Dec 11, 2018 City Council on 2018-12-11 1:00 PM
December 11, 2018 City Council
Full Transcript
welcome everyone we do have a quorum present the mayor is running a little
behind so I will stand in for him until he gets here this is a work session of
the City Council on December 11th and we are starting at 104 first item up is
citizens comments on the consent agenda do we have any no comments item two is
request for clarification on agenda items that's member rings so I have a few
questions on the consent agenda on a I just want to confirm that this is the
policy that we discussed last week with our auditor which allows some of that
allows our customer service the options to work with a customer if they need to
is that good afternoon Tiffany Thompson director customer service that is
correct this is the policy we're bringing forth for your approval to be
able to remove late fees interest and then the normal adjustments that we do
okay perfect thank you very much item C is this because it during the
conversation in the work session we discussed options of AC system or not
I'm just curious is this the design going forward foreign for that or is it
just the base this is just the base yeah just the initial design for the 12-bay
expansion okay and if we decide that we do want to go with that will we have to
make another no we're looking into the options right now and I'll come back to
you with a report on the not only AC option but also the pit that was
mentioned as well okay so come back with a report on those okay thank you and
last on D for the City Hall roof I just wanted to clarify that Roman or the HLC
will get to see and approve any changes to the City Hall roof if anything but
the exact same goes on top hello council member brief I did get an email for
someone about the concern about that it can be administratively approved if
we're just replacing our roof or if it's maintenance and it's a similar roof
unless it's gonna pop up to the sky or something that's something I would just
quickly administratively approve this just doesn't need to go before the
Landmark Commission okay but it would need to be similar to what's on there
yes okay yes all right thank you not in the material but in the appearance you
know that it's flat on the roof and it's not visible mainly okay thank you
anyone else have clarification need clarifications on agenda items see none
the mayor asked that we kind of rearrange the work session items and
move a down okay so if it's okay with the council we'll start with item B and
then come back to a one when the mayor gets here so fine with everyone okay so
we will start with item B receive a report hold the discussion give staff
direction regarding update to the historic preservation plan good
afternoon council I'm Roman McAllen I'm the historic preservation officer this
is about the historic preservation plan I'm just gonna tell you a little bit
about the background and the firm selection and present to you the team
the team that's going to be helping with the updating this the city of Denton's
historic preservation plan and the scope and the timeline real quickly a
preservation plan is something that complements our citywide comprehensive
master plan which is Denton plan 2030 and in Denton plan 2030 there's a
section four that talks about urban character and in that sense of place and
in that section of our didn't plan 2030 we were called to renew our historic
preservation plan or bring a new one about and this plan is something is a
it's a tool for guidance for city staff and for all of us in the city the
current plan is is this one this little booklet that's been around it was
actually passed in late 1985 and this is the the only actually adopted
preservation plan for the city of Denton and it's it's done well by us but as I
said in section 4.14 of the Denton plan 2030 we called to bring it up today funds
were allowed allocated in 2016 and 2017 for a preservation plan to be done and
then in February 2018 the Texas Historic Commission which is really anxious to
see Denton have a new preservation plan gave us a rather large grant for a CLG
grant of $20,000 as a matching grant for this preservation plan so if we complete
the plan by the end of September and pay for it then they will give us back
$20,000. We issued an RFP for people to apply for this historic preservation
planners and planning firms we had four submissions and a committee chose Lakota
group based on their price and the plan as they presented how they would go
forward to do this they were really stood out because rather than seeing
preservation as kind of casting the city in amber and landmarking a property here
or a district here they actually approach it from a holistic way about
from sustainability as well as from economic development the economic
deal sign you'll see that when you hear from Nick who's here to present on their
behalf the plan is going to be completed in two phases which is in your book
there but we're going to just basically get all the input from the city you have
a stakeholders meeting give a state of the city's situation with respect to
preservation as it is today and then go forward so the Lakota group has already
been in Denton all day yesterday and all day today and they've been meeting with
stakeholders non-stop throughout the community and it's been going very well
so I would like to introduce to you if if chair do I have the opportunity to go
ahead and introduce them now to introduce to you Nick who is the principal with the
Lakota group he also has with him today Siraj who's an architect at his firm and
Tom who's an architect in Baltimore and chairman of the Baltimore Landmark
Commission and he has Josh with them who's the economic development person I
get that right thank you Nick
thank you Roman City Council my name is Nick Callagher Isis I'm with the Lakota
group we are planning urban design for invasion Chicago Illinois and we are
very thankful for this opportunity to develop this new historic preservation
plan for your community I wanted to give you a very short overview of what our
team is and then the planning process and some of the issues that we'll be
covering in this in this project the Lakota group we're our firm we do many
different types of planning for many communities around the country we do
have a specialist specialization in historic preservation planning we've
done a number of projects here in Texas about ten years ago we updated the city
of San Antonio's historic preservation plan we just completed a historic
preservation plan in Tyler Texas so historic preservation plan is a big
component of our firm we as part of this assignment we wanted to bring on two
other firms to help us with this project mainly to expand our expertise one is
Moseley Architects with Tom Liebel we have brought him on to help us look at
design guidelines of sustainability and overall urban design is how it relates
to historic preservation and then we've brought on the clue group which is
actually the community land use and economics group which is based in
Philadelphia and they're gonna help us with the economic development aspect one
thing that we believe in historic preservation is that it's it's and I
think Romans kind of alluded to it's not just looking at who slept where what
buildings more significant than in others what famous persons did things
here and what building looks great it is about economic development is about
sustainability it is about quality of life and the overall physical appearance
of our community so we take a very comprehensive look at historic
preservation so this is our team going forward and again this is some of our
experience I'm not going to go into it in any great detail our approach Roman
has already mentioned it is a two-phased approach one is we are spending the next
few months gathering information about this community about the historic
resources about the main issues we've been here since yesterday talking to
many different stakeholders to get an idea from them what they think the
issues are so that we can begin to do our analysis in our homework so this
first phase of the state of the city we we've also spent time visiting your
community and visiting the neighborhoods and taking a look at everything so we're
this first phase is basically just trying to get to know what the issues are
what your historic resources are and then by March we will have a what is
called a state of the city report which summarizes our initial analysis between
now and then we will be having a community workshop so that we can have
an opportunity for the general public to come and tell us what they think the
issues are so that's probably going to be held probably in late January early
February we'll be working with Roman on that schedule and then after March we
will and again these are before we get into developing a plan these are some of
the things we'll be looking at we'll be looking at tourism your housing your
codes and your ordinances other community plans and how they affect
historic preservation we're also looking at the organization context how a
different organizations play a role in historic preservation it's not so it's
not just what the city is doing we're looking at potential private sector
partners who could play a role in implementing historic preservation over
over the years so we are looking at many different players in all of this we are
doing extensive community engagement as part of this process as I mentioned
we're going to be doing a community workshop coming up in the new year we'll
be doing two workshops actually in the total part of this process but we are
going to do a number of other different things to engage the community as I've
said we're doing stakeholder interviews and focus groups we will be doing an
online survey so we can get a feedback from the broader community we'll have
opportunities to do other pop-up workshops and open houses during this
process we also have a website for this project to it will allow the community
access information about this planning process they'll be able to access
documents they'll also be enabled to post comments and feedback and some of
our planning documents as we go forward on this so that's our community
engagement program and then the second part of our approach is will after March
when we submit the state of the city we'll actually go back and develop the
actual plan we'll have another community open house we will be working with the
Historic Landmark Commission and meeting with them several times during this
process to have them view the plan vet the plan give us ideas and to help guide
the overall development so our goal is to develop the final plan by I would say
May or June or June or July somewhere in that time frames will have the final
plan in place and then some of our concepts that will be part of the
historic preservation plan again we will be looking at where there are areas for
future surveys potential districts potential landmarks but we are looking
at how the private sector could play a role in advocating about the benefits of
historic preservation and then we are looking in an economic development and I
think one of the things we've heard clearly from some some of the
stakeholders we've talked to over the last couple of days is that preservation
based economic development makes sense in this community and has played a very
fundamental role in revitalizing your downtown maintaining the stability of
your neighborhoods so that's going to be a very important part of this project
and then we're also looking at program administration how does the city manage
its historic preservation program how do we enhance it strengthen it going
forward and then we are looking at sustainability as it is an important
part that was a theme that was pretty prominent in your comprehensive plan we
are looking at how do we promote sustainability whether it's promoting
energy efficiency in existing buildings or writing some sustainable design
guidelines and other incentives so that will be an important part of this
project and then enhancing community character that is a an important part of
historic preservation is making sure that we maintain the overall character
and scale and environments we had a very interesting session with with area
developers this morning and the one thing they told us is they believe that
historic preservation is the power to make places here in Denton and it already
has with your downtown your courthouse square and many neighborhoods so how do
we begin to enhance their character so we will be looking at a variety of
different approaches to how to maintain community character and then we also
will be looking at incentives and how incentive programs could work more
efficiently and effective here effectively here so these are just a
variety of different things we'll be taking a look at and then our report
production just last last slide we call them they're easy to read and a joy to
implement because it's not very not going to be very text-heavy but we are
going to make it a very succinct docking that people are going to be able to read
and understand very clearly so we want to make this a document that the people
will be able to access and understand and then I already have pretty much talked
about the project timeline so our goal is to try to get to the copper I'm at the
conference but the preservation plan completed by early summer so that's what
we're looking at that's it councilmember so just a few comments and a question
just that one we desperately need an updated citywide preservation plan so I
am in favor I think this is really great second for community character it's very
important and we need to visually set ourselves apart from other communities
by providing the uniqueness I think you touched on that and I just want to
reiterate that I'm in favor of that third I would like to know on the future
landmark districts because preservation just isn't about you know 1910 1900s it
goes all the way up to the 50s and 60s and we need to start integrating that
into what we value and on that topic that goes to idiots Hill which is part
of my district in my neighborhood and there's some unique homes there and I'm
curious if that was some place that you toured while you were here and as we
have we have and there has been a survey of that neighborhood and I believe that
survey concluded that there was a potential national registered district
there so so that that that findings there and so I think in the project we're
going to integrate that in our preservation plan as that's a future
national registered district that the city should pursue and then to go to
your earlier observation yes time moves forward and so what was built in the 50s
50s and 60s are now considered historic so that'll be part of our task is to
look at other areas in Denton where you have some valuable resources from that
time period and do they merit or they are do they merit some significance that
are worthy of a future district okay thank you sure Councilmember Amateur yes
I too am thrilled that that we're revisiting our historic preservation and
reassessing our approach to citywide I was wondering if you had a chance to
tour southeast Denton and and and if not I want to just make a strong request
that that when you start your work on this project that you consider that that
area and it's it's rich rich history yes thank you for that point yes we
actually have been able to go down there and take a peek around there and there
definitely are some very interesting areas and I think the one thing I forgot
to mention is that when we look at future districts or landmarks we also
are going to be looking at areas that were maybe they may be eligible as a
district but do they represent a population that hasn't been represented
in a district you know an African American or the Hispanic legacy here in
the community are they are there resources associated with those groups
and are those resources significant so we'll be taking a look at that as well
thank you thank you very much sorry for interrupting and that's okay
being late any more questions it was at the end of the presentation any other
further questions all right thank you very much appreciate appreciate the time
you took yesterday to share with all the stakeholders thank you so much for that
thank you look forward to working with all of you okay I understand that we
went with item B first thank you mayor pro tem for standing in I appreciate
that thank you so much we'll go on now to agenda item oh they switched it
already on the agenda actual agenda all right receive report and hold discussion
give staff direction regarding economic development incentive application from
Tyson sales and distribution
good afternoon mayor and council members my name is Caroline booth I'm the
director of economic development and today I'm going to be presenting an
incentive request from Tyson sales and distribution which is a business unit of
Tyson Tyson foods which is based in Springdale Arkansas we do have some
representatives from Tyson here with us today we have Jan Nash the director of
tax blue keen the VP of warehousing John Wells the senior manager in
engineering and Philip Garrison manager and warehousing and these folks are
going to be available to answer questions for you later on in the
presentation thank you so I'll start off with a quick description of the project
it is a 350,000 square foot highly automated refrigerated distribution
center that will ship about 700 million pounds of product annually out of the
facility it is going to employ a hundred people full-time these folks will be
benefits eligible after about a 60-day probationary period the average wage of
24 82 an hour is a weighted average based on the number of jobs and the wage
they will be receiving so I think it's important to point that out it does take
into account the different numbers of jobs at the different wages that is 12.5
percent higher than Denton County's average wage and that is one of our
priority targets under the council adopted incentive policy this facility
would likely have an annual electric demand of about two megawatts and if we
did enter into an economic incentive agreement with Tyson the agreement would
state that their operations must I'm sorry I'm missing a word there but the
operations must begin by December 31 2021 we did get a great question about
the type of facilities and the lifespan of these kinds of facilities in the
company and mr. Keane told me that he's worked for Tyson for 39 years and has
never seen a facility like this come offline they're retooled and refurbished
but they are designed to be used for an extended period of time the project is
also vetting sites in Indiana Arkansas and Utah Denton is the sole Texas site
and you can see there from the map that the site is about sick the full site is
about 65 plus or minus acres at the corner of Western Boulevard and Jim
Crystal Road and that is within the West Park tours and as you have heard me
describe before the tears provides a funding source for public improvements
in that area which is zoned for industrial development of this type I
think it's also good to add at this point that the Tyson has some very
specific site location considerations for this project including workforce
availability utilities infrastructure proximity to its customers and other
facilities ease of implementation and return on investment so Tyson contacted
the city directly in February 2018 and we began discussions with them about the
project and provided them the incentive policy that was adopted by the council
and in place at that time which actually was adopted in 2016 and we did have some
questions about how we arrived at our incentive recommendation for this
particular project and so again when we initiated discussions with Tyson the
incentive policy in place at that time contained this chart that you see here
which is basically used as a framework for considering the length and
percentage of a tax abatement based on the ad valorem value in millions so I
wanted to make sure some of you guys were here when we had that policy some
are new but I wanted to make you aware of the fact that that was the policy in
place at the time then in June 2018 Tyson did submit their incentive
application requesting an incentive to offset development costs as well as to
enable application for a debt and county tax abatement and a Texas
enterprise zone program grant under the current incentive policy that was
adopted in March of 2018 by the council Tyson does meet the following priority
considerations business and community investment expanding the tax base
increasing jobs with wages above the Denton County average and generating
significant new customers for municipal utilities can you remind us what the
Denton County average wage is yes I can do that the Denton County average wage
is twenty two dollars and seven cents thank you okay moving on to the fiscal
information about the project so we always start an analysis with the
current conditions the land that is under consideration currently has an AG
exemption so it has a very low certified value of about thirty seven
hundred dollars since the land is in the West Park TERS as y'all will recall forty
percent of the revenue goes into the TERS fund and sixty percent of the
revenue comes to the city's general fund the total estimated tax revenue at this
point is twenty three dollars and eight cents so then when we analyze the
project as it takes that land out of AG exemption status the land value rises to
about three million dollars Tyson is estimating that their improvements would
be valued at eighteen million dollars and that their business personal property
would be valued at around thirty million dollars and this is due to the highly
automated nature of the facility so that's a total estimated additional ad
valorem value of over fifty one million dollars for the project and then as you
move through the chart you can see which percentage of the revenue would go into
the TERS fund which would come into the general fund and the total valuation and
tax revenue generated is down here about three hundred and twenty thousand
dollars on an annual basis and we'll take those assumptions from that analysis
and pull them over into this chart it's a little bit difficult to see up on the
screen but you all have it in your backup so what we did and this is an
economic development industry standard practice to analyze a project on a ten
year time frame even if the incentives are not ten years themselves and that
allows us a way to compare apples to apples across different incentivized
projects so you see year one through ten there the top box shows you the revenue
that would accrue over ten years to the TERS fund the second box there containing
the proposed incentive information talks about the incentive that we're
recommending which I'll detail more on the next slide but what we are talking
about here is a 25% abatement on the business personal property portion only
for six years so you can see that we pull that out by six years here then we
also have the DME economic growth writer as part of this chart since that is
something that Tyson should be eligible for based on their anticipated demand
and so finally we come down for the cumulative total of those two incentives
which is seven hundred and thirty four thousand dollars over the course of six
years then finally we come down to the city revenue portion of the chart which
just shows the remainder after you net out the incentives and bottom line
number on that one is about four point nine million dollars in revenue to the
city over that particular time frame question councilmember Amater can you
explain a little more about what is the DME economic growth writer so the DME
economic growth writer is something that is adopted in the DME rate schedule that
the council adopts each year and it's intended to reduce the demand charges
for large commercial and industrial customers and the reason why those type
of customers are desirable is because say you have a refrigerated warehouse
facility like this or you have a manufacturing facility those types of
facilities are consistent energy users around the clock and that allows DME to
plan out and purchase electricity at a better price because they know they're
going to have those consistent users on the system and so when we're talking
about demand charges that's related to the infrastructure that the customer and
DME have to put in to serve their maximum load when they need it their peak load
and so it's related to is related to capital costs and capital expenditures
not not to rates so the reduction is only to the demand charges related to
that capital expenditure does that help okay thanks mm-hmm any other questions on
this okay okay so to go back and just look at this abatement recommendation a
little bit closer one of the very unique things about this project is the
significant amount of business personal property that it is bringing and that is
why we considered a 25% tax abatement on the business personal property only and
that portion of the incentive is about two hundred and eighty four thousand
dollars which essentially equates to about a forty eight thousand dollar per
year abatement to Tyson and the remaining 75% of BPP over that six year
period is about eight hundred and fifty four thousand dollars coming directly into the city's general fund as we just touched on the economic growth rider it's
available if significant consumers of utilities of electric utilities qualify
it is deployed on a five-year sliding fee scale starting at 50% and scaling
down to 10% and the estimated total reduction in those demand charges would
be close to five hundred thousand dollars for Tyson got a question yes and
probably this will be a utility George question just to help me understand on
the economic growth rider when I see four hundred and fifty thousand dollars
as estimated over the whatever it is six years on the demand charge scaled down
from 50% on down so I've heard that it's budget neutral that this that this
incentive is sort of budget neutral nobody said that but what I'm hearing is
it doesn't affect rates and things such as this but so if the incentive was not
in place right if the incentive was not in place then they're going to be
charged whatever the demand charge rate is for an industry such as theirs based
upon the load based upon the day of the summer those kind of things is that
correct that's correct okay George Morrill general manager of DME but there
is is and I don't I can't remember the budget that in detail is there a budget
line item for demand charge revenue yes I'll throw a few numbers out there so
they would be on our large general service rate that's our most lowest
cost rate for a customer of this character there would be an outstanding
load profile as Caroline indicated our average rate for this customer when we
map it out over a year is about seven cents under that rate the discount in
the first year would be about a penny would take that down to six cents so
we're still recovering six cents average cost variable cost of energy and fuel
and those types of things on a daily basis for power supply about just under
three and a half cents so we're still recovering even with the 50% discount of
that demand charge in the first year an additional two and a half cents that
helps us to write down and pay off our capital expenditures our fixed cost
because technically we're not needing to install any new substations or large
power lines or anything to serve this load we have existing infrastructure
there that we can now amortize over this additional revenue and help keep rates
down but you're going forward so it's pretty pretty exhaustive kind of
calculation I mean it's it's a I mean it's pretty complicated in a sense if
you're looking at all the moving parts and all the pieces and and those kind of
things right so in my industry experience we've always had an economic
development rider wherever I've been and a lot of times they weren't set up as
well as this one but when you set it up just as a percentage of the demand piece
then you're assuring yourself you're not cutting into any of your your needed
costs recovery and and there's still plenty and so you're still recovering
the 50% of the demand charge plus another increment even over and above on
the energy side so and and that's only temporary it's only for a few years it's
only for those years that this is in place after that its status quo it'd be
as as if they didn't have the incentive is that correct so if their rates don't
change that rate would grow to seven cents which would still be a I think a
very attractive electricity price you know when we look around the country and
even in Texas okay all right I think I saw your hand council member armature
did you have a question or comment I did I think actually your last words it
answered my question but I'll just ask it anyway just to make sure make sure so
is that so as I understand it putting together what what you were saying
Carolyn and what you were just saying George so the the growth rider it's not
a rate reduction all right is that is that correct well we're discounting the
one component of the rate so yeah it's got several components just the demand
yeah which is the capital cost recovery for general infrastructure we're still
recovering half and we're giving up half in the first year yes so it does it
lowers the the cost that that the company that that the company is paying
for in there it lowers their bill right even though the rate it affects the rate
yeah it reduces that the numbers that I mentioned to you from about an average
of it's almost exactly seven cents down to six cents yeah but we're still
recovering as I mentioned to the mayor some additional return on our fixed
investment that helps to keep costs tempered for everybody else okay yeah
okay so they're bringing bringing in net revenue over and above our cost yeah so
they're they're using so they're and they're using lat they're using more
energy and paying less because of the you've got that steady demand yeah low
profile in the benefit to them mm-hmm yeah they have a very good low profile
electric utilities like serving customers like Tyson and yes exactly
okay thanks customer breaks so we are unique and then we own our own
municipal utility which allows us to do to do this and you mentioned that you
know other places you were had some kind of economic incentive but not as good as
this one do we know the other places the other sites they're vetting are they
able to get back or count half a million dollars over five years in utility
that's a good question we did not reach out to that so you know offline maybe if
we have some time we could look at that yeah every part of the country every
electric utility has their their own facts related to this situation and I
think we have a very good fact situation here I think for a business this size
and this capability that you it brings a lot to us for the utility side and so
we'll be there if the council were to agree to have them and if they would
agree to come thank you Councilmember Melser
recording the the other sites are the other sites anywhere competitive with
then in terms of the percent of renewables in the mix I don't know if
that matters to Tyson but it might I guess we did look at the one of my staff
members did do a review of the other three sites and we're comparable price
wise with one of the sites almost identical and to wear well less from our
calculation when we look at their exact projections of demand and energy
consumption I would have to say that there'd be almost no chance at all that
the renewable percentages couldn't be Denton's renewable percentage I mean
we're I mean we're standing out in front of the pack basically across the
country because we had the opportunity to incorporate renewables as we retired
some existing you know non-renewable assets we had a nice hole to fill and so
it was a great opportunity for us so the answer would be no without a doubt
thank you George if you could just because I think I read in the backup
where the demand or their load correct me if I'm wrong was I think it's two
megawatts or something like just slightly over two megawatts can you give
an example of what how much is that's that's a lot and is that equal to you
know 50 houses 100 I mean what's a good kind of rule of thumb that if if you
were to say so our our total peak demand is a 369 this past summer so this is two
megawatts on top of 369 so it's a significant addition but it's not
overwhelming for us and so if you figure a customer would would use about them
trying to pick some round numbers at five KW for a house so you've got 20 20
homes in a megawatt times yes so yeah yeah okay yeah and that's not as a
criticism it's just more of an observation this is a this is sort of a
steady in the business of electricity these customers that have these high high
loads constant loads are sort of help sort of allow for the budgeting and just
sort of a base steady stream of revenue that's pretty consistent yeah okay those
so those assets that we install to meet the summer demand they're going to get
utilized the rest of the year versus for some other customer classes they would
mostly sit there when we're not using air conditioning okay great any more
questions for George thank you Caroline what if you could go back to your last
slide where you just sort of break down the and and I know how we have it split
in the sense of what what's coming to the general fund and what's coming what's
going to the TERS revenue TERS but yet the TERS even though it's not coming into
the general fund that was set up because this area lacked the infrastructure to
certainly attract companies such as the ones that we have there now and when co
built all of Western Boulevard and we had accommodations for that but so the
TERS fund even though it's not coming to the city's general fund it is going to
something that is providing an opportunity for infrastructure
development in sort of a green field where there there wasn't anything
before and it's an ag exempt property right now which is bringing in twenty
three dollars a year and maybe or five to the TERS and nine to the whatever it
is okay I just I just want to point that out because it's not as if the city's
not getting it it's just getting it more in a very specified way it's sort of
encumbered in the TERS but to go towards what the city would ultimately have to
be responsible for and that is the development of infrastructure that's
correct okay thank you okay so to move on and discuss a little bit about the
other incentives that could be in play for Tyson the city's incentive is
necessary for Tyson to be able to apply for both Denton County and state level
incentives Denton County's policy only allows it to consider tax abatements for
applicants who have received an abatement from a city inside the county
first and the county's policy also says that they will match or go below what
any city in the county offers in terms of abatement so it's never their
abatement will never exceed what their city does first the enterprise zone
program y'all are probably familiar with that you have approved a number of
enterprise zone project nominations these are these projects are eligible for
state tax refunds based on the capital investment and job creation that they
make in economically distressed areas I think there's a little bit of
misinformation circling around out there about what or where the economically
distressed areas are these areas are actually specific census tracts within a
county they're not the entire county itself and so Denton currently has five
enterprise zone projects that have been approved by the state in the very census
tract where Tyson is going to locate so where we help submit these projects and
they do get approved by the state and we do have five active ones right now local
incentive is also required for those we did get some great council requests for
information over the weekend and earlier this week so I wanted to add a couple of
slides into the presentation to address some of the questions that were asked
one of them in particular was well what are the differences between the US cold
storage facility project which is also a refrigerated storage facility and would
potentially be a next-door neighbor to the Tyson project and Tyson's project so
this is a pretty straightforward description of the differences between
these two things the total investment 97 million versus 34 million additional
Avalorum value would be 51 million on Tyson versus 28 million on US cold
storage the business personal property again the difference is very distinct
there that's 30 million dollars versus three million dollars a hundred jobs
versus 67 average weighted average wage of 2482 versus 1830 and the energy
demand is slightly higher at two or two plus megawatts versus 1.5 megawatts now
none of this is to say that US cold storage wasn't a good project for us this
is just a point of reference between that project and this one councilman
Briggs has a question do we know on the hundred jobs how many of those are going
to be actual local hires and how many of those are going to be transfers from
within the company already existing I think somebody from Tyson might be able
to better answer that question is it okay sure if I ask if they know the
answer to the question be helpful so this is Jan Nash
Jan Nash director of tax for Tyson we may have a maybe a few transfers maybe
one or two but you know we would expect these be new positions of course you
know if there are folks that maybe live here and work at another facility that
they drive further from home potentially if they had a position available here
that that was closer to where they live you know they could you know potentially
apply for this position so it's really you know not able to tell with certainty
that answer but we don't have any planned reductions or anything like that
at another facility to you know that would require them to move to this
facility okay we're televising this so we have to have the microphone for them
here just state your name and blue keen VP of warehousing and I appreciate the
opportunity but we are doing no shutdown that would relocate applications but we
do have operations in your neighboring counties to the south and we do
opportunity you know our team members are offered the opportunity to grow
within our company so if they are a resident of Denton County and they want
to apply they would have an opportunity to transfer but we do not have a shutdown
that will relocate an operation into this this is a growth opportunity for us
as a company yeah that's fine thank you yes would you give preference to local
hires so would we know we would give consideration to our current team
members on a reapplication to that if they had the skill set from a relocation
standpoint that's just our policy from an HR standpoint as a growth opportunity
of taking care of our team members if they had that we would give them first
preference but we would look at their skill set and is it required for what
we're doing here okay okay so the so transfers would get first first dibs as
company company policy and then after that if a position wasn't filled by a
transfer or somebody who wanted to transfer didn't have the skill set for
that then it would go to a local hire preference yes okay that's our policy
throughout the United all across the countries where we're at when we have
open positions they are posted internally and availability internally
first okay thank you that's member husband is this for the gentleman or is
this okay yeah because you you touched on well you touched on one of my
questions so I figured I'd get you while you were there so you touched on other
business entities or connections or company stores whatever that is in the
area so could you give me an idea of where what else regionally what other
regional locations yeah we have a manufacturing in Tarrant County there
of Golden State Foods is what you may see but it's a corn dog manufacturing
with a distribution center attached to it which is in the Fort Worth area then
we have a manufacturing facility in Sherman which is north of here which is
a pretty good distance but you never know how far people would you know
commute to back and forth to work there and we have another manufacturing south
of here in a home field help me out words that no yes Dallas in the Dallas
area there as well there that we do some manufacturing of pepperoni items and
everything so so that would be local and then of course we have Seguin Texas and
Sherman Texas don't anticipate there would be any interest of those that's a
pretty good distance to be relocating and everything so yeah no that that
answered my question I was I was more geared towards we have a regional airport
here in Denton that's really nice yes yes you do facilitates that that long
road trip yeah yes so that does make it nice when we have customers or things
that are coming into here so so yes we do appreciate that yes sir so to get a
little more specific on that how many other facilities like this one that is
being proposed for Denton are in the area because this is a cold storage
there's not any manufacturing going on here this is just cold storage and
distribution how many of those and that you've got said you had one connected
with the manufacturing facility is there another major distribution center here
in the in the area that would be similar to this one and there's none in the
similar to this one a matter of fact this is our first Tyson foods to do a
fully automated of this type design with the amount of technology that we are
investing in this facility this would be our first to handle the volume of size
and scope of the 750 million pounds that are million pounds of a year going
through put okay good Council member Briggs can you give me an estimate of
how many trucks that would be traveling on our roads with the 750 that would be
about a 70 trucks in and 70 trucks out a day there all right thank you thank you
appreciate it thank you very much for the information if I could just add one
more thing about the local hiring and we work with newly locating businesses
expanding businesses in my office to make sure that we're recruiting and
hiring locally and helping these folks to do that so that's one of one of our
most important activities mm-hmm yes I'm sorry go ahead councilman Nelson just
continuing along the comparison with us cold storage which I appreciate now as
there a call they came without an ad valorem incentive so us cold came
without an ad valorem incentive but the council did grant them a 50% rebate
incentive on construction sales and use tax that was after they had already
decided to come that was between the economic development partnership boards
recommendation and us taking it to council they closed on their land deal
in between those two things but my point is only that they found it
economically you know for whatever for whatever reasons they found it
advantageous to come without that I wonder what other do you happen to
recall what other sites they evaluated Denton against I guess I'm indication us
cold storage was looking at expanding some of their existing facilities in
other locations I can't recall those locations off the top of my head but
they have a number they had a number of them around the Metroplex and so that
was what the option was for them was to expand existing facilities in the
Metroplex area okay so addressing some further council requests for information
we had some concerns expressed regarding Tyson's history of wage and hour
environmental and animal handling issues and so of course we reached out to Tyson
to talk to them about that and how they might be addressing that and management's
response to that question was that starting in 2016 2015 they undertook a
process of internal review and stakeholder engagement that included a
number of different parties including farmers and ranchers their producers
non-governmental organizations and policymakers and other people to
understand what needed to change within their organization and that process
ultimately led to the launch of new goals in five different areas including
food animal well-being environment workplace and community and they
provided staff with some examples of those goals and the progress that's been
made on them for example reducing water use intensity by 12 percent by 2020
reducing workplace injuries by at least 15 percent year-over-year and giving 50
million dollars in cash and product by 2020 for hunger relief and again Tyson
staff is here to answer any specific questions about that so to wrap it up
for the presentation I just want to reiterate some key points the project in
front of you meets four priority considerations under the council
approved incentive policy the project is going to add 51 million dollars in new
ad valorem value to the tax rolls and bring a hundred new full-time benefits
eligible jobs a tax abatement from the city is necessary for Tyson to apply for
both county and state incentives and further our incentive agreement if we
move forward with it would contain annual compliance audit requirements and
other safeguards for the city as is our standard practice now with our incentive
agreements and finally what we're talking about is an incentive of just
over seven hundred and thirty four thousand dollars over six years to
secure about four point nine million dollars in city revenue over ten years
the options that we have for you today number one is a 25 percent abatement on
business personal property only for a term of six years plus the economic
growth rider from DME if the project is qualified number two would be a different
percentage or term of tax abatement and the EGR of qualified finally no tax
abatement the EGR of qualified staff recommends option number one and option
number one was presented to the economic development partnership board and the
board approved that recommendation six to one and I'm happy to answer any other
questions or bring up anybody else who can give you the information you need
Councilmember Armitage. So I appreciated seeing in the follow-up to council
members questions the range of salaries that the range is $20 to $45 and 50
cents is that correct and is there is there a way that that $20 minimum could
be written into the incentives package? Into the agreement I think we're at a
point right now where we can consider doing that absolutely because I would I
would I would love to see that it's you know for me a living wage is it deal
breaker and that's a or deal maker and that's a a living living wage so I I
appreciate that I have another question about the traffic but I'll ask that
but for traffic engineering if there's someone there's someone here and I can
ask that later. You're in luck. So there is someone who can answer a question on
the 70 trucks in and out estimate on traffic well if there's not we can get
somebody here but there's no sense in putting that question off if it's if it's
both so yeah go ahead and pose your question Councilmember Archer. I'm sorry
the city engineer was focused on airport pavement recommendations when you ask
the question could you repeat that? Oh well essentially I mean how is has the
city prepared to handle the 70 trucks in and out per day and and also what you
know if you have a sense of kind of what the route or kind of you know various
routes will be traffic patterns how does that compare that 70 trucks in and out
per day to the current or how much is the current load if you happen to know
of trucks in and out per day in that area and I and again I realize some of
that I guess is for the loop expansion that well a good deal of what we're
dealing with is the current infrastructure out in that general vicinity
anyway infrastructure does need to be upgraded we have quite a significant
traffic load from a truck standpoint that is coming now it's it doesn't exist
today because those businesses aren't operating fully but we are working with
the developers in that area to get that road expanded such that you can handle
that truck traffic easily and and and so the timing I'm forgetting now I could
look a few slides back but if the types of plans for Tyson setting up coming
online if that in initial discussions it was by December 31 of 2021 and that's
initial discussions so say you know that's the I mean does that is that
something that the that the traffic engineering department is prepared to to
work with that that date does that seem realistic or you have several moving
parts yeah yeah yeah there's a contractual obligation to have Jim
Crystal I believe we're still talking the same area Jim Crystal upgraded this
would potentially push the traffic volumes to the point where that contract
would have to come into play and bring that roadway up to speed so they could
handle that kind of demand we have that issue currently and we are working with
that person we actually have the contract with so I just want to ask a
follow-up on that if I remember if I remember the map correctly they were
going to be off Western Center Boulevard is that correct Jim Crystal okay well
so and I could be wrong but I believe Western Center Boulevard is four lanes
is it or two lanes it's four lanes four lanes all the way to 380 to 380 yes sir
with a signal light at 380 yes and 380 is a six lane state highway so you have
two pathways and that would be the primary concern with Jim Crystal is not
knowing just how much track track truck traffic we're gonna have at what time of
day Jim Crystal really needs to be upgraded Western can absolutely handle
that it was designed for that so that is the preferred route until Jim Crystal
is complete but I guess my my thought is that if there's a lot of development
going on down east on Jim Crystal closer to where the 84 lumber and all that is
which there is but this particular location is right at Western Center
Boulevard so if they're going to be on Jim Crystal for any length of time it's
going to be to get on Jim Crystal and hang a hang a right at 380 most likely I
mean I don't know why they would go down Airport Road well they wouldn't be going
down Airport Road but Jim Crystal does become for a good majority of the future
truck traffic that's the easiest way to get out to 35 if they're gonna go south
right but but right now the way it is that you go to 380 you got a signal at
380 you go down 380 you got a signal at 380 and 35 and we're saying if they go
down Jim Crystal they just wind around to Oak Street come across the railroad
track and then they can get on right there or go up to the bridge at Airport
Road and credit cross is that right correct okay all right good thank you
yes Councilmember Melcer if we set aside for a moment the the issue of the
incentive from the assessment that you've done how do you feel Denton stacks
up in terms of the criteria that we know Tyson's looking for versus the
alternatives in Indiana Arkansas and Utah as far as energy cost logistics you
know the benefits of just sheer location how do you think we stack up I haven't
done a whole lot of deep diving into what our competition is bringing frankly
but Denton is ideally situated for distribution given our location and our
transportation access we are fortunate to have an abundant workforce and I
think that with the improvements that we be that are being made to our
development processes which was a priority consideration for them the ease
of implementation I think that we are not just for this project but for many
projects we're a great location so on the options if you look down at the the
board recommendations I was the one I voted no for this and not because you
know Tyson isn't great and I I appreciate you guys coming and thinking
of Denton and would love it if you came here and and I also want to say while
I'm at it I appreciate the openness and the process and the way that this has
come before the public and the council just for the transparency sake I know
that sometimes things have been done in the past and so I appreciate that as
well with Tyson but I will say that however I am still on option option 3 I
did express in the Economic Development Board meeting that I would be willing to
do too but to maybe kind of talk about it and look at the incentive but for for
me Tyson is a 38.2 billion dollar in revenue and net income of 1.7 billion in
2018 they've doubled their net income in four years which shows that they have
strong financials and their strong growth company their number 80 on the
fortune 500 Denton is a great location we have the infrastructure we have the
energy that you need or that they need at a discount we have a solid workforce
and in the market that they need to be in I think we're a fantastic location
and that we they should come here you know on their own for me right now
especially with 60 out of the hundred jobs they're providing only at a $20 an
hour rate which is below the 22 dollar average it's not checking all the right
boxes for me for an incentive but I do welcome them if they want to come on
their own and that's from where I stand thank you thank you so I'll push for
option one for whoever's keeping the tally and then I'll support that with
one the airport the utilization as we're trying to grow it the hotel stays as
they visit the other facilities flying back and forth between alliance here
there's a lot of synergies there that are appealing to me only $20 per hour is
one but I say that tongue-in-cheek and then I add to that the hundreds in value
that come with the health benefits that hadn't been touched on I think that is
enormous for anyone that's had to buy health insurance for their family
currently the the prices are going through the roof and so to earn $20 per
hour in addition to the health benefits is significant and I and I appreciate
that and then this council has set forth an incentive policy and I think then for
consistency purposes each each each project evaluated on its face but we've
said if you meet these criteria it warrants a consideration and I think
they've done that and I appreciate that we have five ongoing active agreements
in this exact same area so I don't know why we would then begin to target Tyson
as so that's concerning to me the general manager said that every utility
has some sort of process that by way of taking care of this type customers so I
take him in his word seven hundred thirty four thousand dollars to then
benefit the city four point nine million it's significant to me and then I'll
point out I was at the ISD's corporate office or their school district and they
had a sign out that they were hiring people for ten dollars an hour and so
that to me puts it in scale no one complains about didn't high school didn't
ISD and their hiring practices and last thing I want to take us back I'll
conclude with this because this is most important I'll take us back to last week
and I've not heard anyone complain about these institutions in town and to me
it's it's it's it's noteworthy totally tax exempt properties in the city of
Denton the presentation said eight percent that's the two major universities
no one complains about the universities at this table that I've heard of that
number associated without those entities is almost it would round numbers one
point one billion dollars the city budget is one point three and and so
exact number for the record eight that eight percent as staff presented last
week would represent one billion one hundred twenty seven million seven
hundred twenty two thousand sixteen dollars totally tax exempt and so but
we're willing to see value in the universities and and forego one point
one billion dollars but we don't want to see value in this corporate entity and
what they can bring to the table and that to me is is disjointed and so
that's why I say I see value in the universities I see value in them being
here and I see value in the return on investment here to then benefit others
in our community and not to mention our right payers so that's how I get to option one lots of
good arguments on both sides I think I I hope that Tyson perceives as US cold
storage did that Denton is a fantastic location for distribution center you
don't don't take my word for it take you know Target and Wink oh and use cold
storage's word for it the value of this is one and a half percent of their total
investment I don't believe the ROI you know will stand or fall on this alone I
believe I believe we have a very strong case to make even without the incentive
and therefore I would opt for option number three
the automation that they're bringing forth on this there are some companies
down in Arlington and I'm going to give advertisements that are using automated
vehicles to take items from one warehouse to another to have them worked
on and the number of other distribution centers that we've got in that area you
want to talk about lowering greenhouse gases because you don't have to go as
far you're able to use electric vehicles for those types of transportation that's
the type of stuff that can come about in the future for us between Tyson and you
know whether it be Wink oh or Target or Aldi or any of the other distribution
centers that go out to stores those are all possibilities and so I really like
the direction that all of the warehouses in that area are going it's not your
basic warehouse with a bunch of forklifts like we some of us worked in
and over in our younger days you know it's the automated system also creates
those upper-end jobs and in those higher paying jobs so I'm for number one well
to me this is really a no-brainer option one I don't have that much to say I'm
listening to everything but this is this is not a close decision as far as I'm
concerned option one
yeah sure if nobody else yeah so I'm kind of torn but I have to make a
decision you know one thing that I really like as I said before I like the
$20 minimum I do believe that you know 60 jobs at $20 an hour is that's a good
it's 60 jobs so I like that I would like to see in the agreement a commitment of
not going beneath to not going beneath that $20 an hour I you know I am and I
appreciate the kind of on the fly answering those questions Todd about the
70 trucks in and out per day that was a good question and and that number was
you know it's stunning to me and makes sense so obviously it's a challenge I'm
concerned about that I'm also concerned about the pollution from the from all
those trucks you know I I would like to see or rather you know for the reasons
council person Briggs said you know I don't quite see why their percentage we
know why it has to be so high as a 25% abatement you know I prefer something
like half that so you know I guess you could say number two so I don't know if
I would get any any other takers on that on this council to propose a you know
well it's not an even number so but you know it's 12 12 percent or something
like that if that would you know be enough to make a difference anyway so
that's kind of that's that's where I stand but I do I can see the economic
benefit and the jobs the jobs benefit that's that's where I stand number
number two
thank you Billy I have a couple questions for representative of Tyson if
if you don't mind questions on just operations some general operations
questions so who would be most qualified to answer that yeah no it's better they're
very simple they're very simple yeah so we've heard and you stated about the 70
trucks in and is this a 24-hour operation or is this a is gonna be phased
to 24 hours or what how do these typically operate it will be a seven day
a week operation you know typically we will run our workforce on a 10-hour
work shift some across the country will do 12 if demand from our customers
required but on a typical it's a 10-hour seven day a week that we do a seven day
a week operation so it would be that yes so just so it's not it's just so the
actual number of hours that it's open in a day that somebody's in there working is
that 20 hours is a 10 10 hours a day 20 20 20 so virtually so this truck traffic
you know there might be some times when it's a little more concentrated and
others but these things are you're coming in and going out during that whole work
cycle is that yes sir that traffic would be flowing around on a seven day a week
20 22 hour okay so it's not like you're gonna have 70 coming in and 70 going out
within a two hour time frame it's gonna be spread out over 20 hour day with some
maybe peak times based upon y'all's deliveries and truck yes sir and we do
receiving and shipping simultaneously and plan to do it here so the trucks
that are delivering would be throughout the day through that work period and
also the outbound service and our customers would be cycled throughout the
day correct all right and on the wages do y'all have opportunities for overtime
do people work much overtime or is it pretty much we got a 40-hour workweek
and that's pretty much it okay yes we do over time as you know you know our
businesses are demand customer demand driven so they're cyclical you know this
time of year we have a lot of our items with the holidays and the things that we
do from our business units out to the customer consumption is at a higher pace
than now than it will be in January February we've got you know Super Bowl
you know wings are a hot topic okay so so we those two weeks prior to Super Bowl
we're going to be much busier and that's one of the reasons why we will do a 10
hour work shift that gives us some flex to be able to get that extra throughput
as our customers demand that on a seasonal basis so this this average wage
and let's move it down to that I think in the back of said $20 is sort of the
the floor some is the floor and then you've got some then it's there's
probably a good chance that people at that level or at any level will have an
opportunity to work extra more than 40 hours a week during certain parts of the
year and earn more than that absolutely yes okay all right okay that's helpful
thank oh and benefits some of it is health some of its 401k's I mean is it
pretty much a did they have a menu of benefits that they can choose from
absolutely have a menu of items there on health care from a health savings plans
the health care to various on that and we can definitely get you a copy of all
the things that we have in our benefits packet that we would offer everybody
there you know I can I could talk to you about the ones I take advantage of but
not all no no you're good get that now that general information is helpful to
me thank you that's it thank you very much I appreciate that go ahead but I
still have some other comments but if you got a question for him I'll go ahead
and recognize you go ahead do you use electric trucks do we use electric trucks
okay we do not use any electric trucks today we are working closely with the
prototypes in that a market with the with our transportation group and in the
near future we should be testing some of those in markets across the the country
so I'm not liberty to say when but yes we are working with that on the electric
truck side of the business thanks any others for what was your name again yeah
any other councilmember I'm sure yeah so with their other your trucks registered
it in would they be registered in Denton or at the headquarters with Tyson
headquarters they would be registered across the different states that we
operate in then and the transportation traffic in and out of here some of it
would be our privately what trucks that we own and then we would also go to the
open market for other common carriers that could be in this area they could be
you know Indian here and back calling out to New Mexico or going to San Antonio
a lot of our business our cus the customers pick up Walmart would have
their equipment in here picking up the product taken to the resale stores the
Cisco food service they would have their trucks in and out here so it'd be a
combination all truck traffic would not be privately held by us it would be a
combination thanks okay thank you Caroline could you put up the not the
real detailed slide that had the 10-year projection well let me try that one I
want to see if I can see it so I did a quick look at an agenda item that came
up about a month or two ago and area median income for this area is some of
the charts that I saw was about fifty four to fifty five thousand dollars a
year and of course we looked at a project that was based upon area median
income for housing based upon either eighty percent or sixty five percent or
something like that that a tax incentive was provided that equal to about two
hundred fifty thousand dollars a year of city taxes indefinitely as long as the
project met that that those particular goals I say that to say that at twenty
dollars an hour that puts someone without any overtime at about forty
thousand dollars a year which is over I believe it's a little less than 80% of
area median income anything over area median income 80% is considered middle
income according to HUD anything between 65 and 80% is considered moderate income
and this those 60 jobs would be closer to the high end of that 65 to 80% range
so the the incentive that they're asking for on the economic on the BP what is it
the business personal property business personal of 25% is 284 thousand dollars
over the entire five years of that of that project the one project that we
approved that gave a tax exemption to a housing project specifically targeted to
house people who work at places like this it was equal to that or close to
that for one year so I don't have a problem with the 25% I mean to say if
you want 10 or 12% you drop that down by 140 thousand dollars yes I know that
they're do they need the money does Tyson need the money no I don't think
anybody's in here arguing that Tyson needs the money I don't think Tyson would
stand up there and say they need the money and I don't say that with the
begrudging sense of tone or anything like that but unfortunately this is the
system that we're in not only in this state but in this country as far as
competitiveness and we could roll the dice and say we're not gonna give you
anything and they may come but they may not they may come in spite of what we do
or they could say we're going somewhere else and for two hundred and eighty
thousand dollars over five years I think given what they're bringing this
community in the form of benefits and assets and potential job opportunities
for people when given our decisions that we've had in the past about who we give
incentives to and who not and I will I will just state that of the three
companies that you mentioned councilmember Melcer Winco Target and
US cold storage US cold storage was the only one that did not receive an
incentive Target received an incentive Winco received an incentive in fact
Winco on their own built the entire Western Boulevard project I mean
upgraded it you know as far as out front and then we're paying them back on that
so yeah we could we could talk about a lesser percentage but I'm okay with this
percentage for what it's bringing to the community after five years or six years
when everything falls off when everything falls off you're looking at
what is it 750 million of 750 thousand dollars a year and that's you know
that's a good that's good for the city but more importantly I think it's good
for our community in the sense they're providing jobs that are within the 65 to
80 percent median income range modern income range with benefits we all know
that benefits typically cost an employer 25 to 30 percent more and that's
probably on this the short side of what they're actually paying in salary so I'm
understanding the $20 this average wage is not including that benefit kind of
calculation that's correct it is it's straight wages benefits are not
included okay so I'm I appreciate everybody's comments I certainly
understand about wanting to reduce it you know they don't need it why are we
giving it will they come anyway gosh we always have those discussions and and and
I appreciate those because I think it's always important to have those for me I
would just go with option one and given that it seems like we have a consensus
not a not a unanimous consensus but a consensus on option one but council
member Briggs I had a question for our traffic and if I need to wait and ask it
when this comes up for for a regular vote I can but my concern when that
happens I would like to know from our engineers what kind of wear and tear on
our infrastructure 980 trucks a week will do I just would like to know that
and and that's a good piece of information I also want to know if you're
able to figure it out how many trucks we have a day coming from all kinds of
places in this city that are traveling all over the city Winco Peterbilt
Walmart I mean what because that's it that's a reasonable question to ask but
I think we also have to look at it in the greater context of we we build our
infrastructure so that people will come and do business here and live here so
I'd like to know that too and also a revisit of when they're coming when
there's projected to build and what's the timeline projection for Jim Crystal
because I know there's some things going out there and the turrs is supposed to
do exactly that and that is provide infrastructure development to the turrs
area so I would like as we come back in when we have an agenda item for action
on this if that could be part of the presentation some of that additional
detail if that would be okay all right okay yes yeah and I'd like to add to
that yeah I'd like to see also the truck traffic in this general area however
defined you know I know that I know that there's new that there's a lot of new
demand that's coming that's not online yet but and I'd also like to see kind of
of some sort of map and kind of of the roads that will be used for this truck
traffic which are text dot roads and which are City of Denton roads and and
can I also ask and when do we do we know yet when this would come before council
for a vote it would have to be sometime I mean no earlier than January obviously
and these things proceed at different paces but with the direction we have we
can get a draft agreement together but we'd like to bring it back to you
as soon as possible okay fantastic questions comments all right thank you
very much thank you I guess y'all haven't taken a break so let's take a quick five
or ten minute break till we go on to our next agenda item
welcome back everybody to this meeting of the Denton City Council Tuesday
December the 11th 2018 we're moving through our work session reports we're
now in work session report 3c receive a port and hold a discussion regarding the
University of North Texas athletics facilities master plan and council member
Deb Armitter has filed the necessary paperwork for recusal will be okay all
right thank you well good afternoon mayor and council I'm Rachel Wood chief of
staff and is a proud University of North Texas alumni I am delighted to
introduce mr. run Baker he's the vice president and director of athletics for
the University of North Texas
good afternoon good afternoon thanks for having me and thanks to each of you for
your service to our city I know that we all benefit from your time and your
effort so I will try not take too much time today but you know basically just
want a chance to to walk through our recently released facility master plan
with the council and talking to Todd our city manager and Brian Langley we meet
as an as a university with several of the city leaders and we presented this
at one of those meetings and everybody thought would be beneficial just for the
council to have an understanding of the growth of facilities for the institution
just a couple of highlights which I think you already know but I always try
to reiterate so that my boss keeps paying me we're over 38,000 students now
over 70 top 100 ranked programs a Carnegie tier one research institution
and our athletic program has been on a tremendous upswing we had it last year
best year ever for attendance our best year ever for donations our best year
ever for winning which fans really like and then this year so far those numbers
are even better so certainly athletics is on the upswing and the thing we're
most proud of is we've we've had two straight years of our highest graduation
rate ever 83% so we're really excited about about that we know that athletic
events have an economic impact to the city and certainly as our attendance
have grown we've heard from people and in businesses that that's been a
positive thing so this is really a 20 year roadmap for us some projects are
underway or are more immediate and I'll highlight those some some we don't have
a finite timeline on it'll be kind of donor interest and funding will drive
those and I know you guys are aware of those kind of projects so with that I'll
kind of get into it and try and save any time for questions that there might we
might have okay sure you know yeah you'll fill out the proper paperwork as
well so we started a couple of years ago with our strategic master plan and it's
on our website but we really said what are we here to do and at the end of the
day we said we want to build champions and prepare leaders and we want to do
that through the pursuit of perfection in athletics academics in life and so
really our core focus is on that we get judged in many ways by what's on the
scoreboard at the end of the contest but what our focus is is on how we can help
young people every day become the best they can be and then we think that
winning is a byproduct so our focus is really very much so on that student
athlete experience and facilities are a big part of that it's a big part of
making sure that they have what it takes to grow and mature our athletic
facility master plan we wanted to be realistic actionable a blueprint that
integrates athletics into the campus through through the campus master plan
and so that's that's really where we started out I've got a video here if it
will play and not buffer and it's only about a minute or so long so
[Music]
So on your screen now is just a list of some completed projects that we've
already done most of this was to existing facilities just upgrades and
improvements I won't go through all of those some of those were larger products
than projects than others but certainly they all have had an impact on our on
our student athletes then we divided projects up in the short-term midterm
long-term and as we went through the these the master plan process we really
tried to look at our peer institutions and what they're offering versus what
what we have so just on that first item academic center we currently have 6,500
square feet of space for academic support in our athletic footprint we
identified a need for 14,000 square feet so we were very detailed as we went
through this and compared this with our competitors and peer institutions so
that we had numbers that really show where where our deficits were and how
big that was as we moved into the future the track and field soccer complex so
our track and field student athletes were still using Fouts Field which it
had no dollars invested in many many years we knew that that was not a
long-term solution but but the result of that was our track and field student
athletes were running on surfaces that weren't weren't safe and so one of the
first things we did when I came here two and a half years ago is really started
to look at that and then our soccer team which is our most successful team over
history they've never had a losing season 15 conference championships in
their history they were playing on a field that didn't meet regulation width
for hosting postseason so we made a decision to include track and field
inside of that I mean a soccer field inside the track and field complex so
this is going to be about a 14 million dollar facility it's currently 90%
substantial completion we're just waiting to pour the track but but if you
drive on our footprint you would see it and you'll see it on maps and Jerry why
don't you go ahead and distribute while we're here maps currently under
construction is our indoor practice facility let me go back for just active
soccer facility it drains very quickly and it can take a lot of wear and tear
so that combined with other facilities in the city will allow us to bid for
championships for high school tournaments college tournaments so we're
really excited about what that facility will bring in terms of maybe been able
to drive some some traffic in the in the city that we're all very proud of the
indoor practice facility is under construction now the two largest gifts
the university's ever received for athletics both two and a half million
dollar gifts came in for this facility and it is gonna be really a showpiece
it's gonna sit just south of the stadium you can see in that one shot that's an
evening shot it's got giant letters that say mean green that are lit up and so
it's gonna be a billboard for the institution as we built our master plan
we really have tried to drive eye catching aesthetically pleasing
facilities to 35 and take advantage of that traffic because we we do know as
great as UNT is there's still a lot of people in the Metroplex that don't know
everything we have to offer so any way we can catch attention of that traffic
we want to do we hope that this facility can be flexible maybe for other events
boats RV shows auto shows that kind of stuff so it's it's it's can be a
facility that can help all of our outdoor sports teams but also could be
something that drives traffic this is a some of our future projects here
baseball stadium I already got asked this in the hallway today when are you
guys adding baseball we get it a lot we had a chance to meet and that was your
first question and so it's definitely on a radar screen and the way that I
answer that to our fans and we have a lot of fans and donors who are very
interested in it is we want to provide a championship experience for all of our
student athletes there's some projects that we need to get done to feel good
about that I wouldn't want to bring a new team onto our campus and give them
a chance to compete for championships without fixing some some efficient
deficiencies we have and at the same time I wouldn't want to bring a new team
and not give him a chance to compete for championships so I do believe we'll have
baseball at North Texas we've we've allotted for it in this plan but it is a
facility that if there was a public-private partnership opportunity
like other cities in the Metroplex have done Grand Prairie, Cleburne and there
was a semi-pro team and we could be a tenant that's certainly something that
we would have interest in and so I know there are people active in the DFW
marketplace looking for those opportunities and if that was there we
would certainly welcome a seat at the table indoor tennis facility and we got
a real quick question I'm sorry Councilmember. If we could go back to the
baseball for a second because that's really exciting and we did that's one
you know one question I did ask you like why don't we have this when are we going
to get it and I may have missed it because I was dreaming in my mind of
having a minor league team what did you give a day or an estimated time for that
and also just wanted to say that it would be really great because we have a
lot of really good baseball players here in our high schools and to give them an
option of somewhere local to come to would be good. I would we do not have a
definite timeline on that but if I were to sit here and guess today I would say
somewhere in the five-year mark but again if there were talks to pick up
where there was a public-private partnership and where the facility we
weren't going to have to pay the full cost of a facility I think that would
cut that timeline significantly if something like that were to get off the
ground so you know I'm not I don't know what those opportunities look like but
but I part of my reason for being here is I just want to know as people come
and talk to you guys and talk to your leaders that's something that would if
it took us going ahead and moving forward with a team to make the numbers
work we'd be interested in doing that. Just a follow-up on that do you have an
estimated cost of what that vision would be? Most people are spending anywhere
from 20 to 40 million on ballparks just depends really on the amenities how many
suites how many club seats you know and you know how how much you want to go
beyond that so I don't I mean I think and then you know you can do retail and
development around it and that kind of stuff so when if it was just on our
campus and we were going to build that park I would guess not having went to
market to price that recently it would be probably in the 30 30 30 million
dollar range something like that. Okay thank you. Tennis indoor facility this
actually kind of spurred part of this conversation Gary Packen and Jared
Mosley and I Jared is my number two met because we knew that there's some tennis
facility development here in the in the city of Denton and so we have a lot of
outdoor courts many hours of the day they don't get used much there are
really no indoor courts to speak of in the city and so you talk about a pretty
significant tennis population and community and so we when we met with
Gary we said listen you know perhaps it makes sense if it made sense for you
guys if you have built some indoor courts we can make our outdoor courts
available but that would draw more traffic more tournaments that kind of
stuff to to the city for the high schools for us for everybody so we we're
gonna have follow-up conversations on that it may or may not be realistic or
possibility or something that makes sense but I don't think that the
university at least the athletic department's ever taken the steps to at
least make it known our needs and and where we could maybe help the ROI on
something future projects we all have grown to love and appreciate many
aspects of the super pit but for long term for our sports programs a more
modern arena with six to seven thousand seats and premium seating like clubs
and suites makes sense and certainly we think that could be something that drew
concerts and other events to the city it's another facility that if there was
a public-private partnership we would definitely want to be involved in that
conversation many many cities have done have done those kinds of projects but
that's on our our long term our midterm list of something that we really want to
want to take care of the super pits seats just under ten thousand which is
really too many for what we have and there's no what you what you would call
premium seats no club no suite no loge boxes which is is what most people
that's where you make your money and so and the university doesn't want to
reduce capacity because they host 30 something high school commencements
there and so they they really don't want to lose that seating so it makes sense
for us to look long-term at another facility a softball facility eventually
we want to rebuild that the current orientation in terms of how it sits
east-west the first base it looks right at the Sun that's very difficult and so
we want to turn that and move it eventually move it on the other side of
Bonnie Bray and same side where the football stadium is because we
anticipate that becoming a more and more heavily traffic thoroughfare and then an
auditorium there is no 50 meter lane 50 meter pull here in the city and so
swimming is actually a sport that's on the on the upswing so I'll leave time
for questions I'll go ahead and play one more video real quick and then take any
other questions that you have
[Music]
[Music]
so the only other note that I make that I didn't mention prominently was just
you'll notice as we vacate facilities there on the west side of Bonnie Bray we
turn that into a premium parking area I liken it to the Grove at Ole Miss but
really a place where people come there's an open area for games contest concerts
but it's really another premium tailgate parking space and so we really think as
our athletic program continues to grow we're going to need parking over in that
footprint so questions yeah well thank you excellent presentation I noticed one
thing on the so I have a list here but one thing on the on the basketball the
new stadium I didn't see a grass hill that kids can roll down and that's gonna
be automatic no for me if kids can't roll down a hill and go into the street
then it's just not the same yeah we'll see if we can build a street and a grass
hill into that we'll go we'll go to work there is a significant hill over there
so okay you could still have fun I'm back yeah could you touch on what y'all
are doing with the didn't Diablos and then I have some other questions but I
want you to kind of share what you're doing there yeah so one of the the
gentleman that is running the didn't Diablos Damon Gouchner is a graduate of
ours and an avid fan and he's been up to see me a time or two and so when he
told me this was a dream of his to have the team he was like we really would
need a facility and he wanted to know what we're gonna do with our old soccer
facility and right now we're gonna keep it for practice and just other purposes
and so he would he asked if we'd be interested in renting that out if he
was able to successfully get a team and you never know how that's gonna go and
so we worked really hard with them to give them a deal that really just
covered our cost and get in and brought another team into the city and hopefully
builds even stronger soccer connection for the residents of Denton and hopefully
drive some revenue to the city and then so when you envision locations for
because I would like to see us one work towards a tennis facility because I've
heard that from a lot of the hoteliers as well that that circuit uses a lot of
hotel nights and that sort of thing so that is high on my list of things to
add to the city and especially that opportunity to kind of share and and
hopefully embrace the citizens get go to UNT utilize those facilities and kind of
get gets them exposure to that experience and maybe ask questions
about tickets etc so I think there's some cross-branding opportunities there
as well as meeting a need but when you talk about that it these locations where
we would partner do those would they still be kind of as you laid out on the
on the campus and then we just kind of work I think we would be open to both
you know for so for instance let's talk about baseball for a second there's been
whispers that there might would be the land down close to downtown near the
railroad tracks to do something like that for us we'd have interests we
wouldn't want to move every sport off campus but moving a sport like that off
campus I think would be a good opportunity for us to to connect with
people who might not come see a game on campus but because it's downtown and
it's close to other restaurants and and hangout spots maybe we we we get some
other people to come and eventually get those people connected to North Texas
and so you know I don't I don't think we're necessarily married to location
just like with this indoor tennis facility and I think the hope for us is
if there was opportunity for this for the city to have a public-private
partnership what everybody wants is one to figure out how it's going to be paid
for on the front end and then to the operating costs annually and so for us
we would probably look at doing long-term lease agreements in certain
situations which would help expect with that operating piece for sure and then
lastly what are what are what are the connections between a baseball softball
field can those can it be dual purpose and the base paths just be moved
different or how does that look you cannot really share a single field for
baseball softball the dimensions just work differently but what you can do
sometimes and people will do this is send them where home plates have they're
adjacent to each other and so you can save some cost in terms of a lot of the
concessions restrooms that kind of stuff because they can be centrally located
where the two home plates kind of but up against on each side so I've seen that
done before but the fields themselves there the the dimensions just don't
quite work to to have both games on one kind of yeah thank you very much and so
those are those kind of the hot buttons for me and then also the natatorium
piece I mean if there's a way for us to get more traffic I mean we talked about
that early get more traffic to to that area for the swimming pool and meet a
need I don't know what that looks like but but that would be interesting too
thank you so yeah I hear the not at Torium is pretty busy already with
people trying to get in and swim in the DISD using it my question is I do what I
notice here that you're expanding out and you're expanding out towards the
neighborhood is there any plans to have any kind of neighborhood meetings in the
future I mean I know that you don't have to because you're UNT but you know it is
a little bit more than the normal and I don't know about the the lighting and you
know how that will affect and I know that you don't necessarily have to to go
by our code and our rules so you know how do you plan to very fair question and
historically we've been very respectful of that buffer zone and certainly the
people who are in those neighborhoods you know they used to back up to a golf
course so you know people has been there a long time there's been changes we leave
a fairly significant buffer zone there so if you'll look at the size of that
softball field it looks small on a map but it's a softball field so you're
leaving a fairly substantial buffer zone which has a tree belt now but we
definitely would add more trees the other thing is that soccer practice
facility would either have no lights or minimal lighting it wouldn't be a place
where we played games so there wouldn't be noise pollution unlike pollution
would be minimal and we would definitely if we built a softball facility there
have a lot of conversation so that the lighting could be done in a way where
all of that lighting went on to the field and lighting is much more
sophisticated now as opposed to what it used to be and would look at adjusting
game times and but we definitely want to be very cognizant of that neighborhood
and would to answer your question would include them as we move forward with
those plants well I really appreciate hearing that thank you so much
in the comments appreciate your presentation I think it's I can't
remember a time when there's an opportunity for both universities
especially UNT to partner with some of the city of Denton's recreational
opportunities to see if we can create sort of more value together than we have
a part so thank you so much and we certainly would be willing to explore
those options as well because Denton's a growing city and we do have a lot of
interest in softball soccer I mean just I mean you can tell by our capital
improvement programs in the parks that we're requiring so I think that's an
opportunity that certainly is worth more conversation on well thank you and we're
really grateful for everything that you guys do and I mean it my mom was a
councilperson in my town growing up now my town was 900 so she didn't have the
complexities that you guys have but I remember all the Tuesday nights that she
spent away from home and we were eating ramen noodles or whatever we could get
that night so thanks for your time and service and we appreciate everything
that you guys do and I just want to take a moment and say thank you for your
service to the university and for what you all have been doing to really move
forward the reputation of the university both in academics and in athletics
because it is definitely showing good luck in your bowl appearance wish you
the best of luck and thank you so much for the great entertainment value that
you provide for our citizens over all your athletic spectrum so thank you mr.
Baker so appreciate that you bet okay we're gonna move on to agenda item D
receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding the solid waste
departments building material covering rubble processing operations if you'll
just take just a we'll take about 30 seconds to let the other two council
members come in to get situated before you start your presentation
well good afternoon mayor members of the council my name is Ethan Cox I'm the
director of solid waste for the city of Denton it's my pleasure to be in front
of you this afternoon we're gonna spend a little bit of time doing a business
case analysis over the solid waste departments BMR and rebel processing
operations before we dive into that I'll give you just a little bit of a
refresher back last summer we had a solid waste consultant come in by the
name of Blue Ridge services basically tasked with just doing a 30,000 foot
overview of all of our various programs and services we provide to the city
they had a number of recommendations that were presented to council and a
fairly thorough discussion as some of those recommendations were made the
council at requested the staff take some of the recommendations and programs
offline do a more thorough analysis and review and so this is the first in a
series of these types of discussions that we're gonna be bringing back for
your review before you started I'll be dropping this into most of the
presentation is just an overview of what is a business case analysis and so
textbook definition is generally it's an analysis that evaluates the benefits
cost and particular risk associated with a particular program investment or plan
of action so for us we're really using this process to look at some of our
existing programs not only see what the purpose of those are but how are they
performing you know what are the results that we're getting out of the program
what's the financial outlook our risk assessment and then we'll go into some
options and recommendations for the rebel and BMR analysis I also want to
try to go through some definitions just to make sure we're all understanding
what we're talking about when we say rubble that's associated with the rubble
processing operation obviously that's essentially just waste fragments of
stone brick concrete or asphalt typically associated with larger scale
construction operations building materials are very similar nature
sometimes you also have waste brick concrete there you also have other
materials like glass drywall metals insulation etc I've highlighted metals
here because typically in our past operation that was the material that we
were most successful in recovering and recycling most of the rest of that
typically ends up being waste product lastly when we talk about diversion
that's the process of diverting material away from landfill disposal for the
purposes of our presentations our analyses we're not counting amongst our
diversion numbers anything that's stored or stockpiled on site we only count that
as diverted once it actually leaves our facility so it must be moved off site
some of the objectives our departmental objective over a number of years has
been try to progress towards zero waste objective the interim goal right now is
divert 40% of all waste accepted the purpose that these two programs serve in
relation to that objective is for rebel processing really you get into that
business to sort and process rubble and then you divert by selling the aggregate
material there is some waste product associated with that but in most cases
you try to sell as much of that product through crushed concrete soil etc
building materials recovery the purpose of that operation is to sort and recover
and divert construction waste from landfill disposal through either reuse
or recycling most notably metals like I said a second ago the participants that
we typically service here from a customer standpoint we're dealing with a
lot of private contractors commercial operators that are hauling C&D materials
and rebel for for other businesses as well as city departments we do have a
streets department and a number of operations that utilize these services
the operations in our department that perform these functions the landfill is
involved for dealing with the waste byproducts of these operations the BMR
in the former mining operation if councilor calls we did have a landfill
mining operation that was part of this in a moment I'll talk about budget the
BMR and the landfill mining operation we're kind of commingled in our budget
for a number of years in terms of program performance how are we doing in
terms of achieving our objectives what I have up here is essentially program
performance over the last five complete fiscal years for rebel we accepted a
little over 300,000 tons we've successfully diverted ie sold and moved
off-site about 28,000 tons of that material so that diversion comes out to
about 9% is worth noting that we've essentially tried to go back and recreate
an inventory system for this material we start noticing some issues with this we
made council aware of some of the issues with sales and not being able to account
for the material so we've done surveys we've looked at a lot of our systems
we performed an audit currently we're unable to account for about 140,000 tons
give or take now it's not an exact number simply because material can vary
by density depending on what you're processing but that's a pretty accurate
number in our estimation we do believe that some of that may have been using
capital projects on the side but we do know that it was not sold for revenue
building materials BMR we accepted about 93,000 tons we've diverted just over 9,000
so diversion rate of 10% and again that 10% is majority metals that we take to
local scrap yards some of the challenges that we've seen in getting higher
diversion rates on this is a lot of our source materials extremely contaminated
especially on the rebel processing you might not think of the soils and a lot of
times are contaminated if we're going to be using a soil on site for daily cover
or in some of our operations again that's not diverted material but reusing
that we actually have to have tests performed to ensure that we're not
violating any portion of our permit the other challenges we face is there is a
limited market for recovered material as it relates to rubble you have to have a
certain spec for aggregate in order to move that and be used in roadway
projects and frankly other firms are more efficient processing there are a
number of private firms that do rubble processing and things of that nature and
they're just a bit more efficient have some economies of scale that we have in
our financial overview on the left-hand side here the historical income and loss
we provided something very similar to council back in June so essentially you
have two sources of revenue for these operations one is the gate revenue
that's charging users of our facility as they enter the facility to dispose of
material and then commodity sales which is either selling metals and/or the
crushed aggregate associated with the rebel operation these are large fixed
cost operations a lot of heavy equipment a lot of staff required to run the
processing and so our expenses were about seven million dollars cash flows
net loss of about five point three million I mentioned a moment ago the BMR
and landfill mining were commingled so recent budget activity this looks like
we're a little bit all over the place what I would say is the closest number
to actually running both of these operations at a hundred percent is your
fiscal year 16-17 actual of about three point three three point four million
dollars for this fiscal year we're at about two point seven part of what goes
into that is we did remove the 10 FTEs previously assigned to the mining
operation we also reduced temporary labor expense by about 268,000 we're
hiring our own talent to perform these operations out there right now and then
also on that fiscal year 18-19 budget that two point seven million it's worth
noting that we do have a fairly large amount of stranded debt on some of our
capital expenses for heavy equipment so about one point two million dollars of
that is associated with that strained capital so if we were to move forward in
the way that I'm going to show you we're operating today you're typically looking
at a budget about one point five million dollars based on what we're doing
currently so rewinding back to that June 26 meeting the Blue Ridge
recommendations were to discontinue both operations for the BMR operation it was
really due to financial losses expensive equipment and the operations were
fairly inefficient then in-house rubble processing understand there is some use
for that material the aggregate material on site as a landfill we do construct
temporary roads tipping pads things of that nature so their recommendation was
we use rates and policy to try to regulate the amount of volume we're
taking into the gate and we brought that to council along with some of the other
recommendations again it was to bring back further analysis to the COE PB the
council as well but also at the same time it was to temporarily convert our
BMR into a public disposal area I'll show you a little bit what that looks
like in a moment we had some issues with our recycling drop-off that I'll cover
as well then also to temporarily suspend our rebel processing operations so the
rest of the presentation I'll go through how that's working as of today so first
things first for the BMR to public disposal area I think the biggest thing
that I would say here in terms of a change is the building materials recovery
operation was really there to serve contractors commercial entities etc our
residents and small businesses smaller contractors were then being sent to the
working face of the landfill where they were essentially jockeying for position
with large commercial haulers and our automated trucks I can tell you I had a
few moment anxious moments out there kind of watching that happen so one of
the things that we wanted to do is if we did try to convert this area is provided
much safer operations for you know the person is cleaning out their garage some
of our smaller contractors that live here work here and all that and so on
the bottom left hand corner what you see there that was how they BMR was
typically operating previously you have a large pile of material here that's
waiting to be sorted and you got heavy equipment that's loading it on conveyors
or disorders and you have a number of staff members that are essentially doing
a manual sort to try to get to the recyclable material fairly labor
intensive a lot of dust generated in the process also some potential for injuries
with sharps running this operation we typically had about 10 to 14 staff
members either on the picking station and or running heavy equipment around
the site this is what it looks like today essentially the same area customer
class that we're serving again a smaller businesses as well as our citizens you
have spotters like this gentleman here on the front side as well as the back
side navigating traffic all the vehicles have a lane assigned to them when they
come in as soon as they drop our staff is there along with helping the citizens
to try to clear some of the recyclable material that's easily retrieved so you
can kind of see in this picture you got some cardboard there maybe some metals
that can be grabbed pretty easily and safely do still have a little bit of
heavy equipment but essentially we would be reducing a number of pieces of heavy
equipment as well as getting our staff from about 14 down to about four or five
when you brought this to CoE there was a significant drop in the tons diverted
and it was mentioned that just because that was there there's 55 more tons
diverted but that's actually cleaner and you know exactly where that's going and
it's recyclable but the 67 that was diverted before may have not been right
completely diverted or accounted for is that am I remembering that correctly I
think really but both the 67 in the 56 I think the quality is similar I think on
the the BMR you are getting a lot finer materials because you have that manual
sort on the picking station what we're diverting now is is really stuff that we
can get to easily and safely so you have larger pieces of metal you have some of
your cardboard here which is kind of low weight but a lot of appliances and
things like that we're trying to focus on not spending so much time and effort
and risk trying to get those smaller pieces so I think that's the difference
you're seeing there in the diversion numbers okay but the the tons diverted
still the near the 56 is recyclable like cardboard metal right things like that
most of this is going to be your metals which again was what we were recycling
before we're just not going through the extra effort and risk of trying to sort
that out manually like you see on the bottom bottom left hand corner most of
the materials the same though so to that point the tons diverted we have seen
about an 85% or we're capturing about 85% of the material we were capturing
before but we're also doing it about half the staff as well as half the cost
and we also feel like we're servicing our citizens a lot better commercial
operators still have the opportunity to divert but by and large the big large
haulers are being sent to the landfill instead of to this station just for
clarification on that though because you said it's being sent to the landfill so
does that mean that the landfill is increasing in size with this
opportunity with this I think we'll need to go back and take a look because we've
we've had a number of changes that we've done in terms of rate increases things
like that that we've installed in the middle of this so you are seeing some
volumes reduce I think if we just kind of take a look at these numbers in a
vacuum you can make a reasonable assumption that about 12 more times did
go to the landfill as a result of this but again we're servicing completely
different classes here I would say if we wanted to try to divert the
construction and demolition debris from the landfill we may want to take a look
at somehow regulating that at the gate as opposed to trying to sort it out here
okay yeah one of the other issues we were trying to resolve is the
relocation of our recycling drop-off as you recall we had open access facility
is essentially what we had term it as you entered the landfill over on the
left-hand side it's not unusual for us to see that kind of activity especially
following a weekend we'd have quite a bit of illegal dumping we would also
have quite a bit of contamination in our mixed containers cardboard diversion was
fairly high because as you can see with some of these containers over here those
slats do prevent you from fitting most items in there but once we got into our
mixed-use containers and what was on the ground we were seeing a high amount of
contamination a high amount of illegal dumping and I just I want you all to
look at that picture very closely the one on the our left because this is what
people who have commercial dumpsters whether they're residential commercial
or whatever this is what people do they come and they dump mattresses and they
dump furniture all around the dumpster and it's the property owners
responsibility to get that to the landfill but so this is it was it's
happening to it was happening to our dumpsters there in the open access
that's happening around the city so it definitely is very problematic and it
that's really not I mean never had anything quite look like that because I
just don't have that kind of volume but certainly three or four mattresses few
pieces of furniture all in one location so I appreciate you bringing that picture
forward because it's happening all over the city yeah I think you see some
opening things on this I think that like you said mr. mayor the difference here is
the city's actually the owner of the property so so what was 11 tons under
the monitored access 20 percent landfill what's with the tonnage would you say
where open access when it was open access it wasn't it was not collected
separately so we have a number of drop-off facilities around the city those
are collected by our commercial haulers we got to these diversion numbers
because when we were seeing this issue we asked Pratt our materials recovery
facility to run an audit on this particular collection and so that
contamination essentially when we took these containers to them we dropped it
on the tipping floor and their staff looked at it says to contaminated to
sort reject the whole load so when you swing over to the monitored access that
what is one advantage that we do have is we are closely monitoring we're weighing
that stuff coming into the facility we're weighing it going out and we have
a very good idea on not only who's using it or how often they're using it but
also how effective is the monitored access at diverting the material you do
still have some contamination however it's much improved in the single stream
diversion 80% it's only 20% being landfill versus the 99% cardboard
diversion remains high again we have staff this is race very close to the
public disposal area so folks can typically come into the gates and hit
both sides of the facility if they want to Councilman Bragg's had a question if
you could go back to the the PDA for a second I just had a follow-up question
just because when you brought it to us before I guess you just said it in a
different way that I understood it now differently but a question I didn't ask
then that I kind of want to ask that I want to ask now is that you the people
that are working there in your presentation is a little bit go you said
that you're do you've hired in-house to work here so I'm just curious what what
are their hours and and how much do they get paid is it an hourly we just had a
long conversation about you know what what we pay what we expect other people
today so I'm just curious that the hours here and how does that compare to the
individuals we had working here before so the way it was working before and I'm
gonna ask Brian burner our deputy director to answer the salary question
but essentially what we were doing before is we were contracting the
temporary agencies I can't say for certain what their hourly rate was but
we were typically paying about $15 an hour a portion of which was essentially
a markup to that agency there's a number of challenges with doing it that way I
mean you always have a steady stream of workers but you always have we're in a
high-risk environment and so training of our staff and making sure that they're
conscientious that they're ready for work that's a very high concern for us
and our goal and making this switch was essentially bringing our workers train
them on the safety aspects of it hopefully they could kind of find a
career it's not just an hourly wage but it's also the benefits and everything
else that the city offers so Brian do you have a answer on the hourly rate
good afternoon mayor members of council I'm Brian burner deputy director
currently the the our new fuel service workers we're paying them at between 15
and 16 dollars an hour plus the benefits that the city offers it to them the
landfill is open from seven to four so usually they get there about 630 in the
morning and then they will their portion of the work is done by four o'clock they
don't have to stay after to help close up the landfill they're 40 hours a week
plus overtime I think it's real windy we have a lot of trash to pick up they're
working a lot of overtime areas like right now where it's a little bit wet
we don't have that that extra trash to pick up or kind of cool in the
afternoon so we don't have that the staff they get it but they do get their
four hours in and so when you say they how many how many are here at the side
the PD the the PDA how many field service workers we have three field
service workers that are at the landfill but they are but we also have heavy
equipment operators and other people so we have an average of four people there
at all times it could be a field service worker it could be a heavy equipment
operator it could be somebody else at the landfill so depending on where the
need arises to provide that labor that's where we we move these these
workers okay thank you you're welcome
so in staff's estimation we feel like the both the PDA as well as the new
monitored access recycling facility are working pretty well we do have some
remaining challenges most notably with our rebel processing operation we have
had some of these stockpiles that you see here surveyed and provided some
estimates on what it would take for us to process those rebel stockpiles one
of the challenges we have is based on our estimates we only have about 20
percent recoverable material the rest of that would be about 80 percent waste a
lot of soil as you can see in these photos right here like I mentioned
earlier that's not necessarily diverted material it may be able to reuse but
that's not necessarily going to save us any landfill airspace so testing that is
going to be critical if we test that material and it has certain contaminants
in it we really don't have much choice but the landfill it if we do nothing
just say for instance we take a dozer and start pushing all that in the
landfill you look at about a three point three million dollar potential airspace
loss one of the things that I would say when it comes to rebel processing is we
divert a hundred percent of the rebel we don't accept and so if we accept rebel
in any form or fashion there is going to be some waste product from processing it
and that does start to reduce a little bit of your airspace that being said
there is a value to some of this material at the landfill like I said the
aggregate can be used for road base tipping pads etc so there is some
avoided cost there to where we could avoid about 180 thousand dollars in
purchased aggregate if we're able to move this material off-site we may save
about six hundred sixty four thousand dollars in airspace
I have a question about the are actually really two questions about the last bullet point are
you able to speak to the the resale market and the past and future
predictions for the you know ups and downs of that market or what are what
are people projecting I think I may have to defer to our city engineer and/or
Brian for specifics about specifications but essentially what we've processed in
the past is off spec meaning that there's a very very narrow and limited
market essentially can't be used in commercial projects if we were to try
to process this to make it an on spec material we're probably looking about
twice the processing cost I'm not sure exactly how competitive that market is
right now Todd do you have a general sense of as far as understanding that
particular market so much of it is based on how much material is able to be
processed and how many processing facilities you have and then the quality
of the material itself once they process the applicability of market I don't know
I mean we could look at that a little bit more Brian may have a little better
idea the reality is is we don't have that many options here in town as once
the concrete has been pulverized into chunks it has to be further processed
before we can use it in a road base usually get them in chunks that could be
anywhere from three inches to several feet depending on how well it's broken
up and then it has to be pulverized in between a half an inch to an inch and a
half to be able to go into road base typically it also provides the
workmanship a lot more you have to be used to work the base material a lot more
because concrete tends to be a lot more angular so what that means is I have to
really work harder to compact it will for it to be a road-based material and
like a little bit more rounded aggregate like a stone or a rock thanks yeah if
you have anything to add to that
well again just to piggyback off what Todd was saying here the the amount of
recycled concrete just in the entire University of North Texas is really a
drop in the bucket when you look at the raw aggregate market we're sort of
because of all the limestone we have in the area raw aggregate is really very
inexpensive and to obtain the issue is the trunking and transportation costs so
again location location location if you're very close to where a project's
being made and you've got some size selected aggregate it's real cheap you've
got this market but if you've got aggregate sitting you know 20 30 40
miles away and it's cheaper to bring in in raw material which again the only
processing cost is digging it out of the ground and so I was selecting it so you
know that the market is very limited by location and by your ability to
process it to the right size thank you you're welcome
so to finish up on this slide despite this being a bit of an expense here we
do feel like it is worthwhile processing this because our stockpiles are
currently located on future landfill cells and we're gonna have to incur the
cost and move that material at least we'd like to try to get some benefit and
try to move some of it offside if possible even if there is a limited
market if we're unable to move it offside we will use that aggregate for
roads and tipping pads in the facility so to wrap up trying to kind of towel
this together option one for council's consideration is to discontinue the
acceptance of rebel from commercial entities that would be your large
construction outfits your CMD haulers we would continue to accept from city
departments but we would need to have some strict strict quality standards
essentially less than 5% contamination that cuts down on the sorting cost helps
us process a more quality product and we'd also recommend sorting and
processing that existing stockpile because it is a large expense we would
recommend on metering that expense out over a five-year period use that
material again for internal operations to process it as we need it and then in
terms of the BMR we do think that the public disposal and drop-off areas are
working really well so we would suggest or recommend that that stay the way it
is and essentially liquidate the remaining BMR capital equipment option
two would be to reinstate the rebel and BMR processing operations if we were to
do that there is some additional operational expense and capital
investments that would need to be returned to the budget budget amendment
of just short of $700,000 would be required for us to spend that back up
provided a little bit of a rate impact on what this operation cost again these
are operations that from a cash flow standpoint are losing money and so when
you have that there is some rate impact that ripples out to not just folks at
the gate but also to our own collection operations because they pay disposal as
well so current monthly cost based on the 2018 budget the budget year we're
currently in it can range from 39 cents to 77 cents a month for residents
commercial the spread is much wider that's because those costs vary
according to container size we talked a little bit earlier about debt service
starting to step off by the time we get to the year five period you're seeing a
pretty healthy reduction on this what we share with the PBA and the COE is if we
play our cards right from rates at the gate users landfill facility we think we
can eliminate most of the subsidization that's up here if we go back to option
two again that negates your year-over-year cost reductions because
you're returning those capital investments into the budget and then
you're also going to be increasing that monthly cost and this is a snapshot of
what that budget amendment would look like in terms of an environmental impact
option one requires about 20 less pieces of heavy equipment not only is that a
capital investment but it also burns a great deal of diesel and also has
emissions for Knox and co2 other factors if we do accept less waste the facility
there can be a greenhouse gas reduction there's a couple different ways to
calculate that most of the your rubble and things like that are kind of inert
material so there's not a huge impact but there may be some impact if we were
able to divert a little bit more of the construction waste from the facility
there's also the reduction in dust from the BMR noble processing not necessarily
factor that in when you think about environmental issues but that is a
permit issue for us operating a landfill we need to keep dust to a minimum prior
discussions we did talk to so I mean would you would you count as a so in
terms of impact on the environment this this is about the it see it feels like
this is an argument for kind of the benefits of option one over option two
environmentally but would you would you say option two I mean it has the the
benefit of recycling more right and I think for the BMR you are recycling the
metals and I think the essentially the the trade-off there is right here in the
difference in those tons diverted that the councilmember Briggs brought up
earlier I think when you talk about rubble and a lot of the equipment there
you're not necessarily recycling that material you may be reusing it so you're
processing aggregate that can be used beneficially somewhere else I think the
challenge for us is balancing that with do we add those additional pieces of
equipment when another operation is better suited to do that process than we
are they can do it more efficiently in addition we also have the landfill air
space that we've got to consider by bringing that facility that material
into the facility there will be some waste product that will take up some of
our landfill airspace and so are we better off diverting 100% by not accepting
it I do think the construction and demolition one of the things that we
talked to the committee in the environment about is in terms of trying
to divert as much building materials do we adjust rates at the gate and provide
a different rate class or something like that to encourage folks to do something
more responsible with that material the COE also recommended that we reach out
to some local partners to see if there's an ability to divert some of that
material if they can beneficially reuse it I'm above and beyond what we would use
it so we'll definitely be exploring those likewise the public utilities board
also recommended option one but also ask us if we do enact rate increases that we
monitor illegal dumping and I think that picture that we looked at earlier a lot
of that may be that someone went to the gate and didn't like the rate they were
getting quoted so it ended up illegally dumped near our dumpsters and so that's
those are all factors and ripple effects of these decisions that we've got to
keep an eye on
yeah well I think we do have opportunity there I mean you can charge more at the
gate but if we offer our residents you know more free pickups or we include
certain things in the in the monthly pickup that we normally hadn't we may
not see those increased illegal dumpings as well so there's opportunity there so
for just for me I want to say that the goal is to of course reduce and reuse
and to protect the landfill space that we do have and that's why I went with the
recommended option was to I feel like if we weren't going to be able to divert it
once it crossed and it was just going to end up in our landfill anyway I'm in
favor of preventing it from getting there and allowing the people who have
that material to take it I think we had the conversation to other private
entities who have actual uses for it and it's going to be truly reused in that
way that's correct okay okay council direction I mean not option one seems
oh sorry sorry question um would it be possible kind of with a tweak of number
option number one would it be realistic to have some sort of system where
commercial and to really closely monitor and have really strict standards on
commercial rubble collections such that you know it had to be this size and I
mean how how complicated how unrealistic would it be to to say you know to to
limit it to just the kind of of commercial collection that we could
handle or it would that just lead to more of the the going back to the
problem we had we had before is it really an either or I'll turn the podium
over to Brian just momentarily one of the things I will say though is the
reason why we're recommending that standard for city departments and not
outside entities is I can go to Todd and say hey stop bringing that in the
facility we've got an issue here a lot of times when you're dealing with the
commercial operator it may look good on the surface we may be even do an
inspection but once it gets dumped on the ground it's our responsibility to
deal with it you can't always be sure what's in that load until it actually
ends up on the ground so Brian's you want to piggyback on that one of the
reasons is you know we're competing with a very robust recycling market there are
providers out there that will take this material the city does not need to be in
the business of doing this for the commercial operator so again as Ethan
was saying you know if we can shut the gate to the commercial operators they
will still be recycling this material but out on the commercial market not
with us and again we'll still be there as a safety net for city departments to
manage this material as need be and I think at that point in time it is a
win-win situation for everybody involved okay good direction council on the
committee and committee on the environment said option one is that
correct that are y'all still standing by that recommendation individually as
council members yes just to say a sentence about it it's it's unusual and
welcome from a decision-making point of view when you know there's kind of an
environmental argument that happens to line up also with a cost argument you
know we're recovering not as much but pretty much as you know but but but the
majority of the same material in a much less intensive way so okay that's right
thank you council member Duff any particular direction on this for you
yeah okay I mean I'll go with option one so we're there council member has
bestept out so yeah we'll go with option one thank you appreciate it all right
that concludes our open session we will now convene in oh okay so we're gonna
move the closed session to the end of the so I'm going into the special call
meeting at this point is that correct all right all right so then we will move
the closed session to the ending of the special call meeting and so now we'll
call the special called meeting following the completion of our work
session report City Council will convene in a special call meeting at 343 to
consider the following items our first item on the agenda is the consent agenda
we didn't did y'all had did y'all pull any no you didn't pull any okay all right
consent agenda mayor pro tem move approval of consent agenda councilman
Meltzer second all right we have a motion and second for approval of the
consent agenda all in favor please signify by raising your right hand all
opposed by like sign carries six zero we'll move on then to our items for
individual consideration agenda item 2a consider adoption of ordinance of the
City Council the city didn't in Texas establishing a governance process for
the city auditors department for the purpose of defining the city auditors
authority so the auditor here all right well I'll tell you what we're gonna move
on to agenda item 2b we'll come back to that agenda item 2b consider adoption of
an ordinance of the City of Denton Texas the Texas Home Rule Municipal Corporation
authorizing the city manager to execute contract for the supply of underground
distribution cables and substation control cables
who's in on that this is an item for individual consideration do we have a
staff presentation on that yeah if you could tell I mean this is sort of a
change of process so I apologize for that so just tell everybody we're looking
at the individual item for individual consideration
yeah that's all right we're gonna go with be a measure will catch you yeah
and a measure will catch you right after this we're gonna go with agenda item B
yes okay well what and this is for okay all right
well I'm sure that this is not gonna be as a long a presentation as these show
and tell items seem to indicate okay all right just because if this is basically
a five-year contract is that right okay all right okay you have to be able to
identify all the wire sizes before you can vote on it yes sir you ready just
for the height clear well Jerry Fielder division engineering manager
municipal electric I'm here to visit with you about the request that we have
in for a contract for the supply of our underground distribution cables and
substation control cables I do have a presentation I guess I better get it up
so a little background this was done under RFP 6842 it was sent to 143
prospective suppliers it was posted on the materials management website and
we received five proposals and this RFP was for two different categories
distribution underground cables as well as substation control cables this is a
little bit of a busy page but it kind of helps you understand on the left over
there is a listing of all the cables that we have if you look at the table in
front of it everything pretty much on that side is our underground cables and
what underground cables for is is just that it's to serve the electricity
underground it's insulated so it's protected from the soil etc etc the
other cables you'll see me next week to talk about the overhead cables so the
overhead cables are also included in this demonstration on that part of it so
you can kind of see an idea of all the cables that we have now the loose cables
are just pieces of them if you're interested in seeing those I can pass
those around and let you look at them so see if there's any interest in seeing
okay Councilmember Briggs you had a question I believe I am curious about
the underground because I know if we have new housing additions the though the
electric is underground right nice man not overhead anymore so that's part of
that any of this that we're approving going to convert overhead to under head
or is it just all new yes it will in fact later on the thing I'll show a
couple of projects that I know of but there's always other projects that could
come up to convert overhead to underground and so this contract will
cover that also okay thank you
we use both copper and we use aluminum cable before I move from this slide this
is again this is all the kind of the the numbers that we had from the RFP and the
values that we're going to have if there's any questions then I'll be more
than happy to answer them about this slide so kind of give you an idea with
some of the calm projects that we know that are going to come up for a
distribution cable we have several substation feeder exits didn't North Jim
Crystal Locust Hickory Eagle and May Hill substation all of these are
anticipated to have underground feeder exits and so this cable will be used for
that now for the CIP and for the revenue generating projects razor
ranch three UNT overhead underground conversions that we have going on Bonnie
Ray relocations us 380 Street lighting which is a project you guys saw a couple
of weeks ago and then we always use this cable for the service to the commercial
multifamily and residential developments
well question yeah because the the 380 woods on that list but that necessarily
hasn't been approved so is that just just in case just in case yes in there
okay yes ma'am the the contract won't specifically say we're going to get X
number amount of this cable X amount of this cable so if we need to buy more for
380 than this contract will cover that and we'll be able to buy the the cable
that we need for the 380 Street lighting program so section B of the RFP was for
substation cable and I've sent one around it's a two conductor basically
what this cable is used for is the control systems and the substations the
substation folks have given me a kind of like a little one line of everything
that gets control cable connected to it in the substation so their AC and DC
equipment power system monitoring system meter system metering and system
control is all going to be run through this cable for the substation side and
again they've listed out the substations that they believe that they're going to
use this on which is Brinker substation the Bonnie Bray 138 KB substation
upgrade Hickory Eagle Underwood didn't north May Hill and they'll also use this
for any of the skater upgrades that we have kind of give you a summary of where
the RFP broke it out on distribution we anticipate using on average about 3
million dollars a year in cable so 15 year contract or five years would be 15
million dollars substation would be 225 thousand dollars in in usage five years
is 1.1 billion dollars now all of this contract has what we call a commodity
adder in there so if the price of copper or aluminum goes up or down that is
adjusted and so that's what this little number right here is which is coming up
to our 18 million dollars for the distribution side and one point four
million dollars for a total contract value of 19.4 million dollars and this
is a five-year contract and to kind of give you an idea of where we were at the
last contract we had was five years and it was for 24 million dollars so we've
actually lowered the contract this year so the questions before us is to award a
five-year contract with a not to exceed portion of it and a possibility of a
six-month extension provision if we need to have that again it's going to be 18
million dollars for the electric distribution cable to tech line
incorporated and 1.4 million dollars for substation control cable to the Stewart
C. Irby company our recommendation is well we are seeking the council's
approval for this 19.4 million dollar contract allocated between the vendors
as identified the other option is you don't approve it and you give us
additional direction so with that that's pretty much the present so we have it
used to be united copper in our city but it's called Southwire now and I believe
when I first got on council I asked DME if we ever tried to use companies who
actually source the copper from our local facility do you know if that's the
case here some of this is Southwire but now they don't build our cable here they
build a lot smaller stuff that's like extension cords they usually build that
here in Denton they don't build a big cable but Southwire yes we do buy Southwire
tape okay thank you on the adders is that you just have built into the
contract a sort of base price for your copper and lumen that's the assumption
of the contract and then if it changes there's a is that just we basically pay
the cost difference there's not an adder to the company for a profit or overhead
is it just no it's just it's a past commodity cost okay commodity cost
factor so if the price of copper goes up then right it allows us to pay for that
price of copper okay all right all right any other questions comments okay thank
you very much thank you thank you for the show-and-tell all right so this is a
agenda item 2b mayor pro tem move approval we have a motion councilmember
husband second we have a motion to second for approval of agenda item 2b
all in favor please signify by raising your right hand just curious about the
budget and if it if we could just have the city manager weigh in on that
because that's millions so it's that it's been budgeted it's a it's a routine
purchase and you heard Jerry say it's been scaled back in addition to the CIP
plans that George took a look at last year when he first got here so plenty of
budget authority and we ended to take a pic on it it's a contract that you pay
as you go so we're not concerned okay thank you all right we have a motion to
second all in favor please signify by raising your right hand motion carries
unanimously agenda item 2a consider adoption of an ordinance of the City
Council the City of Denton establishing a governance process for the city
auditors department
good afternoon I'm Mr. all city auditor when I presented this document earlier
previously there were three things brought up the first thing was council
wanted to include a provision where the any additional audit requests that was
made by City Council to be approved by the majority of the City Council and the
second item related item was if there was a request which did not take City
Auditor's offices much of time with a simple response then that response
needed to go to all council members and those two items are addressed by page
five and six of the red line document okay and the last item was City Council
wanted management to assign appropriate priority say that one more time I'm
sorry City Council wanted management to assign appropriate priority on
additional audit requests and that is included on page eight of this document
and that was in the agenda determining the agenda process is that correct right
yeah okay so all those changes are made in this document and I'm requesting an
approval adoption by ordinance okay any questions from mesh on this thank you so
much for for making those changes so no questions all right fantastic
mayor pro tem move approval councilmember Armitage right second yeah we
have a motion and a second for agenda item 2a with the modifications made
pursuant to the last work session agenda item all in favor please signify by
raising your right hand motion carries unanimously moving on to agenda item 2c
consider approval of a resolution of the city of Denton creating an anti
bullying and anti harassment policy for all city facilities and programs
providing an effective day good afternoon mayor City Council I'm Sarah
Kuechler the director of public affairs I'm here today to present an item for an
anti bullying and anti harassment policy this would be a new policy and it would
prohibit bullying on against any individual on the basis of the list of
protected classes seen here on the screen it does include sexual
orientation and gender identity and we use this list of protected classes to be
consistent with other policies that we have in the city including the equal
employment opportunity policy during the council meeting last week a council
member requested if gender expression could be added to that list in addition
to gender identity in general the broader term of gender identity could be
understood to include gender expression so gender identity is kind of more that
broader overarching term that would include gender expression it's the
question is do you want to go the extra step in terms of being very specific
that gender and not only does include gender identity but also gender
expression and that's really for the LGBTQ community in terms of meeting
them with their terminology for gender identity and gender expression so I want
to ask you a question on bullet point two where it says in general and law and
policy the broader term is often defined so when you say law and policy that
means there's there's public policies there's laws that clearly define that
that term is is part of that broader term is is my is that my understanding so
someone brought a claim of gender expression under one that did not have
necessarily that term in it as is being as was requested that that doesn't mean
that somehow it would be an invalid it would be an invalid claim is that my
understanding that's correct we would interpret that term to also include
gender expression and I did confer with our legal department on that as well
okay all right councilmembrometer so as I understand it a training would be part
of this this policy too right so if if gender expression is included then part
of the training would include you know making sure that that supervisors
department heads and co-workers understand that even if you don't
identify as as trans or even if you don't identify as gendered non-binary
right that there's this other category gender expression whereas under option
number one if it was just gender identity there wouldn't be a requirement
right to explain what what gender expression is and what that difference is
is that correct there wouldn't be a requirement but we could include that as
part of our staff trainings in terms of just describing what gender identity
covers yeah that means yeah so there's yeah okay so so even under option
number one it could still be the gender expression could still be included as
part of the part of the training yes I understand okay thanks yes so help me
understand because I would think that it's really not discretionary if that's
what the law is and what general policy is that our training would be deficient
it wouldn't be that we're augmenting it it would be deficient if we didn't
include all aspects of what that broader definition is so that people understood
so it's not like we would be adding something to it that we don't have to is
that we would be not doing something that we're probably close to being
required to do in order to provide proper training for our staff is that does that
make sense yes that's a good way okay all right okay great okay and so just to
explain the differences between the two terms gender identity is that internal
sense of what is your gender it could be the same gender that you were assigned
at birth it could be different than the gender that you were assigned at birth
gender expression is really that external how are you expressing yourself
and in terms of gender for your name your clothing your hairstyle your body
language so the way that someone expresses their gender is not necessarily
a clue as to how they might internally identify their gender the two can be
different so there's two options we could leave the proposed policy for
council consideration is currently written prohibiting on the broader term
of gender identity or the second option could be to add gender expression so it
would prohibit on the basis of gender identity or expression if this is the
option that council would like staff would also recommend updating our other
policies to be consistent so that would be our equal employment opportunity
policy as well as our harassment prevention policy and we could bring
those back at a future council meeting okay councilmember hudspeth yeah I'm
gonna move we believe it is current ridden this matches our current policy
and meets the broader needs okay councilmember Melser that was a
motion I'll second okay we have a motion and a second questions discussion
councilmember was go around the phone councilmember Briggs so I just I didn't
want to read a definition of bullying that I found its use of superior strength
or influence to intimidate someone typically to force them to do what one
wants often over a period of time repeatedly and intentionally to cause
hurt or harm to another I don't care what we add and we can add as many things as
we want I sit here and stand against bullying and and this is what it's all
about it's not about what we add who we add who we don't add it's about standing
against bullying and that's what I'm sitting here to do I completely agree
and I understand having classes listed or particular groups listed in a
anti-discrimination discrimination should not go on and that's more of how
you define that but bullying and harassment you don't need a particular
group that you need to understand it should be there it shouldn't happen
period you know we shouldn't have to say you know you can only be bullied or
harassed because you are belong to a certain group that we're putting in this
policy so you know while I will vote for this as moved I really think that the
true way to have handled anti-bullying and anti-harassment should just be a
general statement you do not bully you do not harass period
so thank you so and I - I'm against any kind of bullying or harassment in
general but but out of respect to the LGBTQ community I I prefer option
number two because it is ultimately has the same legal impact but it sends as
as Sarah explained pretty well you know sends a message to LGBTQ community that
where we understand their terms meeting them in their terms that said even
though I prefer number two and and I'm grateful for this addition to the
presentation I would if the consensus is to go with number one I'm definitely
with number one precisely because as you said its gender expression is is in
included in in gender identity but I wanted to be clear that that that's why
it is out of respect to the LGBT community and to show that where that that
that the city is meeting them at their terms and that we understand what that
is okay any other discussion yes customer husband yeah and I'll say I
absolutely agree with the sentiments of others I asked that specific question
and and was told no because I said hey no bullying done and and I was told you
have to list the protected classes and I and I trust those that operate in that
field to provide that expertise that I don't understand for them to help
enlighten these type decisions but I mean again as a member of a protect
protected class I get it you know I don't need this session to educate me on
the difficulties and intricacies of it and so I wholly just wish we could in a
perfect world just say hey we're not going to allow bullying of any sort and
educate people because I think it is kids and and so I think I think our
staff is well equipped to handle those and I appreciate that training that goes
on that's able to just again I think it's more of an education and kids will
be kids but then let's let's help them grow and learn so thank you very much
thank you and I just want to clarify to what is the way policy bullying is
defined in the policy it does prohibit bullying in general it's just a you know
as bullying can be defined as a written verbal physical conduct that adversely
affects ability of one or more persons to participate or benefit from city
programs and so forth but then it goes on to list and include the protected
classes as well just to give notice of these are things that you can't bully
against my suspicion is that if someone is getting bullied the first thing is
going to figure out how to stop it you can go look at who's defined in that
regard but I think the first question and the first objective will be how do
we stop it no matter who it's against and that's really what we're talking
about that's what that definition is really reading so thank you for reading
that any more conversation questions observations or comments because we do
have a motion and a second oh yes councilmember Briggs I have a question
on the training because that that is a very important part of it and so is it
each individual employee and is an annual training is updated how because I
know that we do have with our parks temporary staff do they go through it as
well I mean is it how does that work yes we're still defining that but it would
be by department different departments have their own codes of conduct and
training in terms of how they deal with situations that arise now so it would be
by department and specifically starting with our parks and libraries that have
the most interactions in terms of programming great any other comments okay
we have a motion in a second all in favor please signify by raising your
right hand motion carries unanimously thank you we're gonna go ahead and go
to our concluding items and we'll go into our closed session so concluding
items councilmember Briggs two quick things I pull them up here one a while
back ago I requested a some options to see a new sign for out in front of City
Hall you can barely see that this is City Hall as you drive by it's you know
the old style wood thing and we've moved away from in our parks and so just an
update on that if we're looking for for any kind of solution and also we heard
about Opportunity Zones a while back and just if we have done anything or have
identified any projects that that we want to have in those Opportunity Zones
okay all right thank you mayor Pro Tem I attended a public meeting on Hickory
Creek Road widening and there were several residents in the area that were
concerned about not being able to make a left-hand turn of Livingston and I've
since you know forwarded the information on the engineer they have reworked on
that so that we do have a left-hand turn coming off of that we'll be able to turn
left off of that and I'll be emailing back to everyone that sent emails to me
to let them know that that has happened
Councilmember anybody over here? Councilmember Hutzpah? Yeah I would ask if staff could
then it could be as simple as an email I just someone in my district had
mentioned the lack of bus service on Sundays I know they work on the the
train tracks on Sunday but I would understand the bus service better so
either email explaining that or a point of contact that can answer that question
another thing can staff look into that same person raised the issue of they had
a their daughter's disabled had her sticker in the car and so she parked in
the area that was not allowed to be parked and I get that but the problem is
she was towed and so I want to look at the towing ordinance as it relates to
people with handicapped or disabled license plates because that's more
heavy-handed in those situations in my opinion so I think there needs to be
either a maybe a fine associated with it more so than automatically towing that
individual that now can't walk home can't you know there's it triggers a lot
of other mechanisms that I didn't think about that that's concerning and then
lastly another person brought up TW has the soccer field across UNT I mean
across University Drive and how are we expecting people to get back and walk
traffic I'd like to see kind of what engineering says is a good path for
walking and then evaluate that to see maybe it's to go up to Bell and cross
maybe that's the answer I just want to understand that better so thank you great
okay seeing no more requests for concluding items we will adjourn the open
session of this special call meeting at 411 we will now convene in closed
session at 411 we will consider the following items consultation with
attorneys under Texas government code section 551.071 and under go take
deliberation regarding real property Texas government code section 551.072
and I believe councilmember Armitage and Melcer will be recusing themselves from
this closed session discussion.