Sep 14, 2021 City Council on 2021-09-14 2:00 PM (SPECIAL CALLED MEETING)

Thank you. Good afternoon and welcome to this city meeting in the City Council. Today is Tuesday, September 14th. We do have a quorum, so I'll call the meeting order at 2 0 1. First thing on the agenda is, um. To I don't think we have any Do we have any callers? I don't think we have any callers. I don't think we have any callers. I'm going to ask a couple of questions for staff from the consent agenda. Okay. Councilman Roter. Another question, but. The Rakeys old, uh. They're almost identical. Maybe they are identical, and I just missed something, but I will need to recuse myself from them. Okay. Great. Councilman McGuire. I will be recusing myself from the same items. Okay. Any other questions for staff or anything to pull? Councilor Davis. Thank you, Mayor. I need to pull you for a recusal as well. You. Okay. Thank you. Any? Councilman McGuire. My apologies. I meant to also say I need to recuse from you as well. Okay. All right. Um, any other? Uh, items seeing none. Okay, staff, so we'll pull TV and UT isn't Tom V isn't Victor. You is an umbrella. Uh, and, um, no presentations. We'll just need those for recusals. So, uh, and then staff, did we have any colors? Okay, I'm assuming no. Okay, so that takes us to our first work session item. Um, so I will call that, which is, uh, item, uh, three A ID 211805 receive report and hold discussion, give staff direction regarding the General Fund fiscal year 2021 22 budget tax rate rates and fees capital improvements program and five year financial forecast. Good afternoon. Cassie Ogden, director of finance here to discuss the 2022 budget and tax rate. So, um, you may recall I've been up here a couple of times to talk to you about the budget. We had our budget workshop August 2nd, another work session August 10th and then, um, another work session August 17th. Today we're going to talk about the, uh, core scientific revenue allocation, uh, the proposed tax rate for FY 22 and then are some of the changes that staff is proposing for next year. And then just a reminder, this is our last, um, budget work session before budget adoption next week on August 21st. So, just as a reminder, these are all the different types of revenue that, um, the General Fund received. We have broken out the ARP funding as well as grants, um, in the yellow and blue just to give you an idea of all the different types of revenue that come into the General Fund, um, that are, that are forecasted for next year. So, a reminder on the sales tax, we talked about this last time, but you may remember, um, our sales tax has come in, come in, um, stronger than we forecasted and we actually revised our current year estimates to for a little over 44 million and then as well as, uh, we increased next year's, uh, proposed estimate to a little over 46 million. Uh, we did get the numbers for the July, um, sales tax revenue and it did come in higher than even our revised estimate. So, I think we're in a good place for sales tax, expecting that to come in a little bit higher than that 44 million this year. So, last time we discussed the budget, um, council directed to bring back what it would look like, um, the core scientific revenue if a portion of that revenue went into General Fund. So, for the core scientific revenue, the total, um, revenue forecast for FY22 is a little over 1.9 million. Um, in the budget that we will be reviewing, we have only budgeted about 1.5 million. We have not included the full amount just because, um, there's still uncertainty with when they will, um, be coming online and given that it's a new revenue source, we wanted to try to avoid, um, being too heavily dependent on that revenue, especially since it is a short-term revenue. And we are looking at ways to mitigate kind of the risk of relying on that short-term revenue in the future years as well. So, with that, the tax rate options that I'm here to get direction on from you today, um, are the 3.1 wage inflation rate, so that 57 cents, and the total no new revenue rate, which is the same amount of tax collection, um, for the upcoming year as the, as existing properties. So, you can see the revenues and expenses, um, listed on the, on the chart. So, the available funding line, that is before any supplementals are funded. So, that is just the revenue minus expenses total available funding. And so, depending on the direction that council gives with the tax rate, then, um, it'll depend on how, how, how much of those supplementals we can fund. So, when you've seen this chart before, I changed it a little bit from the last time. I added those council initiated requests that we've discussed previously for $130,000. The initial contribution to the sustainability fund of $300,000 is really what, um, the general fund could afford to fund of that sustainability fund after all of the supplementals were funded. So, it's about $300,000 as part of the no new revenue rate. If council directs to go with the wage inflation rate of 57 cents, then, um, general fund can afford to fund an additional $900,000 to the sustainability fund, which would be a total of $1.2 million for the sustainability fund. And I just want to remind council, um, these are at your discretion, so you can fund or not fund any of the, um, supplemental requests that we've laid out. And with that, before we go into the fees, um, I am seeking direction on the tax rate because this will go into how we, um, put the budget together next week for your, for your consideration and adoption. >> Okay. Um, so, again, the questions simply or direction on the rate itself, right? That's, uh, in the, in the supplementals. >> Yes. >> Great. Thank you. Councilman Armonter. >> Uh, yes, so, uh, I still support the, uh, wage inflation rate. Uh, I, I like the idea, uh, of using wage inflation as a benchmark, uh, for, uh, for taxes. Um, I'll say just as a note, um, I, uh, do, uh, do not agree with the, um, uh, prioritized, uh, supplemental request list, but I realize that's not what we're talking about now. Uh, so I, I will save that, uh, for later. >> Okay. Councilman Davis. >> Thank you, Mayor. I strongly favor the no new revenue rate. If you look at the slide, can you bring that slide back up? >> Sure. >> The, uh, that shows the supplementals? >> So I agree with Councilmember Armonter that the wage inflation rate is a benchmark. It's a benchmark for raising the tax bill on property taxes in the city of Denton for most taxpayers due to the increase in value. This slide shows very clearly that the purpose of raising taxes in that way would be to keep nearly a million more dollars of taxpayer money for a fund that as of yet has no concrete goals and does not have a work plan. I could be in favor of, of funding this sustainability fund at a higher level at a point at which we have identified goals beyond fight climate change. That's a big nebulous thing. Fund sustainability. That's a big nebulous thing. But this proposes that we would keep nearly a million more dollars of taxpayer money for a fund that currently has no plan for its spending, asking taxpayers to give us a million more dollars for us to think up something to do with it at a later date. Sustainability under the current proposed supplementals is already funded at $300,000, for which we don't yet have a work plan. The no new revenue rate to me is not just good budgeting. It's good stewardship. I can't think of a family or business owner that couldn't put that million dollars to better use, improving their business, paying their employees, improving their home, shopping locally, all of those things. It might be a different thing when we have a work plan, when the sustainability committee has given us a list of programs to implement or ways to spend that first third of a million dollars. At this point, I can't justify raising taxes for an additional infusion of cash to a program that does not yet exist. For that reason, I strongly favor the no new revenue rate. >> Okay. Councilmember Guara. >> Thank you. My understanding when we were discussing the terms of this proposed data center was that any revenue from that project that didn't go to the electric fund and the streets fund would go to the sustainability fund. Was I mistaken in that understanding? >> So the ROI and the franchise fees do go directly to general fund. That's all ROI and franchise fees go to the general fund. >> Right. And then 80% go to streets. >> Yes. So the revenue that I've pointed out in the presentation, that's ROI, franchise fees, and then sales tax. >> And does that include -- are you taking into account the amount that is going to be earmarked for streets? >> No. Not in the first year because there are only -- it's only six months. So it was a substantial decrease from -- it wasn't as much as the following years. So we're taking all of that money in the first year and putting it into general fund in this scenario. So in future years, yes, that would be the plan is to take some part of that money, however much council directs and move some over to streets, some over to sustainability, and then general fund would keep some. >> Okay. I -- it seems that I was -- a misunderstanding then because my support for the core scientific project was contingent upon any revenue that's not going to the electric fund or to the streets fund going to the sustainability fund. That had been my understanding. I am not in favor of pulling any of that revenue from the sustainability fund for other general fund purposes. And because of that and for a variety of other reasons, I continue to be in favor of the wage inflation rate. Thank you. >> Okay. Councilmember Davis. >> Sorry. I was trying to get in queue behind some other folks. I thought other folks might want to weigh in before I had a second -- a second bite. Got it. Councilman bet. >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Similar to councilman McGuire, the discussion that we had for the rationale between the core scientific funds going into sustainability fund was ostensibly to offset and mitigate the hazards that are associated with a large electrical footprint and other things. It doesn't detract from the overall merits of the lease or the project itself. It's just that we were -- the discussion that we had, I think most of us were pretty clear that this was not necessarily a piggy bank, but a compensation for potential risks. And while I understand that six months is on the table for the first year with the idea that the revenue was -- we were sort of discussing a number around 2 million. So about 1 millionish, which is sort of 300,000 plus 900,000 is approximately that. I think that really needs to be kind of treated separately, at least in our minds. I understand that all money is fungible. So for that reason, I'm going to be supporting the wage inflation rate. >> Okay. Mayor pro temelter. >> I think there are two -- somewhat separable issues before us. One is the rate, and the other is how it's allocated. And I think it is amply demonstrated that it's possible for us to do a non-inflation rate. When I talked about wage inflation rate, it was sort of a maximum in my mind versus a higher rate. But the other question that is what do you put it against? And I think there's something -- what has been pointed out that is correct is that you have some things that are already well-sized and scoped, and those are on the list, and then you have some things that are, to me, potentially equally or more compelling than sustainability, but not yet worked out, scoped, size, bedded, so on. So on the rate, given these options, I'm inclined to the noted taxes rate, but I would suggest rather than automatically just saying it's in the general fund and applying it to the existing list of identified items to hold the revenue associated with core scientific in the general fund as unallocated for a period of time, and let's get that work done of getting the sustainability items scoped and sized, and then let's take a look at that list again and see the will of council, is that going to bump these other items or not? It's just simply true that when you do a budget exercise, it doesn't involve making choices, and if that's a higher priority, then it's going to come before some other things. And then there are always yet more good things that could be done. We're talking within a fixed amount, the amount of which we're determining. So anyway, the essence of what I'm saying is noted taxes rate and set aside the core scientific revenue as unallocated, and then let's relook at the implied supplemental items in the context of the sustainability items once those have been scoped. >> Councilmember Davis. >> Thank you, mayor. If there's a way to do that, I absolutely support that idea because it is very easy every year to set a rate that takes in a certain amount of money. It is much more difficult to responsibly give that money back to the taxpayers. We get a chance once a year to set how much we're going to take, and then we have to spend that year budgeting and spending on programs that return a value, an equal or greater value to our citizens. To Councilmember Beck's point, money is fungible, and there was no discussion when we either approved the lease or the purchase power agreement with core scientific or when we passed the sustainability fund, there's no discussion about dollar amounts. I think some folks had things in mind, certainly things they'd like to see, but we were very careful not to have those conversations about how much is going in the sustainability fund because, one, we have to collect the money from that power customer. That has to happen before any fund can be funded. Two, we didn't know how much was going to be collected, and we didn't know that words like "substantial" or similar words like that were used. Those mean different things to different people, and I think what staff has done in slide number seven very clearly lays out, money comes into the general fund, and then it is spent on either council priorities or city manager requests or any of these other supplementals. If we're going to talk about spending a million dollars on a fund that is not programmed, then we need to start looking at maybe we need to knock off the $130,000 of council priorities. Maybe we need to knock off some of these other things that we've all said, as Councilmember Melzer pointed out, are all well and good and are up there for a reason. There is one item that sticks out like a sore thumb, the unprogrammed million dollars of citizen money. >> Just to reiterate that there was no percentage set in the meetings prior to this, and honestly, this is kind of why we went this direction, was there was no percentage. It was a discussion, and staff figured the numbers to show exactly what kind of money we would have to allocate for this little bit of time, but there was no percentage or any kind of amount discussed because that was the whole idea was we didn't know, and that was what we worked. >> Thank you. >> Councilmember Betz. >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Well, okay, so I -- apparently my neurons have collected data in a different way than others. I distinctly remember multiple discussions and sort of at least tacit agreement, if not explicit agreement towards the concept of a number around $2 billion, that was repeatedly floated around at both when it was core scientific and prior to that, the previous client. The other thing I will remind everyone that we were having a discussion just at the last budgetary notice, and to his credit, Councillor Davis is consistent on the no new revenue rate, so that's as a given, but many on this dais were in favor of higher rates than the wage inflation rate. Councillor Meltzer was sort of somewhat of an outlier. I think there was a couple of people who were in favor of that rate, and all of a sudden this is now instead of the floor is the ceiling, and I understand that, you know, we're taking into account an additional source of revenue, and so I guess that one of the things we did discuss in the last budgetary meeting was this idea that we couldn't really make an assessment, we had to approve the sustainability fund, we had to wait until the lease and the PPA were in contract, we couldn't make any of these estimates, which is why all the higher revenue rates were in place, because we couldn't count chickens and eggs before they were hatched, and we felt that we were not -- many of us stated that we would not be good stewards to count on money that didn't exist yet. Well, to some degree the money still doesn't exist yet because they could not follow through on their contract until March, so to some degree it actually bolsters the point of Mayor Pro Tem that we should just sequester all of the core scientific/Tanaska funds until we've programmed what we're going to do with it and until those revenues are not vaporware, in which case we're back to the previous budget from the last meeting, which was $0.59, as I recall, versus $0.57 on the wage inflation rate, and now -- oh, I don't even -- what's the new -- >> $0.56 and a half. >> $0.56 and a half. So, you know, and I think -- and I mean, I distinctly remember bringing up at the time at the last budgetary meeting that, you know, we could cross this bridge when we came to the additional monies, we still don't have the monies, and we're trying to budget for the monies now. So, you know, I'm okay with that because we do have a PPA in place, we are pursuing a lease, it's no longer pure vaporware, but at the same token, then if we have the monies in place, then we should program the way we were discussing the monies. If we don't have the monies in place, then we should not program them. I think that going and saying, well, we're going to have the monies, but we're not -- you know, I think that that's -- we're trying to split that baby too fine. >> Okay. Counselor, I'm going to turn. >> I agree. I -- excuse me, I hadn't realized that direction was being solicited on the supplemental request at this point. That's why I kind of held off on it and just gave a preview, saying that I, you know, I have issues with the supplemental list. Anyway, this is just to say that one of my issues, just one of them is in concurrence with what Mayor Pro Tem and Councilmember Bec were saying, you know, and which also, I think, kind of speaks to Councilmember Davis's point about, you know, kind of something problematic with allocating funds that don't exist yet. >> Okay. Any other comments? Seeing none, I think for me, David, go ahead. >> David Gaines, Assistant City Manager. Thank you, Mayor. Just -- if I can make just one comment on the proposal to do the no new revenue rate, wait on the revenues, and then kind of have -- or wait on a plan for the sustainability fund and weigh that against the other supplementals. Certainly, if that's Council's direction, that's the direction we can go. I would point out that if you look at that supplemental list, most of those are FTEs, so most likely what we'd have to do is just delay hiring those for six, seven months, see what the revenues look like, see what that plan looks like. So it would change the conversation a little bit, as opposed to just going forward with those supplementals, because they're not just one time costs, they're recurring FTE costs. We would just have to -- if that's the direction Council gave, we'd have to delay those hirings for that time, just to point that out as you consider the options. >> Okay. So we have an action-packed work session, so let's not -- let's limit the agrees and I support and duplications as best we can, and whatever doesn't get reached will get pushed to next week, just letting you know in advance. Councilmember Betz? >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Can I have a question for David? Is that appropriate? >> Certainly. >> Thank you. So, David, I don't understand the delay. I mean, if we've got -- I mean, I guess the delay is only necessary if the option of a higher rate is off the table. So if -- so, you know, we could go back to two weeks ago, three weeks ago, whenever the last budget meeting was, and say, okay, we were arguing this and we were trying to find that line, and all of these numbers were on a particular rate, and so we would just return to the status quo rather than this document, wouldn't we? >> Sure. I think the issue is there was not -- from watching council, there was not support to go above that wage inflation rate from consensus of council, and we can't afford all the supplementals on that list at the wage inflation rate without the core scientific revenue. So it's really -- the only way that we got to the point where the wage inflation rate pays for all the supplementals is with that core scientific revenue. And certainly it's -- council's prerogative and there's the flexibility to go above that. We just didn't have that -- we didn't see that consensus from council at the previous budget workshop. >> Okay. Well, then my direction is the wage inflation rate to keep the status quo but keep the sort of discussed programmatic levels as we discuss them. Councilman Burke? >> I think that I'm going to be in support of the wage inflation rate because we are just in a significant growth pattern here and I think that we need to just be mindful of that. We want to be prepared. I am not -- I don't want to risk the city having to wait on anything if we need to take care of something in the future. I'm just trying to make it as simple as possible. So having funds, it's like a savings account. It's an emergency type situation. If I'm talking to the audience out there that's hearing me, we need to make sure that we have something that we can touch basis on. We need something that's going to assist us with the sustainability level that we're trying to stay at or grow with. So that is a reason why I would definitely support that. The wage inflation rate, I just see growth plus need and I have the revisiting. We're going to have to revisit if we keep getting new fresh ideas and things and growing outward. That's where I am. Thank you. >> Councilmember Davis. >> Thank you, mayor. I just want to pick up on a couple of things people have touched on since the last time I spoke. This has been very frustrating budget process for me because from almost the beginning -- this is not on staff. Staff has cut to the bone in some departments. We've realized some savings from voluntary separation. But this has been an exercise in thinking of ways on the council's part to spend money that we don't absolutely need. We are talking about big, nebulous ideas that we apparently need $1.2 million to fund that we don't yet have a program for. We are talking about spending money that we're taking from folks, not to give them another police officer, not to pay their roads faster, not to give them better fire response or any of the things that are in the core of our mission as a city, but to put it in a fund to figure out what to do later. This is like when we looked at all that federal money coming in and said we've got to dream up ways to spend $11 million now and $11 million later for a total of almost $23 million. If we're up here thinking up ways to spend money, we ought not collect it. We ought to leave it with the folks. When you talk about growth, we aren't growing because Denton is just a magical, happy place. We are growing because we have a positive business environment. We have competitive tax rates with the other cities around us. We are growing because people have a good quality of life in Denton, and that is not perpetual. That will not just keep happening. We have to have policies in place that encourage that and keep it going. And raising taxes for the first time in I don't know how many years now is not the way to encourage growth. >> Okay. Councilman Berg. Okay. Councilman Betts. >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. The taxes are coming out of course scientific, so if something is going to be returned to someone, we should be returning it to course scientific. We were addressing the budgetary needs of the citizens of Denton under the previous schema. So if you are talking about, you know, returning funds, then you should be returning them to course scientific who paid those taxes or will pay those taxes in six months' time. And that is all I will say for that, and then I will remind you that the sort of point of discussion was that the rationale for these sustainability funds was to mitigate that industry. So thank you. >> Anyone else? Seeing none, I have a couple of questions. So the -- I talked to the city manager's office about the four digital speeding -- speed signs for Lakey Street, Curly Street, two on Morris. Is that -- can someone speak to that, the cost and would that fit into this budget? >> Sure. Becky from capital projects is here to talk about that. >> And then I asked about the blocker trucks, I just want to get an update on where we are there as well afterwards. >> Sure. >> Good afternoon, Mayor. >> Good afternoon. >> Yes, sir, I have some information on the speed signs. So a typical residential speed limit sign cost about $100. The illuminated signs that actually are the speed limit sign that show the border around them that would flash cost approximately $1,400. And the third sign is called a driver feedback sign. That's actually a speed limit sign that at the bottom of the sign will actually detect and show the speed limit that you are actually driving. So per se, if it's 30 miles an hour, it might say 35 miles per hour if you're driving over the speed limit. That's about $3,600. I did an idea which was to take the first bond package neighborhood, which is the Sedna neighborhood. There's approximately 48 speed limit signs in that neighborhood. And to do basically a repair, a replacement program with some of those costs. So per se, you're going to take the 48 speed limit signs and use just the regular speed limit sign that's the typical one that's out there. I will mention that some of the speed limit signs that are currently in several of our neighborhoods through sun and UV reflection, obviously, some of those have degradation. And so there is new reflective measures that are used. To replace those would cost about $5,000 just with a regular sign. There would be an estimate of about $70,000 to do that for all of the speed limit signs in the Sedna neighborhood for the illuminated one. And then about $175,000 for the driver feedback just to use the Sedna neighborhood as an example. Those are just the costs of the signs themselves that does not include the maintenance and operation of actually putting those out. Several of the signs also include battery packs that do have to be replaced from time to time as they have solar powered feedback on them. I also wanted to mention that starting in October we actually have a replacement program that the traffic operations department is working on. And they will be replacing their regulatory and school signs over a five-year program. And so there is some work that's already kind of going into place. But those are being put in with the standard signs, the regular signs that I mentioned to you. >> Okay. And so my math, and again, it's just for strategic locations based on experience and based on conversation. So I think that's the round numbers for at the feedback component, 3,600. That'd be $14,400 for those four. And my question is, so in this current budget, we wouldn't capture that? >> No, sir. Those are not included in the current budget. >> Okay. Then I would -- I'll try to -- I think that's important. I want to try to add that. But I'll figure out how to do that offline. Or at least how to propose that before we adopt next week. And then the fire blockers -- >> If I may, we are forecasting to have an excess in the current year, so that could be an option that we could fund it out of the current year budget, if council directs us to. >> Okay. So I'll just make a one-minute pitch around that then. And, Chief, if you could speak to the blocker truck, I think your points were very valid on how to get it on scene, that sort of thing. >> Ken Page, Fire Chief. On the blocking unit, we are still kind of in the research phase right now. I did present to city manager's office two weeks ago a proposal in which we're looking, in lieu of using older engines, like some departments have done, looking at a new chassis. So that would actually prolong the life of that vehicle for 15 plus years. You invest one time, you have a solution for longer periods as well. We're in the process of speaking with numerous different vendors. We did set through a call for project -- conference call year's day with a call where there's some funding potentially possible. The only issue we saw with that is this funding wouldn't be available until December of 2022. So I shouldn't have something more zero to end with in the next two to three weeks. But right now, if we look at an all-in new chassis, you're talking about $200,000, roughly. >> Okay. And do you want to -- if you could just so everyone's on the same page, because I think it's a great point, the other challenge is how to staff it or how to get it on scene. Do you want to speak to that, just kind of what you're -- I don't have it solved, but the problem before us. >> The problem is the fact that there would be no staffing for this vehicle. What we're envisioning is keeping it parked at one of the fire stations accessible to fire our police for long-term incidents on the highways with the realization knowing they probably would not be there within the first 15 minutes. That's really the time sensitive area you need to try to capture traffic, try to slow it down. We have some options on the table in which we're actually considering possibly using light-duty personnel that are not eligible to work full-duty operations, but we might be able to utilize them in this blocker position as well. Blocker units really just a truck with the traffic management attenuator on back. So it not only protects the workers on the scene, the distracted driver that actually hits this, it actually improves their chances of survival and less injuries also. >> Great. Thank you very much. Appreciate your research on that. Look forward to your feedback. >> Thank you. >> And Cassie, yeah, so for me, and then it's also important to me just kind of to know what we're -- we talked about briefly the using our existing contract and as far as Spanish translations, so that will be a on-demand kind of -- it's available and then we'll measure that, but everything will be -- the closed captioning will be implemented. That's great. And then I just -- so my statement is this. The -- there's -- the return on investment for the data center, if you will, it's a economic driver that then that's what we focused -- that's what I focused on is using commercial development to lower residential property taxes. And this is -- it's text books. So when you talk about return, absolutely it's a return. And I'm all for conversations about real projects, no different than this conversation I just had. I'm not advocating that we set aside $200,000 for a blocker truck that we've not figured out how it's going to work yet or what we're going to do. That is not right to take taxpayer money early and just set it aside for a plan that's not fully baked. We talk about shovel ready projects, turnkey projects, vetted projects, that sort of thing. So that really is kind of the problem for me. And so -- but this is exactly to me what we should be doing. And I'll note -- I noted it last conversation. We have -- it's the subject of a -- the results of economic development. But this council decided not to fund the economic development fund. So no fund going into economic development. But we would say we're going to raise people's taxes to then put almost a million dollars additional into a fund for sustainability. So that to me is backwards. If we -- more economic development drives more funding for us to do more sustainability projects, it -- to me, economic development precedes those sustainability projects and funds it even -- it increases. So yeah, I'm with councilmember Davis. We've been on council about the same time. Staff showed the chart a million -- a lot of times. We've not raised taxes since I joined this council in 2017. I've been here longer than anyone else. I'm a senior guy, which is crazy. But I say that to say we should not start that trend now. And I expect that the citizens that didn't would not expect us to raise their taxes to put a million dollars into a fund that's not actionable. I think they would be -- I credit staff for allocating over a quarter million dollars for sustainability already. And in six months, I think that's actionable. In eight months, I think that's actionable. And then by then, we're having another budget conversation. So I don't think it's -- it's prudent to raise taxes for the first time in five years to only -- with the only benefit being to put aside a million dollars for a fund to sit there and not be actionable. So that's my direction. I'll leave staff to do the accounting of -- you've heard from everyone, and you can go back and watch it. So I'll leave it at that. And then I'll allow you -- you can go with your -- if there's any questions you have, great. Otherwise -- >> So just to be clear, because I have to put the budget together now for next week's consideration. So I think what I'm hearing is there's consensus for the wage inflation rate. But I just want to be crystal clear that that's what I've heard. Okay. >> Okay. >> So now moving on to the fee changes, we are proposing several fee changes. And we do have the department's fees represented here if you have specific operational questions. But just to go through some of these, we're adding a fee for the canine class. So if -- there's a separate fee if a canine participates versus just a person observing the class, $250 for the working spot and then $100 for the audit. We're removing -- we're proposing to remove the off- duty private event fees because you'll recall we did go to that contracted service that schedules all of our off-duty events. And that includes a 10.5% admin fee to those organizations that require off-duty events. And then for fire, we do charge for hazmat. And then we're just updating the fees to reflect the median pay rates for all of the bands. So for firefighters, drivers, captains, for all the personnel, slight changes proposed for next year. And then for parks fees, we have a couple of additions. So the Clear Creek Heritage Center, there's a proposed hunting permit fee and rental of the park and facility. And then we also have proposed fees for memorial fees like benches, trees, bricks, pickets, the nook rental fee. And then there's some promotional discounts that we're proposing to include in the schedule of fees for the Waterworks Park. Changes to the current fee schedule include adding or changing the rental space for the American Legion Hall, the rental fees for that space. Civic Center Pool, the increases are proposed. There's weekday rates that we're proposing to increase by $50. And then there's also an addition of weekend rates, which are different than the weekday rates. For the natatorium, we're proposing to increase the lane rental from $10 to $12 an hour. And then at the water park to increase the Cabana rental rate from $65 to $75. And again, if you have specific questions about these fees, we do have the departments here to answer those questions. So tonight, we will have the budget and tax rate public hearings. And then next week, budget adoption, tax rate, and capital improvement adoption is scheduled for council consideration. And with that, I'll take any questions. >> Questions for staff. Councilmember Ritter? >> Yeah, question about water park fees. That might be a question for, you know, park staff. >> I'll ask Gary to come help me out. >> So I just wanted to be clear. So what's being proposed -- the changes being proposed are a number of discounts, marketing discounts, military days, et cetera, plus the -- an increase in the Cabana rentals. Is there -- is this contingent on any proposed increase in admission fees in general to the water park? >> Yeah, there's no admission fee increases. The Cabana rate, actually, we've been charging $75, so it was an error on our fees and charges. So that's a correction to our actual fees and charges plan. So we have been charging 75, but it was labeled as 65. >> I know those are just kind of out of my league anyway. So as far as the pricing goes, I'm just so glad that the admissions fees aren't going to be raised on families. Awesome. >> Thank you. >> Okay, any other questions from staff? Then I do -- Gary, while you're there, I just want to tell you and your staff and city management and whoever else made it go, thank you for helping us weather an employee kind of strained environment so we made it the entire summer. And so I really appreciate those efforts and all the hiring and all the just kind of incentivizing and messaging and getting more kids in, and then at the same time we were successful, safely made it, then saved the best for last, the dogs were able to get out there and splash around. So really, really good job all the way, top to bottom. Thank you very much for that. One quick question on the American Legion hall, and my question is the green room, is that that main room? Is that because it's terraced and then it says green room? I just want to understand what that is. >> The green room is the front room along -- Lakey? >> It's the rec room. >> Okay. It's one of the rec rooms off to the side, not the main room of the dividers. That's the A and B. >> Okay, got it. Okay, got it. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. >> Welcome. >> Any other questions for staff? Cassie, I do have one request for tonight's presentation because I'm going to use it to share with people. Could we -- and I was trying to find the date that you put it up to try to make it easier, but I don't have it. I would like to see the graphic of kind of the key fees that you share that show kind of the adjustment and tax rate and I think it was water. There's some key ones that you have on the slide. >> Sure. >> Could you show -- add a column for this evening that would show what's pending so that I can share that over the week and try to get feedback? >> Absolutely. >> Yeah, and in that way people tonight can see it and understand and have a week to think about it. Okay. >> Okay, thank you. >> All right, thank you. Great presentation. Okay, that concludes item A, takes us to item B, which is ID21458, receive report hold -- let me see, let me make sure I have that right, that might be the wrong -- like I said, it's looking at that. Okay, no, so it's B, ID211639, receive report hold discussion, give staff direction regarding an overview of the previous February 25, 2020, and October 13, 2020, council work sessions, federal, state, civil rights, law, and research on comprehensive non-discrimination ordinance. >> Good afternoon, mayor, city council, Sara Keckler, chief of staff. One second while I share the presentation with you. And I just want to mention I also have Mike Kronig, he's our deputy city attorney, so he'll be available for questions as well at the end of this presentation. So this presentation is coming out of the one-minute pitch that was made in June of this year to revisit a comprehensive non-discrimination ordinance. We have a staff presented prior information on non-discrimination ordinances to city council. The first was in February of 2020, and at that time, there was a pending Supreme Court case on employment in regards to sexual orientation and gender identity being covered under federal law for employment or not. That case outcome was given in June of 2020, and we came back in October of 2020 with an update to city council and some more information. So today's presentation is going to be broken up into three parts. We are going to cover, again, just a quick review of federal and state law, and we do have a couple of important updates to note there. We will quickly review those cities in Texas that have comprehensive non-discrimination ordinances. So that is the cities that you see listed here on the screen. Arlington is new, so we'll go over that as well. And then lastly, just providing some information that was requested during the last work session in October of 2020 regarding housing complaints that the city receives. So, Mayor, if it's okay, I'm just going to go through this presentation. Let me know if you want to take a break. Otherwise, we'll just plan on taking questions towards the end. >> Yeah, we'll just take them towards the end. >> Okay. So moving into the first part of the presentation, a review of what is covered for civil rights, for sexual orientation and gender identity by federal and state law. So I've broken it out into the three areas by employment, housing and public accommodations. And the second column shows if discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity is prohibited and is covered in federal law. So for employment, yes, it is covered by federal law. And this is coming out of case law from the Supreme Court, which ruled, as I just mentioned, in June of 2020 that sexual orientation and gender identity is covered under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. So what that means is if you've been discriminated against on the basis of your sexual orientation or gender identity, you can file -- and employment matters -- you can file a claim with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and they will handle and investigate that complaint. Also, you can also file a complaint with the Texas Workforce Commission. Filing with either one effectively files with both. For housing, moving into the second area, this is the new update that we've had since our last presentation. Texas Fair -- as a reminder, Texas Fair Housing Act and the U.S. Fair Housing Act prohibit discrimination in housing practices, and a number of protected classes as seen -- listed here on the screen, including sex-based discrimination. In the past, HUD indicated they may accept these complaints on sexual orientation and gender identity, that it may be covered under sex-based discrimination. But with the change in the executive branch, there has been more clear direction coming down from the federal government. So, per executive order of President Biden, in February of 2021, all federal agencies should interpret sex-based discrimination to also include sexual orientation and gender identity. That led to the acting secretary of HUD to issue a memorandum in February of this year that HUD will interpret the Fair Housing Act to ban discrimination on sexual orientation and gender identity, so HUD will accept and investigate all complaints on sexual orientation and gender identity, and that's the clearest it's ever been from that federal agency. And then, lastly, in the third section here for public accommodations, Title II of the Federal Civil Rights Act does prohibit discrimination in places of public accommodation on the basis of four protected classes, as listed here on the screen. Sex-based discrimination is not included in the federal law, and Texas does not have an equivalent law for public accommodations on those classes or for sex-based discrimination. It is important to note that there are 45 other states that have a law that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, and of those 45, I believe it's 21 or 22 explicitly state sexual orientation and gender identity. So, here in Texas and also federally, that is not currently covered for public accommodations. So, kind of moving into the next part of the presentation, local municipalities have decided in the past to adopt non-discrimination ordinances to add protections for those classes that were not covered expressly under federal or state law or are still not covered expressly under federal or state law. And it just included some information here from the movement advancement project. This is an advocacy group, and it notes that as of January 1 of this year, there are at least 21 states and at least 330 municipalities that fully and explicitly prohibit discrimination against LGBTQ people. In Texas, we have five cities that have that comprehensive non-discrimination ordinance, and I'll move into just providing some brief highlights and some of the key differences of those ordinances. But before I do that, I just want to go over a couple more parameters. These local non-discrimination ordinances in Texas, they largely mirror existing and state federal law for employment, housing, and public accommodations. They're just extending the classes protected, and this is for consistency in how they're going about their processes and also probably likely to make it more defensible. So, for example, the Fair Housing Act, there is specific housing practices. There's a list of at least 10 or so that apply to that act, and you'll see those mirror in those local non-discrimination ordinances, as well as some of the exemptions that are included in federal law. And then one other important thing to note in regards to Texas and that municipalities in Texas have to take into consideration is the Texas Religious Freedom and Restoration Act, which states that governments cannot burden, substantially burden, someone's expression or practice of their religion. So you'll see in these non-discrimination ordinances, some have specifically exempted religious organizations from their entire ordinance, and then some provide for more specific exemptions in each section or they're stating very clearly that it might be a defense to their local non-discrimination ordinance if someone claims this has burdened their religion and their practice of their religion. And so the ordinance may not apply then. One other quick slide that I want to go over before I jump into the five cities is kind of a key distinction amongst those five cities. You'll see for the cities of Dallas, Fort Worth and Austin, they actually have structured offices for human rights and civil rights. So they have fully staffed offices that are actually in agreement with federal agencies of HUD and EEOC. So you'll see on the right side listed here what it means to have an agreement with those federal agencies and to be certified as a Fair Housing Assistance Program Agency or a Fair Employment Practice Agency. In just summary, it means that they are fully certified with those agencies and that they're substantially equivalent to what that agency would do to ensure that they're going through the correct steps and correct process to provide the same rights, procedures, remedies, and availability for judicial review as if the federal agency was doing it themselves. And they have to demonstrate that they can maintain that level in order to continue to have that certification. So it is somewhat resource intensive. The benefit for those agencies for -- sorry, for the cities of Dallas, Fort Worth and Austin is they can use those offices that have been established to help -- to review and investigate complaints that -- on the basis of their local nondiscrimination ordinances. So they're using those offices to also help implement their local nondiscrimination ordinance. For Plano and Arlington, they do not have such offices established. You're going to see in these municipalities, they are more focused on how can they help refer complaints to an agency that might take them, how do they help connect to available resources, how do they do education, or how do they help mediate? They're more focused on that mediation of complaints. And we'll get into some more information about each of these, but just noting that Arlington's is very new and was adopted in June of this year. So for the next few slides, we've tried -- and we've shown this in prior presentations -- just tried to break down the complexity of these ordinances. If you do look at them, we had all the links in the backup. Some of them are quite long. But just trying to provide a quick overview of some key highlights of these ordinances by their six main components. So the first is just some background on each ordinance. The second, what is the definitions for those three areas in each of their ordinances? Do they have broad exemptions? Do they have specific exemptions? Moving down into the complaint process, how are complaints filed and reviewed? Is there a timeline in which a complaint needs to be made, which a complaint needs to be reviewed? Who does that initial review to see if it actually comes underneath the ordinance, or is it outside of the jurisdiction of that local ordinance? If after an initial review, if it moves into an investigative step, who handles that investigation? What does that look like? Are you doing interviews? What sort of documentation can you get? What does that complaint process of review and investigation look like, and how do you determine that there's reasonable cause that the discrimination occurred on the basis of the protected class? And then, if there is reasonable cause that discrimination occurred, when does mediation take place? Who does the mediation? Is it city staff? Is it a third-party mediator? And if it can be mediated, is there an agreement? And then, who enforces or monitors that agreement? If it cannot be mediated, what enforcement mechanisms are there? What penalty is there for violation of the ordinance, which under these are a class C misdemeanor under municipal code? So I'll jump right in. Again, I'm not going to go through all of this, but just to give you a little flavor of kind of what each of these models look like for the five different cities, and I know we've reviewed this in the past as well. But the first is the city of Plano. So they adopted their ordinance in December of 2014, and they do have broad exemptions in their ordinance as listed here on the screen, including for religious, political, and nonprofit organizations and educational institutions. They also exempt public restrooms explicitly in their ordinance. And then, since they've adopted their ordinance, they have only received nine official complaints, and the last complaint was received in 2016. So in the last five years, they have not received any complaints underneath the ordinance, but of the ones they did receive early on, zero of them reached the level to warrant an investigation, so it stopped at that initial review stage. Either it was not covered under the local ordinance, or it could be referred out to another agency, and that's really one distinction for Plano's ordinances. They state very specifically that if a federal agency will take the complaint, it will be referred. So now that employment and housing is covered by federal law and federal agencies, anything falling underneath employment and housing on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in Plano would be referred to those federal agencies which could handle it. If they were to receive a complaint, which they could not refer, they would form, and it needed to be investigated. They would form an investigation panel consisting of five people, which would be three director level staff appointed by the city manager, and two rotating external business community representatives. Again, this is in concept since they have not had to form one of these investigation panels yet and see what that process would look like. If the panel were to investigate it and determine that there was a reasonable cause and a religious accommodation was not granted, the matter could be referred to a neutral third-party mediator paid for by the city, and they would try to mediate that difference. And if it could not be mediated, there is potential for penalty of the ordinance with a violation subject up to a $500 fine, which is that misdemeanor penalty. And then moving on to the city of Arlington, so this is the newest. It was, they did have existing two ordinances for anti-discrimination and fair housing, and they amended both of those in June of this year to add gender identity and sexual orientation, specifically. Also want to highlight here for Arlington is that they did lay out a high-level process in their ordinance of how they would investigate or mediate complaints. It states that the city manager would designate an administrator to oversee the process. They have not determined yet what staff member that would be to be in that administrator position. However, they are proposing a new staff position that would handle some equity and inclusion issues for the city, and so this might be part of that new position, if approved. And we'll follow back up with them in the coming weeks to see if they've made that determination yet and how it would be staffed, as well as they're working on SOPs to give some more detail about what that process would look like. So they're still working through a little bit of the implementation phase, although they've adopted their ordinance. But they are, as staff did share, that one of the intentions of the ordinance is to try to conciliate a complaint where possible and reach an agreement with both parties. As such, there is no penalty or fine for any ordinance violations, but they would help to refer out to other agencies that might investigate it further for federal or state. Moving on to the next city is the city of Dallas, and so they, again, they amended both of their existing chapters to add in sexual orientation, gender identity, and then they provide for some broad exemptions, for some specific exemptions. You kind of see the theme as I'm going through these. They do have some complaint data. They have 91 complaints filed since 2002. As I mentioned earlier in the presentation, Dallas is a federal fair housing assistance program agency, and they do have an office of fair housing and human rights with four paid staff specifically to look into fair housing and complaints. And so they'll go through, that staff will go through the process of investigation and mediation and trying to conciliate where possible. If they cannot, it could be referred to the city attorney's office, and it could then go through municipal court for, again, Class C misdemeanor. The next city is the city of Fort Worth, and they have an entire chapter 17 on human relations that was adopted more than 50 years ago, was amended in the early 2000s to add sexual orientation and gender identity. Fort Worth is both a fair housing and a fair employment practice agency, and they have been those agencies for more than 40 years, so they have a substantial amount of experience in this area. They do not have any broad exemptions, so their ordinance is very detailed by section, and they do provide some exemptions underneath each one of those sections. Public restrooms are exempts from the city of Fort Worth's ordinance. They do have a department of diversity and inclusion with nine FTEs and two part-time staff, and they help to handle these reviews, investigation, and then how a complaint may be mediated or closed out. The city of Austin is the last city. They have an entire Title V civil rights chapter with six sections. They also are a fair housing partner and have an agreement with the EEOC to enforce federal law. Other things to highlight for the city of Austin shown here on the screen is they do have, again, that Fair Housing Equal Employment and Fair Housing Office with seven FTEs to handle the review of complaints and investigation of complaints and mediation, and, again, they are going to try to mediate, and if it cannot be mediated, it may be forwarded for prosecution in the municipal court. Or in the city of Austin's case, because they can enforce federal law, which interpret, now that HUD is interpreting fair housing to include sexual orientation, gender identity, there's a possible that they could be doing that investigation on behalf of HUD because they are certified to do so. And this is the last, the third part and the last part of the presentation, and this is to address what currently happens if city of Denton staff receive potential complaints and how are they handled, and just to provide some more information. So for employment, if we did receive a complaint, we would help that individual get connected to the EEOC or the Texas Workforce Commission. In recent history, checking with community services and economic development, we have not received those type of calls or been reached out to for that type of assistance. However, we do get a number of housing complaint calls in our community services department. And I've tried to outline what are the main categories of housing complaints that we see. And so I'll show the data on the next slide because we do track that. Danny has shared all that information. But here are the four categories. The first is the landlord tenant disputes, and most of the calls fit within this category. And we are helping to refer to an agency that may be able to assist somebody with that civil matter. And that's usually those local legal advocacy groups that can help or housing advocacy groups that can help. Just also want to note that the city does provide a general human services grant program for nonprofit agencies. So agencies that provide those services are eligible to apply for that funding each year. And we do currently fund one of those legal advocacy agencies called RISE. The second category of calls that we see most often is someone seeking housing assistance or perhaps they're having some barriers to housing again based upon the individual circumstances of what that person is needing assistance with. We'll try to refer them to the right agencies since we have many generous nonprofit agencies in the community. We also as a city help to provide funding to those agencies through a number of different programs including the human services grant program. We also have specific annual grants for rapid rehousing and for the United Way of Denton County's Barriers Fund which is really one that I want to highlight here because we do see individuals sometimes that have trouble obtaining housing. Maybe there's certain barriers in their way where they don't have any rental history. They have a criminal history. They need help with a down payment. How do we help them overcome those barriers so that they can obtain the housing that they need because that landlord is requiring that of all individuals. So that is one of the most programs that has one of the most benefits in trying to do some of those quick connections of somebody that may have trouble being housed. And I just want to note, too, for veterans, we do have the veteran housing navigator program with Denton County and they're helping to do very much the same thing. Are there certain barriers that a veteran is seeing that we can help overcome to help get them placed into housing? And then the third category is for rental inspections by request. So somebody may have some health and safety concerns in their unit. We actually do have community services and code enforcement staff that can go into the unit for an inspection to see if it complies with our codes with the permission of the tenant. So that is a service we offer and are able to help with. And then, lastly, if there are any potential fair housing violations, we would help refer them to HUD. We have seen one potential violation of fair housing where we help that individual get connected to HUD. And so that's shown here on the next slide, which is a review of the data of the housing complaint calls that we have tracked for the last two years with a total of 39 complaints. And you can see kind of various numbers through those different categories that I just went through, with the largest being those landlord-tenant civil disputes where we're trying to help refer to agencies that might be able to assist somebody with that civil matter. And so this last slide, staff is looking for direction from City Council if you would like us to begin to draft a model of a nondiscrimination ordinance. And I use the word "model" a little bit more broadly, as it would include both the ordinance, the process, and the staffing. And if we were to move forward with that and kind of looking for some direction, is there a template based upon some of the five cities that we've reviewed and some of the key distinctions I went through that you would like us to start with? If you do, we would have to come back with additional work sessions kind of going at least through more specific components from that template and receiving council direction, as well as developing an estimate of some staffing and financial resources needed to implement that model that would be desired. And then, council, we would advise giving some consideration of when the public outreach and feedback process would take place in development of that ordinance, or at what stage or what level would you like us to solicit community input and feedback. Some other options could be for you to request staff to develop other alternatives or options, and maybe that's around a specific goal and/or objective, whether that be providing more funding or grants to housing advocacy or legal aid groups, trying to address some of the complaints that we do see coming in and trying to provide more resources to our nonprofits that are providing those services, or there are certain programs where you're trying to encourage or incentivize certain objectives. And then, lastly, we would take any other direction, as well. Happy to answer any questions you may have. >> Okay, thank you. Councilmember Amater. >> There we go. So, first of all, thank you so much for this really wonderful presentation. It's, you know, the one from last year was excellent, and this is even better, and just really comprehensive and informative, so thank you. I have a question, and happy to give my direction, as well, although I have a feeling kind of hearing from other council members and seeing questions and concerns that come up. I'll probably need to chime in on other issues raised by other council members. My question is, doesn't Dallas' ordinance also prohibit landlords from discriminating against veterans with housing vouchers, which is something that, as you know, I had brought up in a work session last year, the year before, I think two years ago. But Dallas includes that, too, right? >> Dallas does have an ordinance that prohibits discrimination on the source of income for veterans, so it's based upon the source of income for veterans with housing vouchers. So, yes, they do have one. They would follow that same, I believe, the same process of handling a complaint, then investigating, then going through that entire process to see if there's reasonable cause that discrimination was on the basis of source of income, or was it due -- and that's kind of as I was talking about, often it's due to other barriers to housing, so really, we're trying -- well, we don't have that specific ordinance in place, so what are the barriers? Maybe what are some of the reasons why veterans are not being placed into housing, and is there other ways to overcome that in working with landlords to open up more doors? >> Oh, sure, yeah. And, I mean, I appreciate that, but I see, you know, just an outright prohibition, in other words, the sticks as well as the carrots, you know, could work together really well. But I think that, you know, just having a prohibition would be really helpful, you know, to veterans who are in need of affordable housing who are lucky enough to have housing vouchers. So, you know, my direction is I want a nondiscrimination ordinance like what Dallas has. There are some other good ones, you know, I think Dallas is a good model. I also know what I definitely don't want, which is an ordinance like Plano's or Arlington's or Fort Worth, which are, one, you know, they're weak, and in the case of Plano and Fort Worth, get few complaints or none. And also, number two, and very importantly, in the case of Plano and Fort Worth, exempting bathrooms. By exempting bathrooms from public facilities, they are -- these ordinances exempt one of, if not the biggest, most contested site of trauma for trans people in general, including trans people in Denton who face discrimination every day just for using the bathroom of their gender identity. So what might seem, you know, on the surface to just kind of a small detail or a concession to, you know, people who feel uncomfortable with trans people's right to use the bathrooms is actually, in my very strong view, a kind of slap in the face to the civil rights of trans people. So, you know, for that reason, I don't think there's anything that we can do about it. So I don't think it's -- I don't think it's a good idea to have Plano and Fort Worth are totally off the table to me. >> Okay. Councilmember McGuire. >> Thank you, mayor. I have a question that might be better addressed by Ms. Clifton. Looking at enforcement mechanism, I know that Austin says that cases can be forwarded to the city attorney for prosecution. I'm wondering if staff could give us a little bit more detail about what that type of prosecution might look like and what other options there may be for enforcement, including, like, providing individuals who are experiencing discrimination the opportunity to bring a lawsuit. Could staff speak to that, please? >> I'll start -- or, I don't know, Katherine, if you want Mike to answer as well, or I can -- >> Right. If Mike Kronig, deputy city attorney, could come up. He's done the research on this most recently. On the prosecution part, Stephanie Berry is a deputy city attorney that would prosecute that. I believe, and I'm not a criminal attorney, but I believe there is a maximum -- I don't know if it's $500 or $2,000. I'm not sure what the maximum penalty is financially for a class C misdemeanor. So we put in the $500. I don't know -- Katherine, off that's the maximum that we can do. But that's what the criminal part would be. It would be no different -- I hate to -- there's certainly no equivalency, but it's a citation that you'd go down to court, and you could either have a trial before the court or a jury trial. It's just like a traffic citation or any other type of code violation. So that's the criminal part of it. I think when it comes to filing lawsuits, I don't think -- and I may be wrong on this -- I don't think that the city would be filing a lawsuit on behalf. I think it would be the individual that would have to file a lawsuit against the property owner or the business. I don't think the city necessarily -- I don't know cities that would file that on behalf of them. I know for claims like with the EEOC employment, the EEOC actually is the plaintiff and files it on behalf of it, or if it's against the municipality, the Department of Justice. But certainly, I believe, civil avenues available, I don't think the ordinance has to create the right to file a lawsuit. I think under the United States Constitution, there's an equal protection clause where someone could claim denying me the access to the bathroom is denying me equal protection under the law, so they could either file or state a federal civil rights lawsuit. So there are a lot of different avenues that someone that feels like they've been discriminated could take advantage of. >> Okay. Follow-up question, is there a difference between, say, the city of Fort Worth that, you know, has a fine of not more than $500 versus a city that classifies this type of offense as a Class C misdemeanor? Are those the same thing that we're talking about? >> Yeah, it's just the amount of the fine that they're authorizing. It's a Class C misdemeanor. Anything above that would have to be approved by the state legislature. >> Okay. >> Class B misdemeanor and above. >> All right, that's very helpful. Thank you very much. So I think that I'm ready to provide some direction, although, like Councilmember Armitage, I anticipate we're going to go around about this a little bit. I also -- oh, I had another question that might be more for you, and I may have missed this in the question about Dallas' ordinance. Is the prohibition on source of income discrimination for veterans included in their non-discrimination ordinance, or is that a separate ordinance? >> Danny may know the answer. >> That particular provision is actually in their fair housing ordinance. >> Okay, okay. >> And just to clarify, it's limited to veterans because state law prohibits any other protections. >> Right, okay. We have a fairer housing ordinance, correct? >> That is correct. >> Okay. >> Just to maybe give some more insight, we have a fair housing ordinance. If there are potential fair housing violations, we help to connect that person to HUD to file that complaint, and we do not investigate those locally. So if we were to add a new protection, such as the veteran source of income, we would have to then determine how we would investigate those locally, one, to have the staffing, the training, the process, the SOPs. So it is very time-intensive to get that going and to know, you know, we would have to be ready. If one is filed with us and we need to investigate it locally, how would that take place? >> So -- >> So -- >> Because we could not refer it to HUD. >> We couldn't refer it to HUD. >> We could not refer it to HUD. >> Okay, okay. So we can only refer things to the EEOC or HUD if they are in violation of EEOC or HUD policies, not if they are in violation of our -- >> That is correct. >> Ordinances that may go beyond those policies. Okay, thank you. That clarifies a lot for me. So I am in agreement with Councilmember Armenter. I would like to use as a starting point Dallas and Austin's non-discrimination ordinances. I would like to see us enumerating as many protected classes as we reasonably can and as specifically as we reasonably can. You know, obviously race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity. I think we should also explore and this might be a good, you know, thing to hear about in like a legal status report or something, what would be the implications of including ethnicity, language, disability, veteran status as well in those protected classes. I absolutely want to see us including public accommodation and keeping that as broad as we legally can under state law. I do not want to see any exemption for public restrooms because as Councilmember Armenter pointed out, in practice, that is the greatest pain point for trans and non-binary individuals experiencing discrimination in public settings. Restrooms are -- having access to public restrooms is very important and I wouldn't see a whole lot of point in us doing this if we're going to exempt people from public restrooms. Obviously, religious organizations need to be exempted in order to comply with state law, but that would be about the only exemption that I would like to see unless I'm missing something else that's required by state law. As far as enforcement, I -- you know, another one of the reasons why I didn't include Ellington in my list of ordinances that I would like to use as a template is because they don't have penalties. I would like to see meaningful enforcement mechanisms which are as strong as we can legally make them. If that's a class C misdemeanor, then that's what I would like to see. >> Before the rest of the Councilmembers give direction, I just wanted one thing to clarify. If we're using Dallas, would you simply want staff to refer employment and housing complaints to the federal agencies that handle them, or would you like us to be our own federal fair housing agency program, because that certainly is a very big distinction if we're going to be -- I mean, it still might require some staffing to do it locally, but if we're going to also handle federal complaints, that's a much bigger -- just trying to understand inside of it. >> Yeah, thank you for asking for that clarification. As much as we can refer out, I would prefer for us to refer out, we obviously don't have the resources of Dallas or Austin to do those kinds of investigations in-house very often. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. >> Anyone else? Councilmember Vett. >> Thank you. >> There we go. Thank you, person in the sky. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So that was one of my big questions is, I mean, regarding some of these models with them having that federal relationship, you know, I love the way you laid them out in terms of, you know, the protected entities and the enforcement mechanisms, mediation, that's extremely helpful. I'm really glad you did that. So I guess my question is, and you sort of addressed that just now at the end of the last discussion, is if we don't have a federal relationship, then can you talk -- and maybe just -- I don't know, you'd probably just be reiterating, but can you tell us, again, what would be our mechanism if we say direct you not to have a federal relationship, and we would just be referring them -- anyway, I won't put words in your mouth. I'll let you answer the question. >> Sure. It's actually going to be more like Plano or Arlington, where they've had to come up with a method in their ordinance for how that complaint would be handled for the initial review and investigation and mediation. So we would need to develop something for those ones, like Plano says very specifically, we'll refer where we can. So if HUD or EEOC will handle it, they're going to refer those out. If they do not, they would have to form that five-person panel, or in Arlington, they're going to have a staff member designated to do that. Again, I don't really know what that's going to look like in terms of who that staff member is going to be or what training they're going to have, but we would need to also come up with something like that to determine who's doing that process, what training do they need, who has the capacity, but not knowing at what scope we're doing this, it's a little difficult to try to come up with what are some options, but getting this initial direction will help to scope what those options might be for those things that we could not refer. >> Right. So that's helpful. And so let me flip the question then. So if for Dallas and Fort Worth and Austin, they essentially have to craft their ordinances to match the federal guidelines in order to have that federal relationship. Is that correct? >> Yes. >> So they can't have their ordinance have more coverage than the federal guidelines, right? >> They can. >> So they want to have more protected classes. This is a hypothetical. If we wanted to throw in more protected classes, but because of their federal relationship, they can't do that or they can't? >> They can. All three of those cities have gone beyond the federal protections, but then those complaints on the -- let's take Austin on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity for housing, a few months ago with the change in the administration, they would have had to investigate that underneath their local ordinance so they would follow all of the same processes as if they were doing it underneath HUD. It's just that end step, if it could not be mediated, the only enforcement mechanism then would be a class C misdemeanor. If they were doing it under HUD and federal law, they could be doing it underneath all those remedies that are possible through federal law because they are certified to do that and really act as an arm of HUD. So if they -- on the basis of race, if there was a complaint, they investigated it, they found reasonable cause, they could not mediate it, they could go further into what remedies are defined in the U.S. Fair Housing Act because they are enabled and authorized to enforce federal law. >> Okay. >> So it's different. >> So in the counter -- not the counterexample, but for a class that isn't covered, they would be -- if we wanted to have that or in their case, that they do have classes that are not covered by the fed, then they have what, a simplified subset of language that says what -- we just cite you with a class C. >> The mechanisms would be different there. So, yes, it would just be in municipal court, class C misdemeanor is as far as it would go. >> Which is essentially, minus the mediation, the Arlington Plano approach. Okay. So really, Arlington Plano is the same as Dallas and Fort Worth, but with the extra additional options of the federal relationship. Is that correct? No, I don't mean all of it. I just mean the one part. >> Yeah, I think it's a little difficult, to be honest, to answer because Plano has not really seen complaints go to the investigation stage and because Arlington is so new, and because they are both very focused on education and mediation of complaints. They are trying to mediate and resolve things. Both of them have been very focused upon that. So I think that's one of the key differences there. Kind of losing my train of thought. >> Well, no, let's follow that because that's my next question, so let's keep that train. Because in the case of Dallas and Fort Worth, but they still have the conciliation, the sort of discussionary phase of trying to get someone to comply. >> But they have the support of knowing what these civil rights processes, procedures, training, SOP, to make sure that there's due process for both the complainants and the person that maybe is being accused of discrimination. They're following that federal, that high-level standard of what a judicial review looks like for a complaint of discrimination to understand is there a reasonable cause or not that discrimination occurred. They're much more sophisticated, I should say. I don't mean that in a way, but they have more experience, more training. HUD and EEOC have a lot of training that anyone who's certified has to go through to make sure that they're up to the standard that the federal government wants them to be for civil rights review. >> And so we wouldn't -- if we wanted -- we couldn't just simply -- and I'm sure the answer is no. We couldn't just simply clone it without the federal -- formalizing a federal relationship, because then you would be -- you would have the worst of all worlds. You'd have to follow the federal guidelines and not have any of the federal protections. Is that right? I mean, if we just cloned it? And just literally -- I mean, if we just duplicated the federal guidelines but didn't have that formal federal relationship. >> Well, and I think, you know, and that's why it's really hard to speak to this, because I think Plano had that conception that they would try to do some sort of similar process in terms of the review. They've just never had to do that to see how that works out in practice, and because they've been so focused on education and mediation, they're really trying to sit down and work through things and not go to that next level of a step. >> Okay. >> But theoretically, they would try to do the same types of -- if you look at their SOPs, you know, could you interview the people that may have witnessed it, what could you do to try to investigate it? >> It's just, would that be at the same level or standard that a federal agency who's very experienced, very specialized, in that type of review? >> Okay. And then it seems like if we looked at the examples you gave, and again, maybe this is a Katherine question, I'm not sure, but it seems that in general, a lot of them had streamlined down to just places they didn't have jurisdiction. And that seems to me -- just a matter of law, it's always been my understanding that you want to craft very simplistically and not laundry list things because you'll get dinged on your laundry list. So it seems to me just sort of -- and correct me, all the lawyers, please correct me if that's not the case, that it seems that throwing in this and that and the other thing ends up making us vulnerable for challenges to this, that, and the other thing, whereas if we just kept it very thin and on a jurisdictional basis, it would be smarter? Is that the case or not? >> I'll try to use the right words here. >> Yes, please. >> The state of Texas, I think, is pretty -- what's the word -- resistant, but not -- Texas does not have any laws that specifically prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Federal law, some people may say that's narrow-minded, whatever, I'm not saying that, but -- so the state doesn't have it, but the local jurisdictions have adopted it, some of them. You can't -- a city cannot supersede state law. So we can -- local municipality can give greater protections than state or federal law, but not less. For example, you can't discriminate on federal law and state law for race reasons. We can't say, oh, no, that's okay, we'll kind of take that out of ours. So you have the basic ones, but cities like Austin and Dallas and Fort Worth have expanded the baselines to include -- I came from Austin, worked here for 20 years, so I'm familiar with that a little bit. They have expanded that to include sexual orientation and gender identity, even though state law doesn't include that. So, yes, we can expand it. I don't necessarily think that expanding beyond what state law or even federal law provides necessarily opens us up to more litigation. I just think we're being more forthcoming or inclusive, I guess is the right word. I don't know if that answers your question. >> It sort of answers the reverse of my question. I guess my question was, if we say -- you know, if we leave these, like most of them just said, religious, state and fed are the exceptions. And then, you know, some of them specifically said this, that, the other thing, are also exceptions. It seems to me if we are crafting legislations, we should just -- it's my understanding a better practice that we should just keep it as tight as possible and jurisdictional, you know, areas that we don't have any control like state, federal. And then the religious was for the Texas Freedom -- >> Yeah, most of the exceptions now, let's talk about the vaccine, religious and medical. Those are pretty much, you know, religion is under the state and federal constitutions. Medical reasons. So you're right. I do agree with you that if you start saying, well, we're going to have an exception for this and an exception for that and an exception for that, my question is going to be, well, what's the basis of that exception? If you're going to give me an exception for this one, then how about an exception for that one? So I think you're right as far as if you just expand it. I think you -- my recommendation would go, you go with the recognized exceptions, which really are primarily religious, more than anything else. I know there's some about religious and other things, but I don't think you should just throw out a laundry list of kind of 50 different exceptions, and the exceptions consume the rule and I think it's meaningless at some point. >> I appreciate that. So I'm definitely for a partial direction. I'm definitely for nondiscrimination moving forward. You know, based on this discussion, we just had this last 30 seconds, I'm not for adding, you know, locker rooms or bathrooms or basketball courts or anything else in terms of public accommodation because I think that opens us up for these reasons that we just said. So I would just ignore that entirely and just keep it to the things. In terms of a potential model, I guess I'm not wild about forcing us to take on a bunch of more staff and do a bunch more work, but I think we're going to do a lot of the steps anyway, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. If you're already going to cover the training and do 85, 90%, then maybe it just behooves us to take the last step and do and get the federal relationship and -- but again, I think we -- I concur with Councillor McGuire that, you know, maybe to the extent that we don't have to, I think that would be useful, but I think we should at least maybe mimic some of those larger guidelines like I was asking at the beginning. >> Okay. >> I'm done, sir. >> Councillor McGuire. >> Thank you. I just want to circle back to the investigation piece. I think I was maybe a little bit too dismissive of Plano's ordinance because I dislike their exemptions, but their investigation process seems like it might be a good model for us to work on. We -- you know, obviously we don't have the resources to do all investigations in-house, and, you know, let's be honest, too, that because we're not a very large city, we're probably not going to see that many complaints. So I am liking the idea of, you know, a panel, you know, maybe it can have the same kind of makeup of, you know, three director-level staff plus two, you know, community members. You know, I would like for us to -- I'm sorry that I'm not providing more specific direction, but I would like to ask my colleagues to maybe share your thoughts about how, you know, if you like the idea of an investigation panel, how you might want to form that panel, how you might want to see its members selected, things like that. But I do -- I'm drawn to the idea of a panel because this is probably going to be something we deal with occasionally. As a staff, we can go back and give that some more thought as well and bring back a couple options of if that's a panel or a staff position or what that looks like. It just helps to get that initial direction of kind of the scope, as you've already discussed, but want to hear from other council members. >> Councilmember Armitage. >> Yeah, so I do like the idea of having a panel. I also appreciate option number two in the list of direction alternatives. If, as I understand it, option number two is not instead of option number one, but it's an addition, right? >> It could be that as a policy direction. >> Okay, yeah, so I like the idea of having -- as I understand it, we don't -- the city of Benton doesn't have a fair housing -- any relationship with the -- or formal relationship with the fair housing initiative program. I think that's what it's called. And that is a way to kind of lessen some of the load on staff and also use resources that are already there, like the -- and I always botch my name, so apologies if I'm botching my name, but the North Texas Fair Housing Center and, you know, in the case of fair housing violations, but also, you know, in the case of immigration issues, you know, partnering with an organization like RAESIS, you know, partnering with Disability Rights Texas, with, you know, ADA discrimination concerns. You know, these are existing groups in the area that, of course, anybody could individually -- or anybody who qualifies, anybody who's protected under the Federal Fair Housing Act, you know, could reach out to any of these groups. But in cities, you know, where there are special relationships with them, with groups like this, they have more direct access and they work with staff and can help also to train panels, for instance. So we're not relying on in-house expertise that we don't have, but we're also not necessarily going out and hiring new staff, either. I'm not saying I'm against hiring new staff, but it's just an alternative to consider. So I'm really open to using those resources that are already there and kind of figuring out, you know, maybe, you know, bringing to the table when this comes before us, you know, for a vote next or maybe it would be a second work session. I don't know, I don't want to drag it up too much, you know, because like many others, I just want this to happen. You know, but it would be nice to kind of look at some alternatives because working with groups that are already there would be a good way to get something on the ground and running right off the bat without waiting, you know, the months it would take to form a panel or to hire a new person, you know, and then those other things could come later. Okay. >>Councilmember Davis. >>I think Mayor Pro Temp's had his hand up for a second. I just happened to be looking right at his screen. >>Yeah, and I understand that. I'm just -- that's a separate conversation for a separate day. We'll get there. But at the dais, I'm trying to process this and I'm trying to get people to be more efficient ergo he would then be able to speak earlier, but I'm not getting much help in that regard. So I see your hand, Mayor Pro Temp, and I'm going to utilize the system in front of me to try to keep track of things best I can. I deviate best at times. I get it. I'm just trying to keep up as best I can. So I'm going to exhaust the iterations here and ask people to be conscious of their colleagues and conscious of their time use, and then that then would allow us to get to the others earlier. But again, this is the process. >> Councilmember Davis. >> Okay. Thank you, mayor. So I also prefer the plano model, and the reason is I think we talked around this issue a lot a few work sessions ago, and we caught a little bit of flack with some folks, I think, for kind of coalescing around the plano model because I think there's this impression at the time that it didn't go far enough, it didn't do enough, it didn't protect enough people, but we talked around these same issues before, and the fact of the matter is plano is more right-sized for the kind of city that denton is, the size that we are, the staffing that we have, and the individual exceptions, I'm sure there's room for policy debate on each and every one of them, but as far as a basis for comparison, plano is a much better model for comparison than Austin, three times our size, different demographics. Dallas, much larger than we are, an entire staffed department of these issues of looking at fair housing issues, looking at employment issues, referring to the federal government, and in fact, doing things on behalf of the federal government, which denton is just not at all set up to do. I also want to push back some on this idea that if an ordinance isn't seeing enough complaints, then it must not be doing the job. The alternative is possible, that that community is doing a good job of heading things off before they become a complaint, or doing a good job reaching out to the community and making sure that you don't have landlords that are discriminating for reasons they shouldn't, or businesses that aren't doing what they ought to. You know, when I started listening to this issue really closely back in 2019, I opened my ears up and wondered what the need was in the community. I almost immediately saw, much more of a need than I had known about, I almost immediately saw in fact some of the reaction I got from people told me even more clearly that there's a need for some kind of protection at the municipal level because of some of the kind of vitriol on things that I heard about, but it is really easy to overstep what denton is capable of doing, but also what is best in this space for denton to do is the best way to confront these issues, a bunch of $500 fines that don't mean anything, that don't change hearts and minds, that don't really address issues or is the best way forward more like what Plano and Arlington have focused on, which is education, outreach, conciliation. I'll also say that when we come down to the exceptions, I don't know that I can support something that doesn't have an exception for things like locker rooms and public restrooms. We saw in 2017 certain member of the state government attempt to use this particular issue as a political foil and a wedge issue, and I don't think that that is a space that the city of denton wants to operate in. I don't think we want to follow the example of at that time the lieutenant governor in bringing an issue forward simply for the purpose of putting it on people's minds or for the purpose of moving an agenda forward or anything like that. I think that we address the issues that we have as a community. We address them in a meaningful and comprehensive way. I don't think that we do that by picking the most hot-button item that we can think of and putting it front and center into a new marquee piece of legislation. The other thing that I like about the Plano model as opposed to some others, some of these ordinances started to kind of gain traction when there was an administration in the White House that was very hostile in some ways to the LGBTQ+ community. That's changed. That is different. Where there were state laws that were not friendly to that community, there was a push for municipal ordinances to fill that gap. There is a Biden administration now that has followed what the Supreme Court has said, which is here's how you interpret these federal rules and these federal statutes. I think the Biden administration is correct to say the Supreme Court tells us what sex discrimination means at the federal level. There's a much less pressing need now at the local level to reinterpret those things or decide what those things mean locally or decide what needs to be protected in housing locally because we now have very clear federal guidance on those things. So before we go trying to replace the federal government, or do what these other bigger cities do and do a portion of the federal government's job, I think we need to right-size the solution in Denton to the exact problem we are trying to confront in Denton, and that is primarily outreach, education, conciliation, and building community. >> Councilman Byrd. >> I want to also say that I was looking over here at the City of Plano's model, and Councilmember Davis, we probably ever agree on anything, but I'm in agreement with Councilmember Davis. Just picking at you a little bit. But I am just looking at this one, it just seems like it just makes more sense to me. The overview of looking at the City of Plano, but I was also looking at the exemptions for the Dallas, just kind of weaving in and out of some of these things. And I just kept coming back to the City of Plano, especially for the investigation part. I looked at the Fort Worth, I agree with the Fort Worth mediation part, and I came back to Plano for the enforcement. And for the complaints, the complaints, I like the Austin, the way that they've got that modeled after. So, but overall, I think that, again, with Councilmember Davis, we need to find an area that looks more like us. You know, zero complaints. And I think that that's because of the investigative part. And so I'd like to look at that model there. So I'll just leave that there. Thank you. - Okay, Councilmember Monter. - Yeah, I just want to respond to the comments of Councilmember Davis. - Well, and I don't, in the essence of time, I mean, if you have new... - Yeah, this is new. This is not a point that I made before. It's an important point. And Councilmember Byrd, so, you know, just to be clear, I agree completely with Councilmember Davis that it is not a good idea to bring forward, you know, contested spaces like bathrooms, locker rooms, et cetera, put them in an ordinance. You know, funnily enough, it is ordinances like Plano's in Fort Worth that do precisely what you're saying we shouldn't be doing by mentioning bathrooms and locker rooms. The kind of ordinance that I am advocating and that those of us who are advocating for a simpler and more inclusive ordinance doesn't even mention these spaces whatsoever. The only reason I mention them is because, you know, they were so popular last time, these ordinances, and I say popular, well, there was enough of a contingent on this council, which was a different council then, you know, to make it an issue that kind of, you know, stopped the process. But it's really important for folks out there to understand that when we're talking about an inclusive NDO, we're talking about one that doesn't single out any particular spaces or politicize particular spaces that resists this impulse to politicize these spaces. So, you know, I agree with you in the spirit of what you're saying, but I completely disagree with the conclusion. And I hope that, you know, that, you know, Councilmember Byrd, you know, understands that the kind of ordinance that I'm talking about doesn't even mention these spaces, whereas Plano and Fort Worth does. >> Okay. Mayor Proctor Meltzer. >> Thank you. First of all, I'll just observe there's a lot of interest in finding something, some kind of non-discrimination ordinance to support, so I appreciate that. It doubles the details. I am in agreement with Councilmember McGuire and Councilmember Davis that something like Plano's way of administering it is, you know, probably more manageable for us, although, you know, I'm totally open to the suggestion from Councilmember Armentor, you know, if staff identifies another efficient way for us to, you know, kind of get up to speed with resources that are already in place without, you know, creating a new bureaucracy or whatever. You know, I'd certainly be open to hearing that. We're, you know, we have the benefit, you know, we're trying to get the benefit of the fact that other cities have done this before us, some years before us, but I think we can get more benefit, especially if we're in agreement that we want to put more time and resources, you know, into this investigation to find out what actually happened. We've heard that particularly in the public accommodations area. I think we -- I would share the impulse that we want to address the real problems that people actually face. So can we find out what were the 12 complaints in Dallas related to public accommodations and what was the resolution and the seven that were in Fort Worth? In Austin, we heard there were 78 complaints, 53 of which met the threshold for investigation, but we don't know of those how many were public accommodations and what was the nature of it. You know, I think it would just help us a lot to know what are the actual issues that really do come up and people have the advantage of these ordinances and what was the resolution? And to go one step further, and this, you know, might, I don't know, maybe challenge our -- our creativity. I don't know if there's a way to do this, but if we can find the right counterparts on staffs in those other cities to ask from what you can gather, you know, what, if anything, would you do different? How would you improve on these bills or what kind of improvements are being contemplated? You know, why -- you know, we don't need to shoot in the dark. So those are my requests. >> Okay. So what other -- so I have some thoughts, but kind of what other -- the direction has been a little here, a little there, and so what do you need or what are you -- what are you missing? >> Sure, I think I have some direction to start from as far as kind of a template of Plano, not exactly Plano, but just some of the elements and maybe trying to at least craft an outline, just major components of what this ordinance would look like for another work session to go through that with city council. >> Okay. And then one of my things, and I'll just do it now while we're here, I think it's important to set a time frame. This is not a quick process, I assume, right? And so can you give kind of as you look forward, I mean, what's your kind of general timetable? If you have one, if you don't, then take your time and circle back, but I don't want people thinking this is going to turn in a month or so. >> I'd rather confer with the city attorney's office and put something in the Friday report as far as the timeline, but really, if we're going to use one of these ordinances as a model, it's really more around the staffing and SOP side of how we would handle it. It depends on if when we come back for a city council work session to how many changes or further research or other things, that could very much prolong it further. >> Yes, no, and so, yeah, I think you're right, and I don't even think it comes back. I don't think the estimation is probably proper until after the next, you know, because this is -- it's pretty broad as the feedback has been pretty broad as is, and I'm going to -- >> It will take at least a few weeks, if not longer, so we'll put something in the Friday report. >> I would say, with the question that had been asked, I just was talking to Michael, you know, we'll call Austin. We know who we need to call. We both worked for Austin. I worked there for 14 years, almost 15, and so we know who we need to call. The question is, there are different scenarios. City looks at them, then they pass them on to EEOC, fair housing, other things. The other question is, I want to make sure that, you know, we look at this and we're taking our time to come up with something that meets because there's a lot of information that you've shared with us, but also get with our HR department and the legal department to make sure that we're also, from a city perspective, following this as well once we present something to the council. So it's going to take several weeks to do that. >> Yeah, no, for sure. Okay, and so my thoughts are these. Really, I focus around education. Some people have said it. I don't know that it's getting enough emphasis because, really, we can -- it's actionable now to take a look at forms, or our forms, inclusive, right? Are we saying Mr. and Mrs.? Are we saying parents? Are we -- you know, so there's a lot of education and just kind of modeling, leading, that we could do that doesn't require us to navigate lawsuits. And so I think that's my focal point is making everyone in the city of Denton feel comfortable, feel heard, feel like we're adjusting accordingly, and I think that is paramount to me. >> I'll tell you the thing that strikes me a lot is we've -- Denton is not Dallas. It is not. There's -- and in the examples used, no one mentions a city even in Denton County. If people -- you know, I get accused a lot of, you know, hey, you're trying to make Denton Dallas. Well, no, I'm not, and a lot of people reference Dallas a lot and their practices, and no one speaks to -- I think there's one mentioned -- to the Denton numbers, and so that takes me to my next point, my next question. What is the process currently in Denton? Because when I look at Denton statistics and the information you provided about Denton where we live, you had one instance and they had already filed their own report. So that's noteworthy to me. So what is the current process for someone that lives in Denton if they feel like they've been discriminated against? Sure. So if it's a potential fair housing violation, city staff helps to connect that person with HUD to file a complaint with them, and so we have received one in the last two years, which was a potential violation, and we helped to do that referral and connection to HUD so it could be investigated, and that was on the basis of race. Yeah, and so that's really -- my understanding is, in the next example, I mean, as we go forward, I think we need to talk about our community. We don't have 1 million-plus citizens. By the grace of God, we've never had a murder of a transgender person, which Dallas has. So the city of Denton has done good things, and the citizens of Denton are great people by large, and so I want to try to get it more focused on our community, our county, at least. So if you could come back with information -- Arlington's in Tarrant County. I'd really want to hear from Frisco, want to hear from the colony areas in this -- citizens in this -- pardon me, cities in this area, and see what feedback we get, you know, and just kind of understand that better. And then from a enforcement side of things, I really need to understand that better, so -- because -- and we don't have the answer today, so -- but it will be who's in charge of that, right, because then there's a scrutiny that comes with that. They would then be called to testify. Their actions would be kind of called in. I'd like to ask the chief to be here for that next conversation, because if I'm understanding it right at a municipal level, you're innocent till proven guilty, so that investigation has to find guilt. That means we have to subpoena witnesses. That means it's going to be traditionally after the fact, and so how do you -- I'd like to hear from the chief, how do you preserve that evidence, if you will, and how do we process that and those sort of things? >> So it would not be handled by the police department. That's why we would need trained staff. And again, that's where that lies. We don't know. That could handle that entire investigation process, and then that ordinance would need to lay out what are their powers to be able to investigate that complaint, what can they do, what can be released, what can't be released. So there's some more details in that investigation part. >> So help me understand that, because that's a great point, thank you. What is the road map then to the municipal court? I can't just go file a case in the municipal court. >> We would have to refer it to the city attorney's office to say we believe this is a violation of municipal code, which is the local non-discrimination ordinance. Whoever is doing that investigation, the city attorney's office would help review it and say, yes, we also believe there's reasonable cause that this is a violation of municipal code, and we want to take it to municipal court as a class C misdemeanor, as Mike said, kind of comparable to a traffic violation or some other violation of municipal code. And I'll let Katherine weigh in if there's anything else. >> But a traffic ticket would be observed by a police officer. >> Right. I'm sorry. >> Yeah, please. >> If you have a citizen who has -- believes a criminal offense has occurred, they can go and basically file a complaint with the municipal court, and then there's a determination made as to whether there's probable cause, et cetera. You don't have to have an officer involved for that. Does that help? >> Okay, but who -- that's great. Who investigates that? So I come in, file a complaint, make an allegation. Who investigates the merits of that allegation? What are the elements that are required for that investigation to be true? >> That's the probable cause determination. >> Okay, so who evaluates that? >> The first evaluation on that is generally going to be by the prosecutor. >> And is that -- >> And ultimately -- >> Is that statement made under oath? Now you're getting into details that have been lost to history for me. >> Okay. >> Mike, can you speak to that? Is it a sworn complaint? >> As I said, I'm not a criminal attorney, but I agree with Catherine that any citizen -- I was a police officer in Dallas, and lots of times I'd have people come up to me or they'd call and they want to file a criminal charge, and we would say, well, we don't think there's probable cause, but you can go down to the municipal court and file your own case if you want to. So there is a way of doing that. I don't believe -- you can correct me if I'm wrong -- I don't think in any of these cities the police department is investigating these complaints. They have their own office that is set up that does it, and then they would go to the city attorney if they find probable cause to believe that there was a violation of the ordinance, and I think the city attorney, I think, would then file a complaint with the municipal court. I think that's how some of them work, but the police department doesn't really have any involvement in investigating those or enforcing them. >> Okay. So, yeah, I have a lot of questions around that when you come back. Just -- we'll pull in the right people, right, but I'm going to have a lot of questions because for a number of reasons, for public safety, right, if the police aren't coming and I'm confronting someone saying, hey, I think you violated my interest, whatever, municipal code, et cetera, et cetera, I got a document, I need to take your picture, hey, don't take my picture, you know, I just need to understand a day in the life of what we're authorizing to happen or supporting to happen just so that I can kind of understand it better. And then from a municipal fine standpoint, is that -- so the citizen and get invest starts, files their affidavit, probable cause, affidavit, it moves forward, the city attorney says -- not city attorney, but the -- you know what I mean? The attorney says, yes, okay, we're going to prosecute this. I just need to understand how we get to that, you know, do they call their own witnesses, does the city then adopt these facts and take the case forward for them? >> We can come back with some more details. >> Okay. >> I just want to make sure we can have that more clearly laid out for you. >> And here's the thing. I don't have a model that I like. You know what I like? I like Denton. That's where I live. And so I give you carte blanche from my seat, from my perspective, to craft something that fits our community and doesn't fit a community that's not Denton, 100%. It can be from scratch with some guidance or just some best practices, but I want it to customize and have Denton appeal, Denton field, Denton considerations in it. >> If the city is alleging that someone violated the ordinance, the burden is on the city to prove that violation, and that could include calling witnesses, just like any city ordinance violation, code violation or anything, burdens on the city to prove it. >> So when does that -- and I'm going to use a word that doesn't exist -- when does that alleging transition from the complainant to the city, when does that burden shift? >> I think when this municipal prosecutor makes the determination that there's probable cause to move forward with prosecuting that ordinance violation. >> Okay. Good. Okay. Thank you. And then let me see. And then what is -- what's the -- and you may come back. So religion. What's the definite -- who defines religion? Is that well-defined already in the federal statutes? >> I'll give you the easy example. There was a United States Supreme Court case a few years ago. You may remember it with the bakery that refused to make a cake for a couple. And the U.S. Supreme Court said that the bakery's religious beliefs trumped the individual's right to have a cake, you know, based on their sexual preference. I mean, that was the argument. You're claiming I'm discriminating against you because of your sexual identity or orientation versus my rights to religious freedom, and the court came down on the side of the bakery in that case. So, you know, it's like now with the vaccine mandates, they say a sincerely held religious belief. What does that mean? And we're not taking it necessarily at face value. We actually can ask for some kind of affirmation or -- not a sworn affidavit, but something from a religious leader. So what's religion? That's pretty broad. >> Yeah, yeah. >> Okay. >> It's a whole other discussion, I think. >> Yeah, well, and it's going to be -- and it's significant to what we do, you know, I think, if I'm reading the tea leaves right. But, okay, thank you. >> Okay. >> And then I guess the other direction I'll have is just I'd ask for cost as we go along those steps, right? So if we're -- people are saying, oh, we just stand up this department. Oh, we just do this training. That's -- there's a cost associated with that. I'd like to understand because in all the other models we're moving towards -- and this is not the same. I don't mean it to be the same, but I do want to understand what the costs are associated with and kind of what it takes to stand up and then understanding the number of complaints, et cetera, and just trying to make sure I understand what I'm signing up for or what we're moving forward. And I think -- let me see. And then there's -- and then I just -- I'd be against any outside agencies other than state or federal resources that are recognized and known because we would have to -- I mean, other than that, that's where it's going, right? If we get sideways, we're going to state and federal court. So if they're not registered and affirmed by those state or federal agencies, I wouldn't support us partnering with them. The liability is just too significant for us in my estimation. And I think that's everything. So I appreciate the presentation. Thank you very much. >> You're welcome. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. >> Okay. That takes us -- that completes item B, takes us to item C, which is ID21981, receive report whole discussion, give staff direction regarding an audit project 021, water systems operations production. >> Hello, mayor and council. Can you see my presentation? >> Not yet. >> Okay. No. I think I need to share it. Let's try that. >> There we go. >> There we go. All right. Thank you. All right. I'm Madison Rorschach, city auditor. I'm going to present our findings from phase 3 of our audit of the city's water system operations, which focuses on water production infrastructure, planning and maintenance, as well as water quality reporting. So to begin, this audit evaluated the effectiveness of the city's water production processes. The city currently produces about 7 billion gallons of drinking water for its customers annually. The planning and maintenance of the infrastructure used to produce drinking water is critical to ensure that drinking water is available to customers and meets quality regulations. For the purposes of this audit, water production infrastructure includes water treatment plants, storage tanks at the plant and throughout the distribution system, and high-service pump stations. So specifically, this audit evaluated water production infrastructure planning and monitoring, water quality reporting, water treatment chemical inventory controls, and plant maintenance and safety. So beginning with water production infrastructure, in order to ensure the city has adequate water supply and production infrastructure to meet customer demands, the city forecast water supply needs. Based on a review of the methodology behind this forecast, it appears to be based on reasonable assumptions of population growth, water demand per capita, and a peak day multiplier. In addition, it's the city's current practice to hire a consultant to develop a water master plan every five years. As part of this master planning process, the consultant recommends capital improvements to the water system based on their own forecast and analysis of the city's water system. These recommendations are then reevaluated by an engineering consultant before a project is initiated to ensure it still is needed and is sized correctly. Of the five water production infrastructure recommendations made in the 2018 water master plan, four are either in design or planned to happen in the next five years, including a capacity expansion for the Ray Roberts water treatment plant. While we found that the production capacity of the Lake Louisville and Ray Roberts water plants are currently adequate, additional capacity is projected to be needed in the next few years. In addition, it should be noted that if the Lake Louisville plant was unable to function, the Ray Roberts plant at its current size is not always able to meet average day demand. That being said, the water torment is currently in the process of making improvements to the Ray Roberts plant to rerate the facility so it can produce more before the full expansion is completed. Next, drinking water quality in the U.S. is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency and, furthermore, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality supervises and enforces compliance with those regulations. So as part of that system, the City of Denton's water system utility is required to submit monthly reports on produced drinking water quality. The city has established an effective semi-automated process to report on drinking water quality to the state, which minimizes the chance for human error. Under this process, needed water quality readings are taken automatically by the city 's supervisory control and data acquisition, or SCADA, system. These readings are then imported into the required reporting format monthly by water production staff. Water production also manually records water quality readings from SCADA every two hours, every day, while each plant is operating. These recordings are then compared to the monthly report to ensure that there are no discrepancies so that everything transferred in correctly. In addition, we found that the water department has participated in the Texas optimization program since March of 2018. This program recognizes water systems who continuously show that they can meet the BPA's water production optimization goals. So while we found that the city doesn't quite always meet these goals, participation in this program is a best practice. And then in addition, the city did always meet water quality regulations between the three years that we looked at, 2018 and 2020, as shown in the table on the slide. Finally, we found that the water department has 18 water production operators who operate the water plant. And combined, they are adequately licensed to meet state regulations. As part of the water production process, the water department pumps raw water from Lake Louisville and Lake Ray Roberts to its respective water treatment plants. There, the water is filtered as well as being treated with chemicals in order to remove metals, bacteria, and other pollutants. So based on our observations at each water treatment plant, chemical storage tanks are appropriately safeguarded on site, which are fenced in and require authorization in order to enter. In addition, all chemical storage tanks are locked and staff with access to keys are tracked. So chemical levels are constantly monitored by the water department's SCADA system and are recorded twice each day by water plant operators. These recordings are then reviewed by water production supervisors to determine when chemicals are needed to be ordered. As chemicals are being delivered, water production staff ensure the chemical is correct by reviewing the bill of lading and the color and specific gravity of the delivered substance before allowing it to be offloaded into a chemical storage tank. That being said, there's currently no process to verify that the amount of chemical offloaded into the storage tank matches the amount ordered. So this process is also hindered by the chemical's unit of measurement. Specifically, chemicals are ordered in pounds or gallons, but are monitored by the SCADA system in feet. In addition, based on a review of 30 chemical orders, the bills of lading for nine deliveries could not be provided. These documents provide evidence that the delivery was made and can be important if the delivered substance is determined to be incorrect or inaccurate. So based on these findings, we recommended that water production develop a process to reconcile chemical deliveries with orders and to retain the products of lading. Based on their management response, water production has already begun implementing these processes. Lastly, over time, the performance of water production equipment degrades due to age and use. In order to ensure that the city's water treatment plants continue to be capable of producing drinking water, this equipment must be adequately maintained and repaired. So the water department has established a preventative maintenance program to monitor for and repair equipment issues under this type of maintenance program. Most activities are preventative, however, some corrective or unscheduled maintenance is still required. To carry out the program, the department uses a work order system to assign, track, and manage maintenance activities. Based on a statistical review of preventative and unscheduled maintenance, about 17% of preventative maintenance was not performed in a timely manner. Furthermore, it was not possible to determine if unscheduled maintenance was performed timely as there's no written guidance on how quickly work orders should be completed or how they should be prioritized. In addition, we found that for about 10% of unscheduled maintenance work orders, it was unclear if the maintenance issue had been corrected based on the work order documentation. So for those reasons, we recommended water production develop guidelines on work order prioritization and provide staff with written guidance on how to properly document work orders. And based on their management response, water production has begun using the work order system to prioritize work and is in the process of developing work order completion guidance. We also found that there were generally effective safety assurance activities, including safety meetings and safety trainings. However, the development of a comprehensive safety manual would provide clear written guidance to water staff on how to adhere to safety standards and practices. And the water department as a whole is currently in the process of developing this manual, not just for production but for all the other functions it does as well. So in summary, we issued a total of six recommendations, all of which the department concurred or partially concurred with, and based on this response, we believe the identified risk will be appropriately addressed and we'll conduct a follow-up in six to 18 months. And that's the end. >> Okay, great. Thank you. Councilmember Guara. >> Thank you. I just wanted to thank Madison for this great report and our water staff for doing outstanding work and kind of share a personal anecdote that because of bad experiences with tap water and other places that I've lived, one of the first things that I did when I moved to Denton was get my tap water in my home independently tested and it was outstanding. So I just want to thank staff for, you know, providing us with tap water that is safe to drink, safe straight out of the tap, which is not something that is available in every city. So thank you. >> Thank you. Councilmember Aramater. >> Yeah. Just one question. Thank you also for doing this audit. Really helpful and important. My only question was about the one area where that management partially concurred with, and that was on the daily sheet turbidity readings, the average, every even hour instead of every odd hour. >> Yes. >> You know, I'm not going to pretend to know the first thing about turbidity readings, right? But I'm just -- that, you know, makes me curious, you know, as I am always when there's only a partial concurrence or disagreement. I'm just wondering, you know, what difference it makes, the even hour versus the odd hour. I've come up with some guesses, but my guesses don't matter. I want to -- >> I can explain that. I'm Hector Ortiz, water superintendent for the last two and a half years in the city of Denton. So our SCADA system is a computer system that collects a lot of data. We can collect data every millisecond if we wanted to. So our general disagreement is the fact that if we switch to an even or an odd hour, we may not agree 100% either way, but we did switch the Lake Louisville plan to the even hours per the recommendation to see if it does make a difference. But at this point, I don't think it would be 100% accurate either way. And we're talking turbidity readings that are very low. It's an indication of the cloudiness of the water. And we're talking .03 level, which is very, very low. So you might be talking between .03 and .05, which at that point, does it really statistically make a difference? Probably not. >> So can I ask, as a follow-up question, and thank you for explaining that, because I realized my head almost exploded trying to figure out. None of my guesses were correct. But would it -- I mean, so is there a way that a change could be made for greater accuracy? Say, you know, why not do it 24 hours? There's probably a good reason not to, but why not do it for all of the hours, even an odd? >> There might be. We just really have to look at it. Again, the data from the Skado system is so much, and our operators are manually recording maybe once an hour. And so you might not get that 100% agreeance from one to the other. But we'll definitely look at that and evaluate it after a few months of this change. >> And this is -- and this is just once an hour, 24 -- for 24 hours, right? >> Correct. >> Not just during the work. Okay. Thank you. That's interesting. I'll be interested to see. >> Councilman Byrd. >> Probably next to the land field, the wastewater program that we have here in the city is probably the next most interesting thing for me. I have visited and been on a tour of the plant. Do you all still give tours? >> Absolutely. We see council members every year. >> I'm going to come back. I'm going to see what's going on there. My question was -- you had mentioned something about -- oh, here's my first question. Synthetic. I know that we test for biological -- clean for biological substances and chemical substances. I'm thinking about drugs, synthetic drugs. Does something like this catch synthetic drugs as it's going through the cleaning of? >> There are a lot of studies being conducted related to that. Right now, one of the big things that we have with the city of Denton is the utilization of ozone as a disinfectant, which not a lot of plants use. Ozone is great at destroying a lot of the organic chemicals. And then we follow with granular activated carbon at the lake Louisville plant, which is also great at removing some of that organic carbon byproducts that we end up after destruction. So we do have a very robust process in the city of Denton that handles a lot of that stuff. But again, a lot of these studies are in their infancy. And so we're looking forward to seeing how the industry turns as a result of that. >> Okay. And then you mentioned something about the gallons -- the purchasing process in gallons and in something else you said. I was trying to keep up with it. But then the usage is in a different amount, which is causing a little bit of description there. >> It makes it -- it just makes it difficult to reconcile between what's ordered and what's delivered. >> Right. I understand that. But you say you were monitored by something as opposed to gallons and something. >> The SCADA system, so the system that they use to monitor the chemical levels, monitors it in feet. >> In feet. >> Yes. >> That's the word that I'm looking for. >> Because it's in a tank. >> It's in a big tank. >> So what ends up happening, the operator has to convert that feet into gallons. And then we can use a specific gravity, which is the pounds per gallon, to convert into pounds. So we can do a cross check, but we don't do that. >> Okay. >> So we'll be doing that. >> So now, once the water is clean, and it goes to a creek, and the creek goes to the lake? >> In the water department, we take the water from the lake, run it through our process, then pump it to the distribution system to go to your house. >> Okay. All right. Well, I'm going to be taking the tour. Thank you. >> Yes. We're glad to have you. >> Okay. >> Okay. Any other questions? Seeing none, thank you very much, Madison. >> Thank you. >> Yep, no problem. All right. That concludes item C, takes us to item D, which is ID 211719, receive report and hold discussion and give staff direction regarding comprehensive planning and related areas plans. Thank you. >> Mayor, I'd like to introduce our new planning director. She comes from us. We have farmers branch and some others. Her name is Tina Fergens. She's been here all of maybe a week and a half, and she's very well versed on small area plans, planning, issues related to everything you can imagine centered around planning, and we're really thrilled to have her. >> I'm a big fan of Mayor Dye. He's an outstanding guy. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Okay. >> So I think we need to share this, right? >> Not yet. >> Okay. >> There it is. >> It's over there. >> You can see it, so that means it's being shared. >> Okay. >> Thank you. >> Okay, perfect. All right. Thank you, Mayor. I'm happy to be here, and if I see Mayor Dye, I'll be sure to tell him that you're a big fan, so I'm a big fan of his as well. >> Thank you. >> Thank you for having me here this afternoon to be able to talk to you about our comprehensive planning efforts and particularly related area plans for your considerations. So the whole purpose of this agenda item this evening is to provide City Council with a status update and receive affirmation from you all that you want to move forward with doing an area plan for the area in the vicinity of I-35 and U.S. State. I know from what I understand, this has been a topic of interest of Council, as well as the Planning and Zoning Commission, given your deliberation of a variety of agenda items that have come across the dais over the course of this past year. So the -- and also I would add our Denton 2030 comprehensive plan supports the creation of area plans, as I'm sure Ron has probably had that discussion with you all in the past as well. But what we wanted to do is just to make sure that we all have a sense of what we mean by an area plan, both from your perspective as well as ours. I thought we would start with addressing what an area plan is and what it's not. So I'd like to start with, you know, I know you're very familiar with our comprehensive planning policies and our comprehensive plan in general. It provides that high-level direction that guides growth and redevelopment investment occurring within our communities. It also addresses things from the open space being provided to mobility being component associated with it in addition to that, and it also addresses everything in a variety of other -- other different elements that it might be addressed. A area plan is very similar from that perspective in that it continues to be a policy document. It's a specialized plan for a given area. It can be known by a variety of terms. You've heard us refer to it a small area plan. It can also be called an area plan. Sometimes folks refer to it as a corridor study, and a great example is a project that I worked on in Richardson, particularly in the area plan, but the geography of this particular project ended up getting it referred to as a corridor study, if you will. The property roughly -- or the study area was roughly 400 acres. It was predominantly included commercial properties along U.S. Highway 75, had that very linear nature following the corridor, so hence the name how the corridor study came about. Again, what's most important to understand is with these area plans, they are policy documents. As I mentioned, they're similar to the comprehensive plan, but the advantage of these area plans is that they are much more specific in terms of their recommendations. It allows us to do a deeper dive on a given area and doing that detailed analysis that is needed in order to better position an area for the longer term and on how it develops. As I mentioned earlier, again, it has some flexibility associated with it. It's guiding development, unlike regulatory documents, which I'll address here in just a moment. Here are two additional examples of projects that I'm familiar with, especially the project that's on the left. Earlier I mentioned the area of shape of the study area has a tendency to influence the name of an area plan. In this case, the project area on the left is the I-35 corridor study area that was done when it was in Farmer's Branch and laid out a series of land use recommendations, but also additional actions that were supported by the city with the adoption of that plan. Being that the properties predominantly followed along both sides of I-35, hence the I-35 corridor vision study name that came about. The plan on the right, you can see it has more kind of a blob, if you will, a variety of different shapes. This is actually a project from the city of Plano that was done and was called Envision Oak Point. It doesn't make any reference to it being an area plan, but it has all of the similar characteristics that I will get into here shortly as it relates to these type of projects. So I think the key takeaway with an area plan and that's most important to understand is that it establishes a vision for the area. Regardless of what area we are studying, it tells our community what we want to be or what we want this area to be. It allows us to give a story to tell, if you will, to not only property owners but other stakeholders, elected officials such as yourself, appointed officials that might serve on Plano and Zoning Commission or Parks and Recreation Board, but also the property owners themselves or any developers or future property owners that are looking at investing in the area. It allows us to be able to communicate to them, this is our vision to be for this given area. This is the type of development that we expect to have occur. These are the type of land uses that we're interested in having. Or this is the type of characteristics that we envision this development having. So for example, if we're interested in having industrial development happen within an area plan or study area boundaries, but we want all of the more intensive operations associated with industrial development being located on the backside of buildings and having nice landscape buffered edges along our roadways, then the area plan can make recommendations that affect and then we can take supplement actions to be able to implement those recommendations. Also area plans, they take in consideration transportation needs, whether that's pedestrian, bicycle, we have a transit system, highway, vehicle related. It allows us to factor in, you know, is there additional infrastructure that would need to be extended to an area as well. And lastly that I'd add is that given the size of a study area, for an area plan, we may find that we establish individual sub-districts, if you will, or sub-areas. Again, allowing us to tailor recommendations to given areas. Maybe there are certain assets within that area that we want to be able to leverage and/or there are certain geographical considerations that come into play that make sense for us to further subdivide an area being studied. Our area plan will assess existing conditions. Again, what are the challenges and opportunities that we have that we need to be able to work through as it relates to any recommendations that we would make for development future? Are there any assets within the study area that we need to leverage? And then also, again, what are our infrastructure needs? But I think one of the most important components associated with doing the area plan is it has a public engagement component typically that allows for the stakeholder input to occur. It allows for us to meet with stakeholders individually, especially property owners, to find out from them why have you chosen to wait to invest in your property? Or are there challenges in developing additional steps for development of the property? It also allows us to be able to test the waters, if you will, in terms of any recommendations that we might put forth as we work on the area plan to see where we garner support or where there may be some opposition and concern. Also, as we are able to identify implementation action items associated with an area plan, it allows us to be able to start presenting those ideas and determine where the support is. If we're able to gather support, particularly with stakeholders as we work on the area plan, then it helps give us the ability, especially folks like yourself, the ability to say yes and have the political coverage for taking the next steps and moving forward, especially when it comes to implementation. And speaking of implementation, any good area plan, just like a comprehensive plan, has action items associated with it. So these would be specific recommended items that would further implement the vision and the goals that we are establishing for an area. And I just have some variety of examples that are here based on other projects that I've worked on, that Main Street Central District, that we're currently working on. The first way project in Richardson rezoning the quarter and establishing updated zoning district regulations that further allow us to implement the vision that had been established for that 11 sub-district area was important for that particular community. In Farmer's Branch, several of our recommendations resulted in needing to have a dedicated funding source to be able to pay for some of the items. City Council was very supportive of implementing a tax increment financing district and recognized that as an action item, we're currently working on establishing the boundaries for the TIF district. Another community, we had a commercial facade grant program that we found was very instrumental in helping revitalize an area. That's a simple action item, if you will, that could be included as part of an area plan recommendation, as well as addressing our infrastructure. Maybe we need to consider redesigning or considering alternate street design sections. But I think what's most important about the implementation plan aspect also is it has a level of accountability. So it's deciding or defining whether or not an area plan is relevant. So we're very responsible for carrying out that particular action item and then also the potential timing associated with it. We may find that there are certain action items that need to take place before others and so a sequencing event is important for that. So I've shared with you many characteristics of what an area plan is. When we think about what it's not, an area plan is not a regulatory document. So keep in mind, as I mentioned earlier, it's a policy document. So regulatory, those are our criteria to implement our policy recommendations. So hence why I have on this slide that an area plan is not a zoning district. It's not an overlay zoning district. It's not a form-based code either. A form-based code, as you're probably well aware of, is another type of zoning document or regulatory tool available to us for implementing policy recommendations. It's also typically not design standards as well. So again, it's all in the interest of providing policy direction growth. It has some level of flexibility. But we can use the other tools that we have available, such as zoning, in order to be able to implement its recommendations. So then back to the area around I-35 and US Highway 77. So we know this has been an area that's been a priority for the city. And staff has had an opportunity to discuss this at length. And we've actually put together proposed project area boundary for your consideration. This study area, as shown here, is roughly 2,000 acres. It's as shown as outlined in yellow. It really focuses on capturing properties that are along the I-35 Highway, as well as US Highway 77. It takes into consideration Loop 288, as well as the extension of Loop 288 to the west of I-35. And then also, in fact, takes into consideration the realignment of FM 1173. We -- as I mentioned, it's about 2,000 acres. We estimate it's about 300 parcels, if you will, that are included within the study area boundary. So one of our questions for you this afternoon is, if we're to move forward with this, do you agree with the initial boundaries that are being proposed as our starting point? We were having conversations among staff, and we talked about we need to be able to help define the parameters of the sandbox that we're playing in, if you will, as a starting point. The shape of our sandbox might vary as we further get into this in-depth analysis. We might find that we need to expand one area of it or retract another area, depending upon what we're learning as part of our analysis. But before I have you answer the question, do you agree with the boundaries that are being proposed? Two -- or one disclaimer and another item for consideration. That first disclaimer, as I mentioned earlier, is that keep in mind the boundaries could change. But the second item that you have to take into consideration is the timing and the resources associated with it. So as you're probably well aware of, we are currently working on our comprehensive plan update, the 2040 plan right now that I know Ron has been working diligently with our consultant team on. We would advocate and promote that we do this area plan separate and apart from our comprehensive plan update. We currently have that project underway and are working with the consultant team on that aspect. We're already well into our public engagement phase related to that. So we find benefit on addressing the area plan separately. The other reason for that is because, as I mentioned at the onset of my presentation, is that the area plan is a much deeper dive analysis when evaluating an area compared to the comprehensive plan. We also anticipate that we would need to be able to utilize consultant assistance. We have wonderful talent on our team and we'll be very involved in this. But given the current bandwidth capacity we have with the development projects we have going on as well as the comprehensive plan update, another special request that we get on a regular basis, we find that we need the additional manpower and resources that a consultant can bring us as we work on this type of project. We also know that timing is important. We continue to have development interest in this area as you're well aware of given this past year. Utilizing consultant resources would allow us to be able to execute this project and ideally get this accomplished sooner than later. Once we execute a contract with a consultant, we would anticipate that this project might take about six to eight months to complete just based on some past experience of similar type projects. We would anticipate that the cost associated with doing this project is somewhere in the $100,000 range, probably upwards of $150,000. Keep in mind we have not negotiated a scope of services with any consultant. We have not started a process to go out and select a consultant. So this is our best guess based upon past experience that we have working on these projects . Also, given the number of parcels, the fact that the land is primarily undeveloped, we feel that we're more appropriate within the price range that I've suggested there. But the other key aspect associated with this is right now in our current fiscal year operating budget, we do not have monies allocated for this type of project, nor do we have anything proposed in the -- nor do we have any funding being requested in the proposed budget for your consideration for this upcoming fiscal year. So if council is interested in continuing to move forward with initiating the area plan, then our next steps would be that, again, we would need financial resources allocation to be able to move forward with working on this. We would anticipate that we're likely probably going to have to do an RFQ or a request for qualifications or a request for proposals and go through a consultant selection process. If we have the opportunity to partner with other processes that we already have established in place and to be able to go directly to consultants that we know that put these kind of plans in place and try to expedite some of that consultant selection process, then we would try to take advantage of that as we know timing is important associated with this. We would anticipate that a project kickoff goal would be sometime after the first of the year, probably February/March timeframe. Again, if we're having to go through a formal RFQ/RFP selection process, that may impact that timing a little bit, but we would do our best to keep this moving forward so that we can be aggressive on getting this started. We also know that as we work on this, we will continue to be processing zoning and development applications. We realize that property owners may bring in applications for consideration within our project area boundaries. We have our comprehensive plan. Our comprehensive plan will continue to guide any decisions that we make as it relates to processing those zoning and development applications. But we will also let applicants know that, hey, our council has advised us to work on this area plan. We currently have this underway. Here's where we are in this process. This could affect the outcome that's associated with your zoning and/or development request that you have before you. So it's important that we would maintain that two-way communication with the development community and any stakeholders that are interested in having property developed as it relates to that time. So I go back to then, you know, if this is something that council is interested in moving forward with, we're here to receive that affirmation. Again, our recommendation would be is that we do move forward. But again, we would need some financial resources being allocated for that. I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have and also happy to discuss the boundaries further if you would like. So thank you. >> Okay. Thank you. Questions for staff? Councilmember Armitage? >> So a couple questions. Excuse me. You mentioned there are about 300 parcels in this proposed small area plan. How many -- are any of these agricultural use, non-annexation agreement properties, you know, being used for family farms, land use, etc.? >> So of what I do know -- so I know we have the Harris family request that's on your agenda this evening. So that is subject to an annexation agreement. And so that would be a part of this area request. Whether or not there are any others, I'll be honest with you, we have not done that level of analysis yet at this point in time. >> So thank you. And sorry, I just started coughing now. >> I completely get it. I completely got it. So and, you know, my next question, you know, if you could just kind of elaborate a little more. You mentioned that the reason why your staff is bringing this forward now, this particular small area plan proposal, instead of waiting until after the 2040 plan is kind of finished going through the citizen engagement process, which as you mentioned is kind of happening now, is you said something about, you know, it -- because the 2040 plan takes a deeper dive, I guess, into future land use type issues, and this is -- >> The area plan would take a deeper dive than the comprehensive plan. >> Yeah. I'm sorry. I meant the other way around. The comprehensive plan is broader. This would take a deeper dive. So, you know, is there a time sensitivity to it as well? Because, you know, the only reason why I could imagine, you know, considering any small area plan ahead of, you know, before the 2040 plan with the greater vision of a future land use map would be either, you know, in no particular order, you know, if there was, like, some time sensitivity issue and/or if it was coming from the public, you know, if there was a neighborhood, they came before us and they said, this is happening to our neighborhood. We want, you know, a small area plan. We don't want to wait for the 2040 plan. I would be open to kind of considering either of those, but in lieu of that, you know, I'm inclined to say just to wait for the 2040 plan and that, you know, broader scale kind of future land use vision, which involves the citizen comment. So, anyway, I was just wondering if you could speak to that, whether or not there's time sensitivity or, I should say, if you know, you know, has there, you know, has there been a push from people who live in this area for a small area plan? Maybe there is, has been, and I just don't know about it. >> So it's my understanding that the whole reason why this is -- we're having this discussion this afternoon is a result of your interest as well, your as a collective council, right, as well as the planning and zoning commission. There's been several development applications that have come forth within the past year, and as a result of that discussion, that this has all been driven by city council and the planning and zoning commission. I'm not aware of any area residents within the boundary area that we've identified. That's not to say that there might not be somebody out there that has a family farm, but given where we've proposed to draw the boundaries, a lot of it is probably more commercial oriented property that is given the proximity to the highways. So but this has all been, as my understanding, driven by council and the planning and zoning commission just as a result of the development activity, which that's not uncommon for area plans to be expedited or to come to the forefront of a project for consideration is when we're finding we're having certain development pressures within an area or there's a request in certain land uses that maybe are not supported under the existing zoning, those are all just some of the factors that could influence an area plan being created, just like if we were to do that, we would have a group present. I know we received an email yesterday from some residents in the northeast part of town that are interested in doing an area plan for their portion of the community. So in their case, it's more community interest. I know we've had some development projects in the area that might have also spurred some of that conversation moving forward. But as it specifically relates to the 35 U.S. Highway 77 corridor, it's my understanding that that is all being driven from a top-down perspective. So even though you've only been here for a week, it is true what you were told. It is something that we've discussed. I was just planning on waiting and integrating that into 2040 plans. I was just curious to know, but thank you for answering that. >> No problem. And the other thing I'll add is you're right. We do have the comprehensive plan going on right now. If we were to undertake the area plan simultaneously with any work that we're doing on the comprehensive plan, then it's really incumbent upon us to make sure that we are coordinating this effort and that we're not creating conflicts, if you will, between the two plans. At the end of the day, if we get both adopted, the area plan is going to supersede any recommendations of the comprehensive plan because of the fact that the area plan was that deeper dive, more specific analysis, and it's going to have that finer-grain policy recommendation associated with it. >> And thank you so much for bringing that out. That's my big concern and my reluctance. Also, by the way, I should have mentioned this first. Welcome. >> Thank you. I appreciate it. >> All right. Counselor McGuire. >> Thank you. Yeah. Welcome to Denton. Thank you. My goal is to make my colleagues as sick as possible of hearing me talk about trains. But, you know, obviously we have a lot of industrial development happening in the western part of the city. There's the West Park Tours, and there's also, you know, the Harris Ranch and the area that's kind of designated here as Denton Commerce Center. Both of those, you know, we've seen proposals to develop those as, you know, industrial or light industrial or distribution centers, things like that. Would it be an appropriate use of a small area plan if we were to, say, extend the western boundary out past the train tracks, maybe all the way to the Rivers Lane, and try to find ways to incorporate into a small area plan opportunities for rail connectivity? Because my kind of bell that I keep ringing is the industrial development is great. It's very good for our economy. It's going to bring lots of jobs. I'm also very concerned about adding even more trucks to 35 than we already have. It's a safety concern. It's an air quality and climate change concern. Is a small area plan an appropriate tool for promoting the use of freight rail as an alternative to trucking? >> We can definitely include that as part of the analysis. And the reason why I say that is I'll give you an example. The project I mentioned that I worked in, Farmer's Branch, the I-35 corridor study that we did. Let me see if I can go back to this slide. So within this corridor we have an existing light rail, dart line that existed there. But we also had as the western most boundary an existing freight rail. And we were currently working with the north central. >> Sorry, they don't see that. >> Oh, they don't? I'm sorry. Okay. So is there a way to have -- okay. Sorry, learning on the fly. Did they unshare it? >> Yeah. >> Okay. Perfect. That'll work. Thank you, Ron. Okay. Hopefully you can now see the cursor on the graphic on the left. So this is the Farmer's Branch project. I worked on the I-35 corridor study. So we had two rail lines that existed within our corridor study boundaries. The first one is this one shown here in green. That was the existing dart light rail station. And so hence our station area. And you can see the location of the dart station there. But the other item that was important as we worked on this project was the westernmost boundary here was actually a freight rail corridor. Simultaneously while we were working on this project, we were also working with the North Central Texas Council of Governments on their Irving to Frisco corridor study because they were studying whether or not commuter rail service should be provided on this rail corridor. All of our participation in many of the conversations we had with them as well as the work that we were doing really started to converge upon each other and had some mutual benefits associated with it and that there used to be a commuter rail station that was identified along this rail line that was actually much farther to the south and really didn't meet any of the criteria anymore. And so in working with cog, we realized that there may be some benefit on having that rail station up here north of Valley View Lane. So that was all appropriate for us to be able to -- excuse me. That was all appropriate for us to be able to have that conversation as we worked on that study area. You know, as it relates to us here in Denton, I think that's a viable option given that our western boundary right now that we're proposing is along the rail corridor. We actually had this boundary drawn much larger for the proposed area plan, and then we started applying some mathematical calculations in terms of how many parcels and how much acreage it was, and I think we had this on initial drawing of somewhere around 4,500 acres. And we were concerned regarding the scale and the size of the project that might be a little large, and so hence we chose to scale it back. But we're open to that. You know, if council is interested in expanding that boundary by all means, we can do so. Keep in mind that when we add additional land area, we add additional property owners. That might also potentially increase the price of the proposal as we work on it. But we would work to negotiate a most competitive price that we could have as we work on this area plan. If there's one thing I've learned about these projects is process drives budget, especially when it comes to engagement efforts. The more public engagement, then the more preparation and analysis being done and the work completed just increases the cost, unfortunately, associated with a project like this. >> Okay. Councilmember Betts. >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So a couple of quick points, and they'll lead right into a question I have, is having -- like the mayor having served on P&Z and now on council, I think he gives us a good perspective on some of the development of the issues. And so I think Rob and Haley will concur that this is a project that is coming out of P&Z was because we were seeing conflicts both with the appearance of the gateway on the north side and with the sort of spontaneous organic growth of certain kinds of businesses conflicting with other kinds of businesses. And was that the vision that Denton wanted for our northern gateway? And if it wasn't, we'd better get a small area plan in there to fix it or clean it up because it was going to happen. And it was going to happen in a way that's not the way organically grown things do sometimes. And so, you know, did we want it to be organized and smart if it's going to be logistics, if it's going to be housing, if it's going to be whatever? I think that was really, you know, trying to get that. And to some degree, you know, the analogy is the barn door is a little bit already open. So that goes to my two questions. If the barn door is a little bit open because a lot of logistics that somewhat curtail our small area plan role, and I think we just need to kind of bear that in mind is market pressures and the Westgate turds are kind of pushing logistics on their own without us doing anything. So I think that needs to be built in mind. But so I guess I'll start that as a question. How does that -- how does the sort of existing nature of the development enhance or slow down the development of a small area plan? So as part of our analysis and recommendations, we would take into consideration development projects that have already been approved for the area because we recognize that they are bringing a benefit to the area and will start to influence land use patterns. You know, presumably if those projects have been recently approved, then this council is generally in agreement with those projects. To me, that tells me that you're supportive of a continuation of that kind of development happening in that area. You know, one of the challenges I know that we have with some of the properties, particularly west of I-35, is the existing gas wells that are there. That's also going to influence the type of development that also occurs within that area of town. So some might say that the cows are already out of the barn, if you will, because of the gas wells that exist there today. So those are all factors that we would take into consideration as we determine what's our best course of action for moving forward. You know, if we were interested in having residential development west of I-35, then how do we accommodate for residential in addition to knowing that we've already approved some more intensive land uses happening there? Or we may decide that residential west of I-35 is not appropriate, or at least in close proximity to the highway quarter, knowing that we have truck traffic associated with having properties that have frontage along a regional highway that provides a means for transporting commerce. >> And I appreciate that, because it goes, I guess, to the sort of the timing. I have a couple of time and space issues, if you will. The timing question I have is this issue of the integration of the comprehensive plan and the small area plans. And I think it is really important, is sort of my semi-direction on that is it really is important to do the small area plan now as a part of the comprehensive plan because we already have these cows out of the barn and it's not a green field, per se. It's not like we're thinking about doing it. It's doing it. And I think we do have a little bit of a time, not constrained because we can cancel a thing down at council if we really want to, but there are some state regulations that, you know, keep the engine turning along. And I think if we don't have that vision of where we're going, we'll get in trouble even with the comprehensive plan. So I think in this case, they do need to go together. My space question is one of the issues that was brought up at P&Z when I was there was do we want this visually to be our gateway coming in from Oklahoma, from Gainesville, from Sanger, on the north 35 corridor that runs all the way up to Minnesota? So the question is, you know, it seems like a lot of this concept -- this is not an area plan yet. This is just a 50,000-foot concept. It seems like a lot of that isn't focused on the logistics elements of this potential plan. And I would encourage you to expand northwards and -- or at least survey and compare how we want the visual appearance of the gateway to be. You know, does it matter to Denton that we go bam into an industrial -- we come over the hill into an industrial -- I think that was some of the concerns of planning and zoning. Does that matter? It may not matter to us. But if it does matter to us, then we should expand the boundaries more northward and have a transitional phase from the north. >> Well, and I think those are all questions that would be answered as we work through the area plan itself. And you raise a great question about the gateway. And I know we had some of this conversation internally this past week. Is council interested in us really establishing a new gateway? And we were talking about, you know, where do we draw that line? And originally, you know, we knew that the primary focus was near I-35 and U.S. 77 where it was intersecting. And is that truly perceived as the gateway in the community or is it farther north? And so hence why we ended up with the proposed boundary at Ganzer road because we felt that that was more of an appropriate entrance to the community. But if council feels that we need to, you know, have the starting point even farther north, we can pull the map back up and be able to engage in that conversation. And you can provide me with some direction as to where you think that starting point needs to be as well. >> I think that would be really wise to just maybe not set a boundary but understand what the goals of council and the city are in terms of how much transitional from rural to industry and how sharp that gradient is. Is desired to be or not to be? >> Well, I think the other -- and I'm -- my apologies for interrupting. But I think the other thing that's going to influence it also is what property is currently within our land use control? What property is currently within our city limits compared to those properties that are out in our ETJ? As you're well aware of, we have difficulty regulating land use development within the ETJ. Obviously we can address the subdivision of property in providing for infrastructure to serve it if we have certain annexation agreements in place that will influence some of our decision-making. But right now the greatest control we have over the land use is the zoning that we put in place for the properties that are inside our city limit boundaries. >> And that wasn't an interruption. That was exactly the point I was about to say. So that was -- that was perfect. >> Perfect. >> And I will say just as a sort of aside, council Byrd's statements earlier in the session about not knowing what's coming down the pike and needing to have funds just because we don't know what's coming. Well, apparently even just a few hours later we need some additional funds. So I think that's prescient on the point of council Byrd. Thank you. >> Councilor Davis. >> Quick little follow-on. I know where you can get $900,000 from. >> I'll take it. I can do quite a bit of area planning. >> Just being a little -- being a little flipped there. I have a question about boundary and then a little bit of direction also. Is there a particular reason not to include the, I guess, as a western and northern boundary, the rest of Ganser Road? So the parcels that are included in your yellow line now are in common ownership with the parcels that are directly to the east of the -- your yellow line. So is there a reason not to include everything that's within the city limits there all the way to the rest of Ganser? >> Yes. So I can share with you our justification for drawing this boundary here at this time. And Haley, correct me if I'm wrong on this, is that it's my understanding, Shula Netsor has this property, and I believe we have master plan community zoning already in place there. And so as a result of that, zoning already being in effect there, hence why we drew this boundary where we did, because I believe her property boundary snakes along through there. And we focused primarily on the areas that are closest to the highway corridor. The other aspect that also influenced the decision, again, is just trying to keep the study somewhat reasonable. As I mentioned, you know, the early boundaries that we had drawn had us upwards of 4,000 acres. And so we weren't for certain if that's what council's intention also was with respect to the area plan. But if you, you know, if you believe that this boundary needs to be extended farther here to the east along this road, I see Ganser is labeled here and as well as it comes down through this area, by all means, you know, we can look to including this property here. We would take into consideration that master plan community zoning that's in effect right now because that property owner does have vested development rights under that existing zoning and look to see, you know, how does that shape or influence any of our decisions as we look to what additional land uses are appropriate between Netser's property and I-35 highway. >> So you're kind of making my point for me there. >> Okay. >> I don't know that the existence of master plan community zoning means that something doesn't need to also be considered in the broader scope of the area. I know you're not saying that. It doesn't need to be considered in the broader scope of the area. I mean, any master -- any small area plan is going to abut some other zoning, right? So you're always going to be thinking about what's along the edges. But I have the same question regarding the parcel that's just north of the new bronco way in the new high school. It's already zoned. It's already in development. That project is there. I wouldn't see a problem with and I don't know that it would necessarily increase the workload or the, you know, the money that we'd have to spend because by including that also because that's already a known entity. There's not a big stakeholder engagement, an additional stakeholder engagement piece that comes along with including it. The same for the other Cat 35 Denton properties that are already in an MPC because there's not an additional stakeholder to engage there. It's just kind of another reference point for the rest of the small area plan. I'd rather see those portions included. I think it forms a more natural boundary to the plan and then also, and it doesn't add too much to the workload. It is additional land area, but it's known entities and known stakeholders. >> And we can do that. And I was going to say if you're interested, I do have a magic wizard on with us for the call. I've got Cody on our team who's available to share screen if you're interested in seeing as part of our discussion some of the additional properties being added, or we're more than happy to take the direction that you have and bring it back to you. But what I'm hearing from you is expanding that eastern boundary over to Gansel Road. Let me see if I can share screen again. But if I'm hearing from you correctly and correct me if I'm wrong, that we would extend this boundary somewhere down along through this, I guess it's some sort of county road that exists here and comes down along through this area and picking up this property. So Councilmember McGuire, you had mentioned about coming over to Lover's Lane, and I can't recall if that's the street here or if that extends even further. Out of the frame? Okay. I recall seeing it on the map when we were drawing the boundaries, but we could push that boundary as far west as to Lover's Lane if that's the concurrence of the council. And my apologies. I think you had another comment Councilman Davis. >> I did. Thank you. So one, I'm just one asking for that extension over the rest of the Ganser, the remainder of the Ganser road in those parcels. My reason specifically for that though is the common ownership. Even though the owner may have a particular zoning in place that may not be the zoning they want to build under. >> That's true. >> But then also they may be, and I don't know this, but because it's in common ownership, they may expand that vision for that, you know, the entirety of their assemblage there. There just might be other things that they have in mind and something we want to engage with them on. I'm not necessarily, I don't concur with expanding over to levers because it's ETJ. I like stopping at the train tracks because that's what we can control and what we can zone and what we can, I don't know that going all the way over to levers gives us any additional intermodal possibilities or any additional incentives for someone to do, you know, intermodal shipping or something like that. I think we keep it to what we can actually regulate and what we can actually control. But again, that's just one councilmember's opinion. I agree. In fact, I'm one of the people who said that we need some kind of planning in this area specifically on this area. I want to draw a distinction though between a smaller area plan like what we did with the oh kicker gateway, which was very comprehensive. Mayor Pro Tem was a part of that effort. A number of us were familiar with it. But a very intensive, more along the lines of some of the examples you gave us from Richardson and Farmer's Branch I want to draw a distinction between that kind of granular, very intensive, lots of community engagement, that kind of planning, and then primarily commercial if we wouldn't have any residential within this boundary unless we expand it in the ways that we've talked about. We don't have any residents that live there now that we're aware of unless they're folks who are occupying spaces we don't normally think about. I just don't know that a $100,000 consultant-driven small area plan in the kind of way we've already discussed is exactly what we need. I don't know if we don't need something that is more like small area plan light, a little bit less comprehensive. Is it as simple as updating the future land use map? Is it as simple as an addendum to the comp plan? I don't mind proceeding on parallel tracks, and that might be exactly what we need. I'm just not 100% over the hump to do we need a full-on -- you know, the consultant stuff with putting dots on a map and having 15 community meetings and 100 Zooms and $100,000 worth of consultant work for this particular area. >> So the -- you're right. The level of public engagement associated with this plan is probably likely going to be very different than the oak area plan that you made reference. And I seem to recall -- and correct me if I'm wrong on this, but we spent approximately $170,000 on the oak area plan, and I'm sure given if there were quite a few property owners involved in it that there was a very extensive public engagement process. Part of that is just the sheer volume of the number of property owners involved. In this case, you're right, this plan for the I-35/U.S. 77 area probably would not have as an extensive public engagement component. It still should have one, though, because you have landowners there and stakeholders. So it's very important that we have them at the table in our decision-making process as to how the land continues to prevail in that area. So, you know, knowing that we have fewer landowners involved and we're dealing with primarily undeveloped land compared to the oak area plan, as I suspect was near here in downtown, that, you know, our analysis and our fee at the end of the day with the consultant could actually come in closer to the 100,000 mark. Unfortunately, we just don't know that just yet given the fact that we haven't pursued understanding the scope of services and reaching out to any consultants. So unfortunately, I don't have a better answer for you from that perspective, but just to help understand some differences between the two projects and how that might influence the cost. >> Sure, and that's kind of what I'm getting at. Is it possible to get the small area light or the internal small area plan option? Is it possible for us to be given an option where, you know, over here is the up to $100,000 that the consultant handles most of the project, and this is the utility you get from that option as opposed to here's a staff driven, as we get to it, we get to it, land use map update, very basic version, and to see a comparison of what value we get out of those two options? >> We -- I mean, we could and we could reach out to a couple of consultants and get an idea as what -- as to what the cost difference may be. You know, I think the challenge becomes is that -- is if we have development happening within this area and it's influencing future decisions, then at what point in time do we try to get further ahead? If we want more of the comp plan or area plan light, then I would say let's stick with our comprehensive plan. We're right now updating the comprehensive plan for the area. It provides land use recommendations as to how properties should develop. We already have that, though, right now. And so it's my understanding, given past discussions with council and the planning and zoning commission, that you all have identified that there's a greater need and a better plan or vision that needs to be put forth for those properties. So to me, that's where the decision needs to be made is are you comfortable with continuing with the comprehensive plan and any recommendations as a result of our 2040 plan update that come about, or do you feel like there's still a significant need to do that deeper dive, finer grain policy recommendation and determine what our true next steps should be for the area when it comes to actually the implementation? >> Sure. So my direction is, yes, we need more granularity than we currently have and more granularity than we have under the comprehensive plan. We do not need the level of granularity that we need downtown or in the oak hickory area. We have a handful of major vision questions that need to be answered for this area. We don't have a lot of -- I'll draw a line to that. We have a handful of major questions to answer about this area and what we want to do. One of those, you've already mentioned, are the cows out of the barn regarding logistics. For the west side of the highway, as you identified with the industrial uses existing and the gas wells, maybe so. For the east side of the highway, probably not. >> I understand. >> There's a truck stop and a couple of little spots. But, you know, that assemblage that we talked about already, the cat 35 property, huge opportunities over there that are very different and very different in character than on the west side of the highway where we've got truck uses and fleet services and all that kind of stuff. So answering those kind of questions, sure. But a, you know, 100-page long action plan for this particular area, maybe not. >> I understand. >> Okay. And just a time stamp. So it's 520. We're going to be back in here at 630, and we're going to eat maybe between there somewhere. So just govern yourselves accordingly. Councilmember Guara? >> Thank you. I'd just like to amend my comment about expanding the boundary, like the southwestern boundary. I had suggested all the way to Lover's Lane, and while that would not include ETJ, it would include kind of a strip of properties that it looks like there's some very low density residential happening there, maybe a little bit of agricultural. I don't see any point in going all the way to Lover's Lane. I would say that at the very least I would like to see the small area plan include all of the Harris Ranch property and possibly going basically to the edge of that picture that you're showing us right now, which is there's a property line there and the property is owned by Baker 345 LLC. Just to ensure that, you know, if that property is going to develop into, you know, industrial or logistics, which seems really likely that we have an opportunity to shape that. >> So as you're thinking maybe to kind of square this off and bring our boundary down along through here and just picking up this area. And I realize we have the Harris Ranch item on your agenda this evening. And if we move forward with the annexation of that, I believe that will push out our ETJ boundary just a little bit further. So I think it's okay that we have some properties that are in the ETJ because they're on the edge of property that will be in the city limits. So I know there was a comment made with some concern related whether or not we should be planning within the ETJ. >> I definitely am not proposing anything that goes into the ETJ for obvious reasons. I'm just wondering if it's a simple question. Is this -- if it's simply to agree, you could just say that. But if it's a new point, Councilmember Armitage? >> It's a question. >> Okay. >> So it's a simple question. It might not have a simple answer. Which is more affordable just as well as affordable housing. So I'm just wondering if we're seeing the problems that we're seeking to solve by zoning change versus small area plan? >> You know, if -- so if it's applying some of our zoning districts that we currently have in the development code, you know, that's work that we can do internally and just add that to our development caseload and to change the zoning. My one caution on that would be before we start going in there, if we are comfortable with the vision as provided for in the comprehensive plan, including any future updates, then obviously any zoning request that we process in the future would be done so in accordance with consistency with the comprehensive plan. So I've worked in communities, farmers branch, great example, the I-35 corridor. Council was concerned regarding some of the land uses that were already currently allowed. We actually did a bunch of rezoning before we actually got to the study. Some might say that's kind of backwards because normally zoning is one of the tools that you use for implementing your vision policy plan recommendations. So it's -- but back to your question, like I said, you know, if we're applying some of our existing zoning districts that are in our development -- debt and development code, that's something that in all likelihood we could take care of at the staff level, and that's presuming that we're comfortable with the development standards that we have in the development code. If we are interested in establishing any tighter regulations or regulations that are more restrictive, if you will, to apply to the area, then that takes a little more time and effort. That may be something that can be accomplished in-house or that might benefit from some consultant services. So a lot of it kind of depends on what we're trying to achieve for the area. >> Okay. Thank you. Thank you. You know, I'm in favor of, you know, solving the problem that we're looking to solve. I'm not hearing any disagreement about the idea that there are problems here in this area. So, you know, I'm not in favor of solving the problem. Sorry. But, you know, I am open to -- or I prefer solutions that are lower cost as long as they are -- so, in other words, some things that could be done in-house that could also have more teeth. You know, as long as there aren't any problems in-house. >> My recommendation to you from a SAS perspective would be to let's establish the vision. If we're not comfortable and we want something finer grained in policy direction for the area, then we move forward with doing the area plan. We establish the vision in place and then we determine what the next steps are because I anticipate zoning will probably be one of the tools that's involved in that. And we will learn that as we go through the area plan analysis. But also the decision I realize with you all. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Councilman Byrd. >> I'm listening intently to see whether we're actually trying to go forward with this. It sounds like we want to go forward with it with a lot of caveats, which is holding us back from making this decision. They're asking if we should go forward, if we should stay or not do it. I think that we should go forward and use the current comprehensive plan that we have. Let's see how that's going to flesh out or flesh out for us and come back at some point if there needs to be some changes or we have some additional concerns, then we do it at that time. But whatever we had planned at this time, let's see how that works. Let's go forward. I think we've said a lot. We have a lot of things that we need to move forward with. I just think that we just need to make a decision, and I think the one would be that we move forward with what we have right now. >> Just to make sure I'm understanding you correctly. You're advocating that we move forward with our current comprehensive plan that we have and any adjustments that are made as a result of the 2040 update that we're doing, and we would take subsequent zoning measures to make sure that we have the current comprehensive plan. I feel like I'm hearing two things, but I'll look to the mayor. >> That's what I'm saying. You said it in the precise way, but you did get my point. >> We'll get clarity here in just a minute. I think he's going to get one more. >> Mayor Fulton-Milford. >> Thank you. So I'll give my direction. I think we're kind of heading that way, heading this way through the product. I think we're going to be a lot happier if we have a comprehensive plan first that includes, I would say, maybe you turn up the magnification to 1.5X in areas that we know are already identified as needing a little comment. And then, you know, as Councilman Davis pointed out, I was extensively involved in the Oak Gateway area plan, and I'll tell you, just my personal experience, this is not a knock on the consultants, but I would say that they did not necessarily offer a whole lot of extra value beyond what staff can provide. In fact, I would say that it really isn't a knock on them. It's praise for the expertise of staff, but also the local knowledge. And I would say that the momentum didn't really pick up until, you know, frankly, there was a concerted effort to get the consultants out of the way because the stakeholders, you know, kind of have their say more and, you know, for it to not feel like such a managed straight jagged process. So, you know, if the main thing they're doing is stakeholder input, I think our staff is excellent at that. It might be a slightly slower boat because, you know, I hear part of what I hear in the request is just capacity because people already have day jobs. But, again, I think if we start with adding a little innovation as part of the comprehensive plan so that what we do subsequently will fit into that, you know, and then kind of dig in a little more small area plan light, I think that's what David's called it, you know, primarily using internal resources. I think, frankly, I think we'll have a better product in the end. >> Council Member Bet. >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. This is a question. And so when I send in questions to staff, you know, I'll answer, you know, I had that question of why do we need a consultant? I think you're hearing sort of that question repeated in one form or another over and over. So I guess the response was, as I recall, without pulling out my e-mail, something to the effect of well, we don't think we have the bandwidth, we're too busy. So I guess can you elaborate sort of on your time demands and how you really see the consultant inventing that versus what maybe is a little bit of a drift here, not a drift, but a mild consensus that we're not sure about spending $100,000 on a consultant. So can you maybe address that a little bit? >> Sure thing. So I know the question was raised that we were asked to respond to and with your e-mail inquiry as to why we needed the consultant assistance for that. You know, our challenge is that with the amount of development activity that we're currently experiencing within the city, that it's putting tremendous demands on our staff. I've only been here a short time, but I've also been working the wee hours with them in the morning, and I know that they are working on staff reports late at night. They go home, try to address their family needs, but then they're also logging in late at night writing staff reports till midnight. I know Haley and I were just having a conversation, and the reality is that, you know, she was working on staff reports Friday night, Saturday morning, and even on Sunday. So when we're trying to keep up with the development load and activity to keep development projects moving forward, not to mention the shot clock provisions within the state statute that dictate how we have to perform, then the current development projects are always going to rise to the forefront, so it makes it a little more difficult for us to be able to get to projects like area plans just because we'll burn out our staff more than we already have. So hence, in Mr. Scott McDowell and I've had quite a bit of conversation, you know, we recognize we have amazing talent in-house on our team, and we believe that we have the people and then the professional knowledge and expertise to be able to put together a plan like this. The challenge is we just don't have the bandwidth and capacity. So the consultant brings that basically additional staff resource for us. We're able to have them go do the analysis and bring recommendations to us, and we're able to filter with those and be able to partner with them in that effort, but allow us to keep this interest, if that is a council, is to keep this priority interest moving forward and being able to check the box and getting that completed in addition to all the other work that we're doing right now. I think that helps. Thank you for that. >> You're welcome. >> Councilmember Davis. >> I just want to be really clear in my direction. The reason why I use the terms small area plan light is because I don't have a better word to describe. I'm okay with staff needing a consultant for additional capacity and professional expertise and analysis. That makes perfect sense to me. I'm not interested in again, speaking only for myself, a consultant who is there to produce a nice logo for the project and put together the binders and have a nice PowerPoint, all these things that are good at padding a consultant's bill, but not great at producing. It's very different from like paying for engineering review where you put in the inputs and you get the output and a recommendation and you go forward. That's what I'm looking for, is augmenting staff's capacity but not necessarily paying somebody to give a PowerPoint three times to a community meeting when we have the ability to do that ourselves. And to that point, we also have to make sure that we partner with the correct consultants on putting together an area plan. So if we were to move forward with this and utilizing consultant services, we would make sure that we have the right partner at the table with us because the last thing I want to do is train a consultant on how to do an area plan and expectation. I want somebody who has experience in doing these and there are several consultants that are out there that can do this kind of work but to make sure that we get the product that we are wanting to have for Denton. I was just going to say, Mayor, I think -- and I know you have some comments. I think what we can do is I can go back with staff. We can work on the light concept which would be to narrow the scope of what would be the most important factors, not having -- where they have to conduct all the meetings and that kind of thing, no fancy brochures, but looking at existing zoning, what's already there or planned to be there, what's in the comprehensive plan already and how it's going to work. This area is tagged as business innovation, I believe, and those kinds of things, and then bring that back. Then by then, if you feel like we need more, then we can go back and look at it, but we probably can get a consultant a lot less than 100,000 that can do some of that work to assist us. The other thing, quite frankly, I'll be looking at is, you know, the bandwidth that our employees have currently and trying to address those issues as well. I don't want people with families having to stay up till midnight and on weekends and stuff, so that's something I need to take care of. >> Yeah, no, that sounds great, and I couldn't agree more, and that's my focus as well. I think -- and I thank staff for being transparent that way. We just as a body have to get better, right? We just as -- hopefully each individual is accountable for their own actions, but I'm working hard to get you more time on Tuesdays as best I can, and I just think it's egregious. It hurts my heart that staffs, you know, the weekends and that sort of thing, I get it, that they're willing to do it, and I don't begrudge that. I just -- I think as a boss collective, we have to be more sensitive that we don't run off great talent because of those efforts. To my specific comments, yes, in summary, I think there's enough to move forward, I agree. I think really it is a gateway focus plan, right? And I think that is really key. I think that if we listen to staff and they say the comprehensive plan is a minor update to the current plan, it shouldn't factor into this. It's not a major comprehensive plan. It's a minor twist and tweak, and staffs provided that information. We just have to adopt that and understand what the comprehensive plan is asked to do. So yeah, I see it as a gateway plan. My sales pitch to you would be if you go back and look at it and it's long-term focus, right, and no one's mentioned it here, but understand the county tried to spend -- tried to get through the state legislator a 2% increased hotel tax to build an expo center just north of where you drew your line. And so it's important to me that we butt up right against that, right? Because that's going to be -- there's going to be major development in that area. So I'd push it north right to where we -- as far as we can go north with that, because that's going to be a huge development, lots of investment. What do we want that to look like? When you go to the north, you're in Sanger, but when you come to the south, here's what you see and kind of program that out. So I see -- because that's our gateway, right? So you're going to have new people coming to this expo center, and what do they see on the other side of the street for Denton and what does that represent? That to me is the key boundary, key investment and key kind of vision. Then I'll say I would like to see kind of some -- I know there's a master plan there to -- you know, the one property owner. I would like to see what that looks like. I don't think it needs to be incorporated in the small area plan or in the gateway plan, but I do -- I would like to kind of have a visual representation just so we have -- and obviously that's going to change so it could be as nondescript as possible, but at the same time it could just be words capturing, you know, mixed use homes, whatever to kind of give a visual for that. Again, I think the other thing is -- let's see, try to thin this out a bit. Yeah, and I think just when you come back, maybe there's just some dotted lines to give us some options. You know, hey, we can do, you know, version ABC, streamline this conversation about, you know, which roads, what preference, just kind of as staff goes back and listens, you can kind of say, okay, one mentioned this, one mentioned that one, and then we can get consensus hopefully quicker with those visual aids. And I think that's it. I mean, I just agree with you to close again on the need for a consultant to, again, bridge that workload, you know, because those are the emails I get a ton of, hey, development this, timeline this, response that, you know, I was at Cold Creek and it's like, hey, I was ready to pull my hair out three times. I mean, so I need staff focused on those, like you said, those projects. And these kind of vision plans we can supplement. So thank you very much. Great presentation. Welcome aboard. And I look forward to the feedback. >> Thank you. Appreciate it. >> Okay. So it's 540 -- yeah, 536. So we'll take -- we'll come back to one minute pitch. Staff's going to update us via email on the COVID update or they'll send out something -- >> It went out at noon today. >> Okay. Great. So we have that in your email. You can take a look at that. Follow up with staff. You have questions. So for those tracking along, that's item E, ID 211893. We've run out of room -- out of time. So we're not going to get to that. We're going to -- we'll take F after we grab something to eat and we'll just eat in here. So it is 537. We'll take a break until 6 o'clock. 6 o'clock we'll pick up with one minute pitch and then probably have to go shortly thereafter to the regular meeting. Thanks. And welcome back to this meeting of the Denton City Council. It is 602 and we have a quorum, so I'll call us back to order and then our next -- I'll call the next item as staff is making their way in. It's, again, going down to item F, which is ID 211272, receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction on a pending City Council request for a work session on community-wide effort titled Sign Topper Projects. Good evening. Mayor and council. Good evening. Thank you for your patience as I pull this up. Sure. And as you're doing that, do you want to speak on kind of -- because I talked to staff earlier, kind of the focal point being we're already working on a version in a area but looking for broader -- Broad. Yes. So if you want to kind of lay that out, that would be great. Sure. Not a problem. Okay. There we are. I'm Rachel Ballthorpe-Mendoza and I will present for y'all the City Council Pending Request for information for this evening. Just as a little bit of background, for those that may not be aware, up to seven requests will be reviewed per meeting, and we have one this evening. I'll introduce the one for the tonight, and the elected official that made the request will have up to one minute to describe and justify it. And the remaining elected officials will then have up to one minute to provide their feedback and indicate support for the use of staff time to respond to it. And, of course, we'll respond to the request where a consensus is reached. So tonight we have one from Councilmember Byrd about a community-wide effort for the sign topper project. And as she wrote it, it's there for you to read. And just as a little bit of background, staff is already actually planning a sign topper pilot project for the Southeast Denton community, and there is a particular area that they're working for with that. And there is a tentative public meeting date of November the 4th scheduled for this, where we will plan to get more feedback from the community. And certainly if a city-wide sign topper project program is desired, we'll need to get those identified SOPs and make a policy for that program. And I just wanted to add this here. So Councilmember Byrd asked for kind of an example of what we're looking at. Councilmember, I hope that that's what you were exactly thinking. That was super. So I just wanted to show you all this right before she begins her pitch so that you could see the example. Now I'm going to stop sharing so that we can get her going. Okay. Mayor and Marissa. Okay. I believe Councilmember Byrd is ready. All right. Yes. Go right ahead. At the very beginning of my tenure, I was approached by a gentleman named Randy Hunt. I understood him to be engaged and interested in historical places and neighborhoods. It's his thing. We should appreciate his efforts to connect us citizens of Denton in a particular kind of way. This particular type of way is being touted as a city-wide community project as an effort to remind us that we've arrived in our space, our home, our neighborhood, and our city. If you're new here, join the club as most of us are transplants. We believe, as do Mr. Hunt, that neighborhoods are important, and to commemorate this importance, we both are asking that you support the efforts being made to connect neighbors with the Sign Topper project. This sign will sit atop stop signs and registered neighborhoods. It will give us a chance or a sense of pride to know that we've landed in a perfect place for you and your family. It will instill a concrete sense of belonging to this community, and I would recommend a neighborhood in Southeast Dent named Solomon Hill as a first area to service. Thanks. >> All right. Thank you. Councilmember Armitage. >> Thank you, Councilmember Bird. I strongly support this effort and I know there has already been a significant amount of community input on this, and I'm excited about it. I hope there can be a work session on this. Thank you. >> Councilmember McGuire. >> Thank you. Yeah, I think this will be great for, you know, creating sense of place and community cohesion. I totally support it. >> Councilmember Davis. >> Absolutely support it. Glad the efforts are underway and look forward to see it going forward. >> Okay. All right. So that's the majority. Anyone else? >> Yeah. Really like it. I think it's very dense. >> Okay. Support. >> Okay. Great. So thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Uh-huh. That concludes item F, and so that gives us -- what's that? Councilmember Beck. >> Just as a confusion, had we not decided to go to two-minute pitches? This was a one-minute pitch. Did we not vote on it? I'm a little confused whether it's one-minute pitches or two-minute pitches. It hates me, too. >> I mean, it really doesn't matter. Council's approval, meaning the focus areas, and that's coming on the 21st, I believe. It's all in a nice little package so we can start it all at one time, just -- but that's when it's coming. >> Thank you so much. >> Yeah. >> Ms. City Attorney. >> That requires an ordinance change. So that's -- that requires an ordinance change. So that's what will be coming with it. >> Great. All right. Thank you. So we'll -- at 6.09, we will adjourn our work session and be back to start our regular -- our special call meeting at 6.30. Thank you. Good evening and welcome to this meeting of the Denton City Council. It is 6.30 on September 14th, and we do have a quorum, so we'll call the meeting back to order. And the first item on tonight's agenda is pledge to the United States and Texas flag. So if you could please stand if you're able and join us in that. >> I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Honor the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to the Texas, one state, under God, one and indivisible. >> Thank you. That brings us to our consent agenda, and I'll take a motion understanding letters T as in Tom, U as umbrella, V as in Victor were pulled. Councilmember Davis? >> I move approval of the consent agenda accepting items T, U, and V. >> Okay. And is there -- Councilmember Beck? >> I second. >> Thank you. Motion by Councilmember Davis, seconded by Councilmember Beck. Any discussion? Seeing none, Councilmember Davis, how say you? >> I. >> Councilmember Beck? >> I. >> Councilmember Guare? >> I. >> Councilmember Burt? >> I. >> Councilmember Armitter? >> Yes. >> Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer? >> I. >> Mayor Hutspeth is an I as well, passes seven to zero. Did I get everybody? Make sure. Yeah. Okay. It takes us to item T, for those that are going to recuse. All right. So item T is ID211621, consider adoption of an ordinance authorizing a city manager tax acute-of-service agreement related to public education and government grants, that acronym is PEG, grants with the University of North Texas for the NTTB PEG channel authorizing expenditure funds therefore and declaring an effective date. I'll take a motion. There's no presentation. Councilmember Davis? >> Move approval. >> Okay. Councilmember Beck? >> Second. >> Motion by Councilmember Davis, second by Councilmember Beck. Any discussion? Seeing none, Councilmember Davis, I'll say you? >> Aye. >> Councilmember Beck? >> Aye. >> Councilmember Byrd? >> Aye. >> Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer? >> I. >> And Mayor Hutspeth is an I as well. And then for the record, we'll note that Councilmember Armitter and McGuire have excused themselves. And that passes five to zero. That's item T. Take us to item U. For those that are going to recuse. Okay. So let the record show that's Councilmember Davis, Councilmember Byrd recused, and I'll call the item. It's -- let me get there. ID211622, consider adoption of ordinance authorizing the city manager to execute a service agreement related to public education and government grants with Denton Independent School District for its PEG channel authorizing the expenditure of funds, therefore, and declaring an effective date. I'll take a motion. Councilmember Beck? >> I motion approval. >> And Councilmember Byrd? >> Second. >> Okay. We have a motion by Councilmember Beck, second by Councilmember Byrd. Any discussion? Seeing none, Councilmember Byrd? >> Aye. >> Councilmember Byrd? >> Aye. >> Councilmember Armitage? >> Yes. >> Mayor Meltzer? >> Aye. >> Thank you. Mayor Hutsworth is an aye as well. That passes 5-0. And that brings us to our final item for individual consideration, item V. And we'll let the record reflect that Councilmember Armitage and Councilmember McGuire have recused. I call that item, it's item V, ID211623, consider adoption of an ordinance authorizing a city manager to execute a service agreement related to public education grant, PEG grants, with the University of North Texas for the Denton Community Television PEG channel authorizing expenditure of funds, therefore, and declaring an effective date. Councilmember Beck? >> I move approval. >> Second. >> Councilmember Byrd? >> Second. >> Thank you. Motion by Councilmember Beck, second by Councilmember Byrd. Any discussion? Seeing none, Councilmember Beck, I'll say you. >> Aye. >> Councilmember Byrd? >> Aye. >> Councilmember Davis? >> Aye. >> Mayor Proctor Meltzer? >> Aye. >> Mayor Hutsworth is an aye as well. That passes 5-0. Thank you. That concludes our consent agenda. It takes us to -- everyone get back in and get settled. It takes us to our items for individual consideration. Consider and nomination appointments of Denton Downtown Tax Increment Financing Reinvestment Zone number one. >> Good evening, Mayor and Council, Rachel Ballthorpe Mendoza again, Assistant to the City Manager, and I'll present for you on the Downtown TURS Board appointments. Just as a little bit of background, the appointments for the TURS Board are pursuant to ordinance 2010-316 section four that states all members shall be appointed by the City Council. The structure for the board is two members, our council members, two are property owners or residents from within the zone itself, two are business owners or members of the Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors, and one member has no specific category but must be a qualified voter within the city. So section 311.009 of the Tax Increment Financing Act states what it states there. I'm not going to read it word for word for y'all, but also again, just our ordinance says that members shall be appointed by City Council, and particularly 4B says that City Council shall designate a member of the board to serve as Chair of the Board of the Directors. Our current board is made up of these members here, and I'll point to particularly the two open slots, which were formally held by Alex Payne, who's a property owner, and Jimmy Meredith, who is the business owner and the Chamber Board of Directors. So the appointments for the consideration this evening are shown here on our matrix. We have Councilmember Byrd, who is up for reappointment, and her term is listed there. We have our property owner, we're the resident, which is Melissa Linderberg. We have a property owner and another resident, Marybeth Ranky Doyle. And then lastly, the member of the Chamber or the business owner, we have those three, Marybeth Kevin Roden and Suzanne Johnson. So our actions before y'all tonight are the appointments of the board itself, and then also the selection of the board chair. Ms. Linderberg currently serves as chair, and she's expressed an interest in continuing to serve in that capacity. So I will be here for any questions, and I'll also add that my friend Jessica Rogers is also here, should you have anything. >> Okay. Questions for staff? Any questions? Seeing none, Councilmember Armitage? >> Not a question for staff, just a motion. >> Okay. >> Or a nomination. >> All right. What is your nomination? >> Let's see. So I would -- are we going to take the whole slate all at once? >> Really only there's two names that matter. >> Okay. >> That are at issue, so yes. >> Okay. >> Those last two. >> Okay. So for the property owner or resident, Marybeth Doyle. And for the business owner, Suzanne Johnson. >> Okay. Is there a second? Councilmember Bec? >> I second. >> Okay. Discussion? Councilmember Davis? >> Thank you, Mayor. I move amendment of the motion to include the name Kevin Roden in place of Suzanne Johnson. >> I'll second that. So there's amendment -- there's a motion by Councilmember Davis second by Mayor Hutsbuth. Discussion? Councilmember Davis? >> Thank you, Mayor. I won't belabor too much Mr. Roden's contributions to the downtown area. But of course I'll point out the fish bowl he works in there at the corner of Hickory and Elm. He sees everything that happens. He has thoughts and opinions about most things that happen downtown. He has the institutional memory I think to back that up and to offer -- I know his insight has been helpful to me as a councilmember and I think it would be helpful to the TURS board especially as we look at things like potential expansion of the TURS, uses of TURS money for improvement projects and that kind of thing going forward. >> Okay. Any other discussion? Mayor Pritzker? >> I would have no discomfort whatsoever if Mr. Roden were to serve on the board. He's a great contributor and a keen mind. I nominated -- or I encouraged Ann Johnson to apply and I would have nominated her and she'll have my vote. She's the owner of the Chestnut Tree, a great long-time institution that she's actually -- she was an employee of and then revived as owner with her partners. And I happen to know that she was the recipient of the Denton Rotary Club's Vocational Service Award last year as just being an outstandingly civic-minded business owner and she's got quite a perch on the square as well and I think, you know, will contribute a lot of on the ground and business owner perspective. >> Okay. Any other discussion? Councilmember Armitage? >> There we go. Yes. Just a second. What Mayor Pro Tem Melter said, Suzanne Johnson and the Chestnut Tree are just really invaluable components of the Denton downtown community. That is not to say anything against the nomination of Kevin Roden, only that there is so much to commend Suzanne Johnson and I also love the idea of having a woman business owner represent the business owner on the board. >> Okay. Any other discussion? So I'll just say this for the two that I obviously have not or the few that have not declared kind of a position. My sales pitch would be that one, I plan to nominate former Councilmember Roden. I think he'd be valuable component. I was but conflicted in that I thought there was a question and so, you know, you snooze you lose. But that being said, Kevin has not only -- he and his wife have not only grown that business but they brought in a unique perspective in that they have a company from the East Coast that purchased their company. And so you have that kind of visibility of just kind of bringing and actively activating that area and those relationships. And then the last thing I'll say is just that he's been in queue I think at least three times before. So I think he's -- one, he served as a district one representative. He's probably on the council level and the TURS was started. But two, he has kind of some connectivity and some life experience beyond Denton that will help activate that area and help bring perspective. And then three, I think he's been in queue at least two or three times that I've counted before and not been given opportunity and I think that's unfortunate. Again, all quality candidates but that's what's going to guide my decisions. So any other discussion? So we have a motion to substitute former Councilmember Roden -- Kevin Roden for Suzanne Johnson that's before us. Motion made by Councilmember Davis, seconded by Mayor Hatsbeth. I see no other discussion. Councilmember Davis, I'll say you. >> Aye. >> Mayor Hatsbeth, it's an aye. Councilmember Betz. >> Nay. >> Councilmember McGuire. >> Nay. >> Councilmember Byrd. >> Aye. >> Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. 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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I apologize. There was several versions sent, and I think it just got uploaded. Sure. So my name is Rosa Rios, and I am your city secretary. And I'm here to present appointments to the Board of Ethics. Well, okay. So the Board of Ethics was created by ordinance number 17757, and it has, of course, been codified. And it kind of lists some of the preference and appointments shall be given to professionals. And here you can kind of see what those preferences are, with the exception that it does require that the board have at least three members who are either attorneys or retired jurists. You can see here the existing membership. And currently there are two seats that do not have final appointments to them, although we do have members in holdover status. And you can see here the item presented to you at this point is for the alternate three seat that is currently occupied by Robert Swanbeck, who was originally appointed back in 2019 and has indicated that he does not want to be reappointed. So, of course, he's in holdover status. So the remaining appointment for the at-large three, again, Mayor Hudspeth did nominate this individual on August 25. And again, you can see here his details. So there are two remaining appointments, as I noted, for the Board of Ethics. And one of those must meet the attorney or retired jurist qualification. The nominees are presented in the order that the nominees were received. So you can see here the two agenda items. And, of course, the remaining place that does not receive an appointment would need to be either an attorney or the retired jurist qualification. And I will stop sharing my screen and I will take any questions you might have. Thank you. >> Okay. Councilmember Davis. >> Thank you, Mayor. I move appointment of David Schuch to the alternate place three on the Board of Ethics. >> Okay. Motion by Councilmember Davis. Councilmember Byrd. >> Second. >> Second by Councilmember Byrd. Discussion or questions for staff. Councilmember Amater. >> So, okay, so first a kind of procedural question. And, Rose, I just read your email and the city attorney's email response to my question. So thank you for that. About why the, you know, one nomination was listed before the other. It was -- it's still my understanding and I don't have the actual Robert's Rules book right here before me. I've got it at home. But that nominations are supposed to be kind of taken in the -- in the order in which they are listed. So here we've got the kind of the seven positions, one for each council member. And then it was my understanding that after that are the alternate positions. But outside of that, so, you know, if you wanted to speak to that or the, you know, city attorney, I'd be happy to get an answer on that. I'll say, you know, I certainly have, you know, no problem with this nominee and would love to appoint him and the other nominee coming after this. But these two items are kind of paired together because, as it mentions in the presentation, because there's this existing rule that there have to be three attorneys on the Board of Ethics that, you know, the appointment of one to the current board would preclude the appointment of the other. And so, you know, so for that reason and because this council consensus on this council had previously agreed to a work session on rethinking professional requirements for boards and committees, committee by committee, board by board, including the Board of Ethics. I would like to, I would like to postpone. So are you making a motion? Well, yes, I will. So I would like to postpone, to make a motion to postpone this item and the subsequent item until we can have that work session where we reconsider professional requirements for boards and committees. Okay. There's a motion for a postponement to an event certain by Councilmember Arnter. Is there a second? Councilmember McGuire, are you second? I second, yes, sir. Okay. Is there a motion and a second discussion? Is that, Councilmember Davis? Yes, Mayor, I'm in the queue. If I could, if I could speak on this motion and retain my spot in the queue for the main motion when we get back to it. Sure, don't pull it when it should stay. I could make a lot of comments on the council's nomination preferences and the different procedures that we espouse for nominations and it seems like the consistent point that we keep coming back to is we're okay with whatever the current method of nomination and appointment is as long as our favorite candidate is the one in the lead or seems to have the votes on the floor. I won't make as many comments about that as I could. I'll leave that for another day. I think that substantively if we're going to reconfigure a committee, we need to have that conversation and know what that looks like going forward. In the meantime, we have a board that is not at full strength and a board that if you remember from the ordinance has to form three member panels for certain tasks and has to have a certain number of people in rotation available to do that, especially as we head into yet another election season in the spring, which is always an opportune time for ethics complaints and busy time for this particular board. So I'm not in favor of postponing. I'd rather we staff the board up now and if we have major configuration changes to make, let's take them up on their own merits and not in light of the available nominees or who we'd like to see on the board. Let's address those considerations on their own merits irrespective of the people nominated. >> Councilmember McGuire. >> I would argue that this is very much about the procedure and the existing requirements that we have an attorney or a retired jurist on this board. That's the key issue in question here. Can staff speak to, and I apologize, I might be able to find this in the matrix, but if there's a timeline on when we plan to have that work session regarding professional requirements for members of boards and committees. >> Before we do that, though, I don't know that that's on topic. So, Miss City Attorney? >> I think that's a decision for the chair in terms of whether that relates to the motion to postpone to an event certain. >> It does not, in my opinion, because either you want to make a decision or you don't. Once that's postponed, that information can come forward. That's my decision. Do you have any other questions for staff? Councilmember McGuire? >> No, I've just pulled up the Friday report. I'm looking at the matrix myself. >> Okay. Councilmember Bett? >> Point of order, I challenge the mayor's decision on the timeliness of the event of the work session in terms of its Germanity to the topic at hand. I'd like a vote by council on that. >> So, we're going to -- I just want to frame this. We're going to spend 20 minutes -- you're going to let me talk whether you want to or not. So, we're going to spend 20 minutes on this topic. I just think we need to be more efficient with our time, and here's a great opportunity. Ms. City Attorney, what is the process? I've made a decision. You've heard Councilmember Bett. Next steps. >> So, it's a point of order. You can roll on point of order. >> I have, and I disagree with his assessment. What's next? >> To either move on -- to move on if there's no further motion or appeal. >> Okay. Very good. So, Councilmember -- so, where are we? Those two have spoken. Any other questions for staff? If not, then we have a motion to postpone. My statement -- >> Mayor Pro Tem, any questions for staff? >> Well, I'm going to make my statement, and I'll call on you. So, my statement is this. There are two separate positions, and just to set the record straight for those tracking along, the position at hand is alternate seat 3, which is undisputed, and so this kind of hijacking of the process is -- there are two separate positions, so if you have position 1, position 2, they're not at all the same position. They're not the same appointment. Then I'll take it further to say my concern with the time management of this Council is that we can appoint Mr. Shuck today, and Ms. Ramsey can hold over, and so all of this has no effect. The net effect is we would fill up, we would supply all the members we need for our board. The individuals that want to stay on hold over. The single appointee for alternate 3 is put in place. We have a complete board, but yet this body is going to spend 20 minutes going around in circles and have an incomplete board at the end of it, so that's my concern, is that we have an incomplete board and a net effect of zero because the appointee, Ramsey, will hold over and could hold over in perpetuity, so this is all just kind of gamesmanship, and I just am more mindful of staff's time than that. But here we sit. Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer. Actually, I was going in the same direction, Mayor, and I wanted to confirm with the City Attorney that if Mr. Shuck is approved and if that results in Ms. Ramsey not qualifying to be reappointed under the current rules, would she in fact hold over until, you know, a later action, whether change of the rules or, you know, a different appointment? Yes, she could hold over until there's another person nominated for or appointed, actually. Okay, so I'd like to offer an amendment to the motion to postpone. This is a little tricky. I'll need a little help here. Mayor, you may want to tell me, hold that until the next item. I'd like to amend it so that the postponement only applies to the vote on item E on Ms. Ramsey. Yeah. And the reason is it would have the result of giving us a full compliment and would also result in Ms. Ramsey continuing to serve. Councillor Arnott. Yeah, so first of all, yes, absolutely. The only reason why I motion to postpone was because after reading the presentation, you know, it appeared to me from the presentation for both items that kind of voting on one would preclude the vote on the other. And so rather than trying to, you know, play some kind of gamesmanship, I was just trying to, you know, play by whatever the rules are. But I'm very pleased to hear that, in fact, as I had previously thought, it is indeed the case that a member of a board who is not replaced will remain on that board in perpetuity, you know, until they're replaced, regardless of the lawyer requirement. That answer, you know, the answer to that question had not been answered that clearly to me. And it seemed to me to contrast with the messaging of the presentation. So anyway, I will gladly just withdraw that motion and vote yes to this item. And then I will just move to postpone the next vote. I think that would be cleaner since we're on the one item. Fine with me. Okay. We'll get to the next item. So what's before us is now the motion to postpone has been withdrawn. There's the original underlying motion, Councilmember Davis's motion to approve Dave Shuck. Councilmember Byrd seconded discussion. Councilmember Davis. Thank you, Mayor. Just a quick word on Mr. Shuck, former mayor of Providence Village, Texas. He was part of a group of what became Aldermen that turned it from a mud into a city under the Texas statutes. And in that process, very familiar with government transparency and the necessity for transparency, especially among elected officials. So I'm very happy to nominate him to this order to move his approval to this position. Thank you. Any other discussion? Seeing none, Councilmember Davis, I'll say you. Aye. Councilman Byrd, I'll say you. Aye. Councilmember Beck. Aye. Councilmember McGuire. Aye. Councilmember Armitage. Yes. Mayor Tim Meltzer. Aye. Mayor Hutz with his ayes. Well, that passes 7-0. And by Rosa, help me what I already understand to be true but just want to make sure. I'm going to skip item E and by net effect that member holds over until reappointed or replaced. That's my understanding. Is that right? You might want to. Yeah. So we don't need a motion to postpone. It just stays. Everything stays as it is. We're great. That skips that item. Takes us to the next item, which is F, A21-0001C. Conduct a second. Two readings. Consider adoption. The city of Denton, Texas annexing approximately 247.78 acres of land generally located on the southwest corner of I-35 North and the future expansion of Loop 288 to the city of Denton, Denton County, Texas, providing for a correction to the city map to include the annexed land and provide a savings clause and an effective date. Mayor, we have Ron Mengida here. We'll provide a very brief presentation. Oh, no. Sorry, brother. Mayor, members of council, give me a few minutes to pull up my PowerPoint presentation. All righty. Good evening, mayor, members of council. Ron Mengida with Development Services, principal planner. Today, for your consideration, is the second reading of an annexation petition for the Harris Ranch area development. For your background, the project is generally located southwest of I-35 and the future Loop extension. As you can see on the slide in front of you, it is outlined in yellow. The site is approximately 247.78 acres in size. Just to weigh background, the subject property does have non-annexation agreements. It's part of the PAA2 area. Again, the area is adjacent to the future extension of Loop 288. There are some gas wells on the property, two specifically, and then one single plug gas well. The existing uses on site are agricultural use as well as existing ponds that serve that agricultural use. The applicant that submitted the application for the petition for the annexation has shared with us a conceptual site plan that shows seven logistics centers, the total that is, with a total square feet of 4,098,888 square feet. Up to date, we have had a number of public hearings and meetings with the council. We considered the municipal service agreement. We had our public hearing. We also had our first reading back in August, August 3, to be specific. We also published in the newspaper the annexation ordinance, which is required per state law. Today, we are considering having our second reading and also considering the adoption of the annexation ordinance. If the city council chooses to accept or approve the annexation ordinance, the property will be brought into the city. For the record, I'm going to read the caption of the ordinance as part of the second reading requirements. Today, we're looking at an ordinance of the city of Denton, Texas, annexing approximately 247.78 acres of land, generally located on the southwest corner of I-35 North and the future extension of Loop 288 to the city of Denton, Denton County, Texas, providing for a correction to the city map to include the annexed land and providing for a savings clause and an effective date. With that, that concludes my presentation, and I'll stand for any questions. All right. Questions for staff. Council Member Beck. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Ron, given the two rates that we discussed earlier today, do you think it would be possible to recast the numbers that were in this fiscal report in light of these two rates and any changes that might result, or is that going to be an overweening burden on the staff? I don't have that already available, but was there a specific question? The model was run at 59 cents, and we were exploring 57 and 56 cents, I believe, for the two rates. And I was just curious how much of a substantive difference it made on the fiscal impacts. But I don't want to ask you to do that if it's a huge undertaking. I apologize, I won't be able to do that. Yeah, I don't know how long it will take us to do that. Then I -- We can try, but it's like I'm looking at David and he said it would just be very difficult at this point. I take it back then, that was part of the question. I wanted to make sure that it wasn't an undue burden. I just want to very quickly say that we're completing our fiscal impact study for developments as they come in. That's something we've been working on for the past year, seems like about a year, with the consultant. Once we have that, it will be more dynamic so we can do those types of things quickly. Okay, thank you. Okay, any other questions for Saia? Seeing none, Council Member McGuire? Seeing none. I move approval of the annexation. Okay, Council Member Beck? Second. Thank you. Motion by Council Member McGuire, second by Council Member Beck. Discussion? Seeing none, Council Member McGuire, I'll say you. Aye. Council Member Beck? Aye. Council Member Armitter? Yes. Council Member Byrd? Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer? Aye. Council Member Davis? Aye. Mayor Hutspeth is an aye as well. Passes 7-0. Thanks, Ron. Thanks, staff. Okay, takes us to our public hearings. And so I have a few notes here to just open, but there's a couple. So I need to open it and do you have a presentation? Yes, I have a short presentation. Okay, so let me see here. I'll open -- is there a difference between A and B or are you just doing A? I'm just doing A. Okay, perfect. Okay. So item A is ID211400, whole public hearing, on proposal to adopt a tax rate that will not exceed the maximum allowable rate of 60 cents per 100 valuation. And I'll open the public hearing just to make sure I don't forget. Good evening, Council. Cassie Ogden, Director of Finance, here to give you a brief presentation on the tax rate hearing. So just a brief recap. We've already discussed these. You've seen most of these slides before. But just a reminder, our assessed values for the year did come in about 7.9% higher than the previous year. So final value, about $14.4 billion. And you can see the $461 million of new value. So again, just a different view of our property value growth over the last few years. We've had pretty steady growth, again, at about 7.9% increase over last year. So our tax rate history, I've highlighted the wage inflation rate, which Council gave direction to move forward with earlier in the work session, at $0.57, and that is slightly higher than our no new revenue rate of $0.56. And then our voter approval rate was all the way up to $0.64 for this year. Our previous tax rate was $0.59, and you can see all the way back to 2013 when our total tax rate was $0.68, almost $0.69. So what does this mean for the average residential value? I apologize. We don't have the median value on this slide. But average taxable value, so you can see right there in the blue highlight, the wage inflation rate of $0.57. Average tax bill is about $1,578 for our average taxable value. And then full in tax and utility impact for the year for our residential customers. So you can see in the gray highlights, that's our 22 proposed tax rate along with the average taxable value and then their total tax bill, which from the previous year is about $48 increase. And then for our average utility bills, it's about a $30 decrease. Now, keep in mind that does include the new rate structure for water, so that's on average. It won't be the same for all customers. But then total overall from '21 to '22 is about an $18 increase for the year. And then just a reminder, budget adoption and tax rate adoption is scheduled for next Tuesday. And that's all I have. >> Okay. Questions for staff? Councilmember McGuire? >> Thank you. This is not a question. But I just want to reiterate my support for the wage inflation rate of .573 or 57.3 cents per $100 in valuation. I know that it makes good political theater to claim that this represents a tax increase. But frankly, we're not proposing a tax increase. And I don't mean that in the sense that we're not proposing an increase to the tax rate because, of course, we have discussed a great deal and we have all agreed that maintaining the same tax rate at a time when property taxes -- our property values are skyrocketing does, in effect, represent a tax increase. But tying the revenue that the city takes in from property taxes to wage inflation functionally is keeping taxes the same. I know that we have this no new revenue rate, which the state sets as an absolute dollar amount. But if we're going to propose that we take in the same amount of revenue in absolute dollar amounts, not adjusting for inflation from one year to the next, what we're proposing is that we slowly starve the city of funds and that we reduce our capacity to provide services to our citizens. If we want to continue to function, we have to continue to bring in the same amount of revenue invested for inflation, which the 57.3-cent tax rate does. Thank you. >> Councilmember Armitage? >> So I just wanted to address for the public my opinion on another false narrative of -- to use Councilmember McGuire's term -- political theater that you might be hearing since I heard it expressed at the work session on this topic. And that is the idea that a majority of council members support the wage inflation rate strictly for the purpose of including some additional money to sustainability. And that is oversimplifying the issue. I myself, for one, would completely revise the list of supplementals and have been very clear about that. So the issue of the tax rate is not automatically tied to, you know, which supplemental one is or isn't in favor of. And I just want to make that clear. We are voting on the budget separately than voting on the tax rate. And of course they're related, but just because you support one tax rate over another does not mean that you necessarily support every single item in that supplemental budget list in the priority listed unless you actually state that and vote that way. >> Councilmember Davis? >> Thank you, Mayor. In fairness, Councilmember Armitage, you're exactly right. Voting for the ultimate budget is not saying that you support every single penny spent under the budget, but that you're voting to support the budget as a whole and the goals overall. And certainly we could, if we were all to list the priorities, the budget, the next public hearing, but if we were to list the supplementals in our own priority order, I'm sure we'd all have, there'd be seven different priority listings. However, the $900,000 proposed to go to the sustainability fund is above the line after you increase to the wage inflation rate. You can order the money however you like. You can stack up the piles of cash however you like. Nothing changes the fact that it's not our money, it's the taxpayer money, and the fact that there just so happens to be that much more after we factor in all the supplementals, and that is how much is being proposed to go to the sustainability fund. You could put it above or below whatever blue line you like, that is the exact amount of money proposed under the budget. It is astounding to me that it would be represented that this is not a tax increase. We just had a slide representing that the average tax bill will increase by about $48 a year, and that may not seem like a lot from where we're sitting, but realize that that is a dollar amount that is compounded depending on the value of your home, and if you think the values haven't increased, look at the difference between the no new revenue rate for last year, 59 cents, and the no new revenue rate for this year, 56 cents. Values have skyrocketed, and people are disproportionately, that's an average that we're looking at, that $48. Some homes have increased disproportionately. Some business premises have increased disproportionately. The average is not representative of the whole. The same council that is very eager to point out that wages in Denton have not increased with inflation, that is eager to point out that housing is becoming less affordable for the average citizen, is apparently very eager to pass that burden on to those same people who are trying to make rent and those same folks who are trying to stretch the same dollars just the same way they did this year. They don't have any more extra dollars. Some of us do. Some of us government employees might have something built in. Some of the folks that work for us here in the city have a merit or a cost of living adjustment built in, but not everybody has that. And some members of this council will be the very first ones to tell you that not everybody has a wage inflation. If this is the beginning of a pattern of shifting the burdens of this city to the business community, to the property owners in this community, we will see growth stagnate. We will see opportunities go to other places. And we will not have as much of other people's money to play with next time around. Councilmember McGuire. Thank you. I'd just like to speak to that. $900,000 yet again. I'm not concerned with whether the $900,000 is above or below the line because I object to that amount being on the supplemental list at all. It's not a supplemental. It's also not money that we are collecting from residents of the City of Denton. It's money that we are collecting from Core Scientific and Tanaska to offset their massive, massive energy use. So I'm not considering whether I want that $900,000 to fall above or below the line because that $900,000 is off the table in my estimation. Councilmember Burke. I'd also like to include the fact that when the city manager's office put together this supplemental list, they did it on a scale of the skin of their teeth. I remember the police chief even noting that he really right now needs more officers. So there's things out there that this money can go towards and it's not just going to sit there and just hang out and be friendly in the air. There's going to be some need for these funds. And I'd like to be ahead of the game rather than continuing to cut back or have just working at the least minimum amount that we can use. We've just heard of small area. They can't get a contractor to, you know, assist with that process because it hasn't been budgeted for and it's not even budgeted for in the next plan. But we said we wanted them to go forward with it. How does that work? So let's just keep that in mind as we are looking forward to making sure that we're all comfortable here. $48 does not seem like a lot. We're also taxpayers here. But $48 can be a lot, like he said, and I'm not disagreeing with that. I just don't want the city to be in a crunch. If we need more emergency personnel, if we need to purchase another large vehicle for a fire department, if we need to assist in other areas in the city, I think that we need to -- we can be mindful of having that access to be able to tap into if we need it. >> Councilman Bethe. >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So first I'll reiterate what Councilman McGuire says and just say that about the point that we are -- it's more of an impact fee going to sustainability than anything else. And the other thing is, could you pull up the slide where you talk about the median or mean housing prices and the effects of the different rates? And while you do that, I'll concur with Councilor Byrd about the needs that we were reiterating multiple times throughout the summer. But I want to point out 2021, 1530, 2022, with the revenue rate, oh, 1558, that's a $20 increase. So in terms of theater, it looks like we're increasing taxes regardless of the rate we choose. So, you know, let's benchmark our changes to actual changes in the economy. And that would be the wage inflation rate. So the fact that we're at that, the tide that floats all boats needs to float all boats. And so if the advantage is that we are addressing the budget and the needs and we're managing to do it at the wage inflation rate, which is a rate that is essentially wage neutral, then what we're really saying is this is the cost year to year and not a cut. And at the same token, I also agree that this is the $900,000 that keeps being bandied about is essentially an impact fee for the cost of doing high-energy business. Thank you. >> Okay. Mayor Fortuna-Milzer. >> Thank you. First of all, I want to point out we're not actually voting on the tax rate tonight. It's a public hearing. But since we're talking about it, I supported the new tax rate. But, you know, I appreciate the fact that the other position is based on the concept of the people are able to pay wage inflation, that it's not just saying, well, you know, the value of your home is up, you must be able to pay more. That concept nobody is endorsing. Second point I'd like to make is that members who are sitting on this council now voted as I did in support of an economic development strategy and had four pillars that are based on the things that make Denton distinct and one of them sustainability. And you can't have one of the four pillars that make you distinct, that drive your economic development strategy. You can't assume you can just never fund it. So, yeah, we're going to be investing in sustainability for multiple reasons because it's going to make life in Denton continue to be sustainable. It will support our quality of life, but it's also a cornerstone of our distinctiveness and our economic development. Okay. I have a question and this may be a David question, but I need to clear this up for my own understanding. The budget year we're coming into, what is the general fund reserve amount? I have it on a slide. I can find it for you. The current budget, the beginning fund balance was $37.6 million. So that answers the question of where are we going to get money, right? If we need something that's an emergency, if we need to do something straight away, if we need to do something unplanned, $37 million should cover it. Should. Okay. Just making sure. And so this is -- and so those watching, I'll tell you, don't -- let me ask this because I do not know the answer to this question. If everything stays as planned and we go to whatever the wage rate is and the $900,000 that's been bantered about is earmarked for sustainability, is staff going to put that into the sustainability fund or are you going to leave it in the general fund? The plan was to move it to the sustainability fund. That's right. So you will take it out of the general fund and it will absolutely sit in the sustainability fund and what project will it fund? That's yet to be determined. That's right. So we'll take $900,000 of taxpayer money and put it in the sustainability fund with no project. So that to me is pretty straight line. And then for those that want to ask me, I would say don't let the numbers fool you. Since I've been here in 2017, you can throw the numbers away. What I want, I want the lowest tax rate humanly possible for the citizens of Denton understanding we are only, from memory, most of our neighbors, the gross majority of our neighbors are in the 40 cent range. We're in the 50 cent range and there's only two or three other cities with us. And so when you're talking about competition, you're talking about driving people, bringing people in and fiscal responsibility, I think we're on the high side. So that to me is irrespective of the numbers. We have an opportunity to lower the tax rate another one penny and I support that. Regardless of the numbers associated, the fact of the matter is don't let that misnomer that $900,000 is going to sit in the general fund. We're going to take it from the taxpayers and put it in the sustainability fund with no project. I'd rather take the $300,000, activate that before the next budget, then talk about -- because we're projecting to have a larger number from this development going forward, right? So give the taxpayers their money now because going forward, this number -- what does the number project to be in year two? $4.5 million. So it doubles. So it fixes itself. So again, don't -- this is whole number math. It's not complicated. Don't let the acronyms or any of those things confuse you. We have an opportunity, a unique opportunity to lower and remove the pressure off of our residents by activating -- taking advantage of this commercial property project and economic development project. And we have an opportunity to double down as we establish projects and come up with a plan in the coming years. And that's what I campaigned on. And so -- and I've been campaigning on that since 2017, and this is not my first budget cycle. So I understand it may be confusing if it's your first budget cycle and you don't understand how this works. But for me, every year that I've been here, we have gone to the absolute lowest rate possible. And even in that, we've gone to a cost of recovery model that put us in a position to have $100 million in the bank when an unforeseen winter storm came. It served us well to be fiscally conservative, fiscally responsible, and at the same time just make wise decisions along the way. And it's put us in a great situation. And it has an opportunity to do the same this year given that if this council decides to do so. So that to me is -- in summary, it's -- that money's not going to sit there. It's going to move. And two, we should give that money to the taxpayers and allocate the $300,000, you know, and then come back and have other projects in the coming years. And both are possible. But we just got to be vision cast -- have a vision versus kind of looking down one step in front of us. So I hope that we can -- over the course of this week, we hear from the taxpayers that that's at the top of our org chart in the City of Denton. And I -- so I look forward to hearing from them and getting guidance. Maybe I'm wrong. We'll see. But thank you very much. Great presentation. And do you -- you don't need any direction from us. Great. David? Okay. Great. Thank you. Okay. Now, the next item is -- so we don't have any speakers on that. So I'll close the public hearing, call the next item, which is item B, and that's ID 211399, hold public hearing, and receive citizen input on FY21-22 proposed budget. All right. Proposed budget hearing. Just by way of reminder, you've seen most of these slides already this year. General fund revenue, these are all the different types of revenue that we receive as the general fund, as well as our expenditures. Most of our -- the vast majority of our expenditures do go to personnel services to pay for our staff in the general fund. The tax rate, again, was given direction at the work session to move forward with the wage inflation rate. So you can see general fund revenue, expenses, funding does not include the supplementals or the amount program for sustainability fund. And then the five-year forecast. You haven't seen this yet, but wanted to show you the five-year forecast. A couple of things I will point out. I've added the core scientific revenue to the revenue line. So 1.5 program for the upcoming FY22 year, and it increases in the future years. And just for an estimate, I programmed in $2 million a year for an expense to move over to the sustainability fund. Obviously, that is subject to a future council decision and direction. But we do have our $2.3 million worth of supplemental requests as ongoing expenses. As was mentioned earlier, most of those expenses are staff FTEs. And then you can see the change in fund balance ending the year. We're proposing to end the year about $46,000 positive and staying within our fund balance target of 24%. Just as a reminder for the FY22 capital improvement program, we are proposing to have $77.9 million of new proposed funding for general government and internal services, and then $58.9 million for electric, $47.8 for water, $50.7 for wastewater, and $6.7 million for solid waste. And just as a quick recap, the electric five-year reform reforma, I did want to point out the core scientific revenue has been added since that project was approved, as well as just a reminder on that non-rate revenue line. That is the T-cost rate of return projected to decrease in FY2023. We've added the winter storm debt service, that $140 million that was refunded over 30 years. We have a partial payment in FY22 of around $2.5 million, and then jumps up to $7.2 million in the future years. And then again, just a reminder, we are proposing to increase that fund balance for the electric fund, and you can see where we land as far as the fund balance, and we'll be bringing the fund balance policy for your consideration next week. And with water, our water fund, you can see that we're projecting to slightly increase revenues in FY22 compared to our estimate for FY21. We're staying within our reserve fund balance targets of about $20.5 million, so between that $16.4 and $24.7 million. We have programmed in a capital project reserve in '25, '26, and '27 to account for our water plant expansion in the future years. And then moving on to wastewater, this does include our drainage fund as well. Slight increases in our revenues from FY21 to 22. Again, we are including those supplemental packages that you reviewed previously. We are within our fund balance targets. And then just a reminder, we do have future rate increases programmed in, mainly for the debt service for capital asset replacement. And lastly, solid waste budget, you can see the HOSAL agreement scheduled to fall off in FY2023, so we reduced that revenue in '23, but for the current year, did program in our supplemental requests and then falling slightly above the operating reserve targets and staying within those targets in the future years. And then next week again is budget tax rate and capital improvement plan adoption. And with that, I'll take any questions. Okay. I'll open the public hearing. We do have a couple of speakers. So does anyone have questions for staff before the speakers? Then we'll take the speakers. So questions for staff first? Seeing none. I don't have a list of speakers. Are they calling? Okay. Great. And so if staff can pull up the first caller. Thank you, Mayor. She should be there for you, Mayor. Thank you. Caller, are you there? I am. Hello. You're on with the Denton City Council. If you could please give us your name and address and then you'll have four minutes to speak. Thank you. My name is Sharon Kramer and my address is 3574 Pine Trail, Denton. And that's ZIPCO 7608. Okay. Go ahead. And I will -- thank you. So many of you know me and some of you know me better, and you probably know that I budget my resources, things like time, any talents I have, service, and money to support my values just as our community invests and just as I'm doing now. So I'm speaking to the issue of our community needing better and more available mental health crisis care, specifically in the form of mental health crisis units. It's an excellent start to a better system. A city should invest in its citizens. I grew up in Denton in a fairly quiet, fairly stable neighborhood. But still, I saw what I know now as an adult, because I know better and because I've been trained, were mental health crises. In my 40 years in public classrooms, I helped souls who were living through, if not their own, mental health care crisis, the crisis brought on by family members or even members. Most of those needs from students that I taught and from my childhood neighborhood that I saw could have been handled by a mental health care crisis unit responding. Those situations are what me as a community member realize that there are situations that an armed officer enters, no matter how kind-hearted and well-mannered. As I mentioned, that's still not as good a response as a trained mental health care professional who knows how to respond to a crisis. De-escalation alone, when you're wearing a gun, just frightens too many citizens, the vast majority. The best response is a trained mental health care professional. We do have the city invest its money wisely and appropriately, we all do. Many, many cities are already using this model and using it very successfully. In closing, I want you to remember that budgets are tools. Budgets are also ways, all of us, of governmental entities and individuals, express our values. They express our faith in humanity. They express what we're able to do best for other people. And please use the budget to express and to address the needs you know Denton has. Use your wisdom to know that many emergency calls are actually mental health care crises, and they need mental health care crises care. Thank you for your time. Okay. Thank you very much. I appreciate your comments. Okay. Thank you. Act wisely. Okay. And the next caller, please. Thank you, Mayor. If you'll allow me just a few seconds to get her pulled in. Sure. And if there's anyone here that wants to speak, you'll just need, you can come up and speak. You'll just need to fill out a card before or after, but making that it is a public hearing. Good evening. Good evening. Hello. You're speaking with the Denton City Council. If you could please provide your name and address. We will have four minutes. Okay. My name is Barbara Troupe and my address is 1109 East Hickory Street here in Denton, Texas. Okay. Go right ahead. Okay. I wanted to speak on the budget tonight regarding the funds for the police department. I do not feel that that is necessary. I feel that the budget funds should be allocated for mental health, tech crisis, advocates, and resources. As I grew up in Southeast Denton, really right around the corner from you, Mayor, Gerard Huspeth and your father and your mother, and in Southeast Denton, we are over policed. Every day I sit on the porch and I watch police officers speed up and down this street. Sometimes they come here with their lights on. Sometimes they're just doing it. Just a couple of weeks ago, they came through our neighborhood with their lights on, terrorizing the neighborhood. This is unacceptable. When you do things like this, you make the neighborhood lose faith in the police department. A lot of the things that go on over here do not need a police officer. What we need are mental health therapists and a crisis unit. For me, being one that has been dealing with mental health problems, you scare me. I'm scared to call you. The reason why I'm scared to call you is because I don't feel you have good intentions on helping me or anyone around here. To me, your intentions are to arrest somebody and put it in the newspaper as if you've done something really big. When we really didn't need or me personally didn't really need a police officer. What I needed was someone to talk to because of the things that I'm going through. That's what a lot of the people around here in Southeast didn't are going through. They just have problems to where they just might need to talk to someone. To have a police to show up at their house just because they say, hey, I'm not feeling good. I feel I want to kill myself. I feel I'm going to injure myself. To have a police pull up and we see the guns. Instead of us talking to someone that is trained to help with situations like this, we get to hear the police say, well, let us take you to a hospital, let us take you to the police station and get you help. The police station do not get the help that we need. What they do is lock us up. And we have to bond out. So I'm asking, instead of you using that money to add more police or do whatever it is that you're trying to do with the police department, I'm asking if you would please just hire more, use that money to hire mental health care advocates. And I'm done. Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much. Great points. I appreciate the feedback. And I'll follow up with the city manager on some things you noted and see if we can do maybe focus on anonymous calls and more. We are focused on the mental health component, so trying to get that in place. But you make a good point on who to call and how we respond to that. So thank you very much. Okay. You have a good evening. Yes, ma'am. Okay. So that's our last caller. And one more time, anyone in the room? Yes, sir. So you can come to the -- you have to go to the mic behind you there. You can go around by the velvet rope. And then give us your name and address, and then afterwards you can fill out a card. Okay. Just a second. Let me make sure we get the mic on for you. Give me your name one more time. Let me see if it's on. Yes, it's Matt Ransom. There we go. And I respectfully decline to give my address out for my own personal privacy. Okay. And I just want to make a comment, especially the last -- see, I just recently moved here. And she -- and I want to reply to what she said about the police. I want police presence. I like having police. I spent a little time in New Mexico, and then I came and moved here. And the police interaction, because, you know, it's a blue state, is completely different than over here. And I remember before I got my apartment, I was staying in a hotel, Motel 6. And the police -- I was just in my car, you know, and the police just rolled up and they just started asking questions, asking for my ID. And I have no problem with that. I was actually kind of happy, because I want a police presence. I feel safer that way. And you talk about sending social workers to these people, that they have their own drugs and meth and all the -- come on, that's not going to work. You're going to need somebody with the gun. You're going to need -- I want a police presence. All this stuff, this other stuff they're talking about, I don't want no part of it. That's exactly why I moved to Texas, because it's a red state. I want a red state. I like the way you guys are running things around here. I don't want to change anything. And I like what's going on around here, especially with the abortion law. I'm so happy they passed that, because it's an actual genocide going on out here. The voter ID, I don't want to play any games like that. I want a good running state. I want a conservative state, a red state. I want to leave it that way. I came from a blue state. I don't want to live in a blue state. I want to live in a red state. And all you people in blue and all you liberals out here that talk about you don't like -- no, you can leave Texas. There are a lot of blue states out there. I left the blue state because I don't want to live there. I want to live here. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. And if staff will get you the card to fill out, if you'd be so kind, thank you very much. Okay? Any other speakers? I think I recognize everyone else's staff, so we're good. Denrick Cronicle, you want to come down? Just kidding. Just kidding. Thank you very much. Okay. Then I'll close the public hearing. And no action. Is that right? Perfect. Thank you. That takes us to item C, our last item, last public hearing, which is C, DCA 210003A, hold a public hearing, consider adoption to ordinance of the City of Denton, Texas, amending the Denton Development Code, table 3.5C. And I'll open the public hearing. Thank you, Mayor and members of council. Give me a second to pull up the presentation. Ron Magida with Development Services, principal planner. For your consideration today, this evening, is a development code amendment related to maximum height restrictions in the HI, Heavy Industrial Zoning District. Just way of background, back in August of 2010, there was a code amendment that amended a height restriction in the ICG from 65 to 140 feet to accommodate the height that was being proposed for a manufacturing company back then. So that was done. However, in October of this year, I'm sorry, of 2019, the code amendment that, or I'm sorry, the development code update, that is, where the ICG transitioned to heavy industrial, that was done. But what also was done was that the height restriction maximum was also changed from 140 back to 75, which already was an error, which created nonconformities in the HI zoning districts, specifically three buildings that we know of, Peterbilt, Fastenal, and the Target Distribution Center. So this summer, there was a manufacturing company that came in wanting to do some expansion of their building, which meant they also wanted to increase their building height. Well, of course, because it went back to 75, they were not able to because the maximum height was 75 and they were already above that amount of 75. They were actually at 85. So they were not able to, or wasn't able to move forward with their project until we were able to do this code amendment. So what staff is requesting is a code amendment to address that nonconformity related to the height of the HI zoning district, specifically table 3.5-C and table 3.5.5. What we're proposing is to put the maximum building height from 75 to 140 feet, which what it was back in 2010. To kind of give you an idea of where the HI, Heavy Industrial Zoning District, is located in the city, you see that the majority of them are located in the area next to our airport, the area here shown in purple. We also have some along Fort Worth Drive and specifically the Acme Brick Company. Also, we also have some very small in the area next to the landfill, the city landfill along Mayhill Drive. I'm going to skip through these slides. I just wanted to make mention that there are buffer requirements and setback requirements for any development that develops in the HI zoning district if they're adjacent to residential use or a residential zoning district. So those are built in already in the development code. So there would not be any potential impact if we do decide to move forward with the code amendment to increase that building height. Staff recommends approval of this code amendment as it follows the review criteria manual that you see here listed. I won't read all of them, but the code amendment is consistent with comprehensive plan. It does not conflict with any other provisions. It is a community need and it is responding to a substantial change that happened in 2019. And again, it meets the purpose and intent of the DDC. With that, I'll stand for any question and that concludes my presentation. Thank you. Questions for staff? Councilmember McGuire? Yeah, do you recall in those 2019 conversations around the code update what the reasoning was for reducing it to 75 feet? I think that Councilmember McGuire, I think the reason was that there were a number of zoning districts that were consolidated, and I think this was a mistake in that it dropped to 75. There was a zoning district ICG and ICE, and so I think they were trying to find a medium between, but in turn, what it did, it created those nonconformities that we discussed earlier. Okay. Yeah, thank you. Councilmember Bet? Hey, Ron. For those adjacent buffering segments, especially residential with the 200-foot setbacks, so I just want to be clear, we're already applying that 200-foot buffer setback, that's correct? That is in the DDC as of today, yes. Okay, so that isn't -- we're not adding that in. I just want to make sure that the red box is not an add-on. It is the existing code. That is correct. Okay, thank you. Any other questions for staff? Okay, is the public hearing any public comments? So I'll close the public hearing. Councilmember McGuire? I move approval of the code amendment. Okay. Is there a second? Councilmember Beck? I'll second. Okay, motion by Councilmember McGuire, second by Councilmember Beck. Discussion? Seeing none, thank you, staff, for catching this and addressing that and for consistency and for just kind of correcting that. Okay, so Councilmember McGuire, I'll say you. I. Councilmember Beck? I. Councilmember Armitage? Yes. Councilmember Melton-Melter? I. Councilmember Byrd? I. Councilmember Davis? I. Mayor Hutzpah is an I as well, passes 7-0. That concludes our agenda, which brings us to concluding items. Any concluding items? Councilmember Byrd, then Councilmember Beck, and then McGuire. Tomorrow at 6 p.m., if you have time, please listen live for City Councilwoman Byrd. What's the word? We're going to start talking about some City Council stuff, get you a little bit more familiar with what's happening and kind of behind the scenes of what we do and how we do it. So I'm looking forward to the educational part of public service, and I'll look forward to having you guys join me, visit me, listen to me. We'll do a live slash podcast, and I'll be situated here at the City Hall, and we'll talk for maybe 15, 20 minutes. We don't want to take up too much of your time, but I think it's important that we start communicating to the public as to how things actually happen. So thanks. Okay. Thank you. And a little add-out. Councilmember Beck. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just want to remind everyone that's watching or listening or whatever that Development Services, Parks, what am I forgetting? There's three departments. Development Services, Parks, and anyway, are having an open house at Development Services Building, talking about the comprehensive plan, the Denton 2040 plan. Thank you. And these are all coming up in this open house. This is an opportunity for you to come voice your opinion directly to staff. I know you can always do it all the time with email and other forms of digital communication, but if you have questions, concerns, you've heard today various discussions about small area plans, both sponsored by staff, sponsored by councils and commissions, and also sponsored by the community. And so if you're someone that's interested in that, I really encourage you to come out to their open house Thursday at 6. Okay, Councilmember McGuire. Thank you. I just want to remind the community that this weekend is the Denton Blues Festival. It's a free event being put on by the Denton Black Chamber of Commerce. It's going to be in Quaker Town Park on Saturday and Sunday. Come on out. Here's some free music. Make sure you support the Black Chamber by purchasing some food and beverages. Bring a mask in case you need to go inside the Civic Center, but this is a great opportunity for the community to gather and hear some music in a safe outdoor environment. Okay. Any other comments? Mayor Pro Tem. Yeah. I just want to take a moment to acknowledge the work of the mental health division of the Denton Police Department. It's fairly new. A lot of people don't know it exists, and it's really quite a kind of visionary and ahead of the curve thing that Denton does and other communities are looking to for a model. They have already done follow-ups with the community face-to-face, phone call and email. Over 680 individuals have had contact with that group, and they're doing great things. I just don't know if everybody's aware of this unique rapid response deployment of mental health professionals that Denton does. Okay. Thank you. Anyone else? I'll just kind of note a couple of things. First, I want to thank Councilmember Davis for facing the firing squad with me. We had a community meeting that it was about 45 minutes presentation and about an hour rapid fire hardcore discussion, and we both made it. So it was good. Great conversations. Tomorrow is the Children's Advocacy Center, ribbon-cutting in Lewisville, so looking forward to going to that. And then on Saturday, Solutions of North Texas is having a fundraiser, so please go support them. You can find them on Facebook. And I just want to say that I had a conversation with Leanne from the new CEO for Giving Hope, and they're working with Grace Like Rain, two great organizations as you're looking towards North Texas Giving Day. And if you didn't know there's a new CEO in town, please reach out and get to know them. And then lastly, so Councilmember Beck and I are presenting or speaking to or kicking off the Leadership Denton next Thursday. So that'll be fantastic. Good conversations. And then I'll echo Mayor Pro Tem on the police doing great things, very innovative, but we can always get better. So working on those to make sure we have great suggestions that we can look at implementing enhancements. And also the Blues Fest will be fantastic, so please come on out, enjoy the weather and just fellowship and again, distanced mask if you need to, that sort of thing. So thank you very much. It's 8.14 on and it's still September 14th. We'll conclude today's meeting this evening. Thank you.