It is 5.02 and this meeting has been duly posted and we
have a quorum present
and first item on our agenda is to receive a clarification
of agenda items
today and I'll turn it over to Manal. Thank You Chairperson
. Would the
Commission like presentations on the plats that are on the
agenda today? If
not we can dive straight into the next items. Superb. We'll
go ahead and discuss
the presentation for the DME ordinance and I'm going to
call...
Clarification please. Yes. We use the plats. Those are
among the consent agendas? The
consent and the public hearing plan. We have a final replat
on the agenda as
well. If you have any questions related to any of the plots
we can address this
else we can dive into the rest of the agenda. Questions?
Thank you Mike.
This is the DCA 15-3. This is the proposed change to for
the electric
substations and switch stations. We presented in great
detail last meeting,
the end of last meeting. Just kind of give you a refresher
of what we're doing.
We're adding a new use electric substations and switch
stations. With
that we're going to add standards to subject 24 for
screening buffering access
and with that we'll create a site plan process for all
substations to follow.
Where an SUP in the districts with SUP is currently
required we're going to add
this new limitation that says you have to do all this
public notification prior
to council selecting the site. If you've done that then you
don't have to do an
SUP anymore you just have to follow the site plan process
and we'll get into
that in a second. The revisions that have come up since
last time you saw it last
time we presented it to you as we move the public
notification from the site
acquisition phase where they're purchasing it up to the
site selection
phase. What that does is allows you to notice all five
options and tell them
come out and give your input at that meeting as opposed to
when they're going
to purchase it. So we think that's a little improvement to
the process. The
second is now a site plan approval by staff we've added the
word substantially
comply with the site plan. It was already there for P&Z we
just went ahead and
added it on to staff. The fencing for the gates we changed
from opaque to wrought
iron. DME has some security concerns that we get into if
you want but they need
the visibility into the side in case of emergencies or
fires things like that. So
wrought iron is what we went with and lastly we...
I have a question for you. Is that in lieu of the masonry?
It's only for the gates so there's an opening for the drive
ways it'll be a
masonry gate. Okay so still masonry? Wrought iron gate, yes
. Okay so still masonry
screening just an iron gate. Right. Okay thank you. And
that's clear in the... Commissioner
Dudowitz. Is that clear in the revision? Yes it's changed
to wrought iron or
similar metal material. For the gate. Thank you. It's a
gate, yes gate. And if it's
to if it's across from a residence or something like that
it's still opaque. Right.
And then lastly there was some concern last meeting about
the directors leeway
and providing approving alternatives. We added some
clarification to that note.
I'd be happy to go over it if you want. Basically what we
've done is... I'll
actually go ahead and just read it. It's pretty short.
Minor aesthetic deviations
to screening and buffering standards may be approved by the
director of
developmental services or his or her designee if due to the
unique character
topography or orientation of the site the overall design
aesthetic may be
enhanced by the deviation and may serve the greatest extent
possible of the
regulations where applying them would prove impractical. So
that's in summary
kind of what we've done to add a little bit more direction
to when that can be
used. And we've added if director denies that alternative
then they can appeal
to P&Z. Commissioner Beck. Thank you. Now is this something
that's going to be
enhanced or diminished when he makes a change? It needs to
enhance. Okay.
Did I miss that word in there? Yeah. Yeah. It may be
enhanced. Right. So those are the
major changes. There's also some little minor word tweets
here and there but
nothing of substance. I'm just going to show you what that
process would look
like again. The yellow is what we're adding in. Public
notification. The 200,
500 feet, the signs and everything meeting all needs to be
held before the PB and
City Council meeting for the site selection. And what it'll
look like is if
you've done that notification per limitation and then you
can go to the
site directly to the site plan process. If you comply with
all the design
standards in 24 staff can approve it. If you need a
deviation or cannot comply
with it you go to planning and zoning Commission. If you
cannot meet the
public notification requirements for instance a private
utility because they
don't have City Council obviously they would still do the
SUP as normal and
staff would approve the site plan that complies with the SU
P. Commissioner Beck.
Thank you Chair. Okay. After going over this a little bit
more I think I got a
little bit more clarification. What we're essentially doing
here is changing
the process where SUPs aren't always required anymore.
Correct? Correct. Except
if they're... private utilities. Right. Now interesting to
hear on one of three of the
legislation taxes. Private utility companies or DME sites
that cannot
comply with the public hearing notification and
neighborhood meeting
process will still need to apply for an SUP. Will still
need to apply for an SUP. Why is that
written like that? Why I would assume if they don't meet
these that would be the...
So if they don't do this step here in yellow. Right. They
don't send out
notification for council to purchase a site. Right. Then
you still have to follow
the rules that are in place. The SUP notifications to all
the sites. Then it says any
proposed DME electric sub station or switch station
facility that meets the
public hearing notification neighborhood meeting
requirements but does not meet
the development standards would need to submit an
application for review. That's
the site plan process. So right here if you've done that
notification. Yeah. Then
you go into that site plan review. The sub tap for 24 and
the site plan. Okay. And if
you comply with all the standards we created on the face of
them then you go
staff can approve that. If you cannot comply with those
standards in 24 that's
when it comes to PMV. Okay. So what we're doing is we're am
ending the DDC that
allows this change so they don't have to do an SUP. I
wouldn't say this they don't
have to do an SUP. What we're really doing is moving that
input and noticing that's
required with the SUP up to the beginning of the process
towards more
impactful neighborhoods where they're going. We're
requiring that notification
to the neighbors that's not required now before the sites
ever even picked. That's
the whole intent of what we're doing here. Okay. So to say
we're eliminating
the SUP is not quite fair. We're just taking that
notification and moving it
up. Because by the time that if we do an SUP the sites
already been purchased by
council. It's already been it's already left the gate. It's
already happening. And
so we want to move that input up closer to when you're
actually picking the
site so that neighborhood feedback can be impactful. Okay.
I don't mean to drag
this out too long but I wrote part of this were these
conditions and
additional site considerations not codified anywhere is
that right? Yes that's in 24
which it's in your backup we gave you. Right. Those are all
the site plan
considerations the buffering, the screening, the lighting,
the NERC and
federal standards. Those are all spelled out in 24. Okay.
And those are a
reflection of the seven SUPs we've already approved that
were consistent
across the board with the conditions that were applied. And
so if you comply
with all those then it's just staff approval. Okay so we're
not recodifying
anything. We're adding in standards that were approved as
conditions of SUPs.
We're adding those into the code. Okay. Thanks.
Commissioner Hartsmith. Thank you chair. I don't know if
now is the time. I have a
question about the language in the limitations here in so L
-43. Correct me
if I'm wrong but the way it reads currently 12 days for the
public hearing
15 days which is section C there 15 days for the public
hearing. So would that
does that mean you would have the public hearing before
potentially the notice
goes out? Am I reading that right? No your notice needs to
go out 12 days before
the hearing. Okay and so it go 12 days before the public
hearing. Right to get
the neighborhood notice that they're gonna be talking about
it. Okay okay I
read that to say that they ran they didn't they they ran
separate but I I
was that was my question. Right so B is a public hearing
was required and
then one and two underneath that is you have to have the
notice 12 days prior to
that public hearing. Perfect okay got it thank you. All
right and that's really
that's really it. It's always changed so. Commissioner Beck
. Thank you. For
definition electric distribution lines these are the lines
that go from the
power plant to the homes and businesses. Transmission line
will go from the
power plant to the substation. The substation the trans
distribution line
will go from the substation to your house. Okay thanks.
Thank you Mike. Thank you Mike. Our next item will be
presented by Ross. Ross is
going to discuss DCA 150007.
Good afternoon this is DCA 1507 a didn't cut amendment for
it amending the
historic districts district standards for adding cement
itious siding to the
historic codes. Let me give a little preface real quick. I
have a background
in architecture and I'm was kind of approached by our
director to help kind
of tie loose ends on this ordinance get the ordinance more
into a written stage
so we can put it into our code. Identify the the areas of
interest within our
districts and then just kind of close up the the work that
has been done by our
staff. I do want to kind of give credit to Katia Boykin and
Cindy Jackson they
are planners senior planners in our development services
department that
have done the legwork of a lot of the community meetings a
lot of working with
the historic districts and put all the kind of the data
together that we are
now tying together with this code amendment. Additionally
the city has
brought on board a historic preservation officer who will
be starting with our
department next in two weeks so he will kind of take the
charge of anything
forward and relate to our department on any further code
updates coming forward
but you have a staff report that kind of indicates there
was a need based on some
COA certificate of appropriateness for structures that were
needing to be
identified as a separate type of building material and we
'll kind of walk
through that with this process and how that relates to our
DENT development
code. So the request before you is to make a recommendation
to City Council
regarding amending sections 35 795, 35 7105, and 35 7135 of
the DENT
development code to include additional facade materials
being cementitious
siding as architectural requirements on new construction
only and that's
highlighted there within the DENT development code for the
Oak history
Oak Hickory historic district, the Belle Avenue historic
conservation district,
and the West Oak area historic district. Some background
the homeowners in the
historic districts have inquired to the city and requested
buildings such as
these listed garages, workshops, storage buildings, and new
and fill houses to be
able to apply cementitious or hardy board siding for these
new construction
activities. Now new construction is separate as a building
envelope and
building activity than preservation items. The DENT
development code follows
historic interior interior the secretary historic
guidelines for required
materials and processes for rehabilitating historic homes
based on
those approved materials and the character and quality of
the
contributing structure. So what this code amendment is only
to kind of codify new
rules for new construction. Cementitious siding for your
kind of benefit or
hardy board or planks, hardy board planks are siding or
cement fiber board
products usually kind of spelled out within the parameters
of the dimensional
requirements there used as exterior siding to replicate
wood and they are
tested and fire rated for durability against fire, insect,
wind, and water. And
James Hardy is a leading manufacturer company of fiber
board siding that you
may see throughout your view throughout the DFW Metroplex
and all throughout the
United States. Now generally a definition for the
application of this is kind of
broad. You can see hardy board on new single-family homes,
on accessory
structures, and for infill homes within historic districts
and that's kind of
the application we're looking to to amend with our DDC.
This little picture up
here came from the James Hardy website kind of indicating
all the different
types of siding and trim and architectural elements that
kind of
meet the character of how those new materials and
expression of those
materials are made instead of just a wood siding product.
And the just to kind
of point out this was this is my house or was my house in
Houston and it was in
a historic district but it was on an annex side of the
district where you
didn't have to meet the full replication of materials and
it was built in 1999. I
lived in it from 2004 to 2008 and it to me represents a you
know what we are
looking to do with new infill development when you can get
an architect that can
you know design for a good product with that siding.
Current DDC historic standards just generally do not
differentiate between
new construction and preservation activities. They require
COAs to
have brick, wood siding, wood, stone, and stucco which are
general materials
required for historic preservation activities and are not
consistent. The
language of this is not consistent within the Denton
Development Code and
you'll take a look at that. Now it's kind of again just
another indication these
are the kind of preservation activities where we are
preserving homes in Denton
and these are notable structures in Denton that are
maintaining the strict
standards of brick, wood siding, wood, stone, and stucco
and we are not this code
amendment doesn't affect the historic preservation of these
activities. So if
you take a look in the Denton Development Code these are
how they read verbatim
in each section and you can see that each under general one
of each one kind
of says the permitted the only permitted facade materials
are brick, wood siding,
wood, stone, and stucco and within the Bell Avenue Historic
District there are
opportunities for new materials to be expressed but they
are kind of codified
in all the other districts so we're kind of seamlessly kind
of matching all the
all these together. So looking at this one by one Oak
History Historic District
will read the white writing is the original language the
yellow is the new
amended language which we are including the use of smooth
sided
cementitious siding is permitted on new construction and
accessory buildings
artificial facsimiles of these materials will be considered
on a case-by-case
basis as material technologies progress and we did that
language for each of the
historic districts shown here and with that there was data
provided for us to
make some good qualified decisions quantified decisions of
what to do and
our staff as mentioned polled comparable cities and pretty
much all
of them allow for cementitious siding to be implemented on
new construction and
we found that pretty standard throughout and I want to
point out that Fort Worth
identified it as smooth sided versus a grained pattern and
you can get these
panels within with grain patterns and other things but I
think for the content
and the character of the buildings that we have maintaining
it as smooth sided
is the direction we were going and we are following their
lead. We've got a
question for you on that. Yes. So you you can't use a wood
textured type siding
then only slick. My experience with that is I don't think
you're going to end up
with the kind of look that you may be looking for with a
cement board because
you can't countersink the nails when you shoot a smooth
finish hardy board it'll
it'll break so what ends up happening you have to high nail
it all the nails
show on it and when you paint it and you drive down the
road and you look at it
you'll see that and I learned that probably 20 years ago
the hard way with
the client and I've never used smooth textured siding since
because of that
because you can see every single nail shot in it. I
understand what the look
is but from the street you can't tell the difference but
you will definitely
see a very different look in the way the finish is going to
be when it's
caulk putty and painted with a just a smooth finish and I
would just draw that
to your attention from many years of experience you may
want to check with
some other contractors but I think the clients or the
owners will maybe not be
as pleased with the finished product using just a smooth
only versus a texture
that just be a comment. Commissioner Dudowitz. Ross could
you explain why you
only allow smooth and not give an alternative because in
any architectural
design you would want to sure duplicate something that's
surrounding it and give
the client an option what would look best. I can go back to
that you know
there is precedent with you know those these multiple types
and you can see
there's lap board and you know I understand the single kind
of type stuff
but I'm just thinking that maybe the Jim's point that you
have an alternative
from an aesthetic or architectural design standpoint not to
restrict it just a
flat board but if there is great and I've seen it you get
up close to that you
know to a great thing you think it's grain wood painted
over you get up to a
flat piece it looks like siding. Well there's been
conflicting viewpoints
on that within our within our team so some of the it's a
wood grain would have
looked good looked the other way it would have looked more
of a you know
less quality material versus a seamless material so I'm not
sure how to go about
that. Can you explain artificial effect similes and what
those are?
That would be kind of the same thing if there's any other
new product for brick
for stone but those would be the artificial facsimiles of
the main
material and those would be looked on a case-by-case basis
if they're appropriate
to be implemented either as a you know skirt around a
building or something
like that if they're not going to do river rock stone on
things like that I
mean you would have to do it for preservation purposes but
for new
construction we would look at new materials on a case-by-
case basis. Stone
face cinder block you know they have cinder blocks and they
can put a
artificial facade on the front side of that that qualify
for it? I don't know with
cinder block I mean I wouldn't say. Well no I'm saying you
have real stone and
then you have facsimile of stone it's because it has a
facade on the front
that looks like stone but in fact it's not. Jim may be able
to help explain what I'm
thinking about. Cultured stone. Cultured stone, cement
stone that is porous.
That would be artificial facsimiles. So that's the term
that can be
approved case-by-case. Correct.
Understand your point. Thank you. Commissioner Taylor.
Thank you
Chair. Along the same lines it seems to me that would be
more appropriate
generally to have the wood grange product because it would
more accurately
recreate the historic wood siding. I also have some
questions about other shapes. I
don't know how many kind of craftsman style homes are in
our historic
districts but common in craftsman style homes were shingles
even cement shingles
and asbestos shingles which would have you know were common
in the 20s 30s 40s
and so it seems like it would be better to get rid of the
asbestos and go to the
hardy shingle for example but those aren't smooth either I
believe. I believe
they're also yeah they have the same kind of textures that
would that be
allowed in this because it the way I read it it looks like
you can only have
the straight board. We weren't proposing any kind of
dimensional
requirement for any of these products. Some historical
perspective this item
evolved out of our historic Commission. They are HLC
Commission and they wanted
to they had received several and you can see that in the
backup material for your
report several queries as to what materials they can and
cannot use and
these are one of them came up. Of course obviously some
very relevant discussion
is coming out of this conversation in this presentation and
the Commission at
the PNZ is more than welcome to recommend adding or
including the hardy
board smooth finish and wood grain. So that is an option.
Now to talk about the
other materials or what you've mentioned why wouldn't we
upgrade and eliminate
the for instance the asbestos issue related to homes that
were built in the
20s. If this was a existing home and they decided to tear
it down and build it to
that same character then we would as a facsimile or look at
those other
materials in that manner to determine the appropriateness
of to comply with. But
any new development that occurred on that site let's say
they had the existing
home with the existing materials and they chose and Ross
correct me if I'm
wrong and they chose to add a garage for example then
deciding on that would not
be the asbestos it would be asbestos free and we could see
that it matches the
character of that neighborhood or that single-family home.
So I guess a follow-up
question I don't I don't really know that much about the
historic landmark or
the historic preservation and the kind of activities of HLC
. So to me to my
unexperienced eye it seems like a good facsimile that's of
a quality product
that's going to last 50 or 100 years would be good enough.
Is there a reason
or should we ask HLC to give us input as to whether or not
a facsimile product is
is there a reason why we shouldn't allow facsimile products
? I think the
opportunity that the HLC wanted was to look at everything
case by case in a CO
COA for example to determine the appropriateness and the
likeness and the
historical perspective of that area as well. So I guess
then what we're talking
about would all fall into that facsimile clause that
require a case-by-case
basis. I see. Commissioner Beck. Thank you Chair. Following
up with what you said, do they lose
historical status if they do start changing certain
materials is that part
of the concern here? This is not yet. That would where
preservation activities
have to maintain original structure and form or indicate a
break to the original
structure so that new materials could be shown but I don't
know the logistics of
how that works. I'm not a historic preservation officer but
again these are
for new structures for garages things like that that people
with historic
buildings would want to include on their properties and to
give you the
background HLC has always promoted one-for-one materials to
the
secondary structures so it's become cost prohibitive it's
called become kind of
difficult to maintain a garage you know with you know four
inch slat wood and
kind of clad your whole building with that the durability
of that the
longevity of that when new materials could replicate it but
yet be not would
not diminish the historical nature of that structure
because the original
structure is the the item that that carries that weight.
Well it seems to me
if I may just add that the older these buildings get the
availability of those
original products seems to diminish and you're almost
forced to look at
substitute materials as long as it looks the same. There's
different levels and I'm
not versed in it but there's a level of and I may be listed
it here there's
restoration preservation there's a couple of other levels
where you take
the original material but we've got to kind of focus on
just new materials and
not you know. So this code amendment that's before you was
specifically for
new construction and the the issue was in terms of the
definition in the
ordinance this was a cleanup to the definition of the
ordinance upon the
upon discussion with HLC as well that we needed to refine
the language to enable
the ability to allow cementious fiber / hardy board as
everybody likes to call
it but your point as to you know should it only be a smooth
finish versus a
great wood grain pattern that is something worth
considering and perhaps
making that part of your recommendation. We can take that
recommendation.
Commissioner Rozelle. Thank you. In your question should it
be limited to wood grain if
that especially siding isn't wood grain at all? I would
take you out any mention
of that then and just say the use of cementitious siding is
permitted and not
kind of dictate pattern or form on that. Exactly. Make it a
little more general.
Yeah okay. Commissioner Taylor. One more clarifying
question. Can does it need to
match does the new building the new garage or accessory
building need to
match the main building? It needs to match in yeah. So
there's that somewhere else in
the ordinance? Correct. So we don't have to worry about.
Yeah correct.
Okay. And the COA process would enable that distinction. It
would be reviewed.
I have a couple slides left real quick. Just they our city
staff worked with the
HLC to and with the community to have staff to have
community input for
residents within the districts and we are looking at doing
that again for City
Council moving forward with your recommendation tonight but
there has
been some items done within October of last year to gain
support and get input
from the residents and so again kind of the background we
are looking we're at
the place where HLC did vote 8-0 in support but we can
bring back
your amendments to them or move forward with City Council
with your
amendments. Commissioner Dottovitz. Just to question that
comment so we're going
to be presented with this option tonight. Correct. We can
amend it or suggest to be
amended. Does it go and then go back to CHL? No. It just
goes to City Council.
HLC. HLC. Alphabet soup. The next step is to move on to
City Council with your
recommendation. You do have the option to postpone the item
should you need more
time. Just to keep your apprised we have scheduled a
notification for the
upcoming City Council meeting but your option is if you
need more information
we would choose to table the item that is your prerogative.
Okay. I think from
what I'm hearing is that this cementious siding leave it
open-ended.
Commissioner Rosell. Thank you Chair. I'm not sure if this
question can be
answered but there's different levels of historic design
ations from the city,
state, and federal designations of what is historic. That's
is that on a building
by building or is that the zone? What I'm wondering is any
new construction is are
we do we have to fall under any federal state historic
designations or kind of
new construction has some freedom? I'm not first on that.
We can check with our
Chelsea advisors on that. It would seem to be that there
are those higher tier
districts and this is a local these are three local
districts which I've read
the background on so whatever we're doing we're amending
local districts with
our standards. It's building by building. Building by
building. But we do we have
established specific districts within the city if you
notice we have the okay
create historic district you have the Bell Avenue historic
conservation
district and we also have a West Oak area which those
designations that
should you choose to follow that path you have the
opportunity to. If I'm not
mistaken. There's not gonna be any jeopardy to the primary
structure if
they have one of those state plaques on their wall by
adding a new structure. New
structure that's because that's to the building not to the
property. It's not to
the lot. It's to the building in most instances and that's
what the C of A
would establish you would have all that historical data
with it to determine the
appropriateness of even moving forward with in addition to
that property or
that development. Perfect. Thank you. Again this was new
information to me I tried
to cram and understand the concepts of what was going on to
get it to where it
is. Thank you.
Just for anybody who may be waiting and listening and we
have our final item
that's D, DCA 16-001 in regards to tree preservation that
that item has been
continued to our March 23rd meeting so that will not be on
our agenda tonight.
That's going to cover our public hearing items. We have two
other items in work
session. I think what we're going to do is make a small
change and here item B
first which is going to be PZ 16-030 because I think they
were here last
time and missed completely so we'll make sure that you're
able to get up and do
your presentation and I think we'll take a short break to
get food at 538.
Okay welcome back it's 543 and we're going to call our work
session back into
order and we'll hear item B receive a report on DME's
capital improvement plan.
Thank you Chair Commission. This is an update on DME's CIP
program and processes
that we use in our CIP program. CIP's capital improvement
program. I'd like to
begin and give you just a couple brief facts about Denton
Municipal Electric.
We're an MOU that's what Mike Bill had shown up in his
earlier
presentation. We are the public electric company MOU. Some
people call it public
power as opposed to a private entity which would be an
investor owned
utility such as Encore or a cooperative like CoServe. DME
is the electric
department. We're owned and operated by the City of Denton
so all the citizens
of Denton do own us. Our peak electrical load is 350 meg
awatts. We have over 50,000
electric meters that we serve. Our overhead distribution
lines and I'll
show you some pictures of distribution we talked about
earlier is 328 miles of
overhead distribution. We have 426 miles of underground
distribution. If you do
that math that says that our distribution system is 57%
underground
here in the City of Denton.
This is executive summary. It's a little bit of a
presentation that we gave to the
City Council in a work session on December the 8th. If you
look at the
chart on the right hand side this shows the electrical peak
demand that we've
had here in the City of Denton. It starts on the far left-
hand side over here in
1960 we had 26 megawatts worth of peak electrical load in
the entire City of
Denton combined. Forecast adapt to the year 2022 we're
forecasting 436
megawatts. Our peak load was 350 megawatts in August of
2011 when we had
the hot spell with so many consecutive days over 100
degrees and so it goes up
when it's hot it goes down a little bit when the summer
loads are not as much
but you have to have the infrastructure to handle it
because we never know when
it's going to be hotter when the citizens are going to be
flipping all the light
switches on. So we do have a problem here in the City of
Denton. We have a growth
and agent infrastructure problem. We have a responsibility
to respond to
resolve that problem with both as the electric provider
here in the City of
Denton and also a regulatory responsibility. There are some
words that
have been passed around at the federal level Department of
Energy. There's FERC,
the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. They have NERC,
the North American
Electric Reliability Corporation that has guidelines that
we have to follow.
There's NERC compliance requirements that we have to submit
. There's a report
called a FERC 715 report that every year we have to analyze
our entire
transmission system. That means you mathematically model
your entire
electrical system and then you check to see under peak
loading conditions how
are you looking? What parts of your system or segments
might be overloaded?
Are you going to have any issues with that load? Then you
start doing
contingencies. You take each segment or each piece of that
electrical system out
of service such as if you had to switch it out for
maintenance or if maybe a
piece of equipment failed. You look at that for every
single piece of equipment.
That's one contingency. Then you start doing multiple
contingencies where you
look at that piece and another piece out. And there's a
whole host of guidelines
that we have to follow for the FERC 715 report. We have a
public involvement
process for our CFP program to resolve these issues that we
discover in the
FERC 715 report. And the public involvement process
encourages citizen
input. Brian Dascombe is going to come up in a little bit
to talk about the public
involvement process. We do consider all practical
suggestions that we receive
from the citizens and we desire to move forward with the
most sensible approach
that has the least impact and it has the most support. So
our CFP program does
address the two key factors here in Denton, system growth
and agent
infrastructure. Here is a system substation map. I noticed
in your backup
you had a copy of this. Let me kind of point this out. This
is a more recent one.
The green loop around Denton here. This is I-35 East and 35
W comes here. So this
is the main core of Denton. This is our 69 kV transmission
line that's 69,000
volts. That is what is targeted during this FERC 715 study
to be upgraded to 138 kV
or 138,000 volts. The reason we would want to do that is we
do need more power
requirements and there's a mathematical calculation that
takes the power equals
your voltage times your current in very simplistic terms.
So if you keep the same
current flowing through the conductors and you double your
voltage you get
double the power that you can ship around the system. So
the red line is the
138 kV system that is owned by Texas Municipal Power
Authority. Denton is one
of the sister cities, a TMPA, Texas Municipal Power
Authority and the yellow
dots are the substations across the town. This is a
photograph on the left-hand
side, just a portion of our system operations center. This
is a 24/7
operation that we man here in the city of Denton. It's
located at 1685 Spencer
Drive. If you have not had an opportunity to come out and
visit that we'd love to
set up a time with you personally, schedule a time and
answer any questions
that you may have. We're very proud of this. It has all of
our substations are
tied back into this one site across town in this one
central location through
over on the right-hand side. This is a picture inside of a
switchgear facility
at one of our substations. Each substation has a facility
similar to
this. These are microprocessor relays or solid state relays
. This just happens to
be a brand called Swatz or SEL. They send me one of the
leaders in the
industry and from these these all feed into remote terminal
unit or RTU and
that RTU goes through our SCADA system supervisory control
and data
acquisition back to the system operations center. So we can
look at
telemetry. We know how much current, how much voltage is at
each substation on
each piece of the electrical bus in the substation. We can
check the status of
breakers. Are they opened or closed? We can actually have
control where we can
open and close those remotely from this facility. These
operators that are men in
the desk, they're NERC certified. They have to go through a
rigorous set of
testing to where they can work with the state of Texas
electrical grid which the
transmission system is part of the state grid. Here's a
picture of a substation.
These are unmanned facilities. Those are those yellow dots
that I showed you on
the schematic. The one on the left is a picture of the
Bonnie Bray substation.
Bonnie Bray south of 380. The picture on the right is our
Cooper Creek substation
at Audre and East Loop 288. One of the things that we do
when we begin to try
to pick either new sites or how do we renovate existing
sites to allow for
growth is this is at Giesling and Black Road on the
northeast side of Denton.
These are some drawings that have been put together by
power engineers, one of
our engineering consultants. This is the existing site that
's here. It's kind of
unique that this substation actually has three transmission
lines that come into
it right now and will eventually have four. Encore, TXU,
they come in from the
northeast side of town. We have TMPA line that goes up
through here and then we
have a line that feeds our Cooper Creek, McKinney, and
industrial substations over
in here. So there's three lines that come into this. Most
of our substations have
two lines, one line in one line out. So when you have a
node or an intersection,
we have multiple lines come together, it's really hard to
move the
substation to a much different location unless you move all
the lines that are
with it. Think of a pencil with rubber bands and you can
move that, but all the
rubber bands have to move with that movement of the site.
This is an artist
rendition of what this substation will look like when it's
complete and it's
taken from this KOP key observation point in this direction
. Back to the point
of what is a distribution line, this is the lines that
distribute the power to
their citizens, to their homes, and it steps down on a
transformer to get it
down to 120 to 240 volts so it can go into the house and
supply the customer's
needs on the right-hand side. So they're the typically 40-
45 foot poles that go
down up and down every street, those are distribution
system. It's 13,200
volts phase to phase grounded Y or 7,620 volts phase to
ground on the
distribution system. This picture in the middle is what we
've actually been
constructing with our transmission process. This is one of
the newest ones
we completed over on Paisley Drive. You can see the
transmission system at the
top and then we have distribution system underneath it. And
so it's a very clean
look as compared to some of them like down Bonnie Brave
where we had old wood
poles and we topped them and things like that. So we're
trying to consider
aesthetics and all of designs and how do we have it look in
the end.
Well one of the things that we've come into is how do we
modify and upgrade our
electrical system and still keep the lights on and in. This
is a pretty big
task. Well we got to keep the vehicle moving forward.
Sometimes you have a flat
and you have to change the flat which is kind of what we're
doing. So you have to
kind of get innovative. You just kind of rock that car up
on two wheels and you
get some guys out you change the tire and you try to keep
on moving down the
road and that's what we're attempting to do. So how do we
do this?
Well we've never done this before. Quite like this with
this large of a
program. So we enlisted some help. Freezin Nichols is an
engineering consultant
that we brought on board to help us manage these projects
and help manage the
program. Once they came on board the end of year 2013 we
spent several months
talking to them, talking to other folks within DME and
other seated apartments.
How do we do these projects from start to finish and do
multiple projects at a
time? We're really good at building one or two substations
every two or three
years is what we used to do. Now we're trying to build
three to five every year
or two so we can meet these electrical needs that the first
graph showed. So we
we did some flow charts and process some swim lane diagrams
. We came up with about
21 different processes that we have to go through and I'll
show you just a few
of those real quick. And they mainly worked around site and
route selection,
land acquisition, permitting, design criteria and
construction methods as far
as how do we build these projects and complete the program.
This is very hard
to see but there's a lot of steps involved. This is one of
those 21 steps
that we go through. This is just to pick a site or route.
How do we do this? We
have different players such as Tignall and Perkins, one of
our consultants we
use, Power Engineers that does this across the country, DME
, Freezin Nichols
working with the right-of-way department, our public
utility board and our city
council. So there's six players here and as you go from
left to right you kind of
look at each task that has to happen and maybe multiple
players or parties are
involved in each task. Every time you go from one swim lane
to another you have
to hand it off to somebody and you expect a review or some
type of comment
to come back to you or maybe you work hand-in-hand with
them to accomplish
this task. So once we get around to get into an open house
where we actually
meet with the citizens, talk about things that we need to
do, we've had a whole
host of people involved all the way through city council
before we even have
the first open house to say this project's needed. We need
to get this
built. How do we do this? Here's some options. Here's some
things we came up.
Let's take these in front of the community. Let's hear
their input. Let's
take the good suggestions that we hear back from them. Let
's see what ones seem
reasonable and that we can accommodate and come back forth
with an ultimate
selection of where we get a site selected. And so this
particular one has
49 separate tasks just to help pick a site. So it gets over
on the right hand
side then it comes back over to the left hand side and goes
over to the end. And
so there's a lot of tasks involved to help even pick the
site. Once
the site's picked, an ordinance is written that that's the
site that's picked, we
then go in and try to acquire that site. We try to buy the
land, work with the
landowners. This piece has about 30 separate tasks that are
involved.
Sometimes you have willing landowners, sometimes you don't.
In the end, if you
can't come to agreeable terms and conditions, then you may
end up having to
go through an eminent domain process. Luckily, we've only
had to file a few
eminent domain cases. We went to special commissioners here
in one time. We got an
award, but we've never had to go through the whole process
at all. And so we I
think when people really realize that the relocation
packages and some of the
things, they're very, very generous. It can be a good thing
. They're
like, "What? We didn't know that." And so that's the land
acquisition process. After
that, we end up and we have to go ahead and plait the land
that we've bought.
This is just a preliminary process to plait the land. This
one has 13 tasks. It
does involve the planning department, DRC comments. We
comply with the DRC
comments and we come back and of course that comes back to
P&Z for some reviews
and approvals. And the SUP process, which we're talking
about trying to improve and
maybe move some of this up earlier in the process that Mike
Bell mentioned
earlier, I think this is really a good thing to consider
because it gets
to hear what the citizens have to say about the site, how's
it going to look,
and they hear those questions before we ever pick the site,
before we ever buy
the site, before we ever plait the site, before we then
could come see you as we
do now. So I think there's some real opportunities to
improve that process.
Power engineers helped us with some site evaluation
criteria. Some of the things
we looked at were engineering considerations, aesthetics,
land use,
ecology, and cultural resources and there's many items
under each one of
these subcategories. With that, I'd like to ask Brian Das
combe, he's our
external affairs manager, come up talk about some of our
site selection and
public involvement process and I'll come back up and
conclude this. Thank you,
Brent. Good afternoon, Commissioners. As Brent mentioned, I
'm going to quickly go
through our public involvement process and I'll try to do
that quickly. Please
ask any questions that you have. So here it is real simply,
deceptively simply,
these are the steps we go through. So we start with an open
house and then move
on to a hearing with the Public Utilities Board and then
with the City
Council. Now you're, I'm sure, very familiar with public
hearings and how
those go. I know that you conduct those on a regular basis.
That open house
though, if you haven't been to those, those are meetings
that we have with the
community. They're informal in the sense that there's no
central presentation.
Instead we have about a dozen exhibits set up and the
public's invited in to
come check those out and say what's the impact going to be
on my property, what's
the impact going to be on my neighborhood, and try to get
an
understanding of how that works. And so some of those
exhibits that Brent showed
you earlier, for instance, an artist rendering of what the
substation is
going to look like, a map, an aerial map that shows where
it is. We found that
that allows people to come in and talk to us one-on-one.
They don't have to get
up and stand in front of a group of people and try to
present their
question or something like that. So those are helpful. So
we have that open house.
That's followed by a hearing with the Public Utilities
Board. Hey then they can
get up and make a statement in front of everybody if they
want to, right? So we've
had it informally, we've had it formally at the public
hearing with the PUB, and
those tend to be in the morning, the Public Utilities Board
meets in the
morning, and then an evening meeting with the council for
another public hearing.
So we have formal and informal, we have a couple of evening
meetings and that
one morning meeting. I said this was deceptively simple,
and one of the
reasons is that at any point in this process we can get
kicked back to the
beginning of the process, and I really think that's a good
thing. As much as it
can slow things down, sometimes things need to be slowed
down. For instance, we
could have the open house, we present five different
options, let's say, and
the public says I don't like any of your options because
you should have picked a
sixth option, you should have showed us a sixth option, and
a lot of times we'll
look at that and say you're right, that is a good option.
However, it includes a
new group of people, so we're gonna have another open house
and we'll start the
process over. There have been a number of instances where
just that has happened,
and that can happen anywhere along the way. We can get
kicked back to the
beginning. So that's the general process. To notify people
for those open houses,
as well as the public hearings, we send out mailed letters
and we put a
notification in the dinner record chronicle, we do on-site
signage, and we
create a web page for each of the projects so that people
can get more
information. Now those mailed letters are similar to what
the planning department
does. The dissimilarity is that they send out a 200-foot
legal notice and those are
certified mail. None of these are legal notices for us, it
's just our
process, and so ours we send out to the 500-foot courtesy
area and those are all
just standard mail. So that's currently our process. I also
want to say on
on-site signage, I want to make sure that I communicate
those. We try to do
on-site signage, but if we don't own the property, there
may be no opportunity for
us to do that, and so we do our best to do on-site signage
and sometimes it's
practical and sometimes it isn't. So here's what somebody
could get in the
mail. They would have a narrative along with this. There's
some typed out
information, but they would have a map. This is a subst
ation map for our Locus
substation that we did, and we said, okay, here's these
five different options and
instead of numbering them, we use colors just because we
don't indicate that
there's a preference. We don't know it seemed to be a rank,
but we are saying,
okay, there's five different options that we're looking at.
You can see the
existing site and then we're going to draw, and somebody
knows more about
geometry can tell me, but it's a buffer of 500 foot around
these, around
each polygon, and so those are overlapping somewhat. I don
't know if
that's a radius or a, I call it a buffer. I feel safe
calling it a buffer. All
right, does anyone know, is anyone going to correct me? All
right, it's strange how
we started talking about geometry there in the middle of my
presentation, wasn't it?
Sorry. Okay, so there they can see, here's the sites that
are being
considered, and a lot of times somebody can look at this
and say, do I care to
show up for this meeting? If it's some, if they're, you
know, if they're thinking
about putting a substation on the courthouse lawn, buddy, I
'm coming to the
meeting and let them know what I think. You might wonder
where we got the 500
foot notification. That was through two different sources.
We talked to the
planning department and they said the furthest we ever go
out is 500 feet, but
we also talked to Power Engineers, which is an engineering
consulting firm that
does public involvement across the country for electric
projects, and they
said the furthest we've ever seen anyone go out is 500 feet
. So for projects that
are bigger than anything the Denton's ever going to do, 500
feet is the furthest
we've ever gone out, and we said, okay, we're going to hit
the maximum for both our
planning department and for what this consulting firm has
seen. So citizens
that are included on a project, they have the opportunity
to influence us
and the final decision makers through web comment forms. We
put surveys on those
web pages I mentioned. They can talk to us one-on-one in
the open house and
get information, but also give information there, and they
have a
hearing both with the PB and with the City Council. So
those are their opportunities for input.
So that's all I have on public involvement. Are there any
specific
questions that I can answer? All right. Oh, yes, sir.
Commissioner Beck. Thank you. Signage. Yes, sir. You get a
lot of complaints on the size of the signs. How big are the
signs?
Are they your typical yard signs? So those are, I think
those are 24 by 36. Okay.
Commissioner Hatchbuth. Thank you, Chair. Following kind of
that same thought, the green card, you sent out certified
mail? Is that what you said?
No, sir. Just regular mail? That's right, because it's all
courtesy mail, so it's non-certified. Okay.
Is there, so there's, but there's a spreadsheet or
something, some sort of distribution list of some sort?
Absolutely.
And we send those out to, and I appreciate the opportunity
to clarify, we send that out to any resident within the 500
feet and also any landowner.
So if you're a renter, you get it. If you're a landlord,
but who doesn't live there, then you're going to get it as
well.
And then is that list subsequently posted or is that, I don
't know if you can. I don't know what the rules are.
But here's, along with Larry, I think most often I hear
complaints about, well I didn't get it. I was never
notified.
Yeah. Yes. And so I think it would maybe be in my mind just
, hey, we sent it and here's a spreadsheet that's posted,
you know, that people can check periodically.
I don't know what rules kind of govern that, but I just, I
hear that a lot. Okay. That I didn't know.
And one thing we've batted around is the idea of including
that in the backup to the city council and the public
utilities board so that it's technically a public document
and people can find it if they need to.
But we're not, you know, we're not putting people's public,
even though it is public information, we want to respect
their privacy as well.
And so perhaps that's a good middle way to do it. I think
that's a good concern.
All right. Thank you, Ryan. Appreciate that.
This is our entire CIP program. This is a Gantt chart. On
the left hand side, there's over 2000 separate line items
that we have to accomplish to do each of these projects.
We've rolled those up into these individual projects, and
it has a timeline across the top. The blue line is, it
shows where we at in all of the projects that we have to do
.
I think kind of an interesting thing to note is there's
some of the projects that we've completed, some that we're
in the middle of doing.
And of course, there's others wrote that have rolled off
the top that just because you can't read it, we close those
up.
Don't show them on this chart. And there's some projects
here that we have yet to do in the future.
I think this next chart is a little bit easier to read. It
's the same type of chart, but we broke each of those
horizontal lines into four different categories.
We broke them into route and site selection, land and eas
ement acquisition, permitting and construction.
So at a glance, you can look at a project and see what
phase of that project is it in.
So these are some that we've completed construction on.
These are some that are either beginning or in the middle
of the construction.
And these are some that the construction has not begun yet.
We do hold project meetings for all of these projects and
for the entire program every single Thursday at 1685
Spencer at the DME Operation Engineering and Operations
Center.
We meet. There's about a dozen DME staff, engineering
consultants, some legal consultants, other city of Denton
departments such as legal, right away, purchasing.
We all get together to talk about each and every one of the
projects. And we have a sheet where are we at on this
project?
What have we done? What do we have yet to do? Is there any
roadblocks or any things that we need to maybe reallocate
resources so we can try to keep the project moving forward?
And so we do that every single Thursday. It becomes rather
lengthy. We start at 930. It seems like it rarely gets over
before 130 or two.
And so it's very in depth every single week on these
projects.
This is a different way of looking at some of the projects.
We did the open house here, the route site selection, land
acquisition, permitting and completion date.
The green items have already been completed. The blue items
are in process. So we have many different ways to help
manage this large CIP program and all these projects.
I think that this little animated chart will kind of show
you how much progress that we've made in just a short
amount of time.
This was in 2013. We'd already began some of these projects
before Freeze and Nichols came on.
After they came on, we came up with the swim lanes, the
process flow diagrams.
At the end of that year, I'm going to hit this next mouse
click and you can actually see how different projects have
moved from category to category.
And here we go.
So that's what we did in the year 2013 to 2014 on the
entire CIP program and some of these projects.
This next slide will start off where the last one just left
off. And this is what we showed council on December the 8th
as well.
We do this past year from 2014 to 2015. And here's this
mouse click.
If you stop and kind of reflect on all of those process
swim lanes, those 20 different processes, I just showed you
four of them. You think of all the tasks that have to
happen.
We're very, very busy. We really want to get these projects
out in front of the public. We want to get their input. We
want to consider their comments.
And then we want to comply with all the DRC comments that
we get back from them and get them built.
So with that, I'd be happy, Brian, I'd be happy to answer
any questions that you might have about the electric side
of things on any of our CIP projects.
Commissioner Taylor. Thank you, Chair.
I just have a couple of questions on that very first map,
the very first system diagram.
And kind of the very first slide and the very last slide
kind of tying together. So basically there are stations and
there are lines.
And you said everything green is being updated and
everything yellow, basically. Is that correct?
All of the light colored green lines is our existing 69,000
volt system. And that is all being converted to 138 kV.
And then every basically every yellow dot that touches the
green line, is that those are the substations?
These are the substations if they have a number on them.
These are the projects that we have approved CIP budget
funds for to implement.
And we look at a five year program when the Public Utility
Board and City Council reviews our budget each year.
And so as you get closer into the five year program, you
know of some new things that you didn't really realize the
first part.
And so that's kind of a constantly evolving process.
But these are the projects that have been identified that
do resolve the FERC 715 issues that we've noted.
And on the last slide there appeared to be about five
projects. I think it was two or three stations and two or
three lines that were in site selection.
We're kind of early in the process. I guess six.
This Mayhill substation actually we have a site selection
public involvement hearing with the City Council next
Tuesday.
On this on the 16th we've already gone through the Public
Utility Board site selection for that.
The reason that that stayed there for a while is we've been
working with the landowners one landowner that has all
these possible sites we thought we were going to come to an
arrangement.
We're picking the site that they wanted us to put where on
their property. We just haven't been able to arrive at the
actual dollar amount.
So we'll be having that on Tuesday. Next week, a pockers
dispenser. That's another segment that we're looking at
trying to get done.
Underwood substations on the southwest side of town over by
the Coal Ranch property.
We're working with the Coal Ranch people and also Hillview,
I believe the Ross Perot folks have a lot of land out there
as well.
Eagle substations, one you've probably seen on the front
page of the paper several times.
That some sites have now been removed off of that. It's
actually a good move to do that.
There's some other opportunities that we're pursuing to see
how we can accommodate that.
North Lakes to Denton North. That is an existing route of a
transmission line. We're going to rebuild it in place.
We'll be having an open house with the citizens just to
rebuild that in place.
And then the Spencer Locust line. That's going to be a very
complex project.
And it's much needed, but it's a very dense area between
those two stations.
So is whenever it went from the previous year to this year,
probably 15 or 20 new items slid on.
Are there additional items in a backlog that are not yet on
this slide?
All of those would be shown on some of these Gantt charts
right here.
Like I said, there's over 2,000 line items that have been
rolled up into these projects.
So there would be some of these projects that we might not
have moved into those categories.
But some of those, if you actually look at this diagram,
some of these we don't have to do an open house or site
selection
because they're small projects within an existing station
where we just reconfigure it, add some new equipment.
And so it's just take an existing site and there's not any
of these really time involved tasks that are involved in
that.
Great questions.
Yeah, so that's really my question. Are there any more,
apart from those six that you have outlined,
do you expect any more kind of major public involvement,
like site, site, what do you call it, site?
Site selection.
Site selection and public involvement processes outside
those six? Or is that pretty much the last on the list?
From the very first slide that you talked about here, there
's some that are way out in the future, such as this 18,
which would be a new substation possibly on a Brazos
Electric Power Cooperative line out over in this area.
We're working right now with the landowner on the hills of
Denton or the Long Road substation.
And so, yeah, there's some that are way out there, but they
're actually on the approved budget list.
And I guess my final question. So you do have a coal ranch,
future potential development kind of west of coal.
Sorry, yeah, coal ranch.
Coal ranch would be right here in this area on the
southwest side of town.
And you're already building a substation for it, basically?
We already have a site designated for it because of that
low growth. We'll have to have a substation in that area.
And of course, just north of there is the Artie Wells, and
it's a heavy industrial area. We need these to back up each
other being that close.
And then you have Hills of Denton North, number four,
future growth. And then number 18, I don't think there's a
specific large plan, but there's growth in that area.
Those are just some areas that we have the capability
through the Public Utility Commission.
They're either dual or triple certified that we can serve
new customers out there.
And at this point, are there any in the next five, 10 years
, are there any areas where not on this map that there's
growth that you think will be a challenge?
Or have you all planned out for this is a 10 year or 20
year kind of plan?
Yeah, as I mentioned, we looked at the chart above here as
far as the forecast 436 megawatts in the year 2022.
That's a lot of growth considering we've had 350. And if
you look, if this was a linear graph from 1960 to now,
which it's not, because as you notice, if you go straight
here, it starts to slope up.
If you go straight here, it starts to slope up. It
continues to kind of trend upward. So it's steeper. So it's
not linear.
But if it was linear, it'd be about a six and a half megaw
att increase per year.
And as long as it takes to build these stations, we have to
have several years ahead of time to go through this process
to solicit citizen input and get it built.
It's always better as hills of Denton up north when it's
one landowner and no one lives around it.
They want to get you a site. We want to jump on that
opportunity. We want to select the site. We want to get it
built there.
So once it's there, people go, well, I want this vacant
land around this. But if it wasn't there and people have
that and you try to put one there, it might be a different
story.
Commissioner Danowitz.
Back to the original chart. You're talking about coal ran
ches. Isn't there a Hunter's Ranch sub-agency in Los Alam
itos?
It's too big.
Arizona?
No, it's just to the south.
To the south?
No, it's worse.
Oh, over here in this area? I believe that's down here on
this area.
And that has adequate region to feed off of?
It feed off this Underwood substation.
Now down in this area, there are certain areas when you get
south of 2449 right here, there's only a small section that
the City of Denton or DME can serve being an MOU.
Part of the public utility commissions, they have some
boundaries and some of this becomes single certified for co
-serve to where we can't serve that far down there.
Commissioner Rossell.
Thank you, Chair.
How much megawatts does one substation increase to the
capacity?
For each of these, I'll say the typical substation, we have
two substation transformers in them. Each size of the
transformer is a 15, 20, 25 MVA transformer.
And what that means, if you take the middle number, it's
good for 20 megawatts, or the top number is 25.
The reason there's three numbers is one is with it running
without any fans blowing across it, just the normal base
rating, low rating of 15 MVA.
If it becomes hot enough, the unit gets heat, then you
might kick on the first stage of fans, it blows air across
the cooling radiators, because transformers are a thermal
device, you have to keep them cool.
And that's the second rating, the 20 MVA. If it becomes a
very hot day and the fans run and they run even all night
because it's trying to cool it off from heating up during
the day, then you have the capability of running 25 MVA
through that.
And that's at 55 degrees C. And there is another rating
that you're allowed to use under emergency loading
conditions, that's a 65 degrees C rating that raises that
25 number up to 28 MVA.
Thank you.
Commissioner Rosbeth.
So from the public awareness perspective, does DME do some
sort of outside of the meeting, some sort of educationals,
because for me, I understand the numbers, but I have
nothing to quantify the numbers.
So a one megawatt might as well be a one mega giga. I have
nothing to associate that with, and I think that is where
the, if I'm reading the tea leaves right with the people I
speak with, that's the disconnect, right?
Because your warning of something that, hey, we've got to
get in front of this, but what is this? What is, what, you
know, there's nothing tangible at the end of that warning.
Obviously, I get it, that it's bad, but what does bad mean?
You know, so that sort of thing.
So does the, I guess the trunk-created question is, does DM
E offer some sort of outside of, hey, we want to come see
you because we want to build something, just hey, we want
to come see you because we want to build relationship, and
we want to educate you, we want to give you a day in the
life of our world, and here's this, touch it, feel it, you
know, shock yourself, you know, all that good stuff so you
can understand this is what we're helping you with.
That sounds like an external affair question, and our
manager of that, Brian Dascombe, probably would have an
answer for that.
No, sir. You just stand in the light right there. That's
good.
Oh, yes, you do.
I hope this will answer your question. So I remember a few
years ago, we said, you know, we do need to be out more in
the public eye, we need to be accessible to the public.
Let's have a town hall meeting, we'll invite all of our
customers, and we'll say anything that you want to talk
about regarding electricity, please come talk to us about
it, right?
So we got all the staff, we had plenty of engineers there,
we had plenty of program managers there, we really had
everyone we needed.
And maybe there were a dozen staff members or something
like that, and then two members of the public came.
So this is a little embarrassing, right? We threw a party,
and it was an awkward party. People didn't really care.
So we thought, okay, well, that's interesting. We did a
couple of those awkward parties. And then we built a
transmission line that was going to impact people in their
homes, right?
We were going to have to buy additional easement from
people. In some cases, homes potentially were going to have
to be demolished for this transmission line.
And we thought, well, we've had meetings before, and we
know that no one really shows up to them. And so we booked
a space. It was a church. It was plenty big, it seemed to
us.
We had room for probably 60 people. Well, about 250 people
showed up. They flooded that meeting, and it was overcrow
ded.
And we've learned since then, and we have plenty of space
for our meetings. I tell that story to say, I would say
that a lot of people, if we say, come here tonight to learn
what an MVA is and how it relates to a megawatt,
they're going to say, you know, I think I'm going to stay
home and maybe watch TV or something. They're not that
interested in the technical part.
But when it starts to impact their home, it becomes
suddenly very interesting to them.
What we found is in our open house meetings, the most
popular exhibits are the ones that have an image that shows
, here's what we're talking about. Here's what we're talking
about putting up.
They're not as concerned about the size of the transformers
in the substation as the visual impact of the substation.
And so we do have that information available as far as we
have a, for each project, we have a multi-page description
of what this thing is, how it impacts the electrical system
.
And while I don't have the exact numbers on how many people
read that, I'm going to guess that those aren't on the
nightstands of a lot of our customers.
Instead, they want to know from us, how's this going to
impact my property? Does that answer the question?
>> It does, and I agree.
But I think it's more, there is no connection.
So when you're talking, people don't want to know the
numbers, I agree, but why is it important to know the
numbers?
I guess that's, I think that's the emphasis, and maybe it's
not the adult crowd we're shooting at.
Maybe it's the young college kids, or maybe it's just a day
at the mall when people are walking around.
And I don't know, I'll think about it and ask some
questions in the area.
But I think, I just think that there is an appeal.
There is a, because I had an issue at my home with the
transform outs, the lights were flashing, they were
blinking.
And I just thought it was commonplace.
And I call and there was something out on the pole.
I mean, so that's just, I didn't know who to call.
I didn't know what the symptoms were.
I didn't know anything.
Okay, well, it keeps flashing.
I should probably look and see what it is, or call and see
what it is.
So I think there's some of those kind of almost outreach
type things you could do kind of in advance.
But I'll frame that a bit and maybe I'll get your email
address.
Absolutely, and that's helpful.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you.
Any other questions that we can answer for the commission
while we're here?
Okay, Commissioner Hutsmith.
One last thing that I wrote down.
Your first slide, did it say reasonable requests from the
practical?
Yeah, there are some things that we receive like, well, we
don't even want to indent and put it up in some other area.
Well, as you noticed, the substations have to be somewhat
close to where the electrical load need is.
And so we may get all kinds of suggestions, but from an
engineering perspective, it's really not practical.
Right.
But they're good comments, and if we can help them
understand why that is, we want to help the citizens
understand that.
Again, outside looking in, that would be, if I were
sensitive, to say that my input's not practical.
I mean, I don't know if there's a better word.
I'm not a wordsmith at all.
But if you find a good word for us that means similar to
that, we would be more than happy to start.
Yeah, I mean, because the only option is it's not practical
.
My idea is not practical.
It's hard to change the law of physics.
Electricity only behaves in certain manners, and we just
tried to accommodate that.
Sure.
OK.
Thank you.
Any other questions?
Thank you all so much for coming.
Thank you.
We have one other item I think, unfortunately, we're going
to run out of time, is to finish
up the report we started last time on our pedestrian and
bicycle linkage.
I think what we're going to do is we're going to close our
work session and reconvene in
council chambers in public.
I don't know if we're going to be able to, depending on how
quickly that goes, we may
be able to come back and finish that item.
And if our meeting runs long, this evening we will have to
come back and have this at
our next meeting.
So if--
How long is that presentation?
Because I'm looking at a deck here.
It's told 20 minutes.
I think it's going to take hours to go through.
I'm just wondering.
I was told 20 minutes.
I'm just relaying.
Really?
Congratulations on getting through it.
I'm about halfway.
I had a slow night.
I've got a little more--
I mean, I'm just saying, is 20 minutes going to be enough?
Well, I think another issue, I think maybe one of our
commissioners that's not here would
like to have some additional time to talk about that.
I think we may have somebody that needs to get out this
evening.
So I think what we're going to do is for tonight, we're
just going to ask that that ought to
be moved to our next work session.
And I think the other question that's come up is if
commissioners would be available
possibly earlier for our next work session, since we-- it's
our last two now.
We've run over and haven't had to come back.
If we can come in at--
430.
430?
And I guess staff will send that out and let us know, and
we'll just have to poll and see
if that's possible.
What's that dangerous curiosity?
24.
I think we'll have-- staff will get back to us about
possibly our next work session starting
at 430, and commissioners can check their schedules and see
if that will work or if
not.
We'll have to deal with it at some point here in the future
.
So at 626, I'm going to close our work session for this
evening.
Thank you.
Good evening, and welcome to the City of Denton Planning
and Zoning Commission meeting.
It is 635.
Our meeting was duly posted, and we have a forum present.
And I call our meeting to order, and our first item of
business is to stand and say the pledge
of allegiance to the U.S. and the Texas flag.
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.
I pledge allegiance to the Texas flag and to the United
States of America, one nation
under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
This is a point of order on our agenda tonight.
We have one item that has been continued to March 23rd.
That is going to be our item D, DCA 16-001.
So if anyone's here for that item, again, that item has
been continued to March 23rd.
With that said, we will move on to our consent agenda.
Commissioner Dudowitz.
Thank you, Chair.
I move to approve the consent agenda.
Commissioner Taylor.
Second.
A first and a second, any discussion?
Seeing none, I will call for a vote on the board.
Motion passes 6-0.
Next item we have will be a public hearing.
So I will open the public hearing for item A, FR 15-0013.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'll ask Julie Wyatt to make this presentation for this
final replat.
Good evening.
I'm Julie Wyatt, associate planner with the City of Denton.
I'm presenting to you FR 1513, Country Lakes West.
The request before you is to consider a final replat of two
lots within the Country Lakes
West subdivision, NPD.
Here is the plat here.
The lots in question are here.
It was originally platted as two lots.
They are removing that lot line.
So that's why we're having the public hearing to look at
that.
It does meet the technical requirements of the Denton
Development Code, and therefore
staff does recommend approval of the plat.
The applicant is here if you have any questions.
This is a public hearing.
So anyone that would like to speak on this item, please
come forward.
If you do come forward, we'll need you to fill out a card.
And when you approach, if you'll give your name and address
, we would appreciate that
for the record.
Anyone else that would like to speak on this item?
Okay.
Seeing none, I will close the public hearing.
Commissioner Taylor.
I move approval of the final plat.
Commissioner Beck.
I second the motion.
We have a first and a second on this item.
Any discussion?
Seeing none, I'll call for a vote on the board.
The motion carries 6-0.
I'm going to now open the public hearing for our item B,
which is DCA 15-0003.
Thank you, Mike Bowman, Senior Planner.
We'll make this presentation.
Thank you, all members of the commission.
We covered this in pretty good detail in the work session,
so I'm going to skip to this slide here.
We had a very informative presentation from DMA members.
They saw the big, long workflow that they have.
I hope that helped illustrate to you that all that process
is the SEPs, they start here and end here,
and the SEP is right there at the end.
It's really kind of adding that input too late in the game,
and we think this process helps bring it forward,
makes that input from the community more impactful, and
creates a process where we can get quality design in our
substations.
So with that, I'm just saying pretty questions.
Thank you, Mike.
Again, this is a public hearing, so anyone who would like
to speak on this item, please come forward at this time.
Seeing none, I will close the public hearing on this item.
Commissioner Dudowitz.
Thank you, Chair, again.
I would recommend approval of the amendments as presented.
Commissioner Rosell.
Thank you, Chair.
I second the motion.
Seeing no request for discussion, I'll call for a vote on
the board.
Motion carries 6 to 0.
We'll now open the public hearing for item C, which was DCA
15-0007.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Ross Culbertson, our senior planner, will make this
presentation for us tonight.
Thank you, Mr. Menon and commissioners, Ross Culbertson,
senior planner.
Development services work with the HLC, Historic Landmark
Commission, of the City of Denton,
to come before you with a DENT code amendment for the
inclusion of additional façade materials for new
construction,
and I can work that through with this presentation.
A recommendation for you is to, or a consideration for a
recommendation to city council regarding the sections
within our DENT development code
that relate to our three historic districts, Oak/Hickory
Historic District, Belle Avenue Historic Conservation
District,
and the West Oak Area Historic District, which are found in
35795, 357105, and 357135.
As we want to consider including cementitious siding as an
architectural item for new construction.
The request is precipitated from homeowners and citizens in
the historic districts who want to add these items, listed
garages, workshops,
storage buildings, and new infill houses within the
historic district to incorporate new materials such as hard
y board siding
that is not under the auspices of historic preservation
guidelines, and we're going to kind of see some of those
through some of these slides.
A definition for you, cementitious siding or hardy board pl
anks or siding are cement fiber board products used to
replicate wood.
They come in a variety of widths, a variety of lengths, and
as you can see within the slides there,
they're attached pneumatically or within a regimented
system for installing based on the manufacturer's
instructions.
This is a tested material that is durable against fire,
insects, water, and wind,
and is kind of one of the best replications of wood as a
new material at this point.
General applications of these are typically shown on new
construction within new single-family homes.
T&D, traditional neighborhood design, which are smaller
dense neighborhoods with open space and such,
they kind of replicate hardy siding on a lot of their
products.
Accessory structures, that's kind of the intent of where
this request is coming from for some of those garage and
accessory structures
to main dwelling units within historic districts, and then
infill single-family homes
in historic districts that are new construction only and
are not intended to be bound to historic preservation
guidelines.
So our current DDC, within the three districts that I
mentioned, do not differentiate between new construction
and preservation activities,
and that all COAs are required for any kind of structure,
this would be any for those new constructed items like gar
ages and workshops and such,
would have to be brick, wood siding, wood, stone, and stuc
co.
And with this amendment, we are wanting to introduce cement
itious siding as a new technology material
that meets the intent of the ordinance but does not relate
one for one to historic preservation activities.
These are just some slides of notable historic structures
within DIN that are complying and have been rehabilitated
with the standard materials to replicate the pattern and
the time period of those homes.
And as listed here for you and for the public, this is how
the current DDC standards list,
and you can see that there is a mandate for only permitted
facade materials are brick, wood siding, wood, stone, and
stucco.
And we want to--and for each of the three historic
districts, the Oak, Hickory, Belle Avenue, and West Oak
districts,
a caveat there in the yellow is Belle Avenue Historic
District, which you'll see off just a small section of
Belle Avenue north of 380,
gives for the flexibility to have artificial facsimiles of
materials to be considered on a case-by-case basis.
And with that, that's what the directive and the direction
we want to do is to implement that within the other two
districts also.
Here's what the language will look like within the Oak, H
ickory Historic District, within the yellow italicized,
to include smooth-sided cementitious siding is permitted on
new construction and accessory buildings.
Artificial facsimiles of these materials will be considered
on a case-by-case basis.
In the presentation we gave in the work session, it was a
good indication from the chair, Mr. Strange,
that not limiting--and Mr. Dudwood's also--not limiting the
strict use of smooth siding,
and we will make those corrections and recommendations
moving forward and see what the council has their purview
on that.
But I can certainly bring that forward.
Same thing for the Belle Avenue Historic District and same
thing for the West Oak Area Historic District.
Public survey and input, we did have dedicated staff within
the Development Services Department,
specifically Cindy Jackson and Katia Boykin, worked with
the Historic Landmark Commission
and did a lot of the fact-finding on the ground by surveys
within the historic districts and with a survey to adjacent
cities
on their specific use and their application of cementitious
siding,
which gave us an indication that most cities permit that on
new construction that do not conflict with preservation
activities.
And again, staff did some outreaches throughout 2015 to
solicit information and response from citizens and
residents within those historic districts,
and support was in favor of introducing this, which coinc
ides with the information we received with some of the
surveys.
So let me indicate to you that a couple of days ago on 2/8/
16, the Historic Landmark Commission did vote 8-0 in support
of the amendments.
They are a recommending body, but yet we take both HLC and
Planning Commission to City Council for the approval
process,
and it is slated for a public hearing on 2/16 for the City
Council meeting.
So we are recommending approval. We will adjust the
recommendation based on the outcome of your input tonight.
And again, I'm a senior planner with Development Services,
but yet not a historic planner.
I'm just bringing forth information based on the findings
of our staff at this point, and I'll look for your
recommendation at the end of the meeting.
Any questions for staff?
Okay. This is a public hearing. Anyone who would like to
speak on this item, please come forward at this time.
Seeing no one else here, I'm going to close the public
hearing.
Commissioner Dudderwoods.
Thank you, Chair. I would like to move to approve the
amendments as submitted to the DDC,
with the exception of removing the word "smooth" from the
asymptomatic siding.
Thank you.
I think staff, I mean, staff legal is going to give us a
clarification if they want just "smooth" or they may want a
different wording in there.
It's written as "smooth sided." The use of "smooth sided"
is in the recommendation.
So the deletion would be "smooth sided."
Correct.
So it would read the use of "cementitious siding."
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
It's permitted.
Yeah.
I think that's as we discussed in workshop.
Legal says good.
Thank you.
Okay. Commissioner Hussbett.
Second.
Thank you.
Any discussion on this item? Commissioner Taylor.
Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to clarify with legal, the
way this is worded now, it's the permitted facade materials
are brick, wood siding, wood, stone, and stucco.
The use of "cementitious siding" is permitted in new
construction in the accessory buildings.
Does that always mean that the primary materials are
allowed in new construction, or should it say is also
allowed in new construction?
So basically there's a list of five items allowed in the
district, and then new construction is allowed one item.
I just want to make sure that that doesn't overlap or does
overlap.
Just to clarify, Jennifer, we're trying to incorporate that
as an additional building material, exterior facility.
So you would like to make a friendly amendment to "is also
permitted," correct?
Yes.
I would advise that.
Yes, if necessary.
That's a great suggestion.
Okay, then I will--
I agree.
If you're in agreement with that, then we'll have that
amended motion.
Okay. So any further discussion on this item?
I'm going to chip in and just say I appreciate the friendly
amendment and the ability to do both smooth, textured, and
then all the other items, and it gives the homeowner the
choice of what they feel like will match their structure
the best versus just being limited only to smooth.
Thank you for indulging me on that one.
With that, any other discussion?
Seeing none, I'll call for a vote on the board.
That motion carries 6-0.
Again, our item D has been moved to our March 23 meeting,
which moves us into our project matrix and concluding items
.
Commissioner Dudowitz.
Forgive me, I'm trying to find my place in the matrix.
I had a request and I see that it was stated it was
completed, and I would like to redefine what that meant,
and it was with regard to allowing P&Z to review any
changes to city streets, et cetera, et cetera.
And I thought I had it, but I didn't have it.
I see.
I believe it was on the last page, discussed potentially
allowing planning and zoning commission to review and make
recommendations to city council regarding street execution
and mobility plan.
It said completed.
I had sent to legal staff of this commission a document, or
at least a draft of how that should be worded and asked a
question of the process in which we would actually present
to city council a change to ordinance.
And I haven't received that, or if I need to do that off
this commission, then I can do it separately.
That's not a problem.
I just want to note, I'd like to have direction.
You said it to me?
You said you sent an email to me?
Yes, ma'am.
You would ask for?
I'd ask for a clarification of what?
Correct.
What I was implying?
What details that you would like to review, not you, but a
commission would like to review for the streets and the
mobility plan?
Correct?
Correct.
Okay.
And then you responded with some itemization.
Right.
But that's as far as we got?
Correct.
Okay.
So you sent an email expecting either a response to the
next step or what?
Because you asked for that and I gave that to you.
I did.
Okay.
So now my question is what's next?
So we have to have an internal meeting, which we have not
done, and legal.
Okay.
And once we have that, I'll get back to you.
Okay.
So then I would like for staff to remove the word complete
and either say give me some direction of what that process
or where we are in that process.
Thank you.
Okay.
Anybody else for a concluding item or question on the
matrix?
Okay.
And at 655, I'm going to close our P&Z meeting tonight.
Thank you for coming.