Oct 19, 2021 City Council on 2021-10-19 3:00 PM

Good afternoon and welcome to this meeting of the Denton City Council. It's 3 o'clock p.m. It is October 19th and we do have a quorum so I'll call the meeting to order. The first step on the agenda is for any to see if we have any calls. No sir, no calls right now. Okay great, thank you. That takes us to our next item which is item, we will start off considering a closed session but want to see if that's even necessary. It's just a placeholder. So is there anyone desiring to go in the closed session and have a conversation? I wanted to move that Council waive attorney client confidentiality in regard to all redistricting matters referenced in the confidential report provided to City Council by the City Attorney's Office on October 15th, 2021 so that we could just go right into an open session and have that redistricting conversation in public. Councilman Meltzer? Yeah, I second that. My understanding was it was a placeholder. Matt, can you help me out? Do we need to take formal action or just see if anyone wanted to leverage it as a placeholder? Right, it was there as a placeholder and Council wanted to go in and talk about any of the items that we presented to you or to have a discussion about waiving confidentiality. Those things are both available but if Council is comfortable moving forward, you could act on it at this point and we would not need to go into closed session. Right. Councilman Davis? Yeah, I have a point of order. I don't think the motion's in order. We're not going into closed sessions. No one's asked to go into closed session. We're not posted to talk about waiving privilege which is a different matter and ironically if we were going to talk about waiving attorney client privilege, I think we would need to go into closed session and be fully advised on what it is that we are waiving but I think the motion's out of order at this time. Matt? Yeah, to advise Mayor on how to rule on this, the agenda is posted for two items. One is to receive discussion on the actual redistricting. That's item A under work sessions. There's also an agenda item at the end of this to follow and close a meeting to convene an open meeting to take any actions discussed in closed session. I think to Councilmember Davis' point, it seems in order to do that, you would need to go into closed session, have the discussion about whether you wanted to waive it and then you could take that action coming out of closed meeting. Great. Thank you for the guidance. Yeah. So no action needed. So you can clear the board and we'll just go to citizens' comments, consent and agenda items. I didn't see. Mayor, just to make sure that there's a pending motion in order to take any action on that. I guess where we're going is we need to go into closed session, have the discussion of whether you want to waive it. That's the authority that would give you the authority to come out and waive that in an open meeting pursuant to item 1A. That's really the agenda item that gives you this discretion to waive the attorney-client privilege. So I think to Councilmember Davis' point, we would need to go into closed session to actually take action on that motion. Okay. So then either way, we don't need action from a motion and a vote standpoint. Maybe I'm tracking wrong. We do. If you want to discuss those items which are currently attorney-client privileged that were provided to you on Friday, we're going to need to waive that privilege in order to have that discussion under 1A in open session. Correct. But to have that discussion, we need to go into closed session. Right. And the motion is to not go into closed session. The motion is to waive attorney-client privilege and we need to go into closed to have that discussion to waive and then coming out of that is when Council can take that action on that because it will be based on discussion coming out of closed session. Okay. Then help me understand and forgive me for my ignorance, but then all I need to do is call us in the closed session. Correct. We don't need the vote. We'll go into closed session and then coming out, there's still a pending motion. You can vote on that motion when we come out. Got it. Okay. So at 3.05 PM, we will go into closed session and that is... And welcome back to this meeting of the Denton City Council. It's 3.24. We are back from closed session, takes us to our work session, I know, pardon me, takes us to, yeah, takes us to our work session, which is ID 211979, receive report, hold discussion, waive staff direction regarding redistricting of the City Council districts as a... Okay. Just one second. Okay. So we have to take up the, we'll pick up what we left off first before I open that up. So there's a, Council Member Armitter, if you could restate your motion. Yes. I move that the Council waive attorney-client confidentiality in regard to all redistricting matters referenced in the confidential report provided by the City Attorney's office on October 15th, 2021. Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer, are you second? Yes, I do. Okay. Now we have a motion and a second. Any other discussion? Council Member Davis? I understand that we got some helpful language from the City Attorney, but is it the moments intention that this waiver of privilege would be to all matters referenced for all time going forward or just for the purposes of our meeting here today? That's a good question. Just for, just for today. Then I would, I would move that we amend the motion to, just to apply to today's meeting. The waiver would just apply to today's meeting. Is there a second? Council Member Beck? Yeah. I'll second that to limit it to today. Okay. There's a motion by Council Member Davis, second by Council Member Beck to amend the motion to stipulate it's regarding today's meeting. Any other discussion on that topic? Just so I understand, Mayor. So the motion was really related to materials that were presented to council. There's no way we can unring that bill once those are out. So just want to clarify, those will be out there for the public to see and have, even though we'll be, the discussion today will be related to those. I think the, the concept of the motion or the amendment at least is that we will not be discussing things beyond those materials today or after today. Council Member Davis? Thank you. So thank you, Mack, for, for clarifying that. My concern is, and the reason why I brought this up is that the motion is all matters referenced. It's not just releasing the materials. So if the matter is referenced, at some point we do find ourselves in a situation where we do need to have a closed session meeting or consult with attorneys. I don't want to have pre-waved that conversation as, as it comes up later on. So the materials are, should be, I think should be out in public, but I don't think we should do anything inadvertently today to stop ourselves from, from having privilege in the future. Okay. Understood. Thank you. Great. Well, if we could pull the names off that are on the screen that don't wish to speak, that helped me out. Great. Council Member Beck? Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I was just going to confirm that my understanding is what Mr. Davis just said. And so I'm seconding what Mr. Davis just said. Thank you. All right. We have a motion by Council Member Davis to amend, second by Council Member Beck. Any other discussion? Seeing none. Let's vote on the screen. Mr. Mayor? Yeah. Are we voting on the amendment or the original motion? The amendment. Okay. And that passes seven zero. The motion's been amended to, as Council Member Davis, and now we'll vote on that, the preceding motion. And you'll just, that's motioned by Council Member Armitage, seconded by Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer. Is there any other discussion? Seeing none, let's vote on the screen. That passes seven zero, takes us to our work session reports. The first item is item A, ID 21979, Receive Report, Hold Discussion, Give Staff Direction Regarding Redistricting of the City Council Districts as a Result of the 2020 Census. Mayor and Council, I'll be pulling up the presentation. We do have Bob Heath here from Bickerstad, who's our consulting attorney on this matter. Thank you very much. It is an honor and a pleasure to be here with you again this decade to work on redistricting. In redistricting, the applicable law consists really of three major things, and we have a plus one in there. The first thing is one person, one vote. Districts have to be in population balance. Second, we look at the Voting Rights Act, in particular section two of that act, which says that you can't discriminate against minority races or language minorities. Third thing is a case called Shaw versus Reno, and it regulates how much you can consider and use race. So, section two of the Voting Rights Act, where you really have to consider race, Shaw versus Reno says you can't consider it too much, so you have to balance between those. And the plus one that we have on here involves section five of the Voting Rights Act. Section five is the act that says that every change in election practice standard procedure has to be pre-cleared by the Department of Justice before it can go into effect. In 2013, there was a case, Shelby County versus Holder, that essentially ended section five. So, we don't have to worry about section five anymore. We don't have to submit things to the Department of Justice. The standard under section five, though, was retrogression. You could get a section five objection if you retrogressed or went backwards on the position of minorities in adopting, say, a redistricting plan. And it's a good idea, I think, not to retrogress, not to go backwards, because that can suggest that you have an intent to discriminate, which is a violation of section two. So, we probably want to look at retrogression, even though section five is no longer an issue. Now, one person, one vote is the reason that we all get together every 10 years to see if districts are in balance, because districts that were in balance 10 years ago very often are not. Most of the time, they're not, because people move in, people move out, and the population changes. Under the Constitution, the districts have to have approximately equal population, and the rule of thumb that we use is no more than a 10% total maximum deviation. And to do that, we compare the most populous district to the least populous district, and actually you compare both of those to the ideally sized district, and see how apart those are. And here is an example of how that works. If we assume a jurisdiction with four districts, 40,000 population, that means that every district ideally has 10,000. Obviously, we've chosen this example, because the math is really, really easy. So, if we look at district A, the population is 11,000, a thousand too many, and that's 10% over. The next one, 7.5% over. Next one, 2.5% over. And then we get to the fourth district, and it's 20% under. And indeed, if you look at all the overs and the unders, they're always going to come out to zero in the end. They're going to add up to zero. But your largest district is 10% overpopulated, the smallest district is 20% underpopulated, the distance between those 30 percentage points, and so that's a total maximum deviation of 30%, well above the 10% that we were looking for, or no more than 10%. So, if we look at Denton, the current city council districts that were adopted 10 years ago, here they are. And here's the population under the 2010 population. The ideal district size is just under 35,000. And you see the largest district is district two, which is 4.10% over. The smallest one is district three, 3.67% under. And so the total overall deviation is 7.77, under the 10%. So, as it turns out, Denton is in balance, or at least within the 10% maximum deviation. As a result, legally, under one person, one vote, you don't have to redistrict. You can leave the districts as they are and conform to the one person, one vote standard. Obviously, if you want to redistrict, if you want to change the lines, you may, but you don't have to. One thing, you may notice that the total population that we use is very slightly different from what the census total population was. And that happens almost all the time with cities, because the census boundaries don't always conform precisely to the city limit lines. And when we draw them, we put the city limit lines in. And sometimes it'll add one, subtract one, whatever. And whatever the difference is, I've seen it for Denton, I don't recall, it was under 100. But that's, it really doesn't make much difference. But these are the ones that conform to the city limit lines. There are, and I'm not going to go over these, but some other tables that we have presented to you, voting age population, that's something that we typically look at to get a better idea of minority voting strength. Typically, the Hispanic population will have a lower voting age population than they have a total population, because that group normally has a lower median age. Anglo, it works the other way, because that's a high median age group. And then we have detailed data, which breaks it down a lot of the smaller groups, such as Hawaiian and Pacific Islander, and so forth, that we just sort of lump together and to other for purposes of analysis. And the same thing with voting age population. And we can, I guess that was the abbreviated thing with the idea of, do you want to redistrict if you do? That's certainly something that we can do. And it's your right to do that, but you don't have to if you do it. Obviously, we're going to look at and conform to the Voting Rights Act, Shaw versus Reno, and so forth. But if you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them. Okay, great. Ryan, if we could pull down the presentation. And just as a note, I'm going to, after this conversation, circle back to consent. So sorry I missed that. But also to put together some rules so that we can get through this work session. I'm going to give one pass question, so please organize your thoughts accordingly, and then we'll do five minutes each council member. And that one pass and then we'll move forward. So you'll be able to get all your questions in, hopefully, and have some robust discussion, but at the same time, help us hit our 630 goal on our agenda. And with that, depending on how time goes, please, obviously, you know, if you need to step away from the dais briefly and come back, that's no problem. Just kind of adjust your schedules as needed. So with that, questions. Let me toggle the screen here. I'm sure they're waiting on me. Great. Council Member Davis. Thank you, Mayor. Just a couple of questions. My first one is to do with age, specifically, just kind of in the back of your mind if you'll be thinking the 26th amendment. But I don't know that that bears on today's conversation, just that's why I'm asking. Do we have available voter -- voting age population ages by voter precinct or in a usable -- in a usable way that at some point may become relevant to this conversation? Voting age population by election precinct? Yeah, we can -- that is an available number. Okay. We can do that. Well, I guess the question I asked wasn't voting age population. It was age data, the age of the person, the age of the population by precinct. Well, that is -- I'd have to ask my GIS people to be sure. I know that it comes out with various age cohorts that, you know, maybe 2% -- I mean, by two years or five years or different groups like that. Typically, we just work with under 18 and 18 and over. Sure. I understand. I'm just asking. And I'd have to check to see if we have that data. It may -- I just don't know. And part of the reason is that in -- because of the delay in the census, they put data out early for redistricting. And I'm not sure -- it's the same data that will come out or did come out a little later. But I'm not sure if it has all the age cohorts other than below 18 and 18 and above. Sure. That's my question exactly. I appreciate that, just whether that data was available yet from the Census Bureau. My second question is, Council Member Beck has made us aware, those of us who weren't aware of the poll -- correct me if I mispronounce this, but the Polls Be Popper measurement, it's a way of measuring the compactness of a district versus the spindliness as it gets out. And we've all become very familiar with gerrymandering around here, like we do every ten years or so. Based on your experience advising clients like us, how would you characterize Denton's current voter districts as pretty badly gerrymandered, pretty well drawn, up the snuff? What do you think? Well, since we were involved in drawing them ten years ago, I'll say they're very well drawn. But the -- they are not what I would say badly gerrymandered or extremely non-compact compared to the things that you see as being problems with compactness. And nothing that you draw in Denton is going to have a good compactness score with all the different types of methods there are for measuring compactness, because the borders are highly irregular. You know, if we were in Colorado and drawing legislative districts, it's a square, and you can draw things like that. And here, the borders are irregular, and that makes it -- anything is not going to have a very good score. But nothing ends up being perfectly compact, particularly if you try to take cognizance of Voting Rights Act issues and such. But I assure you that this is nothing like non-compact districts that I have seen. Okay. Any other questions? I see none. Well, you got to push -- there you go. Councilmember Beck. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just let me go off for a second. My apologies. So, Mr. Heath, I was just curious. We're mostly looking at sort of that equal partition argument of equal districts. And you mentioned Shaw v. Reno and the Voting Rights Act as sort of dominant characteristics that are often considered when people do districting. Can you give us an example of how that is typically played out and what courts are looking for when they're trying to assess whether you're doing a good job or a bad job? And I guess then a second question after you answer that is, do courts generally feel more comfortable with you being anywhere under the 10 percent line, or they'd rather you be closer to zero? First thing on Shaw v. Reno, the standard that has developed is that you may use race as a consideration in order to meet a compelling governmental interest in compliance with Section 2 and previously Section 5 were compelling governmental interests. So you can use it to look at compliance with those. It should not be the predominant factor to the extent that it is. You look to see if the usage of that in compliance with Voting Rights Act and so forth is narrowly tailored to comply. So if you need to make those changes to comply with the Voting Rights Act, that's going to be okay, but it needs to be narrowly tailored. And I can give you examples of that, but that's what the courts are looking at. And then on the question of looking at the under 10 percent, the only case that I am offhand aware of that where a court said, "This is under 10 percent, but it's not good enough." And by the way, let me make clear that 10 percent is the standard that applies to City Council districts, Commissioner Court, state legislative, so forth. Congressional districts come under a different provision of the Constitution, and that's a much, much narrower standard. But for council districts and such, there was a state legislative case. I want to say, George, as one of the southern states, Larios v. Cox is the case. And whether it was the Democrats trying to draw districts that favored Democrats and disfavored Republicans or Republicans that were drawing them and disfavoring Democrats, whichever it was, they made the districts of their party roughly about five or just under five percent underpopulated. They made the districts of the other party across the board about five, just under five percent overpopulated. So at the end, you had like 9.9 percent deviation, but it all went one way or the other. And the district court said, "That's not good enough." And they overturned it. It was appealed to the Supreme Court because it was heard by a three-judge federal district court. The appeal doesn't go to the court of appeals. It goes directly to the Supreme Court. And being on the appeal docket, they either affirm it or overturn it. They affirmed it. It was summary affirmance. That's the best data that we have. So it is possible that someone could say, "Hey, this is not good enough." You meet 10 percent, but it's not good enough. But there needs to be some external issue going on, I think, before they would say that. But generally, would it be fair to say that you want to try to get to that standard of zero as best you can or these other voting rights standard as best you can? Yeah. I mean, zero is better than two, two is better than five, et cetera. But I think all of those conform to the legal standard. Thank you. Just for the sake of clarification, communities of interest, is that just a racial factor, what that means or is there something else that goes along with it? If you have a neighborhood, if you have, I'll give you an example. And this is one where there was a highly convoluted, irregular district. It was in the city of Houston. And it involved the Woodlands, which was annexed. It is in the extreme northeastern part of the city. It's not really connected to the city except by some strip annexations. And the nearest district, which wasn't very near, it's still five, seven miles away, whatever, was a predominantly black district. And I assure you that the Woodlands, which was an overwhelmingly white, highly affluent area, had nothing in common with the Fifth Ward in Houston. The next closest neighborhood was a Hispanic or a district was heavily Hispanic, same issue. You could connect it down to Clear Lake City, which is pretty far away, but they did connect, developed by the same developer, very similar. They were like two peas in a pod. So there is a very good argument that those had similar communities of interest. And there are all sorts of issues that were presented to the city to show that they were. So community of interest, it can be racial. It can be just any sorts of things that people sort of go together and have a community. >> Okay. Council? >> I accidentally turned my mic off. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Mayor. So it looks like here on the map, it's more so just geographic location. You know where we are in today's terms, and this looks like we've got ourselves segregated out here just by geographic location. When we're considering this, will we be able to kind of pick and choose and not connect these locations? >> If you decide that you want to redistrict and do something different than just keeping the existing districts, you can draw them any way you want, but you still need to come within population balance, you know, within that 10%. The -- when the districts were drawn, and I think even today, as far as drawing, say, a strong minority district, racial minority, African-American district or something, the population, number one, isn't as big as it is in some cities, and there's some distance. You know, it's not all lumped together. So it's sort of hard to do that. >> Okay. Councilmember Guara? >> Thank you, Mayor Hudspeth. I have a few questions. First, I'd like to confirm, I think I know the answer, but I just want to make sure we're not looking to -- there's no plan to redraw precinct lines at this point, is that correct? To redraw precinct lines, like as we look at our map, the precinct lines are going to stay the way they are today? >> Yeah. If -- well, as far as precinct -- voting precinct lines, ultimately the county is going to decide that, and among other things, they're going to have to look at what the legislature did, and they adjourned yesterday, but I don't know what they have done, because when I have worked with the legislature and represented the Senate and so forth, I always tell them draw districts using whole voting precincts, and they pay absolutely no attention to that. So they may be cutting precincts in two, because if the state representative line runs through there, they're probably going to have to draw another precinct. >> Okay. >> So -- but we would get this information to the county. They would revise the precinct lines. It may take a little while, because your elections, the filing deadline or the filing beginning of filing is January 19th, so you could go up to that date before adopting a plan. The county clerk may be redrawing the precincts or election administrator redrawing the precincts before that, because actually they would have already been drawing them except that redistricting is pushed back so far. It's a real problem. >> Okay. So the county may redraw precinct lines. Is that correct? >> Yeah. He can have precincts for -- draw city precincts, but typically everybody just uses county precincts. >> Okay. I think that answers that question, yes. My other question is probably more for staff. Does the public have access to council member Beck's presentation that we each got a copy of? >> Each council member has a copy and the staff has a copy. Also the consultant was given a copy. >> Proposed map is not something that the public can see like today? >> No, we have not shared it publicly, but it was attached to the -- I believe it was attached, Stewart said he was going to attach it to the information to the answers to the question from the council members, which would make it then a public document. >> Okay. So it would be available via public information request? >> Yes. >> Okay. That brings me to my next question. Is today the day to discuss details of which precincts we might put in which districts in order to improve population balance and other metrics or am I jumping the gun if I want to talk about specific precincts in specific districts? >> No. Today is the day we talk about if we're going to redesign or redraw or open that up to the public or not. >> Okay. >> You're a little ahead. >> Okay. So I would say that although our current map is within legal boundaries, I think that we can do better as far as balancing population among our four districts as well as improving compactness. I'm particularly concerned and have been concerned for a long time about the boundary between district three and district four. It's a little bit crazy. DENIA is kind of out on its own, separated from the rest of district four, and I would like to redistrict in a way that remedies that. Thank you. >> Okay. Councilman Arbiter. >> Yes. I concur. I, too, would like to have a redistricting conversation with the public. I'd like us to get as close as we can to that ideal zero while understanding that, of course, we're legal where we are now, almost eight, but zero is better than two, is better than three, et cetera, et cetera. So the less deviation, the better. Also, and while I understand that there are limitations to how compact we can get because, as you mentioned, our borders are defined by what is now the extraterritorial jurisdiction, the ETJ, and it's just very funky looking. However, there are areas, as Councilmember McGuire mentioned, DENIA, which sticks out like a, I don't even know what to compare it to, but it just sticks out awkwardly and could be made, could make one of the other districts more compact in a way that would better serve the people of DENIA and better represent the city of Denton. But, yeah, public input will be absolutely key in this process, and I look forward to it. >> We're certainly very happy to work with you whichever way you want to go, you know, because that's your decision, not ours. If you decide that you want to open it up and redraw and do something else, we'll work with you on that, and if you decide you want to stay with where it is, that'll work, too, but that's y'all's decision, not mine. >> Councilmember Armando or Tim Meltzer? >> Yeah, just by way of getting direction, I'm absolutely interested in seeing if we can do better. There's, I think some of the things you've already heard have always struck me as odd, particularly that the area around UNT seems to have more in common with itself, you know, and it's bisected in a strange way and the district runs, like, all the way around it. I would like to just understand better what the process is going forward. We have, once Councilmembers put some thought into a proposal, how do others do it? How do we evaluate them? I'd like to understand what the process is. >> Yeah, what we would suggest is if you decide you want to go forward and go into the redistricting process, that you adopt criteria, and we have proposed certain criteria for your consideration, and to say that any plan should consider those, it's not going to be able to meet every single one because meeting one, for example, drawing, trying to use whole voting precincts makes it harder to achieve population balance and things like that. But number one, adopt criteria, and as I say, we have given a draft resolution on that. Also guidelines for public participation and the proposed guidelines we say that if somebody wants to submit a plan, it needs to be in writing. It should draw the entire community, not just one district because what happens if you do one and say, you know, we need to move this here or whatever, it affects everything else. So you can draw one district and it just doesn't work because it doesn't fit the other districts. >> I'm not sure I'm tracking it either. >> We wouldn't consider anything else, but it's much more helpful if they do all those. Then we would have some public sessions, get public input, have a drawing session to see what the council thinks is a good idea, have a public hearing on that, and ultimately adopt it. >> So I just want to make sure I'm tracking on the guidelines part. Are you suggesting that we should craft guidelines or are you going to propose some guidelines for how alternatives can be submitted for consideration? >> We have submitted and I think it would be in your packet proposed guidelines. If you don't like them, you know, you can change them, but these are ones that are fairly standard. We think are helpful. It would be use identifiable boundaries in drawing districts, maintain communities of interest, use whole voting precincts where possible. It won't always be possible. And particularly, you know, it's probably possible in Tarrant and Dallas counties, maybe not so much in Denton because, you know, the whole voting precinct may have 5,000 people. You can't achieve population balance moving that big of a group. Basing the plan on existing districts, that's generally a good idea. You may not want to do that, but, you know, we think that's normally a good idea, but it's up for you to decide. Adopting districts of relatively equal size, population balance, districts that are compact and contiguous, one of the things we mentioned there is functional compactness as being a consideration which may be something that is not necessarily geographically compact, but the people go together. You know, it makes sense. Keeping existing incumbents in their district. You may not want to do that. I think one of the reasons to do it is that it may avoid a turnover in the council, a big turnover in the council. But the other thing is, when you decide to draw somebody out of a district, you're making the decision not the voters. And, you know, that's up for you all to decide, but that's something we put into the draft one. And finally, narrowly tailoring the use of race to comply with the Voting Rights Act. So those are the things we suggest, but they're in that resolution and as I say, if you have some different ideas, that's fine. You all are the ones with the election certificate on your wall, not me. I think it's a perfectly sensible starting point and I would favor seeing if we can do a better job following the process and guidelines you've outlined. And, you know, we may find out some things don't work along the way, but everything you said sounds reasonable to me. Okay. Great. So, Councilmember Davis, this is just direction, right? Thank you. Councilmember Davis. Thank you, Mayor. I might be out on an island here, but I think trying to read district from what we currently have is gilding the lily. I think we're pretty close in almost every district to every metric we can think of. I think there's – I'm already hearing a little bit of a preoccupation with geography, that when you look at the map and you don't quite – you don't quite like the shape or it doesn't quite add up to you, it's not taking into account the disparities in population. It's easy to look at a map and think of a certain thing about a district or the shape of it. Case in point, this conversation about Denia, if you go back and watch what they did 10 years ago, there were reasons why that ended up where it was and before we have too many more conversations about where Denia ought to go, we might want to make sure we're talking to all the folks out in Denia and talking with them about the same conversation we had 10 years ago. If anything, there's a disparity between two and three. Three and four isn't really where our issue is. If you add on to three from four, well, you've got to add back into four from some place. And this is why I think we're – I think we're best advised to go with what we have because it's not a little can of worms that you open up. Every single council member has a thought. Every single interested member of the public has a new plan. And some heavy lifting was really done for us 10 years ago. And the city has grown, but we've grown on the whole imbalance with every measure that we can think of. So I'd prefer that we – that we not redistrict. If the council takes the decision to redistrict, I would like us to set some parameters for ourselves, whether they're formal or not. We have these criteria, but for instance, communities of interest, highly subjective, very squishy, very easy for us to insert our own bias into what we believe to be a community of interest or what a couple of vocal constituents believe to be a community of interest. If we go forward with this, I would – I would like the council to have early on a discussion about parameters for our own deliberations and our own criteria and some things that can helpfully – hopefully eliminate or reduce that bias that I'm already starting to hear just a little bit of. Okay. Councilman Byrd, is this just direction? Yes. My direction would be to go forward with taking a look at some minor changes. Just get us to a point where we're as close to zero as possible. And I'll just sit back and listen and wait. Thank you. Councilmember Armitage, you're listed, but you already gave your direction. Yes, yeah. I have a question. And I mentioned we were going to do one pass, so let me – Well, you had said up to five minutes, and so I just have an important question about – Well, Councilmember Armitage, I had said one pass up to five minutes, but let me then put it before the council do – I mean, again, because ultimately at 6.30, we're going to stop. So if we don't – whatever we don't reach is just going to have to go to the next week. It's a real simple question. So is the council okay with doing another round of questions? Because what's – I've got to have to – it has to be fair. So is there anyone that would be adverse to do – opening it up for another round of questions? Seeing none? Okay. Councilmember Armitage? Yeah, so – and this might be a question for the city attorney, and that is I just wanted to be sure – so in waiving the attorney client privilege on all redistricting matters referenced in the confidential report that was provided to us on the 15th, it's my understanding that that would also include Councilmember Beck's suggestion as well as – am I correct – as well as the recommendations from the consultant? That is to say, like, the whole – not the entire staff report, because that legal staff report also included some items that were not related to redistricting, but that whole redistricting section would be made public, correct? And including those two things. Yes, and that's my understanding. Maybe I want to be clear with the council about what the plan is on that. So you've waived privilege to those – those actual written materials. So if council would like, we could publish those to the public in either a Friday report that's open to the public or otherwise to make sure that's available. Okay, and thank you. Just wanted to be sure, you know, while we're all here in public deliberating, that the public understood and whatever media, you know, was watching that those actual written materials are going to be public. I think it would be nice, in addition to having a Friday report and having it added on to – if possible, retroactively to this – to today's agenda, to also have something on the website where, you know, we could have all of these materials on redistricting and where we could get public feedback on redistricting. Okay. We'll come back to that. Council Member Beck. Yes, I'm providing direction. I definitely would like to go forward and I am gratified that pretty much the consultant, Mr. Heath, pretty much ticked off all my criteria in my proposal. So that makes me feel good. So my direction is to move forward. Okay. So we have a consensus to move forward. I joined Council Member Davis in saying you don't open a small can of worms. You open a big one and that's the consensus of this. Council, my concerns are a few. The primary concern that I hear when it comes to elections is I don't know where to go vote or which precinct or which voting location day of because you have to go to your precinct. And so we don't know what the precinct is. We have that kind of solidified where people would know and they know I've always gone to city, the civic center, I've always gone to MLK and we begin to maybe deviate from that which causes confusion, which then causes suppression. The other thing that is I think your point is valid in incumbents and kind of how those district are shaped and who they reach out to and that changing understanding as much as people think everyone in the city watches these meetings, we can't even get enough information out about health related issues in time. So I just don't think it's prudent to add that layer of confusion which will already be compressed by the state and county discussions that will come after. So that's a concern for me. And I think there's something to be said, echoing what Council Member Davis said, to have a plan ten years ago understanding the radical population growth, the city's experience. And it still be within the threshold. It's absolutely amazing. We couldn't have predicted it. We couldn't have predicted where the growth was going to come. So that just says a lot of the work product. And so that is concern. And then just the results. If none of those tangibles and intangibles resonate with me, I'm a little biased. I sit here as the first mayor that looks like me that won citywide. And so I think there's something to be said for our community, their approach, the balance. And if you're the right candidate and you're, and I think that goes for everyone across this day. Our community is well represented. And so that to me affirms the current boundaries. But the majority sees it different and I respect that. And then I'll just, it's not on today's agenda. So I guess staff will need to bring it back or Mr. City Attorney, you'll have to correct me. But I have a real problem with taking an individual's, because it wasn't done in official capacity. So you're taking one individual's drawing that I hadn't had a chance to review. But still, you can't put that on the website. You can't give that preferential treatment because then from a, it really just to me is concerning from an official capacity as a single member district representative that you've now drawn a line. And is it advantageous to you? Is it, is it not advantageous to you? I just think that needs a little more, the experts not had time to look at it. And so I don't think there's a, there, that would be prudent to give that any extra exposure. As the city manager noted earlier in the meeting, it's already available via open records requests. And there's nothing to stop an individual from posting and sharing their information. But to give it to somehow act like it was done in an official capacity to me is dangerous. And so I'll just defer to Mr. City Attorney or someone during a break, you can, you can kind of educate me on what that is and where I'm wrong and we can have that conversation. But that's, that's where we're not posted for it. So we'll have to come back to it. So that's where we are. Thank you very much. Thank you for your expertise. I'm going to go back to the consent. Does anyone have questions on the consent agenda? Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Okay. Councilmember Armitage. Yes, I had a question about item W about the contract for the golf instructor services W. Councilmember Armitage, what's your question on that one? My question was if there's someone here from parks to answer it. Well, I can tell you that it is a golf contract that, you know, we have our driving range and they hire someone that has experience being an instructor to help people that want to learn better skills in golfing. And that's how we go through and do it through a contract instructor contract. Okay. And so I guess I'm wondering, so the city pays them to be an instructor. And then I'm just kind of wondering how the payment kind of works. And, and are the services provided for free to the public or to the public? It's provided for a fee. There's, there's not for a fee, right? We're don't, we're not paying for it. And then not getting money in return. These are classes and instructions that people pay a fee. We have to pay for the contractual services. Yeah. If, if Christine or, or anyone else is on the line, but that's my understanding. And, and is, is the hope that the, you know, the cost will be, or actually instead of cost neutral. Yeah. Or has that been, you know, the case in the, in the past? I'm not necessarily arguing for that. I'm just trying to figure out. So this is not to exceed. So obviously when they do their classes and they have, let's say five people and the next, the next classes is a five, we only pay the amount that for the services rendered. This is just not to exceed that amount, but we take in the money from the classes, from the people who are taking the class. Sarah, this is Christine Taylor. And we also have Jason Barrow on the phone, but that is exactly correct. The contract and instructor will receive 80% of the registration fee and the city retains 20% for the administrative process to intake that and have the facility. Did you, did you, were you able to hear that? So, so if I understood correctly, so the, the instructor gets 80% and then 20% goes to the city for administrative, administrative costs. So we're, we're really passing, we're, we're hiring the instructor. So we have someone with expertise. There's a fee associated with it's advertised. They get 80% of that fee. We get 20% for the administrative to cover that part of it. But the amount is to not exceed the $200,000 over a period of five years. I'm sorry, with four years total of one option for one year. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. All right, Catherine Byrd. I was looking at X consider adoption of an ordinance to the city releasing, abandoning and vacating a drainage easement. So I can understand that that terminology, but it is, it is what I am reading into it. And also who's responsible for the easement and the, the caretaking of an easement. Is this some kind of H away type situation or is someone explained to me a bit more about what that means? Okay. I'm sorry. Also an effective date. How does that come into play? Mark? Are you on the line? Mark Laird from development services? Yes, ma'am. Okay. I'm here. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Yes. This, this request is for the abandonment of an existing drainage easement that's no longer necessary. The drainage channel that once flowed through it has shifted and is in low, in a new easement that's been conveyed to the city of Ditten in whole. So this was all part of the development. And so that drainage channel is, is no longer in this location. So it's no longer necessary. And the, the, since it is a public drainage easement, it is the responsibility of the city of Ditten to maintain this area. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Any other questions for staff on the consent agenda? Great. So for the notes, nothing was pulled, but do note that item, um, what is it? Why? Why? Why it has been removed just because, uh, it, it was, it's, the vote's completed. So, um, why has been removed? By the session's completed. Okay. So that completes consent agenda. Sorry about that error earlier takes us to our second work session, which is item B, um, which is ID 2, 1, 2, 1, 3, 5 receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction regarding an update to the city of Denton's COVID-19 response. Mayor and council Ryan Adams, customer service and public affairs. Let me share my presentation. Okay. Great. So this is just one of your weekly COVID-19 updates. We last met with you on October 12th, a week ago. And during that time, we did give you an update on what's COVID was looking like in Denton County shared a few statistics. And then we also received direction related to the extension of the 15th order of council. Uh, for today, we are going to again, give you a brief update and give a preview of the drafted 16th order of council, which is going to be, uh, for council to consider later on this evening as part of the regular session. So we do have a little bit of different information relating to COVID that was shared by Denton County public health with the commissioner's court earlier today. Uh, just like last week, our cases, our ICU occupancy and hospitalizations continue to be high, but they are also continuing to decline. Uh, a couple of things that were mentioned today in the report by Denton County public health was that, uh, we now have, uh, 13% of all hospitalizations are COVID-19 related, which is a great improvement. If you compare that to our highest point in the pandemic, where we were at just under 33% of all hospitalizations being COVID-19 related. Additionally, and I know this has been something council has asked about a couple of times, uh, uh, the, how each age group was fairing with regard to COVID. Uh, they did report today that every age group, uh, from pediatric on up, uh, they are declining in the overall cases. Do you have a couple of additional updates regarding the vaccines? Just like last week, uh, the county is continuing to provide third doses and boosters of the Pfizer vaccine. Uh, the FDA is in the approval process for boosters for both Moderna and Johnson and Johnson. Uh, they did not provide a specific date on this, but it is expected to occur in a matter of weeks, at which point those who received those, uh, uh, people who received those, uh, vaccinations could get that, that booster or that third dose. Additionally, uh, Denton County public health mentioned that they did anticipate that a Pfizer vaccine for ages five to 11 may be, uh, may be approved, uh, by the FDA in the coming weeks. The exact time is not known, but that was what was reported today to the county commissioner's court. Uh, and of course, uh, continued to the county continues to offer a drive-through testing events for anyone who wants them. They just have to register ahead of time. So I do have, uh, the graphs just a little bit updated from last week on our overall cases. As you can see, they are declining. And then if you move on to both our, uh, age demographic on top, which covers every age bracket and then our pediatric, uh, demographics on bottom, you can see that they are declining. And if you look really close at that last one on the top graph, you can see that all age groups are a little bit smaller than they were last week. So they are all declining. So this slide is no different from last week. This is just an implementation update on the 15th order. Uh, so the information is the same with regard to how, uh, the city has approached the 15th order. That order of course does expire at the end of this month. And, uh, the public response information has not changed from last week. Uh, again, we did discuss then that, uh, it was staff's, uh, staff's opinion and staff's, I should say staff's, uh, observation that compliance is mixed. And then we did receive the, the, uh, direction from council to continue, uh, with our, the provisions of the 15th order and continue those through into a 16th order, uh, through November 30th. And so that is what has been brought for you today for consideration later on, uh, in this meeting is extending those provisions, uh, through November 30th, uh, in a 16th order that would be adopted. Of course, council can modify that later on in the regular session by modifying any of the requirements or extending them to a different specified date. So a date other than November 30th, uh, of course they can always, council can always take no action. And the 15th order would expire at the end of the month. That is my short presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have. All right. Let me get there. Council Member Buer. Thank you, Mayor Hadsbeth. Um, I'd like to start by acknowledging that, um, the, the city has, has been, um, hit by, by the pandemic, um, once again, and I'd like to offer my deepest condolences to the family of Detective Rodney Mooneyham, um, who passed recently, uh, due to COVID, um, and his, his loss is, is a huge loss to the community. And, and I'd like to extend, extend my condolences to his family. Um, I'd also like to, um, acknowledge, uh, the, the work of Denton County Public Health and, uh, Dr. Matt Richardson. Um, they recently had their 100th vaccine clinic. Um, they've done an outstanding job, um, uh, getting vaccines in arms and they continue to, um, and I'd like to, to quote him from this morning. Um, it's, it's not time to not be vigilant, but it is time to recognize the improvement. Um, and we just 23 minutes ago, um, passed a, a threshold, a, a, a milestone, um, for, for the first time since August 8th, the seven day moving average of COVID hospitalizations as a percentage of total impact inpatient capacity dropped below 15%. That just happened today. Um, today's, uh, uh, COVID hospitalizations as a percentage of inpatient capacity was that we're at 14.4%. Um, I would like to, um, uh, I've, I've brought up similar ideas in the past, but I'd like to state it in more, um, specific terms, uh, today. I would like to propose to my colleagues that we consider, um, if that seven day moving average of COVID hospitalizations as a percentage of total inpatient capacity, not total hospitalizations, um, if that seven day moving average, uh, remains below 15% for 14 calendar days, today being the first day, um, I would like to propose that at the next council meeting following this, reaching that milestone, uh, that we consider repeal of the mask mandate. That's all. Thanks. Councilmember Archer. Um, yeah, so, uh, I, um, well, I, well, there's a lot that I agree with most. In fact, and, um, everything, uh, councilmember McGuire said, I, uh, feel safest, um, using the, uh, CDC recommendation as a guideline, um, where we're not in a vacuum. Uh, and so I, I feel that the most holistic, uh, measure of when it's time to lift the mask mandate is when the CDC, uh, says that, uh, that it is, uh, okay, um, that we are no longer, uh, uh, high risk, you know, not just for ourselves, um, and even for the county, um, but within the, the, the, uh, bigger picture. Uh, so for that reason, I would like to see specify, um, uh, not going, uh, till the end of the month or to the end of November, but to an event certain. And that is, you know, when the CDC says that, uh, city of Denton is, is no longer, uh, high risk, no, uh, no longer, uh, requires a mask mandate or county, I should say, because they, they, they, they go by city and county. Councilmember Davis. Thank you, mayor. I think I've been pretty clear before how I view a mask mandate for at this juncture for entities outside of our control, uh, not city property, not city events, not city things. The compliance, I think staff was, was very kind to say mixed. Um, I see on one store, you go to a major department store in this city and you see the signs say anybody who's not, who has double vaccination can come in here without a mask and you go to the store next door to that and they say local ordinance requires a mask. I think we have added to confusion. I think we've added to the problem and the people who are wearing masks are wearing masks because they choose to, not because anybody else up here says that they ought to. The people who are not wearing masks are not wearing them because they choose to and they're not going to put them on because we've enacted a mandate. Um, when this began months and months and months ago, people asked me, when is it going to be over? I said, well, it's over when it's over. That answer is no longer sufficient to just tell people it will keep going until somebody in Atlanta changes the color of our County on a map. Um, I agree with council member Arminder, excuse me, our common council member McGuire, that it is time to consider getting rid of our city mask mandate because we have objective data that tells us the virus is doing something different. Um, I disagree with council member Arminder that we need to tie it to a, a map that happens to have most of the country read, uh, and is not especially helpful when it comes down to granular decisions like the one that we're making today, uh, we'll make later this evening. Um, I'd be on board with looking at seven days because we have a council meeting that, that happens before the end of October. Um, the council doesn't have to make this decision today. We could even make this decision next week and postpone the item on the order itself until next week when we have more data coming in from the County and we can see the trajectory of this curve continue to go down. Okay. Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer. I just, uh, I find the disrespect for medical authority and the best epidemiologists in the country just to be sad. Uh, I think we have a duty to show some leadership, uh, and I, I hope there, you know, is some followership, but, you know, uh, I think we'd be consistent if we just stuck with going by the, you know, what, uh, the best minds in the country have to say, uh, that the update for Denton County specifically, uh, was updated October 19th. That's today. Uh, and the fact that it's on a map, the people who work on the map, you know, aren't here, that, that is neither here nor there. So, uh, I, I, I very much favor, I think it would be much simpler, frankly, to just refer to the CDC guidelines by way of reference, but, you know, short of that, reasonably short timeframes, uh, you know, uh, in a continuing, uh, ordinance are, are okay. Um, and, uh, that, that would, that would be my direction. Okay. Councilman Burke. Uh, I am in agreement with, uh, Councilwoman McGuire. I think it's time for us to, uh, start thinking outside of the box a bit, uh, but to be mindful as to how quickly that is done. Uh, I've also been grappling with the idea of not, uh, having everything to be mandatory, so to speak, but us moving into a, uh, not a requirement mode, but a, um, recommended mode here, uh, shortly afterwards, uh, you know, in a short time. Um, so I'm, I'm kind of on the fence with it, uh, to be honest, but I do, we, I think we do need to do something different. Uh, so I will, uh, glean myself to closer to, uh, what, uh, Councilwoman McGuire would suggest. I would definitely want to start moving towards us, uh, releasing ourselves from a specified mandate in a, in a, in a, in a particular date. Councilman Burke. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Uh, I think Mayor Pro Tem said it well. I'm, I'm sort of astonished at the, at the, sort of, um, the lack of, of looking at, um, medical expertise. Um, I know that's harsh. I know it's harsh when he said it, but I couldn't agree with it more. Uh, I agree with, uh, what, uh, Councilor Armator said at a recent meeting, I guess it was last week, and she said it multiple times that you don't take your umbrella down during a rainstorm. Uh, the fact that we have improvements, um, are because we're at least in part because we're taking these measures. Um, how much it is, arguably, I, I can freely admit that, uh, it's real personal to me because the lack of compliance in our community at large, writ large in Denton County in North Texas in Denton, um, has led to my personal family, um, coming down with COVID, um, and with my immunocompromised mother. So, um, my nephew, my mother, they, they are now doing everything that I recommended that all the medical professionals recommended. Still, I have now gotten COVID, have been exposed to COVID, um, because of the lack of compliance and the, uh, inability of people in this community to follow expertise. And, and that's just, I know I'm sounding really harsh right now, but I am maddened both crazy and angry definitions about this. And so, uh, absolutely we should be following the guidelines of expertise. And, uh, absolutely, I, I, I think we should continue as, as was the agenda item to the mass mandate. Um, and I, I would prefer that we follow the, the definitions of, uh, of epidemiologists. Okay. Uh, and to conclude, I think for me there's, there's a few things, right? So again, I said it last week, I'll say it again this week, it's updated this week, the same report. And so I, I, I just, I'm speaking to, um, just those that are watching and those that would have interest, obviously, uh, my peers, uh, don't have to, um, uh, adopt what I'm saying or take note of it. But I'll, I'll just, for those watching alone to note that if you go to the CDC guidelines, everyone points you to those that would support this. It was last week on the 12th, this week on the 19th, the language is the same. Follow local laws. That's undisputed. It's an exact quote. So we're told to look to the CDC for guidance. The CDC says look local. We are in the city of Denton, 100 square miles. The school district's 200 square miles. The school's, school district rolled back their mask regulations and the numbers continue to go down. They went back to, to much to my chagrin. They moved back to, uh, more kids at the cafeteria table, went back to from a mandate to a suggestion and the numbers continue to go down. The numbers in Tarrant County where there's no restrictions and Dallas where there's heavy restrictions, both by and large are the same. So what we have is a disagreement on what is triggering the drop. And, and, and to that where I'm just like the rest of our citizens and didn't held hostage by this, the people at this day as making overreaching decisions. And I'll note the 15% number is a number that came from the governor's office, which we're disagreeing with on his order to not have mandate mass mandates, but we adopt the 15% perspective. And so, uh, for me, it's, it's, it's difficult. I mean, it just truly is because we're not, if, um, we don't have it available. I didn't give you a heads up, but if you looked at the, for the citizens, if you looked at the, at the presentation coming up on recycling, you'll see we deployed interns and there's a date and time that it started. And then there's a significant drop from that day forward. You can see that, that those actions produce tangible results in our community. And that's what I think is, is compelling, not arbitrary numbers that again, between Dallas and Denton, I mean, pardon me from Tarrant County, Dallas County are the same, regardless of, of kind of what's in place. And similarly here, the schools roll back their ideas. Ryan, I think what I, what I capture is, and I just, yeah, so I'll summarize it this way. I've counted that we're split on how to proceed. I have a couple of people in queue and I'm trying to, so again, I asked for, for direction. I'm trying to hold us accountable. So if everyone wants to do another round, I'm going to open up to everyone else. If I open it up to anyone. So are we in agreement that we're going to do it again? Another, okay. Great. Again, I'll remind you as a, because when it comes to it, I don't want to, I want to make sure we're very clear attempting to get us done by six 30. And, and if we don't, then we'll just drop off those things that being noted. Councilmember Guara. Thank you. I just like to clarify that under my proposal, which has not received consensus, the bell in the best case scenario, the earliest that we could possibly consider repealing the mask mandate would be November 9th. So, you know, I'm not talking about doing this next week and I'm certainly not talking about not extending the mask mandate through November. I'm talking about potentially a set reassessing in November. I would also like to point out, I am looking at the CDC's mask guidance right now says in Denton County, Texas, community transmission is high. Everyone should wear a mask in public indoor settings. Mask requirements might vary from place to place. Make sure you follow your local laws, rules, regulations, or guidance. Mayor Hudspeth is a very intelligent man. And I believe that he understands very well that that lat, those last two sentences are intended to communicate that in places that have a mask mandate in place, you should continue to wear a mask, even if transmission is not high, not the reverse. Also, we are the ones who make local laws, rules, regulations and guidance. So I what the CDC is is saying is residents of the city of Denton and visitors to the city of Denton should do what the Denton City Council tells you to do regarding masks. And for the time being, that means wear a mask if you are in an indoor public setting full stop. Councilman Rocha. Just comment on kind of my read of the room. So, you know, we've got obviously we're split right now. We've got three council members, you know, I am one who are making the argument to just follow, continue following following CDC guidelines as we have been. And I would just urge that anybody who wants our mask mandate to continue for as long as it as the science says it's necessary or on the side of CDC, rather than trying to pick dates and metrics ourselves. Councilmember Mayer for Tim Meltzer. Yeah, thank you. I take a significant clarification from Councilmember McGuire that there's a short period of time before her preferred metric would kick in. What I would suggest is rather than substitute, I don't think anybody hears an epidemiologist. I think Councilmember Beck comes closest. But what I would say is if we have agreement that among four, that period of time there should be no change, why don't we just revisit this topic sooner rather than say now that it has to change then. You don't have agreement on that, but you probably could have agreement to say for the period of time that you wouldn't want to affect, don't affect anything and revisit it at that time. Councilmember Davis. I think similar thought. I'll reiterate what I said earlier. I think we ought to take this up next week. We have more data, another seven days' data. There's no rush. What we're talking about is leaving in place something that is in place currently. When this action item comes up tonight, I'm going to move that we postpone it a week. Take it up next week. Councilmember Byrd. When this action item comes up a little later on, I am going to be in favor of still being in agreement with Councilwoman's Maguire's direction to monitor it and make a decision later on. So I'm not sure if I'm stuck in between here or there, but I do believe that we do need to start looking at it and weaning ourselves and looking at the numbers and taking it up. So again, I'm in agreement with Councilwoman Maguire. So to wrap it up, I'll defer to my position is we leave it as is and I'll take extreme issue with that statement. We make the local laws. And I take extreme issue with that because we don't have a health department. So the county has a health department. The school district has a health authority. The state has a health authority. The city does not. And I see the citizens, and I'm not saying they get to run roughshod, but we do have to understand, I believe, that the majority of the citizens either disagree or are not participating. I think that's the majority of our community. And I think this piecemeal of every 30 days sending out a new notice is just with no data, no understand there's data issued, but there's no tracking matrix that we are able to do, that we are able to generate that we are. It's a porous city. People drive to Dallas and commute to work and come back and they come into town for football games and they come into town. Alan was in town. That's a huge problem. So we're just not in control as much as people would love us to be is in control of everything in our environment. We're just not. And so I would love to see this energy put towards pushing vaccines and getting people vaccinated because I think that is the way to go and that is causing the trend down. But that's not the majority council. So I'll let staff rewatch this and you can kind of parse it out or, you know, over the whenever you bring forward. But mayor, just just an important clarification so that we can make sure we give Ryan some direction. You know, later on you have an item to approve, which is what you directed us to do in a previous council meeting. Right now I show there are three members in support of council member McGuire's proposal to at the earliest it wouldn't even come back for removal of mask until the ninth and then three under more of guidance of following CDC guidelines. But we don't have a majority for either one of those. So the question is, will you then just vote on extending the declaration to November 31st? Is it right? November 30th. Yes, we'll just take it up when it when it on that next item. We'll have a discussion. We'll see how it goes. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. That concludes 3B takes us to 3C, which is ID 211982. Receive report whole discussion. Give staff direction regarding the on street parking agreements with the University of North Texas. Oh, okay. So for the record, I let the record reflect that Council member armature Council member McGuire have recused himself. Stewart. Yes, sir. Mayor Council Stewart bird's eye, the assistant to the city manager. I'm here today to talk to you about the UNT on street parking agreements. This was originally a one minute pitch from June as requested by Mayor Hudspeth to have staff present this information and get council direction on any potential next steps about the on street parking with UNT. So today we'll give you just a brief history of that on street parking agreement and then any council direction on further action. So UNT is delegated the authority to enter into agreements with the local municipality through the education code. This provision is pretty universal to all state institutions and it allows them to manage the community's traffic flow, parking locations and permits within their own campus in city. This is codified in section 18 Article five of our code of ordinances, and it was done through an interlocal agreement. That agreement expires December 31st. It automatically renews January 1st unless we give 60 days notice So, to align the city's code with the education code, UNT has jurisdiction to control on street parking when the segments of butts the property owned by the state and under control of the university or in 2001, we included some segments that were identified through the fry street small area plan. That small area plan was then kind of folded into the gateway plan. Here's a list of ordinances that we were able to trace back to the first one being 1991. There were 23 segments listed there. In 2001, it was updated to bring in those streets from the aforementioned fry street small area plan. And then in 2003, they added Kindle street in 2006. They approved an ordinance and an interlocal agreement that quote more accurately describes the manner of the authority granted to you and T. There were 25 total street segments included in that interlocal agreement and also set parking meter rates and said that those rates could not be changed without city agreement. And then it also stated that the city collects one third of revenues from parking meters that are located on on street locations. In 2017, the university moved to smart parking meters. And so they came back to the city to negotiate new rates for those on street meters there. At that time, they got some feedback from the fry street area Merchants Association, and they requested to have free two hour parking in the fry street area where those meters were located. So that is free two hour parking now. And as a result, the city doesn't collect any revenues from those at that time and also added Central Avenue to the segment list. This is a map of all of the street segments that are outlined in the agreement. The blue is going to be the on street parking that's allowed by permit. And then the orange is the free two hour parking. Again, that's mainly in the fry street Avenue a Hickory Street areas. So as I mentioned, these agreements are automatically renewed and on January 1st, either party must give 60 days notice to cancel or enter into negotiations on the agreement. Basically, the university provides curb painting, parking signage, permit management and permit enforcement. The city provides the road surface maintenance and the street markings, lines going down the middle of the road, that kind of thing. And prior to 2017, as I mentioned, you and T remitted one third of the revenues from the on street parking meters to the city. But since those were eliminated, the city does not receive any of that revenue. There's another public safety interlocal agreement that just kind of highlights the cooperation between the city and the UNT police department. They maintain a close working partnership. When possible, UNT PD assist didn't PD in the enforcement of traffic around the campus, and then all parking statutes on city streets surrounding UNT campus that are non permitted spots. All of the ticket revenue that's collected are all the citations that UNT writes for those parking violations or traffic violations is processed through our municipal court. In 2001, we received nearly $70,000. In 2020 FY 20, it was a little over 100,000 and then FY 19 was a little over 150,000. On October 13th, we met with some representatives from UNT just to get their feelings on the current agreements and to kind of help them understand what we're talking about today. They express the appreciation of the partnership with the city for on street parking and for all of the police assistance when necessary. They also let us know that there are 14,414, that's not an approximate number, that seems exact, total permitted parking spaces at UNT and of that, 575 are located on city streets. Now the permits vary in cost and type depending on who's purchasing them and what they qualify for, but they may not always have somebody parking in those spaces. Now a portion of the parking permit revenue is used to fund the UNT police department. And so today we're seeking direction to see if city council would like us to analyze further or amend the current agreement. We have a couple of considerations there to kind of help facilitate that discussion and then we have three options, continue with the current agreements or analyze further and open discussions with UNT and then a third option would be to hire a consultant to perform a more comprehensive assessment of on street parking at the university. And we provided an informal staff report in June that kind of outlined what they would look at. The estimated cost at that time was about $50,000 to $75,000 to have that consultant perform that study. So with that I will stop sharing my screen and receive any feedback. Thank you very much and so I just want to kind of be clear on the front end. I think option two is the best way to go. I don't want to spend any money and I do enjoy the relationship we have with the president, Neil and others at UNT. I think that's fantastic. I just want to have a discussion to update the document. I think just to update the agreement. For example, the meters have been removed so that's not really accurate. So just kind of update it there. But my primary focus is to have a conversation with UNT and it may be -- what? Oh, to have a conversation with the university and really zero in on if taxpayers are paying for the street maintenance. At some location they should have free parking. Just because our tax dollars maintain the street and you have a staff parking space or a permitted parking space next to the buildings, I absolutely understand it. But at the same time if a citizen needs to park there and run into the PEB to grab their kid or wait for their kid to finish practicing, by virtue of your tax dollars going to maintain that street you should have 15 minutes. So that conversation is not to be had in the public because then that helps people game the system. That's a private conversation that then is brought back to us to kind of understand, hey, here's a policy that we believe is enforceable that limits the amount of every student at UNT saying -- I understand that. So I want to try to guard against that but at the same time help the parent that's dropping someone off at music class on Avenue C that just needs to park for a second, run in and run out, that sort of thing, that they don't get a ticket and have to go through a process. So I think option two gives us that opportunity to have that conversation. And again, I feel great about our relationship with UNT and the fruits that will bear will be dynamic. I just got it. We got to open it. This is the process to have that conversation. So that's where I am. Mayor Fritz of Meltzer. >> Thank you. I don't see any downside to having a conversation for sure. Just there's some information that's kind of missing for me that maybe would come out of that conversation. Going way back to when we were first tackling the issue of the bike lane going through, that's kind of what led to -- it was around the same time, maybe the same conversation that there's a discussion of pulling the meters out and making it free, comparable to around the square. Some concerns that were expressed at that time were that that would be abused and that it wouldn't be enforced, that people would park and sit there all day. Particularly the small businesses that were concerned. But UNT, UNT's representative in that meeting said, no, we'll enforce it. So I would love to know what the experience has been. Is it abused? How do they enforce it? I think there have been some changes in the law with respect to whether you can chalk tires or not. I'm not sure on that. So just, you know, how has it worked out, I guess, is my question. But, you know, if we don't have that answer today, like I said, maybe that will come out of that conversation. I'm going to look at Chief Smith. It appears that we may have to get back to you with that information, particularly about that area. Sure. I think it's a good conversation to have. Okay. Councilman Bet. So thank you, Mr. Mayor. This is a legitimate question. I guess I'm trying to understand the need. And I'm not resisting, really. I'm more just really confused. So do we not have periodic review yearly of our agreements with UNT? And I guess, Mr. Mayor, you're seeking a different conversation than we have yearly? I really am just honestly trying to understand where you're coming from. Because I might be able to support it. I want to help you if it's something I can understand. Yes, sir. No, thank you for the question. So my understanding is one, it's not reviewed, it auto renews. And then the original agreement, Stewart mentions an ordinance in 2017, but I don't think that was a whole review, right? That was just specific to Fry Street and the redesign. Correct. And they also, it was because of the parking meters, they also requested two streets be added to the agreement. We added one of those. So the full review, the last full review was 2006. And so that's where I'm saying we, from 2006 to 21, nothing other than this 17 minor adjustment has been changed. And so for me, it's a discussion to bring it current, because I think even in 2017, it mentions meters or no on Fry Street. It did, but then, so they set the meter rate to be wide, because they have some meters that are in parking lots and things like that. They extended that to include all meters to that $2.25 an hour rate. At that time also, they took out the on street meters and made it the free two hour parking. Got it. But the 2006 ordinance wasn't replaced. And I think that's my understanding, and I could be wrong. So I think it just needs to be one, updated, and then two, what I'm trying to, I'll give you my user experience. So I went to, I had to deliver some documents to one of the dorms. And I went to park on the street on Highland, right by the police station. And it's UNT staff only. There's no public parking on a public street that allows me to go into that dorm. I can't go in their private lot. I can't park on Highland. There's no parking on Eagle. And so that to me just kind of led to, hey, as a citizen in the city of Denton maintaining Highland Road, I should be able to park on here for 10 minutes to run in there to drop something off and run back out. And I did it. And I didn't get a ticket, which is great. But I think there's, when you're talking about people using the PEB, so there's people there for game practices, that sort of thing, parents that can't pick up their kids or the music dorm. You just can't park anywhere because it's either a permit only on the public streets or private lot. So there's nowhere for kids, I mean, for parents who pay for those roads, to then access those buildings. And so that's the solve. If there is one, understanding, I don't want the system to be gamed. I don't want to do that either. And if I might ask, so Stuart, do we have information on sort of the typical relationship between municipalities and state bodies in this bailiwick of shared use? Is there sort of a standards in practice? I'm assuming we're pretty close to it. But is there there's sort of a standard that that would be germane to the mayor's concerns from pretty brief research? It appears that way. I'll say locally with TWU, it's a similar situation where there's specific streets that are outlined that they're allowed to provide permitted parking on street four. And so as we do there, it's similar to what we do at UNT. So I'm just going to rephrase that to make sure I understood. So we are basically or the city feels that we are basically kind of following a standard practice. Is that right? There doesn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary. I guess if it really has been since 2006 or even 2017, which wasn't that long ago, but that was five years, I'm not adverse to to to readiscussing this. But I mean, it sounds like we're already pretty close and maybe nothing will come of it. But but to support the mayor on this one, I guess I'm giving a tepid support because I don't really think much will come out of it. But tepid tepid support mayor. David and I recently met with the new vice president for financial services at UNT. And we have another meeting scheduled in a few weeks to discuss. We shared with them this presentation. We discussed it. And then I have regular meetings with Corrine Faitin from Texas Women's University in which we are also discussing issues related to parking on streets along the the two areas where students are in parking and there's hardly any room for vehicles to get through. And so we are in that right now discussing and particularly with Clayton over at the UNT at UNT, we'll be talking to him about the actual presentation and where we need to go from a recommendation standpoint in regards to the parking. Okay. And Castleburg, I would just say just for the sake of acknowledging something here, it looks like that's what we're doing is number two is analyzing with further discussion on on on the UNT project. So just for me to put it on paper there, I would I would definitely put down number two. Okay. You have everything you need? Yes, sir. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. So we'll let Councilmember McGuire and Councilmember Armaturi join us as I open up our last work session item. I think they're on the way. So I'll call it. It's DID211417 Receive Report and Hold Discussion Give Staff Direction on Pending City Council Request. We only have one before us today. Once they're seated, our staff will come up. And dinner is here. So after this, we'll be we'll we'll go to that. And then before you start, Mr. City Attorney, help me is is this closed session just a placeholder just in case? Thanks, Mary. Yes, it is just a placeholder. And it's on the consent agenda, the actual action item. If there's no need. If you'd let us know at this time, that would be great. We could let the attorneys go that are waiting on that item. Okay. So is there anyone that would want to take advantage of the opportunity of the closed session item? Mayor Pro Tem? This is related to police officers plan benefits related to injury, blah, blah, blah. I don't feel the need to. Okay, great. Is there anyone that needs further discussion? Okay, great. Here you go, man. Thank you. Sure. Okay. Good afternoon, council. I'm Rachel both of Mendoza assistant to the city manager, and I'll present for y'all this evening, our City Council Pending Request for information. Just by way of reminder for some folks, we have up to seven requests that we'll review per meeting, and we do one per council member. I'll introduce each one. And tonight we have one. And the elected official that made the request will have up to two minutes now to describe and justify it. And then the remaining officials will then have one minute to provide feedback and indicate support for the use of staff time. And then we'll, of course, respond to all the requests where consensus is established. The agenda committee will assist in scheduling any items that receive consensus and in the priority offered by the council members work session availability and readiness of the item. And as some guidelines for council members to note and to offer your priority, we have kind of a little a scale here, a high, moderate and low as far as timing is concerned for yourselves that you can indicate your priorities for the items that receive consensus. So as I mentioned today, we have one from Council Member Byrd about the immediate removal of Chris Watts from the DCTA board. We have her full request here as it was written for us. And then a little bit of staff information that was provided here and in your backup. Just leave it up there for a few more seconds. And I'll stop sharing so that we can hear from Council Member Byrd. Thank you. This pitch is noted for the immediate removal and replacement of Chris Watts from the DCTA board. This removal demonstrates the seriousness of the majority of the mobility committee's responsibility to the city council and to the citizens recommendations to any efforts that are being put forth on behalf of the community of Denton, Texas in any and all areas. In other words, Mr. Watts and I heed the recommendations of the mobility committee and the city council as chair of the DCTA. The council is a voice of the community and the community is not in favor of this specific defiant decision that he made. It was apparently under his own guise, which absolutely is not appropriate because of this defiance. He is not at this point trusted to speak for us. And that means the community. Let this notation reverberate. The responsibility that any and all members of this community who choose to participate in the progress of making the city of didn't a place to live, work and play very serious matter. So the idea at this point, the recommendation at this point is to immediately remove Chris Watts and also replace him at the appropriate time, which is immediate. Thank you. Councilor Armitage. Yes, obviously I concur. I brought forward a similar proposal at the last meeting for remove and replace. I think that we need to remove the current representative and replace him at the same meeting. I think it's a high priority to do both at the next available meeting per DCTA board. Councilor Davis. We have an action item tonight to appoint a member to represent the city on the DCTA board, the spot former mayor Watts currently holds. There is no purpose except symbolic to remove him prior to the end of the term, but the council has the opportunity to do that if they replace him with someone else and a motion is made to make that effective immediately. That can be done without a special item, just like we did it in 2019, I think we've discussed this before, seems like deja vu, as we did when mayor Watts was first appointed. It's already hard enough to find volunteers who are willing to serve the city. It's hard enough to find people who want to be on the city council, people who want to be on these boards and represent us and be subject to the kinds of things that former mayor Watts has been subjected to. We're not making it any easier when we go out of our way to remove someone when we already have the mechanism to replace them available. >> My position hasn't changed from when this was presented before. Mayor Watts had a clear sense of where he wanted to go as mayor. He led the legislative change to increase his influence, got himself on the board and I think he was very much focused on efficiency and driving cost out and that's kind of, you know, seems to be the kind of focus in his approach to the go zone thing. This council is different and based on the resolution, it's more focused on increasing the total use of public transportation, more focused on labor fairness over cost concerns. So that's why I pressed forward on getting a council resolution, expressing our input, so we would have a more objective basis to judge whether we would continue with the same representative or not, but no final decisions are going to be made on bus routes in the one remaining board meeting of his term and he isn't staying on anyway. So this has no policy consequences and to my way of thinking, it just makes a difference in policy into a personal and political matter. All members here may not be giving their direction on that basis, but to me that's the impact and that's why I don't support it. Councillor McGuire. Thank you. My position also has not changed and continues to be based on policy concerns. We seem to be dancing around the issue of the cuts to fixed routes, which is the issue at hand and that's the reason that the community has reached out and voiced their concern about Chris Watts. Members of the community are concerned that if Chris Watts chairs the October 28th DCTA board meeting, that he might take actions that could lead to ending fixed bus routes, even if he does not continue on the board past the end of his term on November 12th. So I would like to give staff direction that yes, when we vote this evening on appointing a new nominee, that it be replacement effective immediately. Thank you. Councillor McVeigh. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I see this as essentially a reconsideration in effect of the last week's decision. The issues are the same. The opinions are clearly the same and therefore I will give direction that is clearly the same. So I would support this. Okay. So that is for in support of and so I'll take my minute to lament. So I this is this opens the door to me. If every and I'll quote this, the council is different. So every time the council is different, then this sets the precedent that we then look at this seat different. And I think that has dangerous implications. And I think everyone should understand that the precedent we're setting as far as every time the council changes, which is potentially every year, this will happen. And you have this kind of retribution effect. It's one meeting. And for those watching along, please go look at that agenda. That agenda has one item on it. And it's the salary for Mr. Suarez. And that is it. There's one meeting about saving, I hope this the sales tax of $30,000. And so it is critical that we have someone there that understands and will prevent and save the set the sales tax of $130,000. And so I think that is then that's the only topic. There's nothing else on there. So I disagree with some of the statements made today. Thank you, Mayor. Just a quick question. If this passes, which you just alluded to that it will, we may want to move the items this evening so that we can revise the resolutions accordingly. If this passes removing him immediately, we will need to then revise those ordinances. Well, and then legal needs time to review because last week we gave him the direction not to review. This week, obviously that's changed. And so that puts them in the hot box as well. So I guess that also no one gave an indication. And so I want to I want to have a clear record. So if we can just go down each, I'll call each, but you need to prioritize this. And so because you're going to take legal from the business they're doing, obviously they don't have downtime, but they're just hanging out. So their days are full. So we need to then pull them off of something to research this legal issue that we discussed last week. So I'll go down the line and give it a priority council member armature. It's high, medium or low. So like I already said, high priority. Thank you. And Councillor Burke. Hi. Okay. Councilor Davis. I'm a no, so zero or whatever. Got it. Mayor Proctor Meltzer. I think Mayor, I think you want to know for the people who are moving it forward with their priorities. Well, no, I want to have a clear record of just, well, if it's going to happen, it's, it's, it's happening tonight. So I mean, is that the option? No, the option is the city attorney has not worked on it because we told him not to. Yeah. No, I got that. So then he's going to either make it a high priority and work on it and take away from something else, or he's going to make it a lower priority or work it in when he can. Well, I think because it's timely, it has to be high priority, whether I want to do it. Well, I just want to get your, your take on it is a high priority to Mayor Proctor Meltzer because of the timeliness. Yeah. Thank you. Council Member McGuire. High priority, but really there's only one sentence in the resolution that needs to be changed. Thank you. Well, that's not true. He needs to research. We talked about that in closed session. Don't want to go into that, but there is research to be done. Council Member Beck. High priority. And I don't see why we can't just amend the motion in progress tonight. Okay, great. Thank you. And it's a low priority to me. So there you go. Thank you, Mack. You have notes you need. That concludes our work session. Just one real quick question. So there were the two items on the agendas and I just want to be clear because I want to make sure, because Rachel's sitting here, those will have to be changed, but we will work with the legal city attorney's office to bring them back next week. Is that correct? Or are we, that's why I want clarification. That's my understanding because the issue, the legal issue was raised last week and it remains and it remains unresolved. So every item that gets on the consent, on the agenda has to go through legal. So whether this dais likes it or not, the city attorney needs time to research because we told him not to research last week and now we're now telling him to research this week and he needs time and his office needs time to do that. That's just, that's every item that comes on the agenda. That's consistent. It's not just this one. It's just, that's a fact. And so Matt, correct me if I'm wrong. You're correct mayor. The direction last week was that this was not going to go forward. I think there were some unresolved questions in closed session. If the consensus of the council is tonight to take action tonight, we may go into close just to talk through what we know and we don't know legally. If council wants to move forward without that research being done, I think it's within the council's prerogative to do so. I think that that's probably a closed item to discuss what we know and we don't know and council could take that risk going forward. But if the direction is to wait till next week to take action both on nominating for the next term as well as immediate action, that would certainly give our office and the city time to prepare this item. The concept of a two minute is tell us to move forward or not before we spend a lot of time working on something. We haven't had that direction yet or that time to work on it. Exactly. And that is my understanding that this process, the two minute process, isn't retroactive immediately. It moves to the next meeting. That's right. And that's by process and by the normal process of getting stuff on the agenda one but then by this two minute process, we agreed it's not instantaneous. We had one instance where we did that but that is not how it's created, my understanding. So we're going to -- I see the board but we're going to conclude the work session at 5.16 p.m. And welcome back to this meeting of Denton City Council. It is 5.17. We are back on the record. Mr. City Attorney, I had a question. The concluded item, the last work session item, which is a one minute pit, two minute pit now, and one minute discussions. And then I concluded the meeting. There's a point of order question regarding questioning my ability to conclude the meeting after this item. You've heard those statements and seeking direction from you. Yeah, so first item to do, Mayor, is to rule on the point of order and then based on your ruling, the council could take steps beyond that either to appeal or to move on with the meeting. Okay. And what item would that come under? Sorry, Mayor, the point of order is to -- as I understand it, to continue the discussion under this two minute pitch item. Right. And then so what allows more than one minute conversations on that item? Right. So that would take, like I say, further council action to proceed down that manner. That would be not to guide the council on how they would go about doing that, but they could pursue options to continue that conversation. Thank you. Okay. So Council Member Armer, if you'll state your point of order. So, yeah, my point of order was based on the premise that this two minute pitch and the one minute responses had already happened. And then there was a discussion happening in conclusion about or rather there was a decision made unilaterally, you know, with that discussion to take action at the subsequent meeting. There were a number of council members who were lined up in the queue to speak. And Robert's rules, you know, says that, as I understand it, that the person leading the meeting should call on people to speak. And until people are done speaking, unless we have some other rule that says that, you know, we can't speak. Yeah. So I disagree -- I don't know what your point of order is. You never stated it. But I disagree with your assertion that I -- I'm saying my point of order that -- Well, you can't cut me off. You don't like me to cut you off. I'd ask you to do the same. So my decision is that we -- the conclusion -- there's no -- the agenda does not allow for further discussion on this item. And the discussion was the city manager and city attorney given direction on what time they'd need to properly bring something back to make sure we're best educated. And I don't think that has anything to do with me opining further than the one minute I had. So that's my decision. I would like to appeal that. Okay. I need your help. State your motion. I move to appeal that decision. Is there a second? So the board is chuck full of names. So I don't know how you want to do that. I'm not -- Councilmember McGuire? I second. There we go. I second. Okay. So we have a motion and a second to appeal the discussion. I guess I'll terminate that discussion. Councilmember McGuire? Well, my name is just still on the board from the questions that I had for staff earlier. Okay. You can pull that out. Councilmember Davis? This is just on the point of order. The mayor had his one minute. The city manager, as often happens after this procedure that we go through at the one minute pitch, said thanks for that direction. Here's how that will play out. That was it. That was done. The agenda item is done. We have an action item to talk about this tonight. The mayor's point -- the point of order is absolutely incorrect. You don't just get to talk when you feel like talking. That's not how Robert's Rules works. The item was done. We had exhausted the business of the item. It was over with. There is no further discussion. There's nothing in our Rules of Procedure for discussion on the one minute, two minute pitch. It's over and done with. Let's have the real conversation later tonight. Nobody loses anything by following the rules here. The mayor is correct. Mayor Proctor ? I think the question is -- has arisen because the mayor was indicating an outcome that would follow that would be -- at least as far as I could tell, that would be different than having the item come up tonight. I might be wrong about that. So I think that -- introducing a consequence that there might not be clarity on is a reason to discuss it. But as far as how to do that, we do absolutely have rules on one minute pitch very clearly laid out. So in my opinion, the available motion would be to suspend the rules in order to discuss the consequences of the previous item. >> For a point of clarification, if the item right now, the two minute pitch, does not go through, we still have on the agenda items for individual consideration, as councilmember Davis says, that could go through, and it says an effective date. Therefore, that discussion could take place later, not withstanding what you're doing here. If you don't approve that, then you go into, make your resolution, who you want as your primary and secondary, and you give as council direction of what date that is effective. >> Yeah, it's just -- no one is paying attention. Mayor Plotim, you're still there. Are you done? No. Councilmember Armitage. >> Thank you for that clarification, Ms. City Manager. I will happily remove my motion now that it's -- that has been explained. That is what I thought it to mean, but it was actually the mayor -- and I was paying close attention, Mayor. You seemed to be implying that this would involve necessarily having this whole discussion at a later date, which is -- which, at least for me, raised the subsequent questions. I don't know about the others who were in the queue, but I myself will gladly remove my motion if we still get to have this discussion that we are posted to have. >> Thank you. And somehow, then -- I'll just conclude with this. Somehow, Councilmember Davis repeated everything I said, and I didn't pass him any notes, so somehow it was communicated. I just -- somehow it wasn't communicated. So I'll do better. Thank you very much for the input, and at 525, that concludes our work session. Thank you. >> Good evening, and welcome to this meeting of the Denton City Council. It is October 19th. We do have a quorum. It is 630. So we will reconvene for a regular scheduled meeting. And so we'll try to move along, try to get everybody out of here by 635. But to start, if we could stand, if you're able to join us for the reading of the U.S. and Texas Pledge of Allegiance. >> I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Thank you. And then that takes us to our proclamation, so I will step down and we'll go through those. [Silence] >> So the first proclamation is shelter your neighbor week. So anyone associated with that proclamation can come down. Hello, how are you? Yeah, thank you very much. And if you could introduce yourself and tell us a little about what we're recognizing today. >> Sure, thank you. >> Oh, good, good. >> Oh, yeah. >> Hello. >> My name is Emily Taylor. I am the board president of operations at our Daily Bread, and this is Wendy McGee. She is our executive director. And we had shelter your neighbor week this past week. Our goal was to bring awareness to the hungry and homeless that are in our Denton community. And I just want to say we just are so grateful to the city of Denton for the invaluable support and to all the citizens of Denton for supporting as well. >> Okay. And do you want to share a little bit about the kind of looking forward, the new organization? Do you want to share a couple things? >> Sure, sure. Well, we're really thrilled we have partnered with the city of Denton and currently our Daily Bread is operating in three locations. But hopefully in about a year from now, October of 2022, we will be moving into a new building where all of our services will be under one roof. And we are thrilled about that. We feel like we're going to be able to serve our guests so much more efficiently, more effectively, and be able to show them the dignity that they deserve. >> Outstanding. Thank you very much for that. Okay. So the proclamation reads, mayor of the city of Denton, a proclamation by the mayor of the city of Denton to all whom these presence shall come greetings. The citizens of Denton are compassionate and show kindness. And whereas our Daily Bread's mission is to feed, shelter, care for neighbors in need. And whereas our Daily Bread strives to nourish, shelter, and connect its guests to independent living. And whereas our Daily Bread offers its guest opportunities for a new start. And whereas our Daily Bread envisions a community where everyone enjoys a life of independent dignity and hope. Now, therefore, I, Gerard Hudsworth, mayor of the city of Denton, do hereby declare and proclaim the week of October 12th and 18th, 2021, as Shelter Your Neighbor Week in the city of Denton, and encourage all citizens to consider volunteering and/or supporting our Daily Bread to be a part of a positively impacting, be a part of positively impacting our city. So thank you very much. I appreciate that. Can we give them a hand? [APPLAUSE] Wonderful. Thank you very much. You're appreciated. Thank you for being here. I always appreciate it. Thank you so much. I appreciate what you do. That brings us to the, now we have the Denton Diablos. Anybody here to accept on behalf of the Denton Diablos? Okay. Well, we'll read it for them and we'll get it to the right person. So it says, greetings, whereas in honor of Denton Diablos FC upon the conclusion of their 2021 national premier soccer league championship season, and whereas the entire off season and seasons presented numerous hurdles due to COVID-19 pandemic, with the team adapting to and overcoming those challenges with the support of a close knit group of players, coaches, staff, and support of one of the best fan bases in the country, and whereas the players and coaches of Denton Diablos FC worked diligently to strengthen the organization's winning culture and represent the city of Denton on a national platform, and whereas Denton Diablos FC returned to MPSL competition after the cancellation of the 2020 season, going 8-1-1 in the Lone Star Conference, regular season play, and then winning both the Lone Star Conference tournament championships and the West Region championship, ending with an overall 13-1-1 record. And the 2021 NPSL national championship, and investing over 90 teams from across the country, and whereas the effort put in by the players, coaches, trainers, managers, and staff has culminated in not only a national championship, but also with players Sam Cote winning the NPSL golden ball, Trevor Aman winning the NPSL national championship man of the March match, and three players and head coach Roman Raya making the all-conference team, whereas these players and coaches have succeeded in demonstrating the quality of sportsmanship and success within the city of Denton, shown the value of hard work and dedication, and represented the best of their community. Now I therefore, Gerard Hutsworth, mayor of the city of Denton, Texas, do hereby recognize the Denton Diablos for their achievements and urge all citizens of the city of Denton to continue to share in celebration of their accomplishments. If we can give them a hand. [applause] We'll get that to them. Thank you. And that takes us to Friends of the Libraries Week. You can come on down. Hello. All right. Hello. Good evening. Hi. So if you want to introduce yourselves and then whoever the spokesperson is. Good evening. My name is Bob Desiderato, I'm president of the board of directors of the Denton Friends of the Public Library. And I have with me other officers, Terry Lupo and Charity Broomfield. And we are, the purpose of the Friends is to raise funds for the various programs of the public library. And mainly, the main one of interest to most of us on the board and in the Friends is the summer reading program for children, which we have had every summer now at all three branches for many, many years. We raise funds through a bookstore we have at the North Branch and through a quarterly book sale that we have unfortunately not been able to hold because of the pandemic restrictions, but we hope to resume with the encouragement of the city. And we hope to do that starting in February of next year. And we are grateful to the city for this proclamation because I think it brings visibility to us and our programs. And hopefully, we get more in terms of participation with a new membership as time goes on. Thank you very much. Sure. And Lenny, do you have any words? I'm just a member of the Friends of the Library. And like it or not, libraries made me who I am today. So you can decide that's a good thing or bad, depending. But I love the libraries and always support them. Excellent. And I really liked your YouTube video you did over there. That was fantastic. You did a great job. I saw it on YouTube, the video. Anything else you want to add? Okay. Great. Okay. Thank you. Friends of the Denton Public Libraries raise funds that provide resources for additional programming, much needed equipment, support for children, summer reading, and special events throughout the year. And whereas to work on the Friends Centers, the focus of our library as the cornerstone of our community by providing opportunities for all to engage in lifelong learning and connecting with the thoughts and ideas of others from the past to present. And whereas the Friends of the Denton Public Libraries understands the critical importance of well-funded libraries and advocate to ensure that our library gets the resources it needs to provide a wide variety of services to all ages, including access to print and electronic materials, expert assistance to research, readers, advisory, and children's services, to name a few. And whereas the Friends gifts of time and commitment to the library is a prime example of volunteerism, which leads to positive civic engagement and the betterment of our community. Now and therefore, I, Gerard Hutzpeth, Mayor of the City of Denton, Texas, do hereby declare and proclaim the week of October 17th and October 23rd as Friends of the Library Week. And I urge everyone to join the Friends of the Denton Public Libraries and thank them for all they do to make our library and community a better place. Give them a hand. [Applause] And Mayor, this is Jennifer Becker, our wonderful library director. Yes. [Applause] Thank you. Awesome. Thank you all very much. Appreciate it. Thank you. Yes. Pleasure. Thank you. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you. All right. A few more here. And so we have Lights Out Nights. Is there anyone here that would be accepting that Lights Out Night? Oh, great. Do you want to speak to what we're recognizing? Sure. Tonight, we just want to bring awareness to the migratory path of birds through North Texas -- sorry -- through North Texas in both the fall and the spring and how the light pollution does impact that and encourage folks to turn off their lights, their non-essential lights, on those evenings when we have peak migration. And I'm Katherine Barnett, sustainability manager. Michael Gagne, the director of environmental services and sustainability. And Michael, when did you join us? I joined us on October 4th. Yes. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. Okay, so it reads, greetings. Every spring and fall, nearly 2 billion birds travel through the state of Texas. This number represents between a quarter and a third of all birds migrating throughout the United States. It is important to recognize this massive migration of birds occurs at night, and whereas these birds must contend with rapidly increasing but still under recognized threat, light pollution. Light attracts and disorients these migrating birds, confusing them and making them vulnerable to collisions with buildings and other urban threats. And whereas according to Lights Out Texas, more than 1 billion birds die in collisions with buildings in the United States annually. And whereas the extensive and intense light pollution from Texas cities with the enormous bird migration create a particularly hazardous environment. And whereas the city of Denton is a community that cares about protecting wildlife and the environment. And whereas Denton is joining in an international Lights Out effort by proposing the -- implementing a simple solution to protect birds, turning off nonessential lights during critical migration periods, turning off nonessential lights dramatically reduces hazards to migrating birds, allowing them to safely proceed with their journey. And whereas with each passing season, light pollution continues to increase and more birds are at risk. And whereas Lights Out Texas is a statewide initiative that aims to raise awareness of this issue and is led by Cornell Lab of Ornithology and former first lady and founder of Texas by nature, Laura Bush. And whereas residents and business owners are encouraged to help protect birds by turning off all nonessential lighting during the critical bird migration period, which begins 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. from September 24 until October 29, 2021. Now, therefore, I, Gerard Hutsworth, mayor of the city of Denton, Texas, do hereby declare and proclaim September 24 until October 29 as Lights Out in the city of Denton and encourage all citizens and businesses to turn off nonessential lighting during the critical bird migration period. Let's just give them a hand. [Applause] We have domestic violence and awareness month, if you're here to speak. Hi. If you want to introduce and we'll pass it down. Tony Johnson Simpson. I'm the very proud executive director at Denton County Friends of the Family. The agency was established 41 years ago here in the city of Denton to provide essential services for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. I always say that the city of Denton was the very first and the only provider of funding for the agency to start some 41 years ago. $10,000 was the annual budget. Now, this year it's 5.5. If y'all want to step in and do that again, we can -- but October is always nationally recognized as domestic violence awareness month. We want to take time to not only honor and celebrate the lives of those women and sometimes men who have lost their lives as a result of intimate partner violence, but also to increase awareness to let others know how you may seek help. We know in 2020 there were some eight citizens of the Denton County area that were killed as a result of domestic violence. We'll celebrate and honor those people in a candlelight vigil that will be virtually done. But I have some members of our staff here. We are a staff of about 75. We have over 500 volunteers a year. And we serve about 4,400 people a year that receive services at our different six locations throughout the community. And we're always honored and pleased that the police department here in city of Denton is always so essential and very supportive of the work that we do. Thank you very much. Thank you. Chief, anything you -- Yes, sir. On behalf of Chief Dixon who couldn't be here tonight, I just want to tell everybody how much we appreciate friends of the family and our relationship that we have with them. We have a commitment within our department to work with victims of family violence. We have victim services. We have our detectives and our supervisors. But we have the collaborative team. And we could not do what we do without the friends of the family, folks. So it's a great partnership. And there's a true commitment to help victims. Thank you. Thank you. And it says a proclamation by the mayor of the city of Denton, Texas to all whom these presents sell come greetings. Whereas for the past 41 years, Denton County friends of the family have provided compassionate and comprehensive services to those impacted by rape, sexual abuse and domestic violence while partnering with Denton community to promote safety, hope, healing, justice and prevention. And whereas by working together with shelters, affiliated programs, municipalities and concerned individuals, Denton County friends of the family has worked extensively to change social attitudes about and response to relationship violence and sexual assault. And whereas all people have the right to live without fear, abuse or oppression and domestic violence affects people of all races, ages, genders and backgrounds. And whereas all people have the right to -- let me see. I'm sorry. Whereas Denton County friends of the family received more than 3,000 crisis calls and text messages from victims of domestic violence and provided 7,435 nights of emergency shelter for adults and children in 2020. Can we give that a hand? That's amazing. Thank you very much. And whereas Denton County friends of the family served more than 4,000 clients and provided over 87,000 services last year including counseling, advocacy, case management and support services and whereas advocates, professionals, volunteers and community members concerned about domestic violence will devote the month of October to raising awareness about the causes, interventions and preventions of the devastating crime of domestic violence. Now, therefore, I, Gerard Hutzpeth, Mayor of the City of Denton, Texas, do hereby declare and proclaim the month of October as Domestic Violence Awareness Month in the City of Denton and to reaffirm the city's commitment to ending domestic violence in our community and encourage everyone to acknowledge the lasting impacts and the staggering numbers of families affected by domestic violence if we can give them a hand. Okay. World Polio Day. While they're coming, I spoke to the pilot knob rotary and so they gave me a certificate I thought was really neat and learned a lot about what they're working on so honored for them to be here today. And if you want to start us off, introduce yourself. I will. I'm Max Morley and I'm president of the Denton Noon Rotary Club. Should we all introduce ourselves? Yes. Yes. I'm Amber Briggle. I'm also a member and I'm this year's World Polio Day club ambassador. I'm a member of the Denton Rotary Club. I'm just a member. And a past president. And I'm Vince Boyer, also a member of the Denton Rotary Club. And we have another Rotarian here with us. Paul Meltzer is a member of our club. And Jesse Davis is a Rotarian, but he's with a different club. So we're going to talk about our club tonight. So I just want to say a few words as the club ambassador for the World Polio Day club ambassador. World Polio Day is on October 24th. Our club, by the way, has been in existence here in Denton for 100 years. We meet across the street at El Chaparral on Thursdays at noon. You all are welcome to join us. Just let us know ahead of time so we can save you a seat. But all are welcome to join. That includes people here at City Hall. You have to eat lunch sometimes. It's right across the street. Rotary's history with polio goes back about 30 years. Polio, as many of us know, is a very deadly, very dangerous disease that's fortunately preventable with vaccines. And Rotary's been driving the effort to eradicate this disease for over 30 years. We've contributed billions of dollars and countless volunteer hours to protect nearly 3 billion children in 122 countries from this paralyzing disease. And when Rotary International -- so we're just one club of an international organization, but when Rotary got involved in 1988, there were 350,000 cases of polio in 125 countries every year. And today we have reduced polio cases by 99.9%, which is amazing. Because of the efforts of Rotary and our partners, nearly 19.4 million people who would otherwise have been paralyzed are walking. And more than 1.5 million people who are alive are alive who would otherwise be dead. That's amazing. Today -- now, we don't have polio in Denton. It's been eradicated in the United States since 1979. But the infrastructure that we've built as Rotarians is still working for us in our community here today, right? So, for example, at the Texas Motor Speedway, there were over 150 Rotarians, including myself, including Vince, who volunteered in this mass vaccination effort. We volunteered over 3,000 hours, which helped to vaccinate 350,000 people right here in our community. And our county judge, Andy Eads, is also a Rotarian. So the infrastructure that we built over these last 30 years is still working in our community today. And that's just really an awesome example of the power of Rotary and service above self. So thanks. >> Thank you. >> Okay. So it says greetings. Whereas Rotary International is a global network of neighbors, friends, leaders, and problem solvers who unite and take action to create lasting changes in communities across the globe. And the Rotary model, service above self, inspires members to provide humanitarian services, follow high ethical standards, and promote good will and peace in the world. And whereas in 1985, Rotary launched Polio Plus, and in 1988, and in 1988, helped establish the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, which today includes the World Health Organization, U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, UNICEF, and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, to immunize the children of the world against polio. And whereas polio cases have dropped by 99.9% since 1988, and the world stands on the threshold of eradicating the disease, to date, Rotary has contributed more than $2.2 billion in countless volunteer hours and protecting nearly 3 billion children in 122 countries. And whereas Rotary is working to raise an additional $50 million this year, or per year, which would be leveraged for maximum impact by an additional $100 million annual by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. And whereas these efforts are providing much needed operational support, medical staff, laboratory equipment, and educational materials for health workers and parents. In addition, Rotary has played a major role in decisions by honoring governments to contribute more than $10 billion to the effort. And whereas there are over 1.2 million Rotary members in 36,000 clubs throughout the world that sponsor service projects to address critical issues such as poverty, disease, hunger, illiteracy, and environment in their local communities and abroad. Now, therefore, I, Gerard Hutsworth, Mayor of the City of Denton, Texas, do hereby proclaim October 24, 2021 as World Polio Day in Denton and encourage all citizens to join me and Rotary International in the fight for a polio-free world. Give them a hand, please. [applause] >> Thank you, sir. >> Thank you. Appreciate it. Yes. Thank you very much. How are you doing, sir? Good to see you. Yes, sir. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay. So we have one more. So the National Colonial Heritage Month. Is there anyone here to receive that? Okay. Well, I'll read it and we'll get it to them. Okay. Oh, hey. How are you? Okay. If you can tell us a little bit about what we're recognizing, that'd be great. >> I'm Wanda Samick. I'm President of the Star of Destiny Chapter, Colonial Dane, 17th century. Our organization is a lineage society. Our members have to trace and prove their lineage back to colonists, American colonists in the 1600s. Our focus is on patriotism, supportive veterans, community service, and our chapter is real active in that area. And Mayor, we appreciate you coming to the dedication we had last fall at Oakwood Cemetery. >> Yes. Do you want to tell people about the -- that was a database y'all helped create? Or do you want to talk a little bit about that? >> Our project last fall, it turned into a little more than we had intended. We researched the lives and determined how many veterans were buried at Oakwood Cemetery. And we prepared a profile for each one of those. We then mapped their locations, gave a GPS coordinate, wrote up the bow, bought medallions and placed at each veteran's grave. And every holiday, we'd go out and put flags in those medallions. And that was a doozy. >> Oh, man. Turned out well. Thank you very much. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Uh-huh. And so it says, to all whom these present shall come, greetings. Whereas the star of destiny chapter of the National Society of Colonial Dames, and is that -- help me out. Is that 17? >> 17th century. >> Yeah, I practiced that. So 17th century, it's Roman. Yeah. And the country of Denton, Texas, is locally observing and promoting National Colonial Heritage Month during the month of October 2021. And whereas National Colonial Heritage Month recalls the first and courageous settlers who arrived in America, founded colonies and determined the direction for formation of our country, and whereas the members of the society, by virtue of their lineal descent from those early arrivals, are imbued with an obligation to support and work towards preservation of the principles of which the United States of America was founded. And whereas those same members strive to continuously convey the true meaning of their inheritance by reminding themselves and others that we all are privileged to live in this free country and enjoy the many liberties and privileges which we take for granted every day. Now, therefore, I, Gerard Hutsworth, mayor of the city of Denton, Texas, do hereby declare and proclaim the month of October 2021 as National Colonial Heritage Month in the city of Denton and encourage all citizens of the city of Denton, Texas, to observe this month as a means of remembrance for those that helped form this great country that we all are blessed to be a part of today. If we can give them a hand. If I can make a comment, you've acknowledged so many wonderful members of the community who contribute, and I just want to point out that among them are two former members of this body, Lenny McAdams and Jack Thompson, who both served on City Council, setting a great example of continuing to serve the community. Great. So that takes us to presentations by the public. So we have, we have a few scheduled, so I'll call the first, which is item A, it's ID 2125. Mr. Tristan Sickle, regarding proposed ordinance about cannabis decriminalization in the city of Denton. Thank you, Mayor. If you'll allow me just a couple of seconds to get Tristan through. Thank you. Mayor Tristan should be in now. Okay, Tristan. Hello. Yes, if you could. Yes, thank you for your for calling in. If you could please give us your name and address and then you can go ahead and start. You'll have four minutes to speak. Okay, so my name is Tristan cycle and my address is 601 Eagle Drive Apartment 101 Denton, Texas. Right. Hello, I'm here today to present reasons why our city council should implement a proposed ordinance that would ban arrest and citations for misdemeanor level cannabis possession offenses. Second, second slide, please. Let's first quickly debunk two myths that continue to negatively impact cannabis policy. Next slide. The peer reviewed studies show that cannabis reform does not create more crime and outright legalization can actually result in less teen and adolescent use than in areas that have allowed the underground cannabis market to remain open for business, such as our own state and community. Next slide. Cannabis causes serious societal harms compared to legal substances is another common myth. Research shows that alcohol and tobacco are considered extremely more harmful to oneself and others compared to cannabis. Additionally, the therapeutic lethal dose index rate is substantially higher for alcohol and it's only 10 times the therapeutic dose compared to cannabis, which is well over a thousand times the effective dose. While volunteering for UNT's opioid overdose prevention day back in 2018, I remember speaking to a Denton police officer who confirmed that the most frequent overdose situation they encounter involves alcohol. There is not a comparable public health issue involving the illicit use of cannabis in our community. Next slide, please. Now, let's discuss some of the negative consequences that stem from enforcing cannabis prohibition. Next slide. Cannabis arrests have enabled US mass incarceration, wherein we lead the world as a country with the largest prison population. 5% of the world's population lives here in the United States and yet we are home to 25% of the world's prisoner population. As seen in the chart here, Texas incarceration rates are significantly higher than the national average. Even though white people in communities of color use cannabis at similar rates, black and white people are disproportionately arrested for simple cannabis possession, a substance that's been scientifically proven to be more safe than currently legal drugs. Next slide, please. I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Denton Police Department back in August for local data on cannabis arrests found and found that in 2020, the city of Denton spent over $13,000 on THC concentration testing. Given that cannabis has been shown to not cause as much societal harm as currently legal substances, it is a waste of valuable taxpayer-funded police resources to continue arresting and citing people for simply being found with small amounts of cannabis, which is a nonviolent and victimless offense. Also, this request showed that 120 black men were arrested for cannabis possession, while 128 white men were arrested for the same offense that year. This clearly shows that we are wasting our city money to racially target black men tonight for cannabis arrests. Next slide. In response to the Texas State Legislature passing a bill in 2019 that legalized cannabis with low THC concentration, the Denton Police Department decided to stop arresting people found with under an ounce of flower cannabis and instead issue a Class C paraphernalia ticket. We should build on the sensible reform initiated by our local police force and help our first responders have a less traumatic and difficult job by passing this ordinance to ban arrests and citations for low-level cannabis possession. Last slide, please. Briefly, this proposed ordinance seeks to do three things. One, ban all arrests and citations for misdemeanor cannabis possession cases, which goes up to a Class A misdemeanor offense. Two, ban the use of drug paraphernalia tickets in lieu of cannabis arrests. And three, the city will not pay for THC concentration testing for cannabis possession cases unless it involves high-profile trafficking or a violent offense. I now entore the City Council to set up a work session to discuss implementing this proposed ordinance in the City of Denton. Thank you for your time. Okay. Thank you. And I think if you all will just want Councilman Armitage. Sorry. It took me a moment to get my button to work. Just to say briefly, thank you so much for speaking. As you know, I support this initiative very strongly, have been very public and vocal about it. And so thanks to you and Decrym Denton for all your work. I look forward to supporting this, this ordinance. Okay. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much. Okay. That takes us to 3B, which is ID 212148, Ms. Eli. And I don't want to say the last number regarding cannabis discrimination in the City of Denton. Mayor, I just spoke with her. She is not feeling well this evening and has asked us to reschedule her. So we will get with her after tonight about that. So she has asked to be removed from the agenda tonight. Okay. Very good. Well, I hope she starts to feel better. Thank you for letting us know. That takes us to item C. And that's ID 212203, Ms. Alexandra. And I don't want to try not to butcher last names. Okay. Great. Thank you. You can step down to the microphone right there. If you could give us your name and address and you'll have four minutes to speak. Thank you. Can you hear me okay? Great. Thank you. Okay. My name is Alexandra Panett. I live at 1600 Highland Park Road, City of Denton, Texas. Before I begin, I'd like to thank the City Council for the opportunity to speak and to make our voices heard. I also want to thank the city police and the city staff for working with us on the issue that I'm going to talk to you about today and to my neighbors who are great people to live with and are incredibly supportive. In the next few minutes, I'd like to tell you a little bit about who I am, some of my and my neighbors' concerns, and you'll hear about a proposal for solutions and more on the problem from some of my neighbors. I moved to Highland Park Road 10 years ago to begin work at the University of North Texas. I am a dog walker, I am a jogger, and I am a commuter cyclist. My dog duties, exercise routine, and work at UNT mean that I walk, jog, and cycle the length of Highland Park Road, not one, not two, but three or more times a day. I am also a neighbor to the increasing number of children in our neighborhood, the mothers and fathers of those children, to expecting mothers and fathers of future children, to UNT students, staff, faculty, and alumni, to disabled residents, and to senior citizens. All of these people walk, jog, run, cycle, and push strollers down the length of Highland Park Road multiple times a day. I am here to express concerns about the safety of our neighborhood residents while using Highland Park Road. It is not uncommon for drivers to reach 40 to 50 mile an hour speeds on what is a 30 mile an hour and in some places a 20 mile an hour road. We also contend with large vehicles hauling construction materials and sometimes even semis. As you may know, we face additional challenges on Highland Park Road. There are no stop signs, there are no speed bumps, there are no speed deterrents of any kind, there are no sidewalks, and there are no shoulders. Last week, speed limit signs were installed along the length of our road and we are super thankful to the city staff for making that happen. In some places, there is literally nowhere to go in the face of oncoming traffic. A driver has two options, stop and let us pass or push us off the road into the ditch. Sadly, I have experienced both with equal frequency. Although I hesitate to speak for everyone in my community, everyone I have spoken to agrees that this is a problem. And I'd like to highlight this problem with a note on next door neighbor by one of the residents in the nearby community. And I quote this resident said, noticing stuff on North Texas Boulevard in reference to Highland Park Road, I have three issues. The signs in the yard for the most part are communicative, but the ones that say bro, well, I'm not your bro and I am offended. And I will say that we installed yard signs saying please slow down, please slow down to encourage drivers to please slow down. The resident continues, there aren't speed limit signs posted anywhere. Why is there not a push to curb and put a sidewalk in? Walkers do not belong on the streets, actually. They should be in the grass. Streets are for cars, for bikes, for motorcycles, not for people walking side by side. You pedestrians need to know your place, kind of like lights up there by the highway. People cross a lot of times when and where they want. Is NTSU, she means UNT, police policing this? Cars do not do need to slow down. But the big picture is that you pedestrians need to stay off the street and abide by the lights. Now, this is a jarring commentary. However, I would like to show that this resident rightly notes that we need a shoulder or a sidewalk to walk on. What is perhaps more frightening is the comment that we need to know our place. Angry drivers confronted with pedestrians with nowhere to go are ingredients for a disaster. We need your help fixing this problem and we need it now. It is not okay to wait until someone gets hurt. Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you very much. I'm sorry, we have one question, I think. Councilmember Armitage? No? Oh, yeah. Just a comment. Just to say, I hear you and thank you very much. I'm very familiar with that area and it's not safe. Thank you. Okay. It takes us to item 3D, which is ID 212204, Ashley Pembroke, regarding traffic challenges on Highland. Thank you, Mayor. I'm going to put Ashley in now. Thank you. Good evening, Ashley. Yes, sir. Hello. If you could give your name and address and then you can begin, you'll have four minutes to speak. All right. My name is Ashley Pembroke. I live at 1900 Westridge Street, Denton, Texas. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, councilmembers and citizens. I live in the Highland Park neighborhood of Denton and I've been a homeowner in Denton for five years. I've attended Denton Middle and Secondary schools and I've been a resident for almost 25. I've come here, along with my neighbors, to call your attention to the pedestrian safety situation on Highland Park Road. As my neighbors will attest, we have a challenge in our neighborhood in that the growth of our residents and traffic outpaces the investment in pedestrian infrastructure. That's to be expected as our city rapidly grows and I would like to put, I would like to provide some input on the priority of solutions. When we've met with city representatives prior, we've discussed traffic studies, the speed of traffic, the volume of traffic, the direction of traffic. But I would like to reorient us around the human component of the issue. This impacts many of us personally as we don't have sidewalks or access to the community except to traverse a road with a 30 mile per hour speed limit while traffic diverts around us. We don't have an option not to use the road and we're scared when we use it. All the pedestrian or traffic solutions we've discussed have centered around comprehensive fixes and it's difficult to have a one size fits all solution to our issue. Highland Park Road is constructed, guttered, and maintained differently along its route. And the road in our neighborhood grew due to development with no consistent width or shoulder ever implemented. Which makes something so simple as a sidewalk, nigh on impossible for you as community leaders to organize quickly. As more people are working from home and new housing development is being built and at least four new babies, my own included, arrive in the next year. I'd like to ask that we don't wait for Denton 2040 plans or other comprehensive city plans be put in place prior to taking action. Doing more now in little ways like designating a pedestrian walkway with paint along sections, putting in speed bumps, or adding a sidewalk to street sections where it could work could all come together to create a better safety situation while longer term plans are put in place. I would like to close with one thought. And that's that the current situation necessitates pedestrians to traverse a road with a speed limit of 30 miles per hour. The accepted fatality rate of adults been hit at that speed is over 40%. If you consider the school bus stops, UNT students on bikes, our proximity to an elementary school, and mothers with strollers, what are the odds that the first real accident we see on that street won't give us a second chance to prevent fatality. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. I don't see any questions for you. So, thank you. That takes us to three, which is ID 212227, Miss Lenny McAdams. And you can just use this podium so that you don't have to go around. Thank you. Yes, please. My name is Lenny McAdams, and I reside at 1426 Kindorf Drive, Denton 76205. I'm one of the longtime residents, and I've been talking to the council and city officials, both city managers and city engineers about the problem of ingress and egress for our neighborhood for almost 20 years. When the small area plan for our neighborhood was developed in 2001, it became obvious to everyone that we had a problem in this neighborhood, and that continues to be a serious problem. Since the south side of this neighborhood is surrounded by railroad tracks, and thus the potential for hazardous waste spill and the resulting need to evacuate the neighborhood quickly is very real. Since that finding of insufficiency in 2001, the traffic signal has been removed at the intersection of Acme Street and Fort Worth Drive, which previously afforded us access. That is not a safe alternative without that traffic light. Kindorf Drive's access to I-35 was closed when the highway was widened. Acme Street is now our only access point to the neighborhood. Holland Park Road has been an okay access. Holland Park is our only good access. Holland Park Road has been an okay access point for the neighborhood, but since it was reworked during the highway expansion, its connection to I-35 has become dangerous. It's one lane wide when you're leaving the area, and that results in a line of traffic waiting to turn right to access the highway. There are many things wrong with that intersection, all of which make it very dangerous. We also share that exit entrance with a great many UNT students, which we didn't previously have when the small area plan was developed. And with the addition of 700 plus single family homes being built off Holland Park Road and the multifamily development on Bonnie Bray, we are worse off than when the small area plan was developed. We are asking that city officials study the situation and come up with a viable solution before any further development takes place. We are absolutely not anti-development. We simply feel that appropriate ingress and egress should be developed first. We live and walk along Holland Park Road, which has no sidewalks on its northern end and is very narrow, so even if the ingress and egress is somehow made better, we will not be safe along that segment. I ask you to please help us. Please study this situation and make the necessary improvements to make this a walkable and bikeable area. I would go so far as to suggest that you look around in the engineering department because I think surely in 20 years of discussion, somebody must have thought of something and maybe it's just hiding in there and perhaps a thorough search will find it. We need help and we need it now. And I'm a walker also in my neighborhood. Walking is good for you, so don't deny us that right. Please. Thank you. Thank you. We have one question or comment. Councilmember McGuire? This is just a comment. I want to thank you and your neighbors for coming and speaking to us about this today. I'm very familiar with the area. I totally agree with the urgency of the situation and I want to sort of acknowledge to constituents and staff who are listening that I recognize that this is not an inexpensive proposition, right? The solution to this problem is not going to be quick and easy, particularly along Highland Park Road. The right-of-way acquisition is going to be significant in order to build the sidewalks that are needed there, but it's something that we must do and it's something that we must find the funding for somehow. Thank you very much. I appreciate the time. And then that takes us to Mr. Michael Lloyd. And that's a ID. It's item F ID 212266. This is your presentation, isn't it? Yes, it is. Thank you very much. Yes, it's working. Yes. Thank you. Yes. And if you could give us your name and address and then you'll have four minutes, you can go right in. All right. My name is Mike Leoy and thank you for taking a shot at it. I reside at 1802 Highland Park Road and I'm here to put an exclamation mark on what the last three speakers have already said. And we do have terrible traffic problems and they're getting much worse with the Eagle Creek development coming in. I'm going to refer to three documents, the traffic impact analysis that was done for the developer, the Denton Mobility Plan 2020, and the City of Denton Transportation Design Criterion Manual. Again, for general reference, this is the site south of I-35E and the broken blue line is Highland Park Road, which you can see runs all the way basically from the interstate to Roselon Drive. This is the site plan for 780 houses. There are seven phases and the first two phases are in development now. The broken line again is Highland Park Road. I believe that Highland Park Road has been mistaken somehow in both the traffic impact analysis and the Denton Mobility Plan and I'm going to start first with what the traffic impact analysis says. It says, highlighted in blue there, Highland Park Road to the north of the site has curb and gutter and it's built out to the City of Denton residential street collector section. It does not have curb and gutter and it is not built out to the criteria of a collector road. And I'm going to talk more about those in a moment. The Denton Mobility Plan with the dark arrow there is pointing to Highland Park Road and it's denoted as a collector road in the plan as well. If we look at the design criteria in this table, we can see how the design criteria for a collector road specifies a minimum width of 39 feet for a two-lane collector. And in addition, the design criteria provides some possible scenarios for those 39 feet with perhaps eight foot parking, six foot bike lanes, a four foot striped shoulder, etc. So I want to show you that Highland Park Road does not meet any of these minimum standards as a collector. Starting with this aerial photo, the broken line, red and yellow, are Highland Park Road and at the southern end, those first 653 feet are indeed to specifications at 39 feet. North of there, for the remaining 2,700 feet, Highland Park Road narrows to as much as 21 feet. I'll just flash through these aerial photos quickly. There's the 39 feet, 34 feet, 25 feet, 22 feet, down to 21 feet at 1213 Highland Park Road. Again, these are the possible, some of the possible ways of organizing the space and there are more, of course. Before we look at Highland Park Road, let me show you what real collectors look like. This is Forest Ridge Drive, which serves as a collector on the plan for Forest Ridge. It is at 39 feet. It has median, which is a nice bonus. It has gutters, storm drainage and bike lanes. And that's your time, but if you could, you know, you had 30 seconds or so to put a bow on it. Okay, here's the bow. Highland Park Road, 22 feet, a construction vehicle that takes up almost, you know, more than half of the road, 44% undersized. And at these access points, if you look at the drive time, Highland Park Road is only two minutes from all of the interstate accesses. No other access for the development that's going in is even within one minute. So I ask you to think about where we are with situations like this and what's going to happen next and to please tell us how we got to Highland Park Road being used as a collector. Thank you. Thank you. And if you could, we have a couple of questions, indoor comments and then, but if you could make sure, obviously staff already has your presentation and we'll take a look at that as well. I'll also send it to your inboxes at the city of Denton. Thank you. Perfect. Thank you. So, Councilmember Armitage. Well, I had a couple questions and what the first one was going to be, could you send us a copy of your presentation. So thank you. I'm glad that's going to happen. Second one, and I just shot off an email to just city manager's office asking for a report on, you know, what it would take to implement as soon as possible the suggestion, really demands of the, of those of you who spoke out for this really dangerous road and the improvements that are necessary. My other question for you is, would you support a moratorium on new development in this area until these necessary changes are implemented. I think that a moratorium is a great idea. I don't know what the legal challenges are to that with development that's already underway. But if you think about what's going to happen, the traffic impact analysis says there will be 8700 new daily trips coming from these new houses. Where are these trips going to go? On what roads are these trips going to go? This road that we're on, in no way can possibly handle that kind of traffic and we are the closest access point to the interstates. So, yes, a moratorium would be a great thing. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Mayor Proctor Meltzer. Yes, I just want to add my thanks to the to you and your neighbors who have raised this concern and to the, you know, the specific research that you did. It's really pretty hair raising. And I want to inform you that the three members of the City Council Mobility Committee are here. We're meeting tomorrow morning. And I guarantee you, we'll be discussing this. Thank you. Great. Thank you very much. Okay, the last, well, next to last speaker is Nell Yadel. And I'm sorry if I said that wrong, please forgive me. You can come to the microphone there at the center there, if you like, or, yeah, or if you have documents to show you can come all the way down and we can put those on the camera. It's up to you. Good evening. Good evening. My name is Nell Yadel. I reside at 516 East Ferry Street, Denton, Texas, 76205. Also, my voice is a little hoarse. I've been ill. I'm 83 years old and I have complaints. Okay. The first complaint I have, I have rent property, 514 East Ferry Street. I have never missed a utility bill since I've been in Denton. I had a renter to move out. His bills was paid up. I goes after he moved, I called the utility company. I says they moved out of 514. But what I want you to do is put all bills from now on in my name because there's two houses hooked up with one water bill. I don't want the tenants to argue. But she say she kept it on, but nobody there. Then they're going to charge me $190 each month for water bill. I say I don't even pay that much in my own house. How do you come up with $190? Ain't nobody. It's empty. So I'm rejecting it. I refuse to pay it. And we can go to court. There's nobody been in that house. I'm not a liar. I pays my bills. So if I charge me $190 for water bill for one month. Then they pull up another one. You have another 190. I say for what? 514. I say it's empty. How can it be? The administrator need to look into the matter. If you please. Sure. I will do that. I'll actually have staff look into this and find out. I beg your pardon. I said I will absolutely contact the person over there and ask them to look at the two $190 bills that you have. And have them relook at it. The fact that the property is vacant at 514 East Prairie Street. So I'll have them look into it. Also, I'm having another problem. My property at 518 East Prairie Street. In Texas, 76205. I live right next to it. I've been ill. I've been out of town most of the time. I had deaths in the family right behind each other. I haven't approached this because I haven't even been able to approach it. But I'm ready now. 518 East Prairie is a commercial property. I paid taxes. Big time taxes on it. They never used it. I paid taxes because it's my property. The city of Dent for years have used it for a drainage ditch. They water from all the streets, drains right beside my house, and it's 518 East Prairie, my property. Pay the tax on it, then they come along. I looked up, the railroad's building on it. Who, what are you doing on my property? Can't get in the court. I haven't spent $30,000 in a courthouse. They won't let me put my foot in. That's taking my rights away. I'm going to tell you the reason why. My deeds, my legal description on my home, my rental house is all corrupted. I've been trying to straighten it out for years. I have here a contract for about 518 East Prairie. I have here a contract on this contract where the accounting of Dent is supposed to copy, copy it out, send the original contract to me, and file. It's filed. But when they did it, when I filed this contract, put it into the county's hand. The county got through there, the clerk, I know who did it. I got her name. Me and her have talked one-on-one. Why did she do this? She went in there and added onto the contract to make my deeds illegal. I have it all written down. 514, 516, 517, 518. It's probably our home. We have one question or comment for you. Councilmember Armitage? Go ahead. Yeah, I was actually going to ask of the city manager what you had already said about having staff look into the first issue that you mentioned, and I would like for staff to look into the drainage issue. You mentioned, yeah, that your property has been being used as a drainage ditch. Right there by my house, it's a sweat. It's a concrete company on the right-hand side. The big trucks are there, maybe about 15, where they wash the cars and all that. All that comes my way. On my property, next to my house, we have bugs, we have rats, we have mosquitoes. It's a thing that no one is sharing to live there. And when it rains. Then we would have no right to live in such acts. Okay, so yeah, staff will follow up with you after this. We'll get your information. We'll have to point you in the right direction. Obviously, you said you already talked to the county, and we can get you the contact information for Congressman Burgess's office that's overseen. He knows me personally. Yeah, they oversee the railroad, but staff will help you with that, and we're looking at those two items and get you in contact with the right people. Sarah, can you? I'm here because I've contacted federal government. I told them the situation I'm having in Texas. They told me, these are their words, go back, report it, and see what they do. So I'm doing exactly what they told me to do. So if you don't mind, I'm asking one of the staff members to get with you, get your name again, and your phone number. I already have your addresses, and then I'll sit down with staff. We may have to come out there and look at something. I wish you could see something. And then we will see what we can do. How can a clerk sit in a courthouse and looking at a contract and add to it one half? When you add one half to property, that means you diluted it. It ain't no more good. Ryan, are you going to -- okay, if you'll see Ryan, he'll take that information for you. And city council, what I did, I talked to the secretary. She says, what are you going to do when you come in? I say I'll have documents, if you guys want, and I got some for everyone, if you want it. Okay. If you'll give it to Ryan there. Do you want them? Yeah. And there are many. Sure. Well, we got them in the car. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. The last speaker before the consent is -- Mayor, I had a question for staff regarding Ms. Yeldell's concerns. Will the stretch of Prairie Street that she was referencing, will there be -- does the bond project include drainage improvements to that stretch of Prairie Street? I don't -- No, I don't think -- I don't see, but I can get that answer for you. It just will -- and I'll send it out to you. Yeah. Okay. Last comment. Willie Hutzworth, that will be our seventh. Pops, dad, it's your turn. Come on. Step right up here to -- yeah, if I can't sleep, you can't sleep. Right here at the mic. Come on. I mean, I love you, pops. We're going to stay up together. You got to stay the whole meeting. All right. Name and address, you'll have one minute. All right. Willie Hutzworth, 623 Newton, and I used to love my son. All right. I want to speak to the fact that the area that I live in over by the Martin Luther King has started to take a turn for the worst, I think. We're trying to help that area grow and be a place where families can live, but there's a movement now, it seems, that is coming in and we think destroying the area. And I just want to say something about that to the council, that we need someone to help preserve what we are doing in that area. But it seems like there's some on the council that's saying no. That area should be something other than to have for families and things like that. So we are, I'm here to say that we're going to start mounting a movement so that we can take our community back, part of the city back, and continue developing it in a way that we can have families to move in there. And it seems like some on the council have a different idea than that. So I'm just here to let you know, and them, that we are going to try to fight what is happening there and to allow us, ask you to allow us time to continue developing what we need for our families over there. Where's the clock? It's right here in the podium. 152. Okay. Yeah. And again, I spoke to you before, that concrete place over there that's developing, or that's there, have that big eyesore concrete fencing. And we would like to maybe put some art on that to make it look better as a start. Thank you for your time and I'll be seeing you again. Love you, Gerard. Thank you. All right. That concludes our comments and takes us to our consent agenda. Quick question. There's a motion need to include excluding item, why, or is that already captured in. As long as you make that clear. Okay. Got it. So moves to our consent agenda. Nothing was pulled. So, but we do need to note that item why is was is excluded so Councilmember McGuire. I move approval of the consent agenda accepting item live counselor back. I second that. Okay, we have a motion to second any discussion. Seeing none, let's vote on the board. Councilmember requirement but yeah, and back on the second. Thank you. That passes seven zero, and I want to thank staff for kind of this initiative so what we've what we've done if you've come frequent at our meetings before we've moved the public hearings up. So that we can take care of those issues first then we go to items for individual consideration so and even on the nights we don't have kind of the formal beginning to presentations will move those public hearing up to the front so that people can speak to those. And try to get you home timely and hopefully, and bring out more people and more comments that sort of thing so we really want to hear from the public and we've adjusted accordingly. So that takes us to our first item which is item a which is z 210013 c, hold a public hearing and consider adoption of ordinance of the city of didn't Texas regarding a change in zoning district and use classification from residential rural our district to residential are one district on approximately 1.372 acres of land generally located on the south side of Miller road. Good evening, my name is Mark Laird, I'm planning this with the development service department. This evening for your reference and review. Have a request to resume 1.372 acres from residential rural to residential one, the properties located on the south on the middle road, and approximately 255 feet east of wash branch road. The site is currently vacant, and is surrounded by rural residential residential to an ETJ. The property owner is requesting the rezoning to allow for site compliance to develop the property for single family use on September 9 of this September 8 of this year, the planning is only recommended approval of this request. It's been provided in your backup. And based on that analysis staff recommends approval of this request. And I stand for any questions or comments you have. Okay, questions for staff. Seeing none, I will take a motion. Well, sorry, I'm sorry. Yes. And so I'll open on the public hearing as well just in case Councilman require just to clarify the, this rezoning would allow for the building of one single family home on this property correct correct. Okay. All right. Thank you. Okay, any other questions. And is there anyone here to speak on this item. One more time. Okay, then I'll close the public hearing and Mayor Pro Temelter. I move approval of this item. Thank you. Councilmember McGuire, I second. Okay, we have a motion by Mayor Pro Temelter second by Councilmember McGuire, any other discussion. Seeing none, let's vote on the board. That passes seven zero. Thank you, Mark. That pass passes to 5B which is Z 210010A hold a public hearing and consider adoption of the ordinance of the city of Denton, Texas, regarding a change in zoning district and use classifications for mixed use neighborhood, MN and residential are six to light industrial district. Good evening, Mayor members of the Council Haley's occurs key assistant planning director. The item before you is Casey 2110 for Gisling Road industrial. This rezoning request has two parts it's for a total of 20 point. 8 acres shown in yellow here on the screen that is currently zone are six and MN, as well as 4.17 acres located here along Gisling Road that consists of for one acre parcels currently zone rural residential. This request may look familiar to you all, I wanted to provide a little bit of background. In May of this year you saw a request for light industrial zoning on the property that's outlined in red here in the middle of the screen. At that time the project that was brought before you was to rezone that parcel, so that it could develop in conjunction with the site across Gisling Road that's outlined in blue. At that time, the applicant did have a site plan approval landscape plans approved, but they've decided to revamp and expand their request a little bit further so the two sites in yellow are now part of a larger project that would include that initial area in red. So all of the site on the east side of Gisling Road the yellow and red parcels on that aerial map would be developed with that original development that was going to split Gisling Road so all of that's moving east, and they now intend to possibly develop speculative zoning on that property. So that's what we're looking at tonight. We've already zoned L.I. property on the west side of Gisling Road. So hopefully that orients everyone to what we're looking at tonight. The PNZ has heard this request and recommended approval 7-0. So looking at our comprehensive plan, we walked through this in the past with that previous rezoning request. So we're going to go ahead and look at what we're looking at right now. This area is designated as moderate residential, so that's that 4 to 12 units per acre intended to provide those moderate density neighborhoods in walkable areas near neighborhood services. Not necessarily what has developed in this part of town, and you'll see on the map this area is also a stark transition where we have business innovation to both the north and the west of this site. This area is associated with annexations, existing industrial uses that were annexed into the city, for example, just across Gisling that are now zoned rural residential and nonconforming. There is a mixture of industrial uses, warehousing, manufacturing along 380 just to the north, as well as some retail uses in the area. So it's a highly mixed use area, probably unlikely to develop with the moderate residential designation that we see on it. So that's why even in May when we brought this to you, we mentioned at the time this is an area that staff is further analyzing with the comp plan update, because the facts on the ground don't match what the plan called for in 2015, and they still don't match today as things have progressed further. One of the other key factors to look at is the dashed red line that you see going north-south here on the far eastern part of the site. That is the current mobility plans alignment for future Post Oak Boulevard. As long ago as when this total 86 acre tract was originally planned for single family, that road alignment has been problematic, and staff had identified that it should probably shift to the Gisling Road corridor. So that's where we're looking at. And then over the past few years of things have developed in this area, and Textot has created their plans for 380 to be expanded, and then have that direct access ramp onto the loop that has been further supported by Textot. So that further lends itself to this property being more appropriate for non-residential uses than the current mixture of residential zonings. So just looking a little bit further at some of those changes that I've already referenced, this property, part of it was annexed in 1971. The larger portion, the smaller tracts were annexed as recently as 2013. They're currently non-conforming to the RR zoning. They could not be platted and developed as they are configured today, because they don't meet the minimum five acres required per parcel, or even if they were all consolidated. So those parcels would have to be re-zoned to be developed, regardless of what happens with this case tonight. There's also existing infrastructure that makes it very challenging to develop the site with residential that would lend itself to being a more compatible neighbor with a non-residential use. As you can see here, there's existing electrical infrastructure to the south of the site. There is a 70, I believe it's a 70 to 100 foot wide electrical corridor that traverses the site. There's also a major gas line that runs through the site. And that's part of the reason that that previous residential development we saw proposed here never came forward. And then as I mentioned, the TIA as well as the warrant study that's being done with TxDOT support this intersection at Geesling and 380 being expanded, with Geesling becoming a six lane arterial roadway that would be signalized in the future. Your backup provides a full analysis of all the criteria for approval. I'll just summarize some of those for you this evening. It is consistent with our comprehensive plan's goals for economic vitality to provide for some of these larger contiguous areas with light industrial rezoning to support continued growth in the industrial and warehousing sectors. The LI district is consistent with the mixture of uses and zoning that are on the ground in this area today. We would not expect any significant adverse environmental infrastructure or fiscal impacts from this, and infrastructure is in place to serve the site and be extended throughout the site. Notification was provided regarding this request, and we've received no responses to date. And finally, staff and the Planning and Zoning Commission are both recommending approval of this request, and I'm happy to stand for any questions. Great. So I'll open the public hearing and Councilmember McGuire. Um, so you kind of alluded to this, but I'd like to get clarification. In your opinion, if Council does not approve the zoning change request, would the developer move forward with some type of project here under the current zoning? So they already have the area that I showed gets kind of in between the two parcels we're looking at tonight is zone light industrial, so they could move forward with the plans that they already have approved that would result in the warehouse development or distribution center being on the west side of Giesling and the parking facilities for it being on the east side. Their plan now would be to consolidate all of that development on the east side with these three pieces for the rezoning and then leave the west side for speculative warehousing or some other development in the future. Um, and I saw somewhere in some backup, um, uh, that that there would be an entrance on university like east of Giesling, but then there would also be multiple right in right out entrances on Giesling. That's correct. They have multiple driveways planned. Let me pull up a map. Um, I definitely, you know, I'll say that I have safety concerns regarding, um, an entrance on university that's not at a signalized intersection. Um, traffic there is very, very fast. Um, I did. Do you happen to know if the developer had planned for a right in right out entrance on university or some other type of entrance on university? Off the top of my head, I can't recall. I believe that one was going to be, um, right in right out, but I can verify that for you. And then they do also have multiple entrances planned off of Giesling. And again, the Giesling and 380 intersection would be signalized. I believe they're planning at least two, uh, just regular driveways on Giesling as well as extension of a public street along the south side to provide additional access to the remainder of that, that parcel in the future. So they would have multiple points of ingress and egress besides just the university drive entrance. Okay. All right. Thank you. Councilman bet. So the it's my understanding from the discussion that, um, the owner still own the property and the with the current plan to the west of Giesling. And, um, the speculative warehousing sort of common, I guess, um, do we have anticipation that it would be a consistent business venture across Giesling with double warehouses or really? These are going to be two different business units or even sold in the future. If we approve this, um, the applicants here this evening, it might be better equipped to answer that question. It's my understanding they intend to develop the sites concurrently, uh, the ultimate ownership of those once they're developed. I'm not sure of, but the applicant would be here to speak to that question. And, um, I guess, uh, is there well, this is probably another applicant question. Is that is the, but I'll say it anyway, and then you can, you can adjust the components that are staff. Um, is there, there's anticipation that the, the, what you highlighted in a red, the, the, uh, the L shaped property parcel, uh, would be, uh, consolidated and merged with the eastern parcel at some point to create one parcel. Yes, if I'm following your question correctly, the three areas that were on that first map, the two pieces we're considering this evening, as well as the area in the middle and red would all be one, uh, continuous development. Those would be plotted as one lot for the warehouse distribution and all of its parking. So that's what I, I thought the answer would be. And so, um, can you, can you walk us through the guidelines for, uh, tree canopy preservation when you combine parcels like this? Sure. So if the, if all of those lots are plotted as a single lot, then the standard 30% tree canopy preservation for quality and heritage trees would apply. Um, as we talked about at the work session, there are options to lower that. They could do enhanced mitigation and take that down as low as 20%, but the entire lot that, that standard would be applied across the entire property rather than the individual tracks that it is now. Once it's plotted as one lot, the standard applies to the entire lot that's being developed. So if, if we were to hold them to the 30% slash flexibility standard now that would, that would result in, um, potentially a different, at least a different distribution of trees, uh, versus the combined, um, parcel. Um, perhaps the, so the tree preservation plan and requirements are triggered when they come in for their, whatever they do first. There's not in compliance or preliminary plat. So we would be looking at it as, as that future development plotted lot, unless these individual parcels were to come in with separate plans, um, ahead of that, perhaps. Okay. Thank you. All right. Any other questions for staff? Okay. Does the African have a presentation or just? Yes. Okay. Great. Thank you, Haley. Good evening, mayor, city council members. My name is Amy visit 109 North Elm Street, Denton, Texas 76201. I appreciate the opportunity to be here before you tonight. Um, some of you have seen this project previously. Others of you may, um, may be new to the project. So I will take a few moments to, um, maybe, maybe provide a little more clarity and light on some of the questions that were asked to Haley, um, just now. So I do want to let you know that I have Trey Braswell with Kim Lee horn here with me. He's the, um, engineer on the project. So if we get into some engineering related questions, we may call him up here and I have Matt Boone with skin L properties has called in online or I'm over the phone and can answer questions on behalf of the developer if necessary. Okay. And can you set the timer for 10 minutes, please? Okay. Thank you. So I want to start by maybe painting an overall picture here of how this how this project has evolved over the last several months. So I started here with an outline of the entire development impact area with, um, it's a little bit zoomed out so you can see the zoning map from loop to 88 all the way to. The view of states and beyond. And so the property does span on the east and west sides of Gisling. It encompasses multiple zoning districts today, but I want to point out that, um, the, the, the impetus behind the project to start with is that the property on the west side of Gisling was already rezoned ally. And the client skin L properties, put that property in contract to do a warehouse and distribution facility. They were going to provide some tandem parking for fleet vehicles and employee vehicles across on the other side of Gisling. And that was kind of how how this came about. So you guys did hear this project in May, and the partial on the east side of Gisling was rezoned to ally at that point in time. So, as Haley mentioned the current zoning request is to rezone and a little over 20 acres from three different zoning designations to ally. The purpose is to do a single tenant distribution center and parking for employees and fleet fleet vehicles on the east side of Gisling and a speculative warehouse and distribution development on the west side of Gisling. To walk you through kind of what happened with the previous zoning case and the property outlined in black here was already zoned ally, and the property outlined in red came before you in May to be rezoned to ally. During that time frame, both at planning and zoning Commission and City Council we heard various comments from commissioners and council members about how this parcel was kind of stranded on the east side of Gisling. And specifically concerns about the, the residential parcels to the south of here that are currently zoned are are and are undeveloped and undevelopable in their current state. Because our has a minimum lot size of five acres, so, and they are there, there were some, there were some comments expressed at the time that that there was a desire to rezone more of this to be more consistent with ally. Additionally, there were concerns that crossing Gisling Road for employees was a was a safety concern for pedestrians and there was some some some opinions expressed that it would be better if the, if the property, the developer could get the property consolidated to have the entire operation on one side of Gisling or the other. In, in the course of the last several months, the developer skin L properties has gone back to property owners surrounding and put these additional parcels and contract. The parcels on the east side here that are currently MN and our six that's one parcel. It is the same parcel that was that a portion of it was rezoned in May, this is one large parcel that has three different zoning designations on it currently. So they essentially just expanded the boundary of what they intend to acquire from that one property owner to the east, and then they went and individually put in contract the four small rural residential parcels immediately to the south. As Haley mentioned, this is an area of transition in terms of what's going to go here in the future. We do know that residential is likely not appropriate, due to 380 being a highway, due to all the traffic, due to, due to the existing development there today, we do have an electric substation to the south, industrial to the west, and a flea market just to the north and industrial to the northwest as well. And as Haley mentioned there are some site constraints that further make it inappropriate for residential development including a large gas pipeline and transmission easement. We did do a traffic impact analysis of course anytime there's a project coming online on 380. One of the big concerns is traffic. However, on the flip side of that 380 is intended to be a primary arterial highway that is supposed to have traffic. It's where in Denton we want to see our traffic happen we want to concentrate it in areas where it can be handled. However, having said that, we did do a full traffic study and signal warrant analysis. TxDOT is already working out in that area. They're constructing today an eastbound right-hand turn lane at Giesling and a westbound left-hand turn lane at Giesling, which will help facilitate better traffic movement in that area. And the proposed traffic improvements that came out of our TIA include the traffic signal at Giesling, widening Giesling Road, a driveway on 380 with a right-hand turn lane. So Councilmember McGuire, I think you mentioned concerns about specifically the entrance on University. The intent with the development is to try to provide as much access off of Giesling as possible and then to provide a right-hand turn lane going into the entrance on University in order to pull the traffic off of the main lanes of University before the slowing process and the turning process begins. And then we are also proposing a public road along the south boundary of the project on the east side of Giesling. That is all I have formally to present, but I am happy to answer any questions or facilitate discussion with the developer or the engineer. Thank you. Thank you. Questions for the applicant? Seeing none. Thank you. Is there anyone from the public that would want to speak on this item? Any public speakers? Okay. I'll close the public hearing and look for a motion. Mayor Hutsworth moves for approval. Is there a second? Councilmember Davis? You second? Got it. Okay. So we have a motion by Mayor Hutsworth, seconded by Councilmember Davis. Discussion? Councilmember Bet? I think there's opportunities for the developer to move forward with this. I guess I have two concerns. I'm a little concerned about what I alluded to earlier with the combination parcel and sort of issues with how that impacts the tree canopy. I think there's opportunities for the developer to work on that. I guess I'm also slightly -- I completely agree with staff that this parcel has taken a life of its own outside of the flume. I have some concerns that it's because the flume was ignored in the past to some degree, and that sort of made a self-fulfilling prophecy. We see that all over Denton, which is why I think -- I won't speak for anyone else. I'll say I would particularly like to focus on the flume. I take staff's point, though. There's really not a lot of things from the original flume that can go in here because of the infrastructure changes. So I guess I think there's opportunities to see how a plan evolves on the CEP. So I guess I'm going to probably agree to -- not motion, because there's already discussion on the floor. But I'll probably vote to approve. But I guess I have a lot of concerns. Councilmember Amater? Yes, so first I want to say for anyone listening, wondering why Councilmember Rebecca is talking about flumes, that the future land use map is what that is, just the projected future growth of Denton as Council -- previous Council saw it in the community in the previous -- the 2030 plan. I wanted to ask staff about this business innovation area concept, because it's something that we hear -- a term we hear thrown around, and it's not entirely clear to me what that is and what our metrics are for that. If you could just kind of define that and say kind of whether this falls into that or whether we shouldn't -- in considering this project, in considering how we're voting on this proposal, do we need to weigh in on this idea of business innovation, or should we just be focusing on the light industrial use? Because I'm not -- I guess I'll say I'm not convinced that it's -- that this is business innovation, but I don't know if that really matters to this vote and what's before us today. Sure, so the comprehensive plan currently has a very loose definition for business innovation, like we've talked about in some of the past work session discussions regarding the north area of town, for example. And it speaks to being appropriate for everything from light manufacturing uses to warehouse and distribution to corporate office campuses and research facilities, but also includes things like support of residential and commercial uses. So it's kind of a catch-all, if you will, as it's currently defined, and that is a problem that we've identified in multiple other cases, and that's something that we are looking to better define with our comprehensive plan update. So when that comes before you all, I expect that you will see a more refined identity for business innovation, and also, you know, we'll be taking a closer look at where is that appropriate versus truly where is industrial intended to go in the city. So as it is before you today, light industrial is generally consistent with business innovation, as it's currently defined in the comprehensive plan. Thank you, thank you. That was my understanding, too. I don't, you know, see this as business innovation, but I understand that, you know, the developers just working within the existing -- I mean, these are the existing loosey-goosey guidelines, which pretty much include everything. Everything is business innovation. Thank you, Mayor. Haley, thank you for clarifying that on business innovation. It's not the first time we've had that issue where it could mean different things to different folks in almost anything. I guess I look at this proposal and this application under the bird in the hand doctrine. We've got a difficult site. Anytime you've got -- the developer says our neighbors are a flea market in the substation, you have to know that they're going to have some difficulties in finding appropriate use for the site. They're going to add value and investment to the city and to the tax rolls in a place that we really can't expect a better project to come along. There's no disparagement on the project, it's just the reality of the site. This is not going to be R1 housing someday. This is probably the highest and best used available for this site, and that's why I seconded the motion and why I'd like to see this approved. Okay. Thank you. Any other discussion? Seeing none, let's vote on the screen. That passes 6-1. It's 8-16. Why don't we take a 10-minute break, come back, so we'll be back at 8-26, and we'll pick up at item C. Thank you. And welcome back. It is 8-27. We're back on the record, and we are moving towards item C, which is Z210014B. Hold a public hearing and consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton, Texas, regarding a change in the zoning district and use classification from residential 3 district to residential 7 district, approximately 0.5 acres of land. Generally located on the east side of Bolivar, approximately 172 feet north of West Congress Street. And I'll open the public hearing. Good evening. Good evening. Let me pull up my presentation. Good evening. I'm Julie Wyatt, senior planner with the city of Denton, and I'm presenting Z210014 Bolivar rezoning for you this evening. So the request is to rezone about half an acre from R3 to R7 district. The subject property is on your screen. It's outlined in yellow. It's situated just north of downtown, just north of the square on the east side of Bolivar. It is the adjacent development includes an office building, a Denton ISD office building to the south, as well as a religious assembly use kind of wraps around the rest of it to the north and then also to the east of the site. The applicant has indicated she intends to convert the north structure, so it is developed with two single-family homes, and the intent is to convert that north structure to a professional office. And I'll open the public hearing. Good evening. Good evening. Good evening. Good evening. I'm Julie Wyatt, senior planner with the city of Denton, and I'm presenting Z210014 Bolivar rezoning for you this evening. And they are proposing R7, which, if approved, would would change that color to brown. As you can see that zoning pattern in the area. When you go south of the subject property into the east, you can see that has that MN zoning that mixed use neighborhood, and that kind of captures that downtown area and adjacent to downtown. And then that zoning pattern changes as you move near the subject property into the north, having that R7 as that transitional district between that MN and the R3, and this proposal is just really is a continuation of that zoning pattern. The criteria for approval is in subchapter two of the Denton development code. The entire analysis is in your backup, but as a summary, the proposal is consistent with the Denton plan 2030 and the purpose statement for R7. We don't anticipate any adverse impacts, and there are adequate public facilities as this is an infill site. Just briefly want to talk about two of those items, one being the comprehensive plan. This site is in the downtown compatibility area. It's that area with the hatch mark. And these are areas that are affected by the proximity to downtown as well as nearby neighborhoods. And the intent is to facilitate compatible form and uses to strengthen both downtown and the adjacent neighborhoods. So this really is that a transitional area. R7 is consistent with the future land use map, as it does allow for a mix of residential densities as well as some limited non-residential uses that provide appropriate transitional scale and intensity. And as I mentioned before, this is an infill site. It is surrounded by existing development and infrastructure. So the rezoning would facilitate a compact development pattern. We also looked at the surrounding area and those impacts associated with it. So by our analysis, R7 is not anticipated to create adverse impacts. As I mentioned before, there's R7 across the street, so it is consistent with that existing zoning pattern. And as we were analyzing the case, we looked at the north of downtown kind of has two sub-districts. One being that higher intensity mixed use, and that's centered along Elm and Locust. So as you move up Elm and Locust, you have that MN centered and facilitating that more intense use. And then as you move to the west of that area, you've got that R3, so it becomes more of a residential character. And that R7 district in this location provides a gradual transition, so it softens that edge and allows that intensity to either scale up or scale down. And as I mentioned, it does have that variety of uses. Public outreach was sent out. We've received two letters in favor, and then we did have one neighbor speak in opposition at the public hearing for the Planning and Zoning Commission. The applicant did hold a neighborhood meeting and there were no attendees. As I mentioned before, the Planning and Zoning Commission recommended approval of the request. Staff also recommends approval as it is consistent with the criteria for approval. And the applicant is here to answer any questions, and I'll be happy to answer any questions as well. Thank you. Any questions for staff? Councilmember Greger? Thank you, Mayor. So I generally, I think this is a great move and a great project. I'm very much in favor of upzoning a lot in this whole area. And this was kind of sort of addressed in an email, but I'd love a little bit more insight as to why the applicant is requesting R7 instead of my favorite zoning designation of MN. That's a great question. So we discussed this proposal with the applicant for some time before she made an application. And we did talk about as a staff, that MN. There are adjacencies for MN. There is that potential for MN. But given that her intended use was for office and that R7 would facilitate her intended use, and also that existing zoning pattern just to the west, having that R7 kind of provide that bridge between the MN and R3. And then one other item, Bolivar is a collector street. So it's just a little lower scale than that MN on that smaller roadway classification inconsistent with that existing zoning. Council Member Bet. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'm also generally in favor of this. I guess I have a question of, and it wasn't really addressed and saw us for clarification, maybe in this might be a developer question as well, is if the northern. Well, let me take a step back. I'm confirming, is this two parcels of rezoning or one? I was a little confused on that. It is two parcels. So the office, the intended office is just for that northern parcel. But staff also worked with the applicant on that because we wanted to make sure we had nice consistent zoning along that street. And so we asked if she could get the adjacent property owner to go in on her. That way we've got a nice clean zoning pattern and consistent zoning across that, from that MN to the R7 and not any kind of stutter step of that zoning. So the intended change, the intended office use is just for that northern parcel. That southern tract would remain as a single family home for now. Okay, that actually anticipated my question is what was the use going to be, because as much as it wouldn't be a very big jump for spot zoning, it's a little it would be a little bit without that intervening parcel. Yeah, no, I still am in favor I'm just the anticipated use is still residential for that southern parcel. The southern parcel. Yes, sir. Okay, thank you. Okay. Councilor armature. Yeah, just a simple question so you mentioned in the PowerPoint that there was one response opposed to the request to in favor and I see here in the backup. Two in favor, but not the one opposed, the one opposed she did speak at the planning and zoning Commission meeting so so that was that that that red mark on your. Okay, okay, so we don't have that on paper. Right, it was just discussion at that planning so I just wanted to make you aware of that. Okay, got it. Thank you. Okay, any other questions for staff. Does that have a presentation or just here to answer questions. She's just here to answer questions, if you have any. Okay, very good. So I'll take a motion, customer back. I move approval. Thank you. Hold on, you have to repeat that someone close the public hearing at this point and then customer back. I move approval customer Davis. Second. Thank you. We have a motion by customer back second by Councilmember Davis any additional discussion. And then let's vote on the board. That passes seven zero Thank you very much. That takes us to item DPD 2000 100 a hold a public hearing consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of didn't Texas regarding change in the zoning district and use classifications from neighborhood residential for to in residential. District to plan development district on approximately 7.11 acres generally located on the on the north side of East McKinney Street approximately six 1615 feet east of South Trinity Road. Okay. Good evening. I'm Julie Wyatt, and this is PD 20 dash 0010 a. So the request before you is to rezone about seven acres from our four and our our districts to a PD district. We are located in the east part of town, just north of McKinney and the existing zoning was established through a series of annexations as well as transition of zoning designation. So I'm going to go through that very briefly development on the site began in 1984 when the property was still in the county. Since then, it has expanded to about 50,000 square feet within three buildings and development on the site also includes parking perimeter fencing to accommodate that use in 1986. The city annexed about one and a half acres adjacent to the street. So right along the street a running parallel to that street and then in 2013 we annexed the remainder of the site. Now, when a property is annexed in the city of Denton, it always gets kind of that placeholder zoning designation. And for that this property, it was that in 1986, it was agriculture. And then in 2013, it was that RD five X those zonings then transitioned to the are four on that portion that was annexed in 1986. And then it transitioned to RR for the remainder of the site with the 2019 adoption. So, because the site was was developed when it was in the county and is has then been annexed and has the zoning it has the, the use of the site is non conforming. So, it is subject to those limitations and processes that are in, that are in subject subchapter one in the Denton development code. The applicant approached the city about this time last year, wanting to kind of get the site into conformance. And that's, that's kind of led us to today. So the request does provide regulations to allow that existing manufacturing use to remain as a conforming use. But we also wanted to think about any development or expansion or redevelopment of the site. And so that's where we where we are today. This item went to the planning and zoning commission in September and they did recommend approval of the request. So, this slide shows you the existing zoning and then the proposal so you can kind of see that the surrounding zoning pattern, the subject property that are the are for is that kind of tan color and then the are are is that green color are for being one of our residential districts, and then are are being kind of our rural residential, but also one of those placeholder districts. The surrounding zoning includes are for it also includes some are six some in in their portions in the general area they're still within the county and the that that map shows it is kind of white doesn't have a color. And then there is some additional are as I mentioned they are proposing that PD with an ally base zoning district so if approved, it would change the zoning on the property to PD ally. Now, given this surrounding zoning pattern and some some growth that we're seeing in this area there's a single family residential neighborhood just developing just to the southwest of the subject site. There's also a manufactured housing development that's kind of moving forward with development to the northwest of the site, as well as that surrounding zoning pattern we do anticipate residential uses in the site. We wanted to look at what that existing uses were and see what the non conforming was and how we could get it in conforming, but also make sure that any redevelopment of the site would be consistent with the with, you know, the anticipated growth given that that zoning. So, as with any PD it includes but development standards in a map that development standards, those development standards included limitations on some of the more intensive commercial and industrial uses within ally. It also includes increased lot sizes and setbacks, as well as reduced building coverage and how you want to make sure the intensity was appropriate for the area. We also, we also worked with the applicant so that any, any redevelopment of the site would have to conform to conform to commercial design standards within 400 feet of McKinney, and that would be in excess of what our typical 250 would be for ally, and then loading areas must be located to the side or rear of the site. The PD includes that development map, it really just kind of shows what's existing on the side but I do want to talk through a couple of things as as part of this request, they have agreed to plant some additional street trees, there are some existing street trees along the right of way. On the west side of the site but but they are proposing some additional trees along McKinney as well as some shrubs to screen the parking areas. Also proposing buffer shrubs along the north portion of the site to to screen on any any of the use from the adjacent properties. And then I've shown this purple line that's about where that 400 foot line is so any anything between that line and McKinney would have to comply with commercial standards, if and when it redevelops. The criteria for approval is in sub chapter two. Just as a summary, the project is consistent with the economic vitality element and and the dent plan 2030. The development standards and permitted uses are more restrictive we also often see in a PD that they're wanting flexibility and wanting, maybe, less restrictive development standards this one's actually a little different they've, they've pulled out some of that those permitted uses within ally and made it more restrictive. And then they are proposing additional landscape improvements and there is adequate capacity to serve the existing development. So didn't plan 2030 does have this site designated as rural areas, and that really is intended to promote those rural type uses like farms and ranges also very low density residential on this proposal is not consistent with the future land use map, but it is consistent with the economic vitality goals. And so that's one of the things that are being used to move forward with some certainty as as as they make make plans for the site. And then also economic vitality talks about a development of new workplaces close to residential areas, so this would allow an employment use in an area that does have houses that are starting to be built in residential areas. We haven't received any any responses. And as I mentioned the planning and zoning Commission recommended approval of the requests and staff does recommend approval. I'll be happy to answer any questions the applicant doesn't have a presentation but they're also here and, and we'll, and we'll be happy to answer any questions. Okay, great. Thank you and now open the public hearing Councilmember Davis. Thank you, Mayor first real quick slide five the summary you don't have to bring it up, but the summary of the criteria for approval I appreciate that so much that we've condensed that to a summary, that's wonderful. Fantastic. You did it perfectly you get everything on there. My question is about, and you kind of alluded to it I know the applicant is here. It seems like maybe they don't have immediate plans for improvements to the site or expansions but they're contemplating and want some certainty and my kind of reading between the lines correctly there. That is my understanding, they probably can answer much better than I can but that's my understanding there wasn't anything immediate but but just to have an understanding what the rules of the road are. Sure, and I appreciate the and I'll ask them that that same question when we get the opportunity but I appreciate the efforts to to balance their existing use and the fact that they've been there since the 80s with a future land use map that crossed them and decided well actually you're in a rural area. Tough luck. Have we can you kind of enumerate a little bit more some of the uses that have been pulled out as we created this PD out of the ally designation what if we said, we're not going to have in this area and recognition of the fact that it's not really ally it's just the closest thing we can get to it. Yes, so we looked at particularly those commercial uses and some of those industrial uses that could create challenges. So, things like medical clinic credit access businesses printing industrial laundry hotels motels. All automotive uses food processing, and then outdoor storage as a primary use. So those were the things that we kind of worked with them to pull out because we felt like they were just too intensive for the area. One other question I believe I had from a council member is, why add the residential use in, and that was something that actually staff suggested that we worked with them about because, because it is an emerging residential area so if the property ever did develop, you know redevelop to provide that use that is, it's kind of consistent with what's surrounding it. Councilmember armature. So, I understand. So this is not the light industrial use for this area, as you mentioned you know it's not consistent with the feature land use map, but is consistent with economic vitality goals of, you know, supporting businesses having, you know, people being able to walk to businesses but aren't there. Other kinds of businesses that that are not light industrial right that could also satisfy those economic vitality goals or to put it another way does economic vitality, these economic vitality goals only apply to light industrial uses. Well, and, and the comprehensive plan talks about just the employment so I believe it could apply to a variety of workplaces or other types of uses. Within that element of the comprehensive plan. Okay yeah so it really so it's not unique to just to light industrial use. No, ma'am. Yeah, okay. Okay, thank you. Yeah, would it be fair to say that this isn't really about fitting goals it's about, it's about fixing something that maybe should have been attended to when they were annexed, or when we did the DTC that it's just something that was there before and, you know, we're trying to kind of tailor what's available to just go look what was already there. We never intended to erase and we just want to kind of box it into more or less, you know, the existing use. It would address that nonconformity so it does provide that that those rules of the road that they can kind of rely on. Yes, sir. Okay, thanks. Thank you, Mr Mayor. So, this is following up on the question that you started to answer from my questions for staff, I appreciate that Julie. And I guess in general I'm like Mayor Pro Tem I'm supportive of cleaning up where it's not quite working. And my, my only tripping point is, I'm trying to understand the single family rationale. It's just tripping me up a little bit because we're putting a light industrial use business use. We're trying to save an existing business, trying to not mess with it leave it alone it's been there since the 80s where we were trying not to mess with it but putting the single family use presupposes sort of that. We're trying to figure out how we're going to do that and I'm wondering if you had a plan for leaving the single family in there for business that's been there since 84. Sure. So, the intent wasn't to facilitate removing the use it just to provide, because the PD is the zoning and it is the rules for that property, and has a menu of uses that could go within there. Flexibility for the future of the site and for the future of the area if at some point in the future that that property doesn't make sense for an industrial type use they're surrounded by residential. This PD would allow a residential use to be developed so it's not really intended for today, maybe just sometime in the future, and it may not happen, but just to provide that flexibility within the regulations. So, if I might follow up then, if we did say all the neighborhoods developed and we kept annexing and there's, there's, you know, McKinney woods east and everything else comes in there. Would we be able to raise this business to the ground and build houses as part of my imaginary McKinney woods east. So, as a PD would still have to follow the PD amendment regulations, so it's it's likely that a change in use that drastic where you're raising the building and building all new infrastructure and, and, and, and structures and lots and plotting it out. It's likely that it would have to still come back to city council at that time for approval so our PDs allow for some flexibility they allow for some amendments to them, but often, maybe a change in use that drastic would still require city council approval sometime in the future. I guess I would, I would lean towards completely approving this but if we can consider removing that single family because I want us to have defined uses that we're doing on purpose. I don't understand the idea of flexibility clearly we just had a vote for flexibility in the downtown region. But, but it feels like, I don't know, that we're in, we're, we're pre anticipating the demise of this business, and, and we would have to come back and approve it kind of thing anyway. And say, look, if you want to put this down as a, as not a business anymore if you want to make it single family then do it on purpose. Anyway, I sort of where I'm falling on that. Okay. Any other answer. Yeah, along those lines, I wonder if there's a mechanism, this is like too complex to to leave the door open to say, if it's a trigger trigger door, I gotta pick a metaphor. I'm following me, if the, it's become substantially in the future, surrounded by residential that, you know, it sort of opens the door to reconsideration, something like that. Is there a mechanism for that or you just sort of do that when it happens. I am not aware of one within the PD process but I can look and see it our processes and see if there's something within there. After approval. Yeah. Okay. Thanks. Okay. Any other questions. Great. Any, any public comment. And does the applicant have any statements very good. For any questions that you guys may have. Mr. Beck, whatever you guys choose to do on the residential piece that was something that we were just trying to leave with working with staff that they said because it's surrounded by residential that we would just leave that open. It's not real important to us. So I think you bring a point so we're easy on that, and we just wanted to be able to clean this up for long term, you know, so it wasn't always a nonconforming use so that's why we just decided to work with Julian we, we worked really thought through a lot of this and she did a good job thinking through the future uses and to get this cleaned up so that it was fixed for long term rather than every time something happened we were back. Is this a conforming use nonconforming so to your point on the residential piece. That was just to try to if something happens in the future, and working with staff so we're open to whatever you guys. So thank you for your time and we appreciate your service. Okay, yeah, and they're not expanding Ryan high school for it for no reason I think residential beyond you before you know it. Councilor Davis. Yeah, I just had the quick question that I asked Julie a little while ago I know y'all are thinking, long term and maybe you don't want to be nailed down just quite yet on long term plans but can you give us a little sneak peek into what you have intended for the site or what the. If there's going to be some expansion in the business or how business is going all that kind of stuff. Sure currently we don't have any plans for expansion. So, mainly this was if a tenant turned over we had to put a new tenant or, or you know least part of we just wanted to make sure it was very clearly defined. So that if you know zoning laws change at a state level, or, you know, just who knows what happens this environment that's why we want to work through this and just set the boundaries and the rules to make sure that that property had those limitations set in place so that we didn't have to have to deal with the battles of the future was really for purpose. Thank you. Okay, the one customer armature. I'll save my comment until after the motion. Great. So, thank you very much. I'll close the public hearing. I'll take a motion. I'm going to take a stab at this, I'd like to motion the, the, the recommendation by staff with the removal of a residential. Okay, Mayor Pro Temelza. Yeah, I'll second that and just comment that should the character the area change around you. I think it'd be pretty straightforward rezoning. Okay, any other discussion. We have motion by Councilman back second by Mayor Pro Temelza councilman armature. Yeah, I'll just say that I'm well I understand and respect the need to, you know grandfather this use in that's been here since the 80s, you know I appreciate staff's work on it. I'm, I'm really not comfortable with the light industrial use for, for, for this area and the possible precedent that it might set. I'm can just imagine, you know, possible future justifications of additional light industrial in this area, you know where there are already significant traffic concerns and and pedestrian concerns and with. I just am worried about the potential risks so sadly I'm going to be voting no. I just wish that there was a way to grandfather this business in without a light industrial zoning, even with these qualifications that you know that staff has worked really hard on. Okay, Catherine with theirs to pick up where that left off. I want to thank the applicant and staff for working so hard to grandfather them in, in a way that's not just kind of ad hoc not just kind of their grandfathered and nobody really quite understands what the lay of the land is the applicants given something up the city's given something up. We've moved forward with something that defines the rules of road for everybody. And this should be a case study to any applicant who finds themselves in a non conforming use someplace with the future land use map doesn't quite make sense. And we've got a number of those just like we looked at earlier. So I applaud the applicant for moving forward with this and bringing it to our attention and staff for coming to creative uses, creative solutions. I think this is a case study we ought to think about in the future. Okay, any other statements. Questions. Great. This photo on the screen. Passes six one takes us to item E, which is s one s 21001 C hold public hearing and consider adoption of ordinance of the city of Denton Texas approving its specific use permit to allow for multifamily dwelling use on approximately 9.92 acres of land generally located on the east side of Luke 288 approximately 300 feet south of East McKinney Street and city of Denton. Pull up my presentation. Great and I'll open the public hearing. Good evening. Good evening. Carina Maldonado associate planner with development services. The request today is for a specific use permit to allow for a multifamily development on 9.92 acres in the S C district. As a just a brief summary. This is consistent with the community mixed use future land use designation that designated in didn't plan 2030. This is also consistent with the community mixed use designation that designated in didn't plan 2030. Item number six, um. Plan Zoning Commission did consider this request and recommend approval 3 to with the conditions recommended by staff. Um so I won't go over the slide. I just mentioned it briefly, but I will jump into the site plan that's proposed with this specific use permit. Um, so this is the site plan that's proposed to be a two and three bedroom. Um they are proposing six buildings, which would be three and four story buildings. I've identified those in red. All buildings are three stories with the exception of the building shown here on the north side and just to orient you north is on this side where my cursor is pointing. This is the site plan that's proposed to be a two and three bedroom, which would be three and four story buildings in substitution. That would be 111 bicycle spaces for the site. They are proposing a widened side path along South Loop 288 to facilitate some internal bike ped circulation. They are proposing to driveways on the southern side that would be a full access driveway. This is the site plan that's proposed to be an adjacent grove development on the west side of South Loop 288. Um the central drive, um Northern drive is a three fourth access with right in right out. This is the site plan. Um as you can see from this site plan, I've highlighted in purple and in kind of a darker blue. Um, this site does have Isa on it on the north. Northeast and south side as well as FEMA floodplain. As shown by the landscape plan. They are proposing 40% landscape area and 38% tree canopy. That's greater quality than what the code would require for the suburban corridor district. This is the site plan that's proposed to be an adjacent grove development on the west side of South Loop 288. Um ornamental trees along South Loop 288. Um those would be in tree wells. Um to facilitate the 12 ft side path on South Loop South Loop 288. This is the site plan that's proposed to be an adjacent grove development on the west side of South Loop 288. Um they are meeting that and exceeding that by 10. Um and as you can see from the site highlighted in purple, those are the open space areas. Proposed to serve the development, um and they are staying outside of the Isa areas. So just a summary, um of the criteria for approval for specific use permit just covering the high points. This is the site plan that's proposed to be an adjacent grove development on the west side of South Loop 288. Um it does provide connectivity to park and bike ped facilities. As well as provides adequate public facilities and its infrastructure. And most of that information can be found in the staff report provided with the agenda. This is the site plan that's proposed to be an adjacent grove development on the west side of South Loop 288. Um the applicant did hold to virtual neighborhood meetings with one person in attendance. Um and no requests. Responses in opposition have been received. And with that, the planning process is in place. And we are working with staff conditions that are shown in the staff report and adopting ordinance. Um the applicant is here to give a presentation. Um and as we as both can answer any questions that you might have. Okay Thank you. Any questions for staff. [inaudible] So now to share screen. [inaudible] Good evening again. Amy Bissett. I appreciate the opportunity to be back up here in front of you. I do want to let you know that we have a couple of people in the room with us tonight that represent the development and then a few more on the phone. Um in the room with us are Ryan Garcia and Mike Ash with J. E. S. Holdings. You'll hear from them very briefly as a part of this applicant presentation. And then we also have on the phone our engineer and our architect. If we do end up with some specific questions that we need to call them in for. As Karina mentioned, I won't I won't review her presentation entirely. It is a 216 unit affordable housing development. It is a tax credit development. With a mix of three story and four story buildings. There are a number of community amenities, including a swimming pool, fitness center, business center, community kitchen, children's playscape. A number of programmed social and recreational activities, which I'll talk a little more about in a moment. And at the request of the Planning and Zoning Commission specifically, we added a dog park. We actually added two, but they asked for one. And those are highlighted here in green. Just wanted to point out those are new features to the site plan since it went to Planning and Zoning Commission. I do want to compare for you what is required under suburban corridor zoning and what we are proposing to provide as a part of the specific use permit. As Karina mentioned, we are proposing a 40% landscape coverage where 20% is required. We're proposing 38% new canopy coverage. Actually, I believe that is tree preservation. I've got an error there. We're proposing to plant four inch caliper trees where three inch is required. We're proposing 111 bike parking spaces where 15 are required. We're proposing a 12 foot side path where a five foot sidewalk is required. Oh, there's the tree preservation. I was not wrong. Tree preservation, we're proposing 40% where 30% is required. I will talk a little bit more about the side path in a moment, but the intention with the 12 foot path was to match the streetscape for Denton Grove, which is the development directly across Loop 288 from this project. We worked hard with staff to create a streetscape that was consistent with what's already been approved to go in across the street so that we can provide a consistent corridor moving forward. I do want to brag for a moment on this developer because they have gone above and beyond to work with both city staff and developing community partners. Because this is a tax credit development, they are proposing to partner with some local nonprofits, including Serve Denton. We've already been in conversations with Pat Smith and also with Michelle Connor at Grace Like Rain. The intent of these partnerships is to provide opportunities for collaboration to provide resident services, whereby those organizations in this particular development may work together to provide cohesive services to residents and clients of those nonprofit organizations. They also have gone above and beyond on environmental considerations. As Corina mentioned, we are staying entirely out of the environmentally sensitive area. They have also worked with the Parks Department. There is a future park just to the south of us, Pebblebrook, that is not currently programmed to activate anytime soon. But the developer did have multiple conversations with the Parks Director and the department about, is there an opportunity to activate the park sooner? And they will be providing a trailhead for the future trail as a part of the SUP. They also really put a lot of thought into the design and the amenities that are being provided as a part of the community. For example, they are providing usable balconies for all of the units that orient towards the interior of the site. And those that orient towards Luke 288, they are providing Juliet balconies, so you still get that architectural detail, while also providing some sound barrier. They're proposing a sound wall along Luke 288 to further protect the residents from just the general noise of the area. Just proximity-wise, I want to point out where Serve Denton is located. It is walkable from this site, as well as the future home of Grace Like Rain, their residential community. And we do see this as an area, an opportunity to be able to partner with these nonprofit organizations and provide a variety of services. Just very briefly, this is a glimpse of the building elevations where you can see the architectural detail and the balconies here. We did hear a couple of concerns at the Planning and Zoning Commission meeting that I want to address briefly with you. One of the primary ones being traffic on Luke 288. This is the preferred growth concept in the Denton Comp Plan 2030. I'm going to hover my mouse over this specific area that we're talking about here today. This is considered a node within the preferred growth concept that is intended for the highest degree of mixed use and highest degree of density in the community. So this preferred growth concept points to this corridor as this is where we want density and this is where we want growth. This is where we would like to see a mix of uses. So we do believe that while of course traffic is generated by adding development along Luke 288, we are mitigating for that through our traffic improvements and believe that this is the appropriate place for a development of this nature. Another concern that came up at the Planning and Zoning Commission was the 12 foot sidewalk because it goes from the back of curb and so it goes all the way to the curb basically. And the question that came up was why? Why do we have it going to the back of curb? And so we've provided this graphic to just explain why. There are existing utility poles that are exactly 12 feet from the back of curb. So in order to fit the sidewalk there, it has to go all the way to the street. We proposed in order to accommodate the street trees required, tree wells within the sidewalk that will be placed closer to the curb that provides some protection for pedestrians. We looked at a number of configurations for this cross section here and this was the preferred configuration by city staff to be able to accommodate what everyone needed and wanted between the street tree requirements, the space necessary to provide easements for water and sewer, the distance from the building, and to provide a full 12 feet. With that, I am going to introduce Ryan Garcia with JES Development and he's going to briefly walk you through some of their company details and he'll bring Mike Ash up as well. Thank you. Great. You have the time there in front of you. Two minutes there. Okay, we'll run through this real quick then. JES Devco is part of one of four companies that make up JES Holdings. Mike and I are representing the development side. We will go out and do the initial development work for the properties. We also have fairway construction and fairway management, which will serve as the general contractor and the property manager. What makes us unique is this fourth company, Affordable Equity Partners. We're going to be our own investor in the deal. All this to show that we are going to be long term holders and we are invested in being part of the community. We're not trying to build something and flip it right away. We are going to be here for the long term and I'll running short on time so I'll turn it over to Mike real quick. Let me correct myself. So if you could set the timer for 12 minutes, right? So it's 10 and 10 if there's two speakers. So sorry for that. We just don't get it a little rusty. So you'll have 12 minutes to go through your portion and forgive me. Mike, is that right? I'm done anyway. I got it done quick. Okay. Got it. Okay. Well then you'll have the, you have extra time if you need it or not. That's great. Come on down. Thank you. We will try to set a record for giving you the most padding on unused time. I'll take it. My name is Michael Ash also with JES Devco. Ryan really talked about the interlocking companies and the breadth of the services and skills we bring to the project. What I really wanted to talk about sort of briefly was our Texas portfolio. Company is primarily located in Missouri and Georgia just because that's where we started in both projects. We've been in Texas probably 10 or 15 years now. And we just want to talk a little bit about our Texas portfolio. We got a map here showing the Texas projects. Most of them are in the Austin Central Texas area. The guy who had the job before Ryan and I came here lived in Austin. So we started there. As you can see, we're now developing, moving northward. I guess it's the I-35 development strategy. We're now probably up to about a dozen projects in the state of Texas that include the ones that are in construction or breaking ground now. And I think the significance from, as I think about it from your perspective, is just our commitment to the state. Ryan mentioned that we're long-term investors. We invest in our own projects. We manage our own projects. We build our own projects. We will be here long-term. All the projects require commitments from us of 15 to 35 years. So we'll be here a long time. And hopefully that will bring you some confidence. We'd like to thank you for your time tonight. Thanks staff for their assistance getting through the process and getting us here. And if you have questions, Ryan or Amy or I'd be happy to answer them. Great. Any questions? Mayor Pro Temelzer? Yes, if you want to come back. Did I lose a chance to ask you a question? Please forgive my poor old eyes. It looks like you do sometimes do more than one project in a city. Yes, absolutely. And is there anything about this that would prevent you from doing a future project in other quadrants of debt? No, not at all. And that's actually something that Ryan and I have been talking about looking at other spots that might make sense for both us and the city. Thank you. Okay. You want to give those addresses you look at? No, just kidding. Just in case. You want to put it out there. Just saying. Actually, I forgot last time I was doing this. Just some real quick pictures of the quality of the communities. This is a senior project we have in Granville, Texas. Some, again, probably senior, but single-family cottage style. Salado. And then in Bastrop. Great. So thank you. And so let's see if we have more questions for you, Councilmember Armitage. Yes. And this might be for you. It might be for somebody else who has spoken so far. So I'll leave it up to you all to decide. So it was mentioned that this is affordable housing. Yes. I was wondering, you know, if we could just hear more about that, what the rents would be, how they compare to, you know, how they relate to incomes, to local incomes. And also, if this is a low-income housing, you know, tax credit, I thought I heard. So, yeah, I would just like to hear just more about that aspect of it and some numbers. I'm going to exit stage right or left and let Ryan answer this one. Okay. Thanks. Yes. So currently, as a project is set up, it's an even mix between 50 percent, 60 percent, and 70 percent AMI. There is a possibility that the numbers change a bit, but if they do change, it would go down and capture lower, lower income bands. Okay. So that's, again, so 50 percent, 60 percent, and 70 percent. Yes. Third and third and third. Okay. Catherine McGuire. Thank you, Mayor. This is just a comment, and I kind of bring this up a lot when we see affordable housing developments in this area. This isn't a deal breaker for me, and I do think that this is a good project. But since the developer mentioned that he is looking at doing other projects, possibly in other parts of town, I would just encourage, you know, this developer and any other developers who are listening to spread the multifamily love a little bit. There's a lot of multifamily development in this area, and I want us to be careful about not creating certain parts of town that have lots and lots of affordable multifamily while other parts of town have very little. I want to make sure that we're being equitable in how we spread that around. Absolutely. We'll be sure to look at all parts of town. Okay. Any other questions? I do have one myself. Are you connecting to the 7-Eleven driveway? So it's on the corner? I believe we have a totally separate curb cut. Okay. Okay. Can somebody talk me through that, though, then? Oh, careful. Sorry. Yep. No worries. So my question is this. I don't know if you want to pull up a map for those that haven't seen or just from memory. My concern is this, if there's a really short jaunt from their parking lot to 7-Eleven, and my concern is, I mean, you know, what's the speed limit on Luke 288? I think it's 60-ish or so. So if you're doing 60 in that... It's actually 50 in this area, but it goes down to 45, I believe, further south. It goes up to 60 after university. Got it. So just pulling up the site plan, the reason why there is no curb cut is because there is ESA in this area, and they would have to cross the ESA to connect through to the adjacent property. Right. But surely, I understand the speed limit, but if you've driven Luke 28... I do. I actually know the area. Yeah, 45 will get you hit. You know, it's dangerous. You know, and so my concern is this. You leave this apartment, and just pragmatic, you know, you tell me it's okay, I'll take you at your word, but the fact is, you turn out of this apartment complex and you have... You know, you've got to get up to speed fast, and then there's a signal light right there, right? And so it's like, how does that work in your mind? Yes, so there was a traffic impact analysis that was done for this site, so there were all the traffic safety concerns were reviewed and addressed through that analysis, and I apologize if I didn't emphasize this. I was trying to make sure my presentation was a little bit brief. So there is a traffic signal here that is proposed by the Denton Grove development on the west side. With the installation of that traffic signal, they will be... city staff will also look into the signal timing along the south Luke 288 corridor to ensure that, again, that, you know, coming through southern light, going north on south Luke 288, that it will address some of those issues. In terms of exiting in and out of the development, the full access would be on that south side, but that northern access would be limited. So it would only allow for ride in, ride out, and so with the addition of the signal, that should slow down traffic. So south Luke 288, excuse me, in this area is a primary arterial rather than a limited access highway, which you can see on the north side past University. So it should accommodate that heavy commercial traffic that's associated with the suburban corridor and that community mixed use future land use. We do have our city engineer in the basement if you have additional questions related to traffic. I know that didn't answer all your questions, but these are some of the things that were looked at by staff during the review process. Yeah, no, I'll, you know, I'm not a subject matter expert. I'll take the word at it. I just, I want to be on the record saying I'm concerned. I don't know how long that distance is, but you've got to get out of there going, and then you got to slam on the brakes potentially, and so that gives me a little heartburn. But I don't think there's much we can do about its textile growth, but it just gives me concern. Then the other thing I'll ask the applicant is that just to note again not not a deal breaker but I want to understand those relationships. I am great to glad to hear that would serve didn't and some other components. I'd love to see you develop a component that as fresh fruit food there right because the alternative is your residents are going to 711 and getting things that are less than great. Even a rap has a million milligrams of salt, you know in it and that's a problem. And so some sort of fresh fruit food component with those partnerships you have would be important to me and then also I couldn't tell by the drawing, do you do covered parking. Covered playground shading. Yes, good. All the place structures will be shaded and we do. We will plan on having a food pantry as part of our amenity services, and we have been talking to Pat Smith about joining the hunger coalition, sweet. Great. Thank you very much. That's, that's my questions. And is there. So we'll see any other questions for the applicant or city staff. Seeing none. Any public comments. Great. I'll close the public comments. Thank you. And I'll take a motion. Councilmember Davis. Move approval of the item customer wire. I second. Great. We have a motion by Councilmember Davis second by Councilmember wire. Any other discussion. Seeing none. Let's vote on the board. Seven zero. Thank you. That takes us to our last public hearing item which is five F, which is SD one 0004 a open the public hearing. I have some cards for some folks I like to speak but before we jump in and we're checking on a technical difficulty this computer is trying to restart itself so we might need just a minute. Okay. And there this would be a good time for me to say I'm recusing from this item my in laws live around the corner from Ken so I'm going to exit over here. Okay. So let the record reflected Councilmember Davis has recused. I'll I'll note that in the caption at the bottom it says a supermajority vote is required for approval of this request so Mr. C manager lay that dynamic while we're getting ready for since Councilmember Davis has recused what does that look like. So that requires 75% so it requires six votes in order for that to be approved. Okay. So even though the number of members is diminished that standard holds. Correct. He's basically he's a voting as an abstention. Okay. Well, yes. Correct. It's restarting. I'm gonna blame this one. Okay. Okay. Come on, stop being difficult. All right, and I'm just real quick. Okay. We're ready to go now. All right. Good evening. Planning Department. This is case s 21 for Millennium crest multifamily. The request before you is a specific use permit. However, whereas we normally see these requested for an actual use tonight the request before you is specific to building height. So this is a specific use permit for a building height of 60 with a maximum of 60 feet. The multifamily use that is proposed is permitted by right. The subject property just to orient you is shown outland in yellow on the map. It is a total of 7.6 acres located on the south side of the I-35E frontage road. It's currently zone mixed use neighborhood. So as I mentioned, the multifamily use is not what's at question here tonight. That is permitted and the building height up to 40 feet is permitted by right. The request is required for anything between 40 feet and 65 feet. I did want to note at the start of the planning and zoning Commission did recommend a denial of this request. That was a seven zero vote. And because they have recommended denial and because of the neighborhood opposition that we will look at later on this evening that super majority vote is required, which does require six out of seven. In this case, that would be six out of six because of one abstention. Before we look at the details of the SUV request. I wanted to briefly talk about what I mentioned earlier, which was that this development with a lower building height could occur by right. This request actually went before the planning and zoning Commission twice. The first time they were there in August. There was a debate and discussion in the Commission wanted to see what development by right would look like on the site. They wanted to know what was possible without the additional building height that was causing concern for the neighborhood. So as a result of that and the case being postponed, the applicant went back to the drawing board and came forward with a possible interpretation of how the site could develop under the current zoning without any specific use permit requirements. And that's what you see before you and we'll walk through this plan and compare it to that issue P plan in a little bit more detail later on. But I wanted to to just kind of lay that foundation before we look at this in more detail. So as I mentioned, the request for the issue P is specific to building heights. It's important to see what the proposed building would look like. You can see here would be a four story single building with the issue P request. It does have a parking garage that would be kind of central to the site along with the central courtyard. So there's not a lot of surface parking to the site with this layout. Again, it would be four stories, a maximum of 60 feet in height. So looking at that in a little more detail, it's important to first look at how building height is measured in the code. So because this is a flat roof building, that measurement is from the average finished grade of the site to the roof line. It does not include building parapets. The building and the plans that are included in your backup have an actual structure height that is just under 55 feet. They've requested a maximum of 60 because of the significant grade changes on site. There's about 20 to 30 feet of difference depending on what part of the site you're in between the north side and the south side. They're expecting that once they account and get into the fine grading of the site, the building would come in at approximately 58 feet from that average grade. But they're looking for a little bit of flexibility there because of the significant grade changes. So that's the reason for the maximum of 60 feet in the request wording. So this is the comparison of the plans that I mentioned earlier. Both of these are provided in your backup as separate documents so you can zoom in and look at them a little more closely. The top plan that you see here is what's part of this SUP request. The bottom is that alternative by right plan, if you will. So in both of these, you see a total of 234 units accounted for in those buildings. The SUP plan does have a much smaller footprint. So you see the multifamily contained in one building. That parking garage that I referenced is this square that you see in the middle of the plan. And this plan is actually leaving additional space for future retail to provide a mixed use component to this development. With the by right plan, you see things are a bit more spread out to account for the lower building height. So you have more traditional surface parking, garden style, multifamily with no retail or mixed use component to this at that point. Looking at some of the things that are key considerations for the site design and the neighborhood concerns we all heard on the SUP plan. They are providing approximately 110 feet of setback between the building and the southern property line. Again, because they've condensed that footprint by going vertical and having the parking internal to the building. With the bottom plan that you see there for the by right development, those setbacks are reduced. They have about 13 feet between the building that's shown as building four and the south property line, approximately 27 feet at building three. It's important to note the Emmon district does not require a rear yard setback, so there's no setback requirement there. There is a 10 foot buffer required, 10 feet of depth for a buffer required between a multifamily and single family use. So that is accommodated in both plans. On the northern plan, that tree buffer and tree preservation area is 60 to 70 feet wide going across the southern side of the site. Again, that's 13 to 27 feet on the by right plan. Tree preservation in the SUP plan does meet and slightly exceed the 30% requirement of the code. With the alternative plan, they would be using that enhanced mitigation allowance that we've talked about, and that would go down to 20%. In both of these plans, access is provided by the same two means. As you saw on that aerial image earlier, there is very limited access. This site literally has one connection to a roadway. TxDOT has already built the driveway and the turning lane for the site because that does only have one point of access and would be otherwise landlocked if they didn't allow that, and that is there at the northeast corner to the site. A secondary means of access to meet emergency access requirements is proposed here on the northwest corner of the site and would go through the fire lanes of the adjacent elderly housing use. As outlined in your backup, staff has found that this meets the criteria for approval that are provided in subchapter two, hitting some of the high points of that. This site is designated for regional mixed use development by our comp plan that does include high density urban style multifamily, which this would meet the criteria for. This SUP request does allow for that more compact building footprint and parking design, so it is a better urban design form, more in line with what our comprehensive plan calls for, and it allows for significantly greater buffering and tree preservation between the multifamily use and the adjacent residences. This site is meeting those requirements for tree preservation, therefore we're not expecting any significant negative environmental impacts from this. The infrastructure to serve the site is in place, and as I mentioned, TxDOT has already built the deceleration lane and driveway that would be needed for this site. Public outreach was conducted prior to those P&Z hearings as well as prior to the city council hearing as required by state law. So far, 23 individual properties, and there are more responses than that in your backup, but 23 individual properties have responded within that 200 foot buffer. And as state law requires, you may be familiar with, we calculate the land area within that 200 foot buffer that's opposed to the request, and if that exceeds 20% state law requires the supermajority is triggered for approval. This is currently at 25.5%, so in addition to the P&Z recommending denial, we also have that requirement triggering the supermajority. The applicant did hold three virtual neighborhood meetings, and they'll be here this evening and can speak to the discussions at those meetings if you have any questions. And with that, staff has recommended approval with the conditions that are outlined in your backup. The Planning and Zoning Commission did recommend denial, and as we indicated previously, the supermajority vote would be required for approval, and I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Questions for staff, Councilmember McGuire? Thank you. This really isn't a question for staff, but I'd like to sort of address, you know, my constituents who I know are listening and many of whom are here tonight, because the neighbors in this area are very concerned about this, obviously. So I think that all my colleagues and constituents know I love multifamily development, I love infill development, I think that we need to be promoting dense infill multifamily development. But the reason that I like those things so much and I want to promote those things so much is because they promote affordability and walkability. The proposed project is not affordable. It is explicitly a luxury apartment development. And through no fault of the developers, it's inherently unwalkable. It's situated in between just these two monstrosities of concrete, the shopping center to the north and then Bucky's to the southeast, both of which are incredibly hostile to pedestrians, and just there is no good access for drivers or for pedestrians. And then, of course, to the south we have these cul-de-sacs that cut off mobility of all sorts. So even though this is dense infill development, it doesn't have the typical benefits that you would see from dense infill development. None of the options that the developer has shown to P&Z or to this council are really good options that would enhance the area. And I'll say that, you know, I think we've all gotten a lot of communication from residents of the area saying loud and clear that they do not want this. I engaged in a lot of back and forth conversation with folks, making sure that folks understand that multifamily development is allowed by right. A lot of folks didn't understand that initially, but even after, you know, engaging in conversation, a lot of folks still, everybody I spoke to, still felt that the SUP was a bad move, and I haven't seen anything from this presentation or from the developer, and I've been following it for a long time that is compelling enough to make me want to vote against what the neighbors want here. So for that reason, I will be voting no. So questions for staff, Councilman Bet. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Hailey, can you talk me through the requirements for entrances and exits and the widths of roads and the development like this? Sure. So the primary point of access, as I mentioned, is that single driveway that they have available to them from the I-35 frontage road. Regardless of what developed here, that would be its only primary point of access because it's literally the only frontage the property has. Depending on the use and the intensity of the use, the fire code kicks in a requirement for a second point of access. The DDC has a similar access, but allows for waivers in cases where it's infeasible to provide that. The fire code, however, does not have similar waivers. It's a life safety matter, so it has to be met. In this instance, they are working with the adjacent neighbor. I believe Brookdale is the owner of that elderly housing facility. The applicant has initiated conversations with them regarding a secondary means of access that would be emergency only, so it would be gated, and it would utilize their fire lanes that connect to this site to provide that means of ingress and egress for emergency services only. That would require an easement from that property owner that they're in the process of obtaining, and they would have to provide us that final documentation by platting in order for this development to move forward. That's a fire code requirement. I believe you also indicated a question about the width of the drive aisles, because the height of the building, it would be anything over 30 feet requires a 26-foot fire lane, so that's what they've accommodated on both of these plans. And that has to be provided on at least one side of any of the buildings that are 30 feet and above, so both of these plans do accommodate that 26-foot fire lane. Correct me if I'm wrong, just on this particular issue, and I know that it's not always fair to relate one property to another, but I'm trying to understand, on Westgate we were very concerned with multiple entrances and exits being a serious issue, and here we have one for how many units? 234. 234 units, so we have one, and maybe a gate to satisfy the fire marshal, which would let the emergency services vehicles in and out, but not the people who would be clogged up trying to get away from the building if it was on fire. Is that sort of where we are? I mean, even in the best case scenario with a gate, we really would just sort of functionally have one entrance and exit? Correct, just because of the physical parameters of the property itself, that is the only option for that primary means of ingress and egress, or off of the one driveway that they have to I-35. But we have uses in the DDC that would be more compatible with having this sort of one and a half entrance, is that correct? Perhaps. It would depend ultimately on the site design, the intensity of uses proposed, assuming financially anything that could afford to go on the property would probably require some higher number of units if it were multifamily or a similar use. You would likely end up in a similar situation, regardless of what was developing on the site. Okay, and I have two more questions if I can, Mr. Mayor? Certainly. Thank you. So one of these I ask you in the questions for staff, and that was, generally when we make a detention pond, a surface exposed detention pond, is concrete lined or it's just an open pit? It depends on the specifics of the design of the pond. Many of them are concrete lined, many of them are not, they're just primarily grassed indentions of the ground with concrete swales or flumes in them. It could really be any different manner of designs. The SUP request in this instance, if they were to go with that site plan and have approval, would have both above ground detention on one end of the site and underground detention in the middle, because there are two different low points on the site that they have to accommodate for drainage. And would, as I understand it, these are underground concrete over, because there's a lane over that, is that correct? Correct. So the particular design on their plan, pull up that just so everyone sees what we were talking about. So within this plan, it is roughly in this area of the site, there would be underground detention underneath that fire lane, if they were developed with this site. So that is, my understanding, by no means a drainage expert or engineer is essentially a giant concrete box that sits under the ground, collects the water, and then lets it drain out at the appropriate rate into the city storm drain system. And there is a storm drain already stubbed to that low point of the site here on the southern end. That they would be required to tie into. So the underground portion is just that small region? Or is it the entire lane? I guess that's what I'm trying to understand. No, it is, the limits of it are not shown on this plan, it's my understanding, it's roughly just this portion of the fire lane that would have that underground detention. And do you happen to know if that's concrete lined? Is it a box? That's my understanding, those structures are essentially concrete boxes that are installed in the ground to hold the water and release it at a designated rate. But I believe the applicant has their engineer here tonight and he could probably speak much more intelligently to that than I can. And I guess my last question is, can you refresh our memories on what trees fall into which categories and what trees are on site in which categories, in these categories? So there are a mixture of trees on site, but they are primarily heritage and quality. So heritage trees being essentially any quality species that is six inches, or I'm sorry, 18 inches and greater, or post oak six inches and greater. The site does have a, I do not know the percent off the top of my head, but it is a large majority post oaks. So they are mostly heritage trees. The quality trees are any species that's not secondary, that's between six and 18 inches. And secondary are those things like hackberry, honey locust, ash, and similar, less desirable species, if you will. So it's fair to say that this SUP plan or the alternative plan are substantially removing heritage trees. I mean, up to our guidelines, I guess, but these are post oaks, essentially. A majority of them are. Yeah, okay. I think that's all my questions. Thank you. Okay. Any other questions for staff? Okay. If the applicant wants to present and they'll have one or two speakers, we'll just set the timer 20 minutes and that'll be, that'll capture both and you can split it, divide it up how you want. Do you want me to get the presentation shared for you or? I think Randy's probably going to do that. Okay. Okay. So you don't need it yet? All right. Thank you. Good evening Mayor and Council. Lance Van Zandt, 512 West Hickory here in Denton. I represent the applicant at Tash Income Fund and its principal, Mr. William Child, who's here tonight. I also have Randy Rivera, who's with our consulting engineer and she'll be able to answer any hard technical questions you have. And of course, Mr. Child is always here to answer any questions related to his business or his plan for the future as far as this property goes. Of course, Mr. Child bought the property, his company Tash Income Fund, a little over a year ago. They build, operate and maintain multifamily projects. That's their business. That's what they intend to do with this site. It's not speculative. It's not under contract. They've owned it for over a year, have been going through a fairly lengthy process as Haley set forth in her presentation. We've had at least three neighborhood meetings. I've had several other points of contact in the neighborhood with some of the folks who are in opposition as well as the surrounding owners. Some of the commercial businesses have been numerous contacts over the last year. We've had two PNZ meetings. And, you know, Mr. Child obviously as a sophisticated investor and businessman knew that he bought a property that was entitled to a certain type of product. The typical garden style apartment that you see a lot of those in Denton. He had a vision for something different and Councilman McGuire is accurate. It's a higher rent product geared mostly toward young professionals who can't quite afford or can't find a home in Denton, a single family home to purchase, but are looking for a little more expensive product for rent. That include natural outdoor amenities and that include a parking garage as opposed to a concrete parking surface parking lot. Those are elements of multifamily projects that this type of demographic is looking for. This this tract was cited in a particular area on the high 35 quarter that's conducive to that that's near the medical community here in Denton employers, and that was a specific demographic that they were targeting and feel that they'll be successful renting to has a very similar project in on the ground in city of Corinth just to the south on the other side of the highway, but you can you can see it there. It's near the near the college. And you'll see from Randy's presentation the site the architecture the elevations that similar what we're proposing it's a very successful project and rents to that to the type of demographic that we discussed but full disclosure, it is a, it is a more expensive product probably more expensive than the vast majority of the apartments and didn't. But that's there's a there's a market for that there's a demographic that wants that and it's in short supply here in Denton and we're trying to we hope to have helped to provide that and hope to get your approval for the issue. Peter night. We're some. Mr. Mac raised a lot of good questions regarding the site development issues surrounding the site we understand that all development building code fire code plotting standards applied as we're not asking for any forgiveness on those we understand that that we will go through that process. We're simply asking for a approval of an issue P that would allow us to increase the height of the building to make it a more compact structure to take the parking to a garage preserve about 150 additional trees about 25,000 square feet of pervious not have to have additional impervious surface. So that's just up front it's it's a product that Mr size developed before this member successful that he's proud of it's also a product that is that makes sense for his for his company for his investors, but that's been a great service to his residents and has been very successful. Well, I understand we've had you know we've met numerous meetings I understand we're at a point where we're probably not going to do anything else to satisfy the neighbors. We understand that. I understand when things go in next to your home. I do I do understand that, but I just don't want it to be. I don't want to walk out of here with anybody under the impression that this is just some speculative application here that we're not going to develop that's. We don't speak definitively about what's going to happen tomorrow, but they fully intend purchase the property have been holding it and going through this process for a year. Not so they can flip it until it's somebody else's business they build multifamily projects and that's what they fully intend to do here under the existing entitlements if need be we just we don't want to do that and please don't. The only reason that was ever created is because commissioner Smith asked us to come back with show us what you could do on this property if you don't get the issue pay and in response to his request that's what we did we never brought this fourth as a. Our proposal or our preferred projects I just want the council to understand that we understand it's a tough decision, but we think it makes just think it makes perfect sense for the for the community and for the city. So again, appreciate your consideration. Randy Rivera is here to go through our slide and will be available for any questions. Thank you again. Thank you. All right. Well good evening. It is a pleasure to be here tonight, finally, in front of you. Council members and mayor, so thank you very much for the time. So, Lance did a good job of opening us up Haley went through the details, and it's been a process. And I wanted to walk through a couple of the site elements. I know some of them are very obvious and looking at the plans but I think when we spend a little bit of time walking through that a little bit. It will show us the enhancements because to your point, Councilwoman McGuire. It's not very walkable but we've had we have developed some things on site that we think can contribute to the walkability. And it is, of course, no fault to our own right but how can we promote walkability on on this plan and I wanted to show you some of those elements. So as Lance indicated, Mr. Sal owned and developed this 24 acre parcel south of us on 35 in Corinth. It's a mixed use development that features a hotel restaurants, an event center, and two buildings on the east side of the project that are four stories, and they sit on about six acres, and there's 228 units on that six acre piece in the back. It's surface part. So it's it's you know when we're looking at the seven acre parcel before us tonight there's some similarities in that, but this before you tonight is a little bit more urban feel but a surface part. And this development is what he did here in current. There's a waiting list to get in. There's a lot of amenities you can see the picture here of the pool courtyard on one of the buildings. And then there's views overlooking the detention pond in the northeast corner of the property, and just a lot of great enhancements architectural features, and how it blends in and creates a cohesive development but this is a very successful project. And it is one of Williams very, you know, I guess, most proud accomplishments in this region that he's been able to do. And so he's looking at coming up here to to Denton to do a more urban type of residential product as Lance indicated to attract a certain demographic, the young professionals, and so this side being seven acres is 300 feet north to south. In that 300 feet we also have 1300 trees, and we shot every single tree, and it took, I think, two months probably to do that with our crews, but we were able to get them all identified and shot and they're predominantly oaks and elms, but yeah the vast majority of them are the the post oaks this being part of that ecosystem, years ago. So, with the features the constraints of the property there's a lot of them access the geometry, the, the, the terrain and the trees, and its adjacency has, you know, it's an infill piece, infill pieces are always more challenging, because you have the adjacency that you have to consider. And so access being all we have is this 50 foot access easement up to 35. And it's existing on the property today as an easement. And as Haley talked about, Texas has already put in a right turn D cell lane for this drive. And so we would install the required section here in order to come into our main point of access here this is non gated. This is open. It is not enclosed, like a lot of other complexes in the city. So it is, it does have that more of that open feel. So residents would come in at this point here and in this gray area is the parking garage. It's centrally located to provide convenience for residents. The building footprint altogether that you see is about 60,000 square feet of a footprint. But what we did look you know the site being the way it is as far as the terrain, and it being only 300 feet wide so we purposefully shove the building as far north as we could to protect the residents to the south to provide more as much separation as possible. Even though that isn't a requirement we knew that we needed to be sensitive to that. And so we're even asking for a reduced landscape buffer on the north side. Instead of the 10 feet we're asking for a five foot buffer up there so that we can get the building closer to the shopping center. And so this this fire lane does circulate around the perimeter of the building, but the majority of the traffic. Actually all the traffic will come in from this point into the garage and then back out. So the flow will be very similar to what I'm showing on my mouse. We think it's very rare, you know, it's not going to be a frequent movement of traffic to take the circuit the route all the way around the building to to leave the site because the closest point of access leaving the garage is just right there direct connection. And so all of this circulation that's here you know the pedestrians and the residents of the site will be able to kind of walk through here and enjoy that space without a lot of vehicle conflicts. Since the majority of traffic is going out to the northeast, but what we have done is there's a 65 foot landscape or I'm sorry tree preservation buffer. This orange line represents a bark mulch mulch trail that were meandering in and out of the trees. And as we do that we have created butterfly gardens along this pathway for residents to enjoy in a natural setting. This bark mulch trail terminates at this point and then this area here which is about 80 feet wide next to Brookdale, where we're also preserving the trees here. This will be the dog park. It's a pretty significant area. It is a must have in today's, you know, urban residential development world. These these residents have to have an amenity for their pets. This natural zone that you see in like a darker shade of green is about 40 feet from the property line. And it was really important in this area to preserve the understory. Here's where we're trying to maintain that ecosystem that's there. Keep those habitats preserved and to not go in and clear, you know, clear out the understory and have it manicured setting, but this is a more of a natural transition if you will, but a 40 foot natural zone where that environment is going to stay intact. Once we're past the 40 feet, then we're going to do some more manicure, manicured areas with the butterfly gardens and preserving the trees still with a bark mulch trail. So to delineate the natural zone from the more accessible open areas is we're proposing a six foot metal fence. So that residents and people that use the trail would understand that that's a different area over there. It's a preservation area, if you will. On our south side, we are proposing an eight foot board on board fence. A six foot fence is required, but we understand the concerns and the visibility, you know, concerns of the neighbors. So we we're asking for an increase of two feet for the fence there. The building itself includes an enclosed courtyard where the really the amenity activation will occur here in the pool area with the amenity center and the fitness in the clubhouse area in this corner of the building. And then as you transition over to the east or sorry to the west, it's in more of an open courtyard with rain gardens and a detention pond that will drain into an underground detention so that at this point it will drain. It will release over to this. There's a great inlet right here that our stormwater is going to be able to drain to. And so we did the underground detention so that we can preserve the trees. We're saving 33% of the tree canopies on the property. So we anticipate starting construction in about six to nine months, depending on the outcome tonight will either move forward with their STP approval and work on our engineering plans. Or we will submit a zoning compliance plan for another plan that's consistent with the regulations today. And then after that is approval move forward with the civil engineering plans. But what we would like to do is is preserve more trees and have more open space and keep the buildings as far away from the south as possible. So if this STP is approved, and we are very hopeful that it will be will be able to accomplish those things to protect the residents. This is a cross section showing a typical residential home, and then the 65 foot natural or the tree preservation buffer, the fire lane, and then the 15 foot landscape buffer before you get to the building and you can see the great change in the terrain section here. But really this is showing if this building is 55 feet at this elevation, just what that angle of vision really is and it's about a 22.9 degree angle of vision. If we go to the next slide. One of the things that we talked about in our neighborhood discussions. Is, and this is a very, the building does not look like this please don't think that's the architecture that's just a placeholder there. But one of the things that we talked about going back to this is like okay if we took the building we know we're, we're asking for 60 feet. Max height, we think it's going to be 58 we haven't done the final grading our elevation say 55 right now. So what if we took that building and work with the terrain as it's sloping down from the north to the south, what if we were able to step the building down in a series of, you know, two to three foot steps and reduce the height of the building, as it is adjacent to the south property line because that's the lower end of the terrain. That's where the property slopes down the most. So we have a cross section here to show at a known point what that would mean. We go from 55 feet to 52 from this particular particular point. But the series of drops you can see kind of on the parapet of the roof how it steps down and then it steps down. And then it goes out to here but it also steps down as it goes to the west. And it's kind of hard to see with this cross section but it's, it's basically following the terrain that's out there today on the south and the east side of that building and stepping it down with the train to create a 20 degree angle of vision instead of a 22.9. And so we would like to propose that. We did discuss that with the neighbors and that is something that William is willing to do. And so that really concludes my portion of the presentation and thank you, Lance, for speaking earlier. Between Lance and myself, we'll be happy to answer any questions. Do we have any questions for the applicant, Councilman bet. So, what, what did you anticipate the price point as I understood this was this more upscale luxury apartments. Yes, yes. We anticipate the price point to be about $1 67 square foot was that right. 76 sorry $1 76 per square foot. And, and so, you know, given the, the, the strip center to the north and the Buckees to the south. Do you think that luxury apartment dwellers are going to want to have those kinds of views to the north and the east. Well, we think the, the, so we, you know, putting the parking garage helps minimize the views to the north to the shopping center, for sure. And so we do think because of the site's location and having those trees on the south. And the detention pond over in the southeast and having some trees saved over here that it will create some nice views for residents to the south and to the east. We're trying to, you know, there will be views to the north and that's understood when people are moving and renting this by choice that they will have some of those views. I don't know if we've looked if if our client has looked at it from a point of maybe those units would have a lesser rate or something I'm not sure. But it would be understood that those could be their views that those are the only units available. I don't know. I guess it's just me but it seems like looking at a senior center to the west the shopping center to the north the Buckees to the east and in people's backyards to the south feels like not something I would want to pay top dollar for. I would worry that if we approve this, that it would, it would sit idle to a large degree and be unlike your current property. And even with the alternative plan it feels very similar to me. I didn't know that Mr. Salas, you know, spend a great deal of time and money on market studies, particularly this side I'm sure he could, he could probably speak to that in more detail if you really wanted to hear that. Commissioner, Councilman Beck. Well, I mean, you know, I guess you guys obviously believe that I guess I'm having a difficult time believing that that's that's a good match. I have some other concerns as well. So I think maybe we'll just leave it there for somebody else's questions. Okay, any other questions for the applicant. Let's see. No questions for the applicant. Thank you very much. I do have a question for city staff before we take calls. My question is, can you confirm what was stated earlier? I think that's an important note to kind of set the tone. Was the alternative plan requested by Commissioner Smith. Yes, it was, it was a discussion by several members of the commission that they they weren't sure the site was developable by developable by right. So, Commissioner Smith did indicate that he would like to see an alternative plan to see what could go on the site within the existing zoning to prove that something could go there. A similar multifamily product. So with after that discussion, the commission voted to postpone the item indefinitely to allow them time to consider what that alternative plan could look like. Okay, so it wasn't presented until until requested. Correct. Yes, this case first went in August and then came back about a month and a half later in September with that alternative plan. Got it. Okay, thank you very much. So we have one caller to start off with and then we have some other speakers so if we could queue the caller that'd be great. I think you may or I have Martha and phone in all Patrick right now. Hello, Martha. Yes, if you could give your name and address and then go you can proceed you'll have four minutes to speak. Okay, thank you. Hello, my name is Martha and salmon. I live at two four zero eight not just trace right behind this proposed millennial crest development. So my two concerns with this development are safety and privacy. So, we have three little boys, and our back to our backs right up into this area. So, my concern is that this apartment will allow more traffic and foot traffic from the highway and potential crime. So we moved to the neighborhood in 2016, and then Bucky's was developed in 2018. And since then, there's been assault on that, but in April 2020 and when a man pulled a gun and was shot by deputies. So, this concerns me in that we would have more traffic coming to our area. And I remember when that happened I was working from home and there was helicopters flying above and so it's very concerning that some, some, someone who is, you know, potential criminal could be coming into our neighborhood. Also, at that Bucky's there was a protester who was punched in the face by a Trump supporter. So this is the kind of things that I'm concerned about that this development will allow this type of public people to access and come closer to our neighborhood. The second one is privacy. So, with the four story building, the residents and guests of this apartment on the fourth floor will be able to look directly into our backyard. And we have, like I mentioned, three small boys who play in the backyard very regularly and so we will lose a lot of privacy with this fourth story being developed that will be able to look directly into our backyard. Thank you. Okay, and is there any questions for the caller. Okay. Yes. Okay, I do have one question, I would ask for your, just because I don't have an opportunity to ask it later. What are your comments. Have you seen the proposal to build by right, and are there any, is there any design that you would be okay with just to have have a clear understanding. To me that would be a little bit better but not 100% beneficial. I think someone has suggested in a previous meeting that maybe a single family development could be built there instead of this high rise building, which would be better suited for the neighborhood. And I agree with that because then you'd have several smaller kind of condo like homes, and that would kind of separate our neighborhood from the highway versus having this big open space where people can come in freely you said. The lady said that there's not it's not even gated it's just open, people can come around that fence to me that's not desirable I'd rather have a neighborhood something else, preferably what there is right now but if something has to be developed that prefer smaller single family homes in that area. Great. Okay, thank you very much. I appreciate that. Okay. Are there any other colors. Are there any other colors for this one. Great. And then, so the going to the blue cards I have Jeff Roman that requested to speak I do believe that's in. Yeah. You can come to the speak to the mic there give your name and address you'll have four minutes. Thank you. My name is Jeff Roman a little bit 2420 matches trace. I'm one of the properties that backs up to our Millennium Crest is is looking to develop here. I want to follow up on something right quick, as far as the plan, a versus plan be the last meeting that we are the initial meeting that we had had. We made it almost to the very end to where we're going to vote, and it was going to be believe it was going to be six. They were going to be opposed to this and one was in favor of it. And that's when sort of the idea came up with Hey, do you have another plan, and then all of a sudden plan B comes up a month and a half later in the very next meeting that we had. I can't speak for all the residents I can only speak for my wife, and my family but it largely felt like a lot of the concerns initially with the height. And so, plan B comes back and shows it to be right up against I mean I look at the graph again but shows it to be right up against our back property lines, and it only took a few minutes for the planning and zoning I forget the gentleman's name sort of, I guess you would say sniff out if you will. You're almost looking and using a fear factor to try and sort of bully the, the residents into picking and being in favor of this SUP to avoid having this right in your backyard. And so that's what led to the seven that declined it on the last meeting. So just a couple of things. We all had mentioned about you know the price point on these on these units here, and it talked about that shopping center I realize everyone's pretty familiar here but not only is that shopping center, it's sort of a different issue but on the corner there there's a cheaper than dirt, there's a goodwill that are going to be right where your high end luxury type tenants are going to be coming in and out of every day. I went to school here, lived in a number of apartments that were here in Denton, I can tell you even as a college guy, probably wouldn't be real crazy about coming in and out and seeing a goodwill or cheaper than dirt every single day. Julie the young lady that presented a little bit earlier she made a really good point. If then was to look and do one of these maps on this particular area I wonder if in 2030 if that small area right there, based on the, the surroundings and how things are classified I kind of wonder if that would end up falling into a. This is a good spot for the future of didn't have a four story apartment complex. There's absolutely nothing in the neighborhood or in the area there that's any, any higher than two stories high. So something that's four stories is really out of scope with what the neighborhood I mean Southridge has been 40 years we've lived there for for almost 10 of them now but it's a well developed neighborhood, and they come in and put a fancy product like this out high I just believe it to be out of the scope. Not only that but on their buffer map that they showed they only showed a one story house myself I live in a two story house that's directly behind that. And that's one of the things that I don't really feel like has been taken into consideration is, again we have small children, and that is going to be what I would consider to be a bit of an invasion of privacy having people that are looking down into where my, my young girls and my young kids play and live every day. The last thing that I'm going to leave you with is the 230 250 units I believe is what it is. I believe they came up with one to one and a half vehicles per unit there. If you've been to that particular stretch of the service road 35 where it finally ends up there Bucky's. I realized they just got they were doing that if you go through there at eight o'clock in the morning or four o'clock in the afternoon. It is nothing to sit through that light to sometimes three times, even with the turnarounds that they have there. So I really feel like that that's going to It's inevitable that there's going to be an accidents, not to mention as we've talked about the speed limits. It's easy to get going 5060 miles an hour right there and with the off ramp that comes on it's a really really dangerous area. I've got a number of other points I've emailed all of y'all I believe you'll know where I'll stand I'm going to So I want to I want to explore that a little bit just on the Do you so staff mentions it's per the commission's request that the alternative is provided. So it wasn't I just I just want to make sure you you give it sounds like you requested for something You've got to give it right. I think that's do you agree or do you disagree. Do you what what I guess my question is more open. What do you think should have been provided or what you what would you anticipated be provided when that question was asked. I was anticipating something that was going to be three stories, not something that was wedged right up against our houses there. Initially, whenever we have initially had the talks at the first planning and zoning, it was very clear that this is absolutely the only plan that we have. We have. We have absolutely have no other plans. If it's not this, it's not anything else. And again, we made it to the end of that meeting. And at the very end, somebody was like, well, why don't you come back with Plan B in Plan B just happened to be. I mean, it really played to the thing that was really on everyone's mind that it was this close. And my thought is right. I don't know. But my thought is that it was done on purpose to be that close to our houses into our property lines to entice us to be willing to buy into the SUV. So that they could have the four story part. I don't believe it's financially feasible to do this with with a three story product. Again, I don't know any of the financials. That's just my gut feel and why the SUV is being pushed at a third meeting here. Got it. And so and just and I'll ask everyone this. I just want to note. Do you have because. Worst case it or best case or wherever you fall on it, you know, either way going forward, it's it's developed by right. That goes all through city staff, and there's not an opportunity to be heard. So I want to have a record of everyone to be heard, right? Because I think that's important. So do you have any change requests, recommendations or anything you want to be heard on? I'm not you don't have to just want to give you the floor to speak to if city staff is sitting there. If city staff is sitting in a meeting, and they're talking about by right, what would you want them to consider? Sure, I want them to consider the surrounding areas and to keep it within the height of the buildings and things that surround the area. There's nothing that's in that area that's any bigger than two stories. Okay, great. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mayor. Hey, I have a question. Sorry. And then next up is. Well, let me do this one at a time. So fair fair point that Jeff makes. So when you when the by right component. Or is that what they consider to be a viable plan for the site, given the significant grade changes how the buildings need to be placed all the fire lanes and surface parking that would have to be accommodated that that is their reasonable assessment of how the site can lay out by right. Okay, so then, worst case, just understanding what city is going to look at right so city is going to look at it and have you have to give guidelines. What are our setback guidelines for whatever I don't even know what it's his own currently but what it's going to own currently what are the what are the setback requirements, because that's what you're going to be guided by sure the only setback requirement would be on the front yard, so the side on the north side of the property would be considered the front facing the roadway that they have access to. There is no setback requirement on the side or the rear property lines. So the only separation requirement would be the landscape buffer requirements which would be 10 feet on both the south and the west side adjacent to single family and elderly housing. So 10 feet on the south and west are required. And then the front setback is what is 10 feet 10. So, for the just so I can understand what a staff allowed to do other than, you know, do you advocate, do you, what do you do in that those. We enforce the code. So as long as they meet the minimums of the code, we will be obligated to to approve the site plan. So that's 10 feet on the south side of the property. Got it. And that's, and just to make sure my notes right so that's 10 foot in the front. That's I 35. And then 10 foot on the south. That's the residences. Yes, and then 10 foot to the west. That's goodwill. To the west is the Brookdale senior housing. And then on the east side is Bucky's and there would not be a setback or a buffer requirement on that side. And then we have Anne Barry. Is that right? Perfect. Thank you. If you can come to the mic and give your name address, you'll have four minutes. Good evening. My name is Anne Barry. I live at 2500 Natchez Trace. My property backs immediately to the property we're discussing this evening. I'd like to thank the City Council for listening to our concerns this evening. South Ridge Estates is a peaceful, family friendly neighborhood. And while I could spend my four minutes reiterating to you what many of my neighbors have said to you via email or that will say to you at the podium tonight. I just want to say that so many of my neighbors have spent hours, hundreds of hours trying to dissect this project and understand it coming before City Council, coming to neighborhood meetings, meeting with one another, doing all the research. And I don't think that we would spend so much of our personal time, our family time, our private time to invest in coming together to fight against this SUP if we didn't believe that that was the best thing for our community. This area, I understand, is zoned mixed use. It's intended to be a buffer area. And I don't believe in any way that the scale of what this project would be given the SUP in any way represents a buffer. There are or that the fire lanes that are planned for this development are completely adequate for the safety of those future residents for this project. I also would submit to you that I understand this property may indeed be developed, and I ask for your careful consideration for what the neighboring properties need and for that to be taken into consideration. It was brought up at Planning and Zoning, and I think I heard maybe Ms. Feldman, my neighbor, mention single-family housing. What was brought up at Planning and Zoning is this idea of horizontal living, which is still a rental product that I think could be a wonderful addition to the City of Denton. I understand that the present owners maybe have or haven't considered that, but what I do know is what they said at the Planning and Zoning Commission with regard to the three-story garden-style product development is they haven't developed a product like that in 20 years. So I have no reason to believe that they will move forward with developing a product like that if they have not done that in 20 years. The developer also shared studies to say that this product will not lower our home values, but these were not formal studies, except for one, which was actually done by a multi-family developer. And what it states is that multi-family developments in moderate-income properties are not affected by multi-family if the scale is similar to the surrounding properties, which with the special-use permit, it in no way will be to scale. Again, I just want to thank you again for all of your time and careful consideration and ask that if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer. Sure. So just the same, do you have anything that you want to note for the developer? No, we've actually met with the developer personally in our home. It was their first time they let us know when they came to visit us and that they had ever even set foot in our neighborhood, which was a little shocking to me since they over and over and over said what a great neighbor they wanted to be to us. So to know that after they owned the property and worked on developing it for a year, that they only set foot in our neighborhood upon our invitation, that just told me that I feel they were being very upfront. Okay, thank you. And next is Don Lyons. Councilman Beck. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, something the speaker brought up that occurred to me talking about the access. Hey, can I ask Kaylee a question related to that? Yeah, certainly. Sorry, Mr. Lyons. You're next. Just give us one second. So, if the applicant is unable to obtain an easement agreement with Brookdale to the west, if for some reason they just don't feel like it and they're under no obligation to do that, then we have one entrance, is that correct? That's correct. And one entrance, as noted earlier, would not be sufficient to meet fire code requirements, so they would then need to pursue some other means of access, whatever that could be, possibly through the property to the north or at some other point to try to meet that requirement. And to the city's knowledge, there's no contract in place for an easement or none of that exists, to our knowledge. To our knowledge, there's not at this point that would be required with the platting of the property. Okay, thank you. My name is Dan Lyons. I live at 2516 Shiloh Road, 76210. And I'm going to start off with reading what an MN mixed use occupancy or mixed use zoning is for this particular property. Also, I am a registered architect in the state of Texas. It says, reading the last part of it, "This district contributes to a vibrant environment for pedestrians and bicyclists and includes varying densities of residential, neighborhood-serving retail, restaurants, commercial, and office uses that are sensitive to the surrounding built natural context in scale and form." That's right here in your own zoning code. This project meets none of that. It meets absolutely none of these requirements, specifically what we're talking about today, scale. There is nothing on the south side of 35 that is four stories tall. There is nothing that is three stories tall on that side. So to say that it's fitting in scale and context is just not true. We have good people that live in that neighborhood, people who pay taxes, we have people who pay HOA dues, we have people who keep up their properties, that are proud of their properties. They don't want to have to get up in the morning, walk out the front door and see a giant monstrosity to the north of them. Everybody in that neighborhood is going to be able to see that particular building. Also, if we're going to talk a little bit about Plan B. It's sort of interesting with Plan B because, let me pull it up over here, sorry, iPhones are great. When they originally talked to our neighborhood, when we had a neighborhood meeting, they showed us Plan B. And in Plan B, they had both the square footage for Plan A and the square footage for Plan B, which has been mysteriously missing from this presentation and from the last P and Z presentation. The square footage from Option A was originally, if I can read it without my glasses, 285,430 square feet. Option B is 228,029 square feet. Quite a bit smaller for 234 units that they claim both options can accommodate, especially when you consider in circulation, administration space, mechanical space for those buildings. The square footage for each unit would be incredibly small. Let's see. That building would definitely be a dramatic change to our neighborhood, to the complete character of our neighborhood. And I hope that y'all follow the advice from your own P and Z meeting, and I hope you are listening to us. I appreciate the time to talk to you all. Thank you so much for sharing your stories, but it can be a three by right, if you want to speak to that. And then I'll ask the applicant back up because I know I watched the planning and zoning meeting and I know they answered that question on the square footage, so I'll give them a chance to speak to that again just for that answer, but I know you asked that before and they spoke to it at the end of the comments about that difference and how that was, how they accounted for that, but neither here nor there. So I want to give you an opportunity to kind of share your thoughts. Yeah. I'm sort of surprised that even having a property next to us like that that's even zone for multi use neighborhood or am in. But even so I agree with what everybody else was saying, a more horizontal type property horizontal rental condos or something like that. That would be something that would, you know that would more match our neighborhood, be more in scale, be more in context. Right. It wouldn't stick out like a sore thumb. Okay. Very good. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Is it Randy. Yeah, if you want to speak to that, that'd be great. For the opportunity to speak to that. Okay, so the total gross floor area of building one with the 234 units on the original plan is 208,000 square feet on the plan B that we created, and we showed it at the second neighborhood meeting after we came back from PNC. We did have less square footage. I can't remember exactly he may be correct on the, I think it might have been 20 or 30,000 square feet less. But it was because we separated out into six buildings instead of one building that had a lot of common areas and internal breezeways. The six buildings were more of a garden style approach, and they did not have any of the internal breezeways and corridors that the, that the original plan had. And so, yeah, we made, we didn't do any floor plans on the plan B that we showed yet. We haven't done, we haven't done those. And so we did make some square footage assumptions to be able to come up with that but we, at that time, we were looking at it and it's, we could fit the 234 in the square footage given because we were losing all that common space. Okay, thank you very much. And then I have a white card from Misty Gold that doesn't wish to speak but is in opposition, so I wanted to note that. And then that takes us to the next speaker, Jerry Drake. And just for the record, Jerry sent in a, he submitted a presentation that that wasn't loaded just because of when it was received but we're going to move forward. Allowing him to use his slides. Jerry Drake 2504 Shiloh Road and on my title slide here. And by the way, I only have four minutes to deal with at least four reasons to deny this SUP so if I go fast, feel free to ask me questions. But number one, should cars be required to use fire lanes instead of requiring streets? Number two, should the fire code ever be interpreted to reduce access standards? And I think that we all understand that that's ludicrous. So these are the four SUP criteria that I think are at issue. There are six SUP criteria, but these four are the ones that I believe are at issue. And if you look at number one, compatibility, that's pretty obvious. Number two, should all other code standards, I'm sorry, I disagree that the issue of whether or not they have the other access is something that could be just weighed on the planning process. This is an actual SUP standard. You can't grant this SUP unless you find that all the other code standards are met. That's legitimate for tonight. This is something that has to be decided before you can grant this SUP. If it doesn't have the second access, it doesn't meet the fire code and it doesn't meet the DDC. And the fourth is mitigation of impacts with access traffic and emergency service, and does it adversely affect health, safety, and welfare? SUPs give you discretion in these situations. That's the whole point of an SUP. Number three, compatibility. I've got this slide here that shows what they want is four stories in height, completely surrounded by one-story buildings. That's not scale. That's not a transition. There are nearby MR-zoned parcels. These are areas that have not been developed yet. These would all allow 100-foot tall buildings without an SUP. As far as the code and access, here's the definition of fire lane directly from the international fire code. A fire lane is not necessarily intended for vehicular traffic other than fire apparatus. When fire apparatus are out there fighting a fire, particularly if they've got the aerial trucks that are needed to reach a four-foot tall building, they have outriggers that come out, and they take up a lot more room. You can't just kind of drive around them the way you can a parked car. And a locked gate is not an appropriate access for an emergency, even if they could get the ease of it, to have that gate locked. And this is true for either plan A or plan B. And so it sounds to me like they're trying to get you to buy a pig and a pope to say that we want to get this, but we don't have it yet, but go ahead and approve it anyway. You don't know if it's going to happen. And once you grant it, you can't take it back. How much time is going to need to evacuate more than 383 panicked cars that are trying to escape as emergency vehicles are coming the other way? It's a dangerous bottleneck. This fire lane, and I really wish that I still had the Highland Park road folks here, because they were up here complaining about they don't have a 39-foot width in their road. Good grief. We're talking about 24 feet here, okay? 24 feet, not 39. And our subdivision, our single-family homes, we have 50-foot right away. And so essentially, they're dealing with a four-story multi-family building with all of these parked cars and this restricted access, and they want to funnel everyone down little 24-foot roads. That's ridiculous. And so you have discretion. Here are the bases for recommending denial that I'll keep up here. Okay. And then, so just a question on the -- I do want you to have an opportunity to speak on the buy-write option just so that we have a clear record. So if there's anything you want to add to that, please, by all means. Well, let me first make sure that we all understand when we say buy-write, you know, as I understand, staff is saying buy-write for the use, okay? Not the proposal. They're not saying that all aspects of this proposal can be developed buy-write. They may have to come back here and show that they've got the secondary access. I don't agree that the fire code's bad. I don't agree that they don't have to show, you know, a proper traffic through way in there. So I don't see it as a buy-write, and we could do exactly what this says. No, that's a fair statement, but my question is, you and I won't be in those conversations. Sure. And so I'm giving you an opportunity to be in those conversations by speaking to it, and by all means, you don't have to. I just say that's going to be a staff discussion. I'm happy to. I don't know if you want to interject something if you're in that conversation. I was in all of the neighborhood meetings, and I could tell you that during one of the neighborhood meetings they were proposing this, and I personally asked Mr. Soud during one of those meetings, would you be willing to show us what a three-story would look like? They said no. And then they came forward to P&Z, and then it was Mr. Smith that was asking for, you know, this kind of worst-case scenario of the Plan B, and then, you know, so I figured they would at least try to come up with something that would be palatable. And what I saw was an insult. They had all of the buildings shoved towards the southern border all the way up there, and yet at the northern border, parking spaces. Why don't they have the parking spaces down by us and have the buildings shoved up to the north? Because this wasn't done in good faith, is what I believe. That's my opinion. And so I heard the P&Z came up with this idea of the horizontal rental units. I don't know much about it, but it sounds like something worth looking into. I asked about three-story and what could reasonably be done, and I think that if we were given a design in good faith, you know, it might be something we could talk about, but we can't do it with this SUP. Thank you very much. And next, Ken Gold, please. Thank you, member. Mayor, members of the council. My name is Ken Gold. I live at 2512 Natchez Trace here in town. I'll try not to repeat too much what you've already heard many times. The immediate question before you is the SUP, which is strongly opposed by the immediate neighbors and property owners, and it was unanimously voted down by the P&Z. That's the key thing I want to make tonight. Sometimes I get to wander off, and I don't get to my points. I just want to say that twice. Four stories is simply too tall. It's out of scale. You've heard all this before. There's nothing like it in the surrounding area. This is so-called Plan B. It only exists, as been pointed out by a couple of people here, it only exists because P&Z asked to see what it would look like with three stories. That's the only reason it's there, because it was looking like Plan A was going down in flames. Plan B didn't exist before August. The project at hand here, it's four stories. That's what the Millennium Crest was always going to be, four stories. That's their Millennium Place in Corinth. It's four stories. That's what they do, four stories. There was never a serious consideration for three stories. Plan B is not a plan. It's a drawing, a what-if, and it seems intensely scary. I'll come back to that if I have time. I'd like to mention that the Brinker and I-35 intersection, we're fixing to dump, if this is approved, we're going to dump over 1,200 vehicle trips a day into that intersection. You know how bad it is already. I think that's something that needs to be considered. And lastly, this is the last remnant of the cross-timber upland habitat, which has value to the city, heavily treed. If approved, many, many heritage oaks with diameters of 20 inches or more will be removed. This clearly has an adverse environmental impact. Big trees like these are an important benefit to the air quality of Denton because of their carbon sequestration, and it's a habitat for a variety of wildlife. Green space increases property values, and consequently, clearing green space adversely impacts property values. And look at the drawings, the overhead drawings, both Plan A and Plan B. Note the driveway on the right side that comes off the 35-axis road and then curves off to the right and stops at the Buckees property line. That's an ESA. Coincidentally, Buckees has a driveway that just lines up perfectly. That ESA is in the crosshairs. The issue denies the SUP, four stories, is too tall. They'll be looking over my back fence. The lead screen of trees doesn't screen much in the winter with no leaves. Half the time, no screen. Right now in the winter, I can see lights on the back of that shopping center. And Mr. Bix, comment about the fire lane. If you look at that north fire lane, it has emergency vehicles coming in from the west side. They're going to line up right in front of that parking garage. How do they get out? To paraphrase the chair of the planning and zoning, when they voted down the SUP, it just doesn't fit. Please support the unanimous decision of the P&Z. Thank you. Thank you very much. That was a great job. The clock snuck up at you at P&Z. You handled the clock this time. Outstanding. Okay. And then Jeff Barry, is that right? Great. Thank you. I'd like to thank you Mayor and the City Council for this opportunity to speak today. My name is Jeff Barry. I live at 2500 Natchez Trace, here in Denton. I am here today to express my concerns about the Pinnacle Millennial Crest specific use permit request. The height of the building they're proposing is way out of scale for our neighborhood and surrounding areas. The purpose of the MM district is to provide support compatibility. This is the reason why this area is zoned to 40 feet, not 60 feet. All the surrounding buildings are one and two story structures ranging from 13 to 30 foot in height. The tallest part of the retail building is approximately 30 feet. And the proposed SGP is for 60 feet, which is more than double the height of all the existing buildings in the area. A proportion, a portion of the property is elevated at least 14 foot behind the retail building. If a 60 foot apartment building was allowed to be built at this height, and this would create light and noise pollution that would be a nuisance to everyone. During the fall and winter months, mainly the deciduous trees, loser leaves, and the light noise pollution will be even more intensified, as we experience since Bucky's received an SGP for its signed to be put up at a taller height. On September 10 2021, Mr. Sal and Ms. Stone from Pinnacle came over to our home to present option B plan. In return, this gave us the opportunity to show them a perspective from our side of the fence. When they arrived, they informed us this was their first time to visit our neighborhood. We invited them in and shared the beautiful view from our, we currently have from our large windows in our backyard, into our backyard. We went out into the backyard and tried to explain how intrusive a 60 foot tall building would be to our lives, and the neighbors around us. This is likely the first, this is likely the first time they noticed the enormous drop in elevation in our backyards. Many homes on Natchez Trace are sitting below retaining wall. This is will further intensify the height of the building immediately behind us. The Pinnacle team kept saying they wanted to be good neighbors and wanted to work with us so they went back. So we went back inside, they presented their option B plan, it felt like something they had thrown together to scare us along to go along with option A. After they left, we could tell they wanted to push us through the 60 foot tall building and really didn't care how we felt. Mr. Salem, several occasions said this was not an option for him. On August 4 during the PNZ meeting, he said if he could not build the 60 foot building, as shown, he would not pursue another option. And then that led on to what we've already talked about before. So much stuff to talk about here. But it's like Pinnacle's claiming it's like for high end professional uses, who wants to live and smell dumpsters behind the retail center. You got to drive through Goodwill every day, dirt cheap, and all that stuff sits in the corner. There's people that drop stuff off there all the time. I have to thank you for the opportunity of, while this is not the right project for this location, if Pinnacle truly wants to build a three story garden walk up, I'd rather take the risk with something like this versus something towering over everything and it's going to be less risk to the seniors and us if there was ever a fire back there. Because one of the things that they pointed out on the 24 foot fire lane, you have two access points coming in out of the garage and they all exit at 24 foot fire lane, which you got your fire vehicles coming in from both sides, they're able to access the Brookdale side and access from 35E. Great. Okay. Thank you very much. And then is there, you already touched on it some so is there any additional thoughts on the three story version, any. You know, just so what I'm working for a multifamily construction company, and, and that we are seeing a lot more the horizontal living, which we are currently building in several cities, Princeton, Melissa, stuff like that, and they make sense. It'd be like an ideal solution for that property if it's to be developed. And, but putting something that's gonna be twice the size of any of the surrounding buildings in that area is not compatible to what they're wanting to do now. Okay, thank you very much. I appreciate your comments. We do have one more caller. So I want to staff can you bring up that call. Is the collar show there. Vanessa right Rachel Are you there, we're ready for the caller. We'll give it a minute. Okay, well, then they can. If they come on, we'll, we'll address it then so we'll leave the, the, well, we'll close public hearing. Okay, while they're, while they're working on that, I part of the rules allow for the applicant to have a rebuttal, which would then open the door for all the. Everyone else to have a rebuttal, so just want to hear from is that something you want to proceed with. Okay, great, great. Okay, so, leaving the, the door open for the caller they, they're working on. So, I guess I asked my question for you for the city manager and it was, if, if we don't have the call by the end we'll just have to figure out a path forward without or maybe they can submit an email or something. So, my question for the city manager is, I think, can go makes a good point from a tree preservation perspective, is there an opportunity to have that conversation around participating with the applicant to purchase, similar to the property we discussed to purchase part of those trees to preserve them in exchange for. And it would basically serve as an offset for the cost of losing the floor or losing the fourth level or just kind of want to understand what our is that tool available to us I think it's just a good point. Is there a potential that I don't understand that and so it may not make sense but if it made sense to for the city to purchase and preserve some of the trees. Is that something that's allowed, either by code or by the bond issue that was passed. We have funding available but I was asked Mac from a legal standpoint, I think if Council said for us to to visit with the developer and discuss options for us to preserve more trees. One of those options could be to, to look at the cost of those trees and how we mitigate that, but I don't know there is not currently a funding mechanism to do that. I don't know if there's a legal issue there Mac. I mean if Council so directed, probably through an action item a separate action item at some point, they would like to staff to pursue the option to purchase trees out there from the developer that that would be a separate discussion item that can be taken up at a later time. Okay. Mr Van Sant, or is there someone that could speak to, or just is that I can, I'm catching you with no time, right. I'm just reacting to what I heard, and I think it's a fair point. And we can make it, I don't know that the two have to dovetail together but I just want to, if you want to speak to just and again you've had no time to plan so I'm not holding you to it just getting your organic reaction. Sure, well, beyond will certainly listen to anything that city breaks to this I guess beyond that I couldn't commit to much mayor but I'm sure we're not going to refuse to listen. Sure. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate it. Staff, are you there. What is the status on with the caller, because we're going to it's 11. Staff be there. Okay, well we'll close the public hearing and. Yes, sir. I think engaging in discussions and I think I overheard Max say that that would be a separate item for another meeting, I guess that this, I guess I can't commit for my client that will just withhold any development application, waiting for, you know, another month of council meetings before we can talk about talking again. If we are ready to file some type of development related application. I mean we do that I don't want to take it to mean that I violated my word to you that will talk, I mean, we'll certainly talk I mean, I'm sure we're prepared to put our project on hold. Sure, that's fair. That's clear. Yes, very clear. Thank you. Okay. Well, then, Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer. Yes, first of all I want to be clear I have no problem with this type of property. This type of product and then at all I think we need a variety of kinds of product. It is a really tough parcel to fill and our comprehensive plan calls for gradual increases in scale and intensity. And when you don't have that, you know, this is the kind of reaction that creates so I'm going to move denial. And I do hope that there are some creative conversations with the city. I think there's a constructive suggestion there, but I move denial of the request. Councilman back. I concur with that I, I have the same sorts of qualms so I think it would you could have a luxury. In fact, should have luxury units in Denton. But I'm going to second that denial. Okay, we have a motion by Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer second by Councilman Beck discussion. Councilman Armitage. To say I am very glad to vote yes to this denial and I thank everybody who has spoken out, and thanks to P and Z. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, I am also planning to vote yes to the denial. As I stated before and I just want to point out that it's it's unfortunate that that things have worked out this way that a parcel of land that is so close to the busiest intersection in a county with over 800,000 people. Really can't be developed because of poor planning of the surrounding parcels. So I think that we should all take this as a lesson moving forward on the importance of good quality planning, so that that things like this don't happen again in the future. Council member. I think that it's. This is just a great opportunity for the public to understand that your voice is very, very, very important, and if it's loud enough, and you're clear enough, and you send enough emails and you send enough text messages and you stay on it. You will get the results that you desire so I am in agreement with denying this request. And I, but we did hear something we did hear what you all would probably agree to. So that was also on the table and I appreciate you all for being up front about that. So, it's just just let's just keep up the good work let's just make the city, what we want it to be we want to look a certain way we want to feel a certain way. We want our neighborhoods to, to feel a certain way. So, I'm very proud of us tonight to be able to do that. Yeah, so I just, I just want to say, my concern is this and the statement and the neighborhood has spoke on it and I respect that. But when you look at Park seven development, which is on scripture. It's a, it's a very, very important thing that happened on Luke 288 and I think everyone's well informed and I think that's great. I'm sensitive to that. I just really am concerned about the number of trees that potentially will go away that that that pains me a lot. The number from your houses is, it pains me a lot, because I don't get to have be in those conversations. This, you don't get to be in those conversations. That's a staff analysis, and it moves forward that and that to me is, that's how you got the 24 hour there on the corner of Lillian Miller, and whatever that road is that that was a staff initiated thing that just showed up and it's it's less than great. And so I truly have concerns but I believe you're going in eyes wide open. And so if, and I believe just from a might my other concern is just from a financial standpoint, we're in rare times and there is enough buffer in these projects because of the market going through the roof that they. I'm concerned that there is enough money and it doesn't that make enough sense to just build three storey and 10 feet away from your homes and clear cut a whole bunch of post folks, but I work with staff on the backside and see what we can do to try to take it to the next level. I think that's a good suggestion and maybe if there's I think there hopefully there's money available either in the tree in the preservation of from the bond package to offset cost to to get a quality product that also gives you a little more space than 10 feet. That's, that's my concern I mean again voices are heard and I'll tell you the other thing, and this is this is important to me. We had a similar not similar ideal, but similar in that in, in the in the neighborhood. It was PNC recommended are 670 and in my neighborhood, we ended up with an MN, which no one recommended staff didn't recommend it, no one, so I will tell you, my vote tonight is just you get what you, it dies, but I don't want you to be surprised when it comes up to say one vote one person voted against this. I vote against it to stick a stake in the ground it says stop shoving random stuff in Southeast Denton, and then honoring everyone else because if we take that for me if we take that approach then we never build streets because I'm just as mad as heck about all this construction right we get a ton of emails about that. But we have to build the streets so I think there's some stuff that has to happen. I absolutely understand the neighborhood, the neighborhood gets what they've requested, I get to say hey stop shoving stuff in Southeast Denton, and on our PNC over in my neighborhood to right because that's important to me, and I have to serve in all capacities and I'm very sensitive to all the stuff that's getting shoved in Southeast Denton. And so no reflection on you, you get the request, we have a clear record, we'll work on a better plan, and I'll advocate for you. As this comes back forward and goes through staff or whatever route it goes through, but did want you to understand that I hear you have a clear record on why I'm in it's, you know, why I'm doing what I'm doing but I gotta, I gotta somehow protect the neighborhood. I don't want to let you down, you know, and start to show a pattern of. Differences on how how people are treated. So thank you very much. Thank you, staff. Thank you, Haley, for working on that. The African I sure appreciate y'all's willingness to talk to the neighborhood in the neighborhood to clearly communicate their expectations. I appreciate that. So with that we will vote on the screen. Z. Yeah, so do you need to recue it. There we go. Yep. Motion to deny passes five to one. Thank you very much for your time. Appreciate it. Okay, so we need to take a quick break to deal with some technical issues. So it is 1109 will take a 10 minute break come back and finish our individual items for consideration. Thank you. And welcome back to this meeting didn't City Council we have completed our public hearings, and now in this new format will go to our individual considerations items for individual consideration. So, and if I didn't say it's 1121. So, first item is ID 212137 consider adoption of ordinance of the city of Denton, Texas, a home rule municipal corporation, confirming the effective period of declared state of local disaster related to the covert 19 emergency. Mayor Councilor items customer service and public affairs we had a presentation earlier today, regarding this item. And so we don't have an additional presentation I'm happy to answer questions that the council may have. But this is the opportunity for counsel to discuss and consider the 16th order. Okay. Thank you, Mayor. At this time I would move postponement of this consideration of this item to our next regularly scheduled meeting which is October the 26th. Okay. Is there a second. Is there. Okay, got it. Sorry, yeah, I'm just commenting it this is a motion to postpone on emotion to adopt less. Yeah, because the item. I don't know if that matters, but I'm I'm seconding the motion to postpone. Okay. Okay. Most of our mayor, pardon me, motion by Councilmember Davis to postpone second by Mayor Pro Tim Meltzer discussion. And is that to propose postpone to a date certain is that an event that's correct that date certain the 26th of October, scheduled meeting. Thank you, Mr. Okay, Councilman back. Thank you, I'm going to vote no simply because I want to continue on with the way we agreed last time, so Councilmember armature. Yes, similarly I don't really understand the utility and postponing another week. So, I'm going to vote no to this. Okay, Councilmember Davis. Thank you, Mayor, there's no harm. Our order current existing order doesn't expire until the 31st of October. This is another week of didn't county COVID data this is another week of public feedback. This is another week of seeing how things are going. Already we see a very marked downward trend. We don't see ourselves move into different CDC territory, maybe not. But those sorts of things have been very important to this council and making these kind of decisions and adding another week of data to what we know, I think, is to our advantage and to the public's advantage. Mayor Pro Tim Meltzer. The purpose of the postponement for those who are actually watching us at 1125 and then watch the afternoon session is that there are three on council who expressed, including me, who expressed support for basically just following the CDC guidelines. And we have a fourth who expressed support for following a different metric, but that wouldn't come into play for at least a week. So I think Councilmember Davis is being very helpful facilitating an agreement that keep the status quo going until, you know, we see what the data looks like a week from now. And I agree with exactly what's been said, doesn't take anything away. And we can, we can see what it looks like a week. I think everybody is, you know, pleased that things are going in the right direction and we have different points of view on what should trigger our changes. For me, it's, it's absolutely medical authorities. Councilmember Beck. Maybe I'm confused, but I thought that we had sort of reached a consensus that the easiest lowest hanging fruit was to simply take this motion and move ahead. I admit in certain ways, it's similar to what Councilor Davis is proposing with the, with the tabling, but or the postponement, but we can certainly reevaluate again at the time, as we have been doing the entire time. So, and in fact, there's nothing to preclude. If we have what's the reverse of an emergency. If there's an epiphany moment, we can have an epiphany meeting that we ask, and we can put that together and say, oh, we're going to drop our rules like that we can do that too. So I don't see, I don't see how it's the delay has any real effect because I'll be honest with you. One week delay in the data isn't not going to give us any additional data. These things, generally, if you look at the, the cycles on COVID response time are 14 days to a month minimum, so. I personally don't. I hope the data does compellingly change in a week I suspect you're exactly right. But if you want to see the current ordinance repealed, don't go for the delay, because that's my count of the noses. Okay, then. So, I'll just say this for me, just because I think it's a fair question. The value is that we don't confuse the public further, because to say that it's extended for another 30 days, and then come back and say that it's repealed to, you know, it just unnecessary confusion to me, and so that's why I'll be supporting it. No other comments. Great. We'll vote on the screen. Motion to postpone passes five. No, pardon me, four to three. Okay, takes us to item B, which is ID to 12270 consider approval resolution of the city of Council in the city of didn't appointing a primary representative to the board of directors to didn't county transportation authority. Do we actually have a joint presentation for item B and item C. Oh, then let me do that. And also item ID to 12271 consider approval of the resolution of city, city council for the city of didn't appointing and alternative, alternative, alternate, alternate. Sorry, representative to the board of directors and didn't county transportation authority. I'm sharing my screen. There we go. Okay. Good evening, Marion Council. I'm Rachel would deputy director of capital projects. This evening. We're going to briefly talk about the primary and alternate appointees to the DCT a board of directors. So just to highlight some of the eligibility criteria as outlined in the DCT a bylaws. Some of the criteria includes professional experience in the field of transportation business government engineering or law. Another requirement is to reside in DCT a territory, or within a municipality that at least a portion of which is located within DCT a territory. Another eligibility option is that the an elected officer of a political subdivision in Texas, who is not prohibited by the state constitution from serving may serve on the board of directors. The DCT a board terms are for a period of two years. The bylaws do state that there are no term limits for DCT a board of directors members. Typically the DCT a board of directors meets at 10 o'clock am on the fourth Thursday of each month. On October 28th and December 2nd, a decision was made to combine the November and December meeting dates just because of the holidays. So that's the reason for this special call date on December 2nd. Our next primary is Chris Watts, our current alternate appointee is John Ryan, both of them are serving two year terms that are set to expire on November 12 2021. And on the screen before you are the nominations that we received so for primary nominees we have Councilmember McGuire, as well as Pat Smith, and then alternate nominees include Eva Greco Councilmember back and joy Curvin. The, the term of the, the new appointees as stated in the attached resolution and legislature is for a period of November 13 2020 2021 through November 12 2023. The steps this evening are to consider approval of both resolutions appointing both the primary and an alternate appointee to the DCT a board of directors. I do know that the city attorney also distributed an alternate option to each of the city council members with a revised term date, which of course the city council can also consider but that's all we have for tonight's presentation and happy to answer any questions. So, I have a question, and so, Miss city manager, how are we set up to ask the primaries questions what's the process for that. As I understand it, it's just now that she's finished her presentation. You can ask your questions or if you want to have your speakers. I know there's one on the phone that's waiting to speak, and then, and then discussion. Yeah, that's a good point. So if we could bring the caller on in. That'd be great. So, mayor and counselor we're going to attempt something today. We had a failure in our zoom audio. So we're going to bring in the caller who is going to be speaking through speakerphone from a cell phone into this microphone. So, we are, we believe that will work. However, if you are going to be asking any questions of the speaker. What we would like to do is probably bring that phone a little closer to you when you ask the question, then return to the microphone so they can respond. Very low tech, and Rachel's coming so hang tight. Mr. Hatton Are you still there. Okay, great. We're in now, and I'm going to put you on speaker. You're welcome. There you are, sir. Good evening. Good evening. My name is Joshua happen. My address is 1414 Auburn Drive Denton. My thanks to the city workers who have facilitated my participation in tonight's meeting as Miss Rios Miss Wilburne, and also Miss Mendoza. I am a member of the organizing committee of the No Bus Cuts Denton campaign. Our committee is made up of 20 people from 10 different labor unions, and our petition against the DCA bus cuts on change.org now has over 900 signatures. The No Bus Cuts Denton urges the members of Denton City Council to appoint Councilmember Allison McGuire to the DCA board of directors. Councilmember McGuire is eligible for the position, familiar with the DCA and knowledgeable in public transportation matters and principled in her actions as a member of City Council, and its mobility committee. Additionally, Councilmember McGuire is a much stronger candidate for the position than is the other nominee, and her appointment would signal to the public, a new openness at Denton City Council to community involvement in decision making. Councilmember McGuire does indeed meet the eligibility criteria for the position. Article 3 Section 3A of the DCTA bylaws states that a person must have professional experience in the field of transportation and reside in the territory covered by the DCTA in order to be eligible for membership on the board. In this same section, professional experience is defined as, "having significant experience in the indicated field." Councilmember McGuire meets both of these criteria. She resides in Denton, and her participation as a member of both Denton City Council's mobility committee and the North Central Texas Council of Governments Regional Transportation Council certainly qualify as significant experience in the field of transportation. Councilmember McGuire should be selected on the basis of not only her own merits, but also because she is clearly a much stronger candidate for the position than is the other nominee. Although Councilmember Jesse Davis claims in his endorsement of his nominee for the DCTA board that this person has both professional experience and expertise in transportation, the four-page resume submitted to Council for his nominee does not contain a single reference to either experience or expertise in the field. In fact, there is stronger evidence for Councilmember Davis's nominee having been chosen instead on the basis of the nominee's ideological alignment with, and perhaps loyalty to, Chris Watts, who had previously appointed the nominee to the board of Denton Housing Authority in 2018 and had nominated him for the Special Citizens Bond Advisory Committee in 2019. It is therefore very possible that Chris Watts is attempting to maintain his control over the DCTA by trying to choose his successor through his proxy, Councilmember Davis. Regardless of the role that former Mayor Chris Watts may have had in the selection of Councilmember Davis's nominee, it is now clear that the people of Denton will not allow Chris Watts to treat the DCTA as his personal kingdom any longer. We want to end his reign, repair the damage that he has done, and start building a public transportation system that is good for workers and the greater Denton community. Nobusco Stanton is confident that Councilmember Allison McGuire will, as City Council's representative to the DCTA Board of Directors, contribute to the democratization of decision-making for mobility in Denton. Okay. Questions for the caller? Is that? Well, let me let me do this. So, I do have one question for the caller. Is he there? Mr. Hatton, you're still there, correct? They have a couple of questions for you. Sure. Great. So, his understanding of how long Councilmember McGuire served on the Mobility Committee and the NTC call. How many how many meetings? How many meetings have been had that Councilmember McGuire attended for Mobility, one, and in how many meetings for the NTC call? Well, what do you base you said your word significant experience in the field and you mentioned those two committees. Is there anything else that you would refer to as far as a strong to support your significant experience statement? I don't have anything else to add to it at this at this moment. Okay. Thank you. And then I then yeah that's and I'm going to have other questions. So, if somebody else has questions, maybe they can call him back. I don't know how that works. But I'm happy to do whatever will help. Okay, great. So, we'll just you can put them on mute or hold or something like that. So, my questions for so that's a caller. Any other callers? No. Great. So, my question. So, first, let me ask Mr. Pat Smith if he can come to the mic and have questions. So, you can come to the mic behind. Thank you. So, question. So, you heard the caller. So, if you want to kind of just speak to your your whatever you think answers that addresses that concern. Yes, thank you, ma'am. Ladies and gentlemen, I appreciate the opportunity to do that. I was asked by Councilmember Davis to I was interested in being nominated for this position and I am given my role at Serve Denton. He asked me to get my resume to him pretty quickly, which I had to do a little bit of updating, but there's a lot of experience I have with public transportation that's not visible in my resume. For example, I spent three years working with Miami-Dade County Transit rebuilding the transit system at Homestead Air Force Base in South Florida, after Hurricane Andrew in 1992 to 1995. That involved constructing bus stops, developing new routes in hurricane ravaged areas, attending numerous meetings with Miami-Dade Transit Authority in that process. Next, I also was on the representative for Travis Air Force Base for Solana County Transportation Authority that was responsible for bus transportation on Travis Air Force Base where I was stationed from nine from 2002 to 2004. We reworked routes and also tried to expand transportation into the surrounding area around Travis Air Force Base. So I was the base representative on pretty high level meetings for that period of time. And then also when I was at Brooks Air Force Base from 2006 to 2008, I worked on creating a bus transportation routes through housing that we were building at Scott Air Force Base with the St. Clair County Transportation Authority. So, you know, there's a lot of things I've done in my career that are not in my resume. So I appreciate the opportunity to share some of that experience. And so give me the size and scope of Travis Air Force Base, best you can recall at that time. Oh yeah, Travis Air Force Base had 2,800 homes. We were the largest housing project in the CONUS in the United States. We had 55,000 residents and workers and employees going on and off the base. And we had a major hospital and public transportation was really important, especially in the Bay Area because of air quality standards and just the congestion in the surrounding area. Okay, and then the same Brooks Air Force Base, how many folks are we talking about there? So at Brooks, we were talking about right at 1,200 households in a new housing area that we were building off base, but in close proximity to the installation and there was a state highway that ran through. And so we were connecting to that existing transportation system in St. Clair County. Okay, and then do you want to, I want to open the door for you to speak to also being labeled as Mayor Watts's proxy. Yeah, I really take on bridge at that. Mayor Watts and I are friends, but he also knows I am the first to disagree with him on a lot of issues, and I've told him that. I specifically reached out to Charles Emory, who's the past chair of DCTA, and if you know anything about the relationship between Mr. Emory and former Mayor Watts, they don't like each other at all. And I'm going to be who I am, and I've always spoken my mind, and I'm pretty much known as a straight shooter. I respect me, Chris, but I'm not going to do what he tells me to do. I'm going to do what I think is best for the people of Denton. And then unfortunately, and I'm going to quote a recent newspaper article, "Everything we do is political," and that's unfortunate, but it's an occupational hazard. Obviously this has taken on a life of its own, social media wise, email wise, and that's unfortunate, but I want you to speak to what you've seen and kind of how you want to address that in your own way. You know, I'm going to answer that in a way that I've given a lot of thought about. Back in 2014, before any of y'all were on council, Amber Briegel and I worked on an initiative to take on predatory towing, and there was some articles in the paper, and everyone wanted to throw the tow truck company under the bus, literally. We came in here and did a public or a citizen's report, and everyone thought I was going to, you know, just blast those guys and say there's the crooks, but we didn't take that approach. We took the approach of, hey, does it make sense to charge someone $250 for a tow, but we're only going to charge them $200 for driving the wrong way or texting, which was an ordinance that just been passed. So why do I share that? I feel like sometimes we've lost the civility that allows us to work through solutions in a progressive, positive manner by not throwing those tow truck companies under the bus. We then spent the next six months working on a very comprehensive policy turned into an ordinance that involved property owners, the tow truck companies, the police department, the city, the municipal judge. And so to me, that was great governance because we didn't attack them personally. We attacked the issue. And so I'm always trying to -- my intent is always to talk about impacts, not intentions. And I think that's something we're losing to some degree in our community. Does that answer your question? Yes, sir. Yeah, no, I think that's great. And I think that's -- I had another thought, but it will come to me. And so my question is, I'm going to pivot. Thank you, Mr. Smith. So Councilmember McGuire, can you fill me in? So cited are mobility and the NTC. What other transit experience or relevant experience are you citing? I have the extent of my experience in transportation. My professional experience and my education is in the field of education. I came from the classroom. And I was just recently elected in May. So I am at the beginning of my career in government and public policy and transportation. Okay. So how many mobility committee meetings have we had? I believe four. And how many NTC meetings? I believe also four. Okay. And is there an initiative you put forward or something you led on? Or what kind of actions in those meetings have you taken that you say -- would say you kind of -- yeah, led on? I would say that I'm proud of my work on the resolution that the mobility committee drafted, trying to guide our representative on the DCTA board's actions regarding the go zone and the cutting of fixed bus routes. Okay. And then also in your town hall meeting that you held that's on social media, you said that DCTA is underfunded. Obviously that's an issue for me because I think they've been taking way too much money. Yeah. And they're just now refunding it through the TRIPS grant. So I want to explore that. Why do you say DCTA is underfunded? I'm so glad that you asked that. I think that this is a really nuanced issue. I think that what I bring to the table here is a vision for a new way for our community to function and a new way for people to move around our city. I don't view mass transit as a service that needs to be bare bones, a service that should only be there for folks who have no other options. I view DCTA as an agency that has an opportunity to transform how we get around the city and how we live. That vision requires dramatic increases in ridership, which are not possible with DCTA's current levels of revenue. So I'm not going to lie, my vision is very ambitious and it's going to require a great deal of creative problem solving to raise the revenue necessary to make the changes I would like to propose. But that's what I meant when I said that it was underfunded. Not so much that the funding was inadequate to provide current levels of service, but that the current levels of service are inadequate. And where would you find the additional revenue source? Outside of the sales tax, around numbers 14 million, where else would you suggest that money come from? Right, so we're already maxing out our sales tax. I think that we need to look to other sources. Federal grant money needs to be a major source of funding. I think that we need to look at the federal transportation agencies and the initiatives that are coming down with the infrastructure bill for sources of funding to expand, not just maintain, but expand our mass transit system. Okay, and then lastly, what do you disagree with the no bus cuts request on? So understanding you would need to disagree. Oh, of course, yeah. What are those items? I've had many conversations with Joshua Hatton and I've disagreed with many things that he has said. If you can give me a top three. Well, number one is that I know, and Joshua, I know you're listening, so you can let me have it later, but I know that no bus cuts wants a complete dissolution of the VIA contract, and they want absolutely no microtransit at all. I am open to the possibility that microtransit could be a valuable component of a robust and highly functioning mass transit system. I am not open to the possibility that cutting fixed routes entirely could lead to positive outcomes for mass transit. Great. Okay. Point of order, Mayor? Yes, sir. I'm not opposed to this, if this is the process, but will all council members get to quiz both applicants? Could have been a sort of team debate, team interview kind of process? You can ask whatever questions you want, yes. I mean, it's just kind of novel, and I think it can be good. I don't want to have this conversation in public, but I will say this. I found it odd that you always take issue with me and my duration of comments, and I never hear you say anything else about other people's duration of comments. That's your prerogative. I accept that. I just want to put a pin in that and just say that I don't appreciate it. I do not appreciate it. You can have a different opinion if you want. I have no issue with the duration of the comments. You did not state a point of order. You interrupted me, and that's okay, too. I'm just going to make my motion, but I'll tell you, I do take issue with your approach. Thank you. Then I'm going to move approval of this slate of appointees. I would move that Pat Smith be the primary and that Brian Beck be the secondary, and that's my motion based on- Point of order. State your point of order. I believe these are two separate items, Mr. Mayor. Okay. Noted. Then I will make that motion afterwards. The primary, I would move that for Mr. Pat Smith, he has a significant amount more of experience, and I think as a council, we need to remove ourselves from- Obviously, we've had the last two appointees have been members of this body, and the political nature of that is just toxic. We need to have someone separate from this body that represents us and executes, understanding it is a body and requires bridge building and understanding the drastic difference in experience. If this body moves towards personal friends and that sort of approach versus skill set approach, I think that's a very dangerous precedent to set, and I hope we can see the difference in experiences and understand that, and that doesn't mean one person is less than. That just means one is more qualified, and that happens in an environment regularly. So that's my motion. So I'll remove myself. I have a point of inquiry, Mayor. State your point of inquiry. Is your motion to adopt the draft resolution that was provided in the original backup or the draft resolution that was provided by email later by the city attorney with Mr. Smith's name? The latter from the city attorney. Thank you for the clarification. I'll second that motion. Okay, we have a motion. There you go. Thank you. Discussion. Council Member Armitter. See, I was not prepared to speak on this motion, but I will adopt my comments accordingly. I'm going to be voting no on this. This is nothing against Mr. Smith, and I think that he and Council Member McGuire are both qualified. I think McGuire is the better choice, and that is why I'm going to vote for her. Mayor Proctor Melter. First, if I may, Mayor, I had no qualm whatsoever with your duration of comments. It was a novel process, and I meant exactly what I said. Do we all have that opportunity? I appreciate you saying we do. I don't know that I need to necessarily do that. I just want to comment on the motion and my thoughts on this topic in general. I think where we've come from is that Mayor Watts had a very strong sense of mission about this, and he was supported by a majority of council in everything he did during that council, which was pursuing an efficiency-oriented approach, because the budget for DCTA is just driven by sales tax, not driven by any kind of a plan, and ridership is declining. He went very forcefully against the efficiency issue. But what changed is different council, and that was why I pushed for a resolution to express what the majority of council wants, and it's a different emphasis. It's much more about maximizing ridership, and it's tilted much more in favor of fair labor practices versus cost-cutting. So this is just a different emphasis. And let me say one other thing before I say where I want to go. Pat Smith, if I may speak about him personally, is a gem. We are so lucky to have Pat Smith in Denton for his skill set and his leadership and his servant's heart. So if there's any doubt about that, I hope to dispel that. And I've worked beside him personally, and I just think we're just so lucky to have him. So what I think would reflect the direction that council wants at this point is to have a member, a primary member, that's much more hand in glove with council. Frankly, I think it's awesome that Councilmember McGuire has a vision. What I really hope for is that she acts more in concert with the body, you know, and she's one-seventh of the vision, and that, you know, I mean, I'm for following the data and being a fair employer. So I think having Councilmember McGuire, who is on mobility, who is on North Central Texas Council of Government, Regional Transportation Committee, and on DCTA, I think that brings synergies to reflecting what this council wants in transportation. And I think the ideal thing would be if Pat Smith would agree to be the alternate, which I know is going to be the next item, because I don't want to waste the opportunity to have his counsel and advice and management experience contributing. I hope he'd be far more than any alternate has ever been in terms of providing, you know, support and insight. So that's the ticket I'm ultimately going for, so that it would lead me to a no vote on this. Councilmember Davis. I'm struggling a bit here, because my inclination and my temperament is typically to speak positively of my nominee, Mr. Smith, and I have at least four pages of resume and many other good things to say about Pat, and to do my best not to denigrate anybody else. But I don't know if Pat feels this way or not. I've been so insulted by what I have just heard to even begin to compare, all due respect to the duly elected Councilmember from District 4, but to even begin to compare a few months, attending some meetings, wherein we don't manage anything at those meetings. We're competing for regional transportation dollars. We're giving some input to compare that experience in the same breath with a retired Air Force Colonel who has managed billion-dollar budgets, multi-billion-dollar budgets, who has overseen staffs of hundreds, who has literally rebuilt a bus system along with the Miami-Dade Transportation Authority. He just told us he's done this job. He's done it well. And to say in one breath, "Gosh, Pat, thanks for your contributions to the city, and you are so very qualified. We'd like you to be an alternate to this freshman Councilmember." It ought to be the other way around. If Councilmember McGuire has a desire to learn about transportation, to be an advocate for transportation, she ought to be the alternate. She ought to be the person who learns from the person who is fully qualified, meets every eligibility criteria, is more qualified than anyone in this building. I'm including city staff, no offense. He's more qualified than Chris Watts ever was, or Sarah Baguerre, or anybody else who's ever served on that board. A person who could run the DCTA if they were so asked to do. And we're going to say that this freshman Councilmember has commensurate experience, and even begin the comparison. You know, if this had been laid out a little bit differently, it would not have been as insulting as it was. But that's exactly what it is. When you are in an organization, and I guarantee you our partners are watching, they pay attention. Lewisville and Highland Village in the county are watching every single move we make. When you send more money to an organization every year than you spend on your own city parks, you play your ace of spades. You don't play the low card, you play the ace of spades. You send the representative who's going to do the work, who knows what's going on behind the scenes, who knows how to get things done. You don't send the person who has announced their agenda from the beginning, who has told you who they're working for, and it's not necessarily always in Denton's interest, who has said that they're there for the employees of the agency who don't live in Denton, not the taxpayers of Denton. You don't send the person who has already told you exactly what they're going to do. You send the person who has told you they follow the data, they follow the guidance, they follow the facts on the ground, and they use their own training and experience and their own wherewithal to make those decisions. You don't send the person who sits here and tells us there's going to be a new vision for DCTA, and we're going to find ways to increase ridership. That has been the vision for DCTA for 17 years. Literally, every single new DCTA CEO has said those things for 17 years, who tells us we're going to find new federal money. DCTA took in $22 million of federal money last year, more than half of their budget. In CARES Act, they took in $23 million. I could not be more proud of supporting Pat Smith's nomination than I am at this moment, and I could not be more disappointed in the things I've heard from this dais to even begin the conversation this way. >> Councilman Betz. >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So I'm going to start off, and first I'm going to apologize to both Mr. Smith and Councilman McGuire. I think some of the behaviors that we've seen and some of the attitudes and statements that have been made are just -- towards both of you are just ridiculous. Both man and woman are doing their best to serve Denton. They have particularly robust and clear desires. I donate to serve Denton. I believe in the Shiloh fields that Mr. Smith has done. I think it's just reprehensible that what we're doing is pitting two quality individuals against each other. I nominated Councilman McGuire because of the synergies that Mayor Pro Tem was talking about. When you have a seated Councilperson on a mobility committee, on the RTA, and on the DCTA, you get synergy of decision-making processes, you get synergy of consistency and integration across mobility. You have these synergies across multiple roles. I'm not saying anyone has. I think Mr. Smith is tremendous -- what is it you said, Mayor Pro Tem? A gem. I think there's -- it's ridiculous that we're pitting these two against each other. That's crazy. I'm looking for that synergy, and to the extent that Mr. Smith can aid in that synergy, I'd be quite willing to step back and withdraw my nomination in favor of Mr. Smith as the alternate to promote that sort of adoption of additional ideas and synergy and support. But the synergy itself is going to come from someone who is simultaneously on all those committees, not necessarily an individual. I'll be voting no to this, and I hope that I can vote yes to a motion of Councilman McGuire and Mr. Smith. I'm for sure I'm going to be voting no, so I'll just put that out there. But what my concern is for voting no to this is that I just want to be absolutely sure that the person that we put in this particular position is not going to be taking it upon themselves to be an island. So whenever there is some type of recommendation and responsibility to this person, like what our mobility committee did and our city council agreed with, and then the person just to kind of step out on their own like that, I want to avoid something like that. I want to have someone in this position for sure that I know will be mindful of the will of the people, the community. And so, you know, with that being said, again, I'm sure I'll be voting no on this particular one. Councilmember Davis. Thank you, Mayor. I just want, because I don't know how many people are watching, but I think it's naive and misinformed to see synergies that don't exist between different facets of transportation. RCT, NTCOG, primarily our function there is funding for surface roads. That is the primary function of what we do there. DCTA is a different kind of mobility. We don't get any value add, certainly not any value add that eclipses, you know what, I'm not going to go through the resume again. You can't even come close. You can't even come close to eclipsing the value you get for putting in a proven professional on a board of lawyers and engineers and government professionals. We're setting ourselves way back on the back foot. And Denton will come out behind. We will go from having the chairmanship, from having a grant program that we fought and clawed for to get some of our money back to be able to use for sidewalks. We're going to go to the bottom rung of this organization, and every single partner on that board right now is watching us do it. It takes a lot to embarrass me, and I am embarrassed. Any other discussion before we vote? Seeing none, I'll just say it's a tough day. It really is. I'd like to say I quote Mayor Watson, say I trust the process, but I don't think we're, this is, it's a tough day. All right, we'll vote on the screen. Anyway, this is something else. Yeah, she'll fix it. I'm going to call the committee and seconded my Councilmember Davis. Motion fails five to two. I'll take a motion. Councilman Beck. I motion to have Allison McGuire as our primary nominee. Well, excuse me, Mr. Mayor, I meant to also say with the second emailed guidance from legal. I second that if that includes effective immediately. Okay. Are you wishing to speak or do you want to remove that? Me? Yes. No, but I just spoke. Thank you. Yeah, I'd like advice of legal. Is it essential that the motion only address the primary or can one motion address both items since they've both been called? Yes, technically in our rules, it says you should have one motion per agenda item. So these are separated into two. Okay, I'm back. Councilman armature discussion. See, seeing none. I'll just say It's it's one meeting and that's that's concerning to me. But again, we have an election every year and this starts a trend, which is unfortunate. Motion passes 5 to takes us to item. See, which is ID 212271 consider adoption, pardon me approval of a resolution of the city council for the city of Denton appointing an alternate representative to the board of directors didn't county transportation authority. To Melter. I nominate Pat Smith as alternate. Councilman bet. Yeah, as I stated earlier, I think that's, I happy to withdraw my nomination for Mr Smith, so I'll second that discussion, I'm going to take liberty, Pat, if you'll speak to with my apologies, if you'll speak to that. Thank you, Mary be happy to accept that nomination. Okay, thank you. Councilman armature. Yeah, so I had pressed the button to make a motion I guess then it went off the screen. So this is the motion that is on. I want to say, and again I have nothing negative to say about Pat Smith. So I don't know what Councilmember Davis was talking about when he said negative things coming from this, this, this day is. I certainly didn't hear any. But I want to put a word in for Ava Greco, who I nominated, and so the reason I'm going to be voting no to this motion is nothing about Pat Smith who has contributed so much to our community, but to Ava Greco, who is somebody who has come to this council on numerous occasions, and who has been quoted by at least one person on this day as in the former, or soon to be former I guess, a representative of DCTA of this council, as she is somebody who has served on in the government on FEMA on the US Census Bureau. Disabilities as a bus monitor. And she is a worker who depends on public transportation. She has written a number of buses and bus routes here in Denton, and also elsewhere in other parts of the country so she knows all the different ways that it works. She is also on public transportation has met with the CEO of DCTA she has served on the, and Ava can remind me of what it's what it's called but the citizens. Yeah, the Citizens Advisory Committee for DCTA. She really has her, her, her ear to the ground to the streets of to listening to bus drivers concerns to workers concerns. And this is a voice that has really been missing. And all of these discussions, as excited as I am and proud and happy and thrilled to have Councilmember McGuire represent this, this council. She's an alternate, who will be there for all the meetings, which the current alternate. Unfortunately was, you know, not able to really attend the meetings but someone who will be able to attend the meetings and be a voice for workers so that's why I'll be putting no to this. And I just want to thank Eva Greco for all the all the time she has spoken to this council and to DCTA, and all the service that she has done to represent workers in on DCTA. Councilmember where. Thank you I agree that Eva Greco has has been an invaluable asset to our community I appreciate your, your, your, your advocacy on behalf of of transit users. And I hope that you will continue that. And please know that I deeply value your opinion. I will be voting. Yes to this motion. I'm Mr Smith you are a leader in the community of great stature. I have nothing but the deepest respect for you. And I hope that in spite of some of the the rhetoric that that's come from this day is that you'd be willing to, you know, share some of your wealth of knowledge with me, and that we can work together to build a better transit system. Councilmember Bert, I'm going to be voting no to this. As I have put in a recommendation for the alternate. Her name is joy curving. She's a well spoken woman who has committed herself to a number of boards and in this community and I thought that she would be a perfect fit for this particular position. And that is very mindful about what the, what the community is asking for. I want to congratulate Councilmember McGuire, I want to extend an opportunity to say that the other individual here that that has been spoken on. To all due respect you are very admirable to hear your background. However, joy curving. She is a for me I think should be great for the alternative representative for the DCA board of directors she's a small business owner and CEO of a company called Czar code it's a IT consulting company with government experience. And I'm sure she's thankful to be given an opportunity to use her transportation industry experience in this manner, and she's had clients in the transportation industry that is she has consulted for assisting them with their fleet management systems. So she is already familiar with business models reporting data analytics needs and other areas of concerns within the transportation system. Her, her issue, along with several other people is the lack of respect for the citizens concerning the regard regarding the transition of changing services from the public to the private sector was surely is may not attend to the needs of the affected as they should be. So, talking with her and listening to her passion about all of this I thought that she would just be a great fit to learn more, and I think it's important that we start giving. When you have someone that's interested, we need to take opportunity to bring in new fresh thoughts and opinions and skills. And then instead of recycling folks we know that they're there. They've been around, and they know everybody and everyone that's that's good, that's good. That's probably how I ended up here, being around and knowing folks and getting some, some support in that kind of way that there's a lot of people out there that want to start their process, and I think that this is a opportunity for us to do that. Thank you ma'am I want to also acknowledge you we had a little conversation so I appreciate you as well. Thank you. Senator Davis, I just want to take the opportunity to point out how big a person Pat Smith is for accepting this nomination. And in his career he's had to deal with the whims of the United States Congress or surely we can't top that. I disagree with Councilmember bird and that this is a good place to start your journey. This is one of the most important appointments that we make both as the primary and the alternate. If not, it's right up there in the top five appointments that we make as a council, and the amount of money in the amount of policy decision that goes into it. I'm supremely disappointed with the political maneuvering, the union involvement, the poorly written and typographical error written letter I got from the AFL CIO president of Texas, trying to tell dent and what it ought to do. I'm supremely disappointed in the process that got us here, but I'm proud to vote for Pat Smith, and in whatever way I get to tonight. The chairs privilege and we're going to vote with it's 1220. It is 1220 so I just want to say I'm thankful for the union involvement unions are awesome. That's ours. We're going to vote. Please hold on the screen. And that motion passes five to that takes us to item D, which is ID 20 ID 2121 76 consider adoption. Mayor just so I can clarify that on that one was that also to be made immediate, I just want to make sure that was clear on that motion. The motion on that was to make the change immediately. That is correct. Okay, thank you. Manager execute a contract Floyd Smith concrete. Yeah, you need to get your number. I'm Daniel Kramer deputy director of operations for public works. We get the technology to work will be good today. So, I'm here to talk about our concrete repair and installation services contract. This contract is used by multiple different departments across the city for all kinds of different repair sidewalk curbs gutters Valley gutters. It's used by water and utilities for utility cuts and parks for some of their trails, and also engineering uses it for some of the sidewalks and stuff and we have that there. This contract is for $39 million, it is a two year contract with three one year renewals. It has this contract was sent out to over 486 different solicitors to try to get the bids back we had one person, one group respond. And that was Floyd Smith concrete. The city has done business with Floyd Smith Smith concrete and some capacity for over 20 years. Here and there over the years. Staff recommends approval of the contract for $39 million, which is a two year with three one year renewals to allow us continue our work throughout the city. Any questions. Any questions for staff. See none. I move approval. Is there a second. Discussion. Let's vote on the screen. Section 27 consider adoption of ordinance of city didn't Texas amending the chapter 25 of the code of city of didn't Texas, adding section 25 dash 15 related to new procedures name and renaming streets. Thank you, Mayor. Council. Bring my presentation real quick. Sorry, this item is an item that was brought to you back in September regarding the street naming and renaming procedures for street names. There were three specific items that was asked for the staff to go back and review. One was to look at the policy related naming guidelines that were adopted several years ago. And also how the applications were to be submitted by staff. Sorry, by the citizens as well as by the staff as well. So we did look at the street naming. I'm sorry. The policies for the guidelines for naming city buildings. We did incorporate some of the languages that we felt that needed to be included. We also refine the application filing application types with regards to the 50%. We decided to go along with the linear feet of the street on both sides. So if there is an example, for example, there is 1000 foot linear feet on both sides. If there is a citizens that are within 501, they can submit an application. And then the last item here is with regards to the application filing from the elected officials. We decided to just add the language there that says elected officials may not file an application for renaming a street. So that is just a simple addition to the procedures that we're proposing. So with that I will stand for any questions. Questions to ask. Councilmember Warrantor. Yeah, so I have a question. I was wondering if something could be added to this process, you know, to the effect where we could have and to formalize having some sort of background on the current street name to see if there's any historical background. If there's any historical background of interest to that current street name. I'm thinking of a recent street that that we renamed and I voted. This is I believe in February, you know, to rename because the current name of the street just sounded pretty generic to me. Then only to find out months afterwards that there is a whole history to the street name having to do with the trolley in Denton that I was ignorant of at the time. And so I would love just to have some and it's okay if I can't get consensus to make that part of the ordinance, but I would just love to have that as part of the process. Because, you know, sometimes we're going to know the history and have people tell us or have people tell us in time. Other times we're not. So it'd be great if just someone on staff could do a little research on how the current name came to be, you know, what's behind it, wherever that can be found. I would really like to see that. Mayor from Tim Meltzer. Yeah, thank you. Just just a narrow point. We had a little exchange in questions before about I was just asking on behalf of the fact that I know that some groups within Denton have interest in potentially asking for streets being named for heroes of their, you know, their same background. But that may or may not be people who are from Denton, like a national hero of some kind or international. So just you commented that you kind of change it to make it clear that you could do that. So just could you point out what that change was? Yes. So we did add the similar language that was in the building naming guidelines. We did add that into the street naming. So that addition that we have in there today are this as part of this consideration is included. And so any person that has any heroic or served in some sort of national or, you know, even world recognition can be nominated as part of this effort. Great. And if I may just briefly, I'm fine with it. But what was the reasoning behind the idea that elected officials can't submit? Right. So there was there was a discussion at the September 28th meeting that certain elected officials should not be able to nominate. We're sorry to propose a street naming because this committee or this council would be voting on it. So that that was the concern. I get it. Okay. Thank you. Councilman Beck. Thank you. My issue goes to the creating noncompliance in terms of the new policy. Do we have a feel for how many of our roads are now will not be in compliance? We don't. But as I mentioned at the last meeting, you know, if there is something that is of a safety concern, we certainly will do that as a staff initiated or city initiated effort to correct anything that may be something that's a safety issue. As far as nonconforming, we don't plan on going out and correcting immediately. But we may want to look at it more back from a safety matter than anything else. So sort of just practically the intent of staff is to to identify those nonconforming names that might cause confusion or traffic safety issues. But otherwise, we're going to turn a blind eye to other nonconformities. We would have to go back to you know what our programs are. And maybe that's something that we can talk about as a staff level to something that we might want to consider in the future. Well, I would just encourage us to keep our eyes on those nonconformities. Sure. Well, you know, the request to speak vote on the board. I think we actually announced that there was a motion at a second. Wait, this is a motion. You got to reset it. So it was motion by me, Mayor, but second by Mayor Pro Tem. So it's still item F. That is correct. We'll just do it by hand. So, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem. Councilmember Beck. Councilmember McGuire. Councilmember Armitter. Yes. Councilmember Byrd. Aye. Councilmember Davis. Aye. That should be seven zero, I think. Yeah. Okay, that concludes that. Takes us to consent. Any concluding items? Seeing none, I'll just note, please adjust your activities accordingly from a council perspective as far as request. The holidays are approaching. There's going to be staff out. We're already remote. We have sick time. We have other issues. So if you could please scale back here as the holidays approach, scale back your approaches or thin them out or something to give city staff a chance to keep up, that'd be great. It's twelve thirty two p.m. We'll conclude tonight.