Jun 04, 2018 City Council on 2018-06-04 11:00 AM

Good morning everyone. Welcome to this meeting of the Dent on City Council on Monday, June 4, 2018. It is 11.02. Start over. The mic wouldn't on. See we got a little light here. When the mic's not on, the light comes on because the guy's in the control room. Very good. We'll start over. Good morning everyone. Welcome to this meeting of the Denton City Council on Monday, June 4, 2018. It is now 11.02. We're here with a quorum, so we'll go ahead and call the meeting to order. Work through our first agenda items, which are work session reports, agenda item 1A, is receive a report and hold discussion and give staff direction on the teen city council activities during the 2018 season and future goals. Good afternoon, Mayor, Council Members. My name is Laura Behrens and I'm the Assistant Director for Parks and Recre ation. Today we wanted to take the opportunity to talk to you about one of our great programs, the Teen City Council. And I am going to, we have several members of our group from this year's group here today, so I'm going to let them tell you a little bit about their program. Great. Are you all going to introduce everybody here? Yes. So, okay, so I'm Elise. I'm the president of the Teen City Council right now, and then we have several other members here with us. So, yeah, Laura, move that mic. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. Do you want to introduce yourselves. And we typically would have to have you come to the mic so but I'm not gonna have you all do that just speak real loudly so they can hear you because this is being televised . Okay. And I'm Natalie Parks, I'm the vice president. Yes, and so we're super excited to be here today just to talk to you all about what we're doing. And, okay, so our mission is essentially to help teens understand local government, so they can develop into young leaders and make a difference in your community. And so I know that Teen City Council for me has been incredibly instrumental in my life and just helping me gain confidence and helping me just have opportunities to understand local government, and also just giving me opportunities to serve in the community. And so I absolutely think that this program is a wonderful thing and asset for the community. In order to participate, you have to be 13 to 18 years old, so you have to be a teenager, and you have to be in grades eight through 12. And I originally I think we had like all the middle school included but we recently kind of amended the bylaws to just be eighth graders and because you're a little bit more just thinking community minded at that point. You have to be a resident with your guardian support and then you have to be attending a state recognized state school or homeschool so I was homeschooled for most of my life and I was able to still join and become the president of the Teen City Council so that was an awesome opportunity to be able to include homeschoolers for me. And then it's comprised of up to 25 student members per year. And then we have a president, a vice president, a tre asurer secretary historian and marketing representative so as a president this year, Natalie was the vice president, and then we also have our secretary and our historian here with us, and so that was awesome. And it was a great team to be able to work with them. And then we also have some committees, so we have a marketing committee and they're kind of in charge of if we ever have an event or we have something that we need to get out to the community, they come up with ideas and then we have them go and present to the rest of the council what they want us to do. And we have a community service committee and they're kind of in charge of helping to plan come up with ideas for what we can do for community service. And then we have a teen events committee. And so the committees meet like on the other part of the meeting and then we have a big group meeting at the beginning. And we have meetings twice a month from five to seven on Tuesday nights. And so that's just us. And those are some committee meetings for us and then that's one of our big group meetings, we have a question. Councilmember breaks so back to the slide where there's 25 members and so I believe that application you have to apply. Do you know how many applications we received right now. I think that would be a question for Jennifer. Thank you. I know this is our second year so I was just wondering the increase in applications from, I'm not sure that we've had an increase this year we've had four applications, and then along with our current members that have served for two years, they will be reapplying because their term is over after two years. And I don't know how many we had last year. But for this year we've had four applicants, we are planning on open opening the application backup though. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. Okay. And then I think Natalie is going to go ahead and talk about community service so this is just the community service products that we've done this year. So, at least touched on the community service committee that we created this year the committees were a new addition to teen council this year. And so one of the tasks of the community community service committee was to kind of brainstorm. We did do this as a big group as well. But that was kind of their main focus. And so a couple of the community service projects that we did do this year we did a bunch of awesome ones were the, the city's spirit of Christmas food drive, where we basically collected a bunch of canned food drive food donations. And we actually got to go to like a little packing party in December at one of the churches, not far from here, where we packed up all the food and then got to deliver them to residents of the city. We also volunteered at the Denton Parks and Recreation reindeer romp and Easter extravaganza. And one of my favorite projects was actually the backpacks for homeless children, which we did at DHS, and at least we'll talk more about that in a moment. So back to the spirit of Christmas food drive this was of course back in December we spent a couple weeks gathering the donations, a bunch of different clubs schools organizations around the city and within our own schools and clubs that we were involved in all work together to get those donations. We distributed flyers around the city and around our respective schools to spread awareness of the city's food drive. And then we got to help and pack and organize and even deliver the food which was an amazing, an amazing experience to actually be able to see everybody's faces when they got the these boxes of food. And then one of like the biggest projects that we were able to do this year that was completely new for us and it was just kind of like a brainchild for from our council, and we really wanted to do something for homeless teenagers and that was something from the beginning of the year, whenever we had our big brainstorming session of what do we want to do and what do we want to achieve this year. And this was one of the big things and so we were trying to figure out how we could actually go and help homeless teens in Denton, and we figured out the best and like the most practical way to do that was to just make little backpacks for them, and with just supplies. And so what we ended up doing is we worked, all of us together to gather donations from dentists, businesses grocery stores and individuals, and to be able to make 50 string backpacks and to donate to homeless teens at Denton High School. And we were able to do that for survival over spring break, such as water non perishable food and hygiene projects. And so we were able to give that over to dent high school and they were they gave us like an approximate number of how many they would need for their homeless population, and they said about 50, and we were able to do that and so it was definitely very exciting I think that's Natalie's in that picture of them actually at DHS so all the students at Denton High School got to go and give it to the coordinator for that but that was an awesome project that we were able to do. And in addition to all of our community service we got to do a lot of conferences and different summits and things. So this was just opportunities for us to go and have fellowship with other teen city councils or other people who are leaders in the community who are teenagers. We went to the Youth Advisory Commission, the North Texas Regional Youth Forum, and we did a team building at group dynamics. We went and met with the Garland teen city council, and we also did a fit for duty fire station day. And first of all, we went to these two specific summits and essentially what they were, is they were a bunch of different teen city councils from around the state of Texas , so it was denting we had Garland there was from Dallas and several other places so probably like 10 different teen city councils from around the state of Texas who came to these, and we got to hear from elected officials business owners and police officers on what they do on a daily basis and how they work with the city administration. And we also got to network with other teens to councils and city officials so if we wanted to do an event with them in the future, then we would able to have like their contact information and all of that so that was great. And then we did this awesome team building time at group dynamics so essentially, they have like some really cool team building activities that you get to go and do. And so our entire group went and that was an awesome time and so here's just some pictures of all of us in action. And we also got to meet up with the Garland teen city council, so they have a massive teen city council over there and it's like one of the biggest funded projects from the city. And so we were able to go over there and meet in their city council chambers with them. And we got to network with them make contacts and gain support from the other city council, and we got to compare and contrast our teen city council so we presented to them like what our teen city council essentially does, and then they were able to show us the aspects of their teen city council so we could kind of compare them and make improvements to ours. And we also got ideas and improvements for our council in the future and different events that we may want to do in the future. And we actually were able to use they had an idea for a fundraiser where they did like a photo booth at their tree lighting for their city. And we were able to do that ours as well and that was an idea that we got from them so that was an awesome opportunity. And then we also did this fire station day so essentially what we were able to do is all of us were able to go out to one of Denton's fire stations, and we essentially got to do a lot of their training exercises and just experience what it was kind of like to be a fireman and training for a day. And we got to learn how the fire station works with the police and city administration, and we got to gain some respect and appreciation for the firefighters in Denton, and also see a potential career path so if any of our members wanted to become a fireman in the future then it would have been easier because they would have seen what exactly it takes to become a fireman Councilmember death has a question. Oh yes. Yeah, I am very glad to see this. Yes, I think this is something that's very important. We've had people bring before us issues about having minorities in the fire department. And I think this is a great opportunity to get the kids in this age range and get them interested in becoming a firefighter. Absolutely, and I would suggest you get with some of the organizations and see if you can't do something to encourage. And it's not only minorities but but you know that's what I 'm thinking of mainly at the moment. But, but it's mainly, mainly kids, but it would be great to see a lot of these minorities. Get interested very early. Definitely, yes, absolutely. I think that was essentially what the vision was for this day is just to, to make sure like if any of us wanted to have interest in this in the future, we have one of the representatives from the fire station come to one of our meetings, talk to us about it and then we decided that that 's something we all wanted to do. So, it was a great opportunity. Do you have a question question as well. Yeah, I did about the conferences and summits when I when I met last year, I didn't mean like, I guess I'm one year off because I'm thinking that this year. Teen Council is the second year right yes yes okay this is the one I meant the second year from the first year applications that's what I was talking about but the conferences and summits as well, because I don't think we were able to do that in the. And so this is really great to see that you guys were able to do the conferences in the summits and it sounds like you 've learned a lot from from getting to do those. Oh, absolutely, because I know last year I was also part of it. And so the very first year we started off and I think we were kind of all just kind of getting our, our whole foot planted and what teen city council was and we were amending the bylaws a lot and just kind of trying to get a foundation. And so this year we got to do a lot more than we did last year, and I assume that in the future it's going to get easier and easier and they're going to build on that. And so that's kind of the point of doing this presentation is just to encourage you all to continue to support it. And so there's just some more pictures of us at the fire station day, there was this thing where we had to like slam a mallet into this like wood box or whatever and I tried it and it was the most exhausting thing I've ever done in my life. And then I believe. Oh, yes, you were going to do this. Yeah, I was actually sore the next day after the firefight er thing so but it was so much fun and it was such an opportunity to be able to actually go out there and see how hard that department works to keep the city safe, which of course highlights the importance of the Teen Council and the opportunities that we have had to gain from being a part of it from networking with other people or other students in their respective communities around the entire Metroplex to see how they're impacting their communities, it was able to help us grow and kind of tweak things in our own teen council to make us more successful. And for example when we talked about Garland we actually also got the committee's idea. And we saw them meeting in their committees, and we thought that that was a really interesting way to get our own Teen Council members involved in what we were doing. And so we decided to implement that into our own city council. But moving on to fundraiser and fundraisers and teen events , which of course is also a huge part of being in the Teen Council. We did quite a few things this year, my personal favorite was the frozen photo booth at the Denton tree lighting so if you saw us there we actually had I believe one of the longest lines for booths at the tree lighting. I was actually Elsa. So that was super exciting. We hosted a teen movie in the park, back in the fall, where we played guardians of Guardians of the Galaxy and then we had our amazing spectacular and super successful Battle of the Bands event. So here are some images from the frozen photo booth. We had Elsa and then we had Olaf. So that was going on throughout the whole night. And then this was back in October, we took over one of the movie in the park days to make it a teen centered movie in the park time. And then Battle of the Bands, which we would you like to speak about. So, this was an awesome, awesome event, and we, this was again one of those things we wanted to do from the beginning of the year, we just had the vision for wanting to do a battle the bands because when teen city council, I guess existed in the early 2000s I believe this was something that they did a lot. And so we just had this idea and we thought it would be so cool to try and pull it off again. And so here's just some pictures, I was the MC and then we also had Chris Watts actually came and was one of the judges, which is awesome. And so there's just some more pictures from it. So, I just want to give some background on what exactly teen city council did to make this event happen. So we recruited all of the bands who were involved so it was personal recruitment from everybody involved in teen city council. And we planned and voted on the venue the time the prizes and the event itself so we were in charge of essentially planning whether or not we wanted to do it. And we should distribute flyers advertised and me and Natalie actually had the opportunity to go on the Denton radio station at the square and talk about our event and also UNT radio to discuss the event and encourage local participation. And we had seven bands in total, and we had over 200 people in attendance. And then we also had some Denton celebrities who came and actually judge to see who they thought the winner would be and so we had our Mary Chris Watts, and we had the UNT jazz mean director and we had a real estate agent Chrissy Maloff, I believe is how pronounce your name. And so they came and judge this event. And it turned out wonderfully we were definitely nervous because we were kind of. We had just come up with it from nothing so it was like from scratch we didn't really have anything to base this off of. And so what we're hoping is for in the future to maybe possibly be able to continue to do this event and have even a bigger turnout and for the city council's continued support for that event, it was awesome to have some of the bands like local teenagers who wanted to get involved in music for them to have an opportunity to actually be able to play in front of a crowd, and it'd be a competition. And so we were able to bring them in to community oriented event and it was family friendly and everything so definitely a great, great event to be able to be a part of. And so in the future. First of all we just wanted to say thank you for supporting us for teen city council, and then just for how you could be involved in the future. Something that we've always thought about is if y'all would want to participate in selection for like the applicants for the future, just participating and helping select people also possible judges for battle the bands and other events if you wanted to be involved in those and guest speakers on our meetings because we've also had guest speakers throughout our year which was amazing I believe. Chris Watts came and spoke on a few of those and we had some other people from the city. We had a fireman and different people like that come speak to us and just give us good vision for our futures, and then also just a continuation of the program because I know for me it was had an absolute impact on my life, and, and, especially this year being able to do the things that we got to do and plan the things we got to do, and gave me a vision for what I want to do in the future. So, absolutely great time. Do you want to say anything Natalie? Yes, I'm so blessed and so happy to have actually been a part of the teen council for these past two years especially watching it get started again because of course we were active years ago, but to be able to be, I guess, one of the people that was kind of like laying the foundation for the future success of this amazing organization. It was so much fun and I obviously wouldn't be here today presenting in front of the city council without the Denton Teen Council so thank you guys for everything. Thank you. Questions, comments, Councilman Briggs. I just have a comment and I kind of talked to you guys about it over there for a little while but I just wanted to go on record and say that I was at a leadership to combat hunger. This past week and they kept speaking about the youth and how important the youth voice is in their mission. And so I appreciate you guys and all that you do and I would like to be able to expand the teen council's role and think about issues like that facing our community and give us feedback, and maybe solutions and ideas. So, would you guys think of that. That would be awesome. Absolutely. Yes, Councilmember Duff. Yeah, I think everybody knows I live at Robson Ranch, and we have several organizations out there that I would like to put you in contact with. For instance, the women's club would be very good for you to come out and speak to them. And, you know, especially if you're if you're doing something like the backpacks are things at Christmas. They can bring things. And, you know, they generally have 200 women there. And they're very responsive to the don't want to charity work and didn't already and I'm sure that they would be glad to hook up with you. We have the Kiwanis group out there to. We have the after schoolers. So it would be good for you to be at least in contact with them, because they would certainly they would they would be very glad to give you any assistance they could. Oh, that would be super helpful. Absolutely. Yes, so I have a question is there a common issue as you visit the different teen councils different areas that continually, I guess, teen councils dealing with the same issue or another issue kind of popping up that everyone's kind of trying to resolve, or is there anything like that just consistently across communities that you were able to identify. Yes, I mean, so we, because we went to the summit so this conference is those were actually extremely impactful because they did give us a vision on what the broader issues were and I think one of the main things was actually just teen involvement in the community because a lot of teams are kind of disconnected from, I guess, community involvement and making an impact on the greater world. And so, just being able to essentially the vision for almost every teen city council I think was just pulling people in from the community so not just it being the people who were on the actual members on the teen city council, but actually wanting to pull in other people from the community so that's what we tried to do with like our battle of the bands, or those backpacks for the homeless teens, just wanting to impact other teenagers in the community specifically, and wanting to be able to bring other people into that circle of. Just impact. Thank you. Yes. Yes, go ahead, Paul. I just want to express my admiration for for what you've done, and I know you're specifically looking at people who are 13 to 18 who are interested in being involved in the community, but I hope you know your example inspires people over 18 as well. Thank you. Okay, customer Gregory. I was wondering if you all have had in any of your meetings discussions about gaps in services that the city provides that would be a benefit to the 13 to 18 age group. I definitely think there weren't a lot of events that were centered around teenagers, so a good example would be like the battle of the bands reason we did that is because there was nothing like that already in the city of Denton and I think that there are more things like that for younger age groups, and also for like adults, but not specifically for just teenagers and that's possibly because I mean when you get to high school like a lot of schools have that role, but I definitely think teenagers would be interested. And I think that this program specifically was a gap that wasn't being filled and so then now that that exists I think that that also helped, so I don't think there's anything specific other than, than just in general more opportunities maybe to volunteer like, oh, this is a teen oriented service day like if you're a teenager and then you can come help with such and such or you can come watch a city council meeting, or, and I think also something that's awesome is I know Chris watts like came up with the idea for the mayor's youth summer jobs program, and that's something that both me and Natalie participated in. And that I think has been absolutely impactful as well just being able to see more of the inner workings of the city so more programs like that, I know I've taken advantage of and I think more people are definitely interested in those hopefully you'll might look at more of those questions, and maybe even survey some of your classmates in public schools and in home schools to see if there are gaps, things that we could be doing through the parks and recreation program or other programs and then report back so that we can have some ideas as to, because we want to be the purpose of the city is to be able to serve all of the residents, including those that don't vote yet. Absolutely. Councilman breaks. So one question for you and then I have a follow up question. Yes, I don't believe so, not that I remember. So no, they would just meet like you did in the city building. Yes, yes, yes. And so my other question is about applications because you mentioned. You mentioned opening to the front of the process. Yes. Right yeah and so there were four and so my question is, what are the plans. Besides just reopening it how do we market and get the news and the information out there because there's still people that don't realize that this right you're right and that's something we're discussing right now, myself and Laura and our marketing manager actually planning to meet, hopefully within the next next few days maybe even weeks to discuss that. And once we make that plan that's when we plan to reopen the application. We definitely need to get the word out there a little bit more. Also before we open it back up we were looking at making a couple changes in our bylaws. We mentioned one of the changes being instead of being a city resident possibly being just D ISD member of a school district. We do have some members that live, you know if you live in little elm, you go to a dent in high school, which is Ray Brazwell. So we have some kids out there, sorry, that wouldn't be able to attend the Teen Council, because they live in little elm, as far as the way it's, it's brought up right now. So that's something that we're looking at changing for next year. Once we have all those changes then we will open it back up. Would you be asking those cities to help fund the program as well. That has not been discussed. Okay. That's. Thank you. You're welcome. Councilman Ryan and I'm on the applications. If you can get them when they're ready to be sent out to the public, you send them out to the council members, that'd be wonderful. I've already been contacted by a wonderful that's kind of interested and we can get them out to other youth organizations that are Natalie's and key club. So, I mean just those types of things that we absolutely absolutely as well. Absolutely. Anybody else. All right. Well, first of all, I want to give credit where credit is due to Councilmember Briggs. This was your sort of brainchild a couple years ago. So thank you so much for that. And I think just based on what we've heard today and what I've experienced through meeting with them and at the Battle of the Bands, it's something that they really, really enjoy and have really committed themselves to. Thank you, Jennifer, for your work. And they didn't mention the hardest thing about the Battle of the Bands. They had set that up outside because it was supposed to be in the in the in the park. And so it was fixing to rain or the storms are coming. So literally, I think it was within an hour or two when you're supposed to start. They moved it all into the Civic Center. So, first of all, kudos to you all for that great work k udos to the Parks Department for being able to have that flexibility. And it was a wonderful event. Everybody had a great deal of fun, very talented people in this community, you know, teens and musicians. So thank you all so much for that. Thank you, Jennifer, for your leadership in that and providing the Parks Department. Thank you to the participants, to those who have served and who will continue to serve because it sounds like you've really gotten a lot out of it. And thank you so much for what you've given to the city and the fundraisers and things such as that. So look forward to another successful year next year. Any other questions, comments? Great presentation as well. Wonderful. Yes, Councilmember. I just wanted to commend you on your presentation. You did a fabulous job presenting to us. All right. Thank you all very much. You bet. Thank you. That's my goal. Just kidding. Now, you all get back to school for crying out loud. I'm kidding. I'm teasing you, obviously. OK, we'll go on to our next agenda item, which is agenda item 1B, receive, report and hold discussion, give staff direction regarding the Courthouse Square design standards. We'll let them if they need to go ahead and move. Thank you all very much for coming. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you all. You bet. Follow that one, my friend. That is a tough act to follow. 26 slides in 25 minutes. I mean, come on now. It's a time thing. I can work on the time thing. Mayor, notice that they meet on Tuesday afternoon or Tuesdays and they only meet two hours. That's true. Yes. All right. I got the dig. When are you leaving? When's your last day? All right. Just checking. I'm sorry. Nope, that's great. I'm Scott McGowan, director of development services here to present a draft outline or guideline for the guidelines and standards for the Denton Square. I guess I want to start with why and where it is that we started. And of course, after Christmas, we had a significant fire in the square. And as a result, it came very apparent that we didn't have standards in place for A, the demolition or B, reconstruction of that space. So we looked at that. We identified the fact that we needed to have some standards and guidelines to make sure that we preserve the character and, you know, work with our business owners and have a good understanding of what needs may be. With that being said, we were asked to do that. We started by researching other communities. We looked for best practices throughout and looked at what other models are working, what time tested versions of having such standards were in place. And we looked at a number of other cities, Fort Worth, Gra pevine, Waco, Roanoke, Bastrop, Capelle, McKinney, and ultimately came up with some draft standards. Those draft standards are largely that of what Fort Worth has. And Fort Worth has a number of standards throughout the community. We took what their model was, looked at some of some other communities were doing well, and we adapted that those standards to fit what we needed in Denton. We began the process by reaching out to the stakeholders. So we immediately visited with those persons that would be most greatly affected, meaning the property owners and business owners within the square and asked them what they thought of the concept of these draft standards. We presented that back in February, I guess it was, and that was really kind of the rollout and kickoff for having these meetings. We also discussed this in numerous public forums throughout , and anytime we had an opportunity to discuss with anyone that may be a potential stakeholder to have the conversation about the importance of preserving the character, the feel, and the experience of the square and what we needed to have in place. Overall, we received overwhelming support. We had no one that was opposed to the standards. You know, the common themes throughout that were that we had flexible, practical standards that wouldn't be a burden to the business owners, property owners within the square, but yet would preserve the character, the feel, and the historic significance of the Denton square. We also heard that they need to be meaningful, and they needed to have teeth. They want to ensure that we didn't just adopt a set of guidelines that that ultimately would just be there to provide some guidance that they want to have standards that actually meant something and that would be consistent in the application. I have a question. And, you know, if you go back to that last slide. Absolutely. You talked about standards and you took several of them or use the city for sort of as a template. So in that first sentence, it says adopt flexible time tested content concepts to fit Denton. And then we talked about standards. So is this a is this like a concept plan or is this actual regulatory code you have very specific codes and help me understand just the. It is both. Okay. We began, we began the work with truly guidelines, and then the difference between guidelines and standards and standards being that that regulatory component. As we went through this process of visiting with stakeholders, they felt the need to have truly have standards in place, so that we would be consistent in the application and be able to enforce those provisions. And as we talked through this I'll get a little bit more into some of that detail. This really is intended just to get a flavor in the pulse of of Council's direction. We went to the stakeholders first to make sure that we had a good understanding and thereby in on what we should present to you. And we would come back to Council with actual ordinance, and those standards and guidelines mapped out very clearly. This is very close or the, the, the exhibits that were attached to the packet. Very close to what we presented originally we've added some components as as we heard common themes from our all of our stakeholders, and just tried to get a document as close to what it is that we would come back to you in ordinance form to present. So, it is both elements and there are some pieces that we were working through as we got into guidelines of course it was somewhat ambiguous as to as to what that might mean so some of its more more streamlined or more regulatory and defined. And the only reason I asked is as I was going through the slides of the, the actual sort of concepts or standards some of them say, encouraged, some of them say are prohibited. So it seemed like there was a mix and, and are you anticipating that when the code is drafted and ordinances are brought back that they 'll still be that mixture of subjectivity and objectivity as far as well encouraged so that doesn't mean you got to do it or you can't do it prohibited certainly means that, or are you going to further define some of that flexibility on some of these items. We're, we're certainly looking for counsel input. What we've heard is is that there are certain areas that need to be clearly defined. And then there also is that piece that we, we certainly shouldn't be picking out paint colors. So not to get into the detail of paint covers colors, but we also want to say that it needs to be, you know, match the character, compliment what the area is rather than, and again without defining what that paint color might be. Okay, so that was a lot of what we heard. So, when you say meaningful. This is all a question. I think what you mean by meaningful is something like enforceable or would actually affect would actually affect choices. Is that what you mean by meaningful. You say we want meaningful standards. Yes, we, we, we want. So, ultimately, an easy one that came up frequently would be first floor first for glass. So we don't want reflective glass on a first floor so we would have a defined standard that would say, you will not have mirrored glass on the first floor. However, on upper levels and it may be a little bit more subjective as to what it is somebody may do for window treatments or how that may appear, having less of an effect and some of those architectural differences of how it is that the street view versus upper levels of the building. And if I may follow up. And when it gets into considerations of fitting character and obviously, you know , we should see the rest of the presentation, but some of that is going to come down to a judgment, and is the enforceability and the meaningfulness of that, that in that body of appeal that some somebody is going to make a decision that will be a subjective judgment but that, you know that. Is that the intention that that the things that seem a little vague now, like fit the character would ultimately be a judgment by a governmental body. Correct, so so the process and it is later in the presentation but I can obviously hit it at a high level is a certificate of appropriateness, so that there is a an application process so when it is that you're going to make a significant change to the facade of the building you're going to do something that ultimately we have a certificate of appropriateness, either approve or denied administratively by staff, so staff would make that first determination. If in fact, that is a denial then that denial would go before a body in that body would then be a group of whatever those stakeholders may look like, which again is an approve or deny process that may come before Council or ZBA depending on what it is those decisions are so yes there is a process. Okay, thank you, or will be. Ultimately when we went to our original stakeholders, and the number of meetings that we had we were. We offered up what what should the standards or where should the standards have those boundaries. And so this map dictates or depicts Excuse me, the, the boundaries for the district. It's important to note that we started with really the central business district talked about the central business district in the downtown square in particular, and there's interest in Oak Street in the rail yard and so we wanted to certainly can find this to the district, making it very unique and unique that it is, and the fac ades and the streets immediately adjacent to so Cartwrights is the easiest example of that. You may walk in the front door and walk out the back door that both of those streets are important to the square and that's part of the character of the square. It was the original business owners and property owners that defined what this area would be. And then as we met with Main Street and the other the other groups. They reinforce the fact that they thought that this was an appropriate place for these guidelines and standards to be. Clear as to where that is. So you're saying you expanded it or no, no, we actually refined it our original original map was a had options for a larger area. And then it was refined down to the square in the buildings that face the courthouse square, as well as the block immediately behind the square. So it's all of the facades and both sides of the street on the streets behind the square. If I could just follow up. So when I look at this map. I see that you've got the line that's run across the front of those buildings. When you say the facades. So this one of those streets is C edar Street. You're saying the buildings on the other side of Cedar Street or Austin or whoever those would be subject to these guidelines only the facades or the entire buildings, just the facade, facade, facade only. And again, trying to manage what that what that character looks like. Councilman Briggs and then I think Councilman Gregory, did you have a question? So if downtown were to become part of a national registered district, and I've heard talks and that may be possible someday in the future. Would these boundaries change with that? And also with the same design standards that we're requiring, would they still apply or would they be different than that? They would be different. So these these these guidelines and standards are something very specific to Denton, not necessarily to a historical district. The historical district may be that same boundary or maybe something completely different. This is truly designed just for us to capture all of the buildings within the square, because if if a particular building has more historical significance than another building, it doesn't necessarily mean I.E. the mini mall where it is they were able to demo the building. We want to be able to address that, just address it more proactively, not to say that they couldn't do what they did , but at least there is an opportunity for the public to have, you know, a say in it. If that helps. Okay. Kind of. I was gonna say that seems. Do you have any follow ups or anything? Councilmember Gregory. Back in the 1960s. We, we didn't know how to react to the building the really tall building on the southeast corner of the courthouse square. Because it was the first state bank at the time. Now it has a big Wells Fargo sign on it. There was partial delight that didn't was grown up enough to have a really tall building downtown. And then there was partial distress over a building that was so much taller that could start a trend of blocking the view of the courthouse from all the way around. So, people really didn't know much how to respond to it. It was it was really a mixed bag. So my question is, would, since that building is now in the downtown, and it helps establish the character of the downtown would, would it be possible if another building were to go away through fire or something like that, that that that that it could be replaced with a building similar in character to the building on the southeast corner of the downtown square . Currently, currently, yes, of course it would be, and then the design standards are really catering to the fact that the square is, you know, we have a height limitation so it 's trying to manage that. And again, when we come back with the actual document and ordinance then we would define, you know, where and feet and, etc. that may look like so. So, today yes tomorrow no. What is the current height restriction and what is, what do you think that the proposed height restriction will be. What, what, 100 feet is the current current height restriction. So that Richard can speak to I don't know specifically off hand. Sorry fighting a little bit of a cold so my voice gives out . Currently it's 100 feet in height but there are some limitations with respect to a view corridor, where you can 't block a view of the, of the courthouse. So how we would how we would measure that the code really doesn't define it. But I think we would have to if a building were to want to go to that that height. We would have to look at various, various locations in the city where, where you could see the, where you could see the courthouse. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. What I struggled a little bit but I here's here's the end of the story if the stakeholders are okay with this layout then obviously I think that should take precedent, but I think the same issue we ran into with many mall becomes an issue further down Hickory with a building does are so close to each other. And so that really to me is is kind of a catalyst and making sure we capture those buildings that are right up against each other so that it doesn't, so we can be proactive and getting the other businesses back up and running or having some effect on that decision versus what we have here so I'd like to see it expand. So I look at Google Maps down Hickory there's that instance, kind of, and down, oh, I think there's some more instances. So that that's my concern again if the stakeholders are fine with this then, then, then I would yield to that but, and I'd also ask you to get it in writing, because the city hall west is outside of that boundary. So I can just see the the blowback being the city is forcing these standards on everyone else, and then we carved ourselves out so that we don't have to do that right and so not to say that's the case but it opens itself that that conversation that that argument can be made so I'd like to, in a perfect world for me I'd like to lump us in there just because I think it, it beats that argument back such that it would come up. Again, maybe future iterations, I can sit in on one of meetings but I just want to understand that component of those buildings that are so tight together, if we lose one, and it adversely affects another, and we don't have a path to get that to regenerate faster. That that's troubling to me. That was that was really a lot of the conversation when we were finding this and absolutely the business owners and stakeholders and I think we had 30 in attendance 29. In that initial meeting, and they did refine this down to this area because it was the creep. So, where is it you start where is it you stop and absolutely that what you reference is valid. We had a first crack at trying to do something but we also in this process, easily and early identified the fact that we have the rail yard, which would be the next area that we would, we would come back with a set of standards and start reaching out to those stakeholders oak Hickory and trying to go that direction following that, and then north and south so that we can truly make sure that we have walkable, there's flow. There's a little bit of uniqueness to each of those characters different from that of what the square is, and making certain that we're taking all of that into into account. It really was to try to get the pulse of what the community felt out of having these types of standards in place, and to begin the process to the past. I understand that this came forward is perhaps form based code. Historic requirements, and it was met with a great deal of resistance and this is really trying to get feedback feedback and input from the stakeholders and that's truly what we heard. We would protect other areas of the city and we would begin that process immediately following this. So, if we could and I'm part of this. Let's go ahead and get through your presentation, because I know I think probably a lot of questions that I've asked and probably some others have asked maybe am doing the presentation and we can not. I don't think the presentation was in the backup was it. I didn't know it was looking at which one was it. Very similar the only only difference might have been the map. Yeah. All right, go ahead. I just try and figure out how many slides but okay so within the within the backup it exhibit three is is standard section one, and then exhibit two is section two but gotcha so just for that being said, really we after our initial rollout which which was our section two. We came back with something that is understanding the district so we can provide a little bit of intent, a little bit more narrative to kind of explain that the what and the where, and really to provide that framework of what we're attempting to do by preserving the character. Ultimately this, this is designed to support businesses. It is to encourage reuse and you know, preserve what we have in place, encourage creativity, so we don't want to stifle anyone's concept of what it is that they're trying to do. We just want to make sure that we have something that's consistent and that flows with with what it is. And really to try to promote a pedestrian friendly community we know that we have a lot of foot traffic we know there are a lot of events on the square and then how is it that we can enhance that the ultimately administering the program I alluded to that somewhat which would be staff, staff would do it just like any other application process so if someone 's within the district they'd make application prior to a building permit to see what in fact was being done if in fact meets that the standards. I have a flow that will show you just here in a little bit that that kind of indicates where it is that that works I guess I'll just jump to that because we talked through some of that. So ultimately when we're talking about the exterior facade we're less concerned with what's happening in the interior of the space. It's it's those aesthetic values that timeless design to the exterior. So, as they do that if they're doing just minor alterations general repairs door front replacements. It would be a staff, staff approval process. If in fact staff doesn't approve if staff denies and it would go before a board of review. Well that board of review also would hear major alterations demolitions or new construction. Now there has been a lot of dialogue on what that board of review should be. I think overwhelmingly what we heard is that that it should be a separate board it should be a board made up of the downtown property owners and business owners that they have the greatest stake in the game. We also heard from the historic landmark Commission that there should be that they should hear these cases. So again that's that's one of those policy decisions for for Council to make. We, you know, going through it again I think overwhelmingly as we talked to groups, we heard from the business owners and stakeholders that you know they're most invested in it, not to say that it wouldn't include someone from historic preservation on that on that board, but that's, that's what we heard and will bring forward or move in the direction that Council would like to move. And then, again from the standpoint of issuing a certificate of appropriateness for the project to move forward. And if either of those denied then that could go before City Council to be heard. Okay, perfect. Before I make that judgment. How many slides do you have so I'll know that it's going to be another 30 minutes we might just ahead of time. No, I'll just roll through them. Just don't want to have a really burning question. Okay. 45, 425 sorry I'm speaking, speaking quickly, mayors trying to hurry me along. No, I'm just making sure that we don't lose questions if people have. Okay, and then section two which was exhibit, exhibit to was is that of building edge standards, really trying to provide for some delineation between that first floor and the floors above, as well as just articulation of the building so we don't have a flat wall that we have some sort of a jerk to to the wall, making certain that we, we have the same sort of look in windows and feel, and how the buildings are oriented so that we're orienting to the to the street to again a pedestrian friendly environment. We, we certainly want to be aware of what the materials are so avoiding stucco and promoting brick and in more of those timeless designs that we see the buildings have a store front feel so that we're not necessarily putting residential living on the first floor that there is a actual storefront with residential or offices above. Another important component that we heard was, was the, the roof shape in the style of the building. And ultimately to a point, what came to be is that really you shouldn't see the roof or see roofing materials so, and if you were that it shouldn't be a shingled roof. So those were just more comments that came out of it. And then those those standards to manage demolition of buildings so that where it is that we have buildings that we maintain buildings that we have a storefront rather than having an open space or a parking lot in the square. We also went further as far as just talking about screening what what we need to screen where we need to screen it. If we have temporary construction fencing or barricades that that we make sure that we have elements that are in place that may add not necessarily remove from the character that we're not leaving that vacant space. First and foremost we want to preserve we want to preserve timeless we want to preserve character we want to preserve historic qualities that the square offers. We know that it's important for pedestrian dining so the standards have some elements in there that you know we're going to have people that that may be out in that walkable area that that are able to eat and being that place for people to come visit and play. Our process. Today or where we're going. I alluded to some of that already is that we've we've done stakeholder input. We've, we've went to historic landmark Commission planning and zoning Commission, and we're here today for city council feedback. We, we want to take all of those comments we want to distill that down and come back with revised standards as well as a draft ordinance, and we'd like to take that back to our stakeholders, walk it through the community, come back before PNC and council and and look to have something adopted in the very near future. This would be a living breathing document we would we would hope that we would continue to manage it, and, you know, just on a path of continuous improvement with everything that we're doing is that we make certain that this is going to be a usable practical tool for for years to come. And with that then I get to the questions. That's very much. So, I have a comment to two questions if I can. So, first of all, I just really applaud the overall impulse and share it in wanting to preserve the character of the square. My questions are, what aspects of this approach, did you adopt from Fort Worth I'm curious how they kind of sort of define the territory, different from historic preservation and you know just what did you what did you learn from for that because I think that some parts of the both are very well executed. And secondly, second question, more specifically, did you look at the factor of awnings, which sounds like a detail, but it's one of the most defining characteristics of the square, and I believe was at one point enshrined in ordinance or at least in encouragement right that there's some kind of a. Some kind of a fund that that businesses could get for having an awning and if you want to be human scale and pedestrian friendly, you know it's sort of a defining feature. So, I'll let you respond to all that Fort Worth awnings. And I was looking to see we had a not I don't, I don't, I 'll start with it, the awnings piece I don't know that there 's a component within our ordinance today and I don't know if Richard if you're familiar, Sean. As far as having that that awning, other than that deline ation between first floor and the upper stories. The, the Fort Worth model Fort Worth has any number of unique cultural areas. And that's why Fort Worth was a was a major contributor to what it is that we have here today. They separate out historic preservation in, and as we're attempting to do is make sure that we're complementing historic preservation, but not trying to meld the two of them because there are an awful lot of stakeholders that have a great deal of concern when we talk about the historic preservation component of it because you lose flexibility. So Fort Worth was very diligent in the fact of trying to manage character. And experience, and to make certain that they were going to keep what it is that they had without discouraging those that are trying to repurpose or reuse a building. So, we know that there are there are two tracks to this, meaning that if we can manage what we have for the Denton Square. All the while we're going to continue to pursue more when it comes to historic preservation and trying to step up what we have for historic preservation and then if that answers that question sufficiently. Good start. Councilmember Brits. I applaud you for for moving quickly after the incident we had on the square and I assume that this kind of sped the process up with the demolition of the building which. Okay, so the Historic Landmark Commission, you mentioned that did they receive this presentation. They did. And did they have any comments. They did. Overall they supported it. I think largely they would like for that body to hear the appeals they feel that they should, they should be the body that hears the appeals . I think that if I recall correctly there was some dialogue between committee members on trying to define historic versus it being a standard and refining that. But overall, supportive of and again, they felt it was important that the appeals be heard through them. I'm actually in agreement with that as well. I think that's the body that hears things already. Right when there's a challenge or a question, it doesn't it go to the Historic Landmark Commission. On his historic or square. Yeah. Yes, they're hearing they 're hearing a lot of that. Yes. It would just be, I would just think that that should continue. That would be my opinion. And I believe, are there. Downtown business owners already on that on that commission . Do you know. No, no. Okay. Well, maybe we could. If you go. Yes. Well, if that were the case, maybe I would recommend maybe adding a seat to it and adding it possible. I'm not sure changing our ordinance our requirements to add a business owner so that voice could still be sure that would be good. Right now we have a close by HLC member these across the street here so he's not down on the square proper. And thinking back on that meeting I think there was really was one strong voice about having the Landmark Commission be that body. I don't know if that they actually made a vote on that but it could be that a couple of those members maybe serve on the board. This is still open. Okay. I've got a couple anybody else. Sure. I think it would probably be wise to maybe look at the different aspects of what they might need to come before the reason for that certificate. I mean demolition is going to be different than than what you reconstruct is it maybe look at dissecting that as to what board it would go to maybe a better way to handle it as opposed to everything goes before one. If it has this aspect to it then it goes before for historic landmark if it goes as this aspect it goes before HLC. You know that that might be something that was kind of help satisfy you know all of the different boards out there to make them happy with, you know, what aspect they're looking out for on the square. Thank you. Thank you. It's still private property. At the end of the day. Yeah, sir. And looking at the square currently that's where I get hung up. Because ultimately, you can only push so far, even if you have standards even if I mean, you know the the resources and the ability to force someone to do something are limited. I'd rather. I'd rather take the approach, you're on as far as appeals, or, you know, that's what, with the goal of being getting something accomplished, allowing that flexibility for if it 's a new buyer that then comes in and rebuilds, or I just, I like that approach because ultimately, we're not going to pay for it and if someone said hey I have the best interest in it in mind I want to do those things I cannot afford to do those things currently. I think it's, it behooves the city to then say well, this standard is set in stone. And so we have an empty space or we, you know, end up fighting over what rights we have but ultimately here in Texas. We're going to have a hunch on how that ends, you know, so I think it's it's best to work with the landowners and have something that does give that flexibility so if they decide to go back they decide to sell, whatever that is it opens up the, a lot of different doors to approach a problem versus saying hey here's succinctly what, to your point, this is the type of paint that has to go back this is the type of break that comes back, and we, we, at that point, lose options, and I just want to avoid that and avoid the situation currently. So I think I think the approach you're on and the path you're on helps so while while mayor's asking his questions can you go back to the slide with the flow chart if you will please, and thank you. All right. Thank you sir. Okay, can I ask my question now. Yes, sir. Thank you. I appreciate that. I'm teasing. It's all good man this is cool rainy weather just you know, get you moving. Couple couple things, because I wanted to see this flow chart as well. Really, and this is more at a higher elevation level, I think we're going to see where we're going to run into a struggle and some conflicts. Because when I hear about certificate of appropriateness. Now I may be wrong but so somebody can correct me, but my understanding is certificate of appropriateness. Those certificates are issued by the historic landmark commission when someone is wanting to do some type of alter ation in a historically in a historic district as designated by the city of Denton. So far okay. You are other than this would be a different certificate of appropriateness. Okay, so, and I don't know if Aaron if there's any issue with terminology just well and that that's helpful, because I think what I'm, what I'm hearing is, because I hear that the appeals will go to the historic landmark commission. Of course right now the only appeals are hearing our historic changes in historic districts, the square is not, there's not there's some buildings that may have historic designation either with the state or with the city, but the square does have a national historic registry designation on certain you know what buildings apply and, and those kind of things. So, we're going to have to be real careful not to mix these two processes, because of I think private property rights people in a historic district have a say. To some degree I mean I think it's a certain number of people who have to prove that within a district. So, we have to be careful on that on not confusing the two processes. But however, my concern is that. And this goes to my second observation, my concern is that we have some very clear and precise factors and guidelines for those two different processes a certificate of appropriateness on historically designated property is different than a certificate of appropriateness , is it appropriate for these standards that we're setting that we're setting forth. And that brings up the the observation of. I know you've talked to the downtown stakeholders and you say they're the ones that have the most at stake. I don't know if I agree with that statement, not about you but yes they do have a stake in the sense of they have investments there they certainly have a, a, an interest in making sure that it thrives. But they all also have their own idea of what they want the square to sort of look like how they want it to develop and those kind of things and there's people that are outside of the square who've been long term didn't residents and also, you know, have some ideas and sometimes some good suggestions about that so I don't know if I'd want to limit it because if we're going to take that approach here. We almost have to take that approach to other places in the city in other words well these people know what's best for their neighborhood so what anybody else says about it throughout the city really doesn't matter I know that's not the approach you're taking. I'm just saying, as the process moves forward. I would hate that the only larger public input only come at a public hearing official public hearing at the city of city council chambers with three minutes. I would hope that there would be some opportunity to to expand that input beyond the boundaries of the square area for people who probably have some pretty strong, you know, thoughts and ideas about about that historical part of our, that part of our city. So, that's my only concern, I have no concern with developing standards have no concern with, you know, the input from the stakeholders. It's these processes because we're interchangeably using historic landmark commission, historic properties National Historic Registry. And so it may be good to either have an informal staff report or a presentation workshop on what what is what are all those different terms mean where they encompass like if you have to design something or repair something according to national standards. What's in place in order to be subject to those and how much differences that they're at the local level so there just seems to be a lot of interchanging of words here that have certain meanings now that what I'm hearing is they may have additional meeting meanings later, and just a lot of clarity on that. And lastly, it's about, and I appreciate you bring up property rights private property rights, it's about private property rights as well. I know what happened with the tragic fire, and that it's still sitting there vacant I know a lot of people have some concerns about that and, and those kind of things but it's private property, and it seemed like the biggest concern was could the people on either side of the building to redevelop and reconstruct, but they didn 't know if the outside facade wall met our code standards for outside facade walls well, this is where we probably learned that we can be a little more proactive in that when something like this happens to say hey, it does or all you got to do is do this, and you guys can start moving ahead, regardless of what they're doing in the vacant space. So I think this is a great step forward. I can see where there may be some confusion about some of the words some of the processes, land, I'm not so sure if I don't know enough about the process to say whether I agree or not that the historic landmark commission should hear the certificate of appropriateness because I don't know what all that means if it's a different standard what is the standard. They have to determine if it's appropriate pursuant to the guidelines that you're talking about drafting, and okay, I can I can get on board with that. I'm hoping there's enough training or enough people business people from the square that may be on that committee to also understand that there's maybe a big difference between a certificate of appropriateness with these standards, and one on a historic situation. So, I don't have a sense either way but I think we need to further explore all the definitions and the processes on how those. Does that make sense. Absolutely. Okay, it wasn't the intent to meld those two. And that was some of the conversation that took place with the historic landmark commission is that they had concern of melding those two, because they're two completely different tracks, right, and so we absolutely can put something together. Okay, great. Yes. If it's not meant to be a historic district per se. What kind of animal is it. And is it a kind of thing that that ought to be formally constit uted, you know with with participation of the stakeholders in parallel fashion to the way historic district is in that some percentage of the people in that area have to buy in for them that designation happen, and then, and then that kind of. My thought is that that kind of would give the authority to to govern it. And then, secondly, doesn't it help. The governing body, the body of appeal isn't solely made up of people in it. Like, I don't know if it's not to be a stark landmark commission or an augmented one or not but isn't it good that that be from a group that is representative from areas around the city because, you know, let's let's face it realistically, ownership could become very concentrated in that area right there seems to be a trend toward concentration of ownership there so you probably wouldn't want it to come down to, you know, a very small number of people setting the rules. Well, and I think and I think to your point in the flow chart, the co a if it's, if it's denied wherever it goes to whether it's lands, landmark historic historic landmark commission is it eventually comes to the city council, which certainly is. And so when you talk about Councilmember Melser when you talk about, should we look at a pathway of formalizing that sort of not historic designation, what we currently have but maybe making it in hybrid or something and other. Was that discussed with the stakeholders that I mean, did you get a sense that the business owners. Would they want to be subject to something like that of a more formalized nature, as we have sort of similar to the historic landmark commission and if someone voluntarily ops in for historic designation. What was the sentiment, or was that even discussed, I mean, I mean standards are one thing. But it's a designated commission or area with, you know, body that oversees it that can make decisions on what you do and it's a little different. And that's what this really is is an overlay with with a with a body that that because that that started very early in the conversation when it is that we said well who's going to make these terminations so if you start with guidelines, less of a concern as you, as you add standards to that appeal process. And this would be an overlay this would be a district. Less and very different than a historic district this is just saying this area, and we envision five of these areas let's say around that as well so so north south east west. And so they may look a little different but they'll complement each other. This would have to have some some sense of a body or a board that then could say, yes this makes sense no this doesn't we agree with staff recommendation so that makeup again looking to looking to counsel for for that direction and guidance on how or we can bring for some ideas, whether it's a downtown task force whether it's a hybrid of several boards whether it's creating a new board that that has a composite or a makeup of whatever it is that's particular I, I don't know that so I just know the feedback. So, I'll go ahead. I was gonna say in many parts of the country you will see cities with a winter called appearance commissions and particularly on the commercial side and what are they called appearance commissions, and they will. Basically what the Council's discussing right now and they will be given a set of essentially a design guidelines rules and in general ideas for you know colors of buildings building periods, the oning issues, that sort of thing, and it's basically a guidebook for and you'll tend to have architects, engineers, folks like that, of course, general residents that can participate but they're charged with these particular districts of ensuring that buildings that go up match in complement the character of the community, and you're never going to get to an objective standard, but they will tend to perfectly objective but they will tend to say okay this is this is the design booklet which you're here to enforce I have seen them get down to paint colors and that sort of thing that granular. It depends on the kind of authority that they're given but that is oftentimes the way you know they regulate signs that sort of things oftentimes the way that a community will deal with something like this trying to get some objectivity in there. There will still be opportunities to where people disagree whether something truly meets the character that community but that's that's kind of the best attempt to get ahead of this. And I think with the agent it gets you out of the issue other, you're forcing, you know, unwilling business owners to necessarily, you know, your, your mark their, their property as I'm sorry landmark their property as well which is really what gives HLC their that voluntary designation because the importance in that is if you're a buyer down the road you know what you're getting into you know the subject, the constraints that you 're agreeing to before that transaction takes place, and sort of thing so it may be that that's the way that you want to handle this and you can have, you can have different design in districts around the community that the appearance commissions responsible for you could have one around fry street you can have one downtown you can have one really anywhere you want. But they will typically have, you know, a portfolio of standards and guidelines that the petitioners can work from , and it gives them that chance of volunteering without necessarily landmarking their property if they don't want to. So you're saying that what you're describing sort of what Councilman Melzer had talked about that is sort of a official formal kind of designation. Now, when you say overlay. You said this is an overlay. I know what those are and those typically are either encouraged by the city on particular developer, when they 're wanting some things different or a developer will volunteer those overlay district like razor ranch I'm thinking of razor ranch, saying hey we'll agree to this overlay to make it create. And so that 's a developer who's voluntarily doing that so for me in this process. I think what's critically important is that as we move down this path. We've talked about it concept ually with the stakeholders and they're in agreement with the path forward. Everybody understands that if you don't want them, you still may be subject to them just for the very fact of where you own the property, and that it's not necessarily something you're the developers doing on his or her own, but we're imposing upon them. And so we started very, very basic with with guidelines and what we heard from the stakeholders was truly that of having standards that enforceable teeth. Right. I mean we heard all of those components, so that they could make certain what happened near and around because of the investment that they're making in their properties. Yeah. It's interesting when it gets passed, and it has the teeth, who's the first one when they're subject to that says, I'm not sure about this, but that's good. I appreciate that. Yes, Councilmember Gregory. I'm having a conversation about private property rights because they're important, but setting community standards don't necessarily represent an unreasonable infringement of private property rights, especially when you're talking about building safety standards standards for building that buildings have to have running water and be hooked up to the sewer system, things like that. So I think it's just a matter of where you draw the line, and how you do it in an appropriate manner that also respects the private property rights of the owners around it, because it could be a real damage to the private property owners. The others on the square. If somebody decided to do something very inappropriate with their property downtown, or decided to do nothing. Yeah. And I think that's particularly the case about about how long a piece of property could stay abandoned. So that's a that's a question that I have, are there any standards that are being proposed regarding how long a property can can be unused or boarded up, or even left just as a vacant lot. Some, some of that conversation took place. And I don't know that I can tell you that there was consensus anywhere on the fact there was a lot of support that there shouldn't be vacant buildings. They shouldn't be allowed to degrade. So if they're maintained or they have a storefront, whether they're actually used or not was a second topic. So it was more getting into the dilapidated building component of that. And then that be addressed, not so much whether they were vacant or not occupied. I would hope that that that gets addressed because just like just like a renovation of a building in an area can generate more investment in that area and more renovation and taking that that neighborhood or that business area on an upward path. The same thing can happen. If, if a building it's damaged in the property owner says, I really can't afford to do anything with this. And, and so their only option is to board it up. Because that can take the spiral in a different direction that that hurts a lot of the other businesses around. And people say, well, I can't, I can't afford to reinvest in an area where the other owners are not reinvesting, I've got to, I've got to leave. We don't want that downward spiral to happen in any of our neighborhoods, but especially the downtown area because, well, absolutely the owners are major stakeholders. I agree with the mayor that I think most people that have lived in Denton for any length of time. Feel like that they 're stakeholder in the downtown square. I think we probably need to get our legal staff weigh in on , you know, where we how far we can go typically the ordin ances that you see that are similar to what you're discussing have to do with a building becoming a nuisance and what steps you would go through, including property app raisals that sort of thing to prove a detrimental impact on the surrounding neighborhood, but in getting the authority to repair and tear it down. I don't know of any law unless the city owned it I don't know of any law in which we could require somebody to rebuild. In this particular case it's typically the other way around where you're removing a nuisance, because the idea is it's it's easy to show a financial impact negatively on abandoned properties or powers aren't kept up, it's very difficult to show a negative impact on a vacant property and what that's doing. And so that tends to be the standard we have to work through unless Aaron's got anything to add. Well, I'm going to say, there's a big leap. I mean, between property rights I mean you started out saying property rights being safety and sanitary sewer. I don't think anybody who's going to sit at this table, talking about we want to make sure we respect private property rights is referring to somebody who can have an unsafe building or one that's got raw sewage dumping out on the street. My concern is sort of what you talked about and that is, if a building is vacant. If it's dilapidated if it's a nu isance if it's a safety hazard. We have codes already that address that. But if it's, if it's not, and it's just vacant for a myriad of different reasons. Why would be really really hard pressed to think that the city should some first of all I don't know how you would do it. And secondly, if it if there's a fire like we had, and the properties vacant. I don't even know how the city would then say well you got to rebuild or what, or. So, that's really I mean these are, these are tough issues and tough questions because you're balancing the private property right with, you know, the good of the community and the cohesion of the neighborhood. So, those will be very interesting conversations, because I 'm not so sure that that would that would be that would be an interesting conversation to, because then, to me that's the slippery slope of, yeah you applied here. Well then what about somewhere else I mean you know there's , there's buildings that we give the order to tear down homes that we tear down because they're substandard. They 're unsafe, their nuisances so we do that I don't know all the time but we have done it in the past. So we do have laws that will do that but if it's just the appearance and if it's just because we want somebody in there because it's somehow. Yeah, that'll be interesting conversation. Somebody yes Councilmember has been. Yeah, I almost asked for one more box here. As I think about it, there's no option. Early on so staff approves. And someone wants to go kicking and screaming, there's no way to at least have some review, or for city council to hear that Am I correct so if staff approves. It goes straight to circuit certificate of appropriateness. What if I'll just use me, because that's that makes sense. What if I, what if I disagreed and wanted somehow to get my hands on it, you know how does that work how do you is there would you consider adding some sort of timeline or notice that would then maybe allow someone to appeal, or is that would that not be a good, good option. Sure, sure. I don't know why we couldn't. I think most of these just be minor alteration so it wouldn 't change character. That's why it is that would go to a body for major, but we certainly can add something. It'd be the notification piece and I certainly wouldn't want to slow down someone proposing to do something by another bureaucratic step but but absolutely could put or add a component to that. Okay. So, no, I think your point's valid. So, skipping down to major. I think, when I hear this review, I would almost advocate for zoning planning and zoning to hear it I don't know what feedback you've gotten from them that's far, but I just think the makeup of that board has been consistently. It's diverse. And, and I think they have to do it, deal with it every week and understand a lot of what how the city's developing just by the nature of the beast. I mean even currently I mean you have a great mix of property owners in the individual business owners retirees I mean, even currently as it sits it's, it's probably one of our better diversified boards, and they deal with those kind of property issues regularly that may be another option that I would entertain as far as hearing those appeals just because one, they have an open meeting component to it like I don't know if you pull the average Joe if they know where it when those other two committees meet it's not recorded, I mean there's there's some exposure opportunities that I think are would be advantages, regardless of what side you fall on the application or decision. Good Councilmember Briggs and then we'll wrap it up because we got lunch and go ahead. Well, I think in your flow chart and that's I'm misunderstanding this, because it says border review goes to certificate of appropriateness now, I guess the question becomes if that's a different body, there's got to be COA denied. But I would think that there would be an error the border review. There's got to be another, the border review isn't unless they're handling the COA's. And that line's got to go from certificate of appropriaten ess to COA denied in other words, you're saying the border review whatever this is identified is is determining whether there's a COA issued. Because to me it almost looks like that's a different that's a different thing there but you're not okay I got you. I was just a little confused about that. Okay, any other questions comments. Yes. I noticed that on a sunny summer day, about two o'clock. I encourage you to circumambulate the square. And, and with the question in your mind of, is it a detail or a defining characteristic of the pedestrian friendly nature of the square to have those awnings over you. And then then look at the aerial view and you'll see how I will, you'll see what you'll see. And you'll notice here they're, they're very much there so. Okay. Any other questions comments will take about a not we'll take about a 10 minute break before we get into the budget presentations and lunch is ready. Welcome back to this meeting of the density Council Monday June 4 2018. We're going to pick back up with our work session reports agenda item one see we're going into our budget presentations I believe, yes. Agenda item one see receive report and hold discussion give staff direction regarding the customer service fiscal year 2018 19 operating budget. Mayor city council Tony point to director finance. I'm just going to get up here really quickly and Tiffany Thompson our customer service manager will actually do the presentation. I just wanted to just let the council know that part of our recommendation today is to create a new internal service fund for customer service customer service has for the last number of years been part of the water fund. It services, not just the water fund but all the utilities including solid waste. And so we felt that it would be better suited more transparent if we broke that out into its own internal service fund. What it was doing as well as about 5.5 million in budget was actually being reserved, applied to the reserve right so 33 to 50% of that 5.5 million was actually in the in the reserve calculation for the water, where water was only contributing about $800,000 a year so we think we thought it made sense to separate that out the freeze up some of that reserve for us to be able to do some of the recommendations that we're making today on the water side. We have other internal service funds tech services engineering fleet services and so those funds just like this fund service all the other city funds. And so it kind of made sense to us to make that recommendation so I just wanted to make that clear here to the council what what this recommendation is and what the nature of it. Yeah, so then it's being handled currently, it just was all part of the water budget, or nobody was transferring anything over is just the water was being specifically handling all the customer service, I mean that budget was no no. Those are the funds were actually transferring into the water budget as well so it was, it was sort of an internal fun but it didn't have the process and the transparency and the accounting formalities, correct, as it will have now. All right, plus it will plus it will not have a separate reserve in that final be a zero based fund. Did you have a question. I have a question about that fund, the new fund. Is this something that we discussed with our internal auditor, or did this idea come from him or, or not at all. No, we've not discussed that with him, we did make a presentation to the PB and PB is recommending that we go forward with this. I just wanted to clarify and customer breaks question is, we're trying to set the reserve standards for long term planning needs. One of the reasons that we're bringing this forward to you is by leaving by leaving this expense in the water fund it was causing us to accumulate more money in the water fund than we could really justify to the policy because it was increasing their annual operating budget about five and a half million a year, which just really wasn't the, it's not the proper way to budget this fund this fund really should be zeroed out at the end of every year it's a pass through utilities paying their own way for this particular service and it just, it flowed through to the water utility fund and so now we have a much more accurate, I guess, base budget and which to plan from. Just to make sure I fully understand I'm the same point really. For my own education, what is the purpose of the water. The water reserve fund. And so why, why would it be inappropriate for the technical support budget to to drive a higher reserve. Well the purpose in the water, the water reserve is to make sure that you know we have operating cash throughout the year, generally it's 90 to 120 days of operating cash on hand in case people are slow and paying bills at one point in time we get for some reason we get cat strap for cash that sort of thing so the only purpose and we're not sure why this was ever really in the water from we think it's probably one of those legacy issues but the way that this fund in particular should be serviced is solid waste. Solid waste water wastewater electric in general fund if there's also services provided general fund should all be sending a transfer over each year to make sure this is under sustained but the one, it really has nothing to do with being a sole source water fund, it was just kind of throwing our accounting off and causing us to accumulate more dollars than we needed to. Thank you. I'll ask Tiffany come up here and she'll go through the presentation. Yeah, the presentation. Good afternoon Tiffany Thompson customer service manager happy to be here today to go over our budget presentation. Our department handles all customer service functions for all five utilities. We also act as the general operator to accept all phone calls coming into the city. And we also do billing and customer service functions for 20 other departments in the city. And so last year, we calculated and produced over 627 ,000 bills accepted over 616,000 payments, filled at 185,000 phone calls and assisted 72,000 customers in our lobby operation. And we also accepted and reconciled over $ 268 million worth of revenue in our department. And so our mission is to help serve and educate both our internal and our external customers. So today's objectives is to go over creating the internal service fund that Tony had mentioned review the fund assumptions financial forecast revenues and expenditures and then more in depth information on our department overall. And so again the customer service to put departments budget is housed currently under the water utility fund it's been that way since about 1999, and the creating the internal service fund helps separate the accounting fund that's used to account for the services provided to the other funds, and that are paid at cost. And so again customer service doesn't just do services for the water we do it for solid waste wastewater drainage all five utilities with that. And so by separating out that fun . Again, it does reduce that require reserve level that Mr. Hellman had referenced in the water fund and reduce their overall budgeting expenses. So the fund assumptions is we will not have an operating reserve required for the fund, and our revenues and expenditures are solely based off of the services utilized from the utilities and so that's based off if they're represented on a bill if we take a phone call for them, or a payment acceptance they would get a portion of that allocation back out to them. And so for customer service our financial forecast, we're proposing about a 3% increase for personal services that's for a merit increases that our staff gets and then everywhere else is about a 2% increase. The major budget impacts that we're foreseeing are going to propose is the addition of 1. 5 ft ease. That's a full time person and a part time person, just to be able to make sure that we're able to continue to handle our scope of services and with the customer growth growth that we see, and then some additional programs that we have coming online we want to be able to respond to those proactively. Are you going to discuss staffing later or would you like to take a question on that now. I do have some information on staffing later but I can, would you like me to answer something now. Well, I'll give the question and you can answer whenever it seems appropriate. What is, what are the call volume modeling assumptions that drive the staffing. And I'll give you a little context. You're looking at over a five year period. My assumption is that you would expect there to be customer growth in that time. And you know it strikes me as on the face of it, let's say, you know, very coincidental if your efficiency measures perfectly balance out the customer growth. Right. So, you know, is there a model that shows reduction in handle time reduction in calls per customer because of specific call drivers that have been identified. How does it work out that over five years. We don't, you know, we can be level. That's so answer whenever it seems appropriate to you. I think most of your questions are being answered in her slide on the metrics that she's keeping and particularly hold times for the, for the customers which she tracks on an annual basis to answer just that question as well as some of the other programs and technologies that we've introduced in order to lower that call volume as much as possible. So we're really focused on hold times and resolution times for our customers and I think you've got a slider to on that. Yeah, we do and just how level for you we do have headcount requirements that we utilize a workforce, workforce management system that shows us a call arrival arrival times, what our shrinkages what we anticipate how long it'll take us to service those phone calls, and then based off off of our growth, what we plan to have with that and so I do have some additional slides on that but if it on it's your question I love to go back to. I love to go back to it for you. So our budget highlights again our total budget is realloc ated back out to the utilities and general government it's proportionate to the services that they utilize and so this is the actual breakdown of the 1819 budget proposed, and how it hits those different utilities. And then for our overall budget highlights we have a slight increase in personal services and materials and management that's directly tied to our bill presentment and postage. We do have an overall decrease in that where I'm going to talk about what influence that for us, and then in operations. We did have another overall decrease in that section even though we increase the funding on the plus one program by $25,000. We have some additional cost savings in that operation and so again we're maintaining about a $5.4 million budget this year. And so for our position so summary we have 42.5 full time equivalence but we have 51 bodies and customer service. We utilize a cross section of full time employees, permanent part time employees and then seasonal staff to be able to help us with our higher call volume times with that. And so our goals and accomplishments for 1718 our accomplishments is we did launch a new payment portal last August, we have over 40% of our customer base is registered on that program now so it's been actually updated since I created this slide it's about 23,000 of our customers are registered. And just to compare what our previous portal was that we had for about 10 years we only had about 6000 registered users. So this hasn't even been live for a year and we already have 40% of our customer base registered on that. And because it is so easy to sign up for electronic. What worked. Why did that's great. It has more functions and more benefits for the customer ease of use is polished it's, it's easy to understand, and customers are also able to pay based off their frequency type so they can select pay when their bill is do or pay in two weeks, and then being able to see their usage their consumption and then also sign up for electronic billing so it's just a much more policy ease of use solution for us so we're pretty excited about the results thus far. And because of the ease of use we did see an increase of almost 56% in electronic bill adoption. And so that's a direct reflection in that budget decrease item for the materials for postage and bill presentment because more customers have signed up to be to receive their bills electronically and almost at about 2030% of our customer base. We've also launched an after call satisfaction survey were testing that right now we have four of our call center staff that offer our customers to take a three short question. Pardon me three short questions, based off their experience that they received with us. And right now we're seeing about a 97.1% satisfaction rating, and there's also a question at the end if they would like a contact back from a supervisor. And based off their experience that will give them a call back and when we originally did that we assumed when a customer wanted to call back there's because maybe something wasn't met to their satisfaction and we're actually seeing the direct opposite customers are asking, asking to be called contact back to provide an accolade to staff and also just to sing their praises so it's pretty exciting the results that we've gotten thus far in that we plan to deploy that to the rest of the call center staff this summer we're just tweaking some of the questions making sure that we have it right. We've also reduced the AMI disconnect meter reconnection time. Previously whenever we had an order for reconnection we sent that over to DME to get taken care of and they completed the last final steps on that. In January we took over the steps the final steps for that process and customer service and by doing that, we were able to offer that holistic solution and reduce that reconnection time by over 50%. We're piloting the prepaid metering program that's going to be called the pay as you go. We have a couple of internal staff that are on that program right now. We're mapping out processes and doing staff training right now and throughout the summer customers will be able to sign up for that through just a soft launch, launch and word of mouth in the next month everyone will be getting information educational materials on the program and their bills and then in October we're going to do that hard marketing push to let them know that that program is available to them. We also implemented the new credit and collection guidelines for city council's direction a couple months ago . We did the executed of the homelessness deposit waiver and then also enhance the plus one program funding and criteria and so our goals for next year is we want to continue to, we want to come back and report proactively and respond to those assistance results. We're working with DME currently right now on the potential of reducing the reconnection charge. We've been providing them data on that to see what the appropriate amount of that reduction will be and we wanted to increase, continue to increase our adoption of self-service options and then leverage that feedback that we're getting also from that customer service survey and some of the things that we've heard is being able to offer a connect and transfer online and we're pretty close to offering that solution as well. And so our budget, I'm sorry. Yes, Sam. On the last thing about the payment plan because I have had many people ask about that and I think that's great. So they will be able to go in and set their payment arrangement online instead of calling and working it out with customer services. So right now there's kind of two prong to that right now they can go in and schedule a payment right now in the in the payment portal but what we want to offer and we're in an exploratory phase with this is to be able to offer an online payment arrangement so they could go online and say I can pay on this date and it would send information to us so they wouldn't have to call in they could do business when they want to be able to do that so autumn over here is actually working on what type of solutions that we have and we just started looking into that but it's something I feel like our customers want to see. I feel like our customers want that we've heard. And when someone does that do late fees and deposit still apply. Like with a point system. If they've already said they want to set up the payment arrangement, and they know that they can pay this, and they do pay it, do those late fees and whatnot still apply, even though they set an intention to pay, they would still apply if it goes past that date where that late fee goes on there but they would that prevents what the payment arrangements for prevents them from is any interruption of services with that. Okay. Thank you. On the. That's where we were. Are there other benchmarks for adoption of self service that you're aiming for. Yes, goal to increase. Yeah, who does it well and how high can it go for a slide on the self service adoption. Okay, I'll wait for that then and then if I can also ask. I didn't see anything on analysis of call drivers and are the goals that you've set up set forth for the coming year. Based on addressing primary call drivers. Yes, so I have a slot on that too. Thank you. You're giving me good. I appreciate it. So our budget emphasis is to maximize value while limiting and containing costs and so we do this by focusing on our performance measures so to your point of self service adoption is a critical measure for us. And so that's ensuring that customers have multiple ways to make payments online and do self service. And so our goal is 59% and right now we're 63 point 76%. And then you have a question. But what why is why is that the goal I mean do we know how high generally in the industry. Self service adoption gets where does that number come from . We did this several years ago we did benchmarking on what other cities were doing and it was about a 40% goal for other cities and so we set a little bit higher because we had made some management decision and council decisions on being able to offer residents being able to make credit card payments without fees and so we wanted to boost up that adoption rate on them so we actually said that at 59% which is higher than most cities. If I can just ask about in general my observation is that these goals are all already being met by your 1617 actuals. So, you know, presumably you want to improve on things so you know how how are these good goals. There was initially a study done of customer service over years ago that provided the management team with a kind of a roadmap that should certain technologies and practices be put in place then these goals can be achievable and we can certainly take a look for instance self service adoption it's been a while since we've looked at that and see what is reasonable out there there's always going to be folks that maybe don't have a computer don't like to do business that way, but we can certainly get to the point of answer your question about what is a reasonable goal, not only where we benchmarked other cities but what is kind of an aspirational approach given, you know, changing demographics and more emphasis on marketing this program. I don't mean to. I think my, my tone might have come out wrong. I think the performance is quite good. I'm just questioning the notion of calling something a goal. If you've already surpassed it . You know you, you are trying to continually improved so I'm really just questioning. I think that with at least a couple of these I don't know that we're going to be able to do too much more in the collection right for instance but I do think on a couple of these. It's a fair question we can ask for additional ideas and whether if we implement change any practices that we might be able to shoot a little bit higher on these because it does have the, it does have the effect that happens of kind of muting some of the growth that we're seeing the need to add staff. So, and make, let me make sure I'm understanding this. They've got a 1617 actual, but then they have a five year average and then they have the goal so this is a yearly goal. And so, not every year are you going to miss I mean 16 might have been an exceptional year because when you look at the average and some of them are the average is a little less or worse than the 1617 actual so I think it's a matter of what can we do this year. I understand the point of if you're achieving it but if we 're measuring off of 1617. I'm also measuring it off of the five year average, which there you've got some that are most of them except for the collection right are exceeding that and the first contact resolution but I mean when you start getting up into 85 and 90%, it's difficult to get, you know, much better than that I mean I guess you can but so yeah I think that's how I reconcile that is, it's more that that one is maybe an outlier year for your comment on the self service adoption. And the self service adoption is right on point and one of the things that being able to set it even higher goal was contingent on launching that new payment portal so I think it's absolutely applicable to be able to reassess and what 's more appropriate now and now that we have all this functionality, customers are going to that the adoption rates 40% so I think it's thank you for the feedback on that I think it's valid. And then for first contact resolution that's ensuring that we're offering that holistic solution the first time our customers contact us. So we want to make sure that we're not duplicating effort on their part and also our customers part so they get taken care of that first time, and then average speed of answer we want to answer that phone call as quickly as possible, and we're answering that within 30 seconds 36 seconds right now. Thank you very much for the wonderful laboring loss. I just would like to suggest for you to investigate whether you want to adopt the measure of service level, rather than as a, which is defined as percent of calls handled within 30 seconds. You'll find that I, you know, call center driven industries that 80 to 85% within 30 seconds is considered good. I mean , it's full municipality might want to do better than that because they're concerned about not over staffing but we're concerned about purely service. So in the perspective 36 is a essay you probably have a pretty good service level. Anyway, but, you know, just something to look into our goal is actually to answer 75% of our inbound calls by 60%, and that actually is what influences our headcount requirements with that so that's one of the key drivers that we use to in order to determine what is the best account that we need based off of meeting that 70% 75% answering that phone call within 60 seconds in our head count requirements, we try to hit that goal 80% of the time that's what we forecast for so that's one of the things we do is that measured from. Okay, I've got to turn utilities on one of my properties. I pick up the phone I've got 349 8200. If you want to do this choose this if you want to do this choose this. When does that time start measuring is it when that initial message picks up or is when it make it this when I make a selection of which of those branches I want to go to, it's once you make the selection. Okay. I can't think of any time it's taken more than 30 or 40 I mean, yeah so 60 seconds would seem like a long time because I've never had that experience. And I do think one point I want to get out, because I think your questions are good ones. You know in each of the budget presentations. That is a standard question that these during all the directors go through is, what have you, what efficiency measures have you put in what business improvement analysis has been brought in what technology has been is being brought in to take a look at reducing long term operating costs, and so it's something that's encouraged in there's several departments right now undergoing efficiency studies and I think in this particular case. It doesn't hurt us at all to, to kind of you know to contact the industry professionals again and just say you know, have things change whether ideas you have it's just something that we're trying to encourage every department of the city to go through at this point you know we'd like to get more money out into streets and capital projects and less on ongoing costs if it's possible if it's not possible and providing that same level of service we at least want to have that answer for you. So the key drivers of our budget is the volumes of our customer base, the behaviors of our customers, how we respond to that volume and then how we minimize that volume . And so we focus on reducing the volume improving effic iencies while increasing customer satisfaction. And so we do that by investing investing in the self service options like for example the new payment portal and being able to sign up for electronic billing with ease. And then a critical performance measure for us is that first contact resolution because if we don't take care of them. The first time that's going to create an additional call call back and a cost associated with that. The way we measure that is through a robust robust quality assurance program we grade eight to 10 observations per representative per month to ensure that they're meeting our key performance indicators, and then also offer development and coaching so that's how we measure that first contact resolution and then the automated routing making sure they get to where they need to go as quickly as possible. And we improve efficiency by utilizing a workforce management tool that helps take historical data. And that gives us where all of our resources should be deployed based off of analysis. And so that determines when we should let staff on breaks how many staff we should let off what anticipated shrinkage we're going to have that day . And then we want to continue to boost staff productivity and another measure that we have is a productivity score in our call center which is not normal on call centers and so we have a score based off of. Are you available to assist the customer. Did you take care of the customer and are you ready for that next phone call. And by doing that it actually helps decrease our average handle time with that so we have an additional productivity measure that we do for call center, and then we want to leverage that feedback from our customer service survey that we're deploying right now to see what additional items that we can do to help boost customer satisfaction and address the volume that we're seeing. So here are the results of our cost containment strategies and also the changes in our customer behavior. So since oh eight and oh nine we have a customer base increase of 18.3% our lobby volume has decreased by over 60% we used to see over 108,000 more customers in our lobby operation than we do today and that's a direct reflection in that investment in the self service tools that we've deployed over the last several years. And then our call center volume has increased by almost 35 %. Question. Oh, thank you. How long has the looks like an ATM I don't know what it is that they don't know yes how long has that been there. I believe it's been there about three years now. Okay, yeah that thing's pretty fantastic. Thank you. Yeah, that's great. So, I just would, I pay online so I hadn't gone up there in a while and I was there . We miss you. No, things have gotten better so I don't have to go there. No, no, no, but it was fantastic and then it's a great option, you know for those that you know after hours I had to go early, that sort of thing so really is I appreciate whomever for getting that in place really, really convenient. No fee 24 seven English Spanish we have a between four and 500 customers that utilize that every single month. And so our average handle time has increased by 24.9% we don't necessarily consider that a bad thing because we are focused on that first contact resolution, and we're making sure that they're taking care of the first time and not creating an additional callback and also the customers that we're hearing from have more complex situations and so we need to take a little bit more time with them and walk them through their situation. And even though our customer base has increased by that 18.3% our average speed of answer has decreased by 33.3% which is a direct reflection of our more productive staff and making sure that we're again giving our customers options to handle the business online. A couple months ago we had a customer come in and provide her original receipt from 1955 when she paid a deposit and 63 years later she thought we might want to have the original so I thought you would like to appreciate the throwback little receipt up here and I wanted to say thank you for your continued support of our department and be happy to answer any questions that you might have. Any questions, comments? At some point I'd like to see, you know, sort of whenever something like slide 12 but going forward, you know what what do you project for customer growth and you know the key metrics that drive your staff. Any other questions comments. Thank you very much appreciate it. I'll probably drive up those. What was the last one on the amount of time for each call when you call in and change about three or four accounts over the utilities. You know you're on there about four or five minutes but hey that's great to get it all done at one time so I've always enjoyed had a good experience. Okay. Oh, you're still going. No, is this on the next one. Yes. Okay. I was like, all right, the next item on the agenda is agenda item one D , which is receive a report and hold discussion give staff direction regarding the water fiscal year 2018 19, operating and capital budget. So, Mayor City Council Tony Quentin director finance. Thank you for having us today. Just like some of the other presentations that you'll be hearing. I certainly started with the electric phone was the first presentation you had. There'll be a joint kind of presentation here between myself and Dr Kenny banks. When it comes to water and wastewater so I'll go through my piece and then he'll come up. But as you have questions we can certainly entertain your questions. So, one of the things that we that we do traditionally is we kind of go through what our volume forecasts are. So I wanted to kind of show you where we are, and where we think we're going to be going forward. So residential customers have have grown over the last number of years, about 2% and that's why we project a 2.1% going forward. You'll see the commercial customers here as well. You know, around 5% there was a pretty big increase there in 2015. But we've seen a slowdown dissipated that will probably ratchet up here in your future wholesale stays, you know, stagnant. Overall, we project that our customer growth will be about 2% a year again that's just an assumption that could fluctuate, as you see from, from year to year depends on what developments are coming into, into the city but for now all our forecasts are based on 2% customer growth. So, we'll talk a little bit with you about some of our water volume, and what those peaks are. One of the things that we have seen is we've seen a little bit of a decrease here in our, in our water production over the last couple years. So, just want to make be clear here that these yellow dots here kind of represent what we think is going to be the growth in water production. Those have not been adjusted from prior years we do anticipate again if we have another down year that we may need to reevaluate that if we reevaluate that they want some of what will happen is that this 30 mg D expansion to our Ray Roberts plant could potentially be pushed out further. So as we as we talked to you about our financial forecast that's certainly one of the one of the risks that's out there for us is that it's not as comprehensive. But, but again, a lot of factors that will go into that $9 million, just so you know , for design of that expansion is built into the financial forecast for 2022. So it's the same we'd be looking at issuance in 2025 for for this expansion. But again, that all that all depends it 's going to be driven by the water production and consumption certainly by our customers. Yes. I don't remember if it's coming up but what is the price tag on that. 30 mg D expansion, it's $90 million or 90 million is the price. The construction is 90 million is $9 million for design so about $100 million. Thank you. What is the capacity today on that we're going from what to what 30. We're separate projected 30 mg D expansion but what is it today what are we going, it's 20. It's a four module plant, it goes, the first. When we brought the plan online it was 20 million gallon per day capacity. The next module will be in 30 to take it to 50, then we'll do 20 and 30 again to its full build out at 100 million gallons per day. Also, it's your right. So you're adding the 30 to the 20 so that's correct 50 okay that'll be a 50 mg D. So just some of the assumptions that have gone into this financial forecast. Again all rates are based on a cost of service. We're cognizant of maintaining our debt coverage ratio. That's set, not just by the bond rating agencies but certainly by policy at 1.25 distribution system replacement funding is 100% revenue funded 25% and 75% mix on plant infrastructure funding reserves and about 33 to 50% of budget expenses that's about 120 to 180 days of cash. And certainly we use a multi year planning model which is something that the city's done for a number of years. And then the rate revenue is forecasted on 145 GPCD that's gallons per customer per day. Again that's the that's the factor that we'll be looking at. And just for some reference in 2014 it was 138 140 and 15 140 and 16 134 in 17 and we're projecting that to be about 142. This particular year. And so again we'll be looking at those trends. You're going into this next year and trying to figure out if that plant is really going to be needed at the time that it's currently planned for. Yes. Can you give us any indication of why 75 debt 25 revenue is a is a good way to approach funding infrastructure. And before you know some of these measures have been kind of long standing measures for the city they've been in place for some time certainly the basis of it has been some some comparison data. Also, discussions with the with the rating agencies we certainly think there's a good mixture there of revenue funding versus debt funding on what the current rate payers pay versus what future rate payers will pay over the next year we'll certainly be looking at that to make sure that our metrics are in line with what what you know some recommended best practices and standards and so we will that is a project that we have on tap to to look at in the coming year. So some of the cost containment strategies that we've been working on something something that we've certainly briefed the council on is that we've been looking at all our CIP programs across all utilities, certainly water has not been an exception. We've been looking very closely at that what's outstanding. One of the things that we did this year is we did not issue any additional bonds for water. We didn't do that for wastewater either as a result of some of those ongoing reviews of the CIP projects. We do budget salary savings, about one, one and a half percent. We've reduced revenue funding about $2 million to kind of level that awesome. So we cut down on some of the swings. And, and then we removed of course customer service from this that actually freed up some of the reserves that was previously as a result of having customer service in the fund. There's some of the future risks and some of the medication , some mitigation, certainly a raw water transmission line cost those continue to to go up. Louisville dam repair and again if there's specific questions on any of these projects you know Dr. Certainly the one that we've already talked about is this 30 mgd expansion to the Ray Roberts facility in 9 million and in 22, and about 90 million in 2024. So again substantial capital project that's out there. And slightly beyond the forecast but certainly something to be aware of other transmission line replacement funding age and condition of the Louisville pump station that is a project that is, you know, there might be necessary and in declining per capital water usage as I mentioned we'll be looking at that. We've certainly seen a slight decrease in that usage but if that continues to be a trend will need to kind of reeval uate that entire capital program. And what do we know what the drivers are of the declining per capita water usage and, and is it only or primarily, frankly the new, you know the newer generation of toilet designs. And in that case, is there a point where that's, that's fully penetrated and you know then the declines start amel iorating. Yeah, as we've discussed internally certainly that is something to be cognizant of the fact that we have more efficient appliances, not just, you know, toilets but certainly washers out there refrigerators, even sprinkler systems that are being put in are far more efficient than those that we've seen in the past. And, you know, we continue to invest heavily in our, in our infrastructure that certainly cuts down on some of the loss that's that's out there, even within our own system. And so there's certainly a lot of different factors that are posing, or having an impact here, as, as well as the fact that, you know, we have seen a decrease in in in the irrigation site as well so some homeowners, maybe going to some more zero scaping zero lot line type of, of home. Lots and so again just not one single thing that's driving this decrease in volume certainly it's a number of different things that are impacting that Councilmember death and Councilmember Gregory. Yeah. Do you know what, what percentage of the water actually goes, for instance on lawns. No, we don't we don't know that off top I had a, I mean that that would, you know, because I'm kind of wondering if there might be some encouraging or something that we can do to actually encourage people to, you know, for instance, I 've personally looking at artificial grass is sick in the yard which I don't have to water, you know, and I think in the long term I think when it gets when it gets down to run out of water. So run out of water I'll prefer the shower to water my lawn . Councilmember Gregory, I'm wondering if one other factor that you didn't mention Tony and the declining per capita water usage is the fact that our percentage of people that are living in apartments in our, in our town is going up, and that means that they're not having any kind of water, watering bills and so I think that that may have an effect or two, it may be something to look into in the calculations if we can go back and look at some of the demographic data. Right. So, today we want to go over two options or two scenarios for you. Same scenarios that we discussed with the P up about a month ago. So the first option would be to look at a 2% rate decrease in 1819. So compared to last year we we have also removed the assumption of any increases over that five year plan. That 's about a $5.6 million reduction in reserves so we would be drawing down some reserves, you know, for that purpose, and an option to would be no rate changes from 19 to 2023 so again, it would be zero across the, the five year performer, and I 'll go through each one of those performers. Second, let me questions. Did you have a question. I did yes because I think it was at 2017 or last year we had a rate increase of 5%. Is that correct. Correct, which was pretty significant at the time. Was that was that for future capital improvements was that what that was for, or. And now there's a decrease suggested because those capital improvements aren't being done or. I'm just curious about that. We have come through the CIP customer breaks and basically refine the CIP based on what the department can deliver versus what had been planned to be delivered over the last several years and, you know, my approach with recommending a budget to counsel is, if the projects can't get out the door we're not going to ask for the money for them. And so, you're going to you'll see that as a consistent theme through water wastewater streets electric is, let's ask for the money that we need, and, and put the projects into place that we're confident we can do, and not necessarily continue as growing large amounts of reserves for projects that are planned but they're not being pulled off. So, probably that that single issue more than anything is driving some of the rate freezes over the next few years. And I think the other thing that you're going to see in both primarily in the other option as well as we're planning for that. That water treatment expansion down the road obviously $100 million no matter how big our client base is is is going to have an impact to us so we've got a couple of different ways of revenue funding capital and then managing our debt service downward over the time so give you a little bit of a sneak preview of what we're looking for but I just feel like in some of these funds have been over collecting and under delivering. Thank you. Go ahead. I just like to follow up specifically on the 5% though I'm curious was, what was the purported reason for that. Does anyone remember the CIP would be a two two factors. A you've got a much larger base with customer service in there and be you've got a more aggressive CIP that this year we spent several weeks kind of combing through the CIP and actually spent the last several months and so we've got a, as well as taking out some contingency accounts that we determine the utilities which were basically called on allocated dollars and all those things start driving your, your future revenue needs you've got a fairly small base here so like 5% seems huge or 2% might seem huge you're, you're, you're talking on a relatively small base compared to something like DME or another larger utility but those are the drivers I think this year we feel much more confident in every utility fund at this point. So it was based on a prior plan. We've dug in we've torn all these utility budgets apart last year we're primarily focused on the general fund, going into the DME budget a little bit more. This year it's been all the utility funds have basically been taken apart put back together. So 1617 just like we did in 1718. There was planned bond issuances and certainly there would have been revenues to support that we did not issue the issue those bonds. So again, sir. So that leads me to a question of, alright so help me make sure I'm understanding this process. So last year, we had a 5% increase in water rates, based upon everything that you mentioned, you know future needs to capital improvements and things such as that. So, and maybe the numbers will bear this out. So what I'm hearing is that those needs moving forward in 2017 with that 5% increase. We've paired those back. We've paired back what some of that revenue was needed for. So that's not there. But the 5% increases is is still there . I mean, so we raised it in 2017 which moving in 2018, we 're not raising it 5% but that that 5% rate increases built in into that budget. So if part of the reasons why we didn't need it are no longer needed. Sounds silly. And I know it all works together but so that's where I'm sort of wrestling with or trying to understand like if you go back to that last slide where you showed the options one and two. Option one is a 2% rate decrease. But then it, and I think this is what you're saying that if we choose option one, then that means, instead of collecting some of that revenue in the rate if we don't change it at all, we're just going to pull it out of reserves, 5.6 million. Option two, we don't have a rate change for 2019 and 2023. This is all the stuff we got to do 4.2 million reduction reserves, blah blah blah blah. But that 5% has still moved through that 5%. So I'm confused as to if we didn't, if we scaled back the need for that. So when we did 2016-17 budget projection, we had that 5% we had those out years. And we said we need this 5% to meet these budgetary assumptions in those out years. Those out years aren't necessarily needed for that. So it just seems like, not that we're over collecting but somehow the 5%, I'm getting lost in why we still, why we couldn't have a little bit greater price. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does actually. Part of the answer to your question is cost rise for the next year. And you're not talking a significant base, so you wouldn't see the full 5% return. But I think the 2% is closer to returning us back to where we were given inflation. But the larger issue here, and Council's got to remember, it took us from essentially last May until really the end of October to pull the CIP out and the bond packages up on the spreadsheets and get away from guesstimating what our needs were and really getting to a point where we could go through the CIP on a monthly or bimonthly basis and see what projects were out there. And see what projects were actually getting done, what projects we were collecting money for that were on the books for years. And I'm talking revenue funded capital projects that had been funded in '15, '16 and still not done. So we had, we had, and those were all being factored into the rate base. So we've basically got a plan in place here where we feel very comfortable we can deliver the projects where we've also pulled a lot of debt issues out of the pro formas and we feel comfortable that we can deliver this project. But it took us six months of very difficult work to basically pull all the plans up and measure what was actually getting done. Other than that, it was a hypothetical exercise based on projects being done and debt being issued. So, so then, looking at this numbers, right. I'm sure I understand this chart. So an actual FY 2017. You've got your column there. That's actual. That's what the books are closed on that it's done. And we have a 5% rate increase so when you go from the revenue of 34 million to 37 million. So the 34 million includes the 5%. Is that correct. Yes. And so 5% of that be about $1.7 million is that am I understanding that. Sorry Mayor know that that 5% is in this 37. Okay, so if you take so 5% of 34 and I'm just gonna take it off of 34 is about $1.7 million, give or take. So you add 1.7 to the 34. That's going to get you to 36 to 36 200 million. Which means we're only we're only in the rates were increasing we're thinking revenues are going to rise another $900,000 or less than a million bucks. So, this is where I'm getting lost and so I understand all that but it's hard it's easier for me to see the numbers. So if we've gone back and we've looked at a bunch of things like you're saying on capital funding, would that be down and where's this revenue funding. Okay revenue funding we gone from 11 five to 8.2. Okay, this is what I'm okay this is the estimate and budget accounts I'm looking at the budget numbers I'm sorry. So the 5% then actually 36 eight okay let me go back over to the estimate. So you've got revenue funding goes from 11.5 to 8.4. Where the other increase so debt service went up about a million five. And that's because of why did debt servicing go up that much. So we're trying to, I almost want to say, take out a 1% we got 0% increase here. So in essence, we bought some time, the 5% increase, because we scaled some things back. It could have been a 3% because of the things we scale back but we may still have to raise rates. So it's just sort of we charge it up front and now it's just going to sort of iron out over the next couple years or that's that's where I'm sorry. That's exactly the approach. That's one option, you know, in. So we'll show you a couple of options but and I want to be careful in terms of scaling back to see IP. I think the CIP was aspirational versus realistic. And I think it's important because I want people in the public to think that we've in any way, taking essential projects out. You know there's a lot of essential projects out my main concern was, there's also a three year backlog and revenue funded capital we're working our way through and until those projects are cleaned off the books it doesn 't make any sense to continue collecting dollars on those. We needed the money to fund the revenue funded capital. But what we've done is pulled down the number moving forward revenue funded capital and that service both if you look at these numbers. Let's say for instance you didn't do the capital. Let's say you left it. If 11 five was carried over into the estimate FY 2018. That's including the 5%. So in essence, the 5% really didn 't even do is supposed to do because if you'd have carried our capital improvement plan forward at the level it was at 2017, you'd be two and a half million dollars in the hole. Okay, I'm not going to disagree with you. Well, so it's all it's all so the 5% was woefully inadequate if we had carried those same numbers forward is what I'm hearing. Right. Okay, I get it now. Yes. Now, if I can just, you know, add to the picture. We're only looking at a, at a five year look here. Right, but we just heard that there's $100 million bump in the road in 2027. Right now and that's going to be 75% debt finance, and I understand maybe it'll be sooner maybe it'll be later depending on how reality turns out. But, you know, I think a question we should be asking is faced with the debt service for that. If we are if we take rate decreases now which of course is very, you know, appealing on the face of it. Are we looking at sixes and sevens in the years after that, you know, the thing I fear with all these utility budgets coming up is, I don't want to be that that bad counsel that some years back said we don't really need to spend much on roads. Let's just keep it real tight, and we'll be okay. You know now you can't knock on five doors and down to that hearing the roads the roads the roads. So you know, you know I don 't want to be lulled into a kind of false sense of security that yeah we can deal back rates, and then come around, you know, come just after this time rise and people are going to wonder what were they thinking in terms of planning ahead for our infrastructure when everything is going up every year. So I mean I'd like to least understand, you know what the implications are for longer than a five year time rising, you know when you're moving fast when you're driving fast on the road, you have to look further out right to accommodate changes and Denton's moving fast. So, you know, I'd like to at least see a time horizon that includes those big increments of capital that we don't question we question exactly when they'll fall, but we know they're coming, you know, and then see what what are the implications of those, it's a pay me now pay me later situation. Correct and and we do look at a 10 year projection. We certainly are cognizant of of those capital programs that are that capital project that's out there. Again, a lot of factors that are going to interplay into when does that project actually happen. What's the growth assumptions. Can we modify those. Where's our volume in relation to to that project. Also a lot of factors that go in and frankly outside of a three year window, it really becomes very difficult to project that out but we can certainly show you that 10 year projection. I mean, in essence, let's say if we were to say in 2024 is when we thought we would, and that's just hypothetically speaking, that's when we're going to have to issue that debt and build that expansion. How are we going to accommodate for the debt service of $90 million which is what are you considered about about 1 million per, per 10 million in debt service. Or, or a 78 million seven, seven to 8 million per year. Yes , for you. Yeah, so that means the debt service. Where's our total debt service. So that means the debt service and 23 is 11 five you would almost be doubling the debt service, which would. I mean if 5% equals right now, $1.7 million. If something doesn't change to where you're getting more revenue and you're cutting costs, and you're trying to. So I think that's what Councilmember saying is, hey, you know, if you understand you can't get two or three years out and be very accurate. In that, I think we can get to the zero percent we wanted, this is a conversation we had with you. With the with the, because there is an argument to be made to not take a rate decrease and in basically you've got you , you could set up a future debt. A future fund to kind of reduce the impact of that and ease rates and the more the more you lower the base, the more you feel it so I think that's a point you're making and we can certainly show you the two options at this point. When you get out to five years in a utility funds. It's not like business and this this is much this this fund is so volatile to you know it's subject to weather patterns it's subject to things we just don't control, and we can put a 10 year plan in place and show you basically our legislative what what our thinking is at the time in terms of managing that debt service but it's simply a thought in time. And I think so I think that debate that we wanted you to have in the feedback we wanted is, is it worth taking a rate decrease today if we could, versus kind of managing in lowering your debt down the road and maybe building some capacity for 2024 2026 whenever that might be. Councilmember Hudson and Councilmember Gregory and Council member. Yeah, no, I think the city manager spot on and that's that 's what gives me heartburn about projecting out that far because it is it does set you up for the fall, it sets you up for these type presentations were eight years down the road someone comes in and says they were right. I mean without something written structured that says in, and we can't bind that Council whenever that comes up to say hey, at this date, we're signing contractually that we're on board to build whatever we need you know they could kick the can down the road if they want to. So that's where I have a problem with projecting out that far and something that's not, because you're you 're know it's not accurate. You absolutely know it's not accurate because you can't predict the weather patterns, etc etc so you're saying hey give me something that is flawed and further. And so that's where, and without the ability, I would be on board with with that kind of build up, if we can contractually obligate a future council to that to say hey you will absolutely build this at this date, we're building up for that versus building up and then they opt well we have this bucket of money here we're going to use it for something else. And so that that 's what gives me a little heartburn projecting out to answer the question is put before us. My preference is to leave the right as is that the water, you know, looking at utility water is not what gives you heartburn. You know, I understand. It's still real money, but it's just in the middle of the summer. No one, it just it doesn't feel the same right when you're getting a two three $400 utility bill wherever you fall on that. I think our water rates. Not ideal, but I think our pal atable and also the vacillation is what would disturb me if we say, okay, we're going to refund the 1.21 or 2%, and then we got to go back and say oh, by the way, I need that back, you know, so now you're, you're all over the place, and that that's just not good to me. The consistency and the ability for people to plan and budget is more important. My heartburn for the maybe midterm. I don't know how short term it really is, is what the additional cost, we will be facing to deal with zebra muscle issue. So that may not be as big of an issue but we have a very long raw water line from Lake Louisville up to the water treatment plant up there on Spencer Road. And I'm curious if we have looked at what's going on in other water districts that have been dealing with this for a period longer than we have, and if there are continually rising cost to deal with that, or if you can get to a maintenance level and pretty much stay there to keep the problem in check. So, do we do we know that now or can we get that? We have done studies on both Ray Roberts and Louisville for the zebra muscle mitigation and some treatment options for dealing with zebra muscles. We do have and we'll go over it a little bit later in the presentation, a component of our Lake Louisville plant upgrade of about $1.5 million is actually directed towards zebra muscle treatment and mitigation so right now, based on where we are in space and time, the assessment information that we've seen, what the population seems to be doing in both lakes, it looks like if we can put those programs in place we will be at a point where it will be more ongoing maintenance versus continual escalating expense. Once we get the dosing system in place, we are we're also looking at some treatment methodologies that will probably make more sense on Ray Roberts than than Louisville for actually making the pipes, less able to be attached to, which is going to be something interesting to look at but even even without those technologies, the chemical dos ing once the infrastructure is in place should be able to handle, at least according to what we're seeing now. Thank you. Sure. So that point on the zebra muscles I heard a park ranger speak not too long ago at Ray Roberts and he he didn't seem to think they were as much of an issue as much now as they used to be in that it's under control. It's getting, it's getting. Yeah, they're, they're, they're always going to be there the population increases and decreases. Usually when you see an invasive species come in . The population will explode, and then as they reach kind of a new equilibrium they the population has tendency to go down, and I think that's kind of where we're at in Louisville, or I'm sorry and Ray Roberts right now I think Louisville. We may see a little bit more of an escalation because they're not quite as established in there as they are and Ray Roberts. So, my question about the the right to speak. I'm just curious if there's specific charter requirements I know that our electric utility has some requirements in there for that so we've got we've got policies that we budget to. If you notice the work in capital operating reserve targets , we've got a minimum minimum maximum there and we, and we try to stay within those as we're setting rates. But that's really more of a city council imposed policy upon the utilities the, I think the policy that you're referring to was the, the aggregation of the utility reserves to as a whole, when we're issuing debt to the, to the bondholders and yet all that is sort of put together and we pay very close attention to make sure that we're not violating any of our coverage ratios. Okay, thank you. I think this is a question for Dr banks. Although it's. You made it clear that we don't know exactly when because of weather and so on. You know that incremental capacity will be needed in the future. There's sort of a reasonable range, like you know likely soon point and likely late point. And within that range. Is it truly optional, would a future council be able to say, we don't want to increase capacity, when we hit that point. I would say right now, the range is probably going to be about a two year time period. Yeah, plus or minus. Because of not getting the additional capacity or you're basically going to be faced with a water need where you don 't have the ability to supply so unless you're, you're willing to purchase from someone else to actually perform that that option you're really not going to have much of a choice. Thank you. Sure. I do want to show you option to option to is the no rate increases again, we have projected. Start to be a trend. So, but, so, so option to is certainly the option where we maintain rates, the way they are. We do propose in this scenario to revenue fund, a little bit more of our capital, and to potentially decrease the amount of bond funded capital. So that's really kind of the trade off between option one and option two is that that option to has the effect of deleveraging, reducing some of the debt that this fund has and potentially position this fund in a slightly different or more advantageous position to issue future debt. So those are kind of the differences between option one option to. And I know Councilman Briggs had said you know having a, you know, having no rate decrease and putting money aside for reduction of debt but that's not really what you're doing here. You're, you're just using the same revenue stream without any reduction in rates to capital fund this isn't about putting money back to fund this debt service that may be coming down the road in five or eight years this is just to cash fund current projects at a greater level than what we're doing now. Correct. Okay. So wouldn't that have the effect of increasing our debt capacity. Yes. Yeah, that's exactly why this there's an argument to be made for this as well as the more room we can create the less of an impact on the road some of that will be offset by growth. But that was exactly the thinking with this option, and why we thought they were both kind of big both have pros and cons. It's very nuanced to say that increases debt capacity. I mean, that's if you have, I mean you probably have a ceiling on debt capacity, but your debt service for that project is still going to be your debt service. I mean, you're still going to have to raise the revenue for that no matter. So it's not a matter of, I mean, for me it 's not an issue of how much debt service capacity to have unless you're hitting a either charter provision that limits it, you know has a ceiling on it, or you just have to keep all playing with the number I mean this is whether it's dead or cash or it's, what do I need. And how much revenue to have coming in. So, the capacity is only an issue if you're hitting some limit. And here, you're saying okay we want to save maybe that but you're still having to fund this. So if you got a $9 million a year, or $8 million a year new debt service coming in, whether you're at your debt services at 12, or it's at 14. You still got to find the revenue to make that payment. And is that right, correct. Okay, or the option mayor would be to kind of restructure the capital program and and not revenue fund some of the projects, postpone some of those projects and then use that revenue to service that debt. Well, but that's not we would have to we would have to re look at that entire capital program in the future, and what that mixes as far as revenue funding versus bond. And you're talking about capacity of debt that's just saying, we only have so much money. Correct. And do we want to spend it here. Do you want to spend it here, or do we want to give up projects to be able to be able to fund that . Correct. So, but the point still is, this is the budget, and, and, and I understand what you're saying Councilmember Hussbett about not wanting to look too far out. It's about me, or I'm going to speak for Councilmember Melt zer I shouldn't but to want to see that isn't saying we're going to obligate the council members, we're being asked to make a decision today about this five year forecast, and what I'm hearing is three years out you're going to be doing so. Do you guess it five years, do you guess it 10. But if you know you're going to have something pop up, potentially, and what I heard was plus or minus two years. It's either going to be an option or you just have to say we're not going to increase it we're just going to buy our water from another provider. You're going to have to come up with that money. And if, if you don't have some plan to do that. You're going to have a rate increase that is going to be blowing people out of their chair, even though it's a small part of their bill. But if you go up 10% or 15% over three or four years. That's a that's a fairly significant. So that's, that's the only reason that I want to see it is not to obligate, but to say, I got to make a decision today on planning, because we know that that $8 million debt a year may be coming up. In fact, we're assured it's coming up at some point is then we just have to make a policy decision if we can't pay for it in debt service. We just pay for it on a yearly basis on the purchase of water from someone else. I mean it's that that's seems to be the option and there's certainly a lot of options out there. A lot of factors that go into is one of the things that we 've been looking at as the same Andrew said in evaluating our currency IP program. So in our currency IP program we have bonds and revenue that have been sitting out there for two, three, four or five years. And so as we evaluate those and look at those. There might be an opportunity to to utilize some of those for some of the design as an example for this particular project. You mean, you mean bonds that haven't been utilized. Yes. In other words, we haven't spent them. Correct. The money's either not been funded or it's been funded and it's sitting in a different account. It's sitting in a capital project account. Correct. Okay. And so that's the other piece here. That's another factor that we'll have to continue to work through as we push forward with this budget and forecast. Yes, Councilmember Hussband. Yeah, no, and I think I can I can understand that that path forward. I guess I need more actual data, right, because here's what I do. I throw away the data that preceded our current city manager because I thought it was it's proven itself to be absolutely troubling. We have a dog park that didn't have a number to it. It wasn 't designed, but they put a number to it. We have all these other. I mean, there's just a lot of stuff. Sure. And I didn't have firsthand opportunity to sit in those meetings. Right. So so maybe I missed it, but just it's bearing itself out that it's not tip top. And so we have one solid year of one and a half solid years of data, you know. And so if we get three years down the road with this outstanding new director of finance that that's proceeding another outstanding director. I was wondering how you're going to work that. Yeah. Very, very, very great. That's great. I'm going to learn from that. Thank you. But no, I think I think that helps me. Right. I'm more benefited personally by looking backwards and saying, OK, we streamlined projects were actually getting projects done. Here's our project pace. Here's these actual numbers and then use that to look forward versus that. And I still I still for me, if you look at the other large energy purchase, how that game was played, how the urgency based on who was sitting in these seats, you can't deny that. Right. And so for me to say that it's going to happen . Sure. I understand. You know, there's there's a strategy to it. And it's more and it's more not before. And and that's just the occupational hazard. Right. And so for me, that's why I say, sure, it's got to happen. But I don't I don't I don't know that timing is as has been proven in history important. You know, who's here, who's filling these seats and how do they feel. So I'm not willing to go that far. But but I think, again, we get in if I'm here, we're 19, 20, and now we have three years, four years of OK, here's a scale down projects. Here 's how many we're getting done. And that would help me kind of then look forward to kind of make a better decision. I think you're spot on. I think they're to absorb that is absolutely the right way to go. It's just what are we based on right now? That's good point. That is that is always good. Absolutely. I agree. OK. So just going to go through kind of the budget highlights for you again. This is this is based on option one. So I don't want to make that point for you. Certainly, we'll be asking the council to give us some direction today on what option you would like for us to continue to pursue. So just a little highlight for you. Would you show three years worth of history of revenues for this particular fund and where these revenues are going? Question on that. This is option one. This is the yes. Correct. All these are based on option one. So was an option one where we draw down the reserves by five point six million dollars. Yes. And maybe I'm just missing it. But under use of reserves under 2018 19 is it somewhere else in there? Is that five point six drawdown somewhere in one of these categories? Nineteen four. Yes. Yes. Yeah, because I would think if we 're going to say use of reserves, I thought that five point six would be there. But is it somewhere else or I'm just not understanding how that all flows in. It's what this is one year. Okay, so you're using it after that. Over a couple years, two or three years. Okay. All right. Sorry about that. Go ahead. Yep. I apologize. Oh, I'm sorry. Yes. So we still have an increase in revenues with a 2% decrease. Okay. And what is the water for resale? Can I ask? I'm not sure. It's just water that we have that we provide for other sellers of water. We actually sell water to a couple of providers that provide water for crumb and for the city of Sanger. And so, yeah, sure. Of course. So I'm just learning about that. Okay, so that so we have water rights for our for our citizens and we have we buy more water than we need and then we sell what we don't use or we don't. We have rights to that water that we have gained by incur ring the debt service of the lakes. And so this is a way of using the water that we don't need at this point to be able to bring revenue into offset the cost of the debt service for that lake that would otherwise be bored by the rate pay ers. Okay. Thank you. Sure. So, going to the expenses. Again, three years of history here for for you high level, what the expenses are, you know, three years of actuals, where we estimate our expenses to be this year and in 1819. It does appear mayor that we did have a slide error there should be a drawdown a reserve here in 1819. Under this particular scenario. For 19, it's about 2 million, based on our, our performer here in 1819. It's this $2.1 million drawdown. So that'd be under an expense. Yeah, it's just, it's just the way that we've presented that in this forecast we didn 't translate that over and show that to you. So that's the difference between the 44.9 and the 47. Gotcha. We did want to show you the where the rates are and where they would be if if option one would be selected again currently for a customer residential customer using 9200 gallons. This is the current rate and where we fall in relation to all these other public utilities and where option one would be the likelihood is that these other utilities if they're doing rating increases, our rates would continue to move further, further to the left. Further to the lower side of that spectrum. Thank you. Is there anything that we think we can learn from the Dallas is and the new Braunfels of the world. Are they, are they just emerging money or are they doing something much more efficiently. Yeah, nothing specific that I can that I can point to off top. Should we investigate in some way to see what we might be able to learn. Yes, we certainly can. I think that I think the debt and Denton drives quite a bit in the fact that we've got to water plants that's going to be a variable in most of the smaller cities that is not even on the radar screen most of the cities are side, not even on the radar screen so there's a cost operating those two plants. There's a cost to the amount of debt that we've got on hand right now and I think there's just not a lot you can do if you take a look at our personnel costs are like comprise about 40% of the whole utility budget on an annual basis. So, short of, you know, over time, putting a plan in place to increase rates decrease debt and then try to back that off, I don't think you're going to see a whole lot of movement there, but there's also timing aspects as well as far as when people are making large investments in their plants that sort of thing but utilities are probably one of the easier things to manage and compare with one another and all has to do with the amount of plant that you're that you're putting on the books in financing the number of staff that you have with the plant tends to drive everything so those cities. Most of those cities I would venture to say probably don't have their own water plants that are left to us in Dallas for instance, my guess and it's only a guess is utilizing water sales other communities office at their water rates. But that would be my supposition but the smaller communities are probably not going to learn a whole lot. If they don't have that kind of plan in place we've got we 've got an unusual amount of plant for us city this size. So on the commercial side this is a customer with 50,000 gallons again, just visually where where our current rates are, and under option one where where they would be. And then finally, this commercial customer with 200,000 gallons two inch meter. Where those would be. So that that wraps up my portion of the presentation, Dr banks will come up here and he'll go through his department al presentation this year. There's more. There's about 50 more slides. Did you say 50. No, no, I'm just kidding. So when do you. So when do you need direction on the option one or option two at the end of Dr banks presentation. Yes, absolutely. Okay. Good afternoon council, Kenny banks general manager of utilities. I know you were scheduled to get out of here around to and Tony took most of my time so I'll try to be as brief as I possibly can. Did you feel the tar tracks. Yeah. Wow. So, want to talk a little bit about the accomplishments for the water department so a few things that I want to point out that you're going to be seeing coming up. We started our five year update of the water and wastewater impact fees so we're required by state law to do that every five years and we've got a study that's ongoing right now. And you'll be seeing some of that information coming back in the late summer timeframe this year. We started our 25 year water distribution master plan a component of that was used for the water and wastewater impact fees. We, we've had some real challenges out at the Louisville plant for handling the solids component of the water treatment process and so we're looking at some preliminary design or looked at some preliminary design for solids handling this material was actually sent to the wastewater treatment plan it was it was giving us some treatment challenges on that side. We were also losing quite a bit of water that we could reclaim and put back to the headworks of the plants we're now looking at a new design for a rotational system that will actually capture most of that water, help us out quite a bit on the on the solids handling side completed the Lake Louisville buoy installation project so if you go over I 35 bridge coming in towards then you can see the nice new buoy line that we have out there on the intake structure right there by the 35 bridge. We did complete a core core main boosting facility at the southwest elevated tower this is mainly to service the ropes and plant are ropes and community the, the southwest elevated is on lively road and the core mean boosting will allow us to put a little bit more water in that tank we don 't have to worry about cycling the tank as much that allows us to get a little bit better water quality there and also boost up the, the psi the water pressure at ropes in a bit. We did complete our water distribution replacement projects in advance of the planned street projects were always trying to line up those schedules so that we can make that that schedule as small as as possible, so that we don't inconvenience our citizens. Anytime we're looking at a street design we're going back and assessing the water and wastewater lines underneath to see if they need to, to be replaced. So, goals coming up we want to complete our wastewater impact fee and our water distribution master plan there's a 10 year utility management study that is a charter requirement that is about to start up that will include water wastewater and DME. So that you'll be seeing that that request coming forward to you and probably about the July timeframe. We want to begin construction of the Lake Louisville water treatment plant part of that was the zebra muscle component that we talked about a little bit earlier this is the phase two rehabilitation. The solids handling is a big component of that and also the replacement of the switch gear system. The switch gear system is the electrical component that handles the pumps that distribute water out of that facility. It's pretty old system and it also happens to be located about 15 feet away from the pumps themselves, which is not optimal to locate your electrical design. So we're actually moving that up the hill and getting that completely isolated from the pump system. We're also going to as part of that there's a building associated with the with that project, and that will also handle all of our camp camera work, and the skater wireless communication system that that allows us to make all the adjustments to the system. We're also implementing the water info master. Basically it is a computer based management and maintenance program. That program is very similar to what we've been able to do on the wastewater side. And it's really about trying to make our CIP program as efficient as we possibly can typically CIP programs are based on lifecycle of asset, but the lifecycle of the asset just takes into account age and and maybe type of material. So when we can look at break history soil types pipe bed ding systems, etc. We can make a lot better and more informed choice on how long we can make that asset last very similar to what we did on the are doing on the wastewater side. So, our budget emphasis is really about water system reliability and sustainability we want to continue to plan and implement replacements for our aging infrastructure, and then plan and implement our capital improvements to support our communities continued to grow. So water process improvements we've done a few things in the last year. For example, we've converted from paper map books to portable laptop digital systems for our water distribution system. We continue to push the use of GIS systems and computer based programs to prioritize our projects help us to coordinate with the street department with the wastewater department and try to just narrow down that capital window for those construction projects as much as we possibly can. So, our budget process improvements is to basically look at continuing to improve the efficiency and really the cost effectiveness on waterline main replacements that's really about benchmarking us against internal crews against what we can get on the outside from contractors and making sure that we're cost efficient, we're able to get those projects done as quickly as possible. And of course as we've talked about develop a permanent systems for that solid handling, improve our work order system for water metering and our city work software we're trying to integrate that into city works right now, and then continuing always to improve our asset management program. Real quick just a summary on the water position. FTEs full time equivalence fairly flat there we've added two new positions and then we've taken a point five FTE away. So essentially the two additions were a deputy director of water and wastewater and then a superintendent of water wastewater through a reorganization we actually unified the water and wastewater construction crews flushing crews, and also our field service technical group into a single consolidated group underneath our water and wastewater superintendent. So, that that has helped us to improve some efficiencies to because those groups work so closely together. It was helpful to have them under under one group. Part of that is this transfer to wastewater FTEs that you see down here below. Essentially, this. These are two positions that were within that field service technical group that are being moved over to wastewater, but the FTE charge out is going to remain in water and we're simply going to do a transfer. Five year capital plan there's a lot of moving parts and pieces to this one of the things that I wanted to point out to to counsel is just the use of the group assignment when you get the larger budget document later on in the year. Every one of these capital projects is going to have a group assignment number to it that you can actually use to tell what type of project it is and who's funding it so I wanted to point that out to you. You can see that we're consistently for the next few years running in the close to 30 to mid 20s in terms of millions of dollars of capital improvements and then we start to taper off here a little bit towards the end. Real quickly some major CIP projects that we that we have the north south water main. Basically, just in the interest of time a lot of these are related to some of our big transmission line infrastructure . Some of them are replacement and rehabilitation like the this G 45 series here with Lake Louisville wall raw water transmission. We've taken the we've completely assess the 30 inch pipe coming from Louisville. We're in process to do the 24 coming up here about in the next year we've done seven of the 12 segments that we need to replace on the on the Louis ville plant. And then we've got five more to do in the following year. Couple of other projects of know that are along the lines of the conversations that we had earlier. We've got a pretty good size project here for the disinfection conversion for the Ray Roberts water treatment plant. One of the things that we're trying to do here is do some rehabilitation work on the existing 20 mg D Ray Roberts to get it completely up to speed. We've got to do some, you know, it's getting to be about a 17 year old plant now we 've got to do some replacements on the Osa nation equipment. Yes, sir. My husband has a question. Yes, real quickly on these evaluations of the equipment. Is it similar to what we do in the city we have the camera that we're able to run down the pipe or how is that evaluated in and how. Again, this is going to sound redundant but if we get images of that I mean it just really helps me convey a message disseminate information if we get what is a you know like in previous presentations we'll get the camera look at the pipe underneath the street and say, here's how we evaluate that so just kind of what however those evaluations are made I'd like to kind of get that snapshots maybe or or diagrams or something for some of the larger transmission lines we can absolutely do that. Just not to get off on a tangent but just to to let you know about it. On the on the wastewater side those pipes are not under pressure. So camera work is pretty easy. And on the water side they are under pressure and so you you have to do water those pipes actually do those assessments so we've got a dual system on on Louisville we took the 30 down 30 inch pipe down we typically do that in the in the winter time because water use is low. We have a system whereby we actually camera it as well as do a fairly new technology with electromagnetic resonance we're actually looking at the steel banding in the pipes themselves. I can I can get you as much of that information as you'd like I certainly get you some images on it. It's like a small, I don't okay. Small. Yeah, don't give me a larger medium just yeah yeah I got you. A couple of. I'd love that kind of stuff. I'm guilty of that I know it's a problem I'm working on. So, the. Yeah, yeah, yeah, admitting you have a problem. That's right. So, we really want to get Ray Roberts existing system all rehabilitated and ready to go before we take the leap into doing the 30 mgd expansion. The design for the 30 mgd is within your CIP window and so you see it there showing up in FY 2022. The, the Louisville dam safety modifications is one that is , it's starting to narrow down a little bit we had a lot of uncertainty with what this was going to cost but keep in mind that we are responsible as a water right owner on Lake Louisville for a portion of the cost to repair the dam right now the estimates that we're getting from the Corps of Engineers is around $15 million to to get that repair completed. And essentially we're programming in about $3.75 million on the four years that you see indicated give us the total of 15 by the time we get to the end of it. Yes. So the 15 million is our portion of the cost that's correct . So what's the, what's the total bill, and how much of it is Dallas and how much of Dallas has got a portion of it. I have been paying a lot more attention to our component of it than the total bill I think it's sitting in about the $ 60 million range $70 million range. So it's it's it's really up there. I'll get you that information I'll, I've got an assessment for it so I'll find out what that is. Provided a map for you to give you a sense of where all of these projects are happening and it's a little bit hard to read on the screen but effectively we have all of these mapped each one of them has been identified we've got them color coded by the, the year of the capital project, and what the project name is and the overall amounts of each one of those projects so you'll get a lot more detail when you get the full budget book but I wanted you to have this at least get a sense of kind of what we're doing and where we're doing you see a lot of emphasis on starting to try to get water into to this section of the, of the city, and then continue to work over on the western side with some of our booster stations and transmission lines. And that's all I have. I'd be glad to take any questions. Any questions comments. Yes, we're looking for direction at this point then. So, if, if I'm hearing that, whether you do the rate decrease or just hold rates, you're still going to face a big hill to climb. You know when that increment of capital comes in the future . You know, my inclination is, I'm not going to stand in the way of rate relief. If we commit to at least looking comprehensively yet at what are a long term financing plan looks like and will we be breaking the back of rate payers in that timeframe and you got to look across utilities, because they all have the same characteristic. We're hitting an inflection point on growth. Right and you know we're going to have a pretty unpleasant utility environment, you know, and then, unless we have some kind of forward look. So, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm, like I said, fine with a rate decrease if it's coupled with a responsible look at the long term. Okay, so that's sort of a contingent direction, that's sort of contingent direction so what do you need to be able to get for you to give clear direction. I mean when you say if it's coupled with a long term look are you talking about informal staff report are you talking about another work session, talking about an offline meeting with somebody, because that's, I mean, they can have direction that's not really that's direction but it's, it's sort of not so I'm trying to figure out exactly where you are on that. Yeah, I would envision a work session where we just have a look across utilities that, you know what, how we'll finance projects that we see coming because my life experience tells me the future is going to come. Okay. All right. I hope it does for me anyway. Okay. Any, any other direction. Okay. You know I'm okay with the keeping rates the same. I would like to see sort of, I don't know if it says contingent is customer Melter's but understanding that that additional revenue that is being raised without the rate decrease is going to cash fund current projects that are that are on the books instead of debt funding. In other words, it's not really to say it makes capacity but I'm not sure I agree with that but it's not going to set up a sinking fund or some type of reserve fund to help with the debt service, specifically of the new expansion of the Ray Roberts wastewater treatment plan, only indirectly maybe it's not directly. Okay. Councilman Ryan. I'm good with option to think this is something we can definitely look at again next year and every year in the future to see if that rate decrease or if we're not actually getting that cash funding that we're talking about the current packages that we can make that adjustment in the future but trying to do this up and down is is not what the right payers really want they want stability in their right. Okay. Yeah, I agree with option to make sense to me to, you know, this. I don't think we're going to be saving people a tremendous amount of money there when compared to all the other utilities and I think it'll make a difference down the road . Because McGregor up to do. Yeah, I'm too. Okay. All right. Okay, it doesn't really matter. At this point what I think but I would like to see we over collected. And I would like to see some of that given back to our rate payers. And since we can't look far out into the future, if we're looking at this closely and we know every year year by year what we're going to do. We're not going to any, any council is not going to say no rate increase no rate increase no rate increase we're going to do it like we should year over year, so that five years we're not having like a 10% increase that's just not responsible. So if we do this as we should, there shouldn't be an extreme increase in the beginning we should take it year after year, and say well this time we over collected. Let's give them a little bit of relief and next year we'll look over maybe it's a 2% maybe we're, you know, we're just kind of that that's my feeling so your direction is option one. Yes, okay. No, that's all right. Okay. Mayor so kind of based on that direction or our next step would be to go back to the, to the PB. Go, go back to them with more information on on Council discussion today, and the recommendation on on option to as as we go through there will kind of ferret out some of the details that you've asked for and when you see this budget back. It'll be as part of the city wide proposed budget. And at that point we can have further discussions about, you know, the request that you've made today. Could you do me one favor, could you go back to the option one projection slide five year projection slide. Okay. So this is with the 2% rate decrease and that's the minus 2% shown right there. And so based upon that, you're saying no rate decrease for the next three years, four years, four years. Is that right . Right under option one. Right. And let's go to option two. So option two is you don't have any rate decrease, but you don't have any rate increases either. Correct. So you're. I mean, are those numbers all the same on I mean I'm assuming all the forecasted numbers are the same like an option FY 2030. Those same numbers for option one or the same numbers for option to given maybe the, the, the debt funded or the capital funded the revenue personnel expenses, all those things are . I didn't check that but is that are those the only two differences. There's some minor changes in the ROI and franchise fee contribution, based on the amount of revenue that's, that's going to be projected on each, each individual scenario. Could you go back to the last slide just one more time, because I want to make sure. Okay, so your revenue total total revenue is 48 million for option one with a 2% and 47 so you got 92 basically million dollar net income so go back to the option to. Okay, so your, your net income. Your revenue is a little bit more. And your expenses are the same and your net income is about a million dollars more. Correct. So in essence. Well I sort of understand Councilmember Briggs is point in the sense that at the end, based upon this forecast. The difference is, there's been no rate decrease increase under either one of these. The only difference is you have a million more dollars in your, in your fund balance or no I'm not sorry. Well, I mean, maybe your net income, you've got a million more dollars in your net income. And so, why is that, I mean I thought that the reason we were doing option two was to decrease debt funding but yet we're basically raising the differences a million dollars in the reserve fund which is money that are we taking the reserve fund below what it should be under option two that's why we need to accumulate and fix it back up. It's 18 million compared to 15 to $23 million range. And what about option one. Sorry to get into these numbers. So it's 17 for compared to 15 and 23. Well, I gotta tell you based upon that. Because you could still. So I need to understand this. So you could still they only the main difference is a million dollar more in the general fund in the reserve fund balance. In essence, between option one, which is a 2% rate decrease and option two which is a no increase or no decreases we're keeping it level. And we're able to put more money into the able to fund more capital revenue. So under revenue funded capital right now under option one it is 1010 five. Right, correct. And then under option two it would be 25. So I'm lost. Is there am I missing something. Oh, okay well I'm just I'm looking at 2023 so okay I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not added it. So we're only using it really that one year. We're only using it that one year. Okay, well, that goes into debt service capital right, which means at the end. We just have a million dollars less, which means that that 's million dollars that the ratepayers have not paid extra. If we went to option option to because that's, I'm going to , I'm going to go with option one. It's still not enough, but because I don't really see a substantial difference I mean that's what I'm saying between cash funding or debt service I mean it's one year, and then at the end we've collected a million dollars more than what I don't say more like there's something wrong with that, but it's a it's an extra million dollars so but we still don't have this we've got three. And the direction seems to be option to, but I just needed for myself to make sure that I felt comfortable with all the numbers so I appreciate your indulging me and going back to that. Okay. Okay, any other questions comments. All right concluding items. The chair will say we are limiting concluding items to two concluding items per person. I have to. Go ahead. So I will save some of mine for tomorrow. But I do because of the presentations that we had today would like to ask for a work session on the downtown rein vestment grant. And I think because of the fact that we put that off, and we moved it into the to funding and there are some projects coming up for downtown preservation, and I think it's an opportunity for us to discuss, maybe increasing the amount and expanding the uses of that fund. And I'd like for this council to to reconsider that it's been a while since we just discussed it. And also, I'd like to know what the old keep it in beautiful building is being used for. I know that Explorium didn't was using it for some of their offices but now they have a spot and maybe consider that being a teen center where the teens can gather and play games and meet and have their own work session room, or some sort. And then I'll save the rest for tomorrow. Thank you tune in tomorrow to find out. Councilman Ryan. Thank you. I've got kind of two combined here, one is possibly an informal staff report on what the cost of the teen city council is for us. And so that we may have staff also contact the other cities within the ISD to give them a briefing of the benefits that it could that it could do what. So we're able to give them some cost when we approach them if we approach current or little elm to see if they wanted to do something for their own town to get them all involved in that way, it works out to be more of a school district type effort in combination with the multiple cities. Okay, over here. Yeah, I think to just tee up for staff consideration whether it'd be doable and desirable to have on the website. It's apparently some searchable list of active city contracts and where change orders are visible as well. And just for consideration and secondly, as we hear about pack pack for project which could open up a large area of downtown adjacent to the square for development. I'm not sure if we should start here anymore but the thought was, should we be thinking ahead about design and layout for. Let's call it the new square, and how it will relate to the old square, you know whether it should have public space within it how to be organized, whether it's a design space it's a square, and there's stuff in the middle and things go around it, you know, so should we take some kind of a design approach to that expanded downtown. So, if I could ask a question clarification on that. So what you're referring to is if it's the property that's being removed from the floodplain due to that drainage improvement it's it's not just the drainage improvement itself it's thing that everything's been taken out of it. Okay. All right. Fantastic. Councilmember Gregory. There's a lovely walk between here and the civic center for the restrooms are working. Really, they. Okay. At the civic center. Yeah. Well, I'm going to put a toll booth out there. Any. Any. Anybody else I just have a couple. I wanted to give a shout out and kudos to the adoption center for their dog fashion show. I heard it was a resounding success if you haven't seen some of the photos on Facebook and things like that and I'm sorry that the name escapes me with the young lady who helped coordinate that anybody know that off the top that was in the informal staff report. Anyway, I'll remember it by tomorrow because I'll make the same bit because I think she did a wonderful job. And it just looked like it was a blast. Secondly, in light of some of the conversations we've had today. I'd like to get, and it may have been on there but I didn't see it. When we had the DME budget presentation, it had the deck performer with the positive income from the deck and then the negative on five or six years out. And then that somehow that flowed into the purchase power expense. I'd like to maybe pull that out, if we could maybe have it as it was presented and if we didn't have both that positive coming in we had to purchase that power. And we didn't have that negative in the out years where we having to supplement that. What would our rates look like based upon is if we just were acting as if we had acted just in the last few years with with, you know, having to purchase power, just trying to get an impact of, you know, coming in. We're not going to have that coming in in three years potentially so what are we going to be raising rates again to make up that deficit. Other than that, if there's not anymore. Seeing none we'll stand adjourned at 233.