Jan 04, 2022 City Council on 2022-01-04 2:00 PM

good afternoon and welcome to this meeting of the City Council it is and happy new year it is Tuesday January 4th 2022 it is 2 o 2 p.m. and we do have a quorum in a hybrid format but I will call this meeting to order and the first let's see first thing is our citizen comments if we have any today no mayor not today for consent great thank you and then that takes us to questions for staff on the consent agenda any questions for staff consent agenda items come from back thank you mr. mayor just a confusion on consent be the the nominations looking at the table it's my understanding reading reading information on the table that mr. Allison nominated or volunteered for the position but there was no council or mayor nominating that person is that correct our city secretary should be able to answer that question all right vaguely I have my microphone on it's better thank you so it's actually under the the process the city auditor is actually recommending and what we should have done was we should have indicated council so as per the resolution that established a committee you had asked that the city auditor recommend the individuals to be appointed to this committee right okay that was that was part of my confusion thank you so so the recommendation would be for us as a body to to recommend or not just as a simple body yes okay okay and and then I just have a comment on N this is the HIP funds this is more just generally to staff so maybe I can just direct it at Sarah a city manager rather and say that I love love love the rubrics they're a huge improvement to what we were doing before my only concern with the rubrics is that I hope we have in our development process a chain I don't mean development services I mean the use of rubrics a chain of auditing or eventually looking back at the efficacy of the rubrics because it's easy enough for especially those of us who've been teachers or otherwise used rubrics know that it's easy enough to put our our thumbs on the scale of any given rubric to make it slide around one direction or another so just as a comment I would encourage us to evaluate the efficacy of these rubrics in regards to positive outcomes and and not really that's not really a specific comment about this particular item but I do encourage that because I realized after six seven eight months of looking at the rubrics there they're very powerful but I have no clue what what's a what's the value of 50 versus a 48 on some of these rubrics so that would be not that's not fair to myself or the rubric but it is it is more challenging to look at that fine grain so I hope that we're gonna go back and look at that and I apologize for that long comment point will take and thank you any other questions mayor for Tim Meltzer yes sir thank you regarding item K because it's not in the bidding process or anything like that there it wasn't obvious to me what the context might be that would help us see that this is a reasonable and appropriate fee just for placing the insurance coverage and not even for the coverage itself I wonder if you know staff would want to provide comment now or you know your if it would be helpful to pull it so we could have that addressed in the evening session I'm our mayor pro tem this is Debbie Skowinski risk and compliance the the background for this particular fee is that in 2020 when the RFP went out for brokerage services the deck property was not listed among the properties that the broker would be responsible for placing coverage for and because just generally power generation plants are very specialized they're very complex they cannot be placed using the typical processes that we use that you would see normally with our property you know commercial property insurances and such so locked in our broker is fantastic but our local team is not able to provide that specialized service placement in those global energy markets so they leverage leverage their public power sector that does have relationships in those global markets to best position as negotiate on our behalf and so forth to be able to provide that coverage for a power generating plant if the the property had been listed as part of the properties in the RFP then it this fee would normally have been rolled into their overall service fee unfortunately when that RFP went out in 2020 it was not included so we negotiated the fee separately for the deck property insurance but does it fall within a certain relationship to the amount of the overall coverage it's just a very big number you know for I mean on the face of it for just brokerage not for any actual coverage so you know what is there a guideline I mean how do you what's that tells you this is a great number this is that the fee that legal procurement and risk was able to negotiate with locked in for the placement of this very very specialized coverage that this is locked in speed for the placement of that insurance coverage okay any other questions seeing none great thank you so for the record nothing was pulled takes us to our work session and I'll call the first item which is work session item a ID 2 1 2 4 2 3 receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding the parks recreation and trail system master plan mayor city council Gary pack and director of parks and recreation happy new year happy new year today is a combination of approximately three years of work that staff the community and our consultant team half an associates have been working on to provide an update on the status of our parks recreation and trail system master plan thank you to all those community members and staff members that have helped us through this process half an associates is going to go through a brief PowerPoint presentation then we'll be available for questions and comments we did provide an ISR earlier in December for additional information and we've provided a number of exhibits for your review as well so at the conclusion of the PowerPoint will stand for questions and comments I'll be providing the logistics on the PowerPoint and and half an associates will be working through that so let me bring up the PowerPoint okay it's point in time I'll turn it over to Lenny and Lenny Hughes and Kendall Howard from half of associates good afternoon mayor city council again my name is Lenny Hughes the director of planning of half associates and today we're gonna be a presentation on the didn't parks recreation trails mash plan the overall mash plan purpose is to build upon previous planning efforts to provide a parks recreation trust mash plan based on citizen engagement and city initiatives this will be a guiding document for the next 10 years this will look at improving the existing system as well as expanding the existing system to meet growing needs we will also look at a detailed implementation action plan to provide guidance for a cost expenses for parts and recreation development for the future the mash plan process we're on a final stage right now we began this project back in January of 2021 the first step was to look at community understanding so we're here we looked at reviewing consistent data plans and inventory of the city's parks and trail system step two was a confirmed the community vision this looks like confirming the vision and goals of the previous planning efforts by the city as well as taking additional input since we've begun this planning effort item three looks at the overall needs assessment now looks at the park conditions assessment level of service for what we have right now currently as well as for the future step four looks at the park recreation system here we look at development recommendations and more of a detailed items for cost estimates and as well as overall implementation step five was the draft plan where we had significant meetings with the staff as well as the park board to go over implementation action plan as well as overall review of the draft report so here we are today to look at the overall plan in the beginning process of plan adoption plan approval and plan publishing here so look at some engagement efforts again as Gary said before this effort started in 2019 2020 the city held a significant amount of public meetings there were five public meetings that were held and there was also a significant amount of stakeholder engagement where there were 35 meetings held with the different cycle groups throughout the community as well as an online community survey since COVID came into an error and do the to the plan it kept things on on hold and so in 2021 we want to make sure that the information that that was gathered over on the previous years was still current or what is some of the changing thoughts and opinions of the citizens and so in 2021 we would develop a extensive planning process to gather additional input this included a mash plan focus group meetings where there were three there were also interdepartmental staff meetings throughout the process as well as meetings with elected appointed officials and their briefings there there were two our virtual public meetings as well as an overall abbreviated community survey so some of the key takeaways from an outdoor recreational standpoint there was a lot of input received on the the want or desire for public restrooms and facilities nature trails as well as aquatics and outdoor swimming facilities here for the community other key takeaways for indoor amenities included cardio fitness rooms exercise studios weightlifting areas indoor play structure as well as an indoor track other key takeaways from the assessment there is a deficit in part that acreage for neighborhood parks and community parks only 48% of residents are within a 10-minute walk to a park here within and then there's also a need and desire for amenities for new amenities as to meet the growth of the city as a for for future development there's also a great demand for trails aquatic facilities playgrounds playgrounds as well as a need for open space and trees because we have there's a lot of significant natural and cultural resources here within the community we also wanted to build upon the partnerships this includes the school district also the universities here and make sure that we are increasing those partnerships as we look at additional areas to include for park and recreational space here also natural features how can they be utilized to help increase the amount of open space and trail corridors here within been dinner so looking at the park system metric review here we looked at what the city is has currently right now within the city as far as the overall recreational amenities as well as national bit benchmarks so looking at the 10-minute walk park metric currently there's about 48% of residents are and have access to a park within 10 minute area the national benchmarks about 55% and so if we look at this comparison between the what the city has as offering as a national we are below the national standard the city's long-term goal is to be have this residence within 100% of access to a 10-minute walk within their within their community acres of Parkland per a thousand residents currently the city has but eight point one five acres per thousand now this does not include the the nature preserve the national benchmark is about eight point nine acres per thousand here we're still slightly below the the national average the city's long-term goal is to have reached about 17.5 acres per thousand residents now we look at residents per playground here we're about 5200 residents per playground the national average if we compare that is about 4800 per residents per playground here we are slightly below that here we wanted to look at an overall goal of about five thousand residents per playground here now if you think about residents per part currently we're about 2,300 residents per part the national average about 3,100 as in residents per part we are above that we want to still see if we can increase that so right now we're looking at 2,500 residents per part for the community in miles of trails there's about 61 miles of trails here within Denton the national average is 25.5 here we are way above that but we want to make sure that we are a city of trails and provide additional connectivity and access and so our long-term goal is to have roughly about 200 miles of trails here within the community then lastly we look at indoor recreational facilities and for residents per square foot there's about 1.07 square foot per resident for indoor rec facilities the national average about 1.25 square foot per resident we are slightly below that and we want to make sure that we are on par with the nation as far as providing recreational services for for the community so at this point like to give them to Kendall Howard to go through the report outline thank you and good afternoon mayor and council members so the draft plan the draft parks master plan as it stands today is a total of nine chapters and so that includes a significant amount of background chapters related to the needs assessment that that Lenny discussed as well as all of the engagement that we've heard through this process and then chapters four through eight really serve as the the core functional elements of the plan so focusing on existing conditions and recommendations for the different elements of the park system so that includes parks and open space indoor recreation and aquatics trails programs and services and maintenance and then the final chapter includes the overall implementation plan to guide city actions moving forward there are also several appendices with additional information that are that are being finalized so in terms of the implementation structure this is the framework that we're using for the implementation plan and so there are a total of six overall goals and these represent overall broad statements that reflect the desired end state for the plan and these goals were developed with input from staff committees the public and elected and appointed officials so then underneath each of the six goals are a series of objectives so these are more specific strategies to help advance the goals and so we'll review those here in the next several slides and then the most specific component of the implementation plan are the specific actions so these there are over 100 total actions that are identified in the draft master plan and that can be tracked over time and the recommendations included in the plan are to the extent possible aligned with other current planning efforts such as the Denton 2040 plan the mobility plan ADA transition plan and other city-wide planning efforts so the first goal is focused on creating a complete park system so you can see that the goal is to create a complete equitable and easily accessible park system for current and future residents as well as visitors so the objectives that are associated with this goal are related to increasing the amount of parkland to meet some of those benchmarks that that when he discussed and really to keep up with the the population growth as Denton continues to grow other objectives is related to increasing the amount of residents that are within a 10-minute walk to a park currently you know it is around 48% and so the goal here is to increase to 70% by the year 2040 and then it also talks about accessibility both to parks and then also within parks and facilities and so within goal number one there are total of 16 total actions goal two is focused on the amenities within the park system so the the goal statement is to incorporate quality and cost-effective park system amenities that are responsive to community needs and desires so the objectives associated with this goal are related to improving and enhancing the existing outdoor and indoor amenities but then also incorporating additional amenities that don't exist today so looking at current trends as well as needs and desires from that we learned through this process through the needs assessment and community input also objectives related to introducing new technology and making strategic system-wide improvements throughout the parks and recreation system and this is really kind of the bulkiest of the goals there are 30 total actions under this goal number two goal number three is related to programming and events the statement is enhance the diverse program and event offerings to cater to varying ages abilities and interests of the communities so the objectives related to this goal relate to continuing to offer and expand events and festivals within parks continuing to evaluate offerings of different programs especially as demands and trends and even demographics of the community change and how that impacts what sort of programs to to provide and then also looking at utilizing the the park system to help drive economic development throughout throughout the city and there are 18 total actions under this goal number three goal four is focused on system connectivity so connecting key destinations throughout the community through a comprehensive system of trails and bikeways so looking at expanding the existing trail system so really looking at you know looking at what didn't have today with those 61 or so miles and looking to fill in strategic gaps to provide a more connected system and also to connect to surrounding communities as well to provide a more regional system and it also looks at different types of trails so looking at opportunities for paddling trails and equestrian trails mountain biking trails more than just your standard off-street paved trails and then also looks at incorporating design standards to to guide future trail developments and there are 14 total actions under the system connectivity goal well five is sustainability and the statement is to integrate sustainable practices and acquiring designing constructing maintaining and operating facilities and amenities in the park system and so there are there's one objective and quite a few actions related to supporting the preservation of dens urban forest so there's a lot of coordination between this plan and the urban forestry master plan another objective focuses on preserving the natural areas and wildlife habitat within the system so this was definitely something we heard a lot through the public engagement was that citizens wanted to preserve trees and natural areas and be able to to interact with those areas through the park system and then also looking at opportunities to maintain the park system in an environmentally friendly manner so there are 12 total actions under goal number five and then the final goal is maintenance and operations so this statement is to provide for systematic maintenance and efficient operations to ensure quality and safety today and in the future so the objectives related to this goal really dive into looking at providing stable funding sources for the continued development and maintenance and operations of the system looking at procedures to ensure that the the department is continued to be maintained in an effective manner and then actions related to looking at growing staffing concurrent with the amount of acreage and facilities that are included within the park system and so there are 18 total actions under this goal number six so that's kind of a high-level overview of the the goals and objectives there was an attachment included in or an exhibit included in the packet that had the overall implementation action plans so that included a list of all those hundred plus actions as well so these next couple sides show more graphically some of the overall recommendations as it relates to parks recreation and trails and so this first map or this first slide looks at existing park land on the left and then opportunities for future park opportunities on the right so based on the expected population growth by the year 2040 it's recommended to acquire an additional approximately 18 or 1850 acres of parkland to to meet the city's goal of parkland per thousand now this number has changed slightly from what was originally included in the packet and that's because we were just able to incorporate an updated 2040 population number that is consistent with the didn't 2040 comprehensive plan and that number is just under two hundred and thirty thousand population for the year 2040 this map also shows in the orange colors the ETJ areas so it's you know looking at opportunities to acquire land for parkland in these future growth areas it's certainly better to do that in the near term instead of waiting until those areas develop and then it's more cost prohibitive to acquire land the map also shows in the yellow areas some of the major planned master communities such as hunter and coal ranch and where those expected parks are supposed to go associated with those large developments and then the light green areas are areas of the of the city today that currently aren't served by by a park within a 10-minute walk so these are priority areas within the more developed parts of the community to look at opportunities for strategic either strategic partnerships or acquisitions for including parkland in those areas this next slide shows the existing recreation centers within the city as well as areas that are not served currently in our priority areas for including some sort of indoor component in the future and so there was a 2019 indoor recreation study that was that was completed and based on that analysis and all of the the needs assessment done associated with that it was recommended to construct over 300,000 square feet by the year 2040 in order to to meet the the targeted benchmarks associated with the expected population growth so you can see that those major areas that are highlighted on the map on the right are areas to the north southeast and southwest so these are closely associated with the major growth areas of Ditten so as those areas continue to grow there will there will be needs in the future for indoor recreation components in those parts of the city and then the final component here is focused on trails so again the map on the left shows the existing trail system about 60 miles and then the map on the right shows the future trail system opportunities so those lightish orange lines represent the proposed trails which make up over 200 miles of trails by the year 2040 and so this includes a multitude of different types of trails including parks and trails internal to parks trails that are located along Creek or drainage channels trails within easements side paths so these are trails that are located adjacent to roadways and then special use trails like equestrian and mountain biking and on-street bikeways are not shown as part of this map because those are being addressed as part of the mobility plan that is currently underway but the trail bikeways are definitely a key component of the overall trail system as well so then of the 100 plus actions that are included in the overall implementation plan as part of this master plan we have identified top ten priority actions which are listed here so these are meant to be ones that should be implemented in the near term or initiated in the near term due to their overall importance and having a high priority needs list can help identify overall needs and then it's also very important to help with being able to secure funding through organizations like the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department for for grant funds and so I'll just touch quickly on these so the top ten priority actions are related to acquiring that additional 1800 acres or so to meet the targeted global service continuing to review and update the parkland dedication ordinance implementing accessibility improvements that were identified in the ADA transition plan within parks and facilities incorporating all-inclusive playgrounds throughout the community develop a plan so Denton can be more of a competitor in the the regional sports tourism market promote nature and cultural tourism to celebrate the unique natural habitats within the community design and construct construct additional miles of trail implement the goals objectives and actions that are identified in the urban forestry master plan update and maintain a CIP and CMP for the department and then develop and implement a parking facility evaluation process to assure that high maintenance standards are continued and so a lot of these actions there have has been a lot of work that city staff has has done towards working towards achieving these actions already but these are definitely the the top ten priorities for for all of the actions within the overall master plan so in terms of next steps we definitely want to incorporate any any final thoughts or comments into into the final master plan and then I think Gary will talk a little bit about the timeline for potential adoption in the coming month or so with that thank you for the opportunity to share the progress that we've made thank you and Gary anything to add before questions or comments yeah just to reiterate now a lot of community input has been attained over the past few years we've been fairly aggressive in trying to make sure that we try to reach out to everybody as possible and try to incorporate as much of that input as well as other plans and the city's doing to make sure they're incorporated into our document as well everything that's provided for you is obviously a recommendation looking for feedback from City Council to see if we're on the right path if we need to make any adjustments we'll update that accordingly and then in the very near future we'll provide you a final document for you to review and adopt so we can start moving forward towards the implementation stages of the plan so with that we do have staff and our consultants available for questions great thank you thank you mr. mayor Gary Kendall any you guys have clearly put a lot of work into this it's it's a it's all these action items 100 plus action items it's just a clear a lot of work I appreciate all that you guys have put in and a couple questions for for goal to the especially in the affordability aspect one of the things that I've been asked by by citizens is you know what for for particular price points for particular levels of density of park or levels of trail or or style of playground or whatever I mean we're picking kind of what we can afford or kind of what we have land available that we can buy but it's one of the things I think would help just as a I don't know how easy it would be to do but I'll just throw it out is if we could have some sort of you know there was less service how much would you save if there was more service how much would it cost to the extent that you can sort of give the citizens a feel for you know if we really just wanted you know if the sky was the limit and we just wanted this amazing playground which you know I think we can all agree is probably unfeasible but you know what would that cost us and you know where are we on sort of the curves of these these cost benefits would be one before the future in terms of like helping people understand why you've ended up at the the numbers particularly on the charts of you know densities of residents per playground and number of parks and things like that I think that would that would go to help them understand why why you end up there is that is that something that would be prohibitive or something that maybe you could address no fantastic question so we are looking at things from a multitude of angles NRPA which the National Recreation and Park Association and Trust for Public Land set some of those standards for us in regards to how we move forward and look at our performance measures so for example the 10-minute walk is a something that's set by NRPA and the Trust for Public Lands the the amount of playgrounds is look at is looked at nationwide as an average across all departments and then it's broken into nine different categories whether it's regionally in the country population type of government so there's numerous ways to look at that so what we've done is we've looked at the population that we currently sit in of a hundred thousand two hundred fifty thousand people and eventually we're going to be greater than two hundred fifty thousand so we also have that on the horizon to see how we were going to eventually fall into those standards and then look at our competing cities across the metroplex and across the country that that we measure ourselves against and up against so there's a number of ways that we look at to help set those standards by all means we are open for discussion on those we cannot be the best at everything right so the definite key aspect of that is you know what do we want to be the best at and what's it going to cost us and how long how long is gonna take us to get there so we've identified a number of measuring sticks that have really shown up a lot in our 2040 plan the mobility plan such as trails tree canopy accessibility land acquisition and preservation those high topic items that have been talked about numerous numerously throughout the community and use those as kind of our starting point so we are definitely available to adjust that as needed obviously there's a price for everything and then every resident once as much as they can get in the park that's closest to them so that's the other balance is is providing you know unique experiences across the city with the idea and the concept that we can't have it in every single part yeah that I think this was more in terms of a marketing and understanding of the citizens than asking you to change your sweet spot you know where you've ended up I don't you know there's a lot of work in there and this was just more of a can we help the citizens understand what led you to be at a particular sweet spot my last two questions the sort of piggyback off that one and that that that top issue and I think it was like number one or two was the land acquisition one and I noticed on slide 15 the 2040 projection maps those conflict areas where we have a gap in coverage you know they they're often our gateways and you know we for the last you know almost year we've been passing items about these particular regions that you know say on the on the north gateway you know we're not really adding opportunities for you Gary I apologize for that there's land there but we tend to we tend to be more taking it in terms of logistics and whatnot so towards that that kind of idea where you have a conflict between the on the ground development and your needs to expand the acreage it seems to me like the sore spots are still going to be sore spots and I was curious if if you could without maybe showing the cards in your hands to future developers address how we might address some of those those sore spots and then I have one more question real short one on native species so yes we we have as many cards as we can in our hand and play them at the right time so we've been working diligently with our development community to try to acquire land in those strategic places when we have those opportunities that might be able to get that through the parkland dedication development process or just straight out what outright acquisition and purchase so we do have a number of ways that we look at that and we are looking at it and we've been focused on our core city at this time now we're starting to evolve out towards the outer rim as development is starting to occur out there and then as mentioned earlier and on the map the ETJ is we need to keep that on the horizon as well and then the last question I had is relates to that in the top ten that number eight for the urban forestry master plan and it goes to the goal I believe it was five sustainability I know that there's opportunities for us to use and I know that you work with sustainability you know really really closely drew especially trying to use you know native species and you know reduce water costs and maintenance costs in general and and I wonder to what now this is particularly for the parks but do you have particular needs in in the the the planting catalogs that we use for development that would that would help ignore parks master planning and urban forestry master planning that we should sort of implement broadly across development in Denton to to make everyone's lives sort of more sustainable and easier I can take that one Gary thank you councilmember back drew up an assistant director of parks so with that our development team as you know they do a great job of staying on top of developers and meeting with developers most developers that we see we typically work with their landscape architects on some of our own projects so they understand what we really like and what we want in the city of Denton some of these developers you know we've sat down especially before the pandemic I mean we had almost a day with a developer just to go through all the different plannings and sustainability of what his project and their project was gonna be in the future to look at all those and so they really understand and it's a it's a mindset change where typically we've always liked to put in very colorful annuals that we change it out twice a year and you know our bushes that we get from all over all over the world that now we have issues with because they've come you know they they overtake our native plants and they become invasive so that mindset is starting to change and to where they really understand that we want those native species we want those native trees we have the list forum they all have our phone numbers and email contacts and we sit down and talk with them quite a bit and and then to furthermore into the sustainability we're constantly looking at new things you know we we brought in some robots you know last year to show you on how we're using robots and electric vehicles I know some council members got to drive some of our electric mowers and then we're we're looking at solar shades those are really big on the on the West Coast right now and they're moving this way so how can we you know shade is a big thing in this master plan so how can we not only get shade but get power at the same time and so some of that technology isn't quite here in North Texas yet it is you know across the world so we're trying it's a little difficult especially with a pandemic to work with a vendor that's you know across the you know across the globe or across the country to actually come here and want to show us you know obviously if we want to spend that amount of money on it we want to be able to touch it and use it so all right thank you so much hope they answer your questions councilman Burton hello everyone it's good to be back happy holidays Merry Christmas happy new year to everyone I've got a couple of questions here about parks in HOA does the city connect with the developers for HOA's and how they is the standard for those little pocket parks I guess that's what I'm thinking of how does that work so as part of the our new kind of integration with the development community as they're being planned we're working with them to try the best we can to have them create trail connectivity to future trails that are going to be near that HOA some of the HOA's are privately owned and maintained so they may not necessarily be open to the public so we don't have general access to that some of the developments they are working with we've had access agreements so we have long-term plans for public access to those HOA's even though they may be maintained by an HOA that they have granted public access forever and then we obviously have some HOA's that we're looking to partner with to improve accessibility for the general public whether it's access to trails access to creeks for paddling trails those types of things depending on the circumstance so we do work with HOA's the best we can to improve accessibility and connectivity to our park system for it to technically count on the 10 minute walk we need to have an access agreement with them so that's why you may not see some HOA's in certain areas based on our 10 minute walk map that's just a parameter that is set up by Texas Trust for Public Lands but yes we're trying to work with the new developments as they come as well as existing HOA's to improve and enhance the park system for everybody in the community okay also because we are developing a number of apartment complexes that are coming in and so how do we connect with those apartment complexes that are putting in their little playgrounds is that included in this conversation not at the moment with those playgrounds but like Gary said that we meet with those developers for instance we have some multifamily complexes coming in over off of McKinney and Mayhill area so we have public land in that area parkland and city property to where we're using those trail connections as they're developing those multifamily homes to put trail connections into their development as they're developing now they may have a gate where only their residents can access you know into their complex and out of their complex onto the public trail and then also we're working with capital projects and developers to acquire property in those multifamily neighborhoods at the moment as they develop so we can provide them park space because we feel it's really important especially if you don't have a yard and you know you have small children or dogs or just health in general to be able to get outside and and play whether it's a playground or a trail or go and fish you know go fishing at a pond so it's it we're working with those developers on a daily basis no matter if they're building you know homes as far as houses go or multifamily so and we're working with commercial developers also now so okay that was my question also the width of sidewalks we do we have that standard set for the width of sidewalks in the future are they gonna be wider as far as our standard is concerned our standard as of right now is a minimum of 10 feet there are some instances where 10 feet may be a challenge based off topography but that's kind of what we're working with is 10 feet if we could squeeze out 12 that's fine too that does add obviously additional cost especially if it's concrete but our minimum standard is 10 feet do we have do we have the city of didn't go in and inspect park playground areas in these apartment complex developments the HOA's do we have anyone to make sure no ma'am those are those are privately owned and we do not inspect those okay privately owned playgrounds okay all right well that's it thank you Councillor McGuire thank you I outstanding work on on this proposed plan I was reading through it you know constantly I was remarking oh wow but these are the things that I would prioritize as well and your point is well taken as far as we can't be the best in everything but I love to see us setting ambitious goals for the 10 minute walk to a park and and the two aiming for 200 miles of trail I think that those are high priorities for the community and I appreciate that y'all are prioritizing that as well I'm also really glad to see the ambitious approach to parkland acquisition and I'm looking at this goal of 17 and a half acres per 1,000 residents I think that you know it's it's an ambitious goal but it's a wonderful goal and I'm glad to see us prioritizing that especially in light of how fast land is developing in this area the the revision of 25 acres down to 1,000 8 or 2,500 acres down to 1,850 acres is that representative of that goal of 17 and a half acres per 1,000 residents the 17.5 acres per resident is is the standard the the reason for the change is because the population that we had in there based on 2040 was higher so when we got the adjusted amount from cog it brought that needed a required amount of land acreage down a little bit gotcha okay thank you for that clarification but yes I'm really glad to see us taking in a per an aggressive approach there I know that we've had you know some conversations about the senior center I know that that you attended some tours with various council members of the senior center and so I was really happy to see kind of an acknowledgement although there wasn't there weren't a lot of specifics there was an acknowledgement in the draft plan that a new senior center is needed I was wondering if you could elaborate on if there are any more details you can provide as far as where we're considering locating that new senior center what kinds of funding sources we're considering sure so I think our initial discussion is our the city's facilities team is gonna be looking across all the existing buildings on the status of those buildings whether they should be renovated or rebuilt it is the first step and I believe that's gonna be taking place early in this calendar year we have looked at locations definitely there's been feedback of a close to the core the city as possible the the core obviously changes as population growth shuffles a little bit but obviously the downtown area we had purchased property on the north side of Mack Park and have had discussions over the past few years and set up as a potential location for a future senior center but that is definitely up for further input and discussion with the community we've had a few feedback meetings with our senior center advisory committee and our staff there's definitely need some more input on that from a funding source most likely that's gonna have to be a bond project just based off the general cost that I would anticipate that being part of a future capital bond project. Okay any other questions? Mayor Proctor Meltzer. Thank you I'm first of all I'm so delighted that we are talking about Parks Master Plan and one that has as everyone has commented you know so much careful thought went into it and I'll also just add I've had a chance to say to Gary privately in a couple of occasions but you know public just to acknowledge how lucky we are that our Parks Department really brings a lot of vision to you know to this whole area. You know Dan we can't get into like the super nitty-gritty because it is like a real estate issue you know and so a lot of what we can talk about is is the goals I think it's great super great that you all have identified the metrics you know that that we want to measure and I and I would observe that it's sort of hard to pick where on the metrics we're supposed to be so I'd like to just tee up a couple of thoughts that you know I don't think I like necessarily have the answers but maybe they could lead to some discussion and maybe to the answers you know the for setting where do you want to be on the measures I think they kind of would fall into three categories one is kind of competitiveness in terms of how how attractive we are as a community to live in to bring business to so this that kind of competitively attractive but then there's also a public health aspect and an environment aspect so I'm that kind of competitiveness thing I would tee up as a starting point for thought that maybe we want to be in the top quartile nationally among cities our size and maybe like can't be number one and everything but number one or two in our region on the major attributes so that if you know whether it's an individual looking for where do I want to live or a company looking for where do I want to you know locate but you know that this would lead them to see Denton as the attractive choice and then on the environmental side I don't know if there are benchmarks but maybe there are and I just don't know if we've you know asked the question that way from a sustainability point of view you know are there recommendations that you know to be sustainable you know you should have at least X acres apart per you know per capita and you know all on all those metrics others is there some sustainability guideline that we should you know target to be at least above and same same for public health I imagine for trails you know somebody out there might have you know a kind of desired ratio of trail miles if I can go on a little bit you know I wonder if somewhere in the list of priorities the 10 priorities between 1.1.1 and 4.1.1 and 5.1.2 you know can we articulate more explicitly if you think it's right and if other members think it's right the goal of establishing wildlife corridors and similarly identifying the need to reserve canopy over our major watersheds Creek Pecan Creek you know when I and kind of relatedly goal five on sustainability talks about the goal of the parks being sustainable but you know we're using parks to include just the concept of green space generally I think they serve a function of making the city sustainable it's not just the parks themselves are sustainable but that if we do preserve our canopy over watersheds you know preserve wildlife corridors we make the city as a whole more sustainable so those are my bits of input and yeah so glad to see this all right any other questions Councilor Armitage yes question about how child care fits into this plan it's a wonderful wonderful plan and by child care I mean you know both pre-k but also after school and activities on weekends especially for parents who work on the weekends and even summer camps I know that under COVID both city and private pre-k child care programs have been really hard hit but there continues to be a need for it and just just wondering you know if you could speak to I realize that that the child care falls under the recreation side you know what the what the plans are for expanding child care under this plan so in general our summer camps holiday camps are very popular obviously for much of the reasons you had just mentioned obviously from a social and development aspect for the children as well so that is definitely that we intend to continue to offer in some form or fashion from a from a camp perspective they are extremely popular and then as our system grows continue to evaluate how with the public sector is filling in those needs and whether we need to continue to provide some of those services or how we can amend our services as needed from from those aspects so that's a continued evolution of how we look at our programs and how they need to change and adapt we can't just offer the same thing all the time because obviously things change and we need to change with that so that's the continued evaluation with our facilities and how we're designing our facilities moving into the future any other questions thank you so much I'll just add to that you know please continue to keep informed also on what we can do to continue to make a child care after school and summer activities affordable for our community thank you okay any other questions seeing none thank you very much Gary thank you to the entire team for the presentation appreciate it thank you uh-huh that's thanks us to item B which is ID two two zero four it's party ID two two zero four six receive report hold a discussion give staff direction regarding an update to the city of Denton COVID-19 response thank you mayor and council Ryan Adams chief of staff let me share my presentation real quick all right council are you able to see the presentation yes you've got to make it full screen there with me perfect all right thank you so this is just our usual COVID-19 update the first one of the new year again a little bit of background we've done this a number of times before our most recent update was on December 14th at that meeting we did present a brief update along with council's consideration of a new disaster declaration and 18th order of council both of it were passed on the 14th the disaster declaration extended the extended army through March 31st and the 18th order of council extended the mask related provisions through January 31st today we're just going to give another brief COVID-19 update and we're going to discuss briefly the impact of COVID transmission on city operations so as you have probably read and heard and seen transmission and hospitalizations are increasing in County this increase began in early December after we hit a little bit of a lull in the November time period after school started and we hit that beginning of school peak over Cron is the primary variant behind this increase in transmission increase in cases it has a higher transmissibility as reported by a number of sources including that in County Public Health but the expectation is that there will be a lower death rate associated with Omicron versus Delta again so much of the impact of Omicron remains to be seen because it is still very early and cases are trending upward we don't know what the final impact will be I do want to mention that since anytime there's a rise in cases questions of testing does come up and that the county has four times per week testing available and that we do have a number of private providers who do provide tests everything from physicians to say your your pharmacy around the corner and those are listed on the county website as well a bit of an update for vaccines as we had previously reported the FDA has approved and recommended boosters for all eligible persons 16 and up some new news is that boosters are eligible for 12 through 15 ages 12 through 15 for Pfizer that was a recent announcement this week additionally as previously reported Pfizer vaccines are approved for ages 5 through 11 and boosters are approved for those who are immunocompromised so as you can see down in the graph below you do see the full extent of the pandemic and we do have a quite a bit of a rise in the most recent reporting period in terms of cases now some of that is due to Omicron some of that is also due to a little bit of a reporting lag due to the weekend and the recent New Year's Day holiday as we've reported before the available ICU beds the the number of available beds has been pretty static and continues to remain static with roughly five to ten ICU beds available and that's been that way for about two to three months since we've been reporting this the statistic additionally also see that we are going to show you the inpatient beds there so the number of hospital beds that are taken up by COVID patients and what that percentage is while we were pretty comfortably below the 15 percent mark for all of November and a good bit of December you can see that those cases have as cases have risen hospitalization has risen and we are back up above that 15 percent threshold again nowhere near where we were during the September timeframe when school started but definitely showing an increase in hospitalizations as well we have also previously provided the council where we stand in terms of CDC transmission level and mask guidelines excuse me we are still in a high transmission range so and we have increased significantly since the last time we brought this before council so at this point there does not appear to be a change in that status anytime soon and of course moving down to the moderate transmission rate would essentially alleviate the indoor masking requirements that the CDC is recommending so for Denton County and CDC still recommends indoor masking as I mentioned earlier council previously extended the disaster declaration through March 31st and issued a new 18th order of council requiring masks through January 31st of this month and as a reminder or for those who have not seen this presentation before the 18th order requires masks in all K through 12 public schools daycares certain commercial buildings and city facilities and then we will come back to just as a heads up to the council we'll come back to the council mid-January for further for direction on further continuation of the order provisions to another date certain likely the end of February so just to give a little bit of information on the impact of these transmission cases so employee cases have risen dramatically as we've shared with council via email over the holidays I believe this number that I've written here is even out of date even though I wrote it this morning so we have about 120 likely more than 120 active cases and associated exposure since December 20th and of course you know the cases are are a significant concern in and of themselves but anytime a person who has or test positive for COVID-19 creates an exposure for other employees we do have to isolate those other employees so we have as a preventative measure really re-engage with our remote working schedules any employees who can telecommute or work from home are going to do so as you can see I'm doing that right now we are still making available and using as often as we can when appropriate employing employee testing so that we can make sure that we can test people quickly determine if they are positive and then take action from there and prevent any further exposures of other employees and then we are as we have been through the whole pandemic really aggressively using our contact tracing to try to identify folks who may have been exposed to COVID-19 and and again place them in a position where they can't potentially infect others we also had some operational closures over the last few weeks the animal shelter closed down from December 27th and that actually ends at the end of today and so they will reopen tomorrow and then our recreation and library facilities closed on December 29th and will remain closed until Thursday so they are closed through tomorrow and then as a reminder to council we have opened them for uses warming stations according to our inclement weather plan and we also continued our holiday camp that's a kids camp that goes through the holidays and we kept that active because it would have been a significant burden on parents to have to adjust quickly and find child care for those can't participants we we kept that in place and continued that camp and I just wanted to show a just a a graphic if I could just to show our approach whenever we do have employee cases whether they're a positive case exposure or someone symptomatic we are following our CDC guidelines to make sure that we can give very sound advice from the CDC on what those employees need to do and so we have a standard that we put in place to make sure every employee plays by the same rules that they do what they need to do per the CDC if they come in contact with someone who has coded or if they test positive themselves so to give a little bit of coming attractions to the council you know it is a very fluid and dynamic situation we don't quite know what the final outcome with Omicron will be we don't know quite know by how much and for how long cases will increase so we are going to observe and we're going to to be watching this on a daily basis we expect that employee and county positive cases will increase just the duration and and the amount the volume we do not yet know we in addition to monitoring these cases we are going to continue our telecommuting on a kind of a to be determined basis we're gonna play that one by year and and where any employee can telecommute we're gonna ask them to do that until further notice we also expect council meetings on January 11th and the 25th to be the same hybrid format that we're using today to make sure that we can create adequate physical distancing in the council chambers and that we don't have large gatherings of staff in one place and we're going to further evaluate the postponement of board and Commission meetings we did postpone any that we could in January push those items off till February and then in mid to late January we're gonna make another assessment to see if we need to continue that any further if conditions warrant that so that is the end of my presentation I'm going to hide my screen now I'm available for any questions we also have our parks and recreation and library directors and we also have Tiffany Thompson our HR director who also available to answer questions councilmember boy thank you mayor first I want to thank staff for quickly and being proactive you know a couple of weeks ago I know that Tiffany Thompson made the call to extend the the kovat leave policy for city employees and I was really relieved that that she made that decision and was forward thinking enough to do that a few weeks before things got really bad and I'm very relieved that staff made the decision to close those those facilities that that needed to be closed I mean obviously there were staffing issues but of course it's also a good proactive measure to take to slow the spread throughout the community I was wondering if you could give us a little bit more information about employee testing procedures how do if an employee would like to get a test at work how do they go about doing that I believe Tiffany's on the line council member wire and has been working extremely hard on this with our not only with reporting but also with our fire department and making sure we have adequate tests and testing good afternoon can you hear me okay yeah excellent thank you Tiffany dog Thompson director of HR and interim assistant city manager so our process for testing our employees we work with the fire department so we have a great relationship with them they have all the testing tools for us and we have 85 people throughout the city that are certified to be able to test our employees so there's a very certain population that can conduct the test and there's a testing boxes at those respective sites for department so you can get a test done at your department and so what we're doing right now is we are trying to preserve those tests for those positions that have to be in person that don't have the option to telecommute or work off site so we can continue those positions to be able to work however if you need to come on site you have a family member that may be having symptoms we're able to test you and we've definitely made some adjustments off of those processes depending on the circumstance so with the testing ability we're able to know exactly what's going on with that employee to make that determination right there to keep them from coming into the work site you know spreading the potential virus because they're able to get that get those test results right now right now we still have a pretty good amount of supply but just like everywhere else it's it's going to start running low so we want to make sure that we are just following all those processes so that's the process but I'm happy to answer any further questions you may have okay Councilman Beck thank you Mr. Mayor so following on I'll just pick up from that point and come back to my other questions in a second but do we have any Tiffany do we have any spare capacity or our existing testing regimen and workflow is is being 100% utilized right now just the number of cases like Brian had mentioned we're back to working seven days a week answering that COVID email box there's a number of staff working on that because it isn't just the symptomatic cases positive cases but one potential exposure could result in us needing to contact 40 people and maybe needing to test 20 people so you can imagine one case right now we have about 125 we may be up to 130 cases right now so we definitely are using those resources for our employees to be able to to be able to keep them working or to know what you know what their health is at this point so I definitely would say that we're making it work but adding any more based on the volume that we're seeing right now would would be even incredibly more challenging than what the situation is but great question and and so following again like following on from that do we need to take steps or approve steps or would staff recommend us changing things to make that a more tenable situation or they're there you know I know you normally would come to us and just say look we know we need to do this you know put it on consent but is there recommendations from staff that would that would relieve strain in this these circumstances sorry I think your mic is off I think we're doing and we started this immediately unfortunately happened right there in the middle of the holidays but we having gone through this before with people like Tiffany and others we immediately started looking at how we would take care of this and started even though we didn't have a council meeting to go through it I have the authority checked with our legal assistant checked with Matt to make sure that some of the decisions we made number one to protect the integrity of the operation of the city of Denton but two and most importantly the integrity is welfare and safety of our employees and the people that we might come in contact with so we are doing I think everything we can I think you know it does when she said contact 40 people I think actually Tiffany actually had to contact with people through a situation so on that side yes it's very taxing on the other side we are taking every measure possible like shutting down the animal services center like shutting down the rec centers in the libraries only for warming centers and I have explicitly told all staff to work from home or to spread out if they can't work from home in making sure that they are safe and wearing masks short of us doing literally shutting the city down I think we're we're doing what we can do and hope that we can keep the number of staff that we have some of our staff have gone to AB shifts so they're not around each other or they've done a modified shift which we started having these meetings before we even went to a holiday break so you can bet I would be calling asking the mayor and mayor pro Tim for a special called meeting if I felt we needed to do anything else and I I trust Tiffany to ring the bell raise the flag if we need to do anything like that okay great great and I will just just as a point mentioned that you know lower virulence is great but higher transmissibility can actually result in more hospitalizations and death just from a sheer number standpoint so it's it's it's good that we're not high virulence and high transmission but it doesn't mean that I think the high transmission level is the thing that you really want to keep your eye on this is not a cold so anyway thank you any other questions air protein monster thank you mayor yeah first of all echo your appreciation for your taking action as you had to I'm a little unclear on what the concept is for how to go forward with things like the rec center rec centers and the animal shelter is the idea kind of they're closed for the foreseeable until something changes or is it governed by staff availability or is it governed by kind of COVID metrics you know in the community Brian would you like me to take that I'll go right ahead Tiffany okay I think that what we're gonna base it off of is like what we had to do at the animal shelter staff availability you know that that hit very quickly and just took out so many of the staff unfortunately we had to make a call to just to be able to deliver the critical services cleaning the kennels taking care of the animals but they're gonna be back up same thing with the park center we would just take that if something happened or we started to see a trend in a very specific operation that's why that COVID email box that everything goes through that is really critical at this time because we're able to pick up on okay we've got something going on this department we need to make a decision and I certainly know that Sarah would come to you if that's what we needed to do on shift on any of those operations at this point but we're in it we're in it we're in a good place right now with telecommuting for those positions that can and trying to reopen the those centers as quickly as possible so is it are we still then following the plan of reopening would it be Friday for the rec centers we're closed through Thursday right Thursday there's a plan so far reopen on Thursday reopen on Thursday Thursday and at this point we think the staff will be in place to do that I do but I think I will tell you this and this is why if this is a very and we use the word fluid because I love that word but I also believe this is how this is all happening I mean it just it's taken off it's turned into a situation where every time you turn around someone is testing positive and so I would tell you that today yes we're the planning to open but I will not hesitate to notify council that I have actually closed the center closed two centers put modified it and said okay now we don't have enough staff to manage all the warming centers but go down to one or two but everything we'll do everything we can to continue to serve our residents but also to make sure that we are taking care of the safety and the well-being of our staff yeah I appreciate that and there's a reason you know we have an executive function all right but do you think that it might be appropriate for us to consider in city facilities requiring n95 or k95 masks and providing them because I mean we know now that that I'm not playing doctor I'm just a guy who follows the news that vaccination doesn't prevent it from spreading and we know that those cloth masks do very little you know within the scope of what we immediately control in the interest of protecting staff do you have any thoughts about that I think we can certainly talk to our purchasing department and get some I understand where you're coming from and heard the same thing and that's why some of us choose to double mask but we can certainly have those in variable in our warehouse and give them out for centers and libraries and other sides yeah thank you all right any other questions counselor meter yeah so I do questions first I wanted to publicly thank city management and HR for your quick action between the holiday and in today on extending the covertly policy and you know returning to at home work possibilities and taking all the necessary precautions very very reassuring and I also recognize that you know doing this at a time when you know people are with their families and it is vacation time so I really really appreciate that and thank you and the public does to you two questions one and I was going to ask about the the question that mayor pro tem melter asked but n95 and kn 95 mass so I'm not going to repeat his question and I appreciated the answer to it I like the answer I will second that concern and also add on to it to say that I would like to see in the language of our ordinance a requirement for n 95 and KN 95 masks specifically again if there comes to be another variant as you said there's a sit fluid situation right I used to wear a cloth mask myself when it was okay to do so now I no longer do and for my whole family I've just taken our cloth masks put them in a drawer some variant might come in in the future where cloth masks are fine but for Omicron they are essentially youth useless according to what the the science says and the CDC so I would like to see language to that effect in our ordinance as well as as as the city manager was just saying and 95 and KN 95 masks being made available to not so much in addition to other masks to the public and employees but really instead you know I would like to see those other any other masks we have put aside not not tossed because there might be good someday for something maybe sooner than we know but really replaced with these masks in that language written into our ordinance because I feel that if we don't do that then we are giving a false sense of security you know with an ordinance that includes people to wear any mask which I think is part of why we're seeing such such great contagion because it's so contagious and you know people have this idea that and 95 and KN 95 masks are hard to access an idea which is partly based on reality and partly not based on reality there's no longer a shortage of them but you can't just necessarily go down to the corner store and get them so but we can order them in great quantities I definitely support that and if there's a need for in you know asking for additional funds I definitely support that so my second question was about the protocol the five day stay-at-home protocol for COVID positive there's I'm sure that you all are following there's you know a national conversation about will the and right now at least as of the last time I checked you know the CDC still had kind of not not changed on this but will they add their requirement of a negative test after the five days to their recommendation the last I heard they had not but you know I and other people who are just you know following the science on it it seems to be the safest bet to require a negative test so my question is will you know can we include a requirement for negative test after those five days or does management prefer to wait to see if the CDC changes their rec their recommendation on that and then to change accordingly that's a great question I'm happy to take what we've done throughout the pandemic because employees have questions they want to know what the source of truth is it's been CDC the whole time for us so if that change does happen that's when we would update the information so that's a that's a great point and you're you're certainly right with all the discussion about the potential negative test I think they're realizing you know the pros and cons to that as well but if those do change we absolutely would update our guidance as well okay thank you very much councilman regards this you we can request and speak again yes yeah thank you so much I would like to add a third voice of support for the suggestion of providing KN95 or N95 for staff there they are readily available now they weren't early in the pandemic but but I think that that's something we should absolutely do at the very least for our employees as far as the language in the ordinance I think that requiring an N95 or a KN95 might be a bit much but I councilmember Armenter's point is well taken about not specifying the type of mask being perhaps giving folks a false sense of security so I would love it if if we could see in you know the next time an updated ordinance or an updated disaster declaration and order of council comes before us if there were language in it acknowledging that KN95s and N95s are more effective than cloth masks and encouraging the public to use those if they have access to them I also have a question so I you may have seen in the news that the city of Boston is distributing at-home rapid tests through their their library system I suspect I know the answer to this but I just wanted to ask is that feasible are there tests that the city could buy that that would be we could distribute to the public or are they just not to be had so councilmember we we did receive that question from you a day or two ago and we are still researching on the face of it it is possible for the city to purchase we would have to identify funding but to purchase a number of tests and create parameters for people to receive those tests through our libraries we are still working on how we would do that with the cost would be and then in addition to that there's always the ever-present concern of test availability and and so those are those are that's information we want to bring to the council to answer your question councilmember but also provide that information to the council large so we hope to have that information for you very soon great thank you so much yeah and if it's feasible I know that I would certainly be willing to approve any any funding that was necessary for that but of course I there may just not be tests available and that's why we're holding ours here in the city very close to deal with specifically with our staff because it's a constant you know number of people coming through but on your point and councilmember Armitage point have already asked our purchasing officer to order the KN 95 and the K 95 mask to get distributed out to our centers so that's already been handled and and to be clear I definitely agree with HR's position of prioritizing employees who have to work in person that that obviously needs to be our top priority all right any other questions seeing none thank you take this item C which is ID 212401 receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding audit project zero to utility payment assistance program hello council and mayor Madison Rorschach city auditor I'm gonna share my screen all right you see that yes thank you all right that was good all right so as a reminder follow-up reviews are intended to provide information on what changes have been made in response to an issued audit and this review was based on the recommendations and management responses originally compiled in the utility payment assistance program audit issued in April 2021 the original audit evaluated the city's utility payment assistance program including application management pledge award administration and program effectiveness this program has been administered by interfaith ministries which is a local nonprofit since 1998 the audit found significant improvements to documentation management performance reporting and the applicant the applicant the pledge award process and customer service monitoring so to begin the original audit found that while interfaith ministries had developed a handbook to guide staff and processing assistance applications it had not been updated to reflect current processes such as missing what information was needed to be included in interface case management system they also found that interfaith had lost all documentation case documentation prior to 2019 due to a software issue and that some improvements could be made to the monthly reporting process to better monitor interface performance since the original audit interface is updated the assistance handbook and developed and has a developed a checklist to help staff ensure all documentation is received and maintained in addition a backup process has been developed to help ensure case documentation is not lost in the future and lastly the monthly reporting process has been streamlined to include client log information including denial information into automatically reconcile interface utility assistance program bank account statements with the pledge payments next the original audit noted that while the city's contract with interfaith limited assistance for most applicants to once a year it allowed for exceptions to this limit if an applicant was designated as having an extreme hardship however there was not set criteria on what constituted an extreme hardship and the designation process was not formalized he also noted that allowing the executive director to approve assistance applicants applications for interfaith staff increased the risk of broader abuse since the audit the city has updated its contract to remove the extreme hardship exception but to also extend assistance by allowing applicants to receive assistance twice each year according to the contract the city can also temporarily increase this limit by providing written documentation to everybody in addition a process has been established to require city authorization in order to award assistance to an interfaith ministries employee or volunteer so while this additional authorization is needed documentation requirements are the same for interfaith staff as for other applicants these adjustments to the applicant award process help to ensure that all applicants are treated equally by the program and help to minimize the risk of fraud and abuse lastly as part of the original audit we review interfaith's progress towards addressing customer service quality suggestions made by the city based on a review performed in March of 2019 during the original audit interfaith had begun addressing these suggestions but we recommended some additional improvements since the original audit interfaith has held for customer service training for its staff and plans to hold more in addition the executive executive director has begun conducting quality assurance reviews the client calls weekly interfaith has also begun providing customer service survey results to the city and has implemented a process to follow up with clients if no responses to the survey are received and the responses to the survey are summarized from the table on the slide the customer service division has also worked with interfaith to develop a flyer to help increase awareness about the city's utility payment assistance program which includes information in both Spanish and English and will be strategically distributed within the community in the future so these changes should help to ensure interfaith ministries customer service quality meets the city standards and should promote increased access to the program so in summary we found that all the recommendations that we originally issued as part of the utility payment assistance program audit were implemented based on these results we recommend that the project be closed and considered formally complete however council could also give direction for us to provide new information on a specific objective or to perform a related routine audit in this area so I'll take this slide down so we can do questions all right questions was that councilor McGuire not a question but direction it sounds like an excellent job was done here and lots of improvements have been made so I my direction is to take the recommended staff action and close out the audit project any other questions mayor Proctor Meltzer yeah just regarding the metrics on the customer service performance this is a you know I think a lot of body of work that's been done on customer service metrics and and I wonder if at least even if you close the project if you want to identify you know what the benchmarks are what's a good number obviously you know not above four would be very bad but I know there are fields where if you're 85% top-two-box you'd still have a product or service that would fail so you know be I think helpful to know you know what what should those numbers be I would suggest JD power might you know be a source for benchmarks for that input any other questions seeing none Madison if you could work with Ryan or the public communications department to put out a some sort of I believe some kind of notice or just note I know that that organization's taken a lot of hits from false information and false delays that sort of thing I think it's important to offset that with your findings I know maybe you put it on your audit page and then maybe there's just a blurb that staff can grab and share out via social medias but I just think that's important to then try to reestablish that represent referee referee what's the word I'm looking for just basically build back their character and you know after some of the hits they took you know or you know kind of some of the narratives that are out there that do be my personal preference so thank you very much appreciate it great presentation let's take a 10-minute break we'll come back and take up item D so it is 340 we'll be back at 350 thank you welcome back to this meeting in the Denton City Council is 353 we are back from break and moving through our work session item we're on item D I'll call that item which is ID 212758 receive a report hold discussion and give staff direction regarding drafting a comprehensive nondiscrimination ordinance for the city of Denton good afternoon mayor city council Sarah Keickler deputy director of human resources I'm one second while I pull up my presentation can you see that yes and then if you put it in a presentation mode okay there you go can you see that now it's probably taking a second to think about it I see it it's just not in presentation mode I saw you click it just didn't trigger hmm let me try one more time here is that coming up now no Dylan yeah strange that's huge is it coming up now I'm guessing Billy is taking over for me because it is not coming up okay well sit and you see can you see it yes okay I don't know if I made that work so hopefully I did if not I'll ask for Billy's help so this is a follow-up work session for the drafting of the comprehensive nondiscrimination ordinance for the city of Denton and mayor if it's okay I'm just gonna move through the presentation and take questions and direction at the end presentation for you that'd be great thank you okay I've advanced to the next slide so let me know if you're not seeing that yeah okay good this is this slide provides background on the work sessions that council has recently held in regards to the nondiscrimination ordinance and just want to highlight at the September 14th work session as where council provided that direction to staff to begin to draft an ordinance and a process and and provided some initial parameters of what the ordinance should look like between September 14th and November 9th staff drafted an ordinance and we presented that draft ordinance to City Council during the November 9th work session as well as sought direction on a number of items so the goal for today's work session is to review that direction that we received on November 9th in regards to those specific items just to recap and let you know the changes that we've made based on that direction those changes have been incorporated in an updated version of the ordinance and that's actually attached as exhibit 3 in the backup apologize for that error we'll also provide some additional information in regards to questions that were asked by council members during the last work session and then lastly we wanted to provide our plan next steps in regards to community input and receive any direction from council if we should proceed with that plan or make any changes to that so I'm going to continue in this slide we reviewed last time so I don't want to go over it again but I did want to take a few moments to refresh kind of some key elements key components of the ordinance and process that we have drafted so it would be for prohibiting discrimination on the basis of housing employment and public accommodations so a complaint could be filed if discrimination occurred on a list of protected classes in one of those three areas and it would kick off the process here if the discrimination complaint can be referred to a federal or state agency it would automatically be referred to that appropriate agency and they would handle it from there it would end the process so basically all housing and employment any any complaints on that basis would be referred to the appropriate federal and state agencies if it cannot be we would investigate and handle that locally and so that would mostly be on the public accommodation side is where there are not currently protections in all of the classes listed so we'd first want to check does it meet our ordinance criteria if it does we would then accept that complaint and proceed to that investigations stage based on the direction provided last time by council that investigation will be done by a third party based on a number of reasons that we had recommended that a staff and they will be trying to determine if there's reasonable cause that discrimination occurred as alleged in the complaint if not they will conclude the investigation and prepare a final report that will be delivered to city staff if they do find that there's reasonable cause it occurred it will proceed to conciliation so that will also be another third party that will be trying to mediate between the two parties and conciliated if they can they'll prepare a conciliation agreement if they cannot it will conclude the investigation and they'll still prepare a final report and it will be referred to the municipal cop prosecutor for a review to determine if it can go forward with an enforcement from enforcement perspective to issue a class C misdemeanor and prosecute in municipal court and there are some questions on that last time so we do have some more information on that today for City Council and as well as we have our municipal prosecutor Stephanie Barry and Deputy City Attorney Mike Kronig are available at the end to answer any questions so I'll jump right in these next few slides I think it's slides 5 to slides 10 are just recapping the direction that we received last time so one of the questions that was asked and posed before council was what should be included or excluded from the ordinance and one item was very specific to public accommodations and sex segregated restrooms and any other similar facilities and when we had done research of other NDOs in Texas cities there are a couple of municipalities that include this exemption in their ordinances which means that sex-based facilities so restrooms and other shower facilities and such are not subject to their ordinances it is exempting it from their ordinances the direction we received from the the City Council at the November 9th work session is that they did not you did not want to include that exception in the ordinance which means that denying access to restrooms or other similar facilities on the basis of a person's sex or gender identity is a vibe would be a violation of the ordinance so just wanted to highlight that change the language has been removed from the ordinance and that's shown in exhibit 3 in strike through the next item that staff sought direction from council on again in terms of what should be included or excluded from the ordinance was for housing and if the ordinance should prohibit discrimination based on the source of income for veterans as you can recall state law state law allows municipalities to adopt provisions very narrowly for source of income for veterans that cannot expand beyond veterans for source of income so there was majority of council that wished to include that provision in the draft NDO ordinance it has been added and this would mean that a landlord could not deny housing to a veteran on the basis of income however from an education point we would definitely want to still educate what a landlord has the rights to do and they still could set and maintain minimum requirements as long as they're applying those to all applicants equally such as having a security deposit or no criminal history so there still may be some barriers to housing that veterans face face here but we do have other programs and other services in the community and in the county that can help veterans navigate and get connected to housing successfully the third item that we sought council direction on was in regards to if there should be an enforcement mechanism there was another municipality with an NDO that had ended the process after the conciliation and did not provide for an enforcement mechanism beyond that conciliation stage so a majority of council members on November 9th wanted to include that provision in the draft ordinance for a plot a possible Class C misdemeanor which is a maximum of a five hundred dollar fine per state law and then prosecution in municipal court so that penalty that enforcement mechanism that we had draft in the ordinance has been left in the updated version council member Davis had some questions last time in regards to how this would take place if it were to proceed to this stage of enforcement and prosecution and what standards would be looked at and so since it is a criminal offense it has to meet two things if the individual knowingly committed the violation and then to usually a standard that's looked at is it beyond reasonable doubt that the violation took place and in the backup in exhibit five the city attorney's office provided some examples of what an affidavit will look like a probable cause as well as a municipal court complaint and what that would look like and again I have both the process municipal prosecutor and deputy city attorney Mike Kronig with us today if there is any further questions in regards to what would be looked at if it got to an enforcement stage and if the city attorney's office decided to prosecute in municipal court and then the next item that we asked for counsel direction on was in regards to how we should how staff should administer this ordinance and what are some options that we had staff had recommended to use a firm to help us administer this ordinance in the investigation and conciliation stages so we are moving forward and working with our procurement and legal teams and trying to gather firms up that do this work and then taking the next step so that we would have a firm ready if the ordinance is adopted and a complaint would be received that they could help us through those appropriate stages we do not expect it to exceed 50,000 but if it were that would be something that we would bring contract or expenditures back before council for approval the next item that we discussed with City Council was in regards to how we should collect community input or business input on the draft ordinance so we heard that a majority of council members wanted to follow normal or similar protocols to how we gather public input on other major ordinances or proposed ordinances including holding a public hearing so what we've proposed is that if we get direction to proceed after today's work session is that we over the next couple weeks would launch and promote a discuss Stanton page you've seen us do that with other plans and things that we're trying to gather public input on broadly and that page would provide some information about the draft ordinance the draft ordinance itself FAQs and then lastly a method for how they could submit input online to City Council if they would like as well as provide staff contact information if there are any questions or clarification that we can help answer about the draft ordinance and we would do that again within the next couple weeks and by mid January have that developed so that we could broadly communicate that out through the city's digital channels as well as through a press release in the media channels and we would communicate in that that there would be a public hearing proposed on Tuesday February 15th at a City Council meeting and then lastly and there was some questions from City Council during the November 9th work session if the ordinance should address individuals practice of religion and we just wanted to provide a reminder in regards to what state law is so there is a Texas religious freedom and Restoration Act and it prohibits government from infringing on religion and allows individuals to challenge laws that substantially burden their practice of religion so it is possible that since that is state law and an individual could claim that as a defense from being in violation of the local ordinance and our ordinance does acknowledge that an individual may be able to assert applicable federal or state law so even if it's not expressly noted in the ordinance that could happen as it is state law and then lastly just seeking council's direction and confirmation on the revisions that we've made to the draft ordinance based on the direction we received at the last work session and if there's consensus for any additional changes to be made so that we can get to a final draft version that we can present to the public and seek public input on and then if there are any suggestions or recommendations with our plan to seek public input in regards to the communications and public hearing so I'll stop sharing my screen at this time and happy to take any questions you might have okay questions for staff Councilmember Barr thank you yeah I think that the proposed schedule for public input is great I think that that the draft ordinance incorporates everything that a majority of council wanted it to incorporate so my direction is to move forward as presented any other questions councilor Davis thank you mayor a couple of things first I like the I like the schedule for public input I think it's imperative that we have some opportunity for public input the the other thing is I wanted to talk about first sir could you put the the criminal complaint up on the screen from the back up not the affidavit I think that's kind of self-explanatory but the the complaint I am getting there I'm gonna try this again can you see that now I see the draft ordinance okay that's the draft ordinance sorry one second that's not the right document I know Billy has this available so let me see if I can't pull it up here one more time if not I'll ask for his assistant sure and if you can't get it that's fine I can I can speak to it without having it on the screen is think it'll be helpful okay hold on actually okay let me try this one more time now can you see this yeah if you can scroll down to the next pass the affidavit to the okay complaint point yeah if you could just zoom in a little bit on that main paragraph okay so the reason why I asked staff to provide this is this is not a document that most people ever see this is similar to what I deal with every day in my day job misdemeanors are alleged by complaint in this case or by information in a class a or class B or by indictment in a felony and what these charging instruments are our word for word verbatim what the prosecutor has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt in a jury trial in addition to these words verbatim word for word what has to be proven the prosecutor has to disprove any defenses that are raised that would include potentially a sincerely held religious belief substantial interference with religious practice kind of defense the prosecutor has to disprove those kinds of defenses also beyond a reasonable doubt and I don't know that this is entirely clear to most members of the public I'm not sure it's entirely clear to all of my colleagues because when we've talked about enforcement I've heard very well intentioned assertions that people need to know we're serious about this law people need to know we're serious about not tolling tolerating bigotry or discrimination in Denton in the way that we make sure they know that we're serious is that we attach a fine to it and make it a criminal offense the problem with that is that you put our prosecutor our city prosecutor in the position if the conciliation doesn't work of having to prove this word this wording something like this word for word including the discriminatory intent I can tell you as somebody who deals with this this stuff on a daily basis proving intent is the very hardest thing under the law we have difficulty sometimes proving simple defenses disproving simple defenses like self defense when there's tens of witnesses how do you disprove what someone's intent was in the moment that something happened in a situation like this where our goal is to address the way that people treat each other the way that people treat people in public the way that business owners behave I don't think that requiring our city prosecutor to prove these words this kind of intent I think it's counterproductive I think that it detracts from what we're actually trying to do and it actually makes it harder if somebody knows that there's a nearly unenforceable fine at the end of the conciliation process they get to blow off the conciliation process and go forward to the enforcement fine process they get their ticket written then they take it into the municipal court and they kind of dare the prosecutor to take it to trial like go ahead prove to a jury that what you said about what's going on inside my head is what was going on inside my head that the reason I had that particular policy at my establishment or the reason I did x y and z with a particular housing situation is because of this intent it is very very difficult and I think we're underestimating how much how difficult the position we're putting our city prosecutor in then let's say hypothetically our city prosecutor is successful they convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt of these words and that the religious exemption was not does not apply let's say they they kind of do the impossible and convince a jury of that beyond a reasonable doubt well then it goes through the next stage of the process and if you have a constitutional claim like a First Amendment religious kind of claim related to a classy offense you could take that sucker all the way up to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals I have heard time and time again from people concerned on all perspectives of this issue the thing that they don't want to see in Denton is that we take vulnerable populations of people and we put them up at the headline of a litigious situation that's why there's not a lot of call in Denton for this to be on a ballot as a referendum issue that's why there's not a lot of call in Denton for this to be something's decided in a court as a as a lawsuit or as a ticket as opposed to something we decide legislatively from a policy perspective as well intentioned as this idea of a fine is it actually puts us in a very very difficult position from an enforcement standpoint and then also from the goal of the legislation which is not to create divisiveness but to be welcoming and to be accommodating and to teach people how we ought to teach it how we ought to treat each other this does exactly the opposite so I'm very disappointed that we've kind of taken the opportunity to do something that has broad-based support and consensus and we have found ways to make it as contentious as we possibly can by just kind of running full tilt in one direction as opposed to considering the full effects and differing perspectives on the issue okay thank you any other questions mayor protein Meltzer yeah I'd like to you know engage a little I think with with issues that that that's what Davis brought up first of all I would say the the intent is well it'd be very laudable to change hearts and minds I think the intent is to protect people against discrimination so so you know related idea but it's not the same thing but but if in fact it's unworkable and leads to bad consequences I'd like to know that but we don't have to speculate about that there are other communities that have that have addressed this and have some time ago so you know I think it would be first of all to that point very important for Denton not to be the one city you know out of you know major cities that tells potential employers we won't protect your employees against discrimination I think that's really bad for them so I'm glad we're moving moving forward but because we're laggards in this space we can look and see what the history has been and I and you know I don't dismiss Councilmember Davis's points at all I'd like to know how how has it worked out and what what has worked well I don't know if there's you know how crisply I can form that as a request but you know if there is a way that we can find out what enforcement has been most successful what is have unintended consequences been I think that would be super helpful yes I can just comment a little bit on the research we can certainly go back and do some more but Plano has had none no complaints move forward so they've never had to try this in terms of a class C misdemeanor and they haven't proceeded forward Arlington just a job adopted theirs in June their ordinance does not have an enforcement mechanism so they will not be going through this process either Austin Fort Worth and Dallas their ordinances are a little bit more complicated in terms of them also being federal agencies are having the authority to act on behalf of the federal government if you remember we went through some of them are called you know fair Federal Fair Housing Agency or forget the other federal employment agency so they can act on behalf of the federal government and when they're actually bringing cases forward on that it's not in terms of their class C misdemeanor but under the authority of the federal government we can go back one thing I cannot answer right now is if of those three communities how but how many cases have they had that have risen to the you know gone through the process under a class C so where it's not under federal protections but maybe their ordinance protections and see if they have some of that data they would be willing to share with us I think you know the staff report on that would be great thank you okay councilmember Amater yes no questions just direction I strongly support the draft and the public input and hearing timeline as proposed and I just wanted to thank all the many elements of staff who have many divisions who have contributed to this and to thank the community who this is serving and just just very pleased that we're moving forward with this and thank you very grateful comes from back thank you mr. yeah no I remember we had a variant of this discussion that mayor pretend brought up last time maybe not the precise question but the topic of a number of events did come up and and I remember a similar answer that that that somewhere along the pipeline along the workflow the most of the most the events were or dealt with and and so that's actually a really good sign that that adding steps you know for various reasons you know has the sort of mitigating impacts that you'd like it to have if there's additional steps then every single time you have to deal with one then you know even if you you even if you ultimately only can get 20% you've still got 20% more than zero and so I think that having these these additional steps is really important to increase general overall compliance and so my direction is to to move ahead as presented okay any other questions comments before may I pretend again thank you yeah just a point about reaching out to the business community which I think is is so important because a lot of this really will fall on on them I I suggest that if it's just presented as here's a change that invariably not changing is more appealing than changing and but you know again as laggards in this area in Texas we have the advantage of seeing you know what how businesses have dealt and you know what practices have evolved you know in other cities and you know how what communication vehicles they have and so on so I would just suggest that when we present this for input from the public that we give some examples some real world examples of how this has gone and how practical and or not practical you know it has proven to be I think you know known versus the unknown it's kind of too easy of a question comes from bird yeah I'm in agreement with us just putting it out there and having this this conversation you know about this topic to draft it for the input for the community just open it up and see what they say about it and come back to it is this goes going to be on the discuss didn't only is that where we're is that where it's only going to be located discuss didn't yes there'll be a discuss Denton page created for it but we'll promote it the link to that page through multiple channels through all the city's channels and when is that going to occur it'll probably be mid-january that will have that launched and then starting to promote that out we will definitely share it with City Council once it is launched and then how long does that last and we would have it last through at least through the public hearing so probably work with the public affairs office to determine that date but probably the line it up with the public hearing like we do in other ordinances so at least open for a full month okay all right thank you okay so to close out are there any other statements questions comments because I want to avoid this great all right so Sarah can you help me with the notice process is there before I'd mentioned a need for a proof of contact proof of discussion before a complaint is filed is there did that gain any traction is there a requirement for someone that to prove or give notice of contact before the city shows up with a hey a complaints been filed against you so if you look in our ordinance it outlines the process right now so it it would be the individual who believes they've been discriminated against a file a complaint and then within a certain number of days and the city would provide that complaint to the person that's alleged to have done that and allow them the ability to respond to that complaint so the that process is outlined but there's no requirement that the person who is alleged to have had that discrimination has that directly with the person is there a way for for that to be an addendum or just noted or to some degree right not saying adopted not drafted but just I just think either I can just bring it up every time or it can be noted in there some way whatever staff is most comfortable with but I think that's important and I'll make sure the public knows not that I mean again I have I have another comment about the public statements that have been made but I'll save that for conclusions but I think for me that's big right so because you can have if I hear you correctly you could have someone that alleges an offense that has no that doesn't stipulate they've made any attempts on their own to reconcile or that it's actually happened the way it's purported to happen you just fill out a complaint based on your worldview without you know proof of contacting the person you're you're complaining against right it's just the police would show up and say or not I know not police but I'm just saying there's a complaint that shows up and you and catches you blind potentially and we change that in our own ethics issues where now you you get notice straight away you don't get blindsided yes so the person alleged to have committed the offense would be provided with that allowed the opportunity to respond and from there then determining if that proceeds into an investigation stage where they would do some additional collection of information that may include some of those questions but they're not given advance notice they're not given that that person doesn't have to can never talk to the person they're filing an allegation against and file the allegation Mac I don't know if you've under if you can help me out with this one sure as I understand it the mayor there's no pre-complaint process for them in the ordinance right now and I guess what you're asking mayor is if you want that we would need some direction from the council as to where we put that in the ordinance or not yeah I want that I doubt that those that are trying to ramrod this through want that and that could be you know that could further diminish my opportunity to get anything new added to it but that's how I feel so I'll just keep bringing it up and we'll see if I can get the public on board and not that that carries a lot of weight either but I'll do what I can okay and then just wanted to make sure I understood it right and then from a complaint perspective is there a penalty for false information so the complaint and files false information is there a penalty for the the cost associated with that as far as outside council etc etc I do not believe there is a penalty but when they are filing the complaint they do have to swear to to it but I don't know if that can relate to okay Mac does that connect language include under the penalty of perjury just like any other if I'm a process service I instead of a notary I can stipulate under the penalty of perjury so that's pretty standard language I can't I'm sorry it was a little faint sorry about that yeah if there was filed under penalty of purge or penalty or perjury if it was under oath that would be the consequence and so if it was proven to be false they potentially could be a charge of perjury brought against a person that it's sworn to complaint falsely okay great and and yeah I take issue with the enforcement component I take councilmember Davis's point and I think there's there's just a lack of understanding of the legal process and or a willingness to ignore that and that's concerning to me and then also I have a question based on sir based on what you outlined in the current draft language and your your explain explanation of how the complaint process is handled could a person receive a complaint so for example someone says I was discriminated against and the business owner never never know about it right so for example complaints filed they never talked to the business owner next thing you know the business owner is defending themselves against the city or being called to buy the city to the meet and confer process whatever its title I think and I'll also ask Mac if he can if he understands that question but they do have to be notified if a complaint is filed against them and they have to be provided the opportunity to respond and then we reviewing that initial information to determine should this proceed to an investigation stage right so I guess my question Matt better better said if the goal is to change behaviors but the ordinance allows for someone to unknowingly be called to the carpet if you will right so if someone does something wrong and we're trying to change that behavior that's one thing but it seems a little overly broad that someone could unknowingly do something and be called to the carpet or called to meet and confer with the city is that am I communicating clearly or no certainly mayor I understand your position and and the question is whether that's any ordinance or not I mean that what's required legally is notice to the to the party that has the complaint against them whether that comes pre or post complaint filed with the city I don't think the law would distinguish or care between the two so as long as they get notice an opportunity the complaint is just a complaint and just the beginning of a process it's not nothing legally that affects the person or be held against the person upfront so they will have notice in an opportunity to present their information to the city through the process outlining the ordinance got it and is there any I know there's not but is there any protections for someone that is our accommodations for a small business owner right so if you're one if you're one person that owns a shop and you run it yourself and you have to go to a hearing and you have to close your business there's no protections for that business owner that single sole proprietor is just they have to close their business and attend to this issue I'm looking back at the ordinance because there is some exceptions by each section that mirror federal and state law for example in housing there's some definitions of the small landlords I don't know if I can answer that just off the cuff right away I'm in regards to small businesses but I do not think so okay if you could just follow up with that just to confirm and I'll take it up with the during the public hearings and then I think lastly for me this I'm confirming this or non-discrimination ordinance has nothing to do with minority-owned women-owned businesses correct like as far as contracts city contracts for delegating a certain portion of the city of Denton spending towards my women-owned minority-owned businesses etc etc correct this ordinance does not have any relation into city procurement or city business this would just be citywide policy decisions and do we have such a or such a policy on minority women-owned businesses etc etc no we do not right so that extent so we're addressing this non-discrimination ordinance which we had one case that we we know of in the city of Denton City of Arlington's had zero cases the city of Denton spends millions of dollars every year but we don't want to address that and so my question city city manager in previous cities have you been in where does though what is that because that's important to me right instead of solving the one case that we have in the city of Denton in the history that we we've been tracking I'd like to address the millions of dollars we spend that don't get allocated equitably and take advantage of the SBA's recent increase in accountability and helping people be prepared to attract potentially federal dollars in contracts so is that something that traditionally in your experience would fall in a non-discrimination ordinance or is that a separate ordinance well it could it can be combined I mean I'd have to refer to Mac but I know it has been in separate ordinances also been as a city ordinance by itself on small small women owned minority businesses and specific ordinance that pertains to priorities for small business or minority owned women owned businesses is a variety of ways it could be done Mac your thoughts right you're referring to a historically underutilized business ordinance which is separately done is typically not on the part and parcel emerge with a non-discrimination non-discrimination ordinance that typically separate ordinances okay very good that's good to know all right then I'll follow up with that okay thank you very much that that's the clarification I need it so thank you Sarah for a presentation thank you all right that the city manager that gives you the direction you need yes it does and staff will Sarah will work with our staff to get the public hearing and everything set up fine-tuned some of the comments that were made and move forward okay great thank you that takes us to item E which is ID 212464 receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding an update on the sidewalk projects and future priorities of the capital projects engineering department sidewalk work plan thank you mayor Nathan George from capital projects engineering department gonna share my screen pull that up and if I could get confirmation that you guys are seeing my screen yes thank you thanks all right so we're here today to talk about the draft sidewalk work plan I'm joined by Becky Davini the director of capital projects engineering and walk you through the presentation it's a little nontraditional presentation if you will because we're looking directly at the web this information that's posted in the AIS is publicly available to any member of the public or the community that would like to take a look at it walk everybody through the presentation want to highlight really quickly that we have collaborated with a number of city departments on developing these materials including our parks department you heard about our trails master plan there's a lot of interrelationship between transportation aspects of these projects so wanted to highlight that also working closely with public works streets and traffic because they're the folks who are out there maintaining these facilities and I want to give a shout out to tech services who really helped us put this information together in terms of the format this is a GIS based presentation so walk you through a lot of information about where we'll be looking to make future investments in sidewalks around the city so the first question to answer is why do we have a sidewalk work plan and just to give everybody an idea of you know just to frame the conversation generally pedestrians prefer to walk outside of the road not mixed into a street with traffic they prefer a sidewalk some separation a much lower stress environment tree-lined streets this is the vision that we get for where we like to walk in practice we have to plan to invest in those facilities so it's important to develop a plan for where we'll make those investments using data to help inform where we're going to build those sidewalks throughout the city because there is a great need and I'll highlight that towards the end of the presentation this material it doesn't stand alone we do have a mobility plan the mobility plan we're currently working on finalizing you'll see more details about that in the coming months but the the mobility plan really outlines the overall vision for what our streets are going to look like from a you know traffic perspective like and Ted so I'll refer to that as kind of the complete streets approach but just to emphasize that's the big picture we're looking today specifically at where those sidewalks are going to be needed and where we're going to make those investments so where are sidewalks needed just a general expectation is that when you're in an urban area when you're in a city sidewalks really should be provided on both sides of the street this is a message that I've delivered you know pretty consistently since I joined the city that we should have sidewalks on both sides of the streets there are exceptions to that rule a couple that I'll highlight if you have a low volume street very comfortable to walk on the street a lot of cars it's not very stressful to travel on a neighborhood street or maybe if you're in a rural area you might be comfortable if you travel in a wide shoulder so there are some exceptions to that included a link here to a federal resource that provides some of those parameters in case anybody's interested in a little more detail but just to frame this conversation we're really talking about our city streets in general should include sidewalks on both sides of the street and as you all understand from conversations we have with the community that can be a very contentious conversation so just need to acknowledge that's you know the fundamental understanding is we're looking at both sides of the street ideally another important consideration is that who owns the street will factor into how we deliver our sidewalk projects this is really the first opportunity to give you a picture for why this presentation is being done in the GIS format because there's a lot of rich mapping information here and this is the first interactive map in the presentation so just to give you an idea we have all these streets throughout the city the red streets are text dot streets and I can eliminate all the other streets and show just the text streets we do have that in county streets and if we're working on those streets either state or county owned that requires some additional work to coordinate with those owners of the street but in general our focus is those city streets and that's where we've historically made investments in our sidewalk network not to say we wouldn't make investments on a county or a state road but just an acknowledgement that there is additional coordination that takes place another feature that's really nice with this tool is that you can search using the magnifying glass in the upper left-hand corner if you want to look at a specific street you can zoom in and out and see different parts of the city so really robust tool just to highlight a few of those features for anybody who wants to take a look at this website on their own all right so how did we prepare this sidewalk work plan there this has been a program the sidewalk program member of a capital projects team Robin Davis manages our sidewalk projects and there have been different iterations of the sidewalk work plan over time that have looked at different factors the what we're showing you today is based on a lot of data and analysis that really initiated with the ADA transition plan so the city spent considerable resources inventorying the entire city where we have sidewalks what are the conditions and then where our sidewalks missing so we have a lot of data you're going to see a lot of that in the maps that come in the subsequent section but that really formed the information that we were able to analyze looking at other other measurable indicators to see where are people and that helps us understand where we compare these projects with where people are we're making sure that those investments are targeted and that we're reaching the community where they are and where they need those those facilities the most so the term that we have used to to tag these indicators pedestrian potential index and so I'll walk through the factors that in this specific sidewalk work plan in this you know version if you will of the sidewalk work plan that we have used to indicate the greatest need around the city so I'll walk you through each of those first so major streets is our first indicator that's you know the the most direct routes it's the main streets to get us through the community we call the thoroughfare streets in our mobility plan so these are the most direct ways that people get around they tend to be the best connected so that tends to be the place where we need to make those investments that accommodate longer trips more direct trips getting people to businesses homes schools that sort of thing these tend to be where we have the greatest need for people to travel that captures the broadest group of folks so I'll refer to like University Boulevard loop 288 or a text that roads or Carol Boulevard streets like that are major streets schools so students represent a very large and significant population of our pedestrians because by nature most of them cannot drive themselves and as they want to independently travel they do tend to represent a large portion of our walking population people tend to walk a little bit less as they get older that kind of thing so schools are an incredibly important indicator of where we expect to see a pedestrian activity government facilities this is where I wanted to point back to that ADA transition plan for just a moment to highlight that our residents our businesses everybody in the community needs to have access to these facilities they're one of the most important places to provide that pedestrian accessibility so you know City Hall but our libraries our parks places like that need to be accessible and so that's certainly an indicator of activity and demand but it's also an indicator of where we should be making the investments themselves so that one has a little bit of us and asterisks a specific emphasis to it so those earlier categories are you know they capture some general themes but there's if you're looking for activity points of interest your businesses retail restaurants grocery stores these are the places that folks tend to want to get to and they travel to by foot in some cases that's sort of the nature of their their businesses that are sort of activated like our downtown with a lot of pedestrian activity and so we have a really robust data set that indicates where we have a lot of that business concentration the more business concentration the more activity level you tend to get and this tends to coalesce around our central business district or shopping centers that sort of thing so it helps us hone in on some of those areas that are maybe a little less residential and a little bit more of a mixed use and the final factor in this work plan of safety so when the system is not working the way it's supposed to when you know when something breaks down that that collision the pedestrian crash that happens is an indicator that there is pedestrian activity it also tells us that something in that area in you know in proximity of where that crash occurred is not working and so we need to pay specific attention to that place so that's another indicator we wanted to look at as well so the PPI is a summation a calculation of those categories that were listed above or that I just walked through for each sidewalk segment in the city that is missing to help us indicate which what is the ranking what's the need for each of those sidewalk segments so I'll walk through those in just a moment but first we'll take a quick look at another map so as I mentioned the sidewalk work plan that's our sidewalk program this is not new so we do have an existing program that's in place we wanted to make sure to share the information about where our current sidewalk projects are I'll turn off the existing and just give you an idea of where we have current projects going on in the city turn off the trails as well so you can see a number of projects as you look around the city that are currently ongoing that are either in project delivery or have recently been delivered so we've got a number of projects that are currently ongoing PPI is not reflected for these but just wanted to highlight that you know these are new sidewalks that are either have recently been completed or will deliver soon so we want to make sure that information is put out front the PPI calculation itself is presented on the second map and so in this map this is where we get all of that information all the PPI calculations the tally of all of those things in what's more or less a heat map and so that ranks from a PPI 6 that's you know where we have the most of those indicators have been have been captured on that sidewalk segment down to a PPI one and just to make sure it's clear every sidewalk in the city has been given at least one point to make sure it's clear these are all the missing sidewalks they're all shown in like a gray dashed line so everything has a point it's not that we're saying anything the zero but as those numbers increase that indicates that there's a higher probability that we'll have pedestrian activity that's supportive of needing to make that investment so people can safely walk and their mobility needs are met so as we look at the at the map it shows us an indication of where some of those needs will be so you know highlights around the UNT area is one of the places that we see a lot of activity that's expected and in downtown but we do have areas that show some higher concentrations of pedestrian activity and they tend to be located around parks and in some cases parks we have nearby government facilities like libraries or we might have public school so we do have some of these sort of hot spots or you know areas of concentration where all of those all of those PPIs sort of converge into different parts of the community and those are the areas that tend to have the highest highest need so what's next what do we do with this information because you know clearly the citywide that's a lot of need it's a lot of information and walk you through how we're going to take the sidewalk work plan and build that next round of projects from that project map that I showed the first step is to go through a project selection process so we've already done this presentation was given in November to mobility committee traffic safety Commission and since that time we've been working on trip so we've done some initial screening of projects for our trip application using this data to see what are some of the sidewalk needs that we might be able to put forward as projects that's the initial step is to look at those high PPI scores and see where might we be able to put forward some projects that make a lot of sense so we would initially identify those projects that's something we've done a little bit with trip and we'll be continuing to do that in the coming year to identify the next round of projects as we look at those lines on the map the reds and the purples from that PPI map the next step after we've identified a potential project is to look at it from a feasibility perspective because need doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be an easy project to deliver we might have right-of-way constraints and need to work with adjacent property owners to acquire right-of-way there may be expensive utilities there could be a lot of hurdles to go through to deliver those projects but it's important to assess that feasibility one key note that I like to touch on here is that sometimes we can provide alternative access by going around the challenges that we encounter so we need to look at this not just as you know the map says the PPI is five or six and so we need to build that five or six but maybe we can provide an alternative route that satisfies the same travel demand so we have to look at these as connected networks of facilities and feasibility is a very important aspect of that and then from you know from a council perspective and from our team's perspective as well the one of the most critical steps to making sure that as we put forward these projects that they successfully get delivered is working with the community so that's a stakeholder engagement process we have we need to talk with our committees like the committee on persons with disabilities to get their input to understand where they may see needs that are not reflected in the data but we also need to be working very collaboratively with the community as we're identifying potential projects to screen you know that's a part of that feasibility screening process so it's really important to have that feedback loop to make sure that we're taking the information that we're using to develop a project we're putting our initial findings out to those stakeholders to see to make sure that as we look for those projects they're going to be successful so that's a an essential part of this process once we've gone through that all that multi-step process we've identified potential projects they're feasible and we've worked with stakeholders and continued to get the support to carry that project forward that's when we take it forward as a design project it become a CIP project at that point so that's sort of the final step before we get into the project delivery or you know the folks showing up to construct the sidewalks but wanted to acknowledge that as well all right so to highlight the sidewalk work plan needs I put together a table just to give you an idea of why the PPI is important and how the results demonstrate what we were you know what we would hope to see in terms of numbers that are manageable so as we look at these higher ranking stores we have small numbers I'll just zoom this up so everybody can see it so at the high PPI's we have very small total numbers our total mileage of less than half a mile right around five miles as the PPI reduces we see the numbers diminish or get larger so now we're seeing really big numbers in that one hundred ninety two miles it's really important that we see manageable numbers in our highest priorities because that makes them more achievable so that's that demonstrates that the evaluation gives us good manageable numbers we still need to make sure that as we're looking at these higher ranks that we're not overlooking the lower ranks because as I mentioned before connectivity is an incredibly important part of making sure that these sidewalk investments will achieve the desired outcome so you know one of the takeaways from some of my trip evaluation is that some of these sixes and fives that we were seeing as as really good potential projects we'd also need to pick up maybe a three or two to complete a sidewalk you know to not leave a gap in that sidewalk project to make sure that it links up with sidewalks in the nearby area the final part of this presentation before I close out and turn it over for discussion and direction is that this you know I touched on the stakeholder engagement process this is an open dialogue with the community we already have an active discuss that and page on our sidewalk work plan this this presentation is linked there as well so the community can access it and we have linked from here back to that discuss them page so we really want to have that open dialogue to hear back from the community it's important that this is a conversation that we're receiving input this is a living and we refer to a lot of times to living documents this is living data there's a lot of information here so the as we get feedback we can take a look at specific areas I can show you on the map a specific sidewalk segment if you want to but it's really important just to to have that conversation to make sure this is an open dialogue because we are here to work with community work with council and with our departments and within our own department here at capital projects to make sure that this program is successful and that we're accomplishing the goals the council has for improving mobility in the city with that I'll conclude presentation and I'll be happy to take your questions comments and discussion direction thank you questions for staff councilor back thank you mr. weir Nathan I am I am giddy with the anticipation of playing with this toy and getting the city citizens of Denton to play with this toy and and the levels of feedback that that will be able to achieve I know that you and I are nerds for data but I think we're really going to see the power of the sort of live feedback mechanisms and interactivity that that this is going to provide I'm really really excited and looking forward to this I did have a couple questions on that feedback mechanism some things we need to evaluate at the city level and and not necessarily through anecdotal evidence but through rigorous reevaluation of some of the PPI and other characteristics that you've already mentioned as part of this map so how often do we anticipate updating this information is it you know going to be initially often and then yearly or what's what's the frequency of updating yeah that's a excellent question councilmember back and I would say you know part of the process of setting up this work plan is that it's it's intentionally not going to just be something that we've done and it sits on a shelf and you know I mentioned our work with tech services to make sure that this thing is is really a beneficial tool not just for capital projects department but also for for our streets and public works folks the intention is that our data is going to be linked with our asset management software which probably sounds really nerdy but to make sure that as our as we're maintaining our facilities it updates this information this work plan it also updates that asset management so we have a real-time understanding of what the conditions of our sidewalks are as capital projects is delivering new projects it's filling in those you know that missing sidewalk and and showing or reflecting that we now have it as a completed sidewalk and then that gets into the asset management tool so they can maintain it if there's deterioration in the sidewalk or anything like that so you know the the intention is that this data is living in real time there's still some cleanup that needs to happen the ADA transition plan didn't inventory our text that roadways so we've incorporated that data but there's still some cleaning to do there and then naturally the data is about two years old so there's still additional cleanup that needs to happen but the intention is that this is data that we're working with you know regularly and as we go through our annual capital program process we'll be able to indicate each of those sidewalk segments as it becomes part of a capital project or any other any other tool that might deliver a sidewalk project it'll be reflected in real time so I would say you know the hope is that you'll see this information continually updated and that is just part of the part of our intent but the process to make sure that it's information that's always up to date that that sound that sounds great and I'm really I'm really interested and excited to see what you see with your continued trip evaluation because we know that as you fill in these missing segments you're going to change the usage patterns as you change the usage patterns it's going to reflexively change the PPI as as new parks from Gary and new businesses come online those are going to change the PPI because they'll be destinations for your trip evaluation so I guess that's I'm kind of interested in that sort of live feedback that you just mentioned you know and and and so to that end as we scrolled through the presentation there was a lot of forward-facing data from the maps which is just awesome how do you want the public to interact with you to give you their interpretations and revisions and Nathan I'm gonna ask you to truncate your answers a bit we got a we'll get it's getting tight on us yes sir I would just say as you know it's like any other input mechanism as people have comments they can feel free to share them with us I think that's you know that's how we're using a lot of these engagement platforms so I'll leave my answer that okay thank you councilman Davis thank you mayor great presentation my first request is if we could get that by email so that we have those we didn't have that available in the in the backup online unless that's been updated while I've been sitting here refreshing my email yeah yes awesome thank you for pointing that out the second thing was I'm also a big fan of data the thing I like the most about data is that we can make some of these processes as objective as possible so that we you know I talk to people all the time I'll use my street as an example I live on a street that doesn't have sidewalks but it does have some places where you can walk and ride a bike along the street some of my neighbors maybe even a majority of them think wouldn't it be great if we had sidewalks some other percentage of my neighbors know that's a million dollar a mile sidewalk just from a property standpoint from a tree preservation standpoint so the more we can give the council and the policymakers objective tools to say bang for your buck I know y'all want a sidewalk right there we've got a very very important sidewalk for the school children over here and for people using the park over here and those sidewalks cost us much much less money just with limited resources we've got to be able to prioritize like that so I appreciate the data in as much as it can give us that objective criteria that we can use I also appreciate the public feedback aspect it's just that balance is really important that you know just because a lot of people feel like their neighborhood may need to be first on the list for the sidewalk but we all feel like our neighborhood should be first on the list for whatever the the new amenity is so I appreciate your work on this any other questions thank you councilmember no questions just approval of this plan moving forward and just want to extend my gratitude to you and the department for highlighting the ADA issue sidewalks are a disability access issue and for those of us you know myself included who I can easily you know walk in the street in certain areas where there are no sidewalks but to someone in a wheelchair that you know that that is not an option at all so thank you so much for highlighting that and I'm very excited about more sidewalks in Denton any other questions seeing none simply my direction if it's if it's if it's doable one I'd like to see you work with with I don't know if it would be development or whatever that is but to eradicate the sidewalks to nowhere right you know you have a new development that doesn't connect that has to put in a sidewalk I'd rather house that money and then put it all in at once versus have a segment in the middle of nowhere so if there's if there's energy around that great also up with the trips grant because I want to continue to get money back from DCTA and so that then gives us an opportunity to prioritize those projects and use our own sales tax money to enhance our expedite those projects and not have to take from the general budget so anything around that that we can expedite using those dollars is great and then lastly like to sync it up with the bond program right so we're gonna be doing 150 million plus over the next five years so kind of hey here's more to kind of the councilmember Davis's point efficiencies of scale if we're gonna be tearing up the entire road we have a contract in place already oh by the way add sidewalk to this segment and it cost us you know pennies on the dollar great so those are my kind of thoughts as they go into the whatever the algorithm is to prioritize segments any yeah I'll offer I'll offer mayor that we have already been using this information to inform our capital projects and incorporate some some missing sidewalk segments or improvements so and your points are are taken and appreciated thank you great thank you very much appreciate that answer any anything else seeing none okay thank y'all thank you Becky okay so we have one more item then we'll break for dinner and then our closed session item and then we got to be back at 630 so the last item on our work session is ID 2 1 2 3 8 6 receive report hold us good hold a discussion give staff direction regarding pending City Council request for a work session and to discuss leave policies for city employees this is Rachel Wofford Mendoza assistant to the city manager let me pull up the presentation for us and if you'll confirm that that's full screen for me please yes super thank you as mayor stated I will be presenting for us today our City Council pending requests for information just by way of a little reminder we review up to seven requests per meeting and we do one per council member and we do have one today so I'll introduce that one and the elected official that made the request will have up to two minutes to describe and justify it and then the remaining elected officials will have up to one minute after that to provide the feedback and indicate their support for the use of staff time to respond to the request and we'll of course respond to all requests where consensus of council is established this afternoon I won't go through this but we do have the the priorities here mentioned as far as time sensitivity goes just a little bit of reminder and this afternoon we do have one from councilmember McGuire about the pending request for a work session to discuss leave policies for city employees we do have her full verbatim request here and a little bit of staff information that was provided in your backup and I'll stop sharing so that we can allow councilmember McGuire to present a request thank you so one of our council priorities this year was to pursue organizational excellence including enhancing benefits and staffing levels to provide a workforce that delivers outstanding services to Denton in addition to competitive pay and benefit packages current and future city staff want healthy work-life balance and the ability to tend to non work related responsibilities without making large financial or professional sacrifices I believe that we owe it to our employees to provide that and we owe it to our residents to work to attract and retain the best and brightest professionals to provide their infrastructure and services therefore I'm requesting a work session on leave policies for city employees as part of the work session I would like counsel to receive a summary of all current paid and unpaid time off policies including FMLA sick leave parental leave bereavement leave and vacation time in particular I'm concerned about our lack of paid parental leave although it isn't common for public employers to offer paid parental leave I'd like to see the city of Denton be a leader in rectifying that issue I'd also like to see estimated budget impacts of potential improvements to these policies for example what would be the impact to the 22-23 budget if the city offered 6 8 12 or 24 weeks of paid parental leave and as far as the timeline for this goes I think that this is probably since there are budget impacts something that we should consider implementing for the coming fiscal year so I would suggest to my colleagues that that you prioritize it with that in mind that this maybe needs to be part of part of our budget conversation thank you counselor Davis thank you mayor I think I'd like to see this as an ISR first I don't know if the goal is paid parental leave let's have a work session about paid parental leave I don't know that a work session on all leave policies is productive if we want to zero in on particular policies we've we've seen some kind of preliminary in the past few years we've seen put some preliminary numbers on paid parental leave and we've talked about it in a very vague way before if that's the goal I'd rather we have the work session on paid parental leave or a particular leave so that we can use our time wisely otherwise if it's a if it's just kind of a primer on whatever what are our leave policies and a 30 slide PowerPoint deck on all of our different policies I think I'd rather see that as an ISR first and then zero in on what it is we actually want to make changes on okay anyone else counselor armature yes I support this proposal a hundred percent this is vital information towards very important goals stated well by councilmember McGuire I have tried under a previous council to move some of these things forward and didn't have the the numbers and I'm hoping that that this council is is more amenable to doing what we need to do for for our staff for quality of life for city workers come from back thank you I support the work session and I do think as part of it it is we will get the background material leading into it so I think it's just going to be their regard that we will get an ISR as a lead-up into the work session that's just the way staff seems to work so I do think that you have to have a comprehensive leave policy so I think the work session has to be comprehensive to address even if the issue is merely family leave so I support the work session counselor bird I also support this work session in supporting the proposal as a whole package and that of course includes a zeroing in on a lead policy if that's something that we need to settle let's get that settled thank you anyone else mayor protein Melter yeah I'm I agree with the sentiments that will probably that we'll see it beforehand anyway so kind of search the ISR function I'm very open to having the discussion and I'm sensitive to the you know timing with relation to budget I think it's a little odd that that we're not hearing from that's not coming from staff as a recommendation so you know it certainly hope that in the process that we hear whether staff as a recommendation great okay that concludes that item takes us to our call us into our closed session and then we'll take a break so we'll go in a way I don't need to call item so we'll go into let me find is it help me out Mac five five they sent it to me but I don't have it in front of me five five one zero seven one five five one dot zero seven one yeah okay great so we're going to close session at five eleven mayor yes I'm sorry to interrupt yes if you've called the item at this time I would move to postpone this work session item excuse me this closed session item until such time as outside council has been retained okay I hadn't called it yet but let me afford you that opportunity I'd well let's see so we got to divide and conquer to go in the closed session Mac help me out I think my motion would be I think my motion would be open session and then if it fails then council goes into closed session like normal got it is that your interpretation correct yes I need a second about okay so if you could restate your motion councilmember Davis please sure my motion is to postpone this closed session item until such time as outside council has been retained okay is there a second looking for a second council armature yeah could I just ask for just further clarification I may second just wondering if you could explain if the motioner could just explain the reasoning I'd love to I don't know if Robert's rules allows me to to discuss until there's a motion in a second I think I'm stuck with just making a lot so I will then I will second it to get that explanation okay we have a motion in a second motion by council member Davis second by council armature I'll councilman Davis sure just by way of discussion on the motion this this closed session as posted is about a public information request recognizing that those typically have very tight deadlines for responses and just for governmental bodies to decide how to proceed with those I also know that this particular and from public information request involves the all members of the City Council and in addition senior staff members and the city attorney's office I think the city attorney is in a difficult position in how to advise the council and I know that that council members just in my own personal knowledge that council members have received information advice from outside council I think it'd be prudent in this instance for the city to have outside council to advise us how best to proceed okay any other discussion before we vote mayor putty meltzer I'm going to be voting no because I think we need to go into closed session to get advice on whether we need to have outside council so the idea of postponing until we have outside council presumes a discussion that we haven't had yet okay anyone else seeing none counselor so for clarification purposes are we going to get are we waiting for outside council advice and who's going to be funding that advice is a city funding and outside council or is it the plunk complainant or the person or the people that are asking for the information how is all of this working for us well yeah if the motion was approved I could certainly reach out and hire council that would be an expenditure of the city if we were going to hire outside council to advise the council on this okay any other questions counselor armature just in case there's any you know ambiguity just about my motion I'm very grateful for the answer but you know I - I don't see the reason to postpone this I'm very eager to hear that the advice of the city attorney is and public information requests are exactly the sort of business that city attorneys handle so I'm very eager to hear what the advice is okay anyone else seeing none we have most by councilmember Davis second by councilmember armature to postpone it yeah I can't do it on so mayor pro tem house a you name counselor back name counselor bird nay counselor armature no counselor McGuire no counselor Davis I may hurt with as well fails 5-2 so now that takes us into so we're going to close session I will convene the closed session at 517 p.m. we will consider the following item consultation with attorneys under Texas government code section five five one dot zero seven one it's five seventeen let's take a break to get food come back at 530 because we got a deal with this and so we'll be back five thirty and close and welcome back to this meeting of the Denton City Council it is 634 we do have a quorum so we will begin our agenda with the first couple items which is pledged to to the United States and Texas flag please stand with me if you're able honor the Texas flag I pledge allegiance to the Texas thank you that takes us to presentations from the public of which we have to scheduled in the first of which is ID two two zero seven zero former mayor Chris Watts yep and you'll have give name and address and you'll have four minutes give me about 20 seconds catch my breath right quick certainly you know where's the timer where do I see the time it should be in the podium once she cute once Rosa queues it up it'll be up here on this screen here yes sir okay good all right yeah let's go ahead get started I'm waiting for the timer to show up yes sir can you see it okay there I don't oh they're okay yeah I see it all right lost three seconds that's okay mayor members of the council Chris Watts for 19 South Carroll Boulevard here in Denton wanted to come to talk to you about DCT a ridership data specifically I know there's been a couple of things recently on DCT I know councilmember McGuire made a presentation to the council into the community a few weeks ago before the end of the year and also the president CEO had a newspaper article about probably about a week or so ago but there wasn't a whole lot of data ridership data in those presentations so I'm going to present some of the ridership data that that I'm aware of first I want to start with the money DCT a has received from dent taxpayers from 2006 to 2021 a hundred and sixty million dollars a hundred and sixty million dollars and currently the Denton City taxpayers pay about fit 14 to 15 million dollars a year contribution to DCT now that's not the county that's not the two other member cities all in all when you take all that aggregate over those 15 years it's close to 600 million dollars so what do we get for that 600 million dollars and that 15 million dollars a year currently there's gonna be a lot of talk about kovat driver shortages things like that but the data will show over the last five years ridership has been going down on the a train it's been going down on the bus system across DCT a but I'm gonna focus primarily on dent so currently the a train based on the November report from DCT a is moved about 653 boardings average for the month of November that translates into about 300 to 325 people a day on the train that's between four stops three cities a county of a million people almost and a corridor if you just take the corridor probably close to a half a million so and not all those are getting on and didn't I'm sure but that's data I think that would be helpful to the community we've DCT a split out the data for the fixed routes I think they could split out the data for the train stops to see exactly where people getting on so let's go to Denton fixed routes from October the 1st through December the 12th the fixed routes the six routes generated 29,314 boardings now that's not passengers when somebody gets on a train or on a bus that's a boarding they get off it's not counted they get back on it's another boarding so you're really one passenger per two boardings is something I think over the years at least I've been connected with DCT a has been fairly standard when you break that down into a daily average that's 240 people a day riding the six fixed routes route seven accounts for about 11,000 of those boardings which is about 30 to 40 percent of that ridership so when you take out right seven you get about 140 people a day are split out between four routes or five routes excuse me go-to-go zone goes on currently from that same time frame across DCT a wide it's about 81,000 rides as councilmember McGuire presented in her presentation most of those rides are in Denton the last time I checked it was between 80 and 85 percent so I'm just using 80% 80% of those rides are 65,000 rides in Denton over that same time period that's more than double the fixed route system so you can see that goes on has been a tremendous success and it concerns me that what's happening I'm trying to get about okay okay that that timer is off it's showing I've got 14 seconds left is that right that's what it says yes but you lost a couple of seconds okay well go ahead DCT a is is wasting taxpayer dollars on trying to hold on to something that has proven to be unsuccessful and they're using the fixture the the go zone to try to prop up the fixed route so what we're doing is we're punishing success and we are rewarding failure so that was four minutes yes okay all right thank you appreciate it yes sir thank you any questions yeah any questions for the speaker it was sent in early I mean in time for for questions so any questions fantastic thank you very much thank you okay that takes us to our next scheduled speaker which is ID two two zero eight five miss Helen Owens if you can give your name and address you'll have four minutes thank you it no people people ignore me all the time I'm used to it go ahead happy new year I will be real quick I promise you I'm here because I have a request that asking you if you could look at something I appreciate you being public servants because that means that you care about didn't you know I've been part of didn't since let's not say my age but I've been here for a minute okay this is say that I've got to see some several libraries raise up here and so I say this didn't has a 1% over due charge on their utilities if a person is late on their utilities and then didn't also has a twenty dollar twenty dollars service fee now you and I may not think that's anything but there's people that we see that don't have cars there's people we see that goes to the the laundry mat and that impacts them so once you add this up then it's a big impact so I'm just here asking you guys if you could please consider you know those according to the census data and this is night 2019 didn't has about 12 percent of people who are in poverty not low-income but poverty and everybody needs electricity so I'm just asking you guys if you could look at those again because that impacts it even if it's two hundred dollars in the year that's that's money to to drive the public transportation to get on the public transportation that's money to go to learn that these are people who are families and you know they've been impacted by Colvin so that's all I'm here to ask you to do God bless you thank you for listening thank you God bless you appreciate it okay that concludes that second item and takes us to our consent agenda nothing was pulled so mayor can you hear me this is Rachel yes I do have one open mic speaker for this evening okay okay when I when you hear the beat to let her in miss Ava Greco will be on the line for you thank you sure miss Greco are you there yes I am hello if you could give your name and address and then you will have four minutes to speak okay on Eva Greco 802 West Oak Street here in Denton good evening ladies and gentlemen let's start off by saying on January 1st 2022 I tested positive for Colvin on this day my doctor's office was closed I caught called my insurance company and I got the name of five different urgent care type facilities and one of them was closed and the other four were booked solid for the day which is a repeating thing lately around here it's nearly impossible to get tested my son was getting very worried he was running around town he was able to purchase three at-home test kits for me and unless there's some miracle tomorrow I retest and hopefully it'll be negative I have seen and heard numbers regarding the Colvin and Denton thrown out there constantly including by some council members all along you know I said these numbers are not accurate that in chronicle actually last week or week and a half ago reported two deaths recently but that's not being reported so I along with thousands of citizens home tested so I don't believe those numbers are getting included in your covert cases because I home tested I'd nobody knows today there was a lot of discussion regarding quote an update to the city of Denton's covert 19 response unquote so and this is again what my opinion what I got out of this tonight public schools daycare certain commercial buildings city facilities wear masks testing of employees only we're gonna just self-test our employees only not the rest of the voters of Denton employees are at work approximately eight to ten hours per day after work and weekends they're not city employees they're ordinary citizens like myself but yet they'll get special consideration and able to be tested and 95 KN 95 masks for employees so my understanding was they can be supplied for employees but the rest of the citizens of Denton they're on their own and as we all know masks are in these kinds of masks especially or very rare to come by something that everybody forgets is that masks are in conjunction with social distancing one does not work well without the other and everybody seems to keep forgetting that six-foot rule masks alone do not work social distancing alone do not does not work you have to do them together so my take on the quote update to the city of Denton's covert 19 response unquote is that the majority of the voters of this city are just on their own and I was very very disheartened it once again here all this discussion and the people that actually put every single one of you up there are not being heard taken into consideration or whatever you want to call it now I just have a quick little blurb while we were on break recently well and and that's your time so if you could if you could summarize really really quick I was just gonna say that um I was just reading an article that there was a new variant that was just discovered in France it's called IHU has 46 mutations so far 12 people in France have been infected that was during the break I just saw that on a blurb thank you very much ladies and gentlemen have a good evening thank you have a appreciate it okay any other colors no sir don't work okay thank you for that takes our consent agenda there were nothing pulled I'll take a motion Councilor Davis I move approval of the consent agenda Councilor Beck I second motion by Councilmember Davis second by Councilmember Beck for the consent agenda in any discussion seeing none Councilmember Davis I'll say you aye Councilmember Beck aye Councilmember bird aye Councilmember McGuire aye Mayor Burton Meltzer aye Councilmember Armitter yes Mayor Hutsworth as well passes 7-0 thank you that takes us to our first item for individual consent or probably individual consideration mayor these are going to come in order there's about as I talked to you before from A through E are all related to the naming of facilities parks or rooms at the city Parks and Recreation Department and they're grouped in groups of five and just those are the those are the first A through E okay should it should I just call all five right now well you just take them as as one group like a ID two one dash two seven oh six drew and his team will go through them quickly I think you do have speakers on a couple okay so but column individually that's what I want to make sure yes mayor okay thank you sorry so first is item a which is ID two one two seven zero six consider approval of a resolution of the city of Denton naming Carnegie Ridge property located at 6500 regalia court to McGuire Park naming Industrial Street Park located at 108 Industrial Street to Wolf's Park naming razor ranch property located at 3230 heritage trail to raise a wrench part naming Mills property located at 5573 Mills Road to East Lake Park and declaring an effective date thank you Mary drew up an assistant director of Parks and Recreation Gary pack and our director of Parks and Recreation we're gonna tag team this event so what what Sarah explained and I appreciate that so we have most of your items tonight so I will be your presenter on almost all of them except for the last one so I'm glad to be here with you this is our our park trail and ball field naming request we went through and Gary can you do a full screen if you will please thank you but we went through an extensive naming policy that council requested us to do we had many naming or excuse me public meetings and of course park board meetings and this is our council meeting for adoption of those so the background of that so the you know the naming policy was approved and updated in october 20 october 2020 back in november 16th of 2020 park board supported city council to make them the ad hoc committee for the naming april six city council directed staff to review and provide their recommendation to city council's decision april 12 2021 staff provided an update to park board regarding the next steps september 13th 2021 and october 4th 2021 park board reviewed the 29 naming applications that we have right now and that we had three public meetings on so the public meetings were held may 6 july 21st and september 29th to gather input from the community next slide so we are seeking your consideration and approval or denial for recommendations provided by the parks and rec beautification board under the items for consideration for today if there needs to be more discussion on this of course we can have another meeting but we hope to get this approved tonight and of course the final decision with the policy rests on city council so kind of going back to where we where we began and where we are now so groups or individuals can make those nominee nominations to the city manager for the naming city manager will refer those to the city council through you know through the process of course like I said in november of 2020 the park and recreation board was made the ad hoc committee for this process and then just following those steps that we talked about the park board meetings the three public meetings that we held the two park board meetings that we went through all the nominations on and we just appreciate what the park board did for this process and I'm sure you had a lot of homework with this process too so thank you for reading all that it was a lot of information and then we are here today for city council's final decision so these are all the areas this is where the naming policy is this is where the application is and of course our city website for parks and recs so the naming request tonight that we have is carnegie ridge property to be named maguire park and the park board did recommend approval industrial street park to wolf wolf's park the board recommended that razor ranch property to razor ranch park to go back to the kind of property so whenever whenever we do get a property whether it be a purchase of a properties like the mills property or a developer builds a park like razor ranch or we get a we get property through a developer of course you know we we come to you and for those developer agreements for those properties they are not called a park to start off with they were just called a property similar to razor ranch property that way the name of that park no matter what it is like meals property that name doesn't get stuck with with a park name and not having any kind of official naming for that park so that's for mills park to east lakes park and then we have a playground application for the north lakes playground uh to to be uh lily can to playground the board did recommend that ball fields we have denia field one to be the tim brewer field evers park field one to be the austin jackson field and evers park field to to be the have a gear era field and the board did approve all three of those field names so trails so these trails uh going through all our public meetings uh we uh the public really wanted to stick with landmarks whether that be a street road or creek so we have bonnie bray clear creek cooper creek hickory creek mayhill mingo pecan university vintage and the wildflower trail is at north lakes park the wildflower trail has never been formally named the wildflower trail but all of our residents and all of us know the wildflower trail to be the wildflower trail so this is just a process to make sure that it is it is written in stone so and then the board did recommend denial we did have one application from and for just an unnamed non specific trail the applicant did not uh really say where they wanted it but it was for abigail and matt mattson memorial trail but the board did uh deny that at the time and gave them some recommendations to come back for a different uh maybe a different area to be named in the future just because the public was very adamant that they wanted to make sure that all trails associated with a landmark so they took that excuse me they took that public feedback into consideration so for city facilities so we've had a lot of discussion with american legion hall of course we did have those three public meetings we also met with sedna on one of those meetings and of course went over the naming policy and explained all those processes that we have but for moving on for facility city facilities so request to keep american legion hall center as currently named the board did recommend to keep the alh american legion hall center senior center named that name and not to rename it but we did have an application uh to re rename the currently named uh alh senior center to herman franklin senior american legion senior center uh and then we had also another application for alh to be renamed lilo martinez senior center and the board did deny that one also uh currently unnamed american legion center senior center multipurpose room to be the pin multipurpose room the fitness room to be the reynolds fitness room these the center's computer lab to be the holland's computer lab and then the center's classroom to be named the jones classroom those names represent uh the gentleman that uh the hall was originally named after and really built for uh when it was originally built and then also uh the the kitchen to be named miss betty betty kimball kitchen and for the patio to be the legion legionnaires patio just to represent all the veterans that was was there with the american legion hall was originally there for and the board did recommend that also so maguire park uh just to give you a little example of where maguire park is our most southern park is right on the edge of our city limits where we border argyle and is in the carnegie ridge neighborhood ryan and rory maguire were the developers of that area but they were also the sons of the maguire's uh both mr and mrs maguire cindy and patrick were um educators in denton uh is and especially um cynthia she did teach until 2020 at twu's chemistry and biochemistry department so industrial street park this was also um the the ladies of the denton women's interracial fellowship really like this idea uh wolf's grocery store wolf's food store excuse me was there from 1947 to 1997 this is this was a place where they met so it also really you know symbolizes that symbolizes their area and their park and where they met and what they were all about especially with their their new uh art piece at that area right now the razor ranch park of course this was adopted by city council just a few months ago as razor ranch property uh we did the developer did build this park and so they we want to formally name it or they would like to formally name it razor ranch park and most of us that have been in denton for years and years remember that as the razor ranch mules property so this is an application from staff uh we have north lakes park and we have south lakes park this is our furthest east park so east lake park goes with it has a very nice lake on there we have some development in that area and so uh we will we have plans to to get people on that property it um without affecting any of the trees especially with the new development the area so we'd like to name this east lakes park and that is that that is for this section sir great thank you very much i appreciate it any questions for staff counselor armature i don't have any questions i just wanted to say a couple things about uh two of the uh individuals uh who these are named these uh are named after um one uh wolfs park uh you mentioned the connection to the interracial women's fellowship which is is so vital uh there's also a connection i believe if what i've been told is correct um to uh the parks department and our hard-working uh park staff that the original owner uh that uh wolf uh was the father of uh now gandhi i here i hope or gandy i hope i have this information correct yes uh yeah who um i have just heard is an outstanding now retired uh parks worker who put in many years of service and love uh to dentin parks so that just makes it that much more appropriate on and i'm not faulting you for not getting it on that slide um it's just there you know for all of these individuals i know there are so many levels of um commitment and connection to this community so i just wanted to um to thank really all of our parks workers and uh especially uh now for that and this honor to our family also wanted to mention uh lilly contu um we've received numerous emails which have moved me deeply uh about about lily i just wanted to read briefly very briefly from one of them um for somebody who knew her personally lily had a great love for the poorest of the poor this example also came from her parents who have been a loving example of helping those in need literally lily gave it all up for the poor her life as a young adult could have been involved in having a great time with other 20 year olds in dentin and then they go on to speak of her you know a tragic premature death and the circumstances surrounding it so just wanted to let everybody who knew her and her family know how moved i was by hearing those memories of her and how happy i am to be able to vote yes on on this way of memorializing her memory okay any other questions for staff seeing none i'll take a motion councilmember beck i move approval is there a second councilmember beck i second motion by councilmember beck i mean pardon motion by councilmember maguire second by councilmember beck this is for item a and a alone um and so any other discussion seeing none councilmember maguire how say you aye councilmember beck aye councilmember bird aye councilmember davis aye councilmayor pretend melter aye councilmember armature yes mayor hudspeth as well that passes uh seven zero congratulations to all those individuals takes us to item b which is id 212709 consider approval of a resolution of the city of dentin naming bonnie bray trail located adjacent to bonnie bray street naming clear creek trail located at the north port northern portion of the dentin adjacent to clear creek and ray roberts greenbelt naming cooper creek trail located adjacent adjacent to cooper creek naming hickory creek trail located adjacent to hickory creek and hickory creek road naming mayhill trail located adjacent to mayhill road naming mingle trail located adjacent to mingle road naming pecan creek trail located adjacent to pecan creek and naming university trail located adjacent to university drive and naming vintage trail located adjacent to vintage boulevard naming wildflower trail located adjacent to denton dog park and denton dog shelter and declaring an effective date thank you mayor so bonnie bray trail like we talked about the trails the all these trails are are located next to a landmark just like you read off so the bonnie bray trail is located next to bonnie bray not all of the trail is completed at this time but capital projects is working hard uh excuse me with the bonnie bray expansion and building the trail adjacent to bonnie bray as that project continues on uh the clear creek trail so the um this trail here is not here yet for the um majority of it except for just a little bit out there at clear creek natural heritage center but as development moves on and we grow uh this is a future trail that we wanted to get named ahead of time cooper creek trail the same for this uh it some of this area is has a trail in it really from locust to sherman and then we have some inner park trails with netty schultz and avondale and in those areas uh but other than that it this trail is under planning uh hickory creek trail uh we do not have um very many public access to these trails yet but we are working on on those trails now uh mayhill trail this trail is built and uh very nice and wide very good nice 10-foot side uh side path on the east side of mayhill so mingo trail so mingo of course a lot of discussion about widening mingo rebuilding mingo and making sure that there's public access up and down mingo other than vehicle transportation and so this will be the mingo trail the concrete trail same thing for the concrete other than um there there are some little bits of the trail uh really in the area of crawl young park other than that there's there's not much trail there and a little bit of uh excuse me fred moore park university trail so text dot is working on the far east side of university right now building that trail and it'll connect to all the other sidewalks and and trails that are all along university vintage trail this project is almost complete also with a capital projects project and so this will be the vintage trail wildflower trail like we talked about this this is just really solidifying the name for the wildflower trail at north lakes and then this was the unnamed trail uh for abigail and matt matt mattson that did get denied by park ward but they did give them some recommendations for future naming okay thank you very much questions for staff seeing none uh i'll take a motion council member armator i move approval thank you is there a second council member beck i second okay motion by council member armator second by council member beck this is for item b discussion seeing none council member armator i'll say you yes council member beck aye council member bird aye council member davis aye uh councilmember maguire aye mayor potomelter aye mayor hutzpeth as well that passes seven zero got it takes us to item c which is and we have uh one speaker registered uh uh martha vales is the only person i have registered for item c so if anyone else wants to speak on c once we get there uh please uh fill out a card before uh but here you go so it's item c which is id 212710 consider approval of a resolution of the city of denton naming denia park field one located at 1000 harvin street to tim brewer field naming ebers park field number one located at 3201 north locus street to austin jackson field name even park field two located at 3201 north locus street to javi gurera uh field and declaring an effective date and forgive me if i said any of those names wrong i feel uncertain about that last one mayor did the caller need to go first uh no go right ahead okay all right so this is uh denia park field one the tim brewer field uh tim brewer was a baseball player and an all-american in uh west park college in fort smith arkansas he coached his two sons uh with dbbi and played the league at evers park he was a baseball announcer for the broncos at denton high uh he did pass away in 2016 and his children started a non-profit and his uh honor and his legacy so this is the name being a softball field field one tim brewer field uh evers park field one to be named austin jackson field uh austin jackson played at denton ryan high school he started with dbbi played at evers park played nine seasons in uh major league baseball and he had an appearance in the world series and just a way to show the kids they can do it if they try and this is one from dbbi so we have a you know a dentonite that played in the major leagues and i don't know if you ever get got you know got the chance to see him play ball but he was a really good really good ball player so hobby gerrera field for evers park field too so hobby also played at denton ryan uh and played three seasons in the major leagues and he's still playing also in the majors uh and uh got to play in in one the world series in 2019 and he started playing at evers park and also with the dbbi way to show the kids uh they can do it if they try and hobby's great ball player also and then that one got it was for that item okay um so and then let me call so it's uh martha if you would please and so you can come right up and you have three minutes if you can give your name and address and then you have three minutes i'm sorry okay yes good evening my name is marta valles uh my address is 1512 mission hills lane in corinth texas thank you ladies and gentlemen for allowing me to speak briefly on behalf of my son javier guerra i am the proud mother of the little boy that was born october 31st 1985 on halloween day uh flow hospital here in denton so he's a dentonite um let me just start out by saying that as a proud mother i could not be happier than to hear from dbbi especially from heather newton who started the process when she contacted our family to let us know that she wanted to start this process to name the field over at evers park after my son javi guerra javi guerra is a dentonite that was living in southeast denton at the time that he discovered baseball he was attending tomar rivera elementary school he was also a part of a pilot program that was created by the city of denton it was an after-school program at the martin uther king center coach peoples was actually someone in the community who also took time to share with the boys in our community a little bit about baseball by taking them to the mac park and javier grew up in denton but went to evers park to discover that there was a dbbi program when he went there and we took him as a family to observe a friend try out for the little boys team he did not own a glove he was not wearing not even shorts he was wearing blue jeans i give you this story only because i think it's important to know that little boys have a dream when they play a sport and my son is no different than all little boys who start out playing ball wanting to become a major league ball player what they don't know is that less than one percent of these athletes become a pro and it takes so much hard work and dedication which is something that he learned not only by being a part of our family but by being a part of this community the denton community the reason i wanted to speak to thank everyone who has had involvement in the upbringing of my son to get to where he has discovered his dream and is able to live a dream is to give you also the important part as a mother when i see his name and i've seen his name when he was drafted by the la dodgers in california then went on to the anaheim angels then went on to chicago white sox florida marlins tomateros de culiacan in mexico also the blue jays the toronto blue jays and now with the washington nationals each time my name my son's name is called out have you get a or it's published on anything whether it's a baseball card a baseball program or something in a stadium denton texas is also brought up to the map and we are a part of that experience so thank you for taking the time to put our family name here in denton where we will now know he leaves a legacy for future generations thank you thank you it's beautiful okay um and uh so any other questions comments seeing none oh councillor davis move approval councillor beck i second that okay motion by council member davis second by council member beck any discussion i'll just say thank you very much i mean we we often as a city forget the rich history we have so i i appreciate you reminding us of that path i'm biased that i really like i mean those i mean my mom used to be a counselor at thomas revera and i think the world of of that school and just the impacts it's had on our community uh and then mlk obviously is a staple in the community those sort of things so really really uh empower to hear hear those things thank you very much oh home economics but they need to bring it back they got rid of it awesome thank you that's fantastic okay so we have a motion by council member davis second by council member beck and so we'll vote councillor davis how say you aye councillor beck aye councillor berg aye um and councillor maguire aye mayor pertin melzer aye council member armature yes mayor hutzpah as well that passes seven zero thank you takes us to uh item d which is id 212711 consider approval of a resolution of the city of denton reaffirming the name of american legion hall senior center naming multi-purpose room located in american legion hall senior center to pin multi-purpose room naming fitness room located in american legion hall senior center to reynolds fitness room naming computer lab located in the american legion hall senior center to holland computer lab naming classroom located in american legion hall senior center to jones recreation room naming kitchen located in american legion hall senior center to betty kimball kitchen naming the patio located in the american legion hall senior center to legionnaires patio in declaring an effective date thank you thank you mayor so american legion hall so this application was in favor of no change and this is what the board did approve no change to the american legion hall center say senior center name keep it as currently named and then it was of course they also recommended possibly naming rooms like you just read off so this one okay all right so the pin multi-purpose room jones recreation room reynolds fitness room holland computer lab and then betty kimball kitchen and the legionnaires patio and all of these names are the first names we read off were names really especially if you got to go to the the new grand opening of the american legion senior center hall those names were very influential in the original american legion hall and if you have ever been around the american legion hall miss betty kimball is just a great lady to know and she she just impacted so many people there so with her name for the kitchen excellent thank you very much any questions for staff i'll take a motion uh command for tim elter yeah uh well i'm i'll move approval and if i i'll make a comment if you i can hold it until uh after you get your second no go right ahead yeah i just want to point out for those who don't know or maybe you're just learning a little bit about dent history tonight it's called the american legion hall not because the american legion meets there or anything like that it's because it was returning members returning veterans uh who were members of the american legion who built the original senior center on that site as a gift to the community and that this name is honoring their service and i move approval excellent is there a second council member back i second okay motion by mayor pro tem melzer second by council member back discussion seeing none mayor pro tem melzer i'll say you aye council member back aye council member bird aye council member maguire aye council member davis aye mayor pro tem got that councilor amater yep yes mayor hudspeth is a i as well that passes seven zero great takes us to item e i have three cards but if anyone else wants to speak on that please fill out a card uh and uh i will call that item now so it's item e which is id 212712 consider approval of a resolution of the city of denton naming northlake parks playground located at 2001 west windsor drive to uh lilly i'm gonna say this wrong somebody will help me when you come up uh lilly can too playground and declaring an effective date yeah okay so um drew help me out yes sir so i'll get started on this we talked about it a little bit so and uh council member uh armator uh read a really nice letter and email that she got so uh we did this is a great family and a great story um for what she did and and kind of a sad ending for her life but she had such an impact at such an early age so this is for the lilly can too playground so what circled is really um what staffs calls the the treetop playground because it's in in those pine trees uh that's the playground at north lakes it has uh restrooms are nearby parking lots nearby this was also picked out by a small focus group that we had for inclusive play for a possible inclusive playground um so lilly also helped um really in that aspect of her life also so this is what this application is for is to name this playground uh squared off in the yellow right now which there's two it's really spread out and there's two playgrounds there at the moment and hopefully in the future we can raise money to make that a really nice large inclusive playground for that for our community and of course that will have lilly's name in the future also and so this is what this application is for and i can't wait for you to hear their stories outstanding thank you very much so i and correct me if i call these in wrong order but i have uh john can too first mr mayor council people thank you yes sir my name is john can too i live at two seven one six cordova circle denton texas and the reason i'm here is to thank you guys for your public service you've heard that before tonight and i hope you keep hearing it because i know there's sacrifice involved and i appreciate you doing it for us i want to say the same thing about the parks and rec folks they've been great i was trying to write something about them today and i used the word openness they were open towards us very helpful but it was more like hospitable they're hospitable towards us um and that's a wonderful thing about denton and the inclusive word that drew just used is so important about our community here i moved here in the early 80s to go to unt and study music and the diversity that's here and continues to be and grow here is uh is wonderful it's not a very big place geographically but there's so many different kinds of people here and inclusive you have to be inclusive in denton because that's the way it is here lily was inclusive in her short life she was the same with everybody there was no judgment there was no aloofness from other people or anything like that she was that kind of person from the get-go and then she went on to cultivate that gift that she had that grace that she had of inclusiveness and it went towards sorry it's beautiful it went towards everyone but especially children so the place that she went to in peru took care of children that are so-called throwaway children there are children mostly born with cleft palates and the thinking down there among the poorest of the poor is that these people the children will starve because they can't suckle well enough right so they just throw them away they just leave them someplace to die or hopefully someone also find them and bury them but there's an organization down there excuse me that takes care of these children gathers them up fixes them up gets them strong enough for surgery it's a simple surgery to fix that takes care of them and lily went to help she did it on her own she did it by herself she did it fearlessly but she did it quietly she wasn't waving any flags about it and that's the way i think this community is we're inclusive we try and help people we don't jump up and down about it make a big deal about it we're just taking care of whoever needs taking care of and i want to thank you guys for for doing what you're doing here excuse me council members for doing what you do here and i want to thank council member armentor for your for your very sweet and kind words and and that's all i have thank you sir appreciate it um next i have uh rudy rodriguez thank you mayor thank you and thank you members of the city council and um mr city manager and my name is rudy rodriguez i'm uh live at 1200 hope street um and um i want to thank john kantu and his wife barbara you know for allowing me the opportunity to work with him in the nomination of lily kantu you know for the naming of our you know that playground park that was um referenced later earlier by the um director of city parks and recreation and i want to add my thanks uh to um gary once again the and his staff you know for their great support and uh they uh offered us great advice and um guidance you know throughout the um process you know that uh we went through in uh working on our nomination of lily kantu she was one of our own she was one of our own just like austin jackson just like uh avier aguerra and i think it's uh very appropriate you know that we consider seriously you know honoring our own particularly those who have represented us uh well you know i have other thanks you know here to for other people that have supported uh you know this nomination uh uh my fellow members of lulac and we have the president here who's who will be speaking in a few minutes you know they unanimously supported this nomination as well we got beautiful support from the dent record chronicle you know with very instrumental in mobilizing public support you know for a nomination so we can go on and on and on but um let me just say a few words very quickly that um one of the beautiful editorials of the dent record chronicle you know said of um lily's life that um although short lived it was a life that cannot be considered anything but a triumph you know this i think speaks you know to the strength of the humanitarian service you know so she provided to the children and families in peru the great ralph aldo emerson once said the purpose of life is not to be happy it is to be useful to be honorable to be compassionate to have a difference that you have lived and lived well what if we are proposing they can do families proposing and um is that um you know we honor the values by which lily lived in a way that befits her legacy she left us she's no longer with us you know it was a life of life of service that ended too soon and you have two handouts that you have before you that speak a little more in depth about the about the um the value and the depth of um lily's humanitarian service to the children and families of uh peru and specifically the clinic where she work so you know it's a long overdue this is a 2010 when she died how long has it been since 2010 to the present you know 10 almost 11 years so i think it's um it's appropriate that though it's a that we approve you know i'm asking for your approval of this park a long overdue uh the naming of a den playground as was stated um in now by by mr packard honoring the life of lily that would be a lasting tribute to this uh young woman's legacy of extra extraordinary strength of spiritual truth or rather uh spiritual faith and um with a life that was graced and so so that um you know that was a spirit you know that was dedicated devoted to the most vulnerable and often forgotten you know among among the least among us so thank you so very much for your consideration and appreciate all the good work that you're doing for our community thank you so much thank you alfredo i gave rudy your time just because i like him more so no no okay here we go uh and alfredo sanchez if you can come up please good evening thank you um for allowing us to speak up on lily's canto's behalf i'm my name is alfred sanchez i'm the president of the league of united latin american citizens i did send a letter a couple of months ago to all council members uh and kind of covered a little bit about what i knew about her and and uh and uh as i listen to mr canto it it kind of inspired me that it's great to hear what young people are doing a lot of times we hear you know that our young people are not involved they don't care but when you hear stories like this of young people how inspirational they are that they are involved with their community and this is why lulac has decided decided to participate in this we see a young person which is something we we always work with young people you know we have a scholarship uh program because we see that these young people have visions and lily had a vision and i think it's well it's it's real close to all of us i mean who would leave their parents to go work among the poor with no i guess no real promises but because she loved young people and young children that's why she did it to me that's very inspirational and that's why the league of united latin american citizens is behind this proposal thank you thank you sir okay um any other questions comments for staff if no um then i'll take a motion may report to melzer i'm delighted to move approval uh for naming this playground for lilly contour and i just uh hope that it's also just acknowledged and just by you know lulac's involvement that we've seen tonight a continuing affirmation of the contributions of of the latin american community as part of the great fabric of denton and every every part everybody in denton deserves to see themselves uh and and their associations reflected in the fabric of the community and i think we're moving uh you're rightly in that direction so i'm very happy to move approval okay thank you councillor mbet i'm happy to second that okay most of my member to melzer second by council member bet um hey prudence how are you did you want to speak okay come on up we'll break the rules just because we're neighbors thank you for being here yes that's true how true go right ahead you have three minutes and then we'll fill out a card after the fact okay thank you well i wanted to come and um speak because we knew lily we knew lily because she was a youth uh teacher at our church and everyone knew lily's name my son knew her through her younger sister my older daughters knew her through uh being a teacher with her so that's just another way that lily served the youth that she had such a heart for and so i just wanted to also say that um that park is the park where she played and so we really think that it would be just nice and fitting to have uh that park named after her um her name livrada i think i don't know spanish very fluently but it means freedom so what better name to have for a park you know where kids can be free to play and to just um have that freedom of spirit and just the fellowship that can happen on a playground so um we would just appreciate it if the council members would agree to name this park after her because we really think that it can be an inspiration for children coming up after her you know and um just to kind of commemorate the effect that she's had on our community even in her short life everyone knew her name thank you excellent thank you very much okay uh mayor pro tem melts are you still motion approval yes and council member beck you still second yes great any other discussion seeing none uh mayor pro tem how say you aye council member back aye council member bird aye council member davis aye council member maguire aye council member armature yes and mayor hutzpah well that passes seven zero thank you um yes that takes us to item f thank you all very much uh so item f is id 212792 consider approval of a resolution of the city of denton adopting southwest park master plan and declaring an effective date mayor council drew up an assistant director of parks and rec again so uh this is uh southwest park master plan so i want to start off with uh just a it's a little i guess tidbit information and a lot of learning that we did through this process so industry-wide it's called a master plan uh hopefully maybe we'll change the industry standard on these kinds of names because ideally we do not have any funding for this park uh it is a goal it's a it started off as a dream it's a goal of you know of ours and hopefully um you'll see that too so really um in kind of in the back of your mind instead of a master plan because i know we we go through all different types of master plans similar to the park master plan that we talked about earlier today and all the other department-wide master plans this is more of a visionary plan uh so that's your time that's my time okay all right next slide so this park is located it's approximately 200 acres it's located at bonnie bray really where bonnie bray uh tees into 377 route before we go over the railroad tracks so bonnie bray and all red and this park was it this land 200 acres was originally just cleared hay pasture it was left alone for quite a few years we're thinking around 30 to 40 years we call it the meanest 200 acres in north texas it's full of honey locusts and mesquite trees i believe there are only two hardwood trees on the entire 200 acres ones next to the little creek channel you can see on on here where the creek line is they're kind of both in that area but the rest of those trees have thorns on them so we do have there will be really good connections for this park so it'll tie into the hunter and coal area sage brook the new sage brook community which they're moving dirt right now and the the new cambridge brook community which they're putting in utilities and roads in right now so we have tons of homes coming to this area and the homes aren't depicted on this map for hunter and coal but i'm sure you've seen those those depictions and renderings time after time especially with all those discussions but i-35 will have a really nice it'll have a new connection thank you gary it'll have a new connection at all red so when i-35 is completely reconstructed it'll have its own frontage road and access right now it's just it's a it's a bridge for all red that goes over i-35 there's no connection off i-35w but loop 288 will connect into vintage so it has a really good connection there and then of course with the new hickory creek road expansion and that new bridge coming across onto brush creek it'll have that connection also and of course 377 so survey data we took a lot of surveys especially off of our community input with our master plan really incorporating what they wanted to see in new facilities and if you were a part of our surveys prior to the pandemic you got to spend your money where you wanted to whether it be and especially your gold coin most people out of their gold coin pick new facilities over maintenance of existing facilities so everybody likes new things and of course just in that visionary mindset think about the the thousands of people that are we moving to this community this part of our community in the future so we had 1300 community survey responses pre-covid pre-pandemic and then 2000 after the pandemic so we're really happy with the amount of survey results our surveys that were taken and the amount of results we got so we had two public input meetings for this southwest part master plan and then two focus group meetings we did have a focus group that you know they looked at everything that we looked at they looked at all the kind of survey input we worked with teagnell and perkins they were the consultant for this master plan on that so we're really dialed in to really what were the industry standards what does our community really want and what are those future needs for dentin and of course we had tons of emails community meetings face-to-face discussions on this master plan so what did the community want was our community really want so our community input and really what we heard from all our responses this is just ranking one through ten for our outdoor amenities for this park so of course hiking bike trails is number one playgrounds number two restrooms open space so where can you go out and fly a kite have a picnic reforestation and really i say reforestation because the the trees that are there are are really have lots of thorns so this is a good area where we can do a post oak reforestation plan and we can do a hard hardwood reforestation with our natural trees so they also wanted outdoor fitness and amphitheater athletic fields multi-use pavilions and i'll show you that on the plan and then outdoor learning and adventure especially that that really came from the pandemic everyone really got to see what you know we really got to see especially in our parks how many people were using outdoors especially when they had that time where you know most of our kids were home with us or home in one kind of fashion in a way where we needed to get them outdoors and out of the the four walls that surrounded us on a day to day basis so we did and then moving on to community input for the indoor space so a multi-generational rec center so indoor walking track uh walk jog tracks patio outdoor spaces of course your fitness areas senior programming gymnasium and sport courts so your basketball volleyball all your indoor sports indoor playground uh party rooms and then we have indoor aquatics with a court with a lap pool and then um really exciting and i know most people may not find this exciting but a park maintenance facility so really with a pandemic we um we learned this and we kind of knew it but we really had the opportunity in there during the pandemic to send all of our park maintenance staff out to different parks so instead of showing up to the service center over by tw every every day we had people showing up to denia north lakes uh the natatorium all the different areas where we could secure and we have fencing and security for that and our staff really like that and it really cuts down on the amount of what we call windshield time the drive time really from the service center to where our staff's going to work every day so we don't have you know we we don't we don't cut we don't cut much of the grass and we don't play ball at the service center so with this with building a park maintenance facility in a large park like this it would really help the amount of time that's wasted during the day and that's what our community really liked also so our master plan so we'll move on to so what our master plan plan really looked like looked like in its entirety so this this is really fluid like we want to really want to call this a visionary plan so we have 10 or 11 ball fields here one of those ball fields is a is a dream field so it's an all-inclusive field and we put that next to if you look where number 12 is ideally that would that would be your you know your grand baseball grand adult softball field so that's your you know you make it to the top bracket you're in the championship game that's your championship field number 12 and just above number 12 uh kind of to your to your one o'clock just to the to the north because that the map's looking north so to your northeast would be your championship softball field so ideally if we could get um you know collegiate games high school competition games and really in you know intertwine those dream uh fields and those dream games in with the with the tournaments that we would potentially have at this location we could get some really good interaction i've been to the areas where they where other cities have planned this and it just it's it's an awesome opportunity for for all to be involved but moving on from the for the so the fields we have we have playgrounds in the field areas and of course your concession stand we have a food truck area in the playground or excuse me not playground but in the parking lot and if you kind of look in this in this map excuse me you'll see where we have the parking lot over a green space well that's permeable pavement so we can do permeable pavement either with rocks or we can do payment permeable pavement with grass which we're really excited to start experimenting soon and so we also have number one on the map so that's a pavilion like you know your amphitheater area we have restored blackland prairie for number two so in our all our surveys and with our focus groups we really wanted to incorporate everything into this 200 acres that all of our residents were really looking for and so that was one of the big features of this park you're not just taking all the mesquite trees and honey locusts away we're pulling in you know that blackland prairie restoring that pulling in your you know a reforestation into this plan and really transitioning this entire parkland into something that'll be outstanding so then we have there is an existing pond there it is pretty shallow so we would we really want to expand that pond put a really nice fountain on of course a fishing dock and and some outdoor entertaining and learning areas in that area we have number five is nature play so you see your yellow circles on there so we build you know logs and rocks and things for kids to play on that's not your typical playground for your nature play and of course your outdoor activities and your outdoor exercise excuse me we have in the in there we have our outdoor learning areas so if you look at the little red rectangles on the number sevens so for your outdoor learning areas and of course playgrounds parks have to have playgrounds right so we have tons of playgrounds in these in this park and then our special event garden so that would be kind of like a mini botanical area botanical garden especially close to that pond where we could irrigate with the pond water and rainwater and then of course our trails so the entire 200 acres we have an they have a huge loop and over the entire area the entire 200 acres that's approximately two miles parks park maintenance we will be cutting in and making a trail just a a natural trail dirt trail and we plan on doing that from now until the spring so that we can get people on this property and we can start putting signs you know a future ball field here a future indoor community component here future you know pavilion nature play so on and so forth just so we can get people excited for what this is going to be in the future and of course we have a that's two two miles of outer loop and approximately a mile and a half of inner loop inner loop trails on this park and also have a dog park because people we all people love our residents love dog parks and remember the amount of people that will be moving here in the future and then like i talked about the baseball and softball fields so really just dialing into the really north section you can kind of see this better so we have a couple parking lots and of course some restrooms and that will be in those areas they really aren't depicted on here but we do we do vision have a vision of restrooms near these parking lot areas and then our nature play and pavilions and then we have our indoor community component to be determined so what does that mean um you know it could be a multitude of things you know of course right here we have a gym you know it could be a field house or aerobic studio indoor walking track library fitness center indoor playground spray ground of course indoor aquatics and then our outdoor spaces like we talked about the host events so really for that we don't want you know we really wanted to name it that indoor community component to be determined that way it didn't have a definite name on what we're going to put there because like i said we want to continue to call this a visionary plan so so we i will end with a just a couple comments on our own so we do not have any funding at the moment so uh the bond funding we did have was just to do the master plan for this space uh funding in the future will need to be allocated through uh bonds grants and uh fundraising opportunities so we're keeping out we're keeping our eye on uh all the the grants that have dropped in the last month or so and then of course the ones that are rumored to drop uh in february and march so those we have there's quite a few grants i'm sure you're you're up on the news also but there's quite a few grants that are coming out there and of course texas parks and wildlife has grants for us to build parks that we're going after for other areas at the moment and hopefully we can go after some grants from from them also for this space okay councilmember davis thank you mayor uh drew and really everybody on your team i wanted to just say thank you for i appreciate that you call this a visionary plan because uh you you've done an excellent job of encapsulating the community's vision for what this property can be and then also you're doing a great job recruiting us to the vision i mean you're really it's i can tell i can hear the excitement in your voice i can hear the excitement for the amenity that this would provide the community and all the work that's gone into it so i appreciate it very much and i tell you if i hit the powerball uh i know where i'm going to spend some of it because this is just a fantastic vision for um what we can do uh you hit the inclusivity that is important to this council you hit the sustainability and the restoration of natural environment that's important this council that's important this community you just i think you're really sorry pun not intended you really hit it out of the park this is fantastic thank you and i want to move approval if nobody else has anything to say okay i'll put you down um any other questions comments for staff councillor bett i i do i just have a question and what i mean i agree with everything councillor davis just said in terms of uh um the visionary plan the recruitment so so where where do we stand on um the success rate i think all of us would be you know championing at the bit to get this sooner rather than later you know what what's our what's our current vision to get this um taken care of i think we really hope to to start on let me let me back up so we don't envision everything to be built at once just because of this i mean 200 acres 11 to 12 ball fields a great you know amphitheater that great lawn just depicted on the map is a quarter mile long so i mean that that's a lot of bermudagrass right and then the the the community the indoor community component is 160 to 180 000 square feet you know you have include the playgrounds are are expensive as it is inclusive playgrounds are even more expensive we would like you know i hope you saw that on the map an inclusive playground on on this side of town also in this park we think this would be a great location and then of course the trails and everything that goes into it so really if if you looked at it and gary i don't know if you want to bring it up but we kind of broke it down in the section so we we know we can get started with the natural area right so we we can we can go out and harvest sapling post oaks we we can put those in we can start watering those we can start planting trees blackland prairie restoration it's been destroyed for well over 100 years so it's going to take us a little bit of time to restore that blackland prairie and we're going to get started on that soon too so really we anticipate biting this often really in chunks so i like to call it you know we crawl before we walk on this one and we we are you know working on what possible you know private public partnerships are out there for these type of components that's in that that that would be in this park space so we just want to be we're really mindful and we want to be as as sensitive and of course as educated as we can through this process to make sure that we make the right decisions and bring the right decisions to you before those decisions are made of course for for those partnerships yeah dr gary baggan director parks and recreation just to tie what drew it stated in in this afternoon as well with our parks master plan is our next step is to take all of that vision that we've been discussing and and lay that out into a cmp cip plan and start having some longer discussions with city council park board city administration on what those next steps are to identify exactly what the priorities are which which city hall and city council wants us to move so we can identify what those expenses are going to be because like drew it mentioned the 200 acre park is pretty expensive um along with everything else that is in our master plan we definitely are going to have to identify those priorities and and chip away as as feasible i i love that you're taking it on in bites like that and i think that's that's the real appropriate approach uh get in you know start with a vision and then get those pieces in as quickly and in a long-term fashion so i'm i'm real happy to second uh councillor davis's motion thank you councillor bird i just want to say that uh i was on the didn't parks and reg board back in uh 2009 between 2009 and 2016 and our first one of our first field trips that we took to look at all what we had was out in that area and literally there was nothing there and the parks director was trying to put this vision in our head that it was going to be this isn't going to be that and to sit here now and to see it see what he was saying uh just gives me great great pride and i'm really really smiling under this mask because it's here it can be done and i would hope that everyone out there all of our citizens could you know just approach this and grab a hold of this and uh just be proud of what we can accomplish here and didn't so all of these years almost 10 years 11 12 13 years uh that we've been visualizing something that just wasn't there uh so i just wanted to just you know chime in on that this is when we were working on the vela uh soccer field out there and all of that it's just so great to see this city growing and i appreciate sitting here tonight to be able to support something like this thank you okay any other questions for staff uh drew i'm in for a fundraiser to have you and gary run through the thorns put me down for 20 to start us off we you're too late we already did that oh okay all right well we can have an annual running of the thorns and we can do it again but council member davis is paying for all of it so yeah yeah he's good he's good okay we have a motion by council member davis second by council member beck any other discussion seeing none councilor davis how say you aye councilor beck aye council member bird aye councilor maguire aye mayor pro tem melzer aye council member armature yes and mayor hutzpah as well that passes seven zero our last item tonight is item g and it is id 22068 consider approval of a resolution of the city of denton amending the resolution number 2501 to provide further affirmation and stating no objection to the jes dev co ink 40 housing tax credit application good evening mayor and council danny shaw director of community services um there's no presentation for this item i'm just going to provide a brief overview uh this item brings brings forward a request from the developer to amend a previous resolution of no objection to include affirmations that the city understands that the census track where the site is located has more than 20 housing tax credit units per total households and that the development is consistent with our jurisdiction's obligations to affirmatively further fair housing that's a mouthful um these provisions were not included in the earlier resolution of support that was approved by council on april 13th but they are needed by the developer to meet the requirements of the state's qualified action plan i'm sorry excuse me qualified allocation plan that will facilitate the possible award of housing tax credits to fund this affordable housing project in addition to the prior approval of the resolution city council has already approved the special use permit for this project on october 19th it was required as a part of the development review process so given the prior resolution approval and that the provisions are consistent with other resolutions approved by city council staff is recommending approval of this request to amend this resolution of no objection we'll say the developer team is on the call and available for questions and so with that i can open up for questions as well got it councilmember davis thank you mayor so i i guess from reading the backup am i correct in understanding that this is this is something that changed with the new census data that originally we are this was not a track that had 20 but it now is a track that has 20 yeah there was data that tdhc provided back to the developer but yes it's new information that they got that the track did meet that 20 requirement and so they need that affirmation in the resolution i don't think it was new census data but amy bissett the developer representative on the call she wants to clarify well that's a that's enough information for i guess where i was going with my question for future applications i guess my question is is it specific to this type of application because we get these from time to time with some regularity is it specific to this type of application and these type of tax credits that we would receive this kind of information or we'd be aware of the or made aware by staff of the i guess the percentage in the census tract or is it uh or is that information that we could have available to us anytime we look at one of these um these resolutions of no objection when we're thinking about where we're going to see these tax credit projects yeah typically they show up in the initial application for this project it just didn't initially it was it's just to correct that okay thank you okay any other questions for staff councilor back thank you mr mayor follow on from that so this is this is a an oversight where we would have expected to see it or this is um or this is a change in the guideline such that going forward we'll expect to see things like this no it's typically it typically shows up in the application process it just didn't and the tdha clarified the developer based on the information they provided to us but this is a census tract that it does require that statement of affirmation it just wasn't included in the previous request it would normally show up though but nothing about the plan is changing no nothing else has changed in the project thank you okay any other questions or i'll take a motion councilman bird a real simple question um where is pebble book pebble brook parkside apartments going to be located um let me pull that real quick um amy are you you want to answer that faster than i can this is amy biffett can you hear me yes good evening mayor and council i can't answer that question it is located on the southeast intersection of loop 288 and mckinney near that intersection um just right on the east side of loop 288 and you did receive or you did approve the sup in october and to just clarify the questions about what has changed and nothing about the census data has changed and nothing about the application or funding has changed it was just an oversight in the original application to make sure that this statement was included okay any other questions um i'm of approval is there a second council councilman beck i'll second okay uh motion by mayor hutzpah second by council member beck any other discussion seeing none uh mayor hutzpah is a i councilor beck aye councilman bird aye council member davis aye council member maguire aye mayor pertin melzer aye councilor armater yes and that passes seven zero thank you very much appreciate the that that takes us to concluding items any concluding items council member i just want to uh wish everyone a happy new year and i am just going to go deep and say that it is important for us to take care of one another that means that i'm going to take care of you and i hope you would take care of me by getting your vaccinations and wearing your masks i mean mindful and thoughtful and helpful and loving of one another i just can't express that anymore so i'll do my very best and i hope you do your very best thank you sir okay anyone else councilor armater uh yeah i just wanted to say i just saw the news um that the cdc has uh has just uh added testing recommendations to their isolation guidelines so hoping uh that you know we will then get those into our um uh our own guidelines as well we'll do that right away awesome okay anyone else uh just want to want to hit a couple of things so my uh nephew denton uh two t's his birthday is saturday and so i want to wish him a happy birthday and then also good friend of mine uh wan reeves his birthday is monday so i want to wish him uh a happy birthday in advance and then also i would like to um just kind of ask the council for permission to give permission to the city manager as we get into uh kind of campaign season it's difficult for staff sometimes uh one request to come in that that it's it's not fair to those running that aren't on this body they don't have access or may not have access to the same acts information so really all i want to do is empower the city manager to then kind of push back or have questions or follow-ups to avoid any uh confusion or any um if they have questions basically to empower staff to be able to ask those questions to say hey is this something we need to share with all candidates that sort of thing just want to have that kind of put that out there for those to consider um and if there's anyone that has objections or and this is not the city manager asking uh that's just me saying it's important and that to give them the authority to kind of ask those questions and and avoid being in contentious situ potentially contentious situations because it's just they don't you know they're not elected they're here just to serve the city well and so it's just that's just experience talking uh from just trying to make sure they have the approval and support of this body to not i don't want that to be punitive if they have questions so just putting that out there uh early before we get into the heat of things uh so that the city manager can so everyone can kind of talk and have their own time to express their thoughts but i wanted to uh at least start the conversation for the city manager so that her and staff are not in the middle of uh what is always uh interesting times so that being said it's 8 07 and i'll conclude the meeting customer davis thank you mayor so i i guess from reading the backup am i correct in understanding that this is this is something that changed with the new census data that originally we weren't this was not a track that had 20 percent but it now is a track that has 20 percent yeah there was data that tdhc provided back to the developer but yes it's new information that they got that the track did meet that 20 requirement and so they need that affirmation in the resolution i don't think it was new census data but uh amy bissett the developer representative on the call she wants to clarify well that's a that's enough information for i guess where i was going with my question for future applications i guess my question is is it specific to this type of application because we get these from time to time with some regularity is it specific to this type of application and these type of tax credits that we would receive this kind of information or we'd be aware of the or made aware by staff of the uh i guess the percentage in the census tract or is it uh or is that information that we could have made available to us anytime we look at one of these um these resolutions of no objection when we're thinking about where we're going to see these tax credit projects yeah typically they show up in the initial application for this project it just didn't initially it was it's just to correct that okay thank you okay any other questions for staff councilor beck thank you mr mayor follow on from that so this is this is a an oversight where we would have expected to see it or this is um or this is a change in the guidelines such that going forward we'll expect to see things like this no it's typically it typically shows up in the application process um it just didn't and the tdhc clarified the developer based on the information they provided to us that this is a census tract that does require that statement of affirmation it just wasn't included in the previous request it would normally show up though but nothing about the plan is changing no nothing else has changed in the project thank you okay any other questions or i'll take a motion council member real simple question um where is purple book pebble brook parkside apartments going to be located um let me pull that real quick um amy are you you want to answer that faster than i can this is amy biffett can you hear me yes good evening mayor and council i can't answer that question it is located on the southeast intersection of loop 288 and mckinney near that intersection just right on the east side of loop 288 and you did receive or you did approve the sup in october and to just clarify the questions about what has changed and nothing about the census data has changed and nothing about the application or funding has changed it was just an oversight in the original application to make sure that this statement was included okay any other questions um i'm of approval is there a second council council member bet all second okay uh motion by mayor hutzpah second by council member beck uh any other discussion seeing none uh mayor hutzpah is a aye council member bet aye councilman bird aye council member davis aye council member maguire aye um mayor pertin melzer aye councilman armater yes and that passes seven zero thank you very much appreciate the that that takes us to concluding items any concluding items councillor burke i just want to uh wish everyone a happy new year and i am just going to go deep and say that it is important for us to take care of one another that means that i'm going to take care of you and i hope you would take care of me by getting your vaccinations and wearing your masks i mean mindful and thoughtful and helpful and loving of one another i just can't express that anymore so i'll do my very best and i hope you do your very best thank you sir okay anyone else councillor armater uh yeah i just wanted to say i just saw the news um that the cdc has uh has just uh added testing recommendations to their isolation guidelines so hoping uh that we will then get those into our um our own guidelines as well we'll do that right away awesome okay anyone else uh just want to want to hit a couple of things so my uh nephew denton uh two t's his birthday saturday and so i want to wish him a happy birthday and then also good friend of mine uh wan reeves his birthday is monday so i want to wish him a happy birthday in advance and then also i would like to um just kind of ask the council for permission to give permission to the city manager as we get into uh kind of campaign season it's difficult for staff sometimes one request to come in that that it's it's not fair to those running that aren't on this body they don't have access or may not have access to the same x information so really all i want to do is empower the city manager to then kind of push back or have questions or follow-ups to avoid any uh confusion or any um if they have questions basically to empower staff to be able to ask those questions to say hey is this something we need to share with all candidates that sort of thing just want to have that kind put that out there for those to consider um and if there's anyone that has objections or and this is not the city manager asking uh that's just me saying it's important and to give them the authority to kind of ask those questions and avoid being in contentious situ potentially contentious situations uh because it's just they don't you know they're not elected they're here just to serve the city well and so it's just that's just experience talking uh from just trying to make sure they have the approval and support of this body to not i don't want that to be punitive if they have questions so just putting that out there uh early before we get into the heat of things uh so that the city manager can so everyone can kind of talk and have their own time to to express your thoughts but i wanted to uh at least start the conversation for the city manager so that her and staff are not in the middle of uh what is always uh interesting times so that being said it's 8 0 7 and i'll conclude the meeting