Aug 21, 2021 City Council on 2021-08-21 9:00 AM (Council Retreat - Day 2)

August 21, 2021 City Council
Full Transcript

54134 words Download SRT Download VTT
             Good morning. It is 9.07 and I'll call the annual council retreat to order. It's August,
 Saturday, August 21st, 2021. We do have a quorum. I will turn it over
 to the city manager to kind of, if we, if we need to. We're good. I think we're good. Okay. Great.
 Okay. Then I'll, I'll just note for the record that council member Meltzer,
 Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer has opted to leave. And so they'll just be the six of us through today.
 Can I? No, go ahead.
 Go ahead. Okay. All right. So let me, good morning everybody. I hope everybody had a good night's
 sleep. There is some breakfast in the break room. Feel free to help yourself. We will take a mid
 morning break this morning. Give you a chance to stretch your legs. If you need to obviously use
 the facilities or grab something during the session, please feel free to do that. We want to make this
 as comfortable and casual as possible for all of you. Hopefully everybody has their binder and did
 their homework last night, read through the materials. Let me direct your attention if I
 would and keep this binder handy. You're going to be referencing it quite a bit today on tab four.
 So if you find that tab four on your, in your binder.
 Can you go to the next slide? Can you do that? And that's, that's a slide two is just a little
 bit about me and, but we talked about my background and experience in expertise last night, but that
 just gave you a little bit of information, but I'm going to move on to the next slide, slide three,
 which is on the screen as well as in your binder to review the agenda for today. And these time
 frames are guardrails. It's important to have some time frames on these subjects to have some
 ebb and flow to it, to try to accomplish what we need to by the time that we've stated. It'll be
 up to me to manage that. If we ended up needing a little bit more time or a little less time,
 we'll have some ebb and flow and I'll try to do my best around those timeframes and managing that.
 So the morning, what we're going to, this morning, what we're going to do is review the goals for
 the day, which is the next step. What we're going to do is spend some time on the current council
 priorities and much of today, Sarah and I are going to sort of tag team. So we'll be both,
 we'll both be sort of going back and forth a little bit of toggling between her contribution
 and her points that she wants to raise to the council and then how I facilitate those
 conversations. So there'll be a little bit of a tag team. So we're going to review the current
 council priorities and major projects. I'll give you an update, a general update, if I would,
 if I will, on that and then dive into based on that and your own estimation and your observations
 and insight. What about those priorities? Do you maybe want to press on the gas and move sooner
 about, sooner faster? Are there things not on there that you would like to consider adding,
 which is a big part of today. If there are items on that list that you want to pump the brakes and
 say, hold on, we're not sure we want to make progress toward that. Maybe things, things change.
 There's an evolution of this. It's an iteration. So the balance of the most of the morning is
 really reviewing the projects and then determining what, if anything, needs to change. It is not a
 linear discussion. So as you may recall yesterday, I mentioned the whole notion of making spaghetti
 and you're going to exchange ideas and try to share perspectives. We're going to dive through
 those. We're going to try to keep them somewhat in order of each of the priority areas if we can,
 but if we zigzag, that's perfectly fine. And the opportunity as well as a challenge about
 those discussions is one person bringing it up doesn't necessarily translate that you want to
 make time, effort and energy putting against that. We're trying to not have voting today. We're
 trying to do this based on a consensus. Remember the outcome of the revised strategic planning
 priority list is the city manager and her staff will spend time, effort and energy against those
 items. So really the strategic plan, as I had said, no one watches a rental car because they
 don't own it. So we want you all to own the car and own that list because the staff is going to
 spend time against us. This is also in addition to what obligates them to do on a daily basis
 to ensure the delivery of core services. So in some respects, their augmentations are enhancements,
 as I mentioned yesterday. So this morning, there's definitely a back and forth ebb and
 flow of exchange of ideas. We wanted to try to by the time lunch arrives, by the time we wrap up
 for lunch is we have an agreed upon list of what those priorities are going forward. And I would
 offer this to you just as an opportunity. If you simply reaffirm the priority list as it stands now,
 there's value in that. Try not to measure the success of the strategic plan update by the length
 of the list. Better to do a few things well than try to do a lot of things. And sometimes councils
 get caught up in the notion we got to do a bunch of new things. And so you add to the list and the
 list always gets longer. Something I would ask you to consider, and I'm going to pull this out
 just as you have these discussions. And it's just a really quick diagram. It's nothing fancy,
 but I see councils as they evaluate items to explore in the future, sometimes as they grapple
 with that, which can be in the best of times very difficult. This is simply our simple apparatus
 that I'm going to draw up here. That's a critical thinking and priority setting device. As you look
 in your role as community builders and you look at the community of Denton, as you examine what
 you're trying to do to refresh the recipe today, what must you do well to be successful in those
 efforts? What is non-negotiable? You have an obligation, you have a fiduciary responsibility
 to the taxpayers of the city of Denton to ensure that the high quality delivery of those services
 must. The second dimension is what do you need to do to keep the community realizing its potential?
 That's a little bit more subjective, a little bit more arbitrary. And depending on me you ask,
 you get a different response. And the third dimension of that is nice. What's nice to do
 to build a community as it continually realizes its potential? Must, need, and nice. A very simple
 device. It's not up to me to decide what content goes into each category, but I find councils
 struggle with everything's a priority. And I think for this council in particular, as you continually
 work together, I think it's going to be crucially important to your continued success to try to
 determine the gauge or the criteria by which you're trying to move this community toward.
 Because if everything is in must, that's not sustainable. Need is a little bit more arbitrary
 as I mentioned, and trying for you all as a group to determine what that is. And then nice. The
 challenge is if you ask somebody in Denton, if you think something is nice to them it's a must.
 So I'm not trying to muddy the water here, but I'm simply trying to introduce this concept of how are
 you prioritizing against what criteria? And I think that goes back to the whole concept of what is your
 role. How do you see your role? You stand on the shoulders of your predecessors. You inherit this
 from them. The decisions they made right, wrong, or indifferent. Your successors will inherit the
 decisions from you. As we know in local government, things are multi-year. This community is not what
 it was several years ago, and who knows where it's going. But how do you craft, influence, and guide,
 and shepherd the community into the future? There are dividends of growth. There's unintended
 consequences of growth. How do you manage? You talked a little bit about that yesterday. How do
 you sort of guide that growth? How would your role as a catalyst? You have great heritage here in
 Denton. How do you make sure that stays vibrant as part of your future? That's always a challenge,
 even in the best of times. So I do share that with you. Very simple device, must, need, and nice. As
 you examine the topics today, as you look to the future in the community that you're building.
 So then we'll break for lunch. Then we come back from lunch. We're going to be reviewing some
 information to help you give a chance to scrub it and determine what, if anything, you want to make
 changes about. First is the council committees, the role, the function. How are they working?
 Do you want to keep the same number? Do you want to revise it, refresh it, reduce it?
 What's the function of those committees? The challenge sometimes of council committees,
 as I think you all know, is you really rely on those committees to do the leg work about
 what that policy item is or whatever that subject is. They really are part of your decision-making
 apparatus as a governing body, the governance side. You're trying to rely on their capability,
 their guidance, their influence. The key to those committees is how you factor their input into your
 decisions. So we'll have a discussion about the council committees. Right after that, we'll go
 into the council meetings and the agenda process, the prioritization and scheduling of additional
 requests. One of the fascinating things about council meetings, no matter where I go, no matter
 what jurisdiction you're in, is how they engineer the preparation of council agenda items. There's
 no perfect way. It's very subject to the organization's past practice. What's a proven practice,
 it's also dependent upon the governing body and their preference. But there is an engineering
 process in order to do that. And we want to kind of re-engineer today and say, how's it working?
 Is it meeting your expectations? There is steps that are gone through just to get an item as a
 council item on the agenda. It's not just, here's an item, let's put it on the... I mean, I think
 you're all well immersed in that. So today's discussion is simply to have a refresh and a
 revisit of that process. How it's working and if any tweaks may need to be made to make sure it's
 successful. Right? It's not about being overly bureaucratic, but there is a methodology to it.
 And that's important. You want to be whimsical about the process there. It should not be something
 that is, every time you do it, it's a brand new endeavor. That's stressful and it's unnecessary.
 So as the staff has worked with council over the last several years, there is a process. We're
 going to review that. See how it works, if there's any tweaks. It's also to manage your expectations,
 which I think is an ongoing opportunity. To say, if an item comes up, there is capacity,
 there are things going to come up later on, what may need to be moved around.
 And then the final item we're going to discuss are the council requests, in particular, the one
 minute pitch process. Staff has done some research in cities in the Metroplex about how they handle it,
 providing you some options, including keeping the current approach, as well as some other options
 to that one minute pitch. There's no, again, no perfect way. It's really what you're comfortable
 with and how it works. And managing the volume. From my vantage point, what I see is the volume
 is continually intensifying and increasing and expanding. How do you not say no to things at an
 immediate reaction, but how does the council stay disciplined and intentional and purposeful in what
 you're trying to do? There's always, there's no shortage of priorities putting pressure on each
 of you and all of you to say, we need to do something about this. We need to do something
 about that. How do you resolve that through the process? And that one minute pitch process,
 for better or worse, seems to have some level of effectiveness. And so this is a chance to revisit
 that. Okay. So that's the agenda for today. There's materials, supporting materials on that tab,
 four and then five through nine and 10. So I encourage you to keep those materials out.
 Just a couple other logistics things before we go into more of the meat of the day. We will take
 a break at some point, but if you need to go to the bathroom or if you want to go get a snack,
 you're welcome to do so at any time. We ask that there's no eating in this room. So even when we
 have lunch, there are other conference rooms available throughout the building. So just find
 Stuart or myself. We can help you go to one of those if you want to eat by yourself in a room.
 Just wanted to make that known. There's plenty of space in this building, but just kind of want to
 set those parameters. Is there anything else? No, but there are some, there are like private
 cubicles. People could go in. There's actually a couple of meeting rooms in there. Just go to any
 of those areas. So there's some, you know, people don't feel uncomfortable and that way everybody's
 safe. Where are the restrooms? Right here. Just right over here. So I'm going to move on to slide
 four and these are just a quick review of today, the goals for today. You're trying to engage in
 collaborative, creative, can you move on to the next one? Collaborative, creative, and collegial
 conversations about the future of Denton and the city's role in helping its potential be realized.
 That's really the outcome of today. Continually that next step in helping the community realize
 its potential, whatever that might be. To distinguish between problems you can fix and issues you can
 only address. That can be, it can be a challenge, can create a conundrum there about how you unknot
 some of those threads. So we had the conversation about that today. Help the governing body coalesce
 around their role as community builders. You're obviously as community leaders, first and foremost,
 you're seen as visible community builders to the members, businesses, others that have an
 affiliation with the city of Denton. So trying to fortify that. Foster trust among the elected
 officials and their deliberations about the future of Denton. We talked a little bit last night about
 trust. It's the currency in all relationships. How do you do that? How do you exchange ideas,
 maintaining healthy relationships in those interactions and ensuring that trust is continually
 replenished. To fortify the council staff partnership. Again, we're trying to make sure
 there's alignment of priorities and agreement upon those expectations as an outcome of today.
 And the final one is to strengthen your versatility to be both responsive and proactive.
 You may recall, we touched on that a little bit yesterday about that notion. Those are different
 muscles. So you're trying to be responsive in the short term, like you got to deal with things like
 right now. And then you're trying to be proactive forecasting on the horizon in the short term in
 some, in some respects, the long term. So those are the goals, kind of the guidelines, if you will,
 somewhat prescriptively about what you're trying to do and how you're trying to do it today. So I
 hope those resonate with you in the approach that we're trying to utilize. We want to utilize.
 The next item is we're going to review the council priorities and major projects.
 And we've got about 45 minutes scheduled for that. We'll see if we need to spend all that time
 for those. And that really starts on slide six.
 And so I'll take over and go through this first part, which is really just to share where we are
 currently with our current council priorities. And then I'll turn it back over to Patrick,
 who's going to lead you through the development of next year's priorities. But staff wanted to
 take an opportunity to share with you a lot of progress that has been made in our priorities,
 but also major projects and initiatives that you've already approved through various items
 or through the budget. But wanted to take an opportunity to say why, why do we, why do you
 all establish your priorities and how does that help staff? And that really helps us better plan
 and focus our time and efforts in terms of what we should be focusing on for policy operations or
 budget development. And really just helps us understand what is most important to you,
 what is most critical that we are getting done and advancing forward for the community.
 So the last retreat you all held was in February. That was six months ago. That was a little
 different timeframe just due to the delay of the elections of the pandemic. But since that time,
 we have made progress and we do have full details in tab five, if you've had a chance to read
 through that. And then we also have on our city website, we do a quarterly update to the public
 of where we are on those council priorities. And so I'll move to the next slide, which just
 reminds you of the nine priorities that have been set by city council and kind of walk you
 through an update just very quickly on each one. I think you're all very familiar, hopefully,
 where we stand on these items. But the first is to implement the economic development strategic
 plan. So that plan was adopted in February of this year. Since that time, Jessica and her staff have
 held a number of work sessions from items coming out of that plan, including discussion of the
 catalyst fund. She just presented this last week and some other tools that you have available to
 you for economic development. And there's another work session scheduled in October. The second item
 is to develop the loop 288 building to serve individuals experiencing homelessness. So this
 will be the 24/7 center for our community for those who are experiencing homelessness or at risk of
 homelessness. Since February, we did finish our work with the architect, we brought forward the
 final design, the budget and next steps in the process in April, we got direction from you all
 to move forward. And then in June, we approved city council approved a contract with our daily bread
 for the management and operation of that center. And then recently, during the last council meeting,
 you all approved the CMAR contract. So we will be going forward to do the next steps of actually
 having the CMAR, the construction manager at risk bid that project out. And so it is still on the
 timeline to be completed substantially by December of 2022. So it's an update a lot of that project
 will take a lot of time throughout the next year. And there's a lot of management that goes into
 such a really substantial renovation and construction projects and then working closely
 with our nonprofit partners to understand what exact services will be provided at that facility,
 what agreements are necessary, just a lot of details, a lot of planning work that will take
 some time over the next year, to make sure that's as successful as it can be immediately.
 The third item is the comp plan update. So we did have a recent presentation to council on August
 3rd, with planning staff and the matrix group, they gave you an update on some of the public
 feedback that they've received so far through the engagement process. And also kind of gave you a
 peek into what's coming next. We expect more work sessions to be held later this fall,
 with hopefully adoption later end of calendar year. And this will be taken up with the mobility plan
 as it was presented to you to make sure those two are aligned with each other. The fourth item is to
 develop a comprehensive solid waste management strategy. So we have had a consultant, Burns and
 McDonnell, working closely with our solid waste and recycling, doing public engagement as well.
 We're going into a series of work sessions this fall with city council to present to you and get
 some direction, hoping to adopt that strategy by the end of the calendar year. And then through the
 rest of the fiscal year, staff would take that strategy, develop some budget options for
 implementation for consideration during the next fiscal year. The fifth item is to develop an
 affordable housing strategy. So since February, we did hold a work session with council in February
 to show the assessment that we had with our consultant and then receive direction at that
 time to go into the next phase, which is to develop some tools, potential tools to help
 foster our needs of affordable housing in the community. We've been working with the consultant,
 have done a number of stakeholder engagement throughout the summer, and we will be bringing
 a presentation and a work session forward to city council on September 21st with that consultant.
 The sixth item is to respond to COVID-19. So this has been a major focus throughout
 the last year and a half. It kind of died down a little bit through the spring and summer,
 but we will be readjusting and focusing more staff time on responding to COVID-19. And this
 is in a number of different ways that affects our city operations and our city workforce,
 as well as community wide. And then in addition to, we'll kind of talk about it when we get to major
 projects, all of the federal funding that we're still trying to administer and develop programs
 for and make sure that we're getting that out to our businesses, our nonprofits, and to the community.
 The seventh item is to complete the mobility plan. Again, we've had some updates on that recently.
 That'll be kind of in alignment with the comp plan coming later this fall.
 The eighth item to improve capital project planning and communication,
 our capital projects team is working very diligently on this. They are adopting a project
 management software. They've been working on that with their staff and training. And they have
 developed also as part of that a draft map that could be eventually pushed out to the public to
 better communicate project timelines and project information. So still more to come. And as well as
 you've seen a number of contracts come before you, some alternative delivery methods,
 and whether that be construction manager at risk or bundling of street reconstruction projects,
 how can we do and look at construction projects differently to be more efficient and effective in
 the timelines and the execution of those projects? So a lot of efforts and a lot of good things
 coming out of capital projects. The last item is City Hall West. So unfortunately, in February,
 probably shortly after these priorities were adopted, we had the winter storm. That building
 did experience some significant damage. We have been doing the remediation steps necessary. I think
 that's going to be completed in the next few weeks. And then we will start with the request for
 information, the RFI process. But we had to wait to kind of do some of that remediation first,
 because it was unsafe to go into the facility. And that RFI process, anyone that's potentially
 interested in that is going to want to go inside of the facility and see it in order to propose.
 The best way possible. So that's kind of a quick update of where we stand on the current City
 Council priorities. Any questions for staff? Council Member Beck.
 Do we use project management software to help us facilitate interactions, tasks, issues,
 epics, that sort of business management approach? Sure. In any department? Sort of across the board
 and then down through the departments? Yeah, there is different approaches across the organization
 in terms of project management software. There's a lot of different softwares that are available,
 but I will say a lot of them, a lot of our departments, do use project planning software,
 whether that be Microsoft or some others that we have available. Yeah, that's why we're doing the
 study to look at all the applications that we have. One of the problems that we're experiencing,
 we have over 400 applications in the city. And what we want to be able to do is pick the very
 best of those so that we're not, one department's using one thing, one department's doing another.
 We need it to all top each other. And so that's what we're working on now. But they have each
 department's, many of them have the same project management software, but not all. And that's my
 concern is that I want one that's talking to all the departments. And so we have a consultant
 that's actually beginning the process, a letter went out to department heads yesterday to talk
 about the goal, which is to one, look at those that are no longer viable, outdated, not working.
 Two, are any of them duplicative? And three, what is the best application for us to use across the
 board? So that's where we are. That you were prescient, that you pre-answered all my questions
 on that. I was concerned with the number of priorities, some of which are very different
 strategies that you can't be successful one, unless we're implementing similar strategies for all.
 Thank you. Mayor Pritzker-Melzer.
 Thank you. You know, I was really struck by Mr. Ibarra yesterday saying that across the country,
 every different kind of locality that you're seeing, affordable housing, affordability of
 housing and homelessness surface and even eclipsing economic development. And it's sort of a little
 outside of our scope of what we need to accomplish today. But I wonder if you'd be willing to even
 just send us a letter later about any remarkable approaches you've observed, you know, on those
 two fronts that we could, you know, just look into. Sure. I'd appreciate that. Thank you.
 Any other questions for staff? Okay. Okay. I'll move into the next four
 slides to give you more updates on some of the major projects and initiatives that staff are
 undertaking as well. And the way we've tried to organize, kind of providing you some updates on
 those is into six key focus areas, as we're calling them. And we develop these key focus areas based
 upon past strategic plans of city council, also knowing what your priorities are, your set
 priorities. And then we've also used these before in our annual report to the community as part of
 the state of the city events so that we are communicating better to the community about what
 the key focus areas are and what we're accomplishing each year. I'll move right into the next slide.
 Shows the first three kind of key areas with the council priorities and projects outlined
 underneath each one of these. So the ones in blue are your council priorities. We've slotted into
 underneath these key focus areas and then some other projects that staff just wanted to make
 you aware of that are going to take significant time throughout the next year, but that will also
 have significant benefits to our operations and to our community. So that first one is pursue
 organizational excellence. We've talked about the council priority and then some other major things
 that we're working on that we kind of fit under this category is developing and implementing
 American Rescue Plan funding and programs. As I talked about, that's going to take a lot of staff
 time from economic development to community services to finance to legal to a number of other
 departments to implement what you have given us policy direction on already in terms of how we
 should use those American Rescue Plan dollars. We're going to have to set up grant applications,
 programs, review those with committees and then bring back final awards to you on those dollars.
 And then monitor going forward once they are awarded to make sure that we're in compliance
 with federal regulations. The next item is to implement 3-in-1 system. We've presented
 before as part of the budget process and we'll actually have in September a contract coming
 forward to city council for the procurement of a 3-in-1 software system and that'll be a 12-month
 project at least and it'll involve multiple departments but it will hopefully significantly
 improve how we are responding to citizen service requests. So right now we're using Engage Denton
 which has been very very helpful but this will allow an opportunity to have one number for
 citizens to call as well as one application for citizens to use and then all of that work will
 take place on the back end and it will be much more efficient for staff as well and will give us
 better reporting and metrics to understand how we are servicing the community and how we continue
 to get better. Budget is always a major focus area and soon after we adopt this current year budget
 we're already looking at the next fiscal year's budget. At grant management as you know we set
 up a grant management office last year so we continue to look at opportunities for additional
 grants but then also making sure that we're successfully managing the ones that we do have
 currently across the organization and being consistent in best practices there. We're also
 launching completing and launching a new website so that'll launch before the end of the calendar
 year or in January of next year and that will hopefully improve how we can communicate out
 critical information and just how we're able to organize all of that information for our residents
 and improve the search functionality of the website as well. So moving into that second
 key focus area this is focusing on utilities infrastructure and mobility. A number of council
 priorities fall underneath this category or focus area. Again this is all in your backup so I don't
 want to take too much time but we do have a number of city facility construction projects
 that we're working on from parks projects to police station and so forth. We have the bond
 program capital projects and then we're continuing to do a number of parks planning efforts that you
 will see coming before you as well for example example the master trails park plan. The third
 area is economic vitality so also have a couple of council priorities that fit underneath this
 category and then as well as the historic preservation plan that was adopted I think
 earlier this year or last year we now have the historic preservation officer who's working to
 implement that plan and bring back things to city council. We're also continuing to review the debt
 and development code amendments so in the backup it does show a number of amendments that have
 been moved forward and approved and then a number of amendments that we're looking to do
 next to continue to improve that. I'll move into the next slide with the last three kind of focus
 areas there to strengthen community and neighborhood services so the two council priorities we've
 discussed and then in addition what has really been impacting our time is helping to manage
 all the federal and state funds that we have received in response to COVID. Some wonderful
 opportunities in the community to support housing but it does take a significant amount of work
 and we will we will keep you updated along the way in terms of how those programs are going. I
 know we just had an ISR to council in terms of our alternative shelter program and the housing
 outcomes that we have realized from having that alternative shelter program but it does take a lot
 of work to do that program and others like it and then lastly just a number of different initiatives
 and programs we have for homelessness and the housing crisis response system how we're looking
 to continue to see what the gaps are and how we strengthen that as a city and then with all of our
 partners through the Denton County homelessness leadership team we did add a work session on
 November 1st I think that's the luncheon to give city council an update on where we stand
 in kind of our strategy and road roadmap for strengthening the housing crisis response system.
 That fifth key focus area there is to support public safety a number of different initiatives
 the police and fire departments are undertaking continuing to develop our new mental health unit
 team continuing to update the PD policies and training they have undertaken I'd say over 100
 new policies within the last couple of years so really significant amount of work there that going
 into the updating of the policies and the training for the department they've also started the new
 in June the new police chief advisory board that body has met three times already and continuing
 to work on the public safety facilities that were approved in the recent 2019 bond program
 I think we're still looking at substantial completion by summer of 2022 for those facilities.
 For the fire department they have a pretty big initiative to undergo fire department
 accreditation this is really just trying to ensure that we're adopting the best practices
 to provide services to the community in the areas of fire and EMS and then lastly the planning and
 design of fire station nine we recently presented that to city council and got direction to move
 forward with hiring an architect to start the design process you'll see more coming forward
 throughout the next year in terms of that fire station nine design process and then lastly
 sustainability and the environment so we do have the solid waste comprehensive management strategy
 underneath that category and then we are continuing to work on implementing the sustainable
 framework plan and then also the committee has started to meet has been formed and has started
 to meet over the spring and summer as well and then lastly the expanding the bike and pedestrian
 network continues to be a focus as well really excited that we have that staff member on board
 and helping to lead forward a number of things going forward there in terms of bike and pedestrian
 any questions on some of the major initiatives and projects that we have planned for the upcoming
 year councilman beck thank you mr sir for the for the public safety i know we're doing uh
 uh traffic safety traffic flow overhaul where is where is that fitting into our schema uh it seems
 like it's a big deal and it doesn't i mean i'm not sure i mean maybe it's just because we had to
 summarize everything that's thin uh and i looked through the backup but and i know that that the
 becky and chandra are doing it so my my question is more where since traffic safety is such a large
 issue it's not one of our smaller more detailed ones but it has a lot of details in it where does
 it fit in the schema yeah under mobility and we can add that if that's something you want regular
 well i know that we're already i'm sorry i didn't mean to interrupt i know we're already doing it so
 i i would i it sort of feels like appropriate to to make sure it's it's it's denoted considering the
 issues okay any other questions councilman berg my my question is uh going towards the police chief
 advisory board uh is there a room for council member on the board or are they already on the
 board have i missed something there everyone appointed right do you want to speak to that
 good morning mayor council so when the board was created each council member had the opportunity to
 appoint someone to sit on it so right now we have i believe 13 appointees and then some
 ex-officio members on there as well that are non-voting okay are there any any council members
 sitting on there no council members just council appointees the appointees from the council okay
 thank you any other questions council member maguire thank you um sort of to council member
 beck's point about um certain things that are definitely priorities may be fitting under
 multiple um categories um i've been like kind of adding bullet points and under promote sustainability
 in the environment um i'd love for like the comp plan the mobility plan the ddc amendments um and
 our our parks plan to sort of be considered part of sustainability in the environment as well even
 though of course they also fall into other categories um just because i really want us to
 approach those with the attitude that sustainability has to be at the heart of how we plan our mobility
 sustainability has to be at the heart of how we plan our development um and and things like that
 so just a good point we can suggestion yeah and there is a number of these that overlap but you
 know maybe calling out more specifically that in terms of sustainability and the life and the
 environment the alignment with the other planning at multiple planning efforts that we have going on
 yes council member davis thank you mayor i i just wanted to say first of all i second some of the
 things that have been said already especially council member beg thank you for bringing up
 traffic safety and uh we've got a framework that we're working on so we definitely need to see it
 reflected in kind of our organizational priorities um but i really appreciate the framework that staff
 has developed with these key areas it was kind of pointed out to me after february that we had a big
 list of projects you know a big list of things to to do and accomplish but not necessarily
 uh strategic goals not necessarily you know things that uh for the next project what is our guidance
 when these we've completed these bullet points now what do we do next it's still in line with
 goals and priorities so i really appreciate these key areas and already just from some of the input
 that we've had um on the existing priorities already provides a very uh a strong framework
 i think for moving forward with adding what really are priority projects to organizational strategic
 goals so um thank you staff for thinking beyond where we were in february and organizing these into
 maybe a more useful framework than what we came up with before thank you okay any other questions
 councilman beck thank you uh that that um councilor davis bring brings reminds me of a question i had
 sort of at the beginning when you were talking about the 311 system but i think it's applicable
 sort of broadly and we have a number of things that we're implementing differently my first
 question about project management software the three three one one system uh you know expanding
 our strategic goals into specific projects so some of these are are requiring us to to bring on board
 new ideas new concepts but we're living with the existing mechanisms right now so um and i guess
 there's no way in the time frame of today but but could unless and maybe a few words on what are we
 using to bridge between the old way and the new things that we're going to do and purposely being
 generic but you know we could take something like the 311 system as a as a case in point uh how are
 we bridging from engage denton to 311 and how are we bridging from the old website to the new website
 how are we bridging between some of our old and new things because the the citizens i think will
 be concerned that we will wait and let the perfect be the i know that's one of my catch phrases but
 the perfect being the enemy of the good uh they won't they won't be happy about that if we don't
 have a bridge mechanism in there somehow uh and and could you maybe in a sentence or two somebody
 address how what our philosophy is on that yeah and i'm trying to understand like just that so
 maybe just the 311 system how are we bridging from engaged denton to 311 because there's still needs
 which is why we're going to 311 but we can't wait till 311 is on the ground no ryan ryan's actually
 overseeing that and i would prefer if he answered that because i know he's working on that
 councilman if i think i understand your question just how is the transition going to be
 to make sure that residents aren't either confused or feel like they're out of the loop and that we
 bring them along with us as we we make these improvements to our services is that correct
 that's correct well and i think that's a very good point and some of the things 311 being a great
 example is is we are are going to put plans in place that make sure that we let the residents
 know and i'll say this is our philosophy with the website as well they see it coming down the line
 they know the value of it they know exactly what's going to happen and they know that in addition to
 that it's a work in progress it's an evolving uh program that we want to continually adapt to meet
 their needs so we're not just going to come in and flip a switch and tell them hey you have this new
 thing now there you go good luck uh we're going to make sure that they know that this is how you use
 it this is how it's going to benefit you and this is really why we did it because of all those
 problems that you keep telling us about we brought this in and we've got a solution for you so let's
 let's explore it together and make sure that that you know how to use it and that we understand we
 are listening to you so that we're not just going to put something out there and walk away that we
 can keep improving it and and if i might the it's really i think you guys actually do a really good
 job of telling the citizens what big picture we're going to do say the 311 and this is all the thing
 the reasons we're good but i guess more my question is geared at while we're waiting to implement all
 the sexy cool new toys what are we doing with the old mechanisms that are helping not have them
 collapse under their own weight of need while we get there how are we shoring up the say for example
 engage dentin so that it can hand transition to 311 with with less of a steep curve and more more
 of a okay we're you know we're going to do these three things we we can't afford to do really too
 much but we're going to do these three things to to shore up engage dentin and i'm not asking for
 three things i i just pulled that number out but we're going to do these x things to shore up engage
 dentin while we get 311 implemented so that you know there's a nice blend of transitioning off of
 the old tools but not letting them still be have the problems that that caused us to go to 311 in
 the first place right so and i and i guess you know that question but then also generically how
 are we bridging how are we shoring up our existing uh mechanisms to get us into the new ones i think
 the best thing that we that we can do toward that ends is make sure that internally our processes
 are in place outside of the actual software that we use platform that we use that our staff and our
 processes are in essentially established before we bring the new uh the new platform on board
 unfortunately and i'll use 311 in the website as examples is that for a long time we've been very
 much stuck uh with a platform with a technology that just has no room for growth or improvement
 which is part of the reason why we're changing these technologies so what we want to do internally
 and also as we work with work with the community is to make sure that whenever we bring this new
 technology on board it's not learning how to use it as we go we're ready for it and that's very much
 an internal uh squaring away of resources internally training our staff to know how to use it and how
 know how to be effective with it just as much as we are with the external community but unfortunately
 with a lot of these you know the website's a great example and we went over this before we procured a
 new website is that unfortunately there's just we've squeezed all we can out of it uh to benefit
 our community and we have to we have to level up uh with as far as technology goes and that's what
 we're attempting to do okay any other questions council member armature yeah just kind of making
 a meta comment on that um this uh so everything that that uh ryan just said in an answer to brian's
 question these are the kind of things that we talk about on as uh vicki and paul know and the the
 community engagement committee um and so i feel being a member of that committee i feel uh you
 know confident in that answer like i already know know that answer just mentioning that moving
 forward because i think that speaks for um you know how on the one hand how important it is to
 have a kind of sustained time where council members can actually discuss this kind of issue
 you know instead of just getting it in a in an update so i love that about that committee
 and uh you know if and i know we're going to be talking possibly doing away with that committee
 i'm actually open to it as long as we could still have sustained conversations about these kinds of
 issues on on council uh because the time spent on that i think is is really worthwhile as council
 members okay any other questions i'll say this uh sarah i'd like to hear from staff perspective
 with respect to uh economic development obviously uh so that's page 10 i think is that right um
 anyway it's economic development and um pardon me foster economic development page nine
 so so with respect so this council voted down the mechanism to feed the economic development
 component um it was a priority to a prior council um where does that put us how does that
 i don't want to i don't want to sacrifice that for you know that opportunity uh but it so does
 it stay a priority and and bump some other stuff down once it's back reworked i just how does that
 work and to that point the bigger point in that because that's a great example uh patrick that's
 my challenge for you today staff that's my ask for a takeaway i think when we're talking about
 these priorities we have an election every year this body is potential to change every year and
 so i think in these priorities it's just simplest to put a star by the things that can be accomplished
 within a calendar year if it can't then okay start it differently for two years but i think
 what that achieves is it keeps us focused on core issues the majority of our community because if
 you get because you've seen in national politics it get polarized and we don't need to get polarized
 we need to serve the majority of our community and you do that by focusing on that core group
 of citizens and i believe and so it nothing gives more of an indicator of that than there's
 something that says hey this is a five-year plan and if it's a five-year plan that doesn't line up
 with the current makeup of the community the next person to get selected is generally potentially
 going to come back towards the middle and your plan's not going to live five years right that's
 five elections that's five opportunities for people to reverse their course just like we're
 seeing here this course get reversed in one year we've had stuff get reversed week to week
 and so i just think it just kind of is folk it's important to focus on although people don't like
 to talk about the political nature of our job everything we do is political and the fact of the
 matter is this body changes potentially every year and so those that can be accomplished in one year
 okay great those that are going to take two years maybe that helps people to focus that hey if you
 want this done you've got to make it doable and appealing to the majority versus being polarized
 i don't know if any of that makes sense but just to recap where are we with economic development
 because i think that's important that's where we're getting 10 million dollars potentially
 and some um so we got to feed continue to feed the monster uh so that we can
 save the right payers and i'd like to see some indicator of timing so that each body comes on
 and knows hey if i want to get this done we have to negotiate okay and i'll have david kind of speak
 to economic development and then as far as the priorities themselves steward has kind of had a
 really great outline on the website where we have just kind of a chart and its key steps or actions
 to the priority and then the timeline so you can kind of see our approximation of how long it will
 take to go through the necessary steps to get to substantial achievement of that priority great so
 that's one way we've tried to at least demonstrate what are the steps necessary and just an estimated
 timeline and what page is that that's on the web page but which tab uh it is the city council
 priorities page on the website thank you good morning mayor council specifically on the economic
 development strategic plan if you look at the list of priorities i think if you we were going to check
 any of them off and say that's complete that would be one you could check off and say i mean the
 intent of that really was to get this plan complete that was complete a conversation off that was the
 catalyst one we had that conversation and it is where it is right now so i think if council wanted
 to rethink the way that if you want economic development to be a priority and think about what focus needs to be
 for economic development that's an opportunity for today is to direct economic development as a priority
 as far as the strategic plan itself that has been completed at this point and we've had those
 subsequent conversations so if that answers your question mayor i mean i think it's an opportunity
 to further economic development as a priority in whatever manner council about so but if i hear you
 right you're saying currently that box is checked right like we don't have an economic development
 plan to move forward per se because of the vote voting down of the funding mechanism well the
 well the strategic plan the economic development plan was approved by council that was a big
 accomplishment to get that done a number of months ago the catalyst one conversation was subsequent to
 that it had it said hey we think the strategic plan mentioned the catalyst plan as an option
 moving forward so i think it's two different kind of pieces to that but strategic plan itself has
 been approved and it's moving forward there are some pieces to that that we're still doing like
 the incentives and incentive policy and things like that but the plan itself has been approved
 got it so the catalyst plan that was voted down is not going to move i mean it's done right and
 until it's either reconstituted or repurposed or requested back in my tracking without a funding
 source yeah the fund doesn't exist okay got it thank you mayor pretzel melzer i don't know if
 this is the time to kind of keep going in this on this topic you know you can let me know if it
 isn't but my observation is that five out of the last five proposed incentives were approved
 unanimously by this council and as i recall the conversation about funding the catalyst fund
 there's there are different points of view about how to do it but you know there's sort of a choice
 you can say well you know if everyone doesn't like the exact recommendation i can make an issue out
 of it and hope to you know turn over the council and run against them on this issue because they
 didn't you know kind of polarize it make a stand about it or you can say well i do want to get
 something done in this year and if there is agreement on supporting five out of five at last
 initiatives people apparently want to fund them somehow you know let's see if we can find common
 ground let's have a you know another session where we talk about how much and how or if it's really
 true that nobody wants to do it just i haven't observed that i haven't observed anybody say i
 don't want to do them at all what i observe is they vote for the the proposals so you know my
 leaning would be to keep it on there but not polarize it into well you know if you don't
 like the recommendation therefore you're against the entire direction
 any other questions councilor davis i just want to acknowledge for staff's benefit that i think
 i think we understand there is a uh there's a real cost to whiplash you know if one council
 has a set of priorities in in february and then i'll pick an absurd example example if this council
 were to decide you know what city hall west let's just tear it down we're done with it there's a
 real cost to manpower to that there's a real cost to i mean that absurd example aside there's a real
 cost to uh funding we've already put into that priority and all the kind of steps moving forward
 or if we were to say you know good job ryan but we don't like 311 anymore we want to do something
 completely different that kind of whiplash has a real a real cost not just in in dollars but in
 staff time and staff energy all that kind of thing so i think i think we're all cognizant of that
 going forward that if we've got you know big swings from year to year uh we have some real
 that you really have to weigh the cost of those things versus the the benefit of
 big different new priorities i think what would help us mayor and council is when we have these
 discussions like the economic development strategy plan that's out there and i think
 all of you agreed to move you know that it was fine move it forward part of the catalyst fund
 discussion was we brought it back because a council asked us to bring it back when that happens and
 there is a uh a point where this council says some like it some don't it would help us if you said
 let's put it on the parking lot let's leave it where it can be brought back up for discussion
 when you find there may be one more funding available more acceptable funding available
 from different pots of money because what we see it happen is once we present it we get a no vote
 kind of we put it on the back burner if there is enough there though that find the catalyst fund
 may be something you want to look at down the road as we begin to look at these various projects that
 come forward and may need some kind of a boost then we could at least put it over and say that
 it's on hold for a further discussion that would help us instead of just taking it off the list
 yeah and i want to and i i was trying not to say anything but i i have to because i think you're
 you're spot on and i think the issue is that we have surplus funding that we're talking about
 and it doesn't bubble to the top and we from the same mechanism it is the exact same utility fund
 that now it's like hey well let's send it over here a general fund let's send it over there
 versus reconstituting what we've talked about and so to your point in my aggravation city staff works
 up a plan hey let's do it no we don't like that funding mechanism another plan rolls around
 sustainability per se we like that funding mechanism and we like taking from the same
 fund we didn't like before that then is confusion that's a direct conflict using the same thing and
 that to me is a problem because you have this council negating the future the previous council
 which is fine every prerogative to do that but i think that then backs up my point that we need
 to to then either having an understanding we're going to respect previous council to a
 degree of pain point or just understand that those things get jerked around from year to year
 and you you have to weather that storm but just just my thought thank you very much questions
 all right coming back over to you sarah or actually at this time so that was kind of the review of
 where we stand the current priorities and projects and then patrick's going to lead the discussion in
 terms of forming priorities for next year thank you sarah so let me draw your attention to slide
 11 which is on the screen then we're going to go backwards just a little bit um just some good
 reminders pardon me about priorities i mentioned this yesterday execution is the strategy that's
 really what you're trying to do is not just identify a list but you're it's only as good as
 the commitment to executing it and your approach is problem solvers and your creativity to use
 different lenses use a microscope a magnifying glass a telescope binoculars to examine issues
 and explore the future and one device i i failed to include on that list which is one of my favorite
 devices is a kaleidoscope as you look at the future how are you trying to fashion what that
 future looks like the third one is as i mentioned yesterday is to refresh the city's recipe for
 continued success and determine priorities in the short and long term so let's stop right there
 about the the timing because you all just were talking about that here is the the conundrum
 local governments not unique to dentin deal with across the country you do inherit the decisions
 from your predecessors things are not going to be done as you know in one year maybe not even two
 years especially capital projects where you have to kind of buy the right way or acquire the property
 get it designed as as sarah was talking about the rfi have this building design then it's
 constructed that could be two three maybe four years just from that start to finish
 the challenge is you do inherit those decisions from your predecessors just like they did from
 theirs and as you look at it said mayor to your point your politics does rear its head sometimes
 in those discussions i'm going to step back and ask you just to think about uh today which is
 somewhat of a little bit of a an exploration question is how do you define success as elected
 official is it about the list of projects that you check off is it about the impact you have on the
 quality of life each one of you runs on something when you think about your value proposition as a
 community builder and then how you blend that together this is difficult in local government
 you're not in the output business you're in the outcome business and some of those outcomes have
 long roots about him for those to be materialized for those to manifest itself you're trying to
 position the community for the future whether or not you're on the council about some of those items
 and absolutely there's trends that happen and how you blend those that's both an opportunity
 and a challenge one of the things that successful councils do is they're disciplined they're not
 rigid but they're disciplined about saying this is what we're going to do and we have some
 persistence and insistence about how we're going to do it because we think this is for the betterment
 of the community even though you may not have agreed with it pre your time on the council
 how do you see that all shaking taking place that's difficult and it is political about how you work
 through that but i think i would just try to expand your horizon that things for to help this
 community realize its potential there's no perfect time frame but i think it's just trying to think
 through how are you trying to prepare it for the future none of us has a crystal ball we don't know
 what's around the next corner but some of these things are a little bit more manageable you deal
 with a lot of ambiguity we hope to reduce some of that ambiguity today so you can feel more
 confident in crafting the future i'm just giving that to you as some food for thought about how
 you look at time frames there is an old saying an old adage you know there's two of them that are
 very relevant to local governments one is public policies made by those who show up
 and two is it's hard to have a five-year plan on four-year election cycles which is a little bit
 of tongue-in-cheek right i'm just sharing that with you because and and and after 911 cities dropped
 2020 plans after the great recession cities dropped even 10-year plans most cities i work with they
 work on a two to three to four-year plan that's about it things that they can kind of see on the
 horizon how they craft but the idea of five and 10-year plan other than capital improvements
 which have whether it's your fleet or your buildings that's different ecosystem entirely
 because it's more observable about timing or projects but the whole notion of what you're
 planning you're trying to get out in front of some of those issues that are impacting the community
 i just share that with you about timing the next one is you're capitalizing on your strength
 strategic planning is not a deficit closing strategy you have several strengths and you're
 trying to build on those to shape the future i mentioned this yesterday the next bullet point
 try not to measure the success by the length of the list sometimes it's easy to get caught up in
 the bright and shiny notion let's do more of this let's do more of this as was mentioned and it's
 difficult sometimes when i say this having been a city manager in 15 years and working with cities
 the last 19 plus it's difficult for staff to to say no it just is and i think for elected officials
 it's hard when the public sometimes is not always reasonable with their expectations about can't you
 do this like right now just go do it right now and i think that's difficult you know you all are the
 community chefs and you're in the kitchen trying to refresh the recipe for continued success
 sometimes there's a lot of cooks in the kitchen offering their perspectives
 but you also are the community storytellers you have a great story in denton how are you telling
 that story to people that sometimes don't recognize the dimensions that you have to explore in order
 to build the community of the future today it's just not very provocative to some people again
 we're a little bit you're this is like inside baseball you understand all the ingredients
 but sometimes the public just doesn't and it's not because they're not capable it's just not
 sometimes very compelling to them so how you refresh them how you tell that story to say hey
 that sounds really good and let's talk about what that would obligate the city to do one thing that
 a lot of cities as they deal with this american rescue plan money that i would just reinforce the
 notion that's one-time money so you have to be very careful how you budget that money and a lot
 of cities are having to be extremely cautious about what they apply that american rescue plan
 money because when that money's gone whether it's a grant program or funding businesses well that
 money's gone um i think it would be extremely difficult for the city to be a surrogate and
 provide that funding i'm just sharing that with you so as you look at that american rescue plan
 money just keep in mind that's one-time money now it may come again now who knows but it's not going
 to be funding in perpetuity the next one is the outcome as i mentioned yesterday to create a
 roadmap that achieves cohesion among elected officials and staff clarity about priorities
 and commitment to implementation nothing really changes in this room it's what you do as a result
 of discussions you have that gets activates efforts as you leave this room if you will
 starting tomorrow even if it's to accelerate some cities they're kind of pregnant they have their
 foot on the gas at the break at the same time they do use perfection as the gauge to your to your
 catchphrase and they're waiting they want to know for sure that this is going to work exactly that
 way hard to build a community when you're kind of paralyzed by the notion of we have to make sure
 it works but let's make sure that it works exactly the way we're so being comfortable in that role
 about building the future there's a little bit of risk taking right it's it's it's uh can be a
 struggle so i just encourage you it's not about going faster but it's also not about just pumping
 the brakes but if you have your foot in the brake at the same time it's hard to make progress
 meanwhile the community is still evolving so how do you step into that and shape that it
 influence that that's both an opportunity and a challenge i just share those with some comments
 and now what we want to do is if you could go back to the previous slide i'm going to just direct
 your attention if you want to keep these out slides nine and ten the priorities and major items my key
 area what we want to do and not necessarily in any order but i want to have an open discussion
 about when you look at these items you touched on a few of these
 questions more questions about these items more details about these items are there items on here
 that you do want to press on the gas about and say we need to do this sooner faster are there items on
 that list that you want to pump the brakes and say we're not so sure things have changed the
 terrain has changed and the third dimension of that is what items may not be on this list
 that you want to discuss and have an exchange of ideas and there's no particular order
 and i'm going to get out my trusty easel here so as you start to talk about these
 and you know the beauty of these sessions is you get to talk about things you don't get to talk
 about the way you always get to talk about that's liberating so this is like an extended study
 session yes council member so the first one that comes to mind because it's kind of this morning
 is kind of a maybe a little bit of change of focus under foster economic vitality we have on there
 to continue implementing the strategic plan well that's every plan right you want to continue
 implementing every single plan what have we focused in a little bit on that item and called it
 identify funding for catalyst fund
 yes council member i want to second that i think that's an excellent way of framing that
 to completely change topics i think we need to re-examine city hall west and and what we're
 doing there and i'm sure a lot of folks will be surprised to hear me say this as a musician but
 given how many urgent things we are addressing right now i'm not sure that city hall west
 necessarily needs to be a high priority i definitely want to see us mitigating the
 damage that was done during the storm i want to see us you know doing what we need to do to preserve
 the structural integrity of the building and you know make sure that the envelope of the building
 is secure and there isn't further damage being done but i don't know that we necessarily need
 to move very fast on it i think it's something that can be perhaps moved to the back burner
 okay let's go back to if we can we'll come back to that one thank you council member back to the
 point council member davis may do you want to elaborate a little bit on that council member
 davis what you think would be a good approach about dealing with the economic development
 plan and the funding there well i i think just even shifting that this is just speak for myself
 just switching that item from continued implementation because that's what we want
 to do with every good plan that we have to specifically focusing on identifying a funding
 source for the catalyst because the rest of it is fairly non-controversial that mayor pro tem
 pointed out earlier we have a plan we're working the plan we have a good staff working the plan
 we have good community partners working the plan the the missing piece of that puzzle is the funding
 source for the catalyst fund and the rest of it is kind of rolling forward
 thoughts about that as a pursuit to identify the funding source for the catalyst fund
 thoughts about that yes yeah i i would concur with a lot of that i don't sense
 in the meetings that we've had that there was much i mean to some degree there can't be much
 disagreement because the our general plan is a 50 000 foot plan without that many details to argue
 about and i think where you're sensing that the the disconnect is this is one micro detail
 where but but even within the the concept of economic development we didn't have a lot of
 disagreement that we should do some level of economic development that a catalyst fund type
 approach would would succeed i i concur that it the the drilling down into specifically how we fund
 that and and you know what are the avenues is would would give us some six you know low-hanging
 fruit successful opportunities even if not all of council agreed to that i mean to the final
 solution um and but you know so for the overall economic strategic development i think there we
 do have deliverables and they're they were listed so i think the fact that we we are making progress
 along those as signs that we are proceeding along in economic development so yeah the plans
 being implemented so the item to discuss is identify the funding source for the catalyst
 fund comments about that thoughts insights concerns support man yeah no i'd support it and and i think
 the the current success as a result of that in the past right and so it's just hey let's
 keep it going because it's successful i think the two conversations work together it's just
 and if there's a disconnect then the disconnect is on how we got to the to the successful projects
 i would represent that it was a catalyst fund that wasn't formalized that was but was being
 utilized and so staff trying to formalize that policy that yielded the projects that then are
 being touted as successful i don't see them as disjointed i see them as which came first chicken
 or the egg thoughts about this i think you've got general agreement i'm happy to talk about the next
 thing i'm just trying to make sure thoughts about this sir you want to have any thoughts about that
 no i mean i think this is fine i um it just gives us sort of a little bullet point to start putting
 underneath the actual strategic plan which is you know an objective to to achieve in addition to
 what we're doing just as a reminder just real quickly the six key area focus areas that were
 mentioned earlier by sarah in her presentation that's and some of you commented about it does
 give the city some structure typically what cities do is they don't change the six categories they
 may wordsmith a little bit here and there but what changes are the objectives underneath each of those
 which is really where you're spending some time on today and there's no perfect number of key
 result areas i always encourage clients to have something that's manageable so six seven eight
 something like that but not to make it so unwielding that you're in double digits
 what changes from year to year are the injectors you know actually yeah as i hit the period of my
 sentence i had a further thought that uh i think to pursue what we've just said that the task would
 be incumbent upon us to dig a little deeper on what the principles are that each member has about
 what's a valid or you know a palatable funding idea so that we find common ground and not just
 give up if we don't like idea one that that that that that would be the direction okay
 all right uh yes council member then yes yes so um the uh uh continue to strengthen
 homeless initiatives and housing crisis response uh has a lot of overlap uh potential overlap um
 with under foster economic vitality we uh continue implementing i'm sorry i review and develop dentin
 development code amendments when we when uh we get our next presentation from the uh how
 affordable housing consultant you know they're going to be addressed i don't know what they're
 going to say um but they're going to talk about but one of the things that they're going to talk
 about will be our zoning and um you know but presumably ways in which our our zoning uh could
 be changed in our codes could be changed to uh provide fewer obstacles to affordable housing
 that's my my wording and my my bias is intent in there so it is obvious in there but um anyway
 just mentioning that there's real intersectionality you know between those kind of two different
 aspects of uh you know under two different uh seemingly very different categories in our priorities
 that i think are really important and overlapping and still priorities for me
 so what i hear you saying is the acknowledgement that there is that intersection but also to factor
 into that discussion about affordable housing which may or may not be present and likely will be
 the whole subject of zoning and how that intersects also with the uh develop the development
 code yeah and acknowledging how those dimensions do overlap yes yeah and i'm also stating that
 that they're both still very important to me all right so one of the things that i think
 leaps off of that and mayor pro tem is uh both is is um i think it would be helpful
 if uh we had a a rubric and i hate to pull this out of my education background but
 i mean these kinds of rubrics are really important because that is what's in this development plan
 is essentially a rubric that we then applied scoring to and tick boxes too so uh if if we
 if we developed sort of a rubric of what we thought a successful project would look like
 and and sort of what elements of other of the strategic goals would dovetail in with this like
 council maguire mentioned earlier the sustainability plan should be cross-cutting
 and i couldn't agree with that more uh that you can't you can do any of these tasks without the
 you know sort of cross-cutting sustainability plan but just to be fair i'm not sure you could
 do a lot of these without a competent economic development plan as well so you know what i i
 would like to see a rubric that allowed us to say you know to at least get to staff this is what we
 think is important and you know scoring these things and and we're we're using rubrics everywhere
 we're using rubrics for project management capital improvement projects uh there's there's no reason
 for us to sort of throw out a big bucket of ideas on the floor and sort at them like toddlers
 so i i mean i think we can be smarter than that
 i'd just like to add there there are a lot of teachers here who are i'm very excited about a
 rubric and i can spell rubric and i think part of developing a rubric is also having the conditions
 by which the rubric is crafted around which gets back to some of the points you've made right you
 can you have to have a creative upon that criteria that goes into that rubric so uh council member
 bird uh yes i was looking at this implement historic preservation plan i really do appreciate that
 being here um i'm just i need somebody to tell me how does that uh connect with the foster economic
 vitality as i probably would have been thinking that it goes more under the community and
 neighborhood services i think that you know as i'm we're just talking about kind of like our
 priorities and while we're here and what we're thinking and what brought us to this point i know
 that i'm i'm biased towards the strengthening community i'm a community person and i'm a
 public safety individual and um for the most part so how did we end up putting that implement
 historic preservation plan over here on the economic vitality how does that work
 well well i can kind of tell you actually i think what's interesting here is when you have a
 strategic you have strategic priority areas one of the things we're missing
 is is a um is a sort of a and i don't want to say graph but it's an actual picture that shows how
 each one of these areas interconnect um for instance um these topics could change easily
 to like look at foster economic vitality could easily say economic opportunity and affordability
 and if you look at that and you think about what does that mean that means that when you're
 implementing an historic preservation plan it may be to maintain the economic viability of that
 of that home or that business and so that is part of that when you look at the development code
 that's a part of creating economic vitality or opportunities maybe affordability and so what
 we're missing here i think once we um finalize sort of where you want to be from a strategic
 priority area is we need to show the interconnectivity between these and that it isn't it isn't cyclical
 this cyclical areas these are cross-functional opportunities and that if we do this right when
 we're working with staff on a project then we talk about the fact that it may be in this area
 but cross-functionally it is it may be it also is under let's say pursue organization
 organizational excellence or i like to use the term government that works for all so that it
 it literally touches the areas you put it under a main area but it does impact other areas you
 could say that historic preservation plan falls under infrastructure so it really to me is your
 strategic priority areas and then those things that we're doing that fit under there but then
 we need to be showing how it works cross-functionally and so it really is on a lot of those that's how it
 fits thank you and so that that brings me back over to the mayor's point that you know we've
 had plans already set up and then you bring in new people and it comes back to life and then it
 changes uh that is we just need to keep that in mind yes you know as we're growing as we're
 thinking towards the future how is this historical you know thinking of the historical nature as to
 why we have decided to do it in the first place and so as new members come on on board or the
 council changes over i think it will be just very helpful for city managing to remind us you know as
 we're getting these things before us that this is historically what we did and this is why we did it
 and so if you all and we get our recommendations but the recommendations don't tell us why
 and i like to see more of this is why you we did it this way or why we think we need to change it
 that way we can do more of that and when we do our agenda information sheets when we're we can talk
 about the why um you know obviously the history and then why it's coming back or why we're
 recommending something different and as i uh begin to you know set my tone for uh district one uh and
 and i speak to these people and i'm going to be talking to them more and i told them that i was
 going to keep them field and if they listen to me and start trusting me then i can go back and tell
 them why when we look at the agenda and after we've had our city council meeting i'm going to go back
 to them and say hey this is what we talked about and this is why and they need to know why so um i
 appreciate you all adding that on give us a little bit more historical uh background on that yeah i
 just want to i think council member bird raises some good points but i also want to speak up for
 historic preservation being under economic vitality in its own right i was really pleased to see it
 there for two reasons one because historic preservation is an economic driver as even
 before covid we were moving towards more and more people getting to choose to live wherever they
 wanted to because they could work from anywhere in the world and this idea of sticky cities and
 magnet cities started to kind of crop up denton is both denton is a magnet and also people like
 to stay here and part of that is our historic uh our historic downtown you the good stock of
 historic homes homes that are becoming more and more historic brian lives in a neighborhood that
 is getting to the the point where there are many historic areas in that in that area people like
 buying mid-century homes in denton so those are big economic drivers to have that historic
 preservation and then also as we work on economic development projects you have to keep that history
 in mind you can't bulldoze something just because you have something big new and shiny coming through
 you have to work that all in together so i when i think of economic historic preservation i think
 about economic vitality and i think about bringing people to our city and why people move here
 why people want to have jobs here build their business and then that's even leaving aside the
 fact that there's money out there for people who want to do historic preservation that people that
 want to have a their building their office building be a historic building they want to renovate a
 warehouse into something cool and new there's grant money out there there's federal money out
 there so it just keeps keeps the economy churning i'm going to suggest if we can pause now maybe
 and take a break we've been sitting for a while i've got 10 30 can we take a 10 minute biology
 break that's good yes sir yeah so do i need to okay great we're all good thanks welcome back
 to this uh work session of the it's council retreat technically work session uh the city of
 didn't uh didn't council and uh it is 10 44 still saturday the 20 august 21st 2021 and we're back
 okay thank you mayor yes something that was mentioned earlier that we that was identified
 that we didn't discuss is about the city hall west and the timing of that there's a comment made
 by the council member about possibly putting that on the back burner and not to make as much time
 after energy to it still to mitigate the building to get it ready but not necessarily move forward
 with whatever those next steps are so i wanted to sample points of view from other members of
 the council about their thoughts about that yes council member so um i i'm inclined to want to
 move forward with that uh i hearing a lot from you know the community about or i should say i'm
 hearing put it this way i'm hearing some from the uh members in the community who are really adamant
 about what's happening with city hall west what's happening with city hall west and i haven't heard
 um that doesn't mean it's not happening but you know any pushback on why are you renovating this
 you know building um at this time when we have all these other things going on
 uh so yeah i'm i'm kind of more inclined to keep uh pushing ahead since it's already been held up
 okay all right thanks council member uh i've similar been hearing that but uh in the community
 for how can we use it but i i think there's a there's a room for a stage development
 where we as as council mcguire could said we could we could stage it uh to a to a functional point
 and then you know if we're not ready to have the full solution we could do something creative like
 you know i don't know artist lofts or permanent booths or or some sort of more temporary solution
 that allowed gave us the time and flexibility but yet also put it in in the function at the same
 time so i think there's there's realm there's opportunities that we can craft to do both move
 forward and maybe not move forward with quite as much gusto so yeah council member so it's not
 perfect but i like what we what we came up with in february because the the challenge with that
 project has been identifying a responsible funding source not just the and that's tied up with what
 you actually use the building for because how's the building helping to pay for itself etc but what
 we came up with in february and what we asked for as a prior then was the rfi rfp process and the
 thing that's good about that is it doesn't rocket it up to the top of the priority list but it does
 it invites community partners if there's going to be funding available in the community for that if
 there's going to be ideas we haven't come up with yet just on on we're in the third or fourth
 iteration of council to consider that that building so we we've had to go outside the city we need to
 go outside the city to get input and and frankly funding for that project so i like kind of where
 it's at with the let's put it out there let's do the procurement process and let's see what comes
 back and then if it comes back you know here's some ideas but the city's going to need to pony
 up millions and millions we don't have that that's probably i think the time to have the conversation
 of are we up here on the financial priority list or are we kind of kind of down here and what are
 our next steps yes council yeah i uh concur very much of course i've been you know on the council
 during the twice before when it's been on the list so my perspective is not like wow we are
 gunning great guns on making this thing happen it's still on the list and and the obstacle is
 exactly that it's a boatload of money so this uh the way that it's being pursued is to have it move
 forward without you know without dominating city resources so it's kind of already in the
 you know the most constructive slow lane it can be yes yes no i think that's i think that's exactly
 right that was my understanding leveraging the rfp process yes to understand who are the potential
 occupants and then go forward i mean just i mean you've been a city manager imagine imagine the
 nightmare that is hey we have a brand new renovated city hall building that you could use for free
 because it's a public space who wants it right that list forms to the left uh you know that line just
 kind of funnels out goes around the corner wraps around a couple of times but having a express
 purpose baked in there then what do they need and then what kind of else can fit or what is
 a public use just kind of wide open to the public is a very different conversation so i think that's
 the best approach is to identify who could possibly manage what funding is associated etc etc then
 that that kind of separates who can actually make it go who can't then program what's left
 oh um sorry i completely lost my train of thought oh uh the mayor pro tem's point is well taken that
 it's sort of already in the slow lane which is essentially what i was suggesting um you know i
 i definitely don't want to see city hall west torn down or anything like that um i'm just saying
 yeah that it's we're talking about a project that would consume a lot of staff time and a lot of of
 city funds and it's um because we have so much that is urgent right now that it probably should
 be in in the slow line lane but continue moving forward i have a question um probably for staff
 but there might be some some folks on council who have been here longer than i have who can speak
 to it as well um as far as what funding sources have been explored and i'm thinking particularly
 particularly of like uh like federal nea grants um is that is that a an avenue that has been explored
 so we have looked at some grants um and one of the things that is let me go back a little bit
 we've replaced the windows we had to replace the windows because and that is complete because we
 were starting to see degradation inside the building from the antiquated windows then the
 storm happened and we had a huge uh rush of water that ran all the way down the walls and we had to
 do a cleanup there some of that was hazardous material so it's taken longer so the third thing
 we're doing now is it's getting ready to kick off the rfi rfp i'm sorry the parade is going by
 am i growing another head go outside to catch candy it scared me so the answer is yes um
 since the city is trying to take the avenue as you heard from council member davis of not expending
 a lot of dollars or time uh what we are doing is encouraging when we prepare us and they're
 working on the rfi rfp that it's creative measures and creative opportunities to partner
 and look at grant opportunities and so we've identified some but we're looking for those
 that might bid on these to then apply for those grants that they're eligible for
 and so all of that is in sort of the product that we're and we are encouraging creative um ideas
 opportunities for this building and even to the point where we'll be giving perspective uh
 developers tours of the building so they can get a good view of it unfortunately we weren't able
 to do that till we cleaned it up okay all right thank you yeah that kind of gives me a sense of
 where we are we are i mean this is a way to do this without expending a lot of city staff time
 and money and um we just were delayed because of the uh destruction that occurred it would seem as
 the project does give you some great opportunity for discretion it's not a city quote unquote city
 facility like a maintenance yard or some other city facility or even the development service center
 where we are and so it's wonderful to see what opportunities there might be explored and identified
 for the multi-use or whatever that use might be for itself but it will be different and so you're
 not bound by the past in some respects which is wonderful and because you do an rfi remember
 there's an rfi an rfq and an rfp and there are different dimensions and so an rfi gives you a
 lot of latitude you just kind of evaluate uh what are people's ideas you don't really know what might
 be out there this is going to be a market driven in some way shape or form i would think uh endeavor
 and it's i don't mean profit necessarily driven but it's going to be a market driven about the
 appetite for whatever uh investors or or um those that choose to participate in that process are
 going to be able to identify as something that's going to be viable and that's exciting something
 else that came up are there other thoughts about that i'm gonna move on um there was some discussion
 came up about traffic safety so and that can come because you know we're all traffic engineers right
 i'm just kidding that's if you ask an engineer that's when they
 yeah everybody's a what i even broke traffic engineering traffic safety
 about the idea of traffic safety and what all that encompasses that's a pretty broad and pretty
 uh vast ecosystem about what uh traffic safety looks like whether it's uh infrastructure or
 programs or what have you yes yes um i i'd like to know um i i would imagine that uh at the very
 least sarah is aware of the vision zero um initiative that that some cities have taken on
 and um you know have you looked at that and what are your thoughts on that yes we have
 as a matter of fact i believe it um last year or the year before our council was very interested
 in that correct me if i'm wrong council member i thought i thought we gave direction at a work
 session yeah again correct me if i'm wrong and so we that we are on board with that and did we have
 a resolution or we i think like we did something formal and voted on it i think we passed yeah
 sure remember the work session i think we passed a resolution yeah exactly yeah i feel like there was
 the work session and then we voted so we are um looking at that i i need to go back that is
 something i have not recently been briefed on and i i need to go back and look at where we are but i
 know it was discussed and i know council gave us direction to look at that so and maybe council
 member armature you have more information from your thoughts but well this is just more of a
 you know just personal opinion that uh i i would love to see it get more integrated into
 all of the decisions that that that we make and even that are you know brought forward by staff
 um kind of like how uh when development projects come up we have to um you know check off does this
 meet our you know uh 2020 plan it's you know how does this fit with you know this plan to do such
 and such does this fit with our with vision zero plan because otherwise it's not helpful
 because it really is that kind of huge framework um council member davis at our last meeting said
 and i concurred um that he would like to see the bike friendly communities plan there are so many
 plans um integrated with our mobility plan and i think this is another opportunity for that kind
 of thing if if we can this is because this looks at it um if you take the bike friendly plan if you
 take your vision zero and you take your mobility plan they should all be coordinated together even
 your um uh walkable walkable streets walkable streets and i'm i'm failing to think um pedestrian
 friendly the pedestrian safe routes to schools the streets uh golly accessibility the streets the
 street trees and all the other things that go into it all of that has to be looked at but it's also
 looking at the community and equity when you're looking at how you put it together so we are
 working on that from a mobility plan i think you'll hear becky use the word um a holistic approach
 all of that has to be tied together um so that's that's what we are doing but i will find out about
 the vision zero where we are on that i uh if i can just offer some help i know he's got a
 totally different job now but pre-tem will remember where that was filed council member davis yeah kind
 of adding to the you know the the list of things we love to see in our streets plan and our mobility
 plan um but we talk about it all the time and constituents bring it up all the time i've gotten
 facebook messages just while we sit here about residential street speed and there's a little
 bit of open question katherine i'll send you an email about uh text dot and an administrative
 rule the 85 percent rule and all that kind of stuff that's a conversation for another day but
 i would have no no problem with denton being the slowest residential city you know drive 45
 on the text dot roads the big the big uh primary arterials the things that get you to work in the
 morning that kind of stuff but if we just crawled through our neighborhood streets my kids and i
 would appreciate it very much yeah no i i couldn't agree more uh profoundly with what councilor davis
 just said that it's it's probably the number two issue that i'm approached with is is uh traffic
 safety and it's probably the the number one if you count my histogram of of requests to the city
 of of things that we they would citizens would like to deal with and you know even even normalizing
 to the squeaky wheel gets the grease factor it's still number one so uh but i i also wanted to uh
 concur uh really strongly with this idea of as as we get as we adopt plans that you know it's just
 like a surgical checklist okay you know you know is this you know part of the you know the street
 improvement plan check check check vision for the you know that that we don't lose track of these
 things that we we're all in agreement with that that we don't want to just wave our hands out and
 say oh yeah that's that's part of our goals that we we actually procedurally mechanically make sure
 that we're meeting that would be my recommendation yes i want to second that idea of of a a checklist
 that's perhaps um included in the mobility plan and and just to give you a little bit of context
 we had a situation recently where um a a major um thoroughfare that that runs through um our largest
 college campus um had you know a a rebuilding or a resurfacing right um was planned but there
 was not a bike lane included in it which is i mean and that's that's a street that um a lot
 of cyclists use and it was really just an oversight because i you know our our bike plan included
 bike paths for for that street so um yeah yeah just a procedural um uh mechanism to ensure that
 um you know capital projects and streets that they're going down a checklist and saying okay
 does this meet our vision zero goals does this meet our bike friendliness goals does it meet our
 ada goals our pedestrian goals all that well something you may want to pursue in the future
 as a council that some councils have adopted because this is what i'm kind of hearing is
 what are your principles as a as a community what are your values because you're starting to talk
 about that checklist manifests itself into policies and if you're going to build a street
 we're going to make sure there's this i don't mean as specific as this but in your principles
 but you're an advocate with the word you have the night last night you use that word advocate a lot
 beneficial for the group at some point in the future to actually capture in writing what are
 you an advocate about somewhat philosophically but also your principles which is kind of uh rubs up
 against the notion of your vision remember a vision shared is not the same things as shared vision
 so i'm just this is some of what today is a discovery opportunity and i look at it from
 the third party and i start to hear common words and i see maybe that you can you can adopt policies
 for that but it may even precede that about what are the principles that you're trying to reflect
 that you think community members want in the policies that you do adopt and that's where you
 i'm just offering that as a perspective some cities have done that and it gives them some
 comforting guidance and all their public policy decisions these are some principles that are the
 basis for those decisions so yes speaking of which um i do have conversations about principles
 uh of of the overall feel for what this community is and so one of the things that uh that i've been
 having a conversation about is the maintenance of a homestyle type community and um and i always
 talk about our sister cities over here to the east and how they just grew so quickly and it just
 seems like people are just kind of coming and going and with these large buildings and everything
 is just kind of looks the same but when you come over here to didn't we still are um in a homestyle
 home feeling type uh community and uh i would hope that and i totally agree with it
 i've been here 38 years and i appreciate that we still have this feeling of a place where people
 live and they work and they play here and so um i appreciate that coming up because it is something
 that's important to a lot of people here in town that as we are bringing in businesses and we still
 like the fact that we still feel like a community family community although we're going to be growing
 you know we're looking forward to just still getting out there and growing but are we going
 to start letting you know glass buildings come in here are we going to be changing the landscape
 of what our of what our horizon looks looks like are we going to just start looking like everywhere
 else that is what uh one of the primary concerns are for people that i've spoken with and me too
 and a play on words just a little bit something you might want to keep in mind in your mindset
 and your approach that is there are roots and there are anchors roots i'm thinking beyond just
 what's traditionally right but roots what are the dimensions of this community that you draw
 emotional strength from heritage right this is a community of shared commitment they're they're
 very much emotional energy drivers so those are roots and then there are anchors and anchors are
 those mindsets that hold the community back from realizing its future some cities spend a lot of
 time trying to mitigate the anchors and don't leverage their roots and then they're just sort
 of standing still i'm just giving that to you as you look at these principles as you look at
 that livability notion how do you even for those people that have been here a long time
 you want to maintain the character of this community it's still going to require the city
 to do something things different and do different things because it's not where it was some
 communities just shut the door behind them and go maybe if we don't deal with it it'll just go away
 that's naive and they end up there are a lot of unintended consequences of growth and there's not
 a lot of do-overs with growth that trajectory of growth may be sustained for decades but how
 are you dealing with it as you go on i'm just offering that to you again at that mindset as
 you approach the kind of community you're trying to cultivate so mayor pretend yeah to uh you know
 bridge off your comment maybe this will get us to uh something for the list we're already doing the
 comprehensive plan update but uh i think you know if we can maybe sharpen the the focus on what we
 want the outcome of that to be at councilmember bird's point i mean yes we need to refresh our
 vision of what our preferred uh pattern of development to be where where if anywhere do
 the big tall glass buildings go nowhere or somewhere and if somewhere where and but also
 what's our preferred pattern of preservation i've said it before but you know this seems to be the
 time to to bring it up again that i would like uh you know i would love it if this council uh
 concurred that a priority would be to end up with a clear vision of our preferred pattern of
 preservation with policies to support that and then when i say preservation that that goes to both
 historic preservation which does add to our uniqueness and our attractiveness and
 it's part of our cultural life but also you know our uh environmental preservation as well
 there are tree canopy and so on yes man yeah so i got a few uh but i want to this is all under
 the guise of you talked about i may be saying it wrong we're about output right well you're
 about outcomes outcomes yeah and so that that that comes from there's there's an idea and then
 there's kind of some action items and then so those conflict points because i just i just think you
 have to talk about those so i think when you're talking about uh for example uh a bike lane
 approach um i think it's important to talk about the fact that okay there's not universal agreement
 amongst bike riders right i've talked to some that say protected lanes are key there's others
 that would say and it's a fact we don't have a sweet street sweeper that's small enough to
 go in the protected lane so they gather trash so then bike riders i don't like protected lanes
 because there's a lot of trash in there rumble strips you know on the on the side of road they're
 great for cars terrible for bikes uh and so you you have mixed opinions about how those go so
 then you'll have cars that park in the bike lane on the side of their house which is a public road
 which they're right to do but then you to prevent that you then put a protected lane there which
 then gathers trash and people don't use it and so i i think when you're talking about this list
 to not have a just kind of a pause for conflict right resolution then i think you you miss an
 action item that that helps you get to an outcome if if you don't pause for the fact that there's
 not universal agreement amongst everyone that rides a bike you know it's like it sounds great
 right all bike riders want this not true you know and so that's really where where are we
 pulsing that where are we gathering that data to say we're going this direction based on what
 you know and and that's really key to me yeah i would just offer i think one of the challenges
 that you all have as policymakers and staff has this as well that's the part of uh the whole
 local government ecosystem is a whole idea that um if you can't do it for everybody you don't do
 it for anybody which it seems very equitable and egalitarian on the nature of it but when you stop
 and think about decisions you're making as policymakers you are trying to customize some
 of these decisions based on preference based on appetite based on advocacy
 and then you're also trying to identify where does your role start and stop
 and where the staff role pick up because some of those are operational issues whether there's
 rumble strips or chop or hatch lines what have you right if you're an advocate that where it's
 appropriate and you want to be more aggressive just on the example of bike lanes that's one thing to
 be an advocate i think that's time well invested for all of you is new development comes in and
 you look at the development code or you look at you're going to resurface elves whatever as you
 do some of those projects how you want to ensure that happens the house that happens is really a
 staff about factoring in what's the design of the street you're now you're into the mechanics and
 and how it's going to work well so i think that again that's a challenge sometimes government
 struggles is we can't do it for everybody we don't do it for anybody which i think is no way to
 build a community i think it's short-sighted and so you are trying to customize things but you also
 i would offer to you as policymakers where does your role sort of end in the implementation of
 whatever those policies are and how is it going to be most if some people say well they have rumble
 strips on that street why don't we have them over here it's like well it's not really appropriate
 it's an arterial street this is residential street it's a 40 mile marathon now you're getting down
 into you know into the mechanics of things that may not necessarily be in your wheelhouse as
 elected officials but the public doesn't know that and they want to know what do you know it's like
 well that's where you have conversations with the city manager or the staff and you say well what
 was the decision point there they didn't do it haphazardly or whimsically it was based on
 you know proven practices of good street design and good bicycle i'm just sharing that with you
 as an example that i think is part of you recognizing those boundaries so council member
 so question stepping back for a moment kind of a meta question about so it's so 11 10
 and thinking about like how we're going to spend the next 50 minutes and i'm i'm wondering
 uh you know what what is how you know maybe this would be a good time for for you to
 to to share with us and and apologies to my colleagues if if everybody else understands
 this and i i don't uh but uh how how should we be you know framing like i have kind of three
 newish not really new to this council but not here listed in this framework issues i want to bring up
 it doesn't that they don't fit in organically with what we're discussing right now so i'm
 kind of letting this conversation you know organically play out right um but uh and i'm
 interested and involved in it you know what what should we if you could kind of explain
 how we should be thinking about using the next 50 minutes as far as like ish talking about issues
 that are already priority stops working on those versus kind of new things that we want to bring
 to the table i appreciate your point i think that's and this is a good time we're at the
 fork of the road right we spending some time we can spend the next balance of the day simply
 revisiting the items on the list we we are trying to give you an opportunity to ask questions about
 those maybe expand those a little bit if the group is comfortable that the oh yes this is now stands
 with a few modifications based on your conversations today are going to staff is going to go back and
 polish those up then absolutely as i mentioned earlier we want to make sure to give you the
 opportunity to say if there's things that are not on that list this is the time to bring them up
 i would also say and this is a bit of a challenge is the things that are discussed today that staff
 will go back and refine and bring back to you for consideration to adoption of a relative solution
 this is part of the challenge you have is if somebody has something that comes up in
 november that is fairly macro and policy focused it's you know heavy investment of staff time
 effort and energy if the opportunity there is that you want to reconsider what's on the strategic
 plan then there should be a meaningful discussion about what's going to come off the strategic plan
 because it shouldn't be a straight jacket but it shouldn't be optional so that's kind of the
 balance right so yeah so yeah um i mean one thing that and i feel bad if this is making us go
 backwards in the conversation or forward but uh that that is related to the development uh update
 development code update is uh revisiting our notification process which is something that
 we did and i don't remember if this was 2018 or 2019 but it was uh there was a work session i
 wish i could remember who presented it but i know that it was it was something that i had requested
 about looking into a program like what mckinney has which does notifications i think it was mckinney
 i forget the name of their program based on uh neighborhoods kind of more organically um not
 so much instead of this you know 200 500 feet foot rule um but that includes that and kind of goes
 beyond that in other words raising the bar on that um and uh uh staff i don't know maybe it was ron
 um i forget who gave her presentation on that but somewhere they've got a presentation and council
 at the time decided that they didn't there was as i remember it the consensus like didn't want to
 go forward with it um but it's it's still something that it was a very different council then
 and i i wonder if this council would would be open to to reconsidering it because we get uh
 i get anyway you know just just so many complaints from people about you know why wasn't i notified
 i'm in this neighborhood well you're not within this you know and but this affects me you know and
 i know that staff deals a lot with that a lot too council member was do you remember was that
 the southlake program the spin program yes yes not not just wanting to make sure i remember
 actually what you were talking about that's why when i was searching my emails for mckinney i
 couldn't find it yes okay i just wanted to make sure we were thank you so much i remember it had
 the nick yeah it was called spin spin uh they just kind of mandated public meetings but they held them
 at city hall uh so the developer would come in and kind of do their community meetings they do now
 just at a central location yes and so we we went with that one aspect of it right so it was that
 but but the part about you know notifying whole neighborhoods as they're organically um as uh you
 know defined by communities um you know neighborhoods like you know southeast denton or
 you know noddingham woods area you know we're going to notify everybody here about this
 um that was another factor of that that that council majority at that time didn't want to
 you know go in the direction of but and if i remember correctly i think ron talked about it
 during one of his presentations it was a mandatory meetings um we're going to at the time and i don't
 know where it is be folded into the new uh comprehensive plan and uh ddc so i think that's
 something that we can follow up on to see where that what the status of that is awesome yeah it's
 it's it's definitely a part of that whole i mean fits into that whole conversation you know that
 we're actually having yeah that's from over here and then i want to come back to you i know you
 had a couple of other items me oh well i mean the others i can bring up later if people want to talk
 about i i just um i guess want procedural clarification on like what we're doing right
 now are we discussing like this list of nine priorities and which ones we want to keep and
 which ones we want to adjust or okay we're talking more about that in terms of these key areas okay
 um sorry to jump around a little bit um i'm looking at the the pursue or organizational
 excellence uh key area um i think that's definitely an important one it's one that we've talked about
 quite a bit here um i would argue that covet 19 response probably doesn't belong in that category
 although it absolutely is a priority and a very urgent one um i would like to add to um this kind
 of list of items that are related to organizational excellence um a category of things that in our
 conversation before this meeting i called being a good employer um and just um a couple of items
 that come to my mind as examples of things that fall under that that category are um something
 that we've already talked quite a bit about today streamlining processes and procedures
 and using technology in order to more efficiently use staff time and resources um addressing uh
 staffing shortages in in some of our departments um we you know obviously we we had our voluntary
 separation program um which in some departments was definitely a really good thing and in some
 departments resulted in um a staff shortage that has resulted then in um quite quite a few staff
 members being overworked um i'd also like to examine our leave policies and this might be
 something that like uh i don't know maybe something that we can can give to madison um to to bring to
 us you know kind of a general overview of what our leave policies look like currently in particular
 i'm thinking about paid parental leave um which is not something that we provide it's not something
 that most public entities provide but i think that we should be providing um and and i think
 that that's you know more more details about that or something to be discussed at another time but
 that's something i would like to see us looking at as part of our you know organizational excellence
 key area we're actually coming back just uh councilmember mcguire we're actually coming
 back i believe in november maybe december on the leave policy when i've asked tiffany to um come
 back on current leave uh situations but also address the issue that the mayor brought up
 about um leave for someone who's had a had a pregnancy but um other uh circumstances that
 were involved around it tiffany's coming back to address or at least present some things there
 so we have it on our work session great i look forward to that thank you
 thoughts about those items about being a good employer which includes streamlining
 policies and procedures using technology which are sort of the how-to things right there's not
 really project attached to that but it's an emphasis um to address staffing shortage which
 is a potential project to evaluate the staffing levels and come back to you by part maybe that
 could be part of the budget process usually it is about where staffing levels are and then the last
 one is sarah just responded to the lead policies there's going to be an update to you november and
 december so i want to engage the rest of the council about especially that and i assume the
 staffing shortage has always factored into budget discussions it is yes um but um certainly we also
 will at times do an analysis or ask our staff either hr uh to do an analysis of a ratio of
 supervisors to staff and then staffing numbers comparable to other cities in those areas so we
 can certainly look at that as well so incorporating that into the budget conversation would that be
 appropriate again and then the lead policy is going to be brought back to you for consideration
 we had over here you counselor and then the mayor and oh sorry i just want to clarify i guess about
 the staffing shortages obviously with where we're at in the budget conversation that's being um
 addressed to an extent but i would also like it to be an ongoing conversation you know once we pass
 this year's budget i'd like to kind of revisit it and start talking early about what we want to see
 in next year's budget as far as staffing so just just to keep the stream of thought just a little
 bit but before i ask my my actual question and that was uh yeah no i think we need to and i think
 critical to this idea of understanding voluntary separation versus leave is is noting when
 what are our staff levels and what are voluntary separations recovery that kind of thing when we
 see the budgets because this was a real confusion from the public why isn't this in the mno budget
 and why why is this a supplemental when in reality all we're doing is getting back to who we were
 right that's not a supplemental that's that's just returning to normal um and but the the citizens
 were very confused by the budget language um i do think as far as the continuing again this stream
 this this idea i think i think it's it's it's going to be critical that's it's sort of an umbrella
 issue for the city at large not just the city's employer to to develop our non-discrimination
 policies and make that really clear and prioritize that very very strongly because that's going to
 impact not just us but the entire city so i i think we do prioritize it but i'd like to see
 us prioritize that within this context as well as broadly but now finally digging back out to
 my my actually original question it feels like organically we've gone to details but my my
 question is i think this counselor maguire asked the same question is are we at 50 000 feet or 5
 000 feet or 50 feet because we have a lot of details that you know every one of us is passionate
 about you know you know there's no npas in this in this council but yet we're all apparently npas
 so you know and i'm going to point the finger exactly at myself as much as anyone else
 so so the question i i guess i'm asking is are you procedurally for this event today are we
 are we looking at the nine you know the or the nine 50 000 foot priorities the the 12 or so 10 000
 foot priorities are we down at 50 feet with details we're trying to look at these now the the challenge
 that you have as elected officials is not everybody thinks to the same lens so some people think
 broadly they go from the macro to the micro some people go from the micro to the macro we've tried
 to listen to those detailed questions that you have today and put those as part of a larger approach
 that's what i've tried to do is say whether it's the bike lanes that's part of it a larger approach
 that you're trying to do in urban mobility so it's yeah it'd be ideal if people stayed at the policy
 level and we're trying to keep you there but not everybody thinks broadly they think micro and then
 in order to go from the micro we have to help them kind of get comfortable if that's a macro decision
 and that's okay right that's okay if you're going to be in those details if you're at the 50 foot
 level it's okay to have a conversation i'm going to try to pull you up and say okay what does that
 mean that the city needs to do differently but we're trying to not allow you not not having you get
 in and play sort of the armchair quarterback to say this is exactly what i think we should do
 because again you're one person and you don't make policy it's what the group does so if you want to
 talk about details which you had you've done today and you will continue i'm trying to say okay that's
 part of a larger schematic about what's the policy that needs to change so it's okay that people talk
 about things detail i'm good with that because i you you want to be heard and i want you to make
 sure that you get a chance to share your points of view don't feel as though that somehow what
 you're saying how you're saying is incorrect my role is to take that and filter that up or take
 that and say what does that mean and operational side so so in terms of policy then it's sort of
 like try to be at least 10 000 feet here um i i think the the two that i heard that that i was
 going to mention anyway are this we really need to define um this sort of idea of preservation or
 empty space role in our in our development concepts um both both green space and empty space and you
 know the the interplay with redevelopment um that i heard from mayor pro tem and the the idea of
 feedback um that we're you were hearing a lot of it that goes to that strategic goal of of responsiveness
 that we talked about yesterday um i i think the 311 will help but uh i think we even with the 311
 this this idea of having a um push notification if you will of various concepts is is is really
 important because push notification of band-aids push notification of of you know zoning developments
 push notification and we we need to be a little bit more proactive a push notification of impacted
 stakeholders keep in mind the mayor and then you and then you um keep in mind that what we're
 trying to make sure that to avoid and give you some give staff some wiggle room as a result of
 today is this is not a set of instructions right we're not assembling a model so it's not do this
 do that do this do that sarah the staff are taking notes i'm taking notes we're all in the room we're
 going to convene after this to go back and put some spit polish on some of these listening to
 your intent trying to revise that so you get another bite of the apple when you consider this
 for adoption so i'm trying to keep you without it singing like we're down in the nitty gritty
 where you're giving instructions we're picking up the the emphasis of your comments and you'll get
 another bite again you get another chance to review this and say does that really reflect what we were
 talking about in those conversations we had on saturday the 21st and i think that's better time
 that's time better set for you all than to get down into the instructional side which then creates
 just we we can't see the force for the truth so to speak so mayor you've been waiting patiently
 and then council armator and then mayor procter i think across the board a policy that the that
 the council i believe should adopt is the ability for staff to push back far too many times there
 there's just a lack of information or from a individual or a individual puts out kind of this
 notion that then sparks interest from the community and it's not steeped in reality and so i just think
 it's important for staff to be able to be for this body to give staff the ability to kind of say hey
 we understand we're going to push back we're going to ask quite you know and and maybe the council
 have a directive to itself to ask questions versus make statements that that aren't accurate and i
 say that across this so for example we all get the emails denton's going to turn into frisco
 that's physically not possible frisco had a bunch of open land that they then came in developing
 large swaths right that's just city of denton is established and has established neighborhoods
 it's just physically not possible to replicate that to replicate dallas because the downtown
 you know so it's just some of those things well if you put that out there and as a body we don't
 rebuff that that or don't at least speak kind of historical fact to that you then give rise to that
 that then is a distraction that then keeps us from moving the conversation forward so i just think
 there's some answers that city staff and the management office have that i need them to be
 comfortable if this body's comfortable giving them authorization to say hey look there's there's just
 some stuff and again that's that's that comes with embracing the fact that i was elected but
 that doesn't make me a subject matter expert on any of it and then to take that a step further
 i'll say this when we're talking about i don't think we have a notification issue i just don't
 because there is a pnz member from my community that voted for an object that had no neighborhood
 meeting right i mean so this person's in the meeting has all the backup gets an intense amount
 of information more so than anyone and they miss it right so i just think there's it's not a
 notification issue it whatever the issue is it's not that because this person has all that information
 and and same thing i mean you just have members on pnz that have all the information and vote
 different than this council all right and so and that's their freedom to do so i just say that to
 say it's not a notification issue it's you've pointed it out it's different people processing
 different information different ways that doesn't mean that we have to ask staff to go give a whole
 bunch of more notice that people are not going to ignore are not going to pay attention to that
 information you know it's just it assumes that more information would cause people to pay attention
 and i don't know that that's true and when we're talking about resources and finite time i think
 it's it's okay to acknowledge some of those shortcomings or just kind of people's habits or
 that sort of thing but it's not a one-to-one correlation more information means different
 decisions not true you know so i just think from from an overall view just kind of all these items
 i just think there needs to be some kind of quick we need to authorize staff to push back a bit and
 say hey i'm going to accept that and from a council perspective try to if you don't know then ask a
 question and and ask it sooner than later so that you have time to get the answer but i just think
 the the declarative statements um from from a body are are difficult you know because they're
 they're not accurate you know and and then you don't get it staff doesn't get a chance to
 they got to correct it on the fly collect correct you know it's just there's problems
 in not understanding what you don't know or owning what you don't know you know so from from a body
 because you just then you you you just shake up the public and cause more misinformation versus saying
 hey i don't know let me get an answer or staff what's the answer to this yeah let me just before
 if you can hold on one second if you would please can you bring to the point which i think
 is relevant to your conversations you know there's two ways of thinking about things
 you know there is an issue there's an opportunity there's a challenge and uh you know finance people
 engineers they think this way it's called convergent thinking you ask them a question
 they give you the answer it's precise it's calculation it's computation you want them to
 be precise in their approach then when you look at other issues an issue an opportunity a challenge
 it's divergent thinking public policies here here's an option here's an option here's an option here's
 an option never ask an attorney a yes or no question right because their response is it depends
 hr people planners it depends i would offer to all of you maybe this will give you comfort when
 you're frustrated most of what you're dealing with is here you have lots of different ways to look at
 lots of different ways to solve the problem there's not just one perfect way to solve the problem
 some cities chase things they chase the holy grail they're looking for the perfect solution
 they don't exist in public policy it's whatever you have the appetite for and you're willing to
 commit to in the decisions that you're making and i think it's also recognizing from your colleagues
 not everybody comes from the same point of view it's how you blend those perspectives
 and that's the challenge and that's the beauty of democracy but it's also going to be frustrating
 how you blend those perspectives so just a thought council member i appreciate you waiting oh sure
 so um going back to something that council member mcguire said earlier about uh you know
 that covet might not really fit under and you don't need to necessarily turn back on the list
 that coveted response might not necessarily fit under um yeah pursue organizational excellence um
 you know one place where and i think we would all agree that covered response is really important
 right so wherever you put it um but you know if the uh support public safety category was expanded
 to include to be called support public health and safety um and i'm going to just say a little bit
 more about this um because if you look at even the things that are already there right the fire
 department most of what they do uh is uh is health related right they are responding to health issues
 actually uh putting out fires is a small percentage of the daily work they do and so sometimes people
 say uh well the city shouldn't be in the business of you know of public health well i think that
 you know covet has shown that we really are um but but our fire department that is most of what they
 do you know and even and the um you know the uh uh police department with with police departments
 you know around the country are um you know kind of grappling with this that that they have been
 uh that they end up responding to mental health crises and trying to figure out what to do with
 that so it's kind of already i would kind of make the case that it's already a public health and
 safety category um but the health is invisible there and i think those two fit so nicely together
 and and i'm going to use this to segue into uh uh stating that you know it's a priority
 for me and i've mentioned this before i know at least one other council member
 has mentioned it publicly you know that we have a public health coordinator i would love to have
 and i think it's critical that we have a public health coordinator for the city because so much
 when these issues come up you know we've we've got a staff who um you know not only are they really
 busy um uh with with other things but you know somebody to really kind of coordinate this these
 efforts and work with not not in a way that's redundant with what the county already has
 but to work with the county which is our our county public health official is very very busy
 you know with a number of different cities that are very very different you know we need somebody
 who's going to work with them i would love to see an assessment also of what are our public health
 needs as a city um and to what extent are they and aren't they being met and i mean not just so much
 not only by by government but you know by services that are already available in the community you
 know these are the people that we're serving we're already again i can't underscore that enough we're
 already uh committed to their to public health this this is not something new um uh and and i
 would include in that uh you know mental health again with the the the mental health unit team and
 and i'm pretty sure chief dickson would agree you know that that this is about it's about response
 what you're doing right response but as far as the issues of you know mhmr i'm using mhmr as an
 example because it's an obvious example you know people can um the crisis response team can bring
 someone to mhmr but mhmr they they have a a a very unmanageable you know case worker to client ratio
 they have to turn people away and it's devastating i'm not blaming them for it um uh but you know but
 we really need to be looking at how are how are needs being met um are they um and uh also in
 terms of addiction treatment you know we've got real addiction problems in this city of all kinds
 and i think that's a you know police end up on the responding end to to that often too
 you know and and i think that we need as far as you know addiction treatment um of course i would
 love to see a a sobering center that's a little getting more in the weeds but anyway um that to
 me is that's something that i wanted to make sure to bring to the table today if if this helps um
 one of the things i think patrick mentions this one of the things i'm taking notes one of the
 things that we're going to be doing is going back and looking at your comments in relationship to
 um the covet 19 statement and where it belongs uh some of the other things so we'll kind of work
 to to see where some of these things go and maybe you look at the actual strategic priority area and
 if it's the right the right wording and get that back out to you so that we will be doing that to
 look at that councillor thank you um agree on the where covet 19 fits uh that
 that's uh the most persuasive case i've heard so far for a public health official and i would
 concur with the idea i'd ask you to wait whether you could be open to this there's a way to build
 support for this time and effort uh i'll concur with the idea of evaluating what a role would be
 that would be different from the county and i and uh whether there's a job description that
 that is distinct and that relates you know uh i'd be open to seeing that and to your earlier to
 councilor's earlier uh question about what's the game plan you know here in this room uh i can tell
 you just the way i'm playing my own scrabble tiles is that i i think we're kind of going through the
 top nine while looking at the others to see do any of them need to be refocused and we've actually
 done a lot of that you know adding refocusing comments where maybe that wasn't even possible
 a year ago but where there's more consensus uh you know on digging into how do we fund
 the catalyst fund and you know looking at vision zero in the mobility plan and all that
 so uh uh and and then also to see what to add and then at the end at some point we got to say
 there aren't 36 top 10 priorities you know at some point we got to figure out which are the
 most important because prioritization if you don't do it uh a year will go by and we will
 pass a lot of spending items but we won't really be able to tell if we accomplished anything
 so anyway my next uh kind of refocusing one i'd like to tee up is regarding number two
 uh i'm pretty confident at this point that we're going to develop the live 288 building
 i'm really confident that's going to happen it's funded and sort of and uh you know it's underway
 but uh in in the time that that went from a council priority to address this issue
 to a building purchase to a plan etc in that time uh we've gotten some deep bigger insights
 for me it was during snow vid when off-duty police officers were you know kind of on their own time
 driving around in the freezing cold asking people if they could bring them to shelter and they were
 saying no thanks i'm good you know it helped me appreciate the fact there is you know it's not
 the only or total answer uh there's a large part of that or you know there is a part of that
 community that is just never going to go to shelter and uh i would just my refocusing is that we uh
 you know just have have uh next strategy whether it's you know and i'm not pushing it one some
 people may advocate the bus ticket method i'll argue against it because every other community
 already figured out the bus ticket method at some point you got to deal with it uh you know all the
 way to community first we obviously already care about that issue because i think a lot of people
 have already signed up to go look at community first so i think implicitly we kind of know that
 there's another chapter and we got to be thinking about it so that's what i would tee up is is you
 know broaden that uh item to say you know uh and frankly it's as much an economic development issue
 as anything else you know address uh homelessness beyond those who are willing to go to shelter
 address you know open to hearing good ideas about how and if i can add in prior to this this priority
 on the loop 28 building the prior year was a more broader priority for how do we strengthen the
 housing crisis response system so really when you're looking at all of those elements um
 assisting those and reaching out to those that are living unsheltered to those that are maybe now
 sheltered so then getting to housing and what's that housing option look like based on that needs
 assessment specific to that individual that is an option there could be more priority to go back
 to look at systematically with all of the data we do have in the system we have we can identify
 what are we currently working on that are gaps in the system and where are the other gaps in
 the system if there is additional investment that this council wants to make or other partners want
 to make in the system where are those next steps in the road map sure first to piggyback off of
 that one i i like the broader i like the broader heading for that one a lot because it does let's
 us do two things it's one getting the community response and the community initiatives and the
 things the community wants to do and talking about those but also letting the staff perspective
 enter into it like our staff has traveled around the country and gone to different cities that have
 different solutions and examine how it works how it doesn't work is this best as a city solution is
 this best as a community solution is this best is something that's you know next door to one of your
 big city buildings or is it something that's better out in the unincorporated county where it can do
 what it wants to do so um having i think the broader heading as opposed to right now we have
 the the broader heading plus the project-based one so not having the the project-based one but
 the broader what's the next step and that answer can come from the community and that answer could
 come from staff and then somehow get you know get synthesized together at the council level
 on the public health uh the public health coordinator that might be might be the first
 time i've heard the word coordinator it might not be it might have just been that i missed i missed
 it but i agree with councilmember melzer that that was probably the most persuasive uh argument i've
 heard for a public health coordinator thus far because the last time we've talked about it
 the only times we've talked about it it's been basically in the context of we want to do something
 we're not getting the the data and support for what we want for an outcome we'd like to see
 from our existing either whether it was county or whether it was uh city staff and competencies they
 have and competencies they don't have and so we'd like to have someone who's here on our staff to
 tell us this is what we need to do next i like much better the idea because that is that's
 programming and budgeting and planning for one exact crisis where we're not happy with certain
 outcomes i like much better the idea of the city has a public health role let's figure out what that
 is and the way that complements the well-trained and well-compensated folks who already work for
 the county or already work for the state and figure out what that role is is it something that goes
 together with an emergency management coordinator is it something that pulls together things we
 haven't even talked about yet like west nile response that our environmental services people
 have to deal with every single summer giving us a west nile response um but i i'd like to keep that
 one really broad too and let staff come up with solutions that right size to denton and not you
 know i heard about something someplace else another city happens to have this another city
 has that program or whatever and and let us synthesize the thing that works best for denton
 so i think a broad heading for that one also and then uh management can can give us options on how
 to proceed with it when i um when i sat when i became a council member i was appreciating the
 fact that the council is a group of people that that's what they do they counsel their
 liaisons between the community and the city manager's office and so i'm appreciating the fact
 that the city manager's office is a a tool it's a resource to give us and they could see they could
 see the historical value and they can help us with our future thought processes and um
 that's why i just want the the community just to also appreciate that mindset is that we are sitting
 here and we're listening to the community and we're bringing those ideas and we're laying them out
 and we're asking the city manager's office uh to be the tool and the research resource to see if it
 can happen and see and then as a city i'm speaking for me now and then as a person that's sitting on
 the council they're guiding me as to what i should be thinking and what i should be relaying back to
 the people you know in the community that i serve so um with all of that being said i i do want to
 take this to a personal level i don't feel like i'm necessarily triggered here but um i'm going to
 get i'm just going to be direct here i think it just needs to be said right now i'm feeling like
 whenever our mayor is speaking uh he's having this tone right now of dismissing um suggestions
 and statements i do want you mayor to know that you are just bringing this tone for me
 about what the people are asking me and questioning me about certain things and if i bring those up
 i don't feel need to feel like i'm being dismissed uh i don't feel like my constituents need to be
 dismissed about whatever historical nature has come about so if someone wants to talk about a
 large glass building and not looking like you know the other locations that's what they're saying
 but it doesn't need to be dismissed as oh we're not going to do that right now that's what i'm
 hearing that's what i'm feeling and it needs to be put out there that if someone brings about
 a topic or a conversation that they've had with their constituents
 it needs to just lay there and let the city count let the city manager's office give that perspective
 mayor i think that you need to be mindful of that as you are communicating with the city
 not just with me but i think it just needs to lay down right there and i want you to be mindful of
 that i'm gonna put that out there publicly i know i probably couldn't text you say your tone is is
 kind of off right there but i do want us to um be on the same front that we're here to help people
 understand i'm a retired educator and i just appreciate the why and i appreciate uh the
 opportunity to be as basic and simple in our thought process we know that our society thinks
 on the sixth grade level and we have higher thinking people and lower thinking people we have
 to come in the middle but the tone to say that oh well we already talked about that and we did
 this and we did that that that's not helpful to me because i don't think that's helpful to
 my constituents i think that we just need to have a positive force going on here from this point
 forward and if it happens again i'm gonna put it up here again because i don't appreciate that
 so i'm learning i'm new to this game i'm i don't feel like a politician but i do know the art of
 compromise i know how that works i know how that works when you're a kid you have brothers and
 sisters and you got to compromise with them you might fight it out but that's where you do that
 you do that in the classroom that's the first thing you learn in the classroom it's classroom rules
 treat others the way you want to be treated and good teachers will make sure that their classrooms
 are aligned like that so we can move forward but the dismissiveness of the history a lot of people
 that just moved here we have a brand new community that's like you said there's a lot of people that
 just showed up here in the past 10 years so they don't know the historical value the historical
 nature that's why we put it in our plan and so we just need to be respectful of that
 mr mayor and anybody else that's needs to know that but i just uh want to go forward and i want
 to say what i need to say because i'm not just speaking for myself i'm speaking for the people
 that trust me to give them a good amount of information the right information the targeted
 information it's a learning process here for all of us every last one of us that are sitting here
 we're learning something new okay thank you so i have to say did i not say everyone gets to say
 i don't i don't know that i targeted one person so i need help understanding that one
 and then two i i accept your feelings but i don't think i don't have feelings well i accept your
 statement i just i just did not i don't think i targeted anyone you didn't target and i and i'll
 say this because it's occupational hazard i'll take it no problem with it but if you go watch all our
 movies all our movies it's pretty accurate all of our council meetings every council member
 has no problems with each other in the in the meetings every almost every council member has
 taken a shot at me and again part of that's occupational hazards but part of that is interesting
 that somehow there's no issues with anyone else right it's just i'm running the meeting poorly
 i'm advocating for this i'm shortcutting that again i get it occupational hazards but i wish
 being fully political on may 22nd this seat is available and let's have that conversation there
 when we're looking at each other versus me getting shot from the curtain on the side of the stage
 and i've had that conversation with people individually and i'll have it here
 let's have a conversation about how i manage the meeting and all those things in the proper format
 which is in those areas and be consistent take issue with all your peers there's not one instance
 that i can recall since i've been in this seat that there's been a kind of a crossfire amongst
 the council not one and i get it that i'm the first one to sit in this seat that looks like me
 and so there's a different management style and i get it that people will dismiss that and say
 that's not part of it but i'll say if everyone else is entitled to their opinion i should be
 entitled to mine and i'm just saying that's a uniqueness that i've noticed that there's no
 crossfires anywhere else and again some of that comes with the job i'll take it but also i'm just
 pointing out statistical anomalies if you will so and i'm just saying psychologically and emotionally
 when you are when you are supposed to be summarizing and that's why i used the term
 yesterday summaries the mayor summarizes the idea of taking little extra little things that
 doesn't necessarily need to be said but just summarize what we have discussed and let the
 vote do it do what it does there's no need to add any extra dismissiveness the tone of dismissiveness
 i think this is a great place to put this right here because that's where i'm going to put it and
 i don't have any feelings you probably ever hear me say i feel i feel i feel i leave that at home
 that's in my car that's out the door well this is what i think and i have gotten feedback from
 some folks about that and so i think that it's okay it's okay that's your style but if people
 keep telling you the same thing you need to listen to these people nobody has a personal problem with
 you it just has to do with pushing our ideas for and letting it go ahead and let that vote
 be what it is and you just need to summarize what we said and you have your thoughts and feelings
 about whatever but if it just feels like you're dismissing everybody else and oh and then i have
 a problem with that i've already spoken to you in private about that and i want to make sure that we
 stay publicly i think that everybody needs to understand that we've had we need to have this
 conversation and i think that and i think that it does bring a certain uh a certain amount of
 contention yeah we're not going to solve that right i know we're not going to solve it but i
 just wanted to lay it out there and i'm done with it so part of the beauty that uh compels each of
 you to choose to run for office is your own motivations right why you chose to run why you
 chose to run again why you stay in office it's about giving back to the community it's about
 feeling good about what you're doing on behalf of residents it's sometimes it's a it's you know some
 people have a job some people have a career some people have a call so the motivations each of you
 have uh is both the source of strength and it can also be one of those areas that's a blind spot
 you all have lots of passion about this community i mean it's evident from last night today and the
 meetings i've watched the conversations i've had with each of you lots of advocacy lots of support
 tremendous amount of energy and enthusiasm and passion about what you're trying to do
 at the same time everything's done within the public domain so all that you used this word
 yesterday counselor counselor beck which is a good word all the tendencies of this governing body are
 amplified because they're all done within the sphere of the public meeting i watched a few of
 your council meetings on i think they go uh from my observation there's an on and on and on and on
 and on it seems as though there's a tendency so please just receive this in the spirit that i
 i offer it there seems to be the notion that everybody wants to be right and everybody wants
 to have their last word in that's going to be tough to sustain going forward because um that
 is just going to i think reflect where there's a clash and then you do turn into politicians
 and i want to be right about this and i don't agree with her and i gotta tell her like right
 now or i gotta tell him right now so i would encourage all of you i say this to all groups
 think about what it means to be a professional elected official what are those attributes what
 are those behaviors what are those choices absolutely some things are going to spill over
 like we've just had right but part of the challenge that you have is you don't have the community is
 not going to wait until you resolve the personal disputes those issues just are banging on the door
 saying what are we going to do about it right so if you can accept some dysfunctionality without
 it making it worse than matrimonious that's going to be part of an elected office that's not unique
 to denton i mean most cities have those issues but i think it's that you know valor is the better
 part of the discussion and saying there are times i'm going to say something they're going to get
 their consequences for that and there are times i'm not going to say something maybe i'm not going
 to call somebody out or i'm not going to say that because we all have those tendencies and sometimes
 there's just a collision and i would hope that you reflect on that as a governing body and how you
 want to make sure that not only what you do but how you do it is above approach doesn't mean you're
 not going to dip your toe into sometimes saying something to people but forgiveness is an act of
 kindness in a sense of humility and sometimes in public office it's in short supply so i just offer
 i'm not trying to lecture to you i'm just trying to share with you just some things to think about
 in public office okay just some things to think about because there is a lot of tremendous pressure
 on each of you but diamonds are made under pressure and so make sure that doesn't shrink you but you
 ride pressures of privilege and so you chose to be in office and there's a high expectation of
 residents of this community about what you're doing and how you're doing it and you want to live up
 to that people want to be proud of you does that mean you're not perfect but how you allow some of
 that conflict if it just festers and blisters and pops it's not healthy for you it's not healthy
 for other people just not mayor you got something and we're about out of time because for lunch so
 if you want to chair and then counselor then counselor i'll just be short and succinct i go
 look at the last two meetings and i've stopped summarizing so i would just expect credit where
 credit's due right that's that's it thank you um i uh i i acknowledge um council member bird's
 concerns i think that those are valid concerns that we need to address but um in the interest of
 kind of staying on topic and keeping this moving forward i would like to return to
 some points that were brought up by mayor pro tem and council member davis
 first when it comes to covid response i think it's important for us to clarify what we're talking
 about there because i think that there are times when we say covid response and we mean economic
 recovery and there are times when we say covid response and we mean public health concerns and
 the implementation of those two different types of covid response are very different so i think
 that it's worth bifurcating that and maybe um talking about covid response both in the context
 of fostering economic vitality and then separately um i love um council member armenter's point about
 viewing public health and safety in a holistic sense having covid response be part of of supporting
 public health and safety as well as um you know our our fire department our police department
 talking about traffic safety in in as part of that conversation talking about a public health
 coordinator as part of that conversation talking about mental health and addiction as part of that
 conversation i i really like that framing of it i would also like to um i third the points that
 mayor pro tem and council member davis made about our current council priority number two developing
 the loop 288 building we are like we're on that road it's happening and so i think now is the time
 to zoom back out and maybe amend that priority to rather than being about the loop 288 building
 being about homelessness addressing homelessness um i do think that homelessness and affordable
 housing are big enough issues they're urgent enough issues and they're complex enough issues
 that it merits having sort of two separate priorities a priority for affordable housing
 and a priority for um addressing homelessness i would like to suggest that we also zoom out a bit
 on um council priority number four developing a comprehensive solid waste management strategy
 i think we should consider that as being part of our broader priority of sustainability initiatives
 of which we have many and solid waste is one of them and we can dig into the details of those
 another time but um i think that just this solid waste management strategy falls under
 the broader umbrella of of our many sustainability initiatives that we need to kind of integrate
 for uh for staff notes uh i just i completely concur with with everything just council member
 said i i think um two things that this is something that sarah brought up earlier is this uh this concept of the higher order
 networking and i think that's where we're seeing sort of a little bit of disconnect here
 not a disconnect we needed additional connect to to jump off of sarah's comment and and i i think
 this is where that this public health aspect gives you that connectivity to these different disparate
 mobility you know it gives you a channel to connect mobility and comprehensive planning and public health
 safety traffic that that arctic you're looking for an arctic category over arctic category that
 connects broadly across i i would say it even hits organizational excellence because for the last
 sort of how long has it been 18 months uh and three different councils make-ups um we've been
 we've been clashing with this concept of well we don't have the public health authority to do xyz
 because we simply lack that we have not assigned ourselves a public health authority so i think you
 can fit public health into into this organizational excellence category as well uh it does tells with
 uh what council armature said um if we simply give ourselves a low-hanging fruit of it's extremely
 low-hanging fruit of saying what is our public health authority don't leave it gray and nevertheless
 don't you know if it's going to be the county it's going to be dr richardson
 then assign it bam that's dr richardson if it's going to be one of us or not one of us but someone
 on staff a public health coordinator i love this idea uh going forward um but the that then i think
 you can really begin to commit a lot of dots even amongst the organizational excellence if you say
 this is the role and here is the authority that we as a council have imbued it with and under the
 laws of texas yeah i'm gonna kind of piggyback and kind of i think add one under organizational
 excellence i think that and i'll say i have a healthy skepticism of exercises like the one
 we're we're doing now the the i made a joke on facebook last night about trust falls when you
 said the word kaleidoscope earlier i just about lost you know like i have a healthy skepticism
 about the team building exercise in a political body but i think we can see that this particular
 team needs to work on some particular areas and i think a council if uh we're going to talk about
 meetings and agendas and uh mechanics later on i don't think that the council's issue is necessarily
 mechanics i think that's part of it and we're mechanically structurally not the best setup
 for some of the things we need to do running efficient meetings moving the ball forward
 focusing on what's important and not getting off in the weeds i think it organizational excellence
 priority may need to include council efficiency and effectiveness and that can include relationships
 with each other that can include strategies we use outside of council meetings to attempt to
 influence our our peers um you know it's really difficult to make decisions when you worry that
 there might be a protest outside city hall in five minutes if you don't make exactly the right decision
 it's difficult to make decisions if you feel like there might be a a mean tweet or something about
 it later on and um i'm not really interested in the the hocus pocus of it you know the the trust
 falls and everything i am interested in the dynamics of the group and developing shared
 respect for each other and because that will shorten our meetings by hours if we can have
 some trust with each other if we're not behaving in certain ways outside of the meetings that will
 move that will uh improve staff's ability to respond to what a sometimes schizophrenic group
 wants to do if we can figure out strategies for developing consensus among ourselves
 so i think uh to council member bird's point and also to the mayor's point i think that we
 need to look in the mirror sometimes and i think that ought to be a priority we're not the first
 council in denton to have this problem and we are on track to be the first of the one among many
 many many more going forward if we can't figure out how to make this body lead this city out of
 schizophrenia and into focus first of all i think you're giving trust falls short shrift
 if y'all want to do some at lunch i'm fine that's fine yeah i i concur with that i think the
 the essence of it is this if we can really embrace the fact that we have an opportunity this year
 and i take the mayor's point very uh seriously we have this year for sure if we can if we can
 really embrace the fact that we haven't that we're we we went through all this trouble and hassle
 and anxiety to get to sit in these seats and we have an opportunity to make the city better
 this year and that all of us are here to do that you know if we can focus on where we can find
 shared purpose and not score points off each other it's just a precious opportunity
 and uh it'll be gone before you know it so i think we focus there a lot of the rest takes care of
 itself remember inspiration as an exploration so you have to translate energy into action
 ideas and implementation what we tried to cover this morning was quite a bit of terrain in the
 time that was allowed for this from the micro to the macro from macro to the micro from bike lanes
 to addiction centers from new buildings to uh what's on the horizon what we're going to do now
 is uh be partnering with staff we're going to take all these notes in the note states up
 and refresh this strategic plan these items underneath the six priority areas and that'll
 be brought back to you i'll recap some of that but that'll be brought back to you uh in september
 for your reconsideration right so we can't and i should have mentioned this last night i apologize
 i didn't you're not going to be walking out of the door this afternoon where this is all tied up in
 a bow and it's nice and neat and you know exactly your time is better invested on those issues that
 you just discussed not getting down into when does that happen and how do we want to make that happen
 the instructions so what we're going to do now is i'm going to it's at 12 10 we validated 30
 minutes for lunch if you're going to step out of the building just be back we can reconvene
 at about 12 45 it's going to be a few extra minutes lunch is in the break room there's plenty
 of places you can eat in the building or outside or where have you but if you do we can just be back
 it is 12 48 and we are back it is still saturday august 21st uh and uh so we're we're all back so
 i'll turn it back over to uh to uh patrick is that right yes there we go got it right okay
 thanks mayor yes and i'm going to transition over to sarah we're actually on slide 14
 on city council committee discussion so we're going to tag team a little bit of this she's
 going to review it and then we're going to have a conversation we've allocated up to 30 minutes
 for this we don't need to take the entire time with the group doesn't believe it needs to take
 that much time so sarah so i'll go ahead and just tee up this conversation um this is a follow-up
 from a approved one-minute pitch back in june from the mayor in regards to taking a fresh look
 at the council committees and really allow for council to have a discussion do you want to
 continue with the same number and format of your council committees are there some that you want
 to take a look at and maybe alter or change and maybe just delete and have those items come
 straight to city council in the interest of all of your time as well as city staff so what we did
 to provide information for this discussion is in tab 9 there is a bigger 11 by 17 material that
 outlines each of the committees the current members how often they meet the purpose of those
 council committees so all of that information is there and i also kind of summarized it here on
 slide 15 just to note that council appointee performance review committee it is established but it has not met
 i think in at least a few years so it does exist but those council appointee reviews have been going
 through the full city council and to help your discussion staff suggested some committees that
 we feel where items could come back to the full city council and potentially skip that additional
 process or step of going to a council committee first and bringing them right back to full city
 council or through alternative ways so kind of the options that we have forward again you can add to
 if you'd like to and these are just some things suggested by city staff so one option would be to
 retire the council airport committee just refer any airport items to the full city council
 a second option that we looked at is to retire the audit and finance committee and how it is
 currently composed and have all those finance items come back to city council we know you all
 are very interested in hearing about those finance items but as far as the audit committee or audit
 you know how we're reviewing things from internal audit the internal auditor wanted to take an
 opportunity to maybe look at different options with you and bring those forward as part of her
 new work plan and how those items get potentially reviewed whether that be continuing with a council
 committee maybe a different board or committee before they come forward to city council and then
 lastly another option would be to retire committee on community engagement while we really enjoy those
 sessions we do feel like we could give some updates to all of city council through a memo
 format which we have been doing throughout coven as we've tried to reduce the number of public
 meetings that we've had but we know this is critical and important to be communicating
 and engaging our community but one that we thought might be an option where we could handle our
 alternatively there's one more oh and yes one more um and this sorry this is kind of a blend
 of a council committee and a planning and zoning committee is the development code review committee
 is another option that could be looked at if those any code and potential code amendments just
 come straight to city council instead of going through that hybrid council committee planning
 and zoning committee so we're happy to open up the discussion i'm gonna have patrick help to
 facilitate this discussion as well yes councillor okay so i'll just go through the options and i'll
 call the the development code review committee option d looking at the yeah so uh so option a
 now i'm not on the airport committee but as somebody who's not on that committee you know as
 far as i know until proven otherwise i'm fine with that coming before all of council
 and retiring that committee for option b i am on the audit and finance committee
 and uh i i am fine having everything come to council uh and i would really uh be interested
 to hear you know when the time comes what the suggestions that you know eternal auditor had i
 heard and you know and what you said a hint of impossible or maybe i misread that but uh you know
 some sort of a community committee or something like that and so that sounds exciting to me so
 i trust that you know she'll come back with some interesting ideas um and uh option option c or
 actually i'll do that last um option d i like the idea of of having uh that is a development code
 changes come forward to council uh all of council together uh i'm maybe someone can talk me out of it
 you know but i know that um and i've never been on that committee uh but under the this is a
 previous council because i remember keely being on there at the time and i think she was on that
 committee right um and uh and i remember there was you know some discussion we were having where it
 was it was keely it was john ryan i forget who else was on that committee but they had a much
 more in the weed it had come before council after coming before that committee and they had a much
 more in the weeds discussion of the details of what we were discussing and so there was a lot
 that was redundant uh for them and i am redundant for staff too presumably so um i i'm fine with
 that coming before all council c is the one i'm i'm generally torn with i really don't i genuinely
 don't know so on the one hand the committee on community engagement i'm i'm on that committee
 you know the thing that i love about that committee is it it well number one all of the staff that's
 sitting around at the table which is that's also a disadvantage of it right because that's time
 they're spending there not doing other things um but uh i i feel like staff is not just there to um
 you know it can inform council on things but i also see a lot of times on that committee staff
 from different areas of community development say tech services and and uh you know public relations
 or uh that are already kind of in touch with each other but having everybody sit around at the table
 it's a really nice group dynamic um i feel like the kind of things we discuss on that committee
 are things that would that be otherwise just updates in the friday report um that uh because
 we're as council members we're so busy fielding you know complaints and concerns from members of
 the community uh about you know there's a pothole in my street you know you know why don't you have
 you know this kind of ordinance uh that um i'm i'm unlikely to take the time to find out and sit down
 and talk with a person on so exactly how is the 311 rollout going to be you know handled i'll just
 see an update but then so i i really appreciate taking the time and these things being forced to
 take the time but i could be convinced if as long as i know that some of them would would come to
 council and not we'd not just be updated on them because they're so important um i i would be open
 to that uh that committee being being dissolved too that's all council davis yeah i think it's
 it's important and i don't know if we can do this today or not but i think it's important for us to
 kind of decide as a group what our consensus for the role of these committees is if they're working
 committees for instance like we heard some examples already but on on my committee the community
 partnership committee we're looking at nuts and bolts budgets right like we're going through
 and allocating a set amount of money to many different worthy projects and there's there's
 some heavy lifting to do there and then we bring forward a recommendation to the council
 the committee on the environment does some of that same kind of stuff if it's a working committee
 that's bringing forward a recommendation and the rest of the council is comfortable accepting the
 recommendation and using that as a starting point then a committee can be very very useful
 i'm i'm very wary of the idea of scrapping a committee that then ends up in extra work
 sessions for council or more opportunities for council to disagree and not not find any consensus
 because we don't have a kind of a common starting point we're either spending our time in committee
 or spending our time in council if we are trusting of our committee members in our committee process
 that can be a big efficiency for everybody that we're kind of dividing the work
 and to that point like for instance at dcrc i'm not not quite sure how it took on the controversy
 that it did but if we're talking about different kinds of zoning in the city if we're talking about
 wanting to accomplish some policy goals through development code revisions a committee of folks
 that can talk about between the pnz and the council a committee of folks who can say listen
 i can tell you that's not going to go at council we need to revisit this idea and what does pnz
 think and that back and forth that's a very productive working group for some of the things
 that we're talking about doing so i'd prefer to keep that one but for any of these that are kind
 of on the chopping block i'm all about skipping meetings and not having superfluous meetings
 but if we think that there's some if it's a committee that does heart heavy lifting
 and brings forward something to council that council that can can start a hundred yards down
 the field instead of i'm going to mix up metaphors i'm going to stop somewhere you know and there's a
 home run in there someplace so if it can start us off ahead because the work's been done in committee
 that has utility and usefulness if it's looking at something that is going to be on an agenda for
 council two weeks from now and it's going to be just as cut up and just as changed around or
 just as much only checking an update box at council then there's not a purpose
 and having it come to committee first if that makes sense
 yeah very very helpful framing comments uh i'll just kind of tick from my list i imagine you're
 keeping score uh runs whatever um so council pointy performance review committee and i guess
 it's a cleanup thing to just formally get rid of it if it's worth the effort if it's not creating
 a problem on the airport committee having served on that it's just it's uh it's controversial
 approximately zero percent of the time so i just don't think it adds value but but there's more to
 say than just it would go straight to council it would be there's that other airport committee
 right that's the the resident board yeah so i just say enough let it go to them i'm interested in
 their recommendation you know and and and and those recommendations from you know other bodies
 have weight with me i don't always agree with them but you know at least lets me know eyes have been
 on it so i'm comfortable with that on community engagement i think it can serve a valuable function
 better than it has there you know i'm as vulnerable to this as anybody else probably more so
 there is an irresistible human impulse to correct someone else's copy and you know everybody's an
 art director but i think what would would be valuable would be earlier in the process to to
 to vet here's here's the objective here's the target audience here are the messages not not to
 have us be you know a creative review committee because you know we're no better at it probably
 worse at it than than y'all so you know to agree up basically on on creative strategy target objective
 target and message and you know there are some things where if it's a super sensitive
 item it may be just a mat like a letter where it could potentially be
 uh you know cause controversy or if you want another set of eyes to go okay we think our
 constituents will absorb this message well or not i think it can be potentially helpful to you that
 way too so i'd say just a different way to use it on audit and finance uh uh 97 percent of the time
 that's not controversial uh the finance items i mean it's really very ritualistic you know we
 kind of trust you all the oversight is very important but i think i can't go straight to
 council the audit items generally our trust level is so high that they're it's incredibly
 interesting but hearing it once is good enough however very occasionally there are very occasionally
 they're partially contested or or you know non-concurrent items in the audit report and
 i would say it doesn't have to meet very frequently to cover this but i would say if there are items of
 non-concurrents have that go to that committee just to kind of hash it out hear about it and
 maybe get it resolved you know before it comes to council i i would propose that uh on uh uh code
 development review committee i mean i you know i objected you know on the creation but i've kind
 of made my peace with it and i'm interested in whether those who are on it are finding it productive
 and that they're you know being able to hash out complex issues i mean and whether staff finds it
 helpful i'm i'll just say i have an open mind and on agenda committee i i think it would be helpful
 if instead of having a long meeting once a month if we had short meetings weekly before the agendas
 go out to go here's an issue there's an issue you know mayor just a simple one that i know you or i
 would have caught uh we spoke about it briefly when we already had agreement on the packages for uh
 the judge and the auditor like that could have gone to consent like just little things like that
 i think we could like be that extra set of eyes and you know catch things like that so uh that
 those are my thoughts oh i very much lost my train of thought um well i i was going to um ask you know
 i think that council member davis's framing is really helpful um you know let's ask ourselves
 which of these committees are um really doing work in their meetings that would not be a smart
 use of time in a full council meeting um and i've i've never been in an audit and finance committee
 meeting so i would love to hear um from folks who are on that committee um if you feel that you are
 hashing things out and doing work in those committee meetings that would be an unwise to address
 or or perhaps not an efficient use of time if we address them in full council meetings
 yeah i mean i think i think i just spoke to that and same yeah not not so much okay
 um all right yeah then that i guess that answers my question on that um uh i'm i'm i'm again i've
 never served on the airport committee um but uh my general sense is that that's something that could
 you know either come before full council or be referred to the the citizen um airport advisory
 board um i would say that the the um i yeah let's go ahead and remove the council point
 d performance review committee because we're doing that in full council already um
 i would prefer to keep the uh the dcrc um i i think that that um the the development code
 needs um quite a few revisions and um that's probably going to be a timely process especially
 with you know the new comp plan coming out the updates to the mobility plan we're going to need
 to sort of update the dcrc in order to match that and it's going to be a lengthy process and
 it would take um an enormous amount of time i think if full council were to address those changes i
 think that needs to be addressed in in a committee um yeah that's my piece okay thanks council
 uh i think the uh thank you uh the i think the framing that that uh councilor mcguire and davis
 were talking about is is the really important one is and to some degree mayor protem as well that
 you know are are you doing work that we otherwise would gloss over in a friday report or in the time
 commitment that we have for a tuesday meeting and and well while i'm technically on two of these
 committees that are uh being reviewed uh the one that i have um not direct familiarity but but
 conversational familiarity with is the dcrc and it does seem like we need that that lift that that
 detailed push um at least from talking with others um on both council and p and z side
 uh so i i wouldn't be in favor of getting rid of that just because council isn't simply going to
 spend an entire work session talking about you know frontage you know distances or something
 whereas this committee might um i the the the big thing for me is the pros and cons i mean are we
 are we contributing i i don't want to have staff to have two meetings where they say the same thing
 with the same slide deck if you're going to do that there's no point to that um and and so unless
 there's going to be substantive differences uh i i concur with mayor protem i think it's probably we
 could send airport to the airport uh uh citizens committee um uh i i i don't know it sounds like
 for mayor protem that only very rarely do we get into the audit and finance weeds so my i guess my
 suggestion is keep it but can we do that ad hoc and say this is an item that we're likely to need to
 refer to committee and therefore you know i mean i don't what are the pros and cons of not having a
 standing time slot i know for zba because they don't have a time slot and they're a little bit
 ad hoc you have attendance issues now i think that won't be an issue for council we are here
 whether we want to be or not sometimes so i think that that probably would solve itself
 whereas zba you can understand that that's all they they might meet once or twice a year
 um uh so i don't think we will suffer from that but i i would maybe recommend that we do that ad
 hawker as needed maybe not dissolve it but just only as needed um and i guess uh i will i will
 take others recommendations in the community engagement it seems like it's a really important
 thing to do but if i guess again if we're not doing heavy lifting if you're gonna do the same
 thing twice i concur with everyone else that said that i don't want to do that again and again and
 again um if we're not going to dig in and really you know do some heavy lifting as counselor davis
 said i i think that anything when we're not doing that we should uh we should do so but i i think
 we do that regularly or at least i see it they don't haven't met very much because of covet i
 guess but the dcrc seemed to have done that in the past and i don't see the expectation why they
 wouldn't do that once we resume more normal meetings um so i guess that's my point on that
 thank you briefly so i support staff's recommendations uh to do away with those four for
 the following reasons succinctly um the um you look at the number of meetings we have 37 meetings
 scheduled in 2021 as a council you look at these boards that they've referenced and even if you go
 back to 2018 i mean i think the high water markets eight maybe nine meetings and that's 18 you know
 you can look at 2019 as well and see some they're just not meeting with enough frequency to to
 warrant the amount of work that staff has to do and it is repetitive and it is not a consensus so
 then you run the risk of having a three two hour meeting only to come back to council and get
 totally different direction have to scrap the two three hours you spent in preparation scrap the two
 three hours you spent in the meeting throw that all away come back with council direction and
 redo it and then it has to go back through that process again just seems counterintuitive i trust
 staff's analysis to say these are those exposure and then the history of the dcrc as i understand
 it was to prepare for that huge kind of revamp and we're not going to revamp at a great level
 anymore that's going to be kind of incremental changes and so those can be either spun up as
 needed and or just kind of brought to entire council again so that you only have to do it once
 so that body obviously you can look at the number of votes from a council from a p and z perspective
 to a council perspective just look at just to you know compare those and you'll see it's a different
 read and i get it that you're trying to normalize that but at the end of the day it's it's double
 work for for staff and if we're saying we want to be more efficient that way and i think it can come
 to the entirety of council or you can spin this up as needed uh kind of hey call you in and all that
 to say that that stops none of this none of these meetings none of these subcommittees stops anyone
 i can go talk schedule a meeting with city management with a director level and city
 management and pull in whoever i need at any point and every council member has that opportunity so
 you're you're able to avail yourself of the information at whatever level you want to it just
 requires you to commit a little time independently and a little forethought independently which is
 which is great right because you can drill down into what you want to hammer out and kind of
 carry that forward and i think that is a better use of time because it has some specificity to it's
 like hey i want to understand these things better i want to get more information about these things
 and it's kind of targeted versus assembling a kind of whole committee you got to post it you
 got to send out notifications etc etc for something that happens as infrequent as these i think we can
 be just as effective uh but but taking a surgical approach to it thanks uh yes i am in agreement with
 the city staff uh option a uh i every time i go to to look at see what's going on with the committees
 they're always counseled so uh you know always counseling their meetings so i've never been to
 i've never had an opportunity to even review what they've what they had been working on and
 what they are going to work on so that can go um retire the audit i kind of want to
 just have in my mind i want to keep that from a risk management perspective i appreciate her
 coming in and telling us some of the some of the needs so i uh would like to and i can probably
 just go online and read it i don't know if that's necessarily for it to come but i think just giving
 the opportunity to speak back and forth on our audits uh yes the finance committee maybe so that
 can go internal uh auditor again um keep the audit if we can uh retire the committee on
 community engagement reviews and considers environment no um we where am i community
 engagement there it is advisors regarding the timely distribution distribution of information
 that didn't citizens and advised methods of engaging didn't citizens in the city government
 i feel like that's what we have to do i think that that is something that we should keep
 i think that is my angle i think i've uh even said have mentioned that kind of time and time again
 that i'm speaking to the people i want to educate them and let them know what we're what we want to
 do going on the information uh propaganda point to let them know how we're doing and what are we
 doing i know that the city has a great uh website and i've seen the videos i've learned so much from
 the videos but is how effective is that when they're still asking questions are they going
 themselves and what about their city council person coming before them saying hey this is
 the topic that we're working on so i won't go too far into that but i appreciate the community
 engagement um committee uh i have down here keep the uh development co-review and and it's so
 connected with the planning and zoning committee i just i wish you watch you on that but i'm going
 to say keep that okay so that's my opinion thank you sure a second way to look at the role of
 committees too is it is and this is how some of them came to be in the first place it does say
 something about the policy areas where we're putting emphasis on a council you know what we
 as a council things we find important and if we follow staff's options a b and c what we're left
 with i i think is a a good clear policy statement emphasis statement about what this council
 and future councils are focused on and ought to be focused on indent right now i have thoughts on
 agenda committee i'll save for later when we talk about agenda setting but environment community
 partnership mobility and smart development and i think those are really good clear emphatic
 statements of you know what if we're going to have to sit through an extra meeting if we're
 going to use staff time if we're going to do the heavy lift and get into the weeds those four areas
 are the ways that we're going to spend that time i think that's a that's using option a b and c
 and i think that's a good clear statement from this council and how we want to prioritize what we do
 we don't have i need to i need more direction this is not clear direction i mean i i hear
 you know i could go this way but um i need more direction for us to literally figure out i i
 think there's consensus on the airport we can take that one out okay and i think there's
 it's kind of uh more that say you know they're okay with the audit and finance going away but
 being able to when there's items of non uh concurrence that they should be able to call it
 back but is that right am i hearing that right that was my point of view i don't know if others
 agree i mean for me i'm fine with i mean i agree that items of non-concurrence are important
 i'm fine with those coming before council uh because we are going to bring all that and you
 know as you all know madison's really good we work really well together she's going to bring all that
 anyway to you um and finance we bring all those things to you as well um on c uh the community
 engagement i will say um that is a heavy lift for our staff to prepare the documents for it
 could that be a possible maybe for quarterly and that's the new schedule that was just adopted so
 it may work to do just just do leave it as quarterly and recently we've been doing more
 just quarterly updates so here's the projects we're working on seeking any feedback so we're
 happy to continue that if council would like to and then the dcrc i just want some clarification
 because i'll just be honest with you i talked to scott mcdonnell about it just to see what his
 thoughts were and he said that on that when we were thinking about forming there were at least
 two council members that said this is all going to come before council anyway why are we separating
 it out and that most the important things are going to be something that council needs to decide
 so i'm i'm we're at the mercy of what you really want to do on that one
 um but most of those items even though they'll be discussed in the committee will go before council
 counselor and steward had something so a couple things one um it might help you or i don't know if
 it would uh for us to do a kind of raise hands if you want to see just like a kind of up down who
 would be okay with doing away with it because maybe some of my um you know maybe i was doing
 so much talking that the point was was was not clear because i i wasn't sure about committee
 retiring committee on community engagement i could see the ups and downs but you know listening to
 everybody thinking it through um i'm really okay with doing away with that uh that that committee
 you know one thing that um maybe could happen if um when i mean as uh uh forget if it was uh
 mayor or council member davis who said uh that uh you know council members can always you know take
 up an issue with staff anyway i would say if if there's an issue a community engagement issue or
 any issue that staff would like council feedback on um but not so much in the sense of having a
 meeting on it but just is everybody okay you know here's the flyer we're going to be putting out
 because i agree with what council member melcher had said you know it's um sometimes seeing things
 on their kind of earlier end um you know can uh can be nice to just get more eyes on it sometimes
 it cannot necessarily stall up stall the process but maybe just in a friday report have it you know
 staff would would love council's feedback if you want you know send this person i mean i think you
 you guys do that anyway you know send this person a note by this date you know uh maybe an email
 reminder if you're not hearing from anybody yeah i think um another thing that we have just started
 to do with all of you is to do monthly meetings yes um with the cmo and each council member so if
 there are questions or you see like hey i'm getting a lot of feedback that we're missing
 communications on that that's another avenue where we can monthly discuss um some of those topics as
 well yeah i was just going to mention i i heard a lot of you uh about option b say you'd be
 interested in what that would look like just to let you know in talking with madison uh her plan
 if y'all decided to do that today or gave direction to do that today would be to take kind of those
 options to the audit finance committee on friday uh for that meeting and then be able to discuss it
 and then come to the full council to kind of discuss it further so i just wanted y'all to know
 kind of what that the mechanism of that would kind of look like for the audit side yeah for
 the audit side of it we did here to eliminate the pointy performance review we got that one
 and the airport we got that one it's the others that we might want to do yeah to sort of try to
 adjust and you know find consensus uh the idea that the non-concurrence items on audit could
 come to full council that's fine too i'm not like super dug in on that and on uh community engagement
 if if if it's just something you feel you're doing for us i don't need that if if if what i
 was laying out was something that you know i would be willing to do if it would help you but if it's
 if you don't need it or you don't see any value in it please don't yeah i can read an update is
 you know in the friday report and give input if i really have a concern so if that helps all right
 let's get a sense then uh the agenda committee yes keep i don't think i don't think option a
 so are you asking for what are you yeah that's the airport okay thumbs down if you don't want the
 airport airport committee so we don't want okay thumbs down i don't want the air
 option b you support it keep it do you support retiring it so that would be so are we raising it
 wait we're trying to summarize right that's what we're trying to do we're struggling with that
 just just curious okay go ahead option b is to retire the audit finance committee do you
 support retiring it raise your hand if you do if you support and then the dcrc
 i want to keep that keep it okay we're keeping the dcrc okay all right thank you that was easy
 or sort of all right it was easy because you told us you need a direction yeah it was easy once you
 told us you needed direction yeah right out to us that we had not reached consensus yeah i just
 i couldn't tell and i didn't want to make that decision and then everybody go that's not what
 we said that was very helpful very helpful honestly was very helpful and i wish we had
 more elements of that in our regular meetings to be honest well i'll do it just don't give me the
 dirty look ever sarah or you can it be all right okay so we're going to roll right into the next
 section and this is not going to take a full hour these next few slides are really just more
 informational and it'll kind of set up getting into the discussion of the one minute pitch
 and how do we how does council consider requests from fellow council members and how does that then
 get on the agenda so i'll just go right into it um this is just for background and informational
 purposes of what it takes to create an agenda we should create an agenda and any item on an
 agenda so it's at least six weeks of a process from start to finish at least to get an item
 onto the agenda it usually takes a lot longer than that so just walking you through an example
 we're going to put something on i don't have a pointer sorry on the june 22nd agenda and you're
 walking it back by that friday before we have to post the agenda to meet tomo requirements
 two to three days prior to that we have to have it in legistar so it's going through an approval
 sequence and it goes through multiple reviews of that approval sequence to make sure that the
 department director has seen it the cmo has seen it and as well as legal and finance if that item
 has any legal or finance components and then if it's a work session item we generally as the cmo
 we do dry runs and every work session presentation try to do that two weeks in advance so that if
 there are any major changes it's not clear we're not presenting clear options clear recommendations
 that we're making those adjustments so by the time you've seen an item it's likely gone through
 a dry run at least once or twice and it may have gone through boards and commissions and committees
 as well stepping back even further than that it's reviewed by the agenda committee
 and then even further back we need to take into time that legal has a chance to review all of the
 items and ensure that they're ready to go and to prepare the ordinances the resolutions the
 agreements and so forth so it it takes at least a few weeks for that process with the agenda items
 and that's just you know there are exceptions to that you know sometimes we need to be flexible
 in that process but we're trying to create what is the best practice to making sure that these things
 are being vetted so that the time it gets to you for consideration you have some trust and confidence
 that this item has gone through all of the reviews that it needs to and that it is ready for your
 final consideration and is in the best shape it can be so that's just some just some background
 about what we do from a staff perspective and a lot of time goes it goes into each one of those
 agenda items for metrics this is going from the calendar year so from January 1 to the beginning
 of August city council has held 31 meetings on average those meetings have lasted six hours and
 24 minutes and then the luncheons are we took that separately so those luncheons are two hours and
 34 minutes cumulatively across those 31 meetings we've had 579 total agenda items and you can see
 underneath they're kind of broken up into the different types of agenda items that have been
 brought forth and this is on council meetings only so we do have 30 other boards commissions and
 committees where we're regularly trying to get the agenda items for those as well through
 and that's just not just to tell you kind of the volume of work that is done to make sure that
 we're preparing these for you we definitely shouldn't take two and a half hours for lunch
 if that's what you're saying i knew you were somebody's gonna say that
 so what we what we've done and to try to better manage what's on each one of those meetings and
 the length of it make sure you're not overloaded is to create that work session matrix we've had
 this for a long time but we've recently revamped it and on tab seven it shows what is our current
 work session topics and meeting information and the cmo and entire director leadership team
 we review this every week as well as our upcoming city council agendas and so we're constantly
 trying to make sure that we're balancing those items that are time-sensitive those that are
 council priorities the normal city business items that just need to go forward on a schedule such
 as the budget i've been really kind of slotting in where we can and we do seek the advice of the
 agenda committee on this as well as we're working through but you can see all the way through
 october and even into november we're full on work sessions and some of these will change may change
 somewhat but even if you look on september 14th as an example we have quite a few hefty work sessions
 there we still need to add in a coven 19 update based on the circumstances so it may be that an
 item has to be pushed back two weeks or so to balance that better to make sure that we're
 respectful of everyone's time in this room as well as city staff and then as well as the public so
 that they can come be part of those conversations and they're not going to to midnight or past
 so that's just one tool that we've been using and then we're also trying to list out
 in the back their work session dates that still need to be determined as well as work sessions
 that have been approved through the one minute pitch process that still need to be scheduled
 so showing what is outstanding what do we still need to get to that has been approved
 that's just kind of the overview of that matrix tool and let me just say one little thing here
 because it's appropriate to say it so i'll just be so to give you a heads up council member davis
 we're moving and and this is what happens we had a dry run this week on the interactive
 fountain sculpture it's not ready to go i'm i am we never want to bring something forward to council
 that we don't believe is ready to be presented so david and i pulled it and are moving it back a
 little bit because it's not it doesn't do any good to bring you something that's not fully baked and
 so just to give you that that's the other thing that happens on some occasions we do a dry run
 and for many reasons it's not ready to go and we don't want to waste your time or others
 so we push it push it back and that's what happens
 anything else to add there sir no but where you see october 26
 2021 it says city holidays that's actually going to go into leave and other things so actually i was
 wrong it's in it's actually in october the end of october council member maguire i'm sorry what oh
 oh talking about talking about leave that's i have asked her to expand that so it won't just cover
 city holidays it will cover leave and what the mayor had mentioned as well okay great thank you
 so many of the items that you'll see especially coming forward in september october or they have
 council priority listed so we are making a focus to have those items be the priority items and if
 some others whether that be one minute pitch or city business items that could be moved off
 we're trying to be really cognizant of what have been the council priorities to bring those forward
 okay so in terms of scheduling the additional requests i had just kind of walked through that
 that's that one minute pitch work sessions that have been approved that we're listing out on
 that matrix as well and then depending upon the workload to prepare that item which department's
 preparing that we slot those in as we can and accomplish those as we can i know council might
 be also interested in having a discussion about how you rate some of those approved one minute
 pitches in terms of priority to all of you as well so that kind of leads us right into the council
 request well stop and take any questions on the information just presented if i may just an
 observation uh this is the first time i've seen or or maybe first time i've noticed that that
 you all did this exercise of timing out each of the items make up the meeting which i think
 thank you i think it was all kinds of sense that came to that suggestion at one of our tend to
 reviews that thank you very much well uh you know no wonder i think it makes all kinds of sense
 but and my observation is i noticed that you know when mr barra said well we've got 30 minutes to
 cover this item like we're totally capable of doing that you know i mean it can be an effective
 team and i and uh you know i i think it's entirely uh acceptable to me and how others would feel
 you know if the mayor were to say we've allotted 60 minutes on this item you know i think we can
 you know we can work within that framework uh and how it could help us make sure we cover every you
 know everything we need to in a meeting so anyway i just wanted to show that counselor those i agree
 with that i've always said i could play with the shot clock and i think most of our items were
 capable like like you said paul we're very capable of doing that it's just helpful to know kind of
 and have little reminders general reminders as we go we've spent 30 minutes and we intend to spend
 60 minutes on this item let's kind of keep things moving and you know if we get into something that
 needs more time there's nothing that says there can't be more time spent but knowing that we have
 a goal it'll help those of us who like to talk a lot including myself it'll help us remember to keep
 the keep the conversation moving along and that we don't necessarily have to offer every single
 thought we've got like i sometimes do yeah so i'm a little wary about having a total allotted time
 for an individual discussion for for certain for certain more controversial items sometimes we know
 to advance what the controversial items are going to be sometimes we don't know you know my biggest
 problem with that is that it doesn't ensure that people have equal opportunity to speak for an
 equal amount of time so i would be more in favor of and i know this is something that roberts rules
 allows and i'm sure i'll get dinged by this you know but i i would be open to trying it if others
 would too to have in a lot of time and we make a comment um you know to say uh you know it can't be
 more than two minutes three minutes i feel like one minute is too short even though sometimes all
 i have to say is like i you know and some of us will say oh i agree but i think that that having
 a limit for individual contributions uh you know you can you can speak but keep it to three minutes
 whatever um i also have a few other suggestions uh outside of the one minute pitch uh redo process
 that could help possibly make work sessions more manageable and shorter um one you know when we
 look at uh the problem of you know how long our our meetings are uh we're always thinking about
 the council discussion part of it uh and and that is for good reason you know however um you know
 if we look to on certain items maybe having shorter power points and uh kind of focusing more on
 you know the the assumption that we're going to do our due diligence beforehand and read the
 backup you know and can ask questions about anything in the backup um i'm a little wary
 to kind of set a limit and say you know there should be no powerpoint presentation longer than
 10 slides some of them you really need a lot also i understand that the powerpoint presentations
 they're not just for council it's also for the public uh and and i don't expect the public to do
 the uh all of the homework that we have to do right so the power the powerpoints are very well
 done in in that sense but i do think it'd be a good idea to look at those i also feel like every
 once in a while i wish i could think of an example now um maybe someone else can but sometimes there's
 a work session where council is not clear and you know including myself do you want direction from us
 and then the answer is like oh no this is just an update i think that uh a lot of those you know if
 not all of them we could just go without a work session yes you know uh because we do do our homework
 and we do read and that you know and that takes time so i feel like things should only come to us
 if you want direction okay um uh two other issues uh i i would love to kind of pursue coming up with
 a an efficient way of showing agreement with what others have said um because i know that uh staff
 i know the mayor yeah somebody and um each of us are i think we're keeping tabs you know i'll be
 like okay there's one person who you know wants option a there's two there's so i'm kind of keeping
 it tally uh but to do that sometimes we have to have like the way we have it now is you have to
 get in the queue raise your hand yeah i would like uh uh maybe not thumbs up i mean sometimes i wish
 that we had a um on our uh buttons at our computers if there was a way to like you can on social media
 click heart on something you know but a lot of times i'll find myself nodding along with something
 somebody's saying and then i'll think like i hope you know i hope that sarah sees me nodding you
 know that way i don't have to raise my hand and go but it's not fair to expect that you are noticing
 nods or or you know head shaking whatever um i think that sometimes ideas get put forward by
 council members where there it where there might be consensus but because we don't go around the
 horn because it would take too long to take the time okay now each of you speak to what you think
 of that um they these they end up getting lost um so anyway there's that um and then i guess this
 third one is not so much a solution it's just a statement of a problem i wish i had this solution
 to it but sometime and i've been told uh by uh by by friends and allies you know that i tend to
 repeat myself in um uh council meetings i'll state my idea and then i'll state it again a
 slightly different way and then again a slightly different way and sometimes i hear myself doing
 that and um and i don't know why i'm doing that but uh uh when i think about why i'm doing that
 it's it's i think it comes from a worry that i won't be heard um because and i think it's
 it's something that and it's not unique to council it's just i think women especially
 you know sometimes feel just not heard in the world um and you know we each have our own unique
 ways of of dealing with that uh so uh anyway i i think maybe the kind of showing agreement thing
 you know just having a simple way of showing agreement that that would be a way to let people
 know that they're they're heard or even showing i disagree um but uh you know just kind of working
 on listening i myself have to work on listening um and of course you know being more concise
 uh and uh and then i think also the kind of a getting misunderstood issue sometimes
 we attribute and this is actually something that under robert's rules you're not supposed to do
 you know attribute like motives or intent you know you're just saying that because um you know you
 you want to please your your base or or you're you're just you know doing that to make me look
 like the bad guy or something like that um you know we all think these things and we all imagine
 what other people's motives might be but i think if we keep that out of it um and don't attribute
 motives uh to what people are saying or you know just kind of take them at their word i focus and
 i try really hard to just take people at their word uh then maybe people will feel more like
 they're being heard and less like they need to repeat themselves again and again well i was just
 going to address i like your idea honestly and i'm just saying this from a interim city manager
 point of view but i like the idea of if if you could come to consensus on limiting each opinion
 two time two minutes and then you go around two times or something where it's a set thing where
 you you all have agreed that you're going to speak each time two minutes and maybe y'all decide it's
 three times but the shorter powerpoints i can see if you want to you can look at my friends in the
 back and they'll tell you that that is one of my bones of contention that anything more than eight
 slides unless unless there's a lot of information that needs to be shared it's not to me it's not
 going to be fruitful so i'm a big stickler for clear concise and to the point and and then if
 there are questions let the council ask those questions um i've also we are also trying to do
 more updates in the friday report that are not asking for direction because if we're not asking
 for direction and it's just an information bit that can go in the friday report so you'll can
 count on me to to do that and the other thing is um i will try my best to help the mayor and he
 does a good job of it but to keep notes that will help make sure people are heard and that we have
 some information that that basically then helps people say that this person's in agreement this
 person's on the fence this person's not sure you know is not for it so that kind of thing
 councilor davis yeah one of the things we lost with going to zoom that was really unfortunate
 and then now we're trying to get it back together in the in the work sessions that we have on the
 dais that informal where you don't have to queue up it's the flow of the conversation is much quicker
 it's much more constructive and builds on itself so getting back to that in whatever way we can i
 think would be very helpful for work sessions specifically and then when it comes to uh action
 items um we all do it and the only one i can't think of an example of her doing i think council
 member bird i haven't heard you do it yet we ask questions and then give directions with the questions
 or we ask a question and they're like yeah see here's the thing about that question i asked
 here's why i asked it i have a 15 minute reason to tell you about it and i do it all the time
 if we can if we can stick with uh like what the mayor tries to do most of the time the robert
 robert's rules questions then we have a motion and then we have discussion on the motion
 that really helps structure their conversation very very well and then we could even bring
 in the the time limits the two minutes uh don't have to give us a little quick kind of stuff
 and it just structures the conversation in such a way where you don't feel like you have to be
 kind of tit for tatting and answering every question all at once and all that kind of stuff
 so i like a lot of the things you said council member armenter about just the the structure of
 how we do things and i think the time limits make a whole lot of sense um the the power points
 pet peeve of mine is the this is a lot of information i'm not going to read it all to you
 now i'm going to read it all to you and if we can just a little bit of extra coaching sometimes
 for the the dense slides they've read it they don't need you to read it out loud uh these planning
 criteria are the same for every single project we don't have to read them every single project
 i think that'd be helpful
 counselor i'll just follow that quickly uh one thing i when i was you know with my own students
 i would say you know people are going to ask you questions so so give this brief slide and then at
 the end of your slide deck have the detailed slide in case some somebody in the room has questions
 so i i mean you need the detailed slide to figure out what the summary slide is so you know i
 understand staff's impetus to do that and i i agree uh you need that because we're gonna say
 wait how many blah blah blahs fit in a blah blah blah and we're gonna do that but then you're like
 aha slide 30 that i didn't show you sob it's right here so you know and you get a little you'll get
 a little owning of a council member you know it'll feel great uh so then the the other thing that we
 haven't really addressed that i would like to sort of bring up is um a lot of what we're putting in
 the agenda committee and sarah are prioritizing um and some of those priorities slipped because
 of just natural practice that she said earlier and some other things um but i i know some prior
 councils didn't really want to scale but the problem with a flat priority scale means everything
 is of equal importance and then someone is guessing what's the important items and so there may be
 things that it we we say this is cool we would like to address it but we don't have to address
 it right away and in fact sometimes there's verbiage to that effect when we're when we're
 giving ascension or opposition but for instance i'll just use myself as an example um the very
 first meeting of this council i asked for a thing and it's way in the back it's like november or
 something i'm fine with that that we've kicked it down the road because for me it's a lower priority
 item and and i'm i'm not getting all bent out of shape that it keeps getting pushed down there are
 other higher priority items that just have to be addressed and we should bump them up and so i
 personally would be interested in some sort of prioritization uh scale um i think that would
 help us i use this in work all the time i'm in my project management software we got a scale of five
 and you know like and it gets bumped and we we adjust it up and down and as workloads um
 determined and i know i know that that there's there's the the con of that is things getting
 kicked down the road kicked down the road kicked down the road to where they never get addressed
 i i understand that but you know uh there's mechanisms to solve that that we could just
 you know address like okay you know if you kick something down the road then you can't kick it down
 the road twice in a row or something i mean there's other mechanisms where you can avoid
 kicking items down the road on a prioritization mechanism so i would like to see us discuss and
 and at least come to some consensus whether we'd like a prioritization mechanism and if we do want
 one what that would be so that we can say some of these items especially emergency items have to
 come up more quickly you know there's a time sensitivity to some of them so that that would
 be my recommendation thanks um i i just want to i pretty much express agreement with several
 points that have been made um i agree with council member armentor that um items that come before us
 in work sessions that are really just informational in nature um most of the time those could probably
 be um included in the friday report um we are a council that does our readings so you can i think
 you can trust us to actually read the friday reports um i i agree that we need some type of
 efficient mechanism for formally expressing agreement because here i am right now just
 reiterating exactly what deb just said so that it's on the record that i agree um i i i have a
 little more nuance on this one i like the idea of guidelines for how long um agenda items should
 take i appreciate that you've started kind of including those in the matrix um i would love
 to see um those included in the in the agendas and of course you'll see you know some some bodies
 like ours will include like timestamps on their agendas of how long they anticipate that something
 will take um i also appreciate the importance of being mindful of how long we're talking and
 how many times we're talking however i'm not in favor of placing hard limits on that um so maybe
 we could like for example when we have a member of the public speaking and they have a time limit
 or when we're giving a one-minute pitch and they we have a time limit um the the mayor i
 believe it's the mayor that starts the clock and we can see it in front of the the podium um you
 know maybe uh there could be something like that that's like yeah like a shot clock kind of letting
 us know visually maybe on our screens or something how long we've been talking but letting us kind
 of self-monitor that um and and have it be an understood collective goal that we're trying to
 move things along rather than having it be um what it sometimes turns into which is some people
 getting shut down um i think we should focus on self-monitoring um in that way um and i totally
 agree with the the point that council member beck made about a prioritization scale i think that's
 particularly um relevant to our one-minute pitches and you i i've heard some some frustration because
 brian and i both do this that will say like yes i want to move forward with this in a work session
 but i don't think it's that urgent and you're kind of like well there's no there's no mechanism
 for you to take that type of input so as we as we move forward i think we should discuss what kind
 of mechanism that should be for the one-minute pitch uh but i think that we should also maybe um
 explore uh ways for council to give input on the urgency and time uh time sensitivity of
 uh agenda items that are not one-minute pitches as well
 okay councilor bird then mayor pro tem uh i uh i just want to say i'm just going to say this um
 i think that we spent a of a bit more time i think it's we spent too much time agreeing
 with agreeing i think that we uh you know everybody's got their own way of
 their own style of communicating um and i'm not saying that because i'm just not agreeing with
 that i i have been i had been observing that when it's time okay so when it's time to ask questions
 there is there are statements that uh appear you know to be made that they're already making
 the their you know the way that they're going to vote or their idea it's part of the question
 process you you motion second are there any questions and in my experience that's where
 you get to ask your questions and come to you know some idea of which way you're going to vote
 but i had been recognizing a very early on it doesn't even bother me that much anymore uh that
 there's a lot of statements being made with agreeing i agree and i agree with so and so i
 agree with so and so and then so now you already have a feeling that this is the way that i'm going
 to take this in this direction and now it's time for the discussion and then we're kind of going
 back over the same thing that we had already was doing when we were in the question portion
 of the discussion so i know that uh for sure me i spend my question time
 as asking a question or two and then of course i'm gathering information from everybody that's
 giving information uh which um and then at some point we've got to vote well by the time we get
 done with all of the gathering of information and all the questions it almost seems like well what's
 the use of voting we already know which way we're going and we could just kind of raise our hand
 and we're done with it does that make sense to everybody is everybody kind of following along
 okay not um trying to be negative or anything but i think that we just kind of have to narrow
 down some of that and that'll help us move the conversation along to stick with um where we're
 trying to go so i wanted to just put that out there um and then i have something about debating
 um going around when we go around once we have opportunity to make our statements um when we're
 in the discussion phase make our statements and then we go back around it's the same statements
 it's just a reiterating of the same statements or unless that was something that was said prior that
 needed clarification i can understand that but i've been recognizing that it's the same comments
 again and so the mayor i think that he does a great job in trying to make a stay on point
 because he'll say okay okay okay um and then it's someone may want to go you know and reiterate
 again and he'll have to say well we've already been we've already done that twice so uh i don't
 know if we need to come to a consensus that do we need to just go once or are we going to agree to
 go twice or three times also work sessions we're talking about our information given us to work
 sessions and some of the work session uh materials can probably be sent to us on a friday report
 do we really need work sessions or what are work sessions for really for if a lot of the things
 that's being put on you know what's coming in for work sessions now we're saying that they can
 probably just be put in on the friday report why why work sessions other than to just go over the
 agenda and be prepared for you know what's coming up on tuesday so that's what i have to say and
 maybe that i've contributed or not i think that if we can um just be more mindful of our time
 you know like we said we have families at home we have people waiting on us to do things and
 then sometimes we have to turn around i think we had a had a meeting that lasted to 11 45 one
 evening and that was just too late to go round and around and around so um just whatever you guys can
 do whatever you what do you think that we could do to just kind of narrow some of that time down
 then i'm all for it thank you mayor pro tem yeah thank you i don't know if uh y'all noticed how
 many times i hit the like button while you're speaking and i really uh i enjoy so many good
 points that have been raised i'll just make a uh a pitch uh for a modification on the thought of
 yes having you know planned times for a couple reasons to keep us on track but also so the public
 can tell about when are you going to hit this topic i mean i hear that all the time particularly
 when are you coming back in closed session you know i mean they just don't know so i think it's
 helpful for that too but also it's uh say as someone who used to watch too much c-span
 i think in most legislative bodies there's a maneuver where someone can say i move we extend
 the time for debate and then you vote on that and then you can do more so it's never like you know
 you're totally out of gas if there's something that you know emerges that you have to do uh so
 just wanted to add that councilor davis um so vicki i really appreciate your comments because
 what you're describing is called posturing and as somebody who's also watched a lot of c-span
 usually that room is empty it's that member of congress down there making their passion speech
 and pound the table and the people who are watching are all the ones at home who just
 have to be tuned into c-span we all have our communication streams we all have our ways of
 communicating with the people who want to hear from us the people who are watching at home nine
 times out of 10 know exactly how we're going to vote on an item after they've had the discussion
 so if we can limit that and myself included if we can limit that that will move our meetings along
 very very nicely and then to the to the point about um statements and questions and when the
 appropriate time is uh mayor probably remembers a uh a time where that same conversation was had
 with the council four years ago at least at least maybe even five years ago and then council member
 armenter and uh melzer when y'all came on and richard haze came and gave a presentation about
 parliamentary procedure and questions come first and then there's a motion and there's discussion
 so all of these are great observations and really good ideas but we do have to self-regulate we do
 have to stick to that and if the mayor holds us to that format because it's working then we have
 to be okay with that too and say i'm sorry i stepped out i'm not going to make my statement
 i'll hold on to it for later on pardon me mayor yeah just i don't know i don't know if this is the
 right spot for this i just want to get your input patrick you watched the meetings and just where
 did you see the best efficiencies or opportunities for efficiency in the meetings that's that's
 and so if that's not at this point if we're not there yet but i just want to kind of get your
 input on that yeah i think you know you can adopt the policies and practices and some of you have
 said this so i observed uh you know just the what you're doing right now which is i got to let you
 know exactly what i'm thinking somebody else has something else i have to build on what they said
 my concern from a third party is um the longer the process doesn't always generate a better outcome
 so sometimes less is more so my observation would be you're doing it right now you're about the same
 thing you're going back and forth around and around and building and building and building
 and that's okay some of that's harmless that's kind of what today is but this uh if you're doing
 that at the council meetings which i observed i'm not sure the points are going to be continually be
 reinforced if you're just building and building and building and saying well i got to build on
 this or i got to correct him or i got to correct her i got to be the person you're all the experts
 it's how you join together to make those decisions so i think it's you know be mindful of it i mean
 you can create all the timelines you want i've seen this council's do it we're going to create
 two but but then they continually violate it and then if what's the rule of have point of having
 policy if you're always going to amend it and and update it so i think you have to think about the
 habits this group is establishing and which ones are helping you make good decisions and which ones
 you think are holding you back for making good decisions and be willing to say this is what i'm
 going to try to do and this is what i think we need to try to do because i hear a lot of acknowledgement
 of that today but in here this is a little bit we're in isolation it's at your next meeting what
 are you going to do when that item comes up and you feel like you're going to need to say something
 and we all everybody in this room gets that there are times you need to say something for public
 consumption i think that's totally but if it's about everything all the time that's hard to
 sustain when you're not when you feel as though you need to have have to say something all the time
 so when i watched the meeting i watched it about the mobility in particular was one of the things
 that stuck out that was an item that's not even the downward the the oh i'm sorry i can't remember
 it was the dcta thank you and that's an area that's not even kind of part of the repertoire
 of what the city is dealing with right that was an external issue and there was a long discussion
 about an issue that's not even in the necessarily the the backbone of what you're trying to do as
 policymakers i'm not saying disputing the importance of the issue i'm just offering that
 and so if you're going to spend that much time talking about issue in some respects that's
 peripheral to what you're doing as policymakers it's probably indicative of how long you're spending
 time having discussions about things that are near and dear to what you're doing as policymakers so
 you know some cities adopt governance manuals but again it's only as good as the people in
 office that they're going to be willing to live up to this so again i'm not trying to be a debbie
 downer i'm just trying to offer an observation but you're doing it right now which is you're
 going around and around and around so it's okay thanks yeah i mean i i think that's fair and we
 definitely are i'm doing it right now but that's because i we don't have any quick and easy
 mechanism to let sarah know yes i agree that with that point that was just made if i if i
 didn't raise my hand and say i agree with deb that informational sessions should be staff reports i
 agree with deb that we need an efficient mechanism for formally expressing agreement with someone
 then sarah wouldn't know that i think that and she might think that deb is the only person who
 thinks that um so i think that that that efficient mechanism for formally expressing agreement
 without having to be called on and talk about it is really going to be key here i think you're
 going to see changes now that she's having one-on-one meetings with you on a regular basis that she's
 going to get a feel for where you're coming from and you're going to get a feel for where she's
 coming well and i'll ask i'll ask more questions and i'll also um ask the mayor if i can ask a
 point of clarification if i need to uh to say i don't feel like i have uh i don't feel like i
 have the direction or i don't feel like i have a good handle on how everyone feels i'll i'll
 certainly do that council yeah so i want to address um something that that was brought up
 a little earlier um and that is this idea of posturing that some that council member davis
 mentioned you know some people are just posturing um that's a really you know you know toxic
 accusation i i believe that that's a really toxic accusation and kind of in that category of uh you
 know the kind of performative gesture that i mentioned before that is attributing motive
 to people um i i happen to hear a podcast that um you know council member davis did that was of
 course you have every right you know to say these things and have these opinions but um you know
 stating that some of us are just you know posturing playing to our base you know playing to the mob
 um you know there were some you know red baiting jokes in there that were hurtful to me uh and uh
 i i would just prefer that you know if we feel that people are taking too much time talking then
 just say people are taking too much time talking or being repetitive but that we really refrain
 from attributing any kind of motive or lack of sincerity or you know playing political games
 because we really don't know that we can't read minds and hearts i think that and now i'm going
 to get to the um kind of uh you know problem solving idea you know if we if we are concerned
 that people are being repetitive i know sometimes i get repetitive um you know and so say i have my
 hand up right uh maybe you know for uh the mayor to ask you know instead of saying well we are we
 already know where you stand you said it before you know um to say um are you are you going to
 say something new or are you responding to something that another council member has said
 because a lot of times when i raise my hand a second time or a third time it's because i'm
 responding to something that somebody else said to either do that thing that we were just talking
 about registering agreement um sometimes it's because uh a statement i made has been mischaracterized
 and it's not so much that i care about you know protecting my reputation but just for the record
 and for the process i want to say for instance um and a lot of times there's not even any um
 you know uh ill intent in it for instance um it took me saying oh um you know when uh i don't
 necessarily even though i agree with mayor protem on x y and z i don't necessarily think that uh
 items of contention on the audit finance committee have to come before you know uh and so i hate that
 that took up time for me to say that but it was necessary because i think because it seemed like
 there was this agreement there and i just needed to to distinguish that because and then that can end
 up changing you know where the consensus is so i'm not going to um you know defend everything i do
 pretend i'm perfect about it uh at uh the way i i i handled my time in meetings um but uh you know
 sometime but but if we do want to address these issues of of you know if we really feel like it's
 important to say publicly that um you know fellow council members are just playing to the mob or
 posturing or just just trying to rile people up so they'll have a protest um i think we can use that
 kind of couples therapy language of you know when you do this i feel you know when they do this i
 feel is opposed to um they're doing this you're you know you're doing this because
 do you need any more direction on that item or can we move on to the one minute pitch
 um i don't i don't think i absolutely need direction other than i'm going to summarize if
 that's okay um so the actual uh matrix we put that on there so we kind of have an idea
 how the agenda is going to flow especially under work session we try very hard not to overload you
 with a lot of information and have like six presentations that are going to go for an hour
 i mean that is information overload unfortunately it may happen a couple of times so we try to put
 the hour you know how long we think it's going to be for each of those that doesn't mean it's going
 to take that long for you all or it doesn't mean that you can't go beyond that it's just our estimate
 guesstimate the other thing is it um i think what we will do because i think the suggestion is good
 is we'll put on the agenda you know the approximate time that we think it will take and then going
 beyond that is is certainly y'all's privilege we we we just put that on there um we uh i do think
 i took a lot of notes we will work on our powerpoints we will work on not doing anything
 that's not direction oriented um i will try very hard to keep up with um sort of where we are on
 consensus to share with the mayor so he's not constantly having to do that and run the meeting
 it's very hard for him anybody trying to run a meeting to hear you know where they're on the
 schedule trying to make sure this listening to everyone else and then every once in a while i'm
 trying to give him some information so i'm probably taking away from his um i do like the idea of
 prioritization schedule i think that will help us so when you get an item that someone wants to see
 on there um if there's a way to say you know it's a five on the list it's not a top two and whatever
 if that's what you all want to talk about um and decide and the only thing i would say is the mayor
 has mentioned this um and i know he tries to share with you if it's gone around once or twice and
 sometimes we end up going around three or four times i would just ask if not time but maybe an
 understanding of if you get your chance to give your comments and then there's another chance to
 say it again would that be appropriate instead of going around three and four times on the subject
 or i don't know i'm just asking that because i think that's where the aggravation occurs
 i see it i see it happening uh i see the aggravation or i see the you know like this
 because we're going to go talk about this now for the fourth time i don't know maybe that's
 something you all can talk about later counselor um i believe in robert's rule gives us an opportunity to ask for
 uh ask for the question yes and i haven't done that uh before or yet uh but i think that that
 is something that we should be okay with doing uh if the mayor you know was okay with that uh but
 i i think we should add that to our our conversation as well i'm just seeing if there's
 anything but it's got to be kind of done in a way that it's not dismissive or anything like that but
 if we are just kind of beaten is dead or at some point somebody's gotta and the mayor is really
 actively does do that like he should um but if you know if one of us can do it i don't i don't want
 it to seem like we're you know putting a negative steam on it it's just that we need to just kind of
 keep moving all right i think i'm good i think i've got what i need to do okay we're going to
 move on to the last item which is the one minute pitch which is starts on slide 22 goes on to 23
 discussing prioritization this is a good segue um i'm just going to give you some
 background on the one minute pitch history on the current numbers that we have that have been
 approved so this was formed following the 2019 council retreat this this one minute pitch process
 was formed and just as a reminder it was formed because we had so many significant council requests
 at one point we had a list 100 plus council requests and frankly no one was happy because
 there was different items from all of the different council members they would take significant
 amount of staff time and we just weren't getting we didn't know if they were priority if they really
 weren't and if you're having a really difficult time managing from a staff perspective what was
 most important to the city council where should we be directing our time and energy and so we
 wanted to make sure that as these council requests came forward and if they did require more than two
 hours of staff staff time and significant resources how could the council have the ability to quickly
 discuss that and give consensus that yes we do want staff to work on this item and to move that
 forward or no this is not high this is not what we want to do at this time staff should not move
 forward there is still as part of this process if it's less than two hours of staff time we will
 prepare a report we will handle certainly any service request from the citizen we will handle
 and i really appreciate that many of you have been using the Engage Denton app as well
 for citizen service requests and that just helps us to route it more efficiently throughout the
 organization and hopefully when we get to 301 system we'll have even more opportunities to
 improve how we're handling those service requests but that one minute pitch process really came out
 of that council retreat and was a way how could we effectively allow a process for council members
 to pitch to their other council members that this needs to be done now here's why it's important
 here's why there's a gap and then allow each council member an opportunity to respond
 and see if there was consensus to move forward with that item so we did put the full ordinance
 and in tab eight that outlines the mechanics of that process going on to slide 24 this is just
 a review of the total council requests for information so this is all of the requests
 that come through we do track them and this is primarily tracked because we want to make sure
 that we are being responsive and getting you the information that you need or that you need to go
 back and talk with your constituents so we do have it mapped out there by council member then also by
 department you can see we're still really heavy on capital projects related questions which is
 it's normal and we know is something that we want to continue to improve upon how we are communicating
 capital projects timelines and different items for those and then this is just an overview
 of those council requests which have been estimated to take more than two hours of time
 we've had 28 total one-minute pitches of those 28 19 were approved to move forward
 and that's showing it by council member there on the chart
 and so council had asked to have a discussion today during the retreat in terms of the one-minute
 pitch process if modifications should be made to your current process or if you wanted to adopt
 some other method that staff could receive direction from you on what items should move
 forward what items should be a priority for things that may come up during the year knowing that we
 already have your council priorities that will be set after this retreat that we are going to spend
 most of our staff time working towards but wanted to review some other council request models that
 we have found i will say the majority of municipalities that we reached out to do not
 have any such process at all they do not have a significant amount of council requests and if
 they do most of them are just related to citizen service requests and they're handling those through
 the city manager's office but we did find some other cities that have made it a more formalized
 process to really understand how staff time is being used and i want to thank stewart and rachel
 for developing the research on these so if there's questions i might allow them to
 chime in as well as i know a little bit more about each of these cities but i'll give an overview so
 the city of arlington what they do is council can request an informational staff report
 staff will prepare those reports they'll put them out in weekly reports that go out to all of city
 council and then they have a standing work session item where council can discuss and say thank you
 i got the information i needed we got the update i needed nothing further is required or you know
 that information is really helpful but i think there's some next steps that we need to take as
 a policy making body and i'd like to see a work session come back before the city council or i'd
 like to see this council committee take up that policy item so that's their process they start
 with just a brief staff report and then council has an outstanding item where they can decide
 should any further actions or steps be taken the city of austin has quite a process in place
 and sarah can probably speak to this a little bit more they have any council request requires
 getting an approved resolution prior to staff proceeding with the work in order to even bring
 forward a resolution for the full city council's consideration you have to have at least three
 other council signatures and i know that is quite a process to manage um and there's there's an
 outstanding list of all of those council resolutions well because just so you know i counted one
 council meeting we had 28 resolutions by council directing the city manager and that's not and then
 and then the next one was 15 and so it's it's it never get they never get finished they never go
 um so then the city of fort worth uh council makes requests during a standing work session item
 uh if if it requires so this is i think just an open work session item if it requires more
 than four hours of staff time um they will seek consensus from council to move forward or not
 the city of louisville um really what they do is just an annual retreat of setting their council
 priorities maybe discussing other council requests that may have further seeking consensus to move
 forward on they do also use an engagement app like engage denton and so most of their council
 members are entering their requests right through that engagement app as well and then san antonio
 maybe one one of the more different ones i think just also how they're structured in their form of
 government uh the council committee they have a council committee that's chaired by the mayor
 that then reviews a list of all their council requests that have come in and that committee
 decides which requests are added to your future agenda or not or maybe go forward with a staff
 report or not so it may be similar to an agenda committee but it also is just different based upon
 the structure of san antonio so what staff has tried to do just to help council discuss
 different options that might be available is to develop three different options
 the first would really be to keep the current pitch process and maybe make some amendments or
 modifications to it if council desires i know there's been some discussion around should there
 be a one minute limit should that be modified should it be a more generalized time limit maybe
 you know a total of 10 or 15 minutes per item of discussion or not we did put those time parameters
 in place when the pitch process was first set up to make sure that we could get direction but that
 it would not significantly prolong the meeting or end up that council's just having a full discussion
 on this item without the full facts or information or staff having an ability to really develop and
 prepare that item into a full work session so that was really the purpose behind some of having those
 time limits other things that we have heard is that prioritization factor is there an ability
 when submitting the one minute pitches pitch requests or when we have council members responding
 to could they somehow indicate what level they think that priority is we can maybe do that as
 part of the one minute pitch process when you're responding or another way that that could be done
 is maybe every quarter or semi-annually we are bringing back the list of requests that have been
 approved and really allowing council to tell us of the five to ten or however many that are
 outstanding do we have them prioritized correctly or is there some more urgency to those requests
 option two that we looked at was kind of a process similar to arlington where maybe staff would be
 first always developing that informational staff report with a maximum time limit of hours that we
 would spend so whether that be the current two hour time limit or not this might some of the
 considerations for this it could allow us to maybe scope better some of the work that would be required
 if this item is going to move forward but it would require some more staff time because we're going
 to be doing a staff report for each one of these items it also just might extend the timeline for
 us to consider some of your requests if it has to come first as an informational staff report in a
 Friday report then you have to come back and say yes it's still like for this to go forward
 in a work session it just could prolong that timeline a little bit further and then lastly
 we thought of an option for a quarterly work session item so somewhat similar similar to
 lewisville or even kind of what we're doing today is to gather requests that come in over a quarter
 just create a list and whether that be we get 10 to 20 total requests and almost like what we did
 in the February retreat is just going through one by one at that time and seeing which have council
 direction to move forward or not again it's not going to be as responsive for some items that might
 be more time sensitive but just some different options and considerations that we put together
 for council discussion. Mayor Pro Tem? Yeah I would just uh I can't wait to hear what everyone
 has to say I would just ask that if possible my colleagues try to define what problem they're
 trying to solve what is it about the current system what dimension is an issue it's not you know it
 may become obvious right here but not obvious at the moment and then on the prioritization issue
 I would just suggest that if you just rank ones twos threes fours and fives our prediction is
 everything's 0 1 and what I'd suggest as an alternative is although equally artificial
 is a forced rank all the items in a in a rank order maybe it's not obvious why 17 is ahead of
 18 but a forced rank and that when you decide to put something in the list you move for where you
 put it on the list suggestion. Okay councilor Davis? Yeah I I agree with that and the one thing I've
 learned from staff's research is that no there's no one size fits all there's no one way that is
 right for every city to do this I think this is a good fit for the issue we had at the time if it
 needs some tweaking I think it needs some tweaking and I agree council member Melzer about if there's
 an issue let's identify what the issue is before we just kind of check the whole thing if we modify
 it I like the idea of maybe giving the pitcher two minutes instead of one minute we don't all need
 two minutes because it takes less than 30 seconds to say yes I agree or one minute to say I agree
 but I have a slight modification of how I'd like to staff to emphasize the information we get back
 and then I think that's the other part of it is allowing in that conversation
 because I've heard some some good criticism of the process that if we're not allowed to add
 emphasis you know I agree that that's something we need to talk about but I'd really like to hear
 more about this aspect of it if we're able to do that within the one minute pitch or two minute
 pitch process then I think that also lets staff better anticipate the things that are going to
 come up at that work session you're like I want to hear about solid waste but I don't need to hear
 about that exactly we need to hear about this and that may draw a different consensus than the
 pitcher expected or was looking for but it's still a council consensus I like about the current
 process too that it's nimble that in some ways if we know something is is time sensitive it can be
 brought up right then you don't have to wait for the next quarterly matrix discussion item you can
 bring it up right then and we've had a number of pitches that have been like that and I agree that
 we need some some form of prioritization quick recap of the issue we had before that it has to
 be done in a ATOMA compliant way it has to be very public and some council members were uncomfortable
 with a public ranking because there's kind of this uncharitable interpretation of oh you didn't rank
 this high enough or you know they'd get bad feedback that way if we can all kind of have the
 best I think the highest possible things about each other and understand that sometimes there's
 not a lot of daylight between 17 and 18 and it's just picking priorities and there's got to be
 balance in all things then I think a prioritization can work really well if we use it as an opportunity
 to snipe and say well you don't care about this very much at all then the whole thing starts
 falling apart again so if we use priorities we have to use them just for what they're needed
 for and that is staff time attention and all this kind of stuff okay yeah so I'm responding to you
 know Mayor Pro Tem's suggestion that it's a good idea to you know for those of us who think we
 should change the one-minute pitch process to say what we think is not working about it
 so I'll begin by saying one thing I like about it which is it doesn't take up that much time in a
 meeting right and it gives everybody an opportunity to you know have their say what I don't like about
 it and why I want to change it a number of reasons one the fact that there's and by the way I realize
 this is contradictory because the the things that I don't like about it if we added it to the one
 minute pitch process it would make it take more time right which is why I want another process
 instead so the fact that there's no opportunity for a rebuttal it can be problematic if for instance
 you know say you know I want I propose some policy change and then you know one council member
 responds well I'm not okay with the work session on that because that's illegal you know and then
 people go around say yeah it's illegal yeah it's illegal and maybe it's not illegal right but it's
 so it kind of it can kind of end up being like a discussion because the one comment can build on
 another comment but then you don't have a chance to rebut I'm not suggesting that we add a rebuttal
 to it right I'm suggesting a different process sometimes I think also and and that sometimes in
 the sometimes you end up getting a kind of staff feedback to the pitch request some and and sometimes
 it's just in fact most of the time it's just kind of the basics that you need to lay a foundation
 other times at least to me anyway it feels like at editorializing especially when there's when some
 pitches have kind of more elaborate you know well here are the potential cons if we did this for
 instance you know here are the pros and the cons if we did this and then if somebody else's pitch
 doesn't get that I'm not I'm not saying it feels personal to the to the individual but it feels
 like well why didn't my pitch get a list of pros and cons and why couldn't we take that up at a
 work session you know if council wants to discuss it why can't we take up those possible pros and
 cons at a work session because I do want to hear staff's input but you know as far as I'm concerned
 that could wait for a work session if we have it so what I want to suggest is a form of option two
 and as I see it you know there are kind of three basic categories of the kind of pitches that we
 make one and I'm going to kind of build from like simple to complex the simplest one is for
 you know a council member and we've had a few of these for instance with our legislative priorities
 I did a one minute pitch for objecting to some anti-trans legislation at the at being considered
 by the state legislature and you know we didn't need to have a big work session about how we were
 going to word that right staff wrote a great letter and I believe we I think we voted on a consent
 agenda but I might be misremembering that sometimes even people can bring a resolution that's already
 been written you know we are you know we support the you know removal of this tax on blah blah blah
 that's you know or we're against this that's happening at the federal level or the state level
 you know that's something where the way they do things in Austin can actually and and I understand
 that that in Austin they've got a lot of you know resolutions on the table but I also know
 that some of these that a lot of what they do is that they're simply like issuing proclamations on
 things you know Austin and on the one hand it might seem meaningless why why do it if it's just
 you know a majority of council members sign off to say we love trees you know or puppies are cute
 you know why bother on the other hand it it takes very little time if it's especially if it's
 already pre-written if we're not asking staff can you go you know write a treaty on why puppies are
 cute and we'll all sign it's here's something another city did and what they do that I like
 is they get it a lot of it done behind the scenes so that this at least as I understand it
 that they that individual council members go to and I forget you know if they go to the city manager
 or whatever but they the city attorney yeah the city attorney they individually go to the city
 attorney and say yeah the thing that you know that you know Paul proposed I'm for that too you can
 put my name down for that you know and then if they get three people who are for that then that
 can go forward and you know get on a consent agenda right and so we don't actually so that
 that process can actually streamline things that don't need a work session I don't think everything
 needs a work session just because it's a council member bringing it forward if if there's you know
 three or more people who are okay with it and then people can just vote it up or down so that's the
 first category this now the second category is a simple policy change and you know and of course
 that's relative but for instance you know the the one one minute pitch that I brought forward
 was having people add their emails or having a space where people could provide their emails
 on a input to council forum that was the kind of thing when I asked about it can we do this
 I think I might be misremembering but that might have been one of those things where I was asking
 can we do this and you said that should come before council again correct me if I'm wrong
 but if you did say that then I think that was the right thing to say whoever told me that I think
 it makes sense or maybe you said you know it'll take more discussion I don't remember what
 but you know but that's something that is it's relatively simple there wasn't of course we can
 never predict you know whether something is going to be controversial or not I didn't expect it to
 be controversial and it wasn't and people were just you know thought yeah that's a good it seems
 like a good idea okay let's do that and so you know that's simple enough that that too even though
 it's not just as simple as signing off on a pre-written resolution it's a simple enough
 policy change that if we got three council members to tell the city attorney you know I'm cool with
 that you know without a work session that could come on a consent agenda item now then the last
 category are more complex policy items where even if everybody agrees with it for instance having a
 you know a nondiscrimination ordinance even if everybody agrees we should have one we need to
 have a work session to go over the details because there are many different kinds of ways you can do
 it right so that would have to require a work session but I think that you know the part of
 what I don't like about our one-minute pitch process is that even though these these the work
 session about whether or not to have a work session doesn't take up much time but there's
 this idea that everything requires a work session and having this big discussion about it so I really
 think that the policy again approach number two with a policy kind of like Austin's can be actually
 really streamlined precisely because so much of this determining whether three or more council
 members are okay with it goes on behind the scenes as long as and I don't know if they do it this way
 in Austin for me I would want that to be public somehow so that the public could know you know
 that this council member had had this idea and then you know these three signed signed off on it
 so council member Archer there's a couple of things the the the council members in Austin find three
 they find three other people to help them to say they would agree to an item and then those staff
 those council members staff and they each have three full-time and one staff and one part-time
 paid staff work together to draft themselves the resolution yes which then goes forward to the city
 attorney's office for the final touches on the resolution yes the resolution then goes on the
 agenda with those members of council who have supported it and then it's an item that's taken
 up for the whole body to approve and so that's why that list is is so is so long and they each have
 so many staff that they work on this with their respective council members staff to draft those
 and then again it does go to the city attorney's office who then puts the spin on it and then it
 goes on yeah yeah so and and that's that absolutely is is right is uh and i'm not saying we replicate
 what they do because we can't afford to do we can't afford to do that but but um kind of that we take
 something from it you know there's something that i like about it uh that is and i don't know the
 Arlington how they do it in Arlington outside of what you know i have here i haven't talked i've
 talked to people in Austin city council i haven't talked to people in Arlington but so it it might
 be like a combination a hybrid of Arlington and Austin but but my point being i like that aspect
 of it that we that there's a way to um without having a work session um just get input because
 again if you don't have three people um who are okay with something then you don't even have to
 go through the you know waste waste public time even you know deciding on whether or not to have
 a work session are there thoughts about this process uh councillor i'm sorry councillor
 thank you um so yeah i think i'm going to take a similar approach of kind of talking about pros
 cons possible solutions so um i do generally think that the one minute pitch is um in principle uh has
 has value it balances conflicting needs of managing staff time right staff are are people
 with a finite number of hours in the day and we can't put everything on them it manages meeting
 length well i think and it attempts to do so while um sort of preserving the ability of council
 members to bring forward legislation right rather than have to just be completely reactive all the
 time um i i would say that the one minute um it time period is too short and too restrictive um
 council member davis uh suggested two minutes i would suggest three minutes although i would suggest
 if we're gonna extend the the pitch to three minutes we keep the responses to one or two
 minutes otherwise we're getting into um yeah long long meeting territory um i i do think that the
 concern of like everything being a priority is a very um legitimate concern um i would like to
 um uh uh introduce the idea that priorities have two dimensions there's importance and urgency
 right and there are lots of things that we discuss that are very important that if we say
 if we're asked to rank on a scale of one to ten how important it is we're going to say ten to
 everything right or i don't know what kind of scale we're confusing our scales but you get what i'm
 saying but urgency is talking about time when does it need to be addressed um and i think if there
 were a mechanism for us to maybe rate both of those and yes it's quite possible that everything
 would be all the way at the top of the importance scale but i think if we are talking about urgency
 and timeliness um i i think that we probably would find ourselves more often saying you know this is
 something we need to address very soon versus this is something that we do need to address but maybe
 you know in a few months um so i would like to see us kind of separating out those dimensions
 of priority um i also really appreciate um council member Arminter's point that um maybe we should
 kind of uh uh categorize these types of requests uh maybe break them into two categories like
 things that are are you know complex that absolutely require a work session like a
 non-discrimination ordinance we need to talk through that versus something that really just
 needs to be written up real quick or um not real quick i shouldn't say real quick because of course
 writing resolution takes time especially from the legal staff but you know just something that needs
 to be written up and then voted on but doesn't necessarily require a full work session um if
 if there was some type of mechanism for for us to say um you know i'm making a one minute or a three
 minute pitch for a work session versus i'm making a three minute pitch that staff write up a resolution
 and put it on the next agenda for us to vote on um if we could kind of delineate between
 those i think that might be helpful as well thanks yeah i think the i i like uh where mayor
 pertin was was trying to get us to focus and i think we all attempted to do that um subsequent
 to making some statements so i i will say that the my problem with the one minute pitch is was
 exemplified last tuesday where i didn't quite get the last 10 seconds out and you end up with a
 truncated pitch so i i concur with this idea of extended it to two minutes and i think maybe the
 solution to some of the problems that that councillor mcguire brought up is you just do
 two rounds of one minute pitch with the potential for a vote to extend as as you indicated earlier
 so um you know if there's no appetite to extend then it's two one minute rounds and then you're
 done um and so i think that would solve a lot of that but just there's times you can't quite get
 the the even even just saying what was in the email you're just literally saying the words you
 can't quite get out um and you see us all like sitting there acting like we're you know we've
 been practicing um uh and you know it's like oh can i get it in and i'm going to talk too fast
 and then there's you know people miss words and whatnot so i i would recommend say a two minute
 opener with two one minute rounds and a vote to extend um i i think the problem one of the problems
 we also addressed was uh um prioritization and and so i i as as ungainly and unseemly as it is
 i think um i'm actually going to fall out on the idea of if there's there's there's 18 current ones
 you've got to suggest where you would insert this uh i it's it's not right or fair that you know
 you have to rank x above y but we're doing this today this is what we're doing in our strategic
 planning in our budget um so uh and and that allows you to incorporate urgency uh and the
 nice thing about that is if you give this a two and tell sarah it needs to be on and you know
 next week two weeks and then we all agree that that or you know there's some sort of consensus
 that that's a two then i mean we don't have to call an emergency meeting or something like that
 we can just say yeah bam that that had to be done because bulldozer hit a building or whatever it is
 caused us to do that um uh so where i think that we can also solve this issue of time sensitivity
 and urgency is a partial adoption of the option two and that is if you can come with something
 more fully baked and present that to legal and have it ready to go then we can just vote on it
 and if you know once it's been you know if legal can address that in their two-hour limit then you
 know bam okay you know that's we could just simply vote on it um so i think there's an opportunity
 to have something come before it's fully baked i think some of the issues with staff time is we're
 asking you we're saying here's the flour eggs and milk please bake the cake for us and and we don't
 we don't know whether it's going to be cupcakes or a wedding cake and so i think if we can come in and
 say frosted cake you know uh yes or no then then that would that would preclude some of the time
 sensitivity for staff staff engagement and i'm not sure i mean i don't have the ability to do a lot of
 that i am not a lawyer so um this is where you know probably most of my pitches would end up being
 the slow pitch but we can do fast pitch baseball there i got your sports metaphor bucko so uh
 anyway i would recommend uh two two minute one rounds and then maybe some sort of hybrid approach
 to allow a fully baked cake to be submitted mayor yeah so to be to be super short uh i like the the
 option to keep it as is primarily uh with some adjustments uh i can get to two minutes on for the
 for the presenter uh one minute still i mean because again it's simple as yes or no and that's
 part of my consternation is you know when trying to capture that it's yes but maybe if and those
 sort of things and when pressed it's i'm not going to let you put me in a box or all those kind of
 replies so to fix that issue i think it's two minutes for the pitcher for the person to make
 their pitch one minute kind of responses yes takes two seconds um i think to the point that's made
 about power points for staff earlier we get all the information read it the pit the person making
 the presentation can just pick up assuming you read it and so you don't have to read what you
 wrote you can just articulate the finer points that aren't there in that one minute it's like
 hey here's what you've read here's enhancements to that and go and then the everyone responds
 it's yes and then i think to to settle the issue with the the the need to opine on things then
 there's a secondary process which is a scope so yes we have consensus that would move us to scoping
 so that staff can properly bring it back then you can have those kind of addendums hey while
 we're talking about bikes let's talk about the front wheel the back wheel the chain the pedals
 that sort of thing so i think that addresses both those concerns then when you get to the ranking
 component i'll tell you i'm the victim of this you know council again goes i hate to beat a dead
 horse but council changes and i get pushed to the back of the line right and so then that's
 frustrating and and so and and people don't get it until it happens to them but assuming i think
 it's important to just hold the line where we are and then everything else is just linear it's either
 a linear adoption hey this passed we add it to the back of the list but these things that are ready
 to go just kind of get plugged in in linear form or to council member davis's point it's anonymous
 everything's anonymous it's here's a survey here's what's ready to go how do you want to hear it
 and what rank these in order city staff gets those and and pump them in but then it doesn't
 get weaponized because that did happen before for those that don't know and that's no good
 and then and then i just think from urgency standpoint there's no real thing i just from
 this process that's not a real thing because the city manager can add stuff to the to the agenda
 the city attorney can add stuff to the agenda the agenda committee can add stuff to the agenda
 i can add stuff to the agenda there's six five different routes to get something on the agenda
 if it's a legit emergency city running priority issue if it's your individual urgency i don't know
 that that rises to the level to need something that where we can kind of fast track it through
 this process so just my read on it okay director sarah do you need i think oh councillor i wanted
 to i agree with the mayor here um but i wanted to ask a question about um the one minute pitch
 situation um let's say for instance we're already working on the homeless issue we have all of this
 homeless stuff on homelessness on you know house that what is the tell me what's the justification
 for me wanting to do a one minute pitch on that because that's what i was considering doing the
 city is already working on it it's already part of a priority are we pitching on things that we're
 already working on mostly or are all of these pitches new situations where we are you know
 bringing in some new activities and like you said you know maybe something his things are getting
 pushed to the back yeah you know in the ranking on all of that is that a legitimate question to
 ask it is okay the honest answer is yes sometimes that is occurring or sometimes there's a specific
 solution that that you've heard about or you've seen in other communities and you're like i want
 to hear more about this specific one instead of maybe higher level there's this gap or there's
 this need and how do we what are some potential options or all of the solutions and the pros and
 cons and just considering that more holistically well and i think i and i want to make sure we're
 going to have consensus here but um and i know you all recognize this you have items that you
 feel very strong about and you want to get it on the agenda but when that happens you have to
 understand that we want to make sure that there's a consensus by council to get it on the count on
 the agenda so i want and i know you understand this but it's important for me to say it
 you know i work for all of you not part of you or some of you and i have to count if there's four
 or more i know where we go in this case if you pick up the phone or you send an email to us and
 say hey i just saw a presentation on this that's dealing with people experiencing homelessness
 we will respond and give you our latest report i'll even give you the report that i did when
 i was in austin to give you more information we'll go out of our way to try to avoid having to
 put you in that position if we can possibly do it but i want i want to make it clear that on
 some occasions there's times when i have to say you know i don't know that there's consensus so
 i need to bring it forward so i can make sure there is consensus because the other side of
 the coin is how did this get on the agenda so with that i i want to make sure i'm hearing this
 um and all of you had great points correct i took notes um but what i'm hearing is to to keep sort
 of the same process but make it two minutes is it two or three minutes because i heard two and then
 i heard three i was the only person who said three okay so two minutes um and then i'd like it to be
 one except for for brian all those and then i didn't hear consensus on going with the option
 two i heard keeping it but expanding to two minutes so that the presenter had more time is that
 if i can have kind of an observation that i think helps us here please the thing that we're kind of
 missing is adding an agenda item not a work session not a night because right now the process is for
 isrs and work sessions right if we made more use of isrs and work sessions that's great but it's
 missing agenda items we have two coming up next week that are maybe just agenda items maybe work
 sessions maybe not and that's created consternation before um both directions so that also dovetails
 into the even the emergency meeting process we had where is placing an agenda item properly and
 like legally on the emergency agenda following own procedures is problematic to do so i think
 if we have a process for placing an agenda item as a council suggestion beyond just work session
 and the thing we have to remember too is the city manager can concur in any of these things like if
 i made if i if i put in a work session request a one-minute pitch request it doesn't have to
 automatically be a one-minute pitch it can be a yeah we're working on that we'll make that a work
 session on the matrix that's already in there that staff time's allocated so and i think adding the
 option for adding an agenda item and i think frankly we have an agenda committee that may be
 integral to that process too however we flesh out that part of the process um and the prioritization
 all that kind of stuff we we have an agenda committee that exists as part of our existing
 structure and i think we can lead pretty heavily on that process and to be honest i'd prefer that
 because it does put us in a very sticky situation of how do you define this and how are you defining
 that word emergency um it is um you know it is part of the job but so are we looking at then
 the two-minute pitch would be for an agenda item as well as the work session
 yeah i think i yeah i i would like to um i suggest that the pitcher um in the two-minute pitch
 process i'm on board with that if everybody else is uh the two-minute pitcher specify whether they
 want a work session or an isr or an agenda item okay and and we will do our best just so you know
 if it's we'll tell you i know several times you've heard one of us call you or something hey
 we're going to be covering that oh great i don't have to put that in there we'll let you know
 in many cases we have added something we feel like it's necessary so we can also remember we
 can give you a very detailed individual staff report if we have the person that has all that
 expertise and information we'll do that okay yeah um so i'm not going to uh belabor the option two
 point again because now we're talking about the the two-minute pitch i'll just add to that um
 so i think uh i i really like the idea uh obviously of of uh having a process to add
 something to the agenda as well and and i would just ask that i'm not saying that we have a
 separate process for consent agenda uh but since items on consent agenda can always be removed if
 someone wants to i think that we at least kind of keep our minds open to that that it could be a
 consent agenda item and i just mentioned that because we're always thinking about time you know
 this is going to take more time and if something's on the consent agenda item if there's agreement
 and i love that all you need is one person to ask to take it off right the consent agenda but if
 there's agreement it could stay on there then we're not then it doesn't take up more time at the
 meeting i'm not saying it doesn't take up any time at all there's whatever prep time and preparation
 but that we'd be open to that um number two um i really like the idea of prioritization i'm just
 mentioning that now because i didn't weigh in on that and i think with what uh it's important
 and i just feel strongly that it um not that uh if however that whatever that ends up looking like
 whether it's numeric ranking or whatever whether we do it in writing um individually or as a group
 i have no idea i'm open to a number of things but i don't think it should be anonymous i i totally
 understand what you're saying about how it can be weaponized and that's true um but just because of
 what our job is you know and and that we're accountable to the public you know i i think
 it's important uh that our our rankings prioritizations be anything like that you know be public i mean our
 our emails are technically public someone could request some of the public information requests
 but i do think it's important that that be public um and then and then finally um so right now the
 way we have it uh if you don't say anything in response to someone's one-minute pitch instead
 of silence implying consent silence implies um sounds like dissent uh and so that's kind of
 i don't think that works very well um and uh it goes against our usual default which is that
 you know well i haven't seen anyone you know it's kind of nobody seems to have if anyone has a
 problem with with with this speak up now right or forever hold your peace and then people just kind
 of nod yeah i'm okay with it and then we move forward so i would kind of i i would suggest
 either having as the mayor mentioned just kind of a simple yes or no which i mean you wouldn't need
 a minute you know just even you would just need a second to say yes or no meaning not yes or no do
 you love this idea or not but are you okay with going forward for a work session you know because
 is is the mayor an agenda for for what or an agenda or an agenda item or consent agenda item
 right for going going forward um uh because any qualif any qualifiers you have to add to that
 as he mentioned can be brought up if it's in the work center it's going to be a work session in the
 individual item if it's going to be in an individual item all right um so i i would either like
 just the yes or no or if people don't like that to at least have the the standard uh silences consent
 versus silence is dissent well and i think that would be the mayor i mean the mayor leads the
 meeting i don't i don't know how everybody feels about that but i just have i'm not going to speak
 to that i have another thought though on the straight to the agenda thing uh my thing is this
 uh can we get an agreement that that won't start until we exhaust the the waiting list right
 because i mean it's just a perpetual bumping of things based on you know i just think we
 got to start there has to be a start line for the going straight to the agenda and i i think there
 should be a prohibition until we clear out the waiting list and then at some point that can move
 forward i just wanted to look at where we are take the numbers 11 12 yes we well some of them
 we've actually are i mean we have our budget development we're getting ready to do affordable
 housing plan come back comprehensive waste strategies on there that's priorities i'm sorry
 those are priorities uh work session dates redistricting comprehensive three that's just
 three then okay because most of them are coming back we have flag policy unt parking agreements
 and more inclusive board and committee requirements we have three then really three that haven't been
 plugged in so we'll get those plugged in how about that and then we can we'll start plugging those
 three and then we'll implement it after we plug those three in does everybody would that work mayor
 i'm biased but yes everybody okay with that because then we okay not so much okay well i
 i'm just uh a little puzzled some of these things are are on a queue waiting to be work sessions
 if something is going to be proposed to be an individual item what's the point of it waiting
 behind a work session you see where i'm going i do i just yeah and i see you hitting the button
 we don't have to hit the button yeah no no i i turn it off so that they don't hear what i'm mumbling
 so uh yeah no i hear what you're saying i just from work session it's we have a work session then
 it gets behind a a thing that went straight to work session i just don't like it i think
 we need to clear it out have a fresh starting point and then go from there and it hardly matters
 we will work to get those uh scheduled so that it doesn't conflict with what you've decided today
 may you know say a couple of other things while i everybody back in line okay uh on on the one on
 one hand i you know i kind of like the efficiency of it's just a yes or no but more often than not
 i'm in a position where uh the presenter you know feels strongly about an issue that i may agree
 with on substance but i don't want to use council time on and it matters to me even if even if only
 allowed 15 seconds in reply to say agree on principle with the sentiment not how i want to
 use council time i need more than you know just yes or no to say that and you know because i'm
 going to be held to account you know by members of the public for how would you vote against this you
 know the puppies are acute resolution you know so so i'm happy with 15 seconds uh and then uh here's
 a here's something i'll toss out as a grenade for you to run away from uh you know i i think back
 to what are the most efficient organizations most and effective organizations i've worked on
 and and uh the one that worked best had a prioritization list i was just and i was
 trying to remember how the heck did we do it now i i i never worked in democratic organizations
 so i say that as a caveat but it was an executive committee uh and they owned the the prioritization
 they had to and it was they owned it and the beauty of it was it took the pressure off of
 everybody else if you like that i'm willing to own having to you know haggle with the mayor and
 staff and have the agenda committee own the prioritization list and you know you have a beef
 with that raise it but it takes the pressure off you to say your world you didn't put it high enough
 on the list blame me blame blame the mayor that's and that's a little like the san antonio model at
 least the way it looks spelled out here yeah it is yeah all the big legislative bodies there are a
 lot of ways we don't need to be like congress but all of the big legislative bodies have a rules
 committee or a calendars committee or somebody who owns that calendar they're responsible for
 getting to the floor for a vote and everybody's mad when their bill doesn't get to the floor on time
 or they're happy when their bill gets somebody's ear and moves forward but we have such a thing we
 have that agenda committee and if we give them priority and we also give them the responsibility
 of mostly city manager and agenda items coming forward it's not fleshed out the the cake is not
 baked uh we need you council member who prior who brought it up and put it forward to put some more
 flesh on the bones or get with the staff or get with the with the lawyers and figure it out i think
 that if our agenda committee is is utilized in that way it can be a very very powerful tool for
 efficiency and consensus building for getting things through in a very efficient way okay so we're now
 trying to wrap up around slide 28 if you will the next steps we're going to uh staff and myself will
 work on refreshing the priorities that you discussed today some polish to that some adjustment to that
 that'll be brought back to him down to the second full point at the meeting either September 14th or
 21st for your consideration one of the things uh sarah and i spoke about was going forward
 just as a good reminder that when there's a staff report provided to you in a council meeting that
 will reference the strategic plan and that particular item and also they'll be under
 consideration to have periodic updates to where it's not just part of the packet but she'll
 actually pull it out and say here's where we are with the status of progress on the strategic plan
 just to kind of keep it in front of you on a regular basis give you a study diet you discussed
 about the council committees main decisions on that and the council request process which you
 just wrapped up this will all be summarized so you have it obviously sarah and staff took tons of
 notes the outcome of today was trying to get some clarity about direction in the near term short term
 as well as certain mechanics about the governance process obviously both dimensions are going to be
 our work in progress you're still going to think who knows what's going to be around the next corner
 where you're going to have to deal and reshuffle those priorities who knows at the same time there's
 the process that you just spent the afternoon discussing that how you're governing and how
 that's going to work and i think you know just my advice to you is there's no perfect solution
 get comfortable be willing like you did today to have to be willing to put on the table and say
 this is working how can we experiment how can we make it better and keep that conversation going
 because that helps you all just govern more effectively and your your saturation point will
 increase the longer you're on council and your comfort level with your colleagues and those
 topics in your immersion that so you may find that the process starts to speed up even more
 because your depth of understanding about those issues is stronger so your reference points are
 different i want to say thank you for the opportunity to spend time with you last night and today
 i know sometimes this process can be uh it's inefficient it's not necessarily efficient but
 it is supposed to be productive trying to listen trying to learn trying to process trying to examine
 as i shared with you last night if these issues were easily solved you would have already done
 so the nature of these sessions are to exchange ideas to build relationships hopefully you had
 another chance to do that to listen to your colleagues where they're coming from remembering
 that you all have a passion for dentin and how you're trying to help it realize its potential
 keep that in mind when you're tired and you haven't eaten dinner and you're at a council
 meeting and you just wanted to finish and you listen to your colleagues you all have a passion
 everybody in here has a passion for dentin trying to help it find its future so those
 are my final comments i don't know if you have final comments no i just want to thank the staff
 i mean i know they put a lot of effort in putting this together for you and steward and sarah and
 everybody rachel and just thank them for all their hard work and billy and billy and ryan because
 billy came in here on friday and put all this together it took him you know several hours to
 set this up speaking of this this has all been recorded it will be uploaded on monday morning
 to the city's website so if anyone wants to go watch the video it will be available beginning on
 monday yeah is the question by the public so i just wanted to let you know and then as patrick said
 we will have items coming back before council on the three topics discussed today with consent
 agenda items on the council committees that were agreed to retire and then as well as an individual
 consideration item for the council priorities and focus areas and then an individual consideration
 item to amend the one minute pitch process and we'll work in those feedback that we heard in the
 consensus we heard and thank you all for taking the time to do this i know this is i mean you all
 have lives outside of this you spend enough time at city hall and it is much appreciated we as
 staff appreciate helping us and giving us some some direction well we have tuesday off right to
 compensate take it off we'll just run right through the agenda all right thanks so much everyone
 thank you patrick thank you yes patrick thank you oh patrick thank you

        
Back to Meeting