Apr 05, 2022 City Council on 2022-04-05 2:00 PM

welcome to this meeting of the Denton City Council it is Tuesday April 5th at 2 p.m. and we do have a quorum technically it's 201 we do have a quorum so I'll call the meeting to order the see first step is do we have any citizens comments see none okay then that takes us to questions and if someone does we'll come back to it questions from on the consent agenda from Council Councilor Davis thank you mayor I need to pull item F for recusal and then on item G I just wondered if somebody could give just the public's benefit at just a real quick synopsis of the conversations that were had between the event host the police department and then the gazebo apartments that are right there okay all right there they're on the line or okay come across okay great I forgot they got a walk across yeah no problem um well while we're waiting I'm also going to be recusing on F so thank you Sasseness assistant director of Parks and Recreation there is a question on item G the ashes 420 event the the event organizers have notified the apartment complex management group the management group is not happy about it but they have been notified the group has worked with the special events team to go through the rest of the permit process PD is is aware and they've met all the requirements from PD sorry I'm a lot of breath from run from the other side thanks that's what I need to know okay okay thank you very much anyone else any other questions customer answer yes so I don't have a question but I wanted to pull item D for individual consideration and a brief presentation doesn't have to be a PowerPoint just a little presentation and discussion that's the one on issuing criminal trespass warnings on public property it's it's a matter of a great great public interest so I think it's important that we discuss it and vote on it separately in the public okay is everything you need for that or okay okay great okay any other anyone else any other questions seeing none that'll conclude questions in the so for the record that's items F and D that will be pulled F or separate vote only two recusals and then D would be presentation and then a separate vote okay and okay let's get that so then go into our work session first items item a I'll call that it's a is ID two one two seven eight six receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding the FY 2020 20 from 2020 2021 annual comp comprehensive financial report and annual audit afternoon counsel my name is Perla Tibera I am the city controller and before I introduce Weaver our partner I wanted to kind of give an overall view although the audit is six months it does take the accounting department the entire full year to go over it so absolute kudos to the accounting department as they're diligently working throughout the year so I'm going to introduce John DeBoro he is audit partner for Weaver thank you thank you Perla and good afternoon mr. mayor and members of the council as pro mentioned my name is John DeBoro I'm the audit partner with Weaver and thank you for inviting me to meet with you this afternoon to go through the results of the fiscal year 2021 audit I have a presentation here that I'd like to go through and before I do that I'd like to thank Perla and Cassie and the rest of the finance department for all their hard work and making this a very successful audit and I have have a number of things to go over with you today I want to start with a little introduction to both the the audit team and the audit process then go through the audit results and some required communications and if it needs oops I apologize about that better thanks sorry about that and at any time if anyone has any questions please feel free to ask as I mentioned I served as the engagement partner again this year this our second year auditing in the city and joining me was Bryant Sanchez one of our audit managers as well as other staff and managers that helped along the way and we began this process last summer I like this slide because it lets you know that we're not just your audit firm for a day or week we're with you throughout the year to help out and we started our planning process last summer doing our risk assessment and performing interim fieldwork last August which I'll elaborate on a little bit of pawn in just a moment we came back in January to perform our final fieldwork and issued our audit opinion last week on the financial statements and anytime between now and next year's audit I always make myself and my staff available to your staff because sometimes you have questions while transactions are occurring where you need that help and we always tell our clients to call us or email us because we want to give you the help when you need it we performed our audit in accordance with generally accepted auditing standards as well as generally accepted government auditing standards we performed single audits both a federal and a state single audit again this year the federal audit was performed in accordance with what's known as the uniform guidance and the state single audit in accordance with the uniform grant management standards of the state of Texas we also performed tests of the city's compliance with various provisions of laws grant agreements such as the Public Funds Investment Act and we use what's known as a risk-based approach to our audit obviously we can't look at every single transaction of the city for the entire year so we use a risk-based approach where we try to identify areas that could be of higher risk of material misstatement of the financial statements and tailor our resources and our staffing more heavily in those areas and I've listed some of those here for you things such as revenue recognition and related receivable balances capital projects purchasing and compliance with bid procedures looking for unrecorded liabilities evaluating significant estimates that are embodied within the financial statements and then also obviously testing of federal and state revenues and expenditures as well as compliance with the related grant agreements grant requirements for those agreements and I mentioned that we came out last summer and when we did so obviously the books aren't closed because it wasn't the end of the fiscal year yet so we concentrate at that point in time on looking at internal controls and we perform what are known as walk-throughs of the significant accounting transaction cycles where we get an understanding of the processes within those cycles we identify internal controls and if we had seen any control deficiencies we would have brought those to management's attention at the time but thankfully we did not find any control deficiencies when doing our observation of controls we also tested internal controls over payroll and cash disbursements where we look at samples of transactions and again testing the controls that we've identified during our walk-throughs we perform tests of journal entries where we identify journal entries that are in areas that may be of higher risk and test to make sure that they're properly approved that they're for business purposes and and the like this particular slide also lists some of the other audit procedures that we performed during our audit we conduct fraud and non-compliance inquiries with people of various levels throughout the organization during our planning and during the fieldwork portion of our audit I mentioned that we performed testing of the city's compliance with both federal and state single audit and for the federal single audit this year we had to test four major programs because of the dollar amount that was expended those four programs were the CDBG or the community development block grant the coronavirus relief fund program which was also tested in the previous year the emergency solutions grant and the home investment partnership program grant all four of those were tested as major programs and for the state single audit it was once again the regional toll revenue projects and I'm happy to report that there were no findings on either the federal or the state single audit so it was great news some of the other areas we tested involved information technology we had some of our IT auditors review both the processes and controls in the IT environment we did recalculations of utility bill to make sure that the rates were proper in accordance with authorized rates we looked at the adequacy of footnote disclosures in the annual comprehensive financial report tested long-term debt including new issuances this year to make sure that they were recorded properly we looked at various areas like tax revenues property taxes sales taxes and collections we assessed allowances for adult full accounts for various receivable balances we tested capital assets both purchases of capital assets as well as construction and progress projects and we tested investments I mentioned before we also looked at the compliance with public funds investment act and found that the city was in compliance with the requirements there we looked at employee compensation from a reasonable standpoint with the various payroll tests we tested enterprise funds both operating revenues and expenses and looked at the city's landfill closure and post closure estimate for reasonableness and as I mentioned or actually I haven't mentioned yet with the audit results we've issued three different reports the first one is our independent auditors report on the city's financial statements and in this report we've issued what's known as an unmodified opinion which means that we feel that the city's financial statements for the year ended September 30th 2021 a fairly stated in all material respects in accordance with gap there were also a report on internal control of a financial reporting compliance and in that report we noted that there were no material weaknesses in internal control no significant deficiencies and no non-compliance material to the financial statement so a very clean opinion and finally we issued the report on the state and federal awards the expenditures of state and federal awards in that report we also issued an unmodified opinion which means that we feel that the city handled the the grants both federal and state grants in accordance with the grant requirements the city was considered a low-risk oddity because you had not had any findings in the past two years and had both state and federal single audits conducted in each of those years there were no material weaknesses in internal control over compliance no significant deficiencies in internal control over compliance with either the federal or the state major programs so again a very clean audit some required communications that we have to have with you as those charged with governance includes our responsibilities under generally accepted auditing standards which really to paraphrase is we have to express an opinion based on our audit procedures and as I mentioned we've expressed an unmodified opinion on the financial statements we also have responsibilities under generally accepted government auditing standards in addition to those I just described we also have to issue a written report on our consideration of the city's fine internal control of a financial reporting and on compliance and that's the report that I mentioned had no no findings and then finally we have responsibilities under the uniform guidance and uniform grant management standards for the federal and state grant and that is to express an opinion based on our audit procedures to show whether or not the city was in compliance with the requirements of those grants and we've issued unmodified opinions on both of them some other areas that we required to communicate to you are whether there were any unusual transactions or adoption of new accounting principles there were no unusual transactions that noted during our testing of the city balances and activity there was one new accounting pronouncement that was implemented this year known as GASB 84 or fiduciary activities but this really didn't have a significant effect on on the city it just had a change in reporting for fiduciary activities such that what used to be agent fee funds for the city and now report as part of the general fund next year there will be a pronouncement known as GASB 87 or the lease standard that the city will have to implement that will have more significant impact on the financial statements as leases will be reported both as assets and liabilities for the first time and I know that the finance department is very well versed in this standard and will will help them with the implementation as needed there were no difficulties in conducting our audit no disagreements over the application of gap we received certain representations from management prior to the release of our audit opinion again we looked at various estimates that are embodied in the financial statements things such as the useful life of capital assets the allowance for uncollectible accounts receivable the city's pension and OPEB liabilities the landfill closure and post closure liability and we looked at the underlying assumptions that make up those estimates and felt that they were reasonable and finally in the area of audit adjustments were required to communicate to you whether there were any significant audit adjustments that had to be made in arriving at the numbers in the financial statements as well as any what are called uncorrected misstatements which are ones that were less significant not material but we passed on and I'm happy to report that there were none of either type no adjustments at all that were made and again I'd just like to summarize that obviously you can tell based on results it was a very successful audit there were no findings and unmodified opinions issued with that I'd be happy to answer any questions okay questions for staff may I pretend thank you mayor first congratulations to staff on another extremely clean audit I'm just curious regarding the Gatsby 84 what is it that might look funny to someone if they didn't know that there was the reclassification what agency might look different once said take this sorry perl it's very again controller it was just so the agency fund what we had was some assets in the forfeiture that we moved into general fund it's still there it just is not in the agency as a separate table you just have to look into the general fund as a forfeiture it's still on its own line item though for what kind of forfeiture seized assets that we keep from the police they were considered yeah understood that's a rolled up in a general fund any other questions Sina thank you very much appreciate it great presentation thank you thank you okay that takes us to item B which is ID two one two seven seven nine receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding the audit project zero one zero capital projects administration property administration follow-up review hello mayor and council Madison Russia didn't city auditor I'm here to present our findings from this follow-up review all right so just as a reminder follow-up reviews are intended to provide information on what changes have been made in response to an issued audit and this review was based on the recommendations and management responses originally compiled in phase two of our audit of capital projects administration which was focused on property acquisition and was originally issued in May of 2020 this follow-up review found significant improvements to procedures however some critical documentation was still missing so to begin I've just illustrated the real estate divisions property acquisition process on the slide here and highlighted the documentation produced within each phase of that process that we kind of checked for basically so as you can see the process begins with the initiation phase during which the division should receive a formal request from the department to acquire the needed property in addition it's considered best practice for a project introduction form to be sent sorry introduction letter to be sent to all city residents who may be impacted by the project so that they may be better prepared if the city approaches them to acquire rights to their property during the due diligence phase the real estate division has the needed land parcel appraised in order to determine the value of the property real estate also obtains a title commitment report to ensure that the property can be acquired without issue once due diligence is complete real estate enters the negotiation phase during which they may make an initial offer to the property owner which is typically based on the appraised value the property owner can then negotiate with the real estate division and present a counter offer during the initial audit we found that there was not a clear justification or approval process for real estate division staff to accept those counter offers which increase the risk of fraud or abuse and then finally real estate may send a final offer letter to the property owner if needed if they've accepted the counter offer and if the property acquisition cannot be settled between the city during this process they may move into imminent domain which was not really covered as part of this follow-up review so since the original audit real estate has implemented a standard operating procedure that formalizes the processes used during the negotiation phase of the property acquisition process specifically it defines the negotiation authority limits of the real real estate division staff and requires that staff document justification for why the city should pay a negotiated price for a property beyond its appraised value in addition the SOP defines management's authority levels to approve negotiated offers the original audit also found that the division did not always retain the documentation required for each phase of the property acquisition process in particular and so as part of this follow-up review as we reviewed a sample of 30 acquired parcels and found that some project request forms and project introduction letters were missing in addition we found that there were occasional instances where a title commitment final offer letter and counter offer justification memo for the acquisition could not be produced as detailed in the table on the slide so while there's really low risk associated with the missing project request forms and project introduction letters so these two appear documents such as the title commitment offer letters and counter offer justifications are critical in the process and should be retained according to real estate staff they believe these documents may be available in storage and are currently working to locate them so as of today actually we received or actually yesterday we received documentation on the two missing title commitments so that should be zero but we can't change what was posted on the agenda and so based on that information the recommendation still appears to be in progress so if we receive additional documentation from real estate this will be communicated to council in a future Friday report and the published report will be amended as as appropriate next at the time of the original audit the division did not have a clear process to report donated assets to the finance department so so that they could be appropriately recorded in the city's financials since then real estate has begun providing a report to finance about every six months of all acquired parcels including those that are donated indicating that the recommendation was implemented finally the original audit found that there was no established qualification requirements for the vendors hired to appraise the properties that real estate was working to acquire in addition the division did not have any formal training requirements for its staff so since that since those findings the division has implemented a has established a list of pre-qualified appraisers through a request for qualifications process in addition the division has implemented a standard operating procedure that requires all division staff to attend training and we also verified that all tenured staff real estate staff appeared to have received training in the last two years which is typical for licensed real estate people in that industry so in summary we found that four of the five recommendations issued as part of the original property acquisition audit were implemented with the remaining one being in progress and based on these results we plan to conduct an informal follow-up review in the next month or so to determine if the outstanding recommendation has been implemented and communicate that in a Friday report so that's the end thank you very much appreciate it questions for staff cancer altar thank you so much for another really excellent and important audit you found some really interesting really important problems that are working to be resolved resolved so that's great I had a question about the appraisal process so now that there is now that there is a process in place for qualifications for appraisers has there been any kind of effort to look back on the appraisals that have been done recently to see that the appraisers we've used meet these new guidelines and again I understand that these new guidelines were not in place at that time I'm just curious to know you know do do our new do our old do the old appraisers we've used past muster under the new guidelines we did not do any sort of evaluation of that as part of our review and I'm not sure if the department has done anything like that thank you I hope the I hope the answer is yes thank you Deanna Cody deputy director of real estate just to answer your question the RFQ was to establish a list of qualified appraisers staff has always used licensed real estate appraisers to appraise any land acquisition interest for the city okay so so the so the answer then in other words is yes okay awesome that's what I wanted to make sure that we had a list established so that we would have several to choose from that were already ready to do work for the city yeah okay excellent thank you so much any other questions see none thank you very much appreciate it man thank you takes us to item C just ID 2 1 2 6 3 3 receive report whole discussion give staff army hold this discussion regarding updates to the up adopted standards for construction fire and health food safety codes for the city excellent thank you Vanna McDonald here Scott McDonald director of development services I want to thank you for the opportunity we're very excited to be here today yes provided you a stack of publications so that you can get somewhat the gravity of these specific codes that we're talking about today this does not actually reference the the health and and food safety code as well as some of the commercial swimming pool operations we have all of these items on consent because again the gravity of the amount of code text that you have before you that's approximately for 2,700 pages of text we have your in your backup roughly 71 pages of ordinances previously paired down to 41 pages of of ordinance amendments so minimizing the local amendments we've got a cadre of staff that's here to support we'll start off with Emily she'll kind of walk through the construction codes fire codes Kevin as our chief health inspector he will be doing some of our food safety and then we have staff available to be able to answer any of the technical questions that you may have on any of the topics related to the items today good afternoon mayor City Council members my name is Emily Lois L. I'm the deputy building official for the city of Denton today I'm bringing you the proposal to adopt the 2021 international family of building codes which includes building fire residential energy conservation existing building fuel gas plumbing mechanical swimming pool and spa and the 2020 national electrical code so why are we here codes established minimum standards to ensure newly constructed or remodeled buildings are safe the most recent editions of the code books afford more materials and construction methods which help keep construction more affordable complexity of the project and use of the structure determines which code books to use a simpler type of construction such as your house uses the residential code alternatively if you're constructing an auto repair shop or a nail salon additional safety requirements are addressed in the plumbing and mechanical codes using the newest version of the codes provides us an avenue to implement best practices which affect not only construction costs but also affects insurance rates across the city new construction in the city of Denton is regulated today by the 2012 family of building codes the 2015 energy code and the 2011 electrical code the proposal is to adopt the most recent publication of the 2021 international family of codes and the 2020 electrical code with minimal amendments these publications are updated every three years it's important to note that the building code is the parent code to all codes and provides the guidelines to construct a structurally sound and safe building construction address in this code is primarily commercial but does include some residential uses such as multi-family and assisted living facilities the existing building code not to be confused with the currently adopted code is a standalone code that provides guidance for existing and historic buildings this code was previously contained in the building code but since has been removed to its own separate code book existing building code allows for flexibility when remodeling an existing building in and then even more flexibility when we're your remodeling historic buildings this codebook also recognizes the need to preserve such structures and keep construction costs at a minimum ultimately safety is the priority if there are life safety items they will be addressed here the residential code is the code that guides the construction of new houses it also addresses duplexes and townhomes so detached and attached housing covers the foundation the framing walls roof plumbing gas lines private water and sewer lines energy conservation and more all the components of building a house so if you were a builder I could give you one of these books and that would be your construction guide from the foundation everything in between to the roof the fire code is a complementary code to the building code along with operations and maintenance it addresses fire alarms fire sprinklers and more to keep businesses and the public safe all other codes cover the different trade or construction types each referring to the other as appropriate so codes are written to be the first line of defense in preventing accidents illness and death they provide sufficient time to escape fires provide for escape paths they're intended to reduce or prevent mold accumulation they protect us from sewer and natural gas poisoning they prevent drowning in pools and they protect us from preventable preventable cross-contamination building codes also regulate energy efficiency which protects businesses and home operational costs updated codes are necessary to ensure these costs continue to be protected the state of Texas mandates some building codes as a minimum across the state it's up to up to the local jurisdictions to adopt and enforce building codes during the code review process staffers received to guidance and directions from a number of groups and individuals we reviewed codes with subject matter experts such as contractors architects engineers we met with city staff we met with the North Central Texas Council of Governments we've met with the Dallas Home Builders Association and outreach within the community we worked especially diligent with the Health and Building Standards Commission this group of folks volunteered countless hours reviewing and discussing this massive stack of codebooks the proposed amendments and they created consistencies with local amendments and evaluated the overall impact that the adoption of these codes may have on the city the next big step is to adopt the most recent published codes I'm happy to answer any questions but first let's hear from Kevin he's our chief health inspector to speak to the changes with the health and pool safety code which directly correlates with the building codes thank you for your time and consideration of this vital step to afford a more safe and sustainable didn't thank you well done good afternoon mayor council members my name is Kevin Cummings I am the chief health inspector for the city of Denton we have three other health inspectors that work with me in the division of health and food safety and their names are Jackie Acosta Sarah Losh and Jessica Griffin okay I'm here to talk to you about two changes to ordinances chapter 13 and chapter 14 and there's only 33 pages that we have to deal with this afternoon so hopefully it would be a little bit quicker than then what you had to see for all the building codes and why am I here to begin with at all well quite frankly I'm here because the state legislature passed two laws this past session that deal with our ordinances so therefore we need to update our ordinance to come into compliance with state law now the first ordinance is chapter 13 food and food establishments as you can imagine as a health inspector I spend a lot of time in restaurants and you can kind of tell that if you look at me but at the same time we're there to make sure that the food that is served to the citizens of Denton is as healthy and as wholesome as it possibly can be what happened this year was the state legislature adopted the 2017 USDA food code as the law of the land for restaurants in the state of Texas now that's a great code and I'm glad that they passed it it's really what everybody's been using for the past five years anyway so it's good that the state legislature brought that up but at the same time it deals primarily with restaurants we also deal with food trucks food trailers and temporary events here in Denton as you may know Denton was one of the first cities that allowed food trucks to operate well with that back then the City Council passed a good set of ordinances to deal with those individual operations we want to keep that that is the primary majority of the ordinance wording that you see before you that we want to keep that we had beforehand again chapter 13 the reason we're here is because the state legislature adopted the 2017 food code we want to be in compliance with that and ask that you pass that this evening the second code is chapter 14 health and human services and primarily what we're looking at there is article 5 which deals with swimming pools as was brought to you earlier the international spa and pool code was adopted by the state legislature this year as the design manual for pools and spas we want to keep that it's a good document we we'd like it we'd like for we're glad that the building officials are looking at passing it as well but what it doesn't do it doesn't really talk about operation of swimming pools so we want to keep that wording that we had beforehand in the ordinance so that we can make sure that the pools and spas that are operating in the city of Dinden are as healthy as they possibly can be with that I'm happy to answer any questions that I may have great thank you any questions for Sam yeah thank you so much I wonder if you could just give a general idea of what the impact would be on Denton food trucks if we didn't take the actions that you know are being recommended tonight what how would they be affected okay well the state law really talks about that you can have food trucks but it doesn't talk about the operations in other words food trucks would be left to their own devices as far as what kind of materials they could be built out of what kind of equipment that they could have on their trucks the time frames that they could serve food and those kind of things this ordinance wording that we have gives a little bit better playing field for everybody so that they know we're really looking for a food truck to be built just as well as a food restaurant as far as the construction items go that the equipment that they use is going to be food grade or restaurant grade equipment that the temperatures and everything else that they deal with is going to be just like at a restaurant it's just going to be on their food truck any other questions counselor Archer yes my questions are also about the food truck ordinance and I'm so glad we have a food truck ordinance me too as our food truck vendors who want to you know ensure that they that you know their competition doesn't give them a bad name by using unsafe practices so they're very very proud of you know how clean and safe they are so anyway it is a good thing that said you know I have heard from some food truck owners about certain problems they have not with the idea of a food truck ordinance in general but with a few issues in it namely the approved commissary registration that's a real obstacle for a number of food truck owners for some it's not but for others they need to move their truck you know far away on that kind of a regular basis and you know these these trucks they're not made for of course their vehicles you know not made for going great distances the last I heard we didn't have any commissary that was at least able to be in locally in the city of Denton that may have changed but I just know that that has been prohibitive also you know the prohibition on storing a vehicle at home just kind of across the board that is problematic for some people I don't I don't see you know what that has to do with health and safety and then I'm pleased about the restrooms within 500 feet requirement first of all I absolutely agree there should be an accessible restroom close by that's really important for health and safety and quality of life everyone can agree on it what I'm wondering is about the 500 feet you know I wonder you know is that number you know required by the state that 500 feet or can that be if there's some wiggle room there so that we could ensure that there's a bathroom close by even if it's not that is easily accessible say you know where you don't have to cross the highway by foot for instance but it's so that that 500 feet is not prohibitive and then people have to end up putting a bathroom on their truck right okay and if I could speak to the commissary portion first a commissary is a base of operations for those who may not know exactly what a commissary is it's where the food truck is going to store their food that they they don't have on the truck constantly it may be where they're going to do some prep cooking before they go out into the field and actually serve their food it's a base of operations and the commissary is required under state law and it is something that I hear a lot about from the food truck industry it is difficult to find those locations that have that there is one in the city of Denton that we currently have that is an operating commissary and quite a few of the trucks utilize their services now that plays into why not parking at a residence and quite frankly having a commissary is is a place that can be inspected so that we make sure that the food is the highest quality that the equipment is going well that they're following all the food safety guidelines that they need to if we are allowed to park trucks at residences the fear is that they would use their residents as a commissary as a health inspector cannot go into somebody's home and do an inspection therefore I can't make sure that all the food and the equipment and all those sort of things that may be inside of a residence is up to speed as far as food safety goes the restroom agreement it used to be that state law said that it had to be 500 feet the ordinance there the state laws just been changed as I said they adopted the 2017 USDA food code it doesn't speak to how close that the restroom has to be that was just a portion of the ordinance that was carried over from back when we had state law I can tell you as a matter of operations we asked that they have a restroom agreement in place do we go out and actually measure that it's 500 feet or less we don't we just want to make sure that they have a restroom and that they can utilize it as they as they should it's up to council if you would like to change to where it doesn't recognize the 500 feet or more or less that's perfectly fine with us well thank you so much for answering those questions really informative and helpful um I have just you know a few direction items related to this one and be curious to know if there is you know any consensus on this from my colleagues in in no particular order one I think that the that 500 feet requirement should be struck since it's not I'm happy and I'm happy to hear that it's not practiced anyway that you're looking at it from a pragmatic perspective is there a restroom agreement and is it close by which is extremely important so because I know that food truck owners they have a checklist right that they have to check off and one of the things is this 500 feet I can be real stressful and they don't know that just be the most transparent solution I and you know I would like to see also struck the requirement that the prohibition on storing vehicles at home if a commissary is already required by state law and if the fear is that you know people are going to use their home as a commissary you know there's already if it turns out that someone is using their home as a commissary that already is a violation so there already is you know because of the state law something in place to prevent that so I think that it's best you know for our small business owners in that community that we you know have that trust in them that is backed up by inspections right and so I think we should get get rid of that also the the next and this is more for a city manager the next time this comes to us I guess it'll be too for us to to vote on maybe not maybe there's gonna be another work session but I would like to see a red lined copy of the ordinance there wasn't you know included in the backup and maybe because there wasn't time for that but certainly if we're gonna vote on it you know I would need to see the new you know the new word the new ordinance and the old ordinance right now all I can look at is the old ordinance and this the the presentation and and I would like to and I'm glad to see that stakeholders and not surprised that that stakeholders have been met with and talked to I think it's important that the community of food truck owners and food cart owners that everybody who's licensed will be great if they could be sent an anonymous survey just to get input and so that they would know that you know their anonymity would be guaranteed just to see you know what suggestions they have maybe some of their suggestions might not be possible but a lot of them are really familiar with certainly more so than I am you know food truck ordinances in other cities ours are much better than I mean there are other kinds of obstacles and in other cities you know but so they're they're pretty savvy on these issues and I would really like to know what they think what I found is that they're you know willing to come forward to a council person to make suggestions but then when I suggest that you know can you can you write a letter can you you know council be really interested too and that they're worried because they don't want to sound like complainers and I know that y'all are gonna retaliate again you know I know that but I also understand that need for anonymity okay any mayor if I could just address a couple of items one within the the commissary within when we adopted the 2019 development code we added food truck courts trying to accommodate for food trucks the requirement for a commissary and state laws is a critical component because again they have to have food storage where they're able to maintain for us to be able to inspect the two ordinances happy we can we can email the redline versions directly we have those there were no substantive changes to the two ordinances it was really the consolidation with state law and then where we had maybe title changes within the department where it was consumer health previously now it's health and food safety so we made those changes and only the changes that would be reflective of state law we certainly can we ask that you would approve the changes today so we can be consistent with state law and we certainly can come back if it's the council's will to talk through food trucks and maybe the changes that we would need to make in order to be at least more accommodating or different when we start getting into really that commissary conversation I just offer that sure there thank you very much any other questions councillor McGuire yeah I just want to you know first of all I'm absolutely open to the the the path of approving it now and then revisiting some of these smaller details but I do want to just voice support for for councilmember Armitage suggestions I think that if state law isn't strict about the 500 foot requirement for restrooms and if in your professional opinion a restroom agreement is adequate I think that that that would be adequate for our code and would remove some some barriers and some unnecessary restrictions and yeah I mean if if it's all it's state law that that food trucks must work with a registered commons commissary and it obviously would be health code violation for them to be using a home kitchen as a commons commissary I don't see any reason to add another layer to that and say well you also can't park it at home because you might use the home kitchen as a commissary I think that's that is another kind of unnecessary restriction it's just if the health code says you can't use a home kitchen as commissary then that's I think that's good enough all right any other questions comes from Bert just a couple of things there and just to kind of start backwards on the parking situation I'm just not envisioning neighbors being okay with food trucks sitting out in front of you know people's homes where they have their small businesses I think that there's already some ordinances out there in regards to parking work vehicles I kind of went through something like that on my own street where some people were parking improperly their work vehicles on our streets so we have to get that taken care of and I think this may fall in line with that so we'll have to make sure we have that connection there the other thing is that I I'm just not in agreement with a whole lot of it that we then councilmember Armitage brought forth because I am you know my background is health and safety and of course I want to look at the stringent those stringent possibilities of keeping food health in healthy and safe have my own small business in that regard so I know what it takes to make sure that you're putting out a great product but you're also doing it in the safest manner possible so 500 feet you know to a restroom that sounds like that's a pretty extensive amount of space between hand washing sanitation you know and the type of restrooms that we have out at festivals and things like that having to use restrooms that at restaurants and in that kind of thing I just seem like it needs to be tight like that I would prefer to have that to stay there but you know I don't want to stop anybody from being successful you know when they're small business of food trucks I eat out of food trucks myself periodically but I also would like to make sure that we just don't collapse you know some of those rules because they're there to make sure that we're taking care of ourselves in the best manner thank you okay it was councilmember back thank you mr. mayor I'm gonna try to thread the needle in this I'd like to like say that you know I'd like to move forward for today on this but if we could get an ISR on the relationships of these issues that we're hearing and and get you know a deeper dive a better take on what we need to do to what's redundant what's not what can we do to help businesses what versus safety I think that would give us the start of a conversation that and I'm not sure that we have the time for with two minutes left so that that would be my recommendation is to start with an ISR on these issues so that we're better informed yeah I would align with that and with the expectation that we would eventually have a you know session to evaluate how we can encourage the great food truck aspect of Denton which is a real addition and and do it in a way that's safe I would like staff to have the opportunity to think about it to say you know if we were to change any of these restrictions what would we have to do to still feel good about what is provided to the public so yep I agree. Councilor Davis. Thank You Mayor I agree going forward today with the items on the consent agenda all of them but zero and on this because as you said we led the way it was a big contentious issue at the time with our brick-and-mortar restaurateurs and our folks who had been complying with all the health inspections and for years and years and they wondered if the new the new game in town was going to be able to comply with health and safety concerns they worried if we were going to capture sales tax in the way that we needed to all of those things and I feel like we've been active in this space a lot longer than maybe most people sitting here at the dais are aware I'm very comfortable with the staff recommendations I feel like we are proactive in finding best practices and we're never always going to be happy we're never always going to have each individual restaurateur or food truck operator happy but I feel like we've struck the right balance in this and that we did that on purpose because we've been studying this issue for a long time okay yes sir mayor and thank you all for your feedback in your in your comments absolutely there were no substantive changes to what we were looking at today happy to to take some of the suggestions and ultimately create a white paper a brief and ISR kind of some of the rationale of where we're at today we'll also survey and try to do some collaborating with the food truck vendors that we have out there and then we'll look to come back to council with the work session specifically on food trucks just to talk about where we're at what best practices may be and what changes we may or may not want to make to the future thank you and I don't know if there are any other codes but I don't see any yeah no we're all good thank you very much appreciate it thank you takes us to item D ID 2 1 2 6 7 6 receive report hold discussion and give staff direction regarding prioritizing area plans no thanks already this is your dessert so while Ron is handing out a present for the council and for the latter part of our discussion this afternoon Tina Bergens W director of development services so I'm happy to be here with you this afternoon to talk about implementing our conference of plan as you know we worked hard on getting the conference of plan across the finish line the Denton 2040 conference of plan one of the key components and recommendations coming out of that was working on area plans and so that's why I'm delighted to be able to have this conversation today I feel like I feel like we've been talking about this for quite some time now given the last several months so I'm not going to go through all of the reasons why we should do area plans you're well aware of that because of all the discussion that we had particularly January February in and leading up to the adoption in March so really what the whole focus of our discussion is today is to have council prioritize five areas that you're interested in us working on and then ideally we will narrow that down to the the top two areas so one then you want us to immediately start moving forward on or if you would rather us delay this effort until this upcoming fiscal year so again conference of plan supports the creation of the area plans a couple of action items both within the land use element and the community character and urban design that give us the basis for moving forward and justification for these projects as we move on as I mentioned the we you know we've been working on this for quite some time we've had councils already given us some feedback in the past I know you told us throughout some of our discussions a couple of you weighed in and said hey I really think we need to do an area plan in Northeast Denton some of you said we should do one in Southeast Denton but what we did is as we shared with you when we were going through the adoption phase on the comp plan that we were going to have a conversation with the Planning and Zoning Commission and have the Planning and Zoning Commission prioritize areas within the community that they felt that we should work on and so what we did is we proposed 10 areas for their consideration consistent with areas that were recommended in the Denton 2040 plan what was interesting in the Planning and Zoning Commission's discussion is their top five which I've shown in bold here matched our top five from staffs recommendation perspective so that was kind of nice to know that we were locked up in alignment with the Planning and Zoning Commission we shared with them the reasons for why we should focus on these areas and and I'll get into that momentarily in a moment but really what I would like to encourage council do today is focus your efforts on prioritizing of these top five that we've noted here that we move forward with you identifying to see you know do you concur with those recommendations do you think that something else should be moved to the top and in something else moved to the number five slot or what that might be in addition to your taken into consideration you know the Planning and Zoning Commission and staffs recommendation you know other reasons why we whittled down to these top five areas were because of the development pressures that are happening within these various areas of the community also given some of our past conversations about land preservation opportunities there may be some opportunities let's say in the northeast part of town for land preservation compared to some of the other areas within the community also we have community partnership and community feedback coming into play which is really important I know we've talked about Southeast Denton the public engagement efforts that are going to be necessary in Southeast Denton are going to be able to help drive forward establishing a vision for this area and that's another key thing for each of these five areas they could use a more concise clear refined vision being provided so again hence why we believe we should focus our prioritizing our efforts within these five areas of the community I know you're fairly area are you're very familiar with some of these areas so I'm just going to quickly go through them obviously Northeast Denton this has had tremendous amount of discussion we've had residents in the past actually put forth their own area plan and their initial attempt one of the things that we that we believe is important is that the stakeholder engagement engagement that occurs within this area that is also reflective of all the property owners that could potentially be within the area the other challenge we have is that portions of this area within the city summer are not within the city it's all part in the EGJ but we know we're having development pressures in this area given the development applications we have come up for land preservation has come up in the past as well infrastructure challenges but also community interest and council's interest so I believe that was why it was number one on our list and number one coming out of the planning and zoning Commission Southeast Denton I know we've talked much about in the past obviously we've got strong community interest in identifying a vision moving forward for this area we need to have conversations about what if the existing portions of the city in this area where we need to maintain the existing character are there offers opportunities for change but most importantly we need to have that community engagement and we really need to have the residents of this area of town being part of that conversation and discussion to help us identify what needs to be the appropriate vision for this area of our community moving forward downtown this item and as well as the next one being the northern portion of the I-35 quarter I'd like to think really this came in as a tie with the planning and zoning Commission but technically on the scoring this one scored higher by one point compared to the next area and that's really the update of and consolidation of all the downtown area plans we've got a jewel in downtown if you saw in the in the Friday report we just received from the the Texas American Planning Association chapter recognition of downtown being a great neighborhood within within the state and so we have the opportunity to build upon that but really we need to do some update work we need to consolidate some of those existing plans to help us with moving forward with our downtown area of our community the northern portion of the community along I-35 both the east and west sides also where the loop will come into play with the extension of it we're seeing a lot of development interest in this area and so you know this one again rose to the top in terms of our top five list but really because of the development pressures that we're seeing within that area opportunities to really identify this as a gateway so how best do we move forward with prioritizing this portion of our community and then lastly this was one that came about really the Dallas Drive quarter from I-35 to Eagle Drive we really see this as an opportunity where we could really establish in a new vision for this quarter we've got some underperforming properties that are in that area when we say underperforming properties you know their second third fourth fifth generation businesses that could potentially be there or just are reusing of space and what have you there's opportunities for improving walkability this could also be a strong quarter within our community so hence why it ranked in the top five that we have for consideration so now I'd like to turn your attention really on to the next steps so following our discussion this afternoon and receiving from council what you believe to be the the top five areas and in terms of prioritization and presuming council is interested in moving forward with us initiating the preparation of plans in two of those areas and on the top two of your list then we will move forward with initiating the preparation of those area plans realistically and my apologies should have pointed this out previously from a staff level we can we can take on two of these simultaneously the two area plans they're not going to be dependent upon each other we believe we can do them simultaneously one may work at a faster schedule than area than the other depending upon how the scope of services plays out for each of the project areas additionally there's budget considerations associated with that as well given the the areas that are involved you know we anticipate that these plans will cost us somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 to 250,000 if there's one thing that's that drives up cuts on these projects is really the the process that it goes through it's essential that we have a strong public engagement process associated with this if we were to compare Northeast Denton and Southeast Denton two completely different areas of town right two completely different sets of issues when when you're comparing those two areas Northeast Denton you know we're looking at an area of 7,000 plus acres an area a lot of undeveloped properties a lot of residents that are interested in the future of that area infrastructure considerations that's all different compared to Southeast Denton which is a much smaller area but we have many more parcels we have many more residents and property owners within that area we're dealing with issues that stem over generations of time in past actions that have come into play that still influence discussions that we have today so two completely different set of issues so it's but yet because of the complexity of the of their their issues the process that's going to be in necessary from a public engagement standpoint hence why they're going to potentially have a similar price tag associated with it the other thing I'll point out in and we believe in having the opportunity to talk with Christine Taylor our assistant city manager and former director of procurement talked about what is the best process that we use for identifying the right partner as we work on these projects because we know we're going to need consultant assistants I've got great talent on my team they will be involved in this effort but given all of the other activity that we have happening we need the extension of staff and that's through the consultant assistants so it's really imperative that we have the right consultant that partners with us on each of these projects the consultant that we use in one area of town may not necessarily be the same consultant that we use in another area of town we want to make sure that we partner with the right consultant depending upon whatever areas that we land on following our conversation today with you giving us a direction on those areas you want us to focus on so from a timeline perspective you know we can go ahead and initiate doing work on whichever areas that we land on if Council is interested in moving forward right now then we'll bring back a budget amendment in May to be able to move forward with going through the process of selecting a consultant ideally we would try to get these projects kicked off kicked off by September October of this calendar year if this is something that council wants to move forward with we've put together what we believe it to be a reasonable but somewhat aggressive schedule I'll be able to get a consultant under board or underway I should say for these projects if council would rather as have take a pause and wait and go through the fiscal year 2023 adoption process happy to do that some of this work we can start working on but we want to make sure we've got some assurances through the budget process before we invest a lot of staff time on this so hence why you've got two calendars shown there the the middle column again is is the immediate aggressive let's move forward now the far right column is the one takes into consideration waiting as we go through the budget adoption process for fiscal year 2023 so with that what I'd like to do is is move forward into engaging in that conversation about what council believes that we should be ranking the areas I know Ron had given you a handout which is comparable to this slide that we have here mayor I don't know if you just want to go around the room and figure out what folks interest lie or if there needs to be any discussion we're happy answer any questions thank you very much and so yeah it's it's really when do you want to move and rankings and we'll just go around council member Davis yeah I have kind of some preliminary questions I think they're going to inform your choices sure and the first thing I want to preface this with is I'm all in favor small area plans I think they're an excellent tool I think I'm glad they're a council priority I think the way that we address some of these pressures that you're talking about so I don't want to sound like I'm pushing back on the idea of small area plans but I have a couple kind of process questions the first one is I think I'm pretty comfortable at the P&Z ranking and the staff ranking can you address on a more specific level how we handle large swaths of property that are not within the city limits and that we could kind of sketch out a regional plan for and how we communicate to the stakeholders you know one stakeholder holder over here is a city of Denton resident and taxpayer and property owner stakeholder over here is a neighbor and someone whose interest we need to kind of look out for but does not have maybe the same stake as a taxpayer and then two stakeholders who are not city of Denton residents communicating to them that we have no control whatsoever over how the pasture land next to them develops or how the street that's in county control gets yeah it's widened or something like that so that would all be communicated through the area plan process so one of the things that we would have so let's talk about much of what you're describing is Northeast Denton if we were to move forward with an area plan on Northeast Denton as part of the scope of work that we would have with the consultant team we would lay out you know these are some of the challenges and issues that we have to work through and so as we work through public engagement efforts and we identify feedback that we're receiving many consultant teams will use an engagement tool that allows us to identify where our participants are coming from in and what we're hearing from those participants so that we can then communicate that back and forth to the planning and zoning Commission and Council so then it becomes up to you as the elected officials for the area to determine where you want to place the weight of the feedback that you're receiving and how that formulates any recommendations moving forward but also with that you know we would also communicate to the residents through our engagement efforts of you know folks that do not live within the city here the limitations that the city has when development happens in that area so there's an education component associated with it as well but we would build all of that into the scope of services associated with that particular project area if we were to move forward with Northeast Dunton other than time and workflow capacity what do it does a consultant do that we cannot do in-house and I don't mean you have an excellent team but they're under a lot of pressure and they have a lot of other projects and there's always growing by leaps and bounds what is it that consultant brings to the table that a staff planner let's say a tip-top $250,000 a year $500,000 a year kind of professional could not do in-house so several things that they would provide to us so they bring that additional technical analysis for an area they bring an additional level of expertise in working with other communities and successes that they've seen in those communities and whether or not those would be applicable to Denton and something to learn from when you're doing plans of this nature there's the writing aspect associated with it there's the development of all the maps and the graphics associated with it so they bring that additional skill level to be able to bring forth and prepare all of those documents and maps that are part of that also one of the significant things that they help us with is the public engagement aspect associated with it when we have one single zoning case of significance where we get a lot of public feedback that consumes a lot of my staff time just on that one particular project a project of this nature especially if we're looking at an area that say that 7,000 acres and in larger with the number of property owners involved or Southeast Denton given the number of property owners involved even though that's a smaller area helping manage the public engagement process that's where the consultant team can be extremely effective in that area they are also able to allow us to employ a variety of different engagement techniques that they've used on other projects that have been successful for for similar type projects so they bring an additional wealth of manpower to the project for us but also some additional technical level of expertise so hopefully that addresses your question it does and it doesn't I mean my concern is this I want to kind of place small air plant plans in the hierarchy of of the the tools that we use I mean they do not have the force of law they're not a zoning ordinance they are not a they're not even a comp plan their vision their go-buy their tool for stakeholders you know when somebody wants to rezone something the stakeholders can come in to us and say well that's not in the small area plan that's not what we all got together and agreed is best for this area but I have doubts about the bang for our buck that if what we're getting is a vision and a plan and a go-buy is that and it's not having the force of law is it in its hierarchy of placement on all of those different documents and things we consider in a zoning case or in the different decisions we make is it worth $250,000 a pop I mean if we're gonna do two of these if we're talking about a $500,000 budget amendment I think the last time we looked at council priorities a million dollars was a penny on the tax rate so we're talking about a project that is a quarter penny on the tax rate I'm not seeing why we don't spend that half million dollars building that team you're talking about if we're if we're gonna do ten of these if we're gonna be doing this for two a year for five years why not build an in-house team of community engagement all the graphics you can handle I just don't know if we get a quarter million dollars worth of use out of a small area plan for as much utility as they have so if if if a senior level planner or principal lever level planner makes roughly a hundred thousand dollars a year and then you add the benefits associated with that that might get me one and a half to two planners right to be able to do this whereas if I bring a consultant team on board I get the entire team so I get experts not only in land use planning I get experts in branding transportation infrastructure needs within that area in addition to some of the other expertise in terms of the graphics and document preparation so I have them for a limited amount of time and then I don't have to continue paying them a salary and benefits beyond that so I realized that $250,000 is a large price tag when we're talking about a planning area document that allows us to put a vision a refined vision in place but allows us to be able to do that more in-depth analysis and gives me that team of individuals where I may have ten people working on that project behind the scenes compared to one and a half to two staff planners being able to try and do all of the work of ten people also the consultant team allows me to accomplish this in a shorter amount of time compared to if I only have one and a half to two people working on this project so when when we're comparing you know the potential for building a team internally versus what a consultant team can bring to me then I get a bigger bang for the buck for a shorter period of time to get the product from the consultant team the other thing I'll add is you're talking about in terms of where the ranking of priority on the area plans and how that influences future decisions an area plan is a refined comprehensive plan for the area right so it the area plan would essentially amend the comprehensive plan for that area so it gives us a more refined vision for the area it gives us a more refined set of actions for moving forward it also may further prioritize those actions and next steps that we need to take so it is it is still a policy document it is not an ordinance but it does give us that refined vision for moving area that we've talked about in the past I want to push back just a little bit more sure and I'm really not disparaging these consultants that do good work but in a city our size these this planning activities small area plans this is something we are going to be doing I mean if we have ten plans we're gonna do it for five years right but this level of planning and this kind of work I mean you're gonna be coming in front of us in the next couple of years need more planners as it is I mean just to get the job done so and you can buy data you can pay engineers you can pay engineers for a specific little bit of analysis do some engineering in this part of town for this scope that we're looking at right now I think there's more utility to the city to have a bigger department that is a few more folks who are focused on Denton needs and and go they do the legwork they do the research they do the planning activities and then we pay the consultants for just a little piece that we need we can be our own contractor we don't need a branding house to put together a public engagement outreach thing we know the folks in Northeast Denton they've already told us who they are we know how to find them we know the folks in Sedna we don't need a consultant to brand us a thing and at the end of the day we get the same plan we would have had to begin with we paid two hundred fifty thousand dollars for it but it has a cool logo and has some maps that we probably could either done without or made ourselves I'm sounding a little bit I don't mean to sound facetious but I'm just not seeing how our bright people and maybe some more bright people in your department can't give us the same work product or something that's even better fit for Denton than a consulting firm council member thank you and I don't know that I disagree in some elements of that that that we could build a bigger team I will tell you it's not uncommon or it's very or it is uncommon for for even large cities to have that experience on their on their staff not to say that we can't evaluate this and look and see what the strategy might look like keep in mind today we're really just looking at what those areas are trying to focus on how we pare this down and then when we get to the areas and I'll just use you know that the two north corridors that we're talking about it's thousands of acres and likely we're going to pair that down again when we start looking at scope and really what we want to do staff hasn't had an opportunity really other than just to talk about the general areas listening to what council had to say for us to focus on what we're going to have to do and and truly trying to be realistic and say that it is 200 250 thousand it may be that we could do this for less on some of these areas and we will certainly get some some duality out of you know when we talk about sudden we talk about downtown and where we have some of that overlap rather than having these larger areas that that just have so many different constraints of whether it's in the city in the ATJ so I think we're a little bit premature with how we get there so we can evaluate those we hear that and think about staff I will tell you we have as of maybe in another week or two weeks we will be fully staffed for the first time in the five years that I've been here it is a challenge to find planning staff in particular with with changes in legislative law it is it has just made it a very tough market out there so for us to recruit the talent certainly if we offer a quarter million dollars we can get as many heads as we want but being realistic it would be very hard to get that that that expertise in the particular areas that we would need it but we can certainly evaluate whether there's a balance between hiring some consultants to do part of the work augmenting the staff that we have in place today with a greater focus on some of that long-range planning and and building that team so I certainly don't want to say that we wouldn't but I think we can I just think we need to really focus on where we want to go as far as the areas and then we can start getting into the strategy and how we need to fund it and where that's going to come from or who's going to do it I understand I bring this up because we had a slide that said next steps and that the next thing to come before us was once we decided these priorities the next thing to come before us was going to be potentially a budget amendment and I don't want to have this conversation on the in the context of a budget amendment where you know I'm the guy one of seven saying well I don't like this this item at all we really should have thought about this differently months ago I want to put a pin in it now and say I think that we can be our own contractor I don't want to pay $250,000 for a cool logo and a survey app on a website I'm being a little facetious now on purpose but that is exactly how it appears to a lot of our citizens that the bang for the buck what we get for these consultancies on these projects oh kicker gateway plan fantastic engagement community a good final product what is it doing for us today not a whole heck of a lot other than we had a big long conversation and we pay the consultants some good money to have that conversation I don't want us to go down that route again I would much rather zero in on exactly what we need figure out exactly who we need to be paying outside and get some as much top-notch talent on the city payroll as we can because we're gonna be doing this for years and years and years that makes good sense and I guess just if I can add one more piece to that is just that for us we have to recognize whether the immediacy of this do we want to start tackling this this fiscal year and that was the purpose and whether we needed a budget amendment and how many area plans because we've had this conversation we've paired 10 down to 5 and really looking at 1 to 2 and then what does that timing look like the reality is by the time we went through RFP and everything else we probably be in the next budget year but we weren't going to make the determination of whether or not we were going to act on something immediately or if we were looking at October so that that's the purpose in whether we needed a to modify the budget or amendment and I would just say I think we can always share with council sort of a looking at both sides of it what it would take to have a team and it will be a team of employees to do this kind of work having experience working in other cities it's usually a team of employees that do smaller plans or area plans which has someone with expertise in transportation someone has expertise in public engagement and setting meetings and getting those meetings agendas posted and everything someone who's an extensive planner who has worked in other cities and has seen the different size of cities and areas and plans that are developed so you're looking at probably at least three full-time people that would do that kind of a job coming from a if you were go in for consulting I mean honestly we would need to just make sure we are being very honest about what that would cost from a city employee perspective but we if that's the desire of council it's probably going to be more than two hundred and fifty thousand but it may be as you say a one-time cost we'll have to look at where we house them and all the other things but we can provide that information well and if I can also add to this conversation so one of the reasons why staff is recommending the use of consultants is so and I'm going to use Southeast Denton as an excellent area of town so I had an opportunity to be further enlightened as I attended a conference here recently and this drove this point home numerous times Southeast Denton comes with a lot of challenges associated with it we're talking about generations of challenges associated with it if we want to be successful and influential in that particular area of our community we need to make sure that we have the right folks that are helping us in that effort I've got wonderful people on my team but we are not trained in some of the challenges and issues that we will be facing in that part of the community in order to be able to move forward and I'm being fully transparent with you on this as I always am you know me I'm never a loss for words many times so but but this is why if it's important to this community to establish vision in place and have a story to tell and how we want these areas of our community to be able to flourish over the longer term time it's important that we partner with the right folks the ability for me to be able to assemble a team of right planners to be able to deal with some of the challenges and issues that we will have in Southeast Denton is going to be very difficult compared to me trying to find the right consultant team to partner with if we're going to invest within our community and invest in an area plan in my opinion we put that investment in Southeast Denton so that we have a clear vision moving forward of what we want this area of our community to be that's based upon extensive community engagement and feedback associated with it so that we're not guessing as to what we think the vision needs to be but that we have a truly robust public engagement effort where they are at the table and helping us being able to identify that but we will be having to work through issues that have stemmed in this community for generations moving forward I would rather have a qualified consultant team helping in that effort and then if I was going to do something in-house then I would focus then on the North Denton corridor along I-35 I honestly think that area would cost less money I think there's some things that we could put in place and to try and be able to address in-house but when it comes to establishing a vision for a community having a story to tell identifying where we have future public investments within those areas of the community this is where these area plans become essential and being able to help us move forward we will have more opportunity to influence what happens in Southeast Denton compared to what happens in Northeast Denton as a result of at least all of the land within Southeast Denton is within the city limits compared to what we're dealing with in Northeast Denton where I have a lot of land in the ETJ and one other piece that I might add to that as far as the point that they're they're not useful documents truly they can be the document to create an overlay district so it can have a purpose and should have a purpose it will be that document that should help to again looking at amendment to the comprehensive plan and then if we have to create other design standards within the development code so there there are more it's multi-pronged it's just a deeper dive into what our comp plan steps were thank you okay you have a rank before I move on yeah I'm fine with the PNZ ranking thank you counselor Burke thank you all for your hard work I'm just so excited about this part I've been wanting to work with the members of the Southeast Denton neighborhood that is at the absolute core of the city and we I'm looking forward to it being strengthened along with the downtown area I know that the city of Denton has a wonderful brand it's so much so that folks want to live here and there's some things that we have to to do to make sure that they're comfortable when they get here so with that being said I'm also just looking forward to some of these food desert issues being addressed there I'm just I'm excited I do hope that we in I don't know if this is possible or not but I like to see that Southeast Denton area be expanded over to loop 288 we have a lot of properties between Woodrow and 288 along Spencer Road and back on up to McKinney Street that is still out there that needs to be developed appropriately to connect with Southeast Denton so speaking of Southeast Denton of course I would definitely want them to be number one on this list and the downtown area and connecting thank you for bringing that forward that we might be able to connect those two areas especially going up around Sycamore Street industrial all of that I'm looking forward to that growth through there the third one would definitely be the Dallas Drive Corridor we have so many people that are coming up from the southern part coming up from Dallas and just driving in on Dallas Drive I think we can do a much better job with how we present that area there's and the other one would be the 288 Sherman Drive area I appreciate all of the vibrancy of that community they speak with us all the time they show up and they show out but I think that they would go next there in the last one would be the north 35 North Highway 77 focus it because it's so still growing and so brand new out that way I think we can give it a little bit more time so that would be my ranking okay so just to make sure I got your rankings correctly so Southeast Denton was number one the downtown master plan or the downtown area number two number three was the Dallas Drive Corridor yes number four was the Northeast end and then number five was the the I-35 loop 77 Northwest what we're calling the Northwest Quadrant yes thank you thank you yeah this is really kind of torturous because these are really good ideas and actually you know I'd like to have them all as soon as possible that my concern is that time is absolutely not on our side in particular in relationship to the Northeast and Southeast where you know in the time that it would take to get to you know other small area plans if they were to come first there there are natural resources in the case of one and and cultural resources in the case of the other that are at risk of really disappearing and all you know just having the these the fundamental character of these areas change before you have a chance to to work on it so given that we have the capacity the work capacity to do too I think this is a very appropriate use of consulting because you can move fast and so if there is a way to do two together it would be I agree with the sequence of the PNZ gave us but I would do those two this year and also in part because you know we have a historical debt in Southeast end must not always be last I think it's time that's at these then be first counselor monitor let's see okay so then thank you to staff and to my colleagues for your interesting and important ideas let's see so first I'll say kind of from a broader perspective you know I appreciate and understand councilmember Davis's concerns about you know this question of consultants versus in-house staff as I do appreciate and understand you know staff's response to it I feel that you know Mayor Pro Tem Melzer encapsulated you know my feeling on this issue and and I'm reluctant to put my motives in your mouth but definitely we arrive at the same place and that is you know I would ideally like to see a some I would ideally like to see us have in-house staff who whose job it is to deal precisely with these kind of community planning issues that is he would be kind of at the day-to-day level less you know spending less time with developers more time with members of the community although there would be some of both this is a little bit like what in fact I think a lot like what what Randy Hunt is has written to us about and written at least one maybe two op-eds in the paper about this idea of a community services department that would deal with these kind of issues so I do think there's a great need for that however because as Mayor Pro Tem Melzer said time is of the essence particularly with Southeast Denton and this the Northeast area I agree that these two these are there they're my top two as well I also like Councilmember Byrd and what I think I heard from Mayor Pro Tem Melzer you know I would put Southeast Denton first and then loop 288 and Sherman Drive because of that that historical debt and what is owed to Southeast Denton however I'm I'm really pleased to know that these could be worked on simultaneously and that that's the plan so that difference between one and two it sounds like won't end up making all that much of a difference but if you know forced to to rank then not then I would say yes Southeast Denton first loop 288 and Sherman Drive Northeast second but very very pleased that they can both be done simultaneously because they're both really essential and time is of the essence because time is of the essence and I think it's important that we get moving now I think that you know unfortunately if we're don't have this in-house expertise to do this then it looks like to make the best use of time that we should have have a out-of-house out-of-house help on this however for these these two top parties you know however I can't underscore enough just how strongly I agree with you know Councilmember Davis is saying about you know how good it would be to have this expertise in-house and the feeling in the public which really resonates strongly with me that that we should be having people in Denton people who are already in Denton helping us with these issues and in who are more likely to know about the the issues in Denton so again I think this is city manager Hensley mentioned you know it would be a question of kind of if there is consensus on council to have to hire these in-house staff where would they be housed I you know I'm open to just about anything but I but I think this idea of community services department would and maybe not even a department maybe a community services division of another department but is really something that's needed I feel like it's kind of crystallizing in that so anyway as I also want to say that agreeing with Scott's you know comment that you know even though small area plans are not law they don't have legislative authority they can't they can lead to that they create a framework that can lead to overlays and don't including zoning in zoning changes of which overlays is one that really do have teeth so I do think that they're crucial importance and I do connect them with these kind of real changes although I agree with what you know your your kind of comments about the Oak Street area you know and the consultants and all the people who worked hard on that and you know it's not clear entirely you know exactly what came of that or maybe that has yet to come but so anyway as for the last three you know I'm curious to know you know if if the top two are going to be the ones that would be prioritized and that would take a while you know how important is it to have because I can give you right now I have the last three all as they're all number three and I would have a number of questions about would this involve this would this involve this that would help me decide how to rank them three four and five I don't want to waste you know y'all's time on this if the important thing is just to get my top two but if it's if it's important to get my you know to hear how I would prioritize the next three I would have to ask some questions first if I might just I heard a couple of things and I just want to get some clarity councilmember armature you you said similar to councilmember bird and to mayor pro tem Meltzer and they did not rank the same way okay that's a lot I wasn't sure about how mayor pro tem ranked ranked them but that I agree with councilmember Berg that I clearly heard she ranked she ranked Southeast Denton as number one yes the downtown master plan is number two it's the number one that I agree with her on okay and then number two you changed yeah number two is 288 and Sherman Drive okay and then number three and then number three for right now my the downtown the I-35 and 77 and the Dallas Drive Eagle are all tied for number three and to break the tie I would have to ask a number of questions which I can but I don't know how important it is for you to get just a valid a valid number three would be ideal because we don't have everybody voting for one two and three yeah that makes sense so I just need a third yeah um so you know for the third gosh I mean I okay so for the third then I'll just ask this one question so the I-35 North and 77 is this is what the staff considered this to be more time sensitive than a downtown master plan update or Dallas Drive in Eagle Drive or is that a call you'd rather not make no I would I would not put I would put downtown I would treat the downtown as a hub and and and all the spokes go from the hub and I think the importance on downtown redevelopment infill development and how that translates and relates to Southeast Denton in particular and then 77 and all the all the directions we're going to go no I wouldn't see I-35 is that then that's been that focal point because it's one of our gateways but we have many gateways that we should be focusing on whether that's an area plan or just some strategies okay yeah so and so that makes sense to me that was I because that answers you kind of I think so where I was going with that that so that settles for me that my number three would be the downtown master plan update so in other words you know my rankings for the top three are the same as P&Z except one and two are switched and but they're both extremely important if I could have a tie for number one they'd be tied for number one for me and I'm glad they're simultaneous thank you thank you that's where thank you yeah question so um there's been you know kind of some vague conversations about transit oriented development around the DDTC is that you know part of what we're talking about when we say infrastructure and mobility challenges around downtown yes it can be so if we were working on downtown area plan updates and consolidating those then transit oriented element would be part of that conversation the proximity of the rail station it's essential that it's part of that conversation okay and councilmember bird brought up the issue of food deserts is an SAP an effective tool to address that issue so it can be and one of the things that is not uncommon that's done as part of an area plan is to have a market analysis component associated with it so if that particular area of the community is having difficulty with certain businesses locating within that area then a market analysis will help us in identifying that effort so that that's one of the additional components that's part of the consultant team that gets brought to the to the table is the ability to do the market analysis for that area to determine where the buying power is and how does that attract certain businesses okay great and my last question before I provide some direction so I've I've kind of you know I like to ring the bell about freight rail connectivity every chance I get and there's you know a little piece of the Kansas City southern line that's included in the proposed boundary map for the I-35 north and loop 288 area you know would freight rail connectivity and opportunities be part of this conversation or are there maybe other tools that would be more appropriate for like an industrial shape it shaping the direction that that industrial development takes yes and yes so with respect to the area plan conversation especially in the northwest part of town with the rail access that's available there as we evaluate transportation opportunities just not you know pedestrians bicyclists and in vehicles but there but also the freight component associated with it so if if improvements are being done or the frequency of trains and in the type of commerce that's being those traversing those rail quarters is significantly going to influence that area then yes it needs to be part of that conversation it you know if we are interested in having a larger transportation conversation throughout the community then that's the to me the second part of your your question there then it could be evaluated as part of that but but I would see it more of relation in relation to the area plan you know right now that part of town on our Denton 2040 future land use map we've identified that area as being industrial in nature and there were birds yeah but as part of that area plan you know we've identified that area is industrial land uses and so the the rail quarters there could influence which businesses decide to to locate along through that area and in the interest of not getting them confused I was just having a conversation with someone last week about the frequency of trains that are along the rail quarter and BNSF I believe is in that area as well and one of them is looking at plans for greater expansion of moving freight along through that area compared to the other one so it's it's all of that goes into that conversation and that's where we bring the transportation experts to the table to be able to assist us in having that conversation and their connections that they may have at KCS and in BNSF okay yeah I guess if you know a northwest SAP would include enough of that Kansas City southern line to really have an impact on freight rail connectivity then I'm I'm good with having that at number four but if I don't know I mean if we need to maybe expand those boundaries or expand the boundaries of West Park to have an impact on that I mean I don't I just I don't know what the best and I'll be honest with you we haven't looked at it to that level of detail yeah we looked at general areas you know we had a conversation gosh back in September about possibly doing an area plan for just that general area I think the original boundary we drew ended up being like over 6,000 acres so we tried to pair it back yeah to see where the most influence would be you know to me those kind of conversations about what lands we include within here that's when we start that that's after we get past the step of okay which area plans have we decided to do and we funded and then we get into the internally having discussion about what properties do we believe need to be included within the area so you're a little further down in the process on how we would go about identifying what properties we include what we don't and and how does that influence and target certain areas so so I'm gonna draw you back a little higher yeah I'm just trying to make sure that my personal like pet issues are being included in this conversation well and I might also add there are some other conversations that are occurring with rail and light rail that that are separate and apart from this and I know specifically that the Kansas City Alliance for they're looking at bringing passenger rail yeah is gonna be funding a feasibility study for doing passenger rail so some of that will occur with or without an area plan in the area so we'll be we'll be looking at all of those okay okay so so for for my direction I agree with several of my colleagues that I would like to see Southeast Denton as a number one priority I also think that you know be because I really want to prioritize transit oriented development and I mean in the I know that these are just sort of preliminary ideas but you know that the yellow dotted lines that you gave us the DDTC is included in both the downtown area and the southeast end area and I think that it it we might want to explore yeah using the same consultant for both of those area plans having them be performed in conjunction so that we can have the the dense multi use mixed use development that we want to see around the DDTC but also be sensitive to the needs of Southeast Denton and having that that development be compatible with the much lower density residential area that's you know immediately abutting the area that we would be probably doing that transit oriented development so that would be kind of number one and two and I would love to see them linked maybe this is like too high in the sky but I wonder if I could have my top two like expanded to a top three because you know I want to see that Southeast Denton downtown master plan in conjunction but loop 288 and Sherman Drive is is a real close third that's also another one where time is of the essence and I'm complete I would be comfortable with hiring a consultant to do with those three this year and then once we get into you know I already said number my number four is the northwest area my number five would be the Dallas Drive area you know if we if we need to push this back a little bit more utilize more in-house resources so that we're not relying quite as heavily on consultants for those projects I would be comfortable with that but on that my top three Southeast Denton downtown master plan and 288 and Sherman Drive I would love to see us moving fast on those three and utilizing consultants to allow us to move fast on those three did I have other direction no that's it that was it okay so I got Southeast Denton is number one downtown number two Northeast Denton is number three the northwest quadrant I-35 as number four and then Dallas Drive is number five and then moving forward with utilizing consultants at least on the top three yeah I do want to mention I know that I've talked to every councilmember about the need to really look at the economic vitality of our downtown area what I'll do is get with the staff and see if there's a way to do the downtown plan in addition to looking at that economic vitality piece that ties in Quaker Town Park also looks at Southeast Denton you know walkability you know that kind of thing and also from a looking at it as a kind of an economic impact analysis so I'll get with them and we'll get back with you to time to see how we tie that in thank you mr. mayor I think we've had a I'll try to just briefly touch on my concurrence with a couple points as I'm so I'm going last or next to last of all all of us and and and I think that you know just for to go straight to the punchline I'm good with the P&Z rankings I actually really take councillor Davis's point and the council armature mentioned is that that you know we've we've got a lot of these but as mayor Pro Tem said speed and land pressures are ridiculous right now and we have the two different kinds of infill cultural pressures in Southeast Denton and then the long history of that and then the Northeast we had what two three major developments that we've really had to put our fingers on the scale enough that then citizens took it upon themselves to say we're done with you guys we're going to make our own small area plan because that's one of the avenues that you could do and submit it to the city because it's not getting done and we you know we've we've identified needs in these various corridors and there's historical needs but I think if we're prioritizing speed because it's directly correlating with land values and it is there's no argument there then the consultants give us speed for whatever we pick for our top two so I'm for the consultants at least for the first two if we can revise later down the pike and bring in house some expertise I think that would be ideal but for the speed issue the top two I also think there's a little bit of less demand for the for the the downtown master plan and I mean I'm I'm following the P&Z rankings those those jive with myself but and the northwest simply because we already have Terz's Terz's is that a plural Terz I I don't know what it is but we already have Terz for those regions and they already are focusing on these kinds of development issues because we have recognized them in the past to be really really important whereas the 288 and southeast are kind of lagging indicators of of our cultural impacts and environmental impacts here in the city so I think those don't they they should stay three and four in my opinion and and they already have those kinds of priorities so so you know my general direction is one two three four as presented I think we should go for speed because lands not getting any cheaper if we have the opportunity to in house in the future I'd love that and I really it really spoke to me a lot I don't know if Tina meant it this way but it spoke to me a lot that the right sizing and and right communication education outreach and training is is what I do for a living and getting that piece really spot-on for whatever neighborhoods we choose is is really really critical and and I think that really spoke to me in addition to the needs of speed you know having that that connectivity with the stakeholders is really really critical so I mean I wish I could triple down on a combination of staff and the consultants making sure that this EOT piece is is like you know honestly priority number one yes we have to prioritize the economics I understand that's the whole point of an SAP but getting those fundamental understandings into the the hearts and minds of the community and and actually let's flip it getting the hearts and minds of the community into the economic piece because this is their home and they need to be the drivers of this so I if we could if we could really emphasize those components but you know I try to make that quick as I could being along with a person is team and I will share that together all right and and sorry I am not as I would like to basically just see a plan from from staff on the FTEs and kind of your analysis of it long term right I think that's important and then just to note kind of I see some different components to that I see the a role kind of pardon me tasks that also would be assigned to that that department if you will would be kind of like the sign topper discussions around neighborhoods then community calendar etc type events to capture which you rightfully so touched on some of the cultural aspects of that and that's just going to take time right that's just someone showing up and attending all those things and beginning to kind of download that information but at the same time send out that information so that people can be aware and then you talk about really this is a big one and it's again right on target with what you touched on kind of an equity component I'm beginning to get more understand that better it's it's not really from a from a amenity standpoint that's where you see kind of that fracturing potentially of the city it's like hey this park has that this neighborhood has that so kind of that equity component looking at it from a smaller plan looking at it from deficiencies and how do we bring it all kind of more equitable I think that's that's a another noble goal that could be kind of communicated throughout the organization if we had someone on staff that could harvest that information and then something that may seem disconnected but I think it connects and again I think you're you're spot-on with your analysis and I've had some conversations with neighbors and it's really especially in southeast Denton it's that senior component right I had a neighbor that said I had called the designated line for XYZ and I didn't get through and then I took your card and called the office number and got right through and got patched over right and so I just think to your point there's some there's some differences in culture and that sort of thing that that we need to be sensitive to so that we can get that information we have that rapport we have the the method which they best communicate and that helps us then guide decisions whereas a consultant comes in and may not understand some of those nuances again that's long term right I think it's a longer kind of phased approach but and so I think it's that I think there is I bifurcated to say yeah there's certain stuff we move forward with but then there's a budget look at it to say hey if we're if we're committed to this here's how we can phase into it and grow into bringing something in-house and then I so I was I was back and forth on priority but just to Scott thank you very much for your point and I think this is maybe there's a map in the future that captures that overlay but I think you're exactly right when I went back and looked after you said it so southeast Denton Dallas Drive and downtown cross a lot right it kind of in the center there and so I think to economies of scale or whatever that looks like you know as we're kind of rolling those things out I think we can kind of so maybe there's a third or maybe there's a sixth map that kind of says hey these intersect here and and that's a different look maybe and that's again and I think that's appropriate maybe kind of a you're passing from this part of town this part of town and we're in we make that kind of by design and incorporate features to that or signage or whatever we do so I did change kind of my approach based on conversations and kind of processing through it I do lead with the get there that's not right so Kings Row area what is that what do you have that is yet Luke 28 north and Sherman that that's first for sure obviously with the neighborhood and we've already heard from them that development is pending the ETJ components are going to take a lot of time and I think it guides our decisions going forward as how we manage and message to the ETJ I think that's an important messaging component so I like that as as first obviously talked about it I'm biased but southeast didn't being that one too that we go go ahead with I like that approach and then yeah taking PNZ's it's interesting I thought I would have ranked I 35 North that Northwest component earlier but I think there's there's one person to negotiate with by and large right and the other side of the highway is doing what it's doing already and so I thank you for your insight and my colleagues conversation around that because that helped change the priority priority of that and in the and I think the Dallas Drive quarter is just kind of a nice to have but but not as pressing you know type thing I agree the traffic there is significant and having that appealing but it's not as pressing as some of the others so so I think that as PNZ has them outlined and then that's why but it was it did strike me that I because I initially when I kind of made my notes I had that Northwest component higher but but then talked myself out of it okay very good I I think it's it's somewhat clear we have we have some some direction I will say and based on the city manager's comments we're gonna put together a plan on how it is that we may be able to tackle downtown Southeast Denton somewhat together and really look at what that area is what that should look like and then we would look at loop eight loop 288 Sherman Drive so the possibility of doing all three that may cost the city you know this year wherever it is we we we find those funds somewhere in the neighborhood of five hundred six hundred thousand dollars and perhaps adding a staff person so we can maybe start to manage some of that more long-range planning but we can have the speed and efficiency to be able to start at least getting something going and then we'll refine the scope of what that looks like as far as what we're doing with a consultant but being realistic just saying what I'll be asking the city manager's office for is is some funding as well as a staff person and trying to tackle the top three that were identified because that there is overlap and then just what we heard here today so I appreciate your your input and the guidance that we've been given today and we'll come back we'll obviously be moving on this somewhat rapidly and certainly be back we'll get with the city manager's office immediately and then have something back to counsel in the next couple of weeks I have one follow-up and then councilmember Davis but I do want to make sure whatever we're doing here is not gonna hold up those on the so I know there's some developments we said hey you have to wait till the small area plan I just want to make sure that we're gonna with this understanding that the north wheat no let me make sure I get that right yes that that that northwest component is I thought there was a applicant or two that said we had told him hey we're gonna wait on a small area plan there there were some conversations but there's been no moratorium we're not holding any thing up or any one up we're just we're gonna we're gonna proceed business as usual okay great we will also though provide you with the analysis of what it would be like for staffing purposes if we went all staff on it okay great counselor Davis thank you Mary when this comes back there's been kind of this assertion made that a consultant gets us there faster and we've all kind of bought into that I'd like to see the I'd like to see that demonstrated because I agree that time is of the essence and all these top priority areas that we're talking about I'd like to see it demonstrated that a consultant gets us there and and I'm willing to put a lot of trust and staff's expertise on that but just intuitively I don't agree intuitively I think we get there faster getting some top-level folks in your department and building that neighborhood planning department and and getting rubber on the road that way tell please tell me where I'm wrong and how I can and that can help me get on board with this consultant idea the other piece is I definitively push back against the notion that community engagement is important and it is particular to each little area I do not agree that we cannot properly engage our own citizens and our folks in ways that we understand more intuitively and more generally generationally and relationally than any consultant I don't think we need a special consultant to come in and tell us how to engage with Southeast Denton or Northeast Denton or Dallas Drive it's a family conversation we've been having it for generations and sometimes you need the family counselor to come and tell you how to talk to each other and sometimes the family just has to sit down and work some stuff out I think we have a much better opportunity and properly engaging that then bring in a consultant who's got no idea really what those generational challenges are they can make a lot of assumptions they can read a lot of background materials and they will not have an intuitive feel for what the real issues are in this town so that is my push back on consultants absolutely and we'll bring back all the supporting information pro and con just as to where we're at again it's that matter of efficiency truly just the hiring process alone would be would be very challenging in this environment just have to know that and I have to say that knowing what it's taken to get staff and yeah I'll leave it at that well and also think I do want to because this was I mean I did it did resonate with me when when you're talking about I think it's goes beyond that I think to spin up someone that's the right for me because I took your point but I think it's really how do you process through that the right candidate for what that has the expertise on the building side on the marketing side that's bilingual that has a diverse background that that has a cultural asset or a cultural focus right so you have like eight different things that are important at once in finding one candidate that checks all those boxes expeditiously is hard versus you'll need I think that's that's what I took from it is just the team you would need to build up that kind of understands all those things because there's just some you know just the the language barriers alone if what you know and I don't want to steal from another staff department and say hey this person can translate now I got to stop what they're doing and bring them over here to this community meeting versus tell a consultant hey when you go to all these meetings you need to have someone that does sign language someone that speaks multiple languages someone that does and they go you know bring that whole package to the meeting and and so I think there's just some some things that can be done all at once around culture not to say that they understand didn't better I agree with you I think that's that's critical that we get better about that ourselves but I think there's there's a skill set there but I think it's a great point you raised so and I think that we can build upon that truly if we start somewhere and we start augmenting staff and we start building that and at least learning some process and people challenge some of our more challenging ones up front might make some easier we have as was pointed out if we have 10 area plans that we're looking at if we have a consultant help us through two or three and we start augmenting staff then they can ultimately learn process and methodology and and again just capitalize upon that and build that long-range planning team yeah it's good thank you mr. Mayor I'm going to point out two things one it's it's all of our duties to help interface with the staff with our constituency and and to their credit Scott and Tina have been with the city five and two years so you know if there was never a time to rely on this body not that body I think that's that's where it's on us to be frank thank you mr. mayor sure yeah okay oh I can't see the question yeah counselor Burke listening to my fellow council member here to my right I just in my head I'm thinking that we're bringing in consultants to do a specific body of work and then those consultants move on and I appreciate you know what you were saying but I just want to be careful that we're bringing them in for something and then they go on and consult other cities to do what they do that's what they do but I again with the the amount of talking we just keep talking it out I can appreciate the fact also that if we're going to be looking at a long term then this is a time to start augmenting the the staff to go along with that to to think about a long-term staff at some point we're going to stop growing I don't know how long it's going to be 10 15 years a lot of ways you know you know but people are going to be coming and going that's what my concern is is that we're we're already losing staff you know there's a turnover rate here where they're going somewhere else to make their mark so I don't want to get hung up on that particular part where we're going to keep losing and getting in and slowing things down I thought I just put that out there thank you thank you okay thank you very much appreciate it it is just about 415 we'll take a 15 minute break come back at 430 pick up the last few work sessions and then we have to hustle to get to closed session after that be a break to 430 thanks and welcome back to this meeting of the Denton City Council it is 427 we do are we're back and have a quorum so we will call the next item I'll remind those staff that let me know during the break those with masks you'll need to get closer to the mic there's some trouble hearing you that someone reported that to them so just passing that along takes us to our fifth work session item item e which is ID two to four six nine receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding the proposal proposed street sign topper program for the city of Denton good afternoon mayor and City Council members Cameron Robertson historic preservation officer and principal planner for the city of Denton oh my apologies so tonight or this afternoon's presentation is pretty brief well staff will take you all through the background of the program staffs proposed annual budget as well as a general overview of the design standards so as you all know this is a result of a one-minute pitch from councilmember bird in September 2021 we presented to City Council on February 1st and from that president presentation City Council gave us direction regarding the primary funding source as well as providing a sign allowance for eligible neighborhoods so the proposed annual budget will be overseen by traffic and operations department this will allow a maximum of 10 neighborhoods per year with a maximum of 20 signs per neighborhood with the opportunity to hold over extra signs with the operations team in case of future theft or accident of those signs so the breakdown of the material and labor costs as well as annual budget costs are shown the signs would be fabricated by Centerline Supply Inc or another third party at approximately $85 the brackets $20 themselves totaling in a hundred and five dollars for both sign and bracket and then the labor equipment and equipment would be approximately 25 the annual budget cost breakdown so if you're looking at 25 signs per neighborhood this would result in $2,650 without the cost of labor with that additional three thousand seven hundred fifty once you incorporate all the ten neighborhoods to cover that labor and cost so this would turn out to be a total annual budget of thirty thousand and as stated as you can see on this PowerPoint as well if the neighborhood requires and/or wants additional signage above that maximum of 25 signs it will be paid for by the neighborhood just to briefly cover the design standards again we have an example here of our diagram examples the font size would range between two to three inches and so that it could be completely visible from the street signs will need to be reflective and assigned background and content must contrast the graphics the city then will only allow one graphic per neighborhood and then the background color provided would be dark gray dark red dark green dark blue light brown dark brown and black and white so staff is looking for City Council direction regarding the annual budget of 30,000 that maximum of 10 neighborhoods per year allowing them a maximum of 10 25 signs granted a year per neighborhood and then if the neighborhood wishes to exceed that maximum 25 signs allotted to them additional signs will be paid for by the neighborhood and we can stand for any questions questions for staff customer back thank you mr. mayor I like everything I heard my problem is the the sort of 25 signs limit because that feels like it's not appropriate to the neighborhood I'm gonna suggest an alternative direction to see if other people like that and that is all collectors and larger and however many that is for a given region and then if you if you want to have greater signed density than collector you can apply to council or get community funding and that way for certain neighborhoods that maybe can't come up with a community funding but there's great will in our community that's a council choice if there's a but if they have great will and and the ability to raise funds and they can do they want to do the residential streets or you know then I think then we can do that but I'm gonna recommend collector and hire simply because I don't think we should make our name for the same reason we had in prior discussions I think the majority of us didn't want to make our neighborhoods necessarily paid for street signs that was the impression I got I would love to hear everybody's opinion but I'm recommending not 25 but collector and hire yeah my I had essentially the same question that 25 signs per neighborhood seems a little bit like one size fits all I might be open to councilmember backs suggested of doing all collectors would it be feasible with the way that this application process is going to be structured to just say we will make a total of 250 signs this year if one neighborhood needs 50 and the other needs 10 and you know like because different neighborhoods are of different sizes and have different numbers of streets that they might want to mark perhaps that would allow you know kind of keep the budget the same but allow more flexibility for some neighborhoods to have more and some neighborhoods to have less so regarding the budget they would be able to staff didn't obviously go into that in the presentation but they would be able to have up to a maximum of 25 so say if they only needed 15 then they could just get the 15 maybe get five additional leftover and then they could store at the operations department so they're not held to that 25 if they don't need the 25 that's just if the neighborhood chooses okay to get that maximum out can we then say okay if this neighborhood only wants 15 can the other 10 go into a bank that could be used by another neighborhood that maybe wants 35 I would direct that question I'm not sure Daniel Kramer deputy director operations I don't see an issue with that we just have to look at different ways where we could track it and put that in the way we looked at this is setting up as the majority of the neighborhoods that we did look at around the city were anywhere from you know 10 to 15 signs upwards of 2025 there wasn't too many that were over there probably are some that we missed but it was just trying to make it consistent on just putting a budget number together and where we're at so that is something we can look at it'll just take a little bit more stuff on our side to be able to track that and keep track of how many signs we have okay yeah I mean if there aren't any neighborhoods that would want more than 25 then maybe that's it that's a moot point but I just just a thought that I had okay anyone else mayor pro tem thank you I think that's a perfectly reasonable way to arrive at a budget but given that maybe I have a different view of this you know then some others might or I view this as a thing the city is doing in collaboration with the neighborhood that it's I really don't care about you know will you have to pay for two more signs and or you didn't use less I don't see it as being about that what I would suggest is okay that's the budget along the lines of a councilmember McGuire said we can make 250 this year here's a neighborhood that we want to focus on you can make a thoughtful recommendation to the neighborhood maybe it's collectors or whatever here's you know our recommendation to you that what would mark this space well and you obviously will have dialogue maybe you know there'll be something you'll learn in the dialogue and then you know kind of go from there go to the next one it's not this idea that you know it's like kind of people waiting in line and you're portioning out soup or something it's just not it to me you're more you know it's no no different in my mind than the historic districts that we have you know I never got asked once how many signs need to be in the historic district or I never got asked to pay for anything that got stolen it's part of the city's marking of space and you know thank goodness the neighbors are interested in contributing their identity it was just wrong - yeah so I think Mayor Pro Tem articulated it really well I agree you know I'm totally okay with the budget and you know also the around 25 signs granted per year per neighborhood is for me sounds like a really good figure for staff to have in mind and I think on the public's end that it should just come forward each request is you know here's you know what what did you the neighborhood have in mind you know you might want to consider you know having all your collectors for instance or just a kind of conversation that y'all know how to do that you don't know need you know council to explain to you you know how to have organically with the neighborhood just kind of keeping in mind that figure of yeah that's a mess about how much we could do within this but set budget per year but not limiting you know not not telling the the neighborhoods that they couldn't that they can't have any more than that I'm guessing probably most and it sounds like that fits with with your prediction to you that most will not request it'll probably be rare if there never if anyone requests more than 25 signs okay anyone else comes over yeah I would agree with Councilman Beck on the idea of you know the collectors as we probably move into those larger neighborhoods but we do have a lot of little boutique type neighborhoods which is a few streets some neighborhoods may have a just a need of eight to ten signs so we would definitely want to make sure that all of those points were hit in those for sure smaller neighborhoods but when you get out into the big GJ situation that we have you know maybe it might be appropriate at that time so I think that we need to give ourselves some flexibility there anyone else I think the idea here is this is a pilot program we have some recommendations of what we're doing I certainly as Danny said we probably will not exceed 25 but we'll work with those individual neighborhoods to ask them where would you like to see the signs where would you like to see the placements and and if we see that there's need for more signs you know we'll come back if we need to and say we're seeing a need for more signs we'll ask for assistance and go from there okay very good thank you thank you very much I appreciate it all right concludes that item to get there takes us to so if is ID two two seven zero four hold a discussion give staff direction regarding board commission and committee appointee relationships there is no formal presentation on this this item was placed on the agenda at your request at the last meeting wait to hear from you excellent thank you very much appreciate it just to start the conversation and then so the goal is to give staff direction regarding how we want to manage relationships when it comes to our council appointees specifically the going through the ethics training recently it asked and we decided that we were going to work to have a standard of avoid avoiding the appearance of impropriety and it came I place this on the agenda looking forward trying to understand how we want to address a policy it came to mind because of a vote on a P&Z member that was not disclosed so there was a payment to a P&Z member on a Monday let's say we voted on a Tuesday and there was only one council member that I think had that information and the city manager has been good and staffs been good about making sure we all have the same information all answers are provided at the same time before a vote and had I known that I would have pulled the that vote for discussion so that brings me to today's discussion and it's simply to give staff direction I don't know what other options are out there it is really for me my intent is carte blanche just the staff get direction to because I think it's going to take more than an hour whatever the hourly limit is to come back build something come back to us and make a suggestion I don't have a suggestion don't have a ordinance I like I've purposefully not read anything to make sure I am as unbiased as humanly possible so I put that before the council just to say when it comes to disclosure making sure we all have the same information we don't have a provision we have family member protections if we pay them then that's an issue but we don't have an issue when it comes to our boards and commissions so I make a suggestion and I'm gonna I'm one looking for three others to say yes this the appearance of this could be problematic obviously there's some in the public that have found it to be problematic and I want to make sure as a body we adopt our goal of transparency and make sure we stay above though just address those issues as they come up so it's just a loophole that we need to in my opinion address so that's where we are I'll take from others cancer amateur yeah so I would like to hear from a city auditor who is overseas the ethics ordinance you know what your sense is and I could tell you and I could ask it as a question and say here's how I understand it am I correct but I think it would be better for everyone you know to just hear it from you to what extent the our ethics ordinance as it stands now does or doesn't cover such fiduciary relationships kind of both in in the example you mentioned which I think I'm not sure exactly I understand that example but I think I understand and just kind of generally and because I know that it's clear that we have rules about if a council member or board member gets six hundred dollars or more I've always thought it should be just a dollar you know I don't know where you know wife how 599 is okay and 600 is a problem but not so much that it goes the other way as far as fiduciary relationships go so if you could just kind of just speak to that to give some background yes so the ethics I'm sorry Madison Russia a city auditor I'm also the staff liaison to the Board of Ethics so the ethics ordinance does prohibit a council member from deliberating on a pending matter which is the which has its own definition if they have a conflicting interest which includes a number of things I think most potentially most relevant here is receipt of more than six hundred dollars I think to your question it does not prohibit payment if there's a if you've made payments of six hundred dollars or more does that answer your question I can read the definition of pending matter you know that yeah that does that that that meets with my end and that kind of brings me back to you a conversation that was had way back in the day before I was on council but when I was involved in attending his discussions about ethics the ethics ordinance in there was were some who supported and I was one of them as a member of the public and I'm having fiduciary relationships just more broadly covered by this ethics ordinance you know doesn't matter if money's going one way or both ways why not have it either way you know that is I'm not sure you know if that is off posting to discuss that because I think it I feel like it to to kind of pinpoint just one example where you've got if as I think I understand you mayor so are you saying there was so if a situation where a council member appoints a nominate or council votes on a board or committee appointment where that person or that appointee has a fiduciary relationship with a council member but that's not that's not disclosed or did that there's a fiduciary relationship come after I was a little unclear on kind of the timeline of that or how much that the timeline even makes a difference no I don't think the timeline makes a difference I think just a disclosure right so I think it's either before or after right you know either way just the disclosure of that that financial relationship so and thank you so again I don't know if this is off posting or not but I mean I think that this just speaks to why our ethics ordinance really needs a in my opinion a instead of kind of improving it by picking it apart piecemeal repeal and replace with a standard you know one of these template ethics ordinances that already has in there that already addresses fiduciary interests more broadly otherwise every time a little issue comes up we're gonna put something in there and then there's something out some other kind of fiduciary relationship is gonna pop up we've got an orphan in ordinance it doesn't address fiduciary relationships from both sides only from just one side okay Councilman Davis yeah in a nutshell I mean I wonder if people are tuning in and kind of wondering what in the world we're talking about the situation as I understand it is that we have a member of the planning and zoning commission who was appointed to that to that position by this council because that's how we do those things typically appointments are most often by consent we all voted for that persons that person to be appointed but it was unknown to almost all of the council at the time that that person was at least a paid contractor had received large sums of money to work on a council members political campaign it is not uncommon at all for council members to nominate someone to a board who they have personal relationships with or even there might be there they might be political supporters they might have worked on their campaign they might have worked knocked on doors for him it might have been their kindergarten teacher that's how we find these folks to be on these boards to nominate is that we have personal relationships with them or we know they have expertise in the community or we know that they're engaged in the community the particular person who is appointed to planning and zoning who I voted for I I've said before I've said to them publicly publicly one-on-one I would vote for them citizen again I supported their their appointment to PNC the thing that surprised me that's different from what I just described is that they were a paid political consultant that there was a not a little bit not just a dollar there was a substantial financial relationship between that person in councilmember Melzer and a lesser to lesser extent councilmember McGuire and I was aware that that person had worked on councilmember McGuire's campaign I don't think I was aware that they were paid if I if I was it didn't really hit home and I didn't really process it and I certainly was not aware at the time that we voted that that person was a paid contractor to the extent that he was for councilmember Melzer I think it would be advantageous to us as a group to have a rule that if you have any financial relationship with someone who's being appointed to a city position that that has to be disclosed it could go as far as recusal if we wanted it to I don't know that that's necessary like I said we have personal relationships with lots of people in this community not all of them rise to the level of a financial relationship but I think it has to be disclosed it's one thing that it shows up on a campaign disclosure but those happen at far intervals that you could go if you're not on the ballot that year you can go many months without anybody having any idea what kind of money a campaign spent so I think it's important that the disclosure is part of our standing rules part of our ethics ordinance that any financial relationship between us any city official and any appointee that we're going to be putting on these boards is disclosed may I pretend yeah I'm totally fine with that you know what we have are situations where we're talking about people who are you know whose relationships are disclosed according to what the rules currently are but I would say let's not be selective if we're going to talk about a financial relationship let's not have it only be this one narrow case that you might want to talk about now but you have somebody well okay we have for instance a transfer of funds from Jason Cole to Don Duff then Don Duff turns around and appoints Jason to PNZ we had a transfer if I think it was $2,000 from former Mayor Watts to former Mayor Watts from former Councilmember Joe Mulroy and then former Mayor Watts appoints I mean you can do this all day the points former councilmember Mulroy to Denton Housing Authority so I would just say don't be selective I'm more than happy to go by a sort of universal rule that at the time of appointments anything whether it's been previously disclosed or not it's not that people have to go digging to find it it's like what are the relationships where has the money moved I have no problem with that whatsoever it was Councilor McGuire yeah I agree I think that you know I don't know if I would go so far as recusal but I think that I think that pardon me disclosures is perfectly reasonable you know in in the case of Commissioner Villarreal's relationship with me that those financial reports were had already been made public before I nominated him to PNZ so that that was public knowledge that he worked on my campaign and that I paid him a little bit for his time but but yeah I mean I thought you have an excellent point that you know given the timing of committee nominations and the release of campaign finance reports that there can be situations where something like that might fall through the cracks and I think it's it's I think a disclosure form particularly if it's in between financial reporting deadlines would be I would be comfortable with that. Councilman Bet. Thank you Mr. Mayor I think you're you're not going to find people on this council that are I hope you won't find people in this council they're against you know really you know making sure that the public is aware of what the relationships are I think that's ideal for the government that we have here in Denton. I do think you know there's gonna have to be some nuance you know if I if I you know appoint a car dealer and I bought a car for more than six hundred dollars from him is you know are we gonna call that financial relationship fiduciary relationship I think there's some gonna be some sort of silly points that we'll run into that are different than you know some of the arguments that we've heard about you know campaign finance donations and things like that I will also caution the council to remember who has the power we have the power in this relationship so the people that we are appointing are advising us it is our votes that are you know so the directionality of power is not from the commissioners or the Board and Commission to this direction that is the direction of advice but the direction of power is is we have the power all right so in terms of like ethical considerations I think you need to be you know mindful of where is the directionality of the abuse of power but you know if you want to if we want to have all those relationships over our ethical standards whatever those are I think that would be wise I just think that we need to be careful that it is it is you know evenly applied and and designed to curtail behaviors that we want without chilling participation in boards and commissions because you know you know you happen to buy a car from someone or you bought a boat from someone or you know you whatever so I think you know those sort of incidental fiduciary relationships we'll have to carefully define you know if you're just going to set a dollar amount and I still think most of those are completely inconsequential because the power structure comes from us not the other way around. Okay Councilman Barrett and then Councilmember Amateur. So then the question becomes you know ethically what difference does it make when the public is aware if we're talking about disclosure so we've disclosed there it is now what that's the part that I guess we'll need to you know come to so what is the consequence of this type of action also with me it resonates with the timing whether or not this person was already on the seat and then they were you know chose to work with a councilmember or whether or not the councilmember was here and chose to utilize the service of this individual how is that all connected how are we going to look at those things differently thanks. Councilmember Amateur. Yeah so I think in my opinion we're getting too in the weeds on this to focus on just the issue of board and committee appointees and then to kind of pick it apart you know respectfully and to look at well what kind of fiduciary relationships matter and which you know so hiring for a campaign versus buying a car or a boat to use councilmember Beck's example it's important that we remember that the whole purpose of an ethics ordinance is about public trust and the appearance of public trust and I don't think it matters what we think about who has the power in certain relationships it is to you know the idea is to be as transparent as possible on any and all fiduciary relationships which which I understand our current ethics ordinance doesn't require and that's part of the problem I have with our current ethics ordinance and then to let the public decide what they think about that it's it's really up to the public I do think that it should be you know more than just disclosure you know I think recusal and but it doesn't mean that a person can't get appointed to a board or committee so I don't think it would have a chilling factor it just means that a certain person you know on council who's got a fiduciary relationship can't vote but I also you know I would I would be opposed to putting in something in there adding yet another detail to our what I think is a messy ethics ordinance that singles out this issue of board and commission so for instance imagine you know a planning and a case of planning and zoning type case that comes before council where say I have say there's an architect who I pay to design something for my house and that architect is coming but you know it's also a contractor I'm just making this up sorry it's also contractor and is is you know coming before council for it with an SUP I think that that that council member you know if that was me in that situation should recuse if that again that the definite as you mentioned pending matter is defined and it pending matter is very important here because it's not you know if this architect just happened to work with someone there or if this architect came and spoke to council and said I think it would be really great if you did this you know it would have to be if that person I had a fiduciary relationship with has that pending matter before council or is the pending matter on council which is what we're talking about when we're talking about boarding committee appointments that person that individual is the pending matter before council their name so again I can't emphasize enough how we need to make it just about fiduciary relationships across the board this would be about changing our the way we define conflicts of interest I personally think the $600 mark is arbitrary I think it should be anything or at least you know a lot lower than not and and we need to have it broadly include it all pending matters and not just be about boards and committees or we're gonna we meaning councils for a perpetuity keep adding little bits and pieces on to this ethics ordinance it gets messier and messier again we really need to just repeal and replace with something much broader okay Councilor Davis councilmember armature I agree with a lot of what you just had to say I don't agree with the full repeal and replace you know I've worked a lot with the ethics code I think there's a lot good to work with there the reason why I'm kind of focused on this one is it's the one that is that has come up I agree it's generally not a good idea to just kind of piecemeal but you know sit there and imagine all the different things that could happen to write a broader rule that's generally better and I think what we're seeing in this one is that it's kind of a question of degree you know if I disclose that I bought a car from somebody or about Girl Scout cookies from somebody's kid that's not a big deal that's I mean probably nobody on the council is gonna blink at that I'm gonna make my disclosure and then my appointee is gonna is gonna get appointed or that that person with a doing a garage addition their house or whatever that I happen to buy Girl Scout cookies from they're gonna get their project through and nobody's gonna blink that the difference for this one for me that the thing that is different about this is I disagree with you councilmember back on this question of power an appointment to a City Board of Commission it's a volunteer position but it is a thing of value in some cases those appointments or even property rights that someone cannot be divested of without due process it is a thing of value to be appointed to especially our quasi judicial boards and commissions so I'm got to be I'm really really careful about this idea of the powers just flow in one direction I disagree there is such a thing as giving out favors and that is what I'm most concerned about that if someone renders good service then they they get a favor they get a something they get a they get a cookie they get a prize the difference for me in this situation is that my vote would have been different with the disclosure it would not have been different with the disclosure of Girl Scout cookies or buying a car or whatever de minimis example my vote in this particular instance would have been different and it was a material fact in my decision making as a council member still would a hundred percent vote for that person as a person at this moment or if I'd known at the proper time if it been properly disclosed I would not have voted that for that person at that time so that's why I'm I'm focused mostly on this particular issue even though I recognize that there's probably a broader conversation to be had I appreciate that we do need to come into de minimis considerations for ethics community otherwise we we are in the circumstance of reporting Girl Scout cookies and other things and so I do think that that is important but I also think it's really really important that we talk about in these relationships again I don't think you're not hearing anyone say don't report anything all right that's not what's happening on this dais what you're hearing is is sort of the rationale and the order and the why and what you're trying to accomplish what are the goals what are the ethics goals that you're trying to accomplish and I and I I think one thing to consider is for say this in this particular case and I don't want to focus on this too much but that the planning and zoning is about land development and code and the expertise of the Commissioner Villarreal is his is is in this case campaign related and organizational related and so you know at best the there's there's the there's no impact from having Commissioner Villarreal adjudicate even if you talk about the quasi judicial relationships of these things because he has no no bearing his his his financial status has no bearing on those and other ethical ordinances would would kick in if we were talking about his personal property or or anything else that would be covered by a conflict of interest now again I'm saying that you know if you we want to we can have a future discussion about you know what is the absolute level of transparency that will not bog down everything to a halt while we like deal with that I do think that we need to consider what we what goals we're trying to establish and solve with particular ethics ordinances and what what behaviors are we trying to encourage and discourage and I think that's that's when I want to respond to councillor Davis on okay anyone else counselor I'll just say real quick I was debating whether or not to say this but I'll just throw this in there you know the Girl Scout cookies example you buy Girl Scout cookies from a kid I know that a lot of parents you know do a lot of the legwork I don't think that's cool I think it should be the kid doing but you know I would say if that you know the kids gonna not gonna be coming up from you but you know if I bought a lot of cookies from you directly from you you know then I personally think that that could have a conflict of public appearance of conflict including as far as gifts go to you know who's to say that's not a gift and and I know that it has to do with the the value of the monetary value of that gift and we have a clause in the ethics are not for that but again I think it's just not our job to parcel out these little examples and really to set to just draw the circle broadly not to make it up on our own to see what other cities have done and their templates out there and just to go with that and and then see what happens and let the Ethics Committee do its job okay thank you yeah I just want to point out that the narrative that councilmember Davis described of a thing of value being gained in an appointment follows the examples that I raised of money going to council members and then the person who gave the money getting the thing of value that's that's the difference and I would say absolutely include those councilmember Davis I mean kind of follow along I mean I agree to some extent with what councilmember Beck was saying about you know the concern that we have the thing we're more concerned about is the flow of power in one particular direction you know the flow of money in one particular direction but if I'm the the managing partner of a law firm and I am on the City Council and I appoint my secretary and my partner and my so-and-so and all of these people whose livelihoods derived from my operation everybody's gonna have a problem with that that's an issue you you can't in one month in one word say or one sentence say what you're describing is an issue and not recognize that having a paid contractor putting them on a board without disclosure is not also an issue I think it's fair to call it an issue I think it's fair to have disclosure and I don't think that we we do ourselves much good to councilmember Armitage point getting involved in questions of degrees say it should be disclosed should have been disclosed and let's going forward disclose it okay anyone else okay so I see the manage can you have someone help me just cover I purple you know I purposely wanted to just kind of say introduce and then step back so I need help kind of finding the common interest and if there's any consensus there so I guess I would come after the fact yeah you know you can just watch the tape or something or and just kind of reduce to writing what you heard if that's okay raised to the Board of Ethics or is it something that you would like staff to deal with separately developing a disclosure disclosure process there's a number of options sure I'm gonna defer to my peers see if we can find consensus there right on next steps that's a great question thank you just going around counselor Davis we've got a Board of Ethics I mean I don't see a problem with referring to them if we wanted to it's gonna eventually come back to us if we wanted to short-circuit that and take it up in a council work session I think that's fine but we appointed those folks for purposes like that anyone else can I just add I'm sorry they and they're currently discussing the conflict of interest ordinance in their meetings that like piece by piece that's currently what the Board of Ethics is doing okay yeah counselor Matt in sorry thank you I think in light of that then then just let the Board of Ethics do their their due diligence let them report back to us about any issues they will hear of this and they can they can make recommendations because that's their purview and and then we can vote on those okay anyone else great thank you thank you okay that takes us to our last work session item is a series that the pitches so we'll do that it's ID two two zero five three receive report hold discussion give staff direction on pending City Council requests good evening mayor and council I'm Monica Benavides management analyst and I was present I will present for you tonight the City Council pending request for information as a reminder of this process up to seven requests will be heard per meeting and tonight we have two that I'll be introducing staff will introduce each request the elected official that made the request will have up to two minutes to describe and justify their request remaining elected officials will then have up to one minute to provide feedback and indicate their support for the use of staff time to respond to the request staff will respond to all requests were a consensus of council is established I won't read this live verbatim however it's a reminder of the priorities that will be said the first request comes from councilmember Davis item number one a work session to consider the creation of an emergency volunteer corps councilmember you may proceed when you're ready thank you so I trust everybody has read the the request and the staff response and I want to be really clear that what I'm asking for is not necessarily to reinvent the wheel if we had a cert chapter I'd be fine with that but that's not necessarily what I'm asking for I think that in the staff response we focus a little bit on the tasks and I'm really more concerned with the people in the workforce during the winter storm one of the things we found out was there are a lot of people who wanted to help and they just needed to be pointed in the right direction so that it resulted in a lot of kind of ad hoc call up the members of your Rotary Club call up the kids in your scout troop gather up your neighbors and we were doing welfare checks we were distributing water there was a you know I don't know if you call them an armada or a fleet of a pickup trucks delivering water and that kind of stuff a lot of that could have happened faster and even better with just a simple text message list an app sign up an email list whatever it is when we were looking for the kid over in the Owsley area who unfortunately passed away that was a lot of ad hoc everybody just kind of everybody come out and help if you can knock on doors get neighbors and that kind of stuff that's a situation where we could have sent out a text message or a red alert or an app something to get folks to respond to a central location people who already know to respond to a central kind of chain of command and be boots on the ground I'm not so much talking about specifically trained tasks although that's possible and could be useful I'm really talking more about eyes ears hands and feet that's a missing piece that we don't have right now and we have a staff member who I think has the capacity to do that level of stuff if we want a cert chapter fantastic I don't think we need a specific Denton Medical Reserve Corps we have an excellent County Medical Reserve Corps but what I'm really talking about is not reinventing what's out there already but developing a quick response team of folks who I know are out there because we saw them during the winter storm we saw them during the manhunts that we've had to do we've seen them when we had the tornado in Northeast Denton we saw folks respond if we can coordinate them just a little bit better we can do an even better job of community response okay guess we're back thank you mr. mayor I think I'd rather take the tact of galvanizing that kind of will that we saw during Yuri through the auspices of an existing nonprofit or an existing cert or an existing mechanism because they already have that infrastructure in place and it would be better for maybe the city's efforts to to get our citizenry into that system rather than again reinventing the wheel so that we get the benefits that he he's talking about counselor Davis is talking about because I completely agree about the benefits but I think it would be more prudent to and to somehow leverage existing nonprofits and inserts and things like that then necessarily dedicate staff time to that okay anyone else councilman McGuire thanks I disagree with Councilman back I think that that having our own cert chapter would be incredibly useful I think several of us work with the medical reserve Corps with with Denton County Public Health and I mean that was a really big part of why the the the mass vaccination clinics at the Texas Motor Speedway were so incredibly successful is because there was an army of folks who weren't medical well some of them are medical professionals and of course with their intake and their training there's documentation of who is and is not a medical professional so the medical professionals can be put in medical positions and people like me can be assigned to you know sanitizing clipboards or whatever and and I think that yeah I in the event of a local emergency like Yuri having a database of some sort where we can quickly and easily easily contact people and we know who is and isn't a medical professional who has various skills that might be useful in that situation and they can be quickly assigned to to tasks that are appropriate to their skills I think we would really benefit from that that's roger yeah I agree with Councilmember McGuire I think a certain team would be very helpful and I also think it would be helpful to have a way for people to sign up who maybe don't want to be part of us don't want to commit to being part of a certain team but just people who we have so many people who want to help out who say how can I help out and there are more ways to help out than just being on a board and committee you know that's one obvious way so sometimes it's just you know I'll have your name for instance when we need to a community tree survey you know we can just send out the call and I know we tend to do that anyway but we do it on the website it would be great to have people boots on the ground including and I'll add to it Councilmember Beck said we've got nonprofits but we've also got grassroots boots on the ground who are of course our nonprofits are grassroots but you know who are doing this on their own get whole teams of them to sign up I just think it would I can only see the good of this thank you anyone else may pretend I think I made the exact same proposal after URI and got the exact same response and I would say I'm really you know unhappy that I didn't raise this again when we're going through you know gee what did we learn because you know we should have done that so that we had that in place this time because there was an amazing outpouring you know of community will to lend a hand and but if we can leverage a search structure so that you have a kind of tree and branch communication system so you can activate people in a more organized way I think that's that's great so you know I I agree with the sentiment and I think there's a smart way to do it and we should have done it customer bird just simply speaking I think we need to start on search after Councilwoman armature noted that people just wanted to help how do they help who's who who are they gonna contact who's gonna contact them back who's gonna send them the way they need to go all that comes under some kind of organization some kind of structure rather they want to be a part of it or not they put themselves in that position to be a part of it so yes I think that that would be a great way to begin this process is by having an organized way to do that and if that includes the nonprofits to bring them in on it and the city oversees it along of course with the nonprofits which is what we do anyway in in the most in the basic sense of the word I think that we should just go ahead and look into doing that thank you okay thank you so that that's consensus but I'll just add I really like the example Councilman McGuire use having volunteered out there the speedway it truly was plug-and-play and and I think we're working on that anyway from a notice requirement city managers doing great work about sending out information and the county does regular updates just because you know so I think that practice so I think it weaves into what we're doing I'll leave it to the city manager but I think it weaves in the kind of what we're doing now and having thank you for the clarity today kind of understanding your vision that that's helpful so yeah look forward to what comes back and I think it'll it'll yield great results thank you thank you okay item number two the requester is mayor Pro Tem Meltzer a work session exploring required recusals related to campaign donations from industry packs thank you lately we're seeing a lot of efforts to throw shade create smoke in my opinion this proposal deals with where the actual fire is this larger project of trying to control the public affairs of the city for the benefits of private interests this goes to the heart of public trust in what we actually do on council and it's high time it gets addressed this is to request a work session exploring required recusals related to campaign donations from industry packs in our fast-growing city the public needs confidence the decisions about development are made with the interests of the community as a whole in mind it undermines that confidence when we see thousands of dollars flowing to local office holders from interested parties like Texas realtors apartment Association of Greater Dallas and Texas Association of Builders they're fine organizations and are well within their rights to advocate as they see fit but let's deal with the unseemly business of cash going to council members who then must weigh cases from members of those very groups I would like to discuss requiring recusal of council members from cases of members of groups that have given that council member more than $500 understand this does not prevent nor attempt to prevent anyone from taking that developer money it's perfectly legal you want to keep taking it go ahead scoop it up with both hands but let's at least avoid the appearance to the public of a potential quid pro quo in the exercise of our powers now as it happens I learned this morning that completely independently the Board of Ethics has been working on a similar proposal to bring to council it would be fine with me if council wants to to take up these proposals at the same time okay counselor Davis I think that came on a little strong I mean you already got your DRC article and all that all that good ink you can't pick good guys and bad guys you can't say a pack in any context is an aggregation of assets and resources to accomplish a political purpose you can't say with one side of your mouth well the Denton realtors who contribute to their state pack should have left less of a voice or an influence or whatever on their city council then Denton together 500 bucks from the tree pack is the same thing as $519 and printing and postage from Denton together it's an aggregation of resources want to talk about disclosure fantastic disclosures good but to say that well if you take money from the bad guys you have to recuse if that tree pack member if that local realtor is doing a garage addition you've got a recuse because somehow that $500 aggregated from across the state or whatever is influencing your vote interesting price point by the way that that's how much you think of vote cost on the Denton City Council $500 I'm offended by this not because I think pack money is fantastic and everybody ought to take it but because it is clearly picking good guys and bad guys and clearly taking shots cancer bird let's go ahead and take up these items together put them together that they were already working on let's add this along with that and you guys come back to us with something who else councilor boy yeah you know I on some level agree with councilmember Davis that there are inherent difficulties in are going to be inherent difficulties and establishing what exactly we need to recuse from right I mean some members of this council I believe have taken political donations from the Texas Associated Association of Builders and here we are about to vote on code amendments that that that association you know has endorsed and there are going to be difficulties in gray areas but I think that I would like to see this come before council in a work session along with what the ethics board is already working on so that we can have that discussion and work out what where what exactly we're talking about here and what types of recusals would be required because I to your point councilmember Davis it we can't paint with a broad brush in this area it was councilmember Archer yes so you know I appreciate mayor pro tem Meltzer bringing this issue forward I agree with councilmember bird that it goes very well with the previous issue that we had a whole you know work session item on and you know I would like to see these this problem kicked to back to the ethics committee to then come forward to us to see how they would propose we resolve it because regardless of what people think about this so this proposed solution you know and I agree that there are all kinds of problems including a member of a group you know some group have groups have thousands of members also the question of a pending matter you know is the group coming before with the pending matter I'm very proud to have gotten some support from a civil rights group you know does that mean every time a civil rights issue you know comes up which I have to you know it raises questions like that however the problem is a real problem of public trust as far as you know money from especially from developers packs but I agree that we can't look at this problem if we want to solve this problem we can't just plug in developers packs we have to think about it every kind of any kind of pack including an civil rights pack an environmental pack and to make it work for public trust okay yeah I sort of think I'm supporting the the the sort of combined approach that I heard from councillor bird I think that we need to have a work session but I think that work session needs to be after the ethics committee combines and puts everything together I think it's really important that we address all these issues and that we address the goals of ethics and transparency dig to get at this idea that you know whether with you know where our conflicts of interest and and how do we how do we limit the the nature of that so I would support both which is what I heard councillor bird say okay and then I'll just say I'm gonna try to get this down a rarely read but I want to make sure I kind of stay as neutral as humanly possible I think for me truly it is a equality versus equity issue and in ensuring a fair election process and transparency organizations have a right to contribute to whomever they want to support that's been stated but not many candidates can lend themselves fifty thousand two hundred and fifty dollars versus a donation to yourself differences alone voters will never know who paid that back because it's after election when you're when you're paid back that every candidate will have the support of a national candidate contributing in kind donations what will be the results of that would a person have to recuse from everything so the equity is allowing people to do exactly what is being done today and individual loan themselves fifty thousand two hundred fifty dollars financially supported other candidates that he agrees with and that's fair 2019 election results prove that who has the most funding funding doesn't win so I support the work session to find out how much influence twelve thousand dollars buys so there's consensus for two together kind of bringing it back with ethics thing yes I mean what my understanding is mayor this would go together with the previous item that was mentioned there's four for that which would go through the work of the Ethics Commission and then come back as a work session that's my understanding great so dinners here so we'll grab that we're we have an hour to get through a closed session so chief will take you first and after closed session let's take ten minutes to grab food that puts us so we'll oh let me do this let me take us in the closed session first then we can come back and get right to it so we're going to go in the closed session deliberate consultation with the 20s under Texas government code five five dot seven five five one dot zero seven one receipt of information from the city attorneys under Texas government code five or one regarding legal issues relating to officer involved shooting on January 29th so we're going we're going oh okay okay and then also deliberations regarding personnel matters under Texas government code five five one dot zero seven four and consultation with attorney under Texas government code section five five one dot zero seven one consultation with the city attorneys regarding legal issues associated with the North American reliability corporation NERC regulatory matters so we'll be it's 530 yes 530 now we'll take a break come back and close session at 545 thank you good afternoon and welcome to this meeting of the Denton City Council thank you for your patience run a little bit behind but we were getting lots done so I appreciate that so it's 643 I'll call the meeting order we do have a quorum the first thing on the agenda is pledges to the United States and Texas flag please stand with me if you're able I put the legions to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Honor the Texas flag, I pledge allegiance to the Texas, one state, under God, one indivisible. I think that I think I am so and just in case I don't think I mentioned it so it just to hit the date just in case for it's the fifth April 5th and so just in case so I'm gonna come down for we have one proclamation so I'll come down for that. Yeah that's great all right yeah that's fantastic that's a good thing I feel safer already okay so here's what here's what we'll do let's get everyone's name because I introduce yourself and kind of what you do or whatever you so I'll pass around and put y'all on the spot and then I'll go down here and we'll read the proclamation. David Powell, building inspector. Billy Thompson, building inspector. John Thomason, building inspector. Rodney Martin, building inspector. Gil Gilbert, building inspector. Ryan Hartley, building inspector. Billy Uton, assistant building official for building inspectors. Scott McDonald, director of development services chief building official for the city. I just want to take a quick moment to thank this staff this is a very talented staff very ethical staff that makes Denton the best place to live work play and for people to visit and it's a result of all the folks that are in the background doing all the hard work ultimately making some people happy making some people less happy but ultimately the goal to take care of all of us so I'm grateful to be here and I certainly am grateful for the staff that works for the city of Denton. Thank you Scott. Emily Loessel, deputy building official. Amber Rogers, assistant building official. Angela Adams, plans examiner. Michelle Brown, plans examiner. Hayden Scarnato, plans examiner. Brad Garrett, building inspector. Josh Hamlin, plans examiner. David Boots, battalion chief Denton fire department safety and wellness. David Becker, Denton fire department fire marshal. Tom Roeder, building inspector. Great thank you very much I have to get a I got to start hanging out with the building inspectors there's lots of them they're safety and numbers you really man that's something else we're building a lot of stuff here in Denton. Excellent okay I have a proclamation so slide on up here Scott or somebody I don't want to be I get nervous in front of crowds so I need your help yeah yeah okay here we go a proclamation by the mayor of the city of Denton Texas to all whom these presence shall come greetings whereas the building the the buildings where we live learn work worship play and go to school each day are among the safest in the world and whereas often we cannot foresee our or prevent dangerous situations such as fires and severe weather though thoughtfully written building codes and diligence of building safety professionals we can prevent such events from be becoming tragic and whereas building safety month is dedicated to reminding the public about the ethical the the critical role of our communities largely unknown guardians of public safety our local building code of officials who assure us of safe efficient and livable buildings and whereas safety for all building codes in action the theme of the bill for building safety month 2022 encourages awareness and promotes actions everyone can take to ensure that the places we live learn work worship play are safe and recognize that countless lives have been saved due to the implementation of modern building codes and whereas during the month of May and throughout the year we encourage our citizens to learn more about building safety and pay tribute to all who work to keep our building safe throughout our community now therefore I Gerard Hutsworth mayor of the city of Denton Texas do hereby declare and proclaim the month of May 2022 as building safety month and encourage our community to participate in the building safety month activities in Denton so give them a hand please , thank you very much appreciate you thank you appreciate you. okay okay so that takes us to presentations from members of the public we will review our process for addressing the City Council the Denton City Council has adopted rules of procedure including a code of conduct that applies to the public as well as council members these rules were enacted to promote an orderly process and to preserve decorum speakers will have four minutes to give a scheduled report and four minutes to give an open mic report a bell will ring when time is expired if their marks are not concluded by that time the speaker will be asked to stop speaking if the speaker does not cease and a second request is made the mayor may request to have the speaker removed from the chamber speakers should not approach the dais if a speaker has materials for the council please notify the city secretary in advance for scheduled reports the council may initiate discussion or ask questions for non-scheduled open mic reports the council may listen however because no notice of the subject of the open mic report has been provided to the public in advance the Texas Open Meetings Act prohibits discussion or decision by the council on non-scheduled items as a result the council may only proceed as follows on non-scheduled items proposed to place the item on a future agenda make a statement of factual policy or a recitation of existing policy speakers are asked to direct all remarks and questions to the council as a whole and not to any individual member please refrain from making abusive personal impertinent profane or slanderous remarks anyone who violates the council rules of procedure may be immediately removed from the chamber thank you in advance copies of the rules of procedure are available from the city secretary first speaker tonight is ID two two seven one four it's miss Wanda Bowman if you can come down to the front and you'll have if you can give your name and address you have four minutes okay my name is evangelist Wanda Bowman my address is 3400 George Lane apartment 25 - 2000 Denton Texas okay go right ahead okay first is an honor to come before the board and you may I'm not from this area I'm actually from Louisiana I just moved here and my reason for coming before the board as you can see it's dealing with homeless in December I got Kobe which led to my homeless situation but because of my homeless situation it led me into meeting a lot of homeless people in my situation I worked with a lot of homeless people in my hometown in Louisiana in Baton Rouge under the bridge so that was part of my ministry anyway but my concern is how homeless people is being treated here in Denton as far as housing as far as they being treated with dignity trustworthy and loyalty is one of the reason why I come before you all because the way I was placed I worked there was some requirements for me to be able to get housing that I had met way prior to my homelessness and I have been treated a certain way that a lot of homeless people that I have came in communication with has been being here I feel like that it is my duty to make this known I don't know to you all my concerns are how they are being treated and mishandled so that's why I want to come before the board I did not do a presentation or get some documentations together because I've been dealing with some serious issues and matters as it relates to my own personal being I have family members that also end up homeless also in this situation you know but I do plan on coming back I normally have four minutes and preparing some information that will back up what I'm trying to make known to this particular board that oversees this area it was funny you know earlier mayor we didn't know what you look like that is not what you look like we just want our voices to be heard but it was amazing because I also in my area worked on the vote I know it's the election time and for stall your homeless people not to know who their leaders are it's very important for you to know who has your voice who is speaking for you do they have the heart for you and your concerns I was also I don't know how many minutes I have so proud to be here to hear the proclamation that was made concerning even the places on you know our safety or where we live where our kids go to school and that too has become a issue as it relates to the homeless people so I just want to thank you and thank you all for giving me an opportunity to at least do an introduction and I will be coming back to share some more detail information and I will put it together and present it to everyone so that you can see or maybe understand where I'm trying to address the matters from thank you again for being able at least come before you all and thank you all for welcoming into into Texas yes thank you thank you very much appreciate it yes what do you feel most needs to be changed about the way unhoused people are treated you can come back you can come back I'm sorry I didn't see the questions thank you yeah what do you feel most needs to be changed about the way unhoused people are treated and then from my experience when they asked me they made requirements that we had to meet the requirements where you had to have a job they wanted you for bank account they wanted you to be able to provide them a plan or how you was gonna if they place you somewhere how you was going to be able to deal with or pay for your stay okay my position where I was already stable I had what they was offering I had my job I was making that at $17 an hour I had my bank account I was already established I fell into what I fell into because of Coby okay which when that happened over 16 of my family members in up with Coby okay but I did not want to stay in a hotel that they was paying right at almost $4,000 for me I didn't want to use the system I just needed a hand up I didn't want to lay back and just become part of some of the people that had been there had been there for years but they wanted out and they were trying to get out but we could not get out because of they not making the phone calls we was required to go out and look for places went out did what they asked us to do presented the information to them they never called the people the people were study called I'm talking apartment people they were study calling me asking me miss Boehmer are you still interested in the place yes I am I didn't want to play their role their role you know what I'm saying I just want to meet what they require to meet to me I could not meet that that led me into sleeping in my car my family I ended up losing my anyway after that on the 18th of last month they placed me over in a low-income apartment duplex that as I said the living established it's below me and I feel like it was God that had me here even with the proclamation to let me know that he's doing something already because something was put in place you know to ensure us that you all are going to make sure that we are living in safe environments because when I went in that apartment that they did provide to me I was in there for six days with no heat cold I could still been in my car cold water no hot water electricity stuff coming out on the electricity all this okay backed up toilets the even though paperwork that was in there stated that it was like a big paperwork that he had and with the application that was saying that they was putting us in a place where there was going to be criminal activities bad fluids maybe coming through the walls I mean I'm looking at this kind of stuff and reading this this I've come from a small community that's less than a thousand people we had a very bad water issue you can go and Google this and you'll see this nine point eight million dollars me and my husband and seven other people had to go before the legislators and the governor's for them to come into my community and put down new pipes because of the bad water and for me to come and for them to do that to me and my family it was hurtful and harmful and they said the only reason why they did that was now they tried to get me off the car when I was stable I had met all of your requirements that you asked of me and then you belittle me like this and you place me in a place like this and the furniture that they gave to us was dirty I took pictures of it filthy dirty that they delivered to my home I say Kobe is here and you all deliver this kind of stuff to our residents I pushed it out and asked them to come back and pick that up but we had to sleep in it all night long until today is when they came and picked it up they brought it yesterday and I contacted the people that brought it and asked him would you please what do you want me to do with it I didn't want to throw it away I didn't know what they was gonna do with it but they did not respond and I again I thank you a lot of voices is not being heard the young lady told me she said thank you miss Bowman for giving me the opportunity to come here I said this is where you come because your voice can be heard a lot of times people that's poor people that are cast out people they are afraid of you all because they thinking that you're gonna belittle them in some kind I say no they your voices they care about you they can't help you until they hear from you first of all thank you so much for your activism in your former city and in Denton I'm so glad you're in Denton thank you for your bravery in coming and speaking before us today I know you speak not just for yourself but for others and that you're a true activist and I admire that and you and I want to give you my personal cell phone number and if you have a if you can text or email me whatever I would love to meet with you one-on-one I represent citywide so anyone who lives in Denton is in my district there are three citywide at-large members up here and we represent you we all represent you and thank you for coming to talk I just want to say there's you know this expression that I heard from the disability rights community and that is nothing about us without us of course meaning you know no decision should get made without us being at the table and I believe that is true for so many issues including homelessness in Denton now I can't do my job without talking to people who are experiencing homelessness right now in Denton so thank you so much for your bravery and coming before us and helping us do our jobs better I hope to be in touch thank you okay so thank you yeah and staff will be is gonna you can get you yeah that'll be great and then staff will reach out to you before you leave as well so thank you very much and so that takes us to our second speaker Pat Smith it's ID 2 2 7 1 5 mayor we are having a problem with the PowerPoint getting it to pull up if there's someone who can you can take and we'll try to get a new version of this put back on the computer okay got it let's go with so the staff can you confirm that mr. Dillenburg didn't call in he didn't he he did call him he can't okay just wanted to make sure I thought okay great then that takes us to Priscilla and I don't want to say your last name wrong that's ID 2 2 7 6 8 so if you give your name and address and then you'll have four minutes thank you my name is Priscilla you ever you know I am in 115 North Austin so just around the corner let me know if you are ready for me yes by all means awesome so my name is Priscilla I'm a Denton resident of seven years I'm a recent graduate of UNT and today I'll be submitting a Medicare for all resolution and asking you to take that resolution up at your next work session I'm here tonight to explain why I think it is important that the set City Council supports and passes this piece so what are we asking of you and what is Medicare for all we ask that the Denton City Council hereby endorses and urges legislation to provide universal comprehensive health coverage with a zero cost sharing for patients by enacting Medicare for all act of 2021 so why at the local level do I bring this to you as a recent graduate of the MPA program at UNT the public administration program I know very very clearly that the local governments must often deal most directly with the consequences of our unaffordable health insurance system municipal budgets are strapped and local businesses struggle to make ends meet due to rising health insurance premiums local governments provide frontline response when community members face debt related bankruptcies or become ill or die needlessly because they were uninsured first reason I believe that we should pass this is that Medicare for all would represent freedom in health care including but not limited to the freedoms of health justice include included in that is a freedom to obtain medically necessary health regardless of personal financial means employment status and to receive comprehensive care and treatment that includes medical dental mental health prescription drugs addiction treatment hearing and eye care women's health and pediatrics and many other forms of care the second is the moral imperative Texas as you may know has one of the highest rates of uninsurance in the nation and suffers from the worst racial health disparities in the nation 76 percent of uninsured Texans are racial minorities 53 percent are low income that make less than 50,000 in total family income per year one in four Texans struggles with medical bills and one in three Texans lives in neighborhoods of colors color that have significant medical debt which impacts access to employment affordable housing credit and other opportunities the third is common sense summer statistics statistics for you studies find that approximately 40 percent of COVID deaths in the U.S. would have been prevented if we had had health care a health care a health care program similar to other industrialized nations by closing the coverage gap gap and health sorry that threw me off local governments will see savings in tens of millions of dollars per year the state of Texas loses out on 10 billion per year from federal dollars due to it not expanding Medicaid lastly the u.s. spends a substantially larger share of its GDP on health care than other high-income nations but has worse health outcomes and shorter life expectancies in conclusion 70 percent of registered voters support Medicare for all you'd be hard-pressed to find an issue with that amount of people that approve it okay we have a couple quick questions councilman Archer so thank you so much for coming before us I have studied this resolution I strongly support it and if nobody else from on council asks in concluding remarks to have it put on the agenda for a work session I definitely will just want to just reiterate that this is something that would most importantly save lives but it also saves money the cost the financial cost to cities is huge and so anyway I am really proud to support this really grateful for you to come before us today with this thank you thank you thank you very much okay how we're looking okay great great well she took I think my name got removed yes but I don't have a question I just wanted to support councilmember Armenters call for this to be on work session you know of course this this is federal policy and we don't set federal policy but it's a federal policy that would impact us significantly a very big chunk of our budget is goes to to health insurance benefits and that's a lot of taxpayer money that gets spent on health insurance benefits to private health insurance companies I'd also like to draw a connection to a few weeks ago chief Dixon briefed us in a work session about the crisis intervention response team and the challenges that the police department faces in addressing the needs of people who are in experiencing mental health crises and one of the barriers that he identified was that UBH Mayhill our local mental health care providers are at capacity and as long as we have a market-based health care system where supply you know private companies are incentivized to keep supply a little bit lower than demand we're always going to have a shortage of mental health care providers so I support this resolution okay Pat good evening council I'm Pat Smith 1417 Cambridge Lane this evening I'm here on behalf of friends of shallow garden which is a nonprofit here in town that operates the largest community garden in the country I have with me Mindy white who's a fellow board member 18 months ago I came before you and asked for a humble request and that was for dirt and I want to say today on behalf of the board thank you for your support over the last year and a half we have worked in the arrangement where we purchased 650 cubic yards of dino dirt and the city contributed 130 cubic yards of dino dirt to what we call a project cornucopia cornucopia was a funded by the city or the Denton County these are some of the organizations that have benefited from project cornucopia over the last 18 months throughout the pandemic and we're just here to say thank you I don't think that's often done enough and we would not be where we are today without your tremendous support because of your support we are able to take our production when I spoke to you in 2020 we were right around 28,000 pounds of production at that time we finished 2020 with 43,000 pounds of food that we distributed in the city of Denton because of the efforts of Rotary clubs which I'll show you in a second and the dirt that you all generously gave us we were able to raise our production to 55,000 pounds in 2021 our goal was 70 and we were on track for 70 except this little guy named Yuri showed up and destroyed about a third of our production so we're on track for 70 for this year and then by 2024 our goal is to hit a hundred thousand pounds of food and 29,400 eggs is what we produced last year that went out across the community that's 242,450 dozen eggs our plan started with a humble beginning and we built 54 raised beds the Rotary clubs of Denton came together and built those beds between November and January of 2021 and 2022 since that time we've added what are called field blocks off to the right there a blackberry chalice and are now those raised beds are in full production and all that is dino dirt that you all helped us procure and so we're extremely grateful for that we are right now we have 21,000 onions in the ground about 10,000 potatoes in the ground and we are we planted 8,000 or 800 plants last Saturday in the future we have plans to put electricity in and you're gonna see that next council meeting a grant request for that as well as a truck that we're gonna use to help distribute and then we're looking to expand to a year-round production in 2023 with two tunnels on one side and two tunnels on the other side of our shed so many great things have happened but this is all possible because of volunteerism we have one paid staff person we had 15 just under 14,000 volunteer at man hours last year if you were to put a price tagging on that that is about four hundred thousand dollars you in us using the IRS guidelines this is a great place not just to great grow food but it's a great place to build community and the groups that come out on a daily basis to serve are phenomenal they love it and we try to make it they're a very great experience for them so I'm asking for your help I'm asking for your help to come volunteer I'm asking for your help to in your sphere of influence to ask other people to come out and volunteer just once a year would be huge especially on Saturdays and so we're very grateful for the opportunity we have to serve not only Denton now but also Lewisville and are happy to sign up any large group who wants to come out and serve a shallow field and we're now working very closely to create a parks program summer day camp for kids and then to learn gardening starting in May so thank you for your time and your attention got it can you email me that presentation sure okay yeah thank you and I'll say this there's you've not seen a four-year-old at the time small bigger than when Pat let her pull up the carrots and she pulls up two giant carrots and man it was it's fantastic it's a it's a really really good experience and so she remembers it to this day so that's good all right so you know the question thank you very much oh yeah Pat I just want to say as a as a fellow Rotarian you represented this as as kind of fun and easy and I would say it was neither it was really hot and it was hard work but and Councilmember McGuire joined us for an afternoon she might have her own point of view on that but but it's it was really well worth it especially when you show us the results thank you so much appreciate it okay thank you very much and then the last oh no not the last speaker so then there's miss Joshua hadn't mr. Joshua hadn't sorry so mayor I believe this is a Colin comments okay he should be being queued up right now got it yes let me queue him up and I'll patch him through thank you no and you still have another column right yes we still have one more after that okay great you you mayor did not did that call not come through no I didn't hear anyone click in okay let me let me try this again I'm actually I dropped that call so I'm going to transfer in the next person camion caller and we'll try again okay , okay. Mayor it appears we're still having some technical difficulties if there's someone there in person you can take please do so okay great thank you so we have former mayor Chris Watts he's on making his way up I think yeah hello if you give your name and address you have four minutes and let me get my yes I'm not gonna trust y'all's timer yes right so mine and it should pop up on the podium or electron as well okay I'll see when it comes up okay Chris Watts didn't Texas I had saved a placeholder for open mic but had decided not to come down then I heard my name mentioned in one of the work sessions I watched to the work session so wanted to come down and express some thoughts and viewpoints I think you mentioned it councilmember Meltzer and don't want to spend time differentiating those situations but I was curious about the work session on campaign finance or campaign donation limitations and when I heard you councilmember Meltzer talking it's like okay five hundred and one dollars will be what somebody is going to be paid for is going to they can be bought for five hundred and one dollar and I thought okay if that's your perspective of influence exist at this level totally get it respect it my only concern is it's not consistent if it's only leveled towards packs that they're the ones that are sort of limited there's many individuals that give more than five hundred dollars so I don't necessarily subscribe to that opinion I don't think people can be bought for five hundred dollars I can't be and quite frankly I don't think anybody sitting up there on the desk can be is there a figure never had to really decide on that but I'm curious because when I hear that limitation and that it brings about influence with a councilmember or anyone else that money buys influence I think we can all agree to that principle pretty well however when I hear that councilmember Meltzer you paid Jordan Villarreal four thousand dollars on August the 16th and you voted for him on August 17th one day later on a consent agenda without disclosing that business relationship and you went on to pay him after that another eight thousand dollars for a total of twelve thousand dollars I think well how much does twelve thousand dollars how much influence does twelve thousand dollars buy it's not just about campaign donations if you think money buys influence there's really all kinds of directions that that goes additionally when I see campaign literature that is paid for by you councilmember Meltzer allegedly with other candidates on those flyers on that campaign literature I know that there's either in kind contributions or there's direct benefit to those and that is an actual contribution to a political candidate so if it's more than five hundred dollars does that mean that there's influence there I personally don't believe that you would be influenced or the people that you're talking we're talking about would be influenced by that I just want to let you I don't believe that but when we talk about it in terms of outside money when there's so much inside money that also comes about I mean to pay a political consultant twelve thousand dollars to be on the Planning and Zoning Commission not to pay him to be there but to vote on it without disclosing it to me that almost taints that vote it's almost as if okay we'll do this and we're not without telling your council members it sort of is not transparent and I think I think we'd all could agree with this this language that I think you would adopt as well councilmember Meltzer transparency is necessary to uphold community trust and so whether it's a legal or illegal or whether there's a rule I heard a lot of discussion about there's really not an ethics rule on point but I also heard there was training about avoiding all appearance of impropriety so however you guys want to do it but I think we all common sensically know that if you're giving someone within three months twelve thousand dollars and your colleagues are voting on it I just think it's the respectful thing to do and the transparent thing to do to just simply disclose it so I look forward to seeing what solutions are come about because of y'all's discussion but wanted to come down and and just share my thoughts thank you thank you staff is the collar able to come be pulled up mayor I'm gonna try one more time all right , thank you. Okay well while they're working on that we're going to skip that and so I'm going to come back to to that if they're if they were to come in Erica Young if you could we'll give her a minute to make her way out thank you. Hello my name is Erica Young I'm speaking on behalf of myself as well as Miss Shaughnessy. Shaughnessy has came here today to address the poor condition of the homeless she has a 20-month-old who has experienced COVID and she came here seeking resources but having told that families cannot be helped upon receiving those resources she was placed in Monsignor King where the director as well as staff don't make don't make her feel safe she has heart problems as well as a rare brain disability and was told that can't she can't be accommodated she's felt unsafe as well as lived in unsanitary conditions she had to live with feces in the restroom and urine as well on the walls the dorms as well as drug use outside there are numerous times where she has addressed the raw and stale food and food shortages there are times that she had spend nights without food because the food has ran out or the food has mold on it. I Erica Young has come before today as a homeless disabled domestic violence survivor I was staying as well as I was staying in Monsignor King as well at the time I was staying there I have experienced discrimination upon my sexuality as well as my disability inside the shelter I was exposed to human waste raw food and fecal matter the lack of security and a constant threat of black mode has led me to believe that the funding provided to the shelter is being mismanaged before other home mismanaged and all the donated items that have been received at shelter has been stolen from by the staff and when this when the homeless come to ask for clothes there is no clothes left or towels all the residents that all the residents have witnessed drug deals alcohol being consumed with the staff I personally have experienced racism within the shelter this shelter needs to be shut down and the money is being mismanaged we both have a child that's 20 months old and we haven't been able to see him due to COVID-19 and the lack of resources our car has been down and that was our main source of income through door - I myself have a herniated disk and have faced discrimination because of the lack of accommodation I as a homeless resident of Denton shouldn't be punished for having back problems as well as walking problems and I pray that you guys will do something about it because I've we've been living in deplorable additions for over a month and we've been bringing these concerns multiple times and there's nothing there we pray that there is a resolution I haven't been able to see our son because of the lack of help I may be disabled but I know that God is able and I pray that we get the help and the resources that we need I had a job for four years for spousal for COVID hit and I lost everything due to domestic violence and my injury in my disability and it's been hard for me to get a job and get on my feet I don't want to use the system I want to be able to do better and be on my feet and they lack the help and they lack the accommodations to even help me lay down on a bottom bunk they made me try to climb to the top bunk where I have a herniated disk where I can barely move my legs and it's hard for me to even stand and talk right now and as well as this gum right here she she has seizures and I'll help her every day when she has seizures in her sleep they refuse to give her medical attention even help her so I'll please beg you guys look into your hearts and please look into monster your king also known as our daily bread and please make something happen other homeless people are afraid to step up because they like they lack the courage please do something change something okay we have one one question a customer brief as possible so we don't keep her standing longer than she has to and you're welcome to sit down if you want to I just wanted to say thank you for your bravery in coming forward it is so much appreciated I know just to address one of the things that you mentioned I too have you know heard for a long time about this issue of people with disabilities you know not being automatically given the bottom bunk if there's if someone has that bottom bunk reserved I never understood why somebody who doesn't have as a bottom bunk reserve can't just have to go if they're able-bodied you know go up to the top bunk to give me medical attention I hit my head two times and I have a concussion I'm still standing here talk to you guys and they refuse to even help or even accommodate and not in by the grace of God my friend right here let me sleep on her couch because they refuse to help I just want something done we shouldn't be treated like this just because we're disabled and homeless we shouldn't be punished isn't it's not our fault thank you and you're you are you're a survivor and thank you for your bravery and coming and I want to give you I don't have any more cards on me but I want to give you my number you know I'll come and give it to you and reach out I would love thank you so much and I know I would love to come meet with you hear more about what you've experienced and how I can represent you thank you so much yeah I've asked Danny to reach out to these ladies and then follow up in regards to their concerns so before you leave Danny one of our staff members will get with you and I wanted to better understand what the issues are so we can address them thank you very much for being here mayor we're going to try this one more time we have tech services on the way so please bear with us well we'll pause when I hear the the I'm gonna I'm gonna push forward so we have the consent agenda I'll I'll take a motion but for items D and F if there's one counselor Davis I move approval of the consent consent agenda accepting items D and F okay and it's not a customer wire a second okay motion by Councilmember Davis second by Councilmember Greger great let's vote on the screen that passes 7-0 takes us to item D which was we had a short presentation requested that ID 2 2 3 9 0 consider approval of a resolution of city of didn't adopt in policy number five zero zero dot zero eight trespass warning city property there we go okay all right good evening mayor and city council I'm president Poehler with the police department also with me is Courtney doing Dara with community services and we're going to talk about the trespass warning on city property policy with that I'll jump into it please thank you so a little bit of background in 2020 about it's probably around August a group of us within the city several different departments we began to research and discovered that the city could benefit from having a formal process with a trespass policy warnings specifically when we're talking about city property so currently the police department we do issue trespass warnings on city property if it's requested by the department that maintains that property such as parks or the libraries or in some cases response to a violation of law or city ordinance so and like I mentioned this policy was a group effort with community services police parks libraries legal and city manager's office I thought I would present just a little bit of information with y'all just to give some context for the past couple of years as far as just two things really any calls for service that we've had related to either a staff member requesting someone be trespassed from the property or in one case a particular area that we're having issues with so and briefly in 2020 we had all together with these properties which there weren't any other city properties that we had any of these calls these were just the the ones that we had there was nine total calls for service in 2020 related to anything dealing with a having to issue a trespass warning and 2021 that bumped up as you can see there was one specific location that kind of caused that which was the Civic Center and just a little little context with that property that was a that was directly related to issues we had at the Civic Center with that back pavilion there that faces Quaker Town Park we were having a unfortunately a lot of disturbances there individuals that were setting up tents sleeping bags blocking the doors that were there as program started back up at the Civic Center there became more and more issues there unfortunately one issue that led to an individual being assaulted by a couple others and being stabbed so I say all that is parks reached out to us and they wanted us to actively try to keep that pavilion specifically free from any individuals that were attempting to stay there so that that that's why we had an increase there the next columns where we actually issued trespass warnings it was a bit lower lower altogether in the past two years we had 21 and then the last column where it says criminal trespass arrests in the past two years we had two total one at the Civic Center that I talked about stemming from the issues unfortunately that we were having and then the other one at the MLK rec center that one was actually there was an individual that was staying there during the winter storm in 2021 that was unfortunately causing a lot of disturbances and issues and they asked us to have them leave and they refused so that that was specifically what happened there so I say all that just to kind of give a some context that it's it's not a really a tool that we use very often but there are occasions where where we have to and to get into it just a little bit what this policy is for we wanted to be able to provide guidance and direction to all the city departments on how to initiate a trespass warning we also because there there isn't one currently we wanted to provide a appeal process for anyone that receives a trespass warning to be able to appeal that to our municipal judge office for review we also wanted to set a time limit right now when we issue out warning specifically for private property there's no there's really no deadline or time limit for these so we wanted to make sure we we limit that to one year and also we wanted to provide a policy if it's needed during any excuse me any judicial processes and just a little bit more information along with this there's gonna be thankfully some technology improvements I just added a little copy of that will essentially be what the the warning will look like currently we just have a an old big paper copy that we issue out is kind of the carbon copy version with this we're able to provide them with the information they need on how to appeal and all that and I say greater analytics were able to actually keep track of these a lot better with this with this new system it's it's very difficult right now currently with this new system will actually be able to search for any trespass warnings so we're able to if we need to track that over time and there's improved communication with anyone who's been trespassed it gives them all the information they need several different ways to appeal if they would like to we tried to reduce any barriers so they can they can even submit their appeal through email if they wish and city staff recommend adoption of this policy great thank you questions counselor armature yes so thank you for the presentation and I was the one who asked to have it pulled so first I'll say you know one thing that I like about this is I like the municipal judge review aspect and I also like the appeal policy and that that that's made clear up front that people can do that so I like that however everything else about most everything else about the policy I'm really concerned about because I feel that it's too broad and risks being as written it has the potential to be too broadly applied to be potentially selectively enforced against people experiencing homelessness I know that's not the intention but that's what I'm concerned about so I have some just some questions along those lines and I don't know if you're able to put the the policy itself up on the projector but I'm just kind of going through my own annotations on this the policy so from the beginning under policy statement says the city developed this policy to create a uniform poll process for issuing notices to people whose entry onto city property or continued presence on city property may be illegal unreasonably disruptive or harmful to city property or to conducting city business to other persons use of enjoyment of approved activities on city property so my question to related to that is so we already have laws about illegal activity obviously which is why they're what makes a legal activity illegal against the law and so if somebody say in the example you mentioned stabbing somebody right we already have laws against that how how what is the argument that says that this is not creating a situation where people would not be trespassed for simply doing life-sustaining activities that we all do like sleeping etc can you if you could speak to that why is it written so broadly sure thank you I think one thing I do want to note on that with the policy and this was intentional is if any city department needs reaches that decision that okay we need to trespass someone it has to come from a supervisor so coupled with that is I certainly appreciate your your question with there we want to make very clear you know we thought that having it at least at the supervisor level and as this policy is implemented and we provide training to the supervisors and clear understanding of of the intent as you as you mentioned that you know we can overcome some of that because because currently there's there's none of none of that is in place any any city staff could call us and if they're you know if they're the ones that we're talking to you know and that's what they want to do then then we would you know follow what they request so you know as far as your question about if something is you know unlawful we obviously have a law for that but what about the other stuff and it's kind of it's kind of broad you know there could be situations and I've seen it firsthand before where you know someone is not necessarily breaking the law or certainly not to the extent that we would take any enforcement action but it is consistently or severely disrupting maybe something like a camp that's going on or you know specifically maybe at Quaker Town Park or any other park where it gets to the point where they are disrupting so much where it doesn't quite fit you know a violation of law but there's there's enough going on there what and say they're not listening to city staff because it does touch on that too how they would be warned first and try to keep those lines of communication open and how this would be kind of the end of the line the very last resort that we'd want to try to get to so thank you so in the council member Danny Shaw community services there's also the situation where each of the different facilities have different rules of behavior that are already in place and the criminal trespass might be as a violation of those rules it's not meant to be arbitrary on behaviors that aren't necessarily addressed by the rules of that particular building so libraries might have a set of rules parks and Recreation Centers might have a set of rules those would be the issues where that person might be trespassed if they're violating those yeah it's not just for like maintaining activities like sleeping if there were a rule against that and then it would be addressed through the parks rule so that that helps me understand but it's still that still concerns me so for instance you know a library policy just as an example that you should be quiet in the library if somebody's making noise at a library they should absolutely be reprimanded by by this by staff but that does not seem to me to be and I'm not saying that you're making the case that that would be an example of a criminal trespass but I'm concerned that just the policy as written not talking about the intent you know has the potential to be used by by somebody and I understand also what you're saying that that possibility is already there right and and that concerns me too I actually think that I don't think that that any city staff should have such authority to do anything more than a member of the public has which is to call you know call police if there's a concern it just it concerns me deeply as wondering and I could cite a number of examples of that but we don't have the time for that so I wanted to ask does this I was trying to see if this applies in any way to trespass signs on public property I noticed just earlier today I was over at Bowling Green Park with somebody who used to live in a small encampment there who had cooperated with police and in an investigation pertaining to some illegal activity that happened they're not involving them they were actually endangered by that illegal activity and glad that that was taken care of but she pointed out to me that there are trespass no trespass signs there on public property it is that does this policy meant to cover that or was that already in place the policy that no trespass signs can be put on public property like a park which park was it again a Bowling Green so my understanding you know all the parks okay perfect well counsel drew up an assistant director of parks ma'am actually those were the park rules signs so they did have the hours of the parks just like every park that we have have the park hours from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. and so therefore just a little example when we were going through all this and a high school couple was asked to leave years and years ago or at was asked to leave South Lakes because they were eating ice cream at 11 o'clock at night so it's just an example that you cannot be in the park after 10 p.m. those are the or those are ordinances years ago about two years ago we went through all those park hours we looked at all the other cities on what what their hours were and everything else but that those signs at Bowling Green only say our park rules and our ordinances so that doesn't say no trespassing no okay the public is allowed on public property okay so and thank you thank you for that the signs were across a kind of a moat there so thank you so um let's see yeah you know and then of course you know the there's the in the question of public of criminal trespass on public property in general right the public property belongs to the public and so if there's one group who's being disrupted by another group there if that other group is violating the noise ordinance we have policy in place for that but you know I don't see anything in this ordinance that would decide that would make clear kind of which group has the greater right to to be on a group or individual you know on public property than any other group it just seems to me to be a slippery slope and I and I understand that slippery slope is already there without this policy what I'm worried about that the policy will in addition to improving it in some ways with the municipal judge review and appeal process cement what to me is a kind of a constitutional problem in a slippery slope about having to do with criminalization of homelessness okay is City Councilmember armature at bottom line is this is not directed at people experiencing homelessness this is criminal trespassing for any individual that might cause a disruption on public property this is not absolutely not focused on people experiencing homelessness oh yeah and I completely understand I meant to I hope I made it clear I'm not saying that's the intent I'm saying that my concern is about the potential for selective enforcement because of how broadly it's written this is you know I mean there have been so much written about this issue nationwide these kinds of laws being used in this way so it's not out of bounds for you know for me to be asking asking questions about this not to do with intent but to just do with the potential for for for for abuse in that way okay counselor bet I have some of the same First Amendment concerns and I feel it's a little broad I'm willing to personally vote for this because I think we do have a hole in our policy statements that creates confusion creates an issue for our municipal courts but I guess in order to thread this needle to find that that sweet spot between abuse of potential abuse of First Amendment rights and and not and following a good municipal practice I'm gonna ask that at least personally that we keep really careful and extra statistics and and I you know you show those nice tables I'm gonna request that we keep and regularly review those because I want to see those numbers go down honestly not go up because if they go up after we implement this policy then that's going to tell us that we're using this policy perhaps in ways that we didn't intend but yet Councilor Amateur is is potentially concerned with and I'm potentially concerned with so I guess I'm I don't know where she's falling I'm falling on letting this go and implementing it but I really would like to have really tight statistics on this if we could. Councilmember Davis. Mayor I'm gonna move approval of the item and then like to speak on the motion. Okay so and then I'll second just to get that out of the way and then you want to you after the comment you want to have comments now. I'd just like to speak in favor of the motion very briefly. Yes by all means. So criminal trespass is a function of state penal code law it's a function of property law vis-a-vis the penal code it will exist regardless of whether there's a policy or not there's a greater abuse for something greater potential for abuse of something when there's not a policy setting the bounds and limits and appeal structures and due process then there would be without the policy. I can see why someone would with a particular concern from the homeless community would look at this and say oh well they're putting they're codifying criminal trespass and so they must be coming after folks who have to live outside but this is not just for them this is for folks who are domestic violence victims and their abuser likes to show up at the place where they like to work where they work and does not go away this is for to use the kind of silly example that we used before at the library this is for the person who will not be quiet in the library and will never be quiet in the library until they're made to leave and not come back to the library this is not for the average infraction of city policies and rules this is just like the statistics showed us this is the extreme case of the repeat offender who will not comply with the very basic rules that everybody else has to follow for whatever facility and for safety you know the enjoyment of the facility by everybody else but by the statistics we saw and the examples that we were given for the safety of the other patrons of that facility they are asked not to come back and it's used very sparingly and I am much more comfortable with its use under a policy that a multidisciplinary team has come up with together then with just you know whatever policy individual departments are using so that's why I moved approval. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you I totally get the intent of it and I think I think everyone here does and the need for it do you think that if you had another two weeks that you could sharpen language to make it clear what we already understand is the case that it's nothing to do with whether people are housed or not but is that something that could be buffed up you know and made clear in the language would there be any point to that? I think honestly no the staff and I mean a multidisciplinary staff have spent hours working through this to try to pinpoint it that would not focus specifically on one population or another and I think quite honestly in reference to Councilmember Davis's comment this is a protection for all of our folks in City of Denton and that means even people experiencing homelessness who may be put at at risk by someone else so it's this is hours and hours of work and honestly I don't think it would help. Okay I very much appreciate that response. Thank you. Councilmember Burke. Could you go back to that slide that had the locations and it looked like to me that those were outdoor okay look like most of them were parks of some sort. Is that the although the only locations that you all would be is this list going to expand? It's not all-inclusive this this was the the list where we had any any type of call activity. It does not include all city property. Okay and I think that Councilman you answered my question in regards to a trespass warning versus a criminal trespass signature or something of that sort making it criminal. So it's a warning different from a criminal trespass. It's a trespass warning you can the criminal part is it's just it's just a trespass warning no matter what language you use. So there's not any kind of fees or anything associated with it you're just on notice as an individual. Correct. You've been notified and we're going to hold this note if we have to come back and deal with you again. That's correct and it's not anything that would be on anyone's kind of record. But you are making sure that if they are you know having difficulty in any other area if you contact them again we will know as a city that that contact has been made before. Yes. Okay okay so those were the things that a couple of things that I had questions about. Thank you. Councilmember McGuire. Thank you I I would love to see maybe in a in a Friday report a more comprehensive list of incidents that includes all city property because I'm thinking you know these are rec centers parks areas where yeah there is perhaps more opportunities the wrong word but but there there there may be more people experiencing homelessness in these locations but I was personally involved in a situation where a gentleman who was not homeless was a pretty wealthy homeowner and decided that a fenced-in drainage easement near his home could should should be his personal dog park because it's public property and that's the type of situation that that this is designed to address as well. Okay any other questions seeing none let's we got a motion by Councilmember Davis second by myself. Let's vote on the screen. Passes 6-1 takes us to item F and please note we have two recusals and quick question for those that are that are following along while they're while they're recusing. Mr. City Attorney can you speak to that so recusals that is that a function of your office is that a function of individual council members how does that work? Yeah each council member makes their own decision whether to recuse or not okay and that could be based on any number of things whether it's an ethics code or something else that prevents them from acting on it so we're not allowed as the city attorney to advise on the ethics code that specifically says if there's a council issue you talk to the ethics code the ethics board about those things so we provide a an abstention form but we don't advise on the actual abstention itself. Got it and that's filed on the that's on the city website? Yes it's provided to the city secretary. Okay great thank you so let the record reflect before I call item F that three council members have recused themselves Councilmember Armitage, Councilmember McGuire, Councilmember Davis. Item F ID 22601 there's consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton authorizing the city manager to execute an agreement between the city of Denton and Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of North Texas to offer document discounted membership option to the Denton Parks and Recreation pass holders 50 years and older so there's no presentation I'll take a motion. Councilmember Beck. This is one of those examples of quality of life that we improve here in Denton so I'm happy to motion approval. Thank you Mayor Pro Tem. Yeah this is great by the way you can't quite tell from the way it's written but this means that if you're a park and rec pass holder over 50 you can get a discount on OLLI which is all kinds of great like adult education opportunities so yeah happy to second. Okay motion by Councilmember Beck, second by Mayor Pro Tem. Let's vote on the screen. That passes 4-0 thank you that concludes consent agenda and takes us to our first public hearing. We'll let the council members rejoin us and the first item is 5A which is PD 20-0007C hold a public hearing and consider adoption of ordinance of the City of Denton Texas regarding a request to rezone approximately 15.9 acres from residential seven to district residential seven district to plan plan development district. Good evening council, mayor, Carina Maldonado, transportation principal planner with the City of Denton. Tonight I'll be giving a very brief presentation most of the information is in the staff report but I can pull up any additional slides beyond the slides I'm presenting tonight if needed. So the item tonight is PD 20-0007C and this is for the love first community village. So the request before you is to rezone 15.9 acres from the R7 district to a plan development district with the base zoning of MN specifically for a transitional housing use which would be defined as temporary housing and supportive services. You can strike the second note but it's currently shown as operated by a nonprofit intended for at-risk families who are experiencing financial burdens that have led to or may lead to homelessness. The proposed development or plan development would also include an accessory amenity center as well as recreational amenities and I just wanted to note that I said to strike the second bullet as you've seen in the staff report there were some changes recommended by the Planning and Zoning Commission related to that language. So the subject site is located on the south side of East McKinney Street east of Mayhill. You can see it's Caddy Corner to Ryan High School. The surrounding development as shown on the screen have kind of made it easier to identify. There are some residential areas adjacent to the property those are shown in yellow as well as the high school that I mentioned as well as city-owned property and that would include our city or government-owned property excuse me that would be the Texas DPS facility that's newly constructed on the corner of Mayhill McKinney as well as some FEMA floodplain area that is currently owned by the city of Denton. There was a specific use permit that was approved back in I believe I would just say last year for the adjacent property for a multifamily development. That one is currently in the development review process but is soon to be constructed. There are also there's also a religious assembly on the north side as well as a few parcels of undeveloped land. So as I mentioned most of the information is in your staff report so I just want to jump to the criteria for approval identified in the Denton Development Code in subchapter 2. So there's two sections one is general approval criteria as well as specific approval criteria approval for for plan developments. So basically in summary the project is consistent with our future land use map and housing goals of both the denton plan 2030 and that's because the the project came in under the previous comprehensive plan but under the new comprehensive plan denton plan or denton 2040 comprehensive plan excuse me it is also compliant with that that future land use and has housing goals. Second the development standards proposed do limit uses they create a community oriented development pattern with residential character and do offer increased landscape and open space requirements. Third it does minimize the impact to surrounding residential and serves as a transitional use between low residential that's existing as well as moderate and high-density residential commercial. And lastly there is adequate infrastructure and capacity to serve the existing development. Public notification was issued for this project we did have two responses in favor one was from the property owner we did have some calls that didn't have a formal response but they did indicate support for the project as well. There were no neighborhood meetings held by the applicant but they did reach out to some individual property owners and with that staff did recommend approval of this project as it meets the criteria in the Denton Development Code. Our planning and zoning Commission did take this at their March 23rd meeting did have some further refinement of the definition specifically of transitional housing as shown on the screen I've highlighted the changes they've made and just in addition to this staff did include in the staff report if council wishes a further refinement of the language to address all of PNC's concerns and with that I can take any questions the applicant is here to give a presentation and I do have some slides if you do need additional information on the screen. Thank you so let's take questions for staff and then we'll have the applicant present so questions for staff. Councilmember McGuire. Thank you so I think I know the answer to this but for folks who may be listening and may have concerns I'd like to confirm that there's no relationship between this project and the tiny home village RFI that we will be discussing on April 19th is that correct? That's correct there is no connection between those two projects. Okay thank you. Councilmember Bet. Thank you and and I think you answered this in email to council but just just for folks here and that are watching them the as I understand the the P&Z recommendation for the 30-day minimum and the 24 month maximum was to make this property clearly fall into particular use categories that were consistent with the neighborhood is that correct? Yes so and I'll and I'll pull up the roof so that the recommendation by P&Z is what's on the screen now I'm gonna put up what staff is proposing as further refined language so to address your concern or P&Z had a specific concern about the definition relating to the minimum length of stay that someone could reside within this community so we did make clarification that this was not a specific homeless shelter however that definition doesn't define a minimum stay so the proposed language would would include the minimum day of 30 days and again that's to make the distinction between the new proposed use within the PD and homeless shelters that they're two separate uses. Okay thank you. Okay any other questions? Seeing none our okay well I'm gonna have the applicant coming so Amy Bissett if you come up you have two joint presentations you'll have 20 minutes. Good evening mayor and council. Let me and so before I do that I'll open the public hearing and and then yeah if you can give your name and address you'll have 20 minutes total. I promise not to take that long. No worries thank you sorry about that thank you. Amy Bissett 97 land company 109 North Elm Denton 76201 and I also have Leanne Kristen with me representing Grace Likerein she'll come up in just a moment and we're gonna we're gonna take turns with this presentation. So I'm gonna open very briefly just to make sure that the purpose statement of the PD the creation of the PD is is made known and then I'm gonna hand it over to Leanne and then she's going to talk a little bit more about the programs that are going to be offered in the organization and how this came about. So the purpose of this PD is to facilitate a primarily residential development intended to create a sense of place and community for at-risk families who resided and received support services on site. The development will provide transitional housing and related services for clients who may be residents residing at this development or non residents who are receiving services and I want to elaborate on this very briefly before I turn it over. This is a new this is a new approach to both case management and nonprofit services as well as land use. I have been in this in similar industries for all of my career and when I was in college a location like this would be confidential and today we expect our community to help protect and help protect the the residents and the clients of organizations like this and so it's a very community oriented approach to land use and and to nonprofit services and so and with that it's my pleasure to introduce Leanne and let her tell you more about the organization and the programs and then I'll take it back over from there to discuss the zoning specifically. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Amy and thank you for the opportunity to speak with you here this evening. My name is Leanne Kristen and I am the CEO for Grace Like Rain and Giving Hope and I'm joined here this evening by the founder of Grace Like Rain Michelle Connor as well as Alyssa Polly and Matt Ferris who are board members for Grace Like Rain and Andrew Cousins of Valley Quest and his colleagues that are in support of our presentation here tonight and so we appreciate the opportunity to be here. Grace Like Rain was founded in 2016 and we have been providing services to those families that are at risk of homelessness since for the last five years and we have a proven model that's been working and it's a unique model that is designed around community. It's designed around giving folks that we heard from this evening give a hand up and not a handout and we treat those and I'll speak about it a little bit more but with dignity with respect and with empowerment to give them the resources that they need to do what Miss Bowman had talked about earlier which is she doesn't want services she just needs some gap help to get her on her feet and to recover from the circumstances that she was in and so we last year we served over a thousand families between our house our homelessness prevention and our great rise with grace program we typically serve those that are mothers with small children and as most of you know I believe on July 1st Grace Like Rain is merging with giving hope and between the two organizations we have a continuum of care that reaches those or goes out to those families again referencing what you heard this morning or a little earlier about families that are living in cars and we bring them into the program we do have us permanent housing opportunities for those that have disabilities we also have programs that are there to support the prevention of being homeless but specifically what we want to showcase tonight is our rise with grace program and that is that unique case management program that helps families through their situation to get them neck to the next level to break that cycle of poverty and to break that cycle of being at risk of homelessness the problem as you all know is that there's there's no shelter for families that are specifically for the community that we serve with those mothers and those families or those mothers or fathers that have young children there is no affordable housing or very very little no really affordable housing in Denton there's very few very little supportive services for families with very young children and the struggles that you see families to go through to receive services it's exhausting and we have seen a rise in the number of families in the streets of the families that are living in the cars in January our Street Outreach team saw 13 so in 2021 they would typically see about three or four families a month and it living in cars and in January it shot up to 13 and then in February they saw 14 families that were different than the 13 unduplicated families and in March there were 31 and those are the families that they spoke to those are the families that they were able to engage with it doesn't necessarily mean that those they didn't get to everyone and so the numbers are growing rapidly and the need and the problem is severe and we only expect it to continue to rise our solution is left first this is a program as Amy had mentioned it isn't unlike any other site across the United States it is unique and we do have that 30-day minimum lease for families to engage in our community and our rents for families would be half at the market rate we will have breaking those barriers that have been identified for families providing they've got barriers if they don't it can't get jobs if they don't have child care we'll have a child care center on site we'll have transportation transportation partnerships we will have a community center to help with our life skills classes we provide life skills help them with education grow their education grow their parenting skills grow their ability to engage in life to finance to manage their finances budget all of that will be on site and then as I had mentioned our our signature kind of rise with grace management program and everyone within the pro with on that's living on site will engage in that program it's a two-year intensive seven-step program that does walk along with the families to ensure that they are no longer at risk of poverty or at risk of being homeless and we have at least an 85 percent graduation rate for those families that engage with our organization in this program thank you thank you she got the fun part I get the boring part just to walk you through quickly the elements of the zoning change and we are going from our seven to PD with an in-man zoning and one of the primary reasons for that is the introduction of three new land uses the transitional housing use the amenity center gets clearly defined here in terms of who that amenity center is for and then the recreational amenities associated with the development and the PD standards are do include increased setbacks and enhanced streetscape in order to pull with this particular property we want to have a centralized kind of community interior facing community which is a little bit different than the typical development standards you would see in mixed use zoning where you want street buildings pulled right up to the street so we've we've tried to address that consistent streetscape by pulling some some enhanced landscaping up to the street to give that sort of closeness feel so that when you walk from one property to another it doesn't just seem like it just drops way back and there's nothing back there so we've we've worked closely to address the orientation of the residential units so that they they're oriented in in a fashion that is inviting to bring people out and to get to know each other and to have immediate access to the many site amenities and then we have design standards associated with what that both the residential uses and the non-residential uses will be required to comply with very quickly we'll have multifamily units two large multifamily buildings I say large there I think they have eight 16 it's 16 units total and then we have duplex units and most of what you see on site are single family units and you can see here the unit mix is mix of two three and four bedrooms and then we will have one parking space per per unit as that is a part of the standard that's set in the PD code the commercial parking spaces do comply with the base DDC the other land uses that are near the front of the property would be the child care facility the offices and the amenity center and just very quickly I want to point out a couple of the site amenities we do have community garden a mixed sports court area playground with play equipment and event lawn and that center as well as trails that wind back through the part though they will connect back through to the Parks Department and management of the the floodplain area to the south in terms of landscape and tree plans we have exceeded what would be required with the immense owning with sixty percent tree canopy coverage and double pervious coverage versus what would be required fifty three percent tree preservation the street scalp scape elements that I mentioned previously and then we've left some options open to explore a development agreement with the Parks Department to provide trail connectivity to the south both for the residents to have direct access to that future park system just very quickly you can see here the the conceptual elevations for the residential uses we've tried hard to think about things that the residents can that will that will help pull the residents into the community like covered front porches and orientation towards the site amenities here's a rendering of what the non-residential buildings would look like the development will be constructed in phases with phase one being towards the front of the property meaning closer to McKinney with a handful of the residential units going in first with the amenity center and then the non-residential uses would go in to be able to support the residents and clients and then the future phases would move to the south of the site and that is really I have happy to answer any questions for you thank you got it questions for the African staff Councilman bet yeah I was first want to give a element of praise I've seen this come at the elements of P&Z and a full disclosure I've talked with the giving hope and Grace electric rain and and I what I've seen through the combination of groups is is really an effort to for this particular property to make it a community approach that blends both with the community and creates community so I'm I've honestly this is a one of the better developments I've seen for this region and honestly in East Denton in general I will ask a question and that is given P&Z's ask to do any of the parties have a problem with what the planning and zoning Commission have asked absolutely not and I think that the intent all along was for lease agreement that runs concurrently with their case management agreement which I think currently is a minimum of three months however we've we've written it in to be a minimum of 30 days just to provide future flexibility for the nonprofit if if needs shift without taking it all the way back to where it would be a homeless shelter that might just not have a minimum stay requirement and then as it relates to the way the wording was changed with the 24 months as well as the kind of the definition of who would operate it in the future that was really our understanding the intent there is to provide clarity for future councils when there's a PD a proposed change to ownership and control and and how would that be regulated and so it has no impact to grace like rains operations and fits perfectly within their their program plan so whoever ends up getting to the buzzer and it looks like council armature got to the buzzer first dammit and if they were to a motion to approve as PNC and staff recommendation you guys would be okay thank you okay yeah I'll just speak briefly to say I remember when this was just an inspiration when y'all were over at the first refuge office and hearing flesh out a little more over at access realty and I'm just delighted to see you get to this point I'm glad you have this visit helping you help this getting to this stage helps with the fundraising to get get it constructed also I applaud that merger with a care provider so it really completes that you know the approach councilor Davis in the spirit of our conversations earlier I'm proud to be a donor to this organization and I hope that my colleagues will join me in in supporting this project financially they need every dollar they can get and if somebody could please give us the website so folks watching at home know how they can support it as well well first of all thank you council member back for drawing attention to the notion of community because that is absolutely at the core of what this the left first is about because of the inspiration for it was around community to be successful folks need community to get through life together everyone here who is successful has community and when you're at risk of being homeless or are homeless you lose that and so this village in this community provides that opportunity for those that are needing it most and so councilmember Davis thank you for supporting us financially as well as giving us a plug so we are www.gracelightglrtx.org so thank you www.glrtx.org awesome council member Burke you know I love love and this is just like you know I'm just all in the neighborhoods and communities and families growing kids just want to let this young lady know that I I heard you loud and clear just thinking about my own family and some things that we've struggled with my my family in Houston growing up in the situation I'm very proud of you I am I really am are you guys gonna be using any kind of renewable solar air water renewables or anything like that to help you with some of the utilities I think that it's probably a little early to answer that question and may partially be contingent upon the capital campaign and you know just the ability for the nonprofit to be able to make the funds go as far as possible I think we've worked hard at looking at native and adapted species and you know try to try to take a natural approach to the design of the development as a whole but to my knowledge there have been no direct discussions about solar or anything like that okay also I just wanted to clarify this the stay them is there did I hear that there's like a 24-month I was trying to capture some of your conversation there so there is this a permanent stay 24 months it's a transitional housing so the intent is to help the residents become stable enough that they can move into permanent housing 24 months was added as a as a part of the definition by P and Z to just provide some kind of tightness around what that meant transitional versus permanent okay so I just want to make the clarification as Amy mentioned at the planning and zoning Commission there was some wordsmithing at the dais and so that language was added into the transitional housing definition so it's different it's different from the staff recommendation so I'm just gonna I'm gonna put it on the screen just very quickly so it highlighted in red on the screen this is what P and Z added with their recommendation to have that that that timeframe included in there so it's a 24 month period or longer depending on how how the how the operators is trying to serve each individual family and their needs and then staff had the additional refinement if desired to have the minimum length of stay added so there's quite a bit of definition changes there's the original definition proposed the definition proposed by planning and zoning and then a possible third definition that would have more refinement so I just wanted to make that clarification counselor amateur yes so I just want to say just what a beautiful community this is what a beautiful idea this is and having seen it in the development for so long I'm just so grateful to grace like rain and to you know private partners for partnering with you and I'm just really proud to make a motion to support it so when it's time for that I'm ready okay yeah I'll take that Councilman McGuire I was a motion-made what I'm sorry sorry did Councilmember yeah I just you know want to echo my colleagues support for this project this is so exciting and so wonderful and so beautiful and we we've spoken a lot because of course homelessness is is a really urgent issue in our community and we've spoken a lot about the diversity of people who are experiencing homelessness people experience homelessness for all kinds of different reasons and they have all kinds of different needs and the junction is going to do a lot to meet the needs of some of those folks we're going to be talking in a couple weeks about the potential for a different kind of model for a different kind of tiny home village that would serve a different group of people with a different group of needs and I'm so thrilled to see this project to serve yet another group of people with yet another group of needs and I think that just that the more different projects that we can have like this to provide a diversity of services is so wonderful so I if there's a motion on the floor I second it can I just say so I didn't get to in making the motion to state that my motion includes the staff recommendation which is the tweaked planning and zoning recommendation okay thank you yes I second that thank you Jason can you come down for a second please I just want to it's my buddy I Jason with Alison engineering group yes anything you want to add or just I just want to I just I appreciate you being here I mean from an engineering standpoint yeah I'm a fan of your work water gets there sewer will go the right direction I'm happy to answer the other questions but it's been a great team and it's been a great okay great project very good thank you just wanted to just want them convenience a little bit because I because I like you all right okay well thank you very much again great project and I forget the name of the event I went to but it was amazing there at that on the power corner there it served in just kind of a very insightful so thank you for continuing to educate the community on on what you're doing the challenges and thank you very much to your entire team so with that we have a motion by councilman armatures second by councilman McGuire I'm gonna close the public hearing and any other discussion seeing none let's vote on the screen and mayor while you're doing that we're still having technical difficulties with our call-ins and so the staff will record any caller that might have had a voice of yes we like it or don't and we'll pass it along to council thank you great thank you and that passes seven zero good luck with your project that takes us to our second public hearing that's so that's item B ID 2 2 2 5 5 hold a public hearing and consider adoption of ordinance of the city of Denton on adopting standards of care for recreational care programs administered by Denton's Parks and Recreation Department and I'll open a public hearing good evening mayor city council Nikki Sasseness assistant director of Parks and Recreation each year I do not have a presentation each year we are required to bring the standards of care to council for review and adoption by adopting the standards of care we are exempt from state licensing to operate our youth programs our summer camp and our after-school programs these standards set forth the minimum standards by which we operate our programs and guide those programs as well there are no substantive changes this year we did make a change on the suspected abuse reporting that we are required to report suspected abuse and file a report with the Department of Health and Human Services PD has requested that anytime we file a report we also file a report with PD and so that they're aware but that is really the only change and that is on page 5 if you wanted to reference it the Parks and Recreation and Beautification Board did review the standards of care at their meeting on March 7th and did recommend approval and I'm happy to answer any questions now or during the public hearing okay any questions for staff let's see see none anyone from the public care to speak you just need to fill out a card afterwards anyone want to speak on that see none okay great I'll close the public hearing counselor McGuire I move to adopt the standards of care is presented thank you counselor Beck I second thank you motion by counselor McGuire second by councilmember get back any other discussion okay let's vote on the screen great thank you thank you Nikki for for all your help takes us to item for it item for individual consideration first thing is item a which is ID 22559 consider adoption of the ordinance that direct directing the publication of notice of intention to issue to 20 million five hundred seventy thousand dollars in principal amount of certificate of obligations of the city of Denton for general government and solid waste projects good evening Randy Klingle treasury manager within the city's finance department mayor husband if you would also call the next one 560 I have one presentation for both certainly so that's item B which is ID 22560 consider adoption of the ordinance directing the publication notice of intention to issue 120 million nine hundred fifty thousand dollars in principal amount of certificates of obligation of the city of Denton for water works and wastewater systems and electric systems projects thank you I have a brief presentation about the notice of intense for our upcoming bond sale occurring this summer the purpose of the notice of intentions are required by state law subchapter C of the state code for certificates of obligation act stating that we need to publicly show our notice of intent to sell CEOs the notice must be published in a newspaper a general circulation so we'll be doing that in the Denton record Chronicle as well as on our city's website the publication must be published once a week for two consecutive weeks so we'll be getting that in about April 14th I think is the target date later coming back to you in a couple of months will will be required to execute a bond ordinance or parameter ordinance they're kind of go hand-in-hand sometimes we call it a bond ordinance sometimes a parameter in ordinance and that will be authorizing the sale of the CEOs most of the presentation is of the project list that goes hand-in-hand with the CEOs those are also in your agenda formation sheet listed out I will not be reading those by line by line but you can see those there also they were part of the budget process so there's no new items here that you have not seen before so the first item is the general government projects which includes internal services general government items and the solid waste department so the general government CEO will be a total of twenty point five million dollars from there we move into our utility CEO program which is the water department their projects here will total twenty three point four million dollars wastewater has a long list and they will take up two slides so slide two will give you the total at forty four point two and lastly for the utilities we have electric which is fifty two point nine for the CEO cell which gives you a total for the utilities of a hundred and twenty point six million dollars in all for a notice of intentions we have the general government at twenty million five and then the utilities at a hundred and twenty million point six with a total of CEOs or a hundred forty one million a hundred sixteen thousand five hundred fifty four dollars so that is in line with your budget again like all these items we have presented today are in your budget next step is in June to come back with the parameters ordinance I discussed earlier bond ordinance parameter ordinance and that that time will bring the geo bond sale and the CEO bond sale together with a final project list most likely this numbers will reduce the departments are working feverishly to really fine-tune what their needs are for the end of the fiscal year and what they can spend and what they have so most likely this number will be reduced and then in June we'll have the sale and then we will receive proceeds from the bond sale in the end of July and if you have any questions and if you have any project questions I believe we do have staff here as well okay councilman bett thank you and just to that last point this is the ceiling of approval if we can come in under that then that's that's what you were referencing and so that I just making that clear and oh I guess the other thing I want to make clear and again you stated it but this these are already items that we debated and the part of the budget and that we're we're seeing for like the end time honestly okay any other questions for staff seeing none I'll take a motion council member bett I move approval cancer wire a second okay we have a motion by councilman Beck second by councilman McGuire any other discussion and just to be clear this is item a we'll take them one at a time so this is item a and no questions let's vote on the screen that passes seven zero takes us to item B I'll take a motion counselor back I move approval of item B okay and there we go councilor McGuire a second second by councilman McGuire so a motion by councilman Beck second by councilor McGuire any other questions or discussion seeing none let's vote on the screen that also passes seven zero thank you very much I appreciate it takes us to item C ID two two six zero three consider adoption of ordinance of the city of Denton Texas the home rule municipal corporation authorizing city manager execute a contract with Texas materials group ink DBA Texas bit for construction of the southeast didn't package a project good evening mayor and council my name is Seth Garcia I'm a program manager with capital projects I've got a brief presentation for you tonight for the construction contract award for southeast didn't package a so this package is associated with our neighborhood rehabilitation program which is funded through the 2019 bond program and then our utility funds as well so just a quick update on the work that our groups doing in South East didn't so we have the entirety of southeast didn't broken up into two packages the first package being the 22 Broadway segments that you're going to see tonight for the construction contract and then the second package being southeast didn't package B which is the remaining 51 Street segments we're currently at 30% design on that and working for our first construction manager at risk project for horizontal we are taking that overall holistic approach to neighborhood construction so we're attempting to make multiple improvements including replacement of the water and wastewater infrastructure as well as sidewalks at the same time so these segments were associated with the 2019 bond so they're selected based on condition as well as kind of adjacent water wastewater projects that needed to happen at the same time I did want to plug our next community meeting for southeast didn't so this will be for both package a and package B that's going to be April 28th at 6 p.m. at the MLK Center and of course we will have additional public meetings as we move through construction with package a and package B so quickly for the project at hand package a we are proposing full street reconstruction for these 22 segments as well as replacement of the aging water and wastewater mains associated with these 22 segments we're looking at some improved sidewalk connectivity so we do have a few areas that had sidewalk gaps so we're closing those gaps to provide some more pedestrian accessibility as well as correcting non-compliant ADA ramps we are instituting some traffic calming measures so currently on Mill Street it's about 40 feet wide so we're instituting some bump outs that's going to make it around 30 feet wide to hopefully decrease speeding there on that wide roadway so this project was bit as a CSP we did receive five proposals after evaluations of our team we felt that Texas bit was the best choice for this project and their total base bid was just over 6.3 million dollars so it's a very very close scoring there quickly on the schedule so we did make a commitment to the community and to a few of you to have this project designed in advertising by the end of 2021 so we did meet that promise it began bidding in December of last year we are anticipating with the word of the contract tonight that construction will begin sometime in q2 2022 we have it within the contract that there will be 365 days for substantial completion so that would put us at a date of q2 2023 for substantial completion and of course that's kind of weather dependent so with that staff is recommending approval of the contract with Texas bit and the amount of 6.6 million and that is the base bid of 6.3 million plus the 5% contingency okay thank you very much questions for staff seeing none councilmember Davis oh hold that councilor bet the two questions really thank you mr. mayor so given the timeframe you're starting here we're not too awfully far from the end of the second quarter we're able to break ground this quarter yes so our contracts typically say that we can issue a notice to proceed within 30 days of execution of the contract so that allows us time to get bonds and insurance processed we then hold a pre-construction meeting and from the time that we issue that notice to proceed essentially time starts so whether or not they're breaking ground the city does have the option to say we're starting May 30th and that's when actual contract time begins I mean I think we'd all rather it be earlier for these folks rather than later because they've waited for their streets for so long I do have a question in terms of the the integration with the speed study because you we brought up traffic calming are we gonna have enough lead time that you can design traffic calming in line with whatever comes out of the speed study here it's shortly it's soon but I mean I don't want to the I'll give context while she walks down the reason I'm asking this question is I don't want them to not be able to take benefit from the speed study as we design their roads and that's where I'm coming from in this question sure so first thing I also wanted to talk about on the first question that you had I understand q2 may be a little bit confusing we actually go by calendar years and not by fiscal so q2 actually hasn't even started yet okay so we're very we're four days five days into q2 okay so but as far as the speed study goes and there are certain roadways that are being studied within the entire geographical area of Sedna but keep in mind that the majority of the roadways that are being studied are not residential streets so there are quite a few streets in this area that will not be studied due to the fact their residential streets okay thank you absolutely there for Tim yeah thank you a couple of questions is the public meeting on the 28th is it is it purely information out or is that in any way an opportunity to determine are there going to be whether there's going to be access in and out possible during all this construction right one of the things that I feel like I've learned here is people hate streets being fixed almost as much as streets not being fixed so yeah can you address that yeah absolutely so it is going to be informational so we are going to have representatives from Texas bit they're talking specifically about southeast in package a the things that they're going to see through construction everything from detours to water shutoffs to just normal construction activities so we're really wanting to be a partnership with the community so when they see my truck when they see Texas bit trucks out there they can go up and say hey I need to get out of my driveway I need to be able to have access what's going on with street closer so we definitely want to get that information out to the community and this is going to be kind of the first touch point with the contractor to encourage that relationship we're also going to have members from our design team and our C MAR for southeast in package B at this community meeting so it's going to be a two-fold community meeting we try in our group to do one community meeting at 30 percent design one at 90 percent design and then one at construction kickoff so since we had both kind of milestones lining up for both projects we're going to bring the whole community together because it's going to kind of impact all of them so we are anticipating to be able to give that information and of course be there to answer questions anything that we need to appreciate that in my second question I confess to having a little bit of difficulty decoding the I'm sure very thorough grid of this block from this street to the street just to answer the question if you can do it now great if it's a follow-up that's fine too obviously I'm gonna be supporting this but but I would like to know if at the end of all this we will have addressed any kind of traffic coming on Lakey Ruth Morse and Curly like I said you don't want to you know can't nimbly pick it up now that's that's quite all right we could do it after so I can say quickly with these two packages we're not actually touching any of those four street segments other than a small piece of Morse at Lakey just east of the DCTA track but I'll let miss Becky answer the rest of that not as a part of this project but you are gonna see another project come before you here in just a second when Nathan presents that's a part of the DCTA trip submission that we've added and so when he does that you'll see one of the projects which will be along more Street that we've actually are gonna submit as part of the trip application and this is why I was asking for kind of a holistic look because it's broken up into three things and so it'll probably be helpful for you to see what's done and what's left to be done but that have to be done tonight you know the response doesn't have to be tonight sure thanks do that Councilman Burke I would just say as a representative of that area and coming to the meetings that you all have held you all have been very thorough and I appreciate all of that and I just if I can share that smile that you have on your face I'm very excited about this prospect of us moving forward in that area and getting these roads done just a quick comment thank you thank you we're excited to okay any other questions seeing none I'll just I'll just say this briefly I mean yeah I'll be at the meeting I'm curious I'm I'm biased I'm really interested to see what y'all are gonna do with Hill Alley I know yeah yeah that Hill Alley because there's no out like what do you do half it anyway we'll talk about it that day but I'm curious how that's gonna work but really excited about it for again for the neighborhood and just all the things that have come together at the same time and and I will tell you miss Betty said she was glad we weren't working on Lakey when I talked to her she's she's miss Betty and miss Cole they're like no we're we're good so anyway okay well counselor Davis very happy to move approval and I'll second and any other discussion this vote on the screen passes 7-0 thank you very much thank you that takes us to our last individual item for consideration and then we have a public speaker after that and then we'll do concluding items so this is ID 22629 consider approval of a resolution of the city of didn't authorize in the city manager to apply for funding under the Denton County transportation reinvestment program good evening mayor and council Nathan George capital projects engineering very pleased to bring this proposal before council this evening so I'll walk you through a quick presentation try to keep my remarks brief and give you an opportunity to ask questions you're my favorite I'm gonna do my best thank you sir all right so trip this is the second year program application excuse me go back for this program so this is the same slide effectively that was presented to council last year when when this program came forward effectively we received back funding from DCTA as part of a grant program that's a reimbursable program we get back 15% of their net available fund balance this year the allocation is a little over three million dollars three million seventy four thousand five hundred seventy eight a couple items to that will walk through the specific project recommendations but they need to be located within the city within you know our areas around our transit served portions of the city and the projects need to be specifically located nearby our fixed route or our rail station so there there are some specific location parameters that DCTA looks at to make sure that we're making these investments around their their transit facilities and then they also are looking for us to make fiscally responsible decisions with these funds so that's just a couple items that we have taken into consideration and I'll walk through a little bit more background on that on the next slide so the trip application timeline staff started early working on this process October November last year we we met and screened potential candidate projects we put together a presentation of our recommendations and presented that to mobility committee now walk through some considerations from mobility committee and what we've done since that time on the next slide on January 27th DCTA issued their call for projects and then staff worked on some consulting with the CTA to make sure that our project recommendations aligned with with what they were looking for and also the guidance we've received from mobility committee then we are here this evening to present to council for resolution and we'll be submitting on or before May 2nd so a little background on what's happened since December since we've met with mobility committee one of the big questions that we received was the applicability of the go-zone or on-demand transit service as a factor because that outweighs some of the geographic considerations if we consider everything in goes on to be a potential applicable project staff did consider two of the projects that were goes on only served and one had a realignment of transit service and we felt it was it was best based on some changes in other projects other capital projects that we have ongoing and also just trying to better align geographically our recommendations with current fixed route transit service that we would remove two of the projects that we presented a mobility committee so those were a sidewalk project on parvin and a sidewalk project on Windsor Drive those will look at under our sidewalk work plan so the projects not going away it's just been removed from this call for four projects and then we took that funding reallocated in into other projects so the first is the Union Pacific railroad quiet zones projects in downtown so that provides sidewalk improvements as part of that project and then also it ties in with the the said be southeast end neighborhood be providing some enhanced sidewalk connectivity as part of that project so that was one major reallocation of funding the other was a project that identified as part of the bike lane CIP to do a road diet or a an on-street trail on Moore Street and I'll walk you through what that will look like in just a minute then in our communication with DCTA we also understood that they would like to have fewer project applications and we had a big sidewalk program that was made up of all these different sidewalk 2018 and 2019 sidewalks which is just how we had them broken out in terms of plans so we've bundled those because that's a bit easier for them to administer as one application so here's our recommended funding requests I'm going to walk you through each of the seven projects we have the estimate for each of the projects our city committed funding that would make up the difference between the trip application and what the overall project would cost so a little over 48 million dollars worth of project costs will have that three million dollars that will supplement the city's funding of a little under 45 million dollars so these are some pretty big projects and a few that are not so big so to walk you through really quickly the specific projects the first is Mayhill Road extension phase two so this is the bridge that will cross over the DCTA it provides really great sidewalk connectivity improvements in the area around Edwards Road Colorado and Mayhill so that's a really good enhancement to the sidewalk network in the area of the Med Park a train station so we felt this was a very strong project to put forward and it will provide really great enhanced sidewalk connectivity on the east side of the a train station primarily due to its connection into the rail trail that runs along along the rail line it's a five hundred ninety two thousand five hundred dollar recommended request on a roughly twenty three and a half million dollar project so it's a very big project and we're recommending a small amount of funding going towards those sidewalk and trail enhancements in that area southeast Stanton a is the presentation that you just heard so this is a project where we had opportunities to do some sidewalk connectivity improvements they also provide some traffic calming benefits for that that project bundle they're already included in the design so that's already been completed it's a small funding allocation over all of that project so seven and a half million dollar project we're requesting eighty two thousand five hundred and that will cover the costs of those sidewalk enhancements as part of that project we thought it was really necessary to include these projects in in the funding request because it shows that commitment to this neighborhood and also the commitment to make these sidewalk connectivity improvements in that area southeast Stanton be likewise we had opportunities to put in curb ramp sidewalk gap improvements and then with the revisioning of what was going to happen with the quiet zone project we included some additional sidewalk that was worked in early this year to this request so that's fifteen and a half million dollar projects we're requesting two hundred twenty eight thousand seven hundred fifty for that project the Union Pacific Railroad quiet zones this is the project that I referred to as the most important project in this application these are the most significant gaps we have between a train station in downtown and downtown so this project will significantly enhance bicycle and pedestrian access across the railroad in downtown projects nearing design completion a little over two million dollar project and we're requesting a little over a half million dollars in trip funding project that Becky felt very strongly we needed to look at making improvements around was where we had missing sidewalks along loop 288 providing sidewalk connectivity between the junction our daily bread so this is a project that we felt was necessary to put forward we did receive a question about text dots acceptance of us going in and making these improvements and provide a clarification that they have no intent to do work in this area we're so based on that direction it feels appropriate to pair this application along with the construction of those facilities so that's a project that we put in a full request three hundred sixty thousand dollars to cover design and construction for this specific project it's a standalone that didn't have any CIP related funding because it was a text that gap so we felt it was necessary to put that forward in this application the downtown sidewalks was the project that was a grouping of different sidewalk designs we've bundled them for this application but it's effectively a lot of different gaps in downtown that would be constructed as as part of this portion of the application it's a large percentage of the the funding we're requesting in this case so 1.2 million dollars a little over that for design and construction where we'll primarily be using that funding for construction and it's a little over a million dollars for for that effort then the final project this is one that we heard a lot from council member bird about concerns that the communities expressed in this area about speeding on Moore Street I've experienced it myself I spent a lot of time exploring opportunities in that corridor and felt we have a good opportunity there to do an on-street trail something that we could do pretty quickly at a low cost near the street provide those traffic calming benefits provide improved connectivity from the neighborhood into the DCTA rail trail so there are a lot of benefits to this project so as I said relatively low cost about a hundred ninety two thousand dollars and we're requesting 167,500 for that project so those are the seven projects happy to answer any questions you may have on those in terms of what are our next steps we're here to receive any direction that you have and address that we're requesting resolution to put this application into DCTA so we can meet the application deadline again that is May 2nd well once we have authorization grants management office will submit that funding application to DCTA and then as as we start spending those funds will be submitting for reimbursement and with that I'll also highlight the DCTA will meet on the 16th to formalize their recommendations and then sometime in June we should hear back in terms of the resolution of our application that all stand for any questions Councilmember Guara thanks can you tell us more about what exactly you mean by on-street trail for Moore Street are we talking about like a protected bike lane or yeah so that's I'm referring to it as an on-street trail because it allows us to consider it as a bicycle and pedestrian facility as opposed to being a bicycle only facility so along Moore Street we have sidewalks predominantly on the north side of the street and then we don't really have much on the south side of the street so the idea would be that we we create an opportunity for people to travel on both sides of the street by putting probably by putting the facility on the south side of the street and it gives kind of a bike ped connection that would be separated from traffic with bollards or some type of vertical material but it would really be just you know taking that road space and repurposing for travel by people outside of a car and making sure it's segregated so it feels safe provides good connectivity it would be continuous from the rail trail to Woodrow so it would provide a really complete connection we're not talking about anything that's like at a different grade from the roadway it would be the same surface as the roadway just separated with bollards correct it would be bollards paints and potentially other materials but certainly things will be low-cost quick to implement and then potentially with some painted curb extensions at wide intersections we did so mayor pro tem we did or I did speak with PD about some concerns that we had over towards the a train crossing and understood you know some of what you were referring to there in terms of like safety and intersection and you know this project intentionally will narrow the street so it's two lanes to make the street feel more self-reinforcing in terms of speed but still making sure that we have a wide enough street to accommodate some parking on the street there's not a lot of evidence of folks parking of it would be traveling in each direction an ability to park on the street okay counselor Davis thank you mayor just a couple things big thanks to staff current and former who are instrumental in developing this program we're going to DCTA and and getting this program developed so we can kind of claw back some of the dollars that go go to their coffers but could be put to a better use make sure people can actually get to bus stops that we have especially folks with mobility challenged who really need to be able to get to that bus stop and don't have a way to do so safely and that segues to my plug for the East McKinney project anything we can do to bump that up the queue I would greatly appreciate just about every day on my way to work I dodged somebody who has to walk in the street because they cannot walk through a fire hydrant or telephone pole or we have not provided facility for them to do that and folks who are mobility challenged basically can't use that road on that stretch of East McKinney Street think everybody knows what I'm talking about so my little plug to move that up if we can you know I can't speak to the first point because that was before I was here I can't tell you McKinney has been probably one of my most one of the areas that I feel needs the most focus from a pedestrian accessibility and safety perspective and you know excited to see our capital projects move forward in that area this does include some sidewalk construction on McKinney but closer to downtown. Councilman Beck. Thank you Mr. Mayor so excited to hear about bollards Becky I'm just teasing Becky a little bit about flexible bollards I will make the point that I really in addition to his plug but I'm gonna plug for this exact program I think we've all been a little concerned with the junction coming online in December I'm super stoked that you guys you know sort of hopefully we've got all the approvals we need we're gonna put those sidewalks in because you know people already move it up and down that that verge up and down 288 so whatever we can do to make that safe for people without vehicular access I know we're gonna have vans and everything else but they're still gonna walk to and from the junction so the as much as we can do to make that safe I'm super stoked you guys are focusing on us that's thank you. Yeah I'll give all credit to Becky she felt very passionately we needed to include that project so and I was happy to include it in this submission. Councilor Armitage. Okay so I'm gonna ask a question that I think I know the answer to but a member the public messaged me and I just want to make sure that what I told them is correct my answer so this person expressed concern that that these trip funds applied in this way might have something to do with enhancing go zone making go zone more permanent it's my understanding that this has nothing to do with the go zone and and micro transit is that correct? I would say that's correct it goes on actually makes this a very challenging grant request to administer because typically we want to make these investments in a very targeted fashion around transit assets so bus stops the train station making connectivity improvements around those facilities with uncertainty with how DCTA is going to move forward with the operating transit in the city I would say there were opportunities that we could not take advantage of in this request because we we just have uncertainty that those investments would relate to transit enhancement so our focus this year was what improvements can we make that improve sidewalk connectivity in areas that are you know good centralized locations for pick up and drop off we did look at their at their go zone heat map the the utilization that kind of gives us an idea of what areas they're seeing high go zone activity in clearly downtown is one of those areas but you know we wanted to see if we saw both our transit assets and go zone activity as strengthening the recommendations but in no means does this program have any bearing on go zone strength or weakness or success excellent and thank you so much and sure because and like you said with that in the case of downtown you know even without go zone that's a transit hub anyway so yes so I don't see any of that reflected in their plan I just wanted to say that for this person and anyone else in the public who might be concerned about it so then just my own question so these trip funds how how much is this the last shot that the city had or that any member city has it these trip funds can you kind of speak to just you know trip fund availability I remember is of this a limited there's a window on that program I'll confer with Becky it's I'll refer to our grants office good evening Laura Barons and Grand Administrator for the city this is a five-year program and we're in year two of it and so we get a call for projects every January and we have a set timeline to make the proposal for the projects within that budget and so the budgets determined based on that funding allocation that was in the presentation shown here just a little bit ago awesome but we're two years into a five-year program thank you so thank you so much so I'm going to going to support this because I like how these funds are being used you know I I wouldn't support the existence of trip funds after this five years only because I think that you know we need this money for for public transportation we also need money to enhance to do what we're doing with these funds but that's not what's on the table today what's on the table is what we're going to do with these funds so I think this is excellent allocation of these funds happy to support it thank you also had a question about the loop 28 sidewalks because I just want to make sure I understand it right it would I think it's just sort of like a word Oh or a typo it says it's about sidewalks between the junction facility and our daily bread facility that's the same thing I think you mean between the junction facility and serve Denton is that what that means yes okay and but you know it looks like you okay I'll just like I take that answer thank you thanks alright any other questions see none I just want to clarify one thing on McKinney just the other side of railroad track so that's the south side where that telephone pole is now comes up against the city parking lot so zeros cross a railroad track there's a little patch of grass I talked to freedom about including that in the sidewalks do we know if that is included in what you presented it's it's either in the sidewalks for what we call the downtown sidewalks or it's in the quiet zones project but that between the combination of those two projects that are both presented here it will cover all the sidewalk along the south side of McKinney okay great and you'll have the conversation with Moore Street will that be at the same meeting on the 28th it's not contemplated as part of that conversation I'm assuming that will be a separate conversation it will become a standalone project while you're there on the 28th you may yes you may bring some you know I like any just word to the wise yes so great okay so I'll move approval councilman bird okay we have a motion by myself second by councilman bird any other discussion is that is that you to speak okay just want to make sure I'm not skipping it okay let's vote on screen and that passes seven zero thank you very much okay now we'll go back to that concludes our regular agenda but then we'll come back to the open session and mr. Haddon you'll have if you can come down give your name and address you'll have four minutes good evening my name is Joshua Hatton my address is 1414 Auburn Drive Denton my thanks to the city workers who have facilitated my participation in tonight's meeting Karen and Monica and Ryan I'm a member of no bus cuts Denton campaign we formed last year to fight back against former mayor Denton former mayor of Denton Chris Watts's scheme to cut the DCTA bus routes layoff bus drivers and take away low-income people's access to public transportation so that he could pay tens of millions of dollars of our public funds to the owners of the New York City based via corporation for its inferior inferior goes on service the vehicle zone vehicles began circulating in Denton in September and we immediately began to witness their unsafe driving after the CEO DCTA told council that via reported that its goes on vehicles had been involved in ten collisions and received one citation our campaign asked you not to simply take via's word for it and to conduct independent research to verify via's information mayor Hudson ignored our request but council member Armenter asked the city manager ms. Hensley to follow our suggestion ms. Hensley refused stating this request needs to go to DCTA and not the city of Denton staff because of this irresponsible stonewalling by mayor Hudson and ms. Hensley we had to take matters into our own hands and conduct the research ourselves all the evidence that I describe in this section is available on our website no bus cuts Denton org we acquired video recordings of 45 via goes on vehicles and their license plates and then filed open records requests with the Denton UNT TWU Highland Village and Lewisville police departments and the Denton County Sheriff's Office for reports of all of their calls for service involving these vehicles we found that the safety record of via's goes on was much worse than the DCTA had reported to council during about ten weeks in Denton and Highland Village and about seven weeks in Lewisville there were a total of 20 calls for service by police involving via goes on vehicles there are nine by Lewisville seven by Denton two by Highland Village and one each for UNT and Denton County Sheriff's Office 10 of these 20 calls were for collisions without injury five were traffic stops there were two each for disabled vehicles and a disturbance or suspicious activity one call was for a collision with injury Denton PD's seven calls for service involving via goes on vehicles occurred at a rate of about one every ten days and break down as follows four collisions without injury two traffic stops and one collision with injury two of these reports are particularly shocking the first is a collision with injury in which a car carrying two female UNT students was rear-ended by a goes on vehicle the report reads as you can see caller says she needs ambulance now hit her head once an ambulance the second is a collision without injury a hit-and-run in which a UNT and a TWU student in a car were struck by a go-zone van which then fled the scene it was eventually found after a search by police the report reads is new vehicle with DCTA they should be able to track it clearly the people of Denton cannot trust either the DCTA or its goes on contractor via to tell the truth about safety you must overcome the stonewalling of Mayor Hudspeth and Ms. Hensley and direct city staff to investigate the safety of vias goes on immediately we also urge you to pass a resolution directing your appointee to the DCTA board to advocate strongly for the DCTA doing the same for the whole system Chris Watts has unleashed the harmful via go zone on our community Denton City Council must perform its most basic function by taking steps to protect us from this threat okay councilmember has a question yes so thank you for coming before us and for all the work that you've done in getting this data I hope you will be able to send this presentation you know and any other data that went into this presentation to council and to make it publicly available I'm assuming the customer is it's on our website www.no bus cuts Denton org okay it's all there okay thank you thank you so I haven't had to but you know it might also be a good idea to email it to us I will write down you know check the website and I will but it's good also to have it on a public record you know that you've done this to get it to us as many and the public as many different ways as possible so these figures are alarming and upsetting to me I must say they're not surprising you know number one it heard anecdotes even before we implemented goes on about these kind of situations at other in other cities not it is not a problem with micro transit in general but with privatized contracted micro transit and I think what you're we're seeing at no I don't think I know that this problem with the lack of transparency that how difficult it is to get this information from you know from goes on from DC to a even from the city is due to the fact that this is a private contractor so actually these although I do support your this investigation and resolution I would be happy to just get rid of goes on based on this all together because this confirms for me why we can't contract public public transportation which is a huge public safety issue to a private contractor if it was just DCT effort since if this was a situation with the buses which it's not but if we had problems with buses getting in collisions and hit and runs with buses DCT a would provide us that information you would be able to get it so I don't you know I don't know if I mean it doesn't doesn't really matter but I'll just say I don't know if you were stonewalled so much as I think that the you know but by individuals so much as the and maybe were but that the whole situation is is a big stonewall to transparency if that makes any sense you know but but thank you for this information and I will happily put forth that resolution proposed investigation somebody needs to be doing this investigation I think DCT a should be doing it I think goes on should be doing it but they're a private company we can't dictate what they can do but we can dictate if we want to you know DCT a if we as a city think or at least our rep can that we should be doing business with them so anyway that's my two cents member - yes thank you thank you for coming and for the work you've put into this already as I've said to you privately and as I've said at Mobility Committee we absolutely need detailed service level agreements with our vendor to ensure vans arrive quickly with high standards for safety which sounds like this is like sorely needed now and service level agreements on having enough vehicles equipped to serve passengers with wheelchairs to serve them as well as other passengers and the point of a service level agreement is you know with measures with agreed how we get the information the point of that is if our vendor they can either meet the service level agreement if they can't meet the service level agreement then we have to be able to look at other options including developing in-house capability I don't know that we have that today but you know we these are the basics of providing the service so thank you for coming before us Councilor McGuire thank you yeah thanks so much for for speaking to us today I didn't have all the data that you have but I raised similar concerns at our most recent DCT a board meeting about safety just my own personal experiences with riding goes on I have very significant concerns about driver training in particular there there doesn't appear to be a whole lot of training happening for drivers what little is happening is completely inadequate I completely agree that an investigation is called for I'm not sure whether the city of Denton is the appropriate agency to perform that investigation but I will follow up with you and I'll follow up with city staff to discuss what options there may be to make that happen because I think you're absolutely right that an investigation is called for here councilman back it's well there wasn't a question that I heard pardon me there was not a question that I heard so just Councilman back thank you mr. mayor yeah I appreciate you coming out I've had similar training concerns I think training might be something to add to to whoever is appropriate I share council requires concern that that maybe the city isn't this city as a as a body isn't the right entity but that as a stakeholder is part of the DCTA community it definitely has pull and to make sure that the training is stepped up and and made adequate to the needs of the community so I appreciate you coming out and bringing some of these items to our for clarity councilman bird thank you so much for being diligent if it hadn't if it's not people like you that keep these issues in front of all of us as a community we just don't know where we would be I'm not a big fan of privatizing public anything if it's public it needs to stay with the public that is my that's just the way that I appreciate you know all of us working together as a community be a community and needs to stay on a community level not privatized I had an opportunity to speak with an employee one day just it just happened to be in the same space at the same time in the parking lot of the DCTA parking lot and I got an earful and it was just simply not anything that was positive being said although this is a very positive individual that of course raises a high level of concern as to how in this person didn't talk more so about themselves and what they were experiencing this individual talked about the lack of care for the rider particularly the elderly people that that they had to come in contact with so you know beyond saying that there's just so much to work on on that it's just it's just even on next door app you all do the next door app they can go all out on the services so much so that I've asked them to look at why do we have out-of-town license plates on these vehicles and they're not being served by the state of Texas you know by now just those kinds of things that's just worrying people so again I appreciate you bringing that to us and keeping it in the light we need it thank you okay thank you very much have a great evening that takes us to concluding items and I want to touch on one thing regarding Friday reports and just making sure we're digging into those lots of answers there that are because city the six city secretary staff and the city manager can correct me where I'm wrong is we're getting several a lot more public information requests and then staff is then having to answer questions or cut and paste from the Friday report to answer council questions and it's just it's we're spread a little thin in the city secretary's office to the it's we're up to 660 requests from beginning of the year to now so that's only three months and so really really getting hit hard in that department so any help you can give staff with just searching across those PDFs on Fridays to see if your answers there would be appreciated and is there anything I missed miss is there we try to answer a lot of the questions in the Friday report and it isn't it's important if the council can please take the time to read it a lot of our information or responses are in there and then like we've always said any kind of questions that come to us individually or through the CMO we're gonna put together try to get it back out but it will always be in Friday's report at the last resort okay thank you councilman armature yes so concluding remarks I'm going to be requesting making a two minute pitch for that Medicare for all resolutions so thank you to Priscilla you ever you know for putting that before us I will also be requesting and not making another two minute pitch for this resolution and investigation from no bus cuts with Denton so I hope they'll circle back with with me on that make sure that I have the information I need and you know finally I just want to say you know I understand that that as far as our can federal COVID funds where that United Way is upgrading their system hopefully that will and hopefully the result will be getting the relief to the people who need it faster and just want to put in a word for just how how helpful it would be if everybody who has applied for aid through United Way could get some kind of email just an automatic email so that everybody has the same messaging because I'm hearing that you know people are hearing different things from different people and some people aren't hearing anything at all just to be able to send them an email letting them know we're upgrading our system letting them know that there's a triage system and that as I understand it that you know people who have notices to vacate we've received notices to vacate are down to the top of the list I think there should be that clear messaging I think it would save most of all the pub members of the public who need to help but also you know the case workers and and city staff a lot of time and work so anyway hopefully we can get that relief into the hands of people who need it as quickly as possible because that that money is there and we need we need to use it so thanks to everyone working on that. Councilman Beck. Thank you Mr. Mayor. To this topic of staff information the staff gave to me and I think they give it to us all but a very helpful primer on on how to do laser fish searches with some some clear guidance on a particular topic that I asked them to look up and I think if you haven't read that I strongly encourage you to do that I don't know if that was put together by Rosa staff or IT staff but it was it was it's really helped my searching of both Friday reports and and just general documentation and they've done a really good job of scanning and getting back a lot of this documentation that's going back decades before the new system so that's honestly I've you may have seen there's a lot less questions coming out of me because I've been able to find those answers in old materials. Then I had two items for the well we often put congratulations and announcements in the matrix so I want to commend the environmental services and sustainability department because this the TCEQ just announced that they are finalists for sustainable Denton and I don't think they actually ended up winning the top honors but they were really high up in the whole state of Texas for our sustainable Denton program so I think there's congratulations to sustainable ability and environmental services so I'm really really proud that our community is is leading municipalities in in the in the state of Texas and then I will remind everyone that the Red Bud Festival is coming up and full disclosure I'll be a judge at one of the contests so I'm looking forward to to that immensely I think we all have fun at the Red Bud Festival so thank you. Mayor Procter. Thank you I want to make people aware that on Thursday at the Civic Center at 830 in the morning there's going to be an event held by a group called dementia friendly Denton County almost everybody will eventually have somebody in their family that suffers from dementia and what this group is focused on is kind of helping us train our community restaurants and so on how we can do things in a way that are just more compatible with with you know some the likelihood that some guests are going to be suffering from dementia I hope we get done with the agenda committee promptly I'll pop over there yeah so you have there's someone in your family that suffering from that or if you know others you may want to pop in and see what they have to say okay anyone else okay I want to ask staff in light of the technical issues we've had if we need to add just a question not advocating but maybe a call at your own risk type thing on the agenda like if we have technical issues or we we have had in the past or if you want to if it's pressing especially because of with the frequency that we meet now I just don't want anyone to miss a window because they don't you know it's just not you know lots of moving parts on the phone system lately your thoughts yes sir so we did have technical issues tonight and we're gonna be troubleshooting those tomorrow and I'm gonna bet that we're gonna get those resolved and not have any issues going forward but we can look at adding some language noting that calls can be interrupted due to technical issues and make sure that people are going into that knowing that this is a possible circumstance right because it's a third-party service right so we don't really we'll have there's only limited control we have over and so I just don't want I want someone if they if it's like oh I gotta speak on this date I want to kind of give them fair warning you know we can do that and we can also remind people that they have other options including the e-comment and speaking in person as well yes thank you very much I appreciate that and and then so I don't know that we'll be back before so there's Easter a resurrection Sunday coming up and so that'll be lots of stuff going on parks and local churches etc and so and then parks has like a teen twilight like glow egg hunt thing yeah yeah that's really cool yeah that's good that's good so lots of great things going on so please check the city websites for that congratulations to Jalen Wilson the Jayhawks Kansas City Jayhawks so he's from guy he's a guy kid that and so we're gonna try to see about a proclamation for him and then unrelated but related my buddy's son big pat son goes to Kansas he's plays in the band so just shout out to Big Pat's son and then other things so later this week this is pretty neat that Brent Ryan from the business school at UNT is receiving an award for the Horatio Alger he's a Horatio Alger recipient really big deal and so that'll happen this weekend so I want to congratulate him North Texas taste of North Texas was was really great that event at Golden Triangle Mall I appreciate them being a great partner in our community and then also went out to University UNT to read their University Day proclamation and had a blast on campus a lot of great young adults there and learned a lot and swagged and surfed love that song if you don't know it look it up it's really good and then so want to thank the city manager staff parks for the shade at Fredmore Park I know you've been working on that so thank you very much for that for the softball fields so the softball fields the guest area the scores table now have shade over them and so those amenities continue to kind of again add equity to our city and then development services for the the parking lot is looking great I mean that's that's really that's that's really neat but what I want to say is and I meant to talk to the pedestrian so that development services component if we could ask staff to kind of give us a feed feedback on where or how we can encourage walking because that that lot was empty and I'm gonna tie this into the to the community market so it's the community markets super full right parking and so that development services lot is pretty big and we can add people to have a walking a way to walk there either to the square or also work on just different traffic service around the community market to kind of help but that development service parking great to walk to downtown just increasing that increasing that awareness so very good well it's 935 and we'll conclude tonight's meeting thank you