Jan 11, 2022 City Council on 2022-01-11 4:00 PM (SPECIAL CALLED MEETING)

good afternoon welcome to this meeting of the Denton City Council it is 4 p.m. on Tuesday January 11th we do have a quorum call the meeting the order and just a one note we're going to take things a little out of order so that we can get staff on their way home so for those following along and I'll mention it again throughout the meeting but we're going to go through today's work session and then we're going to switch gears and skip to the special call meeting component so that would be this consent agenda items and then take us into the one item for individual consideration we have then we'll come back to the closed session so that staff can leave but for those involved in those last three items versus asking them to hold over until we to those things so it's just a little housekeeping things there do we have any callers first. No sir, not right now. Thank you. I'll take questions from Council on consent agenda councilmember wire. No questions but I need to recuse from item C. We'll pull item C. Okay, any Councilor Davis. Sorry about that. Just to let you know I'll also be recusing from item C. Thank you. Okay. Anyone else have any other questions. Councilor Amateur. Yes, I too will be recusing from item C. And I had a question. Just one question, but it's about items A through H and M all the mowing contracts. Okay, go ahead. So my question is, I just just wanted to confirm that there is not that we do not have enough park staff and or equipment to do this mowing in house. That was my, the first part of the question. And the second part of the question was, I wanted to know if not that I expect this to happen but if has happened in the past with, you know, certain other mowers. There are issues with your problems with the quality of, of mowing. Are there provisions in the contract to, you know, and it ended prematurely or do we have to go to the full extent of the contract. Hopefully it's the same answer for all these contracts since I imagine they were all negotiated similarly. Again, that's A through H and M. Those were the only mowing items that I could see that they were all knowing. I can take that. Good afternoon Mayor Council drew up an assistant director of parks. So, on, on your second question I'll answer that one first so there is provisions for if a contractor defaults or they do not operate to the full extent of the contract and we can cut their track contract. We did add contingency money to all of the contracts, in case one of those contractors, either defaulted in one way or another on their particular contract on one of those on the items that that you have before you. And then the, the second or the first question that the next one. So, this is based upon 19, a little over 1900 acres, and we would need park parks does not have the staff right now on as full time employees, we would need a proxy approximately 35 new full time positions, and that would be seven to eight new crews, and that would be supervisors managers, a brand, you know, new manager, you know Gary and I talked about this extensively. But it would, it would really mean it almost a whole new park maintenance, you know division to be able to mow everything in house. And that that would cost more money so right now that all the mowing contracts totally so let me go back a little bit but in October of park maintenance took over all city wide mowing and city wide mowing contracts so everything that water production water wastewater reclamation used to DME anybody airport anybody and everybody that that mode or handled any of those mowing contracts park maintenance now overseas those. And with that, it this all the contracts totally annually is around 3.13 point $2 million. If we were to do this in house, it would cost us around 3.3 and that's just, that's the estimate that we have for all the new, and that's on not that's not on top of the one time purchase equipment that would be almost $1 million so it would cost us more money to do that in house, although our contractors are paying their, their employees starting pay they said they, they can't even pay $15 an hour anymore. They're real starting employees are $18 to $20 an hour for their field hands, you know their, their actual base level employees, and then for their supervisors they're paying anywhere from $22 to $35 an hour for those employees, so they, they actually do get paid more than we get paid. But obviously, they're a little bit more seasonal than, than we are. So, well, thank you so much. And thank you for mentioning that about salary to as you know that's a frequent concern of mine so I will be, you know, voting yes to this I feel comfortable with your answers, especially the answer about the contingency and the contract. I will say though just as something to put a pin in for future reference, you know, such, such well paying jobs that we always have a need for even though it's seasonal it's a regular seasonal need. If we could be, you know, providing those jobs as a city at some future point to Denton residents that would be great as far as economic development. You know job growth in the city those are some pretty good jobs. So anyway, but that's just something to put a pin in for the future. Thank you so much. Yes ma'am and I did miss one part of your question so we do have new signs and those are going out and we have, with us taking over all the mowing contracts, we have, we mow all this, both the cemeteries in house now just to mitigate any of those issues we used to have in the past, and that those, or excuse me that crew mows are and keeps an eye on our special use areas so you know that the wildflower and paragrass planting program so they take care of those areas in house and they will continue to take care of those areas, just typically, they may be mowed once a year, or once every three years, depending on what type of native plants that are grown in those areas and we're continuing to plant those, especially right now as they're. This is the prime time to plant that, but a lot of the employees that work for us as contractors do live here, also. Okay. Any other questions. I just had one. But typically leave the room, but in this case we have to maintain a quorum on camera so if those members that are going to be accused could still stay in their spots for that vote they can abstain from the position. Okay, thank you. Appreciate that. Good catch. And so just clarification for me for staff on item K. Thank you for the answers via email. Just want to point out, I understand it's for the planning of fire station nine. And those are two separate things but I'm just telling you in advance. If we're not going to be if we're not going to have a funding for sure for the the parking the driving pad, I need to know that because that affects how I'm going to vote I can't in good conscience vote for the fire department number nine, and then not be able to provide the driving pad for the police station I just, I think that that sends the wrong message. Good afternoon, Mayor and members of the council Scott Gray director for airport and facilities. Our, our reason is it was in the email was to just temporarily put the driving pad on hold. We do believe we're going to be able to go ahead and move forward with the driving pad with the existing bond funding that we have. So, the only reason it's put on hold at the moment is just, we've got a lot of headwinds with the coven related either project delays funding increases and so forth so we just wanted to give ourselves to step back a moment and put that particular piece on hold to ensure the rest of the building could be completed, then we will know, probably in summer, the ability to move forward with the rest of that project and completed. Got it. Okay. Well, that satisfies my concern but that I just think you know you got to love all your kids. And so I don't want to. I don't want to. You get it. So, thank you very much for that answer that helps. All right, any other questions for staff. Seeing none. Then, just staff will understand what will pull item see no presentations needed. That takes us to our first work session item. And that is ID 22081 receive report hold discussion on the Denton police department's policy on marijuana enforcement and the Denton municipal courts policies related to drug paraphernalia citation processing. There we go I think I clicked all the buttons correctly to get the presentation shown. Yes. Perfect. Good afternoon Mayor and Council I'm Joe Jackinson of the city of Denton municipal court court I'm joined today by Chief Dixon with the police department to talk through police policies regarding the enforcement of state marijuana laws and also court policy options available for defendants in municipal court if they have received a citation for possession of drug paraphernalia. This work session today originated as a request from Council consensus was reached on November 2nd for us to have this conversation and present policy. Because a citation is first issued by police then it's sent to the judge the chief is going to kick us off here in a second talking about police policy and his general orders and then I'll follow up with court policy. In my standing orders for quick background and help with the general understanding for the public will be talking about and around two main criminal offenses that are both found in state law. The first is possession of marijuana and the second is possession of drug paraphernalia possession of marijuana is a class B misdemeanor charge or a county charge. It could carry jail time up to 180 days in jail, although I believe that's rare anecdotally that that would result in jail time over at the county possession of drug paraphernalia is a class C misdemeanor charge. The prosecution starts with a citation similar to a speeding citation. It is a municipal court charge. It carries no jail time and similar to traffic offense. Drug paraphernalia is anything that is used to contain drugs or used to ingest drugs. So most common we see is like a bag, but it could be a marijuana grinder a pipe a hypodermic needle really anything that meets that definition of drug paraphernalia. In this scenario, just to help with background. Let's say I didn't police officer encounters a person within city limit limits who has care custody or control of marijuana, with a weight of less than two ounces. So further suspicion of a broader criminal activity or law enforcement concerns basic possession of marijuana under two ounces under state law. Those facts are proved true beyond a reasonable doubt. The person would be in violation of the class B county charge of possession of marijuana. He could be subject to jail time as the chief will cover shortly instead of the county charge didn't officers will likely in encountering that person issue a citation to them for the charge of possession of drug paraphernalia, making it a municipal court charge instead. The marijuana would be seized and most likely the person would be released and not booked into our city jail. With that background and scenario, I'll turn it over to the chief for a discussion about DPD enforcement policies, chief. Thank you, Judge. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council Frank Dixon Chief of Police on the go over a general order 529 where it concerns marijuana enforcement within the city. Back in 2019, as the pandemic first begun and then later on in the June of that year, when House Bill 1325 was passed, we knew that we were going to have to change the way we were looking for seeing marijuana possession within our city. We also had to understand that we have to consider our resources and our overarching mission, which is to keep the city safe. We do not, and since I've been here, we have and will not specifically target marijuana enforcement. It's important to note, however, that we do have violent crimes associated with what would amount to misdemeanor amounts of marijuana in our city. That includes home invasion robberies, as well as at least two homicides that involve what would be considered minor amounts of marijuana. So to that end, we did craft a policy that says as follows. So barring anything else, the only time a custody arrest shall be made is when individuals are found to be in possession of more than two ounces of marijuana. And those circumstances, if there are less than two ounces, they have to have indicators of it being part of the marijuana distribution, such as having multiple baggies packaged for resale, the presence of digital skills or packs of empty baggies. The officer observed hand-to-hand transactions, or if the individual, the offender being targeted, is involved in a narcotics investigation, a broader scope investigation. Now that individual, also if they are armed with a firearm, or if they were charged with an assault of offense or violent felony, they would then be placed in a custody arrest. So as the judge talked about, for marijuana possession alone, two ounces or less, our officers issue citations following possession of drug paraphernalia, and they release the offender from custody. Now those offenses that are occurring in drug-free zones are not eligible for the issuance of a citation, absent the fact that those will not be charged with being in drug-free zones if there are no children present or if the offender is not part of a larger money-making operation. So what that means is if we caught an offender at night with two ounces or less on property of one of our local schools, school's not in session, there's no kids present, we would not charge that offender with having those drugs in a drug-free zone, absent some other mitigating circumstance, such as we described above. The firearm being in play, they're involved in a much broader narcotics investigation, or involved in an assault of offense or violent felony. And when we were looking at changing how we approach marijuana enforcement, I was very cognizant of one, what the will of our community would be, and then two, the restrictions that came out required in House Bill 1325, which established that a lab test must be done to establish whether or not that suspected marijuana has a THC content of 0.03% or more. Now we want to make sure that we're fiscally responsible, and we're not just sitting in every case that we make off two labs, because that can be found very cost prohibitive. So in making these changes back in 2019, we have reduced our custody arrest for marijuana 85%, which I think is a staggering number when you look at going from triple digits down to very low double digits. And as the judge will explain coming up next, even with those that we have, that 15% left, he has done a lot of very innovative things within his own purview to look at all of the unintended consequences of these arrests. And I'm really, really pleased that we have Judge Jackinson here. He and I actually didn't even talk about the things that we're doing independently. We just luckily think along the same lines and implement kind of the same strategy, and they just ended up doing it together. So thank you, Judge. All right. Thank you, Chief. For every drug paraphernalia citation that comes into my court, I've created a pathway for one, that citation to never be reported on a criminal record, and two, for that ticket to be granted an expunction. I'll go over what expunction means. Together, these two steps would eliminate any and all negative outcomes from the citation being issued. So in Dent municipal court, all drug paraphernalia citations are automatically eligible for deferred disposition. Deferred is the same process that you would go through to keep a speeding ticket off your record and keep insurance rates from being affected. So all drug paraphernalia charges are eligible to go through deferred. The two conditions for deferred for most cases are, one, to either pay the citation or perform community service if they don't have funds to pay for the ticket itself, and two, to receive no further citations for 90 days. If successfully completed, the ticket shows up in our system as a dismissal, and it's not reported on any criminal record. Next, for every citation that successfully completes deferred, they can request and be granted an expunction. An expunction is an order that's sent to police, sent to court admin team, to DPS records, and anyone who may have a record of the citation being issued. It orders those record holders to delete any and all records related to the citation being issued in the first place. All records are ordered to be deleted. Also, the expunction grants a new legal status for the defendant. It allows them forever to legally state that they were never arrested or cited for the original charge. In fact, they're the only ones, after everything's done, who will have a copy of that expunction order. Everyone else, all records are deleted. Historically, expunctions have required that the person hire an attorney to assist with complicated forms and legal requirements. In Denton, we do things a little differently. We took the whole process and automated it with help from our online ODR vendor. So now, every month, those eligible for expunction receive a text message and an email message explaining the expunction process, and the message has a link to their personal ODR page that allows them to fill out a form to request expunction. Expunction requirements are to either pay a $100 fee or show indigence, and then second, have completed a deferred disposition for the charge. For some quick statistics, we had 150 drug paraphernalia citations filed with the court from July through December. Some citations that were written in November and December are still working their way through the court system, so we don't have final numbers yet on this group, but it's important to note that there is a large number of cases that did sign up and request deferred disposition. All right, just in summation, it's Denton Police's policy to only charge possession of marijuana if the amount is at or below that two ounce threshold, or there is some other law enforcement interest at play, as the chief spelled out. Because of this policy for the vast majority of cases, no city funds are expended on testing, and also jail time is never on the table for the vast majority of cases. Instead of the county charge, the Class C citation is issued. That citation is automatically eligible for deferred to keep their record clean, and also all records have a path for expunction, leaving no negative lifetime consequences resulting from the enforcement of state law. Together the Denton Police Department and at municipal court policies with a vast majority of cases allow for no testing expense by the city, no jail time, no criminal record, and no lifetime consequences. That ends the presentation. I'll attempt to pull the screen down and turn it back to the mayor. Thank you, both. Okay. Councilmember McGuire. Thank you Mayor Hatsbeth. First I want to commend Judge Atkinson and Chief Dixon for being proactive in addressing the concerns of the community in on the issue of cannabis. I think this is an excellent example of local leaders doing what they can, what's in their power to address bad policy at the federal and state level, so thank you for your work that you've already done on this. I apologize Chief Dixon if you had already answered this, I was having a little bit of trouble hearing you. Can you clarify, you mentioned that in order to be tested for THC content, cannabis has to be approved to be sent in for testing. Who approves and what does that process look like? It was a little hard to understand, could you say it again? Is it better now? Good enough, go ahead. Okay, so that process as it stands now, those cases have to go up to the Deputy Chief over the investigation section, and then he makes a determination on which cases to go forward for testing. Like I said before, those cases are very few and far between. They have to meet metrics to make us comfortable in the fact that we're not just testing it for no reason at all. Okay, so to clarify, it's at the discretion of the Deputy Chief. Right, and the executive team, we meet every Monday and we discuss these cases on a monthly basis, and to date we have not found any cases that have gone for testing that should not have. Okay, thank you for that clarification. I would also love to know if you have any information about how many of those paraphernalia citations are cannabis related versus how many of the paraphernalia citations that you're seeing are, you know, are they are they low level cannabis possession, or are they cannabis paraphernalia or are they paraphernalia for some other drug? Yes, there, there exists a field in our case management system that contains that information. It's just not retrievable for all cases, like to export to Excel, but I did just a random sample to make sure I had some data for you. And just on random sample it was about 75% were marijuana, actual marijuana or like a marijuana pipe, and then 25% were meth related, or like needles or meth pipe. And I anecdotally, I would say it's probably higher than that 75% but off a random sample of that 150 that's what I got. Okay, yeah, so it's pretty significant portion of those classy paraphernalia citations are related to cannabis. All right, thank you. That's all I have for now. Councilmember Davis. Thank you, Mayor. A few questions but first to follow on to that. I'd also asked if you could break down for us and you're kind enough to do so. Those paraphernalia citations they don't all just come from Denton PD. We also process UNT and TWU classy citations. So can you tell us of those 150 roughly how many were DPD citations and how many were from other jurisdictions. 3% Denton, 3% TWU, 39 UNT. So about 60/40 between DPD and UNT. So last year DPD didn't even issue all 150 of those citations it's a significantly smaller amount that were issued by Denton PD. Correct and then also with that UNT policy regarding their own enforcement does not fall under our Chief of Police so they make their own policy regarding when the possession of marijuana is issued versus when the citation is issued. And then for public the UNT police officer could be interacting with somebody on the same plot of land over which our police officer has jurisdiction so somebody at a given point in the city could be interacting with either UNT or a DPD officer. Sure and kind of I guess along those same lines, depending on where you're at and who you bump into which law enforcement you come in contact with. You could be in contact with DPS that has their own cannabis policy, you could be in contact with County Sheriff's maybe especially the county buildings like the square. Any number of jurisdictions that have different policies than ours correct. Yes. What do we know about what other cities are doing and the reason I asked that is we are hardly the only city in Texas that is wanting to handle these kind of offenses a little bit differently than what's exactly written down in the penal code and have some discretion on how we allocate our resources and enforcing the penal code. What do we know about what other cities are doing, maybe even some of the bigger cities that have many more than these 150 citations. So for the larger cities like San Antonio Austin in Dallas, they have much more resources than we do here locally. For the bigger cities they're they're all moving towards or already doing things that we're doing here in the city of Denton. The things that they have to look at say in Austin, for instance, their jurisdiction actually lays within three different counties. So they have to work with three different county attorneys district attorneys to get their program to the point that it's approved to be implemented all those. Like I said, I think that for what we're doing here in Denton, we are at least on par with every other city I can think of in the state that's doing something similar. Do you have the sense that we're among cities our size or similar cities to us that we're we're leading the way in this space or that we're falling behind or kind of keeping up with the trend. How do you feel about that. The cities are size we are definitely far and above ahead. Thank you. Those are my questions right now. Thank you. Hello, everyone. Judge Atkins, Chief Dixon. Thank you. It's just simple. Thank you so much for bringing this allowing us to bring this forward and Councilwoman Amature. I appreciate you also for bringing this forward. It's very important. And some of the distinctions here with the city of Denton, we're sitting out here right on I-35. It's a major pathway, as we know, for distributing things that are coming out of the south and coming up north of 69 of 75 35 35 W. We're just sitting right there in that path. And we just happen to be a college town of people that are coming from around the world and bringing their cultures and their beliefs and all of that to us. And so with us sitting here and having this discussion today was very much needed. So I take this from an educational perspective for those of you all that don't know what two ounces look like feel like what in your head. Chief Dixon or Judge Atkins, can you tell us about this two ounces? Why is two ounces the, you know, the cutoff point there? Can somebody speak on that? Chief Dixon. So the two ounces is the most you can have that's still a Class B misdemeanor. So that's, in my estimation and speaking with the judge as well, that's as far as I am going, being comfortable in reducing that to a Class C citation. So what that looks like if you have a typical sandwich baggie and I happen to have one. I mean two ounces is a pretty decent amount when you don't have Chex Mix in there, but it's a pretty decent amount of marijuana for personal use. Okay, okay. So I'm thinking about an officer and describe what a custody arrest is for us. What is a custody arrest? So a custody arrest is when someone is actually physically taken into custody placed in handcuffs and then transported to our detention facility and booked in to there. Okay. So this is not the same as when a person is being approached by an officer and they want you to stay where you are, don't move, sit down, I'll talk to you. Sometimes that's considered an arrest, but you're not technically in custody as in taken to the jail or anything like that. Is that correct? Correct. You are under illegal detention at that point. Legal detention. So for those of you all that don't know, that's a difference between custody arrest and legal detention. Sometimes you're just detained. So I'm thinking about when this officer has approached someone and they suspect that they may have marijuana on them, there's a good chance they probably smell it first before they see it. And that's where that discretion of that officer begins. That's the first step in this whole situation of inquiring about marijuana possession. So am I correct in understanding that that particular, that officer has the discretion to go into a custody arrest or that officer also has an opportunity for the detention? What gives that officer that right to do that? How do they decide that at that point? Have they already searched vehicles? Have they already obtained something from the individual? How do you make that decision at that point for that level of discretion? So the point where we're discussing today would be the end of the contact where they have already found what they feel like that they would have found on the individual that they're in contact with. Now, when officers first approach a vehicle or a person, the smell alone, they're going to have to, in their own way, because each case is based on the four corners of what's happening in that case, they're going to have to build their own probable cause to get to where they need to for them to either feel comfortable that they have seized all of the evidence that they're going to, or if there's something driving them to think that there's more that they need to investigate. Okay, so now that takes me to my primary concern here is the point of the apparent racial disparity that is going on here. And even just with the numbers in our in our city, I understood there were, you know, just about the same number of people that had been given citations or arrested for marijuana possession, 128 from my top of my memory here of Caucasians, and then 120 people of color. That number in the end when we compare comparing it to the number of citizens in both of those areas. It just seems like there's a significant amount of disparity there's some, there's some discretionary things that are happening at the beginning of that contact. So, you know, as we're talking and going through all of this and making decisions. That's what's in my mind. How is this officer, it begins with the police officer, making a determination based on his or her own discretion. How are we going to deal with that, how are we going to approach that how are we going to have a conversation on that part, because I do think that there is a significant amount of disparity if this we're allowing this officer to build probable cause they have to start somewhere. And so, right now we're finding that people of color which the number of people of color to just don't make up a number of a lot of people here and didn't it's still in the single digits almost so we've got to figure out some kind of way that we can. I don't know how to put it right now but it's something that is on my mind it weighs on me that it could be. It could be somebody that I know, I don't know, but it's just something that we also need to bring it to the conversation. I'll just leave it right there. Thank you so much. All right, any other. Any other questions. Councilmember armature. Yes, so a number of questions and, and thank you for those questions so far. I to like Councilmember bird, and very concerned about the pattern of the, the racial disparity in our recent history of on this issue. So, initial questions, so the, and I'll say also as some have said just thank you to both Judge Atkinson and Chief Dixon for, you know, doing what what you can do within within your, your jurisdictions. Now, first question for Chief Dixon just to clarify so the 85% reduction in. And by the way, and I'm going to refer to it as to say cannabis instead of marijuana but I mean the same thing in case anyone's wondering I just needs the same thing. The 85% reduction in cannabis arrest, that is, that doesn't include paraphernalia right that is for just cannabis class B citations alone correct. The reduction in arrest or custody arrest. So, citations are completely different. Okay, good. That's what that's what I thought I just wanted to confirm. Yeah, so there's an 85% reduction in custody and citing people for actual possession cannabis possession, right. But we've got this 150 people being cited only I believe, I believe, 89 of which are from Denton PD, according to that breakdown that Councilmember Davis asked about that that 58% for paraphernalia. That paraphernalia is for the two ounces or less. Yes, yes. So if you have if you have two ounces or less. That's, that's, that's paraphernalia. As Councilmember Davis pointed out there as you point out, as he asked there 58% of those of that 150 mentioned by Judge Atkinson were from DPD, so 80 89 individual citations. And then for TWU there were five this is in that past year, you and T 59 I'm just reading off the staff answers to questions. I just wanted to make sure I was understanding that correctly. So paraphernalia. What exactly does that encompass and exclude so for instance, I'm thinking especially. So papers, you know rolling papers. Does that count as as paraphernalia, or is that just, you know, pipes, etc. I think rolling papers could. There's not a definitive answer to that, you're taking into account everything that's present at the scene at the time. So some people do roll regular cigarettes with rolling papers right so there's there's other things that have to come into play. Yeah, and you could I mean, you know, theoretically you could smoke legal tobacco through a pipe that some would smoke for marijuana right it's just a way to smoke you could smoke tea like that to. I'm not recommending this to anybody but right it's just a way to smoke something. Right. So, so so papers could be you're saying could count as paraphernalia, as well as a pipe what about just like a lighter, you know, there is a lighter matches something like that. No, the judge can speak on anything that he's witnessed but I've not seen that. Okay. So there's no legal language that says that that identifies exactly what is and what isn't paraphernalia. I think the judge talked about that when he was talking or do you want to go through that again. Yeah, the, I don't have the statute right in front of me but it's, it's a gives you the it's it's anything used to contain drugs or to use them to ingest or inject, and then it has a section after that that says in this includes and then there's a huge long list of things that it would include but the prosecutor would have to prove the intent that this thing like the chief snack bag is used for snacks and so, you know, he wouldn't be charged with that it's a bag if it contained marijuana. There would be a consideration there but it doesn't contain snacks and so the bag itself. I'm not trying to give a opinion judicial opinion out of court but bag itself if it contained, you know, snacks would not be considered paraphernalia. Okay, thank you. And so, the next question, and I'm not sure whether this is for, you know, Chief Dixon or Judge Atkinson ideally I would love to know each of your opinions on this. But, what about it's probably best I guess to start with, with Chief Dixon because it's at the level of issuing citation. Why issue citation at all for paraphernalia I, I completely understand why it's preferential to a class B misdemeanor arrest for two ounces or less of cannabis possession. But why issue a paraphernalia citation at all. Is there, is there something you know dangerous about the paraphernalia is that what's, what's, what's the rationale for that if you could explain. Yeah, that's a great question. So the rationale behind that is because marijuana is still legal in the state of Texas it is still legal and federal schedule that if an officer comes in contact with somebody that is breaking the law there needs to be some form of accountability. So we can't go to a crime scene and see someone breaking a law and simply walk away from it and not do anything. So the lowest common denominator was the issue of classy citation have have the person go in front of Judge Atkinson, and then go to the process of getting that adjudicated in a proper manner, because we're going to seize it, we're going to seize the evidence anyway, and destroy it as well. And so it, and how is how is this different than laws that tend not to get enforced, such as jaywalking or the distance, you know before a a stop sign you know where you're supposed to put your turn signals on, you know local laws about, you know, smoking such and such feet, you know, not smoking this many feet close to a building. So my understanding and I'm glad that this is the case, you know, that y'all aren't, you know, going around and, you know, issuing citations for every time you see someone jaywalking or smoking too close for to a building because they're bigger fish to fry is my understanding. Now why is that paraphernalia any different when it's just a class C. I think it's important to note that officers are not out looking for paraphernalia citations to issue or marijuana citations, a good bulk of these calls are either residents calling it to complain about the smell of marijuana being smoked in a vehicle inside a structure that drives our officers to respond to a call for service, or during the course of a traffic stop or subject stop related to another call for service. So someone is speeding and an officer gets them on the radar they stop them for the speeding violation. They approach the vehicle, they smell the marijuana, the investigation goes on from there. So, so what would happen if an officer, say in your example. If somebody was was speeding. Or actually let's say it left someone was jaywalking. So do you see someone jaywalking and stop them and to issue a citation, the officer notices they smell like marijuana cannabis. What happens if the officer decides at their own discretion. You know what, I'm not going to go there. What are the consequences for that officer or the police department or the city. There's no consequences. Thank you. Okay, that's just like them not issue a citation, there's no consequences. Okay, thank you and that that was that was my understanding to you and you know for me that's real critical. So, next question for for Judge Atkinson. So I, you know, just like how I'm very glad that, and by the way, it's my understanding Chief Dixon that that you are responsible for the reducing the amount to two ounces for the rule about not arresting for anything less than two ounces correct for that policy. Correct. Correct. Yeah, so I'm very, very, very grateful for it for that you know I'm, and I hope you can see I think this is what is wonderful progress. It's really important for me to get even to progress even more than that but I don't want to appear I'm grateful for that progress that's a huge big deal. And it's a huge big difference, you know the difference between getting a citation that by which there's now a process to be dismissed and an arrest so I do appreciate that. But again, I'm, you know, looking for I want to keep progressing so Chief, I mean, I'm sorry, Judge Atkinson. So this process that you put in place, which and thank you so much for that, you know, to make it there be a way for people to get this off their record. And without having to hire a lawyer, which is which is cost prohibitive. And, you know, even if someone can get representation it's just extremely intimidating. So, and traumatic in all kinds of ways you've done so much to make it easier. How much work is it for, you know, on the part of your staff, you know, now that you have have it automated to kind of educate people about this opportunity they have to defer or expunge, and then to kind of to follow up, you know, make sure people are doing this that they understand. It sounds to me like it would be a lot of work anyway. I was just wondering if you could kind of speak to that anecdotally, Judge, before you do, before you do give me one moment. So Councilmember Armitage, you're at 10 minutes holding the floor that's a quarter of the time allowed for this total item, just as a time stamp, adjust accordingly. Judge, I'd ask you to truncate your answers, Chief, I'd ask you to truncate your answers, so that we can get to other people and get through this and then if there's any way, Councilmember Armitage, you could just ask succinct questions to move us along. That was my last question before giving my directions, I think. Well, we're not scheduled for direction, either. So just to point that out, it just says hold a discussion on blah blah blah, if you'll read the agenda so we're not set for discussion. Yeah, I'm giving direction because my pitch was about a work session towards the goal of giving direction. I understand. I just if you'll read the agenda, you can ignore it. I understand. I just wanted to point that out. Judge, go right ahead. Sorry to interrupt. We've streamlined that process to the expunction process both in terms of informing people about it. People who are eligible get a text message, telling them that they can click here to fill out this form and request an expunction. I know we're the only city in the state, the only municipality in the state that provides that level. Some may have the form available to hand out at the front windows but I really doubt anybody has an online form tied to text messages for expunction process. It was a pretty big burden to process an expunction on staff, but it was direction that I felt that that Council would appreciate. And so we're moving forward even though that does take quite a bit of effort to get expunctions out the door. And thank you. Thank you so much. I think one of the things we can do in any work session we can give direction is to make that even easier for Judge Atkins and staff. I'm speaking about you in the third person because I'm speaking to everybody now, not just to you, by not issuing class C citations at all or at the very least, making it a lowest priority to have either an ordinance from Council or a resolution. Judge Atkinson and his staff are doing all this work that is just extremely beneficial. We could save them a lot of time and prevent people from slipping through the cracks by just taking care of this in other ways. So, Mayor, would you like my direction now, or at the end after everybody's spoken, considering that I am going to give direction, and I hope others will as well. Certainly, I'm not, I'm, you have, we didn't set a time on for this item as far where we set a time that's going to run in three minutes so I don't like our chances of hitting that budgeted amount of time. Thank you, Mayor Lohr. Now at 12 minutes, by all means, I'd rather just conclude your statements, so that the others have opportunity to speak and we can move on. Sure. Okay, so I will try to say this as briefly as possible. So thank you everybody for your answers. We've made significant progress, both in the police department on this issue thanks to Chief Dixon and in our municipal court thanks to Atkinson. We can, we can do even better in ways that really depend entirely on on council. What I want is an ordinance, ideally an ordinance, but if I can't get consensus on an ordinance from this council, then at least a resolution, which is would be a safer version of an ordinance just saying this is where this council stands to show that that we want to one, ban all arrests and citation for misdemeanor cannabis possession cases to ban the use of drug paraphernalia tickets in lieu of cannabis arrest this would save Judge Atkinson and his staff, all of the effort that they're doing now to try to prevent people from the trauma of having citations on their record. And then three, that the city will not pay for THC concentration testing for cannabis possession cases, unless it involves high profile trafficking or a violent offense. So that's a nutshell version of the sample ordinance from Decrym Denton that I know some members of this council had signed on in support of their much earlier petition towards these ends. It's not a redundancy of our current progress that we've made it nor does it cancel it out, it builds on the progress that we've made. Thank you. Okay, any other questions for staff. Councilmember back. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Um, so, um, I guess I'm I'm need some education I have three quick questions. I need some education one. What are the was the in the history or in our in our operating policies is there a reason for the levels I think the the the the the amount the two ounce levels that Councilor bird alluded to earlier. Why Why are these in in state or in in local code and policy set to be the levels that they are. Is there any rationale for that. So the state schedule was made in the legislature. So the, the criminal offense is appointed to them come from the legislature. So, hence, if we go above where we're at now we're going into class a misdemeanors which I do not have the authority to issue citations for, which would promote a great deal of problems for us organizationally. And so, just just for my awareness what's what's the class a level, just anything above two ounces. Correct, and then it goes into state jail felonies, third degree felonies and so forth. Two to four is the a two to four. And so I guess if we're not into felony if we're staying in the misdemeanor realm, can, can someone say what's the, what's the issue with the doubling of that to four, if we just include all misdemeanor levels, what's where what's the problem with that because I love the progress you made. It seems like we have just maybe we can avoid this misdemeanor issue altogether maybe I don't have the authority to do it on a municipal level that would have to come from a higher level court and just correct me. Maybe you see fit but I would not feel comfortable as the chief one above the two ounces that I did now. No, I believe that would have to come from the district court level, and that being consultation with the district court judges and the district attorney's office. Okay. And then my second question goes to for for some of these other classes and whatnot. You know, I've been stopped and warned for, you know, particularly speeding or whatever, you know, in my adult life a couple of times. So, what, what, when, when is that what are the circumstances behind a warning versus a citation, can someone educate me on that. We're talking about for marijuana store we often. Well, in general but going to the idea of, you know, would a warning. And a seizure of the materials and a warning, be available, kind of action. That's something again I would not feel comfortable and given direction to our police officers to do. And was that the seizure part of the warning part, the warning part because this is setting apart from the transportation code this is an actual criminal offense that the code of criminal procedure in the penal code. This is not a transportation violation, such as a broken tail lights beating miss it, you know, inappropriate left turn, and such. Okay. And, and then if we were to, I guess this, this will be sort of a two part code for the the steps we've taken, do our partners here in town, particularly you and team team of you, are they following our lead are the other law enforcement agencies in town following our lead, and or if we were to take even additional steps. What do you think the likelihood that our partners in town would also follow early. I can't speak for the other law enforcement agencies I can tell you that most will not be going, they're not doing what we're doing now they will not be going down this road. And one of my great concerns is the fact that we have at least six different law enforcement agencies that can operate within the city at any given time. And that's ranging from state troopers to game wardens to the county sheriff's office. TAPC there's just a number of law enforcement agencies that can be in our city at any given time. And so unless it's specifically your staff. Those would be the only ones in the city of Denton that would be covered by these modified policies. Correct. Okay. I guess that's all my questions for now. Thank you. Thank you. Chief, the policy that we've been talking about with the citations, you initially did that at one ounce. This is a change to two ounces, based on the success of doing with one ounce. Isn't that right. That's correct. So, great. Also, trying to cover just a few loose ends from the conversation so far. I guess this is really a question for Mac, but isn't the reason that we haven't seen sort of a no arrest policy elsewhere, including in Austin, because of a separation of powers issue that that's why municipalities kind of jumping through hoops to not have life changing effects on people who encounter this, but, you know, the councils can't direct police force, police force and, you know, what state laws to enforce or not. Am I somewhere close to right on that Mac. Yes, sir, that's correct and we've advised in a confidential memo on that I had a little more fleshed out but in the last meeting at the most clear true statements made in the public which I agree with from the council that there is a line between what you can tell a police officer to do. Certainly you can take a position in the council and state a position but they can't tell police officer not to enforce the law. Yeah, so I really appreciate the creativity and sensitivity of both the chief and the judge and finding ways to just make this not, you know, not a life changing event for people. I don't think our community anybody here is is thinks it should be. I noticed that there are still kind of some paraphernalia convictions, where there are is a deferral option. I mean judge how onerous are the deferral options could could there be less onerous ones. What do you think, you know, we don't see, you know, virtually all of them taking a deferral option. There won't be any number of reasons somebody spent time in jail on a higher charge so they want time they want time served, instead of paying the ticket that comes with a conviction. They might just want to pay it and be done, and, and not have the requirement that they go 90 days without picking up a new one. It would be easy and allow options online for people to select that they want deferred and not even to have to talk to a scary judge about their options before the court. So we, we attempt to started it wasn't in my pilot practice before but started when I'm talking to somebody about deferred also following that up with after you're done here's what expunction looks like so somebody in front of me I talked to them about expunction now not just relying on that message at the end to kind of plant the seed about what that looks like. So even if they take the conviction rather than the deferral they can still go for the expunction later and that's what you make sure they understand. Not, not the specific type of expunction that that we've talked about today. So I don't want to say there's no options available on the table but the easy expunction that we're talking about today is after deferred disposition has been successfully completed. Okay. Thank you for clarifying that, you know, the one thing that seems to be still potentially a big impact, maybe not a lifelong impact is the hundred dollar fee for expunction is the, is it actually like a state law or, you know, the requirement that they show literal indigence is that it doesn't sound like, you know, you invented that language. Is there a requirement that they show indigence or is there some, you know, lesser requirement that gives you the discretion to waive the fee. Yeah, there's it. It's both of those the hundred dollars and the indigence are found in state law. I don't know if it's luckily or not state law doesn't define specifically what indigence is both for waiver of fine and fees for any ticket. And but also for this particular iteration of indigence in regard to the expansion fee. That gives you latitude. Yes, yes. Closing, closing in on finishing there. Part of some concerns I've heard are, you know that it's, it's great that we have sort of vision and sensitivity and creativity of our current chief and judge to, you know, put this kind of mechanism altogether to minimize the impact of this kind of encounter is, I guess this is a question for for the city attorney back, would it be within the scope of counsel to require by ordinance let's say for a future judge that the opportunities for expunction and fee waiver be clearly explained verbally and in writing to all who are cited, including the fact that not giving expunction may present obstacles to future housing and hiring situations. We'd obviously need to look into it but impression is that no that that's still within the judge to make those determinations that counsel couldn't dictate how that works or force a judge to do that a certain way but happy to look into that further and follow up. Okay, that's great. I appreciate that I think that may, you know, maybe there's an opportunity for us to sort of solidify this for the future. That's all I have. Thank you. Councilman, you've spoken once if you could as quickly as possible. Thank you. I have a question for city attorney. If a consensus of council majority of council gives direction when we are not posted for direction. Is there any action that we can take? Well, you can certainly give your input as to what you'd like to do from here going forward and then we can come back with a future work session or item depending on what the council about. Okay, thank you. My next question is I guess I'm asking for your legal opinion on whether the current DPD policy and and municipal court policies are already at the limit of how far we can legally go. So, I mean, is, you know, we've already kind of explored that that two to four ounce, you know, class a misdemeanor. And it's my understanding that it would not be within the legal authority of the city or DPD to to not pursue charges in the case of class a misdemeanor cannabis possession. Is that accurate? Right. As far as what was mentioned earlier on the levels, there was actually for a long time in the state, there was no ability to even do citations for the class B. That only was allowed because the state legislator changed the law to authorize that. I believe that the chief's point that he's making is that only class B's become citations. There was no authority given for class A's to become the class C citation. So it requires really a legislative step to take that next step up if you wanted to go to anything above two ounces. I'm sorry. I'm having a little bit of trouble hearing you. So are you saying that that it would be within the legal authority of of either chief Nixon or the council to know it would take a legislative change to go above that. Okay. Okay. All right. Thank you for that. So it sounds to me like although although it would be a great step to to hopefully expand that that window, you know, to include everything under under four ounces, everything that's that's not a felony. We're kind of chief Dixon and Judge Atkinson have already taken the the the steps that they have the legal authority to take. So my direction would be in light of the concerns brought up by Councilmember Bird about the the role that officer discretion plays in this and the ways that officer discretion might lead to inequitable application of what is, you know, a forward thinking policy. And I would like for staff to draft a resolution codifying the policy that's already in place as the policy that that the council endorses just because I think that that it would have a little bit more strength. If we had a resolution coming from council, in addition to the policy that's that's already in place at the police department and the court level. Okay. Any other questions. Council member. Just a question of clarification for Councilmember McGuire. So the sample ordinance from the crime Denton does not include class a, it only deals with the misdemeanor offenses, it doesn't even try to, to deal with these offenses that would require a legislative change. Knowing that, is there anything about that sample ordinance that that does not meet with your your approval that you think might be unfeasible. I'm just a little confused. Thanks. I will, I just, the, the, the text only uses the word misdemeanor it doesn't specify class B or C only. So my, my interpretation of that sample ordinance was that a class a misdemeanors were included. The draft ordinance that we received from decriminalize decriminalize Denton back in October. Okay, is that it was it was also part it was the backup to my pitch that led to this work session. But is it. Okay, nevermind. A felony offense like maybe I don't know if maybe Judge Atkinson want to explain the ordinance doesn't address felonies but it does address class a misdemeanors. Okay, no, when it says up to class, they mean, it doesn't include class a, it only says up to, as in not including class a. Okay, I'm gonna ask that we, is there a question for staff. Mayor Mayor Pro Tem did you have another question. Yeah, I did. Go right. What. Oh, yeah, thank you. Go right. Yeah. Yeah, chief. It seems like the the other agency that would make the most difference if we could get on the same page is, is UNT police department, is there any mechanism or prospect to have a conversation and explore what their resistance would be and see if we can come to a meeting with the police, or do they have an entirely different sort of agenda in relation to this issue. No, I won't I won't speak for. Can you hear me. Yes. Okay, I won't speak for chief Reynolds but I know that he understands what's going on and what we're doing. I don't think that he would push back that much against it himself. I do want to touch on something that was brought up a little bit earlier about the racial disparity to make sure the council understands that the stats that you saw about that was before this citation process was put into place. So the racial disparity the officer discretion in these cases don't come until they've already seized up to two ounces of marijuana. There is no discretion. Once they get to that point, they can't so merely walk away from someone once they seize the marijuana. So I want to just make sure that that's clear that the discretion comes at the point that they get to the two ounces. What do I do with this offender, do I write them a citation and let them go, or do I then make a custody arrest and transformed to jail, and we have taken that off the table. So now, everyone is being treated the same way, which is why we went with this policy as it is laid out. Hopefully that clears up any concerns. Okay, Councilor Davis. I'm good mayor. Thank you. Thank you. All right, so to close out to close this work session. Chief, I do want to archive a video of this so if you could, I couldn't see the, the measurement of two ounces on your sandwich bag. So if you're still empty, you're still finished with your peanut butter sandwich if you can hold that up again. And kind of give a feel for where two ounces is, if you'd be so kind. If you could, do you still have it there, Chief. I do this isn't to scale right so two ounces for. I mean two ounces could be look a lot different to a lot of different people. Right. Got it. So, none of this is to scale or, or anything like that. Yeah, no worries. Thank you just want to archive that. And then, Judge Atkins, I want to vote yes for your beer. That's awesome. Just, just letting you know, I don't see you enough so just while I'm seeing you, I like it a lot. Okay, so, in all seriousness, Chief, could you speak to also a real concern I heard the governor speak on this today. Fentanyl is an issue and you you need what a grain, like a salt, you know salt grain amount of that and so that could be in marijuana as well. Am I correct. I think that Fentanyl could we have not seen any marijuana laced with Fentanyl here locally that I'm aware of. We typically see it in cocaine methamphetamine. Okay, being laced with it and prescription pills. Got it. Thank you. And then. Yes, sir. Okay. And then, my other question would be, Chief, so peace officers can are certified throughout the state of Texas. Is that correct. Yes, sir. That's correct. So it could be any officer passing through if they see an offense and they're certified in the state of Texas, it could be I mean you listed six or so but it could be any off any peace officer in the state of Texas that drives through Denton and makes a stop could then they're authorized to to take action against whatever crime that would be. Correct. Yes, so that. So, and I say that to say in one of my lighter points is, I think it's just important that we not add confusion or give someone's false sense of security and get them in trouble. Because we have. We've overreached in my opinion, and some areas, it just would to me would add confusion and that's why I have. That's one of my concerns. My other concern is, I can't sit at this dais and forecast what an officer is going to see at any given stop they're all different, they're all unique, and try to mandate something from here from this day and time that would predict the future of their and try to mandate their actions based on what they're seeing in a future date that no one knows so that's another reason why I don't support taking any action here, then. I think also for me you touched on it and no one else noted it but I'll note it because I think it was great for staff to put that in there. We have drug free zones near schools, and somehow then we'd say, Well, we want to support this two ounces or less and how does that then mesh with again the other agencies, how does that mesh with the other peace officers again further confusion and I think that sends a bad message. So that gives me concern. Chief, I thank you for your point because I think that we all serve the public and your note is really important when you're talking about most of your calls would be originated by the public so the public has a concern and calls in the voice that concern, and then we would then move to somehow say we don't support those actions that are originated by citizens that to me is counterproductive to what I want to do. And I also say this, everyone at this dais and on the screen, took the oath of office in the state of Texas and that reads that we will uphold the not only the United States but Texas laws, and so I can't in good faith as for resolution to violate my oath of office. So I can't support it for that reason, either. And then, I think it's important to note. When I reconcile a resolution against this council's ability to hire their they hired a city manager, they hired the city attorney directly, they hired the city judge directly. So do I want a resolution, or do I want this body to clearly state what who they want in the qualifications of the person they want in those offices, I'd defer to that before I hire someone before there's a changeover, have that conversation, the city manager directly hires a city, the chief of police. So this body has direct influence on everything they need at every phase, not to require not to rely on someone to read and interpret a resolution but to say specifically, here's our expectation if you're going to take this job, if you're going to move forward. And here's our expectation for the type of police chief we want. So I think that's all the control that I would need to make sure the citizens feel heard, feel safe. And I think we have that in place so I don't think there's anything to do. And I commend you and Judge Atkinson for your, for your work, and I think really when it comes down to officers, you're doing it already. You're hiring great officers, and we're getting great results. And I think that's important and I thank you for clarifying the misinformation about, because I think that it's important that we make sure everyone understands we're not profiling, we're not using discretion in ways that aren't consistent, because I think that's just important to note. So, thank you very much, great presentation, and that'll take us to our next worst session. And then dinner will be ready. We'll grab that and come back for those for the next things. So item B is ID 212387 receive a report hold discussion, give staff direction on pending City Council request. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council this is Rachel Ballthorpe Mendoza assistant to the city manager, and I will get our presentation going. Mayor can you confirm that that's full screen please. Yes, thank you. Thank you. Okay, now that we're up again I'll present our one pending request for information this afternoon. Just by way of reminder, our processes that we will do up to seven requests for meeting one for each member, and I'll introduce each one. Today we just have the one, the elected official that made the request will then have up to two minutes to describe and justify it. And then the remaining elected officials will then have up to one minute to provide feedback and indicate their support for the use of staff time to respond to the request. Staff will respond to our requests where we get the consensus for council. We do have a little bit more here for you, the agenda committee assists and scheduling items, and we do have guidelines based on prioritization, those are there for you. We have a little bit more along here as we lay this one out, Councilmember Armentor today will present one on work session to discuss amending the implement weather policy, and it's there for you verbatim, and we did provide a little bit of information in your backup. And so I will stop sharing. So that Councilmember Armentor can present. Thank you. So we've received information about beds at Monsignor King and Salvation Army. I realized that they are not at full capacity during intimate weather. I'm not asking for a new shelter. I'm asking as a public health measure for there to be somewhere where people can go at any time of day, a consistent place, at least one in the city to take shelter from the, from the, from, from the weather and inclement weather. I'm also asking that we change our definition of inclement weather from Fahrenheit temperatures to the more accurate windchill and heat index that we come up with a scientifically justified definition of what constitutes dangerous weather for public health based on windchill and heat index. I look forward to us having a work session on these two issues, and I feel that we can make some progress if we do. Thank you. Okay. Any, any members of Meltzer. Yeah, there's a lot of backchannel going on on this topic and I think it probably would be more efficient to just get it into work session, and I would, I would rank it high, simply because of time sensitivity, if we are going to make changes, you know, in the middle of cold weather season. So I would support that. And, and I would ask if we're gathering information now we bring into the session, the input of those who don't go to shelter, just to find out what the requirements would have to be whether it's about storage for their stuff or just, you know, what is it, because we do have bets that often go untaken. Thank you. Anyone else. Yes, my points are actually nearly identical to what Mayor Pro Tem just said, with the add on that the, you know, trying to understand what's why a what why aren't they going to the shelter and be I'm not sure as counselor armature understanding why we would want to reach high densities during a pandemic. So, I support exploring these further and I would put it high for the same reasons Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you. I support moving forward with a work session to discuss this and I would also place it at a high priority, given the weather situation. Okay, anyone else. Mayor, this is Sarah. I understand that Council is going to put a high priority on it but as I promised Council in my review with them that I would raise sort of the red flag, you know, we have a lot of other things coming forward with high priority, your mobility plan your comprehensive plan. Today you're hearing the ADA plan kind of need to hear, you know what you want me to push back so I can put something on the agenda. Starting February one we're going to two meetings a month and I've already booked out two meetings that we don't have available for Council meetings for additional conversations for the mobility and comprehensive plan. And it will take us some time, because I want to be able to present to Council, a very full complement of information so you can make a very informed decision which is what it would take to stand up a facility. What are the staffing requirements to training the cost, everything. Okay, so let's just go to those that have already supported if there are four. Councilor Armitage, what would you remove from the list. So, what are the options. Well then. No, I just wanted to get from maybe you can just maybe maybe you can just well no we need to do it now. So yeah. I'm just looking at the agenda, we won't have it ready for the 25th so on February 1 we have a facilities on audit, a homestead exemption roadway impact fees parks and recreation parks dedication and development fees sign topper program. February 8 and February 14 been blocked out for comprehensive plan mobility plan. February 15 building codes fire fire codes residential codes. Another audit police department overview sustainability sustainability framework advisory committee. And then, March 1 is, you know, we're getting into where then. That's why I just want to bring that up because I don't want to, I want to make sure I'm being real clear and transparent with you what we have on the agenda, and what, but also, I don't think I can get it would be pushing it to have everything ready by the 25th. Because I want to make sure we're giving you an informed decision on the cost, and all the other things associated with standing up a facility for people to go to because we currently have facilities where people can go during the day. And we currently have facilities where people can go at night. And so I, I, I'm trying to want to make sure I give you a comprehensive report. Okay, so, so if you feel it sounds like you're saying you feel that might be possible for this to come forward at the first meeting in February, in which case, it would be be helpful to have that list of, you know, to just be able to look at that agenda. I don't have it right now memorized in my in my head and it would take up a little time to go to it right now. I could do it during a break. Yeah, I'll send it to y'all. I'll send it to everybody. Okay, that would be great because for it's the email, but, but I have definitely heard some of those, you know, that could be pushed up a week or whatever. I'm sure we'd be able to find find something. So just just to give you an idea, January 25th right now we have five hours blocked out for work session items on February 1st. We have five hours and 30 minutes blocked out for those items of council, you know, things that we need to go through. So I'll just send you the matrix and you can look at it. I'll send it to all the council members. Yeah, because is it what's the and let's just have a clear process. We would we would need four people to agree on I guess the next level would be would be four people to agree on which work session to be or what items to be pushed. Is that correct because if you have different people that want different things pushed. I assume yes I would need at least four to tell me what to move off of the first or the agenda committee who's helped set the agenda, which the mayor pro tem is saying so we set the agenda the way it is and we just reviewed it the other day. But I'll send this out and you know there's certainly when you got five hours and 30 minutes already for February 1st I got to pull something off. Yeah, and I'm going to tell you I'm against that it's not a agenda committee usurps the body type move. I wouldn't support that at all. There needs to be a consensus of this body of in order for staff to make that type of time investment. If there's not four people that agree on unilaterally what they want to remove and replace then I wouldn't support that it's not our job to usurp the body. Well, my, my answer will be very broad it will encompass a lot, so I'm sure I will be able to find agreement among those consider this priority. Yeah, I just express it just a different opinion in terms of what our rules of procedure are. I think absolutely need a consensus to determine to determine if an item is what we take up, and I think it's exactly what the agenda committee does is determine when we take it up. So, you know, if you want to do it a different way. I don't have a lot of heartburn about it but I think it's exactly what the agenda committee is empowered to do is, but first see if you know if you've got the consensus to take it up I think I think you do have. Yeah, and I, again, I take your point, and I disagree, because if there's two people that agree, and then it comes to council, and it doesn't have support and staffs done all this work for not. I don't, I don't like that that path. I don't think that's productive. I think staff needs to have the confidence that there's four people because you have to pull staff off of something to work on this. And so that is my concern what there needs to be consensus on what we're pulling staff off of what gets delayed in order to move this forward, and that can't be a decision made by a subcommittee of this body that this body needs to make that decision because it has ramifications that are long lasting or at least longer, because staff has been working on these things to bring them forward. Councilor McGuire. Thank you. Yes, I would be comfortable with pushing the facilities maintenance audit follow up back in order to facilitate this conversation. Okay. So, the city manager can note that. Okay, I can get that's for 30 minutes. Yeah, we're already. I'll send this out but again if I don't point this out to you I think it's bad on me. When you have five hours and 30 minutes we're already stretched for February 1, you have some heavy topics here, Homestead exemption roadway impact fees parkland dedication and development see these sign topper the audit is a 30 minute and usually doesn't even go 30 minutes. So, what I'm looking for is removing enough here, so that you have at least an hour to discuss this issue regarding sheltering, because I know that it'll take that staff is going to present a very detailed layout of options. And we have to have the time to prepare it but we also want to make sure we're not that we're giving you all the information so you can make an informed decision. Okay, thank you. So yeah, he'll send it out we'll go from there. And so that'll conclude item B. So let's take, and so we're going to eat at the day of so we can keep moving. So let's say it's it's 530, we will take a 20 minute break to grab food come back and pick up our consent agenda so we'll be back at that be 555. Welcome back to this meeting of the Denton City Council this 555 we're back in session, as noted at the beginning of the meeting we're going to skip past the closed session for now and work our way through to the consent agenda agenda portion of the agenda. And so, with that, item C was pulled for individual consideration so I'll take a motion on the others. I move approval of the items in the consent agenda, excluding item C. Thank you. Is there a second customer require a second. Okay, motion by Councilmember Beck second by Councilmember McGuire for a consent agenda but for item see any discussion. Seeing none customer back I'll say you. Aye, Councilmember Guar. Yes. Your husband as well that passes seven zero, and then we'll take up item C, I'll call that and for the record Councilmember Davis and Councilmember McGuire. And is there anyone else that's recusing that I missed some Councilmember Armitage are recusing for item C. Which is ID 22001 consider adoption of the ordinance authorizing the city manager Tex Q. The amendment, amendment, number two to the memorandum of understanding the environment between the city of Denton, and the University of North Texas. So I'll, I'll take a motion customer back. I move approval. Is there a second. Thank you. I have a motion by Councilmember back second by Councilmember bird any discussion. Seeing none, customer back I'll say you. I customer bird. Mayor Hudson is a I. I. And that passes four to zero. And that takes us to that completes our consent agenda takes us to our one item for individual consideration, which is ID 212733 consider approval of a resolution of the city of Denton, adopting the American Americans with disabilities. With disability acts transition plan and declaring an effective date. Okay. Good evening. Mayor city council. Can you see the presentation? Can you hear me? Fine. Yes, sir. Thank you very much. Today. We have staff from parks and recreation and our engineering team as well as facilities and our consultants. Kim Lee horn and accessology to provide you and present you findings from our 88 self evaluation and transition transition plan. Phase one was conducted in 2019, which consisted of our city sidewalks and then phase two is our building and parks, which, which was completed this year. We have launched a website, a webpage on the city's city's website. There are 15,000 pages of information regarding to this, the study and each one of those are on the website. We will not be going through those each slide today. So rest assured that will not occur, but it is available for the general public to review. Kim Lee horn is going to lead us in the presentation. So at this point time, I'd like to turn over to Matt pool and then I'll be working through the slides and then we'll be standing available afterwards for questions and comments. Thank you, Gary. And thank you mayor and council for the opportunity to present you all this afternoon. My name is Matt pool with Kim Lee horn. We have Christie Avalos and Stephen Lomondowski from accessology on the call with us. And I also want to take an opportunity quickly to thank city staff. I mean, Gary is also Scott Gray, Nathan George, as well as many others have been very actively involved. He's been a multi years long project and we couldn't have done it without them. So really appreciate all the support throughout. So looking at the agenda for today, we're going to go through some goals and objectives of the ADA transition plan project. We're going to talk about the background of the ADA and why this project is important and needs to be completed. Go through the specific scope of services that we've completed, talk through some of the sample findings from some of the facilities that have been reviewed for ADA compliance, and then go through a little bit of the development of the transition plan, including the facility reports that you have available. That's the 15,000 pages Gary mentioned, as well as the prioritization of the accessibility improvements and how those improvements have been costed. And then finally, of course, take any questions and comments you all have. So, overall, I mean goals and objectives, this is a citywide master plan for accessibility in the same way you're going to have a parking master plan utilities master plan this is your master plan for accessibility and so the ADA is a civil rights law that ensures that there's no discrimination for public facilities, based on disability. And so, you know, per that we definitely want to improve accessibility for all citizens. We've done a lot of work in the past, we've done a lot of work in the past in the past, we've done a lot of work in the past, we've done a lot of work in the past, we've done a lot of work in the past, we've done a lot of work in the past, we've done a lot of work in the past, we've done a lot of work in the past, we've done a lot of work in the past, we've done a lot of work in the past, we've done a lot of work in the past, we've done a lot of work in the past, we've done a lot of work in the past, we've done a lot of work in the past. But really, this is a comprehensive list of barriers to access so what is a barrier to access you all may be familiar but a very common example would be, you've got a city sidewalk that runs along the street, it runs up to a curb and there's no curb ramp. What you do is a wheelchair user could not get from the sidewalk across the street in that scenario. So, we've identified thousands of items similar to that in the reports, and not only identifying them but giving you a plan it is a living document at the site that needs to be reworked over time, but this plan includes an identification of all those barriers as well as cost estimates to remove the barriers and the schedule that allows you to plan for funding of the improvements over time. And we've also identified some funding sources that can be utilized to help with that, that funding cost over time. I'm going to pass it over to Christy to give a little more background on the ADA specifically title two for state and local governments and also talk about some of the changes that have occurred over time. So, Christy. Good evening everybody. This says I can't start my video because the host has turned it off so I apologize for not being live up now apparently I can. There we go. Okay. So the ADA is 31 years old. It'll be 32 years old this year so it started back in the in the mid 80s, and it was a civil rights law as Matt said specifically to to ensure that people with disabilities had access to everything that you do as a city. The ADA is not the law that says you have to do anything. It doesn't say you have to have sidewalks, it says, if you have them, they have to comply. And of the procedures that were required under the ADA. We helped develop the grievance procedure which is a required process for people to be able to get to you. If they have an issue if they're unable to get to the store down the street and they need curb ramps put in that kind of thing. There was a requirement that you have a designated person who is known as the ADA coordinator to oversee the implementation of the the evaluation that we've done. There was a requirement to review the, the program services and activities to make sure that everything that you offer you offer to everybody. And then the transition plan itself was designed specifically to ensure that any facilities that you have that might be vulnerable or architectural barriers can be removed. Now a lot of times we get questions as to why would we do this 32 years after the law came out. Well, what happened was in 2010, they opted to start enforcing the law through funding. Now if you don't have a transition plan and you may have already seen, you're not going to be able to get funding from Department of Transportation from the Department of Agriculture from the Department of Education, whoever it is in the federal in the federal administration that you get funding from, you will not be eligible without having a current and comprehensive ADA transition plan. So that's what we have put together for you now with the buildings that were built prior to ADA going into effect. And the date they use is January 26 1992 buildings that were built prior to that. We only have to bring the buildings into compliance in five areas. That includes getting people to and into the building, the access to the goods and services which is your interior path of travel, your restrooms you're drinking fountains and any telephones or communication features that are used by the people who are coming into the building. Everything built since January 26 1992 up until March 15 2012 should have already met the 91 standards. So when we evaluate we evaluate to the standard that was in place at the time. And if it didn't meet the 91 standard you're at a higher risk for potential litigation, then even the older buildings that haven't been brought into compliance, yet. And then the final date is the March 15 2012 and anything built since then should comply with the 2010 standards, which is the current standard being used 2010 ADA in 2012 Texas accessibility standards. So those are the, those are the elements that we that we compare to Christy. We're good for the next slide. And so, as Christy just mentioned all those standards that we compare to that that's what we've evaluated your, your city facilities to so we've looked at all buildings, particularly focused on areas of public access parks trails, and then all the city sidewalk corridors and curb ramps that run along your roadways, as well as the signalized intersections where there's pedestrian equipment push buttons and signal heads, some additional requirements for those. And as Gary mentioned those were completed a couple years ago the sidewalks and curb ramps and signalized intersections, but it's all been grouped together into this transition plan. So we're looking at performing field reviews and comparing the standards, we developed reports that identify within ADA compliance without of ADA compliance, and all this is also developed in a GIS database to give spatial information that that shows the location of the facilities and also allows really great organizational tool for the wealth of data that's associated with with the findings. And then from there, it really is about developing a plan. So, once we have the 15,000 pages all of the list of barriers, how, how are the improvements organized. We'll go through a prioritization schedule and a few slides that helps, you know, plan for improvements over time, fixing the biggest issues first. Those are the facility improvement schedules and we also want to take feedback from the public and from the disability community to help guide the prioritization of those improvements. And so again we've looked at all of your facilities all of your public facilities including over 70 buildings 40 parks over 30 miles of trails that were paved five miles unpaved 125 signals and then the very vast sidewalk network you all have 300 and almost 375 miles. And all this is documented geospatially with listing of barriers along all of these facilities. So on the next slide we're going to show just a sampling of the kinds of issues that we're looking at you know for buildings it's everything Christy mentioned it's accessible parking entrances interior elements including things like transaction counters or elevators restrooms to travel, pretty much anywhere the public's going to need to use needs to be looked at. And then for parks. It's again path of it's parking but it's the path of travel and it's access to amenities like playgrounds, benches, seating areas, etc. And again the sidewalk we're looking for. I mean even a quarter inch elevation change in the sidewalk is deemed an accessibility barrier so that's the level of detail that's been performed in these studies and see on the left image there a curb ramp that significantly slope imagine the wheelchair user going down that curb ramp, they would very likely be tipping towards the bottom of that curb ramp there. So, again, on the, on the facility report there is a detailed report specifying the accessibility barriers, the priority of those barriers and the cost estimated costs associated with improvements for each part for each building, as well as all of your sidewalk corridors and intersections so alongside a GIS based database which is more of a mapping environment there are physical, which can be printed or digital can be printed physically PDF reports that give you detailed access to be able to plan improvements at specific facilities. So this is an example of the prioritization schedule we've been referencing this is a 12 point schedule that was used for the building park and trail improvements, but really it's based around a couple things one grievance, a known complaint from the public for the grievance procedure that Christie mentioned earlier, or severe access limitations, also known as generally immediate danger so it's going to be your top priorities. This is going to be the greatest area of risk to the city if a member of the public were to complain and so that's what has been prioritized at the top of the list. And as we go down through points one through 12 it really just is tapering down towards close to closer towards compliance at the bottom of the list, severe severely non compliant at the top of the list. So this prioritization schedule is just based on really non compliance with the ADA, but it's going to need to be a living schedule over time that takes into account city priorities such as your pedestrian potential index or plan CIP projects so there's going to need to be a blending it's not just accessibility priorities. This table here really goes into the amount of detail we have associated with the prioritization and the costing so we have a list of parks and it was kind of tiny on the left side and then each column represents a various priority level so as we zoom in. You can see that for priority level one and priority level to their every single park has a dollar amount associated by priority of improvements. Again this is all backed up by the database by the GIS data in the reports but the point being is that if you want to go make improvements next year, you have access to the information to be able to plan the most pertinent improvements per the ADA standards, the most pertinent improvements first. And so here the cost associated with the evaluations of the vast number of facilities. We've got it broken down by the high medium and low prioritization level and within each of those there's four sub priorities. You can see we've got about almost $8 million associated with high priority improvements, 17 million with medium and 18 or 18 million with low with the vast majority of those costs being along the public right of way. So the signalized intersection, the public right of way sidewalk and the unsignalized intersections really just due to the fact that there were many more of those facilities again 375 miles of sidewalk is going to lead to a lot of potential improvements under the ADA. You want to point out a couple of things. One, these costs include 15% markup for design contingency and 20% for construction. The point being is this plan needs to be applicable over time. So we want to show inflated costs that will be applicable for the next 10, 20, 30 years as improvements are made. Additionally, this plan or excuse me, these costs are specific to accessibility improvements. They do not account for any planned city projects, any reconstructions, any relocations of facilities. So it is intended to provide a, I guess you could say a worst case scenario. They are intended to be elevated costs that specifically handle accessibility improvements. And so with that, again, we're asking for approval of this plan or staff is asking for approval of this plan and really the action from it is to take the plan, blend it with all the great things you're currently doing as a city, and start implementing strategies to make accessibility improvements over. Right now it's deemed to be a 30 year improvement schedule. So without happy to take any questions. Okay, thank you very much. Questions for staff. Mr. Melzer. Thank you. Great to see this, of course, doesn't feel great to see that, you know, it's 30 years worth of activity to get acknowledgeably $43 million worth of work done. You know, toward the end, as you alluded, you identified a number of different potential grant sources, would it be possible to build into the plan itself, an intention to have the grant writing team focus on hitting all the sources identified, see how much can be raised and then we have a better sense of the kind of total funds available to you have to come back to counsel to prioritize again and just to put that process in the plan rather than to say, we did it. It's going to be about 30 years, you know what I'm saying, just to build in some kind of extra. I mean, I would, I guess I'll go first I would certainly say that can be implemented as part of the plan I mean it's really is, it's really as city, the city's plan you know we don't want to be as the consultants directing any path really just simply trying to report current conditions and have a path forward to make those improvements and so I think that's a great idea you definitely want to take advantage of the potential funding sources to the extent possible. Thanks. Just to add to that as well. The 30 years is something that staff set as as a timeline map maybe you could give a little specific details in regards to, you know, it's not required everything to be done in 10 years there needs to be a strategic plan set forward, and we can make adjustments accordingly based on how quickly we want to accomplish those goals. We didn't want to be too aggressive and say 10 years. You know, the, the existing 40 plus million dollars is one and a half million dollars a year across the city over 30 years. So, you know, there's obviously economic downturn and all that as well so I know I think this you know reality to what you know what's in there not. I'm not questioning that it's just, it could change if you, if you found you could raise a pot of money. In addition to in addition to as a buildings replaced, if we decide that, hey, we're going to replace to say the service center, for example, and there's a million dollars worth of. Impediments that need to be addressed that that could be pushed until that building was renovated. So you don't have to do those changes now and then tear it down. You know, 5 years later. Sorry, Sarah. No, I was just going to say Council, Mayor and Council. I think one of the things to do now is they've sort of laid the information before you and you have it where you have ranked from very high all the way down to low. And it's also based on the most important things that need to be addressed. First, I would highly recommend that we allow staff the time to go back and look at where the areas are in the most high areas, meaning where you get to where it's not really required. Only when you add on or when you're doing a renovation and then come back with a sort of the plan. And I'll be honest, I wouldn't want to see us wait 30 years to make some of these improvements or to make these changes, but to really come back with a plan that has those priority areas that you can see on that that chart and then do that based on the highest priority and the ones that impact the public the most. And then we can start to look at the dollars attached to it. And then we can start looking at grants like to Texas Parks and Wildlife and other things for funding mechanisms. But I do want to be honest and say that in some of these areas, I think it's going to be important, like it was in the Southwest Master Park Master Plan that we are going to have to have a bond program specifically for something. Some of these things. Okay, Councilmember Beck. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And to pick right back up from there, I love the granularity. I mean, I think we all clearly council and city management staff can do their best work when they have that granularity. I guess my question goes to, do we envision factors in our capital improvement projects that will allow, Gary alluded to this just a second ago, allow us to hopscotch, you know, where something that might be a lower priority because we're renovating it this year, next year, that gets covered. And the other flip side of that is, are there sources of funding now? I know that the various administrations put particular emphasis on funding programs that, you know, again, may take a lower priority, but we need to take advantage of it now because there's a funding source now. Even though it might have actually been a 30 year update, rather than the one of the first 10 year updates. Are do we, are there, has that been looked at at all in terms because we already have some of our capital improvement plan in place. I mean, that's not ground zero. And we already, you know, and our grants program staff already know what infrastructure grants are out there and state and federal levels. So I guess, do we anticipate already some shifts or really you haven't comprehensively looked at that yet. I'll go ahead and start with that. I wouldn't, I wouldn't anticipate some, some constant shifts every year as we look at grants, physical needs on property if a trail is damaged and needs to be replaced and we're looking at a master plan expanding the park, whatever that would be from a park perspective. We'll look at that shift each year. Some of the low hanging fruit will be able to address with our operating budget if it's signage related or or something fairly simple. We'll try to figure those out sooner than later, but we'll be taking this plan each year. You know, basically by facilities, CIP and parks integration and I don't want to speak for the other departments, but from a park perspective for sure looking at how we can start chipping away at this and match it mirrored up with our CIP and CMP plans. Great, and that's good because I guess my last sort of follow up from that is, as, as we eventually get back to next year's budget cycle and and and every subsequent budget cycle after that, do we anticipate. You know, we can do we can divide that four and a half to a million and a half a year just like you did, Gary, but we know that some years are going to be five, and some years are going to be 500,000. And so, 5 million I meant. So, do, do we have a feel for, for how much the budget might shift in the next few cycles in order to compensate for some of these changes, or again, is that not something we've done yet. David, you might want to address that. Sure, you know, I think, I think those are all the right questions and as we kind of go through the CIP process we can be sure to point point out and incorporate this in our CIP presentations and our proposals. And as you look at this you see there's so many different buckets of funds right when we're talking about facilities and parks, and engineering and streets and so there's there's different facets of how we go at it if you even just think about 2019 bond program, there's sidewalk efforts there that we're doing there's roadway improvements that are going to help toward this as well. So, that's in conjunction with what we're doing in park so it's not like we have to go find $40 million from scratch it's, how do we use the existing funds which I think is what we need to get to that point, and then think about what our future bond programs look like what are, how do we revenue fund on the park side on this on the street side on the facility side to get there as well what the other are the other funding options like grant so I think this is a great starting point for us as we go into the CIP, and we can continue to benchmark to this as we say here's here's what we're going to execute next year to five years. Thanks, I appreciate it. One comment from the capital projects engineering side. Nathan George capital projects engineer. So, Council member back I'm not sure if this will directly answer your question, but we're referring to our capital programs and how that would relate to delivery of these projects and I just want to make sure it's clear as we're completing capital projects. The effectively it's a you touch it and it's broken you have to fix it or you, you kind of bought the problem so to speak. So, as our projects are are moving forward. We're ensuring at least on the street side and I'm sure parks and facilities would say the same thing as we touch something we bring it into compliance to the degree that's required by federal mandate through the ADA and through tasks. So, I just want to make sure that that's clear that, you know, when we go out and do a streets project, there are noncompliant sidewalk ramps. We're fixing those. There are some caveats. So there's a lot of. A lot of specific criteria when you go to apply these standards, when we're talking about streets, the specific criteria is ramps. So, if they're noncompliant sidewalks, and they're not within the scope of a project, that's where we have to find additional funding to construct those improvements or bring those facilities in the complex. So, just want to make sure that all of that is clear for your free benefit. Yeah, that makes sense. Thank you. Thanks. Catherine Burke. Okay. I think I'm going to be a little bit more simple here. I'm thinking about a neighborhood that is off of our McKinney Street and I'm always very concerned when I drive through this neighborhood because there are mailboxes that are sitting right there smack dab in the middle of the sidewalk. And there hasn't been any kind of provision for to widen the sidewalk or do anything, you know, to allow a person that may be in a wheelchair, you know, in that area. Where does something like that come in here is this part of. I'm looking at the signalized intersection and curb ramp prioritization, all the different pages, and there are a lot of things noted here but something as simple as that is that are we addressing anything like that. In this in this package here. Something basic like a mailbox sitting in the middle of a sidewalk down the street. All of them. Yes. So I'll take that. And yes, you're exactly right I mean that is that's a severe issue within the sidewalk. We do have a sidewalk prioritization schedule which hopefully was included in your, in your packet as well I believe it was page eight of the exhibits. And so, what we, we would probably classify that as somewhat of a, it could be a shattered slab it could be a heave, but long and short that has been captured in the sidewalk evaluation criteria and would be flat is a severe issue because it's obviously a complete blocking of the sidewalk in most cases and creates a very narrow width. So you will know the exact locations of that type of a barrier and there's been a, and again an initial cost associated with removal of that pole, there could be some additional utility coordination needed and things of that nature, but from a visual assessment yes it's been noted captured and prioritized. Thank you. Okay, any other questions for staff. Councilman armature. Yeah, I wanted to ask about the discussion by the committee on persons with disabilities on the plan. Did, did that committee can raise any questions about the, the timeline and try to reduce the, the 30 years to 2015. Something like that. Let me let me pull it up real quick. I have a summary of what they had asked for 1 second. The items that they brought up in the discussion specifically related to feedback include sidewalk detectable warning pavers bus stop concerns public access to individual to the individual reports, which we'd mentioned that's on our website and potential inflation costs and to the transit and the transition timeline. So timeline was mentioned in regards to its, its progress in the costs, obviously associated with that is that inflation goes up quicker and it costs more to make those repairs. So that was brought up during the meeting. Okay, yeah, thank you. And that is a concern to me to the, the rising cost and most of all, even more than that, you know, 30 years of, you know, to wait for us to do all this work just to simply be fully ADA compliant. I love this plan, by the way, and, and I plan to support it. But I, I would like to know, you know why if we made it a 20 year plan instead or a 15 year plan didn't change anything of the substance of it. What, what would be the harm in that since a plan is, it's a vision. Right. We could even maybe write something in that, you know, that if it's not possible to get all of this done in that time then that's okay. But the problem is that 30 years over 30 years, it could die. We could all die, we could, you know, that's a long time from now. And I'm, I, I know the intention is not to spend so much work on this just to show that the intention is to start to get working right away. So these things will be worked on right away, but those things that are kind of the last thing that we need more money for. Why not bring that a little closer in the timeline. Absolutely, we could adjust the schedule based on council direction. 20 years, 15 years, whatever council's recommendation is and direction we can make those adjustments. We can leave it at 30 years as it's planned and make adjustments every year and fluctuate back and forth. Whatever council would like us to do we can make those adjustments. Wonderful. I would, I'll just put this out there. This is my own personal direction. I would love to see 15 years. I would like to see 15 years. Okay, any other questions for staff. Yeah, given the conversation that I guess my question is for the Interim City Manager. What would be most helpful to staff I get I get it that you want to, you know, now, with this kind of overlay the CIP plans. You look at what already matches up with existing funding sources, you know, and, and kind of after prioritizing, then look at grant sources, but would it help you more. Would you rather adopt it tonight, or would you rather, you know, and then you go and do that, or would you prefer to just come back after having kind of hammered through a work plan. I get asked that you adopt it tonight with the caveat that, and I think this is so important is that Gary, Nathan, Scott, Gray, and then we look at the facility assessment that's currently taking place so that we don't go in and try to put money attached to something that we know we're going to have to renovate or take down. And that we come up with this more comprehensive approach of here are the things as it relates to facilities that need to be done in the next year, two, three, here's the things that need to be done in regards to sidewalks, the mobility area. Here are the things as it relates to parks and trails and things. And then we develop from that a funding plan that shows viable grants, because we could say all day that we have grants that are out there, but we need to have viable grants, and then we need to work with our finance staff to put in and plan a reasonable capital improvement program that makes sense based on those areas that have the highest ranking. And then from there we go into, you know, the ranks that the more that are ranked like four, five, six in that area, so that it doesn't take us 30 years, but it shows how we can accomplish this in 15 years or 20 years. Do you want us to articulate in what we passed tonight an expectation that you'll come back with this? Yes, give us a couple of months so that we can put all this together and we can come back or through a Friday report share with you the information advanced and for you to bless it again and saying, yeah, this looks good, because we do need to give you the heads up that in some form or fashion we're going to have to plan some of this out. You heard David say in a CIP program, and it needs to be based on needs, but it also needs to be based on the assessment of what our current facilities are and those kinds of things so we know what to hit first. Yeah. So, on the basis of that, I'm prepared to move approval of the report with the expectation that in, let's say this is, we're in January, let's say that by April 1 that Council would be able to review, let's just call it a more detailed work plan. So that sounds good. Yep, that's, that's my motion, Catherine, if I may, Mayor Scott great director of facilities just want to chime in there and I think Sarah mentioned this is the facility conditions assessments. We are doing that on all these buildings that are listed here we will get that back about the first of April so it's going to take us a little bit of time to dig through those plans and provide some insights so if you don't mind giving us a little bit more of a window our intent was to make sure we had all that information included in our, in our budgetary process this year as well so maybe by by May we would be certainly able to answer those questions. May 1, when you say by May. Yep. So I accept that guidance. So, we approve the, you know, approve the plan with the expectation that by May 1 council will see a more detailed work plan. Okay, Councilmember McGuire. I is there there's there's a motion on the floor yes, yes, go right ahead. I will, I'll second the motion. And I also wanted to reiterate support for what Councilmember Arminter said about, you know, it's an excellent plan. And I think that we could be more ambitious about achieving it in a shorter timeframe, 15 years or 20 years. So, yes, I think that that we should aim to to have it on a faster timeline. And I would also like to see, you know, an established schedule perhaps every five years for, you know, updating the plan. I just want to comment. My expectation is that we'll be able to have greater clarity on what more, what a more accelerated timeline would look like, you know, when, when staff comes back. Okay, any other questions for staff? One real question, Mr. Mayor. Matt, what was your anticipation on how often an ADA plan should be updated? I mean, it's really going to vary by the agency. I would say every, every three to five years is probably a good time to reassess. You don't necessarily need to re-evaluate all of the condition of your facilities given the amount of information that's already been provided, but at least looking at your funding, looking at your priorities, looking at the progress that's been made in that last five years and seeing are we on track to complete a 15 or a 20 year plan or where are we deficient. So I think, I think evaluating the implementation of the plan is much more important than re-evaluating the condition of the facilities. Just to, again, be sure that things are on track, funding is appropriate, and you're making the progress that you want to make as a community. Thank you for that clarification. That was my intent. Okay, we have a motion by Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer, seconded by Council Member McGuire. Any other discussions? Questions for staff? Seeing none, Mayor Pro Tem Halsey? Aye. Council Member McGuire? Aye. Council Member Byrd? Aye. Council Member Davis? Aye. Council Member Beck? Aye. Council Member Armitage? Yes. Mayor Hertzfeld, this is our wealth. That passes 7-0. Takes us to concluding items. Thank you everyone. Any concluding items? We have closed session, Mayor. Yes. I just want to get this done so that I don't have to come back in open session. Anyone? Council Member Byrd? Yes, I want to let everyone know that I am paying homage to, I'm wearing red to pay homage to my sorority, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Incorporated, who will be celebrating its 109th birthday, anniversary, I'm sorry, not birthday, I just had a birthday, 109th year. This is an organization that's made up of over 300,000 women across the earth, and it's a public service group, and I just wanted to say hello, and I'm so proud to be a part of this organization as it concentrates on doing its very best for the public. It was established in 1913, fun fact, this was an African American group that actually walked with the suffragettes when they had their suffragette walk, so established along with the women's movement, established the same year as the Girl Scouts, and so I just want to say hello to everyone, and I'm just very proud to be sitting here in this seat. We have women that are in this group that are on federal levels, they're judges, they're senators, House of Reps, state levels, municipal levels, and we're just doing our very best to make sure that we're all on the same page. Thank you. Okay. Anyone else? Seeing none, I'll just say for those that are watching, I invite them out to the Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration at the MLK Center. There'll be a march from UNT to the American Legion Hall, Fred Moore Park, and then there to the Martin Luther King Center, and that is also going to be distance and will limit the number of people. So, and that's on Monday the 17th, and then also for those tracking along that would then change your trash date so make sure you track all those things. And then Scott left, but, but Chief Dixon pointed it out and I think it's really neat as we grow that I note that Governor Abbott was able to fly in the Denton Municipal Airport, I think today so I think that's really cool that we're increasing traffic there and Scott and his team are doing a great, great job to increase traffic there. And the last thing I'd like to note is I'd like to say hello to the founder of noble wines. Not noble, it's not no one's noble wolf vodka. So got to meet him and and just kind of visit with him and his vision and what he's doing young man he's 28 amazing doing great things so please support that brand and learn more about what they're doing and he was, he's here on purpose really likes Denton, and wants to be a part of what we're doing so couldn't be more proud of city management staff economic development staff that sort of thing we're really increasing our profile and proud to be here and proud to help where I can. From this seat so thank you very much at 640, we will go into closed session, and let me get there. Section two will go into a discussion regarding real property under Texas government code section 551.072 will also go into consultation with attorneys under government code section 551.071 on a couple of items so it is 640 will go to our designated locations. And let's try to pick back up at 645.