Dec 13, 2022 City Council on 2022-12-13 2:00 PM (Special Called Meeting)
December 13, 2022 City Council
Full Transcript
and welcome to this meeting of the Denton City Council it is Tuesday December
13th 2022 we do have a quorum so I'll call the meeting to order first item on
agendas in person our comments on the consent agenda of which we have none
then that takes our citizens comments and then that takes us to the next
request for clarification on this agenda any questions for staff counselor and
Davis I have a couple questions on item Z they're pretty straightforward okay
I saw someone here from DME yeah it's the RFPs for renewables yeah they're
probably walking over they're walking up I'm sure cuz I saw Jerry there they are
there's Terry good afternoon mayor counsel Terry Nolte assistant general
manager DME so my question is anytime that we have an RFP that doesn't result
in a in a contract for that that issue of the RFP especially on renewables I
tend to get a lot of community communication asking us about you know
why aren't we accepting some of these contracts or why aren't we people kind
of get the wrong idea and think that we're walking away from renewables when
a particular RFP doesn't result in a contract could you tell us a little bit
about what the issue was with the responses to this RFP and what our next
steps are going forward sure glad to do that so we we periodically issue these
RFPs as we identify a need for additional renewable supply this one is
intended to replace a contract that we have expiring in 2024 at the end of 2024
excuse me however when we issued this the timing was not how should we say
strategic enough because the the IRA had just been passed by Congress and the
landscape for developers of renewable energy facilities was a little bit
unknown with regard to what kind of credits they were going to receive tax
credits and other incentives and so we had a very poor response to this RFP and
the prices we received were significantly higher than where we currently value the
market and so as with all RFPs that we do we have the ability to reject them
for any reason if we reject an RFP city attorney's office has instructed us that
in order to be compliant with the procurement statutes we have to reject
the RFP in order to issue a new one which we do plan to do this time we will
have a very targeted RFP will issue one for solar one for wind and one for solar
with battery storage and we'll be doing that in the next month or so we believe
that the development community now has figured out what the IRA the Inflation
Reduction Act means to them and what type of value proposition it provides
that so that they can convey that value to us in a lower cost
okay any other any other questions may I pretend
before you go I did have one on Z so follow up if you don't mind staying on
that one so on the the timing so you answer one of my questions thank you
councillor Davis for asking that on the timing you know we I know you're you're
looking forward and trying to do your best to prognosticate the load needs of
the city so we still have plenty of time to get a new RFP out in front and and
match our supplies to our loads right yes sir you know we've had we've had a
little a few hiccups over the last year about renewable energy supply one of the
contracts that we had anticipated would be online by this summer this past summer
has been delayed and so this RFP that we issued was intended this RFP was
intended to cover for that non performance that that late performance
in terms of what we anticipate for that facility to come online plus if you
recall we had a very hot summer and we saw new demand records at DME five at
least five new demand records and so our forecasts now have been adjusted and
require us to procure a little bit more and that's why we did the size of this
particular RFP was for 250 megawatts of renewable capacity we'll be issuing as I
said a combined RFP three three RFPs to achieve that level of additional supply
we don't actually need it until 2025 and that gives a developers sufficient time
to build these facilities if they are successful in the procurement process
awesome that answers my question thanks and then I had so I don't have a problem
with the item H but we have so many items related to the birch farm do we
need to maybe pull that one just for a separate so we can see the presentation
and because there's a lot of there's several items this afternoon and tonight
related to this general area but I don't have a concern about I just thought it
would might be appropriate if council so desired to see the presentation on that
well if you want to it's up to you yeah I'm asking for that unless they're
strong objection I guess is what I'm saying it doesn't have to be at this
moment where we can do it later at them at the consent and move it over to
individual consideration Deanna Cody deputy director of development services
real estate we have a presentation for the eminent domain which is a
corresponding item so they kind of both so yes then that solves my issue I'm
clean then thank you and then I had a question I this might actually be I don't
know who this is for you so for K for the solid waste transfer purchase so I'm
not sure which of you is gonna handle that and Brian is in council chambers as
well in case it's a operational question alright thank you and so I know that the
deck is is adjacent to the north so how and this might be a brand question I'm
not sure so how how does how do the what do we foresee the impacts of the two
utilities on each other in terms of both the purchase of the land and then the
ongoing operation of the two lands is there any conflicts or or concerns about
having these two different utilities adjacent to each other I'm I'm going to
let Brian answer that question and he may need someone from DMA as well the
land that's being purchased is south of the deck so good afternoon Brian
burner saw the waste director with the city of Denton I believe that it's a
symbiotic relationship again we don't see any impact between DME and what
we're doing however given the location access it is a a complementary type of
operation they're both for lack of better terms city industrial we'll be
able to support each other through access and through support and even from
an electrification standpoint once we start bringing the fleet up we in close
proximity substation and it will help support that type of charging over the
years so I mean conceptually would be like sort of the the Spencer area and in
the way that those two utilities are are integrated I know the power plant is now
owned by Garland but in the past that they're they're integrated and that
integration is only going to be beneficial we don't see any any
competition or or you know where the two utilities are in compact or conflict
with each other so no we do not okay but then that answers that question I
appreciate it Brian thank you and the last question I had is on the three one
one extension and time frame AG
mayor council Krista Foster customer service manager and what question yeah
so I was just curious again no no real heartburn on the issue but what does
this do to our timelines of a full rollout and implementation so our
timeline has been updated so that we will be rolling out in November of 2023
so when we first put this into place we had a fairly tight timeline to get
things out by February of this year if we push that timeline very much at all
it pushes right into the busiest part of the year so that's happened and we kind
of had to push back and this amendment is just to make sure that we can keep
our project managers engaged through the continuation of this contract okay thank
you I appreciate Krista that's all I had thank you mr. mayor
councilor Watts thank you mayor yeah - so we are gonna have a presentation an
item for individual consideration on consent agenda H which is the purchase
is that correct of the birch land set my understanding that is correct okay yeah
I mean because I did find it odd when I read the backup that we had a
presentation on a consent agenda item so but I really would like to I guess the
information I'm really looking for in in all of these presentations that are tied
together is the necessity of all the tracks that we're purchasing for 66
acres for wastewater utility facility simply because we're looking at 400
acres and I just need to have some understanding but we can have that
during the presentation because I do have some I don't know if it would rise
to the level of word concern but curiosity as to the price how much is in
the floodplain just a lot of different questions about this particular agenda
item so I look forward to that presentation okay anyone else see it
seeing none I'll say this can can someone speak answer a question about
J item J please yes we do have someone from staff coming that he's in in
council chambers he's on his way thank you running I'm sure yeah no we need a
bigger boat our Claire senior real estate specialist how can help you yes
can you just give me it's just a lot of twists and turns right it was this and
it was that there's a forest story building and then it was in the wrong
space and there's a lot of questions about how we got there but either way can
you just give me a summary of the building was accidentally placed in into
our easement it encroached about six inches into our easement with that
encroachment it caused a issue with the separation of the water line the
existing water line had to be moved so that undermining wouldn't be caused to
the building and so to to this area is not needed for any other project this
little one foot seven foot square foot area is not needed for any future or
current project and the builder paid to move the line yes sir yes sir the the
builder has paid incurred all costs to relocate in that water line okay and no
long-term effects of yes sir no long-term effects upon and according to
staff what we we've added this out okay great thank you thank you all right so
the only thing I showed that was pulled was H and other than that everything's
intact for those tracking along as we get into the latter part of the agenda
please note that item individual items for consideration a will come back on
January 10th so we're not going to take that up tonight just if you're tracking
along that takes us to our first work session which is item a ID 2 2 2 5 7 6
whole discussion give staff direction regarding Denton County Transit
Authority updates to City Council and Ryan just to just to kind of frame this I
don't know do you have presentation or anything no mayor there's no presentation
I was just going to introduce the item got it well I'll let you introduce this
simply an item for staff receive clarification regarding how and whether
council would like to make changes to the current quarterly updates from the
DCTA board representative and this is for staff to receive any feedback any
direction if any on any changes got it and so to that end I the the I think the
focus that I'm gonna ask for is what information what data what is noteworthy
there's been a lot of discussion about the change in routes the change in this
or that and rates but we've never talked about what data we want to see or have
presented or kind of updated to us so really want to be data centric as far as
what we need to communicate this body needs to be informed so again what
information do we want how do we want that captured PDF PowerPoint whatever
your your specification around the data how it's organized but give that
direction so that staff can go pull that together and and have some guidance
there so that being said it councilor Davis thank you mayor I think so I want
to leave some flexibility right I don't want to say you know I want to be zeroed
in and tunnel visioned on on data that may not always be the most important
thing for the given conversation but I think the most important focus for me is
return on investment what what bang for our buck are Denton citizens getting are
we moving people efficiently and in a cost-effective way and and that would be
my my request and then you know I made no secret of it at our last meeting I
would like to hear that update from the professional staff from DCTA I'd like to
move away from politics on this item and and I'd like to see I'd like to see
updates straight from the DCTA professional staff like we've had before
we made a shift at some time to start hearing from our appointed representative
who at the time was also a member of this body I don't think that that's
appropriate right now I think it's more appropriate to hear from the professional
staff from DCTA and I think frankly they're better better equipped to answer
some of our questions when we start drilling into data and cost okay anyone
else mayor pro tem thank you mr. mayor so I too would like to to move us away from
the idea that we're tied to particular politics or viewpoints and and that's
why when you have a representative who's engaging with a foreign body the the
activities the events the data presented at that that foreign body are going to
govern the kinds of information we need to know about it's hard for us not being
DCTA to know what DCTA is going to talk about and in it's going to be need to be
very nimble and so I really don't like the idea of handcuffing us if there is
a particular you know changes events concepts that are coming down from the
board like we would from NCT cog or rise or anything else we need to be aware of
those so that we can make our own policy decisions so whatever representative we
have to DCTA I'd like to see them give just sort of regular updates and if we
need to have leadership of DCTA come in I'd like to you know we I certainly
don't object to that but you know maybe big picture stuff you know once a
quarter or whatever and but then regular updates on events that are coming in
just to keep us apprised for what's going on so you know that's data but it's
generic because we don't know what the data is so my direction would be to to
see you know sort of be nimble and and see what data applies and and have the
representative submit and we actually haven't had a report in a while so I'd
be curious to have them submit sooner rather than later
Councilman Burke I'm in total agreement with us continuing to continuing on to
receiving quarterly reports we've begun those when our representative Alex
McGuire had gotten on the board of the DCTA and so at the beginning of that it
was understood that we would have those quarterly reports I just also happened
to sit on the Mobility Committee excuse me y'all I need some water I'm sorry
a little dry and we receive the Mobility Committee receives reports from the
executive director of the DCTA on it's just an update and for me and one other
person or two other people that what's here including else and we would hear
the same things because she's sitting in the meetings so and she's giving us the
she was giving us the correct information so I appreciated receiving
those so I'm not really sure whether or not it would be I don't know a continuum
of time if we were to have the executive director to come in and speak with us
rather than having whoever the person that we have already on board so and I
think she does a great job so I'm also in a with would hope that there is some
agreement that we would keep her on as the representative until otherwise might
be noted in other certain circumstances thank you so anything specific around
information other than who's presenting it that I just really want to sorry I
want to open the door for so staff can capture because full disclosure the
information is information it's not it's not gonna change who presents it the
number of riders is gonna be the number of riders with you read it I read it so
just is there any information definitely I'm sorry I didn't get around to that
point I missed speaking on that point but see we certainly want to continue to
get the information of the ridership I'm sometimes a bit confused as to hearing
numbers I don't know if I'm necessarily can confuse about it I just haven't
inquired more about it the high levels of riderships on the go zone it was I
was hearing numbers up into the tens of thousands of people using the go zone
routinely on a you know on a monthly average or quarterly average in the end
when we were talking about the buses it would be like oh well there's only ten
people riding per hour or something to that to that nature so I'm would like to
dive in a little bit more on the significant space between the hearings
of the bus riders and the and the in the go zone rider so I definitely that's a
that's a very high point for me thank you anyone else
counselor walks thank you mayor I appreciate it let's make no bones about
it I mean when the change occurred it was it was about politics and when the
change occurred there was certainly a particular bias on this council at the
time towards certain modes of transportation I think before we can
really I mean the data is the data I don't care who presents the data my
concern is is if if if miss McGuire presents the data and we ask questions
and the answer is not there that someone be in the council chambers from DCT a
staff to answer those specific data questions but I think more importantly
this council needs to have another work session about what it is the policy of
the council moving forward for our DCT a representative because the council has
changed there's certainly been a biased in the past about you know whether it
goes on work safety buses no buses all these kinds of things well that was a
different council we have a new council now and I think we need to have a
discussion on what does this council want for the 15 to 18 million dollars a
year that it spends for public transportation how are those people
being moved how are they moving being moved cost-effectively it seems based on
the reporting that the direction that DCT a seems to be taking is how can they
convert data from go zone to provide for fixed bus routes well I'd like to have a
conversation with that with this body because I'm not so sure if someone's
riding goes on right now they're gonna switch to riding a bus route how do we
deal with the UNT students who seem to be flooding to some degree the goes on
application and goes on vehicles there's a lot of things that have changed in a
year in a year and a half a lot more data a lot more people riding goes on
bus routes that have been cut are the is the ridership going up what's DCT a's
purpose and what's their their goal and their plan to change all that before we
hear all that we as a council need to be able to communicate to our
representative what we would like to see as someone had mentioned rate of return
so mr. mayor I think the data is important but I think what's even more
important is that we as a body come together to figure out what is our
policy what are our policies and our goals for public transportation for the
city of Denton for the 15 to 18 million dollars that we're spending because we
can get goes on numbers we can get bus ridership numbers I just want all this
information to be presented objectively and I think to do that our
representative needs to understand what this body is asking her as our
representative to advocate for at the board so data is what I've always asked
for ridership I would like to see the data parsed out especially on the bus
ridership between the North Texas routes and the didn't connect routes I would
like to see if there's any overlap between the didn't connect routes and
the UNT routes I would like to be able to see and have data on geo fencing what
is happening around the universities as far as how much is goes on being
utilized what type of capacity is it being utilized in those areas and if so
how can we make sure that goes on is available for for everyone in our
community that wants to ride it instead of having these these times where we
have rides unavailable where's that data coming from I know they've got the data
now I know they're processing through the data but I think what they need to
know is what is the city of Denton from its policymakers perspective asking for
that rate of return and what we're going to get in return for that money spent so
I think the data that they presented in the in the newspaper articles in their
board agendas that's all data that's just there it's objective nobody's
questioning it I certainly want to see that because ridership is important but
ridership means a lot of different things councilmember bird talked about
you know sometimes understanding that right those ridership numbers it took me
forever to try to figure out that when somebody talks about a ride on a bus
that's just a boarding all right that's that's not a person it's a boarding so
that's why I would always divide those ridership numbers by two to say if
somebody gets on they're probably getting back on to go home so I think
it's important we all have an understanding of the data what it all
means I really get concerned when all that data gets mixed up between UNT
ridership and then the non UNT ridership because UNT ridership on the buses is
extremely extremely high and it could give a false impression as to what is
happening with the rest of the bus routes and also with go zone so I'm all
for that as long as we can get objective information as long as we can get our
policies and our perspectives communicated to our to our advocate so
that that's what they're advocating for because right now there's been a change
and I don't think that they have that direction okay I'm interested also in
ridership and safety safety record as well as training for safety that was all
you asked for correct yes you'll bet okay then to that end Ryan if you could
help me out so what's the best methodology to formulate a policy
direction for this body think that's a valid point that we you've heard the
disparate kind of data points that are interested of interest to people let me
add my three cents worth full disclosure I think it's really around 14 million
dollars that we provide for the in sales tax so the city does well DCTA gets that
money whether they're performing they're hitting matrix or not and that's a
concern for me because that money could be spent elsewhere in our community I
like the trips grant want to expand that to the UNT area there's a lot of streets
roads there that could be addressed with that money so really my focus is pretty
singularly around value for and return on investment and I guess and I've talked
to the CEO about this so it's not a surprise they have 70 million dollars in
their accounts and they need to for me I need to understand what's if they're
saving for upgrades great but what is that money going to what is it allocated
for just to have millions upon millions that are going somewhere with no clear
direction that I can communicate to others is my problem so just like our
budget we have goals as far as how much funds we're going to maintain where the
other funds are going to I just need clear guidance and I know that's that's
a work in progress but that's really what I'm what I'm focused on so that
being said back to my question for you what is the best way for us as a body to
come together and give clear policy direction to the representative because
I think that is where we start we have to start with our advocacy and hold and
get that message across make sure we have a seat at the table and so what's
the best way to best process to communicate that staff so I think that
for this for the specific item we can we can list all the things that that
council the pieces of information that council wants to hear back on a lot of
it involved around ridership course safety training return on investment we
can communicate those to to our board member in a compiled list to make sure
that the board member has those in terms of a I'll say a holistic policy from
council on what their priorities are with regard to transit I believe and and
perhaps Matt can can correct me if I'm wrong but we could if that's a separate
discussion that council wants to have that could be scheduled for an
upcoming work session I think we can take that direction here today and then
we can put that on the calendar for that discussion I don't think that would need
a separate request because that's within today's today's posting okay yeah so my
my ask would be then though that that conversation happened before the next DCT
a meeting if that if I don't know what those schedules look like but if we're
gonna have an advocate in that meeting that advocate needs to be we got to kind
of give direction so I don't know what the next meeting is but I just don't
want I think that's what I've heard and I and I agree with we have to give
direction not get updates on hey here's how it went right I think that's the the
distinction I don't know when the next DCT a meeting is I knew no our earliest
opportunity for a work session discussion would be on January 10th that
means already pretty packed but if council as a as a body wanted us to to
include that discussion on the 10th staff could do that okay well then no I
mean I think it without understanding the the schedule without looking at it
in front of me I think I will I think it is best to defer to staff because it's
not the most pressing thing right I mean there's there's other stuff you're
working on that's been in the works and planned and well thought out and
organized so I respect that but so how about you just email or send out a
message Friday here's what we are here's what we think it fits and that gives us
something to respond to is that okay clarification just to make sure so you
want to have a policy discussion on on what kinds of things you collectively as
a body want to have the DCT a representative report on or advocate for
so for example what I'm hearing is if this body of six because there has been
a change if this body of six says here's our top three priorities and the
discussion goes a DCA DCTA board and that comes up and we say hey we want
whatever oval cars and we want you to advocate for oval cars and there's a
discussion at that board level we want to have that direction given that says
and so I purposely didn't grab anything real because that then just gets
problematic I don't want to speak on specifics I want to speak generally that
we just need to have a just like you work from a give you some directions
clear goals to work towards and that helps you accomplish your goals similarly
for this board that I think that's what I'm hearing and you're saying not to do
a report then until we have that policy direction I I think it's it's earliest
and we'll go back around you know other people have an opportunity to share
their thoughts but I think at the earliest opportunity not to not to
disrupt what you already had planned but it's it is a problem just I think it's
it is a gap right that we need to give direction just like so that we can work
towards those things and not and have a plan all right yeah
councillor McGee mayor pro tem thank mr. mayor so a couple questions just to
clarify so we won't have a report until we can have a discussion about those
things that our DCTA rep will be advocating for is that correct no that's
what the city manager just asked and I said I think I said I don't know I you
know a lot happens in my mind so I could be wrong but short answer is I don't I'm
not I can't give that direction unilaterally and that's for this body to
decide but I think it's I just said at its earliest opportunity is what I said
no one else has spoken okay I guess reason laws asses because I want to make
sure that we capture some of the things that have already been done since the
last time we've had a presentation from our DCTA rep I just want to make sure we
don't lose those things also and making sure that we clarify some things that we
want our rep to advocate for and that makes sense I think so okay my other my
other note was I understand we want to have a discussion about those things
with which this body wants to advocate for on DCTA are we planning to do this
for every board that some of us serve on that other folks serve on outside the
city because I can see an argument for making sure that this is something that
we systematically go through with everything to make sure that the will of
this body is executed on every single board I think if the majority of the
council wants to see that and you bring it forward certainly I mean I don't I
don't see there's no impediment to that okay so I guess I'll just before I I'm
fine with doing that I'm okay with doing that as long as that is a uniform
approach by this body I don't want to see this body do anything different on
one particular board that we're not going to do on all boards to make sure
that we are staying consistent so thank you mr. got it and I think you I think
you deserve my feedback it's 14 million dollars of sales tax money is where I
see a difference there's no other body that has that kind of money unchecked
right the even even each department here is accountable to the city manager to
zero based budgeting where they have to back into that number that's the only
place where we're giving them 14 million dollars unchecked no matter how how they
spend it they get it and and that's what separates that body for me and gives me
an extra bounty account but I think I'll let you that answer may pretend thank
you mr. mayor so I have some of the same issues that you heard from counselor
McKee my direction is we haven't had a report recently so I would like to have
a report to hear about the updates in order to establish where that aligns
with my 1/7 of the priorities so I need that backup information in order to
understand where those priorities go the the other the issue there is the there
has there was a there was an election back in May for council change but
there is there was a there's been a number of votes since then with
individuals that currently make up council so I I don't see that the the
makeup and change of council has really changed substantial to the front during
the course of this this current post-election season so that the same
players have made their priorities real clear and so that that isn't really going
to say and the final point I'll make that's more of a point so the first
point of direction was I still want to see the data and I want to see that data
sooner rather than later and I'm completely amenable to having that
conversation about future priorities but a lot of what the role of the
representative is to convey information back to us as well and so I need that
information and and then finally the the representative is in the room and has
heard all this conversation so it feels a little bit like a telephone game to
say hey Ryan would you tell that person 20 feet away that this is what we said
and so I would I don't know that that's actually really necessary the person is
sitting in the room well but so let me let me clarify that staff sits in a room
every day that we have a meeting and we provide them email backup we provide a
Friday report we're sitting in the room every meeting and we have a Friday
report that captures all those things so I consider that to be consistent then
I'll say if you need the information by all means schedule a meeting with the
with the representative and get that information ASAP do not wait on us by
all means take it upon yourself to schedule a meeting with that rep and get
that information that you need to best be informed straight away that by all
means my direction is to still have the representative report I didn't change
your your direction I just provided my thoughts counter what yeah I think we
have short memories here well first of all as far as the making sure we give
direction to all the other external boards and commissions I'm with you
mayor no other Board of Commission that we're on whether it's the RTC cog it
doesn't matter we're not directly contributing 14 million dollars or 15
or I'm not even sure what it is who knows what it is by now to that body
which comprises through the three member cities almost half to at least a close
to a half of that budget if not more so secondly the dirt the process of giving
direction to a board external board members started with when I was removed
with one week left there was this direction given by that council at the
time and so that started long before now so there was some inconsistency then I
guess back then at least according to councilmember McGee's sort of thought
process and lastly there's been a tremendous change on council we were one
member has been recalled who is the member that is our representative
there's a new member that sits in place six there's a new member that sits in
place five so the notion that somehow all the thoughts are the same that were
a year and a half ago is a little misguided so I think we need to have
that conversation because there's a lot going on at DCTA right now there's a lot
of forks in the road that they're going to be taking there's a lot of money at
stake there's a lot of ridership at stake if you're looking at the ridership
so I think that conversation needs to happen soon whether it happens before we
get a report or not if we're just getting a report on the data and the
facts I don't care that's fine we need the data and the facts but if there's a
report on what the direction of DCTA is well I'm hoping our representative until
they get direction from this body on some of these major decisions that are
coming up that's how it was done a year and a half ago so I certainly am in
favor of continuing that process but and if we want to have direction given to
our RTC representative that has 45 how many members are on the RTC 44 right 44
45 years 44 to 45 which is a totally regional issue we don't provide any
money but I don't I don't have a problem doing that but let's make no mistake
there's a big difference between us having one vote out of five on an
organization that we contribute 14 million dollars to so if we want to do
it with the other ones that's fine if we didn't I would not see that as being
inconsistent Councilman Burton and Councilmember Davis
I'm thinking that we laid out some things that we want to know you've
written them down yes ma'am is there anything else that we would want to add
to that list because that could be the information that can go to the
representative so the representative can bring us that information back after
they have you know when they go to the DCTA so I'm not real sure why we got to
have a meeting to have a meeting about the stuff that we just gave you unless
there's anything additional that that we want to put on that list when our
representative meets with us again whenever that's going to be they will
have that information for us and also again the mobility committee has the
pleasure of having the executive board chair to present to us information and
we hear the same thing it just so happens that I hear the same thing again
coming from our representative you know at the at another time and we also of
course need information new information that's come to us oh the other thing I
wanted to add to that list is the I know we talked about the training and I
definitely want to get into that because there needs to be some type of change in
on how they're dropping people off I have an issue with them dropping people off
in them practically in the middle of the street so I can also give that
information to the executive director but it would also be nice to have that
on the list as well there's a it's a it's a flaw in there somewhere about the
way that they drop people off in the middle of the road and I've seen it with
my own eyes and some other folks that I know have seen it as well so not only
just a general training but redirecting some so I know they don't take people to
the door but I just know there's got to be some kind of driveway close by
somewhere that they can drop people off and I'm really serious about that I saw
some people almost get hit by car so I want to add that to the list thank you
thank you Mary I don't think another work session would be a meeting just to
have a meeting to have a meeting if the representative the council representative
to DCTA for the time being wants to report to the mobility committee and the
mobility committee sees a need to hear from that person directly I think that's
fine I think that's different from a former member of the body reporting back
to the body and taking up a bully pulpit for an issue that they're not for from
the votes for what I'm talking about of course is the letter that council member
Watts allegedly didn't pay enough attention to it got him removed from the
DCTA board and another person sent in his place there are not four votes for
that letter today that's the change and I appreciate the mayor speaking in general
terms to help move his past political issues but by pushing and pushing and
pushing this idea that Allison McGuire has to be the person standing at that
pulpit given us sorry call it a pulpit while you occupy it Ryan that doesn't
apply to you to stand at that that pulpit and give us the information that's
completely disingenuous the way that started was because political operatives
in the city got five votes behind something and those five votes aren't
there anymore that union interests in the city got five votes behind something
and started having a conversation that was divorced from data and sent a
representative to DCTA that espoused the same position there's not a place for
that position being espoused and pushed any further from that spot up there if
individual council members hold that view that's what they ought to champion
absolutely but the council as a whole no one in the room can say with a straight
face still holds all the positions that were put forth in that letter sent to
our DCTA representative that is not the will of the body any longer the will the
body might be dead top dead center it might be nothing at all because there's
not one consensus statement the six of us are willing to get behind but it's
certainly not the same direction that we gave a year ago it just isn't to pretend
that it is to pretend that still ought to be Denton's thrust and direction on
that board that's disingenuous that's why I think we ought to have a work
session hash it out see what we agree on see what we don't see what's happened
with go zone over the last year see where they've fouled up because they have
we've all seen it in the newspaper or goes on hasn't been the right fit for
certain things and see where it's been working see where the bus the bus routes
go now because they're not the same as they were a year ago and I would like to
hear that from the trained professionals who know what they're
talking about and if we need to hear from a representative we do it in the
same way we do everything else we send them a letter or we hear from them
through email last I checked our representative at DCTA is just as
capable as putting together an argument for their position or giving an update
via email as they are doing it right here there's not a question that that
representative can answer from that spot that wouldn't just as well be answered
I'll clarify a non biased non-political question about how DCA DCTA ought to go
forward that can't be better answered by DCTA staff they give us the wrong
information we make the decision our representative does not
well I don't know that we need to talk to each other and try to convince each
other of anything but if you if you have
I'm not sure who's talking but I can't hear Council member thank you for the
opportunity I want to say that we as a body our job is to listen to the people
and there are a lot of different people that have different interests and we all
sit at this dais with our own particular interests I so we bring our passion with
us to this dais I'm very passionate about law enforcement and education I
speak up a lot when we talk about those things and and health care and mental
health and all of that that's my thing neighborhoods and families I'm going to
talk more I'm going to be more passionate about that and so when we
bring our passion to the table yes we're going going to connect with other people
that think like us that's very natural for us to do that we're going to find
people that support us to get their their issue across that's our job as
council members we're here to listen to the people our people and so if it if
this was if this is somebody's passion then we should respect that and whatever
position that they may be on that it's just a level of respect that should be
expected for you to voice your opinion about it I don't have to have any kind
of political leaning to getting people transported across the city that's not
what that means there's no politics involved in that we need transportation
around here we're getting ready to grow twice the size I heard and how are we
people going to be transported there are people that are concerned about that so
let's just you know have this meeting hash it all out get ready for it and give
the end give the questions so when they come back to us they can have the
answers I guess at this point whoever it may be but I'm sure there's some very
capable people of getting that information back to us and whatever kind
of way thank you okay we're all right we're past time we're gonna make it up
somewhere we I think we've exhausted all things but let's councilman McGee
thank you mr. mayor I just want to add one one other note based off of some
messages as we got a couple weeks ago coverage areas thank you mr. mayor okay
anyone else great then I think just captured in the Friday report just
summarize and then I guarantee you somebody will email you I guess I just
want I want to be clear though because I want to make sure staff knows what
they're doing yes so I didn't see three votes for a meeting I didn't see three
votes for who was presenting I didn't see three I mean I didn't see I don't
know what we're doing to be honest yeah no I don't think there's direction clear
direction either way I think the the direction that I've heard is is kind of
and that's what we the goal was to get the data that we need and I think that's
really where where the the synergy ends and so I welcome your input to that but
I think I don't know that everyone's seen the letter that councilmember Davis
referred to I don't know that came up in kind and noted what do we do with every
other board right I don't know that every other board comes to us do we want
to sync that up I mean again it gets into a little bit of micromanagement
type stuff at that point but I think everyone everyone the lack of data it
and the issue right it's it's the presentation thereof it is where there's
no direction and just read looking at the room there's no clear direction
there but the the ridership is the ridership no matter who stands there so
the data is available it's just where we go from there and I don't I don't have a
good answer so I mean forward with presentation or do you want us to try
to wait till we can fit a time in for a policy discussion for a meeting to
discuss what kinds of things you really want to see from our representative the
the meeting from the DC for DCTA in January is on 26th January 26th so the
1st to 10th is booked and we maybe could squeeze one in but it's it's a we're
tight through February yeah okay what do we have yeah we got the okay okay we
don't have a 630 so we'll just I'll throw councillor McGee mayor partil
thank you mr. Marston what I'm hearing from the city manager three things what
the data is how the data is going to be presented and who's gonna present the
data is that correct because mr. mayor based off of what you said I only gave
direct doll I only gave direction on what the data is so yeah I don't I don't
know that there's just I mean there's there's no elephant there's if there's
elephant room not so a pet him there's not four people that agree on who should
present right and so no matter what your input is it just either locks it up or
none of it gets us to four right so that being said you you're more than welcome
to lend it by all means but it's not gonna move the needle and so I'm trying
to move us to more things because we can get more information we can get those
things and and be productive that way I appreciate that so um correct me if I'm
wrong and mr. city attorney feel free to jump in since there is not four people
to change the manner and change the person who gives us information from DCT
a the default is what has happened in the past and in the past the information
has been delivered by our currently serving DCT a rep what I'm hearing you
say is that we don't have direction we don't have four people to tell us to do
a different thing so given that we don't have four people to tell us to do a
different thing I look forward to seeing miss McGuire deliver her quarterly
report as is regularly scheduled I'll swing back around mayor pro tem and then
counselor Davis yeah I actually I was gonna bring up the same point there's
there was no direction to make a change there was there was multiple votes that
means the status quo is the status quo in the previous set serious series of
actions was a report so then we we default back to the default because we
have no change in action well if in case it matters we didn't have any votes in
here did we yeah I just want to clear record counselor Davis no that that
that's exactly right the council never decided that council member McGuire was
gonna come present to us that council never decided the last thing the council
decided was the direction the last thing that council as a whole decided either
by a vote or by staff direction or whatever seven people weighed in on was
the placement of Alice McGuire on the DCTA following removal of someone who
didn't follow the direction allegedly didn't follow the direction of council
that was the last policy direction this council gave on anything related to DCTA
had lots of callers we had lots of presenters we had lots of media articles
we had lots of back and forth that was the last direction account there is no
default there was their agenda items placed their work session items placed
by the agenda committee but there's no default that was a new thing we came up
with when Allison went on the DCTA I think the most appropriate thing for us
to do if we want to give direction if we want to know where the council is after
a couple of very important elections where some of these issues were discussed
and vetted in the public space the best thing to do is to have the person who
puts that agenda together for their 26 meeting a staff member from DCTA come
and tell us what's going to be on that agenda come and tell us what kind of
policy questions are going to be asked tell us what kind of decisions the DCTA
boards can be asked to make and then we as a body can say what we think about
those particular things and give direction to our representative on what
we think they ought to do on the 26th I don't think it's helpful to have any
other any other discussion frankly if we're talking about what direction we
want our representative to have then we need to know those issues are we can't
do that unless we know that agenda looks like and our representative doesn't know
that agenda looks like until it's published might have some ideas but
doesn't know just like we don't have the agenda until it's published so I'd like
to hear in January a work session from DCTA DCTA staff to tell us what the
policy questions are that our representatives going to confront and
then we as a body can give direction on those and if that person stands there at
the lectern and and sees that there are not three not four in favor of any given
direction that's the direction that Denton has chosen to exercise voice in
that particular way
Councilman Watts
unbelievable that's all I can say unbelievable what was brought up was we
need to have a work session I brought it up and I also said I don't care if the
reports given before or after a work session of this body to decide what this
body wants to decide regarding policy policy transportation policy moving
forward I don't know what people are referring to when they say to have a
meeting to have a meeting if this bar if there's not consensus for this body to
get together to talk about transportation issues in this city and
to give direction or attempt to give direction to at least put those issues
out on the table then this whole process is political this whole process has been
we're just going to keep it the way we have because we don't have four votes I
could care less if Allison McGuire gives a presentation or not because if she
doesn't know the answers to the questions we better have somebody who
does because the reports going to be more than just here's what's happened
here's what's going on there is a lot going on at DCTA that affects every
citizen in this city I don't care who gives it but if I'm hearing that there's
not four people on this council who are elected by the citizens of this city
that want to sit down and have a policy discussion about how we move forward
from here with our transportation issues man there's something terribly wrong
here I mean if y'all want to pull out well there's not four so we're going to
keep the default who cares I don't care I don't care who presents I don't care if
you got three or four votes I'm talking about do we come together as a body
elected by the citizens to talk about how we want to pursue transportation
options and processes and programs in the future now am I hearing correctly
that there's not four people who want to have that discussion okay I'm gonna say
I'm one of them so if you don't want to have that discussion please speak up
because I've heard there's not a consensus to have that discussion and
if you want to have that discussion let's be let's be clear about that let's
make sure that we have everybody on record deciding whether they want to
have a discussion about moving forward and having a policy discussion on this
council about transportation issues so we can advise the member that has been
elected kept whatever term you want to use to represent the city they
understand what our position is for the 14 million dollars that we pay who is
not in favor of having that discussion please raise your hand and speak up yeah
so I think there's general agreement around the discussion I think the only
disagreement is the presenter no no no I'm talking about a totally so you're
saying we're gonna have the discussion about policy yes as a city manager said
that can't be had until February and the next meeting is in January initially
the goal was to give direction before their next meeting but that's not
possible okay well I'm gonna say this I don't know where what you got me counted
on as far as who makes the presentation if Allison McGuire wants to make the
presentation if I need to switch votes to be a fourth vote this is this is crazy
I don't care if she gives the presentation or not at this moment so if
I'm the fourth vote to say let's hear a report from her we can then have the
discussion or we have the discussion then have the report we can make a
decision at that time all I know is whenever the report is given there
better be people in the room that can answer the questions that's my only
requirement period okay yeah yeah no and I don't I mean again I think it holds
true that it won't be till February right I don't oh you haven't already in
January 10th that's we have we have the report given by the representative on
January 10th we can do the work session on the policy discussions of
transportation and that's what I'm trying to figure out is when I can plug
that in got it so staff will come back with when so just an update so staff
will come back when when when we can work in direction for the representative
to then advocate based on that the standard placeholder is on January 10th
and if you could please get staff questions comments that sort of thing in
advance and so that we can have a very detailed conversation and staff miss
city manager if you can convey to the CEO they that he makes sure the right
people in the room to get into the get into the the details so that we don't
have I don't know I'll have to follow up as an answer
Councilman Davis Council member I think our time would be best spent on the
10th if we have a written report ahead of time and then we spend a little bit
of time talking about direction on the 10th I don't know that we need to spend
the time hearing a PowerPoint presentation from our representative or
from the CEO or anybody I think we all are well versed in the issue we have
lots of constituents who are vocal on the issue I think we can read a report
ahead of time and have that conversation on the on the 10th I won't pretend to be
as familiar with the agenda as the city manager is but I think if we feel this
strongly about the issue our time is better spent having the conversation and
the report part of it we can we can ask some questions about data and all that
that we need to and then be posted to give direction on the 10th I think I
think that's a fair ask okay customer Bert I agree councilmember Davis on what
you've just stated however I just wanted to just clarify what I've just
experienced here that we initially asked for a report on data I started out
talking about the data and information and we gave a few things that we would
like for the DCA TT and to representative to I can't say they were
DCTA that's hard the representative to to have for us when we meet with them so
it's just for me it just seemed like there was two things going on in regards
to us receiving a report a regular quarterly report like we normally do but
then the conversation evolved into us looking at some some some directives for
the DCTA and giving and having an aside meeting is that what what you all
understand is that I might am I correct on that we're gonna have an additional
meeting for like a SUP or getting information and having the high level
people there we're gonna have questions for them are we gonna give them some
directions on what we want to know from them and then receive a regular report
from our representative with those questions answered that we asked what's
happening here please clarify what's going on here for me I'm not
understanding I think at least what I understand now councilmember bird is that
there are four votes for people who say go ahead allow the representative to
give their presentation on the 10th but they better have someone better be there
that's able to answer questions that may not be in their realm which we can
contact the CEO to be there to answer any further questions and then to
schedule a policy discussion and and I will tell you I'm looking at them now we
could probably get it on February the 7th a policy discussion about the
priorities for this body regarding DCTA so that the representative or
representative that down even down the road has a list of things that are
priorities for this body to articulate to the DCTA board in representing what
the city of Denton it has as a priority
yeah I mean we're hour and ten minutes into this just just to make sure we're
all on the same page
can't hear Mike needs to be on are those questions associated what we've already
given him we will make sure that those questions are shared with not only the
DCTA representative from the city of Denton but also the executive director
of DCTA anyone else okay you feel comfortable Ryan what you
have I do the city manager great takes us to item B which is we're gonna we're
gonna move up an item to that face space so this is item E will be next and it's
I ID 2 2 2 5 2 3 receive report whole discussion gives that a discussion with
the Denko area 9-1-1 staff and again we're not gonna take any breaks so if
you need to take breaks then just you're free to excuse yourself and as needed
okay good afternoon mayor council public safety communications I'm just here to
introduce Greg Valentine Denko area 9-1-1 district CEO of Denko area 9-1-1
district and he's here to do a presentation on Denko 9-1-1 at the
request of council
good afternoon I was asked not to begin until the PowerPoint was showing on that
screen and I don't see that happening
thank you mayor city council and city manager thank you so much for the
invitation to visit with you today and tell you a little bit about the Denko
area 9-1-1 district my name is Greg Valentine I'm the executive director of
Denko area 9-1-1 district and I'm gonna give you a little bit of your time back
because I brought a really nice video to show you giving an overview of our
agency but because we have sound of technical difficulties I won't be able
to play that for you and we'll just get right into telling you a little bit
about a Denko I know many of you are familiar with Denko because we were
created by the voters of the district 35 years ago and started 9-1-1 service in
this district 32 years ago and have been a strong partner with the city of
Denton and the other municipalities and Denton County that time providing a lot
of firsts in the area of 9-1-1 service as the coordinating agency for 9-1-1 in
the the district our mission is solely focused on implementing and managing
9-1-1 emergency communications for the citizens of the area and partnering with
the agencies that operate emergency communication centers and our district
of course yours being one of the the largest and busiest in the district we
also serve the Denton County Sheriff's Office Flower Mound Police Department
Highland Village Police Department Lewisville Police Department Roanoke and
the colony as primary emergency communication centers and then the two
universities located in Denton as secondary emergency communication
centers this is the point that I was going to play that really cool video for
you but I would encourage you to go to our website and take a look at that if
you have an opportunity it's a great overview of the agency and then I wanted
to take a few minutes and share with you some of what it is that our agency does
on your behalf we we are certainly not in the spotlight we're one of those
agencies that we hope you don't hear about very often because we're providing
the underlying structure and support for your emergency communications we have a
pretty robust technical services staff that provides all of the 9-1-1 network
all of the 9-1-1 equipment that operates the system across the district and the
equipment that's in place in your emergency communication center for the
receipt of 9-1-1 calls is purchased and installed and maintained by Denko area
9-1-1 district our staff truly does lose sleep at night over cybersecurity issues
that's become a real hot topic and in all IP networks and all networks that
touch the public internet or the public has public facing at all so a lot of our
efforts are geared toward keeping those systems reliable and keeping them as
stable as we can unfortunately or maybe fortunately a good bit of the 9-1-1
network is not in our control so we have contracts in place with vendors such as
Verizon, Motorola, Entrado who does the the national switching and we don't
actually take control of a 9-1-1 call until it reaches our host site or our
data center that's located in the city of Louisville. Interesting piece of trivia
that every 9-1-1 call in this district is routed through either Miami, Florida or
Englewood, Colorado before it lands here. That happens in milliseconds so there's
not a long delay but those are where the national databases are for the
switching of 9-1-1 calls. Obviously if if a citizen is unable to make a call
doesn't have dial tone or their wireless call doesn't go through we never get it
on our on our input. Once we do get the call at the data center and we contract
with Verizon to provide a wide area network that connects all of the remote
sites we also partner with Denton County and jointly own a microwave system that
wirelessly connects all of those remote sites as failover until very recently
and I'm going to get into that in the next slide or slide after next. The other
thing that is that we're really proud to to have constructed and offer to all of
the communities in the district is a very robust backup Emergency
Communication Center located at the site of our our data center. So this
Emergency Communication Center backup facility and 9-1-1 data center is a
fully hardened f5 tornado shelter and what what happened this morning was in
no way planned but I guess that that severe weather that came through in the
tornadoes and Flower Mound and Grapevine area you know we weren't worried about
it impacting our data center because of the the facility that's in place. We also
have within that that center a fully functional backup center for Emergency
Communication Centers in the district that has the ability to answer 9-1-1
calls at that location and the ability to dispatch police, fire, ambulance, other
other EMS services. In fact City of Denton we hosted the City of Denton's
Emergency Communication Center for about 10 days in October I believe it was
while there some renovation work was taking place at your primary facility so
it really was a good operational test for those facilities and they worked very
well. We recently had a Highland Village in for five days while they had some
issues at their main facility so this has definitely shown some return on
investment having this facility available. An exciting yet challenging
project that we've been implementing over the last almost three years is
transition to a software-defined wide area network. I mentioned the these
systems that we contract with Verizon for for connectivity to the Emergency
Communication Centers from our host site and the microwave backup system that we
partner with Denton County for. Up until the implementation of this project it
was one or the other so our primary system our primary network was the
Verizon network and if there was a failure or degradation in the Verizon
network it the system would automatically switch over to the
microwave network. With the implementation of the SD-WAN project we
will continually use both of those networks so that the strongest most
reliable path at any given moment is what's being used by the system. What
drove this was that we would frequently see degradation in the Verizon network
but not to the point of a failure. It would do it would have a latency or
jitter in this and it would cause poor quality communications but it wouldn't
fail. So we didn't get the full benefit of the backup system where by
implementation of this SD-WAN project we will get the full benefit of both of
those networks. This is I mentioned this has been challenging and I certainly
don't want to stand up here and just tell you a bunch of our pain and
heartburn over the past several months but well when we first started out of
course it was a right at the beginning of COVID-19 and that pandemic and that
certainly slowed things down. Then we got into some real supply chain issues with
Cisco and we were at a point we were waiting between 10 and 12 months for
routers to be delivered. So you order a simple router for a network and you wait
almost a year to get it. And then there is a code bug in the Cisco operating
system of the routers that we did receive that we we discovered for Cisco.
Unfortunately we discovered it after we had implemented a few of those routers
and it has all been corrected now but just sharing some of our pain points
getting getting this system in place. You may remember back in July there was an
issue where there is a degradation of service in 9-1-1 and we had to go switch
everything over to administrative lines for several hours while we worked
through that that issue. That was a Verizon engineer who had entered an IP
address as a part of this project into the network but it was a duplicate IP
address and what they did was create a loop that caused 9-1-1 calls not to
process in the normal way. Because we have so many backup systems in place we
didn't lose 9-1-1 calls. We didn't characterize that as an outage. We simply
moved 9-1-1 to agency 10-digit administrative lines. So we did lose
some of the features of 9-1-1 but every 9-1-1 call that was placed was routed
was answered in the place it should have been answered by the people who should
have answered it and the first responders were dispatched who should
have been dispatched. So definitely inconvenient definitely a degradation in
service but not an outage of 9-1-1. We had another issue in September.
September the 18th I believe it was where a card failed in a frontier central
office and unfortunately it wasn't a hard failure. It was a it would fail and
then it would restore then it would fail and it would restore. At the time we were
not on SD-WAN so we'd go to back it would go to the microwave backup then
we'd come back to the main Verizon network and we'd go to the microwave
backup well then it started failing and restoring so quickly that it couldn't
recover from the microwave backup before it was trying to fail to that backup
system again. Had SD-WAN been in place at the time absolutely would not have
happened and SD-WAN for the city of Denton is in place today. We still have
four agencies to cut over which we'll be doing later this week but city of
Denton is fully on SD-WAN at this point. Our GIS services is something that we're
really proud of. We work with all of the agencies in in the district to correlate
GIS data to make sure that 9-1-1 calls are routed to the appropriate emergency
communication center with as much graphical location information as
possible in the 9-1-1 center. This can get confusing with all the new
construction all of the annexations that occur. You're familiar with
dispatching contracts so you start dispatching for other entities and we
want to make sure calls are routed the way that that they should be so there's
a lot of coordination work that takes place and an exciting exciting project
that we've undertaken recently is an indoor mapping project. In fact our
staff our GIS staff won a national award for this project last year where we are
using the enhanced location data from wireless carriers to better pinpoint the
location of 9-1-1 calls that are coming from inside structures. About 93% of
9-1-1 calls from our district initiate from wireless devices. You know we've
seen that of course grow over the years but it's somewhat blows your mind to
think that only 7% of 9-1-1 calls are coming from what phones that are plugged
into the wall somewhere. Everybody's carrying a wireless device and that's
the vast majority of the calls. Well identifying location has been more
problematic for wireless callers of course but over the past few years that's
gotten much more precise. What we were seeing is that we were getting that
really precise location information but we were still plotting it on a building
footprint where we were just we all we could really tell is what building the
call was coming from. So this project undertook floor planning inside
facilities to assist first responders and being able to locate callers much
more quickly and even if first responders get in trouble to to allow
their colleagues to locate them much more quickly. We started with schools in
the district both because we know that that's a potential risk area for major
events but we also had really good relationships with the schools and
thought that we would be able to have a quicker and easier time getting the
internal floor plan data from these facilities. As of today we have less than
10 schools across the entire district that do not have indoor mapping
associated with them. So we've made really good progress here and recently
moved on to phase two of the project which well I'm sorry let me show you
schools. This is what it does. So this is an elementary school and prior to our
indoor mapping project all you would see is a dot or a shaded area over the top
of this school. You'd know it's coming from the school somewhere. With the
indoor mapping what we were able to do is actually zoom in to the indoor floor
plan. Once this is all lined up and digitized and put in the dispatch map
at the 911 Center the dispatchers are able to see the the room layout. So you
know this is a second story and to give you a little bit better idea of what
they see well I'll zoom in. So you can see you know between the two restrooms
there there's a custodian area so someone dialing 911 from a wireless
phone in that space either having a medical emergency themselves or they're
hiding and need assistance. The responding units are going to have a
much easier time locating inside the facility where that person is. Phase two
government buildings again because of our relationships with local governments
in the district we thought we'd have an easier time getting the the floor plans
and their you know administration buildings libraries community centers
all types of buildings that are are owned and managed by government should
have those floor plans readily available and we have had good success in getting
those and digitizing them into the 911 map. Phase three which we have started
is hotels and apartments and I have a picture of the embassy suites here in the
city of Denton and I would like to give a shout out to the management team at
the embassy suites who have been phenomenally cooperative with us and
allowing us to map their facility and do some internal testing not only on floor
plans but elevation so that when someone is calling from a an upper story of that
facility the what they call the Z-axis is able to be displayed and we're able to
correlate what room they're actually calling from in many cases. And then the
future phases will be more complex facilities such as Golden Triangle Mall
and industrial parks office complexes that have multiple rooms where that
would be really difficult for a first responder to to respond to if somebody
didn't know exactly where they were in that facility. We've started our outreach
to businesses so we've attended many chamber meetings we've created some
handout cards that we're asking our partner agencies to distribute through
their community outreach events we've got a website that we have stood up for
businesses to talk about what this mapping program is and to solicit their
floor plan data so you may have already seen some of this if you haven't you may
in the future see some of our outreach as we're trying to get businesses to
participate. Another major activity that we provide on behalf of you and for your
employees is our public safety training academy. We have one of the few accredited
nationally accredited public safety training academies with a specific focus
on 911 training. So we're accredited by the Commission on accreditation for law
enforcement agencies and have been for about five years and they come in
regularly actually annually and do a review of 300 and something standards
that we have to not only comply with and say we comply with but prove that we
comply with. We're also a Texas Commission on Law Enforcement contract
training provider so all of your personnel who come through training at
the Denko Area 911 district we're able to report that training to the Commission
on Law Enforcement and they receive credit for their mandatory
recertification hours that they're obligated to have. All of that's
provided at no direct cost to the City of Denton. And then operational support
lots of time and effort and funding goes into supporting emergency medical
dispatching programs for all of the communities in our district. Those are
the programs that allow the employees who work for you who answer 911 to save
a life over the phone by providing medical pre-arrival instructions and
provide CPR instructions or deliver a baby if that's what's necessary via the
telephone call. Language interpretation is provided through Denko Area 911
district so any citizen who dials 911 who is unable to speak English for
whatever reason, well actually it should be a language challenge, then we can
bring an interpreter on the line in a relatively short period of time and
provide those services in about 150 different languages within just I want
to say seconds I'll say less than a minute. And then recruiting and testing
obviously selecting your dispatch staff is they're your employees and then you
go you select them you establish the hiring processes but this has been an
area that particularly over the last three years or so where there's been
it's been a real challenge to find high quality candidates for to fill these
vital positions. So to the extent that we can we are attempting to assist in
making sure that folks know about this occupation that they know what to
require, that they know what it takes to be successful and we introduce them into
your agency processes so that you can consider them and we'd like to think
we've had some impact there in getting getting the right folks in the door. The
last area that I'll talk about is our public outreach. This is a strong focus
of Denko's where we have long believed that an educated 911 caller makes for a
more successful 911 call. So we want people to know that the wireless phone
that they have in their pocket what the limitations of that are or if they're
using a VoIP phone what how is that different from your grandmother's phone
or the phone I had growing up on the kitchen wall that's actually hardwired in.
There are differences and we want the citizens to to know that and we talked
to school teachers about educating children on how to call 911 and what to
expect when to call just as importantly when not to call 911. We participate in a
lot of a lot of community events where we're handing out promotional materials
or engaging with the public talking about 911 and other safety issues. The
AED registry is a program that we have just kicked off where we are attempting
to identify the location of all automatic the the defibrillation devices
external defibrillators and their locations to populate into a registry
that when a 911 call is received in in the Denton Emergency Communication
Center and the caller or either the caller themselves or someone with them
is having a cardiac emergency that through the emergency medical dispatch
software this this registry of the location of the closest AEDs will be
available to the dispatcher so they will be able to direct somebody to the
closest AED which the American Heart Association I don't remember the exact
specific but it's a pretty phenomenal what the chances of how the chances of
survival increase if an AED is available when needed. Then the final area if
you're not following us on social media please do so we have a pretty robust
social media program out there we're always trying to engage with the public
let them know about calling 911 giving them tips on how to make their 911 call
more more successful and sharing you know what we can about the profession and
the good things that are going on in the industry. So sorry I didn't have the
opportunity to show you the video I hope you'll go and look at it but I will
absolutely spend any time that you would like responding to any questions. Got it
Thank you. Questions? Mayor Pro Tem and then Councilman Byrd. Thank you Mr. Mayor. I was really
excited to see you had those sort of high ability failover issues and and it
was it was it was exciting to see that you had that sort of the QIQC controls in
place to let you get back into you know routing those those calls to the right
places in the right ways and you know it's exciting to see that network
technology that I mean filter down in from from communications to to not just
promoting you know telecommunications and and internet calls but but actually
getting and saving lives and connecting up your operators so was I know there
had been challenges in in routing technology changes that have gone on have
those impacted you recently in terms of like switching over from from you know
different different styles of routers and different fiber routers and whatnot
and then the supply chain issues on getting those you kind of touched that a
little bit has that been a challenge for you getting these done it's been a
tremendous challenge but thankfully we're on the backside of that at this
point okay so yes it has been a challenge you know we can never guarantee
that there won't be service interruptions or failures in 9-1-1 it'd be
like guaranteeing that the power would never go out of this building what we
try to do is have enough backup systems in place that if that does happen public
safety is not compromised so that's really what we see as our obligation you
know we attempt to hold our vendors accountable just like everyone does and
there there have been some challenges there as well on it's not my desire to
throw anyone under the bus but I do want this body to have a high level of
confidence in the denko area 9-1-1 district that we take our obligation to
hold those vendors accountable very seriously and if it just makes you feel
better you know a lot of the companies and universities I deal with have been
having some of those same router bug challenges so that that really resonated
with me I wonder though as as we you kind of alluded to the AEDs and are is
it the idea that you're just mapping locations or is it your intent is to
kind of get them internet aware and and go towards more of an internet of things
for safety devices I think both you know the I don't know that we'll be able to
do much more with the AEDs other than map their locations and we're certainly
asking that when folks register the locations that they snap a photograph of
it and upload that as well so that we can have that in in the registry having
each of those tied into a some type of IOT location probably beyond our scope
just because it's out of our reach but we certainly see lots of things on the
horizon as far as integration with 9-1-1 so you know wearable devices that will
call 9-1-1 if you're having a medical emergency and how to locate the or
pinpoint the location of that individual and then have access to data on that
individual and their medical history and those types of things that creates lots
of opportunities lots of challenges but a tremendous amount of opportunities for
things going forward. Awesome thank you so much. Councilman Burke. I understood you to say
that there was a bit a bit of a challenge finding quality people you know
to fill those positions there's always positions open I would assume you know.
I've been with the Dink area 9-1-1 district 10 years and I've been in this
industry for 40. I have never known a time when there was not plenty of open
positions in the 9-1-1 industry. It's a highly stressful complex job that not
everyone can do and those who do it well are superheroes and superheroes don't
walk in the door every day. So yes there's always opportunities there.
All right well I just have a little fun fact my first job job was with CWU's police
department I had spent some time being a dispatcher there so that's pretty
exciting. Also have you all connected with the local school districts the NCTC to
develop certain type of programming for those folks so they start preparing? We
we actually did last last year with I think it's the Dale Jackson Career
Center in Louisville where we were invited to come in and and do some some
presentations to a law enforcement class that they had what focused on on 9-1-1.
I'd like to see us do more of that frankly. Okay it would be it would be
great didn't ISD is a great partner of ours and we discussed you know the
challenges of finding and preparing people for these jobs that are out here
waiting for them. So I would certainly encourage to connect with them. We have a
Lagrone Center up a center where those students go to learn about those types
of jobs so I look forward to that that'll be great. Thank you very much.
Councillor McGee. Thank you Mr. Mayor. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you for that
presentation. Very well done. Just a couple questions for you. You mentioned
the the phase two mapping government buildings what not correct? Yes. With
respect to the city of Denton have you completed that? I do not believe it's
completed although I do believe that we've had really good cooperation within
the city of Denton as far as providing the the maps. Schools was our primary
focus and now we've we've moved into this phase two. I can find out from our
GIS staff kind of where we're at with that project but I don't think it's
completed at this point. Okay great thank you. Last question I have you I guess is
about about revenue. How where do you receive your revenue a percentage of
taxes I assume? It's through a 911 service fee on telephone devices. Okay. So
wireline devices there's a line item that amount is set by our board of
managers every year as a part of the budget process. On wireless phones
there's a 50 cent fee charged statewide. The monies are remitted to the
Comptroller and Austin and then redistributed back out to districts based
on population. So we get our percentage of total state population we get that
percentage of the total wireless fees that are collected. We've been fortunate
the past two years to have received some federal grant dollars as well that have
allowed some of this technology to move forward. But you know the majority of our
funds come from that wireless 911 tax on or fee on phones. With the population
reallocations that happen every 10 years with the census? No it does not. Every
state legislative session? It's done every year. Every year? Yes. So the the state
demographer produces population estimates and that's it's done on an
annual basis. How many people are in the DENCO 911 coverage area? Roughly 750,000
or so. There's a good bit of Denton County that's in Frisco that is part of
NCT 911. Okay. And then the Carrollton area is not in the DENCO area 911
district but the rest of Denton County is. Okay. Thank you very much for coming.
Thank you Mr. Mayor. Any other questions? Seeing none thank you very much I appreciate it.
Thank you. Yes. Takes us to item B ID 221167 receive report hold discussion
give staff direction regarding audit project 030 solid waste.
Hello Mayor, Council. Pull this up real quick.
All right. Here we go. All right hello I am Madison Rorschach, Denton City Auditor.
I'm going to present our findings from phase one of our audit of the city's
solid waste operations which focused on scale house management. So this audit
generally evaluated the controls and processes implemented by the city to
ensure landfill customers. Oh I don't know why it's showing it this way.
Wasn't doing this earlier than anybody else. No worries. Thank you. Awesome. Thank
you. All right so this audit generally evaluated the controls and processes
implemented by the city to ensure landfill customers are accurately billed
and scale how staff received adequate cashiering and safety training. The scale
house is the central point in the city's waste disposal process as it's where
customers essentially log how much waste they've dumped at the landfill which is
then used to charge the customer as illustrated on the slide. Over the last
three fiscal years the scale house has processed about 11 million dollars in
revenue annually through this process. So specifically the audit evaluated
transaction processing, credit account billing, and training activities and I'll
begin by discussing transaction processing. In general transactions should
be accurately charged and any changes made to transactions once they're
complete such as edits, voids, or refunds should require adequate review. The scale
house currently uses two systems to create and process transactions. The first
is a scale management software that weighs trucks as they enter and exit the
landfill to determine the amount due based on the type and tonnage of waste
dumped. The second is a payment processing software. In order to process
the transactions scale house staff manually enter the amount due from the
scale management software into the payment processing software before taking
the actual payment from the customer. Based on a review of a random sample of
40 completed transactions we found all customers were accurately charged
according to the rates listed in the city's utility rate book. In addition we
found that scale house management the scale has management reconciles
transactions daily by comparing reports from the scale management and payment
processing softwares. Scale house management then provides a revenue
report to the finance department for accounting purposes. That being said we
found that all scale house staff can void transactions that are still in
progress and the scale management software which increases the risk that
customers may dump waste without paying. Based on review of 40 sorry 39 weighted
transactions we found that less than half had a clearly documented reason for
the trend for the transaction change making it difficult to determine if the
void was appropriately. Similarly scale house management are able to edit
completed transactions however we found that almost two-thirds of edits did not
have a clearly documented reason for the transaction change. Furthermore editing
transactions may create the need for scale house staff to issue refunds
however no additional documentation of the refunds justification or approval of
the refund is retained. So while voids edits and refunds of transactions may
need to may be needed to ensure customers are billed accurately ensuring
these alterations are appropriately documented and reviewed will decrease
the risk of fraud. And based on their management responses solid waste plans
to create documented procedures for these processes and will limit refund
issuance to supervisors and will institute monthly management reviews of
transaction changes. Next solid waste has recently opened a second lane for
customers to use when entering the landfill. The second lane requires
customers to scan a card which automatically populates their empty truck
weight into the scale management system allowing them to exit the landfill
without having to get weighed a second time. In order to receive this card
customer must have a credit account with the city so they can be billed by the
city's customer service division for the waste dumped monthly instead of having
to pay each time they're on on site at the landfill. And this program was
implemented to help reduce the time customers spend in the landfill to dump
their waste. Based on a comparison of three months of billing invoices created
by customer service and the associated charge reports provided by the scale
house all appeared to be billed accurately. That being said this process
requires customer service to manually enter charges provided by the scale
house into the city's utility billing software which has resulted in billing
errors in the past. In addition having a credit account benefits a landfill
customer by reducing the time they spend in the landfill. However according to
scale house staff this benefit is not openly marketed to all landfill
customers instead staff have historically approached large volume
commercial customers about the program and asked them to complete an
application. Scale house staff stated that they used the applications to
ensure the customer had a minimum credit rating as well as met certain other
criteria. However there's no written eligibility criteria. Further the scale
house has not retained any applications for the credit account program making it
difficult to evaluate if customers were treated consistently during this process.
Based on their management response solid waste plans to continue working with
customer service to streamline the billing process and is in the process of
developing written eligibility criteria for the program. Finally I found that
when onboarded scale house staff received training on processing
transactions that included information on the city's recycling program, different
types of waste collection trucks, and details on using the city scale house
management software. In addition the city requires all employees who handle cash
or cash equivalents like checks to receive cash handling certificate
from the finance department which must be obtained every three years. Based on
review all but one of the nine scale house staff had an active certificate
but compliance with this requirement is not actively monitored by scale house
management. Last scale house staff do not receive safety training when they're
onboarded unlike other solid waste division staff. The department does host
monthly safety trainings for its staff but we found that scale house employees
do not regularly attend these meetings. While the scale house is generally the
least dangerous work area compared to waste collection and landfill
compaction they are still regularly around waste collection trucks and on
landfill property so for this reason we recommended that onboarding safety
training for scale house stack be developed. And based on their management
responses solid waste plans to develop onboard this onboarding safety training
and are in the process to develop cash handling train to track cash handling
training requirements. In summary we issued a total of eight recommendations
all of which the department concurred with. Based on that response on their
responses we believe identified risks will be appropriately addressed and we
plan to conduct a follow-up review in the next 18 to 36 months probably in
conjunction with the follow-up review of the second phase. So questions on this one.
Thank you. Questions for staff? Councilor Watts?
Madison thank you so much for as you were presenting and as I was listening to the
data I just thought good heavens we made such a great choice. So thank you so much
for just your professionalism your just attention to detail and bringing it to
this body because I think it's just done wonders for for our departments to really
help us look into these things that you know everybody's busy and this is why we
have an internal auditor. So my question isn't just just for my own information
you said there were 39 I believe voided transactions and what was the what was
the time frame that that covered was that just that you discovered through
your audit what's the time frame of that? So that was a sample that we took from
about a year I believe of time period I believe it was a year and I think we
found that half of those had a clearly documented reason. What was the what was
the dollar amount for the 39 do you do you have that information? I don't have
it in front of me I'm sorry I could get that for you. No that's good yeah but it
sounds like half of them had a document reason the other half didn't so 20 didn't
so over a year's time I mean gosh I'm not sure how many transactions go through
that scale house but but again that's the attention to detail that is so
critical important that you bring that you bring with your expertise so thank
you so much for that. Thank you. Any other questions? Seeing none okay. Yes I'll call
that item C ID 221166 receive report hold a
session and give staff direction regarding audit project 009 capital
projects administration. There we go figured it out this time hello I'm still
Madison Rorschach Denton City Auditor I'm here to present our findings from this
follow-up review of our capital projects administration audits so just as a quick
reminder audit follow-up reviews are intended to provide information on what
changes have been made in response to an issued audit this review was based on
the recommendations and management responses originally compiled in the
audits of capital project administration planning and design and construction
which were issued as two separate reports in May of 2020. The two reports
were phase one and three of that audit project which covered the effectiveness
of controls over capital project management process and a follow-up report
covering phase two over property acquisition was issued in April of this
year and was since it was separated since real estate is now a division of
development services instead of the CIP department. So in general this audit
found that improvements have been made when documenting planning and design
activities complying with procurement regulations and contract terms and
performing quality assurance activities consistently however formalization of
these procedures is still in progress. So just a quick summary before we discuss
specific findings I wanted to give a brief overview of the capital improvement
project management process this starts when the city identifies the capital
need based on various studies evaluations or other plans the state the
stakeholders must then be identified so that they can provide input on the
project scope budget and schedule which should be documented in the project
charter for the city's project management manual. Once the charter is
established a design agreement is executed in accordance with the Texas
Professional Services Procurement Act and the design consultant produces plans
for review using a 30% 60% and 90% design process and that process is
intended to allow the project stakeholders chances to provide
comments and notes throughout the design to ensure that the plans meet their
needs and expectations. In order to ensure that these any issues are
addressed throughout this process design review comments should be documented and
retained. Once the plans are finalized solicitation for the construction is
issued and must be procured in accordance with Texas local government
code as well as the city's procurement policies and then finally the project
enters construction during which contractors must be paid for their
construction progress in accordance with the contract terms. In addition any
discrepancies between the plans and site must be timely addressed in construction
materials and work should be tested and inspected to ensure they meet the city's
quality standards before the work is accepted by the city. So now I'll talk
about our findings beginning with the planning and design phases. The original
audit found that while the city had implemented a project management manual
to guide its CIP staff the manual was not always followed specifically many
planning documents outlining the project stakeholders and the
responsibilities as well as plans to manage project risks were often
unavailable. In addition the project management manual states that the city
will use the 30 60 90 percent design process as we just discussed however
during the original audit documentation of plans and stakeholder input at each
design stage was often missing. Since the original audit all the city's project
managers are now required to obtain the project management professional
certification and internal training on project management processes has been
developed and rolled out to all relevant departments. Further while we found that
some planning and design documentation required by the project management
manual was still missing or was missing this documentation had generally
improved since the original audit. Specifically we found that four of the
eight sample projects reviewed had all required had all had required design
documents based on their current design stage and based on discussions with CIP
management some of these issues are likely due to trying to complete
projects that were initially conceived of more than five years ago. Last the
project management manual has not been updated since the original audit
however according to CIP department management they had begun updating the
manage the manual but put that project on hold when they began implementing a
new construction project management software. Based on discussions with staff
the software implementation is almost complete so the project management
manual update project is expected to resume in the next couple months. On the
financial side there are generally three primary compliance points during the
course of a construction project. One is procuring the project design agreement
two procuring the actual construction contract and then three paying for the
projects construction per the contract terms. During the original audit we found
that project design agreements were generally procured and amended
appropriately though it was occasionally unclear if the most qualified vendor was
awarded the agreement as required by law. Since then the city has implemented a
process to reevaluate a short list of design consultants to provide further
assurance that this requirement is complied with. For construction contracts
the original audit found that most were procured in accordance with state
regulations though some change orders were not approved appropriately. Based on
review of a sample of four projects this no longer appears appears to be an issue
in addition the city has implemented a change board to ensure change orders to
construction contracts are necessary and have appropriate review and the city's
begun putting contingency allowance into their contracts to expedite the change
order authorization process when needed. For construction contract payments the
original audit found an issue with the contractor being paid incorrectly due to
a calculation error and found that payments had been made from materials on
hand and partial retainage despite not being allowed for the contract. Based on
review of 29 payment applications we found that the invoicing process had been
standardized helping to ensure calculation errors did not occur and that
procedures for requesting and tracking payments for materials on hand had been
developed and we also found that all 29 payment applications appeared to be
accurate based on the original contract. Finally the contractor is required to
construct the project in accordance with the construction plans and city
standard details and specifications. Occasionally the contractor may come
across discrepancies between the actual job site and the construction plans
which requires them to submit a request for information or RFI. During the
original audit that we we found that this process was generally handled
through email making it difficult to track if an RFI was resolved timely. Since
the original audit the city has implemented a new construction project
management software through which contractors can submit their request for
information. This system allows a contractor to input a due date and
automatically notifies the project manager when an RFI is submitted
facilitating tracking and timely resolution. Similarly the original audit
found that inspectors were documenting their on-site observations and
inspection results inconsistently in Word documents making it difficult to
track and monitor the resolution of any non-conforming inspection results or
on-site issues. Now the new system allows all on-site observations to be tracked
and if any issues are found the record can be marked aiding in review later. In
addition standard inspection forms have been developed to guide inspectors when
conducting their work and this process also automatically creates an
observation if an item on the inspection list fails which can be assigned to the
contractor for resolution facilitating tracking and monitoring. Lastly the city
has adopted new specifications that are customized for the city. As part of this
contractors are required to submit additional materials tests that are
performed by a third party however this third party is generally hired by the
contractor which increases the risk that test results may be inaccurate when
provided to the city. To mitigate this risk the city has the ability to require
retesting at any time and has a contract for their own testing agency and that
they can use if needed. That being said as part of the original audit we
recommended that the department develop a random retesting program to try to
further mitigate this risk. However this type of program has not been developed
due to resource constraints. So in summary we found that 12 of the 18
originally issued recommendations are now implemented with five in progress
that and they're likely to be addressed once the project management manual is
updated. Finally we did find that one recommendation had not been implemented
as shown on the slide and based on discussions with CIP management a
request to implement a program like this was submitted in the fiscal year 2023
budget to acquire equipment that would allow the city to perform their own
tests but that budget amendment was not approved. So in general this
recommendation seems to be not have been implemented due to resource
constraints. Based on that info on all of this we plan to conduct an informal
follow-up review in the next 12 to 18 months to determine if this project can
be considered complete and I won't answer any questions. Questions for staff
thank you. Mayor Pro Tem and then Councilman Watts. Thank you mayor. So what I
what I love seeing is there was a lot of improvement and you know there was
obvious advancement in the metrics and lots of substantial compliance. There's a
little bit of not delay slow slow full implementation slower full implementation
and and I think and I'm gonna ask what I thought I heard you say was that a lot
of the viscosity might just be to the age of the project is that what what I
heard? Yes basically the department put a cutoff date of hey if we're already in
construction we're not going to go back and create planning documentation for
that because just because our project management manual says so does that
make sense? Do okay so okay following on from that is that fine in your audit or
do we need to not go ahead and bite the bullet and do it where do we feel
that that falls out? I mean obviously we would prefer compliance with our policies
and procedures however I think there's some logic to we're in construction all
of those goals that we would have put in planning they're planning documents
right so if we're already doing it post planning right why we're not planning at
that point we're just creating documentation. And so but but then
following on from that does that impact our quality assurance and project
oversight? If we if it's a little more nebulous in terms of deliverables? I don't
believe it impacts like the quality of construction it might just impact our
ability to report on what we thought the project was going to be like in the
terms of what it actually is because we don't have that documentation of
originally this is what we thought it was going to look like. And and and if I
might the the quality over the quality assurance and project oversight is that
for all capital projects or just our internal ones? So like if we build a
thing or we do a road or or whatever or is it for our subcontractors as well?
I believe that public works inspection also inspects like developer contract
projects if that's what you're asking. Yes. I'm not certain if they have the
same process we haven't reviewed that specifically so I can't speak to that
exactly. But for this audit it is it is internal projects? Yes it's all it's all
the projects managed by the city. All right thank you so much I appreciate it.
Councilmember Watts. Thank You Mayor. Madison and I know it's under quality
assurances but I think what we've seen just recently in the past you know we've
had some construction projects in particular the micro seal that was going
on where there might have been some deficiencies once the project was
completed. Could you just and if it's not if this isn't your purview that's fine
and I'll just ask the city managers miss maybe for a memo or something but could
you help us understand from an audit perspective what processes are in place
once a project is completed and I guess it's would the correct term would be
whether it's delivered and accepted or not by the city. What are our remedies
and do we have processes in place that if there is a construction defect if
there is a massive failure of some type of technique that really creates a big
issue how is that addressed or how was that looked at or was it looked at
through the audit on what do we have in place to identify those to track them to
remedy them and then also to mitigate any of the financial costs? I believe that
we have within our contracts like a one-year warranty period essentially
where we can call the contractor back if there's like significant failure please
correct me if I'm wrong somebody from public works or engineering I believe
that to be true from when we did the original audit as far as monitoring that
goes I think that that's there's not like specific hey in six months we're
gonna go out and make sure that this road still looks fine for capital projects
like this. I believe the microsuit you're talking about is a project that
was done through streets or no it wasn't it was it was a project done through
streets yes yeah yeah so it's a little bit different process okay I appreciate
that clarification that's great thank you for that information so what I'm
hearing you say is that once we take acceptance of something we may have a
one-year warranty but we either we don't or we haven't identified or we're not
sure if there is a process in place whereby within that year we go back and
take a look at these projects to see if there's some type of failure otherwise we
would just be relying upon I guess either citizens to report it or just
sort of an unintentional observation through some other activity is that
that's my understanding but I'm gonna let the public works inspections manager
address that okay thank you
West McBride the public works inspections manager yes we do have it's
actually a two-year performance bond that's the warranty for it and we do
randomly go back and check the site and ensure that it is meeting our
specifications and anytime that we find something that is non-compliant or we
find a defect we do request the contractor to come back I appreciate
that information West so is that when you say random is that like forever
capital improvement project that the city does is there you go back out and
inspect every six months or one time or is it just I mean is there a is there a
planned process in place that people follow once those projects are completed
we usually do a final inspection for it about three months prior to the warranty
coming coming up to ensure but then we'll usually make a pass through it at
one year as well okay all right thank you so much that's great information
appreciate it thanks okay any other question Councilor Davis thank
you mayor on the materials random retesting is random retesting a best
practice from from other cities or from the from the industry the only reason
why I really ask if I don't necessarily have a problem with random retesting is
the solution for good quality assurance and making sure we're getting good call
quality assurance but as far as I'm aware that the that retesting is done by
technical and engineering firms that have to have accreditations and things
like that like there's a reason why a contractor has to go hire a third party
they don't have their own equipment to do their own testing they have to hire an
accredited third party so I'm wondering if it's if it's just as good to know
more about the testing facility or the testing firm or if we really need to go
through the I mean I'm not I'm not really sure the answer is for us to buy
equipment to do materials testing unless we can you know get some efficiencies
out of that doing our own testing for our own internal projects I guess I just
really need to know more about that before I'm willing to think that that's
the best solution to do random retesting versus better knowing the firms and
having a better trust of the independent firms that are being used for the
testing or if staff solution not already solution but the staff solution is to buy
equipment I'm if that comes back around I guess I'd need to know a lot more
about internal efficiencies and if we're really getting bang for our buck out of
having that equipment ourselves versus what we do for a lot of areas which is
and that last part that's not for you that's for the city manager and staff to
know that lots of firms that do materials testing and own their own
equipment and it's usually the economics bearer paying the bear in favor of
paying a firm to do it from the occasional use of it versus owning our
own equipment yes I think I don't remember exactly what if we had a from
the original audit what the best practice was if we we had one I think
the identification was there were some tests that we were doing ourselves or
we hired a contractor to do and then there were some that we were like well
we'll just have the contractor submit that to us and in terms of thinking
about risk there obviously one is a little more risky than the other you're
totally correct that they are required to be certified and things like that so
I think it's really just a discussion of what risk are we mitigating and how much
cost would that be we had a recommendation to mitigate risk but if
the city's willing to accept that amount of risk then that I think that makes
sense you know what I mean yeah I do and I appreciate that I guess I'm saying
just from where I'm sitting my level heartburn with that particular piece of
risk and the whole puzzle of CIP is pretty low understandable mayor potential
thank you mr. mayor councillor Watson councillor Davis is a question sparked a
couple full on if you might so how often do we make claims on our bonds I mean we
have them to protect us they're there to fulfill that role so like I guess my
question is how often are we pulling that lever that's not an answer I have
currently I don't know if they could answer that or if not I can get you an
answer yeah I mean it's not an immediate answer I can take an answer
later not trying to put anybody on spot sure trevor crane director of capital
projects so I would say very rarely yeah we do a lot of I'll say very rarely now
that we've moved away from the low bid especially usually get what you pay for
so as far as using that low bid contractor we had a lot more issues with
those so we're moving into a better quality of contractor and really pushing
that kind of teamwork mentality as far as delivering these projects so the
contractors are just as invested in delivering a good product as we are and
delivering one for the city so I would say very rarely we do we use that we do
a lot of you know checks and balances punch lists before we close out a
project to make sure we're happy with what that that project looks like and
the product that we're getting and usually they're very responsive if we
something comes up in the meantime and we find an issue or something like that
very responsive to getting back out these contractors you know we're starting
up they want to work in the city of Denton they know we have a lot of work
coming up so they were very responsive to us if we find any issues and helping
us mitigate those so just just so that I could report back more of a success
story than then I think maybe some people are aware low priority if we could you
know take a stab at that kind of number I would love to hear like oh three
occurrences or one occurrence or or whatever I'm not asking you to do it now
but yeah I'm trying to think in the three years I've been here I can't
remember maybe one that we've had an issue with the contractor not wanting to
come back and and do things so okay very rarely and then to counselor Davis's
question about that the testing and and we get the companies our subs sub out
further to do testing after they finished the project is what I was
hearing so but that's random I'm not sure where where the testing and
randomness and you know I mean if they're testing every project but we're
only reporting random why aren't we getting all the results and I think that
means I didn't hear it properly sure sir our contract specifications dictate how
often that the the contractor has the test whatever it is whether it's
concrete compaction things like that the way that our contract is set up is that
the contractor is responsible for securing that testing firm so I think
the point that Madison was getting out is that that could be that kind of view
of impropriety that who's paying that bill so the the testing lab is
responsible to the contractor in the way it's currently set up we have very
rarely had issues with a testing firm that you know we feel like is you know
falsifying information things like that but we do have that separate RFQ or that
separate testing lab that's that we're paying the bill for to kind of double
check those test results as those if there's ever an issue where we're you
know kind of thinking that doesn't really sound right let's go out and get
some testing just to kind of double check those things so that's that's kind
of where we're getting that I think where Madison's going with with that with
that statement all right that makes more sense I appreciate the clarification
thank you any other questions seeing none thank you very much thank you takes
us to item D ID 2 2 2 4 2 7 receive report whole discussion give staff
direction regarding the villas of Piney Creek original development construction
and existing condition of infrastructure regarding the homeowners
Association request to be dissolved
and so to be clear no direction at this point am I right or the are you what we
need to give direction just so we can have the context yes sir we are gonna
request that you do give us some direction is that that's okay all right
thank you you're not saying it there we go good evening or afternoon I guess
mayor and council Becky Divini city engineer general manager of public works
I have a whole slew of folks here with me today to help answer questions Julie
Wyatt and I are gonna share this presentation and I'm gonna apologize in
advance for my voice I am NOT contagious I have a sinus infection and I got a
steroid shot so that I actually had a voice to be able to speak to you today
about this matter so why are we here today the request was made by the villas
of Piney Creek HOA to dissolve and the city take ownership and maintenance of
the private streets drainage improvements and all other assets what
staff would like to do today is receive direction regarding the villas of Piney
Creek their original development which Julie will go over the construction and
existing condition of the infrastructure regarding the homeowners Association and
their request to be dissolved I'm going to turn it over to Julie let her talk
about the background from the planning perspective and then we'll go through
the existing condition good afternoon Julie Wyatt senior planner and I'm just
gonna talk a little bit about the project history so the villas of Piney
Creek began in 1995 the subdivision is located just northwest of the mall just
north of San Jacinto I believe it includes 36 single-family dwellings one
open-space lot I put in the presentation five private streets some residents just
inform me that that while under current standards if it if a street turns we
consider that a new street but when this property developed that was just all one
street so it's actually four streets a private drainage system public water and
wastewater and then public electric that was what was included within the
subdivision it had an HOA to maintain those those community assets but as as
the as the neighborhood has aged through the years they're having difficulty
maintaining those private streets with the current HOA dues those HOA dues are
about $900 a year and they pay the utility bills and mow those common areas
so that's why we're here today so as I mentioned it began in 1995 as a plan
development and it was always intended to have the private streets as a
private gated community and it had a detail plan under the 1991 code I mean
it's developed consistent with that detail plan this phase of it I mean it
included those community assets like the private streets there was a final plat
and HOA docs were approved by the Planning and Zoning Commission in 1995
and that included that plat included a common area lot to accommodate those
private streets and nested within that is a public utility easement to
accommodate the public water and sewer those streets don't meet the minimum
widths that that we have within the transportation criteria manual as well
as the sidewalks don't meet the ADA standards and Becky and the other subject
matter experts will go into that a little more detail so it was it was it
started its life as a plan development when we adopted the 2002 Denton
Development Code we got rid of PDs and so the zoning transition to neighborhood
residential 6 and then with the adoption of the 2019 Denton Development Code it
transitioned to r6 about gated communities more broadly so after after
this development was was under construction the city did adopt
standards for gated communities in 2007 and it was an amendment to that 2002
Denton Development Code and it allowed for gated communities with privately
maintained streets and there was a variety of requirements associated with
those gated communities that that was carried forward within the 2019 Denton
Development Code with one change and that any new private gated communities would
have to be approved only through the plan development process and really those
standards were related to those private streets the design the ownership and the
maintenance of those private streets and now I'm gonna turn it over to Becky for
things to consider thank you Julie so wanted to kind of go through some things
that we'd like for you to consider so currently the city of Denton does not
have an ordinance that clearly defines the dissolving of an HOA along with
outlining those responsibilities and the process for doing so there's also the
cost for the city to evaluate the HOA seeking the dissolution of the private
infrastructure so some questions you might ask yourself is what the existing
conditions is the HOA to fund the formal assessment based on the city
requirements is that something we're asking the city to do and then as far as
ongoing maintenance of course there's roadway infrastructure water wastewater
infrastructure electric infrastructure some open space Parkland water meters
and we'll go into that in a little bit greater detail and the other thing I
wanted to bring to your attention is there's some subdivisions that are in a
similar condition as the villas of Pawnee Creek I think you're all familiar
with Robeson Ranch Tuscan Hills Ellison Park and then there's three that are
currently under construction the Carmel Villas the Oaks of Township and the
vintage townhomes those all are in the similar condition where they all have
private streets this initial assessment that staff did was performed by
multiple individuals throughout multiple departments I'm going to just give you
kind of a high-level overview I know it's a lot of information and very
detailed and as far as the streets they're currently owned and maintained by
the HOA they're made of concrete material the cul-de-sacs do not meet the
28 foot radius they're below the minimum and the drive approaches mainly all
exceed the maximum drive approach angle of 8% one thing that you could think
about or a potential consideration is that the design and construction of all
these streets within the development is not in compliance with the current city
standards along with the appropriate right-of-way acquisition that would be
needed to reconstruct the cul-de-sacs to the appropriate standards so just
something for you to consider an estimate to reconstruct the roadway this
is without the right-of-way cost of these roadways in this vicinity is
approximately two to two and a half million dollars the sidewalks are also
owned and maintained by the HOA the sidewalks do not meet current ADA
standards I will tell you that there are ramps that are not constructed to
current standards and there's many obstructions located within the
sidewalks if you've driven this neighborhood you will see electric boxes
you will see mailboxes and you will also see driveway slopes that do not meet the
criteria and so there's not an ADA compliance anywhere in the neighborhood
for them for the most part very hard to determine the estimated cost because at
this point the way that the sidewalks are constructed it's very difficult to
see whether we would be able to actually meet the ADA compliance with the slope
of the driveway and the actual obstructions that would have to be moved
out of the sidewalks as far as drainage it's also owned and maintained by the
HOA there's not very many issues that currently were observed but in order to
do a formal assessment we would actually need to perform what's called a CCTV
it's a camera investigation of the pipeline that would cost about $30,000
and enable to in order to enable us to evaluate the pipe I'm sorry I can spit
that out also I would tell you that there are obstructions along the curb
line where the driveway meets the actual street where concrete has been filled in
so that individuals can get into their driveways so there's many areas where
there are obstructions at the curb line we would believe that it could cost
approximately 250 to 300 thousand dollars to replace the storm drain in
this neighborhood and I will say that that's a caveat that we have not been
able to do a formal assessment because we do not have at the CCTV performed in
this area a couple of other items from water wastewater perspective the city
currently maintains the water and sewer assets that are located in the public
utility easements Julie spoke to the one thing that the HOA does maintain are two
water meters what we would assume through this process is if the HOA was
to dissolve those meters would become a part of the Parks Department and be
their responsibility as a part of another open space they would have to
maintain and be responsible for the irrigation and mowing along with the
billing we did pull the billing that has been happening over the last several
years and park staff estimates it'd be approximately eight hundred dollars per
month to maintain the open space islands of a couple of the areas that actually
have meters as far as the parks open space this is an interesting one it's
owned and maintained by the HOA it was by plat however the owner is a private
individual he is not someone that is living within the actual villas of Pawnee
Creek an evaluation would be done of the open space so that we could actually
look into that and and parks would want to consider obviously if we were to take
that land over to put a neighborhood park in that area they would estimate
that they would put in a playground a trail and maybe a pavilion you can see
the cost data in that area it would be close to a million dollars to install a
neighborhood park in that vicinity but like I mentioned the individual who owns
that actual lot is not a homeowner of villas of Pawnee Creek as far as streets
lights and electrical service it's owned and maintained I'm sorry the street
lights are owned and maintained by the HOA DME does to provide the electrical
service to the site the HOA owns the existing street lights and as they
would need to be replaced the city would go in and make those modifications they
own non DME standard post ops they look similar to some of the lights that you
might see downtown so DME would want to do an evaluation of all of the light
poles look at their conditions see if they need to be replaced it's estimated
with the light poles themselves or streetlights themselves there are nine
currently it would be about forty five thousand dollars to replace and bring up
to city standard I will tell you that the actual electrical service that's
being provided to the city I'm sorry to the individuals that live within the
city of this HOA at this time the condition of that electrical service and
infrastructure would be performed but obviously it's operating and they are
receiving their electrical feed at this time so next steps and really what we
need council direction on you know I need to know does the council want the
city to explore the dissolution of the villas of Pawnee Creek if that is
something that you're interested in us looking into then we would want to talk
about what those next steps will be one we'd like to have a neighborhood meeting
and we're not sure and would want to gauge the interest of all the
neighborhood individuals that live in the neighborhood and gain a consistent
consistent consensus of the potential changes of course we would want to do
our formal assessment I talked about this just a little bit but of course it's
the utilities the storm drain there's great inlets at every single one of the
locations that's not a city standard we do not allow great inlets on storm
drains we would have to do the formal assessment of the sidewalks and street
conditions look at the available right away the water wastewater would have to
evaluate the water meters and the locations and water uses parks would
want to evaluate the existing open space of course DME would look at their
existing light poles the condition the number that need to be updated and then
we would work with the planning department development services team to
research the street and drainage dedication and we would have to do the
necessary research to do that along with the necessary part dedication we would
have to do a formal assessment and research that dedication as it is a
current lot plotted by the HOA so next steps also would be with the dissolution
of the HOA this is really Julie's home but the DDC cannot be dissolved without
the cities and consent and I'll read it says the homeowners Association may not
be dissolved nor made deed restrictions and covenants providing for maintenance
of common areas be deleted or amended without the prior written consent of
the planning and zoning Commission by way of plat amendment a plat to amend or
dissolve the HOA would require the signatures of all property owners within
the plotted subdivision boundaries and the planning and zoning Commission could
not approve a plat amendment to facilitate the HOA dissolution without
the HOA first disposing of the private streets drainage improvements and other
assets that are owned by the HOA and with that I am going to stop sharing and
I have representatives from every department imaginable along with Julie
and myself to answer any question this was a group effort and I want to thank
all the city staff that worked on this together because it did take individuals
from every individual department throughout the city so real quick to set
some guard guidelines and guardrails so the undeveloped space is that do we know
what percentage that is of the entire area meaning could they trigger a
supermajority just that alone that one owner I do not believe so but I'm gonna
ask Julie to help us answer that question okay great and then while she's
looking at that mr. city attorney do you want to speak to us rules taxpayer
money that sort of thing kind of just give us the your understanding of what
those parameters are so that we're all operating from the same space yeah I
mean effectively right now the city could not go out there and maintain the
roads or do anything to repair the roads those are considered private that would
be considered a gift of city resources in violation of the Texas Constitution if
we were going to go out there today and do anything as far as maintenance of
those roads or any of those private amenities so what this effectively would
do is transfer all of those assets to the city so they would become cities
assets that's the only way we could actually go out there and maintain those
items if we own them okay and then did I hear you write Becky say those we would
we couldn't do that as is we'd have to take it new is that did I hear you write
on that last slide I don't I just want to make sure I'm on the same page with
you so a couple of things one is we have the ability to take on the facilities
and their existing condition they do not meet city standards and we would not be
able to have the sidewalks meet ADA compliance and we do not know the
condition of the storm drain so we're taking on risk and we feel like that we
have we need the opportunity to do the evaluation this was just an initial
condition assessment what I was mentioning was with the dissolution of
the HOA it is a neighborhood meeting everyone who owns a home within the
villas of Piney Creek they all have to have a signature within the plotted
boundary to amend the plat to allow this to dissolve so it is a whole individual
group of every 35 home 36 homes that would have to agree to the dissolution
sir and then one last thing sorry yes plot amendment cost like that whole kind
of go to P&Z get a plat amendment that sort of thing what is that overall
general cost like cuz that's that's that's step one if we get there right just
kind of one understand what that I believe the city fees are about a
thousand dollars and then whatever the the surveyor costs Tina's coming up
right Tina Fargan's deputy director of development services so yes we a plat
would need to be prepared to provide for the basically the abandonment of the
streets so typically I'm gonna take that one step so that that's separate that's
a separate engineered has to be hired to correct that work okay correct so that's
what was gonna you kind of stole my thunder there no that's all right but
yes and a registered land or professional land surveyor would have to
be retained in order to prepare a plat to update or actually they probably use
the base plot information that's filed of record but that would all need to be
updated and reflect that those streets are being dedicated or all of those
assets are being dedicated to the city so there is a cost associated with that
and what that would be I have no idea okay and in our process application
etc correct thousand dollars or so round numbers at least yes if not more so I
know we do cost recovery on our development fees my apologies I don't
have those committed to memory no worries okay got it questions for staff
member Tim I really appreciate the mayor's questions it goes to and it's
probably a group of you and I'm not sure who respond but it sort of falls down in
stages if we do nothing and I'm gonna come back to where I'm jump off of the
mayor's question if we do nothing and the HOA fails what what is the
consequence of that if they can no longer maintain the streets and do the
pieces that that Julie described that they're covering that they're just
they're they're a business failure what happens they just they have pothole
streets their sewers collapse we have certain obligations don't we to people
inside our city limits so I don't know when that kind of thing kicks in and I
mean can you help me understand like if we say no no too much and we back away
and we let them fail what happened what does failure look like what does it mean
so keep in mind the water and wastewater our city assets so if they need to be
replaced need to be repaired the city is going to go in and make that
improvement and they will be on a normal cycle for reconstruction as far as if
they fail I'll have to yield to the city attorney because I'm not sure that any
of us have thought of that question and what the next steps are I've not been
involved in that process I mean I've seen it before in another city and it's
a difficult conversation and it's a difficult issue for the whole city
because what happened there was the streets failed they were full of potholes
the rebar was ticking out and the city couldn't put the fire trucks on those
roads and so the city had to send him a letter saying we can no longer provide
that fire service because we can't get those fire trucks on your streets safely
and so it was up to this neighborhood they had to get together figure out how
they were gonna raise the funds in order to maintain those roads and so it's a
it's a difficult situation because there there may be challenges in getting fire
apparatus on those types of streets if they get not the type of condition well
and I can add in another community that I worked in we had a private street
subdivision similar situations the streets fell into disrepair and it ended
up being I believe that the city entered into an agreement with the HOA to
provide for the repair to the streets and some of the maintenance associated
with it but if memory serves me correctly a lien was actually established
on each of the lots to be able to establish the each of those property
owners financial responsibility associated with the maintenance and as
provided for in the terms of the agreement and that launches me into like
piggybacking on the mayor's concern or what I heard was the mayor concerned and
that is who's paying for this yes and so you know we have sort of two levels of
pay we have the pay who's paying for the investigation and to determine we have
sort of crude ballpark numbers but there's a lot of questions that we have
as a city as to the status of things so who pays for that investigation and then
I guess you went you start to answer the second question either they would have
to contract with us or dedicate the streets to us and we would take them
over but then we would have to pay to upgrade them right that's my concern
mayor pro tem is we have done a preliminary work here which has taken a
lot of staff time quite frankly now we were back here telling you there's
unknowns here and we going through to look at the drainage is just one unknown
but you've got great you've got roads that are not satisfactory you've got
sidewalks that are not satisfactory so the city should not bear any of that
cost and as far as reviewing it any further or making any repairs because we
don't own it the recommendation is that if you want us to move forward we have a
public meeting to make sure that every one of those homeowners are actually
wanting to do this because that's we don't know that but number two the cost
of going to look at the drainage the $30,000 for the CCTV should be borne by
those individuals that own those homes there this was all this is not a part of
the city these are not city roads this is not the the grates are not ours the
sidewalks were not built by us and so for us to go in and do any kind of work
like that would and us to be responsible for it which we do not have the budget
for we do not have the budget for and not even for parks even though I don't
think that land I don't think it's open space I think it's a lot owned by
somebody that would have to give it to us if it was given to us we could make
it a park but you're talking about a total of probably when you look at all
that and add it up well over a million dollars just by parks of 750 and then
you add all the other work it's well over a million dollars that the city
would have to invest in and that's not even putting in new sidewalks or roads
so if I understand if I might mr. mayor follow up from that if I understand
really what we'd be looking at is if there is some desire to move forward we
would be looking at having the HOA pay for us to do the investigation and then
we would come back and make a decision I'd love to hear the rest of council's
views on this but I take all that thank you everyone any other questions
councilmember Davis counseling bird thank you mayor something mayor pro-10
said sparked some thoughts in my mind specifically about the city's
obligations and we have easements to provide the services that we are
obligated to provide we currently provide everything that we are obligated
to provide to this community you want to get into a bigger conversation about
citywide obligations that's a different that's a different question legally and
sectorally we're providing what we're obligated to provide when a developer
creates a gated community or a private streets community anything like that
they do so for reasons and when people buy homes in those places they do those
they do that for reasons either they want to be behind that gate or they want
to be in their smaller more close-knit feel community whatever their reasons
are they have their reasons for doing that and those reasons unfortunately for
the people who buy later down the road are pretty particular in time so I would
be extremely wary the staff gave us a few examples of gated communities in
town there are other communities in town especially because of places that we've
annexed and I don't really want to you know bring up the boogeyman of a similar
conversation we had in a more humanitarian vein a short time ago but
when we have annexed places around us we've taken in more places that are like
this neighborhood then you could probably fit onto one slide and if you
start to think about other places we might take in the future
muds that might want to annex in the future I think we set a very dangerous
precedent if we go into this without being very very clear about what it is
that we're trying to do what is our goal what are we trying to accomplish if the
goal is that they have roads they'd like to drive on they're in better condition
that is a different fix than the city taking over the roads I haven't heard
from another issue has anybody do we know if the HOA lot it's not an HOA lot
it's a privately owned lot being maintained by the HOA is that lot owner
an HOA is that a member lot of the HOA that that has to be one of the hundred
percent signatures we're like way car before the horse we ought to see a
hundred percent of the signatures before we're having this conversation and and
it's not just have a community meeting and have a discussion and most of the
people there it is literally every single property has to have a legal
representative whether it's a living trust or a single single person who
lives there every single property's got to have a legal representative sign on
the dotted line I think we need to see that before we go any further I mean one
more hour staff time and that's not because these folks don't deserve good
streets it's that somebody a long time ago figured out how they were going to
have streets and that is that neighborhood provides for its own
streets and if it's no longer able to do that they're they're gonna have to
figure something else out I think it's fair to point out that we do have
substandard by our current standards substandard streets in the city of Denton
that we have streets that are not constructed we built them years ago or
took them over years ago and they are not constructed to the standards we
would use today but as I think somebody pointed out in a committee meeting
yesterday what we like to do is bring things up to standard just as soon as we
possibly can and the first time somebody comes to council and says I can't use
this sidewalk because there's a fire hydrant in the middle of it and it's
your sidewalk to fix they're right that'd be our sidewalk to fix to move
around the electrical boxes and the fire hydrant in the light pole that that's my
direction I would like to see a document with a hundred percent of the property
signatures on it before the city spends any more time money on it and
unfortunately it's just the reality of the situation
Councilman Burke and I think it's also a great time to offer the opportunity for
us to do some research on you know a dissolving of a HOA and come up with
some type of ordinance we see that there are quite a few more out there but it's
great to at least have that footing maybe to you know figure out what what
happens next so that's where we are we're kind of at a crossroads as to
what's the big step so you know in terms of giving some input that would be mine
but it does not sound like we can move forward you know I've been agreeing with
him until we know that the neighborhood is fully in on it and everybody's you
know seated at the table to understand what the consequences are and councilman
Robert I think for us to move forward to look at some kind of ordinance we'd want
all the council to weigh in but the other factor is as what council member
Davis just mentioned and that is there are others out there and one of the
things I would highly recommend to the council to think about is if we do one
if we go out and take over one it sets a precedent for anything else that comes
before us from a standpoint of hey you took theirs we want you to take ours the
problem is we don't set aside money in our budget for these kinds of situations
and this is when I say a million dollars that's on the low end probably as to
what would have to happen not any offense to any of those homeowners there
but looking out for the taxpayers and the other taxpayers of the city who have
to foot those bills and so I would think what council member Davis is suggesting
is getting that full list of those people first then bringing it back to
council and getting direction to say yeah move forward or don't move forward I
just don't want our staff to spend any more time because they've spent a
considerable amount of stuff staff time that was not necessarily approved by
council but needed to be just to be able to bring you this okay anyone else
councilman I think mr. mayor just in an effort to give direction I appreciate
what what you said mr. Davis um that was also my concern particularly when I
heard the city manager say a lot of staff time has already been spent for
this we just don't know if we're gonna get a hundred percent signature so I
completely concur that part right there let's make sure we can actually get
signatures and then let's have this difficult conversation too I would I
would simply ask though any of our neighboring cities in the in the county
do they have any processes for something like this that you know of I don't know
if something like this has happened perhaps when mr. Watts was was mayor
that he might be able to speak to if if you all know any background on how other
other municipalities have dealt with anything like this there are other
cities within the Metroplex we've received some examples of those and
we've been working with the city attorney's office on the dissolve of a
HOA the city it didn't just currently doesn't have one thank you mr. mayor okay
anyone else customer what thank you thank you a couple of sort of foundational
questions and I know this didn't happen why I've been tenured have we ever had
this happen in the city where we have taken over a failed or a voluntarily
give up of an HOA I don't recall that but I don't know for sure but has that
happened before sir I'm not aware of that happening okay okay all right and
so is it my understanding that it's the P&Z really that has the ultimate
legislative authority through its platting powers to do this because it's
sort of like well yeah if everybody comes in and changes the plat well then
it's a new plat and effectively it works to dissolve the HOA is that I mean
they're the ones that have the final say on that given that all the other
conditions are met is that correct City Council doesn't look at it after that so
on the plat that is correct that's what we've assessed right now lack of any
other process being put in place so since the neighborhood or the subdivision was
established via plat then and those streets are dedicated or were dedicated
as HOA maintained facilities and then the plat would need to be updated so
that they're dedicated as public streets and whatever other infrastructure
considerations would have to take place so being that council has dedicated plat
approval authority to the planning and zoning Commission that's why the
Commission would take care of the plat but I guess if a we would have other
steps that would be accomplished before we got to that before we got to that
point well the council has sort of an informal the informal final say because
if they don't get the streets dedicated outside of the HOA and the other assets
that are required that's not gonna happen and nobody's really gonna take
that over but the city so if the city through the City Council doesn't decide
to do that it's all a moot point anyway I would agree okay yeah you know last
question on the the subdivisions that you listed that were similar private
subdivisions those all look fairly new probably within the last 10 or 15 years
I think for the most robes and ranches is older than that but yet but those how
many of those were were constructed outside of city specifications at the
time understanding that our specifications may have changed but when
those were built I mean if we were to have a private developer developer
develop private streets within a private subdivision would they not be required
to construct those two current city standards so councilmember why oh I'm
sorry I didn't know what no no I'm sorry go ahead so we would have to research
those neighborhoods and find out what standards they were built in built in
accordance with it's my understanding private private street subdivisions don't
have to be built to see okay so I was just confirming with Julie so private
streets ideally would be built to city standards for this immediate concern
right that we're discussing today so that they would have been built to the
standards that were in effect at that time in the event at some point in the
future the city ever had to take them over we at least knew what we were
inheriting presume if they were built to our standards so but but specifically
for these subdivisions I mean we would have to research them all to figure out
what how they were built into what standard well I mean I agree with
councilmember Davis in part and it's not that I disagree in part I agree that you
know it's been nice we shouldn't have any more conversation without
understanding if there's a hundred percent agreement to do this something
would have to change dramatically for me to even move forward to say even if
there's a hundred people or however many people 35 homeowners or whoever to say
that we should do this number one the precedent that this sets is is very
concerning and can be potentially alarming number two I was on council I
think as mayor when the subdivision behind this association came to get
developed and it was a big a big concern that you know some of that traffic would
be going through their neighborhood and so the end result was that there was an
emergency gate put there that would allow emergency vehicles but no emergency
traffic and they came you know I wasn't I don't think it was just individual
homeowners I think it was a collected effort so I understand their concern I
understand that currently there's not enough assessments to maybe take care of
future items but even if everybody signs off I probably am not going to be able
to get to where we should take this over I think we would could deal with the
issues as they arise but to take care of them based upon what's may happen in the
future I mean we still provide fire and police service do we not I mean if
there's a fire out there yes we do they do go out there they don't yes and we
still have water wastewater some solid waste solid waste as well so I just
think that the precedent-setting value and the cost and just this is what
everybody bargained for and I understand that sometimes those bargains don't
necessarily pan out but I'm gonna be real hard to put that on the back of the
rest of the taxpayers who you know really didn't have any say in how this
was developed and I don't mean that in any derogatory way or you know kind of
dismissive way or insensitive way to the current homeowners in that subdivision I
think they probably can understand if they were sitting in our shoes chairs
and standing in our shoes that you know they would have the same concern so I'm
not for any more time spent on this unless somebody comes forward saying hey
we're all ready to do it and even then I think we need to have a preliminary
discussion another one before we start telling people to spend money and do all
those kinds of things because this would be a huge huge undertaking and
unprecedented and I think could really send a message that we probably aren't
really want to send mayor from town thank you for your indulgence I didn't
provide direction but I'm gonna be similar to what we've heard I think I
need to see that the neighbors are all gonna be on the same page so I think
that's you know inconsistent with the rest of council and then sort of a half
step before councillor Watson that is I would think we'd have to have a clear
delineation of who's paying for the investigation of the needs and it
sounds like from the discussion that that would be on the back of the
homeowners Association to to you know these are the this this would be what you
need to come into compliance I think if we had both those I could see my way
clear to moving something forward but right I'd need to see those two before I
could move forward councilman Davis thank you mayor just to provide a little
bit more direction the way the other council members have and I want to be
really clear about expectations too I bring up you know the neighborhood buy-in
that the neighborhood signatures not to say that for me that would necessarily
trigger something automatic I want to be really clear about those expectations my
only point in bringing that up was to say that is like bare minimum step
number one I would be and I'd be happy to talk with the neighborhood a little
bit about this too but again I think we really need to think about what the goal
is is the goal really to have the city own these streets no matter what from
this neighborhood perspective or is their goal to have some streets they can
drive in drive on that see very very little traffic it's them and their
visitors do they really need city standard roads or do they have some
other goals that they need met that they're just they're currently not able
to meet with the way their HOA is set up the way that they're the other neighbors
are participating in and all that kind of stuff I'm just not sure that they're
not gonna spend a bunch of money to get to something that's not necessarily the
best fit for meeting the goal there may be a cheaper less expensive and and just
more expeditious way for them to do what they want to do and I wasn't really
clear and maybe it's better for a legal status or something like that on the the
interplay between the plat amendment and the dedication of city streets I mean
somebody can't I mean in theory you could you could file a plat and have it
approved that dedicates to the city something the city does not want to
accept but and I guess the the default is that somebody accepts land conveyed
to them but can we really be made to accept a white elephant you know because
the because the PNZ has amended a plat that's just something I need to know I
just need to be better educated on again just managing expectations I fall more
in line I think with councilmember Watts that I'd need to see I need to see a lot
more and I need to know a lot more about who's paying for what before I'd be
ready to have any more staff time spent on it so for me those signatures are
not like an automatic trigger to let's spend some more staff time on it I'm
saying that's a that's a floor that is a bare minimum and I really having a lot
of difficulty seeing where it would be we'd be justified in using taxpayer
money to take over streets that were not intended for the general public's use
okay anyone else yeah sure I think that it's it's really clear to us here on the
dais because we looked at the map and talked to these folks but I'm not sure
it's clear to everybody this neighborhood connects nowhere else
there's one road in and a series of cul-de-sacs there's no interconnection
nobody else in the city uses these streets except for the people who live
there and the people who go to visit them and I just think that's really
important for the record to be clear that they're private streets for a
reason they were decided to be private streets for a reason and that really
weighs in on my thinking okay anyone else so mayor I just want to be clear
what our direction is and that is we just are going to wait to see if we can
get every signature which is 36 households and then we'll come back
because we will not spend another city dollar to look down on the drainage to
do anything else to bring it forward and by no means is this and our
recommendations endorsing that this be taken over by the city as a matter of
fact that is not our recommendation so yeah that is the consensus I'll add my
notes this this neighborhood is is it's fantastic right it's a great group of
people and known them for a while and so for me here's what I don't want to you
know repeat what others have said I want to do some some quick math and say if
there's sit the citizens of Denton I advocate all the time that hey this is
your staff come talk to your city manager come talk to your city attorney
those sort of things and I think that holds true right and I think we've done
that and I think we we we meet that that that expectation and where I'm going
with that is I think there's maybe some knowledge gaps on how they can have some
internal conversations in their neighborhood and so what I just
straight-line math 36 households if they came and talked to the city manager for
our piece that's 36 hours and so what I would ask and kind of advocate for is
that we as a staff as a city put our heads together and give some guidance to
say here's a template here's a document that would then kind of educate you or
here's some math that would say you know how you get there or how you can't get
there but just kind of give almost like a and I know we've done a lot of work
already not discounting that but saying looking forward kind of use that to say
here's a pool of hours that we can consult with and kind of help you and
it's no different than anyone else would do it for right if a person reached out
to you and said hey I want to meet with the city manager you would oblige if
they say hey you want to go to lunch you would oblige and I know that because
you do it all the time anyway and so that's what I'm saying it's just like
hey let's let's give some guidance versus having them go and I know we've
done that I'm not saying we have not I'm saying looking forward so that they
don't have to go hire an attorney to say Texas says Texas says you know that sort
of thing so we can kind of help them have some hard discussions internally and
and I think ultimately just I again elephant room might as well pet it 36
houses $900 a house that's thirty two thousand four hundred dollars they're
never gonna save enough if they saved every dime from now for a very long time
infrastructure cost and that don't ever meet like that like that's never gonna
line up yeah you're gonna have to sell some houses so there's a lot to be
there's a lot of they're there right to get to that kind of money to repair that
infrastructure so just go in I say go in eyes wide open that I think staff needs
to look at those roads and say hey these are there and they're not in great shape
but they should hold the trash truck pickup for another 18 19 years whatever
whatever that math is that we kind of just you know back at a back of the
napkin math to say okay based on our experience we think we're okay here for
this number of years because at that point we may have to make a decision and
I really like what councilmember Davis said is it's not a whole rework it's a
it's a patchwork it's a by time it's let let them kind of do what they need to do
the other ask is that I think long term and this this goes it's counterintuitive
to the entire focus of the neighborhood but I think that's where I see value for
taxpayer is township to is it's fully built out but it's pretty deep in there
right that one there's a few roads in and out but they're pretty far away from
that end where they are so if there's a way to negotiate some kind of way and
I'm biased let me start by saying this those speed bumps behind that shopping
center behind Office Depot and all that drive me crazy so anything we could do
to connect the road to make that a through through street without the speed
bumps I'm in but but I say that to say it may become prudent for us to connect
somewhere to connect those those and again that goes against what the
neighborhood does right they they they are their private streets and smaller
and and for safety reasons that's great but I think long term if there's a if it
makes sense from a from a transportation plan to say citizens are better served
township to is better served to have another way out and they can go out by
the mall especially when you're talking about that that change at Dallas Drive
you took we hear about all the time how fast people come off there if there's
options to get into their neighborhood a different way in it and it benefits the
residents the entire city as a fair fair plan then hey let's talk about that
let's look at that I mean it's a tight squeeze that one land owner has a bunch
of land that may not that may not ever work but I think that's the one way that
I see it benefits the entire city from a mobility standpoint but and to Mayor
Watts point yeah no there there's not even there's a house there there's not a
gate so there's yeah so it is completely that that ship is sailed so that that's
my thoughts I think there's a pool of hours from a consulting standpoint give
direction I think from a transparent transportation standpoint if there's
ever if staff looks at it and says hey we can connect here here here and and
that benefits township to benefits the rest of the city great and anything we
can do to get rid of speed bumps behind Office Depot that's great
Councilman Watts yeah mayor I guess I'm a little confused so I'll just say I
don't think I'm in favor of I don't know exactly what you're instructing or
asking the city manager to do but I think that the issues are well laid out
and I liked Councilmember Davis's perspective of hey this isn't an all or
nothing it's but but I don't think the ball should be in our court I think the
ball should be in their court I mean you know madam city manager you said well we
just need to you know see if there's a hundred percent signatures me personally
that's not our job our job is we've had a couple meetings I think there's been a
lot of staff time with them so I don't know if I'm in favor of trying to tell
the city manager that hey go out there and consult with them and give them
information because you do that with everybody yes we do but I think her time
she understands her time and and the benefits of her time so I just needed to
say that because I don't know if that's what I've heard from the other council
members I mean I'm all for trying to find solutions but right now there's
even nowhere to even have a conversation without knowing that everybody's on board
and I just don't think that's the city's obligation to try to facilitate that I
think it's the Homeowner's Association to try to facilitate that. And Councilmember Watts I
didn't hear that I what I heard was is there lessons learned here that we can
put in in our back of our minds so when this if and when this comes up again
which by the way we have because we've looked at a matrix we we know now that
if another entity another neighborhood comes to us like this we have that list
that shows it list infrastructure and then it lists sort of what what the
infrastructure is and then it lists appropriate cost or approximate cost it's
that kind of thing yeah we're not gonna go out and meet we're gonna let them do
their due diligence and if they want to provide us with the signatures great if
not it's it's it stops there. Thank you. Councilmember Byrd. I don't really have
anything additional to add to this conversation other than the fact that
you know as a city as a representative for this particular group I do want to
let them know that you know they have been heard and they are here in the
conversation that we put our best foot forward to accommodate them as as well
as we possibly can at this point so I want you all to know that you know these
efforts are not taken lightly but you know it's just we have to consider the
collective of it all for the entire city so we're here and we hope to continue on
with some type of progress in whichever direction we need to take this. Thank you.
Okay that takes us to item F ID 221679 receive report hold discussion give
staff direction on pending City Council request and as they're coming up after
this we will this shouldn't you know it's it's times limited so this won't
take long then we'll be consent only one item pull seems like there's gonna be a
long discussion 630s when we have to start the other part we'll be in recess
till after this we'll probably take a break until like 615 and reconvene in
council chambers to take on consent and then get into public hearings I mean
individual consideration etc so yes correct me if I'm wrong earlier Mayor
Pro Tem wanted to pull H but then I thought he said he no longer needed the
presentation because we're gonna address it no I think Mayor Watts had questions
okay yeah I apologize yeah sorry thank you okay are you ready yeah okay good
evening mayor and council Monica Benavides assistant to the city manager
I'm here to introduce tonight's City Council pending requests for information
of which there are two as a reminder of this process up to seven requests will
be heard per meeting and tonight we have two that I will be introducing staff
will introduce each request the elected official that made the request will have
up to two minutes to describe and justify their request and remaining
elected officials will have up to one minute to provide feedback and indicate
their support for the use of staff time staff will respond to all requests where
consensus of council is established I won't read this slide verbatim however it
is a reminder of the priorities that can be set with that I will start with item
number one item number one is an interim informal staff report on our goal to
vision zero I want to preface this by saying that regardless of the two-minute
pitch outcome staff will provide information related to pedestrian
accident statistics and a future informal staff report if a consensus is
reached staff will compile a more thorough response so mayor pretend when
you're ready thank you everyone yeah I think you can see from that from that
last comment that staff is aligned what they were seeking is that because of the
intensity of my request going beyond a sort of standard two-minute pitch they
were they were just following our own guidelines and asking for council
direction to give them time to go and compile because it was going to be more
than just a standard council pitch but this all comes about from we had that
auto pedestrian accident bell and I was seeking additional statistical
information on accident on accident statistics along Bell but are also our
major arterials and along with streets and capital projects and traffic safety
to come back and provide suggestions as to ways to ameliorate these kinds of
pedestrian accidents and tell us which stakeholder whether it's us the county
the state or federal is responsible for that for those particular options and
give us a portfolio of choices that we can use and to treat this as just sort
of one time point along a larger vision zero narrative and so I asked I I'm
requesting that council give direction to go beyond the sort of standard two
hour so that we can get this kind of information and I'm only asking for a
medium priority and an informal staff report I'm not asking for a presentation
when that when that informal staff report comes back then then we can decide
if we want to have a presentation or something like that in the future okay
anyone else see none yeah speak yeah you got a minute yeah go right Councilor
McGee thank you mr. mayor um I'm I'm okay with this I'm glad that staff is
already making the measure to do this so if a few hours of staff time is needed
to compile a more thorough report I'm okay with that so yeah medium priority
as well that's that's fine okay anyone else
councilman Burke this sounds like a pretty reasonable a pretty reasonable
request you know this particular concern and knowing that we still are working on
a number of streets in the city so I can agree to have them to take a look at
this as well okay anyone else Councilor Watts yeah I'm not in support of the
specific request I'm in support of the data I guess my question and probably
can't be answered I've only got a minute but I thought we are having a vision zero
work session coming up here shortly is that it might correct on that or but
anyway I would think but my main concern is it's looked like that there's a
request to have staff provide options for all the other stakeholders and I
just think that if we want to compile statistics that we have and then we want
to give direction to go talk with some of them but I just if the city if the
county and textile aren't going to be involved with this and gathering this
information I'm just not so sure that that's something I'm in support of the
data I don't know if it's gonna take two hours but I just don't know if I can get
on board with having us do the work of other stakeholders in analyzing this
issue we can provide the data but if staffs gonna take a lot of time to do
that so I'm a little bit agnostic on this one so I'm just gonna say I'll say
this I don't want staff to spend more than two hours on this because I think
it can be done quicker it'd be a medium priority for me and formal staff report
unless we've got a vision we are gonna come back in the phase phase one let me
let Tina she can answer that real quick but we can we have the data we can
provide but we are coming back as a phase of this right so we have the data
that's already been collected I know Becky's team has been working on
regarding the initial request that was submitted regarding vision zero so our
vision zero plan is a multi-phased effort so phase one is the assessment
phase that we've been in that we've been working on we are trying to wrap that up
and have discussed with the city management team about providing an ISR
to council with the outcomes of that phase one assessment that was just to
exist the organization the stakeholders understand what we're doing currently
today that might help advance vision zero objectives phase two is to develop
the actual vision zero action plan and council approved monies in our budget
for that so we will be kicking that off after the first the year we needed we'll
have consultant assistant associated with that but we'll need the time and
effort to be able to put together that action plan so and then phase three is
then to work on the implementation associated with that so when I say it's
a multi-phase process that's why but we're trying to wrap up phase one which
is the assessment and hopefully get that information to you January February
timeframe okay thank you anyone else councillor Davis I think I'm in general
agreement with council member Watts that I'm all for updates on on vision zero
and how we're doing and the steps that we're taking I'm not really interested
in a how bad a job is text up doing work session or ISR if there if there are
folks and I'm one of them who are concerned with design standards on text
dot facilities not being adequate or not providing the level of safety that we
would design in our own facilities I mean that's that's a conversation to
have but I don't think that's a work session to ask our staff to go out and
compile you know how bad is the road have to be before text dot does
something how badly have they designed their roads and how much a better job do
we think we could do if there's a list of specific intersections or if there's
some places where we can identify as Tina was alluding to the vision zero a
partnership that we can undertake but I don't see the benefit in asking our
staff to compile information to build a dossier against text op facilities
that's a that's a different thing entirely okay all right that takes us to
there's there's not for in support of that that takes us to the second one
okay item number two is an ordinance preventing people adverse to the city or
an act of litigation from being nominated to a position serving on
boards and commissions this was requested by mayor hud spiff mayor when
you're ready okay yeah I won't need the full two minutes this is let me find it
they probably take two minutes to find what I want to say I'm requesting staff
to give staff and the city attorney's office authority to draft the ordinance
so this is exactly what we talked about in our retreat it's what do you state
your end goal your outcome and then allow the subject matter experts to then
work towards that so my goal is our outcome I'd like to see is similar to
other cities to have something in place it says if you're on a board or
commission and you are sued a city you can't be of two minds that that's just
the thing you can't say hey I think the city did a terrible job and I want to
represent the city I think you have to take a take a break and it's not to put
you it's not that they're removed it's just there's a pause and I'll say that a
step further to say it has nothing to do with me I didn't draft language I said
the the attorneys and staff so it would be professionally done and it would it
would make sure it's sensitive to all laws etc that's I purposely didn't put
that language together I purposefully followed what was asked of us to do in
the council retreat and I think it's in line with other cities and what they've
done just to be fiscally responsible with taxpayer money and make sure we have
that you're you're you're unbiased in making your decision so I don't see it to
be controversial I see it to be something that aligns us with other
communities and make sure we because whether we do something or not there's a
gap we don't have anything so we need to speak to it it would be everyone
speaking to the work session and having input after staff puts it together but
it's not something of my making okay okay anyone else
councillor Davis I'm good with having the conversation I'd probably put a
pretty medium below or if not just straight out low priority on it the key
for me was the active litigation part I'm very wary of the phrase adverse to
the city I wouldn't really want to see a whole lot of room for interpretation on
something like that but I would like to see what other cities are doing I and
again scar tissue people are going to think this is about current events it's
really not it's about learning from past events and it's about you don't want a
member of pub who's involved in sitting suing DME you don't want a member of the
parks board who's suing us for a slip-and-fall at a park I think it's
forward-looking and I think I'd like to have the conversation and see what other
cities are doing in this space so we can best protect our our taxpayers and our
folks thanks anyone else comes from what
thank you I guess for me and I'm not sure I'm gonna let you decide how you
interpret where I fall on this I think I would need more information about the
specific request because like councilmember Davis I mean if it's about
something that someone's directly involved in a board and it's having to
do with that board but if it's just somebody suing because of something else
and it has nothing related to their service there's just a lot of unknowns
that that I'm that I'm unaware of so I certainly would not be for drafting an
ordinance right out of the bat I would like to have a little bit more
information on what other cities may do what does that look like what are some
of the parameters and certainly it would not be for anything that's happened in
the past or currently happening would be only for forward things but I think I
still just need a lot of information on what the request really is mayor okay
anyone else
seeing none okay that fails that concludes our work session and takes us
to our consent we'll take a break that's the dinners here and we'll do the
consent agenda item here then we'll do the individual consideration public
hearings in council chambers right no I think didn't you say consent here we can
do individual here okay got it okay so yeah we'll be in so
councillor Watts make sure you meet us in the council chamber no it's kidding
you they told you around as a special call meeting it looks like that the
public hearings have to begin at sick have to be at 630 or after that is my
understanding the items for individual consideration we could after a break
just move on right through everything except public hearings and then those
would have to start at 630 is that correct that's fair point I did not make
that that connection but you're right so yes let's let's do that I'm all for that
so it's 517 let's break until 545 and then we'll go can reconvene in council
chambers and get the individual items for consideration and and the and the
consent agenda taking care of 545 in chambers thank you
and welcome back to this meeting of Denton City Council it's 547 we have a
quorum so we'll continue to work through our agenda where we have reached the
consent agenda portion everything is still intact but for H was pulled so
I'll take a motion mayor pro tem come on Mike I move approval of the consent
agenda accepting item H is there a second councillor McGee I second mr.
mayor motion by mayor pro tem second by councillor McGee any discussion see
none mayor pro tem how say you aye councilman McGee aye councilman Burke
councilmember Davis aye councilmember Watts aye mayor Husspeth is as well
that passes 6-0 takes us to item H ID 2 2 2 3 0 7 consider adoption of the
ordinance of the City of Denton authorizing the city manager or their
designee to execute a contract of sale between the City of Denton as buyer and
Burt's Family Farm LTD manager Deanna Cody deputy director of development
services real estate also here this evening we do have the directors of
water utilities Stephen gay and director of parks and recreation Gary pack in in
case you have any specific questions regarding their potential operational
uses for these I this item there are actually two corresponding items being
brought for your consideration tonight the item that we're looking at now is
22 - 23 0 7 which is item H on the consent and also the eminent domain
item 22 - 23 0 8 it's the same presentation for both so we'll just go
ahead and discuss them together previously staff received direction
from the council and closed sessions last year two separate closed sessions
actually to pursue the purchase of this property these items that are brought to
you tonight are the culmination of the negotiations to purchase the land
identified for the wastewater master plan or land identified in the wastewater
master plan for constructing a new wastewater treatment facility the map
shows the existing facility and the proposed purchases from the Burt's
Family Farm and the future purchase for the Hackett tract the land in green the
green is the city's existing wastewater facility and the land that you see in
yellow and blue is the birch family farm and then briefly we'll discuss the
Hackett track that'll be brought back later so the site that we're discussing
this evening is just is just south of the existing wastewater treatment
facility which I mentioned here in green and it is along Country Club Road and is
needed to accommodate the additional wastewater flows introduced and
anticipated from the new developments that could not be adequately handled by
the existing ropes and ranch and pecan Creek wastewater facilities systems the
consent item authorizes the city manager to execute the negotiated contract to
purchase 400 acres of land from the birch family farm and this purchase will
actually support multiple public purposes primarily the wastewater
treatment facility construction but also it offers the ability to preserve much
of this is floodplain as you can see about 350 acres is floodplain and
approximately 60 acres is upland so you know purchasing the entire tract allows
the city to to construct the necessary facilities but it also allows for a
buffer zone to be constructed or maintained it allows for the maintenance
of the natural habitat that currently exists and the future connection for the
Hickory Creek trail system and the eminent domain item that was next on the
agenda focuses on the minimum acreage that's needed for the wastewater
treatment facility and will only be necessary in the event that we are
unable to close on the larger parcel in time to facilitate water utilities
timeframe needed to begin the required assessments for finalizing design and
construction of the wastewater treatment facility these items were both presented
to the pub and did receive unanimous support yesterday one of the questions
that Councilman Watts asked earlier today was regarding the the purchase of
400 acres versus the 50 acres and the new facility requires just about all of
the property owners upland property all of his developable property and so if we
were to purchase that and leave him with only floodplain there would be damages
assessed on that purchase we would still ultimately be paying for much of that
floodplain property that is not developable so that's one of the reasons
why we're moving forward with the purchase of all of the property the
property was a praise the floodplain was appraised at 25 cents per square foot so
we're basically being able to get that property at 25 cents per square foot
still supporting the Parkland trail connectivity providing for the buffer
area and I'll if necessary I'll let those departments going to more detail
about their potential use of those properties but but that is that is one
of the primary reasons why we proceeded with purchasing all of the
property rather than leaving the property owner with just floodplain
that's undevelopable and of course we're able to avoid the eminent domain process
by negotiating this transaction so tonight what we're asking for is we're
recommending approval to purchase the 400 acres at 7 million dollars from the
birch family farm and we're also asking for basically the plan the plan B which
is approval of the eminent domain ordinance that will allow us to proceed
with making an offer to pursue the land that is absolutely necessary to construct
the wastewater treatment facilities in the event that the larger purchase falls
through for any reason so these will be running a parallel path where upon
approval an offer will be made of appraised value for the land that the
city needs for the constructing the wastewater treatment facility we will
come back in the future on the Hackett tract probably in February because
council also gave direction to pursue acquisition of that tract and the
property owner has accepted verbally the city's offer so that is a future item
that will bring back are there any questions okay if you can pull down the
presentation now councilor Watts thank you mayor clearly I was not on council
when when these things happen so that's why I've got a couple questions so my
understanding is that are you able to disclose what the appraisal was on the
400 acres in open session yeah what is that the total appraised amount was six
point seven seven three million dollars okay now I thought you said and correct
me if I heard it wrong that the floodplain and how much how much area was
the floodplain the floodplain is approximately 341 acres it appraised at a
quarter per square foot or about ten thousand eight hundred ninety dollars
per acre okay so that came to ten thousand acre 341 was that three point
four million three point seven so that means the 50 acres is basically three
million dollars that's correct which is what is that sixty thousand an acre just
under it's about fifty four thousand an acre okay so a little over a buck a buck
and ten a foot or something like that so you're the thought is that if we
purchased if we if we went through condemnation for the 50 acres and then I
guess the tack it track that they're going to be left with floodplain so
you're saying that they would that you're looking at somebody might value
that 50 acres at the full appraised amount instead of the three point
something million because you'd have a damage to the remainder but it's really
it's it's not usable anyway right now is that correct my concern about this is
paying that extra money and I understand that yes it could be the
connection for the Hickory Trail and all these other things but over the last ten
years I've seen us buy land because we're gonna do something with it and we
never do anything with it I mean we've got the parks I guess we're looking at
developing the park out behind fire station seven at some point here in the
near future because of hopefully the the development there by Hillwood and
Stratford I believe it was we've got I think it's 70 or 80 acres over there by
oh gosh is it it's got a pond on it we bought it we still so I guess my thought
is we were spending money to sort of I guess we'd call it land bank which I get
that and to preserve the upland habitat if it's floodplain it's not worth
anything but yet it sort of is worth something because we're we're paying I
guess ten thousand dollars an acre or something like that at what point do we
start spending money to develop these areas that we've paid millions of
dollars for and then we keep buying more acreage that we're gonna have to spend
hundreds of thousands if not million dollars to develop I guess that's my
only question that might be a conversation for another time and so I
can accept that that's sort of a high-level policy question so I get that
so those those are my only concerns here that's a lot of land to be buying I mean
we're basically buying 58 we're buying 400 acres to get 50 and then these uses
that we say so I'm probably I mean I'm gonna probably be the outlier here since
I wasn't here during the discussions I wasn't privy to all that but just on its
face I'm probably not gonna support this it's gonna most likely pass but that's
just difficult for me to do given that we've got some other things that we could
spend money on that we've held for quite some time so nothing against anybody
that's just sort of how how I process through it so thank you so much for
answering the questions sure and I do understand your concern it's very
important that we just reiterate that the city would be paying for would likely be
paying for this property anyway in damages if we ended up having to go
through the eminent domain process it's very likely that we would end up paying
for it and so the goal is really to one avoid the eminent domain process if at
all possible and also acquire the property so that we can do some of the
other uses and we could use it for the other public uses that have been
identified so thank you okay any other questions seeing none I'll take a motion
councillor Davis I'll move approval is there a second mayor Pro Tem seconds
Davis with the motion mayor Pro Tem with the second any discussion councillor
Davis just really briefly mayor just just to say that I appreciate the work
that real estate and parks especially but I know there's a lot of other people
in the city or looking at this track for different things but as you say we're
paying for the whole thing we're gonna end up paying for the whole thing might
as well get some value out of it and we're one of the only users who can get
real good use out of floodplain because we can put trails and things through
there and uses parkland when it's otherwise completely undevelopable by
anybody except for agricultural uses and and us so I appreciate the work you put
into it and very happy to move approval okay anything mayor Pro Tem yeah I just
want to put a finer point on that point of councillor Davis's is we do have
that opportunity to sort of fall in our comprehensive plan and and put literally
land or money in this case where our mouth is on establishing the preferred
plan of preservation and and and making sure that those corridors are kept up
or the potential for those corridors are kept up so I and you know considering
we're we are potentially buying you know the damages you discussed I I think it's
easy to second that motion any other discussion seeing none counselor Davis
I'll say you I mayor Pro Tem I counselor McGee I guess I'm a bird I
customer watts sorry I was on mute nay okay
mayor Hudson's eyes well passes 5-1 that concludes our consent and I think we now
have to wait oh I see that's right thank you thank you thank you okay so first
item for individual consideration is a ID 2 2 2 3 0 8 consider adoption of
ordinance of the city of Denton determining the public use needed as and
necessity for an acquisition of land rights and approximately 50.4 1 5 acres
of land for constructing a water waste treatment facility deputy director of
development services real estate this is the same item that I presented just a
moment ago this one is for the eminent domain plan B as we call it to use
eminent domain in the event that the overall purchase stalls or fails okay any
questions for staff seeing none I'll take a motion mayor Pro Tem I move that the
city of Denton after having made the offers required by state law use the
power of eminent domain if needed to acquire approximately 50.4 1 5 acres of
land located generally along Country Club Road situated in the James W
withers survey abstract number 1343 in the extraterritorial jurisdiction of the
city and county of Denton Texas and more particularly described an attached
exhibit a to the ordinance now under consideration and on the screen to be
displayed to the audience all of which are for public use valid public use
necessary to construct a wastewater treatment facility as part of the
wastewater master plan and to serve the public and citizens of the city of
Denton okay and then is there a second Councilman Burke a second motion by
mayor Pro Tem second by Councilman Bird any other discussion questions for
staff seeing none mayor Pro Tem Hassell. Aye. Councilman Burke. Aye. Councilman McGee.
Aye. Councilman Davis. Aye. Councilman Watts. I'm sorry you mute it. Aye. Thank you. Mayor
Huss with eyes well passes 6-0 that takes us to if you recall item A's been
moved to January the 1st mentioned that early on in our meeting so that takes
us to item B which is ID 222444 consider approval of a resolution of the city of
didn't naming Carroll trail located on Carroll Boulevard naming cross Timbers
Park North trail located in cross Timbers Park North naming cross Timbers
Park South trail located in cross Timbers Park South naming McKenna Park
trail located in McKenna Park naming razor ranch Park trail located razor
ranch Park naming you know unicorn Lake trail located unicorn Lake Boulevard
naming Wheeler Ridge Park trail located in Wheeler Ridge Park and declaring an
effective date the parks mayor city council Gary pack and director parks
integration we have a PowerPoint presentation for all three of these
items to roll through that so I don't know if you prefer to call all three of
them or you just want us to go through the entire PowerPoint yeah no I'll call
that and so it's ID 222445 consider approval of a resolution of the city of
didn't naming building located at 30 18 North Bonnie Bray Street to Jane Malone
Soccer Center and then well let me just read them all or let's get closer
Audra property located at 1602 Audre Lane Audre Oaks Park naming Country Club
Terrace property located at 5551 Country Club Road to Country Club Terrace
naming Laney property located at North Trinity Road to Laney Lake Park naming
Mayhill property located at 29 29 Spencer Road to Mayhill Preserve naming
tennis center property located at 1117 Ronnie Road to Denton tennis center
naming Parkside property located at 4800 block of Bibby by Lane to Bibby by part
that's awesome naming perm pros prominence property located at 3,300 block
of pros primrose Parkway to Cooper Cooper Creek Park and then Sagebrook
property located at 6400 block all read to Sagebrook Park naming villages of
Carmel property located at 6,000 Edwards Road to Village Carmel Carmel Park
naming vintage village property located at vintage Boulevard to Tamarick Park and
declaring an effective date and then less and is that in D as well you said
okay got it one more ID 222446 consider approval of a resolution of the city of
Denton naming baseball field number three located at Evers Park Rodney
Mooneham field and declaring an effective date okay good evening mayor
Hudson members of council I have a very brief presentation here so I'll just get
right into it beginning with our naming policy for
resolution 21 to 706 you have this information in your attachments to these
resolutions but just briefly stated our policy requires that for a park to be a
park or park facility or property to be named after someone they should have
reached a certain threshold of notoriety in a positive way they should be a
resident of Denton and they can be someone who has died in the line of
duty and various other sort of categorizations here as you can see we
don't just briefly stated we don't rename buildings as a general policy or
parks as a general policy just sort of get that out there this is just a more
naming policy highlights for foundations that have either provided a great service
to the city or provided some sort of substantial foundational support
internal to the department we have criteria that we rely on we try to base
names for parks and facilities on nearby geographical features for example roads
creeks subdivisions and that's what you'll see as we sort of go through
these following naming applications reconsideration so from our internal
naming requests we have the following trails for you to consider and I'll just
sort of go through them one by one with the maps on Carol Boulevard the trail
will be Carol trail here's a map that shows the context this is the map for
cross Timbers Park North trail here is cross Timbers Park South trail this is
McKenna Park trail which is in McKenna Park here we have razor ranch trail
within razor ranch Park this is the unicorn Lake trail along unicorn Lake
Boulevard this is Wheeler Ridge Park trail within Wheeler Ridge Park and then
these are the internal naming requests we have for land and facilities so this
is the Audra property which we are wanting to name Audra Oaks Park here is
Country Club Terrace Laney Lake Park Mayhill Preserve the Denton Tennis Center
which used to be the YMCA building of course here is Biddy By Park which is
named after a nearby road even though it is a very cute name this is Sage Brook
Park village of villages of Carmel Park and Tamarack Park and just as a brief
explanation a Tamarack is a kind of bird and it is also the name of a street
near the park so we received one external naming request that the park
board motion to approve and that is for the building at North Lake Soccer Center
and they wanted to name that the Jean Malone Soccer Center in reference to Jean
Malone's many years of service to the local soccer community and here is a map
explaining where that building is we had one other external naming request to
name a field at Evers in honor of Detective Rodney Mooningham who
regrettably passed away of COVID-19 while serving as a police officer in the
city of Denton and this is sort of the context of Evers Park
that is the end of the presentation great question for staff Councilman Davis
thank you a couple questions in our backup with the external applications
there was one other trail application that I don't see sure is that maybe
something parks portal look at later they'll see later we had one external
application to name a portion of the DCTA dedicated trail after a former
council member we are still sort of working with DCT and considering what to
do with that application we explained to park board that naming a portion of the
trail is a little bit difficult to do particularly given issues with defining
who has control of that particular part of the trail and with future
considerations about branding the entire velow web once that is complete but we
are working on that application and considering other options that might
work to memorialize that council member on the DCTA trail okay thank you do you
know is that still railroad right-of-way that we just make use of or is it or is
it no longer and if we don't know and I'm personally not sure what our sort of
legal ownership of that area is my other question was if we could have a little
bit of information on the park boards conversation around the baseball field
and that was the only only one of all of them that they recommended denial and if
so there's if there's a little insight into what they what they talked about
what they considered sure staff park board considered the mooney ham
application twice and each time they moved to deny that application because
in their discussion they felt the application didn't meet the sort of
threshold of service in as they read the policy but the policy as I sort of
reviewed it very briefly right now does allow for naming facilities and fields
and parks after individuals who have died in the line of service but just to
clarify their their discussion and their recommendation was to deny that twice
yeah I'm gonna follow me thank you mr. mayor I'm gonna follow immediately up on
that I guess can you what was the I'm trying to understand the I don't want to
get in front of the committee that's what we have committees for and to do the
deep dives on things but I guess I want to hear what their thinking was so I can
line up with their thinking on the mooney ham request sure I think they're
thinking as they conveyed it to us was that it was a little difficult perhaps
to draw the line between death from kovat and death in the line of service so
I think that kind of was sort of the crux of the problem and ultimately they
just felt that in their opinion the application didn't rise to the level of
you know naming in this way Gary back and director of parks recreation just to
add to that detective did not live in Denton he did live in Keller area but he
was he served here as an employee and dying line of duty is an option for
consideration so that's why we continue to move it forward ultimately we bring
them everything to counsel at some point in time so you have the ultimate say
based on how the policy is written but that's that was the rationale okay I
appreciate that thank you so much any other questions yes my bird
the these changes do they line up with any kind of particular connection to you
know this area I'm just thinking about the list let's think about the the
baseball fields they're named after a couple of people that are you know major
league baseball players that have come from Denton or if we have a science
building water waste water building and there's a scientist here that we want to
how does the parks come to a decision like that is it just a random thing for
someone that they love or is there some type of connection that you know is part
of the application how does this connect to what we're doing is this person a
soccer player or you know soccer mom or something like that that you know that
would connect to the soccer fields explaining that a little bit to us just
to explain two things we receive we have internal applications at the department
sort of pushes forward on their own and then these naming applications are in
general external applications from the public at large and so when they submit
that to us we review the applications and proceed to give them to park board to
consider under the guidelines of the naming policy which requires certain
threshold of you know having lived in Denton having served the Den community
having had a connection to Denton that is what sort of meaningful and profound
so that's sort of the guidelines that we offer to park board as they consider
which applications to you know recommend approval or not any other questions so
we're on item B I'll take a motion so councilor Watts real quick on the the
parks that are being renamed and this is are those parks I mean some of them
they're they're probably not developed I mean our citizens able to go reverse on
those pieces of land that I mean that we're looking at as far as like Laney
Lake Park the yeah the the other the other parks are those are those open to
the public I guess is my question mayor city council Gary pack and director of
parks and recreation councilmember Watts so some we're trying to get our park
properties open as quickly as we can some we're going to be starting master
planning with one the one a biddy by is going to be developed by the developer
that neighborhood we're gonna be adding a playground to that so that one will
probably the soonest but we are going to be starting some master plans for those
neighborhoods Audra Oaks would be in 2023 doing a master plan there and trying
to get these properties shovel ready so we can start applying for grants with
Texas Parks and Wildlife textile etc to help with the development of those
properties okay just to follow up so just so I understand like let's say for
instance there's two examples the Laney Lake Park and the which one is it the
Tamarack Park of course I guess you can even say the village is a Carmel
property I mean so outside of the ones you just mentioned those are are are
restricted as far as access just from a policy perspective in other words like
if I wanted to go or somebody want to go out to the Lacey the whatever that Lake
Park is what is it the Laney Lane the Laney Lake Park if somebody drove out
there and said oh I just want to go walk around out here are there signs
prohibiting that or are we saying and it's I'm okay whichever way I just want
to make sure that the public understands if we're identifying these as parks
whether we have whether they have access to them or not yeah and so the question
is yes and no a good example of a property that has been closed to the
general public was Southwest the Southwest Park property Bonnie bar on
Bonnie Bray down by all red this past summer it's always been closed off
their their gates there with the development on the north side and the
road they installed that opened that property up so what we did is we went in
there and used a mower and actually mowed a three point five five mile trail
around that property and open that up in its existing natural condition so we
can at least get people out there using that property and eventually start
showing here's what we'd like to do with that that park gaining more feedback
buy-in that type of thing Laney property we just purchased this past year so we
have not master plan that it's we need to get that in line with every other
property that we're trying to master plan that one we are closing off because
historically it's been used by vehicles going in there in four-wheeling so now
that the city property we need to prevent that from happening villages of
Carmel is open right now people can walk and explore that wooded area we do have
a master plan that was adopted by City Council and we have been approved a
grant for 50% by Texas Parks and Wildlife and we're waiting for the
federal government to release funding to the state of Texas so we can start
construction on that so they're all in different very variations of getting
ready to start moving dirt master planning and a long-term land bank as
you say to where we haven't master planned it yet okay all right thank you
any other questions item B I'll take a motion mayor partem I move approval is
there a second for item B second second by councilman McGee motion by mayor
Pro Tem second by councilman McGee for item B any other questions seeing none
mayor pro tem how say you aye councilor McGee aye councilman Byrd aye
councilman Davis aye councilor Watts aye mayor Hutz with his eyes well that
passes 6-0 takes us to item C any questions for staff or I'll take a
motion mayor pro tem I move approval is there a second second second by
councilman McGee any of discussions motion by mayor pro tem second by
councilman McGee mayor pro tem how say you aye councilman McGee aye councilman
Byrd aye councilman Davis aye councilman Watts aye mayor Hutz with eyes
well takes us to item D any questions for staff councilor Davis I just move
a privilege mayor okay is there a second mayor pro tem I second okay
discussion motion by councilman Davis second by mayor pro tem any discussion
yes sir yes are we the motion is for councilor Davis is to approve or to
deny because the recommendation was for denial my motion is to approve that is
correct then then I would draw my second okay thank you is there a second
councilor Watson I'll second mayor Watts okay motion by councilman Davis second
by councilor Watts discussion councilor Davis is very briefly mayor I understand
where the the committee is coming from where the parks boards coming from and
and I'm glad that we have them to to kind of vet these things and look them
over and I understand their their concern by the same token there are
probably plenty of folks who didn't necessarily know who Jane Malone was but
obviously her service to the community rose to such a level that we named the
soccer facility after her I'm privileged to have been familiar with detective
Mooney him work product I've benefited professionally and as a citizen of Denton
for having him on our police force and I'll go a step further we've been very
clear I think on this body that we see COVID-19 deaths as deaths in the line of
service and I think that we've we've we've intended that to apply to
ourselves and to apply to other places and I think also when we look back and
if anybody has a question about why it's called the Rodney Mooney him field that
is a chance for them to educate that person on that moment in time what
COVID meant what it meant to our police force that there are fathers who are no
longer with us their police officers who no longer with us and that's important
for us to remember may pretend thank you mr. mayor yeah I just because I did the
on again off again I want to just comment that I there's there's absolutely
zeroed integration about officer Mooney him he obviously was performed valiant
service for community respected and beloved officer on our force for me it
was just an issue of and that's why I had the questions to staff earlier that
what was the guidelines parks board twice decided we like this officer but we
don't quite need the guidelines they did the deep dive not me so I'm gonna
support the parks board on this one okay yeah and I'll say this in support that I
hope this goes through because one I was unfortunately was there it's all of it
is tough but was there at the funeral services and met his family and it's
undeniable the impact he had on our community and I think when you look at
the guidelines and you look at the expressed potential concern being if
COVID is a line of duty you understand as a police officer you don't get to
decide what call you're gonna go on you don't get to run a COVID test to see
before you interact with someone you go where you're supposed to go and you stay
as long as you have to stay and you don't get to have them wash their hands
and do all these things so it is unquestionably in the line of duty and
and it's it's and so then you you look at the next prerequisite in it and then
you're talking about disqualifying someone just because of a geographic
restriction which we don't hold any other city staff or two you can live
wherever you need to live we think Denton's great but we think we
appreciate your service to Denton and irrespective of where you live where
your kids go to school etc so I don't want to I'm not willing to disqualify
his great service on a geographic restrict restriction and then I'll just
say his his son he coached his son at that baseball field and so what a
awesome legacy for that young man for that family to reflect upon with all
those other people that will be recognized there with their family to be
celebrated I've seen firsthand the the joy that comes from having a field
named after you so I I can't think of a better way to say thank you to his
family for their sacrifices for their his long night short days away from his
family serving our community keeping us safe this is just the least I can do is
to support him here and say what a valuable part of our community he was
and the fact that he chose to live nearby and not in the city didn't proper
is not a not an issue for me and anybody that doesn't understand that police
officers took a great risk for the past two years during the COVID pandemic and
and had no say so they did so valiantly and and and so I do appreciate his
service in that way and he'll be missed and he's been recognized at UNT he's
been recognized a number of different ways I look forward to continuing to
recognize his service to our community so with that any other discussion seeing
none councilmember let me fix this sorry
there we go Councilman Davis I'll say you I councilman Watts I Council McGee
absolutely on it councilman Burke mayor Hutz with his I mayor Pro Tem I'm not
gonna buck that trend we know where this is going and I don't have a problem with
officer Rooney and getting an accolade and honorarium I was just supporting
parks board so I'll go ahead and say aye that's a 6-0 takes us to item E ID 2 2 2
4 7 9 consider adoption of ordinance of the City of Denton a Texas Home Rule
Municipal Corporation authorizing the city manager to execute a contract with
Mountain Cascade of Texas LLC mayor this is his first time presenting so we want
to make sure we're taking it easy on him welcome Jesus appreciate you
mayor council my name is his who spit us I'm a construction project manager with
capital projects the item that I have here before you is a contract
recommendation for Mountain Cascade of Texas LLC for the construction of the
northwest water transmission main improvement project the project will
install water lines from from the southeast corner of the project from
the elevated water tank all the way to the northwest side of the project to the
other elevated tank just so you have some reference of where the project was
taking place the project scope is to install any water line eight inch water
line all the way to 36 inch water line the majority the majority of the water
line being installed is the 36 inch line because this is a transmission line the
transmission main there's very there's going to be various casing pipe
installations most of that happens at the bore locations where we go
underneath the highways and we also protect the pipe from corrosion we
install the cathodic protection system throughout the system there was an
invitation we had an invitation for bids and we selected only pre-qualified
contractors from that list three those pre-qualified contractors submitted
their bids for our review the bids were reviewed and the lowest bid happened to
me mounted cascade of Texas LLC their bid came in at fourteen point eight
million dollars the schedule that we hope with the acceptance of this ordinance
is to initially here in December issue the you know partial notice to proceed
so the contractor could start ordering materials that have a lot of lead time
for the project and it is our it is our hope that the contractor can complete
his construction by June 2024 the construction estimate including the five
percent contingency is comes out to fifteen point six million dollars and
the funding sources the funding sources for that money is coming from the water
impact fees and the water project fund CEOs the staff recommends the adoption
of the ordinance authorizing the approval of the contract between the
city of Denton and mountain cascade of Texas LLC for the construction of the
northwest water transmission main project the contract and is a not to
exceed amount of fifteen million dollars six hundred and fourteen thousand two
hundred and eighty one dollars and seventy cents and I'll open it up to any
questions that you might have okay very good nailed it job counselor McGee
thank you mr. mayor yes well done well done um just a quick question um with
respect to the three bids that um that were submitted in med spec and Trevor
earlier in the work session you talked to us about making sure that we're not
in a position where you have to accept the lowest bid so how does this project
tracked to want to make sure you know we just didn't accept the lowest bid you
know sure so we have moved away from the low bid into competitive seal proposal
and see Mars if there is outside funding fun you know tech stock funding federal
funding they have requirements as far as the way we have to bid our projects and
so those require it to be low bid but what we've done to kind of help us out
there is that we pre qualified firms on the front end that we would find
acceptable and then a little bit from there so all three of those firms that
build this project were firms that we qualified pre qualified on the front end
and then we awarded to the lowest bid out of those three firms so this is not
just necessarily the lowest bid this is the lowest bid of those that you
qualified on the front end correct we're always looking for ways to make sure
that we're getting quality contractors and not not just having to do a little
bit so that was that was our work around to meet the federal requirement to low
bid but still get a quality contractor on the project okay thank you thank you
mayor any other questions I just have one note that I'd like to make for the
city manager and understanding this is using water the the fees I'm drawing a
blank but the yes impact fees I'd love to you kind of use this as a as a marker
if you will to say as we're having those impact feed discussions maybe just kind
of put a put a red flag on this to say hey this is this is kind of what that
goes to and kind of a point in time that captures those costs so that we can
leverage that I mean because that's I mean that's important I mean you're
talking about when we have that discussion it's kind of gives us a an
actual use case to apply to that and discuss when we're looking at a larger
area that sort of thing so just wanted to make a note of that is there any
counselor Watts man that's a that's a that's a good question I had that same
thought I guess looking through the backup what is the breakdown on the the
use of I think it was a combination of impact fees and CEOs or bonds or do we
know what the breakdown is on that
just the person first do you have the percentage he says of how much money
we're spending on impact how much is the water impact fees and the other like
the split out between the two areas that we're taking the money from we can get
those numbers for you we don't have them right here in front of us but we have it
broken out in our budget so we can get that number for you okay great thank
because I think that's a very good point this gives us a real case scenario of
how these work together yes sir sounds good good okay any other questions or
I'll take a motion councilor mayor pro tem I move approval okay
councilor McGee I'll second mr. mayor motion by the mayor pro tem second by
councilmember McGee any discussion seeing none mayor pro tem I'll say you
aye councilor McGee aye councilman Byrd aye councilmember Davis aye
councilor Watts aye mayor Hutsworth aye as well that passes 6-0 thank you that
takes us to item F ID 2 2 2 4 9 5 consider adoption of ordinance of the
city of Denton Texas home rural municipal corporation authorizing the
city manager to execute a change order number 3 to owner construction manager
agreement with boss s brine ink what's that burn yeah there we go oh yeah yeah
but burn sorry
all right mayor council good evening Trevor crane director of capital
projects so tonight I'll be going through the Denton public safety bond
projects this is change order number three so the project scope public safety
bond projects include the following three facilities so it included the
renovation of the police department headquarters at City Hall East the new
police substation located on vintage Boulevard and the new indoor firing raids
also located on vintage so the project background construction began at all
three facilities in January of 2021 November of 2021 City Council was updated
on some project we called headwinds but issues including winter storm Yuri
supply chain issues and anticipated continue impacts change order number one
for six million dollars was approved August 2022 city staff updated the bond
oversight committee on the need for an additional seven point two million
dollars in funding these funds were identified and issued to the project so
this is the project budget this is taking into or this is showing you the
original GMP for the project change orders one and two and then change order
three which is what we're considering tonight is an additional additional four
point eight million dollars for a proposed contract amount of almost 57
million dollars for these three facilities current schedule so the
indoor firing range being up and operational we're looking at the end of
the month for that to be done police substation operational we quarter one of
2023 and then police headquarters operational by quarter two of 2023 so
staff recommendation is to award a contract amendment to burn for the
renovation of police headquarters and construction of the police substation
and fire range and the amount of four million eight hundred thirty one thousand
four hundred and seventy nine dollars for a total not to exceed amount of 56
million eight hundred and seventy thousand eight hundred and eighty
dollars and with that answer any questions
counselor Davis thank you mayor and this is just my own lack of understanding but
I'm a little bit confused on and maybe it's just the terminology that's
confusing me I'm a little bit confused on the change order and the genesis of
the change order because we have a construction manager at risk I take that
to mean the other way it's been explained to me is that the construction
manager is at risk for changes in certain pricing and then we have a
guaranteed maximum price so I'm confused I understand the headwinds I think the
headwinds you as you listed them I mean anybody who reads a newspaper is aware
of those headwinds which of these how much of this is things that are city
initiated changes that the construction manager never was at risk for how many
how much of this is things that were outside of that GMP that he was never at
risk for and and then how much of it really is just price increases just
straight-up price increases my understanding was that's the risk so help
me better understand yeah that's hundred percent correct and I actually knew
someone's gonna ask my question so I had a little cheat sheet right here so of
these changes almost 50% of those are owner initiated changes so anything that
we initiate and when I say owner it can that's it could be the facilities
department it could be the use end user of the project but really the owner is a
city of them so those are all issues that were identified during construction
that were either missed during design or didn't know we wanted them during design
or anything like that so anything that's owner initiated is is outside the GMP we
don't we can't require the contractor to be on the hook for things that you know
we had no idea about there were some other things for some changes that
happened after the fact after construction that you know weren't
inside the the the GMP and so you're 100% correct there are you know the
purpose of doing a seamr and having a GMP is that you know the seamr is at
risk there's a lot of these things as long as they're involved in the design
process and that you know doing those types of things then they do assume
some risk there these are all issues that we went through we identified that
they were not included in that GMP they were outside the scope of that work and
that they were a requirement for the city to pay for do you have any kind of
breakdown on how many of these things are because in the backup there there's a
list of some some examples the first one is pretty clearly a renovation issue you
got in there you move some concrete and holy moly it's not it's not the structure
you thought you were renovating it's gonna be more expensive is it possible
for us to get a more detailed breakdown of it for the public watching you know
there's owner initiated where we changed our minds about something and I have a
feeling that those are going to be fairly minor things and then there's I
could be wrong but that's my gut that then there's owner initiated as in the
owners building that that was getting renovated was not what anybody expected
it to be and so the price goes up it would be very helpful to have a better
breakdown of what it is we're spending the extra money on from the backup it's
informative but it doesn't help me know yes how much of this is because we
changed your mind how much of it should we have spotted before in any project
you're gonna run into there's gonna be a change order on any project of any kind
of magnitude but I need a little more information yeah 100% you're speaking my
language you know when I went over I was the interim director facilities and to
get involved in these projects and those are the same questions I asked you know
there's a lot of changes here you know I need to know where they're coming from
you know what initiated these things and so we have our consultant PPB they're
here as well but you know there's extensive documentation on what those
changes are where they came from what those costs were what PPB did to try to
mitigate those costs the contractor as well kind of the actions and then what
led us to this you know final number so we can definitely provide that backup
it's hundreds and hundreds of pages but you're welcome to read through it I can
tell you I did as well sure I don't need the hundreds of pages an excel
spreadsheet or a graph would be pretty good you know structural structural and
integrity was not what we expected to be that cost X million dollars to sir we
can get that to you thank you any other questions you count the mayor pro tem
thank you mr. mayor yeah I want to double down on what counselor Davis just
said I we both pushed to talk and I it's pretty much the same issue you can read
the headwinds those are all clearly headwinds you could nobody could have
predicted COVID and other issues like that but I I am having concerns for I
mean I when I read this it was like it's exactly what counselor Davis said I this
is what the whole CMAR was supposed to prevent so I I guess I mean I don't have
a problem with the facility or where we're going or what's being done but
that the risk part feels like it's being shifted back to us so I really do kind
of want to see that breakdown and and and I'm you know maybe coming back in an
ISR or something because this this was part of you know I'm being a little
pushy because this is what this whole process was supposed to stop so that we
didn't have to put the brain cells to this because it had been laid out for us
and and and so like it's not the project I don't I don't the project can be we
were building that the firing range the secondary headquarters all that's good
those extra deltas I do kind of really want to see that spreadsheet because it
feels like like especially like the two middle ones you know mechanical
electrical deficiencies and utility access and maybe even a little bit
security issues I mean if we ask for some more you know you know items or
different change order yeah you know sure that's gonna increase the cost but
you know that the risk feels very uncomfortable to me you can see my
heartburn right now you know trying to figure out how to say yes and no at the
same time and I'm gonna say yes but but it's very uncomfortable for me right now
I can totally understand where y'all coming from like I said I asked those
same questions you know Chris is probably back there squadron with PPV is back
there furiously scribbling but you know we had some of those same conversations
when I first went over there and went through these projects talking through
you know how these were tracked where how we got to where we are so you know
what you're asking for is not not something I haven't already asked and
went through and we have that backup readily available to get that to you so
yeah no issues with those questions I appreciate it
council what yes so help me understand let me get back to the presentation so I
see on on slide I guess this is slide four of six it's sort of the summary of
the original contract amount and all the change orders so forth and so on so the
owners contingency other costs correct me if I'm wrong the other costs of 13
million sort of include the design engineering furnishings other project
costs and owners contingency is that my understanding of that figure yes sir
and like FF&E and those types of things right so do you have a breakdown of that
what is the contingency amount yeah we have a breakdown of all that I don't
have that number with me Chris probably committed to memory if you if you like
that number now but we can get you all that information so okay and then on the
slide prior to that slide three it says August 2022 city staff updated the bond
oversight committee and need for 7.2 million and additional funding these
funds were identified and issued to the project so that is so I see the six
million dollars for change order one I see the 4.8 million dollars I believe is
this request for change order number three there was no additional dollars
for change order number two where's the seven million dollars those were funds
that had already that we had already been identified as part of either
contingency or a separate project now I'm going off a memory Chris do you want
to come save me for a second sorry I wasn't involved during change order
number two so I'm going off a memory of what I've reviewed so give me one second
I'll let Chris squadron with PPV okay so let me let me make sure I made I made
sense on my question because when I see change order number two it says
extension of contract time only there was no change to the contract something
so there's no monies associated with change order number two so I'm trying to
understand the seven point two million dollars it says that it was needed and
the funds were identified and so that's what I'm trying to understand because
those funds don't seem to be added to the ultimate cost unless they're part of
this twelve point six million dollars and other costs so help me understand the
interplay between those so there are a couple things that play on coming up
with that dollar amount we had the amount that we were approved in the
contract that had the portion of the owners contingency and the first GMP so
when these change orders started coming in we still we had to use what we were
authorized up to with that owners contingency and the seven million is
above what we need talking through exhausting all of the owners contingency
and what's needed above that existing GMP is the seven so the change orders
are the amounts rolling in but we still had contingency authorized contract
authority spend so this is what we need above the previously authorized contract
spend okay so just so that makes sure I understand this so I see the twelve
point six million which represents design furniture fixtures so forth so on
and the owners contingency so what is the amount originally that was plugged
in for the owners contingency it is a percentage I we need to pull that I don't
do you have that what the original there was this is Chris squadron with peak
program value there was contingency inside the GMP and contingency outside
the GMP so what we're doing now is we're putting funding the first six million
that we came to you in November of 2021 was to move money from inside our
authorized spend from outside the GMP into the GMP so I need to I hate to
interrupt you but I'm not following that so I want to make sure that I can it's
got to be pretty simple for me so what I'm hearing you say is that within the
46 million dollars of the original contract within that contract amount
there is a contingency amount that's built in to that what is it see more GMP
and that you would call that the inside contingency money is that correct yeah
yes what Chris is saying we're not all speaking the same language and we have a
chart that better better illustrated this it was provided to the bond
committee that I think we need to provide as the follow-up to this but we
have a budget and then we had an amount within the contract so with this change
order we will be exhausting all of the owners contingency and need an
additional seven million dollars in the contract spend to complete all the
change orders to get the project to completion okay so what I think I just
heard you say we've got two change orders six million dollars four point
eight million dollars all right we got those two you're asking for approval of
the four point eight you're saying you need an additional seven million above
and beyond that correct to complete all the change orders to get through the end
of the project and that money is coming out of where it was reallocated from
other bond projects I'm gonna see if Cassie wants to speak on where it was
reallocated from but we did use it funds from other bond projects took it for to
bond committee and approved the allocation to move it okay so and that
that's okay so what I'm hearing is 17 million dollars is needed to bring this
these projects to fruition correct okay that's 35 to 40 percent more than what
the original contract amount was understanding I think somebody said half
of that or half of some figure maybe it's the two change orders of 10 million
were ones that the city initiated because something was overlooked I'm
gonna say I would like to have those breakdowns before I actually vote on
this because I mean if I'm struggling with understanding this I'm gonna
struggle with I don't have any problem with the projects I've toured the
projects they're wonderful we're certainly going to finish them I just
want to see the architect the architecture of the financing and the
funding so that I can at least better understand what because the seven
million dollars now I'm hearing is additional money that's been found but
it's not really anywhere on this chart on this summary of what it's costing us
I mean I'm hearing that that's going to be an additional amount but it's not
showing up as an addition to either proposed contract amount or anything
unless it's part of that twelve point six million dollars but I haven't heard
that yet so I just need to have an understanding of how this money's flowing
honestly now we can we can follow up on that and it is this does bring us up to
the 25% maximum on the on the contract 25% maximum of what the construction
contract the allowable amount by state law so but we we can oh before you have
to go out before we have to rebuild it's mayor and council this is there's a lot
of issues here a lot of moving parts one of which was we chose to redevelop a
building that should have never been redeveloped once we got into that
building I'm talking about the police headquarters we found problem after
problem after problem and still have problems where the police ends and the
municipal court begins and a space in as far as the floor is concerned some of
this is actual needs that were not identified originally some of this are
costs that were not foreseen and some of those were issues related to
purchasing of material that was higher than what was predicted when we actually
did the project what we'll show you is a breakdown of everything and how we have
tried to cover some of those costs internally and then how we've had to
come back now and ask for approval for more money there's nothing really here
to hide other than the cost which we're happy to give you mayor if I could follow
up yes yeah okay so I heard that we're hitting the 25 percent maximum that I
think is per state law that if you go over that you've got to rebid it or
something I'm not sure what the ramifications are is that 25 percent of the
original amount contract amount correct okay so if I do the math 25 percent of
46 million 39 is about eleven million five hundred thousand dollars am I is
that am I understanding that that's how that's calculated it's based off the
total GMP which would have included our contingency amount okay okay so is the
original contract amount 46 million dollars and thirty forty six million 39
dollars and 401 dollars is that the original width with including in other
words what then what is the number that the 25 percent would be based upon what
is that contract that was approved by council the total amount which is the
forty six which is what okay so that's the 25 percent correct of that would
okay and so that 25 percent is I think I just said it it was like eleven million
dollars eleven five twenty five percent of that 46 million and am I is that
correct okay all right so when we say you're you're hitting up against the 25
percent I'm assuming you're meaning the six million dollars plus the four point
eight million which is ten point eight which is really close to eleven million
five hundred thousand dollars is that is that where we're getting that
terminology from yes okay so then where does the seventy two hundred additional
seventy two seven point two million dollars additional money where does it
factor into that whole calculation because if that's part of that cost we've
just exceeded the 25 percent so how is that seven point two million dollars not
part of that 25 percent or part of that additional overage as part of the 25
percent calculation okay Chris Chris is gonna answer but essentially we had we
had the contingency amount we are spending a portion of that towards these
change orders and this should be the difference the contingency amount that's
inside the contract or outside the contract to simplify it you you hit the
nail on the head when you said that the 25 percent rule applies to the original
contract amount and it's about 11 million and change and the change order
to this contract is four million but you know it's four million xxx so the six
million and the four-something add up to about the maximum that we predicted
before the bond council that we might need to hit to solve the structural
issues and the other things that we saw on our radar we wanted to replenish the
contingency to the maximum allowable amount that amount of that change order
is inside the seven million the residual amount the three million or whatever that
we asked for the bond committee is outside the contractors contract so we're
not in any danger of increasing the contractors contract by more than is
allowed by state law okay so then I appreciate that so the seven point two
million you just said half of that basically is outside the contract so
that's not that's why it does not apply to the 25% number that is correct but
the okay and then so that the rest of that the other let's say three and a
half million you're saying is coming from where well the sources and uses are
different well I'm just saying how does that how does that 3.5 not contribute to
going over the 25% because it's not going to the contractors contract it's
going to it's okay but it is an increase it is an increased cost in the project
it's out it's cost that the project is going to bear outside of the general
contractors contract it certainly goes towards the total overall cost and the
25% only applies to to the contract quote-unquote what is within the
boundaries the circle of the contract amount correct if there's money coming
from outside that we call it it doesn't increase the contractors price so it
doesn't apply to the 25% right and I got part of this this request okay all right
I appreciate that thank you I saw sorry apologize mr. mayor I just needed to have
some good questions there we go thank you so there's clearly you know we're
trying to add up numbers I have a lot of the same questions that councillor
Davis did have a lot of same counts questions that councillor Watts did
where than I think I've worked through the fog of war with the but so my
question to staff is do we have to decide at this meeting or we turn into
pumpkins or can we decide at the next meeting to approve or not approve so
that we could see all the numbers I mean is there a deadline that we are forced
to match I know we're going to Christmas it's it's an it's an ugly time to have a
big gap so that is my question is this something that can be shown to us at the
next meeting or we really have to do it at this meeting I mean because I'd
otherwise I motion to table this and let us see the see the layout and so that
we're real clear David gains deputy city manager I just wanted to excuse to come
up to the microphone one time I would request because we really just need a
table to make all this clear because as we describe it the inside GMP outside GMP
inside contingency it's confusing I think if we table this and we just go
work on it right now I think by the end of the meeting we can come back and have
something that makes us more clear if that would be open to them yeah I just
wonder though if we can't follow up with it I mean I open it up to those on a
dice I mean I understand the question valid answers coming valid but we're in
the middle of a building are we just gonna pull the plug right if the
numbers don't look right if the if it's not black and white and organized left
the right top the bottom that's my question right I understand the concern
and the questions are coming I just don't know that we need to pause this in
the middle unless there's there's people willing to pull the trigger and stop
construction while we analyze numbers that that you say are coming right I'd
rather keep going and get the numbers on the back end trusting that you're not
lying to me from the podium right and because if you're lying tell me that and
let's address that but otherwise if the numbers are the numbers when I read if I
read them before I vote after I vote they answer the question right how many
times do we say we don't see the building before we vote on it and say
hey you got to build a building before we vote to allow to make sure everything's
everywhere we just heard there's four stories of a building that's six inches
off on top of our water line right I mean you know so I I understand it but
let's move on unless there's questions that are unanswered great but if they
questions are answered then let's let's let's vote on those things and you get
us the numbers tonight tomorrow just they need to line up right it's all
contingent on this right but there that's that's now I'm one person and and
I'm sure there's plenty of people to disagree with me that's just what's
going on in my mind that I've walked the building and it'd be a really awkward
thing to stop you know in the middle of it we're this you know we're down the
road a little ways and is it great no but also I was the one that didn't want
to remodel the building in the first place I wanted to build a new one so I'm
really in a really odd spot right because I'm like well yeah we kind of
talked about this so we would prefer that honestly because it's putting the
staff in a position to go run in there pull it all together although we have
most of it the truth of the matter is and I just we're not lying and I know
you weren't saying that the truth of the matter is the numbers are the numbers
and we're gonna have to have that money to fix to get it all finished and so
we're happy to supply those numbers to you and lay it all out exactly where
the money is is needed and and the total amount it's there's some apple and
oranges situation here that's getting confused and so I'd rather us come back
after we've laid it out and send it to you and then if you have questions after
that we'll be happy to sit down with individually with council members so
yeah it's so short answer is yes if y'all can work it up but we're gonna
vote today so we can we had this discussion and get all the questions
answered but we're gonna vote this thing up or down here shortly
councilmember McGee thank you mr. Mayor do I need to call the question or we
moving toward the vote let's see councilor Davis that same question I'm
gonna withdraw my request to speak I'm ready to vote okay mayor pro tem you're
in the moving spot are you moving let's just do this but like I I have less
heartburn but I have the same issue so I guess just go ahead and do this but
please come back I need to see these numbers that's part of our job for
oversight okay so anyway thanks council member second I have a motion by mayor
Pro Tem second by Councilman Byrd any other discussion seeing none
councilmember Beck I'll say you Councilman Byrd aye Councilmember McGee aye
Councilman Davis aye Councilman Watts aye Mayor Huss with a aye as well passes six
zero thank y'all and yes it's at your earliest please organize that easy to
consume and get that to everyone please
I'm skipping F I don't have a nomination at this point taking us to public
hearings there's item a ID 2 2 1 7 1 5 hold a public hearing consider adoption
of ordinance of the city of Den Texas amending the solid waste and recycling
criteria manual this is a presentation received last week I'll open a public
hearing and turn it over to staff
good evening mayor and city council I am the city engineer for the capital
project engineering department and I'm actually holding the one presentation
for all the public hearings if you want to call those okay yes let me do that so
which one are we a through all of them no yeah okay so it's ID 2 2 1 7 1 6 hold a
public hearing consider adoption of ordinance of the city of Denton Texas
amending the stormwater criteria manual item C ID 2 2 1 7 1 7 hold a public
hearing consider adoption of ordinance of the city of Denton Texas amending the
transportation transportation criteria manual and item D ID 2 2 1 7 1 8 hold a
public hearing and consider adoption of the ordinance of the city of Denton Texas
amending the water and wastewater criteria manual and I'll open all four
of those public hearings all right thank you very much as we discussed last week
in the work session item we started a series of review meetings in April
through July of this year we completed draft updates to the criteria manuals
in September at that point we started a pretty extensive public outreach program
through different committees boards and community or professional organizations
and we had a work session item last week discussing the criteria manuals our
process in high-level overview of the changes here is the public outreach plan
that we completed this fall and all the community meetings and public notice
that we did and we are here for any questions you may have okay questions
for staff on item a seeing none I'll take a motion well I'll close a public
hearing if there's no speakers seeing none close a public hearing mayor Pro Tem
the the staff did a lot of great work I think this this year's criterion manual
updates are better than in the past so I love the improvement so thank you guys
I don't say that they will never have concerns again in the future but y'all
are doing a good good work on these criterion manuals so I gotta give and
take a little bit Sarah so I move approval okay
customer bird second motion by Mayor Pro Tem second by councilman bird any other
discussion seeing none mayor Pro Tem how say you aye
Councilman bird I'm with you Councilor McGee Councilor Davis Councilor Watts
mayor Hudson's eyes well that passes takes us to item B I'll remind that the
public hearing is open anyone care to speak seeing none I'll close a public
hearing for item B I'll take a motion mayor Pro Tem I move approval is there a
second I'll second councilor Watts motion by mayor Pro Tem second by
council member Watts any other discussion mayor Pro Tem how say you
aye councilor Watts Councilman bird Councilor McGee aye Councilor Davis
aye mayor Hudson's eyes well that passes 6-0 takes them so it takes us to item C
the public hearing is open anyone care to speak on this item seeing no
drastic movements will close a public hearing for item C and I'll take a
motion mayor Pro Tem I move approval is there a second Councilor McGee so we
have a motion by mayor Pro Tem a second by council member McGee any other
discussion seeing none mayor Pro Tem how say you aye Councilor McGee aye
Councilman bird aye Councilor Davis aye Councilor Watts aye mayor Hudson's eyes
well that passes 6-0 takes us to our last public hearing which is open item D
any speakers seeing no one close the public hearing is there a motion mayor
Pro Tem I'll do it again I move approval thank you is there a second
council member bird motion by motion by mayor Pro Tem second by council member
bird any other discussion seeing none mayor Pro Tem how say you second
councilman bird okay McGee councilor McGee aye councilor Davis aye yeah
councilor Watts aye mayor Hudson's eyes well that passed 6-0 thank you very much
that takes us to our last public hearing before concluding items and that is ID
2 2 1 9 8 8 hold a public hearing inviting citizens to comment on home
ARP allocation plan for the city of Denton and I'll open a public hearing
and then there was one what'd you say no
good evening mayor and council Courtney Duang Dara with community services and
I'm here tonight to hold a public hearing on the city of Denton's home ARP
allocation plan in March of 2021 the American rescue plan was signed into law
and provided one point nine trillion dollars in relief funds to address the
continued impact of COVID-19 five billion dollars of this funding was
appropriated to the home investment partnership program or the home program
establishing the home ARP program as a participating jurisdiction for home for
the home program the city of Denton received approximately 1.7 million
dollars in home ARP funding in September of 2021 to serve Denton residents this
one-time funding has a federal expenditure deadline of September 2030
and in October of this year HUD established a date by which allocation
plans for this funding must be submitted at the end of March 2023 home ARP
requires that funds be used to primarily benefit individuals and families and
what HUD refers to as qualifying populations including people experiencing
literal homelessness at risk of homelessness fleeing or attempting to
flee domestic violence or other populations that include households that
have previously qualified as homeless are receiving temporary assistance
assistance to be housed and will need additional assistance to maintain that
housing or households with an income less than or equal to 30 percent of the
area median income and as a note veterans are not identified as a special
qualifying population for this funding but if a veteran household does meet one
of the four qualifying population criteria they are eligible to receive
assistance eligible activities include administration at a maximum of 15% of
the funded amount development of affordable rental housing tenant-based
rental assistance supportive services non-congregate shelter and nonprofit
operating and capacity building assistance and each of these except for
the last two are eligible activities under traditional home funding the last
two have been added specifically for this program so based on consultation
with community partners the community services advisory committee made a
recommendation in their September meeting to allocate funding for tenant
based rental assistance and supportive services the allocation plan which was
provided in the back up for this item the draft plan includes a detailed
analysis of needs and service gaps pertaining to the identified qualified
qualifying populations and based on that analysis and direction from the
committee the allocation plan proposes to prioritize funds comprehensively to
provide rental assistance and supportive services for people experiencing
literal homelessness and this is an estimated timeline for approving the
plan and administering funds in the community our public comment period
began November 27th and was advertised and the paper has been communicated over
social media email on the city's website our comment period will end tomorrow our
plan is to come back to council with a final plan for approval in January and
submit that plan to HUD and pending HUD's approval which can usually takes
anywhere up to 45 days we plan to really send a notice of funding opportunity to
line up agreements to administer this funding so that we can execute those
agreements and get the funding in the community as soon as HUD approves our
plan and that is it for the presentation great questions for staff any questions
mayor pro tem so we just opened the new shelter and one of the things that and
that's great I think we're all there all looking really forward to the increase
in services that will be providing one of the things that was discussed there
at the opening was you know it's in a new location compared to the other
locations does various forms of transit qualify as support services
transportation as it pertains to serve someone's housing plan or supportive
services they might be receiving in the program would apply so definitely if
someone needed a go-zone pass or something it could be included as
supportive services and actually supportive services encompasses quite a
bit because it refers to many CFRs so anything from transportation substance
use treatment services daycare things like that so the transportation itself
could be transportation assistance could be provided to someone receiving
assistance in the program if that's what you're asking yes okay thank you so much
okay any other questions count or what
who administers the who would administer the tenant-based rental assistance
program so our plan is to release a notice of funding opportunity and have
eligible applicants apply so we would target it for nonprofit service providers
already operating in this space to provide housing assistant services so
any of our local providers our local nonprofits would be eligible to apply
we're still finalizing that application and the committee is going to review
that in January so mayor if I could just make one comment sure and and I
appreciate that I mean that's 1.1 million dollars and I know that we've
gotten some we still have some funds left from I think it was an 11 million
dollar allocation I really think we need to really continue to look at how can we
partner with a developer partner with a nonprofit do it ourselves who see and to
analyze the data and the cost if we were to partner with someone or have some
type of ownership stake in something because once that 1.2 1 million dollars
is gone it's gone and I think we just need to continue to think about do we
want to have some opportunity to have something that's more permanent that we
can help people in transitory housing situations or even permanent housing
situation so I'm all for tenant-based rental assistance I just I think that if
we're going to have these large sums of money that is there a better way that we
can utilize it to have the same impact or more of an impact long term for
people who are really needing that so those are just my comments but I'm all
okay with this it did come up in the committee as well we did bring them some
data to evaluate allocation for development of affordable housing or tenant
based rental assistance and as it stands right now we have no dedicated funds for
rental assistance for people moving from homeless to house in the community so it
was such an emergent need and we're just you know right behind this kind of wave
of funding with our affordable housing plan and being able to develop some of
those packages to attract developers we're almost there for it to be able to
embrace those projects more readily but for the time being the most emergent
need was getting people off the street so okay I have a question could this be
you even if it can't be used just a note for for you and for Danny is there could
these funds be used for like fencing is it like I know it says like
construction but it's more housing but as a component of and the reason I ask
is because if we don't add a fence to the outside of our new facility when
people go out the side out the side door for animal you know for their for the
dogs or you know that sort of thing there's no way to control who comes in
and out or if they let them in through the side versus going through the front
so to control that flow we need to find funds to fence that in yeah these funds
could not be but we still have additional funds from the project that
we'll look at as soon as we're complete with all of the budgeting if there are
additional funds that's the one of the things fencing and lighting were the two
things that we didn't include in the original contract but could be utilized
if we have other funds otherwise we'll continue to look at that for
opportunities in the future okay yeah fully support that and even if we can
work with the sweat team with Pat Smith and the sweat team and get a you know
get a better deal that way to donate or something to them or buy the materials
and get labor so whatever we can do I just fully support that just because it
helps us secure that building yeah thank you very much appreciate the insight any
other questions for staff okay I'll take a motion mayor Pro Tem just public
hearing okay great even better so the public hearing is open anyone care to
speak okay we have one speaker David Gaines come on down come on down you
have to until January then you can ignore me as a finance guy can you give
me your dissertation no no anything you want to add or say or just I want to
turn the mic over to you you're from finance so it's all on point so go ahead
for this item no it's it's been a joy to work with with the council throughout my
entire time here and the community to serve this great community and really
most importantly working with this great staff we've really built a great team
over the past few years and I'm sad just to walk away from them walk away from
from you all in the community but I'll be rooting everyone on from afar and I
know everyone will do fantastic things so it's been a great experience yes no
congratulations and those that don't know so David's headed to Austin and
we'll talk about its more include including but yeah yeah yeah what did I
say oh awesome okay yeah Addison but but I'll say this that just becoming more
aware of the the fierce competition you beat back I mean that's that's pretty
impressive and and I got the peek in your office mayor child showed me so he's
going to the White House y'all it'll make sense if you see it but yeah just
couldn't be more proud of of your trajectory and your opportunity to serve
thank you for your services community and and your wisdom and wish you well on
your next thing so yeah just want to say that just want to make you walk the
steps one more time thank you very much yeah yeah Councilor watch yes are you
taking are you are you taking comments yes this is a public hearing go right
ahead give your name and address you have four minutes no no I'm talking
about to David so I just want to make sure I get the opportunity to say a few
words but yeah we're gonna keep him okay yeah well David I appreciate your
service you know it we worked a long time together we worked hard together
you're gonna hear me when you do your first budget about we've got to reduce
the tax rate one or two cents actually I may show up at the public hearing and
just go ahead and recommend but no in all seriousness great choice they
couldn't have gotten anybody any better you're gonna excel there you're gonna
really bring some professionalism and some expertise to them that I think that
they don't even know is coming so really enjoyed working with you enjoyed your
your sense of humor your expertise your knowledge I think you've brought a lot
of things to our community and clarity on some issues that you know are
important and that's the financial issues of the city so congratulations
okay anyone else counsel Burt David I appreciate you just being who you are I
really appreciate your spirit your your successes I kind of wanted you to be my
son but I don't think that kind of worked out but I am wishing you much
success and I appreciate the fact that you just did not make me feel like I
didn't know what ever knew what I was talking about so that is something that
good teachers do and so even with that you you've taught me so much so I
appreciate that in again congratulations for your success
excellent anyone else great thank you very much appreciate you thank you yes
okay so then I'll close the public hearing on that item and then that takes
us to concluding items and and I see you may pretend but I'm gonna take liberty
just for I have a lot but I want to start at this because it's easier for my for
my family to kind of play it when we get there but we experienced a loss and so I
want to talk about that a little bit and I want so my family in California so
you've heard me sometimes wish my grandma Lopez happy birthday
well today she transitioned to heaven to join my grandpa and I say mine it's my
wife's family so I want to my condolences to my my in-laws and my wife it's her
grandparents but I lost mine in middle school so her grandparents became my
de facto grandparents and so we were super tight there in California so we'll
go out there and fellowship with them and kind of get through this but you know
so Samuel so Doris Jean Samuel Hill my grandparents passed away middle school so
kind of glommed on to my wife's family when I could and so grandma Lopez and
and and grandpa Lopez are together now so that's good but but hard and so we'll
just agree with the family and so I wanted to kind of have that there and
I'm going to transition to other community stuff but wanted to start with
that just so they know that that they're top of mind and I'm thinking of them and
then segue so I want to say guy or high school they did a great job their
playoffs didn't end like they wanted to but well done I'm proud of them and then
County Commissioner Ron Mersham is retiring and so he's having a retirement
party this week so I want to wish him well and thank him for a service to the
county I want to thank the city manager and all staff for their work with the
Salvation Army ringing the bell it was a great team effort and I'm grateful for
that a lot of good information a lot of great things happening in our community
and then I want to thank chief and I want to put this out there for anyone
that's interested that fire graduation that NCTC does and they're at the ATC or
LeGrone high school campus I don't know what all they call it but it's amazing
and if you can imagine coming out of high school with your fire credentials
and EMT credentials and going to get a job and making seventy seventy five
thousand dollars a year it's an amazing opportunity so if those if there's
anyone interested to have kids are interested please look into that and then
UNT plays in the Frisco Bowl this Saturday so I think that's right 17th so
want to want to wish them well and then we won't meet again so I'm gonna touch
on all these and I'm probably gonna get them wrong some of them but I want to
say so Merry Christmas we're in the middle of Advent so those that celebrate
that hope and then there's Happy Holidays then there's Happy Hanukkah
which starts I think December 18th so we won't be back before that and then
Kwanzaa starts December 26th we won't be before that so I wanted to touch on
those things however you celebrate please enjoy time with your family loved
ones etc Mayor Pro Tem. Thank You Mr. Mayor so I had a couple just a couple I
wanted to piggyback on with David leaving us we we do have a change in
leadership it was announced to the Friday staff report so I just want to
give a shout out to Cassie Ogden because she said I shouldn't do this tonight so
I definitely had to do it and congratulate her on coming in as the
interim assistant manager and pretty soon she'll be superseding David
because we don't need him anymore good riddance to him and then the the other
couple of announcements I wanted to piggyback on the the holiday
recommendations appreciate the mayor doing that I'll just add Yule for those
in our community that are they're celebrating that I want to remind people
that the Citizens Police Academy sign up is is now so please contact Officer
Whitson over in the police department for the Citizens Police Academy I know
that that sometimes seems weird but I had the best time in the Citizens Police
Academy I saw all what the detectives did I saw what the officers did it was
just fun and slowly I encourage it you know just so that you learn more about
what's going on in there and then I will also double down on the mayor my son's
in Green Brigade band so he'll be at the Frisco Bowl so if you look for the
tallest trumpet on the right hand side doing really strange choreography see if
he's actually got his trumpet on his lips because half the time he does play
so that's a that's my son Ian and I a big shout out to him at the Frisco Bowl
thanks mr. Mayor mm-hmm councilmember Davis thank you mayor so we're ending
an even even numbered year that means you have a lot of public service for
hold on you have a lot of public servants retiring you mentioned
Commissioner Marchant we also have some judges out the courthouse and one in
particular that I want to mention is judge Joe Holland JP one oh yeah he has
been he's remains just try to get away from judge Joe Holland's opinions he
remains an integral part of this community a dedicated Kwan Ian he is he
shows up in the darndest places and for the longest time now he's been on the JP
one bench deciding those cases and hearing those cases but he's a fantastic
person his retirement reception is at the administrative courthouse not the
one I work at and not the one right over here the one on loop 288 from 11 to 1
this Friday and there's some other judges retiring as well but I'd be
remiss if I didn't mention Joe specifically and then also another
really cool event our parks departments participating in it happens across the
country and there's still donation opportunities available but it's called
wreaths across America let me know if you need the opportunity to donate but
this is an event where we place wreaths on the graves of veterans and that's
happening in Denton at the Oakwood cemetery at 11 a.m. this Saturday it'll
be a really cool ceremony to see you can anybody shows up can participate and
help distribute the wreaths have already been donated but there's still donation
opportunities available great thank you anyone else
counselor McGee thank you mr. mayor yeah I appreciate you mentioned that mr.
Davis I want to highlight all the amazing work that parks and recs is doing
wreaths across America is gonna be great also cookies and cocoa that's also
happening on on Saturday afternoon so that'll be fantastic as well David I
want to also extend my congratulations to you I look forward to coming down to
Texas Day Brazil one of my favorite restaurants and break and rare with you
also want to say happy Hanukkah to those so celebrating have a safe and happy new
year let's make sure we don't have any incidents on the road with respect to
drinking and driving I want to wish our officers safety as they do their job
this year this is one of the most dangerous times of the year for our
officers so I just want to lift up them and prayer and safety last thing I'm
Chris still praying for you thank mr. mayor okay thank you anyone
counselor Bert yeah I want to remind the public that our homeless shelter that
we've opened up on 288 or being opened up I don't want to say the wrong thing
here they're gonna they're desperately looking for volunteers there's more
than enough space and room and things to do there this place is fabulous when I
walked in it felt like I was walking to one of a dorm you know how your parents
send you off to college and you end up in a dorm so I know that I'm gonna carve
out some time and find my space there but I would also hope that you do the
same and you all have a happy holiday that's good okay anyone else see you
none at 734 will conclude the night's meeting thank you