Aug 22, 2022 Public Utilities Board on 2022-08-22 9:00 AM

Okay, it's 9.02 and we have a quorum, so we're called to order the Public Utilities Board for the City of Denton from Monday, August 22nd, 2022. The first item is presentations from members of the public. Does anyone from the public wish to address the board? Seeing none, the next is the consent agenda. We have items A through E. Does any board member wish to pull an item on the consent? Item B is in boy. B is in boy, Mr. Jumper. Anyone else? Item E, item E. E as in Edward? Echo. Yes. All right, any others? All right, do we have a motion to approve items A, C, and D? Mr. Beck is moved and Barbara's seconding, all in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Please. Item B. Is someone here to? I kind of know who I'm asking questions to. Howdy. Hello. So, just wanted to kind of clarify the purpose of this. I'm assuming it's just mostly for like remote communication between sites, is that it? It is. Okay. It's how we communicate between remotes and other water plant at Ray Roberts. And then is there any alternative option for anything like this, or what, I guess why is this what you need and not something different? Talk me through that. Well, this is what we've had for a number of years, this microwave network, the radiocommunication. There is talk about maybe looking at fiber, but that's very costly, especially going to Ray Roberts. So we're just, this radio network is efficient and it works. So we just, you know, we keep a, have a contract so if anything goes wrong, let somebody that can repair it and replace radios as quickly as possible so we can keep our communications up. Yeah. Okay. Is the microwave only used for the kind of rural connection up to Ray Roberts or is it used in the city as well? Yes, it's used between all the remote locations like the elevated storage, the pump stations. Yeah, that's how we get all our data back and forth. Okay. So it's pretty much all major facilities then? Yes. Okay. Thank you. That it? All right. Do we have a motion to approve item B? Yes. Mr. Jumper moves. Do we have a second? Are there seconds? All in favor, say aye. Aye. Item E. Good morning, Stephen Gay, director of water utilities. Good morning. Good morning. I just had a few questions. So this agenda item doesn't have any cost on it but it's because we don't get the invoice until the Corps sends it to us. I was wondering, is it generally consistent or does it vary widely year to year? Yeah. I would say there's about, if you look over historically, about a three to eight percent increase every year that we've recognized on that cost. But it's fairly steady just? Yes. And what is the approximate amount, maybe last year or the year before? It's roughly a hundred and, for both facilities, for Lake Louisville and Ray Roberts, both dams, it's right around a hundred and thirty thousand dollars. That was last year, it was a hundred and thirty eight. Okay. And do we also have, we still have remaining bonds on Ray Roberts, right? That's a finance question but I don't believe we do. I believe that those have been satisfied, at least our obligation with the federal government has been satisfied. We may have a different financing mechanism that's still active but our obligation, our contractual obligation to the federal government has been resolved or has been satisfied. Okay. And then one last question. It mentioned in the agenda item information sheet that we're moving to a multi-year or are we currently on a multi-year or is this a new thing? This is a new thing that we're doing because historically what we have to do is when we get the bill we have to come before PUB and City Council to get authorization to make a payment that we're contractually bound to make. So we're trying to streamline the process and what we'll do is when we do make that, we accommodate for it in our budgeting process but when we receive the bill and we actually make the payment, we'll notify PUB and City Council that that payment has been made and that's, the intention is moving forward. Okay yeah, it makes a lot of sense to streamline this process but I was, like I said, curious if it varies widely year to year, it's a very consistent payment so thank you. You know it's a very, very small percentage increase every year and it's based off of the Corps of Engineers evaluation. Thanks. You're very welcome. Okay, do we have a motion to approve item E? So moved. Mr. Taylor moves. Larry Beck seconds. All in favor say aye. Aye. That carries. This item is considered the approval of the August 8th, 2022 minutes. Do we have any changes or corrections? Okay, do we have a motion to approve? Mr. Beck's motioning. Nope. Do we have a second? Okay, Ben Jumper seconds. All in favor say aye. Aye. Management reports. Madam Chair, members of PUB, so we have a couple items on here. The first one is two monthly reports for the DEC dashboard for April and May and then the only item that I'll mention that we did not include in the future agenda is that we are planning to come to the PUB on October 24th, that's our tentative date, to discuss the Greensense incentives program. As I mentioned before, we plan to go to the sustainability committee first in the PUB and my hope is that through that process we'll answer the two outstanding questions that we have on our list, Mr. Jumper's and Mr. Sof's as well. So with that, that's all I have, happy to answer any questions that you may have. Any questions? All right. Concluding items, I do need to read into the record that my absence for July 11th and August 8th were approved by the City Council and Barbara's August 8th absence was approved by the City Council. Does any board member wish to add anything else or say anything that are concluding items? All right. Then we're into the work session. Good morning, my name's Erica Sullivan, I'm the Economic Development Administrator here for the City. And I'll be giving a presentation on the infrastructure financing policy for development plan line funds for water and sewer. So the objective of this presentation is provide background information and the recommended updates to the infrastructure financing policy for water and wastewater plan line funds. The policy was created in 1991 through Resolution 91008, which utilizes the City's water and wastewater development plan line funds. And this was designed to facilitate local economic development growth through a program of infrastructure financing. The program has been underutilized and has been allocated to a single project, Winko Foods, in 2015. Winko Foods was our first tenant in the West Park TURS, the tax increment reinvestment zone in our industrial area. They were building a 100,000 square foot facility, regional distribution facility, and they wanted to take on all of phase one improvements of the entire TURS in order to control the timeline for the construction of their facility. So we had to be real creative in how we decided to reimburse them. The grant actually includes five grants within one. One of the components is related to this. Winko received reimbursement of $1 million for water lines and $865,000 for sewer lines. It was greenfield, so new development, and it was lacking infrastructure. So both the city and the county participate into the West Park TURS at a rate of 40 percent, so they were granted a grant from the West Park TURS as well, ad valorem. And then they were also granted, that was 40 percent, 60 percent for the city. So in order to get 100 percent of their increment in order to reimburse, they also received a sales and use tax for construction for equipping the facility where we participate with a comptroller to do a Texas direct pay permit in order to do that. And then after that was reimbursed, they also received a grant from the city only for four years, for 60 percent. And they were, we're trying to reimburse $7.1 million for those improvements. If I may, thank you, Chair. We're, okay, so they took on the whole project. They got, they took on all of phase one of the TURS. They got the contractors, bought the materials and everything. Was the city involved in any way as far as making sure it was proper materials and? Yeah, we have to accept them, and yes, we were involved in that process. So they did have to go through that process. In order to get reimbursement too, they had to provide documentation in order to get reimbursement for this grant. Okay. That they were accepted. And they also had to have a CO and everything as well. Assumed too much. For most of the grants. Do we think that we, that the city overall, by doing it this way, saved money? Or would- It accelerated. It was definitely a catalyst. And you can, if you look at the West Park TURS now, this is one tenant in 2015 and it has grown exponentially. We can't even keep our maps up with how fast it's grown. Okay. So by doing it this way, the city really profited better. Yes. Yeah. It spurred additional development. Benefited. I don't know about profited, benefited. The cost benefit, yes. So we've been working to align our new strategic plan with all of our policies and we're updating this policy as well. You can see that the strategic plan, I'm going to give a high level overview, has five guiding principles. And these are what define how we do economic development in Denton. They're core resiliency, future focused, inclusive growth, entrepreneurial spirit and cultural vitality. And then we also have three goals that are building blocks in our strategic plan and that is to accelerate recovery, foster growth and strengthen community inclusion. Our plan was approved in late, I believe it was December of 2020. So we had started the process before COVID, but that ended up incorporating it into our strategic plan because of timing. So under accelerated recovery, we also have strategies under these. So we have the nerve center, taking pulse of the business community, virtual business retention because again, due to COVID, workforce collaboration, inclusive economic recovery and regional collaboration. So the recommended changes to the proposed policy that align with our strategic plan. The first major one is business retention and expansion has been added to the policy to be in line with our strategic plan. And under 1.12, we want to shift the focus of existing economic development structure from relief to cross-functional elements of economic recovery, such as business retention, which we have here, workforce and community services, which are all tied together. And under 1.3, we have the top economic development priority for the cities to continue supporting and retaining existing businesses through this recovery period. Again, keep in mind when this was approved. And we've conducted both in-person and virtual visits through this process. We've also awarded three expansion grants since 2020, so we're excited that we were able to continue moving throughout that process. So then we have foster growth in strategic areas for two. And goal number two is divided into four sections, connectivity, sustainability, creativity, and competitiveness. The next recommend change to align with the strategic plan involves Class A office space and mixed use. These have been added to commercial, retail, prospect section of the proposed policy to attract and support professional services and tech-oriented companies, particularly in our downtown core. So 2D2.1 is to sustain implementation of the downtown implementation plan, the DTIP, and the recommendations to create more mixed use pedestrian-friendly development, again, in our urban square and moving out from there. 2D3.1 is to promote the development of Class A space for office space and creative redevelopment of existing structures to attract professional services and tech-oriented development. So we wanted to create infill development as well. And then 2D3.2 is utilize financial incentives to support the development of this office space. So I'm now going to go over the recommended interdepartmental changes to the policy. We mentioned the sales and use tax grant, and that's mentioned actually in the policy. So we have added the Texas Direct Pay Permit. This is a form and process that's done through the Comptroller, the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts. And we've had this for two grants, for WinCo and O'Reilly, and it's worked really well. So we added that to the policy. Intermittent payments have been changed to quarterly payments, and this is to aid in the administration of the reimbursement so we can better plan for it. And then the Economic Development Partnership Board didn't exist at the time. So this is a '91 policy, so they weren't created until 2003. So we added our advisory board. And then staff has identified minor administrative changes, such as name of departments that has changed over time, like development services. And then some additional changes. We sent this to utilities. We sent it to legal. We sent it to finance. Of course, economic development reviewed it as well. And development services. We took all those comments and came up with the following changes. The finance requested that the change of the capital improvement budget to the operating fund, and then the dates were also removed since the appropriation is done annually by council. And the allocation was changed from $500,000 to $1 million. The obligated annual allocation remains at not to exceed $2 million at any given time. Again, WinCo got $1.8, and they were the only recipient so far. From talking with finance, I understand that they stepped it in. So it was like $500,000, $750,000 to $1 million, and then so on. The economic development benefits have changed from a five-year period to a 10-year period. And a cost-benefit percentages were removed. Standard economic development practice is 10 years, so we wanted to do a 10-year analysis since we'd be conducting it. We wanted to align it with our methods and our modeling tools. I'm happy to entertain questions. Questions? Not a question, but a statement, the fact that WinCo was willing to take this on probably expedited it greatly, and the city would have treated this as they do any other project with all the inspections and everything, as per usual, and we're pretty lucky on this. It was a great effort of public and private. I agree. Go ahead, Devin. So when was the last time this policy was updated? Do we know? '91, it looks like. I had to go back through laser fish files to look through it. The AIS has additional information not presented here, but yes. All the updates look really good. I have a concern on policies that might get updated every five or 10 years for putting COVID recovery into the policy that in a few years, like in 10 years, it might be this strange artifact. Is there a plan to update the policy regularly, or when you're referencing recovery on, I think, slide six, is that not going to be directly? I'm referencing recovery in the plan as it relates to business retention. So it doesn't specifically call out in the policy COVID or recovery in the actual infrastructure financing policy, but this is where it's coming from in the strategic plan. Okay. All right. So we're talking about just business retention and supporting existing businesses. Okay. And that's standard economic development practice. Right. I just wanted to make sure that we weren't saying COVID recovery, because in 2040 when we're updating the plan, we're like ... And we are going to look at it more often than it has been in the past, certainly. Thank you. Any questions? Any other questions? All right. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right. Do we have a motion to adjourn? It is 919. Okay. Adjourned. All right. Thank you.