Aug 06, 2018 City Council on 2018-08-06 11:30 AM

Council on Monday August the 6th 2018 we do have a quorum it is 11 33 a.m. We'll move down through our work sessions we've only got a couple work sessions agenda item 1a is receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding nominations to the city boards and commissions. Madam City Secretary the podium is all yours. Well thank you. Council at your desk this morning I placed a revised listing I got some further nominations and so I've revised the list for you and I'm thinking would it be easier to go by board and then if um wherever there's a vacancy if that council member has a name for me I could include that we'll get the nominations today and then tomorrow at the regular meeting there'll be an item for individual consideration where you will be confirming those nominations and if you have any extra ones you want to bring tomorrow we can do that also. Yes I realize this is going in the wrong direction but I didn't realize at the time that they nominated Emily Meisner for community development that the person in that role wishes to continue so I'll withdraw Emily's nomination. Did you want to put the person that is currently in there did you want to renominate that person? Do you want to do that Kelly? It's a Randy Skinner. Randy Skinner. Okay right all right I 'll plug that in then. And just on that on that note with all the the alls um to confirm that they were reached out to and did you guys receive message on on if they did want to continue or is that is that something that council is responsible for like I'm just. No we um send letters or emails out to all of them and asking them if they're you know if they can serve again if they're interested in serving and there is a tab in your notebook that says it's part of that information is there whether or not they wanted to continue. But the the um the position still on when we see it on our list is still it's open. Oh on this list yes yes okay yes because no one's no one has said hey let's put that one on there back on there thank you yeah you see that blank come over here. All right so um on the airport advisory board uh council member Ryan do you have anyone at this time and mayor Watts. Yes I believe Robert Tinker would like to continue. Great okay on animal shelter council member Hudspeth. I don't have a name yet. Okay thanks. Community development mayor Watts. Mary Beth Cottingham will be continuing as well. Okay we have the two also taken care of uh health and building standards council member Ryan. I'll send you an email with a name later today. Okay and there is an alternate position available yet with no name is um anyone interested in putting a name in there. Okay I have asked someone um if the and I'm waiting for a response on that if anybody else has has a name I'm just waiting for a response on that. Okay historic landmark uh mayor Watts. I've got to find somebody. Okay human services is done library board council member Ryan. Uh same thing I'll send you an email later today. Mayor email just shake your head. No I know council member Ryan is taking up in my previous footsteps. Uh Dr. Lin Jen. I'm sorry. Dr. Lin Ling L-I-N-G and then last name is J-E-N-G. Okay for the library board. That should be new. Okay great and and just on on that board for anyone else who has an opening there was someone who reached out to me and this Jean Greenlaw and that was one of her boards of preference. So if anyone is looking for a name and doesn't have one um you can consider her. She's been on for a while and I believe she's been off a year and so she would be eligible I guess to go back on if somebody was interested. Oh so she was currently on the she was for a number of years before. Oh okay. Yeah sorry. No that's good. So uh parks recreation beautification council member Ryan. Should I just skip you? Well in actually the next one. So you do have one. Yes. On public art uh council member Ryan just gave me the name of Michelle Lin for um reappointment and uh then Mayor Watts has a nomination. Sure John Weber. And I did want to let you know I received a call um late this morning from uh Jennifer Lane who's um currently being nominated for the uh zoning board of adjustment but she also expressed interest in the public art committee. So if something falls through and those people are not able to serve that name's out there too. Public utility board. We'll wait . Traffic safety council member Hudspeth. Sorry. No worries. I don't have a name at this point. I've never been up here when you all are eating. It's it's hard isn't it for you? And then also traffic safety council member Armentor. I would like to nominate uh Hannah Bagheri. I'm not sure if her application is in yet. Back on my mind I think we have it but we'll double check. And then zoning board of adjustment. Um just a note for council member Ryan. Uh Jason Cole is currently in that position and next or tomorrow when if you uh approve his nomination for planning and zoning then you'll have a vacancy there. So um if you get any more during the yes ma'am. Oh I have an uh an alternate one of the options. Oh okay. For ZBA um Maureen Leake and her application will be coming in today. Okay can you tell me her name again Maureen? Maureen Leake. Leake as in Plano Leake? Uh yeah. That would be okay . Leake as in the vegetable. Okay got it. Any other alternates for ZBA? We have one more spot available if you. I have someone I'm speaking with but I haven't got confirmation yet so um it's so I may have someone tomorrow. Okay great. So then tomorrow I'll I have this list updated and um I'll have it at your desks tomorrow and um then during the items for individual consideration we'll be able to um confirm the ones that you've already nominated and if you have some more we can add that to the list. Any stand for questions? So on planning and zoning there are only two? Yes. Let me just double check just to make sure. I have Jane's most excellent list here that tells me. Well there were three positions that were um whose terms expired this time but we've already filled the one from Jim Strange with Matt I think it's Prunita is that correct? Okay that's what I thought I just want to make sure that we already got you all have already confirmed that. Anyone else? All right thank you. I'll work with you. We'll go on to work session item 1B. Receive report and hold discussion and give staff direction regarding the operations of development review engineering. Since it's not noon yet good morning council and mayor. Feels a little odd for me to say that um being not afternoon sorry. Say that one more time. It's not afternoon yet so it's been a long day so far but engineering development reviews. I just want to give you a few updates and then we're seeking some direction and just comments and discussion in general on the future of development review in regard to the development process. Engineering development review is an essential part of all the development that comes through the city of Denton. It is involved in reviewing the public works impact so water sewer streets anything that will eventually become public works infrastructure and the drainage impacts water that is shed off a private development site into either another property that's owned by someone else or into the public right of way that ultimately we capture and have to do something with. They review those things to make sure that we have what we need when the project is complete. They also make sure that there are things like easements that we would need when it's time to maintain property say a public storm water line or a public water line or wastewater line that happens to go through a project. They ensure that we have the easements our field crews need in the right size and location so that they can actually do the work say on private property when maintenance is required. Some of the critical pieces that go to their work is having the right manuals design criteria manuals having the right specifications have the backbone of what they need to be able to interface with every one of these consultants and the private development community about what our requirements are up front. So some of those things we accomplished this last year we updated all of our city standard details we also adopted new water wastewater manuals and then again last fall we finished our traffic and drainage manuals. So you'll see the July 13th date there we addressed some of the things that we've done in the past and where we're headed in the future with development review with a local group of consulting engineers that represent our private development community. They typically are the same folks that do all the design work that development review actually performs their responsibilities in regards to this when they submit construction plans they're looking at their work. We have a local chapter of the Texas Society of Professional Engineers that actually meets here once a month and that's where we have gone to this group in a very large setting to talk to them about some of these issues. One of the things that we laid out for them that we have coming up is we are going back much like we told you last fall when these manuals came through to you to approve we told you we'd be updating them on an annual basis so at the end of this week we will be taking in all possible updates and putting them into the manuals that will start a public comment period in September so that every year going forward as we go through this process we'll have an effective set of manuals that become approved and ready to use by January 1 st of every year so that process begins this year just having that annual update to everything if it doesn't occur in between that time frame then we will not have addressed it but we will incorporate those changes much more readily so we don't have these outdated manuals. Development yes sir. So how does that how does that work on people who are doing projects? I had an email a message of someone who started a project and read some fees and then the fees had changed throughout once other criteria had been changed so is it is it kind of like in planning once something is is plotted or yes from the start then that's the the rules that they follow no matter if it changes when as the project is not completed. Correct that's what we're looking to establish through this process is if you come in before January 1st if you've submitted before January 1st you would be under the old set of guidelines but when you do that and you haven't updated those guidelines in five ten years like some of our manuals were you're at danger of having 10-year outdated technology or methodologies if we're doing it on an annual basis we're just missing small snippets of what's coming and going it also helps keep things moving forward then after January 1st if you submit after January 1st you would be under the new criteria. Does that make sense? Did that answer your question? Yeah no no I mean it does I mean I just my my mind immediately went back to the streets and the criteria we had for the developers to build them at a minimum but we hadn't changed it so now we have crumbling streets but this would would allow us to to keep and maintain that as we're watching. Right it allows us to adjust for that on an annual basis with the understanding that if there's something we need to adjust in between January 1 and January 1 that would be something we'd have to look to partner with that developer with because we missed it or it was something new that changed but once it becomes effective January 1 the intent would be that's just a requirement that is put onto the developer to put into their project. Okay thank you. Any other questions ? So then in concert with what development services has been working on and rewriting the development code we anticipate that coming up in January of 19 and then we are looking to put together a set of city standard specifications. Right now we use a set of specifications that the local council of governments has put out with amendments that we like with some special amendments to go with the project. What becomes cumbersome there is we don't have all the same information locked into one place like the materials. We have a preference for a type of valve it's not in the specification because we're using somebody else's spec book and then we have our changes to it and then we have a list of approved items. That makes it very hard to one make sure that we get the right things in the plans. It also makes it very hard for the developer and the consultant to know exactly what I got to have in the plans right from the get-go. So when we consolidate these that will help drive this process a lot more efficiently. We're all playing from the same playing field. They will get the same update on the specification side as we're doing with the manuals and the details. They'd be on the same schedule so every year they come out the exact same time with if there's a change. If there's not a change we'll simply come back and say we're not recommending any changes and then we move on to the next year. So just to give you a little snapshot of a day in life of engineer who works in development review. So we have a model that we're working under today have been working under for quite a while and that model puts a very heavy slant to everything happening after the plans get submitted or a final plaque gets submitted. When the developer comes in with a project that might meet once with us and then they come in with what they want to have in the project and we've not had very many conversations or any when the plans come in. So our development review engineering team they see the plans for the first time right there. Then they make comments so they have two weeks to turn around comments to get that information back to the consultant and the developer on what they need to change or might not need change or have a discussion about things they want to partner with. Then the developer goes back and they make changes the consultant makes changes to their plans and what we see a lot is because we're doing this negotiating on the fly after they've submitted plans what we see a lot of is that the changes the plans change dramatically. So the reviewer is now seeing something again for the first time and they're trying to figure out what's changed what's not changed sometimes it's very dramatic sometimes it's kind of subtle. So there's this constant back and forth the developer and the consultant are getting very frustrated at the length of time our our engineers are getting very frustrated at not being able to see consistency back and forth. A lot of that has to do with the fact that we're doing this very reactive review process. Now that's been a long history for a lot of reasons. What we're looking to do is to flip that model going forward be a lot more proactive. So the question about the two weeks is that is that a policy that that we've given to you is that or is that something within yourself that's kind of been an internal consensus it was not a directive given to us but it was an internal consensus. A lot of cities are able to turn things around in two weeks but what does happen in those settings is the negotiating the making sure the consultant and the developer know what the city's expectations are and vice versa are happening before submittals ever come in. So when you come in with a submittal you're coming in with a plan set that we're all on the same page about where we're going and I can turn that around very quickly and we're moving forward. So two weeks at that point makes more sense. Yes. Okay I got you thank you. Absolutely. So what we're looking to go is instead of doing a we're essentially allowing the development process to be a placeholder to get you in line to get our attention. Instead of we're going to free up our staff's time to make sure we can talk to you negotiate these things up front and then when you come in for that review process it really is just checking all the boxes. Part of the problem the development community has right now is they don't know what those boxes are. We don't have it well laid out. We don't have it well defined. What are those hurdles? What are those steps? They're not well laid out. So we've got to change that process as well. We'd like to get to the point that when you come and talk to us you really are coming and talking to us just about hey I'm ready to get my permit. We 've already talked about all these other items. So if I could just couple of places. Sure. Slide. So right now um submittal. Yes sir. Submittal is when they submit into e -track it or to project docs or whatever the software is they upload their plans there and they're going for the official review for the permit. Correct. Is that or platting or whatever needs to have some type of official action taken from the various city departments? So and so in the I'll call it the reactive mode that's how you have it labeled. In the I'll say before mode . That's when the two weeks I think commitment 10 day turnaround for comments is that is that on permit or is that am I getting this confused with a couple different processes? This is just engineering so if that doesn't apply. What is engineering's timetable? Engineering tends to follow whatever we've laid out with development services but based on time that they have actually have available and the number of projects that are there it may take longer. We tell them that we look to turn it around in two weeks and then the commitment should be we're not doing a good job of this is telling them if it's going to take longer than that tell them early it's going to take longer than that. Okay so then in the new approach the new paradigm because after submittals they look y'all look at it and go oh no this isn't going to work we got to do this or something's really off we got to negotiate something and so somebody's got to redraw the plans and everybody's got to look at it again. That's in the official that's in that reactive mode for where you have oh we got some commitment of days but we're not guaranteeing them when we do the official review. Correct. So under before submittal under proactive are they still submitting hard copy plans for review or are y'all just going through sort of the conceptual because to me that's where the problem is it's it's what is submitted on the plans that y'all have talked about number one doesn 't match it right number two some of them are technicalities like plat numbers or you got a note here you got so if those aren't being addressed in the before submittal you're going to have the same problem after the submittal because you're saying we want to negotiate the kind of big the big items it's not we're not looking at those detailed plans on the before submittal and their proactive approach or are you I don't I don't know. So let me just does that make sense it does let me give you a quick illustration see if that helps so we've had several projects that have come in over the last year where they are about halfway finished to the point where the engineer even has on the plans on the front cover sheet that says interim not for construction review only. Well that's yeah so those should get kicked out immediately. Right and those should be that conversation on the front end before you ever submit that no time associated with that we're negotiating that in cities that say for instance of Fort Worth they can come in as often as they would like the developer and their consultant or just either one and they sit down with staff and talk to them about what are those issues you know I would like to have participation on cross-partition ing on the street or on a waterline or whatever it is and we work those issues out up front and then when they come in with their plans they're coming in with a signed sealed set of plans ready to go to construction tomorrow because the only thing we should be marking off at that point is is hey you know this is not there may be some minimal thing that's incorrect that you could change very quickly and immediately go out to construction. Okay and that's that's a big assumption that the plans are coming in correct pursuant to y'all's earlier conversations so then given that if you have an after submittal issue such as a and I don't know you might be able to define them a technicality or just because some of them is just ministerial some of it's well you're right this should be capitalized instead of in other words there's going to be some opportunities that for some things because today you've got to resubmit you have to correct them and resubmit and get in the queue and go through the line so under proactive are you saying that there'll be maybe a certain set of things that if we look at it they're so minor in nature and they don't really affect the health and safety or the function ability of the of the construction project that we can say change this you got so many days or we're not going to give you a co or completion until we get that you're not going to get kicked back to go through the review process if you forgot to capitalize this or you forgot to add that yeah okay I mean those are things you could just add and move on so I think it would be helpful in this process if because I'm sure you're very familiar with those types of issues of what has caused that problem in the past if if we could memorialize some type of hard list it can't capture them all we might have to add but that gives that kind of administrative flexibility because I think if we had it memorialized it's going to give the developers a bit a greater sense of confidence and predictability of there's not going to be this arguing back and forth or and plus it'll it'll help us as a city stay accountable as well so again what what I'm hearing you say is that and it'll bear itself out after six months or a year if it 's that the reactive was we're getting we're getting bad plans because we're still dealing with issues conceptually not with the actual drawings engineered drawings whereas under proactive if we are still having those same problems then somehow we you know because y'all aren't reviewing the actual plan sheets before submittal y'all just talking about the high level issues we 're gonna put this there we want that many manholes we want this many valves we want them located here right all those things come into play and instead you know right now we do a lot of things like hey let's look at the plans after you get done and then after you've looked at the plans private developer and the consultant thinks hey great we're moving on oh by the way now you got to submit this and you got to submit that you got to give us an exhibit for this right that all should come in with the submittal of course at one time in one package because we've had all those conversations now okay that comes in one time boom now the clock starts we're moving you all right i appreciate that thank you that's helpful okay yes councilmember amater so first i just wanted to say uh this is so great to see the proactive model it's such an improvement and i predict that it will do a lot to improve customer satisfaction and also just with government in general also it'll feel like there's a lot less red tape and more just kind of working it out with actual human beings in a reasonable way so that's that's thrilling to me um i had i just wanted to know about the defined delivery schedule i take it that the plan is um to put that in in writing of course it 'll be you know individualized decision and that i'm guessing that the estimate would be on the conservative side probably um and i'm wondering you know will there be any uh kind of get you know guarantee in place and in other words what happens if something comes up and and you can't make you can't deliver on on the date of delivery so those are all considerations we're looking into the improvements that go to that proactive model one would be an accountability structure how do they how is the development community and the consultant able to see that process is right now what you have in especially here but i've seen it in other places as well is is outside from the outside looking in we're this dark box you know so i insert plans and at some point i get a set of plans that come back to me with something written all over it and i got to try to figure this out and i'm hoping i can knock on the door and figure out what it means but half the time they're so swamped they can't even get back to it in a timely manner so we want to take at least some of those walls down so you can see it if not take it down at least make it clear enough transparent enough that you could see the process and then we would have clearly defined time frames that say you know if i can't make it in 14 days then by day 10 i've got to at least let you know it's going to take longer and not wait till day 14 and go oh my goodness i don't know what i'm going to be able to get done you can't do that so that those are the kinds of things we are looking at as we go into the proactive model excellent that and that'll make that'll just make such a huge difference thanks that's mayor melzer yeah um thank you i i don't remember when but i i know pretty soon uh mr city manager coming up as a session where we benchmark the development process versus other towns and i'm wondering if if you know this is sort of part of the outcome of having done that or you know is this significantly different better or like neighboring communities where the development community says yes these are great places to do business well i think i think it i think it goes hand in hand the problem we've got right now is we we have this very incremental approach to how submittals are working so it's very difficult to commit to a time schedule because you've got folks that are giving you information in pieces the time clock continues to restart so i think what he's talking about is this is the process we'll lay out then it will do vetail in with the overall development review process in general which will be bringing i think it 's on the 28th of august is that right yeah 28th of august so um we have to get the expectations set up front before we can agree to delivery schedules and that means communicating very clearly to the development community that this iterative process that some folks have gotten used to is no longer going to be acceptable you know we'll meet as many times as they want on the front end but what we often find and we've seen several examples in the last week of this where you've got an engineering firm that will come in basically ask questions about whether in general something might work and then submit plans without vetting out the rest of the questions and the property owner or the developer isn't necessarily informed that that's the approach they've taken wanting to know why their project's a month behind so i think by by putting this model in place up front agreeing to what the rules of engagement are going to be what the expectations are very clearly we can streamline communication for the development community engineering community and in our staff as well yes so we've we've been broaching this subject both scott m cdonnell and i and our staffs have been broaching the subject kind of lay the path forward where we're headed ever since really the end of may as we've started looking into this revamp of everything we even went to that tspe meeting we were talking about earlier on july 13th and we laid this out including the next step on the next slide which kind of finalized finalizes and memorializes that hard date for the submittal by we're not accepting i'll just go there while we're here to make that pendulum work you know the pivot point there on the the model as of september 1st we let them know on july 13th we would not accept anything with an interim seal on it to be counted as a middle if you want to start that clock it has to have the engineer signed and sealed documents on it so the board of engineers gave a little leeway about 10 years ago so that cities could see plans ahead of time that was the intent the way it got misused was i'm just going to go ahead and submit it because we're going to do the review together that's not really what that intent was if you're coming in asking for a permit approval to go build then you got to have construction documents ready to go so we laid that out with that group on the 13th the reception was in general and i think scott could attest to this was very positive that's where it needs to go especially if that gets them done faster on time in a deliverable manner that they can count on great thank you any other questions any other questions so as we said we we let the development community in general we had about 56 different consultants show up in the room that day as a pretty large group running out of space which was a nice problem to have communicated several of these slides that you're seeing today to them directly and had this conversation about where we 're headed we also made sure they understood that we needed the complete package not the next steps that we've been doing that has been on us we've been approving a set of plans say hey you look good and then you got to do this and then you got to do this and then i need this and i need that which just takes the process way out here it's one thing to lay out all those steps way up front before it ever gets submitted here's what you got to do and if you can bring the whole package we can get you done in 14 days out the door and then plan review fees are another aspect of this that is still upcoming and that's part of this discussion as we go through this we don't have that nailed down tadi before you go on i think one thing just kind of responding to council member milter's question this process also needs to be clarified for staff as well one of the things we've been working through on the back end dealing with our departments is they've gotten used to this ongoing negotiation after the plans have been submitted you know and so one of the things that we've done over the last year is update all the criteria manuals updating the way in there's still changes that need to be the way we assess impact fees that sort of thing but also breaking them with that habit that up front we're going to have a very clear understanding of what everyone's obligation is and then after the plans are stamped and submitted it's a simple checklist basically does this comply with all of our meeting notes does this comply with all the ordinances and that we're enforcing as well so i want to make it i think it's important to understand that on the flip side we're breaking some habits on our end as well and once we get this process kind of outlined in the rules in place it should be much easier and much much more transparent to put this in place as well as find a software system that kind of mirrors the process that and not having to worry about interpreting the back and forth which is really where they're spending most of their time is who dropped the ball where who didn't submit the signed plans we think this is going to be a lot simpler process yes council member rower question about um about the fees uh and i realize that you're you know just in the beginning phases of reevaluating them but do you anticipate a decrease in in fees or or you can't say i would not anticipate a drop in the fees part of where we are and we have a problem with those fees is we don't even know how to substantiate the fees that we have based on the time it requires to get us there and because we don't have a good handle on the process in general it would be ill-advised to start reassessing fees until we reassess the process yeah so you're going to be so when you reassess i mean you're you're really going to be thinking about focused on cost of of service yes solely and there's how long it takes right and there's several models that we 've recently been exposed to just as we've gone through the process of looking at what we're doing and where we're headed there have been several models that we've been exposed to that we're starting to look into as a viable option for us and we'll get into that here in just a little bit thanks any other questions here and then the last piece of this and i know scott has really addressed this before that we've we have created scott has created a one-stop shop we are continuing to refine that so when a developer or a person interested in some kind of development or construction or needs a permit can only go to one place they only have to go to one place to get the information they need to get that permit and they're not bounced to three or four locations that's an ongoing process as we start bringing in some other permits that are just not in there yet and we revamp this system to bring them in there as well so development review one of the reasons that we run pretty long on projects is we're very limited in staff and we saw as we went through the budget process we had asked for two more reviewers and a technician to help that staff get through their time so what i've broken out here is what our current backlog of review projects these are active projects going through the development review process right now that engineering is engaged in so right now we have 145 projects so as those projects come through there's a certain amount of time that has to go into each one and they're all varying if you go with an assumption of roughly to get from the start of a project to at least get them to construction you're talking about 80 hours of staff time then for the total number of hours that are needed i brought up pointers sorry i don't have a laser pointer but this number here that 11,600 that's how many hours it would take to fill up and complete the approval process to get a contractor out the door all steps included that's a rough estimate based on our historical analysis of how long it's taken us in the past with the current process in place and current staff you these these projects would require a little over 11,000 hours to finish so you just break that down if every staff member that we have currently engaged three engineers and one technician was working eight to 12 hours a day and they typically do work 12 hours a day six days a week to get there that leaves them available about 6,000 hours to actually do the work so if i just put this on a timeline to clear that backlog it would take us roughly two years to get there just with the current staff the current process the way things go so what we're looking to do is if we added staff you could easily make up time but i'm still clearing out that 145 projects in one year over the last two years we've seen easily double almost triple that amount come through the city and when i'm talking projects i'm not talking individual pieces these are just cohesive complete projects developer wants to do this here's all the steps so as i start looking through that if i were to increase staff to seven to nine members i can start reducing the time it would take to clear out that backlog yes councilmember melser i'm just i'm just not 100% sure i get this when you're referring to the backlog you're referring to uh well let me come at this a different way uh it seems to me that there that you're talking about two things one is the labor required and staffing required to do the expected workload each year but then when you talk about backlog or you're talking about an existing backlog that that would require sort of a surge of activity to get you to steady state you know and you know so then you can staff for a steady state so right now we have 145 active projects which is unprecedented for us at any given time to have that many active projects ongoing we still have seen somewhere between 60 70 and 80 projects ongoing at any given moment of time so if i just took that 145 that we have right now and saw them to completion the total amount of hours needed from the time they came in the door to the time they finished under our current process would be 11 600 hours that would just be to clear that hundred the current 145 out but you're gonna you're gonna have you know still each each right cycle right this was just to give you a snapshot because part of part of what we're struggling with in this group in particular is there's not been a real good way of keeping track of their efforts how much time is spent on a final platform subdivision how much time is spent on construction plans for a subdivision for a commercial development for different types of projects require different levels of involvement and a different number of hours engaged in each project and we don't even have that rud imentary data to be able to really spell out for you what the best way to change this process would be and that's a fundamental problem we have so if i can pass a little further so so you might be telling me you don't have a way to answer this question at this time i think that is what you're saying but do you have at least sort of a hunch of whether you need to answer two problems one is to staff to this to your steady state ongoing need and then is there some kind of sir staffing surge if you will to get caught up you know so then you can operate steady state after that the answer that is yes to both so yeah i've got another slide here that will get into exactly what you're talking about and where we're where we're headed council member bricks had a question well just mostly for clarification for my knowledge and this is just the engineering part right of the project correct that these hours are for it's not including any other department that that plan has to go through when their hours put into it no okay thanks so i know that's a lot of numbers up there and it was just intent to give you an idea of how many hours a project when it walks through the door and a developer says hey got this great idea to when we can actually go to construction that's 80 working hours so that's not that 14 weeks of getting to approval of it because in that two week time frame one of those development review engineers is probably working on 15 to 20 to 30 or 40 projects at any given time and try to do it on a daily basis they're not spending as much time as they would like to so and then hence is 14 days doesn't work it's got to go longer so they can give it that kind of attention it's just where we are it is the process that is killing us so question yes sir i'm trying to think if i want to propose it for current or propose i'm just gonna say current everything's you know we're not worried about backlogs we 're not the time that a staff person should spend on a project not the calendar days of when it comes in and when it leaves because sometimes applicants are are people how many hours if it's given and i'm going to say under the new paradigm because we're trying to go from the old paradigm i'm going to go to the new paradigm how many staff hours is the aspirational number for your department on okay for for a different i mean plats are different than so you got a plat right staff shouldn't spend i don't know five or ten hours total on something maybe new construction obviously works that might be because here you're talking about months and years and all those kind of things and i get that but do do you have an idea or will you develop an idea of for all the different types of projects that come in this is how much time staff should be actually looking at this document in front of them working on that's the baseline data we need to obtain and that's what we don't have that's what we do not have and we don't have it because we don't have the software or some system in place in order to capture that data software is part of the issue part of the issue is just not having the realization because we've always done it one way right having the realization in place to be able to go do that and understand what its benefits were and what story it really told about how we were doing and how we're performing so that we could make better adjustments to the process to amount of resources and get a better plan in place so for capturing that data other than software which should give it a lot if if develop if staff has to sign into the project sign out of the project once they quit actually doing work on it what other tool do you need other than the staff person knowing this is what i need to do to in order to be able to capture this day there's not a time clock there's not a there's not a manual set i mean what else do you need besides that that's one basic tool another tool would be to have electronic measures in place so that plans could be submitted electronically and they could be reviewed electronically and then sent back so we don't have that for engineering not right now no sir but we have part of our budget package we have it for planning though i think right we got it for planning and right okay but we don't have for engineering and that is what you 're you're going to have to have that tool to be able to do what you're right asking for yes sir okay and that's included in the budget that was part of what we asked for in the software packages supplement drc and engineering in general and that's part of the city manager's recommended budget okay all right okay that's very helpful thank you sir all right any other questions on this slide so one of the things that councilmember melzer just talked about was how do you adjust for what we currently have how do you take care of backlogs there is a model out there that i think historically we've tried to abide by and that's this blue line here if you look at the changing line in the background that's workload so if you can imagine i could look at how many projects we looked at last year we have that data we have the data of how much was the year before and the year before but what i cannot tell you is is how much of that work was being done concurrently in any given week or month to say you know what my staff is overloaded they've they've reached this peak up here and it's going to cause delays or i need to bring in some help temporarily if not otherwise to help bring that load back down to a manageable level development does occur in cycles now we've seen a serious uptick where it's been a lot more consistent lately over the last three or four years than i've seen it in quite a while but it does occur in cycles and you can almost to a person look at there's certain times a year where we get a lot more plans there's certain times year where we get fewer plans so they have a little bit more time and capacity and what this mount this model here tries to address is if you attempt to staff too high in this curve then there could be periods of time where we have too much internal staff that's on the budget for long time for you know permanently until we decide to reduce and force to try to maintain the peaks well we don't really want to try to maintain the peaks we want to try to find that right level this yellow level that says hey i've got a good i'm sorry the blue level i've got a good balance that balance of i can keep staff working at a fairly steady pace and then at some point i go over a little bit and then i bring in some contract help or some staff aug mentation to help us with that peak as long as it lasts and then we slowly filter that group back on and staff takes back over full time the yellow line is intent to also show that if i'm underst affed how do i adjust to make this blue line occur where i get a good balance between the peaks and the lows in the workload so that's what we're attempting to do right now last fall we brought on kimley horn associates to help us with the backlog of projects that were coming through development services and development review and then help current staff by just having more horsepower to get projects reviewed that has helped to a degree but what became apparent as soon as we brought the resources on the process is still broken and because the process is still broken we're still having issues and as we started working as a staff to resolve those issues one of the other things that became very apparent is we're so busy trying to get done what needs to be done there's very little time left to figure out how do we improve this process as we've gone so far down this process a lot of our staff is so close to being on that burned out edge because they're spending 12 hours a day six days a week they will be here long periods of time just trying to keep up in the camp you just with the number of hours that there are to try to get to the goal line we can 't possibly get there you bring the consultant on we're increasing the cost almost two times what it would cost to have somebody internal on staff to do that review the way we're using it right now again process is broken you're trying to make a consultant do what we're doing in the same process and nobody's really looked at how do those efficiencies need to be changed how do we get better value out of what we're doing so resources we just talked about a couple of these things i'm going to flip through a couple of these so we had kimley horn on board last fall they are going to help us carry on through at least to the end of august now one of the issues that we had looked at was kimley horn is also one of our consultants that is a representative development community they put plans through so i know they're chafing a bit they're doing a very good job of keeping that separated staff has been making sure that whatever kimley horn project comes in they are not reviewing it they are not touching it they don't influence it that gets reviewed by internal staff but kimley horn would like to be out of that business because they don't want that problem we don't want it they don't want it so we went to look for another company to fill that position of helping us with that backlog when it gets too busy for us as we got to looking at what could this consultant do we also came back to that recognition of the process is still broken even if i bring on a new consultant the process is still broken so maybe what we need to really engage in is somebody who could help us with that review backlog but then give us that in our insight from somebody who's experienced enough with other communities other processes how do we change the process and what does staff need to do to change that process what does staff even look like maybe it's double the size we're thinking is maybe it's a third less we don't have a good feel for what the process should be so then the thought process became maybe we bring in a consultant to help us identify the process as well as help us keep this thing moving along so we went into a phase in may of looking at rfqs with that mindset so we were looking in may for a consultant that would help us with the backlog of reviews plus give us an assessment of our processes and how we would fix those processes they would also give us some idea of what staff needed to do to either change or grow or whatever it would need to be we received those uh we sent rfqs out to about six different consultants that received them and looked at them then three of them responded the three that were that responded came with a stack of information based on their qualifications statement of qualifications told us what they thought they could do based on what we advertised and then we interviewed their teams here in this room so that we get a better evaluation of that team in particular what they brought to the table we then coming out of that had narrowed that down to two consultants and thought well let's talk to those two consultants with a follow-up question that of some things that were just grinding out of that discussion we needed to know so we sent that back to them they both responded out of that response we did narrow it down to one and that finalist we then followed up in july and visited with communities that they are currently working with so that we get a better sense of how's this really working so we visit with those communities personally without them in the room so that we could really get the gist of how's it working and what we discovered through that process is there's a variety of ways that this consultant has engaged in the delivery of capital or not capital uh private development projects one way being that they just help with the peak times you know we got too many projects they're going to help us with the review and get it done some ways were to expedite the review have a second source of work that a developer could say i'd like to be outside the normal queue and get it done faster so we engage them and they come in and take on that load and move forward another way that they had gotten engaged in this was to take the whole thing on altogether totally outsource the entire process so internal staff didn't touch that it was just the consultant looking at all those reviews and then coming back to the developer with here's what the city requires we're going to have this and that process was streamlined we got very good responses from each of the cities that and some private developers who have engaged in that process and they were very favorable to all three scenarios that what became apparent was we just had to figure out what was going to work for us given the circumstances we're in and where we need to go how fast we need to get there so one of the things that we just may have a question question about the about the consultant so so is my understanding correct that the uh the consultant would uh would come in immediately once these negotiations are through and help with improving the process at the same time you know helping to do the day-to-day work and reduce the load and then after that they would come in and out you know during peaks they would come in during a peak season and then that was an option back yeah that's an option that we have considered another option that we have considered is given this current state of staff and as burned out as they are and where we have other holes in the engineering department in general for delivery of capital projects we feel that we could repurpose some of our existing staff if that's the option we choose we could repurpose our existing staff to other roles that would be a huge benefit to us and allow a consultant to come in and take on the whole process by virtue of them being an outsider coming in with experience and a variety of other places they could come in with that experience both as having submitted in other places but then being the person engaged in that process and seeing some different styles working what would work for us come in assess the situation take on that review process from the get-go to the end we even went to the extension and that comes into the next slide of maybe we even as we have a ramp up time with bringing on new inspectors to ensure quality they could even take on some of that inspector chore immediately from the private development side and let our staff get engaged in the public side and then as we grow out of that we will know how many people do we really need in development review how many inspectors do we really need to have on the private side do we need more than what we think we have we don't think so but that could be a part of that process there's definitely an interaction between the development review engineers and then construction inspections and there's a handoff that occurs when engineering and planning says okay everything's good now the inspector's out in the field he's our eyes and ears he's engaged in that or she is they're on the field on a daily basis making sure that's getting done but sometimes just that handoff between the two becomes a problem because they're not necessarily in the conversation together so that led to another thought which is well if you outsource the whole thing maybe they bring in their inspectors early while we're still trying to find the rest of our inspectors they could bring in their own and really have control over the whole process and model what does that process look like this works great now let's mimic it with staff yeah okay and so this so every and every one of these models seems to me a kind of a a place holder you know until um what's what is broken gets fixed right so none of none of these models right is you're saying and then it would be this way for right for see right now this is all about how are we going to you know work on these two problems of of you know the big picture of process improvement and then the day-to-day work correct okay um so and just one um you know concern that i would have a uh about about and any consultant even the best one and i i like the idea of having a consultant and this is a concern that can definitely be addressed um that uh is that you know sometimes and i've seen in in other kinds of you know projects before where in the past and some ongoing where city will bring in a consultant that has great expertise and they're able to offer you know part of the gift is is that they give is that they're coming from a different perspective from outside so they're able to help help us think out help dentin think outside the box um but then you have you know on the flip side the problem of um that either they they don't they don't live here or even if some of them do live here they 're not caught up in the day-to-day and so mistakes might i mean i say mistakes might be made or or maybe you know not knowing how to commute you know communicate with uh uh with a resident you know things that would be kind of a no-brainer for for your staff who just lives here and knows dentin you know at the same time i mean when it comes to engineering a lot of engineering is universal you know just universal principles but then there are these dentin specific things some of which having to do with just human you know public relations so i would just caution that that that be um you know taken into account and watch carefully you know especially with inspections you know you got an inspector who maybe is an expert at inspections but they don't know certain things about dentin and that but yeah right and mistakes could you give me an example of that what i mean if you're just talking about how to treat people with respect and dignity and talk but when you're talking about dentin i mean dentin specific is you got an engineering problem this is how it's supposed to be constructed you really this isn't done right so would you mind correcting this so help me understand what what your concern is with people who are coming in yeah i don't i don't understand well well i'd rather i'd rather kind of see hear what and i'll come back if you want me to still to to clarify my question but i was just i was just wondering if that's kind of something that you've taken into account because i mean essentially i 'm saying we've got staff who who who live who live and work here and um and then you've got the advantage of consultants coming in who have this new perspective and just the balance of that you know how do you you know find find that balance so everybody's doing the right thing and i can see in the different models that that you show that you're already taking that um that balance into account oh no i'm not so yeah i'm just not really tracking with what you're saying is your concern as far as i hit the way i'm interpreting it is from a people perspective in other words how do we treat people and somebody who lives here i'm not sure everybody lives here that works here um but i guess i just don't i mean we have people who do live here and work here that we get calls about that you know could do some things different so i'm just not understanding what you're saying oh yeah so yeah that the the the interpersonal relations i just threw that in is just as one example uh but yeah but so if you so yeah i think we've got a few ways to address that well i know we do we one of the ways that we were looking to address that is staff that is currently in that role even though they'll be repurposed to other roles they will still have a marginal impact on they're they're able to go to them at any time so like one of the engineers we're talking about would be moving to the traffic group and in that traffic role traffic still has to see these plans as they come through to say yeah this looks good or they'll be part of the negotiation process so they still have that engagement in it it's not that it's going away plus the consultant we had a requirement as part of the rfq process that regardless of which way we went they needed to at least have one or two people here on site during the normal work week so that we have that consistency excellent excellent yeah and that's kind of what would i would be so that yeah so that no project is being 100 out of source or feels like it's being outsourced everything is some degree of collaboration between the consultant and in-house right so sorry sorry for no no that's good yeah i get that okay yes go ahead so uh in in the process of you know of onboarding the consultant uh do you have a way to capture the insights that that uh you know the current staff has as far as where what where they think the process is broken right i mean if they're working you know 12 hours a day six days a week they must have some clue about what they think is stupid about what they're doing they do and we've had that discussion on multiple occasions and as we try to put steps in place we've made progress we just are not able to make the progress as quickly as we could if we didn't bring in some extra horsepower to just say here's what it is and let's get there even they will tell you if you're talking to them individually and i would encourage you to do so they're great people but they will tell you they're burned out with this process they want something different and they would love nothing more than for us to turn a switch and have a brand new process tomorrow that we could all just go with so i know from their perspective they're ready to do that as well council member bricks so i know i know you're pretty new here and we're very glad to have you here in the department but i just have to listening to you and how the things that you're saying about the department and the the staff it's pretty concerning i mean you know they're overworked burned out like how did it get this bad and that's my first question sure and i mean this is way i'm sure things from the past like coming in and and also is there an engineer shortage like if we wanted to just hire more people to work in our department and train and develop and grow i know that on the next slide you have some um inspectors yeah so i'm kind of speaking to the next side really it's what i looked at in the the difference there so those are my my two um like because i see the recommendation is to go with the the consultant um and so i just so to give you an example we've been looking to hire a traffic engineer to help our traffic engineering department we've been trying to hire somebody quality and that would do a good job from us right from the start just from where we are from my perspective we're we have not been managed well in the past now that's changed over the last year or so absolutely we're going down the right path and we're freeing up a lot of ability to make decisions and adjust to things as they happen quickly development review has been an issue it's been a problem for a long time because it's not been managed well it just hasn't the process didn't allow it the process itself was not managed well so it didn't make it very easy to manage people because how are you even going to tell the story if you can't even tell the background information of why we are where we are what we're doing i can't give you that today and we've been trying to piece it all together for the last eight months so in the traffic engineering role as we've created a traffic department separate from everybody else we've been trying to hire a traffic engineer since december and we've had about 17 or 18 applicants but as you look through the applicants we didn't find anybody really of quality and when we found one or two they were gone just like that so before we even get them here to interview they had gone somewhere else if you start talking to and we have we've reached out to other cities they're having the same problem dallas fort worth across the state of tex as especially in the metroplex even the consultants are having a hard time keeping traffic engineers on board so yes there is a an issue with getting those quality folks okay now the problem that we're trying to turn and this is where i really put it back on for management in the past is if you'd had a good plan of succession where i could hire consistently at an engineer who just graduated from school that pool of candidates is much greater than the pool of candidates that would be a senior engineer or a program manager that needs to be able to just pick this up and run with it we want to hire from that bigger pool and then train them up so that the next person to take that role is right next to you and we put them in that position they're off and running but we're not there yet okay so that kind of answers my question i would like to see you know kind of both because the consultant can't really i don't i don't see it you can't say that's forever no really and so as they kind of go off that we do have people within that are coming up and are ready to be there yes absolutely and that was part of why in our budget we had asked for three more people for the development review group and then we would still retain the four we have to be a part of that is looking at just the hours we were looking at earlier we know that's roughly the time available that's needed but as we improve the process it may need to expand or it may be just right with a consultant to help us in those peak times we just don't have a good basis for that so the thought process coming into this rfq for a consultant to come in was for the first six months they're looking hard at the process what's going on how do we fix this process let's get the process fixed in that first six months and then six months show me show me that this works because now you built it show it to me and then as we're going through that we're figuring out who fills those positions we would put in to that contract our recommendation is that you would put in some extensions to that contract so that if it was working better than we expected and that was the route we need to go trying to be as objective as possible that we could enact those extensions to the contract if need be and he'll probably address more that on the next slide because that's I think your recommendation slide is that right yeah it's coming so this was just walking through we talked briefly about our inspectors and where we are I can go through this slide but we have talked about this multiple times so move on so issues to be resolved so one of the things we've heard from the development community is an expedited review fee we don't have good enough data we have tried multiple times to figure out how do you put an expedited review fee together there's not a good way to get there the way we're set up now so that would be an option that I know the development community from the discussions we've had are very interested in us having that would be another thing we'd be looking at with this process is how do we get there what are they how do we establish those and then put them out there one of the options that we saw that was very intriguing to us when we were talking to our the finalist set of folks that they had recommended to us and then we had gone and checked our background in some other places was development review based on a deposit this requires heavily that proactive model so if you go down this pathway what we're saying is is we get together and say you tell me what you are looking at delivering and how fast you want to get there and then I got to figure out how many hours and how many people have to be engaged in that and then I can tell you what that fee looks like maximum and then as quick as you can get the right plans the right documents together and we work through this thing collaborative we just draw down on that deposit if there's anything left it goes back to the developer now it also requires two-way string right I mean it also requires that we have a way of accounting for our time which we don't currently have and that would be something else we'd be looking at the developer our consultant to do would be to help us define and we keep track of those hours and that time so that we can then when we're going to run longer be able to come back with here's where all that time was spent and here's why it's going to take longer and you got to put a little bit more in that deposit when we went to I'd never heard of this one before we heard about it when we were out talking to some of the clients of our consultant out in California and when we started talking to our local development community here at that July 13th ESPE meeting there are more folks in Texas than we thought doing that already now waiting on to get those examples who that actually is so I can come back to you with better information on that one but they were very receptive to that idea as well issues with development agreements I know we have heard that one a lot and there are all kinds of issues that we have been struggling to work through it is a huge time waste for all of us it needs to be there it has to be there to set the rules of how we're going to engage in delivering this process it's got to be better than what we have and then are there some alternatives to our current developer agreements absolutely there are there are a lot of cities out there that run with them so how do we get them engaged in what our rule book is and what our playbook allows us to do yeah that's a big issue yes I mean they're yeah and then any other improvements that can be made to the process that's what this consultant will be doing and and just so that you all know we are in the negotiation process and part of getting ready to come if council chooses to go down the recommended path was to ask the consultant who was our finalist HR green if they had come and said can we start taking a valuation of kind of what we need to bring to the table so that we can give you a better price for what that contract looks like and they're here we have two representatives here Mike Connors and Tim Hartnett so if you do have questions for them they are here that's you yep okay and then the last piece was the assessment review time per required proprieties that data we don't have the data so how do we get there that's part of what we 've got to have in place is those performance measures how do we know we're doing a good job just to give you a brief overview of what this really entails you've seen this chart before but for those positions that are currently an engineering development review two of them would go to traffic engineering to help bolster that team one would go into capital project delivery as a project manager and then another one would go into engineering services that's our flood plain administrator and they would plug in there to help us with several things one of which would be a stormwater master plan and then cold consultant would fall in under the org chart just where engineering development review is today options so certainly we can explore any options that are out there the three that we brought to the table and would like for you to consider it's one we you could opt to just go with the existing staff repros in the budget and we'll do our best to try to get there as quick as we can that still leaves a lot of ground to cover option two we bring in a consultant to assess just how we can improve the process and then help us with the backlog it's kind of where the rfq started then option three would be to completely outsource that particular piece of what we do on the development side so that we can clear the hurdles and the roadblocks for them to really define that process let them do the entire kit and caboodle from the review and negotiation period all the way down to delivery through inspections define that process without any of the current staffing hurdles that are in place and then let us have a real objective view of what that process would look like council member malister yeah when i first uh read this through i had uh this question i'm still not sure on option three is your uh long-term vision that the uh you know that the outsourced group would redevelop the process clear the backlog and then you would have ultimately you know build but build that back into an internal um you know staff supported function or do or is your concept like nope this just stays an outsourced function so currently my thought process and thought process going into this was this is a temporary scenario in six months you define what that process should be and how many people should go into it and how many hours going to each one of these things and then show me for six months and during that last six months as we're seeing as it progresses then we're defining who fills those roles internally do we hire from the outside what how do we get there but i'm also not going to kid myself when it just comes to looking at this from an objective standpoint we may get to the end of that six months ago you know what they're just doing a flat out better job than we are although would it you know would that be a function of just their skill knowledge level or new process you know what i mean if it's if they're developing a new process for you that you know hopefully then normal normal mortals should be able to learn that process i think you could absolutely be yeah either one of those i suspect yeah that it's going to come down to financial reasons and how do we find that happy medium right because you're going to pay twice as much per head right something like that uh and then uh do i have another question oh yeah and this and your recommended proposal uh recommended option is within what's budgeted i can go ahead so part of what we had in our budget we had put in 300 000 for consulting fees that were going to be to help bolster our our current staff load then we had another 200 000 in there to help bolster the uh a role we would have called an assistant city engineer but that role we were going to outsource this year to help refine those processes if you put that instead into this right so that just add to this then you've also got salary savings from positions that would be approved like the three that we were talking about adding and the four that are currently on board right now so you add that to any salary savings we would get from personnel that would get us at least quite a bit of the way there and then whatever in development review fees that we have would also add to it as far as a total price tag i do not have that right now but do you have a sense of i'm almost there yeah do you have a sense of so do you have a sense of whether you expect to be then asking for some additional funding to do this it sounds like you think you might be asking i don't think so the way we set up our budget for this coming year i do not think we're going to be asking for more but it it i'm not kidding myself when i'm thinking that you know it's going to be probably a million to a million and a half in the contract if you're just looking for a ball park it could be a little bit higher but if you look at the overall budget for drc that's kind of that's basically where we were going to be ending up anyways right around one one three yeah i mean i'm i'm finding what you're saying persuasive and my message to the kids of denton is focus on those stem areas thank you so a few different thoughts all over the place but have we have you given consideration to bifurcating new versus old for example saying all new permits after january are going to go down this path and then someone's just going to turn away at the old kind of separate and then at some point all the new becomes just it that kind of continues to run is that have you explored that okay so i want to clarify the question so that i can give you the best possible answer thank you so are you talking about in the current backlog correct pulling it apart so obviously there will be some projects that are just so close to the goal line that we would just ask either staff to retain that or move forward that was an option we looked at but as we started talking to hr green and staff in general one of the things that we had thrown at them was what if we just throw the whole thing to you because at some point our staff is still here they can still answer that question of what led to now but would it not be more efficient to just hey here take this and run with it that's part of the reason why they're here now trying to figure out what is that backlog what is that history what is the story that goes to each one of those and how do they best staff up to get it out okay and and for me just a note part part of the consideration would be exactly that that backlog and putting hours and and all that to it and what they purport to do right so they've evaluated it some degree understanding that that's gonna that's gonna vacillate a little bit but hey we've we've given it our we 've kicked the tires on this first pass and we believe we can impact that backlog number by x percent or by whatever time frame i'd like to see that uh mr city manager have we looked at the so i hear the cost two two times more and then i also see in our budget the significant cost that comes with insurance at al with employees right and then also the scaling of that and so when you say two times is that two times including insurance and all the other stuff that rolls in the employees or no we have not had the ability to really sit down put together a pro forma what it would cost all in for our employees versus the consultant yet i'm a little uncomfortable throwing numbers around right now while we're still we've got the consultant in the audience and we're negotiating um you know but uh we so we've really not been able to do a side-by-side comparison i think i think what we've been talking about right now and we've seen this with both building inspections and planning and in particular when you're when you're basically down in the weeds constantly behind the eight ball constantly under deadline pressure there's not time to think outside the box and bring different experiences in and we have benefit i think i hope the council has seen since we've had richard canoni around you know who we brought in from cga and associates a year or two a year ago or so to assess our processes the dramatic difference that's been made in the planning side of the house we're looking to exactly the same thing here on the engineering side so the budget the all-in budget will definitely be a consideration there will definitely be a side-by-side comparison but we also want to be sure that any agreement we enter into is fair on both sides and it's eyes wide open for the council but your point is a good one you know in terms of what what is how do we quantify the cost of the backlog versus quantify the cost of the ongoing what is normal under a new process and we just we simply need new eyes to look at this basically saying if if we were a brand new city out in california brand new city somewhere else it's really going like crazy and we've got these you know we've got the engineering criteria manuals finally updated and why that's important is there's one set of rules the engineering review development review department in the past was sitting there with two three four different sets of specs for water main streets who remains it's a nightmare to try to negotiate something fair when you've got that condition so we've gradually been trying to update those scenarios to get to a point where we can fix the process and give you a decent pricing model okay and and and as we as we move forward i'll tell you and i've started last year as we kind of looked at the the tax base and who were putting the pressure on and i'm going to continue that and so i would ask anything that comes before us coming forward that it clearly delineate uh not so much expectations but i want it to be clear what we're signing on for contractually and what we're expected to because if we're gonna if we're gonna say we're gonna make an investment of whatever that number is of whatever software of whatever employees and then individual council members or as a body we don't support that growth and we impede that growth we're betting we're betting against ourselves right i mean and so that's going to be problematic for me if we're not giving clear direction and that doesn't mean all projects get carte blanche but i i absolutely will go back to these type conversations and try to hammer that home that we're sending mixed messages because that's exactly what what the this how we that's how we got here it's there's eight iterations of interpreting interpretations of this rule and how i read it versus how they read it versus so there was not that uniform approach and so as a council if we then duplicate that we now are investing money in a project investing money in the software investing money in staff and then telling them to go eight different directions and so that to me that's nothing to do with you other than when i look at the contract and i look at the kind of the language i'm going to make try to uh incorporate as much language as i can to then try to um get us as a body to to have some uniformity and some consistency not based on the rules right based on what the structured rules are not as much personal references right because that then is is not productive right uh and so that's that's just i'll just give me a heads up when you get the email that's what it's about you're not going to get any arguments from todd arrived at the personal opinions being injected requirements off the book are appropriate we've it's something we've been dealing with since he started and we're trying to get straight to the facts and evaluate against facts okay very good um yeah one one last thing okay i'm surprised that i hadn't heard any presentations or any anything on uh administrative assistance right because i think that that's the key right if if as i understand it loosely and i don't i don't prefer to understand it well but when you're talking about some kind of structured wording type first pass review stuff i'm surprised that we don't have that that administrative level beef up there to when it gets it engineered that that stuff is a no-brainer and you're really focusing on kind of what's irritating what yeah and so i've not seen it's interesting because you look at you look at the auditor that's the first place he goes as he's getting ready to staff up as i need an administrative system uh city manager added that i mean you know i've just seen that the value added there and i'm surprised uh in the legal department you'll see you know the paralegal to attorney ratio and how many they support but so i'd be interested to see what we could get done from a administrative assistant standpoint and it may be in the works i just haven't seen it so forgive me so some of that is in the works already and scott i know mcdonnell is already taking care of quite a bit of that so when you walk in to get a permit or submit your plans they are looking very closely at what's there what's not there part of the problem we've had in the past is when you submit a halfway done set of plans and it says interim for not for construction review only if you're not an engineer is that really a complete set of plans do you have the full checklist and that's where we're getting into problems when you put your seal on it as an engineer you're saying i'm ready to go to construction because if you're not then i got a check and balance for that one they can go right back to the texas board of professional engineers saying you're sending stuff in that's not ready to do what you're saying it is and that's your seal so that's part of where we've hindered this process ourselves is we've allowed this stuff in when it wasn't ready to go okay thank you and i wanted to answer the last two questions councilmember armantyre made the same comment too just in terms of overall pricing and that sort of thing and you know we have we have spent an extensive amount of time reaching out to the development community engineering firms that sort of thing before we decided to bring this model to you and i think one important thing that todd mentioned that he just sort of glossed over quickly was we're so focused on the process improvements we don't we would expect down the road to be able to as we get our time um outlined better to bring to have a better discussion on cost recovery for this service you wouldn't need these functions but for the development in one in one of the issues that we have heard over and over again is the development community they are unconcerned i guess i shouldn't say unconcerned but they're less concerned about the fee structure and any adjustments we might need to make than they are about getting clear direction and plans through the process because they have to pay a little bit more in fee to to get a clean answer up front that's far cheaper for them than paying an architect or an engineering firm two and three times based on how the current process is working so you know i i think that the next six months to a year will tell us a lot here about how what the fixes are but um the impact that that the current process is causing on both sides of the fence right now is it's a problem and i like the i like the ability to get some eyes in here that are unbiased and i have no no sense of the history here to figure out how we match up the engineering review process with the planning process and i think the feedback we get from the development engineering community is going to go a long way when we bring those cost of service recovery back to you but we'll see how this goes that's my breeze so just a few things so i'm i'm okay we talk about options with three for now but you know knowing that the cost it has to be sustainable and hearing what the city manager just said kind of comfort me a little bit as well as what you mentioned earlier with the seal requirements because i think just taking care of that issue and having that requirement before it comes would do wonders and that's probably where a lot of the exhaustion and frustration is coming now so you know one and i'm sure there's other little things that can be done too to help so that that's a good change um i do have a question about um the consultant will they be communicating with other departments the ability to communicate um back to you guys and with planning and you know um environmental i mean that yes they have to do this job they have to be able to do that and one of the things that we saw when we were talking to other communities that have engaged hr green in particular is they are working for a community that has not even internal to the city their own water waste department it's a totally different community altogether the community itself doesn't do their own water and wastewater they have a district they buy that from and they have to interface with even that external agency on a daily basis and they've been doing that well but for me that's a really really big important part and i think councilmember armatar when she was talking earlier that that may be where some of that philosophy comes in as well you know from the city departments and in this council on development of our community um but is it very is it important now that we get a thoroughfare plan and a mobility plan and our code updated so that um they have all the tools that they need when they're going through these plans to see because if we don't have all these things in place it's things are going to keep continuing to go to go back and forth and not move forward that's exactly why we're doing them is to put those tools in place so that regardless of whether it's hr green or it 's somebody else or its internal staff they absolutely can let the development community know a definitiveness that this is the plan if you want to do something different you've got to bring to the table what that is and why instead of what we're doing now which is either kind of making it up or thinking i think it looks good or i have an idea what it is let me go look at it for a while nobody really knows whose responsibility is it to do what and that's what this would define okay um i think i 'm hearing this and i just want to verify that this is a more of an outcome base um goals base as opposed to a fte base we're not saying we're not looking at doing a contract that's going to say you're going to provide a six we're saying you're going to provide us the work power to handle what's necessary is that correct right and with that i'm for option three yeah so i um i strongly support option three and i'm i'm really excited about this uh and this it'll make a big impact and whatever um you know additional investment is involved in this short term will just pay off um for years years to come with it just a much better process and all sorts of unquantifiable and so i'm really excited about it i had a comment and um and then a question for the consultants actually comment being about the and you don't have to go back to the to the slide um but just about the the expedited review fee option and the deposit based review fee option i i like those ideas that that sounds really good um and you know i i would hope that uh it would that the fees would end up decreasing but i understand that even if they don't and this is kind of going back to what the city manager was saying earlier uh that that this new process whatever is determined um will create more of a sense of transparency into the ways that those fees are determined because right now it it feels arbitrary to to people as you know and so it you know it and that'll make a huge difference it'll take away from that that sense of arbitrar iness um and will give a more concrete timeline so you combine that with with the um assurance on timeline and i mean just those two things alone will make a world of difference so i'm excited about that and my question for the the consultants was just i was curious about the um uh the uh not just the issues with developer agreements because i've heard some from a little bit even though i'm it's it's not my my field my area you know that there are issues with developer agreements but alternatives to developer agreements and i was wondering maybe if if you wanted to just give us some examples of what those alternatives could be yeah state your name and address and your time will begin oh no time go ahead just who you are i'm timothy heartnet i'm one of the principals at hr green my address is 7005 south pioneer road richmond illinois way up in the northeast corner of the state of illinois i'm one of the principals there in december i'll be there 30 years and i act as a village and or city engineer and i'm also responsible to run our governmental services midwest group which is now leaking into texas so our team out west handles colorado california that's where your staff went and visited um a little bit i thought i heard the first part of your question about what we call developer reimbursement or escrow accounts that has been very successful depending on the type style complexity of the project um we basically meet early and often and we have a clear understanding of the project and concept and then we are able to offer a scope and a fee and a schedule and then based on that they collaborate with maybe there's legal there could be other consultants required your planners we pull all that together and say you need to establish an escrow account of 25,000 50,000 100,000 and it shall not dip below 25,000 or the project stops until you bring it back up so related to that related to developer agreements um that really kind of starts with the leadership um they can range in style we'd be happy to share any and all but the key is is getting together with them early and often understanding what they'd like to accomplish and then understanding what we would like to accomplish as is the city and then just building that into the agreement that's where a lot of them miss is that it always seems back in the day or maybe even here as hot as it is it always seems to be to the developer side and everyone's so excited to get that here that they fail to look at the infrastructure planning they fail to look at what happens the next development on down or do we need to upgrade our sewer our water our roads to build for the future and so um just those techniques meeting early meeting often meeting with the leadership um good city attorney always helps too to get all that built into it and we've even incorporated exhibits and maps and or samples so that it's very clear from the get-go whether it happens this year five years ten years down the road everybody has a clear understanding of what we all bought into early and often so excellent excellent and uh and i'm excited to hear you also to talk about um how how infrastructure at all different kinds of levels um you know surrounding and and even um somewhat beyond the project will be taken into account because i think as we grow you know that's one kind of criticism that i keep hearing about uh our our our current current approach to the to the growth or or non-approach where kind of there's a sense that we're doing things piecemeal um and that and that infrastructure needs are are are suffering um because they're being kind of superficially addressed piece meal instead of a holistic approach so so there's another you know big city-wide issue that that can be solved just at this that i wouldn't have even thought of at this level of developer by developer from an engineering perspective what'll be taken into account but if i don't have those roadmaps or those master plans or the agreements and full support of the city council that 's where i don't care which consultant you choose we will all have a problem until we get that that roadmap yeah and the rules and the direction absolutely yeah thank you so much anybody else i'm gonna go last um sir oh you're gonna get a question i'm trying to catch you before you yeah i made a long hike back to the church um yeah i'm just curious to know uh do you find that there kind of is an established set of best practices uh you know that that i guess somebody somewhere is doing uh or is there something that really is very peculiar peculiar or unique about that and that needs a custom approach i haven't found very many communities that do something the same way there are best management practices exactly what you just spoke of is having good planning uh good agreements good standards good specifications good details that that is a best management practice you have wonderful ordinances um your handbooks and all your other things are very helpful the checklists are fantastic i think what just a real high level look it just seems like we've gone to this level of the pendulum where we've created a checklist about the checklists and then we 've created a handbook about this handbook and you know so those are some things that we have just at a very high level uh last week i took the time with my staff and i said let's pretend we're going to go in as a developer as their engineer and or as the city engineer and let's see is it clearly defined to us and at this time i have to tell you it's very cumbersome it 's very challenging it's exciting to us and our team but i could exactly see why developers or engineers or even your own staff at this time may find it a little challenging just to dig into a project but um there are some very specific standards we found success in certain techniques sticking closely with the leadership meeting early and often uh meeting with people and saying if this is what you expect this is what we expect um expedited review i find that quite funny that if they just make a complete submittal and they do what they say they're going to do and we do what we say to me there's no need for expedited unless they're seriously looking at it like the next day you know because everyone's just going to want to pay that expedited fee they're all going to be want to be in the queue and be done by tomorrow so then yeah we just make arrangements to to make that happen have we done those yes we i mean quite honestly if they give us what they want we'll perform the service for what they want at the rates that we have established just give us a complete submittal and just do what you say you're going to do and we'll do the same and i think that's where you can close the gap substantially thank you anybody else yes just one thing to to todd's credit not a question just a comment having gone out there and and begr udgingly partook in their potluck that they do out there i mean i think he does a great job i mean as much as he he says uh their struggles and i believe that he's done a great job of managing that department all in that building you know i've kind of worked together to to kind of continue to build camaraderie and and i want to give him credit for that not i don't know that he'd bring it up himself but i i do want to say just seeing it firsthand and seeing the kids come up and and just kind of that fellowship they have is it's pretty dynamic and it helps i'm certain uh kind of manage those times to know he has their best interest family's best interest and there's that kind of camaraderie that will help manage these these peaks valley times but i just want to give him credit for whoever established that but maintaining it and continuing to to know their struggles but doing the best you can to try to make memories in the midst of all that so thank you yep anybody else a couple questions the positions that the if option three is the direction uh the positions that are being retrofitted their destination positions are those currently in the budget yes all right so they're just filling vacancies that have been that are currently in the proposed city manager's budget correct so that's a zero sum okay uh and is it anticipating i think this goes along with um the collaboration and communication with other city departments these people will be uh on site or is this going to be done uh off site in illinois or dallas or california or i mean we were very specific that they would have people here at least three is what i believe we originally started with correct three on site full time so that there is that personal interaction but they do bring that resource as councilman ryan was talking about that if we needed to have eight reviewers then you know they could be sending some of that work elsewhere just to expedite that review to get it done faster to clear that out but then there would always be the interface here okay so what i'd like to see because if that's what you're talking about uh if you're talking about having three people here and then just sort of having off site that's what we have now so you're proposing six or i think you were wanting six or nine we got the three additional that we had in the budget right but we're moving those three that are current to different positions what i 'd like to see is the the when you come back and make the presentation and you figure out all the hard costs just to break down option one option two option three sort of how you broke it down with the hours and the backlog and all that because i think that's going to be like option two is maintain existing staff level with the ones that we've decided to hire but increase consultant involvement to to process review and plan review and maybe some overflow and option three of the total outsourcing because so correct me if i'm wrong what i heard was we have currently four people three engineers and a tech yes sir and the budget says to uh that you're going to increase the number of engineers by how much two two engineers and one more tech so we'd have five engineers and two techs is that right right correct yeah five engineers if if we if we wanted option one be five engineers and two techs correct so there's a cost associated with that and in your could you go to the slide that shows that i think it was your first slide of the hour breakdown and all that right so proposed so the proposed staff with augmentation is not option three no that would have been like that would be option one with recognition that to handle those peaks you're still going to have some kind of contract there to help okay you may have more work at any given time than what you have staff for okay so i want to make sure i understand this and this is with the new paradigm this is under the new paradigm proposed staff with augmentation was we would have to get exactly what you want if you could say if we didn't have option two or three this is what i got to have to do this job is seven to nine reviewers now that's the number of reviewers or is that including the tech people that's including the tech people that's everybody okay so that's that five those five engineers and the two the two techs all right so when i hear and you've just thrown this out so the only reason i'm saying it is because you said it and that is when i asked you about the on-site you said well we'll probably have three on-site reviewers i'm going to have a hard time believing that they're that much more capable and qualified to do the work of we got three now and we're way behind and if there's only three on staff but you're saying under if we were to do it ourselves we need five engineers and two so i'm assuming that some of that work gets offloaded to some reviewers somewhere else which then it depends on whose project it is as far as that i'm just concerned because if you've got off-site people they're not going to have the opportunity to interact with the development community in person which means the people who are here will be sort of that conduit yes so they'll be handling not only their own review projects for from the technical perspective and the communication interface with the developers they're also going to be handling the communication interface from those off-site people who are making so i always say that because you threw that number out so i could this could be 10 minutes of just uh-oh that's all right this could be 10 or 15 minutes of uh yeah this could just be 10 minutes of wasted time because that may not be but you said it so i wanted to make sure when i saw this number three and i saw seven or five that we're going to be getting and then the off-site so there's a couple of things that play there please so part of what we're talking about with that proactive model is one who's interfacing with the customer right now and then if you get into this proactive model when you come in to submit your plans to be approved if i do it all in-house whoever's here that's all we got so it's they got to do both sides of the fence but if i can get to the point where i can get into this proactive model that when you submit a sign sealed set of plans we've already negotiated all this stuff now i just got to review plans that is a checklist that is this looks good this makes sense i don't have to have those three people doing that part especially if it's submitted electronically and it's reviewed electronically and comments are sent back electronically okay so then i need to have an understanding of under the new paradigm this sort of uh informal negotiation the pre-submittal getting it all worked up getting it to where when it's submit it's all correct and accurate and checklist that'll be fun to keep the data on that um who's doing that who's the actual personnel interfacing with those developers who come in so three you we're talking right now about three could be you know the engineers for you whether they're our staff whether there's somebody else okay all right we got three or four that are doing more time interfacing with the customer and then taking that same set of plans and either facilitating the conversation with say water wastewater drainage making sure we're all on the same page about what's going forward okay because right now that is not have that happens after you submit right which is part of the frustration the development community has is you're not talking to me we so we laid out this very clearly to just very quick no no no yeah i don't want to get too much in the weeds i just i shared my thoughts about that and so as as you move forward in the negotiations and when it comes back for council consideration that just may be something to include in the presentation how exactly that process is going to work uh you know under that particular scenario but and again part of that is what we're looking for this group to define is is what is that right i mean they may get into it and find out i need seven people on site and they need to have seven people here yeah okay who's got a question because i think we're going to get to the point where we're probably going to get i mean mine was probably a little long in the weeds which probably would have been answered once the contract came back but you said three people so i wanted to i wanted to understand that we're going to go to duff who else briggs that's one last question and then did you have a question okay okay council member i have to assume that you're going to have a transition period here and uh you're going to reposition the people we have there now but they're still going to be engaged at some point for a certain amount of time i would think they will continue to be engaged as needed and as the consultant really feels like they have to have they're always open there as a resource okay yeah that's that's okay okay council member breaks so how much time is it going to take to clear the backlog with the consultants is that what the seven and a half months is or is it going to be even sooner should be a lot faster because they can bring more people to the game to clear that out but we don't know that as part of this negotiation process and why they're here doing some fact finding to figure out what would that be what would it take so when we come to you with a contract we can tell you what that is okay i look forward to that presentation thanks okay anybody else appreciate the out of the box thinking and just your commitment to trying to understand the problem and resolve the problem because it's everybody dentin is not the only city that faces this issue it just sounds like most people think we're the only ones that have issues with developments and timelines and you know inefficient processes but everybody's struggling to improve them which i think is a worthy goal so i appreciate your commitment to that and look forward to the proposal as it comes back it sounds like the direction is to pursue the option three and about how long do you think that would be before it comes back to council right now i believe we're targeting some time in early september okay we'd love for it to come faster but i just think realistically you're looking at september okay great great any other questions or comments fantastic thank you gentlemen for coming you bet good to meet you thank you appreciate it todd thank you very much concluding items council member breaks i just have one and it's in relation to this um or um whether or not we have a consultant in the future or whatever i would just like to request that we find a way to get whatever plans that we need in the city so that all the departments are working from on on the same page i think it will help tremendously and i know that we're talking about it in budget discussions now and so i would just like for that consideration sure thank you anybody else just a couple uh when i think we asked for some information on the tiff is breakdowns of things uh breakdown of new uh actual new construction and then also what's been remodeled and i went back and looked at the the tiff financing plan back in 2010-11 and it breaks down in the plan uh current property values in other words those that are just increased in value just because of the assessed values and then it has other development which i think would fall into the category of the remodel and then it had the catalyst project so i think when we come back with uh some numbers on the tiff uh if you could maybe categorize them as staff sees them in the categories that were defined in the actual report back in 2011 i think it would help help us understand when we look at the report where was it right and its assumptions where was it a little off and exactly where are we as far as being able to take a snapshot of that and overlay it on the plan and lastly let me pull the email up uh i want to give a um a big shout out to of course uh our fire department uh as they responded to the fire on sat urday i was out there for about an hour just watching it i saw the smoke and i just that was curious um but i asked chief hedges to send me a list of all the municipalities that helped us and this is the list aubrey flower mound justin and these are all fire departments justin crumb lake cities little elm pilot point ponder denton county emergency services the uh agencies that backfilled for our city because our staff and personnel were out fighting that fire were argile in lewis ville um the chief also goes on to say that he wants to acknowledge two of the city's employees and streets departments rex and habier for they responded with a backhoe to assist with the fire overhaul because they needed to dig some stuff up to make sure the hot spots were out and they spent four hours assisting with the final uh extinguishment and then they had a crew out there on site all night watching for any rekindles if only our society could be as helpful and as collaborative as we here in denton we're here in denton county are very fortunate to have the agreements that we have with our neighbor cities both in police and fire because that was a big fire and i'm glad the paper didn't quote me on what i really said but that was a big fire and um they did a wonderful job things were exploding things were uh it just was there was no water on site because the fire hydrant was it was didn't extend out that far because it was in the county the fire technically i believe was in the county and what a wonderful job they did in keeping that fire under control and and keeping people on 380 safe as they're coming through because it was right on the highway so kudos out to just not our fire department but the entire county and county response because uh without their help there's no way that that that would not have that would not have gone a very good way so uh those agreements when they come up let's just sort of remember situations like this they really make it so important to to have those good relationships with our with our neighboring cities any other comments questions yes here here yes yes yeah they did a great they did a great job they absolutely did a great job all right seeing no more we will adjourn at 1 28