Mar 27, 2018 City Council on 2018-03-27 12:00 PM

Good afternoon or good noon everyone. Wanted to welcome you to this meeting of the Denton City Council on Tuesday, March 27, 2018. It is straight up noon. We do have a quorum, so I'll call this meeting to order. Our first item on the agenda is citizen comments on consent agenda items. I do not see any blue cards for consent agenda items. We'll go on then to our agenda work session reports. Our first work session report is 2A, receive a report, and hold a discussion regarding signal timing at intersections with red light cameras within the city. Good afternoon everyone. My name is Preetam Deshmukh. I'm the traffic engineer for the city and let me get this pulled up. All right. Thank you for the opportunity to be here this afternoon and talk about traffic signal timing, one of my favorite topics. I'm also joined here by Deputy Chief Fletcher who will be jumping in towards the end of the slide to talk about red light camera intersections. This is a lot of technical information, equations and stuff that I've tried to simplify, so if there's any questions you have in the middle, you can just stop me and ask questions. So start with the terminology. What is signal timing? What do you mean when you talk about signals and timings at intersections? One of the first thing that people say a lot and talk a lot is cycle length, which pretty much means starting from when you're at an intersection, it starts from green to the next green, so it goes through the whole cycle of different indications. So the time between required to complete a whole sequence is the cycle length. So moving on, there are some other technical terms here, green time, what does that mean? It's the amount of time the indication is green, so if you 're in an approach, you get there at the intersection, you see green, that's pretty much the green time, the interval. Yellow time, which is what we're going to really focus on in this presentation and this particular item at the work session is the amount of time that any approach receives yellow. It's just a few seconds, but that's the time that's required to safely clear the intersection. Any vehicle approaching at a particular speed, they need to be cleared out of the intersection and that's time given. And the red time, that's the amount of time that a movement , so once the red kicks in, you're sitting there until the green kicks in again. So that's the amount of red time. So together all these three times comprise the cycle length . Now actually getting into signal cycle, I have a quick chart here, it looks like a pie chart, but signal timing works in a cyclic fashion. So if you start at zero, it goes around this entire cycle in here. So if you start anywhere, it goes through the whole cycle. So I want to get back to this particular one and explain a little bit more how that impacts if you increase any of these timings, how does it impact the cycle length and how does it impact the signal as a whole. So this is just a typical signal. Our city signals typically cycle lengths range from 65 seconds to 130 seconds. People start getting nervous and frustrated at 130 seconds, but I've sat through ones that are 180 seconds. So there are intersections in the rest of the country. Now focus on yellow time interval. The way it's calculated is this equation and it's fairly straightforward once you try and understand it, the T is the perception and reaction time, typically one second, and then the rest of the equation focuses on the speed at which the vehicle is approaching the intersection. So if the speed limit is 30 miles an hour, typically that's the V and then the rest of the equation has deceleration equation and then grade. So based on this equation, traffic engineers calculate the yellow time at particular intersections. So you have an intersection where the approach speed is 30 on one approach and 40 on the other. Typically we use the conservative and apply the yellow time for that particular approach based on a conservative higher speed. So it typically, these are the calculated yellow times and then I'll get to the all red in a little bit, but these are the calculated yellow times for these speeds at an intersection. And as I mentioned earlier, yellow time is to clear the intersection, but what here we do in Denton also is add a lot of red time to red time will actually help more to hold all the phases red so anyone that's trapped in the intersection can still have a few more seconds to get out anywhere between 1.5 to 2.5 depending on the speed. They have a second or two more to get out of the intersection. That's an added safety that's implemented in the system. So if you see the total amount of time is consistently six or more seconds that's given to anyone that approaches that intersection. And getting -- I have a question on that. Sure. If you go back to the last slide. So just to follow the logic here on the all red, so the reason why it's less at 1.5 seconds at 60 miles an hour is because the car's moving through the intersection faster? Correct. Which I can see how you don't need to hold it as long, but if there is someone else in that intersection, a 60 mile an hour crash is going to be much more -- greater opportunity for serious injury or possible death. So if you had a longer red time at a higher speed, what's the disadvantage of that? In other words, is it just a waste of time? Is it a waste of -- does it cause more potential problems than it might save as far as collision is concerned? So the yellow time and red time play off of each other a little bit. So if you look at the speed, the higher the speed, the higher the yellow time. So the amount of yellow time given will most probably clear the intersection. So you don't have to necessarily get to all red. And then in the pros and cons, I'll explain why you don't want to increase either of them. Okay. We'll go Councilmember Gregory and then Councilmember Ryan. Thank you. You mentioned with yellow that some people perceive that as clear the intersection. Now, some people, when they see yellow, they think it means speed up to achieve that, to clear the intersection. And for other people, they see yellow and they say, oh, it 's time for me to slow down and stop. Have there been studies -- surely there have been engineering traffic studies done to calculate what percentage of the population reacts one way to a yellow and what percentage of the population reacts a different way to the yellow? That's a very good question. I'm not sure if the psychology or the behavior part was studied that much, but definitely there has been studies on a technical level as to -- there is something called a dilemma or trap zone. So if you're approaching an intersection, if you're in that particular area, just before you hit the intersection, then you are caught in whether should I press the gas pedal or should I break down. And that particular dilemma zone, engineers have worked to match the yellow and all red time to counter for that particular area. So behavioral-wise, I'm not sure if there have been studies done. And maybe Scott can talk to that, but it's human behavior. There are days when people behave differently than they would normally behave. So that's the issue is it's hard to predict the same person behaving differently in different ways. Yeah. I was just thinking in terms of percentages of drivers in general, you know, what percentage of cars in an intersection react one way to the yellow or a different way to the yellow? And I agree, it could be different for the same person on a different day, different circumstance. Correct. And, you know, younger the person, driver, it tends to be the faster way than the slowing down way. It could even be gender-based also. Could be. Councilman Wright. Thank you, Mayor. Follow that one. I will try my best not to. Meaning that men would respond more stupidly. You mentioned a moment ago that if you had an intersection that had 35 miles an hour and 45 miles an hour, you went with the more conservative. Does that mean that if it's 35 going this way and 45 going this way, both are having the same? Yellow time. They're both having the same yellow time. Correct. Yes. And it's a matter of a few seconds. 30 and 35, you have .5 seconds. And between 35 and 40, both are almost the same yellow time . So if two streets intersect, one is 35, one is 40, they'll still get the four. So there is not that much difference, but we go with the more conservative yellow. And I think in particular, one spot we have a camera is there at Mayhill. And so you've got 55 going on one road, and I'm not sure what Mayhill is currently, probably 35. Currently, yeah. I think it's 35 or 40. Yeah, so you've got a pretty big difference in the speeds on those two. Yes, I mean, I'm not sure if I have that particular yellow time, but I can check into that. So pros and cons. Pros, yeah, it provides additional timing, and it may help reduce accidents to a point where it starts diminishing returns. So it can go up to a certain level, but after that, you don 't see the benefit of extending. Those are the pros of extending the yellow chain interval. But the cons, there are several cons. It uses part of the green time. Now if you consider this as a whole dial, if you start taking more time or giving more time to certain yellow, then you have to give more time to all the yellows in there, and that reduces time from your green. And if you try and increase the green time again, that increases the cycle length. So that means you're not really doing a service. It's a disservice by keeping on adding more yellow time, because then it creates an intersection delay in congestion. That's another con in here. And then the most important part for me is the inconsist ency with the rest of the signals. If we're doing changes in yellow, they should be applied all over for all intersections in a uniform manner, just to be legally defensible and give a fair opportunity for everyone at all intersections, as opposed to really focusing on the red light camera intersection and changing them or those particular locations. - I believe Council Member Briggs had a question. - So does the changing the yellow change, does that affect the crosswalk timing at all? Do any of these affect the safety of the crosswalk timing for people to get? - No. - No. - The pedestrian trimmings are separate, but yes, they do impact the overall congestion, because now you have to provide more time for yellow, less time for green, and at the same time, provide time for pedestrians on the opposite side. So it becomes a balancing act, and you don't want to increase the overall cycle length, which means by the time someone waiting at an intersection comes back again with a green, it takes a lot longer. So it doesn't affect the pedestrian safety. - Sure. - And so to your last comment on changing all the intersections, so I was just curious, when we did install the red light cameras, did we change the yellow light timing on those intersections? - No, we did not, because the way we calculated those yellow times... - Let's see. There has been conflicting information back when some of the methods of developing yellow time were not standardized. There were industry leaders that were trying to come up with different ways of implementing yellow time, and that's when the red light cameras at certain cities went in, and they were short of the amount of time actually required to clear the intersection. So that's where all these studies and issues came out, that we need to bump out yellow time. So at intersections that we have, we've never reduced or changed the yellow time. They're consistently... Overall, throughout the city, they're consistently applied, and we use the same equation that is federally required, or it's a guideline, federal guideline for us. - Thank you. - Mayor Pro Tem? - I have two questions. One, when the speed limit's changed on US 380 recently, I think they went up to 50 miles per hour. Were the lights also changed commensurate with the... - They were re-timed by text-off. That's correct. - Okay. And so what is the interval then after... I guess is it pursuant to the chart that you provided? - It's consistent with this chart, yes. - Okay. And then the other question, you mentioned that in order to be consistent, we should have all of the signals at every intersection change, but isn't the amount of the interval dependent on the speed limit? - Correct. - So you're saying all 30 mile per hour speed limits should change, all 40 mile per hour speed limits should change? - If the council chooses to move in that direction to add more yellow time at red light locations, then there has to be consistent change to increase, and there are serious cons to that particular. So we don't recommend doing that, but yeah, if we are changing something at one location, it should be consistent. - Okay. Thank you. And then moving on, I think next slide is where the chief is gonna jump in and he'll talk about red light cameras. - Council member Husspeth has a question. - Yeah, before you go, I'm sorry. So I guess when you talk about consistency, that's where it 's troublesome for me a little bit, right? Because not, do all intersections have red light cameras? - No. - So in and of itself, how are those locations selected? - Those locations, probably deputy chief can answer that question, how they were selected. - But for me, just then before he comes up, that's my thing . They're inconsistently applied because consistent would be there'd be in every intersection in my estimation. When I say consistent, then every intersection has one. But whatever the process is where we individually selected these particular intersections, it depends on where you go. If you're affected, that to me is the definition of inconsistent. And then the other thing is if you could summarize, and it may be in the data sheet, but just to hear you, what are the purpose of the cameras? If you had to give a mission statement for the cameras, what's the goal? What are we trying to accomplish? - That's also a good answer for him, but I can summarize it . The accomplishment is to make the intersection safer. - Select intersection safer. So we're not concerned about, and that's a loaded question. - Exactly, exactly. - Okay, thank you. - Thank you. - Okay, all right, thank you. So Chief? - Do you want me to start with answering the questions or move through this? - Sure, ask my husband. - Yes, please. - The chart here shows the locations of our current cameras . We have 13 cameras monitoring 11 intersections. Very briefly, I can't have to go back in history a little bit on how we selected intersections. In 2006, well 2005 when we first took this up with council about doing red light cameras, we were under the home rules set up. There wasn't a state law process that didn't come until 2007. So we could only put red light cameras at intersections that didn't involve a tech start roadway. We were prohibited from those. So that limited a lot of the intersections that we could choose. The process at that time was to look through historically where we as law enforcement went out and worked red light violations where we intuitively knew we have wrecks, we have a lot of violations here because we put a lot of personnel there. Those intersections are, and I said it in the backup, most red light intersections are very difficult to work in terms of law enforcement to do so safely. Because you have to be in, unless you do it with multiple people, you have to be in a position to see the light, see the car, and then safely pull out and get through the rest of the oncoming traffic that has a green light now to get behind the car and stop them and address the issue. So typically what we have done historically is we put out packs of officers. You have to have someone watching the lot and calling out the violation on a radio and then officers stationed downstream for any place that car can go. So we went at it from the idea of violations which equal accidents, which equal injuries and top traffic. After 2007 legislative changes, the state put in some criteria in there in terms of selecting intersections and what has to be done. We followed those procedures, taking those through traffic safety, but in the end it really comes back to where are the problems. In terms of the mission statement, what we're looking to do is try to find a way to enforce the traffic law. Really it comes down to predictability. We all drive. I've taught two kids to drive. We try to teach them how to drive defensively and that's based on predictability. You want to know that when something happens on the roadway , I can predict this is what should happen and therefore that's what I should do. So with red lights, you'd really like to know that when the light turns yellow, cars will slow down and try to stop or they'll have enough time to clear the intersection and they're not just going to go on through. I said this way back in 2004 in this room, how many of us when the light turns green for us at an intersection just punch the gas pedal and take off versus we stop and we delay and we look the other way for oncoming cars because we all know it's a good chance someone's coming through the other way and I'd rather be delayed than be hit. So that's kind of what walks you through how we've come to these particular intersections. If you'll notice as we went along in the backup, I'll point out the ones that came in 2014, we could do text on intersections and you'll see most of those are large intersections. They're ones that take even more officers to work. They're ones that are somewhat higher speeds, a lot more traffic and that's what we're really trying to do is get people to change their driving behavior . We're not going to eliminate all accidents because driving behavior is independent every day and based on the choice that you make at that point in time. So someone's always going to make the wrong choice and hit somebody. We're always going to have violations but we're trying to do an enforcement piece to add on to that if that answers your question. Yeah and then we have Councilmember Gregory on deck. So, yes it does and I guess I'll be listening because ultimately we arrived at these locations because we couldn't put them at every location or because so you there's a ranking system there and so for me it becomes a question of how do you rank the punitive nature of these intersections to the inconvenience of the time being longer or whatever becomes problematic if we stretch that time, right? So how do we measure that because for me listening to you and we've all experienced, so if I'm behind an 18 wheeler and I'm driving I can't see the light so I've either got, even at two seconds back I don't know that I can see the light over the top of the truck so then do I drop back further or do I end up in the intersection unbeknownst to me and now it becomes punitive if I'm in one of these intersections. So if I'm two seconds back and I can't see the light in a normal intersection I clear it maybe I'm late getting in there and it's okay. In one of these intersections I'm getting something in the mail or whoever's driving my car and so for me that's where it becomes, so it may be inconvenient to stretch the time but if we make sure we catch those that are definitively running it on red then, because there's a lot of components to that, right? Because my understanding of the law is if you enter the intersection legally you can leave it legally, right? Yes sir. So if I'm turning left and it's not green, there's a lot of traffic, I can get in the middle intersection when it's yellow and I can leave and be okay when it's red. Absolutely. And so there's some nuances there and so that's my thing. I just want to scale the risk of it being longer versus got chaing some people that may be doing the right things and just get caught up in a bad situation. Well I think it's fair at this point to add in, you know, the concept of the cameras is it's an enforcement tool. From the red light camera perspective I don't really have an opinion on the amber or the yellow time cycle or you know, we just get a feed from the signal that says it's red and so whatever the signal timing is, it's calculated the way it should be calculated. It is a dilemma with driving along and I know because I paid one of these in another city where there was a truck in front of me and I did just what you talked about and by the time I could see it, you know, I thought I could make it and you know, $79 and some odd cents later I paid that I didn't make it. I watched the video and I ran it. It is a driving choice but I would put to you that it's the same dilemma that you face if an officer is sitting there in a squad car and you're driving along and you're behind the truck. That officer, technically you've run the light if the light 's red before you enter the intersection you go on through even if there's a truck in front of you and so the officer then would have that discretion to decide should you have been driving further back was there something you know and so you're still subject to the punitive nature of the violation. The difference is the camera is always there and always on and that's both the pro and the con and they catch everything that goes through. Now I know from reviewing violations we tend to try to watch some of those and there are those that we apply the same discretion that I can see that the car stuck in behind the truck you didn't see it could they have been off you know could they have slowed down those are those are discretion you know discretionary choices we make just like we would if we were out there on the street. Councilmember Gregory has a question. It is an argument for maintaining safer distances behind trucks. So regarding consistency and where we where we place red light cameras do you use the same kind of decision making when you decide where you're going to be monitoring and when you're going to be monitoring for speeding violations how do you all how do you all make those decisions because we don't we're certainly not consistent in when and where we do that. Well a lot of that with what. I'm getting a city attorney wants to understand the different consistency of applying the law we're talking about consistency and where we place red light cameras and his decision making them where to place red light cameras do the same lot does the same logic apply when we're applying other traffic laws is that is that out of the. I just want to just caution the council. I mean the question can go forward or you know what but the this this caption is posted to talk about signal timing and intersections with red light cameras. It's I know that there's red light enforcement camera program that we have in the ordinance that's starting to go beyond the bounds. So with this one I think it's a fair question to ask but I just want the council to to keep that in mind that this is you know the red light enforcement program is a topic that's beyond the scope of what's posted for today. So as far as the consistent question consistency question goes the consistency original discussion was about consistency on the timing for every every intersection instead of just thinking about the question of where we place red light. Well and I think that's okay. Nevermind. The next slide here just to give you a historical perspective and I try to cover it in detail in the agenda information sheet the violation notices that were issued. This is all cameras. Keep in mind that in the earlier years we had six cameras then we added three more in 2011. I pointed out the bump in 2010 where we go up to 7000 violations there. We upgraded equipment we had different detection devices and then in 2014 we added six cameras at some very large intersections and hence the jump in violations. Councilmember Briggs had a did you have a question or comment or? I had a question for the city attorney. Okay sure. Because a few of my questions do revolve around the red light cameras and this is just specifically for timing. My questions involve tickets for violations since that's in the presentation can I ask the a violation ticket question for intersections or? If it's related in how the tickets may have been issued as a result of the signal timing posting that we have today that's yes but the other only suggestion I could offer this council that if this council really wants to discuss the red light camera enforcement program the city staff can come back with a future work session to discuss all the issues, the numbers over the years, how much revenue has been received, etc. but I know that what we have here is that we're getting very dangerously close to going beyond the caption. And I would do that under new business today? And then the last slide I have here is simply showing related to the timing and the issues in terms of safety and accidents we do track we report every year to text dot crash data from our red light cameras and you can see we've so we're never going to eliminate all accidents but we have had I think you know totals of five at 11 intersections that are pretty large in our city which we think you know is getting towards the goal of what we're trying to do. However we do it whether by camera or by officer or you know any other way to change behavior the fewer actions we have the better off we all are in the process. I will note and again I said in the agenda information sheet that I thought of note one of the concerns and it struck me earlier one of the questions was asked earlier about you know safety and timing and those things. One of the indications to me about driver behavior and choosing to go forward on yellow or stop always revolved around the issue of rear end crashes and we first started this that was one of the big rallying cries was what rear end crashes go up with cameras but dating back certainly through 2014 we've had zero rear end crashes at any of our red light cameras which to me is at least indicative that people are adjusting their behavior to what to do when they see a yellow light. Councilmember Gregor has a question. Okay let me try this question. Not blaming you. When you're collecting data about violations I know that you because people maybe didn't time it right. Am I getting here? Didn't time it right getting through the intersection. Do you look at like how many of these citations or notices that go out because somebody entered the intersection within a second of it turning red or within you know more than three seconds of it turning red or that violate because they're turning right on red without stopping. Do we gather any of that kind of data? We have the data we've not pulled that and collated it in terms of you know how many at what intersection you know we're within so many seconds of red or any of those kind of things. We did get some some general data on vehicle speeds and that for me certainly in viewing them that that plays a role. But the numbers tend to be you know it varies at each intersection you know what a tenth of a second at that intersection at that speed looks a whole lot different than a tenth of a second at another intersection at higher speed. We certainly could probably go back and look at each individual intersection and try to take a look at that but it would be a little difficult to go and try to make a cross-section across-the-board comparison with the varying speeds and the size of the intersections as to what the violations are because again I try to emphasize that in terms of an enforcement tool this is just a much more effective and efficient and from the law enforcement side safer way to enforce a violation that can easily be enforced the exact same way by an officer who's out there at the scene. It's just not as cost-effective. Councilmember Ryan. Thank you Mayor. I first had asked for this to to come forward to council it came out first as a informal staff report dating back some time in there it talked about the fact that adding one second to the yellow reduced red light running by I believe it was 30 some percent 36 ish and that the red light cameras more in the in the 90 percent is there any data on having both in the same? I would increase in the yellow and engineer friend. Could you could you restate the question? I didn't quite. The data that was presented to us included adding time to the yellow light interval and what reduction in red light running that created and what the red light camera creates as far as a reduction in the number is there any data that when you do both if there is what the reduction in red light running is? Both being the both the one second adding the one second that reduces by about 36 percent and having the camera there. Okay gotcha. So I can talk to the yellow light reduct increase by one second that goes to back to my initial explanation when cities started implementing this earlier the way the yellow time was calculated and put in the system there were different ways to get there and they were trying different times so when they started installing red light cameras at those particular intersections they had not timed the yellow right the yellow was short and part of the reason was they were trying to this was in larger cities where they were trying to manage congestion at the same time they were trying to manage pedestrians crossing so too many people working at the intersection and too little time for all these movements so the yellow time was lower and in those particular cases when they bumped it one second they reached the optimal and what we have in our city is has worked through all that and had we have we have the optimum time that's needed so technically that 36 percent we already have data on but as far as red light I think these numbers can tell that the number of violations in the previous one does that part of answer part of the question no but let's say any intersection out there it's not necessarily whether it's got a camera or not but if from what I read if you increase the yellow by one second above the the standard from the manual that you had had a 36 percent reduction in the number of people running the red light which obviously would relate to a reduction in accidents at that intersection yeah as I said it's a diminishing return so let me go back to the numbers here you see the six seconds specifically in the guidelines that said that the yellow time should be anywhere between three and six seconds if it's more than six seconds then you have to be really cautious of the amount of time you're providing at this intersection because then you're creeping into people using that particular time to as a green time so the people use it as an extended green so that's why adding one second to some of these locations which already have five point five and six second yellow at this time is well it's not recommended let 's so if I think the study was based on data there was that had short yellows to begin with that's why they saw that increase okay well in the way I thought I read it was that when you increase it to one second above you added if you're at the the industry standard for the manual and you went one second above that's what created that 36 percent reduction is that did I miss read that I think they the way I read the study and there was the the staff report points each and every aspect of it the way it read was the data that was said was time differently not based on these equations it was not an industry standard equation that was run I think it was a report from King Mr. Mr. Reed King I we can we can yeah I guess for future reference at some point I don't know if I need to wait on concluding items on this but additional data that I'd like to see would be of the stop lights in town signals in town how many are at what speed because I don't know that many that would be at that upper that would be at that 60 mile an hour that already had the second so just and and we I think it's evident and clear that it's hard to talk about because the caption is signal timing with intersections at red light cameras and so it may be that because I think that was the that was the request was you know about increasing yellow signal time and so I think that's why the caption was was worded that narrowly so certainly want to get to y'all's questions but I think in the end what we're going to find out is we're going to either make a decision today about do we want to increase any type of interval timing for either yellow or red but it's clear that as councilmember Briggs had mentioned that there's there's certainly an appetite for discussion on the red light program in general so I don't want to try to get those two convoluted here because we could speak we could talk for a couple hours on just in general general terms so I'm going to recognize councilmember Briggs and then councilmember Hudspeth. So I do have a specific question about the yellow light changing I know you mentioned that if we did it for one we'd have to do it for all the intersections but is there a specific intersection maybe that's not at the maximum of six that would you'd feel uncomfortable going over but one that we could do a pilot program in and increasing that like councilmember Ryan said one second just to see if the violations at that intersection decreased from before or after. Yes we can. Is that something maybe that that we could do just to see if it if it works or not but I wouldn't want to make you uncomfortable by going over the the one but it if there's an intersection that's listed here with a red light camera that you think that we could do some sort of pilot program on I would be in favor of at least trying it so that we can have data for our next conversation. Yes we can try we'll pick an intersection I'm not sure if you have anything in mind but the only concern I would have is the minute the cycle goes up people start noticing congestion immediately so that's one of the drawbacks of we start getting complaints. So maybe not near the loop. I would stay away from the loop. Thank you. Councilmember Hudspeth. Yeah as a I mean that's that to me is a I think that's the issue right. I think if you're not if you've not been victimized by these things then I don't think you you you're as a cute because I'll tell you I have an answer to you right now just heard the question and the answer is absolutely shady. What is it Shady Oaks and and what Colorado. Yeah Woodrow because you're going to have a brand new right turn lane and they're used to suffering in traffic anyway so it's going to go faster. And if you do it so I mean it's instantaneous. That's a simple answer. If you if you if you pay attention right to me I I don't need a conversation later I know where I fall and I know how long the contract is but specifically to this. How can you can you educate me on how malfunctions if that so it's all automated right. So with the degree of 100 percent certainty I have an answer as to what happens but the do you do you agree with that to a hundred hundred percent that if it malfunctions somehow it goes all red every time correct. So question yeah it's an inbuilt conflict monitor it's a matter of safety. So if it goes wrong and it fails there is a fail safe that the conflict monitor kicks in and we make sure that we we service each and every intersection conflict monitor every year just to make sure that we're on top of things. Okay and then so there's and then I'll pair two questions together kind of you you've mentioned studies a few different times and so I want to know what study that is you rely on and forgive me if I missed it in the backup and and kind of one that's one a one B would be is there a study that captures the fact that people have slower reaction times now because you have you know before you didn't have Bluetooth you didn't have this you didn't have that so I think there's more distractions in vehicles and I'm assuming driving patterns habits have changed. So is there so what study are you relying on initially and then is there a study out there that you would point to that captures newish drivers or new driving tendencies because I'm assuming there's been a change. So the first one is it's based on the traffic engineering handbook that's from the IT Institute of Transportation Engineers and there's all the formulas all the calculations they are in there the way they have come up with the the numbers as far as you know reaction and perception time it's based on studies that they've received and conducted and over time they've averaged it out every new addition that comes up goes through the series and sequence of other studies that they receive data from and they keep on updating some of the numbers or the equations and add and remove certain things so it's constantly updated based on research and data that they have received throughout the nation. Thank you. Thank you. I agree. Thanks. The first line in the backup information says that the primary objective of signal timing is to move people through an intersection safely and efficiently. So if we do a test by increasing the length of the yellow and we're I guess we're checking to see if that increases violations. I would also be interested if what impact it has on safety and efficiency. In other words does that yellow light being left on longer does that does that mean that we have cars stacking up for a longer period of time. I think that we need that kind of information so that we see the whole picture as we're as we're gathering information and not not focusing on one thing and ignoring the rest of the data that we need to have. So that's an excellent point and one of the things that we are doing across cities we're doing capital projects is historically as we have engineers traffic engineers especially have looked at intersections we've looked at this isolated intersection and then we make decisions based on timing. Over the last 10 to 15 years there's been a an understanding that this is more of a system wide approach and if you look at one intersection you may change one yellow light here and it may impact four other lights and the ability to move through the intersection. So what we're doing with capital projects today is looking at from a complete corridor analysis plus going further to make sure that whatever we do now doesn't have an unintended consequence beyond that limit. One of the things that always gets a little hard to understand with these traffic signals is that anytime I make an adjustment you brought it up to say I may have more parking space in between signal lights which means I got to build more roadway. So there's a much bigger infrastructure cost if I'm not doing a good job of balancing how many lights I have in between one intersection to another or this destination or another plus what is that timing set at and the more frustrated a driver gets with more time delayed at an intersection the more likely they are to run another intersection. And we are talking about intersections with red light cameras. I hear you but it all impacts all of it together because the original question is if we broaden it to an additional second it plays into a bigger picture. Well I guess unless there's some burning questions to address the issue at hand I mean we've got a proposal on the table because this we really are sk irting close to just the general conversation. I don't mind the general conversation I just I'm not sure that the posting is broad enough in order to have that and that's nobody's fault that's just sort of how it came up and it's obviously there's a desire to have that so I think staff has been alerted that and the agenda committee certainly has as well. There was a proposal or a suggestion by Councilmember Br iggs of hey can we instead of doing this across the board can we pick a pilot intersection with a red light camera that won't cause necessarily this stacking kind of dilemma that you've just described and is council okay with trying that to gather some data. Obviously it's you know going to be isolated but it'll still be data to see how it falls out. Yes Councilmember Ryan. Yes I would you know I appreciate Councilmember Husspah's thought in which one to use but you are now changing the flow of traffic through there once you have that extra lane so to me that wouldn't be the ideal one to to do the test on it needs to be something that nothing else has changed except for the time of that line. Well I think we can I don't think we need to decide exactly which intersection that is I think the traffic engineers will know which one best would fit that and isolate it to that to that problem or to that particular testing environment. So are we everybody okay with that moving forward I mean I 'm just yeah yeah I mean and if you're not that's okay too I'm just trying to get an idea we've got to give them some direction I'm seeing sort of half-hearted nods I'm not seeing anybody standing up and down on the table that may happen at our next general conversation but yes Councilmember Mayor Pro Tem I'm sorry. To clarify it would be one signal that's going to have one second more do we do we know the speed there? Unless we fix the intersection we don't know the speed so here's the list of intersections that already have red light cameras and between me and Deputy Chief we pick Oak and Carroll as in as the beta test as the beta test just because it's not that congested it's not a text-off facility so we have better control over all the elements. Okay so that's a 30 35 miles per hour? I think it's in that range. Carroll slightly higher Carroll might be 40. That's a discussion. How long would it last for the test? The question on the floor is what is the time duration of the beta test? I mean from it from I mean I don't think we can make that what do you think is necessary in order to gather the data that is being requested? Yeah I think it definitely depends on the season but right now if we deploy it a month right before summer hits. Thirty days while there's still the student traffic in town ? Correct. Okay. Well I'm okay with it I just I don't really like sessions like this because the issue is that people don't like red light cameras so I hate to put I hated second-guess traffic engineering because there was a formula that I would have failed to answer to. Yes. And I don't like I don't like questioning somebody's math when I'm not even close to the ability to do that so I feel like we should have a discussion about red light cameras rather than try to do these workarounds. So what's your? I'm not opposed to gathering data I just I don't really see the point of it because I think the real issue is the red light cameras. Okay all right given those comments do we still have the same direction from council? Yes councilmember Gregory? I think that's right I think gathering the data is important but I have a feeling that whatever the data comes out people that have their views that we should have them or we shouldn't have them I doubt that it's going to change because sometimes people feel so strongly about views that facts don't ever get in the way of that and I'm including myself in that by the way. Okay so it looks like you have direction to pick an intersection you've identified one certainly if you feel that upon further discussion that needs to be different than just ask that you alert council or just send out an email or something and we'll wait till you come back and in the meantime we'll get on the agenda yeah general discussion on red light cameras. Okay. All right any other questions comments on timing of signal lights at red light cameras? Seeing none thank you very much appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. All right we'll move on to agenda item 2B which is receive a report hold discussion give staff direction regarding the reallocation of project bond funds and other funds in conjunction with the city's capital improvement program. Mayor city council. My name is Tony Puente I'm the director of finance thank you for your time this afternoon to go over some recommendations some thoughts here on the geo bond program. First of all before I begin just let me say that we have met with both the 2014 bond oversight committee we actually met with them back in January and also in March and so many of the recommendations that are here are coming from them. I will also or have been approved by them I'll recommend it for approval. Last night we also were able to meet with the public utility board and they unanimously approved the recommendations that we've made in regards to the funding shortfalls for the drainage projects and where the source of funds is coming from for those and I'll touch a little bit on that as well so if you have questions we'll go to go through that. So just quickly the objectives for today we are wanting to go through a number of projects with you and some of these projects date back to the 2005 bond program so there's some specific projects from that bond program that are still out there we wanted to go ahead and bring that to you today we've just because there is no bond oversight committee from the 2005 bond program and there wasn't enough of a quorum to meet with the 2012 bond oversight committee we did take all those recommendations through the 2014 bond oversight committee and we did have some members of that committee that have been part of the 2005 and 2012 as well so we thought that was the prudent thing for us to do. So we'll discuss with you the recommendations from the bond oversight committee and then ask you for direction on the recommendations for each one of these projects and just so council member Hudbett knows I do have a spreadsheet and so we can go through that if we need to so I'll have that available. So again we had five projects that are remaining we have bonds that are still out that we still have on the books that have not been spent these are geo bonds they're voter approved general obligation bonds for five projects two of the two of the projects which are the larger projects are related to FM 1830 and US 377 both of those projects are actually fully funded and are on the way in the in process FM 1830 was funded by the county with a minor amount of city match and then US 377 is funded by text dot with also a minor city match and so there's bonds that are remaining to the amount of 2.7 million those bonds did and the reallocation of those bonds to the Bonnie Bray project did go to the 2005 bond oversight committee unfortunately we were unable to confirm that but again that staff recollection but what we did is we went ahead and still discussed that with the 2014 bond oversight committee and now would like to go ahead and bring that to you for formal approval or thoughts on that particular project. Just as a note because when we look somebody looks at 2005 bond program projects that have gone uncompleted that's 13 years but when you look at that at least that specific project those are both text dot projects I mean those weren't fully within the control of the city or fully funded by the city so it's not that the city has delayed is that text dot wasn't able to fund those and therefore our match wasn't required until it got funded which has been just recently. Yes sir that's correct. Thank you. Yes Mayor Pro Tem. Can I ask about specific items on the 2005 bond program at this point? Yes ma'am. Okay the IOF cemetery fencing that came to us maybe last summer I think and we allocated $180,000. Correct. So on your spreadsheet it says that the revised project cost is $555,000 so I was under the impression that we were allocating the $180,000 out of general fund revenue and then that was the total cost of the project not that the project had been demarcated as a $555,000 project. Correct it was actually $375,000 that was allocated to that fencing project in fiscal year 17 to complete that project. Was it general fund? It was general fund dollars yes ma'am and so part of the proposal today is specific to that particular project is that we've been able to identify restricted funds which are from fund 916 it's the park development fund and we found that this particular cemetery is eligible for those funds there's $288,000 in that fund that could be allocated to this particular project and so one of the recommendations today is to simply switch out that funding so give the $288,000 to that project and then take the $288 ,000 in general fund dollars and reallocate that to the VALA project that's the recommendation. Okay well I guess my question was more I don't remember anything about a $555,000 project and maybe somebody else that was here could clarify I remember that project being a $180,000 project. You mean the wrought iron fences? Yeah the fencing yes. No I think because I do remember that we were I think that was only either the repairs for the cemetery for the headstones because I remember what part of the question was is do we go ahead and do it all at once because we had a short fall do we do all the monument repair and the fencing and there was some hesitation and I 'll be honest I just said hey just take the difference out of the general fund if we 're short and that was that $375,000. Okay well I obviously didn't understand that whole conversation but just to be clear the larger amount that was presented to us was for headstones as well but this on our spreadsheet is just the fencing. Correct I believe that's correct Laura do you have any thoughts on that? So just the fencing for this project is $555,000? Yeah Laura. And that's only for the IOF correct it's not also for the. Let me ask Laura Barron's to come up here. Good afternoon Mayor Councilmembers Laura Barron's Assistant Director for Parks and Recreation that total amount is a combination of the f encing and the headstone repair both are currently in progress and I can go back and look to see what the total amounts for each one were but we have two two cemetery projects going simultaneously the repairs of the headstones and also the fencing for that total amount. Yeah it was the it was the. It was. It was the. It was the. Right. Oakwood both Oakwood and I00F fencing repairs are in progress as well as the monuments and we actually just gave an update on the monument project and this past Friday's report and that has been complete. I just want to clarify that the I00F cemetery fencing that 's under the program description of the funded projects and geo funded projects is actually Oakwood cemetery IOF cemetery fencing and the major headstone repairs. Yes it includes both cemeteries. Okay I00F and Oakwood cemetery. All right just to clarify thank you. Thank you Mayor Pro Tem. Mayor Councilmember Gregory. So could somebody clarify what was the 2005 bond money for the I00F cemetery for? As best we can tell it was just probably for fencing. There's not a lot of clear documentation in that particular pamphlet for that. And maybe if and I'm just guessing that the reason that that got delayed was because when the original proposal for the fencing came up it was delayed because there were some people who felt like that the fencing that was going to be built was not appropriate for a historical cemetery. I think that's right but I don't think that there's anybody in this room that has the institutional memory right now. I don't think I have that memory either but we did have a pretty lengthy discussion. I think the discussion we had was how much money was in the bond package and was left and what the cost of that fencing was going to be for both the cemeteries and I think that's the mayor's corrective going back and saying well let's make up the difference with the funds out of the general fund and the council approved a budget amendment to take $375,000 I believe out of the general fund matching that with the other project dollars that we have for the bond program to complete the entire project. So we have all those details and we can certainly bring that back to you and or send that to you in informal staff reports so you can see all the components of in the history of that issue. And also to wrap into it also not only I00F but Oakwood. Yes sir that's correct. So we'll do that I'll get that to you. And so the recommendation here is just we found that we had some unspent money in the 2005 bond program for I00F and we're taking that restricted funding and we're using that to do what we're doing and that is to do fencing and monument repair to both I00F and Oakwood therefore not having to pull that money out of the general fund. It's simply it's exchanging the monies out of the 916 fund which is the park development fund with general fund dollars. Sure that's the only purpose of bringing this up is to let you know that the general fund is unrestricted and so we could use that to allocate it somewhere else whereas before if we didn't do this we're just going to take it from that apply it to the cemeteries and then we've got to figure out how to do that's right the rest of the funding for the development. Okay. Yes sir. All right. Who's on first second or third or you know. So the other projects that were in the 2005 was the Clear Creek Heritage that several pieces of that project are underway they're in process and then the last one was the way finding signage that project actually started off as the entry corridor improvements those were subsequently not done and so then there was a recommendation to move that funding to this way finding signage and if you recall some of those signs are already up in the downtown area there's phases one two and three that were approved and those are underway so in process. So in the 2012 bond program of course the majority of that was 20 million dollars for street reconstruction I just want to say that to date we've completed about 123 street segments of the 208 segments that were communicated that's about 35 lane miles out of the 60.8 miles that were there the other piece to a smaller extent was up to 400,000 for public art you you you're aware that the medallions at the North Texas Boulevard Alpha 35 have been completed the other project that was contemplated was additional medallions on Brinker Road and Loop 288 those are still not been done and certainly the public art committee will be having conversations about those particular pieces and and what to recommend and bring back for approval use of that those funds. So the 2014 bond program again we had a large amount for street reconstruction 52 street segments have been completed representing about 19.38 lane miles there's no no reallocation or any shortage of funding in any of the 2012 street money or the 2014 street money what we've discussed with the bond oversight committee is that we're going to complete as many segments as we possibly can with the funds that we have in relation to street reconstruction. Councilmember Hussbett. Yeah thanks Tony. So 52 of 195 is that completely separate from 128 of 208 is that right on that last slide? Yes sir. Yes sir. Two separate numbers? Two separate numbers. So it's what does that mean 195 and 208 fourish? Yeah. Okay thank you. So the first project. Councilmember Briggs had a question. I can wait till the end it's about Ruedale. Oh okay. And just let me say that there's a number of staff people here that from from the the departments that can answer any specific questions on on some of these projects if I'm not able to communicate that. So the transportation division facility if you recall we've discussed with that particular facility with you and relocating that facility from what was originally contemplated to 651 Mayhill. We originally came to you with a proposal to utilize funding of 678 from the general fund and also from some capital savings and capital programs. What we are recommending now is to utilize that particular initial funding for some of the other projects that we have and after this discussion we're going to have discussion about solid waste and and also there's some some excess CEOs that have resulted in solid waste that we are now proposing to utilize for this particular facility instead of what we originally had come to the council and just briefly talk to you about as far as funding. So that's 678,000 that we would use in excess solid waste CEOs. Bonnie Bray phase four that particular project that has a revised project cost now 13 million dollars. There's a 3.5 million dollar gap in that funding. We are proposing to allocate some of the savings or some of the money that we had from the 2005 bomb program from FF 1830 and US 377 2.1 million to this particular project. In addition the other recommendation is to take 1.3 million dollars from Bonnie Bray phase six and allocated reallocated to phase four to get that project completed. Now what will happen is phase six is now going to be underfunded but what we'll have about four million dollars from that was approved in the Geobomb program. Our plan is to utilize those funds to design and do right away acquisition for phase five and phase six of Bonnie Bray to get that completed and then either look for external funding sources to get those two projects completed or to roll those into a future bomb program recommendation. Councilmember Gregory. We've answered the question about how we plan to deal with the shorting the money from phase six of Bonnie Bray but how do we accommodate or account for the shortage of funds from FM 1830 and US 37 7 projects? Again those projects are fully funded they've been fully funded by the county and or by the state. So the money that we had designated from our bond election 2014 we don't need for that project? Correct we do not need those for those two projects correct . Okay that was not clear to me when I was going through this presentation and it was sort of like I was getting very concerned about taking money from this project and then there's no money to do that project. Mayor Pro Tem and then Councilmember Hesk. So for instance with the FM 1830 and 377 improvements if the money is no longer needed that means that we have an overage or we have extra funds of two million dollars is that an early repayment on the bond or how is that money allocated then the bond money? So the bonds that were issued from that particular election are likely still outstanding they're likely beyond their call date and so the only thing that you can do with those bonds you can either use them to pay down pay down debt or to reallocate them to another eligible project. Since the proposition in which those dollars were approved was for transportation projects again reallocating them now to Bonnie Bray is an allowable use. Okay so I guess I'm assuming that you have done the math and you know the interest rate on the 2005 bond projects or bond monies is favorable as opposed to leveraging a new bond or using 2014 monies. Yes ma'am and I think too again we've been paying debt service on these bonds for all these years as well and so I think at this point utilizing was probably the better approach. So when you say it's past the callable time that means that we can't repay it early? That's correct. When was the 2005 bond callable? They were callable likely it was 20-year bonds probably 2015. Again if they were issued in 2015 I'd have to go back and determine exactly when that was issued. So we're certain that none of them can be none of that money can be used to repay any of the bonds? I'm not a hundred percent sure but so I can go back and double check that. Okay. And I just wanted to weigh in a little bit here our main mission with the bond program as a whole has been trying to follow through on as many of these promised programs as we possibly can. I mean obviously so many of these projects are years several years behind we 've got obviously some that were 13 behind you're gonna be dealing with a question on V ela later which is 13 years later and the cost escalation has been significant. So what you're seeing is several months worth of work kind of reallocating savings and different dollars to try to make projects whole that really time and inflation have eaten away those bond estimates from the 2014 and 2012 areas. So we're trying to get the bond packages whole as we possibly can and get that delivered. I think the major lesson learned moving forward is to try to get as many of these plans on the shelf especially for the larger projects before you go to the bond committee that way you don't lose that year or two of just engineering time that sort of thing. But right now we are many millions short on the on those two bond projects because time and things just flat not getting implemented. So we're trying to save as many of these projects and make them whole as we can. Councilmember Patsbeth. Thank you sir . First is a request Tony could I get a some sort of one pager that captures the phased projects if you will and kind of where we are. So for example using your example Bonnie Bray six phases four are done and so if I can have that on one sheet and then like for example the drainage where we're working on that downtown is kind of here's a phase here's where we are so I just have all that in one sheet that would be helpful me to kind of track and flow with if you'd be so kind and then my question is and I don 't know if it's specific for you but generally the question is what is the duty kind of when you have a voter approved bond what what is the duty to fulfill that vote request how does that work. Generally there'll be language in there that the projects that the projects that are voted for will receive the funding and typically there's a there 's some language at the end that should shortfalls occur should something else happen that the money will still be spent on getting as many of these things done as possible but by no means are you promising that everything will be delivered and there is the ability to move dollars around as priorities change but these main staple projects you know is really what we're trying to safeguard as much as possible and that's and keep the integrity there and that would be Mayhill for sure there's a lot more wiggle room with the local street segments the 403 we're not taking that as an excuse though not to get those done so we 're trying Todd's got a plan in place right now to try to at least double or triple our output over the next couple years and get those local street segments largely done so that's really what's driving our approach is trying to come through and do what we said we were going to do back then. Okay thank you. So which Bonnie Bray phase is it the one that is kind of encroaches on the neighborhood and buys those single family homes and goes near razor ranch. Let me ask the city engineer. So the very northern end of phase four and most all of phase five up to about the last thousand feet of it is right on the borderline of the neighborhood right around McKenna Park. Okay and so that phase that will be funded with phase four will be funded with this. Phase four is intended to include the intersection of scripture and Bonnie Bray and we go just beyond that so right to the edge of McKenna Park with that particular project that's part of the increase in cost is the original limit came right to scripture. We're trying to get past the intersection so that you don't end up with just half an intersection built and then we're gonna left with another half so we expanded the limits to be a little bit more inclusive of a complete project. Thank you. Member Hudspeth asked a question that was really had to do with accountability and obligations regarding these bonds. Part of that seems to be the responsibility of the oversight committees and one of the things I couldn't find in the backup was when we see these recommendations from the oversight committee I don't know who's on it and I don't know if it's the 2014 oversight committee or the 2012 committee or the 2005 committee or if it's a combination of those folks and I'd like to get that information for sure. I'd also like to find out if we have any sort of regular like a quarterly meeting of these oversight committees mostly the practice has been to use folks that were part of the citizens bond committee that recommended those because they're familiar with the projects and familiar with the decision making to be part of the oversight committee so I'm curious about that and if they have quarterly meetings or biannual meetings to and by biannual I don't know if I'm using the right word I mean twice a year meetings to keep up with what's going on and to make recommendations so if you all could get that information back to us. I can certainly answer at least the bond committee that's been weighing in lately has been 2014 and there are some of those members that were on both the 2012 and 2014 committees and they've been very helpful actually in bouncing some ideas off particularly as it related to the parks projects so that's definitely the way we move forward . I will tell you that my understanding is that we've been meeting annually my first meeting was about three weeks after I started last year and they were not happy with the progress Tony and his staff and our new city engineer and really all of our directors at FCIP projects began an initiative late last summer pulling all the budgets off the engineering books that the CIP was heavily decentralized and the finances Tony now oversees all those funds and is accounting for all those funds and we meet on a monthly basis making sure for progress status updates we have also just recently spoken with the oversight committee about getting them together on a quarterly basis to get their input a little bit more regularly but there really wasn't an opportunity to do that until we actually could discuss their own data so I will give him give Tony and our team just huge credit for being able to put this in an organized fashion we know where we stand now we're trying to make the best with what we've got left. And Councilmember will say Miss McGarry if you'll permit me that committee is made up of individuals that were on the blue ribbon 50 member committee it was the the chair and then the co-chairs of the subcommittees that comprise the bond oversight committee. Well I think that's actually a really good point in terms of you know the oversight and accountability aspect I have a question for legal I'm assuming that the blue ribbon committee and then the oversight committee were created by an ordinance of some kind or resolution. Most likely resolution. And I guess I'd like to see the resolution just to see if perhaps they could be modified because I think you can build some things in there that just automatically require quarterly meetings for instance that way you're not reliant on you know particularly go get her chair to drive the oversight function of the committee not that there that couldn't happen but I don't have a lot of confidence in it given the history so perhaps we could just build that into the resolution. So the next project down here I've just touched briefly on that a little bit which is phase six again we're playing we're requesting to reallocate about 1.4 million from that project to body for body brave phase four to get that project completed and then the plan would be that the remaining funds about 4.7 that would be utilized for design of phase five and phase six and also to acquire as much right away as possible with those funds have that have those two projects ready to go for the next bond over for the next bond committee. So the next project is the more Street expansion project. This is if you're familiar with this project this project is right next to Sally beauty and also the Denton Central Appraisal District that project has a revised estimate of 3.15 million we are recommending to take 250,000 of that money that was for us 377 and reallocate to this project to get this project completed. That's my Ryan. Thank you mayor when you talk about purchasing the right of ways especially in phase six we already own most of that and if we do will are we because it's in a different department. I know anytime we want to sell parkland we have to put that on a bottom or put that on an election is that something that will have to be done if we're using any North Lake Park property if we if we need to yes that would be the pathway I think where Tony is going with that is we're doing two things with phase six one we 're looking to expand the limits of that project all the way to 77 there's some funding opportunities we're exploring right now that would make that a reality but it's in the very early stages of trying to figure out if that's even something we can do when we say right away a lot of times what we're actually meaning is property acquisition which could be a lot of things it could be easements needed for sidewalks pedestrians it could be temporary construction easements it's just a generic term sometimes that we use when it's not just right away it's also all real properties that would be involved in the project. And I guess the second half of my question is if we need to use any of the parkland will that need to go for an elect and go to an election from the voters since we're changing from one department to another. As I understand it because it would be a parkland conversion that would be the pathway forward but our intent would be to try to avoid that as much as possible. So the next project and Mr. Briggs I know you have a question on this project we have a new estimate for this project seven million dollars there 's a one point three million dollars shortfall the proposal here is to utilize you know 371,000 from those from that US 377 project and there's some additional CIP dollars from water and wastewater that are already included in the 1718 adopted CIP that are there to complete this particular project. And so it says extension but it's the realignment correct. Yes ma'am. And so I recall I guess a year or so ago when we were talking about realignment we were also talking about the service area there in the trucks and there was going to be a change there which was kind of brought to us as a deal like we need to do this because of this and I know that we're not going to do the same the same thing at the service area and so I remember in our conversation the mayor mentioned well do we even need to do this realignment now and I guess that's my first question and the second one is to have we reached out to that neighborhood and had any kind of neighborhood meetings there with the homeowners that are going to be directly affected with the pertain being closed off. Let me ask the city engineer come here. Anthony you're running away from the podium. So the short answer to the public involvement piece is no we have not yet but the plans are so early in our development as we went through the process of trying to bring projects back into either the right size of the original scope one of the things we looked at was a project like Riddell where there are several things trying to be accomplished all at one time. So Riddell does need to be realigned with the current Ridd ell for a lot of reasons there's the future expansion of TWA there's development in the area it also would make a safer crossing because we would remove a couple of the railroad crossings that are potential hazards to safety and condense them into one. We would also get a better alignment of just the roadway in general you right now you have two offset intersections and by bringing them together you reduce the number of potential accidents collisions for even pedestrians and cyclists in that area is that corridor continues to expand along Mingo. So bringing it into one spot has a lot of advantages one of the things that was originally proposed was that would be a four lane roadway through there that's still the long term goal what we've reduced the scope to now is that we've built two lanes of the four lanes with a median in the middle so that you could add in the other two lanes somewhere down the road when the traffic volume is really warranted. Does that answer your question? Yeah it did and I asked earlier for a map so that I could see and I was sent but it looks like it would be really difficult for all those homes in the development over there in that area to get easily to their homes and so I just wanted to bring that up now in the initial discussions. So part of the path forward when we're delivering the project would be to engage the public and where the current alignment proposed would be once we 've ironed out some of the other details we need to get to roughly a 20% or 30% stage on the design address the public show them what we're looking at and get some feedback on those types of issues. The majority of the original scope of the project had more to do with like you said where the service center was located how we provide connectivity and the future traffic management center would have also been in that area and tying all that in and not allowing so much of the city work crew traffic and the potential support of that going through the neighborhood to get to that center and come right off of Roudel to get there. So as the need for that traffic management center has shifted to another location the need for that building has gone away and the access there has also gone away. So we would certainly address those issues with the public as they came up but it does have impacts to the overall capability to deliver the project with the amount of money we have available today. Okay thank you. Councilmember Gregory. My guess is if we did the Roudel extension. Yes sir. Across the train tracks that we could build that in a way that it would be a quiet zone. That's the intent as we build it today would be building it as a quiet zone. And then if we did away with the pertain or and another crossing that that would eliminate the need for the train conductor or the train engineer or whoever lays on the horn to be doing that and there was a guy the other night that just he was just on it constantly. I thought he must be going as slow as possible to get through that intersection because it felt like it went on for five minutes. Yes the current project takes into account a full automated cryotone which means that we would have the crossing arms come down and wouldn't need the wayside horns that you hear in downtown which are quieter than the train but it would eliminate that need. Thanks. Well I mean I think I want a little bit more detail on this because this this project was originally meant to accomplish primarily one goal and that was to get people in and out of the service center in different locations and driving down through I think it was Texas Street one of those streets not Texas Street on the backside. And so I really want to have a little bit more detail on this one because we've basically changed the whole need and you've identified some but I'd still like to see more formal presentation as far as quiet zones. We've been talking about quiet zones for years and for some reason those have escaped us we haven't had that many quiet zones so I just want to see because if this is really a total revision of this project and what it's supposed to do I want to look at it and say is this one we still want to do at this time or do we is this money better allocated or do we just put it in another bond. I just want to see the timing of it because the scope of it and the rationale for it has totally changed and I just would like to see the detail on that. Absolutely. Yep okay thank you. Yes Councilmember Hussbett. I'm going to piggyback that but I'd ask for a phased approach so everything or just to make that curve less deadly and add some barriers to keep you know because right now it just drops off when you go in this. So I'd like maybe during that presentation I'll just give you a heads up I'd like to see something that just makes it look normal and then versus just leaving it as is and then something that does everything if you will. We can absolutely bring the project back. We have not gone away from that specific concern exactly. If we're going to cross the railroad tracks we're going to make sure it's an easily traversable it's a safely traversable crossing. Today yes you have a very steep vertical alignment so it's real steep coming up and real steep coming down which is the way a lot of these crossings have been addressed throughout the state on what used to be a very small two lane road that really had very little traffic so the intent of the design even revised is to make sure that city service crews can get in and out of the service center quickly more effectively safely but so does the rest of the motoring public in and around that area knowing that there's some expansion some other facilities in that area. Great. Thank you. So that kind of concluded the transportation related projects. Can I ask one question on that? Because by the numbers you know people are looking at 403 segments total of 180 segments done so far. So obviously we've got sort of a conundrum here of okay what is the latest? Are we where our bond programs a little over robust? Did we not staff up enough? Are we not hiring enough contractors? You know there's going to be and we don't have to go into all of it. I'd like to get some kind of information on what your analysis is of where we are, how are we going to make it up, how did we get to this place because some of it's just you know you got a hundred four hundred something segments between 2012 and now you've got eight what is that six years. I know they extend a little bit more from the 2014 but I think the public is going to want some explanation of okay help me understand how this happens and sometimes our cost maybe our estimates in the beginning weren't that great. Of course we've hit a time when construction costs have been increasing quite rapidly. Nobody can time that or determine that. You can give some explanation now if you want I don't necessarily mean to prolong it it's just I think those questions eventually are going to have to be answered or some data provided on that. Absolutely and we can do that in an expanded setting. The short answer is we've tried to do a lot of things in house to save a good bit of money but the reality is is that we lose some opportunity costs when it comes to that our crews are both trying to construct new roadways as well as maintain existing roadways and there's just a lot of dominoes that have to fall to keep moving forward and effect in an efficient manner. So what we're putting in place now is what you see a lot of communities going to which is I'm bundle a lot of projects together a lot of these road segments together put them in one construction set and bid those out. So we'll do some in house help offset some of that cost and then put some out on the streets to allow a contractor to take it forward faster and a little bit more effectively in can just because they're focused. They can stay focused on the job that's the job they're working on and they move on because the alternative is we staff up. Yes city staff you say well instead of going out and hiring a contractor crew we got see 170 about 230 something segments still left to go. So we have to decide is it better to contract this out can it get done faster do we just go ahead and hire dedicated staff our street reconstruction or bond construction division to go out and do that. Have we done that analysis on the difference between that approach and then this bundling that you're talking about. We have not done that in depth. Okay. That is something that as we bring out a new deputy director who will be over that streets and drainage department that's one of the things they're going to be looking at is what's the right size department. We can staff up for the next two or three years of construction but how much longer does construction go on. Is it maintainable indefinitely and there is a point at which we have so much materials and manpower on staff that we don't get the same value out of that and we're maintaining a fleet of vehicles that diminish quicker than what we can get. And that's a good and that's a good response and so that's all part of that analysis that cost benefit analysis. Because I know we we did hire specifically I remember the presentation where there was a an entire sewer water and sewer crew replacement crew hired because we were getting behind on the street segments because we couldn't get the utilities done. Yes. I mean you're not going to tear a street up just to tear it up again to put the utility. So we hired a whole new crew to begin to replace sewer lines if I remember correctly. And so it's more along that same approach. Absolutely. Okay. I appreciate that. And I'm looking forward to seeing more detail greater detail coming. Thank you. So the next project we want to talk with you about today is Fire Station 3. You may recall that we had previously come to the council and reallocate some monies from this particular project to complete Fire Station 4 and also the burn tower. Those projects are ongoing. The burn tower I believe is actually complete. And so we had previously talked to the council as part of the budget process that we redeemed about one point two million dollars in additional CEOs to complete that project based on the engineering estimates at that time. There was a number of discussions with the council regarding the design of Fire Station 3. I think all that has finally been the council's finally given staff direction based on the most current engineer's estimate we believe that that amount needs to be about one point six million and not one point two. So we do plan to go to the audit finance committee on April 10 to discuss the next bond sale. And so the proposal here would be to again issue those CEOs one point six million for Fire Station 3 to get that project completed. So the one point two seven five estimate was provided when? I think it was late last year Mayor. Late in 2017? Yes. Okay. So we're three months into 2018. It may have been earlier than that. And we were still at the schematic design phase. So as they continue to get the construction documents ready to go they're going to by definition have better pricing estimates for you as well. So I would like this is going to sound really odd. This comes from my investment days. On some of these shortfalls, I mean we've got a we've got a fund balance. We're paying three or four percent. I don't know what kind of interest rates we're paying. But on some of these we need to make some decisions on do we need to maybe cash fund some of the shortfalls. And that's a financial analysis based upon our policy for our fund balance based upon what the current rates are because I know rates have gone up. I mean they've probably gone up 25 to 50 basis points in the last two or three months at least. And I'm sure that for our fund balances we're getting probably next to nothing and they're not there to achieve a rate of return. They're there more for safety and insurance. So I understand that. So I hope that that's part of the equation at some point like we did. I mean you can't do large projects of two or three or four million dollars. I understand that. But I do know we have had some budget amendments here recently where we've had additional savings in the last budget cycle where we've done two or three million dollars worth of signal improvements or we've we've done some other items such as that. So I just want to make sure we're looking at comprehensive ly because this is a this is first of all great information. Good presentation really giving us a real clear picture of the landscape on the bond program which will allow us to move forward with a little bit more clarity and certainty. But I think that given that combined with some of the budgetary savings we're having I mean I think if we'd have known this back then there might have been some different allocations of funding for for that. So if some of those projects still have not been done that we made some budget amendments for I think it's worth taking a look at to see what's the highest what is the highest priority. So more of a comprehensive approach to sort of our financial management with some of those I don't want to say excessive excess funds but sort of funds that were due because of savings on expenses and increased revenue. What was just inside budget. I'm always accusing him of hiding money from us. But the but we're exactly taking that approach. In fact the you know the quick win street projects the Vela Park you know there was about three million dollars that we added it suggested that we use fund balance to pay for those will be taking exactly that same approach over the summers we're putting together our budget for you and refining our estimates. So we're completely on board that if there's one time shots of money in particular that they should be going to help offset these bond projects. Okay. So Mayor Pro Tem had a question. Well I just want to second what you said about when we were presented with options for instance for I don't know if it was fire station three or four when we actually kind of went into the details of the project. I certainly didn't have any understanding that the project would go four hundred thousand dollars over what the recommendations for the various elements were. So I guess for the audit finance committee meeting on the 10th if the idea is that you're just going to bring forth a four hundred thousand dollar overage on fire station three and six hundred thousand dollars shortfall for the firing range and we're just supposed to say okay we'll send it to council and see if they'll find some money for it. I don't think that's sufficient. I mean I think you have to also bring us options for cutting the shortfall with really good details for how that could happen and not necessarily from getting general fund revenues but how does this project change because now we don't have the money. Because I'm sorry you can't just add five hundred thousand dollars to every project. It's not a fiscally prudent way to operate. I know all of these items are important but that's just you just can't add five hundred thousand dollars every six months to every project. It's not a thing. We will definitely do that and I guess one other change kind of in philosophy I want to mention to council is we're working our way through these projects is you're also going to see more projects brought before you to where we see building projects heading our way to do to fund the preliminary and up through construction design to where we're ready to put something on the street to give you even better project estimates. You're going to see that approach coming forward most likely on station eight as we're planning for that and we've got a couple of other projects that you just authorized us to head down that path with 651 Mayhill and the service center as well. So we see that and the better that we the further along we can get construction drawings the better budgets we can give you. Yes mayor council member Hussman. Thank you. One question is what is what is the time frame so you've like laid out a number of projects. Have you attributed a timeline to these. What are your thoughts on how. So we vote yes. What's the timeline to achieve all that you've laid out. Well I think I think what we've talked about with the bond oversight committee is that our goal is for for the majority if not all these projects to get them completed or at least substantially completed within that six year window that we had communicated to the to the council and to to the bond committee. So if I may so you the the numbers you're giving hold for six years you for it for example in a perfect world I'm not holding you to unforeseen instances but so this maneuvering says we're good for the next six years. Well we have three years left in that program and so so the goal will be again to get most these projects substantially completed within the next three years. He's not going to make that guarantee to you. You know on the and I'll answer your question two phases I think on the on the capital projects involving drainage roads that sort of thing Todd staff has built in inflationary estimates to try to get you as solid with the budget as possible on the building costs firing ranges that sort of thing. It's all going to depend on those costs right now are jumping all over the place it's better for us to get into construction drawings get the most recent per square foot costs of what was happening and not delay those projects every time we're if we were starting to experience out in the market the the time delay with these these projects can add up to several hundred thousand or millions of dollars so road drainage water sewer projects we feel pretty comfortable with the revised estimates the building projects we can't make that commitment to you until we get those until we see what the market says . Okay and then so my follow up to that last point is the help me understand if you know the scope of work for the range in my understanding that there are other not municipalities but law enforcement agencies that utilize that range am I wrong I mean I've slept since I've been out there but no you are right. I believe there's other agencies that utilize that facility are they contributing to the cost or I mean I don't know how that I mean I don't know what the agreement is but that seems like a big number to me so I'd like to understand what's going into it because I know the federal government put that that kind of that covered area out there if I'm thinking about the right place and and and so I'm wondering what goes into six hundred thousand dollars. Let me ask Chief White to come up here. Okay thank you. The building you're talking about was the cover was actually put out by I think the Citizens Police Academy and the 100 club. Okay yes. So there are other agencies that use it they do contribute financially to an extent probably not a lot. A lot of this a lot of the costs are to the building so there was some proper there are properties being donated that has kind of held us this this project up. We're waiting on all that property get donated it's from the razors and it borders Western Boulevard will increase our footprint will allow us to move our building out of the flood plane. As good as this property is for for our range it is substantially inhibited by the flood plane so in the past the buildings we've had because of that have been portable buildings so there's going to have to be a quite a bit of buildup if we stayed inside our normal footprint by we are hoping by getting this extra property that it will allow us to move that a little bit to the east and ever so incrementally getting you know more out of the flood plane. Okay and then the gate is that there was an did they redo the gate there. We've done a lot of work already we've done we've done the the berm has been heightened there's been drainage improvement to the whole range the the gate along Airport Road is finished. We anticipate that we're still going to use that gate even if we move the building out along Western we've we've had some discussions with with planning with trying to look at different designs and how can we maximize our potential for parking using that that existing gate that we already have so there's been quite a bit of work done already the main the main hold up now is the building itself and the building itself along with fencing along Western that will increase our security of the overall property. Okay and then lastly I guess my I don't know the answer to this because I know there's a there's obviously a sensitivity to who goes out there but if there's any avenues to recoup some of that money if it's I don't know if there's if there 's an enhancement where we go $100,000 further but it allows us to collect rents or do something like that I'd like to know what those are just before you know if if it's manageable and it then increases revenue back to us. Well I know there is some revenue that comes in and I know like the DEA is also DEA or that they've been property you know mowers some some machinery that we've used out there so they have target systems so they have contributed but it 's still primarily our facilities. Thank you. So my question is about the Magnolia Street drainage you may have gone over that but I think I was in the back so I know that that we approved something not too long ago council did regarding the drainage project and I thought that was currently going on I know that that's really significant for the Hinkle to get redone and that has to be done first or in connection with so if this revision or the shortfall is that going to affect when Hinkle can be redone? Is that going to delay the project? The short answer is no it won't delay the project it's still moving as quickly as we can it the biggest issue is just wrapping up the very last little tidbits of what we need to have in the way of I believe it's temporary construction easement so that we can just start moving and then of course getting it into the schedule for our crews. Okay thank you. Yes ma'am. I've got a question on Hinkle Drive drainage real quick. Refresh my memory what is that? Hinkle Drive drainage? Yes. So there was a missing component of drainage council recently saw a property acquisition piece that had to be acquired that was the last piece we needed to go to construction this is a drainage piece just north of Hinkle Drive goes under Elm that in the area where Hinkle and Bonnie Bray flooded significantly in the I think it was the 07-08 floods this was a project that came out of that this is the last piece that connects all that and takes it underground. So help me understand it says the shortfall of $180,000 is already included in the street improvement fund this is drainage why are we I know for street improvement fund was a fund created to bulk up our street maintenance. Yes. So why are we taking money out of I never understood that the street improvement fund also was for quote-unquote drainage projects. That's not but there's a street portion to this project and part of what happened is as we're going under Eagle and putting in this new culvert this box over it that goes under the roadway run a significant piece of that last little bit of Eagle that has not been redone. So streets is going to do that in conjunction with the drainage piece so it could have been worded better it's $180,000 that goes to $180,000 worth of streets improvement. Got you okay all right so there's so the drainage component is is already funded somewhere else. Yes. Okay perfect thank you very much I appreciate that. Okay so not to go backwards but so for the police fire range the recommendation is to utilize general fund resources you know mayor one of the questions you brought up was you know we ended fiscal year 1617 with about 3.6 million dollars you know to the good in the general fund we did come to you with a proposal for some traffic improvements and also part of that proposal at the time was $575,000 that went to Vela and so there was some additional capacity there that came from 1617 this 620 ,000 is proposed to come out of the general fund from that you know surplus of revenue that we had in 1617. So okay so let me make sure I'm clear on what you just said so you came back with a staff amendment because of some revenue over expenses in 1617 over the budget and that was 3. At the time it was about 3 million dollars. And we created a budget amendment to allocate all of that. Yes correct. So what I'm hearing you say is that now that all the books are getting finalized and things are settling the dust is settling that now there's an additional however much money that we're taking out of so it's really an increase of 3.6 million or something like that. That's correct. Revenue over expenses for 1617. Correct. Okay all right okay. And just based on if I could based on the both yours and mayor pro tem's questions mayor we will bring back potential value engineering options on station three and fire range if you want to allocate that 620,000 dollars differently or not at all. We'll bring that back to finance and audit for you to have that discussion. Okay. Yes mayor pro tem. So I'm guessing that for the firing range we need to make to have some type of direction today or no is that going to go to audit finance as well? Well the planned issuance was going to go to the audit finance committee on the 10th for the CEOs. Well here's where I'm kind of having some pause because if there's a 620,000 dollar shortfall so the project doubled in price I don't know what the time period was for the doubling but when is the project going to start if there's an additional 620,000 dollars allocated and then are we going to be I won't be here thank goodness but is the next council going to be here and they're going to have 500,000 dollars of additional expenses added on in six months to this project so it becomes a 1.7 million dollar project. So I mean I need to know when these projects are going to actually start before we're allocating money for them. We'll get that for you. Station three is a little easier we're in design for that right now and should be on the street I would say in the next month or two. So we'll have something to the council this summer on station three. Firing range can't be that specific we will get that for you. It sounds like maybe there's a property issue so perhaps I don't know if the time is right for the modification is what I'm saying. No you're bringing up a very good point and we'll get you some information I will also ask chief you know to get us a little bit more information if there's a place if there's options to scale back to have that conversation with you but your points a good one that the longer this goes on the more the price rises so we'll have that discussion with you. So the next couple projects and we've already talked a little bit about both the downtown drainage projects what we're calling the downtown drainage projects that are made up of the Hickory Street and the South Bell projects that were included in the 2014 bomb program with this commingling or not commingling but this aggreg ating or bundling of projects we've now added also Oak Street drainage project to that and so the combined shortfall for those three projects is 470,000 for the Magnolia project we 've already spoke a little bit about that that shortfall and so combined a little bit over 2 million dollars we're proposing to utilize funds that have aggregated or accumulated in what we call the channel rehab funds and so those channel rehab funds are associated with the drainage fee that is that's part of the wastewater bill bills to to our customers throughout the city that was implemented that drainage fee was implemented back in 2002 there's been no changes to that drainage fee that drainage fee was intended to cover O&M expenses of both the drainage operation and also the watershed in addition to the O&M expenses there was also debt service expenses from from previous CEOs and also then revenue bonds that have been sold both of those are nearing the the maturity date and so we have almost completed payoff on on that debt that has contributed to some of the additional pro funds that are going into this channel rehab in addition some of the watershed functions you know the largest one that I can think of is the mosquito abatement program that is now covered by the general fund so the revenues from the drainage fee are not covering those expenses that again have added to monies that were transferring to channel rehab those channel rehab dollars that are going into the CIP program have been utilized to revenue fund some channel rehab or drainage projects currently we have about four million dollars that has that has accumulated in that particular account and we're proposing to utilize two million from that particular account to get these projects these drainage projects fully funded. Councilmember Gregory. This may have already been addressed by Councilmember Greg 's question but on the Magnolia Street drainage that's a significant shortfall for a project that was done in 2014. Is there an explanation for why why it's so so much different from what anticipated. So a good bit of that reasoning is just the length of time it's taken actually get here and the original budgeting. Locally we are seeing in the Dallas Fort Worth area construction inflation is accruing at roughly 1% per month compounded so if you put that over a year we're seeing a growth in rate or in the cost of any construction project from almost 13%. If you bring that back to what the original cost was plus there was a an oversight on the original budgeting in that we didn't take into account all project costs on each project which includes design fees right away any staff times is tied to it so you didn't get an accurate picture of the overall project cost that's been corrected over the last nine months and every budget that you see from a capital improvement side in regards to streets and drainage has taken that into account. So you're saying that that the 2014 bond program there was no anticipation of inflation in construction cost. No but not that I've seen but that's not an uncommon picture for a lot of cities to have been in in the past. I've not seen many cities that have until over the last five or six years really started taking into account construction inflation. Some of that is just potentially not having the knowledge to base that on capital projects some of it is just construction inflation in the past was not near to the extent what it is now especially locally. Nationally the construction inflation rates sitting around four and a half percent. So here is annually. Yes sir. Okay. And here we just have so much construction going on in the Metroplex we have almost an artificial bubble that's been created here in the area the market's just a little bit different. Thank you. Yes sir. One question you've talked about using money from the drainage fund to make up for capital project shortfalls. Is that was that my understanding and I understand about that the drainage fee was originally implemented to cover O&M and some pre-existing debt. I think we need to revisit the drainage fee. That wasn't very popular back then and so I know that it was not anticipated that it would be used for capital programs for capital funding and if we're getting to the point we're paying off debt and things such as that this reminds me when we almost wanted to put a street improvement fee onto the utility bill. That was brought I guess it was before your time. So I just need a better understanding of I mean I know we 're doing it we can do it but that wasn't the original intent of that funding and I'm not trying to be picky or sort of hard-headed it's just I think the cleaner we keep things the better off number one I'll understand it and better off I think the public will understand it and so if there's some things we need to clean up as far as procedures or fees or you know the purpose of those fees we need to have the conversation. So you're saying we're going to take $470,000 out of the street drainage fund drainage fee fund to make up that shortfall. Plus an additional 1.7 that will go to Magnolia Street. Right. Oh out of the street drainage fund. No the 1.7 is also coming from the drainage channel rehab account. But that's not associated with the drainage fee that's collected on the utility. Yeah gotcha okay because I'm talking about the part that's coming from unless I misunderstood that there's some monies coming from the drainage fee account that's assessed on a utility bill every month. The amount that's going to come from that for both of these projects it's a little bit over two million dollars. Okay yeah I mean okay that seems way out of the scope of what that was originally intended for my understanding. So if we could have a little bit more detail on that I mean to see I mean if we're going to use that if we're going to use that for this then we need to definitely have a conversation because if we've got two million dollars saved up in a fund balance it is just a monthly fee that is used to cover O&M. That needs to we need to think about how do we reduce rates potentially and that with that fee as well. So just would like to have a more comprehensive discussion about that. Yeah and I would I guess I would sort of I don't know if temper is the right word but one of the things that we're working on right now with the streets drainage just our overall approach is making sure that we're putting plans in place for measuring those plans on annual basis. The organization and the formality of you know managing these plans is a huge priority for us at this point and one of the one of the positions that Todd is recently hiring his assistant director will be specifically putting in place those types of plans to make sure that as the dollars are coming in there if they're flowing out for those exact projects if there's an opportunity to reduce fees like we're doing in solid waste or rethink philosophies will bring into but right now there is there is a shortage of drainage and I'm sorry a shortage of data for you on those types of things we can certainly talk to you philosophically I think we need a little bit of time to put these plans in place and we're continuing to sort of assess what should have been done what hasn't been done and where do we need to alter the way that we're doing business. And I can appreciate that so I guess the thrust of what I'm saying is is that I understand we have a shortfall I understand we got to find the revenue to to to cover that shortfall for me it's also a philosophical discussion of when we've had the drainage fee that's assessed if I'm wrong in my understanding of this I will certainly stand down and be corrected. But my understanding of it was that it was never intended to fund drainage capital projects that it was intended to cover you know cleaning out of the culverts those kinds of things that are associated with O&M for drainage maintenance. So that's so when you talk about plans and capital projects to me capital projects and drainage fee those were never meant to sort of go together at least the original intent of the drainage fee so I don't want the drainage fee to be an assessment of a fee to fund capital projects because that's that wasn't the intent of it when it was originally so it's nothing about what you're saying it's about revisiting how that because y'all you weren't here obviously that was many years ago but that was really how it was presented to the public and so that's I would I would like to continue to have that conversation as I personally don't want the drainage fee to be covering capital program projects because it's a different it's a utility bill it's not something that is going to be paid for by tax revenue you know tax supported bonds. We had similar concerns voiced by the by the bond committee as well and folks who remember that that fee going into place I think that the challenge has been is this a management issue or is or is this you know where there's not been plans put in place and allowing allowing these funds to pull up or not but I think you're we totally agree with you it's just a matter of how we formalize this and how we put that plan in place through the budget process but in the meantime the discussion was we know Magn olia's got to get done and sure you know no understanding you're asking us for a drainage type project yeah you're asking us to make a modification to a policy decision right and the intent of that policy decision I'm saying I get that I appreciate that coming forward I'm saying though in the future that that is a policy decision of this council to continue to determine if capital projects are funded from the street drain from the drainage fee that's collected on the utility bill and I would want to have that discussion before we have plans allocating those funds for capital projects understood yep. So the last project here and obviously there's other projects in the in the Chia bomb program that we're not presenting today but this is the Vela complex project we do have a separate presentation that we sent to you regarding three current options that we have kind of on the table what we've utilized here is the the high end of that of those options it's six million dollars we believe that that will complete what was originally proposed for this particular project there's a number of funding sources that we've identified to get this project fully funded so what we're proposing is that about 1.9 million dollars is has already been allocated to this project from a number of funding sources we are recommending a budget amendment of 1.5 million dollars to to to allocate interest money and so this is where where things get a little complex and so let me so bear with me so we have the bonnie bray project that was funded partially by rtr regional toll revenue that money is earning interest every month that interest has to be maintained unallocated and then we must request permission from through the cog to utilize those funds we have about 1 .5 million dollars currently of unallocated interest on that rtr money that we would propose to request the cog to allow us to allocate that money to the bonnie bray project we will then swap or do a switch we had previously issued 8.5 million dollars in co's for matching funds for bonnie bray those dollars can be utilized on any traffic type or transportation project what the proposal would be is when we swap that money with co's we would then in turn use the co money to complete traffic projects that were brought forward to the council as a budget amendment to use general fund dollars that frees up the general fund dollars that can then be allocated to to the vela project again what we're doing here is we're identifying dollars that are restricted and swapping them out with unrestricted dollars and so rtr money can only be used on that bonnie bray project the co money can be used on any transportation project including those projects that came forward to you we lovingly call them the freedom projects right and so those are the quick win projects that were funded with general fund dollars that are unrestricted dollars to then reall ocate those dollars to the vela project so i know that that was kind of complex there's a lot of things moving around so before i go to the next piece if you have any questions on that we have a couple questions council breaks so my question we discussed this beforehand i was not in favor of spending that much money on i just couldn't wrap my head around a soccer complex costing six million dollars but seeing this it originally was voted on and approved for 1.3 by the the citizens right for the bond so i'm just kind of trying to figure out how it increased by almost five million dollars for a soccer complex well let me let me run away again let me ask laura barons to come up here and she can walk you through through that project and the genesis of that project and i understand the importance of it to our community and i'm all in favor of parks but this just seems really expensive so it's my understanding in researching the history of this this is going back to 2005 where the just over a million dollars was allocated for a athletic complex that was originally proposed to be part of the ch collins complex it was a three field athletic complex lighted and a playground i believe structure at some point it was determined that that site was unsuit able because of the layout where the complex was originally proposed to go was actually part of either drainage or easement to that property so then they began to explore other sites other potential sites the next site that was looked at had to do with the purchase of about 20 acres where the animal adoption center currently sits during that time we actually went through a formal process of design the design concepts were brought to council in the community at that time and they had some concerns with taking some of the property from north lakes that is designated as natural preserve area and turning that into an athletic complex so that particular site was then abandoned fast forward then a couple more years and now we are at the purchase of the site that we currently have which was 26 acres purchased from the razor development from the razor family in trying to keep with as much of the original concept and design from the 2005 bond package we 've pretty much retained the same major facilities we've expanded to four fields instead of three we now have a restroom and concession stand facility we have the playground there have been some pavilions added but some of the additional first of all of course everything that we've talked about here today in terms of the timeline inflation of costs that has all played a major role there's also some indication that that original cost estimate may have been low something again that we're seeing with several of the projects that we're discussing today about the only really upgrade that I could say that would be considered in this in addition to going from three to four fields is going to be we are recommending in the project and what we have scoped out for this particular complex is the addition of LED lighting we feel that it's just it's it's not going to be physically responsible to put in some of the older styled lights that we have now when our goal is to turn everything over to LED so that's really one of the only upgrades again in addition to the addition of one field and so the land has already been purchased and is that included in this or is that do you know how much that was the land was purchased for a million dollars and that was part of the original funding this this was used for the purchase of that land so the six million will be on top of the one yes for land okay I have a question about veila and then also a question about the RTR swap so with veila can this be a phased project or does it all need to happen at one time yes and that's part of the exhibit that you have in a presentation that I can give I don't know if you wanted me to go ahead and go into that now hang hang on for just a second because let me let me figure out the RTR swap and then so typically I thought when RTR funds are allocated they're supposed to you have a match in order to get the RTR funds so did we have a match and is that match changing by the general fund allocation being moved so part of that match was going to come from the 8.5 million CEOs that that were issued I'm not sure what the exact match is on that particular project okay I'm not comfortable with the interest swap without knowing what the RTR terms are the RTR money is clean money and it's not easy to get is the thing so we 're not making any of these moves that confirm is with both cog and the RTC that's a conversation that's ongoing as Tony had mentioned making sure that every we've got John pollster working on this our consultant with ITS so that we understand exactly what we can and can't do and I believe you've already gotten some commitment from cog in this particular set of funding that we can move on the 1.5 yes interest swap yes that's the first I've heard of it I've been sitting on the board for 20 months well okay so we're assuming that whatever matching has to happen will happen through the source through other CEO funds is what you're saying we'll get clarification on that status for you okay did you want to on the Bella phasing did you want I just wanted that because she brought that up did you want to hear that now or do you want to hear that later I mean I would like to know if there's phasing on Villa because I'm really not comfortable allocating any type of RTR funds for parks to be honest like most of the projects that are behind our parks projects I know that's not the fault of anybody here but if if we want to prioritize parks we should and we should use general funds and we can have a difficult discussion about you know do we get a two million dollar fire station or do we have better parks or do we have an additional five hundred thousand on the firing range those are that's why we're elected so I'm okay with having that conversation I'm not okay with taking RTR funds that I mean they're hard fought funds I don't think anybody understands how difficult it is to get money you know that are that people are competing for and I don't think it really sets a good precedent either well and let me clarify Mayor Pro Tem the recommendation here is to allocate that interest money to the Bonnie Bray project I understand that I totally get that part I'm more concerned about the matching portion of it because by allocating the interest then we're going to free up 1.5 or whatever and the allocated funds that we've committed so that's that's my concern the second concern is that a lot of our projects that go through cog funding are behind as you guys know again not really the faults of anybody here but that impedes our ability to get money for roads in the future as well so I feel like you probably just got triggered by the RTR fund transfer on a parks project so okay and I'm gonna let me record let me come back to the phasing because council member Husbeth has a question I think is it related to sort of this slide that's on the screen generally yes okay okay yeah because well it's a statement more than a question okay I just I want to revisit ask the council to revisit or at least state my position clearly I'm not willing to support anything until we have some regarding Vela until we come to some kind of agreement on those two piece of property that I want to sell you know I just think we can't to this point we can't continue to kick the can down the road and hang on to this property for to plant cherry blossoms you know that is a great it needs great idea we've got to move and so that's my point is I don't want to move forward with conversations about shifting I'm gonna I'm gonna vote no for everything until we have to to Mayor Pro Tempest point some tough discussions about what are we saving it for you know we're saving it for what to then borrow money from something else and pay interest on it I mean to me it's we've got to have that conversation or it at least it's a holistic approach to that area what do we want that to look like and that'll help me form my opinion as to what I can stomach because then it may eat some of that cost you're talking if it if the number is truly six million and if the initial budget was low balls and I don't hold that against this group right so I understand hey it looks like a huge gap but let's say it's two million dollars difference but the first the front end was was low ball so whatever that is but but I just need a complete picture before I can support anything and we do we do have a work session scheduled April the 10th April the 10th to answer your question on the on the property and then Laura's got a few options here for you to to Mayor Pro Tempest question about how does you know what options are there can it be ph ased and what are the budget implications so we could go a long way towards you know this my main concern and urging of the council is you know we've got we've got an ongoing bid that's on this project finally so we give you some certainty for a while for a little bit of time I'm not sure how long that bids good for but you know my main concern was not getting this done and having the project escalate yet again but I think we can address all of your questions through her presentation okay I tell you what we've been going for about two and a half hours that's two hours let's just take a break before we go into this presentation for about five or ten minutes and then we'll pick up at the presentation thank you uh 2018 at 227 so before you go into the presentation I guess Councilmember Husspeth you had indicated that before you have some information on the sale of properties that you didn't want to move forward on anything or just this well I don't want to move forward on anything but I do I am sensitive to the city manager's point that I don't want to compound the problem sure if we have a bit so it depending on when that bid kind of I know the presentation is pending in a couple of weeks but if that bid terminates before if we need to move faster I'll make a decision okay my preference is that we have that conversation before we move forward I guess my and I appreciate that thank you for that clarification for me with just the specific I mean I understand all the other ones and I asked enough questions to have some good clarity on what I need to do on that at least to this point this is one it seems to be a lot more complicated there seems to be some outstanding questions of RTR funds you know what can they be used for swaps the history I mean we can go through this presentation but I would like for this particular project to come back in a standalone work session with more with some written detail on the history what was it originally because I heard that we added restrooms pavilions were those in the rich because this is quite an increase so we can go through the phased approach if we think we're going to make a decision on this particular scenario today and I guess I'd ask the city manager to weigh in on my comment before we move forward if the council like us to another week won't hurt we can certainly put something together that takes you through the iterations that this this particular project's gone through we've got budget options I believe there's six or eight hundred thousand dollars spread Laura is that right so obviously that additional dollars those additional dollars we were talking about can be dealt with on top of and we'll be back on the 10th to answer councilmember HUD's question I think Mayor pro tem but Gary had also asked the same thing about could some of that parcel be sold off and those funds in theory used to offset this project so we can certainly come back with the with the iterations of this give you some options next week I don't think there's a financing issue it's really more of a matter of where the dollars are coming from we can we can fund any iteration of this project that you want but if you want to split together the history of it and and make sure that you have plenty of time to talk and about the the options we are happy to be back here at week with you councilmember during that presentation if we could have an itemized list of each thing and how much it cost instead of just pictures we've got pictures would be good but you know an itemized list to just for me I just want to know I'm asking myself originally 1.3 million was approved and going back in I guess it's a total seven million dollar project would they approve that today is is my question I'm fine with another week or two the the history that that was given to us I think was a very accurate history I haven't right but but but it but it really is reflective of how the project has changed over time the the I think we have already discussed and answered our question about about selling off part of that land around that area but we can you know have that discussion again if we need to my concern is this is a project that has been on the books for a long time and and we have now the the best iteration of that project that we've ever had and significant delays means significant cost increases as we've seen and and so so let's not delay this a significant period of time hopefully we could get answers maybe some answers to the RTR qualifications for body break maybe we could also check and see if there are any matching funds from the state for park development that would go along with the money that we've already spent to purchase the land to be our match on that so if we could do a little check into that also so with that did you have a comment yes yes go ahead yes please so I think I do fall in line with with the week kind of to regather I would add add a caveat if we could maybe it's I don't know who's played it falls on economic development whomever but if there's a marketing opportunity so if there's an exclusive naming whatever that is that ties to help fund it I'd like to know what that would be what that would look like I understand that it's named but there there there's property around it tons of it and if there's someone if it's if it's a con cession stand that then is has a business attributed to it if it's whatever that is I just want to get outside the box a bit and because then you'd have an exclusivity that so there's a tournament in town and you you're the sole concessions provider for that tournament that has a number associated with it and it may be a way to to can't kind of get some more community by it okay yeah and the request for writing wasn't and not believing your it's having that historical record so that I can sit down and look at it and go okay because I I 'm still trying to understand when you say the citizens approved 1.3 million you're saying that was in the 2014 bond program is that what you're saying five two thousand five okay so that was I mean that's yeah I don't know the answer to that one obviously that it might have covered it then but it's not covering it now so you had a question I do have a question because item B on the consent agenda is for approval of all of these projects that we have just seen and I have issues with a few of them and questions and I don't know about approving them all together so my question is about that item and do we just talk about the item when it comes up yeah or we can we can pull it we can pull it back a week as well oh the consented item sure well then if you could get your questions or we can answer them now that you would that you need to to help you with making the decisions on the one that you that you have some questions on and yes it's I'm sorry were you did you have any more questions or well yeah I mean just with each individual like the the police the thing the Bella complex the Roodale all of those are in this one approval and so I don't know if they need to be the ones that we had issues with that we need more information on separated or or how we want to do that okay I think we have two critical paths and I'll just throw this out there for council to chew on we really need to get the feedback on bail in next week I think we've got a little bit of time where they're holding their bid I think the other one is just the adjustment on the the drainage for Magnolia because we've got to get H inkle going so those are the two most critical ones we can certainly pull everything back and have a further discussion after audit and finance gets an opportunity to weigh in on these projects so it would be helpful to to me and the staff to understand we've got Roodale we've got the police department firing range and we had station three I think that you wanted more information on if there's any other projects that we can we got a vet through audit and finance and then bring back to council we're happy to do that my I've been pushing staff pretty hard to get these these packages funded and at least give you something to respond to so we can start getting these out on the street this summer so if there's any more than those three projects that you'd like more update on I'm sorry Roodale I missed that as well if so if there's any of those we're happy to kind of do a workshop and call those out more specifically. Yeah I was on the same along the same lines but I thought perhaps we could approve all of them I would be okay with approving all of them except for essentially the prop to 2014 bond packages because that represents the greatest increase as a percentage it's almost a 33 percent increase over the course of four years so that would be my and I think most of the stuff that we've talked about has fallen under prop two with the exception of the drainage and Vela and with Vela I'm okay going forward on conceptually that it's a six million project I can I can accept that because I just have to the bond was approved by the public the project has to be completed but I think we can have a discussion about where the money comes from because obviously I'm not okay with the RTR funds being used until we have a discussion about that and there may be other sources of funding that we haven't discussed yet like the sale of the property etc so that's where I'm at. All right well it sounds like probably what would be best for just efficiency is to put it on the schedule for when does audit finance meets on the 10th? What's the next council meeting after that is it the 17th? And if council members could get to staff as specific questions as you can on the projects that we've talked about so that number one we can have it for the audit finance committee meeting on the 10th and then number two when it comes before us on the 17th we're ready to take action on it. So if you can and does it mean we're gonna force you to it just means really wanted as the city manager has really requested that we get these things moving so that we aren't going to wind up in this situation you know another six months down the road as construction costs continue to go up so first of all we'll appreciate when so what we don't need the the phased presentation most likely we can do that next week or on the 17th and then for audit finance on the 10th and then okay so you've got the next couple of slides were just just to recap what the bond oversight committee had recommended and then you know the actions that we were proposing for the council's consideration again that would feed into the item for action later on tonight but it sounds like we're gonna just go ahead and wait on on all this and come back to the audit finance committee and then back to the council. Yeah and I want to say first of all thank staff thank you Mr. City Manager for the hard work to put this all together because you know we've asked you to think outside of the box and I think this reflects that and I really do appreciate that because I think it shows an efficient use of taxpayer dollars and and sometimes we might bite off more than we can chew in the past and it's left to those in the future to try to figure out how to clean it up if there's errors made on estimates if if there's you know sort of our eyes are bigger than our ability to consume so thank you for that and and I look forward to the 10th and the 17th meetings that will sort of get this all wrapped up and see you know about getting it moving forward so thank you so much for your hard work in that. All right we'll move on to agenda item 2c which is receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding proposed rate reduction for residential solid waste customers. So Mayor Tony point to Director of Finance if you'll give me a quick second so I can pull this item up. So just really quickly this item I first wanted to acknowledge all the work that our staff at the solid waste department has made over the last 10 to 12 months looking at that operation many of the changes in the capital program and also in the operation itself I think you you have been made aware the PAB has been made aware as well and so this is really a culmination of a lot of those efforts certainly Ethan Cox our Director of Finance Director of Solid Waste sorry I spoke on that and Dr. Kinney Banks as well have been very instrumental in and really taking a hard look at that operation and making a lot of hard decisions and recommendations that have come back to you. So this item just you know kind of right off off off the bat right here you know where we are proposing a rate a rate decrease of 12 percent for residential collection that would impact customers with with standard refuge and recycling carts you have up there what the monthly fee is and what we're proposing that it would be with this 12 percent decrease for a customer with a large cart a large refuge and recycling cart again those rates are up there what that equates to is that that's about a three dollar and thirty four three dollars and thirty four cents savings on a standard cart per month and three dollars ninety nine cents on a large cart service I will tell you too that these services are also subject to sales tax so they are taxable services and so there's a little bit of additional savings that will come from that as well the full eight and a quarter percent of sales tax is applied to this particular service again not a whole lot of services municipal services that are taxable but this this particular one is taxable so in on an annual basis we're estimating that that would be about a forty dollars and eight cent savings on a standard cart service and on a large cart service it's about forty seven dollars and eighty eight cents again there'll be some additional savings attributable to the deferred sales tax that it's not going to be paid. Councilmember Briggs did you have a question? Just a couple of clarifying questions and also a thank you for this this is really great anytime you see a reduction in rates for our citizens you have to apply that so commercial is staying the same this isn't affecting commercial. Let me clarify to councilmember that that we are couching this as a first step there's our first step in what we anticipate would be a full review of all the rates we anticipate that there may be additional rate reductions in other areas we are engaged in both in a management study that will really give us a better picture of what the operation is and also a rate review to make sure that if there's additional fees that need to be rebalanced based on the cost of service that we're able to do that we anticipate bringing that back to you in the next few months as part of the proposed budget. Okay but this is just residential what we're hearing? This is only residential yes ma'am. Okay and it's only for the green cart it doesn't it's not we're not talking about recycling. Well that is a that is a combined fee. Oh okay. Yes. So it's not included. Yes correct. Okay thank you. Councilmember Gregory. Thank you mayor. Does this in any way impact our ability to serve our debt that we have connected with a solid waste operation? No and part of the discussion today in a later slide is that we have been able to reduce the the projected future debt that was planned that will now be planned now. The current debt that's on the books will continue to be serviced though there are about 4.2 million dollars in excess COs we've been talking a little bit about using some of those dollars for 651 Mayhill. Those those excess COs that have that have come out of this whole review process will be offset with rental a rental fee that's going to come back into solid waste from the materials management fund the general fund to offset that debt service cost. Well the reason I'm asking is because I I'm glad that you 're coming back with with this notion that we have this extra money but I was wondering if we would be better served and if the ratepayers would be better served by accelerating our service of the debt because I know that you know when you pay it off early you're getting a savings on the interest that you're not having to pay. So so have you calculated that. The the 4.2 million dollars in excess CEOs was actually issued in 2016. We would we probably you know could go back we would we could go back and look and see what other eligible refundings might be available to us. I will tell you that based on recent federal legislation the opportunity to advance refund bonds is just not available to us any longer and so we would have to look to see if there's any bonds that are still outstanding that that are nearing a current callable time frame. Okay I'm not exactly understanding your answer but it's because I don't exactly understand all of the intricacies of this. I think I think what he's saying is it's too early to call the debt and given the new federal legislation that went in it largely erodes the benefit of refinancing because it are treated as taxable issues now. To your to your point though the second phase we are expecting a second significant rate decrease probably this summer through the budget process. Part of what we're doing though is working on the the commercial side there's a rate book that needs to be updated there's fees that have not been charged uniformly so we're working through that. We're also continuing to take costs out associated with material mining associated with the CNG and some of the other contracts that we have out there so there's several hundred thousand dollars of additional expenses being removed while we're going through the efficiency study. We just felt very comfortable if this was a good first step . We're happy to take a look at your question the next phase of it though I think it makes a lot of sense. Okay thanks. So through this presentation I'm going to go ahead and cover some of the staff efforts that have gone on also we'll cover the capital plan and just in a little bit further just what they what the impact of this particular rate decreases and then finally the the next steps in this process. So some of the staff efforts that have gone on over in in in this operation is really a realignment of some our business units. The goal there is to ensure that we understand each aspect of that operation and we really have done that in preparation for this management review and also this rate study to make sure that we understand what the cost the true cost of the services are so that we can better match them with with the rates that need to be applied for our customers. We've also revised our capital planning and budgeting processes. I will tell you that the finance folks that have traditionally been housed and reporting to that operation now report to the city's finance department. That is a change that that was made in the last several months and also there's just been a culture change in that operation to make sure there 's good business vetting of programs and projects as they come forward to allow staff members they may have different opinions that they can voice those that they have avenues and again that was part of the strategy and not just allowing the finance staff to continue to be housed there to be aware of what's going on in the operation but then to have a different avenue to voice any issues that may come up in evaluating any any other operation. Again we want to make sure that we're having a better you know business case analysis financial analysis of projects and programs that are going on in that in that operation as as you're well aware you know some of those projects that you've have come to you for discontinuation really the economics have not we're not proven to be there and so so through that process we hope to continue to have a better review and business case analysis of of those projects and programs as they come forward in the future. So part of the changes that we've made in the capital program is that we've reduced over the five-year period the CIP program for a total of you know 12.5 million dollars we are currently projecting that we will not need to issue any additional debt in both the current year and the following year we'll continue to evaluate that five-year program as we go forward but currently there is no plans to issue any additional debt for that operation. As a result the projected debt service on that 12.2 million dollars that was included in in that financial forecast has now been stripped out and is no longer there and so that has contributed to the savings that you have up here of approximately 13.4 million dollars over that six-year period so that's operating costs that are no longer included in that revised performance and we'll continue to to look at that performance as we go forward and and when we bring that back to you if additional changes are needed in that area we'll certainly be able to to communicate that to you in the next coming months. Question by councilmember Ryan. Thank you mayor. When you say additional debt in SCIP mainly up there does that also include that we would now be cash financing vehicle replacements and other things that are for solid waste but might go through a different city department like fleet ? This particular fund does cash fund some vehicles they tend to not be the larger trucks those tend to be debt financed but again in in in the review of the operation is some of the scaling back you know some of the vehicles that were projected to be purchased with debt just aren't aren't there anymore. Okay yeah that's that's been one of my big things is we should be big enough to pay cash for our vehicles and as opposed to using debt financing for them as much as possible. So again this is this is just to quickly just visually show you what what the impact is on reserves and working capital again you know this is an immediate rate decrease this if approved tonight would go affect that would be effective starting tomorrow we anticipate that customers that are on they have bills due on April 19 th will be the first customers that will will see this immediate decrease obviously we have a number of cycles in which we bill our customers and so as those cycles come up you know those reductions will be seen by those those additional customers we have a total of 21 billion cycles that we do again this particular change still keeps our reserves well above what the minimum for that reserve which was 14 percent and even well above the 18 percent reserve for this particular fund that equates to about about 60 days of reserve in that particular fund so again in looking at this at these reserves and working capital we think there's a lot of health in that fund and we think that there's might be some opportunities here as we go forward looking at at our rates and the revenue that's coming in to support these operations so just quickly this is just a high level comparison for you of what the adopted budget was in 1718 and what we project that it would be after this particular change now I will mention to you that as a result of some of the operations that we are no longer engaging in particular the mining operation there was also revenue that was assumed that would come in for that operation so that revenue has also been pulled out of that of that out of that budget and so that 4.374 million is is attributable to some of those types of changes that have made revenue assumptions that were made for operations that have now been discontinued so just quickly you know one of the reasons that we're recommending this is a first step on a 12% decrease we certainly believe that that is the pr udent thing to do we think that you know there needs to be certainly considered consideration and not only maintaining our fund balance targets that have been established but also to safeguard this fund we do have some volatility associated with wholesale revenue you know that volatility we need to make sure that we have a better understanding a better handle of what any potential impacts might be when we start looking at cost of service to make sure that we're applying them and that we make sure that we stay within what the market forces would allow for that particular service in particular in addition we've not made any recommendations at this point for any of our commercial rate revenue commercial rate revenue is very complex there's a number of sizes of containers that are out there that may be behavior that may that may change from you know within our commercial customers we need to get a better handle of that we believe that the rate analysis that we're working on today will help us get a better handle on what the impacts might be to be able to come back to you with a with a better recommendation as it relates to commercial rates. Finally just the next steps that we're proposing is again we are engaged in a management review of that operation we anticipate that to be completed sometime in June cost of service and market study is also underway and we anticipate that to be completed between June and July we anticipate that all this would coincide with the discussion on the proposed budget not just for this fund but certainly citywide. Finally you know we do believe that there might be opportunities for some additional rate decreases again we're describing this as a first step for you we also did discuss this particular rate decrease last night with the PUB and they unanimously approved the 12% decrease. Council without you know I don't have any other slides certainly we'll entertain any questions you have and again you know Mr. Ethan Cox is here as well so if there's some questions about the operation of that you know he's certainly available to to respond to any questions you may have. Any further questions thank you so much appreciate your diligence in this and it's great news and sounds like that there may be some availability for future decreases depending on how the budget discussions go. Thank you all right appreciate that. Moving on to agenda item 2D receive a porthole discussion provide direction to staff on the Denton Development Code update specifically regarding administration and procedures module 2. Good afternoon I'm Scott McDonald I'm the director of development services and for this presentation I'm honored to present Claring and Associates and they're going to provide an overview of where we're at and where we're going and Matt Goble will do that and introduce his team certainly he's got a lot of material to go over and happy to answer any questions in the end of the presentation if there are any. You had me until a lot of material to go over it's okay. We'll make it we'll make it. No I'm teasing you. We'll make it happen. This is important this is very important to our community. All right Mayor Council members good to see you all again thank you for the opportunity so happy to be here again Matt Goble I'm with Claring and Associates joined by my colleagues Jim Spong and Tarek Wafai over there. We have a presentation today to do several things. Mainly we're going to we're going to mainly cover the new set of material that we're rolling out for the public over these next couple of days which deals with administration and procedures how we how we make decisions regarding land use development applications in Denton. First of all before I get there I'm going to remind you a little bit about the scope of the project just to the the steps of the project that we 've been through and where we're going after this. We have several slides to talk about next steps. We have a lot of public meetings coming up and we want to make sure that you understand kind of our strategy for rolling this material out to the public and then we should have plenty of time for discussions in Q&A. If I could request I'll try to just go through my slides fast and then we'll come back and have questions at the end but if you do see something you want to you want to flag me down and just stop. Yeah so if we could just maybe hold unless it's just a really really burning question just hold until the end of the presentation thank you. Thank you sir. Just a reminder about Claring we have been working with you all for a while now we work on codes around the country and around Texas and so we bring a lot of knowledge of best practices from the Texas the Metroplex and around the state and then also around the Rocky Mountain West in the country. I'm not going to go too much into our our our quals you've seen all that before you've seen this material before as well the project overview but I just wanted to remind you this is the the same slideshow that we're going to be giving the public at a public open house tomorrow night also to the P&Z tomorrow so I wanted you all to just have a sense of the materials that we are going to be presenting to the public. We're going to be reminding them all about the importance of the Denton Development Code and what it is and how it regulates you know where development can go how big the buildings can be etc. It's very important to address some really important questions about the quality of development over the next generation. So you have good staff and good regulations in place but there's a real opportunity with this project to take everything to the next level so we're excited to take the DDC forward. The real foundation of this project is the Denton Plan which you adopted in the last couple of years and consistency with the Denton Plan is a really important goal for the project. Making sure also that the new regulations are user friendly , clear and concise, as efficient as possible, streamlined, aligned with state law. We have a lot of big objectives that we are trying to achieve with this project. I've got some animation here. The timeline is on this slide. I'm not going to go through specific dates for you. Suffice it to say we've had some fits and starts with this project and we are committed now to maintaining momentum and to getting it done as quickly as possible. We are in the drafting stage of the DDC which has been going on for a while. We're going to be finishing it up in early summer and getting into the adoption process very quickly right after that. So we're already having good conversations with staff about how to turn all this feedback that we're getting around as quickly as possible into a consolidated draft of a new code. Just a quick refresher, we are drafting the code in a series of modules that address different topics. We started off with the zoning districts and the use regulations. Right now we're with the administration and procedures piece. This is what we're rolling out to you all and the public today and tomorrow. And then we'll come back with the final piece which is development standards. This gets at the quality issues, landscaping and parking and building design, things like that. That's actually a little bit more interesting material honestly than the procedures that we'll talk about today. But procedures is interesting too. And we'll try to hit the high points for you with this presentation. I wanted to remind you about process. We are going through an internal staff draft with each of these modules where we kind of do an internal vetting of all the material with staff and then we make edits and we turn around everything for public review. We are now doing the public review presentations for module two, the administration piece. We have already turned in the staff draft of module three, all that building quality stuff that I mentioned. So while we are doing the presentations of module two, staff is already deep in the process of developing all their comments on modules three. So we're actually going to be back in just a few weeks in mid-April and you're going to see the public presentations of module three. So the train is moving quickly. We are trying to get this done as quickly and expeditiously as possible. What you're going to see after we present that module three is very quickly, in early summer, you're going to see a consolidated draft that puts all the pieces together. And it's going to reflect all the different feedback that we've gotten from the public on the use regulations and on the procedures and on the quality standards. So that's a really important milestone stage for the project. And we'll come back and talk about that later at the end of the presentation. But I just want to highlight that we are actually getting pretty close to that exciting milestone. This is the overall annotated outline of the code. This shows you the sequence of the drafting. We started with the districts and the use regulations. We're now in subchapters one and two, which is what I'll spend the bulk of my time today talking about. And then we'll come back with development standards at the final meetings in April. So with that very quick whirlwind overview of the procedures, let's talk about the procedures module and what's in module two. First of all, what are our goals? What are we trying to achieve? And let me just step back real quickly. When we kicked off this project, we talked with a lot of folks that do development in Denton, folks that have experienced the process firsthand as customers, and some of the most frequent critiques we had of the DDC related to the procedures piece. It was considered to be a process that was kind of inconsistent, opaque. People didn't really know, didn't trust that they were being treated consistently by different staff or through different procedures. And so one of the things that we were trying to do was just get back to basics with this material. So first of all, align procedures with state law. Texas Local Government Code sets some minimum requirements for what you need to do in terms of regulating zoning and land use. And we wanted to make sure that we were kind of stripping away all of the extra requirements that may be unnecessary that Denton had developed over time and really focusing on the basics and assuring that we were aligned with state law. Streamline the process by delegating more decision-making authority to staff. Where possible, can we make the process more efficient by not requiring expensive public hearings and letting the small stuff be handled at a professional staff level? Relocate administrative and technical information outside the DDC. You all have a large amount of really technical information , some of which is outdated, that's embedded within your DDC that doesn't need to be there. And so concurrent with the writing of the new code, your staffs are updating their technical criteria manuals and a lot of the stuff can be pulled out and updated from the DDC and put in those new manuals. And then clarify concurrent review procedures, making sure that we know which procedures can move forward simultaneously. So that'll get through the process faster if people realize they don't have to wait for one process to finish before moving to the next one. So I'm gonna quickly now walk you through the content and some of the key changes. Subchapter one is a brief chapter, but it's important. It's the introduction to the material, really sets the legal foundation. This is the one that the lawyers are most focused on. But this sets the overall purpose of the code. This sets the statement of applicability. Where does the zoning jurisdiction for Denton apply? What is the authority to regulate land use in Texas? All these types of things. Even conforming situations is covered here. These are lots or structures or uses or site features that might have been legal at the time that they were originally improved, but no longer comply with the standards of the new code. So those are important and I'll come back to those in a minute. Enforcement is here as well. The clarification of who's responsible for enforcing the zoning regulations. What are the procedures to follow when a violation is alleged? What are examples of different types of violations? What are the penalties and the remedies that are available for violations? All that stuff is covered here. And then also transition from prior regulations. This sounds dry. It's very important. These are the sets of rules that cover how you transition from your current DDC to the new regulations. So clarifying, for example, that prior violations continue to be a violation under the new code unless they comply with the new standards. Knowing that if you submitted a complete application under the prior code, you will still be judged and evaluated based on the standards in place when you submitted that complete application. That's always an important rule. So this is an important chapter that really lays the foundation. I just wanted to highlight a few things that we are continuing to think about and talk about with your staff. First of all, how will the new DDC fit into the existing framework? By this we mean kind of your ordinance framework that you have. Denton has a more complex ordinance structure for land use than we see often. And part of that is because in past years when you have updated the DDC, you haven't consistently gone in and repealed other sections of municipal law that cover the same issues and potentially should have been repealed. They overlap. And so there is a regulatory knot that needs to be unt angled here, to put it mildly. And we're working with staff to make sure that the appropriate other sections of the municipal code are identified and they'll be repealed as the new DDC goes forward. So that's a thorny issue with a simple bullet to describe it. Consider a formal process for determining nonconforming status. We are working through with your staff thinking about the rules that apply to nonconformities and trying to clarify exactly when someone can prove that they are a legal nonconformity and then what the rules are that apply to them. And you see there at the bottom of the slide, we are reorganizing all your nonconforming rules. We're distinguishing rules for nonconforming uses and structures and lots and site features. Right now it's a bit of a tangled mess and we're trying to make it more clear kind of which sets of discrete rules apply to which types of noncon formities. So those are all important parts of this subchapter. And I'm just going to zip right on to the next subchapter, administration and procedures. This is the bulk of the material that we're presenting on this trip. This is where we describe the roles and responsibilities for the city council, for the planning commission, for the staff and how you get particular permits, how you get a preliminary plat, et cetera. So this slide simply shows you the organization of the material. And I'm not going to spend much time here except to say it is a clean organization that makes a lot more sense when you spend time with the document than your current code does. Your current code is pretty scattered and fragmented in terms of where all this stuff is laid out. We start right up front with a table. And I've got the table blown up on a couple of slides here. Just to show you that this is an example of a tool that gives a lot more clarity as to who does what. One of the things we heard about in the current system is that it's not clear to the public who makes what decisions and how you go about getting different types of approvals. So here you can walk down the left-hand side of this table and you can see, okay, there's a category of development permits that includes things like site plan reviews, specific use permits, et cetera, subdivision procedures, et cetera. And then for each one of those, as you travel right across the table, you've got a cross-reference to the section in the code where that's described. You've got a note about whether or not public notice is required, either published or mailed or online. Is a pre-application conference required? And then finally, which bodies are responsible for review and decision-making? R is a review and recommendation. D is a decision. A is an appeal. We haven't changed a lot of the substantive cells here, but we have added things that are done currently in practice that you don't have in your current code. For example, site plan review isn't clearly described in your current DDC, and we have clearly included it right up front. That's an important tool that the city has, and we have included that along with the other procedures to make it very clear and explicit how that procedure follows. We have introduced some new procedures that you don't have now, like temporary use permit. We have carried forward some unchanged. You see Gaswell Development Site Plan is up there. We are not touching the Gaswell piece at all. The substance is going to get carried forward unchanged, but it's getting carried forward as part of this new framework, so we're integrating it into this new framework. I'm going to highlight a few of the more important procedures on my next few slides. This is just the bottom half of the table. We saw permits. We saw subdivision. Here we have plan and DDC amendments. If we're going to amend the zoning map, that's a rezoning that's on here, a rezone to a plan development annexation. Then finally, flexibility and relief. If I am not happy with something, if I feel like I need a escape valve from the regulations through a variance, or if I want to challenge a decision through an appeal, that is covered in this section of the code. Minor modifications is an important new tool that I'll cover in just a few slides. That's the table that introduces this subchapter. A few other things. We have highlighted the responsibilities and the composition of all the different decision-making bodies here and review bodies. So the Historic Landmark Commission, the Zoning Board of Adjustment, the City Council, what role do they have in administering the code? All that is clarified in this section 2.3. One thing I would highlight here is that we're carrying forward, we're calling it the Development Advisory Committee. And we're going to come back and ask you about that in a few minutes. But right now, you have a Development Review Committee under your current code, which is the source of a lot of confusion from a lot of stakeholders . Mr. Mayor? No, is this the Development Review Committee that, is that the Council Committee? No? No. Okay. It's not the one that you, okay. Never mind. No, go ahead. The Development, no. Yeah, staff, okay. That's right. That's right. DRC. Never mind. I know it is DRC. We're going to try to move away from the acronym DRC, and because it's been the source of a lot of confusion and criticism under the current system. And we'll come back and ask you about that. But the proposal right now is to move to a Development Advisory Committee that is not quite as tightly defined and codified in the DDC, and gives you more internal flexibility to adjust moving forward. We'll come back to that. So after the table at the front of this subchapter, and after we lay out the bodies, we establish what are called common review procedures. And this is basically just a simple kind of six-part framework that applies to most types of decision making. You start at the left and you move to the right. And we've got a simple graphic here that we tailor for each one of the procedural types in this subchapter. We start off with pre-application activities. Do I have to come in and meet with staff before I submit an application? All that is covered right up front. Then we submit the application, and it's processed by staff . It's determined whether or not it's complete. And if so, it moves forward into the review process. Staff then reviews that based on criteria and takes action, which could be a decision if it's a staff-approved decision, or it could be a recommendation up to another body. Step four would then be notice and scheduling of public meetings or hearings if it goes on up to the council or it goes on up to Planning Commission. Step five is the review and the decision by that body, by the commission or the council. And then six would be anything that happens after the decision is made. Does the approval lapse? Or can I come back in and modify a permit that I got? It's not rocket science, but it's a clean, simple framework that gives a lot of clarity and predictability to staff and to the decision makers and to the public so that you understand, yeah, there's a method to the madness here in Denton. Yeah, we understand that everything is generally proceeding according to plan. What we do in this material is we set this framework. We just have to say it once. We don't have to repeat it multiple times. And then all the subsequent procedures just refer back to this framework and it becomes a much shorter document than you have now. And it's much more well-organized. So this is the framework that we have. And each one of these procedures later in the subchapter refers back and builds on that framework. So 2.5, again, is the development permit procedures, site plan review, specific use permit, temporary use permit. The Gasswell development site plan is getting carried forward unchanged. I wanted to highlight just a couple of these for you. First of all, site plan review. Codify and simplify site plan procedures. Again, Denton is doing site plan review, but it's not in your DDC right now. And so you've got it in separate manuals. And so we are pulling it forward and codifying it along with the other types of review procedures. This is just where the city evaluates compliance with the site and building design requirements in the code. Does it physically comply? It's a really important tool. This shows you an example of how we have a tailored version of each one of these charts for each of the procedures. So we say at the bottom, you know, who's the decision maker and does this step apply? And you can see in this particular case for site plan review, these are all handled at the staff level. So we just go through steps one through three, steps four and five don't apply because we don't have any public hearings for these. And so this is just a decision made in step three. But step six does apply because, you know, a site plan could expire. There are things that happen post approval in site plan. I do have a couple of questions and one may be in this if this is too much detail and it's it's what our council committee will review as far as the actual draft. Because I know some of the comments that I've received on the site plan review have been the specific things that are required within that site plan review. In other words, either whether it's engineering or I mean, fairly extensive. Now that may have changed recently. I think there was some desire to maybe change that. Are those the kinds of things that what you guys are doing is trying to rewrite or retool, so to speak those types of procedures? And then I have one other question. That's a great question. So that's actually a related issue. It's the administrative manual. You might have heard me talk about in prior meetings, but we are stripping out all the detailed things like submittal requirements and fee schedules, things like that from the code itself. They need to go in a separate manual where they can be updated over time without going through a full code amendment. Scott and his team are working to update all that material right now. It's in process. So that's sort of outside the scope. We're not rewriting those kind of procedures. Okay. So then the next question I have is I guess this would probably fall under the same category as far as permitting rules. In other words, we have right now to get a permit, it's sort of two stages. You get your soil erosion permit and then you get just your regular permit. And I've been asked several times why are they not just the erosion requirement is just part of one single permit. In other words, if you don't get that, you're not moving forward on any more of your construction. Why does it have to be? That's not what you guys are charged with. That's more than that administrative policies and procedures and those kind of things that you're saying are stripped out? Yes, generally speaking. Okay. They're separate. But we are trying to structure this site plan tool as an umbrella that would capture a lot of those different types of requirements. That is the way it should be used. Okay. And so that's why I mentioned earlier we're trying to stress these concurrent reviews because all this stuff should be done at the same time. Okay. All right. Thank you. Those are great questions. So site plan review is here. We have clarified the thresholds for when site plan is required and I'm not going to go through all these bullets, but it's new stuff. It's new projects or it's big new additions to projects, you know, mixed use expansion by more than 2,000 square feet, et cetera. I'll just pause here and say we are meeting with the advisory committee tomorrow morning for the project, which has a few of you on there and then also a few folks from the P&Z. And this is a good example of how we're going to try to get a little bit more in the weeds with them on some of the specifics of where the code should land in terms of things like site plan requirements. I mentioned this change of use permit. This is in the draft as a new tool and this is basically it 's kind of a -- it's a working idea, but this is a tool for staff to evaluate whether changes of use comply with the zoning standards. A lot of communities have something like this. You might need something that's kind of short of site plan, but, you know, some things might not be required to go through a site plan process, but they still need some kind of check for the staff to ensure that the project complies with the zoning ordinance. And that's when this type of thing would be used. We might call it something different. It might be broader than change of use. It could be certificate of zoning compliance, something like that, but that's why this is here. Subdivision procedures, these are very important for Denton . These are all listed here on this slide. Administratively approved plats, you know, we call these minor subdivisions in a lot of communities, you know, just a creation of a few lots. And then the other types of plats are listed here. Plan and DDC amendments are important. What are the procedures and the criteria for making amendments to the Denton Plan 2030? And then also zoning amendments, map amendments, that's a rezoning. Rezoning to a plan development is a specialized type of rez oning, and then a text amendment actually changes the text of the DDC. Those are all really important. I want to highlight the rezone to PD really quickly. This would replace your master plan community tool that you 've got now. Basically MPC has been used in the past. What we're proposing is a simpler process that basically just says you've got a plan development tool, it allows for a negotiated approval for large unusual developments. This would be a simple process that's just a special flavor of a rezoning where you've got an applicant that comes in and lays out their concept, and they get that concept evaluated and approved and documented as part of a plan development plan that is approved and applies to that site in the future as part of the rezoning. The last bullet here is important. Demonstrate public benefit to justify the increased flexibility. You shouldn't be able to do a PD just because you don't feel like complying with the code. The City of Denton is extending a great opportunity by allowing someone to apply for a plan development. You should be getting something in exchange for that flexibility. And the code is designed to require that. I know you want questions held until the end. I just don't know what it's I mean, I'm not sure how long the presentation is. I just have a few more. Okay, then I'll hold it. Yeah. Okay. I just have one more category of procedures and then I've got a little bit on process and then I'll be done. Hopefully in relief again if I want to step outside the straight rules of the code. Minor modifications. I told you I'd come back to this one. Right now you've got ADPs, alternative development plans, which we heard from everyone frankly was overused and led to a lot of inconsistency and some people like it because it lets them you know, you know, have a lot of flexibility. When you say you heard from people overused was it staff that felt they were overused or was it the development community? Both. Okay. So the development community, you know, you think they might like them because they do provide a lot of flexibility but oftentimes they said they recognized that it was becoming too ingrained. It was too much of the process. It was hard to know what was expected of them if they felt like the ADPs were just always going to be so easily granted. Minor modifications would replace the ADPs. A lot of communities have adopted something like this. It allows staff to approve a minor modification or a deviation from a dimensional or a numeric standard based on a set of qualifying criteria. You can't do certain things with minor modifications. Increase density, change use, deviate from use specific standards, etc. But you can do a lot of things and there's a table here of standards that you can deviate from. So, you know, setbacks can be, you know, modified up to 10% say of the underlying standard. Building height by up to 10%. These are all 10s right now. That's a little bit of a placeholder. We're going to go back and review each of these thresholds with staff as we work through Module 3, the development quality standards. But we're trying to provide a little bit more of a tight system when you can consider flexibility and there's criteria that apply here. So, you can't just have this for free. You've got to be meeting the intent of the underlying standard better than the existing code would. So, there's more predictability with this tool. That's the intent. That's my last substantive slide. I just have a few here on process. We are rolling this out now for the public. You're actually our first meeting here. We're going to be doing this for the next couple of days. Tomorrow morning with the advisory committee where we get into more detail. We've got a series of stakeholder meetings tomorrow including with the Developers Alliance. P&Z work session tomorrow afternoon and then public open house tomorrow night at 6 o'clock. So, if you're all able to attend, that would be great. I mentioned Module 3. That is coming up very quickly. You'll see us back here on April 17th for a work session on that. Then we'll be doing a similar set of meetings on that material. This is new. The zoning map is going to be rolled out as well. If you recall from some earlier meetings that we had, we laid out a new set of updated zone districts. Those need to be applied to an updated zoning map. The staff has been working on that in the background and they're going to start rolling out that map at a parallel set of meetings that you see up here on these slides starting in late April. The goal ultimately is going to be to get a first draft of that map out there for feedback. Then we can make revisions to that map and then the full D DC and the clean map can start going forward into the adoption process at the same time. So, that is a lot. We are trying to reach out and talk with as many folks as we can about this and we have a schedule with you all and with the P&Z to get feedback and that's just all summarized here on this slide. I think that's my last substantive slide. Where can you find more information? Everything is going on the website. The city staff has done a great job of keeping that current and keeping all the information up on the site. We've been getting a lot of hits on that I think. We have a couple of things we wanted to ask you about specifically but let me go ahead and just stop there because I know I've talked a lot at you . Let's just take your questions. So, Mayor, thank you. Go ahead, Councilmember Gregory. Thank you, Mayor. I know I'll let you ask the questions on the plan development because I have some too, but my question is about the new zoning map. Are you saying that part of updating the DDC is updating the entire zoning for the city? Yes. Can you go into a little more detail of that? I can, yeah. So every community that updates its zoning code needs to think about this issue and they've got some choices about how aggressive they want to be in changing the zoning map at the same time. So some communities are fairly conservative and they try to update their code in ways that don't require a lot of changes to the zoning map. Other communities are pretty aggressive and they adopt a whole new slate of zone districts that are brand new. They don't have really existing good parallels and then they go through a big process to methodically look at specific sites and think about where those new zones should be. Denver is an example of a city that did that. It took about four or five years to do their whole process and they comprehensively looked at every site and updated the zoning map. Most communities are somewhere in the middle. When they update their code, some of the changes are just simple name changes for districts. Some of the districts get carried forward unchanged and maybe there's a couple of districts where they do need to do some additional thought and think about where those new districts go. I think Denton is in that middle category where there's some simple things that are being converted and some stuff that might require some additional thought and outreach. The staff is in charge of this piece, but they're actually doing that work right now. They have developed a methodology for taking the new districts that have been developed and thinking through whether or not those require simple name conversions or something that requires more public input. When they go into this series of meetings starting in April , one of the things they're going to be doing is presenting that methodology to the public just so people understand this is a rational process that we've gone through and then putting that first map out there and getting feedback on whether or not they've gotten it right. Oftentimes you need to make tweaks to that first map. Then the map gets updated and like I said, it then goes forward with the new code. The reason I ask is because shortly before I got on council in 2009, there had been a citywide rezoning. Everything was renamed and things. It seemed like for the next five or six years, we spent a lot of time having zoning cases coming before us because I don't know, maybe towards the end of the rezoning process, they wore out and there were a whole bunch of things that just got default zoned. As a result of that, there were years of cleaning up some of the issues that came from that. Is that typical? Nobody gets everything right the first time when they're updating a zoning bill. I think it's not atypical at all. I have to go back in and clean it up. Recently it came to light that several of us on council got concerned when we realized that for example, in the NR6 zoning, that the side yard set backs was four feet, which meant it could be eight feet between houses, which the fire department seems to frown upon. Is that where issues like that would be most likely to be corrected as we're doing this updating process? One of the things that you should look at in updating the map is conditions on the ground. You certainly don't want to create any situations that are inconsistent with fire regulations. You don't want to create new nonconformities if you can help it. All those things should be looked at. I think those have been baked into that methodology that I talked about that staff is developing as they prepare the map. You should be looking at conditions on the ground. You shouldn't be creating problems like that. It's a whole big category of issues just by itself. I think I would just add to Councilmember Gregory's question that as I understand it, part of this is to simplify the zoning districts. I think we're cutting them almost in half. That's part of the issue. If you've noticed over the last, I've certainly noticed since I've been here, you're ending up with a lot of, for lack of a better word, backdoor PUDs where people are coming in, don't necessarily fit into a zoning category, so they go to the next one and then negotiate down. Right. That's part of what they're trying to address as well. When he talks about plan development being a privilege, why do you need to do this? What's the methodology for not fitting in a zoning district ? That sort of thing. There's a lot of those types of issues that they're trying to clean up. The other thing I'd add is you're seeing what I still think is a pretty aggressive schedule. This is up there as an idea right now. If we continue to get feedback and the staff's doing the best they can right now to reach out to the communities and the development community to get their feedback, but if this has to go on for a few more months to make sure that we can kind of deal with some of those issues on the front end and save you a lot of complaining on the back end, that's exactly the point. We want to talk to you about the role of our council committee and vetting that out a little bit even more. We're not going to be able to deal with all that. I'm sure we can't anticipate everything, but that's definitely in the front of our mind. It's not creating a huge avalanche for you on the back end. Well, and along those lines, if I may, Mayor, you pointed out a very specific issue of going to the next zoning category and then negotiating back. I'm wondering if in some of those cases that 10% rule for minor modifications would solve that where we were going from NR4 to NR6 and we were really only going to NR4.23. No? Well, I think that's something that's a great example. It's something we really want our council committee to think through that a little bit and get a comfort level because what has happened is some of our residents have been trained that we're negotiating one or two, three houses now over. There's really a lot of thought that needs to go into how far do we go, how comfortable are you with those types of decisions being made. I think there's a lot of work in each one of these modules for those specific questions. But we've been, you're all aware of very specific concerns that you have. We certainly hear it and that's really the point is working with that committee from our council making sure that you've got a comfort level on what in the end product we bring back to council. In terms of the community, we're really hoping this outreach, if we need to expand the outreach and try to cut off some of those concerns up front that will do it. You typically, my guess is that no matter how good of a job we do for the next year or two, you're going to be hearing concerns about, "Well, I didn't really get what I wanted or I've changed my mind now and we're just going to have to work our way through that." It's going to be simple but we're trying to do as much up front as we can. Then the final thing, for zoning changes that have already happened where we have put conditions on these zoning changes that we've approved, they still stand even if we change it. Did I understand that? They are carried forward. One of my earlier slides was transition from prior regulations and that's one of the things that we clarified in that part of the code. If you've got an existing entitlement, that carries forward . I'm sorry. It was one more thing and a half. Because you said if you can prove that you're- Nonconformity. Nonconforming. That could end up being ... How do you prove that you're nonconforming? How do you show that, "Oh, this was built in 1964 and this is what the rules were back then." That's a fairly standard practice in communities around the country that you put the burden of establishing a legal nonconformity on the property owner . You need to produce materials that show, "Yes, this is when we did the addition to the house or this is when the original construction took place." The staff is going to have a record of the regulations that were in place at that time. That analysis is technically, it's on the back of the property owner to show that they were legal when they were established. It's fairly common. The other choice would be to make the city responsible for maintaining a library of nonconformities over time, which is you just don't have the resources to do that. The word for a property owner is to, if you did a remodel in 1995, you better keep that CO or that building permit from then. Very much so. That's an important part of educating people about the code generally. When the new code comes out, that's something that should be in the education materials. I've got a couple of questions. You're saying we're doing away with NPCs and going to PDs, which I remember when we went from PDs to NPCs. NPCs were primarily for large scale, I mean large scale developments, hundreds if not thousands of acres. Is there a floor to a PD development or is it, I mean, is it just, if you can justify it, if you can show the benefit, the additional benefit, it doesn't matter whether it's an acre, five acres, it's more, it's not based upon the size, it's just based upon the need. I can read you the language. So we draft this different ways in different places. Sometimes there is no floor. It's just whenever you need that flexibility. Other communities say 10 acres or more. You know, there is some threshold. We say in this draft right now, maybe submitted for any contiguous area of five acres or more within any combination of districts. Or you can do down to one acre in the central business district. So that's a kind of a tailored approach. So you've got, you can do a smaller site in the CBD. Okay, so can I pass along a comment to the group that's meeting tomorrow? When's the council, the council committee meeting? Nine o'clock. That you know, I want to make sure that that doesn't necessarily impede our desire to have infill. I know infill, if infill is, I remember there's an acreage requirement on infill, if it's less than an acreage. I just, if we have an infill project that's less than five acres, I don't, I guess I would like to have more flexibility with that. That's just my comment. Doesn't mean it has to happen. That's just my comment. And on the ADP, this is going away and then to have these minor modifications, what level of staff approves those minor modifications as per the draft? So just to clarify, it might actually be council. It might not always be staff. The way a minor modification is structured is it kind of tags along with another application. So it could tag along with the site plan, could tag along with the temporary use permit or preliminary plan. And so whoever hears that associated application type is responsible for making the decision. So if it's a staff level decision, then ultimately it is the director of community development who's, but they can delegate that down as they can any decision assigned to them. Okay, so maybe I'm not understanding the minor modification . Could you go back to that slide, minor modification slide? And we need to fix this slide. I apologize for that. But this allows staff to approve. But really it should say allows the decision maker for the associated application. Well, but my question is, because if you're, if you're, so there's some things that, and I don't know enough of a specific example, so somebody might have one, where somebody might want to deviate from something, either it's a setback or they don't want this fence to be here, something that before would have to go to council or P and Z for approval. But we really think that sometimes staff needs to have the flexibility and authority to make some of these minor changes. So I get a little confused when you say if it's in the pur view of whoever the deciding body is like, okay, let's say a permit, building permit. You're getting a permit. Yeah, council doesn't brew permits. If you want to deviate from something in the code, minor something, then whoever's reviewing that permit can do that. If it's a set of construction drawings, and you want to dev iate from, let's say parking requirement. All right. Is that a, according to this, would that be, let's see, changes in uses increases in density, deviations from use specific standards. Okay. All right. So this is the table right here. Okay. All right. Okay. That's helpful. I appreciate that. Go ahead. And then I have one more question. So how does that, are we just changing the name from ADP to minor modifications? You were carrying forward a similar idea, but you're trying to put some more specific guideposts around it. So you're putting some criteria in place that you don't have now, that it's got to meet or exceed the underlying intent of the code. And you're also limiting the number of places where that can be done. And also you're potentially allowing this to be done at a staff level versus having it to go up to a city council or a public hearing. So you're changing it in some important ways. You're trying to grease the wheels for the small projects, but you're also not trying to allow this unfettered flexibility that we heard was a problem. They're close, but we're trying to be nuanced about how we improve it. Okay. So these are the specific areas for minor modification. Is this the exclusive list? No. No. This is a starting point. And as I said, we're going to go through and we're going to work with staff to fine tune these things. Okay. There are a few other ways that you can use this tool specifically for federal legal compliance. If you need to do reasonable accommodations for Fair Housing Act, you can also use minor modifications for that. If you need to do something to affect a religious assembly for RLUPA compliance, you can use you can make adjustments for that. Okay then. So the question that comes for me is, so there will be a page or two document that says these are this is the exhaustive list, which we can modify. This is the exhaustive list of what can qualify for a minor modification. Nobody's going to have to guess. They can look at the table and say it's here, it's not if it's not here, can't do it. If it's here, I can try. Yes very much. And when staff works on their application requirements, they need to be adding a box that says so when somebody submits an application, they're going to say, are you applying for a minor modification as part of this process? If so, which one? Tell us the justification why you deserve to have this. So that that'll be that'll be baked into the application process. Zoning map. I know when we changed the zoning map, gosh, when was it? Was it 2000? And anybody remember that? 2002? Two is sticking in my head for some reason. The council or the city gave an opportunity. Now it was we went from one thing to totally something. I mean, really changed it, putting new classifications. But if you wanted a rezoning in a particular area, why they were changing the map, they literally would allow citizens who desired that to submit their projects to staff and staff would make a decision on is this something that would fit into this new zoning criteria instead of going through the whole rezoning process and then it would come to council and council you can make a presentation council approve it in essence, bypassing PNZ, which was very effective. I mean, you had several people, including myself, who had been trying to do that. And it was effective. Is that something that's going to be afforded in this or are we just changing it in a way to where we're not really changing the zoning or, you know, increasing the zoning opportunities we're just trying to consolidate and does that make sense? The process you described where someone could come in and propose that as part of that process is very wise and makes a lot of sense. I think that's the best practice. That said, you know, this piece of the work is not specifically under our control. And so I don't want to get out in front of the methodology for the map. Oh, who's that under? It's Scott and Scott and his team. So they're working on that now. And so one of the things we're going to be talking about later today and tomorrow is their methodology and we're going to wear that. Then I throw that in the hat. I think that's a great idea. I throw that piece of information in the hat. All right. The overall goal is simplicity and trying to eliminate confusion. And right now you've got these two codes out there and we 're trying to make the whole system simpler and the map simpler as well. Okay. And so as far as the uses within a zoning category, that's also staff's construct. Is that staff constructing? Is that y'all? That's part of the DDC. That's us. Because I think, you know, we have different conversations about and a great example of it was people wanting to go in our six, but they we put enough conditions on it to where it effectively makes it an NR four and, you know, the set backs and things such as that. So I think this is, I guess, going to provide the council an opportunity that if we want to change some criteria in a zoning classification, we can do that. For instance, you got in our six, do we want or lot sizes? I mean, I think our minimum lot size is 4000 square feet or something like that for an NR six or in other words, this allows us to look at some of those to make sure that it's still working for us. In other words, are we creating I'm just using this as an example, because we saw it up here where people could park in their driveway and their truck if they have a big, you know, half ton or ton or ton and a half dually, it's sticking out in the sidewalk because the setback is are we afforded the opportunity to have input into that during this process? Yeah, I think the map and the code need to start building off each other. So as the code gets farther along now, and then as you start to get public feedback on the map, those are going to start to inform each other. So I'm working in another community now where, you know, after the first draft of the map was rolled out, we went back and we we fine tuned to the use table. And because we heard some feedback about the types of small scale commercial that were appropriate in some of the mixed use districts. And so we fine tuned that based on that feedback. And so I think the same thing could apply to developments, dimensional standards as we go forward. So I think, you know, one of the things that we're going to be talking with staff about building into this process is is circling back after you get this feedback to determine if any edits are necessary to the draft standards. Because one thing I thought of is we've done a tremendous amount of annexations and we have a default zoning of RD five. So if people if we're going to be changing the zoning map, if people have an opportunity to say, hey, we know what we want. Can we talk about it and go through that process that best practice process that you talked about? You know, some of the ones on the interior and something that doesn't. But you know, already five just isn't it already five? Yeah, it's a default. Is it already five or already five? Already five X. Yeah. What is already five? Everybody's yours. It's technically unzoned until they come forward with initial zoning. Yeah, I already five regulations, but it's not zoned already five. Okay. Oh, okay. All right. So then that's it makes my point even more. So they're basically unzoned. And so we're going to create a zoning map. I would think that if they can have an opportunity to come in and and ask for some of those things because it's still it's not just staff approval. It is council approval just helps streamline the process. Okay, good. All right. Any other questions from the council to our presenters? Any more comments from Oh, I'm sorry, John, I guess one is from from your standpoint, as other cities have done this, you know, we've got the advisory committee, how much time do other cities generally spend on a with a sub committee on on this type of situation because I'm anticipating that it's going to be quite a bit of work in quite a bit of hours put in. This one here. This one. So the committee that's meeting tomorrow morning. Yes. I think the the goal is we need to talk with staff this afternoon about kind of exactly the plan. But I think there is a lot of work. I mean, there is a lot of detailed review that's going to need to be done by the committee members to to come up to speed on the stuff that we presented last summer on module one, but also this module two and module three. You all will be responsible for really kind of getting into the weeds with us a little bit. But that said, it's not going to be a terrible assignment. I mean, I think it's very interesting. I will appreciate your feedback. But it differs by community, I would say. Some of our committees are fairly high level, honestly, and they come and they listen to presentations and they make a couple of comments and then they go off back to their jobs. Okay. And some I think it's better if you're really involved. That's that means the community is taking ownership, which is great. And just for public clarity, I use the description that it 's kind of like Star Wars. Module one is actually the second part of this module is the first part of it. So it's it's out of order. And that's the reason we that's the reason we haven't gone over module one. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Any other questions or just to clarify, sir, we did go over module one back in the summer. Well, not with your committee. Right. Yeah. So willing to talk with Scott about the way to to come back up to speed on that with you. And I guess for me, it'd be nice to get a little bit of clarity on the direction that we're going. So we've got council direction and staff, staff truly needs to understand where it is you'd like us to go. So we have an advisory committee and the role or the structure of that advisory committee was was all done prior to me, you know, coming on board. So today, as we meet to talk about these things and as we move forward, the expectation is we're going to we're going to do as much public outreach as possible. So what we have is a schedule of outreach meetings, which will not preclude us from having meetings in our office, one on ones, any any civic organization, industry, whoever it may be, we're going to we're going to try to get in front of and talk about this. Most importantly, I think, is the is the advisory group that was established and really understanding what what the catalyst for that was. So so we have three members from council and three members from PNZ. Ultimately, council is appointing PNZ members and now PNZ members are part of this. And is that really the structure that council would like to retain and who those members are kind of that commitment to getting into how far into this and the frequency and that we can talk with the committee members. But really, I just as staff, I need some direction on where it is the council would like for me to go. Sure. Councilmember Ryan. Of the overall DDC, how much actually is directly related to planning and zoning? Isn't it? It's probably only about a fourth of it. Is it not? No, this is a this is a component of the overall municipal code. And a lot of the municipal code doesn't relate to planning and zoning. But all of the DDC relates to planning and zoning. Right. So it all relates to something the council would do. But a very small portion of it actually relates to what planning and zoning does. I think it's the opposite. Opposite. Yes, the opposite. You're saying the DDC relates to planning and zoning more. Whereas if I understand it, exclusively. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And I guess maybe some of the exceptions in that might be as far as how it is that we look at it, whether it's some of the engineering components , water, wastewater, as we look at some of the ESA or some of the other components that are within the DDC that may skew some of that word is that would come directly to council. It may go to PUB versus P and Z. And so there are some differences in that that everything within the DDC will come before council and perhaps not all items that are referenced in the DDC are a P and Z matter. So an appeals process may not result in going to a P and Z. Who's on the committee? Somebody refresh my memory. Who on P and Z? Do we know? I've never met with P and Z. This will be the first time? Yes. Okay. All right. Well, and I don't know that the I don't know what the committee's I don't know how many times the committee's ever met if the committee's ever met. So are you so is your question, do we still want it to consist of three council members and three P and Z members? Absolutely. I'm looking for that structure in that direction. That's what I'm needing. I'm good with it. Okay. All right. I mean, when did we form that? I was not on council at the time. Yeah, I guess if I could jump back in and maybe just provide some background. Now I understand your question a little bit more. So this was set up under prior staffs and prior discussions as a as a just a stakeholder sounding board, you know, just folks that can provide feedback. It's not a voting body. It's not any kind of official group. In other communities where we have a group like this. It's not just officials. Oftentimes we might have a couple of local consultants and some neighborhood folks and maybe just one person from P and Z and maybe one person from council. So you know, it's 10 or 12 people that just kind of regularly meet and provide feedback and guidance as we move forward. I think there was a real focus from some earlier folks in Denton that you had real good expertise on the council and the P and Z and those two groups could suffice and we didn't need to make it a larger thing. And I think there was an also also a thought that that would just be more efficient and it could move faster that way. But whoever serves on it, I still think the goal should be an informal sounding board just to help us move along quickly. I know that part of that comes from council. We actually do already have by ordinance a development committee and that's we only met once since I've been on council for three years and we talked briefly about one thing. And I think that's where the original three member of council came from because that's already established. And then adding the P and Z to come into it would just be for more I guess, more opinions. And I guess maybe this is for Erin from a quorum standpoint when we talk about six members versus five, what does that do to us and should we consider that? And I guess and maybe one more editorial is that if in fact whenever this was created and it's only met one time, I just question when it was created and the purpose in it and I just really want to make sure that I'm doing what it is that you'd like for staff to do. >> You had a question for me. >> I guess I'd have to look closely at the whole history of this. I'm not familiar with it and whether there was some type of an ordinance or resolution that created it as far as membership. I just don't know. I would be happy to talk to you more further after this meeting to refine that. >> Okay. So go ahead. >> So okay. So my thought is strip away to three council members because we'd hear it anyway and just my thought and add more stakeholders, builders, historic, people from the historic district that type component especially, you know, the Allison's of the world. I think that component adds more, has more stakeholder approach to it than, I mean that's just outside looking in my, I mean maybe it's me running from another committee but I just think we're going to see it anyway, right? And I think we can always access that information. We can always, nothing precludes us from sitting in. It's not like you're locked out. It's not mandatory and it opens a door for someone that deals with it every day from a different perspective versus kind of a governing body look at it. >> Okay. Mr. Mayor, do you have a comment? >> Yeah. We've been actively working with CDAC and some of the other local consultants and getting a lot of feedback. I would really urge you not to do that. Sort of I think part of the beauty of the process is to sort of bring together planning and zoning and council's expectations of one another. You're both seeing different things. If a developer doesn't like necessarily that they're seeing a P&Z, you tend to get maybe different arguments at council and I just think it's helpful to have you two working together. We will continue working out, working with the Allison's of the world and those folks and in fact we reach out to them virtually every time that we have a module. But there have been disconnects in certain policies between P&Z and council. I think that my advice to you would be if you're going to keep that committee, go ahead and keep that joint like that so there's some continuity of understanding what a code is supposed to accomplish. >> Well, but see, maybe I'm looking at that wrong and I'm fresh off an argument with the person I appointed to P&Z, but I think that's right. You're almost forcing a meeting of the minds and I may be absolutely wrong, but that's how I see it. You're trying to find some cohesiveness and I think that should be disjointed. I think it should be this group functions autonomous and has a fresh look at it. This group functions autonomous and has a fresh look at it and I look at it as in practice the conversation is going to be had. Either I'm going to have it on Tuesday during the three minutes segment on open session in the council meeting, that group that's going to have to deal with it is going to come talk to me and tell me, hey, I don't think this is a good idea or I can have them talk in advance and save the three minutes on Tuesday nights. But either way it's coming if they disagree. Really, above all that, I just see if I'm looking at it wrong, I'm looking at it wrong. When I hear you say P&Z working with council, cohesive, that's not appealing to me. I really like that they have one look at it and they may see it different. I look at their notes. I can watch the meetings. I can gather information that way. I can always call my representative. I can call any representative on there and say, hey, how did you get there? I do it all the time. Why did you vote that way? What did you see? What am I missing? I'm free to do that in a different area and then come back and research the data we get and form my own opinion and look at it separately that way. I get it. I hear what you're saying. I want to be clear that when I say cohesive, I'm just talking about the purpose in a rule or guideline, a thought process. I'm not talking about conformity. I think that's important because I think if we're trying to get through this process relatively efficiently and that will be defined by all of you, it's not going to be helpful to have planned commission members being whipsawed with city council. That is what happens on a frequent basis with cases and rules and administrative guidelines. I think it would be helpful. We're talking about building methodology and rationale and kind of leaving it at that. We're not talking about making decisions on specific cases. So I think we can hit everybody, but it's going to be easier to kind of work through process frustrations. The people that are willing to serve on these committees are the ones that are very passionate about this subject and it would be helpful to have people kind of working through those together. Otherwise, we're going to be recreating the wheel of the council. Yes, Councilmember Ryan and then Councilmember Rates. I see it that we're the ultimate decision makers in the process and we're the ones whose phones ring and get the emails if something's not put in place right. When we signed up for this job and ran for this job, we committed to the number of hours. The P&Z members, quite often when you're trying to talk somebody into getting in on P&Z, you say it's about three hours a month is what you're going to spend on P&Z. This process, as I see it, is probably you're looking at somewhere between 30 and 60 hours worth of meeting time during the course of it to go through the three modules and are those P&Z members willing to put that much extra time forward? If there are certain parts of this that they don't need to, that it has nothing to do with something that would come before P&Z, they may not need to be there. At most, I think having two P&Z members on there allows you to still have a quorum with three council members as opposed to if you have three P&Z and three council, you've got to have four people there. You've always got to have at least one P&Z at that meeting in order to create the quorum. Council Member Briggs. I just want to clarify the three member council committee is just like any other committee that we have, like mobility, ethics, environmental. It's already something that we have had and when I was elected three years ago, I chose to be on this committee so that I could get into the weeds and hear issues. I think that's what this is for. This is one of our options, one of the committees that we can choose. It's a three member committee that meets. We just haven't met because there wasn't anything to discuss until now. The P&Z members, I think, were added or invited to come into our committee to help us so that we could get experience, different opinions. So I think the developers have had plenty of time and are going to have extensive meetings with these guys and this is our chance to get in and really dig into it. And so I'm completely okay with this. That's what I signed up for. Well I would recommend that the council members stay on it because I think it will facilitate movement. I've been hearing about updating the DDC since I got on council in 2009. And I suspect that if there's no council members involved in this, it could very easily come back to the full council without the sensitivity of people who have been sitting through so many of these meetings and experiencing so many of these problems that we've had. And then it comes back to council for full consideration. And we, because there's not been that input in the process, it just gets completely undone and it goes back to the drawing board again. I think that having council members on it will provide important input and possibly make the process more streamlined. Okay. So let me make a suggestion. Committee's slated to meet tomorrow. Go meet tomorrow and unless we put it on the agenda and discuss it further as far as what the makeup is and things such as that, we'll move forward with this plan unless there's a consensus that says don't do that. Mayor Pro Tem. I'm okay with what we have going forward. I just have a question about the makeup. So tomorrow's meeting is six people. Is that right? Correct. Okay. And the three PNZ were appointed when and by whom? Do we know who the three PNZ members are? Ron, you know those offhand? If you do, could you come? Yes. Thanks. If I may. Yeah, let me hear the answer first and then yeah. Yes. Andrew Rozelle, Larry Beck and Margie Ellis. Okay. Okay. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. I didn't I thought you were. Well, I just want to make sure that there's going to be a quorum because I have a hearing at 830. We didn't get enough notice for me to change my hearing date. So I want to make sure that if there's four people, that's quorum even if it's only one council person. Again, with the actual document, technically three members don't constitute a quorum even but if this is a valid committee that's created by resolution and this would be the makeup, then under that analysis, yes, that would be correct. But again, I have not seen a document that actually created this committee. I know it's existed but I haven't seen the document. So this would be my running request. I mean, I think it will be helpful in the future. If there's some discussion that we're supposed to be having about a policy directive, we really need to see the underlying resolution before we have the discussion. I mean, it's not just this, it's like always and preferably the history as well. I think we can have a better discussion. But just FYI, I probably won't be here till 930. Councilmember Hesbitt. Yeah. So that's kind of my point, right? So I don't even know which three council members are on there? Okay. And then we have legal that's got to get refreshed on this impassioned group. So to me that just seems, it sends red flags to me that we maybe need to, I'm all for speed, but I just want it clear that we're not even succinct on the structure of this group and we're going to meet tomorrow. I just want that clear and articulated. Thank you. And I've had some of those same concerns, plus the posting that came out does not even ask for electing a chair. So we don't really have a way to run the meeting right from the start. All it says is to receive a report on this. So it's a little bit of a mishmash at this point that... And if I might, I mean, absolutely valid points and what I want to do is certainly is get council's input feedback, provide that. Clarion wants to be able to have that more intimate setting to get into greater detail rather than scheduling a series of work sessions. So look, I mean, it's obvious that you're not prepared to meet tomorrow. I mean, there's a problem with the posting, who's going to lead it. We need to have some resolution verification. So I think we need to... Are the council members okay with us having a discussion about this before you have your first meeting? I mean, yes. I mean, from a legal standpoint, question, if you've posted the meeting, can you cancel the meeting within the posting period? Yes, you can. Just making sure. Council Member Briggs and then Council Member Pratt. And the last time the three council committee met, I believe we did, we had a chair, it was Kathleen, right? Or was it... So if we could just look at, find those minutes and see that discussion as well. And if these... And if... I just assumed that this was the council committee and that these PNZ members were invited to come in and... Yeah, they're not members of the committee, they're official members of the committee. Right, so the committee has been created. It's just a specific meeting and so we would just need to, if Kathleen was the chair, reelect the chair. Okay. But it's not posted to do that. Okay. I don't think, I mean, I haven't seen the posting. But I think Sarah was the vice chair. Yeah, it's posted to go right into the code tomorrow and quite frankly, both Scott and they're trying to get up to speed on the committee itself. So assuming the city attorney is okay with how this is set up, we can still move forward tomorrow. If we have concerns about, from Erin's perspective, we'll reschedule it, reformat it and move on. But Scott and I are trying to get up to speed on what the intention of the council was and how this was to move forward. I think we're fine. We're ready to start working through this. And this is new to me today about the planning commissions being sort of volunteers and not necessarily... So it's a good discussion if that's in fact how it's structured. Yes, and absolutely. Just staff just needs direction. I personally look in for direction. I just want to make sure it's the right makeup and how it is we got to where we're at and how to move forward. Absolutely. We can have the meeting tomorrow as scheduled. And if Erin doesn't wish for us to meet for some legal reason, we will not and we'll follow the agenda and I'll get direction from the subcommittee as we move forward. Again, just looking whether it's the appropriate people are on there still and again without any meetings have taken place. If possible, could legal provide if we... We might be here till dinner time anyway. Could you go ahead and maybe look up that resolution and just pass it? I know it won't be posted or unless we were able to come back and I guess this whole discussion to this committee is still within the posting of talking about this module. Because it's trying to figure. So if we could just get the resolution issue resolved, who 's the makeup, when was it created? We can do that today. And are we able to reopen this discussion if we needed to at a later date? If we just if we close this agenda item, are we able to come back into it? Yes, you can as long as the meeting is still being held in progress today. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. Well, let's do that. We'll flush that out. We'll move on for tomorrow pending this information that we 'll be getting with Aaron from the legal department. Because that's what I'm hearing everybody wants to do except for Council Member Hudsbeth. So I'm not sure if I do. Yes, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. So when when we're looking at the information, we're going to find out when the resolution creating this particular makeup was enacted. And we're also going to figure out when our last meetings were, if I understand it correctly, like if there's minutes available, because I'm assuming there have to be some minutes somewhere. That's what you're requesting as well. I thought that's I'm trying to clarify that that's what we 're going to get out of this little break. I will seek for anything that that I can find that relates to. The believe it was December 1 Friday report from last year had a short description in that and I think that's where the confusion is coming about because the way it it was worded it sounded like the PNZ were members of this committee as well as the council members. So that's that's a starting point. Okay, December 1. All right. Okay, we're going to find out some more information. So we may read comments or questions from Clarion. Any comments or questions from the council at this time, we 're going to have more once we get the paperwork, I'm sure. Okay, thank you very much. Seeing none, we will we will adjourn this particular work session. And we also now believe have completed our public work session reports, if I'm not mistaken. So we will now convene in the closed session at 410 on Tuesday, March the 27th 2018, we will consider the following items consultation with attorneys under Texas Government Code section 551.071 and deliberations regarding certain public power utilities competitive matters under Texas Government Code section 551.086. Council now convene in special call meeting on March the 27 th 2018. It is 628 we do have a quorum and order. I believe we're pulling for non consideration at this time. Sorry, let me restart that over my mic was off. We will now move into special call meeting of the Denton City Council, March 27 2018. The time is 629. We do have a quorum call this meeting to order considering the consent agenda items we have A and B that are noted but I believe we are pulling agenda item B for future consideration is that correct? Some understanding? Okay. All right. Okay. So, Chair would entertain a motion on the one consent agenda item which is agenda item one a move for approval. We have a motion and a second. All in favor please signify by raising your right hand. Motion carries. I'm sorry. Yes, Councilmember Gregory. Gregory seconded. I'm sorry. Motion carries unanimously. We move on to our items for individual consideration to a consider approval of a resolution of the City Council of the City of Denton Texas supporting action by the Regional Transportation Council related to local control and the advancement of the I635 LBJ East project. Do we have a very brief presentation on that? Is that right? Okay. I think the computer is fixing to go down. Good evening, Mayor, members of Council, Mark Nelson, Director of Transportation. Yes, I can make this as brief as possible. Less than 20 minutes anyway. Really what we have in front of you this evening is a discussion on managed lanes that really boils down to local control, local planning control really at the regional level. So this is an issue that has been taken up or has been discussed at the Regional Transportation Council. And with that I'll move on into the presentation. Just a quick overview of particular components. We'll talk a little bit about the project at hand, where the state is aligned in itself, where the Regional Transportation Council is aligned in itself, a little bit of discussion on the impact of some of the decisions, and then support of the managed lanes. Maybe that bullet point should read local control or local planning authority. And then really the next steps, which the next step is really decision or discussion of resolution to support that position. Excuse me. So this is the particular project. At the end of the day it's a project that's going to enhance capacity along 635 East. You may be well aware of the LBJ 635 project essentially from 35 down to 75 where they've added the cantilever and additional capacity. Those are managed lanes down below and then general purpose lanes above grade. And essentially what that provides is additional choice for those folks who are utilizing that corridor. This particular project is east of 75 down to I-30 and provides a similar managed lane component. Pretty much what you see, just a larger version of it, what you see on I-35 south of here from Corinth down into 635 into Dallas. So essentially what has happened is the governor and lieutenant governor and a couple of senators have basically submitted letters to the RTC requesting that they do not advance additional transportation projects with the toll component. They have worked with the Texas Transportation Commission, which is appointed by the governor, and has oversight of the unified transportation plan and asked them to pull any projects that are out there that do have a toll component involved in that. So what does that directive do? It essentially creates about a $770 million, maybe a little bit more. They're still polishing and sharpening their pencil as to what that number is, but roughly $770 to a million dollar gap in terms of trying to fund that particular project. So the RTC came up with a plan that would shift funding from other projects to backstop that and move that project along simply because this project, 635, is ready to go. It's got its environmental cleared. It's got schematic plans in place. So long and short, it's ready to move forward. They did not want to delay it, so they looked to take other projects, funding off of the other upcoming projects to advance that. And so one of those projects is I-35 West, roughly in the Fort Worth corridor up to 114, also has a toll component to it. So in summary, what this directive does is it really pulls local control from the planning perspective from the regional transportation council by shifting the planning process. I'm sorry, Council Member Ryan. You said I-35W has a toll component. Is that in the funding of it? It's in the planning stages at this point in time. I-35W, they've actually pulled it off because of what the governor said, but essentially the planning directive would have managed lanes down the center, similar to what 35E has. Okay, because in the 2045 plan put out by RTC, it's not showing to be any managed lanes on that side at all. Right, and what they have is because of that, they've left a wider median in the middle so that they could add those at a later date, but that's the direction they're moving forward with the I-35W. So the regional position or paradigm, if you will, Metropolitan Planning Organization, as stated here, is federally required and recognized. It advances a transportation plan that is voted on and approved by members of the RTC, which are generally elected officials throughout the region . And essentially they have voted in favor and advanced a plan that does include a managed lane component to fund a portion of that 635 project. And so as stated earlier, this project is, you know, the region's ready to move forward with this. It's ready to be let, or I'm sorry, ready to be bid. So at RTC, Dallas has actually emphatically stated that they would not support a project that does not include the managed lane. And so representatives from Garland and Mesquite have also voiced their strong opinion as far as including the managed lane component, and Denton County has also expressed their desire to include that because pulling that funding component or that tool, revenue tool, for regional transportation infrastructure would impact some advancements, some capacity enhancements to I-35 from 635 up to the Rayburn, Tollway, Bush, and 121 in that area there on the south side of Lewisville and Denton County. As stated here, communities and the drivers are embracing the managed lanes, seeing a drastic increase in the use from the projected volumes on the managed lanes, and then essentially using the managed lane revenue in part, the region has been very creative in how they've advanced funding. As stated here, seven billion has been able to leverage upwards to 21 billion in new transportation infrastructure throughout the region. So as stated, the managed lanes offset funding deficits, and so these managed lanes actually provide alternatives to drivers, even if you're not planning to use those managed lanes, by pulling folks who do choose to use the managed lanes, it creates additional capacity in the general purpose lanes. So a couple bullet points here towards the end, kind of expressing a little bit about how well those managed lanes are working. So what does that do? 35 miles per hour in peak, now it's an average of 50 miles per hour, reduces a lot of stop and go traffic along those congested corridors, improving the air quality. So that's one of the key elements that the RTC is trying to address in the non-attainment area here in the North Texas region. Another comment there with reduction, 72% reduction in congestion out of the MT North Terran Express. So where are we at this point in time? RTC is scheduled to take action on this particular issue. They are working through a series of upwards to 11 different funding mechanisms that would include anything from shifting funding from current projects, in other words delay in those other critical projects, to a do nothing at all approach. And so the item before you this evening, the resolution in front of you this evening is really taking a position with local control, local planning , the efforts that the RTC has advanced over the past year to 18 months to advance the I- 35 project and really at the last minute having Tex.Austin, the Governor's Office, change the planning direction and how best the regional folks can plan for their regional infrastructure. So with that I would take any questions and help clarify if I've left anything uncertain. Any questions? Councilmember Gregory? There's not so much question as we're just being put into this situation. In the mobility committee meeting, it was an interesting discussion because we were talking about first we were saying free lanes versus managed lanes. But what it really is is tax supported lanes versus toll supported lanes and that actually the toll supported lanes helps us fund some of the rebuild of tax supported lanes. And we're put in this position of needing to rely on some toll supported lanes because the state's unwilling to increase revenue by increasing to pay for infrastructure improvements because they're unwilling to pay request a increase in the fuel tax. So we're just put into this situation of a growing area and needing some way to pay for the construction of those roads. So it's not really that we're being asked to support toll lanes. It's just we're being asked to find a way to fund the construction of lanes that we must have that the state's unwilling to fund. Right. And there's a significant concern with the some say prol iferation of the toll lane or toll lanes in the state of Texas. The state legislature has approved essentially five projects to allow for a toll component or a managed lane component in this case and one of them is I-635. There was a couple one out of Houston and one out of the Austin area that was also put on ice based on the directive. Did you have a question? So then I would move approval of the resolution. We Councilman Gregory made a motion to approve. Do I have a second? Second. Mayor Pro Tem second. Let's vote on the board. Vote on the board. Everybody. We're voting on agenda item 2A. Everybody in approval please signify by raising your right hand. Passes unanimously. Move on to agenda item 2B. Consider adoption of an ordinance of the City of Denton Texas Home Review Municipal Corporation amending ordinance number 2017 to reduce solid waste residential rates. Mayor, my name is Tony Puente, Director of Finance. As we discussed earlier in our work session, the recommendation before you is to reduce rates for solid waste residential collection services by 12 %. Those rates as we've outlined previously to you translate to about a $40 per year reduction to the customers with a standard cart, refuge and recycling or about $47 per year for customers with a large refuge and recycling cart service. There's additional reduction for those individuals that have additional large cart. But again, we have very few customers that have those additional carts. I don't have a presentation for you. I can certainly put the presentation that we discussed earlier in work session if you'd like or I can just stand for any questions. Council Member Briggs. I move approval. We have a motion. Mayor Pro Tem. Second. We have a motion and a second for agenda item 2B. All who approve signify by raising your right hand. Motion carries unanimously. Agenda item 2C. Consider adoption of an ordinance authorizing the City Manager to sign a notice of extension of the TNPA power sales contract for seasonal operation from September 1, 2018 to September 30, 2018. George Morrow, General Manager of DME. So before you tonight is an extension agreement for a one- month period from September 1st to the end of September for the Gibbons Creek power plant. Obviously our contract expires September 1st and staff has evaluated and determined that the value of that plant exceeds the cost for that one-month period. We can still get pretty good hot conditions in North Texas at that time. This election is made pursuant to this part of the contract so I'm just showing you that provision says basically we have the right, the three participants that are left in that project, Garland, Brian and Denton have the right to extend for this one-month period. So there's a one-page extension letter in your packet that we're being asked to execute to confirm our desires for that month period and we'll be picking up Greenville's old piece. They have 10%. They're leaving. We're really going to increase our entitlement 11 megawatts for that one-month period. I would point out there's no obligation beyond the September 30th period. There's some discussion of operating the plant seasonally again for next year. That's an open item that there's no commitments made by anybody, something we'd come forward as we have better information and talk to the City Council about going forward. Some of the key aspects there is how does the plant run this summer? What does the market look like for that power? Anything else that would make that decision for you. So we're asking approval of an ordinance which would author ize execution by the City Manager or his designee of the extension letter to keep Gib bons Creek running for that extra month which I think had always been anticipated. It's just contractually there was this gap there that we're trying to take care of. So any questions? Council Member Briggs. Was the PUB updated on this? Yes. Did they see it last night? Yes. Yesterday? Okay. So the PUB came forward and endorsed this item by a vote of five to one. Okay. Mayor, I move approval of item 2C. We have a motion by Council Member Gregory, Council Member Ryan. I'll second. Do we have a motion and a second? Oh, I'm sorry. Yes. Discussion for a moment. Yes. I'll be voting in favor of this. I just wanted to clarify though the reason I'm voting in favor of it is because it presents the possibility that the DEC will probably maybe hopefully run for slightly less time if we have Gibbons Creek online. Okay. All right. Any other questions, comments? Council Member Briggs, did you have a question or comment? All right. We have a motion and a second. All in favor, please signify by raising your right hand. Council Member Duff, is that a -- oh, okay. Yes. All right. I'm sorry. Didn't you -- yes. Yes, you were. Okay. The motion carries unanimously. We did have -- we're going to need to go back into one of our work session reports to get an update on the -- let's see. Which one was that? Item 2D as far as regarding the update for the Denton Development Code Module 2, but more over the Council committee and the resolution and just sort of update from legal on matters that we discussed in that work session. So I'll go ahead and reopen, I guess, the agenda item work session report 2D, receive report and hold discussion, provide direction to staff on the Denton Development Code update. Thank you, Mayor, Council. So on -- our department was able to look into the -- how the development review advisory committee was actually formed. It seems originally it was formed without a resolution in 2006 by a previous council that at that time they contemplated having three members of council as well as three members of the P&Z be members of that committee. In addition, there's language in the AIS from that meeting that their meeting or they were formed to look at some specific amendments that were being discussed by council and P&Z at the time and that they would only last between 12 and 18 months for that committee. And so that's how that was formed. We don't know if there was anything else beyond that that extended it other than what appears in a resolution in 2015 in which this council amended its board's commissions and committee's handbook. And in that handbook, there is a -- this committee is actually recognized as an ad hoc city council committee. So there is some support in a resolution that you've all passed that this is an active committee. I think there was some information provided by Council member Ryan that this is -- that they've had an actual meeting not too long ago. Was it Councilmember Briggs? I apologize. And so it seems that it has been living up to its duty. Based on that, I would recommend that tomorrow's meeting do continue going forward. Since there are only two council members on that committee -- There's three. But the third one was Councilmember Wasney who's no longer here. Did somebody replace her? John. Yeah. You replaced her, Councilmember Ryan. So if at least two members show up at nine, that's what you need to have a quorum to start off. I'm not suggesting at this time that the members of the P&Z be considered as part of that committee. I do recommend for quorum purposes. They can be at the meeting, provide any questions, ask questions, input. But I also highly encourage this council to consider adopting a resolution setting forth the parameters of this ad hoc committee so that not just for ourselves but in the future our later councils and P&Z commissions will know what the makeup of this committee is. So I highly encourage that. Yes, Mayor Proctor. So when were Commissioners Rosell, Ellis, and Beck appointed to this committee? Because I don't remember that as an action of the committee . Yes. I don't remember that either. The only thing I can speculate since our line use attorney isn't here is that they were nominated by the P&Z commission as their representatives to this committee. Oh, I see. Okay. So there wasn't any formal action that would establish parameters for the nomination process or composition even of a committee including P&Z? That is correct. The council in 2006 just had an agenda item and they had an AIS and just approved it without a resolution. Okay. That provides a lot more clarity. Thank you. Council Member Hesbitt. And then to your point, I mean, so John says he joined. Are there minutes to support that? Or do you have to go back and? That's in one of your earlier meetings involving appointments to boards and commissions. At that point, Council Member Ryan was replaced, nominated to replace Council Member Wasse. Got it. Okay. Okay. All right. Any questions on that? So the meeting moves forward? That is my recommendation. Yes. Okay. All right. Any other questions or comments on that work session report ? We will move from that work session report and go back to our special call meeting, reconvene for our last agenda item, which is concluding items. Anybody have concluding items? I'm going to start over here. Mayor Pro Tem. In our Friday report, we got a memo about a partnership between the PD and Denton ISD. So I was wondering if, A, we would be getting a presentation on that during our joint meeting with Denton ISD on May 7th. And if not, if we could get that. And then to the extent that there's a policy discussion in there, I'd like to have it because I think it's probably more than just managerial type decision. So I'd like to have that discussion at the time with Denton ISD as well. Or individually as our own group. It's really, I just thought that day might be helpful. Okay. Council Member Deff. Yeah, I've got about 49 letters here that I got from people mainly, I think, in apartments. They're really concerned about the recycling. It's very obvious that we have a lot of people that want to participate that can't right now. And I understand there's cost and logistic, I mean, the logistics of it and all that. I think for my house, about 80% plus goes into recycle. Very little goes into the trash itself. And I think this is something that we need to seriously look at. And it helps our landfill. Second thing. Yes, go ahead. I'm sorry. I tell you, the parking down in the downtown area is pretty brutal if you come at the wrong time. One of my observations though was is there was a credit union that's down on Mulberry that's shutting down and moving out. And I'm wondering whether that might not be some land that we could acquire. Because if we got that, it's a pretty good area. We could initially just turn that into a parking lot and in the future put a parking garage there. I know my wife told me that the parking garages are all ugly, but I'm sorry. I don't see any reason they had to be ugly. As a matter of fact, if you put one there, I mean, you could put restaurants on top of the thing. And it doesn't have to be ugly. But I'm just wondering if that is a possibility because I have no idea what they're planning on that property. Council Member Hussby. I just wanted to give everyone a heads up. So April 24th, I'll be late getting here for that. It's just a work session day. So I won't be here. I'll be here. I know you're still up and running four ish five ish six is h in there someplace, but I have a prior commitment. So just a heads up. Okay. Appreciate that. Thank you. Council Member Gregory. I hope that our posting for our luncheon with the school board is done in a way that's broad enough so that we can have some dialogue with the school board members, especially about issues regarding their plans for future construction, report on the bonds, any land purchases that they've made and what they might be doing with that. Also, I hope that it's broad enough that there's an opportunity for us to discuss school safety and the deployment of school resource officers, things of that nature. Just want to have that broad enough. I wish we had had that meeting scheduled prior to the bond election. I think it should have been, and I'm disappointed that we weren't able to do it in a way that we were able to get that information prior to the bond election. I think we've pretty much covered this in our work session, but just to bring clarity to that, I want to request a work session that is broadly posted to discuss red light cameras, traffic signals, and intersection safety, just something with a much broader posting than what we had today. - Okay, Council Member Briggs. - I remember in our discussions for McKinney, and also Mayor Pro Tempig-Garry brought it up, there were text dot funds that were allocated that had to be used by a certain day or time. I just want to make sure that we're still on schedule with that project for those funds to make sure that that's all coordinated so we don't lose that. I'd also like an update if possible for us if we've hired or the hiring process for the bike and pedestrian coordinator. I've been seeing a lot of confusion still in our community because that position is vacant and I know that it's important for our community to have someone there. I was going to ask about a non-restrictive discussion on red light cameras that Council Member Ryan just brought up. I'd like to see or have a request a wastewater drainage fee ordinance in our Friday packet so we can review that before our next discussion. I had a report that the timing at Carroll and Hickory cross walk is short. I don't know if it's shorter than normal or if we could just have somebody look at that. Also in our Friday packet, a printed copy of the new proposed zoning map. We may see that tomorrow at our meeting, but if we could just have it to look at ahead of time. And then last, with the DDC, there's a lot going on and there's some really specific to neighborhoods that don't really involve developers. And I want to make sure that planning creates collaboration with the residents that are directly affected. For instance, in my district, the historic district, there is a new national register district being created. I don't know if staff is aware of that, but I'd like to make sure that this group is included with city staff as the historic preservation plan of the D DC is updated. Sorry, I forgot my other item. Apologize. And I just wanted to clarify the red light discussion would include the contract as well. So the entire scope of what could be discussed in a red light camera discussion. Council Member Duff brought up a good point, which I also got the many letters regarding recycling and I know that our environment subcommittee is working on that. However, I wanted an informal staff report or some type of report indicating what percentage of our recyclables are sent to China, if any, because I know that China has banned all foreign recyclables at this point. So they did accept 50% of the world's recycling material and it's being backed up at various locations now. So I wanted to make sure that we still have buyers for our recycling and if we don't have buyers, what percentage of that is not being purchased by China anymore. I've just got a couple wanted to give a shout out to DME as I was driving into the city on Bonnie Bray. Apparently the straight line winds that came through about 7 a.m. There was one snapped power line and two or three of them that were about hanging on the ground. So they were on the spot and I'm sure they've been working all through the day to get those repaired. So shout out to them. I want to also just thank Julie Anderson for her work with Keep Dentin' Beautiful and the Great American Cleanup. She did an excellent job and all her volunteers and all those that worked at that event. This last Saturday as you drove around town Saturday morning until about noon, you saw various people all over the city picking up trash and litter and I certainly want to thank her for that and just for everybody in the community that came out to help keep our, to help Keep Dentin' Beautiful to pick up the litter. And one thing I did learn and I think that we need to think about this as a city. I know we use a lot of things that are recyclable but what I did not know is from one of the booths there, very educational, is styrofoam never degrades . It never degrades. So I would like for staff to just take a look at, you know, our styrofoam use and to see exactly where we use it and how we use it and, because I was quite frankly stunned at that. Yes, Council Member Briggs. This is a new, this is a concluding item. This isn't a discussion, it's a concluding item. It's to add to the concluding items because of what you just said with the styrofoam and during our DASD meeting because they are a very extremely high use of styrofoam trays for every school. And so they could, we could just include that in their discussion on what they use and that. Okay. Great. Thank you. You bet. All right, any other conclu- Mayor Pro Tem, you're giving me the stink eye. No. Okay. Well, plastic never degrades either. Every item of plastic that has ever been made is still in existence. Well, that's true. I guess that the, in the concluding item and the educational component of that concluding item, it showed that it degraded at some point. But so we can look at that as well. We will add that to that as well. All right. We will now conclude this very long, what do we call this? Just work session and special call meeting. We will adjourn at 702. [ Silence ]