Oct 26, 2021 City Council on 2021-10-26 2:00 PM

Good afternoon and welcome back to this meeting of the Denton City Council. It's 225. We're back on the record after the closed session. Going into our work session, but I do want to make a note and I'll make a reminder on the consent agenda. Item T has been pulled by staff and so that will come back to us if needed, but just wanted to give everyone a note if you're tracking along. That takes us to our work session. In our first work session is item ID 211981, receive report, hold discussion, and give staff direction on rank choice voting for City Council, Council, Committee, and Board Commissions. Hello, good afternoon everybody. I'm Rachel Ballthorpe-Mendosa, Assistant to the City Manager, and as mayor directed there we're going to begin by talking about rank choice voting for nominating officers. Just as a little bit of background on how this came to y'all today, Councilmember Beck presented a one-minute pitch back when they were still one-minute pitches to discuss the potential of changing the rules and procedures for the council committees, council itself, boards and commissions, and the nomination process for officers using a ranked choice voting system. So I'm going to provide a brief overview of some of the ranked choice voting methods and request any council direction on further action that y'all may have. Currently our nominations process is well the section 207 of the charter says that council will determine its own rules of procedure and their order of business and the adopted rules govern all other committees, boards, and commissions. Section 229 of the City Council rules and procedures, it's silent on the nominations process for any governing body so Robert's Rules of Order on open floor nominations are therefore default. Nominations are taken in the order that they're voiced and nominations do not have to be seconded and we do need four affirmative votes to adopt new rules according to section 229. Just a real brief quick way of trying to describe ranked choice voting, it's an electoral system that allows people to vote for multiple candidates in order of your preference. So instead of just choosing one nominee or one winner, we'll create a ballot dictating the first choice, second choice, and so on for each open position and there are multiple methods derived and used around the world for ranked choice voting so I wanted to go through just a few of those with you today. So this chart kind of shows you an overview for the three that I'll discuss today. I won't read everything but kind of just wanted to go over just a little bit of some of these and how they're done. So instant runoff is the most simplistic method and in all of these a ballot would be created that shows all the nominees with their ranking potentials, first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and so on. The nominees are be ranked in order of preference by those that are voting and if no majority winner exists after the first ballot then the nominee with the fewest votes is eliminated and new ballots are made and distributed. This is for the instant runoff method. So kind of some pros and cons for each of these I'll go over really quickly. So for instant runoff it is the simplest of these methods and thankfully our city's secretary's office does have some experience in performing these types of nominations processes and ballot can be created by a survey so like we've done surveys to in various departments for various reasons but we can do those in advance and then some cons though is we would need to interrupt meeting proceedings and perhaps recess in order to tally those up. And so the border method border method is I won't I won't go through it in too much detail but there it assigns points based on a numerical value it gives it gives people numeric values based on your preference so then the point values are totaled and the nominee with the highest point total is there by the winner. Some pros is that it is relatively simple for those that would be voting and again a ballot can be made in advance by survey but some cons are that it is rather a complicated tallying system and it doesn't always select the majority winner. The board account is sometimes described as a consensus based voting system because it sometimes does not produce the majority winner and this is it's a it's a different approach than plurality because it's focused is on the first choice votes so it does consider every voters entire ranking to determine the outcome but because of that kind of general consensus it may kind of produce a more broadly acceptable option as opposed to the one with the majority vote and because of the way that this is set up variations of this are actually more commonly used in sports when when they're trying to determine a most valuable player for example to rank teams and in CDLA sports and to award the Heisman Trophy. This is a few examples of how that gets used often and like I said in in other words if you ranked a losing candidate as your first choice that candidate would be eliminated but your vote does still count so it like I say it just kind of rearranges things based on on how you're on how you're voting and I did want to cover just very briefly the single transferred vote method. This one gets a little bit more complicated because nominees need to meet a quota based on the number of vacancies there and that exist and any nominee who has more number ones than the quota gets elected and extra votes are moved to each voters second favorite nominee so if a quota isn't reached the least popular nominee is removed and votes are moved to the second favorite of those nominees and then this process would continue until every vacancy is filled. So one pro is that certainly multiple vacancies can be filled in one process but this is absolutely the most complicated tallying system for reasons that I mentioned about moving moving votes and retabulating. Like I mentioned your vote does still count it just would move to your second choice candidate and that process again would just continue until all the vacancies have been filled. So I know that's that's rather a brief overview for some kind of complicated measures but just wanted to go over a few of those options with you. Some considerations that we're asking to go through with you today would be if if council does want to amend and change the nominations process the following should be considered. We need to know if this should apply to just City Council or if we would like it to apply to all 30 committees boards and commissions and if so if it is applicable to all we need to consider time that it would take to create a process and regularly train all the staff liaisons and on an ongoing basis for all of those committees and boards and commissions that they serve. We would of course need time to construct and calculate ballots. There is somewhat of a potential and creation of confusion among the volunteer and appointed advisory board members of the public. Developing changes to the boards and commissions handbook would be a rather lengthy and cumbersome process and then open records requests for the ballots we would take that under consideration and just generally the time to administer and manage this process. As far as recommendations go staff does not recommend applying a rank choice voting method for nominating officers for committees boards or commissions. We think that keeping the open floor nominations process for those other bodies will keep those processes in place for them. If council does wish to make a change and use the rank choice voting for nominating the position of mayor pro tem we would recommend the instant runoff method based on staff's past experience with that method. This option would also be able to be implemented the most quickly of all the others. The direction we're seeking today if we need and want to continue with the current process of Roberts rules for governing the open floor nominations or if you would like to adopt new rules and procedures to allow for rank choice nominations and if so which method you'd like to proceed with we would also thereby be officially amending section 229 and then finally to determine and direct if new rules and procedures should be followed by all 30 of the committee's boards and commissions. So that is all I have and I'm here for questions. Okay thank you questions for staff council member Beck. Thank you Mr. Mayor so the the thing that I it seems like we were saying on this I'll ask a question and I'll give direction it seems like one of the concerns was additional rounds for timing and whatnot but if if we have a circumstance where we do a Roberts rules of order by nomination and then there is no acceptance of that nomination and then we do another round then we have two rounds anyway I mean so the amount of time feels like that's a moot question if you're going to have something in contention you're going to end up with a round plus another round possible you know possibly a third round that that if there's contention whereas if we would solve that in one fell swoop with instant runoff which is what I'm going to direct for because it's simple we don't need to get into the complicated issues of the other policies that's more when you have a large constituency that you're trying to to get the will of not a body of seven the real will I think or the real impetus behind bringing this forward was that we had that Roberts rules of order issue where we had pairwise voting nominations going on which is not at all like a normal voting circumstance that the it would be commonly used to where you would have a nomination process of all the nominees and then you would vote from amongst that pool I think that's generally more accepted even if it's not Roberts rules of order and it in it the instant runoff method will it will immediately give you some idea of the relative order so you would get that that nice benefit of the pool that everyone is it can choose from amongst the pool and the instant runoff or the rank choice and we don't need to go complicated would would allow you to to get around contention if there was contention in that primary vote and it would avoid sort of some of the contention that this body has seen some other bodies and if you had if you had a normal vote where there's no contention at all like one nominee it would just be one and done as it currently is if you had one or two it would still be one and done like it currently is so three quarters seven eights I'm making up statistics right now would would be the same as the current status quo and it would fix the problems that we have with contentious pool nominations so I'm going to be directing towards instant runoff mayor for two minutes sir yeah mayor I have kind of comments and direction would you like to make me to hold and just do questions first or no just both is fine so we can wrap it up so first of all if we're talking about the general electorate with 140,000 people around how many voting members you know voting adults or 14,000 municipal elections typically I totally see the benefit of creating the technology here to have instant runoffs having been through two runoffs myself it's a pain and it's expensive and it's a pain for everybody involved including the voters so you know I think that'd be awesome here we're talking about seven people now the part where I absolutely agree with Councilmember Beck is that I I I I think it's peculiar the way we currently do it where you have one nominee and then up or down vote and then another nominee and up or down vote it's unlike every other voting situation people are familiar with so I'm entirely supportive of the idea of let's get all the nominees out how many for candidate a how many for candidate B how many for candidate C if it's you know that's the situation we're dealing with but then if it if you if the ideas we want to end up with the majority it's a very simple matter with seven people to just go okay these are the top two vote again among the top two but boom no special technological innovations required so I would support that approach which is which is a non technological approach to instant runoff Councilmember Orttor. Yes so I support the instant runoff with only applying to council members I agree it'd be way too messy to do that for boards and committees hadn't even occurred to me until I read the presentation that we were even talking about that that would be too messy I do like the instant runoff idea and I believe that's all their direction we're being asked for right just those two things. Councilmember McGuire. Thank you mayor um so I agree that although at some point in the future it might be worth considering extending the these two citizen boards and commissions that that's probably not appropriate at this time and we should focus on votes that are being taken by council so you mentioned specifically this possibly applying to a vote on on appointing a mayor pro tem would would it be would there be an option for us to apply this the system also to internal City Council committees and external boards like for example DCTA Board of Directors. Certainly I think that would be up to council's discretion if that's the way that you wanted it to the the we did lump in the council committees with everyone else and in that process just by means of there are only three for each of those council committees so getting getting to a an officer's appointee for three people would be technically a lot easier than among seven for example. Okay so I think that my my direction is I would like to adopt either instant runoff or Borda I might be the only one who would support Borda a single transferred vote is clearly more complex than would be appropriate for the situation. I'm I tend to favor Borda because it's the it's it's the type of runoff voting that I'm most familiar with. I sort of disagree with the idea that the tallying is complicated I've never found it too terribly complicated especially when you've got you know panel of three or four or seven judges you know if the electorate were larger than yes it could get quite complicated but with with the body this size I think Borda is totally doable. Yeah and I would very much like to see that either instant runoff or Borda rank-choice voting applied to our selection a selection of mayor pro tem internal council committees as well as external boards. I'm gonna ask you to pick one so that staff can track. Can I cast one vote for instant runoff and one vote for Borda? No that's what you just did I'm asking I mean well you can. All right I don't think I'm gonna get consensus around Borda so instant runoff. And you said mayor pro tem internal council and what else? And external boards. So that's all 30? No no no so external boards would be things like the DCTA Board of Directors, DRMC, those where y'all fill the spots correct yeah okay or where we are eligible to fill the spots because of course DCTA does not require that it be a member of the body as do many external boards but I think situations where where this body is nominating an appointee to an external body I think it would be appropriate to use instant runoff rank-choice voting. Councilman Burt. I am going to recommend that we continue with the current process of Robert's rules governing the open floor nominations for all bodies. Thank you. Councilor Davis. Thank You Mayor. I agree with councilmember Burt and councilmember Meltzer. There's no process that's going to create the illusion of consensus where no consensus exists when you have a body of seven people and you have typically we're down to a couple of folks when we're talking about these nominations whether it's pro tem or filling a board seat and when things are contentious they're just going to be contentious and a larger electorate you can talk about you know the pitfalls of having binary choices and all those kinds of things there's nothing so far that I've seen in this council their previous councils or any other body like us that says that we're going to deviate from the norm which is you tend to end up with binary choices and an instant runoff doesn't help you at all when you only have a couple of choices. I don't think that there's a necessity to create new processes for this body it may be that we need to address what councilmember Meltzer was talking about which is this awkward situation where somebody has to make a motion maybe there's a process that's Tomah compliant that allows us to reach consensus or at least know what the majority is going to do so that the motion that's eventually made is what's in line with what the majority is going to do that could be a straw poll it can't be a secret ballot but it can be a straw poll it can be a pool of choices that are out there and you check a box in a way that's public and known and Tomah compliant and then that's the eventually the motion that is made to be any action we take has to be in the form of a motion that's why we end up kind of going through that that theater of it so I think that there are better ways to address the issue that we're actually talking about that don't involve I'm gonna say complex procedures and I say complex not in that the city secretary is not capable of tabulating or that we're not capable of understanding but anytime you add a layer of points this and positions that there is someone out there in the community who is not going to be familiar with the process and when people are not familiar with the process well enough to immediately understand how the representatives are voting on things that's a transparency issue and rather than bring the whole community up to speed on you know instant runoffs or any of those kind of things I think we do exactly what councilmember McGuire just did her choice did not have the support of a majority of the council she said you know what my second choice is just fine I can reach consensus with the members of the council and I can get behind a different choice okay and then I'll just say this isn't on the council priority list so I would be adverse to taking staff time away from things that we've clearly identified as a body that our priorities and and shifting to this I do want to accept staff's recommendation I think that's something that's we continue to get away from ignoring staff's recommendation and then almost disagreeing with their analysis if they say it's it's cumbersome or challenging etc. we then say oh no it's not that bad and then at some point we have to adopt and accept their answer and and not disagree with everything just because of a particular experience so that that's problematic for me to ask staff to recommend to do their due diligence to do their work and then come back to us and then we say that's wrong so for that reason I'm going to adopt staff's recommendation and take them at their word that that they did do a fair evaluation and it would be cumbersome and and and so and then just the the time to change it back as this body changes every year that just that vacillation back and forth versus a system we've had in place all the regular parts of the meeting are managed through Robert's rule of order so I just don't see a reason to then have two different code books or two different processes and and it adds confusion but moreover the the primary guiding light for me is it's not on our council priorities and if we're going to not hold ourselves to what we agreed to then that's a problem and then if we're not going to accept staff's suggestions as a subject matter expert in this or in their research that said it's too cumbersome then that's a problem for me so for those reasons I think we are we're good as is and and Councilmember Melton before I call you help me understand what else needs to be discussed yeah I just I don't feel that based on comments that I think I spoke too quickly probably and that I don't think I was clear in what I was actually recommending and I'm bothering to take the time to do it because I happen to have the right answer so well I'm saying jokingly but I think if you could restate your your position that'd be great yeah so the thing I don't like is where we have a single nomination one person candidate a everybody votes yes or no then candidate B yes or no don't like that it's very different from every other thing anybody ever votes on what I do favor is we take all the nominations I nominate a nominate B I nominate C we vote all at once just like when you go to the polls you know on election day which one do you pick A B or C okay so that's different than what we do currently but it's also not complicated now you may not end up with a majority may end up with you know 30 40 30 so no okay make make three numbers of which two are the top so I'm saying sure you can do an instant runoff but it doesn't require complex tabulation figuring out a new ballot educating the electorate nothing like that just go well we don't have a majority the top two are candidates A and C let's vote again how many for a how many for C that's your instant runoff not complicated let's your instant runoff not complicated no big you know staff time to create a new thing it's just a different procedure which is much more like every other election anybody participates in except that it happens in about 30 seconds that that was thank you mayor for letting me do that and it same question councilman armatow you gave your direction can you help me understand what you not going into it because I will call a point of order if I have to I'm trying to avoid that but give you an opportunity to be heard so what what issue are we what are you raised okay well so first of all so this is not this is not the one-minute pitch this is a discussion and for me if we see it as just a series of monologues it's really hard to respond to what other people are saying so what I'm doing is I'm responding to you know what appears to be the consensus and now I'm responding to mayor pro tem's recent comment so I think it's totally appropriate so it sounds like to me now so it sounds like to me that there are possibly and I want to make sure I'm understanding mayor pro tem correctly that there are possibly four council members who support the idea of instant runoff before mayor pro tem did I understand you correctly no that no I'm asking I'm asking mayor okay so as the chair I'm not going to recognize mayor pro tem we're gonna move forward so you can complete your comments and then we will summarize staff has notes they can summarize I just go right ahead well okay so I think it's odd that not to let mayor pro tem speak since what what's at stake is what what he meant his intention we've got him right here so you know staff is amazing but can't read minds I think it would be most helpful to staff if if mayor pro tem could just say just to clarify certainly and I would I would point out he spoke once and then he took he noticed that he thought he wasn't interpreted properly and he spoke again to clarify so he just finished so and based on what he just said it looks like now we've got four I'm not gonna I'm gonna ask you to complete your comments or I'm gonna move on then my other comment was going to be you know you mentioned that you support what staff recommended and I just I don't see where staff says that they don't recommend instant runoff only that they don't recommend rank choice voting for committees boards and commissions and that if council wishes to make a change for mayor pro tem staff would recommend an instant runoff method I'm reading right off the slide just wanted to mention that so this idea of instant runoff for mayor pro tem does not to me appear to go against what staff is recommending mayor if I'm if I may mayor pro tem is as far as that direction is concerned that should it be applicable to all the other committees boards and commissions could I have your specific direction on that front please yeah I think it's I don't have a strong impulse about it but I think it's simple enough and intuitive enough that that we should yes thank you for clarifying okay you have everything you need right I do believe now at this point I have sir great thank you appreciate it that concludes item a pardon me mayor can we get confirmation from staff regarding what their direction was I'm happy to provide by all means so councilmember required thanks for asking I did get to four as far as a consensus for instant runoffs for council nominations as they pertain to your officers not any consensus as it relates to all the other boards commissions or committees and external appointees okay and that takes us to item B thank you which is ID 2 1 2 3 6 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 pull the presentation up there so this is just a brief COVID-19 update as we've done every week in the recent past just to give you a brief recap of what we went through last time on October 19th we did give you a statistical update of the COVID-19 situation and we did provide an update on the implementation of the 15th order of council and further discussion received direction for the possible extension of those mask provisions that were under the 15th order which would then be part of a 16th order on the 19th that item was postponed to today for discussion and is scheduled for later on in this meeting for council's consideration so today in this presentation will give you again that brief COVID-19 update and we will recap what is presented for you in the 16th order which you will consider later on in this meeting so a lot of the same from last week the cases occupancy and hospitalizations do continue to be high but they are declining additionally every age group continues to decline that is the most recent report from didn't County Public Health as far as vaccines go of course Pfizer third doses and boosters have been ongoing but we do now have the FDA approval for Madonna Moderna and Johnson and Johnson boosters didn't County Public Health has opened the portal portal for Moderna boosters they'd never administered any Johnson and Johnson Johnson and Johnson so anyone who's received a vaccination through didn't County Public Health is eligible to receive that same brand of booster through didn't County additionally the FDA approved mix-and-match booster so if you received your initial vaccination from Pfizer you could get a Moderna booster if that was convenient to do and finally if you watch the news this morning there are increasing news reports that there will be a final determination on vaccines for ages 5 to 11 in the coming weeks possibly as soon as next week so we will keep an eye on that and take direction from didn't County Public Health if and when that is approved by the FDA of course the public health department continues to offer drive-through testing events that require registration and I will show a couple of new statistical graphs that we have not seen recently we focused on age in the last couple of a presentation to counsel but as you can see ICU occupancy is still pretty limited in terms of available beds although it is declining somewhat one additional graph that we wanted to show when we brought this to counsel a week ago there was discussion on the part of several council members relating to the seven-day moving average of the percent of total inpatient beds a percent of hospital beds that are filled with the COVID-19 patient so at the time we had I think maybe one day if my right if my memory serves me one day where that seven-day moving average is below 15% and that has continued to stay below 15% this graph is out of date by one day so the information that is available as of yesterday is again starting to to trend below that 15% threshold so quick implementation update the information on the left of your screen has not changed from last week just to recap of the general public response to the 15th order of council we do have some updated information and data from Parks and Recreation we do also have Gary Paken here who can provide a little bit of additional information what we have seen and we took a look at this as we we started consider an additional I should say a new 16th order Parks and Recreation does does report that participation in fitness classes and the use of the fitness rooms has decreased by a substantial amount their estimate is a 40% reduction additionally there's concern on the part of Parks and Recreation that whereas the current order does allow classes to move outdoors so that participants are not able to are are not mandated to wear a mask if they are outdoors that that option will be less inviting as the weather does turn cold as we enter the winter season and they also reporting and some loss of revenue from members choosing other fitness facilities who do not have the same requirements as we do while working out so for you tonight to consider is a 16th order it is the same document only with a date of adoption change as you saw last week it would extend the requirements to November 30th 2021 you can consider and adopt what staff has provided as a draft or you can further modify those requirements or extend to a different specified date that would be staffs recommendations keeping a date specific on when that order expires or council can take no action in the current 15th order of council would expire at the end of this month we have brought back some language that we previously presented to the council on what we required of parks facilities in the summer of 2020 and if council so so would so choose today we wanted to provide a little bit more information to modify the requirements for wearing a mask while engaging in activity in parks facilities in the summer of 2020 we did require masks be worn inside all recreation facilities at all times unless someone was actively participating in a fitness class athletic program or fitness activities just like getting on a treadmill in the fitness room the workout equipment was spaced at least six feet apart it was cleaned regularly and we did ensure social distancing in those fitness classes or group exercise classes so that is the end of this presentation I'm happy to answer any questions that the council may have and as a reminder you do have the the action item later on in this meeting councilor armature see I don't have any questions I do have direction number one as I've mentioned previously I want to continue with this order as long as it's needed and for that I look to CDC guidelines I also look at the metrics that they use but it I think the wisest thing for us to do is still to just consider to just extend this until the CDC takes us out of the red zone but if there's not consensus for that you know I'm happy to just keep extending it every month and you know my the direction I give will be just consistent in that but I think it would save a lot of time if we just keep it until the CDC says that that we are in the clear because again this is not just about City of Denton it's a much larger issue and people are very mobile and we can really take it have a big part in the way it spreads around this region and nation as for the parks programming I believe that masks still need to be worn at all times inside the recreation facilities so I don't support the exception for people actively participate in class classes athletics or fitness activities I think of course it's sad you know the loss of revenue for parks but you know when we make decisions on this kind of issue we've got to make decisions for health not for revenue if this was about if parks was about revenue we wouldn't have you know parks and rec department at all it's about how important parks and rec is but right and right now you know a 40 percent reduction actually means the less crowded facility and that is better for COVID so I do support the other two measures about workout equipment space at least six feet apart and clean regularly and social distancing and group exercise classes I think it's important to have that in there counselor bet thank you mr. mayor so well I too would would prefer a CDC criteria I recognize that that can be problematic and that a date certain is easier to work with sometimes and allows us to reevaluate if the CDC guidance has changed in that 30 days or 60 days or whatever a date certain is so so my direction would be to stick with our previous order that put a date certain of November 30th and if there's if we want to reevaluate we really have reevaluate it gives us an opportunity to reevaluate all kinds of things and so I think that's just the easier circumstance and in terms of the park direction I go hi I use the park facilities compliance is is intermittent for the reasons that we're aware of but before exactly because of that I think that we need to stay with the health guidance of indoor use as a counselor armitour said so essentially I guess that's a very duplicate of counselor armitour's customer require thank you my husband yeah I as I did last week I support extending the requirements in their current form through November 30th I am willing to I made a suggestion last week regarding possibly considering a repeal of the mandate once certain metrics have been achieved really related to COVID hospitalizations as a percentage of inpatient capacity I am very open to reconsidering that that was that was kind of just an initial suggestion that I was hoping to would spur my colleagues to you know state an opinion regarding what type of metric they would like to use and a majority appears to favor following CDC guidance related to wearing masks in high-transmission areas and and after thinking on it for a week I've come to the conclusion that I also support that that position as far as park programming you know given that it's difficult to enforce I think it's it's I'm viewing it as a positive that participation has declined so significantly because if there are going to be people in in parks and rec facilities who aren't wearing masks then we want there to be as few of them as possible and there's no evidence that people are less likely to contract or transmit COVID while they're participating in fitness activities so I don't see any reason to make an exception for that I realized that that exception was made last year and I disagree with that decision so I'm going to be voting yes to the 16th order as it will be presented at tonight's meeting Councilman Burke I am going to agree with the 16th order extended requirements in November 30th and I'm also going to and I appreciate you all bringing back the modification for parks and programming and I am in agreement with the modifications here and for those modifications to take place immediately while we're while we're working our way to the November 30th deadline thank you mayor potential yeah I'm in agreement with the first three speakers just he's an ad that as has been pointed out previously the county has a public health director and I would say that of the levels of government that affect this area this body has most closely aligned with his advice which also closely lines with the CDC that's it thanks okay then you have your decision as you come forward I forwarded you an email please if you'll pull that up when not now I just sent it to you for tonight's presentation and I'm going to disseminate disseminate that publicly a lot pull it up for viewing on the screen yes sir this evening when it comes back and here's here's what it is because I took the the step that no one else I guess has taken I hadn't heard about it and so if someone else has something to contradict it they they should bring it forward but I'm going to share it on social medias and I want to have a timestamp and I want it brought up here so that I can have a timestamp in this meeting in tonight's meeting as well my question is this as a chair of this meeting I get challenged regularly on if I've made a decision that that is acceptable and there's an appeals process my question remains what are the citizens that are the head of our orgs chart what's their appeal process for getting just carried down this road that has no end to it this I mean we're going month after month we're putting staff were through all these situations to my to my knowledge has anyone so we sent out a few mailers right to businesses there was a lot of talk on the council about people helping to cover those costs has to date has a city received any money from anyone to help subsidize those costs not aware of anything I received okay thank you and so my my concern is what are the citizens of the head of the org chart what is what are there what's their appeal process for not being held you know to these standards if they disagree right this body has a process that they can disagree the citizens don't have that instantaneously like this body does I have a problem with that the being vaccinated is the best way to help there's no incentive in this policy to motivate people to be vaccinated where you vaccinated or not it's the same treatment you got a mask yeah I do these things there's no there's no variance for there's no incentive for people to be vaccinated that's a problem for me there's no data we presented no data that says we're any different in any control of this drop at any level there's just no data to support the decision that's a problem for me and then just I want to I want to read a little bit of and give the citizens something to look forward to and and you'll have a lot to say social media wise but here's we've had several people talk about CDC right so I emailed I said hey what does this mean what is your local direction mean and I'll paraphrase because I'm gonna put the whole thing out it'll be up on the screen so I contacted the CDC there's a question reach out to the CDC they're open 24/7 email them and sure enough they email me back and I'll post this later it'll be part of tonight's presentation and I quote contact your state or local health department for guidance specific to your area and they note the fact that that influences their decision they make general statements but they don't have the local information which would guide their decisions so I'll tell you everyone that said they follow the CDC guidelines and they vote for this extension then I'm confused by that and so the entire email I sent to you the question and the answer they sent back it's time stamped it's good to go and it answers the very question I've raised three times now where it says follow your local health guidelines are does the county have a health department they do does the county have a mask mandate they do not have they given us any emails direction to say you need to implement a mask mandate they have not sent any that I'm aware of okay thank you very much that takes us to item C thank you for presentation thank you item C is ID 21 1804 receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding the audit project zero zero eight police overtime follow-up review a mayor will Madison should be coming down okay for her presentation thank you I'm bringing up you got [ Pause ] [ Inaudible ] >> No, no, that's perfectly fine. Thank you very much. >> Sorry. [ Inaudible ] >> Oh, good. All right. I'm Madison [inaudible] Auditor. I'm going to present our findings from the follow-up review of the audit of police overtime. Originally presented, originally issued in October 2019. All right. Sorry about that. As a reminder, follow-up reviews are intended to provide information on what changes have been made in response to an issued audit. >> And take your time, no worries. >> Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah, no, no, no, it's all good. No, no, hard-earned. I think it's perfectly fine. Thank you very much. >> So, in general, this review found that significant improvements have been made to the police department's overtime approval processes, as well as the policies and procedures governing overtime. More specifically, the original audit found that the police department's overtime compensation policy did not reflect actual overtime practices. And in addition, there was no maximum amount of overtime set by this policy increasing, no maximum amount of overtime set by the policy, which increased the risk that officers could experience the negative health impacts if it were working. Since then, the police department recently updated the overtime compensation policy to formalize processes to review access to the police's timekeeping system and prohibit employees from working more than 76 hours, including overtime hours, in any seven-day period. In addition, the department created a standard operating procedure that outlines the process of reconciling the biweekly payroll. Furthermore, the original audit found that a significant amount of overtime was either not approved or was approved inappropriately, either by the employee that was being paid for the overtime or by the police department's administrative staff. And supervisory review and approval is the most important way to ensure that all overtime being paid is actually worked by the employee. So, based on a review of a sample of 95 employee paychecks, police employee paychecks, that included overtime since 2019, no overtime was approved by the employee being paid for the time. And in addition, with the retirement of the previous police administration supervisor, no overtime hours have been inappropriately approved by police administrative staff. These changes have resulted in the duties of preparing and authorizing the police department's payroll being appropriately separated. So, in summary, we found that all of the recommendations issued as part of the original police overtime audit were implemented. And based on these results, we do not plan to reform an additional formal follow-up review. So, now I'll open the floor for questions. And usually when we're kind of done at this point, we like direction from the council on whether to formally complete the project, which means we would not perform any more follow-up reviews because there's no recommendations to follow up on. >> Okay. Councilmember Armitage. >> So, thank you for this audit. I'll give my direction first and then ask my questions so nobody's in suspense. Catch your breath while I'm speaking. >> Thank you, I'm sorry. >> No, don't be sorry for breathing. Let's see, so, yeah, my direction is to, you know, go ahead and complete this. I don't see the need for any follow-up. My question is just about the history of this, just trying to get a sense of, you know, to fit it in a, you know, Denton historical timeline. Are you aware of if any of these improvements were made or any improvements were made in overtime process between the time of the red light camera issue and this came out when there were, it's just, it was a small number of officers, I want to say two, maybe three, I'm sure, I'm sure, you know, but who were, but that was where kind of the idea of police overtime became a public issue. That's how I first became aware of this process. And I recognize, you know, some of what I learned about then in what this audit found. So were no improvements made to your knowledge between the time that that came to light and the audit or? >> So the original audit included that period where that was occurring. I believe one of the issues that was implemented, sorry, one of the improvements that was implemented after that was found was like assistant chiefs and deputy chiefs were, could no longer have overtime at all. So that was one of the issues as part of the red light camera. And that was made before the original audit was conducted. But we did find in the original audit some of those self-approvals were from before that change was made. So did that answer your question? >> Yes, thank you. That's good to know. Thank you. >> Any other questions for staff or I do need direction on whether to complete the audit? >> Councilman Beck. >> I have a question and then direction, if I may. The question is, and I sort of alluded to this in the questions to staff, it seems like we're solving that issue of how we authorize over time. And so that part of the direction feels like, okay, now I think we can close it up. But before I like really put a pin in that, we're still going to do periodic audit maintenance on this general topic as we go forward through time as part of your audit process. It's just this particular follow-up is-- >> Correct, yes. >> You're asking if we can put a pin in this particular follow-up. >> That's correct, yeah. Overtime is still on the table. The police department is still on the table. We could even come back and do basically the exact same audit in the future if you would like us to. But we would have new recommendations, issue new recommendations if we did that and we would do a new follow-up at that point. So unless you have any further direction on things to go back on this audit currently, then we don't have any new recommendations to follow up on. >> Yeah, no, then my direction would be to close. >> Okay. >> All right, Councilman Burke. >> My direction is to close and that was the question that I was going to ask if-- is it closed permanently or we can come back. So I appreciate that answer there. I won't hold it any longer. Thank you. >> Councilman McGuire. >> Excellent work to your department and to DPD on implementing these improvements and I think that we can close this out now. Thank you. >> Okay, Mayor Proctor-Melton. >> Yeah, good work all around. Support the recommendation to close. >> Okay, very good. So you have the direction you need. Thank you very much. I don't see no other questions or comments. So thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Appreciate it. It takes us to item D, ID 212165, receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction regarding off-premise signs. >> Mayor Tina Fergens is here. She's climbing the stairs as we speak to come up and present. >> All right, thank you. Mac, is there-- I saw you had some-- our Mr. City Attorney, you gave some guidance I think in the email that all runs together. I know I saw it. Do you want to kind of preface this conversation-- preface or set the guidelines for this conversation or no? Just want to give you that opportunity. >> No, I appreciate it, Mayor and Council. We provided to you a status report and a legal status report over the weekend. Just to give you a little bit of background about the lay of the land on some of the litigation. I don't think any of that necessarily prejudices us. There's going to be some discussion about some of the legal components of regulating signs and that's okay to be had in an open session. Primarily, just wanted to avoid talking specifically about the new kind of property out there that right now I might have some kind of issue with it. I would prefer to stay away from those types of discussions and keep it more broad in our discussion of signs. Also, there is a pending case and I wanted to also give you an update on our current ordinance which I believe was talked about at the last council meeting when this was brought for a two-minute pitch that we probably need to do some comprehensive review. Any of our sign ordinance anyway. So that's probably a discussion beyond just today. We're talking about off-premise signs but there's probably a bigger discussion to be had in the future about our sign ordinance generally. >> Got it. >> And my mistake, Tina's here to answer questions but this is Caleb Norris who's with our city attorney's office I believe. >> Zoning. >> Zoning. >> Zoning. >> Zoning. >> Zoning. >> Zoning. >> Development services. >> Development services, not met in. >> Great, welcome. >> Thank you Mayor. Thank you Council for having me today. Just a little bit of background about off-premises signs and the reason I'm here, in May of, in May of 2021, there was a request for a work session related to creating exemptions for off-premises signs in our sign code. Before we get to that, the city of Denton sign code is based on some foundations that are found in federal and state law, specifically the Highway Beautification Act of 1965. That required states to maintain effective control of outdoor advertising or be subject to a loss of 10% of their federal aid highway funds. Each state was required to enter into mandatory agreement with the federal government and set forth sign controls in commercial and industrial areas. In 1972, the state of Texas enjoined the Highway Beautification Act with the Texas Beautification Act, Texas Beautification Act. It prohibited outdoor advertising within 660 feet of interstates and highways that receive federal money or risk losing that money with a few exceptions. Signs could be permitted in industrial and commercially zoned areas if they were off-premise and signs that were located on-premise were also permitted in industrial and commercial zoned areas. The city of Denton is a certified sign city. That means that TxDOT has relegated the authority to permit signs in these areas to the city of Denton as long as it complies with the state and federal laws. We can also be more strict, which we are. If we are not a certified city, the regulatory authority falls back to TxDOT and they would be the entity that would permit signs on our highways and interstates. History of the city of Denton's sign code. In 1997, the city adopted an ordinance that prohibited new off-premise signs. Back up a little bit, when I talk about an off-premise sign, I'm talking about a sign that advertises a business or a product or an activity that is somewhere other than where the sign is installed. We see them every day when we drive along the interstate as billboards. In 2014, the city in anticipation of the U.S. Supreme Court Reed decision overhauled their sign code and adopted a new ordinance. And when they did that, they removed some of the regulations related to off-premise signage and on-premise signage, but they left in the regulations for billboards. They created a definition for billboards, and that is how city staff, to this day, enforces off-premise sign regulations is through our billboard provisions. So if we see an off-premise sign, it is a billboard by our code. Staff has denied several applications for new off-premise signs, including billboards or owners that want to rent out their signs in town for advertising or to install new ones on the side of buildings. Currently, we have 63 legally nonconforming signs in the city of Denton. When I say legally nonconforming, they don't conform with our current ordinance, but they were in existence before we adopted the regulations in 1997. Earlier, I made mention to the Supreme Court decision town of Gilbert versus Reed. This was handed down in 2015, and it has complicated the city's ability to regulate signage. If we base our sign regulations on reading the sign, then they are likely unconstitutional. They have to be content neutral. If ordinances are content-based, they are subject to strict scrutiny, but we can still regulate signs in a content-neutral manner, such as dimensional controls, the placement, the number of signs on a property. Many cities' ordinances currently do not comply with the regulations that were handed down in Reed, and the appeals courts are divided on how to apply the Reed decision. The Ninth Circuit out of California has very different findings than the Fifth Circuit in Texas. Some potential options related to off-premise signs. We could, as a city, begin the process of drafting a new sign ordinance that permits off-premise signage only as allowed by state and federal law. It would be permitted along local roadways and would require an overhaul of the city's sign code and billboard regulations. I do feel that it would proliferate the number of off-site signs within the city. We can also wait for the court cases surrounding the town of Gilbert decision to make their way through the judicial system. Currently, the Supreme Court will hear in November a case related to the city of Austin and the Fifth Circuit's findings in that case. I am happy to take any questions on this issue that may arise. >> Okay. Is that complete? >> Yes, sir. >> Great. Councilmember Armitage? >> Okay. So I have a question, a comment, and I'm going to wait to give my direction until having heard at least Councilmember Davis speak since he was the one who suggested it. So I'll just start with my comment that I happen to believe that our regulations for on-site signage are too restrictive and are, you know, problematic in terms of kind of fees and requirements for local business owners. I'm not saying do away with them entirely. Also, that's not what's on the agenda for today. But I just wanted to acknowledge that, you know, for me, that is what I hear, what I understand to be the biggest issue that I'm most sympathetic with signs. My question is about these 63 legal nonconforming billboards. So I appreciate the map that shows where they are, right? I just want clarification on what constitutes a billboard? Are any of these murals, does a mural of a certain size constitute in City of Denton a sign or if there's advertising on it, you know, what kind of variety is there in terms of type, not geography of these 63 legal nonconforming signs? So the sign code does not contain a definition of a mural. It contains a definition of a wall sign. And a wall sign is painted, affixed to, or supported by a wall. If a sign, if wall art, we'll use that term, conveys a commercial message, staff considers that to be a wall sign and it would require a permit. Murals around town, for example, recycle books on the building there. There's one on Cedar Street near the campus theater, the Andy's Bar, which I'm sure you're all familiar with, that is a mural and did not require a permit through the sign code. And Councilman Armentor, would you reverse me on the first part of your question about billboards? >> So just wanting to note, so, well, first I'll just say just to make sure that I understand what you just said. So if it's, if there's commercial advertising that is painted on a wall, then it's a wall sign, right. The term mural is used for wall, exterior wall paintings that are not commercial in nature, is it? >> That is correct. >> Okay, so great. And so my question was, if you could kind of speak to, and I don't expect that you know, maybe you do, but I don't expect that, have in your mind all 63 of those legal, nonconforming billboards and, you know, what they're for. But I was just saying that I appreciate that we have a map to show us where they are, right. If you could say something about the variety in type of billboard, for instance, in terms of size, are they, you know, how do they vary in size? Are some of them on, you know, affixed to a wall? >> To mine? >> Whatever else you can tell us about them besides where they are geographically, since we have this nice map here. >> They vary in size. You'll notice some of them downtown. There's one on Hickory Street at the Midway Mart. I think it advertises a local law firm, so that's a smaller one. The ones along the highway are quite large. They are actually, they would be too big to meet the requirements in our sign code. The effective area and the height restrictions along I-35, they would not meet those. And that's why I believe they are protected by the code as legal nonconforming. We do not have any digital billboards in town because our sign code does not permit it. If those billboards are protected, but if you were to alter them to convert them to a digital billboard, then it would lose its nonconforming status and would have to be taken down. Around 35, going into Dallas and Fort Worth, you will notice that some of the billboards will begin to disappear, and that is because TextDOT is going through and taking a lot of that land to widen the road, and they cannot bring back those billboards. Once they're gone, they're gone. The city passed a separate ordinance in 2015 that made that a law, that if you lose it for eminent domain reasons, you cannot bring it back. Did I answer your effectively? >> Yes, yes, yeah, thank you. That's very helpful. So again, you know, I'll be listening, you know, for my direction. I'm inclined for now, just based on what I know at this moment, to say no to changing our rules for off-site signage, but I am very open in the future, just so people know, to changing the rules for on-site signage. >> Councilmember Davis. >> Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate the background and especially the legal background, kind of the landscape of things and the bumpers, the curbs that are on our conversation, what we can do and what we can't do, especially the funding piece that there are certain things we could-- decisions we could make as a city that would jeopardize transportation funding. I'm a little concerned though that we still have not identified a solution to the major problem, and that's what our conversation today needs to do, which is there's a difference, there's a material difference between a 50-foot-high billboard on 35 and signage on the wall of a local business or a building adjacent to a local business. You can take a quick walk around the square and find more than just the examples that were provided of the local realtor who has a very nice piece of what I think is wall art, but it also includes the logo for the realty business. So in our sign code, it's an off-premise sign, but it blends in nicely with the historical nature of the building it's on. It's painted on the brick, just like we have this tradition of advertising art on brick buildings that's been with us for a long time. This distinction between wall sign and mural just gets very content-based, which is problematic for exactly the reasons that we're talking about, that this painted brick sign is commercial in nature and not allowed, and this sign that shows all the things that have to do with the barbecue joint that it's right next to, but don't say, "Eat at Joe's Barbecue," is a mural. That's very problematic for me, and it creates issues for exactly the kind of folks that we should be encouraging to creatively advertise their local business or what they have to offer the community. What I'm looking for is a solution that stays within the bumpers that we've got, but recognizes the issues we have with this content management that we really, this business we really ought not be in, evaluating the content of a sign and sticking within the intent of the Highway Beautification Act. You know, we don't need more 50-foot billboards, but we need to find a way within the code to allow these reasonable, I'll call them wall signs, because that's the term we have in our code now, that are very different from the things that the Highway Beautification Act is intending to prohibit. So that's what I'd like to see out of the conversation. If it's a narrow exemption that we can build into our current code, fantastic. If it means that we need to take a look at our sign code because we anticipate courts making decisions for us a little bit later down the road, then maybe we take a proactive, take our best guess at what the courts are going to do, look at the available jurisprudence, and anticipate what we think they may do, and tailor a sign code that's in compliance with those, and also doesn't penalize local business owners for doing creative things like adjacent properties. You know, maybe that's, just to kind of put a bow on it, maybe that's a solution as well, that off-premises, it has a certain definition in state code. I don't know what kind of leeway we have to craft our own definition if we do of off-premise, but a foot off your premises, do you have to go out and get a CO for a whole nother building just to be able to use the wall that faces your parking lot? That seems a little bit draconian to me. >> Councilman Bet. >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. A couple of questions, what's the expected time frame? I think you sort of alluded to it for the Gilbert decision, but what's the expected time frame? >> So the Supreme Court agreed to hear it. They will hear it next month. I believe we will have a decision in June of next year on whether you can apply the on-premise, off-premise language. Can you treat commercial signs differently? I think is essentially what would be found out from that decision. There is some disagreement in the appeals court and the city attorney, please correct me if I'm wrong, as to whether you can treat commercial signs differently than non-commercial signs. >> Okay. And so potentially within, definitely within the next year, but potentially sooner than that is what I'm hearing. And then to echo some of what Councillor Davis said, do we have the rights to define on-premise, off-premise? If on-premise is on-premise plus 50 feet or something like that, can we make a definition like that? >> Okay. Well, I can weigh in on that. It depends. So along the state and federal highways, those are subject to the Highway Beautification Act, and there's rules and there's standards and definitions for on and off-site premise that are in those. And that's what we're effectively enforcing by being a certified city is those laws. If you want to talk about other local roads that are not state and federal highways, yeah, we have some discretion to describe how we want to define off-site on those. But when it comes to the state and federal, we're enforcing state and federal law. And that's the definition that's going to drive our discussion or our ability to regulate those. >> So if I might summarize just for my own clarity, you're basically saying that we cannot change the rules for adjacent to federal highways, but other roadways and other locations, we may have some discretion. >> Correct. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Council Member Burke. >> My direction would be to wait for the court case that's surrounding the Gilbert so we can have a little bit more time to deal with this. I also think that we need to be very distinctive about our treating the commercial signs differently than the murals. I think there's a clear distinction between those. I was actually thinking about the turds. I know that we extend funding for small businesses, you know, just around downtown, and we may have a business here and there that would want to come in and paint over and use, you know, some funding for that. I think that that-- I don't know why that was coming in, you know, that's part of my thought process. But to go ahead and just-- let's wait. That would be my suggestion and keep our ordinance in place. And if we were to do anything, I have gotten some calls about the mobile signage that are-- that's going digital. I've had a couple of complaints to come through where, you know, people are just-- are just not liking that. It's very distracting, and so if we were to, you know, begin that conversation, I know we're going to have to do something about that. So that's where I am. Thank you. >> The-- just so you know, Councilwoman Byrd, the sign code does have definitions of mobile billboards, but it has no regulations. >> Right. That's where I want to come back to that and we can regulate that at some point. >> Councilmember Armitage. >> Okay. So I'm ready to give my direction now, and I appreciate Councilmember Davis for kind of specifying what you had in mind. I totally support changing our definition of wall sign. I kind of-- I feel similarly that we shouldn't be in the business of, you know, regulating content and also when you're talking about offsite signage that is really close to the business, to the site, for instance, a facing parking lot, as mentioned. I don't know, I mean, if I could right now give a, you know, ballpark figure for how many feet close it has to be. I can just imagine coming up with something and then, you know, business wants to have a sign at the right next door that is a foot further away and they have to come before us for an expensive SUP and involve a lot of time, you know, and I can imagine that being a headache. But I do think that, you know, a mural is a mural and paint is paint. And, you know, billboards can block-- billboards block views. Painting a building that's already there, if that building is allowed, it just changes the color of the building and so I, you know, can see that as a free speech issue. And when I say that, I mean, I'm not saying that-- I think pretending to be a constitutional lawyer but just in the colloquial sense at least. So anyway, I do support that aspect of it but I don't support changing it for those things that we call billboards that are standalone. You know, anything that can block the view but something that doesn't change the physical structure of what's already there in the building is perfectly fine with me. >> Councilmember Davis. >> Thank you, Mayor. I just have a question for the city attorney. If we make the decision or have direction today to wait for some of these decisions to be made for us, are there-- since-- I guess since the best guidance we have so far is a 2015 case. Do there exist model codes? Has TML promulgated any model codes? Are there cities we know of, similarly situated cities that have made amendment to their signed ordinances since that decision came out? I guess what I'm saying is, are there things that we can look towards because if we have a decision that comes out that tells us we need to make changes to our sign code, the better we can anticipate, the more we can anticipate that in advance, then probably the less work for the city attorney's office and the longest lead time we have on making ordinance changes on the council. >> Yes. I know after the Reed case came out in 2015, the International Municipal Lawyers Association did a pretty big project to try to come up with some standard model language for a sign code. And so that's out there. There's been-- like Caleb mentioned, there's been different courts in different parts of the country going different directions. It makes it a little bit hard to stick with one model because based on where you are now located, you may have different law than other parts of the country. But I also know that, you know, when the city redid the ordinance in 2014, we-- our office hired, I believe it was the expert in the country on sign code. So our code is not in a terrible place right now. I think it was drafted assuming that the Reed case would go the way it did. And so, yeah, we would definitely need to do some updating and some fixing but I think there's some resources we could rely on. If not, we could certainly reach out and bring in a consultant as well to help. >> Mayor for Tim Meltzer. >> Yeah, I certainly kind of get the desire to, you know, provide relief for anybody kind of caught in the issue. But, you know, it takes a while to do these things and, you know, the idea that we're going to kind of go through all that it takes and then very likely have to redo it all again. You know, because, you know, whether we like it or not, the court is going to, quote, unquote, you know, make the decision for us. They're going to have a ruling and it will affect us. It's not that if we decide first, then they won't make the decision for us. The ruling is coming. So I want to not be burdensome to our local businesses. I'd like to be practical and permissive, you know, especially to expression. I think it's just smart in terms of process to get the decision. And certainly if we can anticipate and have ducks in a row before, okay. I don't know how well anybody can predict, you know, what the courts will do. But, yeah, if there is an opportunity, sure. But I think we need to find out what the ruling is going to be. >> Okay. So currently don't have a consensus. So I don't, Councilman Beck. >> Real brief question, then I'll give my direction. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. The brief question is, and this may be out of the context of what we should ask in an open session. So Mr. City Attorney, please let me know. For those items that might be in contention with the current state of the overall sign code, ours, the federal, everything, are we required to enforce that state in some fashion? Or is there an ability to wait until the results of this case comes out? >> There's the ability to wait. And that has been our position at this point. >> Okay. Then my direction would be to not double dip and follow Mayor Pro Tem's advice of wait until we get more clear guidance from the courts. >> Councilmember McGuire. >> Thank you. I agree that I would prefer to wait until we get the results of this case and make a decision at that time. Okay. So that gives kind of consensus around that. My notes, double-check it against yours. I would advocate that we, when we do kind of come forward, so I'll give you notes in advance, I think we need to have kind of an ability to get to 100% compliance, right? There's some, there's some, you know, if we have something with teeth that we could hold everyone to versus carve-outs as far as, you know, we all know. That's what's optimal for me from my perspective from, hey, we're doing the same to everyone, best we can. And then I also would think there need, if we could do something around when text dot comes, not the billboards, right? Don't want to get into that. >> But from the, text dot took off from our parking lot. >> Ergo, we need to tell people where to park now or some of those things, you know, maybe if there's some kind of, and it may be a special use permit or something that comes before the body to discuss or maybe, you know, prescriptive in the code. But just something to kind of help us have some flexibility for those that maybe, you know, lose the front of their parking lot just because of growth, that sort of thing. So, but again, defer to staff, you get most of the questions, that sort of thing. And then one other question that comes up a lot is kind of on the digital side of things, just either an addendum or something when we get there that says, you know, because the first example is gas stations, right? Gas stations have digital signs, they change all the time. And so if you get into that digital space, you know, there's lots of wiggle room, right? And so just kind of whatever staff's analysis is on how to best manage that, again, getting to the, hey, gas stations are this and we're holding them accountable, moving vehicles are this, we're holding them accountable, you know, those sort of things. So if we can just kind of give ourselves the flexibility we need to not get pinned in the, you know, these kind of, but the code says this situations, that'd be great. So thank you very much, great presentation. >> Thank you for your time. >> Yes. Okay, that takes us to our last work session item and then we'll take a break. So it's item EID 212329, receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction regarding City Council meeting, discussions and effective meetings and discuss during the annual City Council retreat. >> Good afternoon, Mayor, City Council, Sarah Kuechler, Chief of Staff, I just have a real quick presentation to share with you all. So this item is more of an update for City Council and this is by request of the Agenda Committee. So this is just a quick follow up from the Council's retreat in August. During that retreat, Council discussed a number of different ways to increase the effectiveness of City Council meetings. We reviewed some of those with you in September when we held the work session to review the Council priorities and the action items from that retreat. So again, on October 8th, the Agenda Committee met and they requested that staff present just very briefly to City Council and allow the opportunity for you to discuss and also introduce a new tool that you will see in the chambers in the form of a clock to just help with time management. It's just a tool and some general guidelines that Council can use. So just to review, this is kind of a brief summary coming out of the retreat of some best practices and guidelines that Council agreed as a body in terms of how you want your deliberations and discussions to take place and what you want those to look like. So in general, one of the suggestions, I think this was actually made by Councilmember Armitage during the retreat, was to have a general guideline that each Councilmember could follow. I'm trying to be within a time limit for each person or each member within four minutes, I think, was offered. And that's just to be consistent among all members, make sure that everyone has an equal opportunity to share their thoughts and opinions and to spread that around the dais. And then also just to continue moving through the agenda and acknowledging there, of course, is discussions that are going to need more than one round of discussion points. Council also discussed trying to avoid taking time to repeat previously stated discussion points amongst themselves, to address the body rather than debating individual Councilmembers, and then to respect the process in place and to try to acknowledge how long you have been speaking and allow others a turn to speak as well. And then in terms of Council direction, Councilmembers agreed to try to give more clarity to staff or to have a summarize at the end what we heard the consensus to be to make sure that we are going back and effectively taking the next steps and that there's no confusion, that we misinterpreted and misheard something, making sure that we're doing that check-in point and that Council's also giving us that clear direction. So next steps moving forward, one action that we have already taken that you've seen in the last few City Council agendas is just listing an anticipated time for each work session. Again, just a guideline, just an estimate to help kind of piece together our agendas and make sure that we're, you know, trying to make -- we have -- make sure we have appropriate times and that we're overloading one meeting day or that we have less than one meeting day. And we've also -- to help with that is we've installed a clock on the back wall of the chambers. And so beginning at the next City Council meeting for each work session, it will count up. So you'll be able to see if on the work session it's -- it was estimated at 45 minutes. You'll be able to see, are you 30 minutes into a 45-minute item, maybe it's time to wrap up or get to the discussion or the policy items or to generally agree, we need to extend our time that we're taking for this item. So again, just a tool that's available. Once it would go over the estimated time, it would just turn a different color just so you know you're over the allotted time. And then you could also, if you're speaking as an individual council member, if you see you're at minute 30 and you're now up to minute 45, you know that you've taken too much past your general timeframe and maybe to pass that off to another council member. And so that's just kind of an overview of that tool. The mayor and mayor pro tem have agreed together from the agenda committee that they'll gently remind council members when they're approaching any agreed upon timetable and to help kind of manage those discussions moving forward. So the no specific direction is sought from staff, but just allowing the opportunity for council to have any dialogue if you wish or provide any clarifications. And then staff is suggesting that mid-year that we come back with a work session, check in on the city council priorities, give you a mid-year update. At that point, we can also have another discussion if you'd like to change those, you know, guidelines or best practices, or if you'd like to formalize them more, just kind of see how things are going in terms of that new tool that's available as well. >> Okay. Councilmember McGuire. >> Thank you, mayor. Thank you to staff for putting this together. I think that you hit the nail on the head, and I think that the clock is a very useful tool. So thank you for putting all that together. I would love to kind of highlight on slide four the idea of gently reminding council members when they're approaching an agreed upon timetable. That doesn't mean forcefully shutting down necessary conversation. And it also doesn't mean taking several minutes to lecture council about how long we take to make our points. But gentle reminders. And I think that that clock provides all the gentle reminder we probably need, frankly. >> Anyone else? Seeing none, I would just like to make a note for the city manager. If you could, I'd like to use my ability to add an item to a future agenda in this vein to talk about city staff and for you to give us an update on where we are. And let me give that some context. We were here until midnight, and then emails were sent probably about nine in the next morning, and I just can't imagine that's a healthy work environment. And so I think just your insight on who we don't -- who's active that we don't see, and kind of your feel for staff morale, et cetera, and just workload would be important for us as we try to get back and to -- just to be mindful of people's times, people's families, et cetera, et cetera, it's just important that we hear from you and get some direction from you. So if you could do that, then I'd like to thank staff for your help to try to get a -- I mean, again, in a perfect world, we'd self-regulate, and you wouldn't need any of this. But we -- that's not happened. So thank you for your help setting guardrails. I want to thank technical staff for getting the clock in and setting that up and everything. That'll be great. So that -- those are my comments. I look forward to kind of what the city manager says and how we can be better executive staff for our director level and city staff. So thank you very much. Any other comments? See none? Thank you very much. All right. Then it is 3:59. We will take a 10-minute break. We'll be back at 4:10 to vote on our consent agenda and get into our individual items. Thank you. [ Silence ] >> And welcome back to this meeting in the City Council. It is 413. We're back on the record, and we're through our -- we've completed our work sessions. We're now to our consent agenda. I will remind the council that item T was pulled. But other than that, if you will please indicate -- thank you, Mayor Pritzomel, sir. >> Yes, I move approval of the consent agenda, excluding item T, which has been pulled. >> Councilmember McGuire. >> I second. >> Okay. We have a motion and a second. Let's vote on the board. [ Silence ] And that passes 7-0. That takes us to our items for individual consideration. And I'll note for those tracking along that we're going to push up items G and H. So we'll go A first, and then we'll immediately follow, and we'll be G and H. And then we'll get back on track to B. So there's a minor adjustment there, but be mindful of. But I'll call item A, which is ID 212342, consider adoption of ordinance of the City of Denton, Texas, a home rule, municipal corporation confirming the effective period of a declared state of local disaster related to COVID-19 emergency and providing an ordinance number 211825 to December 31st, 2021. Is that -- is that right? >> To -- >> It's going to be November, right? >> November 30th. >> Yeah. So there's just a note there. But anyway, superseding the -- in replacing the 15th order of council, the City of Denton, issued September 2021 approval ordinance of number 211825, providing a repeal clause and providing an effective date. >> Mayor and council, Ryan Adams, customer service and public affairs. You received a brief presentation earlier this afternoon on this item. We are happy to stand for any questions that the council may have. You do have a draft order in your -- that was in your backup materials. And we're happy to answer any questions. >> Okay. Seeing no questions, we have one speaker, Bonnie Friedman. If you give your -- come to the -- and give your name and address, you'll have four minutes. I don't -- sure, four, four minutes. >> So hi. I feel like I'm meeting movie stars here because I usually see you only on my screen at home. And let me just -- I'm Bonnie Friedman. I live at 1914 West Oak Street here in Denton. And I just wanted to apologize in advance. I thought I was going to be speaking this evening so I would have had more time to put my thoughts together. But I wanted to talk to you about the mask ordinance, which as we all know, we're still in the midst of a pandemic. I think for those of us who don't have family members who work in a hospital or who don't have access to a hospital, it can seem very imaginary, the amount of illness and the communicativeness of the illness that is still out there. So, you know, we have as a community very few tools for dealing with the pandemic. But the ones that we have are pretty effective. And as a city, one of the ones that we have is the mask ordinance. And my own feeling about it is that when you're dealing with something, a matter of life and death and quality of life, what concerns me not only is getting ill but worrying about long-term COVID, about which we know very little and which we know can affect children as well as adults. And there are members of our own community, some very well-known members of our own community that are struggling and have been struggling for a long time with long-term COVID. So I think we should err on the side of caution when removing the safety guards that help our community. One of the things that struck me is that when we took off the mask mandate last time and then put it back on, there was less compliance. So every time you take off the mask mandate, you are weakening one of the few most powerful tools that you have. You're never going to get the same level of compliance again. We're heading into the cooler weather. As we know from the past, people get -- the incidence of illness goes up during the colder weather that happened last year, and they're predicting it will happen this year again. So now, especially, we're heading into a precarious time. My own feeling is that we have a center for disease control. It's full of scientists and doctors who make a study of this, and we ordinary citizens don't have the wherewithal to know what the repercussions are of following our own sound judgment. We're practical people. We care deeply, but it's important that we follow the CDC guidelines, which say that indoors, people who -- even people who are related, you know, should be wearing masks. Gatherings indoors should be wearing masks. I just want to say one or two other things before concluding, which is I know that you all are thinking about whether people who are exercising in the rec centers should have to wear masks. And we know from studies and from experience that people who are singing and people who are expelling a lot of air are communicating even more of the virus. The Delta variant has a lot more virus in people's noses and is extremely communicative. So I think especially for people who are exercising, they should not be removing their masks. I know it is a hardship, but it's a worse hardship to get a respiratory illness that is going to leave the lungs damaged, permanently damaged. So even though, you know, I think we're all living in difficult times, and there's a lot of stresses on it, I trust that you'll do the best for the community, and I thank you for your attention. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Ryan, I have a question. Thank you very much. I don't see any questions. Could you pull up that graphic I sent you, please? >> Yeah. >> An email? >> In just one moment. >> Would you like me to start at the bottom there? >> No, if you could start at the thank you, contact in CDC info. >> Okay. Let me see. >> At the top. >> There we go. >> Great. Thank you. Yeah. So just want to -- just a time stamp for those watching and for me to share. Just to understand, we hear a lot about CDC and what they suggest and what they recommend, and so I've continued to probe that. This email is part of the record that I just want to kind of put on the screen, and I want to highlight that it says -- and citizens will be able to read it for themselves. Citizens will be able to be heard at the appropriate time. Unfortunately, I believe that the CDC's guidelines and regulate that give deference to local health departments, and they say that that data from the health departments guides and informs their decision. So this council has made a decision to prolong this. The coronavirus will be here in perpetuity is what the experts think, and so I just don't understand what medical body this council is using to guide its decisions. It's regularly pointed to the CDC. I asked -- that's why I asked this question. I'll leave that for people to look at it themselves, but I read it to say that we should be following the guidance of our local health department, understanding the city does not have one that would defer to the county, and obviously, you can read it and interpret it for yourself, but I just want to have a time stamp that says this council is overreaching in my estimation, and we have no medical backing for our decisions, and that gives me concern. I think we agree there, because the council said regularly that they want to follow the science, and the science from this organization says they defer to our local organization. So that's just a moment in time. Time stamp. Just wanted to be part of the record. I'll -- that's all I have. Thank you very much, Ryan, for pulling that up. Councilman Betz. >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I could not be happier that you posted this. I really couldn't, because the -- I'm appreciative of the fact that you went to the CDC and that they recommend following the recommendations of the local health authority, and that is exactly what I think the majority of council has been asking for, is to follow the recommendations of the local health authority, and Dr. Richardson's guidance is to wear masks indoors. For political reasons, he may be precluded from enforcing that guidance, but his recommendation is the CDC recommendations. So the fact that you have the CDC recommending that we follow Dr. Richardson, I could not be happier, and I'm glad the mayor's on board with following the CDC recommendations. And at this time, I'd like to motion that we adopt the order as written for November 30th first. Although, I would like some clarity. Are we 31st or December? Let's just get some real clarity before I finish my motion. >> So the order is through November 30th, and that is subsequent to your declaration disaster, which extends through December 31st. So two different things. One has a -- the declaration disaster has an expiration date at the end of the year. The order that's proposed has an expiration date at the end of November. >> Okay. So then I motion as it's written to the end of November. Thank you. >> Councilmember Armitage. >> I second that motion. >> Okay. Any other discussion? We have a motion and second. Seeing none, let's vote on the screen. Votes passes 5-2. Thank you. >> Thank you, Mayor. >> And then that takes us to item G. Do you want -- should I call both or? >> We have one presentation for both, so be fine. >> Okay. So let me do that. So I'll call item G, which is ID-212382, consider approval of resolution of City of Denton -- City Council of the City of Denton adopting criteria for use of 2020-2021 redistricting process. And then ID-21 -- item H is ID-212383, consider approval of resolution of the City of Denton establishing guidelines for persons submitting comments and specific redistricting proposals. >> Thank you, Mayor and Council. We do have just a brief presentation overview of the two resolutions that you'll be considering tonight regarding redistricting. Just a little bit of background, of course, this is all subsequent to the 2020 census. After the census results came in, we -- staff hired consultants to perform a review. The results of that review was presented last week by Bob Heath of Bicker Staff where it was noted that redistricting was not required, but could be done by the council at their discretion. Council did give permission, or I should say, did give direction to proceed with redistricting. And there are two items for consideration today. One is the criteria for redistricting, and the other are public input guidelines. So the criteria that's presented in the resolution will serve as a framework that essentially guides the redistricting effort. It is something to measure proposals against and assist the city and assist the city council in complying with state and federal law related to council districts. There are nine criteria that -- or there are nine criteria within the resolution. It addresses things such as compactness, population balance, and also minority communities. And proposed plans that are submitted to the city should conform to these criteria as what's written in the resolution. The input guidelines are simply there to help with an orderly evaluation of any proposals that come to the council from the public. So we would like them to not be wildly different. We want them to be in conformance with the redistricting criteria. We need them to be in writing and legible. They should show population breakdowns. They should be comprehensive. So not showing just one district, but showing all the districts that would be considered by council. And we do want to give council a preliminary timeline for the redistricting process. Of course, you do consider the criteria and the input guidelines today. We will open a public input opportunity through the city website that will begin this week, and it will continue through the public hearing date. We are scheduling a drawing session on November 16th, and a public hearing on December 7th, with final adoption of the districts on December 14th. And we will come back in early January to have the polling location discussion subsequent to those district changes that we anticipate. So I'm happy to answer any questions. We also have city attorney Catherine -- city attorney's office available, Catherine Clifton, with us, and representative from Bickerstaff, Philip Arnold, who can also answer questions as well. >> Great. So first, if you could kind of frame what feedback you need from us today. Obviously, there's several steps in the process. So if you can remind the council what feedback you need today. >> No specific direction other than the consideration of these two resolutions. We do want council to be aware of the timeline, and that it is a very compressed timeline, because we do want to complete this process before the filing period opens for elections in May. So the timeline that was presented to council, we do want to stick to that as much as we can, because it will get -- there's not a whole lot of time on the back end if anything gets delayed. >> Got it. And then -- so the subject matter expert is whom? >> This is Philip Arnold with Bickerstaff. >> Okay. Philip Arnold. And so just briefly, my comments are these. And I think it's great that this followed item A, because item A said follow the experts, right? We're not experts, so we need to follow the experts. Well, the expert, in this instance, said we don't need to redistrict. So I find it curious that before it's follow the experts, and then this instance, it's, well, the expert didn't say what I want them to say, so we don't want to follow that recommendation. I do think Mr. Arnold's team did a great job drawing lines that have held all the unpredicted growth, all the unpredicted instances for 10 years. And so that would be my guidance is to follow the experts and not go through this lengthy process. But then also, I would look to the city manager's office to push back or to -- I want to open the doors, obviously, that office and staff is welcome to do as they decide. But I want to open the door for them to say, wait a minute, we didn't talk about any of this on our council priorities. And so if we're going to have a huge undertaking like this, something needs to come up. Just to be fair and equitable, just to communicate clearly, that's my understanding of what we agreed to discuss is, so if we're going to ignore the experts, and ask staff to do a lot of work that wasn't anticipated, it's only fair in my -- and I'm one vote that says it's only fair that we adjust the council priorities accordingly and have a roadmap that then says, okay, we understand compressed timeline, this takes a priority, takes a priority over what? What do we put on the back burner? And so I'll be looking to see if we, one, follow the experts as a body or if we act against what the expert recommends, and then two, be hoping to hear what we're going to take off the priority list or at least just highlight the fact that we're going against what we agreed and we're going against the experts. So we'll see how the conversation goes, but I did want to make those points. And so, Council Member Armitage. >> Okay. I strongly support, of course, going forward with this redistricting conversation. The expert that we hired told us that we're legal, but he never said he doesn't recommend doing anything. We can absolutely -- you know, he made it clear that the more we can chip away at this disparity, the better we can be. So he -- and he said it's up to us, and it is up to us, and so anyway, I am excited about the possibilities and opportunities for public input, and I realize that time limits us. You know, the ideal for me -- or part of an ideal scenario for me would involve an online tool similar to what we had with the, you know, make your own budget tool where people got to, you know, submit their own proposals alternately, you know, even if we don't have time for people to actually submit their own proposals, at least for people to be able to fool around with it, I think that it would be good to have a page on the city website just about redistricting where we have such a tool or at least links to videos that people can watch and text that they can read on what's involved in redistricting and these different criteria. You know, it would be neat to have a way for people to mess around with it so they could say, "Okay, what if you change it this way?" Oh, then it leads to, you know, this one district that you never even thought would be affected by it being affected in a negative way, you know, by, you know, minoritized communities being underrepresented, so you have to change it. I think it would be really good for the public to kind of go through that whole process to see what a holistic process it is and how moving one piece of the puzzle affects everything. Anyway, but I think that, you know, the more we can hear people and help to educate people on what's involved, the better. Again, I understand that there are time limitations, but it's crucial that we do this without the community-- it's crucial that we do this with community input. And I think that there's just a little catching up that people will need just on, you know, what these considerations are. But I think that all of the considerations are ones that we should take into account, all of the ones that were mentioned. It looks like you're maybe seeking direction on criteria, are you? Consider criteria and input guidelines. I mean, I'm for all the criteria that our legal expert said that, you know, that we need to consider. >> So, it's actually-- that's what's for vote tonight, not direction, but that's the criteria written into the resolution. >> Yeah, OK. I'm sorry, for vote, yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Paper to Mel, sir. >> Yeah, thanks, some very interesting ideas there. Yeah, absolutely, the direction of the experts was that we didn't need to redistrict but that we could redistrict if there's an opportunity to improve. That's the only reason to do it is if there's an opportunity to improve and we only get to do it once every 10 years. I mean, I view it as sort of in the same kind of frame of mind as comprehensive plan. As far as the actual criteria, I think, you know, we already have a very strong contender which is do nothing, you know, the current plan. As we know, it's legal and it has all the advantages of people not having to learn something new. So, I think the point of going through the exercise is to see if there's anything considerably better and I'm in favor of change for the better. I think that's a good thing. But in order to identify things that are different and better, I would suggest, first of all, removing-- I'm looking at the resolution, the draft resolution, I would remove one and four. So, that's, you know, I think probably what already exists is based on easily identifiable geographic boundaries like, you know, the highway. Well, I think if we are working with whole precincts that already exist, I think that's sort of working from the original enough. So, I would eliminate one and I would eliminate four which talks about trying to be based on existing districts as much as possible. Like I said, I think we already have a really good contender that's based on existing districts. That would be the existing districts. So, I would say that's not a criteria for new proposals. Let's see what the others are. And if they're not compellingly better and not worth the transaction costs of going through the change, then, you know, then you'd go with, you know, with plan A. But I would also add a criteria or a measure to say that, you know, if we can-- it would be preferred if we can see options that improve on the measure of indentedness. And I know that's probably hard to understand through a mask. It's not indebtedness. It's not being screwy, tormented, twisty turns to reach around one neighborhood and attach somebody else, you know, that it-- so lots of twists and turns is kind of what gerrymandered districts look like. So, improving on indentedness is, you know, I would say is a value. So, I would add that as a criteria. >> Councilman Burke. >> I'll also agree that I did not hear the consultant note that we not do anything. I think that it's very important for us to continue to change with the times. Although this map that we have right now is, you know, it suited us well. I mean, it's predicted 10 years ahead. So-- But there's always, again, opportunities to improve. So, I appreciate the fact that we do have this prerogative. It is something that we need to take advantage of while we can to go forward. My question is-- Oh, and also, you know, I think going through this process is also very important from an educational perspective. You know, a lot of people don't get a chance to see this in real time, real life. So, you know, being an educator, of course, I want, you know, people to be educated on this particular kind of process and why we have to go through this and why it's important that they understand the reasonings behind gerrymandering and redistricting. And, you know, it all comes to play right now. So, I would appreciate a little educational piece in there. And then, my question is, right now, drawing session. Tell me what a drawing session would look like. >> I'll actually, if that's all right, defer to our representative from Baker Staff. Philip can hear if you're able to unmute. Are you able to respond to that? >> Yes, sir. Can you all hear me? >> Yes, sir. >> A drawing session would look like either typically an attorney from our firm would be there in person, Bob or me or someone else on our team. And then, we would have, we could also appear virtually by Zoom like we are now. Our GIS person would appear remotely. The GIS person is the drawer who draws the map. And they would essentially share their screen, which would be, it's called Edge is the name of the computer program. It's the drafting software. And from there, we would, in the meeting, make changes to the boundaries. So, typically, we may come with a illustrative plan, which in your case would probably be starting with the existing districts, but we can do something different if you wanted to. We would start with the map and then, as we would sit there and make changes. So, for example, you could say move the boundary of District 1 north to Main Street. Move the edge of District 2 over to 1st Street. And then, in real time, you can see how those changes affect the population. So, there will be a graph at the bottom. There'll be the map taking up the majority of the screen. And at the bottom, there will be a little chart that will have each district and the population total and ethnic breakdowns of each district. And in real time, that'll update as we move a territory from one district to the next. So, you can see how it affects the overall changes to the map. >> Thank you. So, the web page -- okay, back to you. Web page with information on informed submittal of the digital promotion. So, let's say we have about 100 people that have their own ideas. You know, we're going to come in. You know what? I'm just going to bring it down to about 25 people. That has their own ideas of what it would look like. They played around with this web page with information. You know, they kind of gone in there and thought what their idea may be the best. Are we going to narrow down, you know, before we come to the -- are these going to be part of the drawing session? Are we going to add, you know, their piece into that? I'm just thinking it would just probably prolong it. I don't know, with, you know, taking time to do this public piece. >> So, our intent would be -- oh, go ahead. I'm sorry. >> Our intent would be to not whittle down any of the public feedback and make sure council receives that in its entirety. It will also go to our consultants as well. So, they're aware of what the public is or is not recommending. Once the drawing session is complete and a draft is available, that might serve as a vehicle to receive more narrowly scoped comments from the public they can then comment on the draft after their drawing session. But we won't categorize or otherwise whittle it down in any way. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> All right, because I'm just looking at those dates. November the 16th, we're going to be going into the holidays, you know, so it doesn't look up here, so there's going to be very much time, you know, in between the drawing session and what you're talking about. So, I'll just leave that right there, and we'll find out what happens next. Thank you. >> Okay. Any other questions for staff? Great. So, Councilman Betz. >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, I had some concerns about some of the motions in the ordinance. The question I had, I guess, is the sort of number one, the geographic boundaries. I mean, that's maybe a desirable goal, but if we're generally one of our criteria was following precinct boundaries, then, you know, we don't necessarily want to put those into contention with each other and limit what our options are, especially if we're following sort of voting precinct boundaries. So, you know, I don't really see the need for that one, per se. I mean, I think it's more obvious than anything else, and while, you know, we might not want to make, you know, huge arbitrary alterations to the existing district maps, at the same token, if you're going to make alterations, if you're going to do the exercise and explore, I think you want to be careful saying that we're going to stick to the existing maps. I think at best, you say, well, maybe we explore starting from something like that, but I think number four feels like it's limiting the options of the rest of the whole exercise. And then I would say, you know, me, I'm sort of a data guy, and I really want to make sure that we're not spinning a yarn here. I really would like it if, you know, like on number six, if we said something like, you know, let's measure some of these values with, you know, some sort of accepted mathematical metrics for these properties. It seems that we want to be a little less hand wavy and a little more clear and direct why we're doing a thing and not be arbitrary and say to the public, look, this is exactly why. Here's the numbers. They line up the way they do. This is what we should go for. So, you know, I would encourage us to say drop one and four and go for adding something like, you know, more commonly accepted mathematical metrics into that language for this motion. But otherwise, I'm very much in support of this criteria, and I was heartened by the fact that it seemed like the consultant and I were of one mind in terms of how to proceed following rubrics, following criteria, sticking to that, and seeing where the numbers lie. So I was really grateful to see that my naive notions lined up with the experts. So I appreciate that. Thank you. >> Okay. So I'll make a motion. So we need to take them one at a time. Is that right, Mr. City Attorney? >> That's correct. >> Yeah. So G will be what I'm referring to. But I do need to confirm with the experts online before I make my motion to make sure I'm in line with their guidance. So my question is, did the -- I forget who spoke. But if they could speak, did they create this list one through nine of what we should be based on their expertise? But just kind of they -- can they speak to those criteria? >> Sure. I'll defer to Mr. Arnold one more time. >> Yes, counsel. The criteria are based on -- they are what the courts call traditional districting criteria. And they are based on Supreme Court case law in order -- they are essentially the criteria outlined by the courts that if they're followed, they should generally not lead to essentially violation of the Voting Rights Act. That's really what they're designed to protect against. So there's two things an entity needs to do when you redistrict. One is one person, one vote, which is putting the districts in balance. And that's under the 14th Amendment. The other is not discriminating against minority groups and ethnic minorities. And that is under the Voting Rights Act. So these criteria are designed to comply with both of those. >> Great. Then my motion is going to be to support this ordinance as drafted and adopting the guidance of the legal experts, and they're keeping us out of lawsuits and get something that's actionable and in line with the law. So that's my motion. Counselor Armitage? >> I second that motion. >> Discussion. Mayor Proctor Meltzer. >> Yes. So I move the amendment because we already have option A that conforms very much with items one and four, you know, already before us, that we strike one and four and add preference for less indentedness into the resolution. >> Okay. Is there a second? So I guess I'll skip down. Councilmember Davis, are you seconding that? Councilmember Buer, are you seconding that? >> I have a question to clarify. When you talk about indentedness, and this could be a question for staff or for our consultants who are on the phone. Can we use the word compactness to describe what you're trying to get at here? >> Mr. City Attorney, can you help me out? We have a motion, and so far there's not a second. So am I correct in my assessment that we can't have discussion before we have a second, or am I incorrect? >> Traditionally, you would wait until there was a second to have the debate. If there's clarity needed on what the motion or what the amendment is, there could be clarification questions that-- >> Thank you very much. Mayor Proctor, you heard the question. If you could speak to that answer. >> Yeah. Actually, compactness is addressed in item six, so I completely agree. But there's-- there are a number of different measures that are applied in redistricting and indentedness is a separate measure. >> So if you-- I'll just ask you to restate your motion. >> To strike items one and four and add a requirement or add a preference for decreasing indentedness. >> Great. Is there a second for that? Can you-- can you-- Council Member Bett? >> There's not an option, but I'll second it. There's no screen option, but I'll second it. >> Thank you. So we have a motion and a second for the motion to exclude one and four and add the indentedness provision or language. Discussion on that only, on the motion on the floor. Any discussion? Council Member Armitage? >> Yes, I have a question for the consultant, still on the line. And please let me know if this question puts you in a tough spot, then feel free to decline it. But I'm trying to figure out, you know, if not making those changes requested in the motion precludes us from using those criteria, you know, individually and collectively as we make our decision. I mean, my understanding and I might be wrong, it was that we can as a body or individually, you know, consider other criteria as long as they still meet this criteria, even if they're not included in our, you know, in writing, in this, in this document. I don't know if I made that question clear or if it's a question that you can even feel comfortable even answering. But that's the question that I need answered by somebody to figure out how I'm going to vote on this amendment, because I do, you know, agree that these are important criteria. I'm just a little wary about adding it if we don't need to. >> So, Council Members, the question, can you consider, if you pass this resolution as is, can you deviate from it and consider maps that do not comply with criteria? Is that the question? >> Not really, although I don't blame you for taking it that way. I guess I'm saying is it mutually, is it, are these two ideas mutually exclusive, you know, to kind of, I mean, because there are a lot of, there are a lot of, you know, balancing and counterbalancing criteria, you know, there are a number of these criteria are involved, you know, don't go too far up, don't go too far down, you know. And so, so much of it is a balance. I'm wondering if it's mutually exclusive to add, if just considering indentedness contradicts anything that we already have in there, I don't see it as really contradicting anything, just kind of adding to that sense of balance that we're trying to achieve. But I might be wrong. >> So I'm not aware of indentedness as a particular term of art, I guess. But I'll defer to the council member if he knows otherwise. So I'm not sure if indentedness changes anything, if it's different than compactness. There are mathematical ratios you can use. The Poplar Ratio is one to measure compactness. I will say that in a city like Denton, where particularly your northern boundary, for example, is it's not a, you're not a perfect circle, you're not a perfect square. And so measuring compactness can be difficult using those ratios just because of the way the city limits are. >> Okay. Any other questions? >> Thank you. >> And I'll just ask you a follow-up again, because I want to have a clear record. Is it your legal opinion that carving out these exceptions puts us at risk for a lawsuit? Or to be against the Supreme Court's previous rulings? >> If I could ask what, so if the motion is to exclude Criteria 1 and 4, is that correct? >> And use the term that you said has no term of art, which is important to note, indentedness. >> Yes, sir. So Criteria 1 is following easily identifiable geographic boundaries. And the idea behind that is so that voters know where their district is. So they know if they live on one side of the road or the other. The other part of that is to limit to some extent what was commonly referred to as gerrymandering, creating a weird shape in order to reach a particular result. That's the idea behind Criteria number 1. >> Okay, yeah, no, then I think my discussion is this. I mean, we can't create legal terms at the dais. We can't and should not ignore legal guidance. And so I'm not going to support this motion, because again, we said we're going to follow the experts. There's disagreement amongst some things that I've said earlier. But this has been made clear two times that the experts, the legal experts that would then have to defend this and to defend the taxpayer money if we get called into a lawsuit. There's already lawsuits at the state level. So there's no question we'll attract a lot of attention. And it's just important from a timing standpoint, if we get into a prolonged debate legally and other issues, this won't happen in time and it'll be rendered moot. So if we're going to hit our deadline, I'm going to defer to the legal experts and not feign as though I'm a legal expert in this subject matter or in any subject matter from this dais. I'm going to take your guidance. So that's going to guide my decision. Any other comments on the motion to amend? Councilmember Davis. >> Thank you, Mayor. Now, I think you've hit some of the high points, but the lawyer also said each of these, this is not something they created just for us. This is the stock list of criteria that you use when you go through this exercise. And section two starts with to the greatest extent possible. There's not one of these that's going to be 100% satisfied in any map that can be humanly created unless we were a perfect square with an exact perfect distribution of people. We didn't have any, you know, figgledy bits all around the top like he's talking about and strip zoning, excuse me, strip annexation outroads and pipelines that we've done. These are guidelines. And I think it's okay if we wanted to add additional things that are important to us. But I don't think it's okay to take things away that are based on existing court precedent. And if we are going to add things that are important to us, I think it's important that they have a commonly understood meaning that, you know what, if we want to add a guideline that we prefer that they not be indented, then if we have some common understanding of what that means as opposed to compactness, then I don't think there's any problem with expressing what we think is important as we look at these maps. But I think it is problematic to start taking things off. The other thing I'll point out is that these are both, I think, very good criteria just independently. Easily identifiable geographical boundaries, like he said, living on one side of the road or the other, one side of the river or the other, one part of town versus the other part of town. And then number four, basing it on existing districts. I think that's beyond just a, you know, good legal practice. I think it's a best practice of any redistricting. We've spent time on this day as lamenting the fact that we had been redistricted in a way that was drastically different than an existing district. That's an issue. We shouldn't do that as much as we can avoid it. People should stay in their district to the extent we possibly can unless we've got a really good reason to change it, and that's exactly what these criteria say. >> Council Member McGuire. >> Thank you. I'd just like to share from a UCLA paper that I'm looking at right now involving different parameters by which compactness can be measured. And there are generally two measures. There's isoperimetry, which is measured by the Polesby-Poper score, which we discussed last week. And there is convexity, also known as indentedness, which is measured by the REOC score. So I think it couldn't hurt to specify in item six that we want our measures of compactness to consider both isoperimetry and convexity, but both of those concepts are included in the concept of compactness. >> Does the attorney want to speak to that? >> Yes, sir. Given that, yeah, the term of art of indentedness, I can see it applying to those concepts. I do believe it is in compactness. And again, it's something that's difficult to measure in a city shaped as Denton. In other, you're not unique in that way, Houston has many different problems that come off to it just because of geography and annexation. So it is not an overriding factor, but if you want to add indentedness to it or, you know, make it clear that that is included in the definition of compactness, I don't see that necessarily being an issue. >> Okay, Councilmember Arntor, briefly, and then we're going to vote. >> Yeah, that was, Councilmember McGuire, you were much better, that was a kind of statement version of what my question was, was that this is still included in these guidelines. So I agree with Councilmember Davis. I don't feel comfortable at all taking anything away because, you know, these are the standard guidelines and they're good guidelines. I agree with them and I think that they already include and do not preclude, I think, all of the kinds of factors that people already talk about when they talk about, you know, being adequately represented or underrepresented or districts being too wonky or, you know, changed too radically. So anyway, I would be in favor of adding, you know, a note to that effect next to where it says compactness or I'd be okay with not including it, but I am not okay with taking away anything. So if this motion includes this taking away of, I think it was number one and maybe replacing number six, I'm forgetting now, but I don't want to take anything away. So if that's the case, then I cannot approve this motion. Okay. Thank you very much. So the motion before us is to remove number one and number four and add sick, the word indentiveness into the parameter. So that's before us if you vote on the screen. That fails four to three. The motion before us now is to approve the ordinance as in your backup. That's I made the motion. Councilmember Armitage, second. Let's vote on the screen. Mayor? Yes, sir. Sorry, point of order. I'm on the board to speak. Your point of order is correct. Discussion? Councilmember Davis? And I do this with some trepidation, given what we just did. I do have a motion to amend and is to add the following language to number eight under section two and to avoid age-based gerrymandering in violation of the 26th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Okay. Is there a second for that? If you could restate it again. Councilmember Davis? It's a motion to amend to add the following language to number eight and to avoid age-based gerrymandering in violation of the 26th Amendment of the United States Constitution. Mr. Attorney, do you have a comment on that? I'm not aware of any redistricting cases based on age or allegations of gerrymandering based on age. So I'm not sure how we would do that. Our census data tells us the voting age population, so people over the age of 18, we know that. And we can take that into account with complying with the Voting Rights Act. And I can check and see with our GIS people if the census data includes any more detailed age information than that. I'm not aware if we know, for example, how many people in District 2 are over the age of 65, if that may be what the councilmember's looking at. Councilmember Davis, do you want to speak to it? Well, I think, to be honest, that we have to-- the amendment would have to receive a second to go further down this-- I have plenty of things to say in favor of my amendment, but if there's not a second, then it'll hold off. Fair point. Is there a second? See none? OK. So motion dies for one second. And so we're back to the motion on the floor as is, as in our backup. Any other discussion? Seeing none, vote on the screen, please. That passes 7-0, takes us to item H. I'll take a motion. Councilmember Beck, no? Yes, a motion to approve is written. OK, is there a second? Councilmember McGuire? I second. OK, motion by Councilmember Beck, second by Councilmember McGuire. Discussion? Seeing none, let's vote on the screen. Passes 7-0. That concludes those three items. Dinner is here and set up, so let's grab that and come back at 5-20 to finish the rest of our items for individual consideration. So 5-20, we'll be back. Welcome back to this meeting of Denton City Council. It is 5-27. We are working through our individual items for consideration. Takes us to item B, which is ID 212238. Consider approval of a resolution of the city of Denton. Stating no objection to Roselon Senior Apartment's LTD 4% Housing Tax Credit application to the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs. Thank you, Mayor, Council, Danny Shaw, Community Services. I'll be presenting two presentations tonight for this developer. They'll be fairly similar, so I'll just go through a few slides in the second set. Let me go ahead and pull this up. Would you like me to call C or-- It's OK. OK, great. I'll just call them separately. OK, just as a quick reminder for the folks who may not be aware, there is a housing tax credit program that's administered by the state, the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs. We do offer two types of programs, a 4% non-competitive and a 9% competitive program. In the 9%, TDHA ranks the applications submitted by developers and their awarded points. And then they get additional points if they receive support from our community. And then for the 4% program, TDHA at least requires minimum criteria like a resolution of no objection, which is the request for this evening. As a quick reminder, Council approved a housing tax credit policy for the city through Resolution 756 on May 2018. So it's been approved for a while. And just as a quick reminder as well, this is not a part of the development agreement. This is only for the housing tax credit application for project funding. You'll see another presentation on the development later. So the location of this development, as I said earlier, there'll be two projects that we're looking at tonight. So they're both on this one property located at 2800 Rose Lawn Drive at the corner of Rose Lawn and Bernard. This is just a quick view of the multifamily map in the area. You've got multifamily development student housing within a two-mile radius on this map just showing you what's in proximity where the project will be located. The applicant is Rose Lawn Village LTD and the Rose Lawn Senior. The developer for these projects are NRP Group and the Denton Housing Authority. And you have some information on who will be the construction and then the property management. And then they will have supportive services provided on site by a nonprofit. This particular project is on five acres for the senior development. Its current zoning is MN. Multifamily is permitted. There are a couple of conditions for multifamily. The ERC listed here. They just have to meet design standards and ensure that they have a minimum of 400 square feet in order to construct multifamily on this zoning. This project will be exempt from property taxes. In the senior, you'll see 119 units and one three-story building on that five-acre parcel. This will be an income-restricted property, 100%. Through the unit breakdown, as is listed below, there'll be between 30% and 70% of AMI for the units, majority of those being 60% and 70%. But as you can see, this project does offer 30%, so the deeper affordability is available. And this project will be affordable for 30 years. So the options for the housing tax credit projects in front of council would be to recommend a resolution and no objection, which you have a draft of in your backup, to not recommend the resolution, or if you have additional questions or prefer to have certain criteria or questions followed up with for further deliberation, we can extend it to the next council meeting for consideration. With that, I will take questions, and the developer is here, right, Nick? Yep, so if you have questions for him as well. - Great, thank you. Any questions for staff? Councilmember McGuire? - I move approval of the resolution of no objection. - Councilmember Armitage? - I second that motion. - Okay, we have a motion by Councilmember McGuire, seconded by Councilmember Armitage discussion. Councilmember McGuire, you? - Yes, thank you. So I just sort of want to, you know, get on the record for anybody who might be listening at home. I had the opportunity to meet with the DINIA community group last night. It was not specifically regarding this project. It was regarding more broadly mobility concerns in the area. I did bring up this project and this vote that we're having today. And the community members who were present at that meeting seemed broadly supportive. The impression that I get of the neighbors in this area is that they are broadly supportive of affordable housing efforts. They want density. They want walkability, bikeability, wheelchair accessibility, transit access. And this is a project that really serves all of those goals. The sense that I get is that there are two sticking points. One is folks are kind of burned about the Eagle Creek four-star razor development, which is adjacent to this and the amount of tree loss that has been brought on by that. Obviously this presentation, this project that we're being presented with is following modern, you know, today's tree ordinance. And so it involves much more tree preservation than we see with the Eagle Creek development next door. And the second concern, which I think is a very pressing concern and something that if we're going to vote to approve this resolution of no objection, we need to commit ourselves to addressing the mobility concerns in this area. I know that the developers are going to come and talk to us probably about their plans to participate in expanding Roselon, but we need to make sure that our staff is coordinating with them to make sure that Roselon can handle the increase in traffic that's likely to come and that Highland Park Road and other roads in the area, but especially Highland Park Road, which is that gateway from this neighborhood to campus. And a lot of the folks in this neighborhood live and work on or work on campus or attend school on campus, on the UNT campus. And we need to commit to investing in the infrastructure to make this kind of dense, affordable, environmentally friendly project feasible. So that's my piece. Thank you. - Okay, any other discussion? Council Member Bet. - I just had a point of education for myself and I noticed that, and I'm jumping ahead a little bit, but the one bedrooms were 656 square feet for the village and 771 square feet for the one bedrooms for the senior. And I was just curious, what's the difference? - I'll let the developer come up and address that for you since they're developing the project. - Good evening, Council Member. My name is Nick Walsh. I'm with the developer, the NRP Group. The difference between the two, the one is the senior development. All of those units are 100% accessible. We actually make them a little bit larger, even beyond the requirements, just because it is intended specifically for seniors. That's really the main difference. - Okay, that's good. Thank you, I appreciate it. Thank you. - Okay, any other questions, comments for staff? Okay, see none, let's vote on the screen. Okay. That passes seven zero, takes us to item C, which is ID 212240. Consider approval of a resolution of the city of Denton, stating no objection to the Roselon Village, LTD 4% housing tax credit application to the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs. Okay, just quickly, I'll just show the unique slides to this part of the development. So this is the larger portion of the property here to the east and the south. And then, as you can see, it's 290-40 units. There'll be 11 residential buildings, three-story. It's on 20 acres. Again, this project is one project for property taxes will be exempt. And then the unit mix for this project, similar, some 30% affordability, and then the majority in the 60 and 70%. So same options, recommend a resolution, not recommend a resolution, postpone to a later date. - All right, questions for staff? Mayor Proctor Meltzer. - I move approval of the item. - Thank you, Council Member Beck. - I second. - Thank you, I have a motion by Council Member, Mayor Proctor Meltzer, second by Council Member Beck. Any discussion? I'll just say, I agree. I hope that as we move forward in this process, happy to support it. Obviously, they've done great work in our city. The really key will be if this project is selected and it moves forward, just to kind of have that conversation about Rose Lawn and how we wanna program that area. But I really do think they do great work, so happy to support it. So, okay, any other questions, comments for staff? Seeing none, let's vote on the screen. - Okay. - And that passes seven, zero. Thank you very much, Nanny. - Thank you. - Thank you. All right, takes us to item D, which is ID20, pardon me, ID212095. Consider adoption of ordinance for the city of Denton, authorizing the expenditure of funds for the payment of wholesale transmission charges in a total amount of 6,654,159 and 68 cents. - Good afternoon, mayors, city council members, Nick Vinson, assistant director of finance. Have a really brief presentation for you this afternoon to review wholesale transmission charges. Let me get it pulled up here. - This should be old hat for Tony. He could've come back and dip his toe in the water. - Yeah, that's why I've got him sitting in front row here for the questions, so he's ready. - Give him a tour of the old office. - That's it. So these charges are included in the recent budget that was adopted by both the PB and city council last month. Just wanna make sure council was aware of that. So what these are, these are transmission charges. We pay other entities for utilizing their transmission assets that are part of the system. Similarly, the city of Denton does receive revenue from these entities and additional ones for utilization of our assets. So just wanna make sure I tell council that. So in total, these charges total 6.7 million or 6.6. A little bit of history, just wanted to show you a couple tables. So the table to your left, staff does approve some internal charges under 50,000 that does not come forward to city council. You can see those listed for fiscal year 2021. So the fiscal year we just finished and those total about 30.9 million. And you can see those over 50,000 or 6.3 that we just reviewed. With that, I'll pull this down for questions. - Okay, questions for staff? I have one question, or do we track when the entities that we pay are going back for review? Obviously we're gonna go back for review, but from the transmission costs or do we track when they are being called for review? - So you're asking from an interim filing standpoint or a full rate filing standpoint. To the best of my knowledge, we do not track that. I'll look at Tony just to confirm that. He may wanna come up and address it too. - Okay. And if you wanna give an overview of the process and then that way and to give some background. - Sure, so Tony went to DME general manager, mayor of city council. Yes, absolutely, we do track those and are aware when other utilities are going to the commission, not just to file a new full rate case, but also when they're filing their interim rate cases as well, just to make sure that what they're filing is reasonable and that it makes sense. Obviously our interest is protecting our rate payers and making sure that our rate payers aren't paying more than what they should be paying. And so we certainly can intervene in cases if we do see something. And so part of the process is that for investor-owned utilities, they generally go back to the commission a couple of years, two or three years to do new rate filings. So their process is slightly different than co-ops and MOUs. For MOUs, you may recall stating that the last time that we did a full rate case was in 2005. And so we're actually working on a full rate case now and hope to have that filed by November 1st. We'll provide the council information of the outcome of that filing. But in between since 2005, as we've made investments in the transmission system, we've done what's called interim filing so that we can include those investments into our rate base and then start collecting a payment for the use of those assets and those investments as well. - And just to make sure I'm tracking right, that process is just to make, is to reconcile what we're charging versus what we're investing in the system, is that, am I wrong? - Yeah, yes, you're right. So the base was called the test year, the base year establishes your rate. And then that rate is based on the amount of investment that you've made. And so certainly we wanna make sure that after the test year, as we make new investments, that we continue to add that so that we can start collecting that. So that base continues to grow as we continue to make more investments now. Certainly then is in a situation where we're making quite a bit of investments and probably we'll continue to do that for the foreseeable future. But there are other utilities that aren't there, they may be landlocked. And so their rate base may actually be coming down. - Okay, excellent. Thank you very much. Okay, any other questions for staff or I'll take a motion? Council Member Beck? - Motion approval is written. - Thank you. Is there a second? Council Member Davis? - I'll second. - Thank you. Motion by Council Member Beck, second by Council Member Davis. Any discussion? See none, let's vote on the screen. Great, that passes seven zero, takes us to item E, which is ID 212296, consider approval of a resolution nominating a member to the Public Makers Council of the American Public Power Association to represent the City of Denton, the Texas Home Rule Municipal Corporation and declaring an effective date. - So Mayor of City Council, I appreciate you giving me the time today. Just have a quick couple of slides on this item. First of all, I just wanna make sure that council understands that this is purely a voluntary advisory council of APPA. And there could be multiple nominees. It can't just be, it doesn't have to just be one. Ultimately, APPA and their board and their staff will make a decision as to who actually ultimately is appointed to this council. So the City of Denton or DME is a member of the American Public Power Association. They really represent the interest of public power at the federal level on various electric policy issues, technology trends, training operations. And so certainly they're very involved at the federal level, much like TPPA, the Texas Public Power Association here in the state of Texas. And so we wanted to make sure that the council was aware that this Policymakers Council existed. As you know, certainly after winter storm Uri, the council has been very interested in staff and certainly you being involved in the various issues related to electricity because of winter storm Uri. And so this is just our attempt to kind of make sure that the council has this opportunity. If the council decides not to have a nominee, certainly that's at your discretion. But the Policymakers Council is an advisory council to APPA, it's comprised of 45 members. Currently there's two vacancies in our region. As I understand from the staff of APPA, they haven't had any nominees and hadn't anticipated any nominees until I gave them a call and talked to them about it. So regular members serve a three-year term and in regional members or excuse me, our at-large members serve a one-year term. And so if you're not appointed to be the three-year representative for our region, you can actually be a one-year representative for some other region. Again, that's something that APPA will kind of work out as I mentioned, there's two vacancies currently for the region in which Texas is associated. And just to respond to a question that we received, the majority of the individuals that are on this council are mayors and council members, or in some cases may be members of a governing body. In some states and certainly even in the state of Texas, some public utilities do not report to the city council, they may report to a separate governing body. But obviously here in Denver, we report to the city council. So today we're asking the council if there's any nominees, certainly staff received one interest and that was for Mayor Hussbett. He was interested in serving on this and be nominated and potentially serving on this council. So with that, I'll certainly be happy to answer any questions that you may have. - Questions for staff. Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer. - Yes, I move approval of the resolution with Mayor Hussbett and council member Bec in each of the appropriate blanks. - Okay, is there a second? Council member McGuire. - I second. - Okay, I have a motion and a second discussion. Seeing none, let's vote on the screen. - Great, the pass of seven zero takes us to our last item for this evening, which is ID 212297, consider adoption of the ordinance, of an ordinance of the city of Denton, authorizing the city manager to execute a contract of sale with Mark Hicks Investment LLC to sell 0.449 acre track located at 414 West Parkway Street. - Good evening, mayor and council. Deanna Cody, deputy director of development services, real estate. I am looking for my presentation now. Just one moment. - Yeah, I just came out of here, I don't see anything. - I did. - Okay. - Maybe I should. - Mm-hmm. - Second? - Do you have another flash drive? - No. I didn't. - You don't have it. - That's it. - Fine. - Do you have it? - Yeah. - Yeah, I mean, it may not be necessary. - Yeah, we have it. We can pull it up. - I'm gonna say I can resend it to him pretty quickly. - No, you don't have it, general. - I do. Well, unfortunately you don't get to see the nice pretty drawings. Good evening again, mayor and council and city manager, Deanna Cody, deputy director, real estate. Tonight, we're here to talk about the offer that the city has received for the purchase of property owned by the city and the chamber at 414 West Parkway and 413 Congress. So just to give you a little bit of background, as was shown in your packet, on March 23rd, council authorized the city manager to enter into the master agreement with the Denton chamber and the listing agreement with Access Realty for the listing and joint sale of city property, as mentioned. And we do have representatives from Access here and from the chamber as well. On September 3rd, we received a purchase offer from Mark Hicks Investment LLC. And on the 28th of September, council authorized the renewal of the listing agreement that would allow time to move forward with continuing to both market the property and or process any offers that had been received. On October 10th, the prospective buyer executed the contract and that is what is leading us here today. As you'll see on the third slide, the current offer details, the offer is for $725,000 for both properties. It allows for a 45 day feasibility period with the possible or the potential to extend that period for an additional 30 days if the buyer should need it to continue conducting any of his assessments. And then following the expiration of the feasibility review within 15 days, the closing would be scheduled. Those are the terms of the contract. It also includes the city retaining a drainage easement on the property. The earnest money that the buyer would put in escrow with the title company is $5,000 and an additional $5,000 if they determine that they need to extend the feasibility period. So with seven months being exposed on the market, there were approximately 13 inquiries about the property, six tours and two offers. The broker did receive feedback on the property, mostly relating to the property being located in the floodway and restrictions to renovations. But with the offer that's been received, the broker actually recommends accepting the offer. The chamber agrees with accepting the offer and staff agrees also with the recommendation. So next steps, if you approve the city manager or authorize the city manager to enter into the contract tonight, we will submit the contract to the title company. The buyer will deposit his earnest money. They'll start conducting their due diligence as mentioned in the feasibility period and they'll conduct site inspections. They'll do all of their due diligence that they need to make sure that they can use the property as they intend to. So with that, are there any questions? - Great, questions for staff? Council Member Armiter. - Yeah, what can you tell us about the use that Mark's Hicks investment has in mind? - Yes, so based on information provided by the broker, the intended use is to be continued office space. - Okay, any other questions? I'll take a motion. Council Member Beck. - In the interest of moving this forward, I motion approval of the item. - Thank you, Council Member Burke. - I second. - Okay, we have a motion by Council Member Beck, second by Council Member Bird. Any discussion? I'll just say thank you to all involved in pulling this together in a tough climate. I'll say I'm really excited about the buyer. I'm biased, but he's a fellow Bronco, right? And a couple of them there, Jason as well, are both Benton High Broncos. And so really good guys, really great company. I think it's a really good fit for, and branding opportunity and good way to have a local kind of person hopefully in that business and kind of spotlighting the opportunities here. So thank you very much for pulling that together and sourcing a great buyer. So with that, any other discussion? Let's vote on the board. That passes six to one. And that concludes our agenda this evening, takes us to concluding items. Okay, Ms. City Manager. - This past weekend, I had the opportunity to attend, I think the mayor did too, the visitation for Detective Mooneyham. And then I went to the funeral on Saturday. And it was a very powerful and certainly emotional ceremony, but I wanted to say how proud I am of our police department and how well they handled this, not only through the visitation, but and the professionalism of our officers, but also at the funeral. And Chief Dixon spoke at the funeral, which was just an amazing 10 minutes of recognizing this young 43 year old detective who lost his life to COVID, but leaves behind a set of twins, a boy and a girl that are 13 years of age. And so his wife, Karen, and so the city sent a wonderful spray that said City of Denton, they know how much you all care. And I let the wife know that not just the police department is here for them, but the city is here for them. So I just wanted to let you know, it was a very emotional ceremony, but our fine police officers did such an amazing job. I was so proud of them and the staff from the police department. So I wanted to say that. And then I also wanted to say our staff, and I think Council Member McGuire mentioned it, there were 10 or 15 staff members on the call yesterday for the Highland Park Road. And they answered a lot of questions. They gave sort of a current reality of all the developments going on. But I want you to know that this is a group of staff who care very much about public and public comments. And so they'll be coming back 'cause they're gonna add an additional traffic study after they see how the traffic calming measures are working in about three months. They're gonna come back to council here soon, giving council some options on whether or not you leave this road as listed as a connector. And if you do, what does that mean with all the infrastructure that needs to go in? And they'll also come back with any other interim solutions to try to relieve the pressure. They are really, they care, they wanna make sure that things are the right, that we do it right. But they also wanna give you the opportunity to see what does that mean? What are the costs associated with that? And how do we get that money loaded up? Because it is gonna be significant. I just wanted to let you know that they, I've asked them to have that ready and get it prepared so they can bring it back to you. Thank you. - Okay, thank you. Council member Davis. - Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to congratulate the Pilot Knob Rotary Club on chartering a new club. They're no longer going to be a satellite of the Crosstimbers Club. And they'll have a little celebration for that on Friday evening that I intend to attend. - Thank you. Council member Byrd. I wanted to talk directly to the folks over in Southeast Denton right now, just all of Southeast Denton, that November the 11th, there's a date, has been set for us to come back to the community about the upgrades to the roads. So I'm very excited about that. We can get that conversation going again. And also on that same evening that we're gonna be talking about the roads, we're also gonna be talking about sign toppers. So that is something I'm very excited about as well. And I would encourage all the folks out there that live in the Southeastern part of the city to come and join us. I'm sure that it's gonna be at the Martin Luther King Center for that meeting. So that's November the 11th. It's starting at 6 p.m. Thank you. - Council member Beck. - Mr. Mayor. - So I'll play right off that the Idiots Hill, Nottingham Woods area wants to really express appreciation to Capital Projects and Traffic Safety for getting that stop sign at Windsor and Nottingham. By far the majority of the neighborhood really appreciates that. There's a educational curve, but I'm getting a lot of positive feedback on that. And the other thing I wanted to announce or remind folks of is this coming Thursday from six to eight, there's the night at the Courthouse Museum that's part of our county activities for the fall. And you can come and participate. And if you want to, you can come hassle the son of Councilor Beck who will be helping man one of the booths because Commissioner Beck couldn't attend this museum event. That would be my wife in the Denton County Historical Commission. So I encourage everyone to go and give my son a hard time and check out the museum. - Excellent, anyone else? Okay, yes. So we have, I want to thank everyone that helped and participated with the tree giveaway. That was really great. I think there was like round number 700 trees or so given away in a few hours. So really important for our community and for those individuals. And so thank you for all the volunteers, et cetera. Then two things on the MLK. So it is, they have a Halloween event on Saturday 30th. I do believe that's 10 a.m., but check the Parks and Rec Facebook page to make sure that's right. And then also the, I don't know if it's supervisor is the right word for the MLK Center had a house fire, unfortunately. So there's a lot of need there. So that's also, you can find it on Facebook. Her name's Shalana. She'll probably get mad at me for mentioning to her, but mentioning her, but I really do want to support her in any way I can. She does a lot for the neighborhood and for the center. So her and her sons need some help. And so the community stepped up, city has stepped up in a big way. So I appreciate that already. But if you're in a position to support them, please reach out to the MLK Center and figure out where the gaps are and plug in where you're able. So with that, it is six o'clock and we will adjourn tonight's meeting. Thank you.