Apr 19, 2022 City Council on 2022-04-19 2:00 PM

Good afternoon and welcome to this meeting of the Denton City Council it is 2 p.m. It's April 19th. We do have a quorum so I'll call the meeting to order. First thing is calls on the consent agenda items which we have none. Taking us to questions from council on the consent agenda. Questions for staff on the consent agenda? Anyone? Councilmember Thank you Mr. Mayor. I was a little accused, that's not even a word. I was a little confused about the distinction between AE and AD. They are seemingly close to identical. Could someone enlighten me how those are different? It's not necessarily that I have a problem with them I just don't know what the difference is. The only difference is one is Denton County and one is Dallas County and I didn't catch that originally. Each one has their own form that they use. I think we already have one with Denton County and this is just a renewal. The Dallas one is new. So there's little variations between them but yeah I didn't catch it either I think that's the first question I asked. I feel like a goofus now because there's clearly differences between Dallas and Denton County. I do have one follow up question and that is what is that fund, the Confiscation Fund typically used to fund what activities in the police or wherever? I'll defer to the chief if he knows. Frank Dixon, Chief of Police. That's a great question Council Member Beck. So it's typically used to fund anything that we don't have funding for, typically for training is what we've been using it for for the most part. Thank you, appreciate it. Absolutely. Okay anyone else, any other questions? Council Member Davis. Thank you Mayor. I just need to pull AE for a recusal please. Okay got it. Thank you. Any other questions? Council Member Armitage. Yes I have a question about AB, about the water park contract and that is and I remember something a question came up along these lines last year and I was just wondering if Benny Keith also supplies the plates and straws and utensils etc. that come along with the food and if so if a request could be put in there with of course the agreement of the rest of consensus of the rest of council that there be no styrofoam plates or just kind of use of styrofoam in general. Good evening or afternoon Council. Nikki Sassenes, Assistant Director of Parks and Recreation. I apologize I missed the first part of your question. Oh no, no problem. The first part was just me rambling anyway but I think the first part was just to say that this has come up last year. I believe it might not be exactly with this contract but something similar regarding food supplies and utensils. Yeah for the water park. So yeah I was just wondering maybe that's already in there. It is. We actually went out to bid for the concessions for both athletics and aquatics. There were two options A and B. We did not get someone to bid on B which is the water park but in that request there was a clause for sustainability. In the informal bid that we are going with Benny Keith right now there is a requirement for sustainability products so this is mostly just for food and beverage. We do purchase supplies from them as well but we do not purchase any styrofoam. That's also why the price is a little bit higher because of the eco-friendly products that we use. Awesome thank you so much. Anyone else? I just want to one quick question before we move on. I just wanted to make sure and I'm sure this is true. So Giving Hope and Grace Like Rain both are getting receiving funds. I just want to make sure we have whatever naming normalized or by the time those times it rolls around that's not a problem to name it whatever they want. Hi. According to our community services the question was Giving Hope and Grace Like Rain. Yes so just wanted to make sure that we you know I know there's kind of a merging in process whatever naming and convention. They will officially merge in July. Okay. So we're moving forward with the separate contracts. Okay. We have a process internally for organizations if they change names or merge. We've done it with previous organizations. So once they officially merge we'll take care of all that internally. Okay great just wanted to make sure. Thank you very much. All right that concludes our questions on the consent agenda. Just for the record only one thing was pulled. A.E. no presentation. Just a separate vote for a recusal. That takes us to our work session. And I'll call the first item which is ID 212781. Receive report. Hold discussion and give staff direction regarding audit project 0 to 6 dash. So it's wastewater systems operations. Hello mayor and council Madison Rorschach and city auditor here to present our findings from this phase one of our audit project of the city's wastewater system operations which focuses on collection line infrastructure projects and maintenance activities. So the audit generally evaluated the effectiveness of the city's wastewater collection line maintenance activities. So the city currently maintains about five hundred and thirty miles of wastewater lines that collect sewage from its wastewater customers and transport it to the city's wastewater treatment plants in order to ensure ensure that sewage is effectively collected the wastewater lines must be adequately maintained repaired and replaced to ensure that wastewater does not impact public health and safety. So specifically the audit evaluated collection line maintenance and repairs as well as collection line capital improvement construction projects. So I'll begin by discussing line maintenance and repairs. So during the last two fiscal years the wastewater collection division has completed about eighty eight hundred work orders relating to maintenance and repair of wastewater collection lines and manholes. Water utilities has established a preventative maintenance process to ensure that all lines are cleaned every five years and inspected every seven years. Repair work orders are generally created based on the results of line inspections or based on reports received from residents based on discussions with water utility staff collection line chokes or defects are completed as quickly as possible on a first come first serve basis. But formal parameters for how quickly repairs should be completed after being reported have not been developed based on review of all eighty eight hundred work orders. Repair work generally appears to be completed in a timely manner as about 80 percent of maintenance and repair work is initiated within one week of the work orders creation. In addition almost 95 percent of maintenance and repair work is completed on the same day that the work began. That being said we found that there was often delays in a work orders closure after the repair work was complete due to pending restoration work which is generally performed by a third party contractor. So similarly the department has developed some flow charts for collection line repair and maintenance work. However they generally do not address what documentation should be included in a work order such as pictures and videos as well as evidence of right of way pertinent permits and utility line locates. Based on review of a sample of 368 work orders about half did not contain pictures or video of the repair site. In addition of the 24 work orders where excavation was required 15 did not have evidence that a right of way permit was obtained nor that a line locate was completed. Ensuring that the requirements for work order supporting documentation is clear is particularly important as it provides assurance that the repair was completed for the city's established standards practices and applicable regulations. Based on their management response water utilities plans to improve on standard operating procedures to include detailed work order requirements to ensure all work orders are completed to the same standards. Next water utilities has established a capital improvement process flow chart for small water line capital improvement projects as shown in the figure on the slide. Based on a review of eight completed capital improvement projects some project step documentation needed for quality and monitoring assurance was missing. In particular there was no documentation of the project's final walk through or any punch list items that needed to be finished before the project was completed. In addition based on the review of those eight CIP projects we found that there was no evidence of a street moratorium check for two instances. Street construction moratoriums are generally placed on newly improved streets in an effort to preserve their useful life as any excavation weakens the pavement's integrity. So while it's sometimes necessary for water utilities to perform work at locations under a moratorium the department should obtain documented approval from streets division in order to ensure that all stakeholders are informed that the moratorium has been broken and that the street has been weakened. Similarly we found that water utilities does not obtain right of way permits for waste water line capital improvement projects. Right of way permits are generally required to ensure construction work on this on or under the city's streets and sidewalks do not endanger residents safety and to ensure that the assets are properly restored. According to the city's right of way ordinance and public works inspection staff right of way permits are required for all maintenance and construction work impacting the city's right of way. So for this reason we recommended that the department update the current CIP process to ensure right of way permits are appropriately obtained obtained and based on their management response water utilities plans to revise the current CIP process and ensure right of way permits are obtained as appropriate and moratorium checks are adequately documented. Lastly water utilities costs for wastewater capital improvement projects are recorded individually for each project and are ultimately capitalized as infrastructure assets in the city's accounting system. Project costs generally include materials labor hours equipment and restoration costs. So in general we found that the equipment usage materials and restoration costs were adequately recorded for each project. That being said each for us for labor costs each day water wastewater crew leaders record labor hours in the work order of their active project. Separately each crew member completes a physical time sheet that is used by water utilities admin assistant to record the labor hours the labor hours in the city's timekeeping system. Water utilities does have a process to reconcile these two systems to ensure that labor hours are recorded accurately. However it does not appear to be effective based on a review of 24 time entries in the work order system. And inaccurately recording labor costs can lead to inaccurate project cost estimation and reporting. So we found that this issue was previously identified in the water system operations audit and so we haven't issued a new recommendation but we'll do follow up on this at that time together. Additionally closure and capitalization are the final steps of wastewater line capital improvement project process. Ideally assets should be capitalized as soon as possible after they are placed into service. In order in order to initiate this process water department project manager must submit a project closer request form based on a review of 17 wastewater line CIP completed since 2018. The timeliness of project capitalization and closure has significantly improved due to a workflow process implemented by the finance department in 2021. So specifically prior to 2021 it took on average more than 200 days for a project to be capitalized while now it takes less than a week for a project to be capitalized. And then finally based on discussions with department staff they've begun taking steps to launch a full asset management program to improve work management processes and data to support financial and long-range capital planning. Asset management planning was generally reviewed as part of the water system operations audit and so the effectiveness of that the planned asset management program will be evaluated as part of a follow-up review in the future. So in summary we issued a total of five recommendations all of which the department concurred and based on their response we believe the identified risks will be appropriately addressed and we plan to conduct a follow-up review in 18 to 36 months in conjunction with the water system operations distribution audit follow-up review. Questions? Okay thank you. Questions for staff? Councilman Beck? Thank you Mr. Mayor. Madison so to the points were that you made about keeping track of the budget, budgeting items and also keeping track of the moratorium items. When you did your analysis do we keep track of sort of adjacent ancillary impacts to streets and curbs when we have to re-dig them say either for an emergency repair or for an undocumented repair of some sort. When we do those budget estimates do they keep track of sort of the mean cost to repair the surrounding infrastructure of the street. It goes to the kind of combined points that you made I'm just putting them together. Is that part of the budgeting process and if not well no I'll just stop there. Is that part of the budgeting process? I think your question correct me if I'm wrong but I think your question is are we including in the budgeting process the impacts of breaking street moratoriums? Street or any other infrastructure where they have in the process of fixing wastewater. I think that they're probably included in some ways in the operational cost but probably not specifically an analysis on those. I don't know that there's currently not really a good way of tracking if a street moratorium has been broken. Is it standard practice to budget or it's just so variable I mean in this regard or is it just so variable that you can't really do it and so would you recommend that we follow it or not based on that. I think that it's probably already kind of in colluded in streets regular just not on like a granular detail as part of streets or whatever other assets programs of replacement and repair. Okay all right thank you. Any other questions? Councillor Armitage. I'll just say once again because someone had to say it thank you again for just another excellent audit a lot of work and you know if there's not many questions it is because you answer so many questions in your work so thank you to you and your whole department for this work. Okay any other questions? I have a couple so the when you kind of spotlight the for example the CIP you mentioned there's some examples of kind of things that aren't being executed on or not. Are you looking at the are you looking my question is is it is there a guiding document that you're using that that that department has and not executing on that or is there no document and you're sourcing it elsewhere and and in the documents kind of being created just want to understand that. Yeah so in this case there's a couple of different areas that we took the criteria so there's the right of way permit right of way ordinance which requires right of way permits so we look at that requirement. There's the street moratorium I'd call it more of a procedure practice within the streets division where they have they say like okay we just constructed the street we don't think we don't want it to be constructed you know dug into in within 12 years unless there's an emergency so there's that that's kind of more of a guideline not necessarily a policy formal policy. There's also the department itself has a flowchart kind of procedure document that says we're going to have these steps in our CIP process and so we looked and checked if those steps were met and that there was documentation supporting that those things were done. Got it so it's not always just a kind of the document was there didn't see it sometimes it's it's meshing of documents it may not have been done before. Yes great great that's helpful and then you mentioned the there's a in the follow-up right there's there's an existing issue with the time accounting so is that something you knew going in or is that something in the review in your in your preparation you say hey give me all the stuff that's still pending or how does that work? Yeah so with every audit that we do we look and make sure that we haven't touched other areas that are within the scope of the current audit we're doing so we knew going into this wastewater audit that they're they use similar systems and processes that we looked at in the water audit and we have also done a you we did a utility street cuts audit that really touched upon right-of-way permitting as well so we looked at all of that when we were looking at this audit. Great okay thank you very much great job. That takes us that concludes item A takes us to item B which is ID 22374 receive a report and hold discussion give staff direction regarding the tiny home project request for information. Afternoon Mayor and Council Danny Shaw Community Services. So today we're going to go through the RFI submissions for the tiny home project that was recently submitted to the community today we're going to go through why we we did the RFI we're going to review the RFI submissions and then allow for discussion on the next steps from council. So the reason this RFI was initiated was because we do have a community group that's been advocating for a long time for an alternative to emergency housing shelter calling it a tiny home village in Denton. We also have a strategic initiative within the city that is a council priority and that our goals are supporting that strategic initiative around strengthening our housing crisis response system. This does include our conversations around how we are working on reducing the gaps in housing in the community for people experiencing homelessness and also looking at how we focus and prioritize on increasing available and accessible permanent supportive housing. So the RFI scope did identify that this is what we're looking for in the projects that would be submitted. Now just as a quick primer on why this is a priority our housing crisis response system is our community collaborative and coordinated systems approach to what is a complex social issue in our community around homelessness. The housing crisis response system is designated to the shared goal of making homelessness rare brief and non-recurring. And just to highlight it is built on a continuum of services in our community that are all working together on multiple fronts so it's not just shelter it's not just housing it's not just services but a combination of these things working together on a continuum to make sure we're meeting the diverse needs in our community. There's not one solution for this issue and so we're combining those efforts. We did come to council in November and talk about our homelessness initiatives and some of the next steps and just to recap just make sure everyone's reminded of what our current priorities are. We are working on strengthening the shelter system and that's the full implementation of the emergency shelter model. We have the strategic goal of completing our Lou 28 center that the city has purchased and is working with our nonprofit partner Our Daily Bread to finish construction on and then to open a 24/7 shelter available to community with kind of a one-stop shop of services available in the shelter in the facility including food and other wraparound support services to help people in their stability. We also strengthen our outreach PD has implemented a cert program and then we've also added additional resources to street outreach so that we are making sure we're connecting with people where they are and trying to connect them to services that are available. The next steps that we talked about at that time is to really work with our partners to maximize our emergency funding so you making sure we're utilizing the funding was available from COVID effectively but also you all have seen our affordable housing strategic toolkit you have approved that and within that particular toolkit we are also talking about how we can increase permanent supportive housing for people experiencing homelessness so some of those strategies will complement out of this affordable housing toolkit as well. So when we issue the RFI we did go through a process where we wanted to make sure the respondents were clear that under our existing city development standards that the any proposed development would have to meet those current standards as they are and we listed those as they're listed here. Compliance with the development code requirements related to zoning and land use and subdivisions and any of our development design standards as they exist. The city also has criteria manuals including in that our transportation storm water recycling wastewater electric site design all of these things will be considered as we look at this process that the city has adopted building codes fire and health codes and other life codes and that it would have to go through a development review and permitting process no matter what. That started our discussion about how we define what is a tiny tiny house versus other particular options and so while we did name this the tiny home RFI we are talking about how we might define this better for our community make sure we have clarity when we're talking about different options that are available. So right now as the development code and other codes recognize a tiny home is a fully contained unit it does comply with all building codes it does have all of the amenities you would expect in a traditional home whether it's rental or home ownership that includes water heat and air ability to bathe ability to cook and then does have size requirements a minimum of 300 square feet a maximum of 500 square feet for the definition of tiny home as it is. We are looking at ways to talk about this more effectively and so we identified an option for a new term a tiny structure that would define a structure that does provide a unit for sleeping or living that may or may not contain some of the sanitary or cooking facilities that a traditional home would and we also then extended that for the purpose of this conversation around tiny home tiny structure village which would be a combination or a collection of those types of structures available for people to live collaboratively or collectively and to make it clear that tents are currently not considered in any of these above options. So through the process we did receive five submissions to the RFI and I'm going to go through them there as you notice if you saw the backup there was a lot of variety in how the submissions came in and we actually wrote the RFI intentionally for that because we wanted to see what types of things people would bring to us without being restrictive so they were able to not answer sections if it didn't apply to them and so what we're presenting today just for the purpose of this discussion for the presentation is sort of just highlighting some of those common elements across the board for each of these that we could identify and some common characteristics to help us with our discussion we can certainly go into more detail if you'd like but really we're just kind of working through the minimum level of information that would be helpful. So our first project and these are alphabetical it's the Denton Basic Service Center this is a 501c3 it's experienced currently as grassroots providing supportive services in the community to people experiencing homelessness it is a single entity and then their proposal is what they are identifying as a stewardship village which does have a definition in our homelessness community they're proposing about 30 to 35 semi-permanent structures with electricity heating and cooling means for storage sleeping they're proposing that there be separate facilities for cooking restroom shower and laundry and that they would be utilizing a construction team that includes local professionals and volunteers they are suggesting in their proposal two different options to look at so if you look in the financial sections you'll see the first option being canvas I'm sorry the first option being cedar units more of the tiny home village structure and then the second option is the canvas side dwelling which would be more of the tent type format they are potentially requesting a combination of land infrastructure funding funding for their project and then zoning changes that would be related to this request. Green and Brown is a company that's coming or a group of folks who are coming in they do have experience in the tiny home village development process each of their partners has some different experience related to that one dividing just designing some of the small print housing but also relationship to city square housing which is a community development corporation in Dallas that works with city square to develop alternative housing options and then they also are one of the partners is responsible for the cottages of Hickory Creek which is or Hickory Crossing which you also saw in our affordable housing toolkit presentation it is a collaboration of these partners that are listed here their proposal is to come in they don't have a set proposal yet they'd like to come in partner with the city to develop a project and then form a nonprofit entity and then bring a project like this forward they their potential requests could be potential combination of land infrastructure funding and zoning much like the previous applicant proposal. Then we have LIT solutions this one was a nice surprise to see unexpected and we'll talk about a little bit later but really they're just coming in with a housing solution a modular unit that we could be proposed as a way to provide the housing unit on any type of project that comes forward. It is a manufactured affordable scalable modular solution they're out of Oregon and so their request in their RFI is really about us purchasing this mod pod and maybe potentially amending our building codes to allow for it for this type of housing. The fourth out respondent was South SWX global container conversions they're calling this project horizons there are different partners involved with this project as well have the SWX global which does the container homes already we have a real estate partner with the JDL group who does housing and land development and then the United Way of Denton County is a collaborator for housing and homelessness services to be provided. This particular proposal is a comprehensive proposal like the Denton Basic Service Center identifying its housing services wraparound services how they would handle these particular supports with workforce training and then the tradition transition excuse me to permanent living. This is also a potential request they did identify a budget for what it would look like but potentially funding land infrastructure ongoing funding and zoning. And then our fifth project you would know this in the backup as it was an entity to be determined they have since applied for their nonprofit status under the name the 1877 journey they their experiences there are members of the local board of directors here and then member of their board who is on the board of the community first project in Austin. They do have that relational access to the community first leadership team and so they are proposing a model that is very similar to that Austin project this project does have a commitment of land in the city of Denton and has funding commitments for the development of the project so far this potential request of the city would just be probably zoning at this point. So just to kind of recap all of this conversation what the city could excuse me apologize for that what the city could facilitate in any one of these projects and would be consideration for a discussion is land appropriate zoning or identifying a zoning classification that would support any one of these projects funding for infrastructure development funding to help to get the project off the ground sustainable funding to make sure the project can maintain itself over time. And then I did note here some other approvals so for example if any one of these was utilizing city land we would be coming up against the state law House Bill 1925 and may have requirements they would have to go through the process of getting approval through TDHCA depending on how the project is structured and if it is on public property. So with that I'm going to go through some recommendations and this would really be based on which way council would direct us so these are not saying we should do all of these or any one of them it's just how we would look at the different proposals if you would direct us this direction. So look at we've got three projects that are very similar in the way that they're proposing a very common tiny home village tiny structure village project then basic service center green and brown and the SWX global container project. Because of the significance of the investment that are required for these particular projects and how they're being proposed we do recommend procurement and then what would be necessary would be probably some additional work on budget supplementals and considering approval of zoning request that would be consistent to adopted or amended policies as this council directed. The 1877 journey very similar to the other three projects this project is again working through its 501c3 it's also working through the development review process it's already had its first pre-development meeting. It's also a potential complement to our affordable housing toolkit on permanent supportive housing and then staff recommendation here would just be if you decided to move forward with this project is just consider the zoning request when the project comes forward with no other needed city investment. And then the last two have combined light solutions and also the SWX container conversions because it does have a housing option is using shipping containers that these are actually really strong complements to our affordable housing toolkit it was an unexpected benefit of this conversation but when we looked at the affordable housing toolkits one of the recommendations to help us to help us bring some of these projects forward is how do we look at reducing the cost of development and one of those ways is to look at pre-approved permitting for certain types of products that would help reduce the cost in the permitting timeline which also reduces the cost so these are being put forward as a potential for complements to both the ADU programs or some of our other strategies that we're looking at whether it's the small cluster home process or infill or some of those ideas that we have in the toolkit that we'll be working forward with. So this would be a consideration of maybe when we're bringing forward the development incentive packages in the future that are strategies in the toolkit that we might look at how we do this with projects like this. So with that I'm going to talk through our options really quickly and then bring it up for discussion. So right now after we've reviewed these are the RFI council can direct us to prepare a budget amendment or supplementals to issue an RFP or other method of solicitation for their services or you can direct us to just enter into a contract with any one of these projects that you think is eligible or we can take no further action and allow these projects to move through the development process as they are. And so I will bring it down for discussion. Great. Thank you very much. Great presentation. Questions for staff? Councilmember Armitage and then member Tim. Sure. Thank you for the presentation. So first of all it's really exciting how many responses we got and to see the variety. So preliminary questions it seemed to me that all of these all six of them or five of them sorry would be would have the potential to complement the affordable housing toolkit. So I'm just wondering why and I don't expect you to paint all three of them with one broad brush but maybe if you go by through each of them and you know why was that potential to complement not listed for those first three the basic services center green and brown and the global container conversions which was then right. Yeah. And that last category included. Yeah. Yeah. So I think we're really talking about permanent housing solutions versus temporary. So we don't know what the green and project could be or couldn't be. So it very well could have been complemented just didn't have a proposal to react to specifically. So that's why it wasn't listed there. The didn't basic service center has that potential but right now they're proposing more temporary structures not permanent supportive housing. So that was where when I was identifying the potential for the affordable housing toolkit options it was more about which are permanent structures that would meet our current definitions of tiny homes. OK. Got it. So they so all of them do have potential to compliment. Absolutely. Yeah. OK. So so another question if you could explain exactly what's meant by procurement is recommended under comments for that section. My guess is land procurement of land additional land or well there's a significant request for those two of those projects from potential funding and potentially land and other investments. So given this significant investment of the city procurement is recommended. It's not just land. It's also about development funding. It's also about infrastructure funding. These are things that would potentially be considered gifts. So a big sense for us to go through the procurement process to make sure we're fairly OK. Got it. OK. So that is just shorthand for saying that we'd have to just go through the procurement process. We're recommending it if the City Council willing to move with any one of those three projects with that significant city investment. We would recommend procurement. You may direct us. Got it. OK. Got it. Got it. So and then finally if you could speak to you know your sense of which of these projects has expressed has either expressed a timeline with a desire to get this on the ground as soon as possible or if the answer is because I look through these applications and that was one thing that was hard. It was hard to tell you know for some of them you know what staff's thought is on that. And I'll just say in case it makes it easier to you know to answer that question. My thinking is you know I want to see something that can get on the ground as soon as possible up and running as soon as possible. For me it doesn't just have to be just one of these but you know if there's going to be one that might take a while then I would like to see in addition to that one that can get on the ground real soon. So I was just wondering if you could if you could speak to that because I had a hard time telling from just looking at the applications. Yeah I think that it's hard to say definitively but I think you have two projects. One the Denton Basic Service Center that has its proposal knows exactly what it wants and what funding it's required requiring and that would be one. The 1877 journal journey is also probably the closest to process because it has its land commitments and funding commitments and it's already started its development review process with the city without this process it doesn't need us essentially. So it's pretty it's pretty close to probably getting going. Both of them though I probably I couldn't answer how long it would really take them to get off online because I don't know the timeline for their infrastructure investments it's going to be necessary and then the building and construction process I couldn't answer that question but those probably are the two closest. The green and brown process would be a lengthy process for us to go through obviously and then this the SWX container project probably in that same vein they have a good proposal but they haven't really taken any other steps to move forward so it would be difficult to say for those two. Okay thank you that is super helpful and so sorry so I did say that that was my last question but I did have one more and that was that if so say I'm thinking of particularly the modular homes request which was it was kind of an unusual one because it at least to me it seemed like they were offering the homes which seemed real cool and I'm not quite sure exactly what else in it in addition to those physical structures but they seem like really cool physical structures. Right you know are we in a position as far as kind of giving direction now or would would this depend on would this be something that would come up in a request for proposal process to see what kind of possibilities there are where say for instance some of these responders who are applicants who don't yet have those the physical structures that are going to build them to see if they would be interested in partnering with the modular homes. Yeah I guess my answer to that was it wouldn't require any direction from you if one of these partners saw this presentation and wanted to try to collaborate we would certainly make that connection unless it started to involve city investment so if you're asking the city to pay for that structure then we would have a different conversation. Okay so they would have to kind of reach out to each other. They could. They could yeah yeah and is there at this point is there any ethical problem with that them kind of fellow applicants and now that it's out there and if you applied for them to reach out to each other. No I think if one of these groups saw another group they were interested in working with that as independent entities legal entities they could negotiate with each other on whatever level they wanted. Okay awesome thank you so much and thanks everyone for your patience. Mayor Proctor. Thank you. Yeah first of all yeah so you know excited to have gotten to this far and thank you very much to staff for saying you know you can't ask us to initiate an RFI process and the great surprise is the unexpected outpouring of willingness and ideas and and capability. So I'm going to make an observation that they seem to be a lot of there seem to be a lot of complimentary offerings. In fact they all seem to have holes and but together they seem to cover the pieces and I wonder if the model you know of sort of RFI RFP is kind of based on the competitive idea but maybe that doesn't really apply and we should recognize that you know the bounty of willingness and my question is could that be a role for the city to play to coordinate some to coordinate some kind of collaboration to see you know somebody's got to be the lead in it a responsible party but you've got one that's got land and and funding you've got structures that are suggested you've got some that have expertise but you know not the other resources and you've got also a network of of committed volunteers too. It seems like they each have something to to contribute so you know is that is it out of the question that the city could could sort of convene the group and see if they can and kind of help see if there's a better offering that comes out of a combination without us just saying well you know if you talk to each other that's fine but you know is that a way to get to a better answer. So I think there's different ways in which we can approach that we certainly could be a facilitator we already have this information available the more responsibility we take in the coordination of that project though the more it becomes ours so we would just want to be cautious and care take care and how that look across the board and then again as I mentioned to Councilmember Armentor the more investment we make then I think that changes the conversation so if we are starting to consider land or dollars then that that really would be something we want to make sure we're doing in an equitable and fair way. Although you know you have one player that has landed dollars. Yes. That's kind of interesting. They're going through the process now already. Yeah so you know but they're going to need they're going to need the other elements. So you know I don't think you're off base in talking about how they might collaborate potentially together to the same question as Councilmember Armentor asked. Yeah the key the key word is is facilitate you know not not own it. Okay any other questions. Councilmember McGuire. So just to clarify city manager you know mentioned that the 1877 journey is kind of already moving forward. Is it likely that that will move forward without any direction from Council? Yeah I think that the answer to there is it can move forward without any direction from Council because it's not requiring anything other than what will come later in the development process. So there may be a proposal coming forward to you for the development agreement and that would be going through development services. So that would be a later role for you but at this point they can move through the process without any other. Okay thank you. Yeah I think that I'm ready to provide some direction. I share my colleagues enthusiasm that there was such a great response to this request for information and that the responses were so very different that that they weren't we clearly don't need to just pick a winner here. There are there are ways in which these various organizations can definitely work together. There was one that stood out to me and that's the Denton Basic Services Center because of the cohesiveness of the philosophy that they articulated. You know we've obviously we've all been in conversations about this some of us for quite some time and even just a few months ago some of the details were kind of fuzzy about the proposal but I think that this process has really helped the folks at Denton Basic Services Center hone in on what exactly it is that they want to accomplish and they have an existing relationship with the homeless community here that none of these other organizations have that I think would prove really really valuable in helping them achieve their admittedly very ambitious goal of having a community that is primarily run by the residents themselves. I think that the close and existing relationship with the homeless community is going to be about the only thing that would allow that to work because that's you know I know we've had conversations about that element of it and that's not something that any of the other organizations are really offering because they really can't because they don't know the homeless folks in our community. So my direction is I would really like to see moving forward with an RFP for the Denton Basic Services Center project. I would like to see that project move forward for sure perhaps in conjunction with some of these other organizations you know obviously the LIT workshop is they're focused on the modular structures perhaps there could be a combination or a conversation about collaboration there but I really I see Denton Basic Services Center bringing us a cohesive vision and a cohesive philosophy that I really would like to see move forward. Anyone else? Councilman Beck. Thank you Mr. Mayor. So I have a couple questions if I might. So for this 1877 Journey project it didn't see much of a plan compared to say the SWX or the DBSC's plan that those felt like they were more fleshed out in terms of response to the plethora of questions and so it was clear that they wanted to emulate a community first but and I hope I'm not being too glib that seemed to be the extent of the plan that I at least in the documentation that I saw and that's not necessarily I don't mean to drag them I just I'm not seeing what the plan is locally yet we're talking about land and funding as if it's proceeding so do we have an idea so my first question in this regard is do we have an idea of what their plan is and I didn't see we already have land I didn't see where we had noted where that land was in proximity to Denton so what could you could you address either of those two or could the the kind of address the the land is that appropriate yeah he do it I'm sorry mayor would you like the applicant to respond to where the land is or would you like us to what no it's it's fine staff can it's okay yeah I mean let's see you defer to them that's that's fine whatever's easiest Scott McDonald director of Development Services I'm happy to talk from a very high level of what conversations we had I think it'd be most appropriate they could they could address some of the specifics as it relates to the ranch that's there today or the house and how they plan to utilize it and some of those other elements which would be more helpful certainly and so just to give some guardrail so we're just answering questions because we don't have public comment during work sessions so so I want to try to keep keep the bumpers on yes I'll try my best my life sure so the land is just north of 280 the 288 loop and it's bordered by 1173 on the south Bartold Road on the north it's a 73 acre track and on the west the railroad track I do not have the actual track number okay thank you all right any other questions Councilman yeah I apologize I was not clear on that so I appreciate that thank you for the adding that clarity and so that's that's generally northwest part of town and then okay and we can I guess it would be more appropriate to get into those plans after we see something come through development services and I'll comment to that because it seems like we have that opportunity that has some momentum on its own without much prodding from this body and that the rest of the applicants were responding either to their own momentum or from prodding from the RFI so it seems like if something is going to go on its own and we clearly have in our affordable toolkit the need for a comprehensive response from multiple different folks not just maybe one tiny structure village or or you know the junction or anything but a comprehensive approach is needed it seems like if that 1877 project is going to go on its own and already has funding that other than generally lend community goodwill and support to it that it feels like then we're really sort of addressing whether some of these other needs would be something that we want to explore and so in that regard some of the items that were were listed in the the different RFIs included sort of different ballpark structurings for costs and you sort of alluded to they would want zoning they would want leases they would want or land they would want this that or the other thing and that was all really helpful but do we have sort of an estimate of the scale of ask from any of these given participants I see that the mod pods are probably the cheapest because they were a few thousand dollars each and that would just be a function of the number of replicants if we moved forward but for I mean I I don't want to compare too many apples or in this case grapes to two watermelons because some of them are big and some of them are small but could you give us a feel for the scale of these various proposals so the proposals I can whether or not they're realistic I can't so we saw from one proposal you're looking at the difference between a three hundred thousand dollar what they estimate is the cost for investment in infrastructure not including the value of the land all the way up to a five point six million dollar proposal that was put together so out of the two of them you get to see sort of the span of what they think those costs are so I suspect that somewhere in the middle but to your question I don't think we can estimate clearly until we looked at the project what the value would be in the cost for that and just to follow up on the previous question and and what what was proposed we had some very high level conversations as it related to 1877 and what they're proposing to do is have some services available so whether it is a commissary restrooms and then have the tiny structures if you will rather than tiny homes just some important points for council to understand that it's very elementary we do not have a plan as of yet it may or may not meet our comp plan it may or may not meet with what ours are current development code is and likely it doesn't most of these would require some text amendments so these items would have to come before council in order to make those changes to be able to allow for these uses so really it's just trying to refine what it is that people are proposing to do and then how best we can we can bring that forward so it isn't anything that could happen necessarily overnight but we certainly would work our hardest to get it through as quickly as we can and that would be true for three of the projects as they're proposed not just the one then I'll add some direction to my comments here and I concur with several of the comments we've heard that it seems like that there would be some benefit to acting in some way as a facility here because as people have said that they're there seems like there's different pieces to the puzzle but the one that I saw that was the most comprehensive was the Denton basic services center had the least number of pieces missing and based also on sort of the costs estimates that we just described it seemed to be at least hypothetically one of the lower costly ones depending on whatever scale we go to so I think you know recognizing that 1877 on its own it feels like it has its own momentum then I would land more of an inclination to the Denton basic services center proposal than some of the others but I really do think it would be lovely if we could facilitate more engagement below that in terms of you know maybe it would be suitable to start with some pods in addition to whatever structures these particular villages of any sort needed then to just as a bootstrap mechanism to avoid some of the issues that you talked about the beginning of your proposal okay city manager mayor council I would recommend that you follow though the recommendation of councilmember McGuire and conduct a RFP to make sure that it's competitive we cannot and I would not recommend us getting into a situation where we do not know exactly what we're getting ourselves into and we need to fully cost out what is the cost of the land that we would be giving up if we give it up is it considered a gift what kind of proposal what's the real meat on the bone of the proposal is it canvas side is it cedar buildings is it mod pods what other what's the infrastructure cost in running the water or utilities even though there's lines there what's the infrastructure cost this council needs to know the full impact of what that's going to cost before we go down that road I highly recommend an RFP all right anyone else well councilor Davis thank you mayor I respectfully disagree with the idea well first of all let me let me start with agreement because I agree that when you have a lot of different folks who seems like who seem like they have a different things that they are focused on I think facilitation is something the city is very good at something that that as a government entity that we can do there are some things especially in this sector that the nonprofit organizations are just always going to be better at we have nonprofits that run the 11 million dollar center that we are building that we have proposed are going to run the center because there are some things that nonprofits are either more nimble at more experienced at they are just better at case in point we have a nonprofit organization that we on council didn't necessarily even know was in the works they have secured a 73 acre site I do not see the utility in the quote-unquote advancing on all fronts idea which is that we need to give up some city land that we already have slated for other purposes and have had slated for a long time that we need to put a bunch of city budget into or that we have to spend a lot of city resources staff resources on when there are solutions one our own solution 11 million dollar shelter that we are already in the works and then a nonprofit entity that has a 73 acre site that maybe it is that we hook them up with the LIT solutions and the mod pods and that kind of stuff and say hey would you all like to put some mod pods out there you know we went the city mounted an expedition down to Austin to the community first to look at the outside city limits not a dime of government spending community they have there and here we have someone who has experience with that community and wants to do the same kind of thing I don't see the reason I don't see enough justification for the city to the go then go out with more staff resources more taxpayer resources when we have a nonprofit that is already there willing to do that work they're already in the process have they checked all the boxes yet no are we going to have some development challenges yes that that's all clear but I want to contrast that with the other thing and kind of the elephant in the room here is that part of this conversation is that certain members of council would like to see Denton Basic Services Center be given control over long-term lease or outright gifted a particular piece of land Denton Basic Services Center for many years now just in case anybody is new to town and and is tuning in had their leadership has been volunteering and helping people in very difficult situations in the homeless community they have also been successively lobbying members of this council for a particular piece of land and when told that that particular piece of land is not available are unsatisfied with that answer that is a particular piece of land that they've asked for they have also specifically in front of this body and individually to members of the council told us that they're not going to participate in the crisis response system that we are a part of and that every other nonprofit in this space that we partner with are part of because they don't feel that those other participants in the space are adequately providing for the homeless or that they're providing services leadership certain members of leadership of the basic services center have come before this body and disparaged other groups they have asked public speakers to come forward to disparage other groups I don't think that they've been dealing with us in good faith so I am not at all interested in a process that puts the didn't basic services center even an inch ahead of any other proposal or anybody else who might want to put something together or certainly not kind of first to the trough before a group that already has 73 acres secured and the wherewithal to actually see this thing through I'm also not interested in an RFP process that allows for what I'll call significant deviations from the building code I think ground rule number one is if public money public land is going to go into anything has to be life safety issues have to be paramount that's why we adopt these building codes so if someone has in their RFP that they're going to build canvas sided structures and house people in them if someone wants to do that project outside city limits with their own money on their own land that's something we don't have a role in but if the city of Denton is going to put our stamp of approval or our taxpayer resources behind a situation where people are living in a sanctioned encampment which is what that would be canvas sided structures I don't think that's a business that we ought to be in certainly not when there are other better viable alternatives and certainly not when we are building one of those viable alternatives ourselves I'm fine with an RFP process if we feel like if the consensus is that we do need additional housing solutions with city involvement city land or city resources that's fine I disagree I think we've got we've got plenty in the works right now the one thing we don't have in the works is a sanctioned encampment and I see the Denton basic services center as a back door to a sanctioned encampment provide water provide utilities provide some tents and let people live in a sanctioned encampment I'm happy with letting the RFP process proceed as it needs to but I'll reiterate I don't think Denton basic services center has dealt in good faith with us in the past I don't expect them to do so in the future unless there are some leadership changes if that happens I'll be pleasantly surprised okay anyone else mayor yeah yeah I'm trying to get to I'm trying to see who's spoken already before we go to round two councilman Burke thank you for the opportunity always appreciate going last so I can hear everyone's ideas and their their thought processes on all of this I know that I am going to also agree that we need to let the RFP process go through I'm also looking at and since we're talking a lot about Denton basic service center I am very concerned that we have something here with two options the canvas sided dwellings and or cedar cedar units I don't I need to understand what cedar units mean and that'll give me a little bit more clarity as to you know to finish my thought process on that is it going to be something that is is doesn't have any kind of utilities in it is it going to be like a storage shed you know I just kind of need some clarity on that and with that so I am also very concerned about the depth at which the city will have to accommodate some of these proposals and then it what happens is that it just pretty much makes it a city leveled responsibility you know for us as taxpayers and not only just putting it there but the maintenance of it and that's not just necessarily for the didn't basic center there I'm talking about some of these other these other groups as well I you know the 1877 journey is great the location for me just doesn't seem like that's where the greatest need is unless we're talking about some people that are coming in 35 north and we can pick them up coming in from the north on 35 and we can pick up those folks over there and leave them there so the idea of having you know a variety of places to go and stay and live is is attractive so that sounds that sounds great and I appreciate them for bringing that to us so with all of that being said just need a bit more information for didn't basic services center need to have some clarity as to you know who's gonna be who's gonna manage it as a 50 50 process is it 70 30 or the city going to build it and they're going to run it I'm not I'm not really clear on all of that and so finally yes appear it appears as though we need to move forward with the RFP okay going back counselor armature I guess I'm ready to give my direction I just first I want to make the point that as a councilmember Davis you know mentioned his concern about changing building codes you know as Scott McDonald mentioned any one of these proposals would likely require changes in building codes and and also I believe zoning and that is something that I see as a welcome you know change that we have needed I mean I it was my understanding even before we got a single response to this RFI that this was needed to you know to remove additional barriers that we have in our codes to these smaller housing options so I just want to make that clear I agree with councilmember McGuire that of all these requests their basic services center request is the most fully fleshed out and you know has the advantages of just already having that relationship with the Denton homeless community I don't see unlike no councilmember Davis I don't see these various proposals as really being in con and competition with each other going back to Mayor Pro Tem's point you know they're all kind of asking for different things and putting different kinds of things on the table so to say that that 1877 should keep going you know through the development review process and let let council know and staff development services staff know if there any obstacles outside of our building codes and even within those that they encounter that we can help them with you know if we can let them all know that we want these options because our affordable housing consultant showed us that there's a lot of need you know if we only had you know 20 50 people to provide housing for then we could have the luxury of saying okay we only need one but you know we've got a revolving door of need that does not seem likely to change given how you know the stagnation of wages and rising cost of living rents so anyway all that is to say I approve of it an RFP request for the Denton basic services center and I would love for there to be I'm not quite sure what form this would take but you know communications to the other all of the others and letting them know that council is excited about these and wants to know kind of what we can do to remove remove barriers and if other council members want to hear would want an RFP from any of these other groups I'd be hard-pressed to stand in the way of that just one moment I would like to provide some clarification so we're not we're not talking about a recommendation to do an RFP for one of the proposals I want to make that clear so we're talking about is if you are directing us to move forward if you give us that final direction to move forward with an RFP we will have additional questions from you before we leave today about what you are wanting to include as city-provided resources within that RFP and then we would open it up to everyone to respond to what is being made available and then look at that process in a competitive and equitable way so I just want I just want to make sure we're clear on that and Christine did you want to add anything okay yeah just because I am hearing that I just want to make sure everyone's understanding it's not an RFP for one entity but it would be open to everyone okay got it okay so again if you did direct us that way if you eventually do that we're gonna need more clarity before today on what are you offering up to put in that RFP and what are you not so okay okay thanks for that clarification sure all right mayor put in answer I just think it's critical that we focus on how to best solve the problem and not be so hung up on the idea of a winner or loser first to the trough or who's better equipped you could start with I'm basically reiterating support for the position I've already taken but hopefully this comment will be helpful if you start with any one of them let's start with Denton Paising Services Center I'm sorry but you can't tell me that that proposal wouldn't be better if it had a better structure solution which one of these others might provide and you can't tell me that wouldn't be better with a board relationship with community first that offers supervision and that wraparound that's you know in addition to whatever kind of resident stewardship there might be that that you know some kind of helpful supportive structure like community first you can't tell me it would be better you you can't tell me that starting with Denton Paising Services Center you wouldn't have a better proposal if it also included some land or maybe they swap for different land but some land and some funding that's already there and all these respondents have a shared commitment to solving the problem I just think we'd be stupid not to put them together and see if if one or more combination might come forward that that should then go into an RFP process I think you might end up with a new board structure coming out of it it's just I don't know to me it's just obvious there we have we have many strengths and we're in a position to come up with an outstanding solution and then I'll stop there all right is there any councilmember Bara thanks so much I feel like I need to put a finer point on my direction because I think that councilmember Davis brought up some some legitimate concerns I pardon me I share the concern about the the Riddell property I'm not although I know that it would serve the purpose very well there are other mitigating factors that makes that perhaps not the best property so if we were to move forward I would absolutely want to see the proposal include multiple options for different parcels besides just the Riddell property it's also clear to me that you know a canvas sided structures would not be in compliance with state law so we we would need to move forward with with only a proposal that would include hard sided structures regarding the idea that DBSC has not dealt in good faith with the city I disagree I they've taken an approach that would not be my approach there has been some confrontation there has been some conflict that has come as a result of really just personality differences and and and and the the conflicts some of the conflicts have arisen from the fact that the folks at DBSC have a different philosophy from the philosophy of many of the other service organizations and I think that that is a good thing I think it's wonderful that we have you know the United Way and all of the organizations that are under their umbrella that follow a particular philosophy but that philosophy doesn't meet the needs of every single unhoused person in our community and I think that DBSC is offering something that is very different you know just one thing that comes to mind looking at the the DBSC proposal versus the SWX proposal you know how they answered the questions regarding LGBTQ residents and and pets SWX said we won't discriminate staff won't discriminate DBSC said we will require our residents to sign a non-discrimination you know agreement which reflects I think an understanding that that the DBSC folks have that when LGBTQ individuals are seeking services at you know either a shelter or transitional housing often the discrimination that they're experiencing it's not always at the hands of staff it's often at the hands of the other residents and and I think that that that level of understanding is is really important and then regarding you know pets the SWX had a whole list of things that they could do as far as contacting family or talking to animal shelters to take the pets or as DBSC says yeah we'll just take pets yes. So I mean these these these are different philosophies and I think that I want to see DBSC's philosophy included in an RFP moving forward and and included in in in any projects that move forward that doesn't mean that we bump them to the head of the line because I mean that the 1877 journey doesn't isn't asking the same things of us they're not they they're not asking for the same kinds of resources and again that is fine I think it's great that there's a nonprofit that is seeking their own funding sources and and you know private land and that there's another one that's seeking more public resources I think that a diversity of approaches is really really valuable. So yeah I I I would like to ask a couple two questions of the folks from DBSC who I know are here one of them was already asked by by Councilmember Byrd about the nature of the cedar structures I think I saw a lot of heads nodding I think we're pretty much in agreement that we need hard-sided structures in order to be in compliance with state law can is there more that you can tell us about the specs of these cedar sited structures that you're proposing you have to come up to the and let's again we're way ahead of ourselves but I'm trying to be equitable to some extent so just a general overview generally would be great. The last two presentations we did we talked about tents as temporary structures while the houses were being built because we felt that it was humane to bring the people onto the property and give them a safe place to sleep while they're working on these rather than stay on the street and come to us and help build and so that's all that canvas sited structure is about is you know a cheap way to put them up while they're working on the houses because it's important that they invest in in the housing if you look at the front of our proposal the picture is a picture of community first and they have canvas sited structures and tiny house villages we worth I mean the point is we want to build tiny houses okay real tiny houses that's the only reason for the tents. And what is your other question? The other question was regarding the parcel I think that there are legitimate concerns about the Riddell parcel and I would like to know if you'd be open to considering a different parcel if this project moves forward. If we can have a choice you know the reason that's good thank you so yes the answer is if she can have a choice thank you very much got to be equitable. Okay any other comments? City manager so I need to say this because we'll move forward and we will need some guidance from council I mean I think you first need to decide from a commodity here of what you're looking for because there's such a thing as continuum of services there's also such a thing about looking at where you want to go in dealing and helping people experiencing homelessness so if we have a plethora of services that are not rowing the boat in the same direction this is going to be a nightmare been there done that got a got a t-shirt for it you can't have one organization going one way and not a part of the bigger picture you cannot have it because you'll have people going one place and then going to another place and you won't be able to help them collectively we want to do hand up not hand out we have services here in this community that do handouts not hand up a hand up is literally working them through a process getting them help and getting them to be self-sufficient that's what you want you don't want someone delivering food and blankets and just doing what they're doing without helping them get to a better place we can write in an RFP that they have to give us information on an LGBTQA+ we can talk about how we want pets to be dealt with but I think we do have to address the issue of in this RFP we have to say this whoever is going to do this and it goes to all of them they have to be on board with a concept that is rowing the boat in the same direction and what is that direction that is the direction to help people with a hand up not a hand out and it's someone who's capable of funding managing maintaining ensuring the integrity of this city and the programs that we currently offer otherwise we're putting time and money into something that will not be successful and I'm speaking from experience thank you yeah so I think what I'm and I have some comments but I'm gonna summarize and then we're gonna we're gonna move on I think the what I'm hearing is a need to come back because we're not gonna fix it today that the the RFP requirements right so I think it's the city manager and Danny and staff kind of kind of meeting and discussing the key components like hey what what are where you need direction from from council I think it's another work session that says you know the quality of the structure the amenity of this so many of that you know those kind of decision points that you touched on do they have to plug into the system right because you'll need all that information to put together RFP and I think it's important to strip away the names have just a separate conversation that's clean that says here's the requirements that apply to everyone that ever wants to come so everyone gets free land we good with that yes or no everyone gets free water services we good with that yes or no irrespective of where it's located all those things just kind of there's some some things that that we need to reset how we have this conversation to keep us out of legal issues I believe and so I think that's the best for and there's a lot of questions you're gonna have so to add to those kind of that that next level conversation first I want to give I'm gonna I'm gonna start us off and then I want to give you an opportunity to plug this because I think it's already in the books and that that goes to to to staffs wisdom so there's a community nonprofit meeting scheduled for May 6 1 3 at the Development Services Center that's already that's before this conversation happened staff already sent that out to facilitate that meeting right and so is there anything else you want to add to that just to kind of know it's just our opportunity to bring our nonprofit partners together to talk about what some of the gaps are in our community to better understand what services are available and start to process map that better through all types of services in our community with our nonprofit partners right so nonprofits here that want to then be a part of that conversation and talk to other nonprofits that's already planned for yes makes perfect great so then my thoughts are these I I don't have enough information to make a decision because we all know building costs are going through the roof across all spectrums so I need to understand what the implications are budget wise and kind of where we are to even contribute right where we're going to start so that's a concern for me it's kind of a maybe in that next work session a follow-up from the city manager's office that says hey we can't even deliver on some of these projects let alone infrastructure for another project right so I just kind of want to understand where we are given the the cost overruns and specifically to our primary building right if we're going to have concerns there about meeting budget we need to have that conversation first and foremost and then I'd like to also kind of fold in that so a wireless or kind of Wi-Fi component right because wherever it is we're going to need just kind of have that conversation and what what we're thinking around that because if it's something yeah I just would want to understand because computer access all those things are going to be key so I want to understand that then one under just get an overview and maybe baked into the RFP would be an end goal for the residents I think I really like what the city managers have just said what what's the goal right because then for me in every instance it's to work people towards permanent housing that they own we it's it's well documented and if that's not the if that's not achievable okay but I just want to understand what the goal is for I guess this council would have to give a consensus to say hey here's what we're right where we place a priority is is it permanent housing where they're going to be there in perpetuity or is it going to be in a the goal is not everyone reaches the goal but the goal is to get everyone housed and homeownership and that sort of thing and again yeah I think we have that process in place you saw that with the loop to a date building and the management services agreement you all were involved in giving input into what types of things you want into there so in all of our agreements if you're providing on the services you have to be reporting into HMIS within that we have performance measures that will be expected for the nonprofit that's running services there so we that process I think we have solid I think I'm a little more uncomfortable with us trying to come up with estimates of cost good I think that that would be a little bit harder on our staff to be able to do that generally when something goes to the development process they're doing that work yes for us to do that that would take some additional time that might require some additional support and then so and also I think in that RFP there needs to be some sort of geographic restriction right how do you how do you process who who's first in line how I mean I just want to understand what that is because if you announce and then all of a sudden someone that's been indicted one day gets put in front of someone that's been maybe on the on a list somewhere you know I just would want to understand how we process those restrictions so that we have clear messaging around that and prioritization on who gets housed right right yeah because you know I just don't have that information to to kind of guide my decisions and then I just want to touch on this I think rules on regulations are are put in place my understanding to make things equitable different from equality right because so for example if you can't bring pets that could be in consideration of someone with allergies right we want to make sure that people with allergies or without what they can use this facility with limited space if there's people that have you know different different needs as far as you know skin or whatever it is I mean and I have that in my home right my my five-year-old just cannot go and go to my brother-in-law's house so just one of those things right it's just there's there's real concerns there and I and I live them regularly and so it's important that we that we are as the city equitable and not you know because then everyone gets the same treatment and to achieve that we may have to treat some people different and I understand that that's difficult but I think that's important to make sure that when we're when we're apart everyone can go to the rec center everyone can go to the library those that type mentality is really important so that's my thoughts city manager don't miss anything or you have just to make sure I was reminded there is a specific coordinated effort that will be taking place on April 29th and it was specifically centered around discussions with people who are serving people who are experiencing homelessness yes right so that's important that's not an open meeting but that is for people to you know we're going to be talking about exactly what Danny just talked about which is how do we row the boat in the same direction where are the gaps in services what are the things we need how do we fill those gaps all those kinds of things specific to people experiencing homelessness services right yeah so and that's even better because you'll have that one in April and then you have another kind of another look at it in May so that's really good so that's April and I have it on my calendar 21st right 29 yeah 630 so I think that's right okay all right is that okay great and the city we'll put that that's out in the Friday report already and you know yeah we can make sure it's communicated again good okay very good well thank you very much great presentation thank you that takes us to see which is ID two two three nine five receive report hold discussion give staff direction on the fire department staffing update yes sir thank you okay good afternoon mayor see council members Kenneth Hedges fire chief I'm here today to kind of go over briefly of staffing update for the fire department so just kind of the layout of this presentation and really kind of broken down two parts first part's gonna be about staffing how we staff and some overtime issues we're running into as well and the second part is going to be about our blocker three program so I'll just briefly touch about what is the fire service nowadays the fire service is not just fire and EMS so it's really evolving to all hazards to service provider and you're very familiar with over the past two years with pandemic it's been asked to step up and deliver different types of services so one thing is obviously COVID-19 brought in early with the county on testing and actually the vaccine administration so with the paramedics on staff that was an easy transition to be able to kind of implement them in that process as well winter storm URI and we remember that from February of last year as well highlights here also is over a seven day period we responded over 400 times for residents calling saying I have water leaking in my house what I do so we respond we resolve the issue we leave we go the next incident as well the very bottom thing is really kind of I've looked at some different magazines and this is kind of a nationwide issue as well as far as it's so great as far as what we're being asked and the amount of limitations on staff is really kind of what is impacting insurance on before you today also is the reason they know we'll respond quickly we never really delay call 9-1-1 will come to your location we'll try to resolve the problem and usually it's at no cost so obviously we have EMS transports there is some fees associated with that so that's kind of the premise behind this fire and EMS I really kind of create this graphic time show you what our meat and potatoes is fire EMS EMS running about 65 percent of our total call volume for a year but you see the other 11 bullet points around there we're all responsible for handling that also as far as they didn't fire department each fire departments different over the size and the functionalities and these disciplines are specific to what we offer here and one thing I want to point out in the bottom right is service calls that seems kind of a generic term but that's a huge thing for us so the Texas Fire Commission has certain type of call types and this one really is all-encompassing if it doesn't fall in fire EMS bomb hazmat it's pretty much a service call and then in the bottom right new programs coming we do have one paramedic that's been signed to the homeless outreach team and also will be coming back with some information about community paramedicine program this is really kind of going into residents that are what we call more regular customers that go to the hospitals and partner with the hospitals to try to really have call diversion try to divert those calls that maybe not are emergent and try to find different resources and social services for them sometimes we get calls that I'm out of medication what I do and they call 911 so we're trying to look into that also and work with our local medical facilities 2021 how we actually report the state is brace based on calendar year so sometimes I know that overlaps with the fiscal year for the city as well so we have this for the 2021 kind of a call summary this is our workload this is really what our units respond to and it broke this down just by percentages increase on your left side and we only had a small decrease on the right side and that's our overall fire call so active fires and structures residents of that nature and you see that data sets very small anyway so whiz down three percent but everything else has taken a dramatic shift up. So this really kind of tells a story when we talk about workload of the Denton Fire Department we look back all the way back to 2014 and we marched this out and I think the thing really caught most of the administration team off guard was what we experienced last year in 21 we saw almost a 20% spike in calls for service so we moved up from 16 to 20,000 calls for service in one year and we started diving down it's like what was the genesis behind that and really what we determined is if you look in 2020 well now what happened in March COVID hit everything shut down so March April May the city was pretty much bare as well so we were assuming about a nine percent growth each year and we've calculated that if COVID would not hit would have been about 18.5 as far as total calls for service so we've been on that nine percent growth you see for 22 we keep marching that out it is alarming when I look at it in just four years we could be at over 31,000 calls for service and I did just a little slice for 2022 looking at the first three and a half months and kind of see are we still hitting that nine percent growth and actually right now if you average those three and a half months up we're a little shot 24% average growth over the first three and a half months so we're going to outperform what we're already expecting. So I'm going to talk about minimum staffing this is something not every city department has so minimum staffing is amount of personnel we need to actually staff the units each top unit has a number of positions needed to actually function effectively so an ambulance needs two people a fire truck needs three people a ladder truck needs four people and I'm going to kind of brief and touch on this this is kind of a hiring philosophy so constant staffing model this is where you hire the amount of people you need for the positions you have vacant knowing that it will generate overtime knowing when that person uses vacation time they're sick they have funeral leave anything of that nature you're going to be hiring overtime and we try to do some research from our recollection for the past decade plus the city we've really been using this constant staffing model the alternate is continuous that means you over hire there's different ratios out there different relief factors you build in I just bullet points some of the benefits of that second bullet point just out of curiosity last year there's three people in operations that aren't any more than anybody else in the fire department and the last bullet point that is probably the biggest benefit factor is the fact that we have more depth and surge capacity if we have major events going on in the city. I know this may begin a little in the weeds but just one like I said give you a basic understanding of how we operate as far as in operations so right now there's 58 positions assigned per shift so that's a hundred seventy four total we have three shifts they work 24 hours on 48 off each day we must have a minimum of 47 FTEs to be able to staff all those units I have outlined there so we allow it to 11 positions or there's 11 positions as far as to absorb so we approve up to nine people use vacation time holiday time anything they have in their cruel buckets as a reminder firefighters and operations they have to work holiday so they bank 12 hours of each holiday they work into an account and they use it at a different time so along with that and their vacation leave we allow that many spots so that only has a residual of two positions is where everything I have listed there so sick workman's comp FMA dirty duty etc. so it's a very small window to absorb that this kind of goes into the process how do we hire over time so if we don't have enough minimal staffing what do we do so there's a voluntary list so members and operations can sign up say hey I get off tomorrow I'm willing to work 24 hours overtime that's voluntary second we go into mandatory if we exhaust everybody on the voluntary list next is mandatory each member of the department takes vacation one time per year so in December you're picking your vacation for all of the next year at one time so with that you have to choose eight different days that you're willing to work mandatory overtime that means don't schedule no kids appointments no activities like that because you might be called into work if we exhaust the mandatory list so we have eight people per day on that I'm sorry not eight around four or five next we go into something we implemented back in covid so admin prevention staff is not assigned to operations they work a normal eight to five schedule if we get so short staffed and those individuals are not at work we actually allow them to come back in and work operations so we're kind of our pull is as big as we can get at this point and we're calling everybody back in for assistance and we have been actually hiring a numerous amount of admin prevention over the past 18 months and the last thing is forced forced is means you're in operations you just completed your 24 hours a shift your relief person is supposed to show up at eight o'clock is not there we do not have nobody to relieve you at this point you just do not get to leave that's just flat as easy as I can say it so we work on trying to get other people in through the admin prevention route through voluntary overtime but there's times that you're just not allowed to leave from work here's a quick just kind of budget recap or the past three fiscal years as well and really I'll just highlight the difference there so 1920 this is just overtime within the operations division was over eight hundred forty thousand last year eight seventy nine and then we're projected this year right now we're at a million so we're on projected double that so almost one point two over the seven hundred twenty five budgeted is what we're on track for causes for overtime and what is causing this the number one thing is our hiring philosophy for the past ten plus years it's been a one-to-one ratio we haven't built in any absorption no but for their their relief factor so it kind of came to this point today kovats kind of brought this to attention that there's been so much overtime available through this two years as well people are just burnt out it's to the point that it's fatiguing they don't want to work overtime they want to go home and enjoy their time off as well and last year we did have a significant amount of lost hours from employees being injured this is not just on duty this is off duty as well but impacts our staffing and the last bullet point is really just about the support from the organization saying you know if you don't feel well both physically and mentally you don't need to be here trying to take care of other people's mercies as well so the support from the administration on that impacts of overtime I'm not gonna go through these I did do some research on this and it's interesting on physical injuries I saw a report the more overtime you work the more susceptible you are to physical injuries so then you get injured on work so you're in the sufficient cycle we cannot get out of so we're making you work more you get injured you get time off where you cover but somebody else is having to cover your position also sleep deprivation efficiency performance last thing exposure to other people's trauma try not to share many stories but I won't share this one so it's one thing we don't consider you know for both police and fire and this is a story actually got from one of Chief Dixon's patrol officers in traffic and it was about three years ago there was a fatality wreck on 35 as a motorcycle rider end up passed away right in the middle 35 the bad part is his mother was actually falling right behind she saw the witness the entire accident one of her captains and this happens every day without us knowing it was raining outside he got an umbrella and while the mother was grieving over her son's body he was holding an umbrella trying to keep her dry out right so that's where people experience every day that sometimes it's hard to communicate to you it's hard sometimes even when I hear the stories as well it's like I just can't believe that but we don't teach us this is just the compassion our employees have for the public out there so this is alarming I can tell you in my 26 year in this department I've never seen us place units out of service until past a year and a half and we really started tracking this just with the excel spreadsheet and last year you see this so we had up to 19 times we had placed you in our service because we didn't have additional staffing I showed you how we got down to force we will allow one ambulance and then another unit to go out of service before we go to that force because it's so detrimental to families as well so for this year we're already trending higher than we was last year and first three months you sit there 21 times almost 10 days so at this point for mid-budget year we're actually for you asking for your approval to hire three entry-level positions positions right now this will be trying to absorb some overtime usage and reduce the amount of people are held mandatory and specifically forced overtime the big thing is we don't want units out of service you don't want an ambulance in your district to be out of service because guess what we didn't have enough staffing for that day so that's the reason I'm before you today I did want to kind of as reminders if we got approval today these employees may not be ready for the earliest would be three months it could be even up to eight months on how we hire so we send them through paramedic school or we send them through fire school whichever one they may not possess there's opportunity they may have both of certifications and we can implement them with a 90-day period but there is a lag time and that I'm sorry I did a few more slides so looking at how would those three FTS actually impact and this is very difficult we'd have to go in day by day month by month to do the calculations so we did is pull January of this year and in that month we had units at our service 12 times you see the information there so what would happen if we had three FTS on staff additionally at that point and you see the reduction there so it was significant so if you ask the question well how much would this impact you that's reason I took this 30 dot day slice and just kind of showed you also as well this staffing plan so this is something we developed really it's like listen it's just not higher up now what's long-term goals so at the top of this is really kind of the simple events we're going to be looking at over the next 10 plus years and then kind of the FTEs how we're going to have to phase this in I know it's not just a lump sum give us everything we need one time we've got to be very strategic on what our asks are and make sure doing the most bang for the buck as well that is all I have for the first part mayor would you let me go and continue for the blocker part or any discussion on this yeah let's let's have this discussion and then so we'll segregate it in the two and and I'll call on Jesse and blame him if he'd settle more of his cases we'd have less jury stuff going on go ahead Jesse working on so I'm really prefaces by saying it's a really really good thing that we have fewer structure fires right like there's part of this mission shift that's fantastic it means that our code enforcement folks means our building codes means the things that we're actually building means our fire marshals every all that's working right we're doing fewer structure fires that's fantastic but because of that it makes me really concerned when I hear about having to take medic units out of out of service first shift because they're we're going to need them before we need that engine right like that's more likely we're going to need them for any number of citizen issues before we need to be you know spraying water on something so I'm also really cognizant of the fact that you're coming to us with kind of a mid-year request I'm curious about what we think that the budget year request might look like because I'm not sure based on those overtime budget projections that you gave us the the difference there the reduction in service capacity and then just that the folks that we're having to keep on I'm really concerned that three may not be enough I don't know what the magic number is but I were like we're not solving the problem and it's a problem we have today and like you said we have there's a process to get these new recruits onboarded and trained and actually out there on a shift so I guess can you help me understand the mid-year ask versus the budget year ask and will we see more FTEs requested for the budget year should we expect that and two how did we arrive at three is enough for now as opposed to we need some more well you know good question so obviously the way the shift laid out you asked for three mid-year that's really one per shift you're trying to add for absorption we do have six employees in school right now so two should be graduating from Fire Academy in May and then four more later in the fall from Perry Mac school so we're hoping by the time we get to the regular budgeting process we'll have a little bit better feedback how they impact staffing we know there's a deficiency right now them being gone that's one of those necessary evils they've got to go get this additional education to make sure they're a fully compatible employee as well so the three FTEs right now it was I mean not saying a shot in the dark but it is it's like let's get those let's implement them see how that impacts staffing we'll reassess before next year's budget and if you look in this slide right here this five FTE so fours for operations that is another addition come up for this next year budget year as well so that's actually what we've included in the budget package that we've already submitted as well to the budget office that's becoming for you this summer so it's hard to sit there and I see David sneak up beside me as well it's hard to sit there and give you a definitive answer this will solve it because I don't know yet it's that's the reason going back to this right here what would look like in one month now we reduced it it would not have eliminated that so what two people have eliminated eliminated completely any overtime or units out of service and I went through and had to do manual count and I think that we're probably taking that down to almost zero as well so would six be beneficial than more beneficial than three absolutely but I'm gonna kind of defer to you know city manager's office David gains deputy city manager you know what I think with the with starting with the mid-year we're always going to be hesitant to bring forward a mid-year budget adjustment for reoccurring costs because we're basically asking you to commit to ongoing costs in the next year without seeing the full picture so we are certainly comfortable with the three positions and then obviously you're gonna have a conversation here in a little bit as well saying this is an urgent need we need to move forward we understand where we're headed where we're headed sales taxes obviously is coming in where I think we're over three million and from where we where we thought we'd be with the budget at this point and that could go up so as we have the full conversations in the budget process we'll just be able to see where everything lands and you're gonna see just to be transparent you're gonna see a large public safety package across the board from police from more fire positions from our public safety communication so there's gonna be a significant ask for public safety as we look at the entire picture moving forward in the fiscal year but as far as a mid-year we're comfortable with adding these three now and know that we're gonna have a larger conversation in the budget process if that helps that that does help I wasn't really being sneaky and asking that question but I figured that there would be an ask in the regular year and these are ongoing commitments right you an FTE is a commitment that you pick up maybe you pick it up mid-year but you're budgeting for it every year going forward unless there's a big change in service I'd be comfortable having a conversation about I know we have to do it multiples of three because of the shift and then the way that we're set up I'd be comfortable having a conversation about about six versus three I understand this the this is a recommendation I just want to come out there I'm comfortable having that conversation about especially because we're gonna we're gonna pick up another three if we're gonna talk about another three or larger package in the budget year and if we're having a good year in in the old times that the before times there are a lot of guys who wanted to be on the big clock right over time was something that we thought of differently that I think first responders kind of looked at differently but the more folks I talked to we're burning folks out and we're burning them out fast I would I would much rather take that little chance and hire three additional then burn out and lose lose folks to earlier retirement lose folks to just not want to do the job lose folks in recruitment classes to to not knowing that Denton to knowing that Denton's gonna maybe force you into overtime times that you don't want to be forced into overtime I would be very comfortable having that conversation about six versus three I think that's and I I'd not to speak for chief I'm I don't think I think you would be happy to have six now I think what what that means we we just want to be transparent what that means for the budget process you know it means that you're going into the budget process but the some decisions already made and less to work with but if that's council's decision I don't think chiefs can have any problem going forward with six I'm 100% fine making that decision ahead of time but later okay Mayor Pro Tem and Councilmember Beck Councilmember McGuire yeah isn't it is it safe to say that there's such a projectable demand for overtime that it's it's kind of like a savings really to to go as far as you can with you know with the full-time positions you know I'm saying that in other words you you're you're always better off on street time if you know you're going to need it and don't we know we're going to need it I mean we've been outstripping the correction every time look at the overage on the operations overtime it can pretty much accommodate most the ass I'm here before you today as well so it's just an assumption that that should absorb it it's just it's really about what was affected bring towards council today was a three as well I did have sick prepared to go and just be honest I mean talk with David and Sarah as well as like you know we're feeling more comfortable at three so I had my initial projection was six would actually relieve this enough that we'd see you know obviously benefit to the organization as a whole yeah immediately as well probably if you hired six you might have some that you could actually implement in the 90-day period versus waiting eight months as well so you have obviously a bigger pool to impact so I mean you're you're right that you know spend it anyway correct and maybe spend it less efficiently if you don't do it right that was really the my philosophy behind this thing is you're already seeing the money in overtime I mean it fluctuates year to year that's an understandable fact or as once you get FDs it's only obviously the general fund perpetual as well it's there but the money's being spent through the overtime line I do have another question or concern or just maybe just a need for you know getting your your point of view a little better it feels like it's just is it that it is it that overtime is so erratic I'm really just concerned about the budgeting they were always under budgeting like if it's a pattern you know you would think like you shouldn't have huge differences of actual versus budget year over year you know you'd kind of eventually get a handle on it I get that there's some factors that are continuing to grow that maybe didn't think we're gonna grow and that's what the presentation is about but but it just doesn't feel like we're like our each budget is reflecting everything we now know based on the last year unless it really is different different every year you know I probably could not answer that question I have to rely on finance - you know how we're budgeted in the overtime why are we seeing the overage why are we continually seeing that overage versus making adjustments yeah are we but you know should we could we have budgeted better it's really the sharp way to put it sure yeah I you know I think it's we've looked at the overtime the past number of years you are look this is a snapshot and it's a unique snapshot right because it's COVID you know you're looking at 1920 2021 COVID had a large piece of that we also got funding that helped offset some of those costs as well right and then we are obviously having the conversation on 21 22 I do think it's important as we have the conversation it's not a you know just adding the position is it you're not going to see a huge reduction in the overtime that's going to offset the cost of the FTE it's going to be a cost to us to add the FTEs that we're comfortable with I just don't want there to be any impression that there's going to be over time that reduces to offset the cost of these new positions there's going to be a reduction over time certainly but it's not going to be enough to cut to offset the cost of the new positions yeah just can you explain to me why because it seems you know my layperson's expectation would be exactly that that the overtime would reduce the need I mean excuse me the FTE reduces the need for the overtime why wouldn't it it certainly does it reduces it to a degree it just it's not a like for like a dollar it's not we add a hundred thousand dollars of personnel cost it's going to reduce over time a hundred thousand dollars because you have leave and everything that goes associated with a position coming on board so we kind of ran that analysis so there will be savings that we'll be able to bring in the budget process and we'll talk about that I just didn't want there to be any impression that there wouldn't be a cost but you're paying extra per hour for overtime I assume versus straight time yeah so why wouldn't that offset the leave time and all the things you built in the full time sure we've run the analysis we can certainly bring it back bring it back in the budget process isn't that right the other thing we want to be cognizant of though is and it's great if council wants to approve the six and chief hedges is correct he started with six and we were trying to be cautious as a mid-year adjustment is the fact that we have our police department as well that has a need and and the other thing we all need to think about is once when you have that for the officers and for your firefighters it also carries out even further you've got to have dispatch you've got to have admin staff those kinds of things so just just so you know there will be a it will be a package if we do six for fire this time we will need to certainly look at our our police department and our dispatchers to make sure we're addressing that appropriately because that affects our fire department as well thank you mr. mayor so understanding if in this I'm not sure if this is you or David but we were just alluding to it you know it's it's roughly hundred hundred and ten per FTE and you know so it's it's pretty simple to sort of take the estimate a hundred fifteen thank you to take you know just do that math and say that's that's about nine positions there's almost nine stations we're running three men truck should we be running four men trucks would that allow us this flexibility and that's sort of what you're getting to one extra person per shift but one extra person per shift isn't an extra person per truck and this kind of goes I'm kind of comfortable with the six because it's it gets to the burnout and the safety of the officers I don't I don't want them to be so strung out on overtime that they end up injuring themselves in a fire or they're unable to respond to a medical emergency or these other issues so so can you help walk me through the three sort of six or the one per truck or the the one per station kind of kind the relationship between those those different levels I think the best slides that's going to present this is this one right here so we have 58 that's assigned daily to one shift so with that you have eight stations and then you see down there two battalion chiefs seven engines one truck one quint and eight ambulances so that's the amount of units we have to staff daily as well so we have 47 so you add three FTE so you're adding technically now that's bumping up to 48 so really really I mean for simplicity we're only adding one position so now we have 12 positions we can absorb daily so we're still going to keep the non-approved slots because people they need to take their vacation they got to have that time away from work as well so now we bumped up to three positions to absorb for injured and sick as well you're exactly right and when we talk about what you're talking about is four-person staffing so we do not have out here in the city didn't that's something maybe in the future but with the growth here upon us we're looking at our spread and a sprawl out trying to get the response times down but we look at the four-person staffing something that we need to consider in the future but at this point it's hard to put a extra person on a current engine versus just looking at additional stations and getting that footprint spread out for decreased response times how we measure success is down to seconds I mean you constantly hear me talk about response time response time we're looking at every way from the way the dispatch sends us out the door how long takes for people to get on the rigs how long it goes to takes us to get through the city roads as well everything's combined so if we did limit I mean if we if we kept to the three then that really wouldn't you would distribute those three throughout your stations to the shifts that had the highest predicted demand kind of thing right right now it's balanced correct one would go to all three shifts a B and C would get one additional personnel for relief and so okay so still feels like two might be better I am kind of I'm leaning towards where Davis is because I don't feel us not really solving the problem but in terms of two more questions in terms of speed if we have in terms of getting staffing because you're saying I have to train I have to you know recruit them then I have to train them and then then there's going to be a temporal delay getting them out into the into the stations so you know do we have what I mean that that's if we're hiring FTEs if we use the some additional mid-year funding is there is an additional source of say I'm just going to make something up because I don't know if it's permitted could we provide time to Corinth or somebody else to come back us up with additional hours for from their their firefighters or some sort of reciprocal interlocal kind of arrangement is it are there other sources other than just hiring new firefighters and firstly no because every department's experience the exact same issue we are we talked about this the county meeting state levels and national levels as well there's a huge amount of overtime being implemented in the fire service and everybody's trying to get to the reason what really causes and we really think the event was coded that's really what set it off to point that you had to work the additional amount of overtime and it really just highlighted the deficiencies owner hiring practices when you hire a one-to-one ratio you know you're gonna have that amount of overtime it's just perpetuated through the past two years as well to the point that I said people where you have the voluntary overtime working out sometimes nobody on that list they don't want to work whatsoever so we don't have resources outside our own city unfortunately and the benefit about what we have in the city of Denton is we have people wanting to come and work here other fire departments cannot even get employees to come even apply for positions as well so we are fortunate there that our past two entrance exam we have almost 300 people show up for each test so other people are saying we're working getting tests and we're having five people show up and then it's so competitive now these cities are actually offered incentive pays to come and work for them we've never seen this I mean in the fire service all right well that's that's sounds like then really you're saying that the only real solution whether it's now or in the future is increased staffing for these these concerns that you have and then I guess my last question is in terms of the budgeting if we did 800 and then we were over 800 again and now we're projecting to be over 1200,000 so 1.2 million but in it for those projections and I guess this gets back to the sort of question of budgeting is is the fact that we I mean I'm sure two years ago you budgeted for an additional you know needs and then last year you budgeted for additional needs so this comes back to Mayor Pro Tem's question I guess this is a David question is are we is it growth or or what is the sort I mean because we're we're seeing what we used and we're budgeting for it so so why are we continuing to sort of drift backwards a little bit is that is that population growth and and distance of the city we have to cover in either either of you I move seats you're talking particularly on the overtime the overtime line right it seems to be 800 to 1200 you know thousand sure I think so some context on that because you're only seeing the overtime line there I think you also would see if you looked at the budget with salary savings in the salary lines from positions that weren't higher that has caused some of that to increase and obviously we had the head covid as well as I mentioned earlier so we're every year we look at the overtime line and we work with and finance works with the fire department and tries to project out based on the number of calls based on the staff that we have and what the overtime is going to be as you've seen the past couple years it's come in higher we've also had salary savings so it all everything goes into the mix as we're trying to come up with that budget with that budget number should be probably no that makes that makes perfect sense and I don't mean to cut cut you out I just I just sort of like if if we if we I know we did that two years ago and I know we did that last year we're gonna do that again so if we're if we're if we have a multiplier somehow that's constantly drifting what's the source of that multiplier is that population growth is I mean what's why is it that when we do our projections it's we're not we're we're you know we're you know off to the left a little bit sure well I would say number of calls would be a better variable than population growth as you know as we looked at those number of calls and trying to project those outright that's gonna lead to lead to a lot of what the need is and then some of it's just math we have the number of how much how much vacancy are we gonna have how many shifts do we have and so having the extra two positions gonna help I when we're looking when we're looking at those two the two past years and this year in particular it's just hard to say because COVID had a big impact on that on the number of calls that we had the overtime that went out so it's been difficult to pin that number down and what we need for overtime I guess my last part of this last is ended up being a three-part sort of question but would it be would it be better in terms of compensating for the needs to pre-anticipate that we're gonna we're gonna be low again and see what giving six does because if we land perfectly then we've nailed it and then you can do the the safety package which I think you're probably sensing there's some accord you know at least interest in but but it mightn't it be better to do that now and see if that's the sweet spot at the mid-level adjustment I I think the difficulty is a timing I mean I think we can go forward with the six we can do that and we can move forward with it but we're not gonna have them on in enough time to see see the effects yeah so we have we've exhausted the time we allotted just as a time stamp and you still have to talk about the blocker truck and we're three comments in so if we could give it the juice because we still have a closed session as well and we have more work session counselor McGuire thanks yeah so one of our council priorities is organizational excellence a really important component of that is having adequate staffing both so we can provide services and also so that we're not burning out the staff that we had and we're seeing that across departments it's all obviously much more urgent in fire and EMS because there's there's it's a life and safety issue I you know we're also I you know I wouldn't advocate for just willy-nilly adding FTEs left and right unless departments are you know trimming the fat eliminating you know there was the voluntary separation program and and I've seen just across all departments tons of improvements in procedures to make departments more efficient and I think that once those things have been exhausted when department chairs come to us or or you know when when heads of departments come to us and ask for more staff I'm really heavily inclined to to say yes you know also you you mentioned new programs coming in terms of homeless outreach we've we've had a lot of conversations about trying to take that burden off of police and there are probably lots of situations where fire and EMS are more are better equipped to deal with that I know that what you're requesting right now isn't directly related to that but my hope is that if we can you know honor the requests that you're making now that'll that'll free up more of your resources to address you know the homeless outreach and community paramedicine parts I I I agree with Councilmember Davis and back that that I feel comfortable going with six right now I understand why you wanted to be a little bit more conservative in your ask because it is a little bit of a gamble to commit to that many FTEs without seeing the numbers from the tax assessor but I think we've all seen what's been happening with our tax base this last year I think it you know it's it's a pretty good bet that we're going to be in a good position to be able to fund these positions so I don't see any reason to wait I'm fine with doing six now anyone else count parameter yeah I I concur I support the six full-time staff now there's no question to me that they're needed and even if we won't even though we won't be able to see the results of that come budget time we will we will see at some point not long after that that we have cut response time and saved more lives and made our operations more efficient by getting those six on the ground sooner rather than later so I strongly support that anyone else send them do you have where what Oh Council member I was just gonna say um for the record that I would have supported the three because I would would have wanted us to be more cautious with our funding since we really technically don't know and I would I would want to put trust in you know you all process of getting to the place where you want to be and now that we've heard that funding the six is not going to show us any kind of dramatic changes before we budget again then I was certainly would want to be just a little bit more conservative on that point but you know six sounds good it's more than half it's good to have a little bit more than what you asked that's that's a big smile on your face I I know you appreciate that but still you know the idea of really not knowing what what that's what the future is going to hold for that so there's going to be a lot of ask for a lot of things I can imagine and I can imagine us sitting here and making decisions of do we raise taxes to cover this growth that we're having you know all of that's going to have to take place of that conversation so I'll be supported as as best as I can thank you okay okay moving on to the next part of this presentation so it's just kind of an update on the blocker truck may remember we had been August last year was a bad year for the fire department and August 2nd we had our first impact out on north 35 that picture in the middle was what we use using as a blocker truck it was just a frontline unit was angled at 45 degree the employee had just got in the driver's side of that vehicle when a full speed 18 liter semi came through the cones there an impact of the side missing him within a minute or so he had got a seat belt on and threw him from the driver's side over to the passenger side of that vehicle we took them to the hospital for evaluation he was okay bottom left top right was our second one on August 22nd a driver on southbound 35 was doing an excess of 90 miles per hour and on that unit they had just arrived on scene of a motor vehicle accident on inside lane crews were getting out captain opened the door there in the upper right picture heard this vehicle coming down the roadway jumped back in real fast right before impacted the back of the cab there one thing I do want to point out on this is you'll see the grill there in the top right picture it's a texas flag there was employee walking back towards that fire truck from checking the vehicle out when that fire truck got hit and pushed upwards of eight feet he put his hands up in that grill because he just saw a truck moving towards him didn't know what was going on from the impact and his handprint is actually in a metal grill there so that's something significant and on this I was arrived about 5 30 that morning I had one employee this is probably what really resonates with me is the fact he told me I'm no longer scared of dying in a structure fire in this department I'm scared I'm gonna get killed out on the roadway for some stupid reason honestly so that's the reason why the genesis behind the blocker truck and what I have here is I have a video so this is the first incident so if you look this shoulders blocked this lane's blocked these two fireworks are walking away I want you to watch this black area here they had responded to north i-35 for small grass fire just a very small incident this is 11 30 at night we have two lanes blocked this is dashcam from a town chief video here's three employees they're separating I started a timer thanks to DTV from the time they walked away from this location till they get in their vehicles and I'm sorry it goes to 42 seconds I'm gonna let it play out so you can see I want you to build some context and show you how important the blocker program is specifically to us so everybody's getting back in their vehicles at this point so behind this what we call upstream there's two different fire department apparatus blocking that's out of sight the first one I just showed you the guy hit and there's a second one the semi driver hit both of those and then here you'll see what's about to happen so the potential is about to pull away so we were very close having three line to do deaths right there within 42 seconds so like I said I want to build some context for you show how great the blocker program is so we put in service January 8th 180,000 total for turnkey you know a new fire truck cost a million dollars so it's pretty sensible and may I use a term you use analogy that plans not fully baked we know the ingredients for a successful program the thing we're lacking right now is conscious staffing we implement this in January we was using light duty personnel we had a large eight people on light duty in other words they had been injured they weren't fully released from their physicians we assigned them to start driving the blocker truck and that was good for some reason they're healing very fast now don't think they like sitting out on interstates day one of the blocker truck that light duty member responded seven times and spent 12 of the 24 hours sitting in the vehicle out on I-35 so it's a very good day one for this program as well so what we're running through now is a very consistent staffing due to lack of constant staffing we don't have dedicated staff for that vehicle as well and if we need the blocker truck we don't have staffing we're actually taking another frontline unit out of service to deploy that truck they're leaving it and they're going back in service and then when it's time to recover that truck they go back out there and bring it back to station three where it's located 90 days of service so both for police and fire it's made 185 responses and it's been over 98 hours out blocking oncoming traffic as well I have other stuff I'm not going to go through this because I know we're over time as well but I can tell you we've been contacted by numerous departments police and fire are wanting our specs they're designing the exact same thing so this is the innovation out there in the fire service and police is protecting our first responders on the roadways that's the greatest danger we're experiencing out there so what I'm asking is a phased approach is in the end there'll be three fire driver positions to staff this full-time so for mid-year I'm asking to fund one position to go ahead and get the least constant staffing a third of the time and then they can start continue to build that program and then phase this in over the next two budget years as well. Kind of a quick operational question no doubt that you need to get up to constant staffing for this my question is does the driver of a blocker truck need to be a fire driver because that's a particular pay slot particular pay grades particular training level and but part of the reason we do that is because the driver of the engine might need to go into the structure fire or might need to respond to a public health incident or a medical emergency whatever we may need them to be more than just a driver is it possible to staff these units maybe not best practice but is it possible to staff these units with a I'll call them a civilian driver a non firefighter driver? Not a civilian well I haven't had a discussion because that's so with 143 that's very convoluted we did have discussions whether this could be staffed by a firefighter so interlevel so it's one rank down and really kind of feedback we've got is no you're operating a machine and really we look at when we get these drivers they're not going to sit on the blocker truck the entire time they've got to rotate through the fire truck and the ambulance kind of to keep balance as well and keep all your disciplines up so you got to make sure you have them at the right appropriate level that 143 dictates and you are operating this machine and that kind of equates to a driver position. So operationally better to keep it at the job designation that you got it now and then but make sure they're they're rotating through different equipment different responsibilities and staying up to speed I guess getting their flight time or whatever on all these different pieces of equipment. Yeah and it's something we do and we have a rotation that it keeps that balance so you don't spend all the time whether it's on the ambulance or engine or you know a blocker any other special vehicles well you have the balance so everything stays up to speed on your training and your skills. I'm sorry if you cover this and really just kind of out of curiosity does the driver stay in the vehicle when it's on site or does he get it in position and then you know can participate in whatever else is going on. Currently right now our standard operating procedure is the driver stays in the vehicle and stays secured so this vehicle is designed to take a impact of a 60,000 pound vehicle and absorb it and actually not damage the chassis itself as well so for safety practices now there are times that we can deploy cones there's different things we have on this device we have portable speed bumps that they work great also once you capture traffic and deploy speed bumps and keep everything down at lower speed as well so we are asking me to get out that's issue running a lot of duty also now we're asking a lot of duty people that may not be released a full duty start lifting cones and various heavy things as well that we don't have it fully operational to where we want it at this point so hence the ask before you today. I'm a definite yes on this one that's my direction but I do have a question as well I'm curious so with the amount of time it would take for the training for this new hire be equivalent to the the amount of time for the other six hires or would it be less would they be on the ground sooner. No that's a great question no since this is a promoted position we're actually going through the appeals process right now we'll have the list finalized in the next few weeks so once we got direction and it was approved by council and finance allocates the funding it would be immediate promotion and the person would be available. Excellent okay sorry I didn't understand it so this would be an internal hire they'd be available right away as soon as it's a it's a domino effect so we would promote a current firefighter that's on the top of the eligibility list for drivers to this position be able to implement it put in service that person and then we had to hire that would create in the back to fill that vacancy yeah we go with the other FTEs yeah okay got it excellent so yes definitely in favor of this anyone else um I think so yes my direction is to move forward with hiring the blocker truck driver got it okay all good so six and one yes that by my count yes but don't don't trust me somebody smarter than me then we'll confirm that I say we'll bring a budget amendment on May 3rd so that we can get moving as quickly as possible all right thank you thanks chief thank you that concludes item C takes us to item D ID two one two eight zero four receive an update regarding Denton County Transit Authority from Councilman McGuire put together uh as staffs but I'll do my best here um so uh there have been some leadership changes um at DCTA recently uh judge Andy Eads has replaced current uh council member Sam Burke on the DCTA board as of January um David Gaines is now our uh representative on the NTMC board um replacing Sarah Hensley um and I think he brings some some excellent uh experience and expertise to that position um Raymond Suarez of as you got a press release regarding this uh has resigned from DCTA effective March 31st um deputy CEO Paul Christina is currently serving as the interim CEO and we are in the process of engaging a search firm to fill the CEO position on a permanent basis um and we're we're moving on a pretty quick timeline on that um staffing um staffing levels have been an issue for some time um and they're getting to be a more serious issue um our CFO Marissa Perry has resigned again um she originally resigned back in in August and was um uh convinced to stay on um for a little bit longer but she has um put in her her final resignation she has done with with her uh time of of helping us out after her resignation we've also lost our senior manager of human resources um and where this puts us particularly in the the um finance and accounting and budget department um is that we do not have the staff to perform the basic functions of the agency um so we are working with our consultants at Accenture uh to continue those operations um there's uh there is a game plan Paul Christina has um laid out you know we're gonna work with temp agencies to fill accounting roles we're gonna work with search firms to try and fill roles on a permanent basis um but we are relying very very heavily on consultants to get us through um this this transition time um bus operator vacancies um uh there so there there was a reduction in FTEs at MTMC um of bus operators as a result of the service changes that went into effect on March 14th but we already had a pretty big staffing shortage um so reduction in FTEs did not result in any drivers losing their jobs um but there are still six vacancies for bus operators um which is impacting on time performance um ridership so um I have a picture of a slide on my slide um so new denton connect routes went into effect on March 14th and we don't yet have data regarding the impact on ridership um but I thought that this would give you kind of kind of a good picture of um the the the agency as a whole we talk a lot about well what's what's connect ridership what's go zone ridership but um this is is all of the services that we we offer including UNT connect service go zone van pool which is a pretty significant chunk um access and the a train um uh this is just connecting go zone ridership um we had spoken the last few months about um since the implementation of go zone the combined go zone and connect ridership has exceeded um goes on ridership from pre-pandemic levels um in February it didn't work out that way mostly because of the uh the weather events that we had this this past February um because DCTA did shut down most service during both of our our winter weather events in February um so we we shall see how that how that plays out this month um looking ahead we've got lots of um exciting uh uh new uh proposals coming forward um we are going to be working on um updating uh our various apps and integrating them so currently there are there's a go go zone app um which is just for go zone and then there's the go pass app which is um integrated between dart and DCTA um and that is used for connect service and a train service um we are looking at um integrating the two apps making them one um creating more seamless experience for riders where they can plan a trip that you know perhaps they get picked up at their home with go zone and go zone takes them to an a train station or a connect stop um and they can just seamlessly transfer to um the the fixed routes um because as our our consultants at via have assured us um fixed routes are and always will be the most efficient way to move people um we are running into a situation with go zone where um demand is is far outstripping supply um and if we continue to expand the the contract with via um just to to meet that demand without also um taking other measures to direct more of that ridership to the much more efficient fixed route system um we're going to end up just paying for taxi rides for every individual in town um and that's not going to be a sustainable situation to find ourselves in um so yesterday was the start of a public uh comment period related to um service and fare changes that we will be discussing um in june and implementing at the beginning of the next fiscal year um so the the service changes um both both the service changes and the fare changes are going to be geared toward um optimizing the mix to borrow mayor pro tem melzer's phrase optimizing the mix of microtransit and fixed route um so that we are are able to move as many people as possible as efficiently as possible um because you know having very low ridership and providing everybody with their very own taxi is not efficient running empty buses is also not efficient um so so the the fare and the service um changes will be geared toward driving ridership up and improving efficiency um so we'll be discussing that fare policy at the june board meeting um does anybody have any questions regarding any of that um i i i had intended to touch on um improvements to the a train and um go zone efficiency as well and i'm happy to discuss those if anybody wants to any questions councilor batten yeah thank you uh so given the the turnover in staff and and and the discussions that you've had with with them i mean how's that looking are we going to have recruitment issues uh getting the larger we is north texas going to have uh recruitment issues uh getting staff to come in there considering churn drives people away people don't want to come to a to a place where there's chur yeah i mean that's that's certainly a concern um i think that's a concern everywhere just given the nature of the labor market right now there's a lot of churn everywhere and everyone is having trouble um recruiting um it's possible that we may be in a slightly worse situation than most but um that is why the board unanimously uh directed staff to to move as quickly as possible in um performing a search and hiring a permanent ceo because we recognize the necessity of that stability um hiring a ceo on a on a permanent basis who can rebuild the team um and our interim ceo paul christina um has has taken an approach that i really appreciate that um he is really reorganizing the the entire organization he's restructuring um the org chart um just trying to improve efficiency um you know i was just talking in regard to another issue um how much we see this organization working to improve processes and organize the the the structure of the organization in an efficient way um we haven't in the past seen those types of efforts in at dcta i think um but we're starting to see them now um so so i i i'm feeling very hopeful um about our ability to to attract and retain staff in the future even though it is a challenging situation any other questions councilor alberta so several questions so first i'm not going to ask about um safety issues since i've got a two minute pitch regarding that um but i do have um three questions one can you speak to so i should say i'm concerned about obviously the um these all these resignations um including the uh cfo uh and the um uh they moved to as i understood it kind of to have excenture in charge charge of the financials is that so yeah we are temporarily outsourcing um accounting functions to eccentric yes all accounting functions and uh and do they do internal audits as well or we will still be bound um to all of our our federal um auditing requirements um we we are required to to perform uh an internal audit every year um and then then um an external audit every three years and that is coming up um and we will still be bound to those requirements even if excenture is providing those services okay yeah so they yeah so uh so excenture would be the one if when that time comes eccentric is still in that role they would be the one performing the internal audit um we uh uh even with our internal audit so we still have um engaged uh a firm to help with that because we don't have the capacity to do that okay got it okay yeah so they're regardless of what happens there will be an external firm that will be performing the audit um and coming up i believe in late fall early winter um we will be performing the big tri-annual uh uh federal audit and can you speak to you know what has been excenture's role with dcta in the past this is the first time that um that i could find anyway that they have been in this role but they've done other work for dcta in the past yeah if you could kind of explain that relationship so excenture is a consulting firm firm um which dcta has worked with very very closely um they have not previously assisted dcta with accounting and finance related tasks um but uh uh route planning um operations planning um a lot of that type of work um is is excenture is bringing those sorts of things forward um and yeah excenture is they're they're they're a transit um uh consulting firm yeah and do they have a relationship with via go zone outside of their relationship with dcta that i don't know um i i certainly excenture and via are both working very closely with dcta staff um and there have been um plenty of items that have come before the board that have been uh you know excenture and via have worked in conjunction um the service changes that went into effect on march 14th were provided by and proposed by a combination of excenture via and dcta staff and that is also how we're going to be moving forward with the the fair study and the service study that we'll be seeing in june yeah even so excenture is going to continue to do that even while they're in this new accounting role yes yeah they will will be um just expanding the the scope of their contract essentially okay yeah so that that that concern thank you for explaining that so well um you know that that concerns me because of the um it's just another you know turn of the screw in the move to privatization and uh you know i'm not saying that this the resignation of the cfo and eccentric stepping in as part of was part of some big plan that was had been in the works for a long time i have no idea um but uh regardless you know that is the way things are now and so it's real concerning especially because of their working relationship with with go zone in uh you know uh you know no matter what that contractual relationship was on paper it certainly looked to the public like uh eccentric was involved in the selling of of go zone so that's just real problematic and um and i'm not blaming the messenger obviously i'm thanking you for sharing the information with us that's just really really troubling and i hope that someone can be found who is in a public serving role not private contractor and of all the private contractors gosh i wish you know they could have found someone other than eccentric only because of the the relationship that they've had with with uh goes on via in um uh you know promoting them um and uh and being so so actively involved in the uh the via program so um second um uh kind of uh not so much a question really just a um just a direction you know i would when i'm glad to know that you all are going to be discussing fair policy uh at an upcoming meeting and you know i hope that the the question of uh free fares and the impact i was was struck um you know when i when i first found out what uh what a small percentage uh of uh dcta funding comes from fares uh small enough that uh at least the last time that i got the data on that that it seemed to me you know pretty obvious that uh free fares would be a great way to increase ridership as well as now that we've got the buses running along with the uh go zone if we could have them both be free uh to see uh you know where that would lead so i hope that will be explored and i hope that when that happens and i know that you will as as denton's rep be you know pointing to the data and the numbers on that and i hope that others on the board are looking at that too and not just you know freaking out at the idea of you know free fares but looking to see you know um that that uh that uh that is actually something quite reasonable if the the situation is anything near what it was you know the last time i got the numbers on that i will to respond to that i just want to assure you that i at our last board meeting i um absolutely insisted that any conversation about fare structure include an analysis of of what it would look like to eliminate fares on um both uh fixed bus routes and also on the a train um so that is that that is an option that we will be um evaluating for sure um to go back to your point about um uh consultants um i definitely share your concern um i think a lot of folks at dcta share that concern um this is unfortunately sort of the situation that we're in that we have to rely very heavily on consultants um but i know that um the intent of dcta staff is to hire a permanent several many permanent internal uh employees to work in accounting and finance because it is um definitely not in the spirit of a public agency to outsource that that fundamental of a role on a long-term basis and hopefully it won't be someone from go from via or eccentric move with this this revolving people are uh also very worried about the appearance of revolving doors you know but and i know that you're aware of that too and that you're on that so thank you um and then just the third thing i want to ask but it's actually kind of more of an ask for council one take just staff has been notified uh the av staff that you'll have to enunciate a little more clear people called in saying they cannot hear uh you or mayor pro tem so if you could please adjust accordingly or just i want you to be aware so oh okay sorry to those people who called in um so uh let's see so the final comment um more of a uh question for uh council than uh for uh for you and that is that you know i i learned this morning that um uh that there was a um addition to the i'm not sure exactly when that got implemented to the uh e-comment form um saying that um uh questions something along the lines of you know questions about uh dcta um and you know bus and train service uh should go to uh the to uh dcta instead of council um and so i had asked about that and i think that got changed and may have gotten um i hope deleted uh but i wanted to take this opportunity um to um to see if there's consensus to kind of to give direct for the council to use this opportunity of a dcta update work session uh to give direction on you know whether or not you know we think that there should be any such clause in the e-comment form given that that that that is uh the way uh that we get to hear we as council members get to hear uh what the public's input is on this board to which we uh appoint our own we as elected officials appoint our own uh representative so i was wondering if other council members in their you know questions and comments wanted to to take that up and offer offer direction i would i would be um content to have uh no um no such comments on their um it would be another issue altogether if if there was if i was seeing um a lot of people writing in asking uh you know what time do i get the such-and-such bus and you know questions like that that obviously are you know time sensitive issues that should go to dcta but i've gotten literally none none of those um and i know that if i haven't gotten any of those that means that council hasn't either through the e to through that e-comment form if i may mayor kind of put on my council hat and provide my direction regarding that um i is is that all right with you chair i'm thinking sure sure um so so i uh i hear what you're saying um but there does seem to be a a misconception among many members of the public that this body sets dcta policy um so i think that there may be value in having a note along the lines of um you know you're you're welcome to email your council member about whatever you want but please keep in mind that that the denton city council is not the decision making body for dcta okay and mayor i just want to step in because we're walking a pretty close line here we're not um currently on the agenda we don't have to give direction that's not part of the discussion really just an update so i want to be careful about the breadth of direction that starts to come from the council related to the item okay noted thank you we'll adjust accordingly any other questions mayor pro tem yeah thank you um thank you so much for you know taking on this role taking on this role so seriously and and voluntarily coming forward with the report and i'm hoping i'm closer to the mic i'm a little more audible uh mostly my questions for you are are the same i had at the last mobility committee but maybe you have more information now but i'll ask you one that wasn't there i'd be curious to know if you have a point of view on what the driver is of of this so to speak that what the cause is of this uh staff exodus and if that underlying cause has been addressed or you know is there's that going to persist as we as you know as we try to hire that's an excellent question um and i'm hoping you'll be very blunt and for i know you want me to be blind um but i'm gonna i'm gonna skirt it i'm gonna i'm gonna sorry um uh hr issues are our private matters and so i'm not going to be commenting on that today i was talking about the large uh well manifestation not the individual i see that's as far as we're gonna get so the the uh the other questions from mobility committee that'll probably raise tomorrow as well but just see if you have any input i asked well okay one is are we going to address the uh is dcta going to address the pay disparity for drivers versus competing options which is has a predictable effect of driver shortages if other if they have other places to go and once we have driver shortages we see routes trimmed just because we don't have the drivers to staff them so is that being addressed um i hope so uh that is primarily the responsibility of ntmc um uh so i i you know i certainly have made my opinion known in in in dcta board meetings that um we need to raise driver pay we need to um you know offer to pay the full cost of cdl training for for folks who don't have cdls um and and you know startup bonuses for folks who get their cdl with with ntmc and then go on to actually work for ntmc um uh those those are going to be decisions that are going to be made at the ntmc level but um certainly i would as as a dcta board member um approve the funding for any and all of that because we we definitely need to be competitive in the marketplace for cdl drivers yeah thank you and uh if i can ask my uh further questions what i what i raised to the brand new acting ceo so you know i didn't expect him to have the answer uh was whether there are in our contract or in dcta's contract with via service level agreements on safety arrival time and disabled access in other words when you ask for you know van that can accommodate a wheelchair that there is one um i can say that i don't i don't have a ready answer for all of that um but um via is very mindful of service levels um and they are very concerned about um the the number of um seat unavailable messages which means um riders who request a ride and are just rejected because there's no one to take it um and about uh increasing wait times average wait times are up to about 21 minutes um which is uh you know not not what we were sold um when when we when we signed on to the the contract um and and via is concerned about that and are trying to address that and one of the things that via is trying to do to address that particular issue i know that's not the only thing you're asking about but um is um service and fair structure changes to promote fixed route ridership over go zone ridership um because i think the folks at via know darn well that they they can't provide the service that that the community is demanding and anything on safety um i we're going to talk about safety very shortly here so i'll stick with the time limit though yeah yeah i'll stick a pin in that we will have a conversation about safety great thank you okay anyone else any other questions uh i have a few i just want to um hear from you with respect to the fixed routes because it's my understanding that the city of denton has 100 of the connect routes at this time yes as of december yes and then city of lewisville pays in one million dollars more than we do and so there's going to how do you reconcile those two if lewisville raises that issue so what is your position on how to address that my position is that the cutting of the lewisville fixed routes was the decision of mayor tj gilmore he was the one who advocated for that choice um and uh the the only concession that he requested from the rest of the board um was that as we look at changing the fare structure for go zone within the denton uh zone that we maintain a flat fare structure in lewisville um so that lewisville go zone riders are paying the same fare as uh denton connect riders um but if if mayor gilmore is concerned about losing his bus routes then perhaps he shouldn't have asked for them to be cut well moreover do you have any concerns about fixed routes being reduced to make it more equitable from a whole dollars in to services out perspective because we use the majority of the go route as well i'm assuming yes we definitely yeah yeah goes we have most of the go zone service for sure so we're using the bulk of this shared resource all the way around and at some point that's going to reconcile what what is your vision on how that's what goes because if you got to give something if we're using 100 percent if all total 100 is being used there's no reserves what do you what do you think is going to be the reckon the reconciling i think that that's a legitimate concern um i would also say though um that when we're talking about a county-wide system um really a region-wide system because we are um collaborating very very closely with dart um that i i don't know that it makes a lot of sense to um parse out how much one city is paying and how much they're getting versus how much another city is paying and how much they're getting because this is it's it's the denton county transit authority um it's it is it is a county-wide service that benefits all all members of our community um that being said uh there are conversations about um possibly bringing in other member cities um corinth is is um having talks about uh you know what they could do obviously they're at their their sales tax cap but um there have been conversations about um doing things with property tax um so that they can buy into dcta and kind of uh even out that that cost burden a little bit more among among more um communities within denton county and i hope that other communities in denton county will consider joining as well i think the more the merrier got it and then you and t from and thank you for the graphic they're using about over 50 of the go zone resources is that oh that's not go zone that's um unt uh bus service bus okay but uh okay so the go zone do you know what percentage they're using it's originating on unt campus um i do not have access to that data but you know the heat maps that i show are demonstrating that there are quite a lot of go zone rides that are originating and ending on or near campus i know that there's some geo-fencing in the core of campus um but there's still quite a lot of activity around the edges of campus okay got it i'd be curious to see once you once you do kind of revisit how much of that if if that geofence needs to be expanded to try to again curtail usage or or reshape how it's used because the buses are paid for right by you and t in their contract so i'd be curious about that and that's been um that that was part of the conversation that will come back in june um that that that allowing go zone use uh really anywhere near uh campus is really a pretty inefficient use of of limited resources because they have they have their own bus service and they also have route seven done connect service which is the most heavily utilized uh connect route got it and then i do want to give you an opportunity to to touch on what you exactly touched on so and and there's no i don't i don't have an answer in mind i just want to i want you to have an opportunity to say hey what is your role i don't there's five board members and so how you fit how you influence those i mean just kind of your role on that board as far as when people advocate and say we send a a a recommendation or you make a recommendation just kind of give us a feel for the the room and and that atmosphere um yeah i i i think that um i'm a i'm a very active participant um i i am a very strong advocate for the maintenance of our our fixed bus routes um that kind of was was my primary focus going in you know now that i'm in there i've obviously broadened my focus and i want to think about um all the different facets of of of the services that we provide um but i still very strongly believe that we can't meet the the goals of the agency to um increase ridership and move more people more efficient efficiently unless we maintain fixed routes and increase ridership on those fixed routes as well um so that's that's been um really my primary focus um and and the other policies that i've advocated for have been in service of that got it and then i'll just touch on a couple of things real quick uh one person did reach out to me with respect to logos like all the vehicles uh i know they have the smaller sticker but this one person said they had someone who picked them up in a personal car couldn't get into their car so just for whatever i mean whatever policy nothing to answer there i mean i know that's not you know larry you just passing that along and then um the i've heard i i guess i'd need to hear from you on just the fares right because i've heard all three being freed and do the entirety of this conversation someone mentioned bus someone mentioned goes on and someone missed an a-train so what is being considered as far as free fares so um i can tell you after a very long and very contentious conversation about fares at our last meeting um where no decisions were made but um the the consensus was um that goes on um at least in denton um should have a base rate of a dollar fifty per ride it's currently at a promotional rate of 75 cents per ride um going up to there was some debate about whether it should be like four dollars five dollars six dollars maximum based on mileage um for go zone rides that are over four miles because over four miles the efficiency decreases dramatically um and then um either maintaining the same fare on connect and a train or dropping it or eliminating it entirely um there seemed to be consensus around since lewisville no longer has connect routes um that that they should have um just a base rate for go zone that is the same as whatever the base rate is for denton connect and a train um because that's that's their only option okay and did i hear someone right that said there's the routes were trimmed the bus routes were trimmed due to lack of drive driver availability do we know what route that is and it was all of them yeah and i presented that back in december no no i mean like okay maybe i misunderstood i thought it was like hey we have a route but we don't have a driver so we have to cancel oh no it's not that direct so what was happening was um you know we had all you know routes you know all of the routes at their previous levels um many of them were not running on time or not showing up at their designated stops at their designated times because um because of the driver shortage so in order to address that we eliminated route one um and we split route four into two smaller routes and all of the routes got a little bit smaller a little bit shorter um and are running for starting later in the morning ending earlier in the evening and are running on shorter headways um in in order to cope with that driver shortage and that has been fairly effective so far got it i'm tracking with you i just misunderstood it the way it was presented today and then i this is not for you to not know this is not a question just a statement because this is where we got to make those i i'm really uh disappointed about the 187,000 dollars uh that was reported in the paper to uh the former ceo uh that that to me is i mean again uh they get 14 million dollars of our sales tax dollars and to you know uh whether they're no matter what and so for that to go to that was concerning for me and then i think there was a raise at some point that we had not discussed uh or as far as to give direction uh to our representative and so that to me also was never brought before the board for consideration right okay got it well then then that is then we'll work on that i think is i just think i just think this i want this body to be heard on things where our sales tax dollars are going and because it's the only time we'll get to right other once they got once it's once they receive it then it's their discretion so before then i think it's kind of whatever we can do to to be uh make sure fiscally we're we're plugged in this would be good but thank you very much for the presentation and uh that takes us to item d no we finished the e id 22054 receive report hold discussion give staff direction on pending city council requires council member armature had another question yeah we'll we'll have to take it um offline so it's just a it's a question for the board rep not for staff well right she can shoot she can answer it offline we're gonna we're gonna i'm sorry i don't see why i'm sorry it's just a brief question but it's an important one about routes correct but i've called this next item i just missed the glass and everything so forgive me it's my error but we're gonna move so she can answer your question after uh when you good evening mayor and council excuse me monica benavides management analyst tonight i will be presenting the city council pending request for information as a reminder up to seven requests will be reviewed per meeting one per council member 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 and staff will respond to all requests where a consensus of council is established i won't read this word for word however as you can see this outlines of priorities tonight we have two requests the first one comes from council member bird and she requested a work session to explore action and ways the city council and the residents of denton can commemorate former residents of quaker as the county state and city explore who we are the trend is to extricably avoid history in an alarming way i remember a term toll that stated that we ought we pay for the sins of our fathers we can't avoid what happened in the past in this fair city we can only commemorate the perseverance of the people of quaker that um experienced the uprooting of their precious community and to literally be paced in the southeastern sector of town which is out of town at that point i want to thank mr randy hunt for his diligence in getting this commemoration process started for us to pursue i propose a work session to explore action and way city council and the residents of denton can commemorate former residents of quaker possibly and possible in ground markers in specified locations in quaker park and the renaming of the women's club building building it is fitting that uh this because becomes a city council initiative and directive to remember the events of the city 100 years ago this year councilor davis thank you mayor um i i like the idea um i would probably place maybe a medium to low priority uh just because it it probably would take a lot of staff time um i i'm especially drawn to the idea of the in-ground markers i'm kind of imagining you know where uh different houses were and businesses were in quaker town that kind of thing we can't rename the women's building we don't own it uh the land underneath it's ours the women's building is not ours and a better uh a better approach might be to approach the owners of the building and ask if they would be interested in uh you know adding a name to it you know the such-and-such building which is home to the women's clubs of denton uh but we can't the staff helpful direction there's not quite accurate because we don't have the authority to rename that building okay anyone else councilmember back so i too love the idea of putting the markers in the ground i completely support that the the layout and the sort of the town feel the town that is no longer i do i i'll just throw this out since it was brought out before so i i think we lease the women's building so i think that's ours and i believe it's a 50 or 100 year crazy ridiculous lease but it is leased so i believe that's ours mayor pro tem i think the uh markers thing is great and i think the degree to which we consciously connected with uh sign toppers so that people can see hey my my forebears had a house here and they had the wherewithal to drag it over to here you know it's just uh uh potentially just really meaningful and for for visitors to uh you're happy to find out whatever the actual possibilities are on naming the building councilor mcguire obviously there's some details that need to be worked out but i'm totally in favor of having this work session i place a medium priority on it councilor armature i'm strongly in support of this proposal i give it high priority because i i don't see that it will take much staff time it seems to me that that the majority of the work will be on the part of community members and randy hunt and historic denton i think that renaming the women's club is is really important because of the renaming the women's club building because of the role of that the women's club in the displacement of people in quaker town so we need to find out uh what we can do uh legally to get that that that name changed okay um city manager did i see you well i'll tell you um we have staff that's going to look into this because there is some confusion whether it's the building or the land and council member days may be right the other thing to share with you is our good friends at texas women's university is actually taking upon themselves to do something uh really to recognize these individuals who were displaced um and so i got a chance to hear all about it which was really exciting um and so if the council decides to move forward we'd certainly want to work with twu great thank you and and i support the work session and that takes us to item two uh if you'd be so kind item two a work session on adopting the dcta resolution and instituting a process for go-zone collision investigation by council member armenter okay councilor armenter yes i'm asking that council today approve and give high priority to the resolution attached to today's agenda from no bus cuts denton that states that the council instruct its dcta board rep council member alison mcguire to strongly advocate at a board meeting as soon as possible for the board to direct its staff to immediately one acquire the license plate numbers and vehicle ids of all vehicles that have provided go zone rideshare service managed by via under contract to dcta to file open records requests with members city and university police departments in the denton county sheriff's office for complaints and calls for service involving vehicles with these license plate numbers beginning september 20 september 7 2021 ending on the latest date possible three use the vehicle ids to search the lexus nexus clue auto database beginning september 7th uh for auto insurance claims involving go zone vehicles and four publish the results of this research on the dcta website and also report the findings at public meetings to all members cities second i also ask that the council direct the city auditor uh to uh uh investigate uh the calls to search calls for service not just collisions but all calls to service um and that we conduct a full investigation of this i'm open to um different methods it wouldn't have to be city auditor auditor's office seems to be definitely the most qualified i understand that staff recommends that any collision investigation process or effort be fully coordinated managed by dcta however i believe it's in the city's best interest for this investigation to be conducted by an unbiased entity such as the city auditor's office and added to their list of prioritized audits okay any comments councilor maguire um so i'm going to give direction to not move forward with uh this work session or resolution um i don't feel it's necessary in regard to the resolution i'm happy to just do all of these things these are completely reasonable requests um the only stumbling block i can foresee is um given staffing shortages it may be a little bit of a challenge to find staff who are able to do this work but um it's i mean the scope is so narrow and um it's so straightforward that i think if if i could get staff to provide me with the license plate numbers i could do the rest of this work um regarding the second portion um i i don't believe that that it's it's appropriate to to use our city staff um to to deal with dcta in this way um i i do feel that this is dcta's um responsibility um i i hear that there is is is maybe value in having uh an unbiased outside agency outside of dcta do the investigation um but i i don't i'm i'm not on board with the idea of that agency being the city of denton okay thank you anyone else seen none okay uh fails for uh want of uh majority so that's the second one that concludes that that concludes our uh work session items we have dinner here and we have a closed session so let's do let's come back at um 525 hopefully and and do the closed session that'll give us time to set the room yes sir yes well i'm saying you could get it and start eating and at 525 530 we'll start the closed session is uh yes yes thank you i was gonna appreciate that uh so uh at uh 504 i will convene the closed session at 504 and we will consider the following items deliberation regarding personnel matters under texas government code 551.074 so we'll be in on break until we're in closed session at 525 thank you good evening and welcome to this meeting of the denton city council it is 6 30 on april the 19th and we do have a quorum so i'll call this portion of our meeting to order uh we'll get started with the pledges of allegiance to this united states and texas flag please stand with me if you're able thank you and then we have uh several proclamations so i will slide down and we'll call those uh people forward thank you okay the first is people here for sexual assault awareness month if you can come down and join me please and thank you hey gentleman how you doing very good and if y'all could introduce yourself and then we'll and whatever you want to add to that and then we'll uh we'll read the proclamation tony johnson simpson i'm the executive director denton county friends of the families is uh are some members of our team we're here to honor those um individuals who have been affected by sexual assault and this month brings awareness and highlight to that as we go about in our agency at friends of the family serving victims of domestic violence and sexual assault um annually we will serve some 2000 sexual assault victims in providing a variety of services counseling direct hospital assistance and law enforcement support as they go out and enter with those victims so the city of dinn is a wonderful partner for us on this project and we appreciate your support and acknowledgement today thank you does anyone else want to give your name or anyone do we you want to introduce yourselves anyone sure my name is deja pink i'm the survivor's advocacy team at dinn county friends of the family so i coordinate our hospital response team cassandra berry community educator christina sandoval community resource coordinator uh john landau from a detective of the city of denton special victims unit lori nelson director of community engagement olivia barhorse director of marketing and development stephanie honeycutt community resource coordinator of volunteers and intern recruitment great thank you all right and so it's it's this is a proclamation by the mayor of the city of dinn greetings whereas all around all the world sexual assault us pardon me harassment abuse and assault are widespread problems in the united states alone nearly one in five women and one in 67 men have been raped at some point in their lives and one in four girls and one in 20 boys are sexually abused by the age of 17 in in fact an american is sexually assaulted every 68 seconds and whereas sexual assault affects every adult teen and child in denton county either as a victim survivor or sexual assault or as a family member significant other friend neighbor or co-worker and whereas few survivors of sexual violence seek help immediately after victimization due to shame or fear of not being believed and in order to end sexual assault we must alleviate these fears we must begin by delivering some believing survivors and whereas denton county friends of the family staff and volunteers provide comprehensive and compassionate services to those impacted by sexual assault including a survivor advocate team responding 20 24 7 to local hospitals and law enforcement agencies to support victims of sexual assault and whereas april 2022 marks the 21st anniversary of sexual assault awareness month during the denton county friends of the family during which denton county friends of the family will be intensifying efforts to promote public understanding of sexual assault publicizing their services emphasizing the need for increased community support for their agency and increasing the awareness of needs of survivors now therefore i gerard hutzpeth mayor of the city of denton texas do hereby declare and proclaim the month of april 2022 as sexual assault awareness month in the city of denton and encourage all citizens to learn more about the efforts of sexual assault the effects of sexual assault and how to support survivors can we give them a hand please thank you very much for that thank you and then he has his there we go thank you so thank you and those that are here for matt all right thank you very much for being here if you can induce yourselves and tell us whatever you want us to know and then we'll read the proclamation yes good evening everyone my name is emma dugan the program specialist and law enforcement liaison for mothers against drunk driving with our north texas affiliate power talk 21 is a campaign of mad to support our parent program uh the our parent program is called power of parents and we've partnered with nationwide to encourage parents to have ongoing and intentional conversations with their teens about the dangers and consequences of underage drinking 74 percent of teens say that their parents are the leading influence in their decisions to to drink alcohol and this one blew me away the kids start weighing the pros and cons about drinking alcohol as early as age eight so i'm thank you so much for this proclamation and today we had the didn't dwi unit to support as well so the dwi unit is actually teaching other officers the standard field sobriety testing which is part of our dwi investigation so they couldn't be here we are here to represent those dwi enforcement officers i'm sergeant keith night shift patrol i'm officer perry i'm on night shift patrol i'm officer harville on day shift patrol thank you all for being here thank you very much so it sees uh the proclamation by the mayor of the city of denton whereas the city of the city of denton recognizes the importance of parents talking to their teens about the risk and dangers of alcohol and drugs in our communities and whereas high school students who use alcohol or other substances have five times more likely are five times more likely to drop out of school or believe good grades are not important and whereas 27 of middle school students try alcohol before graduating from the eighth grade which significantly increases the risk that they will drop develop alcohol problems later in life and whereas underage drinking contributes to more than four thousand three hundred deaths among people under 21 years of age in the united states every year and whereas many kids say their parents and their primary and are their primary influence when it comes to the decision about drinking alcohol and whereas power talk 21 started by mothers against drunk driving in 2011 was established to encourage parents and caregivers to embrace their the importance role of influencing america's youth and their decisions about drinking alcohol and using drugs and whereas in 2022 mad encourages parents to use power talk 21 as part of the power of parents program to create sustained and prolonged conversations about underage drinking and other drugs among middle school students and high school students and whereas mad north texas is providing a virtual learning series from april first to may 31st to give parents the tools and to effectively talk to their children about alcohol and other drugs to help protect them now therefore i gerard hutz with mayor of the city of denton texas do hereby declare and proclaim the 21st day of april 2022 as power talk 21 day in the city of denton and encourage all citizens to help raise awareness of the dangers of drug and alcohol use sorry alcohol use post to our pose to our teens and community thank you thank you very much give him a hand yes yes thank you very much yes that he has some here there he is one two three one two three thank you very much okay and now we have the national volunteer week those here for national volunteer week great all right if you want to introduce yourselves and tell us a little bit about what we're celebrating and recognizing my name is nicky sasson is assistant director of parks and recreation we are celebrating volunteer week the department utilizes volunteers for all of our programs from our senior centers to keep dentin beautiful to planting trees out at clear creek from our after school program so we cannot do what we do without volunteers we had over 6 000 volunteers in 2021 serve almost 15 000 hours i'll let staff introduce themselves nicole braster supervisor at the denton senior center hi i'm autumn natalie program and events manager and over keep dentin beautiful programs great thank you very much appreciate it okay that says uh see to all whom these presidents shall come greetings whereas in 1974 national volunteer week was established by president presidential proclamation to inspire recognize and encourage people to engage and serve in their communities and whereas denton parks and recreation and keep dentin beautiful engage with volunteers that are representative of a rich diversity diversity of community from children to older adults and from lifelong residents to college students all of which who participate in service to better our community and whereas volunteers enhance services provide provided to the city of denton residents and extend the capacity of the city's departments and whereas volunteers give their time and talents to many wonderful community organizations in denton and contribute to a vibrant healthy community and whereas in 2021 more than 6 000 dedicated volunteers served 14 928 hours with denton parks and recreation and keep dentin beautiful and whereas national volunteer week takes place every year to celebrate the impact of volunteer service and power of volunteers to tackle society's greatest challenges by building stronger communities now therefore i gerard hudspeth mayor of the city of denton texas do hereby declare and proclaim the week of april 17 through 23 2022 as national volunteer week in the city of denton i also extend special recognition to all city of denton volunteers and do here do hereby encourage citizens to join me and the and the denton city council in honoring and thanking all who volunteer especially in our vibrant community we can give them a hand thank you very much thank you and we have the uh alphas if you haven't come to my place is uh great thank you if you can uh give your name tell us why we're here my name is cedric brown and i'm here with brother byron temple and we're here to honor and celebrate the 50th anniversary of the eight epsilon chapter of alpha phi fraternity incorporated at the university of north texas as you can see brother temple and our alumni members who are not currently in school but we're here to celebrate this grand occasion as we mark 50 years of service to the denton community so mr mayor we want to thank you the city council and the city of denton for recognizing this occasion and allowing us to celebrate here on today thank you thank you very much thank you for being here okay says greeting to all whom these presents tell come whereas the eta epsilon chapter of alpha phi alpha fraternity inc was founded on the campus of the university of north texas formerly known as north texas state university in the spring of 1970 by 23 strong-minded individuals pursuing academic excellence and civic contributions and whereas the eight epsilon chapter of alpha phi alpha fraternity inc has taken the ideals and ambitions of their seven founders to continue the work of alpha phi alpha through their their esteemed chapter and whereas eta epsilon chapter of alpha phi alpha fraternity its works in the denton community by volunteering and providing support to local schools the salvation army retirement homes and mentoring through big brothers and big sisters and whereas for the last 50 years eta epsilon members have also spent countless hours involved in charity work by helping men women and youth in local recreation centers schools retirement homes churches and convalescent centers and whereas since service is a badge of honor that all members of eta epsilon wear with pride eta epsilon members strive to be leaders in the community on campus and in the classroom and whereas eta epsilon chapter of the alpha phi alpha fraternity inc will host its 50th golden anniversary with a grand celebration on saturday april 23 2022 at 7 p.m at the university of north texas now therefore i gerard hutzpeth mayor of the city of denton texas do hereby declare and proclaim april 23 2022 as eta epsilon chapter of alpha phi alpha fraternity inc day in the city of denton and urge all citizens to congratulate them on this special occasion if we can give him a hand oh okay anyone here for lights out night great all right hey how are you all this evening all right if you can tell us what we're recognizing so we're here tonight just to bring awareness to the bird migration patterns um that come through texas and what our citizens can do to reduce light pollution and help them migrate i'm kathryn barnett the sustainability manager michael gagne the director of environmental quality and sustainability okay very good thank you all very much this is greetings whereas every spring and fall nearly two billion birds travel through the state of texas this number represents somewhere between a quarter and a third of all birds migrating throughout the united states it is important to recognize this massive migration of birds occurs at night and whereas these birds must contend with the threat called light pollution light attracts and disorients these migrating birds confusing them and making them vulnerable to collisions with buildings and other urban threats according to lights out texas more than one billion birds die in collisions with buildings in the united states annually and whereas denton is joining an international lights out effort by proposing an implementation and simple solution to protect the birds turning off non-essential lights during critical migration periods turning off non-essential lights dramatically reduces hazards to migrating birds allowing them to safely proceed with their journey and whereas lights out texas is a statewide initiative that aims to raise awareness of these issues and is led by the carnal lab of ornithology and former first lady and founder of texas texan by nature laura bush and whereas residents and business owners are encouraged to help protect birds by turning off all non-essential lighting during the critical bird migration periods which is between 11 p.m and 6 a.m from april 2nd to may 12 2022 and from september 5th to october 29th 2022 now therefore i gerard hudspeth mayor of the city of denton texas do hereby declare april 22nd through may 12 2022 and september 5th through october 29 2022 as lights out nights in the city of denton and encourage all citizens and businesses to turn off non-essential lighting during the critical bird migration period thank you can we give him a hand all right thank you thank you very much appreciate it all right thank you all for being here appreciate it yep okay all right one for the road earth day who's here to celebrate earth day oh yeah fantastic okay great thank you okay katherine michael y'all want to come back down you've been requested come on in the water's great i'm autumn natalie program and events manager we're here to celebrate earth day this week this friday and um also bring awareness to the denton redbud festival that's happening this saturday april 23rd from 10 to 2 at the denton civic center and quaker town park and so what type of events going on redbud so since denton is the redbud capital of texas we celebrate that special tree and bring awareness to not only earth day but national arbor day the following week but we have environmental vendors and educational workshops and fun for the kids it's a really family-friendly event all right thank you very much i appreciate it okay uh to all whom these presents shall come greetings whereas april 22nd 1970 millions of americans rallied together to protect our right to live free from environmental environmental hazards and harm and whereas earth day is observed throughout the nation and the world and whereas more than a billion people are celebrating the 52nd anniversary of earth day this week by showing global support for our independent and interconnected environment and by reminding us that the actions we take every day impact people around the world and whereas the city of denton has provided its commitment to a sustainable future by adopting the simply sustainable framework working towards 100 renewable energy production enabling biking and walking across the city maintaining and expanding our parks and trails cleaning litter from our roadways and protecting citizens access to clean air and water and whereas in the past year the citizens of denton demonstrated their commitment to our earth by volunteering thousands of hours by picking up litter restoring natural habitats removing invasive plant species and planting hundreds of trees and whereas in celebration of earth day keep denton beautiful annually holds the denton redbud festival as well as numerous other community beautification programs to encourage the improvement and care of our environment now therefore i gerard husbeth mayor of the city of denton texas do hereby declare and proclaim this 22nd day of april 2022 as earth day in the city of denton and urge all citizens to attend the 28th annual denton redbud festival to support year-round efforts to care for and improve our plant planted improve our planet for current and future generations thank you if you can give me a hand all right that takes us to presentations from the public the first is mr steven dillenberg if you can come down you have four minutes after you can give your name and address and you have four minutes we weren't here last week last time i'm sure yeah yeah i'm with you uh but i want i'll be well i'm gonna hold you to the four minutes just for planning purposes mr davis are you still with the district attorney's office well let's let's reset the clock while we're doing that let's let's uh billy can you run the the procedures i forgot that part now that we're back up and running so we set it four minutes and while he's getting organized let's um play that video please 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 the remarks 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 propose 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 1004 abbit slain didn't texas i'm going to express my right as outlined by article one section 27 of the texas constitution right of assembly the citizens shall have the right to assemble in a peaceable member in a peaceable manner to assemble together for their common good and apply to those invested with the powers of government you all um with the for redress of grievances or other purposes by petition address which this is or remonstrance okay there's no other public forum available for me to address you guys that's why i'm here okay i asked to be here before i signed up i followed all the rules and you guys had technical difficulties that's why i asked for a little bit of latitude okay it's reasonable it's fair let's follow the law all right because you are still here mr davis i've asked you to resign and let me outline this this is addressed to chief frank dixon assistant city manager chief of police this report is made in my personal capacity as a law-abiding citizen blue-collared american and texan small business owner with a deep respect for the system of government that was earned through the blood sweat and tears of our family members past including our veterans law enforcement perhaps most importantly some forgotten heroes as a private american a man created by our god i am ethically and morally bound to report this matter to law enforcement i maintain my faith in our legal in our system of laws because it is based on god's law natural law which is basis for the law of nations from where we got our constitutional conventions the only distinction between the law of nations and natural law is the ability of man to articulate the intent of our creator and that law was written to protect the rights of each and every man walk in the face of god's green earth this report alleges criminal violations by current city council members and involves other council members as witnesses and potentially co-conspirators as well as you this report also alleges that any claims of immunity judicial qualified executive are unconstitutional and that is based on the constitutionality of a rule being determined by whether it is one too broad two too vague or three too subject to be abused and accordingly this report requests immediate action in the pursuit of justice and service and protection of our community i do not seek any specific result other than the constitutional principles specifically separation of powers and jury nullification being restored to our local governments which are constitutional thus natural requirements for a variety of reasons for all societies but mainly because of the potential for abuses that exist without adherence to these mandates specifically article 2 section 1 of the texas constitution describes the powers of government the powers of government of the state of texas shall be divided into three distinct departments each of which shall be confided to a separate body of magistracy to wit those which are legislative to one those which are executive to another and those which are judicial to another and no person or collection of persons being of one of these departments shall exercise any power properly attached to either of the others except in the instances here and expressly permitted synopsis and background beginning on or about may of 19 then city council member jesse davis began his betrayal of the texas constitution and its constituents you're my district member sir which this report alleges continues to this day though no one in our society could reasonably be presumed to be better informed of the law than a district attorney mr davis ran for city council district six of the city of dinton and because of the general public confusion and ignorance of the law due to legalese and seemingly endless omnibus bills or the fact that only 11 percent of didn't voted in those elections davis was able to win a seat on the didn't city council the moment he swore an oath as a legislator while already having sworn and sworn an oath as an officer of the judiciary he betrayed the separation of powers clause of our constitution and as an attorney ignorance and non-excuse i'll leave that there for tonight because i'm out of time but guys we cannot say he can't say what's good or what isn't good this is not good he can't say that when he's spitting on our constitution prima facie i'm talking to the people i'm not talking to them because they're not listening please pay attention we need to do some things thank you guys thank you very much have a good evening okay the next speaker is miss shauncy gum and forgive me if i mispronounced that s-h-a-u-n-e-c-y g-u-m-m going once okay and then also the next person is erica young erica e-r-i-c-a young y-o-n-g no okay that takes us to miss greco you can give your name and address you'll have four minutes eva greco 802 west oak street good evening ladies and gentlemen um first i'd like to give a big shout out and a huge thank you to all the volunteers including myself and the many many businesses in this town that have allowed us to use their establishment um to get signatures for a petition to decrim dentin in other words to decriminalize misdemeanor marijuana in the city of dentin i am honored and proud to volunteer for such a much much needed issue in in this town um and i just want to give a shout out to everybody and a big thank you to everybody and golden boys coffee company yes sarah i thank you um dcta i'm gonna hold off because i'm just stunned i'm actually sick to my stomach what i saw tonight happened so i'm too worked up on that to speak on that tonight so that'll be for another night um and the last item is i was at the forum forum debate whatever it was called at fred moore park okay um i got quite a few laughs at the non-responsiveness of some questions but i'm gonna end on throwing your words back at you jord a little twist to it okay because this is one woman you will never be like a drum i will beat you like a drum first thank you and have a good evening thank you okay that concludes uh the public comment takes us to consent agenda i'll take a motion but for item ae which was pulled counselor davis move approval of the consent agenda uh accepting item ae counselor beck i second motion by council member davis second by council member beck let that get oriented then we'll vote on the screen that passes seven zero takes us to ae uh let the record reflect that council member davis has recused himself i'll call that item id 22794 consider adoption of ordinance of the city of denton authorizing the city manager to execute an interlocal agreement between the city of denton by by and through its police department denton county district attorney for the disposition of contraband seized and forfeited under chapter 59 texas code of criminal procedure uh counselor bett i move approval of item ae counselor maguire i second motion by council member beck second by council member maguire any other discussion seeing none let's vote on the screen um that item passes six to zero takes us to our public hearings um we have three no we have more than that i think yeah no three just three got it okay so the first is item a which is z 22 0001 a hold a public hearing consideration of a consider an adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton regarding a change in the zoning district and use classification from residential rr to district to residential one r1 district on approximately two acres of land generally located east of moss branch road and approximately 2175 feet south of fm 1173 in the city of denton and i'll open the public hearing so go right ahead thank you good evening mayor and council good evening i'm lisa pain uh principal planner for the city of denton this is a project for mosh brance rezoning and this is a project that's on two acres they want to go from rr to r1 uh subject property was part of a 16 acre tract originally and that was annexed into the city the property is non-conforming now now that it's two acres it's a portion of his two acres um the rr zoning does not meet the minimum five acre lot size thanks um the general it's generally located on the east side of mosh branch road and um it's um about 2000 feet south of fm 1173 the property's vacant has not been previously developed and is surrounded by rr on all sides except for to the west is the city of crumb uh this item complies with the general approval criteria and zoning criteria that's found in sub-chapter two of the city's ddc to summarize the r1 is consistent it's not consistent with the denton 2040 comprehensive plan for the light industrial future land use designation however the application was submitted and reviewed under the 2030 plan which does designate this as rural areas this two acre property cannot be so divided further as it is at the minimum size the ddc allows for well water and septic system r1 is more restrictive than rr so the rezoning will not create adverse impacts on surrounding properties and the property was annexed with the placeholder zoning of rd5x which transitioned over to rr um they want to go to r1 as that allows this property to be platted the current rr zoning it does not allow for development of a property that's smaller than five acres deeming this two acre property unusable um notices were sent out um they were sent to the newspaper and published online and also one zoning sign was put on the property there were uh three 500 foot and three 200 foot notices that were delivered and we got two uh letters in favor of the request from the two uh neighbors directly south of here and they did not hold a neighborhood meeting as they just directly went to their neighbors to speak about it and staff recommends approval of the requested rezoning as does p and z they had a vote of six to one and um with that the applicant and i are available for questions great uh any questions for staff yes see well can you hit the counselor armature counselor armature yeah um if you could just kind of give uh just elaborate a little more on how uh r1 is more restrictive than rr the ways in which it's more restricted r1 is less restrictive than rr because rr also allows things like a 65 foot height um maximum where r1 would be a 40 foot height maximum rr allows things like very large barns and things to allow for cattle ranches and horse training and things like that where rr r1 that they're proposing is just for single-family homes so it's so r1 is more restrictive in um uh non-agricultural uses but rr is more tailored to agricultural uses would that be fair to say yes okay so um uh would you know say uh going from uh rr to r1 uh could quite possibly change the uh the or is is there an argument to be made that that the uh character that the rural agricultural character of uh that area could be you know significantly affected by moving from rr to r1 or would that not make that much of a difference it would just allow this one other kind of uh kind of use right this would not allow for some of the larger um uses as far as the agricultural uses um but it is still allowing for a large piece of property being two acres um to have their house there since the rr you have to have at least five acres and this two acre property was established before it was annexed into the city and so being that it's rr right now you cannot get a permit you can't plot it you can't do anything because it does not meet our code so you can still have a single-family house either way but yeah they wouldn't have some of the extra agricultural things you could do in rr yeah um so if they wanted to do uh you know set up a a farm in r1 you would be uh you would have restrictions that you wouldn't have in rr but if in rr you wanted to make a really high barn you know you would not be able to have any kind of structure that high in r1 right and understanding right there would be some building restrictions yeah yeah so okay so and thanks for explaining that because it's just um you know to me it's just a matter of what rr can be seen as more restrictive or r1 can be seen as more restrictive depending on which which kind you know kind of use you're restricting um or thinking about using it for so anyway thank you for clarifying of course thank you mr mayor um so following uh the reverse line of thought um if uh it's my understanding that going to r1 we're attending to develop a residence on this property right yes sir okay so then if we have a residence on this property and for some reason um some permitted use wanted to go on to public facility just a few hundred yards to the north um uh that would um there would be additional limits put on the public use or put on the uses of the public facility because of having a residence on this r1 so if there's any kind of use um it did come up you know if somebody came around and rezoned some property to like industrial or they have the public facilities use anything like that that's developed um if it's next to a residential use or residential zoning district whether it's rr or r1 or a different one then that um that non-residential one has to have a landscape buffer sometimes there's additional setbacks so regardless of it it would if there's a single family house at home on r1 or if it's a horse barn on rr they would still have to have an extra buffer okay thank you okay any other questions seeing none it's a public hearing anyone care to speak you can speak and then um fill out a card after the fact seeing none i'll close a public hearing uh i'll take a motion councillor beck i'll move approval is there councillor bird motion by councilman beck second by council member bird any other discussion i'll just say thank you staff for bringing us i mean it's it's a piece of land surrounded by houses that we're going to put another house next to it's pretty straightforward thank you very much uh let's vote on the screen passes seven zero thank you uh takes us to item b which is s two zero zero zero nine a hold a public hearing again consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton approving a specific use permit to allow for townhome use on approximately 8.382 acres of land and i'll open the public hearing thank you mayor mc council ron maguida principal planner with development services as introduced in the introduction this is a specific use permit request the request is specifically to allow a townhome use on 8.382 acres located generally west of mayhill road just on the west side of that south of prominence parkway as shown on this slide here the exhibit with the aerial the proposed townhome use is proposing 41 townhome lots with one open space lots lot that is the future land use designation for the area is primarily moderate residential with some business center the zoning of the property currently zone residential four r4 and again the r4 for townhome use is what's requiring the specific use permit shown here on this slide is just an illustration of the townhome layout that the applicant is proposing the site data table shown here shows again the zoning the proposed use the acreage again 41 lots number of stories is two minimum lot width is 22 minimum lot depth is between 80 and 100 and as including your backup the one lot open space will consist of 36 percent in regards to the land use i'm sorry the landscaping and the tree preservation standards staff has reviewed it against the dentin development code and the applicant will comply with those standards per the development code a specific use permit is reviewed under sections 245e as well as 252d and as a summary the proposed townhome use is consistent with the comprehensive plan and other applicable plans again it is a moderate residential future land use which fits in line with what that requires complies with the dentin development code as mentioned earlier staff has reviewed it against the ddc it will comply with the utility service and improvement standards and last the site is located adjacent to mayhill which is a sixth lane divide roadway notifications were sent out per state law staff has not received any written response either in opposition or in favor signs were posted no neighborhood meeting was held with that staff recommends approval with a condition in that condition i'll read for the record any amendments to the site plan and landscape plan related to increasing the number of lots changes to the lot layout changes to the street layout or to decreasing the area of open space shall require a specific use permit amendment in accordance with the ddc the planning zoning also unanimously voted to recommend approval seven zero of the sup requests and with that i'll stand for any questions thank you questions for staff seeing none this is a public hearing anyone care to speak you can come down and then fill out a blue card after fact seeing none okay i'll close a public hearing i'll take a motion motion so councilman beck i move approval with the special restrictions listed by staff for the sup councilman burke okay motion by councilman beck second by council member bird any discussion i'll just say i like the fact that this is near saffron and and so you get some more dense housing around that work so that's that's really going to be good that area will be fantastic and we've built that sidewalk up and down that entire corridor so that's that's really good as well so excited about that councilman bird did i understand that there was going to be a park over in that area somewhere well they're proposing open space not necessarily a public park it's part of their development just for uh to provide that open space um component do we know if this is going to be um considered some type of luxury affordable luxury we do not uh the property owner is here and can certainly answer that question but i have not made aware of um if it is or not okay can i speak with the property owner sure okay i'm sure with holland properties uh 2404 texas drive in irving okay well my question was what what what type of housing should we be expecting is it going to be a luxury they're not going to be luxury we're going to try to make it affordable but nice looking product uh it's gonna you know the the prices are changing every day right now so after you know the product will come online probably a year and a half from now you know it will take another nine months to a year just to build the development okay and then we'll start building but it will be in today's pricing we'll probably build around 300 to 350 okay all right thank you sir thank you thank you so we have a motion by councilman beck uh second by council member no we're all good thank you uh let's vote on the screen pass a seven zero thank you good luck with your project that takes us to item c which is z two one zero zero one eight b hold a public hearing consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton regarding an amendment to the razor ranch overlay district and amend the landscape plan to develop standards and for development within lot 11 of razor ranch north addition located within razor ranch north campus so uh i'll open the public hearing and i have one caller um but uh we'll we'll take that after your presentation all right good evening uh mayor city council um the item before you is z 21 dash zero zero one eight b for the home depot um as mentioned and i'll i'll make most of this presentation brief most of the information is the staff report um so the request is to amend a portion of an existing landscape plan which is exhibit z appendix a for the marketplace district which is located in the razor ranch overlay district i've provided provided a overview of the area so as you can see the market place is on the north side of us 380 so that is the area that we're talking about but the request is to amend specifically lot 11 of the landscape plan so i just highlighted the portion of the plan that's being requested for the amendment today so the purpose of this amendment is based on the razor ranch overlay district and the standards which does require a zoning process if you wish to amend the approved design standards as well as the existing master plans for the north campus marketplace district staff does recommend approval of this request and i'll go over the considerations next so just quick background the razor ranch overlay district for zoning text amendment specifically there is no specific criteria for approval as left as outlined in the ordinance however staff did provide some considerations in the request that i'll go over just briefly so first that the proposed amendment is consistent with the permitted use of a home improvement store on this lot as well as parking and landscape guidelines within the overlay district second that the removal of specific planting shown on the plan for future lots does provide flexibility and design as long as as long as the site meets those landscape design guidelines in exhibit d third that the total tree canopy required by the previous plan is still applicable to the entire lot and that responsibility is shared between all future lots if it was to be subdivided and last that the revised plan accounts for the potential need for increased detention to develop the site so if it's determined to be infeasible if the detention is determined to be infeasible or the secondary detention that's proposed is still required any approved site plan is still subject to the design standards in the razor ranch overlay district for the marketplace which can be found in exhibit c d and e so next just wanted to cover some of the requests by residents as they reached out to some council members to provide some connectivity so i just wanted to go over that request specifically and then outline how the ordinance dictates how we kind of review that in our consideration so the request that came was from residents within the winter ridge estates area they did request connectivity to the site via colonial drive and or greenway drive the request was for full access so vehicular bicycle and pedestrian so this just wanted to highlight the scope of the request so the scope of the request today is specifically to amend the landscape plan to allow revised locations of plant materials required by the approved design standards for landscaping in the marketplace this amendment does not or approval of the amendment does not constitute approval of a site plan so the developer would have to go through our development review process they would still have to request the zoning compliance plan and subsequent applications in order to move forward so this is essentially a framework or a guide plan for them to follow to make sure that they're meeting specific landscape plantings and locations so going over the specific landscape design standards as required for the marketplace those standards did require connectivity within the razor range overlay district however they were only required for the rr2 sub area so just just for orientation the area highlighted in yellow is the rr2 sub area that connection was intended for residential to the north which is the residences at razor ranch currently platted and under construction so as you can see here there is a connection off of naka doches that is being provided into the razor ranch area that requirement did not apply to the rr3 area which is where the subject site is located second pedestrian connections adjacent to existing facilities is required within the landscape standards however the two connection points that are being requested which is colonial drive and greenway drive those do not have existing adjacent facilities so they have a roadway stub out but they don't have bike ped facilities there's no sidewalk so they would not be required by the ordinance to provide that connection third the landscape design standards specifically request a eight foot masonry wall or concrete wall between the subject site and the residential and non-residential to the north it also specifically request a landscape or ornamental plantings between that area and so the proposed changes do meet that requirement just as an additional point of clarification the existing landscape plan has been unchanged since 2008 when it was originally adopted by council the third point just to make related to the request is just about existing conditions at that specific area where colonial drive and greenway drive are located there does exist a six to twelve foot grade change into the existing detention on the site so it does currently serve as detention bi-plat and so there is a an actual very steep grade change in my pregnant state i did walk up it just to verify but it is located there so just additional things to point out on this screen just wanted to show we did we did reach out to the applicant to ask if they would provide that connection and they've provided a response that's been added to your packet but just to show the residential area to the north does have some access into razor ranch if they choose so just highlighted the safe accessible route into razor ranch which would be the existing connection at Nacogdoches once the residences at razor ranch are completed in construction it's currently under construction now they would have a access point from Nacogdoches west to through what would be augusta drive and then north into the residential area so that is the kind of the orange that you're seeing some additional points of clarification are just related to existing facilities around the area and i'll touch on that a little bit more thoroughly in the next slide winter drive and bonnie bray do have existing bike ped facilities there's some shared the road signs some sidewalk connectivity that goes down to existing sidewalks on west university drive and just letting you know the the future mobile or the recently adopted mobility plan does show i-35 and west university drive to have bike ped connectivity as well as retrofitting any existing infrastructure and then last i'll point out council recently adopted a plan development for the perch denton horizontal multifamily living development off of bonnie bray that development did provide bike ped connectivity from bonnie bray into the site and on just south of winter ridge so that that connectivity would exist once that development is construction constructed so just touching more thoroughly on the existing connectivity within the area this is that that route that i've kind of highlighted on the previous slide this is the safer accessibility that someone from the residential area to the north could get into razor ranch through using that existing connecting point into naka doches so i've already mentioned the existing facilities on winzer that is to be a future secondary arterial on the mobility plan which when when the right away is acquired that would eventually have widened bike ped facilities bonnie bray phase six was currently at 100 design so phase 6a which would be between winzer and university would include a 10 foot side path to kind of enhance the bike ped connectivity down south through razor ranch i mean the west university drive does have an existing six foot buffered sidewalks between bonnie bray and i-35 as well lastly just really highlighting that existing connectivity between naka doches which does go into razor ranch so at the top you'll see some images of the existing facilities and so there is a sidewalk that goes from the residences at razor ranch down through all the way to university so you'll see there's actual safe pedestrian crossings there's street lights for those wanting to walk into razor ranch to safely walk through the site they're marked they're clearly lit so that would be the preferred path by that staff would recommend regarding connectivity so with that just public notification was issued per state law 200 foot notices as well as 500 foot courtesy notices we did not receive formal responses to this request the applicant did hold one virtual neighborhood meeting there were none in attendance they reached out to those within the 500 foot courtesy notice area staff does recommend approval of the request as does planning and zoning commission they recommended approval seven zero had no questions related to the request with that i can take any questions the applicant is here as well to to answer any questions that you have for them great thank you questions for staff councilor armature um a couple questions about the landscape plan um so this was uh just the landscape plan itself date back to 1999 i believe that the razor ranch ordinances were established for this area in 2008 okay um so that the approved or the currently existing approved landscape plan that governs the marketplace has not been changed since it was adopted okay so it actually dates back to 2000 2008 the time of the the pole razor ranch plan um so uh if if that plan um were to change in the future or i actually first i should ask is it possible for that plan to change obviously that's not what's on the table today but is that set in stone so in order to change so the request today in order for the plan to change they had to go through a zoning amendment the applicant would if there was a request to change that in the future it would have to be either by the property owner or city initiated um so there's that possibility but that has not been a request okay and if it was city initial i know this is hypothetical but if it was if there was a city initiated um landscape plan proposal then would um all uh uh uh requests for um uh or for uh lands proposals that rather for landscape plans that were already on the table would those be grandfathered in uh or is no any change that plan would only apply to new development and the marketplace is essentially fully built out with the exception of this lot and maybe one pad site so it wouldn't have a significant effect on future development however i just do want to make a point of clarification that revising the landscape plan does not set in stone any site plan so the building location could change the the location of driveways could change the purpose of the landscape plan is specific to where the locations of trees the plant material used where that would be located so staff has the ability to make minor amen or if a minor amendment would be necessary to meet the site plan staff has the ability to prove that but it has to significantly comply with the approved landscape plan so it's it's it's really just to set in stone the locations of trees and where they put them um it is it's not really to identify where specific driveway entrances would be yeah and thank thank you so much yet my questions are coming as you probably guess coming from uh you know sympathy with uh area residents and business owners concerns about lack of connectivity i understand the point that um that that is something that the landscape plan doesn't address uh and that that's what's on the table today is the landscape plan and not the site plan however kind of my questions are coming from a place of my wondering uh if uh landscape plans could be adapted or you know new landscape plans created to include connectivity as a consideration since it's not only um built structures you know but also or since it's not only buildings but also you know trees and and fencing etc that that can either create connectivity or block it off yeah and and that that request would require an amendment to more than just the landscape design standards in the overlay district it would also require an amendment to the architectural design standards in the amendment so that would be a separate request separate action it would be a rezoning because that's the process that the razor wrench overlay district has required but as it's written today um the landscape standards are being met um so staff is obligated to recommend approval yeah okay i understand thank you so much any other questions seeing none i'll take the collar well we've been talked mayor patel yeah thank you mayor uh i just want to make sure i'm tracking and i realize the access issue is kind of a parenthetical concern to the you know matter directly before us but uh it went by a little quick you were saying that an acatoches would be the preferred uh bike and pedestrian access yes because the the razor ranch ordinance ordinance or the ordinances for that area will already dictated the connection so it's existing um people actually drive through it today um so that portion of the residence is that razor rancher it exists now it exists now i actually drove it to make sure okay uh and does it have bike and pedestrian facilities it is wide enough to accommodate residential bicycle traffic there is the five foot sidewalk within that area again though it's still under construction in phases so that eastern portion is under construction they haven't started building the development yet but the infrastructure is getting put in the western part is where the connection along what would be future augusta drive is under construction now so that would be the once fully constructed that would that would continue the connection of north to to winter ridge and the adjacent subdivisions is there any need or opportunity to you know influence how complete that access is and you know uh acceptable or you know is is what's planned what you sense the community is asking for already i'm sorry i'm not sure i understand the question what's planned now and what's being constructed is it going to end up being what the people in the neighborhoods to the north are asking for now i have not heard from residents specifically about that development um i i would say that would be the safer existing bike ped connectivity within a residential area of course there are facilities off of winter bonnie bray um but is it intended to have sort of everything one would hope to have if you want to residential development yes for residential development it has sufficient right of way width and to accommodate bike ped traffic okay thank you very much councillor beth thank you uh so um i guess i'll pick up from that point um about nakatoches uh so so uh the idea is that sarah santa gosta when they're completed out would provide that connectivity uh and and at some point um and i've talked to several of you sort of individually but maybe to clarify for the public um uh do we currently have any restrictions any any gates any any impediments i think this is what mayor pro tem was trying to get to uh in in the short term plan uh to inhibit either vehicular or bike ped access along nakatoches no or augusta there's no existing gate there's no plans for any gate that would prohibit that connectivity i think where the gate question is coming up from is when the residents at razor ranch went to p and z for a site plan approval the applicant of that development or the developer they did not want truck traffic cutting through there so they had proposed a gate however they're not actually showing it on their civil engineering plans so it is very unlikely that they would get that connection if they were to request a gate now staff would likely not permit it so there would not be that obstruction okay and and um skipping for a moment the the concept of the landscaping plans is there for the for the residents proposals or or concept of connecting in a colonial or greenway in in some sort of either vehicular or or bike ped is there um uh concerns uh what are the pros and cons of doing that i guess so just so i can understand the question are you asking for the pros and cons of connecting through colonial or greenway drive yes ma'am okay um so we did we did kind of explore that internally before reaching out to the applicant um we do think there's merit in a request in in providing that connectivity there is that you know the restriction of what we're able to provide or or not provide but um to require of the applicant however in in looking at you know the the the conceptual plan or what the intent for the site is going to be providing a full connection would be preferred only along colonial so it would be up to the applicant to determine whether they could provide that connection it wouldn't be a full street connection it's basically opening it up so that it's a private drive aisle entering um colonial would be difficult just because of the detention area it's it's existing now and the grade we feel like that would not be an appropriate connection if that were to go away and it was just bicycle pedestrian staff is concerned with safety given that the back area of the home depot as well as the sams and walmart is all a truck area so we would be introducing the possibility of conflict points between bicycle bicyclists and pedestrians where truck traffic is expected to be so from a vision zero standpoint that's not something we would want to propose and let me let me refocus uh just to read the caption again public hearing the city of denton regarding amendment to the razor ranch overlay district to amend the landscape plan and development standards for the development within lot 11 of razor ranch so i'm going to ask us we've we've strayed from the landscape plan to almost exclusively accesses so i'm going to i'm going to ask you to kind of reel in your answers and i'm gonna ask those on council to be mindful the fact that we've only given notice of a landscape plan so those that would wish to speak on access were not given due notice and so that's not fair to them as well so if you could sorry you have the floor councilman beck i think you mr mayor um um just to push back a little bit where the landscaping goes is where the access is so those are are not not separable so we where where we make that plan is is a is a really important to to both of those elements as well as elements of future access to the feeder and i-35 and so i do have um the just continue to follow up the m for the um for the landscaping plan i know that there's um we're we're we're several um ordinances of combination for the razor ranch overlay district can can someone help me understand um uh the the sort of uh pieces that are necessary to to connect together uh to get to um whether or not uh landscaping at near the colonial intersection would be uh uh something that could be addressed considering that you know there's zoning compliance and traffic and other things that end up becoming downstream of this can you help me understand the sort of uh vertical integration of the razor ranch overlay district in terms of how how does if we have various mobility changes and and whatnot how how does how does that interplay with our landscaping plan so just to keep my my answers brief into to the the point of the request i can well i think you could just i think the question would be then there's a wall there so you could speak to the wall and you could speak to the trees that would be at the bottom of the wall i have two points to the response which is the the current existing landscape design standards do not require a a vehicular connection but they do require an eight foot masonry wall and plantings thank you thank you david yeah shouldn't have to be there i got eight weeks to go i'm sorry um so so that would restrict staff from requiring that at this point in time the only other mechanism to trigger a connection possibly not a requirement it would be a recommendation would be when the the traffic impact analysis comes through to look at the impact of the traffic that's generated by the development if a recommendation is identified by the third party creating the study or doing the analysis if they identify that there's sufficient traffic and bike ped connectivity needs they could recommend that connection we have not seen that yet because it's not in that development phase if that was recommended staff would evaluate that against existing design standards so there's still some sort of restriction if the intent is to have that connection an amendment to the landscape design standards would be required okay so so in in other words if we didn't have adequate connectivity at nakadoches then that would potentially impact the landscaping impacts all the way over by the backside of the home depot colonial and the traffic impact analysis would look at not just lot 11 it would look at the the kind of the area around it so we did identify that as a point within the study to look at however that that connection point at nakadoches does exist it was required so so it's existing all right thank you very much i'm going to take the collar um they've been patiently waiting uh so let me see and try this see if i can um drew are you there yes sir mayor and council thank you so very much for your time this evening uh if you could give your name and address if you can give your name and address you have four minutes yes sir my name is drew christ i'm a homeowner uh i have lived just north of the razor wrench marketplace that y'all have been discussing for the last six years i'm very grateful that you're uh having such an in-depth discussion i do want to say thank you to staff city staff has been extremely patient and very knowledgeable with this issue they have gone above and beyond to provide a ton of information both to residents and council um mayor hutzis i specifically want to say i think councilman beck couldn't have said it better where the the landscaping goes the connectivity follows and the biggest challenge that i've had as a homeowner north of this development with multiple projects that i have come and spoken to council about before is the lack of connectivity between the southern portion of this census block and the residential to the north i'm sure you are all familiar with the desire path this is a path that individuals create because they desire a direct connection it is not provided to them it is usually something you can see on google maps and in fact if you bring up this neighborhood in google maps on your phone you will see there are multiple desire paths that residents of this neighborhood have made trying to access the amenities that council has worked so very hard over the last what 14 years to bring to this area um i am i want to tell a story about my neighbor uh she didn't want to speak tonight because well she doesn't want that's her reasons but she moved here in 1987 before i was bored she has a daughter two other children that daughter when she was a teenager was so excited to start her first job at golden or not golden corral uh cracker barrel over there on the i-35 access road her daughter did not have a car because they were a young family they had limited resources in the 90s this teenage daughter walked to her job and i can tell you the path that she took was south on carriage hill west on thunderbird and then south contra to the flow of traffic along the i-35 access room my neighbor confided in me after i brought up this issue and that i was going to speak at council tonight that it reminded her of how afraid she was for her teenage daughter to go to work because she was terrified that her daughter would be a pedestrian fatality but that at the time this was such an ended undeveloped area that there weren't a lot of options for them but because of their financial situation they had no other choice they couldn't afford a vehicle for their daughter to drive and make four rights to get to work i'm frustrated by the language that i've heard of well this plan you know we have a landscape plan from 2008 and back then no one was thinking about stuff so we're you know we're just going to like let it slide here i fully intend though i'm outside the 200 and 500 foot notice zone to be involved in the process of advocating for those individuals who are citizens of your city who do not have access to a car who desire a direct path to economic opportunity to whether that's employment or services or access to grocery stores i'm ecstatic that there will be pedestrian access and potentially even vehicular access down augusta and nakadoches that's i don't want to settle for one or two connection points thank you so much for your time you'll be hearing from me more in the future have a wonderful evening thank you okay um is there anyone else that would it's a public hearing i want to make sure we get i have an opportunity to speak okay great um councilman marmotor and well let me close the public hearing councilman marmotor um so uh yeah just briefly um i just wanted to uh just push back a little uh against um uh you're uh mentioned earlier that uh that members of the public and council should not address a connectivity issue because it's a landscape uh plan posting uh it it is my understanding that because a landscape plan can also potentially include connectivity concerns that connectivity can absolutely be a landscape plan issue secondly staff included which i really appreciated the concerns about connectivity expressed by residents in their presentation of the issues in the staff presentation and so it's my understanding and you can now correct me mr city attorney if i'm wrong but that as long as people are talking about the landscape plan people can talk about any aspect of of the landscape plan that's included in it or not included in it including the issue of connectivity which is definitely a landscaping concern mr city attorney you want to speak to that or this scott i'll go first yeah um it is a little bit strange because you look at the plan and you see a lot of different elements and parts to it but those are all shown as basically implementation of other requirements in the overlay code and the overlay of for the razor ranch we really are just talking about landscape requirements here and it's not the ability it's not the time to look at requiring additional access that would not be through this it would have to be like kareena talked about earlier that would be a zoning amendment that would have to come back from the beginning to council so there's no ability for council to take that that step today as part of this is really just looking at the landscaping i think to council member beck's point he's talking about it in the sense that well where we put the landscaping may affect some of the access points which is fair point but that's really not within the purview of the council here to require or say where the access points are going to be this is jillie just about the landscaping locations and the species types thank you scott i guess i just want to add a couple of pieces and i want to specifically address why we're here today and this was formerly a low site it was approved lows could build today by right and we wouldn't be having the conversation home depot is opting to come to this site they're going to make some changes to the landscaping and that's why we're here today we did hear questions from the public we did hear some questions from council and we attempted to respond to those questions in when in the request for information from our professional staff and i and i say professional staff because we have hired a bike ped ada coordinator we have a transportation planning manager which is our former traffic engineer we've got a professional planning staff and as we all review this there is no desire for many of our staff to have that connectivity understand that we've heard that there are a couple of individuals that would like to have connectivity to this area and the path that is shown on the screen gives the same it's a rectangle if you were to draw a line as being proposed and trying to get back to the marketplace you're going to introduce somebody onto the proposed home depot site through a loading zone and then dump them into a parking lot of a retail a very busy retail center that doesn't allow for the the walkability the connectivity or putting a bicycle into it the route that is highlighted was designed and set up for vehicular for bike and pedestrian and it's illuminated at night it is ideal it is the same distance going one way or the other it is just someone's preferred path i urge you just on the basis of your professional staff stating that we recommend approval of what it is the applicant is proposing to do to modify their landscaping and encourage you not to go down a path of where it is we want to look at greater connectivity because it is not safe and it is not in the best interests of our community thank you very much that's impactful counselor maguire thank you um what i'm hearing is that you know some of our staff and some some of my colleagues on council and several members of the community are really doing their best to work within a very narrow set of constrictions to to find a solution here but the issue that we're bumping up against is that this type of car-centric commercial development big box stores strip malls big parking lots is inherently incompatible with our pedestrian and bicycle mobility goals so um you know we i think we need to do what we need to do with this particular situation but moving forward we need to ask ourselves if this is the kind of development that we want to see in our city any other questions for staff i move approval looking for a second councillor davis i'll second i'd like to speak in favor of the motion councillor davis um so this is for some folks a newer issue this is something i've been watching since i first took this seat for district three um worked uh really early on started talking with adam brigle and then at the time mark olefant our bike ped person at the time i really kind of bikes are at the time and um i i'm not going to go quite as far as councilmember maguire did with uh with her comment but i broadly agree with it we when we designed this well we didn't design it when we zoned this razor ranch uh development when we created the overlay we didn't do a great job planning for future connectivity we could have done a much better job but we're very limited in what we're able to do today and what we can deliver uh in that regard today before staff started working on this issue i was not aware that that gate on nacogdoches was not going to exist that it got it never went onto the civil plans it got talked about a lot of planning and zoning that was part of the conversation um but here we are today on a landscape plan for a part of a parcel that's got a grade differential that's very difficult we have zero leverage whatsoever in this particular request to require anything of a developer with with regard to connectivity but we have a very professional staff that has educated us on some connectivity that we have that we didn't maybe didn't all realize that we had i certainly didn't realize that we were going to have but so that's why i'm seconding the motion um we're limited what we can do tonight but we can absolutely when we look at future site plans we're under a new ddc we can maybe not have quite so complicated an overlay district in the future when we have such a large development where we have nine layers of overlays and zoning to get through to make fairly simple changes but i'm very confident that our staff understands that and knows the sentiment of council so i'm uh that's why i'm okay making the second voting for this request councilman back thank you and and i'm going to highlight some of those same same points um i think um many of us uh you know i used to serve on pnz and i i think uh we we discussed the gate um we've um i think we discussed the gating council uh and and pedestrian access and so i i think there was not the necessarily the understanding um on this dais um at pnz or in the community um i think there was there was more of a feeling like that those were going to be isolated um i i think that uh having vehicular and pedestrian access behind a big box store is not ideal but uh as i've told the staff um anything is is uh infinitely better than zero but if we can hold to our guns on nakadoches and make that the kind of connectivity um then that that alleviates a lot of the the pressure um that i think you're hearing from the community uh i i cannot agree more strongly with councillor maguire and councillor davis that um this convoluted multi-layer uh um basso-matic level of planning for um razor ranch overlay district um we need to avoid this as much as possible um i think it was challenging even for the public to find the restrictions uh in the uh razor ranch overlay district in order to just look and see what's capable uh in terms of public transparency i think uh they're there it's just incredibly painful to get to and that doesn't help public understanding of what's available so i'm going to actually be voting for this but i strongly encourage staff to make sure that that this is the best damn north south access they've ever seen um so with that i pass mayor pro tem uh yeah i agree with every syllable of that uh and the only thing i would add is i don't know if there is a way formally maybe informally uh you know just in our relationship with uh with the wall uh once we have that hopefully awesome connectivity through nacogdoches that there'd be some way that there is a clear bike pad path between the stores to make i mean it's a little bit of making a silk purse out of a sowsier you know that i mean it's a car-centric mall that's what it is uh but if you know if what we're hearing is people want bike pad access and we're gonna make an effort to provide it we ought to see if there's some way to influence clear safe connectivity throughout without people getting you know uh being challenged by cars councilman otter i'm going to be voting no to this because i don't approve of this landscape plan or the amendment to it so i cannot in good conscience vote yes and it is precisely because of the connectivity issue we need to have landscape plans that take into account connectivity and when we make amendments we should make amendments that have connectivity in mind so i am sticking to this the my no is just for the landscape plan aspects of this i understand this is not a vote on the site plan but it is a very firm no okay anyone else because we're going to vote great i'm going to i'm going to conclude with this there's a few things first i want to be uh unique in my my thought and and um and also want to kind of pick up where we are and understand how traffic flows in the area i'm there regularly and so here's what i'll point out when you when you feature naka dosis that that's a problem and in that the first let's say trip to bonnie bray you can make is behind the stores which says no traffic as for truck traffic but cars do it anyway so that's not a good option uh generally but we should be thinking hey this is going to connect and so the forward thinking thought is how do we adjust that section right how what adjustments do we need need to make sure we don't have now a bunch of cars and 18 wheelers come at a conflict point that's something that's productive that we can task staff with and and that has nothing to do with this great project and so that to me is kind of another focus another focus we all know i-35 is going to be widened why don't we get active and i'm going to do that tomorrow i'm going to the same thing i did when i have other problems with text dot or questions for text dot i'm going to call drew springer's office and i'm going to say hey i've heard from uh drew tonight and i've heard that the neighborhood has a concern about walkability from the north side of this development to the south side where we have a job center mr senator springer can you help me get creative about a sidewalk or bike path along there you're going to be widening it anyway you're going to be adjusting windsor so what are your plans there and can the city participate in that again has nothing to do with this great project that's coming so again there's there's plenty of options this council if we could just focus on kind of things that we can impact and positively impact and and accept what we have make it better and then and then also enhance this area and solve problems i'm passionate about that i think it's great i think the short-sightedness of this is you have a we're going to put up a wall that's going to solidify the foundation of these businesses right on the other side of that i think that's important i think it's important to talk to the neighbors and ask them if they wanted access for 18 wheelers to drive through their neighborhood i could hazard the guess 90 of the neighborhood would say no uh so that's another component that we've not talked about and that again has nothing to do with this great project so i look forward to having a conversation with senator springer tomorrow i look forward to having a great path uh walk path from the north to the south as part of that development as they're widening i-35 and doing everything that they're going to do and exploring how the city can be proactive in that how the city can activate uh that the the um drive lane or something so that we don't have a traffic problem going forward and let's alleviate those things let's problem solve so really looking forward to those conversations and look forward to solidifying that foundation so that those neighbors don't have anything to worry about look no further than 635 when they widened 635 and it disrupted all those houses and triggered millions of dollars in lawsuits there's you know it's just it's not wise to to not solidify that so i'm going to be supportive uh and um look forward to this and again thank you all for being here thank you for your efforts uh and um with that let's vote on the screen passes six to one thank you very much thank you staff uh that that concludes our public uh hearings takes us to our items for individual consideration item a is hl 22 0001 c consider approval of a resolution of the city of denton approving an application for a partial tax exemption exemption of designed historic sites in accordance with chapter 10 article 6 section 10 dash 126 through 10 dash 129 of the denton municipal code i'm not the person you're probably expecting tina fergens um deputy director development services i know cameron robertson i think was listed as uh given the presentations this evening so i'm covering for her uh so we have three tax exemption um requests on your agenda this evening so i'll start with the first one which is located at 123 north elm street uh this property is located on west oak street between cedar street and elm street it's located here just off of the the square uh this property it was designated a local historic landmark back in 1980 therefore it is eligible for participation within the city's partial tax exemption program for a designated historic science uh dating back to april of 27 excuse me uh 2017 the applicant has made a series of improvements to the property including roof and brick repairs brick repairs excuse me to the exterior of the structure and they did do a hand painted sign just some overall general maintenance associated with the property updating some of the flooring and the sealant of the associated with the brick as well with the exception of the hand painted signage the remaining improvements are considered permanent or restoration related as it relates to the structure but the the amount of the improvement exceeds thirty three thousand dollars which well exceeds the minimum ten thousand dollar threshold associated with for participation in the program we included in your agenda packet these images here which illustrate confirmation of the improvements that were done associated with this particular site the historic landmark commission they did review this request back on march 17th of 2022 and they unanimously made a finding of favorable determination of the request as submitted with exception of the hand painted signage because the hand painted signage was not viewed as a permanent improvement for related to the property with that i'll be happy to answer any questions thank you thank you questions for staff seeing none councillor McGuire um i'm always excited to see our buildings on the square getting preserved um and obviously the roof repairs and the brick repair are very were very necessary so i move approval councillor beck i second motion by councillor wire second by council member beck discussion councillor armature so i will happily approve this i agree with the historic landmark committee's opinion that the paint on the that the paint on the brick does not count but that doesn't make a difference of course and did not make any difference in their approval does not make a difference in my approval and i will just take this moment though to say that you know i continue to have a problem with the ten thousand dollar threshold for you know to to qualify for a historic preservation i don't think that we should put any dollar amount at all on that of course these this applicant has spent well above that but you know i think we should really focus on is this structure being preserved and are any changes that are that are made in the name of preservation are you know good for preservation that tends to have a cost to it but i really don't think that we should put a dollar amount on it because that you know ten thousand dollars just excludes some would exclude some people from even considering applying because they don't have that money but they might have a house or a structure of some kind that that's historic okay councillor so motion by councillor reguara second by councillor back no other discussion seeing none let's vote on the screen passes seven zero takes us to item b which is hl 22 0002a consider approval of a resolution of the city of denton approving an application for partial tax exemption design designated historic sites in accordance with chapter 10 article 6 section 10 through 126 through 10 129 of dentin municipal code mr mayor again tina fergens uh so the subject property is located at 607 pearl street it's located on the south side of pearl between denton street and carol boulevard this property is also considered a local historic landmark it was designated back in 1981 therefore it is eligible to participate within our partial tax exemption program i should note that the site is also considered a recorded texas historic landmark as well the property owner has completed restoration improvements associated with this particular property and specifically as it relates to the third floor of the residence and these improvements were completed back in august of 2019 uh much of the repairs that were included include as i mentioned earlier complete restoration of the upper third or the upper third floor of this residence we included in your agenda packet of a listing of items that are or that were done as it relates to these restoration improvements for this property items of more significance related to the restoration of the structure and in concert or associated with more permanent improvements include insulation replacement of windows including preparing and painting the exterior as it related to the six windows that were replaced also electrical work and lighting that was installed within the structure additional framing and beam that was also included in this property as well as the refinishing of the hardwood floors the historic landmark commission they did consider this request back on march 21st of this year and ended up making a favorable finding of determination it was also unanimous action there was a fair amount of discussion amongst the commission in terms of the nature of the improvements being done because there were some of the improvements that they felt maybe were not necessarily permanent or really viable to the restoration of the structure but in the end the in the end the commission was in agreement and unanimously made the finding determination that at least the of the significant improvements that were done that they will exceed the $10,000 threshold associated with that so again they made a finding a favorable determination associated with that staff did also support the request and happy to answer any questions you may have councilmember davis uh mayor i'd like to move approval and i'm very excited to see this project in front of us and they're going to get some uh some exemption from this i grew up across the street from this house i was up there in that third floor many many times when the trees aren't in full leaf you can see the square you can see the courthouse from there and uh if this house is on the home tour again anytime in the future everyone should take the opportunity to check it out very cool property and if you find folks ever move give me a shout because i keep my eye on this one excellent uh councilman bett yeah we we should be protecting our uh our historical landmarks in town so i'm happy to second this okay motion by councilman davis second by councilman back any other discussion i'll just say i want to rent that tent airbnb or verbo something like yeah that'd be good okay uh let's vote on the screen that passes seven zero texas item c which is hl 220003a consider approval of a resolution city of denton approving an application for partial tax exemption of a designated historic site in accordance with chapter 10 article 6 so this particular property again another one that is eligible for participation with it uh within our partial tax exemption program this one is actually located at 805 boliver street it's at the northwest corner of boliver in panhandle street here in denton this one is also considered a local historic landmark site it was locally designated back in 1986 so hence why it's eligible for participation in our program during november of 2014 the applicant did a significant improvement to the structure in that they replaced the roof on the property and so obviously the value of the proposed improvements will exceed the ten thousand dollar threshold given that the the cost of the investment that the property owners made was over 38 000 in this particular property before and after pictures which illustrate the roof being replaced for confirmation of the improvements that were done the historic landmark commission they also considered this request back on march 21st of 2022 they also unanimously recommended approval or made a finding of a favorable favorable determination as it relates to this property participating within our partial tax exemption program staff did also support the request happy answer any questions you may have thank you any questions seeing none councillor maguire i move approval okay mayor pro tem i'll second motion by councillor maguire second by mayor pro tem any other discussion seeing none let's vote on the screen and that passes seven zero takes us to our last item tonight item d id two two seven four three consider adoption of ordinance of the city of denton approving a a first amendment to uh 2019 20 2023 meet and confer agreement between the city of denton and the dentin firefighters association local 1291 by amending article 12 good evening david gaines deputy city manager this item is an amendment to our meet and confer agreement with the fire association so a couple slides of background i won't go through them in detail but our main confer is the in texas the avenue that we have to negotiate to have our bargaining process with the fire and police associations there's no requirement to meet but we have the opportunity to bargain over wages salaries rates of pay hours of work or other terms of employment with meet and confer ultimately the city council will uh approve approve any agreement along with the association as those go into effect so currently we are in the midst of our our fire meeting conferrer we was adopted in 2019 so it goes through 2023 any amendment any substantive amendment would does have to go back to council for a change and to the association and that's what we're here today for so that the scope of the change is is pretty narrow this was a fairly straightforward request from the association the association did approach us with the request and approached the the fire pension board as well and you can see it here i'll go through it the current language uh says that there will be no increase to benefit enhancement for current retirees in the diet that they didn't fire pension plan the association has asked that we have a one-time increase for current retirees and you can see the amounts listed there four percent for retirees of 15 or more years three percent for those retired 10 to 15 years and two percent for those retired five to 10 years they have uh current retirees in the fire pension plan have not had an increase since 2008 so to look at the financial side from from the from the city perspective from a budget perspective we have already we have been over contributing from an actuarial standpoint to our fire pension fund for a number of years for the city contribution with the goal of getting to 100 funded of the fire pension plan so we've gone into each year you can see they are at 18.5 from the city side with that goal to get up to 100 with the last actuarial study we're around 80 expect that to be quite a bit higher as we as we complete the actual aerial study this year so based on the study we only had to we were required to or needed to contribute 17.23 percent and we've consistently contributed in excess of that at the 18.5 percent so what that means for this request is that we can absorb this request without having any budgetary impact we can continue with 18.5 percent and afford the increase and really it's not that substantive of an increase so we had very good conversations with the association uh in our in our meeting conferred meetings and feel certainly feel comfortable moving forward the association has already approved this request they approved it on April 11th and it is here before the city council city manager's office certainly supports the request once it's approved it will go to the the fire pension board the fire pension board did preliminary to get preliminarily give their support a number of months ago so as that goes to them next month it should be fairly straightforward happy to answer any questions questions for staff seeing none councillor maguire yeah this is clearly in keeping with decisions we made earlier in the day about ensuring that we're valuing our firefighters and and ems services and and incentivizing them to continue working with with the city long term and i'm thrilled to see that we're going above what what's required so i approve move approval mayor pro tem i will second okay uh motion by councillor maguire second by mayor pro tem discussion councillor marmiter i will just add to what's already been said that this will also be an important recruitment tool new people new firefighters starting out you know we'll see that this is a city that looks out for those who are retiring so i i fully approve it for the reasons stated and and more okay any other discussion seeing none let's vote on the screen that passes seven zero takes us to concluding items any concluding items councillor rebet thank you mr mayor i will i think we've we've already done it and we're probably all going to beat the drum and dead horse whatever the appropriate analogy is but i encourage everyone to to participate in the upcoming uh earth day and redbud festival events um uh there's a there's a sustainable reusable um fashion show that that i had the honor being a judge on and i'm really looking forward to having the rest of the city see the wonderful creations that i got to judge so i'm really looking forward to that and i encourage everyone to come out councilman burke i want to encourage the public to be reminded that there is a leash law in this uh city we have new residents that have come into the city and i uh am hoping that you all will make sure that your uh pits are leashed as you are walking your pits and i'm also very excited about our prospects for voting coming up everyone please make sure that you um you know take the opportunity to extend your right to vote thank you okay anyone else uh just want to touch on two things so as part of that redbud i agree with that and there's a honey run for those that do that i've read books about running it seems interesting not going to do it but and then also saint marx is i think that's next week that's uh sunday they believe monday's run together but next week uh they're uh they're um doing having a groundbreaking and so that'll be uh neat uh to to see that growth and city manager two things you're sitting in new chairs because the other chairs were about to fall apart and i hope they're meet your needs with the back and stabilizing second of all big thanks to billy uh and to ryan and the team who have worked out the solution for the calls so it's completely seamless now we don't have to have a staff member sit back there and answer the calls it's all done through a um town what's it called ryan texas town hall teletown hall and billy and ryan did the research on this billy actually to the public engagement at austin for over an hour or two hours because they use it and so kudos to the staff yeah agreed thank you okay well at 8 27 we'll conclude tonight's meeting thank you