Apr 17, 2018 City Council on 2018-04-17 1:00 PM

Welcome everyone to this meeting of the Denton City Council . Today's April 17th, 2018. It's 1 p.m. We're going to start our meeting with item one, citizen comments on consent agenda items. Do we not have any comments? We don't have any comments, so we'll move on to item two. Oh, you do have a comment? Oh, request for clarification. Request for clarification of agenda items listed on the agenda for today. Councilwoman Briggs. I'd like to request to pull K for a separate vote. Any others? Okay. Anybody else? Making sure I don't have any. Okay. Then we'll move on to item three, citizen comments on ethic -related work session report items. We've suspended the rules, so the public is able to comment . Doesn't look like we have any comments for item three, so we'll move on to work session reports item four. First item is A, receive a report, hold a discussion, and provide direction to staff on the Denton Development Code update, specifically regarding development standards, module three, and draft zoning map. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor, members of council. Great to be back. It's only been three weeks, so today we are going to make our presentation much more brief. Will you do me a favor and introduce yourself for the people watching? Absolutely. I am Tarek Wafai with Clarion Associates, and today we are talking about the third and final piece of amending the Denton DDC, the Denton Development Code. And we're getting away from the term modules at this point, because everything at this point has been drafted into a series of subchapters that will replace the current DDC. So we're going to jump right in, skipping the introductory material about how we got to where we are today, and just want to show you the contents of what is within the development standards. There is a lot of material in this section of the code, mostly dealing with the quality of development. How good does development have to be? That has to do with parking, with landscaping, how we lay things out on a site, even things that are underground, like the piped infrastructure. We do not have time today to cover each one of these sections within the development standards. Rather, what we're going to do is just focus on some of the things that we think you might be most interested in, and we'll walk through those. But as you can see, again, just a lot of material within this third and final piece. Some of the goals of updating the Denton Development Standards were, right now we have a one-size-fits-all approach to doing development. And when we think about building from the ground up, there are some things where you need some flexibility. There are infill and redevelopment projects that really take a different approach to be able to make a site pencil out in many cases. So one of the big goals, avoid that one-size-fits-all approach. Think about how we can be more creative. Increasing the flexibility, one of the ways we did that earlier in this code rewrite was in the procedures, administration and procedures. Can we shift some of the approvals down to the staff level, to the planning director, to others? Same thing with the development quality standards. What types of things is there an ability for the director to say, "All right, this really meets the intent of this section. We're willing to work with you to make sure that we get something on the site rather than nothing at all." Building neighborhoods, this is a big part of any code that we draft, but especially right here in Denton, you have a lot of beautiful established single-family neighborhoods that need to be protected. How do we manage that character? There are lots of ways to do that. A couple that we'll mention is through building design, making sure that we set the minimum bar for building design and for site design, also through buffer requirements. There are certain uses that are more compatible next door to residential. Then you have a situation where industrial abuts residential, even if it's multi-family, there are different issues that you can address through both building design and providing necessary buffers between those uses. Then finally, to coordinate with the other many documents that help regulate development in Denton, including your criteria manuals, there's engineering standards that live outside of the DDC, and they should live outside the DDC. We need to incorporate those components where they are related to land use and zoning and subdivision. Those have been brought into the DDC. Other standards will continue to live outside. Jumping right in, we're going to focus on just four topics that we think are most relevant to the conversation today, starting with landscaping, screening, buffering, and fences. Just showing you some images to provoke some thought here, how we address the street front, and what does the landscaping and buffering need to look like, and why is that important when cars and people need to move around, how we allow for business to still take place and receive your deliveries and loading, but also thinking about the pedestrians and those who might live across the street. Then looking at a lot of redevelopment opportunities, quite honestly, around the country, we have overbuilt retail. We're left with a lot of stripped shopping centers that will likely be something else in the future. How do we think about the design of a parking lot, and what needs to happen within that parking lot related to landscaping? High level summary of some of the changes that we included in the draft, and you'll see these in that third module. New alternative landscaping plan option. This allows the director to approve alternative landscaping standards, be it general landscaping standards, how many trees, how many shrubs, how wide of a buffer, when there's extenuating circumstances on a site. It's a unique condition. Utilities are already in the site, and that's preventing us from being able to plant street front trees. Things that are just really tough to do to make a project work, we've given that outlet to allow the developer and the staff to work together to be creative. We've simplified the buffering standards. Right now you've got a pretty complex system, but I think it works okay. We have shifted towards a point-based buffering system. Eric, I'm going to interrupt you for just a second. Councilman Briggs? My question is regarding this one point that you're on right here. At the end it says industrial adjacent to single family residential. Is that going to be allowed in our new zone? Are you talking about infill? Because I don't see that that would be something that we would approve now unless that's on our new zoning map. That's a really good question and a good point actually. Some of the things we can handle through the drafting of the new DDC, like addressing what would happen should you end up in a scenario where industrial is next to single family residential. You probably have some of that on the ground today. Whether or not you would approve it again, it probably exists. What happens when redevelopment occurs? The zoning map, we're going to briefly cover that at the end of the presentation. The map is the implementation tool of all of these new standards. That is a really good way to make sure that you are thinking holistically about where things should be located within the city and next to other types of zoning or land uses rather within those districts. So I think you have some of this. I think it would come up in the future through proposals. This gives you a way to, even if you wanted to say no to that approach, this gives you a way to say yes with the following conditions applied. There might be some things you would be willing to consider . Okay. Council Member Gregory. Thank you, Mayor. Following the simplified buffering standards, right now we have basically three types of buffering, level A, B, and C. And there have been times when we have specified one and then even called for enhancements of that one. So I didn't see anything in the presentation that goes into more details on how the points are earned. When would we hear that? Well, we'll probably follow up with you on that. I would urge you to get into the draft for those types of details. A quick reminder that you do have a committee that we are working with to go into that level of detail with. Some members of city council sit on that committee as well. But generally I can tell you more points offered for things that would be a better buffering tool, like a masonry wall gets you more points than a few shrubs planted in the buffer. So there might still be an opportunity if a zoning change was coming before the council that we could say in this particular case we're going to expect as a condition for approval instead of getting 50 points that you have to get 65 points . Yeah, I think there would be a way to work with that. I mean, ultimately you need to be comfortable with any rez oning application or site development application. Zoning is a great way to kind of offer a quid pro quo in those cases. For sure. Thank you. Any other questions? I do have a question. So with the point based system, once a certain threshold is reached, then that project essentially would be approved. For the buffering component. Right, for that particular component. Correct. And it's not as a matter of approval. Remember some of these applications are only going to be reviewed at the staff level. So if I'm coming in with a site plan and it's a staff level approval to begin with, their job at that point is to look at the proposed buffer. What types of things are they proposing here? They've got a 30 foot wide buffer. They planted trees at every 25 feet. They've got shrubs and they have a fence. That earns them enough points to check the box for staff to say you have met the minimum buffer requirements. Okay. Last point I'll make here is called low impact development practices. Really we're talking about mostly green infrastructure opportunities here. Rather than piping all of our storm water and drainage, there are opportunities to run water over the site in things like rain gardens, in things like swales that contain plants that love a little bit of water and they can even be inund ated by storm water for a period of time. They look nice. Oftentimes developers will say it's actually cheaper to develop that way. We want to encourage those types of things as an option. It is not a mandate that you shall do green infrastructure or low impact development, but especially in parking areas where water quality is particularly important, slow the water down, clean the water as it moves across the site. We've included several options for that. You have a question? The title adds fences, but we didn't talk about fences. I know that there are some questions in the community about them, but will that be something we delve deeper into in our committee? We can, absolutely. Okay. I know that there are some questions about the types of fences that we require. Yes, and we have made some minimal changes to the materials . I will just mention one and then we can get into more detail at the committee level and probably with the public as well. One is if you're going to just ban metal as an option for f encing, that really covers a lot of different types of things. You might actually like some metal materials to be used. We allow that. We also allowed the director to be able to approve certain materials that maybe we didn't think of. Even if you draft the perfect code, somebody will propose something that you didn't think of. There's a lot of those outlets, if you will, for the director to say, "Yeah, this meets the basic intent of good design." Okay. Thank you. Okay. That is it on landscaping for now, of course. There's a lot more detail we could get into. Let's shift to parking and loading. Now, the current system is a bit unusual and dentin from our experience in that if you're doing development here, you have to hit the minimum required parking, which is also the maximum amount of parking. There is a number that you must hit for required parking unless you were to do permeable pavers or something like that. We have made a big adjustment from that method and created a table that matches the table of allowed uses that you saw back with the districts and uses piece of the code. Every use that was in that table now has a corresponding parking requirement, a minimum parking requirement. For maximum, we have stated in the current draft that 125% of the required minimum parking is the maximum parking. You no longer have to be right on the button with the number of parking stalls, but we're still telling you we don't want you to really overpark the site. A lot of flexibility built into the parking section as well . We've offered alternatives for shared parking, alternatives to count on-street parking as your required parking, alternatives if you're close to a transit center, a fixed transit facility, then you can reduce your parking up to 25%. Why? Because you think more people would be riding transit instead of parking single occupancy vehicles. The design is important, the number of parking spaces is important, and we have also included some new exemptions from the parking standards. One is actually related to loading, but if you're smaller than 10,000 square feet, you do not have to provide an off-street loading area. You've probably noticed in the last couple of decades, or certainly in the last 10 years, that a lot of loading and deliveries are coming more frequently throughout the day and in much smaller vehicles. So we exempt certain properties from needing the big truck berths. Additionally, parking downtown, which is now called the MD district, is exempt from the parking standards. As are non-residential uses with less than 5,000 square feet lot area. That's a very small lot. But the idea is that if you've got all of these other standards to comply with on that very small non-residential lot, we'll give you a break on the parking so that we can actually do business with you. Question. Yes. So with the loading, how does, for instance, Uber and Lyft parking work? Because people will have to get in really quickly and then they leave really quickly. But oftentimes, there's not a designated area for that. So would that count as loading or is that something different? That is passenger loading, which we did not cover in the current draft. We certainly could. This is pretty new in terms of how we zone for these things and how we address them in development codes. Jim and I were just talking on the way from the airport this morning that we're going to have to really think about these things now. Autonomous vehicles, the shared economy requiring, I have not seen a lot of communities require a designated passenger loading space yet. But I certainly think that we're not far away from that and we could talk to you more about how that might work. What types of uses would you apply that to like hotels, convention centers? It can be a problem. If it is a problem, I think there is a way we can address it through the zoning code. Yeah, if we could, I mean, I'm not on the committee anymore , but I think it would be a good conversation to have in terms of what's coming in the future. And I have heard some requests for Uber type parking or Uber loading. So thank you. Sure. That's a great comment. Okay, so in addition to parking and landscaping we talked about, let's talk about site and building design, another important feature of how we regulate the quality of development. Now we heard that you actually like the quality of development that you're getting here in Denton and just driving around and walking around, you do have cherished buildings. The thought though is rather not to overregulate building design, but to prevent the worst player, right? Make sure that we're setting the bar just high enough to where you still get those decent projects and we think about the worst players right here with the back wall completely unarticulated, a nondescript building that you probably can't guess what type of store that is. Or mixed use developments and those should be regulated differently. Why? Because the way the building interacts with the street is as important as the building design itself. So how do we make sure we have eyes on the street? How do we make sure it's a safe place to walk? How do we represent the character of a particular neighborhood? How do we provide enough diversity in architecture to make sure that we're not getting cookie cutter development, but rather an eclectic mix of things like you already have? So the site and building design, we have organized this in the following way. There are standards that specifically apply to single family and duplex and townhome. There are building design standards for multi-family. You start to see additional standards that you wouldn't see for single family once you get into multi-family. Things like how do we organize multiple buildings on a site , which is how a lot of apartment complexes are built. And then non-residential and mixed use buildings. Again, we care about architectural features. We care about the scale and the mass and the context of that building. And then finally, in your current code, you have pedestrian oriented districts, you call them. Those had been collapsed earlier in this drafting process into the mixed use neighborhood and mixed use downtown districts. And so there are additional standards for those. Some of the elements included for each of these are site design and orientation. Where do I put the building on the site? Should it be oriented towards a public courtyard if there are lots of buildings? Should it face an intersection rather than the alley? Those types of things are covered. The mass and form, how do we make sure it's not overpower ing the streetscape, but making sure buildings are pushed up close enough to the street in mixed use areas where we want that level of pedestrian activity. Building materials, again, a lot of leeway for the director to consider new materials that we didn't think of or that you may not think of. And finally, we've covered transparency in windows. Breaking up large masses of wall by just punching holes in it basically through windows or doors, allowing people to see in and see out of buildings is important. You have a question. Thank you. There are some areas where we probably are interested in something other than architectural variety. For example, a downtown area that has a lot of historic buildings. How do you deal with that? Yeah. So the variety actually only applies to the single family subdivision type of scenario where you're developing multiple lots on a block and you don't want all of the same type of single family home one after another. And so designating, and you have that current standard now in fact, that says we don't want you to place all of the same home along that block face. So do we address issues of more historical areas in the DDC or do we do that elsewhere? Both. Tom, it looks like you'd like to chime in. Yeah, I'll just chime in a little bit. In the next couple of weeks, you're going to be actually seeing some proposed design guidelines for the downtown area. To response to your question, we've been running that through the Historical Preservation Committee and Planning Commission. So but in terms of other historical areas, that's really only focused on downtown. In terms of any other historical areas, I think we'd probably want to fold that into the DDC. And further, where there are overlay districts, consider the Fry Street overlay as an example. Where design standards have been integrated into that district specifically, those would trump these building design standards. So wherever these new site and building design standards conflict with district specific standards, those standards apply. If I could go on. There was a time when we were so concerned, we had some issues with the downtown because a building that had been used for 100 years in one type of use is now being changed to another type of use. And so in other parts of town, that would require maybe some kind of calculation of parking or calculation of this, that or the other. And it's put the possibility of using buildings in a different way in jeopardy. And so there was discussion about form based code. So that the form of the building was more important than the use that was going on inside. Are we dealing with that terminology anymore? Or has that gone by the wayside? Well I think the terminology itself has gone by the wayside . Okay. This idea of form based code has gone by the wayside. However, it's been a big component of everything that we've drafted here in the new DDC, being that we care both about the uses within the buildings for the exact reason that Councilwoman Briggs brought up. We don't want to approve things that are not compatible. So we care about use. But we also care about the physical structure. We care about the way things look. But not to an extent that we would upend the ability to be creative downtown. Not in a way that would prevent you from protecting a historic structure. Okay. Thank you. I have a question. So regarding mass and form, I think that's where the wall articulation issue would probably fall. Yes. And one thing I wanted to just kind of get your thoughts on . So sometimes in mixed plan, you know, heavily planned mixed use areas, you'll see it's a pedestrian oriented area and there will be like a large block development. And it has a lot of wall articulation and it looks very pleasing. However, there aren't any pedestrian entries because it might be a garage or it might be some other use. So would there be something in the code that addresses, you know, in a pedestrian area having a certain amount of ingress and egress in these buildings so that you don't get this kind of facade but without the actual functional use? Yeah. We've addressed it in several different ways. And I hope it ends up with a positive result. Some of that is in the building design section where we talk about how those walls are articulated, how much of the building needs to be up on the street and how the buildings themselves are oriented on the site facing a courtyard, creating those opportunities for public gathering. Other sections though were access and circulation where we specifically state here's how cars need to be able to move from one site to another. Here's how pedestrians also need to move between sites and from one site to another site. And then I guess... So there are several ways we've covered that. So the reverse of that is, for instance, the picture that you showed, I think it was a Target or some type of big box store. I would hate to see like a lot of articulation on a big box store because it's a car-oriented area and it would seem kind of absurd. So I guess is there an exemption for industrial areas or for areas that are not going to be frequented by pedestrians at all? We have not exempted specific use types from them, but there are more stringent standards for things like mixed use and multifamily than there are for developments like this here. So, okay, so an industrial area would still have design standards that it has to meet even though it's maybe a warehouse or something to that nature. But minimal. Where is the building placed on the site? Are they using appropriate materials? Okay. And this, we've had lots of discussion on this photo in particular. You could say that those little individual scores on the concrete are articulation every four inches, but I would argue with you. Okay, so some of the key changes, I think we've probably covered most of them, but I just want to make sure we get those out there. Alternative designs for infill. A specific provision that says in cases of infill and rede velopment, we will allow for alternative designs when they exceed the code requirements. You've got something different we haven't thought of. There's a procedure for that. There are new standards for multi-building. I mentioned that. Most apartment builders of large scale don't just put up one building. There are many buildings. And then I mentioned the pedestrian-oriented districts through your questions. So the final, oh, sorry. Question on that last slide. Yeah. There are some folks that say that one of the ways that you control for higher quality design is through some restrictions or requirements as far as building materials. What's going on with that in this? We still have regulations for building materials, so we carried most of those forward. Staff had been working on the appropriate use of metal, so we've made some minor revisions to that because we think there are some instances where metal is okay, but they're too much of a good thing, can actually deteriorate the character of an area. So building materials are certainly still part of the design features. Thank you. Just for one example, I know that we had in our this kind of border historic West College area and there was a development that I think was, what are the train, train car, not train cars. Shipping containers. Shipping containers. Oh, yeah. Yes, and so is that what you're talking about here? Say since it's infill development, would something like that be allowed? Well, I'm not sure I would go there. I think somebody might come to you with a proposal and say, look, this is something different. You don't really say I can do this. You also don't really say in the code that I can't do this. So let's have a conversation. I think the way the code has been drafted in its current form, there are multiple opportunities for conversations just like that one where you might sit down with Scott and say, I'm not sure that really meets the intent or if it's well designed and meets the building code, which is a big one when it comes to those shipping container sites, then it might be okay. Many cities just outright prohibit them. Many cities actually encourage that type of development. Okay. Thank you. Councilmember Duff. Where do SROs fit into all of this? I'm just thinking about that. Yeah, it's a great question. We know that you all had been talking about those over the past few months. The first part of the code rewrite that we did was focused on the districts and the uses. When it was drafted, we left a placeholder at that time. It had a line for SROs to be populated at some point. So now that this third and final piece has been drafted, our job is upon us in the next month or so to collect all of the things that have changed in either policy direction or comments from the public to get those into a consolidated draft. You don't have that information yet. You will see that in the next draft. Okay. Go ahead. Okay. So finally, lighting, not a lot to say about this other than you have very minimal lighting standards today. And so we still took a light touch, no pun intended, but just being more clear, using clear language about what is and what is not allowed when it comes to outside lighting. The basis of it is point your light downward. Don't spill over onto neighboring properties more than one foot candle at the property line. It's a very common approach to measuring light, something that should be pretty easy for your code enforcement to use too, but improve standards for pedestrian facilities as well. No sense having a good walking path and spending a lot of time with building design if it's not safe and well lit. So not a lot more to say about that other than it was important to put in kind of these minimal standards through this code rewrite. That is subchapter six. So remember, we're going to stop talking about modules now and talk about subchapters because that is your full suite of information through the Denton Development Code. The final piece of this last part though has to do with subdivisions. We're no longer talking about the quality of the buildings or the quality of the site. We're talking about dividing land into multiple parcels. We won't spend a lot of time here other than mention a couple of things about designing a good subdivision. One new tool is flag lot standards. Flag lots meaning that there's a very long skinny portion of the lot that actually touches the public street and then most of the lot exists somewhere farther in the back. It's hard to access legally sometimes and there are things you have to think about with water and sewer and other utilities and so we just included some standards to kind of prevent those challenges from happening in the future. We also introduced a new cluster subdivision tool that allows you to obtain smaller lot sizes down to 2,500 square foot lots in residential and mixed use zoning districts. So these are very small lots provided that you are protecting some sensitive area within the site. If you have three acres, that's the minimum that we've proposed, then you are eligible to propose a cluster subdivision where you put a lot more lots in one part of that site and you're protecting a sensitive feature, a riparian area. Maybe it's a geologic feature. It's something worth protecting but that has to be protected in perpetuity. So these are new standards. It's a good tool. It's an option, not a mandate. We hope it is useful enough to where you actually might see some developers going for this. I think it ends up with a good result. Tara, when you say that it's protected in perpetuity, do you mean through an easement? That is one way of protecting it in perpetuity. There are lots of ways that you can work through between the attorneys to make sure that that is restricted moving forward. Okay, thank you. So what happens next? Again, we've drafted a lot of material now. The big job is to put it all into one document. Districts uses procedures for approving applications and then finally these quality standards. We're going to do that quickly but to do that, we need comments on this piece, the quality standards. We've got the date here, April 26th. That's not a lot of time from now but it is more than a week. So spend some time with the draft. Forward your questions to either through the Denton code 2030.com site or you can email them specifically to the site that we've listed here. Like to shift a little bit. Just got one or two slides here on the zoning map. You teed up this conversation perfectly Councilwoman Briggs . How do we actually make this whole thing work? We have new zoning districts, new standards. The only way to make them work is to propose a new zoning map. The city has drafted that map and it is up on the city's website actually and it's a very user friendly tool. You can go to the Denton code 2030.com site and access it from there or if you just type zoning map into the search bar of the city's home page or if you visit the corner here and he's got a printed copy. It's an interactive proposed map. Click on the site. Click on your neighbor's property. Click on your property. It'll tell you what the current zoning is. It'll tell you what the proposed zoning is and then you can use that information to walk through everything that's been drafted so far and provide comments. That is the key to making this work well is to get feedback early and often on the mapping piece as well as the drafting. These are all of the meetings that staff will be leading over the next couple of weeks on just the zoning map. A lot of open houses. I like what they've done here. They're offering big blocks of time, full days on a couple of those, May 2nd and 3rd, evening meetings, daytime meetings, lots of opportunities to provide comment and feedback or just come and listen and see what other people have to say. So that is it for the formal presentation and I am open to questions. I don't see any questions. Thank you for the presentation. Very informative. Thank you so much. Great to see you. Okay, we'll be moving on to work session item B which is Receiver Report, Hold a Discussion and Give Staff Direction regarding the location of the May hill substation. Good afternoon, members of council. My name is Ethan Cox. I'm the director of solid waste for the City of Denton. This is also going to be a joint presentation with some members of DME. I believe Mr. Brent Heath is going to come up to the podium after I finish my piece. So a little bit of background. There is a substation that's currently proposed to be located on landfill property. This is a substation that you all were briefed on in the 2013 to 2015 timeframe and council actually voted on the transfer of funds and sell that property in 2016. We're bringing this to you because there's some issues that we've addressed with the site. Some of our staff pointed this out as we were going through the permit that is currently being processed by TCEQ. So if you'll recall a few weeks ago we talked with the council a little bit about our permit 1590B that is very close to being complete by the TCEQ. We're hoping to have that approved by the end of the summer . As part of that permit we're actually proposing 11 future landfill cells to be developed on the north side of our property and that's to provide community waste development for hopefully the next 50 plus years in addition to what we have now. The visual that you have here up on the slide I'm going to kind of use my mouse to highlight some areas of interest here. So this is an aerial drawing of our landfill facility. Our current cell development is actually to the south of this visual. Mayhill Road is over here on your left running south to north. This is the entrance to our facility, our fuel island right there, Pratt Recycling Services here and then you wrap around to the actual scales which is the entrance to the facility and then all of our existing cells down to the south. So the 11 new future landfill cells are actually labeled here 7A, 7B all the way up to 11A to 11C and so each of these represents a landfill cell that 's going to be developed in the future in essence replacing a lot of the structures that you see here now. So as we get close to closing out the facility we'll actually be moving a lot of our administrative offices in the light. Now these cell locations are important because DMU has provided assurances by Solid Waste in the past that the location of the substation as proposed and approved in 2016 would not interfere with future waste development. Unfortunately that's not the case. As our staff went back and looked at this a few weeks ago we found that there's actually going to be a pretty big conflict with future landfill cell development and the substation location. This is important because unlike an administrative office that you can remove, typically substations are a permanent fixture on a site. You may go in and replace some of the components but typically you don't want to be moving that and all the accompanying infrastructure with the ones that's in place. So on this slide. I have a question. So why was that? Was it just a breakdown in communication between DME and Solid Waste or was it just one saying yes and the other agreeing without really knowing? I mean what? Yeah, I think it's a lack of planning. One of the other things that was on the table about a year ago, Councilmember Briggs, was there was a proposal to acquire quite a bit of property north of this site as well. So we hadn't really had the permit application completed yet and down the path where it needed to go and that land purchase was put on hold in order to fully plan this site and make sure that the permit was completed. So it was almost a cart before the horse issue. This decision was made and then the planning and the perm itting took place afterwards so it really should have been done the other way around. To that point, one of the things that we did explore before the PV and the Council is are there alternative places for us to move some of these cells around to accomplish the waste capacity the community needs. Unfortunately, that's just not the case. With the property that we have in hand right now, there's floodplain that we have to contend with and so we have met with our engineers and if we do want to have the future cell development as proposing the permit, it will need to be in those locations as presented on the map. So on this slide we have again an aerial visual, same location, Mayhill right here if you follow my mouse running south to north. This little orange/yellow border here is really the cells, all 11 of them highlighted in totality. The little purple outline here is actually the substation location. That's actually going to be cutting through two different cells that were proposed in the permit. It's actually going to have kind of a ripple effect. These red lines here are actually the slope of the final cover for the site. It's going to actually impact about four cells in totality. What that means from a site capacity and a cost standpoint, understand that the transaction, the sale price from DME to solid waste is about $775,000.00 . That includes the land as well as the buildings and some of the infrastructure on the site. In terms of the impact to the operations, there's about 3.3 million cubic yards of airspace. Airspace is essentially how we value the asset for a landfill. So you look at that two different ways. One is how much life does that have in terms of waste disposal capacity? We would lose about nine plus years of landfill life if the substation remains in place. The financial value of that is basically when you apply today's rates, about $53.4 million. You have two questions. Council Member Gregory. Thank you. Would you go back one slide? Certainly. When I see all those red lines over parking areas and areas where we have administrative buildings and sorting buildings and all of that, that makes me think that sometime in the future, all of the facility developments that we built out there at some expense to the ratepayers are going to be removed. That's correct. Has that always been part of the plan? I can't speak to the past. I do know talking to our engineers and some of the plans that were being contemplated as the permit was pushed through is there was a future north entrance up by McKinney that was being proposed in terms of replacing all of the existing buildings and moving them up there and having a north entrance to the facility. We're not quite there yet. I think that's something that I would really like to reeval uate. In essence, we could sequence the development of these cells to push those purchases out as far as we are, those developments out as far as we need to. We do have plenty of land purchased by 651 Mayhill, 1001 Mayhill to where we could do a makeshift entrance near the end of life for the facility that would suit our purposes. We just haven't really laid final plans to all of that yet. It seems, in my recollection, is foggy on this that we had talked about acquisition of land as a way to extend the life of the plant rather than moving those buildings. And I understand that was the narrative that was brought forward. What we've found in conversations with our engineering firm is that most of that land to the north, 651, 1001, there's floodplain considerations that will not allow for future landfill development. Thank you. Councilmember Briggs. On the, you could go forward to the, I just have a question about the price. Because here in the presentation it says $774,000 and in the backup it says $409,000. So I'm just wondering if you can explain the difference. Sure, absolutely. There's two different components. I don't have the numbers right here in front of me, but essentially there's the home chemical collection building that I'm going to talk about in just a moment. That's one aspect of the purchase. A second aspect is actually the land on which the subst ation will reside. So there's those two different parts that sum up to $775, 000. So DME purchased the land and that building? That's correct. And so now they own it? That's exactly correct. And I think what we're really here to talk about is do we want to continue with that as the case or do we want to look in terms of a refund and maybe some alternatives? Also as part of that additional purchase price, there were a number of easements for transmission purchased. We're not talking about that. That's still something, regardless of what we decide today, that we think would still be in effect. In addition to the airspace lost and the potential future revenues, there is an operational impact. I'm going to go back to this and kind of highlight where these are. By virtue of the substation being located where it was, there was also another capital project that had to be spun up. So you can see here our entrance road kind of wraps around and that's in essence, that's the only access to our site now. So there was a new entrance road being constructed here to kind of join up with Mayhill. Unfortunately, that project was too far along for us to stop. We stopped it at about $900,000 of expenditures and said, " What would it cost to reverse out of this project, go back to the way things were?" It was going to end up costing us a lot more money than what we had already put into it. And so at that stage, we said, "Let's go ahead and finish out the road construction." $1.7 million is probably a little high. I think we're going to finish up in the next couple of months with about $1.4 million in total expenditures on that. And we will have a usable entrance to the facility as well. The other operational impact is going to be the displacement of the home chemical collection operation. On this slide here, it's located right here. You can see that it was directly in the footprint of the future substation. Whenever we started digging into our capital plan, there was about a $4 to $5 million project for construction of a new facility. We've since pulled that off of the books. We feel like even if the substation remains where it is, we have other facilities on site that we could perhaps renovate and bring it to code for the home chemical collection center. So with all that taken into consideration, the operational impact, the airspace loss, solid waste approach to DME, and we really appreciate their help and cooperation on this, is we've really got kind of an imbalance here in terms of the exchange that's taking place. Can we reevaluate this? And so before I call Brent to the podium to kind of go through DME, their side of the presentation, I'll stand for any questions and just let you all know that we're hoping for an alternative solution. Council Member Gregory. Well, if you'd go back to the last slide again. Certainly. This raises another concern for me because just to the east of where all of those red lines are is the wastewater treatment plant. So my question is, if all of those become cells, 80, 90 feet tall or taller, how do you get to the wastewater treatment plant? My understanding, Nick Vinson's here. He's our project manager. My understanding is our access road that's being constructed right here, there's some drainage considerations in between our existing cell development and our future cell development that will still allow access to the wastewater facility from here. There's also access from the north if you follow this road around as well. Is that correct, Nick? Any other questions? At this time, I'll let Brent and Heath have the podium and I'll stand for any questions at the end if you have any follow ups for us. Thank you, Brent. Thank you, Ethan. Good afternoon, Mayor Pro Tempogary, Council Members. I'm Brent Heath, Executive Manager, Energy Delivery. Based upon the information that we just heard about this expansion permit, we agree with Ethan that this is definitely a topic that's worth consideration and looking at. Get back down on the correct page. So Ethan gave you a quick overview of how we got here. Some questions were asked about that. I'll do just another brief recap of a little additional information. We began a public involvement process in September of 2013 for the Mayhill substation. We met in the professional lobby building of the Denton Regional Medical Hospital, which is now Medical City Denton. We listened to citizen input and after hearing what they had to say, we consulted with the public and decided we need to go ahead and hold some additional meetings. And so we had several meetings with landowners that came to that open house and we met with city staff to discuss landfill use, other factors such as the soon to be expanded Mayhill Road project that's under construction now, and to see if there are any other municipal area needs in this area that need to be considered. And so we had representatives from Solid Waste, City Engineering, Fire Department, Real Estate. We all met with DME in the legal conference room. So we had a lot of input from various city departments. A second public open house was held in May of 2015 at the Center for the Visual Arts Building to try to finalize the exact routing of the transmission line to get up to Mayhill substation. After that public hearing, we came to city council in January of 2016 and city council selected and approved moving forward with the substation site on the landfill, which is what the citizens recommended and with the transmission path. We came back in July of 2016. Council approved via ordinance 2016-200, transfer $1.2 million for 14.511 acres, which includes the easements for the transmission line in the 6.71 acres for the substation site. >> You have a question, Brett? >> Yes. >> Go ahead. >> Go ahead? Okay. >> There's a couple of reasons that we were trying to move forward with the substation site and transmission line. There was two objectives, a primary objective, which is the transmission system. We identified some concerns of some loading conditions that we needed to go ahead and look at how do we resolve those loading conditions, the capacity of the line both now and in the future and are there diverse paths to help resolve some of those options. The secondary objective is to go ahead and enhance the distribution system and reliability for the citizens and the customers of this area, Denton, and also to serve and plan for future customer load growth. And so that would be the substation portion of that. So after we learned of the expansion permit that we just heard about from Ethan and the financial impact to the landfill operations, we looked at some alternatives. There are five different alternatives that the landfill had both on their side and other city land that we looked at to see could we move the May hill substation. And after reviewing each of those alternative sites, we determined that both from a financial and operational viewpoint that they didn't seem viable. So not constructing the Mayhill substation now, moving forward to what we're going to call a transmission line only approach. And this approach is not an approach that we would use anywhere across the city because we do have customers to serve with the substations and distribution needs. But it does resolve the transmission concerns that we identified. That still enables us to mitigate the loading conditions and the concerns that we saw. And so one of the benefits of if we move forward with this transmission line only approach is we can actually delay and defer the construction of May hill substation now for some point in the future once those customer load growths and items become needed. And so we can defer that $10 million expense to some future date. So let me talk a little bit about the transmission system and the loading concerns that we had that got us into needing to build this transmission line. Here's a system one-line transmission map of the city of Denton. You'll notice in the bottom left-hand corner is our Denton West substation, our interchange. It's actually an interchange. This is our 345KV source from Encore comes into here. It's the strongest electrical source that we have serving the entire city of Denton. So because being the strongest source, there's a lot of power that flows through that southwest corner. And I'll point on the map here where that's located. To get from the southwest corner up to the northeast corner , ARCO substation, there's really just two routes using 138KV lines. Once the 345KV steps it down, you can either go the western and northern route or the southern and the eastern route. In the way that electrical power works, there's some electrical engineering principles called voltage dividers to where actually it does split and goes both ways. One of the things that you'll notice on this map, if you look real close, it's hard to see up on the screen. It's not exactly correct, but in order for illustration purposes, it illustrates from Denton west headed eastward, there's two different lines right here. It comes down to Fort Worth substation, down to Teasley substation, and up to Pokrus substation, these two different lines. Even though some of these lines are owned by different entities such as TMPA and Encore down here at this area, ARGO, you'll notice from Pokrus up to Brinker substation, there's only one line, this red section. That's the red section below this rectangle box. This one red section is the area of concern between Pokrus substation and Brinker substation. Moving on to the system map, on the left-hand side, zooming in from Pokrus substation to Brinker to the Spencer area, this is the same red line that I just pointed out. This was the original plan to resolve not only the transmission loading concerns, but also allow for future development. The way that you alleviate the loading on this line is go ahead and do a diverse alternate path coming up around Flowers Bakery, up the backside of the mobile home park, a landfill property, Mayhill road, hit the Mayhill substation, which is the one that we're talking about, possibly not having at that location. You can take the transmission line and come on over to Br inker substation. So this is the original path that was approved for the $1.2 million transfer to solid waste back in July 2016. The transmission only approach that we're bringing forth to you today for your consideration uses this exact same transmission path right here, the exact same transmission path. It just doesn't have the Mayhill substation. So that resolves the transmission concerns, but it doesn't enable the secondary objective of future growth. We have capacity now to handle all the needs. We don't know how fast customers and growth will come there . At some point that will happen. But we can resolve the immediate concerns now and we think probably for years in the future. So the next steps that we'd like to present to you is we'd like to complete a design in easement acquisition for a new transmission only approach from Paukris to Brinker. Oops, I need to go back up here real quick. And to do that from Paukris to Brinker, that solves the first primary consideration. The future considerations for secondary was we would perform a route study for a future transmission line between Arco and Paukris. And I'll show you where that's at. And then we'll research once that line has -- route's been determined after having future public meetings where and if we need a substation, where could that be cited? So what we're talking about here is the Paukris substation in Arco. This would be a possible new transmission line route. We could utilize the existing transmission line that we're proposing up to this point. And do we veer off somehow and then come up to Arco? The advantages of doing that is it would provide a direct path from Denton West along the southern route to Paukris and allow you to come straight up to Arco, which is where the majority of the wind energy from West Texas comes in and gives it a path to come up to Arco to head east into Collin County and thereby lower and limiting the amount of power we have to carry through the middle of Denton for power that we're not consuming for our citizens here in Denton. So that's what we're proposing to look at in the future as that need arises. So I know that's a lot of information. It's not something that we really wanted to do. The Mayhill substation's a great project. It's a great location. We listen to the citizens. We put it where that was being recommended. But there are definitely concerns now on the landfill side that we need to look at. So Ethan, George, and I would be happy to answer any questions that you have. You do have some questions, Council Member Briggs. Okay. So does that qualify for reimbursement funds from, is it T ECOS or is this something? The transmission line would receive T-cost, transmission cost of service for either route. So by reducing the substation, the portion of T-cost for the substation right now, we would be deferring that to some future date. Okay. But we would still receive it for the transmission line only approach. Yes. Thank you. Any other questions? Council Member. Thank you. So did you reconcile the future cost versus the cost of loss of airspace? And what did that come to be? So your slide, I guess it was round numbers from memory. No, let me get there. The nine years, I guess you evaluated 53.4 million, right, Ethan, round numbers. So then what is the cost though to go to build a new line in the future? If you had to, I mean, because that's really the question, right? Is it worth losing the 53 million for what would be the cost for the new route in my mind? Transmission lines typically are less expensive to construct than a substation because it doesn't take as much land. It's easements. You don't typically purchase the land unless there's constraints. You do have to have a path. It does impact more people. And so there are other considerations to be factored in. But it would be very hard to approach this 53.4 million dollars for a new transmission line. So the 53.4 would definitely outweigh the cost of a transmission line. Okay. I'm just going to chime in real quick. I think Brett hit it on the head, but George Morrow, General Manager of DMA, so that green transmission line that we're going to build calling the transmission line only path, we're going to incur that cost either which way, whether we go for May Hill or whether we don't. So that's kind of a sunk cost either way. The only question would be if someday we want to do a home run shot from Pacris to Arco, which seems intriguing. I think it could bring some benefits, as Brett mentioned, to kind of take a lot of that powerful out of the central part of Denton. It's probably a 15 or 20 year out project likely. So the question becomes will that happen or not happen? And as Brett mentioned, that cost of just a transmission line would be significantly less than that 53 million, probably on the order of about 10 million. Plus we are saving the 10 million in the front end. So we kind of carry that on our books. Probably costs go up over time for construction, but just relatively nominally. And possibly that Arco line is going to be needed or could be needed anyhow. So I don't know that that would even be an additional cost. Do you agree with that one? Okay. Thank you. George, I think you have another question from Council member Briggs. So as I recall, there were other substations that were in the future. I can't remember how many, but there were several more in the plan. Are we looking at this transmission only option for any of those other ones as possibilities? You know, this is probably a more of a unique situation where that was a potential thing. Because of the primary purpose of this was the issue was to get this power flow through the city to where it's heading out east. Other substations serve much more different purposes in town. So there they're required to carry load. And if you carry load, you're going to need a substation because that's where the distribution lines tie in. So out here there are a number of adjacent substations already. You know, at some point, you know, is there going to be a need for something else? And if there are, we have some ideas, you know, Chuck, Brent and I, of where we might cite another substation. And again, that could be two decades out based on, you know , your crystal ball and when you think that growth will come to that area. You have a question from Councilmember Hussbiff and then Councilmember Gregory. Thank you. And so on that point, looking forward, is there anything done? So if we go the if we opt for the transmission line, is there anything that can be done during that installation at that if we pinpointed a future subst ation, we could do some infrastructure work in advance to kind of give us a head start on that at today's construction cost? Or is that something that just there's no real tangible value in quote unquote prepping an area? I think that is very feasible. That's what we're going to one of the things we'll be looking at. Remember, that's one of the next steps is to look at, you know, substation possibilities. Any place on that green line that was going to see if I can get this back. Anywhere on that green transmission only line that we're building might be a possible substation site that would be relatively least cost to construct. And right here at this at this bend could be a possibility because that could be a good takeoff point to eventually head east and go up to that Ar co substation site. And when we bring that line down, we're going to have to tie it in. And the way we would tie it in is either a substation or what's called a switching station. Substation if we actually need to reduce voltage and serve load. Switching station if we just need to control electrons and the path going to the to the north. So, so yes. And I think Brent also mentioned I could put him back up here. I don't see it. Where's the, let's see. Must be another map I don't have here. But you know, along that Arco line going to the north, if and when that was built, could be another location. It could get us a little closer to the actual low growth further east. From May Hill there still could be quite a long run to get around the landfill site to serve load in that rear area to the east of the landfill. If that does develop and grow to the east and south and to the north. So anywhere along that transmission line could work. I think it actually shows better on the screen there than it does here. It's really hard to see on this screen. But you can see some yellow hatched area along the eastern edge of the city of Denton landfill property. It doesn't show. It's really hard to see here. Glad y'all can see better up there. So anywhere from this location, Councilman Husspeth, all the way down, this would be where we would go ahead and build that that could be used for both options in the future that we could then come back around depending on how the ultimate route is decided after having public involvement meetings to solicit input and come up with the best solution. Then once we have that tied down, we can look for a subst ation site somewhere along that route. Thank you. Councilmember Gregory. Thank you. So I'm understanding from the presentation what we lose in terms of assets for the landfill by going forward with the Mayhill substation at this time. What I don't understand is what we lose by not doing the Mayhill substation at this time. What was the Mayhill substation? What benefits was it giving us that we are not going to have now that it's not there? We have several large customers presently in the southeast Denton area. We have the hospital, Denton Regional Medical Center. We have FEMA. We have the commercial development around 288. There is some fairly large vacant land here that's going to be in the west side of the new Mayhill Road that's undeveloped. That will develop at some point, whether it's now or whether it's 10, 20 years down the road, we don't know. With the new Mayhill Road widening, that may bring more commercial development. So presently we have the industrial substation, the Woodrow substation, and the Pocress that can serve in this area. We do have the ARCO in Cooper Creek that we do come down to the wastewater treatment plant over here. You can see it. So we have dual feeds into it in order to make sure it stays up should we have an issue or a fault. So it just prevents future growth right now. We do have the capability to serve loads now and really for the next decade or so. But after that, we'll have to see how development improves. So that's what we're losing is just not getting it there ready for when that comes. Thank you. I don't see any other questions. Okay, so you need direction from us. So we're just looking for direction from here in this. If y'all believe it's worth moving forward with the transmission only approach and not build Mayhill substation, we will still pursue the transmission only option. The same route is what we already have the majority of it being on the landfill property with easements already acquired. There is one section I do need to point out to council here on Spencer Road after this is the Spencer Road area, Lowe's and Roses will be over here. And so this is the one section that we do not have eas ements acquired, but the proposed solution is to move forward with the city of Denton approved mobility plan for when Spencer Road widens, just a matter of when that happens in order to allow that transmission section to be constructed right there. Council direction. Good. Move forward. Yeah, I'm for moving forward, but I would like a timeline that flows with the next steps, right? So I don't want to get too out of sync with those next. You mean with the transmission only option? Yes, I'd like to move forward the transmission only section with the caveat that the substation be identified timely so that we can do whatever prepping or just kind of slow. That's a good point. I took away something different, which was that the new substation was needed maybe 15 years out. So what is the actual timeframe for it? It doesn't mean that we would have to build one now. If we do identify a spot, it's always better to have a site selected approved and going through that entire process, as you can tell, takes years to do. Right. And then it can just be set in there waiting for the need. So we'll begin the investigations and research and come back to you all. Okay, anybody else? I don't hear from council members Duff or Gregory. I'll take that as a yes. Moving forward with the transmission only option. Okay. Thank you very much. Appreciate your time. Thank you. Next item up is item C, Receiver Report Holder Discussion and Provide Staff Direction Regarding an Update to the Existing DME Energy Risk Management Policy . We have Mr. Morrow. I'm back and I'm warmed up. So hopefully that will help. So George Morrow, General Manager of DME. Here today, as I promised not long after I first arrived in Denton, to come back to you with an update of the Energy Risk Management Policy. You first adopted an Energy Risk Management Policy back in 2014, about six months in advance of us starting up the EMO, our trading operation. And well, over that four years, things have changed organizationally. We did get a very nice study by Deloitte that we want to implement their recommendations. And there's a few lessons learned that could be incorporated. In fact, we have incorporated those. As background, Risk Management Policy, it provides some structure, guidance, and oversight for our energy management program so that we know where the boundaries are and who has what authorities and those types of things. So that's absolutely critical when you look at how much the energy management piece of our business is, probably on the order of 50% of our budget or more, relates to purchase power. So two types of activities, more real time, where we're basically trying to manage and balance our load with our resources. So we buy and sell to make that balance. With new renewables coming on board, that will be a little more interesting. And we'll have more opportunities to buy and sell because renewables are going to operate when they operate. You know, solar is going to operate when the sun is shining and there's nothing impacting that. Same with wind. Wind is actually tremendously flexible. Our loads, a little more predictable, and we'll have to try to match that up and do the hedging and buying and selling that we need to do. Longer term, it's the acquire new resources, kind of like we're doing with the renewable resource plan on a longer term basis. And managing our demand side programs and those types of things. And ensuring that we have lots of parties that we can do business with. And probably over the next year or so, we'll be bringing back to you a number of different new agreements with counterparties so that we have additional flexibility to buy and sell. So three pieces to the EMO today. There's the front office, which is basically the trading operation, the real time, you know, market balancing piece. There's the middle office, which is sort of like our traffic cop, basically. It provides an independent review of what's going on. All the different transactions that we do, ensuring that they comply with our policy and that we're dealing with proper parties, counterparties that have, you know, appropriate risk profiles. And lastly, our back office, which does the settlements and billing and contract administration. That organization looks like this. There's actually quite a few folks involved here. Key players in the front office, the market operations manager, energy analytics manager, which is sort of our planning, resource planning manager. The middle office will be our compliance manager. And back office, the chief individuals are settlements and rates administrator that today reports to me. I'm showing this because I want to introduce a gentleman to you who helped put together the revised risk management policy. His name is Phil DiPastina, and Phil's got a lot of highly acclaimed background. I was amazed when I came to DME and I asked him for his resume, and I said, "Whoa!" So he set up and oversaw the front, middle, and back office at one point in time for Pacific Gas and Electric Company, the largest electric utility in the country, back in my neighborhood. And he also did similar work for ERCOT for a number of years, implementing their risk management program as ERCOT got into the market design stuff. So I think we're fortunate to have Phil here, and I was going to turn over the presentation to him and let him talk about a little bit about the changes that we did, just give you a high-level review of those things. And of course, we're here today asking for your input and hopefully your support for updating this policy. So Phil, thank you for coming out of the office and doing this. >> Sure. >> All right. Here's your piece of it. >> Did I build you up enough? You going to be okay? >> Yeah. >> All right. Thank you. My name is Philip DiPastina. I'm the Senior Risk Control Analyst for DME. You're supposed to go through these slides. >> Yeah, I'm back up one. That thing's really sensitive. I mess it up several times. >> Okay. As George should have said, this policy -- >> It's very humble. We're going to -- our plan is to update this risk policy in kind of two phases. One is to capture the high priority items that Deloitte pointed out to us and the easy to implement things. And then come back later this year with the really tough questions. We've restructured the risk oversight function. We had two committees. We've consolidated to one committee. Mostly for the most part, it's the same people, but we've added voting procedures and made it -- try to make it a little more formal. We've added a chairman and added the city auditor as a non- voting member. >> Mr. DiPastina, you have a question from Council Member Briggs. >> Do these meetings follow open meetings? Like will they be posted with agenda? >> We'll get to that in a moment. They're not open to the public, but our plan is to -- one of the improvements is we're planning to take formal minutes of the meetings and send both those minutes and the meeting materials to the council and the PUB. >> I have a follow-up question. So in the prior incarnation of this committee or one of the committees, was the PUB chair or designee involved? >> Yes. >> And were the city auditor or legal involved as non-v oting members? >> We did distinguish between voting and non-voting. We didn't have a city auditor when we first implemented this policy. >> But legal was involved before? >> Legal has always been involved, yes. >> One more follow-up for you. >> Is this committee created by council ordinance? >> By your adoption of the policy? >> Oh, it's in this -- >> It's in the policy and the council adopted an ordinance that adopted the policy. >> Okay. Okay. Thank you. >> Okay. >> I think it was adopted in 2014, so in close session. >> Right, right. That was the -- >> Right. >> Ordinance. And I think at the time, only Councilman Gregory was here when that ordinance was adopted. Just hitting some of the highlights of the changes to this risk policy, we've tried to clarify that the goals of this program are to -- as a -- to provide guidelines for the CMO, the goals are to purchase -- thank you -- perform short-term market transactions to help us -- allow us to integrate renewable resources into the portfolio. And then the second purpose for the risk policy is to control the risks that are associated with those market transactions. As I've already mentioned, well, another new feature of the policy is we're planning to come back to the council annually for reauthorization of the policy, similar to what we do with the city investment policy, which we come back every year to get reapproved. We've already talked about the organizational structure that we've made some changes on. >> You do have a question from Councilwoman Briggs? >> Yes. >> So I had someone from the community reach out and ask me a question about this committee. Would this be like, say, when you talk about risk in renew ables and integrating renewables, when to do what? Would something like putting a restriction on the deck not operating during certain bad ozone days, would that be something that this committee would discuss or do? >> No. >> No? Okay. >> Mr. Moro, can you just kind of follow up with that as far as why the committee couldn't do that? >> I imagine they could, but that's normally from -- you know, I've been involved in a number of risk management committees over time, and that -- you know, if there's a limitation to operating a power plant, you know, could be a lot of different types of limitations. You know, that -- we'll have to comply with that as we evaluate our resources and what our needs are and, you know, for fuel and all those kinds of things. But I don't know that this group would -- would, outside of the restrictions that we already have from environmental regulators, change or do something different than that. However, notwithstanding, if the council wanted us to look at something, if that came from the council and asked us to review that and come back with some feedback, absolutely, we could do that part. >> Okay. >> I think it's not our normal practice to look at those kinds of what-if scenarios. >> Thank you for clarifying that. >> Yes. >> Okay. >> Because market prices change -- the price for short-term energy changes on a daily or even an hourly basis, it's not really practical for us to execute these short-term transactions through a formal RFP process. So our approach instead is to develop a number of relationships with counterparties, energy brokers and commodity exchanges to ensure that we're getting the most competitive price for the power that we either have to buy or sell. And currently, we've got those kind of relationships with about 25 different parties. And our goal is to significantly increase that as we go forward. As far as risk reporting goes, as I already mentioned, our goal is to increase the communication with the city council and in addition to the additional documentation that we're going to be sending to you after we have our -- plan to have at this time quarterly at least risk committee meetings, we're also planning to come to you periodically and provide overview of current market conditions and even commodity trading best practices so you understand not only what the EMO is doing but why it's doing it as we go forward. In appendix A, we've added additional detail on the risk exposure and our transaction limits including even a list of the reports that we're planning to use to monitor the EMO performance. And these are -- we're working on the details of how those reports are defined and we'll come back to you in the second phase later in the year and get your input and approval for those as well as talk to you about some of those tougher questions like what exactly is our appetite for risk when it comes to controlling our costs. And the trade-offs between trying to manage -- ensure stable rates when prices are going up and keeping our rates competitive when prices are going down. Those are admittedly going to be the hardest questions to answer and we're planning to come back to you and discuss those with you later in the year. As we've already mentioned, appendix C just updates the existing organizational structure of the EMO. Appendix D, we've added more detail on the types of transactions that the EMO is authorized to use in trying to hedge its costs. We've talked about our phase two which are the next questions we're going to come back to you and discuss, the greater details of the report. I want to mention that the recommendations that we got from Deloitte included about 60 recommendations, high, medium and low. Included in the attachments of the package you have is not only the updated risk policy but a table showing what all those recommendations are and I've tried to include where -- a column showing where in the policy those recommendations were trying to implement and an idea of the schedule for implementing them. So I'm happy to answer questions about the Deloitte recommendations or any questions you have about the risk policy. >> Phil worked hand in hand with enterprise risk consultants that came in and talked to you about the renewable resource plan. They have a lot of risk background and Phil and ERC worked together and we'll have ERC leading some future conversations with the PUB and council about this risk appetite question which I think is interesting. I have my perception and what I've been successful with for 25 years but I think it's your job also to provide some direction in that regard. Back to the question. >> Council direction. Councilmember Ryan. >> Thank you. Just a quick question on -- because I want to look at this. This is an update of what was done in closed session 2014 so we have -- we've now increased that transparency. Is that correct? >> That's a good point and we should have acknowledged that . We haven't quite opened up the old policy yet because you sealed it through that ordinance that was approved back in 2014 but our recommendation that we would be bringing forward to you is to certainly open this one up since you see what we did with it. We're trying to be as transparent as possible. I think that's our current strategy and approach. I don't see any harm in being transparent at this point in time and I think we'll -- working with legal we'll look at bringing -- opening up what we did back in 2014 also. >> I know I'd ask for an item on an agenda in the future and I was told that this meeting was coming forward to be able to release that if there's certain items in there that need to be redacted we can handle that. I'm happy to see that we're moving forward with opening this up and creating more transparency. I like the direction this is all going and I recommend that we move forward with it. >> All right. >> Councilmember Gregory. >> So the major changes are separating the functions into those front office, middle office and back office and changing the composition of the committee. Is that correct? >> That's correct and formalizing the communications with our governing bodies, making sure that we do that regularly through reporting as Phil mentioned what's going on at the risk management committee. Though some of those minutes might be summary minutes. I don't want to say that we'll have every -- there would be high level minutes because a lot of them touch on strategy for future procurement and those types of things which we want to be sensitive to because other parties out there really don't share their information with us and so we just want to be careful. >> So do you think that the changes will allow us to either -- what impact does it have on the staffing? Will we stay at the same level? Will we increase, decrease? >> Currently we're proposing to stay at the same level. >> Okay. >> And, you know, I'm still relatively new here so I can still make mistakes, right? No, never mind. >> You can make mistakes after you've been here nine years. >> I can't do it. So we're intending to -- I don't know where I was going to go with that. But -- >> But right now you're saying that we'll stay at the same staffing level. >> We'll stay at the same staffing but I'm evaluating all the staff of DME and over time, you know, I get a little more time in the saddle. That's what I meant to say. Then I'll be coming back and proposing some things to the city manager's office. >> Well, Mayor Pro Tem, I think we should give direction to move forward with this recommendation. >> Okay, we'll bring that back to you. A couple of meetings down the road. >> Councilmember Briggs. >> Yeah, I agree. And I want to thank DME and management for bringing this up and allowing it to be open. This of course all happened before I even got on council and I was unaware of a lot of it even as a council member. So thank you. >> Okay. So I think we have direction. I would just like to add that regarding the comment that Councilwoman Briggs made earlier about the ozone standards, I would like to see some type of inquiry into that. My assumption is that since we're 100% renewable city that we would like to maintain compliance with the national ambient air quality standards which means that we would have ozone levels never exceeding 70 parts per billion. We're regularly at 80 parts per billion on our three-year average. So I would say we could have a discussion in the context of the risk analysis because obviously the highest prices are probably going to come at the 80 part per billion times. But I'd like to expand the scope of our policy to include at least a discussion about, you know, what exactly is our position in terms of if air quality is very bad, what is our action plan for the deck? >> Okay. But I'll open that suggestion up to others. >> I have a question. Do we have -- my understanding is we don't have control of when it fires up. Am I missing it? >> No. But if we -- just for -- if we had direction, you know, I mean, that's your -- and the citizens generating unit, if we had direction on any given day or week or month not to operate it, you know, I mean, we could do that. Or we can operate it at some level. But right now the plan is we would turn it over to air cot every day. We would show what our cost profile is. And they would match that up with the market and tell us that unit's needed. And for this summer, it's going to be extremely needed. We're getting a great deal of acclaim basically from folks around the state, the reliability folks, the air cots, the TPUC, the governor's office and so forth who are concerned about this summer. We're into a little mini energy crisis that they're really, really happy that Denton stepped out and did this. So for what it's worth. >> So if I understood you correctly, right now, air cot is in charge of the deck because that's our policy. But if our policy were to change, we could limit the amount of times that air cot could have access to deck. >> Correct. >> Well, that's new. Okay. Great. Yes, Councilmember -- >> Not that we're encouraging that, but that's -- >> Sure. That's fine. Yeah. >> I think it's a good discussion to have. I think that, you know, as we have it, we want to bring back the scientific information that we've heard earlier that suggested, if I remember correctly, that emissions that are produced take several hours before there's a chemical reaction that turns those emissions into ozone. >> Ozone. >> And so it may be that -- so that that information is important when making those determinations because it may be that those emissions don't have any impact on the ozone because of the way that the chemistry works. >> Yeah. I tend to concur. It will be extremely complex algorithm or analysis, but we 'd be at the direction of the council. We'd be happy to look at that. >> Councilmember Duff. >> I don't know. You might want to just give just kind of a potential of what the revenue coming in to deck will be. And, of course, we don't know exactly what the scenarios are going to be, but I think you have a pretty good idea of how much revenue actually we can have coming in per hour, you know, if we end up with 150 or $200 a megawatt hour. >> Yeah. I'll tiptoe around that a little bit. >> I know you do. >> If I want to. You know, there will be times this summer where our revenue will be four or five times our cost. So that would be, you know, 400 or 500%. >> Posting alert. >> We're going off posting and starting to talk about the E EC and specific -- >> Got it. >> -- not the policy as we've been discussing over the last 30 minutes. >> Got it. Thank you for that. >> Okay. So I think we have direction. I concur with Councilmember Gregory's statement that we probably need a science mind on there, maybe Dr. Banks or his heir equivalent just to have that discussion. So yeah. >> Okay. >> Okay. >> Thank you again. >> Thank you. >> Our next item is item D, which is the ethics ordinance discussion with Alan. If it's all right with everybody, I'd like to take just a five-minute break and then we can reconvene. All right. We're back from our break. It's 2.47. We're going to start with item -- work session item D, receive a report and hold a discussion and give staff direction regarding an ethics ordinance from Attorney Alan Borquist. >> Mayor Pro Tem, Council, happy to be back here for another work session. At first we'll cover some of the main changes that were made to the ordinance in response to the feedback we received at the last public hearing. We're juggling a few drafts here. These comments are based on draft D, which is changes from draft C. C is what we had the public hearing on. Since I submitted this PowerPoint, I've also been going back and forth responding to some comments raised by certain council members, the public, staff, and so once we get through the PowerPoint, we'll have additional changes to discuss in draft F, which you've been giving a hard copy of. The first change is regarding to mandates and the annual disclosure form. At one of the public hearings, it was brought up that we should have city officials disclose the actual names of persons with whom they are in various types of partnerships with, and we added that, but then it came out at the last public hearing that we need to refine that a little bit more. The language replies that when there's a pending matter before the city and the city official knows that someone that they are a partner with has an interest in that pending matter, the city official has a duty to disclose that information at that point. And so it's slightly different. Remember this disclosure rule is mandatory separate and apart from your other rule regarding conflicting interests. So even if you do not have an interest in this matter that 's pending before the city, if one of your other business partners would, that would trigger this new requirement to disclose that information. Moving on, when we get to conflicts of interest, there was some discussion at the last work session and public hearing regarding how do you know if someone has received a certain amount of income from a business entity that has a pending matter before the city. And so I added language to the most recent draft that ties it to some sort of reporting form. If you recall, we chose the $600 threshold because that's what would trigger an entity to issue a 1099 to an independent contractor. That's where the $600 came from. But we're broadening this broader than just that 1099 independent contractor income to other types of tax forms, reporting forms could be used to document that threshold $600 of income. You have a question. Council Member Driggs. So under this section, under conflicts of interest though, deliberations, if you've removed yourself, you're still not allowed to deliberate with staff or deliberate with council if you've been, if you've recused yourself from an item. That is correct. Yes. Okay. We will get to a section later where we discuss whether or not communications with staff can occur on projects and that's regarding the abilities of former city officials to talk about non discretionary ministerial permits and approvals. So there may be some confusion on those points. Council Member Gregory. Thank you. It seems that when we were discussing deliberations at one point, we wanted to memorialize what our current policies are our current way of doing things is about stepping back from deliberations. I thought that we said at our last meeting, however, that that that recusal from deliberations would not include a council member asking simply staff member an informational question is that because if the council member just, for example, needed to ask a question to clarify something for a citizen that's wanting to know something is the is the council member not even allowed to ask a question about an issue that they are recused from deliberating on. I think we should discuss that it wasn't clear to me that that sort of clarification needed to make it into the next draft. If that's something that we need to do, then please. Well, it could be discussed. We didn't agree to it. I just couldn't remember from my vantage point. I'm often looking for consensus points. And when I spot those, that's what typically appears in the next draft. If I don't see a broader support on the council, I don't necessarily put every idea into a future draft. And so that's an omission on my part. If it's something that I missed, then let's take the opportunity to go through it. Councilmember Briggs. In response to that, I think the consensus came from the discussion of a council member and ex council member who needed to go and talk to staff after for like a permit or something I don't. Yeah, I don't recall us talking about a council member that 's been recused that has already recused themselves being able to approach staff on that topic. Okay. If I could follow up. My understanding was that we had a different discussion on representation of others after a person is off council. And that that and I didn't see it in here, but I thought that we had come to an agreement that that while a person after they're off council could not appear before a body that had discretionary responsibilities, that a former council member or board member could appear before staff in regular ministerial activities, for example, pulling permits or getting clarification like that is, is that what this is? It is. And we're going back and forth between those which is fine with me when it gets to the the prohibition on a former city official representing another party for compensation, we're adding language that ties it to advocating or lobbying for discretionary approvals, not routine ministerial functions. For example, someone has raised in the dialogue, the issue of a fence permit. Well, it's it's normally going to be my position that if someone comes in and applies for a fence permit, and the ordinance says they meet those standards, then they're entitled to that fence permit. It's a ministerial act to issue it to them. It's not a discretionary act, the city council gets to debate and make policy decisions on. And so I understood that's where we wanted to go. Right. And I'll try to craft that sort of language. Thank you for that. Does that clarify the issue? Okay. We also clarify that that the prohibition on the representation of others dealt with appearing before boards and commissions, generally speaking . Covered that part. I added some some additional language in regards to the to clarify the city attorney's role and the special counsel's role. It's obvious we should anticipate that the city attorney's office would not just be advising the Board of Ethics, they probably would be providing guidance to the city auditor as they would in routine matters. But then I also want to make sure you know, I don't think it has to be stated in the code and this is my addition. I really think we should go ahead and memorialize that the city attorney's office is going to exercise its own discretion in deciding when it can be involved in an ethics complaint and when its own professional responsibility requires them to recuse themselves. And by giving your city attorney that discretion, they can then trigger the special counsel role in those situations. I liked seeing that language. When I read it, one of the things that I interpreted from it is that if there was an item that appeared in the Friday agenda or the agenda that's posted on Friday that caused me concern that I might be in a conflict. But I wasn't sure. And I didn't have time to go to the Ethics Commission or the panel for a formal opinion that I would have an opportunity to at least seek some guidance from the city attorney. This, the way I'm reading this, that would allow for me to do that. It might not provide me cover if a complaint came and the ethics committee, ethics board decided otherwise, but that that would allow an exchange between a council member or a board member and a city attorney regarding to clarify whether or not it appears that there's a conflict or not. You're correct. It would allow that exchange to take place. You're correct that it would not provide the affirmative defense that an advisory opinion would provide, but it at least opens that door. And then finally, it leaves the discretion on where that conversation goes, where I think it already is and where it belongs, which is with your city attorney's office. Because each lawyer that's employed by the city has their own professional responsibility to maintain their law license depends on it. They're the ones that'll exercise the judgment how far they can go in providing guidance to a city official. Thank you. Some further clarification regarding the board of ethics. We had provided that there would be alternates, particularly important since there's a super majority requirement on certain matters. We never said how many. I threw out the number three, that seemed an appropriate number to me. We have term limits, but a question often arises, well, once somebody's been off the board of ethics, could they ever get back on? What if the council thinks they were an outstanding board member, but they rotated off? And so what I often see in dealing with boards and commissions is sort of a one year waiting period before they're eligible again. So that's what I have suggested. Last time around, there were some questions. I had added a provision to the board of ethics provisions, allowing for the city council to remove a board member for cause. And I was asked to put a little more meat on that bone. And so I borrowed some language from other municipal state statutes that deal with removal for cause being things such as neglect of duty and competence, gross ignorance, inability, or unfitness for duty or disregard of the law. In this case, narrowing it down to the city's code of ordin ances. So I would suggest that that would provide ample guidance to the city council for the removal clauses. And then I was asked last time to clarify that the sanctions would be done by a simple majority vote, which was always the intention, but that clarifying language. And there were a couple more boards that needed to be added to the list in that section, board of ethics, the planning and zoning commission, public utilities board. And I also have since then received some questions regarding the historic landmark commission, if that is also a board that should be added to the list of city officials. And we're kind of at the end of that. So I'm sorry. Council member Gregory has a comment. What I've learned in talking to lawyers is nothing's ever simple as it says. And so when it says simple majority vote, is that a majority of the entire ethics board or is that a majority of those present, those present and voting? Does it? Does it? I think that phrase would be interpreted. Okay. Do we need more specificity or do you want to specify a majority of the entire board? If that's what we mean, I think that's what we ought to write down. Okay. That's just me. I'm fine with that addition. Okay. So that includes, that concludes my prepared remarks on the original changes I made from the last public hearing. If it's okay, we can now transition to draft F, which you 've been given a handout of. And your Stiller City staff has already put that on the screen, even though it was written about an hour ago, an hour and a half ago. I will scan to the red line portions. We added, and I'm sorry for the numbering confusion, but your city staff was very helpful in taking, I had originally started drafting this ordinance just using an unused section of your code that I thought made sense. Some other numbers have been assigned to it, so they're slightly different numbers than in previous drafts. But the format and layout is exactly the same. The order and sequence is exactly the same. So hopefully it's not too confusing. And looking at the section regarding applicability, we had added that the complainants themselves are covered under our code, which is true. But the question was raised to me is, shouldn't we clarify that further to the extent that they are covered? And so first of all, procedurally, they must comply with the code of ordinances procedures for how they file complaints. But they also themselves are subject to finding against them for submitting a frivolous complaint. So I added that language. I apologize for some of the glitches in the drafts. I don't have an explanation for how they happened. But we are going for a one year term for there being someone classified as a former city official and then also things such as the prohibition on revolving door and representation of others. That's to be consistent throughout the code. And it was in some versions and not others. And I apologize for that inconvenience. Here is a discussion point for the council. It's under the prohibition on the representation of others regarding former city officials. And I know that Councilman Hutsmith brought this up. And I apologize for not having included it in previous drafts. I didn't do that for two reasons. Number one, I didn't sense a consensus for that. My own sort of perception of broad support. I also thought that perhaps our clarifications regarding what this really applies to lobbying, advocating for discretionary permits, I thought that would clean it up some. But I wanted to make sure that we did address this in respect for Councilman Hutsmith, which was this notion that perhaps there should be an exception for a former city official who has some sort of expertise or specialized knowledge and is employed by or owns a small business where there is nobody else in that shop who could come and for compensation represent somebody before City Hall. And so if that's something that Councilman Hutsmith wants to discuss, I'll let him explain it further. If he thinks the changes we've already made covered it, then it may not be necessary. But I wanted to have that discussion. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, no, I think it's absolutely paramount. I like the language that you've crafted and I'll give you a simple example. Gokie Poole's, it's father, son, it's all family run. And so if they were to come before, if they were to serve and then come before the city or get caught up in any capacity, there is no one else that would step up that's in a ownership management type role. Everyone would be disqualified because of their family relations. And so it's different when you're talking about a corporation or a company where everyone's not related. But if everyone's related to a certain degree, then everyone gets disqualified, who then is able to conduct the business for them? Council Member Briggs. To my understanding, it was just the person that was the council. So in that instance, say whomever was on council, if it was the father, then the son could still come and represent that business. It's only preventing that one person. And say, I think you even brought up the comment that if somebody is on a two-year term, then they would have to have somebody else if they had a business transaction, they would have to have someone else come and present their needs anyway. That was just my understanding of this exemption was that it would only pertain to the actual member of council who served, not to their families. Yes. Is that correct? The language that has already in the draft was this prohib ition solely applies to the former city official and shall not be construed to apply to other persons. And the intention of that was to allow anybody else in that office in that business to come and advocate on behalf of a paying client, just not the former city official. So like an employee or a spouse or someone else. I believe that the examples that came up were an architectural firm. Well, if an architect serves on city council, rotates off for a year, they're not allowed to be paid to come and advocate for or against some sort of discretionary decision at city council. But their partner, the architect in the office next door could come and do so. Yes, member Ryan, oh, I'm sorry, we're finished. Yeah, that was going to be what I was going to talk about was brought up architects, we brought up engineers that have one or two person shop that you're effectively saying you can't do your business if your business may have to come before the city. And just trying to fine tune that so that it's not too large of an exception. But yet, we're not putting someone keeping someone from being able to do business. I don't know if adding something that is a continuation of business that they were on that they had prior to being on council. So it's not starting up a new business. If you start a new business right after you get off of a border commission, that you've got that prohibition for that but not the continuation of something you already do. Councilmember breaks. The way that it's written, I feel it might create a bigger exemption or it might create some issues. The way that it is currently written. Well, let me chime in real quick. So the exception to the article when the former city officials employed by or owns a small business and is the sole source of specialized knowledge or expertise necessary within that small business. And that knowledge or expertise is necessary to transact business with the city. So essentially, this is saying that a spokesperson couldn't go up and speak on behalf of a business because that happens quite a bit. I'm just trying to clarify. I mean, wouldn't just having a spokesperson take care of this? And maybe I'm just not sounding it out right in my head but for example, even if you continue with the architect's firm, if everyone is related, I know it only relates to the individual that served but that individual rolls off council, another family member then carries the torch. I'm tracking with you but then if something rolls around that only this family member handles, I don't understand the fix for that. I don't understand if everyone's related. And again, I don't see the harm, I guess, in the language. It's very-- it's fairly thinly tailored to capture and express issue that may arise but I just don't-- I don't see this gaping hole in-- I mean, again, I guess-- and I'll tell you, I'll back up. At the end of the story, it's a letter that you're going to get, really. I mean, you're not putting anyone off council. It's not punitive in any way. And so even if it's some giant gaping hole, the-- at the end of the day, it's a letter someone's going to receive that says, "Hey, we're upset." But ultimately, power of the falls to the citizens where it should be. And so I don't see a problem with this language because it is thinly tailored to small businesses and to a specific event and it's tailored to doing business , not anything kind of outside of that scope. Okay, any other comments about this particular edition? Yes, Councilmember Gregory. I'm comfortable with it. I don't have a lot of heartburn one way or the other but I 'm comfortable with it because one of the things that I'm looking for as we go through this is that we do not create an ethics ordinance that causes individuals in town who are small business owners from feeling like they cannot serve on council because it would be too costly to them even when they get off council that they weren't able to do their business. And I don't want to-- I don't want to craft an ordinance that discourages small business owners from serving on council. And I think that this helps to relieve some of that concern . Okay, anybody else? Councilmember Ryan. I think because it's got the language of the sole source of specialized knowledge or expertise that that makes me comfortable with it. You know, I hate to open up a bigger pot on this whole thing but is it something that we need to even look at differing levels that council, former council is held to one standard or former P&Z or maybe council and P&Z are in this pot and PUB is in a different pot and because one of my concerns is we look at this as the other boards do not have the recusal and obligations in the conflict of interest that they would fall to the state level and that yes they are advisory but even the boards that we're putting under this do more advising to us than what they do actual final decisions. And you know from that standpoint that I almost feel like all boards need to have that fall under that conflict of interest, you know, recusal position that we have that the year after only hits council and maybe P&Z and that would eliminate some of these items that would make it a smaller pool that's going to be affected by this. Question for Alan following up with that isn't this provision well aren't our conflict of interest provisions specifically for council members and those specified boards? Yes. So it wouldn't just be a city council member here it would be a city official and one of the board members but you're saying that it should be all of the boards? Well I'm saying not for former city officials we almost need to create a new category for our other boards so that they are following the basic principle of the conflict of interest. Because right now if they're on the library board or you know animal shelter board they're not going to they have no reason to recuse themselves unless they get up to the state standard. And so I'm just saying that the recusal part might need to affect all boards. The former city official might only affect council members or council and P&Z you know that each level of this this code might affect different subsets or different boards and commissions. Councilmember Gregory. Could we I think you make a good point but I think we ought to just answer this question as to whether or not we want this last sentence in there or not. What page are you on Alan? Is it 12? It is on page. Or what section number I should say? It's 113. I'm sorry it's been renamed. 273. 273. Is it under representation of others? And I'll say this is this was not my idea but this is my wording and the wording was my effort to try and draft something that's fairly narrowly tailored but gives effect to Councilman Huntsman's concept. The way I can imagine this playing out is if a former city official as we've currently defined it comes in and does some sort of advocacy representation on an issue someone files an ethics complaint against them. On the face of it it looks valid if you assume all the facts are true it then goes through the Board of Ethics process a hearing is convened and at that point the accused has an opportunity to tell the Board of Ethics yes I did this but I did it under this exception because what I know or am capable of talking about and explaining I 'm the only person in my shop that can do it. And at that point the Board of Ethics decides do they believe the person or not, do they think it constitutes a violation or not. That's the way this would play out if this sort of language were left in the draft. Councilmember Briggs. So does this apply to presenting to boards and to lobbying staff or talking to staff about the issue because I heard a citizen comment that being in the open talking to the boards isn't a big of an issue as a formal council person going into the planning department or I mean not just for like a permit or anything but for other I mean does this give the exception to what was stated just previously before or is it just to publicly comment. It's to boards and commissions. Okay. So they would still not be allowed to lobby or talk to staff in a private closed door session. There's no prohibition on them doing that conversation. The prohibition on talking directly to staff is under the conflict of interest rule for any city official that has a conflicting interest. My understanding was that when it came to the representation for compensation by former city officials that was limited to discretionary issues before boards and commissions. Is that is that a mistake? Are you on this point? Okay. It's an interesting point that councilmember Briggs brings up and I don't think that this prohibits what you're talking about. I think that what you're talking about assumes that a former council member has some type of special influence when they come to City Hall to talk about an issue or to work with a staff member on something. I'm not experienced that. In fact, as a sitting council member, I don't experience that. As a city council member, I probably get the same kind of notices from the department formerly known as code enforcement as my neighbors get. They drove down the alley and they measured all of the trees that were too low and all of us that had trees that were too low got the same notice, including me. I understand that there's that perception. I just don't think it's a reality in terms of especially a former council member having some type of special persuasion skills with staff members. I don't see that as a problem. It's not a problem that I've heard of anybody and nobody's come and complained about this happened and I suppose we could suggest all kinds of potentials, but at this particular point, since it's not been a problem, I'm not interested in going there. I think Councilman Gregory makes a good point for discussion because on this very issue, we've sort of gone back and forth a few times. You've seen some draft language going back and forth. You've gotten some feedback from your constituents. Is it fair just to ask you at this point in time, what does the City Council want in the ethics ordinance? Do you want to restrict former city officials from accepting compensation for a project and coming into City Hall for a year and talking to city staff? We have at least one, two. Here's, I'll chime in. First of all, appreciate your crafting of this language. I think it's superfluous because the only person that it would apply to would be a city official and in any small business, you have to have other people who can, every small business that I've ever encountered, everybody wears all the hats and everybody needs to be able to step in to different roles. Maybe there's other scenarios. I'm sure there are, but I see this as a non-necessary provision and it's not just that the only thing that comes out of it is a piece of paper that's really missing the forest for the trees. The forest here is the idea of improper influence and that 's what this is designed to prevent. It's the behavior that it's designed to explain to the public that we don't like. To Council Member Gregory's point about discouraging people from running, I think the thing that discourages people from running, if you're a small business owner, I can speak for myself, is the hours. It's 20 hours of work and it takes away from your business and you get paid $750 a month and that's not feasible. This is a non-issue as far as I'm concerned. You're either able to run for office and do something essentially as volunteer work or you're not. I would just count that year afterwards as a part of your official duties because the perception and the office is more important than the ability for you to get up there in lieu of your brother, in lieu of a business partner. Those things are so grossly outweighed. One of them is so incredibly important and the other one is pecuniary and petty in my mind. That's my two cents on that. But I'd also say that when you say everybody wears all the different hats, that's not always necessarily the case. You can have a sole proprietor who is an LLC that is the only person in that business. So that person then has to turn it down. That might be the fine tune that it has to be a business smaller than so many people, but I think the sole source of specialized knowledge or expertise narrows that down to the point that we've kind of hit that point. Well, I have a question about that because when we do sole source, for instance, procurement, that's determined by our city attorney's office. So who is it that's determining what a sole source of information or specialized knowledge is in this context? I think I'll use Alan's example. It would be the ethics commission and that's their job. That's what they do. Well, Alan said it was after the fact. So this would act as a defense if I understood you correctly. Or would they go to the ethics commission before? They would go to the ethics commission if a complaint was filed and before the ethics commission, after it's already been done, they would be saying, I should not be punished under this ordinance because I meet this exception. And so yes, I think you're right to characterize it as a type of defense. And under this wording, it would be the board of ethics that makes that decision. Well, we have three in favor of this language, it sounds like. Councilmember Duff? I tend to agree with you, Ms. Gary. Sometimes we agree. I kind of tend to agree with you. I don't see that this makes a whole lot of difference one way or the other to put this language in. I'm okay with it. You're going to have to help my lawyer brain with that direction. So is that... Well, is that you're basically essentially okay with this language is what I'm hearing. Yeah, I'm okay with that language. I'm not sure that it's really necessary, but I'm okay with it. Okay. So I think it's going to stay in there against my profound objection. I am not for it either. Sorry. I think it's... Yeah, go ahead. Can you define what a small business is in this instance? Is it a business that makes under a certain amount with only a few employees? Do we need to go there or is it just a local business? Can you help me understand? We certainly can go there. I have no statutory definition of small business that I can provide that would govern as it's currently written. It would be the decision of the Board of Ethics if they think it qualifies as one or not. If the council's not comfortable letting the board have that discretion, we certainly can plug in some numbers. It seems there's too many unknowns. A question about the procedure on this. So there's no disclosure requirements or anything? Does the former official have to... Sorry. Sorry, Sky people. Does the former official have to disclose that they're using this exemption? How would this even come up? I guess somebody would just see that a former council person or a former board member is making a presentation within their one-year tenure. Yes. Yes. Well, I can even imagine a situation. I'm thinking about an architectural office. We've been talking about that where there is an architect. My daughter worked in an office where there was one architect, one person that had the certification. She was there as a draftsperson. Those were the only two people in the office. If that architect had been a former council member and their business needed to come before the council for some kind of an item, the person who has the stamp as the architect is the only person that has the specialized certification necessary to maybe represent their client. I don't know, they may make a million dollars because they 've done a great big job, but it's a small office. I could imagine them coming up and council members that had served with that former council member saying, "Wait a minute. You can't appear before us unless you're the only person in your office with that kind of knowledge." The person would say right there, "I am. I'm the only certified architect in my office." It may be even a point of order where the council members discuss whether or not they want the person to continue their presentation or not. If they're allowed to, then somebody that was opposed to it could bring up a complaint to the ethics board and the ethics board could then do their deliberations. I think that there's room for ... There's some flexibility here for people to object, for the person to not be allowed to go on, or for the person to move through. Great. Well, I'll just let everybody know in the lawyer world, you miss hearings sometimes because you have conflicts or you have double booked hearings. It's very common to get somebody to substitute in for you. I guess I don't know what could be so specialized that ... In lawyer world, it's really easy for another lawyer to step in at a hearing. I guess I'm just really perplexed by the reasoning, but that's okay. I think we have our direction. Yes, Council Member Briggs. My question is, for the two years that they're currently sitting on council, they wouldn't be allowed to present either. Like you said, it would just be an extension of that service, that's a really great way to look at it. That's what I'm going with. I don't know if it adds to the conversation or not, but I keep going back to what the language currently says without this new language, which is that this prohibition on representing someone for money the year after your city service has ended only applies to discretionary approvals. If someone's putting forth a plat, I don't consider a discretionary approval. Correct. If you're doing a site plan, a building permit, none of those involve discretion. If they're seeking a variance or a development agreement, rezoning, those all would fall in the classification of a discretionary approval. Even as it's currently worded, the language you've chosen thus far does not hinder their ability to earn a living, come to city hall and lobby. It limits it to a classification of approvals where the city council, for example, would be free to say yes or no versus a plat comes in, you're not free to say yes or no. If you say no and the ordinance entitles it to them, well, you just bought yourself some trouble. This is just a reminder, I'm not advocating for the language or against it. It's a fairly narrow set of things that this applies to as currently in the draft. So it seems we have support for the new language regarding small businesses. I didn't get a sense of what the council feels about this same prohibition for representing for compensation applying to lobbying staff because currently we talk about boards and commissions. Do you want it to apply to staff or just to boards and commissions? I know you've gotten conflicting feedback. I'll leave it to the men on council. What would you like to do? Well, I am not a man. I know where you stand. We know your position. Okay. I know how two people feel. Yeah, we know where we're at. That's why I turned it over. Yes. So I, like Dalton Gregory, don't know that this exists in actuality. My almost year anniversary, I've not received anything. I did have community enforcement email me directly about my yard. So if there is benefits, it's not working. But I say that to say, I don't think it's necessary to prohibit it, but that could just be me not understanding. I think the option I put forth earlier works for me best and that's that there's a third party there. If there's a need for a private meeting, a third party there, then in my instance, that solves the concern. Absent that, then I wouldn't support it. We'll see where everyone else falls, but I wouldn't support it just on its face. You can't meet with staff. I just don't get there. But if we're saying, hey, you can meet with staff, but there needs to be another person there in private, then that resonates with me. And I'll admit, the Councilman has with it, I didn't gin up language for that because I didn't fully understand what that would involve and I would have been guessing. So I'm open to more feedback on that idea. Yeah, no, we'll see where we are. Councilmember Gregory. I'm not exactly sure what we're asking and what we're answering and it seems to me that if we're talking about allowing former Councilmembers to lobby staff members for pay, is there is the current rules that we have the current draft is it silent on that issue? First it was prohibiting representing someone for compensation before the city. And then we discussed, well, should we define the city to be boards and commissions, boards and commissions and staff. My notes indicated that we left it on boards and commissions and not to include staff on this part. We would include staff when it comes to the conflict of interest. But when it comes to former officials representing for pay during that one year, it was, I had no consensus opinion on if that was supposed to include staff or not in that prohibition. I think it would be awkward to even define if I'm going to talk to a staff member about a ministerial permit. They may say, let me start off by saying, well, no, you can 't have the permit for the fence because it's too close to the street. So then if I say, well, we've measured it. Here's the rule. It says that it has to be 10 feet from the street and we're putting it 11 feet from the street. Please note that. Is that lobbying or is that simply applying for the permit? I don't know. Is that lobbying? Councilwoman Briggs. So it was my understanding that the whole reason we put in the non-discretionary ministerial permitting was because that staff was involved and this allowed the ex-council member to go and to talk to them about things that they needed that were just those things and not a project. That's why I thought we put this whole non-discretionary ministerial permits in because if we're allowed to go and talk to staff, then why even specify what we can talk about if we can talk about anything? I think if you're still talking about being paid a year after your service has ended to come and talk about ministerial matters for which the city has no discretion, this rule still doesn't apply. Right. That's fine. Yes. So I think we are all in agreement on that part and I think that's the language that we have. The question is if you are lobbying on something for which the city has a choice, we've said you can't do so for pay within a year before boards and commissions. Do we also want to throw in staff in those conversations that are prohibited for discretionary approvals? That's the question before us. Yes? I say yes. If it's for discretionary approval, yes. Prohibited. Anybody else? You're going to have to help me. I don't know what that means when you're silent. I'm sorry. Any opposed that you're hearing none? Yeah, exactly. Nobody opposed? All right. Sorry. I just kind of wrote off a lot of this. So I think you have your direction on that. I think so. Staff's included. I mentioned before that the Historic Landmark Commission is being added to the scope of city officials for purposes of this ordinance. That was a request from a council member. Do we have any reason to oppose that? I don't hear any no's. Sorry to have to do it this way. Council member, wait, who was next? Osia Briggs. Yes? Did I just see the PUB was also added? Yes. Public Utilities Board was also added because of y'all's conversation at a previous public hearing. So that is it for the changes made most recently, today. Are there any other discussion points regarding the ordinance the council would like to visit now? I have a question. So there was some, there's a newspaper article talking about the removal of the recusal language. Did I miss it? Has the recusal language been removed? No. Okay. So what section are we in on the recusal? 273. 273 is the conflict of interest provision, which the substantive aspects of it, procedural aspects of it have stayed the same for almost all of these drafts. That has not changed. One question that came up is whether the term deliberations , which is a defined term, included conversations with staff. And if you flip back to the definition section of deliber ations, it's conversing or corresponding with other city officials or staff. So that part stays the same as it has been. The part that's been in flux, which may have caused some confusion, is regarding the representation of others for compensation, which we just went over. So if I'm understanding this correctly, if you're not getting paid, you can't talk with people and you can't lobby. But if you are getting paid and you're the sole source in your small business, you can lobby and you can talk with people. Am I getting it right? I'm not going to agree with that. Yes, please. Because it's talking about when you're currently on council and when you're off council. You left out that pretty major distinction between those two. Well okay, so our old version, it says city officials with a current conflicting interest and a pending matter, but we just carved out the year afterwards. That's what I'm kind of getting at is that year afterwards essentially is saying, what we're saying now is it's not a conflict of interest to get up and speak in favor of your own business within these certain parameters. Yes, yes. Again, Alan has touched on this a few times. In this instance, it's the person that takes a job, that advocates for something and then goes and takes a job. If you're back to your normal business, that's not the same as leveraging your experience on council to go take a job. That's the distinction I see is what is the express purpose ? What are we trying to prevent? If we start with that context, we're starting to stop someone from all of a sudden finding a new career after their life on council, then that's one thing. If you're asking someone to go back to their lifestyle and I think, again, Dalton touched on it. You have several people that have served on city council that will attest to what it's done to their income life afterwards. To take a little pressure off of that, I don't think is that punitive. Is there any distinction, Alan, between that section that says owning a small business? I don't see any language in here that says if you go back to the business that you had before. No, that's been brought up. There's no such language like that. I'm not clear on where that's- It says a small business for which you are the expertise. What you're saying, clarify this for me. You're saying if you're going ... What you're trying to ... I disagree with you on what we're trying to prevent, but you're saying what we're trying to prevent is people leveraging and creating a new business where they can make money off of their city council experience. This doesn't differentiate between a new business and your former business. I don't think it needs to. I mean, anyone that started a business, you don't need that distinction. Unless you're starting a franchise, which then wouldn't classify on a small business. Again, I guess where I hang up is do we want the ethics commission to work because that's their job, to figure this out. Our job is to lay the groundwork and the infrastructure and the foundation for them to do their job. It goes before them. That body then, as an independent body, evaluates each one of those things. Nothing here precludes someone from raising an ethics concern, and that's my thing. It's like we're almost trying to tailor something so that we never have any ethics complaints. Let them work. Let them do their job. I'm only trying to figure out your underlying premise, which is that ... What was the distinction between owning your business and having a new business created by virtue of your position? That's all I was trying to clarify. I'm really not concerned with the business of the ethics committee right now. I'm just trying to figure that particular part out. That's where it all ends. That's where it all goes. I know where it all goes. Okay. Well, then they have a job to do. Councilwoman Briggs. I think they should get to do it. I like that distinction, actually, and I think Council member Ryan brought it up, too, earlier. I think it makes a good point, because if you're going back to your small business and you're going back, that may be okay. Say you're on council for four years. You do learn specialized knowledge that you didn't before. If somebody tries to hire you, and then you have that specialized knowledge, and you can come back and do these things, then I think that is different than going back into your regular business. In my opinion, that kind of thing that I described is what we would want to avoid, in my opinion. By saying something about a new business and having that exemption for a year, I think would be okay. Because then you're using what you learned on council, and you're going, and then you're making money, and you're coming back to council for that. So that's just my opinion. Councilmember Ryan. Just a way to possibly codify that in this is after small business, what's on the screen up there, owns a small business, which has been in existence for at least three years. So that gives you the two years that you were on council or a board, which is the minimum time, plus the one year that you've been off. So it just says that that small business can't be a brand new startup. Okay. I think you have a consensus on that point. Okay. Any other points the council would like to raise regarding this draft? Things you wanted to see that didn't see, things that we hadn't got to you'd like to add to it? City Attorney Liao would like to speak. One of the concerns that I had as we were reviewing this, and this is in the cover ordinance, which would be on page two under section six, effective date. If this ordinance is adopted tonight, it'll be effective starting tonight. The concern that this raises is that if a complaint is filed tomorrow, you have not set up the infrastructure, i.e. the board of ethics, in which to administer the complaint. And so based on your previous experience in trying to find individuals to serve on this, on any board or commission, it may take you a while to get a full membership of the board, at least a month, and then they have to be trained. So I would recommend at least a, if you're going to adopt this tonight, to delay the effective date for two months to allow for the infrastructure to be created. That's a great point. Councilmember Briggs. Could we do have to be to a certain date or could it be just until that committee is formed? And then, I mean, that way it could go into effect sooner. We could certainly do that. I guess the, once they're formed, who's going to be the final, well, we'll have to come back to council to tell you they're off, there's seven members on the board of ethics and they have been trained, we're ready to go. And I guess we would have to come back and at least advise you of that so that we can start getting complaints. Is there any, I guess, I see the benefit of putting an actual date in there because then there's really not a delay on assembling the ethics committee. So that would be my suggestion is that perhaps we hem it in a little bit. And I would recommend a date of something like September 1. I'm thinking about the fact that if this goes into effect immediately, you're going to have, we have elections coming up, there's going to be two new council members. You've got to get people in, people are on vacation, but that would give time to get the new folks and people appointed and the training to happen. And I don't think September 1 is too far away. >> Anybody else? >> September 1, council member Ryan. >> I'm fine with that. The one thing if we are going to vote on this tonight, I'd like to get a clean copy of this as soon as possible. And some of the items that were in the draft F that was most recently handed out to us, what was the ads in draft D did not make it into draft F. >> Yes. >> So I want to make sure that all of those. >> Those are reconciled. >> So I guess in my personal opinion, since the mayor is gone and we do need to, this is a very important ordinance, I would rather us not vote on it this evening. But we can decide that once we get out in the public hearing. >> Well, one thing to consider is that the mayor is not here. He's supposed to come back. He's aiming for 730, but that could very well leave him without the ability to vote on this. And I know that he would like to vote on it and like to review the changes. So >> We could wait until next week. I think the timing of when the vote would actually happen would depend on Alan's schedule in part at least. >> If you would choose to, yes, Mayor Pro Tem, Council, I had not scheduled any other appointments with City of Denton beyond tonight's meeting. And so my availability in the coming month or so is somewhat limited. I discussed with staff some possible dates for either special meetings or a meeting during the day on one of your regular dates, if my presence is necessary to either explain attributes of the ordinance or answer questions. But I'm not available your next two council dates. >> I guess the first question would be do we need Alan here to take the final vote? >> Well. >> Councilman Ryan. >> I would say not necessarily. I mean, again, if we can get the final draft sent out to us and there may be a little back and forth that we get to the final final before that session actually takes place. It would be more of an item for individual consideration at that point that we've got everything all the changes we want to make at that point. >> My anxiety of voting tonight is that, you know, the draft did not have some of the draft D language in it. And I would be nervous if in the next two hours or two and a half hours the staff really has time to thoroughly go through this and make sure that what we would get tonight had all of the changes that are representative. And I think if they had a little more time and then if we had time to look at it ourselves, have these other eyes looking and making sure that draft G is really encompasses all the things that we've talked about. And if that means one more week delay, I'm fine with that. >> Do you need Alan here for the vote? >> I don't think so. >> Okay. And anybody here need Alan for the vote? I don't think we need you anymore. >> I'm trying to decide if I'm wounded or elated. >> I know. >> Both? >> We're going to fly out the nest. >> I know that I can be here for work sessions on May 1st or 24th. If you chose to have a special meeting at that time, noon, to adopt it, that I would be here to field questions. But I don't think my presence is going to be necessary after today. >> Okay. Well, I think we're going to go ahead and just postpone it for a week to give us time to get the final draft in good order. It sounds like we don't need you for the next week, but hopefully everybody will be here next week when it's time to vote. And my understanding from this conversation is that we would keep the public hearing tonight to give people an opportunity to discuss. And nothing's going to change off of the agenda. We're just not going to delay the vote. Okay. >> That's it for me then. I'll see you at the public hearing. >> Thank you, Alan. >> Thank you. >> Okay. That brings us to the end of the work session. At this time, I'll convene the closed session at 3.50 p.m. We'll consider the following items. Consultation with attorneys under Texas Government Code 551 - -- I'm sorry, .071, deliberations regarding a personnel matter. [ Music ] >> Welcome to this meeting of the Denton City Council. I'm your mayor pro tem. The mayor is out. He should be back by around 7.30 or so. So he may be changing seats. If you can right now, if you're able, please stand with me for the Pledge of Allegiance. [ Inaudible ] >> It's National Small Business Week. So we have a proclamation. And I think we have Kim. Are you going to be joining us? Kim McKibbin from Ora Coffee and Laura McCullum, Basil by the Square. Come on down. And Caroline Booth from Economic Development will be joining us as well. Caroline, did you want to say some words while they're coming down? >> Sure. I'd be glad to. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. So this is the second year that the Denton City Council is recognizing National Small Business Week in Denton. And I'm so happy that some representatives from our small business community can join us today. Some women-owned small businesses. At that, we appreciate you making the time to be here. So many folks' lives are involved in small businesses, whether it's as owners, as spouses of owners, as employees, as customers. So I just want to thank you all for your entrepreneurial spirit and the time and care that you put into your businesses and the jobs that you create for employees in our community. And I want to encourage everyone here in the room tonight and everybody watching to make sure that you are shopping, dining, enjoying beverages, and using the services of our local small businesses in Denton. So thank you very much. >> Sure. Kim, do you have anything to say? Do either of you have anything to say? Okay. Well, thank you so much for coming by and for all you do. You're welcome to stay up here or take your seat. I'm just going to read the proclamation. Okay. Come on. Come on up. Come on up. All right. So this is a proclamation by the mayor of the city of Dent on, Texas. To all to whom these presents shall come, greetings. Whereas small business owners and main street businesses have energy and a passion for what they do, America's progress has been driven by pioneers who think big, take risks, and work hard, and whereas from the storefront shops that anchor main street to the tech startups that keep America on the cutting edge, small businesses are the backbone of our economy and the cornerstones of our nation's promise. And whereas when we support small businesses, jobs are created and local communities preserve their unique culture, and whereas because this country's 28 million small businesses create nearly two out of three jobs in our economy, we cannot resolve ourselves to create jobs and spur growth in America without discussing ways to support our entrepreneurs, and whereas the president of the United States has proclaimed National Small Business Week every year since 1963 to highlight the programs and services available to entrepreneurs through the U.S. Small Business Administration and other government agencies , and whereas the city of Denton supports and joins in this national effort to help America's small businesses do what they do best, grow their businesses, create jobs, and ensure that our communities remain as vibrant tomorrow as they are today, now therefore I, Chris Watts, Mayor, well it's not Chris but you get the idea, Chris Watts, Mayor of the City of Denton, Texas, do hereby proclaim April 29 through May 5, 2018 as National Small Business Week in the City of Denton and encourage all citizens to continue their support of small businesses this week and throughout the year. [Applause] I walked up here with these papers and couldn't remember why I brought them. We are having a free small business workshop during National Small Business Week on Thursday, May 3. It's going to be hosted here in the council chambers, and as I said, it is free. It's day long, but you can come to as many sessions or as few sessions as you'd like, and if anybody is interested in registering for that, you can go to www.shopdentontexas.com to see the schedule and to register, and I'm going to leave this information out there on the table outside if anybody has a question or wants to visit that URL. So thank you again. Thank you, and I'm just going to present this proclamation to Laura, and you can give it to every small business owner in town. Thank you. That brings us to item 3, presentation for members of the public. If we could review the procedures for addressing the City Council, please. The Denton City Council has adopted rules of procedure including a code of conduct that applies to citizens as well as council members. These rules were enacted to promote an orderly process and to preserve decorum. Here is a brief review of the rules that apply to citizen reports. Citizens will have four minutes to give a scheduled citizen report and four minutes to give an open mic report. There will be an electronic bell when time has expired. If the remarks are not concluded by that time, the citizen will be asked to stop speaking. If the citizen does not cease and a second request is made, the mayor will request to have the citizen removed from the council chamber. Citizens are asked not to approach the dais. If a citizen has papers or other materials to hand out to the council, please let the city secretary know in advance. For scheduled citizen reports, the council may initiate discussion or questions following each citizen report. For non-scheduled open mic citizen reports, the council may listen to citizens speak. However, because no notice of the subject of the open mic report has been provided to the public in advance, the Texas Open Meetings Act limits any deliberation or decision by the council to a proposal to place the item on a future agenda, a statement of factual policy or a recitation of existing policy. Citizens are asked to direct all remarks and questions to the council as a whole and not to any individual member. Please refrain from making abusive, personal, impertinent, profane, or slanderous remarks. Anyone who violates this council rule of procedure may be immediately removed from the council chamber. Thank you in advance. Copies of the rules of procedure are available from the city secretary. My understanding is we don't have anybody scheduled for item 3B, which is the scheduled citizen reports from members of the public. So I'm going to move on to item 3C, which is additional citizen reports. And that's available to people who fill out blue cards. We have one, David Smith, if you could come up to the podium. And if you'll just state your name and your address and then your time will begin. Yes, my name is David Smith. I live at 910 Stone Circle Lane, Lewisville, Texas. And I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak again. As I said last time, if you look at the Federal Transm igration and you plot the data, the Connect system is the sixth most expensive bus system in the state of Texas. If you flip to page two of the handout, you'll see that the student ridership is like a bathtub curb. It starts off at 1.9 million and it declines and then goes to 1.943 million, about a 20,000 increase over the time period of 2013 to 2017. And most of that increase is caused, as you know, is that we have more pedestrian campus now and the administration's kind of pushed the students off to the side. So they have to take the bus more often. We go to page three, which you see here is the cost per rider of the university system. And it starts at $1.52 and it goes to 171, which is a 12.5% increase in cost over the period of time, with an inflation being 4.5%. If you go to page four, this is the ridership of the Connect system. And you can see in 2014, about 550,000 and it has declined every year since 2014 to at 499,000, about a 50,000-person decline with a Denton County population increase of 9.3%. If you flip to page five, what you see is the cost changes as the years go by. So if you look at from 2013 to 2016, you know, the riders hip is down by 50,000, but the cost of operating the Connect system is up 41%, with an inflation rate of 4.5%. So during that same time ridership is down, the cost of running the system is up 41%. You know, the biggest variable cost in running a bus system is fuel, right? So if you flip to the fifth page, the last page, you'll see that from 2013 to 2016, the cost of diesel has declined 41%. So we have declining ridership, increasing cost, decreasing fuel costs. And I know that the folks at DCTA came and talked to you, they talked about declining ridership. I think that's the question you have to ask is did they mention these topics also? So I'm going to come back next week or two weeks from now and talk more about where the money's going. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Since there are no other blue cards, we'll move on to item four, which is the consent agenda. Council Member Gregory. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. I move approval of the consent agenda. All of the items except K that we're pulling for individual consideration. Council Member Ryan. I'll second. Let's vote on the board. Motion passes unanimously. Council Member Briggs is recusing herself. We have item K. Consider adoption of an ordinance directing the publication of notice of intention to issue $10.11 million in principal amount of certificates of obligation to the City of Denton for general government projects and providing an effective date. Audit and finance approved three zero. We have Mr. Puente giving the presentation. Mayor Pro Tem and Council Members, Tony Puente, Director of Finance. I do have a short presentation or if there's a specific question that you need addressed, I'll be happy to do either one, whichever you prefer. Let me gauge and see if we need a presentation. Does anybody here want a presentation by Mr. Puente? Yes. Okay. Yeah. Please. Yes, please. So just briefly, this item is simply to authorize the publication of a notice in the local paper of the city's intent to issue certificates of obligation. That item was approved and reviewed and approved by the Aud it and Finance Committee on April 10th. The maximum principal amount that we are including in this notice would be $10.11 million. That's made up of $9.935 million that would be used on the specific projects that are being considered. And then there's an additional $175,000 that's the cost of issuance for attorneys and financial advisors. That's all done in conjunction with the state law requirements. The $9.93 million includes vehicle replacements, improvements or constructions of items out in the airport, including a major runway that includes tech stock funding as well. So this is just the city's match. Additionally, we have facility maintenance improvements related to HVAC, roofing and flooring improvements across the city's various buildings. And then finally, additional funds, $1.6 million to complete the construction of Fire Station 3. Fire Station 3 was part of the 2014 bond program, so this is additional funding to get that completed. And just briefly, the majority of these items, a little bit over $8 million was previously approved by the City Council through a reimbursement ordinance. So many of these projects are already underway and so these CEOs would simply just reimburse the city for funds that have already been expended or will be expended between now and the time we sell the bonds. In addition to the CEOs, and this is additional money that we'll be issuing, I will come back to you on May 22nd for you to consider approval of the actual sale of the CEOs. And in conjunction with those, there'll be some additional funds, geo funds, for the 2014 bond program that includes $19.75 million of CEOs. If you recall, we had previously come to you with a proposal on funding some projects. One project that was pulled out from funding or delayed the funding was the Riddell realignment. We, the Audit Finance Committee, requested that we pull that and then come back to the Bond Oversight Committee in June and then subsequent to that, come back to Audit Finance Committee and into the Council with a final proposal on that particular project. So that project is not part of this particular bond sale. The next steps, as I mentioned, we'll come back to the Council on May 22nd to actually approve the actual sale. We'll detail out a little bit more on the CEO projects and also on the geo-funded projects. We anticipate that the sale will be around May 24th, depending on market conditions, and then the sale and delivery of funds to the city will come on June 22nd. That concludes my presentation. If you have any questions, be happy to address them. - Thank you. It doesn't look like there are any questions, but thank you for the presentation. Council Member Gregory. - Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. I move approval of item 4K. - Council Member Ryan. - I second. - Let's vote on the board. Passes unanimously. That brings us to our next item, items for individual consideration. And if somebody could please get Council Member Briggs. We're on item 5A. Under approval of a resolution incorporating a City of Dent on employee ethics policy, reference number 10, within the City of Denton personnel policies and procedures, repealing the city's nepotism and outside employment policies, reference number 102.08 and 108.09 of the City of Denton's current policies and procedures and providing an effective date. - Good evening. I'm Cassie Ogden, Director of Procurement and Compliance, here to talk to you again about the employee ethics policy and seeking approval of our policy and then redacting the current nepotism and outside employment policies. Quick background information. As you know, the charter election approved Proposition D with an adoption of an ethics ordinance that you all have been working with Mr. Borquez to draft and hopefully adopt in the upcoming weeks. Through that, during that time, staff has been working on drafting an ethics policy specifically for employees to address the same issues that Council are discussing. So why do we need an ethics policy? Basically it will reinforce our commitment to ethical behavior. We currently do not have one overarching ethics policy for employees. We have several personnel policies that address different facets of conflicts of interest, but no one overarching ethics policy. We also feel like it will provide a resource for employees and protect the employees and the cities, set clear expectations and guidelines, and reflect our core values. Some of the items that are included as part of our policy, they deal with procurement and non-procurement matters with conflicts of interest. So the policy encourages employees to proactively disclose any relationships that present a potential conflict of interest as soon as they become aware of the conflict. We do have disclosure requirements when evaluating formal solicitations as well. The nepotism section, we previously had a freestanding ne potism policy that we are encompassing into the ethics policy. We have changed the nepotism policy to match Council's ordinance that you are drafting to third degree of affinity and consequentity, so both by marriage and blood. This would apply to all city employees within the same operational division, department heads within their departments, and then city council. The secondary employment was previously called an outside employment. It was a freestanding policy as well. We're redacting that and including it in the proposed ethics policy. We're requiring disclosure and approval as part of the secondary employment to ensure that the employees do not have a conflict of interest with their primary employer, which is the city of Denton. Another facet of the ethics policy is the serving on boards , commissions, and associations. Disclosure and approval are required when serving on boards that have business with the city through contracts and financial support. We've also included political activity. Employees may not engage in political activity while on duty or in city uniform. Then the social media should effectively communicate that their postings are their own, personal opinions and do not reflect those of the city. As part of the policy, we've mentioned gift meals and entertainment. Employees shall neither solicit nor accept gifts, meals, or entertainment offered from an individual business or organization due to their position with the city regardless of the amount. We have given gifts, meals, and entertainment some definitions. We've also included specific examples of what would be considered gifts, meals, and entertainment. Any food received from vendors would be donated to charity if we're unable to return it. Some examples of the prohibited items are meals provided by vendors. Eating hospitality events at conferences that are usually hosted by vendors. Cash and gift cards from any source would be prohibited. Tickets for entertainment and raffle items at conferences are prohibited. There are certain exceptions that we felt were important to exclude when discussing with employees. Meals is part of a community event where attendance is required by the employee. It would be an exception to our ethics policy. Items received at city sponsored events for employees. This specifically came out of our benefits and wellness fair. The employees received like band-aids and things like that encouraging participation in the benefits and wellness fair. Perishable items received by public expressing general appreciation to an entire department. This is an exemption based on our discussions with especially public safety. Police and fire a lot of times receive, organizations will come in and donate meals and things like that to the entire department. So we wanted to exempt that in the policy. And then transportation registration meals or lodging provided due to a speech or service that the employee rendered at the event are also exceptions as well as conference swag bags. Other items in the policy are honorariums. This was never specifically defined in a personnel in any of our personnel policies and we felt it was important to include in our ethics policy. As well as games of chance when an employee is representing the city at an event at the city's expense. We were not to participate in games of chance. Use of city resources. We do have some several policies that deal with the use of city resources already but we wanted to specifically call it out in the ethics policy. There is an annual training requirement for employees now that was never previously required. And then reporting unethical conduct by employees. The employees have the duty to report unethical conduct and then the complaints will be reviewed by HR and city manager's office. Since we discussed the meeting last time, we received some, you all had some great feedback as far as what we would, we need to include in the policy. So we've gone back and made some revisions. We have included employees may seek prior approval to attend events for networking purposes. If they feel like it's a business necessity, they just need to make sure that it gets, they receive prior approval from compliance or city manager 's office. And then the compromised social media accounts resulting in communication that violates the policy are to be reported. We've made that revision to the policy as well. And then we've also specifically called, made reference to the harassment prevention policy. And then based on our, we had some more discussion with fire and police this week that resulted in some additional revisions that were not included in your packet and I've provided a red line version and then a clean version at your seats. But I went ahead and added these, the nepotism guidelines in the policy, we've, are superseded by the meet and confer agreements. They have more specific criteria as far as what's allowed in their nepotism, in their meet and confer agreements. Specifically, appointments of relatives to city employment, they are not allowed to be on the interview panels and things like that. And so they have a more restrictive policy. So we've, their policy will supersede the ethics policy. And then we've also excluded the police and fire labor associations when requiring disclosure and approval on serving on boards and commissions. Obviously those positions are, you are only serving in that capacity as a police or fire employee. So we felt like it was redundant and we already know that they're going to be serving in those roles so that we exempted that as in this new policy revision. We've also added an exception for meal discounts as part of a corporate policy. So a lot of times restaurants will give discounts as part of their policy to people in uniform. So like a fireman walks into a Chick-fil-A for instance is the example that I heard. They actually have a corporate policy that gives them a discount. So we exempted that as part of our policy. And then police and fire, we also added a note that they may use more specific criteria when evaluating secondary employment requests. They have written guidelines already that dictate how they can, how could they go about evaluating secondary employment. So we wanted to make those distinctions in our ethics policy. So we are asking for your recommendation or we're asking for your adoption of the resolution approving the ethics policy. And with the approval we will hold informational and training sessions for all employees. We will also be bringing back to you at a future date the procurement manual revisions and several other personnel policies for your consideration . And that is all that I have. Thank you for the presentation. Council member Briggs. I have a couple of questions. Yes. In regards to, I think you answered a few of them, the new changes that were made after speaking with fire and police, political activity. So I just want to make sure that staff or employees will still be able to go and vote during the work, like leave their job, even if they are in uniform. I know that that's... We do have a separate policy that allows for them to vote while on city time. So they get an exemption to go vote. That is a separate, I believe it's called absentee voting. I can't remember the exact name, but we do have it listed in the ethics policy. I can find it. Okay. So I just want to make sure that that wasn't going to conflict anywhere and that people would not think that they were allowed to go vote if they were at work in their uniform. And also, how does this affect the political activity? Because I do know that associations do endorsements. How does that affect that, especially if they are in uniform while they are doing the endorsing? Does that cover that or is that just completely separate or because it is an association? Yeah. How does that... It would be separate because it is a separate association. Our intention was to make sure that we're not campaigning on city time while we're supposed to be doing city business. So that was the intention. But I don't think that that would be an issue as far as how the policy is written right now. Okay. I just want to say thank you for this. It's really great. And honestly, I think we're holding staff and employees to a higher standard than we are holding ourselves to in some aspects on our ethics ordinance. And I wish that we were as strict on ourselves as we are on our employees at the moment. But good job. Thank you. Any other comments or questions? Hearing none, thank you very much. Any discussion? Council Member Ryan. I move approval. Council Member Gregory. Any discussion before we vote? All right. Then let's vote on the board. Oh, I'm sorry, Gerard, I missed you. Yes, Gerard. Yeah. So will this... Council Member Hudspeth, I apologize. Yeah, no worries. Thank you. So will this be adjusted as we adjust such that... Is that kind of automated that those two will fall in line? I know we have some fine tuning we did today. Does any of that affect this document? None of it was... No, they would stand on their own. And I think the one other comment I would make is even when the council's complete with your document, I have no doubt that we'll be revisiting these policies as, you know, scenarios come up, circumstances that we didn't account for . Our employees have been very good about pointing out to us some subtleties with the work and some things to think about. So I have no doubt that there will be an occasional revis ement to both of those policies. But this one stands separate from the council's. Thank you. Any other discussion? Okay. This time we can go ahead and vote on the board. Motion passes unanimously. Okay. I think our regular mayor is here, so I'm officially relieved of my duties. If you'll have one moment, please. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem, for serving in my stead due to the situation I had to attend to down south. We will move on now to agenda item 5B, which is considered option of ordinance authorizing the city manager or his designee to sign a confidentiality agreement with New Brunsville's utilities. Good evening, Mayor and Council. George Morrow, DME General Manager. I'm here as the mayor indicated to seek your approval of a confidentiality agreement with New Brunsville, New Brunsville's utilities, purpose of the confidentiality agreement is for them to provide us information related to an RFP they recently issued for solar power resources. The city of Denton and four other municipal electric utilities are participating with New Brunsvilles in this RFP. And I'll tell you a little bit, the proposals came back in on Friday. They've got 34 different proposals with a range of pricing, locations and so forth, but they indicated there's some very good ones there and they're in the process of doing a very detailed analysis and should have that by the end of the week and then we'll all get our heads together and see what we can bring back. So each of the six county New Brunsvilles utilities have expressed interest in certain pieces of this and this is kind of our second leg of our renewable resource plan acquisition. We have our own RFP which we're in the final stages of just cleaning up some small bits of language. This will be the second piece and then we're looking at a third piece about a month or so from now. Issue another RFP under our name for some wind and solar resources. And that might put us out of the renewable energy business for a while. We'll have locked in enough renewable energy to meet your goal, which is my goal, of 100% renewable by 2020. So pretty straightforward confidentiality agreement, nothing out of the ordinary and open it up for any questions or comments. Any questions, comments? Mayor Pro Tem? Move for approval. Council Member Briggs? I'll second. Let's vote on it. Motion carries 7-0. Thank you very much. Thank you. Moving on to our next agenda items, which are public hearings, agenda item six. Moving on to agenda item six, hey, hold a third public hearing and consider adoption of an ordinance of the City of Texas amending the code of ordinances. Okay. I will go ahead and open the public hearing so that I won't forget to do that. So we are now in the public hearing. We'll hear a report from our consultant and then take any questions from staff and then move on to public comment. Mayor Watz, members of the City Council. We're here for our third evening public hearing. We had one on a Saturday, so that makes four total. Slide one shows you the summary of this lengthy detailed process that you've gone through as you've gone about the task of crafting a code specifically for the City of Denton. In the changes from our last public hearing, draft C to D, I outlined some of the highlights regarding the mandatory disclosures, the conflicts of interest, the representations of others, and changes to the Board of Ethics. All of these matters were covered during today's work session this afternoon. I didn't have many slides prepared. There hasn't been that many dramatic changes, but I am available for questions that may arise from the council or during the public hearing. Any questions for the speaker? None? Okay. Thank you. Appreciate it, Alan. All right. This is a public hearing, so we're going to go ahead and take comments from those that we have cards with. Of course, being a public hearing, you're not required to fill out a card in order to speak. We'll go through these first, and anybody else wish to speak, come down and state your name and number, address, excuse me, and your time will begin. First speaker is Lee Ann Todd. If you'll come up, state your name and address, your time will begin. I'm Lee Ann Todd. I live at 3316 Rosalonde Drive. I'm here to say that I'm strongly in support of the ethics ordinance that was created by the Citizens Committee, that city council members cannot lobby each other or city staff once they have declared a conflict of interest, not able to vote, participate in discussion, deliberations, or lobby in public or other forums. I think this is a very important part of that. As I see it, the role of city council members are to support our civil servants and are here to support the community and the public of Denton. By changing this ordinance reflects individual interest, and not that for the best welfare of the citizens of Denton at large. Thank you. Council Member Briggs. Were your comments in reference to the Denton Recreation Chronicle article? Yes, it was the cut in the reform. I believe that the things that were mentioned in the article are now in the ordinance that we have going forward. Okay, good. I'm glad to hear that. All right. I just wanted to make sure it was. Yes, thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker is Ken Gold. State your name and address. Your time will begin. Thank you, Mayor, members of the council. My name is Ken Gold. I live at 2512 Natchez Trace here in town. I don't know if this is going to be the last public hearing on this or not, so I thought I'd better run up here real quick. I just want to say this ordinance is a big deal. A lot of time and effort has gone into building it. It covers a lot of territory. It's not perfect, but I can support draft F as best I can remember it. I personally prefer a two-year separation period for former city officials, and I don't think the new small business exception is really needed, but I still support this ordinance. Non-ethical behavior in public officials follows disclosure and transparency like a shadow. This ordinance will increase public confidence and the integrity of the process and needs to be passed as soon as possible, way before September. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker is Kim McKibbin. You'll come down, state your name and address. Your time will begin. Kim McKibbin, 1306 West Hickory Street. You got another question marked from me on that, because it 's not that I am supporting or not supporting this. I also think that the original two-year waiting period would serve the citizens better than the one year. I was also listening this afternoon. I don't, being a small business person, even I don't consider there needs to be a small business clause that was put in today in the ordinance. The other thing that I have to say is that you've worked so long and so hard on this. I would like to see this passed before this council gets out of here. I think that waiting to do anything more than formalize what was agreed upon today or what may be voted on, while I don't think you guys are going to vote today, but don't hesitate on this one. You need this ordinance. The people have been waiting on it a long time. A lot of you have worked very hard on it and it should happen now. Not only that, the people who are going to be elected to the positions that are open need to know what to look forward to. They need to clear their slate now and recuse themselves from anything that might be coming up that has that impacting them. That's it. Thank you. Any questions for the speaker? Seeing none, thank you. Next speaker is Jennifer Lane. Come down and state your name and address. Your time will begin. Hi, my name is Jennifer Lane. I live at 1526 Willowwood in Denton, 76205. I'm so excited that you have done this. I want to start by saying that I think this is the best thing I've seen in years. It's really, really encouraging to me. I think you guys, as Kim was saying, deserve the credit for it. All of you deserve the credit and it should be passed while you're in office. I hope it will be. I do think that the one year should be two year. That's a council member's term. I think that it should reflect the term of office, the full two years of the term before representing clients before the council. I'm happy that the lobbying provision was put back. I'm grateful for that. I think that one of the things, just to speak from the heart for a moment, what has really disturbed me, I even nicknamed this phenomenon that I feel has existed here, which is I would call it the JOON LLC, the Just Outside of Nepotism LLC, that has disturbed me so greatly in terms of some of the things that have gone on in front of the council and around the council and the decision making here. I'm really, really happy to see you move away from it. Bravo. Thank you. Thank you. There were a couple of white cards, but the individuals who filled out the white cards have also spoken, so that's why I'm not going to read the white cards. This is a public hearing. Anybody else wishing to speak on this item, please come down and state your name and address and your time will begin. Anybody else wishing to speak? This is a public hearing. One more time. Okay. We'll now close the public hearing. Councilmember Gregory. Mayor, I'm going to move to postpone action until next week , April 24th. This is because we had before us in work session today a draft E and F, and we needed to get those combined and make sure that everything was clear and straight on those. And it looks like that we're ready for a vote next week once we have that cleaned version ready for us. Okay. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem Bagheri. I can wait for the discussion portion. Okay. All right. Councilmember Ryan. I will second that. We have a motion to second a discussion. Mayor Pro Tem. Yes. I just as a courtesy to the people who presented, I wanted to gauge council's, I guess, inclination towards increasing the time period from one year to two years. Personally, I'm okay with the one year provision, but I did want to at least make that available if anybody had any objections to one year or if they wanted to move to a different time frame. Councilmembers, any comments? Okay. Councilmember Briggs. Well, originally it started out as two, and at one point I believe we were all okay with it and then it went down to one, and that's better than nothing. So if the consensus is one, I'm okay with that, but I'm also okay with two as it was in the very beginning. Mayor Pro Tem. My recollection is that parts, and Alan can clarify this, but one of the reasons that I was okay with one was because in some portions of our ethics ordinance there was a one year prohibition and in other portions there was a two year prohibition. And so for clarity's sake, I thought one year would be a better way to do things across the board, but I wanted to be sure that that's, was my recollection correct or, we've had a lot of meetings. We've had a lot of meetings, Mayor Council, that the two year provision comes from two sources. Number one, the revolving door clause that we have on city officials mirrored originally the state law revolving door clause for state employees. And so we started to apply that to the statute of limitations, which is in the ordinance, and then also the prohibition on former city officials representing clients before the city for compensation. After our first public hearing, we received some feedback that some thought that the two year prohibition on former city officials was too strict and may have the effect of discouraging citizens who want to serve from serving because that's too long of a waiting period and too onerous on them. So we did two things. We shortened it from two years to one year, and then we also specified that it's regarding lobbying for discretionary forms of approval. And the hopes was that would not discourage particularly small business people from considering serving in a city function. It really is the council's choice as to whether it's one year or two year. We did go through the last few drafts to make it consistent across the board that it's one year. Councilmember Gregory. In answer to the mayor pro tem's question, I'm satisfied with the way it is. I think that it's important for folks to realize that council has gone through every word of this ordinance, every section, and none of us got everything we wanted. There were some of us that wanted things added that didn't make it, and some of us that were not completely in favor of certain sections or certain sentences that did get in, but each one of them got at least a consensus of four folks that wanted it. And I think it's been a good process overall. I would hope that as we have our discussion next week, it would be possible during the presentation if we could go back and revisit the wording of the charter that was passed by our citizens on it to make sure that we are touching every mark that we said that we were going to touch and also look at the recommendations of the charter committee. I think it would be helpful to just go back and review that one last time as we approach the time for vote. Thank you. Councilmember Briggs. Well, that's a great idea, Councilmember Gregory. I think we should definitely do that. So in regards to the small business wording that was added today, we had two comments from the citizens here. And so I would just, during our discussion today, we talked about adding whether it would prohibit a new business or, and so I'm not really sure where Council left off, and I'm wondering if you can talk to us or the public about that, the small business section that was added. Absolutely. There was language added in a draft that we considered today during the afternoon's work session and it appeared to me that there was consensus on the Council to leave that provision in there. And I'll read it so the Council and the audience understands what we're referring to. This applies to the prohibition in section 113D number two that restricts the ability of former city officials to represent someone for compensation before the city for a period of one year. This is in regards to advocating and lobbying for approval of a discretionary approval from the city. That's important because if someone is lobbying or pushing for something like a plat, a plat is a non-discretionary ministerial matter. Either the plat conforms to the city of Denton's code and thus should be approved or it does not conform with the code and needs to be revised. In this prohibition for one year, an exception was added today which reads, "It shall be an exception to this article when the former city official is employed by or owns a small business that existed prior to the city official becoming a city official." And that city official is the sole source of specialized knowledge or expertise necessary within that small business and that knowledge or expertise is necessary to transact business with the city. So that there was consensus support among the Council today to have that provision in there. And thus at this point it's scheduled to appear in the next draft that you see. I have a question if I could, Council Member Ryan, Mayor Pro Tem. On the section you just read about former city officials and representation, I thought I recall in the last draft and there may be some changes, I apologize, I wasn't in the work session today, that they were prevented from advocating in front of either boards or commissions or the Council, but as far as if they needed to talk with staff, not on an advocacy term, but if they're an engineer, if they're an architect, just to talk about specific details of code compliance and things such as that . I thought I remember seeing something that they were prohibited from representing someone for pay in front of the governing boards and commissions and/or Council. Is that still in there or has that been removed? You're correct Mayor, that is a topic that has been in the drafts and it has been discussed. It was further debated today and the limitation by this section would apply to a former city official who within a year after leaving office is being compensated to represent someone before the city, that being a city council, city board or commission or city staff in regards to their seeking approval of a discretionary approval, not a ministerial approval. So that's okay, I just wanted to make sure because I remember, so that wasn't removed during the discussion today. No, that was confirmed by a consensus of the Council. Okay, thank you. You bet. All right, thank you. I appreciate that. I apologize Councilmembers. Councilmember Ryan. Thank you Mayor. I want to echo Councilmember Gregory's comments from earlier. I completely agree with that and also wanted to, what I recall on switching from the two year to one year, large portion of that had to do with the fact that this isn't just Council. When Council rolls off, this is also our P&Z, our PUB, Public Utility Board, the Historic Landmark Commission. There are multiple boards that are affected by this and so we did the compromise of a one year was the way I remember it as a way to solve that issue. It seemed like a long period of time for someone who served on some of those other boards. Okay, Mayor Pro Tem. Allen, in the section that you just read, was there any mention of the business that was owned prior to being on Council? Okay, I just want to make sure that I heard that correct. Okay. There was some discussion during the work session Mayor Pro Tem about the Council not wanting someone to exit their city service and immediately cash in on that service by creating a new business that would then turn around and come back and lobby before the city. There was a discussion of some sort of three year waiting period. Staff and I construed that to mean, well, two years being the normal term of office plus a year waiting period. The best way to word that is the way we put it in your next draft, which is this exception for a small business has to have been one that the city official was engaged in prior to becoming a city official. Whether that was two years term or four years, it has to have been prior to them being a city official. All right. Any more discussion? We have a motion and a second to postpone till April the 24 th. Is that correct? All right. Let's vote on the board, please. Oh, Council Member Briggs. Just for clarification that we're not trying to postpone the vote that we mentioned earlier that we were going to not be voting tonight so that we're still going to honor that vote next week. Right? Okay. All right. Okay. Mayor Pro Tem. I also wanted to clarify that the vote is going to happen, but the effective date is going to be September to give time to assemble the ethics board. Yes, there was some discussion, Mayor Pro Tem, at the work session today that to have it go into effect immediately could put the city as an organization at a disadvantage because practically speaking, you will need time to recruit a board of ethics, appoint them, and then give them some level of training in this ordinance and how they're going to function. They're also, this ordinance is going to defer to the board of ethics to adopt some of their own procedural rules rather than have all those details dictated by council. That will take time. And so it seemed that there was consensus in the council this afternoon to put it off. The date that seemed to resonate was September the 1st. I just wanted to clarify that. Thank you. Council Member Briggs. It's my understanding that we've had several comments that September is too late and I know that the public would like to see it happen a lot sooner. And so it is, I would like to also see it happen before September. So 30, is the council in agreement that September is okay? Let me get the, I wasn't at the work session, so was there a consensus in the work session? Well, no. Let me finish the comments out and we're going to revisit that question. If we can't wrap the, because some of those answers may be expressed in the, Council Member Gregory. Well, I was the one that suggested that particular date and I'm not stuck on that particular date, but one of the reasons I did was because of the time it's going to take to recruit, to appoint members and to train them. And also it's to honor and respect the fact that we're having two members of the council for sure that are going to be new and they need to have the chance to get their feet on the ground and go through the process of being part of the nominations to make that happen. And while I'm in total agreement with some of the comments of the speakers that we want to pass this with this particular configuration of the council, I think it's important for the next council to have input on the people who are going to be serving on that commission and to give them sufficient time. These are extremely important appointments and we need to have time to, if we don't have a lot of qualified people to volunteer to actually go out and recruit folks also. Council Member Hudsbon. Thank you. Yeah, I just think it's important not to act just for the sake of acting, right? I think it is important to support those steps with kind of reasoned approach. So I'm happy in further conversations if someone wants to work the math and support the math to say if we spend X amount of time, X amount of weeks, we can then accomplish our goal in this amount of time, a pragmatic approach I'm all for. But to just grab an arbitrary number for expediency, I can 't support that because to Councilman Gregory's point, it is significant and these are weighted decisions that are going to affect people greatly. And I don't want to cut short the training. Now if we want to expedite the training, that's fine, but to cut it short just to get someone in place that's ill-equipped does them a disservice because of the scrutiny they're going to face and that does the individual that would be raised under ethics concern. So again, I'll listen to anyone that wants to support a date with facts, but just to grab an arbitrary date because it's expedient, I can't get behind that. Mayor Pro Tem. Well, I don't know if September 1st isn't arbitrary either, but a lot of our ordinances start on September 1st. They're effective that date. So I'm guessing that that's the reason you brought up September 1st was because of that. But I just wanted to point out that when we're appointing people to Human Services Advisory Committee, Public Art Committee, these committees that are less specialized, I would say, it can be hard to find people to appoint to the committees and sometimes our city secretary will ask four and five times. We have many meetings where none of us have our appointees ready. So just from a kind of back of the house housekeeping standard or housekeeping viewpoint, for us, it can be hard to find our appointees that we need. And then you have to consider that the new council members will be installed on May 15th. So really you're talking about they have from May 15th until however many weeks it takes them to find their appointees and confirm that they will serve. For me, that comes out to a three and a half month wait or a two and a half month wait. That's not too long. I almost think it's a little bit rushed for the new committee to come up with their own procedures in that amount of time, but I'm trusting that they can do it. So I'm okay with September 1st for that reason. Well, and I think it's also important to point out that whoever new serves on the council, they're sworn in in May. We have a few meetings and then in July, we almost take almost half of that month or that whole month. So you're really not getting back in track probably until sometime in July. So then when you look at that, the timeframe really gets compacted. And if they complete it, if there's a reason to change that date, either to move it up earlier because the work has been done or to extend it if they need more time, that's something that the council at the time can do. Is that correct, Mr. City Attorney? That's correct. Okay. All right. So I think what I'm hearing is that September 1st is the date, at least in the draft ordinance to be presented. I haven't heard, I know you expressed a desire to have it sooner. I haven't heard at least anyone else who's expressed that same desire. So we'll go with that. If that could change next week and okay, that'd be, you know, that's, we might have a different set of facts and analysis. So but I think for now, at least moving forward in the draft, the effective date would be September 1st. All right. Okay. We have any more discussion? We have a motion and a second to postpone the vote on the ordinance, the ethics ordinance until April 24th, which I believe is next week. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries seven zero. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Alan. Thank you, Mayor and Council. You'll have that new draft shortly. You bet. All right. We'll move on to public hearing 6B. Hold a public hearing and consider adoption of an ordinance to rezone approximately five acres from downtown residential DR1 and DR2 to downtown commercial DCG. I'm going to go ahead and open the public hearing and we'll hear staff presentation, some questions of staff and then the public comment. Okay. Good evening. Chandria and Jarvis with Development Services. The next item is a rezoning request for item number Z1805. This is a request by the Denton Baptist Temple to rezone approximately five acres from a downtown residential one district and downtown residential two to a downtown commercial general district. The property is generally located at the northwest corner of I-35 and Fort Worth Drive. Here's the site here. If you're familiar with the area, there's a gas station here, a water burger and then I think this is an auto body shop. The church is actually requesting to consolidate the existing zoning on the property into one district. There's currently three different zonings on the property and they want to be able to facilitate a more cohesive development in a single zoning district should the property redevelop in the future. Also of note, this property was subject to textile right away acquisition. They actually gave up about one and a half or two acres of land right along the frontage of I-35. When we consider rezoning requests, we typically look at two criteria. The first is does it meet the future land use plan or the comprehensive plan and then two will the site be adequately served with public services and public infrastructure. When we looked at the future land use plan, we found that the site is designated for community mixed use. This is the area in the pink that you see. When I reviewed the surrounding properties, the development , the existing development in the area is consistent with that future land use designation. Again, there's some single family homes here on the west side. They're currently being leased but it's still that use. To the north, there's some multi-family and then as you get close to or along Fort Worth Drive, there's a mix of commercial development. Again, the gas station, some fast food restaurant. There's a motel use and then an auto body shop. Then again on the south, that's the area for the textile right away acquisition. Looking at the zoning compatibility, the area is primarily surrounded with the DCG district. You see that mostly on the east side of the property. There's also some downtown residential one and two districts here on the west and then to the north. But overall, the development pattern is consistent with a mix of multi-family commercial and then like I said, that small pocket of single family on the west. When we looked at the public facilities, water and sewer is available in the right away of both Bernard Street and then Lindsay on the north. Then the site will continue to be accessed by Bernard Street, Lindsay Street on the north and then the I-35 frontage. In accordance with the Texas Local Government Code, we issued 11 notices within properties within 200 feet of the subject property. Then we actually received one response in favor after the report was written. Then we issued 68 courtesy notices to properties within 500 feet. Then the applicant elected not to do a neighborhood meeting . In summary, staff does recommend approval of the request as well as P&Z voted to recommend approval five zero in their March 21st meeting. We feel that the request is consistent with the comprehensive plan and it's compatible with the surrounding property in terms of the permitted uses and the densities that will be allowed. That concludes my presentation and I'll stand for questions . Questions? Council Member Hudspeth. Just real quick, Sandra, can you put the future, just any map, zoning map that would show the corner, better said, the one that shows the approval, the notice map, that would be great. I'm assuming the green area potentially may say me too. Is that your read on it? Well, the green, the area in green is the one that responded, they were in favor of the request and they're already zoned DCG. Okay, got it. So there's similar zoning district. There we go. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you. This is a public hearing. Anybody wishing to, I have no cards. So anybody wishing to speak, please come down and state your name and address and your time will begin. Yes. Kim McKibbin, 1306 West Hickory Street. There is an intersection there at Lindsay and Fort Worth Drive, which will definitely need some attention from the traffic and other areas. I think it's a good plan to use this area for this, but there are frequently accidents, people trying to cross onto Fort Worth Drive, going back towards town and people trying to come out of the apartments there. So the intersection right there at Fort Worth Drive and Lindsay is going to be complicated. If the only entrance is going to be through Bernard, you will be routing people on and off the frontage road. So just, I know that sometimes the planning commission works in separation from the traffic people or the traffic people don't know what's going on, but this is an area that's been brought up repeatedly, not only in the small area plan that we're currently working on, but in previous presentations here. So please just record this request to directly pay attention to that intersection. It is a very dangerous one as it currently is. Thank you. All right. Thank you. This is a public hearing. Anybody else wishing to speak? One more time. This is a public hearing. Anybody else wishing to speak? Okay. We'll now close the public hearing. Council Member Briggs. I move approval. Council Member Ryan. I second. We have a motion and a second for agenda item 6B. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries unanimously. Agenda item 6C, hold a public hearing and consider adoption of an ordinance regarding a proposed revision to the Denton Development Code specifically to remove limitation 34 in subchapter 5 zoning districts and limitations related to the square footage and number of truck bays for the distribution center/warehouse in general and warehouse retail uses. I will go ahead and open the public hearing and we'll hear from staff, take questions and then hear comments from the public. Good evening. So this is a motion to approve and remove limitation 34. If you recall, this item came before council as a work session a couple of weeks ago and was at the Planning and Zoning Commission last week. So the request, like I said, is to remove limitation 34, which specifically applies to distribution center and warehouse uses in our employment center districts. Just for some background, limitation 34, as we've discussed before, is the restriction that you can't have more than 150,000 square feet or eight truck docks on the distribution center and warehouse uses. It also provides some provisions for the screening and buff ering of loading bays and the outdoor storage on the facility. For reference, just on the map here, that's the Walmart at Razor Ranch. Just over that 150,000 square foot size was six truck docks . So we'd be talking about a building this size or larger. If you'll remember, in 2012 we had an amendment to the DDC that expanded limitation 34. The limitation's been there since the code was adopted, but previously only applied to wholesale storage within the ECI district. So in 2012 we expanded that for all distribution centers in ECI and for warehouse retail in any of these districts. If you recall, we did an analysis to see what size of property it would take to be able to develop a structure that would be 150,000 square feet or larger, have adequate parking. What we found within the ECI district is you'd need a minimum of 5.2 acres. That only affects about 23 parcels in the city, just over 400 acres if you tally all of those properties up together. Then similarly within ECC, for a building to be limited in square footage by this provision, you'd have to have at least five and a half acres in size. So overall we're not talking about this changing regulations for that many properties in the city. Some other considerations we looked at. No other cities have limitations of this type of those that we surveyed. Only two had any sort of limitation on warehouses, but they weren't as broadly applied as what we see here in Denton. Other uses that could be considered more intensive than a distribution center or warehouse are already permitted by right in these districts. So no limitation on size if you manufacture or produce something at your facility as well as distribute. Then according to economic development, the requests that they see are typically for 200,000 square feet and larger. So we are inhibiting a fair amount of property in the city with this limitation. All of the other provisions of the limitation in terms of screening and buffering are addressed elsewhere in the code through our compatibility buffer, right of way screening and site design standards. Staff is recommending approval of the request and the Planning and Zoning Commission recommended approval seven to zero. I can stand for any questions. Okay. Any questions for staff? Any questions for staff? Seeing none. Thank you. If this is a public hearing, anybody wishing to speak on this item, please come down and state your name and address. Anybody else wishing to speak? One more time. Anybody else wishing to speak? I have to go three times. All right. We will now close the public hearing. Council Member Hussbett. Move approval. Council Member Ryan. Second. Let's vote on the board, please. For agenda item 6C. Motion carries seven zero. Now move on to our agenda item seven, which is concluding items. Council, Mayor Pro Tem. Yeah, I was just got some information about signal box mur als. They're like on the electric sign boxes that are near, typically near traffic lights. And so I was wondering, my understanding is that the Public Art Committee considered the murals but rejected it for some reason and there might have been some feasibility issues. So I was hoping for an informal staff report on whether there are any logistical concerns, what other cities are doing. I know that there are several cities in the Metroplex that have signal box mural programs. So just basically if we could get that staff report, that would be great. All right. Council Member Briggs. On that as well, there's the trade bridge on Dallas Drive, I believe was supposed to be repainted or some sort of mural on it. And that's been a while. So just an update on that. I think that was under Kate, Keep Denton Beautiful at one time. But I'm not sure if that's still going on. Also just a reminder that the Redbed Festival is Saturday. Civic Center, Denton Civic Center starts at 10 for the Tr ashin and Fashion Show. That's it. All right. Council Member Ryan. Thank you, Mayor. As many of you may recall, I used to do the outdated code of the week and it gets so overloaded that now I'm just going to do outdated subject. And this one has to do with our code of ordinances, many of which date back to 1966. And to have staff go through and do a search for the word smoking to make sure that all any ordinances that deal with smoking are in line with the most recently passed. I came across in the Parks Department that that is a the 2003 smoking ordinance that it references back to rather than the 2014. But just to try and do a blanket across all of those. All right. Great. Council Member Hutsbeth. Thank you. I would like to ask staff to help or at least let's document our attempts. I think we can get to the table with the Wills family regarding the mini mall there on the square. I think it's important for us to show leadership there and try to schedule a meeting so that we can kind of a lot of us get questions. And so I just think we need to sit down and have that conversation and kind of take the pulse of that situation. And then secondly I'd like to take a moment to thank staff, managers office, traffic department, all the above that kind of helped me at the Betty Myers Middle School College and Career Night. When I went off fantastic. They brought out a signal cabinet similar to that which was at the State of the City event and so the kids got to interact with that and kind of really get some exposure and it was really neat to see our staff kind of interact and educate the kids and kind of take leadership there and kind of interact with them and the kids were excited to be able to touch and understand the camera that sort of thing. So it's really really neat for me to see that interaction and I appreciate all they went through to make that possible. Thank you. I just have a couple. One I wanted to send out a shout out to Jennifer Ussi of Parks and Rec Department. She is heading the team council and they put on their first program which was Battle of the Bands last Friday at the Denton Civic Center. It was going to be outside and they had the stage all set up outside but about that time we got that little storm that rolled through so they hur riedly moved it all inside and it was a wonderful wonderful fun event. I was one of the judges and it was quite amazing to see how talented those young people are with their musical abilities. So I really want to give a shout out to the team council and Jennifer for a job well done and a very successful event. I too want to echo Councilmember Hutzbus concerns or just encouragement to continue to be proactive with the square and the space there where the Denton Mini Mall was and I think my approach as far as what I would like to know is I know that there are two firewalls, one on each side and so it's my understanding that the businesses can't continue to operate or not they're sort of at a standstill until we figure out how do we get those if that space stays vacant how do we get that space those firewalls to be compliant with the rules and regs and codes that would allow them to begin to reopen. So I don't know the answer to that question so I'd like to have an answer as to the codes that regulate that and what are some of the options for that. Any other questions comments well not questions or comments concluding items any concluding items? Okay. We'll stand adjourned at 747.