Dec 04, 2018 City Council on 2018-12-04 2:00 PM

All right, welcome everybody to this meeting of the Dent City Council on Tuesday, December the 4th, 2018 is 2pm. We do have a quorum. We have a couple absent, but they may come in here shortly. Our first item on the agenda, we're going to walk through our work session agenda. First item is citizen comments on consent agenda items. Any citizen comments on consent agenda items? Seeing none, we'll move on to requests for clarification of agenda items listed on the agenda for December 4th, 2018. Clarifications of agenda items. Anybody have clarification of agenda items? Oh, yes, Council Member Hatsbeth. Thank you, Mayor. I do, and let me find the number here, a letter, sorry, bear with me. Well staff note, it is, where is it, the State Fair? Central Texas State Fair? Oh, was that on the consent? Speaker? I thought it was. It's probably one of the hotel tax. Which one is it? Item Y. Yes. Item Y. There you go. Thank you. Sorry. It's hard to read my handwriting. Do you have a question? Yes. I told him, I gave him a heads up. Oh, okay. Yes. Okay. So, we had all this arranged already, Mayor. I was going to say, you're going to share the question with us, I guess. So Tony Puente, Chief Financial Officer, Council Member Hatsbeth had requested just a brief presentation, and so I'm going to have this up here real quick, if you don't doze me, Mayor. Sure. So this is the sponsorship agreement for Den County Lifestyle Association. This is the first time they received the sponsorship money under our new process, but in the past they've been past recipients. So the Lifestyle Association, again, it's an organization for Future Farmers of America, the Family, Career, Community Leaders of America, and also 4-H members. They hold an annual public speaking contest. For 2019, they're anticipating about 30 participants, age 8 to 19. There is a small entry fee of $5 per contestant. Each contestant does a 3 to 7 minute speech that is evaluated. We were requested to provide the list of the 2018 contest winners, and I've listed them up here. You can certainly go through those if you'd like, or I'll just leave that up here for a second. We did black out their home addresses just because we hadn't had a chance to ask them for that information. So, again, various representatives. There's four categories, or four divisions, junior division, intermediate, senior, and then a team division. And there's first and second place awards. First place gets $75, and second place gets $25. This event is held, or is scheduled to be held in March of 2019, again. And so, again, there'll be a list of participant winners at that time. The amount of the sponsorship is $400. $300 is allocated for place one division winners. Again, it's $75 per winner. And then $100 for second place, and again, it's $25 for each winner in the second place of each of those four divisions. So, you know, Councilmember, I don't know if that answers your questions, but I'd certainly be happy to answer any of the questions that you may have. >> Sure. Do you know -- are they -- the format of it that they share, if they give them a topic in advance, or the participants pick their own topic, kind of -- do you know kind of the setup of it? >> I believe the setup is that they give them a list of topics, and they can choose from one of those topics to present. >> Okay. Yeah. No, that's great. I would just like to -- I have it noted, but if you can -- someone earmark it when that gets closer, I'd love to attend that. That sounds like a great program. >> Absolutely. We'll let them know. >> Thanks. >> Okay. Any other clarifications? Councilmember Briggs. >> Just for that one, do you know the $5 entrance fee, where that goes? Does that -- >> No, ma'am. We don't. We didn't ask for that, but we can follow up with them and find out where that goes. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Yes. Councilmember Armitage. >> This is for Consent Agenda, item A. I don't need that pulled. I would just like to see gender expression added to that ordinance. In the list of categories covered, that's for the anti-bullying ordinance. >> Okay. Say that one more time. >> I'd like to see gender expression added as one of the categories listed in that ordinance in addition to gender identity. >> Okay, so I guess if we're changing the ordinance, then if it's on consent, we need to make sure that either we're all okay with that now, or we need to pull it and take a look at it in the meeting, is that correct? >> Either option. >> Okay. All right. >> I'm fine having it pulled either way. >> Okay. You are having it pulled either way? >> I'm fine having it pulled whatever is necessary. >> Okay. Any questions, comments on that? Everybody okay with changing that, Council Member Hussbeth? >> No. If it's -- I'll just vote no independently. I just don't have enough information to do that on the fly. >> Okay. So we'll need to pull it. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. All right. And I guess do we have any information? Does staff have any information on that, or is this just a -- I mean -- and we'll present it at the meeting outside as well. >> Hi. Sarah Kuechler, Director of Public Affairs. I don't at this time. We did look at policies of other municipalities, so we can go back and review -- I'm not sure if gender expression could be considered part of gender identity in terms of expression or identity. I just need to go back and kind of review those terms and review with legal as well. >> Okay. >> Thanks. >> Okay. So if you're going to go back and review the terms and review them with legal, is that all going to happen before the meeting today, tonight? Because if not, I mean, we can either postpone it if we need more information. We'll just deal with it out on the dais. If y'all have it, fine. If not, it'll be an item for individual consideration, and we'll deal with it at that time. >> Okay. Great. Thank you. >> Okay. All right. So that'll be pulled. All right. On clarification of agenda items, if I understand correctly, just for housekeeping, I think our public hearing number C, 6C, they're requesting that that be postponed or pulled. Is that correct? >> That's correct. >> All right. So we will not be hearing that. >> Correct. >> Has it been posted for a public hearing? >> Yes. >> All right. So then we will either open the public hearing and take comment at the time and then just continue it. We'll sort of see how it goes there. I'll try to remember to make an announcement. If I don't make it in the beginning, somebody please remind me that if there's someone there for that, that they can stay or that the applicants requested that that be postponed. Okay. Any other clarification of agenda items? If not, we'll go through our work session reports. Work session report 3A is received report, whole discussion of staff direction regarding the results of the US 380 street lighting feasibility and photometric study conducted by HDR engineering. You're up. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, council members. Good afternoon. My name is Preetam Deshmukh, traffic engineer for the city. And I'll be talking about this particular item, traffic lighting. Start with a little bit of background here. The way this project was envisioned or came to life was a direction from council. We recently completed the widening of 380, it was almost a year ago that the segment between 35 and US 77, focused in Elm, was widened to six-lane divided facility. As part of that, while the project was going on, council had asked questions about can we get lighting in, there was a major concern there. And at the time, the way TxDOT is set up, if they don't design or fund or construct continuous lighting, that's their policy on non-controlled access facilities, which is all the AFMs and US facilities throughout the state. So what they expect from the cities and the local level is if you design, if you fund, if you plan for everything, we'll include it in our bid. We have an AFA, which is advanced funding agreement, the city pays for everything, and then TxDOT will install it as part of their project. That's the way it's currently set up. For the 380, we're sort of really late in the game while asking the questions that were already under construction. So we received to conduct a feasibility study, that's the direction we got from council. For a segment between I-35 all the way to Mayhill, it's a quite a long 5.4 mile corridor. So what we did is we engaged the services of HDR engineering to conduct the study. Their focus was to assess what's out there today, identify what the existing conditions are, the lighting levels, what type, size, as well as locations of streets based on the standards, determine what should go in place, what is proposed consistent with TxDOT standards, and then last to come up with a high level planning level cost estimate. So what we did, since it's a really long segment, we focused our in-depth analysis on two segments that are slightly different. The first one was a segment which is more on the commercial side. It covers the commercial area between 35 and Bonnie Bray right near the Razor Ranch development. That segment is a wider street. It has a 100 foot right of way and also the length is slightly longer, it's slightly less than 4,000 feet. The second segment is a combination of commercial and residential. This is between Carroll and Bell. This is part of TW also. So these two are distinct to the whole corridor. There are several other segments that fall in one or both categories and that's why these two were selected. Existing conditions. This is a heat map that you see and I can go over the bullet points, but anything in blue is pretty much dark. And anything that is yellow or red, red is higher intensity. There's a scale here on the side which shows dark is zero and all the way up to two. And I'll get into all the statistics or the criteria in the slide later. So existing. >> Just real quick, those are the existing conditions. I saw the high pressure sodium bulb. So you probably got something in your presentation about the type of bulb we'll use if we do this. >> Yes. >> Okay. >> That's in the proposed. So currently there's no continuous lighting. There's no lighting under the loop 288 bridge. There are some lights that were out when the study was done. That's part of the observation that was picked up by HDR. The current lighting bulbs are 250 watt high pressure sodium. They're not LED fixtures. The luminaire height varies which means the pole height varies between 25 to 40 feet. And then the luminaire arm, which is how long it's extended away from the pole, it varies between 4 and 12 feet. So this is the existing condition. Let's look at standards. What are the standards that are recommended for continuous illumination by TxDOT? If you look at the numbers, you require average of 1.6 foot candles in a commercial area, which is the first segment between 35 and Bonnie Bray. And then commercial residential mix is a 1.2 foot candles. The existing conditions are way below. They're 0.22 on the first segment and 0.29 on the second. So you can see it's pretty dark out there. So what is proposed? Based on the minimum standards that we looked at, the proposed systems would consist of a 400 watt LED lighting fixture. It would be mounted at a 40 foot high pole with a 12 foot mast arm extending out from the pole. In the commercial section, the spacing is 175. It's slightly closer because you need more lighting. And in commercial residential, the spacing is about 275 between the poles. So what would happen if we go with the recommended lighting levels? What are the average foot candles? They will exceed our minimum requirements here. They'll go up to 1.84 in the commercial and 1.79 in the residential commercial section. So the next few slides are just showing how it would look. And if you look at that existing condition, it's fairly dark. And the proposed condition, you see majority of this is lighted up. Anything in the yellow zone, if you look at that number, is 1.5 is dead center in the middle of yellow. And you can see most of them is higher than yellow in this area. This is the commercial section. The second one is the commercial residential between Carroll and Bell. And you see everything is lit up under the proposed conditions. A different view, this is a much smaller segment, but this is in the commercial area. Just to give you a different perspective other than the heat map to identify it. If you see this is all black and it will be lit up. Cost is the next item. What would it take to light the 5.4 miles of segment? And it is slightly over $5 million, $5.2 million. There is recommendation that we provide additional pedestrian lighting in the segment, which is commercial between Bonnebra and 35. Because the sidewalks are further away, they are closer to the development. So it requires separate lighting and that cost is included in this. And then there is just pedestrian, no additional pedestrian lighting is considered for the section between Carroll and Bell because the sidewalk is close to the curb. So the street light will illuminate the pedestrian walkways or sidewalks. Do we have any governing ordinance or anything within the city that -- just when we take away this section, because you think about our city overall and it seems pretty dark, there is a lot of places that need light. So do we have anything -- do we have our own requirements or standards in the city for -- Currently we don't and Todd is going to jump in. But on all our new projects, all the widening projects, we are going through the same process. We are analyzing individual projects and recommending lighting and it will be included as part of that project. And is it more in line with text out standards or is it kind of less? It is more in line with text out standards. >> First of all, I will say I can't think of -- I can think of a few things more important to invest tax dollars in than public safety. So yes, sticker shock at the price, however very important, but I am wondering as additional commercial development is built up along that area, will that create -- do you anticipate that that will create additional light even in the wee hours that will -- that might offset the need? I am guessing no. But I thought I would ask. I think the way that particular roadway segment is the right of way is pretty further away. So most of the development that is happening is not that close to the pavement. So it doesn't really reflect or ambient lighting is not that high. >> Thank you. >> Do you remember what -- you know, we were given the option with text out when they did the I-35 widening to go with a standard that they would put in at their cost and I think maintained but we went with something different that was a little closer together and with bulbs. Do you remember how much that was? >> The one thing I would say is this does seem like a lot of money, but when you really think about it, especially on that corridor, which is our major east or west to east, east to west corridor outside of I-35, as I have attended some of the U.S. conference of mayor's conferences, lighting and what you can do with light other than just for being able to see, it is tremendous what the difference it can make in the look and just the feel of what it is you're trying to light up. People light up buildings, they light up bridges, they light up all these kind of things. So especially for a price like that, I hope that we could really step up the presentation of the city not only by providing public safety, but really because let's face it, the high pressure sodium bulbs, I mean, those things, they just look -- everything looks drab. It just looks drab. So -- and that's crazy, the aesthetics, public safety is number one, but also if it looks good, then it projects a different image of the city. So what in the presentation, do you have some example of what these lights look like or what the type of light, is it a white light that these put out? >> I think probably Jerry can talk more. >> Yeah, go ahead and get to the presentation and we can come back to that. >> It is not super bright, but it's not yellow, it's somewhere in the middle, that type of light. But I think when DME comes with the recommendation of what LED lighting, that's exactly what we're trying to use here. >> Yeah. Okay. All right. I guess if it's during a council meeting where it gets a little dark, if you just sort of go outside for a slight demonstration, I mean, see what we're paying for. So anyway, I'm sorry, go ahead. >> All right, so I just wanted to throw this out there just to get an idea of what the schedule would be if the council decides to move forward. It's about six months for design and nine months for construction. I just put a start date of March 19, I didn't know, but just to get an idea of if we move forward it's almost a little over a year, a year or three months project to get this thing completed. >> Oh, Councilmember Meltzer, go ahead. >> My impression is that the main safety concern, I could be wrong, this is all a question, is in the segment from Bonnie Braid at 35 where you really can't see where to turn. Do you share that or is it, you know, is the safety issue sort of equal all along? >> I think it's different kind of safety issue in different area. Yes, in the commercial area it's more of vehicles turning in and out, vehicles at the driveway not being able to, being spotted by drivers on 380, but around the TWU area it's more of pedestrian safety. So students walking from apartments or trying to cross Bell to get to UNT campus or get from the campus to the parking lot on the other side. So there are different elements and it will provide safety for all of these aspects. >> Just to make sure I understand. So we've got the turning issue between Bonnie Braid and 35, we've got the largely pedestrian related issue around Elm and Locust and, you know, by TWU and what about for those other long stretches, are there, you know, what are the safety considerations there? >> So I think there is a big commercial chunk also under development and currently in place between Bonnie Braid and Carol. So yes, there are multiple driveways in that segment and it's the same type of issue. Even at the intersections there are concerns of spotting pedestrians while they're crossing and stuff like that. So yes, it's not just one or two places that this is happening and as that corridor continues to grow on the east side as well, it's the same concerns of detection of pedestrians, detection of vehicles. >> Question on if this had been included in the construction when we did I-35, I mean, 380, when TxDOT did that, what would have been the cost savings, any idea? I mean, it doesn't have to be precise. It's costing us more because we're doing it now. >> It absolutely is costing more because we're doing it now. The flip side to that is LED prices are coming down. So I can't say with certainty how much less it would have cost. The other aspect to take into account is if it was part of the overall project, lighting is probably going to be somewhere between 2 to 5% of the total construction cost. So you project that upward, the state probably spent somewhere on the order of 40 to 50 million dollars trying to put in all of the widening aspect that they did, and you're talking a very small percentage that goes into this. >> Right. Okay. Thank you. Oh, I'm sorry. Yes. Paul. >> Versus doing, say, the two parts that we talked about and then later looking at the rest, are there economies or any efficiencies that we gain if we do it all once or, you know, is it really pretty much unit by unit, no scale economies? >> It's a very fair question to ask, and certainly there are some scales of economy to be achieved. This is a very long stretch of road. We're also dealing with that the city's not had a very extensive network. In a lot of cities where you see them converting to LED, there was already a fairly extensive network of street lights, maybe underpowered, but they at least had the conduits and a lot of the cabling already set up to where we're upgrading the copper inside it. Maybe we're upgrading the transformer so the cost tends to come down. If you were doing this at the time of construction of the roadway itself, it would come down because the trenches we could do in open ditches and you wouldn't be boring the vast majority of the distances that we have to go across the intersection. So there's definitely tradeoffs when you build it at the time that you're doing the other work. If you go across the city and start really taking this into account as a program, which is something that we're currently evaluating, is how do you take into account all arterial roadways and then the collector, residential collectors, which need a different level of lighting depending on whether it's residential neighborhood, where is it feeding. Those recommendations we're working on, hopefully I have a recommendation early next year as to what does that look like from a plan perspective across the city. That's where we need to get into the numbers. To do the entire city, that's something I don't have off the top of my head right now. I probably wasn't very clear. I'm really, what I'm really after is let's say we just did 35 to Barney Bray and the area around TWU and then just did that, see if we get enough benefits and then later did the rest. Would we be paying, because of inefficiencies, I don't know, 10% more, 20% more than if we did it all at the same time? I couldn't give you the rough number there. We could develop that analysis and tell you what that really looks like. It's not going to be as large as you would anticipate because we're already talking about a significant number of polls in each segment anyway, but you do see some. Okay, so this is, I think I was a little confused. So the 5.2 million is I-35 and Mayhill, or to Mayhill? Yes. From 380? All the way. All the way to, let me see, all the way to Mayhill. So just to do those segments are the 1.7 million? Yes. All right. All right. I'm sorry. Mayor Prochan, I apologize. Thank you, Mayor. A couple of questions. One, on the polls, are they just a standard galvanized or are they powder-coated? We know in the downtown area we've gone to, I think a black powder-coated is kind of acid. I can ask our consultant exactly what went into the assumption, but we are going to work with DMV to make sure that whatever they recommend as far as the operations and maintenance as an aspect of it so they'll be uniform and we pick the one that they recommend at the end of the day because they're going to come up with a recommendation, but I can tell you exactly what polls were assumed for this particular cost. Oh, yeah, you'll need to come, yes, but just because we're televising this so they can't hear you unless you're in front of the mic. Good afternoon, Mayor and Councilmember. My name is Karan Khosla. I'm with HGR and lead the North Texas Traffic Operations in Dallas office. These polls are standard TXDOT polls, which are galvanized polls. TXDOT usually does not do powder-coated polls. Those are special specifications and it has to be part of a funding agreement with the agencies for what those lights are developed for, but usually these are standard galvanized polls that TXDOT installs on their system roadways. Okay. All right. Councilmember Briggs, did you have a question? Yeah. Well, he may know as well, but we talked about it when we talked about upgrading our lighting to LEDs, the same conversation about the software that goes onto the polls that allows us to see if that light is working or not. Is that included in this or is that something different? So that thing is not included in this. This is fairly standard lighting. DME is looking at options to just replace the photovoltaic cell on top of light with something that talks through communications and can get it on an app and stuff like that, but -- It's kind of smart. Smart. Yes. Photovoltaic cell. Okay. Yes. Councilmember after. Okay. So a question for Preetam. So I'm trying to decide between build all and build segments, and I was wondering if you could kind of walk us through the pros and cons from both the public safety and financial perspective, the pros and cons of either of those two options. I'm wondering if there's anything I might not have thought of and feel free to say no. Some of the biggest concerns would be you get into the cost of inflation for construction, the availability of contractors and materials, you're playing a waiting game. If you delay aspects because you don't know what the market is going to do on some of these materials. Just last year we saw prices and availability of mast arms and poles to put these lights on go up when the hurricanes hit in Houston because they all funneled that direction. So pricing went up and availability was very scarce. It took a while for the market itself to recover to where they were on a much more available platform and the prices to equalize again, but they typically don't equalize back down to where they were. It just depends on where we are at that time. So there's a lot of risks and volatility in the market. You're putting that all at risk just the longer you delay different phases. So the cost for phase two would really be just an estimate. Correct. Well, obviously the cost for phase one is two but more likely accurate as an estimate. I'm assuming you have a financing slide in here as well. There is a final slide. Yeah. So we're looking big picture. If we move forward or decide to go with 380, there are several other corridors that Textile is currently working on or already finished like FM 2499. There is currently no lighting. And just being on this side, I've received several concerns from residents about lighting and safety and concerns on FM 2499 which is already done and then definitely some concerns on the other two. So I just wanted to make sure that a big picture is presented to council knowing that if we just focus on one corridor, what happens with the others and how do we start addressing and tackling them as we move forward? Councilmember Briggs. I light it up. That's all I wanted to say. It's very important and I'm okay with phase one and phase two of the other one but I also would like to see not just the main corridors where there's lots of traffic but in our city as well there's certain intersections that are completely dark and if we're talking about safety and pedestrians, we've got to continue the conversation and keep talking about those intersections as well. Yes. So I have some backup slides if you've given permission I can pull them up. In the background we're working on several projects that were brought to our attention and there's a corridor along Audra north of McKinney between McKinney and 380. We've asked HDR to look at that and we've reviewed that aspect. The four intersections that were recently brought to our attention with pedestrian issues and pedestrian safety lighting, we're looking into upgrading their lighting from existing 250 wattage to more higher power so that they can be better lit. So yes, there are several projects in the background that we're working on and I can pull up the slides but I just wanted to mention it. Okay. Thank you. On these figures you've got here are they since $24.99 is already complete, it would basically be the aftermarket that we're doing on 380. But on 377 they haven't even stuck a shovel in the ground. Is there any savings can we get condos in as part of the project? I think it's both these projects are already bid out. A contractor is on board so we're at the mercy of the contractor providing us whatever the cost they feel for this particular item if we add on to that particular project. So yeah, I can't really say if it's going to be a savings or not at this point. We don't know. Okay. And I'll say that for a number of years the section on 380 from Bell down to Nottingham area has been the concern has been raised a number of times over how dark that area is. So I'm glad to see this coming forward and we just need to figure out how to pay for it. Yes. Councilmember Meltzer. Yeah, that figuring out how we pay for it question is kind of where I'm coming from. I don't really understand what the money is you're talking to us about. Is this all already budgeted? Can we in fact have all the things we think are good or are you talking about some new money that has to come from somewhere? What is this money? So that's the part we don't have an answer to yet. We would have to look at available opportunities and I think Todd can. Yeah, I think we wanted to get your feedback on first of all a lighting plan but for instance with 380 if that's where you want to start we'd suggest moving forward with the design now it's likely going to be put in next year as a supplemental to the budget and it's unbudgeted money all these are unbudgeted but we were asked to come back on university specifically with how do we get this done what's the cost and then just trying to give you a picture that we probably need to start thinking a little bit more holistically about overall lighting plan for the city particularly in those hot button areas we're getting complaints about safe driver safe pedestrian safety rather so we could we could certainly provide you some options heading into next year's budget there's no bond package dollars for this right now and Todd's about as tight as he can possibly be right now with the five year CIP short of another bond election. So how would we actually do this if there's no bond money and it's not budgeted? We would discuss we're working on we're already starting to keep track of supplemental requests for next year we're breaking it down into council items that we're starting to hear about already capital items as well as any department and public safety items that we're seeing so we're going to break them down those three tranches if this is something that the council once considered we'll put that in as a capital project supplemental and when we start seeing what our budget picture looks like next year we'll either make a recommendation or have ancillary packages for you consider along with the tax levy just like we did this last year. Okay so is it conceivable then that what we might be moving toward is you know I don't think anybody hears in favor of darkness you know we might want a comprehensive you know look at what is our total lighting needs and there are many of them you know and see what that amounts to and then and then with that light would that be destined for another bond package or I guess we'd have options then it's up to the council we could certainly we could certainly take a look at some co's again next year to expedite some of these if you'd like to do that we could I think we'll definitely be recommending that we do an overall lighting analysis of the city with recommendations just like we do with our sidewalks streets it's just best practice to know what it would cost but the reason these are coming up is we've got construction already either complete or heading that direction on major corridors we're getting concerns and questions about just wanted you to see that you've already had about 12 million dollars with the lighting projects just in these four sections so if that's something that's important to council we can break it down into phases we can take a look at having an overall study recommendations for a bond committee to kick around it's really up to you how you want to handle that well I would support a comprehensive look at our lighting needs and and I'd be comfortable with the idea that staff will figure it out if we did the segments segments one and two but you know it's sort of not knowing where any of this is coming from so as good as it all obviously is I don't you know really see how we can responsibly just say yeah do it all we'll figure it out but but the first couple of segments I think you know it's a reasonable risk well just for some context and I know that the mayor and councilmember Briggs were we actually several of you here last year we had this first discussion there's a lot of complaints coming in when 380 got opened up where's the lighting we're routinely getting walk-in complaints about carol locust elm I know pre-tems probably got a very exhaustive list and the idea was get us the data as fast as you can so that's this step the next step is if you want us to start doing the engineering to get this prepared for a budget number just let us know and we'll get that underway right now I wanted to make sure that you had some idea however of the time that's involved it's not a matter of you just say go ahead and you know get the lights ready and they're done in a month or two I mean this is a let there be light that's right this is a this is a 12 to 15 month process from the time we get moving so we wanted to be sure that you understood that and to see just kind of where you were okay so I support adding this to the supplemental budget for for next year and moving forward all in one one chunk instead of in segments and one thing that would be helpful for me in terms of helping to educate constituents and disseminate information is I would love to see a kind of a cost analysis of the cost to the city of accidents due to inefficient lighting that would help to make the case and I realize not everything that's valuable can be measured in dollars and cents but so that's not a make or break for me but that would at least be helpful for me to show that there is a costs to in terms of financial costs to having an adequate lighting in terms of police emergency medical etc. but like I said I'm already on board what percentage of the cost is engineering upfront these projects is there kind of a ballpark kind of number typically it's about 15 percent so 15 percent of five million dollars at the engineering cost for the whole piece well I would think that some of these we could go ahead and do that portion of it to start with well I'll start with the most pressing issue is if we're going to do a comprehensive lighting analysis I'd love to go with someone with our office in Denton our consulting in Denton that would have a you know stake in the community as we're going through all these different segments that's one Denton's a great town it's two I'm okay with the entire stretch of university to kind of maximize resources that sort of thing and capture those costs and then looking forward to the other segments I think we have some 380 agreements that roll off and there's some other stuff that hopefully will give us some wiggle room and obviously I think that a lot will get caught up in the bonds hopefully and be able to kind of enhance things but I think you're spot on the the ability to to light up those areas serves a couple of purposes for me one just traffic pedestrians but also as we're trying to catch keep up with our biking infrastructure we're gonna you know it'll then allow those people that ride bikes or maybe feel a little more comfortable on some of those busy roads for intermittent periods of time so that's kind of how I reconcile it so you are okay with moving forward with what's your direction so I would say the five million let's find the five million in the couch for University Drive and then come back and look at 2499 would be next on my I'm trying to hit all the spots that were the speeds a little higher a little higher traffic will be out in front of didn't high school hopefully as far as in front of that construction that growth but we're all aware of how fast the northern side of our town is growing so just to kind of light that up this would be helpful okay so I know that you said you had some other slides that I don't want to go into those but could you send those to us individually on the internal streets projects that you're looking at just so we have those in case someone asks yes thank you is it my understanding that you're going to be coming back to us with a more comprehensive look at the lighting needs I guess when I hear what's out there at the six million when I hear that we've got internal streets that are you know deficient without that data or that knowledge I mean if we're spending five million here it's going to be a while before we're spending another five million probably somewhere else I mean it's my hunch so if we're all okay with not having all of that information that this is the most pressing need and I brought this up I guess is probably when you first came and when they first finished it I was shocked that they didn't put lighting on there and I remember driving through thinking something's missing here and it was the light poles and so with the light so I'm sort of a little conflicted not conflicted but on saying five million but not knowing what's out there but if you're getting a lot of complaints here and and things such as that then then I can go with that but I'd certainly want to come back with a comprehensive study and a plan that the council can agree on about how do we solve these lighting needs I mean not just taking it whatever's complained about the most but really having a strategic approach to it as councilmember Melzer had said so I can get on board with that we need to finish that that's the major especially with Mayhill being finished or getting started and being finished in a year to it's going to be major connectivity there from north south east west I think our from our perspective we would definitely recommend if you want to head that way phases one and two I think it's really up to council whether you want us to plan on just doing the whole corridor though there's a lot of good comments here in terms of synergies that's probably true you know it's always easier to have somebody out there once mobilized it's nothing that says that we couldn't combine some of these other projects and get better pricing the busier we can keep someone but it really gets down to do you want us planning on phase one or two or you just want to design the whole thing and we'll make a call at that point I would that would be my just engineer the whole thing okay and then we'll have an opportunity I mean it sounds like the direction seems to be moving forward with the whole segment but we have time that if we get it engineered and something else pops up or economy tanks or whatever that we have some flexibility in that but we're moving forward that's also the council mayor pro tem yeah I think I'd like to at least approach the contractor on 377 and get some numbers out there to see how much of a savings there is by doing it during the construction as opposed to this after the fact we'll absolutely do that if the money's not there to do it's not there but at least we know so that's sort of a separate request you're okay with proceeding forward with the yes with the entire segments and engineering the whole thing sure I'd still like to you know lean even further forward on the segments okay all right okay okay do you feel like you have appropriate direction yes all right fantastic thank you thank you all right we'll go into agenda item 3b which is received report hold a discussion and give staff direction regarding multifamily dwelling and collegiate housing this will probably be the shortest presentation of the day won't depends on how you guys want to do it important topic sir it's going in there did oh good is this a all right yep mayor members or council members of staff passed out just a second ago is an updated PowerPoint presentation we apologize we were working on this even this afternoon trying to make sure we we get this right so we didn't get a chance to upload it for y'all to review but hopefully you get a chance to run through it as we go through this presentation so the purpose of this or the agenda for this work session is to go over the purpose provide you with some background discuss the research and survey that staff has conducted go through a discussion on the subject item and then seek your direction moving forward purpose of this work session is to determine the classification of what we're terming collegiate housing is it multifamily or is that a separate use either collegiate housing or something else and we've we've put together a proposed or an option that is to maybe consider it as a dormitory but really this is the purpose of the exhibit that you see you here on the slide is just an example of what we've referred to as collegiate housing single room occupancy all the other terms that we've used recently so again this is the purpose of the work session and I view this presentation in the backup are you refresh my memory are you going to because there's something about this configuration that is characteristic of a certain type of housing as in most in other words if there's a bathroom in every bedroom does that mean it's more suited for collegiate housing or a family everybody wants their own bathroom so you're going to go into sort of what differentiates or is it just the but that might be a premature question yeah it's a little we can get into it okay I don't know exactly how we can get directly to what your question is hopefully we will if not we'll even all right sorry for the interruption no problem just quickly a couple slides on the background of this topic as early as November of 2016 we've been talking about this we had a work session on this item and at that time the direction from council was to not regulate it as a separate use instead the council directed staff to work on how we can address it through design standards as a multifamily use we brought forward an item to consider a specific use permit for three specific zoning districts we took that to PNZ and City Council that was ultimately denied and ultimately another discussion came up and we discussed collegiate housing and at that time there was no council directed staff not to proceed as a separate use as well yeah thank you Ron can you help me kind of normalize the concern or what you perceive or I've heard to be the concern sure so when you say try to address it what is it what do we what is the pervasive concern that it's kind of driving everything the three main the three main issues that are concerns that we've heard through you know certain projects or through just discussion with the community has been parking traffic and just neighborhood compatibility how it fits in with the neighborhood we've also heard noise and safety as other concerns but again the three has been parking traffic and compatibility yes sir so but those four things you're saying can be addressed in how we lay out an apartment no what we're saying is that we're trying to find a way to address that and we've got some options and some existing requirements that we have adopted recently that addresses some of those but again the question and purpose of this work section is really to determine is this multifamily or is this a different use a separate use there we go thank you here here's the next slide just to talk about what we did back in March of this year we updated amended our parking requirements again to try to address some of the concerns and in particular parking in March of 2018 we updated the parking requirements and at that time as well there was a discussion on collegiate housing and again council directed staff that the use is not a separate use and to keep it as multifamily throughout the whole process of the DDC update our development code review committee has also been discussing this particular item and it's an ongoing discussion they have discussed it and directed staff to bring this to the full council for our for your discussion and for your direction so again there's something that we've been discussing for some time. Just a quick background in addition to what we've been researching we've looked at what we have currently in the city we've got approximately 26 developments that specifically rent by the bedroom and you see here on this slide and I apologize if it's hard to see primarily they are located close to the University of North Texas there's a couple by TW there's some further out along I-35 closer to the mall area but the majority of them are located in generally the UNT area surrounding the University. Good question how did you verify the number in other words that these apartments rent by the bedroom is there a survey that you did you call them up we went online and we called each one of them and that's how they responded okay do you know first of all is there a list of these that you it's in the I didn't see a list of the actual number in the legend we can provide that yeah if you would that'd be great because I there's some apartments that have been existing for many many years and that when they were bought they might have been converted right to the lease by the bedroom correct and I don't I don't know if they're on the list or not so that that's really what I'm trying to understand is get a real good sense of the data sure on that do you know how many units that comprise the aggregate number of units you know we did it at some point when we did this presentation some time ago I don't have that off the top of my head yeah you know probably 26 developments what 200 units average maybe or something like that so 56 or 5200 or probably somewhere around there okay yeah just maybe some information with the list and what number of units each of those developments have that'd be great thank you and we just want to just highlight that TW and UNT is growing we looked into their enrollment projections and there combine 8,000 students by 2030 that's an increase of what we currently have today so we're gonna we're growing and they're growing as well part of the research that staff conducted was we called 29 cities in Texas that have universities and 17 responded with some general questions basically how do you deal with what do you do with collegiate housing how do you deal with some of the issues and concerns that we've heard here in approximately 58% the majority of them don't treat them as a separate use it's just multifamily 29% of them use overlay districts close to the universities to address the concerns that we just discussed and then three 18% has the use as a separate use San Marcos calls them purpose-built student housing College Station Northgate high density dwelling and San Antonio first to them as school dormitory or housing off campus I'm sorry I missed a key point for all the 29 cities cities that have colleges correct yeah okay close by yes so this is a an important slide because really this is where we are bringing up the question again and seeking council direction is this multifamily or is this a separate use and it's a discussion and if we determined if the council determines that it is a separate use we provided an option that we would use the existing definition of dormitory as you see there this is a revised definition and I'm going to read it for the record a building in which individual bedroom units lacking exclusive use of a kitchen facility are offered for consideration to residents for a period an excess of 30 days really broad but wanted to cover the use again if this is what the council's direction is to consider it as a separate use we provided an option to consider it as a dormitory if you do we'd have to look at the location how we would apply that as a specific use permit or by right also development standards associated with that type of use and then other considerations which we'll get into in a few slides so questions discussion most of what I hear once an all out prohibition on SROs that's what I hear so I don't know that putting given its own category achieves that goal if I were in line with that objective and I don't and so ultimately my feedback is I don't want to put a separate category in there because I think it will just modify I think those that build them will modify it they'll add a closet they'll add two kitchens whatever it is they're going to modify the building to achieve what they want to achieve and then that puts us in the position of having to go back and modify our building standards every time they get ahead of us and so that's why I don't think it's I think it's just maybe there's a methodology to take them all as they come but I just I don't think a express category will do anything but exclude those that choose to opt in for that label so they're going to avoid that label to avoid the automatic no and get into what I think they deserve as a just a up and down vote just a conversation on their project as an individual project not because of the the acronym they selected and then how many yeah because I think some of this might be addressed in right coming future slides yes yes I think that's a great comment great question we've got probably six more slides but covers but we were welcome to more comments go ahead and ask your question you won't wait till the end of the presentation okay yeah so just by way of again discussion location currently dormitory is a use in our development code it is permitted in the NRMU 12 NRMU DR 1 with a specific use permit DR 2 DCN and DCG which is primarily around the universities and downtown permit them by right so if again council decides that this type of use is similar to a dormitory this is how it would be laid out the specific use permit would give you the ability to review them provide additional restrictive conditions if needed and so forth so just again by way of providing you where dormitories are currently permitted you know what we're gonna wait yeah I was gonna ask one too so yeah I agree all right yeah we again for again for discussion we looked at those three separate those three cities that separate the use San Marcos College Station in San Antonio I won't go through all of this data there's there was a lot to take in but the focus and the takeaway from this slide is really that bottom row there where dormitory again if it's determined that dormitory is the said use with the revised definition parking would follow the same parking requirements density would follow the same density requirements as far as height we would consider 45 feet up to a hundred if you choose to go over 45 feet and that is 46 and above a SUP would be triggered so that's how again we're trying to find options and not just say you know this is it or this is it isn't we're trying to give you all as much information as possible to make that determination. Some of the existing requirements as we discussed earlier the parking we updated back in March we've got traffic impact analysis that again hopefully we try to address the traffic concerns neighborhood compatibility as I specifically mentioned earlier there's the special purpose overlay districts that we can apply some cities have used them specific use permit you all know what those can do and then neighborhood meetings additional neighborhood meetings we discussed at a previous work session that's something that also can address neighborhood compatibility. This slide here is to inform you that if dormitory is included as single family or duplexes because by definition a building that leases out by the bedroom again we're calling dormitory could apply to single family and also can apply to duplexes if so they would be subject to the same regulations again what those regulations are is still undetermined but consider something to consider if it's separate if it is a separate use you are affecting property owners that had the intention of developing again these type of uses or development also any developments that are currently in the process of creating or developing said property or said development would essentially be non-conforming if this were to be a separate use and then really just looking at the redevelopment of multi-family would they be more likely not to develop or redevelop that is for these type of developments if they were wanting to. Enforcement I think this is one of the most important slides how do you determine you know once a multi-family developments approved later then comes back and converts into a student or collegiate housing the only way to do that is to be able inspect these developments after the fact in order to inspect it we would need some rental registration program or some other mechanism which requires additional staff to do inspections and if it is determined that the said property did go they come in as a multi-family and then convert it as a collegiate housing and would we be required a specific use permit would we make them go through that certainly we would actually want them to comply and if so they would need to adhere to some conditions if that was the Council's direction and or if they were denied what would happen to that development so just again things to consider when looking at the question of is this a separate use. This is my last slide so just appreciate the time here again looking at is this a separate use if you all determine that it is staff has an option to use dormitory as that particular use and looking at all the different locations approval type the development standards as well as any other considerations we can discuss. Several questions I'll probably just start with one. Under the current let's see if you could go back to this slide that has location and approval at the top and has the different yeah that one. So under current zoning am I correct in understanding that dormitories were we to give direction to have this to have these kinds of dwellings be classified as dormitory am I correct in understanding that around the university under the current zoning classifications these kinds of buildings would not require a special use permit is that correct. Correct in that that's what you see in this slide however staff would provide a suggestion or recommendation that if said buildings exceed 45 feet that we would recommend specific use permit. So it would be the height of the building that would trigger the specific use permit. Thank you. I have a few comments first I think it's important to be clear on why we're even having this conversation you know with the purposes of considering this as a separate you know kind of category and it comes from my opinion the desire you know of developers to bring these large scale buildings into neighborhoods around the university it's just some neighborhoods feel it's compatible and some don't so first of all what it is I think you know if you look probably at the 26 already identified they're not single family and they're not they're not duplexes you know it's these kind of large complexes the five stories large number of units and you know I'm sure you could probably figure out where to draw the line better than I could but I don't think it's single family you know people individually renting a room at I don't think I don't think that's the issue and then given the sort of genesis of this whole conversation I don't think saying it'd be fine near a university is it sort of misses the point you know obviously they're going to be near the university that's where you know anybody would want to put them but the question is they may not be suitable in all neighborhoods and then the reason people might want a separate category so there could be a determination you know kind of by neighborhood whether they're compatible or not and I call to your attention the Oak Gateway project which I know we'll you know we'll hear about soon but you know the first thing that group did was say every area around UNT is not the same except area one is that area between two historic districts that that's you know why there was all that you know attention on you know a recent project that's being done by right rental registration and landlord tenant issues I think are very important very worthy of discussion but really an entirely separate issue so I don't think that has any I don't think exploration of landlord tenant issues bears on enforcing the idea of where dormitories can go it's a different issue those are my comments and I'm in favor of having the category we'll go Councilmember Duff and then we'll come over to ma'am Cartendon. Well you call them SROs or dormitories you know I think we can I think we can pretty well define exactly what those are and I'm not opposed to them at all what I'm opposed to is where we put them and and what I would like to see is okay we define exactly what they are okay and require an SUP to build them anywhere and of course if it's if it's down you know if it's in the area of the universities hey fine we'll approve those but you know we have one right now that's going to go in and there's no way to stop it that shouldn't be there so that's my whole thing I think I think this council has probably ignored this problem for a long time and I think we need to fix it thank you Ron do to the best of your knowledge and I it's a very big question do we have anything or have you seen anything come in that asked to be a dormitory under our current regulations not since I've been here no yeah so we've got it we've got a category here that was intended to be something I generally think of dormitories as being something that is owned by a university or by a school well both schools are under the state authority it doesn't matter what the city wants to do they're going to do what they want to do with if they own it themselves the difference between a restaurant and a bar is how much of their food sales are versus their alcohol sales we define them differently there are two different categories in our code or correct okay so to say that we can't distinguish the difference between collegiate housing and and multifamily units is is something I think people have just looked around for a long time there is a definite difference between the two and I'm definitely in favor of having a separate group yes go ahead council member Duff somehow I'm not like liking that calling them dormitories I you know that may be kind of what they are but they're not multifamily they're definitely not multifamily I like the SRO is oh you know I'm good with that so I guess and good heavens I've had enough discussion on these since I've been on council so somebody tell me the difference then what is the difference between a three-bedroom three-bath multifamily unit and a three-bedroom three-bath SRO what's the difference SRO meaning they rent by the room no we're trying to define something here and we're calling it SRO because of a management approach a business approach but somebody wants to come in and build a three-bedroom three-bath hundred unit multifamily project how are we going to tell the difference between it's an SRO or or it's a collegiate housing let's do collegiate housing or a regular multifamily project how are we going to tell the difference I'm throwing it out on the floor because we're you know it I think I know the answer for myself right and I think that's what goes unsaid a lot in this discussion it's sort of implied and assumed that the business practice is the lease by the bedroom that's what people are saying is the difference between an SRO single room occupancy and a multifamily unit okay well let's let's say that business management decision is part of it but again if they want to build a three-bedroom three-bath hundred unit complex we're going to be able to make the decision or the determination that it's either a separate category collegiate housing or multifamily based upon what criteria if we're asking for a separate category what's the criteria I'm gonna go around the horn councilmember Duff well to start with I think it's probably who who is living in those bedrooms you know I'm not sure how we figure that out but you know if you build an apartment with you know three bedrooms in the rest of the common area I mean which is what I mean it's a bedroom common area meaning it's a three-bedroom unit it's a normal three-bedroom you typically have related people they live in there you don't have you know you're not reading it out separately by the room okay now you just said something here that it comes always back to this and that is you said it depends who's living in there well if you have a multifamily three-bedroom three-bath unit you could have three students living in the multifamily and you could have three units living in the multifamily what's the difference between that multifamily unit and if it were collegiate housing it comes back to the business practice of are you leasing by the bedroom and and that's okay I mean if we want to have a discussion about because I don't know if we create a separate category is part of the application going to be are you going to provide leasing by the bedroom or is it going to be jointly and severably liable that the tenants are going to be jointly and severally liable on the lease as a whole that's the only distinction right which that has some impact I mean sometimes you can get higher rents that way if you're renting them out that way sometimes you don't sometimes you can get them the same if you're leasing it as one lease the three bedrooms with the one lease so I'm not saying that in opposition or in support of I just raised the question of are we getting to the point where we're defining a category based upon management practice and if we are that's okay but yes Councilmember Meltzer yeah so I think we are as one of a short list you know it's going to be number of units this layout you know and combined with that business practice I think more or less gets you there and I think you know we might catch a dolphin or so with the tuna but you know I think that's okay that means you just review it so that's your beat okay so what you're saying is it depends on the number of units yeah I don't know exactly what the number is but and the layout meaning this is it have a bathroom in each bedroom then basically you got suites which basically say that you have a bedroom with a bath that's what's typically called a suite okay that's different than just having a bedroom with outside with bathrooms not in the in the bedroom well I can tell you people who lease who aren't students enjoy their own bathroom in their bedroom I mean so that's not necessarily okay all right so Councilmember Armitage so first of all I'll say so I support having a separate classification other than multi-family I really appreciate this staff report and it's my sense that the answer to your your question mayor which is a good question I feel that it is it is answered or rather we're provided with a number of possible answers in the staff report itself okay and I think you know Mr. Meltzer's answer kind of summed it up very nicely that there's a combination of factors you know including you know what you're calling business practice I mean another way to look at that is use right which is can be pretty broadly defined but I think that this that that this report shows that there's a number of criteria to be to be considered but that we wouldn't have to be we're not reinventing the wheel here there are other cities that have have approaches to this and we could choose one of their approaches or do a common you know combination I think that this is a good that that definition that you just turned to it's a good real basic definition and then but that definition alone as you show you know that doesn't we can't depend on that definition alone so I'm open to discussion on kind of a number of different different factors but I do believe that the answer is in this is that this report itself okay so you're falling back on councilmember Meltzer's sort of three bullet points of the number of units that lay out and the business practice sure sure mm-hmm all right you coming well I doubt that it's all 26 of them that do this but I do know of some complexes that if you are no longer a student you have to move out that's how I've had people looking to rent apartments who were asked to leave another place so it's as long they can as long as they put it in a contract they can follow up on that you know the difference is to if you've got a three-bedroom three-bath that is a multifamily you've got a single lease on that on the entire thing if there's ever an eviction that eviction is for the entire three-bedroom three-bath if you do an eviction on an SRO you would evict per the lease you have three different leases and you would evict just one person from there so again it goes back to what I mentioned earlier the difference between a bar and a restaurant is whether it's 51 percent food sales or not that's by our code we can easily distinguish between the two I mean we've got bars that are probably 95 percent alcohol and we've got some that are you know 52 percent alcohol you know that do have a fair amount of food sales involved and we've got something on the other end of the spectrum you've got restaurants that are just barely there they're you know 51 percent food sales but that we've got some that don't serve alcohol at all so they're 100 food sales so I think that to say that we can't do it because it's a business practice is not I didn't say that I said so let's say you've got business practice is one of the elements and they lease it by they don't lease it by the bedroom they just have one single lease on it is it is it a is it and and is it are these ands are they oars are they is it you know these each one of these so I'm just raising the question because that's going to be an issue because I think like councilmember hudspeth said depending on what we define as the concrete criteria somebody's going to find a way to do a master lease and then have some kind of lease behind this I mean there's so and I'm not saying that therefore we don't do it I'm just saying we need to be very intentional about how we identify these moving forward because I don't I'm with councilmember melzer I think the rental registration I mean it enforceability will be only an issue for those who convert from a sort of standard lease arrangement because I can tell you right now the old units that have converted to a from a standard lease arrangement to the business practice of leasing by the bedroom will not have any layout that looks like the ones you're going to define for an sro it's just not going to happen they're going to be two bedroom one bath may be in one bedroom the one other one may be in the hall it may just be one bath in the hall it's going to be all over the board so that's going to be something we need to think about as well and I think and I think we can't lose sight of the the genesis of this discussion which has been sort of accelerated because of the park seven and the the issues regarding it and and the displeasure with their what's moving forward given the current zoning so I just don't want to overreact to a situation I think we just need to be very intentional if we identify neighborhoods around the area that's like you know what we got to look at the zoning we got to look at what's there do we want something like but when you start defining how these are people are creative people are creative that's not an opposition or support it's just an observation of many years so so we've got a couple of so as far as it being a separate category I think councilmember Melser you're you're on board for a separate category is that correct well I am I'm curious to hear councilmember Armitage comment and then I've got it you know I've response to it you said because you're saying thought provoking things yes you're kidding me right no I'm provoking thoughts okay all right go ahead councilmember Armitage oh go ahead yeah so you know you make a good point in building on counselor Hudson's point that you know the creature will evolve you know and I think back to when I was in school I held the lease for big house and you know they made me rent that's how that worked that's probably what they do so maybe the defining issue is number of units that are majority in a structure that's majority three and four bedroom just stick with that and and and I can I get that absolutely sure and you know in the business I'm I suspect you'd agree there aren't a lot of non-student oriented structures that are mostly three and four bedroom like that that's a pretty rare apartment right apartments are generally one two bedroom yeah depending on if they're the you know if they're sort of like an affordable housing project to accommodate yeah to accommodate some of the larger families but no I'm saying you might you might have some but it wouldn't be majority thrusts and force yeah okay yes yes go ahead councilmember Briggs so I I'm in favor of the of the different definition as well I think it's it's it's different for me I grew up in in apartments and I know I know the difference of what the collegiate housing would be so but I do have a question with this current because it looks like even though I mean our intention is not to keep these out of the city just to say that it's there is a place for everything and we just want to make sure that it has the appropriate definition and is in the right spot that that's where I'm coming from right here so just on that with the current definition of dormitory and part seven was brought up I'm curious with that zoning would that have been allowed or would that have been an sup I'm just if they were applied to come in as a dormitory dr2 I believe and dcg were the zoning districts so by definition and by this chart they would be permitted they still would have been permitted right now in that area correct and you know there there's an option to again as staff as we discussed earlier presented earlier the height was a something should be considered if anything above 45 should require a specific use permit that's again an option for the council to consider so I just wanted to throw that out there that I mean that still would have been allowed sure so if you could go back to that where shows dormitory so I want to make sure I understand what I'm reading what I'm sure here so when you say same as above the dead existing right so really same as above same as above the really only difference for parking which has been talked about as being an issue the only real difference here same as above the bedroom units that's that would still be the same right the dormitory revised is whatever we would make that criteria to be right the main difference is the height it seems like I mean the layout is different I mean I get that but because the parking is the same the unit counts the same it's the height so in some ways are we addressing the issues that were brought up as far as traffic noise parking and all that when whether it's a multifamily that doesn't meet this design criteria still can do still is required to put that much parking that those many units per bedroom and the height is different you know you have heights that don't even require an SUP current yeah that is what it is currently yes okay all right okay all right so yes councilmember Armitage so in addition to what I already said I support echoing councilmember Duff's comment that if I heard understood that correctly I support having a required special use permit discussion for every every proposed dormitory under this new classification in part for the kind of reason the reasons why that you're suggesting that because there are so many different factors in different possible uses I mean height is important parking is important there are so many different things that you know depend on the neighborhood and you know special use permit without any other definitions and requirements to ground it it would be totally arbitrary and unfair you know but with this combination of you know pretty concrete definitions and requirements in terms of parking plus a special use permit to allow for compatibility issues that you know can't always be predicted with the height if if over 45 is that oh no I yeah I actually support kind of special use permit for every for for every every such proposed dwelling because because there are so many different possible factors you know and because height is just one of those so and I'm not against SROs in general you know for me for me parking and the effects on traffic in the neighborhood is a big concern I do want to point out one thing that those people at home who read the may have read the staff report but didn't see we got a recent update in response to council members questions from staff saying that 96 percent of dormitories like this in Denton have a one car per resident if I understood that correctly something like 95.7 something like that and that's something important for people to consider too and the reason why I mentioned that is because I know that in in past discussions I'm talking you know years past that it was said well you know you wouldn't need to own a car if you live so close to the university well people do you own a car I found it interesting that we don't it seems as if we don't really have data yet on on visitors you know how frequently people living in these kinds of structures have have visitors that would be something really useful I think to collect data on you know for the for the future it for to to come up with requirements for for for visitor parking you know right now we've got the 1.25 spaces per unit plus 10 percent plus the 10 percent to me that sounds low but I you know I don't have any data to base that on so data would be great on that for the future. Councilmember Duff. Well I I think there is absolutely a place for SROs in Denton and I think the only reason we're having this discussion now is there are places in especially established neighborhoods that SROs should not be put and I think that's that's where it really gets back to it I think there's plenty of of areas to put SROs that that do not disturb a a neighborhood especially one that's been there for 40 or 50 years. Okay yes Mayor Pro Tem Ron can you go to your I think it's the last slide before the question slide with a map on it out of because on different slides you show that in DR2 DCN and DCG that they would be permitted by right do you happen to what are the colors on those? So the darker green is the DCG and I counted approximately 11 or 12 there and then the rest are pretty spread out in all the other zoning districts so the majority of the area or the zoning is DCG. I still think that because of where those are located we might want to have not as many permitted by right maybe DCG might be okay to permit by right but DR2 and DCN that you know we'd allow multifamily but you'd have to get an SUP to do an SRO. Concurring I know you personally have been through the whole gateway thing and you know that little patch of DR2 is in sub area 1 and there's no part of the description of the vision for sub area 1 that would include this so I concur that I wouldn't just automatically blank and say all DR2 is okay. Well I don't want to mix these two agenda items because we haven't talked we don't have any presentation I mean the small the gateway plan is still so and if we're going to talk about specific zoning I think I'd like to get some more information about that and some idea of where they are what they are and then by that time we may have the presentation for the plan so it sounds like to me the consensus is that to have a separate zoning or use classification is that yes councilmember Hussba. Yes I think you're right and I have one question whenever you're you're done summarizing what no I think that's I think that's it and I think we were going to be coming your staff will be coming back to us with what do they look like you know the specific criteria of how to define how do you identify them and things such as that right and so just as you just said mayor this is the definition that we would be working with as a start a building in which individual bedrooms are you know not considered you know having a kitchen offered for consideration to residents for a period so we're talking about bedrooms so leased by the bedroom rent by the bedroom so that's how the distinction I mean we went around here and we talked about number of units the layout the business management but really what you can would truly you can review against is really the the layout the number of units let's say that that definition will apply to a regular multifamily I mean individual bedroom units lacking exclusive use of a kitchen that identifies more like a whole you know not a hotel room but are offered for consideration to residents for periods in excess of 30 days you're going to have to add something on there on that definition about the business practice of how the leases are arranged because that describes that describes what well no well what I'm saying is though this debt if we're using this definition this would apply to just a regular standard multifamily unit so it doesn't have to be that that distinguishes it but how are you going to distinguish it from if you're just you can't just use that definition okay I understand yeah I'd like to make a suggestion yes okay I'd like to make a suggestion why don't we look at the 26 that we think are these animals and see structurally if there's sort of number of units and percent of units that are three and four bedroom three bedroom plus that you know they share because then I think you know you might have something durable you know that that would be harder to evade later okay council member has been yeah I can just tell you this is going to go very badly in my estimation I think the more you look at existing structures to guide your regulation for the future ignores the fact that the future changes I think mayors absolutely spot on your definite here's what here's my question in the feedback I want I want to clear and succinct definition of multifamily and I also just yeah that'll help me understand because I think your point earlier in your presentation is spot on it's going to apply to homes and so as you drill down and nail down this definition in the more detail you add the worse it's going to get it's like quicksand and so we'll dig down and get a whole bunch of detail which then will start to affect individual homeowners that are renting their homes it'll affect the residents in because they have people that are in their building for more than 30 days that's their express business model so you'll have people from FEMA that are they have that'll meet this definition and so now you're all of a sudden affecting hotels unexpectedly you're going to it's going you're going to catch a lot of people that have businesses that rent homes in this net as your and it won't achieve its express purpose I think everyone here has their concerns could be addressed by the zoning and prohibitions of multifamily in certain areas that's the key that's the catch-all that then alleviates all this detail that it's going to get circumvented and so I just want to be very clear on the record that down the road when this kicks in and people say how did this happen this is how sorry oh yeah hey Richard I just wanted to to bring it bring up a point on this slide about the single family and duplex these images were actually from at the Texas APA Brian Texas put on a session on what they called a stealth dorm and so what happened I think they had some issues with multi-family and as a result if you see the the aerial here what was happening is they were going into some of the large some of the older neighborhoods buying large lots tearing them down subdividing into 5,000 square foot lot minimums and then creating five bedroom units and then renting them by the bedroom and so I just want to I just want to put that out there because it's also something I think we should consider because you know at that first slide we have a continual continual growth that's going to happen from the two universities and I just don't want to push the problem further into if the concern single family I just want to make sure we're not going to push it further or some other some other okay it seems that there's still the consensus for a separate category with some dissenting comments or some observations however that there needs to be a tightening of what it is we're really trying to define here and that's not a criticism it's just an observation of if that's the only definition we have people come in I would like to see I've been trying to keep track in my head but to go around and see what the consensus is on approval type what different if we have some a majority for approval type SUP versus you know SUP across the board versus you know permitted automatically if you meet the recommendations versus as some had suggested you know depends on which zoning category I don't know if anyone else has been you know trying to keep track of that well and I think that's part of the I think we probably have another work session to really dive into the details of this and that would be one of the questions that we would have a little bit more data available to us on what's the zonings around certain areas are our multifamily developments required to do SUPs anyway there so I need more data to understand to answer that question for myself yeah yeah yeah and I would just I would I think that the the beauty of the of an SUP solution is that it can avoid the problems like what Councilmember Hudson was talking about I mean once you get you know it's so specific and our you know end up prohibiting so much and because we can't predict the future you know if you've got a I kind of like the idea of having a relatively yeah yeah broad enough not too broad but broad enough definition plus SUP I feel like that provides a nice balance that allows for different kinds of housing options plus meets the you know concerns of the neighborhoods and the holistic compatibility issues that for me anyway can't be nailed down to any one issue like height or parking I guess then because I know when we address this a couple years ago or last year one of the solutions was you put an SUP on most multifamily three zoning districts these DR2 DCN and DCJ so I mean an option is you also just say any multifamily I mean if you didn't have a separate category any multifamily requires an SUP because what you do is you get an opportunity to look at this to look at the layout you get an opportunity to look at the parking you get a look opportunity to look at everything right but yes Councilmember so yeah and I have to say that and you're absolutely right that that would be another option to consider that would be something that I personally would be opposed to because I mean I believe that apartments that you know just like houses that that that people own sort of fill a really important need in Denton it's not like a niche not a niche category we have 53% of our residents are living in apartments so I don't want to do multifamily by special use only and I do get emails I'm sure some of you do too that people saying I don't like apartments we have too many apartments in you know the city of Denton well you know people live in apartments and that's one housing lifestyle choice so that that's just my personal take on that that possibility well we'll we don't have to answer that question right now we can we can answer that question at the next but it sounds like consensus is direction to create a separate category come back with some very fine details of definitions and criteria and we can talk about the zoning where are the zonings around different parts of town that would be compatible or not and then we'll have to address the issue of whether it's an SCP and all of those for this type of this type of use sure we can bring that as an upcoming work session as you stated mayor work on the definition a little bit more and talk about zoning and proposal sure to the council to to give direction yep okay all right let's go ahead and take a was that it any more questions comments all right thank you so much let's go ahead and take about a five or ten minute break it is about 343. Welcome back to this meeting of the Denton City Council on Tuesday December the fourth 2018 it is basically ten till four three fifty we're moving on to our last last work session report which is receive report hold a discussion and provide direction concerning the city's homestead exemption great good afternoon mayor and members of council my name is David Gaines the assistant director of finance this item is intended to discuss the homestead exemption this is a subject that came up during our 2018 budget process so we said we would bring this back before we started 2019 process and so what we'll go over the the options regulations concerning the homestead exemption and kind of the history of where we are with the homestead exemption so here are a few just facts about the homestead exemption right now in Texas on school in all school districts is a twenty five thousand dollar homestead exemption and the homestead exemption essentially is if you live in the home that you own you get this exemption on your appraised value cities in Texas get the option of whether they want to implement a homestead exemption or not some of the regulations associated with that are once you adopt a homestead exemption the minimum value of that homestead exemption would be five thousand dollars and the maximum would be at twenty percent any decision to increase or change your homestead exemption has to be made by July 1st so as we look at our budget calendar if we wanted to make a change for next budget year for the 2019-2020 budget year we would have to make that by July 1st or we would push it out to the next fiscal year currently our homestead exemptions at point five percent or five thousand dollars whichever is greater we have about sixty five percent of our single-family homes that that take part of the homestead exemption and here's a breakdown of our total properties that are not exempt are not exempt properties of how they how they fall whether they're commercial multifamily multifamily or other non-homestead properties or homestead properties so it breaks out about forty percent commercial twenty percent non-homestead and then another forty percent that are homestead properties I have a breakdown later for some comparison but in Denton County with the Denton Central Appraisal District of the 42 cities in the in Denton DCAD seventeen of them have homestead exemption and they range all the way from point five percent to twenty percent here's a history of our past ten years of homestead exemptions and you can see it's continued to increase each year over the past ten and we're currently at about nineteen thousand homes that get the homestead exemption with an exempted value of about ninety three million dollars the rate of increase in homestead exemption from year to year correlate to the increase in growth in residential growth in terms of just number of homes number of new homes I don't have that number exactly I would imagine it's pretty well correlated as new homes come they're gonna I would imagine most for the most part about the same percentage we get the homestead exemption but we could definitely follow up with exact numbers on that yeah thanks so this slide is just simply some math on when when would you fall above the minimum and get more than with our current rate more than the five thousand dollar minimum obviously with our current point five percent the vast majority are going to just fall at that five thousand dollars you have to have a million dollar appraised house to start getting above that five thousand dollar minimum this chart lays out where those values would fall if you were at the five thousand dollar minimum and a five percent homestead exemption any house over a hundred thousand dollars would get a homestead exemption over the minimum we're gonna talk throughout these slides I'll be talking about the minimum amount as that that as an option as well there will be a caveat that I'll get to later in the presentation in regards to that the homestead exemptions obviously is one of the exemptions that we have in the city I've laid out a few of the major ones that have been decided on and that are implemented in the city that make up a majority of our exemptions the homestead exemption obviously are over 65 and disabled persons exemptions both of those are fifty thousand dollars on appraised value so anyone who qualifies for those automatically gets fifty thousand dollars off of their appraised value in addition to the homestead exemption and then this was our first year of having the over 65 freeze or tax limitation and as we've set back and we've started to analyze what that impact was we've estimated about a hundred and thirteen million dollars of assessed value came off our rolls because of the freeze which equates to about seven hundred thousand less in property tax so in total of all four the all three of these exemptions and the freeze about five hundred and seventy six million came off of our appraised value over the next couple slides I'm going to take a look at our distribution of properties and the impact that the exemption has on that for our total appraised value just for clarification so if you go back the so when you turn 65 you're you're paying that your taxes increase a little bit each year you turn 65 they reduce by fifty thousand and then freeze at that reduction currently I mean like last year that's but say you know you're sixty four say if that exemption was reduced and then you turn 65 that exemption may be thirty and then frozen there right so that is there a way that we could do that as well and then increase the homestead for for everyone else increase so increase the homestead for people under 65 yes I there there's no way to slice the homestead exemption to my knowledge that you can say this fraction of people get the homestead and this when it's stowed everybody gets the home no no no I'm saying to even out the the loss of revenue because as currently when you turn 65 you you're you're sixty four and you're you're paying but when you're sixty five you all of a sudden get fifty thousand dollar reduction and if you're under sixty I mean under sixty five you get a five thousand dollar reduction so I'm just in my mind wondering if we were trying to increase our homestead exemption for everyone else if we reduce that exemption from fifty thousand to thirty thousand and the freeze if that would be beneficial for everyone around well the over 65 we worked our way up history to get to the fifty thousand so I mean that is a lever if you if the council chose to limit that to reduce the over 65 as you increase homestead exemption obviously that would kind of get to the to I think where you're going so that's one option because I wasn't on council but I remember that I think it was increased and increased before that for that exemption well you're talking about the over 65 exemption yes yeah it was a five thousand dollar increase over five years it was 25,000 and what we did is we doubled it over a five-year period to raise it from 25 to 50 with the five thousand increment per year Tony pointed to financial officer you council member if you recall on over 65 and disabled limitation it's actually a dollar amount that is frozen that is independent of the appraisal and so if that exemption is removed I'm not sure what impact it would or wouldn't have on that tax limitation amount because that was already preset once that individual turned 65 and so we would have to research that a little bit if if the council's interested in reducing the over 65 and disabled exemption from 50,000 down to 30,000 as an example I don't know what impact if at all it would actually have since that individual's taxes are frozen on the dollar amount that was set back when they turned 65 okay going forward I would imagine that in that case then anybody turning 65 after that after that amount was reduced it would be based on that but I don't think anybody that's already receiving it would be impacted at all no it's just it's just for the people who reach that exemption in the future but let me let me just let me preface with saying that if there is a change to the over 65 exemption there may be an impact on those individuals we would have to research that so I'm not really sure well that wouldn't be my intention I was just thinking of new new going forward correct okay thank you so this is a breakdown of our properties how they're distributed for our total market value which total market value in the city is about 13.7 billion dollars and just some quick highlights and we'll see how the exemption impacts these in the next slide about 46 percent of our total market value is single family then commercial 26 percent and multi-family 12 percent one important thing to note here is about eight percent of our total market value is totally exempt properties so those are the universities and any government buildings so it's significant when you compare us to other cities around the area that we have eight percent totally exempt same numbers from the previous slide taking out the exempt on the chart to your left is our total market value not looking at exempt properties about 50 percent of our total market value and under that scenario is single family residents 29 percent commercial and 12 percent multi-family the car the chart to your right is a taxable value so the only essentially the only difference between the market value on the left and the taxable on the right are the homestead exemptions and you can see how the distribution of the tax burden shifts as we as we have the impact of the exemption so single family residents has has gone down to 48 percent while multi-family and commercial have increased and within that single family you also have some of those homes that are homesteaded and that are not homesteaded so those non-homesteaded are still bearing a little bit more burden than just a simply market value percentage and then the next few slides I'm just going to take a look at what different options as examples would have impact not only on the residents but also on the city as a whole for our revenue looking at any kind of tax rate changes estimates based on our best guess on on what tax rates might be necessary to bring in the same amount of revenue under these scenarios so under this first scenario I've taken the top chart looks at our current current exemptions and plays out a scenario with $245,000 which is our average home value in the city and a property with just a homestead exemption properties with the over 65 or disabled exemption and the homestead exemption and those non-exempted exempted properties and what with the same home value what their tax estimated taxes each year the chart below would be what those those XM estimated property tax amounts would be with a 5% if we increase our homestead exemption to 5% so about a $24 increase for properties with homestead exemptions about a $29 I'm sorry decrease for properties with homestead exemptions about a $29 decrease for the over 65 and then a $22 increase for homestead exempted properties so make sure I understand this so on the 12 homestead exemption of 12 to 98 that's the that's the 5% is that is that my understanding of that that second that second kind of um yep okay so so the non-homestead exemption property which is non-homestead exemption it's either an investment property or second home or something like that those taxes go up correct okay and that's that's that's with the assumption that we change the tax rate to keep the same amount of revenue obviously that would be a decision as we went through the budget process okay the next chart I've done the same thing instead of taking a 5% increase going up to 5% changing the minimum to 10,000 and looking at that flat dollar amount again there's we'll talk a little bit later about what our true options are in regards to to doing any exemption by dollar amount on this chart I've stepped back and said what is what is the aggregate impact of any of these changes so played out scenarios with each of those exemption amounts and said okay the top line is where we are now 93 million dollars exempt about an average tax exemption for those average homesteaded homes of thirty dollars and the approximate lost revenue if we did not have the homestead exemption for our property taxes in the city played those scenarios out for the different exemption values at 3% you can see the increases along the way and then on the right column a mitigating tax increase again just an estimate on if we were going to bring the same amount of revenue in with these scenarios here's what tax increase that might be needed to bring in the same amount of revenue so I need help me with my math sure so under the mitigating tax increase so right now our tax rate is 62 something per thousand or per hundred skis right yeah so the point oh oh two six nine if we were to convert that into our rate do we move the decimal point over one in other words we would add is that adding point oh two cents is it adding two tenths of a cent two tenths of a cent so if it's sixty two point five it'd be sixty two point seven right all right because I thought I thought we've usually said that a penny equals about nine hundred thousand dollars one penny so that's where I'm a little confused in that so I go ahead on this chart the confusion is the way I the way the chart is set up it's saying right now we're already losing five hundred seventy nine thousand based on the homestead exemption that we have okay so any as you go up the difference is what you would have to make up you have to make oh it's a three hundred thousand it's not yeah gotcha okay that's helpful thank you I appreciate that yes that's been brought can you explain how the effective tax rate uh-huh would be used to yeah how have that how have we threw that into the conversation how that would affect these these calculations how that would be factored in that's I mean that that's where it gets a little complicated the effective tax rate gets complicated because ultimately what the effective tax rate is trying to do is say you're going to bring in the same property tax revenue with these new assessed values so that's where that really is an estimate on the right of it would all depend on next year's assessed values as we start getting those preliminary numbers in and taking a guess of what the effective tax rate and what the change would be so it gets it gets tough to really to dice it that way oh I'm sorry Paul yeah go ahead I mean I'll just offer a comment and see if you think I got it right general interest in the idea of effective tax rate is to see if we can keep people's taxes the same what you were showing us as I understand that is how to keep the total amount of taxes the same but that's in order to give some people a tax cut and you're going to give other people a tax increase correct yeah yeah and I would even you know even the effective tax rate the effective tax rate is intended to keep kind of the average person's tax rate the same even with the effective tax rate it could have a different impact on different residents so to kind of clarify your point a little if we if we increase the homestead exemption it likely would increase it the net result would end up increasing the effective tax rate to some degree but it would have to see how it how it shook out so again I ran this this the same scenarios if we did these by the minimum exemption instead of by a percentage so talked about the minimum exemption a few times and here's that that important caveat is that in September the state attorney general came out with a ruling that can be read to say essentially you cannot increase that minimum you cannot use that as a lever for your homestead exemption to say instead of a five thousand dollar minimum we're going to go to a ten thousand dollar minimum you can only alter the percentage of the homestead exemption we sent out you know once that came out and we sent in a question to DCAD to see if they were under the same belief they had the same opinion they got back to us as recently as today saying you know it's still somewhat outstanding and didn't give a final ruling necessarily our staff recommendation at this point would be if we were going to have a change to the homestead exemption would be to change the percentage given the kind of cloudy future of the of the going by dollar amount but it would definitely be open for discussion so here's a just a summary of a few cities about 11 cities around us seven of them have homestead exemptions four don't you can see how they range from from us at the point five percent all the way up to twenty percent on their homestead exemption and then you can also see those other exemptions that we have where we do utilize the freeze and we have that fifty thousand dollar exemption for over sixty five and disabled persons. So our options moving forward would be for council's consideration would be to option one have no change option to have a amount we want to get to in the future and gradually get there option three would be to before July 1st increase our twenty nine nineteen homestead exemption and then option four would be wait until the twenty nineteen twenty twenty budget process make a decision at that point knowing it wouldn't be effective until twenty twenty you know you're you presented all this on the assumption that we want to hold revenue sure but I I don't know speak for others but I think that the interest in increasing the homestead exemption was to create a tax cut but not to create a tax increase so that would mean a revenue reduction and that's why I asked you on the notes beforehand given the amounts that we're talking about to fund the cuts up to three hundred fifty dollars look like you know are there some good candidate options for budget reductions so that we could responsibly say yeah we do want some people these you know if we do we want some people that have a tax cut we don't want to make a tax increase so we're willing to not do what there's some you know relative are there a few options that you know might be good candidates well I think that the point today is that is to make sure that the council understood that even if you know if we if we continue to be in it which I personally like to use the effective rate is sort of our gauge any any increase in this has a redistributed you redistribute the dollars that you need if you keep the same I'm not going to answer the question I've asked staff not to answer that question right now about cutting services because I think it's so arbitrary two months into the budget and we don't know what our needs are going to look like here in six or eight months you know if in fact the council said hey you know we'd like to we'd like you to go ahead and put the budget together and just assume that you're that you would lower the effective rate you lower the taxes collected below the effective rate to take this into consideration that becomes what we budget to you so it really gets down to are there ways you can cut your way down to that number absolutely be service reductions you cannot fill positions or we would certainly find a way to get there it's somewhat counterintuitive to the request that we get on almost a weekly basis to increase funding here to increase funding there so that has more of a cumulative effect you really need to know what you're looking looking at so this is why we've broken down the supplementals a little bit differently that going into next year with you know council driven requests things you'd like to see us consider increasing funding in the budget next year we're listening and keeping less construction requests and then there's obviously other issues for the departments and I think it has to be considered in one conversation it's just too arbitrary and capricious to say that right now we're not knowing what the field goals are but there's always a way to get there is my answer. Council Member Briggs. So I was in favor of increasing the Homestead Exemption to 5% or and I still am more up more yes 5% okay from 0.5 to 5% what it's 0.5 yes to 5% okay all right so all right okay but if if there's more people that if it goes to anything I mean 3 if is that part of the gradual discussion to go 3 and then 5 and that definitely would be an option for council if you wanted to get to 5 ultimately to okay to kind of step your way there well I'm open to hear what everyone has to say on that of course it's your council member so 5% is kind of what I'm looking at to and I'm trying to decide between the option 2 and option 3 that is the kind of the gradual versus the 2019 increase to desired amount and I had a meeting a while ago with Tony who educated me a lot so my knowledge of this issue went up significantly studying the backup doing my research went up and then after this presentation I feel like I know a little bit more I don't yet feel confident enough in my knowledge to be able to decide with absolute certainty between 2 and 3 today but I know that I would I would like to to hear more and not necessarily for all of council but maybe to have another another one-on-one you know another class really with with Tony to educate me even more to be able to decide so you know but but so that's kind of that's where I stand now not quite sure whether 2 or 3 is the best approach and wanting to know more about the pros and the cons of those those approaches but the 5% really looks like a good number to me and a lot of my questions have to do about with effective effective tax rate yes I'm from option one do nothing I think it is the it's fair across the board and just quickly just researching some stuff and looking around so one the comparisons make me crazy as we know Frisco's on there are you know something that equivalent their average home price is $390,000 you know and and so it's not apples to apples and so but then also I just what this what this shows me and I thank you it's great presentation what it shows me is we have got to we have to get better English we have to continue to work on building up our commercial tax base because our homeowners are showering the lion's share of the burden and that just I think we can do better by homeowners by right sizing that distribution so that's what it that's what it tells me and so as we continue to do that it'll pass down relief to our homeowners just by proxy thank you yes well I tend to agree with councilmember husband to redistributing in a different way all you're doing is now taxing those who don't own their home or the small businesses at a higher rate if you're looking at printers the you know if the entire market cost goes up on taxes rent will go up for all of them to match with it most small businesses who rent space are on a triple net lease which means that they pay the cost directly so it just doesn't make sense to me to to redistribute where that tax burden is and I agree that by keeping the overall tax rate at the lowest possible rate we are encouraging more commercial to move into the area and therefore in the long term it's it's going to be much better for our community that's memory oh well yeah I'm just going to say that as we encourage the commercial and ask them to come in our community then we need to stop incentivizing them so they can pay their fair share thank you don't I guess I'm not really sure why this came up but I see no reason to make any change I'm option one well it'd be nice if this was as cut and dry as the comment seemed indicate that it is this afternoon because it's never that cut and dry as far as incentivizing businesses to come obviously that's that's a little bit more complex than that redistribution it's a little more complex than that I think the best thing that I've heard so far is that the city manager is committed to whatever the council decides that he is committed to the budget process so I will make I would make this suggestion or this recommendation because I understand about keeping it the same because in the end really if you're able to keep your tax rate at the effective rate that doesn't mean that everybody's gonna pay the same rate it means some people are actually gonna pay less taxes it all depends on how their properties are assessed through the Denton Central Appraisal District and how those appraisals go up there is a 10% cap on homestead valuations so they can't go up but just for the sake of discussion because I don't think we I don't have enough data to really make an informed choice yes I see the data here and I see that a 3% if you go back to the difference I see a 3% is a difference of $15.78 a year if that how I'm reading that correctly that is 30 right now if it goes up to 3% it's 4578 so they're saving 1578 correct and if it goes to 5% it's $46.31 so for me I'm open to looking at what the impact would be at a 3% but only in the context of how does that look in the overall budget I mean we can't make this decision in a vacuum because as the city manager said we've got all kinds of requests that come in you know we've got all kinds of things that we want to cut we've got all kinds of things we want to raise and it's different for different council members as far as their priorities and their interests so it's hard to look at this sort of in a in a vacuum and I would just put this out here for the council to give direction to the city manager let me first ask you to to do something like that where you're if you're given sort of direction or request say hey go through your normal budget process with the assumption that what would it be if it's a zero nothing but if it's a 3% is that is that a double budgeting effort or is it is I'm just I don't want to I don't want to create a situation that no it's not you know typically the way the budgets put together is Tony will let us know you know this is what I'm projecting this is what he's projecting on you know really in the in the general funds property taxes sales tax and then we come back a second time because we know he's hidden money under the couch like Councilmember Hudson said but typically what we would do is have a have him run a scenario that should the council choose to increase the exemption up to 3% you really have two options you've got a truly you've got enough calculated effective rate and then you're going to have one that should you choose to not have that redistribution take place you're going to have an even lower property tax rate what I'm seeing right now is that's probably going to be a dangerous thing and lead to it could lead to some service cuts next year based on what we're seeing with sales tax trending right now so we can certainly do that he would give us two different numbers to budget to and you could have that policy discussion and what we've discussed is teeing this up for you more in the April May time frame so we don't you're not in that situation that council brings was frustrated last year that it was July already and it was too late so we can tee this up a couple months early and just say well this is how it looks it's very preliminary what do you think yeah we're happy to do that okay and there I would just point out that you know yes it's it's three hundred thousand one but then it's a cumulative impact in that five-year forecast there'll be growth likely to that as well so it's not just a one-year no I understand multi-year sure for here forever and that's and that's something that would be presented in this kind of yep these options I'm okay with that only because it it gives us options that we can make decisions on based upon the data that's going to be much more clear it's still an assumption it's not you know it's based upon preliminary certified values right I'm interested to learn more about the sales tax trend that you mentioned but so that's what I would say that's what I would propose I just throw it out there to see if we can find some compromise and collaboration to to do that that's my husband yes I think that's fine to take a look at it done right because if you never know a train might bring us a whole bunch of money back to I know that that that may happen so we'll see and that could subsidize things all right Councilmember Amater yeah so I support that approach so it says I understand it so down the line we'd be looking at a kind of three percent scenario and a five percent scenario and what those numbers would be and then is that what we're talking we can certainly do that sure I was thinking three percent if we do both I just don't want to put a heavy burden on the budgeting process so I have to rely heavily upon your guidance in this regard it's really I don't think it's a complicated calculation it's really you've got right now we're predicting you know three different dollar amounts you could set the property tax levy at and you'll be able to see the Delta there and what that means overall in the budget all right yeah that that would that would help for me to be able to see you know some comparison I would like to see that and you know I would like to I'd like to second you know Councilmember Briggs's comment about about tax incentives because homeowners well all taxpayers you know they do and small business owners they they watch when when when we give out tax incentives to to big corporations and they think what about me that's just a fact and then I also want to mention that when we're talking about homeowners struggling to to to keep their homes and pay their other expenses with stagnant wages and and rising cost of living we're not just looking at homeowners in a vacuum homeowners affect all other aspects of the economy including including commercial and even including who's who's using city services and and when so that's all but thank you thank you for this report and I look forward to seeing the next step in the discussion so one question Mr. City Manager at that April May time frame because I think if I understand from the slide if there's a decision made it has to be made by July to really incorporate it in the upcoming fiscal budget is that right I think it's July July yeah so given that will you have enough idea in the April May time frame June that given whatever is chosen what impact that may have on services or supplementals or is that still is that still a stab in the dark I would say we're probably somewhere between eighty and ninety percent confidence level at that point okay well that's Tony will get weekly or daily briefings on what's happening up until the day you actually approve the levies so there's there's not gonna be a time where we've got perfect information but but yeah we can get within a reasonable amount all right great great all right fantastic councilmember Melzer I just want to say that where we iterated to would have been a very good response to my request it is exactly what I was after that we will look at the spending impacts of the decision mechanistically absolutely thank you okay any other questions on this presentation staff has direction yes all right fantastic that concludes our work session reports we don't have any closed session do we do we don't right so we will then can adjourn this work session at four twenty eight and then we'll be here at five o'clock excuse me good evening everyone and welcome to this meeting of the Denton City Council on Tuesday December the 4th 2018 is about 631 and please stand with me if you're able to pledge allegiance to the US and Texas flag okay police appreciation police appreciation day y'all come on down y'all come on down anybody wants to come down where's the chief chief is here somewhere all right fantastic we are here to give a proclamation for police appreciation day so who can tell us a little bit about that who's going to be the person to tell us what police operation is police appreciation day was started some time ago and what we do the association we go out beg borrow steal anything we can to help us with our little project we feed the entire police department breakfast lunch and dinner I'm every all the police department not just the policeman but all civilians also we have door prizes drawings continually all day long and it's just a very good time when the association and the public and the police get together and everybody enjoys it and we love doing it all right well I'm gonna let you all introduce yourself so I'm just gonna pass a mic around and if you would introduce yourself Shane Kaiser thank you mayor for that it's okay only the chief is over here Mike issue please volunteer and Melissa Grissom and also volunteer Wayne Grissom Mary Beth Cottingham volunteer right right Bonnie Bassett Larry loose I'm a volunteer Clarice loose I'm a volunteer Debbie issue volunteer Bobby Smith Chris summit Preston puller Trevor Taylor Mike Christian Eric Beckwith Frank Dixon Mark Bergstrom thank you all for being here you know interesting story is for the citizens police academy my niece was a volunteer there many a few years back Courtney and she went on to the Houston police academy and now is a police officer in Plano so I have a history with you guys and she just loved that organization so much and it inspired her to go on to be a law enforcement officer so thank you all so much for that what you do for our police department this is a proclamation by the mayor of the city didn't whereas the city of Denton police department has two hundred and twenty eight dedicated police officers administrators and staff who daily serve our citizens and whereas the upcoming holiday season will call for added efforts on the part of our police department that results in greater safety of our city and whereas the citizens citizens police academy alumni has chosen the date of December the fourth two thousand eighteen to honor the police department with a day long reception of appreciation and now therefore I Chris Watts mayor the city of Denton Texas to hereby declare and proclaim the week of December the fourth two thousand eighteen as police appreciation day it's not that we I guess it's the day of December the fourth thirty boys who's drafted these things okay so it's December the thirteenth and it is it will be held where the police training center which is off Hickory there by the police department and it's from basically sun up to six a.m. to ten p.m. so let me start over on the day of proclamation I Chris Watts mayor the city of Denton Texas to hereby declare and proclaim the day of December the thirteenth two thousand eighteen as police appreciation day in the city of Denton and urge all my fellow citizens to show their support and appreciation to all the men and women in this community who have dedicated their lives in the field of law enforcement let's give him a big okay I'm gonna give you a chance to say anything if you want to have you know the Mike's not broke okay well I want to introduce you to our new chief Frank Dixon and I just want him to say a few words if you like but just welcome to Denton thank you mayor thank you all for coming out thank you for this proclamation and thank you volunteers it's really amazing the cooperation that we have with our volunteers here in Denton they work so hard and they donate so many hours so much of their personal time to help us serve you so a lot of times in the background these men and women are out and about doing so many things literally donating hundreds of hours a year to help keep you safe so from all of us at the police department to all of you thank you very much I highly encourage anyone in here if you haven't been to the Citizens Police Academy please come see us Shane Kaiser that's your name because you don't know mine but I know yours yeah right please see Shane get involved and come out and see us and thank you guys very much thank you all again thank you so much thank you okay our next item on the agenda is presentation for members of the public if we could review the procedures for addressing the City Council please 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 on to agenda item 3b which has received scheduled citizen reports our first one will be from Vicki Oppenheim regarding the Denton community market just state your name address and your time will begin good evening Vicki Oppenheim 600 Winfield Street here in Denton thank you very much for the opportunity to speak tonight about the Denton community market I'm here in response to the presentation I made last time in October when I was asked to present a proposal to the council related to financial requests so that's what I'm here about tonight I did distribute a proposal to all of you before Thanksgiving I think you've had time to read it and had some questions asked of me as well 2018 was a great market season the family friendly activities as usual we see Santa there we also had a lot of weather issues this year a very challenging year but on the days that we were open we had thousands and thousands of visitors very high sales great networking going on and it's really a community hub but the heart of the request is funding for staff right now we are paid well below regional averages or national averages for nonprofits or markets both of us have to have other sources of income to make do and certainly in my job I'm essentially full time and Rachel Weaver has to limit her activities as well she has other work as well so we're asking for more support from the city for our staff funding given the current situation I have these figures up here but we are a large market for DFW and we have lots of work to do year round to keep it going we also are asking for promotional banners for the downtown we've yet to have those any year that we've been open so how will these funding positions make the market better well they'll provide comparable pay so we can support the civic institution will enable us to focus on quality and expansion of our programs and will assist in the long term sustainability of the organization I want to point out the USDA denied a grant to us this year because they questioned our fiscal sustainability and that was mentioned several times yet it was stated that the proposal was very strong so that tells me there you know even the USDA recognized this I want to remind you that we have significant impact economic impact on the city economic impact study that was provided to you and millions of dollars per year is 1.5 million estimated just for salaries alone but we've been supporting businesses of all types startups minority-owned women-owned businesses and we've generated many brick and mortar as I've already discussed the most exciting study that was just done recently is by analytics I want to repeat there was 46 percent of our visitors are from outside of Denton this is based on cell phone data there's a concentration of visitors within one hour of the market visit in the downtown as we can see by this map there are quite a few hotel stays happening between 2,100 and 3,900 estimated host hotel stays and as based upon where people actually slept at night between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. on Fridays and Saturday nights and they stayed in one of the 22 hotels in Denton so this is the most significant study we've had in terms of our visitors and it shows that we have a very big impact all around for the city now I still have some time going back to the pay requests we're asking for a base pay of fifty five thousand for me and four and forty thousand well I should say fifty two for me and forty two thousand for the coordinator this would be a base pay it's not including benefits or anything like that but it would be similar to the model and compel where they have a director that has this base pay of fifty five thousand thank you any questions council member Melcer thank you for your thoughtful presentation what do you feel would be the likely prospects for the market if this funding doesn't materialize well we continue to grow every year we have more and more visitors we have more and more vendor applications to process we have more activities happening just more activity all around and it's taking more and more staff time so I am concerned maybe even about next year will Rachel and I continue making this pay and doing this amount of work it's a hard I I'm very dedicated to this market because I'm one of the founders and that is why I'm still doing this I know that we have significant impact on the city many different levels economically socially culturally and that's why I continue to this work but how much longer can I continue juggling this job plus having to get other income and keep going I mean it's just it's hard Rachel is same deal she has another job as well we both have to juggle many things and the work continues to grow so I am concerned about the long-term sustainability of this market yes okay council member breaks hey Vicki I wanted to thank you for what you bring to our community and the value that you add and I do recognize that I know a lot of our community members do as well it is on do I need to speak louder yeah okay so I I appreciate all that you do for our community and I value the market and I would like to request that this presentation make it to City Council for a work session so that we can speak more about it all the request great thank you customer armature yes so I was going to request the same and I too wanted to thank you and also to to highlight as you already have in your presentation the role of but then community market is a small business incubator and your success in doing that and what a great low-risk way it is for someone who has a small business dream to start out and an experiment with their product and then to see a blossom and grow into brick and mortars and other kind of businesses is exciting I was wondering if you would anticipate if you've noticed the directional the new directional signage around town and if you would envision if you have envisioned community market being on on one of those signs definitely other cities have done have their markets on directional signage and we definitely see that yes well that's that's great thank you thank you councilmember husband thank you thank you Vicki I just want to commend you want to you know I think the world of the organization and I appreciate the hard work but I just want to touch on the the technology you use to track those stays and just I appreciate you understanding how much that data helps and and kind of leading in that way I really do envision that being utilized in other areas it's a little scary to understand that you're capturing that data and then and then pinging that phone later to understand where that phone is it's a little scary but I really do appreciate it and I was just going to ask you to speak to how that came about just for those that may not understand that technology well so in tolytics is a company that conducted this study and they they they had this day which there's consent to have this data it's not just you know randomly obtained so and they conducted the study I then took their raw data and created this map of the day that they provided I should say not it wasn't raw form it was in a process form so I had no idea who people were or anything like that but they yeah they get the pings from the cell phones certain apps that are that allow this and so this is a sample a one percent sample of the visitors and it was mapped and grids the air the entire point five radius of the market was mapped in grids and then the numbers of people were calculated per grid and it because of the detail of the data yes we could see what at what times different people were in different places so that's why I can definitively say there were that many hotel stays for market visitors because we actually knew where they went by the pings from their phones from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. Friday nights and Saturday nights and and I personally geo-fenced as it's called geo-fenced the areas of those hotels and then we see it we could see where those people were after visiting the market or before they visited the market so it's there's a lot involved with this you know but it's very exciting data it's probably the only study in the United States done on a market like this that I'm aware of and it's really definitive it's showing that we have people coming to the market and then going to the downtown and they're there afterwards they're shopping they're dining they're walking around they're doing all kinds of things and they're in our hotels too yeah thank you very much thank you any other questions Cena thank you Vicki I appreciate it the next speaker is Pat Smith regarding Dallas Dinner Table as an initiative of the Denton Together coalition good evening ladies and gentlemen I'm Pat Smith 1417 Cambridge Lane I along with Serena Eckert are members of the Denton Together coalition the coalition was formed at the request of the mayor in 2015 to work on human relations within the city of Denton and we're an informal group we're not a city committee or commission but we have great support from Sarah Kukler who works in the city manager's office tonight we want to talk to you very briefly about an initiative that was first started last year in Denton called Dallas Dinner Table Dallas Dinner Table was an initiative actually started by leadership Denton or leadership Dallas back in 1999 to promote race relations in the DFW area and it focuses on a dinner once a year to encourage communication about race relations and the impact of ethnicity on relationships educating participants on perspectives held by others and empowering citizens to develop relationships with people from a variety of different racial and ethnic groups and involves of all things having dinner around a table limited to ten people that is led by a trained facilitator last year Denton hosted one at the home of Judy Smith someone I have connections with and that went very well we had facilitators come from Dallas to host that or facilitate that dinner this year it's going to be held on Monday January 21st 2019 from six to nine thirty p.m. that's also coincides with the MLK holiday and it is an initiative of the coalition this year we're going to be hosting four tables one by Denton Bible and three by faith United Methodist Church and we're encouraging individuals churches and organizations to either participate it's coming to dinner it's free or host a table and you can register at Dallas dinner table dot com our goal is to get forty to fifty folks in the community to participate this year and grow this over time and eventually have a dinner table that we operate as part of the coalition but we're going to continue to rely on Dallas dinner table for the time being and if you want a free tour of my mom's house and free dinner sign up and hopefully you'll get a sign here it's randomly assigned you don't get to pick where you go but you got a one in ten chance of eating at mom's house any questions any questions comments councilmember Melcher what you want the planning to serve I'll be serving bacon rack pork tenderloin but I also have a vegetarian dish thank you okay councilmember Briggs I'll just say I've been there and it is really worth the visit to go to Judy's house thank you for bringing this to our attention this is really great so we got plenty of time to register it's easy and it's free okay so either as a participant or as a host as it is that most you have to pay for you have to cover the cost of the meal fair enough yep you bet okay fantastic any other questions comments thank you Pat you're welcome appreciate y'all coming out thank you all right our last scheduled speaker as far as scheduled citizen report is Ed so regarding gas wells and the future good evening everyone I'm speaking on behalf of the board of directors of the Denton drilling awareness group the board asks that you seriously consider measures to drastically reduce future public health and safety risks presented by oil and gas well operations within the city based upon information from the Denton central appraisal district the majority of the economic benefits of shale gas operations in Denton are distributed to mineral owners who do not live in Denton while those absentee owners reap the benefits those of us who live here reap the environmental and public health liabilities and costs local residents comprise only one percent of the total appraised value of mineral assets and the largest share of that one percent belongs to the city of Denton ultimately the severity of negative health impacts that residents could experience depends on how close municipal governments allow gas well operations to be located to protected uses such as homes schools daycare centers athletic fields hospitals house bill forty which you know is the legislation that banned Denton's fracking ban does not ban the city's authority to make moral ethical and precautionary decisions protecting the welfare of the residents we the board of the Denton drilling awareness group asked that you consider an ordinance that would establish a policy whereby the city will no longer lease or sell city owned mineral rights for drilling and fracking and further that the city explores the feasibility of reclaiming the ownership of mineral rights to city property that has yet to be drilled it is in the best interest of the residents and for a healthier future of our town city rather that the city acts proactively to diminish the potential health and safety risks that scientific research has already documented so I think we should all hope for the best obviously but we should prepare for the worst thank you very much couple questions oh and could you just state I know you're out to state your name and address yeah Ed so 1620 Victoria Drive and down thank you a couple questions Councilmember Meltzer I'd like to request an informal staff report along the lines of what the speaker suggested we've captured all that okay thanks Councilmember Armitage I was going to request the same so thank you for your comments thank you thank you any other questions comments thank you everybody you too thank you Ed okay now we go to agenda item 3c which is the additional citizen reports which these are called open mics so we've got two Diana Leggett you're first up state your name and address and your time will begin and just as a reminder because these are open mics we're prevented from dialogue or questions just because of the Texas Open Meetings Good evening Diana Leggett and 19A Lean Street Denton good evening everybody I'm here tonight to strike a blow for plain common sense and transparency everyone agrees we should protect health and safety but do we really know what safe gas well setbacks actually are here in Denton because I don't think we do we've had a very well-meaning capable elected official puzzling over it for years now and so far we've arrived that it's safe at a thousand feet from a well to a house but it's also safe from 250 feet from a house to a well let me repeat that the legal person here would like for you to kind of hear that again our rules currently say that it's safe living at a thousand feet measured from a new gas well to a house but it's safe at 250 feet measured from a new house to a gas well well I don't think that that explains things very well so we I don't think we really know we could guess from studies done in other places for instance my research shows Colorado elsewhere in Texas and that it also suggests that living near a gas well may also be associated with fetal death low birth weight preterm birth chronic rhinocytosis asthma fatigue and migraines but I understand that someone might be unwilling to give up a use of a big chunk of property or unwilling to pass on good development opportunity when the science from one formation may not even apply here now that's a good reason to do a study and I hope you're considering doing that but actually that's not why I'm here tonight until we have the science in hand so we can have rules here in Denton that make simple logical sense can we agree that the potential risks are serious enough that people should at least be told if they're living near a gas well then they can make up their own minds and I don't think that's asking too much what I'm talking about is a simple disclosure form that would be supplied to any tenant or property purchaser by the landowner or manager within a thousand feet of a gas well disclosing the simple fact that the distance from the dwelling place to the well that informs the potential new occupants so that they can make their own decision in possession of the facts and it should protect the landowner from some potential liability my law firm is very happy to drop that disclaimer I have three attorneys that are very interested in this and I'm done thank you thank you any questions comments thank you very much appreciate our last speaker for additional citizen reports is Leanne Todd if you'll come down state your name and address your time will begin hello I'm Leanne Todd I live on 3316 Rose Lawn and I am a very concerned citizen in that I take daily walks up and down Rose Lawn which is a beautiful aesthetically pleasing residential neighborhood and I came upon a bulldozer bulldozing down trees right next to Rose Lawn cemetery I stopped and asked what was going on and it's a proposed site for a concrete batch plant no one in the Dena neighborhood association was informed no public hearing was provided until that moment I looked up a few laws in relation to that like the well for one that didn't capital improvement program does not show that well okay let me back up they said that they are doing this to provide concrete for widening of Fort Worth Drive it's approximately about one mile from Fort Worth Drive from the batch plant which means concrete trucks and 18 wheelers are going to be running up and down Rose Lawn and on Bonnie Bray for a period that they said up to 27 months from 6 a.m. to 830 at night p.m. during that time according to the codes of Denton temporary concrete or asphalt batch plants they are supposed to be on the site in which they are located so they're not on Fort Worth Drive they're on Rose Lawn this is with Article 2 area and height regulations codes for Denton Texas temporary concrete asphalt plants the other concern is that the maximum duration of a permit is not to exceed 60 days no more than three permits within a 12-month period and they're running it for 27 months also the Texas health and safety code article said that applicants must publish a notice at least in the newspaper general circulation municipality where the plant is proposed a description of public comment process time and location of a public hearing and a deadline for filing written comment and no public hearing or notice was given to the community so I am very concerned about this just popping up the trees already been taken down the trailers are already in place and not to mention the air quality and the dust and the noise affecting that neighborhood and that is zone residential and I would ask that this be put maybe on the agenda in the future and anything be done to figure out what's going on with that why we haven't been informed and why they are exceeding the limits of the law according to Denton code all right thank you thank you appreciate that that concludes our citizens reports I do want to recognize leadership dent with the chamber of commerce is here to observe a city council meeting if y'all could just raise your hand and wave and I told you I would promise you something so I've got to read 80 cards into the record so y'all can't leave until I finish reading these into the record I'm just teasing I'm teasing thank y'all for being here all right we're going to move on to our next agenda item which is the consent agenda chair mayor pro tem thank you mayor I move approval of the consent agenda except for item a all right Councilmember I second that Councilmember Briggs yes I had a comment about the consent agenda so while while there are some funds most of the consent agenda items are our hot funds and I I think that most of them are well-deserved but personally I think they could have been distributed differently we just had a presentation from community market asking for help and on the hot funds they get just six thousand dollars more than the dog days which is just one day a year so for me that is a little concerning not I mean I'll say I will also say right now I'm not a fan of the sponsorships however I still plan to vote for this because there are some deserving organizations here but I would like to ask the hot committee to start looking at which events really do encourage hostels hotel stays and start giving larger amounts to those thank you we have a motion in a second for the consent agenda item let's vote on the board motion carries 7-0 and we pulled agenda item a which now will be an item for individual consideration so consent agenda which is now item for individual consideration for a consider approval of a resolution of the city of Denton creating an anti-bullying and anti-harassment policy for all city facilities and programs and providing an effective day City Council members I'm Sarah Kuehler director of public affairs the item before you tonight is for a new policy and this would be an anti-bullying and anti-harassment policy for individuals participating in city programs and for our city facilities it would prohibit bullying bullying on a number of factors that you can see here listed on the screen this language is consistent with what is currently in other city policies including our equal employment opportunity policy during the work session this afternoon a question was asked by a council member if gender expression could be added in to that language and I just wanted to go through some of the terminology and some quick research I did this afternoon from the human rights campaign in terms of the definitions so gender identity is something that is internal to someone in terms of what their their gender and what they feel their gender is whereas gender expression is that external facing expression of what of how they show their gender so just trying to give an example of that gender identity identify as a female my gender expression could be the same or it could be different my gender expression could be feminine and how my appearance my external appearance it could be different my gender expression could be masculine and just in terms of how I dress or a haircut or otherwise and so just just kind of the terminology there they don't necessarily have to be the same between gender identity and gender expression so the there could be an option to specifically include gender expression in the policy this is a proposed language if we were to change it just to clearly say gender identity or expression so two options it can for the council to consider leave as currently written prohibiting on the basis of gender identity I also did find an article from HRC that said generally in policy and law gender expression could be understood to be part of gender identity however HRC would encourage that it's specifically listed just in terms of communicating with the employees or public that it is gender identity or expression so that second option there for City Council could be to add specifically gender expression to communicate that if this were an option to be considered staff would also recommend recommend updating or other city policies so that it's the same language consistent across all policies and that could be brought back at another future City Council meeting day happy to answer any questions you might have sure thank you councilmember Meltzer I'm happy to stand for taking a stand against bullying in protection of all Dantonites and I'll move approval with the second option you know and yeah leave it at that okay councilmember Armitage I second that motion thank you and thank you for that putting together that presentation so nicely last minute councilmember Husspeth yeah I'm going to in advance of discussion move to table till our next meeting because I don't think it's fair to rush this together everything else in this presentation was given weeks in advance and posted in advance and to day of adjust the language without the opportunity to have citizens look at it that would then look at the packet look at what's coming to to kind of do that unbeknownst to the everything else that was noticed I think is problematic so that there are processes that would allow this to come before and it did not so my ask is that we table it till next week so that it can be posted and as it's going to be written and it does give me a little heartburn that she says she quickly researched I think that's just not how we want to do things if we're going to we're talking about changing all policies for the city I would like us to take some time and make sure we get that right so I'm taking you're making a motion to postpone to a date date certain is that or table mr. city attorney which date certain exactly tables for the same meaning but he's meaning postpone until the next meeting day which would be December 11th okay that's right so we do have a motion to postpone to a date certain of December the 11th councilmember or mayor pro tem Ryan I'll second the motion to postpone okay so that means that this will come back as an agenda item on the 11th is that correct mr. city manager mr. city attorney yes okay okay so obviously a motion to postpone takes precedent over the main motion on the floor so we will take a vote on that so the vote that we're going to be taken is for a motion to postpone to date certain of December the 11th which is the next council meeting and this will be placed on the agenda so let's could you go ahead and hit your motion yeah and then mayor pro tem if you could just so we could get the electronics squared away all right we have a motion to second to postpone agenda item 4a is that right yeah 4a let's vote on the board please uh motion to table uh it just just blew by me i think it passed yes is that right yeah so it passed so we'll be taking this up on december the 11th so thank you appreciate that all right we'll move on to our items for individual consideration agenda item 5a consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton authorizing city managers sign an interlocal cooperation agreement between the city of denton and the university of north texas regarding traffic signal operations during unt special events yes thank you and we have i believe recusals from council member armature and council member melzer good evening everyone my name is pre tem deshmukh traffic engineer for the city and i have a really short presentation talking about uh signal operations during events around the unt campus so typically unt hosts about between 40 to 50 special events um in some of their facilities around the campus and um during these events before the event and after event there is a lot of traffic that's coming in attending events primarily it impacts two locations two interchanges one is at north texas boulevard at 35e and then the others two are bonnie bray at 35e currently these locations are manned by unt police department and uh there is no signal operation or special signal timing plans during these events so they are actually out in the field in the middle of the intersection guiding traffic as people come in the proposed operation what we're trying to do is upgrade the signals first so that we can remotely communicate with the signals install special equipment cameras that can monitor them at a facility of the city and once we upgrade those intersections then we can allocate staff typically two hours per event time to operate these intersections so that police officers may still be present but they will not be in the middle of the intersection they can still be monitoring the situation but not necessarily in the harm's way or a much safer situation so we're trying to improve the overall safety i'll be happy to answer any questions any questions seeing none council member briggs i'll be happy to move to approve may approach him a second we have a motion and second for agenda item 5a let's vote on the board please motion carries five zero going on to agenda item 5b consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton authorizing the city manager to sign an amended interlocal agreement between the city of denton and the university of north texas and this is pretend they spoke traffic engineer uh this is the item for parking and when i-35 was widened recently and that whole interchange with north texas uh over crossing that you can see a little piece here by tex dot as part of that project this lane extended all the way back uh up until kendal this was a big safety concern we coordinated with tex dot and uh this entrance was completely closed at this point it's closed for traffic to go through and connect to the furniture road subsequent to this expansion project um and previous to that also this property in this particular area fronting kendal was uh is unt property it was acquired uh around that time on this particular parcel but this already is unt property uh they are also repurposing this building into some administration so they are adding staff that will go and work in this building what they're noticing here is there is an issue with the parking there is a high on street parking demand it has created a pseudo cul-de-sac dead-end street that people park as they wish you can see down here they're parking in the middle of the street and leaving the cars these are mostly students going to unt in order to improve the situate i'm sorry about that in order to improve the situation uh staff is recommending that this parking be um move it to you empty for enforcing the parking to clearly in this area and also make it a permit parking only there are access driveways here uh safety wise um they will be better uh it will be better to monitor them this is a big picture plan i just want to make sure that um council knows um anything in blue is currently enforced by unt around the campus this is parking enforcement what they are wanting to see is add this little piece that's south um and both the properties are on either side is unt so staff is recommending that um we authorize unt to enforce parking and make it permit only parking council member husband thank you mayor i was in that area and i was surprised to see that it's permanent parking only just to the i'm assuming that's north of the of your can you help me understand and if i'm explaining to a citizen that it's a public street but they can't park there the it's almost like the university's using it can you help me understand that logic so the the way it is it's more of how do you better manage the parking uh the parking is an issue around the campus and using public streets it has gotten to a point where um safety is a big concern at driveway entrances driveways are blocked at street corners the street corners people are parking really close so if unt has better staffing to enforce this parking that's why um there was an agreement that was made between the city and unt and i believe it was back in 2006 that parking enforcement around the campus will be taken over by unt and some of that is being converted to permit only parking it's better management of parking as well as safety did you have a follow-up yes sir yeah go ahead okay and yeah you can take me off so i have a problem with that so mr city manager i guess my ask would be uh that we look at a permit for or ask unt to agree to a permit for citizens that would indicate them as citizens or so i just i have a problem with the city street being permit only for the university now understand policing that's different if we put a sign there and they manage it that's one thing but to say that a citizen can't park on a city street gives me heartburn uh and so um we'll figure that out but that's why uh that's where i fall sure you bet mayor pro tem thank you mayor uh the map shows uh everything in red is requested but the only only thing we're approving is this section of kendal for dead-end street is that correct correct it's only that small portion of kendal this is the long-term plan if and when it happens and it'll be separately presented in front of council and we haven't done the analysis on some of this this is an older map okay thank you okay any any further questions seeing none share would entertain action on this agenda item if so desired all right well i'm going to call it one more time looking for either a motion or a second all right the motion dies for a lack of a the agenda item dies for lack of a motion all right move on to agenda item 5b oh yes yes 5c i mean yes go ahead and call them back in we're going to agenda item 5c which is considered option of an ordinance of the city of denton authorizing the city manager or his designee to execute a contract of sale buying between margaret hudnall and the city oh okay all right before you start your presentation council member has to has to recuse himself okay okay good evening mayor council members paul williamson capital projects before you tonight is a contract of sale for a tract over on bonnie bray at the corner of bonnie bray and scripture street it's part it's uh impacted by the bonnie bray phase four uh widening project the tract here and processed orange uh council was briefed on this uh matter on november 13th we're bringing it forward uh we met with the staff has met with miss hudnall and she's agreeable to sell the property for 250 246 980 which is 16 above appraisal and staff recommends accepting the counteroffer okay any questions for staff mayor protem i'll move approval all right we have a motion for agenda item 5c we have a second i'll second oh sorry i didn't see you got some embrace seconds all right we have a motion to second let's vote on the board please motion carries six zero agenda item 5d consider adoption of an ordinance authorizing the city manager to execute an agreement between the city of dentin kiwanis club of dentin breakfast and mayor protem will recuse himself and you can go ahead charard should be coming back here so mayor city council tony puenta chief financial officer this item is for the allocation of six thousand dollars of hot funds for the kiwanis club of dentin breakfast the kiwanis club of dentin breakfast um specializes in improving the quality of life of children they host a number of events throughout the city to promote emphasis on human and spiritual values citizenship development patriotism service they hold a number of events sponsor a number of youth events across the community this particular request is for six thousand dollars for their annual turkey roll bicycle race this this is held in november so this would be for november of 2019 it's held in the northlake area near the immaculate conception church and all these funds will be used for advertising again with hot funds hot funds can be used 100 for advertising so it's well within those requirements and it was also approved three zero by the hotel occupancy and sponsorship committee that that's my presentation unless you have any questions any questions councilmember melzer yeah just had a curiosity why why didn't this go on the consent agenda because he had to recuse himself mayor protem is uh oh yeah yeah yeah yeah councilmember briggs um so i will uh motion to approve and i'll just mention that this uh turnout for the event in november was really really high and i assume that next year it will be even greater great thank you councilmember hudspeth second we have a motion and a second for agenda item 4d let's vote on the board please motion carries six zero if somebody could retrieve mayor proten um agenda item five e consider an appeal of the historic landmark commission denial of an amendment to an existing certificate of appropriateness for the expansion of a mural to the front facade of a local designated landmark building good evening mayor council richard canoni development services uh this was the item this item was continued from the last council meeting so i have just a brief uh just a brief recap this is a request on an appeal where historic landmarks commission denied a certificate of appropriateness for for a mural on the front side of the building or the the west side as you can see here in the picture there's three criteria they they either have to be at least one of them in order to deny it and those being if there's an adverse effect on the external architectural features of the of the landmark external features of the properties in the block or the historic district as a whole or the future preservation maintenance in use of the historical landmark or district i do know that the the applicant is here and also has a presentation okay all right any questions any questions for staff seeing that okay yeah who's going to be making the presentation oh yep coming down and before you leave if you could since this is an item for individual consideration usually we need a blue card so if you could just fill one out because we knew we'd yeah no we're good yeah we're good state your name and address erin palito 1209 piping rock lane i appreciate you guys having me i appreciate you tabling uh the the topic as well i was in a recording session with an out of town artist and i couldn't get out of it um so i appreciate being able to share and stand for questions uh today um i do want to give a little bit uh of backstory just so you know why we got here and one of the hot button issues about um this this whole mural and i respect that um i served on the hlc for six plus years so i'm i'm familiar with the code i'm familiar with the process um i'm on the cvb board as well in gdac i'm a musician in town for a long time uh there was a very much an artist uh versus us versus them i think type of relationship and me joining uh hlc was really a way to to try to to cross that aisle i didn't want that to be the case there were people talking about my band midlake and i wanted to know who those folks were and i appreciated it was one of the best decisions i ever made because i think as i've gotten older and have kids and a wife and home now it's really made that path a lot more of a connection between the city and the artists of the town which i do appreciate um with this effort we had actually gone before hlc last november 2017 with this project at the time it had only covered uh the north and the east uh facades of the building as you know um i'm also an owner in barley and board just caddy corner from andy's and we wanted to the the window panes or the window frames uh had become really dilapidated peeling and just just not really pretty and we wanted to go ahead and try to get those redone sand them and paint them we did that we got a lift that was brought out as you know when a lift is brought out it takes up a good chunk of parking spots um and we wanted the lift gone as quickly as possible obviously um before that work was done um i had the idea with the artist as well to continue this mural um to the north and uh sorry to the west and south side of the building um to do that the artist had said it would take one or two days i asked the gc who was doing the work on the barley and board um windows if there would be any extra time from the time that he had allotted uh the company that we had rented the lift from to squeeze this in this project in when i was found out that we would be able to do that the artist was available he he travels he's very busy he's done uh murals from canada to barcelona he's a dentonite which is really cool um i was able to work that out and said okay there's one big step that i need to to get in place i directly went to roman mcallan with hlc who i've worked with well roman's been one of the more uh just knowledgeable proactive um preservation officers that i've ever worked with and i just really wanted his insight i went before him we were both very optimistic in the fact that we could get it administratively approving because we got the rest of the mural the main mural um approved uh unanimously and so we said yeah we could probably get this administratively approving i i went ahead and submitted the coa or at that time mr polita if i could just because i know uh i think with applicants they get additional time uh is that correct yeah no no you're good i just wanted to make sure so that okay the public understood and we understood here that i believe that as an applicant of the appeal i mean i know in public hearings we do so um i'm just going to go ahead and make a decision as the chair that we're going to give you the same amount of time thank you if anybody has an objection to that they'll have to deal with me about it thank you yeah um so um roman took some time he had talked to staff there was some new hlc members i had already turned off of hlc i'd spent my time and he said you know what i think it would be prudent if we talked to staff at least you know probably should go before hlc and i said i i'd mean no disrespect i i've the the kind of the the ball has started rolling it's been in motion the lifts cost a lot as well just to deliver it doesn't matter if you have it for a day or 30 days so you know the blame is is on me you know for trying to save money to get a lift out of there that was taken up parking as you know when there's construction it affects everybody affects you know the mobility it affects business i wanted to get that out of there and i told roman i said will you meet with staff i said absolutely i'll meet with staff met with staff met with roman told them you know about the project told them you know basically what we were going to do that i meant no disrespect i will go before hlc of course and from my time on hlc just from my heart sharing my vision i i would have hoped that you know we could see just reason in the matter in the bigger picture of why i was doing this and at the same time expressing that if they denied it if i went through every opportunity that i could you know exhausted all types of avenues that we'd paint back over it if that was the wish of hlc or the council or whoever went before them and long story short a long story longer probably they basically approved the south side but not the west side to that which i put in my appeal you know all all sides of the building are equal they're all in public view and i felt that anything that we were going to pose as far as code on one side we should do to all of them the essence of the project obviously is that of a 360 degree mural so i felt that it compromised that integrity in the vision that we had in the artist of course had as well um i'm going to go through this and i'm i promise i'm going to go through it quickly um and i won't go through everything yeah if you could because i how much time jane did we yeah just go through it real quick we're good yes um i know you've seen uh some of this already but you know some of the experience that that we've had you know with with the mural um has just been really awesome i don't know if you saw what it looked like before um but you know we really had you know a building that just was in disrepair it did not look good it needed work done on it that wasn't something that someone told us or asked us to do or gave us any incentive to do we wanted to do that to beautify that building and have the community be involved we replaced the whole wood facade with mahogany wood replaced the custom doors that are on it and engaged in in a mural that that has been getting just community involvement and pictures being taken in front of it wedding promo pictures just families in front of it it's been really neat to see that there's a north texas daily article with dan actually painting the mural um this guy i can't say enough about him he's he's here today as well he's 10 plus years here in denton and done murals you know really all over the world and we have him to call our own here in denton texas so it's it's cool to have that um uh you know as far as you know some precedent that exists already being on hlc i was able to approve two murals both on historic landmarks one being at the front door when you get off of the a train two murals there on the greater dent arts council building and then also just across the street at the fire department the monolithic structure honoring 911 and its victims so and that is at the front of that these are some murals that you see around the world a couple of which are 360 murals i think it's a really neat aspect especially in a downtown area to breathe new life um you know in our uh actual all right city of denton property appearance guidelines you know this is really supported this was something adopted in 97 that the renovation of these historic advertising painted directly on the building surface is encouraged along with what this is a creation of a large-scale mural as a form of public art and that of course they should be professionally applied and restored which this was as well it it gives an inherent sustainability and preservation to the building itself it gives a quality life these are things that were done with government buildings back when the new deal was put in that one percent would go towards art it promotes interaction and civic participation it involves the community a big part is is the banner that we wave here in town of being an artist city that we support the arts i feel like this is an opportunity to not just tolerate the the adventure but but really celebrate it and embrace what our artists have been given to us i feel like we're going to be back here in 50 years when we're all gone trying to preserve this thing and make sure it stays and something that we celebrate uh together so i'm asking you um you know of course to to appeal um this denial and and let this remain um i do sincerely apologize for the process that that is my fault but i want you to know that there was reason and heart behind that and i meant no disrespect absolutely uh council member briggs hi thanks for coming tonight um so yeah i just had a few questions and more of a comment because um so i am disappointed that the procedure didn't get followed um but and i honestly i didn't know where i was going to land um because that is really important we have those procedures in place um to protect those buildings and um restore and make sure that um the integrity is there um and the appropriateness but hearing that you did go um to staff and i know that's not part of the process but it may have given you a false sense of of security and um so that also is is on my mind right now and um so you did get semi-approval and the hlc was kind of confusing so i'm looking for a little bit of clarification so that one night um or in that in that denial did they deny just the front and approve the side at the same time correct okay so that was two different two different votes but right also the potential to paint the whole thing came up at one time is that well it was these were two different coas in the sense that at november 2017 at that time it was just the north and the east side when i came back it was to extend it to the west and the south side and that full coa was denied but then there was an amendment made to just leave the south side and that's what was approved okay councilmemorometer um i was wondering uh well actually this is it's not a question for the applicant so maybe if um well yeah let's get through the questions for the applicant and so councilmember melzer oh okay so any more questions for the applicant i wasn't done oh councilmember very yeah i wasn't finished so i thought you were no i i just wanted to know because i know that you did do some other restoration on the building if you could just go over a few of the things that it's not just about the mural yeah sure um really the main other um repair was was that front facade and i will tell you digging into it because you saw some of these historic pictures um where they had pulled some of that apart whoever went back in and put a wall they just didn't do a really good job and the contractor had to go in and put framing up because there wasn't even frame there to then put the mahogany wood back up there um so so yeah we we also painted the the columns those are original columns there's a transom windows behind the awning which we we replaced the awning from that that that green awning to this this black one here and you know the mural and of course the inside of the the window um frames as well okay thank you okay any more questions for the applicant thank you sir i appreciate it thank you you bet councilmember armature i had a question for roman mcgallen how did you know you started getting up before i i even called you up um so yeah um i i i was wondering if you could speak to um your your comment uh from a comment you made um that's recorded in in the minutes of um of uh one of the hlc meetings on our backup where you say that that paint is just paint from a historic preservation point of view if you could if you could explain exactly what you mean by that well it it it is and among preservation professionals we don't really concern ourselves with paint and often preservation commissions will get accused of having people or choosing people's color for their homes or what have you so we've learned uh and although this isn't just paint it is a mural uh a big work of art um but from a preservation point of view the the building they'd actually restored some of the uh the stucco as well on this and paint is is not um really a threat to historic buildings historic buildings have a lot of other threats and paint isn't one of them a lack of paint on a wooden structure yes and then it's important to note on our square that um if we do pass the design the the downtown denton square um uh guidelines and that we've been talking about that will say that you you cannot paint a brick building that's been unpainted a historic brick building that's been unpainted so most of our buildings on the square are unpainted brick buildings and um i would think ideally in the for as long as i would like to see it they'll stay as bare brick they'll be repointed and touched up but so you wouldn't see this everywhere but the idea is paint isn't a problem yeah and and that is and so just to follow up and so the reason why being because the thing that is being preserved in this case is not um the uh the surface but the actual architectural structure itself yeah whereas the texas the texas store commission said in this case this building due to its current condition not having many architectural uh features that are preserved the only features really preserved are the cast iron the four cast iron columns which are rare on our square um the rest of the building the masonry and the stucco date back of course to we don't know i've never seen the building with bare brick but it may have been bare brick when it survived the fire of 1890 um but since it doesn't have the original two over one double hung curb windows with the curved sash at the top and it doesn't have the the pressed tin cornice that was once there um for now in the future with the building there one day those could be but that would be awesome to put back all of those details they would be magnificent but until then uh the thc design people said you know we would have approved this work if we had seen it come before us great and so uh so is it is it your sense then that the um uh the denial uh was based and maybe there's somebody here from the historic landmark commission he's speak to that if that's possible um but but having been present oh am i allowed to connect yeah no yeah i just we're not going to i don't think we're going to relitigate the hlc decision i just you know if you've got questions as you asked him about the paint and his opinion that's great yeah yeah okay it's yeah so no i um so is it your sense from having been present at the meeting that the decision to deny was um was based on the uh the fact that the the applicant hadn't uh gone finished going through the that was a small part of it there was a discussion in fact i talked to the chair uh afterwards when i noticed in the video it did it was a seven or no the chair actually was a little confused because there was a mix up over whether we were doing the side or the front and so actually the chair was in favor of this project and there were a couple other members that expressed favoritism towards it but it was a little bit of a long discussion i think by the time it got to the end they just took a vote and that's where we got it okay thank you thank you council member melzer i'm just gonna you're welcome to stand um sure go ahead so uh i think it's disingenuous well no let me see the first thing first i like it i do like it um doesn't offend me personally i think it's acceptable to me personally but that's not the only consideration to me um i think it's disingenuous to say uh that that it's only paint and that's not a consideration when we made the decision that we the city made the decision that it needed to go before hlc it was only ever just paint so if we don't have jurisdiction over paint it never should have gone before him but but apparently it did have jurisdiction and i asked for some research on it and significantly affects the appearance it's not just paint it's a mural a mural that i like uh that having been said i believe that we have this we have the historic landmark commission for a reason they're duly appointed uh they're concerned with the appearance of the square uh there's no evidence that they erred and i'm going to vote to back up the hlc even though i like the mural i like the applicant i like artists but you know uh we can't just you know in my mind for me flat our processes and hope that we get a good result in the long run uh so that's where i stand council member uh hudspeth thank you yeah i think the process allows for the appeal and so the process is playing out i think the confusion uh on the night of the 70 vote helps me understand a lot because for those that did not review the uh minutes you have four carryover members from the original painting to the consideration of the front of the painting but you have a 70 vote uh to not allow the front of the painting so you have four people that kinder in limbo that voted to allow the painting but then turned around and voted against the painting and so that to me is a clear indication and speaking firsthand to some of those members uh is it was just confusion on on what they were voting for and not wanting to have to repaint the entire building so i i'm okay and i don't think it's one or the other i think i'm absolutely in support of the historic land commission i think i absolutely they do exactly what i would ask a board member to do make the decision as though it's yours own it don't don't say hey i'm going to get close and defer to city council but own that decision but ultimately where i draw the line is i think the system is flawed in that it's one building so the historic land commission is tasked with making the decision for that building not parsing it out in the sides not saying hey this side is more important it's one building make the decision for the building and move forward and not doing that to me is the flaw and so when you're the code is for the entire building and so to say that one side of the building is allowed to be painted and not the front side is is problematic for me and that is the flaw not so much the decision i think they're absolutely entitled to the decision and do what they're supposed to do and so for me that is kind of where i would ask others to kind of see where there's an opportunity to correct our processes and i'm even open to holding allowing it to stay developing our plan for the entire square and then coming back and and revisiting where it is because until that fence one building down is correct because i have pictures of it and it's in bad shape i mean that go look at the fence and it is in bad shape i mean it's it's plywood it's chipping it's the weather's getting to it and so there's some there's i want to have a plan in place to to move forward with our square as a whole and so and absent that some kind of building standard i'm not willing to parse this building into four sides it's one building one set of rules they allow the they were okay with the painting on one side so i believe that to be consistent with the building okay and i see the whole request to speak lit up and we've gone all this going to this last time when we postponed it so i just ask that you if you have new comments to go ahead and make those but if we can avoid saying what we've already said and getting into a big debate up here because i think we all know where we are but so councilmember armater and we do have a movement and a seconder that's that's but i'm not going to call y'all until we get through yeah so i would like to since we have some members from the historic landmark commission here may i i just don't i don't think that's prudent to to come and and they've made their decision and to try to go back on that i don't think i don't think we need that oh no i i wasn't going to ask them to go back on that just to ask but no no that's fine that's fine okay sure okay because i know that we we struggle sometimes when we have people giving public input if they're from a commission but that decision has been made and so i would just assume let's move on with the discussion with the council and keely just keely just said there's nobody here from the commission so i assumed that there was all right so anyway yeah so i will just say um and yes i did mention this at the last meeting but this is it's a i just want to say i i remain convinced that um yes i respect the historic landmark commission i respect the process as councilmember hutzpah said that this the appeal is also part of the process um and uh and so having looked over the minutes and uh and studied um everything before us i i support uh the uh the applicant's appeal on on the grounds that um that uh the uh paint on on the wall the surface appearance of the exterior wall is not the thing being being preserved um that decision would would not be mine were it not for to make were it not for the fact of the applicant's appeal so i'm not trying to interfere with with um the historic landmarks commit commissions uh right to make that decision um but but i i feel pretty strongly about that uh and and i do happen to uh also like the mural uh and agree that it that that whether i like it or not is it is irrelevant okay thank you councilmember uh death well when i first looked at this uh it looked like it looked like i like i really liked it because it's it i mean it's carrying right on around the building i see no reason to to not approve this okay councilmember briggs well for me since everyone is kind of talking about where they are um i had to ask my cost myself you know what are we voting on are we voting on the process and and if it if he you know violated it well you know or are we being punitive for that or are we voting on on the paint which um is supposed to not meet criteria for for denial um and so if it's two different votes you know um which i think that that we are um i i am very disappointed that the process didn't get followed but i also don't think that the paint is um a criteria for for denial um and i do value the hlc and the um historic structures but i also think that a lot of the comments that i heard is that you know this is going to set a precedence you know if if we allow him to to get away with this more people are going to take advantage of the system and continue to do this and so i feel like this might be a larger conversation for us to have for policy sake um in the future so that's just i want to throw that out there so so mayor pro tem if you could indulge me just in a couple comments thank you um i love the mural no question about it beautiful what a what a change to the square and so i think we have a way that we can fix this and stay true to the process um and also stay true to the policy because i believe next week or on one of our next agenda items we're going to be considering design criteria or some kind of criteria for downtown is that correct some some kind of design standards for downtown is is on the next agenda item i believe it's going to be in february oh did we change that yeah we move back okay all right so then i'm going to say this uh i think um i would just assume um this is going to sound really crazy but instead of approve this outright i would say let's postpone the appeal let it stay until after we consider the design criteria on the building because it may be that this council decides that this is really okay on on the square on the front part of the square i think that's been most of the the concern is the front part of the square the facing part of the square so instead of trying to figure out we've got a either make him paint it back which i mean or leave it there when in just two months we're going to be talking about policy decisions on that criteria i just think we just sort of let it let it ride for a little bit you know let the bet ride and see what this council decides on the on the policy because i understand council member briggs about about the policy and about you know uh doing something and you know the old adage you know it's easier to get forgiveness than permission but i also understand that there's an appeal process uh that we afford applicants with the historic landmark commission and other things to come before this council so i guess when i weigh all those factors and when i think about the time that it takes it's not offensive if if if we get to the point where we have design criteria and we decide we don't want murals on the front part of the buildings facing the square if this appeal is still open then we can take it up at that time and make that decision because if we make that decision as a body then we're saying something i just think we're too close to a more policy decision to i don't even say punish or reward but just to have this kind of discussion on this when we're so close to making a more permanent policy decision so that's what i'm for i mean if we have to take a vote today unfortunately i would have to vote against it only because of that reason because i think we should wait until um we have the opportunity to set more permanent policy and so that's where i am so council member or mayor pro tem i just needed to say that but i thought we were hearing it next week so that adds a little bit of a wrinkle to it uh extending it a couple months but i'm i'm still okay with that mayor pro tem just i'm sorry point of order if would a motion to postpone supersede further conversation no no we don't we there's not there's no motion on the table right now because i haven't recognized the the motion the movement or the seconder which i will do that but what i don't want to get into is an endless loop in this discussion i mean i think we've got all the facts out on the table council mayor pro tem i've not heard from you so i certainly want to recognize you but the other people who have queued up i'm going to recognize the movement and the seconder the next thing and so we're going to go from there and figure out what we need to do so mayor pro tem thank you mayor um i agree with most everything that's been set up here i agree with council member melzer that you know it there is a question of the appropriateness against the square um the process wasn't followed but this isn't punitive against that uh this is about what do we want on our square and i definitely agree with the mayor that because we've got this coming forward in the near future we thought it was going to be next week it's going to be a while back it's not going to hurt any of us to leave it until that point um and so i know we have other motion and uh pending but uh a motion to postpone would would also supersede those so i'm going to make a motion to postpone to an event certain of after we have uh reviewed the reviewed and or um approved the downtown square uh criteria's yes council member so i'll second that motion with the expectation that we'll get some input from hlc on that process yes yes i just wanted to add to the motion as with any ordinance that comes before your consideration there's always a possibility as council will not adopt it so would you add to your motion of whether the downtown design standards are actually adopted or not approved or adopted by council that'll give us some certainty i would say until a vote is taken on the downtown standards whether it's an up vote or a down vote fair enough that's good do you second that restatement of the motion yes i do okay all right so we have a motion in a second to postpone to an event certain which is the consideration and a vote up or down on the downtown is it design standards what are what are they called design guidelines the downtown desired guidelines so the mayor mo mayor pro tem made the motion and council member meltzer seconded the motion so let's vote on the board please okay the motion carries five to two so the motion to postpone um was approved all right i don't think we've taken a break i think we need to take about a 10-minute break let's take about a 10-minute break no was it the dent city council on december the 4th 2018 it is 805 i just realized that we missed a vote on that item that didn't show up on the board so we're gonna have to revoke but that means we're gonna have to go back and discuss this whole thing over again i'm just kidding i'm just kidding i'm kidding all right so uh do we need to remake the motion or do we just need to call the vote we call the vote just to recall the vote that's all all right so we're recalling the vote for the motion to postpone to to an event certain etc uh on agenda item five is it e yes five e okay all right so let's vote on the board please well oh okay uh paul if you'll hit your there you go thank you it's it says motion to adopt that motion to postpone the motion to postpone to event certain passes five to two all right so we'll go on to agenda item six i'm sorry five f consider approval of a resolution of the city council of the city of denton appointing a primary representative to the denton county transportation authority board good evening mayor members of the council mario ken is our assistant city manager excuse me um over the last uh month or so uh both of the uh dent representatives for the dcta board have resigned mr huckabee and mrs bloom um they resigned back in november of 2018 and uh we have a meeting coming up on the 13th of december and so we had presented uh to see if the council had any nominees to name a representative to the uh dcta board represent denton because of the upcoming meeting and so yesterday at the at the council uh luncheon you all had mentioned two names one was sarah bagari and the other was rick wolfelk and so um we're here to see if either one of those two um individuals would like to be if you would like them have for them to be your nominee for the uh primary representative to the dcta board in the past we've had an alternate member what we're asking for is just uh to name a primary member to the board and then we can come back the following meeting or at a at the next meeting or a following meeting in the near future to name an alternate member to the board if you so choose all right did were there any more nominations councilmembers so i had made a nomination but but that was not for the the primary member it was for an alternate okay so i just want to clarify thank you i appreciate that yeah so we're only uh appointing a primary member so um so the chair would ask are there any more nominations than the one that the two that have been presented um this evening councilmember amater okay thank you any um so the first then we'll go ahead and move toward for the votes on the nomination oh councilmember hud councilmember hudspeth yeah i mentioned it yesterday as well i don't know when that's coming up but i want to have at least have an understanding of the appointment is this is that part of the motion how long it's going to be appointed i know there's a year vacancy but is that a part of the motion or is that just assumed that it's going to be the entire year i think there's two answers to that uh the first would be to initially uh fill out the term mr huckabee however um we are currently working with the cta on legislation of how the board would be comprised and should that pass it could be a more like a seven-month appointment so at this point that's in flux depending on uh whether we can reach agreement on the board composition councilmember briggs yeah that that was going to be another question of mine like is this um is it if some members are uncomfortable for the full year is it possible to say um interim like for for i guess so many until that decision comes up do we have to be that specific or will we just address that topic when it gets here well i think also um it's my understanding that the board members that we appoint to dcta board serve at the pleasure of the council so the council could at any time make a decision to to change that board member or if the board member has to or needs to they can submit their resignation and then we would be approving someone else so i think we have some flexibility with that in conversation with whoever wins the nomination i don't know if it has to get that specific okay is that sound that's correct okay all right okay so uh councilmembers so the first nominee that was presented was uh sarah baguerre yes sir uh okay councilmember melzer yeah i would just like to say that uh i believe sarah baguerre to be an exceptionally talented person uh who would uh likely succeed in any job we put her in uh you know that having been said i'm gonna reserve my yes vote for my nominee but i would certainly have no qualms if her nomination succeeds all right thank you sir all right so um councilmember briggs go ahead well i i know if we needed i needed to make the motion but i also wanted to um speak about sarah for just a moment sure um so i i motion to um i'd like to nominate sarah baguerre um she was on the regional transportation council and the mobility committee and for the full city council for two years and while she was here she fought for a better system then in dca and i know she will do what is best for the denton riders um as a um as a board member some people asked why we were nominating her and i wanted to go on record and for me personally she's not being nominated to dismantle dcta as some people have mentioned and it's just the opposite um so we all know that there are issues and um and she has already reached out to the community for ideas um to bring in to see what she can do to help make it better and i am glad to hear that the alternate alternate position is open so that more people can um fill out applications and we have time to look through those as well and um i think that if by not putting anyone in that seat we would be doing a disservice to our citizens by leaving that um that seat open so i uh would like to nominate sarah all right council member armater i second thank you yes and i i share your sentiments council member riggs about uh uh miss baguerre and and i believe that she uh has indicated that she certainly wants to work closely with this council to understand the council's needs and the city's needs on public transportation and how she can be a voice for that representing us at the dcta board so i appreciate that um okay council member melzer do you have another somehow these are staying up on the council member i'll take it since you gave it to me i share her passion for bus shelters for transit dependent people council member hospice thank you i too am going to uh end up voting for if we get there the the person um council member melzer put forward but um it's no no slight against former mayor former pro tem and for former council person baguerre uh and moreover i would ask staff or i'll do it in concluding items but i just think this entire process has been a bit rushed um understanding if you go to dcta's website you'll see that it still lists mr huckabee so we're putting someone in place before they can update update their website to me is an indicator that either they're slow or we're fast either way uh it it it warrants a little more conversation before you put someone in a position for one or two years or period of time so i look forward to the alternate discussion and maybe a work session to to again just slow down make good decisions and evaluate properly okay all right let's um we have a nomination for a motion and a second let's vote on the board motion carries four to three thank you thank you we'll now move on to the public hearing portion of our agenda and let's see you're gonna have to help me mr city attorney so 6a has been postponed but we still need to open the public hearing i believe and continue it is that you can do that or re-notice it well is there anybody here that had come to speak on agenda item 6a okay all right so what i'm going to do then is i'm just going to go ahead and open the public hearing and anybody here that wants to speak is is welcome to speak and then we'll continue it so we don't have to re-notice it to the date certain that they had that they had wished so uh we don't need a staff presentation i believe so i will call agenda item 6a hold a public hearing consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of dent texas assigning initial zoning classification and use designation of neighborhood residential 6 nr 6 with an overlay on approximately 118.04 acres of land generally located north of east mckinney street west of south trinity road we don't have a staff presentation at this time but i will now open the public hearing so anybody wishing to speak at this public hearing is certainly welcome to come down state your name and address and your time will begin my name is nancy corrison i live at 2908 oakshire here in denton i just recently found out about this um this situation and uh i understand there would be 1300 mobile homes in that area if this is approved is that correct i don't know um i think there's several there but that might be in combination with the ones that are already located there well that's what's going around the neighborhoods and uh i just think that it listed several cities in our area that were not allowing mobile homes at all to be started up and considering that denton is looking at growing our city and keeping it prosperous and making a really good home for our college students and our citizens here i just think that is not something that we want to have that many mobile homes in this area and i'm very much against it okay all right thank you anybody else wishing to speak at this public hearing for agenda item 6a all right so do we need a motion to continue to continue the public hearing yes sir all right and does that need to be to a date certain or event certain or i believe the applicant requested a date certain january 8th january the 8th okay all right uh mayor pro tem i move that we uh postpone or continue the public hearing i guess would be the proper word we continue the public hearing to january 8th 2019 for agenda item 6a okay council member melzer i second all right so we have a motion and a second for agenda item 6a to continue the public hearing to date certain of january the 8th 2019 let's vote on the board please motion carries seven zero we'll now take up six do we need to even call 6b since it was the sup the sup is related to the zoning so since you opened the other one i would recommend all the same process yes especially with all those cards yes okay you're right um so we'll open up agenda item 6b hold a public hearing consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of benton texas approving a specific use permit to allow manufactured housing park with conditions on approximately 126 acres different acreage generally located north of east mckinney street and west of south trinity road so we don't have a staff presentation but i will now open the public hearing this is the sup associated with the zoning that was requested prior to so if there's anybody here wishing to speak again on be or on this agenda item 6b come forward and state your name and address and your time will begin and we will continue this one as well to the to the date certainize my is my suspicion anybody wishing to speak okay all right uh mayor pro tem i move that we continue this public hearing 6b until january the 8th 2019 council member melzer second all right and just as a note um if i noticed the acreage was different on the sup and the zoning so it's okay i don't need an explanation now but just make sure as it comes i just want to make sure that's if that's the way it is okay all right so we have a motion and a second for agenda item 6b to continue let's vote on the board please motion carries seven zero now folks these are the cards that were for those agenda items hey there's probably guys there's probably 80 to 100 cards here that i'm going to have to eventually read into the record so we're sparing you this evening uh all right we're going to go on to agenda item 6c which is hold a public hearing and consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas approving a specific use permit to allow for multifamily multifamily residential use as part of a mixed use development on approximately 31 acres this one i believe is also being requested to be postponed but i'm going to go ahead and open uh i've called the item uh there's no staff presentation i'm going to go ahead and open the public hearing for agenda item 6c uh anybody wishing to speak on agenda item 6c come down state your name and address and your time will begin anybody okay and so when are they wanting this postponed to january 15th january 15th okay so probably need a motion to continue the public hearing till january 15 councilmember melzer i move that we continue this item until january 15th is that sufficient for continuing the public hearing continue the public hearing there you go until january 15th all right okay thank you which is a certain date it's also a date certain i don't know why we like to say yes that's right uh mayor pro tem all right we have a motion in the second for agenda item 6c for continuation to january 15th for the public hearing let's vote on the board please motion carries seven zero agenda uh agenda item 6d hold a public hearing and consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas regarding an amendment to the dent development code amending sub chapter 35.3 procedures by adding a citizen participation section it says this item has been withdrawn oh am i oh okay i needed to turn the page so we don't need to um that's just been pulled all together that's not being continued it says it's going to be all right good great okay so agenda item 6e i notice a uh notation that staff has postponed this item to a later date does that mean it's does it need to be renoticed or do i need to open the public hearing what's the status of this particular one and is there anybody here for agenda item 6e okay good evening mayor council richard canoni development services uh this happened uh this project was actually uh dual noticed um so it has not yet gone to p and z but it will be renoticed uh when it goes back to when it comes back to council okay so we're pulling this off altogether together it doesn't need to be open okay all right so 6e we will not consider agenda item 6f hold a public hearing consider an adoption of the city of denton regarding a change in the zoning classification from neighborhood resident residential nr4 to neighborhood residential mixed use nrmu 12 and i'm going to go ahead and open the public hearing on that so i don't forget to do it thank you uh mayor and council members uh cindy jackson with the um development services department this is a request to rezone approximately 20.7 acres from the nr4 neighborhood residential district to the nrmu 12 zoning district the um site is generally located west of lane west of lane south of mckinney which you can see along here and at the terminus of trailhead right here current zoning map as you can see the site is zoned nr4 the proposed zoning is nrmu 12 which as you can see would be a continuation and extension of the nrmu 12 that's located to the north of the site here you can see the proposed concept plan the applicant is proposing uh townhouse development is 612 units per acre they are going to be selling these condo style the site will actually be plotted as one lot instead of having townhouses on in each individual lot because of that the fact that they're all on one lot we are considering this as a multifamily per the dentin development code standards it doesn't meet the requirements for townhouses however they are going to be sold separately at condo style do do we not have a condo type of regulation in our ddc no well that's probably something to look at okay all right okay as you'll see the way the site is designed there is a significant grade change from the perimeter of the site to the center here approximately 28 feet and so the roads will go around circumvent circum navigating the the peak so to speak now when we look at uh zoning changes we look to see uh we have specific criteria for approval and specifically does the request conform to the future land use plan and will there be adequate provision of transportation water sewer infrastructure when looking at the dentin plan uh 2030 the site is designated as moderate residential under future land use plan uh the intent of this is to promote single-family housing on small lots with a density of between four and 12 units per acre the applicant is proposing six dwelling units per acre the types and uses of scale of development permitted in the nrmu 12 district conforms with the goals of the moderate residential designation as noted the nrmu 12 district permits single-family housing on small lots that is consistent with the future land use element the uh maximum of 12 dwelling units per acre permitted in the nrmu 12 is consistent with the future land use element and the district will actually provide a transition between established single-family neighborhoods that are located to the south and the more commercial uh higher density that will be are located along mckinney street as noted previously this is a continuation of the nrmu 12 located to the north the uses permitted in the in the nrmu 12 district are consistent with the uses that exist in the area day today which are more moderate density residential uses as you can see nr6 and nrmu this is zoned nr4 however we've got a church here there is a multi-family development going here and this property over here is actually an electrical transformer site um i already covered that we sent out notices uh within 200 and 500 feet of the site we received one response back that was in favor located up here in this corner and that represents 0.5 of the actual land within the 200 foot boundary the applicant did hold a neighborhood meeting in september to which four people attended and the only concern expressed was with regard to a proposed drive to the north that would go into the church property and the church requested that that drive be limited to emergency access only and so that we've made that part of a condition for approval the planning and zoning commission recommends approval of this request with a mixed use protection overlay including the following conditions that the use of the site is limited to townhouse development with a maximum density of six dwelling units per acre and the proposed northern access drive to mckinney street shall be utilized as a ems access only and that concludes my presentation and the applicant is present sure we got a couple of questions or comments council member briggs so when when i look at this property i see a lot a lot of trees i mean it's almost fully covered and i know that you had and this is really not the time that we're doing it but i just want to make sure that um with the site plan because i went out the one that's preliminary that i look at there's like four trees left i mean it looks like there's not very many at all um so will that final plant will that come back to us um it will um i believe that it will have to come back because it's considered multi-family so they will need to have an sup okay thank you yes councilmembrometer yeah um so i'm concerned about the traffic on mckinney uh and and i know that there's a plan for its expansion of mckinney um i uh i heard from uh one constituent um with a request that seemed pretty reasonable to me that uh construction be postponed until the mckinney expansion is complete um and uh i had a putting a request from staff to staff i mean this this email from constituent just came in yesterday afternoon so understandably people hadn't had time to to respond to that um um but but possibly you've heard um or have anticipated this question is there any way to delay the construction until the mckinney expansion is complete and if you happen to know um anything about uh the specific about um their time their projected timeline and how that would correspond to the mckinney expansion timeline right um that that email was forwarded to me and it was my understanding that email was in regards to the woodlands on mckinney which was the postponed to january 8th so that was not okay that was not to the okay okay so all right okay well thank you i'm sorry that's okay no we could have just interrupted me because uh yeah i see yeah see this doesn't front mckinney yeah the only access that would be to mckinney would be the emergency medical service and it will be gated so they wouldn't be able nobody would be able to access okay got it okay all right next time i do that you can just cut me off now we're good council member hudspeth okay i have a question because your the google maps obviously doesn't capture the apartment complex that's built right to the north of it right right it has when this was taken that hadn't been constructed yet what's between the two properties well i believe that this is this is the entire site right here so between the two properties meaning will they obviously they won't be able to drive that way either no so what prevents that is it going to be wooded or wall well the applicant that the the applicant probably would be able to help you with that because we haven't really got that much into site design we've got that concept plan and we know that the the northern route to mckinney is going to be blocked to all but ems but other than that we really haven't discussed it yet because this is just the zoning phase understood but understanding that it wasn't touched on in the presentation and it's almost done well because single because townhouse development is considered a single family product and this is multi and multifamily is is to the north even though this is we're using multifamily standards they're still going to be sold separately as single family so they would have to have a type c buffer between them okay and um okay got it thank you okay i see no more questions for staff we have uh have opened the public hearing so we've got a one card rick maria yes i'm here come on down and uh i believe it's how many minutes is the applicant get is it 10 i think i get 10 minutes per for speaker okay yeah okay just state your name and address and your time will begin do i hit escape ah there we go i shrink that yes right there okay okay thank you my name is rick baria some people say baria that's okay with me too don't worry about it and um i want to thank you for staying up late and working hard i know it's probably been a long day for you and i'll try to answer as many questions as i can especially i think the presentation may answer some of them and i'll go through that now if i can figure out just which button to press this is about clustering i think it's more than just a better view now why did we decide to do this the way that we've done well didn't doesn't have exactly the rules that we needed the other thing is is that we wanted to uh not wrestle with the site but to build whatever would work on that site i guess i'll put my alarm up here and uh that required a few changes this is a typical linear development and these houses uh actually touch each other it always means that you have alleys we didn't really want alleys they they mean more concrete here's another uh neighborhood that's very similar uh but we can't do that because five in a row is much too long we have a very steep hill with an eight percent grade in some places it's 11 percent so we can't really have a building that long and you see that when you start to do all this you just don't have any trees so we didn't like that either i've planted thousands of trees i've been in the landscaping business for years before i got into this and we are wanting to save as many trees as we can but we uh have a problem sometimes with the way things are designed today you'll notice how many cars are in the street there can you count them all well i did there's 20 now this is also linear even though it's a curved street everything's in a row and everything follows the roadway center line but there's no green space there's no commons there's really no community there this is the same piece of property with an alternative design that i did and you can see that well i want to say there's more green space heck i put green all over it but if you look at the amount of concrete and the houses and how they can be enjoyed it's much better than the previous slide there are two bedroom units for families walkways they're separate from the street that's safer especially for children now here's uh some clustering that was done in grapevine but once again those buildings are too long for us they did save a number of trees though as you can see and this is another cluster that's a an apartment complex it's on spencer road and denton and then here's oak vista now i've been working on oak vista since 2009 you'll notice that we have a much wider channel and up at the north you'll see that says narrow channel that was what the city was content to do but we didn't like that i especially didn't like it we're going to we were going to have to knock down a number of trees big pecan trees so by making the channel wider we gain a more natural looking drainage and that's why we trouble ourselves to do it that's what's there today what kind of value would you put on that we plan to keep it we still have prairie flowers in some places and we plan to keep as many of those as we can there's natural uh understory we want to keep that and those are the type of post oaks that are there now i believe i haven't made an account actually because we've had some tree damage but some of the post oaks can't be saved because they they're broken but we're saving i believe about 85 of all these large post oaks no one does that here's where somebody else saved the post oaks in this neighborhood and it sure looked good look at that but as i say some of the trees are damaged and we'll have to take those out this tree is basically it's weak structurally and rotten but it worked real good for the bees and so we'll have to move the bees i suppose now as you can see we have a hill in the middle and it's very steep so i can't use a straight street i can't have long buildings that look like barracks so we had to do something else the green you can see that the green is actually where most of the oak trees are but that's privet under them and we had to take all the privet out to save them typical grading would remove all the trees this is another place where you can see there's nothing left now this is what it looks like and you've seen that this is a little bit closer and you can see their free form now that is why we have to have the free form arrangement that i'm allowed with multifamily rules that's the only way that i can get everything in there to save some space and all the green areas are basically public some of the areas that are white we are not sure where those buildings are going to go exactly we may change them around but they are side by side as if they were duplexes and we are saving the large trees now there's a lot more trees there but some of them won't be saved and they are species that we don't want here's what the units look like they're pretty small we think there's a demand for people who've been living in apartments and they want to get out i'm not any real architect but we've tried and we've done a lot of research on this and we have hundreds of hours anyway under denton's existing rule book we need the restriction overlay in our mu12 density of nr6 it's the open layout of multifamily the travel lane radii of multifamily because roads require a different radii for the street that won't fit parking rules of multifamily we would use that as well that's one parking space for each bedroom plus 10 and it will have a gated with an emergency only on the north and of course we'll have an hoa for maintenance and for security and stability as you can see that's the trees that are the large trees there are other trees that we're going to save but these are the ones that are large and they all have metal tags on them and that's the end of my presentation i want to make it short council member briggs so i had just a couple questions um so how large are the units you said they're kind of small but i i didn't get a number well we are we are still trying to determine exactly what that will be based on the demographics and i'm not the architect but right now we're looking at just a little under 1100 square feet up to our empty nester unit i think it will be about 1650 to 1700 somewhere in there but most of the units would probably be around 1300 to 1450 square feet which we think is certainly doable for a lot of people who aren't really a full-size family they have nothing to buy right and and um when you were talking about the design you said there's not much concrete what are your roads going to when you when you show the the picture the only thing that was concrete were the driveways what what are the roads going to be made out of okay let me go back okay now the darker is our primary if you want to call it roadway but it's really a 24 foot wide uh lane for emergency vehicles okay and then the driveways are a little bit uh lighter and the driveways where we have parking it's another color again and you can see that i really don't have a pointer but you can see that there is a parking section in the middle with landscape around it there'll be uh naturally grass and everyone's unit will back up to that green section and but we think that we can put enough uh landscaping there so that people won't be looking at the cars obviously it'll take a little while to grow but we can we can hope that the people will wait a little while and do you have an idea of how much the units are going to to sell for sell for i'm not the builder but i am talking to uh some builders uh two of them i've toured their houses in fort worth and they are building houses that they are selling for at about 190,000 dollars and that's freestanding we had a discussion with them or i should say i had a discussion with them one of them is an architect we talked back and forth uh we're trying to target something about 175,000 dollars we think that that's we think that uh it may be impossible but that's our goal and i think there's plenty of people who would like to buy something like that even if it's a little small well i think you probably would sell out pretty quickly at that price here um and a condo is something that we um definitely need it's a different mix in in denton um thank you so i appreciate it and as far as the the trees go um on the e.s.a. it's so you're not planning on doing any kind of um alternative e.s.a plan the the e.s.a. on this particular site uh as far as i know and as we've been able to determine but we haven't cleared this with uh staff yet it doesn't appear that it's on on this part of the land there's a section that it will be on and later we plan to develop that uh and it will be fronting uh duchess we're thinking of uh some type of offices that would have a excuse me that would have a view of the e.s.a. area and the pond we don't want to take that pond out i mean i think i can get a little more money if i have that as a view you know from your office wouldn't you pay a little more to see that it's also natural drainage too councilman robert so first of all i want to say i was really excited when i um saw the plan um and uh it was was sad when i saw what i thought was a constituent's concern about the traffic on mckinney so apologies for that um but i always represent when a constituent has a concern who lives there so i'm glad that that was about a different development um i just wanted to say that i i support this project uh i really like how you've worked around the natural um environment i like that it just it doesn't have it your typical cookie cutter development look um and you know most of all um it it's it's really providing a kind of housing option um that there's a real need for in the community i hear that often um and i'm glad that the price point is not uh uh totally uh prohibitive uh for a lot of people um so i i i support it i'm excited about it and that's all all right anybody else any questions all right thank you appreciate it thank you thank you this is a public hearing anybody wishing to speak on this agenda item please come down state your name and address and your time will begin anybody wishing to speak um all right we will now close the public hearing council member melzer i move approval of this item council member husbeth second we have a motion and a second let's vote on the board please motion carries seven zero last item on the public public hearings agenda hold a public hearing considered option of an ordinance of the city of denton texas regarding a change in the zoning district and use classification from plan development 115 district to a regional center commercial downtown on approximately 9.08 acres south side of u.s highway 77 north elm street i'll go ahead and open the public hearing i don't know if i close the public hearing on the last one hold on just a second i don't think i closed the public hearing on the last one is it just sort of automatically close with the termination of the agenda item that in the vote that was taken okay did i close it okay i did yeah it's good it's not even late um so yes go ahead good evening mayor council um the item in front of you this evening is uh rezoning of uh just over nine acres uh from pd 115 district to rccd this site is generally located uh sort of at the intersection of uh highway 77 or north elm and and bonnie bray uh just south of the north loop again the the current zoning on the property is is pd 115 there was an amendment as part as part of this pd back in 2004 that limited the development on this property to 10 to a 10,000 square foot church and then a school and daycare as as a supplemental use to that what they're proposing to do is essentially unify the site they own this portion as well as actually to the south but actually zone it out of the pd to the straight rccd this is just their concept plan i don't want to get too much into this but it just gives you an idea of what they what they initially had had intentioned for the site again it's just to unify that and really take a property that that would just be limited to a to a church almost a non you know a tax exempt property to to just unify that unify this entire site two criteria for approval on the rezoning does it conform to the future land use plan and would there be adequate provisions of public facilities the first answer is yes it's business innovation as you can see it's again just a carryover of that of that land use category and it does allow for larger scale employment parks as well as supporting uses such as retail hotel and residential public facilities there is frontage along along north elm at one point we were looking at we were trying to to understand where we were eventually heading with with the extension of bonnie bray now that that has tracked a little bit further to the east this it doesn't look like this this site will be affected by any by any right of way water and sewer is not available at the site so as they if this is approved and they and they continue with the process through platting as part of their ceps they will be required to extend both water and sewer to the to the property again rccd is is really a logical extension in of the existing zoning pattern it will ensure a consistent development along the corridor and more so they'll be required to comply with all existing standards in the in the ddc there was a notification that was sent there was none in opposition none in favor the notification signs were posted there was not a a neighborhood meeting because there's not a whole lot of folks around them i believe they are they own most of the property to the to the west and south planning and zoning commission recommended approval seven zero and with that i'd be happy to answer any questions council member armature so the zoning change makes sense to me it's consistent with what's there i was just wondering has the city heard from us any specific commercial entities kind of wanting to build there is that what what the emphasis was or city just trying to get ahead of the make zoning consistent i'm not aware of a specific business i know the applicant is here they can maybe provide some it was just a request that they had to to really look at unifying the site as well as as where they are with the property to the south i think we'll be seeing that in in the near future as well okay any more questions for staff seeing none i think i already opened the public hearing as well so i don't have any cards but this is a public hearing if the applicants here they're certainly welcome to come down and speak state your name and address if anybody wants to come and speak this is a public hearing anybody wishing to speak all right we will go ahead and close the public hearing council member hudspeth move approval mayor protem second we have a motion and a second let's vote on the board please motion carries seven zero we're now to our concluding items council member melzer thank you yes i would like to request an informal staff report on the feasibility of adopting and enforcing a gas well proximity disclosure requirement for new occupants of dwellings within a thousand feet of a gas well along the lines of what was proposed during the open mic segment today council member briggs i think you showed up and then went off yeah my things acting really strange tonight well that's okay yeah go ahead we'll go ahead and recognize you because you were you were queued up yeah go ahead just um just a little blurb in our friday report about the concrete badge plant i saw um scott chasing out um miss todd earlier night to explain to her about it but just in our report so that um the public can can see as they read that what happened and what the requirements are in text dot um just for information purposes um and and also just a i'd like to know about a community market banner because i have seen other banners and so maybe it's just a question if we um have a little blurb about banners if they're supposed to pay for it or if the city does that um i'm just curious about event event banners in the city okay council member obiter let's see um so i had already requested the um that community markets proposal come before us as a work session i also wanted to add that i would like to see a staff report and i will i will subsequently be asking for a work session no matter what the staff report is about having a townhome or condo classification i think we need that as we expand our housing options uh and so i'd like to see kind of what what possibilities um you know how that how that might fit into uh our uh uh zoning zoning designations and council member hudspeth thank you uh one i'd like to follow up on my my comments earlier i i would like the city manager to look into a way to provide citizens access to on street parking that we've turned over to unt i just i don't know what the path forward to that is but that's problematic for me and i did notice it when i was needing to go to one of the dorms and i tried to park on a street so i just think that's a concern and then i mentioned to sarah earlier today already but just to put it uh just to share with the city manager i'd like to develop a way to brand each slide presentation with a concurrent number and the the purpose for that would be if i see if i'm a citizen watching online and i see a presentation uh and i want to research that further get a copy of that i have to note the date of the council meeting and then go back and dig through all the power points and try to find it versus a unique identifier that i could take a picture of the screen and send the staff and say hey i'd like a copy of this presentation this slide so i have kind of a a reference point for each slide that then just kind of runs concurrent maybe could be tied to the agenda number but but it just is easier take a picture to screen hey this one and no one has a look at a date or anything you just kind of know based on that identifier and then lastly i saw i saw this in some other cities and i'd like to explore it here is that kind of the trash can screening i see i'll give you an example behind martin with the king center there's a short wall that doesn't get used both trash cans are outside the wall i'd love to see a way for us to go with a larger potted plant maybe evergreen or something that kind of surrounds it and screen serves as kind of a natural screen and then if the driver needs to move it or it gets out of control we're not we don't have these walls that they're not serving a purpose you know so i think that whatever the end goal is to give us some flexibility to cover trash cans if we add a trash can we can extend that versus build a new wall that sort of thing so just give us flexibility so that we can always have those screened anybody else any other concluding items okay if not we will stand adjourned at 8 55