Mar 20, 2018 City Council on 2018-03-20 1:30 PM

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to this meeting of the Denton City Council. It is Tuesday, March the 20th, 2018, about 1.32 p.m. We do have a quorum. We'll go ahead and start proceeding through our agenda. First item on the agenda is citizen comments on consent agenda items. Do we have any citizen blue cards filled out for citizens comments? We have none. We'll go to number two, request for clarification of agenda items listed on the agenda for March 20th. Yes, Councilmember Gregory. Thank you. This is a question for someone on the staff on items D, E, and F. I noted as I looked at all of those items that the total amount of money that we're talking about for these three projects, D is sidewalks to serve Wilson Elementary and Pecan Creek Elementary. E is sidewalks to serve Jennings Elementary and Lee Elementary. And F is bike infrastructure around the University of North Texas area. The total amount of money is almost $2.5 million. And of that $2.5 million, $2 million or 80% of it is from federal and state funds. So I need to know the names of the people on our staff that are responsible for putting all this together because that's mighty fine stuff. I think one of the, one particular item, the sidewalks for Pecan Creek and the other, Wilson was put together by Julie Anderson, I think, as well as N oreen Housewright in engineering. So between them, they created that one particular one. And the other two were TA Set-Aside funding that were applied last year. And myself, Noreen and Julie were responsible. So it's Julie Anderson, Noreen Housewright and Preetem. How do you say your last name? Dejmukh. Oh yeah, Dejmukh. Anybody else involved? Was Mark Nelson in any way involved in this? Yes, Mark Nelson was leading the department at the time. Okay. Anyone else? Because that's a great deal of work and that's a significant amount of money that's coming into the city to help us do what our citizens have been asking for a long time. Anyone else? I know what we call it. Thank you, Preetem, and thanks to that whole team. Thank you. And thank you, Council Member Gregory, for pointing that out. I think that's very important. Yes, Council Member Ritchie. Item T, if we can have someone come up and discuss it. So regarding the Atmos, just so the public understands what 's going on, there's a lot of discussion lately about Atmos in our community. Good afternoon. Mario Canizares, Assistant City Manager. Letter T on that item, it's related to the rate review mechanism. It's more about the process and methodology in which the gas company does its annual rate increase request. They work through the Railroad Commission. The city is involved with 172 city member coalitions. So we as an organization, we as a group work together with Atmos to work through that methodology. Those rates are made on an annual basis. What would happen in this case, they would make their filing in April. The cities, through its coalition, through its consultants, would review the rate increase based on their revenues, based on their expenditures, their operating expenditures, their capital expenditures as far as what's being placed into the ground, the replacements throughout the region or throughout the state. We would determine whether or not those requests are valid and then we would render a decision and work and negotiate with the company for the appropriate rate. But it has nothing to do with the situation that's happening in the City of Dallas at this point. Okay, with the pipelines. But as far as the rates go, because there were some concerns with the billing and the rates increasing. Oh, I see. And so by approving this, we're not approving a rate increase. No, ma'am, not at all. And we're not saying that we are going to approve a rate increase by approving this. Correct. What this is is purely the methodology, the process in which the company must follow when they do request a rate increase. And then they work through the city, the coalition of cities to determine whether those rate increases are merited. Okay. But it's not binding us to approving a rate increase. Absolutely not. Thank you. Yes. Anybody else? Got just a couple. On. Let's see. Where are they? I just had them. It's the increase in the here it is. From Q P and Q. These are for amendments to the contract for engineering services for looks like Bonnie Bray, face five and Bonnie Bray face for. And just real briefly, what what's precipitating the additional engineering services that weren't contemplated originally? I've got a short presentation. Oh, I'm sorry. Sorry, I was gonna I was gonna show you a presentation if you'd like. I was gonna put a map up. So we have some on both of these phases. There's offsite storm drainage analysis and design that's going to be required. The the stormwater or the storm drain that we're going to install within the limits of the project when it's carried outside the limits of the project that that is not currently size and well enough to handle that capacity. So that's the main driver behind both of these amendments. That was a scope increase. Yes. Okay. So was were these not contemplated? I guess when I hear that there wasn't drainage taken to account off of the project scope of services. When it's draining and it's going outside the scope of the bonding break project that I'm sorry. And it's also a general question. And that is when we do projects like this, do we put in as part of the cost to situations that are being described here? Ordinarily, we would and that would be the path forward. This is another project that's got a legacy much like me may Hill did where we were identifying some locations where the drainage wasn't fully thought through upfront. We do that on projects now. Anything that's new, we're saying we're front end loading the project, finding out all the issues that are upfront. We account for that in the original scope of the project. But we're finding more and more projects that are older projects that weren't fully vetted in all its aspects. So that's where these are coming from. It's a recognition now that that should have been handled up front. There is some additional cost for finding out late in the game that this is needed. No, at least later in the game. So we've corrected that particular process in costing projects or getting projects out to include these types of situations. Yes, sir. Okay. All right. That's all I have on that. Thank you. I appreciate that. I guess one follow up to that though is we're doing engineering services for that. So that means somewhere down the line, there's going to have to be some the actual improvements being performed, which are those costs be then would you come back and then say we have to make an amendment for the construction costs for these particular phases to account for those off project potentially, but part of this is also to do the value engineering upfront so that we can find alternatives that potentially reduce the cost either in this capacity or in other aspects of the project. All right. Fantastic. Okay. Thank you. So no presentation. That's all right. Yeah. Yeah, we're good. Wow, man. That's funny. Okay. Any other clarifications on the agenda items? All right. I love it that we have funny engineers. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, I agree. All right. Then we'll move on to our work session reports, which are agenda. I'm sorry. I missed one. Citizen comments on ethics related work session report items. Did we have any blue cards on that? I don't believe. All right. Then we'll move on to agenda item number four, which are work session reports for a receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction regarding the city's delinquent tax collection contract. Mayor and council Brian Langley, deputy city manager. I do have a presentation to talk to you today about delin quent property tax collection services contract. This contract is scheduled to expire at the end of June. So we wanted to come forward today to talk about the progress that we've made on collections, some options that we've identified. I do have a few slides for you, but I think I can get through these very quickly and get down to those options for you just to give you some background. So in terms of property tax collection history, one of the things I wanted to mention to you is that typically we get close to almost 100% collections on property taxes. This is mostly just the normal property tax bills that go out and those are collected pretty routinely. About 1% of our overall levy on average is sent to the del inquent property tax firm. That represents about $500,000 to $600,000 per year that is past due. And that's about, like I said, about 1% or a little less than 1% of the overall levy that goes to the delinquent tax firm on an annual basis out of a levy of more than about $60 million. Question. In those numbers, thank you, Mayor. I know that there are a few people who are seniors who are not able to pay and they have an option to defer. Where does that show up in the percentages? Those are considered to be uncollectible as well and I have a later slide that I'll specifically talk about that issue. It's called a legally uncollectible account. All right. So the contract history for delinquent tax services, we originally awarded a contract to Saco & Burroughs in 2005. In 2008, we went out for a request for qualifications. We received four proposals. The McCreary firm in association with the local firm of Hay es submitted a proposal. The Purdue firm in association with the local firm of Ship man's Stepak and Gray Pearson submitted a proposal. We had one from Saco & Burroughs and also one from the Le imburger firm. In 2008, the council approved a new contract with Saco & Burroughs. That term initially expired in 2011 and then through subsequent extension, it was extended through June of 2016. In February of 2016, we did another request for qualifications to look at the services that were in this space. We evaluated the proposals based on qualifications of the firms, the credentials of the firms, providing all the materials to us, historical performance levels, demonstrated capabilities, all of their procedures, their processes, their oral presentations, and the overall proposal was all evaluated by a staff panel. All of the fees for delinquent tax collection services, for those of you who've been on council, you know this, that those are paid by the delin quent taxpayers, not the city of Denton. That's a 20% fee that's added onto any delinquent property taxes per state statute. We didn't consider that as part of the process. In 2016, we received the same four proposals from the same four firms. There was one exception, the Purdue firm recommended an association with another local law firm, Minor and Juster, but the other four were the same. The takeaway from this is the two separate processes that we've had, you've had the same four firms make those proposals. In any future RFQ, we would likely get the same four firms as well making any kind of future proposal to us. 2016, staff made a recommendation for the firm of Saucon Boroughs to be used for delinquent tax collection services. There's a variety of reasons for that recommendation. They have a strong history of collections and performance. They led some efforts to collect on difficult accounts, worked through practically some bankruptcy situations to help the city. They had, over the last 20 year period that we looked at during that time period, initiated more than 65% of the delinquent tax collection auction proceedings in Denton County. They've had evidence of assistance for taxpayers that were in need and needed payment arrangements. They also currently have a contract with Denton ISD, which we believe leverages our collection right here. They have principal attorneys that work in the delinquent tax collection business here locally in Denton. Can I ask a question? If you could go back one slide. Beyond this? Yes. Okay. The first two firms are statewide firms and they associate themselves with a local firm. Saucon Boroughs is a local firm. The last firm there also is a statewide firm. Why did they not, do you have any idea why they don't have an association with a local firm? They didn't propose one. Do they currently have a local office in town? Not that I'm aware of. They do have some offices in the Metroplex. I do know that. Okay. Thank you. Moving forward, the second ranked firm that we had was the McCreary firm. They currently have a contract with Denton County for their collections, their delinquent tax collections. We felt like that would certainly leverage collections for us as well. They do have a local affiliated law firm, the Hayes firm here, but they would have a limited, more limited role in providing the services. It would primarily be the McCreary firm. We asked them for evidence of what their collection rate has been for Denton County to give us in Denton County, their Denton County collections, what were the city of Denton accounts they had in their collection rate. They couldn't do that. They indicated their technology did not allow them to do that. We weren't able to really make an apples to apples comparison of their collection rates versus Saco and Burroughs collection rates on the same accounts. With that said, all of these rankings are inherently subjective. These firms are all qualified to perform these services. They're all what I would consider to be experts in delin quent tax collection services. Any firm is capable of providing the service. In 2016, after receiving the staff recommendation, council asked for a variety of information. For those of you who were on council, you may recall that the McCreary firm had submitted a 70% guarantee collection rate in their proposal. The council asked for us to go back and ask all of the other firms, would they guarantee a collection rate? The 70% guarantee was excluding what we call legally uncoll ectible accounts. I'll show you a chart on this in a moment which shows how this works. The council asked for what would those firms do from a guarantee standpoint and what was the value of that 70% guarantee? After doing that, we received these clarifications. McCreary remained with a 70% guarantee in their proposal. Saco and Burroughs responded with a 70% guarantee and they also would match any higher guarantee that was submitted. The Purdue firm responded with a guarantee of 80% and Lim barger did not wish to have any kind of guarantee in their collection rate. Council action 2016, the current collection contract requires a minimum of 60% to be collected from current year delinquencies and 30% from the prior year . I'll show you in just a moment how we believe the 60% collection rate on gross collections is a superior metric for measuring performance because of the dollars that are involved rather than the 70% excluding out the uncollectible accounts. In 2016, Saco and Burroughs had demonstrated collections exceeding both the 60% and 30% metrics that were in the requirements and also 80% of collections for the collections less than uncollectible accounts that were due. Given those factors, the council looked at these factors and awarded a two-year contract in 2016. Again, that's expiring in end of June 2018, so that's the purpose for our discussion today is to try to see where the council would like to move forward. This is the chart I was mentioning to you earlier. This is quite a few numbers here, but a couple of takeaways I want to point out to you. At the top is all of the tax years that are here. These are the gross delinquencies or gross collections that are provided to the firm on an annual basis, again, about that $500,000 to $600,000 per year. These are the legally uncollectible accounts, about $120, 000. Those are primarily these over 65 tax deferrals for the seniors that we were mentioning earlier. Then you have the adjusted accounts that are listed here at the bottom. There's two different ways to measure the collection rate. The 60% of gross collections, which is simply 60% of the top number here, or 70% of the adjusted number. The purpose of this is to show you that the 60% of gross collections always yields more money than the 70% of the adjusted figures. That was part of the discussion, again, we had in 2016. The other takeaway from this slide is the collection rate that we've been able to achieve on the adjusted basis, which is over 80% each year. These numbers are through February 28th, so we don't have a complete year of data for the 2016 tax year, but we expect them to be also in the same range. If you look at it from the 30% to 60% contract basis, again , this is what's required by contract. In all years, they've exceeded 30% of the entire prior year delinquencies and more than 60% collections for the current year delinquencies. Again, this 2016 is a partial year, but even so, they're almost at 60% already with about four months remaining on the collections. Real quick question. Oh, yes, sir. You could go back to the last slide. This one? Yes. So, if we had delinquencies that occurred prior to 2013 up on this chart, in other words, do we have an idea of what the amount of our total delinqu encies are that are collectible, whether they're between 2013 through '16 and even prior to that? Do we have any idea on that? I certainly have that information. I don't have it handy. Yeah, if you could just send it out. You're looking for just total delinquent property taxes in total? You started here at 2013, but because I don't know what the statute of limitations is on collecting property taxes. Does the city attorney? I think real property, it never goes away. The problems are going to be some of the personal property. Once that personal property is gone or there's been a bankruptcy, there's no more assets, that becomes very difficult. The real property is always, my understanding is always attached as a lien to the property. At some point, you should be able to collect that. Yeah, I just thought- It's the personal property. Be curious about that number. Sure. I'll be glad to provide that for you. So that's the collection numbers. So the conclusion from staff is that Saco & Burroughs has exceeded all the contract collection requirements. They've also exceeded the other metrics that we saw in this 2016 process where you had the guaranteed collection rates of either 70 or even 80% that were offered by the other firms. So the options that we've identified for you, we really see three paths forward on this contract. One would be to renew the contract with Saco & Burroughs. This is the recommendation of staff given all of the performance history that we've had with them. If you were inclined to proceed with that option, we would recommend a three-year extension. The second option would be select the second rated firm from the 2016 RFQ process. Again, this would be the McCreary firm, very qualified firm , has a lot of experience in this area. But I did want to point out that this is a professional service. This is a legal service. So even though if we haven't been through an RFQ process, you can select that second ranked firm that I mentioned to you before or any firm of your choosing, provided they're qualified in that area of law, and all four of those firms are. So you could select any of those firms. If you felt like there was a reason to have rotation of services, if you wanted to rotate firms every few years, you could certainly do that at the council's choosing. The third option would be to go back through another proposal process. I did want to point out to you, as I've said earlier, that we've really gotten the same four firms every time that we've been out for this recently in the last 10 years or so, and I wouldn't expect any different players to be there . We could certainly do that again. But we might be back here in 60 days with the same four firms asking you for your opinion on which direction you'd want to go. So those are the three options that we've identified for you, and I'd be happy to try to answer any questions and take direction of how you'd like us to proceed. Questions, comments, direction? Council Member Ritch? I would like to do the third option. Any other comments or Council Member Hudson? Question. Do we have any complaints from citizens on record or any historically? I'm not aware of any. No, sir, I'm not aware of any. It's frankly a contract that I don't hear much about, so that's probably a good thing from that standpoint. Yes, no, absolutely, especially for that length of time. That was the one caveat for me, but absent some comment, complaints out there that I didn't know, I didn't realize until we looked everything over, the 90% collection rate and all that. But yeah, no, I'm absolutely fine with and hope we go with just to renew the contract, and I'm fine with a three-year term. Yes, Council Member Gregory? I'm fine with option number one, especially because that's a completely local firm. Council Member Ryan? And I'm also fine with option number one. Mayor Pro Tem. Oh, I'm sorry, yeah, Council Member Duff. Yeah, I'm good with option one, and it is a local firm, and that's another positive. I bet they've been doing a good job, so one change. Yeah. All right. I'm okay with two or three, and just wanted to answer Council Member Hudspeth's question. I don't think we've ever received any citizen complaints, but in my past life, I was an ad litem on tax cases, and I did get several complaints from delinquent taxpayers regarding the ability to contact Saco and Burroughs, the ability to make timely payments. So I realize that nobody else has that type of insight into the tax collection process, but I did want to share that since you asked. I guess, Mayor Pro Tem, that's a good observation. So whether it's option one or any other options or any other firms, do you have any suggestions on what we might could do to ensure that if those kind of things are occurring, that the City Council would have an opportunity to, or city staff would have an opportunity to hear those? I'm just saying, as you've had clients share with you, that it's been difficult to contact. Is there anything we could do that might facilitate? Maybe if we had, for instance, a de minimis amount where we 're not trying to collect taxes that are $600 delinquent or something like that, because taxpayers are charged for the filing fees, which is $297, and then they're also charged ad litem fees, which is several hundred dollars, and they're charged the attorney's fees, which is 20% of the delinquent. So if you're collecting de minimis accounts at like $600, then you've automatically doubled the amount that a taxpayer owes. I don't necessarily think that's really a good way of approaching delinquent tax contracts, so it's just my take on things. Okay. But as far as any type of reporting mechanism or anything, that might be a little bit too either cumbersome or burdensome to, we just have to rely upon the citizens to understand the process and make the contact the right people. I mean, the thing is, people that have delinquent tax contracts usually don't contact their city council members about delinquent taxes. They're typically not super involved in the legislative process. Okay, I understand that. Yes, ma'am. Council member Gregory, then we'll go to council member Br iggs. Thank you. I have a question regarding that. Before I would want to act on something like a discount or not pursuing whatever we define as de minimis, I'd like to know what amount of those delin quent taxes would be considered de minimis by a standard of, I guess, $600, because it could be that that's half of the amount. I don't know. If that's the case, I wouldn't be in favor of that. If it's de minimis in the bigger picture, maybe so, but there are other folks that, there are lots of folks that struggle to pay their taxes that find a way to do that. Council member Briggs. I just wanted to echo Mayor Pro Tem's comment. Last time we discussed this contract, I had heard some of the same issues, but also with billing issues, billing late, not billing, getting second billings without getting first billings, late charges, that kind of thing. So I just wanted to throw that into the conversation that that was something that I had heard when we discussed the contract before, and that is why I voted against it last time. Any other comments, questions? Seems like the consensus is to go with option one. And I guess there may be some -- I would like to have a discussion on how we can better communicate to the public that if it's regarding city taxes collection, notwithstanding which firm has this contract, how can we make sure that we're understanding of what's out there, what's happening, because we do hire these people, even though the taxpayers pay them directly, we give them the right to collect that money. So I think it's incumbent upon us to promote the same level of customer service in those that we contract with that we're really trying to create here at the city. So I'd really like to see how we can further that. I think that's certainly a good point from this discussion. We also outsource our collection of property taxes to Dent on County, so I think there's a better way for us to make sure citizens know if they have a question or a concern about how Denton County is performing some operation or our delinquent services, how we can get that feedback and that they know that ultimately the city is responsible for these contracts. And if they have an issue, we're here to help them with them. So we can certainly look to figure out -- >> Yeah, and if you could either through an informal staff report or even just a brief work session report just come back with some recommendations or options on how -- what's the plan moving forward to accomplish that goal? >> So I think the consensus to move forward with option one , okay, we'll bring the contract back for you to consider in the near future. >> Well, and I didn't hear -- I heard one council member address it specifically. On the three years, everybody okay with the three year? They want to stay with the two year. Council member Duff, I thought you said -- >> No, I didn't. I'm good with the three years. >> Okay. All right. Okay. Three years. >> Okay. All right. Thank you for your time. >> You bet. All right. We'll move on to agenda item number 4B. Receive report, hold discussion, provide direction concerning a management study for water, wastewater, and municipal electrical. No mosquitoes. >> Good afternoon, council. Kenny banks, general manager of utilities. The item that I brought before you today is to give you a little briefing on the utilities management study for water, wastewater, and DME. This is a charter requirement for the city of Denton to have a management study every ten years for water, wastewater, and for DME. The last study was completed in 2008 and 2009. We did release a request for proposal on January 29th, 2018 with responses to the 15th last week. And I've provided a summary of the major elements in your agenda information sheet. There's a lot of info in there. So I'm going to try to kind of hit the high points on this presentation and would be happy to answer any questions along the way. What we did when we put this together was we looked back through all the prior management studies that had been done and extracted elements out of those management studies to complete this RFP. So in terms of general management, it's basically a review of how each aspect of utilities operates related to the cost or function of providing the services that they each provide. This can include governance, organizational structure, financial practices, development policies, support services, our franchise fees and cost of service transfer, communications, public relations, our budget process, our planning process, our rate development, and our overall administration. So quite a large amount of elements there to take a look at . Utilities have a tendency to be very extensive studies and a good thing to do, I would say, on a course of every so often just to kind of give us a reset and give us an idea of how we're performing against others. We do also have in there a comparative analysis of significant operational costs. So we're going to look at the main components of operating our utility services for electric that is going to be transmission and distribution services. For water, it's our raw water supply, our treatment process , how we store and pump the water around the city, our distribution network, our engineering, metering, and then our wholesale contracts. Wastewater very similar, the collection of the wastewater, pumping treatment, biosolids management, wholesale services, and then also storm water. Our support services to operate the utilities are things like customer service, accounting, purchasing, warehousing, legal, information technology, human resources, finance, engineering, inspections, and fleet services. Those will all be evaluated as a part of this management study. We have added an element of outsourcing there. If the consultant finds that any function of the utility or the city is now performing by its own personnel is not reasonably comparable or competitive with the market and would not be comparable or competitive within a reasonable timeframe, the consultant is required to present that information to us within the interim report. And then if outsourcing appears to be an appropriate recommended action, the consultant may be requested as a part of this contract to provide a detailed plan for outsourcing implementation. This response is going to have to have the approval of the city and will result in an amendment to the consultant's base contract if it happens. Our deliverables, we anticipate that the project will be completed in phases and our interim draft reports will be provided on key issues and there are possible actions that will be prepared for review by the city in these interim reports. And then they will be required to produce a final report with a single comprehensive document that includes all the interim reports and all the action items that have been identified, the cost of service and comparable relationship, which is basically a benchmarking operation to see how we stack up with others with regards to rates, and then how we stack up with other utilities of our general size and service area to provide a cost of service. In other words, how much does it cost us to actually perform these activities of providing these services and then how does that compare to others in a similar business? Our hope is to complete this draft management study during 2018. We do have intentions of providing interim presentations to the public utility board for direction. We will do a final presentation to the public utility board for a recommendation and then on to city council. Our hope is to get a finalized approval from the city council sometime in the spring of 2019. It's a lot of information, a lot of material provided in your backup. I wanted to bring this to council to let you know that this was going on and also to seek any feedback that you might have at this time. Are there elements that we're missing that we could potentially add to our contract? Are there certain elements that you would want us to accent uate as a part of this contract? So mainly it's informational in nature, but would certainly be glad to receive and incorporate any feedback you might have. I might have misunderstood. On March the 15th, that's a deadline for what now? That's when the responses will come back from our request for proposal that was placed out in January. So we are at the point now we will begin evaluating those responses very soon. Okay. Councilmember Gregory. Thank you, Mayor. How much outsourcing are those areas participating in right now? None. Oh, really? Right. I mean, in terms of the base functions, we are not outs ourcing. Of course, we certainly do things of an engineering or contract in nature for water and wastewater, but where we have an overlap between internal ability to provide that service and external, and in terms of completely outsourcing right now, there's nothing. Thank you. Councilmember Hesbitt. Thank you. I had a couple of notes. I wasn't sure if they are applicable. During the analysis, do they analyze -- I understood it to be some kind of a customer standpoint, kind of how they deal with customers, that sort of -- am I tracking right? Certainly, it's about the cost of providing that service. There is an element of how you relate and communicate with the public that is a component of the management study. That can certainly overlap with customer service. It's not limited to customer service because it also will be an attempt to see how we relate to the community and some things that we might be able to improve upon there. But certainly, we can make a point of saying that we want to have an analysis specific to the idea of the interaction of customer service. Yes, specifically, I would like to -- and again, if it doesn't fit, it doesn't fit, but kind of an online presence because most people go to websites, department sites, department heads, and just kind of if they had any feedback to give about the placement or the lack of information accessible through that medium, I think that would be helpful to know because more and more people are going that direction. And then I would also, as just a normal reporting, I'd like to see something that captures who they communicated with. I know it talks about talking to department heads, that sort of thing. So just if I have a finding and I have who in that department they spoke with that kind of helps me just understand that. So if they came back with adjustments, corrections, positive reinforcement, who are they referencing? So it's kind of a list that captures that. And then on the looking forward to afterwards, I know it talked about how you -- the implementation of suggestions. And I would just ask that we kind of start again with a customer first type approach. So if there are -- in that evaluation, if there are things that are affecting the customers in their opinion, if we find those to be true, I'd like to kind of have that float to the top of the list and then work internally kind of behind that. Sure. Sure. I think all of those elements are well within the scope that we have. And I envision at the end of this taking an approach similar to what we've done in some of the studies that we've done with solid waste where we have a finding and then we have a management response that we can share with you as we 're working through that. Thank you. Sure. Council Member Ryan then -- oh, I'm sorry, Council Member Briggs then Ryan. Did you come in? Yeah. Briggs, Ryan, and then Council Member Dunn. So this is required by charter. That's correct. Yes. And so just a process, if we did find that our rates -- it 's kind of a rate study, right? Yes. There will be benchmarking. It's not really a rate study, but it will be a comparison of our rates against others. Right. It will give us a chance, though, to know that. And -- Absolutely. We don't necessarily have to outsource because I do know there's value into having our own. Sure. Especially when we're talking about recycling and there's a lot of things that we can do by owning our own utility and having that and not outs ourcing it. But it will give us a chance to see if we're competitive and if we need to do something to make our rates more competitive for our citizens. Correct. Okay. Thank you. Sure. Okay. So Council Member Ryan, you don't have any -- no more questions? Okay. Okay. All right. Thank you. Council Member Dunn. Is part of this going to be looking at where we need to expand? Obviously we're going to need more water, wastewater. We're going to need all of it. Right. Right. That's my lifeline calling in. No, is that -- Yes, sir. They will definitely look at our long-term planning on the electric side. It's mainly about, you know, energy and transmission distribution. On the water side, our water rights will be looked at. And they -- oftentimes, especially on the water side, you have a tendency to see -- they'll look to make sure that we are securing adequate water rights from where our population growth projections are showing that we're going. But they will also do comparisons against statewide plans like through Regency. So that will all be a part of this management study. I think I'd probably be more concerned about the wastewater . That seems to be the -- that's the -- you know, you need more capacity. You need more capacity. Absolutely. And that's probably one of the more difficult things to take care of. Right. Right. They will look at our processes for planning for that and also with our capital improvement program. So that's a part of it. Question? What a great day that not only our engineers but our scientists are making jokes. You know, I couldn't let it go by. Thank you. Although, no one needs a lifeline less than you. That's probably true. I do have a question. So wanted to make sure I understood on the -- because these are some of the questions that I've been asked just recently in the last six months as far as -- you know, Denton's obviously expected to explode in population by 2050. So this -- these types of plans will give us a strategic outlook on how do we -- do we have, number one, enough water rights secured to take care of the population projections for that timeframe? And if not, how we go about getting that? That's correct. They're going to -- they're going to take a look at the processes that we have in place for doing that planning and analyze those processes to ensure that those processes are adequate, meet industry standards, et cetera. So that's an issue that we are constantly looking at. Every year we go through that modeling exercise again to make sure that our capital program is appropriate and to make sure that our water rights are where they need to be, for example. Part of the -- one of the things that's interesting about doing this is this one happens to align with our 10-year capital improvement program. And so that will really give us an opportunity to lock that down and look forward. I think that's going to help sharpen our predictive ability because it's been a while since we have gone through the entire exercise of updating one of those master plans. So just to make sure I understand what you just said. So it's going to give us an idea to look at our infrastructure, and let's just take water, for example. Okay. The city is going to expand. Right. So you have two issues. You have where are we getting the water from? Correct. And then how are we going to move it around in the city? That's correct. This one certainly takes a look at how are we going to move it around within the city. Right. And then it also takes a look at do we have adequate water supplies scheduled now? Right. And if not, what do we need to do? Or give us some indication of what we might need. That's correct, but I think it goes beyond that because it will actually look at the processes that we're using to project what we will need in the future. Right. To ensure that we have an accuracy in those formulas. That's correct. Okay. And to make sure that that's meeting industry standards because this study is only done once every 10 years. Right. So they're going to definitely take a look at how we do those forward-looking projections to make sure that that process is adequate as well as seeing as far as they can tell with their current water rights kind of where we are in space and time. You know what would be interesting is to take the one we did 10 years ago. Right. And to look at it and see what we projected. Right. And see how close we were to the projections. Right. Will they do that? Or do we need to do that internally? I think that that's outside of the scope. They will. It would not surprise me in the least having seen one of these done before if they've reviewed that document. But we don't have a scope for doing a side-by-side comparison within this RFP. All right. I think Councilmember Gregory had a question. Yeah. Speaking of securing future water rights, I think I asked this question a couple of years ago and I don't recall if we got an answer or not. But I've read in the paper that very soon if not immediately a new reservoir is going to be constructed in the northeast part of Texas. Correct. And that I know that one of the cities in our county had been participating in that or had looked to participate in that and declined fairly late in the process. And I was just wondering if as we look at this, if there's any opportunities for Denton or a need for Denton to possibly step in and participate in any way in that project to get any rights that we might need above and beyond what we currently have contracts for that I think go out over 20, 30 years. Right. Yeah. The emergency planning for water services was just completed last year. That's a statewide plan that's required to be done every five years. Denton is a part of that plan and Denton has a that plan basically looks forward to 2070. And that is generally the same planning horizon that we have. If the council is interested I can certainly bring back that presentation. That's a very broad topic but I can go over where we are as a part of our water rights and where we're planning to be and then also keep in mind as a part of the budget process when we do the forecasting we actually talk about the water rights component as well. And so you'll be seeing that here pretty shortly. Thank you. Any other questions or comments? I'd like to see at some point that that presentation that you just described. Sure. Yeah I think that'd be helpful. I can do that. Maybe even somewhere around the budget process so we can sort of see them and how they intertwine together. Okay. I'd be glad to. Any other questions comments? Okay seeing none. Appreciate it. Thank you Dr. Banks. All right we'll move on to work session item 4C. Receive report and hold discussion. Give staff guidance on a proposed amendment to the Denton Development Code to remove a limitation on the square footage and number of truck bays for the distribution center slash warehouse etc. in the employment center districts. Good afternoon. Richard Canone interim planning director. The item today I guess if I can maybe start hopefully it's gonna be a joke but kind of follow suit hopefully this is a pretty straightforward item and not as complicated as the parking that we've seen in the past but what we're requesting today is again some guidance on it on a amendment that we would like to bring forward eliminating the 150,000 square foot requirement and eight dock bays essentially for the ECI and ECC. ECI is employment center industrial and ECC is employment center commercial. This is essentially the existing language in the code. I wanted to point out and kind of break this down into three parts. The first would be that 150 and eight truck docks. The second part is again the second sentence requiring loading bays to be at the rear or side of the property. There's a current requirement in the code now that requires for any facility regardless of whether it's distribution or not. If it is on an arterial then they cannot have direct view from the right of way for their truck docks and so it's sort of already written into the code so it's not by deleting this we would diminish some sort of protection. Same with the third item or the third sentence buffering standards for outdoor storage. That would again that applies regardless whether or not there's this L34 limitation or not. That's already we have screening requirements in the code. So really what we would propose is that elimination of that 150 gross square feet and eight truck docks again for distribution facilities. And just to give you a sort of a comparison this is the Walmart at Razor Ranch. It's 167,000 square feet, six truck docks. We also looked at the SAMS next door. It's around roughly 130, 140,000 square feet and I think they have five truck docks. So just between those two structures there we've got 300, 000 square feet and 11 bays. So again this is just retail not necessarily distribution. - So why is it that there's too many? Are we requiring too many truck bays? I'm just curious what the change is for. - So limiting so if a facility wanted to come in at 200,000 square feet they would not be permitted within the ECI or ECC. And so what we did is we've looked at a number of municipalities. We looked at eight within the Metroplex to see if they had any limitations on square footage of district warehouse or distribution facilities. I think it was Carrollton and it's on the last slide. - Well yeah if you want to head to the last slide. - Had a limitation with inner town center of 20,000 square feet. And so in speaking with economic development the inquiries that they're getting with respect to warehouse and distribution generally range between 200, 000 and 300,000 square feet. We went back in 2012 to see why this changed and we cannot find anything. This was part of a code amendment with respect to boarding houses so there was quite a bit of staff analysis and background with respect to that and for whatever reason this just sort of got tacked on we think as a way to sort of clean it up. But again as you can see a distribution center was previously permitted as of right. So again we're just trying to remove that limitation so if a large distributor wanted to come in they wouldn't be held back from the ECI or employment center industrial zoning or commercial district. - Real question. I'll go real quick on this so it's only in these two zoning districts that were because this is if someone wants to come in that has more than 150, 000 square feet and more than eight dock bay doors they'd have to get a rezoning or they couldn't do it. - Correct. - All right. - And what's strange about it is it's only for distribution so if I'm a light manufacturer for instance and I have a 500,000 square foot facility that includes warehousing and distribution that's sort of secondary to my manufacturing process there 's no limitation and take it so far as we've looked at like a beer distributor would be limited for example under this L34 limitation but if you're a craft alcohol producer and in that definition includes warehouse and distribution even retail there's no limitation so if you're a craft you can have 200,000 square feet and warehouse distribution with no limitation. So it's again we don't really know where this limitation came from or why it came about. We think again if you're looking at the various distribution warehouse, to be quite honest I mean this is one of those reasons why we're updating the code in an attempt to start to clean this up now as opposed to waiting until then but we are going through each of these uses to give a much clearer definition. So it's again so even staff we're not making sort of off the cuff interpretations of the code just to make sure it's clear and simple. But to reiterate on the previous slide you said by eliminating the requirements for the side or rear location those are covered in a general part of the code that's saying if you're on an arterial or something like that you can't do it which was sort of redundant depending on the kind of street that it was in this regard. Correct and what we did is we went back and started to do an analysis looking at sites that so we kind of extrapolated out 150,000 square feet assumed parking and kind of lot coverage and then came up with for ECI you would need a minimum of 5.2 acres to have that 150,000 square foot roughly. And so then what we did is we sort of pulled out all of these ECI properties greater than 5.2 acres and you can see here on the map I think all of them are located on an arterial. We did the same thing there were 28 I'm sorry 24 tracks. We did the same for ECC and there's about seven tracks. Again these are either undeveloped or vacant properties. And this is kind of just what I had mentioned previously. So again our recommendation would be to remove that L34 limitation and then again as part of the overall DDC clarify and update a lot of our uses and definitions particularly as it relates to wholesale warehouse distribution. Questions comments? Yes. Was this triggered by a development coming into an area and you saw it or was this just going through and trying to clean up? A little bit of both. We're in the process now of we're at the third module so we 're really starting to craft a lot of the language moving forward on some of these limitations and development criteria. But also as we look at it we're going back and looking at okay let's pull three sites that would that this may affect so we can start to test that and see if it makes sense. And so that's why we're kind of looking at some of these and saying you know what same with kind of with parking and the the multifamily limitation and say you know we have some development that has been pending on some of these sites or interest in these sites. Let's not sort of hold it up with respect to this and see if moving it forward now is for an amendment as opposed to as opposed to later. I think to be a little bit more specific as well though staff was doing a quality assurance analysis on the last two deals that were brought before you on cold storage and Fisher 59 and I think it was the Fisher 59 where there's flagged saying in so I asked them to go back and do the research on where the 150,000 square foot figure came from and what methodology was there why it was in there because we were considering you know having to make them go back through a rezoning process because we couldn't explain that one requirement. So we just decided I asked me to do some research bring it to the council for some discussion and input. We can't defend it can't explain it and especially when you 're talking about these big distributorships and so we just want to have a conversation with you about if we can't justify the rationale for that size requirements and we've got other ways of handling the bays and the way that the building is situated on arterial does this make sense to you or do you agree with us that it should just be taken out. Thank you. Casper Hespeth. Yeah for me I mean I think it's very encouraging one I mean it puts probably staff in a better position to defend the conversation versus ultimately end up saying I don't know how this got here you know so it puts them in a conversation to have a better conversation going forward about potential projects so yeah I'd like to see it and I'm encouraged by the consistency of it I mean I think it needs to be clear across because then again that that conversation comes up later well why not you know this and that and gets to wordsmithing names and what you're going to do just be more transparent and say what you can and can't do and and it'll trigger other mechanisms down the road so I'd like to see us make that change. Okay. So unless I hear otherwise the direction of the council is to move forward with this with staff's recommendation. Okay all right thank you appreciate Richard. All right we'll move on to agenda item 4d which is receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding a draft ethics ordinance. And I guess we've only been going for about an hour so I don't know how long you how long do you anticipate this part of the presentation to be just thinking about breaks and just making sure everybody's comfortable. Mayor we have 18 slides so 18 minutes how's that. Why don't we don't have to be that short. That's great but let's not let's not just pander all right let's just not let's not just pander. I can dream can't I? Yeah. Mayor I believe that's the first time I've ever heard of a lawyer that we've hired wanting to do a short presentation. Yes. Ready to proceed. Mayor Council Alan Borquez here for our seventh meeting total. This is our sixth work session on the ordinance itself and this is over draft B. Draft B which includes the the edits and changes recommended by the council at our last session reflects some input I've received from senior staff and addressing some of the comments we've received from citizens. So you should have the red line version. I know staff made the red line and the clean copy available on the internet for the public as well. So these 18 slides that I mentioned really focus in on the substantive changes between A and B and then at the end recommends one topic we may want to consider adding that had not yet been considered. First we start off with the purpose which we added a language that would ensure that decision makers with the city would be responsible stewards of the city's resources and assets. That was a specific change raised by Councilman Gregory and the City Council agreed to add that. I think it's important because again I'll say the purpose and the expectations are in my opinion some of the most important parts of the entire ordinance and things that we need to discuss over and over. Moving forward I added some clarifying language the council requested to specify that this ordinance is prospective. One cannot later bring a complaint based on activity that occurred before this ordinance was adopted. If someone were to do that there'd be grounds under the ordinance to dismiss it. This is just forward looking. With the applicability section we did some clarifying. First of all in terms of the former city officials we specifically called out in section 108 how former city officials are covered by this document. It's very limited to either activity that occurred during the time they were a city official and for that two-year period afterwards. The prohibition on representing others for compensation, the revolving door clause and also the subsequent work on prior projects which is also revolving door clause and that's something that the mayor asked for clarification on and I was able to provide that. What that's saying is these are the only three violations that can be brought under former city officials. Yes sir. Okay good. We get to the definitions you'll see a list of things that we either added or modified. In terms of modification the most important one is the clarification regarding department heads and your senior staff was helpful in this regard. We specified that department heads only means those employees who are appointed directly by the City Council and in the definition we go ahead and list those out city managers, city auditors, city attorney and municipal court judge. All others will be covered by the HR policy, the personnel policy that will be adopted around the time of this document and will mirror it in the substantive terms and we do that as a reminder more for the audience that this is done to prevent us from interfering with the charter and the city manager form of government which puts the city manager in charge of those other staff and what happened to them in terms of their acts or their omissions. We also added a couple definitions and for interfere and recklessly that Councilman Huntsman had requested and made some other minor clarifications. We clarified the first one under charged is just clarifying language, doesn't change anything but it clarifies that someone can't accurately be categor ized of having been charged with an ethics violation until a complaint has been filed and been deemed actionable. We get to expectations, those were always meant to be aspir ational in nature, things we should strive to do. They were never meant to serve as a basis for an ethics complaint themselves. To avoid any ambiguity on that point we added language clar ifying that. They are just aspirational. I think they're incredibly important but someone cannot come in and file an ethics complaint that will be sustained if it's solely based on those things listed in section 111. We also at Council's request added language regarding maintaining of an individual's rights. There's nothing about this ordinance that's meant to inf ringe on someone's First Amendment right to free speech, freedom of association, those sorts of things. That was not the intent and consistent with other practices of the City of Denton in the past we went ahead and added that language. Regarding the mandates and the duty to report when it comes to your finances and your financial disclosures, Council asked that we clarify that the time period covered for those disclosures means the previous calendar year and up to the point whenever a conflict of interest is identified. So if you have one at the time, a pending matter comes before the City Council or you've had that relationship in the previous year, you're required to disclose that. 313, prohibitive acts regarding conflicts of interest. I put exact same language in this section also. If a matter is pending before the City and a City official is required to disclose that, the disclosure covers that point in time plus the previous calendar year. Regarding business entity, which is defined in that section 113, we expanded it as Council discussed to include a political subdivision, government agency, university, or any other entity recognized by law. Yes, I'm sorry, Council Member Gregory. Help me understand the implications of that. The first point, disclosures under this subsection so be for the time period including the previous calendar year up to the date when conflicting interest arises. So a Council member is a question comes before the Council and a Council member had a business relationship with this entity that amounted to more than $ 600 11 months ago. No longer. It ended 11 months ago. Does that mean that the Council member needs to not only disclose but to recuse because of a conflict of interest? The first part, not the second part. The language as it's worded will still require that disclosure. But if you no longer have that interest at the date of action for the City Council, you're still allowed to proceed with the vote. Okay. Do you think that's clear in the actual wording of the ordinance? I think it is. But if you think there's some ambiguity, I can certainly try to clarify that. I'll dig back in and look at it myself. Another key point in this section is the definition of deliberations. I added language that would at least attempt to clarify what may in the end be a procedural matter for you. But when it comes time to voting on a budget, for example, a budget is a large comprehensive document. One vote approves an ordinance that actually improves a lot of other documents typically. And that is allowed under this ordinance. The fact that some nonprofit that you may be a member of or a board member of is receiving some appropriation under the budget would not preclude you from ultimately voting on that broad omnibus document itself. And I think this is consistent with the spirit of the ethics ordinance and achieves that practical difficulty that we're trying to overcome at our last discussion. So if there's a particular vote on a particular contract or specific appropriation and you have a conflicting interest as defined by this ordinance, you would have to disclose that and abstain. But if you're voting on some broader measure like the budget ordinance, then you would not be precluded from voting on that. >> So just to sort of dive down into maybe a specific example on that, let's say for instance I'm on the board of Giving Hope, Inc., a nonprofit here in town, and the Health and Human Services Fund committee recommends funding for that particular nonprofit specifically. They come before us and they say we're making our presentation as a committee. These are the funding recommendations that we provide you. So I would have to recuse myself from that, but if the council that's left says we approve this budget for these allocations to these specific nonprofits, and then it gets merged into the total budget document when it comes time to vote on the budget, I'm not precluded from voting on the budget. >> That's correct. >> Okay. All right. >> That exact scenario is what this language was meant to affect. >> Okay. All right. Thank you. >> Also discussing prohibitions on the topic of gifts, I clarified further that if you were to accept meals, lodging, entertainment, travel expenses, those sorts of things furnished in connection with a charity function or a community event that would be excluded from the prohibition on gifts. And this was meant to address the notion of a neighborhood association or neighborhood group that's inviting you because you are a member of the city council. They want you at their event. But by accepting what they're offering in that regard, it would not trigger a violation under this ordinance. I think that was the case already in draft A, but we added some clarifying language to make it more clear in draft B. Another section I added, which I had intended to have in there all along, but just inadvertently excluded from draft A, is that if any individual city official were to accept a gift that really is not yours, it belongs to the city of Denton and it goes beyond the gift limits. As long as it belongs to the city of Denton, resides with the city of Denton, it's just ceremoniously being accepted by one of you, that would not trigger this ordinance. And that includes gifts that are often made by, I don't know, sister cities and those sorts of things because everything about our ordinance is meant to target the individual, not the entity as a whole. We also added in there that if you did receive a gift that exceeded the gift limits, but you donated it to the city itself or to a nonprofit entity, then that would exempt you from the prohibition on gifts because you're not accepting it in your individual capacity. You're not taking it home, not using it in your personal office, those sorts of things. Okay, moving on also on prohibitions, the representation of others. I clarified that a former city official will be banned for a period of time from representing others before the city for compensation, but that's unique to that individual. It does not preclude anyone with their organization from coming before the city and representing private clients for pay. So I believe the example that came up last time was what if we have a city council member who's an architect, they leave city service, are they prec luded for coming back for two years for pay to advocate on behalf of a new construction project? Yes, they are. Are other members of their architecture or development firm precluded? No, they're not. It's unique to that person. Just a question on that because I know we talked about it last time I see it. What is that? Outside employment 4D, where it says current officials, there shall be a violation of this article for city officials to represent -- sorry, let me look at the other one. Same wording. Before the city, to represent before the city. So we talked about last time that I think it said something about during an official deliberation but before the city encompasses any kind of informal staff meeting, you know, where you're meeting with staff to discuss specific issues. Is that what that's getting at? Yes. Okay. As it's currently worded in draft B, before the city includes not just the city council and boards or commissions, it would include the planning department, for example. Oh, I'm sorry. Councilmember Gregory. Thank you. While we're still not too far away from the item on disclosure requirements, you did a couple of slides back and I'm looking on page 9 of the red line copy in our backup. When I'm looking at that item, it's paragraph 2. I'm not sure that there is significant or enough clarity because I think a lot of times when we think of disclosure of a conflict, then we think that disclosing a conflict immediately requires recusal and it may be that that's what the council would prefer. I would understand that but I don't think it's clear here. So if 11 months ago I had been working for the University of North Texas and my work terminated 11 months ago and I got paid more than $600 and an adjunct teacher gets paid slightly more than that but not a lot more. But I'm no longer working there. I would need to disclose it but it's not clear as to whether or not I would need to recuse myself and I think that we probably need to decide if we would want a person to recuse themselves also if they had been involved in the last year, not just disclosed but recused. So because I don't think it's clear one way or the other. Councilmember Briggs. Well to that point on disclosure, I know that my request for full disclosure didn't get much traction last time but I still think that we should disclose even if we are not going to recuse and I think just for instance, we're going to vote on a contract and say that maybe my child is carpools with a family who's going to be getting approved for that contract. And I write down that and eventually somebody comes and says well I'm going to file an ethics complaint against you because you voted for this and you shouldn't have. I can say well you can look at this. I disclosed this information. It was there for you to decide and I believe that will prevent a lot of ethics violations if we have some sort of form for disclosure. Maybe that's up to the individual council member to do that but I still think that disclosing information that we have even if we're not recusing ourselves is important. My remark to that would be I think you're right. I think that's a good idea for that individual council member based on their own sense of ethics. I think if we are to stray into that level of mandatory disclosure for purposes of regulation and enforcement, it's going to be very difficult for every city official to know what the possible investment interests are of everyone that they associate with and trying to draw a line I think would be quite difficult. I think aspirationally that's a laudable goal, I think practically it may prove very difficult. I just wanted to put it back out there. Well in your example, let's just use your example for instance. Let's say that that happens and so somebody files the administrative complaint, it's taken as administratively complete. Most likely it's going to go before the if I remember the process correctly, a three panel board and they're going to look at that and go well, there's no violation here alleged because the friend, the family of your son's friend is not in any one of the trees I guess of conflict of interest and they just kick it out I guess. Is that my understanding? And I want you to respond but I'm trying to understand the process. If this happened and it goes before an ethics committee or the three panel, it's not alleging the facts as you presented them don't allege a violation of our ordinance is what I mean. If that's we're going to put it in that category. It's not like you're in a partnership with them in some business but you'd have to disclose that as well as simply just a social relationship that you have. So I mean I'd like to hear sort of his response and I want to certainly hear your comments Council Member Briggs. Right now under draft B the only disclosure requirements are number one disclosures as required by state law. So that's a source outside of City Hall that I don't think would cover those sorts of social relationships. The second one is if you have a conflicting interest under our code which we specifically define and I don't think those sorts of social interests would be triggered there either. So the only way to require disclosure would be to change our definition of conflicting interest to reach out and capture those sorts of relationships. The thrust of my comment was if that happened and the disclosure requirements are as drafted in draft B then if someone makes that they file a complaint and it goes before the three panel board they would look at it and go well there's no conflict here because it doesn't meet any requirements of the code or any definitions of the code then that would simply be dismissed at that level. I'm trying to figure out if you were to walk that complaint through this process where does it get kicked out as a because it's not quote unquote a violation of our ethics code. If someone were to file a complaint and that complaint is not tied to either a mandate under our code or a prohibition under our code then yes the three-person panel would kick that out early on in the process. Okay all right. Council Member Riggs now go to Council Member Gregory. So I was proposing this because I believe that that would be a step to avoid if those disclosures were made and my request would be for our City Attorney to have some sort of social disclosure or any kind of disclosure on file so that if that were the case a council member could choose to disclose that and that that form would be available to the public and more than likely would prevent that ethics violation from even coming to the board so that that person knew that that was disclosed and it wasn't trying to we weren't hiding it we weren't trying to do anything. So it's more of a preventive so that would just be my request if this doesn't go into the ordinance that there would be some way for council member to make those disclosures available to the public if they wish to do so. So you're saying to have a city policy amendment or some kind of city policy says hey City Attorney's Office will keep a file of council members disc losures whether it's per the code or not per the code that would be a public record. My concern about because there has been discussion about making those disclosures mandatory full and complete disclosures mandatory and I think that that would actually put every council member at risk of violating the code just plain violating it. I cannot I mean I'm old and I've been working in this town for 35 years and regularly I come across people I'm sitting at the table with people and we're having dinner and I realize I was their principal and I didn't know that I didn 't remember that but if they're coming to do business before the council and I don't disclose it then if it's a mandatory for a disclosure then I have without a doubt violated the code of conduct and I think that I think that's too steep a too onerous a rule for an issue that probably is very insignificant in terms of its impact. I think you know especially if like most council members are they're connected in the community in a lot of different ways you know served on you know 20 years ago served on a you know the Heart Association board with some folks and don't remember who they all are and some of them were wanting to you know come before the council to do a contract I think it'd be impossible to remember and to disclose all of those things so a mandatory disclosure like that I think would be would pretty much guarantee that a lot of people would end up violating the ordinance so if you want it as a as an optional thing I think that's fine but but for it to be mandatory I think would be I think it would cause a lot of people to to not to choose not to bother to serve because of the the onerousness of the requirement. So maybe on the form because on the form that we filled out conflict you share a direct conflict maybe there's a third or fourth option that says you know a social conflict or you know there's some other specific thing that's not necessarily directed to money that that a person could check it if they wanted I mean since the mandatory isn't popular. Okay so yeah and I think that and I think that's a good idea I mean I think individual council members P and Z board of adjustment members should feel the weight of their own decision making and deciding when to voluntarily disclose something and when to voluntarily recuse themselves I would have no objection to that. Okay I'm not sure what everybody's saying that she they're okay with it you don't have an objection to it my understanding is that's going to be more of a city policy than something that's in the code am I right on that correct that's right that's where I believe the council is okay yes yeah no I was just I have the same question you had oh yeah okay all right yeah because that's that's just simply voluntary because truthfully somebody could still look at that form and go well I'm still gonna file an ethics complaint because they might believe in their mind that that's an ethics violation like some had thought that graduating from the University of North Texas was an ethics violation if we were considering a decision that involved the university so but I certainly think to have that option available to each individual council member is certainly warranted absolutely . Okay on to the councilman did you have any okay all right I 'm sorry on to Councilman Gregory's question I think what's before us is if someone had a conflicting interest in the past say in the previous fiscal year previous calendar year excuse me and therefore our ordinance required them to disclose that interest but they no longer had that interest when the matter that was pending before the city came up to a vote do they still have to abstain or they allowed to deliberate and vote what's the council's preference question okay I would be I would struggle to say I'm gonna wait to hear what the rest of council members say anybody having a thought on that? Yeah I mean because the way I'm reading this it has up to a two-year prohibition on that and I feel like that might be a little little on the lengthy side because it's the previous calendar year up to the date so if it's something you're voting on in November you're going back to January of two years you know 18 months back or 20 23 months back at that point so if you had someone who taught a class over at the university in the spring semester and retired from the university after that point they would have to wait until after December of the following year before they could do any votes that involved the university. I think that's his question so what I'm hearing you say is you you're in favor of the requirement for disclosure but you wouldn't be in favor of the requirement to abstain if that conflict is no longer applicable at the time of the vote. Is that okay? Right. Am I framing that your question? Yes sir. Yes I'm gonna go council member Hussman. No I just I will what if you just say yes to me. Can you say that again? Sure sure sure. If I can sometimes I'm just talking off the top of my head I can't remember what I said two seconds ago. The question that Alan posed was that council member Gregory actually had posed was if you have a conflict in the past in the past 12 months that and of course council member Ryan expanded that based upon the calendar year language but when it comes to the vote we're all voting today and I have a conflict that has been within the last calendar year but I no longer have that conflict sitting here today. The question was do I still have to abstain from the vote because I had a previous conflict which I still do not have or can I go ahead and vote but I just require to disclose that previous conflict and what he said was that that was the framing of that was the correct framing of the question and council member Ryan said I'm more in favor of you are still allowed to vote but you have to disclose if you have if you no longer have the conflict. The current ruling the current wording on page 9 of the red line copy says that you're required to disclose that conflict if it happened within the past 12 months of when you're voting but it doesn't it's silent on whether or not you have to recuse and my question is do you have to recuse I think we ought to be clear about that. So does disclosure requirement of disclosure here in the 12 month period mean recusal also and I think we just need to decide that how we want to progress. What a wonderful synopsis I appreciate it and well done. Thank you. Because I was able to but and so understanding but yeah no no understanding it now I think for me I think yet once you once you've had to abstain I think that should just carry throughout the life of whatever that if it deals succinctly if it's the same subject matter just your circumstances have changed I think to come back in convolus it for me because there's a period of time where you're kind of free to do whatever because you're abstaining and now you come back into a conversation what happened while you're abstaining right I mean it's like that doesn't come into play type thing. That's that's not my question my question is there hasn't been a conversation there's nothing that's happened it's coming before the council for the very first time but you had a conflict of interest 11 months ago or 10 months ago it's no longer that case it ended 10 months ago you're required to disclose that that you had that conflict 10 months ago you've never had deliberations on this at all but now it's coming before the council for the first time because you disclosed that 10 months ago you had a conflict that you no longer have are you required to abstain and recuse yourself from discussion and from votes right yeah I think I think I'm with you and I think the answer still yes you should have to abstain because if I for example if I'm planning to run for City Council and I do what free citizens are free to do then they say hey why don't you run and and and vote and represent our interest well that time before what you know it's the first time I've heard it but there's been work kind of done that could be you know that's undisclosed that may have prompted me to run or prompted me to lean a certain way when it comes up for the first time versus so if there's once there's a conflict for me I think that that carries throughout just because I mean now some of that self-reporting I mean obviously you know because you're not if you're seeing it for the first time there's there's not been that kind of paper trail but that's I don't know if that that is succinct enough but generally if you have to if you're affected by it I think it should carry through the life of that item here on Council all right so you would be in favor of still having to abstain from the vote yes okay yeah but I think Dalton's absolutely correct that we need to have one way or another at that language no sure yeah that's my right I think another way we might look at this is if we look at the conflict of interest definitions on page nine are there any of those in particular that that we would want that up to two-year period or any of those that once you're off you're often and I use as an example if if your spouse serves on a board and a nonprofit and which would which you would have to then recuse yourself but that spouse got off the board in October and it's now April of the next year do you really have any connection with that nonprofit anymore that would make you have to recuse yourself so it may be more of a line by line we need to look at these to figure out what time period with each one and that's a good observation because I mean to to take your concept in general I would struggle with that only because there's some because of the definition of conflict of interest but let's say I had a an interest in a piece of property at a partnership and I got out of that partnership a year ago you know somebody bought me out it's coming now for a rezoning some could say well that you know still maybe you know have those social relationships but I don't have necessarily the conflict of interest so if it was the general question for me I'd have to say I think you should be able to vote given the language that is present but it would also fall under I think council member Briggs opportunity to say hey well you got to disclose it number one you do have to disclose I had this relationship but carrying that because in essence what you're saying is once a conflict always a conflict and I totally understand that approach I'm having a hard time getting there 100% so that that's that's why I would say from a general perspective I would be in favor of being able to you know you got to disclose but then you have to you can vote doesn't mean you can't recuse yourself you have the option but you're not mandated to opt to to vote or to recuse yourself by the code so council member Ryan had put some options out there which if we need to go there I'm okay with going there I mean looking at those line items but in general I'm probably okay with if you're done with it because it does extend back more than just 12 months I mean so you're gonna have to disclose some things which still may be hard to remember back 24 months ago I can't remember yesterday I can't remember sometimes what I voted on so that that's where that's the direction I would give council member Huspeth would give the opposite direction so I'm not sure where everybody else is as a person who writes rules for living and in this case we're specifically writing ethics rules I often have to ask the question what harm is being avoided by prohibiting someone from voting on a relationship they no longer have that I word that yes I mean if someone used to work with a junior college down the road obviously they'd feel that pressure to favor that junior college down the road whenever that junior college came before the city for a contract or a zoning change or to have pavement work done or something else if you no longer have that relationship whether you ended it on the good terms or you were fired what's the city's interest in prohibiting that elected official from exercising their vote at the Dias so they no longer have that relationship I think that's one of the questions well and also I mean and I appreciate you pointing that out because we're putting it in terms of casting our vote but our vote is representative of the community that elected us so I think that's something else so in other words if we recuse ourselves we're saying and rightly so we need to based upon some of these ethical these ethics codes requirements so yeah I'm still so where's everybody else on this I mean we we got to give some direction but I think the code currently says it talks about if you had the person has a conflict in conflicting interests city officials with a conflicting interest that was meant to cover at the moment it comes before the City Council they have this relationship if you would like me to clarify that that's really what it means I can add clarifying language if instead a majority of the council doesn't want that to be the rule they want it to be prospective in the past excuse me that I can do that it sounds like what you've just described is his question may be answered in the code I think I think he just answered the question and I'm comfortable with that because I think that the requirement to disclose is important and and and it gives people the opportunity to say then well hmm maybe maybe that relationship that they had in the last 12 months did influence in a in a way that's not not in the best interest of the city and they have that opportunity to make that decision and and if that were to happen I think that that council member or that P and Z member is responsible for that choice and they may have to explain it and some folks may think they made a bad decision by disclosing and still voting they should have disclosed and abstained right but for purposes of triggering the enforcement mechanisms under this ordinance I would suggest leaving it the prohibition on just current conflicts not past conflicts what go ahead when I first got on council what I was I had seen some votes and I thought man I would just as soon not have to vote on this and and man I could go either way on it or I have friends on both sides I'm bound to to you know whatever I wish I could just avoid this vote but it was explained to me by some of the senior people that had been on council for a while now you have an obligation you you you got on council to make hard decisions and and there was a reason for not not allowing abstentions from votes just willy-nilly because because you were you were elected to do a job do you do you in your experience have you run into some situations where where these kinds of ordinances and and things have been maybe abused by people who want to avoid a controversial decision we've had a few here I've not encountered anything in my career that I would characterize as abusing it and but in part understand that I believe that it is a fundamental exercise of the First Amendment a right of free speech not to vote and also not to explain why you're not voting and so there are cities across Texas that actually have rules in their charter or in their code of ethics that says thou shall vote unless you have a conflict as defined in this ordinance and you explain that conflict okay and I think those are fascinating I think they're ultimately unenforceable because there's ample case law elsewhere that says it's your right whether you show up to city council meetings or not it's your right where you open your mouth or not and so while I've seen those ordin ances and I've seen them in Texas I don't think they're enforceable because I think they're unconstitutional and I think if a council member were to constantly abstain from those tough votes then the liability they're incurring is political liability which is justified it's not legal and it may or may not be ethical that was a very helpful answer thank you okay so we're back to this issue at hand recommendation was just to leave it as it's drafted I think I expressed a desire to do that let's see I understand where you are okay all right looks like the consensus at least not unanimous but the consensus is to to move forward with as drafted skipping forward to section 114 which is the implementation section regarding staffing at our last work session I was asked to add language requiring the city auditor to maintain a conflicts log in essence a spreadsheet or database cataloging the conflicts that are declared by city officials in consultation with senior staff since that work session I 've added additional language here at the end which makes it clear that the auditor is neither authorized nor required to inspect or act upon the conflicts log and that was our effort to make it clear for everyone that just because the auditor is keeping certain data that does not make your auditor your ethics policeman I also added language saying in the unlikely event a complaint is against the city auditor then wherever it says city auditor the city manager's office would step in and perform that function councilman breaks I don't really recall talking about that last one with the city manager stepping in is there a reason why the city manager was chosen and not the city attorney or council since council is direct no I'm not I don't think we did discuss that I think that's something that I put in there okay and the reason I and we could choose and you can certainly direct me to put in a different city employee I purposely chose not to include the city attorney's office just because city attorneys tend to like to give give legal advice and advocate most of the ones I've dealt with do not like serving this function but I can tell you I've not consulted with Aaron about this at all so this was just a suggestion from me so I want to make sure I understand what this is really saying because what you're saying is we're changing simply who quote unquote purposes of processing that complaint yes so paperwork calendaring meetings so it's not about making a substantive finding on the complaint it's it's just administrating the complaint as far as okay is it all filled out we've got a complaint on this day this time they're not looking at it for the substantive violation or non violation of the or are they I'm trying to understand no your explanation is correct mayor in fact nothing in this ordinance gives any staff member adjudicatory authority over any ethics complaint it's purely paperwork processing the only people who decide whether there has or has not been an ethics violation would be the Board of Ethics so since early on you gave me guidance designating the city auditor as the department where the clerical functions of this board will be handled it occurred to me what actually the question was raised me by others what happens if the complaints against the auditor and I thought okay that makes sense we need to have somebody else deal with this the city manager's office made the most sense to me I would never suggest assigning the City Council a clerical function okay any concerns I mean are we okay with that as it's written I mean so it would just be mr. Hellman himself say like so the city auditor receives the complaint and then says to the city manager there's a complaint about me can you handle this and at that point which I assume it 's a city you know I imagine the auditor has some clerical or support staff the city manager 's offices clerical or support staff would be the one handling the paperwork calendaring the meeting sending out the notices they would not be making any decisions about whether the complaint is based in any sort of reality or not what what's your concern I mean it's that it's a city manager's office handling it rather than one individual so that if that complaint is I guess it's just the first time I'm seeing it so I'm just absorbing it and I 'm trying to work through it and we haven't heard from our city manager our city attorney or the city auditor how that normally occurs I know that our city auditor has been with the municipality for over 20 years and so how in the past a complaint like that is handled I would like to have some more information that's great before we just understand absolutely all right so if if it's possible because we we are going to have a public hearing tonight if it's possible just to get some information about of course I don't think the auditors in town is auditor in town here okay yeah if we could just get because it may be a very simple answer and if it is then we maybe can address that this evening or even before the it's not before because you're about three so I appreciate that you bet and so if you if the city manager's office could also sort of formulate a response for councilmember Briggs that'd be councilmember Hussle yeah I'm fine with the languages is just to state because we don 't have many other options right we we directly hire city manager city attorney city auditor and the judge right so I mean it's either going to be the city manager or the judge because I do think we need to keep the attorney clean so it I'm fine with it as is for that reason I mean I want to put it on judge Ramsey and that leaves one person so okay yeah any other comments on that councilmember I thought that councilmember Hussle said it wonderfully okay anybody else everybody's fine with it except for councilmember Briggs but okay if you don't mind I think getting the answer during the public hearing would be helpful because I mean it feedback it I'm not even sure that I mean we're obviously posted to take action tonight but if we don't then that that's okay I mean we've got a time to consider that okay and here he comes all right well why don't we move through your presentation if we want to ask some questions to clarify this okay that'd be great section 117 on the board of ethics at your suggestion in our last work session I clarified that the members of the board of ethics can only serve three terms we expanded the ineligibility to include all family members of city officials within the third degree and we added language saying that at the first meeting each fiscal year the board of ethics will choose its own officers regarding complaints we clarified that any complaint that can be brought under the ordinance and go through the process must be based on either on specific mandate that's included in the complaint or one of the prohibitions that's in the ordinance so just because they think someone did something wrong based on some gut instinct will not support a complaint going through the process under this ordinance I did not change the confidentiality language that we already had but what I did add at council suggestion is that clerical steps and administrative steps will be taken to identify or label or manage confidential information so that it's not inadvertently disclosed if it's required to be disclosed then I anticipate it will be but at least it'll be stamped cover sheet those sorts of things kept in separate files so it's not accidentally disclosed Section 120 regarding preliminary assessments we clarified that the panels those rotating groups of three members of the board of ethics when they gather they shall be subject to the open meetings act draft a didn't say one way or the other it was silent I added language at council's request to make it very specific and then added some just practical language about each panel will select among themselves a presiding officer for that meeting regarding board of ethics meetings themselves clarified that the chairperson will count toward the establishment of a quorum and the chairperson will be allowed to vote added that both the accused and the complainant have a right to legal counsel and of course the accused has a right to mount a defense of any allegations I added some language regarding postponement basically doing what's often done in municipal court and other courts anyway each side gets one freebie whether it's the accused or the complainant if they can't be there they've got a conflict that would hinder their attending a hearing each side gets one free pass after that postponements are at the discretion of the board of ethics and based on good cause to keep one party the other from ab using the system I don't know if this is the right place I'm looking yeah well under burden of proof we've talked about who has the burden of proof for putting forth the evidence yes sir which is the complainant am I correct yes sir as far as the standard in other words two questions one is when there is a finding issued is it by simple majority of the full committee or is it a super majority of the committee we talked about super majority for if it's a frivolous finding you're correct but for just a general finding that's one question the second one is what and this might be too technical the city attorney brought this to my attention you know obviously in legal cases criminal and civil you have standards of proof you know convincing clear convincing evidence preponderance of the evidence or you know beyond reasonable do we need to get that kind of technical in this I mean or I mean how do you determine what rises to the level of a finding for a complaint and that's just sort of a question posed to you as someone who's worked in this field for a long time and drafted I did not suggest a standard of evidence because it's not necessarily it's not really my opinion that it's necessary I think it's very difficult to do particularly with lay people we do require that some members of our board of ethics be lawyers or jurists not all of them I've seen it to be a difficult concept for some of them to understand and I've all in equal number of times seen it not work with juries but what I've seen most common for those cities that do choose to have it is clear and convincing evidence preponderance is probably the second most common but it's more rare so if they do set it it's a typically low burden and as far as for a finding the amount of affirmative votes it has currently written it's just a simple majority and I'm certainly open to council suggestions on either one of those points yes I'm okay with leaving it without a standard of proof I'm with a lot of people can 't do the difference between preponderance and then I mean are you doing it by vote like I just yeah I don't want to do no and I'm okay with that I just wanted to pose that question yes councilmember Gregory when we're talking about having lawyers present and that sort of thing what I'm wondering is does do we have anything in here that that allows the accused to know specifically what they're being accused of in advance is it or is it when the actual hearing takes place that that specific evidence is being you know that the accused finds out for the first time what the evidence they're being accused of is is otherwise they wouldn't have much of an opportunity to offer another explanation sure the the accused is provided a copy of the complaint early in the process but that's it there's nothing in this draft that would require for example evidence to be filed with the Board of Ethics and served on both parties 14 days in advance or 10 days in advance I think that your Board of Ethics could adopt such procedural rules when they adopt their procedural rules but there's nothing in this ordinance that would require that do you are there many cities that do require that or is this it's pretty much it's pretty rare okay and and your point is well taken sometimes it requires an accused to respond to evidence on the spot and so you don't have that say 30-day deadline as you would in a typical court hearing or something like that okay thanks yeah so as far as the questions I raised I'm okay if that seems like everybody else is okay with as it's written and this is at the end of the ordinance we're adding some general procedural points at the request of counsel one deadlines any deadline that appears in this ordinance shall be interpreted to mean five o'clock p.m. local time on that last day and also the mailbox rule so I've added those two things the only subject of substance that has not been covered by draft a or draft B is the issue of nepotism and this was raised with me since our last work session that you know your charter previously contained some language regarding nepotism which is usually defined as the reward of employment based on a relationship to to someone in power in this case the City Council we covered this in our training session the very first meeting we had Texas Government Code 573 basically prevents the City Council from hiring its relatives within the second or third degree because you're a home rule city and the city manager has authority for hiring most employees this typically does not apply it would apply only to those City Council direct appointees the state nepotism law applies to full- time and part-time employees it does not apply to volunteers so here's again a quick summary of what state law looks like of the 18 codes of ethics that we have sampled from in building our ordinance in Denton I've only spotted two that specifically address nepotism and one is Bastrop Texas the other is Laredo both of them mirror state law this is the standards you see on the screen so the question is does the City Council want to address nepot ism in its ethics ordinance if so do you want to mirror state law or do something different council member Briggs I would like to address it in our in our ordinance for sure personally so which which one of the options would you I would like to have conversations with council to see I mean all all of the ones here does that mirror or is there some that are different like is this your recommendations if we did put it in to our ordinance well this what you see on the screen is state law is my bulleted summary of state law and currently the city manager could hire a City Council members relative within the first degree and if people didn't like it their Avenue under state law would be to complain to the City Council who would complain to the City Manager what are you doing hiring our relatives now this could be addressed elsewhere it could be addressed in an HR policy it could be addressed in something regarding the City Manager or it could be addressed in your ethics ordinance the point of it is to keep council members themselves as a group from hiring their relatives or supervising their relatives the fact that by charter the citizens of dead all gated most the day-to-day employment supervision of the City Manager means that most of this is not into effect you couldn't hire your direct relative as City Attorney or municipal court judge or City Manager but otherwise the City Manager under current Texas law is free to do that if he thinks it's in the best interest of the city unless the City Council has told him not to I think that's a fair abbreviated summary of Texas law so by having this in our I'm sorry putting this in our ordinance we would need to if council agrees to prohibit the City Manager from hiring our first degree relatives or second degree that would be what we would do to differentiate from state law yes that that's one way you could do it okay yes council member Gregory I thought that thank you I thought that we it was in our policies that we didn't do that can you can you address that I've actually just sent our HR director email asking for a recap of the nepotism policy but that is my that is my recollection I'm trying to confirm that though I believe it it's already in policy it's not in ordinance but it's in policy that we and we approved that personnel policy yeah I think it may be covered in a different direction in a different way it if I could go on my comment would be it certainly makes sense that council wouldn't hire a relative but the council directly supervises a manager who hires a relative it doesn't seem like it doesn't seem appropriate to do so but I think that we already have it covered we might want to cover it a different way but I think it's already I just want to read the policy again to figure out what's overlapping or not I'm okay putting this in an ordinance but I want to make sure I understand the policy as well the policy the currently standing policy okay so that's we'll probably have that information here shortly before the so we've got a couple things to cover up after your presentation that's conversation with city auditor and then clarification of this policy yeah so here's my last slide then and that is looking forward beyond this work session we have tonight's public hearing and then I'm working with your staff I have placeholders for April the 3rd and April the 17th at some point staff and I would like to have feedback from the City Council as to how you would like to see this process proceed do you need more drafts more hearings more evening hearings or maybe you won't know into the conclusion of tonight's meeting where you are but at this point we have nothing else scheduled and planned beyond tonight's public hearing okay council we've got I'll tell you what we've been going for two hours let's just take a quick five minute break and then we'll come back answer your question and we're going to hear from our auditor and then we'll probably have the response back from the because we could you know it could be another 30 minutes as we have this conversation and just give everybody a chance to take a break welcome back everyone to this meeting of the Denton City Council we are back on our work session agenda item 4d wow is that right we're moving through this we're moving through this work session report okay so we've got a couple of things to wrap up sorry about that we've got a couple things to wrap up council direction to Alan for you know future action future dates and then we 've got a conversation to have with city auditor and then a clarification on the ne potism policy if where it's contained if anywhere in city policy so there's out yeah so council we've got a public hearing tonight but we don't have anything else scheduled council member Ryan well I really feel like until tonight's public hearing it's difficult to say which date we would we would want to have or if we'd want even both so all right okay so all right anybody else have any yes mayor pro tem what's why why do you say that what depends on the amount of public input types of changes might be proposed and need to be discussed by the council so I would say we would at least need April 3rd but we might also need the 17th at this point okay yes well I'm okay with going ahead and setting aside April 3rd and if we need another one after the hearing then we can go ahead and add it okay anybody else comment council member Riggs I'm okay with that all right April 3rd yeah and then obviously if we haven't got it finished by then we've moved April 17th so I guess the the thing to keep in mind for staff and the agenda committee is you know to not load up the 17th necessarily totally if we can't that's a couple months that's about a month out but we'll see but tonight will tell us a lot so okay all right so if we will take the the the auditor um mesh welcome I believe were you were you able to hear any of the presentation okay and so the the question primarily is is if there's a complaint ethics complaint filed against the city auditor as it's drafted the city manager's office would handle handle the administrative processing clerical processing of that complaint what are your thoughts on that and what have had been your experiences just in in your many years as a as an internal auditor in this particular case since the city manager is not making any value judgment on it it's just a pretty much check the box so I would not have any issue with that okay all right Councilman Briggs you have any questions or comments yeah well if I could just ask him his opinion on this because we've designated him for his office for a lot of things in this ordinance and have not heard his sure response or questions or if it 's okay what he needs if there's anything that we've done that's incorrect and just if he could weigh in on it for the first time sure thanks yeah I'm sorry yeah basically we've we've made you sort of the your department the the prime department to handle ethics complaints and you know the old joke that if you're not in the room you're always the one that gets volunteered so boy I wasn't even here that's crickets I mean come on now come on so just your feedback on you know that okay with it not okay with it any suggestions comments no I I do not have any issue with that okay however this is going to be some administrative burden so when I come back with my budget request I mean yeah I understand good good good yeah always like those opportunities yes okay are there any any other questions you you have in that regard councilmember Briggs or anybody else for that matter while we've got the city auditor here to mesh here to talk about okay thank you very much I appreciate it thank you and then our final business at least on this agenda item is the nepotism what type of city policies if any do we already have in place yeah yeah thank you mayor the yeah personal policies refer to the charter which actually contains a nepotism prohibition against city manager hiring anyone related to who's a member of the city council within the second degree of affinity or the third degree of consanguinity and it also this also happens to apply to the heads of all their are all of our departments as well within their within their department respective departments and the city personnel policy goes one step further and kind of outlines the nepotism policy with employees as well okay I think that answers that question so we don't really need it in the ethics ordinance because it's in our charter correct almost to that same level to some degree I think it's covered yep okay any other questions yes councilmember Briggs so back on the the complaint for the auditor I know it's fine since it said the city manager's office our city manager but can we have just a designation or a specific person rather than individual people or a complaint going from person to person I'm not sure how the office functions so it may already be that way where it's just one person or the city manager directly just for the confidentiality of the the auditor if a complaint is received okay my only thought on that is that's a that's a great question and comment I know we cover confidentiality in the ordinance itself so are you saying that they're that the auditor because he's where she could be in a city employee or one of our hires should be afforded a different level of confidentiality or because it's an employee employment yes right so the so the auditor's office is going to I don't know how many people will wind up having but probably eventually more than one one so it may are you saying you would like that same procedure in the auditor's office that one person be primarily responsible named person or by title it's got to be by title because these change so you so your primary thrust is to either increase the level of confidentiality because it's the city auditor or maintain what we already have in the ordinance is that correct well I'm not sure the process it just says to the sit by the city manager but in our conversations we've been referring to it to city manager office and so there's a lot of people in the office so I'm not sure at who the complaint goes to and if it would travel from person to person or if it just remains with so I guess I'm just looking for clarification and so I need a little clarification because when you say based upon your observation of this particular language it says performed by the city manager I think we had in here when we talk about okay says the city auditor's office shall maintain it but I think we also have it where is it the city auditor's office is always referred to when we're talking about that the auditor is going to handle these functions because what you're reading is a specific title so you're saying it's either needs to be city manager or city manager's office and then even limit that further to maybe a title or something like that well I'm asking the city manager like will it go to the city secretary in the office or will it come directly to you just for some more specifics I'm just looking for typically the way we would handle a complaint like that it would be to read myself or the deputy city manager one of us would handle a complaint confidential confidentiality if we needed meetings set up or copies made we would utilize one of our two assistants in the office should that and that's basically how we would work that to maintain that confidentiality keep the number of folks as small as possible in these very sensitive situations thank you so is that does this language satisfy you okay all right okay any other questions before we move on to our next agenda item oh mayor pro tem I just wanted to thank Alan for all of his work and we have an ethics ordinance now it looks like so very happy about that almost almost I know should we clap no we haven't heard from the public yet I mean come on the work part the really tough work part I think was on Alan's plate and I just want to thank him for that he did he did some heavy lifting I appreciate that it's an interesting process because y'all chose a slightly different path and that the council chose as a group to review debate discuss and kind of wordsmith all the substantive sections and so it's no surprise to me that there's so much agreement at this point because you built it as you went along it wasn't forced upon you so thank you so far we'll see how the public feels tonight all right thank you very much okay I guess this is do we have closed sessions no no we can go run errands holy cow all right then we will that's okay everybody at this meeting of the Denton City Council on Tuesday March the 20th 2018 it is 631 this evening and we do have a quorum we'll call this meeting to order and please join with me and stand if you're able to pledge allegiance to the US and Texas flag one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all on our right side I pledge allegiance to the United States of America for all that is in its cause. Okay we've got a special treat for us tonight want to read a proclamation for New Horizons senior band day but if who would like to come up and sort of share a little bit about what we're celebrating tonight and we're going to read the pro clamation and then we're going to have a performance yeah come on because we want everybody to introduce themselves all right tell us a little bit about yes my name is Rodney Barton I live in Hickory Creek I am the president of New Horizons music didn't which is the nonprofit that supports the New Horizons band New Horizons is an international organization made up of about 200 different bands mostly in the United States but some in Europe and some in New Zealand actually the local band was was started 20 years ago by Dr. Deborah Ror from the School of Music at UNT and she would be with us here tonight I'm sure but she's on a business trip for UNT now that she's administration she stays very busy but she is still the music director and still our conductor for the band and we really appreciate her the New Horizons philosophy is to provide expert music experiences to people who would not necessarily to adults who would not necessarily have an opportunity to do that in that it provides opportunities for people who have never played music before and so there 's I think there's at least one person that's up here that had never played a musical instrument until they joined the band just a few years ago and so that's unique about New Horizons but it also provides opportunities for people like me who played in high school or college or even junior high but took a long time off between high school or college and retirement age and so it provides an opportunity for us to get back into music but I'm going to pass the microphone on and let everybody else introduce themselves I've been with a band about five years I'm Carl Backus I live out at ropes and ranch I've been with the band about nine years I'd had been 35 plus years since I had played I play bass clar inet with the band and one thing he forgot to mention in here that this band was the first New Horizons band in Texas in North Texas now there's either four or five New Horizons bands and I think statewide it's what close to ten or a little over ten yeah so this is we were the groundwork for it all. My name is Marion Rohr Debbie Rohr is my daughter-in-law and I moved to Texas from Wisconsin 17 years ago and I was told you will join the band because I had played in grade school middle school and high school and she and my son said mom that's a great way to meet people and I've never been sorry since. My name is Susan Denny I joined the beginner band last year to learn to play percussion and so this is my first year with the New Horizons band. Marshall Smith I've been with the band about eight years and I'm a percussionist. Joe Roy I've been with the band about 14 years and I play trumpet. Mary Lee Kendrick I've been with the band for two and a half years and I play clarinet and I hadn't played for 60 years when I came back so you can do it. My name is Susan Wren I also play clarinet I've been in the band about five years and I had about a 38 year break for playing. I'm Doug Ebersole and I've been with the band for seven years I'm playing at the trumpet. I'm Sleepy Lewis I play trumpet and I also have been with the band for about six years. Helen Schenck I flew in from London especially for this concert I want you all to know that. And I think I've been with the band about six years and I play percussion. Michael Denny I've been with the band for three years and I play tuba. My name is Woody Wood and I came to North Texas in 1946 and got in the first lab band at North Texas. I've been here I was living in Shreveport Louisiana at that time but I was in the Navy during World War II and came to North Texas in '46 and I came back to North Texas in 2000 and got into this band. And your wife plays too and how long have you all been married? Seventy seven years. Oh and the reason we're doing this tonight is because there is a concert next week for the 20th anniversary it's at the Merkison Performance Center it is free and it's worth twice that much money to go hear it. It starts at seven o'clock everyone's invited. I want to make sure when you said the first lab band you meant the first one o'clock lab band for is that right? It wasn't? Two o'clock but the first one. Let's give this gentleman a big hand. 91. Wow. Well it gives me great pleasure to read this proclamation then we're going to hear a number from the band. This is a proclamation by the mayor of the city of Denton whereas the Denton New Horizons band began in February of 1998 at the Denton Senior Center founded by Dr. Debbie Rohr the associate to the president chief of staff and professor of music education at the University of North Texas. 30 people started out playing in this band that first year and the numbers have steadily grown over the years. Members come from all walks of life are both working and retired and play the entire range of instruments one finds in a traditional concert wind ensemble some experienced and some just beginning. Who was the one that just that is never played? Is it? Okay great. That's correct you never played an instrument before you joined the band right? Alright fantastic. Then whereas the 75 members of the Denton New Horizons band range in age from 40 to 92 and are divided into two groups one for beginners and one for more experienced players. Only 200 players have participated in the band over its 20 years but the impressive part is the hundreds of spouses children and grandchildren of the band members who have enjoyed the concert the band presents in Denton. And whereas the Denton New Horizons band's free concerts draw crowds of 100 to 200 for each performance it plays regularly for the Denton community at events such as Denton Arts and Jazz Festival and played at the Texas Music Educ ators Conference in San Antonio. Any given year might find the band playing at a local soup kitchen accompanying a high school choir or fundraising for local charitable organizations. Now therefore I Chris Watts mayor of the city of Denton Texas do hereby proclaim March the 26th 2018 as New Horizons Senior Band Day and in the city of Denton Texas and encourage all citizens to help celebrate the band's 20th anniversary with the concert that evening. So the concert's on the 26th of March at the at this Monday at the at the Mercason. Yep. Okay and we're gonna hear a little number. One two one. All right. All right. Thank you all so much again for that and your contribution to our community. Our next item on the agenda is presentation from members of the public. If we could go ahead and start the review of citizen reports. 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 chambers. 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 recitation 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. Citizens 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. All right thank you our first presenter and only presenter as far as under the schedule citizen reports is Christopher is it Colum? You'll have to pronounce that last name for me when you get up I'm sorry. Regarding a statement of concern regarding Story Parachute Works Inc. if you could just state your name and address your time will begin. Yes my name is Christopher Clubundee my address is 418 Maple Street I'm in district one. I finished a degree at UNT work at UPS and I'm a full-time diaper changer I have two five-month-old twin girls and while we were on a walk I was walking by and I discovered that fully automatic firearms and destructive devices are being sold two doors down from Mellow Mushroom. At Story Parachute Works Inc. and I'll show you how I know that. But first machine guns according to the Firearm Owners Protection Act are permitted to be sold if they were made before 1986 according to the Reagan administration. Semi-automatic assault rifles were used in the Douglas High School shooting that happened recently the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting that happened in Connecticut also recently at home in Sutherland Springs Texas. These are semi-automatic assault rifles and I'm here to tell you that fully automatic assault rifles are being sold at Story Parachute Works Inc. This is a picture of the building like I said it's two doors down from Mellow Mushroom. As you can see it's pretty discreet. I went to the website there's Mellow Mushroom there. I went to the website and it advertises itself as a dealer of class three firearms which are technically title two firearms I researched just going online that includes fully automatic machine guns silencers short-bill shotgun short-bill rifles and destructive devices which include grenades rockets etc. As you can see there's nothing about parachutes on this website. I highlighted at the bottom information that's pertinent. Once all of your ducks are in a row come on down to Story Parachute Works Inc. in Texas check out our stock of firearm suppressors and automatic weapons and skydiving gear yet no skydiving gear is an option in the menu. This is a quote from the website although it may seem complicated we're happy to help you through every step in the process we have transferable guns in stock and if we don't have it we can tap into a network of dealers in other states to find it for you let us help you get the full auto gun you always wanted they're worth it. So I'd like to somehow just put that out there because I was shocked. Also I'd like to suggest the city imposing zoning restrictions that might help limit the sale of machine guns so close to downtown near residential areas. I hear that NCTC is going to establish itself where the Denton Records Chronicle Building is also there's a liquor store there. I've heard that counties like Alameda County just went through a court hearing where they were being challenged for imposing zoning ordinances which limited gun stores to 500 feet away from residences liquor stores schools and churches. Thank you. Thank you Christopher. Any questions? See none. All right. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. I don't believe we have any open mic citizen reports so we 'll move on to our agenda four which is consent agenda. Chair would entertain. Mayor Pro Tem. For approval of all items on the consent agenda. All right. Council member Ryan. I'll second. We have a motion and a second for approval of the consent agenda. Let's vote on the board please. Motion carries seven zero. Now move on to our agenda item for items for individual consideration. Agenda items five will move on to five a consider approval of a resolution replacing the current city of Denton policy for tax abatement incentives to establish guidelines and criteria governing tax abatement agreements and other types of incentive agreements. Thank you. Good evening mayor and council members. I'm Caroline Booth director of economic development and I'm here to make a short presentation for you regarding a new policy for tax abatement and incentives. The Denton City Council has the ability to use tax incentives for economic development as part of our economic development toolbox and state law does require that council approves a policy governing the use of these tax incentives every two years. Our current policy expires on April 5th 2018. Staff began the policy revisions in 2017 and their primary changes to the policy are listed there for you on the slide but I also want to mention that the policy throughout the changes does preserve the council's ability to consider each incentive request on a case by case basis. Also all of the projects will always be evaluated with regard to their return on investment and their public benefit for the community and performance measures are going to be established for each project and annual compliance will be verified by city staff prior to any incentive being received. The economic development partnership board reviewed the revised policy on January 10th and then we brought it to you for your initial review on the 16th. We went back to the EDP board on February 14th at which time they recommended approval of the new policy by a vote of 7 to 0 and then we brought it back to the council again on February 27th for a final review and that brings us to where we are tonight. Just to reiterate for tax incentives to be available to us as an economic development tool council must approve an incentive policy every two years. This policy before you this evening has been thoroughly v etted by the EDP board and the council and the EDP board does recommend approval of the new policy and I'm happy to answer any questions you have. So I wanted the public to know that the actual policy is online and in the backup to review but we did actually make changes this time as far as the timing I mean the year the amount of time for the incentives correct? I think you're talking about reducing the amount of time available for a chapter 380 agreement. There was an initial recommendation from staff to reduce the amount of time to 10 years only to align with the amount of time that's available for tax abatement. However during the discussion and review and revision process between the boards and the council that ultimately the majority direction was to not implement a 10 year limit on chapter 380 agreements. And of course the council can choose to limit it on a case by case basis but that's not something that's a blanket part of the policy. But more specifics on when they can be approved for target industries and such like that. Correct we have put some additional parameters around prioritizing target industries, listing out specific decision making factors that can contribute to what the council considers a public benefit of incentivizing a project and also put some more parameters around incentivizing based on sales tax. There's a minimum taxable sales per year of 15 million dollars in order for an entity to be incentivized via sales tax and there's also a cap of sales tax rebate which are both significant changes to the policy. Thank you. You're welcome. Any other questions for staff? Seeing none. Chair would entertain a motion or action. Council Member Ryan. I move approval. Council Member Gregory. Second. We have a motion and a second. Let's vote on the board for agenda item 5A. Motion carries unanimously. Moving on to agenda item 5B. Consider approval of a resolution of the city of city council of the city of Denton appointing a primary representative to the Denton County Transportation Authority Board of Directors and consider nominations for an alternate representative to the Denton County Transportation Board of Directors. Good afternoon mayor members of council. My name is Mark Nelson, director of transportation and I have for you this evening a quick presentation relating to as stated by the mayor DCTA board representation. This particular item has been in front of the mobility committee earlier this year in February and then in front of the council work session a couple of weeks ago and so bringing this forward presently for the potential reappoint ment of a board member and seeking nominations for a board alternate. So very quickly our current board representative is Richard Huckabee. He's been serving on the DCTA board since 2011. He's actually in the audience this evening with us. Appointment representative is Guy McElroy and also a Denton resident and has been serving as stated here in the presentation since 2011 and appointed by resolution 2011 048. The board representative and board alternates essentially serve a two-year appointment and the current appointment is for November of 2017 through November of 2019. We received notice from DCTA of this of the appointment in November of this past year and they may serve until reappointed and eligibility for representative is listed here with respect to having professional experience in transportation business, government, engineering, and law. So before you this evening we have staff has put forward four different options that the council may consider. We do have a draft resolution which would reappoint Richard Huckabee as the primary representative. Would also that particular option first option would allow for us to receive or to make nominations by the council for the board alternate. We could bring that back to a subsequent council meeting for consideration. We've suggested in the backup April 3rd. The second option would be bringing forward a resolution that would appoint both Richard Huckabee as the primary and Guy McElroy then for the alternate. Option three is consider nominations for both the primary and alternate position and then as stated earlier take no action at this point in time. Current board members could serve until reappointed. So at this point in time I can take questions if you have any. We can make amendments to the current resolution should that be your desire. Councilmember Gregory. I would make a motion to for option one which is to reapp oint Mr. Huckabee and leaving the alternative open for other nominations. Councilmember Briggs. I'll second. We have a motion to second for agenda item five B. Let's vote on the board please. Seeing no more questions. Motion carries six to one. We'll now move into our public hearing portion of the agenda. To item six A which is hold a public hearing regarding a draft ethics ordinance from an attorney Allen. Boy you're going to have to help me on that last name Mr. Allen. We'll let you introduce yourself. Allen always works Mr. Mayor. Okay. Mayor and Council Allen Borquez. I'll pull up my PowerPoint. Mayor and Council we're here to have our first public hearing on a draft ordinance for your code of ethics and I'll walk you through the key essentials of this. I'll skip some of the preliminary matters regarding the charter review process where this started ultimately was decided not to put an ethics ordinance in your charter but a recommendation came from your charter review committee and ultimately there was an election last November that prompted the voters to amend your charter to require you adopted ethics ordinance and to do that you first had to craft one and so with the November seventh election we went forward. You retained me and my firm to assist you in this regard and since then you've had several public work sessions where you've gone through the structure of an ordinance and discussed and debated and deliberated and chose the various components to put into your draft ordinance and here we are on March the 20th with draft B and we followed my lariat methodology for structuring this and putting the ingredients in leadership coming from the top the administration with your city management. We're proposing some regulations training that it goes into instructing city officials on what the rules are a method to hold those city officials accountable and transparency in the process. You looked not just at one or two model ordinances you didn 't particularly particular cities ordinance to be your rule to go by you looked at 18 different ones and your draft reflects different selections from those 18 different samples and no one can say that you have a cookbook ordinance this one was crafted specifically for Denton or reflection reflecting your wishes and your preferences. Starting at the beginning I don't mind reading this one I promise you won't read every slide but this stuff is important. The purpose of this ordinance is to foster an environment of integrity for those that serve the city of Denton and our citizenry. The City Council enacted this article in order to increase public confidence in our municipal government and there's other language like that along those lines. In terms of who this ordinance applies to it applies to city officials which is defined as the City Council members of the Board of Adjustment and the Planning and Zoning Commission. It also applies to the department heads that are directly appointed by the City Council. To a limited extent it applies to former city officials to vendors and to the complainants themselves. The rest of city staff will be covered by a different ethics rule which will be adopted through an HR personnel policy that follows along the same lines. In terms of expectations you have a section that says that all your city officials are expected to conduct themselves in a manner that fosters public trust. The city officials are charged with performing their public duties in a way that their projects and their own personal integrity upholds the integrity of the organization. Then you get into the meat of the ordinance where you've got a series of mandates such as a duty to report unethical conduct and also financial disclosures. Then the part that most people are concerned with the prohibitions. Here's a short list of the types of prohibitions covered in your ordinances, conflict of interest, gifts, restrictions on outside employment and those sorts of things. Training is a key component of this. The literature that we've discussed throughout our many sessions emphasizes that the best way to increase the ethics in an organization is to have conversations about ethics. Training on what you expect, training on what you require and training what you will be enforcing under your ordinance. That's for new city officials as they come on board, a refresher for those that are already on board and then a mention of the rules that will apply to those who are exiting the organization. To enforce all of this, you're deciding to put forth a board of ethics which will be a seven member group of citizens that will have two year staggered terms with a maximum of three terms. That group will be responsible for several things, the first of which is issuing advisory opinions. A rotating three person panel of the ethics board will be responding to request for ethics rulings. People who are concerned about how the code of ethics might apply to them or their situation will have the opportunity under your new code to ask for an opinion in advance. If they rely on that opinion in good faith, it could serve as a defense should ever an ethics complaint be brought against them. This whole system is designed to get folks who are in doubt to come forward and ask the question before getting too far down the road. We have a process in place for complaints. They must be writing, they must be submitted to the city auditor on a form that we provide. We specify in the code what the contents will be and that they must specifically allege a violation of the code and that that complaint be sworn. We're limiting the time period within which complaints can be brought to within two years of when the act or omission occurred or within six months of when the complainant learned of that behavior. We provide for limited confidentiality at the front end of the process and restrict ex parte communications, not wanting parties or their advocates to be talking individually with board of ethics members and those sorts of things. We provide for a preliminary assessment. The moment a complaint is filed, if it is complete, a panel of the board of ethics will take a look at it and see first of all, is it actionable? If everything in that complaint is assumed to be true, then does it give rise to a violation covered by our code? If not, then it can be dismissed. If it's completely baseless, then it will be dismissed. There is an opportunity to appeal that panel's decision. So we're providing due process in that regard. When it comes to meetings, they can be ordered by the chair person of the board of ethics, by three of the members or by the city auditor. A quorum will be four. We have rules regarding public hearings, purpose, they can drop their own rules or procedures. And the city council has made clear that meetings of the board of ethics and of their panels shall be in compliance with the open meetings act. When it comes to disposing of an ethics complaint, we specify certain options depending on the nature of the complaint. If it's baseless, it can be dismissed because the violation didn't occur or because the accused relied in good faith on an advisory opinion that they got in advance or that the complainant failed to testify at a hearing. Other than dismissal, there are certain sanctions provided for in the ordinance depending on the gravity of the offense. One is a letter of notification, a letter of admonition, a reprimand, a recommendation for suspension or ineligibility to serve in the future or in the case of vendors to contract in the future. We also provide a mechanism for dealing with frivolous complaints in hope of deterring those. At the end, whatever the final ruling is the board of ethics, we provide one more attempt at due process and that is allowing the complainant or the accused, whoever was wronged, to file a request for reconsideration as a form of internal appeal. That concludes my overview of what the ordinance says. I know that draft B, both the clean and red line were posted online along with a copy of the presentation and I'm available to answer any questions. Any questions from counsel for Alan on this ordinance before we open the public hearing? Seeing none, thank you very much. Appreciate it. We will now open the public hearing. I've got a couple of blue cards but you don't have to have a blue card turned in in order to speak at the public hearing but I will go ahead and call on them first. We do have a card from Mr. David Zoltner who's not in attendance but wanted to register his comments into the record. Mr. Zoltner indicates that he both supports and opposes the current ethics ordinance and I will read the comments that he has written down. I'm satisfied that draft B will become a solid foundation for the ethics reform in Denton. However, pointless handpicked panels will needlessly undermine public confidence in the system which runs counter to the founding principle. Expediency and T-O-M-A arguments are irrelevant. Learn from others before us. Let the entire ethics board be tasked with all advisory opinions and pre-screening complaints for validity. The next speaker with a blue card is Mr. Ken Gold. If you'll come down and state your name and address, your time will begin. Dear members of the council, my name is Ken Gold. I live at 2512 Hatches Trace here in town. First, I want to thank you all for the hard work you put in on this. I have read through draft B and like Mr. Zoltner, I feel strongly both ways. But I do want to proceed to press a point I made the other day about full disclosure. There's a difference between disclosure and the threshold for recusal. The $600 amount is the point at which it's prohibited to take action of individual, take action on a particular item in front of them. But below $600, I don't see any requirement that you even disclose that you have that kind of relationship with somebody. For example, a person here could be presenting a zoning change and a member of the council may be a business partner with them in an LLC unrelated to the issue in front of them, or a small partner. Would they have to disclose that? I don't see anything in this ordinance that requires them to disclose that the person in front of them seeking a change in zoning is a business partner with this council member. I think all business and financial interests need to be disclosed. And you have to rely on the citizens to give the proper weight to that disclosure. You also have to rely on the Board of Ethics to determine what a reasonable disclosure is. If it's a very, very small amount and you're not even aware of it and they do file an ethics complaint on you. You have to rely on that board to say that you made a reasonable effort. This kind of disclosure is important in aiding the citizens and understanding whether, not just if there is bias, but is there the appearance of bias. And I think that's a higher standard than just saying beyond, above $600 it's prohibited, but under $600, $599 is ethically okay. I just don't like the way that looks. So I'd appreciate a little further consideration on full disclosure as much as can be written into the ordinance as possible to make it as strong in that area as can be done. If you look at San Marcos, they have a pretty good one. They don't go as far as I'm pushing for, obviously. I don't know anybody else that does it the way I'm talking about. But that doesn't make it a bad theory, a bad concept. I think it can be made something more than a $600 threshold and $599 is okay. Thank you. I have a question, I believe, from Council Member Hussbuss. Yes, sir. So can you explain, kind of expand on that, what that looks like? So for example, if it almost would, in my mind, have me interrogate everybody I talk to because I don't know what interests they have, right? So how do you see that if I don't understand your point, if you don't know, but what if I don't know, right? If I'm talking to someone and I don't know the relationship or where they go, that's where it gets -- I just want to hear you sound that out. The very small, insignificant relationships might be hard to keep up with. But if you know there's a relationship, then just disclose it. I don't see why there's a problem. But if you don't know of the relationship and you've made a reasonable effort to know of these, I mean, the guy's name, the party's names are on the agenda, at least by that point, you have some idea who's going to be in front of you . I think you can make a reasonable effort to disclose. And if somebody disagrees that it was a reasonable effort, then they can file an ethics complaint and you can make your case in front of the Ethics Commission and rely on them to make a reasonable determination. The really insignificant ones are going to be insignificant . And you're going to have lots of insignificant, small relationships that don't rise to the level of concern of bias on the particular item. But $599, that's a different thing than you run a QT and sell cigarettes to somebody. You understand? I mean, there's a big range between there. An ongoing relationship with somebody, particularly if you have a series of LLCs that somebody's involved in, six or eight of them, and you're in two or three of them, I'd like to know that. Even if the item right here in front of me that you're voting on today has nothing to do with the LLC you're involved in, I'd like to know this guy's your business partner. That's really all. Okay. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Appreciate it. Those are all the cards I have, but this is a public hearing. Anybody wishing to speak on this matter, please come down, state your name and address and your time will begin. Deb Armantar, 2003 Mistywood Lane. I feel very similarly to Mr. Zultner and Mr. Gold. I'm both pleased, thrilled actually, and disappointed in this ordinance for the reasons that have been stated previously. I have a number of things that I like about the ordinance and a number of corrections that I would ask you to consider on behalf of the appearance of just maximum accountability to the public. I've decided to limit my comments today to four general areas. One, I call the just say no rule, which applies to my rule of thumb about ethics that if you can't explain it to a kid, there's probably something wrong with it. If I can't explain to a kid why $600 worth of the appearance of conflict of interest is acceptable, but $601 is not or $599 and 600, then I don 't think that's right. I am in favor, as I've been stating from the beginning, of a $0 conflict of interest policy, which also by the way makes it easier for anybody covered by that policy to deal with it. You just say no. You don't have to play the prices right with your gifts and try to figure out is this a really expensive gift basket or something cheap. You just say no. Very easy. You recuse yourself if you have the slightest appearance of conflict. The Board of Ethics is my second one for reasons that have been stated before. I don't think that we should have a seven member jury handp icked by council. There are other kinds of boards, many different ways that other cities do it. I don't think there's one right solution, but I think that for me this looks a little too close to self-policing. Also, I want to add something that I didn't like, though, is the language in the description of the board that preference be given to people of especially well-educated professions like attorneys, architects, doctors, et cetera. We live in a country where a waiter or a janitor can serve on a jury for a capital murder trial. I don't see what education has to do with ethics. I'm talking to someone who has a PhD. I don't think I'm any more ethical because of my education than somebody who just has a GED. I don't think that that's a very American idea. I don't like that and the impression it gives. Third, all boards and committees, I believe, should be covered, not just the Zoning Board of Adjustment and P&Z. I understand the reasoning behind it because these are legislative bodies. I'll give an example. I happen to serve on the Public Utility Board. I'm also an English professor at UNT. Say something comes up on Public Utility Board where UNT wants an even better special deal on their electricity. I wouldn't have to recuse myself from that. I think that's wrong. I would recuse myself, but that's because I myself would make the personal decision to do that. I think that should be the case with every single board and commission required disclosure and recusal. If that sounds onerous, well, being on a board or committee involves a lot of work. I think the most important thing and what we should be thinking of is the public, not so much the burden on the people being asked to disclose. Thank you. >> Councilmember Gregory? >> Thank you. So I've heard you say what you don't like about the Ethics Board, about the council appointing the members. So how would they be appointed? What is your recommendation? >> Well, there are a number. I mean, your consultant can tell you a number of different ways better than I can, a number of different ways that other cities do it. I'm open to, gosh, many of the different possibilities, and I think some of them have already been covered in previous discussions. >> Thank you. >> But I don't -- I'm not partial to one particular way. I just think for it to look like -- for that board to look like another board or committee where everybody has their appointee, even though, of course , that appointee isn't beholden to the person who appointed them, again, it's just about the appearance. So anyway, number of different ways that are better, and I think that you've got an expert much more well versed than I am and the many possibilities. I only know a few. >> Okay. Thank you. I see no more questions. Thank you. This is a public hearing. Anybody else wishing to speak, please come down, state your name and address. Your time will begin. This is a public hearing. Anybody else wishing to speak? One more time. Not seeing anybody rise. So we will now close the public hearing. Councilmember Gregory. >> Question for city manager about the timeline. What do you anticipate the timeline to be for the HR policies that will be aligned with this ordinance? >> We are finalizing some drafts right now. We are working with the department directors to review those and our compliance directors also holding numerous training sessions with our employees. So we are shooting for the 3rd of April. My intention was whenever the council is ready to adopt the year ethics ordinance, we will have a companion one here for the employees. >> Councilmember Hudspeth. >> Thank you. I have a question for Alan. I guess my question, more of a request, on our next meeting , that's the 3rd, is that what we talked about? >> Yes. >> Our next meeting, 3rd? >> Okay. >> For that, could you, I'd like to see some language that, or if you could email a language that kind of what it would look like if we ask for disclosure for all business interests. I think I can get there, right, because you know who you're in business with. And so it's not a, it's not prohibitive, it's just a disclosure of who you do business with. You know? And so I'd like to see kind of what that language, what you would suggest if that makes sense. >> Certainly. >> Okay. It's kind of a draft of what a paragraph would look like if we went and asked for disclosure for, so I guess 5%, 5% is a prohibition, but the 1 to 5, what does that look like if we said, hey, you at least have to disclose this, but you're free to, you know, be involved in those conversations. I'd like to see, or yeah, be involved, but you have to disclose for that, kind of that gap. If you would, please. >> I will, and I'll follow up, because part of what this ordinance does is it makes it an ethics violation in Denton to fail to disclose the requirements that you have to disclose under state law. So a lot of what your financial investments are going to be in your business interests are already covered under Chapter 145 of the Local Government Code, because you're a municipality over 100,000 population. >> Okay. >> 172 of the Local Government Code is going to require a disclosure of business interests for those vendors who come before the City of Denton seeking a contract, and so that's already in state law, and those disclosures are already required. I will prepare some draft language along the lines of what you're describing as well. >> Yeah, no, that's excellent. That's good information. >> And a point of clarification as to where the $600 came from, that was the number chosen by the council as a threshold for the conflicting interests , because that's the number that triggers a 1099 under the IRS rules. >> Yeah, okay. >> So it wasn't arbitrary, but that was the lowest number, and it's much lower than what state law would have that trigger be. >> Thank you. Councilmember Briggs. >> I would like to have council consider to add PUB to this ordinance, the Public Utility Board, because I think they are more than just an advisory, they're making recommendations that involve a lot of money, and so I just think that they should be covered. >> Okay. >> That's PNC, yeah. >> All right. Mayor Pro Tem. >> Alan, I have a question. So when you say Chapter 145, you're talking about the campaign disclosures? >> Yes. >> Okay. So on our campaign personal finance forms and our campaign fundraising forms, we're required to disclose, for instance, business interests, but we're not required to disclose other members of, like for instance, an LLC, if I remember correctly. I'm asking, that was a question. I'm trying to remember. >> Yes, you don't have to list all the members of that limited partnership or the other owners of the limited corporation. That's correct. >> Okay. So the names of those we're getting at, the names of those other people you have business interests in, those names would not appear on that form. The business entity would appear on that form. >> Right. Only the business entity would appear. >> Correct. >> Okay. >> You're right. >> That's kind of what I was trying to, because I couldn't remember putting any names. Maybe I filled out my forms wrong, but I think you don't have to put LLC partners or partnership partners on there. >> Correct. No, I didn't mean to imply that. The entity is going to be listed on there. >> Right. >> Who makes up that entity is not going to be on that form . That's going to be on the Secretary of State's forms. >> So I think maybe just hearing Council Member Hudspeth's comment and remembering back from work session when we were talking with Councilwoman Briggs, I think maybe some of the hang up might be the idea that it's somehow an ethical violation if you don't disclose that could trigger some type of punitive measures. That's what I remember from the conversation, but I think what I'm starting to hear is that we'd like to know who the business partners are, just in general. So I feel like in our disclosure form, we could probably add a section that just says, do you have a business interest with the applicant, and probably cover it. And I would be okay with something along those lines. >> You mean similar to the form we talked about that would be on file, not necessarily part of the ethics ordinance, but the one that was talked about as far as sort of discretionary, or what do you come out? >> Because I think in work session we talked about it being discretionary, but I think it should be a mandatory form. It's just that I don't necessarily think that it should trigger some type of ethics hearing. I think it just needs to be a mandatory disclosure. Now, if you don't do it, then okay. But the problem is when we do our disclosures right now, it 's because there's a conflict of interest. So I think that's where, at least that's where I was getting confused. We only fill out those forms when there is a conflict of interest. So what we're saying is basically there's not a conflict of interest, but we want people to know that we have this relationship. >> I see what you're saying. Okay. All right. Councilmember Hudsbeth? >> Yeah. That's very well said. I think that for me it's you know who you're in business with. So it's not onerous to then kind of capture that information and provide that. And again, that level, Mayor Pro Tem pointed out, that level of just kind of awareness is important. >> If I may ask Mayor a follow-up question? >> Sure. >> So we understand that under the state campaign finance disclosure forms, the entities are going to be disclosed. Under our draft ethics ordinance, as we have it written, a different form of disclosure happens when there is a matter pending before the city in which the city official has a conflicting interest. Do you think it's best to have an additional disclosure that automatically city officials must list out who all their business partners are, the human beings, and that's something that gets filed with the city, or that only come up when there's a matter pending before the city? >> See, that's one of the things that we talked about is like are you always having to disclose every, I really just think it has to be if there's a matter that comes up, then you need to disclose it. And it could also just be a part of the conflict of interest form. So the first question could be do you have any business interests with the applicant, yes or no? If yes, does the business interest represent a conflict according to these terms? Then it's disclosed essentially. >> I guess my question on that, we're going to have to really define business interest. Because to say that I've got less than a $600 amount of interest in an LLC, which maybe who knows what it is, but yet I'm doing tens of thousands of dollars of business that I don't own with a bank, I think we need to be really careful with this. I mean, I don't have an objection to the general principle, but I think the specifics of how this gets implemented has to be done very carefully and very intentionally, because you could run afoul of a lot of things. Because if you're saying that just because I own less than $600, but you're coming before us on a planning and zoning hearing, and I own $500 interest in your half a million dollar business, I don't even know how that's going to happen, to be quite honest with you. To say that somehow that's going to influence, but yet then I'm doing business with a contractor somewhere else that is not an official ownership capacity, but is a customer relationship. We just need to be very careful with this. I mean, I don't have an issue with it in principle, but I want to make sure we draft it in a way that is consistent, but also not to owners to say, "If you own ..." If that were the case, I'd rather say, "Well, then let's just drop the interest to zero." What I'm hearing is it doesn't matter what your interest is . If someone comes before counsel and you know them, and you have a business that's totally unrelated to what's coming before counsel, you'd have to disclose that. I'm simply saying we need to make sure we delineate between what is truly a business interest, which I'm hearing is an actual ownership interest in some kind of business association like LLC, S-corp, corporation, private partnership, anything like that. Whereas if it's a business relationship, customer-client business relationship, that's not required, which seems a little interesting to me because your financial interest or relationship with someone you're doing a tremendous amount of business with may be more influential than a de minimis interest in some other business association. I'm open to the conversation. I just think we need to be very deliberate and intentional about how we draft that. Council Member Briggs? Well, I was going to mention something you just said, that it would be easier if we drop that interest to zero than to say- Well, no, what I was going to say, no, because you still have the same situation. If you're going to disclose, if you know someone and you have a business interest to them, really the amount really is ... Because what I'm hearing is , it's regardless of what the amount is, the conflict of interest amount benchmark is, that if it's $600, you have to disclose it if you have a business interest in what's being said or what's being presented. If you don't have a quote unquote direct business interest in what's being presented, but you have really any business interest with this person, no matter what level, you all are having that disclosed is my understanding. Is that correct? Yes, I feel that way, because if a council member has another business partner in another business and that person comes up for a certain project, then I think that that should be disclosed. Unrelated to their current business ownership? Unrelated to the, yes. Okay. Yes, Mayor Proctor? I think the distinction between recusal and disclosure is really important because yes, you have to disclose at $600, but you're recusing at $600. So really, we're just talking about putting the public on notice, essentially. Well, no, but now, okay, that's not what I've been hearing. Because what I'm hearing is, if you're in a situation where someone comes before council and you don't have a business interest in that immediate request, but you have a business interest in business A, they're here for business X, there 's nothing that triggers a recusal in that regard. If it's $600 or $10,000 or $5, that does not trigger a rec use. Am I understanding that correctly? That's my understanding. There's no recusal required. Okay, all right, got you. All right. Okay. Is there any understanding of what's been asked? Yes, Council Member Hussbett. So I'll give you, kind of put it in an example for me. So for example, if I'm a business partner with Nassar Jewel ers, we're formerly in an LLC together, and they come before us for zoning, then I think just because I'm not standing before council, but a business that I'm party to is, I think that based on the dollar amount, if I have to recuse myself or not, but I think that should be disclosed. If I've gone through the corporate paperwork to be part of that entity and it's before us on an issue, then that should be known. But I see that different than, because that's easy. I mean, if you filled out, even if you have an attorney that fills out and you have 100 businesses, at some point you have gone through some signature or you're aware that you're part of those corporations. That's one thing separate and apart from what you outlined, which is if I'm doing business with someone or I have Chase Bank that I use or I have some contractor that's building a home, whatever that is, I don't see that the same. I mean, that then becomes, I've got to figure out who owns what when they're coming before us and that becomes a little more onerous than me documenting who I went through the formal corporate paperwork with and have an interest that way. Sure. So I want to make sure I understand. So I have clarity on what you just mentioned, the example that you gave. So the example you gave was you're in business and I'll just use the name you mentioned. I forgot. Who was it? Nassar Jewelers. Nassar Jewelers. So they come before us requesting a rezoning. If they're requesting a rezoning for land that that business owns, you will have to recuse yourself. If they're requesting, if the other partner is coming before us requesting something in his own individual capacity, like I want to build a gas station and I got to get rezoning, but he's the one that owns it or she's the one that owns it and there's no LLC. It's all in, then you're saying I disclose that I have a business relationship with them, but it's not what's pending before us. Therefore I don't have to recuse myself. Exactly. That's important. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Gregory. All right. Well, I had gotten very confused, but you asked the question that I was going to ask to clarify. I have one other thing, are we talking about business interests such as if I'm getting ready to buy or I am a regular customer of an auto dealers hip? I'm a customer of theirs. So I've done business with them. Is that, are we talking about that kind of disclosure? Not that I'm aware of. Okay. I'm just saying, whereas we're talking about an official business partner or owner based upon the specific business association that you formed. Okay. I understand. Either stock ownership or an LLC partner or a partner in a limited private partnership or something, you know all the terminology for it. Are we on a fishing boat together? If that's a business, if you're just going out fishing, I don't know if I ... But that's an example of my point. We just have to be very deliberate about how we construct this because disclosure, if you're having to disclose without recusal, okay, I get that. I don't have an issue with that. We just have to be very intentional about it because really my understanding is the point of the whole ethics ordinance is to give some guidelines, give some criteria on how do we maintain the public trust. So personally, I get it, I don't have an issue with the general concept, but if I'm a customer of someone that I'm doing half a billion dollars worth of business with and they came before on something, but I'm not an official owner, when you think about motivation on who's going to be more motivated to do what, from just a practical aspect, I think one could argue that if there was going to be any kind of influence, it's that kind of relationship that might bear heavy on that than if also this person only owned less than $600 interest in some business. That's all I'm saying. I'm not advocating for one or the other. I'm saying if we're going to look at the intention of this, then let's make sure we look at all of it, but then we also have to find a place where you have to go, okay, we can't cover everything and there comes a point where we have to act with reasonableness and practicality. So that's the only reason I bring it up, because this whole thing is about who has influence, what may cause influence, and I just bring that up as an observation. Council Member Ryan. Thank you, Mayor. Is it possible under the prohibitions where we list the conflict of interest to take those and copy them, and one set is the conflict of interest or we must recuse yourself and the other is just for a business relationship that would require disclosure? So in other words, the first set may say that if you've got a stake in the matter before council, then you must disclose and refuse, and the second set would be if you've got a business partner who is bringing something before council who is a different business, so it's not actually your personal finances on the table on what's coming forward, then you just disclose. Yeah, and I think that's certainly something we can look at . Of course, what we're giving you is direction from when we meet on April 3rd to go back over some of these things that we've heard from public comment and what we're hearing from today, so we're not going to decide this today, but this is a good conversation to give you some guidelines and some guidance on what do we bring back that we can further discuss about this particular issue. Are there any other questions or comments to bring back on the next meeting to discuss? Okay, all right. Fantastic. Any questions, comments from you as far as do you have the direction or do you feel you have an understanding of the issue? No, you give me some good pointers. I'll come back with some additional language for your next meeting. Okay, good deal. Thank you. Thank you. All right, then, oh, I've got to have a council will chair will entertain a motion on action. I mean, if we're going to are we continuing this or is this just we don't know we didn't we close the public hearing. That's right. We don't know action is required. Is that correct? All right. Sorry, Council Member Hussman. No actions required. Okay, agenda item six B, hold the public hearing consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton, Texas regarding a zoning change from neighborhood residential to NR two and use classification to a regional center commercial downtown RCCD district and use classification on approximately 88.725 acres of land generally located south of University Drive approximately 1500 feet west of Interstate 35. Good afternoon, Mayor, members of council Ramagita, long reach player. With the development services department for your consideration this afternoon is a request for a zoning change as read in the introduction to go from NR two to an RCCD regional center down commercial downtown district on approximately 88.725 acres, generally located just south of I-35, I'm sorry, 380, 1500 feet west of I-35, the former House L1 school site as shown here outlined in yellow. The future land use designation for this site covers two future land use designation, business innovation, which is intended for well planned large scale office and employment parks. Other uses include office research development and light manufacturing as well as industrial commerce, which is intended for predominant uses light and heavy industrial uses, uses such as wholesaling and distribution centers. The site shown here is surrounded by single family residential subdivision in our two to the northwest. We've got a regional center commercial downtown commercial uses to the northeast. Undeveloped land, ICE zoning to the southeast and southwest or south that is. ICG to the west, which comprises of professional offices. It's the Westgate business park just to the west of the site. It doesn't show up on this aerial, but it's in this general vicinity as well as gas well production on the western boundary located here. The site also has a gas well development production site on the property and that's generally located here. Staff looked at the proposal and analyzed the request. The property is plotted as one lot. This would create an opportunity for a large scale development as outlined in our comprehensive plan. The NR2 zoning district, which was zoned back in 2002, permits two dwelling units per acre and is not consistent with the future language designation. Again, most likely zoned because of the school. The property fronts University Drive, which is a six lane primary arterial roadway. Of course, with any future development, there will be requirements to comply with buffers and screening requirements. This slide here illustrates the mobility plan where the site is generally in this location and you've got I-35, I'm sorry, I keep saying I-35 University Drive here and I-35 to the east. This slide here illustrates what is currently zoned for the site in the yellow is NR2. What is proposed is RCCD, similar to what you see along Raz or Ranch and along the north side of University in this general vicinity. Permitted uses in the RCCD, the proposed zoning district, include retail sales, professional services, light manufacturing with limitation, retail warehouse with limitation, and also multifamily with a specific use permit for part of a mixed use development. Notifications were sent out back in November 2017. There were nine notices mailed out to property owners, 12 sent out to courtesy letters to folks within 500 feet of the subject site, and two signs were posted by the applicant. As of this afternoon, staff has received one letter or form in opposition. This exhibit here illustrates in red the property owner that owns this area who is in opposition and this property owner is the Razor company. With that, staff is recommending approval of the zoning change. Planning Zoning Commission recommended 6-0 to approve this request as well. The applicant is here. This concludes my presentation. I'll be happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Mayor. Does the notification and the percentage of property owned where there was no -- does that trigger any kind of a supermajority? Yes, I failed to mention that. Yes, Council Member Gray, a supermajority is required if the council chooses to approve this request. Thank you. Any other questions for staff before we open the public hearing? Oh, Council Member Riggs, sorry. Was there any documentation along with the opposition? There was. There was a request form that the applicant -- I'm sorry, the representative of the Razor company provided staff. However, there was no comment provided per se. However, this individual presented or spoke at the public hearing at the Planning Zoning Commission. And so we've got minutes that I included basically his reason, and I'm going to paraphrase, is that zoning this to RCCD could potentially allow for multif amily, and he felt that that would limit his ability to market the adjacent properties to the south and southeast. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? Seeing none, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Ron. We will now open the public hearing. The blue card that I have is Randy Rivera is the applicant. If you'll come down and state your name and address, your time will begin. Good evening, Mayor, Council Members. Randy Rivera, land planner with GNA Consultants in Louis ville, Texas, 111 Hillside Drive. And I'm here on behalf of my client, Volunteer Enterprises, to present our request to you tonight. So I'm going to open up my PowerPoint real quick. All right. So Volunteer Hills, this is just an aerial view of the property. Ron did a great job, so I do not want to be redundant in the things that he covered. He did an excellent job reviewing it, our application and everything. So I'm going to try to be brief. Again, 1,500 feet from I-35, and here's some aerial views looking out to the south. The feature of the property that's the most significant is, or features are the pond to the south and then the hill that's in the middle offers just some fantastic views. Here's another view looking to the southwest where you can see the industrial boxes in the background, and then another view looking to the east towards 35 and the TW campus. Okay, Ron covered the future land use plan where we're split, and we all can, I think, agree that neighborhood residential too doesn't really fit here in this area. So looking closer at the aerial and the property and the characteristics of it, it is 88 acres. It's inundated with floodplain. You can see that trees are really interspersed on the southern half, and then the northern half is virtually treeless besides the school campus that was there, and then the gas pad sites on the southeast corner. We have 1,500 linear feet across 380. A median opening is here. 380 is just a great arterial with a capacity of over 20,000 cars a day or more to travel along that roadway. And then there's about 2,500 linear feet of the depth of this property. And then looking at, it is a platted lot. They did that for the school, and the red shows the areas that we are unable to develop within that are encumbrances of easements, the floodplain, the gas pad site. So it's about 45%. It eats up about 45% of the property. There's also this sewer easement right down the middle here that I think we would like to maybe park over, or we could work through that with a site plan stage, maybe reroute it if we need to, depending on the user. So about 48 acres of developable land are remaining on the property. All right. Topo speaks volumes really here when we're looking at, this is an industrial area of the city, and the idea from the Dinton 2030 plan was to allow for industrial uses in this area. But looking at the Topo, the site isn't conducive for large box, big box distribution warehouses that take up a lot of space, that would require a lot of cut. The hill itself is just a magnificent feature of the property, and we don't want to eliminate that. Having industrial uses here, we would have to eliminate the hill. These are the types of properties that the industrial users want to avoid. Again, the pond on the southern portion is another feature that lends the site to not be conducive to those types of uses. We want to be sensitive to the character of the property, and kind of let it speak to us, like what's the best use for it to keep the integrity of the property intact. The utilities, this is the sewer that runs across the middle, so there's sewer availability, and then there's water along 380, so utilities are present to serve the site. When our client first acquired the property, really one of the first things he did was approach the economic development staff and talk about, have a discussion with them about the development potential of this property, and what we could really capture here. What was the vision of the city? What are the city's needs and desires? And then what would be best suited for this property in this area of the city? At that meeting, the developer or the property owner was encouraged to pursue a rezoning to a mixed-use type of designation to allow for a corporate campus setting in a mixed-use environment. That allows the property to be competitive for corporate campuses. We understand that there is a shortage of Class A corporate campuses in the city, and this property and those characteristics and features of the property really lend itself to be able to have some views of where we put or we site the campus, the office buildings, overlooking the pond and overlooking the views to the south . And then the live/work component to attract these employers , they want to be in a place where their employees can—employees want to be social, they want to be connected, they want to be on their Wi-Fi, but still be outside. And so what the desires of the employees are also drives the employers when they're looking for relocating their regional office or their headquarters. And so it would be a mixture of the live/work component, open space areas integrated throughout, quality of life elements for users to enjoy with the residential and the office and the retail and restaurants spaces, and have them all integrated into a connection. And what's important of the site is that it's also the western gateway into the city when you're coming in from 380. We want to set the tone as you're coming in from a rural area into a more developed area, you know, the face of the city of Denton as we're coming in from that west. What does that look like? And here we have an opportunity to really dress that up and have a good visibility along 380. And so when we looked at—okay, so now we have kind of our vision, what we want to attract, the kind of uses that we want. Then we go back to the land, the property, and where can we site these uses? Where's the best location for them in order to keep, again, the characteristics, working around the constraints, working around the attributes of the property to maximize the opportunities for all these users. And so, of course, in a retail restaurant, those users are going to require the most visibility. And so we're going to focus those, concentrate them up along the 380 line. And then set back here, so this floodplain wraps around, again, like the southeast side of here. And the corporate campus location, this was the first really spot that we picked because you will have—this is the height of the hill right here, the max height of the hill. And again, that's 54 feet of fall across the whole property . So up on this hill, those aerial photos I hope that they showed and demonstrated the views that they could see. But the corporate campus locations sited here on this bubble plan were put here purposefully for maximum views to the south and to the east because this buffer here of the floodplain and this preserved open space area would allow for them to have continuous views off to those directions. And again, when we look at corporate campuses throughout the Metroplex, some of the best ones are located in areas that have attractive, high-end amenities. And that's what we would propose here. And the pond is really the best feature to play off of that from an amenity standpoint. So that's about 1,000 foot separation from the corporate campus area to our southern property line. And then on the west side, we would concentrate the urban residential uses. And this green represents what we would propose as 100 foot setback from the existing industrial user, the potential industrial users on this site. And we did get a letter of support from the property owners over here for future industrial users. And then the central gathering space is right on top of the hill. We want everybody to be able to benefit from the views that the hill has to offer from a plaza-type setting where residents can come out and enjoy it and employees can come out and enjoy that in their break time. It's not just the views from the office and the views from some of the residential that can enjoy it. But it's even users up here can come in and walk around. And this acts as a seam bringing all of these uses together in an ideal location that maximizes the experience, that outdoor experience for everybody. And again, the black dash line represents the circulation of the trail network system. So it's different experiences along the trail in the native area down here, in the riparian area. And then you get into more of the developed urban area and then the more kind of formal-ish type of green space, gathering space in the center. So when we did the bubble plan, we do a lot of research on how can we be inspired by just some of the most thriving developments in the area. And Cypress Waters is, if you ever look at it online or go visit the site, it is beautiful. It's close to DFW Airport. It's in Irving. They have some of the similar features that we do, a pond off to the north. And then they have urban residential and office next to industrial. And it's such an incredibly attractive. Office users are, they're interested in it. I don't have a, well, this is the most recent Google Earth aerial here of the buildings that have been built thus far. But they're planned here on this master plan to come over onto this road as well. And so it's a place where employers want to be located so that their employees can live in close proximity to where they work and still enjoy the quality of life elements. And so this was our inspiration for Volunteer Hills. It captured the look and the feel that we would like to achieve as well as the site components. And so when we had our P&Z meeting, the discussion that came up with the neighbor to our south and east was the proximity of the residential next to industrial. And there are examples throughout the metroplex of where this exists. That time, so if you could maybe just wrap up that. Yes. Was that 10 minutes? Was that 10? Yeah. Oh my goodness. Well, I just want to show examples of residential next to industrial. This exists in numerous locations. It's not uncommon at all. And then we just would like to be considered with the same, we have the same characteristics as the previous request and we have a lot of consistency with that. So thank you. We respectfully request approval tonight and I'm here with for any questions. Okay, you bet. I think we have one. Let me get my screen up. Councilmember Briggs. So this may be for staff. It's in regards to the gas well on the plan that she shows the residential is close. So what would that meet our ordinance with the setback? Yes, my understanding is that the gas well is existing. So I believe it's 250 feet from an existing gas well or residential is my understanding. Now, if it was a new gas well, then that's a different story. It's our setbacks. Okay. That's just crazy to me. Okay. Any other questions for the applicant? All right. Thank you. Appreciate it. You bet. This is a public hearing that those are all the cards I have. Anybody else wishing to speak? Please come down state your name and address. Your time will begin. Anybody else wishing to speak? Seeing no movement. We will now close the public hearing mayor pro tem. Well, I was going to move for approval of this item. Okay. All right. Councilmember Gregory. Second. All right. We have a motion. Councilmember Briggs. Oh, after the. Okay, we have a motion and a second for agenda item six B. Councilmember Briggs. So this item is just to rezone what we saw isn't necessarily going to be there. We're not approving the images that we saw. We're just approving the rezoning. Correct. That's correct. Yeah, that's my understanding. Yes. Okay. Thank you. All right. Any other questions? Discussion. All right. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries seven zero. We'll move on to agenda item six D. Hold a public hearing. Consider adoption of ordinance of the city of Denton, Texas , regarding amendments to the city drainage design criteria managed to update, provide a severability clause and an effective date. We did skip C, right? Yeah, C was pulled. It looked like. Do need to take action on agenda item C. That's the one that said the postponement. We don't? Okay. Sorry. Go ahead. We're on agenda item D. Okay. Yep. Good evening, Mayor, council members. I'm Chad Allen, the deputy city engineer, and I'm here to present about the drainage and transportation design criteria manuals update. This entire presentation is in your backup, but I've been told to sort of cover the highlights. That's what I'm going to do. If you have any questions or want me to slow down or want me to cover something in more detail, I'd be happy to do that at any time. So tonight we want to hold a public hearing and then we want to ask city council to consider adoption of an ordinance to amend the following two design criteria manuals, the drainage design criteria manual and the transportation design criteria manual. The goals of the update project include we want to reeval uate the current design criteria manuals and update them where appropriate. We want to identify common development issues and find resolutions. We want to clarify and consolidate the design criteria. We want to eliminate any inconsistencies between our regulatory documents. We have multiple documents, the development code, these criteria manuals, our flood prevention and protection ordinance, our standard details and other plans. And then we wanted to provide the development community an opportunity to have input into the process. So in August of last year, we selected T. Nolan Perkins to serve as our consultant to assist us in updating our drainage and our transportation design criteria manuals. So the process included multiple staff workshops with our consultant. It included review of other municipal requirements. It included one-on-one discussions with various staff members and our consultant, two rounds of public comment, one 30-day period, one 7-day period. These items were considered by planning and zoning twice. We had multiple meetings with our local developer community and then tonight we hope we get adoption of the ordinance by city council, the ordinances. This is a listing of the stakeholders that were involved in the process. And this slide shows days when specific parts of the process occurred. So this shows that on January 4th, we started our first public comment period. It was a 30-day comment period. This slide shows that we took the manuals for planning and zoning consideration first on, bless you. - Bless you. - No problem. On January 24th, and they were considering the initial version of the manual, we took it back to planning and zoning on March 7th, and they considered the final version of the manual that included all of the comments that occurred during the public comment period. And during that meeting, planning and zoning recommended unanimously to approve the documents. Tonight, we're having the public hearing and then we hope that you will adopt the ordinance and we can publish the final updates this Friday. So these are the initial changes that were made to the drainage manual. We changed the title to the stormwater design trend criteria manual. We moved many technical requirements that were in the development code to the criteria manual. We added a decision chart related to floodplain fill requirements. We added stream bank protection criteria to downstream conditions assessment. We made allowances for limited use of detention ponds for recreational structures. We clarified the limits on floodplain development and we simplified minimum finished floor elevation requirements and we moved those to the development code. Here's the changes that weren't made. We didn't make any major changes to our stormwater policy. We were just trying to clarify the existing policy and make it easier to understand. We made no changes to our design calculations, no significant changes to our floodplain criteria, no changes to our channel design criteria. We continue to reference NETCOG I-SWIM criteria and we did not change our primary design storm, which is a 100 year event. After our 30 day comment period, after all of our comment periods and after review by planning and zoning, we received 53 comments. We provided responses to all of those comments in your backup and these are the major changes that were made after the public comment period. Finally we were asked to define what I-SWIM is, the NETCOG I-SWIM criteria is the integrated stormwater management policy that NETCOG documents and distributes for engineering companies in the Metroplex and municipalities. We clarified our fence policy. We added limits of overland stormwater discharge from newly developed sites. We added design criteria for flumes and easements associated with positive overflow areas and we added FEMA shaded zone X areas to the list of areas that could require FEMA map revisions as part of the development process. So that's the changes that were made to the drainage criteria and now I'd like to invite Preetam Deshmukh, our traffic engineer up here to talk about the transportation criteria manual update. Good evening Mr. Mayor and council members. I'm talking about the next item on the agenda and we as engineers like to tag team on this. Okay I need to call it then if we're going to talk about it . That's why I walked across. Yeah well we're going to roll it on these several. Well I tell you what since we just had the update on the first one this is a public I just want to handle these individually since we're already through it and I didn't know that we're going to handle these at the same time so I want to council member Higgs did you have a question on for the first presentation on agenda item okay agenda item D yeah let's go ahead and go with agenda item D. You had a question? Yeah so on the on the fence it says no new fences and that was clarified. Yes. And so so does that mean that if you have an existing fence and you want to replace it that you can. So during the building permit process typically existing fences are grandfathered so if there's a floodplain area and there was an existing fence during the building permit process the way I understand it works now is you can put in a lack kind of fence and replace it with a similar type of material. So that wasn't changed it was just. No that was not changed. Okay thank you. Sure. Council member Gregory. So this is this is all part of a bigger plan of removing some of the specific criteria from the DDC over to the criterion manual. That is correct. And we're doing this first and then we're going to have the DDC come back to us soon. I believe yes the DDC comes next what we try to do is take the very specific engineering criteria out of the development code and put it here but leave the overall regulations in the development code. So and both the DDC if there are changes to that or if there are changes to the criterion manuals they must be finally approved by council. Yes. Okay thank you. All right any other questions for staff. If not thank you very much. We will this is a public hearing so we will open the public hearing. Anybody wishing to speak on agenda item 6D. Anybody wishing to speak. Seeing no movement we will close the public hearing on agenda item 6D. Chair will call for entertain a motion. Council member Gregory. I move approval. Mayor Pro Tem. Second. We have a motion and a second for agenda item 6D. Next vote on the board please. Motion carries 7-0. We'll move on to agenda item 6E. Hold a public hearing considered option of ordinance the city of Denton Texas regarding amendments to the city's transportation design criteria. Sorry about that. Good evening again. Yes sorry. My name is Preem Deshmukh traffic engineer for the city. I'm presenting in the next few slides I'm going to wrap it up pretty quickly. Transportation criteria manual revisions updates to the existing manual. We completely reorganized the manual. We wanted to make it much more simpler user friendly. There are major changes to a couple sections there. Street classification, street geometry and traffic impact analysis. And what we did is we also included the perimeter street guidelines which were adopted late last year October last year and we have incorporated those as a section in the new criteria manual. Now what changes just a broad overview of changes in the street classification. We are trying to make it much more simpler easier to terminology more flexible. It gives the flexibility for developers as well as staff engineers to look at things differently and design them based on context of the particular development. So we're introducing context sensitive designs as well as getting to our next level of complete street policy. So it provides more flexibility making some decisions. An example here a quick one is if you look at a two lane collector there are different options that can be implemented. This was not available previously. So what we added is if depending on the context or the land use surrounding some of these streets we can design them. So for example option one if it's a high parking demand then we go with option one. >> Wait until this slide. We've got your attention. So go ahead. >> So on this slide I was curious because there are dimensions for parking and there are dimensions for the bike lane but there are no dimensions for the travel lanes. >> Yes. And actually if we go back one slide so the total width within say for example under collector you have number of you have two rows there. One with a 65 foot right of way and one with 110 foot of right of way. So depending on what we are serving there's a flexibility for staff as well as developers to come up with designs that can be accommodated between those two cross sections. So based on for example there's a small collector for residential streets then we can accommodate within the 65 foot right of way. And typically the lane widths are 12 feet but they can vary within the right of way implications. So we have much more flexibility. >> Now that you have this slide up I had a question on that because I noticed that for collector streets we're calling for eight foot wide sidewalks but for arterials only five foot wide sidewalks. That surprised me. >> One of the thinking behind that is arterial streets primary designation is to carry traffic and if we have high speed arterials it becomes an issue if we don't have enough buffer to have pedestrians really close to high speed traffic. So based on the designations for some of these streets wider sidewalks are more prone to it. It depends on what you're serving. Arterials mostly serve. >> You just quit right in the middle of the sentence. >> I didn't get a chance to cough and get my attention. One of the things I'd like to point out here is Pre-Tem is exactly right that the intent here is that the sidewalk width is a minimum. So when you recognize a collector you are recognizing that it's probably in and around more of a residential area in and around a school something that's going to bring in more pedestrian foot traffic. So minimum of eight foot is what we're really trying to say there. When you get into an arterial segment there are parts of town where we're not going to need anything bigger than five foot. There are a lot of parts of town where an arterial will need more. But the flexibilities in this current criteria to say we need more based on this but we're not going to do anything less. And that's really what that number is. It's a minimum width of that sidewalk. It stuck out for me because I know as we are doing Mayhill Road and Bonnie Bray, but I know from Mayhill Road that those side paths are eight feet . And so I thought that that was probably the new standard. >> It can be. Absolutely it could be. But part of what we're also trying to look at from a contact sensitivity standpoint is that five foot sidewalk says I may have urban parts of town where I need to get that arterial roadway through but I've still got to provide some kind of sidewalk and it has to be ADA accessible. So that is the absolute minimum we'll accept for capital projects or for development projects. But the intent is also to say so the developer knows minimum is five here so you better be planning on five. But it also gives staff the flexibility to say I can't go less than five but I can go as big as it needs to be based on the demand. >> Part of that answer also lies in the traffic impact analysis in the following slides. What we're trying to get at is for the developer to come back and tell us what type of development it is, what are the needs within the development, what are the land uses surrounding these particular type of street classifications and then depending on the use and character of the development surrounding that particular we can go from a minimum to if there is more pedestrian demand we'll go to an eight foot. That's the flexibility that we're trying to build in. >> The concern that I have here because of not specifying the length or the width of the lanes is we have some collector's street or we have some arterial streets and I'm thinking of 288 where it does not have sidewalks on both sides and there are some very clear paths where people walk so regularly that nothing can grow there. And I'm just a little bit anxious. I know that it's important to move traffic. We don't want traffic going so slowly that we have engines running a lot longer putting a lot more pollution into the air. I get it. But we also have that issue of if you only have a right of way that's so wide and you dedicate nearly all of that right of way to traffic lanes, 12 foot, 14 foot traffic lanes, it doesn't give enough room for sidewalks or if the sidewalks are five feet or eight feet they get squeezed right up next to the curb line which makes for a very unpleasant and undesirable experience for people that are walking if that's their only choice. >> I agree completely. Part of what we're also trying to address is a scenario like you have on Bell where I come up to McKinney and unless we're prepared to take a bunch of older buildings down, I don't have much space to do anything and if I immediately start saying the minimum required is eight foot or 10 foot on a primary arterial roadway or even a secondary arterial under the old classification scheme, I've got some serious issues now that we've really got to contend with. So it's a recognition that we totally agree that we've got to be able to take into account all modes of transportation. That's what we're trying to set up but we're also trying to give ourselves enough flexibility that we don't get shoehorned into a course of action that can be a lot more cost prohibitive. >> That's actually a very helpful comment because I'm just thinking about major expansions where we have enough room to expand. >> Yes, sir. >> And that was -- that's -- you gave me my epiphany. >> Okay. >> Councilmember Ryan has an epiphany. >> Thank you, Mayor. While we've got this slide up on the residential, it's showing 33 and 31. Is that an improvement from what we had? I believe I had heard 28 was what we were going with before . >> Correct. That is an improvement. And part of the reasoning behind this was a lot of these residential neighborhoods are getting a lot more denser as far as the lot sizes are slowly kind of reducing which creates more parking issues, on street parking issues. And we looked at that particular thing and we talked to -- we even had input from Fire and PD as far as emergency response. And these are the new dimensions adding in more with where it's needed. >> Got a question on that. Would it be too onerous or too complicated? Because you said that because of the higher density residential developments that we needed to maybe go to a wider street. I think we probably needed to go to a wider street before that. What would be the appetite if you had a different street criteria depending upon your residential zoning? Or is that -- first of all, is that number one, legal? And number two, is it something that you can do? Because it addresses this issue you're talking about at off site. But honestly, I'm not so sure because 33 feet -- let's see that -- let me see what that -- the 33 over 31 -- is that 33 pavement width or 31 pavement width? >> So 33 is if it's a 90-degree curb, 33. 31 if it's a rolled curb. So you can actually go over the curb slightly. There are certain subdivisions that have a rolled curb. >> No, no. I guess I don't understand the different -- because what you're saying is if it's a 90-degree curb, it's 33 feet -- >> 31 feet. >> Oh, 31 feet from curb to curb. Inside curb to curb. >> Right, it has to do more with the comfort level that you have as a driver on how close I can get. If I have a vertical curb there, I don't really want to rub the tires up against it. So I tend to park further away from the curb. If I give a rolled curb or a flattened curb, which allows a lot more flexibility for the driver, they have a tendency to snug up next to it. No, I'm not going to do any damage to my car. But I get to go a little narrower on the width of the road way and still achieve that parking on both sides. >> So you came up with these numbers based upon input from the fire department, the police department. But, I mean, when you -- okay, they gave you input. But what are the engineering kind of elements applied to this? Is it just arbitrary to a certain degree? I mean, obviously you've got to have a minimum. You've got to have a minimum. >> It's not arbitrary at all. >> And that's the wrong word. I'm saying you've got to have a minimum. But to go beyond the minimum, to say, I mean, we could change it as easily to 35 feet to 33 feet. Could we not? >> So part of what went into that was typically a car, a standard car width is anywhere between six and six and a half feet. So you typically give eight foot of width for that car to park. Because they may get closer to the curb, they may get further away from the curb. Then you still want to have enough traveling for two-way traffic between the parked cars on both sides. You also want to make sure that if I park cars on both sides, that the fire department still can maintain at least 20 foot of clear space. So if they bring in a fire apparatus that has outriggers or they've got to get in in between vehicles, they have plenty of room to move people around the vehicle itself. >> And so the fire trucks with outriggers requires what width? >> So going back to the fire department requirements, they classify parking spaces as six feet. And then the 20 feet clear distance in between. So that's 32 feet. So this is in between those two dimensions. So we needed ideally even in the when we come for parking restrictions, 32 feet is our criteria where we anything wider than that, we allow parking on both sides. But anything narrower than that. >> So let me make sure I understood what you just said. So a fire apparatus requires 20 feet, but that's not I mean that's allowing for a certain feet of distance around what is the footprint of the actual vehicle? >> So you're looking at roughly 16 feet. >> Okay. >> Because you got eight foot wide for the vehicle itself. And then you've got outriggers that may go as far as four foot depending on the apparatus that they have. >> Right. >> So that's 16 foot. >> And then you're only adding two feet on each side to walk around it. >> Right. >> So I got to be honest with you. That's I mean they're requiring 10 feet around structures to be able to get around for you building to have 10 feet of clearance as you move around. So that's my point is so arbitrary only was in the sense that if you go higher, if we wanted to go higher, we certainly can do that. And we're not precluded from doing that because I don't know if because you're saying it's six and a half feet is the typical width of a car. Is that right? >> Six to six and a half feet. >> Six to six and a half but you said the fire department takes into consideration six feet. So now you're down to a foot now you got a foot differential. And I think it needs to be wider. I mean I just mean because when you when you've got two cars passing if you want two cars on each side and you even have two cars passing how much space is that allowing for between the two park cars and the cars passing each other on the street. >> So typically you can go to 10 foot lanes is acceptable. So if you think about it that way it serves the purpose of both the fire and emergency services vehicle but also allows vehicles to move slowly between park cars which is what you want in a residential neighborhood. If you go too wide you end up with a scenario like you have . >> Sure on some of the major streets like Windsor and Not tingham and some parts like that. >> Even if you go over to Montecito people are flying up and down it and they've got super wide roadways. >> All I'm saying is if we're going to make a change let's be proactive for the future thought because if you've got if you're saying a car is six and a half feet typically six to six and a half feet that's from metal to metal. >> Yes. >> Right is that right. Okay so you want a distance of what between cross traffic traffic coming down that side of the street you want about a foot or two feet. >> At least and part of what you got to take into account when we're planning for six six and a half feet we're talking about the dually pickups with the expanded mirrors. Most your cars on the roadway are five five and a half foot wide. It's not necessarily a bad thing especially in a residential neighborhood to compress the width a little bit because it makes a driver slow down knowing that I can't just fly down there. >> I understand that and I don't think what I'm saying is and I'm not saying necessarily advocating to widen it so if you were to take it a foot you 're not going to have that space where people are coming down. I'm just saying I would rather have it a little wider not to where people are speeding down there if you've got if you increase that a foot or two I don't think it's going to give the impression that you can zoom down that street and it may I just I just don't want to have that's commerce I don't want other councils to be having this conversation in ten years that hey you know what gosh we got a fire truck out there and people really can't walk around it because both cars are parked on each side or when people are passing you're really not wanting to pass because it seems so close you're not quite sure if you're going to satisfy somebody or not. >> I completely appreciate that standard that statement and the other side of that coin that I would just throw out there is that typically across the Metroplex statewide and across the United States this is very much within the realm 32 foot is an accepted width that across the board for the exact same reasons it allows for parking 10 foot lanes is very typical when you're trying to work around a neighborhood. >> You said 32 feet this is 31. >> We gave two options. >> Oh. >> Because the 33 foot is where we aired to give just a little bit of extra room that said if you want to do the road curbs which people are a lot more willing to snug up next to the curbs a lot closer than they are when you drive down any residential street in this town and you see a six inch curb you're going to see people a foot and a half two feet off the curb. So that's where we're going to with this the other side of that is this like the sidewalks is still a minimum if a developer wants to go wider absolutely we can consider it but we'd want to see the engineering data that said show me why this is they're not going to want to do that it's more money. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I appreciate that. Thank you for the discussion that that helps educate me on how this got to this number councilmember Briggs. >> So just to continue on the street conversation because in my mind I'm thinking I think it's a Wainwright or something it's it's so small when cars are parked on either side even one vehicle you have to pull over so one vehicle can come through there's no way a emergency vehicle could even think about going on there and I think that's what the mayor's trying to say we want to avoid that situation because we still have we're still saying you can't park on one side of the street just so emergency vehicles can come down and so this is not going to create that situation is what you're saying. This will not part of the problem that we're dealing with today is we have roads that are 26 foot and 28 foot wide so when you park cars on both sides of that you do reduce down to where you don't have that same width you have a much narrower passageway to where people are going to drive right down the middle because that's where they feel comfortable. >> It's still where they can fit. >> Right. Correct. >> Yeah. So okay. So just wanted to make sure that that wasn't going to create that situation and I have a question about the roll curb. Does that encroach on the sidewalk area? >> No. >> So you said you have the five I just want to make sure that that's not included in that minimum sidewalk area. >> No it's not. Not in the minimum sidewalk. The way those roll curbs work is typically you see a sidewalk or a curb is six inches deep it's actually seven inches deep and it has a very slight curb to it. What we're doing is in the same span just tilting it back further. So it does the it's in the exact same footprint. It does not take away from the sidewalk it just makes it a little bit more comfortable for a car to feel like I can move a little closer to that side of the road. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Councilman Hudspeth. >> Thank you. And listening to the conversation I think the key aspect because it's bitten me a few times in our site visits. I think the issue and correct me if I'm wrong the issue becomes you have to justify the space by which you provide. You can't go with an arbitrary number because that puts you in this puts a city in harm's way legally. Is that am I am I right. >> Yeah we try to stay within the acceptable realm of dimensions that are accepted nationwide and the other flip side of providing wider street is definitely speeding and that if speeding goes up it puts the city in a position where we have to come and do some kind of traffic calming at that point. So we were running this we're walking this fine line where what is best that can fit all the different demands and needs. >> Right. Okay. Thank you. >> Do we still allow roll up curbs in. >> As far as the engineering staff and as far as the technical manuals and the DDC says yes we do. If you talk to our street superintendent there's a preference not to go there but that's just purely your preference. You see that across the Metroplex and part of the reason this came up was in talking to the development community one of the issues we continue to come up with was how do you get a narrower roadway but still achieve the same goals. They were very resistant to the idea that we limit how much parking you can put on the street to the point where we were looking at I could still maintain a narrow roadway if you were willing to put no parking signs monitor that maintain that there was a lack of interest going there they were a lot more interested in trying to minimize that impact. So that's where some of this came from just trying to find that medium where we said this is safe and this is something that we can utilize. >> Okay. All right. Councilmember Duff. >> Generally they'll put the streets in first before they put the houses in and one of the reasons they like that roll up curb is because if you have a straight up curb you got to go in there and cut it out. I've already been down that road once myself. >> Yes, sir. And one of the other things that the roll up curb like we 're talking about does achieve for us is when you get into a neighborhood and we're trying to maintain ADA accessibility on the sidewalks if I have a normal driveway where it ramps down from the sidewalk I got to pull the sidewalks back further either from the back of curb or I have to jog out from the curb line out to the end of the driveway to make up that same six inch difference. If I have the rollover curb especially in a residential neighborhood then I can keep the sidewalk where it's maintained. I don't have to do anything weird in and around the drive ways potentially. >> Okay. All right. Great. Any other questions for staff? Oh, you still have presentation. >> I do. >> Go ahead. >> All right. I'm going to wrap quickly up. Traffic impact analysis again erring on the flexibility and focusing on that. We are now assessing we're having development do traffic impact analysis in two segments. One is the smaller developments that are typically less than 500 trips in the peak hours. We're asking for them to look at not only the opening conditions of the development but up until five years. And any development that is less than 100 trips is mostly looking at immediate opening year conditions. But this is the type of flexibility we wanted to build in. Larger developments we'll look at 20 year. It doesn't exist in the current criteria manual to look at that further in the future. We're trying to do a better job of planning things and align them to our goals and our future thoroughfare plans. So that's why we made this change. Overall what was done is we tried to simplify the criteria manual. We reduced the number of pages to more than half. Added some missing information. There was a lot of redundant information that was in other standards. So we moved it. In the last couple months we received public comments and about 37 we responded to all of those. They were included in the backup. And the majority of the comments were focusing on more clarification, adding more information related to parking spaces or the TIA requirements in scope. And final slide, recommend approval of the transportation criteria manual. Any other questions for staff? Councilmember Ryan. >> Thank you, Mayor. I'm not finding it in here and probably just missing it. Do we now have a standard that says it requires traffic common devices on residential if it's a straight stretch of our service line? >> There are different alternatives in the manual that will be a part of the traffic impact analysis where if you have longer stretches and there's a lot more traffic running through it, it would be decided during the pre-development meeting when the developer comes in. So it's now more flexible to sit down and decide by the end there's not a required criteria, but there are a bunch of traffic calming devices that are recommended in the criteria that we look at implementing. >> One thing to add is this, all of the manuals we are currently working under right now, the intent is for this to be a living document because we will learn things that need to change from year to year. We'll be coming back with changes to make sure that we don 't let these things sit for 6, 7, and 10 years like some manuals have without addressing some of the issues that come up over time. So traffic calming is something that we definitely know is something that will become a bigger and bigger issue as we go forward. As Pretem said, we want to reserve that flexibility now, see how this develops over the year and come back with something potentially more comprehensive in the next version. >> Okay. Any other questions for staff? Seeing none, thank you very much. Appreciate it. And this is a public hearing, so I will now open the public hearing. Anybody wishing to speak on this item, please come down and state your name and address and your time will begin. Anybody wishing to speak? I don't see any movement, so one more time. Okay. We will close the public hearing. Mayor Pretem. >> Move for approval of item E, amending the city's transportation design criteria manual and updating it. >> Councilmember Briggs. >> I will second. >> We have a motion and a second for agenda item 6E. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries, 7-0. Moving on to agenda item 6F, hold a public hearing, consider adoption of an ordinance of the City of Denton, Texas adopting standards of care. Councilmember Briggs, did you? >> Yes. >> Okay. All right. Standards of care for youth team programs administered by Denton City's park and recreation department. >> Good evening, mayor and councilmembers. My name is Laura Barons and I'm the assistant director for parks and recreation. The state requires us to hold a public hearing prior to considering and moving forward with adoption of a standards of care document. The standards of care document outlines the minimum standards that are set forth for the operations of our youth and teen service programming. After adoption, the standard of care is then submitted to the state's regulatory services department for -- to be kept on file for that year. We do review and update this on an annual basis and bring this forward to you. It does cover our programs ages 5 to 13. >> Okay. Oh, is that it? >> That's all I have for you. >> All right. Any questions for staff? All right. Thank you. Appreciate that. We will now open the public hearing. Anybody else wishing to speak on this item? Please come down and state your name and address. >> My name is Louann Autry. I live downtown 210 Stroud. So understand that there's this manual, but like what's it -- our policy, what's it -- what does it say? I mean, it seemed like there was a lot of detail there. >> Okay. We'll give you a chance to respond to that once we close the public hearing. Anybody else wishing to speak? One more time. All right. We will now close the public hearing. If you'd like to respond to where that manual can be observed or viewed. >> First of all, the standards of care does cover our staffing requirements, training. It also covers the environment that the children are cared for. It can be found not only here at the city secretary's office, but it is also published on our website and is also kept on record at the Department of Regulatory Services. >> So it would just be under the department's window of the website? >> For programming, yes, sir. >> Okay. All right. Good. Councilmember Briggs? >> I will just add that it's also on our website now under the agenda. If you click on the backup, you can read the ordinance and the standards of care as well there. That's what we're voting on. And with that, I will move approval. >> Okay. >> Just one more question on the standards of care. This is designed to align with be at least the minimum standards required by the state or better? >> Correct. >> Okay. Mayor Pro Tem? >> Second. >> All right. We have a motion and a second for agenda item 6F. I did close the public hearing. Yes, okay. Agenda item 6F. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 7-0. Concluding items. Councilmember Briggs? >> Okay. So I would like to request a work session or closed session , an illegal update on the small cell 5G infrastructure. I would also like to have an update on the deck air permit testing. And also a staff report from the speaker earlier on gun cells. And if we have any current zoning regulations regarding certain types of guns in close proximity to schools and whatnot. And also I would like to say that the flowers on the square look very pretty. >> I agree. They do. Councilmember Hudspeth? >> I was going to ask. Okay. So I would like to get up to speed or just request a work session. I would like to request some sort of -- it could be as simple as an email. I just don't know what our emergency plan is as a city. So if we have kind of a city emergency and there's kind of how do we tier that response? And then who kind of takes precedence? So if we don't have time to have council meetings, kind of what's the protocol for how we handle those things? Who makes those decisions? That sort of thing. I just kind of want to get that information, if you would please. >> I wanted to thank city staff, Mr. City Manager for the Legion Hall presentation as we're preparing to look at fixing that building foundation. I heard that went very well. And the meetings I've sat in have been fantastic. It's a great group. I would also like to ask staff to do an analysis on speed limit, just kind of city-wide. I think there's some areas that -- I can give you a list, but just generally I think there -- we need to revisit that and see if there's just some areas where we're maybe need to be raised, lowered, et cetera, kind of throughout. And then if someone could let me know the plan for the splash park when that's going to open, if we have a date, I'd like to know that kind of in advance so that I can disseminate information. And then lastly, we had a conversation homelessness regarding restrooms, that sort of thing, downtownish. And I'd like to have a work session to kind of follow -- we had some subsequent conversations and so just want to follow up on overall management facilities, that sort of thing downtown and kind of how we can better have everyone kind of work together on that. As far as patterns, there's some new services being provided, that sort of thing. So just kind of revisiting that flow and making that easy on all involved. So thank you. >> Councilmember Gregory. >> Thank you, Mayor. If we could get an update in the Friday packet on the progress on the work being done on the fences and the gateways for the two cemeteries and any of the -- if we've completed all of the work on adjusting monuments. >> I've got a couple -- and we talked about it in the work session, just a work session on the water plan, if there's any more information we need on that as far as, you know, the 20/70 plan securing our water sufficient for our population growth. And another is I want us to have a work session or just to have staff start looking at the U.S. Conference of Mayors, we attended a seminar about the census coming up, 2020 census. And their suggestion is, which I think I agree with and would like to see the city participate in, is to form a census committee comprised of various stakeholders around the city that will encourage all stakeholders to participate in the census. I know it's going to be a challenge, but the census date is quite relevant and very impactful on the type of funding we can receive and those kinds of things from the federal government. So it's so vitally important that we have an accurate count , and that can be such a challenge. So I'd like to talk about formulating that committee of various stakeholders representing all ethnic groups and ideologies and just to really where we can reach out to everyone in our community to encourage them to fill out the census and that they can do that without fear of reprisal. Anybody else have any kind of concluding item? Yes, Council Member Hudson. I will say I drove by, what was that, Shady Oaks, where we 're putting in, and they were working last night. So I think that's fantastic. I appreciate staff's flexibility in that regard because I could not imagine the work they were doing during the day and what that would do to the citizens. So for them to take that, go the extra mile to make sure, one, keeping employees safe, but two, making that adjustment so we can get that done faster is greatly appreciated. And I will echo Council Member Briggs' sentiments that the floral on the square is absolutely gorgeous and I thank everybody who's been involved in that because I think it really makes a huge difference in how our square looks. So thank you very much and thank you, Council Member Briggs , for bringing that to our table. Thank you for your attention. Okay, seeing none others, we will now adjourn.