Sep 21, 2021 City Council on 2021-09-21 3:00 PM

And good afternoon. Welcome to this meeting of Denton City Council. It is 3 0 3 p.m. Sorry for the brief delay but we do have a quorum so we now can get started. I have not heard that we have any callers but want to confirm staff. Do we have any callers? No sir there are no callers for the consent agenda. Thank you. That takes us to questions on the consent agenda. Questions for staff on the consent agenda. Seeing none, Council Member Bet first. Thank you Mr. Mayor. I had questions, let me get to my notes here, on R and and AE. Okay. Go ahead with your question on R. We'll see if we who we need to pull in. Do you? Yeah you can go ahead with your question on R. Thank you sir. Yes. On R my question is sort of the the rental of equipment versus purchasing of equipment and it seems the way I'm reading the item that that we are choosing choosing to rent that and I was but it this seems like it's a it's a common function for us is can someone discuss what's what's the economic difference between purchasing our own equipment and storing it versus intermittent renting? I mean other than I understand it's a large initial cost compared to rental but then less cost annualized. Yeah good good afternoon um Council Member Beck can you hear me this is pre-tem. Yes sir. Yes sir. Hi good afternoon Assistant Director for Water and Wastewater. One of the basic or the main reason behind this particular contract is maintaining the equipment that we currently have. We own a lot of trench boxes, trench safety equipment but one of the things that this contract is going to help us do is if we run into certain scenarios where the equipment fails needs repairs and needs maintenance that's the primary function for this contract. If you look at the amount it's not too large it's about seventy thousand dollars a year and that's why we're using this. Also in some cases if the trenches are deep or if we need different kind of equipment that we don't normally need we rent that time to time but that's very rare but whatever basic equipment we need we have it on hand and we buy it. So then maybe it was my misunderstanding and so this is for maintenance of the equipment or for rental of the safety equipment? It it covers both. So it covers the rental piece for specialty equipment and it also services some of our trench safety equipment. So if a box fails or some of the shoring starts falling apart we can actually take it and get it repaired from this site. All right all right and it's economically more it's economically more reasonable to rent this than to to purchase and maintain ourselves? We do have what we require as far as purchasing. The regular equipment that we use from time to time we have all of it. What this helps us to do is any specialty equipment that we may need or any equipment that breaks that requires repairs. So those are the those are the chunk of large chunk of this contract. Okay thank you. And then your question on AE? Yes my question on AE this is about real estate on the Chamber of Commerce building and I was just curious given the the real estate horizon and the market why did the why did our realtors feel a 17 to 20 percent cut was the right one? I'm not I'm not second guessing and only in the sense that that seems fairly substantial and and you know maybe just some reassurance from staff or our contractors that that a 20 percent cut in price is the right way to go. This is Deanna Cody Deputy Director Real Estate. Can you hear me Councilman Betz? Yes thank you. Awesome we have Brad Andrews the listing broker with Access Realty and he's on the line to answer your questions regarding the requested or recommended price differentiation. Brad you may need to hit star six to unmute yourself. I think I'm on now can you hear me? I can thank you. Okay yeah yeah this is Brad Andrews Access Realty Group we've had the property listed for sale for for the last six months and in your report there we've got a a summary of the activity we've had over the over the time period so our recommendation on pricing is is based on on the activity and you know interest or relatively lack thereof to be honest in the property over the last six months. The the real estate market in general is is strong right now. Office is is one of the weaker segments of of the real commercial real estate market especially during the pandemic. There's been a a pullback in the demand for for office space which this property certainly falls into that category. So it's our pricing is is based on the activity some of the offers and and we could you know discuss more of that in closed session at the appropriate time but pricing a commercial property like this especially in the floodplain is not a perfect science. What we and we have these discussions with with clients all the time it is you know whereas in a in a house that might have you know 10 other a subdivision that might have 10 other homes that are almost identical to the one that we're you know someone would propose to sell and you could say that hey these these three others have sold at this and whatever it's more you know a little more of a scientific approach to pricing it in a commercial world and a very unique property and especially one that sits in the flood plain. We do our best best estimate of what we think the market will bring. We we always if we're going to price it we're going to price it a little higher than where we think it'll bring and kind of let the market drive you know where the real valuation is. But at this time to generate more interest in the property it is our recommendation to so let the market see a reduction in the price. Okay I guess I I will say that I'm just a little concerned that that we don't have the sort of resale pressures the way residents would. We're not moving. None of the participants are moving are forced to sell so it feels like this is more of a sellers we should be seller biased on this one but I'm not it's not a hell I'm going to die on. Thank you. Okay Councilman Burke. Okay. I thought this is a package for a whole lot of our districts. For Q. Mayor council members Laura Barons the grant administrator. This is covering a completed park with an estimated project cost that's attached in the backup but it's for the what we are calling right now villages of Carmel property. Okay it's like a pocket pocket park. I think it's going to be a little bit more developed than that with some pavilion amenities I believe a trail and and some other just regular park amenities. Okay all right restrooms included. I have to go back and look to see if restaurants are included in the in the final project. It's still currently in the design phase. Okay thank you. Also the letter B is in Victor. Can you all hear me? Okay letter V is that better? I didn't have any. B is in Boy. V is in Victor. Okay got it yes. The question is the transform and replace transformer bushing and insulators etc. Explain what that is and is this for the whole city or is this going to be done at the substations only? I'm not sure what to think about how that's going to happen. Yes council member Byrd this is Chris Luther executive manager of operations at DME. Can you hear me? Yes sir. Yes this contract only refers to our power transformers our 55 transformers that are located in substations. The bushings are kind of the ceramic insulators where the transformers connect to the high side and the low side. So this is only for the maintenance of those large power transformers on our system. You said at the to clarify you said at the substations only. Yes ma'am every one of these transformers is located within a substation. Okay and then the last one for me is AD. A is in Adam. D is in David. AD. Okay this question is this question is this situation satisfying our responsibility for MHMR without law enforcement backup? I know that there's a it's you know concern and controversy or whatever we want to call it in regards to law enforcement showing up. I see that it says non-offending family members here but sometimes law enforcement may have to be present. Is this is this kind of satisfying that that situation? Chief this is can you answer this or Michael? It's an ordinance. Yeah chief's gonna answer I think okay the other person may not be on. Sure yeah I think the chief should answer if this is my chronic I I can't answer that question. Okay go right ahead. Yes Michael council member Byrd would like to know if this covers not only the actual children's advocacy center but if it covers the is it under does it fall into the law enforcement piece? I know that you know we're meshing mental MHMR mental health responsibilities and trying to hash out the responsibilities of how law enforcement is going to be utilized. I'm noticing that the city is have this agreement with the CASA and just a curiosity is how does that work with law enforcement will law enforcement be called out? You know if there's a an event that may occur in a home pulling a child out of a home how does all of that work for us? Good afternoon mayor council Frank Dixon chief of police. So this will not take law enforcement out of it. What this is is just a it's an annual renewal of an agreement we have with the children's advocacy center Dan county friends of the family so we have these agreements in place. What it does is it helps us get them directed to services for both the survivors of the crimes that would have been committed as well as the non-offending family members so siblings parents anybody else that resides within the residence. I think that's what I was looking for thank you. Yes ma'am. Thank you thank you chief. Okay any other questions councilor Armitter? Yes I wanted to pull a e from the consent agenda for individual consideration because this is a regarding the sale of private sale of public property since it's a matter of public interest something we don't do every day. I think it merits its own presentation and discussion. What what do you want the presentation to capture? There is a presentation in our backup. Yeah just just to you know go just to go over those points briefly from the presentation and have a discussion along the lines of you know the concerns that council member Beck brought up you know other possibilities. All right any other questions for staff? Seeing none okay great so just uh by my route it's just a e the presentation and the backup is great and and we'll move pretty quick to a vote just to let everyone know. Okay then that takes us our first work session item is going to be moved that's item a we'll push that until mayor watts can join us is that that's right okay great so i'll take us to item b which is let me get there well it's listed as item f is that right it is b okay just making sure okay great so it's id 211 836 receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding fy 21 22 city council priorities and other items that as discussed during the annual city council retreat good afternoon mayor city council sara keekler chief of staff i have a very brief presentation for you this afternoon to follow up from your annual council retreat that was held last month so by way of background city council did hold an annual retreat uh in august that is available and was recorded for the public on our city's website council discussed a number of topics and provided direction on the following items as listed on the screen um you gave direction in regards to your council priorities for the next year um you also discussed council committees and provided direction to staff to retire a few of those committees um you also discussed your council request process and the one minute pitch process and desired some amendments to be made and then a number of other items were discussed and i'll go over those as well we do have some items that will be brought forth to city council during next week's council meeting for formal action in regards to the priorities the committees and then also making the amendments to the one-minute pitch process and so i'll just take a few minutes to review those right now and see if there's any council questions or feedback and just a few slides to go through so the action items that you'll see for next week's council meeting there will be three the first will be a resolution to adopt the city council priorities and i'll show you those as we've amended and revised based upon the feedback that we got from council during the retreat on the next couple of slides the second item that will be on next week's agenda is an ordinance to retire four council committees the airport committee the audit finance committee the community engagement committee and the council appointee performance review committee and just for the public these are council committees so there are sub working groups of city council members made up of three city council members none of these committees being retired have residents serving on them and then lastly there will be an action item to amend the one-minute pitch process for council requests that process was adopted by ordinance so it does require an ordinance to make those amendments and the the amendments that were discussed were to change the time to allow the the person presenting to have two minutes instead of one minute to present their pitch request but all responses will remain one minute for the remaining council members council also directed staff to clarify the language so that council members could also request a resolution to be placed on a future city council agenda in addition to work session items and informal staff reports and so i'll move into the next two slides which are the proposed city council priorities for the next fiscal year we showed you this in the retreat where we've organized them into six key focus areas which are in the blue boxes here at the top and we've made some revisions based upon the feedback from council so those six are to pursue organizational excellence enhance infrastructure and mobility foster economic opportunity and affordability and then moving into the next slide to strengthen community services and quality of life support healthy and safe communities and promote sustainability and the environment i'll move back a slide so underneath each one of these key focus areas are major projects and goals for the next year some of these are already in progress based upon prior city council policy direction or adoption of the previous budgets and then as well as there's a couple of new projects and goals that were added to the list and i tried to show those changes from the last version that you saw in red so that's the feedback we received at the council retreat and then as well as shown in light blue are those items and that we felt we heard from council that were the most council priority the highest priority where staff should focus the most resources to should have the highest priority for scheduling that should be part of our major communications to the public in terms of how we are accomplishing those priorities and so i've listed those here on a separate screen so you can see them a little bit more condensed and that includes the american rescue plan funding and programs capital project planning and communication finalizing the mobility plan updating the comp plan and making sure that it aligns with numerous other master plans developing an affordable housing strategy strengthening homeless initiatives and our housing crisis response system overall and then continuing our response to COVID-19 and lastly developing a comprehensive solid waste management strategy and the last part of the presentation today is a few other items that we received direction on that we wanted to take an opportunity to review so the first item is regards to the city council meeting length a number of items were discussed in these first three bullet points here are actions that staff will take so we will include in future agendas an approximate time per work session and that will begin on the September 28th agenda and then as well as staff will try to limit the number of slides we have in each presentation to make them more concise and then anything that was just an informational update we'll put in the friday report be an informal staff report unless it's specifically requested from council for an information update and then the last two bullet points as shown here in regards to the meeting length it was a city council discussion for how you as a group and a governing body wanted to handle your discussions and deliberations so there was some discussion around being concise and trying to follow robert's rules of order to keep the group moving towards its goals as well as some discussion around trying to limit your comments to no more than two rounds where possible and then trying to follow some of the estimated times that staff will put forward for work sessions and trying to be cognizant of that as well during city council discussions and deliberations again the times that we will include will be estimates which is something to help provide a guideline to city council the next item is in regards to background information for agenda items and these are some actions that staff will be taking so we will work where possible include some rubrics and performance measures on the agenda information sheets that come with each agenda items that you can see the full background as well as see if it fits the adopted plan and try to make that a little bit more visual to communicate to city council as well as the public about what sort of checks it has gone through and if it's meeting the adopted plans that were passed if applicable and then lastly another item two other items that were discussed were some questions around the notification process for proposed developments and so staff will update council on the current requirements of what notifications we send out to neighborhoods or the community on proposed developments as well as providing some information if that can be modified so that it could include additional neighborhoods but also trying to keep in mind the consistency and the parameters of what we need to do from a legal perspective on proposed developments so that information will be coming back this fall or winter and then the last item is in regards to those council requests that are approved through the pitch process how would they be scheduled for a work session and what priority so council discussed having the agenda committee helped to make those decisions with staff about where they should be scheduled in the work session matrix so we do have that tentative work session matrix that council sees each week in the friday report and we do go through that work session matrix with the agenda committee and we can work through scheduling those one minute approved requests based upon a number of different factors but including the priority that was offered by council members as they were giving their one minute response the work session availability that we have we do have a full calendar of work sessions often and then also just the readiness of the item some requests may take five to ten hours easy to accomplish some may take more hours may have many departments involved so it may take a little longer to get scheduled so just kind of taking all those factors into consideration when we're talking with the agenda committee which is made up of the mayor mayor pro tem and the city manager and so that is the presentation happy to take any questions or feedback you may have before we bring back those items for approval next week great so just questions fine tuning clarifying no action right correct great okay and let me switch to toggle my screen here just one second council member maguire um thank you mayor uh just to clarify so i i definitely recall us talking a lot about um prioritization and how council members express how you know how urgent and also how important uh we feel um a council initiated request is and i appreciate that that there's going to be um some type of mechanism for us to to express that in our one minute responses um i would like to suggest that that be something that's kind of standardized either you know on a scale of one to ten how urgent is it on a scale of one to ten how important is it um just so that the staff has something that they can like write down and refer to that's not as slippery as we can sometimes be okay that's a good feedback maybe we can create some guidelines just three different categories of and kind of what each of those categories would mean so the council members can help note that in their response councillor bett thank you mr weir um so i had similar questions so i'll lead off with that one uh i thought in our discussion that there and you know maybe i was wrong um maybe i counted wrong but i thought we sort of had we were leaning towards um prioritization on the number of items scale so i'm just going to make something up like let's say there were 37 items we would say where in 37 we thought they should go rather than a a one to ten scale um maybe i'm misremembering or you know that's my own fever dreams but i definitely remember we discussed something like that maybe it wasn't for people um so maybe if if um you could provide roll back the tape and provide some clarity on that i appreciate it we did check and go back and check we did hear that from a couple of council members in terms of actually having a strict ranking but we did not hear that from a majority also practically from a staff perspective and that work session matrix changes daily sometimes just depending upon if an item's ready to go if there's now a spot that's open so there's a lot of moving parts and i think it would be very difficult to always have you know that that's strict ranking in place i think more of the categorization would be helpful to staff and the agenda committee to then work from fair enough fair enough um and then one of the things i guess i will encourage us to do is um which was not in the language but is probably intrinsic to the nature of the charter and the powers of council but but building avenues for continuation um i know we had discussed you know i mean i i can always a council person can always motion to continue or or motion to do a thing um but sometimes it's it's easier if there's a built-in mechanism to continue a discussion so we we definitely did also discuss that as well but again maybe it wasn't at the level of four so i just encourage i'll say it in this way i encourage us to have a more a streamlined approach to continuation of discussion as needed okay thank you okay councillor require thank you um i just want to clarify my um you know scale of one to ten ideas just a suggestion that i was kind of throwing out i'm totally open to the idea of staff developing a a system that that would work best for y'all thank you okay any other questions councillor armature yeah so i think i probably need uh just a little more of a definition on what is meant by a purely informational uh staff presentation so for instance this this presentation right where we're just being asked questions not uh if we have any questions uh before we get to um the real um you know in the weeds work session discussion that this it is the kind of presentation that that i would have uh called uh you know purely informational uh and you know i was wondering if if i'm wrong about that or if something different was was intended from the discussion that council had at the retreat i think those informational items where we're not seeking council direction or confirmation like today our goal was to confirm we made some revisions to the proposed uh priorities as well as kind of laid out the action items that we heard at the retreat we just wanted to confirm uh this that we interpreted that correctly before we bring the action items back for next week so that was the intent of today so a little bit more confirmation and direction from council but it it would be something that could just be in a friday report and if you felt like you still wanted to have more information or discussion about that item that could be requested then for a council work session and i'm trying to think of a couple of examples that might fit that but they're not coming to the top of mind right now well and and thank thank you for that you know for me okay i'm just speaking for myself you know this presentation and i'm i'm really glad that this was brought before council uh you know to see if we had any input on this before it came to the work session for me personally this would be something that could just be in a staff report uh you know maybe with a directive that uh you know council members please email staff if you have any corrections or input on this before such and such date um and i'm not saying there's anything wrong with this presentation great presentation just saying that this is something that could have for me you know been in a friday report with just an invitation uh for feedback from council okay any other questions say none thank you very much appreciate it that concludes item b we're going to skip item c until council member davis can join us probably about four so that's going to take us to item d and i'll call that which is uh id 218 pardon me id 211894 receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding an update to the city of denton's covet 19 response just to let all council members know the mics are going to stay hot for the next little bit until our um staff can fix them they're not going off and on just to so you know mayor council thank you let me pull up the presentation real quick thank you okay thank you again ryan adams uh customer service and public affairs this will be just a brief uh presentation to give a little background on the city's response to the covet 19 pandemic like we have a number of times prior to today as you recall our last work session on this was uh on august 24th where we actually presented to council at that time we did provide an update and council adopted its 14th order of council relating to mask requirements uh we provided information but did not present on september 14th and for today we are again going to provide that brief update and also give an update on that 14th order of council so just a little bit of a situational update for covet 19 of course we still continue to have high icu occupancy high numbers of cases and high hospitalizations we did get some additional vaccine information from the county here within the last week last friday an fda advisor committee did recommend booster shots Pfizer booster shots for those persons 65 and older or high-risk individuals of course this has been this has been a matter of discussion for a number of weeks on if and when booster shots would be approved and how at this point in time i know council has asked about this before there's still no real knowledge of when approvals for expanded boosters so boosters for everyone regardless of your age as long as you are above that threshold of 12 years of age will be approved and we don't have any information on when vaccines for ages five to 11 will be approved so we're still looking for information on that and when we hear anything we will report that to the council new since we last spoke to the council is denton county public health is now offering drive drive-through testing events these will be weekly events they will require registration but they are free to the public and that information can be found along with all this information at the county website so we did include a few graphics just to illustrate kind of where things are with the pandemic one graphic the one below does show where we stand with cases of course we are still within kind of the heat of a third wave based on the county's presentation of the commissioner's court today it is possible it does remain to be seen but it is possible we are reaching a plateau with cases so that will be continued to be monitored by the county as the weeks go on we also wanted to show you a couple of graphics that we did include in the report last week that was sent to you in the agenda materials but of course the the weekly recorded reported cases by age is information and data that has been available on the county website for a number of months one thing that was new in the last couple of weeks is they now have a pediatric cases by age range and when the symptoms are actually have have symptom onset and so you can see whereas the top graph you only get the zero to 19 years a bit of data the bottom graph which is now available on the county website you can break that up even further to show which age ranges within zero to 19 years you have the the most onset of symptoms so one of the things that the county did report today to the commissioner's court was you still we still are seeing a high degree of of symptoms and cases within the 12 to 19 age ranges so brief update on our implementation of the 14th order of council of course we uh mentioned several times how we did put a lot of information when that order was adopted in the 13th order before it while we did have a number of calls emails inquiries within the first week or two of those orders being approved by council the inquiries have generally abated since then that we feel like people are very knowledgeable of what the order is requiring and we the questions have subsided and when they were numerous back in those first few weeks it was less about what the order what the order wanted or was asking of residents and more about how it interplayed with other county or state orders and so a lot of residents simply wanted clarification of that we did speak about parks and recreation programming when we last met on august 24th and since that time we are requiring masks to be worn indoors even during exercise to the extent that we can we have moved exercises exercise classes fitness classes outdoors per our council order some refunds have been processed we are continuing to require them for our fitness classes and for our athletics activities like youth volleyball league adult basketball league and what we've seen is we've gotten overall compliance that has come with some negative feedback and comments some people have definitely let us know that they're not happy with the requirement but very few comparatively very few requests for refunds and we do have nicky sasnews on the line if there are any park specific questions with regard to the order so we do have an action item for you tonight that comes later in the meeting and this will be to extend the disaster declaration from its current expiration date of september 30th all the way through december 31st again this is just the disaster declaration and we have also within that item approval to extend the provisions of the 14th order which would be come a new 15th order through october 31st 2021 and the reason we have that shortened timeline is simply in recognition that this is a very quickly evolving situation the pandemic has things can change on a dime for better or for worse and so we wanted to make sure that we gave council the opportunity to come back at a shorter time frame to discuss modify or make any changes or let that order expire as council desired so that is your very brief presentation i'm happy to answer any questions that the council may have and of course you do have that individual consideration item on the declaration in order coming later tonight okay bear with me councilmember guar thank you um i'm glad that you're the one uh uh talking to us today because this question is for you specifically um can you talk to us a little bit about um what your department or other departments have done in regard to um communicating about the ordinance to uh uh commercial entities um i know that there has been some uh i i believe there was a letter sent out there was yes yeah just give us a little bit more information about what steps were taken absolutely and and with you know in any business we try to keep the the communication very brief and short and to the point uh so we did uh send a letter out to every commercial entity uh whose address we had on file and we did that through our utility records uh yeah so if you have a commercial account you got a letter a few folks who probably didn't apply did get a letter but that was in addition to the social media news media and broad communication efforts that we did employ we wanted also make sure that businesses had the opportunity to to know what happened know what council approved and give them uh direct them to resources and direct them to people uh like me who can answer their more specific questions we got a few but i think generally they were understanding i believe having gone through this before a year ago they they kind of knew uh they were familiar with the request and familiar with the with the drill so to speak great um i that sounds wonderful um i do you feel that your department has the resources to kind of do all of that again with a 15th order just kind of give an update so i think we we could easily send out another letter just letting folks know that the provisions had been extended and then kind of essentially go through a lot of the same uh channels a lot of the same methods that we did back on august 24 25th and the the weeks just following that that wouldn't be a problem of course if there is a lot there are a lot of changes to the order if if it's just simply extension that's an easy communication to do if there are a lot of other things that perhaps change with the order that council deems fit to change that might take a more aggressive or a more extended approach if it's a complex concept to to communicate to people okay all right thank you so much um that definitely answers those questions um uh i would like to um invite my colleagues on council um to to share your thoughts on whether we should set a um a threshold for um when or how we might repeal um our mask mandate um some some ideas that that i want to throw out there that i would love to hear my colleagues opinions on are um if we should set some type of threshold for icu capacity and when when icu capacity increases to a certain point then we can remove the mask mandate um we could you know perhaps um take vaccination levels by age group taking into account that five to 11 year olds are likely to become eligible for the vaccine soon um we could tie it to local positivity rates um of course governor abbott um in his ga 32 order which has still you know since been superseded but he set a threshold of um covid hospitalizations um if covid hospitalizations represent less than 15 percent of total hospitalizations for a seven day period um then perhaps that could be a trigger um for for repealing our mask mandate we are obviously very far away from all of those uh from all of the those benchmarks currently um but you know knock on on plexiglass will will be there eventually and i'd like to see us kind of making plans for how we're going to address that councilman bett thank you mr mayor um ryan you may not have broken this down um so the answer may be i don't know but um do you have a feel for in your in your feedback with the community um when when you're having to educate and re-educate uh entities that are covered by our order versus sort of an an initial blast that is just sort of unidirectional and this is our new um this is our new policy do you have a feel for how much uh reminders and re-education that we've had to remind people about our orders we were pretty intensive in the beginning uh and putting things up pretty frequently and pretty regularly uh and we we let the the feedback that we were receiving trail off a little bit before we we kind of scaled down our communications at the same time so if your question is will this require a lot of reminders to to keep this uh keep this in the forefront of people's minds that is something that really uh i think people they become aware of it and i believe that they to be quite honest they decide right then how they feel about and how they're going to act on it i think that continued reminders are good but not at the intensity that you would need to when you first put something out there because at that point it's about education and you need to make sure that they know right off the bat what the key details are and then afterwards you can continue to reinforce and support that on an ongoing basis which we have done uh in in a number of different ways so does that answer your question i may have missed i may have missed the mark no you you you hit the target maybe not the bullseye so i think i'm going to call that uh good enough on that one um i i will say in response to councillor uh maguire um that i i think the idea of potentially um setting thresholds is is a reasonable one um i'm not going to specify a particular thing i know that we did that a year ago um but i don't think that's an unreasonable request for us to to review um what our thresholds are uh so i'll leave it at that nebulous level okay councillor roentgen yes so a number of uh questions uh first one i can ask for rec staff since it was mentioned that they were on the line um and this is just it's just a specific question um it was brought to me by a constituent who was wondering uh about the spacing of exercise equipment at the gyms uh has there been uh you know any effort to better uh space out uh the exercise equipment for more uh social distancing nicky are you on the line hi this is nicky fastness of parks and recreation sorry i had to unmute myself um yes council member armature we have spaced out equipment in the workout facilities um it is six feet apart from where the people are standing on the exercise equipment we're also social distancing in the exercise classes that are still choosing to operate inside the gyms and all of those participants are wearing masks thank you so much i'll make sure to let this person know that uh that that's happening um the last they had when they reached out to me i think about a week ago um they they felt that it wasn't happening uh at least at the rec center they go to but i'll i will double check with them and i'm really pleased to hear that so thank you my next question um has to do uh with the uh new new breakdown that we have uh of uh pediatric cases uh into age age groups um and i i really appreciate you know that that the county is doing that um it's you know those of you who are disd parents know uh disd parents got an email yesterday you know stating that math yeah if you can you hear me yes it's just yeah if you could tailor your your question a bit that'd be great thank you and narrow it um i don't i don't know that you're asking staff to speak on what bisd is doing so i'd like to get to your your question we have some others in queue yeah uh so my question was uh given uh that the 12 to 19 age range uh is where we're seeing uh the biggest spike in in cases and given that this coincides with the lifting of mask requirement in disd moving from a requirement to a recommendation um what can uh council do if there's a consensus for it uh to either uh have a joint work session with disd or to issue uh uh some sort of uh statement you know to to disd you know expressing our our concern you know asking them to return to uh to requiring it um it's just just wondering you know what what is staff sense of kind of what the possibilities are uh for action from this council if there's consensus from it for it and feel free to say yeah you don't want to wade into those waters i think that's something where we we can't exactly give us an answer to that um uh that's yeah yeah go ahead sir uh council member aren't sure this is i'd say dealing with the school district i would recommend that this is something that council can certainly take uh action if they choose to do that but this would not be something staff would recommend doing and wading into those waters okay sure so it's it is it's something that i am um interested in so i will be you know speaking with uh members of the public and um you know bringing something forward uh to council as a proposal unless something changes for disd um my other questions um had to do uh with just if you could give us an update uh on the uh both the uh staff uh testing equipment and the uh city uh testing initiative i'm sorry city city of vaccination uh mobile initiative sure we actually have that sorry go on i was saying we have chief becker here who can answer those questions yes council member david becker assistant fire chief uh that those projects are actually moving forward we're working with department of state health services to receive our uh our certification that we can go out and provide the shots uh we've been working with fleet on trying to identify a van and we all know that these are trying times to try to buy a vehicle and working with them in that process and on the testing equipment uh the purchase orders have been put together for purchasing the actual testing units and the the kits themselves so uh just waiting on some approvals outside of you know our our expertise i mean our outside of our purview on those approvals thank you very much um you know then finally just wanted to weigh in on what council member mcguire had asked about uh and just a couple other things briefly um i i do like the idea of having some sort of uh uh metric you know guidelines in place for lifting a mask mandate you know off the top of my head you know i would like it to see it being some combination of uh percentage uh herd immunity local herd immunity so you know a high percentage say you know an 80 or more um combined with um uh hospital uh bed availability and possibly uh you know cdc uh uh guidelines and cdc compatibility but anyway i would be happy to have that conversation at some later point um finally i just wanted to mention you know i still uh you know feel very strongly that uh would really like to see um not just kind of a mobile uh education and uh vaccination uh effort but really a kind of comprehensive uh mobile you know door to door um for for people who who want it uh and uh have um have mobility issues or maybe you know don't have the initiative to or the time to really make a trip anywhere um so to have both testing and uh vaccinations come to people uh where they are i would would love to see that and uh and i hope we get to have that discussion and uh and uh finally i'm uh i like the idea of having a uh you know vaccination uh requirement uh for us first city staff um and would also like to uh you know have that discussion if there's a consensus for that later okay okay okay um mayor pro temelzer thank you mayor yeah i just uh want to address two items that have come up uh first of all i'm very supportive of the idea of of uh in general more coordinated conversations with the ist uh not that either of us has any kind of reporting relationship together whatsoever but i think the uh the communication is important if i have a regret about the actions we've taken that just on my own heart well it's it's not having uh take taken the opportunity beforehand to have those conversations uh and uh you know i think that's something that that we uh you know that i can correct going forward in that we can as a body i think it's helpful to the public for even if we don't agree on the outcomes for there to be some sense that the community is trying to you know work this through together in some kind of coordinated way regarding council member mcguire's request that uh you know we have some kind of metrics for when we would roll back absolutely understand and uh sympathetic with the desire to kind of give the public a sense of you know this this is not a never-ending thing uh i would never or certainly not at this point see uh want to substitute certainly my uh judgment for that of public health officials to me you know i'm responding uh primarily out of cdc guidelines which dial down to the county level and they have all those factors you know taking into account but um uh you know it certainly makes it vivid to me that there is at this writing here at this moment one available icu bed in denton county just one so that that's very vivid to me it's vivid to me that the percent of the icu beds that were people there for covid was 10 in the spring and now it's more than half so you know people wonder like well is this even really real going to bother well people working in the icu sure know it so that makes it vivid to me but that uh what i would suggest is if you want to make make it clear to the public what the drivers are that we enlist the help of the deep in county dph to you know kind of interpret the the metrics that go into the cdc guidelines but uh you know other than cover back i don't think we're qualified to make those judgments on our own thanks all right any other questions for staff seeing none i'll just say this and and conclude we'll go mayor watts is ready to for us to join uh so i don't i don't know how from a from a measurement standpoint i don't support extending this the current mask ordinance not one more day until we talk to the businesses we've had no opportunity for them uh obviously to to have a public hearing to so if there's a letter to go out the letter should say hey come talk to us we have a date scheduled for you to be heard i think it's extremely important just because when i look at the org chart for the city of denton the citizens are at the top but and then council's under that but it seems like council's usurping that and and i think um this council will hear from the citizens soon and so to that end i'd ask um legal to be prepared to send a mem a memo in the friday report how those legal fees are handled because if a if this body is subject to a lawsuit by the citizens then i'd like those individuals that supported this mass mandate to fund their own legal expenses understanding we were given direction about crossing the governor's orders so i need to understand where that falls so that i can disseminate that information to the citizens then i'll just say this it's i i just don't think the science works to say the city of denton is the only city in denton county that has a mass mandate and somehow that then is going to control the spread of a worldwide pandemic the math i'll show you is dallas has a mass mandate and tarrant county does not both are on par to uh rise and decline in number of cases at the same rate so uh that's the the data is not there and it's interesting that we would put a mass mandate in place and then kind of try to back into a tracking number i think it's an absolute tragedy that we have a mass mandate with no parameters staff is asked to to break down numbers into average versus mean versus this percentage versus that before we can do anything but yet in our infinite wisdom we would then ignore all those data points and put something in place and then try to back into to measuring it i just think that's a tragedy i think if we have data that we want to bring forward it should have come forward in the front and should have been exercised in the front and i don't think this is something we can go in alone i don't absolutely don't support trying to tell another another government body what to do we see how that works i make a decision here at the dais and it's immediately challenged right i say hey here's the decision immediately it's it's challenged so what do you expect and citizens are doing the same thing it's just so i would be against spending another dime of taxpayer money i wouldn't send another letter to say hey the same thing's in place um just because it's it's not people have made their mind and and we're not taking the steps to engage and educate and do some different things we're we're just trying to force compliance and we're going at it alone and so i think um in that instance i just don't think that's a wise use of taxpayer money and i look forward to legal's analysis of how those legal fees are going to be handled and i i would the citizens of denton are at the top of the work chart and they'll have every opportunity to um take ashken as they deem necessary and and i think it's a tragedy that we have public buildings being the rec centers that are not being uh able to be accessed or we're dictating how people can access those public buildings when their tax dollars pay for those buildings just as much as everyone else so um and then for those again picking up on the disd thing everyone here knows how to contact those elected officials their task with running that board that body they've made a decision and if anyone wants to advocate on their own i think that's a great use of time to try to mandate something from here to another government body that's not working with austin here it's not going to work here to to locust street so i just don't think that's a good use of staff time or this body's time i think everyone here is is a resident of denton at this bot at this dais they can contact their elected official and let their thoughts and and and be heard and you can also uh dr wilson's very accessible city management has talked to dr wilson in advance and talked to the other um uh universities so those conversations have been had i'm going to call on uh council member bird everyone else has spoken council member um i just wanted to let my constituents know that i uh am representing you here i know that you're at the top of the chart you've uh allowed me to sit here uh for you and speak for you i am not up here on this dais on my own fruition and making my own decisions i receive emails text messages phone calls what have you uh to tell me what to do in any uh decision that it's made by me yay or nay here it's been approved by most of the people that are in my district i am not in an individual in any manner on this table i represent a large number of people in this city and so i'm a bit offended uh by it being noted that in some cases it seems like it's been noted that we're here making our own individual decisions just because we want to do that i listen to my people and i do what they say i just wanted to clarify that point i am in agreement uh with the mayor i think that we should be cognizant of how long this is lasting people are getting weary about what's going on here i've been out you know and about like everyone else there's hardly any mass being worn out there there are some people i wear mine um there are a number of people that are just giving up on this thing but we have this mandate in place i'm not calling the cops on anybody i'm not looking at anybody sideways if they don't have it on but i do know that i've done my part because my constituents wanted me to vote it devote that way and so i'm listening to them and collectively for the most part that's what they said we want to have something in place so uh i'll just you know lay that on that table right there and i will um be done with that thank you for allowing me to have the time yes sir just two points before we move on to the next time mayor uh from staff's perspective it would be very difficult for staff to identify a metric that might be suitable uh to counsel and to the public for when to withdraw this mask mandate similarly it may be very difficult for the county to do that on our behalf because there are so many different aspects to this pandemic it would be tough for them to identify what that that metric may be additionally it would be difficult if it was written into the order to conclude when we hit a certain threshold and bear in mind the thresholds go up and down very quickly that might introduce an additional layer of confusion that would be difficult to communicate to the public this is part of why staff recommended uh an extension to a date certain um in addition to that if council is going to make substantive changes to the order or the disaster declaration it's staff's request that we actually table this item until the 28th and come back so we can have a well thought out uh well prepared document for council to consider at that time which is still well within uh our uh expiration date of both the current order and the current disaster declaration thank you mayor yeah given that so we'll we'll have a discussion further just because uh you've you've raised some good questions i'll go back to council member beck i saw your name uh by all means thank you mr mayor um i would i completely concur with that i think our original guidance um irrespective of what might have been said a moment ago was based on medical and cdc guidance um we said to follow that we referenced it in the order um i'm i'm on in agreement with mayor pro tem that we follow medical guidance on that one um i i but i understand and i completely agree with the the idea of providing clarity and sort of the notion of um scope uh that goes to expectation management that i'm always on about and and so uh it is i think it's it is behooves us to be very clear on what our scope is and that we're following medical guidance so um i i agree with you your your question that you've asked us that we need to be careful about uh yo-yoing and oscillating uh too much to the public because that that goes to expectation management so uh i i hadn't heard a lot of demands for action or requests for action of council um i i don't see something that's inhibiting us from continuing the 14th order into the 15th order councillor maguire yes thank you um yeah i want to clarify that i i also was not proposing any any changes to the 15th order to be voted on today this is just this is the first opportunity we've had to discuss um that our order since august 24th because last week this this work session item was pulled from the agenda so i was just taking the opportunity to to have a discussion with my colleagues about how and when this might end um and and i i think it's clear that we have not come to any type of conclusion about that but i i would suggest that we maybe come prepared um for for the next work session the next time this this standing work session on the city's covet 19 response the next time it comes back that we come prepared uh to discuss that any other questions for staff seeing them thank you ron thank you council takes us back to item a which is uh id 211835 receive report and let's see receive report from the city of denton's currents denton county transportation authority board of directors appointee and hold discussion is that my cue mr mayor yes sir how are you doing mayor watts doing well thank you so much mayor and esteemed council colleagues mayor pro tem for uh giving me time to just sort of update you on the launch of the go zone and to give you some some data that we've compiled and unfortunately it's only over a couple weeks but it will at least give you some idea of how things are going and then also share with you a couple of things that uh you know have cropped up that have been challenges as you would expect with with anything like this that um uh that you that you roll out initially as as a new initiative and then to stand for any questions that you might have um rachel let's start with the slide of course we launched on september the seventh of this year uh with with the go zone uh for both highland village the city of denton and the city of louisville and together with that launch we added some additional services uh that have been highlighted quite extensively uh throughout throughout the last six or seven months um if we could go to the slide that has the two graph the two line graphs on it it's a it's like a yellow one and a blue one i think it was uh let's see right there yeah that one right there can y'all hear me okay yes sir okay great now what we're looking at here is um a graph of between september the seventh and the 16th of the dcta connect weekday trips now my understanding is this is the this is the entire connect system um which and i probably need to verify that but um but denton is primarily the the majority of this so this is the dcta connect bus system it excludes the university of north texas contract and the riders that are associated with that because it's on a separate contract and of course the go zone initiative wasn't to replace or to augment or enhance the unt bus system that dcta offers under a separate contract for moving students from various apartment communities to other areas around the campus both the main campus and also discovery park so the yellow line or orange line is uh the dcta bus connect ridership numbers weekday trips because you can see that it starts back on monday august the 16th which that's not really some significant date they just had to start it somewhere to give you sort of a graphic representation now the blue line represents the go zone initial launch you can see it it starts there to tuesday september the seventh and then of course both of these graphs in on thursday uh september the 16th so uh we i wanted to let you see sort of a pictorial graphic representation of the weekday trips now how these trips are calculated and my understanding is and gosh we've gone over this quite a bit you know over the years since i've been affiliated with dcta through uh being on council and also as a board member what they count are boardings this doesn't mean these represent number of individual people what it represents is like let's say for on the bus if you get on the bus you will be counted as a weekday trip so when you get off you're not necessarily counted you're not counted but if you get back on to go back to where you you know you originated well then you are counted again so technically one person could generate two countable weekday trips in a given day and if that person goes to two or three different locations all right then the same thing would happen is you might have three weekday trips that so my biggest struggle when i first was looking at all this data a few years back was well i i really want to try to understand how many people are utilizing public transportation and so that's what you know helped me do that now of course we don't know if someone is using more than two weekday trips if they're leaving they're getting on the the bus and then they're coming back on the bus they could have multiple trips so at that the way i figure this is the worst case scenario is i just attribute you know one person is getting on getting off and getting back on so that's how i calculate to try to get an idea of how many people and so i apply the same thing and the same paradigm the same formula with the go zone numbers as well i think those may be a little less susceptible to that assumption just because of the nature of it's not a fixed route you can get dropped off somewhere and you may meet someone and they may take you so it's but but i still use the same paradigm just for comparison purposes so you can see um based upon the graph that from tuesday the 7th of september uh for the go zone of course it stayed fairly flat but then it really began to sort of increase up to about the 15th to about 600 trips per day now we're out what is it the 21st so we're out now five days from the ending of this particular collection of data and we are collecting the data and we'll provide that you know an update on that on on a regular basis just so we can let everybody see what what's happening in both the fixed route and what i found interesting about this graph is um you know of course this is post covid uh you've got you know it peaks it looks like at about close to 1200 trips per day um or 1100 and then on the 7th you see a sort of precipitous drop from 11 to about probably 9 and then it gradually just sort of begins to inch its way down as the go zone goes up now whether those are attributable to one another i think there could be some discussion made but yet it can't all be that because the drop off of weekday trips on the dent connect uh is less than the increase of the of the go zone the go zone has gone from zero basically to almost 600 uh whereas the dent connect has gone from maybe a high of 1100 down to about uh down to about 800 so it's about half uh and we are working on incorporating in the application i asked them to look into this some somewhere on the application on the on the app where they can indicate some type of or provide voluntarily some type of survey information like are you a student using this now and i'll show you a heat map that that sort of warrants that question you know have you used public transportation before or is this your first time to use public transportation have you been using the bus and now you're trying to uh you know you're now you're trying to go zone i mean just to be able to collect some of that data on who our users are i think is imperative to to really understand uh the the effectiveness of the system and where the riders are coming from which will allow us to further hone the system to where it maximizes ridership and the opportunity for people to to have ridership uh rachel if you could put up the heat map i think is what they call it yes that right there um now what this is is what they've done is they've they've mapped all the trips for each zone you know the blue zone represents dentin the green zone is is louisville and holland village is somewhere in there but they don't really show that maybe there hadn't been that many trips um and but you can see in the dentin zone of course the pink or whatever that color is uh actually when i first looked at that i thought that looks like a fish so i'm going to say that little fin down there on the pink you know i mean you can see the mouth and the fins and you know yeah it's a good sized perch yeah it is um but the pink is the new denia zone that we added as an add-on just to sort of give you a frame of reference and i believe where the pink meets the blue you would probably that's going to probably be around the i-35 corridor and if you look at you know where a lot of those trips either start or stop that's going to be probably in that university area and then i asked them well what is this you can sort of see this line that sort of goes up and then cuts over to the i guess if you're looking at the screen to the left that they think that that's either part of university drive yeah that right there so i've asked them if they could to take these heat maps and overlay them over city street map so that you know i mean it might be too small but just to give us an indication of where are these locations you know generally and it'll show us sort of where people are going now what's encouraging to me is if you look on that those zones you see trips originating far to the to the outs outskirts of that zone which most likely um we're not served by fixed route systems so i think what would be good too is we overlap this these particular heat maps for lewisville and denton over the fixed route systems to be able to get an indication of all right how many of these trips are really outside of those fixed route systems how many of them are along those fixed route systems which will give us an idea of where are people going where are they getting on and things such as that rachel i think there's one that shows the the wait times or oh yeah this is fine right here and this is just a a summary of the completed trips if you if you look you know you'll see those numbers and i think this is just for goes on for lewisville highland village and dent if we have the there we go uh here's the average uh pickup time average walk distance average drop-off walk distance which and in feet that's about what 30 40 yards i think um something or something around there i think those are the the ones that they sent me that i thought were were pretty dispositive as far as just giving an indication of sort of just the basics for for what's happening now i want to sort of share a couple things that i've heard that you know we're certainly looking to improve but i know we've received some comments about bike bike racks on the vehicles and that some of the vehicles don't have bike racks and you know the understanding was most of them would have bike racks and so we're what we found out is like many other unfortunately many other types of activities they're having a supply chain issue where they're trying they've got some of these bike racks on back order for some of these vans and we're feverishly trying to make sure that we get those in and get them installed because we've had some uh in fact one person uh biked up from lewisville and was going to take a a uh it goes on back from denton to lewisville but they didn't have a car that was uh uh equipped or van equipped with a bike rack so this person just biked back to lewisville uh so that is one thing that that we're trying to uh trying to correct as quickly as we can understanding that that's an issue the other one is you might have had a report or i'm just going to go ahead and share it because it's it's something that happened and and i'm sure that it's it's it's out there uh apparently and we're still trying to figure out the the origin and genesis of the issue yesterday when people would sign up for a ride it would say that there were not uh cars available and of course as you can imagine um you know i found this out but everybody was scrambling long before you know that and it had to do something with a i think either a software issue or even just someone uploading something that might not uh that was incorrect i'm just going to be honest and we're on top of that it's been corrected i believe in fact i'm sure it's been corrected and we're definitely going to have a debriefing and one of those meetings with uh via to say hey we need to understand this need to understand how to happen we need to understand how it's not going to happen again so i i put that out there just so that you'll know so that if you hear something that you've at least heard from dcta that they were aware of it and that they worked really hard yesterday to make sure that number one they could identify the problem number two they could correct the problem and how do we put in processes and things that would prevent it from happening again those are sort of some of the highlights we do have the brand ambassadors we've had the brand ambassadors on the fixed bus route systems at least um from what i recall uh for the first two weeks in september of this rollout and they will be on the bus fixed route bus systems for the first two weeks in october and they will be on the bus system uh fixed route systems in november for two weeks to begin to uh number one answer questions about uh the go zone to educate about the go zone that if these if individuals riding the fixed route systems do not have access to excuse me um you know smartphones or the kind of technology that would allow them to uh schedule a ride on the app that we ensure that we put them in touch and give them instructions on okay well if this is the situation then here's how you do this we've been talking with non-profits on how to provide them with certain types of methodologies to where they can provide rides for their clients so we've certainly heard the concerns from this council and from the public about well what happens if people don't have this technology we will make sure that they have an opportunity to uh if they choose to schedule a ride on go zone on on that initiative um i'm trying to think because it's been such a short time since we've launched you know this is you know we've got as much data as we can given that short time frame i'm encouraged that that ridership you know jumped the way it did now only time will tell and bear out you know to what extent does it level off i've heard anecdotally that there are quite a few students who are utilizing the system of course now the students are paying on the go zone currently on denton connect at least under the old contract and if we're still under that old contract under denton connect students paid a transportation fee with their tuition but they got to ride the denton connect system i'm going to say no charge but or they had to pay a transportation fee but they didn't have to pay a fare all right and so uh but if they utilize the go zone they do have to pay a fare um but currently right now i believe the fare is 75 cents or something like that uh you know promotional fare um maybe for the first week or so but um that that's passed but yeah we've got some pro promotional fares that are that are trying to encourage people at least try it uh but yeah we've heard that you know and and i think once we get that street overlay of that heat map i think we will see that a lot of these trips may end and begin around the extended campus of the university of north texas because that's really where it's located is down there you know near the i-35 corridor sort of across this highway from uh from the denia neighborhood so that's that's what i have as far as you know i i question and answer probably the best way to get information out because it's information that you want to know about and i'm not a mind reader so uh if i can answer the question certainly we'll we'll do that but i know that uh of course rachel's there in the council chambers and whatever questions i can't answer we can forward those on to dcta staff and get those answers out to you so uh mayor husbeth i'm gonna turn over to you the the handling of the question and answer and and i'll just i mean as far as the questions in an order and i'll try to answer them as best as i can got it okay yeah and and to mayor watts point if staff whoever can just make notes of the the questions and maybe we'll disseminate those in some way digitally and as well forward them to uh dcta so that mayor watts didn't have to keep notes and then we can make sure we get that over to them um an exhaustive list of kind of what what's uh what was asked and then the answers that way we can get that over and have a good good uh notes on those councilman maguire thank you so much mayor husbeth um thank you mr watts for taking the time to speak with us today it's great to see you um i have lots and lots of questions um first i am aware that there have been a lot of resignations recently among dcta staff particularly leadership staff um i and i would love it if to the extent that you can answer my questions i would love that because i know that there's not there aren't very many folks left to answer questions um can you speak to who is still there at dcta what what does the current staffing situation look like at dcta councilmember maguire that's a good question i i can't speak to that in the sense of because i'm not there every day and plus the board is not involved in personnel decisions we're aware of the executive staff positions that submitted letters of resignation i don't know if all of those have officially left i know that two have um i'm not sure about the third one but those are the only ones that i'm aware of uh if there's been other staff resignations those i mean typically well actually typically they don't really come to the board anyway but for some reason uh these three did uh so that that's the extent of what i know that i know two for sure uh have resigned and that you know they they left dcta back in august and then one i believe is still employed by dcta from my understanding but not being involved in personnel decisions we don't get briefed on the specific details of all that okay um is raymond soares still at dcta uh yes i mean yes all right thank you very much um i uh this this might be a better question to forward to staff excuse me have you have you heard otherwise i have heard otherwise that that that raymond soares was no longer ceo of dcta i i have not seen anything official i had heard rumors that he had resigned um yeah obviously those rumors were incorrect yeah that's they're very incorrect yes all right i'm glad to hear that um uh so i'd love it if um uh dcta staff could kind of give give an idea of what the timeline is for hiring um that new leadership i'm very curious to know about that um i i have another staff question when you speak of new leadership when you speak of new leadership what exactly are you referring to oh uh for example vice president's deputy ceo positions like that okay okay all right okay just so that they'll know yep um oh vp of mobility services of course um is is there currently a staff member at dcta who is responsible for um applying for or managing grants i couldn't answer that i don't know because we're not in charge of staffing and and job descriptions and things such as that okay all right thank you um my next question um is is there any type of um ethics rule either within dcta or at the state level um that prevents dcta staff from seeking or accepting employment with uh contractors or consultants who have worked with dcta okay so and i'm going to answer that question but i was under the impression from my conversation with mayor pro tem that this work session was really to talk about uh the goes on initiative some of the objections that council had to that and um to ask me as your representative questions about my thoughts and either my vote or so a lot of these things regarding staffing regarding uh personnel decisions as board chair and as board members we're not going to know the answer to that um as far as what the last question that you asked i don't know if there's state law but dcta has its own internal policy it's called the revolving door policy and i believe you attended one of the meetings where we i think i was during the gopro actually vote but it so it might not have been on the uh revolving door policy so dcta has a policy where if someone leaves uh and they go to work for someone that we don't then rehire them and i don't know verbatim the the wording of the policy but the gist of the policy is that we don't rehire them for compensation for the same or similar work that they did once when they were employed with dcta okay yeah thank you that answers my question completely thank you okay yep um okay my next question um is uh regarding um dcta connect routes one two four and six um is the current plan to eliminate those routes on december 6th or will there be an opportunity to reassess the plan for those those routes sorry you're muted mayor wat sorry about that accidentally hit me um i think the based upon the discussion the uh and not just the discussion in the last two or three months i think the discussion has been we've been talking about this uh initiative or exploring this initiative for well over a year or two i mean ever since i got on the board even before i got on the board as i discussed it when i was when i was mayor i think the original intention and i think i can only speak for myself but i think this is what it seemed like the board's intention was as well and i think you were at that meeting is that um come december 6th the default is that those routes we would graduate they would they would terminate they would end and that's the whole point of the time to be given and also the brand ambassadors to make sure we've answered all questions but can i say here unequivocally that therefore come december 6th this is all over said and done um i i i mean i can't say that because that's i don't know if that's the truth because you don't know what the data is going to show you don't know exactly uh how things are going to play out so you certainly want the flexibility but now to say that unequivocally there they will not go away i i would make that statement either i think the default is that's the plan but as you all well know plans can change but you know the board's going to want to see the data and that whatever is causing that plan to change continues to be in the best interest of the agency in the member cities and the community because as i've said the whole point of public transportation is to move people and give them an opportunity to to have public transportation to meet their transportation needs and if it's one formula that meets that need if it's two formulas i think the the dcta staff and board have shown that they they're more than willing to figure out how do we continue to promote that mission and quite frankly the fixed route system wasn't working it was moving less people for more money and so we needed to find a way and they've tried a lot of things i mean somebody had talked about don't charge a fare all right we've reduced fares we've also talked to other transit agencies who've reduced it to zero and all the complications and things that have arisen from that so it's not as if dcta hasn't worked very hard long before i even got on the board to figure out how do we continue to move more people but when you look at the data even pre-covid you know there was a little uptick from 18 to 19 in the bus system of ridership well that really when you looked at it and you parsed it out was 83 people per day addition which that's nothing to slouch at but you're still down to six or seven hundred people a day being moved in a huge bus system in the city of denton where you're paying about six to eight million dollars a year so i think it's i think the default as i said is that's the plan but plans change okay yeah thank you for uh speaking to to those four routes my next question is regarding the remaining two routes uh routes three and seven um can i know that um back in like january or february whenever this was um first kind of brought to council in a work session um the discussion was that routes three and seven would be cut six months after the implementation of go zone is that still the plan with the understanding that plans can change i think that i think that is the plan uh when you look at the routes three and seven you know what i asked them to do a few probably a few months back as we were moving into this new initiative was because unt students because routes three and seven i think like route three was under the 10 10 boardings per hour threshold that was used as sort of a benchmark on looking at which fixed routes might need to be modified or eliminated and everything we read is if you're only getting 10 people or 10 boardings per hour on a fixed route system that's just not acceptable however route three um because of its because of its its uh route it would go by uh you know many of the social service agencies and things such as that so that's why it was determined that let's keep this for a while to make sure that we can get people to these places of services that they need and then route seven when we when we did a survey and we to see how many students were riding routes three and seven how many unt students virtually none on route three i mean it was in the three or four or five percent all right but route seven which i believe goes from the uh the downtown train station you know up through uh the corridor along oak and hickory and up through the universities or the university there were days when it was 25 percent or 30 percent and then of course it would drop down to 10 depending on especially the time of the year obviously the semester the two semesters would be higher percentage and the summers would be lower and i'll be honest that was sort of telling because i thought well so a lot of our ridership you know 20 on route seven is attributable to students at unt who have a separate contract but who can ride dcta connect uh assets the buses uh for no charge up front in the fair it's built in to their tuition and then contractually it's given to and i think honestly contractually it's not it's not that much at all that dcta gets the portion of the contract that is attributable to and they're also eliminating it in the new contract that they're not going to be paying dcta anything for their students riding uh dcta connect facilities i mean assets so i think it's probably the same paradigm um those are a little bit they're probably going to get a little bit more scrutiny only because of the importance number one of route three and to ensure that we can get residents to some of those social service uh activities that they need and then on route seven you know how many students are really riding and we may find is if more students utilize the gopro the gopro i don't know why i call it that every time the go zone uh system then we might see ridership on route seven decrease because they may decide it's more convenient to take you just muted there we go yep sorry man these things are sensitive i apologize go ahead so i think it's the same thing that's a long-winded answer to say the same thing except it may get a little bit more uh i mean those routes were kept longer for a reason and those are the reasons all right uh thank you so much for that um uh my next question is regarding um ntmc and uh the ntmc contract with dcta in particular are there any um changes to to the contract with ntmc that are anticipated as a result of um discontinuing bus routes okay now you said a contract with ntmc and dcta are you meaning a contract between ntmc and the union or are you talking about the relationship between dcta dcta and ntmc i'm talking about the relationship between dcta and ntmc okay so that relationship those are two separate legal entities and so uh you know we do have an interlocal agreement which you know i'm not you know i don't know every detail of it but in essence dcta approves the budget of the ntmc and so uh but the contracts that ntmc enter into uh are individual contracts with those entities that dct that ntmc has within that organization like the the a train uh subcontract the union's contract so i'm not aware of uh any changes between dcta and ntmc we've had some you know uh how would i put it um some governmental changes in the sense of who's going to be president you know who's on the board and things such as that so could you help me understand um what is there a particular issue that you're thinking about when you think about it i was thinking particularly about um uh staffing and and um labor considerations i i am i mistaken in my understanding that dcta contracts with ntmc to provide staffing to for for like drivers okay i see what you're saying got you all right yeah so dcta does enter into a contract with ntmc to provide the bus service so yes uh now does dcta approve or enter into contracts with those downline contractors in ntmc who are actually providing those assets and those services dcta does not execute those contracts the contract is between the organization of ntmc and ntmc and dcta agree that uh ntmc will provide the bus services for for the connect for for dcta and that does include staffing it does include insurance it does include and then dcta's obligation is to provide the funding for those contracts and for that budget and that staffing so yes it's sort of if you look at it hierarchically you know the dcta and ntmc contract is to basically pay for the operations of ntmc who are going to be in charge of the day-to-day operations of the bus system and i i believe um i can't remember is it so much that the a train but i'm probably pretty sure it is or we have a separate contract with them yeah right yeah um i apologize for this yeah so i that sort of answers my question i think so so will the the portion of uh dcta's contract with ntmc that provides for the the denton connect service will that portion of the contract be terminated leaving in place the a train i think it depends on i mean i don't i don't think it's set to quote unquote terminate because number one we still have fixed route bus systems and we still may have fixed route bus systems you know at these dates that you had mentioned earlier which were december 6th and then sometime i believe six months in january or february so i think the contracts are written such that it's it's a matter of what is the amount of the budget or the amount of reimbursement that dcta would be providing to ntmc so i don't know if it gets into the particulars of okay well how many people are still driving how many people are still you know how many bus routes do we still have but i can't answer that specifically i just don't know i don't think that the contract goes in to that much detail uh but it may but we'll find that out we can get you that information thank you so much i appreciate that um so my next question um you you mentioned earlier um you know that that um ridership levels have really never been great with with the dent connect service especially um and and that there is that goal of 10 boardings per hour can you speak to and let's say just pre-covid um what steps dcta has taken or took uh to try to increase ridership well having been on the board just two years uh i know that i know over the the time that i've been mayor and also on the board i know of several times where they've looked at modifying routes and you know they've held public input you know because they have to by federal by federal law uh if it's going to impact certain certain constituents um i think what they've done is they've tried to increase headways i think they they have reduced fares um i think there was uh one where they had a dollar fare and that might have been on the train but i think it was also on the bus system um they've certainly tried many types of uh options to increase that ridership i mean to you know closing some bus stops and then opening up some others where they feel that you know there's there's more demand here than there is there of course you know if you're one of the ones that are using something and you're the only one using it and they decide well we've got to obviously it impacts you and it has a tremendous impact on you so you know and i've heard that so those are some of the things but we will get you a list we will get you some initiatives that they've done over the years to try to increase that ridership i can't you know enumerate them specifically here to my satisfaction so i want to make sure that we have the facts right and we get those correct facts to you great i would i'm really looking forward to seeing that i'm guessing that you mean decrease headways rather than than increase yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah you're right i can't imagine that increasing headways would would increase ridership yeah um uh so my my my last question is more of a request maybe more of a request for racial could we get via email those slides that were presented earlier i would appreciate that very much all right that that covers everything um if i have more questions i'll email you mr watts thank you so much for being here i appreciate that okay and just a time stamp i think we've been at it i don't know this is about 30 minutes or so and and and i'll just say um the consultant talked to us about this very topic um during the the work session we had the time we spent on something that doesn't fall on our purview i'm not going to try and truncate conversations i'm just telling you we we won't finish our work session at the pace we're on and so just a time stamp it's five we have a 6 30 start time dinner will be here and so uh i'll allow i'm all for council having a robust conversation about this this topic but understand we won't get to the things on the agenda that are pending before this body at this pace and mayor just a just a little uh note uh dcta is planning on having a staff person come back and be at the mobility meetings that are going to be held uh starting next month and they have board meetings that we can attend as well so counselor bet thank you mr mayor mr watts uh i have uh some more some data-oriented questions um like you were asking about uh so um and in fact maybe the better thing to do um because i i doubt very much that that you could quickly pull some slides out of your pocket so maybe this is a the best thing to address to staff but to the for the items that you happen to know the answer on that'd be great do you have a feel or dcta staff have a feel for how much of the go-zone ridership is seems like it's a experimental trying something new out versus the the fixed routes which is sort of you know established already uh no council member i i don't but that was one of the things that the thrust of my request to see if we can't create on the app some type of uh fields where we can ask for data such as that in other words have you ridden public transportation before well if the answer is no and we're trying to go zone i think that goes towards your question of how do we identify what these this mode of transportation is being used for if someone answers yes i've used the fixed route system and i'm trying this and so far i like it and i mean so that will give us an indication of the motivation to use this system so i mean that that was one of the reasons why i've asked for us to try to capture that data because i think it's important data as you as you recognize so so that that's perfect that's a nice segue into the next one do we have a feel a lot of our existing fixed route and other avenues have options for not not using an app although the app being smart gives you a lot of survey and and uh data gathering potential and you know i'm all for using the apps for for all our different applications so do you have a maybe a question in for staff to maybe get back to us on is you know app versus phone requests um you know do you have a feel for the sort of non-app purchases for the versus app purchases and compare those i mean the whole point of this experiment is to to see hey is is this an avenue that we should explore is this an avenue that that you know will be favorable for us so i assume we're looking at like you know fixed route versus go zone app versus non-app app versus phone and and things like that did did they give you any data on that or or can we look into that oh i think uh if i understand the question um let me make sure i understand the question so what you're asking is um how much data do we have for those who are able to utilize the app and how many people are having uh that don't have access to the technology to access the app the application for scheduling a ride how many are using alternative means to schedule a ride is that was that the thrust of your question exactly for both fixed route and and and as a comparison fixed route to go zone so there's really four points to that square okay all right um all right yeah we can so and i do want to say something because i mean and of course you're entitled to use the words i don't know if the board would classify this as an experiment um and that doesn't mean that things can't change but it means that the board recognize it let's move into this direction and if it doesn't i mean and it's very nuanced you know the default is we're moving forward and we'll make a change if it if the data shows that it warrants a change so the the board is 100 behind making this successful and successful means that everybody has an opportunity to to utilize public transportation to the best of our we're not even serving everybody now with the fixed route system so uh our attempt is to increase the the the the pool of people who are able to ride not just those who have the technology but also those who don't have it and so the thrust of your question is certainly appropriate because it helps us understand now i don't know on the fixed route system if we have in place on the go pass and all that uh something already that captures that data if we don't we'll have to develop that or find a way to do it but i know on the the go zone that has been requested and i think we'll be able to to get that done now people who don't have an app we've got to figure out an alternative way to capture that data and my my last question um is uh i like the heat maps that was great um i i my question more is is it telling us uh you know is there um a similar sort of data again it's we're all comparing comparing fixed routes to to uh go zone regardless of of whether we call it an experiment or or a re-evaluation or anything like that so uh sorry that mr watts there was some noise in the room um so do we have the a do we have the heat maps for for fixed routes versus goes and we may not be able to do that or it may be just uh very simplistic since we already know where the stops are but it'd be lovely if your staff could could do that comparison of the heat map kind of approach for both go zone and fixed routes but more to my question b is are you getting any data from your staff about um the length of the trip uh the trip length because you you were discussing a lot of elements in the heat map um around the university centers around the city centers uh you know you talked about wait times and pick up and drop off distances are are we getting any any estimation on how what the trip links are i didn't get those uh in the data that i got but i i could almost you know i'll step out on a limb and say i'm sure that they're able to keep track of that and if they are we can certainly uh you know move that forward and present that and gather that data it just wasn't presented to me as far as the actual length of the trip it you know as the average trip you know a mile or two miles or things such as that but uh we will certainly look into that but i would be surprised if somehow we don't have an opportunity because it's with it being in sort of an app based technology they know where they pick you up they know where they drop you off i can't imagine that the company wouldn't keep track of the distance between those two awesome thank you so much yeah all right any seen all the questions in the room councilmemorator yeah uh several questions first um so you mentioned that uh december 6th uh is is uh the date that bus service might be uh cut off depending on the on the results uh of uh of the this data collection period um what would or rather i should ask you know do you know uh what is the projected date of the meeting where that will be decided or voted on yeah i i don't know i mean we're probably going to be getting data presented to each meeting and of course if need be just like with with the with the city council if there's a additional meetings that need to be had those meetings can be called but i don't know what what meeting that would be on my i assume it might be the november meeting but the november meeting may be combined with the december meeting so we haven't figured all that out yet but that's a good question and we will certainly make sure that we hone in on that and make that as as well known as as uh quickly as possible thank you that would be great and i would love to know also um you know when that's known uh the date of the uh that uh november meeting and december meeting for some reason i thought that there wasn't going to be a december meeting or that there's not a planned december meeting but i'm not as familiar with reading you know the dcta meetings board meeting schedules as i am with council meeting schedules sure i think we're still trying to figure out the logistics of that um last year we had a november and i believe a december meeting i believe uh but also know that there's been times based upon you know the holidays and what days they fell on either towards the middle of november or the end of november that um there's been in the past maybe a thought to combine both the november and the december meeting but there's not been a day if that happens or number one that hasn't been decided to do that which we'll probably do here soon and number two uh we haven't certainly decided on a date yet but as soon as there's a date decided either way that will certainly be published okay thank you um and then my next question has to do with uh what we're talking about about um the you know the relationship between uh uh the ongoing bus route uh service and uh goes on goes on service and use um i i've heard uh that there has been a reduction in uh fixed bus route service due to uh uh lack of drivers you know drivers leaving insufficient number of drivers um but i don't know you know any details on that and i was wondering you know if you could if if you feel comfortable you know speaking to that if that's true number one and and then two you know if that's true to what extent and you know what has dcta to your knowledge been trying to do uh if that's the case yeah oh i have heard that and i don't know the full extent of the circumstances but i heard that on a couple of our routes during peak time you know for some reason route four comes to my mind but i really hate to stick that out there because i'm i'm not 100 certain but there had been a one or two routes that during peak hours they had to increase the headways so i mean it certainly wasn't an elimination of service but they had to increase the headways because you know they did have a shortage of drivers from my understanding during the peak times just as alternatively uh out at i believe one of the university stops for the university contract and this was off peak that you know there was such a demand that they had to bring in an additional you know bus because you know some students you know they i mean the bus has just got full uh so yes i don't think that that's an ongoing problem um i at least from what has what's been reported to me i was aware of when it was occurring and i think your what was your second question on that your second part on that question oh the the second part of the question was just if if that's true you know what has uh dcta been doing to try to remedy sure uh i you know dcta through ntmc has provided uh and so i've heard the discussion about you know that i mean we are having a shortage of drivers i mean so that's why dcta and ntmc has implemented an incentive program of a thousand dollars a month for bus drivers who you know don't necessarily take sick leave you know they fulfill their their scheduled duties for the month in other words they're not you know going to take vacation days in the middle or no they just fulfill what they've signed up for an incentive i believe it was a thousand dollars a month and i will certainly make sure that we verify that if that in verified and if that's incorrect we'll make that correction but uh i know the amount is right it's just what are the conditions for that to be paid so that you know we're incentivizing we're trying to encourage people to you know continue to uh run their routes um so that's one of the things that we've done here recently probably within the last board meeting in order in order to do that and uh so question another question related to that um you know is beginning with a concern and just asking if a concern of mine and if um if you or uh DCTA board you know have have discussed that concern you know share a similar concern um you know to what extent uh could that reduction in bus drivers in you know certain uh fixed fixed route service including during some peak hours impact the data that's being collected uh in in this you know brief period about uh fixed bus routes bus route use versus go zone use for instance you know if um if students so you mentioned you know some students are using um go zone i had i've heard that anecdotally too i don't know i haven't seen any data on that but i had heard that anecdotally um you know and i wonder if if student more students are using goes on uh because they're having to you know wait for an hour uh for a for a bus uh because of a shortage in drivers you know to what extent does that askew the data and and how will that be incorporated into the DCT as decision making or or your personal decision making yeah i really don't think i don't think the issue has been that chronic i mean i think we're describing an issue that might have happened uh you know acutely uh so i i think it's probably gonna have a minimal impact but we can certainly see if we can find a way to capture that data but i will say i mean regardless of whether uh someone's you know the bus is so full that we've got to send out another bus which we do if i were a student and even if i'm not having to wait on a bus you know a second bus but i'm waiting on a bus for 30 minutes or an hour you know because i'm out of class and here's when the bus and those are all contractual with UNT all right so UNT has its own kind of contract relationship within TMC for buses bus drivers the routes the time of the routes but anecdotally when i heard about the student was well because this is convenient and it gets me there quicker it allows me to potentially take a nap in between times and i might have to stay somewhere because so i think that students are going to use the GO system the GO zone regardless of whether there's any type of unusual operational issue with the fixed route system just because right now it's almost free i mean when you think of the amount of money and when you look at the wait times and you look at those kinds of things you know they are just making a decision of hey instead of me getting on a bus and having to ride around to three or four different stops that might take 30-45 minutes i'm going to get me a GO zone and so i'm not so sure that that data whether it's because they're having to order an extra bus i don't think that data would be that dispositive because again i don't think that it's been that chronic and so would have a minimum but we can we can see if we can't capture that sure i mean you know i think any any data that you're able to capture that can give you some insight and some vision of you know what's happening on the ground is obviously is worth worth trying to capture if you if you can do that thank you thank you very much um and then you know finally my final question is kind of is really you know just for you and your your perspective your point of view as as denton dcta rep um and this is about the the the resolution which you know as you know um you know this council passed um asking that that buses run alongside go zone for a period of of six months um and at the in the july meeting which which i didn't attend but but heard about um july 22nd i believe um you had uh are you argued for overlaps of 30 or 90 days that's what when i had heard or for no overlap at all instead of the six months in the council resolution i was wondering if if if that's true you know if you could speak to that and just kind of give your perspective on why uh you know why why that made more sense to you uh than the the resolution of this council sure um well first of all i never advocated for zero days i mean that was the original that was the original kind of thought coming out uh but even staff didn't think that that was good i think staff said two weeks or three weeks and and i began to advocate for 60 days even before this council began to advocate for six months because i knew that was not long enough period uh and as we got closer to the meeting as i listened to the input uh from this council and as i listened to the end read the input from the citizens um you know i thought well 90 days i couldn't have agreed to the six months because of quite frankly i didn't understand i didn't hear articulated in that request anything i mean it was just sort of well we want to do six months because we want to gather data but i didn't really hear how six months was the the avenue necessary to gather the kind of data in order to continue to make decisions organically as we move forward in this process whereas we've been working on this for two years and we had been working on this extensively over the last year with with the consultants and the data but then when one of the board members and 90 days would have put us somewhere in november i think or i think i had advocated for 60 days at first but then one of the board members said well why don't we just go through the semester the school semester which then would provide us a real comprehensive look at how are the students responding to this how is the community responding to this and it just made a rational it made rational sense to me because my 60 days was like well where am i getting 60 days my 60 days was like six months it's like well i think it's enough but why am i saying that's enough what's the what's the rationale for that what what data points am i using what data collection type of activities am i using whereas to say let's go through a full semester because i think this council had brought up the college and you know how are the students going to utilize it and the time frame so uh that was something that i could get on board with because it for me it gave me a rational basis uh in order to make that decision so it's just an it's just a and of course doing that i did consider the input of the council now if you're saying why did you not take our recommendation because you're our appointee and you really have a duty to do what we ask you to do well i don't necessarily see that as my role i mean because number one this council is not involved in all the board meetings and all the the emails and all the information that we receive in fact this is a fairly new council so i mean council member armatree you've been on for a while so you've been involved in discussions through the mobility committee since january and also just in council discussions about what's going on with dcta what are we going to do to get better public transportation so that was just the exercise of my judgment as the as a board member that ultimately has to make a decision for the board taking into consideration all the input so i will certainly say that the input from this council gave me great comfort to go up to really even more than 90 it's about 90 days or more it's almost 120 but uh it was september october november uh the semester ends end of november the first of december so you're looking at four months three to four months so that's i mean those are my thoughts on that okay any other questions mayor proctor melter thank you mayor uh yeah thank you mayor west for for accepting my invitation to come and talk to us and uh for your service before you know in relation to having our city council have proportionately more influence than we used to have in the past you know due to the composition of the board um and uh i'd also say i wasn't so much personally hung up on the number as on the objective and what i'm hearing from you now is that in some form or fashion you share the objective of let's get the product mix right you know the mixture of how much on-demand where and how much fixed route and where and and and to me you know that's sort of the uh you know the right place to end up not i understand you're leaning forward uh so uh to get to a question uh uh one other item that was you kind of touched on briefly it was in the uh the resolution was building on an insight from councilmember davis that fairs represent less than a half a percent of revenue uh and you know there's a difference between a penny and free not it's only a penny difference but just in terms of you don't have to know if you have the penny on you you know uh no one has to have a way to collect it no one has to have a way to track it so this you know just a sort of a freedom throughout the system if if uh you know uh that's adopted what is the uh what has been the thought process around that idea around the idea of eliminating fares as a way to increase ridership and you know reduce some costs associated with sure well i think that and and let me go back and say that your characterization of the mix of the product um i i don't want to leave the impression that somehow the board because i'm i'm speaking here as a board member and i've certainly shared with you what i thought the intention of the board was that the intention was here's our original plan uh the original plan wasn't necessarily to characterize it as a mixed product however that doesn't mean that in the end based upon data and analysis that that's not exactly what will wind up and that's very nuanced but i don't want to leave the impression that somehow that was the original intent and the original goal but certainly is is a is a possibility because nobody's none of the board members or staff or you guys or you on council we don't really have a dog in this hunt other than to make sure that we provide the best public transportation opportunities to our community and so however that winds up is how it winds up and and we'll all celebrate that if it if it achieves those goals so on to answer the fair question it had been discussed i don't know if it had been discussed formally but a question had been asked and this is the two trains of thought and i'm not saying this is my fault and i'm not saying this is the board's thought this is sort of an industry-wide thought of of why if that hasn't happened it doesn't happen and so i'm not if i say something that is making a declaratory statement i'm not saying that that's attributable to me or that i share the same concern but this is sort of what is sort of out there in the industry that's been communicated to us the first is that you know sometimes free may increase something but are there some downsides now one of the downsides or one of the unintended potential consequences that is in the industry that has been communicated in the industry is that would they be would would fixed route systems become pseudo shelters in other words people would just get on them and stay on them to to have a shelter i mean i don't know how else to say it now that's not something that dcta staff or the dcta board necessarily subscribes to but when we've looked at others who've tried it that has been their experience and then sometimes it's you know are you going to is just giving away something for free going to spur someone to do something differently and i think that depends on each personal circumstance let's take for example if i want to you know i've taken the train to one of the board meetings down in lewisville all right but i drove myself to the train station because when i looked at you know if i you know catch a bus route to get to the train station uh was going to be about 30 to 45 minutes well i can get there in five you know five or ten so if that were a free fare on the bus would that really be the motivational factor for me so it depends on each individual circumstance so i don't think that the board is opposed to looking at that muted you're muted again when we got the resolution it was you know i think that the mobility committee approved it like either the the week of and we got it the day before so some of it was you know you know our agenda is posted uh but if that's something that you know people want the board to look at or staff to look at say hey just give us an idea have you tried that may be in the list of the things that we're going to provide that was not do this today but evaluate that yeah yeah so that that may be in a list that we're going to provide on what has dcta done in the past to try to improve ridership that may it may not have been an official kind of uh deliberation but it may be hey we did a white paper on it we looked at it we looked at so i don't know whether it will be or not but that certainly is something that i think you know someone can take a look at and and and do some research on uh i'm sure there's a lot of it out there because this isn't probably a novel idea on you know and there may be some promotions that we can do in that regard and maybe some cities have figured out a way to counter that particular risk too yes leave time if anyone else has any other questions thanks okay any any other questions and i'm going to close it out so this is is if you have something you need to say it now we're going to move on seeing nothing can i just make a couple closing remarks yeah i have something before that just wanted to make sure that we were done here at the desk so here's what i here's information i'd like to ask uh dcta staff to follow up with i'd like to know the data on the really this the additions right the sunday trips i'd like to know how many of those in the late night like after the other hours because i think that's important that's an addition and when i was talking to people about getting to work and the extra access that was critical so i'd like to see that information uh i'd like to ask dcta to uh provide a even even if it's not exact maybe i mean even if it's not ideal a transit plan for the airports so for example leave denton go to lovefield leave denton go to um dfw kind of how how would someone a resident in denton connect those trips if if they have if they can help me piece that together i just want to share that information uh and i think it's important now that that's an option especially for example the late night service where you can now get a ride from the carolton station back to denton whereas you couldn't before so i want to i want to highlight those i want to make sure i saw some comments online about the drivers being new to denton i think it's important to make sure they're using the ways app so that um they have the the construction kind of details baked into the app or at least understand that's an option uh i may watch i take your point about the supply chain everyone's struggling with that so i thank you for pulling the curtain back there for uh dcta staff again uh so the i'd like to see a map of the um current bus stops with a radius of 46 yards that's kind of the max that the in in the information mayor watts provided where people are walking so that'll give a visual to say here's the current bus stops people in this area have experienced the same walk people outside of this area are now being benefited so i can just have a visual for how we're serving our community better that way um then i i just want to say this i think it's important um to mayor watts when you do speak i'd like i'd like to hear you on this as a representative you touched on it kind of what your role is but also i think it's important to note the value add uh from kind of what positions you served and the longevity there i've talked to the mayor in lewis for i've talked to other people um in the organ in the dcta organization independently and and they've shared that but i want to open a door for you to kind of make sure uh that's archived the service and i think um being here since 2017 one of the things i've always heard is the 12 to 13 and maybe now 14 million dollars the city gives this organization with very little uh return on investment in in my estimation we could we could do better um and so you are mayor watts you're instrumental in in creating that grant program that then allows us to realize the benefit of the dollars we're giving and i think that's important uh and i think more people need to understand and know about that or at least give it its due that's really significant it's really been a problem and it's one of the key things i i wanted to fix when i got here so thank you and if you could speak to those so it's just kind of you'll just kind of your representation tenure etc to dovetail off of that i i think for me the truck the check the trouble is i do want any board member there's there's no one we appoint that in any board that i think should be told what to do there's input there's guidance but those individuals are serving in the capacity because they have an expertise if i appoint someone to a board i exploit i appoint them to let's say the airport board because they have expertise i want them apply that in that scenario and give good guidance not go there and do what i tell them to do that's that's counter-intuitive and so and this body this very body communicated very early that we weren't going to it was either it was either do what we say or else is how i felt it was and i just don't think that's the way to manage a an appointment and then i'll point out for staff to confirm this in in dcta to confirm it i read on dart's website so that's dallas area rapid transit so dart.org there it says uh they're redoing they're doing the same thing we're doing so this is not a novel concept and so they they cite it says ridership it has been falling since 2006 both bus and light rail so if it i know that's right but if staff can just confirm it so that i can then uh have another source or another way just fact check that because i think that's important because there's industry-wide trends that are happening irrespective of options size of city that sort of thing and so it's important to kind of make decisions based on the current state of things and not get off track under thinking we're going to somehow be an anomaly in an entire transit kind of uh region so that's important to me um and i'll say the only one that's that's about the trend is tarrant county and i and i talked to the ceo of dcta about that they're tarrant county when they rolled out their light rail it was free after the free term they started charging and ridership went up and there's a reason for that because grapevine is at the end of the rail they have they have airport there's destinations that drive ridership and i've i spent a lot of time with the with the ceo there at uh dcta learning that studying that uh going on trips just kind of driving the region and understanding that so i appreciate that education so those are the things i'd like to see when we come back uh and um mayor watts i'll turn it over to you to close out sure yeah and i've reviewed my notes i'm going to make some clarification so that i that i'm accurate ntmc only oversees the bus operations dct dcta oversees the train operations ntmc did vote in september uh and in their august meeting ntmc did for the thousand dollar a month uh additional bonus for the month of september uh but ntmc also is willing to consider additional bonuses going forward as the need arises and of course as the mayor said all the all the transit agencies are experiencing uh shortages of bus drivers all over the all over the country in fact um yeah i mean there's the the motion for the time as far as the concurrent time of the fixed route system and the to overlap with the go with the go zone of course the motion was originally for 60 days from someone else and that did not uh that did not pass uh and i think i made the motion for the 90 days it was clear from the discussion that the board uh was not going to vote for uh six months so um and and so i've already explained my rationale uh on that and as far as on the four lowest bus ridership routes that were mentioned earlier by council member maguire on that the expenses the cost per trip were getting so high that we knew that we had to figure out was there an alternative way so that we can use the taxpayers money in the most efficient manner now the mayor had asked me to sort of give you tenure and i'm not you know sometimes so keen on this isn't about blowing you know sort of bragging but i will say this started long before i was on the board to look at the data to look at the money that the city of denton was paying and to look at the ridership that was occurring and when you look at a five-year graph a five-year trend starting in 2014 and 15 up to 2019 they were going in inverse direction the amount of money being spent was rising the amount of ridership both on train and bus were decreasing now in 2018 to 2019 there was an increase of ridership in the bus system and when you sort of break it down to daily riders what did that increase look like and it was 83 about 83 people in the city of denton i think per day additional well you know you're still paying i mean you just everybody has to make their decision on if you're spending 14 million dollars a year you got to decide what you're getting for it so i realized that i didn't know if i had the answer but i knew that the answer wasn't to keep the status quo so that's why we started exploring what are some other avenues and what we realized was that there was a what's called an elac program it's now it's called the trip program within dcta organization whereby member cities other the board passed the policy whereby member cities with money that's left you know if there's if there's a if i say a surplus but if there's money after the expenses and after the revenue that the member cities are allowed a certain percentage of that to go towards transportation projects within and i believe uh miss city city manager what what was the uh what was the amount do you recall what the amount was this go around was it a couple of million dollars for the city of denton i've got rachel here that's going to answer that okay it was for the trip program we're doing safe routes to school with a lot of this money yes the original estimates were two and a half million so the resolution that the city council approved in january of 2021 was for that two and a half million we actually perform better than we were anticipating with sales tax so the number is actually about 3.1 million so we'll be coming back to you with a plan for not only our 2022 trip dollars but also how we're going to spend that additional funding that we weren't anticipating for the 2021 year so yes uh so basically you know we spearheaded uh a policy within dcta to say hey i mean i'd heard a comment i'm not it's anecdotal that somehow that dcta was underfunded well i would say i would probably say the opposite that and not overfunded or underfunded but is there a way that we could better utilize the funding to promote our mission our number one mission providing public transportation for the communities for our member cities and those who want to drive to those opportunities in order to use that public transportation as well so based upon that and looking at the budget and i mean sales tax it's it's amazing how the sales tax even in the midst of the pandemic even last year when things were really locked down and this year they were above projection so dcta board implemented a policy whereby well then we need to move some of that money back to the member cities so that they can provide improved infrastructure to promote public transportation and in this case you know part of that is safe routes to schools which you know how many times have we heard when i was on council and from this council that that is that is ultimately a priority and three million dollars is coming back to the city of dentin in order to provide that specifically as presented by rachel but also in the future as there are dollars that are earmarked or slated for the trip program because of i'm going to say a surplus that's that's what it is i mean you got more money coming in revenue than you have expenses and i think it's 15 percent or i can't remember what the percentage is but so i think that was something that we were able to do and certainly that i advocated for for the city of denton that really provides a great benefit to our community because it's money that we're paying that the taxpayers are paying to the organization and the organization dcta relic recognized and the board recognized well if you know we want to be as efficient as we can with our own budget and if all of a sudden we have additional revenue we need to make sure that it goes back to the cities for projects that promote public transportation which has its end result the increased ridership now of course i'm serving as the board chair at this at this time i think that it comes up in november so i think it's been i've had the ability to at least with the help of the other board members guide the discussion to try to make sure that we maximize the impact to our citizens and to our member cities who fund us so i've enjoyed serving on the board because i think i've accomplished and i what i set out to do in the sense of i wanted to find a way that we could at least move forward with an alternative to try to increase our ridership and provide a more efficient use of the tax dollars that uh the citizens of denton through their sales tax and through the election uh you know pay to because the member cities are the only ones that are funding dcta at this time outside of federal grants and things such as that the county paid their contribution at the front end when they paid 250 million dollars to build the a train if you look at the amount of money that the city of denton has spent over the 10 years in sales tax to the dcta organization i i knew what it was off the top of my head at one point but it's it's probably close to 150 uh you know between 120 and 150 million dollars so mayor you know i'm proud of our work on dcta i'm proud of you know my contribution to that work to provide value for this community i'm proud of uh the historical context and the knowledge that i have of just the overall system in the overall plan uh based upon the data so whatever the decision of this council is certainly i serve at the pleasure of the council if reappointed i will continue to do that same due diligence if not i will certainly be available to whoever it is to provide any type of information that i can historically or or otherwise my goal is just simply to improve and to be and to make a difference in whatever i'm involved in for the community if it's if it's a community i think and if it's a personal thing it's just to leave something better than with the way i found it and i think in this situation certainly with three million dollars coming back to the city in this budget cycle and you know i don't know what that means looking forward but if there's additional monies looking at how can we continue to provide ridership to people who currently right now don't have access to public transportation in this city how can we continue to provide better public transportation to people who do have access to public transportation in this city and however that looks and whatever contribution i can make uh i'm more than willing to do that so i appreciate the opportunity to number one share the data uh with with council and and mayor and mayor pro tem and i certainly can say this and i appreciate your service because i understand exactly what it entails and it doesn't matter whether everyone agrees or disagrees it still means that you all have a heart for denton and how you want to make it a better place than where you found it and and that's respectable and commendable and i certainly appreciate you being willing to serve so mayor with that i will stand down and thank you all for that and we will get that information back to you as quickly as we can and certainly don't hesitate to reach out if you have other questions awesome thank you very much appreciate time mayor watts and and have a good evening thanks for being with us evening thank you and uh rachel will that come back as well the the the grant information if you can just include that in the information we provide that just to have that kind of outlet and mayor that rachel's going to take those and we're going to get them over to dcta and then we'll take the questions and the answers and put them in a friday report back and then if there are more questions or other things we can council can let us know got okay thank you uh and so that leaves us i think we need i'm thinking 5 45 to break uh so so we'll take um i think um i think john can run through c uh really quick okay we just wanted to wait to make sure councilmember davis was here for this okay so i'll call that uh item c is uh id 211 750 receive a report hold discussion give staff direction regarding the proposal proposed indirect interactive fountain at the razor ranch property good afternoon i'm mayor hudspeth and council members my name is john whitmore i'm the park planning manager for the city but i'm also one of the liaisons to the public art committee for it today we're going to be talking about the proposed interactive fountain for the razor ranch property and this particular one was part of a one-minute pitch by councilmember davis and he'd asked originally that something that would commemorate the history of the land in the razor family uh something that would be interactive in nature incorporate some free play water play around it and then had some proposals about what kind of funding strategy we can have such as a public-private type of partnership for that as a part of that councilmember davis mentioned at least one the the spokane rotary fountain but he also mentioned a couple of other ones and one of those was catfish road park and this is in mississippi and this particular one has this very interesting type of carved uh things you can see in them in the pictures there there's carved catfish in there and this commemorates like what the razor ranch would be the history of the area being a landing for steamboats so it is in general it's very similar to the operations that we have but its original construction costs were five hundred thousand dollars in their yearly operating costs are around twenty thousand so it gives you a perspective on a smaller sized park for it now the specific one the park that councilmember davis mentioned was the riverside park rotary fountain and there's two pictures of that there's a daytime picture where you can see kids that are actively playing in the structures and then you have a nighttime one where they don't have kids allowed in it they actually have the sprays going up higher and it's not good for people to be in there so you can get this idea of there's two different sides of this there's artwork there's spray park there's all those things that are a part of it it was financed by public private partnership about eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars was donated by the rotary club uh in spokane and that was a pretty good portion of that overall if you did the construction costs today uh you'd see about two and a half million dollars it was originally one point two million they actually had a cost over another two hundred thousand so one point four uh million is what their actual costs were for that one and their yearly operating costs are twelve thousand and that's doesn't include utilities it's not tied into that particular facility so they don't really know how that all worked for it there's some pros and cons that when we met with the public art committee we had a subcommittee that worked with us and they did some things looking at the possibility of the public-private partnership but they saw things as definitely when we looked at the data that we collected for the park master plan which is still in process we saw that there was a tremendous community interest in spray grounds in the aquatic facilities in the top three as a matter of fact also there's support for public art initiatives in the city and that this particular type of project the public art committee thought would be a definite a destination type of a project for them to come to it they also saw some cons in that it's a very large fundraising effort it would be one of the largest public-private partnership amounts of money in considering that also they thought some of the other timing was some of the potential inclusive playground in fundraising let's say with the park foundation so one of they thought maybe it's something in the inclusive playground might have had a higher priority so they were back and forth a little bit there and also the operational costs for maintenance of a fountain tending the final design would be fairly high a location of razor ranch currently has only on just off street parking it doesn't have a parking lot that would actually be able to serve this so their other parking would be built in so some other structures infrastructure would have to be built in before it was actually a very place where a number of people can come and then prioritization over other capital improvement overall but their over their recommendation was that they thought that it would be a good type of project some type of an art project with that but they did have some of those other reservations so the next steps we will need some direction from council whether we continue along on this road proceed or not to proceed and then kind of prioritize the project funding because right now probably would take something closer to a bond issue to be able to do that and their recommendations that also had about hiring a consultant and maybe looking at the theme being coming from the community as instead of just the quote razor ranch and the longhorns and and that type of site with it and that concludes that great have any questions okay uh so uh if we could be uber concise to say whether you support it or not um the senates are two why uh otherwise we'll end up postponing if it gets i mean if it gets too long-winded uh due to the the 6 30 we have four or five proclamations so we can't start late councillor beck thank you mr mayor um in general i'm i'm supportive of this sort of thing i i take the cons that the the committee uh enunciate enumerated um i wondered if and this i i float not as a as a direction but as a suggestion that we do um maybe um a base goal a moderate goal and a and a stretch goal depending on how much uh you know not to take a page from go fund me but go fund me um and and have a uh our kickstarter kind of approach and so that we we could build a a public water art facility uh at at moderate um demand uh or you know small demand or big demand depending on and then have the the public art committee uh come back to us with these different levels that's that is that second one is merely suggestion i my direction is i would like to see something but before i could fully support it obviously the devil's in the details councillor burke uh yes sir i would support something like this i like the catfish road park type of uh splash park a larger one we do have a a toddler splash park here in town and it's very popular uh so i i would appreciate this i'm not just real sure of where exactly are we talking i know you say raise a ranch is this the the area where the all the apartment complexes are located or it's north of that area north of north of the area where all the apartments are north of uh it's uh is it north of uh it's very close to the the back end of the supermarket that's there oh that large area there closer to university okay because i spend time over in that area okay all right well that makes sense to me i think it'd be neat to have something on that side of town for uh you know a um a um destination uh type location so yeah i would support it thank you okay anyone else councilmember armature mayor pro tem okay yes so i uh like the this project um but uh because of you know limited resources and uh the uh the concerns that were raised um especially um you know concerns about uh conflict in uh you know fundraising or just uh concurrence rather in in fundraising uh between the fundraising plans for the inclusive uh playground um versus this you know i would be in favor of um uh prioritizing the inclusive playground uh in in terms of scheduling for and fundraising and kind of tabling this you know as a really good idea but then unfortunately because our resources are so limited um you know something that uh is maybe best not done uh right now you know unless uh unless funding changes okay uh mayor pro tem meltzer yeah uh i think you're you know what i was getting out of the presentation and i think what you're hearing some of the remarks is like liken the idea by seems like it's at a scale for what we can do especially given other priorities so i guess i'll just pose the question back not for you to answer now but how much is realistic and what could be done for that i don't frankly know how much there is for public art i know we didn't have a bond measure so that i would say is there is there a scale of this that could make sense and i'll just uh just throw in a somewhat unrelated comment the fetch sculpture the bellatrophy are really wonderful i'm looking forward to the sculpt uh the artwork honoring the women's interracial fellowship uh i think you guys are knocking out of the park so to speak councilor davis thank you mayor no i think the the committee and the council members have identified some good uh good things to keep in mind when you're taking on a project like this what i kind of throw out there because i don't think any of these challenges are necessarily insurmountable you know we've got about 100 parking spots there that serve the park uh some guest overflow from the apartments too but um also keep in mind another example we didn't talk about the shops at allen uh there's a splash pad out there where you take your kids and go shopping for the day and then when you're done you go get some ice cream and you play in the splash pad when you finish your day what i'd like to do and i certainly don't didn't intend for this project to jump the line especially when we're talking about really important projects like the inclusive park and other things the parks board are working on what i'd like to suggest is maybe we put a uh let's develop the vision with a goal of talking about a budget item that's in not this uh not next fiscal year but the one following let's figure out how much it's going to cost and give me a shot at raising some community money let's see how much is out there one of the reasons i suggested this particular location is we have some uh entrepreneurial family ties involved in that property we have some um some high value commercial properties in that area there's some folks uh in that area who may see this as an amenity to their commercial operation so i'd like to take a shot at let's set the vision let's figure out what we want it to look like out there let's find a way to honor the heritage of the site uh in a way that we can afford or at least that we think is attainable and then let's take a shot and see how much community money exists for the project before we worry too much about you know is the city going to be able to float its portion let's figure out what that portion would be before we decide it's an insurmountable roadblock or just a table of things completely so i guess for me that's a proceed let's figure out what our vision is get something on paper i think i'm hearing mostly uh along the scale of the catfish row kind of uh as opposed to the spokane big downtown kind of a sculpture thing let's get something get some ideas on paper uh then let me take a shot at raising some money councilor aguar thank you um i just want to concur with council member davis i think that um this is a fantastic idea um i i love spat splash pads my kids aren't quite old enough to like swim yet but man when it gets hot outside a splash pad is just perfect um and i i would be really interested to see yeah what what kind of funding um might come from the community um versus what kind of funding uh the the city might need to contribute and once we have a little bit more information about that then i think i'll i'll be more prepared to to give an answer about whether i think we should proceed but i would say proceed with gathering more information about funding sources uh so to conclude i'd like to know i'd have to know how much it's going to cost to proceed to to that level right and i'll tell you this is the thing that that has not been spoken but i think it's critical uh the uh southeast end community is the only one that has a splash pad currently and they are upset about the size of it and so they they feel like they were disenfranchised told a little that it was going to be more grand than it is uh so to then go fund something on the other side of town is is it's just a terrible visual uh in my estimation right uh and so i have to represent those interests and and and hear that community and hear those concerns and so it even it have to be some sort of dollar split for the for the uh to make that make sense or else the optics for me are are not good so that's that's my direction it's kind of i need to know what it's cost i take the the concerns about the parking it's a senior community community going in so and those streets are very narrow uh i think there's an opportunity maybe in mckinna park we we we abated the the playground area so there may be and there's more space over there more parking over there so i'm not against that area town but i think it just the optics of it are are pretty tough for me uh based on feedback from the from the community and just the it's almost like your it's it's the messaging isn't good for me so uh if you can bring in the numbers that'll be great miss city manager just i don't want anyone to panic when you see the numbers and the reason i say this is having been heavily engaged in spray pads in my past there will need to be a filtration system as part of a spray pad at this size and the other part of it is is when you build something like this they will come because this will be not just a site for the people around this area this will be some sort of a an attraction that everyone will and to the same point that the mayor brought up i would suggest highly suggest that if we do this that we literally think about what we're building here and i think it's a wonderful idea it's a great opportunity in the shops around it but we also need to take care of our community members in southeast denton beef that up and do it right okay thank you thank you very much great presentation uh so we uh my question is for staff item e is a one minute pitch can we can that be done i think we can do the presentation that's one minute and then the yeses or no another two minutes and we'll be eating until six thirty let's do it don't fast do it you done yet okay let me call it how about i do my part first i'm sorry item e which is id 2 1 1 2 7 3 receive porthole discussion give staff direction pending city council request for a work session to discuss direct and public art committee to explore a commissioning a statue of abner haynes to be installed on city property good afternoon mayor city council steward birdseye the assistant to the city manager i'm here today with our pending council request work session i will mention as we talked about today that in a couple meetings this will be updated to a two minute pitch but right now the requesting council member which is council member davis will have one minute to present his request and the remaining council members will have one minute to reply and indicate their support we will move forward with all requests where there is a consensus of council supporting it tonight's request is a work session to discuss directing the public art committee to explore commissioning a statue of abner hayes to be installed on city property it was made by council member davis the text of his request is there and then the staff information provided is that we can add this to the october public art committee agenda and then bring back that discussion those discussion points uh and kind of a path moving forward if council wishes fantastic council member davis as we pull it down uh go ahead mayor i don't have much to add to the text there just to highlight that there are a couple options that i think would be worthwhile for the public art committee to consider i highlighted mr haynes because he was born here in denton as well as planning for unt and then of course went on to an nfl career um but then mr king of course made a significant contribution and i don't think we should overlook the possibility of a partnership with unt if that becomes appropriate um i think again that's another public art project that doesn't have to be on the city's shoulders completely i think we can find some opportunities for community partnership and anytime we can find those public art subjects that i think we can leverage that community support um i think we should take those opportunities okay thank you uh so council lots councilor bet thank you mr mayor uh yeah i i can i support this um i i'd look forward to uh hearing uh potential avenues of of where we're installing it and and what kind of partnerships but i think this sounds like a good community-minded idea councilman burke i was supported thank you councilman reguer i support great everyone else can email staff thank you very much do it thank you that's four all right so it is 558 we'll take a break until we start our regular scheduled meeting at 6 30 thank you very much and welcome back to this meeting of the denton city council i'm sorry we had some technical issues up to now uh can it's 8 10 we're back on the record can everyone hear me okay that meets okay great okay then we'll start our 6 30 meeting it's set first thing on the agenda is the pledge to the united states and texas flag please stand with me if you're able 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 takes us to the consent agenda and we have our part right now we have completed the proclamations near the room takes us to the presentations from members of the public we have two scheduled and one caller so the first scheduled is i'll call it it's miss kim cloud regarding bedtime rescue program and uh it's item a i d two one one seven nine three and you'll have four minutes hello everyone thank you sorry for their problems tonight i understand that can be frustrating i uh left everyone a little pamphlet i'm kim cloud um founder of cloud nine uh charities and we started uh established our non-profit back in 2007 and at that time we did events where we raised money uh through different events and we through a grant process helped other non-profits do what they do but in 2012 i saw a 60 minutes television show where they were talking about homeless children that were in different public schools and so i started doing research and solve it we had a huge problem with that in my area closer to my home which was lizville and we decided to start operating a program called bedtime rescue where we were the phone call that was made to us to get the family that was homeless and in crisis off of the street quickly and into a hotel and so for several years most of the families that we helped were in luisville but over the past several years because of non-profits like united way denton county and uh communities and schools more and more denton families have found out about us we get phone calls from the school a school counselor police station churches or these non-profits and so in our last board meeting i was surprised to see that we have helped 205 families so far this year and 160 of those are in denton and so our switch has greatly gone from luisville to denton we use two hotels the hotel that we use in denton is studio six and the hotel that we use in luisville is motel six and we get a phone call within an hour we can have the family out of the car off the street we do tend to help families because we feel like this is an area of crisis that's happening more and more we want the children of course to get off the street and be in a safe place we've been called a band-aid that doesn't hurt our feelings we are um designed to get them into the hotel quickly for a week or two while they make a long-term plan sometimes that can be extended how we help those people are two different events that we do every year a golf tournament and the best little brew fest in texas our brew fest is in luisville and old town we take over the streets we have several thousand people there and we use those funds along with our golf tournament funds every year to help as many families as we can i'm bringing this to your attention because i feel like many of you don't know about cloud nine charities and probably don't know about bedtime rescue so mainly just awareness but also to let the public know that we need help to do brew fest we need volunteers sponsors and other people that help us make that event successful so that we can help as many families as possible they also need help from the mayor and the council and just knowing what we do uh letting police stations know churches and other uh organizations and non-profits help us to help more families and also of course when we do a grant process with you hopefully you'll remember a little bit more about cloud nine charities and bedtime rescue um wanted to thank you for allowing me to be here but wanted to see if you had any specific question do do we have any questions okay great well thank you very oh yeah councilman vett briefly yeah thank you mr mayor um just can you can you say your your website we have it on your pamphlet but for the public can you say your website uh so they can get a hold of you we're cloud nine charities dot org number nine so cloud nine charities dot org you can also find out about best little brew fest in texas we have our own website there best little brew fest in texas.com you can follow us on facebook uh you'll see we also do things like amazon smile and work with the local grocery stores to help feedback there too but we never have had to say no to our family we never want to but with the numbers increasing like this i mean you can see where the need is getting greater and greater especially with what's happening in our world right now so if we're at 205 families we're expecting to probably help four to five hundred this year thank you so much thank you thank you very much for your presentation okay the next uh scheduled uh is item b it's id 212029 mr patrick and i'm going to say this wrong uh commits regarding our agricultural use of property and permitting of improvements at 6501 shallow road and 6505 shallow road may i speak with my mask down or do i need it up if you could leave it up that'd be great okay sorry so good evening ladies and gentlemen my name is patrick comiskey and i'm here today regarding agricultural use and permitting of improvements at my family farm located at 6501 and 6505 shallow road and then i provided a slide deck for those in person and i emailed to those who are not here in person uh if you reference slide two and then slide three my family bought two adjoining properties on shallow road in october of 2020 to fulfill our dream to establish a small family-owned organic farm and homestead that would be beautiful functional and would add value to our neighborhood and community our property is zoned as residential rural 6501 is annexed into the city of dentin 6505 is an extraterritorial jurisdiction or etj property with a valid non-annexation agreement or naa enforced through 2040 and has had an established and long-standing agricultural exemption with dentin central appraisal district dcad as with other dentin etj property owners reference the chapman family presentation to dentin city council on february 2nd of 2021 our family was told prior to closing in october of 2020 that no platting was required that permitting would go through dentin county and that our home and agricultural plan was sound and in accordance with our non-annexation agreement when our family began pursuing permits in january of 2021 through dentin county the county subsequently advised us that per the city county permits would not be issued and instead permitting would go through the city of dentin development services simultaneously the city that is dentin development services advised that our plan to place a new modular home on our etj property and then later build a new larger home in the future would not now be permitted reference slide four the county then rejected our modular home permit request deferring to the city and violating previous procedures as the chapman family previously detailed to this council the city contended that because of city regulations a home could not be placed on 6505 and a larger home built later because of this our modular home contract had to be cancelled after deposit had already been made all our house plans then had to be scrapped and put on hold based on the city's action depending further resolution and currently in beginning to set up our farming and livestock activities we needed to begin securing the property with a perimeter fence around 6501 and 6505 to contain goats and sheep we submitted a fence permit request through the city of dentin in april of 2021 as of this hearing and now after almost six months the fence permit still has not been approved by dentin development services so no fence can be built and our livestock cannot be brought on the property the dentin central appraisal district dcad has since notified us that since no livestock are on our property our property's agricultural exemption cannot be granted again this is due to the city's inaction in not permitting our fence in a timely manner this will cost our family several thousand dollars extra in property taxes if the situation is not remedied by the city on slide five i've detailed section three of our naa a legal document which the city is currently in violation of and has been since january of 2021 on slides six and seven i provided details of the timeline for how the city has created inexplicable delays has consistently refused to answer our questions and has otherwise stonewalled our efforts to make progress on our family farm all while remaining in violation of our naa on slide eight you will see my proposed resolution in february 2021 the chapman family who spoke to this council and who experienced similar issues and inexplicable delays received an agreeable resolution i again renew my reasonable request that i'd be given a similar agreement to the chaplain chaplain family so that i may build my house and make my future agricultural improvements on my etj property and not be required to obtain building permits through the city with the understanding that we will hire third-party inspectors and not pursue any damages to the city for the over one hundred thousand dollars lost because of unnecessary and improper city delays and inaction we have already lost over six months of time and had to change our farm and house plant significantly and incurred much money lost in costs because the city and i cannot afford to begin a new project and be delayed and incur more expenses that that's your time so sorry you can you can just sum up but just uh just a few like 30 seconds of stuff in summary i'm deeply disappointed in the inaction and continued broken promises from dentin development services and the fact that my repeated request for response and reasonable resolution have gone unanswered as a 22-year military veteran and retiree and a 14-year federal employee i've spent my entire life in public service i know good government and bad government and this is not good government development services has repeatedly and knowingly violated our rights as citizens violated illegally binding naa ignored repeated requests from us for response and resolution despite being aware of their improper action wasted countless hours of my time in the city's time and properly cost my family well over $100,000 in additional building costs and material costs for my family farm and put my family's agricultural exemption in jeopardy i honestly ask these actions exemplify the city's core values of integrity fiscal responsibility outstanding customer service and transparency so i please ask this council for your help i please ask that you would require development services to resolve our request to our benefit as they did with the chapman family please honor our non-annexation agreement and do not allow development services to continue to interfere with our rights to lawfully thank you thank you all right questions councillor dayes thank you mayor this is a question for staff and the city attorney if we could get um maybe a legal status on this particular situation and an update from the staff perspective so we can kind of be clued into what's been going on so far with this family okay and is there anything you want to share this evening i guess we can't nevermind i answered my own question any other questions for set for the for this week okay councilor i'll return break to shorten to the point with the question please sorry can you repeat that mayor yes i need you to be brief and and asking your question sure uh i just wanted um to thank patrick for for coming speaking to us uh and uh uh to say that you know i have really enjoyed our conversations i thought we were getting somewhere when we had that meeting uh with staff at the development services building i had really appreciated us is it is it a question no i just wanted to just just say that my heart goes out to you and your family i hope it comes to a resolution i am following also in response to council member davis there was a a recent staff report but it just came out i think today or yesterday yeah i might not have gotten a chance to to read it i understand but it's it's long okay mayor and council members uh legal staff report came to you yesterday um and so that should give you background information and explain why our staff and development services has made the decisions that they made i do stand behind development services decisions okay any other questions councilor vitt yeah mr kaminsky i i don't i don't seem to have the documents that you said you sent the slides okay okay uh all right um i provided nine copies so i i believe there should be if staff has a copy i'll get a copy thank you yeah okay any other questions thank you great okay thank you very much i appreciate your time today okay so we have one caller hi mayor yes we have one caller josh hatton he'll be on in just one second please thank you josh if you're there you may need to unmute yourself but you should be live josh you there what is it star six to unmute hello hello yes if you can give your name and address you'll have four minutes all right thank you my name is joshua hatton and my address is 1414 auburn drive in denton thank you to miss willborn uh to steward and to rachel the denton city workers who have facilitated my participation in tonight's unusual meeting i'm an organizer of the no bus cuts and campaign which has a committee of 17 people from 10 different labor unions and can be found at no bus cuts denton on facebook and twitter we oppose dcta's plan to cut bus routes in denton and lewisville after december 6th and our petition on change.org lists more than 750 people who agree with us we call on denton city council to remove if a pointy chris watz from the dcta board of directors immediately he should be removed immediately because it has been come clear he simply can't be trusted he can't be trusted to do what the people of denton to the city council instruct him to do council member jesse davis once said quote this council speaks with one voice when it votes on an item before it end quote well chris watz ignored your voice at the july 22nd meeting with the dcta board of directors although denton city council had passed a resolution that dcta should maintain its bus routes for six months chris watz argued at the july dcta board meeting that the bus routes should be maintained for only three months and earlier today at the city council work session he stated plainly that he thinks that it is not his role to follow the instructions of denton city council as its appointee to the dcta board of directors we also know that chris watz can't be trusted to govern the dcta's operations shortages of drivers supervisors and executives are affecting the quality of its bus services dcta currently admits on its website that quote some routes will have reduced operation due to bus operator shortage end quote additionally the resignations of the number two three and four executives at dcta were announced at the july board meeting finally it's clear that chris watz can't be trusted to keep dcta from being a revolving door for executives between the public agency and its corporate contractors under his chairmanship dcta has become a breeding ground for conflicts of interest for example one of the dcta executives who resigned last month is nicole wrecker his wrecker was dcta's point person for negotiating the details of its contract with the via corporation for the go-zone minivan ride service which received final approval from the dcta board of directors at the july board meeting ms wrecker resigned shortly thereafter and less than a month later started working for the via corporation another dcta executive who resigned last month is christina holcomb who now works for a pump which has also been a contractor for dcta chris watz can't be trusted and should be removed from the dcta board of directors immediately okay is that everything yes great thank you very much have a great evening okay thank you uh and so that takes us to our next item which is the consent agenda uh everything but ae was so only ae was pulled for a brief presentation i'll take a motion counselor beck i make a motion to approve the consent agenda minus item ae okay sir second councilmember maguire i second thank you sir motion by councilmember beck second by councilmember maguire any discussion okay um seeing none uh councilmember beck how say you aye councilmember maguire aye councilmember bird aye mayor putin melzer aye councilmember davis aye councilmember armater yes mayor hutspeth is a i as well that passes seven zero okay that'll then i'll call item ae for a brief presentation it's ae id 211953 consider adoption of ordinance of the city of denton authorizing the city manager to execute a new listing agreement with access realty group of denton inc and denton chamber of commerce for sale of certain property and approve and and improvements uh comprised of 0.449 acre tract good evening mayor council scott mcdonnell director of development services just wanted to provide a brief overview i i understand there are some questions related to this item um the materials are in the backup and uh council members should have that but ultimately what this is is just to extend the listing we have the broker and the chamber here as well if there's any questions sienna cody can certainly clarify um where we're at address the history or any of those respective questions just the important piece to this is is that it expires at the end of this month um there's been very limited traffic and what we're trying to do is just make sure that we continue the listing um certainly council can elect not to um lower the listing price but we can address that as necessary but ultimately staff's recommending to to lower the listing price and and to recommend the extension okay thank you very much and so just to so i'll move approval is there a second and then we'll have discussion is there a second council member thank you very much councilor armature briefly please yes uh so i i don't recall uh council deciding you know on a point at which uh this would not be uh you know worthwhile sale for us um can someone remind me if uh if there was a kind of price point decided on that i'm not remembering good afternoon mayor council diana cody deputy director real estate uh miss armature if i heard you correctly you said you don't recall hearing council make a decision on the sale price is that what you said yeah kind of at a point at which you know if if we can't get an offer for any uh uh you know for for this amount you know kind of setting a bar uh by which uh it becomes not worthwhile the sale becomes not worthwhile and i i don't recall setting a bar you have not you have not set a bar that is correct well let me know but i would i'm in there if i may um no just one second please i need to i need to frame the discussion it's we're starting two hours late and we're not gonna i'm not gonna i'm gonna have very little patience because we need to to focus in the the cost is not the issue this evening the the issue is to extend the contract with the with the realty group so the cost will come back to us if there's a proposal tonight we're discussing extending the agreement or not period okay so my understanding and thank you for clarifying that it was my understanding that it came with a drop about a 20 drop in the listing price and that that we were voting on as part of the consent agenda no this is yes this is strictly to extend the agreement with access really the group to sell it well it it does include um access is recommendation to decrease the list price but council does not have to elect to do that this evening what we need to do is uh what we're requesting is that there be an extension of the listing agreement that expires in just over a week okay so what so what i would i would like to uh you know request an amendment to the motion of approval uh that we um make no um that that what we're voting on uh does not incorporate that recommendation of dropping and listing price and that we uh wait until we can have we can meet as a council to discuss uh the price our options right i i don't accept the amendment but we will go ahead and vote and you can vote uh accordingly it just it's not needed it's duplicative because well fact just mentioned the numbers will come back it's it's a but she's but but as i understand no no but we should be careful um i just want to be clear if that recommendation is a part of what we're voting on right i don't want i just want to make be clear that i don't want it to come back to us and and feel that we've been rushed you know into dropping our uh selling price or you know uh committing to continue to have this on the market um at a certain price just because on this in a hurry if you could briefly i mean it's it's almost nine o'clock and we're we're not to the regular meeting we're gonna we're gonna move it along so if you can briefly give an explanation of so that everyone can understand we're not i'm not gonna banner back and forth with you i'm just gonna ask you to explain it we're gonna vote and people can vote accordingly yes just very briefly we are requesting the extension for six months with access and the reduction at this point is being requested based on access recommendation because of the lack of interest that has been received in the property it's been very little interest staff will bring back to the full council whether in closed session or in open session any offers that may be received so council will have an opportunity to review and discuss um in the future any any offers that are received great okay any other question drop in listing price is that correct i'm sorry i didn't hear the question but the vote includes the drop in listing price it does yes yes thank you okay so i will be voting no to this i'm sorry no problem no no no need to explain okay any other questions seeing none i have a motion by myself second by council member bird uh i'm an aye council member aye council member bet aye but i don't want this rough shot over process to continue mr mayor well look it is almost nine o'clock it's it's very clear the decision before us there's no reason to repeat the question repeatedly you everyone has an opportunity to vote if you do not like what's presented in front of you then you have that opportunity to vote no but there's no need for us to talk to each other at the dais and try to prolong be inevitable council member maguire no council member aye council member melton melter aye council member armater no one two five two i believe yes that passes five two okay that completes our consent agenda access to our items for individual consideration first thing is item a which is id 211825 consider adoption of an ordinance the city of denton texas home rule municipal corporation extending an effective period to declare a state of local disaster related to covet 19 we let me make sure but mayor i believe we we because we did not have a full discussion on this or or consensus we postponed this till if i'm not mistaken we postpone this item so we're not going to have the vote okay is that correct say that again so did we postpone this item for a vote it was staff's recommendation that this item will only be postponed if there will be substantive changes okay and there aren't going to be we received that direction from council okay so there were not any substantial changes okay okay so i've called it uh so is there it's just based on our earlier conversation during the work session right that's correct we do not have a separate presentation for this one but i'm happy to stand for questions got it any questions for staff councillor maguire sorry this was not not a question but i was going to move approval of the the order and the the ordinance okay is there a second councillor beck i second thank you council motion by council member maguire second by council member beck discussion seeing them councillor maguire how say you aye council member beck aye council member bird aye council mayor pertin melter aye council member davis now mayor hudspeth is a no as well and councillor armater yes that passes five to two it takes us to item b thank you chris takes us to item b which is id 211875 consider adoption of ordinance of the city of denton texas a home rule municipal corporation authorizing the city manage ex-duty contract with classic chevrolet good evening mayor members of council terry cater fleet superintendent the item before us is a light duty vehicle contract to purchase uh a number of light duty vehicles for the city fleet over the next several years it's a multi-year contract and just a little background we we currently have had contracts with james wood the local vendor for purchasing light duty vehicles the most recent contract the most recent contract expired in may and so we typically purchase 35 units annually on the contract over that five-year period we purchased approximately 100 vehicles from the previous contract here's some examples of the light duty fleet they're basically sedans light duty trucks up to one ton police vehicles and support vehicles for a citywide fleet the advantages of a contract is to satisfy the procurement requirements also to speed up the procurement process so that we could give vehicles and fleet to our customers this particular contract includes discounts for parts and repair it also includes police patrol vehicles which the previous contract was separate and of course we want to standardize the fleet to create efficiencies and parts and training and and this contract will include all available gm platforms in the light duty line new as new platforms come out they'll be added to the contract this is a multi-year contract does include discounts on parts and labor and we participate up to 40 vehicles purchased annually with this contract here's just a quick list of the planned replacements for this next fiscal year there's about 23 vehicles on there these are just replacements and the criteria we use when we replace vehicles basically life in years miles and then maintenance points and so we have a system that calculates all this for us and tells us when we need to start taking a look at vehicle replacements with that i'll entertain any questions any questions for mayor for tim melzer well sorry to get this these questions to you in advance but uh ordinarily with uh any kind of large size uh contracts hear a little bit about the bid process is there anything you can share how many bidders you know just uh sure the the contract was sent out to several bidders and this particular contract only had one bid and that was from classic chevrolet and grapevine classic is one of the largest volume dealers in the metroplex and i'm not sure of the reasons why the current vendor didn't bid or other gm vendors did not bid i'm just not sure why i think the current uh climate with the vehicles and the chip shortage might have had something to do that because the timing for oems was a little bit off right now any other council member beck and councillor nabar thank you mr mayor um so you know in the description we see electric vehicles and and in the slide four or five it says electric vehicles but considering that almost every manufacturer is in the process of converting their fleet sales over to and clients like us to electric vehicles but i didn't see any in the final table were those all regular guests or or that's open for us to purchase that is the list of vehicles that are eligible to be replaced the replacements for those have not been chosen yet that would be done by committee and certainly electric vehicle platforms will be a part of that selection process so that that's still to be determined right thank you very much that's required uh council member beck already covered my question thank you okay any other question councilor armater and then councillor berg yeah this is actually a process question um i just heard um that from a couple members of the public that this is not being broadcast live is that true that we're not broadcast live right now on dtv because of the technical difficulties yeah staff's watching it in the back and there's they see it online right i don't know i know we have we're gonna check we're gonna check councilmember armature we are not going to be broadcast live we are recording this to be posted on the internet tomorrow but right now we do not have the capability to broadcast live as we are okay so yeah i want to mention and i don't know when the appropriate time is for me to do this but having just you know learn this uh i think that we should limit our uh actions today to uh you know only time sensitive actions that need to be taken not today you know especially for the in the case of the public hearings you know where people plan on uh listening in and uh possibly calling in it's it's hard to you know part for the public to participate if they can't hear what's going on okay so we'll take that up after this item we're going to call this item we need to complete it any questions for seph i just have one question there are we already prepared to does the city have electric uh stations for these anticipated vehicles they're coming in several charging stations in place now and they're adding more um as we move along there are some planned stations to be put into parking lots with my understanding and um as we add vehicles to the fleet those locations will need to be determined and we'll have to add charging systems for those electric vehicles yes ma'am okay and council member bird i've asked staff to work on a five-year plan for electric vehicles and for not only the vehicle purchasing but also in equipment whether it's mowing weeding blowing also looking at charging stations not only for city facilities but for public locations excellent i know that there's some at the walmart on university i'm not sure if that's the only location here in the city but yeah they're working on a plan so they'll be bringing that back thank you very much okay i move that we accept the uh presentation that's presented i second uh the adoption of the contract mayor pardon the interruption sir oh yes you're muted but now you fixed it thank you sorry so okay motion by council member bird second by council member guire um council member bird how say you aye council member mcguire aye council member pet aye thank you i'm a no i i think it requires diligence to see you know why there aren't competitors let me know thank you council member armature no council member davis aye mayor hutzpah is a i as well that passes five two okay uh so discussion uh around how to proceed um obviously the budget has to be done tonight so i'll open the floor for discussion on how to proceed um council member maguire um could we in addition to recording the meeting to be posted at a later time could we also um do like a facebook live just on somebody's phone or ipad who wants to come down and field questions thank you just so you know we only have it's a good thought uh we've not tested that before the immediate concerns i have are with audio quality and whether we would capture be able to capture the podium and all the council members and also capture anyone uh within the room if they don't happen to be in near enough range for that to go through i don't know that that's something that we could implement tonight without trying to test it and it might take a considerable amount of additional time just trying to make that work yeah thank you and i just want to say this before i call on the next person i'm trying to be sensitive to the issue i share that concern we are recording it we would post it people are welcome to call i think we could even come up with a way to post on facebook what's going on so people can call in on a public item but i'll tell you this we live in a city where the with a school board doesn't record their meetings at all and and doesn't live broadcast either and so uh i understand the concern but it's um to to postpone this many items really uh it would be difficult for me to get there but obviously i'm going to make it'll be a majority decision but i i'll just say that the school dentin school board that had takes a dollar 10 per 100 doesn't record their videos and it's never been a problem for anyone on this dais that i've heard i raise it regularly because i think it's noteworthy but i i say that to say they conduct business um in that environment i think it's not of our making but i think to delay this many items is it's just really problematic for me to get there but it's not a it's not a unilateral decision i'm just i need to hear from everyone else on i just need to hear guidance i mean we don't we don't have to banter it about we don't have to convince each other i just need to know where each of us stand so that we can give staff direction so yes sir as you mentioned it i will say that we have posted that we are not able to broadcast on our social media and we do have a crawl going across uh our website dtv source the source where the agenda is we're not able to do that we do have it on one of our stream sources a crawl across the screen saying we are not uh able to broadcast at this time okay thank you so i just need to hit may protein i i'm uh real wait this says i'm muted are you hearing me now yes okay um i i don't like it uh i mean at all um but it's a question of the expectations that have been said i mean i you know i can't do anything about what disd does but uh i don't i don't think it i don't think it's a good look i mean the two biggest things we really do is tax rate and budget i would like to understand uh the time sensitivity what would happen if we did put in a special call meeting somewhere it doesn't make me feel good even saying it but um you know i just the situation i just think i think so if i want to let me capture the the majority understanding and then we can drill down into the details on how to move i just want to segment it and so i take your point that you're not comfortable moving forward and so that's fair thank you others counselor armature yeah so uh one really important difference um between us and dis is that no no no no no no no no you know you have cut me off too many times this meeting please allow me to absolutely pertinent this is a member aren't you don't need to correct me you don't have to feel the need to correct me i understand you disagree noted now if you could let me let me speak mr mayor we're gonna be isd does not allow call in a minute break for a point of order they do not allow call it back at 906 we allow call ins that's a crucial difference okay we'll be back thank you billy have you um taking a super and welcome back to this meeting of the denton city council it is 908 and we're back on the record discussing how to proceed in the absence of streaming uh live and so i need to ask the the next steps are determined by the direction we give i'm trying to get direction on this very basic principle of do we proceed with the must-haves or do we proceed with everything i have mayor pro tem saying not to proceed i have councilman maguire that i'm not sure i just need to get direction on how we proceed then we can talk about the items that are mandatory if we're going to truncate the agenda but we can't talk about that until we give staff some direction or get some general guidelines nailed down so there'll be plenty of opportunity to opine about everything you want to once we figure out where we're going councilman burke uh mr mayor i suggest that we proceed with everything okay councilmember davis there my preference is to do as much as possible live streaming and not not just recording i i'm not 100 clear on the implications for the budget and tax rate item and whether we have an opportunity to take those up next week as long as the budget passes before the tax rate or if those absolutely have to be completed tonight councilmember bar um i before i provide my direction i would like to get staff's input on what would happen if we postponed the budget the tax rate the the utility rates until next week what are the implications of that because i i can't make a decision until i understand what we're deciding david just in the in the fewest words possible just on the budget tax rating budget has to be passed by midnight tonight because by state law you have to adopt your tax rate seven days at most seven days after your public hearing we had our public hearing last week if we do not call it so they know new revenue rate thank you okay so to clarify we need to pass a tax rate tonight but other items can be postponed well well david david let me let councilmember bar if you can note your questions david if you can take a note for those and and we'll come back to him this is exactly because we end up down this rabbit hole of how i understand i i don't know what to tell you i tried to explain as best i could that we we need to understand there's a there's four or five things that are triggered based on this first conversation first things first we have to decide if there's a majority that wants to if there's a majority that wants to proceed with the agenda then your question is moot is the is what i'm trying to guide you towards to understand so just trying to understand if there's a majority consensus before we make that this is i understand i understand you're undecided point of order who am i missing which state your point of order state your point of order uh that she needs that question answered in order to give her direction so i i believe that she was not fully allowed uh to have her say and i believe that roberts rules says that you know every council member should be allowed to speak without getting cut off unnecessarily i was also cut off unnecessarily before this break miss city manager i mean city attorney could you correct me from wrong but i think council member mcguire had stopped talking when i started talking the best i can tell i will admit that i don't have perfect recollection as to whether she had finished talking my recollection was that she asked a question that she did not receive an answer to correct the mayor stopped david from answering my question so miss city attorney do i not do i have the opportunity to acknowledge the the speakers is that in my purview you do okay so and then and then and then i'll also ask did i not ask for uh the the assistant city manager to note all the questions so the note the questions could be noted and we could come back to those that's my recollection i believe that is correct okay so if the questions were there's an opportunity for the questions to be noted and we would address those after the fact yes okay so council member armature any direction for you please my direction is that we only vote on the tax rate if that's the only thing that is absolutely time sensitive postpone everything else if that is not the will of this council uh i i will be walking out anyway democracy in the darkness is not democracy i haven't had time to check this on texas um open meetings act so it might not be a violation of the texas open meetings act but it is definitely a violation of the spirit of open meetings and the difference with your mayor between this and disd is that disd uh does not have phone in comments okay we have phone in comments disd everybody who's participating has to be there in person so we have people who were counting on participating in our democracy virtually they cannot do that if they're just calling in and they can't even hear what we're talking about okay so and for the record we have two callers already this evening just to note that for those that will watch this later council member bett direction from you am i going to be allowed to ask questions mr mayor certainly staff will note those and if you could lead with your direction on how to proceed that'd be great i i can't give directions until after my questions are answered okay so then i'm going to call the next item and the the council can govern themselves accordingly um and so i'll start with the budget i'll fast forward to the budget item since we know that has to be done what item is that patsy can you give me some direction on where that is 21 1986 six okay got it okay okay so i call i call that it's uh it's item id right yeah id 2 1 1 9 8 6 consider adoption of the ordinance of the city of vinton texas adopting fiscal year 2021 2022 annual program of services budget and capital improvement program on the city of vinton texas for fiscal year beginning october 1 2021 and ending september 30 2022 declaring an effective date good evening mayor city council cassi augden director of finance i'm here to give you a brief presentation regarding the budget adoption none of this should be new information we've been reviewing this since may so just by way of objectives we're going to quickly review the revenues and expenses for general fund the supplemental packages the proposed capital improvement plan total expenses and they go through any questions that you may have so just a reminder of all the different types of revenue the general fund receives our largest being property tax and sales tax and then we have other different fines fees return on investments franchise fees things like that expenditures by different category the majority of our expenses in the general fund are personnel services and then we do have materials and supplies maintenance operations and then you can see the the gray is our supplemental packages that are being proposed in the budget so last week i did receive direction to proceed with the what we are calling the wage inflation rate of 57 cents so you can see that gives us 151 million in general fund revenue with expenses of 147 million leaving 3.6 million of available funding that does not account for supplemental the supplemental requests that are that are being proposed and so just to quickly review those we have ranked them for council's approval so we've the council initiated requests of 130 000 along with the sustainability fund contribution of a total of 1.2 billion you can see it on the second line and then next to the last line and then all of the position requests that are being requested from the departments that we've reviewed in previous meetings happy to ask answer any questions regarding those requests and then just a reminder on the capital improvement program we are planning for a total of 246 million of new funding and you can see the the breakout between general government electric water wastewater and solid waste and that co issuance for the total five-year program is 146 million so we're asking for a budget adoption tonight of 1.4 billion dollars um between general fund all of our utility funds including electric water wastewater solid waste 1.2 million of our sustainability framework funds our street improvement fund grant programs and internal service funds and with that i'll take any questions okay uh first i'm gonna make a motion that we move approval of the no new revenue rate which is at the 56 cents in accordance with that would line it up with the budget amount from last year and it would be prevent us from raising taxes uh and it would also fall in line with the direction i've been given uh i believe from the community that has asked us not to raise their taxes and so i want to lower it to the lowest possible rate and provide funds for the upcoming year and not sequester funds that i don't believe will be spent so that is it's against um okay and so uh but that that then it's the same the number i guess the question is is the number 1.4 million um so at 56 question at 56 cents at the no new revenue rate um we would reduce the amount to the sustainability fund by nine hundred thousand dollars right it would be nine hundred thousand dollars less yes and so three hundred thousand dollars to the sustainability fund that's right so that's that's the purpose for a given indication that i just wanted to be clear what i was moving so it would reduce it to 1.3 million some change i guess i have a slide that will show the supplemental packages that would be included in the no new revenue rate so up to the line um the top line is what could be included so one through six of the no new revenue rate and then the items below the line would not would be included if council adopted the wage inflation rate got it okay yeah so that's that's the motion we have uh councilman councilman bett just left and that we don't have four here at the desk so we'll be in break until he returns or we'll cancel the meeting and staff can prepare those contingencies my apologies to those that are waiting with projects so at 9 22 we'll be in recess until we have a quorum or until i'm told we we should cancel the meeting mayor thank you kathryn what's the process forgive me the city attorney what's the process to table when i've called six eight just to table it right just move to table okay um so before i do that i want to get a second so that we can hold this table it if there is one and then pick it back up i just want to get some ground rules clarified and i don't want to do it while this is pending so let me there's an issue with the motion if i can okay then then we'll just table it staff will pick back up and we'll go from there right great so we'll just queue it back up in a minute right so i'll table six a there was issue with the motion so nothing there so nothing on the floor david you have the floor so just to try to set the stage a little bit for the two items the the budget item and the tax rate item so in some of this is just state law the way the budget item has to be voted on before the tax rate item as we've talked about previously the tax rate item must be approved tonight the budget item must also be approved tonight if you want to go above the no new revenue rate based on the most recent legislative session you have to have five votes the super majority to pass any tax rate above the no new revenue rate so it is disjointed you have the budget first and the tax rate but they are tied together so your first action on this item would be to adopt the budget now we can make that simple if you if you go with the with a tax rate framing you could easily say we want to adopt the budget at the no new revenue rate based with the supplementals we saw we want to adopt adopt the budget at the 3.1 percent wage wage inflation rate which is what is in the backup right now we can adjust the resolution very easily or the ordinance very easily to get to that point we just want to make sure i kind of bring those two items for you that they are in tandem and you're going to need a super majority to vote above the no new revenue rate okay now um if you could stay david thank you um so it's not going to be and we'll just go until right but let's we're gonna we'll cue the questions so councilmember armature what questions you have uh if any that that's where i left off and then i'll come back so let's go councilmember armature councilmember maguire and then councilmember beck all the questions about the agenda and how to proceed okay great councilmember maguire um i i believe that david just answered my question regarding what must be passed tonight and that was items a and b in that order correct all right then i would like to um uh pass items a and b and postpone the rest until a later date and if i may that's that's not correct and that's the confusion i was trying to avoid miss city manager can you explain the other item please um councilmember maguire we do have one public hearing that if the if it's the will of council um that is item b which is a um julie wyatt has this it's a um rezoning that would need to be conducted tonight with the others one has already been postponed we could push off but there is one other item we asked that it be held tonight and then david one so items c and d right after a and b the procedural they're going to go a lot but they have to be approved as well and just on the fees and rates i would just say we there's no reasons that surely we have to approve those tonight it would be disjointed to some degree to approve you're approving the expenses for the utilities today you would be doing the revenue for that next week that's council could decide to do that but that would just be the timing would be disjointed on that okay can someone can someone put all those together again this is what i was trying to avoid if someone could succinctly lay out so it's a b and this is let's just call it what it is so this is um budget items for consideration a and b and then you mentioned c and d right right after that yeah and and then you mentioned miss city manager yes this would be under public hearings seven b is in boy seven b so it's those five things all right thank you so much for the clarity staff um i my direction is i would like to move forward with voting on all of the budget items for individual consideration and public hearing b thank you on the other because we got it counseling back your questions this is the uh the issue that i had i was trying to to get and david for the most part answered what we had limitations on um i will say that the other issue was to try to understand what are the limitations on public transparency and process that a super majority of council had issues with uh and how to best address those uh democratically and transparently that that discussion was not allowed to be held until just maybe not even now um my my direction is um for those items that that david that mr gains uh enumerated that that must be held tonight then then i concur with holding them there with me um so this city attorney there's not a clear consensus um unless well let me let me clarify mr pro tem are you i'm i'm uh i said what david told us okay thank you so that's okay um we don't have a we have three that have said in line with david and so is there someone else who that jumps over or um we're at three three counselor davis thank you mayor yeah i just had needed more clarification before i was ready to get really give direction i'm i'm fine proceeding on uh budget items for individual consideration you got section six and then item seven b perfect okay that's the majority um and so i will call oh better said pass if you can start over i'll pick up six a on the uh id 211986 and you you completed your presentation or did you still have more to do my apologies i did show the wrong slide last time for your question um so just wanted to to clarify the no new revenue rate so the difference between the wage inflation rates of the 57 cents and the no new revenue rate of 56 and a half cents um you can see the difference in the supplementals that would be um would be able to be funded because essentially the tax rate determines what we can fund in the budget um but if council decides tonight to um adopt the no new revenue rate instead of the wage inflation rate we could bring the those remaining supplementals back in march for reconsideration um okay sorry just wanted to clarify that so then where i left off so and using david's terminology i would adopt the the budget at the no new uh no new revenue rate is my motion and um is there a second councilmember davis i'll second motion and a second at the no new revenue rate for the budget adoption which is item 6a discussion mayor pro tem as stated does the revenue associated with the tenaska deal another in other words not other you know existing property tax revenue but it's the revenue associated with the tenaska deal incorporated in uh that budget with the no new revenue rate yes that would only be the three hundred thousand dollars though for the sustainability fund because if you call with the wage inflation rate we were going to fund 1.2 million of the sustainability fund of the total 1.5 million of revenue so three hundred thousand dollars would go to the general fund towards the supplemental packages and the remaining 1.2 would go towards the sustainability fund uh so let me just share kind of how i'm thinking about it and uh you know maybe you can uh help me respond to the motion so i i've uh on the rate uh you know if i felt there was a very compelling case to raise tax bills for you know major needed capability or fund basic operations someday surely there will be you know i would make that case to the residents i wouldn't try to hide it by talking about the rate but you know i'm persuaded that sales tax coming in stronger than expected revenue from new growth strong significant opportunities to see down the road uh for additional revenue for sustainability and other things don't require increasing residential tax bills right now you know i'm inclined to support the no new revenue rate however um my preference would be that uh we not allocate revenue at this point associated with the tenaska deal i mean more specifically you know the tenaska deal was presented to council with a raft of potential sustainability projects and i understand some people don't you know feel comfortable the fact that they're not scoped yet so that's fine uh set it aside we haven't received that money yet anyway so my inclination is you know just don't incorporate that in the budget yet when it comes you know the work that needs to be done now is scoping out those projects so we can make that determination but you know those were presented together and belong together sustainability is a cornerstone it's our sustainable competitive advantage it's the only economic development activity we've done that leads people to come to us to write checks to us it's not about having a big fun sit there in case we want to write checks to someone else they're bringing us the checks so i think investing in sustainability is is uh very smart for economic development so that that's that's you know what where i want to end up is no new revenue rate but don't incorporate at this point don't allocate the uh prospective tenaska revenues councilman back thank you mr mayor um so the problem we have here is we're being presented with um with a package deal when we were discussing just as mayor protem said um the implications of this and then then we took those monies back out and we rolled them into uh different and now they're they're suddenly part of the supplemental budgets um where they were they were not scoped we don't they're vaporware uh until they actually pay their fees in march so we're discussing putting making our budget decisions for a company that hasn't paid us any money that we we are we're counting we are almost literally counting chickens before they're hatched now you know the we can do that as long as we line up the budgets properly and we're aware that we have to have the funds and revenues to back those up um but if we don't have the funds and revenues to back that up um if we're not dealing with the if if the rates don't match the budgets and the revenue and the scoping um and they're clearly misaligned um then then we have a problem the other thing is that um i i'm really just not comfortable with us pretending like the no new revenue rate doesn't raise the mean value on on property you showed that last time so no matter what rate we vote on taxes are going up to the average household all right they're 20 dollars difference in the rates and it means the difference between funding essential services at a wage inflation consumer price index uh linked number so we're not doing a secret backdoor property tax cut we are simply matching inflation we're keeping it flat um it is it is unfathomable to me to say that everyone um you know if you if if we as a body want to come in and say you know what we we have this extra surplus cash which we don't have yet and we want to give that back to the citizens um that that would be appropriate when we have extra revenue in hand but we don't have that in hand we don't even have matching consumer price index funds in hand so if you know anything under that cpi wir wage inflation based rate is a tax cut let's just call you know a spade a spade all right and and so we i i i'm not comfortable with playing shenanigans playing games playing games with the scope of projects playing games with the rates so um you know my my clear direction to to do the least harm and and the the the most um appropriate stewardship of the money is is the wage inflationary any other questions for seh got some work thank you for pulling that up uh i just want to us to take a look at what new what the no new rate will give us and the wage inflation rate will give us um and if we are going to uh you know sustain ourselves and have the uh supplements we need as you all are seeing that all of these areas have already requested uh some additional uh you know some additional descriptions that they need and these professionals are not going to ask the city to do anything more than what they're what we need as a city we are again we're a growing city parks and ricks need everybody that's listed here has given us direction the staff has asked us and when they're asking us they're asking the community if you want us to provide you a certain level of living standard this is what you're going to need so if you're asking us to build more parks you have to pay people or hire people to maintain those things it's a very simple minded process that when you want more you have to have the means to get more or sustain your level of what you're used to i don't want the citizens out there to think that uh we want to not we don't want them to have what they need and so that's what i'm basing my um that's what i would be basing my vote on is that if we want to maintain this level and stay up with the growth because if we don't stay up with it or keep up with it then we're always going to be finding ourselves behind and if you're not getting what you need as a citizen and we want to have everything that we want but we don't want to pay for it that's what it always seems like it always kind of boils down to i want my roads done i want my streets done i want my trash picked up i want my water clean i want this i want that but don't i don't want to pay for it we're all paying all of us are sitting here on homes so we're all paying and so we know what we're we're getting ourselves into i mean we're talking about just a few dollars in between what we have and what we don't have which makes a apparently makes a big deal so um i'll leave it at that and i appreciate the opportunity to discuss any discussion council member dayes thank you mayor a couple of questions for staff i'll just go ahead and say both of them if you could answer just however you need to one it seems like last week the difference between the wage inflation rate and the no new revenue rate was nine hundred thousand dollars and there was exactly one supplemental that didn't get reached if we enacted the no new revenue rate and now it looks like from the slide that we had had earlier that the no new revenue rate cut off a number of supplementals that staff suggested uh that we revisit in march i and you don't have to answer that quite yet i would rather revisit that nine hundred thousand dollars in march if that's if we can revisit supplementals mid-year just like we do every single year have supplementals that come along mid-year then if we have more revenue than expected this coming year which we likely will um then let's revisit that as a supplemental in march as opposed to budgeting it now um my second question is uh can we accomplish the same thing as what the mayor is trying to do right now by passing the draft ordinance that we have in our backup and simply on sustainability framework funds subbing back in the 300,000 instead of the 1.2 million on that line because everything is stated as funds in the ordinance there's not really a a motion to pass a budget that hits this mark is not exactly what we have to do tonight we have to pass an ordinance that does that and it's all stated in terms of funds and then my last question is what happens if we pass a budget that is at a certain dollar amount and then we pass a tax rate that is not sufficient we don't expect is sufficient to attain that dollar amount is that then on the city manager to allocate as funds come in just like if there's a budget shortfall just as if there was a tax collection shortfall how does that work so my questions were the difference between the slide we saw tonight and last week my other question was can we just change the fund numbers on the ordinance and make it a little cleaner and my last and my third question was what happens when we adopt a budget that's a certain amount and a tax rate that does not is not projected to collect that amount so your first question councilmember davis i apologize i've i've shown the wrong slide now twice and that's my fault but yes you are correct um i was i had a backup slide in case someone asked about the tenaska revenue what would happen with the no new revenue and the wage inflation rate and that's the one i showed instead of um with the tenaska revenue or core scientific revenue excuse me so with the core scientific revenue the difference between the no new revenue rate and the wage inflation rate would be the nine hundred thousand dollars to the sustainability fund um without so it would just be the dip that nine hundred thousand dollars for the sustainability fund um let me show you on the screen sorry so the wage inflation rate would go all the way down through 17 it would not fund the sustainability fund the additional contribution if to mayor protem's point if we were to ignore or just you know set aside the um tenaska revenue that's the other slide that i showed so i apologize for the confusion tonight um and then to your point about the or to your question about the budget um so yes the the rate and the budget really are tied together however because council approves the budget at the fund level we could do one of two things we if council adopts a tax rate that's different than what the expenses allow we can bring an amendment back for council review and approval so to reduce that amount going to the sustainability fund or to the general fund however council gives direction or we can reduce expenses just like we would any other year that that revenue comes in lower than what we forecasted we would adjust accordingly throughout the year and give council updates of the budget okay any other and does that answer all your questions councilor davis does mayor i'd like to propose an amendment to the motion okay i move that we amend the motion to state uh that the motion is to adopt the ordinance the draft ordinance that's in our backup materials with the exception that the sustainability framework fund currently listed at 1.2 million dollars be listed at three hundred thousand dollars david okay um just making sure it captures which you gave some language and so i was trying to make sure it captures before i correct that council member davis's um a motion reflects the known new revenue rate in the same way that i read out okay got it yeah so i'll accept that amendment uh so for the record that that as council member davis stated has been adopted that's motioned by me seconded by him amended by him i accepted uh and then i have questions for staff cassie can you bring back up so so that's a couple of things so can you put up the wrong slide again because that's because that's telling right because if we don't if we don't okay so this slide yeah so if not accept if the tenaska dollars or or if those that economic funds are not added seven through 17 are not funded right so if we don't apply those dollars 17 seven through 17 aren't and it won't be included in this budget well if council gave us direction to um to do that then yes that okay got it and then and then i want to i want to talk on something that's been kind of uh discussed does this budget account for sales tax for the year yes we have those sales tax dollars already not through august and september right so so well no it's for it's it's looking forward to next year right right and we don't have those dollars so no different than the um data center we don't have those dollars so it's the same thing we're budgeting for anticipated money am i am i seeing those right okay just making sure i was i was i was seeing it right so we don't have sales tax dollars but somehow we're budgeting for those we don't have this economic incentive dollars but we're budgeting for those that's just what we do okay i just wanted to make sure i understood the process right um okay that answers all my questions thank you any other questions for staff mayor pertin melzer okay we have a history of collecting sales tax dollars every year i won't make you like make you answer the questions these are just sort of obvious i'll just state it we have a history of collecting sales tax dollars we have a history of collecting property debts tanaska no history whatsoever that's the difference so uh look i move uh an amendment and i don't expect you to you know accept them here so i'm moving it like to put it up for a vote uh that revenues associated with the um core scientific deal uh uh remain unallocated at this point to be revisited uh when the when sustainability projects are scoped and can be evaluated alongside these other you know contenders uh for those funds okay now help me understand that um this city attorney that's not exactly kind of what we were discussing so it's it's a new motion but it's not modifying it's not help me understand and maybe maybe you need to restate i just don't know that it's in line i just need to understand that better well so i'm uh you know uh moving an amendment to the current motion so i'm not uh addressing i'm not changing anything about the tax rate that you uh suggested of course you're you're proposing a budget that aligns with the tax rate and i'm basically putting in a however so a budget that's based on revenues associated with the no new taxes rate however not allocating funds associated with the core scientific deal until uh this is until the sustainability projects have been scoped and be considered alongside the other candidate expenditures mayor if i may i just i think what what that would do if i understand the mayor project correctly we've already said with the no new revenue with the no new revenue rate to keep that rate we would reduce 900 000 from the sustainability fund the ordinance would also reduce the entirety of this amount from the general fund because those supplementals would not be funded as laid out alongside scoped sustainability projects so my question my question is miss city attorney is that is that close enough in alignment that that would that vote would proceed the the motion on the floor or no i thought that you had a motion to amend on the floor from council member davis is that correct yes i accepted i think you need a vote on that unless he was your second unless he was suggesting the amendment as a second no he he amended he asked me to accept his amendment i think i think he just moved to amend who's he council member davis that was my understanding council member davis what's your recollection so the words i used were that i moved an amendment to your pending motion which needs a second and then can have discussion and vote which i did i accepted it we're in discussion right so then is council is mayor pro tem's motion to amend the pending amendment or is it separate i think he said i don't want to speak for him mayor pro tem well uh you know i don't we don't have to necessarily go backwards if you're saying we have to vote on council member davis's amendment before we can take up another amendment that's fine just do that okay any other questions for semmi councilman bed so just procedurally if is this being uh touted in the frame of a friendly amendment to the original motion or is this being uh uh said as a motioned as a secondary add-on amendment uh the way we proceed depends on that and and we need to be clear or we're we're nodding our amendments in well we're creating nodded amendments so if if you took that as a friendly amendment then that's the original amendment is that not correct uh miss city attorney that's that is the the amendment to the original motion first amendment to the original motion and if so if that was a friendly and accepted then we the the tradition is we do not vote on those they're just friendly and accepted therefore we have no additional motion therefore mayor pro tem's motion is to modify the now modified motion so there is only one amended motion on the floor is that not correct and i apologize because i do not recall who who seconded the motion who seconded the mayor seconded the in accepting the friendly amendment in practice this body has allowed that to be able to to take the friendly amendment in that context and make that the then current motion which is i think is your point yes so so if i if i may then mayor pro tem's is it your intention to amend the aggregate state of the motion yeah i mean i i can respond there uh you know i i understood what was happening the way you described it but there seemed to be a moment where we were saying oh we don't do friendly amendments we vote on everything so you know i uh so i kind of backed off that but but my understanding when i spoke was what you described that the mayor had accepted councilmember davis's amendment that was then the standing amendment and i was amending that aggregate as you put it if that is your emotion if that is your understanding as well that that is the current state that there is an emotion that a motion your motion has already been amended and now mayor pro tem has offered and a new amendment to the amended motion yeah so it's it's what the the chair says and what the body accepts without objection so if the chair accepted my motion as a friendly amendment my motion to amend is a friendly amendment there's no objection from the body then that's the pronouncement of the chair stands and then if um if mayor pro tem wants to offer his amendment now as either as a friendly amendment or amendment to be second and voted on um it just proceeds from there yeah and as i said i don't i don't assume it will be recorded as friendly so i was offering it for a vote so so it doesn't sound like there's any objection to what i moved as an amendment to the motion to the main motion being accepted as a friendly amendment and so if that's the case and that's pronouncement of the chair then i think we move forward in just the way we've talked about in which case my motion is still languishing for one to a second at this moment okay well let's let's do that that's fine is there a second seeing none we're gonna vote uh the motion on for mayor hutchforth is a aye council member davis aye council member bett nay and and just just to kind of frame it this is the no new uh revenue rate sorry budget budget based on the no new revenue rate just so everyone's clear okay that was all for now are you there mayor this is rachel are you ready for the caller yes okay just give me one moment please just a couple of seconds there she goes hello are you there yeah yeah if you can give your name and address you'll have four minutes to speak hello okay jennifer lane and my address is dentin texas district four the second i have to pull up a um notes no other colors because the meeting sorry hello go ahead okay um because the meeting is not being broadcast you know due to technical difficulties it's hard to know uh whether what i have to say is in context or not but um i did want to mention that the reason i called is that the police seem to be having a hard time with covid and nationally well well over half of them are not vaccinated according to a recent npr report and just as many if not more of them object mass here in texas one has to assume these percentages to be even higher given the politics i had a strange run-in with a police officer a few days ago and got a covid test today because of that knowing this vaccination rate data i'm concerned about the mental health of both the community and the police force the past year and a half has been rough on everyone i know there's been debate about moving funds out of policing and into mental health services and i'm wondering if a sort of path through this couldn't be found given uh when i'm thinking about the experience that i had the incident i experienced made me worry about the young officer once it was clear i worried about him once the clear that the situation was turning safer for me the behavior was aggressive and erratic so it seemed no reason whatsoever it ended up all right but it could have gone quite a different way i think his co-officer woman was able to calmly address the situation and that and this calmed him down eventually i was driving and they were having a something was going on so there were a lot of flashing lights so i and another driver coming in the direction were basically trying to figure out whether we should pass through there and things went very awry from there for no reason at all unrelated to whatever it is they had been doing and the details aren't worth recounting at the moment i think mental health funding is sorely needed by the police and other first responders as well as by all of those with whom they come into contact their by and large refusal to be vaccinated is a bad sign this is not normal for a person tasked with protection of others i can understand maybe the mask aversion in this heat and with the various needs of their jobs but they are putting themselves each other and the public in danger for no good reason by not being vaccinated and it's inexplicable what's going on and why they are doing that and the pressure they're putting on each other and so forth and so please help us all by moving some funding into mental health services perhaps by including the police among those who would receive funding for this purpose and benefit from it thank you thank you we just don't need crazy police we do not thank you thank you motion by mayor hutzpah second by councilmember davis and mayor mayor you're muted okay thank you um motion by mayor hutzpah second by councilmember davis uh mayor hutzpah councilmember davis aye councilmember beck nay councilmember hurt nay councilmember wire nay mayor put the melter it comes to tax rate you'll see i'm for the no new revenue rate on budget i'm nay uh because you're of basically a pain switch on on sustainability so i'm a no okay um okay that fails for to need a motion councilmember wire thank you i move approval and adoption of the budget and the capital improvement program based on a property tax rate of 57.3 cents per 100 of valuation we're voting on the budget so you correct and i am i am moving approval of the budget that is based on that tax rate can you give some direction in the wording i would just say that's the ordinance that's attached so it would just be that you would just be approving the the ordinance as i i move approval of the ordinance as presented thank you uh is there a second councilmember bet second discussion seeing none councilmember guara i say you yes councillor bet aye councillor bird aye mayor put some melter hey um councillor davis nay mayor hutsmith is a nay as well it's three three so david does it just lay there and it'll fix itself um i'll if mac is on the line i would ask mac for um or kathryn for some insight because i know we've had a number of discussions on what would happen if a budget was not adopted and there's been a couple scenarios so insight from kathryn and mac would be great in terms of the tie vote it would come back when you have full members typically at this point it may be appropriate to go into a closed session to advise the body on the issues related to this okay all right it's uh 10 13 we'll go into closed session all right and it's 10 36 we are back we're still on 6a uh councilmember davis i'll take a motion uh mayor i'm not prepared to make a motion this time got it i'll make a motion to reconsider uh adopting the budget at the no new revenue rate is there a second mayor i have to raise the point of order i believe you have to be on the prevailing side to make a motion to reconsider stay in law that one unfortunately staying corrected thank you for that well i'll take a motion okay i will i'll put six a on the table and let's take up um do we have the gentleman here for the other item yeah okay hold on putting it down okay great we're going to item seven b and they're going to be very succinct and to the point we can't we have to do the tax rate oh that's right i'm sorry we were i don't understand we have to do it but do we have to do it in the same order no yeah no i didn't yeah okay we're good yeah i just want to take take a break from from budget stuff and try to get them out of here i mean it's okay um scott mcdonald director of development services um well let me let me let me get there i was wait a minute seven i want to talk through a few things before i even go into an item okay so we have four public hearings mayor i'm sorry i have to raise a point of order okay i can't remember if um and i could just be out of line here i can't remember if we had a that last item was a public hearing that needed to be closed our charter talks about a public hearing but um on this whole deemed adopted or not things i have to ask so i'm clear going forward with the rest of the night fair question it was not a public hearing thank you thank you okay scott i'm sorry mayor council scott mcdonald director of development services um have four public hearings this evening i would offer to make some recommendations on item 7a is that item b open and postponed to september 28 item b would be considered this evening julie wyatt will make that presentation item c would be open and postponed to october 19th item d be open and postponed to september 28th so public hearing item b which is the christopher todd communities with julie wyatt i've asked staff to condense their presentation and to simplify that and ultimately she will have um slides that she will go through briefly but ultimately can answer any and all questions as required and the applicant is here as well for for any questions okay then let me do this and let's go on to you let's make the postponements out of order but in order if you know what i mean so i'll call the first thing it's uh item 7a z21005 c hold the public hearing consider adoption of ordinance of the city of denton texas regarding a change in rezoning district use classification mixed use neighborhood and residential r4 um i'll open the public hearing uh but or do i need to not open them if you can you can open the public hearing and then you can postpone it by unanimous consent or you can take a motion to postpone so i won't open the public here no you can't do open the public hearing you open it and then take motion we can open it when it comes back it won't remain open yeah right it'll open it now and it will remain open okay if staff can note that when it when it comes back on the on the style that'll say it's already opened or some some kind of queue uh okay um and so i'll close the public hearings no i'm talking with you take a motion councilmember revoir i move that we postpone item 7a until uh september 28th right is there a second i'll second mayor mayor hurts but seconds uh any discussion seeing none councillor revoir i'll say you i'm mayor has to say aye councilman bet aye councilman bird aye councilmember davis aye mayor pro tem melzer passes six zero our call item c7c s2 1001 b hold a public hearing and consider adoption of an ordinance on city of didn't texas approving a specific use permit to allow multi-family dwelling on approximately 9.2 acres i'll open the public hearing and take a motion to postpone to october 19th mayor pro tem melzer yeah i move we postpone item 7c uh to october 19th by acclamation that means there's a second council member i get got a motion by member melzer second by council member bird discussion may i say you councillor burke aye councilmember beck aye councilmember mcguire aye councilmember davis aye and mayor hutzpah says aye as well that passes six zero and then we get the last one uh item d is the seven two one zero zero one three eight on the public hearing and consider adoption of ordinance of the city of didn't texas i'll take a motion uh looking at postpones to september 28 council member davis move this moment of this item to september 20 you say 28th well first let me open the public hearing and then i'll say yes september 28 okay i move postponing this item to september 28th and i ask that it be uh by unanimous consent so we don't have to vote got it so um is there okay then that's postponed we all need a second correct or no second and a vote i'm sorry so i'm just asking do i need a second no just answer objections right any objection if there's not objection then we move forward we could have voted by now so now i regret it right any objections got it so i was just trying to ask the question if we needed a second point of order don't we need a second on a motion i'm not trying to slow things down i'm trying to make it not fail yeah i don't think we do everyone was looking at me like that i asked the question three times so i think okay um okay so the one item that we have a presentation for was seven that is 7b and thank you mayor thank you council for allowing this let me call it so it's pd 0002d hold public hearing consider adoption of ordinance of city of denton texas regarding the request for rezoning approximately 32.11 acres from mixed use mr to district to plan development pd district and i will open the public hearing we have one speaker one that just is in support but doesn't want to speak and then one speaker after she does her presentation and and thank you mayor council for this julie why it's going to make this presentation i just wanted to say a couple of words that this this applicant we've asked them to postpone this item a couple different times for a line relocate on i-35 they've been very cordial and i do appreciate that the the patience and going through the process good evening let me share my screen good evening i'm julie wyatt senior planner with the city of denton and i'm presenting pd 21 0002d uh to you this evening as scott mentioned well this will be an abbreviated presentation but i'll be happy to answer any questions you may have regarding the the proposal additionally the applicant is here tonight as well so the request before you is to rezone approximately 32 acres from mixed use regional district to a planned development district to facilitate the development of a horizontal multifamily living use the subject property is outlined in yellow on your screen it's it's located kind of at the convergence of loop 288 and highway 77 as well as north bonnie bray a situated kind of in the north part of town i wanted to talk about the site plan with you so as i mentioned this is a horizontal multifamily use that's kind of a newer use to the city of denton it's akin to a multifamily use it is in this instance it is 316 dwelling units located on one lot so it'd be platted as one lot what makes this a little different something that we don't typically see as like for instance in a garden style apartment is they're all designed to resemble single family dwellings or duplex dwellings and as you can see on the site they are laid out kind of in a grid pattern sort of in a compact neighborhood pattern there are three access points to highway 77 on the site the main entrance located in this in in kind of the central area then there's an exit only on the south part as well as a an emergency entrance on the or i'm sorry an emergency access point on the north part of the site is the drive aisle connects the dwelling units throughout the site as i mentioned it's kind of a grid pattern they also have a pedestrian connections throughout the subject property as well as shared open spaces you can see that blue line cutting through the site and a horizontal and that is a kind of a central park throughout the the property it does have sidewalks through it as well as tree plantings they have a shared open spaces for a dog park on the southern part of the the development as well as closet areas depicted with those blue stars there's also a main amenity center that also that has the pool and the barbecue area there are also pedestrian connections one pedestrian connection to the sidewalk on bonnie bray i'm sorry not bonnie bray on highway 77 as well as a pedestrian connection to the west and there's not development to the west but the intent is that at some point when it does develop likely with a commercial use that there will be that pedestrian connection to the west to allow any residents to go shopping and maybe not have to get in the car as i mentioned these are designed as kind of single family or duplex dwellings they also each have not only those shared common spaces but also private open space with backyards for each dwelling unit additionally each dwelling unit will also have a lot tree as well as foundation plantings the criteria for approval for pd's is in sub chapter 2 of the dentin development code staff has analyzed the request and by our analysis it does meet the criteria for approval and as well as consistency with the dentin plan 2030 this does provide that greater building design that we want to see with pd's it's not anticipated to generate significant adverse impacts to the city as well as upcoming improvements to bonnie bray will also improve the area of mobility not only for this project but for the surrounding development public outreach was sent out for this project in accordance with the dentin development code and we haven't received any responses the planning and zoning commission recommended approval of the request and staff also recommended approval as it is consistent with that criteria and i'll be happy to answer any questions questions what will help me understand did want did well someone wants to speak on behalf of the developer but yeah so we'll take questions for staff then we'll have the developer present questions for staff councilman vert what did you say those stars were on there i missed that so those were plaza areas so a common gathering areas kind of between several units kind of grouped as a little pod oh okay so you said plaza p-l-a-z-a yes ma'am okay i didn't hear that thank you you got any other questions for sat thank you mayor so um it's looking like uh with you know these these are all one and two bedroom units um and there's an average of 1.98 parking spaces per unit um is that the minimum um how do how does the pd impact uh minimum parking requirements here all right so let me pull out i actually have a calculation here so their pd includes 534 service surface parking spaces and that includes covered and uncovered so they do have canopies over some of those they also have 92 garage spaces um so that's that total 627 spaces um that is slightly different than our denton development code typically requires for multi-family i did a calculation of the development um if they were just going to follow the denton development code exactly it would be 624 spaces so they are proposing a few spaces over that minimum about 20 but it that does also include those garage spaces so um so they are proposing about 20 more spaces than the the development code typically would require can we ask the developer to take it all the way down to the minimum the developer is here and that could probably be a question that they could answer and when they present it's okay when you present you can speak to it okay so yeah i just want to show a few just a few thoughts good evening mayor council appreciate you behind this evening yeah and i'll be very concise um and then have to answer the questions i've got 15 slides i'll probably just show five or six of them and then uh blast through the rest and if we need to circle back on anything we can in your name i'm sorry so i can look at my name is matt lucas and i'm with kimley horn 13455 noel road in dallas yes of course i understand we're not the most important thing on the on the docket today so really appreciate you all taking the time and letting us present this evening so i guess while the presentation is getting queued up maybe i can answer um council member mcwire's question about the parking um if i may you know we've we've uh we've got eight communities like this in the markets one or four coming on online um we park these at two parking spaces per unit typically um in about 25 percent of those garage spaces five percent are covered parking uh and then the actually 25 percent of garage parking 50 percent are covered parking five percent uncovered um yes yes and just having close to their units um so i would like to um so that's the theory behind kind of getting close to that two spaces i think we're right underneath that where like 1.92 so a little bit between the required spaces and what are typical is um is uh can you can you help me understand the desire to go to reduce parking back to the multifamily standards is that what the request was thank you uh in general from a land use perspective um i prefer to keep parking to to the bare minimum um you know we're we're working toward a land use pattern that is dense and compact and that promotes alternatives to driving um and and part of that means um really uh not overdoing it on the parking so that that was my motivation for asking that just to to have that conversation while they're pulling it up you help me understand your bonny bray and 77 is that yes yes there's no there's no margin for error people can't park on the street right so in a traditional neighborhood if it leaks out onto a residential street no big deal if you leak out on the bonnie bray that's a huge deal and if you leak out on the 77 that's a huge deal we're like we have to get this right based on the calculations and expectations because your guests don't visitors there don't have anywhere else to park and the discernment someone could make the bad decision to park on bonnie bray and and that could be costly that that that's right i think that's that's part of it um in and is is the concern related to the amount of pavement um i i that's a factor certainly i mean uh permeable paving surfaces would would be great um but truly land use um and and promoting alternatives to driving is is my my primary concern here understanding yeah and and we have um i will say from a we have 48 percent of the site that is pervious so it's it's uh the the private backyards that come with every every home um it's the open space and then the the other spaces so i think we're doing a um a good job of doing that um if we would of course consider a request from from from council to reduce that back to the minimum if that was uh one of the items that y'all wanted us to address yeah yeah it's it's something that i'm interested in but um i'm just one member yes thank you um sorry to kind of do intros i'm just gonna kind of so real quick um this is a partnership between christopher tog communities who's a luxury uh single story rental community developer in based out of phoenix they have eight communities on the ground in phoenix with another four coming and taylor morrison who is a national home builder um they build quality um the same quality they use in their single-family residential neighborhoods is the same quality they'll be building in this community um so renters by choice it's really just the fact that um we have people that are looking for a hybrid product a hybrid product that includes um i'm gonna flash through these i'm gonna get to um some of the so hybrid product which is a hybrid between single family and home of molten family single family where they want their yards and and they want their privacy but they don't want their maintenance that goes with owning a single-family home so this is just one of the example of the backyards don't pay too much attention to the elevation we've got some great looking elevations that put these to shame but these are one of our oversized backyards that we have in i think just over 20 of the units in in our community flashing up the elevations great looking elevations three distinct elevations for the one bedroom homes and then this is just an overview a rendering of what a one bedroom home is open concept stainless steel appliances you know direct access to their backyard that has lots of great light coming into the backyard walk-in closet double vanities elevations two bedroom very similar with just the second bedroom incorporated into the front of the unit um julia talked a lot about the site plan so i won't belabor this what i want to kind of show off for the renderings what this is actually going to look like um this is a view coming in the front door here enhanced paving up front just just resort style amenities you see the beautiful pool we've got a yoga i guess a fitness center with yoga we've got a barbecue area we've got a clubhouse and just really shows how these units lay out so here's a little close-up of that beautiful looking rendering really cover the connectivity throughout the site i i'll just kind of fast forward to this is the ground view looking up our main kind of north south boulevard you can tell there's nice streetscape sidewalks on both sides trees trying to minimize parking as much as possible you have some parallel parking parking both and then julia talked about the east west connectivity down this main spine which is the purple that shows the activity between the amenity center and the future connection to the retail to the west this is what one of those we have three of those running through the site this is what what one of those looks like so this is a 30 foot wide corridor that's got seating areas throughout trees just nice open space and areas for building community in addition to those we've got 21 courtyards or 21 seating areas which includes the yellow stars which are courtyards additional courtyards around the site so we've got these smaller gathering and community social spaces as well and then this just highlights the the units that have oversized backyards so every unit will have a 10 foot deep backyard by the width of the unit and these are the the units that will exceed that along the south side we have 15 foot backyards and we actually have some larger backyards in addition to that i'm not going to show the video because i know we're short on time and then i'm happy to answer any other questions okay and i have any any questions for the presenter and then we'll i think we have one more questions okay and then this doesn't want to speak got it okay um so there's one card in support that doesn't want to speak i see no questions i'll move approval i i think as as presented um i and i'm looking i'm looking for a second yeah i'll second and i'm happy to take up in general like parking requirements and other legislation not to try to settle it on kind of all on this uh but i i second the motion thank you and discussion i i think i i take the point about the parking i just the reason i didn't didn't adopt it into my motion is because i don't know that the deficiency of parking spaces alone is going to motivate anyone to drive or take public transit etc etc i think there's other ways to achieve that i think this is a truly unique project that and i also think it's important to note this this i believe is next to getting high school so i think there'll be some walkability just by by proxy and we can do a lot of things on our end from a city perspective to to inspire that we could probably do a lot more on bonnie gray to help people cross over to the park and to the to the to access some of those amenities and really enhance that walkability i think there's other ways to do that i just don't know that the in this corner with the speeds of cars are going to be traveling and it being next to a school i just don't want to um yes or be wrong on on the amount of parking needed because i think we see it all the time people park uh on state highways and and all that stuff so it's just dangerous uh that's my thoughts uh any other comments see none mayor huntsman says aye mayor pro tem aye councilman bett aye councilman maguire aye councilman bird aye council member davis aye that's a six zero thank you gentlemen appreciate your patience um that takes us that completes the and i close the public hearing um that takes us to all seven beats takes us back to the only items we have we have four items uh and it takes us back to six eight make a motion um city manager or city attorney please correct me if i'm uh i'm out of order here but um i would like to move um reconsideration of the budget as proposed in our backups point of order yes uh councillor davis so most reconsider has to be on the prevailing side and a tie vote roberts will says that the prevailing side is the no's okay uh miss city attorney that's correct i withdraw my motion um okay let's i mean uh there's some i don't know the city manager david if you want to speak to it i mean it's going to fix itself in in in 50 minutes so at this point i'll take some direction but i'm just inclined to let it fix itself because the other thing the other thing we need a super majority on the um right side the next thing if we can't get a majority a simple majority here i don't i'm not optimistic about a super majority um on the next item right and if you don't have a vote on this item you can't even consider the um the tax prock so okay so let's let's do this if it's okay with you i'll just take up c and d you you really can't you can't okay well then we'll give it a minute and then we'll adjourn okay well i guess just to kind of to level side if if we don't adopt anything and mac can certainly jump in and correct me just so we're all on the same page and i'm sure we are i mean we go to the city manager's proposed budget for all expenses we would default to the no new revenue rate for the tax rate that would have to be ratified at a future council meeting in big picture supplemental list what that most likely will mean and we'll bring back the detail is would be no transfer sustainability fund but we could do most of the supplementals but we'll we'll certainly bring that back we can obviously bring back budget amendments either in october or throughout the year for further conversations but as mentioned earlier those would take five five votes so that's as i understand it and certainly if any questions um can can we take oh yeah i am on um would it be appropriate and you can tell me this mr mayor if we took a a 10 minute recess and saw if we could get councillor armator back on the line no i'm not gonna ask everyone here to wait and that again i'm not trying to be unreasonable i'm just saying it's 11 o'clock and i'm trying to it would potentially break the tie sir i understand i just can we ask if she's already been contacted tonight staff's already tried to get her back staff did i ask uh sarah keichler to call her and follow up back up with her let her know we were back on the line and her comment was she would not rejoin us based on uh she did not feel it was uh transparent and i'm i'm paraphrasing i am not quoting okay so then the 10 minutes wouldn't be fruitful fair enough fair enough we'll take there's a motion on the floor sir is that your motion still miss mcgore i withdrew my motion yeah okay we're gonna we're gonna take a five minute break and if we don't have a motion at 6 15 then let me pardon me 11 15 11 15 then we'll just i'm gonna go to concluding items and we're gonna go home okay so we'll we'll be in we'll be on break till 11 15 we'll be back and then we'll wrap up today's meeting thank you all right it is 11 26 we're we're we're back and we need uh i need a so i see two i don't know this is the worst i wish we were all here this button councillor davis councillor back thank you mayor i move approval of the draft budget as presented our backups uh with the one change that the sustainability framework fund uh instead of being 1.2 million dollars be 500 000 dollars is that phrased properly councillor under bet uh are you waiting on a second sir yes um not yet okay is there a second um i can't see what mayor pro tem i think i'm seconding but i'm not i'm not sure i'm totally clear on that one presented in the backup is the um it's not the no new revenue budget right that's the you're proposing the wage inflation rate budget with the five as i understand the difference between the two is nine hundred thousand dollars in sustainability fund so i'm moving just a little bit up from uh no new revenue and a little bit down uh to the tune of about two hundred thousand dollars down down some from wage and wage inflation up two hundred thousand dollars from no new revenue oh okay so so a different tax rate ultimately between the two no just expenses just expenses so i'm not talking about tax rate at all i'm just going off the ordinance that's in the backup uh a sustainability fund at five hundred thousand dollars which would be uh two hundred thousand dollars in uh i guess mana from heaven in addition to the no new revenue and uh mayor if i may continue to ask councilmember davis sure uh and then is your pension or your expectation that that would then be paired with a no new revenue tax rate in a later action yeah either later action or later in action we've got 32 minutes to do one or the other right i'm gonna uh i think i'm gonna wait a little bit i'll just to hear what councilmember beck has to say and i may i may second it so we can move on okay i second the motion i accept your encouragement because we're back so i said um okay we have a motion by councilmember davis second by mayor pro tem melzer and um councilmember davis if you could rephrase you said it once already forgive me i don't want to misstate it but if you can kind of frame it for so that we can vote right what i moved was adoption of the ordinance as presented in our backup materials with the exception that the sustainability framework fund instead of being 1.2 million dollars would be five hundred thousand dollars okay any other discussion councilor bett thank you um i i think a better solution to this and i'm going to propose it in a second as a an amendment uh and and we can decide if it's friendly or otherwise i'll do it straight if we need to and that is we accept the no new revenue rate budget um we accept the no new revenue rate in here in a second um except that um the no new revenue rate budget is contingent upon um a budget um um reconsideration in march um where sustainability is funded no less than 1.2 million dollars so essentially the compromise would be to delay sustainability by x months i i don't think i can accept that as a friendly amendment not because i don't agree with the the sentiment or the thought but um i i don't know that i can make it i don't know that we can make adoption of a budget contingent on something that's going to happen in the future because it can't be undone it has to be done by the end of the fiscal year or reverse so i don't know that that's why i'm not accepting i'm not i'm not saying that's a legal conclusion i don't i can't accept that as a friendly amendment for that reason but i i think what you're saying merits further conversation at the appropriate time okay do you want to move it as a as a motion i mean an amendment yes but i want to make sure that that doesn't fail and it looks like there's other discussion as well so maybe i should let that other discussion happen if you will mr mayor okay may i pretend now sir yeah uh you know i think there uh there's the essence of of agreement is you know is uh is at hand and i think we shouldn't let it slip away uh i i think that what makes it hard is let me put it this way i think what what's easy to agree with i think we've all shared the sentiment is that we want we want a chance to revisit things in march when we have different facts uh and i think uh you know however we can incorporate the spirit of that i guess whether we say it or not we can revisit things in march but but pinning it to a specific number when you know a lot of this is a lot of the uncertainties because we don't really know what the money's going to look like in march uh you know i i hope we end up with that outcome um but i wonder if there's a way to frame this that makes it a little you know easier to easier for more people to to uh agree with except but i think the principle of a bigger down payment now and an openness to be looking at things in march i think that's a good framework that's when required thank you i would like to point out that the reason we are in this situation in the first place is because we got a um verbal agreement that was not official in any sense um that the revenue excess revenue from the course scientific deal would go toward the sustainability fund and we are now seeing just how much value those unofficial verbal agreements have um they're they're they are very easily taken away so i am very hesitant to um vote for a budget with some kind of vague uh verbal agreement that we might do a budget amendment in march i'll just say everything we do is subject to revisiting as a body there's nothing that we we voted on something earlier this year and came back two weeks later and voted polar opposite that that so even this body is not holding itself to um it's votes i mean so i don't think that's the answer i really do think the the answer is we need to move to a point where we agree on what we want to accomplish with the sustainability fund and what's going to be most effective and i've not heard two people agree on how to do that so to sequester 1.2 million dollars to then figure out what we're going to do with it when no one said the same thing everything from planting trees to buying bicycles to other means of transportation we've not come to a consensus on what we would spend that on so then i'm forced to look at the and i'll just tell you where i am the budget is for next year we don't have anything to spend the three hundred thousand dollars on i can get the five hundred thousand but what are we going to spend it on no one spent any time talking about that and it is an annual budget it is the least amount we need to keep the city running to save the the the the taxpayer money is what we're here to do and so we have 35 million dollars in the reserve fund we're going to push more to the to that reserve fund we're exceeding our pace and sales tax and i don't see i i just can't get to where we sequester 1.2 million dollars with no project and there's and there's we would never put up we would never decide to do that any other scenario we would never decide to just sock away 1.2 million dollars with no if staff was standing at the podium and said i present to you that we take 1.2 million dollars and set it aside and use it at a in the future for something sustainable we would the questions that would come to staff would be limitless and we would demand more accountability so i can't in good faith support anything that sequesters 1.2 million dollars that we're not going to likely spend this year uh we're we're whatever we can reasonably spend this year great five hundred thousand dollars is on the high end of that but other than that i want to leave the money with the taxpayers and then if this body said we want to double that and spend two million dollars that to me is a reasonable argument say we're going to receive more money in theory next year i want to start having a conversation now about how to to address that extra so then you would have the same two million dollars we have this year allocated you would have two million access excess of that that you could then spend on a sustainability project that we've identified and studied with the five hundred thousand dollars this year so five hundred thousand this year sets us up for two million next year if if we would just be forward thinking and visions and set some vision and set some goals on what type of projects could achieve those but i've not heard those statements on what that money would go to and so i can't just put it in a bank account and a future council is not going to be held to that either so they could then make a different decision so we have a motion oh i can never tell if you're just holding phone or not councilman maguire we have not had an opportunity to make any decisions about how we plan to to to use the sustainability funds about what sustainability initiatives we have had um we had one work session where we presented a few ideas and and it hasn't come back to us yet it is not fair to say that we're sequestering 1.2 million dollars with no plan for it when we have not been given the opportunity to make a plan for it i know that i have lots of thoughts that i have not had an opportunity to share because that has not come before council yet after in bed thank you mr mayor um i'm going to make a motion to amend the motion on the floor with the um so the motion on the floor is uh the no new revenue rate with um of 200,000 above the current sustainability front for a total of 500,000 and i will try to add back in to say that in march we revisit and do a budget amendment for no less than seven seven hundred thousand dollars in march so it is councillor davis's amended motion plus the the agreement that we revisit and do a budget amendment of seven hundred thousand dollars towards sustainability in march okay is there a second councillor burke i second okay motion by councillor member uh bet second by council member it's the no new revenue and seven hundred thousand dollars is it seven thousand seven hundred thousand seven fifty ten hundred seven hundred thousand and uh sustainability fund that's david we can we can cert certainly in march bring back a budget amendment for council consideration but at this time and katharine or mac you cannot commit to a future budget amendment during the budget process so we certainly in march can bring back here's where we are in the general fund here's where we are with the revenue from core scientific here's and lay out those options you can vote in a budget in at that time you if you're committing to a budget amendment right now you're committing to the budget increasing that's just procedurally what you're voting on uh so let me ask if i might mr mayor may i follow up um we we cannot commit to a an action not a budget item an action a but a budget amendment is altering the budget a budget amendment takes five votes it has its own course that it goes down to amend the budget so the only way to do what you're asking is to actually budget the entire 1.2 right now i'm not asking for that though i'm just actually asking that we all right if there if if you are unaware of a path forward to get there i accept that i certainly think the path forward is we come back in march we lay out exactly where we are with revenues and it could be earlier than march if the revenues come in and we say here's what we could go over now and then council at that time makes a decision on what to move over that is certainly something we can bring forward it makes a lot of sense it's just tying a commitment to it right now is the difficulty my difficulty is uh and i i see mayor pertem's hand so i'll be quiet but my difficulty with this is exactly the point that councilor mcguire said is um we we had uh sort of concurrence and it is gone so i i am loathe to to make conciliatory motions and movements i'm trying um but i'm loathe to do that without some sort of nominal hand tying okay council member i mean pardon mayor pertem else so i i want to understand what council member beck is proposing and you know whether uh and whether david is concurring that's doable or not i is it your intention council member beck that in this motion that simply that an amendment will be brought a budget amendment will be brought forward for council consideration in march it's not that we're committing that it will succeed it's that it will be brought forward is that what your intention is um that that would be the minimum yes okay so uh so david uh how does that oh i i have absolutely no problem i have absolutely no problem with that um they can give council yeah that that is perfectly fine we'll bring the amendment forward it was just the commitment that council's going to approve it at that time yeah living the commitment as a council will will take it up you can't force people they vote so so uh well i i hope uh the mayor calls the rolls so i'm ready to vote in favor of the amendment and the underlying motion well the amendment needs to be restated um the amendment that i'm asking for is that we consider uh no less than seven hundred thousand dollars in a uh budget amendment in march david is that will that and lie okay okay is there a second okay council member you seconded the first time okay got it so there's amendment 700 000 coming back in march david restate that so that we have a clear record as you understand it it's uh essentially the the motion before you with the sustainability fund at 500 000 instead of 1.2 million and that we will bring back for consideration in march a budget amendment of at least 700 000 dollars to sustainability fund okay okay yes okay okay so that's as as david stated discussion i'll just know that though that i have a question so david when that comes back or regardless let's say it's successful in march there's a process by in in june council five votes could reverse that if they had a super majority in june that said hey we've changed our mind we don't want the 700 000 that we voted on in march is there a process to reverse that any council can do a budget amendment that's right and i'm not trying to kill it as you said council member back i'm trying to prevent the future argument that says that council didn't follow through or staff didn't follow through i'm trying to highlight the fact that a future council can reverse this just as easy as as a simple vote majority and so that's not to say and it could be a month after i just want to have a clear record that's i think that's fair um okay so uh council member we're going to vote council member i'll say you on the motion to amend council member bird aye council member buer aye mayor pretend melter aye council member davis aye and mayor hutzpah is and and i so uh that that passes so the the underlined motions amended to 700 000 we'll vote on that that was moved by council member davis five plus seven i'm sorry underlined 500 000 forgive me yes i had seven of them so underlined we're going to vote on now it's 500 000 in the budget uh at the no new revenue rate motion it was motioned by council member davis second by my mayor protein melzer any other discussion seeing none mayor just just to clarify the motion had nothing to do with no new revenue rate we'll do that next it's the presented but the the budget ordinance thank you thank you yes thank you for the clarification um so um council member davis i'll say aye mayor protein melter aye council member bett aye council member maguire council member bird who am i missing myself mayor hutzpah i as well that passes six zero um takes us to item 6b let me get there hi so this is uh id 2 1 1 9 8 7 consider adoption order the city of denton texas levying and ad valerian tax of the property tax of the city of denton texas for the year 2021 and taxable property within the corporate limits of the city of city on january 1st 2021 in lieu of going through the whole presentation as it obviously closely tied to the conversation we just had i'll just bring up this slide and obviously we can go through as much as you would like to based on the previous conversation you can see our our former tax rate our previous tax rates here you can see that voter approval rate which was the the rate that would have required voter approval the maximum rate we could have done without voter approval that wage inflation rate which we've obviously discussed today and then no new revenue rate of the 56.582 cents so it certainly can pull up any slides and answer questions but let's see if that helps up the stage yeah yeah if you can help set the stage on the new law sure so uh with with the the updated texas code chapter 26.05 with sp2 from previous legislative session the tap code now does require a super majority of at least five votes for any any tax rate that is above the no new revenue rate so if we were going to be at that 3.1 wage inflation rate that is above the no new revenue rate so it does require the super majority of council if you adopt the uh the vote the no new revenue rate itself that only requires four votes if there's no vote if there's no tax rate adopted it reverts to the no new revenue rate got it okay so i i move approval of the that we adopt the no new revenue rate at 5.565823 mayor point of order okay state your point of order i made a motion indicated on my screen that i that i was making a motion okay well just as last week when i did that and the person had the floor they made a motion if you have the floor you can make the motion and so i i'm not i don't even have that on because it's not working so i didn't see it so forgive me um so is there a second councillor davis i'll second most of our mayor hurts but second by councillor davis at the no new never new no new revenue rate uh at 565823 there's a dot in the front of that um discussion seeing councilmember bet i'm i'm just going to pull a bullet in we had we had a discussion i want to make sure that it's clear that the discussion we just had is is operating all right i know that we can vote to do a new thing but the discussion we just had is is an operation here so if this passes by supermajority i i i hope staff um recalls that okay councillor davis can i just get clarification on what what part were can what part were concerned about not being an operation i mean because the item we just passed we passed as an ordinance and as a direction of council as part of the motion as amended so is that what is that what we're talking about or is there some additional nuance that i'm fine with moving on councillor davis okay i just i just want to make sure we're all clear with expectations that we're not finding ourselves in some way that's not completely clear that we're going to hear about a conversation later on mayor procter yeah i think i can uh sharpen the question if i'm intruding this right uh i expect to support this item and i'm doing so with the full expectation that 500 000 is going into the sustainability fund for projects that will be well scoped and defined at some point here but but but i'm i'm expecting that we'll have the no new revenue rate and then 500 will go to the sustainability fund both those things will be true set is that uh a fair expectation i ask the motioners and council just approved that motion on that action on the previous item so of course great okay then i i i'm ready to move forward discussion see none council member so mayor hudson i council member davis aye council member bett aye council member maguire no council member bird aye mayor proctor melter that passes um five one that takes us to six c which is id211989 consider adoption of ordinance of the city of ditton texas approving for proving for 2021 tax roles and providing effective date no presentation for cnd they're just really procedural after the first two items thank you is there a motion council member guara i move approval council member bett i second we have motion by council member guara second by council member beck discussion seeing none council member guara i'll say you aye council member bett aye council member bird aye mayor proctor melter aye council member davis aye that's a six zero takes us to 6d which is id211990 consider adoption of ordinance of the city of ditton texas ratifying adoption of a fiscal year 2021 2022 annual program of services i'll take a motion council member bar actually have a question um does this ratification have to be postponed until next week since we did not ratify uh the the ordinance as presented excuse me since we did not pass the ordinance as presented i would imagine we would we've just updated accordingly so we can ratify tonight right okay right then then i move ratification for a second who said that may councilman bett all right okay most of my councilman maguire second by council member beck you needed discussion council member maguire i'll say you aye council member bett aye council member bird aye um mayor proctor melter aye council member davis aye mayor hutz with his eye as well that passes six zero that's that takes us to concluding items any concluding items for tonight i uh i want to change the tone a little bit um i want to uh announce that today's the birthday of long-time uh north texas resident linda uphouse who is well known in the biology department at dw and has uh is since retired but is uh has uh had a great and dramatic effect on particularly women in our community and getting started uh in their careers in biology so i want to wish her a happy birthday okay any other consent concluding items uh i want to thank city manager for organizing the trip down to community first right in austin that's thursday thank you very much for that and um then if you know if anyone hadn't seen uh former chief ossevedo passed away and so um um chief ossevedo no no is that what's the name ossevedo that's a that's a bit of yeah yeah yeah make sure i say thank you i want to make sure i say it right uh so so um his services were last week so i just want to mention how he served our community well and um with that we'll conclude tonight's meeting 11 57