Aug 14, 2018 City Council on 2018-08-14 1:00 PM
August 14, 2018 City Council
Full Transcript
Welcome everyone. We do have a quorum. I'd like to welcome
you to the August 14th
council work session. It is 1.02 and our first item up is
citizens comments on
consent agenda items. We do not have any cards. All right.
Next item is request
for clarification on items listed on the agenda. Any
councilmember breaks? So on
the consent agenda item A it's the pilot bicycle share and
I know that the day
it's for extending the date but is there an addition of
scooters because I do
know that we talked about it in mobility and I didn't see
the addition of
scooters in this amendment so I... The discussion on the
scooters will be
placed on the agenda I believe it's next Tuesday the 28th
so this this was simply
to extend the timeline on the initial program itself. The
actual discussion on
them whether to amend it to include scooters it will be on
the 21st
or 28th? 28th. And so the the timing is of essence like to
extend it is that why
it's coming to separate? Yes. Okay. And Mario can answer
any other specific
questions on the need for it? Part of the rationale for the
extension is to because
the pilot program ends very soon and we have no data and so
I know that was a
concern of council to have data of bike share and with UNT
working with
one of their partners for bikes we wanted to make sure that
that that the
pilot program extended to the end of their semester or the
end of May of
next year so that we can have a full two semesters and kind
of a slow season as
well of data to compare and see if we want to continue with
that program or
not. Okay I just wondered if the other item was coming to
us at a different
date. Okay. I have one more. I consent agenda item C it's
prohibiting parking on
Hanover and this is near Woodrow Wilson Elementary and I
just have a few
questions because that area I understand why we're doing
that for drop-off pickup
and that it was a request from the principal and in DISD
but questions that
the parents wondered because there are several events that
take place and
there's hardly very there's little parking in the parking
lot is it
possible to have certain events like grandparents day or
when there is a play
exempted from that or would would it just be every day all
the time I mean are
there days that would be non-enforceable? This is pretend
they smoke traffic
engineer for the city. We the way this was written in the
ordinance and we
talked to legal the easiest way of implementing it is all
days during
school hours instead of getting into the details of which
day we can pick can we
put in an actual date or an event name it gets too complex
in order to enforce
it but we can work with the school district primarily the
school principal
as well as PD and make sure that certain events don't get
enforced so the so the
ordinance will cover everything but as far as enforcing it
we can work with PD
and the school. Okay for certain days for certain days for
events. I have one
other question follow up to that. Right now when you're
exiting the the driveway
onto Hanover there's a sign that's posted and it says no
left turns during
school hours. Is that a city sign and if so it's really
ignored all the time and
if it if it is a request that nobody turn left on to Han
over from that
driveway then that sign needs to be replaced and it needs
to be larger. So
yes it was a request it is a city sign it was a request
from the school district
and the the reason that sign is in place is because of
exactly what was happening
is people were parked on Hanover and then double parked or
double waiting to
pick up kids and that's why people leaving the actual
driveway did not see
any traffic coming in so once we have that taken out
visibility will be much
better there are currently teachers at that driveway
guiding folks in and out
and they want the traffic to make a right out only but with
this new
implementation we are going to revisit that issue if we
need that left out or
not. Okay so that's possible that that will go away I'm
just trying to figure
out if these are all hand-in-hand these are questions that
I've received so yes
so we'll figure that one out. Okay thank you. Anyone else?
George? Thanks for
telling I just want to be I just want to be painfully clear
and I have the answer
but give me a day in the life of enforcement because here's
my concern if
someone breaks the rule and it's not enforced that's gonna
it's just gonna be
problematic right and so the problem is I know you can't in
theory have someone
there all the time but I would almost press the school
district to allow funds
to have someone there 80% of the time there's got to be
significant
enforcement because if you don't then someone gets away
with it and it blows
back pretty quick. Correct so enforcement wise I think PD
is working closely with
the school and the principal and in this particular case
where it's really next
to the school the school is more in charge of if it's
happening or not and
then informing PD or getting them involved when and where
required so if
it's more of a PD can be there initially to make sure that
everything goes fine
for the first few weeks and then after that they're gonna
work really close
with the school to make sure that they this particular one
is enforced. Yeah I
would just encourage us to get that written and in the
email that they
confirm receipt that sort of thing that they're gonna take
that that ownership
because I'll tell you candidly I have a picture of a DISD
delivery truck parked
in the no parking lane you know what I mean so it happens
right I mean I can email it to you
and so I'm just saying that can't happen we can't have a
DISD car parked in the
no parking right next to the school and then change the
rules so parents can't
park on the street next to the school right I mean it's
just they've got to
take significant ownership in that enforcement and and be a
hundred percent
diligent and and and a hundred percent enforcement at least
first few months or
so because if not it's gonna trickle down and heal pretty
quick. I definitely
agree and we'll send that email out to DISD and the
principal school
principal. Okay thank you. Any other clarification? I've
got a couple of
items one is I believe we have a replacement ordinance for
item E on the
consent agenda so I recommend that we just pull that and
let them do a
presentation on on what that changes are okay and then also
as a housekeeping
matter the public hearing was posted for a 630 meeting and
so if we finish up
with everything else on the agenda we'll take a break and
come back and start
that public hearing at 630. Okay all right we will move on
to item 3 work
session reports first item is receive report hold the
discussion give staff
direction regarding the implementation of standards
standard construction
specifications and contract documentation.
And I questioned Todd earlier why we didn't get all this in
our backup. We're
gonna go through each one of these. Good afternoon Mayor
Pro Tem, Council, I'm
Todd Estes City Engineer and I've got with me an assistant
today we have a
few visual aids we will not be diving into all of them but
I did want you to
get an idea of what we're talking about we're talking about
construction
specifications and what we're dealing with today Chad Allen
our deputy city
engineer is going to help me with this when we get there so
we're talking about
standard construction and specifications and what we're
looking to do is rewrite
the city of Denton's standard construction specifications
or more
clearly to actually create our own. Currently we use a
variety of sources so
just to get into what is the construction specification
when we go to
build a job we have to tell a contractor every component of
the job if there's
something specific that we want done a very specific way we
have to tell them
what that is so I could tell a home contractor to go build
me a house but I
need to get a lot more detailed and what I want in that
house and it can get down
to just every little detail from hey I'd like 1,500 square
feet I'd like four
bedrooms I'd like three bathrooms or whatever that ends up
being to I would
like wood frames studs to or steel or what is it I want to
use I have to tell
the contractor that or it becomes room for interpretation
which is what leads
to a lot of the issues we run into in the form of change
orders runs into cost
escalation can potentially blow the schedule out of the
project make it much
longer because now we're working on different items and
there's a point of
confusion on even how we're gonna build something something
as simple as putting
a pipe in the ground sounds fairly simple but if I don't
put it in the
right way I could potentially have a weak point in the
street to where the
road could fail so all of these things have to be put into
every project so
that we have a uniform understanding between the contractor
and the city of
what's expected what are you gonna deliver and how do I
want it delivered
there are always elements we want to leave open for the
contractor to have
some flexibility and what they're doing but the things that
are absolutes need
to be very clear or they tend to become issues that result
in claims if we had
to go to say a bonding company because the contractor and
us could not get to
terms or they went out of business or for a variety of
reasons they're gonna
want to know did we tell them exactly what we wanted what
is it you want to do
all of that has to be spelled out very clearly or we leave
ourselves open for a
lot of issues during the course of the project this is just
the technical
definition of what is the specification and when I'm
talking about
specifications going into construction that is a large
piece it's a very large
document it's everything from how we bid the project to the
contract documents
what is the contractor expected to do in the contract
documents to give us a bid
you know I need you to send me whatever requirements that
we have on a specific
job show me that you can meet that show me the pricing that
's pricing is just a
little bitty piece of that they got to show us a lot of
other things and these
are all those pieces plans specifications we have to agree
on what those items are
to get a legitimate price or it immediately becomes a
source of a
change order for the project what goes into a specification
so on the screen on
the right side yeah right side sorry right side of the
screen here where the
cursor is that's a sample specification so it's very it's
not exciting it's not
something that you would spend a lot of time reading late
at night but it is
critical for the delivery of the project it spells out very
clearly what's going
to be installed how it's going to be installed what
equipment we would need
sometimes that's a requirement how we're going to measure
it so that we know how
to pay the contractor and then how we're going to pay the
contractor for that
item all those items are rolled into it on the left side
here you can actually
see all the different items that go into one specification
for one item
so something as simple as detailing what's a stop sign look
like there is a
specification for that and it's very defined because you
don't want to have a
different looking stop sign everywhere you go it's
important that it looks the
same impacts on specifications and especially in the
current format right
now we utilize specifications from multiple sources so if
you were to go
into the development code you would see that we go to the
North Central Texas
Council of Governments fourth edition was what all of our
current standards
are built on but the DDC actually says to use the current
edition which is let
which is seventh edition I believe that's correct so we're
on the seventh
edition of those specifications but all the specifications
that we reference to
go back to the fourth or fifth version depending on which
specification it is
that the North Central Texas Council of Government put out
we're utilizing their
construction specifications with and Chad's got a red
binder there the red
binder are all of the City of Denton specific amendments to
those cog
specifications so if there's something in there that we
want to do differently
than what cog has in there we have to call those out
specifically all of the
ones that you see in that red binder point back to the
fourth edition of the
cog specifications then if you go to the white manual there
that white manual is
the traffic signal is traffic signalization striping
markings signs
all those things that also points back to a different
manual that cog references
and you also got to double check it within that red manual
to make sure we
don't have some kind of amendment in there then the blue
binder and if you'll
turn it to the side you can see all the tabs in there all
those tabs are
individual specifications we've pulled from other sources
over the last 20 30
years to say I would like to use those in place of either
what's in the black
red or white binders because I didn't like them I want to
use these so that's
what has happened over time as you can imagine that creates
a lot of confusion
not just for staff trying to figure out which ones we're
using for our
inspectors in the field the contractors especially when
they're pricing jobs for
us which one of these do I use so just as an example one of
the projects we've
had recently is FM 2181 where it's a text that job we're
doing the relocation
of all the utilities out there we there they actually bid
ded is one project so
we gave them our plans for that job and our specifications
for the utilities
before the project really got underway I think within the
first 30 days Chad we
had a change order number one change order number one was
for utility issues
because in the confusion of putting all these plan sets
together when text up
bid it our plans called for a certain specification that we
normally call in
our plans in one of these books over here that didn't get
put into the text
out materials what text thoughts advertisement showed was K
go to the
city didn't website and find it I believe councilmember Br
iggs did you
have a question well I was just looking for more of an
example because you said
that there's a whole book that we came up with that's
different than cog it's
that red book in the white book and the in the white book
yes okay so do we just
go through and if you could just kind of speak to that a
little bit why what
would be something that we think is different and I mean we
just go through
individual and say well that won't work here or or this
will or so the 2181
change order is exactly that okay so in our cog
specifications it calls out
certain types of materials so when I put pipe together
especially water pipe I've
got to put valves and I put some bins and some other things
in there we want a
very specific style and believe it or not there are a whole
host of ways to
put that pipe together we wanted a certain way because it's
an easier way
for us to maintain it we get better life out of it it's a
better product that's
not what's in the cog manual so we have an amendment to
that that says we want
to use this instead of that one and here's what that one
should be but
because you have multiple versions I think even the red
version is not the
current version of the water preferences for materials that
we would need on any
project so there's an additional set in that blue binder
that goes to just those
water items I think even on the title there there's one
that says DIP fittings
or something like that DIP means ductile iron pipe so when
I put ductile iron
together I typically bolt them together there's a whole
host of ways to bolt
them together and it's even to how tight I turn the bolts
which has an impact
for both the guys that have to replace it and how well it
stands up underneath
the demands of a roadway with a lot of traffic rolling over
it does that
answer the question it does it does it sounds really
confusing it is so that's
the confusion that actually led to that first change order
for 2181 I believe
the initial estimate on that was over six figures when they
did the change
order and through the negotiation and the project
management process of that
change order we actually brought it back down under $100,
000 for that change
order but that was just right from the beginning of the
project before they
ever broke ground and it was the confusion that was from
having so many
sources the contractor had to figure out what are we using
what are we doing and
then how I bid that project because their first response is
I didn't bid the
project that way and that none of this was out there where
I could find it so
that becomes a problem that becomes a project claim against
the project from
the contractor that usually and did results resorts an
increased cost of the
project you're always gonna have change order some projects
they just happen
there's things we just can't find in the field or things
that just happen you
don't want to start a project with change order one thanks
yeah maybe this
is obvious but just so it gets asked is this literally like
paper binders or
when we bid something is this all digital and linked you
know what what
allows it to be so confusing right it's a variety of that
so we have some that
are hard copies because they are that old we have others
that have been
scanned in as PDFs you have others that are sitting out on
a website to go find
anyway you look at it things get missed when I start
pointing you to hey go pull
this off the state's website because that's their version
of this
specification we like that versus we have our own uniform
set of
specifications that say this is how we want it done and it
's one document I'm
not gonna point you to eight then answer your question okay
all right so that's
our current and existing set of status of specifications
and how we get these
projects out the door they almost always result in a
project cost increase they
can result in a schedule increase because they just take
time to work
through these issues or you find out that a material the
contractor figured
he was going to use when he bid the project he's gonna use
something totally
different and it takes longer to get it in so I could push
a project easily out
eight to twelve weeks right from the start so the expected
outcomes we have
for actually going and writing our own specification is
that we reduce that
confusion we can reduce the impacts both schedule budget
potential scope increase
for those situations much like the FM 2181 scenario you don
't want to run into
that right from the start you can expect on average a good
bit of this
construction specification confusion will net out to about
a 1% cost increase to
the construction and and we'll come back to that in a
little bit but if you put
that across the board so you have a hundred million dollars
worth of projects
out there that's a million dollars worth of impacts right
from the get-go so what
do we need to do those books that you see there on the
table have to be
consolidated into one tome one volume and that's a lot of
work we got it for
every one of those specifications we have to get the right
people in the room
when we need legal advice on what we can and cannot require
they need to be in the
room purchasing needs to be in the room we need to have the
right departments in
the room if we're building something for water and
wastewater they need to be in
the room so that we know exactly what they want and how we
're gonna put it in
the ground then how we're gonna measure and pay for it
everybody needs to be in
on this game so as you can imagine when you've had that
many people in the room
it takes a while there's also a need to make sure that the
contracting community
understands what we're asking the development community
also plays a role
in this because they're building a good bit of our public
infrastructure so they
have to have some sort of say in this process in total as
well because there
are some methods we might not consider they could bring to
the table there are
others they may consider to be overly extreme that
conversation needs to be
had as well it will take a good bit of time just to get
this amount of work
done so we're looking at roughly 12 months to get through
all of the
specifications that we normally run into that's just our
standard set of
specifications then every project that we do will have what
we call special
conditions or special specifications that are unique to
that project those are
the one-offs that we have a special need for that scenario
we don't typically run
into those so every project will generate those as well so
then the
question becomes how do we fund this how do we get it done
if we utilize current
staff to try to do this we would be engaged in this you're
you're looking at
somewhere around 5,000 hours to get through all of these
items get them
quantified coordinate collaborate do all this work together
if I had somebody
dedicated to that I would need one person plus another
person and almost a
third of another person just to get all that done working
on it solid for a year
and that's all they did or I can go the route that we're
recommending which is
we hire a consultant based on the RFQ that we submitted and
put out to
advertise last fall to help us develop these standards and
put these
specifications in place coordinate collaborate write all
this we could get
that done within a year we would have a working draft ready
within about six
months so that we would be able to utilize that on capital
projects within
12 months we'd have a final published set that we could go
through the normal
process of approval like we do with our design criteria
manuals and we come back
to you to see the final format and we would have a very
solid consistent set
of documents that we're working with both on the private
side and the public
side going forward every project of a capital project that
we have coming up
would benefit from this what we are looking at doing is
splitting this cost
amongst 20 projects that we know will be the direct benefic
iary of this so if
we're estimating around nine hundred fifty thousand dollars
to get this done
we would be looking at splitting that amongst all the
upcoming construction
projects where this would be ready to go what you have on
this list right here
totals about a hundred and twenty million dollars worth of
construction if
you just consider that we could prevent one percent change
and that's a minimum
to expectation on the confusion that misleading
specifications can lead to
project that one percent of construction costs we talked
about earlier when net
to about 1.2 million of the hundred and twenty million
dollars with the
construction we have coming up if we were to spend it on up
front we could
avoid a good bit of that confusion and that one percent is
a is a minimal cost
it can get much higher usually when you start a project
without even breaking
ground with a change order I can bank on and there's gonna
be more change orders
coming along because that was just the first blush at what
we missed
so this sets us on a very stable footing going forward with
all these projects
you'll get better bids you'll get a better expectation out
of the contractor
because they know exactly what we're doing councilmember
Nelson thanks this
is a sort of slightly off topic hoping Aaron you'll give me
a little leeway
that you're part of the genesis of all this all these
diverse specs it sounds
like it's because we find things that are that are
different and better than
what NCT cog is recommended correct so is there a process
where you know the
things that we're uncovering or that other local
governments are uncovering
feed upstream like you know if it's not just like somebody
doesn't like
something right it's not truly like waiting like this we
like that we're
trying to save money and sure just maintenance and so on so
why wouldn't
that go upstream to their their specs so the COG
specification the way really the
genesis of the North Central Texas Council government
specifications was
that you had a variety of sized communities that a good
portion of them
much like Denton 20 30 years ago couldn't afford to do
their own
specifications to get off the ground in the way they needed
to they also didn't
have a way of keeping up with them over time so cog much
like it does for
everything else we do it's an attempt to how do we help
equalize the playing
field a little bit how we make sure we're doing things
similarly and help
those organizations in those cities around the metropolitan
organization
area that aren't able to do this on their own they need
something so you
can feed it up but it tends to be fairly generic and it
doesn't it doesn't
reflect it's not as easy a process to amend and change
because it's got to go
across the board you know if I want to address this this is
have a mean
organizations are in the total Council of Governments
district they got to
approve that as well so what you see the lion's share of
communities in in this
area do is they say okay well that that works for most
things but we want
specifics Dallas and Arlington of Fort Worth all of those
communities in in and
around the area that are large enough size similar to where
we are or larger
they say you know that's not cutting it because I'm not as
broad-based as
everybody else this is what we want we want it specifically
for this reason
here's what it is and then I don't have multiple sources to
go look at when I'm
bidding this project does that answer your question any
other questions so
would you basically do a 1% or a point nine percent
whatever it would be to
work out for 120 million dollars worth of projects until
that was covered is
that the intention we would be looking more to weight it
because not all
projects will need all of those specifications and we would
be looking
to weight it based on the project so kind of an average
weighting you know a
Bonnie Bray a Mayhill bridge is gonna need certain
requirements and they're
gonna be more costly than say one or two streets so so our
projected timeline
if we get the go-ahead today or get the nod to proceed
further with going into
the contract negotiation phase we would be coming at
council in September with
a contract with a consultant and then we would start work
tail into September to
progress this as quickly as we could this would be our
intent would be that
this is a hourly not to exceed contract so while we're
estimating nine hundred
and fifty thousand dollars is in the ballpark we will work
very hard to make
sure that we keep everybody on track and focused and keep
that cost down as much
as possible councilmember Bray has a question how does this
intertwine or does
it intertwine with our our code rewrite it's very much
intertwined with it okay
the code points to a certain set of specifications already
right that would
have to change with this okay so is that part of the reason
for the timeline
because we are in the process of doing our code rewrite
would they would they
go hand-in-hand and kind of be implemented around the same
time not
really they do point to each other okay but really the
reason that this was kind
of last on our list and it just dovetails with the DDCs
they do point to
each other the timeline here was we needed to rewrite our
design manuals
first and we did that we needed to update all of our
standard construction
details which also goes into these specifications and then
we needed to
have our construction manual set up to where it was ready
for this now we dive
into the details here of how do we make all those things we
said we wanted in
the design manual become reality and that's what these are
because I looked
at one of the sides over here and they're labeled and ESA
development noise
ordinance I mean there's a lot of things that we were
talking about in the code
that yes would be implemented so I've just yeah so I'm kind
of yeah all of
those things are they get closely tight you have to run
that and that's part of
the reason why legal becomes a part of this as a critical
partner for us you
have to run that against the code is do they you can't have
the specification
cancel out the code or vice versa we gotta make sure they
talk to each other
and well so in that essence for me it seems to be pretty
important that they
the timelines line up absolutely okay thank you
you know frankly this seems so like integral to how you run
your shop like
I almost feel like why do we need to look at this but but
we'll just share
with you that it just does sound like an awful lot of money
you know the the
virtues of having things be organized and not having it be
confusing and I
can easily believe 1% problems but you know the nature of
the work is it gonna
be competitively bid or just like it's just not obvious to
me that it's you
know that it's a million dollars worth of work it's
probably obvious to you but
you know how can we feel more how can we feel better about
spending a million
dollars on this in terms of the type of effort required it
sounds kind of
clerical almost you know so you know help me out on this so
there's a lot
more to it than just hey let's type up a specification and
stick it in the
document there are a lot of individuals that have a say and
what those item and
items actually are that go into this the wire department
your field crews you
have a variety of folks in the inspector's crews and the
inspector
corps that needs to be involved in plus the engineers who
are actually designing
these things and requiring that they be there that 5,000
hour figure that we had
up earlier is really how much time we're talking about in
that collaboration of
getting everything together lined out typing it if I was
just having somebody
type it it would probably ten or fifteen thousand dollars
we could have that done
you know that wouldn't be that big an issue it's the
coordination of all of
these elements making sure they work with the DDC the legal
requirements OSHA
the Texas Municipal Manual and Uniform Transportation Code
I'm thinking something
totally different so making sure that when we actually
build something in the
public right away we're not endangering the public either
with just the traffic
controls the safety measures we have to have in place that
all goes into one
document making sure you have them and then understanding
what they are just
takes a lot of time and as we try to push the vast majority
of the projects
out the door that we need we don't have a lot of extra time
to go do that and
keep up with our projects we could try to do that but it
would take us years to
get there and we'll get projects that are ready to go out
the door here in the
next six months that could be a benefit of this mostly my
reaction is this is
coming out of existing funding yes you're not actually
asking for any
additional funding it's part of how you know you feel the
need to do your work
so it can be done efficiently you know I almost feel like I
'm not you know I'm
not gonna keep you from trying to do work as efficiently as
you know you can
I think one of the thing I would add that Todd's kind of
not really spoken
about too much but one of the biggest sources of
controversy we have with our
development process is the fact that we have all these
different standards and
typically you'll have developers come in wanting the lowest
cost standard it may
not necessarily be the one that's the best built which
matters to us from a
long-term maintenance perspective and it puts our staff in
a really difficult
position when we're negotiating developer agreements or
negotiating new
subdivision standards because which set of specs are we
going to enforce and
oftentimes a lot of you will get the complaints that show
me where this is in
the code and it happens to be maybe in one of these
different you know
additions of a book and there's just a lot of debate and
concern that goes over
how do we actually build these roads that we're ultimately
going to take over
and maintain because oftentimes the development community
is worried about
costs we're worried about longevity and maintenance and I
think that's probably
to me everything he's laid out is absolutely correct in
terms of how we're
building these roads but it also has it's so integral in
terms of how we run
our development department and how we interface the
development community
making sure there's a clean set of standards and putting
assets in the
ground that really have the taxpayers best interests in
mind long term and
we're not arguing over which addition of we're going to use
which is very
frequent
that's my barometer yes so I - I'm convinced that this is a
hundred percent
necessary and this will make a big difference for years to
come like
councilmember Meltzer you know I'm finding the the cost for
a consultant
the proposed cost hard to swallow but I'm I'm I'm
invincible you know and and again this this is clearly
necessary and has been
for quite some time I'm wondering if you considered
alternatives to a consultant
that maybe might get more kind of long-term bang for the
buck such as
hiring a a full-time staff person what well-paid person
specifically you know
to start out to do this work and then with some plan is to
you know after this
is done in the future other you know similar work they
could do so yeah have
we considered that absolutely we did I mean that was one of
the things that we
had looked at initially was do we have somebody internal do
that the reality is
just to get there could I get you know you it will probably
take roughly a
month per specification if I have one person working on it
and there's 130 plus
specifications we're looking at because of all the fine
detail coordination that
has to go into it just to get this done I'm already 130
months out and if I
pushed them hadn't worked overtime maybe I could get to
fully complete in a month
I'm still at 65 months I'm five years out we have projects
that need to hit the
ground with this little cause and confusion and potential
cost impacts I
know we threw up that 1% number I have been a part of
projects where
specifications were an issue and the right from the get-go
we had a question
of whether or not we'd be able to maintain the 25% cost
differential when
I bid a project if I change order the project more than 25%
of the initial
construction bid I need to I have to vacate that project
and rebid the
project that's the limit that we can do so I've been a part
of projects where we
have had that exact scenario happen and we were worried we
weren't even going to
be able to make the project go and we had to find some
other very creative ways
of getting there to start a project right from the start
without that cushion
you're gonna run into issues out there some way somehow it
's a very dangerous
place to be the other issue that you run into with so much
of this is if I do
this in-house that I'm gonna be lagging behind on the time
and let's just run
the just a brief hours if I look at each project I'm gonna
have to generate
these documents for each project you could plan on somebody
spending 20 to 40
hours just trying to get this done per project I'm gonna be
doing this over and
over again I can do it once the thought was we do this once
with a consultant
who can do the heavy lifting pay for it up front and then
spread it amongst a
whole host of projects that will be a beneficiary to this
and minimize the
cost to each project what this would be and then long term
we do have staff
internally in a process already established to where when
we do
amendments or upgrades every year which we will do that
staff would be taking it
from there and moving on so then it becomes manageable for
a person or two
people internally to handle that whereas the consultant can
bring eight nine ten
folks however they need to get this done quickly okay
thanks yeah and that was
could be my next question how many how many people do you
know do you
anticipate the consultant one have working on this project
well thank you
you've convinced me also kind of stressed me out you know
thinking about
all of the the risk involved in just the the status quo how
we've been operating
for so long so anyway thank you thanks for that explanation
and I'm convinced
thanks councilmember Duff yeah you know I look at all of
this and we didn't get to
this point yes sir in a short period of time this is
something that has been
evolving yes sir and I really I really think your approach
to fixing it is
solid and it's something that's probably long overdue to be
done
councilmember Meltzer just to offer you know a possibly
helpful question do you
think there might be some kind of an 80/20 rule that would
apply here that not
every part of the you know the spec encyclopedia causes
equal amount of
problems right there's probably some that come up over and
over and are you
know is there you know do you would you intend to might you
intend to prioritize
the work so they get more benefits sooner from certain
areas that just
brainially cause problems absolutely we've thought through
that we know we
have multiple projects that will be going out to bid very
soon we have four
that are coming up here in the next 30 days and we this
will not make it
they'll be working off the same system we've had in the
past and they're in
danger of running in some issues right from the get-go if
we're not careful
and we're doing everything we can to minimize that we have
another round
they'll be coming out around the first of the year to go to
bid and we would be
prioritizing which of these particular specifications need
to go into those
projects first so we at least have something good to go
with and then work
on the other ones absolutely I'll just add us I was
actually waiting for
councilmember Duff to weigh in because this is like
probably close to your
professional life in some some degree so I appreciate
hearing your perspective
well having been a project manager in my past life I can
definitely appreciate
this when contractors bid they bid based on the specs that
they're given
correct and they bid as low as possible and when that first
changer comes up
that's when they I don't want to say they they dog you but
you know you might
do a cost plus five percent to get the bid and then you
start going to a cost
plus ten on change orders and it gets more costly when if
it's not in that
original spec I've personally experienced that with a job
at TI there's all the
contractors knew that you had to include the John West
factor and if you did not
you were gonna lose money on the job because he had a very
good set of specs
Councilmember Hussman so I have a few questions so could
you first what is the
role that the development community plays in this because I
argued for the
development community to play a role in the the draft that
you're currently
working on the code and I was told we don't need that and
so I'm trying to
understand their role in this process so they play a big
role in this process
because part of what we do as we're reviewing their
projects when they come
in is then we hand them hey here's our standard product so
if you're building a
water line that we're gonna own and maintain when your
project is done we
need it built this way so their impact and their feed they
've got to understand
what they're being required and requested to do on our part
they also
need to be able to bring to the table if you have a thought
that is different to
what we're doing let's consider that because part of what I
don't want to do
is get so locked into something without looking at it from
all aspects is it
better to do something they may have seen somewhere else so
when you bring
them to the table to ask that question I get to either
defend what we're saying
is the requirement and and we have that education moment
with the developer
here's why we're doing this and there's a very specific
reason and we also get a
chance to listen to some alternatives that maybe we just
never considered
because I saw that one I liked it better we're gonna use it
some of these
specifications I don't know how they were chosen I just
know that's what we've
been working with for years okay if I may thank you and so
compare and
contrast that process of them going step by step giving
that input versus we
draft it they look at it and then give their input so my
thought is why are we
going to argue ever over it as we go versus uniformly this
is what we
perceive to be best practices so and then have them
uniformly go kicking and
screaming wherever they're gonna kick and screaming and
then clean to have
those discussions that was not the intent so if I alluded
to that my
apologies they're a part of this process but it's not one
of those things where
we have them come talk to us with the water maintenance
guys in the room and
say hey help me put this together it's more of a here's
what we're doing and
here's why it just becomes easier when we're dealing with
all these
specifications to have multiple meetings like that instead
of one big one and try
to digest this we could be there for weeks going through
everyone of those
items if you've ever sat in a room full of contractors and
argued over the
specification of a project you got to limit the time
because they all have an
opinion on exactly how it should be done to some degree
there's the creativity
gets lost if I don't allow some of that as we go through
this process but it
also becomes an education to normally get the developer
when he goes into a
project has an expectation of what he's gonna deliver if
this is for everybody
to see in a very defined format they know what to count on
a lot of the
questions we deal with on the development side right now
especially is
that you can't figure out what it is they're supposed to be
using so there's
a lot of question - is it this kind of valve or that kind
of valve I'm not
really sure I use this in Lewisville I use this in Flyer M
ound and I use this
one in Fort Worth I want to use it here because I'm used to
it well we want
something different and we're gonna own it if they didn't
factor that into their
initial conversation because they didn't hear about until
three four stages late
in the game then they are upset because that's not
something they counted on
from a cost perspective okay thank you and then when when
do we project to be
able to to view drawings in 3d how far out is that is that
baked in the here
anywhere in the new software this really has nothing to do
with that
particular issue we already do everything in 3d so every
every set of
plans that we do I may not have a hologram set up or easily
for me to grab
a pipe and move it up and down but everything's done in
three dimensions so
we know where it's set horizontally vertically and spat
ially I know exactly
where it is that's part of every design we do and the
software that the
consultants used to design that will allow you to actually
rotate that and
see it in three dimensions you all will actually see some
of that as we go
forward through the design process some of the projects we
're bringing forward
you'll see some of those things as we discuss those
projects most specifically
as we start going down the path of discussing roundabouts
at some point in
the future whenever that may come we'll be bringing some 3d
models so that you
can see them and what they look like and how traffic
revolves around that
phonometric analysis of street lighting and pedestrian
lighting that's an it's
a much easier way for us to try to ascertain what kind of
lighting am I
actually getting is it going where I want it to go what
impediments do I have
in the way and how do I adjust for that we have to do that
in three dimensions
today okay and then so a few more here but sorry so if
there's this is not a
question but a comment if there's any way to bake in a
rewrite understanding
that's coming I don't see why we don't bake that into the
price out the gate at
least one revisit you know it's like if we're hiring hey
bid on this to draft
this and you're saying bring on someone or someone kind of
internally manages
the rewrites I don't see why we don't bake that into this
bidding to say
you're gonna help this draft it and then we're gonna bring
on a person or assign
a person to manage the rewrite and you're gonna work side
by side with that
individual on that process kind of a passion of the torch a
year later so now
we've kicked the tires the person the company that
originated the documents is
working with the person that's going to carry it forward
and kind of has that
knowledge base transfer a year later versus compact to the
process and and
it's all kind of top of mind so in that mindset that's
exactly what we're doing
the team that is a team of five individuals that will
actually be the
owners of this document be responsible for updating it they
're the same team
that is working on the design criteria manual rewrites this
year they're
working on that actively they collect it throughout the
year all the updates and
then by the time we hit August they're stopping the
collection of updates and
they're making changes to the construction details to the
design
criteria manual that we feel are important and necessary
and then we
begin that public process much like we did last year where
it goes out for
public comment period then comes back to PNZ then it comes
to council and by the
time we get to December you have through this group you
have a complete set of
revised documents ready to be started as effective for
January 1 of each year so
we do have a team in place that that's their their role
well it's one of their
many roles they're an in-house design and engineering
services group they
provide engineering service for water for wastewater they
're a group that's
dedicated to those types of issues okay and so I have a
comment in the compound
question and I'm done so so the the compound question is I
want to
understand if you can take me through what is the current
master document that
they kind of launches so a project comes in there's got to
be some assembly of
these documents that it kind of comes from and the compound
part of that is
how does that process begin right so if someone comes with
a project would take
me through this is in the door here's how we're gonna do
that and then the
comment is I find it interesting during this conversation
it's it's been alluded
to which I hold that position static that we don't need to
compare communities
and or projects that sort of I mean you didn't stand alone
we don't need to
compare didn't the Louisville because it never lines up and
so it's interesting
to hear in this presentation it's kind of that different
communities have
different codes that aren't beneficial to our area that we
kind of have to find
the best of which fit which fits didn't so it to me the
comment is just simply I
wish we would stop with the this company does this in this
area so didn't should
adopt that theory because it does not fit and so in this
line it's hey
Louisville maybe do it in a certain way but for Denton this
is the way that's
best for us so we're gonna go that way and so that should
be uniformly applied
but I don't know that it will be but that's that's my wish
one day so if you
can walk me through the beginning of what is the master
document and then
kind of how you briefly just kind of how you cobble that
together more in regard
to when we go to construction because it's yes okay so
after we have put
together plans and we've designed the project with keeping
in mind what
documents are what specifications we have to use because
that does tell us
exactly what we need to design in some cases there are
certain things that
require certain things and you put that in the design
documents when I assemble
all these documents together it is then the form of a
contract so that they
understand what would be the agreement if you're the bidder
who wins so you see
what would that be what what are we requiring how many days
do we expect it
to be what we anticipate the cost to be that's blank
because they got to fill
that out but here's all the items that go into that and
they tie every one of
those items that's in this list so it if I put together a
set of plans I got to
then condense it into what we call a unit price schedule
how much asphalt how
much grass how much dirt how much everything you can think
of it's got to
be in there and we have to specify that directly so that
unit price schedules
tied with a number next to each item to the specification
so if you can imagine
how confusing it is for a contractor to go okay I have this
item I got to figure
out which specification I got to go to because every one of
these spec books
has a different way of numbering them what we're talking
about doing is not
only consolidating all of what we prefer into one book but
also putting into a
uniform numbering code that the contractor can go this item
goes to here
so I know exactly how to bid that item because I know what
's expected all of
that goes into one master document with the bid dates how
long is it gonna
advertise for when are we gonna have a pre-bid opening
meeting then when
are the bids gonna be opened all of these documents get
assembled together
along with warranties and bonds and commitments by the
contractor that if
they get this job they're gonna do it this way and they're
on the hook for
this much there's typically a two-year warranty period for
all items that they
construct all those things are spelled out in the overall
document the
specifications are tied to the overall document I put all
these things together
with the plans then I bid them through the newspaper
through some online
buy boards that they typically monitor what we're doing we
put them on our
website and then it advertises for at least 21 days by the
state's
requirements we typically do 28 to 36 depending on what we
need might give a
little longer if there's some holiday periods things like
that we're also very
careful about when we let those out to be advertised and
when the bid opening
date is because contractors look across the entire Metro
plex and anywhere else
or they do work to see who's opening bids on what days and
that will impact
who we get text dot always opens I think is on the first
Tuesday of each month so
you're not gonna get contractors opening wanting to come to
a bid opening with us
until text out opens and they see what they got and on
purpose we schedule
afterwards so that we can very strategically line this up
in a way that
makes sense it also means we do have to look at the other
communities to see
what they've got coming out the door is if we have too much
coming out the door
at one time in conjunction with Louisville or Flower Mound
or any other
local communities we may not get what we want in the way of
number of bidders
which makes it very hard for us to get a competitive price
thank you very much
helpful Councilmember Meltzer just you may already be
planning to do this I'll
just chip in you know a thought that as you begin the work
it may be helpful to
have someone just take the download of say the last 10
years of change orders
I'm just to avoid completely boiling the ocean on this
right take the last you
know here we've actually had issues last 10 years of change
orders code by what
portion of the specs are involved and group and then just
at least use that as
a checklist at the end to say would we have avoided these
there will yeah would
we have avoided these if we'd had this in place then you
know I'm saying like
just just as a test no I do we like the final product we
could do that and
unfortunately that's exactly what led to this scenario is I
didn't like that one
and that was a bad change order for us so I'm gonna pull
this one for this one
and then that works great now and then it works for four or
five years and then
it doesn't work again because somebody wouldn't have you
with something we pull
a new one that's why exactly what we have is what we got
that's me what type
of direction you need just sounds like we've got pretty
good consensus on
moving forward with this is that any disagreement with that
if Council's on
board with where we're headed and we will come back in
September with a
contract to move forward with this path okay yeah cuz cuz I
completely getting
all the specs into one place also affects the long-term
ownership of that
you know you need repair parts to repair things and if you
've got to have 17
different brands on a truck or you've got send that truck
back to the shop
every time to get the right repair part it gets expensive
so yes sir all right
anything any other comments on this item we will move on to
work session 3b
receive a report hold a discussion and give staff direction
regarding the
fiscal year 2018-19 City managers proposed budget
mayor pretend City Council Tony pointed director finance
first of all just let
me say that you know we've come to you a number of
occasions this is again our
continuation of just an update as we continue to work
through the proposed
budget there's been a number of questions that that the
council had back
when we did the budget kickoff on August 7th we provided a
memo with as many
responses as we were able to to compile at this point and
so you you have that
as part of your backup there's only a number of staff
members here that are
present they'll be happy to go through any questions you
have on any of those
specific items we'll continue to work through the remaining
questions
anticipate having the majority of those if not all of those
completed for August
21st certainly if there's questions today then that may
that may spill over
onto the 28th but we anticipate having all those questions
completed by the 21st
so I do have a very short presentation or a couple of items
that the council
had requested and some updates I'm going to go through that
certainly if you have
any questions on any of that please stop me as we go
through so just really
quickly I'm going to go through some budgetary changes that
we've made kind
of go over the updated forecast for the general fund there
was two items that
that I've identified here regarding property values and
collections and also
some history on market values go through an update on the
downtown turrs based on
recent feedback and direction from the council as well as
the tree mitigation
fund that went through the committee on the environment and
then complete that
with just an update on next steps of the budget process so
some of the changes
that we've made to the general fund include a one-time cost
of 285,000 if
you recall this was part of our capital projects it was for
I believe two
specific capital improvements the council gave us direction
to go ahead
and fund those and so we've included that in the 1718
estimate and will like
may result in a in a drawdown of fund balance at the end of
1718 depending on
where we end the year also the council recently added
approved the addition of
an assistant chief position in the police department we've
also added that
that's an ongoing cost and has been added through the five
years of the RFP
I mean excuse me of the forecast finally just want to give
you an update that we
did communicate to the council that the following projects
the master thorough
for a plant thoroughfare plan mobility master plan and the
fire air truck that
those would be priority items contingent upon the
performance of our year end and
just to be clear we continue beyond the September 30th day
to accrue expenses of
revenues out to 60 days out and so we have some time even
beyond the fiscal
year to make additional expenses if needed contingent upon
you know where we
see that that fiscal year is going to be ending we could do
that and or we can
always amend the prior year's budget so again we'll be
looking at that as we get
closer and work with our external auditors they are here
currently looking
at our books and so as we continue to go and wrap up this
fiscal year we'll be
able to better assess where we are and what we may be able
to do with these top
three kind of priority unfunded projects at this point so
this is really quickly
for you the update to the financial forecast and so for
fiscal year 17 18 we
have included the the parts capital project funding as a
one-time project for
17 18 and in the police chief is certainly on the outgoing
had minimal
impact on our projected fund balance over that period of
time we do anticipate
to be at about 16.9 percent fund balance at the end of
fiscal year 23 again this
is a living breathing forecast and budget that will
continue to monitor and
make changes as we continue to progress through each of
these fiscal years this
was a slide that was requested by by the council regarding
our property tax
values I do want to mention that certainly from the time
that we get our
certified values which is on July 25th of every year to
where that those values
are at the end of each fiscal year there's certainly some
changes and this
certainly demonstrates that from year to year you know for
the most part as I
mentioned to you when we talked about the effective tax
rate calculation even
for this year we're already at the 33rd supplement and so
those continue we
continue to receive those throughout the year and even
beyond the fiscal year as
those items that are under ARB review are settled either
through court
proceedings or through the ARB process we get supplements
to that certified
value and so those changes are there and so for example for
fiscal year I'll just
look at fiscal year 17 or excuse me 16 which is the last
completed fiscal year
our certified values were 9.7 billion we ended that fiscal
year at 9.37 billion
the projected revenue at the time was 62.6 million dollars
this total revenue
to the city where we ended the year was at 64 million
dollars so that was you
know a little bit over a 1.4 million dollar increase in
revenue but what I've
added here is I've included what the actual collections are
again just
because it's a it's a projected revenue based on the levy
what we actually
record to the general fund is actual collections and so
there is a 60-day
period beyond the fiscal year where we can actually accrue
and and book those
those revenues so of that 64 million dollars based on that
the the levy at
that time we projected that we would that we collect or we
collected sixty three point seven million dollars again
that's a direct result as you can see here what I've
included is the amounts that have been under ARB review at
the certified value they did begin to spike in 2016
basically doubled and so we've seen that certainly this for
fiscal year 18 that has even grown even more to 491 million
dollars
conversations with the central praise district is really
this is just a side
effect if you will of increased protest primarily related
to equity protest
market value protest on the commercial side so while we do
anticipate that
these will be settled again they may not necessarily be
settled within this
fiscal year and certainly collections may not occur until
some future year
depending on when those are settled and paid so I just
wanted to you know we
provided this for you I don't know if you have any specific
questions on this that
you may that you may have the other item that the council
requested was just a
five-year history of where our market values have been
based on the category
so single-family all the way through exempt properties for
single families
from 2014 to 2018 seen as 57 percent growth in those market
values followed
by multifamily and also commercial industrial and so these
are the trends
of where our market values have been 43 percent overall
increase in market
values based on the category of properties that are that
are out there
again these are market values certainly for single-family
residents some of
those are certainly exempt others exemptions homestead
exemptions over 65
exemptions those aren't reflected here these are before any
exemptions are
applied so going on to the downtown terz as I as we
discussed during the August
2nd budget process we had at that time included 76 thousand
dollars for that
incentive payment related to the rail to the rail yard and
also eighty thousand
dollar reimbursement to the general fund since that time
the council did provide
staff direction to continue to fund the downtown reinvest
ment grant program out
of the out of this particular fund and so we have made that
change and included
that in the expenses so the total 18 19 expenditures from
this fund would be
two hundred and fifty six thousand dollars we have a
projected fund balance
of about three hundred seventy seven thousand that we're
projecting at the
end of 930 19 councilman breaks so council approved several
sidewalk
projects pedestrian and lighting projects with this fund is
that the
expenditures there for 256 or has that been taken out where
where does that fit
in to this fund those expenditures act actually happened in
17 18 okay it was I
think about 1.5 million it was basically the the entire
balance of that fund that
would that would that had accumulated and so we transfer
that over to a
capital project that happened in 17 18 okay and so this is
what it built back up
to and this is the what's remaining yes ma'am that's
basically we're projecting
five hundred sixteen thousand dollars to come into that
fund and that's what's
really funding these expenditures expenditures I have a
follow-up on the
downtown reimbursement grant wasn't there our if I remember
correctly there was
still some money available yes can can somebody speak to
that and how that's
gonna work now that this has been funded have those
applications been approved
and is that amount going to be fully utilized so we have we
have a downtown
reinvestment fund that has about a hundred thirty one
thousand dollars what
we have in the proposed budgets we're projecting that about
thirty one
thousand will come out of 17 18 and then we budgeted the
full hundred thousand
remaining for for 18 19 and so I think what we would
anticipate is that any any
grants that are being applied for would come out of those
funds first to
extinguish that and then we would then go into the downtown
reinvestment or
downtown turrs okay so those funds that have already been
put into that fund for
that specific purpose will continue to be used for that
until they are until
they're all gone yes ma'am okay good thank you very much
okay so the other
fund that I wanted to provide an update is the tree
mitigation fund this fund
back in August 2nd had two items that were included was the
750,000 for tree
plantings on and public parks and also $75,000 for a
comprehensive urban
forestry plan for $75,000 back in June and in subsequent to
that August 6 the
committee on the environment was provided a plan that
included a tree
rebate program tree initiative program and so those items
based on that plan
we've also provided to you that a memo a memo that includes
a three-year plan to
address these programs has been included in your backup but
that tree tree rebate
program also includes have an intern position that will be
that will be
adding to the budget twenty three thousand one hundred
dollars for that
tree rebate program the tree initiative program is sixteen
thousand five hundred
citizen forester training is thousand dollars in this
promotional contingency
cost of twelve thousand five hundred those items are being
proposed to be
added to that proposed budget that would bring the 18 19
expenditures to eight
hundred seventy thousand one hundred it's about a five
hundred sixty eight
thousand dollar drawdown in the fund balanced for that fund
and then we
anticipate having at the end of nine thirty nineteen a fund
balance of about
one point two almost one point three million dollars again
these items that
are hot that are in both for you or the items that have
been added and certainly
if you have any questions or staff here that can
specifically address these
items but they these items were discussed with the
committee on the
environment any questions so finally just next steps again
we'll continue to
come in front of you as we continue to work through this
budget we have a few
more meetings on the schedule we do anticipate for August
21st to bring an
update to a couple of other funds one of those being the DM
E fund and certainly
we'll try to have as many of those outstanding questions
completed for you
we'll have a public hearing our first public hearing
tonight on the tax rate
we'll have a second public hearing and also a public
hearing on the proposed
budget on September 11th and then finally scheduled for
adoption of the
budget the tax roll and the tax rate is scheduled for
September 18th that
concludes my presentation if you have any questions be
happy to go through
those council members any any questions thank you very much
Tony that will move
on to agenda item 3c receive a report from staff hold a
discussion and give
staff direction regarding the design and construction of
the new North Lakes dog
park
everybody's leaving and this is the best part
good afternoon my name is Laura Barons and I am the
assistant director for
parks and recreation and today I want to provide you with
an update for the North
Lakes dog park and also share the preliminary concept
design with you I
also want to take this opportunity to introduce Glenn McLe
an who is with our
parks department and is the designer of this project and
has also been designing
several of our other park projects that are ongoing right
now so the goal of
this project is to provide a second dog park in the north
part of our city that
gives both people and our pets our canine pets a place to
socialize and to
exercise with this park we're also looking to provide
programs for pets and
their owners and one of the most exciting features about
this is the
support that we're looking at providing for the McNatt
animal care and adoption
center that's right next door and that includes everything
from again programs
to even some daily activities where folks that are looking
at adopting an
animal adopting a pack can take the dog to the dog park and
spend some time with
it when they're considering adoptions we're also looking at
the integration of
art in this project and also in general just an enhancement
to our overall city
park system just to give you a little bit of orientation on
the site this is
located off of highway 77 in our North Lakes Park it is
right next door to
again the animal care facility and is really kind of
located in between our
Vela athletic complex that's currently under construction
and the tennis center
which you've had an opportunity to hear about and is in
also the design and
concept phase there are some residential properties around
the dog park everywhere
except for the West which is the natural preserve area
located right in the middle
of North Lakes Park just another site perspective again it
's gonna be this
open area that we see here our main points of access for
travelers you can
be highway 77 and University Drive and then we also have
several other points
of access that will go over for pedestrians when we were
considering the
design for this project we really wanted to take a
different approach most dog
parks have kind of a play on words like our very own Wigley
Field but in this
case Glenn came up with the idea to focus on the
relationship that we have
with dogs and our pets and so as you can see that's been
going on for a lot of
years but one of the ways that this has been documented
over time is literally
in the stars and so there are several constellations that
are named after dogs
and that became the focus in the platform for our design
just a quick
overview of the park itself it would incorporate four dog
run areas two large
dogs and two small dog runs the parking lot was designed in
2014 I believe and
our proposal would be to phase the parking lot in with
starting with about
60 spots here and the ability to double that in the future
in a phase two the
overall objective of the park is to be educational and fun
and we'll look at how
each of these design elements will carry that out first it
's very easily accessed
from several different points for our pedestrians we've got
access off of the
sidewalk here and also through our trail system that are
currently are already
existing in the park and as well as from the parking lot so
we have multiple
entrance points for pedestrian access we've also
incorporated some sun and
shaded exposure with shade pavilions these trees are
already planted so we're
incorporating the planting of many more trees to give us
that shade for the
visitors and the animals and then we've got one main point
of entrance for the
actual dog runs themselves in that main point of entrance
for the dog runs is
one of our first major design elements which incorporates
the planets part of
that celestial design where the solar system can be built
into the hard
surface here that can be accomplished through several
different types of
materials that we have yet to decide and that's really some
feedback that we're
looking for from not only our park users from the community
but also some focus
groups and some folks that we want to talk to and
incorporate their their
thoughts for the use of this park
helps my breaks so is this when you mention art public art
would this be
where the public art funds would come in to pay for this
design we actually have
and I've got that on another slide we've got a location
where we're looking at
incorporating sculpture and that's where the public art
would come into this
would just be part of the basic design and layout for hards
cape okay
as I mentioned before we've got four dog runs and this is
where the
constellation concept is integrated each one has a playful
design within each
dog run that resembles four different constellations the
first large dog run
is canis major right next to it is a small dog run of canis
minor and so the
constellations are laid out through the different
structures within each play
run utilizing the trees the pavilions and agility or play
structures for the
animals we have lupus which is also known as the wolf
constellation and then
the hunting dog which is canis finitisi I hope I'm not I'm
saying that
correctly on one of the main entry ways coming from the
parking lot this is the
area where we've actually left space and have the thought
and design for sculpture
pieces that we would work again through the public art
committee in selecting
that art this is a different little concept design that you
can see some of
those elements a little bit more closely again the parking
lot this this
entrance would be coming off of the Linda McNatt parking
lot 60 spaces to
begin with under phase 2 we can double that up to about 130
spaces the four
dog runs we also have some spray structures their concepts
at this time
but will definitely provide watering stations and cooling
stations for the
dogs and of course watering fountains as well for our
citizens and and the dogs
themselves we also have some digging stations
councilmember breaks well yeah you could I've just wanted
to address the the cost
in in the funding so the current funding is 411 538 and
that is that is the
amount that we have that's currently the amount that we
have overall we're
looking at a budget of about six hundred thousand dollars
we have a little over
400 already allocated for this project yes so it would be I
I would prefer that
we stay within the amount of funding that we have I think
the design is
awesome and creative but I think that it's kind of extravag
ant a little
unnecessary for a dog park I mean when we're talking about
six hundred thousand
dollars water fountains a pond you know digging fences I
think you know that's
that's the the basics of what we need I think you know
having some a few
sculptures may be great with a partnership there I am very
supportive of
this dog park I have been since I've been on council
because that's I've heard
about it you know for you four and a half years so I just
kind of wanted to
go ahead and address that and let you know where where I am
as far as budget
and funding the existing funding of four hundred thousand
dollars is primarily
from our park dedication and park development so those are
restricted funds
that have to be spent within a half mile to a mile radius
of the development that
contributed those funds the other identified funding
sources that we're
looking at are also restricted funds specific to park
projects and they
include revenues from our gas well leases as well as reall
ocating some bond
funds that the original purpose have already been completed
through the
through a private donation that came in so it freed up
those bond funds to allow
us to reallocate it towards other projects within the park
system so that's
the primary those are the primary funding sources that we
're looking at to
make up that difference anything else again these things
can be phased in
anything else above and beyond that we can work with the
Parks Foundation to
help raise that additional funding this project is included
in their annual
project plan moving forward
that's my meltzer I'm inclined to line up along the lines
of councilmember
preaches comments I'd be curious to see what that design
would look like if you
were you know strictly trying to stay within the fund the
current funding
also curious to hear you know what the demand is like the
response is like from
the community input that's forthcoming so we'll hear that I
've read studies that
no more than 65 percent of dogs actually know the planets
but that's just one
study councilmember armator yeah I want to piggyback on
council members Briggs
and Melzer said I this is a a fabulous design however I can
't couldn't justify
spending and anything over that designated amount
especially when we
have people sleeping in the street and people homeless
people who are you know
being arrested for criminal trespassing for being in our
public park after after
hours so and that that's just to say you know within the
big picture if I were
looking just at the issue of dog parks I would say yes this
is the dream dog park
I love dogs I'm a dog person but you know because my my job
is to to serve
people and and I've been asking like with the past few
parks presentations on
for the tennis center and also the industrial pocket park
both of which I
approve of my questions have kind of all been along the
lines of you know how are
these public parks serving low-income people who who
benefit theoretically
anyway by our public parks so this this for me is one where
I feel like I'll
kind of a line has been crossed and I feel like I have to
come out and say you
know not well people are sleeping on the on the street can
I support that so but
then again you know that beautiful design great job and I
don't want you to feel
guilty for that that has nothing to do with with you but
and I will say a little
more about that in concluding remarks thank you this park
is a little bit
bigger than our existing park so the majority of the cost
is going to be in
the construction in terms of grading sodding fencing with
the actual theme
itself we're just incorporating those elements into the
design so we would
already be providing pavilions for shade structure we would
already be providing
the trees as well for added shade structure we would
already be providing
some of those play structures or what we call agility
structures for the dogs
it's just the way that it's actually then designed into
incorporated into
this theme again this can be phased in in terms of the one
of the one of the
cost efficiencies that were already proposing is the
parking lot itself but
certainly some of the other the number of pins the number
of runs can also be
phased in as well as some of the other features council
member breaks on the
parking how many spots does Wrigley field have I don't know
Glenn if you
know right offhand
so approximately maybe 70 because that that that parking
lot originally was
part of the park itself and then it became used for access
to the dog park
and then there have been some improvements to that parking
lot so but
I'm glad to see the faced in parking because with all the
other areas and
especially North Lakes and the trails I feel like those are
going to be
utilized absolutely a lot more so I I'm glad to see the
parking scaled back I
mean if 60 is scaled back I think that's gonna be plenty
but but again the
current funding I would like to know is there because I don
't want to put it off
any longer I know we have public meetings I'm excited to
hear what the
the public has to say but but again if we're if we're
trying to go really
beyond to fulfill the design and spend I'd rather scale it
back down and then
implement so that we can actually get the dog park because
that's the the main
priority is to to get it right no absolutely and our
current dog park is
just a little under three acres and it gets used quite a
bit so there has been
a demand for a while to have an additional dog park this
one is just at
five acres which gives us a little bit more room and space
for those for the
dogs the Wigley Field right now has three pens this one has
four so there
are some there are some ways that we can definitely look at
phasing in but being
able to having some lesson learned you know from Wigley
Field we're trying to
incorporate that as well here we do have we've had some
several internal
meetings with not only within our parks department but also
with some feedback
from mr. O'Neill who's the manager at the animal care
facility and then we've
had a preliminary presentation to park board just last week
at our monthly
meeting of course we're here with you today we have a
public meeting scheduled
for August the 16th at 6 p.m. at North Lakes Recreation
Center we also have
built in some time for any additional focus group meetings
that we want to
hold and anticipate coming back to you and a park board in
the September
October time frame any other questions I am kind of curious
you know if as just
as an alternative what what it would cost out to do
something more along the
sort of the basics lines that councilmember Briggs outlined
where it's
essentially fence water what makes a dog park
poop bags yes poop bags we'll have those there yeah maybe
you know a small amount
of us of astrological information but you know not that
much you know what
would that what would that cost and how much of the public
demand with that
meet night and I'm curious if the public were to see you
know that as an
alternative and with that price tag you know where would
they land would they
land somewhere in between you know I I'd be very interested
in taking guidance
from the public well and I'd say to you because the what's
currently available
the 411 is the current if there's another development
within that half
mile to mile radius that will increase as well which would
give us more funding
you mentioned the Parks Foundation is a is a possible
addition I think if they
coordinate as well with Denton Animal Support Foundation I
'm I'm not opposed
and actually think it would be a good idea to maybe do
naming rights for
certain size donation on the pavilions and that might be a
way to be able to pay
for those and offset some of that cost but I think it's a
great idea I'm
looking at I'm interested in the in the public input on
this
thank you you know what's missing from this conversation
that there's a couple
of things one I think it's it's interesting that no one
touches on the
difference in the two right so we would we would fold in
all the greatness here
and not consider those at the original park so I found that
missing from the
conversation so I would advocate for looking at the
differences I would
advocate for a split of the place structures shade
structures and an art
those are the kind of the key ingredients that I find
missing from
that would be baked in here that would not be baked in that
are not currently
there and so that's where I would see a division of the
money but also I think
it missing from the conversation is giving credit where
credit is due so I
asked for and received the kind of list of how we got here
and so around the
horn everyone latches on the 400k but that's based on magic
beans and no one
no one researches that no one asks no one brings it up that
there's no
research there's no drawing there's no nothing to support
that number
absolutely nothing it was just the council is in a budget
and they threw a
number to it so I want to give credit will regret is due to
staff in a city
manager and to those on City Council I would ask you what
are you justifying
that number on you're saying you want to hear from the
public on a number that
you can't support there's no backup information that
supports what goes into
that and that's then even that's 2014 numbers so you didn't
even factor in
inflation so for me I think it's important to note one the
quality
information we get now versus what we had in the past and
this is my argument
when we start drudging up old stuff about past city
managers versus current
city manager and not adjusting our thinking to from then to
now but the
money's already there I've checked we can't do anything
else with it so so I
would suggest whatever 400 K looks like at the new one but
no matter what if
there's 200 K available I want to see that applied to the
other Wrigley part
to make sure that we can normalize the experience across
our town versus make
it punitive and overload one you know to kind of go to the
latest and greatest so
that's my three cents thank you that's great and with Wig
ley Field we just did
some major upgrades to that park it was recently regraded
resotted and we added
a digging station at that park specifically in an area that
does not
get we don't we can't get the grass to grow because it's so
shaded and dogs
normally dig there anyways and they're digging up the grass
in other areas so
we added a digging station added sand added a retaining
wall to keep all that
together and provide a place for dogs to have that activity
so we are looking at
that balance as well but definitely some other things that
we could go back and
look at and consider adding to Wigley Field yeah if I make
no I latched on all
the zeros that I had zero place structures there's zero
shade
structures in there's the educational piece and
opportunities I set that aside
there's zero art and so that's why I latched on to that
that's my brother yeah just responding to adding to a
councilmember Hudson's
comment I I too would hit was curious to know more about
how that figure that
four hundred eleven thousand figure was developed back in
the day and what what
you said councilmember Hudson but that was kind of my sense
of things but I
hit I didn't know for sure that that was the case I'd be
curious to have that
confirmed and then also I'm wondering you know and part of
this is just me
being new on you on council but I think it's also something
that that the public
wonders about too sometimes when in a case like this so
that and I'm looking at
city manager because I assume it would be a question for
you and maybe for
finance but in a project like this where we have a certain
amount of money that's
been marked for a specific purpose what where is the the
wiggle room for kind of
how we can you know how that can be applied how that can be
spread out
elsewhere because I I too am thinking kind of along those
lines as gosh you
know four hundred eleven thousand that's a lot for a dog
park we have to spend it
on on a dog park or do we just have to spend it on on on
parks or something in
something in this location you know I'd like to know
exactly what we've committed
to in in paper so we can't for this specific project so we
can see how that
that money might be better better used in a way that still
meets those that's
that's still legit according to what with what that has
been designated for
yeah the most of the funding for this park is you'll get
familiar with the 9
59 16 funds which are really land development and park
development fees
which we have relied on to build this this particular
facility we have been
slowly and ever since Laura's been in that department we've
been slowly
working our way through the city because those funds are
collected in zones
throughout the city can only be spent in those zones so
there's a restriction we
couldn't take money that would for instance plan for this
particular park
and put it out at South Lakes because that's in a different
zone so that's
where your funding sources come from but you know in trying
to make the the
budgets hold it we will identify savings from other
projects that sort of thing
this is one of those cases where if we ended up increasing
the budget
councilmember Ryan's onto one revenue stream if you had
some more development
that contributed to the funds in this area you could be use
it for that or
like in the council went through with numerous debates on
Bella there's other
you know general fund dollars can be put there so I think
what we're hearing from
you is you know there's a there's a desire from majority of
you to stay
within the budget we'll take a look at what that looks like
if there's some
inequities with the two dog parks we can certainly keep
that in mind as well and
look for identity funds that have been donated for that
specific part of Denton
to see if there's a way to equalize that but we can take
all this feedback that
we're receiving today and you know and certainly sulfur
acts I think the I think
the issue is you know and what we've heard today is if we
need to eventually
ensure that the demands appropriate and add to this park in
a second phase a
majority of you appear to be in that in that that mindset
that's fine but the
restrictions on these park development fees are very
restrictive actually we've
got a professor right now at the Texas A&M who's well
renowned in this area
helping us rethink the way that the funds are collected
because you know
Denton doesn't in no community really grows as orderly as a
park development
impact fee rationale set up so we're actually going to be
bringing something
back to you probably within the year to have an additional
debate on how we
collect these and how we sequester the funds great that's
that's great to hear
and so follow-up question on that just to confirm so it
sounds like so from what
you're saying those funds have to be spent at the North
Lakes Park they have
to be spent in this particular area within this zone this
particular area
the zone of Denton correct it's a mile to a mile radius of
the development that
contributed okay very restrictive yes and so do they have
to be spent on a dog
park no the answer the answer is no however this has been a
project that has
been on the books something the council has wanted to see
you completed and I
think staffs done a really good job in terms of providing
realistic cost
estimates and trying to give you some idea what it would
take to make that
initial desire come to fruition but what we're hearing is
work within your budget
and and and bring forward a four hundred eleven thousand
dollar project which we
can do but it does not they're not dedicated to a specific
project or
dedicated to a specific zone okay so that's that's very
good to know thank
you and I think probably a number of members of the public
don't quite
understood that either yep so I would like to see also you
know some to see
kind of how how bare bones I keep trying not to use dog p
ines about dog mark and
bear bars and wiggle room how how bare bones you could get
in the in the the
funding while still making dogs happy because I mean it is
after all it's a
beautiful park and so kind of what would be the barest
minimum and and then I
have some other ideas about that those funds that I'll save
for concluding
remarks because they don't pertain to this particular
project but thank you so
much for explaining that and thanks
I'd just like to understand a little more of your comments
so I can't remember
how to but I mean obviously you're not privy to what
exchanges and
conversations I had pre vetting before but you definitely
got into some areas
that I didn't but were you satisfied on the point that the
four hundred eleven
is a real number there that this really cost six hundred or
you know I just
didn't know where you were going with that and I'm curious
to know also you
know are you you seem to question the idea of hearing the
public respond to a
price tag on a project yeah and I guess I just want to
understand where you landed
on that like are you do you not want the public to see
alternatives at different
places right so the short answer to your last question is
that's silly we all are
elected and we all are responsible to the public and I've
advocated very much
so for everything I do about the importance of that now to
hold that
holistically to say that that feedback man magically
controls every decision I
make absolutely not because you can look at a situation
like Don sits in where
half his neighbor every neighborhood he represents a split
down the middle and
they're upset about different different things I have
downtown I have I have
pecan Creek I have southeast didn't very different needs so
depending I can't I
can't say well I've heard from more southeast didn't people
today so I'm
gonna rebuild a street down there or advocate for that that
's not how it
works in my mind and so the short answer your question is
yes I think the
valuable but I think it has to be factored into reality the
latter part
the first question you ask I think I was clear when I said
I I was surprised that
it was not said so I don't dig into what emails or
communications you were had
you had outside of this arena but in this arena I base my
comments on what
you said or what was not said and then when you ask about
the four hundred
thousand dollars it's real cash money and it can't go
anywhere outside that
zone that's what that's the confines I work with them not
to say that it's
justified it's not due to due diligence and it's in a it's
a mentioned in a
budget in 2014 with nothing subscribe to it the total
number was 1 million
seven hundred thousand two hundred nineteen dollars
prescribed to six parks
in the dog park that's not that's not steeped in reality at
all we spent a
million bucks on a parking lot we spent eight hundred nine
six hundred thousand
on a bathroom you know so these numbers aren't it's not a
real number what's
real is it is what it is and it has to be spent where it
has to be spent and
people want this dog park done so let's move forward with
reality and let's give
credit what credits do for the city manager's office
bringing us bad news
early when and you know and that's because then people will
get in the buy
in if we continue to hammer home that message that there's
a new sheriff in
town and his name is Reggie Hammons and and we're gonna get
stuff done
differently then then that'll be fantastic and and and I
think that will
begin to buy back the trust in the public when you go back
and talk to him
versus base in the dog park in everywhere I'm running this
table I
wait and listen everyone was latched on that at four
hundred thousand dollars
that's tied to nothing when you can't find it so that's my
point so so so
right so you're not satisfied that the foreign alone means
anything in
particular other than it got allocated right that's I mean
I thank you for
elaborating and it does leave me kind of curious to know
what the you know what
the justification for the 411 was what is it tied to there
's a the only
constant in this is that there's been X number of acres set
aside for a dog park
that is trying to meet meet the need up north they've shown
you what it would
take to do then you know kind of the one a one-stop build
out for the project
which is gonna be closer to six hundred thousand dollars I
think councilmember
Hudson is he's spot-on in terms of the concepts not being
shown budget numbers
being thrown out there we don't spend a lot of our time
reverse engineering these
things it's just not worth it but what we can do is say if
we did this once
this is what it would look like what we heard today is you
've been able to
identify about four hundred thousand dollars left over from
whatever might
remain of the bond funding and some additional impact fees
from the from the
parks area we can certainly bring you back two or three
different options and
and show you how we would grow this park over time but the
only thing that's
really been constant is the lands been set aside for it so
we can I have no
problem just bring you back two or three different options
and and work within
those confines but I think I think what he's telling you
and he's he's absolutely
right is there was a lot of projects on the books with
numbers put at them put
there that we can't necessarily track back where the
estimates were or
whatever it seemed good at the time we're bringing you back
real concepts
with real costs and trying to get your feedback on it I
think we got a lot of
good feedback today you want a couple of different options
and we'll bring those
back if I may I'm you know I'm actually influenced by what
I hear and so I'm
kind of landing in a different place my after doing the
diligence that I did do
my sort of willingness to entertain this now is really
solely because of the
equity issue but because I like I'm something higher
priority on my list
just in general dog park but but the fact that it's a
northern part of the
city dog park and I and I truly didn't take into account
like what's the
comparison of the amenities in the two places so you know I
think that's a very
valid observation I kind of be interested in saying in
knowing what the
cost would be to create something that's up to the you know
basically the level
of what's offered in the south we will certainly bring you
back that option as
well as what do you get for four hundred eleven thousand
dollars to the best of
our ability obviously we can't bid it yet but we can
provide a pretty solid
estimate since so much of it's just grass and grading
councilmember Doug yeah I
guess I've been kind of consistent on these kind of things
you know if we're
gonna do this you know I think we need to do it very well
because this is
something that's going to be there for a long time you know
I understand the the
money part of it on all that and maybe we don't need to do
it all it start with
and maybe phase in some of it but let's don't shortchange
the thing if we're
going to do it let's do it right
councilmember Briggs so on the the timeline because I'm
just want to
reiterate that this dog park has been a long time coming
and the constituents
near there and around in the city have been expecting it
for a long time so it
says park board and the City Council September October is
that coming back
for final design approval yes that will be will be bringing
back some concept
designs based on the feedback the collective feedback that
we've gotten and
incorporated that into some final designs for you to to
review so one of
my concerns because tomorrow is the public meeting and this
is more than
likely what's going to be shown and from what has been said
here today a design
probably a little less than what is shown is going to be
has been asked for
is there a way to in I mean I'm just trying to figure out
because there's not
options for the public to see no house absolutely that's a
great point one of
the benefits of having Glenn who again is one of our park
team members is that
he can take the information that we have today and go back
and start working on
and drafting some some scaled down versions some fate you
know take this
concept and do more of a phased in approach and present
that and we can we
have that ability to quickly turn around these types of
projects whereas if we
had outsourced this then you're right we would have to go
back place a call get
you know to be dependent on somebody else to do that but we
would be able to
probably quickly turn around something that would bring
them into that
four hundred thousand dollar scope and give them some
options that that's good
to know yes as quick as tomorrow okay thank you very much
councilmember yeah no I want to say how grateful I am for
that expertise I mean
that it to have that in houses is really fantastic the the
mindset and everything
is outstanding I really like that and and I agree with Don
that we need to
begin to upgrade our facilities and be better about that
and even if it is at a
phase approach I respect that if I'm gonna make one plea
though because I
have an eight-year-old so sometimes I think like her so if
you go to like the
the the consolation the first one and I'm not gonna put
that on her but I'll
just say I sometimes think like eight-year-old so right
there that's good
right so depending on where we put this and how it's it's
stamped whatever that
is my concern and again forgive me my mind just goes there
so if you scratch
off the C if you can somehow analyze a C that's less than
great so I don't know
if we mean you're one letter you know you just so I think
as long as it can't
be damaged otherwise I need a different name well we can
definitely you know
consider using those names underneath that are the more
common names it's
known as the great dog and I'm sure that there's probably
some jokes that could
be made about that too but I don't know we can control it
all but definitely yes
well I'd say we're you know right now at that hundred
thousand foot level it's
still got to go through public hearings and see what that
that has we haven't
even really approached some of the other groups to find out
what they think they
might be able to raise to help with this obviously we can
do it in stages I would
even question whether that much parking is needed
considering it's in a
residential area and is on our trail path that I think a
lot of people using
this park are going to be using the trail to get to and
from and those are
the types of things that we want to hear some input from
the public on again you
can phase in parking a little at a time it does get more
expensive when you do
smaller parts but you know we can see from the start and
there's always going
to be overflow over at the shelter as well so I think we'll
probably find more
people will park there and walk the trails then and we're
gonna have more
people walking the trails with their dogs so yes which is
great is something
that we very much want to encourage yes so any other
questions or comments on
this do you have the direction you need from us thank you
all right in case
we've been going at this almost two hours so let's take a
five-minute recess
and we'll be back
welcome back everyone we are going to resume our August 14
th work session it
is 305 we just took a short break and we're going to start
back at item 3d
receive a report hold a discussion and give staff direction
regarding quiet
zones along at grade railroad crossings within the city of
Denton good afternoon
thank you mayor pro tem council members my name is pre-tem
Deshmukh I'm the city
traffic engineer and I'll be talking about quiet zones I
don't have chat here
to have some props there and start acting on bed it's a
start with how many
at-grade cross crossings we have we currently have 34
throughout the city
they're spread in three major corridors the first one is
the biggest one that's
the Union Pacific railroad corridor that runs across the
city there are about 16
crossings there along UPR are eight in the northern segment
segment excuse me
four in the downtown and then four crossings are on the
south side towards
the up towards the west of the city southwest Kansas City
Southern is the
second line that runs across the city on the west side it
has about nine at-grade
crossings and the last one the newly installed DCT that's
the most recent one
light rail it has nine crossings all the crossings at-grade
crossings along DCT
are quiet zones and I'll go into detail of what exactly
quiet zones mean it's
one or a group of crossings that implement extra or
additional safety
measures to eliminate train horns typically it's in a group
of crossings if
you have a crossing that is quite zoned and then the next
crossing isn't and
they're typically if they're within half a mile then it's
really hard for train
operators to not have any sound at one crossing but then
blow the horn the next
so that sound travels pretty further away so typically it's
recommended that
these quiet zones are implemented in a half mile area or
half mile segments what
are they required for they're required to reduce noise in
residential
neighborhoods as Denton grows we have more population
moving closer and
closer to these at-grade crossing so there are more
residential neighborhoods
being developed near these crossings their schools as well
as some sensitive
sound sensitive areas like hospitals are also located near
these at-grade crossings
that's why quiet zones are required according to the
federal railroad
administration every operator train operator has to blow
horn at at-grade
crossing for about 15 to 20 seconds which is typically a
quarter to a half
a mile before the crossing and through the crossing and
these horns are
typically really loud I have a slide that shows you how far
their reach is
there are about 96 to 110 decibels within the first hundred
feet from the
crossing so what are the some of the supplemental or
additional measures that
can be implemented in order to make a at-grade crossing
quiet is the first one
is the four quadrant gate which is gate on either side of
the track on on both
directions so the entire street is completely blocked by
these gates once
there the arms are down the second option is to I'm not
sure if you can see
it clearly but there is a gate around here the second
option is gate in only
one direction but then actually have a median for quite a
bit of length almost
a minimum of 60 but then they can go all the way to 100 200
feet so that that way
it ensures that people that are actually traveling on the
right side of the road
and not swinging around will be stopped by the gate the
other alternatives are
one-way streets if you convert the whole streets to one way
you don't need four
gates you need or four arms you need two arms and that
would be enough and then
the last last one is a wayside horn it's a much smaller
horn than the train horn
and I think there is a slide next one so to the left is the
reach of the train
horn if a train is passing on this particular track which
is the UPR are
this figure illustrates how far they're reaching and they
're they're well into
the residential neighborhoods and you can actually see the
impact zone cone is
pretty high now these wayside horns as part of supplemental
managers they will
only have horn directed towards the traffic coming towards
the crossing so
these wayside horns can be implemented I think one there is
one location on the
TCT a track it's either sycamore or prairie has wayside
horns which is less
intrusive very low noise compared to the train horn and
some of the
supplemental measures identified for our funded projects we
do not have wayside
horns I just wanted to make that clear then I'll talk about
the supplemental
projects that are the projects that are funded there are
two one is the downtown
segment has four crossings Hickory McKinney sycamore and
prairie there is
a little under one million dollars allocated for this
particular project
three hundred and fifty thousand dollars came from the 2014
bond fund and then
there are six hundred thousand dollars that came from the H
ickory Street
enhancement that's how we have close to a million dollars
for these four
locations the estimated cost of the project is currently
uncertain one of
the biggest uncertainty here is a UPR or the railroad is in
control of their own
designs they have to design their own equipment and then
they come up with the
cost for installing we have to pay them for doing their own
construction so at
we don't have a project cost estimate plans and
specifications from UPR at
this point but once we get them we get an idea of how much
money will be spent
and then we come back to council with requests for moving
forward with that
and having an agreement with UPR for construction is there
a question
councilmember breaks this question yeah I appreciate this
presentation and thank
you for requesting it I think councilmember Hutzpah
requested it since
I've been on council again in the dog park this is an item
that comes to me
maybe once a month and I'm sure I afford it to mark and he
answers the best you
can and you as well it's a lot there's a lot of confusion
of people don't really
understand they know they voted for something a very long
time ago and
nothing it's the trains are still really loud and there's
nothing that has been
done so I appreciate this presentation because it's helping
me understand a
little bit more about the process as well as the public but
what because you
showed the different options and safety measures which ones
are we choosing for
this funding is that correct so I'll go to the next slide
okay through the
process and then define words choosing who is choosing and
what is choosing and
I'll tell you which ones were choosing so there will be
different ones for
different crossings correct so they want okay thank you
any other questions did you have the questions okay so
moving on to these are
the steps for getting to a quiet zone we're currently
working with a consultant
CTC and going through the whole process there they have
done multiple quiet
zones throughout the Metroplex so they're really helpful in
doing that so
as you can see there there are several steps we've already
gone through the
first three we have evaluated it we've already made contact
with the railroad
we have ran a diagnostic review now this is the most
critical stage for a quiet
zone this is where officials or staff from the railroad
from the city and
federal railroad administration they all come together they
have an on-site
meeting for several hours visit each and every crossing
identify what the
improvements are needed what kind of improvements are
needed what what is the
extent and you know work with the railroad if that if these
improvements
are feasible for the railroad or work with the city staff
and as the
improvements are feasible for staff once that whole
diagnostic review is
completed then these improvements are decided in terms of
meeting notes and
then sent out to all the parties involved we've already
gone through that
phase for the downtown project and for three crossings that
's McKinney
sycamore and Prairie all we're doing is installing medians
so we're installing
medians one of the criteria is within the where the medians
are installed
there shouldn't be any driveways let me see if I can find
there there are the
specific graphics for each of these locations I can send
them over after we
talk but all we're doing is installing meetings so those
are all city
improvements and we're working on designing those as we
work through Union
Pacific Railroad to design one improvement at the Hickory
Street
crossing I think one of the issues on the Hickory Street
crossing was there
was a fatality a year or year and a half ago and that's
what triggered more
safety measures at that particular location and railroad is
upgrading all
the arms that are moving the arms at the right location so
railroad is currently
working on designing the improvements at the Hickory Street
we're working on the
rest of them and their minor improvements in the sense that
they're
only medians or driveway relocations and I can send the
exhibits for specific
changes so is it also my understanding that even though
these improvements
are implemented that it is still up to the train conductor
to hawk the horn if
they feel it necessary correct so it quiet zones are not
quite quite there
yet but yes so they're not completely quiet if there is a
person crossing a
railroad or if there is an animal in the track or something
the rail the
according to federal rules and regulations the railroad
operator has to
honk or blow the horn in order for them to get them moved
out of the railroad or
be safe or at least understand that there is a train
approaching so it has
to happen so short of installing fencing all up and down
the railroad there is
very little control over how you can control even places
where people there's
no crossing people jump the tracks in neighborhoods and
rail train operators
are required to honk yes any other questions I can quickly
go through the
next few steps as I mentioned the railroad is designing
improvements once
we find out how what's the total cost we'll come back to
council get an
agreement in place with railroad to go and construct it
typical timelines are
12 months for a project like this which only has one
location to improve we feel
that this can be shortened I've talked to the railroad and
we're working with
them and then after the construction is completed there is
a 30-day final notice
of establishment or you notify the public that there is
going to be a
railroad is a quiet zone established and then the current
schedule for this
project to be completed is July 2019 the next project they
were working on and
that's funded actually this is funded to the fiscal year 18
19 which begins in on
October 1st so I'm currently getting scopes from a
consultant to start
helping us with this project there are eight crossings
along this segment
northside along you PRR frame Street will a street pertain
Street one of the
one of the things that I want to point out is two crossings
Willis and pertain
we're planning on replacing those two at grade crossings
with one crossing which
is Roodale Street and Roodale Street at some point we're
still under design but
yes as the council may know we have made some changes and
move the monies so
we're working with a consultant to figure out what's best
approach to get
the other crossings converted to quiet zones especially
these three on the
north side earlier or sooner because we only have a limited
amount of fun
nine hundred thirty thousand dollars we want to see
whatever we can accommodate
and guess those established rather than waiting for the R
oodale and will listen
pertain to be taken off so that's that's how we're moving
forward on this one and
we'll come back with the consultant agreement or and or the
agreement with
Union Pacific for the this particular project next year any
questions on this
project that's my breaks it kind of just goes about the
process so if I were to
say why did the first section take so long like so can you
is it the conduct
diagnostic review I'm asking because the next segment we
just talked about the
northern segment cannot can the public expect for that to
be five years down
the road where we're just getting started or is that has
the process been
worked out now where we understand what we need to do as
you is a railroad more
friendly I mean just I'm trying to figure out so there yeah
I there are a
couple things the process typically takes about two years
from the time we
start so that's the normal timeline working with the
railroad working with
the federal redwood administration from the time we kick
off the consultant get
everything established data collection and everything
railroad requires majority
chunk of the time about 18 months to do their process but
it's 24 months a
standard timeline this project took a little bit longer I
think the bond funds
were sold in 2014 this is 2014 funded because the city was
work trying to work
with the railroad to repurpose there's a there is a
maintenance yard here for
UPR are and we were working with the railroad and DCTA and
NC and the cog to
see if we can repurpose this railroad move this maintenance
yard up somewhere
else and then repurpose this place for other uses like
parking retail and
that's what the main issue was that whole deal took a lot
longer the
coordination and ultimately we found out that the railroad
was not willing to
work with us so we had to drop the idea that's what the
time lag was for
councilmember death I just want to make a comment anytime
you're working with the
railroad it's gonna take a long time because they are not
cooperative I've
had experiences with them and they just they're just not
because they don't have
to so these are the next segment of southern segment of UPR
this the
project that's currently not funded the reason I've
highlighted vintage
Boulevard as part of the Bonnie Bray project vintage Boule
vard is currently
almost under the design is complete they're getting ready
to go to
construction but that this particular crossing will be
completely upgraded to
meet the quiet zone criteria so this particular location
where vintage
Boulevard crosses and connects to 377 will be upgraded
completely so when we
go back for any quiet zone on any of these crossings that
particular
location does not need any upgrades and then the last
portion is the Kansas City
Southern Railroad it has about nine crossings one of the
thing here is there
are three private crossings which go to one parcel or one
particular business and
oftentimes you have to work with them to make sure that
they they're included in
the process of converting the whole thing in quiet zone and
similar to the
previous one the Bonnie Bray Street that will be crossing
this particular
railroad I think it is up here this is the one that will be
fully you know
constructed as far as quiet zone safety measures are
concerned and once that
once the project is built it's face three of Bonnie Bray I
believe that goes
through here it's gonna end her design and this project is
not funded it also
any questions yes I was wondering if you go back to this
slide where you show
this those different options of supplemental safety
measures and if I
assume that kind of when you're thinking about which of
these to use and you're
doing weighing the pros and cons you're kind of thinking
about safety as far as
the real the railroad goes and also about traffic concerns
you know in what
extent to what extent one of those safety measures will
create a lot of
congestion so if can you just could you just kind of
briefly speak to because
I'm trying to you know figure out for myself which of these
would be the
safest in any given situation and then which would create
the most congestion
how you weigh that and in addition to that and I mean you
could even though
this is a big question you could answer it really in just
two sentences if you
wanted to but I'm also trying to kind of reconcile you know
to those what do they
call those those localized horns that they don't have is
yeah those wayside
you know would those be equivalent in in safety to oh that
's right this is what
right there wayside horns to one of these you know three
silent silent safety
measures is it is it equivalent is it I mean is it
apples and oranges is it good to have both at the same time
so so the way this
is decided there are a couple things when the diagnostic
team gets together
federal railroad administration staff discusses several
options that with the
railroad as well as the city saying here are the options
that you have and this
is what we feel would work better or this is what we
recommend so there are
certain recommendations that come from the federal railroad
so even though we
have some say they prefer to have certain ones just based
on their
knowledge and their experience in the past with hundreds of
these or thousands
of these throughout the nation they know that if there's a
certain type of
roadway it has a certain amount of traffic then these are
the ones that
would work better so they try and recommend certain of this
of course we
can go back and work with them and say this would work
better as far as traffic
is concerned if there are signals near which one which way
side horn right here
you can see there are signals those are the ones that we
have to be those are
the ones that will be impacted when the arm is down so we
typically want to work
with the railroad and have some sign of type of
communication with the signal
saying preempted so that everyone clears off the track
while the arms are coming
down so that that we definitely tie into for example Wood
row on the DC 28 track
or Colorado at the DC 28 track the signal is really close
we have
communications with the gate so whenever the gate is trying
to get down where it
gets hits the signal our signals are agreed so that
everyone clears off so
yes we are we are working closely with them excellent
thanks that was really
helpful any other questions I just uh thanks I would just
comment keep leaning
forward I think this is a great way to pretty efficiently
really improve
quality of life and death thank you in just so I understand
it completely if
you're using one of these other three methods you do not
have to use the
wayside and you can still be a quiet zone yes you can use
either or they
pick one they don't pick a whole lot and as I mentioned
three of our crossings
don't even need anything other than putting in these med
ians and the arms
already exist so any other no other questions then thank
you very much
our next item item 3e receive a report hold a discussion
give staff direction
on the composition of the oak gateway area plan steering
committee I think
this is going to be quite similar to one we had last week
on a different
committee yes yes mayor pro temp members of council this
item for your
consideration is for staff to seek direction on the
composition of the oak
gateway area plan steering committee as you all heard in
our last presentation
where we provided an update back in June 12 the committee
is moving forward
there's a lot of momentum focus in the right direction the
only issue that
we're having to date is trying to be quorum we have some
really dedicated
folks that are on the committee but again to be able to
move forward we need
the quorum to be met and so we're seeking your help in
moving this
committee in the right way so real quickly this
presentation here or this
slide here just illustrates what we've done to date we are
currently at the I
would like to call the halfway mark we've got our draft
vision statements
already drafted we're hoping to meet next couple weeks in
the next couple
weeks to formulate some goals and then hopefully prepare
some recommendations
that we can bring forward to the planning zoning Commission
and City
Council currently the starting committee is made up of 24
members one councilman
sorry three members from each council members and three
from staff staff
selected three members to add to the steering committee
they are made up of
UNT DCTA members representing their entities this is the
list of current
steering committee members as you can see they represent a
variety of
stakeholders from business owners to property owners to
bicyclists we've got
UNT again DCTA student representation and others these
individuals have given
notice that they are no longer able to serve on the
committee there is a total
of eight of the members that have requested that they be
removed or have
resigned and so these are the folks that we are trying to
one either replace or
if that is not the direction from council reduce the number
so that we
will be down to just the 16 that are left so here's the
option that similar
to what we heard from the prior steering committee is one
is to reduce the number
of the committee member size again reducing it by eight
bringing us down to
16 just as a FYI I have received some comments from our
committee members one
of our committee members the said person is in favor of
option one option two is
the reappointment of the those eight members that have
given their notice the
breakdown that I've shown here based on denominations of
those non of those
steering committee members that have given their notice one
would be from
councilman Watts or a mayor Watts councilman Briggs has
provided her
nominations already to come from councilmember Armentor to
replace those
that were nominated by councilman past councilman Gregory
commissioner
Hutzpeth there is a one committee one of the members that
have resigned is a
student representation a representative and we would like
for the current student
representative to be replaced to be replaced by her and her
name is Gabrielle
Tilly if that is your choosing and choosing come out
councilmember on
Metsler there are two that would be need to be replaced
again those two that were
nominated by councilmember of the Gary and her dot there's
nothing you you need
you're good those council those members that you've
selected are still in place
Teresa Rogers we're recommending if we go with option to be
replaced I'm sorry
we replaced mr. James Davis on the committee and also I've
got a list of
members if the council would like again option two where I
reached out to have
their it seek their interest and there are approximately
eight so far that have
shared that they are interested in being on the committee I
can share that list
with the council after the meeting if again we choose or
the council direct
staff to go with option two that being said that is what
the staff is requesting
is your direction on the composition of the steering
committee again option one
option two let's just start over here and work our way
around councilmember death
yeah I would be for option one I think 24 is probably too
big anyway and I just
think that reducing the size of committee rather than bring
new people in
makes sense option two and I'm fine with the student
representative replacement
I'm a little torn because I know that that this is a very
dedicated committee
that has wanted to meet more frequently but can't because
of coronal requirements
on the other hand I also know that they are sorely lacking
in representation
from two of the sub areas of that you know of the area
under question would it
be possible to hear from from the committee chair yes I
apologize
Patrice like just walked in cheese here as well as vice
chair Kim McGibbon is
here as well it's up to the council bring them up now yeah
yeah Patrice
help me help you like 1109 Egan so Ron and I discussed the
committee makeup six
weeks ago it it's summertime I've lost track it's been a
little while but we
talked about the committee makeup and he did reach out to
committee members who
have been unable to attend over the past few meetings as
you know when we started
talking about this we were on a schedule of meeting maybe
once a month every six
weeks but when we recognized how much work we had to do we
began to meet once
a week and that did be we did see a fall in attendance at
that point and so at
that point you know Ron and I had talked about adding
members so that we could
replace and hit our 24 because this is a big area we need
the voices but we also
need the voices to consistently be there so I do understand
a I can I can see an
argument for reducing the committee to 16 to be honest with
you it is a little
bit more of a maneuverable committee but I also I think I'd
lean more sixty
percent toward getting it back up to full steam at 24
particularly since there
are some I don't we've already identified some people who
would
continue additionally some of those spots on the committee
are kind of
standing spots so for instance Jim from Jim Davis from UNT
if there is a way to
make that simply a standing spot you know a representative
from UNT in that
capacity or the student government spot if that were a
standing spot and because
some of those positions rotate so since we already have
some people who are
does it you know who have expressed interest and who can
come in we can get
them up to speed from the last meeting that we had you know
that we have
mission statements written for all four of our sub areas
and we're ready to get
back to work on August 23rd so I'm so far we're 50/50 over
here you're you got
me up here counseling that's all right any questions
I saw your hand moving I had a question but then I realized
that we were kind of
we were going around so I'm not sure okay so is is the
committee still
working with the consultant on a regular basis or is it
consulting we okay no we
are still working with the consultant but they are
currently standing at the
ready so we have been meeting more as a you know a steering
committee citizen-led
staff is with us but we are to the point we are where we
are getting ready to ask
the consultants to come back so they have not been
attending every meeting
that we have had since sometime in the spring our weekly
meetings they did not
attend but now we have more direction and more specific
information that we
will ask from them so we are getting ready to bring them
back any other
questions for the chair councilmember if we did decide on
option two would it be
a recommendation that the list of interested individuals
from the sub
areas that have been chosen be looked at first to fill in
the availability spots
right yeah okay yeah if there if there are people who've
already expressed
interest it's a it's a big task and I suspect it's a bigger
task than some
people saw it to be at the beginning of the process and so
yes if there are
interested people especially in sub area two and three
those are very under
represented we're heavy in sub area one you know as a
member of some area one
we're heavy there but if there are people in two and three
then I would I
think that is a good it's a good idea especially since the
idea behind the
ginormous small area plan is to not just push our problems
over into neighboring
areas that then have to mop up after us so other questions
with you
well this is not so much a question but it's well I was
gonna go back okay
thank you okay councilmember Nelson have you that help you
form an opinion yeah
yes it did I'm certainly willing to support you know the
chair and what the
committee needs I just hope and expect that will you know
reinforce very
strongly to the to the people from there is two and three
who might join that
they really have to show up and to give an incentive I'm
willing to double the
pay and I'm gonna take the same privilege our mayor
normally does and
save my comments for last so councilmember armator yeah so
I'll say I
appreciate the arguments you know for and against either
option it's kind of
it's messy either way but these these processes are are
messy and good things
come out of the messes I will I am going to go with option
number two and I think
the most compelling case for that as far as I'm concerned
is that that there is
is not enough representation of those other two sub areas
so you know if it
when it comes to me if it's up to me to appoint two members
then I will be
looking at those areas and I will just I'll just say you
know seeing that list
of who all is on that committee it's a list of really fine
people and I know
most of those people and a lot of those people are on other
committees and have
served on I've served on other committees in the past or
serving on
other committees at present I think this is another case
for reducing the number
of committees that one person can serve on is a way to
encourage us as a council
to branch out and ask more people more of our constituents
to get involved even
constituents who we don't know we need more diversity in
all all respects on
our committees including more even within the small area
plan so we need
more geographical diversity within the small area plan so
anyway that's that's
really really telling to me so I hope that you know in the
near future we can
be addressed that that issue so yes I will be going for
number for number two
primarily for that reason councilmember Briggs I appreciate
Patrice coming up
and I'm kind of the same with her I see the reason why we
would want to reduce
the size of the committee but I also think that having
different voices speak
matters I like the idea of having the standing seat just so
that if you know
we're not coming back individually approving you know each
person so you
know maybe so many members from the community or UNT you
know that I like
that idea I think that that would help especially if there
are issues with
someone moving or somebody are not coming so I mean I would
go with option
two and and just add that having those standing seats there
may be good and not
have a specific name for those who we know need to be on
the on the committee
that would be hopefully we we get this done and they don't
rotate off you know
right well and also one of the reasons I'm kind of leaning
more towards option
two is because you said it's it's the halfway mark and I
know that it's not
the very beginning but it's not the very end and since the
consultant hasn't yet
come in I do believe that anyone coming in can kind of hop
on board see see
where the committee's gotten thus far sure and then share
their input with the
consultant well to certainly do our best to make sure that
they do get on board
as quickly as possible well I will say I'm for option three
which is kind of a
hybrid I do believe having the standing student
representative and a UNT
representative would be good but as far as adding more
members at this point I
feel like we've gone quite a ways on this already and don't
think it's
necessary and I will say that I would have a a principal
issue with the fact
that one of the persons recommended is on the ballot for a
future election and
it's kind of been these in unwritten rule within council we
don't put elected
officials or people who are currently listed to be on a
ballot in the near
future onto a committee like this so that's kind of where I
stand I think I'm
probably out I think outnumbered with the number of people
who would like to go
with option two okay so is that I think councilmember Duff
and myself are option
one with the possibility of letting UNT and student
representative come back
we've got we got four for options yeah I think the standing
seat is pretty well
accepted by all yes could you please weigh in on that I
never heard of of
that the person is is an actual resident but not running
for any city office so I
mean if it if it is a an issue then that can be made but I
hadn't heard of any
policy or seen anything to that effect I would just like an
update from the our
city attorney on that please I'll just make comments since
it was my initial
one and let him weigh in give him a moment to think it
through it's not
anything that's written anywhere it's not anything in our
policy but it's kind
of been one of those you know we've never appointed we've
never put a
commissioner or JP or you know state rep or any of those
types of people any
elected officials on boards nor have we ever put someone on
a board that I know
of while their name was already placed on a ballot I'm just
gonna agree there's
no policy or ordinance at prohibit side depending on the
board or committee that
a person is put on there they if they're an elected
official they may have to
look at whether they have any issues under what we call the
common law as a
dual office holding or if they're violating some
constitutional provision
in holding two offices that that's for them to decide not
us but as far as the
city of Denton having any any written policy or ordinance
there is none but I
I understand why it has been done in the past but I but I
will tell you there is
nothing in writing thank you I should make sure I wasn't
violating any sort of
so thank you well and again it's just something I've
observed over time though
we've never never done it and you know she's a great person
I've known her for
a number of years I think she'd be great on there but it's
it's the principle of
someone on a ballot being on a committee I just wanted to
ask just to I think
this through sir are you making a distinction between
appointing somebody
who's on the ballot for it to be on a committee who's on a
ballot to be on a
committee versus somebody who is on the ballot and already
was on the committee
prior to being on a ballot that makes sense I guess what
you're referring to
in councilmember Meltzer was on this committee exactly and
was on the ballot
he was put on this committee prior to filing any paperwork
fire prior to the
fact that he was going to be on the ballot yeah so that's
that's the
distinction is you can say that somebody is may run for an
office in the future
that's a different scenario than someone is on you know is
already listed on the
ballot and that's that's where I kind of draw that line I
've got no problem with
somebody who in the past has been on a ballot or may in the
future be on a
ballot but if they're currently deep on the ballot that's
it's a you know
personal principle of mine that that's just you know are we
stepping ourselves
into an issue of well when the election happens then we got
a replacer again
potentially you know that's that becomes a situation that
you're just setting
yourself up for the potential of having a problem again in
the future so yeah
I'll just say I myself so thanks for explaining I myself
don't have a problem
with that but I would imagine that that would be a
situation where you know if
individual people on council wanted to you know not approve
a certain nomination
and a matter of principle that that would be our right to
do so but I don't
have a problem with that myself at all but thanks for
qualifying so just to
summarize move forward with option two we're replacing all
eight including
those that are and then bringing back to the council for
approval in obviously
identify the those standing seats and moving this committee
forward is that
council direction I believe so I would just like to add
that if if there are
issues with attendance or something comes up that it not
just kind of
snowball and get bigger and bigger that we're made aware so
and that we can kind
of come in at one one by one if there are issues instead of
awaiting for so
long so that the committee isn't stuck understood
understood and after tonight
or today's a meeting I will send out an email or have our
city sector sending
email out with the names that have already identified that
they are
interested in it in in serving on this committee as well as
a little description
of you know where they are as far as area and what they
represent so that you
all have that as an option if you are looking for
nominations any other
questions comments thank you very much thank you and we
will move on to item
3f receive a report hold a discussion give staff direction
regarding the
human rights campaign minute municipal equal quality index
the city of Denton
MEI score and options for consideration on the MEI score
and I just kind of like
to get my council's preference on this as to I believe the
first several slides
are informational how we got to the score that we have in
the last slide is
more on the policy so I'd rather we hold our questions till
we get to that last
slide if that's good with everyone thank you thank you
mayor pro tem council
members my name is Sarah Keckler I'm the director of public
affairs here to
present today on the human rights campaign municipal
equality index this is
the first time staff is presenting this item to council so
I will spend the
majority of the time kind of education what is the MEI what
are their criteria
and then I'll conclude the presentation with that last
slide which lists all of
the options and seek council direction if staff should work
on any items further
so to start off who is the human rights campaign or HRC as
I'll refer to them
they are a civil rights organization founded in 1980
representing the LGBTQ
community and they have over 3 million supporters and
members nationwide they
developed the municipal equality index the MEI as an annual
scorecard to
examine and rate how inclusive municipal laws and policies
are to the LGBTQ
people I just want to say that this is a tool in the
toolbox to evaluate annually
how we're performing as a city in terms of being inclusive
the HRC even states
quote the MEI specifically rates cities on their laws and
policies while
respecting the legal and political context the city
operates within is not
a measure of an LGBTQ persons lived experience in that city
so as a
community it makes up many things beyond just the MEI score
the human rights
campaign select cities for the MEI annually in 2017 they
selected 506 cities
nationwide and it kind of listed out how they go about
selecting what cities
they're going to rate generally they are the larger cities
in the nation but
they do select those that are nominated by HRC members and
supporters as well
so the cities are based upon five categories and I'm gonna
have a slide
on each one of those categories I do want to point out that
first category of
non-discrimination laws requires adoption of citywide laws
prohibiting
discrimination discrimination on the basis of sexual
orientation and gender
identity the remaining four categories are how the
municipality as an entity
operates to be inclusive so I speaking with an HRC
representative they said
that generally cities will focus on those last four
categories first since
it's under control of the municipality in terms of how we
operate and then we'll
come and focus on the non-discrimination laws category and
our
previous scores for the city of Denton on the scorecard
where in 2016 we had a
total of 35 and this is out of a hundred points in 2017 we
increased slightly to
44 and then in 2018 we estimate that we will score 52 I
just want to stress that
this is my staff estimation of what we will score this is
not HRC those final
scores will be released in September or October in 2017
there were 25 cities in
Texas rated they had an average score of 41 and then
nationwide in 2017 the
average score was 57 and this slide just shows the 2017
comparison to other Texas
cities and where Denton Falls to other cities in the DFW
region so we scored a
total of 44 out of a hundred and you can see it being very
low and in Irving to
all the way Dallas and Fort Worth scoring above the maximum
of a hundred points
with the bonus categories included and so this is the first
slide I'll get into
to kind of describing what are the different sections and
categories of the
MEI and so this is section one on the nondiscrimination
laws this category
rates municipalities if they have adopted citywide nondisc
rimination
ordinances on the basis of sexual orientation and gender
identity in three
categories private employment housing and public
accommodations I just want to
point out section one points can come from state law county
law or city law so
if the state has protections for these three categories on
the basis of sexual
orientation and gender identity a city can score points in
these areas however
if a state law or county law doesn't cover it the city can
adopt their own
ordinances to have nondiscrimination on the basis of the
two categories I do
want to spend some time kind of going through the
background of what are the
existing state and federal protections and even city
protections and
nondiscrimination so for private employment Texas law does
prohibit
discrimination and employment based on a person's race
religion gender national
origin age or disability however it does not expressly
include a prohibition
based on a person's sexual orientation or gender identity
there were some Texas
legislative bills introduced last session however they did
not pass and go further
as for housing the second category listed there and the
Texas Fair Housing
Act and the US Fair Housing Act prohibit discriminatory
housing practices in the
sale rental and financing of dwellings based upon a number
of protected classes
however again it does not expressly include sexual
orientation and gender
identity it again had bills introduced during last Texas
legislative session
however they died as well the city does have a fair housing
ordinance that's
chapter 15 in our code of ordinances and that protects
every individual within
the city to obtain housing without regards to race color
sex handicap
familiar status religion or national origin however it does
not expressly
include the two on sexual orientation and gender identity
the third third
category listed here is public accommodations and this is
protected by
federal law under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it
states all persons shall be
entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods
services facilities and
privileges advantages and accommodations of any place of
public accommodation
however the act has not been amended to include sexual
orientation and gender
identity and I just want to point out here with all of
these non-
discrimination laws there would be considerable work that
we would staff
would need to be put into in terms of coming up with an
ordinance development
what would be covered underneath that ordinance and then
the majority of work
would be what would be the administration enforcement of
that ordinance how would
we accept complaints how would we review complaints how
would that be staffed how
do we do give due process to both so there's considerable
work work that
would need to be done per the HRC the only Texas city with
cities with
comprehensive non-discrimination ordinances in Texas or
Austin Dallas
Fort Worth and Plano and then the last two categories here
are the bonus
categories so the first one all gender single occupancy
facilities the city can
earn two points if it passes a citywide ordinance that says
that all single
occupancy restroom facilities would have to be all gender
the city can earn half
credit in this bonus category so earning one bonus point if
it makes this
mandatory for our city buildings staff to do some
background research and we
currently have 64 single occupancy restrooms in city
buildings and then last
category and this is new in 2018 for their HRC criteria is
that it would
protect we would pass a discrimination ordinance non-disc
rimination ordinance
or sorry we pass an ordinance that protects youth from
conversion therapy
also new in 2018 cities will be deducted points if they
allow carve outs and if
they allow religious exemptions that single out sexual
orientation and or
gender identity so that was section one I'll keep moving
through the second
section here is the municipality as an employer and so we
did earn full points
and are expected to earn full points again for non-disc
rimination in city
employment we do have that policy the second category trans
inclusive health
care benefits we are expected to earn zero in this category
I did want to
footnote and the city does provide health care benefits for
transgender
health care needs including mental health care and home and
hormone therapy
however it excludes those areas related to surgical
treatments therefore we do
not score any points in this category because surgical
treatments must be
included in the city's health care plan in order to earn
those points 2.3 it
would be a city contractor non-discrimination ordinance the
city
earned one point in our standard contract template we do
prohibit a
discrimination on sexual orientation for contracts in order
to earn full points
the city would need to adopt through policy or ordinance
that all businesses
that contract with the city will have an employee non-disc
rimination policy that
expressly covers sexual orientation and gender identity and
the last category
here 2.4 is an inclusive workplace there's a number of
things that can be
done to achieve points in this category including diversity
training for all
city staff or recruitment program that actively advertises
available positions
to the LGBTQ community the last year bonus point that you
can earn is if the
city extends health care benefits to domestic partnerships
Texas law does not
recognize the legal status of domestic partnerships I just
want to point out
the city of Denton's current health care policy defines a
spouse as an individual
to whom you are legally married so it covers if same-sex
marriages for our
employees that have same-sex marriages they can the health
care benefits are
extended to them as well it just does not cover domestic
partnerships because
that's currently not defined by Texas state law
section 3 moving on is municipal services first category
here is a human
rights commission and the HRC defines this as a community-
facing body tasked
with eliminating discrimination and educating the public on
issues of
diversity and inclusion and the city the Denton together
coalition serves this
purpose is not an official city body but a community group
that gathers to
discuss these issues and therefore we do not have an
enforcement mechanism
through the HRC as it is not a city body and we do not have
the
non-discrimination ordinances in place that that body would
be enforcing the
third category is an LGBTQ liaison to the city executive we
earn full points
in this category and that is myself so I am available and
willing to talk to
anyone about any issues that may have come out there may be
in the community
my contact information is on the city website and I am
designated as liaison
on the city website as well and then there are a number of
bonus categories
listed down here where you can get points for well the city
provides services
and supports many community organizations serving the LGBTQ
community
we cannot earn bonus points unless the support the support
or funding is
specifically targeted for the LGBTQ community meaning it's
not community
wide it would have to be specific to that population
section four is law enforcement and we do expect to earn
full points in this
entire category this year and we have designated police
liaison and that is
lieutenant Chris summit with the police department again
his information is
available on the city website as well and then we have
consistently reported
as a police department our hate crime statistics to the FBI
each year earning
the full 22 points in this category and then finally the
last category is
leadership on LGBTQ equality and there's a number of
different things that can be
done but HRC really reviews articles proclamations public
events city
officials are they supporting the LGBTQ community and that
's in that first
category I expect that we would earn a four we do an annual
proclamation to
recognize LGBTQ month in June as well as a number of other
events and support
from our city officials and then the second category here
is pro equality
legislative or policy efforts and that would be counsel
trying to lead forward
more of these efforts and then there's a couple bonus
categories here as well
recognizing if we have elected or appointed municipal
leaders who are
LGBTQ and the last one is if we are testing the limits of
restrictive state
law so overall this slide kind of shows the first column
here the estimated
2018 score again that's what I think we will score a total
of 52 that means this
last column here the additional possible points we could
get additional 48 points
and the 22 here in kind of gray is the bonus points that
would also be available
so these these items here are additional efforts that staff
could work on and our
seeking policy direction from council in terms of what
should be our priorities
what questions do you have what additional research would
you like to
see where should we head next councilmember Briggs I
believe you had a
couple of questions who went through there did thank you so
the the most
recent one is on page 7 of 11 under the bonus I know that
the city we don't
provide services directly to to anyone the youth bullying
prevention policy for
city services does parks and rec not have a bullying policy
and is that a
way to implement that because that is something I think all
schools have and
any department that has works with children should have
some sort of
anti-bullying policy yes the Denton Public Library
currently has a rules of
conduct policy for their facilities however it doesn't
expressly state
sexual orientation and gender identity so we could work
with them on revising
that policy to state that and then we could also work with
parks and
recreation to adopt and the policy okay I had a I had a few
other things but by
withholding them I need to reorient my thoughts so somebody
else can I would
suggest that or I'd like to propose that staff go ahead
with the all of all of
the items on this list that are not ordinances that are
kind of under the
auspices of at least I understand it that would be kind of
under the city city
manager's office that council would just kind of come back
and sign off on and
that those ordinances come back to us at a later time I'm
not trying to shut off
discussion of those I support and I support all of all of
this I was I had
pushed pushed to get this on the agenda and so grateful for
the for the job you
did there's so much here that I wonder if that might be a
productive way to go
about it to break it into ordinances you know versus those
on this list those
items on this list that where we can just kind of give give
staff direction
that's all just kind of saying that well and I have I don't
know how much you
would call that out that wasn't part of an ordinance I
would think most
everything up there is going to require either an ordinance
or resolution from
the city in order to make that change so is there anything
in particular up there
that you see that you sees the the low-hanging fruit from
your standpoint I
was sure I mean everything that everything that is not an
actual law so
for instance you know the health care benefits that's not a
law the single
occupancy the bathroom I mean there's so much low-hanging
fruit I see of course
it's subjective what one sees as low-hanging fruit or not I
see everything
that's not a law as as a low-hanging fruit and I guess
within that low-hanging
fruit then you could take those things that could just you
know with with an
email or the stroke of a pen be be set in place you know
versus those where
there's a lot of room as to if we decide to go ahead with
it how we would want to
define it such as you know the Human Rights Commission but
but another way to
do that would be to say yes to the Human Rights Commission
and to say you know
staff you go and kind of come back with us it has a future
date with kind of a
proposal you know how how you might envision that you know
everybody on
council picks one etc anyway I mean those are just some
suggestions but I I
think you've probably thought some about this I don't know
if you how you would
I think there's a couple opportunities from staff and you
know the inclusive
workplace that's that's one opportunity that we can work
with our Human
Resources Department on the bonus category here of adopting
youth bullying
prevention policy that's something we can work on at a
staff level however you
know changing our health care plan we would not counsel
input on that if we
were changing what is covered underneath our health care
plan and as well as the
city contractor we are updating our purchasing policy
manual that would be
it's planned as a future project that would come as an
ordinance adoption
through City Councils that's something if you wanted us to
look at but we would
want council adoption of that as well through an ordinance
so of course
ordinances require council approval
any other questions or comments I mean I the bullying
policy yes I think that
should definitely be put in place you know there there are
some of these we
can you know almost come back individually as a category to
possibly
look at some of them but yes some of it also to me goes to
the different layers
and do we want as a city to be outside of HUD requirements
you know I've got no
problem with the housing ordinance but we start getting
into you know worse our
ordinance is now so much different than what HUD requires
and that can cause you
know some issues as well so I think some of them take a
deeper dive to to really
figure out where we can go on them my understanding is that
it's kind of like
our ethics ordinance and that we can raise the bar on on
the the state or
federal policy but we just we can't go below it we can't
take anything away so
I don't anticipate that being a problem or at least it you
know hasn't been in
in other cities it's just kind of within our right as a
home-rule municipality to
raise the bar I will say you know among the benefits
besides equality
besides equality equal access it's be really good for for
business
relationships in the city for attracting attracting new
businesses and as we grow
as a city increasing tourism and making you know not only
people who already
live here feel welcome but people who are going to be doing
business here who
we're considering economic development deals with you get
them excited about
doing deals with Denton I will say that the one that I get
the most feedback on
not related to the municipal equality index just in general
is the issue of
single single-use bathrooms being you know not having
gender specific identity
on them just saying restroom and obviously you know city
wide we've got
64 single-use bathrooms that's super low-hanging fruit and
that would be one
of these universal designs a design improvements that would
benefit
everybody because then regardless of gender identity you're
less likely to be
waiting in line so you know that would be I see it as a
universal good I had
proposed last time throwing something in there this is kind
of something outside
of this but I would propose as adding to that that we just
have a little
kind of certificate that we could give to local businesses
I'm calling a
certificate you know just a piece of paper something to put
in their window
but that would be citywide of course that any individual
business could do
this on their own for those businesses that choose to or
they'd already just
by default have bathrooms that are not limited to one one
gender that so that
they can put it on their on their window I think that would
be really good way to
easily and cheaply reward small businesses for being
inclusive and make
people in the community feel welcome
Councilman briefs I want to thank you when we when this was
brought to our
attention in 2016 you guys really started going to work and
figuring out
and it's been raised each year and that's really great we
're not going
backwards we're not moving you know we don't have over a
hundred points just
yet but we're getting there our neighbors Dallas Fort Worth
I noticed
that they have in Arlington I know they're they're bigger
cities they have
their high high points are in municipality as an employer
and law
enforcement and so do we have I'm just I'm just wondering
because ours is it
looks like we could raise those two up so far law
enforcement last year we
earned partial points we didn't have and police liaison
names this year we do as
we expect to earn those full points of 22 okay so that that
helps to bring our
score up and then municipality as an employer you can see
here the benefits
category is six and the city contractor would be five so
that's eleven that's a
considerable portion of that of that category that just
assuming and the other
municipalities are earning full some of the couple that you
mentioned
Allison Arlington and my last question besides thanking you
for working on this
and we're moving up the legislative part last year we've
got two points and this
year one is there a reason the legislator five point two
yeah it says
last year we were at two points in this year there's only
one as an estimated
score I'll have to go back and look it might just be the
difference sometimes
they change the category slightly so this public position
versus pro-equality
legislative or policy efforts I may have adjusted that
slightly again this is all
a little flexible but I think this was at three last year
this top one of five
point one was at three I think I just changed that
estimation slightly okay
because I do recall last year the chamber did send us a
letter saying that
they were not in favor of the policy the anti bathroom
legislation and so I mean
that was the chamber it wasn't necessarily the city but I
don't know if
if that is good if that counts or not and if this is my
estimation at one it
could stay at two okay thank you come from outside yeah
could you clear up the
point for me about domestic partnership it sounds like
something that may have
predated marriage equality so that might not might just
might not be kind of a
relevant category anymore for my understanding it was a
category and then
HRC removed it as a category and is now reinstated as a
category in 2018 to have
it for those that may not be married but our domestic
partners but I mean
regardless of sexual orientation or anything like that you
know health care
benefits yep generally don't go to people you know to
family members
unrelated by birth or marriage right I mean whether you
know homosexual
heterosexual correct and that's Texas does not recognize
domestic partnerships
there are a couple cities in Texas that have tried to
define on their own what a
domestic partnership is and how you provide the
documentation necessary in
order to prove that you have a domestic partnership and
then order to qualify to
get health care benefits this is actually one area to go
back again to
this idea of universal design where we make men can make a
change that would
benefit one group of people that really ends up really
benefiting many many more
people everybody we could if we wanted to as I understand
it and you can
correct correct me city attorney but to expand the health
benefits to include
domestic partners and you know in certain other kinds of
domestic living
arrangements so that when you have somebody who is living
with an elderly
you know somebody living with an elderly parent somebody
who's taking care of
their of their you know niece and nephew who are their
guardian but they're not
adopted I mean they're you know and I I'd be curious at the
very least as to
how if we decide to go ahead with and again like I said
before I support every
single one of these issues here and want to give direction
for all of them but
that would be an example of one area where we could see how
we could add more
to it and another thing to think about too is when we all
of these items that
include kind of adding sexual orientation and gender
identity to an
existing list of groups and identities that we're not going
to discriminate
against veteran status is missing from a number of those so
this would be an area
where we could address you know while we're while we're
doing it I mean it
wouldn't count that doesn't count for the municipal quality
index but if
we're going to be going back and looking over air revising
our anti
discrimination ordinances why not add veteran status to all
of those two so
that somebody can't be discriminated against in housing for
instance for
veteran status councilman breaks just one last quick
comment we talk about
things that we could do I'm in favor of the the city
contractor non
discrimination policy I think that is something apparently
all the other
cities around us are doing and so that means that the
contractors they are
using have these in place and I'm sure a lot of
municipalities use a lot of the
same contractors so that may be something that the the
contractors around
in the area already have in place that might not be such a
big issue for them
if we start looking into their policies and that's
something we can work on
doing more of an analysis on and perhaps we can fold it
into that overall
purchasing policy update as we're looking at reviewing the
entire policy
that's an item we can we can look at at that time and tell
you what the if there
would be any projected impacts yeah I'd just be curious to
to know I mean a lot
of the larger ones probably already have anti-disc
rimination policies just not
cities but contractors larger contractors and consulting
firms any other questions
just to suggest that outside of these these categories that
are created by the
human rights campaign I would like to see staff come up
with and you could you
could define these however however you wanted to but kind
of a list of to use
your term mayor pro-democracy low-hanging fruit what is the
low you know if you
could decide in terms of implementation what is the lowest
of the low-hanging
fruit so what if you could come up with a list of what
items would be the fastest
and easiest to implement and I realize there are a number
of different factors
it's subjective but just kind of as a starting point
because again this is so
many and we could spend a lot of time on each of these but
this is just such a
wonderful beginning to this discussion anyway for me that
would be helpful and
I would imagine you know from my colleagues as well in
seeing what would
be the fastest to implement where we could just all say
okay you know look
around the table do we agree to do this and have nods and
we all know what it
means you know versus maybe those other things that could
would be fast and and
and cheap or free to implement but first we would have to
establish exactly what
that means so for instance I my guess would be that I don't
think that any of
us it would can doesn't know what it means to just take a
sign off of you
know take a women or men sign off a bathroom and just to
write restroom on
it right so that I can't imagine unless people want to be
particular about you
know what color would font whatever you know that that
doesn't matter to me so
that would be something I would imagine it's just really
quick consensus can we
get I don't know do I how does making a motion work in a
work session I notice
doesn't happen much we don't really do that but but I mean
I would definitely
give you know myself say it'd be great to just go ahead and
and and and do that
right now if my colleagues agree and if people want more
time then maybe that
would be the next the next stage would be simply to have
staff go back and to
create that list of you know prioritize in terms of or
maybe not even
prioritizing just just listing in terms of the lowest
hanging fruit quickest and
cheapest for implementation branching out and I imagine
that the ordinances
would be would kind of it would take the most time and be
the most complicated
not not the most not costly per se but just you want to get
those just right
certainly couldn't hurt would probably be helpful to see
the difficulty of
implementation in sequence yeah I think we've got at least
three I'm sure
somebody over here would also agree with the fact that we'd
like to adopt a youth
bullying policy I think that's that's a no-brainer right
there on the item of
restrooms I think we would want to check with our health
department I don't know
if this is strictly with restaurants but I know when I
would get inspections when
I owned a restaurant there are differences if the restrooms
look
single-use restrooms if they looked identical you may pass
on the men's and
not on the women's so there are differences in what's
required by a
business by our health department in certain situations as
to what has to be
in in the different restrooms so you know that's something
that could be
discussed yeah how exactly does our does the didn't
together coalition you do
they look at any of these items or are they not
specifically but we can bring
this item to them for discussion and input for that group
we are kind of
trying to do a refresh of the dentin together coalition
refresh the members
are on it as well so I want to make sure that we have the
LGBTQ
representation on that group but I think that would be a
great community group to
discuss it and are there items that aren't on this list
that maybe we can
work on as a community I think I would really like to see a
group of citizens to
a committee maybe charged with addressing this but as far
as I'm
concerned you know the I'd be fine with kind of staff and
council and if working
on this with constant citizen input but this the Human
Rights Commission
whether it's a some other incarnation of the dentin
together coalition or
whether it's something completely new to me that would
excuse me that would seem
to come be one of the first things that I would like to see
us do and you know
making it a priority of having LGBTQ representation on that
Human Rights
Commission including people who are parents and guardians
of LGBTQ youth who
are too young to to serve on committees but need to be
represented too so do you
feel like you have some direction which yes I think we'll
work on the youth
bullying prevention policy we'll work on inclusive
workplace I think those the
two I heard and then just overall there's you have an
awareness of staff
or some other items that could be policy discussions for
council in the future as
we work on other items you know I think you know if if the
council wants us to
bring back you know priorities then the next two would
obviously be the housing
and public accommodations although we do need to have legal
weigh in on both of
those and I don't want to put Aaron on the spot right now
so it's really up to
you if you want to spring back I feel like we've pushed as
far as we really
can I mean right now this group wants to see they don't
care what I think they
care what you know if the council wants to move the ball
from a policy
perspective and a legislative so I think we've done what we
can there's there's a
couple of smaller policies we can certainly change and I
could you know if
there's agreement on the bullying for instance that's a
real simple one to to
take on I'm happy to do that but they're they're wanting
you know council
positions on some of these other things so we've we've kind
of implemented as
councilmember Brink said over the last couple years some of
the things that I
readily control from an employment and just a workplace
equity perspective but
when it comes time to when it comes to actually you know
dealing you know
adding you know to the the city benefit program and all
that that is done with
councils approval so I feel like we have pushed as far as
we can and you know if
there's four of you that want us to move forward and bring
some research back
we're happy to do it but I feel like we're at a place where
we put with the
exception of the bullying policy we pushed about as far as
we can without
you so and we still have of course we've got one member who
's not here mr. mayor
who who you know declared the pride month did the pride
month declaration so
it'll be good to have his way into and I'm just I'm really
pleased to have heard
no objection and no vocalized objection to any of these
items so I'm excited
about that and thanks to staff for moving moving forward as
much as you can
on those staff issues and when can I ask when could we
expect roughly the next or
would you need time to to to regroup and think about that
could we expect the next
I think the real question is what direction are we being
given to bring
you back I mean we've heard the bullying policy well the
list of priorities for
us well I yeah I guess the question is is are we hearing
from a majority of
you that this is something you want to move forward on you
know and if it is we
can we can sir I think that would I would stand by the
public accommodations
and housing issues after conferring with the city attorneys
quest their their
bigger point issues but I'm not sure I want to be careful
in the housing I
think mayor pro tem hit the nail in the head I want to want
to be sure that
we're not in any way adopting policies that that we're not
thinking through that
you know I want to have the research done on that just to
be sure he's that
we're clear of all obstacles right now and we're those
would be the next two
that we would clearly bring back and research if we've
directed by a majority
of the council councilmember tough well I you know I'm good
with the bullying
thing and all that but as far as moving forward on most of
this I'm not far at
all and I can rest assured there will be citizens that will
weigh in on this city
attorney and I just wanted to weigh in I just wanted to
make understand the
ordinances piece that councilmember arm and tour was
discussing about housing
and public accommodations are you trying are talking about
those similar
ordinance or similar ordinance that Plano or Dallas have
adopted which are
just general anti-discrimination ordinances which cover or
include
sexual oriented orientation and LGBTQ and if so I mean I
want to leave you all
with this question to think about what exactly do you want
to accomplish with
that ordinance because if you look at all these ordinances
that are being passed
the enforcement mechanism is a class C misdemeanor for a
violation it doesn't
get a person's job back if they're terminated because of
their sexual
orientation or LGBTQ it doesn't guarantee them housing and
all those
issues so I just wanted to at least to let you all know as
a council the types
of ordinances are out there they're anti-discrimination but
the only
enforcement piece to them is issuing a citation and and so
and there are a lot
of exceptions in these each of these ordinances will have a
list of
exceptions for religious grounds employers under certain
that have
certain number of employees like 15 or less and that's what
you start seeing so
as you start having those kinds of discussions that's the
question I want
to leave with you is what exactly you wanted to accomplish
for you in an
ordinance that's my brief yeah well that I was gonna ask
that you do look at
other cities ordinances and see what they have as well on
on the contractor
on the municipal on the housing and and I know that people
are still
discriminated against even though the policies are in place
for many other
reasons not just you know sexual orientation but we can do
what we can do
to make it to make it better and so I mean that that's all
it's all we can ask
Councilmember Meltzer we're the government and you know
represent the
law and there's just a very basic principle that all are
equal before the
law so whatever we do that goes to just establishing that
very basic principle
that helps every single person that everyone is equal
before the law I'm for
that and we'll you know so I'm interested so as far as what
the benefit
would be it's purely just a statement of principle to all
citizens that everyone
is equal before the law Councilmember Amateur I would like
to see some some
teeth to that to answer your question to those ordinances
but I feel that kind of
what what that would entail I imagine would involve you
know separate
discussion and presentation from legal and would vary on
each each of these
ordinances at the same time you know I feel much like with
our ethics ordinance
for a long time we didn't have one and now that we have one
you know I might I
might not agree with everything in it I might want it to be
stronger and raise
the bar even higher but it's but I I'm so happy that we've
got something you
know so anything I would be happy with the barest minimum
that but once we had
that I would want to push to to give it some some teeth to
make people feel more
protected and I would just say you know speaking to you
that counts member Duff's
but he mentioned you know I think you seem to have alluded
to the idea that
you know that there might be letters coming in that
expressing a dislike or
disapproval of LGBTQ equality and when those letters come
in I believe those
letters themselves will end up making a further case for
why we need to show
these people who are being discriminated against that the
city respects their
their rights and their equal access and equal opportunity
and that we're on their
side councilmember Duff yeah Paul I just want to totally
agree with you which which
is kind of surprising no but what you said I totally agree
with you know I
don't want anybody discriminated against but you know there
's a there's a lot of
other issues involved with this so we'll see what happens
any other comments sir thank you very much and leave that
concludes our work
session items so we will now can oh okay had a request
before we go into close to
go ahead and do can see the consent agenda and that way
some of staff won't
have to stick around past their normal time so with that I
will we will convene
in a in our special call session at 440 so and the first
item up is the consent
agenda move approval of the consent agenda I don't know I
don't item II I
move approval of the consent agenda but for item II second
got a motion and a
second all in favor seek to fight by raising your right
hand motion carries
unanimously mr. city manager do you want to go ahead and do
individual
consideration including item II sure and we have Mr. Kenaz
ari's here also to
answer your question on II if you want so it's up to you
how do you want however
you want to take the order well I guess the main yeah we'll
go ahead and call
for item II on the consent agenda I was informed beforehand
before the meeting
that there were some changes to the ordinance so if we can
just quickly
explain what changes were made absolutely mayor pro to the
members of
the council Mario Kenazari's as a city manager real quick
what had happened was
the North Texas Fair Association had made a request to
utilize some city owned
road cones in the past they have have borrowed these cones
about 125 of these
for the North Texas Fair the fair starts this coming week
and last another week
another eight days beyond that and so in the past so when
they've made this
request it's been administered through staff but with the
recent changes to our
ethics policy it was it was deemed that the City Council
needed to render a
decision on this request and so that's why you have an item
on your on your
agenda I don't have to go through all that you have it in
your backup but the
bottom line is the reasons why this thing this item was
pulled is there some
issues with the ordinance the original ordinance that was
posted on the agenda
indicated that there would be a financial contribution of $
5,000 that is
not the case did not provide any specific language of the
actual request
and then it was confusing the ordinance did not match the
information in the AIS
so that's basically the the changes that we're asking for
here on this item
again it's 125 cones the North Texas Fair staff comes and
borrows the cones
they use it they whatever doesn't get brought back the city
charges them a fee
I think a little low a little under seven dollars a cone to
replace those and the
North Texas Fair staff immediately issues the check and
covers the city's
expenses so that's really that's the intent of the other
request Councilmember
Briggs so the they will pay us back is that we said they
will if again of the
they borrow 125 so they borrow 125 125 were returned of
those that aren't for
if they're damaged or they're missing that we charge them
for whatever it is
that's missing okay and so I just have a few questions
because we do this is not
the sponsorship money that they get from DME no man and
this is not the hot fun
money which they get so this is separate it's separate and
above and above that
do we do this kind of thing for other even like with cones
do is this normal
for us to do as far as cones I'm not quite sure I know that
other entities
have come in the past prior to the ethics ordinance ethics
policy to set up
barricades for some of the other events and we've accommod
ated that so it's one
of those things that because of policy was just recently
adopted these requests
are coming in in that in that transition phase so what we
need to do a better job
is just making sure that those groups that make those in
kind requests that
have been administered by staff that they just include that
request and if
all their sponsorships so that way it's all identified on
their front end and it
can be the decision can be rendered at that time so we're
not caught off guard
like this so I'm glad this is coming before us and we
probably will see other
things but my concern is that we're doing in kind services
for an
organization that made four million dollars last year on
top of that we do
not do the same or provide the same service for our
neighborhood or block
parties our citizens who just want to have a block party we
charge them to use
these things so I would like to see if we do provide the
service for
organizations that we provide the same type of ability or
service for our
citizens who want to just have a block party in their
neighborhood thank you we
can certainly do that as we're finding these past practices
we're requiring that
they come before you to see you understand what it is and
in compliance
with the ethics ordinance but Mario's right with these
should certainly be
included in any any asks of the really the hot and the hot
fund and sponsorship
committee in the future and in terms of the residents we
can certainly draft a
policy like that thank you
motion do we have
we have a motion and a second all signify by raising your
right hand
motion carries unanimously thank you and so that all will
have to come back for
is the public hearing go ahead and call is call the the
item for individual
consider yeah that's a sense we'll go ahead and call the
item for individual
consideration item 2a consider adoption of an ordinance the
city of Denton Texas
authorizing city manager and is designated to execute
advanced funding
agreement
good evening mayor pro tem council members I'm passing
around something
that updates the backup that was provided to you previously
this is an
updated version of the agreement the only thing that has
changed is this
morning we were notified by text dot that the text dot name
on the signing
page had changed the previous person mr. Selman is no
longer there so the only
change in this agreement is who needs to sign it at the
state so I wanted to pass
that out for y'all before I begin the presentation
so I'm Chad Allen deputy city engineer and I'm here to
present about the
Fort Worth Drive utility relocations project it's
associated with the text
dot us 377 roadway widening and specifically I'm going to
ask you to
adopt an ordinance to execute an advanced funding agreement
and the a fa is
between the city of Denton and the state of Texas through
text dot it's regarding
water and wastewater utility improvements associated with
the text dot
us 377 roadway widening project it's going to allow us to
pay text dot to
have their contractor to move our utilities out of the text
dot right of
way and the amount of the advanced funding agreement is six
point eight six
million dollars I'm going to describe that more in in just
a few minutes but
basically we're expected that the city of Denton will be
obligated to pay three
point eight six million dollars and then we're going to
receive additional
regional toll revenue funding in the amount of three
million dollars from net
cog to finalize execution of the a fa so this map shows the
limits of the text
dot project the the text of product starts at the I 35 e
frontage road and
extends to the south to country Club Road or FM 1830 text
odd is going to
widen the existing two-lane roadway to a six lane concrete
roadway with the raised
median and they're going to construct traffic signal
improvements at multiple
intersections they're going to install an underground storm
drain system and
remove the roadside ditches and then they're going to build
concrete
sidewalks along both sides of the road throughout the
project limits before
that happens we have to move our utilities outside the text
dot right of
way and basically we're going to modify our utilities and
relocate them to avoid
any conflicts with the text odd improvements so what we've
done is we've
designed our utility relocations we've hired our
engineering consultant and we
have final plans for our utility relocations and we put
those plans in
along with the text op plans and we're bidding the job text
odd is bidding the
job all as one project they're gonna hire a contractor and
that contractor is
going to relocate our utilities and also perform their road
way work and in order
to pay for that we have to enter into an advanced funding
agreement so that we
can give money to text ot and then they'll pay the
contractor to move our
utilities so back on July 9th I brought a draft version of
the a FA to PB and at
that time the amount of the a FA was based on our
engineering consultants
construction cost estimate and we thought the total was
going to be three
point two million dollars around three point two million
dollars I told that to
be on July 9th and the very next day on July 10th text ot
open the bids there
were nine bidders for the text op project and the low bid
der for the
project was a company called SEMA construction Inc and they
had an overall
low bid of forty three point six two million dollars and
that includes all of
the roadway work and our public utility work so this is a
list of the bidders
SEMA is shown on top there the low bidder the overall low
bidder you can
see right here I've highlighted their low bid of forty
three point six two
million dollars but unfortunately when they open the bid we
immediately looked
at the public utility numbers and their public utility bid
is very high it's six
point one million dollars it's almost three million dollars
more than what we
initially estimated our utility work to be so we looked at
all the other bids and
you can see that some of the other bids for instance bidder
number four had a
bid of three point five million for the public utility work
bidder number nine had a
bid of three point seven million for the public utility
work those numbers are
much closer to our estimates but we are obligated to pay
the six point one
million dollars because text ot has to choose the low bid
der which is SEMA
construction Inc so we opened the bids on July 10th and we
were very concerned
of how high the public utility bids were so we immediately
coordinated with text
ot and thankfully all of our stakeholders agreed that the
public
utility work that the overall low bidder provided for
prices for was very high so
everyone text ot net cog Denton County and those of us at
the city all agree
those numbers for the public utility work and the overall
low bid are
unreasonably high so we all work together to find a
solution and everyone agreed
that net cog would go to the October 2018 RTC meeting the
meeting of the
regional transportation council and they would propose
approval of an additional
three million dollars in regional toll revenue funds to
cover the higher costs
of the public utilities which are unreasonably high so we
're not so this
this number right here six point one two million that's the
public utility bid
from SEMA we have to pay a little bit more than that when
we enter into an AFA
with text ot they ask us to pay an additional 12% it's 2%
for barricades 5%
for mobilization and 5% for contingency so the amount of
the AFA is actually the
SEMA public utility bid of 6.1 plus an additional 12% so it
's this six point
eight six million dollars amount that's the amount of the A
FA and again we
believe we're gonna be obligated to pay the three point
eight six million then
we're going to receive the additional RTR funding from next
net cog in the
amount of three million dollars so this is how it's gonna
work the AFA sets out
the terms and conditions of the payment right now the AFA
says that the city
will make two incremental payments to the state the first
payment we have to
make right after this meeting if City Council approves
execution of the AFA
we're gonna send a check in the amount of three point eight
six million dollars
to text dot then everyone all of our stakeholders agree
that at the October
2018 RTC meeting an additional three million dollars in RTR
funds will be
approved and then we'll take that money it will be given to
the city and we'll
make our final payment to the state on or before February
16th of the three
million dollars so we anticipate that the total amount the
six point eight six
million dollars is all we'll have to pay for the for this
project the only reason
we would have to pay more than that is if during
construction the city of
didn't requested a change order if we ask for the text dot
contractor to do
more work on our behalf we would have to pay for that
otherwise we expect this to
be the total amount we owe for the project so I'm asking
you to adopt an
ordinance to allow the city of Denton to enter into an AFA
with the state of
Texas in the amount of six million eight hundred and sixty
four thousand nine
hundred and seventy nine dollars and ninety eight cents
regarding water and
wastewater utility improvements associated with the Fort
Worth Drive
utility relocation project the US 377 roadway widening
project are we happy to
answer any questions you may have councilmember Riggs we
had a presentation
earlier today for my engineering department about change
orders yes and
so I know that you just specifically said if we request
anything different
but is it possible that things that will come back to us
that are change orders
to make this project more expensive even if it's something
that we're not
requesting like extra bells and whistles because of the
thing that we learned
this morning and and what do we have planned to pay for
that if so so the
thing you heard about this morning was about the FM 2181
project and that was
where we almost requested a large change order based on the
fact that some of our
specifications for various reasons didn't include be
included in the text
dot bid text dot put the entire bid package out there and
those amendments
we were talking about this morning those amendments didn't
get in there so the
text out contractor bid the project without the amendments
so what happened
is we requested it we almost requested a change order hey
we want you to include
these amendments and this is going to be the changes we're
asking you to make
because these are our preferences the contractor came back
with a very high
price over a million dollars so in the end we decided that
that was not
reasonable that we couldn't justify an additional million
dollars and so we did
request it was our request that final change order of
around a hundred
thousand was our request but it was much smaller than we
then our original
preferences would have made it be so that would have that
that example you
heard this morning would have been us asking for a change
order but what I'm
saying is that come on up here Todd that situation won't
happen with the text
dot bid because it's already been bid and all of those
issues have already
been there's always the potential on any project that we
may run into a change
order for unforeseen circumstances but learning from the 21
81 scenario we did
make sure that text I had the correct information here okay
in this current
one okay thank you that's my question thank you
councilmember melting I'm not fully understanding the cash
flows here okay
you can help me out so we thought it was going to be 3.2
million the utility
portion and presumably that's budgeted somewhere so now
after the NCT COG kind
of supplement that'll still leave us with close to 3.9
million so do we know
where the extra 700,000 supposed to come from so we
attributed to a couple of
different things we talked to our engineering consultant
who put together
our cost estimate and since then it's been about a year and
a half since
we've done that cost estimate because the project was
delayed because of
coordination with the railroad so City of Denton I was very
proud of the City of
Denton and how we got it went out there and got our eas
ements and finished our
plans in time for the original text dot deadline but
unfortunately text dot was
delayed by over a year so we were ready it took another
year year and a half
before they could go to construction so prices have escal
ated since then because
of inflation and we specifically talked to our engineering
consultant about a
couple of those things pipe cost definitely increased and
so we think
that's a part of it and then just yes the 18 months of
delay caused an
increase in construction costs that was actually very
interesting but it wasn't
really what I meant to ask the budget I must understand the
short the short fall
will come from either allocated bond funds and water and
sewer or from fund
balance yes and currently just to go with city manager
mentioned currently
the project is funded up to I believe it's five point two
million which is the
original anticipated overall project cost so they're still
close to four
million dollars in that fund balance right now for
construction this stays
well within that range so I apologize I thought you're
asking about
between our estimate so is it coming for us basically just
because it's a change
because it's not it or is it because it's more funding it's
a kind it's a
contract with text dot so it's coming it's coming before
you because you're
contractually agreeing to pay our fair share which is a six
point eight million
dollars what Chad has basically shown you is how the money
will work and I
have to thank you know our partners at cog and Denton
County quite frankly for
for helping us with the RTR money which is a three million
dollar offset to get
this done so they came through but it's this is basically a
contract for
services yeah I just want to tackle that to say thanks to
those entities for
helping us out with those additional funds and also and
thanks to staff for
being on time and within this project and I can tell you
know just in your the
way you're presenting how much you care about keeping costs
down too and I
really appreciate that the public really appreciates that
so you know it's too
bad that that the cost soared so much this was a great you
know great effort
to try to get some some some accountability for that so
thank you
councilmember dot yeah I guess this is really just money to
get get the thing
started so there's a whole lot more money is going to be
spent putting the
roadway in there and I would I would imagine replacing that
bridge is a big
big part of it and that's what you were alluding to with
probably the railroad
closing you know slowing that down and one of the problems
with that bridge is
what I understand is the fire truck can't go under it so
yes that that whole
portion of the project was complicated and working with the
railroad takes time
so yes that delayed the project but everything's been
worked out council
member husband yeah so before I move approve move approval
fun fact I learned
it uh the again at the engineering potluck one of our
employees made mr.
frosty's list as he was clearing right away he's oh that
was pretty awesome to
see our employees name up there for a bit awesome from my
perspective I'm
less than awesome but it's like beware of or something so
it's pretty awesome
but anyway so I move approval watch out for a year and a
half on the side yes
yes it was up there a while we have a motion second second
back council member
armator any further discussion all those in favor signify
by raising your right
hand and motion carries unanimously so now we will move
into the closed session
so we will convene in closed session at 5 o 2 we will
consider the following
items consultation with attorneys under Texas government
code section five five
one point oh seven one and deliberations regarding certain
power public power
utilities competitive matters under Texas government code
section five five
one point oh eight six
welcome back everyone we are going to continue with our
August 14th special
call meeting it is 630 and the next item up on our agenda
is a public hearing hold
a public hearing on a proposed proposal to adopt a tax rate
of sixty two point
oh four seven seven with a maximum allowable rate of sixty
three point seven
eight five six per hundred dollars valuation mr. mayor for
tam city
council Tony point the director finance have a very short
presentation that I'll
go through so if you have any questions be happy to answer
your questions just
wanted to remind everybody that the current proposed tax
rate is sixty two
oh four seven seven it's broken up between maintenance
operations debt
service as you can see up here that does reflect a proposed
one cent increase
from the city calculated effective rate we've had that
discussion about the
state calculated effective rates of the state calculated
effective of which were
required to publish is actually sixty eight five one six
eight cents the roll
back rate as you can see up here is a little bit over
seventy two cents the
maximum rate that we utilize to to do this publication and
also to that was
set as the maximum rate was actually last year's tax rate
of sixty three cents
a little bit over sixty three cents total certified values
for the city was
eleven point three billion dollars that was that represents
about about a nine
point five three percent increase over the prior year if
you include the terse
values it's a nine point seven percent this gives you a
breakout of the current
proposed budget for the general fund on the revenue side a
little bit over
127 million dollars as you can see the majority of that is
coming from
adverlorem taxes 36 percent followed closely by sales taxes
at at thirty two
and a half percent the current proposed expenditures by
category 129 million
dollars the majority of that as you can see in the general
fund is 67 percent is
where the majority of those expenses are in the general
fund that's personnel
expenditures by function this is actually by department by
City Department
129 liberal hundred twenty nine million the largest share
of course police and
then followed by a fire so public safety certainly makes up
a little bit over 48
percent of the general fund budget followed by the parks
department at eight
three percent eight point three percent and libraries at
four point six percent
just as a reminder we'd had some discussions about some of
the capital
project funding the one cent increase that that you've you
've directed us and
are considering includes funding of capital projects these
projects include
a replacement of the radio system the city radio system
design of fire
station 8 service center rehabilitation some small
transportation projects our
match for the Mayhill Bridge at DCTA some money to complete
the police fire
range was actually part of the 2014 bomb program also funds
to to reconstruct
some airport roads and then finally the lion's share is the
reconstruction
dollars to to complete the 2012 and 14 street segments last
week you approved a
notice of intent we've already published that are required
to publish that for
two weeks so there's a 30-day wait period the intent is to
come back to you on
September 11th for consideration of the actual bond
ordinance that would
authorizes to conduct that sale of certificates of
obligation so that will
be coming back to you pending any different direction from
the council
between now and then the total city proposed budget for
fiscal year 18 19
I was a little bit over 1.1 billion dollars certainly the
general fund the
piece that I just went through is 10.9 percent of that the
electric fund makes
up a little bit over 17 percent you'll see all the other
funds listed here I
just want to point out that a large portion of our city
budget is related to
our capital program new funding makes up 9.2 percent and
already available
dollars that were required to reappropriate on an annual
basis is a
little bit over 33 percent of the total budget per council
members requests we
did break out down here in the notes what the other funds
are comprising
next step in this process is that the council will consider
well they you
considered already and voted on a maximum tax rate on on
August 2nd today
is the first public hearing on the tax rate proposed tax
rate we'll have a
second public hearing on a tax rate on September 11th there
will also be a
public hearing on the budget on September 11 we'll continue
to have
ongoing discussions with you at every work session on the
budget the next
opportunity will be on September 21st and then finally
budget adoption is
currently scheduled for September 18th that concludes my
presentation if you
have any questions be happy to answer your questions I'm
gonna go ahead and
open the public hearing and then we can any questions from
council on this item
another question just a comment I'd like to express
appreciation to our city
manager for spending some quality time with me
investigating just what
variations we might have conceivably pursued for instance
if we were gunning
solely for the effective rate I'm the the of the three
options of doing what
we're doing which allows us to do the sorely needed road
work which allows us
to fill in the very much needed police and fire augments
the inspectors that
versus not having any of those extra items you know I think
where we are is
the right place it's a small it is a small tax increase but
it's less than
what people will actually be saving in this cycle in
utilities so I think as a
balance of keeping the citizen whole and meeting urgent
needs with it with great
efforts at staying economical in each department I think
you know we're in a
very good place and I you know encourage the public to
support this any other
questions or comments then since we are this is a public
hearing so anyone
wishing to speak may step forward to the podium anyone
wishing to speak I see no
one here so I'm going to assume that we don't have anyone
wishing to and go
ahead and close our public hearing I believe there's no
action to be taken at
this time I'm correct okay then we will move on to our next
agenda item number
four concluding items any councilmember Briggs I just want
to make sure asked
that our our parks be ordinance is going to come back to us
this budget cycle yes
that I didn't miss that and I'll defer to you Tony or Brian
in terms of the
date that's coming back
councilmember we're shooting for the 21st but I think
realistically it'll be
probably the August 28th when we'll bring that back to you
and then just last
back to school tomorrow for everyone I just want to wish
the teachers and
students a great year ahead councilmember hasn't thank you
masterful job keeping us on a straight narrow day so we
appreciate you stepping
up in that regard but mr. city manager I would ask that
staff and it could be an
email to me I'm just I'd like to look at frame Street
behind the police station
and see if there's a way to make that a dead end without
affecting the neighbors
behind us yeah I just think there's a way kind of
positioning to so that our
office come out of the back and there's there's not you
know people we have we
actually have a committee researching it now we'll get you
an update in a Friday
report okay yeah I just I don't know what those barriers
look like with the
property lines look like but okay I was I was curious about
so that's good to
know that's in the works and then along the back to school
route I mean I think
for those that did not make it to the back to school eat
backpack event I mean
there's so many people I could not imagine you know if a
portion of that
was at MLK I mean just UNT gateway wasn't big enough so I
don't know what
the next steps are and I'm sure there's detractors from
that event but I went
twice just to kind of see the beginning middle and I just I
welcome those
conversations but I mean it's like I felt like we needed a
bigger boat even
then you know and that's that's a big complex so but it was
run very well and
so whoever kind of contributed participated in that I
appreciate that
and think it did a lot of good
yeah this is just in light of the earlier discussion about
parks projects
today I would love to see and some some upcoming staff
report and in answer to
the question of whether our in-house designer Glen could be
put to use to
help out if he has any interest in helping with design work
with the the
committee on shelter solutions and the the the other
committee looking at I'm
not sure if a committee has been formed yet but work group
looking at at other
transitional options and kind of to to what extent our and
you know maybe if his
creativity could be used to and experience in parks to
think of ways in
which our parks could could help to serve our low-income
residents low-income
kids you know we've got this term that was new to me until
a little while ago
rogue play which you know I think when most of us were kids
that that was what
playing at a park was you know pick up game of basketball
the kind of things
you do for free when and so I would like to you know as we
do all these kind of
these fancy proposals for things things in parks to see
what creative options we
could have to to kind of to scale back and look at how we
can serve our our
lowest income residents and low-income kids for free that's
all thank you I
just have a couple of announcements I want to remind
everybody that the North
Texas fair and rodeo starts this Friday a great lineup on
music over the next
week and a half so be sure and check the schedule and show
up when you can and
also we're all feeling very blessed for the rain we've had
for the last few days
wonderful totals would be sure and walk through yards dump
out buckets dump out
the little the tray underneath your potted plants and etc
so we can keep the
mosquito population down so and that's all I've got anyone
else and I guess we
will adjourn at 643