Jun 04, 2018 City Council on 2018-06-04 11:00 AM
June 04, 2018 City Council
Full Transcript
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.