Nov 06, 2018 City Council on 2018-11-06 2:00 PM

Welcome everybody to this meeting of the Denton City Council on Tuesday, November the 6th, 2018. It is 2.03 p.m. We do have a quorum, barely. And so I will call this meeting to order. Nobody can leave on break from the work session table or the meeting will have to stop. So we'll make sure we take very often, breaks very often. The first item is citizen comments on consent agenda items. We do have two blue cards. I'll call your name and just come to the podium here and state your name and address and your time will begin. Pam Barnes for agenda item K, which I believe is the Kiwanis Fireworks. So if you want to come and we'll give and then the next speaker will be Hank Dickinson. We'll follow after her. Okay. Well, thank you for hearing my presentation today. I am the president of the Denton Noon Kiwanis Club and the Denton Noon Kiwanis Club has been putting on the Firework. Name and address. I'm sorry. Pamela Barnes, 1222 Thomas Street, Denton, 76201. Thank you. Sorry about that. Now you're good. Okay. So the Denton Noon Kiwanis Club has been putting on the City Fireworks Show for 47 years. The Denton Noon Kiwanis is a service club here in Denton and we are a group of volunteers that has been putting on the Fireworks Show for over, for 47 years with the support of the city. And we have requested a grant in the amount of $40,000 and I would like to respectfully request your, your approval of that grant. And I wanted to let you know just a little bit about the Kiwanis. The Kiwanis' mission is to serve the children of the city in our, in our community. So what we use, that is a major fundraiser for our organization. We've, we've moved from the old UNT Stadium to the Apigee Stadium and in that move our expenses have greatly increased, but we've also upped our game in that, in that, in the presentation of the Fireworks Show. But more importantly, I want to let you know what the Kiwanis does and what this Fireworks Show does for the community. Over the past three years Denton Noon Club has spent over $156,000 on medical care for children. That's medical, dental and just recently we've added mental health services to our, to our services that we provide and that goes in line with the city mental health initiatives as well. And that is half price. So we work with local professionals, local medical people in the community and they cut their costs in half. So we refer our kids, the kids come to our office. We refer them to the local professionals in the, the medical care professionals in the community and they build a Kiwanis club. They cut their price in half and we pay for those services. And so that's $156,000, $156,768 to be exact, to be exact, over the past three years. That is $313,536 in value of medical care for our kids. And the purpose of the Fireworks Show is that we don't charge, we do pay, have a lot of expenses that go towards the Fireworks Show, but we don't charge. We have volunteers that walk around and ask for donations to help support our cause. And the other thing that we do is we also do youth services for our kids and we do Denton ISD scholarships. We have the five schools, the five high schools and we give out thousand dollar scholarships to kids in the schools. And we also sponsor kids to go to girls and boys state here in Texas. And we have tons of other things that we do, we do the Ki Club, we do the Bell Band at state school. So we are an important initiative for this community and I'm not sure that the entire community knows what we do for the community and kind of the purpose that we have for the Fireworks Show. It is a national American pastime, but it also serves a purpose to serve the children of our community. And I would like to respectfully request that you continue to support this and to the ongoing foreseeable future and thank you for your time. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you, Pam. Next speaker is Hank Dickinson. If you'll come, state your name and address. Your time will begin. Fitting that we went ladies first with our present, Pam, but I'm Hank Dickinson, 419 Northridge. I'm a member of the Qantas Club and I also have keys to Apogee, so that's why I'm in charge of the Fireworks Show. But to echo her statements, it has turned into a much bigger event than it was back in 2001 when I took it over at Fouts Field simply because I think most of you realize we've got a state of the art stadium and with that we've got an ability to get over 30,000 people on that property. So without the help of the city and the finances that you make available, we've got a project and an event every year that's probably bigger in scope than most people realize. But we take a lot of pressure off in terms of providing our own risk management from the university standpoint, hiring the police, hiring the CSC group that does security, and I guess the only thing I wanted to make sure this body understood, especially in a year where we've had two of the biggest crowds in school history for football, this day is basically a football game at our stadium. We are parking the same amount of people, sometimes more. We're trying to get them in and out. They operate much like a football crowd in that they come very early, so it's just like a tailgate and it's a very full day. But we work real hard to make it family friendly, free to the public, and try to work really hard to get people in and out of there in a timely basis. So the support of the city through all these years has been incremental to our success and our growth in it, and we can't thank you enough for doing that. And just to kind of dovetail into what Pam said, we appreciate it and hope it can continue for a long time. And if there are any questions about it, we're happy to come back and answer those. Questions? Anybody? Seeing none. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Yep. You bet. And it is a long day because I know last year I volunteered and the people were out there six, seven o'clock in the morning taping things off and getting the fireworks set up. And so thank you all so much for that. Thank you for what Kiwanis does for our community. Appreciate that. And that'll be a consent agenda item for this evening. So that's when that'll be voted on. Okay. I don't see any other cards, blue cards, for the consent agenda items. So now we'll go to request for clarification of agenda items on the agenda for today. Councilmember Meltzer. Yeah. I had a few. There's a reference that I think might not be clear to any of the public who might be studying the consent agenda in item C about the maximum fine for leaving trash receptacles at $500 a day. And I thought it might be helpful to just get clarification on what our actual practice is. You want to take this one at a time or just list them all out? Sure. Do you just have several questions or what do you have? No. Just a few items that I have questions on. A few consent agenda items. Yeah. Let's do them one at a time so if staff is here they can answer the questions as we go through them. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. And I know our general practice is not to give citations sort of, you know, anyway unless it's extreme. So. Bradley Hart, fire marshal. I believe we were responding to your question today. I was looking from the email from Stephanie Berry. But I believe it's $130, generally the first citation of which if they decide to get a court the judge usually will give deferred adjudication for it so if they don't do the same thing within usually six months, 180 days, then the violation is waived. It's not a blanket $500. Thanks. I'm glad I probably reduced the panic for somebody. And I think the City Attorney has something to add. I just want to add that, you know, by Texas law all classy misdemeanors have a maximum possible punishment of up to $500. Most cities don't actually use the full limit and so it's going to be sometimes very low, especially city ordinances which is usually be a couple hundred dollars and I think this one total is $216 or thereabouts. Thank you. And yeah, Item G, well, we're going to get an ISR just telling us about those capabilities. On Item I, would it be possible to get some insight into the kinds of specifications that most bidders fail to meet because, you know, this is the second item that I've seen like that where we had quite a lot of requests for bids and very few qualifying. I think we're prepared to answer that question. We had a very similar response rate two or three years ago as well. So let Cassie answer that. Hello, Cassie Ogden, Director of Procurement and Compliance. And for this particular item, we actually only received two bids. Previously when we bid this in 2015, we received three bids. So historically, we just do not receive a lot of bids for these particular contracts. You have language talked about only two that met specifications but it's really only two. We only received two, correct. Okay. I appreciate the clarification. Thank you. That's all I have. You want me to go on? I'll go until you're ready. Anybody else have any? Yes. Council Member. Let's see. I had a question about item O, about the money from Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Security Grant, Urban Area Security Initiative. I believe this is a first. Welcome. Thank you. Frank Dixon, Chief of Police in the Police Department. Okay. First of all, it gives me great pleasure to be able to ask you my first question and I guess what I believe is your first opportunity up here. I was wondering if you could speak to what the boundaries, not geographical, but in terms of application of this grant money. I don't want to be refusing money that is for the purpose of security, but I and a number of my constituents are wary about Department of Homeland Security efforts that are interpreted by some, including myself, in a number of cases as anti-immigrant measures. That said, I realize that they do a lot of good in preventing actual terrorist threats, so I just wanted to be sure what I was voting on, if my question makes sense. If you could speak to what that money is expected to be used for, what it can't be used for, how much of that is up to us to use that, who gets to decide how to use that money. All the monies that we'll be getting from the grant will be to fund equipment strictly for the SWAT team, because they're a Tier 2 SWAT team, it will be to supplement any operations that would happen in Cook, Tarrant, Wise, or Dayton County, so strictly for tactical operations. Okay, excellent. So if, say, Department of Homeland Security says we want you to use it for this other thing, there's no precedent for that, no authority for that. Okay. Correct. Excellent. Well, great. Then I'll be approving it. Thanks. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, sure. Just because you brought it up, I'd be curious to just know in a sentence or two, what does that SWAT team generally do? So they respond to hostage barricade situations, dignitary protections, they execute high-risk search warrants for the investigative unit, and just respond to a number of things that our patrol officers aren't equipped or trained to handle. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. You bet. Any other clarifying questions or agenda items? All right. Seeing none, we'll move to our work session reports. First work session report. Let everybody clear out. Everybody just get on out of here. Yeah, we're not going to probably need this, actually, because we're going for people. All right, y'all have a good day. Everybody enjoy your time off. Okay, we'll go on to our agenda item 3A, which is Receive Report, Hold Discussion, Give Staff Direction Regarding the Annual Funding Recommendation Processes Carried Out by the Community Development Advisory Committee and the Human Services Advisory Committee. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council, Danny Shaw, Community Development. The purpose of our presentation today is to sort of bring council members up to speed on the process for two of our city grants, the Human Services Advisory Committee's grant and then the Community Development Advisory Committee's grant. It's also to give us an opportunity that community development's goal is to sort of increase awareness of these grant opportunities to the community, and so this will help us give some notification that these grants are about to be released. And then also to provide opportunity for any direction or feedback. In our deliberations for this current funding year, the Human Services Advisory Committee did ask some questions about making sure they understood that we were all in alignment for priorities that the council may have or other priorities in the community that we want them to be aware of in the future as well. So there are two committees that are advisory committees for the council, the Community Development Advisory Committee and then the Human Services Advisory Committee. And there are two grants that each one, or one grant for each of those administer. The committees are different in size. The Community Development Advisory Committee is a nine-member group and the Human Services Advisory Committee is an 11-member group. Within the context of the Community Development Advisory Committee, they review what we kind of informally call our bricks and sticks projects. Those are those housing and public facility improvements, and then the Human Services Grant is just as it says, those things that are public services that provide a direct benefit to folks. We're actually in the process of planning for our 19-20, which feels weird. So this is that we're already entering into that process for a couple of reasons. We started with our approval of the applications, so the Community Development Advisory Committee has already met and the Human Services Advisory Committee will meet tomorrow to approve the applications. The processes are very similar between the two committees, but we do have separate applications because of the different types of requests that are happening. And then during November, December, and January, we do community public hearings, so we'll go out to homeowners association meetings or plan other activities where we will solicit feedback from citizens about what their priorities are for funding from these funding sources and then collect that information. We also do an online survey that allows citizens to comment who can't attend one of those meetings, and then occasionally we'll do other special activities around that. In December, once both committees have approved their applications, we do offer trainings for anyone who's interested in applying for the grant. Mostly we want to make sure they understand the application process, but also the grant requirements. So because some of the sources of these funds are federal, there are significant requirements that come along with the use of those funds. We want to make sure the applicants understand what would be required of them after they receive any of those grants. And then through January and March, typically the applications are due in January. And then through January and March, the committees review those applications and then hear presentations from the applicants. Once that is complete and they have had opportunity to consider both the applications and presentations, both committees meet in March typically to review those and make recommendations. The reason we do this at this time of year is because we have one report that we're required to submit to HUD in June. And so in order to give staff time to develop the draft action plan and to include those funding recommendations in there, we have to start in March. So we draft the plan that goes to once the presentations for the recommendations are made to council, we take those recommendations and any comments and make adjustments. We draft the action plan in May that goes back to the community for public comment and a public hearing at a city council meeting. And then once that's done, we take it back to council to approve the action plan. And the action plan is then submitted to HUD and that then approves the funding for CDBG and home funds that are included in both of these grants. We are on a -- yes, ma'am? >> Yes. Councilmember Hunter. >> So can you explain what a home grant is? >> Yeah. The Home Investment Partnership Grant -- excuse me, there are lots of words -- is funding for housing and affordable housing and home improvement type programs whereas CDBG can be a broader base of funding but is less -- we can't do construction or things like that with it. Does that make sense? >> Yes. And both are federal? >> Yes. Both are federal sources. Now, we do have a different program year with HUD than our city's fiscal year. So HUD's program year is August through July. So that does create some funding differences. So in August HUD releases those funds and we start the funding agreements for CDBG projects and home projects and then in addition to CDBG, the human services grant is also funded by general funds. Those particular funds while we bring those recommendations to council aren't approved until council approves the program services budget in September. >> No. Councilmember Mouser. >> Yeah. I apologize if you said it and I missed it but where in the flow do the committees deliberate? >> In the January through March it varies depending on the committee's timing. So they receive the applications in advance in paper typically and they have the opportunity to review those at their leisure and then we schedule presentation hearings. So for instance, last year the community development advisory committee met three times to review those presentations and then the human services advisory committee met every Friday in February to hear presentations. It depends on the volume. So we -- yes, there you go. Anything else? >> Any other questions on this slide? >> Thanks. Okay. We did want to kind of bring forward a little bit of a funding history for you. This is based on our consolidated plan which is also the federal plan that we put together. It's like community development strategic plan and that plan was for 2015 through 2019. So we're just entering or just finished our fourth year but here's our three-year funding history. On the left-hand side you'll see the funding history for the community development grant. That's broken down. We spent $2.9 million approximately in projects that were related to homeownership, housing assistance, affordable housing and public facility improvements. And then on the right-hand side you'll see the human services grant and that's been the contribution about 1.2 million to local nonprofits in the community who are providing public services in the areas that are listed there. Any specific questions about -- >> Can you speak to -- and maybe this would be more a question for council but could you speak to how the amount of general fund money is generally determined? >> So we like to provide a guide to the Human Services Advisory Committee. So we work with finance and we use -- currently we use a population and per capita calculation. It's about $2.50 per individual. And then we give them a baseline, however, we do educate the committee that they receive multiple applications and could make recommendations above that amount but we do kind of give them a guide of what would be expected for the year and available in general fund. >> Okay. Thanks. So that figure right there for general fund roughly represents at $2.50 per capita. >> Based on our calculation of population. >> And that's the minimum. And is that -- so -- and is that figure -- the $2.50 per capita is the idea that that meets the need? Yeah. >> No. >> I didn't think so. >> No. Again -- >> So how is that arrived at? I'm curious. >> So that was something that in my first year with the Human Services Advisory Committee as their staff liaison, it was something that they were advocating for because the amount was not at that level. And so that $2.50 calculation was a guide to get us to funding levels where we were back in 2005, which we just achieved. >> Got it. Got it. >> So it was just a goal to sort of increase the funding over time to match up with our population. And then over time, that's a decision that, you know, that will be available to the council and to the committees to make based on -- we receive about 7 -- almost $700,000 in request. And so we're annually funding -- you can see in your AIS the growth over time. So we're at about $400,000 in funding based on what's being requested. >> Okay. >> Okay. >> Can I ask some additional questions on this issue or -- should I say that for the end about the funding, the general fund? >> Yeah. Let's save that for the end to see -- >> Okay. Sure. >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> So I wanted to make you aware of how currently the committees look at their funding priorities. The first, of course, is our HUD plan because we put that in the plan to develop what our goals are for the community over the next five years. And then we, of course, report that annually through our CAPER, how we met those performance measures. And then we do an annual action plan to say how we wish to perform in the next year with those funds. And then we also conducted those annual public hearings that I referenced and we review those citizen comments. There are also other community needs assessments that are done. So the United Way, the Denton Health Department, Texas Health Resources in the past few years of all done -- excuse me -- needs assessments. And so we utilize those. We give that information to the committee members to review for their consideration. And of course, every member brings their own personal knowledge and skills and expertise to the table in those considerations. Just a little bit then about how the grants actually support citizens in our community. First and foremost, our direct housing assistance. These are programs that are directly run out of our office. We help citizens with minor repair, home renovation, and home reconstruction projects so that they can stay in safe, affordable housing, maintaining that housing stock. We also then have affordable housing partnerships for the creation and preservation of affordable housing. Some of that's mandated by the federal guidelines. Home requires that we give 15 percent of the home funds we receive to a nonprofit partner for that purpose, and then the rest of those funds are distributed through projects for public facility improvements that are affordable or individual rehab programs. And then we do public improvement. So public facilities are a primary. Our nonprofit facility is secondary, and everyone's want infrastructure projects within the community as those are brought forward from city departments. And then finally, of course, the partner with nonprofits who provide public services. So CDBG actually has a limitation of only 15 percent of those funds that they use for public services, and then the rest of it comes in from the general fund. The categories are listed similarly to the funding slide, however, I just would want to note that within these categories, there are other things happening. So for instance, in elderly services, that funding is actually for food security for people who are elderly. So in any of these categories, there are other things that are happening. We just try to generally provide a guideline for what's happening. All right. Okay. Councilmember Archer. So a number of questions. First of all, so you mentioned, what was the figure, did you say, of grants applied for something about 700 something plus? In your Exhibit 3, do you have that in front of you, or Exhibit 4, sorry, the Human Services Funding for 2018? If you'll look, the requests were 666,755, and then we funded 471,000, or recommended funding for funding. And so, and the money that's left over, you know, when there's more money that's been received, is that at the discretion of the committee, how does it get decided how that's going to be? There's no funding left over. No, there's never any funding. That was my guess. Yeah, the requests come in, and then we fund based on the resources we have, which is usually based on our 15% cap, and the recommendations to the committee for those funding amounts. So you've never been phased with the -- No, we're just not funding the full request, or on occasion not funding an application. Yeah. Okay. And that's the same with the Community Development Advisory Grant. That grant, we're typically just not funding the full requests, although there hasn't been a time recently where we haven't funded a project or attempted to. And why is there no -- and again, this might be a question more for council, so feel free to throw it back and say that that's our business. But why is there no general money for the Community Development Grant -- sorry, no general fund money for Community Development Grant only for the Human Services Grant? Has that just been the tradition, or is there some reason that you know of? Yeah. And Barbara's here to answer -- I'm sorry, Barbara. Barbara is here to answer any questions if you'd like, but historically, we just haven't allocated funds that way. Okay. Yeah. Well, I mean, that is certainly something I would like to see. I would like to see, you know, general fund money provided to the Community Development Grant, you know, given if we look at -- can you go back to that slide, the three-year funding history and the two donuts, yeah. You know, when I look at what your department does -- home ownership, housing, assistance, affordable housing, et cetera -- you know, these are, you know, what I personally consider our community's most pressing needs, so I don't see any reason why we shouldn't have general fund money going to the Community Development Grant as well as the Human Services Grant, so I would love to see a staff report on, you know, what -- if you were to come up with a figure, like that 250 figure, per capita figure, you know, what would be a good figure? If that were to happen, obviously, it would be up to council, but I would like to see some -- Well, and I probably should have mentioned that oftentimes in public facilities projects, there will be like Quaker Town Park playground replacement. There may be some other funding, city funding, that goes into that project, but we do not include it when we look at this, and also, we have three staff members that are funded through the general fund, and I can tell you that when I talk to my colleagues from other communities, you know, they don't have that support, so -- Oh, yeah, yeah. No, yeah, and I don't want to -- yes, yes, we're -- and I'm glad that you have salaries, because you work very, very hard, and it -- yes, thank you. Okay. Any other questions for the presentation? Yes. Oh, well, I'm -- yeah, I do -- Go ahead. Go ahead. So, let's see. Before you start, I just want to make sure, because this is to describe the processes for the funding allocation, so if there's questions or recommendations or desires from the budgeting perspective, it's my understanding that these funds have been budgeted for this year, so it would be next year that we're talking about. Of course. Okay. Yes. So, I don't know if I really want to get into a real robust discussion of funding for next year, especially with three council members gone, so if you have questions about the processes, that'd be great. Yeah, so would I -- I mean, because there's a slide on this topic, I, you know, I just wanted to request some, you know, staff reports -- or to request a staff report to come up with a figure to, you know, where instead of say that -- instead of applying for -- or in addition to applying for individual projects, like the Quaker Town project from the general fund, of course, money can always be, you know, granted on a case-by-case basis to the general fund, but I would like to see, you know, staff kind of come up with a figure or some kind of metric for determining, you know, what would be a good kind of reliable amount of money to come from the general fund to meet these needs of the community development grant, homeownership, housing assistance, affordable housing, public -- and public facility. And again, that's just asking for a staff report related to this -- Okay. -- this slide, but I did -- you know, while you're up here, I wanted to say that I try not to, you know, choose favorites, and I don't choose favorites among my children, but this is definitely my favorite department. I love all our departments, but -- and the reason why is because, as I said, these are, I believe, our most pressing needs in our community, and I know that there are other cities that don't even fund, you know, these kind of efforts, and that's unfortunate, so I'm very proud that we do. And I would like to see what the -- what level of funding we could provide that would actually meet these needs, because, as you know, we're paying for these anyway through -- in a number of different ways, you know, including individuals and their tax dollars. So I know that, well, we don't do nothing. We do do a lot, and like I said, this is my favorite department. I'm so grateful for what you do. I would love a really, you know, creative, outside-the-box thinking staff report, take as long as you want with it, on what we could provide to meet -- to actually meet those needs. Thank you. >> Yeah. Councilmember Melser. >> Actually, I want to sort of propose, you know, it's not a thing that's subject to amendment, but, you know, like an idea build, that might be, you know, a helpful response would be just to size what are the needs, right, because the question of what we can provide goes to do we want a tax, what can be cut, and all that, which is like a whole separate thing, but, you know, I think as a first step, just understand what is the total need that the community has that this address is part of, you know, might be a place to start. >> Yeah, and that's what -- yes, and that makes perfect sense, and I'm kind of -- I'm throwing a ball to staff to say make a staff think tank and show us what you got, you know, and then -- but I completely agree that there would have to be a lot more of a think tank from council, from the public to come up with -- from experts to come up with these figures. >> So do you have -- do you have direction on the report that you're supposed to -- >> Yeah, I like the idea build. >> Okay. >> It's a nice term. >> Yeah. >> Yes, we do. >> Because I know we get every time -- every -- when the committees make their recommendations, you show who's requested, how much they've requested, how much we fund, and how much we don't fund. >> Okay. >> So I mean that's presented every year. Any other questions on this? You got sufficient direction, at least, from one council member? >> I do, thank you. >> And this is for the next budgetary cycle, so I concur with her that I don't think there's any necessarily large rush on this. It's because, in my understanding, we've already funded this -- we've already budgeted for this year. >> Yes. >> Okay. >> Thank you. >> I'll take your time. >> Thank you. >> I have a wish list for next year. >> Okay. We're going to move on to agenda item B, which is receive report, hold discussion, give direction regarding an amendment to the DENT development code, amending subchapter 35.3 procedures by adding a citizen participation section. >> Mayor, members of council, members of staff, Ron McGuida, development services, this presentation is a request to kind of bring you all up to speed as far as what is being discussed. This was earlier requested by a council member regarding a spin program that Southlake has regarding having neighborhood meetings and meeting with the general public in advance of items coming to the planning zoning commission and/or city council. So the agenda for this presentation is really to discuss the purpose of the code amendment, what the spin or the Southlake's program for involvement of neighborhoods program, what the draft code amendment entails, and then what are next steps moving forward if the council does direct this code amendment to move forward. So the purpose of this is to really have an opportunity to meet with the community in advance of, again, items being brought forward to planning zoning as well as city council, and really it's to engage the community in the development review process, and essentially what is stated here is enhancing the overall welfare of the area and the community as we bring forward proposed applications. Southlake implemented this program some time ago. They have applicants, developers host a neighborhood meeting where they present to the citizens essentially what they're proposing. They have an opportunity to hear their concerns and their issues, and after that they have an opportunity to respond, and hopefully there is a consensus of what is being proposed and if there's a way to meet some options or remedy some issues and concerns, that is the result that comes out of it. We hope to see that something similar here, and that is why we're proposing a citizen participation procedure. The goals of what spin has is stated here. I'm not going to read it verbatim, but really it's just to increase and encourage citizen participation, and as I said earlier, let the planning zoning commission know and city council know in advance of what the sediments of the citizens are, and hopefully there's again an opportunity for the developer and applicant to respond to those concerns and issues so that when we get to the public hearing, there's not much of discussion and there's a little bit more of collaboration. So the proposed code amendment, we are looking at adding a citizen participation procedure, and this would only apply to certain applications. Now we've listed a number of applications here as you can see. We started off with rezoning and specific use permits, but we've expanded it since then because we feel that these applications that you see here also bring up some concerns and issues from the citizens that we've experienced. Just starting from the top, going down, comprehensive plan amendment. We don't see those often, but when we do, it's a big deal, and we want to make sure we understand what the community and what the citizens are thinking. Zoning change of course, we see several of these on the agenda, and we want to make sure we address those concerns and issues in advance. Initial zoning is when an annex property comes in, and it's not yet annexed or isn't zoned, it comes in and gets a zoning designation. Specific use permit, we see those often as well. Plan development amendment is where an applicant wants to amend a PD, plan development. That may turn out to be where there's some issues and concerns that need to be addressed. Zoning board of adjustment, that's a big deal because the applicant is requesting a variance. We want to make sure that citizens within quite a distance also has an opportunity to learn what's going on and hopefully provide some input. The last two, alternate ESA and alternate development plan, we see not a lot, but we see some. The alternate development plan was added because again, it's an alternative, and there may be some concerns, issues that maybe a neighbor wants to address, and so that's why we added it. But the alternate development plan does not come to city council. It's primarily. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. That's sort of a staff or is that planning zoning? Planning zoning commission, yes. So again, this list isn't the, it's a draft, right? So if there's any addition or deletion, we are open for those comments, but this is the list that we developed. Yeah, what about the tree code amendment, is that? That would be part of a code update, a code amendment. So it's not an application. That would probably be from the city, a city initiated amendment. So we would bring it forward and hopefully would host some public open houses in advance of taking to PNC and city council. So what the proposed code amendment entails is that we would require that the applicant submit a citizen participation plan during the development review process, during their first submittal. And that plan will consist of names and addresses of those affected parties and staff will help them with that. We have the ability to pull from the county's appraisal district data, and we will provide that to them as well as neighborhood leader information and other parties that will help me understand something. Sir, when you say this is part of what did you say it was part of the first time you said it's part of development review process. Correct. Okay, I don't have a problem with this, but I don't want to add anything else to the development review process, because this is only going to be when when they when the city finally signs off on it, you want to let the neighborhoods know. So we got to make sure that this doesn't hold anything up. I mean, basically, what I'm understanding is this is saying, we're going to require developers to have public meetings, neighborhood, yes, neighborhood meetings, yes. And we're going to require them to have them between a certain time here and a certain time there. But if you're saying they have to have them right at the beginning, is there a time prescription here? Yes, we will receive a submittal application, and from there, they they are the plan actually gets reviewed by staff. And we would like to have the neighborhood meeting conducted prior to comments going out the first review comments going out. So between submittal and 1012 business days, they should have the public open. So and I and I get that but as far as what staff is looking at, when they're reviewing a project, the public comments, if they're if they're meeting code, right, if they're meeting code, the public comments are public comments for the developer for the policymakers who make those decisions. But as far as staff goes, if they've got code requirements that they've met, the public comment, maybe I'm going to step out on a limb here and say that it necessarily shouldn't persuade to change the rule of law of the ordinances in that regard. Right, no, it's like any other information that we receive, we request that citizens provide, you know, those comments, right, right. So those be folded into the staff report and or backup information. Yeah, so yeah, that was actually kind of what I was going to ask and then follow up with the specific question that so that this is about this is a way to, I would say, improve on the you know, what we have now, which is this, and I always forget if it's 200 or 250, but that 200 and then the 500 radius, you know, and I mean, and how many times for the notification process. And so, you know, how many times have we seen, you know, 10 were sent because, you know, these were widely, widely spaced out, residences affected, this is a way for, as I understand it, correct me if I'm wrong, to inform neighborhoods, however neighborhoods are defined, and that was going to kind of be where my question was, was going to be leading, in terms of all the people affected. So for instance, in the case of a school, well, that's my do you have a notice radius here? We do. Okay. Can we just let him finish the presentation? I'll hold my questions until the end, because it sounds like he's got a lot of things he's going to answer. Yeah, hopefully, hopefully we get to it, and we can always come back to this. Because you're talking about defining neighborhoods, but he's got a slide that says exactly. Oh, I know. Yep, I know. And I read that slide, and I'm fine waiting on my question until that slide. Okay. Thank you. So, citizen participation plan submitted with the submittal of the application, so that we can get the community involved as early as possible, and again, it is just an information that's sent out, and also an opportunity to receive feedback and input from the citizen. So part of the citizen participation plan is really who's going to be invited, where is the event held, we would like to see first and second public hearing, I'm sorry, public neighborhood meeting that is, the details of the meeting, and what information are going to be, again, sent out, and then submitted as part of the initial submittal. Following that, as we get ready for the public hearing process, we would require that the citizen or the applicant submit a citizen participation report. And basically, what that is, is just a summary of what has occurred with regards to the public neighborhood meetings. Date and location, name and addresses, what happened during the event, if there were any issues raised, what were they, and how did the applicant address or respond to those comments. We request that that be submitted seven days or a week prior to the actual public hearing, so that we can review it and then also include it in the AIS or the backup that gets forwarded to the Planning Zone Commission and City Council. Can we wait till the end of the presentation for the questions? Thank you. I have a copy of what Southlake prepares as a citizen participation report and I can send that around. I've also got a slide here that shows it. It's really a two-pager where it lists, again, the case number, the project name, who was involved, who was invited, how many people attended, who represented the property owner, the applicant and then a summary of what was discussed and then a list of questions, concerns and how the applicant addressed it. This one we got from Southlake. I don't have any more examples, but this one particularly had four attendees. It was a zoning change request and the questions weren't very sensitive. They were very simple in that where is the property, what's the address, what size. This probably doesn't represent every one of them, but it's an example of what we see from Southlake. This is my last slide before we get to questions and where we're going next. This is a summary of a meeting that was held last Monday or last Tuesday which I attended. This is actually in Den. It's for a subject case that's coming forward to the Planning Zone Commission. I asked them to provide a summary of the meeting, also the sign and sheet. They again listed the names of who represented the applicant, a description of the meeting discussions and when was it held and who was involved. This is just, again, not a requirement by the city, but something that I asked of our applicants. They were able to provide it and I don't think it was too much for them to do so. Next steps, we're looking to go forward as a code amendment. Of course, pending the Council's recommendation or direction and then hopefully bring this back to you all on December 4th as public hearing item. The options as presented here is to go forward as presented with conditions and, of course, if the Council decides not to, then we don't move forward. That is the end of my presentation. Thank you so much. First of all, I'm really excited about this. I was wondering if you could, for starters, speak a little more to how neighborhoods would be defined beyond the 200 to 500 radius. Part of our task here with the planning and the development services is we have a list of neighborhoods that we try to register. We've got over 150 registered neighborhoods throughout the city. We actually have a map on our city website that identifies all the neighborhoods within the city. We've reached out to each one of them, have contact information, and we try to update that every year. We've got a list. If we know a project is within a neighborhood, we have that contact information and we can share that with the applicant and whoever needs it to make sure that they are notified of the project as well. Correct me if I'm wrong, but my sense is that this is a way of looking at neighborhoods in the way that residents talk about their own neighborhoods. I live in the Idiots Hill neighborhood, is the nickname. There's no ordinance that says that that is what it is, and I was supposedly named that because a lot of professors live there, but people know what that means. We try very hard to make sure we have as many information as possible so we can share it. This list of neighborhoods and contact information is not just used by the planning department. We share it with other departments, solid waste, police departments. It's something that the city has and is able to share with everyone. Yes, exactly. To me, this seems to be an approach to neighboring neighborhoods that is more in touch with how residents and business owners actually talk about and understand what neighborhoods, because we really don't think, in terms of 200 and 500 feet square radiuses of radii. We talk about the Denian neighborhood, and they're different sizes, different populations. The example I shared with you last Tuesday, this group right here, now they sent out notices to the Bell Air subdivision to the south. Not all of them received the notice because they weren't within 500 feet, but they're actually an active group, and through social media they were able to share that as well. The whole neighborhood was then informed. Not only were we informing the group, but the neighbors themselves were informing their own neighbors. Can you go back to that Mockingbird slide, a pilot case of what something like this might look like? Yeah, it wasn't, but I thought this was a good example to share that the applicant was willing to just share. To be honest, this wasn't a requirement of the applicant, but I strongly recommended it because I feel that it's something that will benefit us in the end when we can learn about what the issues are before we get to the public hearing, so that we can address that on a staff level as well, so that it's something that when the council hears it and considers it, they have all the information before rather than during the meeting. Thank you, and that's why I applaud this, and I think that a number of developers will appreciate that as well, because they don't want to wait to find out until the public hearing that there's just something that they could have easily changed that would make the people happy. In that case with the Mockingbird case, I think that this shows how much potential there is for something like this, but also how much better it will be even than this example once a plan like this is implemented, because you have here, I guess I assume the developer, it was up to them to choose the date, because they're going above and beyond, is that correct? Halloween evening at dinner time, and I'm grateful to them for wanting to do this, but this is the kind of thing where if they really wanted neighborhood input, which you would get under this scenario that you're proposing, it would be that the residents could participate in working with them to talk about what would be a better time for the families in the community, and then you would get more people to come, which would mean more input for the developer and a better process overall. I personally attended this meeting, and I was thinking that there would be more people. Unfortunately, there wasn't, or fortunately, I don't know what it was, but there were not many people there as what I thought it would be. I think if it was done earlier, they may have been able to get more people, but again, it all depends on availability, of course. Finally, I just had a question about the citizens' report. You can answer either one. You prefer either under the Southlake Spin Plan or under this revision of that plan for Denton. Who are you imagining would write the citizens' report, because it's not clear to me from looking at this who actually wrote the thing? It looks like Southlake prepared this, but some things that we've been discussing internally is maybe prepare a form, prepare a form to be filled out, and so that they'll have that in advance, so there's all the necessary information that's provided to the Planning Zone Information City Council. Who prepares it? It could be the applicant, it could be staff, but ultimately we want to make sure we get everything from the applicant and to you all as part of the backup. Excellent. As far as my feedback on that issue, I would say I would prefer to have some combination of staff and the citizens present writing that form. I wouldn't want the applicant to write it. That's why it's important that staff attend these meetings, so that they can verify those discussions and what was discussed. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mayor. Ron, what's the difference between this and the proposed DDC that we're going through right now, Section 2.4.3, Sections B and C, that we discussed a couple weeks ago during the DDC meeting and we made recommendations for changes, if it's going to come forward in that, why are we going to go through a public process to go through another public process? It's the same procedure. We're folding it in, so this will be in the current code, and then when we get to the proposed code, it will be folded in. I guess for me I would prefer the longer vetting of the new DDC as a whole, which is going to go through a whole lot more public scrutiny, a whole lot more public meetings than what this will, to make sure that we've got good public input on how this should be set up. So what I'm hearing you say, Mayor Pro Tem, is that in the new DDC, proposed new DDC, there's very similar requirements in that code, and you're saying instead of implementing something new now, it's then going to have to be changed or folded into the DDC as we're coming back. Let's just continue on the process of this is going to be addressed in the new DDC, and there's going to be tremendous amount of opportunity for that to be vetted in the public, be it public hearings or town hall meetings or things such as that. Is that what I'm understanding? Exactly. Okay. Okay. Yes. Yeah, I'm curious. So that's an interesting point, I'm curious for staff reaction on, would it be more difficult to work it into the development code by the time we get around to it? Would it be easier, more seamless to go about it this way, and if you could speak to what would be the difference on timelines? Because I appreciate that suggestion, I'm trying to weigh my mind, pros and cons. With this proposal, we would be going to, you all in December, with the development code update, we've got a number of stakeholder meetings and public open houses scheduled, looking at a early March timeframe. So not too far. The reason why we're bringing this forward to council in this schedule here is, again, the staff's understanding that we wanted to see something sooner than later. Staff's understanding from whom? From council. From council, this council, or councilmember Armitage? I can answer that. We had at least two or three of the council members' requests that we, early on several months ago, that we take a look at the Southlake SPIN program, and we studied it for a while. I got concerned about the SPIN program for a number of reasons, and after listening to them, they've actually started walking back the authority of the SPIN committee because they were overstepping the planning and zoning committee. So what we've done is taken a more moderate approach. This is kind of where they've actually ended up now, after some years of experience, and we've had a number of zoning cases where the public has come in saying, "We didn't know." This isn't necessarily going to fix that because, A, you have to be paying attention and care about the zoning that's going on, and we'll do our best to notify you. No matter how careful we are about informing a neighborhood, there's still subjectivity involved in terms of who gets noticed. So it's just another step to try to add that additional process on, that additional meeting on, to try to get that community input up front. So that was the reason, and it mostly came out of the contentious debates that we've had recently with some zoning issues. So that compared with kind of pairing about the SPIN program, we just wanted to put it out there for you to say, "Is this something you'd like to implement now, or do you want to wait?" And it doesn't matter to us. I mean, we're agnostic on it, but we wanted to make sure you had our recommendation. Yes? So first of all, because I had asked about that, and when you mentioned we're concerned about some aspects of the SPIN program, thinking about paring it down, I was concerned because I really like the SPIN program, but looking at this, and also, as you said, how the SPIN program has been working with, troubleshooting its own program, I'm really pleased with this, with what I'm seeing here. And I would prefer for this to go ahead now because of the difference in time, and because to me, staff seems fully prepared to go about this, and it would, and then, under development code discussions about how to incorporate this, they would actually have some experience with this. We don't know how much, but however many cases, such cases would have come before counsel in the interim, and then they'll know what they're talking about. And so if tweaks need to happen to what we have here, then that's a great opportunity to tweak and revise at that level. So because I see, and I'm excited by what I'm, you know, interpreting as, you know, staff, I hesitate to say, you know, excitement about this process, maybe that's not fair. Yeah, yeah, I don't think so, yeah, I mean, that's taken pretty good liberty with staff presentation. Okay, well, I will say, as well, staff, that's, or I should say, I'm pleased, I'll put it this way, I'm pleased that staff has come up with a plan that really works with what staff is already doing, as an example, you know, we've seen in engineering and some other departments where we've had staff really revise the processes that they've been using for a long time that have, you know, created some really unnecessary contention and resentment in the community, now's the chance to make it over. That's what I'm calling excitement, but so, but I'm deaf, I can definitely speak for my own excitement and I would love to see this now, so thank you so much for your work on it and thanks for, thanks for all the work that goes into this and, oh yeah, that's right, one more thing I wanted to say that this involves, because a plan like this involves a combination of what one might call top-down notification and grassroots-up notification, it, like you said, Mr. Howman, you know, there's no way to guarantee that everybody will know, but at least not only are we doing, you know, the government informing people, but you're also reaching out to neighborhood leaders who aren't going to be able to reach out to anybody either, but they'll reach different kinds of people and they'll know in the small-world way, you know, nature of neighborhoods, how better to reach people than we would, so thanks. Okay, a couple questions. If you could go back to the slide where it talks about neighborhood. I see nothing there that mentions, so we as staff are going to be supplying the mailing list to the developer, is that correct? Yes. All right. And how are we choosing that mailing list? We use a buffer of a 200-foot property owner and have 500 for residents. We do that now for our notifications. Okay, so as far as, you know, and if you want to add on to that, the city may notify a neighborhood in general, but our legal requirement is 200, 200, and then we as a city have imposed an additional 500-foot requirement on our zoning, planning and zoning cases for notification, is that correct? Correct. 200 to property owners and then we add a 500 radius of residents. Okay, so that's what will be provided to the applicant. So those will be sent out regular mail? Yes. Okay. And that's... They, from the applicant, that is correct. So my question then is, and I want to go back and review the proposed DDC that this is part of because that's what I don't want to do. I mean, I'm not in favor of necessarily implementing this now because I trust the process that we've been working through for many months to try to figure out how we're going to modify the DDC and that if we have something here and then based upon the input, then we've got to change something, then we have real changes within a two or three or four-month period. I mean, me personally, I'm not necessarily for that because really the only thing that this is doing is codifying and making our sort of what we encourage developers to do and that is hold two public meetings. We're codifying and you're required to do that, number one. Yes. You're required to do that on a certain timeframe and that is the first one is before you receive your first round of comments and the second one is within so many days before the first public hearing, whether it be PNZ or city council. Correct. So that could be five months, that could be a year, depending on the project. I mean, sometimes these things take a while and that's nothing slamming at staff. I'm just saying between applicants changing projects or changing ideas, okay. So if you could go to, so when you say that the citizen participation plan is part of the initial application submittal and that plan is comprised of a schedule for two neighborhood meetings, I'm not in favor of, I mean, if these developers are going to be setting their meetings, they need to be able to set the meetings. Now if people contact them and say we can't make it and they voluntarily make that change, fair enough but we've got to have some process whereby if we're requiring them to meet twice, they should be able to set those meetings and put that up and if they do it ridiculously like at 6 o'clock in the morning, I mean, come on. That's not going to happen. One of the things that's listed here is applicant contact information, we really want them to be, this is a partnership. So we want them, if the things change, if it doesn't make sense, we're going to recommend let's do something different. Right. And that's what you do normally now. Is that correct? Correct. All right. So if you go to the next slide please. So the report, pretty simple, basic. As far as who's drafting it, I think the developer should be the one drafting it. If a citizen committee of that neighborhood or within those people notified want to submit an alternative one, I think they have the opportunity to do that. But to try to collaborate, if you have a disagreement, how do you do that? And so then you have, because this is a two-page summary, it's not a treatise on or a transcript on what happened. No, it's their summary, it's their understanding of what transpired. So what is the reviewed by the assigned planning representative? What does that mean? That would be the staff making sure that we attend the meeting. So if they say something that wasn't done or they missed something, we're able to elaborate or revise or add to it, if that's the case. So you're saying that the reviewed by the assigned planning representative, so the assigned planning representative, their duty is to ensure the accuracy of this citizen partation report? That puts a very different burden on staff than what you guys have right now. I mean, y'all attend, but I don't think you're required to provide some either summary or something or to attest to the accuracy of some bodies. No, but when we get to the public hearing, if council asks the staff, we're able to answer the question. All right. So will the planning staff be creating, first of all, is that in the DDC? No. Okay. So this is the reviewed by this, this citizen participation report reviewed by assigned planning representative that's planning staff will go to the meetings. That is part of the code. That is that is part of the code amendment. Yes. Yeah, the code amendment. Okay, good. I should go to the next slide, please. Just so I can make sure I'm looking at this. Yeah, so the form summary, it's very basic, obviously, if there's a lot of issues that are brought up, and then it expands. This wasn't one, but if there was one, I don't have one. I understand. Yeah, I understand. And then if you go to that, I just want to make sure that I got all my questions answered. This applicant didn't have a form or request. He just put this together. That's pretty good for the first time. Yeah. I mean, that's pretty good for the first time. Okay. So most of what you've presented here today is part of the DDC new code proposals. Yes. Well, we drafted this and we will add it to the update once, you know, that's for consideration. Okay, so then I'm confused because I thought Mayor Pro Tem said that there's something very similar in the DDC to this. So help me understand Mayor Pro Tem. I'm sorry, proposed DDC. Proposed DDC, the first version had neighborhood meetings involved in it, and that's section B. And then they added section C, which is citizen participation, and they're basically the same thing, but the citizen participation had more of this in it. Right. So as it was going back to Clarion for rewrite, the part on the neighborhood participation was going to be pulled to just have citizen participation. And so it was my understanding at the meeting the other day. And the reason why I'm in favor of waiting because have we vetted this with the development community? No, this is our first fair enough interaction with council and we take it. So while we're concerned also with there being enough citizen engagement and public neighborhood participation, totally get that we also want to make sure that we get the input from our developer community, and because they're going to be providing their input on the new DDC proposed code amendments and revisions. Is that correct? That is correct. Okay. In fact, we have a meeting with several of them coming in the coming month to go over the development code. Okay. So yeah, conceptually I have no issue with this. I do have a concern with it being too micromanaged. If it's coming down to that, you know, they state the dates, they send out the notices, just like really we do now. I mean, this is just more of a requirement. This is a requirement. You're required to do it. They don't have to do it now. Correct. There's no requirement that you have to -- but in the new DDC -- It's proposed to be also required. It'll be a requirement. Correct. If it passes that way. If it passes. Right. Okay. All right. That's fair enough. Yeah. I just wanted to give you some clarification on -- but I'm okay with it being just -- it's already part of the new DDC code proposed amendments. Right. And so I'm very comfortable with that process as it moves forward, looking at that, especially since we haven't consulted the development community in this regard on here's some new requirements. I don't think they're going to have an issue, but they're going to have specific questions. Maybe you can get to hear from them. Yeah, of course, because, you know, they're going to want to know what's included in that. If staff is reviewing this proposed -- what was it, the reviewing the -- It says in participating report. Report. Right. Does that mean that it can hold up the comment periods? Does it mean that it can hold up the permit? You know, if they have the -- that's my concern is I'm not quite sure, other than maybe asking for some corrections and making sure that the times that are prescribed are followed. In other words, before comments, seven or ten days before the first public meeting. Right. Because if you look at that, this isn't going to necessarily throw a wrench into the development process because it's happening prior to anything and it's happening at the end of everything. Understood. Right. That's not our intent. And we're not asking them to notify any more people than what we're already asking to notify in our own code. Right. And we have that information. We will be providing that data. Okay. And I guess the way we envision this working, what was the apartment complex upon Sherman that we encouraged them to do another voluntary neighborhood meeting. They listed all the issues, showed how they had checked the boxes. I mean, the idea is to try to identify as many of these issues up front as possible, show that they've worked with your community, and I think it helps staff and the commissions also prepare a little bit better. So that was the purpose behind it. We just wanted to make sure we were on the right track. Yeah, no, I think you're on the right track because I think we've already got some built into what we're going to be looking at anyway. Right. And that was the intent, that was always the intent is to have it in the proposed code update. But again, again, staff's understanding was that let's bring this. Well, I appreciate that. You did what you were asked to do. And so I'm okay with presenting it in the code amendments, but I'm certainly I'm not okay with implementing it now without the developer community weighing in and having some kind of workshop for them to let them know what we need to be doing. I'm going to let Councilmember Meltzer because you've spoken. Okay. Yeah. Neighborhood leadership, you know, inclusion, great. I think if we actually do have the capacity to attend all these meetings, then I think it only makes sense, in my opinion, to have staff write the summary. Otherwise, I think they would all say they loved it. So you're saying that the developer doesn't write it at all. Yeah, I don't think it makes sense, personally. So then what if there's a disagreement between the developer and staff? I think it's staff's role to say what they heard. But, well, you've got a hearing, right, that the applicant speaks later in the hearing. Okay. So yeah, they don't agree with the assessment. I'm not sure I completely understand, and you may be able to help me understand what the rationale is behind specifically behind two meetings is the idea that it's input to the comments, your input to staff for the comment phase versus one or three. So the first meeting is really to get that initial information from the applicant to the citizens, get that input. The second meeting is to, if there are any revisions, to share that with the citizens and share with, again, the staff and citizen what those resolutions were based on those issues and concerns. If there wasn't any issues or concerns, then in the code it's built in our draft that the second meeting is not necessarily required. Okay. That makes a little more sense, not that two meetings are required. Right. Okay. Is that how you're envisioning this, that they're not -- this seemed to present that they were required. No. I apologize. I don't have the write-up of the actual code amendment, but we recognize that that's a possibility where a second meeting may not be necessary, where everyone is okay with the project and then we won't necessarily require one in that situation. Who will make that decision? The staff representative. Okay. All right. Okay. So I buy that. As far as timing of implementation, you may say what I'm about to suggest is really no different than what we do currently because we recommend this often now, but, you know, to the extent that we can let developers know that, you know, we'd really like you to do this because it's a trial run for future DDC, not -- what I'm proposing is that we just encourage a little harder now just so we can get, you know, a little more experience trying this process. So you're saying sort of a voluntary kind of pilot program that's not passing this as a code ordinance, but, hey, here's what we're going to do, give this a chance to practice before it's implemented in the new DDC and then we've ironed out all the kinks. And it's input then to the DDC review. I'm good with that. Because if you guys are going to be writing the report. So I'm -- what I'm hearing is your request or observation, Council Member Meltzer, recommendation is that this -- what's it called, report? Citizen participation. That staff construct that. That means that whole form that I saw that was two pages, staff does that. Okay. My opinion. Is that -- all right. Fantastic. And, you know, it's a trial run for the developers, too, right? Sure. Let them see how fair is the write-up. I agree. I agree. I think the staff report, you're right, there's oftentimes where a developer might disagree with a staff recommendation or -- and when they see those draft reports, that oftentimes leads to more negotiation. So it's fine. I mean, we -- I can't really think of a time where we've had any major conflicts that haven't been able to get worked out very quickly. So -- So I want to make sure I understand your proposal is that as projects come into staff and/or as public meetings or neighborhood meetings are being established anyway, that this kind of documentation paradigm be employed and that if someone's coming in with a new project, not as a requirement, but voluntarily, hey, this is what we're going to be moving to. Right. Would you guys be amenable to this before we review our first comments, which I don't see -- No. I think they'd say okay. I mean, I think they would say okay. I think in the end -- The difference between making it a requirement and it being voluntary I think at least gives us some flexibility and gives them some flexibility, and instead of -- especially if it's a requirement and we haven't talked to them yet, I'm adamantly opposed to that until we let people know. That's fair. So any more comments? Just that I think, you know, it could be suggested that this would be a good way for them to help us -- Sure. -- you know, create a process. Yeah. Collaborative process. Yep. Councilmember Armitage. Well, so yeah, I think that's a great idea. I mean, it'll look a lot like just going ahead with the plan as is, but it's not in ordinance and -- It's not a requirement. It's -- yep, yep, and like you said, you know, if I had to put money on it, I would bet that they'll all want to do it, and we'll also be getting feedback also from citizens who are participating in this process on what they like and don't like about it. I think people are really going to like it. I have not heard just, you know, anecdotally, any kind of positive feedback about the 200 to 500 foot, you know, current approach. This is really a way to reach out to neighborhoods, get people more involved in their government, and it also helps us to do our job because we can attend these meetings too, and we can listen to a bunch of citizens in a room, and you know, we get to hear the whole dialogue instead of just meeting with people one-on-one, hearing and writing, so I'm excited to get started on it, and I think that's a great idea. So I want to make sure I understand because she just made a comment of reaching out to people beyond the 2,200 and 500 foot mark. That's all we're required to give to the developer for distribution. Is that correct? That is what we provide to meet our requirements, and if we choose to, we can also share information on neighborhoods. Of course, but I just want to make sure that we give a clear understanding to the applicants and the developers what their duty is under this volunteer program, and then if it gets passed in the DDC, this requirement, that it's still the same duty that they've had all along for notification of neighborhood meetings. Correct. Okay. All right. Fantastic. Yes, Councilmember Meltzer? Yeah, just in the interest of clarification. So you announced that if we choose to, that we would notify sort of established neighborhood leaders so they can do their social media thing. I would just say my understanding and part of what I like about this is that that would in general be our practice, or you're envisioning that there might be circumstances where we would not choose to do that. So I appreciate that question, just to clarify, this is a trial run. This is not what we ... So what we're trying to do is use what we're proposing, except for where the applicant prepares the citizen participation report. We will do what we are envisioning and do a trial run following what we've already presented, what I've presented as far as reaching out to the neighborhood, sharing the neighborhood leader information with the applicant. Is that what I'm ... I hear him saying something very different than what you just reflected. Correct me if I'm wrong. What I thought I heard Councilmember Meltzer say is, and my question is, okay, so I've heard two different types of things here. I've heard that because this is going to have to be at some point an ordinance that people are going to be able to rely upon and depend upon and have a certain set of rules that everybody understands and their duties and responsibilities. The City of Denton staff, for the citizen participation plan, will deliver to the developer, from what I'm hearing you say, the mailing addresses of those within 200 and 500 feet of the boundaries as we define them currently in the code. I think the question was, all right, is there something that is going to be required that someone is going to do, not sure quite who yet, to notify people outside of those boundaries? And I think that's what I heard you sort of saying, because I've heard you say several times, we've got lists of neighborhood leaders that we can reach out to. So this is my proposal or my suggestion. I think we need to have a place on our website once this all gets up and going where we list all of these neighborhood meetings that are proposed, because we're going to have a list of them. We're going to have the dates. We're going to have the dates certain, so that even if we come up with some other procedure of notifying people outside of that boundary, that people can go to a web page specifically for information on neighborhood meetings and a summary of the projects affecting that certain area, so that if they're not one of the two or 500 people within 200 or 500 feet, there's still that opportunity. What I fear is this. If that burden is upon staff to notify people outside of what our duty is by ordinance, I can hear it now. Somehow something's happened and we haven't been notified, and then there's going to be a lot of finger pointing. That's why I'm trying to really understand, and we may not be able to resolve it today, exactly how that's going to occur, whose duties are what, because it needs to be that clear moving forward. It can't be nebulous. Right, no, and I understand the first bullet here, naming addresses of affected parties. My understanding was we were going to notify the 200 and the 500 foot. If there was a neighborhood group or organization within that area, we would share that information. And who is the we? Staff. All right. So the duty for the developer is still the 200 and 500? Correct. Okay. All right. So I understand that, and I agree with that, and just one last point of clarification. The Northeast Kingdom, that wooded area where squirrels tend to chew the electrical wires, technically it's Avondale, but I call it Idiot's Hill, too. We'll have to follow up with you then to map that out. Well, and we'll work on the website. Your point is right on, because I can tell you with even some developments that we've seen recently on Sherman, we're getting public input from in opposition from people a mile away. And so your point's well made in terms of, you know, do we extend the 500, do we work within the 200 and 500, and then just put something on the website? That's probably the most efficient way to get the word out is to drive into the website. There's always going to be a group just outside of that boundary, and that's where we need to manage expectations that felt like they should have known, too. And so it is important to have these rules very clear in terms of where we're going and how far out we expect to notify people. It becomes an issue all the time. Because I know there was an example where someone was supposed to distribute some email list. This is my concern. If staff is saying we will take it upon ourselves to notify neighborhood leaders, and if somehow those neighborhood leaders don't get the word out, then the first thing that's going to happen is staff's going to get blamed for it. And that's what I'm trying to avoid, because if we can have some very clearly defined rules then people understand. If there's a place they can go look, which I think is the biggest problem anyway, there's no central clearinghouse for these meetings. You've got to sign up on a piece of property, and then you have notifications sent to 200, 500 foot of people. The only other way that people get notified is through their own social media kind of sharing and platforms and things such as that. So if we had a specific page associated with these type of meetings for any project, people would just look at it probably just to see what's going on and go to them. I mean, even if it doesn't affect them, they still might want to know what's going on. We just did something very similar. I think we shared it with you in the Friday report a couple weeks ago for our capital projects, and we're moving in that direction on the smaller projects. I'm sure we can work our way through this on the public hearings as well. Sure. Yep. Okay. Comment? Councilmember Mouser? Yeah. I don't think those are mutually exclusive ideas, but I think if you only kind of post it on a website and expect people to come through it, I'm sure there are people who will be fans of it. But that's almost like hiding it in plain sight, you know? I think if we establish that our responsibility is to notify the neighborhood leader if the project is in an identified neighborhood, and we know that we've done that, sure, people will blame others for things. Well, we've got three council members that are out too, so this is going to be something we need to come back anyway. So I don't have an issue with that, but we're all talking about this in a way that it's all standardized, that we've got this list and here's this neighborhood and here's this one neighborhood leader. Right. You know, if you've got that, that's fine. You better make sure that that neighborhood leader knows that they're the neighborhood leader. Right. Yeah. So Councilmember Armitage? Oh, yeah. And I'll say that this is what I see is so exciting about what has happened with the Southlake spin program, which I also anticipate happening here, that where for those neighborhoods that don't already have organized neighborhood groups, they're going to want to start them. And it really, I would argue, and of course I completely see what you're saying about the concern that staff getting blamed for the communication not going out, but really by empowering citizens, we're also creating more responsibility for citizens, for neighborhoods and community leaders, so it's not, so the relationship between residents and staff and residents and council, it's not like little children saying, "Why didn't you tell me to do this?" It is, "Look, this is, you're empowered. Now you go and do it." If people in the neighborhood group are unhappy, then they might say, "Well, next year we need to get a new neighborhood leader." And they look at how other neighborhoods are sending it out. So really it is, for me, as somebody who came from the grassroots, and I believe the best ideas and information comes from the grassroots, in empowering the grassroots, in many ways it takes a lot of the burden off of staff. And staff doesn't have to go running around babysitting this giant growing city. It really disperses some of that work and the burden to the grassroots. So I think it's beautiful, and I would encourage people to talk to people in Southlake about how this has worked well, how it hasn't worked well, and what exactly has happened there since they've had this, or their version of this. So staff has sufficient direction? Yes. So I'm just going to go over real quick, if you don't mind, so I can get it right. Work and meet with the development community and discuss with them our proposed. The citizen participant report, as presented, will be prepared by staff, put together a pilot program between now and the code update to strongly or encourage, that is, the applicants to partake in a meeting or two, depending on encourage, sorry. And then lastly is look at our website in looking at how we can add the dates of the neighborhood meetings. And then just quickly, this is what we have available on our city whose website as we speak of the neighborhoods that we've identified so far here and then, and again, each of these neighborhoods has a neighbor leader that again, we've contacted or have a contact and we can share information accordingly. Fantastic. Yes, one more comment wrapping this up. Real quick question, could you send that to us, or at least to me, the link to that as a follow up? Will do. Thanks. All right. Anything else? Yeah, if it's not posted, are they posted in the in for the regular meeting? Yeah, they're posted for the regular. Yeah. Mike. Yeah. All right. So that concludes our work session. We usually don't have concluding remarks and work sessions. So that concludes our work session report. Really because of council absences, I think our closed meetings, we're not going to have the closed meetings, we're going to postpone that to when we have a full council. So that means that we will adjourn the work session meeting at 333 and reconvene in the council chambers at 630. That right? All right. Fantastic. Everybody and welcome to this meeting of the Dent City Council on November the 7th. November the 6th, 2018, it is 630. And please stand with me to pledge allegiance to the U.S. and Texas flag if you're able. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Under the Texas flag, I pledge allegiance to the Texas, one state under God, one indivisible. Important evening tonight, election night. So wonderful. I heard a radio commentator say for those who enjoy politics, it's their Super Bowl tonight. So I'll be going home to watch some of that. Okay. We've got about six proclamations and four public speakers tonight and two open mics. So when you come up for your proclamation, whoever wants to come down to support that proclamation, come on down. We'll let you introduce yourselves and then to have a spokesperson who will just give a little brief commentary about that if that's okay with you all tonight. So the first one will be presentation of the 2018 Texas Amateur Athletic Federation Award. That's Parks, yes. Mark is going to be presenting that, okay, good. Good evening. How are y'all? Good. Thank you very much for the invite. My name is Mark Lord. I'm the executive director of the Texas Amateur Athletic Federation and a couple of awards to be handed out tonight to your parks and recreation staff. The first one is the TAF region four member city of the year for that region. Region four is basically everything around the city of Fort Worth. Okay. TAF has 17 regions. We've been around since 1925. We have 65 state championships and 10 sports, two multi-sport festivals, including the summer and winter games of Texas, which is a multi-sport Olympic style festival with close to 10,000 athletes every year. Okay. So in region four, there's probably 35 cities and they won the member city of the year for that region. And that award is a great award, but the real award that I'm here for is not only did they win the TAF region four member city of the year, they won the TAF state member city of the year. The Texas Amateur Athletic Federation has about 165 municipal parks and recreation departments that are members of ours, all over the state, 17 regions. And this award is not based on registrations. This is the overall, this is selected by their peers. And I can't say enough for your staff, Jason, Chris, Caitlin, Adam, everyone that came. I'm telling you, they work the games at Texas, they work on the regional level, they work at the state level, they've hosted volleyball, youth volleyball multiple times, they've hosted youth flag football, adult flag football, gymnastics, numerous, numerous state terms. We love coming to Denton, but this is an overall award and I cannot tell you how impressive your department is. And I, my hat is off and thank you so much for the opportunity to present this to you. So once again, from the state office, selected by the peers, membership of Texas Amateur Athletic Federation, city of Denton, member city of the year. Thank you. Thank you so much. Okay I want y'all to introduce yourselves. Chris Escoto, youth and adult sports supervisor. Jason Barrow, athletics manager. Cathy Avery, aquatics program area manager. Adam Shorter, golf and tennis supervisor. Caitlin Essex, athletic coordinator. And I'm Monica Martin, aquatic program supervisor. Wow, that's great. Thank y'all so much. Thank you so much. We'll get a quick picture. You sure can. Thank you so much. Okay, the Benjamin Line chapter, National Society Daughters of the American Revolution Day. Who's here for that? Anybody? Oh, okay. Introduce yourselves and tell us. Okay, my name is Cathy Strauss. I'm a member of Benjamin Line chapter, National Society Daughters of the American Revolution. For those of you who don't know, it's a lineage society that bases its membership on those who are descended from a Revolutionary War soldier, so or someone who gave service to toward the American Revolution. And the Benjamin Line chapter is celebrating its 90th anniversary on November 17th, and we're here to celebrate. So that's. Thank you. Appreciate it. This is a proclamation by the mayor of the city of Denton, whereas 13 women organized the Benjamin Line chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution on November the 17th, 1928. Miss Elizabeth Lyon, for whose ancestor the chapter was named, was the organizing region. She was a long time history teacher at Denton High School. Whereas education, history, and patriotism have been continuing themes in the chapter's work, two scholarships are awarded annually. One at the University of North Texas to history majors, and one at Texas Woman's University to nursing majors. And whereas in 1940, the authentic collection of the gowns of the First Ladies of Texas was assembled by the TXDAR and now belongs to the Texas Woman's University, where the gowns are on display. Benjamin Line chapter has supplied docents and other support for this collection. And whereas the chapter has promoted the DAR Good Citizens Program in area high schools since 1960, and also awards national defense, good citizenship medals, excuse me, ROTC medals for achievement have been presented annually to high school and university students in Denton County. Awards are presented for distinguished community service. And whereas the tradition of serving the ideals and purposes of the NSDAR and strong participation in service to community, state, and the nation continue as hallmarks of the Benjamin Line chapter. Now therefore, I, Chris Watts, Mayor of the City of Denton, Texas, do hereby declare and proclaim November 17th, 2018 as Benjamin Line Chapter National Society Daughters of the American Revolution Day, and ask that the community join in celebrating the 90th anniversary of Benjamin Line Chapter National Society Daughters of the American Revolution. Thank you so much. Support our Troops Day? I was going to say, I know there's more of you out there. Y'all come on. Come on. If you want to go ahead and start introducing yourselves and just pass the mic on down, that would be great. I'd be happy to do that. My name is Susan Galbraith. I'm from Robeson, and I have the privilege of being the president of Support Our Troops. We do have an awesome board of other people to back me up, but these are Robeson people that have come to see us tonight. Don Duff. Margarita Kowchuk. Peggy Crandall Duff. Jerry Wienen. Alan Schig. Carol Panuski. And Jim Galbraith. Thank you, Jim. Yes. Robeson Support Our Troops, definitely mail packages and stuff to the troops all year long and letters of support and sometimes gifts and things that go to them. And the way we pay for this is with our Support Our Troops auction on Veterans Day. So I wanted everybody to know that Veterans Day is being celebrated Saturday, November 10th, out at Robeson Ranch. Please come. There's an auction ceremony at 9 o'clock. You're welcome to come and see the singing and the proclamations and the flyover of the planes. We have a silent auction all day long with hundreds of wonderful treasures for you to discover and every penny goes to support the troops. There's also a concert in memory of the troops with a lot of patriotic music. So it's a very special day for Support Our Troops on November 10th. Thank you. And I've attended those. There are great treasures and those silent auction items. Ray Wozniak got several pieces of his homemade furniture. So this is a proclamation by the mayor of the city of Denton. Whereas the Robeson Ranch residents formed Support Our Troops in 2006 and currently have 300 members who support some 80 to 90 military personnel who are related by love or blood to Robeson Ranch residents, some which are deployed and whereas more than 400 greeting cards have been sent annually to military personnel. These cards are lovely handmade cards by Robeson Ranch resident Sassy Stampers with personal notes from SOT members. And whereas the SOT will conduct a Veterans Day patriotic service on Saturday, November the 10th, which will be open to the public and held at Robeson Ranch Veterans Park with a flyover and whereas Support Our Troops annual spring golf tournament is complimentary for up to three dozen military personnel who are joined by Robeson Ranch golfers and hosted by Robeson Ranch residents for a weekend of fun and appreciation. And whereas the Support Our Troops conducts fundraising with proceeds of about $80,000, which supports the Support Our Troops and provides for comfort items to military personnel as well as other groups who support them such as USO, Patriot Paws, Roll Call, and Intrepid Soldiers. Also Support Our Troops ships 500 care packages annually to military personnel to provide for the material, physical, and emotional needs of our servicemen and women. Now therefore I, Chris Watts, Mayor of the City of Denton, Texas, do hereby declare and proclaim Saturday, November the 10th, 2018 as Support Our Troops Day and urge all citizens to support our military men and women as the Support Our Troops does encouraging patriotism and interaction with veterans. Thank you so much for what you all do. Small Business Saturday. Who's here for Small Business Saturday? Anybody? Okay. No one? Well, I tell you what, since we have a full card, I'm going to sign it and mail it to the representative from Small Business Saturday so that we make sure that they have the proclamation. National Transgender Awareness Week. Who's going to come on down? And who will be the spokesman? And then whoever's here will be able to introduce themselves and tell us a little bit about what's going on. Hey. Hi Daniel. Good to see you. Good to see you. Okay. Let's get the introductions and then we'll give the mic back to you. Okay. My name is Daniel Bryant-Gone and I am the chapter director for Debt and Transcendence, which is a local education and support group for transgender people. My pronouns are he, him, and his, meaning that I am transmasculine. My name's Alexander Kuchina and I'm not going to lie, I just showed up because I felt like we could use more transgender representatives here, but I'm glad to be here. Yep. Basically the same. I'm James Jackson, he, him, his pronouns, and I just want to come out and support the transgender community. Hi. I'm Sarah Kuechler. I'm the director of public affairs for the city. I'm also the LGBTQ liaison for the city. Pronouns are she, hers, and her. Hi. I'm Chris Summon. I'm with the Dent Police. I'm deputy chief over investigations and support, and I'm the police department LGBTQ liaison. Happy to be here. Hello. My name is Luisa May Briggle, and my pronouns are she, her, and hers. My name's Amber. I am not transgender. I am an ally. One of my children is trans, and I was very happy that the mayor was able to recognize National Transgender Awareness Week and that so many friends could be here tonight. There are a lot more trans people in Denton. It's estimated that 0.6% of the population is trans, which means there's over 800 people right here in our own community, but of course, just like all of us, they have lives and they get busy with school and work, and it's a school night, so I'm happy that people could be here tonight. Oh, I'm so sorry, pardon me. My name is Day Hugley, and I use they/them pronouns. I came here to show my support and represent a number of trans friends of mine and also to be supported and to thank you for that support. Take a couple minutes to tell us a little bit about National Transgender Awareness Week. Okay. Okay, so November 12th through the 19th, individuals and organizations around the country will participate in Transgender Awareness Week to help raise the visibility of transgender and gender non-conforming people and address the issues that the community faces. There are a couple of local events on Saturday, 11/17 at 10.30 a.m. at the North Branch Library. We will have transgender story time. This is different than a drag story time where a drag queen reads to children, because transgender and drag is not the same thing, not at all, and so we will be having some people from our trans community reading with children on that day. And it's open to all ages, and it's free. And then on Sunday, 11/18, we are having a transgender awareness panel at the Universalist Unitarian Fellowship Church, and I'm trying to make sure I hit all the points, sorry. This will be moderated by Amber, and I've been thinking about being a part of the panel if there's still room for it, but we'll talk about that. Let's see. And then also on Tuesday, 11/20, this is Transgender Day of Remembrance, and this is where we remember all of the trans people who have been murdered in the last year or who have committed suicide. It's kind of a somber day. So it's a lot of things going on, and before we get to the proclamation, I just want to ask any allies or, yeah, allies in the room to please stand or just raise your hand if you are here tonight because of this proclamation. Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you very much. Thank you all. This is a proclamation by the mayor of the city of Denton, whereas there's an estimated 1.4 million transgender people living in the United States with at least 800 or more residing right here in Denton, Texas. And whereas transgender people have contributed to every aspect of American society, including the business community, government, the arts, education, the military, technology, and more. And whereas Transgender Awareness Week is a time for transgender people and their allies to bring attention to the community by educating the public and advocating, excuse me, advancing advocacy for issues experienced by transgender people. And now, therefore, I, Chris Watts, mayor of the city of Denton, Texas, do hereby declare and proclaim the week of November the 12th, 2018 through November the 19th, 2018 as National Transgender Awareness Week here in the city of Denton and ask all citizens to recognize the value and contribution the transgender community brings to our community and to our country. So thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, we have a resolution of appreciation for, oh, sure, briefly because we got, yeah, just. Yeah. Thank you. I just wanted to say thanks to those who came out for Transgender Day of Awareness. And I wanted to point out I decided to wear today in support as an ally my shirt that says this is what trans looks like, I am not a trans person, I'm an ally, but this is what trans looks like, this, this, this is what trans looks like, trans looks like people. So thank you so much for coming out. Judge Robin Ramsey? He's probably not here, is he? Oh, there you are. Well, we've got a couple of things for you, Judge, come on over here. So I don't have to walk so far for these. We've got a resolution of appreciation and also a plaque of appreciation. I want I'm going to read these first because I think it gives a lot of detail and facts to this man's service to our community for, let me see, is it, how many years, Judge? 22, 23 full time Judge, but you've been here longer than that. I've been here since 1996, no 1985 as a judge, 86, she just tells me everything. So 30, so 32 years as a, as a public servant, working for the city of Denton and serving this entire community for that long and in that amount of time, Judge, you've seen a lot of changes in this community. So what I want to do is I want to read the proclamation, the resolution, the plaque. I want to give any council member an opportunity if they so desire to say a few words. And then I want to give the two of you an opportunity to say a few words because this is, this is quite a day in the life of the city to have someone of your stature and your longevity and just the kind of person that you represent that we all aspire to be and how you executed the job of a municipal judge and just your heart. So I will read these and then we'll, we'll, we'll take some comments. I'm going to read the plaque first. Oh, that's right, we've got to vote on the resolution. You can say it out loud. We've got to, somebody be sure and remind me to vote on the resolution because I'll forget. Okay. All right. So this is a plaque that says the city of Denton expresses its gratitude to you, Robin A. Ramsey for dedication and invaluable service to the citizens of Denton serving from February of 1986 through November of 2018 as the municipal judge for the city of Denton. Now the next sentence I'm going to read is something that is put on a lot of plaques, but I really want people to listen to this because it's, it's so absolutely true and it's true for everybody, but I really believe it also especially applies to you, judge. Employees such as you are a valued asset to our community. Your contributions to the city of Denton are greatly appreciated. So I'm going to give you all this to hold if you don't mind, and then I'm going to read the resolution. Resolution and appreciation of judge Robin A. Ramsey, whereas judge Robin Ramsey has worked for the city of Denton as a judge from July the 22nd 1986 through November the 2nd, 2018. And whereas judge Ramsey began with the city of Denton as a temporary judge and worked in that capacity from July, July 22nd, 1986 till July 17th, 1995. He then moved into a part-time position from July 18, 1995 through February 1, 1996. Robin became a full time judge for the municipal court on February the 2nd, 1996. And whereas the city of Denton has been extremely fortunate in having enjoyed the dedication and outstanding contributions of judge Ramsey and his efforts as the municipal judge serving as an impartial and neutral judge of facts and law. And that's very true. And whereas judge Ramsey received his undergraduate degree from Southern Methodist University in Dallas and his law degree from Texas Tech University in Lubbock. And whereas judge Ramsey has served as president and vice president for the Texas Municipal Courts Association. He currently serves as a regional director. He also serves on the Denton County bail bond board. And whereas judge Ramsey also serves as the Denton County jail magistrate, as well as an alternate mental health magistrate for Denton County and other duties as assigned by the county probate and district court judges of Denton County. In the past and present, he has served as a municipal judge for several cities in the Denton County area. And whereas judge Ramsey has implemented safe harbor policies. I'm going to start over on that. Whereas judge Ramsey has implemented safe harbor policies, which allow for open access to the court and to encourage voluntary appearance of defendants to appear before the court, regardless of case status or active warrant, without fear of arrest in order that the defendant may dispose of the case in a manner beneficial to both the defendant and the court. Now I'm just going to stop a moment right there. I hope you really understand the significance and the impact that this policy and implementation of this policy implemented by judge Ramsey has had on people's lives. If you've got an active warrant, if I'm wrong, you just tell me. If you've got an active warrant, what is the last thing people think they're going to want to do is walk into a courtroom? Because what do you think will happen? Somebody is going to greet you, put a pair of handcuffs on you and take you out. And my understanding is that's not what happens here. That's not what happens here. So thank you. Thank you for that. Now therefore, the Council of the City of Denton hereby resolves that the sincere appreciation of Robin A. Ramsey felt by the citizens and staff of the City of Denton be formally conveyed to him in a permanent manner by reading this resolution into the official minutes of the City of Denton and forward to him a true copy thereof, and be it further resolved that the City of Denton does hereby officially and sincerely extend its thanks to Judge Robin A. Ramsey for his successful career at the City of Denton and wish him well on his future endeavors. Thank you, Judge. We're going to get a vote. Okay we need a vote or a motion and a second. Just raise your hand. Council Mayor Pro Tem? Okay. I will happily and humbly move approval. Okay. Council Mayor Melser. I second. Okay. All in favor of said resolution, please signify by the raising of your right hand. Motion passes unanimously of the council members that are present. So Judge, you want to talk first or you want the council members to be able to share their thoughts with you first? I'm going to let you have that final choice. I'm going to be very short, so why don't you let me say something? Okay. When the judge says he's going to be very short, yeah okay. All right, yes. All right. So I want to open it up for the council members if they'd like to make a few comments and I'll close and then we'll let the judge and his wife and Randy if they want to say a few words to talk. Yes. Council Mayor Melser. Well, Judge Ramsey and I have hardly met. He was on his way out shortly after I arrived, but I had the privilege of attending his retirement ceremony and I heard from, it seems like about everybody who ever worked for you. And they felt the need not just to say how much they respected Judge Ramsey, but to a person, they all spoke about how much they truly love this man. And any of us would be envious of that accomplishment and it's a very inspiring impact that you've had on the people around you. And I'm so happy that you will still be having that impact on Denton County. Okay, so Your Honor, first of all, you've been way underpaid for a long time. It's too late to do anything about that, but oh my goodness. So I actually kind of the opposite of Paul, I have met with you a number of times and I was not able to attend your retirement ceremony. I was out meeting with people and I know that, I know you understand that because at the end of the day, you're not in it for the pomp and circumstance and being called, Your Honor. You're in it for justice and mercy. And I remember the first time when I saw you speaking to counsel and you were, Jay must have been in budget season and you were doing some sort of update and you said, "Our court's not bringing in a lot of money, we're bringing in increasingly less money and that's a good thing because the purpose of the criminal justice system is not to make money. It's to hand out justice," although you said it much better than that. And I thought, "Wow." And I have just been increasingly impressed by your commitment to justice, your knowledge and understanding of the law, but you don't go about it in that wonky kind of way. You go about it in a really pure and simple way where you understand the heart of the law, the intent of the law and everybody who I've talked to respects you. I've never met anyone who doesn't respect you. You understand that justice needs mercy and those two things work together. And I would be asking our police chief up here to barricade the door and not let you leave if it weren't for the fact that you are moving on to the county where you're going to be in a position to implement policies to bring more mercy and compassion countywide and that'll affect us too. So, thank you so much and I'm excited about what you're going on to do. Anybody else? All right, well, I'll wrap up the comments at least from the council. I said, and I won't repeat verbatim what I said in your retirement party, but just to say that this man, I believe, represents the embodiment of what true justice is all about and the deliverance of justice and being fairness because he does it with heart and soul. He doesn't do it with arrogance. He does it with humility. He doesn't do it in a black and white fashion in the sense of it's all or nothing. He does it and listens just as you can tell by his implementation of the safe harbors principle because he truly wants people to have the best opportunity to get ahead, to make amends for something that they might have done wrong, but also to not be something that punishes them and sets them back if they can have some sense of accountability and responsibility. So, I want to thank you for that and this isn't about you as far as being a judge. This is about who you are as a man and I think what a wonderful example to our community and I'm so thankful that you will still be serving this community at the county. I think you have a lot of opportunity there to help in a much larger way to impact more people. So, thank you, Judge, for your faithful, dedicated service to this city, but more so thank you for just who you are as a man and the heart and soul that you bring to whatever you do. And I just want to say, I want to echo Councilmember Melsers, when I heard those people speaking at the retirement party and some of the stories about how this man went way out of his way to help people that were before his court. I mean, folks, you just can't put words to that. You just can't put words for that and the city of Denton is a better place because of people like Judge Ramsey. So, thank you, Judge, so much and I'm going to give you a chance to say a few words. Yes, that's fine. Let's give him another round of applause. I'm going to be uncharacteristically short because I, the last couple of days, I have taken a position down with the county and we're talking about some justice and bell reform issues and just making sure the system is truly serving both protecting the community and keeping people who need to stay there, but we're also trying to make sure that we give people a chance and ability to make amends if they can do so and do so in the future. It's been a sad couple of days though for me because I truly feel lucky. I hope that you can reach a point in life that you feel as if you have been really blessed that God put you in the right place at the right time for the right purposes and it may not be a big deal to everyone, but I really did sit back and even the other day I said to her, I said I might have been able to make more money in some areas or done something different, but I felt like this is where I made an impact and I think that Denton is also the kind of place that allows you to make the impact that you feel that you need to make. I think we've had a spirit of expression here in this city that isn't easily found in a lot of places and so we are lucky to be as different and as diverse as we are and that's what makes Denton Denton and so my point is Mayor, just thank you very much for the opportunity and every one of you and every previous council, thank you very, very much for the opportunity. I am the one who's been lucky. I'm here representing his big sister who hopes that he gets out of jail soon and job well done. And I just want to say one more thing. You know, you really know the impact of a person's life when you know that there's people out there that you don't even know about who you've impacted. You know, you know the people that some that you have, but there's people out in this world who you gave a second chance to who may have not ever told you that, but that their lives are different for that so thank you so much for that and we'll miss you and wish you all the success. Thank you. Okay, we'll move on to our next agenda item which is I believe it's the presentations from members of the public if we could run the review of procedures for addressing the City Council. The Denton City Council has adopted rules of procedure including a code of conduct that applies to citizens as well as council members. These rules were enacted to promote an orderly process and to preserve decorum. Here is a brief review of the rules that apply to citizen reports. Citizens will have four minutes to give a scheduled citizen report and four minutes to give an open mic report. There will be an electronic bell when time has expired. If the remarks are not concluded by that time, the citizen will be asked to stop speaking. If the citizen does not cease and a second request is made, the mayor will request to have the citizen removed from the council chamber. Citizens are asked not to approach the dais. If a citizen has papers or other materials to hand out to the council, please let the city secretary know in advance. For scheduled citizen reports, the council may initiate discussion or questions following each citizen report. For non-scheduled open mic citizen reports, the council may listen to citizens speak. However, because no notice of the subject of the open mic report has been provided to the public in advance, the Texas Open Meetings Act limits any deliberation or decision by the council to a proposal to place the item on a future agenda, a statement of factual policy or a recitation of existing policy. Citizens are asked to direct all remarks and questions to the council as a whole and not to any individual member. Please refrain from making abusive, personal, impertinent, profane, or slanderous remarks. Anyone who violates this council rule of procedure may be immediately removed from the council chamber. Thank you in advance. Copies of the rules of procedure are available from the city secretary. All right, we'll move down through our citizen's reports who scheduled. Number one would be Raina Galleon. Hi, my name is Raina Galleon and I live at 808 Chapel Drive. I'm in third grade at Sam Houston Elementary School. I would like to talk about safety and make suggestions to improve the city. Number one, to lower the speed limit from 45 miles per hour to just 20 at all times on Teasley from I-35 to Lillian Miller. Right now the school zone protects from driveway to driveway at my school 20 minutes before and after school. I would like to protect my fellow students and pedestrians the same way our city protects the adult students at TWA U and UNT. The college students are taller and therefore easier to see if you are in a car. The five-year-olds are harder to see therefore they are in more danger. They are walking inches away from one of the busiest roads in town, Teasley. A lot of kids from our area love to go to Eureka Park. Denton wants to be a bike and pedestrian-friendly city but you cannot safely cross Teasley to go to the park or path. The cars go too fast and do not want your people crossing. I would like to have a stoplight added at Teasley in Pennsylvania. Councilwoman Deb and Mark, the pedestrian safety person, both said it was very scary to cross Teasley in Pennsylvania when I met them at Sam Houston when school had just ended and had just been released. Cars drive up onto the crosswalk and try to turn from Pennsylvania onto Teasley. At dismissal time, students have to cross over Pennsylvania by themselves between all the cars. The city is currently working on improving traffic at Teasley and Dallas Drive but the traffic does not go poof and disappear. It goes right to the road that must not be named. Now, with the opening of the Beaver School, traffic will be bananas both ways. Finally, I would like to thank Deb for giving kids a voice in Denton. I would like to form the first ever Deb's Denton Kids Council and continue to help kids make Denton Kids Council, small voices, big changes. Councilmember Armitage. So, first of all, Rayna, thank you so much for calling this issue to our attention. I'm not going to tell you you're a great kid, you already know you're a great kid. You're a great citizen. What you're doing is what it takes, it took me many, many years to learn how to do that, to have the guts to do that, so I wanted to thank you for that and try to think how to put this in the form of a question, I know I'm supposed to ask it in the form of a question. So you're aware that the city, that city staff, after you alerted us to council to this problem, that city staff has been working on it, and I take it you're also aware that we take you very, very seriously in your recommendations and I'd like to ask of you if you could send to council, maybe send to our city secretary a copy of your speech so we can see your recommendations in writing, that would be wonderful, and anyway, I just, I wanted to ask if you realize what a difference that you made, this is not just something about how kids are so cute even though kids are cute, this is about what an outstanding citizen you are and how you're making a difference and we've got staff working for you and someday maybe I'll show you the email trail that came from your email in our talk and you'll see nowhere in there does anybody say oh what a cute, cute third grader it is all, yep, we will get right on that problem from our city manager to our bike and pedestrian coordinator Mark who you met, and yes we were, he and I were terrified as you know to cross the street and I love so much the Deb's kids council poster you made for me, I decided not to bring it because my kids told me that might be embarrassing so I go by what they say, anyway, thank you. Thank you very much, appreciate it, thank you so much and if you could provide a copy to the city secretary of your comments that have the specific recommendations in there that would be helpful to us. Thank you very much. Council member Meltzer. Yes, Mr. City Manager I wonder if I could ask that someone from staff get me or directly get the speaker instructions for how to apply to teen council, because I think we've got a pretty good candidate once she meets the requirements. I think we've got a good candidate for grown up council, I'm keeping the seat warm for you. We have some absences today, maybe. All right, all right, you've got that Mr. City Manager, all right thank you, thank you so much, thank you very much for your presentation, well done, great job. All right our next speaker will be Randy Hunt regarding value creation in national register districts. Well I came to bring you some positive information and I brought three maps, so I'll just put them over here as time allows. Name, address. Oh sorry, Randy Hunt, 722 West Oak Street. So we're going to talk about incentives because it's not often that there's something positive about historic preservation, but national register districts create that for a large number of people in a specific group. But first I want you to envision in your minds universities that are surrounded by strong neighborhoods. I bet all of you have some specifics in mind, mine was SMU, but think about that. So in Denton we only have one national register district right now and that is right around the square. We have created a second one that will be announced in this next year by the Texas Historic Commission. It's going to be called the John B. Denton College Neighborhood Historic District. We've been approved to provide several more, so there will be at least one more that will be adjacent to us and it's going to be referred to as the Normal College, which was the first name of UNT. What happens within a national register district is that if you are a building owner of a for-profit structure that is contributing to the national register or could be contributing to the national register, you can be incentivized with a 45% tax credit. And that comes from 20% from the IRS, 25% from the state. These are awarded through working with the Texas Historic Commission for the restoration of buildings. I have a couple of examples already. One is the Texas Theater or the Fine Arts Theater on the square. The second just got accepted by the National Park Service and it is the Fairhaven Retirement Home on North Bell. Both of those are going to be receiving tax incentives. As we start pushing forward on other ones, one of the critical things was to start showing, so what's significant about this area? So I wanted to show you just one street. This is Normal Street, which was named after the Normal College, and it was built by the early faculty, all 18 of them, when this first street started. This is a picture of where we are with the survey. It's a little bit hard to see, but right now there's only about 90 structures, and this will probably grow to about 300, 350, just like our John B. Denton College neighborhood district has. Go back now and think about the college and the strong universities that are surrounded by strong neighborhoods. Those didn't happen by coincidence. They happened just like they did here. So faculty always have a place to live. Students always have a place to live. It's a cooperation, it's a collaboration, no different from here. What we need to do now is start respecting what has been here for over 100 years and get busy to create the preservation efforts. So I think the big thing I wanted to bring to you is to make sure that you knew that for rental properties, for properties that are income-producing, for other things that are over 50 years old that are contributing, there's a new opportunity for the owners of those businesses to work in those neighborhoods to keep them strong. Let me pull up my speaker seat. Council Member Armitage. So questions. So am I understanding it correctly, so this is federal money that would come to local businesses within this district to enable them to make repairs and preservation efforts that would otherwise be expensive, a burden for the business owner and asset for the community? So it would really, that's- Correct. So as an example, the Fairhaven is going to cost several million dollars to restore. Right now, it's just NYSOR for all of us in Denton. It's boarded up. It was an O'Neill Ford structure. So now it's going to get restored. It's going to go back to assisted living with some memory care in it. And we'll have a new building, a restored building that keeps it the same character. It also becomes part of the tax, property tax for the city. Yeah. Well, that sounds wonderful. So what's the, just a follow-up question. What's the downside? What's the catch? Is there a catch? I did some research on it and I can't see any. I don't know of any catches. We have funded this ourselves, so there is no expense to the city. This is a project of Historic Denton, Inc., which is our nonprofit. And, you know, we're good to go as far as our long-term relationship with the Texas Historic Commission. And it's been in place for about five years. Take, you know, these national registry districts do not happen overnight, but we certainly got a huge head start on two more that one will be in the downtown area to really expand. The other is just north of UNT to celebrate the normal college. Okay. Next question from Councilmember Nelson. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. So for someone who owns one of these homes that's contributing, or could be contributing once these districts are completed, for them to take advantage of the tax credits, they've got to have a commercial use, is that correct? Correct. It could be a home originally, but maybe someone wants to do something different. The purpose is to restore that building so it is not destroyed. And could a landlord take advantage of the credit if the home is rented? Absolutely right. That's really what started our interest was how do we work well with, and become inclusive in a large neighborhood is what started our national registry district, because there's a lot of homes that are rentals. If we can support the owners and help the landlords find new monies that don't cost them things, doesn't cost the city anything, but you know, as they still return huge value to the neighborhoods, to the city, then that's the win-win. That's 40-45%. Yep. All right. Okay. And just real quick. Yeah, because we're getting into a deliberation on an issue here. So, yeah. Okay. I promise this one won't be deliberative. Yep. Is historic Denton doing a house tour this year? It is. December 1st. Okay. Great. One to five. Okay. All right. Next speaker is Sonia Vasquez regarding benefits of protected bike lanes. Hello. My name is Sonia Vasquez, and we wanted to ask with the permission of the Mayor Chris Watts if Aaron Powell could actually go first as he has an introduction to the same subject. Of course. Of course. Okay. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry. You bet. So, we'll go ahead and call Aaron Powell regarding protected bike lanes. Raise this up. Sure. And just state your name and address, your time will begin. Yes. My name is Aaron Powell. I live at 1011 Cordell Street. I'm representing Bike Denton here today. I'm also the owner of Bunch Bikes, a family cargo bike manufacturer. Hold on. Let me get this in presentation mode here. There we go. Yeah. Yeah. I also lead Denton Family Biking, a monthly family bike ride through the city, and I'm a long-time bicycle commuter in Denton. Why protected bike lanes? Protected bike lanes increase bicycle ridership, reduce motor vehicle speeding, reduce crashes for all vehicles, and improve safety. Cities that invest in protected bike lanes see a dramatic increase in bicycle ridership. Case studies are Seville, Spain, which increased their bicycle ridership by 6.5% in six years with a protected bike lane network, and Minneapolis, which increased bike commuting 100% in five years. Conventional bike lane. This is mostly what we have in Denton where we do have bike lanes. The pros are they are cheap to build, however, they feel unsafe for cyclists. Cars often park in it, forcing cyclists into the travel lane, and they do not offer any real physical protection from cars. However, if a conventional bike lane is to be used, a painted buffer as seen in the picture next to the bike lane feels safer than a single stripe and is preferred by 90% of cyclists. Delineator posts. This would be the first level of a protected bike lane. They are cheap, easy to install. They stop cars from parking in the bike lane, and they feel safer to ride in than just having paint on the ground. However, they are easily run over, which require maintenance to fix. They are kind of ugly, and they do not offer any real physical protection. Delineator posts are best as a temporary solution when expanding a network until permanent separation can later be built. Bike lane outside of parked cars. This is cheap, easy to implement, and offers a real physical protection for cyclists. However, it is also kind of an ugly solution, but this would be the easiest and cheapest way for Denton to increase safety and ridership for cyclists. I think it would be great for the Elm and Locust updates north of downtown whenever that happens. Planters and curbs. This is a permanent improvement to the infrastructure, offers a high level of physical protection to cyclists and separation from cars, and is also attractive. However, it is more expensive to build. This would be ideal to use wherever aesthetics are most important, like close to downtown or on college campuses. Race bikeway cycle track. This is a sidewalk level protected infrastructure for cyclists, offers separation from cars, and maximum increase in ridership. However, it is very expensive, but this is the ideal standard. Fifty percent of all trips in Copenhagen, Denmark, are done on a bike, and that is because of the cycle tracks they started building in the 1970s. Before that, Copenhagen was just as car centric as any other US city. Now they are the number one cycle city in the world. So what do we have in Denton right now? Mostly, we have incomplete conventional bike lanes. Oak Street, west of Carroll. We have a conventional bike lane that abruptly ends and forces cyclists to merge in high speed traffic. Hickory Street downtown, a narrow lane that abruptly ends, merging into traffic while avoiding reversing cars on the right-hand side. Bell Street, we have a short narrow lane that forces cyclists to merge into traffic. Even experienced cyclists are often not comfortable sharing a lane, even on a 20-mile-an-hour speed road through a college campus. Highland Street at UNT, cars are almost always parked in it. The solutions would be to increase enforcement education, which would be difficult and time-consuming, or to add a physical barrier, which would be a simple way to stop this behavior. You can check out Highland Street Parking Line Instagram for hundreds more pictures like this, if you are so inclined. Parting thoughts for you today. Do you think Denton will benefit from having more people biking? And if so, do you think the bike lanes we build should be the ones that people feel safe actually using? Would you allow your children to ride in Denton's bike lanes? And if not, then I would say the average person wouldn't feel safe riding in them either. Thanks for your time. Thank you. Appreciate it. Councilmember Armitter. Yeah, thank you so much for speaking. I was wondering if you could speak to the advantages of protected bike lanes for pedestrians as well. Only that it adds more distance between the travel lane and wherever pedestrians will be walking, say the sidewalk. Any additional distance from speeding cars, especially on fast and highly traveled roads, it's going to make pedestrians more comfortable. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Okay, Sonja. State your name and address, your time will begin. Okay. My name is Sonja Vasquez. I live at 603 West Mulberry Street. I just recently moved from Cordell Street, about a block from Denton High School. I'm going to show you a little bit of protected bike lanes and why we need them. More as an example, as a personal experience, I'm a resident of Denton. I lead and organize the Denton Women's Cyclists Group, which I've had a couple of youth city council members attend to, as well as Mark, our bike and pedestrian coordinator. I am in the collective council of Currencia, as well as an advocate and part of other committees around the city. So as Erin just said, would you allow your child to ride a bicycle through the streets of Denton, such as Hickory, Oak, Highland, most likely not. If I had children, I would not put them on the bike lane, at least not on Hickory or where they just suddenly end. So this is a video of me traveling up Highland Street, and you can kind of see one of the main issues. So this is 7.40 in the morning on a Monday, trying to travel, and I have to get out of the way to move the cars, and I thought there was only two, but luckily there was no other cars coming my way, or else I would have been stuck in between two cars. Okay, so like I said, I'm part of the Denton Women's Cyclists and I lead the rides. We provide a safe space for women to help guide them through the cities, through using bike lanes and bike-friendly roads. This is often really difficult because no single bike lane in the city is continuous or has a connectivity to other gateways. Like I said, bike lanes often end and it fails to connect, so when I'm trying to teach someone that's completely new to riding a bicycle, it makes them feel really uncomfortable, and it's just dealing with traffic and so forth. We also lead workshops for bike maintenance and key skills before rides. This is other examples of bike lanes that do exist, but only have a lane, and there's nothing protecting us from cars and having to go around cars. Ideally, we ask city council to look into these bike lanes as well as work with our bike and pedestrian coordinator to build more safe spaces, not only for irregular cyclists, but for women and for children to travel to schools, downtown. We have a lot of landmarks in our city or downtown area, parks, and there's a lot of recreation things and things for families to do, and this could be a safe way to get kids and families out there and enjoy all these landmarks that Denton has to offer. Thank you. Any questions, comments? Councilmember Armitage? Yeah, I was wondering if you could speak for how would the protected bike lanes be an asset for local businesses in these areas? Yes. As Erin briefly mentioned, there is a lot of studies done on how protected bike lanes and the addition of bike racks near businesses increase traffic through those businesses, as well as provide an economic effect to them and just more people getting to places. The easier it gets for you to get there, the more that people are going to use it, especially downtown. You are most likely not going to find a parking spot, but if you live near the area, it would be a great way to get your children out there and yourself to just go get a cup of coffee or just go visit the square. Thank you. That concludes at least the scheduled portion of the Citizens Report. We do now have the agenda item 3C, which is the open mic, which allows two speakers a maximum of four minutes, and at this time, councilmembers are prohibited from asking questions due to potential violation of the Texas Open Meetings Act, so our first speaker will be Suzanne Townsend. Is that correct? Yes. You sure can. Charles Browning, if you'll come up, state your name and address, your time will begin. My name is Charles Browning. I live at 3220 Hornbeam in Argyle. Even though it's Argyle, I am in District 3, Mr. Duff's district. This picture here on the top, this is a heat map from a software called Strava, where people who GPS and track their rides, I ride 4,000 to 5,000 miles a year, commute daily, five miles each way from Argyle, and Highland Street here is a, what we see here, we see some signage that says no stopping or parking in the bike lane, and next to it, we see four cars parked and stopped in this bike lane, which according to Texas state traffic law, are technically the same thing. This was taken a couple years ago when the bike lanes were first put in, so just to orient you on this map, this is the campus. You can see Eagle, and Highland is a very hot street. There's a lot of people who ride through there, but I would say the majority of the people who ride through there do not track their rides through GPS, so this probably is running quite as hot as Hickory or Oak. You can see the full white lines that's more of a corridor from West to East Denton. Our protected or I guess buffered bike lanes that we have on Highland, I'm going to start a slideshow. I've been collecting these since June 6th to today. I'm assuming that's about five months or 100 workdays. I commute to work in the morning, about 6.30 in the morning, so there's very few drop offs, but my afternoon commute that usually is between 3 and 6 p.m., I try to ride my bike down this road completely once with nothing stopped in the bike lane. Sometimes I circle the bike lane 45 minutes because there are always people parked in the bike lane. The most common excuse is when I ask people as nicely, I've gotten better at it, nicely as I can, were you aware you were parked in the bike lane? Most people say, "Yes, I am," but everyone does it, so I'm going to go start. These are the pictures. I've got about 400 or 500 on the website, the Instagram site, Highland_ST_Parking_Lane, if you'd like to check them out, I've just picked out some of my favorite ones. This includes about 300, rolling at about two per second so that you can see as many as possible. Bikes you can find on these pictures, a lot of times the bikes are forced to swerve into oncoming traffic, and traffic, especially if there is a large car or delivery truck parked in the bike lane, does not expect, or can they see a bike that is swerving like this one into oncoming traffic? Also the bike, and especially the recently delivered bike share program we have at UNT, a lot of times people on bikes are forced to ride in on the sidewalk with much slower moving traffic, pedestrians are usually not fond of people and bikes swerving or driving past them really quick. The bike lanes are designated for the cyclists. They're not prohibited from riding in the regular traffic lane, but cars are definitely prohibited from being in the bike lane, not only by Texas state law, but by UNT parking code. I have contacted the police and they've been very nice to me after I was assaulted this summer by someone who did not like me taking a picture of their car in the bike lane. The police straighten things out and we've worked together to not only keep UNT vehicles from parking in the bike lane, setting a poor example, but if people often, and you'll see people turn on their hazard lights and leave their car parked in the bike lane for as long as 30 minutes at one time, I'll call the police and they'll have someone out. The bike share programs, I think, do have to pay some kind of permit fee and it would be nice, as we are a pro-business community, that we return the favor by making their cyclists feel safe and convenient. Also this will benefit the local area by hopefully encouraging students to use the bike lanes and not park in front of people's houses, where I've heard that there are many people who would like to park in front of the bike lanes and not park in front of other people's houses. Thank you, Charles. That was your time. Thank you. If you could just, if you had the sentence to wrap up, that'd be great. I would like to propose that in a future council session that y'all maybe discuss the implementation of some type of physical barrier. That's what I would like. Some kind of physical barrier that would keep bikes out of the bike lane because according to the police, people will always prioritize their own convenience over other people's safety. Okay. Suzanne Townsend, please. State your name and address. Your time will begin. Hi, my name is Suzanne Townsend. I live at 1700 Crescent. I'm in Don Duff's district, district three. So far we've heard about why we need protected bike lanes, and I know a lot of council members were not here when the bike plan was passed. So I want to review real quick why we want bicycle infrastructure in the first place. Why is this beneficial for Denton? So first off, it's good for business. When people bike, they spend money locally because they cannot go as far. So if you're in your car, you're going to go further, potentially spend money somewhere else on your bike. Most people don't want to go more than about four miles from wherever they live. Okay. And then when people bike, they're moving more slowly and are more likely to notice a business and maybe make a serendipitous stop and spend some money that they had not planned on. If you're driving, usually it's more planned out. It's less serendipitous. When people bike more often, they tend to have more disposable income that they could potentially spend locally at businesses. When people bike, they require about a tenth of the amount of parking space as when they drive. That means that more people can fit into a smaller area, which means more customers are in smaller, popular areas like the square or Fry Street if people are taking up less space parking. And research has also shown that employees who bike to work are more productive, they're more alert when they arrive to work. They're also healthier, so they're less of an insurance burden to the companies. Okay. So it's good for business. Bike infrastructure is also good for the health of Denton residents. Obesity, cardiovascular disease, depression, and many other diseases and conditions are caused or worsened by a sedentary lifestyle. These diseases result in a lower quality of life for residents and higher insurance costs for employers. Doctors often suggest to all of us to exercise more often, but a lot of us don't have the money or the time or the motivation to go to a gym. So it's really, really helpful if you can just sort of incorporate exercise into the day, and so if you can just hop on a bike for, you know, short trips when you're able to do so, it's a really easy way to get some exercise. Also in addition to helping children maintain good physical health, research has shown that children who walk or bike to work outperform their peers academically. They're also more focused, more alert. So it's good for our health. It's also good for safety. So according to TexDOT in 2017, 3,721 people died from motor vehicle crashes in Texas, and more than 250,000 people were injured. A person riding a bicycle creates significantly less damage if a crash occurs than if they are driving a motor vehicle. So I attended a walk around in the neighborhood north of UNT, and a lot of people were, you know, concerned about the traffic and the speeding, and one person said their car had been totaled multiple times. So a person on a bicycle cannot destroy a light pole. They cannot destroy a traffic signal when they crash into it or a fire hydrant, and it would be really hard to total someone's car if you crashed into it on your bike. You might damage it, but you're not going to completely destroy it, probably. Also somebody on a bicycle is less likely to kill a pedestrian in the event of a collision than if they were driving a car. So it's good for safety. It also keeps cyclists off the sidewalk if it's good, safe infrastructure, so that's a good pedestrian improvement. It also creates a buffer between the sidewalk and the car traffic, so that makes the pedestrians a lot more comfortable as well. Okay, and then so more people riding bicycles in Denton instead of driving cars is good for business. It's good for health of residents. It's good for safety. I speak to people all the time about how fun and fast it can be traveling by bicycle, and the number one thing they tell me is I wish I could bike, but I'm scared of being hit by a car. So there's a lot of people out there who are interested. They're just too scared to try. So whether they want to bike or not, all Denton residents benefit from a safer, healthier, more livable, and vibrant community that's bikeable and walkable. We ask the members of this council to be champions for this effort by initiating and supporting efforts to plan for and fund safer bicycle infrastructure in Denton that increases ridership. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. Appreciate that. Thank you. We'll move on to our consent agenda. Mayor Pro Tem? >> Move approval. >> All right. Councilmember Meltzer? >> Second. >> We have a motion and a second for consent agenda. Let's vote on the board, please. Thank you all for coming. Motion carries 5-0. Move to items for individual consideration. Consider nomination appointments to the city boards and commissions, health building standards commission and library board. Madam city secretary? >> Yes, mayor and council. We still have a few nominations left for our boards and commissions. On the health and safety standards commission, councilmember Armentor has nominated Sindel Addison. We still have two other positions available. >> The application has been in for that particular nominee? >> Yes. >> Okay. >> All right. >> And then on the library board, mayor Pro Tem Ryan has nominated Dionne Starnes. Councilmember Duff has a nomination. >> So the application for years, mayor Pro Tem, is also -- >> Has she got it emailed into you? >> I'd have to double check to make sure. >> All right. But we can still vote on those and the applications can come in. Okay. So those are the only two we have right now slated for an action item today? >> Correct. >> All right. Okay. Councilmember Meltzer? >> I move approval of nominees Addison and Starnes to health and building standards commission and library board respectively. >> All right. Mayor Pro Tem? >> Second. >> We have a motion and second for agenda item 5A. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 5-0. Agenda item 5B, considered adoption of the ordinance of the city of Denton confirming the Board of Ethics rules and procedures, et cetera. >> Mayor and council, Brian Langley, deputy city manager, we have before you tonight the rules and procedure for the Board of Ethics, Jesse Davis, the chair of the Board of Ethics is here to make a brief presentation to you on these and I know we had a work session on it but we want to go through these briefly with you before we ask for your approval. >> Thank you, Brian, and good evening, council, good to see you again. I just wanted to provide for the record a little bit of background. You're aware of some of these dates but the important thing is that the city has moved very expeditiously in adopting an ethics structure, an ethics culture and moving us towards what you will hopefully do tonight which is approve the final piece for your ethics board to receive complaints, review them and deal with them in a fair manner. You see here that we adopted the ordinance, as you're aware, back in May. We had three meetings to deliberate the rules and procedure and kind of interposed with those were our two work sessions with the council. You posed a lot of questions for us, you had a lot of things you wanted us to examine and spend some time thinking about, which we did. So the key points, the key takeaways from what you have in your agenda packets tonight are guidelines for conducting the proceedings, outlines for the structure of meetings, scheduling and time limits, the use of subpoena power, we talked at length about that in the two work sessions, the recusal requirements for when a member of the board should recuse themselves or must recuse themselves from the proceedings, and allowing for the representation by individuals other than legal counsel so people aren't spending money unnecessarily on lawyers. Tonight the recommendation from your board of ethics is that the council confirm the rules that we worked on together, the board and the council, that we adopt them and we get going. Any questions for the presenter? Councilmemorandum? I just wanted to thank you so much for your effort, it's so exciting, we're finally here at this point, a really important day. Yes ma'am, thank you, and thank you to the council and councilmembers before you and also the Charter Review Committee. There's a lot of work that went into these, into where we're at today, even before these rules got started. Thank you. Thank you, Jessie. Mayor Pro Tempe. Move approval. Councilmemorandum? I second. I have a motion to second. Let's vote on the board please for agenda item 5B. Motion carries 5-0. Thank you, Jessie, appreciate it. Thank you all. Thank you for your work, you bet. All right, we're going to our public hearings portion, so I'm going to need some help, Mr. City Attorney. We've got, and this will be for the public, we found out that basically all but one of these has requested postponement on the public hearings. Is that correct? It's a pay-through, it's F is the only one that is scheduled to be heard, is that correct? Yes. So, Mr. City Attorney, how do we, do we need to, the ones that have captioned staff has postponed the item to December the, do we have to call that and then make a motion to postpone it? That's automatically moved. That's automatically moved, Mayor. And so 6A and B have been automatically moved, 6C has not, that's one that's being postponed today. Is that correct? Is that 6C was one that was called in later on this afternoon to withdraw or postpone? Yes. It doesn't show that it. Yes, that's correct. Okay. So I'm going to come back to that one. So 6D has also been postponed to December 18th, City Council meeting. That's correct. So there doesn't need to be any action on that? No. So on agenda item 6C, because the applicant is not, I don't believe we've got a formal written request of a postponement or a polling. Is that correct? No, I'm seeing somebody shaking their heads up there. So I can't quite see that far without my glasses. I just saw a little movement. So I'm going to go ahead and call the item and we'll, because I know there's some people that may be here for that item on the public hearing and then we'll talk about how we proceed from there. So if you'll, let me go ahead and call the item. Agenda item 6C, which hold a public hearing, consider adoption of an ordinance to rezone approximately 9.08 acres from plan development to regional center commercial. So yeah, don't necessarily need a presentation at least at this point, but so we do have some official statement in writing asking for the postponement. The applicant did request in writing today to postpone it to the December 4th. Okay. All right. So if I could, and if I'm out of order on any of this, just please let me know. If I could, who all is here? If you could just show by raising of your hands for agenda item 6C to speak at the public hearing. Anybody? All right. So we can make a, do we, how do we do the postponement? Is it to a date certain? Is it to an event? So did they have a certain date that they wanted it postponed to or Mr. City manager you want to weigh in? December 4th. December 4th. Okay. Yes. Yes. Council member Meltzer. I move that we postpone item C to December 4th. Mayor Pro Tem. Second. All right. That we have motion to second question of clarification since we did not open the public hearing. Does it have to be reposted? Yes. It's going to have to be. Okay. It'll have to. And so we've got enough time to do that. Yes. Yes. Okay. All right. All right. We have a motion and second to postpone agenda item 6C till December the 4th. Okay. So the other one D has been already noticed in the agenda. So no actions taken on that. Agenda item E. Who's handling agenda item E. Let me go ahead and call it. Hold a public hearing. Consider an ordinance of the City of Dent Texas regarding a change in zoning classification from neighborhood residential NR4 to NRMU 12. Is it my understanding that the applicant has submitted a written request for this to be postponed? Yes. A written request. And postponed to what date? December 4th. The first meeting in December. Okay. December 4th. All right. So I'll do like I did with the last one. Who all's here in the public that would be that is desiring to speak on agenda item 6E. If you could show by raising of your hands. Well that means you're all here for 6F I guess or something. I don't know. Okay good. All right. So that helps with that. So Councilmember Armitage. So I move to postpone item E to December 4th. All right. Do we have a second? Councilmember Pro Tem. I second. All right. We have a second. So let's vote on the board please. All right. Motion carries 5-0. So we're to our last public hearing item which is public hearing agenda item 6F. Hold a public hearing and consider adoption of an ordinance granting approval in accordance with chapters 26 of the Texas Park and Wildlife Code of the non-park use of a part of Owsley Park for the purpose of installing and maintaining electric transmission distribution and communication lines for the city's electric utility infrastructure upgrades. So I know we do have a presentation on that. Thank you Mayor, Council. I'm Brent Heath, Executive Manager for Energy Delivery here tonight for the public hearing of the chapter 26 at Owsley Park. Owsley Park is a city park located on Stella Street just next Avenue H which is one block east of Bonnie Bray. CME is rebuilding and converting an existing 69KV electric transmission line to 138KV in the existing alignment longitudinally along Stella Street. This is needed to replace 1960 aging vintage infrastructure and provide proper clearance as we convert from 69KV to 138KV. A legal briefing was sent to City Council back on September the 16th, 2016 to rebuild the short section of line in the existing location. We took it before the Parks and Recreation Board January 8th of this year, received unanimous approval for that. That was 6-0 approval. One did abstain. And we noticed City Council that we were going to have to publish in the newspaper three times this chapter 26 according to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Code that was published on October 12th, 19th, and 26th. To give you a visual representation of where Owsley Park is, that's the park down here in the bottom center. The horizontal east-west green line is the existing 69KV transmission line that's going to be converted to 138KV. The red clouded area is the section that crosses the very front of Owsley Park and the red section up here is the only portion that we're requesting the easement in Chapter 26 on. This is an arrow view of the same park. You'll notice the same green transmission line. There's a covered park pavilion and some playground equipment. None of those structures are within the easement. There are not any poles presently on the city property and no poles are planned to be on the city property. This is the survey document of the 0.064 acres for the electric transmission line easement. This is a picture taken last week down Stella Street looking eastward. The Owsley Park is the section in this one span between the two wooden poles. Zooming in just a little bit, this pole is not on the park property. The park property stops where the sidewalk is at. This is to the west side of the park and the other pole is also to the east of the park. We are being able to use some new technologies with configuration. One thing I'd like to point out on the existing 69KV transmission line pole, Stella Street is here looking west this time. There are two transmission conductors that are out over the street. One transmission conductor is closer to the park. The new proposed line has all three transmission conductors over the street. That improves the distance to the park. Because this is an easement, the appraisal was done on the property next door to it to the east. Real estate department looked at it and used the exact same appraisal method. So therefore, staff and parks and rec board recommend a proven adoption of the chapter 26 ordinance. I'd be happy to answer any questions now or after the public hearing. Real quick question. That equitable fee, that's actually some payment that DME will be making to the parks and rec department, however they do that accounting. Yes, Mayor, that is correct. The electric CIP fund will transfer that to parks. As we went before the parks board in January, there was a lot of discussion how they wanted to use that money. Okay. Great. I can wait until after the public hearing in case there's anyone who wants to -- Say that one more time. Oh, I can wait until after the public hearing in case anyone wants to speak. Okay. Sure. Yeah, you bet. Okay. No problem. Okay. Any more questions for staff before we open the public hearing? All right. Seeing none. Thank you. Thank you, Brad. This is a public hearing. So we'll now open the public hearing. I do not see any blue cards, but a blue card is not required to be filled out in order to speak at a public hearing. So anybody wishing to speak at this public hearing, please come on down and state your name and address. And your time will begin. Good evening. I'm Kim McKibbin. I own the business at 1306 West Hickory Street. I have had the pleasure of serving for the last year on the Oak Gateway Small Area Plan in Owsley Park is located inside that area. There was a lot of discussion at certain times about the size of the park and what it was going to be used for and those sorts of things. So I came to make sure that what was going to happen to the park was on par. One of the things that I did notice when the gentleman was showing the new power lines is that the old power line has a street light on it and the new one did not. I would like to make sure that any lighting that is removed from that area be replaced. It is the only park that's down there for a very dense housing area in that area. So if we could do that, we're good. Thank you. Great observation. Thank you so much for that. This is a public hearing. Anybody else wishing to speak on this item? Anybody else wishing to speak? One more time. Do you want to ask your question during the public hearing or afterwards? I'm going to wait for you to call the rest. Oh, okay. Just the follow-up. Oh, okay. Sure. Yeah. You bet. Okay. Well, one more time for the public hearing. If not, we will now close the public hearing. Council Member Meltzer. Yeah. Council Member Marmotter. Yes. Yes. She was queued up. Thank you. So just to clarify, I assume the answer is yes, but I wanted to ask this. So the new poles will be put in exactly the same location as the old poles, pole for pole? Yes, that is correct. It would be in the same alignment. We may have to move it right next to the pole, but it would not be any closer to the park than what it presently is. Okay, and about how long roughly do you think the construction of these new poles will take setting them up and how would the park and parking right there and et cetera be affected? The actual construction of place in the new poles will go fairly quickly. We will coordinate with the streets and with parks to make sure that we find an appropriate time to just block off the locations right next to those two poles. We would not need to be right in the middle of the park there. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Council Member Meltzer. Will there be lighting on top of the poles comparable to what there is on the current poles? Yes, we just heard about the street light and she is entirely correct. There is one and we would like to put another one back on the new one. Absolutely. Thank you. Oh, I'm sorry. Real quick question. You said you're going to put the new poles next to the old poles. Yes. So is this one of those situations where there's still some additional infrastructure or utilities being utilized on those poles such as phone lines or cable and until we get that transferred to the new pole, those poles will stay in place until we can get them all transferred and then they were moved? That's correct because it is in the same alignment. It'll be easy to reattach those other cables to that and pull the pole, but there may be a very short period, a few days or so, that that could go. Will we be doing that or will the entities, the utilities that own those? We'll be contacting the communication companies to do that if they felt are promptly respond and it's easy to do and we wouldn't damage the cable. We have historically assisted with that. Okay, great. All right, any other questions for staff? This is an action item. Chair would entertain a motion, council member, Mayor Pro Tem Ryan. I move approval. Council Member Armitter. I second. We have a motion and a second. For agenda item 6F, let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 5-0. Brings us to concluding items. Concluding items, Council Member Meltzer. I'm looking forward to hearing our new bike and pedestrian mobility plan, which I'm sure will take into account the question of safer bike lanes, but until that time that we make any changes in the way we do bike lanes, I'd be interested in a staff report on bike lane parking violations and ideas to improve enforcement for parking in bike lanes. Thank you, sir. Council Member Armitter. So, first of all, I won't repeat what Council Member Meltzer just said, but I was also going to call for that, too, so I second that request. And secondly and lastly, I wanted to show, and I'm not sure if these went to all of council, letters like these, but I got a number of letters. I haven't even counted them yet. I probably should have, although I did read them all. People expressing concern about the landfill expansion, and I know that we've gotten some really helpful information about that, and I would like to follow up on the information to request a future work session to talk about what council can do, what our options are for making sure that the landfill doesn't get too high and to see exactly what our options are to meet concerns of the citizens, and I'd be happy to share these letters so people can see. All right. Anybody else? Concluding items? If not, we'll stand adjourned at 8 p.m. sharp.