Nov 09, 2021 City Council on 2021-11-09 2:00 PM

Thank you. Good afternoon and welcome to this meeting, the didn't City Council is 2 PM. It is November the 9th and we do have a call. I'm sorry. Call the meeting the order. The first thing on the agenda is do we have any citizens comments? Yes, sir, and so that takes us to questions for staff on the consent agenda, questions for staff, Councilor Armitage. Yes, a question about item F. I was just wondering if just someone could explain. Miss 6 million dollars, I assume it's on top of what has already been budgeted. Just kind of just a little context for that. It is now let chief come down if he wants to, but this is literally taking money from one contingency and putting it in another. It is not additional money. It is within the 60.9 million. So it's not additional money. It's within the range of what is already there improved. Am I right, chief? That is correct. Frank Dixon, Chief of Police and Councilor Armitage. It is owner's contingency money, so it's not above what was already budgeted in the bond. It's within that. Okay, great. Okay, so it's in that larger bond budget, just kind of moving around. Moving around, correct. And that total, was that for fire and I know that there had been some changes. Did that end up being for fire and police combined or it had been split, right? No, it's for the three facilities that we had, the south substation, the renovations to the main station, and then the firing range. Okay. Okay, great. Thank you so much for answering that question. So that is clearly a totally legitimate use of funds, but I'm just going to be consistent in my opinion on the budget for the indoor shooting range. And so I'm going to request that that be removed. So I vote no, but just to be clear, that's a total legitimate use of this bond funding as far as I'm concerned. Okay. Any other questions? Seeing none. Okay, so staff will just pull, after no presentation, we'll just vote separately on that. That takes us to our first work session item. Thank y'all. That's ID 212425, receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction on the developments of the draft of a comprehensive solid waste management strategy. Well, good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, members of council, Brian Burner, solid waste director with the city of Denton. I do appreciate the opportunity to come before you today to talk a little bit about our status on our comprehensive solid waste management strategy. With me today, I've got several members of our leadership team, as well as our consultants Scott Pasternak with Burns and McDonald. What we hope to do today is provide a status update and receive comment direction on the development of the comprehensive solid waste management strategy. This has been a project that's been ongoing for about a year now. I know several of you were not on the council when we first started this process, but in a nutshell, as envisioned, this strategy is designed to be a comprehensive forward-looking future document that really will help the city of Denton in making sustainable decisions regarding its solid waste program. It's agnostic to programs at this point. We're not looking at projects or products, but we're really looking at process, trying to really document what we're doing here and the best ways to take it. In short, the document's about leading. It's not about following. It's about doing what's right for the city of Denton. We don't want to operate inside a box, nor do we want to be, or we don't want to operate inside a box or outside a box that other organizations have defined. What we want to do is to create a box that will support the maximum diversion of our waste stream while minimizing costs and environmental impacts. As part of this process, we're looking to look where few have looked before, believing what no one else has, and in result, we'll make our programs as sustainable as possible. Over this past year, we've been working to evaluate our waste characteristics, review existing programs, both nationally and locally, evaluating state and federal laws to identify strategic points of synergy. In today's discussion, we're going to be discussing the six strategies we want to focus our efforts on, as well as the metrics to help us define what those program successes are. What we'll be doing this afternoon, or what we'd like to do this afternoon, is run through our presentation so you have an opportunity to see how all the projects and the strategies work together, and then once we're done, go back for discussion, opinion, questions, things of that nature. We did present this to the Public Utilities Board yesterday, and we had a few clarification questions, but we had enthusiastic support of the document that we had brought forward, so I hope that we'll have similar results today, but again, we want to be here to answer the questions we have from you. So with that, I would like to introduce Scott Pasternak with Burns & McNaughton. I will pull up the presentation and we will go from there. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor, Councilmembers. Thank you for having us here today to talk about the collaborative efforts with the City of Denton to develop this comprehensive solid waste management strategy. During the presentation, I'd like to first start off to give you an overview of what we're doing as far as the entire project, just very briefly, and then to share with you some of the efforts that have been undertaken with regard to stakeholder engagement services. And as Brian just mentioned, we'd like to spend the bulk of the time for the presentation to talk about the six draft strategies that we're currently collaborating with the City to develop. We do want to emphasize that those strategy efforts are very much in the developmental and draft stages, so what that really means is that we've put a lot of thought and are making significant progress in fleshing those out, but it's really, from our perspective, very good timing to have the opportunity to talk with the utility board yesterday as well as council today to answer any questions that you may have to hopefully make sure that we're on the right path. And if we need to make any adjustments based on input from you all today, that's within the timing of how we are looking at things. So this slide does give some perspective on the overall planning process. I won't go through each of these boxes in a great level of detail, but just from a high level perspective, going from left to right, we started the project with an evaluation of the existing system in terms of all the various key programs that are in place in the city. Brian also did mention the waste characterization work that we did last year, which was actually to physically sort through trash and recycling from businesses, single family and multifamily residents here in the city of Denton. And then from there, we've moved into the phase that we're working on or close to wrapping up now in terms of the development of the various strategies and associated recommendations. So that'll be, again, the key part of the presentation this morning. And then we are just now starting the efforts to develop the solid waste management strategy. And then across the bottom of the slide, you'll see that throughout the course of the project, we have had engagement with not only city itself, but also city stakeholders. And so what I'd like to do now is to provide an overview of what we've done from a stakeholder engagement process. So we started that off with a city-wide survey of businesses and residents and received a very robust response rate to that survey. Close to 900 entities did respond to the survey, which we were very thrilled to see and really appreciated the efforts by city staff to get the word out about that survey, especially in the midst of COVID. And then from there, we held a series of three visioning workshops, or we called those think tanks. Originally, we were hoping to have those in person, but again, due to COVID, those were transitioned to a virtual format and those proceeded very, very effectively. And the whole purpose of those workshops was really to get an understanding of where does the city see itself now from a solid waste management perspective and what is the preferred future of where the participants from that think tank would like to see themselves or the city in the future. And I'll share a little bit of the insight on that in just a moment. But if you want to see any of the specific results of that survey, as well as the actual think tank process, it's all available in the future summit report. And at the bottom of this slide is the website where you can access that information. What you all may find particularly interesting is that you can slice and dice that data on a real time basis, based on many of the different factors that were included as a part of that survey effort. So some of the key findings from the stakeholder engagement outcomes, I want to talk about, again, in terms of what residents and businesses in the city of Denton were looking to see in terms of that future vision, both with respect to the trajectory in terms of what's the direction in which they would like to see the city headed, as well as the velocity or the speed for which they would like for that to occur. So what we're seeing from a trajectory is that there is a strong preference for what the group described as a vision to change the future now. Again, as a part of that visioning process, we asked them to think about different scenarios of the future. And one of those really focused on being very progressive in terms of embracing technology, as well as policies that are focused on not only recycling, but also reuse and reduction efforts. And that was the one that really resonated most effectively with the members of the think tank. And then they also said in terms of velocity, in terms of when they would want to see change, there was a strong support for near term actions. And then on the right hand side of this slide, it communicates the top three solid waste management trends. We use the term trends here just simply to communicate the ideas that came out of this process so that we could then better understand those and apply them in the evaluation process as we then thought about various strategies and recommendations. So some of those key trends that were identified were the importance of recycling education, a strong recognition that there's significant population growth, not only directly here in the city of Denton, but the entire surrounding region and the impacts that that could have on in terms of increased waste for landfills as well as opportunities to increase diversion of not only recycling, but also organic or other brush and use. Brush and yard waste and food waste type materials, and then associated with that the recognition that even though the city has recently achieved an important milestone in terms of increasing capacity at the landfill, it is still going to be a limited resource in the future. So with that, we further collaborated with with Brian and his team to develop this set of six strategies that will then form, you know, significant part of the comprehensive solid waste management strategy. So what I'd like to do now is to walk through each of these six strategies. And then if it's okay with with the mayor and council to answer any questions that you may have after we walk through all six of them just because some of them are going to be kind of intertwined with with each other. So questions you may have initially, hopefully we will answer during the course of the presentation. So it's just six more slides. So so one slide per strategy and each one of them are formatted in the same way as far as identifying what the strategy is at at the top of the slide and a little bit of additional information. And then what we have included on these slides as shown by the green numbered rows are the specific recommendations for each strategy. And then another really important aspect, and this was actually brought up yesterday during the utility board meeting is that, you know, if you want to measure progress, if you want to figure out what your progress is going to be, it has to be measured. And so the way to achieve that is to identify what are the key performance indicators for each of these six different strategies. So we have listed those out at the bottom of the slide. And if you look at these, you'll see that there is, again, some overlap from one strategy to the next. As far as discussing the specific key performance indicators, be happy to answer any questions you may have about those. But I'm going to focus on the specific strategies and associated recommendations. So this first strategy is to enhance education, outreach, and compliance. And this one is really so critical because so many of the products that we have to manage in the waste stream are changing from a day in day out type perspective as far as packaging and other things just getting more complex. And so the city is working very proactively to reduce the amount of the call it the bad stuff or contamination that ends up in our in the city's recycling carts that should be going directly to to the landfill, or vice versa as far as sometimes recyclables that they go to the landfill that should be recycled. And so these are recommendations that are focused on addressing these these types of operational issues as well as to increase sustainability. And so the first part of this recommendation is to more effectively track and report materials in terms of, again, what's being done in terms of recyclables, making sure that they are going to the right right places. And that involves a lot of collaboration with the existing recycling facility to better understand what is happening. So that in recommendation number two, that the city can continue its data driven content and audience targeting to reach out to customers to help them better understand how they can participate in the right way within the various programs. And this is not only for single family residents, but also multifamily and commercial customers because they are a very important part of the recycling and diversion system here in the city of Denton. And then under number three is is to look to incorporate various types of incentives into a compliance program. The whole idea for this is the city very much wants to lead with education and outreach and to give people significant opportunities to comply with how the program needs to work. But also to have a set of tools in the toolbox to then work with customers who are not able to comply with with those requirements. So again, we're still in the process of working through what the details of those will be. Technology is also going to be an important part of this. The city has made an investment in software technology that will help identify actual habits by residents and other customers of the city. So that again, information can be specifically targeted for those customers. As I mentioned a few minutes ago, our team did sort through a lot of garbage and recycling generated here from the city. And the number one biggest category was organics and food scraps are a very significant part of that. And so the next strategy that we want to talk about is what the city is looking to do to implement innovative organics management approaches. And this also recognizes that the commercial part of the waste stream is very significant. And what we have done there and have actually developed some Excel-based modeling to understand what are the differences in terms of quantities and where can you essentially kind of get your best bang for your buck in terms of various types of programs that could be implemented. And so the number one initiative that we are recommending, and the city is already moving ahead with this in the form of a pilot, is to really place a significant emphasis on collecting food scraps from commercial businesses here in the city. And to have that material composted and/or co-digested at the Pecan Creek wastewater treatment plant. And from an emerging technology perspective, this is really pretty innovative from a solid waste management perspective. Because we're not actually aware of very many entities that are doing this yet in Texas as far as dealing with the commercial waste stream and looking to generate energy from the recovery of those food scraps via wastewater treatment plants. And then the second element of this is to optimize what is already in place in terms of the residential recycling program. So I use that term capture rate on the prior slide as far as the key performance indicator. So that can apply in this case to the organics program to make sure that when the city's sending out all of its trucks on a week in, week out basis, to make sure that all the material that they can place in those trucks, in this case yard trimmings as well as brush type materials, does get diverted so that it can be composted. We also are evaluating opportunities to incorporate food into that program where the city's already doing that to some extent, but quite frankly the emphasis there is with respect to food is on the commercial side. Again, because that return on investment can be so much higher by focusing on the commercial side of things. And as I mentioned a few minutes ago, the city has achieved and I think this is a very important milestone as far as increased capacity at the Denton landfill. And so, but I think it's really important to make sure that the city does efficiently use that that landfill capacity, because that's going to be impacted not only by the growth here in the city, but also from from a regional perspective, not only in terms of the growth of surrounding communities but other landfills in the area, reaching capacity in the near future. And so, we think it is really important and there's a number of benefits for the city to bring in third party tonnage from outside customers, but also to think about this in a very innovative way. And so, what we have strategized with city staff is when these disposal contracts come due, is to actually develop a rate structure so that customers are incentivized to divert more materials. And so, the whole idea here is that you just don't get a better rate by bringing more material to the landfill, but you could potentially get more cost effective rates by being more comprehensive in your approach to recycle and or compost more material so that you really partner with the city of Denton with that vision for extending the life of the landfill while also meeting the long term needs. Number two also recognizes that the city does generate a meaningful amount of revenue from these disposal contracts and in our understanding is that relatively soon the city will be able to retire some some key debt associated with some of that revenue and so the recommendation here is to continue to utilize that that revenue to stabilize residential rates as well as to fund diversion programs and this is also a very dynamic industry as far as what's happening from a landfill perspective. So, the third recommendation is to conduct routine market studies to track what's happening as far as pricing and then set rates accordingly. This, this next one focuses on planning for future growth and infrastructure. We've taken a pretty deep look at what is happening. We're going to occur in the future over in the hunter coal area and that's going to require some some very important infrastructure planning. So the first recommendation focuses on the idea of recognizing that there may be a need for a transfer station over in that part of the city in the future, essentially a transfer station is is a facility where individual collection trucks would go to to empty out their material to then be translated on to bigger semi trucks to then take the material either to the landfill composting facility, or a recycling processing facility. But we are also saying, don't don't actually spend the money or build this until you meet minimum thresholds to again make sure that you realize the return on investment from that type of facility. We're also seeing and this is not only in the city of Denton but cities, really all across across the state of Texas and that is for more compact development, you know which which can definitely be a good use of space but also can be much more challenging. And then also recognizing that this growth is going to impact not only single family households, but also the multifamily and commercial sector. And then also recognizing that there need to be a number of programs in place, looking to build programs that are in place for for again both the multifamily and the commercial sectors in terms of diversion. So Denton was has been a leader with with its recycling processing program by developing a public private partnership by putting a recycling facility in place that is out there at the same facility where the landfill is located. And we think that going forward there's going to be opportunities to increase recycling quantities as well as processing efficiency. And we have had opportunities to talk not only with city staff but the company that operates that facility to understand what are the types of materials that are that are going into into the, it's called a material recovery facility or Murph that should not be going in there and working with the city to make sure that key information is communicated as far as how those different types of materials should be recycled instead. One example would be clothing or textiles for some reason a lot of people will think that they can be recycled but you know there's of course a number of other much better outlets for for the use of those materials such as goodwill stores and or recycling of that. So just understanding what are those key material types and developing programs accordingly. So there is a potential where the company Pratt may request to negotiate that recycling processing agreement in 2022 they have that opportunity. Every five years of the contract so we're collaborating with the city. Should that request be made. And then the third recommendation is with that contract expiring in in about five years from now is to really be thinking ahead in terms of what could the city do in terms of its next recycling processing agreement and recognizing that the existing facility is a good baseline of a facility but with as much growth as occurring there may be a need to look at expanding that and to explore opportunities with either the existing recycling company or to look at future opportunities for public private partnerships down the road. And then this this next strategy is is focused on supporting new markets and and even more importantly to leverage a number of different partnerships. There are so many other organizations both within the city as well as other entities in the community that are either directly or tangentially involved in in solid waste management. So that further enhance collaboration with these groups can increase diversion, as well as reuse of materials. And so we have identified opportunities for continued coordination with a number of city departments that would focus on ideas such as sustainable procurement, incorporating more green building requirements and into city buildings and then from a public space recycling perspective, enhancing opportunities so that wherever you may go in the in the community, you can have some more opportunities to recycle as you may have either at work or in your home. And then there are further opportunities to continue to leverage partnerships with organizations like the school district and other local nonprofits. And I think this is really a good opportunity timing wise for that, with as we all know so many of the schools have kind of had to kind of revamp their approach to so many things but as the schools are really ramping up, you know it's a good time to collaborate with them as far as what can be done from a recycling and diversion perspective. And then the third recommendation is to look to contract directly with other local governments to to expand the impact and revenue of various materials management programs like the home chemical collection. The city of Denton operates the only facility of its kind throughout Denton County. And it's in it's a real challenge for other communities to figure out how to manage that material. So the city of Denton can can help those communities can also have those entities pay for their fair share of the costs that can be a win win situation and in this recommendation also can apply to what we talked about earlier in terms of collaborating with communities from a landfill usage and capacity perspective so that they just don't see the city of Denton as as the landfill but also from a more comprehensive perspective in terms of management of the household chemicals and other recycling and composting opportunities. So with that, we would be happy to answer any questions that you may have for us. Thank you. Okay, customer. So on slide seven. If you could say a little more about the commercial organics composting plan for the pecan Creek waterways treatment plan. I understand from what you've described that it will involve commercial food waste. And, but what, and that's great because you know the people have called for been calling for quite some time for commercial food waste diversion programs composting program so that's wonderful to hear. So, my, my concern the question is, what is going to happen to that that food waste, when it gets composted what's the plan for it is this about. Is it going to be incorporated into biosolids, or is there a plan that doesn't involve biosolids. Questions first that the co digester pilot that we're proposing here was actually approved by Council we submitted a grant to the North Central Texas Council of Governments who actually funded a six month pilot will be going into the valley area. We've got about 50 bars pubs restaurants that will be collecting food waste from running it through a macerator which is basically an industrial grade food process or garbage disposal, getting it size right putting it into the digester and allowing the bugs that are there at the wastewater treatment plant to, you know, eat it down. And then we form methane which another project that we're working on is to capture all the method landfill gas, as well as the gas has come off top the digester have a company come in. Treat that the pipeline great quality, we get paid for significantly amounts for putting into the pipeline. So we get a revenue benefit there but as you did state correctly on the back end, the solids would come out as biosolids. We would incorporate it into the downloader processing piece. And then it would be turned into compost to be sold through the normal channels that we have existing infrastructure, zero increase in cost for us to manage existing right now so from a cost effective standpoint that's part of what this pilot is is designed to do. Define how much additional material, you know we might be encountering buying by putting it into the digester can it handle it. And really use that data to compare with traditional composting and see where our best step forward might be. But at the end of the day yes it does go into our existing beneficial reuse program. And we absorb the organics that we're currently getting through our yard waste program that's that's coming off across the scale through the normal program so. And thank you for answering that and again, love and you know strongly support the collection of commercial food waste. But you know continue to be I continue to be wary about the biosolids and was wondering if the department is following the Sierra clubs recent joining the call for stopping biosolids and in light of, you know, their EPA studies that have shown that I mean you've probably read those studies in the Sierra club statement on it that that the toxins that the EPA looks for are not enough that you know charges that they don't get the EPA doesn't have the ability to regulate all the many the many toxins in that that come come out of biosolids and concerns about biosolids being sold specifically for residential and food use. Composting just wondering if there's you know given this again Sierra clubs adding their voice to this. If there's any thought to the future of this questions about the future of biosolids. Again, I think that that's a consideration that we will will continue to look at throughout the road I think we've made a decision up to this point based on the data we have but we'll be glad to incorporate the Sierra clubs opinion in this evaluation as we move forward and if it's the right decision to go down that path and then we'll keep working that way but if not, and we need to make a veer into another type of program that's what the strategy allows us to do again it's another point of data that allows us to make the right decisions for the city of Denton. You know economically socially as well as physically. Well, thank you. Thanks for taking that into account, you know, and another other related kind of issue to take into account is that in the meantime, considering labeling kind of dino dirt not for home food garden use is another another possibility. Since since that's the main issue you know around which there's questions so in. Let's see, my, my question about on other question on slide 7.2 optimize residential recycling program and incentivize waste reduction. That's awesome. I'm just wondering if you could speak to apartment and commercial recycling how that fits into it. Yeah, I think we're dealing with two different things you know slide seven is specifically about organics management. And again, this is not just picking up in a bucket and taking it somewhere, and you forget about it. This starts as part of the strategy apart it, and this is where you get those different layers on the strategy. This actually goes back to strategy one on education. And again I told this this joke a year ago and I apologize for having to hear it again but the guy walks into doctors office and says doctor doctor it hurts when I do this doctor says, don't do that. That's the first step in this whole residential organics management program. It talks about managing you know food purchasing. The system always said clean your plate so you know, utilizing that material, the way it was supposed to be utilized minimizing the waste development up front, but at the end of the day. What are your options you know back home composting backyard composting, and then at some point in time, creating an opportunity for the residential, and we currently have a bit of home of centralized composting available for that pre consumer right now, going to your brown bins that can go into your craft bags, as long as it's not cooked doesn't have fat oil and grease in it. We can take it, we can utilize that is that post consumer cook material that we can't take so again, you know, just a very very small fraction of what the current waste characteristic is currently is not in our composting program. So again, you know, identifying mechanisms that will allow that but if we can work on reducing them out of that way so we're doing and again we don't have to invest the dollars in the community to manage that so education outreach. And then as we move forward, looking additionally at how we we manage that residential piece. Okay, great, great. So that means so in other words, the. The residential recycling program means specifically composting is composting again for me a, a, a going to sort of the blue bin container stuff. Yeah, again, that that's going to be another key piece you know, we've been giving the council reports about how high the contamination was at budget time and how we significantly reduce that volume. We've recently completed an audit of our own just apartment only and found again, significant amounts of contamination there so we're currently working on those reports because we need to fix the problem before we implement it city wide. And that's what we're trying to do with a lot of this data that we're able to get now is trying to identify those mechanisms and means and once we from a strategy standpoint, once we understand what's happening in the apartments, and then really where we can put it in place because some of these older apartments. We're doing good just to find place to put a garbage can much less taking up additional parking spots and trying to get a truck that we've never meant to have a truck. So that's part of the strategy to figure out how we incorporate a lot of this in areas that were never designed to support the infrastructure that needs to happen. So again, it's not just putting a bin out there and having somebody throw it in there. There's there's a much deeper thought that has been that's what the strategies helping us drive. Thank you. Excellent, you know, and I've seen, by the way, different kinds of some different apartment recycling bins popping up around town, and it seemed designed to reduce contamination. And I'm excited. It makes me excited to see that and eager to hear you know the data of how that's working and very grateful for the, the collection of that data and the follow up. My next questions are about slide eight, and these external contracts for landfill and those who are new on Council I can't remember if the newest Council, this issue has come before our new council members, yet, but, but, but this is an issue much discussed by Councils about other other cities and entities, paying to dispose their waste in our landfill significant percentage of our landfill as you know, it comes from other other entities trash. So diversion. So I truly appreciate the emphasis on on diversion. You know we're not helping anybody we're not helping ourselves or these other cities to just encourage more and more, you know, piling up of trash. What I'm wondering is, you know, what consideration is being given to eliminating those contracts when they not prematurely but when they come up just, in other words, not, not renewing them. You know, I would love to see more of a discussion I don't, as I recall, I don't think that this. It has come before our new council members, yet, as to, you know, should we even be continuing to do this. And so, so anyway, I was just wondering if you could kind of speak to was that considered, and to what extent that that will be considered moving forward that is being considered as part of this strategy because you know like in the, in the. I think I've thrown out this this example before you know the sustenance farmer he grows a crop, a lot of it goes back to sustain his family pulls out a little bit of seed corn for next year's crops but then you always grow just a little bit more to go out and barter with to help you know pay pay the bill at the, at the general store to maybe trade with your, your, your buddy farmer down the street that may have a cow or pig or whatever else just to keep things going and to get yourself that next step and that's part of what we want to try to identify here. And you're correct in that these contracts. This is the last year on them so probably first part of next year we're going to start having significant discussions about what this might look like. Now part of what we have to consider here also is that the city of dinner itself while it's growing is really a small fish in a big pond from a recycling standpoint was a Eugene McKinney my deputy director and I were in a meeting about three weeks ago, probably 45 of the bigger cities, talking just about municipal solid waste management. One of the issues that was there was several third party recyclers there. The issue was specifically glass. It was like okay, you know, is there a market for recycled glass and the answer is yes. The next question was, how much glass do you need to put in a recycling center here, you know, in your town. And I said between 1500 and 2000 ton a month reliable. Right now, see the dent and everything it collects it's right at 500 simple math tells you were two thirds short on the short end, you know, we're probably three quarters short on the long yet. Going back to what Scott was talking about, if we can drive these contracts that allow us to bring more glass in from these other third party ways now the sudden. If we reach that that that level, we're able to create an economic development incentive that will bring that third party glass recyclable recycler here. Now we've increased our tax base, we've created jobs. From a sustainability standpoint, we're not having to track our glass all the way down to Houston. So we, we, the vehicle miles traveled on the road are eliminated. So again, we get that sustainability piece so that's just one small example that if we look at these, these contracts in the right way. We can use the benefit that we have from a regional standpoint to create jobs to forward our recycling opportunities, and yet, minimize the amount of material that's actually going into our landfill as waste. So again, it's a tool. I think it's a very important tool for us and at the end of the day also. If we get a little money off the top then it goes back to incentivize lower rates for our citizens right now we enjoy probably some of the lowest rates in the state of Texas for the very robust program that we have how to ensure that we try to maintain those low rates for. Thank you. Okay, Councilmember Davis. Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate that glass example and if that's the. I want to let that stand as the answer to my next question as well just let me know because I was thinking kind of along the same lines, materials pricing, that's something that we've been increasingly kind of concerned about in the recycling space. Is there, I guess, for public education is there in any way shape or form, a recycling program for the city of Denton, even as a regional recycling process or hub, in which the materials are paying the cost of the recycling service. That is a really good question. And if you just look at the specific containers that we collect in the blue bin the answers probably no. But from a quality and quality standpoint if we can aggregate large enough and start looking at additional material such as plastic film you know you go to Sam's Walmart you buy a case of water, what is it, 40 bottles, wrapped with piece of plastic. We can't recycle that plastic in our program so where does it go. If we can find these these third party type of opportunities that may be outside our existing contract or expand our existing contract to manage some of this material, then the answer might be yes, but if nothing else it will only it will only close that gap between that cost differential of really how much it's costing us at the end of the day. The answer currently for kind of our I'll call them the kind of traditional recyclable materials the things we put in our blue bins now cardboard paper glass acceptable plastics. Currently the answer is no materials are not going to pay for the cost of the program. But there could be some, I guess I'll call them commercial opportunities for the city to engage in that if we are taking in additional material and having a hand in the processing of those, we could potentially at least close the gap a little more. Yeah, so it's a great question and I appreciate you asking that. We work with so many cities on their recycling processing contracts, and there has been so much scrutiny because of the volatility of the value of those materials because they are commodities with their values constantly fluctuating. So what you're speaking to as far as the that those pricing challenges has very much been the case from problems largely stemming from China, saying that they no longer wanted those materials from not just the US but really the rest of the world. But that was now three or four years ago. And in the time since then, two main things have happened. First, the US has started to build up that manufacturing and processing capacity here in the United States, so that's driving demand. And we're also seeing really meaningful demand from manufacturers to say, hey, we understand we've got to use recycled content materials and in their products. So correspondingly, and there's no guarantee of how long these prices will continue to be this way. But we're now back to really all time highs as far as the value of those materials. So again, that's usually when I get worried about a potential market correction. But in this case, because there is that enhanced manufacturing base here in the US, and more demand from companies, you know, hopefully it's going to stabilize recycling markets going forward. So, but I guess to kind of follow up on that line of thinking, though, even if we're all time high materials pricing, recyclable recycled material pricing, that's still not making up cost of service. Still, we'd have to reach outside ourselves to make up cost of service. So it all depends on how your contract is set up and so in the case with the city of Denton. It's actually pretty well protected in those markets where, where the value of the materials were pretty low so it's a, you know, it's a pretty stable contract, whereas other cities were in the past when the value of those materials was very low. They were having to write checks each month for that, for that service. But now they are back to, to a large extent getting checks back for that program. And so, so a lot of it really just depends on how the contract is set up and what the value of those materials are. But there definitely are some cities that at least on the recycling processing side are receiving revenue. You still have to of course account for the cost to collect right the recyclables, but I think that's where it's really just up to cities and specifically councils like yourselves to decide, you know, to what extent these programs are important to your community, and to recognize that programs definitely do have a cost associated with them. I guess my the, the crux of my question is better suited for Brian, is that, at least currently in the city of Denton, we offer curbside recycling as a service, and not as a, I mean we operated as a business unit but is not it is not a revenue producing business unit. And, but there are some additional activities we could look at that could be revenue producing and further offset our residential rates. Is that fair to say? That is correct. That is a fair statement. The second thing I wanted to ask about was, I understand that this strategy is geared in terms of, or presented in terms of processes, in terms of the kind of defining metrics, and the thing that I'm kind of wrapping, trying to wrap my head around though, is, is goals. So in the agenda information sheet, you listed some very good statistics about our current diversion, and we're doing, just from my lay read of it, we're doing a very good job of diversion, we got room for improvement, we have ideas already about how we can improve our diversion with our existing programs. But, you know, kind of alongside you as a department head wanting to improve the department, improve the service to the city, the council has also been asking about zero waste strategies. And we understand zero waste is a little bit of a branding thing. It's like when you buy a zero grams of fat, something at the store, it actually has a little bit of fat in there, but you say zero grams of fat because it falls behind, below some acceptable threshold. But the council has been asking about zero waste strategies, and the only thing I'm really missing from this presentation, or maybe I'm just not understanding, is defining metrics, at what point do we define what the goals that we're trying to achieve, measured by those metrics? Well, and that's a real good question. I appreciate the way it was couched. And part of our issue with what you said with zero waste is it does sort of have a brand that goes with it, and it contains certain things. And that's why we're trying to be more processed than product. You know, we're slowly seeing a shift from sort of zero waste into circular economies and waste minimization. So as we start defining really what these strategies will look like, instead of one number, which a lot of zero waste programs now, which is total diversion or total recycling, we may have five or six different numbers that we're looking at, which better describes how the entire program is working. You know, landfill life, diversion rate, capture rate. Scott talked about that. And that's really key to a lot of people right now is we know what's in our garbage and how much of that material is left to be able to capture, to pull out. So how much are we actually able to grab right now and how much remains? We know that, you know, 10 years ago, you know, grab a Denton Record Chronicle, came to your house every day, and it was a pretty hefty newspaper. What is it now? Comes in the mail one day a week, eight pages and a few circulars. I mean, that variable shifts, but the amount of garbage that we look at that's produced per person per household is remaining relatively constant. So if we can look at garbage production and get that on the decline, that tells us a lot of information that we need. So what we hope to do is as we finalize this, identify what those metrics are that we're going to use to define where our program is and then work with the council to redefine what that end goal is. For that diversion and for that capture rate and everything else that we're going with. Excellent, thank you. So you're saying it's more complex than a tagline? It's more complex than just one number. Because, I mean, first and foremost, and Scott will agree, ask any zero waste city, you know, what their number is and how they capture it, you're going to get that many number of answers. The inputs and the outputs. Nobody looks at it the same. So one of the things that is my, that I've always talked about throughout this entire process is transparency. You're going to know what our numbers are, you're going to know how we came about them, what the numerator is, what the denominator is, what that means for our entire program. It's not just some black box type of number that spits out and we don't know really what went into the calculation of that number. Thank you. Okay, Mayor President Meltzer. Yeah, thank you. I really have, you know, input toward, you know, probably future discussions on this. You know, I just feel like there's part of the analysis that's probably in there for you, because you're subject matter experts, but that isn't explicit here. You know, to me, like, may already all be baked in there. But, you know, what I, what I see and what I read describes a process of community input. It's very important to understand, you know, kind of values and concerns of the, you know, the general lay audience, which I'd include most of us into, and then, and then a kind of operational assessment of how can we kind of fine tune what we do. But what I, what I, what I'm not reading here, but I'm hearing lots of in the conversation, is that subject matter expertise piece that, that looks at what are trends in the waste stream itself, like, where are we now, how is it projected to change, what threats does that pose to us, what opportunities may lie in there, and you've addressed some of those verbally, but those would be inputs to strategy. And then, what is emerging in the technology world to address some of the challenges that we have, who's doing something that's awesome and that we should look at, you know, that may be replicable, you know, those three are part of the constellation that is beyond what we and members of the general public, you know, would, would be able to bring to, to the strategy discussion. And especially if you're looking 20 years out, you've got to be looking at, you know, true trends, not just like the large things that people already think are true, but just what's really happening that we can see coming down the road. So that, that's, that's just input, and then just a minor point I'd like to just raise, because biosolids has come up. My lay understanding is that they're bad if they're, if they're elements that are in concentration, but if they're not, they're not, and then it's really a question of how robust your testing is. So I'd love to, you know, hear more about that at some time. I don't necessarily need to hear it now, but thank you very much for the work that's gone in so far over months and months. Thank you. We didn't specifically talk about it today but there is a direct section of the strategy that will speak to trends in the industry. And so while we didn't talk about it today that was definitely in our mindset as well as what we shared with the city to drive a number of these strategies as well as within the context of the work products for the city highlighting successful case studies and a number of the topics being addressed. Actually, if I may, there was just one more point kind of escaping on on the topic of importing and so on. It, it strikes me that maybe this is like too big for our britches but that it may be at least at a high level we ought to say what are the regional trends that guide what role do we want to play. I mean you kind of alluded to it that other facilities are maxing out but I don't know, do we talk to other communities is it a fait accompli that nobody else is going to handle this but us or, or to be or is it such an opportunity we don't want to tell them because it's really good for us to have it, which also goes back to goals, as Councilmember Davis pointed out. What's our environmental goal, what's our economic goal, you know, maybe there's a couple of distinct options that Council would look at, like if this is your goals, and this is where you go. You know, sorry, it's just more more input I hope you capture some of that when you rewatch the tape. Thanks. Okay, Councilmember Guara. Thank you. First of all outstanding work on this and in general, I'm really thrilled about the direction that that solid waste has been taking and improvements and diversion that we've been seeing so excellent work on that. I want to address the same issue that Councilmember Meltzer just just finished with Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer, regarding, you know, contracts with other cities and importing waste from other cities I think that, given that there are very few other communities in our area who have a landfill of our size. I think that it's incumbent on us to consider waste management from a regional perspective. And I'm, I'm completely comfortable with importing trash, to the extent that we can use that as leverage to have positive impact on waste management throughout the region. And it sounds like those those plans are in the works to promote diversion and home chemical collection and all of these other wonderful programs in the other cities that are served by our landfill so I'm really glad to hear about that and I think that that we should be pursuing that aggressively for sure. And as far as goal setting, you know your point is well taken that there's no one number we're not going to get to zero waste that's not a meaningful number. But I, you know, you did, you know, in the AIS. There's, you know, specific numbers about the potential of 17% additional paper diversion, for example. So, you know, if you know I think it's fine for goals to be multivariate, and to have more than one number and more than one metric that that we're setting goals in but but I think that we do need to be setting those goals. I'm not going to go so far as to make any kind of recommendation but I would just urge urge y'all to kind of take those those concerns from the Syracuse era club to heart and see what we can do to mitigate the potential harm of PFOS content in those environments, and what solutions we can come up with I know that dino dirt light was kind of was that was that developed in response to those concerns about bio solids. And again, that the actual beneficial reuse programs is in the weight of water department not in solid waste, but we are partners because we deliver the, the, the brown waste to them so that they have a media to do that and we're connected at the hip. And to your specific question, you know we that the data, dirt light has been product since I've been here and that's well before the PFOS concerns were were brought up. And, you know, the most recent, and to the best of my knowledge you know there's always been concerns raised about, you know, industrial impacts to our wastewater stream and the concentration in the biosolids. And on the presentation that was, you know, about 18 months ago you know there was, you know, and again not not to rehash, you know dirt but there was there was still, you know, analysis that showed that those levels were well below any toxicity levels so again, those are the things that we're going to continue to look at and with our partners and try to figure out exactly. What that end point is so we can manage the bio solid or the sludge material correctly. But, you know, have a robust composting program also. Great. Yeah, I think that those are definitely all valid concerns that need to be balanced and I'm glad to hear that that's that continues to be on your mind. Thanks. Thank you. So, I'll just pick up on that, since that was one of my questions and so it occurs to me that the solution isn't that this is about the biosolids and sledges are like any other technology and I think Mayor Pro Tem touched on this as did Councilor McGuire, and that is this issue of what's actually in it, and what are the levels and, you know, some are fine and some are not, and you can use regenerative technologies like that. And, you know, you can ferment and do other things and it's it's completely fine and you just need to know what's in your materials. And as you just said, that to the current testing levels I think you're, you know, you're occurring meeting standards and I think some of the concerns you might be hearing in the community that is leading them to perhaps a reaction that is, is like, no, no, don't do it at all, is, is because they don't know, or they don't have a strong feel for what's in the material. So I guess, instead of taking the tact of, no, no, no, we should never, never, ever use biosolids because that's obviously I think a legitimate, I mean, essentially that's what your, your compost heap is doing is fermenting your organics. The question is what else is in there. And so I think the place that we could really set ourselves a saw in advance of other places that is this issue of will and reliability and trust where you're like we test the crap out of that, literally. So sorry, I didn't mean that pun, but it's appropriate. And so, you know, if we, if we test the heck out of it, and we can tell everything beyond EPA standards but to a level where not only are you comfortable but it becomes a selling point like our, our Dino dirt is, is excellent, you know, you can see here's our testing regime, and, you know, it becomes, it goes from being a detractor to a marketing advantage. So I'm going to encourage you to, to continue because I think that's an avenue of success, but to, to ramp up your testing, so that the community has confidence in what they're doing and that that satisfies Sarah Club and everybody else because now we know what's in there. In terms of, I'm not going to try to like, whatever it is pin topple down on the, the goals direction, I'm just going to simply say that you're allowed to have goals that move and adjust with the trends and the flows and in, in, in technology and culture and society and knowledge. But I would definitely set goals because otherwise you just have metrics that you put in reports, and then they just go around and around every year and what are we doing with that, and we have, we have no path forward, and it's fine to head this way, and then say oh we screwed up we're going to go that way. That's fine, but we need to set those targets and I think that's what almost every other counselor was saying is, I don't think we can just have metrics, we got to have targets, and even if it's a multi modal commentatoric, like Councilor McGuire was saying, that's totally fine. It can be complex. You guys are experts and you can, you can help us understand the complexity. I will say a metric that I saw missing was this, we sort of this idea of it at the engagement level, if I can take a step back both of the public and the partners, what I, I saw key performance indicators for amounts of tons of this and rates of that, but what I didn't see is how many of our organic waste diverter companies are we luring in for economic development, how many again this goes to goals a little bit, how many are out there, you know, do we, can we corner 50% of the market, 5% of the market, that would be awesome. I mean, and can we, can we be so, if we're going to take this tact that we have pre diversion at the customer level, we have on site diversion at the facility, then can we take the tact that we need that we have to have partners for that diversion you talked about which is an example that everybody sort of latched onto with glass and I think that's a great example can, but that was one, and I don't think you're going to have a successful program with a goal of one. So I think that's an area where you need to say, how are you luring in your partners, and then the other part of education outreach and training that and this is actually a really long waited question, how are you learning in your partners, but how are you telling the public about all the cool and sexy things you do, not not just with these, these technology things like I participated in. And so full disclosure, my data is actually in this study because I was a citizen in this study before I was on council. And, you know, I apologize for, for, for, you know, being just just talking about glass but that was the example about, you know, other things we can include you know textiles pbcs, you know things that aren't in our traditional recycling markets creating those those opportunities for new markets that to grow up economic development is key in this this piece you know I see I see us joined at the hip, you know green green building standards, you know, developments can be connected at the hip to the solid waste management strategy as we're looking out you know, creating opportunities. Creating opportunities that are still fully compliant with the building code, you know, creating inserting opportunities to make them more sustainable using you know, and again part of that that that that circular economy take that the waste materials that we have over here. You know, through that economic development piece that we've got the company here and all of a sudden we've got a building material that we can put back in in, and it all happens in didn't so again you're correct or there will be, you know, this this whole movable piece that. And I appreciate the fact that from an education education standpoint. I see us on the city of Denton solid waste management page having a dashboard for lack of a better term that shows you know in real time what these metrics are, you know how we're performing where we're off while we're off. And then you know where we're changing a little bit of course to help make that correction as we see fit. I would, I would. That's great I encourage that it's a really fabulous thing, I would encourage us to, because you know some of this will fall fall into. Mr Gange's sustainability department and development services everything else I think it sounds like though, this is a little aspirational at the moment. But going back to the goals thing. I think it's fine to have aspirational goals that can, then I'm going to say that I feel like we're wanting a piece of. We don't see so much diversion of materials we want to see like, what do you what do you mean by this that are the, I mean, there, if you, we can all agree we would love to have recycled semi organic I beams made out of glass and organic waste and everything But, you know, we would love to have reuse reuse recycle, but that's aspirational. That doesn't give us somewhere to go and so I guess, even for these pieces that involve the sustainability office I'm, I, I just kind of pin tumble can Drupal down on this that we want to have something solid to put on your dashboard, so that the public can understand when you do when you take your cake cups that results in, you know, 27 tons of I beams, which are now part of the new city hall west or something like that we're like the path flow of that is really evident for us. And so I guess the last very last thing is, if we don't do these things but we accept more and more trash and an attempt to do these things. At what point did we break and we just have to like there's no there's no recycling. And we're just go back to landfill because we can't afford to do the recycling. Is there a break even point where we're, we're accepting so much trash to try to make the recycling programs happen, but now we just filled up our landfill and it's not happening. I'm concerned about these conflicting curves and you and I share that same that same concern, you know, before I got here. That's where we were. And we spent the better part of the last five years from a financial standpoint looking at the things that were successful that were unsuccessful. Basically getting our house back in order so that, you know, come January when the when when we finalize all of these aspects start, you know, put the goals into concrete we start this next step. You know, the road and begin that evaluation and implementation. The way the strategy set up though it allows us to be able to move just a little bit quicker than we were under old contracts old paradigms of and ways of thought. So, you know, we're in the same boat there. We don't want to get so buried under that again our residents are carrying a large, you know, financial impact, and we're not seeing any results. You may remember what, five or six years ago, or it was what 30 something dollars we're down to 20 now, 20 $25. I mean significant amount reduction, no other city and state is seeing that. And we're hoping to, you know, as one of the stool legs the stool here is financial management and transparency as part of this program. Thank you customer bird. I saw one of my neighbors. Just yesterday. And I think they moved into that house, maybe about two months ago. And I saw them put some trash in the recycle bin. And I thought to myself, I'm gonna tell, because they just didn't have anywhere else to put their trash. And I'm sure if they had done the right thing, they would have had enough space in the regular trash bins. And they would have had enough space to put their regular trash in there. If they had done their recycling, the way that I do mine now, because I think you all reminded me that I shouldn't put pizza boxes or something in mind. So it was just the educational perspective so I'm just going to come from the educational side I'm a former teacher everybody knows that so I think education all the time. So a lot of the goals. We definitely want to make sure we have a good piece in there. We are growing we got people coming from all over the country to live here understand that this is, you know, a popular place to come. And then especially didn't is one of those places. So I think that we need to stay on top of making sure that the citizens the new citizens that come in, it's got to be some kind of way that we they were, we remind them through media bulletins I know we send some things out there. But would you all please add that in as part of one of those major goals is that we're always just have it in front of them at all times this is I made some changes, you know, some, some of the past meetings that you've been in front of us. And have probably put recycling is more of a priority. Because I was hearing it. So I think that if we are going to be, you know, welcoming everyone. Then we need to make sure that they're doing what we're doing. And so that's all that I wanted to say, I'm not real sure I didn't hear a lot about the educational piece in there so I like to that to be as prominent as anything else and education outreach was strategy one but but but but I hear you loud and clear and, you know, I agree that, you know, education is key. In fact, yesterday we had an internal meeting about the reboot on our didn't sustainable schools program. Again, you know, with looking at quality and empty clean and dry and you're looking at auditing as opposed to just wait and diversion and things of that nature so again you know we're committed to that, and we will be moving forward with that. As the, you know, connecting with that nice to train the kids up into recycling, I know that they in the schools they do have some recycle the things like that but I just feel like it needs to be a bigger push. Yes, in that area and I'm sure that that will help as well. Thank you. Thank you. Looking at time. Okay, Councilmember or you to that education point I just want to give like a shout out and a kudos to the social media team at solid waste. Y'all are putting out content that is like so clear so educational. Sometimes it's funny it's really shareable I think that that the social media part of the education has been extremely effective. There may be some other areas, particularly in targeting new residents who are have newly moved to town. Where where there's room for improvement but social media y'all are killing it. Thank you very much. We've got a very talented team and I appreciate every single employee that's on that team so thank you. Just to my thoughts, I would ask that on the on the food recycling component maybe we reach out to turn I know they presented to us once they're in Dallas ever presence I understand we have the kind of monopoly contractually and by charter ordinance all those things but if there's an opportunity to partner with them since they're already standing up. I'd like to look at that as an as an option. Then, from a transfer station component you mentioned that they're 35 W that sort of thing as the infrastructure is going in. We have an understanding of what we want to do there before end of year before as they start turning dirt to do the infrastructure work. I'm going to say hopefully, we're currently working on some siding of potential opportunities, and based on our ability to to acquire a potential piece of property that will be coming back and then when we come back with that will lay out a much larger plan with regard to not only transfer station but also use that as a diversion station so not only do you just take trash there but again, recycling metals electronics. You know, other things, and you know we'll have a host of opportunities that go with that but yes you'll you'll have that opportunity. Yeah, that would be my goal just to you know just to get the economies of scale right already going to have everything dug up 35 W is going to be widening. There's a lot going on and be an optimal time to kind of take advantage of while it's open. Let's let's do these things as well. So hopefully that you can make that time in work. And then this is just, well, just a note that that those are tracking along. How big of a user is shallow gardens for the Dino dirt. Well that's it. That's a really good question one that I'm not prepared to answer what we can is is come back to you with a sort of a Dino dirt report on users and uses and sales. Yeah, that'd be great just because and for those watching the reason I asked. It's the yard largest community garden in the United States. They produce a ton of food, and they give it to nonprofits and we've had no issues with that and so I just want to make sure. In fact, personal note, I gave some of the, and it was a great deal so that they had a an event and shallow gardens donates their vegetables etc to those events to give away for it so people have fresh food. I gave my father in law some of the jalapenos and he's like man these are beautiful. Right, which is a random thing to me but it just kind of goes out to say there's the quality of food they're putting out is, is absolutely amazing. You know, again, largest in the United States, and so I'd love to know what they're using and then that kind of is a real life example of it's the value of that product and they evaluated both so if you can circle back with that and then I do. Another point of emphasis for me just because the citizens of didn't see Brian stand here and is it and I made a note Scott right, but not really understanding can you give just a just the high level of your kind of training your CV if you were to kind of pick out the specific training and I'm going to ask you to do the Scott, the same Scott so just so people understand the level of expertise we have in front of us it's not just the thing is just important to start doing that a lot of people don't know this but I am a native tonight I was born in flow hospital. Yes, baby. Yes. Yeah, I lived in pilot point for a few years and then my dad got a job in Fort Worth and Northridge on Hills and that's where I grew up and was raised, went to North Texas back when it was North Texas State University I've got my bachelor's from there in chemistry and math. I've got my master's from University of North Texas and environmental science and studies. I spent 21 years at the city of Fort Worth where I was a director of environmental management so I was their internal consultant on all things environmental related. I'm responsible for the largest municipal setting designation in the United States. I've managed their solid waste program for almost 12 years before I retired from the city of Fort Worth. I spent about five years in the private sector, and then due to market issues I was laid off there found work with the city of Denton or city of Dallas, or I spent three years working in safety and managing the McCombs bluff landfill which is the second largest landfill in the state. And then, when the opportunity to come here to the city of Denton came, I jumped on top of it and been here for the last three and a half years. Outstanding. Thank you very much. Just real quick, I'm a certified hazardous materials manager, and a certified professional manager in the state of Texas, and those do those come with regular CLEs that you have to. They do. Yeah, they do. And I maintain a MSA license, which basically is the license you need to run landfill and disposal facilities in the state of Texas. Excellent. Yeah, so I have my undergraduate degree and master's degrees both from the University of Texas and Austin, with my undergraduate being major in government and a minor in business. And then I also have a master's degree in community and regional planning. So I spent the first five years of my career, working for what is now the Texas Commission on environmental quality as part of their solid waste planning group. And then coming up on 21 years in January, moved over to the consulting side, because that's really what I've wanted to do throughout my career, to work directly with local communities on their solid waste and recycling issues. And so I've worked with the city of Denton at Burns and Mack and then with my prior firm since about 2005. Very happy to work for a number of other cities here in the North Central Texas region, as well as the North Central Texas Council of Governments. Our firm actually just recently completed the statewide recycling market development plan that we mentioned. So trash, recycling, organics, diversion, zero waste planning, the whole bit. And that's what we do throughout the course of every day. Okay, thank you very much. We'll hook them and go Eagles. Alright, thank you all very much. That concludes item A. It takes us to item B, which is ID 212037, receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction regarding an update on police headquarters. Mayor, today we have Chris Squadron, who is our consultant. You all should recognize him. He's worked with us in a variety of on a variety projects. And he's here from peak performance value. Did I get that right? Yeah, peak program value. I always say performance because I think, but he does, he helps us with scope schedule budget and the whole issues around value engineering. But today he's here to give you the answer and talk about the reasoning why we're requesting the six million, which I believe Chief addressed, which is really staying within the contingency funds. It's not extra money. So I'll turn it over to you. And I don't know if your program's loaded. Well, I'm assuming it is. Right. I'll let someone who's pretty experienced at doing this. There we go. Well, I can, I can jump in. Close to be loaded, but I have a hard copy. So to not take the time of everybody who's here. I'll just start off with the, for the folks who may not be completely familiar with the project. It has two sites. One is a renovation of the existing police department headquarters of 62,000 square feet. The other is a substation and a firing range, two buildings on the second site that are new build from the ground up. The, the simple update on the schedule is, as you all know, we had a, we had a agreement with little Elm to move in, I think a year ago you signed an agreement with little Elm to take over their 911 call center. We have a commitment to them to have their 911 call center up and accepting calls live on October 1st. We. And one question. So if you could. Oh, there it is. And I was going to say if you told us what pages on we have the, we have the backup. Yeah, there we go. There we go. So just scroll down. So this is just a picture of the police department headquarters. Substation and the firing range. This is the schedule slide that I was just going into. So we stood up a public safety access point or PSAP communication center for the on the 27th of September, we beat our deadline by a few days and went live and met that contractual commitment. The ability goes live on the 1st of November next year, a little under a year from now. The original date that we provided you in our last estimate was December 20th. December 20, December 2020 was the 30th of June. We ran into some headwinds, but we made the two most important dates, which were turnover for little Elm and the permanent communication center. So that I just wanted to give you an update back to those. The last update that you got from us. The headwinds that we've run into our global supply chain interruptions, winter storm, Yuri, which we all remember some labor shortages and soaring energy prices, demand for construction going up. And we did have some delays and cost increases. They were absorbed inside the GMP using contingency that we had. And so the greatest win is that the project as I stand here before you remains on budget. So we're very proud of that. And we did make some owner changes as we went through this process for the safety of staff and public planning for the future and some operational efficiencies. The project budget, as you can see the funding on the top adds up to the 65 million to 12 and the project budget is also 65 million to 12. We are asking to move some money from outside the guaranteed maximum price to replenish the owners contingency inside the GMP inside the contractors contract with money we had outside the GMP. And we're moving scope in to their contract for to expedite it. And from stuff that was previously budgeted outside, and we also are anticipating some more headwinds. That's what's before you here today. And we will report back to you in January on if we have any more headwinds. So with that, I'll turn it over to Mr. Mayor. Thank you, sir. Councilmember Davis has questions. Thank you, Mayor. I'm asking you to take out your crystal ball for us. We're all pretty aware of some of the headline kind of issues you mentioned the headwinds, you laid them out and those are the things that were, at least on some level mostly all aware of supply chain issues materials, labor. Can you give us any kind of prognostication? Can you give us any kind of the direction that you're seeing right now? I know you're going to update us in January and you saw the first half of my question is what direction do you see the markets going right now in those in those areas? The second half of my question is, when you say additional headwinds, do you mean in addition to the ones that you've listed here that you'll be bringing forward to us at some some future date, or do you mean that you'll be the anticipate additional developments in those areas you've already mentioned? It's a great question and I stand here before you exceptionally well prepared to answer that. As I gave a presentation to a purchasing agents association this very morning and did a lot of research for that, and as I told them, and I'll tell you, we should have given that presentation on Halloween because it's pretty scary. And I think the biggest, the first prognostication I can make is that the people that really know supply chains in January of this year were predicting by fall that the supply chain issues would have been solved. Those same people were interviewed in the Wall Street Journal as recently as last week and they said we have quit trying to forecast when the supply chain interruptions are going to stop, but it will be at least through the end of next year and probably well into 2023. So price of oil has gone from $40 to $80 a barrel since January and $100 a barrel futures were selling fairly, you know, there was some demand for them in January. $100 a barrel oil futures are selling briskly now and $200 a barrel futures, which didn't really used to sell, are starting to sell. So those are just two of the horror stories that I brought forward. So on the cost side and the supply chain side, there's no end in sight. The only thing that I can say to your second question of, do we anticipate any more if you are kind enough to grant this transfer inside our budget to the contractor's contract, we will be, we will, based on the forecast we have standing here today, we will have 1.7 million left inside their contract. Taking into account every incoming missile and artillery shell we see heading towards the project today, we will still have 1.7 million for those unforeseeables. What is left for us is about $2 million worth of furnishings that we need to buy. There's a heck of a lot of steel in those furnishings. We still have to buy about a million dollars worth of police department specialty cabinets and they also have a lot of steel in them. Steel has gone up 30 or 40%. And to give you an example that we will talk about a week from today, on the junction project, we were able to avoid, by bringing that GMP amendment to you next week, we had a kitchen equipment contract of $618,000 in that GMP and we were told on bid day, September 23rd, the CMAR and I heard from the vendor that it would go up 7% on December 1st and 23% on January 1. Now that's stuff that we designed and put out on the street in August and bid in September, so those are the only facts that I have to gauge what kind of headwinds this plane is going to see next year. But we're putting the final touches on the $2 million furnishings package and a $1 million storage package and those go out on the street and they will see those increases after the 1st of January because we won't have them under contract until then. So I hope that that's not too long of an answer to a very simple question. Thank you. Okay, any other questions? Seeing none. Okay, so thank you for the update and I would say, just as a note for me, that this is part of that 2019 bond, which to me is important because the citizens, all citizens have the opportunity to vote on it. So I think it is something obviously we want to be mindful, but it has broad support and it's important to honor those requests. So thank you very much for being a good steward of those things. Yeah, so thank you very much. I had one question if I might Mr. Mayor. Is it important for me to be here later tonight to answer any further questions? No, sir. Are you certain? I am. Okay, well, we all work for you, so I thought you're too kind. Well, I'll say if needed, but would love to head out. No, no. Yeah, no, by all means. Thank you very much for offering. Yes. Thank you very much. Okay. Okay, so it is 333. This next item is going to take a bit. So I'll let staff get loaded up. We'll take a 10 minute break. Come back 343 and get started. Thank you. Welcome back to this meeting of the Denton City Councils 344. We're back on the record and we're to our third work session item. Have a couple more after this so making good time. So I call it this item. It's item C ID 212100 C report hold discussion and give staff direction regarding a drafting of a comprehensive non discrimination ordinance for the city of Denton. Good afternoon, Mayor City Council. Mayor Mayor, I'd like to ask that we go into before the presentation to go into a closed session, just because we've got a legal status update 30 minutes before this item and I'd like to have the opportunity to ask questions and discuss would influence our consideration of the presentation. Anyone to not inclined to do so, or have an issue with that. Seeing none. Then I'll grant that request. So we'll go into. Well, let me read this. I will can convene the closed session at 345 PM we would consider the following items consultation with attorney under Texas government code 551.071 on the comprehensive non discrimination ordinance ID 212100 and I'll note probably going to still hold our feet to the fire on the 90 minutes so let's be just so you understand it's all cumulative. So, that will be on in closed session. And welcome back to this meeting of the didn't city councils for 28, we're back on the record, and we call the item and staff, turn it over to you for your presentation. Good evening, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today on the drafting of a comprehensive non discrimination ordinance. So this first slide shows some background of how we got to where we are today and staff has presented a few previous work sessions on this topic. So I'm going to go through a couple of the things that were presented on that September 14th date, including an overview of federal and state law and overview of the other not comprehensive non discrimination ordinances in Texas, in which there are five cities. And then also information on the housing complaints that we receive as a city. And I'm going to go through some of the information, but we did review this on September 14th. And it shows for sexual orientation and gender identity. If they are covered federally or protected federally, so in the areas of employment and housing, they are federally protected. And actually, if you look here to the right, the federal protections for public accommodations are only on the four classes listed for race, color, religion or national origin, and the state of Texas does not have a law in regards to public accommodations and discrimination. Some other states do have that law, which would add different different state protected classes. So during that September 14th work session, Council just discussed and provided some preliminary direction to staff, including to begin drafting a model ordinance process and staffing. And the feedback was to use the city of Plano's adopted ordinance just as a general framework and template for drafting. And when I say general I think what we heard the most was a consensus to refer complaints to federal and state agencies where at all possible. So that being the first route is if we receive something that is protected federally or by the state, that that be referred to the appropriate agency. And if it cannot be handled by one of those agencies that we create a process where we can handle it locally. So what we've done, and you'll see is we've we've used Plano really Plano in Arlington as a basis for drafting this ordinance, also taking into consideration some other comments that were made that council members highlighted different elements in some of the other ordinances. So objectives for today we have divided the presentation into three sections. The first is the longest and that will review the major components of a draft non discrimination ordinance that has been included in exhibit three of the backup. And this is the first draft that we have put together so there may be changes feedback, but we wanted to get something drafted for your review and input. Right. And then the second section we'll move into some staff options for the administration of this ordinance. And then lastly, like we'd like to receive direction on next steps and a timeline for this. So, I'm going to jump right in. And I did forget to mention it at the beginning of the presentation that Michael chronic the deputy city attorney is also here and can help answer any questions and mayor if it's okay I think I'm just going to try to move through the presentation and then take questions and direction at the end. Agree. Okay. So this is the first section on the non discrimination ordinance components so as mentioned, we do have that draft as exhibit three for the presentation, we've tried to simplify it and break it down into the six main components, and this may look familiar to you as when we've had previous work sessions, we've looked at the other five ordinances in Texas and broken it down the same way into these categories. So I'm going to jump right in and go into the first component which is really just a general overview of the ordinance, and some key things about the ordinance. So, it does include a mission statement that expresses Denton stance against discrimination. It would cover non discrimination in those three areas of housing, employment and public accommodations. It covers federally and state protected groups but then also extends to expressly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. What you'll see in the language in those sections throughout the ordinance is it's going to mirror what you see in federal and state non discrimination laws to try to have the most consistency with those higher level laws. It would also repeal city of Denton standalone fair housing ordinance and combine it so that we have one ordinance, and that would make it easier to communicate to the public in terms of what our non discrimination laws are for the city of Denton and that's a recommendation from the city of Denton. So what we're going to do with that is we're going to combine it, repeal that prior ordinance and combine it all into one ordinance. And then lastly, it would, if adopted, the effective date would be delayed 120 days from adoption. And there's two key reasons for this, and that's to give staff the time to establish processes and take the necessary steps in order to implement it, and that's going to make it easier to communicate to the public in terms of what we see in the ordinance itself. So I'll move into that second component, which is what is included in the ordinance or what is excluded in the ordinance. So the way we have drafted it currently is across all three areas of housing, employment, and public accommodations. We believe this is the most clear way to communicate to the public if you have that standard set of protected classes against or across all three of those areas and Arlington took the same approach as well. There are some broad exemptions in the ordinance. They're listed here in that second bullet point. And what is drafted is that religious organizations, the federal government and the state government would be exempt from this ordinance and that's something we saw in Plano, Arlington, and Dallas as well. They have those broad, those three broad exemptions in all three of those cities. There are also some specific exclusions by each of the three areas, and these are to generally mirror what you see in federal and state non-discrimination laws. So a common example would be in housing, you are allowed to have age restrictions. For example, you can have senior housing complexes where you must be of a certain age to reside in that complex. In this component, we have two key policy items where we need council direction on. So the first is shown here on the slide and that's in regards to the public accommodations section and sex segregated restrooms and any other similar facilities. So what we have seen in the Plano and Fort Worth's ordinances is a provision along the lines of the first bullet point here. And you can read this language for you directly. But what I want to jump to is the bottom. What would this mean if a provision like this is included? So it would allow a business or an owner the ability to deny a patron from using a sex segregated facility, whether that be a restroom, a locker room, a shower, a dressing room that does not align with their gender assigned at birth. So in other words, it would not be a violation of the ordinance if an owner chose to say you must use the sex segregated facility with the gender that matches what you were assigned to at birth. However, it would still allow the ability for a business or an owner to let patrons use the restroom or any other similar facility of their choice or for the business to create gender neutral facilities. So still allowing that flexibility for the business to make that decision. And then the second item that we would be seeking policy direction on in this section is in regards to housing and if just a source of income for veterans should be added as a protected group. And this question has been asked before from council. So in the state of just as a reminder in the state of Texas, local governments cannot broadly prohibit source of income discrimination in housing. However, there's a specific carve out that can be done for veterans on their source of income. So for example, if a veteran has a bash bash housing voucher. And what this means, if this were to be adopted practically just to kind of talk it through a landlord could not deny housing to a veteran then on the basis of income, such as having that voucher. However, a landlord could still set and maintain minimum requirements as long as they are applied consistently across applicants, such as having a security deposit or no criminal history. So there is a potential where someone may have that voucher still be denied housing because they're not able to meet those other requirements that the landlord has set that would not be discrimination on source of income, but just that they could not meet the other consistent requirements that are in place. And that's the reason why the city and its partners have been trying to remove such barriers through alternate means through programs and advocacy such as the barriers fund the veteran navigator program doors for Denton County initiative. How can we help remove some of those barriers to ensure that we are getting those placements. When this question has been asked in the past from from see staff if we could, as a city adopt that provision and adopt an ordinance. What we have not had is if you adopt this and it does become a legal process to investigate it locally if we receive a complaint. If a local non discrimination ordinance is passed in a process is established, it could follow that same process, but that has been a barrier in the past is that we have not had any way to take in a complaint and then investigate it locally, because we cannot simply refer this to HUD. And then just the last point of data here we do not have any complaints that we know of from veterans being denied housing due to bash vouchers. So those are two key policy items that I've outlined and we'll come back to those. But moving on to the third component of complaints. So the ordinance does outline the process for complaints, including the time to file a complaint after an alleged violation occurs, which would be 90 days creates a system for filing these complaints, including. You know, describing how the city would respond once the complaint is received and setting a timeline for all the procedural steps. And then it also creates a process for that preliminary review of a complaint and really for dispositions of what can happen at that preliminary review, including if it can be referred to another public agency. That would be the first step, and I have a process chart that will show you as well. If it could not be referred to another public agency, then it we look at would be either deny or accept the complaint. The complaint could be denied due to incomplete information, or if it's legally deficient or untimely, or if it is not, it could be accepted for investigation as long as it meets the parameters of our ordinance. So this is a chart trying to show that referral outline. So if the complaint is able to be referred to a federal and state agency, this is what it will look like as of today. Just to say that federal or state laws could change. They could become more expansive. They could become more restrictive in the future. But this is what would happen now. So in terms of employment, we would based on the defined protected classes that standards set. I showed you in the previous slide, we would be able to refer any complaints we receive on employment to the EOC or Texas Workforce Commission, meaning we would not need to investigate those claims locally. For housing, we would also be able to do the same for the large sum of them and referring them to HUD if it's a potential fair housing violation on these basis. The only one that may not be covered where we may have to investigate it locally is on age based discrimination. I've also just noted here, we again would assist in referring to other nonprofit agencies or other resources if it's not on the basis of discrimination, but someone else needing assistance with housing or removing a potential barrier. And then lastly, on public accommodations, this is where most are going to have to be handled locally, investigated locally. We can refer to the Justice Department if it's on one of those four protected classes. Or we can also help in referring to appropriate agencies or departments or liaisons if it's in regards to the Americans with Disabilities Act. But anything on the basis of age, religion, sex, sexual orientation or gender identity, we need to be investigated locally and handled by a process as I'll try to describe here that we've set forth. So the investigation process would be coordinated through a designated administrator. The ordinance sets out the timeline, how would the respondent be notified and what is the rights of the respondent, establishing how would that investigation process occur, including interviews and collection of information, and will lastly requiring delivery of a final investigative report. If during the investigation investigation or after there is reasonable cause to believe discrimination occurred, the city shall attempt to conciliate the complaint. So that moves into the next step, which would be conciliation and trying to use education where at all possible with the two parties. Also trying to conclude that effort with assurances of future compliance, which would take the form of a conciliatory agreement between those two parties. What's noted here in the third bullet point, and this is kind of an unknown, is if that conciliatory agreement could remain confidential or if it would have to be released according to public records laws. And then lastly, if a agreement cannot be reached, it could be reviewed for criminal and force enforcement. If that provision is provided for in the ordinance, and that leads into another policy item that staff is seeking a direction on from council is confirming. Really two options. If you would like to focus on conciliation and provide no penalty or fine, and this is done to hopefully bring those parties encourage them to come in and work through that conciliation process, or the other option being if conciliation, it does not work, providing for a possible class C misdemeanor. The maximum fine allowable for that is $500. And then that would proceed. That would be accepted by the city attorney's office and municipal prosecutor proceed through the municipal court process. And I've lastly I've just listed how other cities have handled and focused their ordinances Arlington decided to focus on conciliation and they actually do not have a penalty in their ordinance. So that's the process map. I've tried to outline just went through a lot of information, but more simply, what would it look like if we received a complaint and how would it work its way through the process. So if it can be referred again that ends the process right there, it'll be referred to the appropriate public agency. If the public agency does not meet the ordinance criteria, if not, the complaint would be denied process would end there. If it does, we'd accept that complaint and proceed to investigation. And in that investigation stage that the key component first is determining is a reasonable cause that discrimination occurred. We can conclude the investigation and prepare that final report. If yes, we proceed to conciliation and this can be done again during or after the investigation. And then conciliation, you know, if it can be conciliated that ends the process there, we're preparing the conciliation agreement. If not, we are referring the matter to the municipal prosecute prosecutor for review, as I just outlined, really looking for that last direction here. If there should be that penalty provided for in the ordinance. Staff also included just a few other considerations for City Council. This is just for awareness, not to talk through these questions, but we just posed them of some maybe things to consider or be aware of in terms of through this whole process. It's really unknown what information may be subject to public disclosure. I think that would be important to notify a potential complaint and respondent that there's a potential. Any of these documents could go could go public and that kind of going into the next questions and factors of is there a risk to the privacy or reputation of both or either the individual or the business, the complaint and the respondent there. And is there a potential risk for a lawsuit if somebody is injured from having had a claim and it's been released more publicly. And then lastly, if there's any liability for city employees or officials who are involved in the evaluation investigation decision of these complaints. So I'm just going to move on to the next section, which is in regards to if an ordinance is adopted and how would it be administered and implemented. And so in the ordinance itself, it has language that is very broad that the city manager or designee would designated and minister administrator, and that's to leave the ordinance more broad in case it's changed in the future in terms of the staffing mechanism. But we do need some additional direction of how we would implement this ordinance as we do not have the resources to do so with current staffing. So we've really taken a thoughtful approach to this looked at three options really tried to outline some considerations of each of those options with the recommendation from staff, which is for that first option to contract with a firm for the necessary professional services. We are not recommending at this time to hire a full time position due to the unknown of volume or how much workload or how this is going to what the experience of the ordinance will be. And then lastly, was an option that we saw Plano put together in the ordinance, but it has not ever been used or tested, which is to form a staff and business representative panel. So I just want to take you through in the next three slides very quickly. What are the things that we consider that we analyze that we evaluated evaluated when trying to put forward these recommendations. So for the first option, this is to use a firm and to contract with them on an as needed basis to handle the initial review of complaints and then if required, the investigation and conciliation stages of a complaint. This would have a neutral third party handling the process. That firm does would have the knowledge, skills and abilities to conduct investigation and conciliation to proper standards and best practices. And that's why we feel it is the best option for managing risk as well as neutrality. We've included an estimated budget. This is just very rough of what it could mean annually. We would need to go through a procurement process to determine what is the pricing and what is the interest from potential firms. And we would want to start that procurement process soon just to get that to be a known factor if directed by Council. And lastly, we can utilize and pay for the services on an as needed basis. So if we don't receive any complaints within a year, there would be no financial impact there. Or if it's just one or two, we're just paying for it for those one or two complaints. And then option number two, again, staff is not recommending this at this time. That would be to hire a full time staff position with the experience, training and skill sets necessary. We'd be looking for prior experience in conducting public investigations and with a preference for experience with human rights matters. Considerations that we have, again, could be a future option or recommendation once there is some experience. And once the volume of work is known, we do think this position would have to be full time in order to recruit a qualified individual to come here and be employed here. And to maintain the training and standards necessary to conduct the investigations, the hearings, meet everything that needs to be done to the proper standard. It's possible you could hire a full time staff position and they would spend part of their time doing the implementation of the ordinance and maybe doing some other work. But you do have to find a person that has the skills and abilities to do both of those, all of the duties and responsibilities, which could be difficult as you're looking at maybe two different specialties. And then lastly, just awareness, you know, it could place a staff member in a difficult position if the professional decisions are not accepted and respected. So for example, if something went more public by one of the parties, we would need to maintain, you know, some of that confidentiality and privacy and respect that process. And it does get a little difficult when that's challenged more publicly in terms of a staff's decisions that were made. And then lastly, the other option that was not recommended is a panel. And this is the Plano approach that they had outlined in their ordinance, which is to have three directors and then to also point to business representatives. And the reason this is not recommended is it would add workload to ready our senior leadership in the organization. They would also need to be properly trained and it could impact other city business priorities. If we're taking away from their schedule to do that training and then also participate in these panels and could place them in a difficult position again if it's more public. And then lastly, it could increase the integrity of the process and the outcome if we're not doing all of those things appropriately, such as the training. Lastly, I'll conclude with next steps and the direction that staff is seeking. So overall feedback or questions on the draft ordinance. We do need direction on the items outlined. And I believe that slides eight, nine and 15 and then also feedback on the options for the administration of the ordinance. I think I got the slide number is wrong. I think I updated the presentation. And we are also seeking feedback on kind of the timing and process moving forward. So we do have another work session scheduled for January 11th. And that's just if Council needs more time to ask more questions wants to see another revised ordinance. Wants any more information. We've just put that on the work session matrix to build in knowing that there might be additional work sessions necessary. And we would also like some direction on what level of community or business involvement is desired in the draft development. So would we be going out to maybe the public and the community and the business community to show them a draft of the ordinance. Seek their feedback. How much involvement and when do you want that as well. So I know that was a long presentation a lot there, but we're happy to answer any questions you may have and go from there. Okay, and so let's in the essence of time. So let's agree to or can we agree to five minutes per person and that's your their time staff's going to be very concise in their answers. So is there anyone that's going to have an objection to that. Okay. Councilman Armitage, this is on the essence of time on the subject of time. No, I just think that if we leave it to five minutes per person, just because of the number of considerations that there are here. Looking at the amount of time. I just don't see how it would be possible to discuss all of the items in this that were being asked to give direction on at this work session. However, you know, I'm open to, you know, if, if we want to continue this into another work session. I'm open to that I completely understand you know for the sake of time why we want to limit it but I just don't see how in that time we can get the work done that with it staff is asking us to a pine on. So anyone else disagree. Councilman require. I agree with Councilmember arm enter that five minutes per person is probably not enough to give all of the feedback that's been asked, customer back. I think rounds of five minutes, if we get it done in one round great. Councilmember. We've had a lot of discussion and I just think that this is a lot for us and try to squeeze in like that. And I guess I would say I agree, and I don't think we're going to solve this issue today. So, in my mind, it's given staff direction and narrowing this thing down to something that they can get their hands around. But then I just need some, I need some guidance, then, because it's, I mean, I'm not willing to extend it, but I'm willing to concede to the majority and put that on the all to say hey I tried to keep it in the rails, and it, and it got out and I got out voted. And so someone throw out of time, and if there's consensus, then you will be. I'm going to stake you to that. So what's the number. Mayor, if I might add, we have another work session January 11 so if Council wants to. But we would just need some direction between now and January 11. Would you like us to answer any questions would you like us to make any revisions would you like us to go out to the public. Any questions we'd be looking for. Yeah, in my mind, a fair thing is to give direction right and save the questions for when we're narrowing, but right now to give kind of quite. I think the questions are what's going to take the most time but we don't even have it down to where it's questionable there's so many questions I agree, and so it's, I think. Again, I think five minutes is enough time to give kind of direction and submit questions as follow ups etc once we see another draft or however you want to do that but again I just need a time frame, so that we can, before we get into it that we can manage I mean, I would just ask my colleagues can we just just try to give our first responses we need to go on beyond, you know, the first round. I suspect we will. But, you know, what's it hurt to we're taking how many minutes to decide how many minutes we're going to take you know, let me just make some comments. It doesn't have to be everything you ever say. I would just let's let's take around see how far we get. Is that agreeable. So we'll start with that and then we'll go around again if we need to. So, that's fair. So, customer required. Thank you I'm mostly going to provide direction I do have a couple of questions and I'm going to go in order of the presentation. So regarding the prison provision which is currently in the draft ordinance it shall not be a violation of this ordinance to deny the opposite sex access to facilities inside a public accommodation segregated on the basis of sex for privacy such as restroom shower facilities locker rooms dressing rooms or any other similar facility. I do not support including that provision in the ordinance. Those types of facilities which are traditionally sex segregated. Those are the sites of some of the most intense discrimination that LGBTQ individuals face and also people who aren't LGBTQ but just have an appearance that's not doesn't conform to gender stereotypes. The question, which remains open to me and you don't need to respond to this is, is whether we should just omit that provision, or whether we should actively and positively state that restrooms locker rooms shower facilities dressing rooms are covered by this ordinance and that discrimination in those areas is is included in this ordinance, and that that I think is something that we, I would like to hear my colleagues opinion on regarding bash vouchers, I am supportive of passing an ordinance that eliminates a source of income discrimination for veterans. I wonder if it wouldn't work better as a separate ordinance, or if administratively and perhaps this is something that you can speak to administratively would it be simpler to include it in this ordinance or would it be simpler to make it its own ordinance. I think, I think it would be simpler to include it in this ordinance and Danny Shaw who is our director of community services is also agreeing with that. And I would agree with the recommendation that would be included in the fair housing section of the ordinance just to keep it all together that way it doesn't get lost for people who are looking for something like that. Okay, excellent then my recommendation is to include that in this ordinance. Regarding enforcement. I think that, although changing hearts and minds is a laudable goal. That's not really the goal of this particular ordinance I think that conciliation. The chart that you showed us where you know conciliation is perhaps attempted is perfectly fine, but I do think that there needs to be a provision for classy misdemeanor and pop prosecution and municipal court in order to, I think, accurately convey the idea that I think a lot of members of council are trying to convey which is that it's not about how you feel it's about how you behave and discrimination should be illegal. As far as administration, I thank you for coming up with this option number one it's something that I don't recall having been discussed before. Obviously, favored option three, but but seeing now option one, using a contracted firm, given that it's really unlikely that we're going to experience very many complaints. I think that that seems like like it's the best path forward so I support option one for administration and look at that three minutes and 50 seconds. Sure. Okay, so very similar direction for me. So, number one, I am absolutely against the portion of the draft ordinance that says it should not be a violation of this ordinance to deny the opposite sex access to facilities inside a public accommodation segregated on the basis of sex for properties such as restrooms shower facilities locker rooms dressing rooms or any similar facilities. For a number of reasons, it excludes trans people intersects people, gender queer people as. People who don't identify as LGBTQ, whose sexes is, you know, diagnosed by a business owner, which I don't see how that is possible anyway, you know, I feel like this is about gender, not about sex and about gender identity when you were each one of us when we decide what, what room to go in. Number two. So, and for me that is really a my opposite position to that is so strong that I would vote no to any India that includes that because I would see it as excluding trans and intersects people and people of other gender identities. Number two. I also support, including income discrimination against veterans. Obviously it's something that I've been very passionate on have brought before this council in the past. And I do support being a class misdemeanor that is decided in municipal court, and I agree. This is, you know, the point is not to try to, you know, convert people to seeing the light it's a civil rights issue is about protecting the rights of those civil rights of those people who are being discriminated against, it's not there to, you know, to, to try to change the hearts and minds of people who choose to discriminate. And also I too, like the option number one, for the administrative option as recommended by staff. I would hope that it would be a, you know, contracted firm that has experience in this area that would be part of the criteria for me. And, you know, if, if that somehow doesn't work out, then it would be, we could, you know, council could work around that, you know, versus height going through the process of hiring someone new. And if that doesn't work out, that's much more difficult to get out of. And I don't think that, or I should say I agree that, you know, the current staff does not have had the time to do that. So anyway, I'm pretty sure those are the major points of direction. And that's where I stand. Okay. So, I feel like there's a movement forward with this and I just want to kind of be clear, I disagree, I don't think the city should be in these spaces that are already covered. And so my direction would be to tailor the ordinance down to what is specific to what Denton's covered. If you understand ordinances, they should not read citing other legal briefs without those being included, which then make the document blow up. So it just needs to be simply what Denton is responsible for, and no different than when you call a hospital, they say if there's an emergency dial 911, they redirect you immediately. I think this ordinance should redirect, it should be easy to read for the lay person. My direction on the public hearings is at least two, we have plats that you have to read twice for public hearings. So I think that's, that's going to be important. But I really think this, this, you know, as a, as a person that's received the negative kind of comments based on race. I think really, this doesn't fix the facts that when I walk the square, I get the power locks hit on me, you know, because people are afraid that it doesn't fix that it doesn't fix the real life. Ahmaud Arbery issues when he's running in his neighborhood and he's gunned down. It doesn't fix the Eric Brown, the realtor in Michigan that was showing the house to Roy Thorne and his son Sammy, who then get the police called on him, it doesn't fix those things. And so that to me is a, there's larger issues from, from, from my perspective, and I think this, just the data doesn't prove it out we planos not had any issues if you want to use Plano didn't had one that we've taken on so I just think we could use our resources to serve didn't issues. Well, and so to that end, I think there should be some lighter version rolled out that just says hey let's educate if you have issues let's bolster our kind of communication let's invite more people to the table. But I think I really want to hear from staff on the public aspect of it because that's going to be huge if we're telling people to come forward and sign up. Then we're going to turn your name over to the didn't record Chronicle and put it out there, you're, it's going to, it's going to be a problem to live in didn't for you going forward, potentially, you know, and that's that's that's scary. And, and as a public entity we I don't, I don't like our chances of having a legal standing to withhold that information. And so that to me if we're inviting people to come to the front to then be, you know, put out there like, like that is in businesses in an age where people aren't going to be able to come to the front. They're not going to be able to come to the front jumping in front of cars and protesting at people's homes. I mean, that's just that's that's really scary to me to put people's address and name and information. I'd like to hear back from staff on how we're going to collect this data. What's the legal authority to subpoena or do those records? I just want to understand where that falls, right? And so that's not today, but that's just I have concerns about that. And I'm going to get closer to something that that is going to move forward. It says bonafide offers and in there about so realtors that then you get a ton of bonafide offers right now, and they're all over asking. And so now all of a sudden, just because someone didn't get a house potentially a realtor is now held accountable by the city, you know, and there's just, there's a lot of overlap in a city that I'm concerned about. And for those following on that site on page nine, I do believe nine and it's E. D. Something like that in the draft. But there's a lot of language in there that that's concerning for me just kind of going forward. And then I'll just say you're coming back in January. I'd like to hear from staff on when how long it's going to take to get that that next draft. If that's January 11, that gives me concerns because then you're rolling out, you know, just before May. And does that change everything right? And so there's just some there's some real concerns about the timing that I have. And then I can one of the other things I wanted to touch on is the the restroom component. I just think we need to again that I've heard a lot. We don't need to be in that business. We don't that's and also selfishly. I'll say it from a guy with all daughters. That's a health issue to me because I think in just to be as plain and simple as I can, someone standing up versus someone sitting up. The aim is different, right? And the success rate of that is different. If it's little boys look, whatever. It doesn't matter. I just think from a guy that's had to go in the restroom and clean up so that my daughter can sit down. I have concerns about that pragmatically. So that's my thoughts. Councilor Davis. Thank you, Mayor. I think that in the. We need to include an exception for sincerely held religious beliefs. I think that brings us in line with First Amendment jurisprudence and also the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act. I think that's the current state of the law, and we need to be very careful in this to state the law and how this ordinance intersects with it very clearly to put it on the most secure legal footing. I would also support the exception for what I'll call private areas. I think that there is from a policy perspective, I don't see a legitimate policy reason to deny someone an apartment on the basis of sexual identity or gender identity. I don't I don't see a policy reason to deny somebody a plate of tacos or a pint of beer along any of those lines. I do see that there are legitimate policy reasons to have private areas based on sex segregation. I think those policy reasons exist. I think there's plenty of room to disagree about them. But I think that most people most in tonight's agree that those policy reasons exist, and they're not based on bigotry or discrimination. I acknowledge that issues exist around that statement. But I think that there are legitimate policy reasons to maintain that segregation that have nothing to do with discrimination or bigotry. I also point out that I say that as somebody who prosecutes sex offenders as my day job. I'm not aware of any situation that has arisen because of a transgender person using a bathroom based on where they feel they ought to be able to use the bathroom. But I am aware of issues where someone's status being called out and made more public has created a safety issue for that person. And those are the safety issues that I'm mostly thinking about when I think about that aspect of this policy. I agree that we that veterans shouldn't be discriminated against based on their source of income. I think if we include that we have to be very careful in our education piece that the public understands. This is not the city of Denton saying anybody has to rent to any veteran who comes along. It is very specific to source of income. Most veterans who are renting apartments are not doing so with Vash vouchers and there still remain legitimate reasons that a landlord could deny someone an apartment. So I think we have to be very careful how we educate about that piece that people know what the law actually says and what it actually does. Let's see. I'm also in favor of the third party administration. I think that that gives the best that the community needs to have confidence and neutrality of the process. And I think that also is the best use of our tax dollars and staff time. Let's see what else I'm missing here. Yeah. I'm a little disturbed by the statement that changing hearts and minds is a laudable goal. I think changing hearts and minds is the singular long-term goal. I think that yes, Councilmember Armentur is correct that protection of people who are being discriminated against is the short-term goal. There does not exist another long-term policy goal other than ending discrimination. So to kind of relegate hearts and minds, I took some social media flak for making a comment about hearts and minds before. And the commentary I heard there was a punitive focus, not a protection focus. It was a let's go get folks focus. As someone who practices criminal law, I don't think that a Class C misdemeanor penalty has the effect that you believe that it does. I think that conciliatory process is going to be a much more valuable tool in the long run for making Denton the kind of place that we want it to be. And a criminal penalty up to $500 that's going to be extremely onerous for a municipal prosecutor to even bring to court if it ever gets to that point, I don't think it will have the effect that you believe that it will, other than being able to tell somebody I made discrimination illegal in the city of Denton. And then finally, I think that we need a robust public comment process. I think that we need to be just as open about this ordinance as we were about our waste reduction strategy, our solid waste reduction strategy, about our sustainability framework. If this is something that is a pillar of how Denton sees itself and how this city government would like Denton to be, then we need to have a robust public commentary period. Once we get the ordinance hammered out, we have some clear direction from counsel on what it's going to look like. I think the public needs to have every single opportunity possible to comment and have their say. Thank you. Councilman bet. Mr. Mayor, I'll try to follow along the at the same rapid pace as everyone else. So, let's see the directions I agree with the classes and exceptions as presented. I think most people were implicitly saying that I guess I'm explicitly saying it. I don't, I don't, I don't want us to mention public accommodations at all would be my preference. So I guess I'm moving to exclude that one. I just think we shouldn't mention at all that we if we have a policy we have a policy. I think we shouldn't invite nickel and diming and armchair quarterbacking on that one. Let's see. It doesn't sound like from staff feedback that there is a widespread veteran discrimination issue but I take staff's point that it would clean up things and, and help just consolidate it so I'm fine with the. I don't want veterans discriminated so let me make sure that that's really clear. But, you know, is there a need for it I'm not sure but if it's if it will make it clean and easy to govern with that in there great. We definitely don't want to discriminate against veteran sources of income. I am in favor of conciliation but after if that fails I think I have to just I mean, Councillor Davis is, this is an area of expertise, but there is there is. You've got to have teeth for some things for some people that that don't want to go through the process. What I think conciliation was probably going to be the, the biggest lever that we could pull, having the most impact but if that fails I think you, you can't condone. Just dance and say we don't condone this. We're, we're, this is, this is a row too far. So I'm for the class C, after the conciliation. Let's see. I eventually. I think we should get to the point where we have an FTE. I take staff's point that we would, we will have an unknown amount of material to work with and, and do and we won't be able to adequately judge right away, how many events were likely to take place. I take staff that there are at least for the near term let's try a consultation approach with an eye towards eventually identifying a full time employee. But I think that's a reasonable start as we go through the process. The public commentary one. I think we do need to have, we do need to have feedback and public commentary. I think that's, that's good. How much is appropriate. I think it's, it's appropriate to do the sort of things that we always do for all these issues. Public comment, if this is of interest and passion to them and they it's a concern. And so, I would say, sort of, we provide the standard opportunities for for public comment on on these kinds of practices so whatever that that normally is whatever kind of practices, I think it's fine. Oh, we do have a future question for the future workstation. I work in computers too much to to quick questions for the future work session. The 2012 had the religion in two categories. And I think I understood the where it was supposed to be but it wasn't both. I think that. Oh, my other my other question is, where can we insert exceptions for particular classes, must, must that be at the beginning before the entire process, or can we say, you know, everyone, I'm just going to throw a hypothetical everyone goes through conciliation regardless of exceptions. But then certain classes can can have exceptions from the class see. And, and then, I think, just because I may not have been clear, I am against the inclusion, any public accommodation because I think that it is in the ordinance because I think that public accommodation my intent is that public accommodation is just implicit in the ordinance overall we do not discriminate, and that includes public accommodations. Thank you. Council member. Yes, thank you. I'm just going to bullet point all of this my notes are all over the place and literally. I think that I want to talk about the way the privilege opportunity I'm just not for that I think that we need to have some protections in place agreement with the mayor on that particular point. I think that instead of us being very specific on on the accommodations portion of it for the restrooms I guess I'm going back to the restroom situation, like the idea of being as general generalize as possible and looking at the expectation of privacy portion of that I think that that's probably going to push us into some type of additional conversation, but that'll give us a chance to whittle down and narrow down what we need to talk about. There's a risk associated with that I'm, I'm sure. With that, with that comment there. Fair housing for the veterans. That's, that's a good thing. I appreciate the option number one for third party. I think that that is going to help us with the waving the privilege section there that I talked about earlier I think that's connected favoring the conciliation. I certainly agree with public commentary. And I guess at some point, maybe by January 11 we'll figure out what we want to do with that. And then, again, I'm just looking at for something that's going to be fairly simple to understand. You know from educational perspective, our level of understanding is communicating is not really very high, so it needs to be something that we can all kind of get behind and, and just makes make it as simple contextually as we possibly can. That's what I'll be not too much, not too many huge words. In other words, simpler. Thank you. Okay. And before you start I do want to give credit where credit's due I think your question at the end of closed session was on point so thank you for that. So, anyway. Appreciate that. All right. Well first let me just say I'm glad we're talking about this. And in addition to the fact that we're talking about protecting civil rights. There's an economic development aspect to this, you know all these other cities in Texas have addressed this and corporate America is way ahead of us on this. Just talk to Peterbilt, you know what they do internally on, you know, having their group to just avoid discrimination and for all these categories. So, to pick up the easy ones. I'm in favor of including the veterans source of income issue I think it's very good staff, very good staff input on the idea of having an outside resource, you know that's can scale us to the need. I do think we need to have public input. I do think that the fact that we're talking about protecting civil rights is paramount, but then also think that hearts and changes in hearts and minds can follow from behavior. And the fact that the possibility of a fine can bring people together and have them communicate with each other can lead to just more impact than we're even, you know, shooting for initially. I have kind of two points, and I'm not 100% clear on how to achieve it. I would not want it to be interpreted overly interpreted such that you cannot have separate facilities by gender for locker rooms, etc. For purposes of privacy, but I think it is very Denton. I know it's very hard for people to get there but I think it is very Denton to say, you just don't hassle people. I think that's really what we're trying to get to is don't hassle people, and certainly don't harm people, you know, verbally or physically. So, so whatever achieves, making it clear that we're not saying you can't have separate facilities but that I wouldn't. We do want to have it be the norm that you just don't hassle people so I, so I wouldn't exclude that as was presented here. And then on the point of sincerely held religious belief. First of all, I'll just say my own sincerely held belief is that, you know, you shouldn't do to others, what you wouldn't want done to you. I know I'm going away on a limb here, but you know I wouldn't want to be discriminated against. And, and so I think that, you know, is really what we're trying to achieve but I know that there is jurisprudence around the issue of sincerely held religious belief and I'd just like to understand what the kind of court precedents are like what I think matters, but I think what if the law is clear on that, I think that matters too. So I would like to, you know, just hear what the law is regarding that based on, you know, court presidents. Michael chronic deputy city attorney. You're correct the Supreme Court has carved out. I'm gonna say carved out they recognize an exception in the Constitution for religious organizations. There's a law that says that that isn't only typically what you consider traditional religious organizations like churches. Excuse me. That includes individuals, as well as businesses. So I think if you. The problem with the audience is if you leave it out and don't mention it is a covered or isn't it. I think if you if you, if you leave it out and don't mention an exclusion. The courts are going to apply that. Excuse me. I'm sorry. The courts, whether you leave it in or leave it out, the exclusion is going to apply. I think that's helpful for me and the general public to understand. Thank you. Okay. All right. So that's everyone. Councilmember armatures back in queue. Are there your thoughts? I mean, are there others that have additional stuff to add? We can, you know, just quickly add those things. So let's just go around. If you want to jump back in, that's great. So I'll break out the hook at three minutes, but you have flexibility there. Miss city manager, can we right at the end of this, can we just make sure what we're hearing so we can make sure what we're taking to work on? Because I wrote a lot down, but I want to make sure what we're hearing. Well, and I think it may be better to give you and staff time to huddle up, you know, and send something out if that's okay. I mean, that way, at least you don't get, you know, you can all compare notes and reconcile. It's like the referees at a football game now huddle up and then and then. Okay, great. Yes, sir. Yeah, I was some reason I was just nervous and I don't know why I've done this a lot. One thing I would like to say, and I didn't make it clear, the Supreme Court in their cases have recognized that for certain types of anti-discrimination laws, there are exceptions for religion. For example, under Title VII, where churches can only, they lawfully can only hire people who have the same faith. They can only ordain people if they want to that have the same faith. So there's exceptions for anti-discrimination and employment, for example. There's anti-discrimination provisions in businesses making a cake. You know, it's against my religious beliefs to make a cake for a same-sex marriage. There's religious exceptions for housing. If you're a Catholic organization, there's little nuances in there, but you can only provide housing for people of the same faith. Those type of exceptions apply for religious organizations, but I think it's important to note that religious organizations are still subject to the other discrimination laws. They can't discriminate based on race, national origin, disability, age. But the Supreme Court, because it's in the First Amendment, it's the very first one, so people always say that's how important it is, it's the first one, religion. So whether you leave the, if you want to put a specific exclusion in the ordinance or you don't even mention it, if someone, a religious organization or I believe an individual business is given a citation, whether it's excluded or included in the ordinance, when they go to municipal court, I believe that the judge is going to say, you have that exception and I'm not going to fine you. So whether you put it in or put it out, it doesn't mean that someone isn't going to be able to raise that exception. And under the current law, and as you know, law changes almost every day, one other thing I just made a note, too, that occurred to me, pandemic. You saw a lot of states trying to impose laws about religious organizations and being able to have prayer and everything. And the Supreme Court said, you can't do that. It was a California case and they said, you can put restrictions, but you can limit the attendance to 25% of what normal is. But then they even said, well, but you can prohibit singing and other things because of the spit and all that. So the bottom line is, yes, the courts currently recognize exemptions for religion. And whether or not you want to put that in the ordinance or not is certainly up to you. My only concern, if you leave something out, as Mac had mentioned, as a lawyer, if it's out, did you leave it out intentionally? Is it is it you intended to exclude it? One of the main things is we want people, whoever might be subject to this ordinance, they want to know, am I covered or not? What's prohibited? What's not? And that's that's kind of the risk in leaving something out. I've always recommended that you be more specific and not more ambiguous. Thank you. Thank you. Catherine Archer, you have just to touch on that point briefly. I don't support including the language, language about individually held religious beliefs. I would support just as a statement, you know, maybe to the effect of nothing in this ordinance is intended to contradict federal law or whatever, whatever the proper legal language would be. So, but, you know, if I think that we're just getting kind of too specific and in ways that could be misinterpreted beyond even that Supreme Court decision when we're talking about individually held religious beliefs, because this is an ordinance. You know, that's about public accommodations and and housing and employment. It's not about individuals and regulating individuals. It's about protecting individuals and protecting classes of people, but not regulating individuals. So and then finally, I just wanted to say in case it wasn't clear in my previous comments that I don't want any mention of bathrooms or any other kinds of specific accommodations included. We don't mention any other category of public accommodation space. And so, you know, there's, there's no reason to. So again, I feel very strongly. Not only should we not exclude bathrooms, but we shouldn't even mention by the way this includes bathrooms and changing rooms and restrooms and because then there are all these other places that we're not listing. So anyway, Councilor Davis. Thank you, Mayor, I'll be really brief request for the lawyers if y'all could please brief us on the Texas Religious Restoration and Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act and specifically injunctive relief, not having to show actual harm just a threat of harm. And if you could brief us just a little bit more on the sincerely held religious beliefs issue that's kind of bubbled up as a little bit, a little bit of a point of contention that I think we needed some more guidance on. And if you could also provide us with perhaps some sample sample complaints of the type the city prosecutor would have to bring and when I mean complaints I don't mean the complaints that people would bring from the public. I mean, in my cases I prosecute under an indictment. A and B misdemeanors are complaint and information, and then class C's are brought with a citation and complaint is the document the charging instrument that the prosecutor would have to prove to a hypothetical jury for a charge to stick and I think that might help some folks understand what I mean. When I say I don't know that a class C does what you think that it does. Okay, I do want to say a couple of things. I do want to say this. We think I've heard a lot, and I agree. It's about protecting individuals. Well a group of individuals that I think we need to protect, and that's what a detail comes in, is the 100 1800 city staff members we have that if we don't have the detail are going to be answering questions that they can't answer right I think that is the key to the detail is they need it so that when an angry or uneducated or a happy but confused citizen comes in, they have explicit detail they they don't have to say I don't know. We got to talk to counsel and we're not readily available at a moment's notice so we have to give that staff that specific detail so that they can execute, they can educate the public. They can answer questions succinctly, and I think that's a critical component. It's not about the Supreme Court as much we're not going to go in front of the Supreme Court with, but the city, the city of Denton residents are going to come to city staff they're going to call City Hall and they're going to need this information. We have a duty to arm them with that information. And I'll just say from from a, from a conciliatory standpoint, I think there has to be some kind of mandatory clause that the individual reach out to the business, or the property owner. Example, I went to a local store here in Denton, and they had greeting cards up there, and the greeting cards one of them said, you know, whatever the language blah blah blah, or you'll make me blush. Now, I don't blush. And if I do you'd never know. And so, I could then blindly come to the city's City Hall and say hey, that business is discriminating against people of color, you know, so I think you have to understand the the entire context and just kind of, we have to have, we can't have it where citizens can blindside a property owner, just by coming directly to the city without at least reaching out we can only work as hard as they're willing to work and so I think that's that's important to note, and I think there also needs to be protection for the for the taxpayer if we're going to pay 30 to $50,000 whatever that number is, and we hire an attorney and it turns out those those facts are wrong. As we as the taxpayer, you can't, we can't pay outside attorneys to sue local businesses with taxpayer it just it really does get difficult. And so I think that's important to me that want to see those details how we manage that. And just ultimately the reason I have concerns is because the ordinance, for all the reasons listed first member rights etc etc won't apply to everyone so it becomes divisive in nature generally, I understand the value of it but it's got to be very narrowly tailored because if you don't, you're dividing, you know it's just an example I'll close with is what if we only sent the utility bills to some people, that'd be a problem. Anyone else. Seeing none. Great. Thank you very much great great presentation great great discussion. Yes, so dinner is here but I want to the covert 19 update shouldn't take too long and then we have the one minute pitch, and then we can go into will take a longer break and then come back and finish the last four things. So I'll call that ID 212429 receiver porthole discussion give staff direction regarding an update to the city of Denton covert 19 response. Mayor and Council Ryan Adams customer service and public affairs, let me pull my presentation. Excellent. So thank you Council. Again this is just a brief update on the covert 19 pandemic that we present every week and have done so for quite some time the last year and a half. As you recall at our last meeting on November 2 we did present a an update in the work session, providing statistics on the transmission of covert 19 and gave an update on the 16th order of Council, we will do the same today. We will also ask for preliminary direction from the Council and anticipation Council considering a new order related to mask requirements on November 16 which is next week. So again with the covert 19 situational update, it is very much the same as what's been permitted presented in the last couple of weeks, cases and hospitalizations continue to decline. Every age group continues to decline and I will show you a few of the graphs are available at Denton County dot gov. And as a reminder, the FDA has approved mix and match boosters for Pfizer Moderna and Johnson and Johnson those are being administered in the state of Texas and by Denton County public health. The FDA, since we last presented has approved emergency use of the Pfizer vaccine for ages 5 to 11 so children may now receive the Pfizer vaccine. And the Denton County public health has opened their portal portal for scheduling and registration. And again the same graph we've shown in previous presentations just illustrating the amount of cases and how they are on the, they are on the decline. Our daily hospital capacity a little bit better than what was presented last week still a number of ICU beds are taken, but rather than say three weeks ago when we had one or two available ICU beds we now have 10. And I think one of the more important grass we've been showing you over the last couple weeks are the percentage of total inpatient beds that are taken by covid cases. And as you can see it for about 18 straight days. We have seen that continue to drop below the 15% threshold. So that's a seven day moving average of the percentage of total beds and then counting being lower than 15%. So one thing that was brought up at the last meeting which I did want to follow up on today was the county's transmission level, and how that relates to mask guidelines as pushed out by the CDC. Right now Denton County is listed as being in a substantial transmission level, so not a high but a substantial transmission level. And what it would take to get down to a moderate transmission level where the CDC would no longer recommend indoor masking or universal masks is that we would have to have less than 50 new cases per 100,000 people in the past seven days. So that would essentially need to have where you see we currently are at about 700 so that would need to be closer to 400. And additionally, we would need to have a positivity rate of less than 8% in the past seven days, which we do have. But of course, the CDC needs both, you can't just have one you need both. So, as a quick reminder, we are under the 16th order of council which was adopted on October 26, and that extends the masking requirements through November 30 2021. Our communication efforts a few times already, but what we would like direction on today is we're going to bring back a draft 17th order for council to consider next week which would extend the mask requirements to a specified date. That's the discussion we see we received today. Next week is our last opportunity to extend those requirements beyond November 30, when they current order of council does expire so next week you will have the, the option to consider extending those requirements past November 30 to a specified date, modifying those requirements. Again you can make them perhaps only specific to city facilities and or you can take no action and allow the order to expire after November 30 and what we would like today is to make sure we receive as much direction as we can so that we bring forward a draft that reflects the will of the council next week. I'm happy to answer any questions that Council may have and appreciate your time. Councilmember bar. Thank you. I'm going to provide direction but first I want to bring up an issue that I think I brought up at the last work session that we are continuing to get these complaints from North Lakes rec center specifically. I don't have any complaints from DNA or for MLK it's just at North Lakes rec center. Individuals complaining that they are being required to wear a mask during high intensity exercise, which tells me that someone on staff at North Lakes rec center is not following our guidance, our guidance was that for high intensity exercises. Should be moved outside or canceled, not that they should be held and people should be required to wear masks. So I would love it if if you know if Gary packin is listening if you could follow up with with your staff and make sure that North Lake specifically that they understand what our guidance says. Brian, let me, let me, because, well, Councilmember I think you're a little off. And here's why you weren't here but staff can maybe send you the, the link to that meeting you got to understand North Lakes is a very very active recreation center when it comes to the exercise facility, and they were very vocal when we were looking at cost of cost of services and that was in threat of being removed so you're not seeing response from citizens that are not being told what to do. You're hearing response from an active community that is in disagreement with this council, it has nothing to do with staff it has everything to do with us, and the decisions we make in their response to those and I think they're entitled to those but I do not I think you're off to say lay it at the feet of staff, you're free to disagree. And I think it would help though if you watch that the other proceedings around when we were looking at cost of services agreements and that sort of thing. I think that's the beauty of that group, and how passionate they are about one, and I'll go the other way. They're passionate about the staff to work there they are buddies, and they probably miss hanging out with their friends in the gym, it is just a close bond I'll be first to tell you I was trying to close it and got a ton of emails like hey don't you dare close my gym. And so it's it's just they're passionate and they enjoy their time with staff they interact, whatever it is that that's what you're seeing, it has nothing to do with staff, everything to do with the citizens, allow me to amend my statement. Someone, I don't know who is telling the users of North Lakes rec center that they should wear masks during high intensity exercise, which is counter to the recommendation that this council made. I don't know I don't know where the communication breakdown is happening but the but people who who are attending classes at North Lakes rec center seem to be under the impression that they have to wear masks while they're exercising. Gary's here from parks and recreation he can hopefully clear. Hi Gary pack and director parks and recreation. We are constructing participants, if they can't go outside and participate if it's raining if it was too hot. Or if it's going to be too cold. If they want to have class inside you have to wear a mask at that point it's up to them if they want to participate or not. And we did the same thing with our athletic programs that we refunded people if they did not want to participate. If you didn't want to participate it was under that those rules that you had to have a mask. Okay, so so it's not class classes aren't being canceled. We've canceled some because of low attendance that type of thing but for the most part if you didn't want to participate. It was your option not to participate but you had to have a mask. Okay. We tried moving as much as we could outside. But that's how we've been operating. Okay. Okay. I think then that the communication breakdown has been perhaps between the intent of council and the language that we use to communicate that intent. Because my, my understanding, and I perhaps I was incorrect, was that the, the, the direction we provided was, if it can't be moved outside, then it should be canceled. But that's perhaps not what was that what was conveyed to you and your staff. I mean we could certainly go back and look and make sure that we're clear if there's other direction from city council. Do you want to go back over what I mean we what we heard what we documented. So, so I'm actually if it's okay I'm going to read the order. And so what the order states is that any fitness classes where the wearing of masks by all participants cannot be achieved will be relocated outdoors or canceled so in those cases where the participants can all wear a mask, we have been alive, it sounds like we've been aligned that to happen for the order. Okay, all right. Um, I guess I'm just puzzled then at why so many people are choosing to stay and wear a mask but then complaining about it instead of leaving if they don't want to wear a mask but that sounds, I suppose like an individual issue. So, okay, to move on to my, my direction. I would like for staff to prepare a new order with the same language as the current order to be voted on on the 16th, I'm going to keep my fingers crossed that I can vote no to it but I think that that we need to have the opportunity to vote on it. Thanks. Councilman back. Thank you. And just to cover the previous point first, my recollection is we said exercise masking, and there's no the guidance from the CDC is, there's no problems with exercise masking, people don't like it. I go to North Leagues where I can exercise. I don't like it but I wear it. Anyway, so that is, I mean I hate to refute, Councillor McGuire but that is my recollection is that we just said exercise mask, if, and everything else stipulated from what you just read. I actually agree that we should prepare a continuation. I hope that I do have a question before I finish this. Is there. If we go into moderate is there an opportunity to have a special session that we could, we could cancel the emergency order. And in our calendar is there an opportunity I mean I know we can always count a call an emergency one. But if conditions don't merit on next Tuesday, but they do merit subsequent after that I don't have a problem. We said follow the CDC guidance if the CDC got sees blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If the CDC guidance drops below the threshold and I don't have a problem calling a special session to get rid of the mask ordinance, because we've been saying follow the CDC guidance all along. So that is, that is, before I quite finish my direction we have an option there. I always call ask for an emergency meeting if I can get two other people or three other people but I just have to follow the processes so says mayor can call a meeting, city manager call meeting emergency meetings have been called and push it we've done before on COVID related items so any of those avenues are available to council if they wanted to meet after the 16th but before it expires. Then my, my direction is to to continue along, because I don't think there's going to be sufficient change by next Tuesday, but I'm really hopeful not knock would that there is a, there's change after that. Mayor Proctor Meltzer. Yeah, I would just say anyway you can tighten up the timelines I don't know why we're like do we always have to make it a month at a time. Yeah, we're following a moving target that, thank goodness is moving in a good direction. Hope it continues. I would just say, you know, if we can, however comfortable we are in shortening the timeline, so that, you know, if it's practical to go week to week I would do week to week I don't know if that's practical or not. So what I can say council members that we can do no more than the end of December because that is the extent for our declaration disaster, and we would have to consider that again in December for extension. And I'll just remind that we do have a gap of two meetings at the end of this month due to the Thanksgiving holiday so the earliest we could consider this after November 16 adoption would be December I believe seventh. Second, points well taken it but I would just say within, within those constraints, whatever the minimum is so that because it's a, you know, hopefully increasingly rapidly changing favorable environment, you know, we can hope there's nothing unforeseen that changes that trajectory. Councilor armature. You know, metrics, move us into the moderate category, then we should absolutely meet and reconsider, but I think we just steer the course until then. And we react to the data that we get you know instead of trying to predict we've held out so far, and I think we can keep doing it. My direction is no. I mean, this helped me understand the numbers. So if you go to your slide that shows the days below 15% my notes say October 18 is the last date it was at 15% that 16 business days 22 calendar days since then, roughly and continues to drop the school district I looked at it continues to drop, and that was before vaccination and now they're back to say vaccinations available by my notes. It's been 10 days since Halloween, when everyone was out and about presumably collecting candy that sort of thing interacting and the numbers continue to drop since then if that that trend continues. And so for me, this is just inexcusable I mean to say that we're following the CDC guidelines is one thing. Well we meet one of the parameters already and then I couple that with the fact that Dr Richardson from the county said he uses a local approach, and with specificity that the CDC does not use so CDC says look at local guidelines local guidelines say we use a level of specificity that they don't use. And none of this, I mean, I guess I'm missing the data set that you gave me on the effect of masking. So the mask ordinance went into place when that was back in August, I believe when that was approved, and what is the data set that you can provide me that says, since that one place in August, it's dropped precipitously it's changed it's ebbed and flowed based on the sense we implement implemented that we're speaking you're speaking to number of cases. Yeah, yeah, anything, any data associated with the mask being effective, since when, since around August since August, so show me what data is specifically tied to masking and then we would have to pull that together. But you say it exists. We would have to, we, we, we get all our data from didn't county public health. So that would take an inquiry didn't county public health to see if they have that data available. Yes, then that's my ask that if you could bring back the data that says from August when we implemented the mask mandate to current how that has the masking in didn't know has affected the precipitous drop in cases, I'd appreciate that. But, Mayor, if I can say I will be able to provide is just the case drop since that time. I don't know that the county will have any other information that would relate to our order. Right, it wouldn't, it would not be specific to the city of Denton, the information they have is specific to the county. Right, and I understand that and it's not going to be conclusive we don't have any data that's that's really my. That's my point will we talk about data we asked for data for all our other decisions but somehow in this decision. We don't ask for data, and we're okay, just so my numbers, and so I'll conclude with this. My numbers based on the website say that the state school has two cases to then my my my note says this, the children that do not have access to vaccines right that at the time 152 cases in the entire school district, entire school district is 200 square miles, 200 square miles divided by 152 cases is point seven six cases per square mile. Then you look at the last seven days, so last seven days, there's been 95 cases in the ISD divide that by 200 square miles, irrespective of where the school is located just the entire ISD that's point 48 cases per square mile of the ISD. So, I think, to hold the citizens of Denton hostage, because five people on this council think it's it's prudent is very discouraging my apologies to city staff my apologies to the citizens of Denton, but if you want to be heard. I received emails, and they need to redirect those emails to try to change some hearts. The people that have the five people that hold this mandate in place at our last vote, not to say now but just to the last vote there's five people that said hey this has to be in place. Staffs only executing what they have to do. And my apologies. So there's unlimited and what we can, we just don't have a recourse until we can get something. Either by charter, or there's other means. Anyone else before Councilman armature speaks again. Councilman Burke. Yes, thank you for the opportunity. We just have a debate about this, this thing here, we have some people that are absolutely concerned. There's some people whose families have passed away suddenly behind this situation. It's a matter of care, I think that the folks out there in didn't land would appreciate that there's some people here that care about their well being that's what we're here for is for the well being of our citizens and our local society. And if we are really going to look at this we just need to be mindful that this is just more than just a notion, this is something that we want to make sure that we're doing our very best. And I think that if I am going to be one of the ones that say let's just go ahead and push it out to December, until we finish the declaration of the and that's my stance I don't want to feel like I don't want to think that I am being. You know disrespectful to the prospects. I think that we should stand on our word. I think that if I did do make that notation I don't want anybody to come through here and make it make me seem like I've made the wrong decision. That's not what I would want to think that's happening here. So we each one of us have our reasons. My reason is that I care about people. And we're losing people we're still losing people behind this may not be somebody that's next to me but it may be somebody that know somebody that know somebody that I know. So, I want to be careful about that. My opinion, and my thoughts is that we should at least extended through November. That's where I am with that, and I'm gonna leave that right there. Thank you. Do you mean December. I'm sorry December. Yes, and then that's it. I'm done with that conversation. Okay, very good. Thank you very much. Thank you counsel. Yep. So last item ID 211763 received porthole discussion give staff direction on pending City Council requests. Good evening mayor city council super birds I assistant to the city manager. I am here for our two minute pitch request. Just by way of review. We will review up to seven requests per week. Today we have one, the requesting city council member will have two minutes to present their request, and then the remaining council members will have one minute to respond and indicate support for the request staff will act on any requests where a consensus of Council is established. Excuse me, in giving the one minute response, the city council is discussed at the retreat has the opportunity to state whether they see it as a high moderate or low priority item. This will assist staff and the agenda committee and scheduling these for execution. Tonight, as I mentioned we have one. It is from council member armature and it is for a proposed council resolution to DC ta from no bus cuts didn't council member armatures request is there up top, and the information that she provided from no bus cuts didn't was provided in your backup as well. The staff information indicates a number of staff hours that we anticipate it will take in that, because of the timing for this as requested by council member armature, we would push to get this on the November 16 agenda. With that, stop sharing my screen. And I believe the clock is ready and council member. I'm here today to represent no bus cuts dentin workers plan for public transportation, which they and I are asking council to endorse to the dentist new DC ta board rep can propose the plan at DC ta board of directors meeting on December 2. Three components keep cancel and include number one, keep all dentin bus routes. Number two cancel the via contract three include the community in a new participatory process to decide the future of public transportation in dentin council can choose to cancel the via contract, the board of directors all are some of their three components I'm advocating for all three of them. The first and third or self explanatory keeping the bus routes and including public input in the board's process before not after board decisions are made at for the second canceling the via contract, you will notice that it comes with no set timeline, and is not against supplementing bus service with micro transit. And I believe it's partnership with this particular corporation at some unspecified point transitioning as appropriate. There's a lot of flexibility in there including continuation of micro transit, but the fact remains that that the via contract and the public's trust and vias relationship with DC ta have been irreparably tainted by the appearance of conflicts of interest, and by vias abysmal not to mention unregulated and unchecked safety track record in just the first few months on the ground. Okay. All right. I'll just say, I don't support this for one simple reason we talked about it just a minute ago we don't have any data we've received no updates from our current DC ta rep, and no data to support such a direction from it, they had a meeting there's there's no updated data so there's nothing to act upon, other than and especially when you're talking about a interested party so it's if interested parties requesting something and there's no no data provided to then gauge that I just can't make a decision based on an independent party's direction without any guidance and I will point out that I also have a concern that if it cost more of reforms any loss of revenue for DC a DC ta that loses dollars for our trip grants for sidewalks, etc. I don't agree with that. Councilmember wire. Thank you. I agree with many of the points in this proposal, especially the transit and dentin must include fixed routes in order to meet the needs of the community. As a changing fleet that will likely bring bus shortages soon DC ta isn't currently equipped to provide the level of service the community needs without using contractors. Although I share organizers concerns about via and goes on, canceling the contract now would remove a valuable stopgap DC ta needs to maintain service and collect data, while working to improve capacity. I agree with that after addressing staffing shortages and other obstacles DC ta will eventually be in a position to consider alternatives to the via contract, but we're not in that position now. My colleagues on the DC ta board have already received a resolution stating that this council in the community we represent want fixed routes to continue. Although I agree that the via contract needs scrutiny scrutiny and I'm open to considering alternatives in the future. I'm not willing to commit to ending the via contract until viable alternatives are on the table. And for that reason I do not support moving forward with this resolution at this time. Councilor Davis. Thank you mayor, the council considered a resolution this summer that was also painstakingly drafted by the mobility committee, it was hardly debated by this council, it was transmitted to the DC ta and stated well the council's concerns were. So much so that the council then saw fit to use that resolution to not renew the term of our DC ta representative relying on that resolution. There's not a need at this time to replace the expression of council's concerns and expression of direction is councilmember Armand, excuse me, councilmember McGuire just stated, there's not a need now to restate different values and different viewpoints. I'll ask you with some of the conclusory statements made in the press release for no bus cuts Denton without evidence without statements of support or any kind of supporting information, calling it discriminatory or dangerous. I'd like to see their evidence. Councilor. Yeah, our resolution already in place is all still entirely relevant, it captures my sentiments. We needed it at the time because there's a change in what direction, the council favored versus the direction that had been being pursued up to that time. So, the change in direction has happened. And I'd say, you know, keep flying by the existing resolution. Councilman back in spirit I agree with a lot of the goals of the proposal but no, you know, we already have a resolution in place. We need to collect data we need to give it a fair run. I don't support removing fixed routes but at this time we we need to figure out how and what the appropriate ratio of multimodal was which was the resolution to this council passed. So, I can't support this resolution right now until we've gathered more data and and explored more options. Convert. I cannot support this resolution at this particular time because we are still working underneath the other result resolution, but I will say that I am very very suspicious of privatizing something that is for public benefit. I appreciate the opportunity for us to have a DCTA as a public system that we need. I think that we need to gather up information to enhance what we have. So, but the resolution is there. And, and I agree with keeping it the way that it is. Thank you. So, that concludes our work session. Let's take a break till 640 come back and finish out the last four things. On the evening. Thank you. And welcome back it is 647pm we are back for after break. Thank you very much. And so we are to the consent agenda portion of our agenda we do have one citizen that called in earlier that wants to that we may have had. That couldn't get through so I'm going to take chairs discretion and open the floor for Miss ever Greco to speak for four minutes then we'll, I'll take a motion and we'll vote. But, Miss Greco. Thank you, Mayor. Sure. Eva Greco 802 West Oak Street Department five Denton, Texas. And I apologize I know this is out of the ordinary I've been trying to call. I've been watching since two o'clock, and I couldn't get through to anybody to make my comments so when you went on break to want some clothes and I ran down here real quick. So, so I thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to quick items. The comprehensive solid weight solid waste management strategy. I'd like to, first of all, thank all counsel that asked questions because I wrote questions down. And every one of the questions were answered. The big concern as a citizen is whatever the bottom line is. We're going to end up paying for it. You know, and as a tenant. You know my rent just went up again. You know, everything prices are going up and it's not fair to us. I don't know it's just very very frustrating it's very disheartening on being from New Jersey. We're very big with the recycling. I'm used to recycling. I have my little bag I put all my recycling in. But when I take it outside. There was a dumpster. You know, so you you can as much as I do it in my apartment, you can't do it outside. It's to do it in this whole town. And remember, thousands of our residents are temporary residents. Speaking of the college students, you know, to be able to monitor this. It's just going to be very costly. It's a good idea. But the bottom line is it's going to be very costly for the citizens. And myself being one of them. Second item is the DCTA. What was spoken about right before break. May you you said there was no data received. There has been data put out there, not from DCTA maybe. But then again, when this was first proposed by DCTA. And I was one of the citizens coming to the meetings. And telling you about false information DCTA is presenting. And certain individuals, this was just their primary thing. It was a total disregard for the citizens to bring in this vehicle zone. I have a vehicle now, but I always took the bus. Very inconvenient. I don't remember the date. I didn't bring those notes with me. Because this was last minute. But at a May 2021 council meeting, Raymond Suarez from DCTA spoke. About how he's been with DCTA for so long. And in the last ten years, he has seen no improvement on the public transportation. Which I wasn't at the meeting. I was watching it. But that led me to so many questions. Well, what are you doing with the millions of dollars that the city of Denton is giving you every year? You've been working at DCTA. He got promoted, I'll just use that word, to CEO with a $450,000 annual salary increase. But yet nothing is going to our public transportation. So this is all the things that really need to be looked into. The citizens of this town need to be heard, listened when they speak. Because many of us have spoken numerous times about bottom line, these back room deals. That are made by these executives. That's your time, though. And that hurts us. Thank you for this time. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen. Great. So we're through the consent agenda. Only item F was pulled. I'll take a motion. But for item F. Councilmember Betz. I motion approval of the consent minus item F. Councilmember Guar. I second. Any discussion? We have a motion by Councilmember Beck. Second by Councilmember McGuire. Let's vote on the screen. That passes. 7-0. Item F is ID 212479. Consider adoption of ordinance of the city of Denton, Texas. A Home Rule Municipal Corporation authorizing the city manager to execute a change order. Number one, to the owner construction manager agreement with THOS. Is that right? S. Brian Inc. For renovation of police headquarters and construction of the new police substation. Councilmember Davis. Move approval. Councilmember Beck. Second. Any discussion? Seeing none. Let's vote on the screen. That passes 6-1. That concludes our consent agenda. And takes us to item for individual consideration. And I'll call that that's ID 211751. Consider adoption of ordinance of the city of Denton. Determining the public use need and necessity for the acquisition of various free fee tracks. Temporary construction easements and utility easements generally located along Hickory Creek Road. From River Pass Drive to FM 1830 situated in the J Rogers Survey abstract 1084. Good evening Mayor and Council. Deanna Cody, Deputy Director of Development Services, Real Estate. This evening we're here to discuss the Hickory Creek Road from River Pass to 1830. And acquisitions that will be needed to support the delivery of that project. In February of 2019, ordinance 19351 awarded a contract to HDR Engineering for the design of the Hickory Creek Road expansion. Oh, I'm sorry. There we go. Thank you. In February 2019, ordinance 19351 awarded a contract to HDR Engineering for the design of the Hickory Creek Road expansion. That included a four lane realignment from River Pass to FM 1830 and a bridge across Hickory Creek. The contract also awarded the negotiations and acquisition of property interest to HDR for the rights of way that are needed and the utility easements and temporary construction easements that are needed to support the project. This evening staff is recommending approval of the item and upon approval, HDR will make all offers required by law and those offers will be based on an independent appraisal. Of course, there's the initial and the final offers that are also required by state law. This item also authorizes eminent domain if the consultants are unable to reach agreement on the purchase price. At that point, the city attorney's office will file an eminent domain petition. A special commissioners hearing will be held to establish the value of the properties and the city will compensate the landowners in accordance with state law. We do have representatives from both capital projects from capital projects here if there are any questions regarding the project itself. And upon the reading of a favorable motion and a second. I'll begin displaying the legal descriptions for each property interests that are needed for the project. Now there are 79 pages of the PDF, but I will scroll through them and identify each parcel as we move forward. Okay, thank you. Questions for staff Councilman armature. Let's see. Oh, was there more to the presentation? No. Okay. No, you're gonna go through this. Okay. Yeah. So questions just. So is this for the this is for the bridge and repairs. Safety repairs to the area and the road and their expansion of the road as well. It is expanding from a two lane to a four lane road. And there's an existing 90 degree curve that has caused some safety concerns. And so that's going to be also addressed. Yeah. So, you know, I'll just state, you know, on this one, I'm really torn because I am I am so strongly in support of the fixing of that 90 degree turn, which is very dangerous. And the work on the bridge, but I'm very wary about the expansion, expansion of that road. So, but just to qualify about exactly what we're voting on, this is just about it's not voting on eminent domain, right? It's saying we're going to go through these different phases and the eminent domain is a possibility. You'll be voting on authorizing the initiation of the project, which includes acquisition. And if if they're unable to reach an agreement on a purchase price, it does also authorize the implementation of eminent domain. And so for that, that that turn that fatal turn does in desperate need of repair is does that particular part of the project require a right of way? And if so, how many? So parcels, I'm not sure I understood your question fully, but there are 11 parcels that are being required. And on those 11 parcels, some of them have a combination of right of way acquisition and easements, both permanent and temporary easements that are associated with it. So, and sorry for the unclear question. I was asking kind of specifically for the specifically for that turn, which is just a portion of the area. How many parcels of land is that require? Let me see. I'll go back to the project to the presentation. Just one second. And I will scroll back to the map because I think you may be able to see from that. And so I've got dusty here so that if he wants to come up and clarify it all, he'll be able to help with that. But let me move this down. So the 90 degree turn. That's being cleared. Hello, Dustin Draper, Project Manager for Capital Projects. The 90 degree turn that you're talking about. Actually, all the parcels actually relate to it, to be honest with you, because where you have to cross over, the only way to take it out is to straighten it. There's no other way you can do it. If you build a bridge over the crossing where you'd have to cross the creek to make the creek crossing straight, you have to start the bridge farther back. So technically all the parcels are required underneath it. If you had to choke it down at all, so to speak. You wouldn't have a bridge that you couldn't start your bridge in the floodplain and let it out. So that's the only way you can build a bridge. That's the only way you can build a bridge has a start. So actually all 11 parcels actually do. Are part of what it takes to take the 90 degree bend out because you're you're not just building a bridge over the creek. You want to sustain something that last and addresses all the safety concerns, which is what you have to do to build a bridge this long. If there's a solution that did not involve expanding the road to four lanes, and it would still that portion that we still need that much portion because all this area that is right in here as you're seeing in your map when you get below the tracks right here. This is a road tracks. All this area is technically in a floodplain. You ideally wouldn't say you couldn't start a bridge right here. It would purposely, it would defeat the purpose of having the bridge because you wouldn't be able to access it once it rained. Because it's the safety issue of the 90 record plus the fact that this road has many numbers times flooding. Any other questions that makes sense. Thank you so much. Okay. Thank you. Soon other questions Councilmember Warren. Thank you. I move that the city of Denton after having made the offers required by state law. The power of eminent domain if needed to acquire various fee tracks, temporary construction easements, and a utility easement generally located along Hickory Creek Road between River Pass Drive and FM 1830 and being situated in the Jay Rogers survey abstracts 1084 and Rogers survey abstracts 1079 and 1080 Jay withers survey abstract 1343 and Jay Schultz survey abstract 1223, all in the city of Denton Denton County, Texas, and more particularly described an exhibit a to the ordinance now under consideration and on the screen to be displayed to the audience, all of which are for a valid public use necessary to construct a four lane extension and realignment of Hickory Creek Road from River Pass Drive to FM 1830 to serve the public and citizens of the city of Denton. Okay, customer Davis. Yeah, what she said, I mean, I think it's a very good question. I think it's a very good question. Thank you. Okay. Okay. So starting with parcel one. These are surveys that you're seeing here. Parcel two. And parcel to parcel four. Parcel five. And parcel seven. Parcel eight. And parcel nine. And parcel 11 is the final parcel. And parcel 11 is the final parcel. And parcel seven zero. Thank you. Thank you, staff takes us to item a of the individual considerations ID 212467 consider approval resolution of city of Denton stating no objection to the primrose at Sequoia Park LP 4% housing tax credit application. The Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs for proposed acquisition and really rehabilitation of primrose at Sequoia Park Apartments in Denton, Texas. Thank you, Mayor and Council Danny Shaw Community Services. Tonight we have two requests from this developer. The developer representatives are on the call. If there are questions, I'll take us through this. We're going to be asking the developer representatives to provide the information on the housing tax credit program. As a reminder, this is administered by the state of Texas. There are two types of programs. The 4% and the 9%. This is a request for the 4% program. The program ranks in the 9% but in the 4% this resolution request is a minimum threshold document required for them to seek these housing tax credits. Council did approve this policy and application in June. We're going to be asking the developer representatives to provide the information on this policy and application in May of 2018. Just as a quick reminder, this is not the development agreement. This is only for funding for the housing tax credit project. The development process will go through with development services later. This is just for acquisition and renovation of existing affordable housing. It's one of the first times we've seen this here in recent years. The developer is proposing 250 units for the senior living for this first request. This is the location. This is the Sequoia Park area. And then it's location and proximity to other affordable and other multifamily properties. Just as a quick view just what's going on around it. It is on 22 acres. It's currently R7 but again these are existing projects. It's meeting the existing zoning. And at this time the developer expects to be paying property taxes and will stay on the tax roll for this project. And it is income restricted. All the units will be at 60% as you can see the unit mix here. And again as a reminder, this extends the affordability on this existing affordable housing for another 30 years so retaining affordable for additional 30 years. So with that, council has three options to recommend a resolution of no objection to not recommend the resolution, or if you have additional questions would like to postpone for those questions to be answered, we can postpone later for further consideration. So I'll take this one down and then take any questions. Thank you. Questions for staff. Seeing none, Mayor Proctor Meltzer. Yes, great project and makes it a lot easier that they'll be paying taxes. I move that we recommend a resolution of no objection. Councilor Armitage? I second that. Okay, we have a motion approved by Mayor Proctor Meltzer, second by Councilor Armitage. Any other discussion? Seeing none, let's vote on the screen. That passes 7-0 takes us to item B which is ID 212468. Consider approval of a resolution of the City of Denton stating no objection to the Rosemont and Pecan Creek LP 4% housing tax credit application to Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs for proposed acquisition and rehabilitation of Rosemont at Pecan Creek Apartments in Denton, Texas. Thank you, Mayor. Again, this is the same developer, but we're looking at a different property. I won't go through the background again, but the Rosemont at Pecan Creek, same developer with the same portfolio of property management supportive services planned. This one is located at 3500 East McKinney. It is an existing property as well. Same kind of map view of where this one is located in relation to other multifamily in the community. This is a 21 acre project, same R7, same tax status proposed for this project. And again, it's existing property, so we're looking at extending the affordability on the existing project with this acquisition and renovation. Same project demographics as well for income. It is for families at 60% of AMIs, the expected rents. So same options. And with that, I'll take it down. And any questions? Okay. Any questions for staff? Seeing none, Mayor Proctor Meltzer? Yes, and I support for the same reasons. I move approval of a resolution of no objection. Thank you, Councilman Burt. I second. Okay. Have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Before we vote, I do want to open the floor for you afterwards. Danny, if you want to share news, I think that'd be awesome. I just want to open the floor for you. You don't have to, but just know that you're more than welcome after this. So have a motion and a second. Motion by Mayor Proctor Meltzer, second by Councilman Burt. Let's vote on the screen. That passes 7-0. Thank you, Mayor, for the opportunity to share. And your well-timed dinner break allowed me to watch my daughter and her Hebron band win state this tonight, so. Yeah, that's good. Very exciting for our household. Thank you. That's outstanding. Thank you all. Good. Good. That is fantastic. Okay. That takes us to our last item, which is C, which is ID 212140. Consider adoption of the ordinance of the City of Denton, authorizing the city manager to enter into a development agreement between the City of Denton and BJH Johnson Properties LTD. Don't see the PowerPoint. There it is. Okay, there we go. I'm here to share with you a project that our Parks and Recreation team have been working on. Actually, since 2017, we had a neighborhood meeting on a possible park in this neighborhood. We've looked at a number of parcels over the past few years, and this one specifically has been an ongoing discussion. And we've done a lot of work on this. From a general location, this is on the south side of Audra, between Audra Lane and Luke 288, just west of 288. You can see here from an aerial map, it's an additional location just west of Luke 288, as I mentioned. If chosen, instead of the land dedication, a fee in lieu of land would be approximately $7,600. The land dedication that's actually being provided is $5.19, so the developer is exceeding the land required. There are a number of easements that are going through the property as well, so that does have some restriction. Just jumping back, the developer, while providing the additional acreage, is also paying the park development fees and also providing the fee in lieu of land. So not only is he providing more land required, but he's also paying the additional rate for the fee in lieu of, so that will go towards that future project development. You can see the parcel itself is a little awkward-shaped, but it's in the middle of a new neighborhood to the west and to the existing neighborhood to the east. And then there'll be a connection on the south side as well once that road is built. From a 10-minute walk perspective, this is a major opportunity for us. You can see in the deep purple color, that's a high area of concern with our 10-minute walk. The actual polygon is not showing the connection down here because there's a new road that's going to be added to that, so it'll actually be a little over 1,600 new residents providing access to a park. It will increase our score from 48.1% to 49.3%, so that's in the positive direction as well. And as I mentioned, there'll be additional residents that'll have access to that park coming from the south going to the north. With that, I'll take this down and be available for any questions. Questions for staff? Councilman Beck? I'm going to lightly tease Gary. You couldn't get us that 0.7% to get us to 50%. We're working on that. That's just an automatic calculation from the trust of the public. Any other questions or I'll take a motion? Councilmember Armitage? I move approval. Councilmember Beck? Second. Motion by Councilmember Armitage, second by Councilmember Beck. Any other discussion? Seeing none, let's vote on the screen. And that passes 7-0, takes us to concluding items. Thank you, Gary. Thank you. Any concluding items? Councilmember McGuire? Thank you, Mayor. As I'm sure y'all know, Thursday is Veterans Day, so I just want to say thank you for your service to all the veterans in our community. Also, this coming Thursday, for District 4 residents or residents of the area, since it's pretty close to District 1 as well, there will be a meeting Thursday evening at 6 o'clock at the Wildwood Inn at 2602 Lillian Miller. To discuss the Wildwood Inn's forthcoming proposal to change their zoning. So if you are interested in zoning issues around Southridge and surrounding areas, then you should consider attending that. So I appreciate your service. Yes, on this Thursday, the 11th, 6 p.m., Martin Luther King Center, I will be, along with some other community citizens, we'll be having a conversation about the streets, the streets upgrades that are coming into the Southeast Dent area. And not only the neighborhood of what we know as Southeast Dent, but the whole southern part and eastern part of Denton's downtown area is going to be touched in some kind of way, in two phases. So we are asking you, if you live anywhere over in that area, in the southern part of the downtown area, in the eastern part of the downtown area, you all should come and hear the city of Denton have those conversations about upgrading the streets in that area. Also, at the same meeting, Mr. Randy Hunt, he's a gentleman here, a historical gentleman that is interested in historical things. We are going to talk with the citizen, have a conversation about something called sign toppers. And so he and I, and I'm sure a number of other folks, are very interested in maintaining neighborhoods. There's a big concern about our neighborhoods, so we think this might be helpful to some of us that are settled in our neighborhoods, the ones who live in homes and own their homes, for sure. We want to have that conversation as well, so we are inviting all of Denton to come in, for sure, make sure you hear that conversation there, because it's going to be very interesting to see how we are really, really trying to keep ourselves as good neighbors. So I think this might be helpful. Thank you. I'll look forward to seeing you. Thank you. Mayor Brinton Meltzer. Thank you. Thank you, veterans. Go to Councilmember Byrd's meeting. Monday the 15th, I'll be doing Facebook Live Town Hall. You can find it at Paul Meltzer Denton City Council on Facebook. It's just, let's talk again. I'll update on City Council priorities, kind of where things stand, just to kind of kick us off the way I think of what you want to ask me, and then I'll just take your questions. Thanks. Okay, great. So, again, yes, please check. There's lots of veterans events going on so please look at those and attend as many as you can. I want to say also, it's a fun event so Friday UNT is having their homecoming bonfire. If you're in the fire like me, that's always great, but they're having a march and then they have a fire there and then the game's at 3pm this Saturday. And then I'm kicking off the Red Kettle for Salvation Army. There's an event at Golden Triangle Mall tomorrow for that so if you're able to attend, I think it starts at 1030. Then Kiwanis is celebrating their 100th anniversary this week so I want to recognize them. And then, for those that are into it, at Strickland, there's a play, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I'm biased, my daughter's going to be in that so hey Alice, she's one of the, she's an awesome narrator so she's going to be in that, that's Friday and Saturday, I do believe at two o'clock, the play starts, and then last, no, next to last, Texas Oncology is having a 5k on, I think that's, my days get away from me, I think that's Friday. Maybe Saturday morning but look up Texas Oncology, they're having a 5k fundraiser and forgive me for that, I didn't make that note. And then, lastly, there's a car show this Friday, I do believe, no, Saturday, Saturday, car show, North Texas Fair, Fairgrounds are having a car show there and thanks to Bubba, his nickname, Bubba Speedbump Turner, you know, he has a great voice, he sings around town, does a lot of stuff, but he's a great guy. Anyway, he's been on me about speed bumps in his neighborhood, and, but he's having a car show at North Texas Fairgrounds so if you're into cars, that sort of thing, then please, I think that's 11 to five or something is a sweet spot to get there, but look that up. So, other than that, anyone else, any other thing, anything else we missed. Okay, then I'll conclude the night's meeting at 722pm. Thank you.