you. So it means that my brother can go ahead and give me that $700 fly rod that I've been hinting at for three years right and from a legal basis I think he should. Thank you. Thank you. I like you. Don't give your brother my cell phone. So to go back to page eight. Under definitions, I'm sorry. Yeah definitions three. See which is deliberations says this is what you're prohibited from doing discussions at the dais voting as a member of the board or commission presentations as a member of the audience before any city board or commission conversing to corresponding conversing to corresponding with other city officials, I don't even it's kind of cool or or conversing or. Okay. So, again, city officials is a pretty distinct definition. I think what we talked about in our workshop was deliber ations means standing down across the board. In other words, I can't just because I don't go before council talk to board, a city official, I'm not going to be meeting with planning staff or somebody like that. In other words, we stand down altogether is that my understanding of what we talked about on that. Yeah, yeah, and I think that's been our practice that that we wouldn't, we wouldn't try to influence staff as they're preparing their recommendations, and that we wouldn't be lobbying our colleagues, individual on on those. And, and our, our, our practice has also been that we wouldn't even sit in the room. If we get a chance to observe the meeting. And if there was a situation where we couldn't observe it on live streaming or telecast. Maybe we could make an exception for that. We don't even sit in the room so that people would suggest that we're giving hand signs. And I want to go back to gifts. Because this is a. And it's more than meals. I mean, I'm going to, you know, I 'll throw out some examples for me. And I'm going to let me see here. Where is it. We got an email from someone who really went into a lot of examples on the meals. And, and I mean, you know, I'm just going to, it's dollar kickbacks and other high dollar paybacks that need to be addressed not meals are good. That is going to be very difficult. And so I'd like to find some way we can because if we're out at let's say we're going to go to NLC and we all get together and somebody and let's say for instance our, our consultant who, you know, we hired and he's working for us currently so he could be a vendor I guess. And as part of going out there, we all meet to, and we don 't have a quorum. We don't meet and have a quorum so we're not in a quorum. But he wants, but he wants to hear she wants to take us out and and buys dinner. I really don't see how that's an issue. Another example. Let's say you're invited to one of the universities here they're grand gala, and you're invited to sit at the President's table. And the tickets are I don't know a couple hundred dollars. I guess if we could say it's the duty of the city council member that's part of their duty but I mean, I think we have to have some practicality here on giving us the ability to operate and if that's not how y'all want to do it that's fine but I just, I need to have some understanding of what kind of flexibility, if there is any. And do we have to say okay well if I'm being invited as a, as a mayor to sit at a table, and it's a $200 ticket. Do I then go ahead and turn that is and is expense to the city. And if so I would like, I would like to have some policies written on that so that, you know, if you're invited somewhere by a dignitary, and you spend money that you know it's at least reimbursable you don't might not want it to be in reverse but you have the option for it to be reversed. So I'm going to throw the floor open I saw Councilmember Ryan. Well I believe this state law allows for meals, if the person paying for the meal is there or something to that extent that I think would work a little better because I can also see if you've had an event that is $75 a ticket type situation. And, you know, the city puts you on the list that you're sitting at their table but you were talking with someone else who had bought a table and says well, you know, I've got space at mine and they put your name down on that list and you end up sitting at their table. Are you now in violation. You know there's, you know, we had a situation this past weekend that several of us were at the same banquet in one person was sitting at a different table. Well, was that a city paid, or if somebody observed that would that have been a meal gift in excess of $50. And so I really think that that that exclusion of if that person is there that handles our vendors when we go to DC handles when you go to a banquet that, you know, you're, you're pretty well covered at that point, or also the neighborhood associations you know might be under 50 but if they invite you for, you know, to come out for a barbecue. I'm talking about Dean yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm talking about Dean and DC. He takes us out. We talked business. And here's why, because it's so nice. It's just so friendly , like, it's awfully nice of our lobbyists to take us out to a very nice meal, and he's super friendly his staff is super friendly. So when it comes time to vote on his contract. I'm thinking about the meal. I didn't vote for his contract but I'm still thinking about it and I think it has an influence so I'm loathe to say that we should carve out an exemption for our vendors because I think in reality it does affect us. And again, my question isn't asking to carve out I'm, that 's a good observation I appreciate. I don't. Wasn't that your concern is that that would be covered by this. No, I'm just trying to understand that I get an idea of how the rule is I mean that's really, I'm just trying to make sure I understand so that I don't inadvertently, you know, commit an act, you know in violation of the rule, and you said I think it impacts our decision if we're with the vendor. In my opinion, I think it does I can't speak for other people, I just think that it does. My understanding, to clarify is I think that it would be included under the definition of a gift because it's a meal by a vendor. No, and I think it yes I think it would be so that was raising my question make sure I understand. I mean, any, any comments. Yes, and then we'll come back over here. You know I am. I'll just say, so I guess that is individual process right because I mean, I've known my dad all my life , and we disagree on everything, you know, and he's done a great job and there's nothing I mean so you know it's like one of those things where we're here we have to make tough decisions all the time and so I think that is he a nice guy certainly, but do we agree no. And so I think if he doesn't cross that threshold I think I can absolutely parse out the vendors side of things , I would be in agreement with you and kind of what john is laid out as far as a way to amend this wording to give some some room, just because I think, especially when you're talking about bank but you're talking about anyone that, well here's a picture of, you know, Councilmember X at a table. So here's my proof. And off we go, you know, now, hopefully in that process it gets DQ but if it doesn't then that individual has to go and defend themselves over hey no here 's, here's my receipts, or whatever you know I so I just think perception wise. And I try I struggle with all of it because there's just a myriad of ways to work around all this. And so I think what we're after is not to get someone getting a free dollar mill at McDonald's that's not the goal, right that we're not trying to motivate people to pay for their own coffee, we're trying to motivate people to do bigger and greater things, or at least reel that in a bit so I like. There's three, you know, we're looking for one. Well, I'm not sure that I'll come back to it. I want to go with Councilmember Gregory, Councilmember Duff and Council member Briggs. Well, another thing that happens in the course of our doing business will go to a conference takes a municipal conference and different evenings of the conference, different vendors, maybe an engineering firm that does business all over the state. Maybe does some business with them. They will host receptions different nights. I don't know how much those receptions per plate cost. But I suspect that at some point in the future. There may be more than $50 a person for what they're doing, you know, for what they're providing. But going to some of those events have been pretty productive in terms of being able to visit with other council members from other cities. And that's where we had some very good discussions that led to the city of Denton adopting Dallas's coordinates regarding predatory lenders. That's an opportunity to meet with state officials that happen to be down there that go to the same reception, and you have a chance to work with them and lobby for some issues for the city of Denton. I'm concerned that we're creating a rule that that it's going to be so strict. This is not so much about about people using this reception to influence us as our opportunity to to network with other people and to actually lobby other folks and others at the state level for things that benefit the city so I don't know if that resonates with anyone or not or if you think that we ought to, at the end of the day of the conference, go to our rooms and have a monastic lifestyle for that evening. Those are big words I'm not sure what all that means. I'm not sure either but it seems good. Obviously fishing trips would be a problem. The problem I have is, where do we draw that line? You know, I think, you know, there's some obvious things that, you know, no that's wrong. And there's other things that, you know, a male here there, I don't know how you draw that line. Okay. All right. Councilmember Briggs. So I would just like to ask our attorney since there seems to be a lot of confusion about if this would affect it or if it wouldn't. So, city picnics , like neighborhood picnics, is that is that prohibited, do we have to count that, according to this ordinance. If you're in, if it's a public event, and you're invited there as part of your public office. I think it falls within the exception created by see. Right, that's what I remember from our previous conversation as well. I'm sorry I mean to cut you off. Oh, go ahead. I mean but just because of the conversation here, I made notes to add to see charity functions and community or neighborhood events, which would address what I've heard the council say, and also what the citizen wrote in. So I would add charity functions and community or neighborhood events to exception see. And I think the notion of going to a reception as part of a TML function would fall into the exception created for be above. A city. Yeah, because you're going there as a city official it's a city conference. And therefore, those expenses spent on a reception would not trigger this ordinance and be exempt from this ordinance. Thank you. Okay, any other comment I think that's a good addition to that because, and then we're just, I think we'll have to have probably some discussion from policies and procedures perspective of that this may require that if you're out somewhere and you're paying for your own meal that you know you can choose or not to seek a reimbursement if it's official city business. And so we probably need to set up some kind of process whereby that becomes a little bit easier. If it doesn't fall into one of those exceptions, if you choose to do that, it doesn't mean that you have to choose to do that. Okay. Yes, go ahead. Oh, yes. Yeah. Oh, don't I'm sorry. Yes, and then we'll come back to you. B to, you know, it says the fair market value of $50 or greater. Shouldn't that be greater than $50. I mean, if you read that, you know $50 is a violation and for 99 is not. Correct. Okay. So you think you think it should be more than $50. Yeah, more than $50. No, yeah, that's a good. That's a good. Good look. Councilmember husband. Yeah. So if I may, and this may be in the weeds but I'm looking at a five, which you know the little e five. Yes. Okay. Yeah. All right. Yeah, the, the, the kind of leading is violation city official uses such persons, official title position. But if you look at five agencies sit officials, specifically representative of the city council, without first authorizing city council to make such representation, and I don't know what the, the charter reads but for example, currently, the mayor and signs the ordinance so so the entire county, I mean part of the entire council votes, but the mayor signs the ordinance so in essence he's repert, he's a representative of the city council. In this instance you're saying he could represent everyone. I just want to know if this lines up with the if it lines up with the current charter or if it's different from the charter in that it says you can't. But we do. No, no, am I reading it wrong. I think, I think what this is about is, if we, if one of us were to go to Austin and testify before a house or Senate committee, or the public utilities board. And we can't represent ourselves as being here on behalf of the entire council there, unless the entire council had passed a resolution regarding that particular issue. You know so you say, I have in my hand this resolution, where the council has taken a position on this issue that you're considering. Otherwise you say, I'm, I'm a member of the city council but I'm only here representing myself, and not the entire council or not the entire city, I think that's what that's what number five is meant to say . And in my notes for the next draft I was going to propose, you know, exempting from this, the mayor the city manager and the city attorney, who I think have inherent powers to represent the city, based on the charter and other ordin ances. Yes. Yeah, is that cool. Yes. Good to be king. Did you have a comment. Did you raise your, yes, and I have two definitions that I was so there's, I think there should be a definition for reck lessly. That's a little F. Two. Or recklessly disclose any. Unless that's a that's a known term and I'm just not aware of it and then also when you, a definition for interference . That's a little H to interfere with criminal and administrative bubble I don't know what that, what your, what all falls into that bucket, or at least I'd like to have that, you know, because someone. I don't want to leave that to interpretation, best we can obviously there is an interpretation of it but I'd like to maybe at least give examples or something that kind of helps the board commission. Understand those decisions better understand what they're, what their task to do. That's easy to do. Yes, sir. So a couple for me. On gifts, little be to where it talks about fair market value. Who determines that. Are we going to have a hearing over what I mean, and I give an example, we all receive at Christmas time at a gift from North Texas Fair Association nuts and things like that. I have no idea what the fair market value of that is. So, how do we determine fair market value. I just pose that as a question. That's something we might need to. And so, another one would be on the in this, we're back really where we started originally and that is under gifts for gifts, little see, which is on page or little D I'm sorry that's on page 10 which is representation of others. So we 're here. So, what we've got is two years, former city officials. Everybody okay with that with maybe some language saying that this and maybe one other issue is one that former officials are subject to, you know, we talked about nauseam about that, but are we everybody okay with, or not everybody or who's not okay or we got to figure out, is this language sufficient. Okay. Well, I think your question came up. You're not being paid to represent somebody else but you're doing it for your own business. Right. Are you excluded, because of the way this is written. Yeah, and I think he's going to try to address that and someone else I'll make it clear. Okay, thank you. So I guess in that regard to if you are part of a business entity where you have other, you know, you're not representing them for money as a third party hire, but you may be representing the business entity as you know part of that. So I just want to make sure I just don't want people to fall into through the cracks on this I really want some clear language on that. Yes, go ahead. We've not talked about it thus far but thank you for the conversation because it brings to mind. What if you have a small business right is there any way to or a small family business right so we're gonna, we're gonna recognize the go keys, I mean, it's all run by, by their family so it's if he were to, if the son were to serve the next person to step up as a brother in the business so it falls into that lineage issue but it's a family run business so it precludes the other family members from picking up where he left off so I think there needs to be some sort of mechanism for business small business owners to either request relief or I don't know how you've seen that handled but it would hamstring someone I mean I initially I was thinking larger companies and there's kind of no connection but if it's a family run business. The next person up is is excluded as well. I don't think draft a would exclude other members of that small family owned business from coming to city hall and lobbying to the extent they want to. It's as defined, it would just be that former city official . Right. Yeah. And to be clear to build on this transfer's notion here that that small family business could still do business with the city. But, but it would require the recusal recusal of that council member, or does that exclude that business from doing any business at all with the city. So what the draft day would do is if account the council member could not vote to let's send all of our fleet maintenance to a local family business right. And then once the votes over resigned from city council and go to work as CEO of that transportation maintenance business. That's where the revolving door part of this would hit them . If they voted for it would not interfere with any contracts in the future would not preclude those businesses from seeking other contracts in the future. The representation item is meant to keep someone from coming back into city hall for a period of time, and basically trading on the relationships they built while they were here. And again I'll say if we think it's unduly harsh on a community this size, then we may want to think about less ening it from two years and some future draft. I'm not in a good position to gauge how harsh it may be in practice, I wouldn't have a problem with one but if everybody's with two I'm fine with that. And maybe it's something that we can leave and we're going to be revisiting this I'm sure there's going to be items as this gets implemented that we need to tweak and we're going to see our scar tissue on this in discussing this before the meeting with some of your management staff and that's going to be my recommendation that you know if nothing else a year after it's been adopted, sit down and look at how it was actually implemented in real life and make the tweaks it may not make it that long, but my recommendation will be if nothing else in a year revisit it and see if it's still working for you. Yes, and then I've got a question. Yeah, and I was gonna, I was gonna say, understanding it better I could get to one year as well. I think that that kind of me is, if you decide not to run again, a year is kind of that middle point if you decide to run again then you're in for another two years, I'm not going to run again. So, in a year kind of that's how I reconcile that listening to the discussion so I think that is a good, good midway point to say you've made a conscious decision not to run again you shouldn't be penalized like you're running again, you know and so that's how I can get get to that one year penalty if you will or buffer. Yes, Council member Ryan on that representation of others and former city officials. Is that in any way, include a city council person from former city first council person from lobbying for a nonprofit that they might have gone on the board after they left and it's, you know, because that's funds, not for them . Personal getting paid. Well, what I'm saying is the person isn't, but you're lobbying for city funds, says if they get paid. That's my understanding. They get it's not if they're getting paid as long as it's not personal compensation. That's right. Then they're fine. That's my understanding. Okay, I just want to make sure that was the case. You can do it free all you want somebody can come back and do it free all you want the NFL is a pretty striking nonprofit corporation. And if you leave city service the NFL hires you to lobby because they want, you know, to use a local practice field, then I think you've got a problem being paid by that nonprofit to come back to city hall and lobby. I do have a question on abuse of resources on G, I guess that's probably gifts. G little G. And it was pointed out in the email we received as well. Several. During election time several organizations will hold forums . And some of them are held in fire stations some of them are held in rec centers. And so, it says here shall be a violation if you use any of these things except to the extent and according to the terms that those resources are generally available to the city council for official city purposes. But I don't think that holding a candidate's form is necessarily an official city purpose. So I, I think it's important to try to find some language that would work. That wouldn't be abusive that, you know that if somebody. And I don't know what that would be I just I mean I remember when I saw that I thought okay that's a that's a valid observation. So, well, yes, and we might want to just to be a little bit more clear because I could see it coming up. If somebody using this in an inappropriate way of saying that that that another exception would be if a council member wanted to have a town hall meeting, as several of our council members do, and they do it in city hall, or they do it in the fire station or library or something like that, that that's that that is considered to be a use. Yes, I think of city council member where to use the city facility for a town hall meeting. That's an official use that would be allowed because we open to any city council member. If we're using the library for a candidates forum. I don't know if the candidate is the sponsor using that library room, or is it the League of Women Voters because if it's the League of Women Voters use again, and they're inviting the candidates that are on the ballot to attend. That doesn't get triggered at all because the city officials not using it the League of Women Voters would be using hypothetically. Yeah, well, yeah, where it says including political purposes. So, there, you may flush that out a little. I should. That 's a good point. And I'll add that if it's really available to citizens, or to the city council or city officials, so I will loosen up. What I'm saying is, really, this is driven by who procures the space in other words, if I were to go out as mayor say, I want to use the library to hold a political, a candidate rally in other words it's, it's free election. If either the DNA neighborhood group or the League of Women Voters or the firefighters Association didn't. They're the ones that secure that place for the purposes of holding a political forum. It's not the city official that's doing it, it's an outside public, you know it's a citizen or an organization of citizens, and that's where you're saying that doesn't trigger that. So use, use of that's going to be a facility use agreement or application. The standard form that some nonprofit or entity fills out. It's not going to be the city official filling that out. Gotcha. You are using very, very noble examples for your hypotheticals. This language is designed for when the city 's backhoe is on your private property, fixing your private problems. That's where these examples come up from, we can't do that. We can't do that. I'm encouraging you not to do that for both ethical and ethical and criminal purposes. Obviously I'm teasing. Okay. All right. Let's go ahead and take a five minute break we're going to try to push through this and if not we may have to. How many more we got on here I think it'll go fairly quickly once we this is the meat of the matter this. Yes, sir. I agree. All right, let's take a five minute break. All right, welcome back to this meeting of the density council we're on agenda item. For a. It is 256. We're moving forward still in our discussion of the draft of the new ethics ordinance so you may proceed. Thank you Mayor Council, we're on. The process of position item, which is on page 12 of your draft, your draft ordinance. If you're ready to discuss that one. Okay. I don't think we're going to have anything dealing with harassment or discrimination I think that the terms included in this draft. I recognize what was decided at our last work session. I know that Councilmember Hudson has asked that we define interfere, which is easy enough to do. Any other questions on this. Seems like we've lost a couple of our council members. I guess we'll move forward. We've already covered subsequent work on prior projects and I'll tighten up some of that language. This, this, unless you have any other issues on the prohib itions that were listed in the ordinance, where we go next is into the mechanics of actually implementing the code. We start with staffing and selecting what city department made the most sense to help administer the mechanics of this, the council indicated the city auditors office. Beyond that we put in a provision regarding legal counsel, giving the city attorney, the direct role and advising the city as a whole, the Board of Ethics in particular. But then this is fairly loosely worded to give the city attorney broad discretion when to bring in outside legal counsel, including when the city council requests that to occur. That training which you know I think is the shortest provision in the entire code but what you're going to hear me say for the hundredth time is probably the most important aspect of the entire code. When it comes to actually creating a culture and getting folks to conduct public affairs in a more ethical way. At this point I left it to the city auditors discretion to come up with a curriculum. I would imagine that many department heads will have influence in that I imagine the city council may want a briefing in that. But at this point I went ahead and just left that with the city auditors office. There's an orientation session that's required for new city officials. There's a consultation or exit interview it's required for departing ones to let them know which aspects of this code will continue to apply to them for a period of time. I know that we received a question regarding orientation for current city officials. After this code has been adopted, and I did not put any language in here mandating that training to occur, I certainly can if you would like me to. But it's going to be one of my recommendations is once council votes on the final version of this, that there is training. And of course if there is a staff version that sort of mirrors this, then it just makes sense. If you want compliance, the emphasis should be on training as much or more than it is on enforcement. In my opinion. Yeah, so I agree with that that it just kind of rolls in organically after it's, it's the training is is set. Because it just it's just that inaugural portion then it kind of it picks up regularly so I'm with that. My other question that I wasn't sure if you had a chance to look at was the sort of conflicts log, if you will, so that people can easily. You'd plug in kind of a name and then for a council member they've made these disclosures and you kind of run it through. Does that make any sense or have you seen people manage the archive of if there's conflicts who it applies to, and I'll use the example of the phases they talked about in a budget processes that you 're prohibited from this phase but then you're back in this phase so there's some moving parts there that kind of, in my mind would need some sort of running tally to understand when someone's in or out. And it also gives you that legacy information if that would come into question. From a management standpoint, right, are you suggesting we add into the code that someone like the city auditor should should create such a database and operate it on a regular basis. That's my thinking to save time versus a question comes up, and you have to source legacy data to answer that question versus a something as simple as a spreadsheet that you can run a quick search across, and it says, No, there's no conflicts here, or yes there's conflicts, and they recuse themselves on this date that date you know so it's for me it's the implementation part and the question arises, how do you answer that question. And the alternative to me seems to be going through a whole bunch of legacy data to figure out our meetings or when was that held versus kind of a running category of those things but would that be based on their disclosure statements or their state and local disclosures. Yes, sir, their disclosures, and yeah, as it kind of as. So in a meeting. I recuse myself. It's noted the subject matter and when I recuse myself is noted, you know, kind of as a part of the minutes. And then it kind of you search that to say, I don't know if that's, that's just my thought I don't know if that if that makes practical sense is just kind of a looking ahead as a way to evaluate as questions come in. It's not something that I've seen I don't know how that would be managed. But what you outlined sounds workable to me. Member Briggs. Okay, so to that, I want to ask our city attorney, what do you do with those recusals now how do we manage those are those in a, in a file, or another paper is that it's possible to make those electronic to Council member has this request. The city secretary after their sign, I prepare them but I turned them over to the city secretary. Okay. Sorry. Yes, Councilmember Briggs, those are maintained in my office. They're on file in my office. And I do know that our financial disclosures have been put online, and they could be readily available, but say, as far as the disclosures. Those can be found by doing open records or whatnot right. Correct. Thank you. Okay. Anybody else on this. Yes. So, and I'm sorry. Sorry. Yes, sir. So for example, so I'm, I'm, if this were passed on, I'm not able to serve on committees this that or other for a period of two years. How would you kind of using your current system how would you know how would you track who's eligible and when right because you're talking about your time frame, and you have to remember has it been two years do you have a way to source that pretty quick. Well that sounds like if everything's resting with the city auditor that perhaps the auditor would be keeping track of all of that. I don't know that if the auditors maintaining all the other parts of this, would you want that to rest with the auditor rather than break it up and put it in a different office. Right. But your current system would, if it did fall to your office would you have a way to easily know who falls where. I'm sure I could work up something. Absolutely. No that answers my question so that's that's my point that it's because you're talking seven council members falling off at different times and then two year time frame from that, it begins to get onerous. And so, if we had something from the beginning from its inception, the captures that in some sort of law versus trying to create a new system I mean it's a spreadsheet that says, you know, George prohibited for till, you know, X amount of time so someone dominates Gerard for a board, and you plug it into a spreadsheet, and I pop up, no, he's not eligible, you know, and you move on. So that's who, whoever. Sure. Whichever department falls under, I think it's easier to have something in place that makes that a quick search. You might want to like, started say at the time the ordin ances approved, so you have a definite beginning time and not try to go back and recreate everything. Exactly. Yes. Thank you. Okay. Anybody question comments. Okay. All right. Board of ethics we can skip that right now wishful thinking , did you say you wanted to delete it is that what you said. The entity that we're calling it at least at this point if you want to stick with it is Board of Ethics. It could be the Ethics Commission it could be the Ethics Review Commission different cities use different names. This is the one there seem to be consensus with last time. I'm appointed by vote of the city council, the number of regular members is seven two year staggered terms. The first ever Board of Ethics will draw straws to make sure there's offsetting terms. And then I tried to capture the best I could the eligibility requirements that the council discussed at our work session. I know there's been some, some public comments on that. Do you want to discuss any particular aspects of the Board of Ethics. Yeah, one is now. Grab this right quick dog. That's my Gregory. Didn't, and it was pointed out and I didn't see it originally but term limit. I don't see that there was a term limit on. There's not okay. I'm for a term limit on the board. I mean, what do we typically have for under two dash 69 I think. Or 65 there's a term limit of three terms for every member of a board of commission and the practice that we followed is two year terms so six years that we have an ordinance overlays all of our boards and commissions, of which this would be one of them. Yes. And unless you want to specifically call out a different term or specify in this ordinance, you can do that, but we already have a general rule for all members of boards and commissions that this council points to. But our economic development partnership board has its own term limit paragraph within the ordinance Is that correct right because that's that's a slightly different board that is correct. Okay, but you know we're whether it's haps go PNC ZBA, they 're all because of the, I mean this we're drafting this new. I would just assume. Have it specifically in here. So that if, because if it changes if let's say the general moreness changes at some point, because we've talked about with someone is appointed and another council member gets elected. So, I just like to have a specific in here if that's possible, but I appreciate you point that out that's that's good. Council member duck did you have to. On eligibility I understand several of the professions that you list. The last one about master craftsman in the building trades is. That that some of the other professions have. And that was my best attempt to capture the notion that was offered by another member of the council and if I botched that then that's on me. And maybe I missed what what the argument was for sure. I think you have some clarification. Yes, so that's me, and it becomes a matter of. They have a so for example, master plumber, it takes 2030 years you have a license at stake, and it's a different career path it's a different understanding it's a different level of experience that would relate to particular issues, and I think that's important to have that variety, and I'll give you an example. I took my driver's test. The DPS officer takes me we go through the neighborhood we come to a stop sign a stop is four way intersection. I make a complete stop and then go through, well he marked off on my test because in the neighborhood he grew up in that stop sign was left off on purpose neighborhood, I grew up in someone stole a stop sign, and I got to stop anyway because it's in someone's house, you know and so that's a different level how how you grew up, your, your experience. Your experiences are going to guide your decision making. So you can't have all legal legal minded people making these decisions because there's people that grew up in different neighborhoods that are going to that are going to come up, and you're looking at the merits of that they do something malicious or did they just make an honest mistake or miss something inadvertently, because of, you know, how they grew up. And so for me, it's important to have different people, but at the same time have a licensing mechanism behind, which has them by a different level of different level of buy in so as a process server. I, you can report to the state Supreme Court, I mean I there's a number there's an association you say hey this guy did something wrong, and there's there's accountability there so those licenses are one hard earned and two, there's a level of accountability there. And for me, this says preference but you could have a board that is comprised of no one in this list. So, I think we need to I mean we have several boards and commissions or boards boards I guess. Yeah, that, that some of them specifically delineate on those specific ones, a type of vocation like for our Animal Services Board Animal Advisory Board. Somebody's got to be a vet, somebody's got to be. So, I think we need to figure out. Because I think it's important to have if we're going to make this a preference of the list. And so the issue may be how many but I think we need to specify that us that somebody or more than one needs to to meet this criteria. Because this is an important, and I appreciate Council member Hussbuss remarks in that you know we want people who have different experiences, different types of approaches but in the end, we're no but in the end we have to enforce and prosecute whatever comes before the Board of Ethics, according to the, the, the ordinance so I think we need to have somehow. How do we say a minimum of two or three people from this list. I mean you don't want to then say well then everybody else can. It's sort of a quandary we're saying we want a preference. But that doesn't really mandate anything. So I just open it up for discussion those are so much my thoughts yes Councilmember. And I think that with our historical landmark commission. We do call for a person representing. That's an architect, someone else that represents certain trades for our hams go, we require certain trades to be represented on those. And if we want to keep this list as it is. And if we do I'm not sure why we wouldn't include architects and engineers also who require to have licenses at state level. But I would, I would think that I would want to say at least three of the members would have or three, three, three or four of the people would have to be. And I want to be more specific, because I would want them to be either attorneys, licensed mediators, or retired jur ists, because that particular training is is more specifically relevant. And I've seen people, I've seen attorneys come from about every neighborhood in the community. So, so I want at least a few people that have some more specialized training that could deal with some of the, let 's face it, the legal terminologies, and the legal definitions that we're dealing with here, and have that kind of discernment. Yeah, comments on that. I mean I don't necessarily have an issue with that. I mean, I agree with Councilman Gregory, but those are the key points I could possibly also include licensed professional counselors in that, because of the confidentiality aspect that they could bring to it, that three or four members should be from those particular groups. What he listed. And I don't have an issue with that. I think we need to have some group from there and recognize what's going to be the purpose of this this isn't a mean, this is a board of ethics it's handling serious potential allegations and has somewhat of a rule of law to have to follow but Councilmember. I kind of think this is this is really kind of guidance, but it's really going to be up to each city council. But I think it's good that we have some guidance of what is your mic on. Oh, yeah, I guess not. Well we got the light. Oh, it has shown you'll have to start over. You know what, if you would because I've listened before when the mic's not on and you just can't hear anything that 'd be greatly appreciated. If I can, if I can remember. No, I think this, this document should be a guideline for the, for the, you know, the people that we put on these boards, but but it's really going to be up to the city councils, now and in the future to make good decisions of who they put on there. But I think I think we do need the guidance. You are opposed to a specific delineation of a certain number from this list, or. I don't see any reason that we can't but you know three or four from that specific people on the list, but it is still going to be up to the future city council. Of course. Yeah. Okay. And then I would imagine they don't have to listen to this anyway. Okay, well, sure. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate that input. I think Councilmember Briggs and then Councilmember Ryan. So on the animal shelter board. There are each position is directly aligned with the seat, like say when a vacancy comes up in my seat, I can only nom inate a worker from the shelter. It can't be a contract worker has to be, or there's very specific rules to whom I can nominate on that board in this seat. And I don't want that to be the case here, as opposed to say the historic landmark mission where you can you have . This is what you need. This is what's open your person can fit, whoever, whomever. So I just want to make sure that when we're talking about specifics that say my seat isn't always going to be a lawyer because on that board for some that's, it's that way. So are you okay with the concept of we'd like to have. We're not going to nominate someone else but we need to ensure that if there is that going into the ordinance that we have this group of three or four that meet somewhere. Just for clarification sake if we can get a little better definition because other than a JP. Are there any other retired jurists that would not be an attorney as well, or is attorney more specific in its definition. Same thing with mediators or their mediators who do not have a law degree. Yes. So, I'm just wondering if maybe we can slim the list down and eliminate retired jurors since the retired jurors would be an attorney. Maybe, I mean, I mean, if they, I mean, I guess you know you've got to keep your law license up but they may decide, I don't want to maintain those mandatory continuing legal educations and I'm sure they all do but I don't have it a problem being in there because it's just a list. And I think it says what our desire is, is to say hey, but because there's a difference between an attorney and a retired jurist from the sense of their experience level in handling cases from either the advocacy perspective, or the fact finder and having to deliberate to make a decision scenario. I mean, as an attorney you're advocating as a jurist you're taking all the facts in, and you're having to make a decision based upon what the advocates have represented to you so there's a different level of experience, different type, let me say, different type of experience. That's why I don't have the problem with that being in there. So, is three okay. I hear is this three okay. All right. Excuse me. Eligibility now there's ineligibility. I've already gotten some feedback regarding item number f3, that it was counsel's preference that it be the third degree. Yeah, I was one I saw the first okay, so that was a mistake in my notes I've corrected that for what draft to be able to say. And that's like down to either nieces or nephews or cousins or something like that. All right, we have alternates. Any question on our alternates or scope of authority. Amendments. All right, advisory opinions. Do we tell what the panel is, or it says a panel of the Board of Ethics. It's a defined term. Rotating three members of the Board of Ethics is a panel. What is that in the definitions that I'm Yes, sir. Okay, let me just go back and I remember seeing that I just want to re familiarize myself with what it is. This is our first view at the ordinance where the panel comes up. It's in essence a rotating ad hoc subcommittee of the Board of Ethics. Yes, Councilmember husband. Thanks here in the advisory section here. One, I'd like in the language where in prohibitions that it 's if you serve pro probation for felony that that would. That would also prohibit service, because what you have is you're accused you're, but you didn't, you're not found guilty you take probation but you still. Is that right. If you're on probation or you're not found guilty. Well, no, I think you could. If you will maybe maybe my terminology is off but if you take a plea bargain. I think you're probably referring to pre trial diversion. Okay, which is a form of post plea or mean a pre plea. Probation, when I understand that something that the district attorney's office has that authority, but I think that's probably what you're referring to yes that's that's what I'm trying to get because we had that issue come up election wise can you run can you not because of this, you know, and so it just gets kind of complicated. And so I think in those instances. Hear if people in disagreement so that I can have a clear understanding. Okay. So this is it is. Page 13, f5. Yes. And so I'd like that, again I want to have a clear understanding where everyone falls on that and then on the looking at. We're not there yet. I'll wait for opinions. Okay, let's let's start over. I think I saw Councilmember, did you have to and then Councilmember Briggs and then customer. I just want to back up to the panel on the definition. I'm sorry. It. Yeah, if we could just sort of question. So, yeah, did somebody have a comment to his, his. Yes. Okay. I don't exactly understand what you're asking for because what this says is that you're ineligible. A person would be ineligible if they have been convicted of a felony or a crime of moral torpitude. Is that, is that not a. Do you think that that's excluding people that we might want to have on them. It's the opposite. Yes, I think you can you can circumvent being convicted. You can admit there's a level of, and I could be using beaten up the terminology but there's a level of, hey, I'm going to circumvent the conviction, but the not. Does that become part of a person's criminal record or is that on their record, would there be a new way of knowing that I don't know. My understanding is there's ways of skirt around it but I mean I'll let Aaron correct me where I'm wrong. As far as when somebody enters in the pre child diversion I think they can be charges ultimately dropped upon compliance so it's not that's not on the record. And the other is the expungement which would treat it as doesn't exist anymore. So what I'm understanding is you're not trying to say you 're trying to say, if we're wanting to exclude people who have a conviction of a felony. We may want. There's some other ways that they can plea or some other procedural processes where we still may not want them to serve that this conviction of a felony may not catch them. In other words, if if I'm under a pre trial diversion, and we might need to get maybe some have to come back with some more information on that specificity as far as the criminal process and criminal procedure process, but you're saying if, even though they weren't quote unquote convicted. If they were on probation for this I look at it as deferred adjudication, you know you get a ticket. You can go defer red adjudication, you're on a probationary period and you're not admitting guilt if you don't have anything done within that period of time, then it then it goes away. That's sort of what you're describing and that's a way to get away from, I would say well I wasn't convicted. I wasn 't. I didn't commit that. In my way of thinking in that regard. If that happens, it's probably. It probably happens because it's a rather minor situation it's a first time offense. And the other thing that happens is there are some people. But if, but if Council members know about that, they could decline to nominate or they declined to vote to, to play as a group to place a person on the committee. People that will not have a conviction of a felony or a crime of moral turpitude that are just, just icky, just lazy, just just just, you know, they, they, you know that they that they have ethical issues themselves, even though they've not been convicted of anything, and you probably wouldn't want to nominate them or vote to put them on. So that you could allow that the nomination and selection process to weed those kinds of folks out. Sure, no, my point is this. It's a known commodity that you can circumvent this. You can circumvent five, if you have a good attorney or you know the legal system well. Sure. And then if we want to, if we want, I don't know why you have it there if you know if you're saying hey, the ones that didn't circumvent it and got caught in the system or got to have a record we're going to exclude those, but those are the ones that that are are significant enough to understand how to subvert the system. We want to reward them by putting them on the list. I mean, I think that's the very person you're trying to catch is someone that works the system for for a reason, you know, and that's just that's just me, but I'm thinking if you're if you're of the mindset that hey here's how I'm going to subvert the system, then I don't know that that I just don't think I don't see how you parse those out. I just don't see how you separate you same crime, you just managed it different. I mean, I don't know. Go ahead. I'm sorry Mayor pro team. I certainly don't agree with every time deferred adjud ication or probation is offered by the district attorney's office. But my understanding is that when it's offered it's because the evidence is not strong enough to actually follow through with a prosecution. So, if that's because of a great lawyer or that's because of the facts of the case is really not our business. The way that this is written is pretty clean in my opinion and if we keep. I mean, if you want to go broader that's fine I just don't think it's addressing the issue that you're bringing up which is that people can get around being scumbags. Yes, they can. We're not going to filter every scumbag through this ordinance. So, that's just reality. Yeah, nevermind. Because if that's the case. Yeah. Okay, saying, if you don't understand why having an ordinance is important, but without going into every bad scenario that could happen then you don't understand why we 're having an ordinance, and that's okay, but you're not going to address every bad situation with a law, I couldn't, I couldn't agree more. So, I haven't. We've got a concern on the floor. Honestly, I don't know enough about it to be able to make an informed decision. It's what I'm hearing is there's not a whole lot of are people okay with the language as presented or do you want more exploration on this particular topic. I'm seeing, I'm not. Okay. Okay. Okay. All right. Mayor I think you had an issue with my definition of icky. No, it was with panel. No, no, no, I was just I was looking at my question about panel though is, we don't have any, any process around in other words, are these just picked each individual time that a panel needs to be convened, you know when you say ad hoc, or is a, is the rotation of, you've got this three member panel that serves for six months, and then, or is it each panel is chosen as the need arises, and that we set in place a process, I guess that's in the rules that the Board of Ethics would would create but so I'm just trying to understand how the process of the panel or yet. Yes. Well, that was the where I was going on my question earlier . Oh, sorry, go ahead. I'm sorry. Yeah, go ahead. So, do we want to go back to the definition of the panel now that we determine that we want three people on the board who are either attorneys retired jurists or mediators and say that that panel should consist of at least one of those people. Each time on the panel. To get to the mayor's question first, if it's an advisory opinion, the panel is selected by the city auditor. If there is a complaint that's been filed, the panel is selected by the chairperson of the ethics board in here. So there's two distinct functions. The wheels are set in motion by two different city officials is how draft a is worded. And for the advisory opinions, I chose that route myself y' all didn't choose that I put it forth as a recommendation just in the nature of expediency. I figured the city auditor could get something a group together sooner than a chairperson so we skipped a step. Okay, so, and then to address Councilmember Ryan's observation, which is to do you want to have on the panel that at least one of those panel members should be one of the one of the prefer, you know, one of those three people that 's either a retired jurist attorney or mediator. You still want to include LPC. Someone suggested LPC. Yeah, I had earlier, I could go either way on that one. I mean, that's kind of. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, a couple things on the advisory opinion. That's an important function. Somebody has come to the ethics board and said hey, I need to know if this is. So, I think we need to think about the composition of it because they're going to render an opinion that someone is going to rely upon that will be used as a affirmative defense so to speak so Councilmember breaks I'm sorry. So that's one of my questions about about that. And so will the advisory will that come out of the full. The full board, or just the panel and my question is can you remind me why we have the panel. Is it because did that form out of our conversation of confidentiality. Is that why we added the lead, another layer to avoid the, the open . And the open records or open meetings I'm just trying to remember that conversation. Can we take your questions one at a time. So the first one goes. Then we'll move on. Next. No. So your question was, is the advisory opinion, just come forth from the three three member panel, or is it issued from the entire board. Is that your question. And the answer is, is from the three member panel, not from the entire board. And this gets to an issue I was trying to raise earlier and we went elsewhere. This, this advisory opinion is the first time in the audience where we encounter what this panel does. And I want to remind you that we discussed have that there was consensus for having an advisory panel do this function , because some of the options that I presented you during the earlier work sessions were to either have the full board of ethics do it to have an employee do it in some cities it's the city attorney's office that issues advisory opinions, or in some city ethics ordinances they outsource advisory opinions to some other lawyer in town that's been retained for that purpose. So you had some choices. This is where you start to see the advisory opinions being done by a panel, and your chance to review if that's still something that you like. One of the reasons I think in favor of a panel would be that it probably happens quicker than calling a meeting of the full board and having them deliberate advisory opinions . And I think that's probably the number one reason to do something other than the full board, because you want to have a system that encourages people to seek advisory opinions. It's more likely that they're even asking the question up front, they're going to be more ethical actors at City Hall . And of course if they truly don't know the answer to something, seeking an answer quickly and then being able to rely on it, as I think in the best interest of the city, whether the advisory panel, excuse me, a panel is the proper way or not is something for us to discuss. Is that panel subject to open meetings or would it be in violation of open meetings. There's certainly been comments put back and forth in terms of some members of the public that we've received. I don't think an advisory panel is subject to the open meetings act. I don't, I don't think the panel itself it's a subcommittee not the full blown, and its answer is not a final answer. But there are certainly lawyers who know open meetings who looked at it and disagree with me. So it's an unanswered question. When we get to the advisory, excuse me, when we get to the panels deliberations regarding an ethics complaint. Nothing they do is final. Everything is appealable to the Board of Ethics, which is the final authority, which clearly I think is covered by the open meetings act. I don't know the transparency is helped by making a panel subject to the open meetings act for purposes of issuing an advisory opinion, when you could just as easily have a city employee do it, or an outside lawyer do it completely outside of the public's view. So I think it's a I think it's a policy question. I'm in favor after hearing that, having it outsourced to somebody else, instead of a panel. Okay. To the outside legal outsource to outside legal was some cities will retain an outside independent lawyer, or two or three that are activated as needed to issue advisory opinions. That's something that some code of ethics do. Which I mean, I don't necessarily have an issue with that. Number one, I mean, I didn't know if you were heading towards you wanted the panels deliberation advisory opinion , advisory opinion to be open records because if you do, then having an attorney do it is not the way to do it because that could be like a privileged document or some legal document that I believe is an except potentially an exception it may not fit into the rubrics. Quite it could be unless you want to by ordinance say that it's public. Yeah. Go ahead. Well, my issue is if we have a panel, and we're not really sure about the open meetings or not, if we have a panel then I would like for them to be subject to those roles and I think that the reason we had a panel in the to begin with was to have the confidentiality aspect of it. Right. I'm not remembering correctly. When it comes to reviewing the complaints that are filed. We did discuss having a panel do that without it being a public process for the purposes of evaluating an early on, and having it be confidential at those early phases. That is a discussion we have. Okay, so I'm kind of mixing the two. These are the advisory opinions, which is something separate. I believe so they're treated separately separate functions under draft a. Okay. But you bring up a good point, we will get back to your question on. Do we want to have a member, if we keep the panels because obviously nobody sitting around this table has an issue with transparency. I think for me, if someone is seeking an advisory opinion. In other words, they're, they're not. They're not, they've not been injected into the ethics process through a complaint. In other words, they're trying to be proactive and saying hey I want to make sure I understand what's happening. My only concern with it necessarily having to be something that is wholly transparent is they may need to communicate specific facts or details that they would want to be held in confidence. And, and that might be the part of their interest and reason to even seeking the advisory opinion in the first place because they could be so. So, it's not that I don't want transparency said I want to encourage people to get advisory opinions to avoid having to go through the ethics process so that's my only. I don't even know if hesitation is the right word that's my only look at the opposite side of that that says hey, if it's an advisory opinion. I can see it both ways. I just wouldn't want to do something that may discourage people from saying hey, tell me what you think. And it may be that that's not a big problem. I just don't know I just, I'm really careful of wanting to ensure that we. So I think I had some. So, anyway, those are my thoughts. I'm okay with the advisory panel. I'm okay with one of them being from this list. I would want to talk a little bit more about the subject to the open records, not because I'm trying to hide things but I just, we need to have an understanding of how that works, so that if people, it is open subject, and people know that very clearly that whatever you submit is public for your request of an advisory opinion. So, anyway, so we're going to go to your question. And when it comes to your comment is that okay. All right. So you're saying. I'm saying if if we can and I do feel that we should have three members who are attorneys, retired jurists or medi ators that the sub panel should contain one of those people because the reason that we are asking for these people to be on there is to have that legal knowledge for the process . Right. Okay. Councilmember Hudson. Okay, sorry, I just listened to last time I just want to make sure I'm tracking right and if this if it transitions. As far as the advisory panel if we're going to go outside counsel. We'd have to have them. Is that. Is that a consideration or no. Anybody who's, who's on who's in favor of the outside Council for advisory opinion. I guess for me that there's a there's a newer there's a question before that and that is, do we want these advisory opinion applications to be open records or not, whether it 's a outside attorney, or whether it's an advisory opinion, I mean whether it's a panel, do we want these to be subject to the open records. That's really a trick question it's really a no win question, I mean, we're not saying, we don't want this to be subject to the open meeting room but. So let's talk about it outside of that. Is this something that you want people to be able to have some level of confidentiality and the descriptions that they're communicating to the advisory panel, or do you want it to be something that if you submit it, you have to understand that it could be fully publicly disclosed. So for me, no I think you do need to have that we want to your point we want them to come in, and, and I think that I take issue, and I'll handle that directly but I take issue with the assertion that to Allen's credit, the assertion that one person says one attorney says it's a violation. And so then that then somehow magically miscly excludes the other half of the equation that would say it's not, you know, and so to provide both sides of the equation is important now we don't get that a lot of emails but the fact of the matter is, there's two attorneys on every side of every argument believe in their case right and so to take one on its face just oh well this is this is it, and to the exclusion of the other side of that argument, you know, is, oh you're saying from from outsourcing it to the advisory opinion to an attorney. And as far as I'm speaking on this using the open meetings statute or requirements as a weapon. Right, it's like well you're going to be in violation of this, and it needs to have three dots and say, according to your interpretation of it, because there's another interpretation that would say we're not in violation right, and I think oftentimes that gets missed that it's, it becomes, it comes down to if someone's willing to raise that issue, and it'll be evaluated and judged on its merits, but it's not a whole sweeping just, if you do this, it's a violation, you know, and so I just take issue with that entire one sided argument because it just So you're not in favor of taking it to an outside counsel. No, because there's a money side of that that I'm not in favor of because you got to pay someone to then have someone evaluate it and so there. I don't even get to open meeting side. Okay, so it sounds like we're still going to stay with the advisory panel doesn't sound like you want to go with the outside mayor pro tem is also good. What I'm trying to do, we're all over the place folks. We got to, we got to centralize this to so we can get this issue. So I want to try to guide the discussion on because we've had several propositions put out there, notwith standing, I mean, I'm not including your question. So the question becomes, we've got in the current draft that there's an advisory panel that's made up of three people. All right, we've had something on the table that says, or we could take it to an outside attorney. Now we have the questions of confidentiality that still, but, but who's going to hear this is the basic question. And I'd like to get some guidance on that question, Mary pro tem. Okay, I guess on that particular issue, I'm okay with the panel hearing it. I was operating under the assumption that maybe I misremembered our last conversations but I thought people can make anonymous requests or anonymous complaints, the panel could then issue an opinion. I'm not sure what the open meetings, I mean, there should be no open meetings issue at all because if it's an anonymous, you have the option of anonymity, then it protects people. Are you talking about for the advisory opinion or for complaints, we're talking about advisory opinions right now, correct. We are talking about advisory opinions, I think that's a great question because I did not have that was a consensus point. I think that could be an option. It might have been one of a point in my own brain that I could have just missed it. I don't know that that anything we do would would result in a request for an advisory opinion, or the opinion itself being confidential. If we say it's our intention that it be treated as confidential then it would be up into the point somebody requests it. Okay, go to the Attorney General's office and somebody gives us an answer that says you have to release it. Right. But at least we could try and treat it that way. If that was something the council wanted. If instead we want to provide a mechanism for these to be anonymous, then that's certainly something I could work into the next draft. Well to me the anonymity kind of took care of people's concerns about the open meetings part of it so that's why I linked those two together. But anyway, the second point I was going to bring was with respect to the jurists, retired jurists attorney or mediator. I just wanted everybody to know that it only takes 40 hours to become a mediator I mean anybody can become a licensed mediator so I don't know if that's what you're going for but I wouldn't say that that's something that qualifies anybody in particular for this type of work. So you would you would want to exclude them from that list. Yeah, I would say just the other two. Okay. All right. The first thing I would have about the anonymous request for an opinion would be when I have asked our attorney. Am I is this a conflict of interest or not, give them a little bit of information. Sometimes they have to ask for more information. It's that may be unwieldy to try to get an anonymous for an anonymous person to get the answer to the question because if it's anonymous. How do they answer that question. And, and they may not be able to answer the question unless they have more information. I don't know really how to deal with that. All I know is that my, my own personal experiences when I'm trying to find out if I'm in a gray area on the conflict of interest. It generally requires a little more professional probing to ask me more questions in order for me to give them in order for them to get information and make an educated opinion. I'm going to come over here to death and then we can come back to you. Are we talking about having a pill process for this three person panel. Well, that's later. This is the advisory opinion. I'm talking about the advisory. No, I don't think we talked about having an appeal process for the advisory opinion. Did we. Did we. No, no, I'm asking. I just question. Was there an appeal. I know there's an appeals process for if you go before the panel and you file a complaint and it gets kicked out or it doesn't get kicked out. But for an advisory opinion, I don't know if we talk about don't recall there being a process for an advisory opinion that there was an appeal, which what would you be appealing . I mean, you're asking, you know, you're going to say, well, I'm going to appeal. You're wrong. I just saw that camera point this way. I don't know if I like that. Go to the full. You could go to the full panel, but I don't , I don't know. So I'm going to, I'm going to take a little bit of liberty after Councilmember Briggs speaks. Can somebody just tell me why the entire board instead of a panel isn't issuing the advisory opinions. Do you recall the conversation on that. I don't recall. I guess the only reason I would say is a practical one. I would think that an advisory board advisory opinion can be issued by a panel of three, a lot faster than a meeting of seven. So is it possible, though, that the other members of the advisory board would disagree. I mean, is there. Okay. And because because of that point, that's why an advisory opinion may be raised as an affirmative defense if someone is actually accused of violating the code. But the Board of Ethics is not bound by that advisory opinion. They still have the discretion to ignore the advisory opinion and find that somebody violated the code. That's how I tried to address that in the drafting. Yeah, because if it went to the full board, you get that advisory opinion, you're basically now going to have to say you, you are free and clear. In other words, if the whole board renders an advisory opinion that it is not an ethical violation, and somebody brings a complaint, unless you can show that there's substantial material facts that were omitted. If the facts are substantially similar, how could you then say, well, we gave you this based upon these facts, and therefore, we've had a change of heart and you're going to that would defeat the whole purpose of having an advisory opinion, whereas if you have a smaller panel, then the requ ester understands this is not a this is not a get out of jail free card, so to speak. This is simply, I can raise this as an affirmative defense and say, oh, I got this, but it's still up to the full panel to say, well, that's true, but the facts are different. We think it was wrong. And that's just the risk you take. So I'm going to say, I'm okay. I don't need the anonymity. I think we just need to pick something and I'm okay with saying, if you submit a request for an advisory opinion. If you know that it could be that it's a public record, then you just have to act accordingly. And, and then, if that creates a problem, we'll figure it out. But I think that's at least the default to start with. And then if we had one panel, and I really agree with Mayor Pro Tem that if you're going to have people specifically who are going to be educated and experienced in this art of decision making, based upon analysis of the facts, an attorney or retired jurist. Those are going to be the ones of that whole list. Now you have others who can address the more human element, the interpersonal element, but, but for mediators, she's absolutely right. It's basically a week long class of eight hours a day. And that's not to take away from that. And I don't think she is either. I think it's just a matter of trained mediators are there to resolve conflict, you know, by helping the parties come to an agreement based upon their interests, whereas this Board of Ethics is being tasked with deciding a matter based upon the ordinance based upon the facts submitted. I'm okay with maybe limiting that to the two to the two that we to the jurist and the attorney, and I'm okay with one on the sub panel being a retired jurist or an attorney who can give some of that guidance. Anybody have any objections to that. Okay, the next fundamental question I think is that question of the Open Meetings Act. Because the advisory opinion is purely advisory because this is a rotating ad hoc subcommittee. It's not clear to me that the group must post an agenda three days in advance, allow the public to attend. Yes, they can go into executive session, but then keep minutes. It's not clear to me that it has to go through those steps. And I think lawyers who understand the Open Meetings Act very well can argue or disagree on that point as a policy choice. Is that something the city council wants. Do you want whenever someone requests an advisory opinion, and the three person panelists selected by the city auditor to go get give an advisory opinion. Do you want them to comply with the Open Meetings Act. We've specifically said elsewhere in the ordinance at the Board of Ethics as a whole must do so. We have not said specifically regarding the advisory the panel. Yes, I guess under my current understanding of the advisory opinion. There's not much difference in that and what we currently do when we go and talk to our city attorney to find out if we've got a conflict of interest. So, I don't have a problem at all with it being falling outside of the Open Meetings, because the decision may, you know, maybe open to open meetings but as far as the process to get there. You know we wouldn't currently go, you know, in front of a large group of people with our city attorney and ask hey you know I'm on this board, do I have a conflict of interest, getting that opinion is, it has no basis on what the final outcome is the final outcome is, if it went to the full board. I would say yes I would like for them to, and if this council decides not to we need to have a written advisory from outside legal that says that it's fine if they don't just to make sure that that it's protected. That would be my request. Comment, question. We are drafting this ethics ordinance to communicate to the community. A commitment to ethics and transparency. So, I don't know the answer to the question whether it's subject to the Open Meetings Act or not. There's people who will argue both sides of that fence. I do know that with our council subcommittees. We do follow the Open Meetings Act. So, I don't have a problem doing that and you know what if we find out that nobody's asking for an advisory opinion, because of various reasons that maybe that's fine. But people, if what's important. I don't even know so much if it's important people have to know, you know, whether they decide whether it's subject to open meeting. They just want to know what the requirements are for them, and what the rules are. And so if they know going into it, I'm going to ask for an advisory opinion, and it may be deliberated in an open session where people can give and take. They know the rules, and then they can make an informed choice and that's really what we want to make sure we give our citizens informed choice. Yes. You know, I think it's, we have. There's been a long tradition of the council requiring that all of our boards and commissions operate under the Texas Open Meetings Act that all of our council committees of three that don't constitute a quorum of the council operated under the Texas Open Meetings Act. That that we ought to just say that this advisory panel, or this panel would also operate under that. That's part of transparency. That's part of what this whole ordinance is about. And if the whole ordinance is about that to, to, to carve out this exception seems to be working at odds with the, with the goal. Yes, I agree. Any other questions or anything counter to that. Got it. Yeah. Well what does the count is that is it that's three. Okay. Okay. Complaints we outlined the requirements for the complaint, the form, what it must state. It's sworn. Okay. So that's a list of things any questions on those. On page 16 of the ordinance. Next up on the pages. Process for filing submitted to the city auditor. See auditor has has two functions in deciding whether the complaint will go forward or not. Number one, is it administratively complete. If the complainant left something out that's required by this code, then the complaint gets returned to the complain ant, along with an explanation of the deficiencies. So they have an opportunity to refile. If they don't within a certain time period, it'll be automatically dismissed. Just take it off the books. There's no punishment. It's not dismissed with prejudice. They can refile if they don't clean it up in time. The next issue is timeliness. That's where you first see that the six month and they get a two year requirement in terms of the conduct they alleged to be a violation. Did it occur within six months of the complainant becoming aware or two years of the act being committed, allegedly. Everyone's okay with that. We talked about there being confidentiality during these early stages. If it's just been a complaint that's been turned in, then it'll be confidential until such time it's either dismissed or put on the agenda. Those two triggers will will trigger the city determining that it's that it's open. Obviously, if there's an opinion of the Attorney General's office under the open records act, it could be released prior to that time. Okay. Yes, customer. Here. So, generally on in this, this area I think there needs to be a clause kind of preceding this this subsection that would have some sort of, as I noted, mail clause, but the just of it is if it gets lost in the mail. The, the person that is on the downside of that and so we 're saying hey we rejected it, you have this amount of time to challenge that rejection. There's nothing in there that says, if it gets lost in the mail, because that happens there's there's no real accountability we just said hey we mail the letter, the person says we didn't get it. Then what you know. So I think there needs to be something kind of unilaterally that covers that that issue that says, if you've not received notice in five days it's your responsibility to call and check in or something that just kind of gives the person a heads up. I think that's just crucial. But maybe I just hold the post office and low regard by myself but I'm trying to tell you they don't check, even if you send it certified they don't check the signature, anyone could just make any kind of mark on there, that's not what they do. And so when we're saying this, your time is out. And then there's two other things. I think the confidential stamp is important on the documents, because you say it's confidential until a point in time and then you can remove that it could be something as simple as a watermark on the document, but what happens is someone leaks the, the document out to didn't record Chronicle, and it has no watermark on it it has no anything indicating it's confidential, so the paper says hey we printed it because we thought we could they gave it to us, you know, and so if it, but if it has confidential on it, then if someone prints it out. It travels with the printed copy and raises questions. If it should get out. And then lastly, I think there needs to be a time associated with it says five days, but I think it 's a by 5pm on the fifth day. And if it falls on holiday, it, it shifts to the next business day. Got it. Everyone okay with the party communications parts. So then we get into the preliminary assessment this is again where we see the panel, and the panels looking at two things number one is a complaint actionable. And I define that to mean that taken as a whole on the face of the complaint and any supporting documentation. If it all were assumed to be true, would it add up to something that would be a violation of the code. If so, then it goes forward for a full blown hearing before the Board of Ethics, where there'll be witnesses testimony those sorts of things. If the panel determines it's baseless, then it's dismissed at that point, which is appealable to the full Board of Eth ics. Make a suggestion we hadn't gotten to appeals yet. We had appeals. Sure. No, anybody have anything under action actionable or baseless. I will make sure the open meetings at part compliance part is inserted in this section to okay, it's not there now it 's silent on that question. So, I would on the appeals, where it says determination of a panel may be appealed. You're talking about the panel in section 3119 B. And I would probably say let's try to make give that some specificity because we do have an advisory panel. Yes, sir. So yeah, that's a good idea. Any other questions on appeals or section 3120. Calling the meetings quorum hearing. So let's see here so it says the purpose of the hearing shall be solely determined whether there's a violation and assess appropriate action or to accept an accepted complaint was erroneously just missed so those are the only two things that a hearing is set up for under the full board. That correct. Yes, sir. Rules of procedure. They're going to the board's going to draft their own rules of procedure subject to the approval of the city council. So on testimony under oath burden of proof anybody have an issue. I'm on page 12, I mean 17 under section three dash 125 I'm just going down his, I'm just going down the list of the, I was a page behind you. Yeah, okay. Yeah, so burden of proof. The only question I have is got this underlined, because we did receive a comment about this, a complainants failure to testify to hearing Shelby grounds for dismissal of a complaint. Any comments on that questions on that. I think the comment. I think it was Mr. Zoltan or somebody sent about if they've sworn an affidavit that's sworn under oath, which is, and if they don't show up. How is that grounds for dismissal when they've actually you know so that you have some level of evidence even though I 've got a question. Yes. And because this is almost a quasi judicial kind of an activity in in municipal court. If, even though somebody police officers swears to that a offense happened. If, if a person who got the ticket says, I want to challenge this. What happens if the police officer that issued the ticket does not show up or can't show up. Is that dismissed. If the police officer doesn't show up and the police officer has been served a valid subpoena. Typically what most prosecutors and municipal court will do is they will request the violation to be dismissed because they don't have a witness to come forward and testify as to the facts contained in the allegation or in the in the complaint. So it's more of a of a rules of evidence issue at that point, but I don't have them. I can't make my case. And is part of that whole issue of that have to do with with some of the premises of due process that that a person who's accused of something gets a chance to face their accuser. That is correct. Yes, that is a right to face your accused question yours. So, to me, if the if the complaint doesn't show up, then the person who's accused doesn't have the right to face their future. And, and if that's the case, it would seem appropriate for that to be dropped. Or the complaint could say, I can't make this. Can you rearrange the time when it's getting to you. I don't want I don't want to make it. It's just got to be fair on all sides. Yeah, I mean, I understand if somebody files a complaint and swears to it. But according to our ordinance, they have the burden of proof. So it's up to their it's up to them to rather like a word prosecute the case, which means if they don't show up. You know, all somebody's got to do is stand up and say, I disagree with that. And they've controverted, quote unquote , the evidence and they don't have anything to rebut it. And so that's why I think that this dismissal is part of that. Well, and if I may, I think part of that burden of proof goes along with the whole history in the United States of jurisprudence where a person is presumed innocent until found guilty. And it's, it's, it's on the. If somebody accuses something they have to prove it up. So, I'm hearing that there's Councilmember Briggs. Yeah, I don't necessarily think there should be an automatic dismissal if someone shows up. I mean, it's just the process and if they don't show up and it continues, and then they could. I mean, is that what we're saying, if the person that filed the complaint doesn't show up to testify to testify then it 's an automatic dismissal of everything. Yes. Unless there, I mean, and I'm assuming in the rules of procedure. The Board of ethics could have procedures for if we schedule the trial and some of something's come up somebody can't make it that you can ask for continuous in other words, give people an opportunity. It's not like you either show up this day, or you're out. It's, it's, but if you don't show up and somehow you don't have a. That's because, because otherwise, tough. Otherwise, they don't ever show up. And you're walking around with a pending complaint. It could be pending for a month or a year or for the entire term on counsel. Who wants to walk around with that, a pending complaint, because the person will never show up. I think it will encourage people if you're gonna file a complaint. Make sure that you're ready to follow through with that complaint, because you do have the burden of proof. I mean, we, we made that as a policy. And now, I want to, you know, we can address that during the rules of procedure , because you can't ask for, I mean, people get continuances all the time but if you just flat don't show up, then. And there's not some kind of reason and usually people can get that to the board or the court and expeditious amount of time. Open meetings I think we've discovered we've said it's an open meeting. Post moment and certain instances and here's the, you know, if something happens, and it's going before a criminal trib unal or something else and we defer to sort of that higher jurisdiction or that higher adjudication dismissal. Here are the ways to get dismissal. The conclusion of a hearing by simple majority vote that a complaint should be dismissed it may do so upon the finding the complaint is baseless. The alleged violation did not occur. The accused read on good faith and the complaint file failed to testify at the hearing which is part of that. I guess, up in. Where was it. Oh, five. Any questions on disposition. Go ahead. Couldn't there be a dismissal even if the complaint. Did testify at the hearing. Yeah, the alleged violation did not occur. Well, it says and. So it's 123 and four would be a dismissal so my question is , couldn't you just get the end is misplaced. Or that's an or. Yes. Thank you. All right. Good. Good catch. Yes, John. Okay, sanctions. If at the conclusion of the hearing. Within 10 business days impose or recommend any of the following sanctions. Any questions on the sanctions. Letter of notification letter of admonition reprimand recommendation of suspension. Of course we just, we did talk about that that only applied to planning zoning sort of adjustment or department head. Did we talk about department, that's sort of city manager. Is that you're okay with that. Person personnel manuals. Right. Well, okay, we can just make a rec recommendation of suspension we don't actually suspend them okay correct. Yeah. And that's only if a and b. Either one of those were present. Yes. Ineligibility for vendors. Okay, everybody's okay with that. Okay, now we get down to, and just stop me. If you all have a question. Frivolous. It is a violation of this article for a person to submit a frivolous complaint. That requires if the Board of Ethics determines that the conclusion of a hearing by a vote of two thirds that a complaint was frivolous the board may impose a sanction. And these are the factors for the sanction. Three a through F, but I don't really know what the sanction is. We didn't really define a sanction. It's, it's the same sanctions that are above at this point. We didn't discuss anything extra. Oh, above for the for the letter of the admonition reprimand those things are still the only sanctions that are available. There did not seem to be consensus support at our previous work session to impose any sort of civil fines, or to automatically refer someone to either criminal prosecution for perjury or for a civil case of abuse of process. So those were mentioned under external remedies, but there was no automatic provision for that. Okay, so then the sanctions that you're talking about, it says the board may impose a sanction. Well, then you're specifically referring to the sanctions in section. What is that for be? Yes, sir. One twenty one. Okay. If we could, that's all we have at this point. We could maybe specifically state that. I understand. Yeah. Yes, Councilmember has been. I think it generally falls in this area I don't you don't speak to it exactly. I think there needs to be something added that either absolves the whistleblower, the complainant or makes them complicit. So if I say me and a fellow co-worker did something improper. Am I then immune because I'm providing information about a co-worker or is the complaint subject to if they admit if they admit, hey, this is what we did, then do they come under this issue or the employee handbook? I'm sorry, I don't understand. So if you're if you're reporting issue and you're part of it, are you are you guilty? You're admitting you're admitting guilt because that's how I know this other person did it. Are you punished for admitting guilt or no, because it doesn't speak to it. Are you talking about an employee employee council member if I say, Dalton, I did something that's against the ethics ordinance. Then am I guilty of an ethics ordinance violation or am I rewarded for telling on you? I'm going to tell you what I think about that. I think you would be guilty. You committed the violation. And so what you're asking is, do we want to provide any type of policy statement for if you have a change of heart and you want to turn someone else in that you were in caho ots with? Does that provide you with a less with a mitigated outcome? And wouldn't that be up to the Board of Ethics? Yeah, that may be something that they can leave to the panel. I just want I think there needs to be some language one way or another. It happens. You know, you have whistleblower lawsuits all the time. I mean, so it becomes a matter of I think it's relevant. I think one way or another, there should be some guidance. I think it's pretty easy if you know, if you if you said I don't know what kind of language you want to put in, but basically just get put it at the discretion of the panel. I mean, if those are the facts, if somebody turns in themselves and someone else, then the panel has full authority to decide what the sanctions would be based upon all the facts during the hearing. And they may take leniency. They may, you know, that's so good. Can I request a just I'd like to see what the language is. I don't mind motivating someone to roll over on somebody. I mean, see something, say something. And I and if you do, you know, it's I think that there's value in it. I just want to see just off to the side, not in your formal draft B. But I sure would like to see what that language looks like just so I can, you know, dip my toe in the water. I'd be curious to see because if I can motivate someone, I 'm in. So you and I play it out. You and I both get a hundred dollar gift. You you have you feel remorseful later. You report us both. It goes to the ethics committee and you get a letter of notification and I get a letter of reframing because I didn 't turn you in. Right. OK. That's up to the panel. Yeah. Well, I'm just kind of playing out. OK. All right. So there is no monetary sanction for either someone who's guilty of an ethics violation or someone who files. Is that frivolous? Yeah. Frivolous complaint. Not all the same. Correct. OK. All right. OK. The only thing left is reconsideration. This was my sort of last ditch effort to put some form of appeal. You did not discuss this. There's no consensus for this. So if you don't want it in there, that's fine. It occurred to me that the council decided that the Board of Ethics would be the final authority under this ordinance for anything regarding this ordinance. But I thought in the name of due process, we may put in some sort of simple procedure for reconsideration if there 's other facts that weren't previously presented. I don't think we have to have this, but I felt that it was good to provide an option to further the due process aspects of the ordinance. So I offer it for your consideration. I don't see an issue with that. Council can ask for a motion reconsideration, but we have to vote on it. Any council member whose the prevailing party can do that. I do have a question on the external remedies for the fr ivolous action. This, I mean, because it's subject of a quasi judicial process, the activities aren't necessarily, if somebody wanted to sue somebody for defamation or something, some civil tort based upon the filing of a frivolous complaint, there's nothing in our process that would exclude evidence from the hearing and the documents of the complaint and all that from being admissible in a regular judicial state court or tribunal. In other words, there's not. Okay, that's all I wanted to know. So we have this section here at the end at the very beginning. We have a section warning folks that this is not exclusive. This is cumulative of all other remedies that are available under law. Okay. So this is just our own internal process for dealing with this. We're not foreclosing folks from pursuing their other options on their own, either as the complainant or as someone who's been accused wrongfully accused. Correct. All right. Any other questions, comments on this? Good first run. Very good. Yeah, good first run. Thank you. If there's anything else you'd like to see in draft B we didn't get to, please feel free to shoot me the emails. I know that Charlie's doing a great job of forwarding me the comments. I'll be happy to explore some language. Otherwise, I'll get to work incorporating all of this into your next draft. We have a public hearing scheduled for March the 20th tent atively scheduled. I think staff has indicated their preference that that be an evening hearing. And that will be our next time to get together, whether we get together in the afternoon of the 20th to have a work session or just have the public hearing that night is up to you all to decide. Just give me some guidance. Okay. All right. Fantastic. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you. We're on the downhill slide. We're in the final stretch. Getting close. Yes, sir. Thank you very much. Yeah, we did. Okay. And you can tell I didn't eat lunch. We're moving on to agenda item for B, which is received report hold discussion give staff direction regarding the FY 2016 17 comprehensive annual financial report. Step out right quick. I'm not sure. Thank you. Okay. Oh, I need to call. I think I called it. Yeah, okay. Yeah, go ahead. Mayor City Council my name is Tony point them the director finance. And then my presentation. We have our actual hearts that are going to walk you through their presentation. I might go ahead and get that ready for you. Just wanted to just first of all, before we get started, just to acknowledge the amount of work and hours that our staff and the accounting department put in for this document. I want to recognize a couple of folks Harvey Jarvis is our controller. He said over there, Kevin and Cody would are our assistant controllers and behind them and they're not here right there actually in her office is working are the rest of our accounting staff but they put countless hours it's a, it's a compilation. It's a compilation of a lot of hours of work throughout the year that go into making this document it's what I would call the, the Super Bowl of accountants, right, this is the , the main event. And so, we're glad to present that to you today. You're going to find within the pages of this document the overall financial condition of the city's positive. I did want to remind you that this past year, fiscal year 1617 we ended the year, much better than we had anticipated. We ended up with a fund balance of a little bit over, you know, three and a half million dollars of that amount you may remember that we had already conducted a data budget amendment that you approved to do a couple of traffic improvement projects throughout the city, a little bit over $2 million. We hope that in the next coming weeks we're going to be back to you to talk to you about some additional projects that we'd like to fund and potentially draw down some of this fund balance but that'll be coming. We have a meeting later this week with the bond oversight committee we're going to be briefing the PB, and then coming back to you with the status of some of our geo projects, and that really reflects some of the work that we 've done on the capital project side. Overall, I think you'll find that, you know, again the condition of the city is a very positive financial condition. Unless you have any questions for me, I'll turn it over to john Manning with Patel Brown and Hill, who are external auditors for the city. Thank you, Tony mayor, counsel, thank you for letting us be here today. We're going to go over the results of the 2017 audit report , just to let everybody know we did meet this morning with the audit finance committee for a good bit on kind of going over some of the highlights of the audit so just wanted to make sure that y'all knew that we've already kind of went over this before. This is just kind of an outline of some of the things that we're going to talk about today we're going to keep it brief, since we've already went through this in a lot of detail earlier. But these are some of the items that we will discuss as our presentation progresses. You have a comprehensive annual financial report in front of you which is divided up into three sections introductory financial and statistical. You also have a single audit package which houses your state and federal grants, and the results of that as well. And with the audit report, the financial statements are the responsibility of the city. Our responsibility is to render an opinion on are those financial statements and disclos ures accurate and timely. And that's what we've been able to do is to offer an unmod ified opinion on the financial statements. Also, in congruence with the state and single audit, we have to issue a government auditing standards letter for 12 for 2017. And again we had no material weaknesses or no significant deficiencies. Also, with the federal and state single audit, we had to look at three major programs this year, CDBG, FEMA, and the RTR funds, and we did not have any material non compliance. And we did not have any material weaknesses or issues with those as well. I think we had a question Councilmember Gray. For those of you who do not understand the technical language of your profession. What do those things mean, un modified opinion, no material non compliance. Unmodified means we did not have to modify our opinion for something that was in the financials that the city could not come up with. For instance, we have some entities that don't have enough staff that can't keep up with capital assets or can't make sure they get all the required disclos ures in their financial statements. So we have to modify our opinion to say, everything is good , except for these items. And when you say except for, that 's a modification. So unmodified means we did not have any of that here. So, in the language of a regular person, that means everything is good, no exceptions. Yes, exactly. Yes. And that's what they call this is the clean opinion. Okay. Hi, my name is Kent, I'm a supervisor with Patel around Hill. I want to take a few minutes to kind of go through some of the actual specific testing that we perform during the audit. I'll keep it high level I'm not going to go into a lot of detail but feel free to stop me if you have any questions as we progress. One part of the audit that we do perform is called a test of controls. So if you're on the screen we've got six different areas where we perform test of controls. While performing those can those tests we didn't notice any exceptions or deficiencies or anything that we would need to report to you guys today. So that's good news, obviously. In conjunction with the tests of control to perform some other procedures. So if you're on the screen here we've got a few items that were brought to our attention last year. There's some theft I believe at the animal show we understand was addressed this year, we did our walkthrough of controls there at the animal shelter and that appears to have been addressed. We also perform 15 fraud interviews with various staff throughout the audit so we met with these people and asked some generic questions about fraud allegations of fraud or suspicions noted nothing there during those interviews. And we also had our director of IT come out and perform some procedures and gain some understanding of the IT procedures that are in place here at the city, and we made some recommendations there as well. So in conjunction again with internal control we performed walkthroughs at the departments you see here. So just gaining understanding of the controls and policies and procedures that are in place, making sure that what's actually happening at the departments is in compliance with procedures and policies that you have in place. That's my question. Sure. Help me understand. So walkthrough how's that setup is the is the department called hey we're going to be there this day how does that, how do you kind of take it from pre walkthrough to what do you do in a walkthrough. Okay. Yeah, so say with the municipal court will, when we 're here doing the audit for the during field work will call them up, ask if they have a time we can meet, they will schedule it will go sit down for probably an hour, maybe a little longer depending on how complex the department is. So we're probably walking through that, that employees day to day activities with cash receiving or cash disbursements , whatever their procedures may be. That makes sense. Yes. So some of the high level balance sheet items we test we confirmed cash and investments, while testing the items in the caffer. We perform some reviews of fair value investments to make sure that the way that those were priced and valued in the cafe agreed with some third party sources. So we confirmed property tax revenue sales tax revenue, obviously very large dollar amounts in the caffer confirm those with a third party. Moving further down the balance sheet, look at the obviously very significant purchases of capital assets that were made during the year drill down some detail there look for potential issues that could have popped up with procurement or compliance with policies and procedures and no issues there, everything looks clean. Moving a little further down the balance sheet from the long term liabilities. Again, confirming the balances of things is the best evidence we can get from for one performing audit. So what we did was confirm the outstanding balances of all the long term debt at September 30 2017. This might be a good opportunity, john if you want to talk about earlier in the audit finance committee. One of the things that we talked about doing was kind of going over or showing Council, where all the debt is housed and how you can see it individually if you look at page 53 in your caffer that breaks it down by all different type of debt general obligation revenue pension unfunded. OPEB's all those kind of things and one thing that we talked about there as well I'll go ahead and mention. Next year you have to implement a new Gatsby standard, which is going to require implementing and essentially accruing your unfunded liability for your post retirement health care benefit plan, similar exactly what you did with the pensions three years ago, we're going to have to put that liability or the city's going to have to put that liability on the books. And again, it's much like the pension liability where there's not anything to offset it when you when you pay off the debt. Normally like your GOs and CEOs, you do capital assets with those so there's an asset and a liability, pay off the debt depreciate the asset and those kind of mirror each other all the way down to where there's zero. So with these unfunded pension and OPEB liabilities. It's a liability with with no real offset. So that's something that's going to be different for FY 18 as opposed to FY 17. Any questions. When we got the CAFR, we did have a couple of corrections that needed to be made but you have to remember this is about 150 page document. And the things that were given to us were very minor, they were more like the deferred inflows and outflows for the pension items were netted when they needed to be separated out the net effect was zero, but we still needed to make sure that we showed that correctly. We had a good fund balance, and all of these items were corrected and are properly reflected in the CAFR that that you guys have here. Last year, we had some things being the first year we did the audit. We found some items that that we thought could be done a little bit better or done a little bit differently. And as you can see, all of those items have been corrected by management and city staff so we really appreciate the feedback that we've got from them, and the willingness to look at some of the things that we had, and made sure that they made those corrections. Just to kind of wrap up, everybody here that we dealt with in every department I mean we saw the list of departments that we went to everybody was very professional helpful. Very good controls at the city you guys have a lot of people and a lot of controls going on, and the financial information that you get on an interim basis from the finance department is really good. You have to do a lot to this. What you're seeing in this report is extremely close to what you're getting. Every every time you get financial information from the finance department and the CAFR can't not do probably 30 or 35 of these a year, the city does one. They are to do one thing really good and they do a super job, and, you know, that's why we're here on March, my sixth or seventh and presenting 150 page document so if anybody has any questions I'll be glad to entertain those customer has a question. Thanks. Could you go back one slide. There you're listing several items. Where there were recommendations for changes, and it notes, each of them were corrected with some things that were recommended to be fixed that were not corrected. No. Okay. By the way, your colleague there has impeccable taste and ties. So I trust implicitly everything he has to say, we always try to figure out what council person ties are wearing so we try to match. Great research. Okay, any other questions besides fashion statements. All right, thank you. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you guys very much I know this takes a lot of time and we really appreciate the time from all the departments, all the council, and it's just, it goes very smooth and we appreciate all the help. Thank you sir appreciate it. Thank you guys. Great job. Okay, we're going to go ahead and move right. No, we got one more. One more. Do you want to have some questions. You sure, because they're right here. You positive. Okay. Okay. The light came on because I was talking without my microphone. I'm going to email the questions that I had for those out there that wanted to hear what I was going to say. And if you wouldn't mind maybe having those responses circ led back to the entire thing. Thank you. Thank you for your cooperation. Okay. Let's go ahead and call then agenda item. For see. Thank you. I'm not sure what I'm doing at the bottom receive report whole discussion give staff direction regarding the nominations and the appointment of a board of a member to the board of directors that didn't county transportation authority to include a discussion on the composition of the existing board directors. Good afternoon mayor, members of council appreciate the opportunity to come before you this evening. I visit with you a little bit about DCT a as stated, this, this particular item outlines the potential or proposed recommendation or advancement of a representative to DCT a board of directors. So, a little bit of background history, this. We actually have Richard Huckabee general Richard Huckabee who's the city of Denton representative on the board of directors he is here with us this afternoon, as well as Jim Klein president of DCT a Mr. Huckabee was appointed in. In the fall or in December of 2013. There has been a request or a notice from DCT a to reappoint that particular position that's a two it's typically a two year appointment , made by the council. So, that that appointment has not been made in the past, past few years so they notified the city of Denton, we have we brought this item forward to the to the mobility committee, and they requested that we bring this forward as a work session so a little bit background on this particular item I think Council member breaks out a question. So, 2013 was the original appointment and we haven't done anything since is that that is correct just them. Okay. They, the, the bylaws do allow the board members serve until either they resign or replaced by another appointment . So it's continuous. So there's no term limit. That's correct. So, a little bit about the board composition there's a walk through this quickly there's 14 board members. Essentially, when this was set up back in the early 2000s. In terms of establishing DCT as an authority. The desire was to establish a cohesiveness or support across the county. So you can see that there are a number of communities that that have a representative based on specific population values at one point in time those municipalities over 12,000 is now municipalities over 17,000, which there are eight now. There's three members that are appointed by the county, and two of those are actually from unincorporated areas, and then the three members representing communities 500 to 17,000. So what happens in this case is each of the municipalities submit a nomination that goes to the county commissioners or county commissioners court, and then based on votes of those member cities submitting those nominations in the judge, county judge makes those three for for those mid mid size or communities between 500 and 17,000 population. A little bit about a board leadership and, and who's representing which community on the board board chair is Charles Emory from Louisville. He has served in that position, I believe, since about 2001 2002 timeframe. Richard Huckabee the dent representative is now serving as the vice chair, Secretary, former mayor of Highland villages dying cost. And then treasure Dave Kovach from is actually from an at large position formerly from the colony, and then executive committee member, George Campbell is from an unincorporated part of Denton County that is not George Campbell previously employed by the city of Denton. So members. Well, I can walk down through that, if you wish , but this just gives you an idea of those members representing various areas throughout Denton County. Make note of Ron trees, understand that there's a action by town little Alan to either appoint him or another individual this evening but we understand it would be Ron trees from little well, and then there's a vacant small city position there at the bottom. Believe in the, in the backup. You're seeing an informal staff report and staff is sitting on informal staff report, a couple of weeks ago that outlines some of the voting rights this really just kind of clarifies that I'm going to read verbatim here on items of significance, where it talks about the, the two thirds vote. That's really a situation where it's more or less a weighted vote of sort for those participating financially participating members so those communities, which are Louisville Denton and High land village that contribute to the sales tax to DCT a have this two thirds vote, which essentially requires for formal action that two of those three communities, or the board representative from those communities must vote in favor or against for an actionable item. So it just kind of walks through what those what those are it's typically related to finance, financial and nature. You can see capital expenditures O and M, certainly a material change in the DCT a service plan. Obviously with the material change you might see additional bus service or if there's a change to the DCT a rail service or, or adding service to a different location, which would create additional capital outlay or operating costs. I want to make sure I understand that. So if we identify need here in Denton. And we asked for a change, say a new route is a new route considered a material change. Or a new stop, a new stop would not be okay, I believe is it, is it a 20% or 25 does it work on that I'm looking to Mr Klein. Well, well, yeah, if if if we could just get some clarification on the come up here just real quickly I just want to understand what what that really means. Good. Jim Klein, President DCT a significant change. There are some metrics that we look at from a title six perspective but adding a new route. Really it's committing the funds to make that happen, which is the most significant right that falls into the budget area. This does provide that protection. So, a new stop on a route. Let's say you've got a route, and you're trying to see if you can't find a new stop that's not a material change that requires a two thirds voted. Okay, all right. Thank you. So, and that, and you may, you may recall from time to time , typically DCT able to do some tweaking of their routes. Most often they'll do that towards the end of end of the spring, and in the August timeframe so kind of coincides with the universities, with respect to some of their, some of their needs on the two at the two universities. So, really, if you could go back one more spot please. So on number six. Approval of a contract or agreement for an addition of a community along the a train quarter. So if Corinth, you're going to come in requires a two thirds vote. And that would entail either the extent of their contribution or financially, or the lack there I mean that 's all decided in that two thirds vote if somebody's wanting to come on as a additional community or stop in the train quarter takes a two thirds vote. I understand that is correct. Yes, sir. Okay, because you would be creating a new stop capital outlay change to the service and refresh my memory because it's been one of those days. And of the three paying member cities. That's two thirds of that or two, or does one of two thirds of those would have to be. Yes. So for an actionable item, either up or down that have to be two of the three voting, the same one. Okay, gotcha. Okay. Yes, that's fine. Yep. Okay. Thank you. Yep. So at this point in time, just kind of walk through where we are. Again, staff was requested to bring this forward as a, as a council work session item in the backup we've identified three different options in terms of either a reappointing the existing representative. I could be and Mr. Guy McElroy, who is the alternate, or could open up the, the nomination for additional or other representatives for that for that board position from the city of Denton. And again, by taking no action back to the question that you raised council member that they can continue to serve until replaced or, or if they resign whatever the issue may be that would require replacement. Okay, and this came to us I believe from the mobility committee am I correct as far as how it got. That was a request from the mobility committee on our agenda is that my understanding that is correct. Is there somebody on the mobility committee like to speak to sort of what what. So I can understand sort of what's being asked here. Yes. Right. So, I requested just information about the composition of the DCT a board. And it turns out that the renewal was up for our city, our seated member. So we had a discussion mobility Councilman Briggs wasn't there but Councilman Gregory and I were there. I suggested that we bring it to full council to see if there was any desire to change direction, given that this. The seat has had the same person there for six years so I thought perhaps it was open for discussion. I've spoken with some people who have expressed an interest. So if it does have some restrictions I think you have to have either background in government, a law degree or finance is that right. So there's there's about five, five background areas so you 're correct background in law, transportation, government, engineering, or business. Right so it's not exactly completely. Anybody can have the seat but I mean, I, the people that I've spoken to expressed interest so I think there is some interest in if people are open to looking out and seeing if there's more interest than I would be open to that as well. Okay. Right. Anybody else comments. Because if Councilmember Briggs. I'm open to see who else is willing to to serve to look at it with just in our discussion earlier we have six term, six year limits on all of the other things that we've been discussing. So, with that being six. Just kind of trying to make it equal. I know that there's not a policy for that one but just as a limit. Okay. Councilmember has with. Yeah, no, I'm comfortable with with Mr Hucklebee I think his experiences is is fairly diverse and I think that it's kind of a unique qualification. And I think for for the role he's providing. I'm happy with with where we are and in the direction we're going. Councilmember, Gregory, things I too would like to see Mr H ucklebee remain on if you pass those down. You know, he's, he's had a highly successful military career. He's been successful in municipal government has quite a bit of experience in municipal government. He's experienced in the issues regarding public transportation experienced in DC ta. He's currently vice chair of the board and experience really matters. I think here, because, as we all know, getting on a new board or commission. You're not very effective during your learning curve time period. Knowing the organization matters, knowing the other board members matter, knowing issues involving public transportation. Mr Hucklebee also knows the folks in Corinth, and there's discussion ongoing discussion about Corinth becoming a member city that could possibly benefit the city of Denton greatly because now there's another entity that's paying in and paying, paying for the services. And he was a city manager for the city of Corinth and understands those folks, but he also understands and he represents Denton's point of view. My experience, being on the mobility committee for nine years is that Mr Hucklebee is always responsive to our questions. He's quick to respond. He understands Denton's needs and has represented us well. And, and I think if the council was going to be setting any kind of new directions, he would be very, very amenable to representing us in those directions and knowing his character. I think if for some reason, he felt uncomfortable representing us in a new direction. He would speak out and say, I'm probably not sure guy to continue as your representative because I can't agree to that point of view. So I think in a particular situation like this term limits are not important. In fact, we found in other areas such as the regional transportation council that the longer person serves on that council, the more effective they are at representing their particular group, because they get to know the ins and outs of how to operate within that. So, I think it's important for us to continue with the person who has experience and imminent qualifications. I would echo the comments by Councilman, has been Gregory has, have we had any contact with guy McElroy is. Yes, sir. He is interested in and has indicated that he would be willing to continue to serve if nominated. Anybody else. Yes. I just want to be very blunt. If, if we don't cultivate another generation of leaders, then we really won't have anybody that will have experience 10 years down the line or 15 years down the line. There's always an argument that the people who are vested or embedded in a position have a better understanding of the ins and outs. They have a better understanding of, you know, how things work. I personally disagree. I don't think that tenure creates an effective regime. I don't think that diligence creates effectiveness, and that can come with tenure or it can come just by nature. So I would just really encourage people to take a look at that 14 person board and ask yourself if that represents Denton County. There are two women on there. There's one person of color on that board. Not to say that we have to replace anybody, but I don't think that it's representative of Denton County, and I think that there are people who can be eminently qualified can learn what DCT a does can represent the interests of the writers and represent the interests of Denton, and still will still get effective representation. It's not a slight against anybody that's there. It's simply a philosophical matter of wanting to cultivate the next generation of leaders and the next generation of volunteers for our city. My else. Yes. I'm willing to listen to any concerns, right, I think what, what I don't hear is specific issues and so maybe that's another time but that that's kind of what's going to resonate with me because I have my core set of firsthand experiences, and I'm more than willing to reconcile those against what would be negative experiences, if those exist but to try to sell me on changing for the sake of change sake, I mean, I really think that's where I mean I talk about it all the time it's it's merits, it's, it's, it's, let's have tangible reasons why we do or make decisions and I and I and I only base, I 've been out to the plant independent of this council and I've been and I visited and I'm speaking from firsthand experiences. Again, in his role, are there issues, absolutely, I don't know that those fallen on his plate, you know, and so for me, it becomes a matter of weighing my firsthand experience. And that is all been positive, and it's been responsive and again, those experiences. In his favor to me just the diverse kind of career traject ories. So that's, I just wanted to add clarification where I get there is based on just firsthand tours out there conversations and that sort of thing. And I think that's a good way for replacements and getting some other people with experience and, and I would certainly be open to looking at an alternative for our, for our alternate representative on the committee because I think that that could give somebody a chance to grow into a person who understands the working so that even when the time comes that Mr Huckabee no longer wants to be on the be involved or if the council decides that it's time for a change that we would have somebody in the wings that had that kind of experience so, so I think that Mr McElroy had been had served on the as our representative before he had served on city council here and didn't before. So he had a lot of qualifications but, but, you know, I don 't think he goes to the meetings very regularly does he. And so if we had if we had a new person who was indicating an interest and wanted to start shadowing and, you know, attending these meetings and learning the ins and outs. I'm very open to that discussion. Is this, is this an action item tonight. Then I think what we need to do is put it on and we, I don 't want to take an action by omission. I certainly would be an affirmative vote of appointment or non appointment for Mr Huckabee or anybody I mean I just don't want to sort of to be by attrition. I certainly would entertain an idea of if people have alternatives, alternate excuse me, that they would like to submit during that. In other words, when we have the action item. We're looking at appointing or reappointing a board member and an alternate. And then if people have names that they want to bring forward, then they can do that. Just one clarification Mr Mayor would you request that it go back through the mobility committee because there is one later this month or it can come back. My understanding was there was not a recommendation brought forth from the mobility committee for either reappointment or non appointment for either the alternate or the current. It was just sort of bring back for informational purposes. I don't think it needs to go back through the mobility committee. And I think it's just come straight to counsel. Yeah, I don 't, I don't have my observations. I think what's going on with our partnership with DCTA is and I make no bones about it that, you know, we're paying a lot of money, and I just want to make sure that we're getting our value, and if we are, I'm good with that and if someone if there's another city coming on board. I do think that we're able to either save some money or get additional services because that's really the key. I mean we're paying about 11 to $12 million a year. And, you know, we've all seen the ridership numbers and just want to ensure that we are getting that value for what we're, what we're paying and I believe we are but also want to make sure we maintain the metrics. Because if we're not, we need to address that and that's not just through our board representative. That's through this council. And to me that's that's the most despot this positive so let's put it on a work session. I'm sorry an action item on the next available agenda to go ahead and get this resolved, so that if Mr Huckabee gets appointed he can move on and we can continue this we have this continuity and we can be raising somebody or training someone up. Because obviously Mr Huckabee has a tremendous amount of experience and it seems like he's got the nature to train people and to mentor them and explain to them the ins and outs of all kinds of different levels of experience so I think that's a great idea to move forward in that regard. Understood. All right. Fantastic. Any other questions comments. All right, thank you very much. I appreciate that. That concludes I believe our open session work sessions. Is that correct. We will Good evening everybody welcome to this meeting of the Dent on City Council on March the 6 2018. It is 630 we do have a quorum so I will call this meeting to order. If you would stand if you're able to pledge allegiance to the US and the Texas flag. To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God, indivis ible, with liberty and justice for all. On the line of the Texas flag I pledge allegiance to the United States of America, Texas, one state under God, one indivisible. Okay, the first proclamation we have which is, I think a great honor and privilege for us to do this this evening. It's to honor Jean and Judy Goukey. So if Mr. Mrs Goukey if you could come down and anybody that wants to come stand with them and celebrate that that they brought I sure want you to be a part of this and Okay, fantastic. All right, we're going to get everybody to introduce themselves to. So we'll just start down the line. I'm Judy Goukey. And I'm Jean Goukey. I'm cutter Goukey. I'm Tory Goukey. I'm Stephanie Goukey. I'm Matt Goukey. Connor Goukey and Whitney Goukey. There's a lot of Goukies. And I'll tell you it is such a pleasure and honor to be recognizing you today, because you've been such a stall work just a pillar in this community for many many years as evidenced by the generations here, and just have contributed to the community of Denton for for just a long amount of time. You 've certainly contributed to the building industry by providing great products through your masonry products of which I fortunately have been able to be a part of that business so thank you so much for everything that your family has contributed to this community. It's family like yours that make didn't really what it is today so again thank you and it's my privilege and honor to read this proclamation. And then I want to have a chance if anybody wants to say a few words afterwards, give, give everybody a chance to speak if they want. This is a mayor. This is a proclamation by the mayor of the city of Denton, whereas Jean Goukey and Judy Carolyn Hoover Goukey, both attended North Texas State College. And while in college, Jean started working for Burtmore building products and became partners with Mr. Moore in 1958 by starting Royal Pools of Denton. And whereas Jean and Judy have now been married for 58 years and have four children, and after marriage Jean purchased the business from Mr. Moore in the 1960s and renamed it Jean Goukey and started building products in 1974 and started Denton m asonry supply Goukey pool supply and Goukey custom pools, which I've used them as well. And whereas Judy achieved her dream of becoming a teacher, receiving her Bachelor of Science in Education in 1984, teaching second grade at Sam Houston Elementary and Ronald E McNair Elementary for 18 years. And whereas Jean served as president of the Denton quarterback club, president of the evening Optimist Club, vice president of the Denton Chamber of Commerce, and Judy served as a president of the teacher communication committee on the board of the local American Heart Association and Fred Moore day nursery. And whereas Jean and Judy have been members of First Christian Church for 58 years with both serving as youth pastors teaching Sunday school classes and sharing numerous boards. And whereas Jean and his companies were honored in 2015 by the Denton County Commissioner's Court, and Jean was induct ed into the Family Business Hall of Fame by the University of North Texas last year in 2017. And whereas Jean and Judy Goukey sold their business invent ories of Jean Goukey building products and didn't masonry supply in 2018. 74 years after Mr Moore started the original business. And while I, Chris Watts mayor the city of Denton, Texas, do hereby declare and proclaim, March the 6 2018 today as Jean and Judy Goukey day here in the city of Denton, and urge all citizens to congratulate them on the special occasion and the many contributions that they've given to our community Thank you all so much for your support. Okay, I want to give you all a chance to speak but then if there's any council members who would like to say a few words I'd like for them to do as well so I'm just going to hand the mic to whoever reaches for it first. I would definitely like to thank members and good friend of ours from First Christian Church, and our minister, they're here to be with us this evening, and also two couples of our supper club group which we have been meeting for over 45 46 47 years, can you imagine that group being that long. We all love all of you all very very much and appreciate your being here. Well and I just like to say that when I finally graduated from UNT. Well, that wasn't what it was called then. North Texas State College. I taught second grade. I loved it so much, I could not believe they paid me to play with little children. Well thank you so I want to give the council member yes Councilmember Gregory. Tell you, I don't know what the booster clubs and the PTA is are going to do and didn't because everybody knew that go key building supply was a soft touch. You go there and and and buy an ad and every yearbook had an ad all those calendars had ads, because you guys just were always committed to serving the community in every way that you could. And I appreciate you. Thank you. So likewise I mean I can't say enough about your hospitality I went to high school with Luke and they would always, I can always go there and get a spare sandwich. During my growth, and just really an outstanding group we rode bikes all over the neighborhood just a lot of a lot of fun memories. And then more recently, that's my favorite sign location there on McKinney so I got to work something out now. I do, but no just the outstanding family I mean and serve the community and truly. And I stopped by the office there and, and really just kind of enjoyed the conversation about how he was Mr more mentored him and brought him in and I just think that that's an outstanding legacy and approach to business here in town and speaks well of the town so thank you very much. Thank you again let's give them another round of applause. Thank you all so much. The next proclamation is a proclamation entitled a purple heart cities for those coming in if you're going to come forward and just, and anybody who wants to join you. Come on down and get you to introduce yourselves and then tell us a little bit about a purple heart city designation I've certainly want to thank you all for your service to our country. See, he's coming on down good yeah. I hope you could just introduce yourselves. My name is John Lincolts on the department senior vice for the military or the purple heart. I'm Gus which X sergeant arms for the military order of purple heart. Larry Kellogg military order the purple heart. I'd like to thank Mayor Watts, city council members, citizens of Irving, and all veterans who have served our country. A lot of people say what does it mean when a city recognizes a purple heart city. Well we remember our all purple heart recipients living or dead. We honor all veterans living in the city that have served in the military. We are taking a moment to honor George Washington and his significant contribution to our country. And last use this moment to educate all the city citizens of sacrifices of your veterans and remind them, you know, for their service. Thank you. Appreciate that. So this is a proclamation by the mayor city of Denton, whereas the people of the city of Denton, Texas, have great admiration and the utmost gratitude for all the men and women who have selflessly serve their country in this community in the armed forces. And whereas the purple heart is the oldest military decoration in present use and was initially created as the badge of military merit by George Washington in 1782. And whereas the purple heart was the first American service award or decoration, excuse me, made available to the common soldier and is specifically awarded to members of the United States Armed Forces who have been wounded or paid the ultimate sacrifice in combat with a declared enemy of the United States of America. And whereas the contributions and sacrifices of the men and women from the city of Denton, Texas who served in the armed forces have been vital in maintaining the freedoms and way of life enjoyed by our citizens. And whereas many citizens of our community have earned the Purple Heart Medal as a result of being wounded while engaged in combat with an enemy force construed as a singularly meritorious act of essential service. And whereas March 6 2018 has officially been designated as the day in the city of Denton, Texas to remember and recognize veterans who are recipients of the Purple Heart Medal. And now therefore I Chris Watts mayor the city of Denton, Texas to hereby declare and proclaim the city of Denton as a Purple Heart City and encourage the citizens of city of Denton to show their appreciation for their sacrifice the Purple Heart recipients have made in defending our freedoms and to acknowledge their courage and show honor and support for these brave men and women. Thank you so much. Thank you. That's beautiful. Thank you. What a great way to start off the council meeting. Okay, we're going to move on to our next agenda item on the agenda which is agenda item three presentation from members of the public. If we could review the procedures for addressing the city council please if we could. The Denton City Council has adopted rules of procedure, including a code of conduct that applies to citizens as well as council members. These rules were enacted to promote an orderly process and to preserve decorum. Here is a brief review of the rules that apply to citizen reports. Citizens will have three minutes to give a scheduled citizen report and four minutes to give an open mic report. There will be an electronic bell when time has expired. If the remarks are not concluded by that time, the citizen will be asked to stop speaking. If the citizen does not cease and a second request is made, the mayor will request to have the citizen removed from the council chamber. Citizens are asked not to approach the dais. If a citizen has papers or other materials to hand out to the council, please let the city secretary know and she will have a staff member distribute the materials to the council. For scheduled citizen reports, the council has enacted a temporary pilot program whereby additional council discussion or questions are allowed but limited to two minutes. For non-scheduled open mic citizen reports, the council may listen to citizens speak. However, because no notice of the subject of the open mic report has been provided to the public in advance, the Texas Open Meetings Act limits any deliberation or decision by the council to a proposal to place the item on a future agenda, a statement of factual policy, or a rec itation of existing policy. When speaking to the council, citizens are asked to direct all remarks and questions to the council as a whole and not to any individual member. Please refrain from making abusive, personal, impertinent, profane, or slanderous remarks. Anyone who violates this council rule of procedure may be immediately removed from the council chamber. Thank you in advance. Adherence to these rules will help make an effective presentation and will preserve the order and decorum of our proceedings. Copies of the rules of procedure are available from the city secretary. The first speaker we have is Mr. Robert Donnelly regarding solid waste. If Mr. Donnelly could come forward and state his name and address and his time will begin. If we could have the overhead, please. Thank you. My name is Robert Donnelly. I live at 3900 Quail Creek Road, Denton, Texas. And this is a correction to the staff report you all had last Tuesday on solid waste. This says the concern is a lack of trees. It's not a lack of trees, it's a lack of compliance with the obligations you've made. The second highlighted area says the SUP limits it to 680 feet. That's incorrect. It limits it to 695 feet. The next highlighted area says prior council's thing was in 2002, not 2006 as was stated in the report. And council asked for a 50-year time frame, not a 70-year time frame. And also this quote at the bottom is going to come up a couple of times. I'm sorry I'm rushed, but with three minutes it's very tough. You were shown a very nice picture of what the new landfill at 213 feet would be, with this green area being 53 feet. And all this was for comparison. Well, living near the landfill, I know that's not how they're built. That's giving you the wrong impression. With a simple compass, if this is 53 feet, four of those equals 212, which is what it is. So the height should have been to here. And the height is not even the issue. The issue is this slope. That looks like a nice gradual slope. That is a contour map provided. And all those narrow lines are the first 175 feet, which means it's rather -- it's not a slope. It is an upward progress. So the picture you got had no representation, and that's what it was brought for as a representation. Here once again is that same quotation, and that is a condition, this here, that is a condition that has to be met before you as a council can grant an SUP. It's not what is done to meet this condition. That is in the site plan, which you were given -- you were shown a copy of that, and I don't know why the attachment exhibit three, because that's page two of the site plan for the SUP that I say that you are not in compliance with. And then you were shown another pretty picture, this one, that had greens and yellows and a little bit of red, and saying you were substandard, almost standard, or not standard. Not standard is, but you have requirements of an SUP. That 's what you should have been shown, the entire thing in red. None of it is compliant with what is in the SUP. And number four is not even the buffer. It's a right of way . Has nothing to do with the buffer. The buffer starts behind the wall. I only had one more picture, and it doesn't really matter because it's irrelevant. It has nothing to do with the buffer zone anyway. Any questions? Let me switch over to mine. I can't. Okay. Any questions for Mr. Bellman? Seeing none, thank you very much. Sorry for the speed, but three minutes. No, I understand. Thank you, sir. You bet. Okay. Those are all the scheduled requests to speak, according to agenda item 3B1. We'll now move to agenda item 3C, which is commonly known as the open mic. It's limited to two speakers, four minutes as the narrative before. This agenda item stated that council is prohibited from interaction because of a lack of posting. We do have one card. Reverend Dr. Jeff Hood, if you'll come down and state your name and address, your time will begin in, I believe, four minutes. Good evening. My name is Reverend Dr. Jeff Hood. I live at 2723 Northcrest Road here in Denton, Texas, 76209. I don't spend a lot of time on my activism here in Denton. I spend a lot of time elsewhere, in Dallas and Fort Worth and other cities, but I felt like tonight it was important for me to be here with you. You see, me and my family, three of my children, were eating at Chipotle, which we often eat at. My kids love Chipotle. We were followed out of the parking lot by Officer Gilmour from the Marshal's office, Fire Mars hal's office. We were ultimately stopped by a fire investigator. As we're driving down the highway, there is a white car with red lights on top, which I assumed at first to be a construction vehicle. Then the car starts doing this kind of ramming type gesture , like a lot of other law enforcement agencies do. We were pulled over, and I looked behind me, and I still couldn't figure out who was behind me. But I felt if I kept on driving, we were going to get killed. So I pulled over, and there's a gentleman with a gun that walks to my window. I still could not tell who this person was. How would you feel if you had somebody with a gun walking to your window? Ultimately, it was a considerable amount of time before I figured out what was going on. And that was because I had good enough eyes to see that little bitty decal on the back of fire department vehicles. Then I was cited for an offense that ultimately the city prosecutor's office has found out, announced that doesn't exist. I would think a requirement for law enforcement would be knowledge of the law. What could have been a tremendously dangerous situation, all you have to do is look all over the country. People are dying all the time for traffic stops that go aw ry. And here we are in a tremendously dangerous situation for something, for a law that was not even violated. I am asking you, begging you, before the hashtag is #DintIn Texas. Let me say that one more time, before the hashtag is #Dint InTexas. I would like three things from you. One, I would like for this council to create a committee, some type of investigatory agency group to talk about, to think about, does the fire marshal's office need to be making traffic stops? If you only make three or four traffic stops a year, how are you going to know the law? How are you going to even know how to do it? To me, as we see in video after video, hashtag after hashtag, it's not as easy as it looks. Two, I would like for this council to create policy that says how these vehicles are going to be identified and how these persons are going to be identified, so there is no mistake, there is no mistaking who this person is pulling you over here in the city of Denton. And lastly, I think this might be easy and most important of all. I think that the city website needs a simple list of agencies in this city that can perform traffic stops. I think with that, people will have a much greater knowledge of what could happen to you and Denton, Texas. Councilmember Gary, you've requested to speak, but this is open mic. Clarification? Yes, let's go ahead. Well, I didn't know what the stop's purpose was, because we talked about the stop, but I don't know what the reason for the stop was. Are you asking that to the speaker? Yes. Yes, sir, yes, sir, we have a question for you. We can ask for clarification. Clarification, yes, sir. Well, ultimately the stop was for something that wasn't against the law. Primarily, what was the stop for? Something that wasn't against the law. Well, that's not my question. That's my answer. So they stopped you for nothing? They stopped me for something that wasn't against the law. Let me phrase it differently. What did they think was against the law? I don't know what they were thinking. I can't tell you what they were thinking because I'm not in their brain. Yeah, the question's been asked and answered, so yeah. All right, thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Okay, that's all the cards we have for the open mic. We will now move on to our consent agenda, which is consent agenda items four. Councilmember Gregory. Thank you, Mayor. Move approval of consent agenda, all of the items, A through G, all of them. Okay, great. Mayor Pro Tem. Second. We have a motion and a second for all the consent agenda items, agenda item fours. Let's vote on the board, please. My screen is not touching. Okay. All right. Can we reset it and maybe try one more? Affirmative. Okay. All right. So yeah, we'll post it and then motion carries seven, zero, let the record reflect that Councilmember Ryan was an affirmative vote, both in vocal record and then transposed onto the vote. Thank you. All right, we'll move on to agenda item number five, which is items for individual consideration. Agenda item number five A is conduct the first of two readings of an ordinance of the city of Denton for voluntary annexation of approximately 0.30 acres of land generally located on the east side of Old Alton Road, south of the intersection of Old Alton Road and Teasley Lane by the city of Denton. Good evening, Richard Canone, development services department. The item in front of you this evening is the first of two public hearings regarding the, I'm sorry, on the reading of the ordinance regarding 0.3 acres of land generally south of Teasley and on the east side of Old Alton Road. You may recall back in October 2017, the north section of this, just to the north of this property, we approved the rezoning to CMG. This property once annexed will ultimately come back to you again to match that zoning. Again, as stated, we had two public hearings in February. The item tonight is the first reading of that ordinance and then 30 days later, April 10th, we'll bring back the second reading of that ordinance. And with that, I'll go ahead and read the ordinance title into the record. An ordinance of the city of Denton, Texas voluntarily annex ing approximately 0.3 acres of land generally located on the east side of Old Alton Road, south of the intersection of Old Alton Road and Teasley Lane by the city of Denton, Denton County, Texas, more specifically described in Exhibit A and illustrated in Ex hibit B, providing for a correction to the city map to include the annexed lands, providing for savings and an effective date. Okay. And I don't believe there's any action on this item. Is that correct, Mr. City Attorney? No, Mayor, there's no action tonight. Okay. All right. Thank you very much. Appreciate it, Richard. All right. We'll move on to agenda item 5B, consider nominations/app ointments to the city boards and commissions, excuse me, Human Services Advisory Committee and Public Art. Thank you, Mayor and Council. On the Human Services Advisory Committee, Council Member Ryan has nominated Rhonda Love, and on the Public Art Committee, Council Member Dove has nominated Jodi Ismurad. And you are able to vote on these nominations at this meeting and approval will be contingent upon completion of the confirmation process. Council Member Griggs. I move approval. Okay. Mayor Pro Tem. Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries, 7-0. Agenda item 5C, consider adoption and notice of the City of Denton, Texas Home Rule Municipal Corporation for partial approval of a pre-qualified professional services list for project management. Good evening, Mayor and Council, Todd Estes, City Engineer. We had a work session item not too long ago about this RFQ process. Tonight we're bringing forward a request for partial approval of a pre-qualified list of consulting engineers for professional services regarding four different categories, just as a short synopsis. We had 41 firms submit. We had in different varieties, there were seven categories of those categories you see on the board up there. We had a good project management, development review, roads , bridges and intersection design, traffic signals and street lights design. Those had been completed and that's what's before you for approval tonight. The items left to be completed, we have made some more progress, but wrangling a large group to try to get this together and finish this up. We still have water infrastructure, wastewater infrastructure, and stormwater infrastructure designed to come back to you with. That'll be sometime early April. Last fall we submitted these for advertising. We had again 41 firms that submitted on each of these different categories and different varieties. We released two addendums, had a meeting with all of these groups. They were available to come if they wanted to. Obviously we did not have everybody that could possibly want to come, but the ones that were there asked a lot of good questions. We brought their attention and was advised a lot of their concerns. Ultimately you have the list before you tonight. These are the 27 firms in roadway design, the signal design , I believe it's 14, and design review and project management. These were the firms that we have reviewed as a staff, their qualifications based on their quest for qualifications we put out last fall, that we feel could do the best work for us going forward on all of our capital projects and other items that I'm sure will come over the next three year period. At the end of that three year period we'd go back out with the same process, ask for another round, potentially with some revisions to what those categories are. Next steps, should you approve tonight, what we would engage in is negotiation of contracts with these consultants based on their qualifications and what they are best at. Part of what we noted as a staff as we went through it was not just what are their general qualifications for design, but specifically some of them did some things better than others and that was noted in their statement of qualifications. We took note of that. We're asking you to approve the entire list so that we have the flexibility to utilize the best firm for the job that we have up for consideration at any given time. This right here is just a short sampling of projects we know that we're going to need consultant services on. What we would do is we would engage in a negotiation with whichever of these consulting firms is most qualified to address one of these projects or other projects. Part of that negotiation would be to give them an idea of what the scope that we're looking for for each of these projects. They would come back to us with what they thought would be the total number of hours required based on the number of people that are involved. For instance, if they had a senior professional engineer on the job or they had a project manager or even an administrative assistant that was on that job and they anticipated some amount of hours, they would tell us what their price for that person would be and how many hours they think over the life of that contract it would take to complete all the terms of the contract. That would be a negotiating point. Once they give us that back, we sit down and we go through those numbers with them to make sure that we're all in agreement that does seem like a just ifiable amount of hours to support the total contract amount that we would ultimately bring back to you and lay out to you what it was that you're going to approve. Tonight, we're recommending that you approve our pre- qualified list for the four categories of project management, development review, or design review as it's listed here, roadway design, traffic signal design, and that would be the four we're looking at tonight. Okay. We've got a couple of questions. Yes, sir. Council Member Gregory. Thank you, Mayor. On one of your lists, it has, gosh, 27 companies. Yes, sir. So, my guess is you're not going to get to all of them, but the numbers that we see on the backup, are those the ranks? Is that the ranking within the group? The numbers on the backup? I'd have to go back and look at that to look at specifically what you're talking about. Did y'all have a priority ranking? We did have a priority ranking. We have to do that in case there is ever any federal funds or state funds. Okay. It would show them that there was a progression of negotiation. By their requirements, we'd have to start with what we consider the most qualified or ranked number one. And if we can't come to terms on that contract, we would move to number two. Is there any possibility that during the time, there are probably some of these companies that you've used frequently and some that you've not used before. Yes, sir. Is there an opportunity to move around and give different jobs to different companies and see if our experience working with them proves out? Absolutely. And that was one of the many intents with trying to get the entire list approved from a pre-qualification standpoint, is it allows a firm that we might not normally see ranked high, but they may have a specialty in that niche, maybe it 's sidewalks, urban planning. I mean, there may be something in there that would jive with a project that we have and would line up best in the way we're looking at how qualified they are to do the work. We'd give them a chance to do that work, whereas ordinarily we would disqualify them because they're not big enough or they don't give us the right words. And then just one more question from Amy here. Yes. So you said on some contracts, you have to go with the most qualified. Yes, sir. But imagine that you have in this three year time period have used what on paper was the most qualified and it turned out it was a less than satisfactory experience. Yes, sir. You're required to use them for some of those federal contracts or can you go to the next contractor on the next list if the experience has been better with them? We can absolutely, we can do exactly what you're saying. It's just move on to the next person because of whatever experiences we've had in the past. We just have to do a really good job of noting that, documenting it so that whenever the federal or state agency gives us a question, we can say here's why. Okay. Thank you very much. Yes, sir. Mayor, I would add that on exhibit two, for Councilman Vig aray's question, there is a ranking of all the firms in each respective category and I want to reiterate too, one of the other motivating parts of this exercise is we're actually trying to get our 2012-2014 bond packages completed the next three years or so and one of the things that even when we're going through competitive processes for a project or two that we're finding is many of these firms are already leveraged. So that was probably the other strong argument. I think Todd made early on was if we find that you're getting a number of projects that we're ready to bundle, you're going to be seeing major road projects coming to you in five and $10 million tranches for the next couple of years. We can move on if at that point in time we don't have the staff freed up in order to perform the project rather than having to go back all the way through an RFQ process. So it really gives him a ton of flexibility to clean out those bond projects. Okay. Great. Any more questions for staff? Mayor Pro Tem? Move for approval. Councilmember Ryan. I will second. We have a motion and a second on agenda item 5C. Let's vote on the board please. Motion carries 7-0. Now moving on to the public hearing portion of our agenda. Agenda item 6A, hold a public hearing and consider adoption of an ordinance regarding an amendment to the razor ranch overlay district. Before the presentation I will go ahead and open the public hearing. Good evening. Haley Zagorski with the planning department. As you mentioned this is case Z18A for the razor ranch marketplace residential. So a little bit of background on this property. As I'm sure you're aware the razor ranch overlay district is comprised overall of 410 acres located on both sides of US 380. You can see that outlined here in black. That overlay district was approved in 2007. The subject property is 40 acres roughly out of that total 410 outlined in yellow on the map. So on the far north side of the overlay district. And the request before you tonight is to consider adoption of an ordinance to amend the district to provide standards and criteria for residential development on this 40 acres. So a little bit of background on razor ranch. There are two major sub areas. The marketplace on the north and the south campus where the town center is located on the south side of 380. The marketplace is then further subdivided in the overlay into three areas. We have the RR2 area with a lot of the smaller retail and restaurant uses. The RR3 area which includes some of the bigger box stores and some vacant property on the far west side. And both of these areas have had design standards in place since the overlay district was created. The residential area on the north which we're dealing with tonight has never had those design standards developed for it. So looking at the base zoning here the hatching on the map represents the overlay. And the subject property is NR3 on the north that's about 16 acres out of the total 40. And it's zoned NRMU 12 on the south that's approximately 24 acres out of the 40. So looking a little bit more specifically at what they're proposing. You had the full design criteria in your backup so I won't walk you through all of that. We'll just hit the highlights. The permitted uses for this area would be distinguished as within the NR3 zoning only single family dwellings. Within the NRMU 12 area they would propose to permit single family, attached single family and big houses. Which there is a definition for in the overlay. It's essentially one large structure that looks like a single home but may have multiple dwellings within it. And then throughout the entire property they would propose to permit an amenity center for the future residents. As well as accessory garages or accessory structures. Do want to point out on this zoning exhibit that you see here there's an area indicated in gray. It's zoned NRMU 12 but they're proposing to only allow detached single family there and to develop it as if it were NR3. Looking at a little bit more of the specifics. Exhibit C4 would be the exhibit itself that contains the design standards. One of the highlights of that is that it provides site design architectural criteria, landscaping requirements and parking requirements. One of the key features is that on the south side where it 's NRMU 12 they're trying to create a more walkable urban environment. So that would primarily be developed with town homes. A little bit reduced setbacks creating that more urbanized feel to help transition from the commercial in the south into single family. They do require a high amount of architectural diversity in terms of the materials and not repeating building elev ations and things like that. They're proposing an 80 percent minimum masonry requirement for the entire area. And they are proposing to keep with the same neutral color palette that we see throughout the remainder of Razor Ranch . Looking at the future land use map this area is designated as moderate residential. So that's an area where we desire to see between four and twelve dwelling units per acre with a mixture of housing types. And this area as we see here is often used as that transitional zone between commercial areas and established single family neighborhoods. So staff's considerations for this proposal were that the design and development standards were consistent with both the zoning and the other standards that we have existing for Razor Ranch. The proposed development standards are generally stricter than what our citywide requirements are for single family. So we would see some architectural and site design enhance ments here. And the density does conform with the future land use designation for the property. And it is providing that logical transition. So with the higher density townhomes on the south we would see a transition from commercial to high density residential into the single family to match with the existing neighborhoods in the area. Notifications were sent. We didn't receive any formal written responses to those notices except for one neutral to the request that was from the property owner of the remainder of the marketplace. Staff is recommending approval of the request because of its compatibility with the surrounding area as well as its consistency with the goals of our dent and plan 2030 and the planning and zoning commission also recommended approval six to zero and can stand for any questions. Okay. Councilmember Gregory. Thank you, Mayor. If you would go back to slide number six. Don't have them numbered which one. That's it. Okay. Yes. It would help me a little bit to get a better feel for this if I could have some notion is in all in yours looks a little bit different than than the one that we have in the backup because your shows an amenity center up there on Bonnie Bray and ours does not. But what I'm curious about is the the link or the width. From south to north. Do you know how many feet that is dimensions I'm not sure if I know it breaks down to about 16 versus 24 acres overall. Let me see if I have I don't have those dimensions with me offhand I believe the engineer for the project is here tonight though so he might be able to provide some more clarification on that. Okay. So the second question is in our version. There's a shaded area to the west of the NR three zone. That's that says this area is to include detached single family. I'm assuming because that sort of backs up to Thunderbird Drive. That they've proposed to include this first one does outline the single family area. I believe you should have this one as well. So does that mean that the area of NR three that's that's to the east. Is that also detached single family because it's all in our three. Yes. Yeah. So on this exhibit this was just pointing out that this one particular area in gray would follow the NR three regulations that they've proposed as in opposed to the NR MU 12. So they're kind of self imposing a density limitation there to restrict that area. Why wouldn't we just zone that in our three also. I'm not sure how the original zoning came in to be but they 're proposing to do that on their own. But this exhibit does explain that a little bit easier. So the the area with the lighter crosshatch is the detached single family area. Everything with the vertical marking would be attached single family or town homes. This middle portion with the hatching go in the opposite direction would be green space and then the amenity center on Bonnie Bray. And then a final question if you don't mind. The only other time I've ever seen big houses in any presentation was another razor ranch presentation for the south side. His big house is just a different word for apartments. It is a type of multifamily. What they're proposing here is actually town homes and the multifamily. So I believe they're intended to be on their own individual lots and sold. But big houses as razors overlay defines them is essentially a type of multifamily where the outside product looks like a single large structure. But it is subdivided inside. Okay. All right. Thank you very much. Mary Pro Tem. Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't see it. My screen. Oh, you had it. You had it right. First things first. No, yes. Go ahead. Um, can you talk about the ingress and egress possibilities ? Certainly. And the applicant actually has a concept plan that I that they had intended to share with you all this evening when they're when they're up here. But in general, they're proposing a single drive on Bonnie Bray and a continuation of Augusta Drive. So you would have one road cutting across the property that would then widen out here to a couple of separate roads. I believe they're planning alley entrances for the town homes. So there would also be some alleys on the southern portion. And then again, as I mentioned at one point of ingress and egress on Bonnie Bray. Okay, thank you. Councilmember has Thank you. So that's where I'm going. Do we know and can we apply in the overlay a street with because I know the development, the single single family developments there, especially as it's grown. Lots of concerns from those neighbors regarding the number of houses on street parking, etc, etc. Is there a way in this overlay to address that or is that has that ship sailed? What? What is the status on the street with? I know they do specify in their proposed standards to prohibit parking on the streets to try to alleviate that concern. And I think their concept plan can speak a little more to how they would propose to deal with parking in there. They're planning some smaller parking, I guess, you know, five or six parking spaces at the end of each row of town homes to prevent parking on the streets. I don't believe they specify street widths there are street with standards specified overall for razor ranch, but they 're kind of an option if they don't want to follow the city standards they can follow their own guidelines that were adopted several years ago. But I would think that that would be something that could be specified with this as well, specifically for this 40 acres if you chose to do so. So, I would like to add that to the I don't know the difference in the two razor ranch maybe wider. I know we've had a conversation about our current city standards and I think those are being addressed or at least it was set to have that conversation. So I don't know what the rest of the council feels like but I just know from people that live in that neighborhood how tight it is. Maybe if they're, they're planning to manage it, I don't know what the management approach is how you keep someone from parking on the street if there's a sign age prohibition from parking. I don't know how they're going to manage that but I'll just listen to see if there's traction for for addressing that at this time. Okay. I have a follow up question. So, on North Bonnie Bray that section is scheduled for widening. I think it's phase seven so I'm not sure what year that would be but is there going to be a dedication for the widening. I believe those have been made if they've not it will be handled at the time of plotting for this property. But I think the last timeline I saw for this was about 2021 for this portion of the project, we were in the process of probably started engineering on that in the next couple of years and my guess is it will be in the next bond package. So my concern is if they're able to build, you know their amenity center all the way up to Bonnie Bray then we wouldn 't actually be able to expand Bonnie Bray without taking. Well, it'll be taking one way or the other but it would be a very expensive taking if there's an amenity center, a bud ding Bonnie Bray. And this schematic that you see here is intended to be just that very high level and conceptual. They will have a site plan that has to go back before the planning and zoning commission with plotting so at that time our engineers would review this and make sure all the necessary right of way is being dedicated by that plant and accounted for on the site plan. Okay, thank you. Any other questions for staff, customer husband. Well at that time, can you make a note to give me the street with it planning so whatever they're planning and then what the razor ranch overlay is by comparison, please. Thank you. Any other questions for staff. Thank you very much. This is a public hearing anybody wishing to speak, please come down and state your name and address and your time will begin. I'm a little taller. Mayor and Council, thank you so much. My name is Drew Christ, I'm a resident of 2208 carriage Hill. You can actually look at this slide this is really helpful. I live just north dead center, you see Western street right where the wa is. Before I can go any further I want to congratulate and say thank you to Mrs. Zagorski. She's been extremely helpful in the past couple days. I'm outside that bubble of contact for homeowners but I'm very grateful for the signs that were posted on Bonnie break for this. I'm in support of this neighborhood, I want new neighbors, I think this is going to be a great development. But is there any way we can show the projector. I have a very. Oh yeah, yes yeah. Yeah, they can they can blow it up to. Yeah, can you blow that up a little Billy. So, my request of Council, you already asked the questions that I had concerns about which was in ingress egress and the construction of Bonnie break. You can see my very technical map. I'm. That's sarcasm. So, this is the Augusta drive living in this neighborhood, specifically, different areas were built in different decades. And so you may notice the streets don't exactly align very well Thunderbird drive dead ends at Crest Meadow there are residential structures there so no new in the grass and egress can be made. More south Augusta just dead ends into the field. Northway is blocked by the property owner just north of the razor ranch development here. So there's no ingress and egress that can happen there as a homeowner as a parent of two children. So, being 20 years down the line, I want to be able to walk safely in my neighborhood. I want to be able to bike, I want to be able to access razor ranch on foot. And unfortunately, right now, I have to walk down to 40 mile per hour roads, I have to go down Windsor and I have to go all the way down north funny bray. I'm very grateful for the sidewalks that are over there but it's very dangerous with young children. And so, I'm just hoping that once the platting occurs once PNC reviews this council will have the foresight to look at the sustainability to look at the vitality of the neighborhoods and really correct the errors that past developers made in the 60s 80s 90s early 1000s and then later teens 1000s, where they didn't think about walkability for the neighborhoods, and I just very grateful. Thank you for hearing me out. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. Any questions for the speaker. Seeing none. Thank you very much. Appreciate your comments. Is it Daniel E barb. If you come down states your name and address your time will begin. Hi, my name is Daniel E barb I'm with Hodges architecture 13642 Omega in Dallas. I'm coming up to answer questions if there were any but if we can pull up the concept plan. I'm going to address some of the concerns about ingress and egress and see over here that, you know, we do have the one drive coming off of Bonnie Bray, and it'll snake around and come down here and extend into Augusta, and I don't know if we're still truly considering that there was some concerns at PNC about the amount of traffic going through that way. So we've had we have proposed that maybe engineering and fire safety, consider us, letting us gate that potentially, so that it's only fire access. And that would prevent some of the drive through traffic. And then we do have some access down here into the marketplace that once again we might gate that and doing that might take out of here, but that might alleviate some of the concerns of being able to walk because you could maybe then walk through the this place at a relatively relatively low speed. There's only one in and one out for sure, unless it's fire access if you all gate off those two. So I mean, is that is that what I'm understanding. It's a potential that we've, we've considered, it's just kind of on the table. If there's a concern that it needs to happen. I understand the concern of the gentleman before you. I guess my concern is that there's only one way in and out of that in general, outside of an emergency situation. First of all, I'm not even sure. I guess because of the g ated ingress ingress you have the two, the two access points for fire. It's like a lot of traffic that's being filtered down into basically one area. I mean, it's not a criticism is more of an observation. It says this is a very unique design, very linear, doesn't have a whole lot of, I'm going to say squareness to is not a square development. But my concerns are both what was stated before, but also if you do gate them, then you only have really one way in and out. And so every how many how many structures are you planning on having in here between attached and detached. I think we have some maximums that have been imposed. These are the maximums that we're going to impose on that. So about 300, 300 separate, about 200 and 95 or something. I can't see if there's any question speak. I've got my screen. Okay, Councilmember breaks. You asked my question I was wondering about the number of homes and units and on there it said townhomes but was that it just single family in townhomes, because I thought I heard a third thing is single family it's just divided between detached and attached, which are the townhomes. Yeah, I shared the same concerns with the amount of people residential places in there was just the egress. One entrance and one exit. Thank you, Mr. Chair, Councilmember Gregory. Thank you, sir for the homes that are on the western end that are single family detached. Are you requesting that that area be zoned as in our three, or is in our immune. We've changed actual base zoning of those we're just self imposing to make that piece to comply with in our three in that piece because we're up against Thunderbird and those houses right. Would you be opposed if that section was zoned in our three . You're complying with our three requirements. Yeah, sorry, Mr. I know that this item is not reposted as a rezoning item, if they were to rezone it to in our three, and have to start that process. Nevermind. The other, the other question I've got is about the egress. The ways in and out. The understanding is and maybe a staff person can help with this is that we don't build subdivisions anymore that just have one way in and one way out. Because if there was heavy construction, or, or a few years ago we had a bunch of power lines down. Nobody. Nobody would be able to get out of that neighborhood. If the other accesses were gated. So I want to make sure that we're clear about that because, because we've had some other neighborhoods in the same general area that have complained because their neighborhood was allowed to be built in the phase. And for years, they've not had. They've only had one way in and out. And it's, and it's created a lot of concern for those folks so am I wrong or am I. What is our, what is our status on neighborhoods that have only one way in and out. I think staff can answer that question. You're correct for any subdivision with over, I believe it 's 30 single family homes is the trigger and the fire code for two remote points of access. This this point at Augusta being continued would count as that second point of access even if it is gated. But for the streets to be gated they would have to be private so if these are proposed public streets. My understanding is the engineering wouldn't permit those gates to be there. Good. Mayor Pro Tem. Can you zoom in on this section with the maximum number of detached single family. So, how many bedrooms are we talking about because we're currently talking about parking requirements that may require additional parking. So I'm assuming there'll be a car per bedroom so how many, how many bedrooms are we talking about. We haven't proposed any numbers of bedrooms. I believe the standard right now says you have to have two parking spaces that have to be in the, you know, available in the garage. So that would obviously be designed in each one of these. So I guess, just for my own benefit I think we're talking about 600 cars or so, is that about right. I think everything is two cars per residence. The way that things are right now. I think that would be about right. Yeah. Thank you. Is that it may protein. Yeah, that's it. Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, I think for me, I would absolutely, as we go forward, I'm going to tell you I'm going to lean towards Augusta being open and maybe addressing whatever concerns we have there as far as the traffic but I looking at the Google Maps version I mean that to me is necessary for a few different reasons and I'll tell you I'll just pull the curtain back a little bit so it leaving the proposal. Leaving the proposed development going out, it puts you out on 380, which is, pardon me, it puts you out on the service road for I 35, you know, and so I think that in theory, take some pressure off the intersection at 380 there and I 35 service road kind of puts you out, we can go make the you turn further up and kind of take some of that traffic gives that traffic, a different option to go that way. Bonnie Bray, you know, different direction. Going through this, the shopping center I don't know how, how tricky that is and then it's 10 miles per hour through there. But just the traffic flow is going to be big to me. But I just wanted to say I do think Augusta being open is going to be important for me and thank you Haley for that for that additional information. And then we'll just see how the rest of it goes but but I think that'll be, I don't think that hurts the project at all and I think it's good for the neighborhood to have those various points because then you have Greenway which puts you out the Thunderbird and just kind of disperses the traffic more than consolidating it all on Bonnie Bray, especially if we're talking construction down the road, you know that then gets real tricky. And in that area, north of you as you know is growing quite a bit. So I think it kind of gives additional traffic for those businesses, which is which is important as well. So that's just my two cents worth. So thank you. Okay. Any other questions for the speaker. Any more comments from any more comments from you. No, sir. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thanks. Right. This is a public hearing, we are still in the public hearing portion, anybody wishing to speak please come down state your name and address and your time will begin. Anybody else wishing to speak. Okay, we will now close the public hearing. Council. Councilmember husband. I move approval with the, the asking staff to take the concerns in the, in the consideration as we when it comes back after, after planning but move, move approved for this phase. We do have a customer breaks before I recognize the second or you have a comment or question. Okay. Yes, go ahead. Yeah, to that point, if we approve this item tonight that still gives us time or staff to go back and address the street concerns and everything that we had this is just for the standards. Okay. Thank you. Councilmember Gregory second the motion. We have a motion to second and I too would want to echo that, as this moves forward, that if there's always traffic calming devices on streets, if the traffic is too heavy and people, you know, are traveling too fast for for pedestrians in the neighborhood to be able to walk safely in the life without any sidewalks. So we have a motion and a second for agenda item six. A let's vote on the board please. Motion carries seven zero. Moving on to agenda item six be hold a public hearing consider adoption of an ordinance to rezone approximately two acres from a neighborhood residential mixed use in our me 12 to a community mixed use CMG. Good evening, Shandri and Jarvis and Gorky. So the next item is Z 1727. I'm going to take just a second to find the presentation. Okay, this is a reason and request for property located along University Boulevard, just adjacent to the razor elementary. If I can give you some landmarks Malone Street is here, university goes on the east west and then Fulton Street is here. The applicant is requesting to reason on approximately two acres from a neighborhood residential mixed use 12 district to a community mixed use general district. The intent is to construct retail and restaurant uses at the site and the current zoning district doesn't allow for that. When we look at reason request we consider two criteria. So looking at the future land use map. The subject property is designated as commercial here in the red. The subject property is designated as low density residential but it's primarily been undeveloped because most of it is a floodplain. So continuing on that thought, as we look at the zoning for the area, we see along for most of the university corridor which, as we can expect for high traffic area. Most of the area is community mixed use general, a mix of retail office restaurants is what we see. The subject property is here. Here, there's some pockets of NRMU 12. This is primarily developed with offices. Then you see NR3 neighborhood residential three on the south. And again this is that area that's primarily located within the floodplain, and then the school properties here. So when we did the analysis with the future land use and the zoning, what we found was that the request meets the intent of the future land use plan as CMG would be a logical extension of the existing CMG in the area. And it would promote a cohesive development pattern in terms of building scale, the building materials that could be used, and what the products would look like. So that rez oning would facilitate that. So as we look at public facilities, there's water and wastewater available here in university, and that would need to be extended as the property gets redeveloped. Access University is currently a six-lane divided roadway. The mobility plan calls for a six-lane divided with the addition of sidewalks and bike lanes. And any dedications for right-of-way and perimeter street improvements would be addressed at Platting. So I did a preliminary assessment of the environmental features on the site, and what I found was that there's some floodplain ESA on the southwest corner of the site. You can see here in blue. It just clips the corner here. If they do encroach in that area, they would need to go through our ESA assessment process, our alternative ESA assessment, as they get into site development in Platting. There is no existing tree canopy, but the site would still be subject to our tree preservation ordinance and landscape ordinance. So we could expect new trees to be planted on site. We did issue public notification. We sent 11 letter notices to properties within 200 feet of the subject property. We received two letters in response, one in opposition and one in favor. Both of those were about 1% each, so it didn 't trigger a supermajority vote. We sent 26 notices within the 500 feet boundary. The applicant did not, he elected not to do a neighborhood meeting, but he did contact the neighborhood representatives, and they didn't have any objections to the project. So in summary, staff recommends approval of the request. Again, CMG is consistent with the DIN 2030 plan, and it's compatible with the surrounding property in terms of density and the uses that would be allowed. And then just to note, P and Z also recommended approval 6- 0. And with that, I will stand for questions. So my original question was how far away is the school? Then I saw on your map there, it's just about right at 500 feet. It was pretty close to that second ring. Since it's going to be a business, I was wondering if the school is close enough to dictate what businesses can go in that property or if it's just outside the zone. The only businesses I think would be dictated by the school would be alcohol sales. They would have to comply with what the state says for that. I'm not sure. I don't recall the regulations for SOBs, but they wouldn't be allowed in this area anyway. So the only thing that really would be of concern would be anything that would sell alcohol, and we would just make sure that it meets those minimum distances. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions for staff before we go into the public hearing? All right. Seeing none. Thank you very much. I think I opened the public hearing, but if I didn't, I now open the public hearing. This is a public hearing. Anybody wishing to speak? Come down and state your name and address. Your time will begin. Anybody wishing to speak? One more time. Anybody wishing to speak? All right. Seeing none, we will now close the public hearing. Councilmember H ussbuth. Thank you, Mayor. Move approval. Mayor Pro Tem. Second. We have a motion to second on agenda item 6B. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 7-0. Now on to our concluding items portion of the agenda. Concluding items. Councilmember Briggs. So I'm going to go quickly here. So I noticed that in the paper, the PD received 466 calls, and that seemed high to me just for a certain amount of time designated. And so I'm wondering if we can have a staff report on the crime statistics and maybe divide that up by district. And if we're seeing an uptick in calls for the department. Also, just earlier someone spoke and I learned about the fire marshal being able to stop and that was something new to me. And so just a staff report on that, the duties and regulations, just a little bit more information. Lastly, I recently heard some Quaker Town stories and I learned of a man named Henry Taylor. He was a towns farmer and gardener and I believe he grew white lilacs in his yard, which were really beautiful. And later on or currently there's a book that has been written about Quaker Town called White Lilacs. And I would like to see a request if parks could plant some white lilacs in the garden outside for remembrance. Okay, thank you. That's my Gregory. Thanks. Another follow up to Reverend Hood's comment. If we could have some staff follow up on the notion of possibly putting some better identification on our fire marshal vehicles on front back sides so that people would know what kind of vehicle, you know, who's in those vehicles. That might be good to find out about. The other thing is, starting Thursday evening with Denton, the city of Denton and the city parks and rec department as sponsors. We're starting the 31st annual Texas storytelling festival started right here in Denton. A couple of graduate students at the University of North Texas along with their professor said, Hey, I've got an idea. Let's put on a festival where the best storytellers in the United States come to Denton and tell stories and people can hear and learn more about storytelling and it's been happening for 31 years. It happens this weekend. And the Denton Civic Center in Qu aker Town Park, about 200 feet east of where we're sitting right now. And Thursday night is story is ghost stories and it's free. And it's a great place to go and have some great entertainment. If you've never been, and you're wondering, what the heck is the storytelling festival. The only way you're going to find out is to go. So do we have anybody curious out here. Go find out. Thanks. Mayor protein. That sounds spook tacky. I would like a follow up with staff regarding the Denton DM V. So back in August I sent an email to represent representative Stuckey's office requesting an assist on, you know, larger site more parking, etc. So we get some staff assistance on that and then also just an IFS to identify what their parking requirements are and making sure that they're in code compliance with respect to fire. I went there 10 days ago and it was a unique experience. You're being kind. Councilmember husband. Thank you, Mayor. So two things. One I, the gentleman that spoke earlier tonight touched on it and I've been meaning to say something. The zoning change signs have been a tremendous success. I mean those are just fantastic great size placement of those have really been tremendous so I don't know who initially started that conversation and got that ball rolling but man that is it's a significant change and so that's been great. I want to give credit was credits due for the Mr. City manager. So we took a tour of district one just some stuff hot button issues and again, one of the key things is he he initiated the conversation about hey let's have a meeting let's go take a look at these things. And then so that was a maybe four weeks ago, let's say, and then I get it's, I had a constituent call me saying hey there's, there's work being done on my sidewalk and the great thing about it is staff kept me up to speed so I kind of pass that message alone so the individual when the county called them wasn't surprised she's, she said yeah I know that's going on I knew it's going to happen. And so it's a sidewalk on Mulberry and Carol, and it was buckling up, and that's a high traffic area for the community market. So I just think it's fabulous that they got started today they'll be done this week, month in advance of the, the community. What is that market opening. And so I just want to give, tell him, thank you how much I appreciate that that initiative that that work getting started and completed timely, so that they can realize the success of that. And so, and the communication helps me so I think about the opposite of that if I'm not able to educate that that individual then it they're caught off by surprise panic, you know, emergency emails, you know, so we kind of cut that off so it's really, really great experience. Fantastic. Thank you. Any other concluding items. Seeing none we will stand adjourned at 750.