Sep 25, 2018 City Council on 2018-09-25 2:00 PM

Welcome everyone to this meeting of the Denton City Council on Tuesday, September the 25th, 2018. We're all present, therefore have a quorum. Call this meeting to order. We'll go through our agenda items. Agenda item one is citizen comments on consent agenda items . Are there any cards for citizen comment on consent agenda items? See none? In here, none. Okay, request for clarification of agenda items listed on the agenda for September 25th, 2008. Yes? If there's an item that we need to go into closed session on or questions about, is that -- when and what point would we ask that? I'd just -- probably now. If you want to ask for that. Well, I'm not sure, but it's possible a little bit later on . Okay. And as it comes up -- I'm sorry, go ahead, Mr. Chair. Go ahead. If you're not sure at this time, but maybe right before the item is introduced and you want to go into closed session at that time, make that request. That would be another appropriate time to do so. Okay. Thank you. Yes, Council Member Ahmert. I would like -- speaking of which, I would like us to have a closed session on individual item C. Okay. We'll just have that at the end of our other closed sessions before we take up the item, before we even take up the regular agenda item. Okay. Anybody else? Yeah, I just wanted to bring to -- I think Council's aware of it because of a memo that was sent out, but also just to clarify on the record that, you know, there's some that thought the line of questioning that I had for the developer and one of the issues that we're going to take up this afternoon was out of line and not consistent with the SUP ordinance, but I think if you look at condition A, where it talks about uses and conformance with different factors -- and I won't read it until I need to if I need to -- but it was directly on point for that specific factor, so it was not outside the bounds of the SUP discussion. Okay. Any other clarifications? All right. We'll go on to work session reports. Item 3, work session reports A, receive report and hold discussion, give staff direction regarding the 2018-19 audit plan. Good afternoon. I'm Ramesh Dallal, City Auditor. I have completed annual audit plan for FY '19. This plan was presented to the Audit and Finance Committee, and at their recommendation, I'm presenting this proposed plan to the City Council with some options. Before I get into the annual audit plan, I want to kind of give a little introduction about internal audit function, entity, and what role we apply. Now internal audit function is governed by professional standards. There are three standards that are of interest. One is called COSO standard, which is Committee of Spons oring Organizations. Now this is the group of high-profile businesses and government organizations came together, and they defined what is an internal control structure in any organization, government or non-government. In 2013, the U.S. General Accounting Office adopted these standards for government. In generally accepted, government auditing standards are updated to help verify in compliance with these standards. So basically, I mean, these standards provide the basis of our work. Now basically, internal control is the process used by management to help the organization to achieve its objectives. So basically, I mean, organization is supposed to identify objectives, which we have. Our core value is integrity, fiscal responsibility, transparency, and outstanding customer service. So to achieve this objective, the organization has designed some control processes, procedures, and they are required to monitor this compliance with their supervision structure in order to achieve objectives. Now since internal audit is city council agency to verify that we have proper processes, procedures, and the proper controls are included in the organization, and basically, we provide assurance to the city council. The control objectives, which almost like a backbone of any good governance, is effective in efficiency of the operations, compliance with applicable laws, regulations, and policies, in existence of proper checks and balances. Without these controls, none of the organization can work. Basically the outcome of this verification is that there's assurance of accountability and transparency in government. So with that background, I've done a risk assessment, which identified more than 200 opportunities. I do not believe that all the council members that are today were there when I completed that risk assessment, but I have provided that risk assessment to you today. My proposed plan includes 12 projects. First is economic development. Now since I came to Denton, I've heard that this city is positioned for significant growth, and if city is going to be experiencing significant growth, then economic development strategy, policies, procedures, and the controls over incentives that we offer is very critical. That's why this project is included. Again, when I talk to the city council members and the member from city administration. I'm sorry, Council Member Briggs had a question. On the economic development, it says here that it's an important function for the city attracting major businesses, which is correct. As far as included in the audit, will this be past contracts that we have approved for incentives and also does that also encompass the chamber contract that we have, which is part of their job as well to attract businesses? It definitely will include chamber contract because they are part of this process. It will look at some of the contracts that were approved. Basically, it can provide guidelines what worked, what didn 't work. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Next item is accounts payable. Accounts payable and procurement are like companion audits, I call it. Basically, we are spending $300 million through each of these processes. But they are the same dollars flowing through one process and then going to the other process. In order to make sure that there is proper accountability on an entire amount, we have to look at two processes at the same time. Capital project administration and compliance on selected projects. We are funding very significant amount, like almost $500 million over a certain period of time on capital projects. So we want to make sure that there are policies, procedures , and adequate controls exist in this process. Debit quality management and the next audit utility cuts, they are almost like goes together. Many times what happens in government, maintenance on important infrastructure like roadway is deferred. And because for immediate budget gains. But what happens is that that deferral results into comprom ising integrity of the roadways. And whatever was going to cost in maintenance, roadway, capital maintenance and replacement will cost significantly more. So that is a significant risk for the city. And I felt like we need to take a look at it. And utility cuts, water department and DMA, sometimes they have to dig up the streets and for their infrastructure maintenance and repairs. But when they fix it, I mean, contractors are supposed to fix the roadways, but many times it doesn't happen the correct way. And that also compromises integrity of the roadways. Water loss audit. A water department can lose substantial amount of water during the distribution. And that could add up into very significant amount of dollars. And that could result as a result into it could be a result of water leaks or faulty meters. And there are some other issues that are related to that. Now American Water Works Association has established methodology. And we're going to use that to review that. Yes, sir. >> I think Councilmember Briggs has a question. >> So I'm really glad to see that this is on here. This past few months I had several emails from residents saying that all of a sudden the past month their water usage unexplained jumped up. So I started asking a lot of questions and learned some things I didn't know about we have non-revenue water which is part of the leaks and then the non-revenue aspect. But for 2017, 835 million gallons was in that and 531 was due to breaks and leaks. So that's quite a significant amount of water. So will you take these amounts in your audits? >> I'll be auditing those amounts. And basically the idea is to identify what is the cause if we can find it. >> Right. Thank you. >> Sure. >> Yes, Councilmember Arnett. >> Will you be looking at and investigating the cause, will you also be looking at our watering ordinance, our watering policy? >> We'll be looking. When we do an audit we look at all ordinances and policies. >> Thanks. >> Okay. Next audit is DME Emergency Management Office effectiveness . Now again, when I was talking to City Councilmembers, this was brought up by several of them. And this particular office trades energy and basically there is a potential for millions of dollars of risk. And are we taking undue risk? I mean, that is the question. What are our policies? What are our procedures? So basically if that office is not effective, we stand to lose a lot of money. So we are going to take a look at the effectiveness of that office. >> So I've got a question on that. >> Yes, sir. >> Because I'm a little confused as to because looking at effectiveness of the process is a different process than doing an analysis and of what is the business risk of that particular function. Is that correct or are those two the same? >> I think they are very closely related to each other. Because again, if a function is not effective, again, the business risk is going to be significantly more. >> Well, okay. And so maybe it's specific to this particular department. But I know there is a difference between if you look at a process of how are we handling information, how are we handling data, how are we handling cash, those kind of things. You go in and you audit that process to see how can we do that more effectively to make the process and the organization more efficient from a process perspective. Here what I'm hearing you say is you are going to analyze -- and I don't have an issue with it. I'm just saying exactly what you are auditing because the risk is based upon the decisions that are being made upon real data being received constantly. And so there is also risk, but there is also reward. That's the whole reason why this exists. It was sold as it was proposed to be one that saves us more money than what it costs us. So are you also going to be analyzing the potential rewards of this process as well? >> Absolutely. >> Okay. All right. Okay. Yes. >> And just following up on that, because when we had the presentation from -- I forget which consultant, but they went and looked at that and the amount that we had thought we were saving was significantly lower than the amount that we were. Does that have something to do with what you're going to be looking? >> One of the things is that that particular study came out with several recommendations. And again, during the part of this audit we will see whether those recommendations were implemented. And again, what is the benefit that we derived? >> Very good. Thank you. >> So it's my understanding too that study did show that we were experiencing less savings, but it also showed we were still experiencing savings, just not to the degree and that the savings were still larger than the cost of the department per se. I think that's one thing you're going to be looking at. >> If there's a cost benefit, then we should continue doing this. >> Okay. All right. Fantastic. Thank you. The next audit is police property room. This particular unit is very critical for police department . In this particular property room, they store all the evidence, including all the cash, confiscated guns, drugs, jewelry, and so on and so forth. So having proper chain of custody and having proper controls is very critical here. And again, I mean, if we have everything good, then that's fantastic. But if we don't, then we need to take some actions. Otherwise, sometimes it can compromise the cases. >> Yes. Councilmember Hesbeth. >> So but to that point, how far in advance -- how far outside of the property room do you trace the -- let's say dollars, right? Because if you started the property room -- not that it would happen, but I'm saying if you started the property room and everything doesn't make it to the property room, then how do you reconcile that? >> Well, typically a police department will have a case management system. And the records will have a documentation about what was done, how much money was confiscated if they did. And then we can kind of reconcile to that, to the actual money on hand. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Next item is police overtime. We are spending about $1.5 million on police overtime. Now, overtime per se is a topic that we need to look at periodically. Because especially in case of police and fire, there is some overtime we cannot avoid and some overtime we can. Again, I mean, if we can avoid overtime that is avoidable, then we can -- we stand to save a lot of money. So again, I mean, that is -- police overtime is included. But at future date, we tend to -- we will include other overtime, like the fire department is another overtime where there's a huge amount of overtime incurred. >> Councilmember Armitage. >> So if it turns out that you find that there is too much overtime, I take it you'll consider that understaffing might be one of the culprits. >> What happens is we pay time and half for overtime. So if it is beneficial to hire one more body, then we save that half time. So it's just a cost benefit analysis. >> You got a comment? >> Well, one thing I would say is obviously we're going to be having a new police chief come on board in the next couple of weeks, so mid-October. So working with the internal auditor, those recommendations are made. I'm sure our police chief along with his command staff will look at those options and bring forward recommendations to the council for consideration. >> Thank you. >> Recent ethics ordinance requires us to provide administrative support to the ethics board. And again, I mean, I've scheduled 200 hours for that support. And the last item is we have fraud, waste and abuse hotline and periodically complaints trickle in on that hotline and we spend some time on investigation. So that's that item. In addition to that, if council so chooses, if you choose not to accept any of the proposed projects, there are four additional projects which are also very high risk. If you want to substitute one of those projects or one or more of those projects with the proposed project, that still will be covering the enough risk. And those are payroll administration. Today we are spending about $166 million on payroll. Grants management, we receive grants from state and federal government and that amounts to about $125 million. Franchise fees audit, we receive $17.8 million annually. And again, I mean, the franchise fees at times you find additional money in that area. And finally the risk management audit. Now, this audit is important because this risk management makes sure that we are protected from potential losses and we have got proper insurance coverage or workman's compensation coverage, so on and so forth. So that is an audit is interesting to do. But with that I conclude my presentation. Is it possible that on any of the items that you have here that it would take you less hours than we are estimated? Probably not. No, okay. Okay. Thank you. I am okay with the ones that you have when you have proposed here. >> Councilmember Melcher. >> It strikes me that you have identified for very good reasons areas that have a lot of dollars attached to them, but I submit to you that there is kind of two factors. There is the size of the dollars, but then there is also the probability that there is something amiss. And I will just make an example. This is off the sort of B list. Like payroll, huge amount of dollars, but you have got 1, 500 checkpoints. Payroll is usually done right because people speak up if it is a penny off. Whereas like grants management, we know we went through an experience a couple of years ago of missing on a very big grant. So you have to say there is at least some evidence of a probability of a bigger real -- realized -- realizable risk there. So I say that to ask you if there are some of these items on the A list, you know, that have sort of less probability of something amiss than others. The ones that occur to me, like you won't find anyone who will talk about roadway quality, you know, more than me, but I have never heard it alleged that we don't measure the quality well so much. I don't know. Maybe I am wrong about that. Mostly, you know, it is that the quality is, you know, needed to be affected. In other words, we learned about 25 percent of the streets being in poor, very poor shape, but the issue wasn't -- we weren't measuring the quality. So like I -- you know, I wonder if we would be more -- if we would gain more -- I am just throwing that out as an example, you know, to do the grants management instead of that one. That is just a possibility. Another one that, you know, strikes me as at least worth talking about is as much of a skeptic as I am of the value of the energy management office, because I am -- not because of anything specific to DME. I am just skeptical of anybody thinking they can consistently beat a market. You know, that is a really hard thing to do. But we just did it. You know, would it be valid to do it every other year and, you know, get something else looked at? So I just throw those out for discussion, but that is -- really, my question is, are there any of these areas on the A list that you think, even though they are big, that the kind of probability of something I miss might not be, you know, as obvious? Yeah, I -- Which is great. And again, to respond to that, I mean, I created my risk assessment by talking to a lot of people and kind of understanding the organization. My opinion is that any of the audits that are selected here , A list or B list, if they are not done this year, they will be done, you know, coming years, because again, I mean, I do believe that the risk is equal. I mean, there is a greater risk in all of the projects. But again, I mean, it is up to the City Council to choose. Any other comments on this agenda item? So your question in the direction is, is this an adequate audit plan for you to begin to work on for this fiscal -- upcoming fiscal year? Yes, sir. All right. I haven't seen too many objections to it other than some comments about substituting in some in. Is everybody okay with this? All right. Okay. All right. You have your direction. Thank you. Yep. Okay. The next item on the agenda is agenda item 2B, receive report and hold discussion, give staff direction regarding the potential reestablishment of a committee on people with disabilities. Good afternoon, Mayor, members of the Council, Mario Cann izzaro, Assistant City Manager. I wanted to take a few minutes of your time to talk about an item that's been of interest to a number of you. We've had some conversations over the last number of weeks. An informal staff report was issued back in late August about this committee, a committee that actually about establishing a committee and working with staff, found a little history that actually a committee already existed that just because of the changeover turnover we've had in City Manager's office just did not know about. So wanted to bring you some information, a little history about this program and see if there's some interest in either reconstituting the committee in which it was established or do something different from a Council appointed committee or, again, any other options you might want to do. To give you some history, in 2007 a Mayor's Committee for Citizens with Disability was established by resolution 2007-030. At that time, Mayor McNeil, Perry McNeil was the Mayor and this was a citizens initiative or more of a grassroots effort of some concerned citizens that wanted to advocate on behalf of citizens with disabilities. And so they came together and formed a small group and then working with Mayor McNeil about giving the moniker of this committee through the Council process. About 8 to 10 of those individuals were the key principals but the group grew to about 40 and if you read into the record, some bylaws were established and this bylaw is the way to describe it, it allowed for membership within this committee. So but again, it was a citizens led effort. It wasn't Council appointed. So they this committee worked quite a bit for about seven years. They worked with to raise awareness for folks that have disabilities. They worked with some of our local entities like DCTA to raise concerns about their operations and how it affected and interface with citizens with disabilities. They did special events. I believe one of the events that they did was White Cane Day held I believe in the fall of every year and it was an event that celebrates individuals that have visual impairments or blindness and also puts on demonstrations for those that have full visual capabilities with blindfolds and allow them to walk around with a cane to basically demonstrate to them what it's like for folks with disabilities and the some of the obstacles that they come into play when it comes to walking around in the streets and some of the other public areas. >> Question, Councilmember? >> Yes, ma'am. >> I actually participated in that. >> Oh, have you? Okay. Very good. >> Yes. So did they have agendas of post meetings and have meeting minutes anywhere? >> Yes, ma'am. They did have agendas. They did have posted meetings. I actually do have a file. Barbara Ross was the staff liaison to that group during that time and she was the recording secretary and kept minutes and agendas. So there are those and I have those or she has those on file too. >> Do we know why it stopped meeting in 2014? >> Well, that's funny that you ask. I asked Barbara the same thing and what had happened, they had elected a new chair person and they had a meeting scheduled at the end of October or sorry, the October of 2014 and we're not quite sure all the nuances, whether it was a relocation of a job or a different opportunity but they just quit calling meetings and the chair quit calling meetings. The committee members never really asked for meetings to occur and so it just organically was created and somewhat organically sort of waned. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> So as I mentioned, there were some bylaws that were established and there were some six to seven key things that the committee was focused around. Certainly all around promoting and advocating for folks with disabilities to promote better public and employer understanding for those individuals with disabilities, to increase employment of those workers, to encourage retention and advancement of workers with disabilities, provide better understanding for those with disabilities and the services that are available to them because it's just being able to market and get those pieces of information to those that may just not have the means to find it for themselves, to encourage them to use these services to remove architectural barriers and this is where they would come in and work with some of our staff and one of the things that they did was including the voice activated pet heads that you see around the square. So that was one of the elements that they worked on with staff as they were working through their programs. And again, just to promote participation with folks with disabilities, again, more of an encouragement and advocating for those individuals with disabilities. To give a little bit more in depth understanding, again, not knowing where the council may want to go, we wanted to do a little bit of analysis as to what other cities in and around the Metroplex do with committees such as this. We also have some information in your backup of cities outside of the region along with cities from other parts of the country and also the state of Texas has a governor's committee on citizens with disabilities. But as you can see, city of Arlington, city of Irving, city of Fort Worth are some cities here around the area and they run the gamut of how they are structured. For example, the city of Arlington is a membership similar to what was established here in Denton. While we haven't gone into all great in depth research as to how each city has structured their committees, we have just kind of given you some highlights of what they have done. Theirs is more of a voluntary basis, Irving and Fort Worth is more of an appointment basis. So very similar to what we have here with our advisory committee boards that we have here in Denton. Some areas, again, if the council is interested in continuing with this program or establishing something different, we are, as you all know, through the budget process and all the various conversations that we've had with you and folks in the community, the number of projects that we're working on. Currently we're continuing our efforts to replace sidewalks , ramps and crosswalks or adding new ramps and crosswalks and sidewalks to the city as we continue to build out our CIP. Last week, I believe, you all approved a contract to begin our ADA transition plan project. So that would be a program that would be suited for a vet ting process where folks with disabilities could help give guidance to the consultant when they're establishing the plan for the city of Denton. My understanding is the Parks Department is working on planning for an adaptive, handicap accessible park, I believe a mechanical park, at least at this point, but it may be moved to a different location depending on the direction of the Park Board and Council. But that may be an option for as those plans are being developed, again, where folks can come in, give some guidance and direction as to what would folks with disabilities, how would they use this park for children and adults alike. Question Council Member Briggs. Yes ma'am. Well, one thing I do not see on there and that we do currently do, it's recent, in our parks and recreation, we have activities for youth and adults for adaptive recreation and that is something that would also need to be under their list as for things that we could advise on. Just on the recreation programs? For those activities, yes. Absolutely. You know, as you know, we're building our facilities, a number of facilities we're building, just so you all know, all of our city facilities are ADA compliant so they meet the standard, but there certainly is room for improvement. There could be friendlier for those with disabilities and in fact earlier this month or late last month, I guess earlier this month we did a walking tour with Council Member Armitage and some folks here that are here in the audience, citizens of Denton, just walking around City Hall giving some ideas of how it could make, how we could make this facility friendlier for those with disabilities. For example, just better signage, increased parking, handicap accessible parking, so there is the minimum, but could there be more based on the number of folks that come here to City Hall to do business or to come to Council meetings and other functions here with the city. So signage, visual boards such as just electronic panels, basically flat panel televisions that can give folks an understanding where a map of the facility , upcoming events, schedules that are larger print so they could see if they have some visual impairment. So again, some good suggestions that were made, better lighting, things of that nature that we think we can do. It's a little bit of an investment, but certainly it could make the facility friendlier for those with disabilities. So we have those kinds of things that come up and as we build our new facilities that are more in that public realm, we certainly could use the guidance if the Council so chooses. We are embarking on a number of design projects in a number of our city parking lots, our public parking lot projects. And as I mentioned, we're going to meet the standard for ADA based on the number of spaces that the law requires, but based on the direction of this committee, if they're so inclined or even from Council, we could certainly add more spacing, more spaces for those with disabilities, again depending on the nature of where those parking lots are at. Certainly give guidance for improving city operations and suggestions for improving other entities' operations, whether it's DCTA, the county, other entities that we have associations with. It may not necessarily have any type of enforcement power on that, but it could be some guidance and some just again suggestions as when they interface with those other entities, how those entities could make improvements to their own operations. So I mean, I'm sure there's others, but those are the key highlights that I wanted to mention. And so at the conclusion, it's just options for you all to consider. You can certainly do nothing, take no action, and continue going down the path with how we've been going. Again, the parks board would be vetting parks projects, mobility would be vetting more of those mobility projects such as sidewalks, ramps, et cetera . You could reconstitute the Mayor's Committee that you had before or establish a new one with more of the guidelines that we use with our other advisory committees and boards that we have or if you have other options to consider or we're all open for any ideas that you have. >> Councilmember Briggs and then Councilmember Armitage, Councilmember Meltzer. Oh, I'm sorry. We'll just go down. Yeah. Go ahead, Councilmember Briggs. >> Thank you for this presentation. >> Sure. >> Well, my concern with doing what we did before was that it just fell apart and there wasn't any kind of, you know, cheerleading to get it back. But I would like to hear from Barbara if that's okay on the committee before and if what kind of changes she would think we would need. It seems like a perfect home for you to be in this committee. >> Well, and of course a lot of what we do in community development is related to persons with disabilities. I mentioned the minor repair program that if somebody needs a ramp, you know, to their housing unit, then we can assist with that. I think the committee was very helpful and provided some information that was needed in certain areas and went forward with certain projects and suggested that to staff and to Council. I will mention that there is currently a healthy communities group that is a county group and I don't know if you heard about the caregiver summit that we basically had Saturday, but that was an action of that particular group. We can -- I certainly think an advisory committee could work to come up with things in the community that are issues for persons with disabilities or programs and services that could be even paid out of CDBG funds to assist persons with disabilities. But I'm not certain. >> Well, just something with more -- like more of an advisory committee like our other committees are with more, I guess, appointments or nominations and specific rules rather than something that could just dissolve on its own. >> Right. Correct. I mean, the human services advisory and the community development advisory committee certainly are council appointed committees and have been active for many years. >> Okay. Well, it would be -- I would prefer not to do what we did before unless there was added wording in there and, you know, I don't know how the membership thing works. It's the new concept for me. I would like for it to be just an established committee, advisory committee as the other ones that we have. That would be my preference. >> Mayor Pro Temerai. >> I don't have a real strong feeling on whether I want -- which way we really want to go. I know we want to create a new committee on this. My personal thought on it is that to go with item number two in one of their charges is to look at item three as to whether, you know, it would work better, you know, what went wrong in 2014, what can they change? Would that require a council appointed committee as what's listed in number three? Let the current -- reconstitute the current one and let them look at what went wrong in 2014 and how would we fix it in the future. >> Councilmember Armitage. Wow. Sorry about that. I support number three because as councilperson Briggs said , if we have something like a committee chair leave town, there's an infrastructure in place under our rules on committees to have that person replaced and we have term limits and we have rules that apply to all our committees we can tweak special rules to this having to do with this particular committee. I do believe, however, because institutional memory is so important that if others on council -- if we decide and give directive for this option number three, I think it would be a good idea to have whoever is left from that previous committee meet with the new committee. Maybe there will be some overlap, maybe there won't. But to meet with them, including Barbara, to answer their questions, I thought that their charter or their mission statement, whatever it was called that you showed a few slides back, contained some really good points. I would want to leave it up to that committee to decide what they want to continue and what they want to let go. But I could envision them deciding to adopt that mission statement and maybe add some things to that. So number three, in other words, wouldn't necessarily be starting from ground zero. It could still be a building on what was done previously. And finally, I just want to add that when it comes time to council picking people for this committee, I would love to have something in place, not just for the present council but for the future, keeping the language flexible enough but just insisting that we appoint people who either have disabilities themselves or have firsthand experience, either professionally or caring for a loved one, because we have so many people who care. And that's wonderful. But I believe that for a committee like this to be most effective, it should be people, it should be about empowering people who have disabilities or extensive, including just extensive personal firsthand experience with someone with disabilities so that they can really make positive changes. So that would be kind of my one tweak to our current standing committee procedures. >> Council Member Meltzer. >> I go for option three, seven members. And I think a routine function for them could be to review items that come before -- I should say preview items that would come before parks and mobility , just to put that lens on it. Because if you don't have somebody looking specifically from that perspective, I think things will miss. >> Anybody else? >> Thank you. I would agree with Mayor Partem Ryan. I think we need to reconstitute what was there before. I think the concerns about the previous committee, I think, are captured in the people being active and passionate about it. I think that takes care of itself to regain that momentum. I -- furthermore, I think three is too exclusive. And I think there's value in having more people to the table, more experiences, because it is not an exact science. There's not a one solution catches all. And so to narrow it to not allow someone with a unique experience or perspective on an issue to not be allowed to participate, I think, goes against what was originally constituted. And so I can't see narrowing it. And we've all seen our track record here. Getting appointments, keeping appointments, it's not 100% either. And so -- and when you get into restrictions on that, I think it's best to just open it versus tailor some narrow path towards the ability to serve on this committee. So I'd like to see it open. I think that's beautiful. The 40 people, 50 people, whatever that is. My conversation feedback from staff was it was manageable at that level. I think that you can't beat that input and that dynamic amount of information that's coming in, different user experiences. So again, I think that the best path to be more inclusive than exclusive and not be as selective and allow those that want to serve the ability to serve to keep it open and then allow that group to then decide if they want to have a smaller component or more structured look at it is feasible at that point. >> Anybody else? Councilmember Duff. >> Yeah, I've been stopping and thinking about this. And I think I kind of agree with going with the number two. Because I think in order for this to be very successful, we have to have people that are going to be on that committee that really care. And whether that's people that just happen to care or whether they have the disabilities themselves. So I think we need to keep it open and I'm not totally opposed with number three, but I think two is better. >> Yes, Councilmember Amatero. >> Yeah, I was wondering, so we've got some residents here who are sitting in the audience who are people with disabilities or caretakers of people with disabilities. I was wondering if I could ask for maybe a show of hands on preference for two or three. That's something we haven't pulled the residents about, we don't necessarily have to. But if that's appropriate or maybe have someone come and speak, answer questions which folks with who are here with disabilities feel is the best option for you. >> Councilmember Melton, did you have a comment? >> On the same lines, if it's not sort of breaking the rules of how to do a work session, I'd be interested in hearing briefly comments from members of the public who have come specifically on this issue. >> Okay. Councilmember Hussman. >> Aaron, is that in the posting? I just don't want to make it -- I don't want to do something that's not given equal opportunity or giving fair notice to others that want to speak. That's my concern. Again, I don't want to be restrictive to those that made it and know we're going to have this conversation and aren't able to get here in time to partake in that conversation. >> And that's a point for not allowing that conversation. That's a discussion, a policy discussion for you to have. If for some reason you do choose to want to hear from citizens who are currently in the audience, you would have to suspend the rules, which is the rule on the work session items. And so that would allow you to hear from them. But again, that decision of whether to go to do that or not is yours based on a reasoning that Councilmember Hutz-Beth raised or any others that are out there. >> So let me comment on this first and then we can continue this discussion. I guess from the standpoint of Councilmember Hutz-Beth, I'm trying to understand when you say that three might be less inclusive than two, is that because of just the numbers that were sort of just thrown out there in the presentation? >> No, because at some point -- just because, yes, we're going to select a static number versus it being open to all that have an interest or are in that industry. >> Okay. All right. And I get that. I guess when I look at this, what -- I don't know how to say this, but what we had before didn't seem to be as effective as what we would like. And we might could tweak that a little bit because when I read the backup, if the committee is one where people can just sort of come in and out as situations evolve, then you really don't have -- you're either going to have to have a really core constituency that keeps that moving or it's going to be very disjointed and won't have much structure. So I think if we're interested in public input, I would feel uncomfortable giving public input now when we didn't give notice that we were going to have public input. I know we've got a couple of people in the audience that could speak to it. And I've spoken with both of them. But I'm sure there's a lot of people who are interested in this. So I would suggest that we sort of have a cooling off period of saying maybe in the next council meeting, go out and somehow create some public avenue where -- whether it be a town hall meeting or something like that where people can come to discuss the various options and give some feedback, which would be helpful. And some people who are on that other committee may do that . If we're going to do number two, we need to figure out a way to either put some rules in or some procedures that will ensure that the same thing that happened before doesn't happen again. Because actually that was the year I got elected. And I think by that time it had already sort of been not meeting. And it's obviously important. And I think it's probably more important -- it's always been important. And I think there's more community engagement around this issue than there might have been four years ago. So it would be interesting to see the comment. But I'd hate to -- I don't feel comfortable choosing one or the other without maybe having a little bit more feedback and trying to have a clear understanding of why did number two not work? Was it just some of the people involved that just didn't get together? One thing about council committees is there's probably a little bit more level of accountability with the meeting. But yet it can be very exclusive in the sense of you've got a finite number of people. And I think we've seen on council when you get council committees that are 25 or 30 or 40 people, it gets burdensome. I mean, it gets burdensome and then half of them wind up not coming or more than that and then you struggle with that. So that's sort of my thoughts on it. So we've got some comments. Councilmember Armitage? >> Oh, yeah, so that makes sense to me. I like the idea of having -- you know, putting the word out there to get more input. Since I'm not hearing that anybody saying -- wanting option number one, at the very least, you know, if we could kind of come out of this work session today with a directive that we want some form of this, number two or number three, and then -- and I wanted to propose what about having that input, that public input happen by posting this as an individual -- an item for individual consideration in a meeting since we -- in a future meeting since we know we're going to -- that nobody's opposed to this here and then we could hear from whoever from the public wants to come and then vote on it there and then we wouldn't be kicking the can, you know, too much further down the road and could really get started. I don't know what others think about that. >> I'm going to go with Councilmember Duff. >> Yeah, I think I've changed my mind on this. What I would like to see is go ahead and have a City Council appointed committee and let that committee set up and get up -- bring all the input in. That's what -- you know, that's what the committee should be doing. And if we each appoint one person to that, that's seven, and that's very manageable. Okay. That's my thought. >> So are you saying that that committee pursuant to option three would provide some more structure to create something like number two or number three would be it just with they're the vehicle for gathering input, making policy proposals and the like? >> That's right. I'm looking at number three. We appoint seven people to the committee, let them operate, let them have the public meetings and, you know, establish their own rules and see what we get that way. I think that's -- you know, I don't think we need to micr omanage this thing. >> Okay. I'm not quite sure who all -- I know Councilmember Hussbett and Ryan, at least what I thought I heard, and correct me if I'm wrong, on item two, it was to reconstitute it but take their input to see if they -- I thought your thing was to see if they want to create an option number three. Is that what you were saying as well? Okay. All right. Okay. All right. And Councilmember Meltzer, what were you -- >> I was for three. I mean, I think you have four that are for three. >> That's what I'm trying to understand. Councilmember Briggs, you're for option three. Councilmember Armitage? All right. Now there was a specific proposal made of the number of people. I mean, I know some of -- but I don't think that was -- there was some of that in the presentation but is that what we're deciding today as well? That we're appointing one each or is that for a different conversation or for today's conversation? Councilmember Meltzer? >> Well, actually, I can wait until you get an answer on whether it's for today or not. I was one who said seven, one each. I think, you know, it's a manageable number. They can always bring in more people to address the committee. You know, the super committee model doesn't have a great track record and, you know, I think we ought to build on that learning. >> All right. >> Anybody else? Yes, Councilmember -- Mayor Protein? >> Well, I believe the other two committees that Barbara deals with have a couple of alternates and I think it would not hurt to have some alternates on this as well. That allows for that additional input that we were concerned with. So it would be a committee of seven with two alternates. >> And those advisory committees and community development committee, those are seven with alternates? Is that correct? >> I believe so. >> I thought they were bigger than that, but I could be wrong. Yes. I thought they were bigger than that. >> Maybe they are. >> The community development advisory committee is nine persons and the human services advisory committee is 11. So they're a little over that. >> Is that including -- in addition to alternates? >> We don't have any alternates. >> You don't have alternates? >> No. >> Okay. >> Not at this time. >> Excuse me. >> Okay. >> So they're nine and 11. I guess I -- yeah. I'm not sure how though. Anyway. Okay. Yes, councilmember Armitage? >> One more thing before I forget. Something that came up when we had our walking tour and I'm forgetting who mentioned it, but maybe someone from engineering mentioned that staff has a committee, I don't know if it's an engineering committee or an interdepartmental committee that meets every once in a while on ADA issues and the possibility was raised that having somebody from -- either a member from this committee or somebody else to be a kind of resident liaison to that committee. So that would -- I would love to at least have the council committee consider that as a possibility, having something that's kind of regularly in place. >> I can shed some light on that. It's our facilities manager, Dean Hartley. >> That's right. >> Excuse me. And as part of their operating budget, they're set aside a specific amount of money to make ADA improvements in the various facilities. And so they as a team, because they're out and about, we have 50 buildings that the city manages and operates. And so what they do through their day-to-day maintenance of those facilities, when they see things that need to be repaired, when facilities are being updated, they have to -- they go through a process of just identifying those areas that need to make those improvements and they prioritize those. So it's an internal group of those facility employees to identify those areas and prioritize based on the funding that's given to them. >> That's right. Yeah. So having somebody from that committee be a regular liaison . >> Or one option could be that as that list is created, again, if this group is established, that could be given to them just as an overview. >> Exactly. Yeah, exactly. >> Yes. Councilmember Anderson. >> Just to state the obvious, if we craft this -- we seem to be pretty close to crafting this as a proposal, then if that goes up as an item for individual consideration, that's the public input opportunity. >> Did you have a comment? Yes. >> Well, I had a question for the council. It seems direction is being given to Mario is to come back with a resolution that creates this committee on people with disabilities, seven members. Are there any specific objectives you're wishing to include in that resolution or are you wanting to give the committee the leeway to come up with those objectives and then incorporate those as a resolution amendment? >> Yes. Councilmember Hatsbeth. >> Aaron, I'd like to hear from you. So if we can go back to that other slide. I'm sorry, Mario. >> That option. >> Yes, sir. Yes, sir. >> So just so that I can have a clear understanding, the previous mayor committee is already established so you wouldn't have to reconstitute that. You could pick that up almost immediately. Or do you have to redraft? >> Based on the wording of that resolution, which is very minimal, we could simply go out and have those people and reconstitute it that way without having to do any type of resolution because that resolution on its face is still a valid resolution. >> Yes, so I just wanted to have that record clear that the path -- this path is the fastest to get up and running and then as you're working on part three, just for the record. Now back to the appointment, I would -- I just want each councilmember to have the autonomy to appoint whoever they deem necessary. So whatever restrictions, I'm going to be against those if there's four people four restrictions but as that conversation matures, I'm not for restricting the individual councilmember's selection. >> Yes, councilmember. >> I just wanted to support what councilmember Duff said about not wanting to micromanage this too much and leaving it up to whoever turns out to be the members of that committee since the whole idea being about empowering people with disabilities to make these kinds of decisions. I love the idea of keeping it as open as possible and much like we did, though without as much legal oversight with our ethics committee. To the extent that they got to decide with their rules and procedures where I'd like to see something like that, really see this committee empowered. >> Councilmember Duff. >> Yeah, I guess I kind of look at this that if we have this committee and each of us on the council appoint somebody, let's make sure we go and find somebody that's passionate about it that really cares. I think that's the key to it because if you got people that really care about this whole subject, then they will come to the meetings and they will participate. >> I mean, I'm okay with option 3. I think I sort of share a similar sentiment with council member Hudspeth in the sense of, you know, our other two committees that are sort of our social service committees have 9 and 11 people and I guess we each have an appointment and then there's probably all, you know, there's probably two that are all or five that are all. So I would be okay, in fact, would probably prefer that because I think those committees follow along those lines of people who are passionate. I've never heard any problems with those two committees either making quorums or being able to have, you know, recommendations and the things that have sort of bedeviled some of our other committees recently, which have been larger. I mean, some of our committees have been three people, three councilmembers and, you know, it's been 20 something people or larger. So I would prefer to have more than just one per council member because I think this is a far reaching issue and I think I agree with councilmember Hudspeth, sort of the more the merrier we just have to find it as a manageable thing. So I'd be okay with 11, you know, one appointment for each councilmember and then three at large and then if the committee gets together and decides, well, we need to find a way to either have ex officio members or increase it, just, you know, see how it goes, that's what I would prefer councilmember Armitage. Just to be clear, I would actually prefer something like nine, nine or 11. I just, I wouldn't want to see it get to a mega committee, you know, like the city hall West committee size or up to, you know, 40 like we had there, you know, I think I would cap it at say 13, but I'd be open just about to kind of any , any odd number around between seven and 13. So is 11 okay? Okay. Go ahead. Wouldn't kill me if it was 11. Just the literature from years ago when I was in business school was that optimal group size for decision making, you know, achieve the most efficient outcomes, six to 10. Once you get beyond 10, your group process issues start taking away from your decision making ability. So I think odd number is smart. So if we're going to quibble, I'd put my chips on nine, but you know, it's not that big a deal. Okay. So we have nine or 11. Doesn't matter to me, but I don't know if I'm going to use necessarily a business model to try to help determine a political, a city political committee and social committee. So yeah. Yeah. So I heard nine or 11. I mean, okay. And so of the two or the four, those would be just at large . Yeah, all. Any council person could make that selection. If we had multiple ones, then we just do it like we do any other nomination. Just take them in the order that they're made. And then, and then again, those, as we bring that forward, we would allow this committee to have that public forum to hear the input from the community or do you want to have that public forum beforehand? Well, I think the, the considering of this agenda item, which would come forward as a action item would provide that forum because you can speak at an agenda item, whether this is probably an item for individual consideration. So you're able to speak at those with a blue card. Okay. Yeah. So you can put nine and 11 and then we'll just, we can figure that out. It's not a big deal to me. I mean, honestly. Okay. I mean, if everybody does, if we have a strong preference, if somebody, if there's a strong consensus of a certain preference, then we can go with that now. Is there a preference either way or do y'all just want to have another discussion about the number? Yeah, we'll go around the horn, I guess. We'll start over here. I think council member does. Well, I forgot my textbook at home, so I'll have to go. I'll read it when I get home. But 11 is closest to 40. So I'll go with the choices are nine or 11. Nine. I'll go with 11. He didn't get a choice. You looked at him. Yeah. I'll say, I'll say, I'll say nine. Yeah. Kind of a noncommittal nine. Your mic was off. Oh, sorry. I didn't see the light. 11. No, just kidding. Nine. Nine. I say 11. I like the diversity of it. There is a diversity of disabilities and in order to get input on all the different types of disabilities, I think 11 would be better. You're it. I say 11. 11 is a master number. It's a great number to have. And I know that there are several members in the community and at least three have already reached out to me that want to be on this committee. And so I don't think we will have any trouble filling those seats. So I think it was 11. Is that the consensus 11? That was the four. Okay. No, it's 11. I think that's after the fact. I don't think we -- yeah. So 11 it is. We'll try that out there in the council chambers. Yeah, 11. Yeah. Okay. Anything further? No. Any other comments on when they're bringing this back? We're working on it. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. The next agenda item is agenda item 3C. We've been going for about an hour and 15 minutes. Let's just take a quick break. Sorry about that. Everybody welcome back to this meeting of the Denton City Council, Tuesday, September 25th, 2018. It is 323. We are moving back down through our work session reports. We are on work session item 3C, receive report and hold discussion, give staff direction regarding neighborhood traffic calming options in the City of Denton. Good afternoon, everyone. Sorry. Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, council members. Thank you for the opportunity. My name is Preetam Deshmukh, traffic engineer for the city. I'll be talking about traffic calming. Let me just see if this drive can pull up. There we go. Okay. So, this is one of the items that was brought up last council meeting as a definite work session item that council wanted to hear more about and let the public know more about traffic calming. And a quick overview of what I'm going to talk about. There are several traffic calming options, engineering related. I'm not going to go over all of them, but the way this presentation is set up is what is traffic calming? What are the main requests that we get from citizens? How do we address them? What are the steps involved in the process that we go through? And then obviously, there's a toolbox of traffic calming options. How do we choose them? I'll touch quickly on two or three main ones or the most frequently requested ones. And the information is similar all the way down the list. We can talk more if you have any questions on a particular one. But at the end, I'll wrap it up with traffic calming, public art and traffic calming, and then next steps. What are we doing with this information? So let's get started. What is traffic calming? It is pretty much how do we reduce speed in neighborhood and residential streets? And the main concern that we get as a growing community, some of these older neighborhoods were not designed as cut through or thoroughfares. So what's happening is residential streets are used by motorists to speed cut through through neighborhood to get to the final destination. And as we continue to grow, we get more and more concerns. How do we address that? It's a three-step process. Start with education, enforcement, and then end with engineering, which is the final step where we actually go and take an action, come up with a solution and implement that. It requires physical building or changing the nature of some of these streets and some of the intersections within the neighborhood. So on the first two, education and enforcement, police department has put together a method that they use and pretty much the way they address some of these information. The method they use is SARA, scan, analyze, respond, assess . If you have any specific questions on this, Lieutenant Poeh ler is here to answer. But a quick overview. Once a location is identified for the analysis, they conduct a speed study, identify if there's really a speeding problem or a car is really speeding. Once they do that, then they start a robust education as well as enforcement for two to three weeks. They start issuing warnings. They start enforcing with tickets if they're really high. Once that happens, they go back after two or three weeks, go back with a second study and see if there are any impacts. Have we changed the behavior? What's happening? And then with that second study, if they're convinced that this is working out, they'll wait for a couple more months. After that, they'll go do a third speed study. Were the changes permanent or semi-permanent? That's what they're trying to get to. And with this type of analysis, we're really focusing on how to educate people more about speeding and then how to enforce it. So the next aspect of the engineering, and this is why I want to get back, get into a little bit of a technical aspect of this. Majority of the residents request stop signs for addressing speeding concerns. And stop signs, there's a slight misconception behind that. Stop signs are typically used as regulatory signs for controlling or assigning right of way at intersections. So their main purpose is not to speed, not to control speed . In fact, the guidelines tell us that you should not be using yield or stop signs to control speeds at intersections. If we go ahead and install a stop sign, we cannot actually enforce it. Legally, we cannot do anything if someone's going through the stop sign. That's one aspect of it. The second aspect, if you have multiple stop signs, people tend to accelerate between the stop signs. That defeats the purpose of actually calming the traffic, you're making them more aggressive. They find a way to cover up the time that they've missed between intersections. So those are two big drawbacks when residents talk about stop signs for speeding control. The other most common request is speed humps, and next few slides I'll discuss, there are some major disadvantages associated with speed humps. So what do we do when we get in complaint? There are certain steps we follow. These are the steps. Once we get the request, we go through that process where PD goes through education enforcement phase. Then if we really think that we need a permanent solution, then we actually go and collect data and do an assessment. There is an eligibility criteria. This is just a 10,000 foot level criteria saying, okay, at a higher level, these are the issues of the traffic is more than 1,000 trips or 100 peak hour trips. Council Member Hudson has a question. Go ahead. I just want to touch on that. You make a good point. How do I or no, no, how do my constituents complain about a speed? What is that process, right? So the average person that doesn't know who to contact or if they observe something, what's the best way to get that information in the right hands? So typically it comes through different avenues. There's engaged intent. Obviously, we get a lot of requests from there. Some of the requests directly go to the police department and some come to me as a traffic engineer. There are various means, but ultimately between the police department and traffic department, we cover all of the requests and make sure that we're going through this process that I'm outlining here. Thank you. Thank you. So then as mentioned, there is an eligibility criteria. We take the speed surveys and then also cut through traffic . There's specific criteria. If there's more than 100 cut through trips, it qualifies for the next level to implement some of the traffic calming devices. And then develop a plan. Traffic calming, implementing some of these measures is very not controversial, but it differs from person to person as far as their views. So it's very important to have some of the community meetings and understand that most of the people that live within the community use those streets are okay with some of the drawbacks, advantage, as well as disadvantage of a particular option. So I'll go through the options, but a neighborhood meeting is definitely a requirement for something to really work. After that, funding, design construction, and then evaluation of the effectiveness, which will probably occur six, eight months down the line. This is the process that the city follows. And these are the options. This is a toolbox. I'm not going to cover all of them, but just to give you an idea, there are about 14, there are 10 more outside of these, but these are fairly common. I'll touch the first two or three and go over what are the pros and cons and what exactly are these. And then after that, if you have any questions, I have information for the first seven, which is this. I have information within the presentation, but I'm not going to touch on all of that. And then move to the traffic calming public art piece. First, speed humps, very common, three or four inches in depth. That hump height is about four inches and it is entire width of the street. And this is a most common measure within residential neighborhoods and used as a mid-block location. So advantages, it's effective in slowing people down. They definitely calm people down. Slowing people down and then they're relatively a low-cost alternative. Disadvantages, there are some serious concerns associated with emergency response ambulances. Yes, Council Member. Okay, you just hit it. Inequality for emergency response routes. Yeah, because I've heard anecdotally from people on the doorsteps that when they've asked for speed humps, they've been told that it does damage to fire trucks. Is that what you are talking to? It is more on the paramedic side, ambulance side, where they're carrying patients. They don't want to go over the hump, which makes it more worse for the patient. So that's the main concern right there. It also creates an issue with transit. If you have buses going over it, it affects their routes, their timing, the way they want to run their buses. And then last, drainage could be a problem. If the speed hump is connected all the way to the gutters, the water doesn't drain properly. It kind of stands there. So these are the main disadvantages. This is a modified speed hump, which really helps address some of the disadvantages. These are called speed cushions. As you can see, there are grooves in between the speed hump . Now, these grooves are strategically placed. They are at a width that supports any emergency vehicle with wider axle. Anything above 70 inches in axle width can pass through these two grooves, while even the trucks, any vehicle, any passenger vehicles cannot go through these grooves. So these are strategically placed so emergency vehicles can go through them, and we can use on emergency response routes and on mid-block locations. So as you can see, there are a bunch of advantages. It can be incorporated. It has minimal impact on emergency response times. And then there is a disadvantage, which is associated with most of the traffic coming devices, that there might be some traffic diversion onto parallel streets. So if you install a traffic coming device on one street, the traffic shifts to others. So when we're picking one or the other, we have to be careful. Mayor Pro Tem Ryan. Thank you. If the speed cushions work better than speed humps, why would we ever use humps? Is there a disadvantage to the humps in that they break down quicker, that their lifespan is not as long, or is any of that part of it? So I think there are a couple ways of looking at it. Speed humps work well in really low-volume residential neighborhood streets that are not emergency response route, and primarily used as a connection or a high-speed corridor between two major arterials. There are certain locations it could work better. These are definitely on emergency response routes. Speed cushions are better. Personally, I recommend speed cushions on every place. There are some kinds that can be bolted down. As you can see in this picture, there are some kinds that can be done with asphalt. Council Member Briggs. Do we have any speed cushions in the city, and have we recommended any with all the complaints of speeding? We've had recently in neighborhoods. We don't have any speed cushions in the city. We have not gone through the analysis portion of the whole traffic calming with the neighborhood meetings. I've started talking to three or four communities about holding these meetings and going through the different options and explaining what are the pros and cons to get a consensus. So we're in the ongoing process of getting consensus. What about maintenance and costs? Maintenance cost on the... Cushions. On the cushions. This is something that can be used as an educational piece, also these bolt down, where you place them at a location, educate people to slow down, and once the tendencies or once the behavior has changed, you can pull them up. This is something that can be reused at different locations . As far as maintenance, this can be...and we're looking at other alternatives too. There are some bolt down curbs that are available that you can do bulb outs or islands. So there are different temporary solutions to train people, and that's why we wanted to bring it forward to the communities and let them understand that do you want it on a temporary basis, which is much more cheaper, or a permanent basis, or either/or. So one more last one, and then I can skip to almost the end of the presentation. This is on street parking. Typically people don't think that this is traffic calming, but it does help calm traffic down. It increases roadside friction so that people, when they travel and cars are parked along, it creates a sense of smaller lanes, and they typically travel at low speed. So these are the advantages. Parked vehicles create a buffer between the pedestrians that are on the sidewalks and the actual vehicles traveling on the streets. But there is a big disadvantage when we're talking about pedestrians. The visibility is an issue, and then also there's a risk to bikes and pedestrians. - Council Member Briggs? - On the one image you showed us, I'm surprised that as a disadvantage, emergency vehicles is not on, because there are some streets that when you have two-side street parking, a fire truck cannot fit through there. So that would seem to me to be a disadvantage as well. - That's a yes and a no. These are really old streets that we're talking about that were really narrow. They were not designed for the amount of on-street parking that is currently happening on those due to some of the change in land use and the surrounding uses. So we are trying on doing some kind of retrofit of how do we address this issue, particularly around UNT where the streets are really narrow. Some of them definitely need to go take out parking on one side or both. And then moving forward, our design standards, we looked at that, and our current design standards accommodate parking on both sides as well as have a clear 20-foot. We worked with fire department to set that up. So moving forward, we shouldn't have any issues, but yes, we have to deal with that older street component. - Okay. Thank you. - Thank you. - Yes, Council Member Almejar? - So I was wondering what you think, kind of along these lines, in the way in which something like parking on both sides of the street creates the illusion of a narrower street, not quite an illusion in this case, because you can't actually drive where the cars are parked. But in preparing for the meeting today, I was wondering, I had the question of whether or not bike lanes do anything to calm traffic. And I did a little research, and I read one study that said yes, and another one that said no. And the one that said yes wasn't sure whether it was a result, a very limited study testing in a specific area, I forget what state, but wasn't sure how much of that was the result of the lanes creating the illusion of a smaller street, or whether it was because of the bikes that then came, and the drivers were slowing down around bikes. But given how much people have been asking for more bike lanes and more continuity connection between bike lanes throughout the city, is that something we should be considering? - So another aspect of that appearance part of making the lanes appear narrow is pavement marking, and we've been doing that. We've implemented some on Nottingham, we've implemented similar parking lane and/or bike lane marking on even Old North, some of these wider streets that existed in the neighborhood now people are actually speeding. So in order to create an illusion of instead of having a whole 40 foot wide section, you only have a 12 foot lane to travel on in one direction, and the rest of this parking on either side or bike lane. So yes, we've already started doing some of the pavement marking concepts, and it can work hand in hand with this particular. - And just to follow up on that, since I especially hear, I mean I hear from people all over the city about traffic issues in all kinds of places, but I especially hear from parents near schools who are concerned about speeding near schools, and said this would be bike lanes. I mean with parking, I'd also worry about kids getting out on the wrong side, but at least bike lanes would also, would slow down traffic and encourage or make it easier for kids to ride their bike or scooter or whatever to school. Another thing I wanted to mention too is that I've noticed also around the school where my kids went to elementary school, Woodrow Wilson, Emerson Lane used to be in really bad condition. And then it got fixed, and the good news was that no longer broken road. The bad news is the broken road was the built in traffic calming, and then you had people speeding in front of the school, so that's kind of something else to consider, especially near schools. So, when you fix new roads to put in even a temporary traffic calming device, because it is, it's such a stunning difference being able to sail down the street, some people get carried away. Correct, and we've done a similar thing on Malone Street. We did go down on a road diet, we added bike lanes on Mal one, and after it was paved, so after it was completely done, we have bike lanes and bike facilities, so we are working in that direction with the streets department. I'm going to skip a bunch of this. Public art and traffic calming, this is a concept where by installing some of the monument signs or some of the public art features in the median in between in the roundabout island, or even some of the murals, it does help to not distract people, but make them slow down to look at some of these nuances, and pavement marking is the last piece. And we're going to talk to the art committee next week about how do we incorporate public art and how do we effectuate, not necessarily distracting people, but an experience for the drivers that are going through it, and this is something we've started talking within our department about when we do this bigger corridor projects, how do we incorporate a theme moving forward with some of the artwork, some of the landscaping, and the associated different elements, and that's something that is coming forward to the committee next week. Council Member Briggs. So I'm really excited to see the public art and traffic calming mobility discuss this a while ago, and I believe that we wanted to see a pilot, or I thought that was an intersection that we wanted to kind of to do to see how the public reacted, but I don't know if that was ever done. We haven't done any intersections as part of our Mew Street , we're definitely looking at a concept. It needs to be designed in order to get it implemented, and so as part of Mew Street, we're definitely looking at, I think, one or two at least intersections. And I believe it was Canada when I was in it, not just the crosswalks were painted, those were actually painted differently, but the inside of the actual intersection was painted so that people approaching it from all different directions would kind of slow down, it would visually get them to slow down, and then the people would use the actual crosswalks, and that was interesting to see as well, it seemed to work. Okay, yeah, I mean, we're looking at different alternatives and options, definitely. Yes, Council Member Meltzer. I like public art for all the reasons we have public art and all these executions, but I wonder, is that really true that it comps traffic? I mean, are there studies that show it comps traffic after, say, two weeks when it's not here? Yeah, the way I presented in mobility, there are studies that it does do a wow factor initially in the first two to three weeks, four weeks, and once that effect goes away, if you're doing it every day, then it just becomes something that you drive over every day. And then the other issue in Texas, pavement markings don't last more than two years, so after a year and a half, it starts falling apart, doesn't really look. So we're looking at options as not necessarily painting the pavement, but more of how do you integrate the character of the roadway. Just to plant a seed, what your comment suggests to me is that if there's a form of art installation that is somehow periodically refreshed, then it would still have the traffic calming benefit. Correct. Okay, interesting. Council Member Riggs? I lost my thought. So yes, on the public art, but people getting used to it, the area I'm thinking about where pedestrians are walking is downtown, right, on those intersections, and that we get a lot of people that are traveling in, they're tourists, they 're visitors, they're maybe in a different state of mind, and so when they see that, it 's going to make them stop and slow down. And I'm not really just talking about everyday intersections where people driving to work. These would be where there's heavy pedestrians use and tourists. And I'll also remember in our mobility discussion, since the roads that run through downtown are text dot roads, that Mr. Polster said that painting would not be an issue. So it's Mike, I'm kind of a little concerned that if we start embedding things in the street, that text dot may, you know, he seemed to be fine with paint. So there are a couple things that maybe Todd can jump in. And there's a text dot wants to turn back those two streets to the city. As part of the new street, we have intersection behind the square. Those are along Austin Street or Pecan Street. All those intersections, we're looking at how we can incorporate some of the public art within the intersection itself, so that maintenance doesn't become an issue as an integral part of the concrete color or different textures that we can look at. And that would be one of the projects that would move forward. But as far as the turn back is, the city will take it over and then we can maintain it. Okay, talk more about the turn back if you want to. But I don't know that I have anything more to add on the turn back since we've discussed that pretty thoroughly. But I think as we work with the Public Art Committee, and we look at different segments of town, there absolutely is this integration of capital works or capital projects, public works projects, and the public art interest. Some of that may take the form of an overall context for the entire roadway. It may conform more to the actual part of town, a subdiv ision, some of the arts characteristics of this town. And other parts may be very, very location-centric, like downtown, much like you're saying, where some of those things where you're actually doing it in the pavement may make more sense. Okay, thank you. Do I have a question on, you mentioned that in Mobility Committee, you discussed a pilot program. And pilot program you thought might be applicable to the Me use streets. Is that, is that what you're saying? Well, that was some of what our understanding was we're looking at Meuse street at the same time, we're looking at different concepts. And I think that would be a better location to start because you're more focused on the downtown places where people can actually, while they're walking. So that program is upcoming. We didn't. Well, let me, so help me understand something in that regard. So we're talking about traffic calming. In other words, where people are moving quickly, and we're trying to get them to slow down, not just because of pedestrians or bicycles, but also just to slow down residential areas primarily. So the Meuse streets really, I don't see people, they're so short, you can't really get up a big head of steam anyway. And so I don't know if that would be a really good indication of that if we're really trying to use public art to see if that works. Because I mean, you've got those intersections, you got stop signs. And I mean, if you, I just go ahead and do it. But I think there could be some other intersections that might be more. Part of it is to create that entryway into the downtown area. The other thing is as part of the Meuse street, we're going to look at complete street, not necessarily taking the traffic element out, but reducing it to one lane, one direction with parking and some larger sidewalks. So they're constricting traffic movement and slowing them down. Right. I'm just getting. And we had a presentation on that. So no, I totally understand that. I'm just saying what I thought I heard you say, and if I'm incorrect, that's fine. Is that you are going to use that maybe as a beta test to see if these things do achieve this result. And I'm just saying, I think given especially what you just said about we're reducing it down to one lane, we're going to have, there may be some other intersections that it may give us some better data on whether this actually does what it says it does. So I think you're right. There are other places we can look at this for some different methodologies and places to test. But I think where we were also looking at the public art component on the new streets is where it intersects those major roadways. Because even the new streets can they connect with, or at least cross Elm and Locust Oak and Hickory where as people leave the square, there's a tendency to try to get away from the square a little faster, especially if they're not looking for parking. If they're done, they're moving out. So the traffic calming would come in more of those vicin ities than the actual new streets and you're talking about the intersections, right? Okay. Yes, Councilmember Hussbett. Yeah. You're too kind. I think you make a good point, Mayor. And I can give you a couple suggestions. Absolutely. I'm an expert. But no, so for really coming off of I-35 Dallas Drive, I know that intersection is going to be reworked, but in the meantime, I think that to me is a great test for you go from new I-35 that's 70 to 45 just past QT, an opportunity to maybe affect that traffic and help people manage that through that intersection. Because you don't have to stop. So it's a straight shot. You're doing 70 all of a sudden, 45. And I have my own opinions about that. But I think something like that where it truly is a -- where you're asking people to decelerate at a faster rate, I would be curious to see how that helps motivate that behavior. Same with Moore Street. I mean, I know the officers are there quite a bit. When you come down that hill, that also is tempting to people. And you're right by MLK and some other stuff like that. So that may be another similar -- something similar to those where it is truly a challenge to get people to focus and pay attention. Okay. Mayor Pro Tem Bryan. Oh, I'm sorry. Council Member Muts, that's right. Yeah, go for the swaddle together. I would just make a caution against -- I know it's very exciting to see. Here's a new opportunity to have more public art to see that it might be used for traffic homing, which I think is interesting. But I wouldn't want -- I'd want to caution against this idea that now we only are interested in public art if it's traffic homing. I think the idea of traffic homing on the Mew Streets is awesome because for other reasons we do public art because it makes vibrant, interesting spaces. So that's all. I wouldn't just get too hung up on the idea that it should only be for traffic homing. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem. One thing I didn't see in your list, and it might be because there's names in there I'm not familiar with, on the embedded in the street, I know in a lot of other cities they use paver crosswalks that would naturally make you -- it's like the little ridges in the street before you have a stop sign coming up that's out of sight, that pavers do that same thing. Is that something we're looking at as well? Right. That could be part of the pavement markings scheme, not necessarily engineering part. But pavement markings, we have thermoplastic we use for pavement markings. If you add two or three thick enough layers, they create the same ripple effect as pavers in the pavement. Because if you start installing pavers it becomes a maintenance hazard and issue part of that. But definitely those thermoplastic layers help to create that ripple effect. This isn't about public art. So back to the previous thing. You mentioned federal standards, and I had someone message and ask that if the city can legally have traffic control in excess of state or federal minimum guidelines, because we do follow that and we say, well, it doesn't fit because of these guidelines. So is it just a guiding principle or is it like the law where you have to -- you can't go over or above or under? So this particular standard is nationwide standard and each state adopts it. So it's a standard for the state, too. And then we implement the state standard. There's also Texas vehicle code that eludes to this particular standard. So when we are in the process of regulating or enforcing some of these, we refer back to -- and Lieutenant Pollard can attest that we refer back to the what does Texas vehicle code say and how do we, you know, abide by that particular law. Okay. Can I have another question? So on the speed humps, on our old website, and when I first got on council, there was a process, like a neighborhood petition. So for speed humps, that if you got so many people within your area on your street signed that they were okay with that, then something magical would happen. But the process never ever complete. I do know that I had someone working on it, but nothing ever came of it. So is that process going to be the same for speed cushions? I mean, is that the way how, you know, a neighborhood can say, like, you know, my street Emerson people speed down it? We used to have speed humps. Can we have speed pillows? So that process is slightly going to change. Yes, there will be community input and there needs to be some sort of approval, majority approval that yes, we can implement along this street or in someone's front yard. That part of the process still remains, but we're changing the application process because what used to happen is people would send in the request and you didn't see anything because a lot of these routes fell within the emergency response system and that's where we would approach Fire and Petey and end up not moving forward with any of these applications. But now we'll receive it, we'll reach out, we'll go through the community process and let them know these are not the options because of these issues, but these other options are available if you want to move forward. So that's moving forward. So there will be an application online under streets? So under next steps, we'll slowly start getting there. There are a couple of next steps and then with yes, application ultimately we'll get there. Eddie? Eddie, you kind of skipped over the roundabouts and that was one of the concerns that was brought up was how does it calm traffic such that pedestrian traffic, has it calm vehicular traffic so that pedestrian traffic can cross that round about? I think Todd can talk more about that, but the approach angles here are very designed so that any vehicle that wants to head straight down this intersection actually has to reduce the speed down to 15 or 20 miles an hour. So once you are in this approach angle, you have to be, sorry about that, you have to be at a 15 mile an hour speed, which really makes it much more easier for the pedestrians to cross because the cars are entering really slow speed. The other thing is pedestrians have this raised islands that creates a refuge. So when they're crossing, they're only looking at one direction of traffic, one lane of traffic, they cross and then they can wait and look at the other direction. So a lot more safety added due to the refuge island. Just following that, so what about those, we just had a discussion about disabilities that are blind or deaf, how without those signals and noises there that say it's safe to cross because MHMR is just directly on the other side of the one that we just proposed, how do you navigate that? So the signal part, we only have it at signalized intersections, there are hundreds or thousands of unsignalized intersections that do have crosswalk. As I think Todd can talk more about, but there are these ADA compliant crams that come at an angle so you have a better visibility for some of these approaches. And then when the car is coming, it really has to yield. There are several yield signage, pavement markings that will be in place when you're approaching a roundabout to let the vehicle know that this is where the pedestrians are crossing, this is where you need to yield and similar to any other intersection that's so well controlled. So one of the major benefits of a roundabout when it comes to pedestrians and walkability is that in any intersection, if you look at how a car approaches an intersection, you think about just yourself driving to an intersection, how many decisions do you physically have to make at a stop sign or a signalized intersection to know I can turn right, I can turn left or go straight? So we look at those as conflict points. So anytime you're just adjusting for say other cars, you're at a minimum going to be looking at three to four other cars out there and trying to figure out what they're doing and that's just if there's a single lane in each direction, you add multiple lanes, you're going to add more points of decision. How fast are they coming? Do I want to turn right and insert myself into that traffic ? Are you thinking about the pedestrian as well? Typically you're not. They're on the side and we're not seeing them. They are there but they're in your periphery. What the roundabout does is it eliminates the total number of decision points that you as a driver have to make. So you reduce it by almost a quarter of what you would normally have to do. So we have a diagram we'll bring when we start talking more about roundabouts and safety and how they interact with the pedestrians and the cyclists . That's a discussion, it's a much broader discussion but it is statistically much safer for the pedestrians, the cyclists and the vehicles because they're your driver, when we design these, we slow the driver down by physically rest ricting what kinds of things they can do. There's a big curb in the way. We slow down. We make you turn a little sharper so you have to slow down. Then we're also reducing the places you have to look. I'm not looking at all three sides of me. I'm looking just in one direction. So with that being the case, my chances, my likelihood of being more cognizant of what the pedestrian is doing or the cyclist is doing, go way up. I'm not near as distracted when I start to drive in. The pedestrian, I was also only having to look in one direction. So instead if you think about a standard intersection, they 're looking at who's turning left as well as who's maybe turning right on the other side and they've got to get all the way across. Some of these signalized intersections, they're trying to get across four to six lanes of traffic in the same time frame. With a roundabout, we're going to put an island in the middle, you go across one or two lanes and you're only looking in one direction because that's where the traffic's coming from. Then when you get to the island, I look the other way so I 'm only having to concern myself with that direction of traffic as well. I'm really trying to take a lot of the decisions off the shoulders of both the pedestrian and the driver so that they're a lot more cognizant of what's happening. Does that make sense? Well that's a valid point. So some of the other alternatives when it comes to any system of handicap with visual difficulties, they're going to have those same scenarios if I'm at a four-way stop, if I'm at an intersection that's only stop controlled on one side, they're going to have the exact same scenario. One of the advantages a roundabout does have is I can retro fit those with like a hawk signal or something that can only be activated by a push button but not when a pedestrian's there. That can be retroactively installed. Usually when you install them, you put the conduit and cable in so we're just putting up the post on the side and you go. Promise this last slide. So what are the next steps? Definitely compile all the information that was presented. We have a lot more. I didn't really include that but in an easy to read format. Work with our public communication office and create something that we can publish on the website real easy so that we can actually send out links to those that way any person that really wants to get more information of what needs to happen, what are the steps, you can actually send them those links. Actually develop a traffic calming handbook that talks about the process, actually how do you apply, what is needed and the application and then take the traffic calming handbook to the next two levels which is traffic safety and then finally bring it to you for approval. I think that's about it on traffic calming. Any questions, comments? Yes, Councilmember Hussbett. I would just ask that staff consider putting together some sort of documentation on no matter what the situation is, especially when it comes to the humps, cushions, because that is the primary question we get. Or the path to yes. If it's on an emergency route but to circumvent that you would need council approval, state approval, federal approval, just whatever that would take. Obviously there's ways to get to yes. It has to clear all these hurdles. Thinking oh well this application process is all I have to do or I understand it's an emergency route but I think I can circumvent that with enough signatures. I think it needs to properly lay out the path to get to yes is this and I don't know how you cover the legal aspects of it. My understanding of it is that we can't go, using an example, we can't exceed the requirements without supporting that with data because then you have to, if challenged, you have to support why you exceeded it. I don't know how to explain that further or to make that where it's easy to digest but I think I understand that to be the case and I understand that to be true. But whatever the idea is, I'd like to have some sort of checklist or flow chart that says here's the things that need to align if you're on this path to get to yes on that request. Anything else? All right. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate it. We will now convene in a closed session at 4.05 p.m. We will consider the following items. Consultation with attorneys under Texas government code section 551.071. Deliberations regarding certain public power utilities competitive matters under Texas government code section 551.06. Deliberations regarding real estate matters under Texas government code section 551.072. Welcome everybody back to this meeting of the Denton City Council on September 25th, 2018. We have completed our work session item or portion of the agenda and now we will go into a -- oh, there it is. Where is it? Going to a work session -- where are we? Oh, here we are. Hold on a second. Let me find my place on the agenda. Closed meeting. Special call meeting. To consider the following items. Item 1A, consider adoption of an ordinance of the City of Denton approving an agreement with the friends of the Denton Public Libraries and the City of Denton, Texas to clarify the roles and responsibilities of each party. Who is going to -- yeah. Who is going to be giving that presentation? All right. I'm Jennifer Becker, director of libraries. And so we have an agreement to present to you for voting with the City of Denton and the friends of the Denton Public Libraries. They are a nonprofit organization. Their purpose is to support and raise funds for the Denton Public Library. They do so by providing book sales and they have a bookstore at the North Branch Library. And the Denton Public Library provides some space for the bookstore as well as some storage space and we also provide them with the donated materials that we do not add to the Denton Public Library as well as the withdrawn materials that we pull per this Texas State Library weeding standards. And so we present this agreement to you for your review and approval. All right. Any questions? Comments? Councilmember Robter? Is there anyone here from friends -- representing friends of the library? They are not here today. Okay. So I guess that means that they're -- They did vote. They have a leadership board. And so the board members all voted and they all voted yes on the agreement. Excellent. Thanks. Pro Tem Ryan, did you have a question? No, I was going to move approval. Okay. We have a motion. Councilmember Briggs? I second. We have a motion and a second on agenda item 1A. Please signify approval by raising your right hand. Passes unanimously. Moving to agenda item 1B. Consider adoption of an ordinance of the City of Denton authorizing the city manager or designee to execute a physical gas transaction confirming confirmation for the purchase of natural gas under the terms and conditions of base contract , et cetera. All right. Good evening, Mayor, City Council, George Morrow, General Manager of DME. We're here this evening with a proposed natural gas contract for operation of the Denton Energy Center. Our current contract is expiring. And we went through a process to identify different options and we're bringing one forward for your approval tonight. And that's with Enterprise Products. There are existing gas suppliers that we're proposing to continue to purchase gas from them. That would be pursuant to the NAISB agreement, as you recall, the North American Energy Base Agreement that has been previously approved by the City Council. So recommendation is that we adopt an ordinance authorizing execution of this new gas arrangement. Any questions, comments? Councilmember Aramater. I'll just comment that it won't come as any surprise to anybody that I'm, you know, no fan of the gas plant and that although I voted for the test gas because I thought it was important that it get tested, I'm going to be voting my conscience no to this. But it's no criticism of your work in securing this. I understand this is the only choice we have for the gas plant. You need gas to make a gas plant. This is the best deal. What? The best deal. The best and the only. And, you know, of course, I'm concerned also about the all of the redactions in the agreement. But again, that's something we had no control over either and tried and I want to commend staff again for having tried in previous iterations of this to get more and similar agreements to try to get more transparency. So anyway, if anybody in the public has any questions about why I'm voting no, happy to talk with them about that, really with anyone. But I don't want to take up take up too much time here. Okay. All right. Anybody else? Councilmember or mayor Pro Tem? I move approval of item 1B. Item 1B. Councilmember Duff? I second. All right. We have a motion and a second for agenda item 1B. All in favor, please signify by raising your right hand. All opposed by like sign. Motion carries 5-2. Thank you. Yeah, and we're going to go on to agenda item 1C. And I believe we've got a recusal on that. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. Yes, sir. Consider adoption of ordinance of the city of Denton author izing the city manager or his designee to execute a contract of sale between Janda Legacy Investments LP and the city. Mayor Councilmembers Paul Williamson, real estate manager. Before you tonight is an ordinance proposing to purchase a track out on Bonnie Bray just north of the intersection of Scripture and Bonnie Bray. It's a little over 8/10 of an acre and we'll show you a little bit more about it. There's a location map, the site map. Now we have a little schematic. This was a little snapshot of the schematic that was shown last week as part of the approved alignment. And that's a little overlay of the tract in question. City had an appraiser appraise this tract last month. It appraised for $475,000 and the present equitable title owner, which is Janda Legacy Investments has agreed to sell to the city at that purchase price. And the house that's situated on the tract is presently vacant. Any questions you might have? Councilmember Meltzer. Mr. City Attorney, may I ask questions of engineering about the adjacent, about the use of the land and the area around it or just about the real estate purchase? Some limited questions would be fine. So I'll come back to you, I promise, but Todd Estes has indicated sort of with his hand that ultimately he'd want to move that portion of Bonnie Br ay more closely to follow the curve of, the existing curve of Bonnie Bray. And I guess my question to you is how far can that move because my interest in this execution is to preserve as much as possible of that, of the subject parcel in question as green space with trees on it, frankly. Pretend they smoke city traffic engineer. To answer your question, there are several iterations of the layout that we've looked at. I think one is in the presentation where it doesn't really follow the whole curve. It's pretty much overlaying. As we refine our alternatives, this is a much newer, which will follow majority of the curve except for the last approach where you see this little pavement area. We will be saving most of this area from this particular parcel, but this can definitely go back along with this parking area used as a park area, part of the park, or as a landscape buffer, leave it the way it is. And I'm not quite sure who to address this question to, but my question is whether it's possible for us in a future action to make this parcel part of McKenna Park. The remainder after construction, is that okay? And is it okay? And who do I ask? Is it within posting? I think it's going to go out of posting, but I don't want to speak for Mario, but he's probably going to say that we can get back to you on that. Stafford for the concluding items for something of that nature. Okay, appreciate that. I'll bring it up in concluding items. And aside, I like the other picture better. Will the trees on the remainder of the parcel be preserved? That is definitely something we can look into. We don't have a final layout or the actual alignment nailed down yet. We're still working through it, but definitely we will try and save whatever we can if it doesn't fall within the path. Okay, I think if I follow your answer, once you have settled on the final alignment, the part that's not part of the alignment that's treed, you will attempt to remain treed. And in this particular illustration, I see the, I think I 'll come back to this in closing remarks. And then I have one more question if I may. I'm sorry, I forgot your name, sir. Paul Williams. Thanks, sir. So it's, I've seen the appraisal, I don't think the public has, but can you help us and the public understand the difference between the appraisal done for purposes of arriving at a price and the appraisal that was done for the purpose of arriving at taxes on the property? Yeah, the appraisal that's, the mass appraisal that's performed by the Denton Central Appraisal District annually. It is, it's the techniques and I'm not hugely vested in all the nuances of the techniques that they use in mass appraisal. But really what happens is that sometimes when you have tracks that are on transitional neighborhoods that are changing from either residential to commercial or some kind of transitional use, a mass appraisal will not pick those potential market transitions up and it lags a little bit. Because two or three years later when they do a true up and catch up to what's really happening in the market. And I think this is an example of that where you've got a transitional use, the highest and best use is whole for commercial development of this track. There's a residence on it, but that's not the highest and best use of the property. Council Member Ricks. Thank you. Yeah, so I had a similar question to that, so I appreciate you answering that. Did have we, the house that's down right on the other side of that. This house here? Yeah. Is that, have we done any transactions with that property? No, actually it wasn't until last week that when we really got the alignment not nailed down that has really guided us on where we're going to be going forward with the project. So those, the folks that are impacted by the current alignment were the same folks that we notified even back in 2015 and advised everybody that we had a project that was passed by the voters in 2014. So they're all, they're aware, you know, we've had contact with many of the property owners along the route, sometimes constant contact, they're wanting to know when we're going to get the project done. Sure, of course. And just on the previous question to follow up with Council Member Metzler was talking about, so on the tax, on the taxing someone posted on social media that it was 158,637 and then so we're pushing it for 475, which to someone who doesn't really know about the process, that seems like quite a bit more. Yes. So we did have our own appraiser. Yes, the city engaged an appraiser, an independent appra iser, certified appraiser, and the finding here is that the highest and best use of the property is hold for commercial, which means it's in one of these areas where you have transitional demand that ultimately could be and we see that up North Monibray, we see tracks that were residential, they're now, you know, becoming medical offices and different kind of things. Anybody else? Yes, Council Member Armstrong. First, I have a question for, I guess, Preetam? For who? Preetam or about the... So if the property right across the street, when we were talking about, at the last meeting we were talking about, I had asked about the possibility of preserving some more of those homes in green space while still having a roundabout there and I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, I want to make sure I'm understanding correctly that you are telling it, I forget, Hitz said that that would involve moving it to the other side where there's commercial and that would up the cost because of all that would have to be done. Correct. That is correct. If we moved the roundabout further West, the amount of construction cost because of the re-tenning, because of relocation of utilities will considerably go up if we shift the roundabout to around, I think you had said what, like 19 million plus? I think so, it was 19.8. 19.8, 19.9 I think. Yeah. And do you happen to know who manages that property here, that property is listed under... It's fine if not, it just occurred to me now. It's a detention area. Yeah. For the property of North. Yeah. Okay, thanks. Thank you. Thank you. And then I just had a comment, but you may sit down, just for the public about why I'm gonna be voting no on this and I'm going to be voting no because although the property now would be bought through JANDA up until relatively recently when council had met to discuss the potential purchase of this property as was listed in our closed meetings, closed meeting postings. There was a different entity that we would have been doing the sale with and that entity was connected to somebody who had been on city council about two years ago and although that is totally within the rules of our current ethics ordinance, I personally am not okay with that. I haven't passed my personal smell test, so that's why I'm going to be voting no to this particular purchase, but I wanted to make it clear to the public that that's why I'm voting no to this. It's not because of the roundabout, but although I do have issues with those houses, the number of homes that would have to be removed, I'm voting no on this because it's just a little too close for comfort for me, the switch, 11th hour switch from one entity to the other. Thanks. >> Okay. Any other questions, comments? All right. Thank you, Paul. Okay. Council Member Briggs. >> Oh, not for him. I was just going to say that I am also going to be voting no on this purchase, but mostly because of the transitional aspect that you talked about, how instead of residential, it's going to be now transitioning with the road widening into more of commercial and I'm not in favor. I'm more in favor of protecting that neighborhood area there in those homes. >> Okay. All right. Anybody else? Chair, to entertain a motion. Mayor Pro Tem. >> I'll move approval of Item 1C. >> Council Member Duff. >> I'll second. >> We have a motion and a second for approval of Agenda Item 1C. All in favor, please signify by raising your right hand. All opposed by like sign. Motion carries 4-2. Moving on to Agenda Item 1D. Continue to consider the adoption of an ordinance for a specific use permit to allow for multifamily use and somebody could get Council Member Hutsbuth as well. >> Agenda Item 1D. >> Do you have a brief kind of summary presentation put together if you'd like to go through that or I have the entire presentation from the last meeting? >> Brief would be fine. >> Yeah. >> Okay. All right. So this is Case S17.7, the enclave at Denton, which we talked about at the last meeting. So just a refresher. The subject property is outlined here in yellow. It is located on the east side of Brinker Road, just south of the Loop 288 intersection. You can see the Walmart here for a point of reference. The request before you is a specific use permit to allow for a multifamily use on the property. The property is zoned Regional Center Commercial Downtown, which has a limitation that requires multifamily either be part of a very specific set of criteria for mixed use development, approved with an SUP, or have some prior approval, such as a small area plan, which is not the case here. Just to show you the site plan once again, it was two buildings. They're approximately four stories each. The footprint of these is just under 100,000 square feet. Total square footage is closer to 400,000. It is 270 units that are a mix of one, two, and three bedrooms. There is approximately 5,100 square feet of commercial space shown in red. And then one of the key features we had talked about last time was this two and a half acres of tree conservation that is being used to meet both the up land habitat ESA preservation requirements and the tree code preservation requirements for the site. We just wanted to make the criteria for approval available to you all if you wanted to look at them in more detail. Again, if you read through them, they're mostly dealing with compatibility, and rather this would cause any nuisances for adjacent properties. So I'm happy to go through these if you want to or just have them available if we need to refer to them. I do have a question. We've got 271 units, I believe. Is that right? Yeah. How many bedrooms, total bedrooms is that? Let me see. I have the, let's see. So there are 131 one bedrooms, 124 two bedroom, and 15 three bedroom units. Okay, a minute total. So we got about 240, so about 400, close to 400 bedrooms, I think. Yes, sir. I believe that's correct. Okay. Any questions for staff? Yes, Councilmember Briggs, and then we'll go to Council member Monter. You can just repeat that. I didn't certainly. Yeah, their site plan reflects 131 one bedroom units, 124 two bedroom, and 15 three bedroom. Okay, thank you. Councilmember Armitage? So, and just to be clear, so staff is recommending approval because all of those, because as you see it, all of those criteria have been. Correct. We found the development to be generally consistent and compatible with the mixed uses that are in the area, as well as with our future land use plan. So there was one condition with our recommendation, which you can see here, which is just relating to the need for a full site plan submittal if this is approved. And the PNZ also recommended approval of the case. Seven to zero. Yes. Thank you. Yeah, I, may I comment now? Well we've got some cards wishing to speak. Yeah, if we could just say that for the end, that'd be great. Yes, I will, thanks. Oh, yes. Councilmember Meltzer? I'm sorry, I already want to take this in, but wasn't present for the first hearing, but I did watch it also, you know, acquainted with the discussion and the background. But I'd be interested in hearing whether there's any new information from the applicant or the landowner. Well, I think they're probably part of these blue cards. So let me go through the cards and then as those individuals come forward, then they can answer that question. All right, first speaker is Rick Simmons. You feel come state your name and address. Your time will begin. Oh, extra time? Yeah, well, yeah, if you if you come forward, if you're the applicant, please identify yourself as that because you'll get additional time on that . So I'm not sure who's the applicant per se or who's representing. I am one of the applicant. I am the applicant. Okay, so then you'll get the 10 minutes. Yes. And Mr. Fambrel is an applicant as well. So I'm going to mine's going to be pretty. Okay, so do we split that up then? Total of 20 minutes. Okay. Yeah, if you could just identify yourself so we can keep track of the time. Appreciate that. Good afternoon, Mayor and council members. My name is Rick Simmons. I reside at 1851 Broken Bend Drive, Westlake, Texas. I was here last Tuesday. I heard a couple comments that I wanted to address with you guys. One was I think the children issue and the other one was compatibility. And before I get started, I do want to thank you for for just your passion for what you do. It amazes me. I've done a lot of developments in my life and in your attention to detail is well respected on our end. I just want to point that out. I am the founder and managing partner of integrated real estate group started that business over 15 years ago. I have just a little bit about myself. I grew up relatively poor from the Midwest, graduated from college the age of 21. The first 10 years of my career, we're working to gain knowledge first as a civil engineer, then as a builder for national home builder. As a developer, by the age of 30, I was I was starting my first business. I actually built homes in the city of Grapevine, bought lots from the RTC for those of you that are old enough to can remember that. And it was a grind for me. So all in all, I've got 35 years of real estate experience. I've been doing this for a very, very long time. So what I'm going to talk to you about, I have a lot of passion for it. I think I've earned the right to talk about some of the things that I'm going to I'm going to address tonight. Over my career, I was somewhat amazed when I went through these numbers. I've developed over $2.5 billion of real estate, of which I was the guarantor for those deals. They consist of a mixed bag of products. 28 of those were high end multifamily communities. 25 of them were affordable communities, of which 22 of the 25 were senior housing communities that had an affordability component to them. And 30 of them are senior housing communities that No, I just want to because affordability, affordable housing developments, there's all different types. Were these state tax credit, either 4% or 9%? Those were my tech deals. Okay, gotcha. All right. Okay, thank you. Of the 30 senior housing communities that I've done, they range from independent living, which includes services that have meals, housekeeping, transportation, home health, social activities. The average age of my customer in those buildings were 81 years old and I'm going somewhere with this. So I just I'm trying to explain to you. You got 20 minutes. So, 10 minutes. Yep. My assisted living product memory care skilled nursing average age is 86. The reason why I tell you that is because I think I know who my customer is going to be in this proposed development. I believe that that given where America's at today, where developers are at, I believe at least over the lifetime of this project, 50% of my residents will be ages 45 and older head of household. And I'm going to go through some stats and I'm going to explain to you why I believe that. The first thing is that that most municipalities that I that I work with do not have zoning for senior housing. So you know, you deal with with certain approvals, whether they're SUPs, whether they're site plan approvals and and over the course of the years, I've been able to develop what I would consider the best in class for senior housing in the cities of South Lake, the project called water, WaterMirror did it over 12 years ago was about a 10 year long project. I have without a doubt the best project in Frisco right now for independent living and assisted living. I got to know the mayor Mansfield really well. He recruited me to build what's the best product in Mans field. And I'm currently finishing up a development in Alliance Texas that he would wanted myself and my partner to develop. So we're very well experienced in that area. Those independent living buildings, I told you my average age is 81 years. So so just just the fact we lose our healthy 70 year olds. It's kind of a bit of a shock to me when you get into senior housing, you think of what the Federal Fair Housing Act says, which is 55 and older 62 or older, if you have this requirement. Well, here's what we learned really quickly. Number one complaint senior housing, old people. So your healthy 70 year olds, 78 year olds do not want to deal with 85 year olds that are in walkers that are slumped over, you know, they're still vibrant, they're still doing things. And so what we've learned with the product that we've developed is that because of the way zoning is work because of the way buildings are being built, the the seniors that are between say 55 and 75 really don't have a place to go when they're running. That's really sort of fits their personality fits their lifestyle. And we've learned a lot through the developments that we develop, not only the senior housing, but the multifamily. Just some stats for you. The first baby boomers, which are are basically those that were born between 1946 and 1965 will turn 80 in 2026. They're the largest generation that this country's ever seen. They're currently over 70 million people that they will get passed up by the millennials because of of people passing away, but they are a huge force. Those people today are aged from 53 to 72. Here's the second most important fact 40% of baby boomers nationwide have not saved for retirement. They can't afford ropes and ranch. They they are not anywhere but most likely renting or living with their children. So those are those are just facts. And then one last fact is 26 of baby boomers will still be working after the age of 70. So they'll still sort of fit the worst workforce housing model. We as a company because of the way we have have built our senior housing, we market our residents through social media through social activities through going to senior centers. And the fact that that that we we have existing multifamily communities that are straight multifamily we've got I can give you examples Grapevine, North Richard Hills, Alliance, Texas, we have 300 plus multifamily straight market rate multif amily units, four story elevator buildings, the average customer is over 45 years old. So about half of our households are 45 plus. They like the product they like they like the convenience of the elevators. And they like to be in company of younger people they like multi generational, they don't necessarily want to be just with seniors. I think the second comment for me was was compatibility. I mean, I have been developing since the 90s. And I've seen an evolution of multifamily the first multif amily building that I developed was in Grapevine, Texas in 1995, at the time, in the architect, one largest architects in the country, he recommended that I do a 16 unit two story building because that eliminated the request or the needs for fire sprinklers and fire alarms. That's just the way buildings were built back then. From there the code changed people were building three story walk ups. A lot of the product I would bet would bet in Denton and Kenneth can give you more detail about that is probably three story without elevators. I think my point today is is that we are building a product that I believe will meet the needs of your population your residents, that will be more senior friendly than you probably realize and so if you look you just asked a question mayor about the number of bedrooms were almost 50% one bedrooms, those are not necessarily going to have children in them. And, and, and our even our seniors community and Paul Mil osevic can talk about that just a bit. About half our units are two bedrooms in our senior communities. We learned husband and wives don't even sleep in the same room anymore because of snoring, or for whatever reasons, say like to use a second bedroom for for game room or TV room, but people want a little bit of space, especially if they 're coming out of a house so when I look at it, I think we're probably looking at 25% of the of the units in this community of even having children. And we have communities that that would love to take you to that we could show you this. But that's that's really what I want to tell you today want to thank you for your time and answer any questions I'll stay up here when Mr. fan will speaks I think he's going to be next and I've got a couple questions any questions. Thanks from Council. Of the multifamily projects that you've done. Yes, sir. How many of them have been done pursuant to local Texas local government code chapter 303 the in partnership with a public facility corporation. How many of those do you all. So we did one in Alliance Texas called Westport. I think it's 338 units. Is that correct, Kenneth. So so one. No, that's first one. Okay. So that's the first one and that was with the Fort Worth Housing Finance Corp. They were so happy with that we're doing a second one that 's off of Golden Triangle Boulevard which is an extension of South Lake Boulevard. We are doing one in Garland, which is off Campbell Road. And that's the second project we've done with Garland with Garland's Housing Authority they've got a great relationship with those guys. And yeah, yeah. Any other questions and then we'll have Mr. fan broke them up. Because I think you've got some answers. Okay, sure. Go ahead. You bet. Another deal that we have is development in Kingwood, Texas . We partnered with the city of Houston. And that's a that's a senior housing development. And then we have two proposed deals in Austin. And by the way, the one in the city of Houston because our company manages it is is market rate independent living. The city of Houston really want to work with us we've done on a project with them before. We manage over 3500 units of senior housing over 2000 units of multifamily 1200 units of affordable seniors. So I guess my question that irrelevant. Yeah, nevermind. Any other questions. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Are you are you up next, Mr. fan bro. Actually, Paul Moss has like one brief comment. Okay, and is he going to be considered an applicant for time. Purposes, I guess he is. Is that right? That's the only reason I asked. I won't be cute, but he will. He works in our office. So technically, if you could if you've been when you talk step behind the mic, because we're we're televising this. So yeah, yeah. Okay, go ahead. Perfect. My name is Paul Milosevic. And I'm with integrated real estate group part of the applicant here. And I simply want to tag on to what Rick said, and clearly one of his key messages was that we will have a certain percentage of seniors who lease in this community if it's approved. And in our history shows that and one of the reasons they 'll do that is because the rents are affordable, they'll either pay market rent, or if they fall under the qualifications for the affordable units, they'll qualify for those units. And part of the reason for that is in a in an independent living a traditional market rate independent living community anywhere in the state of Texas, and certainly what we build, the rents typically range from 1700 for one bedroom all the way to 3000 to the low 3000s for a two or three bedroom or a villa. So clearly if you look at the market rents here, they're going to be much lower. And again, to Rick's point, we may attract 2030 35% 55 and above in this community. And then kind of a final point to blend affordability and especially the need for senior affordability going forward with the baby boomers about to hit full retirement. We had a meeting last week at our community and Frisco with the head of senior housing for Fannie Mae nationally. And part of that was they're looking at refinancing that that community for us. But really, one of the key things he wanted to talk about was asking us to join Fannie Mae panel nationwide panel on how we address senior afford ability and Kenneth and Rick just highlighted the participation with the city of Houston , a finance corporation on a senior independent living project in Kingwood, north of Houston where we do have an affordable component of seniors. So that's all I have. Thank you for your time. You bet. Any questions for the speaker? Okay. Yes, sir. I'm from Fambro 317 Edinburgh Court, South Lake, Texas. So I want to I have what I think we'll we'll spend a bulk of our time on three points that I want to really bring up and make sure I answer that we're not I felt like they were questions that weren't answered last time. One dealt with compatibility. And I thought we'd have that fancy zoom over. Oh, sorry. Kind of deal here, so we'll have to go real old school here and really take a look at a slide. But I have so just bear with me one second and I'll pull this out for you. So yeah, or you can even pass it around if you like. Yeah, you bet. So we took a look at and I believe we mentioned this last time that our development is a four story development with elevators. Part of that and with the maximum height that is conforming within this particular SUP, we looked at in reference to a mayor, I think you had a question on the height of the existing multifamily within the development. That picture right there kind of shows what we looked at was the height from basically foundation finished floor to the to the roofies to the highest maximum point of the roofs. And it actually exceeds our four story building with with the facade. So just wanted to bring that to your attention to point that out. Another issue that even given our site that we have to point taken to to the benefit here, we're approximately 18 to 24 feet below the adjacent property, the adjacent property sits on a hill will be sitting down. So even at four stories, you don't you don't you don't feel like four stories given given the nature of where the property is. Is that the assisted living center? That is yes, sir. And also another point within that Sally's Beauty Supply is four tenths of a mile from our site. And it's a five and a half story, you know, single first stories, about 15 feet with four stories above it. So just to bring those points out to you. I'm going to have one person come and speak on on traffic or traffic engineer when I'm finished. But I want to take some time right now. And I felt like I didn't really get into if we want this form to be some of the rent analysis. If if this is the form that we want to really go through and we talk about new information. Sure. That's what I'm ready to present. I have some handouts for you guys. I did come prepared with that. Thank you. I just wanted to present that slide. We get kind of really caught up in numbers and am I as their median incomes. And here's the facts. The fact that the fact is that this product would serve is serving incomes between 60 percent and 80 percent of the area median income. Top chart really has those incomes identified for you. They kind of start at thirty two thousand four hundred and range and upwards of depending on unit occupancy and things of that nature. If you look at 80 percent upwards of sixty six thousand. But then to the left we actually just did some analysis which is why we like Denton. We did some analysis on just. Employees within didn't. They're your average tenant. They're your average resident. They're they're people that are not necessarily single parents but they are single parents. And as as my partner Rick mentioned there are people that are over the age of fifty five that are still in the employment arena that are working at Wal-Mart they're working at Target Home Depot. I stopped by lunch for Chick-fil-A today and saw potential residents there as well. And it just it just really told the story of who we're really setting aside this type of housing for. That's first and foremost. The second part is are there any questions about this slide . I kind of want to go in pieces instead of getting some questions but I want to hear I want to hear the rest of your presentation. Yep. Thank you. So this is another point that after our meeting I really wanted to dive into the numbers and really specify because in the previous meeting we spoke a lot on max and we really didn't speak a lot on who was the bottom that we were actually serving this slide here indicates really some rent levels that weren't mentioned in the last meeting but identify tenants that we're really we're serving right here. I've have been in conversation with a couple of you here and we're looking here from that's a little bit different from it's a clarification point from where we were before and having a set aside of 10 percent of our units at 50 percent rent limits. Another 10 percent at 60 percent rent limits and the balance would be the balance of the 51 percent if you will would be at the 80 percent am I rent limits. So that's a little bit different and new information than where we came before in the last council meeting so this I think is really vital to how you guys want to take a look at this and I'm sure this has the bulk of the questions behind. Sure. You seem like you're eager ready to go. Yeah well any questions and I appreciate that it's good information but obviously my curiosity and concern is pretty fundamental and that is obviously your company is very familiar with the Texas Department of Housing the investment tax credit and within that structure there are specific rules and guidelines as far as area medium income percentage and these are the rents that you can charge very specific you know prescribed schedules in those regards. So when I read the memorandum of understanding and I've looked through the rental schedule and think now the 10 percent of 50 percent and 10 percent of 60 percent I think last time you had said 10 percent of the 60 percent so you've added the 10 percent of 50 percent. Correct. I appreciate that I think that's helpful. For me the concern is I don't find statutorily when I look at the statute the 303 statute which this project's basically I mean it's that's the foundation of this project I mean that's why it was brought in conjunction with the housing authority to the public facility corporation and in the statute it just simply says you have to reserve 80 percent or I'm sorry 50 percent or more for those earning less. Good catch. Than 80 percent of median income. Well so I mean you all can go back and read the statute and recognize okay we just saying it really close but but that's not even my that's not even my point in that. My point is there's nothing in the statute that prescribes rental rates. There's nothing in the statute that prescribes that you have to say 10 percent is 50 percent of very median income 10 percent of 60 is 60 percent median income. When I look through your memorandum of understanding which is the agreement you have with the public facility corporation there's a performance on exhibit C that does give rents. So my question is where let me see if I can phrase it correctly. What if any statutory construct are you using to determine how much the rates will be for your under 80 percent whoever they are. Let me strike that. That's this real simple question. I make less than 80 percent median area income. We can name whatever that price is. I come and I make an application. How do you determine who gets reserved for those hundred and thirty eight units for under 80 percent like if I'm under 80 percent I'm assuming I can rent a market rate apartment. I can do that. You can. If I do that because I'm under 80 percent am I going to be one of those hundred and thirty eight that gets reserved. Yes sir. So what that tells me is that there's nothing that I don't want to say forces prescribes instructs the development to say well you if you're at 60 percent of area median income your rent will not be more than X. There's nothing in the statute that requires that that I'm reading unless you all know some other law that I don't know. There's nothing in the statute that requires it and there's nothing in the memorandum of understanding that requires that. And so I'm trying to understand if if we're going to approve the S.U.P. which says we can have as a criteria that it satisfies that it's in conformance with federal state and local law and this is predicated on that one chapter three oh three the taxation portion because you're getting a full tax exemption for this for this particular kind of project. So how do we how do we get I don't know if it's a guarantee but because my issue I've never had an issue with this development as I told you that in our individual meeting when you and I met privately said this isn't about this what my my concern has been it's being termed an affordable housing project and if there's no way to actually enforce a rental schedule for those who are at either 50 percent or 60 percent which even if it's a hundred dollars off or 200 you're looking at 26 units that's fifty two hundred dollars a year a month that's sixty thousand dollars a year. The tax exemption is almost eight hundred nine hundred thousand. So I'm trying to understand how what do we have if anything we may not have anything where you could reserve if everybody came in at seventy five percent of area median income they could rent a market unit rent rental unit and every one of those would be used to get to that fifty percent or less and so I'm not understanding how this thing is the market rents are not anybody can rent a market rent and if you just meet that income threshold of under eighty percent you count for the hundred eighty thirty thirty eight units that you have to meet is my understanding and if that 's not right please correct me. So I'm going to pause and have my attorney come up but I will say this and it's not a knock on you and I conversation or anything but this is a type of dialogue had I known that in a meeting this specific we could have fleshed this out a little bit versus right now this that's just my one comment that I want to say I'm going to have my attorney just go and talk. No no no you can't you can't make that comment and not allow me a chance to respond. I'm going to pause right now I will come back and but I want him he has the answer I want him to know that's fine and I'm going to let him answer after I get to respond to that. I believe that we did talk about that now also I didn't I think some things came up in the meeting when you and when you were making your presentation that I wasn't aware of certainly you bringing up the sixty percent but that raised to me the question of well how do we get the rent the affordable housing problem isn't because of what how much money people make it's because of how much rent they pay so I would take I would disagree with you on the characterization of our meeting that I think we discussed pretty much in earnest now did I ask the specific questions no I sure did not but I think the general concepts we went over pretty in depth. Fair enough. All right. Yes sir. Mr. Mayor and members of the City Council to address your question about is there anything that prescribes you know these income limits that kind of thing there's not statutorily and so your point's well taken okay so what kind of confidence do we have that the things that Mr. Fambro saying to us will be enacted that kind of thing and I can address it by saying we can put it in a partnership agreement with the Public Facilities Corporation now that's not statutorily prescribed but still we can put it in a partnership agreement with the Public Facilities Corporation that we have to do this so that it would be a breach of the agreement if we didn't follow these guidelines the 10% at 50 and the 10% at 60 and the rest at below 80% and I will also say you mentioned the rent limits HUD requires for it to be affordable housing you have to be less than 80% as you talked about at the last meeting you're absolutely correct you can't charge somebody rent more than 30% correct of that income so I just didn't want to know if everybody understood that and that's one of the main thrusts of my question I know those are HUD guidelines for when you when you've invested when y'all have your tax credit programs when you've done your tax credit properties those are strict terms in those programs that this is how you calculate the rent unless I'm missing something that y'all are being subject to some HUD guideline not voluntarily but statutorily then I don't see where that is a is mandatory for the development it seems like it's it is say that one more time it is it has to be affordable in order for it to constitute a public use and for it to constitute a public use is part of the requirement to get our tax exemption the property tax exemption so in order for the Public Facilities Corporation or any governmental entity it has to serve a public use under 11.11 a and under the Texas Constitution so that's part of the what goes into this in order for us to satisfy the Public Facilities Corporation of housing authority we've got to be affordable to be affordable you have to satisfy the HUD requirements to satisfy the HUD requirements we got to be less than 80% and we can't charge over 30% on the on the rent so I've read the statute and this is important to me because if I'm hearing you say that you have a provisions that make you that are mandatory on if you have a sick you have somebody who's making let me do the easy math $30,000 a year all right so that means the rent cannot be more than 30% of that which is $9,000 a year which is a little it's about 750 little less than $800 a year so what I'm hearing you say is that because I 've read that statute backwards and forwards and I understand the public use concept but that statute I don't see anywhere where that ties HUD guidelines I mean the Texas Constitution certainly has public use but I don't see that so if that's there I certainly would I would be interested in an email that's describing those specific points of that statute that tie this back to a HUD guideline now I understand you can agree with the public facility corporation on anything I mean y'all could agree to do enact those things and if y' all agree to it well then you'll have to stick with that or it's a breach of the agreement that's not what I'm asking what I'm asking is if you don't have an agreement with them for these mandatory rent schedules based upon their income according to HUD guidelines which you've just stated I don't I don't see the connection in the statute and being forced by HUD regulation that if you didn't because what I'm hearing you say is if you did not do that that pursuant to that statute 303 somehow there could be some penalty or some consequence to that is that is that my understanding well I think you're conflating different things but stat utorily you're correct under 303 you're correct where I'm taking the analysis is we have to be under the 80 percent to constitute affordable but by what definition the Denton Central App raisal District is not going to give us an exemption if we don't show that the public facility corporation is using this property for a public use so that's why a majority of these units a majority of these units are constitute as affordable and to constitute as affordable we got to satisfy those HUD requirements could you send me a memo stating that and showing me where those are all tied together because the Denton County Appraisal District they're going to be looking at your rent rolls to say hey do you have over 50 percent at least 50 percent who earn less than 80 percent of median income that is the that's that standard is specific that whole statute everybody's tax exempt every they carve out for multifamily you don't get the tax exemption you meet this criteria doesn't say anything about public use doesn't say anything about anything else it says if you meet this criteria you get the tax exemption I'm presuming if you don't you don't so I don't I'm not trying to debate you I'm just it's I thought what I heard you say is that you're subject to some kind of HUD guideline that prescribes the rents for those people making less than 80 percent of median income I'm just simply asking for a connection of the dots and it may not be able to happen here we're going to have a vote it may be irrelevant after tonight but those are my concerns because if everybody that rents a market unit rent that is under 80 percent median income and it counts as one of those 138 that's not affordable to me that's not affordable because you're paying market rents even though your income is under the 80 percent so it's like a double count we'll rent you market rent so this is where I'm confused because I've heard different things so I'm gonna let some other council members chime in and then I'll circle back around if I need to yeah councilmember armature so I want to so just listening to these questioning I want to see if I can want to see if I understood correctly and put it in the simplest way as I understand it so to count as so we have federal law which is overarching if we're talking about circles right it encompasses everything so if you want to qualify as affordable housing to meet those federal HUD requirements for affordability and and so anything under that any any kind of agreement having to do with affordable housing doesn't need to restate those HUD requirements it would be redundant right because to count as affordable you need you need you need to meet those HUD requirements when people say affordable thank you that's what they're talking exactly yeah it has to be satisfy the HUD guidelines the requirements less than 80 percent exactly yeah so so I think I want to see I want to see that I mean I hear what you're saying yes HUD the federal government defines affordability as less than 80 percent and it breaks it down it breaks it down into middle which is above 80 percent it breaks it down into moderate income which is I think 65 percent above to 80 percent then it goes into low and then very low yes those are the definitions but my point is I'm not finding where the development is subject to that definition and the corresponding rental rates that go with that so if I'm incorrect well I would love to see it no as I've told you I can't provide that to you because it doesn't exist and it won't exist okay what that that's where I'm trying to get get you to understand though is in order for the property to be tax exempt we have to satisfy the public use requirement to satisfy the public use requirement for the public facilities corporation we have to be affordable so that's how it's what all ties together okay now I don't represent I'm pardon me for interrupting you go ahead no I'm sorry didn't housing authority or the public facilities corporation other council represent them I will say I do a lot of work for the Fort Worth housing finance corporation so where my municipal hat sometimes on those deals and I can tell you when another developer comes and approaches the Fort Worth HFC about doing this kind of a transaction we would require that to be affordable so because they would want to get the property tax exemption so is affordable also the rent prescription the rental rate prescription well it's under the 80% there 's help me understand what you're just what I'm what I'm saying is you're saying that the public use has to be affordable and so I simply would want to know where in the statute does it say for the public use if it's a multifamily unit or residential unit development that it has to be affordable pursuant to HUD guidelines to receive the exemption because the carve out this is what I mean this is and I think you understand what I'm saying I really do specifically they made a carve out statutorily so I'm not going to belabor this because it's really in the issue but my concern is that there's nothing that defines what these rents have to be at 80% and you just answered my own question because you said no if somebody comes in at 70% or 60% they can rent a market rate unit so hang on so that is actually an incorrect statement that I said okay okay that I spoke I went back and wrote it down so it that is incorrect okay so what is the correct answer because if you're coming in this is the reason why I gave you that if you're coming in at a and you earn 70% or you're earning 60% of area median income right you are qualifying for that tranche of unit I can't put you in a in a market rate you don't qualify for a market rate rent and on top of that we have we have restrictions in there that you have to have two and a half times income in order to qualify for that so you cannot qualify for that rent that's just that's the business model they just they wouldn't be able to just simply from a financial perspective correct but they wouldn't be able to from an affordable housing and affordable the definition of affordable as well so then when so now they can't rent a market unit rent correct so how do you determine what their rent is what formula will you apply to determine what their rent is so the same and I'll back it back because you brought up the affordable housing and the tax credit program so we have compliance people on our staff that actually go into and that is how there's a there is a formula that we use on every tax credit development sure we use it here that is how we factor into and we do the math to figure out what they can qualify for okay so what I what I heard you say in your answer was that y'all have a formula that you use to calculate what somebody at 65 percent of area median income can pay and you don't charge them more than that that's not that's not a correct statement that's not true but well here's what I will tell you and in this is actually factual so if we have a resident that comes in that makes this happens a lot we we cannot get 70 call it seventy nine point nine five percent of the median income most residents and two bedroom units won't pay that rent they when they look at how much money they're making and what the rent is at that for Denton County it's too it's too much stress for them so we generally our rents will be less than the seventy nine point nine five I was going to actually come up and tell you in my presentation that when I looked at our Westport model and they have about the same income as is this community if you look at a radius of people our average rent is about equivalent to seventy five percent of median income if you look across all our residents that are on the affordable side so we have to make some concessions for some of our residents based on what they earn and what they can what they can afford it's just it's just it's no different than market rate but we have to move around underneath that eighty to make to fix people's needs that's not exactly answering your question that's reality no it does it's reality it does answer my question what it answers is that it's it's a it's sort of a case by case analysis that if a guy comes in at sixty percent and then somebody else comes in at sixty percent that depending on other factors someone may get a lower or higher rent still within that rental range that they can afford you're not applying the thirty percent rule just as your counsel said in your tax credit programs you cannot charge more than thirty percent or fifty or thirty percent of their salary so if it's fifty percent sixty percent that's not the issue my concern has been there's no guarantees that there's a formula pursuant we you guys are getting about a nine hundred to a million dollar tax exemption I don't follow that math I mean I have I have our own calculation I don't follow that I'm just going by your project costs in your memorandum of understanding is about forty million dollars and I'm applying the current rate that the city the DISD two point four five or two point four two or something and that 's nine hundred and twenty thousand or nine hundred and fifty thousand dollars so now y'all are going to come in and protest it I understand that we all do that's why we just discussed something where we had a lower assessed value than a sales price we all get that but so that's that's what I'm saying this is and we can't I'm not going to base my approval on that I'm just saying that I want to make sure that if we're we're paying that that we are truly getting affordable housing that the rents of a thousand dollars a month for a one bedroom unit to me doesn't necessarily represent what I would consider affordability so that was in the article you and I discussed that very directly correct and I just want to make this point to you although what you're saying is accurate in some respect you don't see the other side of that as well some of the tenants that come in we actually go below what so so there's so that is a point that you're only talking about the higher side no no no but I want to I just I just have a make a public statement I just want to let that be known as well that there are some rents just because we're here and I gave you saying that is 10 percent that set aside it could be lower it's going to be based on a lot of it too you know we have thresholds but it can be a lower threshold based on the market as well I understand but I understand what I understand what you're sure what what you're saying yeah I appreciate it I mean those are helpful that's helpful information and I think you've answered answered my questions so I appreciate that yes councilmember Melcher first of all I want to observe I'm seeing 772 and and at the low end for one bit but but you I think it was your attorney who referred to the possibility of a binding agreement between you and and the Housing Authority they'll be attached to this rent grid so that so that if you you know if you weren't following that that would be a violation of your agreement am I mischaracterizing what you suggested yes sir we can we can I'm mischaracter izing it or no you're not mischaracterizing we can do that we can put in the agreement with the Housing Authority which is their subsidiary this the public facilities corporation right but we can put in that agreement that you're gonna follow this 10 percent at 50 and 10 percent at 60 exactly and 10 percent at 65 and and in that scenario what 's the mechanism by which rents increase over you know in the future right you're not obviously pegged to that dollar amount for 30 years HUD puts out every year a new schedule of what the rents are you're indexed to the HUD schedule and and if you did violate that this agreement that we're talking about you're crafting with the Housing Authority what would the consequences be to you well I represent the developers I hope there are none but yeah but your point is and that's something we have a negotiator to discuss with Council for the Housing Authority so I'd be just speculating at this point okay but I mean you know I'm I'm very interested in how to at least put some kind of you know it's compelling to me that there would be a legally binding agreement but only if if it had meaningful consequences because otherwise it's legally binding but you know that's true but not significant right so so I wonder how for the purposes of our conversation today you know we could bracket that well I'll propose that a good man I'd like to make you know just move that I move approval subject to the stipulation that was already in the proposal from staff and also subject to the applicant you know executing a binding agreement around this rent guideline with the Housing Authority with penalties for for breach comparable to the value of the of the tax abatement we still have about three speakers who have put cards in and we've got other council members who want to talk so I'm just gonna sort of let that that motion sit on the table for just a sec till we hear from everybody else and then we hear from our speakers as well and and that'll give you all a chance to think about because I wouldn't want you to have to try to agree to that on the fly I'm gonna go with councilmember Hussbett and then councilmember Briggs. Thank you. Mayor's points concerns valid I mean we we spoke I mean I think that that component the tax component not driving my decision today is is noteworth y right I've researched those numbers with with staff's help and I think we we we as an entity the mayor's appointments to that board have given me some satisfaction going forward so this project specifically what I do want to point out is this I don't know who else went out but and I don't even know the name of the property it is their where did I go Westport and so I went to the property unbeknownst unbeknownst I have a packet have application I just went in hey what do you have here and I think it's important to note you you have to make an apples to apples comparison I have to and so when I look at the the the community offerings they have a they have the grills outside they have community events they have a free workout room I'm understanding this one may be a little different each of them I'm sure it takes on their own life they have two dog walks they have the pool environment so I'll just say that it is absolutely and this unit was was three years old and again the employee has no idea what what I'm looking for I'm just asking questions and I was absolutely and I told Mr. Fran bro this so so he won't be surprised I told him I'm trying to get to know but I just and that's how I have to look at it because when when when constituents asked me how did you get to yes I need to be able to defend that and so I'll say to any that it to me is that is the biggest differentiator it 's it's I can go to apartment store a and get whatever level of service or I can go to department store B and get a higher level of service for a little more money or no more money it's just it's it's baked in and so that's the that's the experience I received from this apartment complex is that it is a cut above but for those that are the beneficiaries of that below market rate rent they're getting a heck of a deal and hopefully it motivates them to be an environment where you're challenged because during the social events you're now mixing people above at market rate with people below market rate and their fellowship and they're talking there hey what do you do what do you work I like you I want to hire you I mean and so it becomes this community and I really get that that feel from there the the the community rooms etc etc so I think for me that is the biggest component that that has not been highlighted is just the different I don't see many complexes in Denton that carry that ability to upgrade that lifestyle and I also think it's it's important to note I mean there's a missing component here low and moderate there's something for the median income there 's there's nothing I mean when I was a single dad with my kiddos making average money this would be ideal because it allows me to not have a mortgage on top of my head but at the same time have amenities we can have a dog because they have a dog running in the pet deposit is mana manageable it's you know whatever it is whatever the number but I mean it's all manageable you know right and so that that to me is I think the missing component I think this you talk about it studies talk about it all the time that that middle rung that there 's nothing for I don't get tax credits like I do for it when I made less I don't get those special exemptions on so you're in the middle and you're sinking and so this moderate price allows me to live a little better in in this environment and I think that is that's where I hang my hat and that's how I get to yes is there's there's a single mom there's a single dad that has two kids that benefits from this development in this price point. All right. That's my bricks. So when when I looked at the rents as for a single mom it didn't look like a single mom making working at Buc-ee's I think was it making 30,000 a year could afford a two bedroom but a one bedroom they could and that would be a tight fit. I'm just curious because affordable housing affordable it's a it's a big issue but the bigger issue is getting someone who needs to be in a place a place based on their rental history. I'm curious how you view previous evictions and how many late payments do you allow before you do an eviction. I don't have the specific answer on the late payments before we look at a particular eviction because a lot of that is actually governed by TAA but we understand we just got through one of the from in my lifetime the worst recession I've ever experienced so we understand that everyone has a blip on their credit most people do most working class people who go to work every day they have issues and so we work through that we take exception the only thing we really take exception and look into it our felonies we have to really dive into those because we care about the totality of the development itself and we take a look at all that but when it comes to credit I mean we really dive into that a lot of those personally I'm in the weeds as I call it on this development because I 'm passionate about this particular process so a lot of those those approvals they actually come across my desk for approval so I understand exactly what you're talking about and it is to help those people that are aren't don't have perfect credit scores that don't have you know that have a blip on their credit and they they might even have a blip on in their past in other ways as well. So you will provide provide a home for someone who has a couple evictions in their rental history I can say from experience we have done that in the past in the deposits Councilman or husbands went down some deposits and then didn't say so how how do you do that is it for those who qualify for the non market units how do you how do you do the deposit that's required for that is it the same it is the same as everyone across this particular development has the same deposit so it's two it's two and a half times two and a half times the rent so even for the affordable units that's not the deposit that's not the positive the qualification is doing a half time okay right not not the deposit itself the deposit I believe on this particular unit I mean he may have it right off it 's I believe it's 250 yeah okay I have to go and take a look at that I believe it's 250 all right thank you Councilmember Bometter okay so I wanted to say why I am going to vote yes to support this project I voted yes before why voting yes again with confidence as I understand it there were are there were the last time we discussed this and today I don 't think that where we are going to have our last time we had nobody from the area come forward to us and say I don't want this development in my community that's something that I'm very sensitive to as someone who represents the public represents communities and one of the reasons why is because this is a commercial area that is being made more residential by this facility it's also taking an area you know as I had mentioned before Walmarts are not very pretty to look at so we're pretty fine this this area that is otherwise kind of drab we're so this is it's you know as somebody who is often on the other side of these kind of developer situations where I kind of have a reputation for not not liking develop developers and new developments it's not that I don't like developers new developments it's just that so often we've got a very different kind of scenario where the people who live and work in the area don't want this development in this community that's not what I'm seeing I'm seeing something that in my opinion is compatible it's compatible according to planning and zoning commission it's compatible according to our staff and I don't see the Walmart or the surrounding businesses complaining that they don't want this so I don't I don't quite see what what the negatives are unless or I should say outside of we've got HUD and we've got HUD law which is you know the lawyer explained before is is is overriding on top of all of this if we if we have problems with HUD we can if we have problems with HUD we can you know write to our federal government and do all kinds of things individually to make HUD raise the bar on what they define as affordable housing but that's not what's before us today what's before us today is given the HUD that we have and given what counts as affordable housing today is this is this compatible and I will also say that there are things we can do as a city outside the scope of this conversation to lower rents in the city there are ordinances we could make but but it is not to be I don't think that it's to be decided in this one SUP what what we consider affordable in Denton right we're operating under HUD law state law city law and what we define as compatibility so anyway that that's why I'm voting yes and that's why I would encourage others to as well. Councilmember Hussbett do you mind if I recognize the mayor pro tem since he hadn't spoken yet is that okay all right well and there was mention of the traffic your traffic person would be coming up and I'd like to hear from them because yes to me that is a huge issue that you know as I look down Brinker Road there are no multifamily that actually dump on a Brinker and the intersection that there are only left turn exit out of here being directly across from a big box store is to me is what makes us incompatible with the neighborhood before we hear from that councilmember Hussb ett do you want to make your comment and then hear from the traffic applicant okay go ahead yeah because I just want to succinctly and I've tried to process and breathe deep but when you talk about I'll tell you so I'm not telling you I didn't reference what I heard about what I've talked from a constituent I'm telling you me sure as a single father so it bothers me when someone comes back to me with something they heard secondhand smoke kills I'm telling you what I lived and then you balance that and and I believe try to invalidate that with something you've heard and that's problematic for me and so crunching the numbers at a restaurant being a kitchen manager 35k a year that's $2,900 round numbers a month then you factor in child support and so you figure $200 based on on 400 for the month 200 biweek ly thank you Greg Abbott based on on minimum wage and so I've lived that so I just I want to I wanted to that bothers me because I want to be clear you know because council member Briggs uses an anecdote from someone she spoke to who I don't know but I'm telling you what I lived for three four or five years and as a point of reference for the single single family home and the value that it brings and so I'm using my life experience as as a point of reference and I took issue with that being kept reconciled against someone she spoke to that that I don't know anything about that but what I do know is what I live and so it's very important to me that I have that very abundantly clear that I'm not grabbing numbers I 'm not talking to constituents I'm recounting my life experiences that puts me here in this chair to make decisions for those that that I represent and and I'm telling you that lifestyle exists because I lived it sure I understand I sure and that's yeah I'm gonna give you a chance to respond but yeah I didn't know that that's exactly where I go ahead I have absolutely no idea I'm talking about the 30,000 Buckees thing from here I don't I don't know what you're referencing that I grew up in a single parent home with my mother I mean I know exactly I lived in apartment after apartment after apartment can you just tell me yeah so the quote was that's not single fam that's not single family affordable that's not the people I talked to can't afford that that's what you said okay can I just going off their charts let me let me jump in here I mean obviously this is we're all very passionate about our respective positions and interests on this issue and I just simply would ask that as we deliberate and as we discuss that we really try to keep those kind of emotional exchanges to a minimum including myself and really concentrate on the facts as presented by the developer and the project so I understand that it's a it can touch a lot of us personally and I think that's why we have passion about it and that's why I appreciate this council and the work that we do to really dig into issues to find the best way to improve our community so I just simply ask for some deference in that and if I cross that line I expect somebody to yell point order and say mayor take your own advice so if it's okay let's go ahead and hear from the traffic person and then we've got a couple more cars to speak and then we'll wrap it up I've just got a couple questions and comments and then if anybody else does they can as well and your name sir is I'm Kelly Parma I just want to make sure I keep up with the cards yes sir Kelly Parma of Lee engineering office office out of a 3030 LBJ freeway Dallas Texas and as Kenneth said I represent I traffic engineer and have kind of looked at this the site and the traffic along W inker Road and so what we looked at is we looked at the apartment complex and we also looked at we added the retail component to it typically just an apartment complex which has apartment trips and so we added the the retail component that has a part of it and so we kind of made a best estimate of the trips that would be generated it's done using a nationally accept nationally accepted standard of different land uses different trip numbers so that's what the numbers I'm presenting are kind of coming from from a quick and quick and dirty easy to approve easy to understand standpoint is that the apartment complex with the retail component is estimated to generate about 180 trips during both the AM and the PMP hour obviously different ins and outs during those times but it's about 180 trips during the AM and the PMP hour on Winker Road during that same time kind of when this is built forecasting out you're looking at about 1500 trips in the morning peak and about 2400 in the PMP so you kind of get a reference relative feel for how much traffic this is generating compared to what's out there now almost out there now and what's going to be out there when this gets built in 2020 so the other thing we kind of looked at is that okay well we've got this apartment complex we looked at you know it's 180 that doesn 't really take into account you know there's a bus stop close by if there's people that are using multi multi modal it could be lower but also if it's under current zoning you could allow retail there some type of commercial development there and so we looked at the trips generated by a development that would be able to fit in that site and it came out to be that the AM peak hour would be about 210 trips during the PMP hours about 30 trips more in the AM peak hour but in the PMP hours where you kind of see the greater disparity and keep in mind that the PMP hours and there's a lot more traffic on Winker Road so there's a lot more impact when you have side street traffic and so that came out to about 600 trips during the PMP hour generated by shopping center that could fit within there and so just reference that's 100 600 compared to 180 for the apartments and so that's kind of some of the traffic numbers we came up with I'm sure you may have questions and I'm able to answer you that you may have. Mayor Pro Tem you sort of had an interest in this do you have any questions? Yeah because you're saying on Brinker that we're talking about 1500 trips on Brinker itself during AM peak hours and from the apartment complex 210? No apartment complex 180. 180 okay so we're still looking at about 13 percent of the traffic on Brinker is going to be directly related to this complex and about 8 percent then in the evening if you've got 2400 trips which means you've actually got more traffic going on on Brinker to begin with and you're going to toss 180 yeah another well anything you develop anything percent onto that road correct anything you develop there will add more traffic to Brinker so and then I'm just I'm just I compared that to the retail that could develop there okay would would it warrant would it be necessary to put a stoplight in that corner with that number of trips? The traffic signal would not warrant at that location there 's different there's various warrants that have to be satisfied mainly it's volume war rants and it's volumes on the side streets most of the major arterials such as such as Brinker or Luke 288's obviously a little bit more a little bit more heavily trafficked than this it's mainly the side street traffic that creates the warrant need because there 's usually not traffic on the main street where it meet it that part meets warrants and so it's a side street traffic that kind of determines whether it meets warrants or not and just based on the preliminary numbers I haven't done a full-blown kind of analysis of the because it looks at a four hour and eight hour type of perspective I don't feel that it meets warrants the other the other thing too is that even if it meets warrants isn't necessary if it doesn't meet war if it meets warrants doesn't necessarily mean you have to put a signal in if it doesn't meet warrants doesn't mean you can't put a signal in so it 's just it's just a guideline that that helps the process. Yeah I just I just feel like for this area I mean I've got nothing against the development itself it's just not in the right area that you know we have to look at how it's going to affect the area and that kind of traffic count just takes it off off the table for me it just doesn't make sense to add that much more volume of traffic in that area which will increase Brinker itself is going to increase simply because we're going to be tying it underneath 35 there's going to be a yeah and that will increase the traffic on that road to begin with and if there's only one point for people to make a left-hand turn out of that place and it's directly across from two very large box stores it just does not fit well every other every other multifamily in that vicinity is on a side street and most of those side streets exit onto a street that will have a light there there are I mean there are two access points but there's only one access full access point so there is another access point to the north right that's a right in right yeah that's that's a right in right so they have that option they also have an option of going north to the signal at the Walmart making a u-turn if they need to if the left turn becomes so problematic this is similar to the there's another unsignalized intersection south of 288 between the Walmart signal and the 288 signal it's an unsignalized intersection that serves commercial areas and I'm not we didn't do count at that location but just from general trip generation standpoint you kind of assume that trip that that unsignalized intersection would be more than trips you have at for this apartment complex yeah I mean sorry at that intersection yeah and and I would think if these are workforce housing style apartments that most of your trips are going to be you know between 630 and 930 in the morning you know I find 180 kind of low if you've got you know 280 apartments that means not everybody is is going to be leaving or coming to work I mean that's that's what seems seems strange where you've got 471 parking places and 424 those are resident allocated parking places so to speak based on our code and what's required so that's you know 424 vehicles is what we anticipate could quite possibly might be there and yet you're saying 180 is what you're thinking is going to be the number of trips which is still above 10 percent of what is already on that road and that's just way too heavy we're going to take a five minute break five ten minute break just going to take a break but all right welcome everybody back to this meeting of the Denton City Council on September the 25th 2018 into 722 we are on agenda item 1c that it be be 1 d and we're going to reconvene so the next person to speak and let me give you sort of an update there's about two minutes left on the applicant's time but that means that whoever else left to speak just gets their normal time so and that's what that's not taking into the question and answer that's just simply the presentation so we've got two cards left which is Ryan McIntosh and John Shackelford so who would like to speak of those two yo go ahead go ahead oh you need to get behind the microphone because we can't the television broadcast can't hear you and you are okay Ryan 47 yes on holo drive Dallas Texas yeah mr . mayor I don't have a statement to make at this time just in case there's any specific questions relating to the project later on I may answer you're not the applicant are you are you an applicant are you the landowner landowner okay all right okay so are you going to be the remaining two minutes no I'm John Shackelford oh you're John yes yes I'm sorry yes card and I was only up here to yeah assist you all okay any any okay well this it's this is items for individual consideration out of public hearing okay well those are all the cards that I have so we can continue yes questions for staff sure sure go ahead councilmember Melzer yeah I'm I wonder if you can fill us in and I'm sure some my colleagues will tell me I could very well have done this research myself but I didn't did planning and zoning evaluate the traffic impacts as part of their process and what were their findings if you wouldn't mind sharing that certainly it was discussed the full traffic impact analysis hasn't been completed at this point or submitted to the city through their review of the process our DRC engineering team decided that's more appropriate at the plotting process because the primary impact that would have on the side is whether or not they dedicate additional right of way for a right turn lane but that it was considered there were concerns expressed at PNZ similarly to hear about people trying to exit in and out of the facility but they after looking at the site plan and seeing those two points of access which can get back to here if you want to look at it you know just knowing that there were two ways in and out of the site that it met the fire code requirements for for access they they generally felt comfortable with that because as the engineer mentioned you anything that develops here is going to have an impact so this is lesser than some of the things that would be permitted in the zoning thank you if I may I'd like to pull my motion back off the table before you do we might have some other discussions let me go to the yes councilmember I wanted to move to well he oh he would councilmember uh melzer had sort of started that and we tabled it so I was going to give an opportunity for people to speak and then pull it back on the table any other questions comments mayor part time ryan you look like you want to yeah I just I just feel like this is coming before us for an sqp ahead of schedule that the data is not all there to me the the traffic impact and for our city staff to be able to look over that before we say yes you can build it is necessary and again I reiterate I'm looking at the map right now and all the other multifamily in that area comes off of side streets and and then is able to get to a stoplight to get out on a brinker road I'm not against this development I'm against where it's located based on the traffic as I see it and I think that something similar to what is next door to this property you know and a facility for the aging of some sort would be a lower traffic count to begin with because you're basically going to have staff and occasional visitors hitting that as opposed to when we're when we're looking at this as affordable housing we are talking about workforce which means that they have jobs that they go to and from every day and with that I'm I'm not going to be able to support this particular issue I just have a couple of questions probably for the council the counselors mr. Shackleford yes a couple and this is this is reference to the memorand um of understanding that was executed on the 18th of April 2018 between the public facility corporation and what is it HHS is that right yeah so we've talked a lot about rents and what how do how the rents get set and whether HUD guidelines regulate or not but who determines what those rents are based upon whether their guidelines whether just you know somebody's making a decision from a business model based upon the state who has the final say of what those rents are set to typically the developer would have the final say but again they've got to work within the guidelines of complying with HUD and all the things I said earlier the less than 80 percent no more than 30 percent of the income going towards the rent okay all right so the public facility corporation doesn't have any authority to override those no say well I mean it's a collaboration and somebody's got a decide it's a collaboration remember in these way we structure these deals the public facilities corporation in order to get our tax exemption has to be the general partner so as a general partner you understand what all that means as far as its its authority that kind of thing but they delegate a lot of that authority to the management company right and so okay they do the the nuts and bolts of coming up with what are those amounts and the numbers but the general partner which is above the facilities corporation they have oversight they review it that kind of thing okay I appreciate that Mr. Ambrose you have something to add to that or I was I was just going to add that in our agreements the public facilities court they have the oversight to look at this on an annual and semi-annual basis we go over rents this is how we've done in the past on our developments and how we're going to do them in the future and I'm that's a great segue because my question was basically predicated on the section C where it says an intention of the parties blah blah rents and it says the parties agree that IHS shall examine rents and advise PDPFC of any adjustment so I didn 't know if that advisement this is sort of what we think they need to be and we're just going to tell you about them or if it's hey guys we think it's this what do y'all think and can we come to a mutually collaborative agreement on what these rents should be is it is it the latter instead of the latter I mean because you have a lot of factors within the market I mean you have true market conditions that right you know don't exist at this moment in time but once we were up and going we have to really look at true market conditions as well so I want to verify something that you said Mr. Shackle just now where you said when you're setting the rents based upon the less than 80 percent based upon the HUD guidelines of that they their rent can it be any more than 30 percent of their income so are you representing that that is how the developer and this entity will set those rents for those individuals or families that are making less than 80 percent of area median income yes sir okay and let me just say you keep calling them guidelines it's actually there's a regulation okay and it's 24 CFR part 92.252 that provides them following maximum home rent limits the maximum home rent limits rents are the lesser of and then it pres cribes okay what they they must be right and so you're saying that somewhere in the development of this project that you are subject to those guide that statute to be affordable we have to comply with that yes all right I appreciate that I appreciate that thank you very much that that answers my question you know the last comment I have to say is I I don't look at trying to get to know on this I'm the reason I met with you early even though the reason I met with you early is because I wanted to understand the project and also I think it's indicative of your generosity in this that you know you've added in these last two meetings at 10 percent of 50 percent area median income that you're reserving for 10 percent of 60 what that lets me know is that what what has frustrated me about this whole process and what caused me to change out three board members on a particular board is I commend you all for the deal that you struck because I think it's a good deal I'm not saying that it shouldn't be your deal and that there's something wrong with that but I think that it could have been a little bit better as we've evidenced by what's already happened here last time and this time that there was probably some things left on the table and it's too late to go back and really look at the whole deal and so I appreciate the the the effort in that so it's not been anything about the development it's not been anything about the developers what it has been about is we have a shortage of affordable housing units in this city and at 70 percent 75 percent AMI that's not going to cut it and I'm thankful to hear that the under 80 percent rents will be set at the HUD statutory levels of 30 percent so that's this is being recorded so it doesn't matter what you agree with the housing authority or not this is being recorded and no we can't enforce it statutorily or by our ordinance but you've done enough business where I think that you that your company is a company of their word and I would expect that to be the case I'm gonna have a hard time because of the traffic issue supporting this I think it would be helpful if we had a traffic study on this I know this council has many times before postponed projects because we didn't have a traffic study and I know that it typically occurs at plat ting but we also know that by the time you get to platting the authority of this body to be able to make some kinds of conditions to mitigate those concerns is gone platting is a planning and zoning ministerial act and so that that's my concern on that so appreciate you all coming out both last week and this week and providing additional information and helping us helping me get some clarity on on the rent structures and all that so thank you all yes councilmember armature so did I hear correctly that oh sorry Gerard sorry oh that that three so you were saying that three board members were replaced because of this project no I'm just saying I replaced three board members okay yep yes councilmember H ussbett Haley can we pull up google maps have an address please and thank you I need to correct something yes I did I did replace board members because of this project which is statutorily the authority of the mayor to appoint all the board members to the Denton Housing Authority board so absolutely I did if we can go to 3500 Hudson Wood Drive okay so Prov idence Place 2 exits out to what street appears they'll take Quill Creek to Brinker okay bio life plasma services X is out to what street they have exits with Quill Creek and looks like a shared driveway to Brinker okay where does Quill Creek go it goes to Brinker right and so then let's look at Willow Bend assisted living where do they go out looks like two drives Quill Creek and Barry down lane and both of those go to I would assume Qu ill Creek to Brinker right and so that's where that's where you lose me a bit when you say they they have different entrances on to Brinker they they have a street in between Brinker but they all dump on to Brinker they're all the same unless I'm missing something am I missing something so if you're to tell me that they're complex they're they're their apartments add more traffic than everything that I see here I disagree and so that's why I'm okay with the track everything there dumps to Brinker they have a they have a street you know so but but the fact of the matter is and I I had to look twice because I took you at there they're dumping out on to a different road but they're not they're all going to bring I mean there's a street in theory between them and Brinker but everything goes to Brinker and so that that's I think that that's a point of a clear you know I think that's just important to point out that that that entire complex and you go further north I mean that dumps in the Brinker I mean everything and so when you're talking about the effect of this unit versus that entire footprint not to mention those that go to the golf course etc etc you're it's it's it's it's comparable so thank you so I have another correction I was incorrect in my three board members was really one one was a place before one retired and it was one so I wanted to make sure that I got very clear detail on that I can sometimes speak with a little bit of emotionality and want to make sure I'm very factual data driven guy make sure the data is right so that's it okay any other questions comments councilmember Meltzer okay so to reiterate I move approval subject to two conditions one the condition that was stated in the presentation and the other that the applicant successfully execute a binding agreement with DHA binding them to the rent grid presented today with the 10 percent of 50 10 percent of 60 10 percent of 65 with a penalty in it such that breach in any given year you would result in a penalty equal to the tax exemption okay so I want to clarify that because I heard something different and so I want to make sure that didn't hear I thought what I heard on the offer or on the accommodation was 10 percent of the units reserved for 50 percent of the median area income 10 percent reserved at 60 did I miss 10 percent reserved at 65 percent I thought it was only just two so okay so unless you're adding the 10 percent at 65 percent so if you look back to you I must have misunderstood right so it outlines if you look and what we can do is just so that there's no can you add 10 percent of 65 Kenneth I'm just I know trying to line it up it's a it's a it's a long day for everyone right this this is this sheet that you have before you right yeah lines I see and when you say that 10 percent let's since we're being crystal clear it's 10 percent of the 51 thank you very much since we are recorded and we are sure which equates to 13 units for each set of that 10 percent 14 units because you're rounding on cheat yourself absolutely 14 units appreciate that we've had some other conversations so what I am so you will see this this is what we're I mean we're going to come in to something of that nature so the so the condition is that the applicant successfully executes a binding agreement with DHA that binds them to this rental grid with a penalty for breach in any given year equal to their tax exemptions and I'm open to amendments and over with that happens that's happened after a second if there is one I do have a question and then I mean so on your table on the 80 percent rent average if this is supposed to represent the standard per the statute I'm not trying to be picky but it is I may not even answer your question yeah it is less than 80 percent so you're showing 80 percent rent average but it's so I just want to make sure I understand yes you 're okay you are correct for thanks yes go ahead it's maybe subject to the condition that it you know it must conform to state and federal there you go yes yes I the the penalty provisions we already have that in the SUP and that's if they don't comply with any of the conditions and just on any SUP there's a replication procedure that's available to the council and so I know enough to have the SUP exactly and so as far as the meaningful penalties and all that I think that that's incredibly helpful to know because previously you know we were sort of saying there was nothing binding them but so but I you know maintain that I would still require successful execution of a contract between the applicant and DHA binding them to this to this rental grid as a condition so I have a question on that for the city attorney whether or not those conditions are met with DH between the public facility corporation and the app and the developer let's say there's some breach or something if those conditions aren't in our SUP they could still very well meet our SUP and I'm not trying to say anything about well we should punish them or I'm just saying if we're thinking that somehow that controls what happens with our SUP I don't think there's a cause and effect of if they now if they if some of those conditions are in the SUP because if this if that's the only condition it's not really conditioned upon in our ordinance it's saying successful execution somewhere else well if they execute it and that's fine but if they breach it I don't know what how that plays back into our ordinance and our remedies if that makes sense I think you understand my intent that be part of the SUP in effect right that you know like instead of making contingent upon the then executing the contract those you 're saying put those conditions meeting that executing meeting the terms of you know I mean I take your point yeah you're saying put those terms in the SUP ordinance if that achieves the result of you know the penalty is binding upon them if they reach yes make sure I understood this correctly as far as the breach the breach you're referring to is to the actual SUP condition not necessarily to a breach of their separate contract with private facility corporation because it's a latter if they break this they get a penalty that's that 's that's the intention the their MOU also contemplates that rates could be adjusted and I think the mayor read that provision earlier today so if they were adjusted maybe following federal guidelines it would be a breach of what you just wrote so I'm trying to raise that issue and because there will be a breach because you're tying them to this to the rent to an exhibit that has static numbers and those static numbers may change in the future based on circumstances beyond the city's control we discussed that we discussed that it's not about the static numbers it's about the index to the it's about the index to the HUD figures so obviously they're not you know gonna charge the same run 30 years from now right and but that has to be make sure that we're clarified in the condition that it takes that into account I know you understand what I mean yes I trust you well it's not just him that needs to understand that the other council members need to understand and more importantly the applicants need to understand yes what what you mean so let me see if I can take a stab at what I think you're you mean you probably do better job that it would that it the the SUP is conditioned upon the applicant I'm just gonna you're saying execute something with the public facility corporation but whether it's in our SUP ordinance or in a contract with them that they adhere to the HUD guidelines for 50 percent area median income 60 percent area median income and then if there's any other guidelines for a book 60 percent or 61 percent up to less than 80 percent whatever the HUD guidelines are for area median income that they will adhere to those and those change well but I'm binding them my intention is to bind them to the 10 percent at 50 and the 10 percent okay well yeah yes yes that too yes that that that's what I have yeah yeah okay to make that to make it stick right okay all right well that could probably be in our could put it just straight in the SUP yeah I mean I don't know I'd have to ask the city attorney yes well that achieves the objective I thought that we had that the only mechanism available was the agreement between the applicant and DHA but if we can put it directly in our that's gonna be dependent on an outside agreement that's that's where you're going I just needs to be binding you know it's just you know what I guess did I would recommend the strikeout the binding agreement and you're just basically making a condition of this use as far as the affordability that they're offering is and I use that term loosely that you know they're offering that that they're adhering to the federal gut guidelines and as you described 10% you know going through that I think that having a language about success with executing a binding agreement that's fine that should I think you're on a cleaner yes route to the objective so for clarification and I just want to make sure that we're clear to summarize what I've heard that there's basically two issues or two conditions regarding this affordability concept one is that they reserve 10% of the 51% for 50% area median income and then oh oh okay all right hold on let me let me recognize you so let me finish my sort of summary and then y'all can have a chance to discuss it because I want to that's why I wanted to make sure it's clear so you guys can have a response to that thank you so then the 10% reserved of those 51% which is approximately 14 units for 60% area median income and then the rest will be whatever they decide oh I think that we're gonna hear is that they want to they want the rent not the income well but that's that's that and and and that's the reservation of the units yeah and then the other one was that the rents for the for those under 80% of area median income simply conform to the HUD guidelines that you had the HUD requirements that you stated yeah so those are the two conditions I think I heard you say is that yes that's what you heard me say and I'm just anticipating what I think we're gonna hear but you just hear it yeah yeah because we're about I'll just say this by way of preface I'm mostly interested in the rent being affordable not the income per se which is the HUD guidelines yeah yeah but but you know did well that's here what they have to say let's keep those two conditions on for now and if you want to change that you can and I want to hear what y'all's response is to those well I hate to be an attorney and say there's a concern I have and I think it's a major concern and that is by making it a condition of the SUP that if we bre ached it and understand why you want it and and that's valid the concern is our lender I don't think we'll make the loan because in all these deals the lender takes a first lien mortgage on the property and they're going to want to know that if this deal goes in the ditch and they got to protect their interest and they foreclose on the property they're not restricted to keeping it within those HUD guidelines now we've never had that ever happen but just all lenders under their underwriting they they require that that's why even in the light tech program under section 42 it's specifically federal law that a first lien mortgage holder can foreclose and wipe out the deed restrictions that are in place you know for the 30 years plus another 30 years but go ahead now I want to respond just ask him a question on that but go ahead also add that if that foreclosed if that if the bank forecloses it actually goes away as well that's correct right yes that's so that's an important it's I knew where you were going to that no no I just yeah because the tax exemption is there because of the the less than 80 percent right so I've done two and a half billion dollars in real estate I have never had anything go back to a bank I mean we were a strong company I think we're I think we're just we're just we're getting into too much detail here so let me yeah what I want to do is we've got a motion on the table so if you want to change your motion based upon their response then okay all right go ahead yeah so so is there I think you understand what I want to achieve I want to hold you collectively to what you presented to us so do you have a different mechanism that you'd suggest that that still makes your project possible that bindingly holds you to what you presented to us because I hate to tell you we have developers come and do song and dance every week you know and we think we it's what all it only matters if we can actually they can actually be held to what they tell us they're going to do well like I said we can put it in a partnership agreement with the public facilities corporation and have events of default as I mentioned to you earlier a lot of times represent the Fort Worth housing finance corporation and I can't recall off the top of our head all the events of default we have and what the remedies are for the HFC if a developer goes into faults I 'm fine with those I'm fine with those to make those binding in this instance with the public facilities corporation I can't recite to you off the top of my head what all's we have in that part of those partnership agreements I'm fine with those so that's you know I mean Aaron that's you know why I started where I did and if there's a way to it you know I'm not trying to kill the project obviously I'm trying to condition it on this so if there's a way to do that but still have it have the force of the penalty of the SCP and I'm willing to tomorrow to send to Mr. Leo the partnership agreement from another project where I represented the Fort Worth HFC so he can see exactly what's in it how it was structured and events of default and remedies and all that so I'm happy to send him that and but I but what I'm hearing you say which I just heard you say which I don't think is you're wanting something in the SUP whether it's what we started out and they just objected to or whether it's something that says you are conditioned on doing this and if you don't do it then it breaches our SUP well we're right back to where we started well that makes sense yeah I mean if we if we put a condition in there and that you're trying to get a condition that if they breach it that it breaches our SUP ordinance we're right back to where we started with whether it was in there all right well the only reason I sort of said okay let's put it in there was because it looked like a more efficient way to get to the penalty but if there's a way to attach that where I started was if we if we condition it on them living up to executing and living up to continually in agreement with the DHA that has the penalty in it which penalty are you talking about penalty equal to the tax exemption just something that you know would definitely give them true religion every day we'll have to work on that well you've made the motion do you understand the motion councilmember armature so I have a suggestion and a request of having to do with this motion if this is if this motion is the only if a tweaked version of this motion is the only way for this project to go forward then I'll help out but I would really much rather see us vote on this see a motion to and I'm not I'm not obviously I'm not making the motion because now's not the time to do it I'm just talking about this is my way of talking about this motion that's just been raised to see it 's been made made made to see a motion to approve this SUP with the conditions stated by okay well you're you're talking about another motion yes but we've got one on the I know I know this is my way of explaining my my problem with this motion and then I'm going to explain why and so and the reason why is because if this is going to happen every time a HUD project comes to us before us as a council this can get really problematic really messy you know for me it feels and I know we have other HUD projects in the city I know because I visited them I've seen them and I feel like you know I'm just saying it 's not as if this is the first but I think I think you're using HUD in a very liberal sense there are HUD projects that are specifically financed by the Housing and Urban Department Department yeah which have a whole different criteria sure attached to it than just this but so it's it's not it's not what you're characterizing it to be I guess is what I'm saying okay well what I mean by that is is subject to federal federal HUD law is what I'm saying what what and what what we can do okay to there are other ways to solve this problem that you're suggesting outside of this particular vote we can vote on this and then separately at some future point make an ordinance or have a discussion about ordin ances an ordinance that we can have as a city to raise the bar but if we do it project by project in terms of rents in these percentages and you know whether or not it's going to be I mean make you rent part of it if you could understand what you're saying but we have a motion on the table let me call for a second we may not even get a second and then what you're talking about you'll be able to put in the form of a motion so yes councilmember Hussbett so I'd ask councilmember Meltzer if he would accept a friendly amendment to to ask that we take the document that Mr. Shackleford is stipulated to be made part of the file is this one that this no no whatever memorandum of understanding or whatever that is between the partnership agreement right so I would ask if you would consider taking that document making it part of this application or part of this file motion yeah well as far as part of the the file that would then travel with it does that make it what's the proper word Aaron so do we create a file we create a log we okay let me let me because I know councilmember yes let me so this document this partnership agreement he's talking about yes you're saying you want it done something done with it outside of this motion you don't want it as part of this motion you don't want it as a condition of this motion you want it outside of this motion no no I want it part of his motion but not part of the SUP so for this to move forward it Aaron receives that document that then supplements whatever else Aaron puts together and it moves down to P&Z to planning to wherever it's going it just becomes part of the record so the document he stipulated to is recorded but it's not tangible so he creates a tangible document it attaches to the rest of the records from this conversation and travels with it through the duration of the project but right now what's on the table is the motion and if you're saying you don't want it as part of the SUP motion then that's what we're considering is the motion on what are the conditions within the SUP ordinance that we're going to be voting on okay so if you don't want it attached to that we can figure out another mechanism informally that because I think this is the end of the line there's no more I mean except for platting and all that you don't come back to council unless you want something else so okay so I guess I guess that your point is valid but that I guess it's his motion right and so in his motion he said SUP according to what staff outlined and this other punitive document so I'm saying I'm asking him if he would leave it as staff 's recommendations and remove that document in lieu of them supplementing the file yeah you're asking sort of what councilmember Armatuer said is approve the SUP as presented by staff with good staff conditions I mean well are we taking two votes SUP and because the thing is just one vote it's one vote it's the SUP ordinance yeah so it's it's it's part of the SUP in that it's this is what we have the vote on but it's not contingent on that that that document and punitive it just is part of the file okay it just it just gets attached with no consequence yes yeah because I live in a different world where you know okay contracts are challenged all the time so you have a motion on the table you've asked for somebody a friendly amendment are you open to a friendly amendment I'm just gonna start we're gonna we're gonna get through this process yes I'm not open to that amendment and we'll thank you for the constructive suggestion they just to be clear about my intent this rental this rent grid that's been presented to us makes this project more affordable it makes this affordable housing project more affordable but you know the perennial problem with projects in Denton is people promise us things but they're not held to it you know and and I and I would say in response to councilman barminter suggestion that that if we figure out the mechanism to get this right it becomes a template so the others are easier because that because we don't want to be in the position of having affordable housing projects come up that we don't really feel are affordable but we can get them more affordable but they're not binding so if we figure out this mechanism we won't have to do it every time we'll know a good way to do it okay so if you could restate the motion that you want to be on the table requesting a second for it well you know it's kind of like requires a little help from okay from the city attorney to kind of get it right I mean I you know I can only gesture toward the idea that it's subject to sorry did I miss something I don't need any chocolate oh yeah yeah I really I mean this is important so okay yeah so approval of you know the project subject to the condition that staff provided as well as a binding condition with a penalty that that binds the project to reserving 10% at 60% and 10% and 10% of 50% in some form that that attaches a penalty without yeah that in some form that it has the consequence of providing a penalty and how I'm saying this with the knowledge that I don't want to do it in a form that makes the project un-executable because I'm trying to move that the project go forward hey can I just ask question yes out of ignorance you all pointing the members of the DHA board they control the public facilities corporation we're saying we've got enter into a partnership agreement with the with DHA they're your appointees can you not have the authority with appointees your point is no I'm just saying yeah can you not mr. mirror then instruct them in connection with their separate there's a body my only my only function is to appoint the board I do not give them the direction or we can't we can't tell them how to govern that's right if they watch this tape I think they'd get the message I'm just I was just trying to find a suggestion that we've got to be compelled to put it in an agreement that protects you all through your DHA representatives satisfy meeting the needs of the city was what I was hoping for and if there's a way to move forward with a sort of understanding that you know details to come with help from city attorney not at this instant you know I don't know if that's a possible thing to do and that's you're putting making a condition for a something in a document that you haven't seen to actually sit and review and analyze and determine whether it is it meets your standard so you're putting too much discretion in me and staff to ensure that it meets your your so so we'd have to come back to us for yes I think it's worth it because you know we're trying we're trying or I'm trying to make an affordable housing project more affordable that's worth it okay so then what I 'm hearing you say from your standpoint of your motion doesn't mean somebody else's that that you would prefer that if there's this document that's going to be executed between the public housing corporation with some of these agreements or stipulations that have been made regarding the 10 percent 50 10 percent 60 and the HUD guidelines pursuant to statute that was read here at the day that that would be an agreement between the public housing facility and the developer as the partnership is already with the memorandum of understanding that that's all that group it's an amendment or whatever it is that that come back to us that we not consider the SUP until we get that document I'm not saying that's what I'm saying I'm saying is that is that what you're saying okay all right so are you withdrawing your motion Paul before you do that let me ask you a question okay now I'm gonna say something my attorney can slap me and pull me aside and say no I don't want to do that but is there let me let me let me recognize you because y'all are up there sort of at our discretion and I don't want this to get into a kind of a back and forth I mean I wanted y'all to be able to answer some questions so I want you to go ahead and make your comment but then unless we have something yes yeah not go away but just because we 're trying to yeah because we don't really afford this necessarily to other applicants I just want to make sure that we're consistent and okay thank you thank you can we condition can we condition his amendment to go away if we lose a tax exemption can we condition it to the tax exemption I don't know exactly what you're saying well what I'm saying if we're if we're if we're talking about our biggest concern and mayor I mean sure go ahead where I'm want to hear your interest our biggest concern is at the end of the day we can leave here but if I can't get the deal developed this is all right it's a big colossal waste of time the banks who have the first mortgage on it want to be able to they have to be able to to blow out any affordability mechanism and in doing so the tax exemption would go away you guys care about the tax exemption right that's why we're having this discussion because if we didn't we could just attach this to another deal and this would just be an SUV correct so can we however you guys do it from friendly amendments and whatever you do tie it to if we don't adhere to what's in front of them tie it to the tax exemption that we would lose a tax exemption is that premise I'm asking you because I'm yeah and my concern here is we have a problem crafting at the dais sometimes when we and so I know that there's a lot of implications in that so what I don't want to get into is us doing this on the fly I mean there's been a lot of discussion there's been a lot of and I would just assume if somebody's going to make a motion to accept it the way staff has presented it and all this other these all these other things are out let's let's if you want to make that motion if there's a second we'll vote on it and if you don't you don't but I don't want to put you all and I don't want to put us in a situation of trying to craft something very complicated on the fly because you understand how that can create situations that really are untenable and it's a lot harder to untie the knot yes sir yes okay yeah okay yeah okay all right so we're gonna take councilmember hudspeth's comments or motion or something yeah is this I'm waiting for his motion to either get a second or die so that you are you is your motion still on the table well it doesn't it doesn't sound like there's a way to I'd almost like to like to postpone the item until we can craft something that would conceivably respond to you know what I'm trying to achieve with the motion okay so you've made a motion are you withdrawing that particular motion with the specific things that you had in that motion you know it's if it's if it's executable this is kind of interesting problem so the question is the effect of the question you're asking me is if I were to proceed with the project be executable no no my question is very simple yeah yeah and that is you've stated a motion and I think we have the gist of your motion we've had some comments back from your motion are you wanting to move stay with that motion in other words you're going to reaffirm and republish that motion or are you going to withdraw it and make another motion or somebody else can make a motion tell you what just reading the room I'll withdraw the motion see if somebody else can do a better job of ensuring that this degree of affordability that is offered by the applicant is binding on them okay all right okay councilmember hudspeth I move approval with staff stipulations and to get Aaron ready during concluding items I'm going to ask for an exhaustive list of these people that have broken agreements that I'm not aware of so just a heads up because I think we were punitive to come to people that we've never worked with and treat them all the same when I think there are different people and I don't have a list of all these projects that okay so your motion is to approve yes presented by staff with any corresponding conditions on no I'm sorry that's right if staff has any conditions in the presentation you're you're taking that but nothing that we've discussed you're just pretty plain motion based upon staff recommend yes sir all right councilmember Duff I second okay I just want to make a correction to councilmember hudspeth you said that that was that all that dumps out onto brinker off coil Creek and quail Creek also goes out to mid park or I tell you just slipped out of my mind I have no idea mayhill mayhill road and there are stub outs out of that development that for Hudson Way and stock bridge that go into the undeveloped property so that is not the only way out okay so we have a motion we have a motion staff approval staff conditions and that's it we have a second staff recommendation I'm sorry and we have a motion by councilmember hudspeth we have a motion by councilmember Duff seconded by council member Duff did you have a comment okay and you okay okay I'm gonna take you y'all's comments let's keep them brief because I think we probably talked about this as much as we can talk about it so we're gonna take a vote well yes I'm gonna be voting no okay and I feel like because true quality affordable housing is much needed in Denton and I'm a very big advocate for that and so I just wanted to go on the record and saying that I'm not gonna vote for this project for for one because I'm not completely 100% sure that it's going to be affordable there's a large portion of it that's market rate it's a tax credit and the traffic full traffic impact analysis has not been done yet and I think we're a little ahead appro ving this project before that gets back in okay councilmember Marmot I have a question of procedure so I plan to vote yes on this so if this vote if this if we don't get four votes on this right now what happens next it fails and go ahead the motion fails and we move on to the next item and so that's that so I just wanted to be I mean that was my understanding so I wanted to be clear that there won't be and that if this fails then there's no chance to it doesn't automatically come back and we get to discuss it again with the so I I will just read her and of course we you know this is obviously gone on long enough but but I will say just to stress the importance of this vote and also the importance of having truly affordable housing to me because I I too I think that the the HUD guidelines are I think that the bar for HUD is not high enough I would love to see councilmember Armitage I don't want to be interrupt you but we we've heard that and I really want to get on with this because I understand I understand I'm just I'm making a I'm just making but I understand that but I've heard you say that several times and I'm just trying to get moving on the agenda item yes so if you could make one or two sentences very brief that maybe you haven't made in this discussion it would be greatly appreciated by the chair okay I I hope that this can be passed and the conversation about having truly affordable housing can happen at a later date this does not have to be the time for this to happen and when I say later date that could be the next meeting I am all for that but procedurally I don't think a case by case basis is the way okay go all right thank you councilmember so we have a motion and a second councilmember Melzer so I want to offer a friendly amendment to we've got some of the husband councilmember husband if you we've got a friendly amendment being offered if you wouldn't mind hearing that thank you so you know I appreciate councilmember Hussp eth's confidence in in these agreements so in the spirit of what you're trying to sort of do with mine so let me just suggest you know that we you know as you suggested before have as a condition that this rent grid gets attached to their DHA agreement and I'm not worrying about penalties yes yes I'm amenable to that it's fair okay so I want to understand that so you're saying that that gets attached as a document to be negotiated with somebody else becomes part of their date and there's and we don't have a copy of that agreement we don't have anything seeing that agreement it's just whether they do it or not there's no penalty no matter what happens with that piece of paper there's no penalty okay okay you 're except you're accepting of that friendly amendment yes this not even agreement this this grid right I mean it's just literally this grid that stipulates that states out the the rents yeah okay now that's not what I heard okay we agree yeah yeah you're what I heard you say is that this be attached as a as a just a document to be attached to the well that'd be part of their agreement with the H.A. that it be part of their agreement with the H .A. yes okay yeah all right okay we have a motion and a second let's vote on not vote on the board all in favor of the motion signify by raising your right hand all opposed by same sign motion carries four to three thank you all right we're going to move on to our next agenda item all right our next agenda item is agenda I think it's public hearings is it not yeah thank you sir all right going on to our public hearings portion of 2a conduct the second of two public hearings for voluntary annexation of approximately eighty six point four seven acres of land generally located between Creekdale Drive and Hickory Creek Road. Mayor Council Richard Canoni Development Services I'll be brief with with this item no need to be. It's relatively relatively straightforward this is the second second of two public hearings on the annexation as you stated eighty six point four seven acres I know they are intending to develop their future plans a single family residential development there's still two here two readings after this October 16th would be the first reading of the annexation ordinance November 7th November 27th would be the second reading and adoption of the annexation ordinance just also put put some other time frames out there assuming that that November 27th reading is an adoption it is approved they do have a pending zoning application for NR4 so it's likely that that would go to PN Z in December and probably in front of you sometime after the first of the year and the reason I state that is if you recall from the last last meeting we had last week we are in the process of the city is in the process of conducting a traffic analysis for the area south of Ryan Road from Country Club over and then this so this this area would be included as part of that development so when it does come back for the zoning that that study we should have at least some of the preliminary results from from that study so with that I 'd be happy to answer any questions. Any questions for staff before we open the public hearing I will open the public hearing anybody here to speak on this item yeah anybody want it's public hearing just come on up state your name and address and your time will begin. So I too intend to be brief Abra Nusser and I think I have my information on here it's been a while since I've been at this podium PO Box 93211 South Lake Texas 76092 just to provide a little more context four star is the developer again this is the second of public here second public hearing for this case so I'm not going to go in depth but just to let you know a little bit more of where this property is it's on the north side of Hickory Creek Road just south of Ryan you can see it in that blue star there it's 92 acres you will see two different acreages as we move forward since the rezoning does include just it includes the entire 92 acres and the annex ation is just the unzoned portion so just keep that in mind. We do intend to preserve a significant amount of open space and ESA on this or environmentally sensitive area on this property and these are some scenic pictures of what we intend to preserve as we move forward we're very excited about the possibilities of this neighborhood and our design so with that just to clarify the the schedule we did have a neighborhood meeting on September 6th the neighborhood was generally supportive of our development they have some historical traffic concerns but nothing related to our development specifically we intend to get annexed by Thanksgiving and zoned by Christmas and then flats and building permits after that and with that I'd be happy to answer any questions. Any questions? Oh you got to stretch it out longer than that. Sorry. Yeah yeah. Sorry not sorry. Any questions? All right thank you this is a public hearing anybody else wishing to speak just come on up state your name and address and your time will begin and we take action on this or no? No. No so there's no action on this. Anybody else wishing to speak on this item? Okay oh yes go ahead I'm sorry. I have to say about this presentation it's an add very nice pick of the wetlands that has obviously been done it's a very nice nice pick of the wetlands. Wonderful. Okay any other questions because I still have the public hearing open I will now close the public hearing there is no action taken on this we will move on to concluding items concluding items Councilmember Hutzpah you had mentioned them so I'm going to let you have the first crack. Thank you sir. Yeah so Mr. Assistant City Manager I'd like an exhaustive list based on the staff's account of every agreement that we believe staff believes was committed to in council and broken in actuality and let's take that back three years. And then also let me get to my notes sorry. I want to thank staff they helped get me an answer today on a question regarding the development on 380 so thank you for that quick turnaround on that and I 'll pose it to my other council members for them to consider and I can show you a picture after the meeting but I found in Dallas this dumpster that was painted and so it's an art piece that's then located and it was really neat it caught my eye because it's easy on the eyes and so if you look at behind Alamo draft house we have a brand new building in the giant blue dumpster there versus something that maybe could be turned into art piece that you kind of more look by versus focus on and so I've asked staff to look into that and so any feedback or anything you have I'd ask you to share that with staff as well as they kind of cultivate that idea so thank you. Council Member Meltzer we'll just go around the whole one. First just to comment I noticed that in that in item D the staff item was to stipulate that the final plat resemble the preliminary plat and I assume that's added because sometimes that doesn't happen so that might be you know guideline as you look for those cases. I'd be interested in an informal staff report on whether the parcel at scripture and Bonnie Bray that we approved purchase of tonight whether that could be added to McKenna Park in a future action and I'd also be interested in an informal staff report on not whether it's recommended but whether it would be possible and how it might be possible for the building that's currently on the parcel to be put to some other public use. That's all. I've just got one this is sort of atypical but I would like for City Attorney's Office to circulate the final ordinance on this SUP to council just so that we all can read it to ensure that it's what our understanding is of what we approve today and if it's not we'll deal with that but this is there was a lot going on there was a lot said and I want to make sure that everybody's in agreement with what I 'm going to sign as an ordinance so that's that's I don't think I've ever done that before but I want to make sure on this that that gets done. And I would like to request a staff report on what other cities have done to make ordinances ensuring that any companies and contractors that that city does business with pays a livable wage as according to that that city and the livable wage calculation. So in other words because of the livable wage the prohib ition on having a livable wage ordinance of the kind that I had asked for previously I'd like us to look into the this possibility and to see what what other cities have done at least to ensure that we do business with with companies businesses and contractors that pay livable wage does that make sense thanks. I would like council to review our right away ordinance and permitting specifically I don't know if anyone noticed the the big work truck that was blocking down by Barley and Board that whole section it was blocking for a really long time. Turns out they didn't need a permit and we actually had to go and ask them to move out of the way in the evening times they were just blocking it off. So if we could review our permitting ordinance and maybe address the right away issues when if situations like that arise again. Also a staff report on municipal broadband and if it's an option for us we hear time and time and again that charter and frontier are our only options and they're both really bad and I know that some case law has been done in other states where municipal broadband can happen and at once when it couldn't so just an update on on that. And then finally I would really like for us to have a discussion again on using our tree fund for land for land purchases and small smaller tree stands and either open land where if we're going to start mitigating trees that maybe we could do we could create our own mini urban forest so that's I don't know if that would need to be a work session or a staff report just the one that I skipped Mr. City Attorney if you could you know there was a lot of discussion about HUD guidelines and developments pursuant to this particular statute in Texas local government code 303 if you could provide council a white paper on who's responsible for determining tax exempt status what all goes into that where does HUD come into play if any I just there was a lot of said and I want some clarity and some some specific statute and sort of connecting the dots on that. All right anything else fantastic all right we will adjourn at 827.