Mar 01, 2022 City Council on 2022-03-01 2:00 PM

March 01, 2022 City Council
Full Transcript

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             And welcome to this meeting of the Denton City Council. It is Tuesday, March the
 1st, and we do have a quorum before we get started. I have a couple of plugs. So
 I want to say hello to Mayor Jason Massel. He's in Napoleon, Ohio. Just had a
 chance to meet him and share some kind of stories and learn from him. And matter
 of fact, that's where Campbell Soup Company is, and so learned a lot about
 kind of that sort of thing. So just doing some neat... And then also, look at this.
 This is fantastic. So I got this from Grayson College. So we had a career
 fair, Gary, shout out to you, the career fair at Martin Luther King. Hey Jesse,
 you're just in time. We have new rules. So career fair at Martin Luther King, I'm
 gonna be posting some of these. This is Grayson College that gave me this
 awesome hat that lets me boss my kids around. But TWU was there, UNT, NCTC, great
 things. So I'm gonna post those. So really, really good things, and staff's doing a
 great job around those things. So I just wanted to say thank you and show off my
 new hat. So with that, we'll get to the normal stuff. So the first thing, do we
 have any... So call a meeting order 201. Do we have any callers? Hi Mayor, no, not for
 consent. Okay, great. Thank you. Then that'll take us to questions on the consent
 agenda from council. Councilmember McGuire? No questions, but I need to pull
 E for recusal. Okay, and anyone else? Councilmember Davis? Thank you Mayor, also
 recusing on E, and then I had a question on... I'm sorry, I lost the DME locks,
 where... I'm sorry, I lost my item number. Does anyone know which one that is?
 It'll take me just a second, I'm sorry. No problem, take your time. There we go.
 H. And really, I don't question the need to have padlocks on
 electrical equipment that people could get into and fiddle with. I'm just a
 little concerned about the amount, even over five years. What's that? If it's a
 $50 lock, that's 10,000 padlocks. So if we could have just a little information
 about this, the sheer dollar amount is my question.
 I'm Air City Council Tony Puenta, DME. Yes, Councilmember, we do go through a
 lot of locks. That is a five-year spend. It's based on what we've
 spent historically, not just in replacing locks, but also in new locks. And so,
 again, we've looked at what we've spent historically, we've tried to put in a
 little bit of a contingency in there, and that's just the number that we've
 gotten to. But if you can think about just about every piece of equipment that
 we have out there, whether it's a transformer on the ground or up on a
 pole, gates that we have, there's just an enormous amount of locks in the past.
 We've not had a contract like this, and so this is just a way for us to
 try to want to have a contract, but also to try to get the best price possible
 for those locks. Okay, thank you. Mayor Proctor Meltzer. Thank you, Mayor. On item S, about the
 approval of the Small Business Rent and Mortgage Relief Grant Program, either now
 or this evening, could staff just share how small business owners can make
 contact to take advantage of this program or to apply? Good afternoon. Laura
 Barons, Grant Administrator. So we will be working with our partners in making sure
 that that information gets put out. We're also planning on using our new e-Civice
 system. It's a grant management system that allows anyone who wants to apply,
 our applicants, to do so online, and they'll have step-by-step instructions on
 how to do that. And then myself and Daniel Jones, our grant analyst, will be
 available to take calls, questions, and assist anyone once that NOFO has
 been published, that Notice of Funding Opportunity has been published. Great.
 Thank you very much. Okay, anyone else? Seeing none. So for the record,
 that's just E that's being pulled. Everything else is, and that's just for
 a separate vote. That takes us to our first work session. ID 22501, receive
 report, hold discussion, give staff direction regarding an update to the
 City of Denton's COVID-19 response. Thank you Mayor and Council, Ryan Adams, Chief
 of Staff, and I will pull up the presentation. Okay. So this is just a, once
 again, another update on the COVID-19 pandemic and a discussion on the 19th
 Order of Council in light of recent CDC guideline changes. Again, background, we
 last met on this topic on February 21st. At that time, we did provide an update
 on the pandemic, discussed the Order of Council, and further discussed a letter
 received by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas. Today, we have a
 COVID-19 update scheduled, so we'll update our statistics and where we're at
 now, and then provide more information on those CDC guidelines. So not much has
 changed since we last saw you on the 21st, except that positivity rate,
 transmissions and hospitalizations continue to go down. The word used by
 Denton County Public Health today was that they have declined dramatically
 from the early 2022 peak. Omicron is still the primary variant, and as council
 knows, the Omicron variant has a higher transmissibility but a much lower death
 rate than Delta. And I do want to update our city staff figures. On the 21st, we
 presented to council, we had 25 positive cases since February 1st, and since
 February 1st, as of today, we've had 26, so we really have only had one new case,
 certainly one new case in the last five days, but our employee cases have slowed
 dramatically. Testing availability and vaccine availability has not changed
 since our last update, and I did include our case numbers, our trend over time
 for the last year at the bottom of the screen, and it will show that we are
 creeping back and have case numbers that reflect the time in the late summer,
 just before school started of the school year.
 We've also included our hospitalization chart as well. It continues to trend
 downward. Look this morning, and it was about a 9.0% of all hospital beds are
 all hospital patients are COVID-19 related, which is well under that 15%
 threshold that was associated with the previous governor's order. And
 additionally, what we presented before the death rate with the Omicron variant
 continues to be very low. So as you can see the peak that we saw, which if you
 can see my mouse, this was when Omicron peaked roughly in this time frame, high
 transmissibility, but very low death rate associated with with the Omicron
 variant.
 So we do want to share with the council that we did receive update updated CDC
 guidance that does affect masking recommendations that was announced last
 Friday. The new approach does focus on more on minimizing the impact to
 hospitals and health care systems and the impact of severe disease and
 hospitalization on the community. So less focused. It could be framed as less
 focused on preventing transmission and more focused on preventing serious cases
 and severe disease. I did include just a quick note from the CDC using their
 language on the reasons for this change at the bottom of the slide.
 So just as a recap for council, what the previous guidance, which was based
 primarily on transmission, it recommended indoor masking in areas of
 high or substantial transmission and Denton County had been high almost
 exclusively throughout the time that this guidance was was recommended by
 the CDC. And indoor masking would that recommendation would be set aside for
 areas of moderate transmission, which we as a county were not close to, to be
 frank.
 Well, the statistics have continued their trends. Nothing has changed about
 that downward trend in transmissibility and hospitalizations. The new guidance
 essentially categorizes communities, in our case counties, as high, medium or
 low risk. And those are based on not just transmission, so not just new
 COVID-19 cases, but it also takes into effect hospital admissions, new
 hospital admissions for COVID-19 and occupied inpatient beds that are
 related to COVID-19. Again, reflecting the CDC's focus on severe disease and
 the impact that it has on the community.
 So I did include this. I'm not gonna walk through it entirely, but this is
 the rubric that they're using to evaluate communities. If the new COVID-19
 cases per 1000 population over the past seven days is fewer than 200, which is
 where Denton County falls, there are two indicators that the CDC will pay
 attention to. The number of new COVID-19 admissions per 100,000 and the number
 of staffed inpatient beds occupied by COVID-19 patients. And a county will
 fall into one of the three categories. Again, low, medium or high. And out of
 those two indicators, whichever is the highest is how the county is
 categorized. So if you're low on one and high on the other, you're a high risk
 county, according to the CDC.
 And I won't read all this, but I will note the distinction is that masks are
 only recommended to be worn indoors in public for those high risk
 communities. So for medium and lower risk communities, they don't recommend
 universal indoor masking. For medium, they do recommend if you are
 susceptible to severe illness, you consult with your physician. For low
 communities, low risk communities, just stay up to date with COVID-19, get
 tested and get vaccinated.
 Now, in previous presentations, I had shown a map of the high
 transmissibility area, which were red and almost the entire United States was
 blanketed red as high and requiring indoor masking. Under the new
 guidelines, about 70% of the country is low or medium in their community
 risk level. So the CDC is not recommending indoor masking for those
 low and medium counties. So roughly 70% of the U.S. population.
 So where does Denton County fall? Denton County's currently categorized as
 medium per the CDC. However, the CDC's numbers lag what we track locally with
 Denton County Public Health, and according to Denton County Public Health,
 we are actually in the low category. And the CDC's, their figures should
 update here in the near future. So that means that within Denton County,
 there is no recommendation from the CDC for universal masking. And really,
 if you consider us medium, what people should focus on is if you are high
 risk or immunocompromised, you need to speak with your health care providers
 to see what they recommend and if they recommend that you mask. Denton County
 Public Health does not expect the county to shift to high risk in the
 near future. The reason for that is the numbers are trending down.
 We met the threshold for the low category over a week ago,
 and so it is, we've been kind of in the position to be in that
 low category for a number of days, and that there are no new
 variants with high transmissibility or high mortality rates that are on
 the horizon. Now, they do, and we do say that anything can change,
 of course, but everything is trending to where we would be in this
 low or medium, these lower medium categories for the foreseeable future.
 Which brings us to the 19th order of council.
 It is still effective through March 31st, and it requires universal indoor
 masking for city buildings, K through 12 schools, daycares, certain commercial
 buildings. When we last presented to the council on the 21st,
 we received direction that if the CDC guidance changes, please come back
 to council for discussion and the opportunity to
 act on the 19th order of council, whatever council's desire for action
 might be. And so we have done that today.
 We do have this work session so council can discuss, provide direction,
 but we do have an action item later on this evening where council can
 take action. We have listed a couple of options for the council to consider,
 and council can take action. We are posted to where you can take action
 on the 19th order or the declaration of disaster, knowing that the declaration
 of disaster can affect the 19th order. So you could modify the provisions
 or dates of either the order or the declaration. You could rescind one
 or both, or you could take no action, and both are still slated to
 expire at the end of March. And if council wanted to take no action,
 we would seek additional direction as to whether council would like us
 to bring back another decision item, another action item on the March
 22nd meeting for further action on those two,
 the order and the declaration. So with that, that is the end of
 my presentation. I'm happy to answer questions from the council,
 and staff is seeking direction. Questions for staff. Councilman Armitter?
 Yeah, I don't have any questions, but I do have
 direction. So first, I just wanna say how over the moon happy I am,
 and so many of my constituents and the public just thrilled that
 we have now reached this point. I'm really proud also
 of what we have done so far as a city in listening to the science,
 listening to the CDC, consistently following CDC guidelines and not letting
 politics guide us, but instead the science. And so now the science
 points in a wonderful direction. I want to ask... So first, let me
 say, obviously, in following CDC guidelines, I want to
 remove our mask requirement, but I would like to request that we
 have an opportunity to meet before this work session item is over with
 our outside legal counsel and the city attorney, just so that we
 can discuss what is the best way to meet that goal while still
 keeping ourselves in a position where if,
 God forbid, we go back into high risk category, that we
 can return to requiring masks. It's my understanding that we can and
 that we don't need an emergency order to do that, but I'm not entirely
 sure. So if my colleagues would agree to that, I would like
 to consult before. But I just wanted to say publicly that that is
 my goal in consulting, to find us the best way to remove
 the mask requirement. Mayor Pro Temelza. I think that's a very good
 suggestion, so I'd be interested in that as well.
 Yeah, and I've been very consistent. We've been very consistent
 in having what we do track to the CDC guidance,
 so I would certainly support doing that now, and adjusting to what
 the guidance is now. I have a question regarding
 whether there are any other impacts in changing the
 order in general in terms of access to funding or
 other kind of long tail effects that we're looking after.
 The declaration that underpins the order, so you can't have the order
 without the declaration. So the order speaks exclusively to mask requirements,
 and so I would recommend that if council so chose later in the
 meeting or would wanna give direction that if they wanna remove their
 mask requirements, we simply rescind the order. Council would also have
 the option to rescind the declaration of disaster. Currently, the declaration
 of disaster only exists to provide council the ability to adopt an order
 of council. So with no orders of council, the declaration of disaster
 has no purpose, and it could be rescinded as well or allowed to expire
 at the end of the month. Okay, well, I think the prior suggestion that
 we get a little legal council on that too, 'cause there were other
 dimensions of this in motion is a good one.
 Anyone else?
 Council Member Warren. Thank you, Mayor Hedsbeth. I would also like to
 confer with our attorneys before we provide direction on this item.
 Council Member Beck. I'll make that four.
 Mr. City Attorney, obviously you have no time to prep for this,
 so give me your thoughts.
 We've put on a closed session item as a future... Well, I'm sorry,
 later in the meeting, we have an agenda item to go into closed session,
 but we can do that now if you'd like to. We have outside council available,
 and I'm ready to go to closed session if you'd like to do
 it now. Okay. Then, yeah, let's... Because I'll tell you, Ryan,
 you can only imagine. So one, I wanna know if we can move it up,
 that item for action once we get clear direction. Can we move that
 up in the agenda? Is there anything that would stop me from... Staff
 would need just sufficient time to draft. Right. So we would need
 to understand council's direction, but we could move it up to front
 of the row for IC items, that would be no problem. Got it. Yes.
 Or even if someone typed really fast and at the end of work
 session, it was... If we got you... 'Cause we're gonna go into closed now
 and get you direction so that we can... So, stand by. We'll let you know.
 Yes, sir. Appreciate you. You got it. Anyone else? Councilman Davis.
 Now, Mayor, you took some of the words out of my mouth.
 Yeah, I think it's... And I don't know, there's a whole lot of typing
 if it's a rescission. I move to rescind. I think it's seconds. The council
 says they wanna rescind, it's rescinded. So if that's consistent with
 the legal advice we get here in a little bit, I think it could happen
 at any point in the agenda. Great. Then let's get that ball rolling.
 Let me find my words. So at 2.20, we're gonna go into closed session for
 consultation with attorneys on the Texas Government Code 551.071, Consider
 Consultation Discussions, Deliberation and Receipt of Information to City's
 Attorneys Involving Legal Issues Related to a Disaster Declaration Related
 to Order Pertaining to COVID-19 Emergency. We'll get started soon as
 we're all set up in our locations. Thank you.
 Welcome back to this meeting of Denton City Council. It's 2.41. We're back
 in the open session, back on our agenda, and
 I wanted to ask, Ryan, do you need someone to give you a summary of what
 was... Or has someone already updated you? Updated me on... On a conversation.
 I was present for that. Okay, got it. I wouldn't. Great. So you have
 direction you need... Okay. Right. But I'm just asking... 'Cause I'm gonna
 have someone summarize... What are you... I'm just... Okay. If there... Could you
 summarize what you understood the direction to be? I don't believe I can
 summarize what was... I believe that's privileged conversation, closed session.
 I think we need to receive direction again here in open session. Got it. I'll
 defer to our attorney though. Correct. Okay. Well then, Councilman Arbiter. Yes,
 so thank you to our attorneys and for that consultation. As a result,
 I want to fine-tune my direction. My direction is to rescind both the 19th
 order and the declaration immediately, and I will also be suggesting that we...
 As soon as possible, whenever staff can have it ready, that we issue some
 sort of resolution encouraging folks to follow CDC guidelines and protect people
 with disabilities along the lines of the CDC guidelines. So anyway, but as far as
 this goes, rescind both. And I just want to underscore again how happy and
 proud I am that we have consistently followed CDC guidelines this whole time
 and have let public health and safety rather than politics be our guide. I
 think we should all be really proud and thanks to staff and most of all the
 public. Mayor Pro Temel, sir. Exact same direction. Glad we followed CDC
 guidelines. That's guided our actions. We had a local order and we enforced it
 and now the time has come to take it off. Councilmember Davis. Agreed. My
 direction is to rescind the order and declaration both at the earliest
 possible opportunity in this evening's agenda. I don't feel we need any
 additional resolutions. We've been doing this for two years. Folks know what to do.
 They know our position. They don't need any more. Please, please wash your hands.
 Please be careful kind of resolutions from the City Council. Councilman Byrd. I
 am in agreement to rescind the resolution and also I would also like
 to just simply state that we there are no losers in this game. I think that we
 have been, the whole city, all of us have had to deal with this and I believe that
 we have done as a city a great job so I would hope that we would see some grace
 sometimes, allow ourselves some flexibility when needed but it's time
 now so I'll agree with my peers. Councilmember Beck. Thank you Mr. Mayor. Yeah I'm not
 gonna belabor too much. I guess I'm gonna say that the science hasn't changed, the
 case rates has been changed and we've changed posture from one of prevention
 to more of one of management but we're following our nation's experts in
 scientific biomedical principles and so my direction on that component is yeah
 let's go ahead and follow that guidance. I wish we were still maintaining
 prevention and not not management but I want to stick with the nation's experts
 on that one. Regarding the resolution I think it is important to say that the
 City of Denton takes public health really seriously. We're establishing a
 position, we're saying that you know this isn't over and we encourage you to be on
 your best behavior, we're going to all be on our best behavior. We encourage all
 kinds of things for all kinds of reasons that we don't put any teeth to so I'm
 concurring with a resolution that you know pretty well matches what our
 previous order was in terms of recommendations, softening things where
 necessary to not be mandates but pretty well saying that you know we encouraged
 good behavior. Thank you. Council Member Guara. Thank you. I agree with council
 members Armenter, Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer and council member Beck. I would like to
 see us rescind both the 19th order of council and the emergency deck or the
 disaster declaration as well as for perhaps a future meeting. I mean
 certainly a future meeting because we're not posted for it today but draft a
 resolution affirming that although we're removing the 19th order and the CDC no
 longer recommends universal indoor masking for our area that that that
 doesn't mean that the pandemics over and that we can let our guard down. Yeah so
 I would like to see that resolution at a future meeting. Thanks. Okay. We have our
 direction. Okay and so to that end understanding the posting issue on the
 agenda I just want to take a moment and say that for those that are on their way
 or speaking this evening or those that would speak now I'm only speaking from
 my perspective I defer to individuals the city manager and her management but
 I think it's important to note that given the direction we have given the
 fact that we're not enforcing the mandate anyway and if we could vote now
 obviously we would but we cannot so it's kind of moot to if if there's those so
 inclined and and they're able to based on the directors you know remove them
 before 630 you know I think that's a call for the senior manager for those I
 just want to open that open that conversation and not and not defer to
 those management directors etc etc however that works I mean that's that's
 not my my Bailey wick but just want to kind of open those conversations so at
 anything else from your presentation no sir thank great thank you very much look
 forward to that so that'll conclude item a take us to item B which is ID 2 1 2 4
 0 2 receive report hold discussion to give staff direction regarding the audit
 project 0 to 5 energy portfolio management transaction administration
 I'm gonna present our findings from this audit and so this report details our
 findings from the first phase of this project and phase 2 will cover renewable
 Denton plan reporting and is expected to be released and presented to you all in
 March so to get started this audit generally evaluated compliance with the
 city's energy portfolio transaction administration policies which includes
 the energy risk management policy as well as the hedge plan annually the city
 spends about 95 million dollars in wholesale power costs and these policies
 have been implemented to manage the risk associated with meeting the city's
 instantaneous electric demand through its energy portfolio so oh your
 presentation it oh I'm so sorry the words I need to share it that's the
 problem back to being the regular stuff all right this is the this is where I
 was so in order to meet this demand didn't municipal electricity electrics
 energy management organization must execute transactions including hedges
 to ensure energy put on the ERCOT grid by generators is available to be taken
 off by DME to serve its customers it's important to make clear that once energy
 is put on the grid it's not physically possible to keep track of each unique
 megawatt generated so instead ERCOT uses metering and a system of accounting to
 track and financially settle the trade and use of electricity so I'll begin by
 discussing the different types of energy portfolio transactions that we reviewed
 and if these transactions were executed in compliance with the city's policies
 based on our review so generally we reviewed three different types of energy
 portfolio transactions as part of this audit including physical and financial
 trades power purchase agreements and payments and congestion revenue rights
 in general the front office is responsible for identifying a transaction
 to execute to execute including monitoring the electricity market to
 identify appropriate physical and financial hedges they solicit and
 evaluate generators to contract with for power purchase agreements and they also
 bid as part of ERCOT's congestion revenue rights auctions the middle
 office is then responsible for ensuring these transactions align with relevant
 energy portfolio management policies such as verifying the physical and
 financial hedges were executed within the proper authority they also execute
 agreements with other market participants and they monitor contract
 compliance the back office is then responsible for processing received
 invoices and billing other market participants for executed transactions
 back office also communicates these transactions transaction settlement
 activities to the city's accounting division accounting and Treasury
 divisions as needed to ensure the transactions are recorded in the city's
 financial records these duties and internal controls including the
 appropriately designed separation of duties between the three different
 offices and the risk management committees governance activities are
 laid out effectively in the city's energy risk management policy and hedge
 plan and so the results of our view of each of these transaction types are
 summarized next beginning with physical and financial trades we found that all
 40 reviewed trades were generally executed settled and recorded
 appropriately in the city's financial records however there was no formal
 process for front office staff to approve trade transactions after they
 were executed to ensure they were appropriate in addition we found the
 middle office did not have a process to verify that trade transactions were made
 by authorized employees based on the transaction authority limits set in the
 energy risk management policy and in addition the middle office has
 established procedures for evaluating and monitoring the financial health of
 trading of our trading counterparties however the documentation of these
 periodic evaluations was not maintained for power purchase agreements we found
 that the city was complying with state procurement regulations when going
 through the solicitation process we did originally find that for 10 of the 46
 agreement payments reviewed the quantity delivered could not be verified based on
 the documentation provided by back office staff but based on discussion
 with them today we were able to verify most of these discrepancies so there's
 currently just two invoices that we couldn't verify and we in total under
 paid one vendor by 19 megawatts basically so a very small amount compared
 to what we were doing on average annually so in then in addition we found
 that payments made for megawatt hours curtailed or megawatt hours that could
 have been generated but were not due to direction from the city were very
 difficult to verify because there's not actually a physical commodity being
 delivered and quantities can only be verified in 15 minute increments while
 the curtailment decision is being made in real time and then finally for
 congestion revenue rights awarded CRRs are automatically recorded in the city's
 city's energy trading and risk management system and transactions are
 settled by ERCOT automatically in the city's CRR account with ERCOT back
 office has a process to monitor the city's CRR account with ERCOT and has
 also established informal thresholds at which the account account
 replenishment payments are initiated so as part of as part of our view of these
 transactions I noticed a couple set administrative issues in particular we
 found that data stored in the energy trade and risk management or ETRM system
 was not regularly regularly reviewed which resulted in some data inconsistencies
 we I already mentioned the one about the CRRs being awarded to the city not
 being automatically recorded in the system in addition we found that while
 the ETRM system included data on the energy energy generated by the city's
 power purchase agreement generators the data was not used to verify a megawatt
 hours quantities billed by our our PPAs and instead back office uses ERCOT
 settlement data but there were discrepancies between the two datasets
 in addition we found that while the middle office has developed and
 implemented standard operating procedures they've not been updated since
 2017 and did not match with current practices furthermore the middle office
 has been charged with administering access to the ETRM system but no
 criteria or procedures have been developed outlining how that access
 should be granted modified or revoked in addition we found that the back office
 did not have any standard operating procedures for settlement activities we
 also found that back office settlement activities are primarily performed by a
 single individual and based on our industry research we found that the
 uniqueness and complexity of these settlement activities along with the
 lack of the standard operating procedures for the back office further
 increases the risk that the city would be unable to adequately settle its
 energy portfolio transactions if that role was vacated so in summary we
 issued a total of 12 recommendations to DME all of which were concurred and based
 on their responses we believe the identified risks will be appropriately
 addressed and plan to do a follow-up in 18 to 36 months so I'll stop yeah okay
 questions for staff Councilman Beck thank you mr. mayor so one of the things
 that I was interested in and getting more information about is this this lack
 of clarity between spinning and non-spinning generation there's especially
 with regards to curtailment we didn't really talk about spinning and
 non-spinning but you know there's a lot of the curtailment issues that I presume
 was about non-spinning power generation and that's going to be impactful
 potentially depending on the kinds of ancillary services that we implement in
 the future so I guess how big was that it wasn't clear to me how big the
 discrepancies were that when we didn't have a but in your analysis for
 curtailment related revenue and fees yeah with the curtailment we looked at
 that a little bit but based on the data it's almost impossible to tell what the
 discrepancy the discrepancy differences because of the the way that you only
 have 15 minute increment data for price and then you're there making decisions
 in real time so you're trying to figure out based on a 15 minute price signal if
 they should have like in every single moment if they should have curtailed or
 not and so we looked at that generally and we're like this is almost impossible
 to figure out so I guess impossible to figure out you certainly have a number
 though I mean you know if the value varied and you said well x didn't max
 match y at a 15 minute bin I mean you can certainly determine those sorts of
 numbers if you I mean you may not be looking at the on the books numbers but
 like if you if you average it to the same bin size you know you can compare
 yeah I guess what I'm asking obviously we're not we're not out you know maybe
 bajillions of dollars that's a that's a scientific number but but the the
 question is more sort of how how broadly are we off and how does it impact more
 importantly you know auditing and then our future policy decisions we didn't
 identify any discrepancies in the curtailment numbers because it was so
 difficult to verify what number we even should be looking at and do we have an
 idea how we might rectify that going forward that was the recommendation to
 try to figure that I think we don't have an idea necessarily as audit good
 afternoon mayor council Terry Dalte DME just to give you a little color on this
 so curtailments happen when we don't want to take the energy because the
 market price is so low that it creates a liability for our customers the other
 reason why we curtail is because of ramping so when a when a wind unit for
 example is ramping down because the price is getting too low those hours are
 those megawatt hours that are actually during the ramp under the terms of our
 power purchase agreements there are settlements that have to be made for
 those the reason why it's so hard to quantify is because the ramping period
 may be different from one day to the next from one hour to the next and the
 pricing may only last for a five-minute period so we this is not an area in
 renewable energy that we can really quantify very effectively what we try to
 do in the power purchase agreements is make sure that both parties are treated
 equitably for what's known is going to be these unscheduled megawatt hours I
 hope that helps you understand a little bit so if we could if we can go back to
 the question I asked Madison is like is there is there a bin size that we can
 comfortably get to and say okay averaged out over this bin size we
 completely agree that you know these match you know knowing knowing you have
 these kinds of you know time-dependent phenomena but is there there is a way
 saying okay you know look and I you must be doing this anyway otherwise you
 wouldn't know when to turn things on and off in the first place so I guess my
 question is you know as part of this auditing process is there a way where we
 can get to a number that we feel that you know says yeah we're doing what we
 said we would do well most of the decisions about this are really out of
 our hands because they're controlled by the generator the wind generator or the
 solar generator so we're looking at data as it comes in on how they actually
 operate it we're not actually making dispatch decisions for them and then
 trying to quantify how well they follow those dispatch decisions so it's just a
 very murky area that again we just try to be as equitable as we can between the
 parties all right I don't have a good answer for you but there really isn't a
 good one the industry struggles with with this
 issue I'll be brief just want to thank you for this excellent audit and to say
 that I feel you and the point that you're making and the points that Mr.
 Nalty you just made that makes a lot of sense to me it's this is a market after
 all you know it's a commercial market and so governments don't get to set we
 don't get to decide what's what's a reasonable price and it happens to be a
 commercial market that's really wild that fluctuates so wildly that we need
 people to be on top of it like you said every 15 minutes it's a little like it
 doesn't carry with it the risk of day trading you know but it's a little bit
 like that Wall Street atmosphere really got to be on top of it every minute and
 so anyway I do I do understand that and but it's it's pretty overwhelming to
 think about but it is what it is and you know I'm glad that we've got great
 auditors auditing it and that that we're on top of it and hopefully this market
 will stabilize at some point but but for now it's just a pretty pretty wild
 market okay anyone else see none I do have a question about so you said 18
 months you'll circle back what's your estimated time for them for the changes
 to be implemented so what's your understanding of when you go back what
 should have been done or yeah I believe for all but maybe one of the
 recommendations they put an estimated completion time as September 30th 2023 so
 we would probably come back in the 23 24 fiscal year okay would be the expected
 and so how much time would that give it in place to evaluate oh I guess if it
 was completed by 23 six months or so okay got it okay good good all right
 thank you very much great presentation thank you thank you that takes us to
 item C ID 2 2 1 2 0 receive report hold discussion give staff direction
 regarding city of Denton public safety drone program
 all right good afternoon my name is Brian coast I'm the traffic safety unit
 sergeant I'm joined today by captain Robert Flanagan from the didn't fire
 department and we're excited to just provide you an update on the joint
 public safety UAS team for the city of Denton to give you a little bit of
 background about how we got here today we began researching back in the late
 part of 2019 how to map car crash scenes and crime scenes using a drone when we
 got into that research we realized that a lot of the things that we would have
 to have in place including licenses certificates waivers and aircraft would
 open up the possibility of completing other missions with the aircraft so over
 the course of 2020 and into 2021 we began a network with a bunch of cities
 around us in Denton County and the DFW Metroplex we had a huge advantage that
 we're actually one of the last agencies in Denton County to pursue this program
 so there was a lot of expertise that we were able to tap into and as we were
 going through this part of the research we realized that a lot of cities had
 joint teams where they had pilots that were police officers firefighters and in
 some case emergency management personnel and other cities had separate teams one
 for the fire department one for the police department we realized that the
 best way to standardize training policies procedures and make sure that
 we can always operate together was to go forward with a joint team so the police
 department reached out to the fire department we found out that they had a
 interest in integrating drones into their operations and so we move forward
 together from there by the end of 2021 we a couple of years of research we
 determine what software we were going to need and what kind of aircraft features
 we were looking for and we were ready to move forward and then today we are
 operationally ready with two aircraft and a small group of pilots selected
 undergoing training so just to talk about what are we what are we referring
 to here when we say at UAS that stands for small unmanned aircraft system those
 people just call them drones I think however though when we hear the word
 drone sometimes people envision the big military style drones that fly high in
 the sky and stay in the air for a long time that's not what we're talking about
 here you can see on the picture that's one of the drones parked next to a
 laptop for scale reference we also actually brought one with us today if
 y'all would like to see that in a little bit but according to the FAA they define
 a small aircraft a small unmanned aircraft as having to weigh less than
 55 pounds including everything on board these don't weigh anywhere near that and
 they cannot fly over 400 feet so the maximum altitude they're allowed to fly
 is 400 feet above the ground and they can't fly obviously when there's bad
 weather and things like that the aircraft we chose for the police
 department a fire department is the DJI Mavic Enterprise Advanced as you can see
 there this aircraft weighs about two pounds just under two pounds it is
 equipped with a color camera and a thermal resolution camera to see in all
 lighting conditions this one is specific in that it has a anti collision strobe
 which allows us to operate at night not all search and rescue activities happen
 in the daylight so this one allows us to fly at night this one can be equipped
 with spotlights to aid in that search and even a loudspeaker so we can send
 remote messages to people through the drone itself it doesn't have a microphone
 we can't hear anything that they're saying back can't record anything from
 them but we can give them information like stay where you are help is on the
 way call 9-1-1 whatever that may be so it's important to note during our
 research that we reviewed information and recommendations from the ACLU and
 some other sources and the ACLU recommends that drones not be equipped
 with lethal or non-lethal weapons so we just want to make it clear that this one
 will not be weaponized there will be no weapons on it they're not strong so it
 can't actually have anything attached to it and still take off also it's not
 going to be equipped with facial recognition technology this has it's
 basically a flying camera and that's it it can record video and pictures general
 efforts general search efforts though we are not going to be recording 100% of
 the time the recording we can turn it on and we can turn it off from the remote
 control so it's not recording every time we power it up only when the pilot
 chooses to record something so in most search and rescue activities we don't
 need to record all of our flying around it would be more of once we find the
 person that would be when the pilot kind of activates the recording give you some
 ideas on how the UAS can be used for public safety we know that drones can
 provide that valuable eye in the sky during search and rescue operations it
 can be that force multiplier we need to speed up the rescue in some of these
 cases the people need help and they need it quick and this is our way of finding
 them quicker and getting them help quicker we also tested this you know the
 original intention was to map crash and crime scenes we've done a little bit of
 testing on that and we've seen very very good results we are able to map large
 scenes in about 20 to 45 minutes usually takes us three or four hours with some
 of our other technologies and one excellent benefit is that as you may
 recall the police department has a laser scanner for mapping crime scenes and
 crash scenes laser scanners and drones merge together and they work together to
 fill in some of those data gaps so it will work with our existing equipment
 we've been fortunate to not have a whole lot of natural disasters here in Denton
 but we've had a few tornadoes over the last 10 years or so we know that drones
 are very helpful in getting some situational awareness of those affected
 areas sometimes that we can't get to by vehicle or on foot and then finally last
 on this list but not least is protecting citizen and responder safety we talked
 on the fire department some of their bomb squad folks mentioned being able to
 use a drone to go and look at suspicious packages remotely saving personnel from
 having to walk down there we know if we have a crash involving some possible
 hazardous materials we'd much rather put the drone into the so-called hot zone to
 try to read placards versus a firefighter and we also know you know if
 we're searching for potentially armed subject searching for somebody that's on
 the run being able to do that remotely makes it safer for them and us we're not
 stumbling into an armed encounter we can have that standoff distance as we went
 through this we kind of honed us down to four key components that we needed to
 have in place for this to be successful number one and first and foremost is
 respecting privacy right we understand that citizens are going to have privacy
 concerns and so we're going to take as many steps as we can to make sure that
 we alleviate those concerns we also know and all the pilots have to understand
 that they will be accountable to the public for their actions when they're
 operating these aircraft we know that we have to be transparent that the public
 has a right to know exactly when and where and why we're using this
 particular tool and so we'll talk about some ways that we're going to try to
 ensure transparency here in just a minute and finally we got to provide
 high caliber training to our pilots so that they can operate safely and
 effectively we'll dig into concerns some privacy concerns real quick the Texas
 government code chapter 423 it's titled use of unmanned aircraft it outlines when
 a drone operator any drone operator whether it's a law enforcement officer a
 firefighter or private citizen it outlines when a drone operator can and
 cannot collect an image for the purpose of the statute an image is pretty much
 anything a picture a video a sound recording an odor collection a chemical
 collection pretty much anything that you could collect that is considered an
 image so these use cases here on the screen are times that images would be
 allowed under the law to be collected the search for a missing person
 investigation of a human fatality this could be a fatality crash or homicide
 crashes with serious injury car crashes with serious injury on any roadway or
 any crash regardless of injury on a federal or state highway and this is
 getting towards that quick clearance get the highways open get traffic moving the
 pursuit of or investigation of a felony pursuant to a valid search warrant
 signed by a judge high-risk tactical operation with the landowners consent and
 then obviously what we talked about before the hazmat fire rescue and fire
 suppression activities so our general order on the police department and fire
 department side prohibits and state law criminalizes the taking of images on
 private property outside of this list so when possible as we're conducting
 missions we intend to respect the privacy of citizens below and images
 when possible will not be recorded of private property although there may be
 some incidental as we're flying from one place to the other that's not going to
 be our intention any videos or pictures that come from the drone will be put
 into our digital evidence management system that we use for our body cameras
 and dash cameras already so it'll be secure this list is not complete but I
 wanted to give a few examples of things that we would consider to be
 inappropriate uses prohibited uses conducting a random or targeted
 surveillance of any individual group or private property without a valid search
 Warner landowner consent we would consider that to be an inappropriate use
 of the drone impeding restricting or preventing in any way constitutionally
 protected actions and speech searching for contraband on private property
 without a warrant we're investigating non felony crime scenes with the possible
 exception of those crashes that we talked about on the previous slide so how
 do we ensure accountability we have selected drone sense the drone sense
 application to assist us with accountability drone sense is based in
 Austin Texas and as a public safety oriented comprehensive drone management
 program it's serving hundreds of agencies inside and outside the state
 including the Denton County Sheriff's Office Texas Department of Public Safety
 Texas Parks and Wildlife and the Texas Department of Emergency Management as
 well as a number of municipalities it's specifically built around public safety
 applications drone sense collects a lot of information and collects the type of
 mission being flown where and when the mission is being flown and who is
 piloting the drone it also has some robust flight telemetry data and this
 information is securely and permanently stored on the drone sense cloud I have
 the highest level of access on drone sense currently and I cannot get rid of
 anything it's not no user has the power to get rid of these records when I say
 permanent they are permanent flights can be reconstructed though when there's a
 question about how or why it was operated if you see in the picture there
 it may be hard to see but the light green line the squiggly line that is the
 animated flight reconstruction so that flight you can hit a there's a play
 button on the screen and it will animate how that drone took off and moved around
 and went up and down and all those things so we can reconstruct all of that
 now important note drone sense does not store any pictures or videos all it
 stores is which direction how high things like that off of the drone other
 benefit of drone sense is it allows the commanders at a scene to be able to see
 all the other drones operating in that area through the drone sense website as
 well as live streaming video if those drones are streaming video drone sense
 cost $99 per drone per month that is covered under the existing PD and FD
 budget so no additional funds are being requested and then beyond the
 capabilities of drone sense we're gonna we have developed strong general order
 standard operating procedures based off of best practices and pilots are going
 to receive not only initial training but monthly ongoing training we recognize
 and understand that some citizens may be concerned about how these public safety
 drones will be used and so we remain committed to meeting with citizens and
 community groups to answer any questions and receive any feedback that they may
 have our pilots and our supervisors will be communicating with our public safety
 communications personnel and departmental PIOs about emergency and
 pre-planned flights our PIOs when tactically sound will be pushing out
 notifications through our social media channels letting the public know why
 we're in the area and why is the drone flying around and then as discussed
 before the flight logs are permanent and they can be exported for reporting
 purposes and so we intend to on a regular basis export a simplified report
 that we will post on the data and transparency page of the police
 department's website they will show the date the time the general location we
 don't want to tie it to any address for privacy concerns and why it was being
 flown and then finally our pilot training new pilots will begin their
 training by going to a test preparation course get them ready to sit for their
 Federal Aviation Administration part 107 examination which are those tests are
 conducted at a approved FAA testing center the closest one is here in Denton
 at the Denton Airport so we don't have to travel far for that once they have
 their 107 license they'll enter into our flight training program where they
 actually learn how to fly the aircraft and there's going to be a strong
 component on the policies procedures SOPs and they're going to be expected to
 know those like before they're going to be allowed to actually fly any missions
 and as I said just a minute ago all the pilots will have to attend monthly
 retraining to show proficiency in flight and that they still understand all of
 the SOPs and regulations and rules. This project is in line with the mission
 vision and value statements of both the police and fire departments and we
 believe that embracing this cost-effective technology will improve
 the efficiency of public safety service delivery and increase citizen safety in
 the city of Denton. Thank you. All right you can take that down it'd be great.
 Questions for staff. Thank you. Well you know the the pluses are so abundant you
 know the costs are so light it's it's really pretty amazing and I and I and I
 totally get how much care will be put into making sure we can do all the right
 things and also that we have the capacity to track down after the fact if
 the wrong things were done but can you describe what practices would be in
 place to prevent someone from doing using them using them the wrong way sort
 of in the first place? Sure so where the where the policies the general orders
 don't work we've got some physical security in place the drones aren't left
 in a public area of the police department they are secured and locked
 up and currently in the traffic safety units office we're just traffic officers
 have access to that in our new building once it's open we'll have some
 additional storage options to keep them in there and keep it locked up and then
 drone sense will also send notifications so currently it's set up if someone
 attempts to fly the drone it's going to send me a text message and an email we're
 going to expand out those notifications right now we're just in the testing phase
 but once we go live we can expand out those notifications so we're getting
 real-time notification hey a drone just took off and if it's something that we
 didn't know about it we'll know immediately that something's something's
 up here but I think with the physical security and the the general order
 prohibiting it making it a you know pretty stout policy violation I'm not
 anticipating too many issues with that. But would you would you ordinarily know
 let's say you got one of these notifications drones taken off would you
 ordinarily know oh I know what case that would be involved in you know what I'm
 saying but click the thing you want is like whoa someone you know taking this
 off there's no reason they should be doing that how would you know so a
 couple of things one right now we only have four pilots two of them are here in
 the room with you and the other two are traffic officers that work for me so if
 they're on something I would know that they're on something we also have the
 ability to pull up calls on our phone remotely so if I was to receive a
 notification I can quickly pull up all the calls for service that are going on
 right now and reconcile is there a reason for that drone to be in the air
 thank you I appreciate that answer. Councillor McGuire. Thank you so I guess
 follow-up question you know who has the authority to dispatch a drone? So the
 ultimate authority under FAA regulations is going to lie with the pilot in
 command because they're the ones that's going to be responsible for a safe
 flight and making sure that they're in compliance with all FAA regulations and
 department policies we haven't rolled this out to be fully you know available
 just yet just kind of testing it what I would say is that most likely is going to
 have to come from you know a supervisor or a lieutenant on a shift is going to
 have to make that request in the early days those requests are going to be at
 least funneled through me until we get some more pilots but there's going to be
 this kind of checks and balances system where a supervisor has to call for it
 the pilot then is responsible to say okay yes we're going to fly it or no
 we're not going to fly this mission because of this this or this okay in our
 in our SOPs we also have that any pilot any other supervisor the program
 coordinator anybody has a right to to end a mission for any reason safety
 privacy concerns whatever it may be okay all right thank you that's that
 clarifies that for me I have a question about the the Texas government code
 chapter 423 said that an image can be lawfully collected by a UAS in Texas
 with the landowners consent so theoretically would it then be legal
 for for example a landlord to consent to the department using a drone to collect
 images of their property but but without getting the consent of the tenants who
 are living on the property so I think for that we would have to take a look at
 some existing case law and a land a landowner a landlord can't give you
 consent to search someone's you know their tenants house right we would need
 to get consent from them and I think the same thing there's not really any case
 law around it yet but I would venture to guess that's that would give us some
 good guidance on how to handle that okay okay kind of similar to you know if
 there's if you don't have a search warrant correct right okay okay those
 are all my questions thanks customer after yeah so I have a question there
 might be more of an attorney question so if you can't answer it feel free to pass
 it on or maybe more of a police chief question not sure or fire chief question
 not sure and that is do federal agencies or private entities have the capacity to
 in a lawsuit subpoena drone footage from city police or fire departments I think
 an attorney would have to shore that up but I would imagine that it would be
 subject to the same open records request as any other body camera - camera
 video that's created but an attorney would have to fully answer that question
 okay count remember that thank you yeah I'm sure there's this existing case on
 body cams - cams surveillance mechanisms that will you know massively overlap
 what this is so I guess my concern is more pragmatic we already have drone
 fleets in our in our city for other for other purposes for media relations and
 whatnot do you have the capacity to to share resources so in terms of getting
 economies of scale so that like you know you guys have your own sequester drones
 because of these conditions that we've all been just been discussing but you
 know realistically it's the same drone that media relations would use or
 something like that to where we can get economies of scale so that you know if
 we need to buy 20 drones you know three of them can be for law enforcement and
 or however I mean I'm looking more practically across department so I'm
 aware that like DTV does have a drone I think there's just more for like
 cinematography and aerial photography ours the camera is not quite that high
 definition we're really just looking for decision-making quality and ours has the
 thermal camera which which DTV doesn't now if if we had a lost person and
 that's another drone pilot another drone that we can put into finding that lost
 person I would be on the phone with DTV and a heartbeat asking for their
 assistance so actually that brings up a great question is it is there I will let
 me just put it this way I'll encourage you if you don't already have policies
 in place to where if you need a team effort to design policies because I
 think that if you've only got how'd you see two drones right now you know and
 even if we double that I mean you know it would be nice to be able to utilize
 those in emergency conditions to augment your forces right and something that we
 and then follow your same restriction something that we've tried to take the
 lead on here in Denton County is trying to collect the other public safety
 agencies and explain our best practices to them and work on you know if they'll
 go along with our best practices and follow our guidelines then they may be a
 resource that we could reach out to as well depending on how big the issue is
 right but I do like that I'm sure we'll be in touch with DTV and talking about
 how we can integrate them into into our operations awesome thank you any other
 questions thank you very much appreciate it okay next couple are going to take a
 little bit so let's take a quick 15 minute break okay so it's 330 so we'll
 come back 345 and take up the last two work session items and then we have a
 closed session after that so we'll be back three thank you
 and welcome back to this meeting of the density council's 345 and we're
 continuing to work through our work session we're at item D and that item is
 ID 2 2 3 7 3 receive a report hold discussion and give staff direction
 regarding options related to the creation and setting of metrics and
 goals related to the development of comprehensive solid waste management
 strategy well good afternoon honorable mayor members of council Brian burner
 solid waste director with the city of Denton I do appreciate the opportunity
 to talk a little bit about goals and metrics for upcoming comprehensive solid
 waste management strategy we're really going to talk to you about today is to
 just provide a very short update on where we are in the development of the
 strategy mostly I want to spend some time talking about metrics and goals how
 we want to be developed them so that they are transparent and communicate
 really what we're trying to identify here with the city of Denton but most
 importantly create goals and metrics that are centric and central to the city of
 Denton's efforts we're not Washington we're not New York we're Denton while
 there's a lot of uniform things as the way municipal government operates and
 people are people there's some unique things about the city of Denton and what
 we do and the systems that we have in place and we'd like to be able to
 capture all of those systems to be able to communicate how well and how healthy
 our program is at the end of presentation I do want to go ahead and
 try to get some concurrence on really setting the goals for this plan and by
 that review a couple of goals that we've looked at from programs across the
 nation currently we're in the probably about the last 45 to 60 days of the
 development we're working really on the implementation portion of the plan as
 well as the financing piece once we get the goals and metrics approved today and
 some direction given that we'll be able to drop that into the plan and hopefully
 here within the next couple of months bring that plan back to you for final
 concurrence and then we can move with our next step toward implementation
 talking about metrics and goals the way we're looking at it here metrics are
 really those stepping stones those small things that we do such as budgets staff
 programs things of that nature that help us move to those short-term goals things
 that we can measure on a daily weekly annual basis to really help define what
 the health is of the program or the process that we're trying to identify we
 use these short-term goals to really help us create and monitor those
 long-term goals those things that we can see it about five ten years down the
 road one of the things that we're going to be sitting here also is really a
 lifetime goal so really looking at the 30,000 foot view where do we want to be
 50, 60, 70 years from now as we're implementing these programs so again a
 short shorter term we're going to call it a long-term goal and one of the things
 that we've we're trying to do here is be consistent with some other plans that
 we've been talking about here recently so those are some of the timeframes that
 that we'll be looking at talking last November we were here talking about
 several different programs that we were evaluating in the strategy and talking
 about where our waste is coming from and some of the things that some of the
 opportunities that we have to identify metrics and goals as part of the
 feedback that we've got from that that presentation we've decided to actually
 become transparent and actually create dashboards around eight different
 metrics that will help us define how well we're doing in our diversionary
 tactics first is the waste generation rate obviously what that means is how
 much waste is every man woman and child in city of Denton calculate or generate
 on a daily basis what we want to be able to do is to drive that down best way to
 eliminate waste is do not make it in the first place so if we can drive down the
 amount of waste that's being generated we're much ahead on the back end
 currently since the city of Denton is a full service city we provide all the
 services to the residential commercial multifamily sectors what we want to be
 able to do is identify a commercial and a residential recycling rate when we
 talk about this rate we're talking about programmatic material only that material
 that you would find in your blue bin containers glass things of that nature
 that doesn't mean that we're not going to be looking at other recycled programs
 but this but this actually helps us define the health of what our Murph is
 doing its efficiencies and also our education and outreach we recognize that
 we will have other programs in there also will that will help us recycle and
 divert non-programmatic material we'd be able to capture that those metrics in
 other ways throughout this program the converse side to the the residential and
 commercial recycling rate will be the contamination rate we want to see the
 recycle rate go up but the amount of contamination that's in that system go
 down that's defined by several different different things first of all we want
 to make sure that everybody's putting the right things in their bins that it's
 empty clean dry and loose but secondarily it also goes back to helping
 develop markets if we can find local markets increase demand from a third
 party providers that contamination which you know really is off spec programmatic
 material now it becomes a commodity as opposed to a contaminant going out the
 back into our facility and as a result we end up in a better place we divert
 more so again that helps us from that from that goal standpoint we'll look at
 capture rate so our ability to capture that amount of recycling that's
 currently being thrown away in our waste stream will report out here in just a
 minute what our current capture rate is obviously that the bottom line is we
 want to increase landfill life we want to minimize consumption of the landfill
 make it last as long as we possibly can and then also one of the big keys is
 going to be organic diversion our goal is to increase it we're doing tremendous
 right now but there is significant rooms for improvement in our organic diversion
 program one of the exciting things happened shortly after our presentation
 in November the EPA actually rolled out the national recycling goal and what
 they've proposed is the increase the US recycle rate to 50 percent by 2030 so in
 the next 10 years increase the ability for residential customers to increase
 the amount of curbside programmatic material so again that consistent you
 know plastic 137 plastics paper metal cans containers glass that's the
 material they're focusing on so increase that amount of waste or that amount of
 material that's being diverted to 50 percent as we left last November and
 throughout this process we've actually been looking at several other cities
 both here and locally across the state of Texas and across the nation with
 regard to what their current goal is with regard to programs they have in
 place some have zero waste programs some have just residential recycling programs
 end of the day though we've got goals that are all over the place a couple
 things that we found is that most cities whether they're aggressive or not in
 setting their goal what we're finding is that they're going back and
 reevaluating what those goals are they were too aggressive on the front end and
 as a result they haven't been able to make the progress that they've been able
 to achieve secondarily there's been some issues with really trying to compare on
 an apples-to-apples basis some of these programs are simply the residential
 solid waste collection program others are a little more corporate wide City of
 Denton as we go through this we want to make sure that it's a comprehensive
 program that not only helps us define what's happening in our residential
 commercial and multifamily community but as the regional provider of landfill
 service we want to be able to drive recycling and diversion in those
 communities that are outside the City of Denton but use our disposal capacity
 won't be able to use that capacity to increase that recycling potential so
 looking from a long-term goal diversion goal standpoint what we would like to
 try to do is to divert 40% of all the waste that's received at the City of
 Denton by 40% we will divert 40% by the year 2040 2040 specific because again
 that's the year that our comprehensive plan is built around so again we're
 we're aligning some some planned dates there but there's an alliterative factor
 that helped you know 40 by 40 you know I say you know it just sort of rolls off
 the tongue but secondarily you're gonna go home from meeting they're not saying
 40 by 40 that sounds kind of cool you know it's gonna be hard to get that out
 of your head it does it it may sound a little low but again it's attainable and
 again this is meant to be a floor not a ceiling so it's not you know when we get
 to 40 2040 we can stop and you know forget about everything until we get to
 the next goal what we want to be able to do is get to that 40% as easy as
 easily and as quickly as possible and use that to synergize continual
 improvements as we move forward our lifetime diversion goal for the City of
 Denton we want to be able to divert 75% of the waste not only in the City of
 Denton but also in the North Texas region from customers who bring material
 to the landfill by the year 2075 and again that alliterative 75 by 75
 again it's a wonderful communication opportunity but again this is specific
 right now based on our waste composition study that was done back in October of
 2020 our partners at Burns and McDonald they have determined that of the waste
 that is produced in the City of Denton only 73% of that waste stream is
 divertible whether it's recyclable through our existing program or there
 are some other opportunity out there for material to be recycled so so roughly
 25% of the material that is produced on a you know from your home would
 ultimately always have to go to a landfill so again 75% is really where
 that max is as we're moving forward similarly we've got customers out there
 that do not produce waste that are supported by our recycling programmatic
 program wonderful companies like Tetra Pak and and Peterbilt Peterbilt doesn't
 make doesn't discard aluminum cans steel cans they make trucks but they have a
 very very robust diversion program we'll be able to capture that type of
 information and roll that in here too so again programmatic things that are
 happening outside that programmatic area and also organics and everything else
 that that that goes into this waste stream so where are we where are we at
 now what is what are we starting with well currently the City of Denton when
 we look at just what the City of Denton produces both in its or in its
 multifamily commercial and residential currently we enjoy a 15% diversion rate
 a little bit lower but again it's it's slightly less than half of what our goal
 is in that we've set forward for our 2040 time period our residential waste
 generation rate right now is one and a quarter pound per person per day in the
 City of Fort Worth excuse me City of Denton recycle rate and this is the
 actual this is 2021 data so this is a full year last year 11% of everything
 that that was collected you know curbside was able to be recycled and was
 was clean and accepted and found its way into a third-party user to be
 beneficially recycled what we did find out is that last year also 61% of
 everything that was set in your blue cart curbside was contaminated material
 there was either it was non-programmatic material or it was programmatic material
 is set in such a way that it was not able to be recycled think about it you
 have a half a cart full load full of cardboard pristine drop a bag of dirty
 diapers on top of it 100% recycle contaminated at that point we can't
 manage it so it's off spec contaminate it's off spec programmatic material is
 the majority of what we're seeing in this contaminated number and that's
 really what we're trying to clean up right now with our auditing program and
 future educational programs again empty clean dry and loose and and if we can if
 we can you know drive that mantra into everybody's head that number would
 significantly go down we did receive the February numbers from our partners at
 Pratt today on last month's and actually our contamination rate is down to I
 believe 43% for the month of February so again we're considered we're making
 steps because the auditing program the outreach program so again when we look
 at the at the 2022 numbers come October they're going to be significantly
 better than this but again it's a process that we move forward with from
 a commercial standpoint right now we're at 2% recycle rate and a contamination
 rate of 55% we're capturing curbside about 49 almost 50% of everything that
 can be recycled in the residential waste stream so we have a ways to go but again
 we have opportunities that exist with our landfill currently we have about 50
 years of life left in it we want to be able to use the diversionary tactics is
 increased that by 20 40 60 maybe even a hundred years but again a lot of that
 has to go back into the diversionary piece from an organic standpoint this is
 really where the success story lies a lot of that goes back to decisions
 made by the council or the direction made by the design council that actually
 help us implement the yard cart and the bag program what we've seen is that
 residential curbside collections has gone up current last year we managed
 curbside slightly over 6,000 tons of material from an organic standpoint we
 have contracts with a couple of big-box stores they actually have organics
 containers out back so spent spoiled and spent vegetables and other fruit and
 vegetable type materials we collected about 300 tons of that material last
 year we hope to expand that program the real success though is that what we call
 the direct hauls so again those arborist lawn care companies instead of just
 putting them on the plastic bags and throw them on the curb to go in the
 landfill now they're directly hauling from their customers into the landfill
 and and we collected almost 22,000 tons of that material last year again there's
 there's tremendous increases that occurred but we still have a about 35%
 organic material that's in our residential waste streams right now and
 that's you know whether it's food waste whether it's yard waste we have a we
 have a good opportunity to be able to remove that material so again we're
 looking for improvements there so with that I will go ahead and close my
 presentation I'll take it down and answer any sort of questions that you
 may have and seek direction and approval of the 40 by 40 and 75 by 75
 proposed diversionary goals thank you Councilman Armitage yes okay so thank
 you for this presentation we've got several questions followed by some
 direction so what percentage of the land of the non-divertible trash in our
 landfill right now comes from these other entities who pay to to dump their
 trash in our landfill probably about 45% okay and here's a part of the issue is
 most of the entities that currently contract with our waste haulers they
 have active recycling programs also so we want to be able to capture what that
 material is what that diversionary goal is and work to help improve that also
 and right now about half of that 45% is considered a waste hauler contract is in
 our waste hauler contracts the other half is direct haul and they're paying
 the full scale rate gate rate as they come across okay thank you okay and so
 you know and I want to make sure that you know that just fellow council
 members and the public understand what a large percentage that is at 45% of our
 land of the non-divertible trash in our landfill from other entities so what can
 you speak to the what the shelf life of the contracts we currently have when are
 these are any of these contracts set to expire yes this year they are all set to
 expire in October okay all every single one of those five of all six that we
 currently have are set to it to expire so between now and October you know we
 hope to have conversations with them with regard to to extending under new
 contract paradigms where you'll pay our first of all you'll pay a higher rate
 but the more you're able to divert maybe a better rate that you get but I also
 want to set a cap on the amount of third-party waste we would we would
 actually accept at the the what we call the putter pay rate so again you would
 still pay the full rate if you want to bring it across the scale but if you
 want to participate under this program what's slightly incentivized you would
 be out that the cap of that program is exceeded or is limited okay and so I as
 far as my direction on this this this aspect of the solid waste plans it's
 obviously it's a big percentage of what we have in our landfill I I would like
 to see the city not renew a single one of those contracts and to see our our
 numbers as far as diversion I mean we have is and zero waste we have reduced
 that that is the easiest way that we can make a really big difference in reducing
 waste and I know that there's income that's generated by that right but again
 if our goal is really to reduce waste I just strongly urge this council to to do
 that and not feel that we have to you know keep keep a landfill that is 50%
 other people's trash just to keep rates low there are other measures we can take
 to keep rates low and I encourage this council to pursue those so just a couple
 other questions let's see about the organics diversion category so that
 includes both or I should say that is for now that is everything that goes
 into dino dirt and biosolids correct those correct so if there would were to
 be in the future which I hope a food waste composting program that is not that
 is separate from biosolids where it doesn't just all go into the biosolids
 would that would be also under in that same category of organics diversion
 correct that is correct and again we're not we're talking about the what not the
 how so we know we want to have organics diversion we know that we've got these
 different sectors of yard waste food waste and other organics that we're
 looking at so you know we really the what is we want to maximize diversion we
 haven't focused on the how yet got it got it still looking at you know either
 you know reinforcing what we're doing on dino dirt or doing some sort of separate
 third-party or or some something in the middle yeah and thank you and yeah and I
 do understand that this is that very high level that we're looking at now you
 know I think that one bit of direction I would give on that is that testing our
 dino dirt beyond the FDA regulations along the lines of Sierra Sierra clubs
 recently expressed you know concerns and recommendations about just biosolids
 nationwide not Denton's in particular would be really helpful in knowing in
 coming to decide the what or the how now I'm forgetting which one it is you said
 that we're doing but the lower level the more specific you know what kind of
 organics diversion we want then finally question so I understand that you're
 you're saying about that right now only about 73 percent of the waste that we
 produce as a city is divertable right correct yeah and and so that includes
 things and does that include plastic bags are they considered well again when
 we're looking at what is potentially divertable not not whether we have a
 program in place right now or whatever plastic bags is considered a recyclable
 a big are recyclable material we would have to set up a program find a processor
 and things of that nature what we're talking about is those small pieces of
 paper that are just too small to capture fiber too small small things that are
 end-of-life that can't be recycled anymore waste that are just too mixed
 that from a technology standpoint you cannot separate those are the that that's
 that remaining 25% that that ultimately would have to be landfilled and and that
 is subject to change right that in in the future as I mean we can't we
 shouldn't assume that to be a constant right because we you know we don't know
 what materials things are going to be made of in the future and what kinds of
 federal regulations right there might be or am I am the answer that question has
 nothing to do with federal regulation I think it goes back to our ability to
 identify end users that first of all we can you know from that triple point you
 know standpoint we can be socially and economically viable and from you know be
 you know ensure that that you know it is sustainable so again you know you know
 making earrings out of out of your PCB boards you know that's that's a great
 little niche thing but you'd have to have you know 500 billion people out
 there wearing earrings just to take all those old you know CPU boards we have to
 find something else to do for but there will always be an in in piece that that
 dispose you know disposal will not be an option there you know whether it's ash
 or it's some sort of in byproduct disposal will always be here and that's
 one of the things that we have to really look at from a quote zero raster or
 diversionary standpoint is there will always be some piece of that going to
 the landfill you know unless you know hundred years from now people smarter
 than us and you know building upon the the the the knowledge of the people that
 came before them figure out what to do with it and create that viable
 opportunity okay well thank you so yeah that is my my direction thus far and you
 know I in the umbrella category for me of this direction is I I still support
 the idea of having a zero waste plan and zero waste goal we do get closer you
 know the higher those percentages of percentage of diversion the closer we
 get to zero waste and so I think that that is a zero waste plans carry a lot
 of weight and we would be not alone as a city you know in having one and having
 it guide our our solid waste plans anyway thank you so much for all the
 work done on this and getting those metrics is really helpful mayor mayor
 Pro Tem thank you by the way I feel really happy every time I see that kind
 of miniature garbage truck that goes around the square I mean those guys
 work so hard and it's just it's really working I think this square looks great
 so just to comment on that thank you you know I'm a little trouble just on kind of
 metrics which is our topic and I get it that everybody might measure in ways
 it's hard to know but then you'd expect there to be like a range around us how
 come everybody's you know current diversion rate is so much higher than
 ours even you know Fort Worth the 30 like can we ask them you know why is it
 twice as high as ours do we know anything I think you had something to do
 with that well I did in fact I worked for city for 21 years and when I left in
 2010 it was a 28% so in the last 12 years they've been able to increase it
 2% so you're the key obviously well still got some of the scars to to show
 on the on the the integration there but again you know a lot of it goes back to
 you know programs that are put in place but being you know not just throwing a
 program out there because somebody else is doing it or because it's the niche
 thing to do it's drilling down and trying to identify you know both what
 what's coming in as well as the economic and viable pieces that are able to go
 out no I'm just gonna run the agenda and then I'll do a quick check that's fine
 okay yeah well no it's just training it give us a minute okay good go we know a
 lot about what programs Fort Worth has in place you know aren't there
 opportunities like what are the things preventing us from doing those things
 that you already have vetted personally no no there's not anything that that's
 that's you know a lot of it is is is money money and time right now yeah so
 again you know putting those programs in place that that help and also you know
 there's a scale to come in here you know we're a hundred and fifty thousand
 they're close to nine hundred thousand right now so you know scale has a lot to
 do with it also and that's really one reason why we want to try to work as a
 regional partner to create that that that that that tipping point for lack of
 a better term that would allow processors to come in here give them the
 minimal amount of material that they would need to actually set up create
 jobs in the city of Denton as well as create opportunities for us to shorten
 transportation you know right now our glass goes all the way down to Houston
 because that's where they're going to take it but if we can double the amount
 of glass that we get either through our you know our personal collections or
 partnering with other cities we could find a processor that would locate in
 the city of Denton tomorrow and now not only are we talking about saving you
 know it's you know recycling more glass but think about all those emissions we
 are saving from having to transport it down to you know it goes across towns
 across the state you know those are the type of sustainability pieces that we
 want to be able to throw in here and look at you know at the end of the day so
 is that is that part of the point of taking what looked like a really bad
 thing that I voted against consistently you know taking these outside contracts
 is part of the point to make them a focus of volume for additional recycling
 opportunities correct you know and creating you know right now some of the
 some of the smaller cities that surround us just because they have some
 diminished volume they're not able to recycle and while most of that lots and
 most of the cities that you know participate in the waste haulers are
 bringing to us they have viable recycling contracts you know if we can help them by
 creating recycling alternatives and creating in markets just because we can
 can reach that that that critical mass of volume standpoint then you know it's
 it's better for everybody well so to the point of volume thank you Mayor for
 letting me go on a bit here is it still true that that commercial and
 multifamily is about three times the size of total tonnage of residential it's
 about a yeah it's about a two to one average so third and two-thirds yeah
 multiple anyway residential and you know I feel like I've heard in this seat over
 the years that the obstacle was the contamination rate of commercial and
 multifamily and you know for the first time I'm seeing here it spelled out and
 it's actually lower than the contamination rate for residential so
 isn't that an opportunity and yet you know residential you're showing as an
 11% recycle rate in commercial only two so if contamination is actually better
 on commercial and it can go from 2 to 11 let's say and that's at least twice the
 volume wouldn't that bring us rapidly closer to these goals yes and no I mean
 obviously we want to be what that material again when we're talking about
 that 2 and 11% we're talking specifically programmatic material so
 plastics and a lot of our you know while we have that from the multifamily sector
 when you look at the commercial sector as I said you know you're not going to
 get significant amounts of those type of materials and that's why that volume is
 so low so even if you're able to double it you know you're still only talking four
 tons as opposed to you know 11 or 12 or we know whatever we're bringing in from a
 residential standpoint so characteristics of that waste stream
 pardon just that waste stream has different characteristics it does it
 does but again like I said you know with our partners like a Tetra pack and and
 Peter built and and even the University of North Texas they have a very viable
 diversionary program we haul all their garbage but we don't get to enjoy that
 diversionary piece that they're doing so working with them to support and
 continue to do what they're doing make it a whole lot more viable but be able
 to enter to capture that data and and report out as the city of Denton is
 doing X amount as opposed to just the solid waste department is able to manage
 this so it's a much bigger program you know think about all these boxes that
 are sitting in front of big box stores you know you put your shoes in it you
 put your clothes in it and some good company takes it out you know takes it
 and does something good with it you know we would like to be able to partner with
 them to better focus the ability to manage that material first of all you
 know where do you take it and second of all you know ensure that we're meeting
 development codes we're not eating up you know by valuable parking spaces but
 also they're being maintained and then what's that that diversions done be able
 to capture that material back into our number so again you know you can see
 that you know by reporting and being able to capture that those numbers that
 diversionary will rapidly increase but again you know rule of nature is you
 crawl you walk and then you run and what we're trying to do is to follow that
 start slowly but then once we get to that point and we're able to really
 gain speed you know if we reach 40 percent in you know eight years then
 let's reset the goal yeah and I definitely heard you on you know it's a
 floor not a ceiling of I just I'm you know I'll yield the floor after this
 comment that I just have to feel like with if we go along with this idea that
 bringing in all this outside material with a specific focus on getting to
 volume so we can do more recycling types of recycling than we do now you know
 that knowing that for what's already at 30 that it feels like maybe the number
 is not as aggressive as it could be just even given what you already know so
 that's that's that's my feeling about it at the moment I'm gonna listen to the
 conversation Councilman Beck thank you mr. mayor yeah I'm gonna just pick up
 right from there I guess my concern is we're talking about a sort of a 35
 percent increase above not even that a 25 percent increase above what we're
 already doing and so I guess what's prior to this year or last year when you
 were measuring what was sort of our increase in diversion and we're at 15
 percent now we're did we you know you know we've been doing a percent a year
 two percent a year just without any effort I mean how is that changing you
 know it's I would agree I agree that it's probably been a couple percent per
 year but again you know a lot of it has to do with some some programs that we've
 been specific in with the last three years and and you know it may it may
 seem kind of counterintuitive by shutting down a couple of programs we
 increased diversion what that allowed us to do is better identify where the
 materials were going previously before before I got here some of the the
 numbers that were being reported were questionable so we went in and cleaned
 the books and that dropped some of our you know honestly dropped some of our
 diversionary numbers but again you know that the number that I reported here is
 what our diversion number is you know there's no math magic it's it's very
 transparent we can move forward and right now you know with the the increase
 with the yard waste we're seeing you know that's a couple of percent and you
 know I think that that what we're going to see is something exponential occur
 once we get the programs identified that the the administrative policies and
 programs and rules in place and then you know where we can involve the third
 party that's what we want to do city of Denton you know as a as a city doesn't
 need to be running a lot of these programs we need to find those third
 party providers create economic incentives for them once they get established here
 then we're gonna see you know the pull that material come out of our waste
 stream naturally and so instead of 2% it may be 6% 10% whatever that is per year
 but it's gonna it's going to rapidly jump so so I'm hearing these these
 ideas bandied about the dais and most of them actually from you you know of like
 okay we have these potential solutions that we could try that we want to try
 that do you have experience prior to coming here and now again here that you
 want to try and so I don't think it's necessary for a lack of ideas and vision
 but it you know to go back to your your you know walk run and crawl analogy
 that's not why we start walking running and crawling we we want to get to a
 thing you know we stand up on the table and we
 toggle and we're you know we have a goal in mind the goal isn't to walk run or
 cry and or crawl or whatever and I ran the analogy backwards but anyway the
 the point is that we're we're trying to get to mom and dad or we're trying to
 pet the dog or we're trying to pull the hot soup on to us from the stove or
 whatever it is that we do and and those are our goals and so I think you have
 plenty of ideas you're you're coming up with okay we can do this this partner
 and this partner and this partner and I'm not wild about taking you know a lot
 of outside materials but if if it allows us to adjust their diversionary stream
 from 10% to something closer to ours so that we are increasing the regional
 diversionary averages great as long as we hold them to our standards and not
 their standards but I mean again these are all you know you're you're telling
 us all these wonderful ideas my concern is if you don't set the aspirational
 goal higher then then the the push the the force that is causing you to go seek
 these solutions and implement these solutions and partner all these
 strategies is less it's it's sort of like well you know I'm doing what is it
 now about 1.25% per year and I can do that you know I'm I'm Brian I can do
 that that's no problem do two can you get to two if you can do two percent a
 year that's you know that's a little more than a 25% increase and and now
 you're like oh I don't know I think I can get to two but you know and now
 you're pushing yourself and your team to find those and you like well we were
 only gonna do four solutions but I'm gonna do seven solutions in order to
 get that little extra bit and so I you know you have the expertise I think you
 know I'd like to see you push those so well you know look I love me I love me
 some good alliteration but 40 at 40 you know feels like the kind of weight I put
 on at my birthday rather than the goals that I want to have for my diversionary
 program so I you know I'd like to see those that might so my direction would
 be you know you know sort of at least a 25% increase to these numbers and maybe
 you know a 10% decrease in terms of the lifetime goals so not not 90 or not 20
 75 but 20 60 or something like that and and not 40% but 50 55% get us over half
 get get us you know get us 53 let's what 53 last week get us 53% and to match my
 birthday all right and and so that that way we you know I'm just being silly but
 the point is push that envelope a little bit because you already have the ideas
 but and I'd like to see the aspiration be not something that Brian knows he can
 achieve but something's Brian's not sure he can achieve okay
 customer wire thank you so much um first a question um on the metric the
 residential and commercial recycling rate metric yeah what exactly is that
 measuring when we say that our our residential recycle rate is 11% what
 does that mean that 11% of customers participate 11% of everything we
 collected curbside resident that was in a bin was was recycled but it was it was
 recycled through the Murph programmatically so again it's the
 bottles the plastics the cans and the glass so that's 11% of all solid waste
 that's collected curbside curbside correct it does not include yard waste
 okay or anything else that may have come across you know landfill scales or
 anything else it's just what was collected by city forces okay and and
 it goes through the Murph specifically okay thank you for that that
 clarification yeah I think that I'm hearing a lot of my colleagues kind of
 express the same first reaction that I also had when I saw this that that okay
 the EPA has set a goal of nationally I mean not like us specifically but
 nationally a recycling rate of 50% by 2030 but our goal is to divert 40% by
 2040 and sort of implicit in in setting the goal that way sorry yeah we're
 talking two different things right yeah the EPA's number goes back to that 11%
 so those are the two numbers you have to compare not our 40% to their 50%
 because what EPA is talking about is curbside collections of programmatic
 material okay okay thank you for that clarification so again we've got
 significant improvement to make there we've got it you know we got almost a
 40% jump that we're going to need to make from where we're currently at to
 where the EPA wants to be at 2030 okay okay all right well I I appreciate that
 I appreciate your desire to focus more on real results than on the appearance
 of diversion right and and you know as you've alluded to you know we could
 adopt a zero waste policy but that's a little bit disingenuous to say that we
 could have zero waste right I mean at best we could divert 73% maybe someday
 if we're very very ambitious right although by that by 2075 as council
 member Armentier alluded to we don't know what the market might be like and
 what type of solid waste might be produced at that point in the future but
 yeah I I'm concerned that 40% is by 2040 is not very it's not as as aggressive or
 as ambitious as we could potentially be and I'd love to hear more I perhaps when
 when you come back to us with these contracts for for outside haulers you
 know what what types of incentives or what types of levers we could we could
 push to increase their diversion rate as well as ours and I agree with Councilman
 Beck's point about I would love to see us holding our contractors to the state
 same standards that we're reaching for in terms of diversion councilman Davis
 a few questions how long have we have curbside pickup recycling in the city
 of Denton oh that's a really good question one I don't know the the answer
 to you know ten or more years at least sure from a carted collection program
 right and then we we've had haul your own recycling since at least the early
 90s I know I was doing curbside for my neighbors in 94 as a fifth grader and
 that had to go somewhere that went to the to the city collection areas like we
 still have at North Lakes does the North Lakes and haul your own kind of
 recycling still how does that factor into slide 9 the table that we're
 looking at again you know it the contamination is extremely low usually
 it's about 10% so you know we know that what we're doing there really you know
 is important but again the volume that we get is just a very small portion of
 the the bigger set of entire recycling right but how where does that figure in
 and in slide 9 so if I look at slide 9 I see residential and commercial yeah
 that is part of the 2% of commercial but we factor that in with commercial
 correct as if it was a newspaper recycling bin set up at a business or
 correct okay and when we look at some of the rates on another question on slide
 9 in a second but kind of going back to slide 6 with the other cities yes when
 Austin says zero waste and then they set a goal that's 75% by 2025 what does
 zero waste mean in the city of Austin do they mean that 75% is is all of 100% of
 the programmatically recyclable materials will be diverted or do they
 mean that everything that's possible to be diverted in any kind of in any sort
 of way will be diverted like what does that mean well I think it's more the
 second part of what you were talking about there they recognize that there is
 some percentage of their waste stream that at least right now will always have
 to go to the landfill so a hundred percent is a hundred percent of that
 which is divertable so it would it's the 75% so our 75 by 75 is a zero waste
 strategy if you look at it in Austin terms essentially correct so 75% of
 everything in the waste stream mean by 75 by the year 75 means 100% of the
 things that we believe to be divertable through any means whatsoever correct
 okay and we're we kind of count on some technological help there right that
 there's going to be some sometime between now and 75 there'll be some
 improvements in technology even though we're also every day inventing new
 things that can't be recycled and so that have no diversion program there's a
 lot more you could recycle in you know 1922 than you can in 2022 right of those
 cities that have higher current rates some of which also have higher goal
 rates than ours but how many of those have what we might call mandatory
 programs most of the programs that you see that that's under the United States
 actually have mandatory programs and the key to them getting even close to
 potentially getting close to where where their goal is set is based on these
 programs from a state standpoint they have very strict mandates and they give
 local cities a latitude of you know opportunity to be able to make some of
 these diversionary tactics in the state of Texas right now state law does not
 allow us to do certain things with regard to containers with regard to
 certain you know bottle deposit bills things of this nature and until we can
 work you know and part of this plan will be there be a legislative package but
 until we can get some of these rules changed we're for lack of a better term
 hamstring we have to be a little more creative a little more innovative in in
 trying to divert that way stream out of you know of ultimate disposal so that
 that might be a reason why San Diego could be at 65% diversion and have a
 goal of 90% whereas Austin is at 42% you know similarly progressive city
 interested in sustainability wants to see these things diverted but they're at 42%
 and with the goal at 75% well and one of the things unfortunately that I
 wasn't able to put on this this list but really is a cost benefit analysis too is
 some of these cities have significant cost increases you know to the customer
 over what we're able to charge your city of Denton and some of these programs
 will cost and I'm gonna throw that one out there and there will be impacts to
 the rate but when you're talking you know twice to three times what city of
 Denton is currently paying on a monthly base to support some of these you know
 we're gonna have to ensure we've got that that cost benefit laid out really
 well so that our customers will support the programs that we're proposing to
 implement I don't want to put you too much on the spot but can you give us an
 example of a program that a mandatory type program that would be helpful in
 improving our diversion rate in the city of Denton if we were able to do it but
 under state law we're not able to do it prohibition of single-use cutlery and
 dining establishments I mean just reading this morning about city council
 in California that was able to you know unilaterally pass it removes all those
 forks knives and spoons immediately out of the waste stream sure can they still
 do well never mind that's off-posting off-posting sorry I'm fascinated by that
 and I have questions while I see you later so that kind of bringing you back
 around to slide number nine how do are putting put or pay obligations or
 contracts how do those factor into slide nine how does that factor into our
 diversion rate on it does not it does not figure into the numbers that is in
 slide nine this is inclusive of city of what we have control over with our crews
 within our municipality if we were to include everything that's currently
 coming across the scale into sea limits that no that diversion rate would drop
 to about seven and a half percent right now so roughly would cut it in half okay
 I want to be really clear that when I'm talking about diversion rates and that
 that was in the answer anticipated I'm talking about the city of Denton waste
 collection and the things that we are programmatically in charge of the
 contracts are a question that has a different set of policy considerations I
 don't think it's fair to say well if we stopped collecting other people if we
 stop taking other people's trash into our landfill that that would reduce waste
 that's still gonna go someplace I'm much better I much prefer your strategy that
 you've kind of put out there for us of if we become a regional leader in a place
 we're not just a place you can put your waste we're also a regional leader in
 how waste is handled and we're going to provide some resources for a smaller
 municipality to produce to participate so I really I want to separate those two
 issues for the purposes of this conversation because as I've focused in
 on this issue it has been how can we increase the amount of recyclables that
 dentonites put in their cart and don't put in their green bin how can we
 increase the amount of the different kinds of things that we can collect in
 your in your blue cart and take care of not what is the percentage of
 recyclables that are showing up in our landfill I think that's a different a
 different consideration with different policy considerations so taken all that
 together I think 40 by 40 is extremely aspirational I'll be honest I think if
 we've been every single year that we have had curbside recycling up to and
 including me knocking on my neighbor's doors in 1994 we have had contamination
 issues that we worked through and we worked to improve we have every single
 year had extensive public outreach we've had very talented individuals working in
 your department and others promoting sustainability sustainability has been
 an a key value in this city for a long time before even before city councils
 put it up there on a on the letterhead and said that was a value of the city
 I don't subscribe to the idea that a goal should be something we're not sure
 we can achieve I think that's the antithesis of a goal that's a dream
 that's an aspiration that's a vision board a goal is something we think that
 we actually can do and I think 40 by 40 honestly looking at the numbers even
 looking at the very capable staff and the wonderful ideas that we're generating
 here and that you're that you're bringing to us from your prior experience
 I think 40 by 40 is just as aspirational as we need to get the
 alliterative factor helps it's biblical right 40 but even so I think that's
 that's very aspirational I'm gonna leave this 70 by 75 where it's at I think
 that's fine because that's a 100% goal that is a near to technological
 perfection near to programmatic perfection things that we don't
 currently have the ability to even contemplate how to do I think 70 by 75
 by 75 is is just fine where it's at but 45 40 by 40 is as aspirational as I'm
 comfortable getting thank you all right we're right at about 50 minutes
 councilman bird thank you I won't take long I just had a couple of a statement
 here that I think that we should not give up any kind of contract and you know
 and taking other people's ways but however I do think that there's always
 room for a better outreach to those cities I'm understanding that there's
 not any recycling outreach to the other people's waste you know that comes in we
 get what we get and then we separate it out is that necessary a lot of most of
 the cities that our waste haulers bring in material from they have a two carted
 system also okay but where that goes and how much is contamination and how clean
 those loads are we never see that number so everything that we realize from them
 is a hundred percent into the landfill so first and foremost I want to be able
 to capture that number and put it in our diversion goal but then also work to
 drive improvements in their system so if they've got glass and they don't have a
 place to put it in their Murph won't handle it get it to our Murph and that
 gets us up to that minimum level we need to have the processor here and in where
 we're creating jobs lowering emissions things of that nature okay I remember
 you know it's a lot being said yes so I just wanted to clarify that yeah of course
 I'm always looking at it from the educational perspective and what about
 those other cities that bring in their their waste do we know do we have any
 kind of requirement for for them to educate their own citizens you know get
 the outreach to their own citizens or it's just not something that we're
 concerned that it's not a requirement that we built into our contracts but but
 being in this business for as long as I have been in North Texas when you look at
 most procurements for solid waste services in some of these smaller towns
 there is a de minimis amount of money that they're into that they require back
 from their their provider to provide education and outreach a lot of that is
 basically provide supply is to basically provide printer material that the cog
 has already come up with which is again is very good and very beneficial but
 it's really just more of more of the same so again we've got a sort of break
 out of that curve just a little bit and be a little more cutting edge on the
 education outreach that were they were able to do in those areas thank you very
 much you're welcome just curious you don't have to answer now could be like
 in a Friday report or something I'm curious if we were able to get to scale
 you know as we were discussing before with the sources I'd be interested to
 know what do you think are the the big new types of recycling that could be
 added to our program if we achieved that scale
 ultimately that'll go back on our right our own volume right well again it goes
 back to my mantra you know if somebody else can do it we don't need to be doing
 it yeah you know first and foremost I think textiles you know there's a week in
 in both coming into the landfill and coming through the mirth we see a lot of
 people throwing away carpets clothes shoes things of that nature so if we can
 partner with third-party operators such as goodwill Salvation Army people that
 first and foremost maybe recite you know resell this material back into the
 market because again you want to reuse as much as you can but a lot of people
 don't you know everybody's probably you know held up a shirt or something and
 said you know this is too good or this is too bad to go to goodwill it goes in
 the trash no goodwill wants every piece of textile that you can have because
 there's a secondary in a tertiary market for this material either using it you
 know in as rags or actually deconstructing that material and uses
 those fiber in new clothing so again you know providing those opportunities if we
 can do that they can make a you know again that may be a year 18 months out
 but again that's that's one of the low-hanging fruits that's out there and
 you know in addition to organics that we've identified you know styrofoam you
 know it weighs nothing but it takes up a lot of room so we're looking at that
 possible densification how do we get out you know get get managed on some of the
 styrofoam material now we can't collect at curbside because it causes you know
 it causes a great amount of litter just putting it in and crunching it and
 things of that nature so figuring out those programs to to manage that type
 material let's just you know couple yeah I mean with you know and you have just
 to have more time to think about it I'd be curious to know of those type big type
 things like what are they those are two great examples and like kind of what
 percent of the waste stream do they represent maybe if we know but you know
 not make I'm not asking you to do it right now and then on the goal I'm not
 sure yet how I feel about 40 by 2040 but I'm pretty sure that you could do 30 by
 2030 I'll leave it at that okay anyone else seeing none I'll just close out
 saying where are we or can we I don't know even if it belongs but I'd like to
 see it added if it does from a separate column for food composting and least
 just begin to measure that and turn is an existing thing they just can't
 function here because we for close that option and so even just turning on the
 spigot pun unintended to allow them to function here as a separate entity that
 reports up allows us to start tracking that function so what what are our
 options around food composting because I think it serves a dual purpose right so
 I guarantee you if I were to stand at the recycle bin there's an egg shell
 there's a this there's a that that could go in a bucket right and and help from a
 contamination standpoint so I think it serves us well to say hey if all put all
 the food in here and if you err here it has less of an effect than over there
 well and remember you know your your uncooked vegetable ends egg shells you
 know cantaloupe rinds things that nature that can already go in your yard waste
 container or your paper bag we will take that material will turn into diner dirt
 and you know but it's that post consumer that stuff that's been cooked the fats
 that oils and grease the spice material that we've really got to focus on and and
 we would love to partner with turn and other organizations that that work like
 they do and you know create a presence and an opportunity for them to be an
 operator in the city of Denton yeah because I hear you but from your answers
 right on but that that cost 25 bucks right to get that other the other car
 right in my wrong the brown no yard you purchase it for yeah for I believe it's
 $25 but then you know then after that there's no additional fee right 25 is a
 lot to some people yeah right and if we're trying and so I'm just saying I'm
 not I'm just saying we could have a lower barrier to entry and and I think
 also kind of get people not used to throwing because I mean I'm preaching to
 the choir you see all kinds of things in the in the in the recycle bin it's
 unbelievable but if we can kind of program and train people err on the side
 of just dumping it in here and we'll manage that and coach that up but it
 also frees up the recycle bin to maybe have a less spoil right that's great
 right a contamination rate unit sorry that's what I'm thinking and I don't
 think there's a high barrier to pull that trigger to allow currently just
 there's not an ordinance that allows them we have to control that space so
 it's just to me it's simply carving out a space for them to start and start
 measuring it and to be to be more succinct I I'm gonna agree with a lot of
 what councilmember Davis said not because I struggle with the fact that
 you as a subject matter expert we're saying hey give us your understanding of
 what it is set the goals and then we say I you can do better than that I don't
 know how but to do we did the Tony haters a couch over there find me a
 million bucks in there please you know that that sort of thing so I and I think
 we can always to your point over over achieve in those goals and I think we
 will I think you're actually right that it'll catch momentum and so excited
 about that and really for me and I will highlight this would councilmember Davis
 said that's that's really the core essence of a goal to be obtainable right
 when I look at here at New York 90% and they're at 17 that's ridiculous I mean
 that they you know that's just that's not steeped in reality at all looks I
 mean if you you know looks good on the fly or someplace if you're telling
 somebody half the information but holistically shout out to Becky Davini
 you know that that's a you know that that's not that's not what we want to do
 and and that that's that's misleading in some any way in kind of way and in it
 best it's not telling the whole story right it's and so I think you're spot-on
 look forward to see let's come back again that's my only nuances that I'd
 like to start tracking their open carve out and start tracking that food compost
 because I think it does a few things my other question for you would be or not
 not for an answer but just to kind of put on your radar for you to come back
 from a construction standpoint getting in front of things and so the example
 and I'm gonna add to your example Morrissey Millings another one right that
 has gone from several dumpsters to to one and and they do a great job but so
 my my ask would be that you come back with a plan or kind of share a thought on
 hundred coal ranches those things are getting moving I-35W expansion what are
 we doing with tech stop to kind of be creative and what I like to see is it's
 kind of like embassy suites when they were working towards their lead
 certification they had to recycle whatever that is you know 80% of all
 their building materials so before they even started construction they had to
 have a solid plan for how they were going to stage things during the
 construction process to hit that goal and so I'd like that we have plenty of
 warning that hey these large developments are coming text dots gonna
 be tearing up a lot of roads and what is our plan to kind of process through that
 partner with them make that easy to receive and to the benefit of our rate
 payers that sort of thing so really would like to hear from you on what's
 our forward-looking plan for these large-scale developments that are coming
 and then out of that I think we can have something that becomes a system that we
 can just kind of as another the next large-scale development comes you know
 we have 3,000 acres north of town it's gonna get developed you know those sort
 of things we can say hey here's what worked and we can replicate that but
 thank you very much appreciate you thank you yeah takes us to item okay so
 dentistry we're gonna we're gonna press through the part thing I think yes and
 then we'll grab it because we still have a closed session so want to try to get
 through that well sorry give me a second Gary
 counselor yeah not a question just real quick I just wanted to say I I agree
 that it would be good to have food waste composting as I mentioned before you
 know in addition to dino dirt so I would support a request for proposals on that
 don't have to respond to that but that's just my as far as direction just to
 specify the previous direction I gave earlier request for proposals on that I
 think would be great okay item e ID 2 1 2 1 4 2 receive report hold discussion
 give staff direction regarding assessment use of parkland dedication and
 park development fees good afternoon Gary pack and director parks and
 recreation today we're here to provide you an update on some work that we've
 been working on for a few years to get to this point and that is the update of
 our park dedication which we call 9 15 16 9 15 and our development which is 9 16
 that is an ordinance that was put into place in 2018 the overview for today's
 presentation or what are 9 15 16 funds our current ordinance which I mentioned
 is from 1998 the need for the update and the reason for that our approach that we
 took during this process in this journey the proposed updates will provide to you
 some staff recommendations and some discussion going back in the archives
 Laura Barons has been working on this and she was with parks and recreation
 before transferring to finance so she has very thankfully worked through this
 entire process with us in this journey and has done a tremendous amount of work
 so she's going to provide the presentation and then staff will be here
 for questions good afternoon Laura Barons good afternoon so our 9 15 and 9 16 funds
 are our park dedication and park development respectively park dedication
 is the allocation of land for the development of a park and park
 development is the allocation of funding for park development and improvements
 the purpose of these funds is to provide recreational areas as part of the
 planning and development process these apply only to new residential
 developments it provides parks that directly benefits the residents of those
 new developments and the intent is to help us keep pace with growth and the
 needs as a result of those new residential developments coming in and
 finally these fees help us to convey the cost to the user so that new development
 pays for itself and not subsidized by the current residents as Gary mentioned
 the current ordinance was adopted in 1998 and it hasn't been updated since for 9
 15 there is a dedication calculation that incorporates a metrics of 2.5 acres
 per a thousand population it also includes the number of units for that
 particular proposed developments and a person per dwelling unit factor at the
 time for single-family it was 2.8 and for multi-family it was 1.8 it also
 provides the option to pay a fee in lieu of park dedication that fee in lieu of is
 based on the average cost per acre of the value of that specific proposed
 project and that value comes from DCAD on the development side we have a
 calculation that's based off a development cost for a five acre park of
 188 thousand dollars it then sets a flat fee from there for 291 and 187
 respectively for those residential types the ordinance also allows for
 alternatives to reach the intent so again you see under the 915 the
 dedication piece we do have the alternative of paying a fee in lieu of
 the land dedication you can also use a combination of fees and any of these
 alternatives it does provide a park credit for private park amenities under
 the 916 development side and on the 915 dedication side it does allow for the
 construction of a public park in lieu of dedication of land something that's not
 in the ordinance but is a common practice that you've seen you know time
 and time again our development agreements so we we are able to work
 outside of the 915 916 ordinance currently under a development agreement
 those development agreements are brought to council for final approval we do have
 some restrictions that are presenting some challenges to us under the current
 ordinance the first one is that it specifically applies to neighborhood
 parks it names neighborhood parks as an application for 915 and 916 fees we also
 have a proximity restriction of a half a mile to mile radius for the use of the
 fees and also for land purchases so for instance we have to either purchase land
 or use the fees within a half mile to a mile radius of the development that paid
 in to the fund so a lot has changed since 1998 as you can imagine back in
 in 98 we had a legal standard between the assessment of fees and the
 development of a nexus principle in that case we only had to make a simple link
 between our assessment and the development and that was primarily satisfied with
 that half mile to mile radius today we have a different legal standard that we
 have to meet when we apply these fees for park dedication and development and
 that's the rough proportionality test it's more stringent and it requires a
 connection between the requirements that we impose and the projected park use for
 that specific development so this means we have to take an individual approach
 we have to use current unique factors to didn't and apply those to the proposed
 development in question and so our typical methods like benchmarking cannot
 be used as a basis for the fee the solution for this is to create park zones
 and to establish a service level the service level gives us the individual
 approach in which we take in establishing our park fees and then the
 zone continues to give us that proximity or that link we've just expanded it the
 methodology in the current ordinance is also outdated the metric of two point
 five acres per a thousand is very low as it's very low standard for us other
 formulas that really are just outdated and undervalued are the two hundred and
 eight thousand dollars to develop a five acre park that's currently under the
 current construction cost at one point two million so big discrepancy in those
 differences and then once again we talked a little bit about that proximity
 half-mile to a mile radius that's presented some challenges for us because
 what it's actually doing is it's driving our use rather than the need we're
 actually looking to see where do we have money and where can we use it rather
 than where is the need and what money do we have available to address that need
 operationally what does this program look like for us on the dedication side
 we have that metric of two point five acres per a thousand today that needle
 hasn't really moved we're at three developed park acres per a thousand so
 even though our population has increased exponentially we really haven't moved
 the needle on service level on the development side we took a little bit
 different snapshot of this looking at a three-year history between 2017 and 2020
 we collected one point four million dollars in development fees during that
 same time about 6,300 residential permits were issued single-family and
 multifamily and we estimated that at a population about 13,000 what does that
 get us today that 1.4 million dollars will get us one five acre park it would
 have to be shared within that 6,300 residential units and that estimated
 13,000 an increase in population so not very much and looking at this review as
 Gary mentioned we've been working on this for a couple of years when we
 started the review we looked internal we talked to our park staff we wanted to
 know hey over the last 24 years what's been working what hasn't been working
 what updates what amendments do we need to make and then we went to our
 department stakeholders we're not working in a vacuum we're a part of a
 bigger development process so we went to our other partner departments and talked
 to them about code requirements we shared our drafts we did conflict
 resolution meetings to make sure that anything that we were proposing wasn't
 in conflict with any other code requirements and then we engaged the
 help of dr. John Crompton he is a distinguished professor with Texas A&M
 he literally wrote the book on part fees he currently teaches under the
 recreation parks and tourism services so he helped us all along the way and he
 even came down to Denton and met with our CMO staff and with one of our
 developer group meetings that we'll talk about here in just a second we also did
 presentations at a series of development town hall meetings and then from that we
 formed a smaller focus group we had about 11 representatives from eight
 different firms that we met with on a monthly basis up until COVID and then
 after that we suspended our in-person meetings try to pick up again suspended
 again but we have started to resume those conversations with them and every
 step of the way they looked at draft after draft after draft I think we ended
 up on about 12 different drafts they worked with a step-by-step on the
 formula they've seen the details of this and they helped us craft even some of
 the language that you see today in the proposal so in the proposal we have a
 big shift in methodology we go from that calculation of that 2.5 per thousand
 metric and we transition to a service level model so how we got to that
 service level is we took that individual approach that's required from us under
 the rough proportionality test and we looked at our local population we use
 the most updated 2020 census number we have a park inventory that's included in
 an appendix that outlines which parks were included in the number of park
 acres developed parks we updated the people per dwelling unit factor with the
 help of Development Services that really hasn't moved a lot 2.6 now for single
 family 1.8 still for multifamily we retained the fee in lieu of option and
 instead of using a value based on the cost of the specific development we're
 now looking at a citywide parcel value on the development side the major change
 is going to be in the updating of that cost to develop a park again major
 change from two point I'm sorry from two hundred and eight thousand to one point
 two million we've taken that into account with our service level and what
 we've done is establish that set sort of service levels we've established park
 zones the out of the assessments that are paid into still have to be used
 within that park zone but it also helps us to focus on the need not the distance
 from a development we now have set fees across the board whereas today we don't
 we have single-family and multifamily set fees and they're based on current
 costs we've also expanded the alternatives where we only gave park
 credit under one or you were only able to construct a public park under another
 we've now expanded that so they apply to both we've also included land a language
 specific to the development agreements again because we're using those in
 practice and want to make sure that we acknowledge and recognize those in the
 ordinance and so that we don't find ourselves in the same position again
 we've actually put in a required review every three years so in in those three
 years what we're gonna do is we'll look for adjustments in the population we'll
 update land values we'll also update our park acres if we've added any during
 that time we'll formulate a new fee bring that back to you for review and
 approval and the last thing we did that we don't have right now is that we have
 created a companion handbook that goes along with the ordinance now that
 handbook can be updated as needed it gives more specifications on the
 requirements is if you were going to construct your own pride park or
 construct private amenities it outlines some of the different requirements for
 that so looking at these side-by-side just a quick look again we have the
 metrics 2.5 acres per a thousand number of units in the development those
 dwelling unit factors and then the calculation under the development 916
 transitioning to a service level model still using several of the same unique
 factors to didn't in that methodology and the development cost has been
 updated where that takes us is a one acre dedication for every 129 single
 family dwelling units and a one acre dedication for every 186 multi-family
 dwelling units in most cases the ordinance lays out that we will require
 a minimum of five acres and we say that in most cases because we do want to give
 ourselves the flexibility to be able to review the proposed land that's up for
 dedication the use for it and have the ability to accept it or decline it for
 fee in Lua we have a flat fee of 435 and 301 for single-family and multi-family
 and we have a new flat fee for a development cost of 2753 for single
 family and 1906 for multi-family I want to go back to this for just a second and
 point out the park zones so we do have five different zones that you can see
 here when we started to look at carving out the city into zones we started
 looking at some different maps and we started also looking at the population
 within those zones we started looking at the types of development currently in
 the zones how they were zoned and we also with the help of our tech service
 team and development services overlaid proposed projects or projects that were
 in the works into these zones so that we could see where the opportunities for new
 development coming in we wanted to make sure that none were skewed in one way or
 another for instance between zone a and zone e we have a heavy industrial area
 it's zoned for that we're not going to be adding any new residential areas to
 that so we wanted to make sure that those zones weren't skewed we also did a
 lot of work in carving out the center of the zone because that is highs or at the
 center of the city because that is so high density we didn't want to again
 make one zone imbalanced over another so what does this look like now we took a
 recent project that parks was involved in it's a single-family proposed
 development on just under 91 acres 390 units the dcad value which is what we
 use in our assessment is at seven hundred and thirty eight thousand
 dollars as you can see the appraisal for that is eight point six this is one of
 the challenges that we're facing a huge difference between what's in dcad which
 is our normal source of information and what is an appraised value we we rarely
 have an opportunity to have access to an appraisal in this case the city
 actually performed or had the appraisal performed so we had we had this
 information but under the current assessment the land dedication would be
 two point seven three acres for a fee in lieu of option of a little over twenty
 two thousand again that's based on the dcad value the development fee for
 three hundred and ninety acres would be a hundred and thirty one hundred and
 thirteen thousand dollars based on that flat fee of two ninety one under the
 proposed assessment the land dedication would be three acres again not a big
 move from the current ordinance because we haven't moved the needle a lot on our
 current service level the fee in lieu of land because we're not using dcad value
 we're using a city-wide parcel value that has moved to a hundred and sixty
 nine thousand and the development fee is now at a million as I mentioned before
 when when we were working with our our internal department team members we are
 a part of a larger development fee structure so you can see some of the
 other development fees that our city has we're at the top there at 1998 some of
 them have been updated as recently as 2019 and you'll be seeing the roadway
 impact fees coming back to you immediately after the adoption of the
 2022 mobility plan staff plans on presenting several options to the City
 Council and it will seek your feedback on that fee structure to cover the
 infrastructure cost and also to align with that hopefully recently adopted
 2020 mobility plan so moving forward staff recommends the approval of the
 new methodology and the proposed fees we also propose an implementation timeline
 of three to six months we do want to give the development community as much
 notice as possible but we would also just the way we would do any other
 development code update set a timeline for implementation set a date for any
 projects currently in the work being grandfathered into the current ordinance
 any new proposed developments after that date falling under the new ordinance we
 do our goal is to have a new fee structure with the with the implementation
 of the next fiscal year budget if not sooner and Gary and I are ready to take
 any questions you might have great thank you councilor Armitage yes so first of
 all I want to thank you and everybody who was involved in in this this is such
 a needed long overdue improvement that the public will benefit from immensely I
 anticipate that there will probably be a little developer pushback on that and I
 am totally prepared to to defend this very very reasonable and against so long
 overdue update the one and only concern I have about it is just about the
 category of affordable housing you know I would love since we've is a city
 committed to making up for also talking about making up for big gaps you know in
 affordable housing if I would like to see a major reduction or waiver for for
 affordable housing and I wonder if there are any models for that if I forget what
 the who the the author of the that book you mentioned who you consulted with is
 but I bet he would have all kinds of ideas about that okay
 Councilor Davis thank you mayor first I have a question can you help me better
 understand the citywide parcel value concept can you kind of walk me through
 that yes and if I can refer to exhibit or I'm sorry appendix C of the proposed
 ordinance what we did is we worked with our GIS team so we worked with our GIS
 team to pull D CAD information and we we went back and when we started this we
 started with 2018 appraised D CAD values we updated it and with using 2020
 appraised D CAD values or certified D CAD values and we pulled all
 residential parcels all residential properties out of D CAD for the city of
 Denton we took it one step further and we went through because there are
 different types of residential homes or residential classifications we pulled
 out everything except for single-family and multifamily we also pulled or we are
 we kept duplexes under five units because that's one of the requirements
 for you have to have if you're doing a duplex it has to have five units or more
 to apply to the to the proposed ordinance so we pulled everything out and
 what was left as you can see we had 30 a little over almost 31,000 residential
 parcels we took the total value of certified value and this we also went
 back and we looked at the unimproved value so there are several different
 values that are associated with a particular piece of property we looked
 at the unimproved and you'll see that total and then we took an average value
 of parcels and that's the value that we're using and why is that why I
 understand methodology but why is that advantageous why is that something that
 we ought to do as opposed to the way we're doing it before we had well first
 it helps to capture some a more realistic land value as you can see the
 DCAD values in our experience are already very undervalued and so that
 helped us to capture a more realistic value and still doesn't close the gap
 but it is it is a better value we also tried to do this by acres and we had a
 great discussion with our focus group about this and we went back and forth
 DCAD does have so they do have numbers in there and I say numbers for the the
 size of a property but we were what we were finding is it that they weren't
 really accurate I mean somewhere in square foot somewhere in acres some
 didn't while they had a number exemptions were taken out of them so one
 of the things that where we try to reduce that was by taking out
 agricultural land and that sort of thing and again focusing on single family
 multifamily and those duplexes because we knew those were hard numbers and so
 that was a better using the parcels number for us was more accurate than
 trying to assess a total acreage for those 30,000 parts or 30,000
 properties got it thank you I really appreciate all the thought and effort
 that's gone into this and by our thought and effort I mean years of it at this
 point and philosophically I find very little to disagree with there's there's
 a need for updating the structure there's a need for updating and increasing
 the total revenue from this item I think that's pretty clear I think even the
 development community has to acknowledge like there's a these we are woefully
 under collecting what we should for these types of developments and the kind
 of amenities we intend to offer one of our primary goals to offer in Denton and
 I'm going to use the term that's imperfect but I think it conveys the idea
 vest that sticker shock and I don't think I don't think it's a I don't
 prefer that term I can't think of a better one because it kind of conveys
 this idea like like it's the customers fault right like what you got sticker
 shock you should have listened better to the salesman you know when you saw the
 sticker you didn't fully understand you were kind of taken along for a ride
 there but the issue that I have with increasing this much this quickly is you
 know not just because of course the development community isn't in favor of
 higher fees but I think it will have a direct impact on the kinds of
 developments that we'll see we talk a lot about how growth is the only thing
 really keeping our infrastructure funded at this point if the city does not grow
 as much as we want to talk about you know we're slowing down growth or lots
 of folks moving here and maybe it's a different kind of city than the one we
 remember or whatever the conversations are without growth without growth in
 that tax base we don't fund infrastructure it does not happen we
 can't at current levels keep up with just managing what we have so that
 residential growth however we feel about it is necessary to the city's bottom
 line and this is an anti growth measure as I look at it that rapid increase in
 the fees is an anti growth measure and there are some on this dais who will
 think that's a good thing and that's fine that's a policy that's a policy
 consideration that may be slowing down residential growth is just fine I'm not
 one of those people because I don't think long term the city can survive
 slowing or growth down very much considering all the services we
 currently we currently provide I also have a lot of concern with the effect on
 affordable housing and I want to kind of break that down a little bit because
 it's not just as easy as saying well if it costs more to build a house that's
 gonna cost more to buy a house last week we had a project where I said
 something along the lines of or last meeting rather I said something along
 the lines of people are buying these houses with zero lot lines because
 they're they want to and somebody said they know they're buying them because
 that's all they can afford developers are building them because that's what
 they can afford to develop because of the the costs of land because the
 economics that go into their projects that is not a plea for sympathy for
 developers that's simply a plea for understand the actual economics of
 developing a piece of property under our fee regime some of our fees got it
 they've got to go up they've got to be higher and developers are just going to
 have to eat those fees to develop but to say that in this size in your example
 it's 390 units your fees are going to be a million dollars more than they were
 last year to develop the same parcel that's a that's an economic blow and I
 think that's going to have some unintended consequences it's a policy
 conversation it's a fair policy conversation but I think that hits a lot
 harder than we really are factoring in even on those big projects like 390
 units and I think that has real real-world effects on the kinds of
 developments we're going to see the numbers of lots we're going to see the
 number of PDs people are going to want to have because they've got a cram in
 down to our seven levels to be able to pencil out their projects just to make
 them work and a lot of that's going to have to do with our fees the last thing
 I want to say about affordable housing is I don't support a waiver a waiver is
 exactly the kind of idea that sounds really good like what let's make it less
 expensive to build affordable housing in the city of Denton the people building
 affordable housing are primarily for-profit entities they are doing
 affordable housing because they can get tax credits to build the affordable
 housing some of them are also somewhat altruistic but I don't see a need
 necessarily to incentivize affordable housing in that way the other thing you
 get when you say there are waivers for things like park amenities for affordable
 housing is a bunch of affordable housing that doesn't have access to the same
 things that other neighborhoods do that aren't built to the same standards as
 other neighborhoods that are packed in together even more dense than the other
 neighborhoods so I'm not in favor of treating affordable housing quote-unquote
 differently because I think just simple dignity even if you live in affordable
 housing you deserve to live in just as good a neighborhood just as nice a
 neighborhood as something that's not labeled quote-unquote affordable
 may pretend yes completely persuaded that you know it's time to relook at
 this and I very much respect the methodical process that you've
 described and hitching it to the cost of actually building apart it's it is tough
 to get to the idea that it is quote-unquote reasonable to hit somebody
 with ten times greater fee it's it's not impossible for me to get there but
 let me lay out a couple of things that would help me well first of all I
 remember a couple of cycles ago when we didn't want to raise taxes and I was
 part of that that there was a this council then we were presented a big
 increase in impact in fees enough so that it really made me blanch a bit and
 I and I this is what mayor Watts was here and I said you know I get it but
 are we hanging a closed for business sign on Denton and he laid out the case
 that particularly with rising prices there was a such a small amount of the
 total build cost that they that it development wouldn't skip a beat and that
 turned out to be true I mean the fees were massively increased and development
 as if anything you know as strong as ever so I so I don't think that's
 impossible I don't think I think it is also possible that with the rise in
 prices now the developers got labor problems he's got material problems but
 there's also price flexibility in our market so there may be room in there so
 I appreciate a better understanding if that's true if their model really can
 sustain them I don't know if it's who it's on to help us see that but I think
 that that would help me to understand that second thing that would help me
 would be to see just to the extent that we're in competition for you know good
 for good housing that we need with other places around North Texas and it'd be
 helpful for me to see same type of project y'all pick the cities that you
 think are the most comparable some really aren't I accept that but so make
 your case what's really the right comparison and say how do we stack up
 and I know it's difficult but it's it's totally possible for the developer to do
 it because you know they have to figure out their costs so let's let's just see
 you how do we line up you know sticker shop may be different in the context of
 what's everyone else price that and then lastly I don't know how to what extent
 this would be even appropriate but I'll just put it out there it's amazing to me
 that that you had this focus group of developers that said 10 times higher fee
 looks good to us but I accept that you did that so I'd be really interested in
 knowing into whatever degree you can share what the Constitution was of that
 group you know would that be impressive I don't know if you can if you if it was
 confidential if you don't feel you want to say specifically who or if that's fine
 or just characterize I think they'll be interesting to the rest of the
 development community to know the kind of caliber of opinions that were there
 that said yeah this totally makes sense and you know that would be persuasive to
 me so that's where I am at this point so to address your on the compared
 comparison study we did look at 12 other cities in our area and it's it's
 difficult to make the comparison because everybody's using a different model and
 those that are using similar models to ours which is that establishing a
 service level which most communities are again transitioning to I've already
 moved to to meet that that legal standard they're factoring in their own
 communities demographic information you know cost values land values and so forth
 so it that's where the difference is formula may be the same methodology may
 be very similar but the difference is going to be in what are our city
 demographic numbers and what are those other community city different
 demographic numbers I will say that of the 12 only three we're still using a
 metric of park acres per a thousand population and the average was five so
 significantly higher well twice as high right then what it currently is and
 still higher than where we are today in a service level the others again we're
 using similar service levels different different numbers to plug into the
 formula but the average was about seventeen hundred dollars per dwelling
 unit one thousand seven hundred per dwelling unit I'm sorry to answer really
 quick your second the developer meetings I'm I'm this is my perspective don't
 want to speak for them but we in general got a lot of positive feedback the first
 thing is that they were very thankful to even be included in the process and
 they were thankful for the monthly meetings the continued development of
 drafts every month they were involved step-by-step throughout the whole
 process obviously do they like the increase no and they told us that they
 said look you know it's that that's part of our right our our stance is going to
 be not to increase anything they definitely agreed with the need for it
 they they see that obviously the construction cost they know that the
 current values are undervalued would they like to see them obviously lower
 absolutely we there was there was kind of a sweet spot that we were trying to
 reach in but we had to present the baseline and this is where we work off
 of again we can't use those traditional methods of what is everybody else
 charging and then let's set our fee based on that but what we can do is have
 a baseline this is our baseline this is based on service level factors unique to
 didn't and we can work from here whether that's from there looking to see if we
 are a better match with other communities starting at our baseline an
 implementation process or something like that this is but this is the baseline
 for us to start from okay customer back thank you mr. mayor so I went through
 the handbook on page six really kind of just lays out I think it's the handbooks
 page six not the PDFs page six but whatever page is labeled six and it just
 lays out all the numbers so I really appreciate that it was really clear so
 I'm not asking you to look it up because you guys already know what you wrote but
 but for the dais and for folks watching it just lays out okay this many people
 this much land this many city parks yada yada yada it's basically you know how
 many city parks per dent night and then how many how many dent nights per house
 it's it's really just kind of that simple and then what does it cost us to
 build a park in Denton not in Fort Worth or in Austin or anywhere else but what
 does it cost us to build a park in Denton and and different kinds of parks
 and you average you know the the smaller pocket parks and the larger city parks
 and you know honestly that averaging it probably you know under under costs your
 large parks to be honest and you guys kind of know that it does a little bit
 hopefully you make that up in volume of small parks but I mean that page six
 really lays everything out and you know we can we can argue about sticker shock
 or or anything else that we want to try to say oh well they didn't expect this
 but it was 1998 I think you can kind of expect that there might be changes in
 24 years I mean so like just for example I looked at the consumer price index
 from 1998 to 2021 and it's about 1.73 times so it just everything else being
 equal it's almost twice as much dollars I mean it costs twice as much to do
 anything today than it did in 1998 and then I went to Texas A&M not only has
 dr. Crompton but they have that real estate center that that focuses on this
 very issue and and I went looked up they have tables of what land values were so
 I looked up the general Texas land values from 1998 and I compared that to
 2021 and if you look at that it's land values have increased six point two five
 times and unfortunately unfortunately when we want to buy a park we got to buy
 land and and then it's gonna not only do we have to buy land that's six times
 more expensive but we cost us twice as much 1.7 times as much to build and
 maintain a park and have staff salaries M&O that sort of thing so if you just do
 those numbers that's you know 1.73 times 6.25 is about 10.8 so you know if
 the park dedication fees just followed CPI and land value changes in in the
 last 24 years you'd expect almost 11 times and the fact is that you guys
 working with developers and coming up with actual metrics and the cost of parks
 in Denton streamlined that down to about I think it was about 9.4 9.5 times then
 the 98 value to the proposed value so while that 9.45 seems like a lot just
 just crude metrics suggested it probably should be a little bit higher and the
 fact that you were able to streamline and get economies of scale I think is
 is magnificent working with the vendors like you talked with Mayor Pro Tem about
 you know you had these you had people making these kinds of products in your
 focus group so I'm I guess is there my I guess my question is is I mean is is
 there am I basically doing faulty math is it is the two time 1.7 times 6.2 is
 that is that wrong I mean because that just sort of gives us the the ballpark
 ballpark figure and you guys were under that yeah no that's what we're
 definitely seeing we looked specifically at the land value CPI is close and
 something we wanted to you know be able to take another look at but specifically
 on the land value in addition to this one again there's a because of that huge
 difference between DCAD and appraisals it is very difficult to buy right you
 know we might be looking at some land and look at a DCAD value to start off
 and can we afford this do we have funding for it then we get an appraisal
 and we ourselves are hit with sticker shock in what it's actually going to
 take to buy the land so in addition to to this example we looked at another
 property that parks recently was was looking at and we had a very clay was
 higher but close to that Texas land value figure I don't think DCAD went
 all the way back to 1998 I think it went back to 2008 so we looked at the 2008
 value and then we looked at the appraised value we actually had the
 property property also appraised we looked at the difference between those
 values again a little bit higher than that Texas land value metric but it was
 what you know it was reflective of what we've been seeing ballpark yes no pun
 intended since you guys are making ballparks but so the other question I
 have is the the park dedication is that that that change from 2.7 to 3 if I'm
 understanding the the page 6 again that's just coming out from this is what
 we have now yes so I want to have that same ratio going forward and we've we've
 been the equivalent of one r3 lot bigger in the last 24 years for this same size
 98 per parcel in your example so so one lot bigger is the average that we're
 using so we're just going to apply that average to any future developments and I
 understand what we're doing again we've moved away from that metric because it
 it it's outdated number one and it's not reflective of really of where we want
 to be so the challenges is again with the rough proportionality test we can't
 assess a fee based on where we want to be it has to be what the existing
 service level is so again that hasn't that needle hasn't moved a whole lot but
 what we're hoping is with that three-year review as we continue to add
 land at population hopefully that metric will continue to move up and then as
 we're reviewing and reapproving new fees it's based on now a higher service
 level but having these updated fees will definitely go a long way in helping us
 get to that acquire more land develop more parks we want it to be very
 transparent in the information and the data that we were including so not only
 is it in the handbook as you pointed out but it's in the appendices of the
 actual ordinance so you will see an actual breakdown of the park acreage
 that was included in the metric in the formula you'll see a breakdown of those
 costs we had a lot of discussions with the developers on the cost as well they
 don't see the soft costs or realize those soft costs in the same way that we
 do when we bid out a project but when we were looking at the hard cost we were
 very close in what we were paying for and the prices that they're seeing we
 also as you pointed out have those formulas in there for both dedication and
 development and so it's step one step two it gives you a table of the numbers
 that we're using where we got those numbers from and how we arrived at those
 at those figures so again trying to be very open and transparent of what those
 factors are what those costs are how we got there and and this is again this is
 the baseline this is where we're at today I appreciate that a lot and then I guess I
 I'm also saying in terms of I actually agree with councillor Davis I think
 that we have other mechanisms for leveraging and helping with
 affordability but my concern with applying a waiver for affordable
 development is generally people won't do park dedication they won't dedicate land
 they'll just do loop fee and move a waiver and so you you will then make it
 more challenging for for you guys to find adjacent properties to put a park
 on because now you got to convince some other owner to sell you land instead of
 doing park dedication so I'm not I want just as councillor Davis said I want any
 affordable property have the same quality of existence is as any non
 affordable market rate development and so I'm not I'm not in favor of a waiver
 in terms of my direction but in terms of the my direction is to support the staff
 recommendation on this one because I actually think it's you know marginally
 cheaper than than what just general market forces would dictate
 council member um so it all it all boils down it all comes down to the level of
 service everybody wants everything and nobody wants to pay for anything but we
 understand that what you what we what we pay for is what we get and so with all
 of everything that's being said I don't want to take up too much additional time
 but I do want to let me get back to my page I do want to go ahead and direct
 that of course we got a update the the methodology methodology of for
 assistance and I I cannot believe that you know a developer would step back
 from anything that's going on these days in terms of our growth they want to be
 here they want to help us get through it I don't think that there's going to be
 any it's just not gonna anything that's happening right now it's not gonna allow
 us to stand still on all of our needs and I'll just say that for the entire
 city especially when we come back and look at this budget coming up this fall
 are we gonna push more or are we gonna try to be as conservative as possible and
 may you know look at it from that perspective you know what we're gonna
 deliver so you know just for the needs of everybody that doesn't understand
 budgeting and whatnot if you if you want it you got to pay for it I guess and
 again I'm just I got my just looking at my notes here and I have down here we
 should expect a higher cost for more development I think that we should
 continue to take a look at these waivers I think that it's just gonna give us a
 bigger opportunity to it's just gonna expand our opportunity for more groups
 to look look at us and see if they can help us in certain kinds of ways so the
 methodology yes waivers yes. Councilmember Davis. Yeah so I appreciate
 councilmember Beck's math I'm glad to find that at least by those measures
 that he kind of cocktail napkin better quality math than cocktail napkin but
 factors maybe kind of at the cocktail napkin level we're kind of born out and
 what you guys have done in the in the actual you know number crunch you've
 been doing with the development community the numbers that they're
 seeing as well the thing I point out about those numbers though those are
 things that have increased over that time period and they crunch us and our
 family budgets just as much having increased incrementally over time as if
 they had just just happened so the issue I don't think is the methodology the
 issue I don't think is the final number I think the issue is that a project that
 is submitted or hits that vesting point yesterday is gonna pay ten times less
 than a project that vests in the new ordinance and I think that kind of quick
 turnaround is the issue and I think that's the economic issue and that's the
 thing that is gonna hit pause on some on some projects I respectfully disagree
 that developers aren't gonna step back I think the developers who are looking at
 big projects that either hold the land now or speculating or show excuse me
 shopping now or the folks who are marketing land now I think this is gonna
 have an impact that it changes overnight I think a phased approach is better and I
 haven't yet heard an argument against a phased approach the argument I would I
 would expect against the phased approaches you know it's it's more
 complex for a city to administer and that less money comes in as quickly but
 I don't think I don't think those are strong enough arguments to justify an
 overnight change of a ten thousand excuse me a ten times increase in the
 fee not even we haven't even brought up this this afternoon yet that we're going
 to be looking at additional impact fee and increases in addition to the ones
 because we changed our structure somewhat the time that council member
 Meltzer is speaking of and we're going to be looking at increasing them
 additionally so I'm very concerned about immediate impacts of an increase and I
 would much prefer some kind of phased approach okay and just so we're all on
 the same page we have 45 is that right 15 yeah minutes for we were back here
 for regular session so we'll skip dinner if we need to just to get this get this
 done but we'll we'll wrap up councilbert you're still on there on the screen are
 you are you okay councilmember wire thank you so much regarding the the fee
 structure I support staffs recommendation of you know they're recommended increase
 and the timeline port as well my concern with a phased approach would be that you
 know depending on the timeline of the phasing we could encourage a front
 loading of developments we don't want to create a situation where developers are
 scrambling to get their projects in before the fees increase and and then
 the development suddenly drops off I think that you know it's possible that
 there might be some some developers that back away from projects as a result of
 this increase but I think that that's let it's it's likely that the drop-off
 would be less severe if we just increase their the fees as as early as we
 reasonably can that versus if we were to do a phased approach then we would see a
 big flood of projects and then a much bigger drop-off so I'm more comfortable
 with it with this this approach of just doing it quickly in terms of waiving or
 reducing fees for affordable housing so I you know I hear my colleagues concerned
 that we don't want a reduced level of service for individuals who live in
 affordable housing and it's clear to me that there would be a reduced level of
 service if we were maintaining the you know half to one mile radius that that
 was in the old ordinance I'd love to hear you know your your take on whether
 that would have that impact with this new the new zones and our related
 question to that are we legally obligated to have zones are we
 disallowed from having all of the park fees go into one big pot and having
 park staff just allocate it in the the way that you know that that y'all see to
 be equitable so there's not a there's not a prohibition on it we we have the
 zones because it's kind of another layer of that rough proportionality test the
 first one is to establish those service levels what it nuts the individualized
 approach but that that zone also helps us keep that connection again between
 park users in a new development in the location of that development and the
 development or acquisition of part space or development improvement of parks
 within an area where it's you know where we have people that those users will go
 we know that our users are traveling outside of that half mile to mile radius
 so we wanted to follow more in line with the trend of use but that zone helps us
 give it gives us that second layer of connection to meet that rough
 proportionality test okay yeah I think that that's that that's a reasonable you
 know compromise so within the the zone structure it is there a concern that
 there would be a reduced level of service in areas with a lot of affordable
 housing if we were to waive or reduce fees we would really need to look at
 where and I guess we would need to do a little bit of research on the
 classification of that type of housing and then map it if we can narrow down a
 clear classification right capture that housing type map it and then work again
 with our development team and seeing what proposed projects or projects that
 are already in the pipeline with that same classification and where are they I
 can tell you something that was one of the original models of this is that we
 had a an actual fee for each zone and that became that became a challenge
 because of that very thing that you just talked about there were discrepancies
 between the zones zone E was our problem zone just to be quite honest because we
 don't have a lot of part we actually have seven on E we have 17 acres in all
 of zone E we also have about a population of three to four thousand and
 that's from one specific development now we know that's going to grow we have
 developments that are all right we know we're coming in we're working with them
 development agreement all of that we know it's going to grow but in the
 interim it was causing a huge inequity between the zones so what this will
 allow us to do in the zones is begin to put more concentration on need again
 rather than the location driving the use just to add real quickly to that the one
 thing too and I don't know off the top my head any cities that have that type
 of flexibility with the fees based on what type of affordable housing there is
 ultimately the park development costs are what they are today that's what's
 driving the methodology for the actual fee right now we are heavily
 subsidizing those private developments because we're getting you know ten cents
 and a dollar per se don't quote me on that but that's where we're at today
 ultimately the decision is do we want to continue to subsidize that and at what
 amount if if the rate is twenty seven hundred dollars and council wants to
 roll that in over an increment of let's say six five six years that's that's
 council's direction we can do that we're subsidizing that that's providing
 subsidy for those types of situations that you're mentioning some cities are
 looking at here's the fee but we're only taking sixty percent of that fee to
 actually charge and the rest is being subsidized by the general population now
 that construction cost keeps going up every year at expense so even with it
 being adopted we're already behind them behind the the cost because it keeps
 moving and we're static at that point in time so it's something we're always
 going to be chasing it's just a point of where council wants to be in the comfort
 level to help how we're going to subsidize that difference and what that
 difference is going to be and there's different ways of doing that whether it's
 subsidy density in the housing is is an option that to look at the how to how to
 make things more affordable but ultimately there's there's options for
 council consideration and rolling that up in incremental years is an option
 yeah so my direction is do not roll it in incrementally implement it as quickly
 as we feasibly can and I would like to see you know if there if there's a
 future is there a future work session planned for this or we'd come back with
 action an item for action okay I when you come back for action I don't know I
 I I would love to see some options for for perhaps subsidizing park fees for
 for affordable developments so you know we mentioned a couple times a roadway
 impact fee and that is gonna but it's part of this conversation in the sense
 that that's coming in a few months in six seven months as we get through that
 process and we do anticipate an increase recommended at that time to to say that
 in April we have a work session for that for impact fees if we do have the
 follow-up items which are a couple of follow-up items we could have a work
 session that same day for any follow-up for the park fees as well so we could
 just and it would be nice to have those together as we're kind of thinking to
 the future so I think that would make a lot of sense in April yeah I might my
 direction then is I would love to have a brief work session focusing
 specifically on this issue of reducing or waiving park fees for affordable you
 know and we need to I guess define what we mean by affordable and and discuss
 how that might impact level of service but I would like to have that
 conversation but that set aside I agree with staff direction on this item
 Councilman bet most of the points were just in the previous back and forth so
 I'll just mention that 2753 in an average 300 K home is 0.9% so most of
 the rest of the comments that were already answered between you two thank
 you mayor pro tem yeah just you know to eliminates doubt I'm directionally
 wanting to do what we want to do I just feel like the case isn't completely
 laid convincingly to me that we got exactly right that's and you know
 because if you say this is a good thing and it costs as much we want to do it
 well you know if why not make it 10 million that would be even better you
 know and you need to have some sense of reality of are you in fact just throwing
 a monkey wrench in the market and killing it if I mean if that was really
 true I don't think anyone here actually wants to do that I don't know if we are
 or not I just need some you know what you did a little bit verbally and kind
 of would like to just see that laid out in terms of the competitive set but then
 just understanding does it actually fit in developers real business models or
 not or we really just hang in the clothes sign up so and I don't know how
 we get that but if without having any consideration of whether that's real
 world to times 10 a fee you know it just doesn't strike me as a done policy
 discussion so that's something so I'm directionally there I need a little more
 help to get all the way there that just wanted to clarify that Councilman Davis
 thank you I agree with mayor pro tem if there's a developer out there who's at
 least swollen to open the books a little bit on on at least a hypothetical
 project and walk us through kind of some of our hypothetical penciling out that
 would be very helpful to know kind of the real world economics because I don't
 respectfully to including myself in this no one on this dais is qualified to know
 what those projects pencil at and how those others work out we can make a lot
 of assumptions and we just don't know and I have not yet heard consensus on a
 separate work session for affordable housing I think I would like to talk
 about the issue more if just to establish what kind of projects have we
 seen recently that would be in this space that would even qualify for this
 fee are we having a moot conversation but I think we could do that in the
 context of a different work session I don't know that we need many more many
 more hours on a different day okay anyone else okay to close out briefly
 and forgive me if you sent these answers and I missed it but I think we all
 receive the builders associations letter and I think for me I'm happy to give the
 answers I just did not see them in a response yes sir yeah well I know I saw
 the response but there's a couple of things that I and so if if I just need
 someone to direct me to them if I missed them as far as I saw the email that staff
 sent but but I think there's a couple things that jump out at me and first
 though would this affect the existing funds so existing funds would we does
 ordinance say now those can be spent in the zones or that they'd have to stay
 collected under the current ordinance must be used in accordance with the
 current ordinance yeah and then just quick to the point I'm absolutely in
 favor of phasing I just think you can't say in the middle ignore the supply chain
 issues the middle of a pandemic I mean you have stuff that you're ordering now
 that you can't get your you got brick that comes in that customers are no
 longer get not choose brick right it's like hey here's what we have do you want
 it yes and and they're paying a premium so to ignore the facts on the ground
 just is not good I think you put in a lot of work in detail into the kind of
 the scenario and I believe that to be true but I think we we we err to not put
 our that same analysis on the effect right just to kind of say oh we don't
 think it'll be that bad and not do that analysis to to Councilmember Davis's
 point I I think is is not good and then so Builders Association so professional
 services they ask about 42% if that's in the email then just point me to it and
 then irrigation estimates and building on the on the land so point me to that as
 well replacement homes I mean I think that's a valid point that language has
 already been okay great and then so some of my own thoughts are I just like the
 tie the fees to some sort of relief getting through the process right and
 then and that's not a I want to make sure everyone understands it's not a
 staff thing right and I'll use the example of Kings way that's a that's a
 P&Z and council problem but the fact that a matter is you had a developer
 come here and spend over a year and lots of money and leave with nothing you know
 and so when you're saying we're gonna increase your fees we have to tie that
 to an ability to get out of the process and and recoup that money we can't say
 and I know that's difficult for staff right you have no control over that
 right and so that's but that's the deal point we have to give staff some sort of
 freedom to move projects forward faster so that they're not spending thousands
 and thousands and thousands of dollars to get to know we need to get to know
 quickly you know if that's what we're gonna do and move on and so that's my
 concern about not being able to balance that I'll say I also would like to see a
 strategy or understand the strategy better so I'll circle back with you but
 is the strategy to purchase more land or have more land conveyed to us or have
 more parks built by the developers and just roll over to us it's like what what
 do we want to prioritize because if we want to prioritize the latter per se we
 don't need the money to buy the land right so so let's whatever that
 percentage is understand that so if we're and I think the thing that I've
 not heard in this conversation is we have a bond package that's out there for
 the five years that gives us money to buy space right so does that give us
 time to ramp up right so to say hey we're gonna leverage these bond dollars
 because we have to over the next five years and then this in time builds up
 to start year six where we're spending money that sort of thing so just how
 those work together in addition to David mentioned and staff has mentioned the
 other fees because I think that factors into my analysis and then let's see yeah
 no I think that's it and then and then I just we can say affordable I just don't
 like that word right I just don't think it's a real thing right Jeff Bezos can
 afford a billion dollar home that's affordable right so it's like I'd really
 like to focus on either first-time homebuyers or whatever we want to call
 it and and and you know I've said it before I mean that number starts at
 three hundred thousand dollars so there's got to be a different strategy
 obviously we have the consultant working on those things so I think that's a
 bigger issue in that to task this group we're trying to figure out because the
 consultants are already working through that for us so to then task this group
 with doing that seems like we'd be double-dipping and conflicting info so I
 just would rather adopt what the consultants working on and and pull that
 over as is versus recreate the wheel on some kind of other individual thing with
 some other term that no one can define so it's six that'll yes mr. city manager
 yes I just want to get clarification so it is the pleasure of council to come
 back for the work session or can we provide the information related to the
 housing affordability in an isr and then come back for this as a vote I don't know
 if you want another work session on this based strictly on that or just move
 forward with sending out the information that we come up with regarding the
 housing affordability and cost and then bring this item back for vote yeah so
 just specifically on the affordability if we could please 601 so councilman
 armature yeah so what I would like to see and I'm certainly open to a work
 session just on affordability but I would want more information and and I
 would love as I mentioned before you know I would love to know what the
 consultant and I don't mean more information from y'all in terms of the
 cost and all that you guys did an incredible job just I would be curious to
 know what the the consultant has to say about affordable housing options in for
 it for what are other cities doing because we don't have to reinvent the
 wheel you know I want to know how do we balance this these are two adjacent
 goals parks land and then parts lands that's accessible for everybody and
 affordable housing and they don't have to be in competition with each other so
 and I would also love to get Denton Housing Authority in on that
 conversation you know just as developers were in on the conversation to have them
 just their their input you know to see what ideas they have so anyway I that is
 to say a work session sure but before that I would need some some more more
 options I guess I could come at the work session though but Councilman back
 thank you I'll be brief I the I think we should decouple these two issues and so
 an affordable ISR followed by work session sure decouple from this
 discussion of parks but my direction is for the stuff forward as is and keep
 these things separate councilor Davis I'd like to see the
 affordable information in ISR first I think we're talking about an almost
 moot point I just don't think the fee applies to enough projects that we like
 we think it does anyone else seeing none I'm the same I don't think they go
 together obviously so that's that's not clear consensus but that's that's who
 chimed up so it is six you can maybe follow back up it's six oh three we'll
 conclude the work session thank you very much we'll be back six thirty good
 evening and welcome to this meeting of the Denton City Council it is still
 Tuesday March the 1st and it is 630 and we do have a quorum so I'll call this
 meeting to order the first thing on our agenda this evening is the pledge to the
 United States and Texas flag so please stand with me if you're able
 honor the Texas flag I pledge allegiance to the Texas one state under God one
 indivisible okay and then I will come down we have recognition by the Salvation
 Army and Red Kettle challenge but then also have a proclamation I'll read for
 the National Procurement Month so we'll come down for those
 who wants to come down for hey how are you who and if there's anyone who wants
 to join you by all means okay got it all right so I will hey how are you good to
 see you so I'll let you in to do yourself and hey guys I'm captain
 Whitney Houston with the Salvation Army Mary Freeman wanted to be here but
 she had a hip replacement surgery and she couldn't make it but thank you guys
 for letting me come and say thank you to your team I'm sorry I can't breathe with
 this thing on we just wanted to say thank you because we just recently got
 through Christmas praise the Lord and we did a huge kettle campaign you might have
 recognized us ringing at bells and you know making that fun lovable sound
 everyone loves to hear during Christmas so we asked the mayor and his team if
 they would help us ring the bell and actually encourage other mayors to do it
 in Denton County and that's exactly what they did and we just wanted to say a
 huge thank you because they stood at a kettle they said at the Walmart on
 University and rang for a day and they helped us raise let's see seven hundred
 and forty one dollars in one day now let me tell you the normal kettle amount for
 a bell ringer paid bell ringer is like maybe $300 so the fact that they could
 get seven hundred and forty one is pretty great it's really awesome so it
 shows like the community showed up and just gave to you guys so thank you for
 your Christmas spirit thank you for helping I wanted to share the mayor has
 been at our kettle kickoff and announced our our challenge because we always have
 a goal that we set each Christmas of trying to raise money because the money
 that we raised during Christmas is what we budget around so last year we came up
 short because COVID hit us real hard and and it hit everybody hard it wasn't just
 us it was a lot of us and you can see it so we were really sad that we didn't
 meet our goal but this year we met our goal and then some I mean we were really
 blessed and it really showed up through the community and the community's help
 we couldn't do it without the community and you guys so thank you so much but
 through this challenge this was the first year so we're hoping to keep it
 going so thank you for your help we're hoping that it will inspire other mayors
 in Denton County so this year we had the mayor of Hickory Creek the mayor
 crossroads a little elm and Frisco volunteer and work into it some of them
 did it virtually some of them were in person but it was all due to the work of
 the Denton mayor's team they helped inspire them and ask them to join in so
 that we could work around together and through their help we raised sorry I have
 notes and I probably should stick to them we raised seven thousand one hundred
 and thirty seven dollars and that's amazing and that's not just in person
 that's online too and it was through the help of this great team so thank you
 guys so much we really appreciate it because we're hoping to keep this going
 to help us in the future as well and just to inspire the community to give we
 really love the help because this goes back to the community it doesn't go
 outside of Denton it stays in Denton County and we really appreciate
 everything that's been given to us so that we can help everyone in our
 neighborhood you know specifically I have a story here her name's Vanessa she
 lost her job and health care insurance when agency she worked for lost its
 funding have we heard that before in this past year or so it's right it's
 crazy this created a huge crisis for her big and she had a teenage daughter her
 name was Tia and she had medical serious medical issues that required
 hospitalization Vanessa drained her 401k to pay medical bills thankfully her
 daughter's health improved but Vanessa ended up worse than broke she was on the
 verge of becoming homeless and that she says this I never asked for help from
 anyone never been on government system or programs of any type believe it or
 not we actually saw a lot of that this last year because a lot of people were
 affected by cobit so this was their first time asking for help and it's
 really kind of sad to see if they're they're feeling ashamed or nervous
 asking for help because in our eyes we see it as a victory you don't want to
 hit rock bottom you're trying to reach out for help and we want to give it to
 you so Vanessa's life was transformed the Salvation Army helped pay Vanessa's
 rent utilities for six months gave her job referrals and provided training in
 financial literacy budgeting and nutrition she also received regular
 groceries from the food pantry and this supported help for Vanessa and Tia
 remains in their home until Vanessa could get a job and get back on her feet
 Vanessa says I was recently hired full-time that's awesome and that's a
 plus and I owe it all to the help I received from the Salvation Army I love
 that but it also makes me have a big head so I'm like it's not just us
 because we couldn't do it without the help of the community we survive on the
 help of the community so it's wonderful to hear those stories and through that
 we have provided a hundred and eighty two thousand meals through our food
 pantry program over 3,200 nights of safe shelter each year and we have hope to
 help people like Vanessa and so many more so I just want to say thank you so
 much for your team for helping us stick to our being able to help and give hope
 to others you are very much a part of that and we hope to see you guys ringing
 bells next year actually this year oh my gosh 2022 that's crazy I'm so I have a
 certificate I just wanted to say I'm appreciate oh that's just so that glass
 was a brick of saying thank you for being a champion leader and ringing
 bells for us can I get a picture
 first I want to thank the city manager for all her helps
 do you want to tell people how they can get plugged in and learn more about how
 to help if they want to volunteer where do they go for that and it's important
 that you touch on I mean you rehoused last number I heard is 32 ish I could be
 off yeah well we've gotten up a little higher than that is around 50 we've
 housed around 50 since last summer so it's been a really we have a really
 great team and we've been blessed with federal federal grants to help us and I
 see chiefs back there he's part of the team and so we've been blessed so we've
 been trying to work hard to rapidly rehouse others and we've gotten rapid
 rehousing funds so that we can do that and we've been able to house almost 50
 people so it's been it's been awesome yeah I love raising the profile of that
 number of the city and all the other partner agencies getting people yeah we
 work closely with United Way and other nonprofits we can't do it on our own so
 we definitely work really closely with other nonprofit agencies just so you guys
 know yeah okay
 no no you're all good thank you and now if you want to everyone that that's here
 for the proclamation for procurement come on down excellent
 okay okay well I'm gonna let you introduce yourself yeah hello I'm
 Christine Taylor I'm the director of procurement compliance and this is our
 amazing procurement compliance team we've actually added in legal and
 compliance because they help keep us on track but we just want to recognize all
 the great work this group does they brought you guys over 300 contracts last
 fiscal year and every contract takes about either 30 to 100 days depending on
 the negotiation so they do a lot of great work we have a really great team
 and on top of that they do about 3,500 purchase orders a year so they do a
 great job of keeping our city safe and keeping us all in compliance yeah you
 want to say what you are the queen I'm the queen no just kidding
 Andre the Cunningham the assistant buyer I'm the one who's going to process all
 those orders so when those contracts come through that's my job I've got to
 process those and next we have Lori Lori fuel on the purchasing manager Cheyenne
 de V the procurement administration supervisor I handle all of the council
 stuff Mary McFall paralegal and I spend most of my time reviewing contracts
 Rhonda Barnes administrative assistant Crystal Westbrook I'm a senior buyer
 Jenny Bremant buyer Corey power power senior buyer Gabby Leeper buyer I am
 Marcella line I'm with the city attorney's office Elizabeth Corbello I'm
 an assistant buyer I team up with the retail and I'm Chris Moore compliance
 officer and I do what I can you look outstanding that's what you do I mean
 you do that well so very good well thank you all very much for being here so
 important and there's so many hoops and teas and to cross eyes a dot so thank
 you all very much for being helping us be great stewards of our taxpayer money
 and making sure we get value so thank you very much so it so it reads to all
 whom these present shall come greetings whereas the organizational role of the
 procurement was the truly recognized and wasn't truly recognized until 18 until
 the 1800s in early 2000 20th century during World War one and the Great
 Depression the objective of the procurement was to obtain enough raw
 materials service services and supplies to supply to simply keep the economy
 running and whereas today's procurement professionals and are instrumental to
 the services organizations they sorry let me reread that the whereas has got
 me where whereas today's procurement professionals are instrumental in the
 success of organizations they are responsible for the an umbrella of
 initiatives from the development and solicitation to the evaluation
 sorry got to make the words bigger evaluation of a working and with
 qualified suppliers and everything in in between and whereas the procurement
 plays a role in a vital role and not just in the public sector but within
 organizations across virtually all industries the city of Denton's
 procurement department ensures an open and competitive procurement process
 compliance and applicable laws upholding public the public sorry trust by an
 ethical procurement standards and wisely managing public funds to achieve the
 best value for the city of Denton and whereas the procurement role based off
 its long history as a strategic part of the organizational structure it's still
 relatively new in the years to come it can be expected that the procurement
 function will only continue to be a strategic function working to align
 procurement processes with the city's long-term vision and goals whereas the
 month of March is known as National Procurement Month and is dedicated to
 honoring the procure purchasing professionals in the public and private
 sectors it is it is time to celebrate with pride the role of public
 procurement professionals now therefore I Gerard Hudson mayor of the city of
 Denton Texas do hereby declare and proclaim the month of March 2022 as
 National Procurement Month in the city of Denton and encourage our community
 to take this opportunity to recognize and appreciate all the work that is
 accomplished by procurement if we can give him a hand please
 thank you very much appreciate y'all thank y'all have a great evening
 appreciate it okay great thank you for that
 okay all right thank you for that I want to so we have one caller on the line as
 a caller available she is mayor I can patch her through right now okay thank
 you sure hold please okay thank you hello are you there
 hello hello yes if you could give your name yes if you give your name and
 address you'll have four minutes okay Eva Greco 802 West Oak Street here in
 Denton I have a lot to say but I have to condense it into the time so here it
 goes I ran a two-bedroom apartment with my 27 year old son we have a gas stove
 and a gas hot water heater unfortunately I do not use my stove as much as I used
 used to however my son and I shower daily hello yes I'm sorry
 however my son and I shower daily flush the toilet regularly watch TV use lights
 etc throughout the day and yet thanks to current mayor and council unanimously
 approving on a cassette agenda a rate increase for at most energy my gas bill
 was higher than my DME bill for the first time I know this mayor and council
 view various dent in social media groups and selectively respond but none of you
 have responded to the voting residents stating how their gas bills have
 tripled you need to take accountability for all your actions people reality is
 we have horrible roads causing repair bills deceptive DME practices increase
 at most rates outrageous rent increases developments being built with an average
 bentonite cannot afford the rent I have two cheeks on my face and this mayor and
 council have indirectly slapped both over and over again on this topic I
 somewhat sarcastically say I thank you mayor and council and to those running
 in the upcoming election I say good luck with that thank you thank you very much
 have thank you yo you're welcome okay and speaking here in person mr.
 Dillingberg if you can come down to the podium and just best you can where I'm
 gonna hold you to the four minutes just for full disclosure and just please try
 to keep your comments to the body as a whole not to individuals yeah and I'll
 cut you off just full disclosure all right so if we can get ready all right my
 name is Steven Dillenburg I reside at 1004 Abbots Lane real quick firstly
 Deb Armentor 2003 Misty Woodland didn't Paul Meltzer 1914 West Oak Street didn't
 Brian Beck 124 Mill Pond Road didn't did I witness the three of you guys sitting
 around a table without masks on my first time here November 16th 2021 did I
 witness the three of you sitting out there prior to a City Council meeting
 November 16th 2021 I did the answer to that question is yes and after that you
 voted to have a mask mandate in place for the regular citizens of Denton I
 asked you to consider your individual actions in your policy decisions the
 rule of this house sir in contrast it in contradiction to what you said
 December 14th 2021 is our Constitution do you believe in God sir it's a
 question asking for an answer do you believe in God mr. Beck go ahead and
 conclude your comments no religious test shall ever be required provided he
 acknowledged the existence of a supreme being do you believe in God do you
 believe that you guys answer to the same God that the rest of us do okay it's
 important that y'all take that into consideration
 y'all's decisions affect us and I'm asking that mayor Hudspeth just so you
 know it's great to see your face here tonight sir it is a blessing and I would
 encourage you guys to listen to what he's saying through those actions not
 necessarily what he can say through words because of contradicting oaths but
 y'all should listen to that it's important for all of us it really is
 councilmember Davis what's your address sir go ahead and finish your comments my
 comment is to councilmember Davis in your experience as a district attorney
 how many times have you seen jury nullification even mentioned in court in
 front of a judge specific question our Constitution demands juries decide the
 outcomes of cases how many times have you seen a judge direct the court
 accordingly do you believe that our Constitution is sacred and that this is
 what outlines decency for our community because you're being here means you
 don't have an exemption for giving your address we need the accountability not
 asking anything from you as is not expected from all of y'all but we need
 y'all's help in resolving some of these issues that have crept in while some of
 us weren't paying attention all right I believe you to be a good man sir I do
 and we need some help from each and every one of y'all I've seen great
 things councilmember bird your comments on affordability for renters in our town
 we need it for students for low-income people who may have been misled who may
 have been pushed down a road and made some bad decisions that put them into a
 non-great position but they can come back and us accounting for that and
 helping them I appreciate what you're doing here and those those opinions are
 are awesome and we need more of them we just want y'all to be thinking about us
 and thinking about more than what citizens united allows to be happening
 because that's not going to be here forever it doesn't make sense it's
 unconstitutional and we just ask y'all to make some decisions to care for the
 people as opposed to just act just saying it and not actually acting like
 that's your time I thank y'all for your time thank you have a great evening okay
 I'm gonna take the chairs liberty and move up item per individual consideration
 item D so I'll call that next and that's ID two two five zero zero consider
 adoption of ordinance of the city of Benton related to the kovat 19
 declaration of disaster order and order of council
 mayor and council Ryan Adams chief staff we provided the council with a draft
 ordinance in the interim during the work session I have that available to pull up
 but that does reflect council direction to rescind both the declaration of
 disaster and the order of council effective immediately great any
 questions for staff seeing none mayor pro tem yes thank you mayor this council
 has consistently taken guidance from the CDC enacted in what it's always the best
 interest of protecting public health in relation to a locally declared disaster
 and those standards have been reevaluated thank goodness were at this
 moment on the steep downslide side of the latest wave and we no longer fall
 under the CDC guidance requiring masking or universally so I move that we rescind
 the declaration of disaster and the 19th order of council cuz roger and I'm
 happy to to second that motion and really proud that we've gotten to this
 point as a city and that we've been following the science in the CDC and not
 politics in deciding on public safety we have motion by mayor mayor pro tem we
 have a second by council armature any any other discussion just for
 clarification does that include the adoption of the ordinance that was
 promulgated to the council earlier today there was an ordinance passed to the
 council earlier today from the city secretary I'm wondering if this motion
 in effect is approving that ordinance that was provided to the city council
 yes okay thank you great thank you any other discussion not yet not the vote
 yet were you concerned bird I just want to just tell the city of didn't that we
 I'm just so this is personal and I'm very proud of us for getting through
 this I'm proud of us for allowing again the gray area for us to have some
 flexibility I'm proud of us for having the arguments and the folks that have
 come through here and have been brave to voice their opinion for it and not for
 it that's what we need to do as a city we need to just act like we're related
 to each other in battle it out but I am so proud of my peers on the desk that
 just allowed us to pull this off because it's it's the right thing to do I've
 always heard that when you need to do the right thing for the right reasons at
 the right time and so that's just that's what I want to say to the city I would
 that's what I want to say to my peers thank you
 come from back thank you I'll just add that that we've been following science I
 appreciate that we're continuing to follow science and that as part of that
 we still are in the midst of a pandemic and though we are lower and we're
 following the guidance of the CDC to rescind our our motion I still think
 everyone should be mindful of the hygiene vaccination masking benefits to
 yourself and towards others so I encourage you to continue to follow
 best medical practices Councilman Armitage I just want to second what
 Councilmember Beck mentioned to let folks know you're probably gonna see me
 for the time being continue to wear a mask my dad is in treatment for cancer
 and and so because of that and I want to spend time with him and have him spend
 time with his grandchildren that's why I will still be wearing a mask in crowded
 situation the gentleman who spoke earlier by the way it sounds like he
 probably saw us eating in our own office so just everybody be respectful of
 people who choose to continue masking people have their reasons and just I'm
 just really proud again of us as a community and of staff and this council
 just to speak again yeah just just add a little bit because you'll you know see
 different behaviors from different people you'll see me mask in indoor
 settings where people are close I'm not worried about getting ill I'm not
 worried about being you know hospitalized or death that I'm boosted
 if anybody's still wondering whether they should get vaccinated I'd be one
 to be encouraging you to do it but I'm not interested in long COVID either now
 you know our right or obligation to act had in my mind a lot to do with hospital
 beds being occupied and disappearing you know a lot of the impact of us on each
 other in a very grave way so a lot of that has subsided but there's still
 plenty of good reasons to you know for instance not want to get long-term brain
 fog so so yeah I support what you've heard in terms of not not just being in
 a in an illusion that everything's over but that grave concern over you know
 hospital beds and deaths and so on is we're in a much different place thank
 you okay anyone else then I will just before we vote I'll just say I'll have a
 lot to say later today's not the day for that I do want to though tip the cap to
 our local health authority I think they're doing a great job I think it's
 noteworthy that when they set up the speedway when this all started and and
 going through that process it was the federal government that came down to see
 what they were doing to learn from their processes so to dr. Matt Richardson to
 Andy Eads and all the other commission county commissioners they've done a
 tremendous job hosting regular conference calls from the speedway mass
 vaccination and so we you know the focus on local advice and local information is
 is really key and they've done a tremendous job with that so happy to
 support this as a result of a lot of a lot of work by staff and updates etc from
 that body so with that what let's uh we'll vote on the screen
 past the 7-0 I'm gonna take chairs discretion again and call item a from
 individual items so that's ID two two four nine eight consider an adoption of
 the ordinance of the city of Denton appointing a city manager authorizing the
 mayor to execute an employment agreement setting the compensation and terms of
 the city manager providing for the expenditure of funds and and providing
 an effective date mayor council to be Thompson interim assistant city manager
 and director of human resources there is not a presentation but I'm here to take
 any questions and just want to thank you for the process last week in all of your
 lots of reading and material and getting us to this candidate and hopefully an
 appointment so I'm here for any questions that you may have this evening
 thank you questions for staff great member to Meltzer yeah I'd like to just
 on the way to moving enthusiastic approval of this I just share that we
 did a very thorough process thanks to staff saw a lot of very qualified
 executives we chose Sarah Hensley not because she was in place released them
 sort of in my mind not because she was here but because she was the most
 impressive executive that we interviewed I'm very happy to move approval of the
 appointment of her as Denton's first female city manager and also probably
 gonna be our best city manager yet councilmember why thank you yeah I am so
 happy that we did our due diligence because there is of course the only city
 manager I've ever worked with and although I knew her to do excellent work
 it was also incredibly reassuring to do the full search see that there are lots
 of other also highly qualified candidates out there but that Sarah is
 still the the best candidate for the job so I second
 customer armature yep I agree with what's been said so far and I've told a
 city manager Hensley that myself the people on the some people on the outside
 they might see this as an inside hire but as you're hearing that nobody knew
 what the outcome was going to be but we surveyed the field with very open mind
 and there are some really great candidates out there and it just so
 happened that the best one we already had and her answers to all of our
 questions were outstanding and really a pleasure to to work with you as a city
 manager and as I step off council I just feel one of the things that makes me
 feel good about stepping off feeling like the city's and in real good hands
 with a good council and good city manager and great staff okay any any
 other comments so we have a motion by Mayor Pro Tem second by Councilmember
 McGuire and I'll just have one brief comment to say that I am excited about
 this opportunity to again continue to support our staff solidify our staff and
 put take the interim off and and make history all those fun things you know I
 I'm a fan of making history myself so that's good great minds think alike but
 looking forward to the direction city is going to go kind of under under your
 leadership and and thank you for stepping up to what is a very tough job
 with seven unique and distinct bosses it can be a challenge so thank you very
 much for what you do and let's vote on the screen
 and that passes 7-0 so now back to our regularly scheduled program so we're on
 the consent agenda I'll take a motion everything except for e e was pulled
 counselor Davis move approval of the consent agenda accepting item e
 counselor back I second okay a motion by councilmember Davis second by
 counselor back for the consent agenda but for item e once the screen set we'll
 vote on the screen got it
 Davis was the motioner and back was the second there we go and that passes 7-0
 takes us to item e let the record reflect that councilmember McGuire
 councilmember Davis have recused themselves and I'll call that item ID 2
 1 2 7 9 8 consider adoption of ordinance of the city of Denton authorizing the
 city manager to execute an interlocal agreement between Denton independent
 school district and the city of Denton for participation in the La Grone Academy
 practicum of law public safety corrections and security program for
 2021 2022 and 2022 2023 and 2023 2024 school terms and providing an effective
 date counselor back I move approval if it will stay on the screen
 counselor back I mean counseling bird I second motion by counseling back second
 by counseling bird any discussion seeing none let's vote on the screen
 and that passes four to one and takes us to the public hearing section and then
 rejoin great so on this I'm just going to the the one these three have been
 postponed to March 22nd so I'm gonna call it and then say bye so it's item a
 ID 2 1 2 6 5 6 and it's hold public hearings and consider adoption of the
 ordinance of the city of Denton regarding ordinance of City of Denton
 Texas adopting an update of this update to the City of Denton comprehensive plan
 and by you know unanimous consent I'm going to I'm gonna open the hearing and
 postpone to March 22nd of this year and if there's any objections to that seeing
 none takes us to item B which is ID 2 2 0 9 8 hold a public hearing and
 recommend city adoption of ordinance of the city of Denton Texas for the Denton
 2022 mobility plan public hearing so I'm gonna open the public hearing and by
 unanimous consent move that postpone it to March 22nd of this year any any
 objections seeing none takes us to items to see on the public hearings which is
 DCA 2 2 0 0 0 1 hold a public hearing and consider adoption of ordinance of
 the city of Denton Texas amending the Denton development code specifically to
 provide for pathways and trails in section 7.4.7 a and I'll open the public
 hearing for that as well and then by unanimous consent move postpone that to
 March 22nd of this year as well any objections seeing none that takes us to
 our items for individual consideration we've completed a and D I'll call item
 B which is ID 2 1 2 8 0 9 consider adoption of ordinance of the city of
 Denton Texas amending the fiscal year 2021 2022 budget and annual program
 services of the city of Denton to allow for adjustments to the capital
 improvement program of four million four hundred sixty four thousand nine
 hundred thousand nine hundred for expenses related to purchasing land for
 the purpose of constructing a new solid waste transfer station good evening mayor
 council Cassie Ogden director of finance I have a brief presentation for you I'm
 not sure what it's not showing on the screen
 so just briefly we are requesting to amend the capital improvement program
 budget by 4.4 million for purchase to purchase land for the construction of
 the new solid waste transfer station council date did give direction for
 this enclosed session on February 15th and happy to answer any questions that
 you may have okay thank you questions for staff Mayor Pro Tem yes thank you I
 just want to make sure I understand clearly an answer that was already
 provided before am I right in saying that this incremental capital would be
 carried by by solid waste revenue and is already coverable within that you know
 that that budget so it was not included in the FY 22 budget that's why we are
 requesting a budget amendment but for forecasting purposes we have included it
 and we've updated the forecast and it the annual debt payment of approximately
 three hundred and forty six thousand over a 20 year period will be able to
 be covered by the current solid waste revenues so no associated increase can
 be it can be handled by this fund and it doesn't take away from some of the
 program no thank you okay any other questions for staff or I'll take a
 motion Councilman McGuire I move approval of the budget amendment councilor Davis second have a
 motion by council member gwire second by council member Davis any other
 discussion seeing none we'll vote on the screen
 that passes seven zero takes us to our last item before concluding items ID two
 two one two nine consider adoption the ordinance of the city of Denton to
 declare the intent to reimburse capital program expenditure of solid waste four
 million four hundred sixty four thousand nine hundred dollars with tax preferred
 obligations with an aggregate a maximum principal amount to not to exceed four
 million four hundred sixty four thousand nine hundred and providing an effective
 date so just briefly we are proposing to sell certificates or sell certificates
 of obligations for the purchase of this land for solid waste the payments as I
 said previously will be paid from the solid waste fund but for purposes of
 moving forward with the the purchase immediately we're asking for a
 reimbursement ordinance to be able to pay ourselves back with those bond
 proceeds when we receive them in July and this is allowed by the city's debt
 policy we're doing this we usually do this in October but because we didn't
 include this in the budget this is why we're requesting it now so again the
 four point four million dollars for a 20 year term and then you will see this
 come back a couple of times before the actual bond sale date so we will bring
 the notice of intent to you in April and then the parameters ordinance in June
 before we actually receive the funds in July for this type of account do you get
 a free toaster or no blender right yeah ninja councilmember mayor Pro Tem I move
 approval councilor Davis second okay we have a motion by mayor Pro Tem second by
 councilmember Davis any discussion okay let's vote on the screen
 and that passes 7-0 that takes us to concluding items any concluding items
 council armature yeah I just want to give a shout out tonight to all of the
 trans kids and trans supportive families in Denton very much on my mind and just
 want you to know I'm thinking of you and I fully support your right to gender
 affirming care and there's nothing that these recent actions by certain
 political figures in the state of Texas for political gain have made dad
 interfere with your right to gender affirming care so I just wanted to
 uplift all trans supportive families and kids in our community and I know that
 this these recent statements that have come from the state have been really
 hurtful even if they are groundless and I hope they go away I'm glad that they're
 being challenged that's all that's why thank you I just want to send my
 condolences out to the friends and family of Jim Owen who passed this week
 Jim was a Dentonite and was active in the community he was a bus driver with
 DCTA he was a leader in the Union and he will be deeply deeply missed by our
 community Councilman Bergman to the trans kids and the trans families I love
 you I will always support you but I also want to say a shout out to my husband I
 know he's listening tonight I love you honey so much we are celebrating a 33rd
 year anniversary on March the 4th so I'm very excited to publicly say that and I
 will see you soon okay and so we're not back to the 20 seconds that right yeah
 so I'll say happy st. Patrick's Day in advance and wear green up until then and
 then it's women's history month so there's that and then I want to thank DME
 for all the work they do I was at the APPA I think that's right it's right
 acronym and so what a great reputation we have and just a great opportunity to
 learn more and and represent the city of Denton on the public public elected
 officials type board there so that was that was really good to kind of be on
 that committee and talk to other cities and understand what's coming our way so
 it's great great opportunity so with that it is 719 and we will conclude
 tonight's meeting thank you very much

        
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