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.