Jul 27, 2016 Planning and Zoning Commission on 2016-07-27 5:00 PM

Time is 5.01. This meeting has been duly posted and we do now have a quorum present. I'm gonna call our meeting to order and as chair I want to change the order on our agenda of presentation from our clarification of agenda items because we have I think quite a bit of discussion this evening about our public hearing item on the tree ordinance and we're going to go ahead for our first item in our work session to hear PZ 16 - 124 receive a report and hold a discussion on the park dedication development fees if y'all will go ahead and make your presentation on that first and we'll we'll go back to the tree code. Good evening, I'm Jim Mays with the Parks and Recreation Department. I appreciate the opportunity to come out and discuss our 915 and 916 park dedication and park development ordinance with you. I wanted to see if everyone has a physical copy of the ordinance so we can review it later on. Should we have the opportunity? If not, I'll place these. Thank you, sir. Outstanding, thank you very much. This has been announced a very good ordinance for us. It's served us since 1998. With everything it's time to take an opportunity to look at what's been good and what we could possibly look at to enhance the elements of the ordinance for both our citizens and what's best for the development community and the Parks and Recreation General. A little bit about the ordinance. Parks and Recreation fees through 915 and 916. They serve to fulfill the two and a half acres of recreational space per thousand people in the community. NR PA standards, which we do a very good job of maintaining, require about 9.5 acres. So this is not the only conduit that we have in order to fulfill that need , but it fulfills the lion's share of the recreational park services that we have in instances where they're neighborhood parks. Parks are directly, physically within a half mile to a mile of people's homes. The purpose is to provide a recreational area to the community in the form of neighborhood parks on pace with development of the city of Denton as a whole. And as written, the development ordinance does a very good job of maintaining that. Bene fits that we've had with this ordinance, local land purchases with the park dedication funds, the downtown pocket park that we've recently purchased at 108 Industrial, Lake Forest Park, Litheridge Park where we were able to secure and save a very nice stand of post oak trees that would have otherwise been subject for right for development adjacent to the property. Also a very widely celebrated park, specialist Ernest W. Dallas Park. It's our Veterans Memorial Park and we've had lots of success with that. 916 park dedication fees. These are improvements, physical enhancements of the park properties themselves. I need to interrupt just a second. We have a special guest that's joined us temporarily this evening and as part of our rules we need to I need to seek for a motion to suspend our rules for who can sit here at the dais with us so the chair would entertain a motion for a suspension this evening for our special guest. Is it Katherine? Katherine. So Katherine can join us . I'll motion to suspend the rules. The first and a second? Yes sir. Okay and the vote by hand. It's unanimous all in favor say aye. All those opposed? We had a motion one time. We did. That's why we stopped to do a special motion here this evening so that is unanimous and passes. Please continue. Thank you for your time. Get a break there. In 23 years of municipal services that's one of the nicest things that I've seen happen impromptu like that and I applaud everyone on the committee for it. That was outstanding. Again we've discussed the benefits. A little bit about our nomenclature in the parks and recreation system. We have many parks, neighborhood parks, which essentially this is what we're talking about today. Community parks, city parks, special use parks, which are parks that are like dog parks or BMX parks, things of a like parkour, things of a specialized nature and also open space parks. How are the fees calculated? When a new development comes into town what we do is we have each single and multifamily unit is assessed a fee based on the residential density so as to convey two and a half acres per thousand new residents. Single family units are assigned an average density of 2.8 people per unit and multifamily units are assessed a unit density of 1.8 persons per unit. Essentially we work out this calculation you see below us and what that does is that shows us the number of acres per se, the amount of impact that we would have this new development would have on a park system. In instances where there's less than five acres of land that is available to donate to the Parks Department we accept fees in lieu and what we do is we calculate the fees in lieu based upon the average value of the property in the surrounding area. For the park development portion of the ordinance we assess a fee of $187 for every multifamily unit and $291 for every single family unit. This is the first calculation is consumer price index adjusted due to the fact that the price is based on the value of the land itself. So as long as the DCAD value or the settlement statements are accurate or in line with the other property that's left in the community for us to purchase that it's self adjusting. The park development side of the ordinance on the other hand that's one thing that we need to open a dialogue and take a look at. I met with the Park and Recreation Beautification Board back in back in March of this year and I discussed that with moving forward with an opportunity to open this dialogue with the Planning and Zoning Board, the development community, and then the other stakeholder that we may feel in addition to the public at large that we need to include in this dialogue. The way that this figure was was arrived at was back in 1998 when this ordinance was was first drafted. The average value of making a five acre park was about $205,000 in order to develop it. Due to 18 years of inflation, due to the what the average consumers expectations have shifted from 18 years ago to present now, due to the market availability of much enhanced park communities, we no longer can establish a built-out five acre park for $205, 000. Again, this figure is still somewhat variable. I don't want to pin down a replacement number in today's meeting, but again the expectations of the community at large in the last 18 years has had a significant shift towards higher-end amenities and amenities that 18 years ago were not there. Also, the park amenities themselves, due to the fact that they're regulated by the CPSC, Consumer Product Safety Council, there have been a number of safety enhancements that have also pushed this price. So as we move forward, this is going to be one of the things that we're really going to take a look at. And again, this is just for our neighborhood parks, which is about 25% of our inventory as we move forward. The advantages of the last park system to grow at the same pace the city has stated, since it's directly key to the development community, we're building parks and assessing land in order to build those parks at the same pace as we're getting more citizens. And also, there's a certain nexus within one -half to one mile that we have allowed to spend this pool of money. So we keep the money on pace where it was originated and at the same pace of the additional need. Some of the limitations that we've experienced in the last 18 years is pockets of stranded funds. The infill areas in the eastern portion of town, where there's more mature homes, homes that are much older than 18 years old, we're not assessing value toward parks in those areas. This is exclusively a development ordinance. If there's not infill development, if there's not development in new subdivisions, we're not attributing value towards towards parks for the people in these areas and it puts a heavier burden on our CIP demand. Again, I want to make certain that we realize these funds are not for use for ball fields, pools, athletic centers, or recreation centers. These are exclusively for recreational amenities that one would find in a neighborhood park, not a regional athletic field, not something that's a community-level park. These are just for what their express purposes that we talked about. Again, we talked about limited geographic area and one thing I like to discuss is by large the majority of these valu ations, as I touched on just briefly previously, these valuations are based on DCAD assessments and again these DCAD assessments don't always reflect the amount of the value would be of the property that we would need to buy in adjacent area. So in some instances, we really need the opportunity to look at settlement documents and DCAD statements for any chance of anomalies or things that would benefit us as a community in moving forward in order to get the value that we need in order to to purchase these additional properties. This map will show the subdivisions around the parks. If you notice the green locations, those are parks within the community. The light blue areas show areas that are only half a mile adjacent to the park and the lavender shows those of a mile . This map shows the reciprocal of that. This shows the parcels of property that we will have available to us, places where we would need to exclude the fact of where we have a park in the interest of buying a new part. These are the parcels of land that are around new subdivisions. So when a new subdiv ision comes into town, we try to see where would be the most appropriate location for a balanced inventory so that everyone has that same half mile to one mile nexus in order to get to a park. Again, we may look at exchanging the one mile radius to that of a fixed geographic area. As it stands, it's served as well, but there are pockets of money, pockets of funding that we don't have enough to affect the purchase or to do the work that we need to do in park development. So there's, but they're essentially tied up in locations where the, we cannot access them where they need to be done. So what we want to do, yes Mr. Beck. Commissioner Beck. On that issue, thank you Chair, then what you're suggesting here is if we just expand the area until we get the thousand people we need to legitimize two and a half acres. Let me go back to the map for this little second. One thing that we're looking at is in instances, and again this is all the purpose of this dialogue is just to open a dialogue. We want to find out what will be the most effective solution in order to go forward. So this is our idea at first blush going through, is what we would want to do is to have somewhat like a cleanup provision where we could have geographical locations which are similar to many other geographic maps that we have in town, such as streets infrastructure map. There's quite a few that we can attribute it to, but basically we just would want to have a pool area that would allow us a cleanup provision so we don't have money sitting there that's to use that we can't access. So again that's one of the things that we as we meet with our stakeholders the next and following months that's that's one of the things that we want to move towards finding out. What will be the advantages and disadvantages of having that cleanup provision? And what do you clarify cleanup provision for me if you would? Essentially there are locations where there are portions of there's like in the infill areas like let's say the Redwood area. Sequoia Park is right there adjacent to Red wood and we've worked diligently in order to move forward with finding a replacement finding funding in order to develop Sequoia Park. It's an inventory we've had for a number of years. It's right there by a few apartments. What we just have never had enough funding due to the fact that majority of those houses are in excess of 30 years old. When the infill lot develops but with with recent development with the Riddell apartments, the University apartments, we're just now entering that opportunity where we can develop. What we want to do is to have an opportunity where we don't have funding sitting in an account unused. We want to be able to access areas where you know they have existing development but since this is a funding apparatus that's exclusively driven by development if we don't build it the funds don't count. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Dudowitz. How much more do you have because I have a series of questions. I just want to know if it's appropriate to ask them now or wait to finish. I'm an easy guy. You have a question? We're talking about neighborhood parks in specific. Yes sir. Okay now if I remember correctly from a development standpoint a developer comes in and says here's a tract of land I'm going to develop 200 homes here. He has a choice to put certain parks in place within that development or pay into the fund. Okay well I can show you in the ordinance where it addresses that. Okay I'm just asking he has a choice right? There is an opportunity. Opportunity for him to put in parks within the development. But the choice is usually what is stated currently in the ordinance is if the amount of funding is less than that of five acres the city has the option to accept fees in lieu of. So the city makes the choice? There is an opportunity and quite often we have we take that opportunity to make that choice. But help you understand that. I can restate what I think where we're going is that the option is the city determines whether they want to take the land in the park or where they take the funds. Correct. It's not the developer saying I'm gonna give you a park and y'all will take it. They say we will take the park or if we don't want the park we'll take the funds. And the city traditionally takes the funds currently? Yes. I don't believe I've stated that. I didn't mean to walk on your time. I don't believe that that's what I conveyed and if it was I was in there. We look at any any offer we get with a very gracious and magnanimous opportunity to say by and large exclusively that we make the choice. I don't know if I would have comfort in saying that . Okay the reason I bring that up I've heard and I'm not sure it's true but I 've heard instances where the city would prefer the funds rather than to have a park built by the developer and then maintained by the city because the city doesn't want to maintain those parks because of the expense to it. They rather had the funds put into into one of their coffers. I don't know if that's true but that's why I'm going through this line of question to find out where what's the city's intent or desire in some cases I've heard it they really had the funds. My desire is to make accessible great parks for all citizens of Denton within a half a mile a mile of their house. As far as that the logic stream that you've just stated that that has an air of subjectivity to it. That's not really how. We go through a host of different things when we make a decision because every decision we make has to be defendable to this decision. As far as just exclusively denying a partial property because we don 't have the money to maintain it is not something that 16 years I've been here that we've been party to. If I'm wrong I'd like to have an offer. I'd like to have a conversation to examine that. Let me just go to examples. There's Ryan Road. There's a fairly large development going in behind Ryan Elementary. There's some other development at the corner of Teasley and Ryan. A lot of homes going in. I did not see any pocket parks or anything and I'm wondering within that those two large developments and what 's being developed behind the current Walmart in that area where whether the parks are going to be placed within within half mile or a mile of those new developments going in. We have property already in that area. I'd be happy to pull up a map and show you. On Ryan Road? On Ryan Road exclusively. You have a dog park there. We have 75-acre dog park and we also have other parcels that we're in negotiation for. In negotiation but there's nothing specifically planned right now. Not that I can tell you on camera about any pending real estate transactions. No. If I have the opportunity to I could continue this dialogue but I don't know if this is the best venue to talk about a pending real estate transaction or any pending real estate transaction. It kind of puts us in a really poor negotiating. I understand. Okay. Tell everybody. But I'd be happy to pursue it. Well I'm going to get into is that within those areas to set there's a definition of an area in which by your discussion you need to put a neighborhood park in. There are also nodes at Lake Forest. Let me go back. I may have brushed over that rapidly in in the trying to make make time for the next presentation. I apologize for that. That was disservice to myself and to y'all. We show here 9 15 purchases and 915 development. You reference Ryan. Just here alone I've got cross timbers, Lake Forest and Wheeler Ridge. They're all within that one-half to one mile nexus. So they're there. If there's already properties that I'd be happy to sit down and discuss this with you but those are negotiations that we had where they did fees and loot. If there is instances where I need to go back and talk to the developer find out if perhaps we've trespassed on their intents, we're willing to do that. I said the reason that we're having this dialogue or I would like to I'd like for us to have this dialogue is in order for us to to make it best for everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Beck, you don't know? No. I'm sorry. Back to the quadrant issue. Again that will give us an opportunity to more effectively utilize funds that we have available to us and additionally there's various sectors outside the loop that the funding is very spread out and again moving to a regional area where we could disperse those funds if we didn't meet the nexus test of one-half to one mile then it would allow us opportunity to be a better benefit to the citizens than have money in the coffers. Again, I brushed on this a few moments ago, due to 18 years of inflation, CPSC safety upgrades and the public's expectation, the price of park amenities has risen exceptionally in excess of the $208,000 that the $291 and $ 187 is assessed towards. We touched on the quadrants. What we propose for 2016 moving forward through the year, we want to review how the changes in the ordinance can best benefits the citizens of Denton, solicit citizen and developer input, solicit development from the planning and zoning, revise changes to both parks advisory board and the planning zoning board and then at that point move forward with any proposed changes to the city council. That concludes my presentation. If there's any additional questions, I'd be willing to address those. Mr. Hudsworth? Commissioner Hudsworth. I'm sorry. That's okay. Thank you, Chair. Yes, so let's see. I'd like to try to explore, because I'm tracking with you in maximizing dollars and efficiency and I'm curious your thoughts on like a Eureka Park. So obviously people are going to travel further for the amenities at that particular park and so have you explored that as an option? Larger, larger parks, more attract, so you got to you got to travel a little further but it kind of pulls resources and I and I so it's a double-edged question because I want to then I guess underg ird that with the fact that I'd like to maximize federal dollars so there's going to be requirements low and moderate income neighborhoods so as a way to have larger features in low and moderate income areas where you get these federal dollars now we have a bigger pool to pool from and so we have these larger pockets of parks where people it's not in that radius but people are it's kind of serving the community by kind of pulling these two resources together have you have you explored that at all how to kind of maybe build bigger parks using what's available to us? That's a that's a great segue into what we would I'm always in for maximizing whatever we can. Our Parks and Recreation Department does a very effective job of maintaining very nice parks without the utilization of a 4B sales tax and without the utilization of a lot of the tools our surrounding cities have and there's good reason for that but what I I think that's that's certainly something we can put into the dialogue so we we're very adaptive requesting and receiving grant dollars and we're very gracious for everything we've gotten through CDBG through TexDOT through Texas Parks and Wildlife and through a number of private foundations and endowments but I wouldn't stop there if there's any way we can synergize what you've talked about along with any public private sponsorships we would be out we would love to do that our the last time that Parks and Recreation Department built a rec center I graduated high school it was 1987 that's MLK Center some of our surrounding communities they're presently building multi- generational centers to the 10 to 36 million dollars apiece we don't expect that but we would like to we feel as though there are some deficits that we'd like to to move forward to to surpassing and not building a rec center in almost 20 years and when our population was 58,000 and now it's nearly 135, 000 there's probably a little bit of a deficit we need to overcome I'd like to tag on to Commissioner Hussbuth I think we have some proof of that already with like the water park here in the city I know people travel from all over our city to go out there to the CH Collins area to use that we're very proud of it so it's a fantastic facility very proud and and thankful for the bond fund that we received in 2014 that will be building the wave pool and concession that we'll have there next year so I think that's a great idea that maybe you expand the areas and have some nicer larger parks I guess a suggestion is there a possibility for you all to do any informal polling at your parks to go out and ask people where do you live did you travel five miles or ten miles to get here did you walk down the street and maybe put some research behind some of this when you come back to us to say we find people will travel ten miles to come to the dog park out there on Ryan or Eureka Park I know Eureka Park is a has just been completely redone and that was a public private fundraiser together on on some of that I think a lot of it was actually private sector I think that a lot of you pretty much was we received over $500,000 the private sector for that location sure how much happy million dollars and we're nearing the three million dollar mark in recent years on on grant funding also so we we try well I'm gonna switch gears on you a little bit on yes on this our next item that's going to come before us is going to be tree coat in our work session and on in public I wanted to ask what what is the parks department's view on tree parks and maintenance of those and and your general thoughts of these undisturbed areas in the city taking ownership of those if possible and the maintenance of those well as with any tree part or native stay in the timber you know we would want to do an assessment on on on said area we have a number of arborist in our field I've got in the green industry along with got close to 30 years of experience I have a number of my colleagues that have equitable experience as with anything you if you know we would need to take a look at it and do a prospectus on what just because there's trees there and I don't know which parcel you're talking about you always need to do a liability assessment and I have a hundred percent faith in Haywood's abilities to do items such as that well that's not specific parcel but our next item on our agenda for our work session is going to be to talk about tree code which is going to have a great amount of preservation for it and some of the discussions that we're probably gonna be having is how do we consolidate those areas and whether they're privately owned or possibly publicly owned and if they're publicly owned I'm assuming more likely they're gonna fall to the Parks Department and if the Parks Department is saying we'd love to have them and we'd love to take care of them and and those things are we 're concerned about them and we're gonna evaluate something that we're going to be considering here in a minute and possibly voting on this evening how do these things get administered and so since you're here I thought I'd pose that question to you as with any asset the purchase whether it's something for your home or if it's something for your business every appreciable asset has depreciable contacts and also has maintenance contacts if we received an asset such as that we would be needing to do the assessment I've discussed and receive funding in order to maintain that and that's something that we need to be mindful of Parks does not have the discretionary capacity to just take large parts of property with no associated funding okay Commissioner Hesbath yeah interesting point and so my question is how does your budget look I mean is it tight is it like super tight or is it comfy I mean you tell me that's okay do you mean on the camera anything I mean is it I mean and so if we dumped if by chance that the new canopy requirements dumped three tree preservation preserves on you what does that do to your budget give me it give me a day in the life of parks and didn't well again going back to my analogy of doing an assessment and getting the the associated maintenance dollars we would love to get a free puppy but we don't want a sick pup we want to you know what I'm trying to say is as long as it's an appreciable standard timber that is healthy does not have inherent hazards or hazards that we cannot effectively manage again I would have to I'm very cautious to just make a cart launch decision that will cost the city X amount of dollars and not have and not be able to assess that I was thinking is a businessman this room would do that that's why I asked the question and I'm all recognized Commissioner Dennis with but that's why I asked the question is because before us tonight we're gonna have some more discussion but we're gonna be working through this tree code ordinance and update and as such if we begin to preserve these areas the heads up somebody needs to have the discussion of how they get administered and who's gonna take care of them and pay for them before they get created and we have an issue and how they get administered and whether we were told that we're gonna have them in areas and then we're also told we don't know whether we we need to do a feasibility on whether we want it or not whether it's a sick puppy or a good puppy or whatever so Commissioner Daddowitz well that 's kind of where I was going earlier and asking about the city taking over parks and requiring funds versus you know having to maintain them but having jumped on that last question do we have a stand of timber now that we have to maintain under a tree a tree part we have tree parks and we have a large urban forest within all of our parks you know one particular area where there is one right now sure and then you should know what the cost of maintenance that is not because your budget for it or you're having to maintain it so you know what the current that's maintenance cost is of that particular property and or all the ones that we're doing right if I may make an analogy that is someone akin to you on a car so you can go by any car off the street and you know how much that car is gonna cost you to maintain and what's wrong with their car to me those two concepts are now with us but you own a car right now and you've owned it for 10 years and you've been putting maintenance into it so you should know what the maintenance cost is of owning that particular car in which you've been owned for a while so I'm asking you we have property now that you own you have to maintain it there is a cost actual cost of maintaining that on a per acre or per person or however you do it that's kind of you know what's I have that fun I have those stats okay from a few years back what it costs per acre or per square foot to maintain trees I am NOT the person that 's logged in at this diets that we could get yeah if the chair could could step in I think that's valuable information and we're gonna have some dialogue about this tree ordinance that's probably something that I would ask staff as we dig into this some more not only in tonight but sound like me may have some some future discussion on this if we could get that information and sure benefits everybody in how we draft this ordinance and also how you all may prepare for the future of that I am certainly in favor of maintaining standard trees within the community and preserving trees in the community but again if you buy a car and most people take the mechanics see what's wrong with it so we need to we need to make it a smart assessment just one last Commissioner does one final thing we just want to make sure you have the funds available to be able to take care of things that's why we're getting to we're not you know going in one direction but if we're gonna do something we want to make sure we we can maintain it though it doesn't get trashed or become a you know a derelict piece of property that's just no not used to anybody okay normally those are funded through the supplemental process in the budget what happens in in previous instances we maintain those track records and then apply for a supplemental the next budget season unfortunately or fortunately rather we have a very vibrant and growing community and we have a number of very great departments that buy quite competitively for those supplemental funding packages or sometimes hey you've already made maintaining for X amount of months you obviously can do it and we don't get the funding so we try to be a little more finite in our our statements in public I apologize for not giving you a complete cost benefit analysis but I just would rather give you accurate numbers than shoot from the hip and just give you I appreciate that and I know at the beginning your your presentation this is a beginning step of an ongoing conversation as you roll out your ordinance so appreciate what you've brought tonight I think you've given some great starting points I think Commission has given you some maybe some questions back of some things we'd like to see when you come back so we look forward to having you back and and having more dialogue on on what you're proposing on updating your ordinance so thank you very much thank you for opportunity yes a couple quick clarification thank you chair in her background material and what you presented on the board it classifies a neighborhood park is a medium-sized park the range in size from one and a half acres 15 acres yet on page six of the information sheet you pointed out section 22 - 41 C site selection characteristics part it classifies a neighborhood park is a minimum of five acres and obtained as one complete parcel so why the difference there I believe one is our internal nomenclature and one or NPA NRP a standards that may be made more sense on the AIS the NRP a standards due to the most recent NRP a data that's out in the 2016 field report that's what where I brought up the figure of 9.5 acres for thousand of which this this conduit provides 2.5 okay so our as with any national nomenclature versus local nomen clature there's going to be small nuances that are different okay so I'm sure if you look at Fed standards versus city didn't standards on number of things there would be minor nuance okay that makes a good in this one last question we didn't talk about biker hiking trails are we developing anything I know we've got the Cooper Creek trail is that in the works we are actually moving forward with I don't want to over speak I'm gonna step in as chair I know we were trying to go for about 30 minutes and we're 45 minutes in I know you're gonna be come back if we've got some further questions on this could we get you some an email from each individual commissioner they've got some follow-up because I know we've got a an important item that's coming before us next I know everybody wants to make sure we have some good time on so I'll leave a stack of my cards by the table there I apologize those that know me know I'm long-winded and we've asked a lot of questions so thank you for for giving us as much information as you could at this time again I really appreciate the opportunity just to have the opportunity thank you very much thank you I'll take one thank you sir good job we're gonna move to back to our the item that was on our number one on our agenda not to receive a clarification of agenda items and I'm gonna turn that over to Manal for a presentation thank you chairperson strange tonight we 're going to present the proposed amendments to our tree preservation and landscape requirements specifically the tree code I'm going to ask Haywood to do a presentation for us which basically provides a good understanding of where we are where we came from and what is our intention and where we should be as a growing community today thank you good evening commissioners my name is Haywood Morgan and I'm the urban forester for the city of Denton just to give a little bit of background about myself my formal education is in urban forestry and I have about 18 years of experience working in urban forestry specifically working for municipal governments amongst three municipalities including the city of Denton so today our objective here is to hold a public hearing to consider making recommendations to the City Council regarding adopting an ordinance of the city of Denton Texas amending sub chapter 35.3 procedures sub chapter 35.13 site design standards and sub chapter 35.23 definitions and terms of the Denton development code as relates to tree preservation and landscape requirements so what is the tree code when we talk about the tree code well the tree code deals with the preservation of existing trees and mitigation of trees removed when preservation goals cannot be met it applies to the city limits not in the ATJ so why do we have a tree code why do we why is it important to preserve trees well first we have the many environmental benefits that are associated with trees from soil quality wildlife habitat beauty local climate modification air quality carbon sequestration stopping erosion reducing flooding filtering water pollution and noise abatement we also have the many health benefits that are associated with trees there's been studies that have shown that environments where people are exposed to environments where there are mature trees that they have boosted immune systems lower blood pressure reduce stress improve moods it speeds recovery after surgery increases energy level and improve sleep a recent study found that adding ten trees to a city block makes residents healthier by the same manner of raising their income by ten thousand dollars per household that same study found that having ten more trees added to a city block on average decreases cardio metabolic conditions in the way of increasing annual perceived income by twenty thousand dollars so there are many health benefits that we receive from trees so we talk about economic viability pictured here is one of our local commercial properties you may recognize it you may not but this is an example of a commercial development where trees were successfully preserved and you see the trees are you know still around the property still providing benefits you can't see it too well but this sign this particular establishment was listed at one as one of Denton's best of 2016 so you can preserve trees and have a successful business in the process there's also been studies shown that trees can lower heating and air conditioning costs by up to 40% shoppers are willing to pay more up to 12% more in areas and shopping areas where trees are present versus areas where trees are not present even the perceived quality of products has been shown to have an increased perception of quality when the shopping areas have trees and and lastly it's been shown in multiple studies that home values are four to fifteen percent higher in areas that have mature trees now it's true that there is not a checkbox when a bank appraiser comes out to a property to assess a property to say okay trees added X amount to the value of this house I won't dispute that that is absolutely correct that being said the studies that that have been done has to do with the desirability of someone to live in a neighborhood people that are purchasing homes are willing to spend more for homes that have mature trees and the neighborhood so if someone is willing to pay more for houses in that neighborhood when the bank does their comps what does that do well that increases the values in that neighborhood where there are mature trees I know for one the last house that I purchased one of the big determining factors were the mature trees and the neighborhood as well as a city park within a half a block of the house that had a lot of trees in it so we also look at public demand as you may know and I'll go over this a little bit later but Denton's tree preservation code started off with with public demand as a result of trees being removed at the flow hospital site here in town in 2003 this clip of this picture an article is from last week 's didn't record Chronicle southern didn't area cleared of trees to make way for homes and this is one of the local residents standing next to a pile of mulch so residents have not you know lost their desire to preserve trees it is still a demand of the citizens of Denton we talked about the the the benefits of trees as relates to the urban heat island there's been many studies that have shown that cities and urban areas that are devoid of trees have higher daytime and nighttime temperature due primarily to the absorption of heat during the daytime and the release of heat during the nighttime so our urban areas are hotter when they are devoid of trees and of course there's the aesthetic beauty that's provided by trees in our environment so who's affected by tree preservation and Denton well our property owners and residents are affected developers are affected and other interested groups such as keep them beautiful the Native Plant Society TWU UNT all those various stakeholders that we have in a community are also affected by how we preserve or how we do not preserve trees I'm not to stop and ask you a question sure this TWU and UNT do they follow the city of Denton tree ordinance are they exempt to state institutions you and T because they are state they they do not follow the city's tree preservation or they have their own guidelines that they abide by I'm not a hundred percent sure of TWU okay thank you mm-hmm so I mentioned earlier the flow hospital site and you know this this picture is a little distorted I stretched it out to fill the slide but you get the gesture you have your hospital here and you see there's a large stands of trees here to the east to the north some to the to the west this is what I like to call the genesis of tree preservation in Denton this is where it all began this is where it started and that's why I felt it was important to include this at the start of our timeline so we have the flow hospital again 2003 in 2004 the city passed its first tree preservation requirements between 2005 and 2008 the tree code has been reviewed for updates and 2008 the city hired their first urban forester 2014 to present has been the current effort to revise the city's tree code back up here so the current state of our code you know basically there's too many variables there's 39 different scenarios for preserving trees based on the size of your property the type of trees it's it's not very straightforward at all there's no flexibility in the code when it comes to to preservation and there are no incentives to sort to save large trees now when I'm when I'm speaking of large trees I mean those trees in our code that are listed 18 inches and larger our our protected trees and our large secondary trees under our current code there is no requirement to preserve any tree that's 18 inches above if the developer or the development removes that they simply pay for the tree they mitigated either at a one to two ratio or one to one ratio if it's in if it's a part if it is a part of a tree stand it can be can be treated as a tree stand and as a tree that's less than 18 inches that's under our current code so here's some examples of the state of our current code now here's an example of a commercial development I believe it's a doctor's office where you see they successfully preserved large trees in this landscape the road is not pictured here I wanted to actually show the the trees and the building here's another the some similar the same picture we saw earlier of the the hotel and here's a student housing development near UNT that you know they were able to preserve a large tree on that site okay so here's another example of the current state of our code what I'm showing here is a parcel land prior to development and you can see you know it's not fully tree but you know it has a fair amount of trees on this property now here is the property developed as a residential site it's hard to pick out the areas that were preserved for trees were here there's a few trees here everything else on this site was removed now while I have this this picture up I'm going to cover something that you may hear later as far as the public hearing when we were going through meeting with some of our stakeholders we were asked about about the possibility of exempting roadways and building pads and utility easements from the tree code well if you can see this this development here which is an NR6 development if you exempt the street the building pad the utilities what area are you really not exempting for to have to preserve trees on this site there is virtually none okay so project review when we set out to revise this tree code we looked at we analyzed the current code you know to get a full understanding of the ramifications and the challenges with enforcing the current code we looked at best management practices as set forth by the American National Standards Institute ISA and tree care of organization we looked at comparing to benchmark cities not only in the DFW metro area we felt that it was important to get sample cities from the major metro areas throughout the state because when Denton is competing for businesses and residents there's a lot I can't remember the stat of the number of people moving to Texas but there's there's a lot of folks when businesses are looking to move to Texas we're not just competing against people in DFW or the cities around us we're competing with with Austin area with Houston area with San Antonio so we felt it important to look at those other metro areas also we also had community input so this slide here is an example we did a visual preference survey and what we did was we actually went out to the the three Kroger stores in town which are geographically fairly spread out and we posed you know several pictures to to shoppers going in and out some stopped some didn't but we ended up with about 300 just over 300 respondents that day from our visual preference survey we also went to the rec centers and the libraries so this is just you know was our sample slide for what someone's preference was on residential development so Commissioner Dudowitz with due respect yes I understand and I would prefer to live on one of these streets but I got to tell you I would believe that slide B is a very new newly planted residential area while slide C is probably a much older developed area so you're not really comparing apples with apples in time frame but if I understand you're comparing where would you prefer to live correct okay but it's gonna take time for the this the plan B there site B to grow it into the into number C well and if you notice on number B there are no trees planted between the curb and side walk you have a few trees planted back behind the sidewalk but not very many I could understand too because as those trees mature they're gonna go into the curbs they're gonna break up concrete and they also would in some cases I've seen where they've gotten so large that they obstruct views from driveways and people pulling out and or at stop signs so I'm trying to make sure that we understand it I love aesthetics I love trees in fact I'm trying to preserve a very very hundred year old tree in my front yard right now absolutely but there are I want to make sure we just were very honest and how we proceed proceed in in showing things like this that may be misconst rued that's all absolutely if I can interject for a second the intent of this visual preference survey was basically to give options or scenarios where you have this darkness and you don't have a landscape buffer that would accommodate those trees in fact the trees the trees would be located it's it 's to show if you had an opportunity out of this visual preference slide what would be the most attractive to you so the intent was to look at opportunities because in some instances some people may not want the trees such as C or a they may prefer B so what we were trying to explain and expose everybody we didn't want to have just a heavily treed site for example the intent of the visual preference survey was not to give any false impression either but was to give a plethora of examples of it could be this or it could be this what do you like out of this okay so we looked at for our proposed revisions as I mentioned earlier we're looking at aligning with industrial industry best management practice American National Standards Institute nationally known organization that sets standards for various organizations this is done in conjunctions with TCIA which is a tree care National Tree Care Association and you know they set four standards and best management practices for tree care this particular section here deals with managing trees during construction so our idea was to let these national standards guide our decisions with how we preserve and how we manage trees in the city of Denton so we looked at establishing or proposing to establish an exempt tree list you might want to say well why exempt some trees from the tree code right you know aren't all trees good they all provide benefits well they all provide benefits but they're not all desirable in a landscaping or in a landscape business situation so this is our mesquite tree that we have locally this is most of the time you see a mesquite listed on a property this is what you're looking at this particular tree believe it or not because it is a multi stem qualifies as a as a large secondary tree because it's over 18 inches when you do the measurements and you know how the industry standards looking at this as a professional urban forester this is really more of a large shrub versus a tree so the other reasons you know we're looking at mesquite if you can see mesquite has thorns if you have kids you know in a landscape situation you don't want you know your kids to have to deal with thorns kids like to climb trees they get into a climate of a tree a mesquite tree they will get injured it just will happen there were some other pictures when I was pulling these off of people that were injured but I didn't want to put anything up here that would be you know a little squeamish for some so this is a example of a honey locust tree nice tree otherwise but honey locust has thorns also as you see this this example the th orn is six inches long and they're not just on the branches but they're on the trunk of the tree so these can be you know a safety issue if they are you know present in a landscaping situation so we felt that is important not to preserve trees that will cause issues for you know the eventual property owner now this is a tree of this is a picture of a Texas ash you want to say Texas has a nice tree you see us in fall color beautiful tree well just recently there's been a bug emerald ash borer that has been detected in Texas it was only a matter of time hasn't made it to Denton yet but it's just a matter of time with the the the highways that you know converge here in Denton I mean this is less than 300 miles away at present time once the tree is known to have emerald ash for the trees fully infested and you know it's pretty much a goner you know the only option if we are trying to preserve ash would be to have a guy like this it's actually a friend of mine from when I worked in Milwaukee because we actually had a program for treating ash trees along city streets because we had a significant population of ash trees the goal there wasn't to save the ash indefinitely but more so to manage the removal of the ash trees but this particular injection last two to three years so it's not just you inject it once and the trees good for life it's a continual maintenance issue Commissioner Beck thank you chair so you're saying the ash tree and I love ash tree so I was kind of surprised to see them is are you saying then that the ash tree is susceptible to this bug then or is it that when we bring in ash trees ash trees we're gonna be careful with that they bring the bug with them no the bug travels okay started off I believe ground but they go after the ash tree yes they are very host specific as opposed to a post oak or something correct correct they started off in Michigan if I'm not mistaken and they spread from there it's taking it I want to say it's been less than 10 years to get to Texas sometimes it travels just naturally through you know when through books travel but a lot of times they travel with firewood it even you know skipped over you know the state of Kansas and there's em erald ash borer in Denver Colorado so you know it's definitely something that we will have to deal with but the reason for exempting it is because we don't want to preserve a tree in a landscape that's going to cause an ongoing maintenance for someone down the road or to have them to remove the tree anyway so now reduce the number of exemptions under the current code there's about 13 exemptions we reduce that down to four exemptions there are some exemptions that you know really are common-sense exemptions if a tree is dead you don't need to get up you know it's not you know the tree code doesn't apply yes Commissioner Donovan's what about the bulldog tree and it's thorns yeah I just listed three I didn't want to go through okay make sure you said the four so that's the fourth one no no no no this is exemptions to the tree code as a whole to preservation yeah yeah I can't remember the exact number there's a copy of the draft list I believe in the backup that's kind of buried down it's like attachment 10 yes yes so and again that's just a draft list it may expand because I want to run that by you know Texas State Forest Service just to see if there's something that that they know to be invasive which is another reason to exempt trees that are invasive they tend to destroy our natural habitats but I want to make sure that that we cover things that really we shouldn't be preserving in a landscape situation but looking at the number of exemptions to the tree code as a whole we rent down from 13 to 4 you know I say some of them you know common-sense exemptions that can be left up to a discretion of the city forester and handle you know during the development process so we look we're also recommending based on our preservation requirements on canopy versus DBH and you may ask stuff why the switch from canopy to DBH well when we look at the benefits that are derived from trees they're derived based on the canopy the DBH can be very misleading as opposed to in reference to the actual canopy of a tree it is possible to have 18 inch tree that has a larger canopy than a 24 or 25 inch tree so why should we continue to look at DBH to assess our trees industry-wide when benefits are derived it's always based on on canopy so when you look at DBH you send someone out to the site they have a detail to tape measure and they measure the size of each individual tree on the site now once you get good you could kind of eyeball it but even that can can be off you know you can be off by an inch or so one way or the other moving to canopy we'll be looking at a situation similar to what I'm showing here where we'd be looking at an area photograph and basically using a program like ArcView to calculate the canopy inside the area here along with actually verifying you know that your aerial is accurate you know you may make a site visit to the site just to verify okay you know this isn't a bunch of privet that I'm looking at that looks like a tree you know you just verify what's on site. Question for you on that. Yes. Is that how this is going to roll forward through more of this type of an approach versus what's been the traditional like a tree survey we're moving away from tree survey requirements and going to this? Correct. Correct. Is there a standard that we're going to use that this is the time frame or who provides whether it's Google Maps or whatever that we're going to do the survey with? Yes. Yes in some instances we may be able to provide city mapping data. Okay . We are actually in the process of completing an eye tree assessment eye tree eco- assessment and urban tree canopy analysis and if I'm not mistaken we'll have data down to the parcel to where we can look at a parcel and see what the state of the canopy was on that parcel at that particular time. Okay great. Commissioner Hesman. Just not for nothing I don't know if it makes sense but it makes sense to me. I think given the technology now it makes no sense that you don't have access to a drone that could then go up. I mean really you go on a site you send it up and it's it's super simple. I mean I don't drive them but I know people to do and it's it's very simple you take aerial photos so if I'm there and I'm meeting with a builder you send it up you snap a shot and then you discuss it straight away and it's in it's super accurate and they think the technology is just it's it supports that. I don't know I mean obviously get back into a big bad budget but I'm just saying for what it's worth a note that makes no sense that we shouldn't you know you send the drone up you take a picture and you go back and you have it and it's accurate and you're not dependent on the third party you're not arguing over something that is static you know it's like hey we can get past what's here and when it was here let's just get on to the particulars. We've actually explored that option yeah but then it goes back to ordinances and budget but it's a very valuable tool especially in the planning arena these days. Well our GIS personnel in planning attended a conference a GIS conference in San Diego recently and one of the things that he shared with us when he came back was the drone technology used to do aerial you know aerial surveillance and you know ArcGIS has the tools built in to do you know to measure the tree canopy or to you know actually input that data so the technology is there you know I'm sure if there aren 't local companies that are already you know on board with that I'm sure there 'll be local companies coming on board with that technology. Commissioner Beck. Thank you chair just quick question that if within say a cluster like this we have a lot of ash trees or those other intrusive type trees what do we do then do we go in and remove them because we don't want them to be a liability to us and in doing that does that reduce that canopy? Well to look at the species composition of an area like this now what you would do is you would have you know someone to you know when you're doing their site verification they can look at the species composition and give an estimate on you know the percentages of species based on you know what they're actually seeing in the field. Okay and that kind of tags on to what I wanted to ask too and we've got this list here of trees we're going to exempt do we have a list of trees that we prefer like the post oak some of those or something like that so we have a specific list for that yes and these will be recommendations to the developers. Correct. Okay good thank you. Okay so we also looked at establishing a standard preservation amount of 30% per development. Under the current code the preservation percent ranges from 0 to 25% there's a lot of variations that contributes to that 39 different options for preservation under the current code. We're looking at doing a standard rate of 30% and that rate was derived basically in line with the recommendations of the Texas A&M Forest Service for this region so it's not just a number that you know we thought looked good it's actually based in what the recommendation of our state forestry agency is. So we're proposing to establish a flat mitigation ratio of 1 to 4. Under the current code you know mitigation can be from 0 to 1 to 2 so you may say well why 1 to 4? Okay keep in mind we're going from canopy we're going from deviation to canopy so essentially we look at mitigation of the canopy we look at the canopy down of the canopy for say one large tree would be mitigated through the planting of four large canopy trees. Well you say well why not just a one-to-one to replace it one-to-one because I've heard that you know that question. Well to replace one for one you know you're looking at the time that it takes for that newly planted tree to reach its full size. You know under our current code we give a value of 1,256 square feet to the canopy of a large tree. So by replacing it with four trees just say example if our large of the canopy we're replacing or the large tree if it takes 40 years for this one tree to reach that 1,256 that's 40 years where we are waiting to replace what was lost because of development. By having this as a 4 to 4 ratio we're basically replacing our canopy on the fourth of the time that it would take based on the species you know that is planted of course. So that was part of the rationale for you know the 1 to 4 ratio. Commissioner Taylor. So if I understand what you're saying if there is for an example example a live oak on a property it's a large canopy tree it's established 40 or 50 years old has a has a very large canopy 50 or 60 foot radius. I could remove that tree and then I could plant four two-inch live oaks and because that two- inch live oak is a large canopy tree the those 50 square feet of canopy now can replace the thousand square feet of canopy of the established live oak. That's that's what we're looking at we're not looking at the immediate replacement of what was lost because that would really be you know almost impract ical really just given space constraints on a given site and you know the number of trees you would need to accomplish that. Also keep in mind that we mitigate for trees when preservation requirements cannot be met so these are trees that fall into that area that that need to be mitigated based on the code. So if I so if expanding this example it's a lot with a variety of species on it say it's 50% coverage I can get to 30% I can remove 20% for free basically right because I think I can go from a 50% canopy cover to 30% canopy cover without was it would be 30% of the existing canopy cover oh so of the property itself oh so I so you can just you can just remove 70% of all trees on the property correct before you begin to mitigate correct can you selectively pick which species you remove without mitigation? I'm not sure your question there well so we're we're we're well not not the exemplist but large canopy versus smaller canopy you know I know that large canopy trees or something like that chinkapin and schumard and live oak and a handful of oaks will have that thousand plus square foot canopy there are a lot of trees that probably end up with about a 600 square foot canopy so and there will be there will just generally be a smaller tree if can I selectively cut down the 70% that I think will be the hardest for me to mitigate and then choose to mitigate the other ones I cut down with so I can cut down a bunch of kind of medium sized trees and replace them with a single two-inch schumard you can you can select which ones you you you remove but keep in mind we're looking at the canopy as a whole not the individual size of the tree or the the individuals we're looking at canopy as as a whole okay all right so all right thank you so I think we're gonna stop yeah I know we have food and we got ten minutes and I think we're gonna have a I don't know what kind of turnout we may already have this evening I'd like to ask the Commission do you all want to stop and get food you want to go through and see where we end up this evening and come back to eat afterwards what's the what's the Commission's pleasure we have the opportunity to ask these questions in public hearing okay I have a few more things to phase in on this slide and then I have one more slide sure I'm sorry I've been watching the 13 or 14 at the tip thinking I go well okay we're gonna go the next one I'm like yeah how many 13 or 14s are there so let's take a call for a break here at 620 let's try to grab some food right quick and try to finish our presentation before we got to go in if we need a few minutes run a little light we just have to but call us back in to order at 627 and we're gonna go on and I'm gonna just go ahead for right now just for the Commission's approval I guess a couple things may want to send somebody into the council chambers just let me know we're gonna be running a few minutes light here at work session so they've got a heads up you think you need another 15 minutes if that not even got even that only very little bit left just depends on questions but maybe say we may need a we may need a restroom break between here and there's maybe 645 we'll start some one will let the folks in council there's also just so the rest of Commission knows there's a number of items on this ordinance that are apparently not quite ready to go some some definitions some legal things and some other things to need to be worked out so tonight I want to just throw out if it's the Commission's pleasure for us to continue this item rather than trying to work through and solve all of these issues out here in our public so I'll throw that out and then also want to throw out if that's the direction that council I mean Commission wants to to go we would probably want to go ahead and do a suspension of our rules because our rules state that if we open a public hearing and someone comes to speak we want to ask for public input about our ordinance this evening when it comes back when it gets revised and some of these issues get taken care of that they under our rules cannot speak again on that item so I would like to throw out as an option for our Commission to suspend the rules to gain public input tonight from all the stakeholders so that when this date these items do get resolved and finished up that everyone who is interested in this has the opportunity to come back to us to speak again on what the final ordinance is going to be with these items cleaned up so just want to throw that out for you for everybody to think about as we're wrapping up work session and before we start here and in our public meeting so you have a question Commissioner but always we need to make a motion we will when we get into our public hearing and obviously we make an emotion whether we're going to continue the item ahead of time and all of those things so I want to just be prior to the public hearings that's why I wanted to bring it up here as we're wrapping up work session as we've gone a little bit long and ran out of time too I didn't want to run out time without throwing this out to you all to have some opportunity to consider it before we go in for our public meeting so anybody else have a comment or question on on those couple housekeeping items for me when we go in to start our public meeting again if that's what the conditions I was going to suggest that anyway okay and I'm glad you brought it up because there is a lot of changes okay so we'll think about that and we'll have some motions when we get back into our public meeting so with that thank you for letting us do a little housekeeping here and please continue with the presentation okay so moving on to the next bullet here we revised the calculation for the tree fund pavement moving from diameter inches to canopy necessitated this revision so what I have here is just a very very basic example when preservation when preserving on a site so let's say our site has a canopy of 1,000 square feet and our preservation requirements is 30% of that so 300 square feet is what we're required to preserve based on the code but we're also allowing to dip below that up to 50% of that 300 may be removed and mitigated through replanting of new trees or payment into the city's tree fund now this mitigation would be for the 150 square feet of trees in the example of planting new trees that's where our one to four ratio will come into play so what we would be looking at is as you know mitigating through planting of 600 square feet of canopy so notice even with that you know 600 square feet of canopy plus the 150 left we're still less than the initial tree canopy on the site so you know 600 plus 150 that's 750 so we're still at a net loss of canopy on this you know post development versus pre -development okay so to calculate our tree fund payment what you would basically stop you there and ask question now that's just in regards to development does that include when you come back in to plant landscape type trees street trees any of those extra trees that are planted on the site in addition to that or not that's my next bullet but so far to calculate the tree fund payment what we're proposing you know once you figure out the amount of canopy that you 're mitigating in this example it's 150 square feet of canopy we would times that by $450 per square feet will you say how do we come up with that $450 per square feet I'm using this $4.50 per square foot of canopy. Quit eating there for a second. [Laughter] Let me state that again for the record $4.50 per square foot of canopy. This number will be based on what the structural value of the urban canopy is in the city of Denton. We are currently conducting an urban tree canopy assessment and an i-tree eco-assessment. These studies that we're currently undertaking will give us what the structural value of the trees are for the city of Denton. Once we know the value of the trees as a whole I can calculate what a square foot of canopy in Denton cost. This number is really close to what a square foot of canopy is worth in Arlington Texas. They did that study several years ago. Yes so I'm fairly confident that you know our numbers will come in somewhere around this number. So to calculate what your tree fund payment would be just simply multiplying the amount of canopy that you're mitigating times that $4.50. Commissioner Dudowitz. I have just one series of questions here. Is anybody else using this barometer or this index? What you put up here? You gave us a benchmark city list. I asked back in December to add Lewisville Flower Mound but again the question is who's doing this right now? I've seen a various things mainly diameter inches or flat rates even. I haven't seen this particular method but the idea is to go to canopy because that's where we derive our benefits from. Any of these benchmark cities or any cities around us using canopy? Using canopy for preservation? Yes. South Lakes uses canopy for preservation . At some point in time down I'd like to be able to see what each of these cities are using. You use them as benchmarks. Okay. Here's the cities but I want to know specifically what each of those cities are and I would like to add something closer to us. Okay. I mean the Kennedy is but I asked back in December to look at Lewisville Flower Mound is more closer to you know our area here to the south. Okay. So the other proposal what we're proposing with this revision is that to allow for preserved and mitigated trees to count towards the landscaping requirement. Under the current code only trees preserved beyond the minimum can count towards the landscape canopy requirements for development. Mitigation trees are above and beyond required landscape trees under the current code. So what we're proposing is let's just say this example of a retail commercial establishment. Let's just say these were you know preserved trees. Well they count towards the canopy requirement for this development. Every one of these trees that are required for parking lot or for street trees count towards what your required mitigation is. Under the current code that does not exist. In addition if you are preserving trees that are larger than 18 inches you're getting double the credit for the canopy. That's a 200% increase of what is currently under our existing code. You get a for trees that are less than 18 inches it's a one-to- one credit. So you're getting the actual credit of what you preserve towards your new canopy requirements. Question if we have on the other extreme that if you take out one you have to plant four and the goal is to preserve why would we not at least match that or even increase it to encourage someone to preserve the existing canopy versus if you take it out you got plant four but if you save it you only get twice the credit. Well the goal of having the one to four again is to reduce the amount of time that it takes to replace the canopy. If we're looking at you know given at the end of the day you get four times the canopy. Yes I understand it takes time but at the end of the day you end up with four times the canopy doing that. Of the percentage that you mitigate remember 70% of the trees that are removed on the site you can remove without any mitigation whatsoever. So you've already taken out 70% of the canopy so it's true that of that mitigation amount you know we're replacing more canopy but it's not going to exceed what was originally on the site and you know looking at you know the the credit for incentives for preserving trees if we raise that number too high we're going to have you know hard time actually having the canopy that we desire in our city in our developments. So if I give you know four times the credit for a preserved 18 inch or larger tree it's you know it's not I see your comparison but you know you're actually missing out on a lot of canopy on the site. Well I guess it would just be a philosophical difference is if you can take out the 70% and then you're stuck you're with the 30 then that's the part we ought to be talking about not if you can take out the 70 then we're going to come back and say well even though you can take it out technically that's per our code we still are trying to get back to what originally was there even though you can take out the 70 if that makes sense it's kind of a backwards in my mind of going well if you can take it out you can take it out I understand philosophically where you come up with we're short canopy but if we can take it out the 30% that you're left that's where I think the canopy then discussion is on trying to preserve and encourage that if that's if that's what we're trying to go. Well no the goal is not to try to replace the initial canopy on the site the goal is to mitigate for the canopy that you did not preserve of that 30% so the idea of the one to four again is to reduce the amount of time it takes to replace that specified 15% of the canopy that you're mitigating for. Yeah 50% of the 30 so yeah which is 15% of the of the. Yeah but that's kind of where I'm coming from is in your example you said well we have a thousand square feet of trees and you can take 70% of that so we're then with 300 and in your example you went back to say even when you do all this you end up back with 750 you're still short of the overall canopy right and that's my point is if you can take out the 70 then you can take out the 70 and you're you're then left with your 30% that's the part we are talking about rather than how do we get back to the part that you can take out if I'm making sense on where I'm going with that. I understand what you're saying and keep in mind that you know looking at this site and looking at that urban forest ry you know a little more holistically one of the the key components to having a healthy and a vibrant urban forestry is species diversity and age diversity so you want to have a variation of age of trees on your site so by the time some of these trees that you're mitigating from are reaching their their full maturity some of those trees that you preserved initially may be petering out and actually being removed some from the site so it's twofold is to have that that species diversity and that age diversity on the site more importantly the age diversity so that we don't you know have a site to where you know 30 40 50 years from now whenever the trees the end of the lifespan you don't have an entire site or entire neighborhood that has all the same age trees and they're dying out at the same time which also increases you know the maintenance costs for that individual property. Okay thank you. So in summary you know what we did we analyzed the existing code we conducted benchmark city analysis we reviewed industry best management practices and we solic ited stakeholders for community input. Now when we looked at you know rev ising the code you know our intent was not simply to copy other ordinances but to use what other cities were doing to craft an ordinance that works for the city of Denton which is in keeping with city leaders vision. Any other questions? Commissioner Hertzberg. No question real quick just a suggestion I think what you do is very enlightening I would be 100% behind an area maybe in one of these new develops developing in an area where you can take people to then get a day in the life right so here 's this here's a cluster of these different kind of trees this does that so it so even if I'm a citizen or I have a kids group whatever we can become educated on hey here's the trees here's what I'm talking about we can go to this one central area and get a day in the life of an urban forester type thing and just get a snapshot of those different things so I just think it would be helpful for me you know we're having this conversation to go to a one acre lot and walk around and kick the tires and then come back and know have a good good hands-on experience with that so down the road for what it's worth but I think that would be useful for me personally. Commissioner Beck and we're going to try to wrap up and get on in what we'll have lots more time for more questions. Thank You Chair just clarification what we're fixing to do here we're moving this agenda item into the future so any real concerns we have here now can be addressed in the future too. That's going to be up to the Commission to put forth that motion that's right if that motion passes then that's I think that 's the appropriate thing to do I can't speak for the Commission but I'm gonna throw it out I think that's appropriate thing to do based on where we are in the ordinance as of right now tonight. Okay thank you. So at 6 45 I'm going to close our work session and we will reconvene in council work in council chambers as soon as possible. Good evening and welcome to the City of Denton Planning and Zoning Commission meeting it is 6 55 and I apologize for running late we had a long work session this meeting has been duly posted and we have a quorum present and I'm going to call our meeting to order at this time the first item that we have is to stand and give the pledge to the US and the Texas flag. The Texas flag pledge allegiance to thee Texas one state under God one indivisible. The next item on our agenda this evening will be to have a motion for our minutes of our July 13th meeting. Chair would entertain a motion. Commissioner Rizel. I motion to approve the minutes. Commissioner Dudowitz. I second the motion. Okay we have a first and a second any discussion? Seeing none we'll call for a vote on the board. Motion carries 6 to 0. We'll move us to our public hearings section of our meeting this evening. The first item that was on our agenda tonight fr 16 - 0 0 1 0 has been withdrawn so we will now move to our second public hearing and I've got a couple announcements before we open this meeting or public hearing I should say. During our work session there's a number of items that we've discovered in our ordinance that we are going to need to address before we can move it forward for a vote. So at this time the chair is going to look for a motion for a continuance and the second announcement I want to make in regards to that is the standard protocol of the city is once you come up to speak in a public hearing you have one opportunity and only to do that . So we're also going to be looking for a motion to suspend our rules because this is an important item and we are interested in all of the stakeholders having an opportunity to not only give us additional feedback and input tonight but as we work on this ordinance probably at least one or two more work sessions we're going to invite you all to come and continue to participate in that but we want to make sure that all of our residents and all of our stakeholders have an opportunity as we revise and get this ordinance in a fashion to move forward to City Council that you have the opportunity to come back as a second opportunity to speak again on the final draft of the ordinance. So I want to make that announcement to everyone here this evening and for those that are watching those will be the two things that we will look for a motion on here in a minute and then we will open the public hearing and invite anyone that wants to come down to speak. So at this time the chair will look for a motion for continuance. Do we do those as two separate a separate motion for each of those items? Commissioner Beck. I move that we issue continuance on agenda item DCA 16001C. Okay and a clarification from the chair I should have stated in my announcement I think it's appropriate probably at this time based on where we are that we do it indefinitely rather than a date certain because we don't have how much time it's gonna take to get this revised so would you entertain that as a friendly amendment to your motion? I do. Okay. Commissioner Dudowitz. I second the motion as amended. Okay. I have a first and a second to continue this item indefinitely. Any discussion or comment at this time? Seeing none I'll call for a vote on the board. Motion carries six to zero. Commissioner Dudowitz. I now move that we suspend the rules to allow citizens secondary and multiple options to to speak on behalf the continuance on this particular item when it comes back. Okay. Got a recommendation from staff that we clarify in this motion that you would have since we're spending the rules tonight it would be up for two times so that would have an opportunity to speak tonight and when this comes back for public hearing we'd have a second opportunity to speak rather than it's open-ended. Question. Chair. What happens if it continues beyond that? We can always suspend the rules if necessary again but since we're looking for hopefully maybe we're being optimistic that we can do this and come back once what we'll stick with two times for tonight if you're okay with that. Yes I am. Okay. Commissioner Hutsmith. Second. Okay. We have a first and a second to suspend our rules for this particular agenda item to speak a total of two times tonight and at a date in the future when this comes back. Any discussion or comment further comment on this item? We will keep a... Commissioner Dudowitz. We'll keep a list of then who's eligible for a second. I'm sure staff will do that yes. Seeing no further discussion on this this motion I'll call for a vote on the board. Motion carries six to zero. Okay. I hope everybody got that if we have a question we'll come back. Now at this time I'm going to open our public hearing for our item B DCA 16-0001 and I've got... I'm gonna call on staff to go ahead and make the presentation for all to view and then we will begin to we've got a number of cards here to go through this evening. Thank you Haywood. Just for the benefit of those at home who may have not been tuned in earlier my name is Haywood Morgan. I'm the urban forester for the city of Denton. I have approximately 18 years experience primarily working for municipalities. Prior to coming to Denton my two stops had me actually working with field operations directly where I was responsible or responsible in part with some of my colleagues for managing trees along streets in parks along boulevards and parkways. So tonight we're here to hold a public hearing to consider making a recommendation to City Council regarding the adoption of an ordinance to the city of Dent on Texas amending subchapter 35.3 procedures subchapter 35.13 site design standards and subchapter 35.23 definitions and terms of the Denton development code as relates to true preservation and landscape requirements. So what is the tree code when we talk about the tree code? The tree code deals with the preservation of existing trees and mitigation of trees removed when preservation goals cannot be met. It applies to the city limits and not in the ETJ. So why do we preserve trees? Well we know that there are environmental benefits that are associated with trees. Soil quality is improved, wildlife habitat, the beauty, local climate modifications, air quality, carbon sequestration, they help to stop erosion, reduce flooding, and filter water pollution and and abate noise. There are also a number of health benefits that are associated with trees such as boost immune systems, lowering blood pressure, reducing stress, improving mood, speeding recovery after surgeries, increasing energy levels, and improving sleep. There's a recent study that shows that ten additional trees planted along a city block makes residents healthier by the same amount of raising their income $10,000 per year per household. That same study found that that addition of ten trees per city block decreased cardio metabolic conditions in a way comparable to increasing the annual income, personal income , by $20,000. So we also look at economic viability. You see this is one of our local establishments. It's a hotel that was developed and they were able to, as you see here, they were able to successfully preserve some groupings of mature trees on this site and have their development goals reached. It's hard to see on this picture but there's a sign at this corner that this is one of Ditten's best of 2016. Let me back up one second here. When you talk about economic viability, it's been proven that the trees can help reduce heating and AC costs by up to 40% for properties. Shoppers are willing to pay up to 12% more for goods and services and shopping areas that have trees and mature trees on their site. In fact, they even rate products higher in those shopping centers that have mature trees present on their site versus sites that are devoid of trees. Home values have also been shown to be 40, excuse me, 4 to 15% higher in neighborhoods that have mature trees versus neighborhoods that do not have mature trees. It is very true that there is no assessment when the bank sends out an appraiser to look at a house and to appraise a house for your home mortgage. But what the studies are looking at is the individual's desire to live in that neighborhood based on the presence of mature trees. So they're willing to spend more because of the mature trees. So when you have a neighborhood that has mature trees, the home values because someone is willing to pay more tend to be higher than those neighborhoods that are devoid of trees. You know it's often said that a house or anything for that matter is worth what someone is willing to pay for it. Well studies have shown that people are willing to pay more when there are mature trees in our neighborhoods. Okay, public demand. The Denton Tree Code came about because of public demand going back to 2003 with the development or redevelopment, should I say, of the Flow Hospital site. There were a number of large mature oak trees on the site that were removed with this development that spurred the public demand to have a tree code. The article that I have pictured here, the caption and the picture, is actually from just last Friday's Denton Record Chronicle. People are still interested in trees. They're still interested in preserving trees in our cities. Okay, we also look at the benefit that trees have on reducing the urban heat island effect. Studies have shown that in cities that are devoid of trees that ground level temperatures and surface temperatures are higher. There's an absorption of heat during the daytime that is released at night so you have an increase in your not only your daytime temperatures but your nighttime temperatures. The presence of trees in our urban areas helps to reduce that effect in our urban areas. And of course we look at the aesthetics of trees. So who is affected? Those that are affected by the tree code here in Denton are, you know, property owners and residents, developers, and other interested groups such as KDB, Native Plant Society, UNT, TWU. So let me go to our project timeline here. So this is a picture of the Flow Hospital site prior to, well actually it's a historic photo. You can tell it's black and white. It's a little distorted because I stretched it to fit the screen, but as you can see there was quite a number of large mature trees on this site here. You know the site was redeveloped in 2003 for student housing. So that was again Flow Hospital 2003. In 2004 the city passed its first tree preservation requirements. 2005 to 2008 the tree code was reviewed for updates. 2008 the city hired its first urban forester. And 2014 to present is the current effort to revise the tree code. So when we look at our, when we looked at the current state of our code we found that there were too many variables. There's actually 36 or 39 different scenarios for preservation under the current code. We found that it there was no flexibility and there was no incentive to save large trees. In fact under our current code if you're developing a property that has a tree that's larger than 18 inches you can remove it. There isn't a requirement to preserve any tree that's larger than 18 inches. You can remove it and simply pay a mitigation fee into the city's tree fund or mitigate through replanting additional trees on site. So here are some examples of what we see with our current code. So here's an example and these are some some good examples of sites being developed and large trees being preserved while developing sites. Here's another, this is just another view of that same local hotel and here's one of a student housing development where there was, they were able to preserve a large tree at that site. So you can preserve trees and realize your development goals. It's not, they're not exclusive of one another. Now here I'll continue on with current state examples. This is a parcel in the city of the city of Devent, excuse me, in the city of Denton prior to development. Okay so as you can see you know it's not a hundred percent covered with trees but there's quite a few trees along this site. This is the site during the development. It's about halfway there by this aerial. I mean they're there actually in real life they're finishing up the last phases of this process but as you can see this is a residential development. This is what we call an NR6 development or six houses allowed per acre. The trees that were preserved and met the tree code was this section right here was kind of a little pocket park and a few trees along this side here. Other than that everything else on this site was removed. Now in our discussions with some stakeholders it was brought up that maybe we should consider exempting right of ways and building pads from the tree code. Well if you can if you look at this example here and this is an NR6 development which is pretty much the majority of residential development going on currently in Denton, if you exempt those things what are we left? What are we left to preserve here? I mean that's that's pretty much the majority of the site. So let's review kind of our method for coming to our recommendations here. We analyze the current tree code. We looked at best management practices as set forth by the American National Standards Institute which is a national recognized organization. They set standards for many things . So we use those as kind of our guiding principles for how we would like to see trees preserved here in Denton. We also did a benchmark city comparison. As you notice the map here you know we didn't just look at trees in DFW because you know we aren't just competing for business and for residents with you know other cities in DFW. We're competing with the area of Austin San Antonio down here the Houston area. We're competing really statewide when businesses are looking to move into Texas when they're looking to where they want to relocate to. So we felt that it was important to you know look at benchmarks throughout the state. We also had community input via a visual preference survey and this is you know just one of the slides that you know we asked residents to simply give a preference on what they liked and you know there were some people that picked A, some picked B, some picked C, but the majority of the people picked the sites that depicted residential areas that had trees in them. We did a little bit more about the visual preference. We did in- person surveys at the three local Kroger locations. We were at the local library and several of the recreation centers. We received 300 respondents through those in-person surveys and we also conducted the same survey online and received an additional 700 plus respondents. So when we talk about aligning with industry best managers practice again American National Standards Institute, TCIA, they are the people that that publish this information and it's really put together by leaders in the field of tree care and tree management. So we're also proposing that we have an exempt tree list and you may say why do we want to exempt any tree from preservation? Aren't all trees good? Don't they all provide benefits? Well that is true. However there are some trees because of their physical characteristics are less desirable in a landscape situation . So here we have you know a mesquite which is on our list of current trees as a secondary tree. This tree based on industry measurements is actually categorized as a large secondary tree meaning a tree that's 18 inches in diameter above but if you see the picture and most mesquites they're really you know quite a large shrub as they grow here in Denton. If you get further in the southern part of the state they develop into a you know a larger tree but here we're dealing with what we have locally. So the other reason when you look at mesquite you know it has thorns that can be quite painful. There were some pictures when I was pulling these off line that you know but not for the faint of heart just that the effect that you know had just from you know being poked with one of these thorns. They flatten tires I've experienced that personally with my city vehicle here going on to a job site and you know that had a had a mesqu ite thorn that poked a hole in the tire. So we also look at another example is the honey locust you know again on the surface nice looking tree this isn't actually the thorn variety this is a cultivar that is thornless but the thorn variety the ones that we have you know growing naturally here have th orns you can see that's like about a six inch thorn those are not things that you want in your backyard landscape you know and it's not just on the leaves but it's also on the trunk. Okay we also looked at the Texas Ash you know I said wait a minute Texas Ash that's a nice tree that's a tree that you know was on our list to plant but one thing that that has occurred here I think approximately ten years ago there was a bug called emerald ash borer that is an invasive pest came from China it attacks ash trees exclusively. Now the peculiar thing about this bug you see is quite tiny they start at the top of the tree so by the time you realize that your tree is infested it's really too late there's very little you can do once you know the you actually notice usually once you see it the infestation is four or five years old. Now our idea of leaving that off the list and emerald ash borer has been identified positively in traps in the state of Texas closer to the Louisiana border eastern Texas that's less than 300 miles away from where we are it's not a matter of if it will get here it's a matter of when it will get here if it's not already here. So the idea of exempting that was we don't want to preserve a tree that's going to cause long- term care in the future for the eventual property owner. The picture I have here is actually a friend of mine when I when I worked in Milwaukee they have an active ash injection program they inject their city ash trees on well when I was there was a two-year schedule they found that they can actually go three years so it's an ongoing maintenance process of treatment that you have to have if you're going to maintain that tree otherwise once it gets the bug it will die. So looking at exemptions to the tree code as a whole the current code has 13 exemptions we reduce that to four some of the exemptions on the current code were you know really common-sense exemptions you're not held to the tree code if the tree is dead if the tree blew over in a storm we felt that it wasn't necessary to spell out you know things that are really you know common sense if someone calls in and says you know my tree is dead or blew over in a storm do I need a permit no you don't need a permit for that. So we also are looking to base our preservation requirements based on canopy versus the current code which is DBH and the the rationale to move to canopy as our measure is because the benefits that we derive from trees are all based on the canopy of the tree. Looking at the the DBH solely as as the determining factor can be very misleading it's very possible to have a tree that's 18 inches in diameter that has a larger canopy than a tree that's 24 or 25 inches in diameter it all depends on the tree itself so when a developer is required to get the diameter of a tree as they currently are they have to send someone out there on the property and you know this this picture here is one I pulled online but you know this site here isn't bad to walk through there's some sites on this indentum that you can't just walk through to do you know an assessment as this this young lady is doing here but what it requires under the current code is to get a diameter of every tree on the property to essentially do an inventory of every tree on the site. So moving to canopy will allow us to look at area photographs and as you see here this is a site where you are able to actually use computer software ArcGIS or a similar program and draw out your perimeters of your treeed areas and let the computer calculate the canopy of what you have drawn out along of course with you going out in the field and verifying that okay this is actually these are actually trees it's not just privet which you know we tend to have a lot of here in Texas so you know we thought that going the canopy will allow for that analysis looking at looking at area photographs based on existing photographs or in the case as it was mentioned earlier in the work session drone technology is there that works in conjunction with ArcGIS where you can send a drone up and do your property and get the canopy on a specific site. Okay so we're also proposing that we establish a standard preservation amount of 30% per development. Under the current code your preservation is anywhere from 0 to 25% of the existing trees on the site based on either canopy if you can preserve by canopy but if you can't reach it by canopy then it's diameter-entral you have to do the 100% survey of the trees. So you may say well why 30% where's that number come from? Well we picked 30% and we've opted to use 30% as our parameter because it's in line with regional goals set by the Texas A&M Forest Service. The decisions that we've made in this we didn't just make them because we thought it would be good we have a rationale for why we're proposing what we're proposing. So we also talked about looking at proposing and establishing a flat mitigation ratio when preservation requirements cannot be met. So under the existing code and with what we're proposing of that 30% of the canopy that you are required to save on site if you can't meet that you can remove up to half of that. So essentially 15% of the canopy on site you can up to 15% you can remove and mitigate through either replanting trees on site or payment into the tree fund. The ratio comes into play only when you're looking at replanting trees on site. So essentially when you look at one diameter's worth of canopy that you're mitigating for you're planting trees that will at maturity have four times the diameter of what was replaced and you may say well why not just one for one? You know I've heard that question you know many times. Well for that one tree to replace the diameter of the one tree's worth of canopy that we replace it may take 40 years or more for that tree to reach that maturity stage. So by doing a one to four ratio planting four trees we're actually replacing that canopy and a fourth of the time that it would take otherwise. So we're also proposing based on going to the to looking at canopy versus DBH revising the calculation for the tree fund payments. So this is just a very basic example of what that looks like. So in this example if a site has a thousand square feet of canopy and these numbers are all in square feet. So if it has a thousand square feet of canopy your preservation requirement or really your preservation goal is 300 square feet of canopy. Okay the code allows you to remove half of that or 150 square feet of that canopy. So to figure out your either your mitigation if you're planting back on the site if you're planting back on the site that's where your ratio comes into play. You would multiply that 150 times 4 you get 600 that's the amount of canopy you would be replacing on the site. The mature canopy equivalent not the canopy of the tree that you're replacing because we know that you know though a three inch caliber tree doesn't have very much canopy. So if you're planting or if you're payment if you're making a payment into the tree fund you're going to take that 150 and you're going to times it by $1.50 you say per square foot. So you say where that $4.50 per square foot come from? Well the City of Den is currently in the process of conducting an iTree eco-assessment and an urban tree canopy analysis. The combination of those two studies will give us the structural value of these trees in Denton and the software that's used is used industry-wide is actually used even internationally as the result of a collaboration of the US Forest Service and several private entities. It's an ongoing peer review software that's free to the public to use. You know the key contributor to that software has been researching his methodology and his algorithm for 30 years. Very well known, very well respected in that field. So back to that 450 once we get Denton structural value and we know that you know what the canopy percentage is of Denton I can put a dollar an actual dollar value of what a square foot of canopy is in Denton. The 450 is actually real close to what the City of Arlington's structure as canopy is worth based on a study they did several years ago. So we're also proposing in our revisions that all preserved trees and trees that are planted for mitigation count towards the landscape requirement. Under the current code preserved trees do not count unless they're preserved beyond the minimum requirement. So if you preserve you know however many you know diameters of the trees they don't count you get no credit if you're below if you're at or below the minimum requirement of preservation. As far as mitigation trees, mitigation trees under the current code are above and beyond any required landscape trees. So what we're proposing is to allow those trees that you're preserving and the trees that you're planning for mitigation if you have to mitigate to count towards your landscape canopy tree requirement. So just say for this example here this is a retail development if these trees were preserved and for this I let's just say these were trees that were large in 18 inches. Well what we're categorizing as heritage trees under our new proposal. Heritage trees you would get actually two times the the credit of what the actual canopy is as an incentive to preserve larger trees. The remaining trees you'll get a one-to-one credit for preserved trees anything that's less than 18 inches and you know I've heard the thing well that 's not enough credit to be an incentive. Well under the current code you get zero unless you preserve beyond the minimum. What we're proposing is really a 200% up to a 200% increase of what the current code allows. For as far as your trees planted for mitigation any required trees whether they are street trees, parking lot trees, those can now be mitigation trees also. They do not have the mitigation does not have to be above and beyond what the landscape code requires. So in summary we analyzed our existing code we conducted benchmark city analysis, we reviewed industry best management practices and we solicited stakeholder and community input. I'll stand for any questions. Commissioner Hutchins. I have one request for whenever in future presentations or the next presentation we see is there a way to build the slides where it shows 50% of the canopy and then a visual rendering of what 15% or 30 % looks like on a particular just so I can get a visual of what those percentages to give them just to give it a so I can see what 15% 30% what that looks like you know so if you if you had a slide that then says here's a lot like that the last slide you had of the retail center and so in that retail center it says here's what 30% looks like here's what 15% of that looks like that way I can get a get an idea I'd appreciate that. Okay I think we can probably accommodate that. Commissioner Back. Thank you chair and thanks Haywood for your presentation well done appreciate it. I'm glad this Commission decided to issue a continuous on this because there's a lot of questions here need to be answered and there's some concerns I like a lot of what I see in the revision but one big concern I have I'd appreciate it if you could address it for us tonight because I'm sure other members of the Commission do in the public as well but there is that part that allows city-owned utilities DME and street construction projects it eliminates any responsibility they have for that it seems like the responsibility of preserving trees should be built out equally and these agencies are being allowed to forego that so can you at least address that concern why that was considered part of your revision your tree code revision well under the current code some of those exemptions exist we actually reviewed that and you know we dialed it back some and they don't have total exemption on on those lists they have partial exemptions mainly on the preservation they're not exempt from the replanting part of it or you know the planting of street trees for the new streets per se but change is hard and you know there are some that you know we have to work with internally that are comfortable with the current standard okay but the way I read it is these agencies are totally exempt that there wasn't any lee way for them that if they were whatever they were designing whatever they were doing if a tree was in their way they wouldn't they would be allowed to remove it did I read that I'm gonna step in right quick I think staff wants to make a clarification kind of where we are on the ordinance and some of the rev isions to make sure we're all on the latest update on the ordinance okay yes thank you Jefferson strange Commissioner Beck one of the elements that we're reviewing as part of our our study and on and our analysis associated with the amended tree code or tree ordinance is to assess and evaluate how city programs or city projects play into the tree code and how what relationship they have to each other without compromising any statutory requirements associated with that and as a result if you recall we basically did an analysis today on what the tree code is what the intentions are what studies show prior to us looking at the ordinance and thus the continuance tonight or request for continuous okay but I'm right and therefore to assess in terms of what have we exempted in the ordinance what you're looking at is a draft ordinance okay and that's the ordinance that we had some concern with because there was some inconsistencies that we wanted to modify it just seemed like that concern need to be raised as we go forward so that person definitely so as we go forward and once we have a draft ordinance in fact what we're going to do I have sir is have separate workshops with yourselves to actually address each component of the tree code ordinance that will be discussed then itemizing each element as to applicability of the tree code great thank you thanks you have a follow-up commissioner back commissioner Roselle thank you chair thank you Heywood for your presentation I have one question and maybe a follow-up comment to that in terms of the last thing you presented in the incentivizing of preservation what how does the one to two compare to the other municipalities that you looked at and some municipalities there's there's not that have to go back and review that specifically but some you know there isn't you know an incentive you know what we what we're doing in some instances is similar to what other cities are doing and others it's really breaking new ground okay and then I guess my comment would be as a follow-up to that is I would hope that there's an opportunity here obviously for a massive tree preservation reform I hope that we're not limited to just comparing it to what the status quo for Denton was previously you mentioned that it's a 200% increase from what didn't used to have but that doesn't necessarily communicate to me that that's actually a good goal just because it compared to potentially a really bad ordinance before and so I guess my encouragement to the staff would be not just to look at the previous standard like well we're out doing ourselves before but rather if there's a way to really incentivize preservation of these trees then maybe we can take this opportunity to do that to the best of our abilities thank you Commissioner Taylor thank you chair I have just a few questions I'm still I think I've mostly understand this ordinance now after three months but I just have a few more clarifications so right now in a commercial development the parking lot tree canopy requirement is it is it 30% I don't know if that's a be a question for you or for a question just a general development staff question if I'm not mistaken it is 30% but that gets into the the landscape requirements of the code which is a little bit beyond the scope of what we're currently looking at right no I understand I just the the an interesting feature of this ordinance is that it does allow that the double dipping of landscape and preservation or previously it was there was always the we've preserved you know 22% and now we are you know also using an additional 12% of the canopy to allocate for you know street trees or park tree parking lot tree and that'll be going away so we'll just be having a single number to look at let's see the if you your mitigation example you threw up the example of a thousand square feet you can immediately remove 70% without without any mitigation at all so you go to 300 and then if you can go down to half of that 30% so you can go to 150 square feet and if you happen to preserve a larger than 18 inch diameter tree you get double credit for that preservation so if we if we made this a 10,000 square foot example you you have to keep 3,000 square feet and if you have one 18 inch or larger tree that has 1500 square feet of canopy that covers everything including mitigation is that correct because you get double credit it doesn't cover the mitigation they cover that two to one credit for the canopy is credit towards your new landscape canopy requirements so if that particular site say if they required 5,000 square feet of new canopy where you'd have a credit of 3,000 square feet towards your new canopy requirement okay so it's so in this case in my hypothetical I'd have a 1500 square foot one very large mature tree and then I would have to plant one additional large species three inches diameter it's like a large oak or something like large species oak and that would meet meet my 30% I guess I have to mitigate so it'd be a four to one ratio and repl anting right so whatever the balance of it in this example if that 15,000 is satisfying you know that minimum 15% preservation where you're mitigating for 15,000 more square feet so in your example you'll be replacing it with you know approximately four trees that have a large canopy upon maturity so that would be like four four three inch large species oaks or pecan correct okay and then I get 3,000 square feet of landscape credit for saving that one the one tree I didn't cut down correct okay and if I choose not to replant my four three inch trees the fee would be the four dollars a 50 square 50 cents square foot so it'd be about six thousand dollars correct and so that would be six thousand dollars to cut down 7,500 square feet of canopy roughly yeah okay so and and that would be I'm gonna sorry 8,500 up miscalculated 8,500 square feet so that would be about eight mature trees if I was under the old ordinance a mature tree is 18 inches and it's gonna cost me $125 an inch to cut it down so each of those trees is worth about $2,000 eight mature trees at two thousand sixteen thousand dollars in mitigation is what today we would pay under this ordinance it would be six thousand dollars roughly right right right now I understand this is a hypothetical and I'm just putting this all out there so the mitigation fees have gone down dramatically depending on the situation yeah and then I get bonus points when I come to landscape because now I got three thousand square feet of credit or before you'd had to preserve and then you'd had to do your landscape all right thank you yeah to add to your example if you're looking at the current code and you're preserving the one 18 inch tree the balance of what you would be mitigating would be 18 inches so it would be 18 times $125 not the total diameter inches that are on the entire site Commissioner Nettles now they have a bunch of numbers in my head I was going in that direction you made it an assumption and you said you have rationale for all those the one to four ratio and you explained it as being being able to get to maturity four times faster so you made some assumptions on that that original tree and the assumptions on the four are of the same type of species or of a variety or something's a rationale behind the four it would be a it would be a large canopy tree so if if you 're replacing and you're looking at you know a large trees worth the canopy which we estimated in Denton or given us a size of 1256 square feet you're looking at planting four new trees that would meet that that size upon maturity why not one to three I'm just you know you you told us that you had a number of wonderful because of again the rationale is you know replacing tree canopy sooner if it's the the lower that ratio the longer it takes to to replace a canopy and the longer we're not realizing the benefits of that canopy if you go back to that that slide that I had with all the various benefits that were received from trees I just want to make sure everybody was clear on the rationale and we may you know replace it the canopy in our lifetime versus you know after we're we're going it's the second one that needs for me and others to clarify what how'd you get that $4.50 that that $4.50 is an estimate of what a square foot of canopy would be here in Denton what I actually did to get around that number was I use the the i-tree eco assessment of the city of Or lington's trees they have their you know the value of their the structural value of their tree canopy the percentage of tree canopy and using those numbers along with the total square footage of the city of Orlington I was able to calculate how much one square foot of canopy is worth thank you I got a couple questions I want to go back to our last P&T meeting we had a project came before preserved pecan Creek like they had essentially what may be kind of a future view of the direction we may be going with I think that a seven or ten acre tree reserve that they were doing as they developed that project and I think they put that in a individual lot and it was enough therefore would be in a homeowners association rather than it's publicly owned is it villages I'm sorry I spoke with the wrong project villages Carmel just a philosophical concern I have and I'm throwing this out just to get it out because I know we 're going to have a time to have future meetings and work sessions and talk about this is we're taking somewhat of a public policy of preserving the trees and putting it in more of a private type of application and individual developments more than likely those go into homeowners association so they're privately owned and they're maintained by a homeowner association they're not open to the public and as part of this ordinance the developer or the homeowners association by default has to maintain these trees for three years so if something for example oak wilt or some type of issue happens with those trees now the homeowners association ie the residents that live in that neighborhood are going to have to be coming back and have a great expense potentially to replace all these trees to get it back into compliance so I'm concerned about that and the precedent that we said and the burden that we put on our future residents and so one of the things that I want to throw out just for us to consider as a city if this is the direction that we want to go with public policy that we look at doing this more on a public policy platform that is more of a park that's a publicly owned park if it can be dedicated as park whether we're buying paying into the tree fund and taking tree fund dollars to buy areas that are then public parks publicly maintained they 're no longer homeowners association and private and the burden saw the go with that and general liability for safety all other stuff that goes along with HOA's and anybody can come and enjoy those versus its HOA exclusively area that is just for that neighborhood so that's one of the things that I want to throw out just as an observation of where we are so far on this ordinance as we're going to be taking a look at it and soliciting feedback here in a minute from public as well and some other stakeholders is there an opportunity for us to look at that since this is more of a public policy decision that it 's more of a benefit and use for the public versus its private private HOA's privately maintained and expense and all those types of things so we 'll still throw that out to add to all the other comments that we're probably getting ready to get and see if there's a place for that somewhere in this ordinance as we move it forward so any other comments or questions for Hay wood before we move on to our cars thank you for a great presentation all right thank you have a number of cards and just want to announce again that we've suspended our rules and so what we'll be doing going for you're welcome to speak this evening and then speak a second time as this comes back if you do want to speak tonight and you haven't filled out a card yet we would ask that you so if you do want to speak this evening we will need to fill out a card you can fill out a card either support the ordinance or not support it and we'll just read that into the record and our timeframes do still apply even though we've suspended the rules I believe it's four minutes per speaker and they can combine time it's four minutes four minutes per speaker and then if there is a group of four or more then you'll get a ten minute or less opportunity to speak and then also the applicant which is I guess us we've already taken our time to speak so we don't need to address that okay with that said I'm gonna we've got two cards that did not wish to speak so I'm gonna record these for the record and then we'll move into our cards that do wish to speak first card I have is from Lynn Dodd 612 Pearl Street she she or he is in support of this ordinance but did not wish to speak I have a second card Courtney blebens for service 7429 Culver Avenue Fort Worth is in support of this ordinance and did not wish to speak the next card I have is from Rod Zuc chi and I'm gonna go ahead and put next speaker behind we can get ready would be Larry Reichart the right if you want to come forward you have four minutes to speak and please give your name and address please sir thank you mr. chairman commissioners my name is Rod Zucchi I'm with ZPS consulting engineers at one one one one Main Street in Grapevine Texas there's so many things to tackle I'm not even going to attempt it here in four minutes so I'd just like to make a few points to try and kind of stimulate some thought for our future conversations to give you some background I'll tell you that I have over 25 years of engineering and planning experience working for and with the city of Denton and most other area cities I organized and headed the consultant team for the city that worked on the original Denton plan for example my firm currently has five large single-family projects with significant tree and ESA issues and various stages of development in the city of Denton so I'm currently very familiar with your current code both tree and ESA in working with staff as a representative of the Denton Community Development Alliance team which included Larry Reichart and Lee Allison who are also here this evening in multiple workshops with the city over the past several weeks I've developed several concerns about the current draft I'm concerned that the Commission does not have adequate and accurate information to make an informed decision some key informational tools provided have been taken out of context or valuable components of the information are missing I'm concerned that we are not proceeding with the consideration of this ordinance in conformance with the process outlined and our recently adopted comprehensive plan Larry will elaborate on this some more in future discussion I'm concerned that this ordinance would have a very significant financial impact when applied to our projects recently approved under the current ordinance we are seeing possible mitigation cost increase increases of five times or more based on rates suggested by staff in our workshop and the rate this which is the same rate Larry suggested this evening admittedly this ordinance does not establish those rates but how can you consider an ordinance without considering what the economic impact of that ordinance would be I've asked myself and several staff several times what the goal of this new ordinance actually is and I'm not sure I can tell you the answer is it to simplify the current ordinance tree ordinance in most cities are not simple and our current ordinance is not that bad in comparison one of the things that complicates tree ordinances and our current one as well is there's multiple kinds of projects single-family versus commercial that are very different in nature and the rules that apply to the development of those types of projects are very different and so the cost analysis you might go through on a commercial project is not the same result you'd get on a single-family project our code addresses different types of projects that's one thing that makes it more complicated this code does not is the purpose to preserve more trees if that's the case shouldn't the economic impact of the ordinance be similar or maybe slightly higher than the curtain ordinance to preserve some economic development opportunities is the purpose to have more trees in Denton's future tree planting is a much more beneficial and efficient method of accomplishing this goal than preservation of older trees with limited lifespans this allows trees to occur in a desired location making them an asset instead of a liability in a being preserved in a demanded location and that's an important concept we need to discuss further on it's not just the preservation of the tree it's the impact that that location has on the use of a piece of property there's one reason why it's difficult for cities not to exempt city projects like a wastewater treatment plant because you don't get to preserve trees where you want to you have to preserve them where they are and if they're in the middle of where you need to use that site it significantly impacts the use of the site thank you for your comments I'm sorry I have a question Ron I apologize Commissioner Roselle thank you chair Rod I appreciate your your feedback I had one question not not to get into the weeds but it might be helpful as I'm thinking through this you mentioned there's out of context information being provided to the Commission can you provide like just an example so I can get my mind going where that might be for one thing Larry's pulled a number out of the city of Arlington code to establish the value of the trees you need to read that report and see how that number how he came up with that number it's the city Arlington wouldn't come up with that number if you read their entire ordinance another example is I've heard examples used in comparison to the city of Southlake I'm very familiar with their code and I've actually talked to their arborist about the application or code it's very stringent and and it's been used as a comparison tool for this well if you ask they'll voluntarily tell you that an overwhelming majority of projects to prove in Southlake do not comply with their tree code city of Southlake uses their tree code as a tool in in conjunction with all their other ordinances to get the kind of development they want they don't necessarily enforce the tree code to the letter off now that's very onerous on a city that that puts your staff in a position where they've got to consider variances on every project you know those are a couple that 's helpful thank you one more question Commissioner Hedgepeth thank you chair thank you sir appreciate your insight and I 'm gonna ask each individual this so if we can agree on the canopy what is your so mr. Haywood's number is 450 $4.50 what is what is your number in your analysis well I think that's where we get to the comprehensive plan the comprehensive plan actually outlines and Larry is an expert on this and he'll address that for you a process you go through to establish the value of the trees in your city so you can assess that rate and that's what we have not done we've just kind of said Arlington did it and and here's Arlington's not well and so that's that's gonna be the challenge for me and maybe someone else is gonna get to it but I'm gonna ask each individual I'm just gonna repeat it mr. Haywood's put a number out there he's done his due diligence and if you're going to then challenge his due diligence then I would challenge whomever to come up with a new number and and validate that number that's only fair if someone comes and does their due diligence and puts a number out there to get scrutinized I 'm all for scrutiny but then those challengers need also to to do the math and put themselves out there and let us kick the tires on let me offer you a number if you would like with with with with 30% preservation requirement mm-hmm if you were to exempt public right aways and public easements as most cities do which also it does not show up in your in your equivalent city comparison and you took half that number it would come out about 10% higher financial impact and what your current ordinance does okay but the current ordinance does not is not based on canopy so if we can agree to switch the canopy then I've got projects where I have the detailed survey of all the trees so I can make a direct correlation between canopy and the current code which is is caliper inches and so you know and it's it's tough it's complicated I mean I do support the concept of canopy it avoids the need to do a detailed survey on every tree on the property and particularly when you get in large single- family properties I can be very expensive and time-consuming so I mean there's some very good concepts in the in the in the code but that's a tough question and that's really my point is we need to we need to figure that out yes sir thank you thank you next speaker will be Larry Reichart and this looks like a group speaker for ten minutes on behalf of Larry Reichart Brett Chance Adam Gararecki and Lee Allison thank you my name is Larry Reichart I'm a board member with the DCDA I live at 2228 Jefferson Trail here in Denton Texas a little background on me I used to work for the city of Denton I was the assistant planning director and I was the interim planning director for for a while also I penned the existing code that we're using right now when I say I penned it I don't like to say I authored it because it was done by a committee and when you get stuff done by a committee you have to address almost everybody's concerns that's why there's such a variety of different variables we tried to address infill lots with the one acre minimums this code doesn't address infill lots you know they're going to be addressed later but this code is in effect now if you have one tree on your property you can't remove it there or you have to pay you can't remove it because you can't get below 15% so you can now you know if you have an infill lot and there's very possible we'll have one tree I have a pretty in depth PowerPoint presentation you you've gotten my letter you probably haven't had a chance to read it I'll ask you if you want me to go through the PowerPoint now and you know really go into it or just hit some highlights you're probably just take a quick poll you guys want to see the PowerPoint or you want to handle that in a work session I can do it in ten the one thing I will have to say right now too within the presentation and the letter I sent you I was totally wrong with the mitigation fee I calculated I'm learning that now is I and I because I multiplied it by four and you're not supposed to do that for the mitigation I didn't include the existing trees ever planted so that number is way off up till you get to that point the analysis was correct that point which is the main point was is really wrong so I wanted to say that right out get that out of the way right now we have philosophical differences inconsistent with the comprehensive plan I'll get into that missing the information that we think is important for an informed decision impact on the property owner we don't believe is proportional to the gain and the economic impact we believe the tree canopy benefits the entire community and therefore should be a community solution not an individual property owner responsibility or burden we believe and it's identified in the common plan that the city should be purchasing and protecting and maintaining important tree stands not requiring individuals to do it and again we believe increasing the tree canopy should be done over the long term it's not a quick fix you plant trees they grow trees die you replace them and that's that goes to the four to one mitigation responsibility we believe the citywide canopy we will increase with development on the slide or the city to the the colors to the right the green areas are ag land which aren't developed they are going to develop that's 43% of the city there's probably not a lot of trees on there on that property once they get developed you look at any old subdiv ision in this city those are the heavily canopied properties in the city idiot Hill when it was developed didn't have a single tree out there now it's one of the most go to Google Earth and look homeowners now provide trees homeowners plant trees on a lot of trees and it look at ropes and ranch wasn't a single tree out there when it was developed there's probably there's hundreds of trees have not over a thousand regarding the camp plan in chapter 5 5.5 there are policies and actions to undertake to expand and protect tree canopy the ones that are underlined here conduct an urban forestry master plan some of these are underway right now research and determine what the goal should be where are we heading with tree canopy what is the appropriate number and then what is the appropriate number to preserve for the city of Denton not for Texas not for a and M what is appropriate for the city we haven't done that we haven't even discussed that understand the future and economic development of the urban tree canopy the tree value identified by staff is one way to do it but at four dollars and fifty cents a square foot we're saying the tree canopy is more valuable than the land itself you can't buy it no one's selling you can't buy commercial property at 450 the motion get is like 250 a square foot but we're saying it's valued at four dollars and fifty cents a square foot that that is it's not proportional to the value of the land update the tree trust section as we were talking that needs to be done and incorporated into this code one to one one to two is not an incentive to preserve trees it's just not you need to be almost to one to ten one to five you got to really think outside the box what's going to get a developer to preserve the tree as opposed to cutting it down and developing it and making money off the development established tree parks talked about and the last one is just ensure that city services providers aren't compliance with tree code regarding trimming and pruning this probably isn't the type of tree we want to really preserve or promote to be pruned this way and this is in the city the impact of tree removal I calculated based on the square miles of the city converted that to acreage for the comp plan we're at 19% which again in the comp plan says it's a significant tree canopy then calculated what the existing tree canopy was and then calculated what is one acre of trees how does that relate to the citywide tree canopy it's point zero zero nine percent not even a hundredth of a percent of the existing tree canopy yet an acre of trees based on a 450 square foot is a hundred and ninety six thousand dollars value at point zero zero nine percent of the existing tree canopy something isn't working out there it's not proportional to the impact of what's being you have to get to a hundred acres before you even get close to one percent of the tree canopy I'm not going to go over this example because I screwed it up and I apologize for that from the Arlington study the structural value is the issue that we take coming out of that study and what what the city staff is proposing to use the structural value there are numerous ways but the structural value is the most important impact getting to that dollar value two point seven five billion dollars in Arlington it's covered on half a page it's a full page half the page is pictures to talk about the structural value there is no information no supporting documentation is how they got to that information there's not an appendix there's nothing it's just we say here's the value it's probably correct but getting that information would be helpful and I 've gone through the Arlington code and I'm playing phone tag with some of the staff but it doesn't appear that Arlington is using that value in their tree preservation tree mitigation requirements and I don't think it should be used in ours we don't think I say I a lot more the DCDA I apologize for that tree values staff was kind they gave me the this tree appraisals from Purdue University excellent reading material it's a widely accepted methodology but it lists three basic methods for to evaluate a plant the cost approach and that's how to replace it right now what's the value of to replace this tree right now and that's what the Arlington study does and that's what we're recommended what's in the code the income approach timber crop like that and then the market approach determine what the market value is of the property with and without the tree and we think it should be more related to the market value of the value of the tree as opposed to the cost approach and the other thing that I find really important in the study was that result result should be reasonable in relationship to the value of the property where it resides and I forget the number now billions of dollars a hundred and ninety six thousand dollars an acre that has no relationship to the value of the property none so it really quickly we're opposed we're not opposed to tree preservation we think it's important we're opposed to these regulations as they are written now the data that we were talking about if I may real quick there you can ask me and I can respond one of the examples is the nine cities that were analyzed they weren't and they to truly get a good analysis you almost have to take the same site and put it through each city's tree mitigation requirements you look at McKinney and this is outlined in the letter the city of McK inney exempts if you it says you have to replace quality tree six inches or greater except where they are they need to be removed to install and maintain any utility line dedicate public right away private streets and alleys fire lanes sidewalks driveways screening walls patios swimming pools parking areas hiking bike trails cut and fill drainage if you have to do any of that the trees that are impacted by that you don't have to mitigate I'm not saying we should do that but when you compare Denton to McKinney you have to know that information and that information wasn't in the analysis and it needs to be a thorough analysis of each city's mini tree mitigation needs to be provided so you have a fair comparison when you look at that the city of Denton's tree preservation shoots to the top compared to McKinney because we don't we didn't exempt any of those areas so yeah the fee of $125 now 175 sounds a little bit better than what McKinney does if I may I'm done so there are some things in tonight's presentation that we can address as we move forward the one thing I think is important is the exemptions that aren't in the code that the common sense exemptions that aren't in the code I'm sorry I've dealt with codes for the my whole profession common sense gets thrown out the window when people start reading codes you have to I think you should spell out what's you can cut down a dead tree you can cut down a disease tree you can cut down a tree of the visibility triangle those need to be in there so people know as a nursery exemptor and that I would think they are but the way it's written they 're not so they sell a tree they have to mitigate that doesn't seem to make sense but and I'm sure that's not the intent but it's not in here and so someone could look at that and take advantage of that or cause problems with that and I there's a there's a lot of little things like that in the in the code that we think still need to be addressed that we had a good working relationship with the city staff I think we learned a lot from each other but we would like to see some of these other items addressed as we move forward I'd be happy to answer any questions have several Commissioner Roselle thank you and thank you for your presentation I think this PowerPoint the letter provided hopefully will be valuable as we go forward and continue to to figure all this out so I appreciate that because I'm kind of a math inclined person I want to clarify with both you and staff a number you threw out a hundred ninety six thousand dollars per acre a couple times but if I owned a acre of land that was fully treed I can cut down 70% of that with no mitigation another 15% with mitigation so if I was to cut down eighty five percent of all the trees on the acre leave only 15% of trees that would cost $29,000 but it's still what is it a hundred ninety six thousand dollars an acre so you're using I'm just taking it up to four dollars and fifty cents a square foot is 196 thousand dollars I just multiplied it by 43 560 just as developers look at what's the cost per acre when they develop and they expand that out when you buy commercial property usually by that by the square foot residential property large developments and you could have enough trees on your property that you get down to where you have to mitigate for an acre of trees lost sure in an exact that example if you're actually tearing down within the limits like an acre of trees that means the property you're developing is over 15 acres for you to get down to an acre of trees being the 15 like 15% that you're allowed to cut down to okay well in the McKin ney example the 15% the 30% represented 5.4 acres so 15% represented 2.6 2.7 acres doing the man of mitigation now where I got a skewed I you know I multiplied that by four I don't have to do that and we planted there were over 300 some trees planted on the property so there's there's some conversions there but it's two and a half acres of mitigation that needed to be done on that property assuming the same site plan like and such sir okay commissioner Dadowitz you're representing the DCDA correct correct and I'm reading from staff notes here following the P&Z presentation on March 23rd 2016 staff held a series of meetings with several stakeholders groups to provide additional opportunities for review of the proposed revisions and to receive additional feedback and you're listed as one of the five groups that did you have such meetings we've had we had three or four and probably four I think and you brought up these types of concern brought up a number of these issues yes okay and I think they were all identified in that the table that you that you received the comparison table that all our issues were okay the majority of the issues were identified do you believe that within the discussions you've had and going forward there is some compromise and some give-and-take in the process that we can come to meeting of the mines honestly I think I think you 're finding out why there were there was a three-year period where the tree preservation regular regulations were tried they tried to amend them and they always got to a point and it was like oh my gosh what do we do it's such a polarizing topic tree preservation no one can argue the value of the tree and the benefits that the tree gives the community again now what do you do with that information from our perspective it's a community issue that needs should be addressed yeah I'm willing to pay more in taxes to preserve trees for the city to go out and buy property to preserve it I don't know if the majority of the city of Denton residents would be willing to do that so you know it's it's a tough one in quite honestly I think a lot of folks look at it and say make the developer do it and we don't think that's fair we will do our fair share but we 're not going to carry the entire burden from from your perspective what is the one or two main issues that you do feel that are just not compromisable or just you got a I don't think we have any issues that are not compromisable okay I think we're trying to identify what our concerns are I think we're we 're open to a lot of that for me the number one issue would be the 450 a square foot and my answer is 40 to 50 cents a square foot I knew you were gonna ask 40 to 50 cents a square foot and that's based on I apologize well that's why I brought it up earlier what how did we get to the 450 and so I knew we 're all thinking the same thing here so I appreciate the comment and and then the answer by the way that that value that 450 has a rightful value of what is the replacement value of the city of Denton tree canopy if you pulled it all out and wanted to reestablish it right now that's how much it would cost we think that's not a the proper way to do that because it is a long-term solution you look at the developments I mean the the pictures of the newly created subdivision all subdivisions look like that when they're when they start out almost unless it's a really exclusive subdivision go back in ten years go back and you can do this very easily on Google Earth just by looking well this subdivision was built about ten years ago what's this look like now oh this one was built about 20 look at the ones that were built 30 and 40 and 50 years ago you can't even see a rooftop there's so many trees planted I understand that because I have a house that's five years old and I'm trimming trees right now yeah because it's you know but blocking and it and it's not written in the code but right now if you wanted to cut down one of your trees you're gonna need a tree survey to get a permit from the city of Denton to cut down your tree if it 's over three inches or six inches in size you're not exempt and you're gonna need a tree survey on every property to determine where the 18 inches ain't 18 inch trees are and where are the three inch trees that I can cut down without a permit you're still gonna need a survey doing it by aerials is very easy to do and I agree with that if it's a if it's a heavily wooded area you get a sparsely tre ed site try to pick out where that canopy is and those little that's going to be the difficulty on the on the sites that have very few trees and the sites that have a lot of trees you outline it you know I did it on the McKinney Street example it wasn't that difficult because I had a decent aerial and we had you know so there's issues and again that's why the existing code got complicated how do you deal with the small site with just a couple trees how do you deal with the infill site how do you deal with this but the new code getting down to the trees that are exempt now that you know that's great that's you know there's a lot there are a number of things in this exists the proposed code that we do like sorry Commissioner Hedgemouth thank you sir okay so we'll get to the number again I just want to make sure I have that right I'm not gonna crunch them I'm not gonna do math on the fly I'm a whole number specialist from one to ten that's it so word of caution first looking at your slide number three where you say cities should purchase and protect and maintain important tree stands I don't ask you to respond to that I just say tread softly because next thing you know you have a piece of property in the city says we want to buy this chunk and that goes right back to what Rod touched on the tree ill-placed is a problem so now you're inviting that I don't want to I'm just saying you're saying hey city come pick out the trees you want and you purchase them from me and that seems I would say I don't want the city to condemn the property and take the trees I want the city to pay fair market value for the property that has the trees and that'll take me to your next point so you say it's just we should spell out what's in the in the ordinance what exempted that and that 's not based on reality I mean it just isn't I work in the legal industry and I can find an attorney to challenge anything and we live in the land of the Constitution and everything gets run up to the Supreme Court and they argue about that then states sue again so that that's not in my humble opinion that's not based on reality to write every contingency and and that's my point exactly in your slide you don't you don't specify purchase under these particular circumstances you just said hey the city should purchase it and there's more to that and I understand that but I think I just want stakeholders in the city to get to a realistic conversation right and so I think to normalize a conversation here's some things we cannot do we cannot write a contract or anything that is going to be ironclad it just doesn't exist it not and not on this earth as we live today there's not one document that can't be challenged that's just it's not reality and so I think if we normalize it to let's get down to what we can actually do I think we'll get down the road but my other point is you touch just now on exclusive neighborhoods your words have exclusive yeah yeah you said you said exclusive and you said and talking about higher-end neighborhoods have more trees if you will so if I miss quoted you know no I'm not probably said that I should have said larger lot neighborhoods whatever it is we can agree that that is a sign of a it adds value to the neighborhood you drive around South Lake you drive around flower mound these gated communities this that and the other are gonna have these tree plots and I say that only to say the city of Denton has a market for and in need of higher-end housing I mean that's been every study on the planet so maybe this is a way to get there maybe it's a way to streamline it to a we're not building we're building certain homes where you can get you the bang for your buck I don't know that's not that's not my area of focus my focus is if we can get past some of these wedge issues and get down to and have a realistic conversation I think we can we can get along way can I address that absolutely it the reason I said that because large lot developments have the ability to be able to work in where the pad is okay and just work in a smaller area I don 't have to work around the entire property when you do a typical subdivision when it is constructed you have geotechnical reports typically that say here's what you have to do underneath the pad of this house to make it be acceptable to put a foundation on it typically it means dig out some dirt put it back in at certain dampness levels compact it put another lip and a certain so you have to do that and when you're doing a large lot an acre development you do you do it pad per pad when you do a typical subdivision the economy of scales you do all the pads on one side of the street at the same time mm- hmm so the way construction happens in the real world which I think everybody needs to also understand preserving that individual tree between the lots you can't do it the geotechnical report will probably say keep trees five to ten feet away from the foundation of the house or else we won't warranty the foundation okay so the trees have to go in that area and now you have drainage responsibilities that the city of Denton put on you know in subdivision you can't let your water from one lot go across another one so every lot has to drain towards the street typically you have to grade that lot to do that so there's a lot of things and I agree with you but there's a lot of things in the construction end of this too that need to be understood to understand it again where we're coming from sure and if I may only thing I want to end with is I think we can all agree that the city of Denton has done a less than great job with the tree canopy right currently or tree I will not agree to that okay great I say we've done a less than great job and taking care of trees and I can I ask you based on what sure based on the you see a rush of developers coming in under the current to get under the radar under the currents standard to tear down trees as quickly as they can we just had an issue of that a couple of weeks ago where we couldn't do anything about it and they just scout the place and so yes I think that that's motor and I'm just saying if I if I proffer a deal and someone does not hesitate like if you if you show up and like I got a car for you and you just sign on the dotted line and drive off that's a problem there needs to be some negotiations I mean it's just just reading the tea leaves right I'm not I'm not crunching numbers I'm just reading the tea leaves what's the hurry what is the hurry to get it done but for some nefarious means some motivation some whatever it is I'm not saying it's good bad and different it's saving money I'm all for saving money you know so the place where the economy is right now sure to sell houses the interest rates are low so you want to get your development on the ground as soon as possible okay so in my humble opinion we've not done well okay okay and so then that is the very basis if I start with that emphasis that hey I don't think the city of didn 't has done well preserving trees then your numbers quoting the status quo were automatically at odds I mean if you don't think that the current standard if you think the current standard for trees is okay and that's what you base your your number that's not that that says it says if all you do is maintain the status the existing tree all you're doing is maintaining the status quo in order to increase tree canopy you need to plant trees that's what that says right and so I disagree and so based on that I disagree one two three four five six eight or nine whatever slide that is you know I disagree and so just for what it's worth just so it's out there I don't think we should we should the the goal is to get better every day and not maintain nothing stays the same either gets better or worse again in my humble opinion we can disagree but I'm done thank you okay a couple more questions Commissioner Tyler thank you Mr. Reichardt I have a just a couple of questions I think I actually agree with you on the single-family and small lot exemption I think that's that is going to be a challenge I think it's going to be addressed let me find my question written down somewhere oh yeah I noticed in the first page of the letter you mentioned landscape regulations as a better solution I think that's a there there are two aspects I think of tree ordinance one is preservation you know buying sections of forests to preserve and then there is the like street tree built atmosphere so on landscape regulations you have a lot of experience in this area what kind of what could we do in single-family areas to encourage the what we're looking for the desirable street tree we are there already is a street tree requirement and an aside note the proposed code exempts the city of Denton from having to have to plant street trees it's in this code right now I don't know if you knew that there is a section that exempts the city of Denton from planting street trees so there is already a on my the way I look at residential developments I look from the front of the from the front of the house to the other side of the street that's the public realm okay what happens in that area is what I think the city should be concerned with you know the safety in the backyard and shed locations that that's different but as far as landscape and an image that's where that's where you get your bang for your buck there already is a street tree planting requirement and again I haven't done work in the city in a number of years but there's a street tree planting requirement I think it's having you know most developers I can't say all but most developers will plant at least one if not two trees per lot I think the city needs to look at that a little closer and you really need to dive into it a little bit because there's requirements in the code that a tree has to be X number of feet away from a sanitary sewer line a water line sidewalk and mailbox driveway so when you get down to it there's very limited space on some lots where you can actually put a tree but you maybe make a regulation that there has to be at least one at least or maybe depend on a lot with number of trees per front yard and I agree that and I think the street trees if I'm not mistaken I'm not sure if they can be planted in the right away or not there was when I was at the city we had a huge roundtable discussion if you will with the streets and utilities and that little five foot landscape strip I think was utilities didn't want the trees to go in there so now you're pushing them out in the back into the front yards and you're not going to get that streetscape I'm all for planting the trees in the tree island I think you get the better the better appearance the better look I personally I think each street each street should be the same species that's where you get the real nice look and then the next street can be a different species it unifies the street you can use a root barrier under the sidewalks and adjacent to the utilities to keep the roots out of the trees or out of the utilities so there 's there's a number of things where the location of where that street tree is required is probably the first thing to look at in the code thank you sure Commissioner Roselle I appreciate the second go at this I hope I keep this short your last slide with the numbers was actually quite helpful for me to understand I understand that you multiplied by four so the numbers aren't exactly accurate here's my last slide yeah this one no no it actually has the chart oh she did it's where he came up with a hundred ninety six thousand dollars or whatever this one no it's actually just like an Excel spreadsheet oh the one per tree here that one no it's I don't think it matters it's the page that says there's a price the Cypress campus I'm a Kenny project that's the one that that's the one you really shouldn't look at yeah well I corrected the numbers and I got to where he got the ninety one ninety six per acre number hopefully on the same page now probably the one night so that one ninety six is based on the four dollars and fifty cents yeah which is how you suggested forty cents or forty to fifty cents yeah but and again you can't use those numbers because how I they are they are off okay because you get credit for planting trees or over 300 trees planted on this site sure the numbers have to be reworked again up to the I think I had it and comparing the old code with the new code is because the old code was inches caliper inches or new code isn't you know but the the 15% requirement is 2.7 acres of the canopy right on the property right 117 square feet I gotcha okay I guess just to try to get to my question your proposal is roughly a tenth of what's been mentioned and of course as developer I'd rather pay 19,000 per acre than 196,000 per acre I get that but if the mitigation is to kind of incentivize the preservation of trees from a developer standpoint I'm making assumptions I'm not a developer if there's an acre of trees and it's gonna cost me 17,000 to tear down might be a no-brainer at 196,000 dollars now I'm thinking about it which seems to be the point of the high cost for mitigation so my question I guess to you is at that price at 196,000 dollars an acre how does that impact your developing does that to Gerard's point does that make you rethink maybe putting more trees in a lot or that makes me walk away from the property that so that amount that property is no longer of any value to any developer the property owner is gonna be stuck with it until he loses it with taxes no one's gonna buy it because everybody does due diligence sure before they purchase the property and they look at all the ordinances and the impact the ordinance will have and that price whatever the number is is gonna get spread out over the per acre cost for the property and once that gets to a certain point it's you can't make a profit so you can't develop it I totally get that and I think that's maybe to where I'm my point is is if we're starting at a negotiation at at 40 cents an acre that is a no-brainer for you but at 196,000 dollars maybe that's a deal breaker so maybe 450 is way too high because it's not actually encouraging development in tree preservations it's killing it but at 40 cents we're not even getting close to trying to to incentivize tree mitigation so your feedback is helpful to maybe understand that there's a number in between that that maybe the city doesn't think is great but as a developer it's also like well man that's gonna make me think do I want to pay this or actually I'm sure there's a number out there that the 40 to 50 cents is basically the cost of a three inch tree three inches times 175 divided by 1256 I mean I just it came off the top of my head so that's the mitigation now you want to say you know it maybe it needs to be a buck maybe it needs 75 cents and and really what needs to be done is look at a get to the point okay here's how much how much canopy I need to preserve and start plugging numbers in and see what makes sense it can't be more than the value of the land and that's the 450 a square foot that's more than the value of the land by adding an additional 50 cents a square foot you're increasing the let me do the math real quick here sorry and I guess why you're doing the math just to so you know my perspective it doesn't sound that adds twenty one thousand seven hundred dollars an acre to the development that's substantial I don't I don't disagree I agree but I guess I'm having a tough time understanding that it's for the 450 is more than the price of the land because in fact that 450 is over I mean 18 acres of trees potentially not necessarily no sure what the 450 is per square foot and understood but you're taking out in this project how many how many acres of trees did you take out no under the new code there is 18 acres of canopy right okay we took out let's we preserved two points two point eight acres so you took out over 15 acres of trees so 15 acres is the one point six million dollars over no 16 acres no that's well we're looking at it in here we probably need more discussion though we should be doing right here but that 16 acres we took out 15 acres whatever the number is is allowed per code sure now change that 50% and that now that now we're talking different numbers you're almost wanting to penalize the developer for taking out what he was allowed to take out I'm not trying to do that and maybe we're getting into weeds a little bit it's I'm just having a tough time with the the assumption that it's actually more than the value of the land but it might not be worth this conversation so okay and over the real quick numbers I and I just took it to two acres of trees instead of the 2.6 it added over the cost of the entire projects that I think it would add 1800 to $2,000 at the 50 cents a square foot and that's still you know over the per acre cost of the development that's pretty substantial it really is round two Commissioner Dudowitz this discussion has been very helpful but you've said something that sparked a question you said there is a point in place where developer walk away rendering that property useless this is a question for legal does any of this discussion or any of these proposed ordinances get into a point of regulatory taking well that 's what they're hinting at what they've said in their letters that there's no nexus I'm sorry what they've said in their letter is that there is no nexus between what we're requiring of them and the impact that they have on the property and so there's no proportionality that's their argument we would have to discuss that as to whether or not it meets that threshold legally yeah I just want to make sure that it's gonna come out somewhere along the way as being an issue I want to make sure we discuss it openly so that we're very clear thank you and we believe there is a point where it is a taken there is a point where it isn't that it's a yeah you know part of doing development we don't think we 're at that point well they know other questions but mine I'm like it's kind of a final comment that's one of the reasons because of all the discussion that we have about individual projects and how it impacts individual sites individual property owners and why I threw out the idea to consider if this becomes more of a public issue and we are not are no longer looking at individual sites that you can't develop this one or you can develop that one it becomes there's a fee tree fee whatever you want to call it per lot whatever it is it goes into the tree fun the city goes and buys these areas public use them and we get away from all this trying to preserve trees and this particular property owner has a heavily tree property and therefore the value of it is diminished this particular one is the other and there's a whole different concept to even look at so that's interesting we've had a lot of questions on from your PowerPoint and I want to ask hey we're just step up don't have any other questions around the board and just give some feedback to the Commission we've had a PowerPoint a lot of discussion and I want to just get some feedback from you about some of your thoughts about the PowerPoint some of the questions and anything that you may want to address or correct or have a different point of view on to keep keep us moving in the right direction okay just a couple points of clarification there were some I didn't write down but did write down a few the statement about the city city exemption cities being completely exempt including from the street tree requirement the exemptions in the preservation part of this ordinance pertain to the preservation of trees the mitigation of trees and the protection of trees during construction there is no exemption from the city from planting trees on newly constructed streets and the city of Denton the other point of clarification there was a statement made about having you know our neighborhoods with you know the same species of tree on this block the same species on that block well in the industry my industry in urban forestry we learned in the 50s and 60s the danger of model cultures which is basically having the same type of tree in one block we learned that with the American elm tree and a meant on Dutch Elm disease where our neighborhoods were devastated and completely stripped of trees we're seeing the same thing in the other side and that's the reason why the city of Milwaukee is actually treating trees because they have some blocks that you know ash trees were our own trees were cut down and they went back and planted in the ash trees well now there's a bug that's attracting to the to the ash so you know culturally speaking you always want to have a good species diversity wherever you're planting trees that the last point and this is more just just my you know personal you know thoughts on the cost that preservation would add per house site I think you know let us say it was around 2000 a little over 2000 if I'm looking for a house I'm in the market for a house that 's 200 and 250 300 thousand dollars two thousand dollars added to the cost of that house is not going to be a deal break for someone in that market that's just my opinion that's not going to make someone walk away from from purchasing that home the other thing is and this is an observation I've seen with with preservation of trees and development here in Denton everything within the neighborhoods seem to be very compartmentalized we have this section for our houses we have this section generally for a tree preservation we have this section for you know detention of water well I think there's a better approach to to look at development that we should consider is you know a more holistic approach as far as you know using the ice-worn standards for integrating detention in multiple spots within the development even you know there was a mention of Villas de Carmel that had the five acre tree park there's nothing in the development requirements that state that tree preservation has to be in one area there's nothing that says that you can't have that in our six development and have you know for linear parks between the backs of houses where you're stretching out that five acres over blocks within your development and getting those out those trees in the backyards of the residents where they can actually enjoy those trees so there's more than one way to look at development it just seems like here there seems to be compartmentalization of the requirements and the functions and it really should be more integrated okay I got a question another question for Commissioner Taylor thank you chair mr. Morgan there was I believe it was the first presentation of the first speaker brought up some questions about we're not following the comp plan because we don't have a study of the economic value of trees are we planning a study on the tree canopy and the economic value to the city that we're actually in the process of performing an eye tree eco-assessment which is the equivalent of an economic study of the value of trees the benefits that they provide and also an urban tree count analysis that actually goes into further depth in the benefits that we're deriving from our trees here in the state of Denton we expect that study to be completed if I'm not mistaken it's either October November this year okay and would use in the more detailed study would it be able would would we be able to identify most densely covered large parcels in that we could look at like the the lots that have the highest percentage of canopy or things like that absolutely okay thank you any other questions thank you anyone thank the public again this is a public hearing we 're going to continue with our cards anyone else that would like to speak if you haven't already filled out a card please do please do so the next speaker I have is David Lindke to be followed by Mindy White David Lindke with the Dallas Builders Association 5816 West Plano Parkway you've kind of heard pretty much from the development community it covers all areas you've gotten a letter from us a lot of our members I 'll just kind of try and keep it brief here are a lot of them are custom builders so with the rule of exemption when you get to the single-family or two- family lights it can greatly change the scenario if you've got a small home and they're wanting to add to it you've got certain trees in the area we get beyond into that 30% calculation and then we start looking at hey if something at a thousand foot canopy we start paying a pretty significant price to a point that was made earlier that hey two thousand dollars may not affect a person buying a home unfortunately that may not necessarily be the case due to mortgage lending rules and things like that and the tighter restrictions that have come over the years that are not due to any of us in this room wasn't really our call I think if we'd have been in the room we'd have come up with something different but National Association of Home Builders has done a study I know Texas A&M Research Center has looked at a check with Jim G aines once before on those numbers and basically what it came out to what we saw was kind of startling was that for every thousand dollars you add to the price of that medium price home you can price them between 19,000 to 20, 000 Texas families out of it so you'd have to break it down what the allotment is here but you could also get at this 20,000 Texas families that wouldn't come to Denton our basis when we look at this is always the quality of the home be able to build well property rights and then we always look at housing afford ability we always push that housing affordability exist at multiple levels because the responsible businessman most likely is going to finance that home in certain ways the appraisal guys and the banks are always going to underwrite a certain amount and they don't look at certain things they look at other things this is where we talked about the study where hey this would be more people buying into trees or certain areas which you have to consider the regional value of this of well how that really pans out an example would be there are areas in Frisco that don't have a lot of trees and those lots carry a lot higher value than they do here it is often more to the demand of it because the region we're at we have jobs location near jobs school districts what stores are near that these is greater parameter to look at it it's the same thing with the health issue I was here the well it really I mean I like trees like this anybody else but then I also have to be careful on certain days if I was here on a certain Thursday I'd have an Epi pen in my pocket in case I have shock related to two shots I take once a month due to trees to tree pollen so there's both sides this argument that always have to be considered so when you see a study you need to be careful realize where it came from who's pushing it and it'd be the same for our side just to be fair so these are things we want to consider one of the things we've talked about tonight is the infrastructure that's going to be required and the reality is you're not going to let one of my guys plan a subdivision without streets train and cheese mince you have required utilities and at that point the utility companies are going to have their say and I think the city would agree they have a tremendous amount of say on how these things go there are certain ways these things are laid out to be affordable to keep housing affordability you don't zigzag gas pipelines there are all sorts of things that play in so one of the things we'd send a letter I think that might help in a lot of this and refer to his push for the tree camping issue is an exemption for the buildable area and maybe if we get together in work groups we'd love to participate in those this time now that we know about them there are different things to look at for that that you could consider where those exemptions come in I think the single-family two-family exemption lot would possibly cover the issue of the mitigation fee being excessive on the smaller lots because that's always our concern you know we want to mitigate this for it gets anything worse and be a partner with the city you know as it's written I don't think we could support the ordinance but if there were changes we could we don't like to just go out right and oppose the ordinance we want to be a community partner I will say one thing though and it's to your question Commissioner Roselle earlier that well you know we're allowing you to take down 85% of the property well here's the thing that can't get lost in this conversation you're allowing the property owner to deal with his property and that is something that can't get lost in this the idea that okay you only have to mitigate this percentage you get into here so you 're not paying for all these other trees that remaining percentage of those trees that you have to mitigate still adds on top of the development cost and that can impact and that that margin in tight areas can impact the deal it is important to realize that trees are part of the property owners property and his protections come under the Texas and US Constitution and that's just one thing we want to stress there I think everybody's trying to be mindful of that but I don't want that to get lost in the conversation have some questions for you yes Commissioner Hesbeth thank you chair so what is your based on a canopy what what is your price per square foot that you again I realize you've asked that question sure and and I applaud you for doing that but I also want to point out I spent a lot of my time around attorneys commissioner and so I also know not to get pulled into a question that's that's it could be somewhat low to whether intended or not and the reason I say that is because there are so many variables that are involved our developments are different than commercial developments and I'm not saying that it's easier for us but there are times where it's harder for them it all depends on the lot your own but I will point out that you saw in our letter that our guys generally when they're planning a replacement tree and a lot of them go for three inches because a lot of times they stay better if they don't have to come back for the three month later issue and this is not including the tree berry and other items do they get around the sidewalk they're looking at sometimes you know looking on the hot rise at a five hundred and fifty dollars per tree so and this is a two part answer so based on the current draft you have four trees that you could replace there you're looking at twenty two hundred dollars but you're looking at the value of say one thousand two hundred fifty six square feet on your you know a large tree was a lot a lot of rule Arborist told me hey look at 1256 well now we're getting five thousand six hundred fifty two dollars that far exceeds the price of the planning of the four trees and I realize there's this idea to be punitive to encourage them to plant more but again I get into the issue of property rights and the fact that by assessing this field what you may consider infrastructure we get into the area where somebody could make the claim that you're now assessing an impact fee which generally has to be relative and commensurate to the service provided so you're claiming a tree for the community yet there's no where reverse it for the person so again we would like to have to calculate that I could I could see where in our position you'll see in the letter is that you should be getting credit for the projected maturity of the tree that you're planning and with the one to four ratio I'm sorry but it does not give you the projected maturity that tree is going to grow and if it's going to grow you should be getting credit for it if you're gonna base it he mentioned I would say 50 cents a square foot comes out to about $500 based on a thousand foot canopy is what I did and I'm like you I'm a whole numbers guy I did on my phone to be honest but and so I have a follow-up question because you raise a great point do you think that would be palatable for builders to then if you have this scale based on the tree so price of trees goes up let's say you have to buy two three trees and so you pick it you can find the the Sam's of trees and get a discounted tree you know whatever it is but you have to replace it but that then allows the ordnance to be a living document because the cost of trees goes up and so next year that same $550 tree may be 700 well I do want to be careful to point out here I get back to the issue of property rights yeah it should be based on a marketable value but it also should be based on the marketable value of the land it would be you do leave even with that the the probability where you 're adding more than an acceptable percentage of the value of land in the cost and it gets back to questions that are raised that we always get nervous about you know and we want to make sure that we never get in the area or advise the city in the area where it could lead to something that's a regulatory taking that is something we get real nervous about I get pulled I get arm pulled both ways and I don't necessarily enjoy that and it doesn't help me to be a community partner with the city so our it would be something that again we'd have to look at the very different types of land again we have guys who are production or volume builders how we want to call them here your larger builders and you know they work with engineering issues and then we have guys who are custom builders and it may not just be an infield lot it may be where you have a new development and they bought a couple of those lots and if the tree wasn't mitigated at that point or it was left there on the lot and they have to come in and they have to mitigate it that cost comes to them and when it's an individual home they you know or an individual lot it could have a significant impact these are just you know I realize I'm throwing a lot at you but these are all the questions that I get on the phone over and over so right and I'll just conclude with I would encourage those conversations and whatever you can provide because ultimately right I mean at some point the can won't get kicked and we're gonna vote right and so there's a lot of variables there's a lot of ifs this but that but ultimately there's gonna come a vote and and I'd love to take all things into consideration but it can't be this fluid thing I mean ultimately no I think word to the wise to all builders I need for my linear brain to process a number and how we got there and if there's a more time to get that done but two months down the road a month down the road of where still if this than that it you know a decision has to be made and into your to your point there you had mentioned earlier that some of these things in exemption cannot be specific but you mentioned here an area where it needs to be for that point first that is something I would definitely want to take back to my members because I have to talk to builders I have to talk to people who advise them in various areas to make sure that if we make it a consultation of the city or advice to the city I don't have the Commission coming back to me in five years going why are we getting hit with this and you know I don't have the public pitchforks out on me and sure my skin hung on the tree to be fair but the the reality is there's also the backside what you talked about on the the specifics of the ordinance on the exempt ions and I'll get into this I understand your point that it could be argued at court and you and I are in an environment where we get to see those things play out in our in our in our jobs sure but I think for what they were getting at and we appreciate the city looking to streamline the ordinance I understand their purpose for it because they get hit with a ton of questions and different things from my guys from commercial guys but for a builder and you mentioned heard this mentioned earlier these developments are often planned years in advance so if they have the rules laid out clearly even though if it's streamlined as far as what has to be done but in certain areas or what kind of exemptions that those questions may come up sometimes it's good to have that specific detail and then we avoid all the headaches and things move forward people don't get their feelings hurt when something come through a plat review and things like that sure just one more item that kind of plays into this with specifics and this is a completely outside item but I do want you to keep in mind because for our guys who may be by an individual a lot or a few lots in a new development it will come into play there was a regulation that was passed by I guess it would be the Commission that oversees the US Postal Service there was a House Committee that involved it and the postal inspectors came out with a process and how they doled up the notification may not have been exactly adequate and so for new residential developments single- family they are calling that those new developments will require cluster mailbox units what you see in an apartment there's an argument they have for financing I don't want to get into that because they still have to drive around you still have to have certain distances there's always our worry about risk and safety this maintenance of it was lost keys etc we get into that but the reason I bring that up here is there does exist the situation we've seen this on other places in Metroplex where development had pulled their development guides with the city had gone through this process and built their $600 mailbox es each one and they were saying one of the final phases of a development and the other phases were recently finished and the Postal Service came to or a city getting notification from Postal Service came to them and informed them that they would not be getting mail delivered to that individual box so they are left in the position where they have to go back and go whose front yard or what what do we pull to place that mailbox and I mentioned that because we run into the issue of street trees and then and I just thought about this up there does this run an issue how we place trees on future things and I will be researching that if there's something I'll bring that to meetings that 's something just ancillary that I think should be kept in mind it's just one of these other variables that we always end up dealing with and it's just the little things that play into it sure no thank you okay see no further questions thank you thanks next speaker is Mindy White to be followed by Michael Hinn an thank you thank you commissioners you've heard from developers previously I'm going to bring you the other side of the perspective from a citizen and a resident longtime resident of Denton direct dressing my address yes clearly haven't done this before 2614 Rockwood Lane thank you just to give you a little bit of background for those of you that don't know me I know a couple of you I've been in Denton since 96 I went to UNT I have multiple degrees from UNT biology graduate work in biology and a master's in public administration so that kind of informs what I'm speaking to you about from my own personal perspective in addition to just being a resident of Denton I'm also another speaker mentioned that they were a former city employee I as well I'm a former city employee I've worked in environmental services here as well as a former employee of keep done beautiful so I bring my prior professional experience here tonight as well and I want to start by reading a letter that I sent a couple of months ago to my council representative that I think is pertinent to some of the things that we're talking about tonight and then I'd like to address a few points that were brought up by some of the speakers that preceded me so just an excerpt from this letter that actually talks about our current iteration of the tree code and some ideas that I had for it at that time which I was excited to see Commissioner strange that a lot of the things that you mentioned kind of dovetail nicely with this and so to read from the letter our current tree code includes options for developers to pay into a tree mitigation fund for trees that they removed during the building process with a balance of over two million dollars it is my hope that we can use some of the mitigation funds for something that will make a real and meaningful difference in preserving some of our contiguous old growth tree stands many of these are made up of post oaks a species that is notoriously difficult if not impossible to replant and replace these native trees are invaluable in the cross timbers forest district and unfortunately have experienced a decline in recent years due in part to study development in the area personally it has saddened me to see the stand behind Walmart at Brinker demolished for an assisted living facility as well as similar large stands at the preserve on Teasley and on Crawford near Argyle these trees simply cannot be replaced by families and households participating in tree plantings we cannot do anything about the trees that we've lost we have to see the value in the large stands of quality trees that are left and moved to protect them and so that's something that I would really urge you to consider is looking at not just the mitigation and the replanting side of things but also on how can we preserve our heritage trees and our continued contiguous sections of trees that just aren't easily replaced there's a lot of trees here that are historical there's ecosystems that cannot be replaced just by going and even planting native trees so that's something that I would definitely encourage the Commission to consider as you're going forward with developing the new ordinance and approving the eventual ordinance that will be passed I would definitely like to see the city move forward with purchasing parcels that have these historical areas or protected species like or protected isn 't the right word the post oaks the blackjack oaks those type of trees they 're already in place to protect those to buy those parcels so that we don't have to look at how can we replace these or can they be replaced at all and I guess that's a that's a side of the tree code that hasn't really been investigated fully we've done a lot of really great things in terms of tree giveaways tree education but we haven't done much in terms of trying to preserve what's already there and I would really love to see maybe exploring more of the feasibility of some of those aspects so to get to some of the points that I wanted to address from prior speakers one of the gentleman mentioned that there's a lack of common sense a lot of times when it comes to ordinances and there was also a mention of about infill development by a couple of speakers as well and how important that is and I would like to comment that there's a whole option in there about variances and that's where we can bring our variances in on these inf ill developments if there is a single tree in the center another I have two quickies and then I'll be finished tree viability and survivorship rights of the new trees that are planted are also something that hasn't been mentioned that I think should be a serious concern if you are planning for trees to replace one how many of those four trees are going to make it to maturity is that something that's been looked at or considered at all and the question that I had and I I think that it kind of boils down to what this is all about whenever you're you're considering this is we're looking at the public good versus individual property rights really we're looking at the need for a tree canopy and the benefits that trees bring us and and the need that we as a city have to define what kind of city we want to be moving forward during this time of growth and I think that while there are lots of considerations that we need to give to the importance of property rights we also need to consider that public good for instance we can't just go and flush our toilet and have that go out in the law and there's a repercussion there so even though that's our property we can't just always do what we want without considering the overall good for the community so I yield to any questions that you may have most any questions but do you have a comment on one of your points in the ordinance now if you plant a tree you have to watch over it and maintain it for three years and if it dies during that period of time it has to be replaced so there is a mechanism currently in that ordinance to your point that you know what there is some survivability in there so I just wanted if you hadn't got to that level of detail that is in our ordinance so keep an eye on us and come back when we bring this forward and I think we're gonna have some work sessions as well and invited to come and participate those as well thank you very much next speaker is Michael Hinnan to be followed by Katherine Lundgarten thank you Chairman Strange I'm Michael Hinnan I live at 724 Thomas Street here in Denton I feel a little bit inadequate after hearing all this detailed and very numer ically detailed discussion going on about you know per inch and per square foot and this that and the other thing I'm speaking simply from the perspective of a citizen who lives here in Denton and is concerned about the loss of green space that I see occurring Mr. Morgan showed you that slide early in his presentation that showed an area of the city that had been a beautiful area and it's been scalped and it looks terrible and we know that even the houses that are put in there and have trees planted around them it's never going to be what it looked like before that piece of property was was developed and so it's very important for us to urge developers to develop their their properties to the extent that it preserves the maximum amount we can of this beautiful cross timbers area that we live in and and I'm afraid that our current ordinance and even the one that's proposed so far does not go far enough in trying to preserve the the nature of the and the natural landscape of the area that that we live in I was concerned about the same issue that Commissioner Beck brought up about the city's exemption from certain parts of the proposed ordinance and I would urge the the Commission here to pay close attention as to whether or not that is a proper exemption I've seen projects carried out by city departments that have left parts of our city looking a whole lot worse than when this when they started and I do not want any any part of our city to go forward continuing to make our city look worse than it does does now so I would urge you not to give any kind of blanket exemption I was also kind of concerned with some of the exemptions from the kinds of trees that were on the list to be cut and I understand that this is some type of a of a draft proposal and perhaps it's not the same as what I looked at online when I was looking at the exhibits to the ordinance but some of the exempt trees that apparently are not covered are our native trees to this area and can be quite beautiful trees that I don't think ought to be able to be exempted without some kind of a review by a qualified arborist I didn't have any problem with with the mesquite and I didn't have any problem with with with the locust that he mentioned the tech there is a Texas Mountain ash and then I would I would yield to some arbor ist on this issue but I don't know if the Texas Mountain ash has the same vulnerability to the emerald ash borer also though I would think that that the hackberry the sugar berry the cottonwood and the the Texas cedars and even the Baudart not to be automatically on on lists of exempted trees many of those trees can be quite beautiful and offer a lot of habitat for trees and and food for excuse me for birds and food for birds and add a lot to our environment and it gets us away from just having a monoculture of certain kinds of trees that's my concerns thank you thank you I see no questions thank you sir Catherine to be followed by Michelle Barry I'm Catherine lost starting 11809 Sutherland my background just so to expose my biases I'm a life member of the Native Plant Society of Texas and I'm a charter member of the chapter that's here in Denton the Trinity Forks chapter and so I want to add my support for some of the recent comments about the value of preserving the existing trees because of the biological diversity that they provide all trees are not created equal trees that are nursery grown to be planted in residential and commercial developments have to be mass produced so they have to be there then those decisions are driven by economic factors so you tend to get a very narrow scope of tree species that are available for developers or homeowners individuals to purchase because the they're going to grow the ones that grow the fastest that require the least amount of water and fertilizer and attention and market demands are going to say yes those are the ones we're going to buy so there's just no comparison between planting a hundred trees and preserving a hundred trees that are already out there similarly there are quite a few species of trees that we don't know how to grow them commercially or they can't be post oak is an outstanding example and one of the stated purposes of the new ordinance is to preserve and promote our cross timbers ecosystem the heritage local to this part of Texas the post oak is like the signature tree of that ecosystem just to just to mention one example the more diverse plants species that you have relates to the diversity of insects the diversity of every other animal living species that that is part of that ecosystem most birds can only eat certain insects if others are available in abundance and the ones they want are not they can't survive they can't switch like we can switch our diet at will so if we and insects also need certain plants to survive if that plant is not there that insect is not there if that insect is not there that bird is not there so preserving a diversity of tree species throughout our city and especially that those species that are characteristic of our ecosystem it makes us different from all other parts of the state a Texas mountain ash for example I'm not familiar with that species but if it's a mountain ash it's not native to the cross timbers prairie system and it may grow here and as the you know climate conditions change that may be a tree that we import because it will survive here but preserving what's already here is so important and that's what I like about the ordinance thank you for your comments and this is a public hearing and I'm down to my last card so if there's anyone else that would like to speak you can come forward after miss Barry and give your comments and then please fill out a card good evening Michelle Barry 1716 West Eagle that in Texas and I just like to start by saying I think Haywood is a great resource that the city of Denton has he's absolutely fabulous I do call him him for professional advice from time to time as well as personal advice from my own trees so I just think he's great and I appreciate the work that he's done I wanted to echo the comments about the value of the existing cross timbers forest especially the blackjack oak and the post oak those are native trees you cannot replant them you cannot buy them at nurseries they have a special value to the citizens here in Denton I know that because they have a special value to me and I know that because when I worked at the city of Denton I heard that from the citizens I worked on several of those projects where trees were removed including the example that Haywood showed you so I know firsthand from dealing with the citizens adjacent to that how much these trees are valued by the citizens I like that we have a minimum preservation for these trees and I like that we put extra emphasis on the native species as heritage trees I think the 30% goal is great that's really what we want to be at is 30% or higher for a whole city wide and so I think this code that requires that but then allows for an additional removal of 15% of those if you mitigate honestly I think most mitigation will happen by planting on site rather than paying into the fee I know we talked a lot about that but the option they have is to plant and that counts as their landscape plantings so I think in most circumstances that's probably what's going to happen we'd have to go through some scenarios to kind of check on all of that so I haven't also been reading a lot of tree codes recently and I just I really like the one that's been drafted here for Denton I think it is unique to us I think it does represent our city as a community let's see I think that this code will work on a variety of different kinds of lots it'll even work in your smaller subdivisions developers will have to change their practices a little bit to be inclusive of trees when they're laying out the subdiv isions and laying out open spaces especially where they know they're going to have smaller lot homes because you can't preserve as many trees on those individual lots but I've seen great examples throughout the Metroplex where people preserve trees and medians and entry spaces and open space areas which then benefit the entire subdivision and those open space areas are especially valuable where you have smaller lot homes as people don't have the backyards and they increase the value of those homes in those neighborhoods because more of them are within that 800 to 1200 foot range of those areas so I think that's just great as well and I think it works pretty much everywhere if it doesn't work there is a variance built into the code to allow for staff and possible appeal to the zoning board of adjustment so there is a safety valve if it 's necessary I think that's the summary of all of my comments but I think it's a great code I hope you adopt it as it's presented tonight thanks thank you again this is a public hearing is there anyone else that would like to come down and speak at this time okay please come forward give your name and address and when you're done if you don't fill out a card for us we'd appreciate it earlier that I didn't want to speak but I decided that I do want to okay so Lindy Dodd I live at 612 Pearl Street okay I've been a longtime resident of Denton 20 plus years I have a couple of degrees from the University of North Texas environmental science I have a master's in environmental science and my current occupation is a research biologist and I just wanted to speak in support of several of the people who have just spoken about the importance of the post oak and blackjack oak ecosystem it is actually quite unique for the north central Texas and I also wanted to speak to the fact that our home that we live out at 612 Pearl Street has quite a number of large diameter post oak trees and that the the new tree code I don't have any issue with if say one of our trees dies and I have to replace it obviously I don't have any issues with having to do that and I also want to say that when we purchased our home we actually paid above the appraised value of our home by about $10,000 because it was a tree lot and we we've really valued the large post oaks that were on that property and since that time our property we get quite a few letters and folks that that want to purchase the property from us now and every time we hear we love the trees we love your trees we love your post oaks and I just wanted to convey as a resident of the city of Denton how important are or how I feel as far as the post oak blackjack oak Eastern Crosstoran Timbers ecosystem is to the city of Denton and that preserving these these older stands of canopy are very important and they're very difficult to replace once they've been removed I believe that someone spoke as to how difficult it is to get some of these trees commercially for a variety of reasons that have already been explained but they are very difficult to purchase commercially and they are very difficult to get established so preserving these in this ecosystem it seems to me in my mind and in my opinion much more important than trying to mitigate for it after the fact by planting a bunch of live oaks with their used to be post oaks it's pretty much all I had I wasn't really prepared and I don't do well speaking in front of people so thank you very much thank you again this public hearing is there anyone else who would like to speak to us this evening since we have a motion that this item is going to be continued we're going to leave our public hearing open and we're going to move on to the final item that we have on our agenda tonight I'm sorry I didn't see you on the board and there's some couple more on here now sorry Commissioner Taylor thank you chair I just wanted to so when we come back to our work session I wanted to give the feedback from my feedback on this so far you know we have two primary purposes of our tree ordinance one is preservation preservation of you know very important in this area is cross timbers and just general treat areas and then we also have creating a built space that is treed and that we want and I think this this ordinance does a really good job on the built spaces it doesn't have as much on just general preservation our former ordinance or current ordinance that we're looking at revising had tree trusts and all of these different mechanisms that in 14 years have never been used a single time so if there was a way to make a tree trust work I love the idea of tree trusts but if in the last 40,000 people that have moved here in the last 25,000 units of housing that have been built and over the over a decade we've never once been able to make it work I don't know what it would take to to make that work the economic concerns from development I think I think they realize I think it's so this is a complex ordinance and there's a lot of information here but I think in the in going through this process they've realized that being able to double count preservation with landscape and street trees and parking trees is a massive benefit because normally it's you have to preserve 20% and then you have to come up with another 300 trees for the parking lots or another you know 80 trees for the landscape type D landscape buffer along the back of the property or things like that well now those 300 parking lot trees in that apartment complex in the example would be 300,000 square feet of canopy it would easily hit that 117,000 square feet of canopy requirement and I think even in the worst-case scenario of a 100% tree lot you know if you have 50 acres 100% trees zero ESA zero floodplain it's all buildable you could still probably hit your your your president or your mitigation requirements just in the landscaping and street trees without even you know without even making concerted effort to build tree parks or dedicate to preservation but if you had to put it in preservation you're still looking at a 15% preservation so 23 acres you end up with about three acres at the back that you don 't build on so to say that this makes a project completely economically untenable it lowers the value of that land by approximately 15% but it doesn't make building in Denton untenable in fact I think it makes it a lot more a lot easier than it is today because I think in today you'd end up with you know this you have to preserve about three acres and then you have to go plant all of these additional landscaping street trees the single-family exemption or no finger single-family exemption no small lot exemption I think that 's where you could really get in trouble is you could have a fifth acre lot that becomes unbuildable because it's got a handful of large trees and they're in the wrong place and there's absolutely nothing you can do and you can 't mitigate below 15% if you have to cut down all three large trees on that lot over on Frye Street you're at 0% and so that becomes completely unusable and I guess that would be a case for the ZBA but I don't think it would be worth going to the ZBA for a fifth acre lot you know it had to be a really special case so I'd like to look at those the fringe cases of small lots and potentially of an existing single-family home where you might have a Bradford pear in the front and an oak in the back and you know you have to remove one of them and in you get in a bind on you know you get in a position where you know you can't really replant on your NR6 with your Bradford pear I think those are those are all of my notes I I wish we could do more to address preservation I don't think it's going to fit in this ordinance or it's going to be like a separate section on tree trusts or alternate ways of preserving large acreages of existing forest thank you. Commissioner Dudlewicz. Hey would could you I'm going to ask a question for point of clarification as we're talking trees and development help me understand UNT and TWU and what ordinances or requirements they have because they're going to future develop I'm looking at the old golf course which is going to go someplace and there's been discussion about a housing and/or parks and/or classrooms and there's some beautiful trees in that property as well as the old Texas North Texas golf course that still is quite open for future development and there's again ponds and trees there what do they fall under? State. State ordinances or development has what? Yes yeah I mean they they they are exempt from they're exempt from everything right that that being said I have you know been called upon by the the I think she was the landscape architect for UNT to discuss a project that they were doing on campus in relation to some of their existing mature trees as far as assessing the health conditions and the alignment of where they were going with their their project. What about the discussion with TWU? With TWU and I 'm not sure if they are private or state school. They're private. If they're private school then they would be they would fall under the regulations and under our jurisdiction. I'm sorry then they're not private. I'm not sure if you know if they're state then they would be you know in the same category as as UNT. That's a concern because there's a lot of trees and a lot of development potential there. We have people from ex-UNT here too I'm hoping they're pushing it in and making some comments and or getting involved with what's what could happen there. All right thank you. Okay any other questions or discussion on on this public hearing item? Seeing none again this public hearing is going to remain open. It will be continued indefinitely and we will continue to work on this ordinance and I think one of the things that we are hopeful is to have at least one or two work sessions before it comes back so we encourage anybody who is interested in this issue please stay apprised of that and you're welcome to come and continue to give us staff feedback and your thoughts and attend the work sessions so that we can work out whatever the items are that need to be addressed and fine tuned and tweaked and come back here for a continued public hearing to move this ordinance on forward to City Council. So thank you all for coming out tonight to participate and we are going to now move to our final item tonight which is going to be our project matrix and our concluding items. Commissioner Dudowitz. This is a question from all on page three of the matrix or I love this new matrix looks really good but on page three one of my comments that I received information regarding power and duties of the Commission relating to clearance and slum rehabilitation of blighted areas. I recall you said that there is a conflict between what we're allowed to do and code enforcement but I don't ever remember getting any clarification back on that. Commissioner Dudowitz I believe a memo was prepared and sent to the entire Commission and I will double-check to make sure that didn't slip through the cracks. Okay that'd be great because I don't recall. I apologize I know we did talk about it and I had one of our team members prepared a write-up for the Commission so I'll look into that and make sure and find out what happened to that. Anyone else on the project matrix or a future agenda item or concluding item? Seeing none I'm going to close our meeting tonight at 9 31. Thank you all for coming out.