Aug 28, 2018 City Council on 2018-08-28 12:00 PM

August 28th 2018 it is 1202 p.m. Moving on to our agenda we 've got the first agenda item is citizen comments on consent agenda items we have two cards but I think there's some we're gonna take that out of order we're gonna move the request for clarifications first because I think that's gonna affect the the citizen comments on the agenda item. Councilmember Ryan go ahead. I like full consent agenda item B. All right and we'll just go ahead any any other council members have clarification on consent agenda items? Councilmember Reed? Mine was B. B okay anybody else? Okay yes councilmember Amato we're on the request for clarification of agenda items? Okay yes it's B. Yes yes we did. Okay I'm seeing the light is on that my mic is not on but my green light on my mic is on. Oh it's her mic okay. Oh sorry there we go. Agenda item B. Yeah all right okay so any other requests for clarification on agenda items for today? All right so we'll circle back around to citizen comments on consent agenda items. Mr. Gold you had filled out two blue cards one for regular session one for this agenda item wait for the regular session when we pull it. Okay thank you sir. Okay we'll move on through our work session reports now. Agenda item 3A. Receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding the FY 2018-19 Denton Economic Development Partnership Agreement between the City of Dent Chamber of Commerce. Good afternoon mayor and council members I'm Caroline Booth director of economic development and I'm going to be presenting a work session item to you regarding the upcoming fiscal years draft contract between the City of Denton and the Chamber of Commerce for an economic development program. To begin with some brief background 1986 was the first year of an economic development partnership between the city and the chamber and the city does provide funds for the administration and operations of the chambers office of economic development and you can see listed there some of the expenses that the city funds cover for the chamber. This year as in the prior year the chamber has requested $238,000 in funding for the upcoming fiscal year approximately $48,000 each will come from the general fund the electric water wastewater and solid waste administration funds to add up to that particular amount requested. Some of you will recall that last year about this time the council had some robust discussions regarding changes to the agreement with the chamber and staff was directed at that time to move forward with the proposed agreement that was significantly different from prior years and that it did include specific goals deliverables and metrics along with some enhanced clauses about financial reporting insurance requirements and indemnity and this allowed for increased transparency and accountability. To date in this current fiscal year the chamber has met or exceeded all of the terms set forth in the agreement and as you had a chance to look over in your backup the fiscal year 18-19 draft agreement does follow the same format as the current year's contract but includes a few changes including the addition of shared strategic initiatives that are also included in the City of Denton strategic plan and are now included in this agreement, revision of the goals that are related to the website and social media marketing metrics, addition of a new goal for making new contacts at marketing events and the reporting of those new contacts. We also have an increase in the number of site visits from target industry companies and the addition of a duty to engage Denton's business community in economic development efforts through the Denton economic development partnership investor program and the goals associated with that in the agreement. Chamber staff and board leadership did review the agreement and did not request any changes to the draft. So the options that we're asking for a direction on today are renewing the agreement as presented by staff, renewing the agreement with additional changes or non renewal of the agreement. The staff recommendation is to renew the agreement as presented by staff and with that I will be happy to answer questions. Questions? Yes. Councilmember Griggs and Councilmember R itchie. Oh and may I also add, I'm sorry before you start, that Adam Gavoresky is here the vice president for economic development from the chamber if you have any questions to direct to him. So on the background it says a first year between the in the partnership was 1986 and so was that first year is that when the amount started coming out of our general fund, electric fund or water or was that at a separate day? I think that was at a later date. This was this was more of an agreement to partner but there wasn't a financial arrangement at that time. Do you know when the financial arrangement started? I can find out for you but I don't know it off the top of my head. Okay and I guess this my next question is for the city manager. A little over 47,000 close to 48,000 from the different funds. Besides the general fund is that built into the utility rates? Is that our how how does that work? I guess by definition it would be. Any any payments from those funds obviously are built into any rate that we collect so we first build the fund balances and then any budget expectations. Thank you. Yeah two questions. I guess I'll start with the one about the utilities rates. What was the do you know what the rationale was behind funding it through combined general funding and utility rates as opposed to just general funding? I'm sorry not rates revenue as opposed to just general funding so it wouldn't impact ratepayers? I can't tell you that I know the rationale for that but the discussions that we had about it this year centered around sharing the expense across the different funds but it has been set up that way for a number of years and and I can try to find that out to you for you the specific number of years but it has been divided. Yes yeah because I noticed that it wasn't one of the redlined items but I just thought I would ask about that. Yeah that's something that I would be curious to about in a email or staff report you know why not general funds. I realize the impact to rates and you know is low but just to as far as kind of the movement towards more central ization that would be good to know and then my other question also a finance question number three in the contract and again this is in the original this is from the original contract this is not any one of the changes under support services and funding it says the balance of this is the very last sentence in that item number three the balance of any unused city funds will be returned to the city at the end of the fiscal year and I was just curious how often is it that that happens does it usually happen does it ever happen that there's money left over that gets returned. At the end of the year if there's money left over what's been done for the last four or five years is that we have a discussion about if there are projects like changes to the website or other mutually beneficial projects that fall within the scope of the chamber's work if those things are beneficial to spend that money on instead of refunding it back to the city so that's the way that it's been handled in the past but we do have that discussion at the end of every year. Okay so sometimes it does happen that okay thanks and then after those questions I had two comments but I don't know whether it be preferable to take questions from others. I did want to address the first question about why was there some monies in the general fund and the other utilities how it was split the logic behind that has been that all economic development would impact revenues for all the utilities as well as tax revenues and that was the reason for sharing some of the burden across all of the funds that at least in the past how it's been approached. Okay so you're saying that so the rationale just to make sure I understand so the rationale is that the economic development in general is good for the utilities because businesses. In other words if a new business were to come into the city it could generate electricity that needs DME would get additional revenues from those customers and then that would generate more revenues for the utilities. Okay that's interesting so I guess I don't need that in writing then. Councilmember Melter anybody? Okay first I'd like to praise the addition of the strategic initiatives to the contract just so that others can hear. The focus is clearly on creating higher paying jobs in Dent on so that we'll at least be tracking the goals of increasing the percentage of jobs paying $75,000 or more from 10 to 14 percent by 2021 and increasing the percentage of jobs paying $25,000 or more from 68 to 71 percent by 2021 and there are some other measures as well. Now presumably all the kind of activity measurements that are in here about you know number of contacts and site visits and so on are meant to ultimately drive those strategic results. Fair to say and then I you know I have a couple of questions I know you know they're coming. Is there a way to quantify the benefit of those those specific moves in number of higher paying jobs whether in terms of just economic value to Dent on maybe also the tax value to Denton so that we could at least on a kind of theoretical basis compare that outcome to what we're you know what we're investing through these contracts. So that would be my first question is there a way to you know in a memo to council would be fine but is there is there a way to do that to kind of model the benefit of that increase in higher paying jobs ? So something that we could definitely look into is companies that have located here the types of jobs that have come with those companies we could use the economic multiplier that's associated with those jobs about how much of that how much of their income is recirculated within the community so on and so forth. We can absolutely do that and as far as the revenue that's generated by the same projects for ad valorem or sales tax we also have that information and we can we can choose the projects in which the chamber obviously for these purposes in which the chamber had a direct participation in recruitment so we can provide that report to you in the future. I think that would be worthwhile to just say you know if we achieve these goals we'll be very happy to have spent this money. Now you know this next part is I think a little thornier but it might be near least we're thinking about is there a way that we could model at least in theory how these activities we're asking the chamber to do could over a long period of time result in the outcomes we're hoping to get. In other words how many visits assuming a certain close rate or you know whatever the success measure is for each of these activities you know do we have an idea that makes sense of how much activity could ultimately result in the outcomes that we want not in a given year obviously wouldn't happen in a truly deterministic way you know it's not a factory of inputs and outputs but but you know is it at least plausibly modelable because otherwise you know we might say well we asked them to do these activities they did them we got these results I don't know if they have any relationship to each other you know and what if we're not doing enough what if to really achieve these outcomes you know at least by our own judgment of close rates and so on you know how much activity do we need to be doing to achieve these goals so can you define define a question in all that? I think so yeah yes a couple of comments about that I appreciate your acknowledgement of the fact that this is not a factory with inputs and outputs and economic development by its nature is not the same thing as making widgets where we're trying to grow a community in a healthy way. Close rates that's an interesting concept that you brought up and and I appreciate it it made me think about the relationship of what we're asking the chamber to do versus what we would be asking a salesperson who's selling widgets to do. I think close rate is very applicable in a sales situation it's a little bit more difficult to apply directly here though I get what you're getting after you know we want to know how many times they have to visit any companies to get one to locate here I see where you're going. This is not typically a model that 's used in economic development so I think my best answer to your question right now is we can check into some people who might be able to develop something like that for us and you know the associated costs with it and I'd be happy to work on that at the council's direction that's really the best answer I can give you we don't have that kind of model that we can just start plugging these numbers into at this time though I appreciate the thought and like where you're going with it. I appreciate willingness to look at it I guess you know the question I'd sort of leave with rhetorically is you know if we don't have some kind of idea of how we generate success how will we ever know if we're doing enough? Thank you very much. Yeah so those were my questions from before and then I had a couple comments that one of them was very much along the lines of what Councilmember Meltzer was just saying so I will just I will second that and I will also add that that I too am really pleased with the the advances and kind of increased metrics and accountability there are in place from with the economic development partnership I know you've worked really hard on that and I want to thank the chamber too for you know your contributions and it's in that partnership and working together so I'm really really pleased with that and you know any more kind of future future looking forms of measurement to track maybe not because as you were saying before you know it's not making widgets so you you can't necessarily tell even say a year out you know has this has this incentive package brought in the results we wanted but five years out ten years out you know I'm just picking those numbers at random so kind of having more and I know you've done so much already which is why I've kind of began with the praise but you know more of the same and you know better you know than I do what what kinds of instruments you would use to measure that but to see how we 're bringing in new jobs and just to trace that that I think would be something that that all parties involved and the public would really want to see and again with the understanding that I'm not saying one year from now or one year from an agreement anyway and the other my other comment just something that I had had brought up before the last time economic development partnership was discussed is the has to do with the the composition of the economic development partnership board there are I believe two slots on there for top 20 taxpayers and you know as I had stated before I really don 't like that requirement I'm not against people who happen to be among the top 20 taxpayers being on there I'm not saying they should be excluded but I don't like the message that that sends to the taxpayers at large for whom paying taxes whether you're poor rich or anywhere in the middle for everybody it it takes a lot of work to do that and so I think that the top 20 taxpayers have lots of privileges and seats at the table already and I don't see the point in going out of our way to to acknowledge that that's some sort of special status now that said I realize the top 20 taxpayers contribute a lot to our economy and I'm I'm grateful for that but so I would prefer just changing it to at large position at large position or you know business owners in general that way the possibility would be open to having a new new small business owner in in that slot or you could still put a top 20 taxpayer in there but anyway that's that's something I've mentioned before that is important to me so thank you all for listening any other questions comments so back to the utility rates I know that you're looking for direction here my direction now is to to go ahead as presented but when this comes back if in that in that staff memo about the rates I would like to see some data or metrics that justify charging our rate payers adding that into their utility rate for this and maybe if if there's not anything there just having this come straight from our general fund because for me that makes more sense I can see where if a company comes in and they do pay high utility rates then that would be part of that but I would like to see some of those included when that did happen okay yeah thank you yeah comments I got a couple emails well answer that I will respond to the last comment first one example I can think of right off the bat is WENCO distribution WENCO distribution came in and built and I believe that was a collaboration of bringing them together through the city of Denton in the chamber as far as contacts and who's bringing who to the table I mean I don't want to get into this idea of who's doing what work and who's doing more and I mean it really is a team effort but WENCO was able to complete all of the infrastructure for Western Center Boulevard of course we're reimbursing it through a 380 and the TIF but and we also have that economic development I don't know what you call them but there's two funds one in wastewater and one in water I believe where they're available for you know large infrastructure projects so I mean I certainly want to see that data I don't have a real big problem with it being split out only because I think the rationale is is applicable but if it were to come all out of the general fund I don't have really any heartburn about that either but I've seen large companies come in who who do participate and so that's just a response to that no sure go ahead well yeah and just to have that list you have that data this is what was brought in and this is why it's you know that's good to see thank you and I have a question on the whereas in the contract let me put back up on the jobs let's see if we can identify which is a behavior what we call the disk what's that called behavior so we can all tell who's wanting the data and so on on that whereas where what's the source of the number of jobs that we have in those income brackets where does that come from in general it's a software program called jobs EQ that's our demographic software that we use it's it's very standard across the industry to pull demographic and job and wage information is that okay but is that tied back to some kind of census data or I mean how does that data get accumulated how do we know they use primarily federal sourced data to do that and it's updated quarterly all right the data so jobs could come in here at 25,000 or more or 75,000 or more without really the city or the chamber being involved in it I mean not not that involved at all if any I mean right these jobs are this is an economic indicator method and when we determine our performance measures we always have to think about what kind of performance they are and so this is an indicator and while we can take steps on things that are within our control like heavily recruiting jobs that are higher skilled higher wage that provide either a living wage or provide a significantly higher wage like the $75,000 or above ultimately a lot of what goes into that indicator is not affected by our actions but we have to consider how we can pull the data and we have to then acknowledge that we can do things within our control to try to move the needle forward but that some of that action a lot of it that action is gonna happen outside of our control so then my question becomes this being aware as in the con which isn't a term of the contract it's not a condition of the contract it's sort of a stated goal for this contract but which is fine but I would think that the city outside of the chamber our goal is to do that and and more this is just saying hey let's just monitor it which you can tell us probably tomorrow you can go back five years use this software program and say how many increase from this year to this year this year to this year this year to this year okay and if I can just make sure to clarify when I say this is these these strategic initiatives are shared it's because these are the strategic initiatives that are included for economic development as part of the strategic plan for the city and this was a discussion that we had with the chamber how can we demonstrate more alignment of purpose towards our strategic initiatives and we decided that the inclusion of these shared initiatives would be beneficial to keep us focused down the road on what we're trying and I don't have an opposition to that I'm just wanting to flush out that some of that is beyond the control of the city economic development and the chamber and also when we were when Councilmember Meltzer you were talking about some type of metrics to see how are we doing and should we do be be doing more or less on its face but I don't disagree with that I think when you apply the specific facts of this kind of endeavor to me we can certainly strive to do that to find that data point but because there's so many factors outside of the control of the chamber and out in fact the city chamber could bring somebody to the city and the city could say we don't necessarily want to provide you what what you're asking for and they don't come which then you know how do you take that because the chamber did perform what they were supposed to do so yeah I mean trying to find some additional metrics is good I think if we understand that that kind of finite measurement scientific measurement is difficult to do only because the only way you really find out and I still don't even think it's true you either increase it a lot to see if you get a bump or you take it away to see if you have a big decrease well those those are tough ways to experiment with things that I think have been working but I mean that's so I don't have an issue with with the whereas and the discussion here I think the partnership has worked well I think I think it they're meeting their metrics last year was was a good sign us meeting our metrics because I said last year I think if the city is going to ask the chamber to perform at a certain level the city's economic development department should perform at a commensurate level based upon whatever tasks that we've been given contractually I look forward to sharing that information with you after the end of the year after what after the end of the fiscal year okay good good that's that you're you sound excited about that so it's good news right fantastic so am I hearing the consensus is to move forward with the contract as presented okay right yep thank you and we'll get that additional data out to you okay agenda item B is receive report hold a discussion and give staff direction for the 2018 city manager's proposed budget I guess this is a placeholder do you have additional presentation mayor City Council Tony point to director finance we actually have embedded within the budget memo three separate presentations ones related to park fees ones related to the solid waste fees and then electric fees you know we'll be happy to go through those with you but before we go there what I wanted to do was there was a number of questions that the council had had over the last several weeks we've provided a response to you within the memo certainly if there's questions on any of those specific items we'll be happy to discuss those now we can go ahead and and move forward with the presentation on the park fees whatever the council's pleasure might be anybody have any questions on the questions I have one anybody have questions on the questions the memorandum that questions on yes ma'am yes I have is this on is this outside of the the fee structure discussion council member well I don't it's on the utility fee we're gonna have that as a separate discussion yes I think so I think we're gonna present separate park fee analysis utility analysis and what was the other one correct there is a presentation on on park fees on on electric fees and also on solid waste fees I don't have a separate presentation on the miscellaneous rate ordinance so I'll be happy to answer those now we can wait till the end whatever whatever your pleasure might be okay that's a sort of a fee as well I mean it's the miscellaneous rate ordinance but correct it was there was some questions related to the interest charge penalty and what have you let me get let me mine's just related to question one in the memor andum let me get that out real quick so that so that's it's sort of a different animal than just talking about fees and things downtown tours yeah and I'm not sure if this is in response to my request which it's okay if it is or isn't but I know that in the TIF project financing report that was originally done back in 2011 it breaks out the the TIF values into three categories catalyst projects which I'm gonna say are new construction but I don't know about that new development which could be new construction that's not a catalyst project or and or I believe could be classified in what counts of mayor pro tem said last time was major remodels of existing buildings that you know dramatically increase its value and then just the increase in the value of existing properties so in the in the report it shows I think new construction I think those values are the new construction values the new value is just yeah so if we're able to and if it's too much if you can't do it because we're not keeping records over like that it's no big deal but if there's a way to look at which properties that were major remodels which would probably come in under the change in existing value of properties correct and I know you've got the list of the projects the major ones right the major ones yes and you know I mean you're talking five thousand or ten thousand you know I think you sort of look know what I'm looking for just if even with that list if there's just a way you can maybe add the value okay next to that list that'd be great okay we could do that yep okay any other questions besides fees and all that because the next question is the interest rate and I think somebody had a question on that one that miscellaneous is that right well mine is number four and it says miscellaneous rate ordinance so yeah it's the it's the late payment fee options the $20 yes yes ma'am so on may I oh sure on the list we are the only one with a hard dollar amount and I think councilmember Alma pointed that out last time and the rest of them are our percentages correct and these are all municipally owned utilities right yes correct so I would I would just like to to point out that I would prefer that we go to a percentage as well okay I don't know what that percentage would be just that it is in some form of instead of a hard dollar amount it was that your yes yeah and and I would like as I stated before I would prefer a percentage as well and I would like it to be determined in terms of competition I'll put that in quotes with with co-serve which is the other provider in town most everybody's on DME but some people have co-served and people are always comparing you know how much they're paying on a bill and so I definitely favor the the percentage I think it would be be better for our utility because it also be you know not because that's a pretty small late fee for businesses to pay as well so it and and it would be better for our residents or ordinary residents because for the most part you know unless your bill is I don't know you know five something I forget I did the calculation before but it would be really high to be that I believe it's 20% is what co-serve I'm sorry for it to be a $20 for the $ 20 to equal yeah you mentioned it was 5% for co-serve 5% sorry yeah dollars it'd be the $20 20 yeah that's what sorry yep looking looking for my notes and my my calculation as I was talking yeah so to me I mean it just it makes math mathematical sense and it was really helpful I appreciate the data you provided you know to see that it's not just co-serve that other utilities do that too okay anybody else come want to comment on that particular issue okay yes so my question mayor is so is the council providing his direction to make that change the the current ordinance calls for a $20 fee penalty fee if we're gonna change that to the percentage what percentage would that be if the council is wanting to move in that direction right what page is that I saw it when I was reading it what page no I'm talking about the the the question is number four but I'm talking about the the backup information in the actual rate ordinance yeah and the summary of who's charging what it's it's right there with the question it's what okay when I opened it up saw 200 something pages so here mayor up here you see that here's a list of cities and the percentages that that they charge so again these are all municipal utilities won't have any private utilities on here so you know if you'd like I can go to the to the rate ordinance if you'd like to see that there no this is what we're this is what we're talking about right correct councilmember husband what is our thank you what is our average bill over the years 200 ish I think right probably on the residential side yes I guess I would just make the observation that you have the goal in making this change was to reduce delinquencies and it appears to have worked so you know I see that others do percentage and that you know that's interesting although I don't we don't know released at this moment we don't know what their delinquency rates are and if we're doing better or worse than them I mean we you know we may be on to the thing that they should be copying unless I knew you know what the impact was of their policies correct and as a reminder the council back in 2010 there was a study I mean in that study the recommendation was not necessarily to change how the fee was was calculated the more that any had to be increased from $10 to $20 in response to to the number of delinquencies and it seems to have you know cut our del inquencies not quite in half and I also you know have that concern that you know we're hitting people of limited means at if we go to percentage you know to the greatest amount when their bills are the highest you know which I think could be kind of kind of severe in summer so I'm not in favor of that yeah so just to respond to Councilmember Meltzer's comment you know think about it so the 20 the $20 right versus 5% which is the best the lowest percentages best for the for the consumer here among these other cities and it's also what co-serve charges right so what would $20 you know how big would your bill have to be for 5% of it to be $20 I take your point that you might want the amount to be more in line with the dollar amount so if the average is $200 and if we were at a 5% rate you know that so that would be a $10 charge so that's what we used to be yeah no I take your point I'm sorry I wasn't recognized no no you're fine yeah I guess I just take the I just take the data that it appears to have worked well and then that was the other thing I want to if I may respond to continue I think that's a there's that's a kind of cause-and-effect fallacy behind that because there in 2010 there were a number of changes being made including the credit-based deposits right that were also determined to have that effect so we don't know that delinquencies were down because there was a higher rate the actually the credit-based deposits and I don't know this for a fact I'm just saying if you want to look at cause and effect because they have a higher impact on the kind of people who were the kind of accounts who were responsible for the uncollected debt that I think would be a more likely you know culprit of the cause so I don't I don't quite see cause and effect well because because it's used to what well not the yeah not the initial deposit at the beginning but it's used I'm looking at Tiffany she's expert on that but it's it's used for in in certain kinds of situations you know Tiffany could explain better when people are if you're habitually late you'll get another one or two deposits added on so I have a question on data go figure this number as far as delinquent accounts is because I if I'm not mistaken the deposit information we typically have used as a measurement for that our bad debt how much bad debt would do we have before a deposit kind of reformation or change and then how much bad debt dude did we have after those changes were implemented I don't know if the the measuring criteria was per se delin quent accounts it was more the bad day am I remembering that wrong or is that that is correct mayor and and the council may recall that back in January there was some changes that were recommended and adopted by the council to the to the collect the pre-dine collection policy and we did commit to the council to come back a year from adopt from that adoption to give you a recap on where things kind of stood with those changes that were made okay Councilmember Briggs did you have a comment well I was just gonna ask Tiffany to come up here and help us explain because there are a few council members that that weren't here for the presentation before and just how my question is if there's a late fee does that mean that there is a deposit added on or if they pay a deposit up front and then they're charged a late fee does that come out of the deposit that they had earlier if you could just explain that process because generally from what I understand if you pay your bill late you're not just getting a late fee you're getting other charges as well thank you so Tiffany Thompson customer service manager the late fee and the deposits are two two separate fees that we collect and the late fee only happens if the payment of the bill is not received by the due date and you have a little bit of a grace period with that so the late fee and what we're deeming delinquent accounts with this information is those accounts that incurred a late fee with that so the deposit is aside from all of this and so the late fees will hit and after a customer may get a certain number of late fees there's that internal credit rating that we have if they continue that behavior having trouble paying the bill then a deposit may be associated with the account and those are some of the things that we had talked through and the last several months with that and going back to what Tony said on the interest charge we did have internal points associated if a customer incurred an interest charge and we removed any points associated with that so that doesn't create an additional deposit on the account if they have an interest charge put on there does that answer the question anybody I'm gonna recognize councilmember Malter but I want to get people who haven't spoken a chance councilmember Ryan well I think I tend to lean towards the $20 as opposed to go under percentage because as councilmember Meltzer pointed out if we have an average of 200 that might be a hundred dollar bill in the winter and it might be a four hundred dollar for a couple of the summer months that the consistency of a flat rate which is generally what most companies will charge a flat rate late fee makes more sense as opposed to a variable that someone who's already late in a larger amount is now going to have to pay more than what they would have if it was the smaller amount so in other words if during the winter time you're late and you get a late fee of five dollars you get to summertime you're like well I don't know if I can I don't have the right amount of money in the account so I'm gonna skip this because it's only five dollars well now you get hit with thirty dollars because it's that variable rate that the twenty dollar set fee seems like a better way of handling the business yes customer yeah I'll just say and I'll just respond to that that you know five that five percent of for just to use your example five percent of four hundred dollars is what 20 bucks yeah so exactly that's so in other words even in the example you give you're not going above what we currently charge and most of the time most residents would be paying less so I think that most residents if given the choice would you want to pay over the course of a year a big amount or a smaller amount of course nobody wants to be late but you know if you're gonna be late and and people are late for you know silly reasons you know the husband thinks they're you know one spouse thinks the other one does it has paid it whatever anyway I wanted to ask while you're up here Tiffany so do commercial accounts as well as residential accounts pay the $20 yes man really yeah so and see for me and for me that's the that's the key there you know if I were a big business I'd want that $20 late fee too because that's that's nothing um if you're if you've got a five thousand ten thousand you know a dollar a month twenty thousand whatever bill then $20 you know if for whatever reason you 're gonna be late $400 that's that's nothing drop in the bucket so I see why big businesses want it but for our hardest hit customers who you know many of whom are struggling to keep keep the power on because of the high high cost of living stagnant wages all the other fees that they're paying that could make a big difference it could also make a big difference I think in terms of DME's public relations reputation among the public you know imagine and I'm gonna be so this is where I say what I would like the percentage to be I would like it to be five percent to match co-serve or even ideally four percent I mean what if you know imagine if if debt and utilities could do a press release saying hooray we've got the lowest percentage for delinquencies out of all these cities and out of co-serve and the big businesses would be paying more so it would lead to not that we want to use you know delinquent charges as a moneymaker but you know would hold them more accountable and then if someone's late we're not losing for it so anyway I'm really I think it makes mathematical sense again like I said if I was a big business I'd rather pay that $20 but the it's our residents who we're elected to represent. -Councilman Ryan. -Thank you Mayor. Well and I would say that the best way to avoid people from having to pay late is we get them on the prepay system or an auto-pay system and this encourages residents and businesses to move over that I mean I'm set up on auto-pay I don't get anything in the mail I don't you know they just draft what my bill is every month and you know I see it when we balance the checkbook but and so if the goal is to lower the number of delinquencies encouraging people to move on one of these on one of these other programs is the better route to do it and by having as you might think a stiffer penalty for lower having a set penalty to say look you can always avoid this again I go back to if they're thinking I can always avoid a 5% and they're doing this in the wintertime 5% is not what their summertime bills going to be as well so the consistency of knowing what your extra cost would be if you don't go to a system where you can completely avoid late penalties is is a better way to get people to understand what's going on okay so for clarification so commercial account has a bill of $3,000 and they're late mm-hmm they pay 20 bucks yes sir resident has a bill of 150 bucks 200 bucks is the average about 250 about 250 is the average they pay $20 is are the commercial delinquencies included in these numbers that the total delinquency yes and 88% of the accounts that pay later resi 20 residential 12% is commercial just for some additional data and one other thing I would note in 2010 when our late fee was $10 about 15.2% of our customer base was paying late and now with it being $20 it's down to 8.2% with a higher customer base as well so just some additional data for you I was gonna say because I mean the numbers are not only down but they've been going down as our as the number of people on the system meters is going up correct all right so yes councilmember Duff you know I think I would prefer to stick with a $20 you know but for a commercial it would make sense to me to go to possibly a percentage on those and you know business got a $3,000 a month you know you put a 5% on that and they're gonna they're not gonna be late so yes come from the military just want to register agreement I think you know that's my bar mentors that is the service by putting out the disparity between commercial and residential I think there are two different issues but I agree that you know addressing the disparity along the lines that councilmember Duff just suggested makes sense to me too so so let's break this down into two couple of either clarification of direction or direction for the $20 to be applied either to just residential or across the board of commercial and residential what who's I'm indifferent I'll just say before I do that on commercial I'd like to see the data I'd like to see you know how many commercial accounts are delinquent what's the average bill just to get a an idea of that data because I mean that's that's a reasonable observation and I think the data would help us make a decision that's more arbitrary that's not as arbitrary as just picking a percentage to apply to that if we're going to use a percentage I'd like it to be based on some type of at least observation of the data so I'm hearing anybody have a problem with looking at the data on commercial you all want to do that okay all right yes councilmember no yeah I think that's that's fair I do I mean I think that the goal here is it is to be punitive it is not to be to make it easy and I guess that's I mean I don't know how I'll just share for my and when I talked to the city manager about the the reconnections and the speed at which that that's done I mean that that to me is more impactful you know and I'm just telling you from someone that's utilized the services a number of times and someone that's ran outside you know I mean the process for those that don't know is all of a sudden things go dark and then you go check the refrigerator because that's a clear indicator and then you run out front you say hey no no leave it on and they're like no I can't I got to keep going and so just from firsthand experience from utilizing the service that was addressed and that's that's the key point then John Ryan makes a good point it's the consistency right it's I've got to accumulate this number of funds to then get back up and running versus that vacillating which then becomes more more complex than those that may have not have utilized a service understand and so that's why I think I'm comfortable with the $20 and because mayor we've this came up before it's back before us and there's no new data to support a random arbitrary percentage if I'm going to put forth a percentage I need to then provide data or information or have count meetings outside with staff to build up that number and support that number and I've not seen anything to to that effect to to consider so based on my own personal experiences and understanding of those that would maybe similar situated that's how I get there the commercial thing I I think that it is punitive right already I mean I think the numbers don't line up but the fact of the matter is if you're in a business and a customer comes in and your lights are off that then is all the motivation you need versus a household again where you just go to someone's house Elsa's house until they turn them back on that's firsthand experience so so what I'm hearing you say is you're okay with the $20 yes for now and the brain and bring back the data on the commercial yes and specifically with the commercial data I want to see is it it really the target is delinquent so I want to understand what commercial accounts absconded without paying their $20 so they didn't pay the $20 and they left right so they left us holding the bag as far as you they closed up they have an extent they have a leftover bill and we've tacked $20 on to that and it's remained uncollected that's what I want to see because I would I would hazard against the commercial accounts they may accumulate the same fee but it all gets paid because I mean they have to stay in business and so there I want to understand that number best but that's the data would be most helpful so what I'm hearing at least from a consensus is to keep the status quo of $20 with the caveat that asking staff to bring back data on the commercial delinquencies of what Councilmember Hussbett has pointed out also what I had mentioned as far as how many are delin quent what's the average bill are there ones that are more delinquent more often than others I mean are there just some that are always delinquent are always late so that then we can make a little bit better more informed policy decision I'm moving forward on the Councilmember Briggs yeah I'm okay with that and also with the commercial because I assume that in that category we're talking about small businesses as well yes so the average bill may be ske wed because you'll have an industrial and then a mom and pop so I would like if possible to separate that data out okay so that it's not skewed because you have you know somebody what's your highest and lowest yeah in between just to get better Councilmember Meltzer yeah I guess amplifying the same point like yeah I think you're looking for like buckets of bill ranges within commercial like what's the delinquency among accounts that are in this kind of dollar range versus the next versus the next maybe it's quartiles or quintiles or yeah y'all have direction on this one at least in particular okay fantastic all right so you said we go ahead sorry yes yes oh no yeah we still got three presentations to go yeah we we haven't even scratched the surface so no we got we got plenty of time to rock and roll on this one and mayor we'll plan to bring that information back to you at this September 11th meeting okay the work session and so it's one o'clock so we're probably get through one of the one of the presentations on the fees if there's no questions and so we'll be taking a break about 15 to 20 minutes all right any other questions before we start the fee fee structure presentations so Gary Packen will come up and go through the the parks fees presentation good afternoon mayor City Council Gary Packen director parks and recreation wanted to give you an update in your packet there was a memo with outlining fees and fees and charges specifically new items that are proposed new ads to our organization from from a fee standpoint amendments fees that would be dropping and removing some changes and then also some cleanup items of fees that weren't on the last fees and charges this is the process we go through every year during our budget process for fees and charges for the whole fiscal year in addition to that there was a spreadsheet that outlined all of the fees and charges within the organization and the ones that are being changed or highlighted in red so you could see those stand out fairly fairly easily and then I'll go through a presentation I'm not going to highlight and go through each fees and charge but we're trying to highlight some of the the hot button issues or things that are a little bit more prevalent to discuss as well as some backup to some recent discussion about some of our aquatic fees all right so his historically we we come to the budget process for City Council to talk about our general fund fees and charges and those are adopted by ordinance each year in addition to that we've done a comprehensive analysis of looking at our fees and charges to see what we could look at changing I've been here a short period of time I think over the course of next year we'll look at that a little deeper and analyze more the data that we have within our software to make sure that we're maximizing that as best as possible as well as balancing service to the community and then also this was presented to part board in August for consideration they did approve that for nothing during the review process we did identify a number of fees and charges that weren't on the ordinance as I had mentioned earlier from last year so those have been added to this memo as well as the spreadsheet we looked at a fees for appropriate appropriateness in regards to how they 're being compared to competitors other municipal organizations other service providers whether it's a balance of public service such as a swim lesson or it's something that is more value-added or more specifically targeted towards a personal interest which might be kayaking of sorts so obviously learn to swim is more focused on safety and kayaking is more entertainment overall our general fund revenue was about 17% of our entire general fund budget based off of what we projected this year our year to date we're at 16% our estimate for the end of the fiscal year is 15% so we're pretty close to that 17% projection with an expended expected variance of about five hundred and twelve thousand dollars in the black to the good being that we've had quite a bit of expenditures we haven't utilized throughout the year some specific removals as a reaction to our pros aquatics assessment as well as the ISD and City Council joint meeting a few months ago we're proposing to remove the DISD employee fee and make it the same as the city employee fee our Civic Center rental we had charged an additional eight hundred dollars for a reservation for a damaged deposit on top of the two hundred dollar deposit the four hundred dollar cleaning fee that could be a burden to some people that want to have an event out there so we wanted to try this there could be an issue where maybe the damage not that it happens frequently but if someone does significant damage that's more than the six hundred dollars we'd have to work through that process but we felt this is more more service related to our customers the natatorium fee is more an internal cleanup and then our senior center fee we're removing that because we don't have that room anymore it's no longer rentable some fee adjustment language to be more business development savvy and more aggressive from business development we want to be more reactive to the environment that we work in and and with specifically aquatics as an example the weather can change things dramatically in the course of a Saturday obviously that's one of our highest attending days where if weather rolls in or the forecast can greatly impact our revenue if they say it's gonna rain all day Saturday people go and make other plans they decide to do something else go to a museum or something that's indoors and then if it doesn't rain and we 've lost all that potential revenue from our customers so we want to be able to react to that we kind of have a fixed dynamic pricing model where we have certain prices certain days certain times a year type of thing and we have certain discounts but we want to be more reactive to that and whether it's putting out a group on package where it's admission for four people we're including ice cream dessert and snacks whatever for that day for a certain price that's a discount we can offer it's also it's a prepaid service so we get that in hand so that people are gonna come regardless if they if that expires and they don't use it then they would lose that opportunity but that's just something that we can react to our customers and to the environment that we're working in you know Kmart blue light specials something when I was a kid you know go up there and get a cheap pretzel same kind of concept if we have an overabund ance of soft pretzels or hot dogs we could offer specials and those types of things to try to stimulate more revenue in our concession sales or even targeting special interest groups whether it's the Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts or the youth baseball association to try to get them to buy passes to come up and participate in our facility and then I'm sorry councilmember Briggs has a question but just on that with a targeted promotions to select groups because the sport associations are a big part of the people that use our fields and we did get an update that the flag football is not going to be in a partnership with us any longer and I'm just wondering like when you say sport associations which ones are left like and do you mean outside of the community to get in tournaments because tournaments are a big deal and they could bring a lot just if you could talk a little bit more about that because that sounds really good but I'm just looking for a little more specifics yeah I think this what I was talking about specifically was relation to like group sales for the pools where we go out and work with the sports association or the Boy Scouts and say hey if you guys buy a hundred passes you can get them at this rate type of a group by so like into your party type things yeah that's that's what I was talking about there okay we still do go after tournaments to bring them into town to take up you know on the weekends they come in whether it's baseball softball soccer tennis of that nature we'll go after tournaments of that nature okay thanks just some some kind of history of this past year in regards to waterworks there was a request of a past meeting about kind of how aquatics was doing and their proposed fees we had 90 days that the pools were open we had 26 days that were impacted both by heat rain or forecasts and we reply had another five days that could be lumped into that as well we were at 23 days last year to kind of give you a sense and if those are weekends they make a bigger impact than if they're a Monday or Tuesday our attendance that we projected for the budget was 1200 people per day and we ended up at 826 for a little bit shy of what our projection was from a budgetary standpoint our electric our aquatic or our chemicals as well as our personnel we've seen some savings there so that's helping our budget our revenue obviously from a detriment from an impact our attendance was under what our projection was and our con cession sales weren't as much as that we thought they would be now originally we put this together last week we anticipated a cost recovery of a negative 167,000 right now we're about 135,000 so we've updated that as of yesterday that's member Armitage thanks my guess it's just a guess but an educated guess is that the and I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on that and and see if we can get some data on that that the lower than expected attendance is probably a result of the higher higher fees and I'm wondering what you think about that I know that I've seen discussions especially there's a mom's group on Facebook that I'm a part of and you know every once in a while this subject comes up and you get all these moms coming out of the woodwork saying yeah we used to go but now we can't forget you've probably heard you know anecd otes it's just anecdotal but I'd be curious to see that and also you know connected to that do you when you look at attendance and revenue are you keeping track of kids and adults that is who you know how many of those 826 are kids and how many are adults it we do it's based on height is how the fee is determined yeah and and how how old or how high do you do a 48 inches yeah so and how old or how high does a kid need to be to be able to be there without an adult a kid or a person ten I can't see nine nine okay so you can be nine and be there without an adult right we do have people that roll the car up kids get out so I'll address the the fees here in a second on a future slide so in in summary this spreadsheet shows specifically where our main revenue sources are so seventy five percent seventy three percent of our total revenue is admissions another 14 is concessions so if we're gonna swing that number and that budget from a revenue standpoint those are the two areas we really need to focus on okay last four years our admissions average up until I guess when the wave pool opened we were at eleven dollars and seven dollars now we're at thirty or seventeen dollars so our general admissions walk-ups were 55 percent and our membership was around 36 percent so that's people prep aying and coming for the whole summer well with what we've noticed this year is that's flipped and the assumption there is it's because of our fee increase so our general mission is 40 percent and our memberships are 43 percent and there's other fees associated with that but that's the two big ones so that has flipped to where it used to be so but at the same time 50 56 percent of our walk up business are using a discount so that's created a net revenue of twelve dollars and seventy eight cents a person from the 17 as a high high price point so people are saving four dollars on the average to get into the pool yes and what kind of discount options are there your coupon so if you look across if you look across here you have buddy passes you have Denton child magazine fifty percent off our flashback fee which is the eleven seven dollar fee a non swimmer if you're just coming in just to sit you're not participating if just kind of being a parent not participating we have a text club fifty percent off a two dollar coupon group discount and then I just our general membership and our member our past sales mm-hmm so these listed here that's the full extent of it yeah so across this line right here you could see the amount of people this is our attendance basic based on per month in our total that took advantage of that so we had four thousand people take care of the take part in the text club so in addition to that we averaged about two dollars and twenty cents per person I'm sorry councilman Briggs you have a question yeah well I guess I can let you finish this and then because it's about the water park okay we had about two dollars and twenty cents per person in concession sales so if we're gonna move that concession number we have to figure out how we can generate more revenue per person in sales for the concessions and that would benefit something like the blue light special where we can try to stimulate more more sales within a facility and as a result worried about eighty six percent cost recovery as of right now so I have a quick question then council member if you could go back to that last slide I want to make sure I understand that because I think the previous slide said that the average or that the number of people attending in the 90 days was 860 am I am I'm is that right 826 826 I don 't know which slide it was on but average attendance yeah all right oh that's that's per day yeah okay go ahead that's my question council member Briggs did you have a question or did you well oh yeah I mean we can just it's go ahead and okay so just some of the promotional discounts you had asked more specifically we do offer discount passes we have preseason sales we have season sales we have group sales we have a pass you can buy for the month and it's virtually a dollar a day if you if you want for that month you can buy punch passes that you can use periodically throughout the year and then all access you can use it all the aquatic facilities so we do offer various types of those members hips and then we have the two dollar off coupon the daily admission that's advertised it's 50% off in some of our publications the BOGO specials and then our Twilight discounts that we offer where people just want to come in for a few hours after work type of situation yes so I would like to kind of discuss what the the promotions are the promotional discounts because I'm just gonna say it I have been against the fee increase at the water park from from day one and this is the first year that my our family actually couldn't go and I know that if that's the case for me that's a case for a lot of families and I'm really not that surprised to see the data so there's you know a lot of things that have come to us that we were that had I guess goals and metrics in the past that haven't actually played out the way that we thought they were going to be and that's of course nobody's fault here but for me all of these these discounts and promotions are just really confusing there's so many of them they're beneficial and we're actually they're getting taken you know advantage of just so people could go to the water park I would I'd rather just see a decrease in the fee instead of all these promotions spending all the money on marketing to make sure that the family see what days they can go what days they can't go I'm just gonna go ahead and put that out there I appreciate all that that your team has done to make it as affordable as possible because there are a lot of good things here it's just it just looks like it's just so much yes yeah I I second that and and I'm what my family is one of the families that we when the prices went up that's when we got our family membership and for us where we happen to be very you know we're fortunate it's just luck that that we can pay it so we end up saving money and it's one of those situations like so many others in life you have to have money to save the money right so we get a good deal because we can afford to get a good deal but others who just don't have as much to put up front can't go so I completely support that I what what I would like to see or what what I find the most troubling and then I see you know families just kind of anecdotally and as I mentioned there was a mom's group where people have been discussing this the idea of the $17 for a kid is if you when you have multiple kids that hits really hard and so I'm that would be the first fee that I would want to look at to reduce you know reducing for kids or maybe having you know you know experimenting with kind of different options where you've got you know a lower price for two for two kids for three kids etc because that's what's you know families that have more kids that's a big impediment I think families would appreciate that I think that would help with attendance you know the adult you know if the kids can swim all you need is one adult with them and that was actually another question that then I have which is it's not so much a financial question but kind of a safety issue I'm you know I'm sure that their kids positive that that they're you know nine-year nine know to say ten-year-old ten-year-olds who are super well behaved awesome swimmers and can just go there and stay all day and create no problems but my guess maybe I'm wrong but I mean I would imagine have if there been problems with with you know be behavior either you know you know accidents or accidents avoided I understand that it's a lifeguard's job to make sure that accidents don't happen and they're doing that all the time but you know I've been there when I've seen the lifeguards again and again tell the same groups of kids stop whatever you know in the lazy river stop hitting each other stop it again and again and you know there's no parents saying they 're saying yeah so I'm weird I'm not saying I've decided I'm against it but you know I wonder what the staff thinks about yourself included and also lifegu ards people who work there think about this rule you know what if we kind of raise the age that kids could be there alone or is that not necessary yeah I'd have to defer that to Kathy and Monica in regards to what their experience is I know we have groups that come in you know whether it's daycares or athletic teams or band groups that come in and swim that they're there with maybe just a teacher and an advisor so they're not they don't have parental supervision so that is something we'd have to do a little more research on Gary and we're starting to go off posting on a safety issue not related to the budget finance perhaps that's something the staff could come back in an ISR for the council okay councilmember Meltzer I'm sorry I didn't think of this in advance to ask you but I'm having a little trouble falling like I think it might help us all to follow like a bit of the recent history first of all the shortfall that you identify yeah we thought it was gonna be 1200 1200 it's been more like 800 that's a shortfall versus versus what what it has historically been or that was the anticipated attendance with the new wave pole addition so I guess it would help me to understand kind of what has been in the last I don't know three to five years the attendance the average revenue and was it always like this high low pricing you know strategy or did it used to be not promotional and just kind of everyday low price so that's that's what I'm you know curious to know is were we doing better before is this a new thing to have you know this kind of complex promotional grid and has that you know is the high price with the complex promotional grid led to lower attendance and lower revenue per person or are we kind of about the same month you know I think you can see where I'm going right so what what combination work better I don't I'm sorry I don't have this I don't this on the screen but for instance summer of 2016 we had 57,000 people summer of 2015 we had 62 summer of 2014 we had 50,000 so we 're roughly at 70,000 people so that's anywhere between five and 15,000 increase in attendance so so we're up so the shortfalls versus an estimate which is not the way pool would do do for us right okay that's interesting to know because my impulse on seeing this was similar to what you've heard before like gee maybe we should just simplify and have a cheaper and I do have some discomfort around the idea that you know we're here to serve the public but it's sort of where we're primarily serving the bargain seeking public you know not but I but the fact that more people are going is pretty persuasive to me so couple couple questions in there if I could go back and try to help answer those in regards to reduction of the fee if we went back to the original amount which we were very well can there will have to be some sort of subsidy associated with that most likely this is the first year that we've operated the way full so we're going through some learning curves getting enough staff hired in get everybody trained the concession stand getting it up and running from the food service standpoint so there would be probably a nut of 150 to 300 thousand dollars in the deficit based on our projections if we if we went all the way back to the eleven seven dollar rate or if we split the difference so that would have to be a revenue that we'd have to figure out how to subsidize well it's another kind of historical question that I you know meant to ask is is eighty six percent cost recovery kind of about what it's been or has it bounced around no I think there's been one year in the past five or six years that we were in the red every other year we've been in the black I don't have I don 't have an analysis of how many weather days have been in the past I know maybe 14 15 we had bad weather days a lot in the early summer with a lot of rain but we're at twice at 26 and maybe another five and we're at 23 last year so we 're four or five more than we were last year do you have the ability to say hol istically you know what's really driving the shortfall what are the new we've got more people coming good and higher costs but you know but the costs are outpacing the attendance so what's the driver of the so the flipping the flipping from the walk up to the membership dry some of that because people are getting cheaper rates because they're buying all up front with a membership okay sorry to interrupt but just so I can follow you well so it's our it 's our average revenue you know I got that but is that resulting in an average revenue that 1278 is that actually lower than what we used to get because if we have more people right you know unless we have some extra expense that's really what I was asking some extra expense driver if you have more people if our average revenue is holding you know then we ought to be able to be covering the expenses so expenses did go up the way okay so it's the way Paul is driving it's not pure it's not pure net revenue yeah in that perspective okay and and has our average revenue been more or less holding with this complex promotional scheme well I think we've been doing these types of discounts for a while I can't say how long they've been happening but those are things and we've tweaked it along the way well let me just ask a simpler question that is as it was our average revenue higher or lower before the wave pool I don't have that I don't have that number based on prior years with well then just based on you know kind of what we've got at our fingertips it sounds like that the change in our you know kind of PNL is more that we've got this big extra expense then that we've got a shortfall in revenue so do you think that's okay so I here I found it so from 20 2015 to 16 we are eight hundred thirty thousand dollars in revenue 2016 and 17 we're at nine hundred ninety eight thousand and our estimate this year is a little over 1.1 okay so we've got rising revenues the expenses rose faster than the revenues so the culprit behind this shortfall is the big extra expense right and and and you've identified that as the way pool now what's the extra bogey that were you know what's the extra expense associated with the way pool well staffing is a big one staffing electricity chemicals I'm gonna I'm gonna step in here it's obvious that there may be some data that we need some historical context the data because I remember the presentation on the wave pool was it last year year before last and the performance they the projection was 1200 people that was the that was the projection so I think no matter what notwithstanding what the decision or direction is coming out of this discussion I think we historical data would be important pre and post wave pool and all the additional associated expenses with the wave pool so we're gonna go to and so I'm we're spending a lot of time here and and so I really if you've got a proposal of fees throw it out there so the council can decide on it if not if we need to come back with the more data and things such as that that we can look at let's do that but I feel that sometimes we're getting in discussion of we're beginning debate and trying to convince people of different stuff and I don't I don't think that's gonna work right now so I certainly want to hear your comments but I want them to be you know new comments based upon what you might have said earlier I have one more slide yes and then we'll help yep and then we'll we'll take we'll take the rest of the questions so next steps that we're gonna do to try to curtail and move that continued positive revenue growth and get back in the black from a water perks water park standpoint expect continue to expand our marketing and target market when we can to generate more business and increase our attendance at the facility targeted marketing walk-up groups for and walk-up sales specifically expand our cooperation with the ISD we 've started meeting with our aquatics committee as another recommendation from the pros consulting assessment and working with the ISD to get more advertising both from a user standpoint as well as an employee standpoint as well as helping with marketing looking at dynamic pricing instead of maybe setting that hard fixed fee we have a price that fluctuates that's maybe it's its peak rate on Saturday afternoons it's its lowest rate on on Mond ays maybe in evenings it's different rate maybe if the weather is iffy it's cheaper so people could choose when they want to come no different than a toll road or even you know our airlines we buy tickets at different times those prices fluctuate so looking into that type of model not necessary for this upcoming year but maybe for future years and in consideration continue identify premium services that we could sell to generate revenue if people want that extra added benefits maximizing our concession sales outside food policy right now we're one of the few aquatic facilities of this type that allow people bring in anything they want with no restrictions so that is going to drive down our concession sales we have people come with bags of you know the hot boxes for pizzas that are delivered to the facility we have people that set up basically a food food buffet for their group so that all takes away from potential revenue that we kind of anticipated as part of our revenue source for that facility so that's something that we were going to have whether it's the Aquatics Committee Park or even council kind of consider in the future and then continue to dive into our data and look more from a business approach of our sales and attendance so we can improve our strategies and then complete the cost service study that we've been talking about again was part of that process right the council member breaks so I'm glad to see all this and mayor I I must have been mistaken I thought right now this is the time to discuss the fees because the next time it comes to us it will be time to approve it and I will not be ready to approve it if the fees are the same as they are and that's why I said if you have a fee proposal let's go ahead and get it out there to talk about it because it sounds like also there's more data that some people are wanting to be able to discuss those fees I'm just saying I don't want to just keep repeating the things that we've been talking about right no I totally get it but I didn't know if this was going to come back to us again before passage and and because that's not the time we need to be dealing you know entrance entry fees so for me on this for the fees I think there's something to be said for quantity of people you get more people in a less entry fee and they're gonna want to spend more money on food you know so that just makes more sense to me so I just wanted to go ahead and give my direction on the fees for the water park so what is your direction is there specific I mean what are you saying you want the fee to be well my question would be is the data that has been asked for on the fees if we lower it to the original price or if we do kind of a middle from what it is now is that data gonna come back to us before we are asked to approve this fee ordinance because that would be helpful right now there's just a set fee that and so I'd like to see more options I think that right now I'm not sure what Gary is going to be able to bring you that's gonna add much to this conversation because what we've seen over the last three or four years is the fee the fee per person which is a good question is moving up and down so you know in part of it part of why that happened is we didn't have the water park open for a full year last year it's skewed it and turn in to kind of increase the amount of fee per entry into the into the park I think if you want if you really want to test that strategy perhaps you meet in the middle see what happens it's a hundred and fifty thousand dollars we can certainly figure out how to absorb that and then you'll know I mean is that is that enough of a drop to drive quantity or not I think that if we did that I'd probably encourage you and probably you know give Gary the ability to you know to implement some of the suggestions that he's that he's coming up with to try to drive attendance on those those days it may be iffy and that are affecting people's behavior but it's probably the best way right now to continue gathering data we've only had one real year of data and that's this last year the year before is kind of screwy and because part of the the wave pool wasn't open all year you know and what we've seen is I think we I think we would both agree with you that the the revenue estimates were overly optimistic that's been sort of a general trend out there and we'd be very happy to to scale back build it into the budget and see what happens at least you can have a some data points next year on what happened in regards to if we went to a $14 $10 model and right now we're at 17 13 and it used to be 11 7 so if we split the difference at 72,000 people we're at 70 little over 70,000 this year so if attendance went up 2,000 that'd be a shortfall of approximately 210,000 at 75,000 it'd be 188 77,000 it'd be 170 and 80,000 it's 144,000 would be their shortfall that's kind of our preliminary numbers I'm gonna come over here first because they haven't they had a comment councilmember Duff and then councilmember Husspah well one way one way to look at this is if you if you if you chart you know the various fees okay you'll get some kind of curve and there is a spot in there you will get the maximum revenue now I don't know whether the maximum revenue is what we're really after or whether it's maximum number of people coming I mean that's a you know but I'm not sure exactly how you come up with this without trying things councilmember Husspah thank you quick quick quick question Gary what about the cabana Reynolds do you have those numbers I do not have those specifically broken out okay you know my thoughts are mayor it becomes a trick of what our target goal is right I mean because if we're talking about round numbers of $200,000 loss $100,000 loss and we're going to take shots at his department and the lifeguards and the you know it needs to all roll in to one holistic approach and so that's why I'm okay with the with the kind of the group on that that that site type approach to the cost because I think there are an increased number of people that are bargain shoppers and I think there's value in having those dollars in hand early one fatal swoop I think that that kind is appealing we also have the Civic Center pool right so if you want to just go swim that's been enhanced in your I looked it up you're in the door for 48 inches taller you're $17 no no no that's the water work sorry bear with me one second wrong website so you're in for $4 and so that has a has a slide it has a diving board it has kids play area and so it has a lot of amenities for for that value so if you're looking for value that's it so there are options before we burden though the other general budget if you will with $200,000 that we could explore so I like the discounted approach and more strategic approach I think and I disagree with the assessment that if you're if someone is gonna risk is looking to save money if you save money at the gate you're not then gonna spend more at the concession stand and I think that is a tremendous value that's missed Gary that you're able to so my four kids we go I'm able to pack sandwiches and or go to subway or whatever that that number is the largest savings that that that is out there I mean that that that advantage you can't get that anywhere you know because people want to drive the three dollar soft drinks you know so I think I think it's it's it 's a tremendous service that that's missed I'd like to see us maybe target more after hours events maybe there's people that want to rent it or rent portions of it to try to subsidize that or more specials that or the discounted rates or a staggered you know early on early in the season before the season it's this it's this low moderate amount maybe it steps up you know to try to drive more more memberships because I think that that is the place to go and also I guess when we're talking about data coming back I think it's important to note Grand Prairie just opened a some eight thousand eighty thousand square feet it's a monster epic waters and it's all indoors so when you're talking about what's missed is there's competition out there you know there's there's kids don't go outside as much there's other water parks opening up there's new wrinkles and so I think there's a lot of stuff that that we could analyze before we just have a straight line item that says there's a citizen in Denton that I don't understand their budget and that's the trick for me they ultimately I'll sum up with this I can't make a decision based on a comment that someone made about their budget that I have no look into right because if I say I don't have the money for it that could absolutely be true but is that that I didn't make enough I bet too much at Winstar what is that number right it's the summertime and there's increased child care I mean the summertime is the worst time for and trust me as a single parent over the summertime it's brutal I mean because you have weekly fees for summer camps and for child care that go through the roof I mean monthly it's back when I was experienced it monthly it was 300 a month and then you go to the summertime and it's 200 a week and so I think there's some skewed numbers and I'm not willing to to base my decision on an arbitrary budget number that I don't get the look into you know that 's that's the challenge for me to make that decision there so if there's additional data that takes into account competition takes into account the value of buying early in the savings you have there maybe it's increased fees for people outside of the city I just think there's some other stuff to look at that is that is tangible that does not it's that's not punitive on the other citizens in the budget so I have a proposal to put on the table for direction and also a request for data but the request for data isn't dependent on the proposal so if we're talking if going back to the previous rates before they got increased would mean a 150 K to what did you say what was the high end 300 loss for it well it varies between 144 and 214 depending on yes so I mean that's a loss that or a reduction that we could easily absorb without any reduction even in our waterpark services and it and what I 'm proposing is that we do it as a test to see if the if the lowering of the fees would result in an increase in attendance to see if we can get that up to that projected 1200 and if we do that then we can come back and have another discussion worst-case scenario excuse me if we don't then talking about a you know 140 to you know 200 something loss which is really not that much if you think of amount you did list examples of other things that we spend that kind of money on and again I would come at no reduction even to our waterpark services so I want to put that on the table and so let me make sure I understand so what you're saying is what your your proposal is to go back to the original 11 7 yeah yeah the original 11 and 7 to see I mean number one - and that'll be and I think that when we discuss these things I feel like we don't think about from the public relations aspect and that's kind of the effect that it has on you know just an announcement I mean if we put out an announcement we're going back to the you know previous rates I mean there will be I know for you know a lot of parents there'll be you know dancing in the streets and that that sense of the public trust in their government now that's no reason to take a wild risk but that it's not a wild risk because we see you know what what the numbers are even if would be even if attendance stays the same of course it 's possible that attendance would drop but with as our population continues to grow and as we're seeing an increased number of attendance every year you know then the numbers suggest that you know it's only going to be more so just just one so the number I gave you was for the I think that what council member Briggs mentioned is the 1410 which was like the halfway point the $11 $7 which is the original rate is ranges from 354 to $300,000 in losses based on attendance of 72 to 80 thousand people okay can you repeat those numbers again the range of losses together the original it's at 72,000 people it's 354,000 and then at 80 thousand it's 300,000 okay so it's it's a little bit a little bit yeah it's it's more I mean I would be I would be thrilled with that but if there's more likelihood of getting consensus to go to that middle ground the 11 and 14 and 10 is kind of sorry yeah going to the 1410 that would I mean that would still be a welcome you know difference to the to the public I would want to also tie in with that though that because I don't want to see people and again this this is a request for kind of information for the future that's not that my putting this on the table doesn't hinge upon that but I still would like to see this I want to know what the lifeguards think about the you know not nine-year-old and up rule and what they would think about and I know you said not to mention that but the connection to the rates is because if we lower the rates then you might see more unattended kids it's oh now we can send our four kids see what I'm saying if we lower the rate so that is something I would be concerned about with a rate lowering that it might have an effect maybe but they the data that I wanted to ask for was if you could come up with a projection for if the fees are reduced to that 11 11 and 14 what would be or actually sorry never mind up put it put it this way I would like to see a list of of this year's attendance how many are were adults and how much revenue is generated by adults versus how much revenue is generated by kids so it's gonna be by height okay yeah so by height yeah but do you keep track of because the kids who can come on attended okay that's a certain okay yes so I'd like I'd like to see that because that would just be my one my one concern about lowering the rates I don't want to see a huge increase in unattended kids and huge safety risk but I am for it given the data that we have because we can see what the risk is I'm for either scenario I'd prefer returning to the earlier the previous fees but I'd be happy with a compromise and we do it to get on a one would do it on a one year basis to test to see what the what the result would be to see if we can get up to that 1200 okay councilmember Melston because we you know it's sort of hard to tell what has worked what hasn't because of the muddiness and the data I definitely support the idea of getting a clean year and it might as well do it with a reduction I'm happy with the sort of sort of more risk you know to me seeming seems more responsible to go with the midway rates I also think with with the general goal being to have the maximum use without losing our shirts that's I think you know really what we're after I think they came out of pretty quickly but I think if you could explore some of the ideas that councilmember Hudson shot out there for finding areas of you know kind of underutilized time you know just seems like something we're thinking through and lastly I just like to express concern about the pernicious bias against tall people councilmember Ryan thank you mayor I agree with all the strategies you've got up here on the next step I think that dynamic pricing is very important can you go back one slide because what I'm seeing on this is you can buy family package you get four tickets basically $50 a piece that you can get into any of the pools all summer long this is this is new this is this would be a new one yeah so this is a new one so it's $200 four season passes and you can buy an additional pass for $400 okay and I'm $15 off the regular price or $5 off the preseason price so it's cheaper than the pre season price right and I'm very much like these when is the on the bottom promotion when do we do that flashback is that a regular deal is it like a taco Tuesday it's it's it's every day under from four to seven Monday through Friday Monday through Friday so we're already offering the old rates during a certain time period so I think I would prefer to stick with the current rate structure since we do offer times when they can get in at that lower price and take another year at a full year of data before we really make any changes to the pricing structure alright councilmember Duff yeah you know I can't see that that we really know what kind of attendance will get if we look at each you know the 11 14 or 17 I just don't think we know the answer to that I'm good with sticking what with the 17 or dropping it back to 14 and see what happens just just I 'm sorry Laura has looked up the numbers for the height breakdown highs and lows so we can answer that question right now can we just get that I mean yeah because I mean her her data wasn't consistent wouldn't contingent upon that so I mean we got so much data out here floating around it yeah I'm sorry about that I apologize councilmember Hudson thank you succinctly I would I would agree with with with John especially with that caveat and then I had one other note I just one touch point 1200 is just a projection and that's that's the trick it's like a number comes out and if we just latch on to a number that it's a projection so there's no supporting data to that it's just hey we looked at it we had a half a season of wave pool to do our analysis and if you look at the Denton record Chronicle article that touches on this is the rare feature that brings people into Denton because our wave pool actually has giant waves I mean so so think about it I mean it was an article I mean that to me is significant because you have people from not in the area coming here for a feature we have and that is that is far too rare you know and so to I think that's noteworthy so for me I think I think it's spot-on to we can always run promotions and that sort of thing versus changing the price down because when that data comes back next year and we need to run it back up that is going to be a conversation that is going to hurt because it's why are you doing this what again we talked about it a lot consistency there's there's just you can't make spot reactions and then we'll see how that goes and move it back as easily as it is people think that just does not work out a couple questions okay I'm gonna go ahead and then I want to sort of get some direction because we've been going at this for a while go ahead well it's to the city manager and mostly do we require other park amenities to have a hundred percent cost recovery rate I mean we just approved a six million dollar soccer field and we're talking about a tennis center do we expect to recover that full amount of money and if we don't then how come we do for the water park well Gary and I are gonna take a very diplomatic answer to you and say it depends the most of the most of the programs that are I guess classes that are offered that sort of thing yeah we absolutely shoot for a hundred percent recovery the the water park is is has been treated differently historically I don 't think there's been any expectation that it's going to that it's going to pencil out and my understanding after reading the data on building the wave pool was to close the loss you know to shorten the gap a little bit you know because we it's still losing upwards of a million dollars a year when you combine with an editorial and of course we split that loss with the DISD so I would say that it's not a uniform policy across the board with your swimming pools you try to get to some level of cost recovery I think we've seen some industry standards it really gets down to is this such an important amenity in the community that you do you want to keep the fees a little lower at the expense of either other programs are raising the taxes a little bit it really is a simple analysis and it's a it's a political analysis less than a business one but if we tried to if we tried to put a rate package together that where this would break even those prices would be far higher and we'd be having exactly the same discussion about volume so it's really where your comfort level is where you think your constituents are comfortable comment to that so I am in favor of lowering the fee but I hear a general consistency that may not be it but I would ask this council to consider having the flash back fund go the twilight admission go on to the weekend Saturday and Sunday as well if we're gonna do it Monday through what Thursday right through Friday it just for those certain hours I would appreciate that it just continue and just be a seven day a week thing rather than eliminating the weekend and that would be if the fees weren't changed yes if they weren't changed okay aren't these discussions grand yeah yeah but you know and I appreciate that that sentiment and I think I don't have a problem with that the the promotional changes to go in for extending to the weekends because that 's from the hours of what to what on the 2747 all right I have to say I understand about the loss of $300,000 and that it would lower the rates back down I don't know if I can and I don't think you meant it that way but that just to be able to say we can just absorb that I mean all it takes is one or two or three or four of these type of items or say we can absorb we can absorb we can absorb now we're at a million million and a half bucks we can't absorb that without a rate increase and that's I mean that this is all a decision that we make on and it is it is a political and a policy decision there's no question about it if we if this were business we would look at everything the same way but we don't but I go back to the slide that is most dispositive for me and that's the slide that says that 50% 56% of the revenue was 1278 a person which is lower than the $14 that we were talking about and it's just barely above the $11 that you know people were asking you know that was before the wave pool and the last question and so that's why I'm okay because it sounds like if more people take advantage of these these promotionals and with this change in the twilight to twilight tunes twilight rates maybe we should offer a band out there I don't know then I think it's probably gonna drive that down even more that's gonna be closer and I'm okay with you know I think we all if we want to find a deal on something we try to shop for it so I just look at we were talking about 1278 is the average for 50% of the walk-ups 50% of the walk-ups and also we've been talking about losses here now correct me if I'm wrong but the numbers that you're presenting is that prior to debt service that's just the operational expenses and income really operational so that is the loss of just the revenue and expenses without the debt service so make no mistake we 'll never get a hold on this in the true sense of the word because the debt service is about what is it almost a million bucks a year what is it close to that five hundred seven hundred eight hundred thousand what okay well I've had a big range so if you could just sort of tell what the what just just so that we understand because the losses we're talking about are the operational losses yeah it's about 750 a year okay 750 all right and if I remember from your data prior to the wave pool we had about 50 to 55 thousand people the one year of data which is true we don't base that on one year but the one full year of data we were at 70 this year at 70,000 70,000 so an increase of 15 five between five and 15 based on the year yeah okay so is everybody okay with leaving the structure the same with the caveat of adding the Twilight admissions extending to the because is this a new offering the twice it's not okay no it's Monday through Friday we're changing the name of it but going from Saturday and Sunday would be new okay all right so everybody okay with that okay you're not okay all right so we've got leading the structure the same you mean not not reducing the not reducing it and and going with the the Twilight admissions throughout the whole week end you know first choice I'm fine with the Twilight thing and you know I'm standing at the 10 and 14 okay all right we're okay all right so what I'm hearing you say is you're negotiating for an additional term but you're you're you're not going you're not in approval even if it's if we put that in there is that right and that's okay I'm just trying to I'm trying to understand for clarification well I would like I said earlier I would really love to see the rates reduced if there are enough people here that are in agreement but if not I would ask those that are in the majority to consider allowing the flashback rate to go through the weekend so that there is so I mean I don 't know okay all right how else to best you're okay with that Councilmember Ryan you okay with that yeah keeping the rates the same but allow allow fast-track ed you can I can join that councilmember husband I have one one question yes is a short answer and then I have a question okay let me get let me just get the pulse here first okay and I'm in agreement that councilmember Arthur header was looking to be recognized and we'll recognize you councilmember husband yeah so I just wanted to clarify asking answering the same question that Keely that you asked for councilmember Briggs I can't sign on to this I can't approve of it myself unless it comes with a reduced rate for me that that's a deal-breaker for me and I just want to just put in one more plea for people to think about the PR aspect that we don't think about enough how happy it would make people even right now and how much more trust in government to see that we listened and we heard that people were not able to go to the water park this year and we decided to go back as an experiment for one year to these earlier rates I just don't think we consider that enough when we weigh the pros and cons of decisions like this appreciate that councilmember husband so my my my thought is well never mind it's okay I'll email you all right yes just real quick a couple of good examples where I live we have a golf course and we have a grill they will never make money that the point about point I'm making is is this is something that's very beneficial to Denton even though it never makes money okay yes can we can we set up a system where they auto apply the discounts is that so so for example the discounts available but a citizen doesn't know about it is there a way for that to be calculated automatically or would they have to mention it well as right now they have to mention it or bring the coupon in or whatever it is to stimulate that yeah I mean that's how we operate today yeah so maybe that would be my ask is that we maybe there's a way to allow people to take advantage that way that way if someone misses it it's not punitive but those that want to come and want to take advantage of those things that it's they 're made aware maybe there's a monthly sheet or something I don't know if that's good bad and different but that was that's my ask okay I'm not really quite sure how that works because then you're just saying everybody that walks up gets the discount without any knowledge of the discount which I guess it would only be really one discount really or got the lowest price would be the the platform are you talking about just the you talking about just the I mean I just saw this big list of all these discounts he had this all of I don't know what kind of two off two dollars off group discount general admission flashback didn't child 50% Tex Club 50% I don't even know what a lot of those mean but so if we had a 50 for instance the 50% off coupon for Dent on child if if we would offer that every time that would just be our standard rate if someone came up to the door and said oh yeah we'll give you this right here here's the coupon and hand it to them and then we use that as a transaction which one are you referencing the the Denton child 50% this one here because it's the lowest one right so if there was a 20% off we would give them the lowest of the two if we were giving it to everybody am I understanding that correctly yes so that's a child that listened in right the Denton child is a is a magazine okay so if they bring in the magazine clip they get that yes sir and the magazine clip goes out to general public yeah okay yeah that's my thought is that that it's no different than yes that's my thought but I get it that that doesn't yeah if we had a stack of the magazine sitting right by the door you could pick one up and literally use it yes yeah okay it sounds like I hear direction correct me if I'm wrong consensus of the rate stays the same with the addition of the Twilight admission to apply through Saturday and Sunday yes sir and then you can bring back us some some historical data either in a staff report or something again the so I want to make sure I get the data right on the attendance so 2000 when we put the way pool in 2016 knows last summer it opened last July last July so the one before that the attendance was how much good afternoon council members Laura Barron's assistant director of parks and recreation so water park overall attendance we can go back to 1112 is the information that I have in front of me and 1112 it was 70,000 718 in 12 13 seventy thousand five twenty in 1314 we went down a little bit to 69 794 in 14 15 we went up to 83 382 that was our largest spike 15 16 we stabilized stabilized again at about 72 985 last year 77 371 and this year we're looking at topping out at between 70 and 72 thousand okay those are different than the ones on this sheet yeah that's okay yeah well the ones that we gave earlier were just for general admission they didn't include everything gotcha okay yes yes okay so that's an entirely different picture than I thought I was seeing and so we can't conclude that what's been happening is necessarily working in order we have you know a year of clean data because of movement if I'm gonna pick a place to be at to get a clean year I think we 're better off at a lower price okay all right all right anybody else we anybody else who wants to keep it the same yeah well he's basically he was he with the new data presentation that showed there really wasn't much of an increase of overall admission stayed about the same with the plus or minus spikes but we pretty much actually down pretty much from 1415 well 1415 was the out lier that was 83 thousand that was that was the outlier and that was before the wave park correct yeah all right so I mean if you were to throw out the outlier then you you've got an average of about 70 something thousand so I mean if well if you're going to say that the data for you says you've got a 15 you got an eighty three thousand person attendance one year and the other four years plus or minus two of each one of that is about the same of seventy thousand and somehow that eighty three thousand is going to be used as a decision point I don't understand that well I really think is I can't tell what's working and what isn't you know you can't say clear before the impression of like whatever we're doing is clearly working and it seemed to settle a lot of bets in my mind so now you know either nothing's really made a dent or it's down so the year I get your point about the outlier I apologize the year on the outlier that was the year that the lakes were closed staff is telling me that that was the year okay well see I'm telling you data is the key yeah general premise when the lakes were closed the ramps were closed when we could access the lakes that was the year and I can also tell you can we let's talk to the parks and rac quet of the state councilmember Hussbett did you have I thought no if I didn 't recognize okay okay so any other comments it sounds like the direction still stays with there's a four that says add the the new expansion of the weekend the average revenue right now for walk-ups is 1278 is would you say that if they use a pass if they do a family pass and things such as that obviously they're getting in for less than the rack rate per se is that right am I am I correct depends on how often but that's their choice that's the choice if you if you buy you can use it as you could go down to you could use it every day if you wanted to that it was open correct okay okay I mean you could buy a monthly pass for $30 and use it every day and it costs your dollar to get in okay so one last question how does this discussion and I don't know the answer to this when we have the partnership with the Denton Independent School District where somehow there's the profits and losses combined and somehow everybody shares in that so the question I have is hypothetically let's say for instance at some point we go down to the either $14 rate or the $11 rate and we experience an operational loss at the at the at the water park of $300,000 does that have any impact on what the school district does or does not pay when it's all leveled out so so to our understanding that any revenue profit made on that revenue made off of the water park itself would be contributed to the loss of the natatorium any deficit to the water park would not be contributed to the natatorium well that's great terms right there that's great contract terms okay I appreciate so any profit they share in the profit yeah it goes towards the losses it offsets it offsets the overall loss any deficit in the operation for the water park the city absorbs all of that yes that's my understanding yes okay all right okay fantastic all right any other questions comments thank you very much we will is it something that you haven't said or I mean we okay because we're gonna we're gonna wrap this up we've been going to all right okay okay go ahead thank you yeah this is about the the parks rates where I hadn't realized we were on the last slide when we were but then we moved on okay then let me okay you're gonna go then I want us to take a break we'll come back to this we'll take come back to this let's take a because we're still on the parks fees so that's fine yep let's take a five or ten minute break okay welcome everybody back to this meeting of the Denton City Council it is 2 25 on Tuesday August 28 2018 it's so good to be back in this seat you know I was I did some deliberation over the break and trying to just gather you know just from staff and thinking through these things and trying to understand back on the part the the water park fees so I'm going to to change my direction on on on it all right based upon the data that we heard and based upon when we were doing this originally with the water park so I'm just gonna put it out there I'm not gonna what they call that no it's where you go my mind is losing no not below the filibuster filibuster below the eight now that sounds horrible so and the reason so I was I can agree to the fourteen dollars and is it the ten dollars was that it or eleven fourteen and ten fourteen and ten if we don't have all of that list of discounts in other words it just applies to everybody across the board and that we leave the flash not the flash the twilight this this way it is now Monday through Friday or Monday through Friday and part of the reason I'm willing to do that on the price is because if we don't have the discounts if we had the discounts with that price it's going to drive that price below probably ten or eleven dollars below what even some of this on this council are asking for and I think most likely in hindsight that probably would have been a better interval even before when the wave park was was implemented and because we only have a half a year on the wave park and because our data is a little skewed I think we've got one full year at this rate and so our control can be more consistent so if we go to without the discount even though that that was in place at the seventeen dollars that'll give us a chance to really look at the data and I don't I don't have a problem doing that because I it may not be the loss that everybody's thinking especially if we take away the discounts I don't know how you analyze that data but I'm willing to do that there may not be three other people who are willing to do that and that's okay and if that's the case then I'll go back to the way I was but I certainly wanted to throw it out there as a as a as an option based upon just understanding the data a little bit more yes I'm with you yeah please don't go back to the way you were I support that hurts me and I will also add that another thing that I like about what you're proposing is that that way everybody who attends the water park you know that everybody else there is paying the same as you so there's not that feeling I think that increases trust to you it's just it's more transparent not that I'm saying there's anything sinister about the discounts but just you know people like to know that everyone's paying the same fee so I think that's a very good solution it makes mathematical sense I would support that okay anybody else so so to hear you right so they could get less with the other discounts but you're against that you're kidding no so I think I think that is a good that's a good mix because that is that that touches one of my concerns is you know it kind of levels that out right so the the person that does or doesn't does not pay attention to the magazine timely gets the same rate as someone it does so so I can get there okay anybody else well I'm not gonna say I've definitely in favor of lowering rates lowering rates and I think that's really great that we've gotten here I just because there are the family passes and I'm just kind of wanting to focus in a more of what promotions you want to get rid of I'm good with the the weekend being you know not the Twilight going back to the original but there are so many promotions and they do the season passes were you wanting to make I'm just I'm talking about the walk-up discounts where it showed that 58% got $12.78 for a walk-up whatever those if it's a coupon if it 's a you know that the rate would be $14 for people walking up with no pass you know they don't have a family pass they don't have a monthly pass they're just walking up to pay that's so those other discounts for the membership the memberships yes season passes yes season pass I'm not talking about those at all it's just the ones that apply to walk up clients walk up customers okay yes I 'm okay okay okay there we go the power of collaboration and compromise all right moving on to other parks we had some questions I think about do you still have any parks presentation fees I'm done with the PowerPoint presentation but I'm open okay all right we're gonna go to questions and charges all right so councilmember thank you and and so by the way when we were doing the parks presentation I hadn't realized that was the last slide because I didn't get see the slide in my these slides in my backup but I figured I would just wait till the wait till the end when I saw we had moved on so and this is about question and can follow up comments depending on the answer questions about admission fees to the rec center is it ten dollars across the board for every rec center and the forty dollars per family for residents so a rec pass is ten dollars for ages eight and up per person mm-hmm and then for a family it's forty dollars that's correct yeah and then so for non residents it's fifteen you know fifteen and sixty is that right you add the nonprofit no wait a minute where is the non resident fees five dollars yep and then that the family rate goes up as well okay um so I I would like to propose that we let kids have a free year and that we keep the forty dollars for you know even out the cost so that we would still get you know roughly forty dollars per family so however much you'd have to charge for adults to do that and I want to give give an anecdote as to what what made me think of this because I actually hadn't realized that it was the ten dollars per year even for kids now ten dollars per year that's hardly anything you know even for somebody who doesn't have a lot of money so but I I saw it the rec center one of the rec centers a kid who came up and he just it was later I don't remember it was a weekend or a weekday and he wanted to use the rec center and he didn't have a pass so he couldn't and that was the rule right you know the kid didn't have ten dollars on him he had to go ask its parent and so part staff is absolutely correct to enforce the rule that was there but watching that happen I thought you know we had these things like boys club and girls club where kids know that they can just go to and by we I don't mean here in Denton but in you know their institutions like this where kids can go after school and you know no matter even if you don't have anything on you even if you don't have a pass so you can't get ten dollars from your parents so you know I would like to see and I'm not asking people you can think on the fly and come up with something but a way to you know still charge adults maybe we could still continue to charge adults ten the same ten dollars maybe what we would have to raise the price per adults to even out the difference but if a kid could just come after school to the rec center use of facilities not the class you know classes you still have to pay for I think that would really make a big difference and I have a feeling probably you know not just with this this one kid but but for all kids that would be a place to go after school and this was this was at the MLK rec center which is you know one of the rec centers where unlike North Lakes it's really it's right in walking distance you can just go you know it's a really nice kind of walking neighborhood from your school from your house so anyway I just I wanted to throw that out there and I don't know if anyone else wants to respond to that now or if that's something for a later date but I wanted to get that get that in publicly during this discussion that proposal so if there's anybody could you say it again more summarized I just didn't really get it what exactly okay so so basically everybody has to pay ten dollars to and correct me if you hear me say something that's wrong but um everybody has to pay ten dollars to use residents Denton residents to use the rec center ten dollars just for the whole year right to get a rec pass then you get a rec pass and they know who you are and they know who's there and it's important that I think that they know who's there and can record that but but this means that a kid who like say their parents didn't want to give them ten dollars to use the rec center and they had no we're too young to have a source of income then they couldn't go after school so I'm different for kids so so yeah I'm proposing that kids that kids could get a rec pass for free they could just go and sign up and say can I have you know then they get a rec rec pass yeah and then there would be a safe place and of course if kid misbehaves you know that I mean the behavior rules apply right but I mean that ten dollars doesn't ensure be behavior and maybe their parental permission issues you know that are considered I that's something I don't know about the parents need so if if a kid rolls up with ten dollars say you know nine-year-old kid ten dollars can they get a rec pass by themselves or do they need is there some parent or guardian permission that they need with that if a nine-year-old comes up in the rec center can they get a pass without a guardian at that point in time or they have to pay the ten dollars no they to be able to use any of any portion of the rec center like to go into the open gym the computer room and all of that you they have to have the ten dollar rec pass right because there is there do they need if they just come in and do it on their own no because they have to sign a liability okay okay yes that's what I figured so so I'm not proposing that we do away with that a part of it right but I am proposing that kids get a rec pass for free and that and I would be open to if it would be too much of a loss to keep the ten dollar fee for adults because right now it's ten dollars if you're an adult or a kid then I would be fine I would be okay with increasing the the price a little bit for an adult to allow kids to use it for for for free because I feel like having a place safe place where all kids could go after school without having ten dollars would be awesome I realize it's ten dollars just for the year so it might be that commit kind of figuring that out would take more time and it might be that that's not a discussion we can even have right now but but I wanted to throw that out there and to see if anybody else had any interest in that it would basically be like the city of Denton would be kind of sponsoring you know all kids in the city of Denton and we'd have to define what that is you know kids under I would say height you know high school age and and under or it sounds like how old are how much you have to pay for an under eight-year-old kid because you said ten dollars eight and up right eight and under that is free eight and under free yeah so I would just say you know so right now we already have eight and under free I would say we just say from you know up until say age 18 free rec pass courtesy of the city of Denton and it may be possible under our current system to be able to go back and pull some data on what you know what the percentages it falls within the different age ranges but I can also tell you that part of our scholarship program does include rec passes so that is available for those that that may have a challenge in in getting the right pass that's awesome I love our scholarship program so yeah so no I don't have any interest in that and I and I and I hope we can give clear direction in that regard so staff doesn't if there's enough if there's a consensus so staff doesn't have to run that down mayor my primary concern is is that when you reference Martin Luther King Center of all of them and and you give a snapshot of one day in time that is an absolute travesty Bobby has worked in that facility as long as I can remember Bobby is awesome he did nothing wrong we had a meeting about this Saturday right okay got it so but it's a travesty to take a snapshot of a moment in time he's worked there it's as long as I can remember he he works with one of the kids there is nonverbal checks out the pool table checks out ping pong balls Derek runs around neighborhood everyone knows him and Bobby has a rapport with every kid that comes in there and so to somehow say that using that as a point of reference and interesting enough Martin Luther King Center is one of the few that you have the ability to actually play basketball there a lot of them have a lot of programs out you know so there's a lot of advantages to that particular center to use that as your your snapshot is a little misleading and so I wanted to set that right then every financial thing that we deal with is not a financial thing right it's it's three cents I did the math three cents a day is what we're talking about and I don't know how much time this is going to consume but it's three cents a day and they mentioned there's programs to cover that cost what's not being discussed is the accountability aspect of it certainly do we do we want kids they can go and sit in the lobby and and I guarantee you I'm speaking for Bobby they would be perfectly comfortable thank you to staff that has just completed Wi-Fi throughout the building so they can sit there and and they can do whatever they need to do and and have all the resources of a library until they get picked up but to somehow this council to get behind a nine-year-old having free roam in our facility without the parent knowing without some level of tracking it's just not it's not good and and so and then to couch all the concerns on just finances because it's not a financial thing it's a it's a hunch I'm guessing it's a tracking mechanism a lot of that and then to I know if a kid came in and told Bobby hey I don't have ten dollars today Bobby would work that out there's just no doubt in my mind so maybe there's a different Center that I don't know that well but that one I know very well and so to say that anyone would go amiss from Thomas Rivera Elementary School that would want to come in there and do anything and there's no flexibility there is disingenuous and so I hope we point of order disingenuous questioning motive so you're not for the ten dollars no no I was just hope we could we could pull the get a consensus to then move on I'm assuming the point of order disingenuous and all that y'all learned in your your Robert's Rules of Order so I'll have to go back and read that okay all right so we're not gonna get into a big debate about about all this but let's see does anybody else want to talk about this before I recognize councilmember Amateur again a first second go around yes I just want to I just want to recognize everything that you're George said okay okay all right first of all okay this is in response to that last comment this the reason why I told that anecdote was because prior to that I did not know that it was ten dollars a year for a kid and I had not thought about what would happen if if a kid didn't have access to ten dollars this is nothing now it never would have occurred to me to mention a staff person's name it just so happens that staff person you mentioned is and I completely agree with everything you said except the dis ingenuous part that's that person is amazing MLK is amazing yes it has basketball all everything you said I'm sorry everything that that was just said in the previous comment except for the part about the you know the motivation is is true it's also true that we need to have tracking and know who's there and that parents and guardians need to give permission and I was very clear that I was not proposing that we stop requiring a pass and that we stop requiring parent parental or guardian permission for liability reasons so I just wanted to make that clear that if I think kids if I say I think kids need to use the rec center for free be it's because I think the rec center is awesome it's because I think our staff takes such good care of them I am not faulting I would never fault staff for using policy and exactly as you said staff do everything that they can to try to you know work around policy to try to make it better for for for kids and the people who use our rec centers so so I object I mean I held off on saying point of order for a while but you know this is how how how rumors get started and so I would really appreciate if we didn't question each other's motives if we stop doing that thank you okay all right anybody else did you have a question on this or comment on this anybody else for the proposal on the table as far as giving children free passes you have a question about that sure how many scholarships are available for that and does the ten dollars do you have to pay the ten dollars to get the use of the computers for after-school homework because the Wi-Fi is great but if you don't have any kind of thing to use to get it then you're not really yeah you don't have a cell phone or something like that yeah then so you would need that that's correct okay and so how many because that that's a it's a good point and I know ten dollars isn't that it's not that much but for somebody some individual it may be and if they're looking to use those facilities for homework I just want to make sure that there is enough scholarship to go around for those so I'm kind of wondering if you have that data or could get that to us we can we okay I believe we still have scholarship money available from the summer so we could offer that if someone just wanted to tell our past we could offer that that's fine that works for me no we're trying to get direction on this councilmember has with yeah Gary I know you've been in a short a short while Laura if I could borrow you please this would be one question one and done so I understand you've only been with the parks apartment how long it'll be a year next month okay so so it's only been a year but in that year have you known anyone that needed to go do something that didn't have a pass that was turned away from so if they need to go in and use a computer and they explained to the parks manager person there that that person is human enough to understand needs from wants and able to help them out as needed there's there's no hard and fast rule I'm assuming that says that shall enforce the three cents a day that cumulates to ten dollars a day a year without fail right I mean we help me understand that policy to my knowledge that hasn't been an issue now having said that it's you know in the short time that I've been here I have certainly my experience with staff is that they go above and beyond to assist anyone in the rec center and it's not just the rec centers but park maintenance as well even in our aquatic centers so that again that that hasn't been my experience and that's I can I can say on personally it's my expectation and Gary's expectation that they do everything that they can to assist somebody and if there's for some reason an obstacle that doesn't allow us to immediately address their needs that we provide them with the information that they need to get where they need to go right thank you okay so unless I'm hearing go ahead you know nothing's about money except except everything is about money because we have a budget so how much would it cost us to not collect the ten dollar fees from kids that we currently collect I'd have to get you that number I don't know it offhand I guess I'd have to know that I think on the face of it yeah doing things for free is of course appealing you know more services less be of course we'd all like that and and then in my mind it is somewhat like a library card kind of a library card you don 't have to pay anything for it but you know it's sort of simple reality that we operate with revenues and expenses so I need to know what it would take you know to support this program but in principle I kind of like it assuming that yes of course you've got to have parental you know waivers liabilities incredibly important when you deal with children you got to be able to track where people are and I guess I just want to know what the expense was to do it but you know it's sure it's appealing I don't have a problem with the current policy yeah I don't have a desire to change it I mean it it is about money but also I think people who pay something that's also just about you know if you if you get something for free all the time it doesn't necessarily mean it and ten dollars a year is that what I'm understanding ten dollars a year yeah and with the parental liability and with the liability release that's required I think we're I think I trust our park staff enough to know that that will be a very rare occurrence where somebody is just booted out and if there's an issue with the computers and the Wi-Fi and when we just got that in just recently so we might want to look at that to say hey let's let's make sure we have that conversation but again ten dollars a year to have access to Wi-Fi and all those amenities is I think that that's that's more than reasonable and yes we would like everybody to have everything for free and we can do that we can do that and we need to make sure that we're all willing to pay about another 15 or 20 or 30 percent of property taxes to do that probably and that's okay and these are all policy decisions and political decisions and you know we all have different sets of values and ideologies that that go into what we support and what we don't support but I'm not the water park fee I can get it because it's we're reducing this one I just think it's important for for if a child is with their parents or their parents want to pay ten dollars for them to get a rec pass or the child and if we got small sponsorships then I'm okay with leaving it the way it is until we get some data on that anybody else yes I guess it's okay you want that you want the child for free councilmember Arter you're okay with it yeah so we'll move forward with the policy of status quo as it is until it's up to time we can get some data to make a different decision yes I think it's probably fine where it is what I really think especially since we have the flexibility to help out with sponsorship with scholarships were needed the only kind of corner case or thing that's sort of in the back of my mind I would say it's worth considering if we didn't have a lot of money when I was growing up I didn't necessarily want others to know it and sometimes you don't want to admit that you don't have the money yeah well I understand that I understand that okay and we have further questions on park fees yes I have three different areas the question for the rental service fees there's a building attendant police security and the deposit my question of this is are all the fees required for any room rental and is there a threshold what is the threshold of people for hiring an officer the police is that's based on attendance thresholds and what is that it varies based on how many people I don't have it right hand I would think there would be a certain number that would it kicks it kicks in yeah so there are really gonna be three variables number one the attendance which varies based on occupant load so it would be different at a direct center than it would be at the Civic Center the also the other thing is the sale of alcohol the sale of alcohol requires security and then the third is the the time of day I know specifically at the MLK Center there if you if you have it through midnight on weekends they do ask for security at that point and it's usually at the request of the of the event holder yes so just as an example yes we've rented a room at North Lakes and had a superhero themed birthday party with 20 kids do I need to get a police officer no to come to that event these are gonna be for more of special events if you've got a large family reunion or I mean we're where you're yeah yeah but specifically at the Civic Center those the capacity there can can reach 600 okay that's fine my other question is there's been several private workout facilities that have opened planet fitness family fitness that have $10 a month memberships and I know that ours I think is still 20 have we since those have opened up in our area have you seen a decline in membership I mean just looking for the data if you could get that to us I'm just curious because we have really great facilities and I just want to make sure that we're able to compete with that so and the next question on the score board rental at Evers or any baseball field I'm gonna use Evers as an example because I'm there all the time and a lot of times the scoreboards are broken or not working and here it says that there's a hundred dollars a day fee to use the scoreboard and I'm wondering just say if you go to Denton boys baseball are they required to pay a hundred dollars a day for that or how does that fee structure work or do they have an individualized associations that's just for tournaments that come in to town on the weekends okay those types of activities not so we're not putting an extra burden on our associations locally okay just making sure thank you okay any other questions for parks or park fees yes maybe park fees is what I should say oh Mike Mike so okay I noticed that there's a five hundred dollar late fee for permit submissions for the cemetery side double-edged and so those that show the rationale yeah that that fee is was approved as what we can find out was in 2009 wasn't on the last last year's fees and charges submittal so that's a something that's just a cleanup process on that but the issue the challenge we have there is the cemetery is a very old we don't have great records so it takes time to double-check where the lots are what who people who has what in regards to a lot and then get the lot surveyed get out there and stake it for where the burial is going to be or the headstone placement so somebody can come in and dig dig the grave there's one company that is bonded ins ured that can do the digging for us it also entails getting them on schedule and sometimes it happens you know we'll get a call at Friday night we don't have time to get that ready for the next day we have to bring people in overtime whatever that is we want to make sure we get it right and that we don't end up putting somebody in the wrong spot or there's somebody there already that's unmarked so we just want some time to get that process correct so it 's an existing fee it just wasn't noticed this wasn't in the schedule for yes that answers my question thank you any other questions or comments on park fees all right thank you we still have two items to go on this agenda item we get we ordered dinner yet okay all right good afternoon mayor city council members I'm Nick Vincent the business utility manager here at the city I'll be presenting to you today the FY 18 19 solid waste rates a little bit of history these rates were approved yesterday at the PUB meeting that was last night so they did recommend approval to the City Council if you have any questions feel free to stop me throughout the presentation I'll be happy to answer them for you this is an overview of the rates I'll be discussing with you today the residential rates during March of this year the City Council did approve a 12% rate decrease for residential customers commercial rates over the last several months staff has been working to improve the transparency of these rates I'll show you that new matrix system here and shortly the landfill rates we have also been working to address the subsidization and align these rates with the market we are recommending that three landfill disposal rates be increased and we are also recommending that a few of the landfill disposal fees go away these are the residential rates you can see here in front of you there are two cart options currently available customers and the first one is a standard car and the second one is a large cart both of these are paired rates meaning that is for one refuse and one recycling car and you can see that the standard rate was 2785 before the 12% decrease and afterwards it went to 2451 the large part was 3325 after the decrease it went to 2926 I had always heard that an additional cart was free is that not is that for recycling or is that not true at all for either it's let me ask Ethan to come up and address that this is what's published in the rate ordinance but let me address the operational side of it yeah there yes that's correct there is a distinction between residential recycling and refuse additional carts recycling additional cart for one is free this is for the additional refuse cart okay thank you so yeah the additional refuse cart will be 1975 before the decrease after be 1738 these are the commercial rates as I mentioned over the last several months several the staff here present today has been working to improve the transparency of these rates and you can see here at the top matrix is the commercial siloed rates for commercial silo containers in the community the bottom matrix here is for commercials front load rates and these are front load containers in the community these are for both refuse and recycling containers question yes sir and I asked this question I guess a couple weeks ago help me understand the difference a couple hundred hours at least on the six per week between I mean what's the difference between a car I know the difference between a commercial side load truck and front load why is there a price difference in that it other than trying to discourage a certain type of dumpster right so what you're talking to them want to say really quick is six times a week here silo to 726 and the front load container be 550 yeah but they're higher across the across the schedule then then the side load that is correct in a couple months that's what we'll be coming back to you with the rate correction strategy to address that so there are these rates that are over recovering these matrix and some that are over recovering so that is part of that plan to come back to you with a plan to address that okay yeah we are also having difficulty understanding that some of the philosophies on the commercial side so that's going to be the next workshop we have with you on commercial rates I expect this to be a short placeholder until we can but we're also the our other concern is these haven't necessarily been advertised publicly as much as you would have thought in the past so we are taking a deep dive at this really trying to understand is there really any meaningful difference in these rates how did it get this way and we're likely gonna be recommending a very different rate structure for you in the near term and know historically in the past I mean just a long time ago that it seemed that the preference was for one or the other and I can't remember which one apparently it was for front load because side loads were typically on the right of way and things such as that whereas front loads were easier because they're fitting the erect vets minutes they come up and I know of one specific situation where they've gone from front load to side load and there's damage in the alley and so you know that's where I really learned about this price disparity right because that's was one of the reasons and if they're more equal than one might fit better than the other so I appreciate that and we feel in addition just kind of tagging on to the Blue Ridge study which is another point of reference for us you know we really aren't giving I don 't believe our customers the opportunity to make a decision you know as you can see you can have one less pick up a week and have a little with having a four cubic yard container versus three and save you know 15 or 20 dollars a month so these are these are the types of decisions if you've got the space that we really need to be putting out there for our business owners and if it means that there's some decrease costs on our end for gas and and in maintenance that sort of thing then everyone wins and so this is a kind of thoughtful process that Nick and Ethan are leading us through right now. These are the landfill rates as I previously mentioned we are recommending that the three disposal rates be increased that are in front of you these increases are based on the recently completed cost of service study the first rate is the sludge disposal rate we are recommending this rate be increased from 23 to 46 and you can see that right here and the wholesale disposal rate or recommending it go from 23 to 2450 and then clean concrete asphalt brick and dirt coming into the facility or recommending it go from 10 to 22 and you can see that right right here. Can you just explain more about this sludge because that that's something that we haven't discussed since since I've been on council I don't quite understand what that what this material is yeah okay so sl udge materials come from wastewater plants freshwater plants it's the sludge material it comes the byproduct of the process in that way so it comes in the facility it is disposed of in the landfill itself so it does consume airspace we do feel that the new rate aligns us better with the market after talking to facilities around us so based on the cost of service study in a market outreach and this is where we feel comfortable at so you'd say that's is that about average of what the landfill it's still fairly low okay and I think the question you may see us come back recommending increasing that again we there just doesn 't seem to be a good business decision to take that I mean what we're saying is accepting sludge from other communities wastewater treatment plants taking up airspace so that's it's something that we're having internal discussion about right now okay thanks thank you that's my breaks what's the environmental impact of taking a product like this and is that cost recovery for things that we need to to mitigate and if it needs to be higher I'm wondering why you chose to stop at 46 it's a good question already come up here thank you Todd so yeah this is actually a discussion that we've had as we've worked through the budget and really comes down to kind of a policy discussion for council is this a material that you want to accept from an environmental impact there is some benefit if you're trying to increase your gas generation curve at the landfill so it generates methane gas now that being said we 've tried to back off of our gas production a little bit this material is also kind of difficult to handle it doesn't smell pleasant I walked into the office this morning I was afraid I was gonna smell like it when I walked in here today so it can be kind of a difficult waste to contend with and what you see with a lot of facilities is they'll kind of use the price to dictate if we want to take it we want to make sure that it's a revenue beneficial or beneficial from a revenue standpoint one of the things that we'll come back and talk to the council about is what does our cost of service look like for disposal now and then five years from now right now we're right around the $46 per ton on disposal rates so we're under recovering a lot of our disposal rates you fast-forward five years from now and we're down in the $34 per ton range and that's with no further changes on things like rubble processing BMR and so when you look at something like this this represents right now about $300, 000 per year in revenue we've basically doubled the rate obviously there's a market reaction to that but let's assume everyone stays put because a lot of other facilities don't accept this material we may have just injected $300,000 in additional revenue into the budget and that enables us to go through and start making some more aggressive adjustments in other areas so it's it's really a policy decision on how we approach this but we wanted to be aggressive but also at the same time not make your decision for you yeah right well for me when you start getting into conversations about the landfill you kind of figure how everything seems to be connected when you said sludge generates methane well right now I think we're flaring or we were because we had too much gas and not enough or another generation unit isn't going to come online for a while because if if we were benefiting from that generating and then getting power back into the city from that landfill gas that would make a little bit more sense but since we're not and we're having to flare then I appreciate looking at this at the current moment until we can get back to you know generating more I just I feel like I guess maybe the people are coming to dump it here because it's so cheap that's the case today assuming that the rate gets adopted then I think that changes the dynamics in the market a little bit thank you thank you mayor specifically on these top two the haulers on these are there any is this the only fees that the city collects on them because I believe some other like grease trap haulers pay a fee to the city gas well trucks pay a fee to the city for having used our roads because there are heavy equipment do we charge anything additional to any of these for haulers that coming in from outside the facility we would just build that in in terms of the rate I 'm not aware of anything specifically what you have there is a permitting for the waste haulers the grease trap haulers within the city of Denton that is under I think Heather Billings group I think she administers that fee I don't exactly how it's assessed offer revenues and such it's separate from this does this is a disposal and that is based on them collecting it and the revenues they generate from their operations and what I'm wondering is we charge them mainly as I understand it those fees are to cover the fact that they've got very heavy trucks calling a load on our streets so it's somewhat of a recovery for damage to our streets the same thing with with gas well and so I'm wondering these are going to be very heavy trucks on our streets and have we built enough in to cover that as well or is that something we might want to look at an additional fee could we have an additional fee on these types of dollars definitely and that's one of the things that we're going through right now at the cost of service study making sure we that our fees are defensible and accurately not only reflect the cost of us handling material but also the landfill space they take so as well as breaking up the infrastructures you're hitting but we're probably one to two months out from having a study we feel completely confident in these are the types of things we're definitely looking into I'd go back to the sludge it's very possible if this doesn't curve the behavior we've seen other landfills that are in the 90 to 100 dollars per ton area which clearly sends the message we don't want that so those are those are the types of discussions that are ongoing right now while we're going through our cost of service analysis so what do we do with our sludge so the city sludge that's generated from wastewater treatment plant is used in the compost operation okay so down over dirt it is compost ed it is not landfill to answer your question so did you have a comment and I'll let you make it I don't you know I don't have I mean I was gonna have a follow-up but we'll hear what you have to say well then why don't we put other sludge into I mean is it just I'm just wondering why we put it into our landfill and our sludge goes into the compost so what's smart lady that was them either may know we're about the compost and operates on the come back over here I'm gonna make an educated guess we can certainly talk more about this with beneficial reuse but it's really probably gonna come down to a quality control mechanism as well as a volume mechanism right now we're having haulers come in that probably dwarf our production in terms of just our city they're collecting around our community and so I don't know that we have enough yard ways to contend with that volume and we can certainly talk to beneficial and see if that's something they're interested in but I think we've probably got just enough to contend with our dino dirt operation right now yes okay I would propose just based on everything that's been said raising it to a hundred dollars it that is right now in the new budget at least until we start getting in the methane capturing business again okay all right any anybody I guess I want to make sure I understood this whole conversation about this price that because what I'm hearing is you're saying based upon that price you're wanting to be out of the sludge business is my understanding of that well and until we get back to capturing the method because it could because what now while we're flaring it okay is that you should you're shaking your head councilmember Briggs I'm okay with raising it more the the proposed fee if that's okay all right anybody else comment on that I mean I don't have a problem raising it if we're gonna not take it we just need to say we're not taking it and not charge anything for it and as far as it's I don't know enough about what the tonnage is how long that takes to convert to methane gas I mean our own waste is I mean we're everything we're putting in there is turning into methane gas so I mean I don't know enough about the facts of the conversion rate in that regard I mean the flaring is happening for a lot of different reasons so if we if we don't want to be in the sl udge business okay that's I guess I'm okay with that then we just can say we 're not taking it but if we want to try to say well we'll take it but if we have to we want to get a very good premium to help with the budget and these other issues okay so I'm that's what I was suggesting okay all right gotcha all right okay so go ahead okay is the direction then to raise it up I think it's to raise it the question becomes is it to a hundred dollars okay and I don't know if I have a whole lot of data to know what yes go ahead yeah I wonder if you can help us with that and if you've already addressed this and I didn't capture it sorry at $46 do you predict that we'll still have volume and at $100 we'd have no volume that's a judgment but you take your judgment over mine on that I think at this stage it's our best guess is that there's gonna be a market impact what we don't know and not all the cities and not all the landfills that we talked to are willing to disclose what what they accept what they don't what rate they're accepting at and I think based on the market analysis $46 puts us on the high side of some of the other facilities but again at some of those places that's what they're charging internal to their city limits they may just put up the close sign for anyone outside of it I think the thing that I will put out there the risk that we're taking in terms of even raising it to $46 is about $300,000 in revenue and so at what point does it become advantageous for us to accept it to accelerate some of those other rate corrections that we 've talked about I think we're taking a risk at $46 that risk increases exponentially as you go up the scale but I think from Council's direction is certainly a policy decision do we want to accept this or not as Todd alluded to it takes up airspace there is a proposed or a possible benefit to it but we're not gonna realize that is councilman Briggs pointed out with our gas generation situation so I think right now we felt comfortable with the 46 let's take a look at it as Todd said and come back in a few months if things are status quo and we may get more aggressive but do you feel comfortable with 46 knowing that it's a risk on the assumption that you think you probably will still get some volume I think though I think the way we look at that is this is what we would classify as a special waste 46 is just just recovering our cost of service so you did get volume if we let me ask a different question okay it'll help would you rather not take volume again it comes down to a financial situation this is a problematic waste for us to deal with so at the current rates we would prefer not to take it the $46 is starting to become a break-even scenario at a higher rate it's starting to become beneficial from a financial perspective that does not negate the operational challenges that go along with there be any downside to putting up a we do not accept do you watered sludge $300, 000 and lost revenue would be chief among them but outside of that operationally we would be fine with stepping away from that model right so and at the 46 you know the bet is we'll have sharply reduced volume but maybe hold the revenue okay that's correct the 46 all right yes councilmember but you're saying that the 46 were basically breaking even that's correct that the cost of service shows the gate as well as the right to be a $46 currently that is correct so and we don't really want to do it that is the operational you know it is a difficult waste to handle so we're talking about breaking even and doing something we don't really want to do is am I getting that correct what you're hearing is that this is our recommendation until we get our cost of service analysis done and also a gap a little time to you know to analyze the data what we don't want is to lose money on the operation and as we're going through the cost of service it's very obvious we're under collecting in this area and we've got other communities actually bringing their sludge in because it's so cheap right now and they can't they can't possibly be dumping it anywhere else at this cost and the neighborhood so you've got two approaches you can either set the market high and which basically even higher than this it's up the sign that we don't want it or we can at least make sure we're not losing any money while we continue to study our cost of service holistically so the one thing I'll throw in there is is cost of service right now is $46 a ton we start carving revenue out different lines of revenue out of that tonnage goes down and the cost of service goes up for whatever tonnage remains so that impacts the residential rate base the commercial rate base it also slows down the ability of us to do rate adjustments to bring rates down in those categories so at $300,000 that's not a tremendous concern but if we're looking at other categories ie wholesale and some of those others you can start looking at some pretty big revenue holes in your budget yeah I guess I need some clarification because council member Duff's questions on point when you say it's yeah that we might break even or that or that if we put up a we do not accept this material sign we'd have a revenue problem but is that is that really true at 46 let's say we have the sort of perfectly offsetting reduction in volume but we hold the revenue would we be break-even against our expenses yes okay but if you know to councilman Duff's point but if we did if we didn't accept the material at all wouldn't we also be breaking against against our expenses it's not perfectly correlated to answer your question it's not perfectly correlated so we remove you know a ton of material we don't necessarily lose a ton of expense it's basically a huge fixed cost operation and so where we are right now from our debt service we're at $46 a ton next year we're gonna be around 42 the year after that so in terms of you want a contribution to fixed overhead that's what I would caution the council to do anything with this until we can bring you back a full picture the cost of service it's solid waste right now it's like a Rubik's Cube you you move you move one you affect something else and we're trying you know I don't see much I don't see much harm to the residential rate payers only get down on the table given our given the reserves that we're seeing in solid waste right now it is clear though we need to make some changes on the commercial side and we need we just need to understand if we if we lose this this revenue what does it do to fund balance how does that impact the rest of the operation as we continue to take costs out so it's a little it's a little dangerous right now to just take one line item out of probably 50 to 100 revenue streams that's significant until we can bring you back a more holistic thing so if you can give us you know a couple months at least stop the bleeding that's sort of the approach at this point but I just don't think this is a this is gonna end up being a business we're gonna recommend you staying in at the end of the day yes yeah I'm good with a stand for the 46 and then give them the time to to evaluate and decide what we really need to do I agree with what staff is saying okay all right sounds good all right okay yes well just on that just going from the conversations we had before with the same philosophy as you just said I think is that what we were doing with a wholesale disposal rate because in my in our previous conversation we talked about it it could be higher compared to some other places but we didn't know we didn't want to increase it that much because of the impact I am not contradicting myself here on the wholesale disposal rate it's clear it's clear I am but I'm not it's clear we're a little bit low on the wholesale disposal rate that one is really the risk in the budget I mean that that's probably the big in the big one that if we move that too far too fast that could take out hundreds of thousands about millions of dollars out of the revenue base so that's the one we're really kind of watching closely and trying to align with where the market is so that's that 's what we need to be respectful of at this point thank you okay these are landfill rates that staff is proposing to remove from the solid waste rate ordinance and these rates are either not supportive about the recently completed cost of service study and they're not justifiable stay in the ordinance and are currently not being utilized and you could see the rate that's called out here in the light blue color and the first one is the commercial disposal rate of 2850 a ton this is a reduced disposal fee that's been charged to companies in the past and it's currently being charged about three companies we are recommending this rate be removed from the ordinance and these companies we build at forty four dollars a ton which is the gate disposal rate moving forward on the second one here is the clean lumber disposal rate of $23 a ton in the past customers could bring in clean fence panels or construction debris that's free of paint or stain at this reduced rate and it has not seen a lot of utilization in the past and it's currently this material is being landfilled with the temporary suspension of the BMR operation so we are recommending this rate be removed from the ordinance moving forward these customers we would build at $44 a ton contaminated yard waste of $44 a ton and this is not a rate adjustment we're just trying to clean up the rate ordinance and language and this material is being landfilled and what this is is this yard waste that's mixed with construction debris or municipal solid waste so we are recommending this rate be removed from the ordinance the pull-off fees currently in the past solid waste staff has assisted customers with unloading their vehicles and you can see that one down here we do feel like this is liability to the solid waste department with the possibility of damaging the vehicles and trailers so we are recommending this rate be removed from the ordinance moving forward customers will be required to unload their vehicles and trailers herself what happens if it's an elderly customer or someone with a disability that's unable to do it what are their options so this is more it's my understanding this feed this doesn't address the the elderly customers coming in the facility this is more of pulling off large loads so for example a customer was to bring in an old boat or something pulling it off the trailer and if there's a load of shingles pulling the shingles off the trailer so in the past it really hasn't I guess that hasn't really come up that much there is a citizens drop-off sign at the landfill my experience with that is if an elderly couple comes in and they need help in loading something they have a bicycle in the back of their pickup a solid waste staff member would walk over there and get it out it hasn't been an issue in the past I mean anything to come up and yes Nick's correct that this fee was really related to like someone comes in with a flatbed full of shingles they would attach you know basically a chain to that and we would pull that off with with our materials something very similar is over in the beneficial reuse operation for the yard waste that comes in the brush and like in terms of the citizens drop-off area as we talked to the council a few months ago we recently launched that and so essentially what happens at the citizens drop-off area is we have the recycling side which is pretty much serve yourself on the other side of public disposal we do have some slots slots for like appliances and large items we do have field service workers that are there to kind of assist and direct I mean it'll have to be within reason we don't want to risk injury to anyone certainly the citizen or ourselves but that's really the the focus of our staff is being there on that side it's safer they're not buying with large commercial vehicles down there and that is part of our job is to kind of help them navigate the facility and get their stuff disposed of in a safe manner okay thank you certainly our questions least fees I'll move to the next slide there's a few more of them sand select feel and rock cells these are aggregate materials that are located on the city didn't landfill side off Mayhill Road I'm in the past these materials have been sold to customers and loaded into their vehicles or on the trailers sales are currently suspended until an adequate business planning and for system inventory system is in place basically we need a way to monitor how much stockpile we have on site how much is leaving the site and how much is coming in so once it's in place we can bring it back to council this could be something we could offer in the future if council decides to material delivery fee is a hundred dollar fee it is a flat delivery fee it's been charged to residents occasionally in the past to deliver aggregate material to their households or businesses in the city of Denton within the city of limits we we do feel like moving for this is not an adequate use of staff time or equipment so we are recommending this be removed from rate ordinance moving forward there are plenty of companies around the community to offer this service yes sir yes sir so you're saying on the sand select fill etc that you want to suspend until an adequate business plan is in place so what's the inadequate problem you know with the current business plan or I don't I don't really understand the problem that you're addressing really right now that there's not a business plan in place at all so to determine what what the rate should be how to track the material how to monitor it going out the gate we do sell it now we have offered it for sale in the past yes danger question that is correct do people buy it they have in the past and they have purchased the material and it's my understanding Ethan may want to come up here is that they we've currently suspended sales until we can track inventory that we have on hand but let me have last fall we had Weaver and associates on site to conduct an audit for us and one of their key findings was for a lot of our commodity sales which is essentially what you're seeing up here is there's not an adequate inventory system and we essentially have ran reconciliation and found that we weren't doing a good enough job of keeping track of what's coming into the facility what we had an inventory and what was being sold and going out the gate and so as we've kind of started working through that like we mentioned on some of these other items there's two things we need to do establish an inventory system business process for dealing with that if we want to be in that business and the secondary to that is establish a cost of service and I think in some cases let's take soil for instance when you look at landfill soil is a valuable commodity because you use that for cover for covering waste at the end of the day you do excavation so you may have an abundance of soil one day and a dearth of it the next and so one of the questions that we have right now is a landfill operation is are we soil positive or negative and essentially what that means is do we have an abundance a surplus if you will or are we gonna need more soil down the road until we can answer those questions for some of these materials we really feel like we just need to hit the pause button on this we don't know if we may need these materials rather than selling it that is exactly and we don't know if we're selling it in a profit or not right and you also have you know the competitive nature of this is a private entity is probably in the same business do we really want to compete with them or not I understand the objections if we don't know if we're giving selling stuff at a loss that we may need so Councilman Romer what would what would be your guess estimate is to how long you think it might take you know can give me a range in time to to complete that study and come up with I think a lot of it is gonna depend on you know kind of getting our game plan together for the landfill over the next six to nine months what that means is kind of looking at our sequence when cells are going to develop what the soil requirements are a lot of the information that was in the Blue Ridge study hints around at this is your soil use is dependent that that's really kind of the driving factor there if we reduce our dependence on soil then that changes the whole equation we increase compaction rates we slow down our consumption of some of this we're in a better position and so I hope that we'll have those answers within the next six to nine months we've got a lot on our table though and I want to be kind of realistic as we kind of step through this so when we set this rate in really and truly I think the earliest that we probably be coming back to you to address these particular rates would be a mid-year discussion on budget so just follow-up question so and so the staff so while this is being reviewed if staff who were working on these in these areas will be working in other other areas on the landfill we've currently so whenever we discuss the the building materials recovery and rebel process and with council last time we've deployed those staff members in other areas we're actually going to be hiring some field service workers to help with the public disposal area directing traffic and also assisting in some other areas around the side excellent thanks yes I have a question about the community garden plots yes that is the next one we're going to cover and I can go over that really quick and you 're gonna ask your question you may go over it first well I didn't really even know it was out there and so I would after you kind of go through the highlights there how many people actually had plots out there that are going to be losing them okay yeah let me cover it really quick so the community garden is located just south the 651 South May Hill and those of you are not familiar with that address that is the new building that was approved to be renovated for materials management traffic to move to the area that the community garden is currently in will be used as an equipment lay down yard for materials management so we are proposing this rate be removed from the solvage trade ordinance and miss Briggs your question I'm two plots have been rented to date and so $50 in revenue okay thank you well I'm not concerned about the revenue there's just a lot of people who'd like to garden and I just wanted to make sure that they weren't going to be misplaced and right and when we did some research staff did research and we did find out that the city does have a community garden at the bowling green park which is off Windsor just south of North Lakes Park thank you yes ma'am how big are those plots in terms I don't know for sure Ethan may know not a hundred percent sure if it had been technically be taught it off you come up may heal or the bowling green oh yeah well they're going away aren't they yes sir they're going away that's yeah that's why I was asking I was just wondering like is it the entire footprint of the materials management building or what part of it does that cover is the whole garden going away it's my understanding that it will take up the majority of it that the garden would go away and it'd be you know lay down yard for poles or different pieces of material these are the next steps like I said the rates were presented to PB yesterday they did approve the rates we will come back to you on September 18th for formal approval so if you have any questions between them please feel free to reach out to staff over the coming months Ethan will be bringing back a series of discussions with you to set a rate setting and policy strategies once we receive direction from the PB and council on those discussions we will complete the rate correction strategy to address the commercial rates into various rates in the solid waste department with that that actually concludes my presentation if you have any questions I'll be happy to answer them or anything come after - so I have two things one I'd like to talk about the bulk item fee okay I know that I'd asked about that in a closing thing and so I know if that's a appropriate time to talk about it now because we're doing the right ordinance but it's I hear on the list it's large household item and I think it's what $20 for appliances and electronics but I I 'd always heard that there you were allowed one bulk item a free a month like if you have a couch or something like that and if we could just you could help me understand that yeah let me let you think I'm a parent we've had some internal discussions on this and I think it's really just a matter of how much can we take on at one time but thanks for your question there are some differences in definitions both in the rate ordinance as well as in the actual code of ordinances and so we're gonna be meeting with customer service in the weeks ahead as we start formally adopting the rate ordinance our approach operationally has been that we will handle bulk items which are household items free of charge up to four on any individual pickup I believe the rate in there is seven dollars for anything above and beyond that and then the appliances are $20 I think the thing for council to consider is the definitions and the code of ordinances don't differentiate between those two all that is considered a household item and so if we have direction on on the rates or we want to take a look at that policy we can certainly come back to the council and have kind of a discussion on what you'd like to see in one ordinance or the other just as an example I would it was made aware to me that I thought since I had a storm door that it was a bulk item but it was considered construction material so there was a large fee associated with picking that up right and so is that is that part of the definition section you're talking about I think so do we have individual items listed for definition or are we just gonna have bulk item it's large we'll come get it there's a term used to describe solid waste and it's heterogeneous and that means there's all kinds of stuff that you may not anticipate and I think as we look at these definitions that 's something we've got to discuss is the cost for dealing with the door is no difference than the cost of dealing with the couch and so if we kind of grav itate toward what's the cost of service for this we're out in that community already we're already servicing bulk items if this was scheduled is it gonna cost $20 more for us to service that the answers is probably not and so the quick answer on some of these fees is to Todd's earlier point is we've got to get back to cost of service and and then outside of cost of service it becomes a policy decision for council on do you want to have rate subsidization in some areas do you want to have this rolled in with the the regular curbside rate I think those are things for council to consider that being said we are going to be sitting down with customer service our staff at the conclusion when council proves the rates and say this is what we mean when we talk about a bulk item and empower our employees when they're out in the field that if it's there it's reasonable we need to take care of it thank you for that that's gonna be really helpful I think so on the residential collection services there is a section for standard which I guess is small the smart small trash can and a small recycling can as a set and then there is a large trash and large recycling cart as a set is there not a way to get say because we use very minimal trash a small trash in a large recycling is there not a fee structure for that or is it because it says here it's the 2018 right you know so I just wondering we do have small carts available I'll throw a couple of operational issues out there as to why we don't publish that we've had about the hundred carts in inventory for the last five years they go very slowly customers typically don 't request them they go with the large or the standard the other issue that we run into operation with the small carts is the arms on the automated machines they tend to fall off into the hopper which creates some other operational issues and so we are trying to step away from that we understand not everyone wants to use that much service but from an operational efficiency standpoint it just makes sense for us to kind of divest ourselves with the smaller carts from a recycling standpoint I don't know that we even have small carts in inventory we typically try to go with either the standard or the large on that for the same reason just a follow-up because that is in our list of options so if that is not an option or it's a difficult one to to have then I would like to get some feedback on why that's still in there certainly and I think that cleanup is going to be happening in the months ahead as Todd mentioned we're gonna come back and have kind of these policy discussions some of this is gonna be operational issues is here's what we're contending with and it does it doesn't make sense anymore and we'll get your read on it okay thank you any questions any more questions it's all waste let's go ahead take about a five-minute break okay we're back on our agenda for August the 28th 2018 it is five till well it's about 353 and we're on our last sub presentation of agenda item 3b is that correct unless the council has any questions on the fire fees that are part of the memo as well okay yeah just any questions outside of the last presentation okay all right good afternoon mayor City Council George Morrow DME general manager thank you for that break I cut my slides from 40 down to four and and this is my main slide so this is an overview of what's in the electric rates I'm sponsoring the electric rate schedule all the different tariffs and so forth that we have and what we're doing to the rates so you are we're featuring basically that we're reducing the TCRF the transmission cost adjustment down to by three and a half percent so we're reducing it to zero which will result in a customer bill reduction of three and a half percent we're not changing the ECA RCA we did some tweaking of the ECA definition that we talked about last time to make sure that we more explicit about what's in and what's out and one of the things that's in is the deck so and all the different components of the deck very few changes to the tariffs we eliminated residential prepaid service for three-phase facilities because basically we can't implement that we don't have the type of meter that's necessary they don't actually make it today and and they found that out after they implemented that rate but no other changes on the tariffs and very minor adjustments in the distributed generation from renewable rider just some tweaks to make it a little clearer for folks who are looking for information about solar guidelines and those kinds of things so so that reduction in the TCRF mentioned is about a three and a half percent average reduction this shows the breakdown of how that hits the different customer classes 3.4 percent on average you know depends if you're an average customer not on the residential side up to as much as 4.3 percent on the large commercial their average rates a little bit lower than residential and so a fixed reduction of the TCRF actually gives them a slightly bigger percentage reduction so I think our customers are going to appreciate that if that's the council's wish to to provide that rate reduction so I wasn't kidding any questions yes can you go back yep further mm-hmm oh I'm sorry yeah just back that one to the rates we have the different rates can you explain what constitutes a small medium and large commercial how that's defined yeah we actually had a slide on that but it took it out you know so small commercial would be the typical storefront maybe the barbershop the hair salon could be a you know could be a small restaurant you know so we talked about mom-and-pop type businesses medium commercial would be a little bit larger you know more employees maybe they're actually doing something with electricity inside of the of the business and so that would be typically what a medium is in large commercial that we all have a pretty good idea of what the you know what our larger commercial customers are ranging you know all the way up to a Peter belt and in size thanks yes I just want to add that they're all paying a $20 late fee thank you thank you any other questions comments yes so so can you explain why the commercial rate is different than the residential rate why the commercial rate is less sure so just like all the different utilities and other rates you've looked at it's based on cost of service and the cost to serve a larger customer is less than it cost to serve a smaller customer so it's an economy of scale basically and so when we allocate the cost of the distribution and transmission network and all the other assets of the utility to customers based on their usage profile commercial customers tend to have a better profile of electric usage they use more and maybe off-peak periods when our cost is actually less so there's a number of different components in addition to the economy of scale that can reduce the cost of large customers so so so when you say a better that that the commercial accounts have a better usage profile you don't mean better environmentally right you mean you mean in terms of generating yeah I think load profile would have been a more descriptive word so their electric load profile the times a day when they use power and how much they use might have a better load factor load factor would be how much energy they buy from us for the capacity impact they have on the system so they're actually using capacity more and we're able to spread those fixed costs across more kilowatt hours and that helps reduce the price per kilowatt hour okay another follow-up but I can tell somebody else oh would you were you three yes yeah because I can tell somebody else has a question so that's just it's really interesting because for me the more electricity I use the higher bill that I have but say for a commercial you're just saying that the more energy they use it goes to reduce their rate so they get a lower bill so and it's because as a residential you're saying I cost more to your system so so so you had a couple things going on there you know once is one is how much you consume on a kilowatt hour basis and the second is the cost of service part of it which determines what the price is per kilowatt hour so so that's done in the background so periodically I think we do it about once every five years we're going to run a cost of service we're gonna take all of the cost allocations to the different customer classes and come up with this cents per kilowatt hour that's in the rate tariff that's that I'm bringing you today and then depends how many of those you use and of course you're going to use a lot more typically in the summertime when you know we all have air conditioning load and so forth but that per unit price is fixed so if customer sees a larger bill in the summer or any other time of the year it's because you used more kilowatt hours commercial customer you know similarly they their rates are on a average basis lower than residential they typically pay a demand charge so they're gonna pay no whether they use any electricity or not but typically they do use a lot of electricity so they're spreading that kilowatt demand charge across more consumption and getting their rate down but at the same time they're also seeing higher bills in the in the summertime because they're probably needing to do more cooling and that type of thing so anybody else are you okay go ahead so what is your sense of what the impact would be if residential rates were lowered by X amount whatever amount and commercial rates were raised to accommodate whatever that difference predicted difference in revenue would be does that make sense the question it does but I think the you know the industry trend is to develop rates that are consistent with the cost to serve customers so that that would be a little bit upside down from that there's impacts I guess the only other thing I would add on the commercial side if your rates go up on a dollar per KW basis there's there are a number of customers that are sensitive to electric electric rates particularly those that use a lot of electricity right so when they look at Denton as a place to move or locate their business or to build something that could you know depending on how much of a tilt we did that could have that impact so we could lose some businesses we could lose some jobs we could lose some tax base others if it was significant enough would might look someplace else to even relocate an existing business so and I would be curious to know kind of where the cutoff point is at which and that was the reason why I said X amount you know at what point would raising commercial rates to offset lowering the residential rates and again residents are the as a municipal utility residents including business owners who live here you know for their homestead they're paying a residential rate so these are the people who are eligible to vote these are the people were elected to serve so you know I would like to know at what point the commercial rates would be raised to so much as to have an impact on attracting businesses versus the positive impact to residents for that same amount in a reduction of rates especially as we move forward and you know in a number of years really start paying off the debt on the gas plant so I want to make sure I understood she's basically repeating her question and I heard your first answer right and I want to make sure I heard your answer and that I understood it but in light of your question because I but I hear your question saying hey give me a graph of what do we lower residential rates to some X amount and what would it cost and cut commercial rates to offset that so it's revenue neutral it's a zero sum game I heard your response to be that's not really how we do it and what I've heard in a lot of the discussions prior to this today about solid waste and all that is cost of service that's what we that's how we look at this is not just the electric company it's planning and development it's solid waste it's wastewater it's drink we look at cost of service to do that so are you are you asking for them to move away from that model in in developing rate structures is that or am I misunderstanding your question well so we also keep in mind we also have a cost of service adjustment that factors into the bill that's outside of the rates so we adjust for and the adjust for cost of service varies so the energy cost adjustment yes the energy cost is the energy there's the energy cost adjustment yeah but I don't think that's separate from yeah yeah that's what I'm saying that's separate from that so but energy cost adjustment and cost of service are totally they're totally different okay yeah one is for the just the price fluctuation and energy and it's a total pass through it's there's no we don't get a premium on it or it's you know that's how we try to budget for it am I am I right yeah yeah okay sorry I wanted to be sure that that you were talking about the I wasn't sure if you're talking about actual cost of service or if you were talking about the no energy no there's cost no cost of service to separate energy cost of service I wasn't talking about it they say energy cost of stress it cost yeah got it so and my second question was actually it was it was different than the first question it was kind of so you articulated the first question correctly and then I got an answer for that and my second question was I'd like to see it kind of solve for X you know what would the X be to and you don't have to answer that now but that 's something I would like to see in the in the future come back to us but yes I do believe that we have that we have a rate structure and I realize it's very common in fact it's it's the norm it's the industry norm for electricity and it differs in other utilities but I do really like how our water department has a complete opposite rate structure where the more you use the more you pay so that has for me that the two benefits of having a positive environmental impact because it's rewarding lower consumption instead of rewarding higher consumption and it also has a greater financial impact on our residents who are these citizen owners of our utilities so you know I have in the past and there might not be consensus on council to you know to push for this but every time it comes up I will ask to see more data on kind of what are the risks involved and how if at all could we make this happen because I do see the impact that our you know rates and policies have have on ratepayers who again are our citizen owners so I'm not so yes I'm convinced that it's industry standard and everyone does it but just based on the data I've seen I'm not convinced that that's the only way it has to be so I'll keep asking for more information yes given give a good example if we get too crazy with our electrical rates I think we just got a cold storage come in here and very likely if we had been raising our rates up too high they probably wouldn't have come okay yes councilmember Briggs well to that we also have some sort of special incentive that if a customer commercial person uses so much energy they get a large discount they get so much back so I don't I don't think that's an issue they were happy to have that incentive so if they reach a certain energy uses they definitely get a discount and get money back in their pocket so that is covered I'm sure I know yeah go ahead yeah so on this list because I have heard people in the community talk about you know if you're looking at it from an energy usage point and when our demand in the city gets really high that part of what a plan that we should do in the city is reduce our usage and by if you do raise rates on for certain people who use a certain amount of energy they will be more inclined to not use as much and so I'm looking here at the the peak hours off peak on peak super peak and then on peak and I guess then it goes back to off peak again if you can help me because I I don't know do each of those time periods have a different rate or what is the significance of this of the timing of these right so presently we have one sort of a time use rate but as far as I know nobody is on it at the moment so the industry is moving eventually to time use rates we're not there today and so we'll one of the ideas we're exploring is to do pilot maybe sometime in the future perhaps this next budget year on a limited basis to see what the customer reaction would be to a time of use rate so generally you raise the prices during the high demand period you lower them when energy is abundant and cheap and you see if the customers can adjust their consumption to net out a lower bill at the end of the month and provide some other benefits maybe to the grid by not putting as much demand on the on peak period there's a lot of pros and cons at time of use rates and that's maybe a dialogue we can have someday as we get more serious about it some people cannot adjust to their time and so they end up with much larger bales right because we got this on peak maybe you don't work you're at home you need air conditioning for your health and those kinds of things so so it's a it's an elaborate question but one thing we're wanting to do this next year is to through our green sense program offer some additional incentives I talked to you last time I was here that we're going to look at hol istically at the green sense program see if we can make some some modest adjustments going forward to encourage customers to do things to get off of our peak you know we'll provide some incentives rather than time of use rates we might have discounts for things that would you know more efficient air conditions air conditions is one way we do that so if we can encourage customers to change out and get a more efficient air conditioning with better efficiency then that helps reduce our peak demand so yes I think it's a it's simply true that to keep our taxes affordable you know we ultimately need a diversity in our economy and if you know I've kind of heard that before that the electrical rates are part of how we do attract you know some of these larger employers I think it's a fair question though to know what how our commercial rates stack up versus the other communities that we tend to compete with for the cold storages of the world whether it's Plano or you know whoever we tend to lose business to also be good to know so I don't think that's an urgent request but I'd like to know that at some point all right yeah we tend to look at residential the other graphs so we typically provide but we haven't looked hard at commercial lately so that's possibly something we could do anything else okay thank you thank you for that discussion any questions on the fire fees questions on the fire fees Tony do you have anything else besides the fire fees no mayor the other fire fees that was attachment seven to that memo just want to remind the council again we will have another work session on September 11th we'll also have a public second public hearing on the tax rate on that same night and a and the first and only public hearing on the budget on that night as well the plan would be to come back to you on the 11th and kind of reconcile kind of where we are in total for the budget give you some some a revised look at at the total budget and then also provide any responses to questions that you had today and then on September 18th we'll be we'll have another work session item there for you if you want to talk some more about the budget and then that evening we'll be asking you to consider adoption of the tax roll the tax rate and also the budget itself so unless you have any questions councilman breaks I have a question about the EMS medications are these things that I know that the base rate isn't covered through insurance but are the other things listed here are these items that are covered by insurance that the residents can if they have it can file for yes I believe that we will bill both the insurance or if they have Medicare Medicaid that's billed first certainly if they don't have insurance then it's private pay for Medicare Medicaid anything that's not covered is is written off we 're not allowed to turn around and bill the customer but if they have insurance and certainly that insurance will have certain caps on how much is covered by the by the insurance and any differences then bill to the customer well because I look at some of these amounts and they vary really a large amount you know like was it so I'm just I'm just curious like from so-and-so and to so-and-so how how do we come up with those those numbers and if it's I just want to make sure that it's it's a fair price and it's how do we come up with these so so there is a the city does have a medical director that that helps us set those and there is a formulary very similar to the way that the insurance for if we're sitting employees is done as well so there's these are customary charges that are out there in the industry in the insurance industry medical director is the one that advises us on what those fees should be and and I see a lot of trucks here I'm wondering how do they take care of those and manage those in their facilities are they are they locked up and if somebody could come yes I'll ask the chiefs come up here and ask okay good Kenneth edges and fire chief so own pricing this is actually contract pricing we are writing a contract with Cedar Hill in a local agreement so what you see is we have not updated these via schedule since 2010 so it's just some cleanup language look at to add certain medications that our medical director has allowed us to actually operate under now and then to remove some as well so you see some these pricing as far as how they're very expensive they are that 's just a price from the manufacturer and what we're transferring on to the patient okay and as far as the the handling of these how and are they in every individual truck and are they locked up is there one person who's able to access this because I see fate and all right there and there's been plenty of you know overdoses with that I'm just trying to make sure that the the medicines are kept safe we're regulated by the DEA as well we had to operate underneath the medical director's license anytime we purchase these type of drugs it's all documentation we do have lock boxes under double key in our ambulances as well okay thank you any other questions I think that concludes this presentation city managers asked do we have any appetite for we've got several people here on agenda item F which is the last one we can move that up or we can just keep proceeding down through the agenda we're probably still gosh I would think an hour or two out to get to at least because we got so yeah we about moving it up all right is everybody here that as far as for staff presentation yeah okay all right I'll go ahead and read the caption so we're going to F is received porthole discussion of staff direction regarding homelessness initiatives in the proposed in basic services center project made at the August 7th 2018 City Council meeting good afternoon mayor City Council I'm Sarah Keekler I'm the director of public affairs I'm here to receive direction today from City Council as the mayor read through the caption there was a resident group that presented at the August 7th City Council meeting during the public presentation section of the agenda on a project proposal for a tent encampment or transitional housing village for the homeless on city property so staff wants to seek direction if you want us to look into this further and research it and analyze it and do everything necessary and kind of give you some context of what that would take but before I go into that project proposal and describing the work work effort required I wanted to first review what is the progress we've made as a regional effort for homelessness initiatives and I know we've gone over this in the past so I'm going to try to keep this fast but I think it is important background of how we've approached this from a very strategic effort of how to best address homelessness in our community so we've focused on building a housing crisis response system and a housing crisis response system ensures that homelessness is prevented and if not that it is rare brief and non-recur ring experience so there are four elements to an effective housing crisis response system the first element is that it identifies all people experiencing homelessness or at risk of experiencing homelessness the second element is that it prevents homelessness whenever possible so it's the second category here the third is that it provides immediate access through coordinated entry to shelter and supportive services without barriers to entry while housing is being secured so that's the third element and then the fourth element is trying to secure quickly connect people with housing solutions and so I want to go through some major milestones of how we built this system and how we're looking to continuously improve the system that we've started so back in actually 2014 mayor Watts convened housing the homeless task force in July of 2015 they issued a report there were two primary recommendations coming from that report one was to immediately provide beds for the homeless and the city acted upon that recommendation by providing a facility a 10-year lease agreement with MK OC for a shelter that immediately added 40 beds to the community and then so this is part addressing the unsheltered part here the second recommendation coming from the mayor's housing the homeless task force that was acted upon as well was to hire a homeless coordinator someone that could oversee the development and implementation of this system as a collaborative effort and so homeless coordinator was hired through an MOU with the United Way of Denton County which serves as the backbone support for the entire effort at a region and county level and this they're also providing backbone support to the strategic planning group which is the Denton County homeless leadership team that initiative was launched in June 2016 and charged with developing this system and improving it with all the agencies and entities involved in September one of the first initiatives that the Denton County homeless leadership team started to work on was implementation of a coordinated entry system this was key this is a major gap in our in the county that was missing all the agencies were operating independently and we needed one tool one common tool that everyone could use to understand how to quickly connect those people with the resources that they needed as well as prioritize for the housing solutions that are available and we this became even more important when we realized that we had lost as a county federal emergency solutions grant funding because we did not have that coordinated entry system in place so a significant amount of work and resources went to getting that system up into place because we lost that funding the city of Denton stepped in as well as the city of Louisville and Denton County and providing stopgap stopgap funding for the emergency solutions grant and that's important because that funding goes directly towards housing solutions for the homeless in the fall I just want to mention as well in the fall of 2016 we expanded our street outreach team to seven member team consisting of representatives from giving hope Denton police dent fire and Denton County MHMR they are tasked with going out into the community they were started off doing it weekly and then they went to bi-weekly and trying to reach out to those individuals that are unsheltered and connect them with the services that they need as well as get them through coordinated entry and so they continued to do that every every two weeks in the community in October of 2017 we came back to the emergency shelter piece and looked at how what could be expanded there to serve the needs of homeless individuals so prior to last winter beginning MK OC did a remodel and they added 50 beds so it came to a total of 90 beds available there and previously they were using cuts so now they've upgraded to actual bunk beds and they have catering kitchen as well so they can serve dinner at night as well as restrooms and showers available at that facility so some significant improvements were made to the MK OC shelter before last winter began to increase that capacity as well in March of 2018 of this year the Denton County homeless leadership team launched the barriers fund the purpose of this fund is to help those individuals that are at risk of becoming homeless stay housed is a much more cost-effective solution to help those individuals stay housed than for them to become homeless and take them back to housing and this fund really allows us to be creative sometimes grant funding we have very strict limitations on it this one we can help individuals if they're in need of a security deposit or some other just low solutions that we can help them to stay housed and so we're continuing to develop that barriers fund and really promoting it and marketing it so this can be a solution for us as well in April of this year through through the implementation of the coordinated entry system we had finally gotten to a place where we could have active management of that housing priority list that comes from the coordinated entry system so every two weeks about 15 to 20 case managers from around the county are sitting sitting down and going through that list which is by name and determining who is new to the list who has moved off the list who might have moved up in priority what housing units are have become available what may become available it's very active management around that housing priority list to connect individuals to housing solutions in recently in July we received direction from City Council to work with the United Way of Denton County and hiring housing navigator and that the purpose of that position will be to open up more doors for Denton County to increase the number of housing units that we have available for individuals and that has already been included in next year 's 18-19 budget the amount we also received direction to restart the employee to empower program and then recently in August the Denton County homeless leadership team formed a shelter planning work group and that's to come back up to this component of our response system and identify do we have gaps and what are the needs and what are the salute what are their potential solutions that we have so this is again just the major milestones it doesn't encompass everything that all of the nonprofit agencies and all of the entities are working on in addition to the major initiatives that we've seen through the last few months such March of this year the Denton County homeless leadership team is planning to update their strategic plan in October of this year they're also planning to adopt standards of excellence which will set target metrics to quantify what does it mean to make homeless homelessness rare brief and non-recur ring and then their continued work on a community dashboard so we can share all that information very transparently with the public so a lot of major initiatives to address multiple components of our housing crisis response system and take a very balanced approach I just want to touch a little bit more upon the shelter planning work group so that was as mentioned recently formed on August 9th number of different entities participating that are involved in street outreach and trying to help the unsheltered population the purpose of this group there was a one sheet included in the backup but really it's to assess the current environment what's the capacity what's the availability what's the utilization are there barriers that could be lower what are the options that are available trying to identify with the nonprofit agencies what are they planning how can we align those plans to better meet the needs of our county and our region as well as looking at doing a survey to survey the homeless population see what they're experiencing what are the problems their frustrations the barriers that they might be experiencing to shelter and kind of pulling all that together and trying to identify are there some quick things that we can do to immediately improve the shelter environment here in Denton County as well as looking a little bit long-term what are some strategic things that could take place so we did set a very aggressive timeline for this so it will require a lot of resources to get that collaboration and pull together what our report and recommendations I want to wait till after the presentation go into the question just so we get through this yeah and so this is the proposed project from the resident group this was on August 7th and the copy of their project proposal was in your backup they were proposing a tent and encampment in the area outlined on green here in your square this is city property at the corner of Texas and R oodell they actually proposed two options one was to start with a tent encampment the second was to do cedar sheds so somewhat love lodging on this square this would be the pilot program and then they were looking to use also city property to the east of Roodell here to expand at another point this was referred to as the Denton basic services center to provide a place for the homeless and so what staff has tried to do through our report is kind of outline everything that would be involved and need to be researched analyzed and vetted to bring back to you so you can make an informed decision and tried to to kind of expand on these areas I'm not going to go through them all they were in the report but this is a significant would require a significant amount of resources and may delay other projects and initiatives that we have going on for homelessness as well as in other departments that are working on some very high priority projects so just to kind of hit on a few here of some of the areas that were outlined in the backup there currently is no land use available for this type of proposed use so a DDC text amendment would be necessary that require a lot of resources to do the research and analysis and then propose development standards and then take it through the public notification P&Z City Council to get to a place where it could be a proposed land use if that's allowed that they would then proceed through what would be the development standards and the site plan review process and there's a lot of questions as far as building fire and health codes how would we make sure that we protect the safety health and welfare of individuals on the site as well as surrounding properties safety and security a lot of questions there as well to protect the individuals that might be most vulnerable liability and risk would be a significant undertaking with the city attorney's office to really kind of convey and quantify what liability and risk the city might be taking on what could be covered by an insurance policy from the nonprofit that would have this and what could not be and are we covered on your governmental purpose or does it now cross over into not the enterprise purpose neighborhood and community support some of that would might be proposed the development process there was also mentioned in their backup that they would reach out to the neighborhood and have kind of a neighborhood good meeting good neighbor agreement so those conversations would need to take place for case management and HMIS number of questions around how would they provide the supportive services necessary to these individuals to make sure that they continue on from the journey of being homeless to housed and how do we provide those full wraparound services that each individual may need depending on their situation and goals and outcomes that's a big question and for staff in terms of what is the goal of this proposed project and how does that fit into our overall system that I just described and really trying to understand what is the purpose there and what what does success look like what are the metrics for success in terms of helping individuals move from homeless to house cost and requested assistance we need to vet that out more thoroughly what would be what are the financials of the nonprofit what's requested from the city whether that be directly or in kind services we request more documentation on the nonprofit as well and then this we'd want to see what the city plans for property are I just want to mention I found out the area to the right here we do have a drainage easement with the developer of this land currently that's in effect until September of 2019 so nothing could take place on that property until then after we also have some plans for Riddell realignment that will go right through this this property here for the property outlined in green this is right below our service center here so there are some remodel plans that we're developing where there could be a use for this property in terms of the service center so that's just a general overview very preliminary just trying to describe what would be required for us to vet this a little bit more thoroughly and then seek council direction if this is a priority if this is something we should work on how do we best direct our time we're just gonna start around the horn councilmember armature header and at first a little armature and then crazy okay so thank you and I had a number of questions several questions but first I wanted to before I asked my question I need to to make a disclosure which I made the last time this came up and and I will make this in the future whenever I have something to disclose and I have here a document and affidavit on previous affiliation and I 'll just read from it for the disclosure it says I deb armatars a city official of the city of Net and make this affidavit that I do not have a substantial interest that would be specifically affected by a vote or decision on this item listed under the work session report etc however I used to be a board member or officer of the nonprofit organization involved with this item I simply desire to disclose my previous relationship and then I check off the box that says I had that I have no substantial interest so and it's it is signed by a not ary who happens to be the city secretary anyway this document is filed with with the city auditor so anyway all of that is to say that I used to be a board member and not anymore and there is an actual affidavit to that effect so there's no contradiction with the ethics ordinance and anyway so I wanted to make that clear um so my first question is so I'm trying to wrap my head around why all right actually that way what I should ask is is this included in the shelter planning work group discussions is there a plan to discuss this option as part of the shelter planning work group we have invited the Denton basic service center representatives to participate in that group as well and bring their ideas and their energy we certainly want to have everyone involved in this conversation in terms of what are the options and what are the best options to help meet our goal of getting individuals from homeless to housed okay thanks so just kind of a follow-up question is to ascertain exactly what that means so in terms of possibilities so the the shelter the shelter planning work group is not just about looking at our two shelters the you know salvation army Mets in your king how much do we want to expand them change what they do it is that correct yes it'll be more comprehensive than that that might be the immediate goal because there could be some immediate wins in terms of with our existing infrastructure that we have available but it will look a little bit more broadly in terms of future long-term strategic planning okay so then theoretically speaking a discussion of a and I'll call it basic basic services center basic services center like option could be one of the outcomes of this shelter shelter planning work group it could be mm-hmm okay thank you I had some other questions but I'll I'll save those for a little later so I have a few questions too mine it's just really about the ESG grant because you mentioned it and so it's my understanding that there are actually some requirements for that ESG grant that the city has to provide or to put and I think it has to do with getting in a home that if can you elaborate on that a little bit and the percentages where we are and where we need to be sure I'm gonna invite Danny Shaw or Human Services Coordinator to come up here to explain that a little bit more but in terms of that that grant does come from HUD and HUD has some definitions in terms of what does sheltering an individual mean so I'll turn that over to Danny so current I'm sorry Danny Shaw Human Services Coordinator and Community Development for the ESG grant there actually a couple of different requirements depending on the service type so in emergency shelter the goals in the ESG grant are to get 35% of the folks who enter into shelter into a temporary housing solution and 40% into a permanent housing solution and that's measured in the HM IS system as people are exited from shelter in the ESG grant currently we're only at about 19% so we're not quite meeting those measures yet and then within rapid rehousing the goals are a bit higher and homeless prevention as well so in homeless prevention our goal is to keep 75% of the people actually 85% of the people housed for at least three months and then 75% after that three month period so they just vary depending on the program type as to what those goals are for housing and rapids very similar that was very fast so on the excited so the 35% backup for transitional housing is a requirement for us to continue to get the grant and we're at 19 did you say right in in rapid reh ousing and emergency shelter on average we're at about 19% housing performance I 'd have to go look at the full numbers in each category but we're not meeting those measures currently okay so there's shelter transitional and permanent and those are all three different metrics that we have to meet right and the ESG grant is written that we have to meet different metrics in each category because of the different service needs of the clients in those categories and so what qualifies as transitional housing so in this particular grant transitional housing is not a part of the program transitional housing would have to be anything from seven days to two years and it has to be in most housing standards it has to be habitable housing which means it would have to be housing that a person could stay in with all the utilities and all of the proper accout rements of a typical housing unit it would have to meet those kind of standards and then as far as the other aspects go it could vary it's all about the wraparound service so they're being provided the time the person is in that program that is working towards getting them into a permanent housing solution okay thank you okay oh I'm sorry did you have one oh well I can keep asking I guess as we go around I'll just do we'll just do one question at a time I have some I have like a whole bunch of comments I'm happy to wait yeah I have a lot to you we can round we can just take one at a time each I'm gonna take a try no y'all try to say most of your comment I mean I'd say most of what you have to say okay that might spur some other people to have I'd hate to have the data come out in such a fragmented way that it you know it sort of fragments the discussion so yeah go ahead and just share what you got okay so for for me learning about the the homeless population in the HMIS data it's a little bit different compared to the point-in-time count which is a little bit more dense specific but currently from blast counts what I I know there are 642 homeless people actual homeless people in Denton County and then we had a little over 200 in in the point-in-time count in Denton so I'm assuming there's there 's a middle in there between the 200 and the 600 in Denton and so when I see a project like this and I have people come and speak to me who are actually homeless and they're literally pulling on my arm saying I need to be somewhere I can't keep doing what I'm doing and I don't have an answer for them I mean we have all this data we have all of these things and we're making progress but what we're not doing is putting them in somewhere safe to sleep that's consistent and so that that is a goal that that I want to achieve and I'm not sure I mean you know maybe a tent isn't the way to do it but I am definitely in favor of some sort of project like this and making the structures habitable so that that can count towards our percentage and it can help alleviate those the stresses that the people are feeling that are on the street currently sure first I'll make the same disclosure I was on the board of this or the organization that brought this concept forward I'm not now I praise the the citizens who volunteered their time to put together the ethics ordinance who fought through this issue decided they wanted us to disclose our past you know associations but to have people in council who have past experiences and you know can still participate in the deliberations and so on I also want to praise mayor our mayor and councilmember Briggs who were part of this council at the time that Monsignor King came about and I don't think you know a lot of people are aware of that I was glad you went through the chronology and that in that instance the city provided land they provided a structure that was served with utilities and I think it's made a huge impact you know and a contribution toward resolving this issue and I'm more making comments than questions I don't know if I'll probably hit a question here and there I guess what I'm one of well here's a question there's a lot of our efforts are toward I think very validly toward long term getting people all the way to those who can be permanently housed you're to real housing but what is the sort of envisioned time frame for that I mean down to the point where obviously you know we say almost this will be rare we don't say non-exist ent but what's the time frame do you think to get to rare is it something like in five years or 20 years or I'm gonna invite Courtney cross up with you know we have to encounter to answer that that is something we're looking at with the standards of excellent document in terms of what are some achievable reasonable metrics that we have I'm not sure if we've started good question Courtney cross I think when we say we mean in relation to a person's life a rare experience we know that the majority of our homeless population experience homelessness once and then don't experience it again and so I think when we when we say rare brief and non-recurring we have to look at that in the context of different life experiences so people maybe who are experiencing chronic homelessness have been homeless for an extended period of time and may live with some sort of physical or mental disability that prohibits them from earning a sufficient income to pay market rate for rent and that sort of thing or maybe battling with substance use or whatever that may be putting that in the context of the different experiences of our homeless population and we're getting close to kind of being able to start to set some of those baseline goals we do have some standards of excellence that we're starting to implement across our homeless programs with just standards of operation and also like I mentioned baseline measurements around kind of what some of what Danny mentioned around our grant metrics but also what's a best or emerging practice or around how long should a person stay in shelter before they're you know transition on to a permanent housing solution and that sort of thing so rare it in so much as you know is this a family that's experiencing a one-time crisis or is this someone who you know has is experiencing a mental illness or doesn't have access to adequate services that they need to maintain that housing stability that's very helpful is it's is it safe to say that you know achieving that obviously it 's a very complex you know set of enterprises but that that's like some time off like before we can say we're there homelessness in Denton County is rare brief and on recurring that's it's some time off it's maybe it's I'm gonna say yes and no to that we are working very diligently to kind of as I mentioned pinpoint some of these subpopulations if you will within our homeless population specifically veterans and chronic homeless populations so we're working very closely with some are Denton County Veterans Coalition and quite a few local partners here in the county to and through our efforts to kind of aggregate and analyze our data and use that to more quickly get people placed into housing we're using our veterans as a sub population to to get close to that functional zero which you've heard of as we have adequate supply to meet the need of what's there you know so for all of those you know what about the people that want to don't want to access shelter don't want to access services you know we're getting close to being able to say we've got so many homeless veterans in Denton County and so many transitional permanent units to to meet that need so as far as our entire homeless population it may be you know technically a ways off but for our subpopulations and working towards that functional zero where we're getting close so yeah thanks thanks with the question of rare brief and non recurring they are actually tied to our system performance measures but more importantly the issue of being able to get to rare brief and non recurring is the funding issue a fiscal issue so we presented information to the homeless leadership team that shows very directly that at those numbers that we're talking about now that's about 42 units a month but we only have funding for seven so that's a huge gap in just being able to pay for units much less being able to identify units that are open to people who are in these circumstances with higher barriers so the rare brief and non recurring we'll get there when we have the funding to do it yeah yeah we're just really limited there's there's really no way to get to that place until we increase those resources so yeah so with existing funding it's more time yes so so this is just to say that you know this is we're gonna I'm sure based on what we're hearing we're gonna see very very significant strides along the way but but not get there all at once most likely I mean even giving the funding and I would just suggest that that that means you know we 're gonna be looking at an unsolved problem getting solved over a period of time and I would just suggest that the current program the status quo program that sort of you know that we implicitly have is horrible you know I think the idea of having say that one more time the status quo program for people who aren't yet being served in some way right if I made the difference between people who are living on the street in our ability to house them there's a group of people who don't have a place exactly and and the and the idea that you know that our current program is you know of having people just find a place in the woods or sleep in doorways it's very expensive it's it's it's because we've got people you know taking round trips through jails because they're on they're more likely to end up on emergency response vehicles very expensive bad for business bad for response times and you know and I don't think it's great for the rest of the population to have people who don't have access to sanitation you know other than restaurant bathrooms and I just think it's a horrible system and so if I think if if this could is potentially part of something that gets us between here and there I'm certainly interested in it and you know I see a long list of obstacles and I'd like to maybe take a shot at just make a few brief comments you know about some of the obstacles that have been represented we say there's no allowable land use under you know the development code but that really is the whole point of coming before council led debts within our power to craft a you know I'm not saying it won't take effort and you described it but it's you know something within our capacity you mentioned in the backup need for utility site plan and I think that is likely I think that's likely to be city driven there's a question about how much how much does the city need to do and how much would you know this organization do I think similar to my senior King right there the city provided a structure with utilities I think here you're talking about something simpler that was an existing animal shelter but I think you're talking about something like like what you might have at a campground you know so yeah for sure that's got to get planned and built but that's not outside the range of you know many kinds of things that we see come before us fire plan absolutely but you know there are also established examples are not this isn't the first thing like this ever you know attempted there's something like 20s 28 or 26 around the country of similar kind of neighborhoods like this so there are established examples we can look at as far as health and sanitation requirements I do think that something like dumpster service you know like you might have like at a campsite probably would be asked of the city but as far as concerns that were raised about how do people cook how do they store food where do they take the dog it's a neighborhood I don't think it's a self-governing neighborhood it's not something run by the city I don't think it's on us to decide like for anybody for anybody else in any other neighborhood how they do that there's good questions about safety and security again this is the city's being asked to provide certain basic services but it's meant to be run by a self-governing it's meant to be self-governing with the oversight of a non-profit liability and risk have come up certainly but that would be an expectation of the nonprofit to carry the insurance there's questions raised about how would we probe neighborhood and community support absolutely but it's something the city does all the time you know we know how to notice and have meetings and you know that's you know we know how to do those things there's a question raised about case management that's not actually being necessarily asked of the city but I'd say to the extent that case management is provided by the city or nonprofits to these people these people exist now so if anything it's easier to find them if they're all in one place as far as what are the goals and outcomes I think you're gonna I think that would be defined by the nonprofit it's a totally reasonable question I think you're likely to hear that it's gonna be a mixture of a very inexpensive form of supportive housing for some it's emergency housing for some it's transitional housing for some it was mentioned in the backup that you know there's a need to determine what the costs would be and what the requested assistance is sure that is work to do like for every single item that comes before us and yeah I think you know that that's about it now and let me just close by saying sounds interesting to me but to me it's not important that we necessarily do this my question is ultimately does it fit into a broader strategic plan that you're gonna come to us with and if it does it does it doesn't it doesn't I'm pleased very pleased to hear that you know you're looking at it comprehensively with an idea of reaching a goal that we're moving beyond just saying you know look we're doing a lot you know it's like which is great but I think it's even better that you 're saying we want to achieve a goal and you know we're gonna look at a comprehensive way to do it so I applaud all that speech over yeah so first I want to I was listening very carefully and I agree with everything councilmember Melter just said you know to those points some of those I had planned to say already but no point in repeating it let's see so and I'm pleased as well to know that a discussion of some sort of sanctioned tent ground or tiny home community will be included as part of the shelter planning work group so one of my questions I'll start with this one since this slide is up for the estimated staff effort and by the way staff thank you so much I want to just shout out to our staff who are who work with we've been working on these kinds of issues for a really long time really so few so few of you doing the work of millions and it's I can't thank you enough I don't know if people realize people I know council realizes people outside of council how much time that that does that you all spend on on this so these areas and in groups of staff since the since it's sanctioned tent ground or small home village would be included in discussions of possibilities with the shelter planning work group then would it be fair to say then that all of these that these areas and staff involvement that you list here along with the basic services center as attached to the basic services center would also be involved at some point in part of the discussion of the shelter planning work group itself that's already existing in other words what I'm getting at is you know is this necessarily additional staff effort then it's already planned with the shelter planning work group or aren't these just the staff that could be at at some point in the discussion would likely be drawn in if we're talking about starting anything new yes so at the shelter planning work group level it may be discussed as a concept as an option if it comes back as a recommendation that's at that point where we've come back to council and again seek do you want city staff because this is all the city staff participates in the work group this involves a large number of departments and city staff in order to research and analyze it but I think the focus of the work group will really be to understand what are our gaps what are the needs and then what are all the potential solutions and what are the the most cost-effective solutions in order to meet that gap or need and how do we get there the quickest that we can because this is a substantial amount of planning and capital and operations and services what is the best solution and that's the that's the work that we 're trying to get done now is to come back to that element in our system of how do we best serve those that are on the street or that are unsheltered to get them into a sheltered environment while we provide the wraparound services and get them through coordinated entry till they find a permanent housing solution so that's kind of how we're trying to approach it very strategically and really give you the best information possible thank you I really I really appreciate that and you know as councilmember Melter was saying you know I think you'll find that some of these areas such as the case management you know don't apply to this basic services center option but could as you're saying to apply to some yeah potential I would kind of disagree that the case management does we've built we spent a lot of time building that system and if we strain it and we don't provide the resources that are needed it could have unintended consequences so I do really do think case management is necessary and that could be that's something that could be worked on with if the nonprofit could have a partnership with another nonprofit it's just a conversation that should occur yeah oh yes so sorry yes and I completely agree with that I mean kind of outside of so we're already providing case price case management or case management is already a goal so it's not a new it's not adding on a new goal so a question for Danny about something that you said earlier I'm just going to miss some questions so you mentioned that how soon we come to our goal of rare brief and non-occurring which is an awesome goal you know how soon we reach that goal depends on on how much money that city is willing to spend on that ultimately is that what you're well yes but not just the city this you want to make sure where this is a regional county so yes shouldn't all fall on the city of Denton shoulders to fund but yes it's a funding issue yeah yeah so he breaks down yeah and so sorry so I'm thinking city because yeah we're Denton City Council right so but definitely we want of course of course it's a countywide issue and so you're speaking for a this countywide organization but you're also working in city of Denton but yeah thank you thank you for pointing that out absolutely um so what is what would be your estimate of how much we are already spending now on emergency medical and policing and jail time for people who are currently living on the street have a number for that just yet but we're working on that we're working on improvements with collecting that data from all the public safety entities so that we can provide that information for our direct cost and then Courtney's been doing a lot of work trying to bring some of our hospital systems on board to give us that data as well so we have a good estimate we did a presentation in 2014 where we just did some generic estimating yeah right and so that was almost three million dollars a year just on what we learned from the 112 people were able to count in 2014 based on their frequency of usage and some general assessments again that's old data and it's you know it's it's probably out of date at this point so is your guess and you don't have to answer this question if it's too risky to guess but would you guess that that number will go up once you look at all the data or do you think it'll be less compared to 2014 what we know is under a current environment from everything in the research from other communities and everything that we've learned across the board is it is it is a very costly situation to allow people to live on the street and not provide housing solutions for them and then it is cheaper to house them so there's plenty of research and data that tells us that we don't have specific numbers for what that cost is here and what that savings would be but we believe there would be savings so thank you and what is that number that you said was projected in 2014? Just over three million over three million yeah we assessed about 112 people in 2014 doing the first vulnerability index survey and it asked questions like how many times have you been in jail how many times have you used the hospital how many times have you been in the hospital and stayed there some of the more detailed questions we asked we were able to assess about 112 other people at the time who gave us that data and it was really about 19 users that were the highest users well thank you and I hope that at some future point you guys come forward to us you know when you have that figure and can say look here's how much we're spending already on people just to have to have to live in a place where people sleep on are sleeping on the street and then I would like you to ask us for a for a dollar amount that we can that City Council can vote and I realize this comes after all the research but I just want you to know that I'm I'm really looking forward to that day when we'll get a request for look we're gonna ask you for this amount of money it's a lot of it's a lot of money but it is less than we are spending on the status quo every year so I really look forward to that day and I think it's so important that people understand that that's what we're talking about that it is cheaper to provide housing and you're talking about housing for people not even having people in you know tents which we're talking about as can stopgap measure so anyway thank you so much for that and I look forward to that so the next question I guess for Sarah if you could go back to that I think it was the first slide where you have the different yeah there we go that the coordinated entry system so would you say that on this within the coordinated entry system does the basic services center fall under the street outreach is that where that is coming in or is it more towards the emergency shelter what what is what's your sense of that oh sure yes for whoever I think the intention of the the basic services center is to meet this emergency shelter need as part of part of the system here okay thanks so it's not then competing if you will with with I want to I want to make sure I'm not clear on it as well because I don't know the stated goals and outcomes and I've heard it might be a mix sorry to send you away Danny I just thought that Sarah presented this life I'm happy to hear from being so we can only go by the proposal that was put in front of us and it is a tent encampment it is not shelter so for me it would be more of a street outreach solution it would be a sheltering or transitional housing solution thank you and that was that was my sense so I wanted to kind of underscore kind of based on that that we're kind of looking at that this what 's being proposed today is we're looking at a question of you know do we want this versus people compete be people sleeping on the street this is competing this proposal is competing with the status quo of people sleeping in the street it's not competing with men senior king Salvation Army is definitely not which are emergency shelters and it's not competing with the housing navigator and this idea of getting people housed and permanent housing it 's a different and maybe competing is the wrong verb to use but it's a different point of entry this is at a point of entry that is that is currently not being addressed so I just I wanted to to make that point and I think it's important to understand because shelter is so important supportive housing is so important and most of all this getting getting making homelessness rare brief non-recurring but there are a number of different points of entry and what's being proposed today is even though it's related to the emergency shelter in the sense that all of these are related and that and and that housing coming in and out of homelessness it is a cycle it's it is not I don't think anybody's saying that it that this is a substitute for a men senior king or a Salvation Army we need those shelters for the people who are using them we and we need options that is my my opinion so I wanted to ask about and it's something Sarah that you and I had kind of chatted about one-on-one but we haven't had this discussion publicly I had asked you about the the Constitution of the of the committee the shelter planning work group and I love seeing who's on it so no objection to who's on it these are all the you know they 're the right kind of people to be on it but I couldn't understand why there aren't any currently homeless or you know recently homeless people on that committee and as you had explained to me and you know correct me if I'm wrong you know you said well that that would come kind of later in a kind of focus group or survey stage yes part of this work group we do plan on doing a survey and outreach to homeless individuals to understand what they are experiencing so that we do gather that feedback and input as we sit around collaboratively and try to assess yes yeah and so while I while I understand that I I would prefer to see people experiencing homeless at the table at this early stage the at the collaborating stage much in the same way that in other committees we have the City Hall West planning committee the small area plan committee starting from the very you know the very earliest stages these pre-plan ning stages the collaborating stages that you're talking about where we have stakeholders right all sitting around brainstorming in each of those examples we have Denton residents who are stakeholders who are who have a seat at the table from day one and so I would really urge that to be considered again I understand what you're saying and it makes sense as an argument but because because I see in other committees around the city where we have residents stakeholders and our homeless people they are that they don't have a house to reside in but their residents in debt so I would love to see them at the at the table not in addition to serve not instead of you know survey etc you know just like the City Hall West committee they went and surveyed artists but they also had people who are invested in the arts at that committee thanks comes my ride thank you yeah I do like do you like the idea of who you've got listed for the members of this the shelter planning work group I think that's good if you can flip over to slide five yes that last slide there are a lot of hurdles there that I mean we my fellow council members have quite often talked about the city needs to follow its own rules and to change the rules on everything to make this work I mean Monsignor King I'm sure got a permit and was inspected and passed it's you know got a certificate of occupancy same thing with Salvation Army and the only way to make it make it rare brief and non-recurring is to give a hand up as opposed to hand out in my in my way of looking at this and this is it's not making it rare it's not making it brief and it's not making it non-recurring yeah yeah the group will have a whole lot more data to look at and to go through what our current needs for shelter how many people are being turned away a day how many beds are emptied on some days you know those types of things and I've constantly advocated for us to consider more money towards MHMR because I believe that the the people that are going to end up in this even though it said in the backup are the people that are gonna be turned away from the other places and they get turned away because they've had too much to drink and and you know they're not allowed to be in there if if they're intoxicated or on some other substance and so you know I think our nonprofits in this town do a great job and their their dollars go seven to one versus what the city spends on things I just cannot I'm looked at the zoning this this area is an NR4 zoning we're putting it smack dab in an in a neighborhood and it just doesn't fit because it's not there's nothing on there that the way that it's proposed is not going to get hit on on the zoning the site development infrastructure building fire codes health and sanitation security and safety liability and risk the neighborhood you know all of these items are going to be barriers to try and do this this way so I just I can't support this but I do support them being involved in in the larger group to try and find out other solutions okay I'm gonna call on councilmember Briggs and we have some council members who haven't spoken and if you want to what I don't want this to turn into is we're not going to debate this issue as far as the the philosophy of it the the agenda item is to give direction to staff and I think I'm here in the direction but I want everybody to have an opportunity to speak and I certainly have a few comments but I don't want to start all sudden people trying to point counterpoint because we will be here literally all night because this is the problem that has been around for a long time and people are still trying to find the solution so I'm not saying anybody's doing that now I'm just saying I don't want that necessarily to occur because whatever each of our positions are most likely today if they're if somebody's trying to persuade to change that position it's probably gonna be difficult today but we're here to give direction on for staff as far as this particular project city going at it alone or we wait and see what happens with the shelter advisory group with them being a part of it and see what those recommendations are they're going to come then we'll come back and probably have that very discussion so I just want to set that sort of as some encouragement in this regard so anybody else wanting to speak on this councilmember Duff council member Hussbuth and then oh I'm sorry yeah let me get the ones who haven't spoken first if you don't mind and then I'll and I'll wrap it up I reckon I should I was taking notes but I'll so my direction would be yes to proceed with the plan to gather information continued information I okay let me ask you real quick because there's two there's are you saying through the through the shelter work group yes through the behavior okay yeah okay I'm sorry I just wanted yes through the existing plan be okay yes okay and and the short answer is it was a support to that is let me start with a question because I couldn't find it in in my brief research there do you know how much the group the the nonprofit raised for Monsignor King initially 300 to 350 for the remodel yeah they had some in reserve when they started about a hundred thousand and they raised in additional funds to get it to about 300,000 I think it's not completely accurate but I'm I think it's close thank you so and that's that's significant to me because that's for all the and I hate to put I don't hate I wish people would not draw the straight line comparisons I mean I'm well on record for my my stance on comparisons because I think it it's just not fair to them but in this instance and across multiple instances I think people should bring in fundraise invest I mean I think I looked and it was 2009 is h when when Monsignor King was kind of top of mind and began to form that sort of thing and I know it was a number of years before it came to fruition so there this process is not unusual it's not unique to any organization it's it's it's sweat equity I mean so they bring three hundred thousand dollars to it and so I think that's noteworthy to me other notes that jump out of me I think mayor pro tem is spot-on I mean you're talking about a a facility that's next to a county property that has no houses around it none and a facility that backs up to houses and then also I think it's noteworthy to note that the any zoning case we're gonna send out notices 200 feet so understanding the pressure or the concern in the community both ways I would why didn't we go talk to we that the organization report back the neighbors you know if you 're gonna talk to the if you're gonna not that's a key distinction that this area is right next to a neighborhood it would seem the right thing to do to talk to the neighbors to then bring that those letters though of support and whatever that is back for consideration ultimately where I land I'm still waiting for a number I think it's interesting that the two people two of our members that served on the board needed this presentation which I mean I think they're already intimately up to speed on that so I just want to I want to understand what the what the cost is and I want to normalize the conversation I think that's that's important I've heard a few different times to resolve to solve to eradicate wasn't what I'm but that that kind of is the inference and I think that's hard for me to get to because I think that I forget the gentleman's name that spoke during the public session but he spoke on the gentleman turtle that was in the newspaper that unfortunately passed away and he says I couldn't get him to come inside you know and so I think it's important to understand there's a component that just even even knowing him well and having a rapport and having a relationship could not get him to come inside that day unfortunately and so I think it's important that we in those conversations and in these conversations when when we're debating these things to have it steeped in reality versus saying three million dollars and it's resolved and then if that's the case then I want I don't want a community member to make that suggestion I want a council person to stand up and say Tony's Tony's made it clear it's one cent equals one million dollars I want a council person person to stand up and say I want to raise the tax rate three cents and I want to take that three million dollars and I want to put it towards homelessness and then let's vote on because I think it is it's that succ inct it could be and that's I think to dodge that is to dodge reality and ultimately we're gonna get there at some point and so when we get there I'll be able to make a decision I think also I want to point out though the differences in policy when you talk about 2014 the police department had a different policy back then I think it's just been 2016 2015 their policy towards homelessness and so that affects the numbers on the jail counts and so I find it interesting that that was not brought up you know and so I think at some point you you're either given a an entire picture or you or you're narrowing it to to a narrative and so I want to give the entire picture and let's make a decision you know and so that's that kind of resonated with me that that that part was was left out and that was a significant change that our police department embraced and they came back I mean I think it was chief how I'll make the presentation and I want to say you know round numbers 300,000 or so a year we were paying and and they had to make a decision and that's that's what they decided to do that council at that time so that being said yet I like the path we're we're currently on with that with the program enhancing and this is this is I don't I'm not comfortable allocating staff time if the group the private group wants to fundra ise wants to rework their plan wants to put together a planning a presentation of planning to change the zoning absolutely they have absolutely that right and and I would absolutely hear that my concern is when we say staff stop everything you're doing and work on this because where does that end you know as far as projects as far as time allocation as far as what other things are tasked to do so I don't think it's a bad idea I just don't want city staff managing it I want those individuals that are in that board to to enhance a presentation staff can obviously give direction what's needed and have them bring that forward and then at some point some council members going to come hopefully if they if it's gonna be done this year then Tony laid out the deadlines and bring that forward thank you Councilmember Duff any comment? Not much. I kind of I kind of I think one thing we need to look at this and this is not gonna solve the problem guys the problem is a whole lot bigger than this I think it is good that they're they're trying to work something and I hope they can pull it off you're talking about 35 units and that's a start okay I don't think it's any more than a start but you know I agree with a lot of the stuff that that John Ryan and Gerard said but you know I wish them well on you know and I think the city should should try what we can to help them so are you wanting to I'm not wanting to use a lot of staff but your the question becomes because they have a shelter work group yes it's been so you want them to work through that shelter work group to vet all the options and then those recommendations be brought back to the various municipalities that are represented yes in that okay yes okay council member yeah if we're if you're on your second round if you could just keep everything pretty succinct and then I'll wrap it up and yes go ahead yeah yeah no um because first I want I want to thank the citizen nonprofit for this presentation for seeing a need and in our community and stepping up because that that's a big deal not everybody does that and the reality is there is a big gap there's a big gap there's people in the street and they do not have a place to go but I want to take the conversation away from tents because again that's not the solution and I don't think the presentation was specifically about tents I think it was about a funding issue in a way to maybe get the project started but honestly if there is a way to make these permanent shelters and have a way to their have habitable with utilities and they can count towards our transitional percentage and it can remove people from the streets and help set them up and get them into permanent housing I don't see an issue with that I think that is a win we had a prep a group come to us and present tiny homes for veterans and it wasn't an issue then the council I guess council direction was go out into the community and get support and see how it goes well that project has fizzled for some reason it may come back but what you need is community buy-in and I am in favor of shelter I am I am tired of seeing people in need and struggling and they have nowhere to go and if there is something the city can do to fix that then I am in support of it that's that's where I stand and you know it's not going to solve the problem but it's a piece it's a piece of the puzzle it's it's a start and if if there if you can get habitable shelters and you can take this group and they are willing to take this project on as a partnership then then I am for that because I mean we it's it's the only solution that's been brought to us lately yeah I echo councilmember Briggs reinforcement of the fact that what they showed us was not was not actually tense there was like tense but then other more sort of working toward other more durable structures so you know I think that's a kind of mistaken notion I would suggest that we've we go down a couple of paths obviously this shelter work task force I might be using the wrong four words what is it called shelter something shelter planning work group shelter planning work group okay you know can take this into account and kind of look at the whole basket of options but I think it'd be helpful for the city to help shape up the option for consideration and you know it 's just different than getting it all the way down to the last you know dotting the I in particular you know this citizens group is not expert in identifying sites and knowing what all this owning is and everything it was just you know an area a piece of land that they saw if in fact this particular site is problematic because it's next to housing and so on I think they would welcome assistance in looking at the I don't know what is it a hundred parcels that the city owns here and there to see if there's a more suitable site that it doesn't create you know the problems that other council members have identified ideally it would it shouldn't I would suggest shouldn't be near retail shouldn't be near ideally shouldn't be near established neighborhoods should be on a bus line so that folks can get to essential services I think that's something staff ought to be able to help with yes and then I'm gonna wrap it up so in terms of direction I second the direction given by council members Briggs Melter I had a question for Danny to kind of to clear up a difference of what seems to me to be kind of a difference of opinion on a certain issue and that's if you could go back to that the first slide about the there we go about the coordinated entry system so I'm hearing some people say that that a an option like this what we're giving direction on and what I'm giving direction for it to say you know let's let's go ahead and and and and work with this group and and see what they come up with without putting because we're not giving direction on put this amount of money on the table or promises amount of money it's just kind of let's let's let's look at this this is you said falls under the street outreach category as you see it now in the federal housing first model right which is this is adapted from and which Denton housing coalition has taken on and rightly so it's an awesome model the the street outreach stage is that the answer to itself the answer to making homelessness rare brief and non recurring my sense is no and it's not and that's not what it's supposed to do so street outreach is one part of the equation because much of what the work that has to happen has to be through the engagement of people who are living on the street so to even get them to a point of having conversations with the people who are trying to provide assistance or refer them to assistance the street arch is part of the solution it is not a housing solution exactly exactly and so I just want to reiterate you know for those and I hope people are listening people who feel that this is not that what's being proposed today is not a solution I am completely agree with you it's not a solution to homelessness but it is a crucial it or it falls into a category that's a crucial part of the process that leads to a solution and that right now our options at the level street outweigh we've got people on the street and we've got people being arrested and that for sleeping on the street sleeping on a bench so and at some point we've got to address that too that that's happening and that that costs money too and we're we're not filling this this essential block in the in the building block building blocks towards a solution so I just want to make sure that people understand that nobody is saying and I don't think this that the group proposing this is saying this is the solution but it is something it's a small thing that is that would help so thank you okay just to clarify direction before I make my comments my direction is move this discussion to the shelter planning work group vet it through that organization regional organization of experts that have been doing this for a long time a lot longer than four or five years and we'll see what what comes out of it I'm hearing that that's your direction councilmember Duff I'm hearing that's your direction councilmember Hussbutt that's my direction it's your direction I'm assuming it sounds like there's you sort of have a dual direction you have a dual direction and I'm not sure where you are so but we got four already so that's I think we're gonna move it to there but I think this conversation has been very indicative of the whole difficulty and challenge of this problem I'm going to tell you why number one we started out talking about it's been presented as tents we've heard people advocate for tent cities tents encampments sanctioned city sanctioned tent encampments now we had a presentation about sheds that were based upon maybe recycled material port-a-potty common kitchen area maybe I don't know about laundry and showering all that but they certainly weren't then I hear you talk about and rightly so councilmember Briggs that maybe tents aren't it but something that will be that will suffice and define and be able to be defined as transitional housing well folks we've just changed the whole course that that changed the whole course of the conversation transitional housing is not a structure with no utilities it's not a structure that you go out and use a port-a-potty it's not a structure though that's not what would meet our goal so I am all for finding a way to continue on this this journey that wasn't begun in 2015 or 14 but that was begun a long time ago and yes the circumstances may be horrible and we could be doing more but I can tell you right now when I look at that list holy cow I was reminded that four years ago none of that existed and so let's take out the bureaucratic part let's take out the bureaucratic part we got 90 additional beds 90 additional shelters with utilities safety from the elements that we didn't have three years ago that was done by a nonprofit that's been around for 10 or 15 or 20 years and raised their own funds I appreciate people coming in making presentations and coming up with some good creative solutions and I'm glad that they agreed to be part of the shelter group because anecdotally I've heard that this that some in this group had said they didn 't they didn't want to work with the homelessness leadership team and I'm glad to hear that that's that's the because this is the infrastructure that has allowed us and this isn't me this is everybody in this room who's been working on this for 10 years so I think that's the best place for this because I'm gonna tell you I cannot get on board with putting people in tents in an area that you say is a communal neighborhood that is self-governed and all those kind of things I'm sorry I I think I don't think that solves the problem and it's and it is horrible that people are living the way they are and three years ago 90 people were living that same way and so I feel very confident that as we move forward and as we enlist our regional partners and as we en list those that have been working on this for a long let's don't forget it's not up there we get we have 20 veterans vouchers so my my concern with this isn 't the concept in the sense of the general concept how do we provide how do we continue on this path and do more within the confines of our resources as a city but also in our help as a region no matter what comes out of it whoever is governing whatever recommendation is put forth it's going to be important that we have an understanding of who they are you know what's the track record what what are they bringing to the table so and I want to go back to this this data because I don't this is like the OCI to me where we say we 're saving three million dollars if we find a way to get all these people into into a something I don't think a tent is it I don't think a tent or even a structure that's basically what I've seen described and what I've seen pictures of I mean it's better than nothing there's no question about it I will certainly admit that but that that doesn't move us anywhere towards our long-term goal because my question is what's the exit strategy I mean when I hear that they don't care about that there wasn't any thought about HMIS or case management services I'm like well wait a minute isn't that the whole goal is to help people find a way to have shelter whether it's emergency or transitional or permanent but we've given them now shelter how can we help them improve the other areas of their life so I get concerned when I hear oh it's just going to be a bunch of people together and there's not going to be really any kind of structure around it I want to go back to those numbers those numbers are very interesting and I would have to really see the data on those numbers number one that's not all the city's numbers that's the hospitals that's the county that's that's all kinds of other social services that are involved so that's not the city's number so it's not like the city is spending an additional three million and I would really want to means test that data because anyway so I am all for the any option being on the table in the shelter work group because I trust the deliberation of the shelter work group and the people who have helped make this list a reality now that doesn't keep anybody from going out and looking and moving in programs and adopting programs that they're adopting on their own doesn't doesn't preclude anybody from doing that but what is being asked of us and I think the paper said it best in the article that appeared it said that the group is asking the city of Denton to go alone outside of the partnership that it is built with the city at with the United Way and Denton County Homelessness Leadership Team now I'm paraphrasing that but that we've created an infrastructure I'm off I have a lot of faith and confidence in that infrastructure I have a lot of faith and confidence in looking at this list and can we do better of course we can do better we can always do better we always strive to do better but better is a relative term and to me better is continuing to try to meet these goals and how can we create more emergency shelter space that is truly shelter space within the limitation of all the resources we have and there may be some people out there who have a building we don't even know about there may be somebody out there that has a building that that would be willing to donate it or do something like that in this group we could help facilitate this group beginning to facilitate that there's all kinds of possibilities but I do not believe it's the city's unilateral duty to solve this problem because number one we don't have the resources and the conversation in and of itself did you notice how it sort of changed changed during the course of the discussion and that's the difficulty it's certainly the difficulty with me trying to figure all this out and that's why I think this these people who have it so as far as this dual capacity I think that the city of Denton can provide through its staff member on that group the necessary resources that would be required from the city but folks this doesn't have to be in the city of Denton it could be somewhere else it could be in the city of Sanger it could be in Lewisville it could be in Lake Dallas it could be it could be in the county there's all kinds of possibilities so that's really why I'm excited about the shelter work group because it's like okay let's open up the discussion out we really solved on a very large scale very quickly when we were able to help Monsignor King get that yes it was a city building it was the old pound it was the old animal shelter and it's really just sort of I mean you heard all kinds of comments about that but look I hope everybody at this table has had a chance to tour that facility it's amazing so I hear the direction shelter work group I know you're wanting to speak but I really I really want to I really want to because people are gonna start making comments I've waited intentionally just because I'm not I'm not gonna try to convince anybody I'm just saying what my thoughts are and that I believe we have a great opportunity here to work with the group that brought this to us initially to get them involved in the process and that we have people who are dedicated to that to make it work I just look at that list of accomplishments and I feel very confident in it and we visited Austin and I can tell you when I left that meeting with Austin who's been doing this for a long time my first thought was wow we're further along than what I thought we were for just the short amount of time that we've been doing this on a cloud basis so that seems to be the direction and that is a very robust schedule I get a little concerned about that because I want to make sure that we do things correctly and succinctly and so I can appreciate that but I I just those are my thoughts I trust you guys to do that you all to do that and and I don't have an issue if we if we've tried if we can find people who are homeless to be a part of that we've had those the unfortunately councilmember Armer to the challenge in the past is we've formed those work groups before with with demographics to try to help us and we did it at the Denton County homelessness leadership team and I don't think it I'm not sure if we even had that many meetings but it's sometimes it just gets difficult I don't know why but I certainly support that and certainly support anything that we can do to help inject that population into the discussion because I think that's important I think that's very important okay the staff have their direction okay all right let's go ahead pizzas here too so let's take a break and grab us some pizza okay welcome back to this meeting in the Dent City Council it is 552 on August the 28th 2018 we're moving on to back up to our regularly scheduled agenda format and order agenda item 3c received report hold discussion of staff direction regarding the process for prioritizing and adding items to the work session reports portion of the City Council agenda okay good evening mayor and council Brian Langley deputy city manager I want to spend a few minutes with you talking about work session items and how to prioritize those and get items on the agenda in the future have a very short presentation for you and they'll be looking for some direction we are currently managing a list of almost four dozen work session requests that we have that have been submitted by both staff and council some of these are routine business items that need to be before the council others are individual requests that we received from you all those typically we typically try to have three to four presentations per meeting to limit the size some of you have gotten back with staff and said you 're concerned about the length of the meetings the time that we were spending in work session and so we try to manage that and plan out those work sessions over time right now we're looking at the 44 that we have taking those out into the November to December timeframe before we can work through all of those work session items so as we're working through those items at times sometimes it's unclear whether or not there's a consensus of the council that's interested in discussing that item or having a work session topic on that and so we need a way to identify if there are consensus items that you want to pursue how to prioritize those and bring them forward here's an example of the 28 work session items that we do believe we have some consensus on that we've heard from multiple council members that you're interested in these topics not going to go through all these with you but we do have these scheduled as I mentioned to you through November and then we have other items that have come up many of these come up in concluding items or other parts of the agendas at times about different items that you'd like to have some information on and so we're trying to get some direction of what the priority is and if you're if there is a consensus of the council that's interested in having that discussion so we 've come up with a you know really a couple of options one is really to seek direction from you on any other way to do it but one option to put forward to you would be to have once a month to have a work session item where we would talk about items that you'd like to consider coming forward the ones that we know about that we've heard and to get some priority from the council and consensus on are these items that you'd like to bring forward and having a discussion on and then we could talk about scheduling those and take them through the agenda committee and get those scheduled to be brought forward again with kind of the mindset of three to five work session items per agenda but making sure that if we're bringing those forward that there's a consensus of you that that want to do that but with that said we're open for other options other discussion that you may have about how to how to make the agendas more efficient and utilize your time wisely so with that that concludes my presentation be happy to answer any questions councilmember Melcer and then councilmember Armit age. Thank you mayor. First of all I want to say that the experience we had on the retreat was which went completely under reported maybe there's an article coming up on the paper you know had I think a very important outcome which was a set of a list of things that we think we ought to work on in the next 18 months and you know hopefully that that gives some guidance right there. Secondly I'd like to say that you know I totally I totally get the the challenge I think going at it as an idea under the idea that it's sort of like four votes before you get the information that can exclude things is in a way like I 'm gonna propose an alternative but I think that that's in a way the opposite of what council should do I think we should always have the information before we vote and obviously you know the problem is you can't do that on 44 items in any quick amount of time so let me get on to my proposal. You know we're not the first people ever to deal with a long list of things that need to be prioritized because of time management and I'll bet you that at least 90% of the consultants you hire probably use an Eisenhower matrix or some people just call it an urgency importance matrix so let me say what that is if we had this one session a month instead of saying I don't even want to hear it you know which that method would be council members would say I think this is high importance or low importance call it a two and a one you know you could give it a numerical value and I think this is high urgency or low urgency call it a two and a one now then you can top those up and you can put and you know offline you can put these in quadrants if it's high urgency and high importance we should be doing it right now if it's high importance but low urgency then it should be scheduled if it's high urgency but low importance I don't know how you apply this you delegate it don't put your a team on it somebody works on it but it's not that important but you know somebody needs to work on it if it's low urgency and low importance no action unless there's a change in our view of the urgency of it or the importance of it you know or unless the docket is clear of everything else which I don't think will live long enough to see so that that's what I would propose we express those views to you I think it's absolutely correct for council members to express you know what they think is important and urgent you know and to help set priorities but you know not to vote with that information so thank you for bringing this up um I agree with what council member Melzer was saying just with I'm not sure I would completely sign on to the Eisenhower what is that her model is yeah I'm still trying to wrap my head around how something could be urgent but not important yeah but I'm sure there's a but I'm sure there's a case but but but definitely we need some and it might be that that method but some kind of systematic way of of establishing priority and so for you know time sensitive I guess that's another way to say urgent you know so something that I mean urgent could mean you know like the house is burning down or it could mean there's something that we might not find all that exciting but there's a timeline there's a deadline this decision has to be made by such and such date so that's you know then we've got a I mean so so that's that's extremely important and is somebody who you know relatively new to councils so I'm I came on with a number of suggestions having kind of been watching for four years and and and talking to people about things that are you know seeing things that haven't been addressed into in the city a number of these that are outside the kind of planned budget work session discussions were my suggestion so that said just because I 'm suggesting something it doesn't mean that I'm that I think it it needs to be discussed at the absolute next you know work session and and so I don't have a problem at all in fact I think it's a great thing for for all suggestions to be weighed and to be weighted in this in this way and anyway so I wanted to kind of to make that clear when I'm suggesting something I don't see it as this is the top priority for the city because it's the it's a big priority for me it is here something I want us to discuss and I wanted to be weighed with all of the other things that are considered so the closer we can get to something like a kind of objective although at some level you know it involves people weighing in with subjective opinions but at least a process for establishing that that would be awesome so two more things that I want to suggest one which came up at the new council members Texas Municipal League meeting in Waco that I attended is we could have a policy whereby to put something on the work session to put something on the agenda for a work session you need two people on council to want it to be to want to have a work session on that topic that doesn't mean that those two people are even definitely gonna vote yes to it obviously you can't you know commit to that in advance but so in other words it would be so if I were to propose in whatever format we decide to do this you know I think we should have a work session on X and and Keely said I I second that right then there you go you've got more than one person who wants to see a work session on that you know Keely might not like the idea but she wants to have a discussion on it so but if I say I want like a work session on X and then there's you know is anybody with me and not a single person also wants to have a discussion on X then we don't so anyway I would kind of propose that which is which is which is different than what you were saying because I completely agree you know if you're looking for four votes then it's like saying we want to make sure that there's a majority in place and anyway that's so I don't necessarily like that idea and this next thing I 'm gonna just propose is throw out there which I would definitely be open to I have a feeling it's not gonna be very popular but in addition to all these things I would be open to meeting weekly when need when needed I mean we've been meeting weekly for a while now during budget season but think how much longer are what yeah I'm sorry more frequently sorry more more more freak more frequently then then we actually do if you know during certain times I 'm open to that and I realized that that would be asking more of all of us and staff and it might be it might be impossible but but at least I'm open to that possibility but not instead of any of this because we definitely I agree we you know we need to have a kind of more system at something more systematic but I love that idea of having the reserved one work session per month is a strategic priority session I think that's awesome I you know my only kind of caveat would be I wouldn't want that to be instead of an opportunity to on a weekly basis in public suggest other possibilities especially when some will come up for into the urgent category you know sometimes it's because something is just recently come up so you know they kind of DCTA strikes when that came on it's like let's we you know have a have a work session on I mean if you're waiting till the end of the month that you know then you've lost time so anyway those are those are my suggestions on this but I wanted to thank you for putting this this together a couple things if I if I could offer I know this is really council direction we're happy to meet as often as you like and provide all the work sessions that you need but one of the things to honestly but the information that council member Metzler was talking about information I think a lot of these if it 's an informal staff report that we want or is there some information that we need to get to the council so the council then can make a decision of whether or not you want to have a work session we can certainly do that in some of these cases as well I think each of you have a different rating system of what's an urgent or what's important I think there's seven different opinions about how that's gonna look and so we can perhaps give you some tools to do that as we bring these items if it was a once a month meeting we could give you some tools to help to have you provide those ratings and try to look at consensus where is the consensus on where that is in the Eisenhower scales an example we can try to do that but I think the informal staff reports are also a way for us to try to provide you with the information you need to see is this even worth pursuing getting on a work session because your time is valuable it takes a lot of time for you to go through these meetings and we just want to make sure that it's something that you're interested in doing after after speaking with councilmember Meltzer in his Eisenhower method I think is what he called it I I still don't think it's specific enough you know we try I think looking out the next two or three months we could certainly I think it gets down to we could certainly leave a couple of more routine items on each agenda and then allow what we were thinking of us allow the council say there's six or eight things you'd like to take on that are outside of routine or maybe it's ten and put them in there we just like to get your your input what that looks like Brian's right they're having done this a long time what is urgent is very different definitionally and I think the process now just kind of occurred to us because we're seeing so many so much energy on the council to take on projects but it's really more of an issue of there's really no way for you to talk about what you want to discuss so it's definitely needed I like the idea of just having a kind of a discussion saying if we have six or eight slots open how do we get there what's a common definition for what we're gonna focus staff on it gives us the ability to plan workloads you know and especially then now that we're outside of budget items but you know I think the other thing is is at one point or another most of you have kind of pulled me aside and said okay you know how many more ten or twelve hour meetings we're gonna have since mr. Gary left that's less frequent but it's still a big issue it's a huge drain on your time and and that's something when we're putting the agendas together you know we try to guesstimate you know this item might take an hour or two hours that sort of thing but you have lives and it's it's it's something that we're very respectful of and and trying to trying to be as courteous to all of you and your personal lives as possible as well so yeah so I would not really be in favor of adding another council meeting because not only am I on serving here I'm serving on many we have many other committees that meet throughout the weeks with city and then other personal obligations as well and the more that we meet as a council the less time staff has to work on all our requests so I mean in other city jobs that that they're doing so for that but I just kind of want to understand because I've been on council almost four years and have never had to this hasn't been presented to me before and generally if one council member thinks of it of a an issue to be important and wants to request more information on it it generally has been okay up until this point so is it because the amount of request is it because the items are just being talked about to death during the meetings is it okay we come I'm just trying to figure out what the change in the process is and because I I don't I don't know what's the I guess I'm trying to figure out how many more requests are you getting now than than you had in the past year it's significant yeah you know we haven't had 44 requests we probably hadn't had 30 requests you know since I've been here so we 've been able to sort of manage them down a little bit and you know in terms of are we discussing it too much hey that you discuss as much as you want but I think it's more of a matter of how do you how do you use your time and you know so and I think it just sort of occurred with you know we get we'll get requests for workshop information and I mean two or three days later when is it gonna get scheduled can we get consultants on board you know and I'm like you know we take our direction from four or more of you and that's very important so we need to kind of know if you think for instance force too much that's fine but I really want to get you involved in this because what is happening right now depending on how you feel about where the work session requests are out there is I don't want to be put put in the position nor do I want the agenda committee to be put in a position that we're slow walking requests you might want to work on and when you're starting to see this volume and we're trying to keep the your the time impacts on you and your families and your personal lives to a minimum we need to we need to figure this out as a group how we're gonna how we're gonna work on these things but yeah I would I would absolutely say that the volume of them has probably doubled and I'm probably guilty I have quite a bit but generally I think it would so is it so if you request a staff report is that just as big of an issue no those are those are easy to schedule we can get we can kind of schedule those into staff workloads and get those out there'll be times like on a fifth week that might be what that was thinking of is you know on a fifth week when we don't have a meeting like next week we just happen to be lucky and not have a meeting we'll be able to banks more of those out so there are times we can schedule those there's also times when they're when it just kind of dovetails with other things we 're working on similar to you know with the budget for instance there's a lot of simple questions that you know it's good for us to go through the exercise but when we're putting something on display for you and trying to give you the options and analyze that sort of thing most of these presentations you know what will take you know many many hours to put together that make sure the information is correct make sure the options are vetted out there so it 's probably a factor three or four putting a work session item together versus an ISR so maybe being more specific saying stuff report or you know and if it's something that's very prior high priority in that maybe the public is requesting more information on in some cases we can provide as part of the Friday report we provide updates that you've had a request and it's just a paragraph or two some information or maybe it's something we attach and we provide it there it's public you're seeing us do that a lot more when we'll get questions from one or two of you going well if one or two of them want to know maybe everybody does so we're just putting in the fryer it's a nice convenient way to package all those things no my direction would be to require for to to because I don 't think it's exclusive it doesn't exclude anything for example if I have something that I need to flesh out or I want to present or I want to answer a question for a citizen all that's doable without any of y'all you know I get I get sorry sorry but I I too got the super secret city manager email address and I can I can make all that happen independent of this body and that's the part I enjoy right that's a part of our job where the city managers helped me get signs moved to help me get stuff cleaned up thinks fixes fences fixed I've gotten a ton done even more so than in these meetings you know and so I think that's the key if you're talking about getting stuff done that's all doable we're not we're not preventing anyone from getting anything done and so when you then you talk about the conversation piece well you're gonna need four votes anyway so I'm just hung up on the number four then the other part of that I would ask to implement that process here's my sales pitch to you it's a document that's published it goes to the paper it goes to wherever you want to put it because it needs it there needs to be a very clear record and that document says who requested the work session item it has everyone's name and it's either yes or no and so every item those 44 items on one piece of paper front and back two pages whatever and you check yes or no and if there's not four yeses it doesn't happen and all that's published so you have who requested it who's against it who's for it clear record very succinct takes no time and in that way everyone stands up for what they are they're asking for and they stand on if they're denying and and that's published the paper can run it you can put it on your blog you can people can email and say hey Gerard I'd rather you support this or not but it's very succinct very cut and dry and so I think sometimes we as a body may be hesitant to have succinct answers but I live in that world I enjoy it and and I think it's okay to be clearly wrong early or clearly right early whatever you're gonna do let's just make it clear succinct no great black and white yes or no and so four people check yes off we go three people check yes and those four are on the record of saying they didn't want to they weren 't didn't want that to come forward but that's that's my ask and my solution that would go with my ask and then I just don't I need I'll listen to the conversation but I don't understand the difference between a request for more information and a full presentation right so if I have a item that I want to understand more I'll come meet with Caroline I'll come meet with whomever I'll go out in the community meet with them or staff has been they go to our town halls they they're available on the weekends they they when I and when I hosted the tour of the the TURS area boarders the staff was there to help me with that I mean so you can go in the community and address any concern without a work session item and matter of fact get more done get more answers and and staffs been amenable to that so what is better than actually meeting with the people that have the concern and addressing it right there versus in here where you're still gonna have to ultimately go do the same thing you know so if it does not require a vote or or a monetary if there's not a monetary issue tied to it why do we need to take up that time it's almost counterproductive so that's that's my answer that it be narrow that it be printed that we you send it out with the Friday reports whatever that is and every week it goes out yes or no and it's documented who requested it who said yes who said no and and you stand on your record so that's my I don't have as many words to say it's Gerard but I happen to agree I happen to totally agree I think matter of fact there are items that have been brought up that I was going to ask for a vote on it and I think that some things are coming that we don't need we don't have a consensus of four people here that want to hear it and you know I think it takes four yeah I would for the most part agree with with what Councilmember Duff and the husband have said you know one other item I might add to that is looking at attaching something to an upcoming we've got the tree tree code discussion tree code discussion coming up in one of the items on the potential on the next page was about the citywide tree canopy strategy can we attach those two together or how difficult is that those those are little things we can look at I would almost say that even if it's a minor informal staff report might be good to have those come out prior to us evaluating whether or not we should should discuss it or not you know I'm kind of dubious on that because that could get a little deep maybe you need two people for the informal staff report and four votes then to to move that informal staff report into a work session might be a little bit easier way to keep things under control I think I think it's very important for me and I hope for my colleagues to come to these meetings with a somewhat open mind on issues I'm influenced not just by what staff says but by what you all say and if you force everything to be a vote I'd say skip the work session altogether just vote you know I think it's important to hear each other so you know I think if you overly force people to close their mind on an issue beforehand that that's not gonna result in the best outcome for the city that's my opinion so you know I'm still with with Eisen hower look he led us to victory in Europe and got the interstate system going you know can't argue with that so I don't agree with everything Eisenhower did so okay but um no yes so the reason so we have works sessions or we bring things forward to a work session in the hope that eventually it will come to a vote so there are issues absolutely that that I deal with independently with staff daily weekly you know little problem-solving here and there but if there's an issue that involves a policy decision or even a staff staff direction that needs to go through most of the time anyway oh a work session a lot of the things that end up that we end up voting on have gone through you know a work session first so that's one thing I wanted to point out that it's not an either or type scenario - I wanted to say about the to go back to the issue of kind of the four person versus two person to add something on that I had mentioned before that you know the reason why the the two what was mentioned that a and this was not the official Texas Municipal League opinion it was just somebody who was giving a giving a presentation on on on Roberts rules and kind of issues that come up pertaining to city City Council and they said that a common practice is is you know to have to but the reason why to instead of for not only because you know it is for too much like asking everybody to put their put their cards you know on the table assuming that as you were saying everybody's mind is already made up and they're not going to hear each other out but it's also because democracies designed to even though it's on the one hand a majority rule in terms of voting but it's also designed to protect minority opinion and you know one way a minority opinion can be protected is to ensure that even if you've got a minority that wants to discuss an issue that issue will at least get discussed if even if you even if you don't have a majority who's gonna vote on it and we're also we're discussing for the public the public watches and the public knows we've also got four different districts represented and three at-large positions and you know including mayor so we've got different different perspectives and and so I think it's really important to preserve that minority opinion within a democracy because democracy is not strictly majority rule even though that is how the voting typically works out third responding something else that had been mentioned I encourage staff to come to council members who make work session requests to suggest things like what council member Ryan had suggested before with with you know if we've got because I actually had the same thought with seeing those several different items on trees okay you 've got these several different items on trees how can you know could they be all collapsed into a into a single discussion in some cases the answer might be no but it you know if the answer is yes then that's great so just because somebody has suggested I want a work session on this it might not necessarily mean it has to be a work in independent work session so I just want to say you know underscore how amenable I am and I hope that my colleagues would be too I imagine people are you know to staff saying to us if we suggest a work session well for instance that this scenario that I mentioned before you know we're gonna be having something like that coming up in October so can we just add that on would you be okay with us just adding that on to there also if I have a suggestion for a work session if staff person comes up to me and says you know what how would you feel about having a staff report on that and then you can look at the staff report and decide based on that respond to that and decide you want to request a work session I would almost always say yes you know yes to that because the staff and I love how it seemed the kind of the evolution of the of the staff reports there and it kind of blows my mind how much work is spent and I'm so grateful for all the work that's spent on that so I would just encourage staff to kind of ask us follow-up questions so we don't end up with an unmanageable number of scheduled work sessions or work sessions to schedule so that we can do as much as we can you know collectively to condense them and to put some of them into the staff report so those were my additional additional suggestions has everybody had a chance to speak the first round besides me we're gonna take second round so I am I'm not in favor of the four votes I think that's dangerous ground and it can just block out and lock out conversation that may generally be needed and it can be political and I I'm just not in favor I would say do nothing at this point and ask counsel my fellow council members to be cognizant of council and staff time when making these requests and see how that goes I will say maybe a year or so ago I asked for a work session something about you know signing on to climate change or something and it only lasted three minutes no one was interested no one wanted to talk and we moved on and that that's how it goes so I just when we start talking about voting on things before I mean it just it makes me really nervous so that's the where I am well I will tell you the flip side it can also be political I mean work session requests can be made because of politics as well so I mean it all goes both ways I struggle with having to have that formality of the four the four votes because but we've got to do something because these meetings are going too long I know I might have come across as rude a couple of times in these work sessions when I try to really rein in the discussion but we're getting a lot of repeat comments and it's like we get into debates of trying to persuade people and all and we just need to state our piece and and and make our direction known and I think that's where we're also getting caught up so first and foremost I believe that this the business of the city is the top priority and the business of the city I mean are the things that staff needs to conduct the business of the city usually what we ask for our policies that have to do with I'm not gonna say politics but issues that aren't necessarily day-to-day city business but our policies that you know we want to we want to tackle and look at very reasonable have no issue with that we have to find a way to make these concise and so I would say if you can do with this with a staff report and if those staff reports are sent out to all the council members you could even have an instruction hey what's the what what are your thoughts you know you could have people respond back the council respond back to hey what are you not not teach council member but to the staff member sending it so that the staff can gauge okay here's sort of what we're thinking because what I don't want to do is think that everything has to be said in public per se for some reasons other than doing the business of the city that needs to be done there's a lot of things that get done as council members Hudson said that nobody knows about nobody's gonna you know raise the flag and toot their horn it's just they get done so I would probably suggest I think that the matrix council member Meltzer yes yeah yeah I think it's it's a good concept of how do we find a way to develop priorities because I think that's what I think that's what the for vote thing was really trying to do sort of in this sort of a general philosophical kind of way to say hey how do we set priorities to give an example all right I'm just going to give an example it was a request that council member armature made then we got a staff report on it I think in our legal status update about city attorneys helping people in different kind of scenarios and I remember when that was when you said that and I'm not trying to do point of order and call you out I'm just simply saying I remember when that was made I thought well I really I have no desire to understand how city staff could work with but in all fairness when the report came out about the pros and cons that was helpful to understand the issues and the rationale behind why that may be problematic so that to me was one of those situations that didn't necessarily need a full-fledged work session so we have to be cognizant that staff only has so many hours in the day and staffs and so if y'all disagree with me please let me know because I very strongly feel that staffs number one priority is to make sure that this city runs day to day that the police show up the fire department shows up we have a rec center we have a water park our streets get repaired you know we try to provide for the quality of life and core services and we talked about that it's right but health safety and general welfare of the community those are things that are just paramount and and so I think I'm gonna have to look to staff as well to as we move forward personally I think starting out let's try to be more conscientious of when we make concluding items are we requesting a work session or are we really wanting just information then we can decide let's make sure we make that very specific delineation and that's in the meetings themselves any questions or background information that you need on a particular issue please don't hesitate to talk to staff about it they would much rather you correct me if I'm wrong they would much rather you talk about it and get that background information within a time frame that both of you can work out you know in offline so when we come into this meeting we're not asking questions that sort of seem not basic but it's like it helped me understand when I first got on council I bet staff hated me but I spent a lot of time in with individual staff members just to get the history of particular issues a particular concepts and a particular projects that the city's going so I think we can manage it all better we all just have to be committed to to that so I'm okay with if we were to try one option one just a couple of times to see hey we you give us a set of six or seven and we say hey you know and I think we need to on work session reports I think we need to decide we've got so many the staff needs I think the staff needs come first unless it's some real big issue and then you know how many discretionary ones do we have for council because it I mean we started at 12 o'clock we're not even close to being finished we still got three work session reports and we got a couple of public items and individuals so this is a goal we might not figure it out today we have to find a way to do better so and if we can find a way to categorize priority I think that's important and I think that's really what all this is getting to is how do we prioritize what what we want to do I don't have a specific here's what I think we need to do so that's why I'm gonna go with maybe option one and reserve maybe 30 set a time limit on it 30 45 minutes because if we can't get this under control what's gonna happen is this council is gonna decide probably that we put time limits on work session items because we I mean to have a two-hour work session on some things is just I just don't I don't get it so this is gonna be one of those work sessions that we have two hours on so we got councilmember Metzler councilmember Briggs and councilmember Armitage oh I'm sorry you were you raised it he was he was yeah yeah yeah go ahead thank you so so to reply to generally to you mayor you have to be the receiver okay so so the word open mind was mentioned to here and so just last Tuesday night during one of the public conversations there was no information presented first opportunity to speak it was said I've made up my mind based on this issue so I understand where you're going but that doesn't happen now and you don't call it and you know I understand mayor watts I understand yes and it I won't do it it's against the rules and it and it doesn't happen right I mean so that's if we're gonna call it out let's call it out always then the power of the numbers three is that we can all we can all meet so that doesn't break any any any rules of three people meet and discuss an issue and vet it and then and candidly so I have my other points and I have a ask of you mayor what so and I think I think it boils down to I agree priority but I think it also is finding if that priority syncs up with enough other people to resonate so if it's one person's priority two person priority that doesn't get you where you need to be in my estimation and so my ask is help me understand a scenario that but for a work session on it you know a request that requires a work session versus being resolved in a staff report or a independent meeting with staff I don't I truly don't understand a scenario where that happens okay well I think one if I go outside of posting let me know well it's actually on this list I think if you look at the list if you look at this individual list you know there's several that from my perspective like one of them is and I think we've all gotten several emails about the where is it yes sorry say one more time yeah the disabilities committee you know that you know about forming a committee a disability committee where people can vet issues and bring policy direction and so that something like that could that be done in a staff report that says hey this is this is a committee that's being proposed this is sort of what we see is the structure in other areas here's an informal staff report if if we don't hear from a bunch of people we're gonna go ahead and just put this on a work session real brief or a consent agenda item and bring it forward I mean so there 's items that I think but one that probably wouldn't is let's say the conversation about DCTA and our contributions and you know different options about how do we try to improve our bus transportation system and or find options well that's a I mean that's a that's a 15 million dollar bill that we pay every year so that is one that's probably going to take you know the full the full impact of staff research and presentation so I don't think I don't have a problem with having work sessions on things what we're hearing from staff is we have no direction or guidance on we know what we need to bring forward because of our needs to run the city but we have so many council work session requests that we don't know which ones have a high priority and and so I don't think if you have a low priority that means it's never heard I think what it means is it might get on a Monday lunch it might get on a work session where you're allocating some time I mean so I don't think it's never heard I mean I think we need to find a way to hear it it's just we don't have staff concentrating a lot of time on that when there's other issues that the council has decided this has a higher priority so this is a tough issue because you're right this hasn't been an issue in the past we did go but part of the reason why it wasn't it hasn't been recently is when we were only doing two meetings a week plus a Monday lunch and maybe a third we went to four we went to almost meeting every Tuesday I mean you remember that when we were on council we we knew that we had to have more time because we just were running out of time so now we've hit we've done that and now we've hit to where our capacity in that regard is filling up so how do we manage it in a way that's efficient but also substantive in its analysis of the issues and the projects or the things that council wants to discuss I got the answer I don't know the answer that's why we're having this I mean I really don't know the answer and I think it's gonna be an answer that we form over time so we have to start somewhere see I think Hudson Br iggs and then Armatyr yes is that you yes no I'm sorry yes no I that answers yeah I just did I want to make sure that you had you know you had finished her that yes I still would I asked wherever we resolve I want it I want it written I want some sort of something that documents who asked for it right and who just like I asked for on that it's no different than what I asked for on the items we vote on it needs to have a clear record somebody goes back I you know okay it's very succinct very clear three points first totally agree that on the list of items that are outstanding that I actually always look at it expecting to see whose item it was frankly you know I want to know where mine are on that list so I have no objection to seeing who brought that forward secondly mr. mayor because I don't want to trust anyone else mr. mayor open mind when I mentioned open mind I wasn't saying that anybody doesn't have an open mind I'm saying that if we're if we're sort of compelled to vote before hearing that we wouldn't then bring an open mind to the conversation that I want because I want us to your like the comments that I just heard recently that affected my opinion just now you know I think I get good ideas from everyone at the table now as far as like a way forward I actually think you you pointed to one kind of mr. mayor off handedly and I think it's a perfect place to start it's taking option one and just the first bullet where you and where you said let's see how many slots do we have open for non you know staff staff stuff that must be dealt with gotta happen how many slots are left and then we can have a discussion on what goes there what goes in the rest and and invariably people are gonna say this is I think this is important I think this is urgent we'll see if a lot of people agree you know all these factors will go into it but without you know sort of killing items we're just it's just a reality that there's only so many slots you know that's and like no we we didn't invent time it exists you know we got to deal with it okay councilmember Briggs so are we gonna go through the work items the requested the list because there are some here that I requested that I mean I like the traffic calming that could be an informal staff report from engineering and you know so I mean I'm just I'm looking at all the the MEI ones those three together they could be you know when our new score comes out you know in another work session as an update I mean the tree canopy could go to the the tree ordinance I mean I feel like there's some organization here that that could be could be done and I mean I'm going through these and I can see you know I'm like the spin program I'd like the mayor's idea where you know we could put it in the report and say well if you have any issues with it then let us know and we or we'll continue to do that from the planning department I mean so there are you know there's there's ways to to go ahead and get through the current list that I'm looking at well and we're happy to do that if council is comfortable of us coming back and asking are you sure you want a work session but our practice has been if you ask for a work session we assume that's what you want and so that's what we're trying to provide but if there's flexibility on that and combining items we can certainly look at trying to streamline that I think what we were looking more for today is just the format and you know for people like option one and we can basically okay here's what September looks like we've got a few slots is there something you want to pull up and discuss and you and you bet that out that's fine if there's if there's items on here that you're happy with an ISR on just tell us we'll take them off and move forward we take here we take your request for work session items very seriously and it's getting to a point where we could probably schedule these out to March now and so it's really up to you I like that approach if you can if you wanted the information in a different fashion that's fine I think the one thing the only thing I've heard that concerns me a little bit so we set out an ISR to folks and say that this work session has been requested you know there's this you know we can certainly ask the question you know are you interested in having this in a work session after reading this or not I suppose that 's the question and just kind of you're sort of doing this informal polling each time I don't know if you only get one or two responses what do you do okay we asked their opinion we said we asked their opinions but I mean that that's fine if that's how you'd like to handle it we just want to know what what you're comfortable with well and maybe and maybe I'm sorry councilmember Ritter go ahead yeah so um it's a first so about the spin program actually the spin program started out as in or was first kind of part of an official city document when it became an informal staff report I think you might have been the one to ask for it and and I and then I got on council and I read it and I thought it was really a great report and a great idea and so I asked to see a work session on it so I think that's a great example of something that has already happened that that way um there have been some other some issues that I asked for a you know staff report or work session on or more information I try to kind of leave it open when I say that I'm really saying whatever staff you know I want staff to decide and I'd be okay with either of these things and then I see it an informal staff report on it and I'm satisfied so I think that that using those you know an informal staff reports as kind of ways to see to both to get information and then to see do we really need a work session on that and for me you know the answer in some of those cases has been no and you know other of those cases yes so I wanted to to ask a question just kind of clarifying the direction that given by the mayor so you had said that that you would proposing option number one but without the not not the four okay that was gonna it was more like what councilman okay great okay that was my question okay yeah okay just wanted to clarify thanks so I so I think I what I've heard is some consensus around having once a month top of strategy session to bring these items forward and then let's kind of see where this goes continue to discuss it and bring it forward is that correct you know what would be and I know y 'all use Monday works at Monday luncheons a lot of sort of informal kind of things yep that's the first Monday I think we could just say first Monday except for when we maybe have D ISD you know but the first Monday that could be it and if somehow it's a holiday or something then we'll work it in because a lot of times the ones that we come on on Monday it's either gonna be a full- blown council meeting which lasts three or four hours or it's a you know just so I think that would be helpful and if you wanted to have one other thing because that shouldn't be a long conversation you know an hour so because you know we're all gonna have our opinions but I think I think we could come to a consensus on what we need here so I want to ask you something because councilmember Armatuer it said you know just sort of how sometimes she requests information so what it sounds like what you're wanting as staff is we need to have a clear understanding if you're gonna ask for something what is it exactly that you're asking for right either a work session an informal staff report just additional information just offline in a in a memo that just goes to the council member just because it's just so I think that's important to help staff understand because my hunch is your default is gonna be well we're gonna have a work session on this because you're not gonna want to give less if you thought they might need more if it's asked for yeah right if it's asked for a work session that's typically what we're thinking but real clear it would certainly help clarity from the council when you're asking for something to let us know kind of what you're looking for and if we have questions I think what I've heard is you're open to us coming back and saying can we get you some information on this is that what you need we can work through that I still go back to informal staff report and somebody says you know I'm very interested in this and there's six of you that aren't you know do we do we put it on the Monday lunch and let you debate that or do you just basically say you know if you're interested in a work session let me know and if I don't hear from three or four of you we don't go well the only problem is I think that's a that could be construed as a polling issue right yeah and so we're sort the same place yeah well no for me it's if somebody wants an if the council member wants an informal staff report and and they get it and they say well I'd like to I would like to put this on the agenda to discuss as a work session then on that Monday then you just bring a list of things and you start talking so if a council member says hey I would like this to be on that particular agenda in other words to be considered okay for a work session that's that's really how we we and we'll see how that goes and if it's gets too burdensome or cum bersome or we find that it's getting you know the requests are sort of balancing or leveling out yes sir address me directly yes sir no I listen into what you said taking that in you know I hear here's what resonates with me I'm gonna get blamed for a lot of no I think I like where you're going but I think I would even remove any so the conversation in of itself is gonna take up time I would say with this clarity of hey if you ask for it you got it put it on a list put it in number order it comes up Monday but to encourage people to be short with their words you just take them in order so those are just extra things you take them in order if someone wants to talk for eight hours on on one topic then we get through one Monday if you want to be short and concise and you get through eight of them you know it just is a you that way no one's vetting anything no one's choosing picking it is absolutely in order and why we didn't get to your item is because Gerard talked too long and then and so or Gerard conforms and we power through a lot of them but it's that way it's not a ranking it's it's city business and then the list of non city business that just you kind of take them in order so I mean only burden is staff how many they prepare you know so maybe it's it's you know you're prepared for eight of them and if we get to two the other two sit in the bank and then they don't have to prepare anymore those already just sat and kind of in a holding pattern but that's my thought to kind of take out any any I feel slighted because we didn't get to my item well yeah it's we take them in order well and I think so I think the direction is conceptually because this is going to be a work in progress this is obviously going to be a work in progress to bring it as Monday work Monday luncheons right a set number of issues or items to be considered and then yeah we got to take them in some order and that we really want to make sure that we are cognizant of the time and that you know we're not gonna go till three or four o'clock in the afternoon but let's have a luncheon let's get these things discussed and I personally think we can do it I really really honestly do I feel very confident that and then if it gets to be like well we're only spending 30 minutes doing it well then we know that okay well then we might can put a couple of these other things on here and and so it's a it's a work in progress but I feel confident that we'll find a way to to make this work to where because let's not forget what the interest is we're trying to assist and that is for our council meetings to be efficient and for them to be substantively accurate and have depth of discussion and that staff has predictability and that staff has the opportunity to efficiently use their time in a way that benefits both staff's work working day and then the council and the public because you'll have people sitting out there for council meetings till 1030 or 11 o'clock at night who might have gotten there at 630 or 7 so all right let's practice here let's sort of again to wrap this up I know you raised your hand yes go ahead a question because I was out for a little bit but so the additional items requested in our backup the list through 16 will that start in this new process for which you're speaking of or those already because I'm just some of those the public have taken an interest in inside I don't really know what you proposed I was out of the room I didn't really having all of these discussed in a lunch was I you know I think I'm sorry they basically option one says reserve one work session per month a part of a work session per month to sort of prioritize the requests and we have one lunch lunch and it's the first Monday of each month lunch and to use that may be specifically for that goal instead of taking up you know real estate on a Tuesday to talk about that and what we ask the council is if as you suggested there there's ISR's or consolidation of some of these things that that is okay with you just let us know what that is and we can take some of that off and we can certainly bring to the first Monday or our first meeting in September just kind of give you a look out for the next month or so and we 'll do that again October since we're meeting with DISD you know what things look like and if we've got a few options to a few openings there just let you know but you know I think that will work well and my main point today was just get you all on the same page with your expectations so I think we've got a usable solution and I like the idea of if this list if this that we we have this list and that I thought at one point it did have the requesting members name decided and so it did I actually asked staff just to take that off I just I wanted I wanted to focus on the issues and just make it simple so we just put into a real easy easy problem with you know that your name being associated with the ones that requested so okay yes I'm sorry what I wanted to say was maybe the first thing we do at that first lunch is just take a quick pass and say could any of these be ISRs but I think actually city managers comment suggests that we might do that before we get to that yeah yeah somebody can send you a hat on you'll give me a recommendation yeah okay all right fantastic all right thank you for your time I don't even know in the last break all right so we're moving on to agenda item D receive report and hold discussion give staff direction regarding recent plan changes the development process to an enhanced efficiency and customer service yes are we not supposed to yeah well we I was thinking about maybe on the scooter thing maybe there's this good good evening I'm Scott McDonald I am the director of development services and I'm excited to be here to talk to you about where we're at with the development services process and an overview of where those processes are just as a reminder development services really is that a to Z for land development it's that raw land to a set of keys for whether it's a homeowner property owner business owner or where we're going I also want to reinforce the fact that over the course of the past 18 months there's been significant changes that have occurred and that's as a result of having new administration and a new focus on what we do and how we do it the presentation is going to provide you an overview of the department we're going to talk about land development just the basics of what that means and where it is that we're going with that what our development processes look like what they look like to the past the present and and what we're looking to do to the future and actually give you some turnaround time so some statistics statistical data excuse me that will ultimately cement the fact of what we're doing in the process that are in place that are that are actually creating real change and we'll do that also on the building inspection side and really with a focus on commercial applications that's typically what we see is is being a little more comprehensive and complicated and what those building permit turnaround times look like and then we'll focus a little bit on kind of the future enhancement enhancements where we're going and how much further we'll be going along I think as far as just an overview of what the department is as important that we talk about that we have a couple of different divisions within the department and those divisions really affect everything within the built environment so when we talk about taking a piece of raw land or infill development we have to be concerned with sewer water drainage streets traffic let alone when we get into the zoning land use as well as then what structure is going to be on there how it is that it's accessible for everyone safe reliable complies with the fire codes and sustainability for the duration so the planning division works to really focus on what our what our present needs are our future needs and how best to develop that land building inspection division is a focus on life safety aspects so when we talk about a building its uses how it's being used getting that certificate of occupancy health inspections as well as dealing with zoning compliance through the duration of that that process the department has a focus on our guiding principles which are that of being solution focused customer driven and striving to provide excellence and service delivery and and we feel that that's going to be the key to success for us to get where it is that we're going and continue to focus on continuous improvement I have a couple different division directors here to speak to you about their particular programs and I'm gonna start off with Richard as we talk about land use and the planning process oh was that the last slide no I'm sorry I'm just kidding you're in no problem I go fast if you like no I'm just kidding you seriously Richard can only development services department just wanted to kind of touch touch base a little bit on on sort of what I always call kind of the three major components for the planning process or land entit lement process first being obviously the zoning and and to not to oversimplify but really what is how is it colored on the map and what does that mean how can that it what is the the the bulk mass height how can that building be built on on on the site which is typically what zoning regulates then we get into platting which for the most part is really the a map of how that property should develop to a certain extent how is a lot laid out how will those lots be conveyed where is the public infrastructure where are the streets where the utilities and then the site plan which is a little bit more detailed depicting exactly what will be built with with landscape plan usually a component of that from there we really move into the construction phase building and associated permits fire so that that's where you really get into how it will be constructed then we get into the inspections obviously making sure that that what you're building is following the plans and following code and last but not least certificate of occupancy meaning the project is complete all conditions have been met and the business is ready to be opened and so kind of going back to the development review process what I wanted to do is just kind of provide a snapshot over a three-year period of just the type of applications that we get as you can see that the blue is platting and so we kind of lumped them all together whether it be preliminary plat final plat am ending plat minor plat so the vast majority well over 50% of those applications relate to platting second at least for for 2018 our site plan 40 41 applications and then 35 for for zoning and so I believe in 18 and 17 site plan zoning and plat related accounted for approximately 78% of the applications so just kind of setting the context of the volume and and the majority of the type of applications that we get and so as Scott indicated you know that we had we had a change in leadership and that's kind of where we have we have 2017 broken out October through December is really when that when that's that that change occurred and so so what we when Scott and I first started looking at this and how can we sort of ameliorate some of the the issues that we have right now with with the complaints that we get on length of time and and what can we fix immediately that's kind of out of the context of the code that we know where things are being delayed and and a lot of that was just a scheduling in with pre-development meetings there there were some of the pre- development meetings were simple as just I have an idea here's what I want to do and so people were being sort of put in queue when really it could have just been a quick and simple phone call kind of what we're just talking about the item before but folks were put in queue and waiting sometimes up to 45 days just to sit down to talk to staff which is crazy I mean it's crazy so then you have them wanting to submit a project developing their application which can take anywhere from 30 to 60 days best case scenario and then from there we would get into what we were calling a completeness check just saying okay you've you've submitted all the application material that that's needed and then we're gonna route the plans for review and so in 2016 that was taking 17 days so from when you submitted your application to when staff would start looking at it was 17 business days so it's three weeks that you've just been sitting waiting which again these are averages but again a substantial a substantial delay which which really is isn't the result of any code it was just operations and and how things how things related one thing I do like to point out to we in 2017 you know it's interesting there were 2016 I think we had three individuals doing development review on staff 2017 we had two and a half and and so if you kind of go back to the number of applications that were that were in we really had for the most part for the majority of the year only two people working on on those reviews so again you looking at where we were with pre-development meetings were down to about ten ten business days or two weeks and then completeness review so you get an application submitted the most it's going to take you is two days to have that initial review and then routed we also have have started rejecting applications so if they are if they are incomplete we have sent them back that was also part of the delay where things just just sit and sit and sit without any sort of communication and so these were some things that we just jumped on immediately to try to to try to correct looking at just average business days again from approve from from submittal to approval now again that to me this was just rather than let 's take this out take that out now some of this is relayed back to when the applicant responded to comments so it could have taken they could have jumped on it within two weeks and had it resubmitted it could have taken them 30 days but this just gives you an idea of kind of where we were and where we're headed I like to point out site plan preliminary plat final plat this was a big change that was done in 2017 kind of this new process for site plan but when you really start looking at those those business days and how these how these each of these processes were staggered on average it took you over a year just in business days to get through site plan preliminary and final plat which is which is quite a long quite a long time so you if you want to extrapolate that out you're looking at a year and a half to two years to get to get through the process which is which is a long time long time and so what we what we've done here is and I've we've updated this slide and so we'll have Sean hand hand these out so this is sort of where we where we kind of stack up to some of our some of our competitors if you will within the Metroplex we did get Irving today and so we updated this slide to reflect Irving's number what I'd like to point out on you'll see where there's a few that are missing for example preliminary plat there Irving and Flower Mound don't have a preliminary plat process Irving actually runs theirs to as one Flower Mound actually has a development plan and then it goes right into a final pl atter what they call a record plat but as you can see we have we have come down quite a bit rezone our rezoning times are again these are a number of months we're about two and a half months which kind of puts us for the most part in the middle Frisco is at six months for for rezoning preliminary plat we're still we still have a long ways to go I think to improve on those numbers site plan we've brought that down quite quite a bit where we're kind of almost almost in the middle final plat again we're we're we take the longest it is what it is but it's a substantial improvement from from where we were minor plat as well that that's something that we're trying to work on to bring down within within 30 days at the or within one month at the very at the very minimum and then looking at average number of reviews this was another one that we wanted to really try to bring down to one to two reviews maximum so rezoning as you see kind of where we are we're down to one one review a lot of this just was how we were how we were routing some of these we were sending it through every single different department imaginable some were reviewing the rez oning like it was a site plan and it was just taking on reviews that that shouldn't really didn't need to occur and so we're much more smarter and in in in how we how we route these route these items SGP we're kind of right at two and then again site plan ADP preliminary plan and final plat we brought those down from from an average of three reviews down down to two what that what that what does that really mean once you get to three reviews and beyond you get hit with another fee and so for planning it it's $250 for engineering it varies it goes from $500 to $3,000 so if you have a plat with a hundred and one residential lots or more and you get into a third review you're paying another $3,000 well 30 3250 so what we've done is we broke them out between 16 17 18 and we say our key projects so really it's it's platting so preliminary final plat and then your your site plan and so if you look at the number of applications in a hunt in in 2016 at a hundred and eight and of those sixty three went to three three and three or more reviews which is which is quite a bit I'm 17 we brought that down and now now 18 we're down we're down to 34 and so I think on a percentage basis yeah we were at 58 percent of the application of those types of applications in 2016 went to three three and greater reviews of those sixty three five or at five five or more reviews so if you had a large residential subdivision at your fifth review you're at roughly nine nine thousand plus the previous application fees so again time and money pretty pretty substantial numbers again we're working we're working to bring that down right now at least this fiscal year we're at we have it at 23 percent some of that is just a function of other departments but again it's something that that we're working on trying to bring down and just kind of be smarter in our reviews wanted to talk a little bit about about site plans again this was something that was implemented in in late 2016 and so you see the average business days in review an average number of reviews in the first three quarters in 2017 the the average business days in review for a site plan was a hundred and seventy two days I mean that that is a long long time for site plan part of the part of the part of the issue you know it was a new process that that I think was well intended but just how it was implemented was there were some flaws it meant it tried to merge some of the construction plans that were part of platting and it just drew it drew a lot of things out so what we did as soon as we got in is really tried to that that last quarter or first quarter of this fiscal year is really tried to clear clear the backlogs and so that was something that we pushed through right away is is getting the backlog resolved and then really and then really being a lot more smarter on on what the site plan truly is taking those engineering plans out of out of the site plan review and where we're at or sort of at least where we want to be in 2019 once we have the new code is try to get that done in in 15 days business days and that's typically you know a 10-day more or less a 10-day review staff have that done in one review just be very clear from putting a little bit more time in upfront and and letting know both what our expectation is as far as the submittal making sure we get complete subm ittals and and and again focusing on that trying to have that site plan done in one review another one ADP alternative development plans these also function as a site plan approved by P&Z to 2016 average days in review was 102 we 're down at 51 right now where I have NA in 2019 one of the proposed changes for the DDC update is to eliminate the ADP and provide staff with with some some some flexibility with those types of administrative approvals on on setbacks again just I know we've talked a lot about this before but just kind of wanted to put it out there again you know we are we are going through the D DC update we're looking at having our consolidated draft at least for staff review within the next month month and a half we continue to meet weekly with the with the development review committee every Friday and kind of talk on on some policy items and get some general direction in in moving forward but again we're still still shooting for early 2019 to have that hopefully in front of you for for consideration one item in particular where we we need the most improvement but a lot of this is again it's going to relate to how those changes play out with with the DDC is our is our plotting process so you see we broke out preliminary plat versus final plat and kind of the average days in in review so we were at last year 133 days right now we 're at 85 I've kind of set a goal informally right now of trying to get down to 60 days maybe maybe less one thing we're looking at doing it if you see kind of the flow chart on on the left is previously a lot of time you know if you go back to 2017 we would do preliminary plat then we would do final then we would do site plan and I remember hearing all the time from the development community you know kind of joking that you know indent you're never done with review well you know what they're absolutely right because we we plat properties and we we were placing these easements kind of gerrymandering throughout throughout the lot then we'd come into site plan review to say that you can't develop your site because of these easements and then we're back doing an amending plat and it's just it's just a circle that doesn't need to that doesn't need to occur and so now what we're looking at doing is is is one being a little bit more upfront with it with the pre-application truly treating it as a pre-applic ation but then coming up with at least a preliminary site plan right off the bat and then really saying okay what do you what do you want to do with your property how do you want to develop and then try to build the build the plot around that and where those easements should be and really most likely around the perimeter of the property we're going back and forth with how we look at engineering plans and how those are constructed and when those improvements are accepted whether they be done separate some some cities that we're looking at Pl ano for example they they remove it totally and and their final plat really is just a record plat or it almost serves as an as-built ideally I think that's where I would like like to go that's what we have a kind of our projection of 15 days we do have the local government code 30-day requirement where it has to you know it's considered approved it's not done within 30 days I think if obviously if it's done as as a as an as built that's pretty easy to achieve but right now we're working through those you know how we how we sort of recraft and and look at look at platting we do still have some archaic language interestingly found one today that we had adopted in 2006 that we copied right from Plano and so Plano is on like their I think third iteration of their subdivision ordinance since then and we're still kind of where we were so I think you know now is a good time as we are looking at the total at the overall code but also looking at our metrics of where we are where where we were where we are and kind of where we want to be and so that that's really where we are with with with platting I guess we can we can toot our horn a little bit given a recent success I guess with some of the changes particularly on the front end I will be at at the the Texas APA or the American Planning Association Texas chapter they have a an annual conference this year it's in Galveston so the city of Denton and the city of of Parolin are going to be on a panel talking about improvements to the development review process and so rather than being looked at as the bad example we're kind of turn full circle and we'll be on a panel of how to improve at least front on on the front end so I think it's I think it's a good thing for the city that that we're now being recognized and looked at in that light from there we go into into building and at that point I'll turn it over to to Emily our system building official to go through thank you for that introduction I guess I don't have to introduce myself now and development services has been working diligently to develop and expand our one-stop shop this environment is where business owners food established personnel contractors homeowners architects engineers and developers can come and meet with staff they can also get a multitude of items accomplished in one location these items include a single point of contact same-day permitting guidance on permit submittals questions on zoning inspection coordination and making payments for permits our same-day permitting currently includes review of residential fences replacement windows and replacement doors we also have foundation repair temporary pods that we do as well our goal to the future is to include residential irrigation residential sheds and residential pools in that same day turnaround the end result is less staff time used to route reviews and excellent service delivery our online software systems each racket and project Doc's allows for 24/7 access this allows our customers to make payments submit plans submit resubmittals research permits issued already or applied for and also see inspection results and anytime plans to access certificates of occupancy online are currently in the works to obtain a permit for new commercial construction several steps must be taken applicants must first apply for the permit and submit required documents multiple departmental staff will review all documents submitted and determine code compliance corrections if needed will be sent to the applicant and they'll resubmit those corrected or missing plan sheets after all departments have approved the plans and the site the permit will be issued this slide represents turnaround time in days for new commercial and for certificates of occupancies or business licenses it also it shows the median of the timeframes and this is our current timeframes in the red the new commercial building plan review times have been decreased right now we're running 10 to 15 business days previously we've seen 30 to 45 days for plan review we coordinate with fire electric engineering watershed protection and planning for plan review certificate of occupancies include the change of use business owner name of businesses and completion of new buildings we've reduced these times significantly in this last year previous times allotted was 10 business days we we've reduced it to two days a lot of times we'll get them done same day as well this slide represents our current residential building plan review turnaround times in relation to ship to other cities we're currently at six days our goal is to get to three days this would be in a where Plano is and and we feel like that's a reasonable goal sort of give you some k udos because I I personally have experienced that quick turnaround time in a remodel permit I submitted but yesterday when I was picking up the permit there was a couple at the counter that was wanting to do a porch and staff was very helpful basically helped them walk through the application the permit the permit application and to try to get together the documents and help them even draw the floor little floor plan out on the sheet of paper so I really appreciate the work that you all are doing at that and residential I can't say because I haven't done anything that's really called commercial but whatever you've been doing is working and also just seeing the the customer service the level of customer service at the front desk is just impecc able so I just wanted to give out a give out a shout out to that thank you appreciate it let's see a new practice we have used to reduce turnaround times is redlining plans we really haven't had support to do these to do this but we've reduced turnaround our we used to have two plan reviews usually for residential and we've reduced 60% of those second reviews into single reviews so that's pretty significant when you look at how many permits we issue per year that's all I have. Okay so I have a question. I could be wrong but is that your first presentation to council? Yes it is. Great job yes very fantastic. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. I thought I thought it was important that Richard and Emily they've been doing all of the work they get all the kudos their staff is fabulous they've got great teams and it was important for them to present the work that they've they've done so I just want to visit a little bit as far as some of our next steps we have been incredibly busy over the past year we look forward to probably the next six months to 12 months to be equally as busy we are continuing to work on the development code has Richard had indicated Clarion's going to be back on site prior to the consolidated draft being published to visit with our council correlating committee as well as is visiting with a couple of our stakeholders internally so we can make sure that we have a concise understanding of what policy direction that there is we're going to finish up working on the zoning map we have Denton Square standards which we have vetted through we have an ordinance that will be forthcoming that is going to codify that or with with Council's blessing we are in the process of reviewing the 2018 international codes to include the fire code so plumbing building electrical all of our standards for the built environment we are under the 2012 codes we're going to update those standards as well as the food establishment code to be in line with the Texas food standards we have a comprehensive evaluation of our fees going on so we can present to council where it is that the cost of services where it is that we're going to provide those those services and how it is that we're going to fund those services as well we're going to create a departmental annual report so that we can take this this type of information and kind of what we're doing and where we're going so that we can produce something for our community to have a better understanding of what the department's doing and the magnitude of the work that's being performed so that and any number of things that are that are going on beyond that that will continue to pursue any questions of me yes that's member us so I just I wanted to make a comment of just how exciting I find it to see this comprehensive really radical revision of what had been the status quo for so long I've been hearing so many you know reports in the community from small business owners and residents complaints about the process and and then to see you know staff who knows just as well if not more you know then the people this stakeholders on the other side of what's wrong and what's not working actually come together and create the solution it's just marvelous you know we saw that already in engineering when they came before us and presented that one little piece of the puzzle that was just a small part there on the flow chart it was a similar you know kind of excitement in the room and I just want to say you know I guess partly to also also credit our city manager and the new the new culture that we have here in the city you know I think this is what you get when when you've got a culture that that doesn't discourage questioning the status quo right that if you have somebody saying you know you've been doing it this way for years and it's not working and instead of being hushed they're told okay well come come come come up with the plan then that that works so it's really exciting for me in a number of different levels I just want to thank all of you and you know congratulate you for for this work so thank you questions comments is there a way so I think on the lines of kind of helping helping with residential submittals that sort of thing do we have a template for example if someone wants to put in a fence a driveway something I say driveway fit something that's maybe simplistic to complex a garage do we have a template that they could utilize to say this has been approved before if you're okay with this then you can kind of adopt this is there anything like that that would help someone along and streamline the process so if you had a booklet that says these projects were are all options that were completed I mean were approved same day pretty turnkey pretty routine if you have this much space it fits that sort of thing do we have anything like that where a citizen that would come in to make a request could look at what's been approved before and see if they can adopt that to help them in that process nothing in a book form we have a couple of very simple pieces staff staff is is quite engaged and excited about the changes that are occurring and them being empowered and be able to do and and they're actually developing some templates so where it is some sample detached accessory structures we have some wall sections so we have the pieces to help them not necessarily anything comprehensive but I think over the course of the next year we'll we'll be exploring more of that and more of that to certainly make it easier it's easier on both sides it's easier when our clientele our customers know what they want or if they don't that we can provide them the tools and the resources so so that our staff is able to look at it and say okay we know what this is this what you're doing that's fine so we're encouraged to do it so what is that what is it what is the kind of the process for that so for example if someone doesn't know that's available how would I do they just mentioned hey do you have anything that I could utilize or I can look at or do you walk me through that process what is kind of the the lead-up to that conversation as Emily talked about that the one-stop shop so that front counter and the mayor had indicated we have technical staff at the counter that's there to help so we ask the questions we work hard to listen to what it is that they're looking for and then we provide what resources we that they need we're attempting to include more of that online so the intent is everything that we have available to our staff would be available to the public out available for somebody to grab it really fill in the blank so if they're looking at a wall section or attached building then they can just indicate sizes or spacing or whatever they might be that we can provide some simple plans and and pieces to help them do that okay thank you anything else appreciate it thank you oh I'm sorry I didn't see it was just very nice yeah don't just yeah just in case you insist on knowing yes I asked for this work session specifically specifically the benchmark but the first time I asked for the benchmarking I remember was back in 2017 before I was on council and he said you know I don't know if I really want to do that right now we're looking at this whole process and I'm glad I waited this is a fantastic result that's really gonna help make help keep them vibrant and creative fantastic thank you okay any other comments don't need a break we got people here okay no we got one more one more work session and we're gonna I think we're probably gonna move the closed session at the end is that what you want yeah we can move yeah let's move it to the end and we've got one more Mario assures me this is five minutes or less and okay we have two options for you yeah all right so I will call the work session item yes yes be received report hold discussion pride staff direction regarding shared electric scooters and a potential rival in the city of Denton mayor members of the council we wanted to bring you some information related to the scooter share program that has come into the city of Dallas similar to what happened last summer with the bike share those some of those firms have made overtures that they want to arrive in Denton and so we wanted to make sure that we presented you some with some information and get some policy direction from you I'm going to introduce Mark Oliphant he 's our new back in pedestrian coordinator so he'll be here making the presentation welcome thank you I've been here about eight weeks it's nice to be here I think I've met a number of you but not for a long period or anything so thank you for your time I want to talk to you about dockless electric scooter share it's not very different from bike share and as I understand it there 's been a lot of discussion about bike share in the last six months to a year so let's get right into it whoops okay here is what a typical scooter looks like this is from the company spin they're a little larger than what you what you'd see razor scooters a lot of kids ride those or have them my kids have rate razor scooters about three and a half feet tall three and a half feet long and maybe one foot wide there's a throttle on the right side like you 'd see on a motorcycle cycle there's a brake on the left Bell typically is part of it and you unlock the scooter by using an app you sign up for these apps they are smaller than most bike share bikes interestingly so as I said an offs hoot of dockless bike share no docking station or fixed scooter rack that they have to return to their GPS based and so you pull up your smartphone app if you want to find one of these and it will direct you to where the nearest ones can be found there's a lot of startups a lot of interesting disruption money from Silicon Valley that's funding these sorts of things they have a history of just showing up overnight in cities uninvited with the with the philosophy that it's better to ask for forgiveness than it is for permission but there are some neat things about these actually so advocates would say this is a simple accessible affordable and environmentally friendly transportation option one interesting difference between these and the bicycles is that because they have a battery they must be picked up and charged at least every night some are even the in heavy use areas are picked up halfway through the day and recharged and so they keep much better track of their inventory than we've experienced with some of the bike shares that got abandoned here and just you know left now opponents there are concerns about rider safety driving these can be a little squirrely appropriate travel routes here in the city interestingly in the AIS it says oh this will be treated as a toy device because I had a conversation with the police last week and they said well I'm not sure that's probably where we would put it and then earlier this week we talked to council and they said you know to us this really does fall under motor vehicle which means toy device it's relegated to sidewalks motor vehicle would be on the roads there's some major differences here and something that we need to work out and that each city has had to work out and finally parked scooters so they can be knocked over easily people can be lazy and they can leave them in front of stoops or driveways all kinds of places that aren't good now these companies do have some different they have ideas to try to fight some of these things when you check in a lime scooter you're supposed to take a photo of it with your phone so it records where you left it and and you can't be tracked down if it's in a bad place now let's just go over what's what's going on here in Texas as far as these shared scoot ers so Denton we do not have them and right now we have no policy we don't even know how to categorize them right now Dallas does have them they have three different companies lime spin and bird and do have a policy governing them what they've done is just wrapped electric scooters into their bike share ordinance which is fairly easy to do you just change a few words and it can cover them all Fort Worth right now does not allow these electric scooters they 're banned under an existing ordinance although they are looking into what this might entail for the city Plano and Arlington both have lime and and they've allowed them under existing ordinances Austin yes has three and they have an ordinance and then Waco interestingly just in the past two weeks Waco had them show up overnight the scooter ferry visited them in the night and there were scooters on the streets and within 48 hours the city contacted the company said no way we're not having this and get them out and and they complied they did it been a number of different examples I know bird has been fined in Santa Monica for operating without a business license there's there's really a wide variety of experiences some cities have had very good experiences Washington DC has had them for probably 18 months now and they seem to function fairly well so going on so we have I would say two major obstacles to having successful shared scooters here right now one is both universities have expressed zero interest in accommodating them at this time they're both focusing on doing bike share this year they really want to give bike share a real try and they're just don't want you know some something new to be thrown into those gears and then secondly this regulatory landscape I mean just just which is illustrated by the conversation between the police and the legal department is that a toy is that a motor vehicle and there are huge implications about that because if I'm riding a toy and I'm intoxicated I don't get a DWI but if I 'm riding a motor vehicle and I'm intoxicated I do which is I mean these are you know major things that they have to deal with and that we need to clarify so my question to you I know it's me standing between you and getting this meeting done is dockless scooter share right for Denton and and what what do you think go ahead do you have any information on other places like Washington DC that how many accidents they have in it because I know that there was one recorded death I'm not sure where it was but I'd be interested in knowing you know how many people get injured right these things there are not good accident statistics the companies tend to hold those close to themselves and it hasn't been around long enough that someone else has gotten to aggregating them I do know within the last two weeks in Austin there was a woman maybe early 50s who hit a curb and major head trauma but do keep in mind that that sort of thing happens regularly with with other modes as well and there I think there'll be a learning curve as people learn about them I think when they show up in new cities it's very often a novelty and so people just jump on it and they were just have to you know figure out how it works I tried lime scooter about two weeks ago and interesting you know squirrely handling compared to a bike the small wheels I'd say that's something else for this city is we have some areas where pavement is not in great shape and you know when I'm riding a bike with wheels like this it jars me and jumbles me and so think if you're going to a wheel this size you could run into trouble so no good no good stats on that thank you first I want to say this is this may be the greatest slide ever I like that and so on top of that though I would just succinctly say I I support this oddly enough just because I see them in Dallas a ton and they get used a ton and that's the difference and then also the revenue source that it generates for those that charge them up so they pay them to some degree yeah I think that's noteworthy so I think the usage and I think we would I would personally like to try to make it where they're in the maybe craft language where it is a motor vehicle and it is they maintain in the slow lane whatever that is that type direction versus access to the sidewalk to make it easily enforceable if you're on the sidewalk with it instant violation know what like Dallas went with different segments of the city you can have on the street have it on the sidewalk not crazy about that I'm pretty easy to enforce if you have it you're on the sidewalk ticket you know pretty pretty clean yes yes no I'm not in favor of it right now I would like to see how they kind of play out in other cities mostly because of the the safety aspect of it seeing someone riding a scooter I know on a sidewalk and I'm there's a lot of issues with that and also even if they were on the street like you said our streets have some issues especially in the have been the downtown area as well and the universities aren't interested in them and if this you know if they don't want them on the campus then you know that's going to cause another issue so I mean I'd like to get the bike less share and the the bike it's worked out and get that really good in our city and focus on that to something that works for everyone and then maybe eventually come back to this once there's more more data or some more safety issues or insurance requirements or actual definition of what it is I agree with councilmember Briggs I think that the time is not right I think we need a little more data on in we need people to learn how to use these in other cities before they try to have your accident and Dallas my answer is kind of in between answer my answer would be I don't know yet and I do want to see more data but I have some kind of specific questions about what data I'd like to see so number one I too have seen I was in Dallas for a concert just last week and it was amazing to me to see all these business people all dressed up in suits these adults riding around and you know scooters like little kids and mixing with traffic and you know it it looked great so that you know the but then again I realized that Denton's in Dallas are different and I you know for me the safety issue chief concern and I'd like to know you know in the cities in which this is working or at least the cities that haven't banned it yet what is the quality of the streets in which that these are being used I'm it seemed that you know that the part of Dallas that I was in I mean they were pretty very nice new smooth it it almost felt like watching the Jetsons you know there are all these people in suits just just zooming along yeah and it looked like a future utopia technological utopia or something like that so anyway so I would like to know that I'd also like to know about helmets do you know offhand in any of the cities that use these that have ordinances to any of them require helmets all of the apps when you sign up you have to go through a little process of checking off yes I understand I'm liable and yes you recommend a helmet I was riding them in Portland saw very few helmets I in Texas there's no statewide helmet requirement so I know it's encouraged for children but the scooters are specifically state they earn for 18 and over and even bird scooters you're supposed to scan your driver's license before you can get access to the app so that they all use different methods for this now there is no requirement for helmets on bikes right now so and they don't the electric motors are governed at 15 miles an hour typically I think that is adjustable if you want them to I went a little faster than that going down a hill because the motor wasn't pushing me I was just so you can go above that speed and those are bicycle speeds you know not Walker speeds not walking speeds thanks okay that's my Mel sir I feel like we should be leaning forward to figure out how to do it right I think there's probably no scenario where we'd want them on sidewalks I think we may find some stats outside the US I 've been traveling outside the US and they're like least where I was you know the rage now they were being used in traffic which would scare the crap out of me but you know I think a possible destiny is in bike lanes I'd love to hear from cyclists whether that that's totally nuts or not but that that's my first thought definitely yeah yeah I'm a definite no at this time you know we may look at it later but right now absolutely not yeah no I think I can't even imagine one of these things zipping in and out of traffic at night number one we barely we barely have the bike ordinance in place and the main reason we have the bike ordinance that we do is because UNT and TW you both wanted to try that out and that's why we and they're saying they have no interest in this so but we need to get an ordinance in place to do something even if it says for now at least understand there's some data to be gathered and some some empirical things to look at that we we don't necessarily want them here until we are able to explore more because if we do nothing they're gonna show up we're gonna be right back here in the same way we were with the bikes so and at 15 miles an hour yeah that's almost too fast for a bike lane and it's too slow for a lane of traffic I mean I know bikes can use lanes of traffic on residential streets and all that but when you're on a bicycle you have a bigger profile you're it's bigger it's a bigger mechanism the way you're seated here you're standing up and your silhouette it's just so I think we have a consensus to at least defer it for now get a policy in place that states that and then as we get the data and as we see experiments with the other cities coming in then we can come back and revisit this yeah appreciate that all right so we 've got let's see we're going to probably move the closed session to the end of the meeting just because we've got staff here and we're gonna be late being here so there's no reason why everybody has to be late being here so we're gonna go ahead and that completes our work session we will now following not following the complete following the completion of this the the work session City Council will convene in a special call meeting to consider the following items and we will call that meeting to order at 745 we do have a quorum and it is August the 28th 2018 do we need a break people need a break let's take a five-minute break before we get started I mean we're gonna special called meeting to order so we'll go on down through the agenda our first item on the agenda is consent agenda councilmember may pretend Ryan move approval of consent agenda except for item B okay councilmember Hussbeth second all right we have a motion for approval and a second for agenda item B but we're I'm sorry the consent agenda but we're pulling agenda item B you ready all in favor sign ify by raising your right hand passes six zero councilmember Duff is here but he just wasn't here for this vote we'll now take up agenda item B for an item for individual consideration we do have a speaker card on that do we have a presentation on it or no no sir this is the rules of procedure for the Board of Ethics and we had a work session on that just last week without work has be happy to pull up the rules or discuss anything you want but didn 't have a formal presentation I've got a couple of questions but I want to call the public speaker we'll let him speak mr. King gold if you'll come up state your name and address your time will begin thank you mayor members of the council my name is Ken gold I just wanted to speak on this one I sent you on an email a while back on the rules of procedure the section on legal counsel and I'm not an attorney but I play one on TV hi mom because you slept in a holiday Inn Express yeah that it okay all right I'm somewhat familiar with some boards that operated didn't already that don't require legal counsel they are quasi judicial the Denton Civil Service Commission allows a person to be represented by any person that they want I believe that can be done here I don't think it sets up any kind of criminal liability for anybody or Board of Ethics state bar issues if the provision is in the rules and and probably also needs to be on the ordinance so I may have gotten the cart before the horse a little bit by talking about the rules procedure because I think that change still needs to be in there but it might be smoother to change the ordinance section that says a party can be represented by an attorney to simply add or any person of their choice it's it's the city's board I think that it's not going to be a conflict with the state bar or anybody else if you create this board I believe you can set the rules for it I do think it can be done it's already being done in Denton where in the Civil Service Commission format or the third-party hearing examiner format of the non attorney reps can request for subpoenas they can request they can make motions they can file objections they can cross examine witnesses we have experience with this it works you know I've seen it both ways I've seen employees in front of the Commission since Civil Service Commission use attorneys I've seen them not use attorneys they've used me which was a mistake but that's their call and it ought not to be required that they can only represent themselves or only pay for an attorney because just a few hours of an attorney can run over $1,000 and that's gonna that's a crippling effect on some people's income I really think it's up to you whether we allow representatives to do this or not I know I did not discuss this when the ethics ordinance was before you I simply missed it I just didn't catch it I did not raise the issue at any of the public hearings that's my bad but I believe that this is the time before this is actually all set in concrete to take a position on the ordinance and also on the rules of procedure for the board thank you any questions for the speaker your question for the speakers yes okay go ahead mr. gold do you know if the Civil Service has subpoena power it does okay thank you yes councilmember Armitage oh I'm sorry yes no mayor pro-tenant councilmember Hussman so hey Tim question though would you be okay with middle ground that someone can be there to help but the party has to speak for themselves so so I read I read I read it to say and Aaron correct me where I'm wrong but that's why I asked a question last week I don't read it to explicitly say attorney I know it implies lawyer attorney something like that but I read the language last week and that's why I asked that question is because it doesn't explicitly say state bar attorney I asked him and he said yeah that's how he reads it but it doesn't read that succinctly but so my question would be if you're okay with that I think I can get there I just want to do away with the the plausible deniability part of it so for example if I hire Ken and Ken says something and I lose I can then say why I didn't intend for it to go that way he said that at a turn but if Ken sit next to me and kind of helps me through the process because he's more comfortable but I have to say everything then I can't say I didn't intend to say that so it just adds some responsibility on the individual and so that's where that's where that's my concern is that someone says something that you don't like or that doesn't have the outcome you want and all of a sudden there's a miscommunication I want to avoid that so if someone sits next to you and they can kind of coach you up then then I can get there understand if to have somebody at the table with them but not speaking for them advising them as a friend that's better than the way it is no doubt okay I don't it's just an extra step I think if you have the representative speak for the person he's not gonna be any more likely to complain about an unhappy end result than it would be that he would say I had a bad lawyer it's you know when you lose you got unhappy people so sure the complaints are possible under any scenario okay but yes that's definitely halfway okay it 's so if I'll just sum up so that I don't have to come back that's that would be my suggestion that either wherever the consensus is if it's if there's consensus for someone to represent them outside of an attorney that was my interpretation anyway that's why I asked a question last week but also I have some concern there and so I'd like for the individual to speak for themselves as so that 's a 1a 1b as far as direction for me okay anybody else yes go ahead oh okay yeah thank you thank you yes go ahead so as I understand it so under the current rules the defendant does not have to speak for themselves right but they can speak for themselves that they can defend themselves and if they want to have somebody represent them it has to be a lawyer is that correct that's the way it's written okay yeah I just I just wanted to clear it's a to clarify that um so I think that you know mr. gold makes a compelling case about the Civil Service Commission if that's the case that we have the Civil Service Commission where an officer who is coming before that has the choice of just like in a court of law to represent themselves or have a lawyer and in addition to that unlike in a court of law they can also have a citizen advocate I don't see any reason why we couldn't do that in the case of our in our ethics complaint process except for the fact that as mr. gold mentioned the ordinance doesn't mention that so I think he's right it sounds like he's right that we would need to change change the ordinance so I would be in favor of of changing the ordinance to allow that for the reason that you know as great as it would be if we could all have a lawyer represented by we I mean it you know anybody not just just just counsel lawyer represent us it it costs a lot of money and not everybody can afford that so to kind of even the playing field that would seem to be a good way to provide that that option because not everybody can you know have have the kind of presence of mind to defend themselves no matter how how smart and talented they are when they're the ones you know who are being who are against whom that there's a complaint it can be hard to to see things in that legalistic way so and I would suggest that if we if there's not consensus on that to changing to changing the ordinance to allow for a non lawyer advocate that options you know be explored later as to you know maybe staff report on that later if that turns out not not to be the consensus to look into ways in which the cost could be offset or if you know lawyers could have a good count for I mean I don't know it was much about kind of what goes into pro bono work if that wouldn't count towards a pro bono job or something but at least to ensure that that legal services would not be prohibitively expensive for those who didn't feel competent to represent themselves so anyway I hope I made that clear that for me like the cost is the main issue it's not that I have a problem with lawyers representing people that's what they're good at that's their skill set thanks you have a question yeah I'm sorry I missed miss part of this but if I understand let me ask legal you know if you have somebody representing you that is not a lawyer is there a problem of them basically representing somebody like they were a lawyer it depends on the proceeding I mean there are certain proceedings even under our city codes where an individual a representative an engineer a planning consultant can represent somebody before a commission or this council here we're getting into a board that has been set up to operate like a court like municipal court and that is the difference between this and civil service commission a civil service commission is based more on the union model not court model and so what you have here is is bringing in somebody to do that and I'm going back to the comments that were made by one of the members of the ethics board is that because this is like a court proceeding opening statements direct examination cross-examination closing statements producing evidence that the person somebody who is not a licensed attorney who comes in and actually represents somebody you know that person could always have a complaint filed against them for the unauthor ized practice of law and so that would be against the individual who comes in and represents the the the the individual who's been accused of violating the ethics ordinance I'm not saying it's going to happen but that is the the risk well and I would think if they they can't be taking compensation for it if they were taking compensation they were acting would be acting as an attorney that's one more factor that I don't know a district attorney or the Texas Attorney General would look at to determine to build their case I agree councilmember Meltzer and then councilmember Briggs is it being like a court or does being does it being like a court make it a court it's not a Texas court like a municipal court or district court but it sure operates a lot like that and it'll be up to a either an assistant or a district attorney or Texas AG to bring the case and then of course go through the actual process of charging somebody to see if a jury or judge will find that person guilty I'm sorry councilmember Briggs yeah if the person because I I do I do have concerns with someone having to hire a lawyer because lawyers are not cheap I mean they're just they're not and if somebody goes through the process has charges or complaint filed against them and then it is found to be you know nothing then does the person who brought the charges against them pay for their legal fees or are they just out that much money defending themselves and so I'm just kind of first I want to know I want to know that and then I also want to know some other suggestions on on things that on I mean I like councilmember Hutzpeth's he threw out an idea there that somebody can guide but not speak are there is there anything else that we can do or suggest where it doesn't necessarily have to be an attorney or is there a group of attorneys that would do a discounted fee for this court like I don't know how how that would work it's late I might need to get me a Snickers little bar because I got some pretty as the ticket says hot sports opinions about this yeah so somebody's gonna have to maybe rein me in so I'll look at the clock and I'll try to be succinct yeah well first of all I have some the conversation when developing this ethics ordinance one of the things that permeated the whole discussion was my concern of it representing more like a legal proceeding without lawyers being involved and and all the different kinds of protections of due process that people were afforded in our Jewish prudent system of you're innocent before guilty and these kind of things so I think I don't agree with the analysis of the email that I saw and and I don't think that it just because it looks like a court I don't think makes it a court if it's not defined by a court in the laws of the state of Texas and if we want to if we want to make sure that that's not an issue we can simply say in our ethics ordinance that this is not a court of law and therefore no one is going to be prosecuted for practicing law without a license so I think it's important for people to be able to have that choice because this is not a court proceeding I'll say it again this is not a court proceeding because if this is a court proceeding if we're gonna treat this like a court then we're gonna have to rewrite the whole thing because you've got we got people serving on the board who don't have legal training well that was one thing that was said was we don't want to just have all lawyers on here because we want to make it open and people who are jur ors can serve and they can make decisions questions of fact but not questions of law this is not a court if it is a court then we need to we need to redo the whole thing so I think people need to be able to represent themselves in the best light available that they see fit and if someone makes a mistake and they 're not a lawyer well that's that's just the way it is the person who hired them or solicited their friendship they're responsible and accountable so if we need to find a way that's satisfactory to you mr. city attorney to make sure that nobody that we can define this as a way that people cannot be accused of practicing law without a license because I will you cannot believe the disruption with you're at a table and you're trying to do something and you got somebody beside you trying to give you advice and you're gonna have to stop number one you're limited to 30 minutes that's another problem I have so I'm that's a hot sports opinion about as far as I'm concerned this isn't we need to make sure that someone who's representing another person is not practicing law without a license and would that solve that problem and I think putting something in the ordinance itself that makes it actually clear that this is not a court proceeding it's not intended to be a court proceeding would definitely help and that you know if if a someone who from the AG's office or the district attorney's office looks at it and they look at the ordinance that may be enough for them to say you know what this isn't worth my time it's in the ordinance is not intended to be that so it certainly helps Mary so Justin you brought and I would ask for a little research then on you know what are defined as courts and state law and maybe what the bar defines is or the laws defined as practicing law without a license so a couple other things because if it's a court this whole subpoena issue well we better start looking at that all over again because when you can start demanding under penalty of something now there's really not any penalty in here if you just ignore a subpoena but so it's it's it's an issue it's an issue for me so one of the changes that I if I were here and I apologize for not being here but I looked at it you've got two places where subpoenas are mentioned you have in the latter in the later sections it has the specific outline of the authority and the scope of the sub poena or the the limiting scope of the subpoena whereas in the beginning of it it talks about let's see no that's not it it just talks about subpoenas in general I think it may be under definition where is it but what we need to do is say that wherever the subpoena is mentioned first which is a very general broad power where is it subpoena where is it no I'm talking about in the actual ordinance there's two places for it there's one that just ordinance mayor or the rules of procedure in the rules of procedure I'm sorry the rules of procedure because there's one place that says periodically the need for information may need to rise you can do the the let me see okay yeah it's before section 11 but anyway I think it needs to say where it talks about subpoenas that they make what it says is and I can't find it but they have subpoena power to to exercise the goal of the of the but you just need to make that subject to section 11 we 'll find it I'll find it oh no no that's that's the specific power that's that's limiting it it's before that where it's just talking it's a very general statement that the the board has the the power to subpoena to affect the processing of its blah blah blah yeah it's it's no it's in the no it's in the it's in the just do a search for subpoena but we'll figure that out I'll find it eventually and so then you've got 30 minutes first of all you got an opening statement of three minutes and you got a closing statement of five minutes so I think what I'm gonna do is implement a process here reach of us gets three minutes to talk or five minutes yeah I've been speaking for ten so my point is I don't think I think that's pretty rigid I don't think that I mean the chair should have some discretion to extend time or also to cut time off to say that so either one of those so I think we need to look at that where you have that you are only allowed 30 minutes for the presentation of your case and that includes all your production of evidence all your your witnesses and the cross-examination of the other parties witnesses that's just not very long and so what that tells me is are we looking at this as a true opportunity for people to who are being accused of an ethical violation to have the full opportunity to make their case and to attack or discredit the the the witnesses or the documents brought before them so I think that that time limit is a little bit too strict and I think the five minutes for the closing statement is a little bit too too short I think there needs to be and I know the chair can have some discretion in that but I think that's that's too much that's not enough so I'm okay if we can make it to where it's not a court that people can have other people represent them because you're not talking about the time just for the attorney being there representing the person you will spend four to five times the amount in preparation as you will actually conducting the case I mean you probably can I mean councilmember Hussbeth understands that I mean the trials the easy part it's all the preparation leading up to it so I think we need to have a real clear message from this council of how we perceive this proceeding because if it's if it is a court like proceeding then folks we got a we got to come in and do some tweaking because it is not fair plain and simple whereas if it's a gathering of the community with some professionals who have some experience in mediation and arbitration and and and and collaborative processing and evidence and just moving a meeting along with people telling a narrative I'm okay with that if people want to hire a council to maybe make that evidence presentation a little bit more succinct but I really I'm concerned about that councilmember Duff and I'm gonna find that place I think I think one a one a hold on just a minute councilmember yes one thank you one a issue a subpoena requesting production of data or other evidence from a city official needed for the performance of the board's duties and including the board's exercise of its powers of investigation I think right there it should be subject to the limitations in section 11 because you could you could see it as a as conflicting because that's just sort of a broad statement of what they can do section 11 is more of the limiting power of subpoena power and that way there's no mistake that yeah you got the power but it's subject to this I know that's overkill but that's my what does that see the data that's the data part of me sorry okay I'm sorry councilmember Duff to interrupt you yes no as far as the time I think you know you're gonna you're gonna get trials that are very very different I think that the time that's allowed should be at the discretion of the judge rather than putting a specific time on it because you know they can they can make a judgment maybe the discretion of the board the board chair yeah that's right yeah it's not a court right yeah yeah the chair yeah okay but but that makes more sense to me and they could they can do that right yes councilmember Armitage and the councilmember I just want to add that that I support that too about the time limit I would give direction on that as well councilmember of mayor pro tem Ryan thank you mayor yeah I support all the recommendations that have made been made here so far I'm looking back at the ordinance and in section 2 - this is the actual ethics ordinance not the rules of procedures 2 - 2 7 7 item K where it talks about rules of procedure this is a question for legal the second line in there says such procedure procedural rules are subject to confirmation or modification by city councils who the question is does this need to go because it has an or in there does this need to go back to them and then come back to us for for confirmation the key words are confirmation or modification by council modification implies you can change it here but given the the the issues that have been raised by the mayor in what I guess that some of the other council members are chiming in maybe something to actually send back to the ethics board to address those issues I would probably recommend that as well at the same time change the ethics ordinance to include the item that this is not a court we can get both of those at the same time and just to echo on that comment I think some of these questions really weren't raised before the ethics board we could certainly go back ask them their opinions on those things and and see what recommendations they might have for you and time limits and so forth I also wanted to take a moment to point out that Jesse Davis chair of the ethics board he is here and I'm sure he'd be willing to talk to you about his thoughts if you have that conversation I'm just saying that I don't want this to be construed as a court because number one I see that you're going to be sworn in but if you purge of yourself there's no penalty I mean not that I not that I remember seeing in there anyway so this this isn't meant to be punitive in a sense I mean there's certainly some consequences but you're not going to jail you're not getting fined you're not getting removed from office unless you're maybe on a border commission I mean there can be that recommendation I think so I don't want there to be a situation where if someone is representing someone else and they're not a licensed practicing attorney or licensed attorney in the state of Texas that somehow they've got to worry about getting drug before some tribunal to be accused of practicing law without a license I don't think that was the intent or the spirit of crafting this particular type of hearing so and so we might need some more research on that to to to make that determine if we is that it's something that's subject to an attorney general's opinion is that only for open records requests it's only for open records requests all right so yeah I'd like to you know get some more research on that and I can certainly do that yeah okay yeah I think it's best to go back to the board because there'll be some maybe hot sports opinions on that as well so yeah I appreciate that any other questions comments yes may please the court tribunal here brother no I this my only ask is this and maybe we can find we can agree there I would ask that we keep it succinct so if it's a specific paragraph let's redline that paragraph and have them go back and look at that I just don't want to take them the whole document and say hey shoot at this we need to propose some either language or a paragraph that needs to be evaluated and give some specific goals I just don't want to take the whole document back to be re-examined okay so I think the things I've heard is this is not a court of law making that clear and either the ordinance or the rules or procedure maybe both I'll talk to City Attorney's office about how best to do that the other points I heard were the subpoena language and that section one mayor that you pointed out that was the language to restrict it to that section 11 and then the the other piece that I heard about was the time limits of you know how much time we take for different proceedings I don 't know if the council has a an idea of what you think is appropriate but I could certainly go back to the board and ask them what they felt like is I think I would rather hear from them because I want them to have wide discretion without necessarily hamstringing either party in the hearing to be held to you know I mean you're talking about then your hearing is only 30 minutes an hour 10 16 you know an hour and you know 16 minutes which that's a long time but if you're presenting evidence it depending on what the complaint is and so I do have a question about the subpoena issue on number 11 because it's it seems to state that the only subpoenas that only subpoenas can be issued for city officials but you may need to be able to issue a subpoena for the person making the complaint I mean there may be some information that you may that may be important or may be pertinent to that specific complaint you don't know if there's a I mean that seems a little that doesn't seem to be much reciprocity it just unless I'm reading it wrong when deemed necessary by simple majority everybody okay with simple majority on issuing subpoenas okay I sort of struggle with that but if I don't have the comrade the the consensus on that then but so I go on it goes on to say for witnesses and or records in furtherance of its investigatory and first enforcement power under the code when deemed necessary simple majority issue subpoenas to city officials compelling their attendance number one and or the production of data or other evidence deemed relevant to the pending complaint the scope of the board's authority subpoena records is limited those under the direct control and possession of city officials subpoenas will not be issued for persons who would serve as character witness so there's no there seems to be no I mean it's limited only to one party and I think that there should be the availability because you still have a control mechanism there that's what does it say for the production of data or other evidence deemed relevant to the pending complaint because there may need to be some evidence about well how does this person have firsthand knowledge so I just think it should be reciprocal yes actually I'd be curious to know what Jesse sure thinks about that on that particular issue if you have an opinion on this but yeah good the court calls so subpoenas presented a tricky issue and mr. mayor I think we talked a lot about what you've touched on that this is not a court whether or not saying the words this is not a court is going to absolve somebody of accidentally practicing as a lawyer that's a question for your city attorney I'm not your city attorney y'all have my email my concern is that your your real estate agent could accidentally practice law your investment banker could accidentally practice law it doesn't have to be a court taxing and practice law if you all have an opinion from your city attorney move forward with that but the reason why I bring that back up is because it touches on the same thing that subpoenas do do the way the ethics ordinance is written in the direction that we've gotten from counsel is a quasi judicial body it is not a court but we are continually being asked to function more like a court and having to butt up against a we are a group of citizens we want to do our best to give equal time and fairness to anybody who needs to bring a complaint or needs to fairly defend themselves against a complaint but you know when we talk about things like rules of procedure opening statements presenting evidence issuing subpoenas our mandate becomes more and more like a court so what we had to do specifically on subpoenas is refine what that means and what is how does this best apply to a group of citizens doing their best not to litigate against one another but to hold each other accountable in ethical you to a code of ethics the city has adopted so subpoenas in my opinion the subpoenas issued by this board should not be looked at in the same way that you would look at a subpoena that's issued under a lawsuit or the ones that I use every day as a criminal prosecutor it's just not the same when a district court issues a subpoena it has the full force of a district court behind it the the judge she can send out the sheriff to do a writ of attachment she could make that subpoena stick this board doesn't get to do that so this board is going to issue a subpoena for a council person's bank records we're gonna send something over to Wells Fargo Wells Fargo will either you know just kick it right back or send a lawyer over with some kind of motion to quash and maybe a lawsuit naming all of us here in the room today so we have to be very careful with how we how we talk about subpoenas under the what this board does I think that's why we came forward to y'all with a section 11 that limits it to something a city official is going to have in their possession however it's not just limited to what a city official might have generated as a city official just what they have in their desk drawer at work it's not like a super foyer request it's anything that's in their possession so there could be something that's relevant to what's going on whatever the ethics complaint is that is in their possession as a city official but is not directly relate to their work it's not an email on their city computer or something like that when you get into issuing a subpoena to a private individual who has no you the complaint maybe is a private individual there is no enforcement mechanism whatsoever for that subpoena so is there for the one against the city official though as well the enforcement mechanism you have there is that they're they're defending their good reputation or you know if it's a you know somebody with political aspirations or an elected official they've got to consider their political reputation so there's no legal there's no no legal form of enforcement as no B if it was against it's just it's more of I'm gonna comply with it voluntarily because of these other sort of tangential non-legal reasons correct personal motivations or you know other reasons to comply I think that would be the case regardless of how the council words the rules of procedure or how it writes an ethic ethics ordinance the subpoena is going to be the same subpoena regardless ultimately like you said mr. mayor this is not a punitive body that's why it doesn't have these enforcement powers and those kind of things it's accountability body in fact that would be my recommendation you all tonight would be although you have some concerns and you have some tweaks and some things you'd like to see differently right now you don't have that accountability body functioning in the city we talked through some of these things we talked a lot about subpoenas we talked a lot about the quasi judicial nature of the body we talked through the time limitations we spent a lot of time talking about that my recommendation to y'all would be to to go ahead and adopt some rules of procedure as your board has recommended to you and then if you have tweaks for the future we haven't received a complaint yet we won't know how well these work even with all the the most well-int entioned tweaks that we can come up with tonight we won't know how it works until we start using it to the to the time limits the thing we talked about is that when a complaint presents their affidavit they present they presented a prima facie case all the facts we need should be in that four corners of that document it doesn't need to be a trial it doesn't need to be a long drawn-out star chamber with 50 witnesses talking about how councilman so-and-so is been trouble for that person before we can move forward in very expeditious manner on just about any complaint you could consider under the code of ethics so couple of comments one is you made a statement when you when you first began speaking was that the City Council had given direction that this is a quasi judicial or that somehow the council has said this is a quasi judicial body or board I think that has come from the the draft rules of procedure that were provided to us by Alan no no criticism of that but I think just the construct of the draft that was sent us I think has pushed it more into that light given the terminology subpoenas opening statement Alan's a lawyer I mean I understand why he would want why that would happen the reason why I don't mind making those tweaks now is because we don't have a complaint filed and so if we think we need more consensus or if we need want some changes I would rather make the changes before that if we have time then wait and you mentioned something else oh I just lost it the time the oh the four corners of the so what I'm hearing you say is somebody swears to an affidavit of facts and now that that I thought the burden of proof was on the the complainant correct well if all they've got to do is have one piece of paper that swear that they swear that these facts are true and they have to provide no supporting evidence of that and that the presumption switches over to the complaint and the burden of proof basically shifts because now if that document is presumed to be accurate well that's really not a burden of proof I mean that that's I mean the burden has shifted over to the over to the city official if all you've got to do is I fill out a piece of paper and I sign an affidavit and give it to you and I called out do you even have to testify if you've had this you are called to testify you do you are the complaintant must always testify and we kind of got away from the the thing that I think got us pulled from the consent agenda in the first place was kind of revolved around attorney representation all that kind of thing even if somebody is represented by an attorney they still have to testify complainant has to come in and testify even if they've got a helper a community advocate or whatever they're with them they have to testify to the facts so you cannot just present your Four Corners affidavit and rest on that and the board makes its decision on well I guess it's true there's a preliminary hearing where a panel would hear or a preliminary panel that would hear and assuming these facts are true does this merit going forward to the whole board and then the board meets the board is less like a judge and more like a jury the board decides are these facts true and if true do they constitute a violation of our code and and to your question about the council's direction the the ordinance itself is full of words like accused defend complaintant oh I know these are these are all these are all directions to your board that things are gonna act in a manner that kind of fits more with a judicial proceeding than with an ombudsman's board or an advisory board or something like that so we did our very best to walk that line between a judicial board which were not and you know a community advisory board which were not and to find that that middle ground and that's where I think you get this this draft well first of all my question my comments are in no way a criticism of the Board of Ethics and their process I wasn't at the meeting when we discussed this ordinance per se or these these rules of procedure I would have obviously brought it up at that time now the whole legal representation issue that was brought up by mr. gold I wasn't aware of that until I just got y' all's email exchanges so any questions for the speaker yeah you question for the speaker okay because you know do do the names of things matter in helping distinguish between it being judicial and non-judicial and specifically would it make a difference if if subpoena means all these other things that go with a subpoena would it be helpful to call that a records request how helpful to what end to not having someone get in trouble for seeming like they're acting like a lawyer so the the legal representation question is a gray area it's nebulous I wouldn't expect that somebody who appears before a city board whether it's quasi-judicial or whether it's PNZ or whatever it is is going to face a lot of legal consequences themselves those statutes are pretty narrowly tailored however they could find themselves reported to the state bar as some some citizen who's practicing law that's the question for the state bar that's a question for that individual that actually has very little to do with you know how would the board handle that the board would would handle that mr. Mary you mentioned the the chairman's discretion the chairman's discretion is built in throughout these rules of procedure if the thing needs to go three hours long because that's what the complaint deserves and what the evidence is presented it can go three hours long the chair and the board a member of the board can move to extend the time limits a member of the board can move to if there's some objection the board itself has to rule on legal objections and they can they can vote down the chair and you know make all those kind of decisions those legal objections are those just objections during the during the course of the decision I mean this this is and I just only bring that up say this is the problem we're running into because since it's not a court of law somebody can object but it's almost like if somebody in here would say hey point of order or hey I don't think this is right or it's just it's more of a statement of the process than it being actually having some type of impact legally because it's not I mean I mean you don't have we're not using the rules of evidence we're not we're using the rules of civil procedure so this is this is important I don't want to have to figure this out after we have our first hearing that's when I don't want to have to figure this out I mean this is going to be serious serious serious stuff and I wouldn't want the first person to file it get a complaint filed against them to be quote-unquote the guinea pig oh well we we probably could have got this process a little bit better sorry that you had to go through this and maybe you know and that's no reflection upon the board or no reflection on it's just it's this council how do we want to how do we want to see it so I think it's important that we you know if we if we pass this as it is I don't want tweaks to be coming down the pike six months from now I want this council to have it this is one of those things we put on as a prior because this was a priority from the citizens they were voted we got on it very quickly we passed this within what four or five months after they voted on it I mean and that's with everybody working so hard on it so those are my HSO's so I appreciate thank you so much for being here I appreciate your input is very valuable thank you thank you any more questions any more questions what do you think of the records request idea instead of subpo ena well I mean it goes back to subpoena sounds powerful and it is intimidating and people understand what that means but if I get subpoenaed and I say I'm not gonna give you those records now people can make a reputational issue of it hey you got you know by the board of and the board can use that in their deliberations on well you know this and that I guess if there's no evidence there 's no evidence so this is a very very slippery slope and that's why I brought it up early in the process because we really need to figure out how we want this to be perceived and so if we think the only way to make it serious and for people to take it seriously and it for to be legitimate and to be legitimate in the public's eyes that we have to sprinkle these words in that make it seem like a quasi-judicial I don't know if I I don't I don't know if I want to pass something simply for perception I mean these are people's lives that we're dealing with and if we want it to be quasi-judicial then we need to figure out a different approach so those are my thoughts I mean I still think we ought to send it back and and at least but if that's not the consensus of the council I'm right you know I'm certainly we can move forward and then send it back and have them look at it because he's right there's discretion built in there for procedural aspects if they need to extend it those aren't hard times so I certainly can back off on that I appreciate that council member Ryan thank you mayor just a couple things one on the subpoena that's required by the the city charter the Charter Amendment specifically the word the word is actually in there so to try and change the word in this is not gonna yeah we're not lying upright I would prefer to send it back I'm I wasn 't really paying attention for it the first time I looked through and I'm trying to glance through and I'm not saying it now is is there a provision in their rules and procedures that refers them back to Roberts rules if something is not addressed elsewhere I don't know the answer to that question I don't think so but and should that be I guess this question for legal should we not have something to that effect in there that if something's not addressed elsewhere in the rules and procedures that they would that that would be their fallback well because it is a city board an official city board and they're subject to chapter 2 - 29 your council rules procedure that would also attach to this board okay okay I wasn't sure since they had their own rules and procedures if that automatically attacks for now thank you okay any other questions comments need to have some direction this is a this is a action item so let's see what the action is I may be alone in this and so we'll figure out where it's gonna be one or the other so yes so I would have moved approval just so we have something on the books if a complaint comes in tomorrow we have no means to to process it as we're running it back through and and so we'll see if we get a second I support this conversation going back to the the Board of Ethics them having a chance to review ideally watch this part of the video if they weren't here and and well let's see if we have a second for council member a husband's motion he made a motion let me see if there's a let me see he made him yeah he made a motion to approve as as presented and then do the tweaking later I guess council member okay do we have is there a second once twice okay motion dies for lack of second all right any any other anybody else want to take action or make a recommendation or I move that we send the if if you could summarize I don't get this all in my motion but I move that we send the suggested revisions back to the ethics board for for consideration and amendment okay council mayor pro tem second all in favor signify by raising your right hand all opposed by like sign passes six to one all right I'll take responsibility for that long-winded session mayor to be clear it's it's the time limits it's the the items that you guys just discussed you want all those all those items I think the time limits and things probably got resolved with the discretion so if everybody but just let them yeah or nay that's a 30-second conversation so I think I think he was telling that there's discretion built in and just pointing that out you know if we just had that pointed out that okay they're not bound by this that the chair has a lot of discretion the board has discretion to expend those okay we'll raise the points that you appear today see what they want thank you thank you all right going on to agenda items to which are public hearings is that right yep we're through hold a public hearing considered option of an ordinance amending ordinance number two oh two sixteen - two one three of the City Council the city of Denton authorizing participant test participation in the Texas Enterprise Zone program good evening everybody I'm gonna make this as short as possible Caroline Booth here to present you an amended ordinance for Denton's participation in the Texas Enterprise Zone program this is a state economic development tool to promote job creation and capital investment in economically disadvantaged or distressed areas the local community has to opt to participate and then nominate companies which allow them to apply to this program the local community does have to offer one or more forms of local tax incentives to a nominated company and then the applicants who are successful when they apply to the state's program can receive state sales and use tax refund on certain expenditures those refunds are based on the level of capital investment and number of jobs that are created or retained for economically disadvantaged individuals or veterans 25% of the new jobs created or existing positions that turn over must be filled by people who are either economically disadvantaged or residents of an enterprise zone within the city or our veterans so this these are the state's requirements for hiring if a company is participating in the program our participation ordinance was first adopted in 2016 three companies have been nominated since that time a pack our slash Peterbilt has two concurrent nominations WNCO and May day are also participants all of those were approved at the state level the reason why we're asking you to consider amending the ordinance tonight is the ordinance has to contain a specific liaison for communication with interested parties that's the phrasing in the state regs on it and when this was done in 2016 the director of development services was a different title from what it means now and so we're proposing to update the liaison to read the city manager or his designee and then to also clarify the list of possible incentives that the city of Denton may offer so these are two minor changes to this participation ordinance participating in the program does allow us to assist our local companies in receiving potentially significant state tax refunds and participating in the program itself does not have a fiscal impact to the city of Denton this is simply just authorizing the city's participation should the city under separate action choose to incentivize a company so that's my presentation glad to answer questions I'm sorry this is a public hearing do we need to ask I'll say that all over again thank you Ryan this is a public hearing I will now open the public hearing anybody wishing to speak on this item anybody in the public wishing to speak all right we will now close the public hearing councilmember Briggs thank you Caroline I motion to approve councilmember Meltzer I second we have a motion and second to approve agenda item 2a all in favor please signify by raising your right hand passes unanimously thank you very much item three items for individual consideration 3a consider approval of the resolution of the City Council of the city didn't nominating Tetra pack to the office of the governor economic development tourism through the economic development bank thank you I'm still Caroline I think so now that you have graciously passed the participation ordinance I now am bringing you information about nominating Tetra pack to the program Tetra pack as many of you are familiar is a multinational food packaging company that has a manufacturing and North American headquarters facility here in Denton in 2013 Tetra pack did receive a four-year 65 percent tax abatement for its local facility expansion to date that abatement has totaled slightly over a hundred thousand dollars over the next five years Tetra pack is going to invest another 15 million dollars in Denton primarily in a new l aminator machine that's going to enable them to meet some increasing demand for certain types of products and ensures that they're able to meet future demand of their markets in US and Canada I'm not going to tell you again what the enters that Enterprise Zone program is because you know just a quick depiction of the fact that Tetra packs locations shown by the marker there is within an Enterprise Zone and the benefit to tech Tetra pack could be a sales and use tax refund from the state of up to nine hundred and thirty seven thousand dollars and then the formula for figuring that the benefit to Denton is that 25 percent of those new jobs created or existing positions that turnover will be filled by folks who are veterans or economically disadvantaged and again nominating Tetra pack enables them to receive these significant funds which is a benefit to them Tetra packs participation in that program guarantees a certain type of hiring and nominating Tetra pack to the program does not have any new fiscal impact to the city of Denton because the fiscal impact was agreed to back in 2013 and we're not considering new incentives for them at this time so that is all I have glad to answer questions quick question yes residents does that mean residents of Denton yes sir residents of the city's jurisdiction I think sorry did you have a question go ahead move approval of item 3a I just wanted to go and comment with my second that they are a very environmentally responsible company and I appreciate that and so I will second please indulge me for just a second because I have good news for you I just heard today that Tetra pack is installing a solar array at their Denton facility and they're gonna be having an event on the 13th of September to showcase that and I will be forwarding inv itations to all of you to attend that event so thank you all right we have a motion a second on agenda item 3a all in favor please signify by raising your right hand passes unanimously item 3b consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton setting a date in place two public hearings on the proposed voluntary annexation of certain property generally located between Creekdale Drive and Hickory Creek Road thank you mayor and council I'm Cindy Jackson with the Planning Division we just completed one annexation and now we're getting ready to queue up another this is a request to approve an ordinance setting the date time and place for two public hearings for a voluntary annexation of land the site is located generally north of Hickory and south of Creek dale and this would authorize and direct the city secretary to publish notice of such public hearings the site is approximately 92 acres and they're proposing single family development if the annexation is approved they are going to request to rezone the site to NR4 the proposed annexation schedule is as follows September 11th will be the first public hearing September 25th the second public hearing October 16th will be the first reading of the annex ation ordinance and November 27th will be the second reading and adoption of the annexation ordinance that concludes my presentation comments questions that's my answer I move approval of the recommended annexation public hearings at this location second have a motion and a second for agenda item 3b all in favor please signify by raising your right hand motion carries unanimously agenda thank you thank you thank you Cindy agenda item 3c consider nominations and appointment to the downtown TIF reinvestment zone number one board mayor and council at your desks this evening you had an updated boards and commission nomination sheet which you also received via email yesterday this revised sheet more clearly showed the nominations that were made at your meeting last week before you decided to postpone the item one of the concerns last week was the first nomination was for a council member and I think last week it said should but it's really shall so your first nomination would be for a council member in that position and I note that council council member Meltzer had expressed interest in that position so I don't know if any you want discussion on that now or are we gonna motion and vote on individual ones are all together as a slate I think it's I think there's two is the last item are those eligible about those individuals eligible to be appointed in the second position is for a member who is a qualified voter of the city of Denton and council member Meltzer had nominated King Gold who does meet that qualification and then the third one is a member that 's either a business owner of a business located within the zone or a member of the Denton Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors it's noted that Ben Easley currently is in this position and has expressed an interest to serve another term but council member Armantor also nominated Stephanie Davis and council member Hudson had put in the name of Ben Easley for that position and there could only be one correct yeah yeah that's just let's just it's gonna be easiness let 's just vote on them individually we can wrap that up real quick I would like to nominate oh yes well it doesn't I mean I think technically you're supposed to get your motion in second for discussion but we never practice that so let me get the motion you want to make a motion you're recognized I would like to make a motion to nominate council member Meltzer in the council member position okay second all right so we have a second there is your discussion on that nomination okay all right so all in favor of council member Meltzer filling position for council member on the downtown TIF reinvestment zone number one board say myself because I know the applicant yeah well you don't have to but that's fine yeah all in favor signify by raising your right hand okay we got to the number so it doesn't matter carry six zero with one does he need to feel did you did you see you recuse or no does he need to feel something out officially we've accepted the voting oh no not you but in previous members okay yeah that's all right I stand with tradition okay all right so seven zero carries get seven zero second position is oh is this regarding Ken Gold your question the second position okay go ahead so my question so about that position number two that to be qualified voter so I assume that the the two nominees for the third spot the two business owners they're both qualified voters right so the number two could the number two spot theoretically be a qualified voter who is also a business owner it doesn't say they can't be right it doesn't specifically exclude that but I mean traditionally it's it's always I mean it's always been business owner or member of the Chamber of Commerce and so so talk about number two yeah so you understand now yeah okay so say the question again okay so the question so the question is so the number two spot yes for a qualified voter right and it doesn't so the qualified could the qualified voter theoretically also be a business owner in this area and and I can explain the reason why I'm asking yeah they can have dual qualifications but they can only fill a seat yes that one of the qualifications okay yes thank you thank you that was my assumption and and the reason why I asked is because so when I when I nominated Stephanie and also when I nominated Lillian you know I was thinking I saw the two spots I saw the should or no what was it should I forget what the word was should it was really it's shell so um you know I looked at it as oh there are two spots and I'd like to get these two you know new local business owners on there so as you know as far as my nomination of Stephanie and so I understand you know Lily of course doesn't qualify nobody qualifies except a councilmember for first spot so of course that makes sense but you know when I nominated Stephanie Davis it was because you know she's an owner of a new business on the square you know representing a diversity on the on this council and and new business and but doesn't matter to me whether she's in place two or a place where would you where she qualifies where are you nom inating her for well that's my point it doesn't matter to me well what we need we need to know which one you're nominating her for yeah space two or three oh is she the one who doesn't okay that's correct I'm sorry my apologies so thank you okay so then so in that case then she only qualifies for number three okay yeah so I'll just say you know when I nominated her is because I thought she'd be great on this committee but I mean Ben it is is really terrific so you know nothing against him I just so that's how I was looking we're on spot number two yeah yes yeah okay yeah so you're she's not nominated but that was what yeah but my question was about number two because I wanted to know if I should get that in there right okay I just want to thank you for clarifying I'm trying to get this yeah oh no no no sorry about that councilmember husband yeah so I'm approval can go for number two councilmember Dove on favor of Ken Gold being nominated to the Turres board number one signify by raising your right hand motion number number one was spot number two but for the Turres board number yeah sorry sorry okay that's good at Turres board number one passes unanimously so on number three we will take these I guess in order so you're not you're still nominating Stephanie Davis for that spot that great yes yes although I just I want to say you know Ben is great on there great business owner I just thought she would be a great addition as well okay yeah and just just a point of clarification so there's no misunderstanding I'm gonna be voting for Ben simply because he's already on there and he's continuing so it means nothing against miss Davis it's just he's he's continuing on so he has that history so I didn't want there to be any miscommunication or misinterpretation of that yeah councilmember Melcer I will be voting the same way for the same reason and I sincerely hope that miss Davis stays interested because the spots can open up or some and or other ways to participate and I welcome her voice I believe she will all right so do we have a go ahead we're gonna the first one is for Stephanie Davis do we have a motion for the nomination of miss Davis for spot number three on Turres board number one so I move for miss Davis for spot number three okay we have a motion do we have a second was that a hand or I what business does she own a Q's Q's cafe Q's cafe downtown it's the the new LGBT cafe mayor I need to recuse myself on this one okay is that okay is it in it may be one of your properties or something like that yeah okay all right fair enough all right you want to be need to step out or yeah we'll get them we'll get we'll get we'll get we'll get the right paperwork no that's good I appreciate you catching that mayor second I don't believe okay so there is a second all in favor of that nomination please signify by raising your right hand all opposed by like sign motion does not carry motion fails okay we'll take councilmember Hudson somebody get I move to a point being easily to Turres board number one position number three all right councilmember Duff a second we have a motion and a second for Ben easily excuse me all in favor signify by raising your right hand passes unanimously thank you thank you next item on the agenda is consider a motion to read to reconsider a motion to reconsider the August 21st 2018 adoption of ordinance appro ving a detailed plan for plan development yeah what's the procedure for this mr. I think I think the we used to have a custom on how to do these and then we kind of departed from that not too long ago but typically the person who has requested this item or the council members requested this item goes forward and presents the reasons why but since this item involved a very complex detail plan if this council wishes to have Haley Zygurski actually give that presentation as to what you know what this item is and then any background information you may need she's available to do that so it's this council's pleasure because we've we've gone two different ways well I certainly want to give we can do both we can have council member state the reasons why she requested this motion and we can have a presentation if that's that the pleasure of the council council member husband I'd love to hear why we're back but no I don't know the presentation I feel the underlying cases fresh in my mind yeah I'm very interested here so yeah we may pass on the presentation there may be a question I have on it but okay councilmember briefs okay so I wrote all this down and I thank you I did ask for the reconsideration and I don't take reconsideration vote slightly I've been on council nearly four years and this is the first time that I've asked for one and it's not something we do often as a body but it does happen from time to time there are other council members who have used this tool one time or another and I do believe there needs to be a good reason and for the request in in granting the right for reconsider vote and so on the night of this original vote we had a long and thorough deliberation as to whether or not to allow detailed plans for this car wash it is a in a PD so approval from us was required and it was not every day that we get a PD so there was some confusion about what we could do what we couldn't there was some questions about variance and and things and such but the the main reason I'm asking for the reconsideration is once public comments closed and we went into deliberation and vote the developer at one point called out loud from the audience what I understood is that he could make the tower shorter you can hear me respond that I wish he would have spoken up earlier and so when he called out this claim afterwards after previously answered the direct question from another council member about the ability to make it shorter that answer what I think the developer was trying to tell us from the audience I believe needs to be explored it was not intentional but my vote was made with what I believe to be false misleading or unclear input as to what the developer was able to do with the height of the tower and then I asked for the original PD document from when this detailed plan was created it's a prior to 2002 and I reviewed the sections in that ordinance and section 35 154 number two that provides for a compatible arrangement of buildings and land uses that would not adversely affect the adjoining neighborhoods I drove down last night just to make sure that I wanted to continue with this reconsideration in that area was although it was a big road it was calm it was quiet there was no lights and I I don't believe it's not like 2181 where their commercial lines the road so I would like to hear if there's a way to make this development less impactful on the neighborhood I believe it deserves a full complete and correct information from the stakeholders involved and that's my reason for requests for reconsideration and I have other sections that that I found that that night we weren't informed of or that if we were I didn't put put it together as an option for us to do so it's my understanding you're the only one that can make the motion I make a motion to reconsider and it's also my understanding that anybody can second and I second it any discussion yeah I fully intend to roll back make a motion if this if we revisit this I'm gonna roll back the my ask for the height of the fence to go up to line up with P&Z I'm gonna ask to roll that back and I'm gonna ask to roll back the the time requirements I'm it's unfortunate that these people were given the go-ahead and then they lose a week of productivity I think it and and and I just it's true it's it's troubling for the perspective of our city if we don't hold true to what we say we're gonna do it's an absolute right but it's absolutely my right to be troubled by it because we're trying to fix a perception and so I think that that's my way of doing what I can in my little control to try to make it right for what I believe is is a good project to say hey I'm sorry we're back I'm sorry you're gonna lose two weeks productivity because there's not only this week then there's next week to put it back on the agenda and they've got to come back to then have all this do over again after two or three hours in P&Z two or three hours at council last year last week and now we're gonna we're taking this up that'll be 20 minutes and then we'll do another whatever it takes a week so anyway that that's my full intention my general going in view is similar to councilmember hudsp it's that you know we had it we have our shot you know we do the best we can but if in fact the applicant you know before we're hearing is that the applicant has a different point of view than what we acted on I'd be interested in hearing that I guess before weighing on the before voting on the motion to reconsider and I believe he's here no I don't think no I'd like to understand is no no let me check with the city attorney to see if if that's appropriate for discussion during for just this motion in other words not re litigating the underlying issue substantive issue but to hear I think listen a well this council can certainly allow the the applicant to come in and answer any questions you may have but I think going back to councilmember Briggs brought up as part of one of the facts in support of her motion was the fact that she had heard the applicant say that he could address the height and I think that's what councilmember Melzer is also asking about so I think that's probably fair game within this motion because it's one of the reasons why she's bringing okay all right yeah so I would like to you know hear whether we understood you correctly as far as well let me make sure the council's okay yeah I mean let me make sure the council is okay with that consensus of the council oh to hear yeah so I know you you do I don't see any reason to you I mean if the motion passes then we can you can speak when it comes back before us but I don't I mean we're just basically a motion to reconsider not I mean I understand that that's one of the the issues involved but my personal opinion is that I don't need to hear from yeah nor do I I mean because if you put a gun to someone's head they'll say anything and that's what it was right that it was absolutely hey we're gonna hold up your project or you can agree to anything to get it going and sure and in desperation on there's no no question but the fact of the matter is it was said before the vote it wasn't if it was said after the vote I'm not tracking right so I need to understand that but we'll we'll have a week to do so I'm ready to go ahead and vote on the motion does that leave me okay yeah so there's there's no question that I have the ability to vote on this motion to reconsider that is correct you're a member of this right assembly even though I wasn't physically present during that that is correct this is a separate item this is a separate motion to undo the first item all right so these are my thoughts I did watch it I did watch it the full deliberation on this issue remotely so I certainly understand about the facts I understand about the question about can you lower it I heard some comment in the background but certainly there was some very specific dialogue between councilmember Melcer and the applicant about that and the applicant didn't affirmatively say that he would lower it so having seen that so I'm just gonna say this and then I'll decide what I want to do but my hunch is that if this motion to reconsider passes and we reconsider this it may be possible that some of the protections that were put in and requests by PNZ may may not hold so I just want to I want to make that clear and I do have and I have a question that was not addressed during that issue that because the dumpster placement is on the side of the neighborhood and I think it could very easily be moved to the other side because there's a drive lane through there but to me the tower issue is I think it was asked and answered at the at the meeting I mean whatever was shouted out I think it was all that was before I think that was before the vote was that that was before the vote was taken I don't think it was shouted out after the vote was taken which I think council has an opportunity correct me if I'm wrong Mr. city manager if there's a question for an applicant after is was the public hearing what what city manager I'm sorry I just demoted you so I'm kidding it's they're all feeling the love tonight it's 915 so at any even if a public hearing is closed or debate has closed if it's councils desire a consensus of the council are they able to call people back to the dais to ask further clarifying questions is that assuming that the motion succeeds and then you're going no no no this is before this is before the vote is taken this is me tonight's vote this no I'm talking about back in last week 's session yes if if if you're in any session and there's a there's somebody shout something out and you want clarification for that can the council ask someone to come forward and they can ask a question even though before the vote is taken yes okay I mean you have you have that ability okay so this is what I'm gonna do because I'm gonna be truthful I'm most likely gonna vote for this motion to reconsider but I'm also gonna tell you something else and that is I this is gonna be a very short meeting when this comes back because I think we've all deliberated this I I don't have an issue with the six-foot fence maybe can talk about hours of operation you know I've got want to get more clarity from the applicant on that because I also think that we can move the dumpsters over which would help folks the vac the vacuums if those things are inside a house and all you're hearing is the suction in the carpet you're not gonna hear anything you me tell you what you will hear at 630 in the morning is a city of Denton either front-end loader or side-end loader coming down there and clanging a big dumpster so that's my only thought and I've looked at the site plan and I think that that can be done if it can't be done that doesn't mean that I'm not gonna vote for if it can be done I think it can but so I'm gonna vote for it to be reconsidered but I think if it gets reconsidered then in some ways some of the things that you all discussed to build in you know some conditions those may those those may be different and so I just want to I just want to say that and I'm not that's not putting anybody under the gun it's just I'm just trying to be honest about about where I am so that there's no mistake of you know moving forward so any more discussion can I clarify something mayor yes just to make sure that everyone understands that if this motion does pass it doesn't come back next week there's that little wrinkle called Texas only law it's very procedural so once that vote was taken last week if you undo it well when the vote was taken last week you lost jurisdiction over the item if you undo the vote to get that jurisdiction back again you'd have to re-notice the item send out the public notice to the people within 200 feet come back whenever that data is so they have a new public hearing and that's what we've done because in the past so I just wanted you ought to be aware because councilmember Hutzpeth had talked about coming back next week yeah question yes why why is that because that it's based on Texas chapter 2 11 the Texas local government code which is our zoning labeling statute and also a Texas case law that is interpreted that that as soon as the vote is taken for you to come back and get it you've got to start back to scratch where you from the beginning for the council not going back to P&Z but back to where the council starts with it afresh so you're talking since we don't meet next week which is Labor Day you know it's got to get posted that's a 14-day notice period public hearing 15 I believe so you're two you're three or four weeks out it'll be some time in probably your the meeting on the 25th I is Haley here she can probably provide the dates she's knowing Haley she's already got that 18 yeah yeah okay well that that that helps me I don't think that I think that I think staff can work with the applicant to maybe accomplish my my thoughts because the dumpster I think if it can be moved it can be moved councilmember Duff and then that was what I was going to say if that is your only concern I have an idea that we can probably arrange that with with the applicant okay all right so last comment yes I just want to add to your consideration in my car I talked to the applicant because I wanted to understand repercussions cost right and I'll represent to you that it's worth the wait to make it right my understanding okay what it's worth all right okay all right fair enough so we have a motion to reconsider and a second all in favor of the motion to reconsider signify by raising and I want to I want to make sure I heard what you what I thought I heard you say I want to make sure I thought I heard you say that that the timing to some people may be an issue because it sort of stops the process maybe in this particular situation it may not be as as onerous as as for some others okay well no it's no no no there's been a motion to take but no we have not not called for the vote Mike yeah yeah for purpose of the record I was just pointing out there wasn't a motion to close discussion if we vote not to reconsider with everything that's sort of cooked so far is there anything preventing the applicant from reducing the tower height if that is in fact his desire wouldn't think so that's I mean as long as it's not prohibited by code if he chooses to do that on site plan yeah he can do that yeah thank you all right so we do have a motion and a second to reconsider the vote that was taken on August 21st 2018 for PD 176 all in favor of the motion to reconsider please signify by raising your right hand all opposed by like sign that was four to three so the motion to reconsider passes yeah so the motion to reconsider passes so the motion will be reconsidered okay all right yeah so we will now move on to agenda item E which is considered option of an ordinance of the City Council the City of Denton the Texas Home Room municipal corporation providing for authorizing and approving the execution by the city manager is designee let's let's try to have a little bit order we got a presentation coming he's been waiting all night for this right yep all day - yes I'm sorry yes ma'am you can okay no I think councilmember Meltzer voted no on the last agenda item yes thank you madam city secretary appreciate that clarification all right mayor council on before you tonight bringing a nays be agreement with Tanaska for your approval you remember nays bees those are the industry-wide contractual vehicles for buying and selling natural gas in the Texas and United States it's a copyrighted document by the North American Energy Standards Boards hence we go through the redaction process we also provide a copy this at the city secretary so anybody in the community can come forward and see the redacted document without making a copy to ask us a very well known in the energy business entity one of the largest natural gas marketers in the country and we think they they're a very viable entity to give us some options in the future for making sure our natural gas supply is competitive so got an ordinance for you tonight to authorize execution of this nays be with Tanaska and the pub recommends approval of this recommendation any questions for staff may protein move approval we have a motion for agenda item what is this 3e 3e 3e councilmember Duff second we have a motion and a second for agenda item 3 all in favor please signify by raising your right hand all opposed by like sign motion carries 5 to 2 that concludes our open meeting portion of our meeting tonight you are the only items yeah we'll do concluding items then go to closed session concluding items I have none yes that's correct yes any concluding items councilmembrometer yes I wanted to thanks to I would think staff for that great report San Antonio model it's actually not about the about city attorneys and providing themselves legal services for for residents it's about kind of partnering with other groups to do that work so I just wanted to be clear anyway I really appreciated that and I think it looks like a great plan and I like to call for a work session on that and I do mean a work session but you know to be determined I'll leave it up to our new process to determine priority on that and scheduling and trust the process and then I want to ask for a staff report on and when a second councilmember Ryan's mentioned in an earlier item and he's mentioned this before about the situation at MHMR how kind of poorly funded they are by the state and I too am concerned about that would would like to see what we could do what we could possibly do to help so I would like some sort of staff report on that and if if that would involve kind of staff reaching out to MHMR I imagine it would and saying hey if we were to help you know making it clear that council and decided if we were to help you what kind of help would you need what would be involved maybe look looking at actually not maybe but I would like to look at other cities within the same state of Texas that have helped out their similar facilities that are struggling with the same lack of funding because it's such a crucial issue so again that's just a staff report I'm asking for thanks you 're about to enter into a period of massive road construction and resurfacing I think the only thing citizens hate nearly as much as roads being in poor shape is roads being under construction to approve them so I'd be interested in in a staff report of just how we plan to consult with businesses and neighborhoods on each area to make sure we have workable escape routes and reasonable accommodations to help businesses stay open when we can okay thank you anybody else no wow okay all right now that concludes our portion of the open meeting for this council meeting on August 28 2018 it is 930 which I will now convene in closed session at 930 we will consider the following items consultation with attorneys under Texas go you