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