Jan 15, 2019 City Council on 2019-01-15 12:00 PM

All right, welcome everybody to this meeting of the Denton City Council. It's Tuesday, January the 15th, 2019. It is 12.03 p.m. We do have a quorum, so I will call this meeting to order. Our first item on the agenda is citizen comments on consent agenda items. Do we have any cards? All right. We have no cards. Request for clarification of agenda items listed on the agenda for today, January 15th, 2019. Council Member Briggs. I have a question. One later on this evening, we're going to be talking about the Oak Gateway plan, and there's a lot of concern and issues just regarding the Hickory bike lane. And I just want to clarify for the people that are coming today and tonight, and also to get staff to weigh in on that, that that specific, those options are coming back to mobility and that by the approval of this plan does not necessarily lock in a concept for that section of street, if that's okay. Just for the people speaking tonight, they're aware of that. Do you want that to be made at the beginning of the -- it sounds like, because what I'm hearing you say is that people are coming to speak believing that the Oak Gateway plan has some final decision on the bike lanes when you're saying that that goes back to mobility, which will then come back to council, so there's going to be plenty of opportunities to address that as a separate issue. And I just want clarification. I'll make that in the beginning, so if somebody's here that thinks that -- oh, you mean right now? If that's the truth. Oh, yeah, sure, okay. If that's the truth, yes. I didn't know if you just wanted me to share it with the people who will be coming. Go ahead. Sorry about that. Good afternoon. That should be a quick response. That's a correct statement. A lot of the recommendations that are included in the Oak Gateway plan are just that recommendations and ultimately final decision, final designs would have to be conducted and performed by staff and city council. Okay. Thank you. On the consent agenda item D, regarding the refuse and recycling carts and the replacement, I'm just confirming and asking if they're the exact same ones that we've had before or if there's been any advancement. I know that some people have talked about maybe having ones that drain or if these are just the exact ones that we have, same size and everything. Good afternoon. To address your question, yes, I believe those are exactly the same type of cart. It's a different manufacturer but the same cart. Okay. Same size? Everything? Yes. Yes. Same size. Okay. Thank you. Any others? I do have a question for city attorney. On agenda items, we've got a public hearing agenda item 5B which is the sales tax distribution reinvestment zone and then we have an item for individual consideration which is agenda item 6A. So if 6B either ties or fails, do we need to proceed to 6A? I mean 5B. In other words, we've got to create that zone before we go on to the next agenda item. Is that correct? Yes. Yes, that is correct, mayor. Okay. I just want to understand for procedural purposes. Okay. Any more comments on the agenda? Questions of clarification? All right. We'll move forward then for our work session reports. Our first work session report is receive report, hold discussion and give staff direction regarding the development of the coal ranch and hunter ranch master plan communities in southwest Denton. Good afternoon, Brian Langley, deputy city manager. I want to spend a few minutes today talking to you about the coal and hunter ranch developments on the west side of the city, west of I-35W. I'm going to take a moment to introduce a couple of special guests that we have with us today. OC Vest from Stratford Land is here and Brian Carlock from Hillwood Development are here and after I make a few initial comments, I'm going to turn the podium over to them and let them go through the presentation with the council today to talk more specifically about their development. So again, I'll go through a quick few slides for you to provide you some background, give the developer a chance to make a presentation to you and then at the end of that, I'll come back to you and seek some direction from the council. At the beginning of this presentation, I just wanted to highlight for you and I'll have the same slide at the end of my comments that we're looking for some general feedback today from the council of your direction on this. If you have conceptual framework, enough information to feel like that this is something that you're interested in moving forward with and having more discussion on. If so, over the next several months, there will be a number of different opportunities for the council to have discussion on this, to discuss the MMD in more detail, to talk about what kind of powers, what kinds of restrictions that city council may want to place on the MMD. We would have work sessions on the design standards, potential development agreements. All those things would be covered over the next few months. So today, we're looking for just general feedback from the council. Is there merit in this type of development? Is there merit in moving forward? Do you have an interest in doing that? Yes, sir. So can I just try to clarify or get some clarification on what you just said? So my understanding is that the request has been that in order for an MMD to be created, there has to be some enabling legislation at the Texas state legislature, and the desire is to go ahead and obtain that and to give the council the information that it needs to feel comfortable with at least having it authorized. But my understanding is that having it been authorized does not mean that, therefore, that's it. In other words, there's still going to be this collaborative effort between the council and the developers to come up with something that meets the interests of all the parties. And then if somehow that doesn't occur, and I'm not saying it would or wouldn't, but just looking at all the different options, that just because you have a resolution doesn't necessarily lock you into anything. I'm not saying that to put a negative spin on it, but I don't want us to think that we have to make that decision on all those moving parts in this work session and/or in a vote that may be coming forward in February, that it's just -- am I? No, that's accurate. So what they're requesting is support, so an MMD, for it to be formed, has to be created through state statute, and so there would need to be legislation filed to create the MMD. But Mayor, as you articulated, there would be lots of opportunities to have additional discussions about exactly how it would be done and how you'd want to govern it. Good. All right. Just wanted to make sure, as we move forward in this conversation, that there's that overarching principle of what we're really talking about. I think the urgency is that the legislature is convening now for this year, and so if there's an interest in doing it, the earlier you get that in the process, the better, and the council would need to provide some type of support for that legislation for it to move forward. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate it, Brian. So just quickly on the background, Cole and Hunter Ranch are very large tracts of land, each about 3,000 acres, so a total of about 6,000 acres on the west side of the city, and you'll see some maps of this in a moment, and we have some visual representations over here as well. As you may recall, some of you have been on council in the past. We did have some Cole Ranch presentations in the past where a public improvement district was proposed. We had a lot of different discussions with the council on that, and ultimately the council declined to move forward with Cole Ranch using a PID. One of the principal reasons was that the debt would be retained on the city's books. That was a concern amongst some other issues about the development in general. So earlier in 2018, I was going to say earlier this year, but it is 2019 now, but in 2018, late 2018, we were approached by Cole Ranch and Hunter Ranch looking to partner together instead of working independently on separate developments, and they wanted us to consider looking at a municipal management district. That's the MMD that we were just talking about instead of the PID, and that would enable them to still recover a portion of the cost of their infrastructure, but a key piece would be that that would be issued as a separate political subdivision of the state and would not be debt that would be retained on the city's books. So that was something that had changed. The developers would continue to front the cost of all the public infrastructure and they'd be reimbursed from bonds issued by the MMD at some point in the future. A key point here is that the reimbursement only occurs, though, after the developers paid for all of those improvements up front, and then the assessed value of the homes, the land, all the buildings that have been constructed would be 10 times whatever the value of the bonds would be issued. The revenue from property taxes would be collected from all the property owners within that district, not current city of Denton taxpayers, just the residents and taxpayers in that district, and then again, the key difference between the PID and the MMD is that the MMD would issue debt on its own and it would not be on the city's financials. Because the PID was a, the taxing entity was the city, right, and the tax rate would have been different for the PID residents compared to other city residents, and so you're saying that with the MMD, that is not what happens? It's similar. The PID would not be a tax, it's a special assessment, so it's a specific amount that would be levied for every property owner in the district. An MMD, on the other hand, would be a tax that would be levied, and that would be only on people in the district, so if you don't live in that district, you don't live in Coal Ranch or Hunter Ranch or an existing city of Denton resident, you would not pay that additional tax. Does that make sense? So there is an additional tax for the people living within that? It is. Yes, it is. Different from everyone else. Right. That's correct. Just a moment, I'll show you a little bit of how the stack bar graph is so you can see the different pieces of a tax levy. So the main difference, sorry, is the debt and where that lays, either with the city or the developers? Well, I'll have a chart here in just a moment, and I'll try to walk through some of the other key differences, but that is one of them that's there. So here's just a, in your backup, there's a more exhaustive discussion of the differences between a PID and an MMD, but from a very high level, as I mentioned to you, on this left-hand column is the MMD, the Municipal Management District. It's a separate political subdivision of the state. The PID, on the other hand, is created through Chapter 372 of the Local Government Code. I won't read all of these to you, but the MMD issues the bonds. The debt is not included on the city's financials. The PID, on the other hand, as we talked about, it would be on the city's financials, how that would be recorded. Also debt for water, sewer, and drainage facilities must be approved by the TCEQ under an MMD, and that wouldn't be the case under a PID, so that's another difference. And then we have some of the lean-to-value ratios under an MMD versus a PID are different as well, and that's a key difference for the MMD is 10 to 1. You've got to have 10 times the assessed value of what you're issuing in bonds, so it's additional protection that those bonds are going to be able to be paid. So hopefully that provides a little bit of background for you of the differences, and I'll show you the tax right here in just a moment. Any other questions on that? So here is the tax rate, just a stack bar graph, so you can see these are various developments around the Metroplex that have special districts, and you can see the blue is the county rate, which is about 22 cents. The school district is always the largest tax rate that people pay, and that's about a $1.54 or 1.54%. Then you can see the city rate on top of that when those are applicable. Some of these are outside of city limits that you'll find, some are inside. Then special districts, and I put those all as one category. You can see how those layer in, and some as well have a hospital or college district. The Hunter and Cole Ranch, they're proposing a total tax rate of about 2.93%, so $2.93 for every $100 of value. That compares pretty favorably to some of the other developments that you see here, it's slightly higher than some of the developments that have been around for a few years, Paloma Creek, Savannah, Lantana, and it's about, again, about 55 cents higher than what you would pay if you were just in the city of Denton without a special district. So hopefully that provides a little bit of clarity of how the taxing works, but the total tax rate that someone would pay would be about 2.93%. So going back to this slide, again we're going to talk very specifically about the development in a moment. Brian and OC will be walking you through their vision for the development. But as I stated earlier, we're really seeking at this point direction from you, is you need additional information, is there merit in this type of proposal, is there merit in looking at this further, and if so, we'll be glad to get you that information, but there will be a request to approve a resolution to support the MMD legislation, and that could come in February or later when you're ready for that. But that in no way would prevent you from having multiple different discussions, as we discussed earlier, of talking about how to create a development agreement, how to look at the MMD, restrict the powers to what you felt was appropriate, look at the board of directors, all those different discussions that need to take place, as well as the character of the development, design standards that you want to see, the layout of the development of where the parks will be, all those kinds of elements that will be coming. So hopefully that makes sense from a process standpoint. If there's any additional questions, I'll be happy to answer it. Otherwise, I'll turn it over to Brian to begin the presentation. Okay. Thank you for your time. I'm going to turn it over to Brian Karloch, and he'll go through his. Brian Langley? Yeah. Okay, yes. It's confusing. He's with an eye. Oh, sorry. Yeah. So, there are other ways that a development might get money from the people who buy homes there, like an HOA fee or something like that. What would be the point of, the particular point of doing it through the city in the form of a specially collected tax, what would be the benefit of that? HOA fees typically pay for maintenance of amenities or operations that are there. They don't generally generate enough dollars to pay for reimbursement of capital costs for infrastructure. Typically, you'll see large master plan communities look at lots of different ways to put together special districts. They don't always have that, but when they're looking to try to reimburse for infrastructure, it's through some type of debt mechanism that reimburses them for all the roads, the water and sewer infrastructure, those kinds of things are much larger dollars. But not every development has a special government district, right? There are lots of developments in Denton, so how do they do it? They've chosen to finance those on their own. They may decide that they're willing to absorb those costs, and they can still make the project economical. I think what you'll hear from these developers is they believe that they can't do that and include all of the amenities and concepts that they'd like to include without these types of special financing mechanisms. On the west side of the development of the city, the infrastructure is just not there at this point to make those developments happen. I think they can speak to this, but I suspect this development would also have an HOA on top of it as well. It's typically what you see in these large developments with large numbers of homes. Hopefully that answers your question. Well, I thought there's also a difference in that this sort of arrangement gets the developer access to lower cost financing, so that creates a financial benefit to the developer versus some other form of financing. There's an advantage of it because it is tax-based financing, so there is an interest rate advantage, absolutely. I think that would be lower. Okay. With that, Brian? Again, just probably use these buttons. They're easy for the slides. Great. Good afternoon, mayor, city council members. Again, my name is Brian Karloch. I'm a senior vice president with Hillwood. We are going to -- excuse me, sir. We're going to touch several times on your question to make sure it's clear kind of what is the difference and why now, and why this particular financing tool. I did want to introduce a few people that are on our team that are here, so as particular questions come up, know that we have kind of the experts to be able to address those questions. But Brian mentioned OCVEST with Stratford land, coal ranch. We also have our financial planners who play in the space of public debt with RW Baird, Jan Bartholomew and Ron Nesbeth in the back over here. We have our land use and our special district attorneys that really focus on district work no matter what, MUD, MMD, those types of special districts, and they're here, Clay Crawford and Angie Lutz with ABHR and Crawford and Jordan. We also have our land planner here who we've worked with for probably 20-plus years, Mark Meyer, and we have our engineering group here also, Peloton, Jonathan and Pat, in the corner. I think that's everyone, but regardless of hopefully your question, we can address it in whatever depth that you feel necessary. We did want to take just a few minutes, well, more than a few minutes, but a few minutes to talk a little bit about background, who we are and what it is that we're asking and kind of why now and why this tool that we're talking about, the MMD, but we do think it's important for you to have some perspective on other aspects of the project. You can see here the outline, I understand, that at least council has been given this outline in advance, but we think each one of these is important to touch on and discuss at your discretion deeper. One thing, so there's two properties here, again, Brian mentioned, about 3,000 acres in Hunter Ranch, owned by the Perot family, and then the Cole property, which is similarly sized north of 3,000 acres, owned by the Cole family in Stratford. Just a little bit about the two parties, because we think it's relevant. If you don't know, Hillwood, we're now 30, 31 years old, founded and owned by Ross Perot, the Perot family. We address several different competencies, as you can see on the screen here. If it's real estate, we probably do it. We're born and we're headquartered here in Dallas, Texas. We now have offices out of the United States, in the Middle East and all over Europe. Really out of the country, it's really industrial that takes us mainly out of the country. From industrial and from a residential standpoint, we do find platforms on the East Coast, West Coast, primarily, though, focus on Texas. Just to give you just an idea of a size and scale of Hillwood, again, this is our 31st year of doing this, these numbers may or may not mean anything to you, but it probably puts us number two, number one, size of a residential master plan community in the state of Texas. We're fortunate that we do have a lot of holdings in Texas. We're blessed with the economy and just Texas in general, so we always call this home and this is really where most of our work occurs. We don't build homes, we're developers. We focus on master plan communities that are somewhere in that $200,000 to $700,000 price point, Austin, San Antonio, Houston and Dallas footwork. That is our fairway. Really active, we really specialize in large master plan communities, largely because they are so capital intensive and largely because these are multiple decade projects riding through cycles, so it almost takes a private owner developer to be able to weather the ups and downs. We're fortunate we don't have the same financial pressures that, for sure, publicly traded companies deal with on a quarter to quarter basis. We're able to make long term, good decisions because we do have a long term aspect. This just gives you an idea of our Texas platforms and our interactive communities. I'll speak for Stratford just for the efficiency of presenting. These are a few highlights with Stratford land. Again, they've been doing this a little longer than we have as a company since the mid 1980s based here in Dallas, Texas as well. You can see on the right hand screen what they focus on. Starting from lending to providing equity to actually developing to consulting, but all around this idea of master plan community development, often and mostly on large scales. Just a few images, currently invested around a billion at this point, it goes up and down. Also focused across the country, but centered here in Dallas, Texas. Again, not that bigger is better or more is better, but we show those statistics really to show depth and breadth of experience. The objectives of really this entire effort at the highest macro level going down to what we're really here talking about today, ultimately our plan is to develop and our desire is to develop these two properties side by side in a master plan way to kind of have it at a nationally prominent level. We know that's achievable based on both of our experiences. We currently have at least one master plan in that top national ranking, but size and scale allows you to do things that you can't do on smaller scales. That goes a little bit to your question about why some of these other subdivisions may have a tax rate, maybe some don't, maybe some have special districts, some don't, but we'll touch on that a little bit more. Kind of more specifically, our objective is to create a municipal management district. We've now spent I don't know how many hours with staff and discussions with maybe what city preferences might be, what financing tool might be most acceptable given the burden perceived, the risk perceived by the city. We, Hillwood, have significant experience in creating municipal management districts within cities at the right time if it's the desire of council, certainly would encourage you to reach out to other city managers, other mayors to see how it's gone with them. But it is a pretty tried and true proven mechanism. It allows you to finance really regional infrastructure as well as provide a reimbursement financing mechanism to really elevate the standards of a master plan community. So I don't want to get too deep into it, but that is really first and foremost what you probably need to understand is these districts are created as financing tools to be able to afford things that a lot of other projects may be not be burdened with. In this particular case, it's the regional infrastructure. This entire south-southwest part of town, it has really no access to fundamentals like water and sewer. There's other transportation needs that it has that really lie on TechStot's side of the equation, but largely it's missing basics like infrastructure, which other projects, say another subdivision, 100 or 2,800 acre subdivision somewhere else in town may not have that constraint. It may already have readily available plug and play, but we're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars, not just small amounts, just to be able to start your development. What you'll find too if you look at the top master plan communities in Texas or the country, you'll see that it is almost a given that it has some form of public financing from California to Florida to Texas to Arizona. It's in play. So if you wonder how in the world these communities can deliver high quality of parks, open space, mixed use, residential architecture, and probably afford off-site infrastructure in the hundreds of millions, the only answer, practically speaking, is some form of public financing. In this particular case, our objective is to create a municipal management district through the state legislature. One key point, Brian hit on it, but one key point is also to not just create specifically the MMD, but the MMD was selected as a tool to bring forward to you because of really the risk avoidance at the city. Again, we continue to compare it to, say, a PID. The MMD requires effectively nothing from the city. We don't need to use a balance sheet. You don't administer the PID. Those two things are not true for a PID. They're really the burden of administration and the burden of debt falls really on the city. PIDs can be good too. This is probably the safest of all the financing mechanisms available. The other key component, while not mentioned here, is that it allows the city to have participation in the governance of the district. To the extent the city council would prefer to have a member on the board of the MMD that's certainly allowed. It's written into the legislation that we've drafted, and your legal team has, to be able to allow that if you choose to, but that's something unique about the MMD is that it allows you to be a part of the process, so there's no concern about what's going on behind the magic curtain. You're really a part of the process. At build out, we put a number, 14 billion is the anticipated projected future value of the 6,000 plus acres at build out. Build out being 35 to 45 years is probably the projection, which seems probably pretty reasonable based on our expectations. The ability to take it from almost nothing, I think collectively these two ranches are on the tax rolls at about half a million dollars right now, so that's what the two properties are participating in, as far as taxes. A little bit about the property history. Both properties were annexed into the city in the early 2000s. Both properties were also zoned 2007 and 2008. They both have zoning of this MPC zoning, which you're familiar with. A component to the MP zoning is this technical term called a development plan map, but think about it as a concept plan that shows where different uses can go. What is missing and is key to this conversation is there is no regional infrastructure. There's not. That is the reason why the properties have been annexed and zoned. Most would see them as ready for development, but they have not developed in the last decade or 15 years for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that there's no way to afford typical traditional city services like water and sewer that are traditionally available for properties within the city. A little bit of context for the properties. You can see them in red, probably important to see kind of how they sit and how they situate relative to I-35W. In dashed, you see the loop 288, which I know you're familiar with. This is a substantial portion, probably around three miles of the 288 loop as it goes west on 35, goes through both of the properties. Maybe also interesting to highlight on this map is Alliance. You see Alliance, Texas. I would hope some of you are at least somewhat familiar with Alliance, Texas, but Alliance, Texas, again, really developed by Hillwood. Everything in color that you see, except for the outline around the coal ranch, are properties owned by Hillwood. Largely since 1990, we've been focused on all those things between 114 and loop 820. Really, this sector from here to highway 114, that's where we've been focusing. That is most of the 26,000 acres that makes up Alliance, Texas. We're very proud of that development, but that's where it has been. We're substantially not done, but we're substantially into the late stages of development in that bracket. What we see as an evolution to Hillwood's interest and probably the market is development that really just continues to run up I-35 straight to Denton. There's several good reasons why development doesn't want to push west, lack of regional infrastructure is one of them, but also the proliferation of gas wells, particularly vertical wells that make it difficult to develop. Member Husbeth, I believe, has a question or comment. Yes, sir. Brian, particularly interested in the Alliance timeline, can you give me a ... I have some other questions. I'm going to wait until after the presentation. Yes, sir. I'm making notes, but help me understand the timeline from just this airport in the middle of wherever to ... That's a good way to put it. What it is now. Yeah. Also, by the way, here at the meeting, I didn't introduce them, but a representative from our Alliance group who focus on Alliance Texas all day, every day, Craig Scotty and Robert Foselogan. From a time period, I'll see if I can't help. Robert, you can chip in if I miss a date, but largely 1990 was considered the beginning of Alliance. The airport was substantially built and completed in a public-private partnership at that point and then it started from there. Alliance is really a 26,000 mixed-use development, from residential to office, industrial, obviously airport operations. What is interesting, I'll tell you, if you go back and look at the business plan in 1990, it probably isn't exactly what happened today. Evolution of transportation, technology, e-commerce, e-distribution has really changed the way it's developed and will continue to change, the way that land use is used to develop, but generally 1990 is when we kind of think of day one, correct, Robert? If you're going to speak, we'll just need you to come to the microphone. Well, you tell me if I'm wrong, Robert. Okay, all right, thank you. Yeah, we're just televising this so that it can be heard. No, yeah, I understand. Sorry about that. No, you're good. You know, but it is interesting. Do you have some more questions about Alliance? Yes, sir, no, I'm going to hang on to them, but I needed that for context. Well, since you asked, I can follow up with a few more data points, which I think we think are interesting. Since 1990, Alliance now employs just over 60,000 people, so really created 60,000, 61,000 direct jobs at Alliance Texas. Indirect jobs is around the 145,000 jobs. You kind of described it right. In 1990, this was nothing out here, absolutely nothing. To kind of see what it's become today is really quite unbelievable. We're very, very proud. If you ask Mr. Perot what he's most proud of, he will say kind of what has been created in Alliance Texas. We just paid our 2.3 billionth dollar in property tax since 1990, so we're at 2.3 billion. Last year, our number was we, Alliance Texas, paid $210 million in taxes to the six cities for school districts and two counties that really make up this property. But again, to reinforce, we've really spent all efforts for logical reasons because infrastructure was available, transportation available, leveraging airport, Burlington Northern Rail Hub, and other factors focused on that center sector as we go forward. As evidenced by work we're doing in North Lake, we're doing what will be a 3 million square foot industrial project, just north you can't see it, but there's a blue dot up there. We've also, in the orange, you'll see those are really primarily residential master plan communities with retail as a component, and then we make our way up into what we think is the next leg, which is coal ranch and hunter ranch, that sector. So we can't be more excited, but we also feel like we have a little bit of a clear crystal ball on the path of development because of some barriers going west. Another context map, just to point out that the red is the 6,000 acres, it falls entirely within Denton County, it falls entirely within the corporate limits of Denton. Also, I guess, kind of obvious is, I know you all use the term gateway opportunities in your 2030 plan, clearly it's your southern gateway into town. So we know it's important to be able to understand when we're going into a city, certainly proposing something to the scale to understand what's important to the city, at least as stated in their documents, like your 2030 vision or your 2030 plan. We look at preferred growth plans, future land use maps, just to see if what we're proposing, in this case we're already zoned, but what this map does, it really reinforces where these properties lie in that the bottom line is they are consistent with your preferred growth plan and your future land use plan. We'll go through a little bit of what the revised development plan is, but if you just put up the zoning maps that are up there with our existing zoning, you would see that it's consistent with your future land use map and your preferred growth plan. A couple, as we go through and digest the voluminous document, this 2030 plan, we tried to pull out some critical things that were important, things that we make sure that we understand to make sure that we're in connection with the city. Won't go through all these, but these are things that very much line up with our vision of how we develop master plan communities as well. There's really absolutely not one thing on here that I would say that even without being told wouldn't be a guiding principle to the way we address a large master plan community. One bullet just to point out is really number one, this idea of a flexible plan. Your comp plan somewhere, section 210 talks about flexibility and the ability to, really it talks about replan master plan community zoned properties, and I know they're talking about coal and Hunter Ranch, but just talking about the ability to be flexible with land use going forward that we have got to be able to be fluid and where we place specific parcels for certain types of development for fear that we really can't take advantage of the opportunities as they present themselves over a long time period. Again, Alliance Texas is probably, I wouldn't say 180 degrees, but it is far different than what we probably thought it was going to be in the mid 80s when we were at this same stage with that project. Inspirational community, every master plan that we do, we look at differently. We know it's unique. There's something about either the characteristic of the land, the city in which it lies, what's the opportunity. They're always different, but we do gather inspirational ideas from other communities, our own, but also communities across the country. One I just kind of wanted to talk about a little bit is one actually right here in our backyard, one of the most successful communities in Dallas Fort Worth history, top 30 or so in the country right now. We had a planning session or an information session sometime this summer where we invited Mayor Watts and some of your staff along with the mayor of Arlington and his staff to talk about Viridian. What is Viridian? And then let's talk about, let's peel the onion back a little bit, and what is it that allowed Viridian to be successful? Just real quick bullets about Viridian. It's not 6,000 acres, but it's 2,000 acres. It has about 500 acres of parks that are key to understand, but if you look at it, it's really a very high quality mixed use community with a variety of price points, lot sizes, and a very high level of amenity of parks and open space. You feel it from the time you go in. I think hopefully the mayor and those who joined would also agree and I think you mentioned a couple of times that that is a community that I think would, you know, Denton would be proud to have as well. But if you look hard enough and you look back at the beginning of Viridian, you'll see that it also has the same issues that we're talking about with Hunter and Cole. Generally speaking, significant measured in hundreds of millions of dollars of infrastructure burden that other properties may not have that burden. In their case it was not just water and sewer, but they had significant detention, wetlands, some environmental issues. Bottom line, there was no way to spend the money on the parks and open space and landscape and require high levels of architecture from the builders and be able to afford those what I'll call regional infrastructure burdens. While they had those particular burdens, we have our same burdens here, water, sewer and some transportation needs. But what the City of Arlington did, just like we're talking here today, they worked with the developer. They created an in-city district almost identical to what we're talking about now, as well as some other things that maybe in this case is probably a better setup for Denton than Arlington. Arlington actually has a TUR, so they have a component to where the city does participate in the form of ad valorem being invested from this property back into as a reimbursement or building certain infrastructure. One key thing to take away that we'll talk about at the very end is we're really not asking the city at all for any of that. We're not asking for cost participation, we're not asking to sell debt, we're really asking for the no risk situation from the city. That's not the most efficient way to go about this, but it's something that we heard maybe from staff time and time again is that the city does not want to feel the burden of either administering this type of a project, issuing debt that might impact a balance sheet potentially, but just really wanted it to stand alone. One thing I'll mention now, and I'll mention it again, one other fundamental big difference in an MMD versus a PID is this notion of reimbursement. A PID, basically bonds are sold, the developer goes and spends that money to go build things like regional infrastructure, MMDs and some other districts that are created through the PID. They're different and they're reimbursement. The risk really goes more on to the developer. We the developer have to put the money in with private dollars. Once everything is done, accepted by the city, the TCEQ signs off on it, the agent in general signs off on it, and we create generally 10 times the amount of value in terms of office, retail, housing, whatever. We have to create 10 times the assessed value to be able to sell that first debt. That's an important point to understand because the risk on button certainly goes to the developer in that scenario. A little bit about the site. This is an image, actually, that's Hunter Ranch. I just want to introduce the property a little bit because it kind of takes you into what we think the land use opportunities are. Outline in red, you can kind of see how they situate, identifying 288 and I-35. Generally it's about five miles of I-35 and future loop 288 frontage, and you can see we own most of both sides of those interstates. Maybe round that to about eight miles of highway frontage, 288 and I-35. Unique to this property, I guess, is it's largely pastoral rule, general rolling hills. What's unique about this property probably is the tributaries, you can see them identified in red, that divide the parcels, divide the overall ranches into smaller parcels. We do have a question. Yes, sir. Council Member Nelson. I'm mostly holding my questions in, but I wonder if you could clear up. What is that out parcel? That's a parcel owned not by us, a gentleman named Gene McCutchen owns that, it's 265 acres and I think his heirs have it and they have no interest in discussions, so. But nothing in particular on it? No, that's fine. Yeah, yeah, just so you know, it's a gentleman who's a long-time landowner. It's not developed land at this point? Yes, sir. There's nothing on it? Okay. Thank you. Probably except Robeson Ranch, which you see on the southwest corner and the industrial, well, you get a little bit of country lakes. Most of this is raw and unimproved. Did I mention the lack of infrastructure? But that's largely why it's not improved. Also unique, I'll tell you, to this tract and this overall parcel, it resides on Hunter Ranch. If you're familiar and you drive I-35W at all, that's that pilot's knob, which is really a recognizable terrain feature. But it is unique in terms of just the elevation, the hardwood trees. After that, it's really maybe a little more general rolling land divided by tributaries. Best way to see it, it's this short little clip here. This is actually headed northbound, leaving Robeson Ranch Boulevard, gives you an idea of really where we are. The pilot's knob is off to the left, if you can see that in the distant left. Robeson Ranch now is on the left, and the drone here kind of turns north and follows the pilot knob ridge. We flew this because we think it's probably the most interesting part of the tract, but also we have some airport restrictions of flying drones closer to your municipal airport. It gives you a little bit of an idea of, and we'll talk about this special district, special area that we would like to focus on, again, you see coming into the northern pilot knob. This is probably the best we could do to give you an idea of the elevation change between really the lowland and the top of the ridge, and the far distance, you'll see the airport coming into the top right. Council Member Hudspeth. Would you, by chance, run email that video, or a link to that somehow? Is that okay? Yes, sir. Your staff actually has it. They have it in presentation in its entirety, including the video, so Carolyn, I assume that's possible. Okay. Okay. If you're looking for the drone video, obviously it won't come in the PDF, but yeah, you have that, absolutely. Thank you. Yes, sir. That was taken a few weeks ago, I think. Again, going back to regional infrastructure, the good thing, I would guess, about this proposal is it not only benefits the 6,000 acres that make up, 6,500 acres that make up the Coal Hunter Ranch, it also provides further development opportunity to about the same area, so there's an additional 6,500, 6,700 acres that's identified in dark red here that would benefit from this water and sewer regional infrastructure and transportation that would be delivered to the project using the MMD as a financing tool to bring that infrastructure. You shouldn't know this, but I'll tell you, the water and sewer particularly, they all reside over on 377, which is the far right of the map. These properties, including those properties to the west, once you drain all the way over to 377, the work branch, water also is unavailable regionally and will have to be extended. Just seeing this in a kind of a regional perspective, you'll see, and I don't know the percentage, I probably should have calculated it, but it's a large percentage of the undeveloped part of the city of Denton that this area would benefit. To the west of us, as you remember from your municipality map, is actually in the ETJ, but ropes and ranches in, but there are certain portions just to the west that are in ETJ, which one day will be, of course, in the city. But we think it's an exciting opportunity to find a way to really allow this part of the city to develop. All these things kind of bring us to our vision. There's a board over here on the right, but this is really a movement of puzzle pieces. I mentioned we already have our zoning in place, which talks about land uses. We're really not here to ask for anything really more than really what we have from a zoning perspective, but our proposal here is that if you put these two properties together like we have, and you consider the zoning that's in place, and then you, in a more logical manner, kind of put the puzzle pieces together from mixed use, commercial, single family, do you come up with a more creative and logical and maybe more marketable overall development plan? We say yes to that question. I'll tell you, just a highlight, and we're going to go through a little bit more on each district and each land use type, but what you should see here is red being more mixed use, which multifamily, high density residential, commercial, retail, and office, and you'll see those as they should be kind of hanging around I-35 frontage and 288, and focused on what we know are going to be intersections in our conversations and meetings with TxDOT, even as of late. The orange represents a more moderate or medium density of residential housing as you transition away from the red or away from the freeways, and as you make your way to the far west in this case, you'll see yellow. Yellow is intended to be a more, a lower density of residential as you make your way back west logically into more rural parts of town, but that's what we consider the more orderly arrangement of the puzzle pieces when you put these two properties together. In blue, we'll talk about it in a moment, but in blue you'll see a substantial allocation of land to school districts, properties, elementary, six elementaries, two middle schools, one high school. We'll talk about that more in detail, but that's really the arrangement in here. Also, I think this is a good depiction of how the green spaces and trail systems, and we'll talk about that, but just kind of how they mix in within the neighborhood. So open space is probably the greatest characteristic of the site. That's not, that you don't see on every piece of land. You'll see how it kind of filters through the property. If we went back and toggle back to the master plan, you'll see that the developable land is very specifically tied to open spaces and access to these open spaces. This also, I think, represents pretty well how the city will be able to connect from the east, connect and extend regional trail park, linear park systems to the west through the city. This is a representation of the trails. Just in red and yellow here you'll see, just to give you an idea of size and scale, this is approximately 35 miles worth of trails that would be built by the developer, again, utilizing this financing mechanism called a MMD to help us to do things that are really up and above the city standards. The park systems, these are really your improved parks. This isn't just open space. These are a hierarchy of neighborhood parks. Some people call them pocket parks, those things that are right in the middle of a neighborhood to a higher community park. These are things that are minitized, playgrounds, parks, covered areas, really energized program parks. What's important to us, and I know important to the city too, is how proximity to the housing and proximity to the mixed use centers, making it very walkable that you can get to one of these very conveniently. This kind of depicts radiuses of proximity from the parks to all parts of the property. The idea of a 10 minute walk is something that's a pretty commonly accepted planning principle. If you can afford to do it, the idea is that we will be able to afford this number of parks that are programmed throughout the community. Just a couple of images to give you an idea, again, largely dominated by these long linear greenways that go through the property, so we'll see a lot of these type of linear linkage type greenway parks and trail systems. We have several hilltops. The idea there is to honor the ESAs, the environmentally sensitive areas that are already really dedicated. Honor that, but then program those for amenity in the terms of ideas here are these elevated parks with maybe crushed granite or soft trail systems that allow you to enjoy the trees and the hilltops. This will be the most prevalent. This idea of neighborhood parks, the idea of a place to gather reasonable walk from your house, playgrounds, a place to have unprogrammed oftentimes activities with your neighbors. This only goes to show a little bit of the major roadway networks. We've met obviously with your entire staff, including all departments, just making sure that what we're proposing is in line with your master thoroughfare plan. Clearly this can and will be massaged to some degree, but these are also things that are measured in hundreds of millions of dollars and what these type roadways cost when building them out to their ultimate sections. Also highlighted on this map is the red circles. Those are the intersections that TextDOT is programming to be built over time, so that's where if we flip back to our overall development plan, you would see that's where we're centering our mixed use and higher density development, which is logical. Bit of a depiction just calling out the mixed use planning areas. They're centered again around these intersections on I-35 and 288. This is a concept that I wanted to address a little bit. We talked about flexibility and really our inability to project out needs and plans 30, 40, 50 years out. This region that you see in red here, which is almost entirely, if not entirely on Hillwood's property is this designation, this area that we think has high potential to be corporate campus mixed use. We'll show an example here in a minute of where we've successfully done some version of that in Westlake. We think this piece of land, size and scale, with the characteristics of the pilot's knobs, topography and trees, offers us one of the few large scale land opportunities if and when a corporate user came in and wanted to position themselves in North Texas. Similar vision is in place in our Alliance Texas project. This is called Circle T, it's a 2,500 acre ranch, part of Alliance that is being developed. As it turns out, here to date what we've done is really corporate campuses, so Fidelity in the late '90s, then Deloitte University, and then most recently you may or may not have heard about Charles Schwab, a little over a million square foot of offices being built as they're relocating their headquarters here. We think these are unique. If I took you down to ground level and you saw this property and saw the topography and saw maybe some of the trees, you'd see a little bit of similarity to that part of Hunter Ranch that has a pilot's knob that we think is a unique opportunity and we'd love to reserve the flexibility to be able to put that type of user in there if and when it comes to this part of the Metroplex. Another couple of examples around this corporate campus, this is actually an image of the Charles Schwab building, I believe it's about 1.3 million feet, is that about right, and we'll employ about 3,000 people once built. Hillwood will develop the retail actually adjacent to the campus entertainment restaurants and such. To the right is again a mid-rise office building that we're doing in Frisco as a part of another project that we're developing there. Residential is really everything outside of those mixed use planning areas as you would imagine it. The orange is a little more moderate density residential, as you feather west it's a lower density residential. Trying to be sensitive to those people to the west that would have a compatible land use. A little bit about the residential character. High quality architecture, I'd like to jump to how do you promise Hillwood, how do you promise developer that we're going to get this, and this is part of the process that Brian mentioned. The city deserves the benefit of the bargain of course if we're going to entertain the idea of a public financing mechanism, the give on that is that we deliver what we're promising and that's a high level of everything. This idea of design guidelines which will make its way through some form of a development agreement or whatever the city attorney's office decides that document ought to be, that's where the details of what we're promising will come to fruition. Examples here are multiple lot sizes, multiple types of architecture, different price points, but all of which have this guarantee in this development agreement document that we'll discuss through the spring before this MMD is actually created. That's where we'll talk about architectural style, quality, roof pitches, landscapes, sustainability initiatives, things like that. That's where that all comes into play here to make sure that we deliver the promise that we're talking about. As far as schools, you'll see here these are preliminarily located schools. The intent of this is just to show the breadth of what we know is important and that is making sure that we have places for schools. The school district, DISD, and we have representatives here from DISD as well, they already own an elementary and a middle school that was provided for from the coal ranch, I'm not sure what year that was OC, but a while back. We know that a project of this size and scale will need more than obviously a middle school and a high school, but in visiting with the school district what they've represented to us is that likely needs based on their projections was one high school, two middle schools and six elementary schools and firmly committing to make sure that happens. We have placeholders certainly on the map to allow for it. We can't market and develop a project this size and scale without these blue dots on the map. School districts are just a fundamental part of our amenity package, up and above pools and tennis courts and parks, they're as important. We have a great relationship, we believe, with DISD, working on some other projects within the district and we're excited about continuing that. Just a quick observation, when I was growing up we had one high school, two middle schools, about four or five elementary schools, so this represents about the size of Denton back 20, 30, 40 years ago, so it's pretty sizable development. By anybody's scale, it's a sizable development, worthy of discussion, long discussion and deliberation. If we didn't believe in the viability of this, obviously we wouldn't be here. We need some things to make this happen and that's why we're here talking about this financing mechanism. I won't go through these, but after all deliberation, discussing what is the land, what does it have to offer, your 20, 30 guidelines that you have in place, these are things that resonate with us about what are our design principles as we go forward and design this community. The design process that we have is one that really is a form of collaboration. We call it our Live Smart Workshop. Most people call it a design charrette, but that's the time in which we take three or four straight days and we bring in all stakeholders, school districts, counties, cities, realtors, brokers, builders, landowners, and we really come up with what is the right master plan. That's during that process which we propose would happen over the spring in this particular project is where we would refine master concept plan and we would also refine all the details that we're signing up for in the form of likely a development agreement. I was asked to talk a little bit about projected phasing. How do we see this project phasing out over this 35 or so years? We'll bring in here. I think it's important to highlight that like all master plan communities, residential will lead. That's the yellow blocks that came in. Also, we anticipate that the intersections to be built by a tech stop would come in phases as well, which came in with those, the red circles. Just as we build these blocks out, you'll see likely the first couple of phases being residential. The purple, I didn't mention industrial, but we believe there's an industrial opportunity on the coal property as it snugs up to your already existing industrial park. You'll see more intersections starting to be created along 288 and I-35. The red now really just coming in and what we call phase fives and sixes, which is our logical development order until we finally get to a point that we're fully developed out through this nine stage sequence. This probably represents again 35 to 40 years worth of development leading with high quality single family driving demand for retail commercial. As we develop out really to your south and alliance, the need for office and other uses. The last couple of slides here just address in our minds what are the benefits to the city. This opportunity presents the opportunity to develop out in a very logical master plan way the large part of the southwest part of the city. Guaranteeing high quality architecture, parks, landscape, mixed use centers, those things that are way up and above city standards that you're only able to do if you have a mechanism that allows you to do it. Once again about 14 billion is our projection over that 35, 40 year period given the development plan and our zoning that's in place. There's really no financial participation or economic incentive that we're asking for will be required from the city. The burden is really on the 6,000 acres and the value that it creates. Specifically on the MMD, it places no risk on the city. It doesn't require the city to issue debt. The bonds are repaid through residents within the district only. If you live within the district and full disclosure, you bought into the property, you understood the tax rate, you understood the payments that are required to live there. That's how you service the debt, so no requirement by other city residents. The last one is this notion that I mentioned, it is a reimbursement mechanism, not an upfront bond. There's a lot less risk. It's governed by the TCEQ. It's governed by the adjutant general before you issue debt. There's a highly regulated system. There's been no district that's been created by the legislature or TCEQ in the state of Texas that's defaulted on debt, largely because of the oversight required by the state, the TCEQ and adjutant general. Lastly, this is really the requested action. Again, there's some questions on what are we here to talk about? Is this my only bite at the apple? What do we talk about next? We're really here talking about a support resolution that would allow likely Dr. Stuckey, our house representative, to submit a bill this session. We've already met with both Senator Nelson's office as well as Dr. Stuckey. They're in support of it. By ordinary process, they look to the municipality to say, "Hey, we're in favor of this bill before they'll submit it to subcommittee." That's why we're here talking about this idea of a support resolution. Next would be later in May, June, after we've talked about architectural guidelines, design guidelines, all those details to make sure the city gets what they expect and then and only then is when the district is approved to be created by the city. If for some reason we cannot mutually agree on those things, then there is no validity to the district. It won't be created at that point. Better way to talk about it probably is this. This is my last slide is we're here today, January 15th, in an initial workshop. We've discussed a follow-on workshop if desired, February 5th, to maybe talk about very specific things. Looking forward to maybe a proposed February 12th date to actually bring before council the request to vote in favor of this support resolution so that then Dr. Stuckey can submit this bill likely to subcommittee in February. That February through May time period is when one, the MMD is going through the legislature, the legislation is going through. On the city side, that's where we go through an in-depth charrette process, ironing out all the details, mutually agreeing on everything, negotiating all those documents that you see down there below with the city, how is the MMD going to run, how is it going to be governed, design guidelines, we'll agree on a final development map. That's all going on this spring. Fast forward to that May/June time period, again, there's two independent paths. One is the Congress legislature. Ideally, they would approve the legislation that says it's really not effective until the city agrees to it, but the legislature has its process going. The city, we still have all these other items that hopefully we will finalize and agree on by council action. Then and only then, and if the legislature approves the bill, at that point only is this finalized and actually in place. Again, the only reason we're really even talking about a February 12th action is just because of the process the legislature has. House representative, just by ordinary practice, says, "City, you need to pass something that tells me you're okay with what I'm about to submit." That's really why the February 12th proposed action is occurring. Thank you very much. I know it's a lot. I apologize for all the slides, but we thought it was important to maybe touch a lot of this request. Before we go into discussion and questions, let's just take a quick five or ten minute break, because I think the discussion could take some time, and we don't want to take a break right in the middle of that. So let's just take a quick break. All right, welcome everybody back to this meeting of the Dent City Council. It is 1/16. We are on agenda item 3A. We have completed the presentation, and now we'll stand for questions and comments. Questions and comments. Council Member Meltzer. Just as maybe a framing bit of conversation, I would love to hear from our planning department about the point that, to what degree it fits in with the preferred development map and the future land use map. I saw that it is indeed on the map, but I didn't really understand how it fits into the preferences expressed in those maps. I can barrel ahead with other questions, if you'd like to work, or if others have questions. Yes. So Farmer's Brother's Coffee, does that fall on your property, so that's the east side of 35W? It is. That's part of our alliance program. Okay. Yes, sir. Outstanding work first to bring them to Texas from California, but two, how did those corporations fall into a district like this? So are there still incentive requests made through the city in conjunction with them being in that district, or does your company kind of absorb that? How does that regular incentive process for corporation on that property work? I'm going to tap on my brother and Robert Foselogan real quick. We're talking about Farmer's Brother. I might ask you to come address it, but in that particular case, it's not within a special district. Okay. A variety of reasons why. One is size and scale. The other one is it didn't have the infrastructure burden that, say, this particular project did, or maybe some of our other big master planning communities that are now in North Lake had those burdens that you just couldn't afford the water and the sewer to not create a district. Sure. I know you were just talking about economic incentives and the Farmer's Brother's deal as an example. So generally, as a corporation comes into this type of taxing district, those incentive requests, those continue to go to the city, or is it kind of dispersed through the district? How does that manage? Specific to Farmer's Brothers, I don't know. That's not within one of these districts, and it wasn't our project, even though it's in the Alliance Corridor. But as a general practice? Yeah, but as a general practice, if they came into a district such as this, they would be subject to the same taxing structure as anybody else. So whether they have incentives from the state or through economic development departments in the city would be separate and unrelated to their taxing within a district such as this. Okay. So part of a requirement of a district like this is that you have an equal and uniform tax across the district. So whether you're a retail, commercial, office, residential, you're paying the same. In this case, the bill and the discussions with the city have been setting a maximum tax rate to be authorized, and that's $0.55 per 100 AV. So in your example, if Farmer's Brothers had been in a district like this, then they would be subject to that. Any additional economic incentive requests would be just part of the discussions between that particular user in the city or state or county, or maybe the developers involved as well. Okay. Yes, sir. May I? Yeah, but Mr. City Manager, to that point, I'd like you at some point to speak to it almost seems like at that point, we'd be almost bidding against ourselves. So we're giving not an incentive, but we're working with the tax district to make infrastructure and everything possible. But at the same time, that doesn't preclude a corporation from coming in and saying, "Hey, I'd like to discount. I'm benefiting from this infrastructure, but at the same time, I want to discount or I want to be incentivized to come here." So I just want to understand that look of that kind of, that relationship. I don't have a preconceived notion, just want to hear from you down the road your thoughts on that. And then another question I had is, as you look at Luke 288 in this project, so the out parcel honestly concerns me if you're talking about because my limited time here, those things can take a bit. They can go fast. They can go slow. But your understanding of how much land Hillwood is set aside for Luke 288 and then your understanding just a reader of the tea leaves, not holding it to you, holding you to it, but timeline to kind of negotiate that out parcel and make something happen. So a good question specifically to 288, 288 will happen no matter what. The state will negotiate with that property owner just like they'll work with Hillwood, just like I'll work with the coal to achieve that right of way, independent of whether or not that particular landowner wants to provide the right of way or not. We're in conversations with the McCutcheon family, the coal family has been in conversations with the McCutcheon family for years and no interest in being a part of the development. It actually is not even in the city of Denton as it is, it has not been incorporated. But if the concern is that their right of way may hold up a project like 288 and the development on either side of it, it's really not practical because the state will take it, they'll negotiate for it and get it. Worst case is they would utilize some form of eminent domain to achieve it, but it will be there whether or not. And your understanding of the timing? You know, we've seen they have 60 percent design schematics on 288 done since our meeting with TexDOT probably two or three weeks ago. So a lot of it's going to be subject to funding. I think if you ask them, they'll say their desire, actually I have it in my notebook for my meeting, but I believe they said they want to be able to let it in 2024, 2025. That's another important part of why we're here trying to line all this stuff up is so that when TexDOT is here and DOT are here building both new highways like 288 and intersections along 35, we're really kind of poised and positioned to take advantage of it then, not just then be reactive and then maybe a couple of years later, we might be able to take advantage of that infrastructure. And then one last thing and I'll wait here, but so I'm really interested in the synergy between Denton Municipal Electric, I mean Denton Municipal Airport and Alliance Airport, right? Because this property runs right up alongside of it and then obviously down further south you have that development and some of the things you've been able to accomplish there and going back and looking, thank you for the timeline, so I go back and look at 1990, what was there versus what's there now, understanding as our bus service buses people to Alliance area for jobs, that to me is very telling. You have a Michaels warehouse there, you have our corporate offices there, you have FedEx, I think recently announced Amazon is coming there, so there's some significant growth around the airport. So if you could speak to the synergies between that airport growth, our airport and its potential and kind of how those could work together and/or any processes that strategically allowed you to grow Alliance Airport, I'd like to hear kind of that behind the scenes, what was done, what's your pitch to Amazon to say hey, this is where you need to be? Robert lives that world every day, so I'm going to ask Robert maybe to step in and talk a little bit about that, I just threw the map up there for you. It's a long answer to, I'm trying to figure out the 30 years in a couple of seconds, but the short answer is through planning of infrastructure, amenities, transportation, all these things that we've worked on starting in the mid-1990s that ultimately led to us getting a Facebook. So for example, that was thinking through long term power some 30 years ago and ultimately allowing Facebook to build the substation that they did and having the power to facilitate a project like that. Transportation with same dialogue that we're having here but a long time ago in developing the 170-114 corridor with TechStat and many other municipal parties, that's how they get here. So it's hard to answer what ultimately the evolution of the Denton Airport will turn into, I'll tell you for Alliance, it started out with the idea of a completely different project that was centered around how do we get big aerospace aviation users around that airport. Fast forward, the intermodal facility came and we realized when Nestle showed up and said, "Hey, I need a place where I've got air, rail, and all the transportation pieces in one place," that's how the whole logistics and e-commerce industry really came about for Alliance. So a lot of good things were put into place early on from a planning perspective but ultimately that took the population growth that we see today that built all of those warehouses there that support everything that we're ordering on our phones every day. So how that plays out in the Denton Airport, don't know. Ultimately as population growth happens and job creation continues to happen, then those things will start to show up but not knowing the detail around the airport and what's available for infrastructure, I don't really know what that answer is. Fair enough. Thank you. Council Member Briggs. A couple of questions. One that the main question that I hear is why not build to scale in phases of affordability that you can afford rather than coming in, building it all, and asking for the special district. That's one question. Another question is of all the developments that you've talked about and you've done, how many of them have you had financial help with? Let me see if I can take those in pieces. So the number of projects we've had that we've had financial help, special financing through a special district, of all of our thousand plus communities we have and we're developing right now, 100%. I may just, you tell me the answer Jan, you don't have to come all the way up here, but Jan Bartholomew runs the Texas markets for municipal debt regarding these special districts, but of all the thousand plus master plan communities really in Texas, a percentage of how many actually use a form of special district. So I wanted to answer that question from our perspective. Again, we're one developer. We happen to be one of the Texas largest, but our situation and the use of a special district is not by any means unique to Hillwood or this idea that we have. So I'm going to refer to primarily TCEQ or Texas Commission on Environmental Quality Districts. Texas is the only state that has districts that are regulated by a governmental agency. They're very highly regulated. There are about 2,000 districts in the state of Texas. For example, they were very widely used in Houston as part of the oil boom in the late 70s and 80s. So today there are about 900 special districts that are TCEQ regulated in the Houston metropolitan area. Could you just get a little closer to the mic, please? Yeah, I've got this. Thank you. And so they're becoming much more required, if you will, because of competition and development and developer can get reimbursed his infrastructure cost after he's put that infrastructure in the ground, which allows him to make affordable housing, increase amenities, which is now kind of an expectation of a lot of residents in the state of Texas. And so they're becoming much more widely used. And in fact, in some areas, a developer wouldn't proceed with the development without a special district. Okay. Can I follow up? Yes, sure. Because you did say affordable housing. So does that mean that within your communities you will or could possibly, as a deal that we could make as we're talking about it, put homes less than 200,000 down in the 150s? Is that an option for affordable? We would enjoy doing that, yes. The typical business structure, maybe it's called a 200 acre subdivision without a special financing district that might have offsite regional infrastructure challenges. The problem is that if you do the math, there's just not enough, you need so much out of the revenue from the land in terms of lot sales, you can't afford to take less. You can't afford to produce that affordable housing lot because you're just getting less for that lot. You're going to have to make the lot, call it a subsidy, but you're going to have to make that affordable lot cheap enough so that the ultimate home ends up being in the target price range, 175 to $200,000. These special financing districts allow you to do those sort of things. As a matter of fact, that is kind of the business model with the districts is allow enough reimbursement of regional infrastructure to allow you to maybe sell the lot or the real estate slightly below say a competitor because you know you have a reimbursement mechanism coming in through the MMD in this particular case. I would say absolutely that would be a desire of ours is to produce a segment of the market that hits that price point. Not the whole community by any means, but we think it's an important sector as we try to fill the needs of home buyers from first time home buyers all the way to more fluid. Just to clarify, I mean, less than 200,000 more like 175, 150, that's where I'm talking about. The answer is yes. That would be very much in our desire to do that. We'll have to create design guidelines and within our city documents that allow us to do that, a small enough lot, for example, the architectural standards around that particular effort of affordable housing will have to be slightly different, right? Eventually, you're going to have to build a house that can be sold for that price point, but absolutely, yes. The attention to we'll call that the first time home buyer maybe is a huge important part. Oftentimes, we see cities who just don't want that buyer to be buying houses at that price point in their city. We just seem to think that maybe they need to go buy somewhere else. We see a lot of objections from a lot of cities, so I'm encouraged that we're even talking about this, but we would very much want a segment to be centered around that type buyer. Thank you. Katharine Rometter. Excuse me, just to follow up on that question, sorry I'm losing my voice. As I understand it, nobody who lives in that district would be exempt from the additional MMD tax, right? Is that correct? I think that's correct. I don't think there's any special exceptions for anything, but to the best, I don't think so. I think everybody is subject to that same, which again then puts a challenge to produce that affordable house. They might be able to afford the house, but can they afford the mortgage payment and the other annual costs that go with it, but I think that still goes to the design guidelines that are agreed upon is can we produce a house with the right standards at the right cost, even building in the extra cost, call it this 55 cent or 50 cent additional tax, it'll just have to be factored in that they can afford that annual payment all in, county, city, MMD, school tax, the whole equation. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. Thank you for answering that. That would be my reservation about putting, about trying to put people at that house value level in a community like this, but I appreciate you're entertaining that. I would love if there was a way to make that affordable so that they weren't taxed more than others in the city. But anyway, I just wanted to just point that out, but thank you. It is a good observation. It's just part of the calculus on what does the house cost and then calculating what are the annual cost of ownership, which include this particular MMD. Exactly. Thanks. Go ahead, Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mayor. You say regional infrastructure is also, I'm guessing this is only for your transmission lines for water and we're not looking at residential streets, we're looking strictly at arterial type roads, is that correct? The burden, the big burden that's kept this property raw is really that regional infrastructure. So the MMD would be used to reimburse what we call eligible cost. That's defined by the TCEQ and the Texas Water Code as really any public infrastructure, sewer drainage and certain roads that promote the development and serve the district, in this case, the 6,000 acres is eligible for reimbursement. So the reimbursement that would occur would be not only the regional but certain public infrastructure within the confines of the boundary of the property, which would include some residential local streets as well as the regional thoroughfares and collectors. And then the second question I have is, you talk about a 35-year build out, roughly. How long after that does this MMD remain? Great question. So the debt is issued over time in a series of bond issuances. I talked about this idea that it's a reimbursement bond. So largely speaking, once we create 10 times the value of the bond we want to sell, say it's a million dollar bond, we have to create $10 million of ad valorem tax, then we sell that bond. That will occur over and over and over. So each bond issuance will have a 25-year term to it. So once we issue the debt, the 25-year ticker starts on that debt issuance. And once the debt's retired, then the debt's retired. So the idea would be the district would be in place servicing all the debt, paying back the bonds that it issues related to the project. So if the very last bond in your example, if the very last bond was issued at the very end of the development, call it year 30, then again, just making the math easy, it would be 25 years after that, would be that particular bond issuance. That is the other good thing. Somebody asked the question about an HOA versus the district. But these districts are designed to go away. Once you've serviced the debt that was used to build the infrastructure and you retire it, then the need for the district really kind of goes away. And so does the tax related to it. So this has a finite period of time to it. The property will be broken into a couple of different districts for size and scale. And what will happen is if we developed all of that first district and issued the debt, then that particular district would be really debt free. That tax on that district, as it develops out, goes away. I point out the HOA. The HOA is kind of intended to be a forever tax or a forever assessment used to continue to afford the things you've built, the private things, usually in a master plan, pools, tennis courts, bocce ball, all that stuff. The idea of financing district improvements, public improvements, is that they go away. It's truly a financing tool with an end, typically these are 25 year bonds. Kind of a follow up on that first question now that I've got a little bit more input on it. As we negotiate what the city's going to allow to happen in that, can we negotiate what infrastructure is allowed to be used and can we negotiate such that we say we're going to identify affordable housing is going to be in roughly this kind of a neighborhood and wherever that affordable housing is the only residential street infrastructure, everything else is only regional. Really anything is negotiable, I will tell you. I'm just being completely transparent and upfront. We need most of the things that we've kind of identified and we've talked with staff in terms of being able to be reimbursed for that infrastructure is largely what we need to just make the project economically feasible. We can talk about all those details and maybe something works out and lines up that we can agree on that, whatever that particular matter is. Okay. Thank you. Yes. Councilmember Meltzer. Maybe you can help me understand something. First of all, I assume you want to build the amenities you want to build because you think there's a market for it. You think they're buyers for these homes, so if the upfront costs, ultimately all these costs are going to be borne by the buyers, whether it's through the MMD tax or through what they pay for the home. None of it's coming from the city, right? Other than the operation of the, once we build the water and the sewer, then obviously the city will maintain that infrastructure, but as far as constructing it. But these costs that you're trying to fund, they're going to be borne by the buyer one way or the other. Correct. So now it strikes me that if they were, because it's being financed as proposed in a recurring tax, that's got to have a depressing effect on the price, right? If you're going to buy something that's worth X, you wouldn't pay as much for it if it also comes with a tax you've got to pay every year, but let me just complete the thought if I may. Because if it were built into the price, the buyer can variabilize it. That's what the mortgage does, but the difference is that goes into their property tax assessment. In other words, this would reduce, what's proposed would reduce the amount that goes into the city because the property values are lower since people are paying for property that comes with a recurring tax. So do you see where I'm coming from? I completely get it, and I think that's a logical way to at least initially think about it. Think about it. What really happens, and I'll challenge you to go look at any quality master plan community, really in the country, is the buyers who buy into master plan communities largely because of the level of amenity and kind of maybe these guarantees they believe that the master developer is going to control and insist on high levels of quality, not only of me but for my neighbor, is they're prepared to pay, even without a district, forget all that, they're generally prepared to pay 20, 25% more than that same house, believe it or not, that's in random subdivision down the street with really no guarantees in protection of their investment when they decide to buy that house. So take that for a moment. That allows them then to be able to, that 20 or 25% extra that they're willing to pay, it's either in a non-district, they're paying literally 20, 25% more maybe for the house, or in this case, as they do their entire stack of home ownership, it allows them to be able to pay for affordably the additional tax. Therefore, kind of really putting that house on the tax rolls from the city, at or above, the same as it would be outside of a district. So I argue and we see that it doesn't at all depress the assessed value of a house by having it in a district. At worst, I would argue you're neutral, more likely that house is on the ad valorem books at the city county school district at an increased price. But it's that quality lift of, again, amenities, landscape, just overall quality of the community that somebody says, "I'm willing to pay a little more to live in that community." And that's almost universally true of high quality master plans. So they're willing to pay a premium to be there, but they wouldn't be willing to pay a higher premium to be there without a tax? Well, you really need, we call it a tax, I'm going to call it a financing mechanism. You really need that as a developer, in this case and in most cases, to be able to even deliver that higher quality of whatever, that park, the landscape. You need that financing mechanism to be able to get there because we're balancing all these things that we're trying to spend money on as a developer. High quality parks, landscape, all these neat things that make every master plan you go through neat, right? But they cost money. In this particular case also, we've got this unbelievable burden of off-site infrastructure. So when you weigh all the costs that need to be paid, there's just not enough money in the bucket to be able to just sell lots or land and then be able to even cover the costs, much less. None of us do this for free and nobody would ever do this for free, but to be able to make a reasonable margin, make this economically feasible, you need the ability to recover costs to be able to deliver that high level of quality within the community. If you didn't have a district, I will say this, if you didn't have a district and you tried to pay for all the regional infrastructure and deliver all those high quality parks and all that, the price you would have to charge the homeowner for the lot and therefore the home would be completely unaffordable. There would be no one that could afford to live in a community to get to that high level of quality without that offset, per se. So the idea of creating a $175,000 house would be completely undoable. But they're still going to pay for it, right? You're not saying it'll be cheaper. They're still going to pay for it just through the tax. Exactly. They have an additional tax. Your point I thought was that you think that the impact of that would be that that same house is going to be on the city roll at a lower rate than it would be otherwise. I think if people are rational, it would, and you're kind of saying they're not rational. But you're saying nobody could afford it if we had to build in all these costs. But the people who we say couldn't afford it are in fact the people who are going to pay for it in either scenario. Right? I mean, they're either going to pay for it in the value of the home or they're going to pay for it in the tax. But if they can't afford it, then you can't sell it, right? Because they're going to pay for it either way. They are. Exactly. And again, this is obviously full disclosure. Somebody goes in to buy a house in a master plan community with a financing district, they're aware of what they're getting into. They get to make the decision as an adult, do I think I can afford it and do I want to spend my money in that master plan? But I hear, I think I hear you. Yeah, we're going to go around and around. Yes, sir. I have more questions than I'm willing to take a turn. Sure, sure. Council Member Hussbett. I just want to add context to that last conversation, so Mr. City Manager, do we have someone that could give us a number, not, not, let's cut out the parks, let's cut out the sidewalks because you can have varying degrees of value placed on those. But can someone give me a general ballpark number because to get infrastructure, water, sewer, because twofold, one, how much are we spending on Robeson Ranch trying to fix that with the sewer issues we have that would mitigate that. So that's one. Two, is can someone speak to the cost to get water and sewer from wherever it taps out to this development, you know, and so that will give me a context of the must-have infrastructure cost because it is, it's monstrous and I'll just tell you coming from, my dad has two acres, I can throw a rock from North Lake Park and hit his two acres and no one can build there because it doesn't have infrastructure and the cost is too expensive. In the middle of our town to do anything with it. So when you're talking about all the way out 35W, I'm just curious what that number is. And if I could, if somebody's going to answer that before they do, I really want us to understand too that we have, there's, we could be here all day answering questions about the specifics of how an MMD works, what can we negotiate, what can't we negotiate, but so correct me if I'm wrong, that really, and I'm not trying to cut out the questions, I'm just trying to really focus us on what really is the task at hand because really the request is simply at some point to put on the agenda next month, a resolution that will at least allow the creation, it's not even the creating of it, it's allowing the creation of an MMD. Allow the bill to be submitted. Allow the bill to be submitted. Whereas what I understood was then there's going to be numerous conversations with this council about all the specific questions and analogies and kind of philosophical approaches that we're talking about today to see if we can come to a meeting of the minds to where it's a win-win for both the city and both the developer based upon all the issues that we bring to the table. And if we can't come to an agreement, then that means it's all moot. In other words, y'all aren't, the bill does not allow you to just go out there and say, city, you're not important anymore, we're going to go do what we want to do, we don't have to have anything else from you. Is that, am I understanding? The legislation specifically states that it requires the consent which would happen in May, June, once we kind of decide on all these details, it requires the consent to be in place before the MUD is effective. And I just want to give that context to the discussion because we do have a lot of questions which we're going to walk out of here today and still have more once we go back and think about it. But the issue here is, do we even want to get to a step to where we even have those further discussions? So I think you had an outstanding question on infrastructure. Did you want that answer now or do you want it? Yes, because I think that's, for me, thank you for summarizing, I think that's at the core of it. Is it pragmatic without the infrastructure, understand the infrastructure costs, is it pragmatic to say, nah, you go do it yourself, or does it make sense that, hey, this cannot, this is kind of where the project pivots? And so understanding that number would help me kind of get at that overarching question. Councilmember Hudspeth, unfortunately, I don't have that specific number handy for you. We can get that for you. I did want to just maybe echo the mayor's comments. One of the things that we're looking for today is some general direction of what you want to do. And if you do want to proceed, one of the things we would recommend is we would do a detailed fiscal impact analysis of the project. We'd hire an outside consultant funded by the developer to prepare that, and you could see all of those costs, every piece of infrastructure, exactly what it costs, what kind of return they're going to be making on the project, what's needed, all those kinds of things. So that's one of the things that we'd recommend, and I think we'd be able to bring a lot of that really detailed information back to the council through that process later in the year if you want to do that. I think that's helpful. Do you have a follow-up to that? No. I'm going to summarize so I can stop. Okay. And then we'll recognize the councilman. So in general, so in support of it is my general look at it, I, buyer beware, looking forward, I'm going to look for unique, complete options. So all-in type options, so it kind of, when it opens, Robeson Ranch is viable road, you know, those type things kind of is what's going to, when we get to the details, that's kind of where I'm going to pivot visitor parking type things in houses, because I've seen other master plan developments and kind of what that looks like as far as if 6,000 acres worth of families come to this development, and that's Christmas time, and that brings this many cars. So there's just some other things kind of when I say completeness, that's kind of things that I'm going to press on when we get to that point, but as a general idea, I'm in support. Okay. Councilmember Armitage. Yeah, so I actually had a question about the legislative side of it. If say permission is granted, say council says go ahead with it and then the legislature says yes, you can do this, and then say that council ends up thinking about it and saying no. Can a future council indefinitely into the future seize that opportunity because it's been opened or is there a time limit on it? Is it specifically linked to this development in particular? Does that make sense? Yes, ma'am. There's probably a couple questions in there, but yes, the draft bill that had been submitted or drafted relate only to those things within the red boundaries that you see on the map. So very specific to these properties. There's actually one bill, they're mirror images, but one on the 3,000 acre coal and one on the Hunter Range. Mirror images, your legal team has those draft bills. We've had a couple of rounds back and forth yet to be finalized. So very unique to this and it will be a bill that we're both on track with before it really gets submitted. As far as timeline, so the way the bill is created, it speaks to that the district cannot be created until the city consents. So it's being designed so that the city kind of gets the last word. So the draft bill you'll see or the bill that will go forward suggests that there's some time periods. Okay, this bill is a lot not created, but the bill is alive and approved by the governor waiting on the city to agree to let it go forward. So there's some time period after it's approved by and signed by the governor and we agree with the city and the city agrees with us about all these other components to say, yeah, now we're ready to go. But at some point, there's an expiration, it blows up, and we may have to go back one day to if we want to do this again one day, it might be the next or the next or the next legislature that we try it again, per se. But does that make sense? Yeah. And are you aware of exactly what that expiration is? I mean, there might not be a date, but the size of that window. If you could, if you could come on up and, yep, or I can introduce yourself and yes, we just need to put some cameras in here. Angie Letts with Alan Boone Humphreys Robinson and the way we've drafted the last template of the bill is its sunset provision on January 1 2021. If the city has not consented and approved a development agreement and allowed a confirmation election to occur. Okay, thank you. Yes, Councilmember Meltzer. Maybe we should talk about what are the things that we should understand in order to make this decision. I understand you're saying there's a whole bunch of things we don't need to decide today, right? You have the floor. What do you need? Well, you know, frankly, to Councilmember Hussman's point, I would like to form our own point of view on whether we think that's credible that that it won't happen, that this development of this area won't happen at all unless we do something like this. That is kind of where I was getting at. Is that really true or are there other ways to finance this? That's the critical, that's a very critical question. Are we deciding on, in general, development of this part of Denton? So we need to know that. Then, you know, secondly, I'd like to understand whether economically it's a benefit to the City of Denton or a cost to the City of Denton in general. And then we can talk about, you know, what would make us want to have that benefit or bear that cost and we may not need to get all the way to the details, but I'm not inclined to totally buy a pig in a poke. Okay. Mayor, can I make a recommendation? Let me say a few comments first. I understand what you're saying. I think I understand what you're saying, but I don't understand what you're saying. So when I hear the talk about affordable housing, the key to this is for you all to have your facts. And so when you say, what's the, is it feasible for us to do this without the financing or with the financing or is it a cost or a benefit to the City of Denton? We have developers come stand before us every week who present us with projects. Not one time has that question come up, number one. Is it a benefit for the city or a cost for the city? We look at it on its face and they certainly don't have the cost involved here. I'm not advocating for or against this project. I'm just simply saying, when you look at the developers, especially here, council member Husband asked a question. He asked a question. How did Alliance happen? Well, I can tell you how Alliance happened because the peros are involved and the peros are very smart people and they're very philanthropic people. You can see that throughout their whole, so you also have to have someone who has the reputation that can pull a project like this off. So we can get the information on the infrastructure costs, but you know what, when you weren't on council, I was, the MPCs came before council to look at how do we, you know, the master plan community zoning. And if I recall correctly, the infrastructure cost was, and that's just to get back then, that was ten years ago, to get the water and the sewer line, millions of dollars. I mean millions of dollars. So I really do not agree with your characterization that what we're here to talk about today or agree to today or not agree to today is agreeing to either it being a pig and a poke because I think what we've heard three or four times today is that unless the city consents, which is what you're basically ultimately going to be asked to do is if this passes, or if we approve this simply a legislative bill that sunsets, and I didn't know that till today, sunsets in 2021, which means if we don't do anything, it's over and they have to come back through this whole process again. So that discussion of to use your language, a pig and a poke, that discussion happens when you at least have the permission, do we even want to talk about this? And then as all of these answers and all these facts come to fruition, then that's when the ultimate question, your question is, is this worth it to the city or is it not worth it to the city? So let's talk about affordable housing. Because I think that's delving into some of the detail of this that we could get into something else. But I just did some quick math. Let's say one of the houses that you sell for a hundred and I'm going to say 50,000. I don't know if you can do it for that because I mean, but I understand, but I'm going to just use that as a benchmark. Number one, you cannot buy in this city a brand new home for $150,000. That's of any size. I mean, I don't even know if you can buy one, a brand new home. You can barely buy a pre-owned home for $150,000, which will require a tremendous amount of probably improvements, all right? So at $150,000, you're going to have all your normal taxes that you pay, school, county, city of Denton. You're going to have on top of that, and I put it at 50 cents, you're going to have on top of that $750 a year. That's $70 a month. Now if you took that $750 a year and you looked at it as if it were a property tax, in other words, you converted it to a value, a property value that would collect that amount of money on a property tax, you're looking at $30,000. Our tax rate's about two and a half. So $30,000 would create about $750 additional property taxes. So my thought was, okay, let's say for the sake of discussion on Council Member Armitage's question that they can't afford it. Well, that means they're going to have to find, that means they're looking at a house for $185,000 in the city of Denton, which would generate the same amount of tax, whether it's going to the developer or a taxing entity. So I challenge you, I challenge people, where are you going to find new subdivisions in this city that are being built for housing for $185,000? And again, I'm not advocating for this or against it. I'm just simply saying, let's look at all of the facts. So and then when you talked about the houses would be less than they would be on the market in the city... I don't think I said that, if you want to, I'm happy to clarify, because you're kind of answering... Well, you said assessed values. You said the assessed values may be... No, I'm just saying, the underlying question is, first of all, it's about a financing mechanism. Yes, we have developers every week, but generally it's about compatibility, zoning, questions like that. And I'm not questioning whether these things could be zoned there. We're being asked about a financing mechanism. So my question is whether that financing mechanism is actually truly neutral to the city or not. And my point was, if someone's buying an existing house here, not somewhere else in the city, in this area, case A, there's no extra tax. Case B, there's an extra tax. Presumably, you'd pay more if there's no extra tax than if there is, right? Council Member Melfer... I respect your opinion on that, I just disagree with it, because what they're going to be paying for are the additional amenities that this particular development... And now, I don't know what those amenities are, and we may get into discussion, and those may not be enough amenities. It may be that, you know what? We're not getting enough. We've got subdivisions that are being built where people are paying $250,000 a year or $250,000 a house, and we're not giving anything. We don't need a special financing mechanism, but seriously, let's really think about... And it doesn't matter to me. I think we need to move forward with at least to be able to have the deeper discussion, but this is 6,000 acres, which is about a third of our city right now, as far as population-wise eventually. Like I said, when I was growing up, we had those many schools. You're talking about a population here that will exceed probably when I graduated from high school, at final build out. So it has unique challenges that someone building off of Sherman Drive, who has a 24-inch water line already in front of it and a 12-inch sewer line running in front of it. And so, I don't know all the answers to your questions. I'm just saying I'm open to exploring the questions and the answers, because whether or not what you just shared is true or not, I don't know. And that's empirical data that we can gather, but the only time we're going to be gathering that is if we're looking at, do we want to consent to this development, truly moving forward with this financing mechanism? And that's really not what we're... That's not really our question today. So this is how I view this conversation. We could say yes to the resolution. First of all, we could say no to the resolution. This all stops. We've got 6,000 acres earning ag value on the west side of our city with no infrastructure, and really nobody's going to come out there and do this without asking for something to get that regional infrastructure there. So that conversation ends today. You guys go on and you find another project. You go build another, you know, you go build another project. Or we say, you know, it's worth further discussion. So we say we will allow and give a resolution to allow this bill to be pursued in the legislature understanding that we're going to have this exact same conversation, not once, but probably two or three times at least, on what are the details and the information that we're trying to gather to make what I would call the final approval of this project, the financing district. I'm going to say the financing district. And to me, it's worth it to me to say, hey, to me, there's no risk in us giving a resolution. Is there risk in us not? Not really, except we've got 6,000 acres on the west side that is not going to be developed anytime soon. And will we have those who want to develop coming forward the kind of reputation in developments? Now whether you like the developers or not or what they've done around the communities or not, that's certainly your prerogative. My point being, I think there's a track record of trying to do the right thing with the cities. And if it's not, guess what? We can say no. So that's really how I see this. So I respect your questions. I have those same questions. I guess for me the answers aren't necessarily -- I don't have to have them now because we're going to get a chance to go into them and negotiate, you use that word, to negotiate something that we believe is in the best interest of the city. And they will be negotiating what they believe is in the best interest of their projects. And where those overlap and if we can get enough overlap, we got us a win-win. If not, we move on. So I'm going to go to Councilmember Briggs and then Councilmember Armitage. And I apologize for that filibuster, but I just think it was important to try to put some context in this. We're going to be asked here in a few minutes to give direction. And we'll just see how it goes. Can I let him make a comment if you still want to? Yes. >> Absolutely. >> Yes. >> And thank you for trying to, I think, explain the process and therefore maybe the risk profile to the city in making any decision. I just want to remind you of Brian's initial chart that talks about today was the initial conversation. We have at least tentatively programmed further discussion on isolated matters February 5th in a workshop format, and then and only then we've talked about maybe that next council session to actually put the support resolution that the mayor is speaking to put it on the ballot for, I think, February 12th. So what we would love to do is, A, obviously love you to maybe appreciate and be excited about what we're talking about, but maybe we can isolate it to a couple of salient points or discussion points that we can come back and talk about those maybe more specifically February 5th to maybe make sure that come February 12th we're all comfortable, you're all comfortable with voting however you see fit. But with a lot of the information on the table, the fact is, though, if we get support in submitting the resolution February 12th, that's really when we dig in all funded by private developer on that's where we dig in economic impact design guidelines this negotiation, but we really do need to believe deeply that we're going to get to a win when we have lots of projects across the country we choose to spend our time on projects that we think have a chance to to go forward. So we do want you to be excited come February 12th that hey, we are going to support the legislation to be submitted in hopes that really we got a better chance than not getting to the goal line, and we would love to feel the same way as well because we really are excited about this is a super unique opportunity I don't care where you are in the country this is a super unique opportunity to do something at this scale, I do offer again, to the extent you want to talk to mayors, city managers, city attorneys financial advisors who have been in this space and have operated under the same exact structure for long periods of time all of the state of Texas I encourage you and we can offer those same contacts for you to dig in and maybe answer some of the concerns how does this work I don't understand this, because we want you to go eyes wide open into it, and we have a lot of depth of experience 20 3040 years of doing this exact thing. So we're comfortable that we can hopefully address and answer your questions and get you comfortable but we understand it's going to take time and a few more conversations Councilmember Briggs and then Councilmember Ombudsman. So I have a few things I've been taking notes on and just a comment so I've been on council for years and have been talking about this sense and one of the last things I remember on infrastructure is that there was some disagreement on what that amount was so I'm looking forward to seeing what the actual agreed amount will be. So just side note, as far as the DME electric utility these are questions that I'm going to need to answer just so I have more information on whether or not to continue the talks. It's my understanding that part of it is and part of part of it gets a choice can you explain a little bit more about that because that seems rather confusing to live next or across the street from a neighbor and one person has one utility and another one doesn't so how can you address that all over the state of Texas, probably United States different electric telecommunications gas companies that have certain rights to certain areas. And sometimes it comes out to where there's some overlapping agreements for what areas served by who so they have these service areas. In this particular case is a good example where you have multiple providers co-serve dentin electric. Is there another one OC or just on court, okay, where we, in some cases there is overlapping options on kind of who we as a property owner could elect to use in some cases, there's a sole provider say dentin electric and that that's who we use like it or not. That's who we use. So this is a little bit checkerboarded as far as who owns what rights from an electric company. It's not our decision. We kind of live with what we're given in terms of service areas and how they overlap our given property. Often that's true for water and sewer and other things but so we can certainly talk about what's what and who has rights to what but it's really a third party's right. Not a property owner's right or even a city's right to be honest with you about who can provide what. Well that may be more information. I'd like to see a chart or a map. Yeah, we've got a good graphic that over that from I got it from the city. Okay. And also if Mr. Esses could come in and explain our someone impact fees. Do they work the same in a development like this as they do in other development? Okay. And you mentioned everything was open to negotiation. So does that mean that we could negotiate increased setbacks around the gas wells from properties? I will say everything is a negotiable but I'll say that it's got to work. I mean end of the day clearly it has to work. There are certain things that are probably more negotiable than others but generally speaking we're looking for win-win however that ends up getting defined. And if we do need to talk about gas wells and the permitted gas wells and setbacks and all that certainly we look forward to that conversation. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Council Member Archer. So I just wanted to give my personal direction and just explain my reasoning behind it. And that this it seems like a lovely place and I appreciate your the presentation. But my objection to requesting the legislation for this is more just a matter of principle about what I feel the purpose of taxes should be in general. And so without going too deeply into if anybody has any questions for me I'd be happy to explain it another time but I just believe that taxes are a public thing and should be decided by governments together with constituents and I'm not against special taxing districts in general if it's to say revitalize a certain neighborhood when it's coming from a government entity but my problem and again I mean this it's not personal to this it seems like a lovely development I appreciate the presentation but when it's linked to a specific private entity that's when I have a problem with it which is why again which is why I don't feel comfortable even asking for that legislative permission. So anyway that's where I stand and I just hope I can that I made it clear nothing against this development this seems lovely and nothing against special taxing districts in general just when they're linked to a private entity is it that's when I have a problem. Thanks. Thank you. Can I respond to that just real quick just point of clarification this actually is a public district so there is no private component it'll have a board eventually they'll be elected by constituents throughout the district so it is public for sure it's recognized as a political subdivision within the state so it is public in terms of oversight and transparency and voting purposes so it is very much a municipal public yeah but I think I know what you maybe you were leaning to but just wanted to point out that this is very public yeah thank you thank you that's a good point yeah the kind of the coming together of this public and private makes it public and of course it is a part of the city so yeah I do under I do understand that you know my objection still stands but thank you for that clarification. Council member I'm definitely willing to see this go forward and have further discussions on it the argument of the private to me doesn't fit because we sell bonds to replace streets in our in our town right now that we had the growth because it was a hundred acres Hickory Creek is an example there's several subdivisions along Hickory Creek Road that came in none of them triggered the need for it but now because we've got all these on there we're having to build that regional infrastructure in that area that is a public tax dollar item so you know that's my argument against the thought that this is strictly about helping a private developer I'm much more in into the regional infrastructures where I will most likely land and you know obviously I have sticker shock when I think about a fifty five cents so that's all that's part of what negotiates but I'm willing to come to the table and have the discussion and I think we need to move forward. I'm willing to have the discussion I frankly thought we'd be having more of it today in terms of give and take in general outlines of what we would look for in such a thing I'm not willing to say do the enabling legislation without at least having some rough outlines of what we would want you know the ultimate outcome to look like so happy to have more conversations about it you know would like to talk about setbacks tree preservation lead certification what is that proposed Park who's proposed it who owns it you know there's you know I haven't even got my first question answered which is whether in our opinion it fits the future land use map so without having the conversation no I'm not for going forward with the legislation so if you could submit your questions and your what you need to answer that question more definitively for you to the city manager so he could disseminate it to staff and also to the developer so that when we have our next meeting which is some more time I think the first week of February we can get as much of those answered as possible I don't know if you're gonna get them all answered because of the detail but certainly want you to have that information so so today today you would be a no on the legislation okay all right Councilmember Briggs I too I'm willing to have one more another conversation before before my decision and I'm not really at a point today to make that because I feel like we have discussed opportunities to give developers incentives for affordable housing and this presents a really good opportunity for us if they're willing to negotiate certain things we've wanted increased setbacks and so these are opportunities within this area that allow us to do that if we can come to some some agreement and so I don't want to just cut off the conversation without knowing what's possible so I am open to one more conversation before my decision if if that if sure so if you could the same request for you as Councilmember Meltzer if you could determine what those questions are that you need to make that decision and forward those to the city manager so they can be disseminated to the staff and the developers so that we can get those answered at the next meeting and I will just say that generally I'm not in favor of giving developers incentives especially those for housing additions because it's not something that we have done in the city and it's something that I have been opposed to especially with the PID but this presents some unique opportunities for us that I hadn't really thought about so one more conversation I'm willing to have okay yeah no I I yeah okay yeah and I'll be interested in the information as well but I mean if we had to make the decision today I would say you know move forward I want to say this because we've had this situation happen in with other circumstances where we've had situations that the council has an opportunity to exercise some level of control over certain projects based upon some of the requests of the developer and in some cases we've chosen to exercise that control by collaborating with them on some of their needs in other cases we've chosen not to exercise that kind of control so I just as we move forward I just want you to know that these people already have these developers already have a master plan zoning map that's available that they can build by right today without any talk about setbacks without any well setbacks without any talk of amenities without any talk of anything so what they're coming to is asking us hey do you do y'all want to participate with us to build something that we don't have in the city that's our only shot at least at this particular junction to get to be able to have some kind of say of what develops out there so I look forward to the quest the answers to the questions and the conversations and I know that you all are will be as diligent as you can be and will provide the answers to some of the detail that you can I think it's going to be hard because until you enter into a full-fledged negotiation where if you want affordable housing and if you want increased set well setbacks if you want increased setbacks from from the houses in the streets well they've we don't even haven't even identified well if we're going to ask for that what are they going to ask for in return that we don't even have our response to so but we'll we'll have our conversation we are missing a council member and I believe he will be back I want to make sure he will be back when that we have all seven here when we hear this next time because it seems clear that there's some possibilities that you know it may be a direction won't be depending on all of us being here so I just want to make sure that we do that because we don't want to keep going through this iteration I mean I know it's a lot of work for all of us here so I want to make sure that we have a full attendance when that happens yes council member husband just Mr. city manager to that point we had a conversation last week about grows versus net land and and houses so at some point can we nail down that before that next conversation just as a council or as staff recommendation how we want to address that houses per acre net gross usable and not usable just kind of I think that's going to factor in to conversations down the road I think it it'll be overarching policy conversation we need to have because it some good points are made last week and so I'd like to at some point nail that down we can certainly show both gross and net on this particular project and I think just to go along with what the mayor saying I think it's important leaving this meeting you know trying to right size everybody's expectations for the next time we get together we're not going to have the level of detail with some of the questions that have been asked for I mean if we move forward we can certainly answer some some theoretical questions we can give you general ideas about what the infrastructure costs are that stuff's easy this is about as simple as we could make this deal and when I first saw it there was a tis a tiff as a part of it and it's a very simple deal we can get to some of the questions that council member Ryan's bringing up you know and certainly councilman Meltzer and in the operational questions those are months away from us having that level of data they have not begun in depth planning the questions to whether or not this you know meets our master plan it is it perfectly will comply with the master plan community zoning that was been approved for over 10 years which was incorporated in the 2030 plan from there it really gets down to a negotiation as far as if there's policy ideas that the council would like to achieve your goals such as the affordable housing you know how does that that trade-off go but those those discussions will only be entered into should the legislation ultimately get submitted and approved and then and the idea would be at that point does the council think there's enough you know if there's enough benefit to move forward with the MMD even though you could and ultimately if you don't believe that there's enough benefit for the community it dies so I just wanted to make sure when we get back in another you know a couple of weeks on this there's not going to be enough time to get the level of specificity some of the questions we heard today we can certainly get back to you though with some of the more theoretical or high-level policy answers but at the end of the day it's just simply you know do you even get to the next phase of having discussion whether it's something you want to consider and if you do then we can set those policy goals while we're negotiating if it gets to that so all right you've heard our conversation so we'll get back with you with the questions and then you can deliver the information at least to the best of your ability based upon sort of where you are in in the scope of the planning stage okay thank you all for your time thank you I appreciate it all right okay let's take about a seven minute break come back at 2 30 all right welcome everybody back to this meeting the Dent City Council on Tuesday January the 15th 2019 it is 237 we're resuming our work session reports on work session report item 3b which is receive report hold discussion you have staff direction regarding multifamily dwelling collegiate housing and dormitory land use classifications thank you mayor members of council members staff this item is a follow-up item to our discussion regarding the subject matter back on December 4th of last year at that time the council direct staff to move forward with the potential use of dormitory as a use that would encompass the what we often refer to as collegiate housing or single room occupancy so today the purpose of this work session is really to refine and clarify the definition of dormitory also to discuss further the location and the approval process in which we will look how this dormitory would be in placed within the city and then at the end just seek your direction on moving forward if that is the direction of the council so staff went back after the meeting and we looked at the definition it's been a while since probably we've seen this definition but I'm going to just read it for the record a definition as proposed for this type of development for dormitory is as follows a structure with three or more dwelling units in which individual bedrooms are offered for consideration to to residents for periods in excess of 30 days and which each bedroom lacks exclusive use of a full kitchen now that's a that's a that's a lot there does anybody have any questions council member armature let's see so I got and probably others on council too got it interesting small edit suggestion from a member of the public that I think makes makes sense so I guess since you ask I guess this would be a time to mention this and she advises that the words individual and in be repeated so it's up until so a structure with three or more dwelling units in which individual bedrooms are offered for individual considerate yeah just to I don't I've also I also received that yeah that email I didn't see any changes in the context I think it was just more grammatical I think we can include that as part of the revised definition yeah yeah and for me as and that's awesome you know for me it's not so much you know grammatical is just to reiterate exactly exactly yeah so I have a question about this yes sir what we're talking about are individual bedrooms that are leased by the bedroom correct correct I think we just need to say that I mean we're offered for consideration I don't I don't really know exactly I mean that that can be sort of a little vague but if we're saying a structure with three more dwelling units in which individual bedrooms are leased to individual residents for periods in excess of 30 days in which each bedroom I mean that's really what we're getting at is the whole thing we're trying to do is say if you're three bedroom unit or two bedroom you are leasing by the bedroom not as a unit which I think you had something another slide that right out that difference I think we need to figure out a way to say it like that because it's a offer for consideration can be swapped with lease yeah or you know whoever's better word smithing than I am but but that's really the the gist or the thrust of the difference between a what y'all are calling a non SRO and an SRO or a dormitory and a non dormitory is the leasing structure and we can certainly add that this this definition we again we worked with stuff and you know we want to make sure that we got it right and offered for consideration covered a lot of other examples but if the true intent is the leasing of each bedroom we can certainly make that what I guess it helped me understand when you say other examples offer for consideration what what for example the an example I was given was if it's if it's if it's not in a lease or someone is given the opportunity to stay in that one bedroom without a lease is that still considered you know a dormitory so we want to make sure that we covered everything rather than identify just one or an exact you know specific you know process oh that's going to be impossible right to to to regulate I mean what you're saying is if I let's say I'm I'm living somewhere I'm living in a two or three bedroom and I got some friends who you know it's like hey you want to come stay in my bedroom stay here and and I'll just charge you a third of the rent I'll pay the rent all myself and just sublease it to you right what how does that fit in there well I think I think that the the offer for consideration is again the terminology that we're trying to broad you know capture all the different examples that we may not be thinking of so if if the lease is is the term that we use I think it still meets the intent yeah well and the only reason I ask that is because during out this whole conversation we've had about SROs that concept of you know it's been more of leasing you know if you are leasing by the bedroom that seems to be the thing that has been the delineating and the distinguishing factor between so if all of a sudden we're going to start broadening this out to encompass other types of arrangements that may be entered into not by the property owner not by the person who actually has a lease on the property but maybe a tenant within that lease struggle with that I think it was just a cover like a lease rent you know all these different we wanted to just offer for consideration covered lease covers rent but it's it's a little broader and that's really what the intent was it's not to specifically you know excluding anything it was just to try to get it so we were able to use the definition appropriately okay what I can't support offered for consideration I mean I'm only one so I think that what we've talked about is a consideration of lease so that's just where I am so whatever however it turns out that's fine but Councilmember Husspeth. So question for you great point for you Mayor where do you how do you see that because I listening to the reply I do see an opportunity for and I think I agree with you on the individual you know kind of that situation that that's hard to parse out but as a developer all of a sudden I don't have a lease I have some other kind of name contract you know so I change the name of it it's intent is to be in lease but I just give it a new name you know partnership agreement long-term staying arrangement you know whatever it is it's not a lease by name do you think do you think the term lease and the intent behind it encompasses that or because I think that's the that's the difference that I hear between the question which is valid the answer is that there's an opportunity to just title it different and circumvent that language if it's succinct but but do you think that the intent covers that yes because I don't think I mean because even though you don't have a written lease you still have a lease whether it's a month to month it's an oral lease I mean there's still I mean there's legal constant there are legal constructs and when you say offered for consideration those consideration is a legal term of art is is a contractual kind of terminology so I've stated where I am with it so I'm okay I've shared my thoughts so councilmember Armater yeah I suppose so I appreciate the conversation and I for the reasons you know councilmember Hudson was saying you were saying I do support they keeping it broad I understand that some kinds of arrangements will be harder to you know keep track of than others but I think that this provides the best protections for people excuse me protections of who protection it protects us in you know say as a council say there's a situation where as councilmember Hudson was making was providing where you know somebody they call it they don't have a written lease or they have a lease that they call something else or you know who knows or so you know it it protects us in being able to for me it's just a nice balance of broad and specific I feel like getting putting the individual in there makes it a little more specific by reiterating that really each bedroom is an individual unit being offered you know I don't know if paid for or you know I was thinking of something like that but I really think offered seems like the best even though I know it does sound weird it's it sounds awkward if that makes sense so I think it I think it protects us I do think in a way it protects the people living there about but I want to go into that too much okay councilmember Mouser well you know if we think back to what the underlying reason was for looking at this it was because we want the ability to say maybe student housing belongs in some places and doesn't belong elsewhere right and that was how we define it and that's why we're trying to define it and I'm actually unreflectioned persuaded by what councilmember Hudson said at the very end of the last time he talked about this which was the more you try to figure out you can put use these exact words but the more you you know try to figure out a very precise definition you just kind of leave open the possibility that you know the developer will just kind of work around that and I'm persuaded that however we want to define it this way slight change I'm okay with but that the mechanism we probably need at the end of the day is SUP on all multifamily and you know you can approve them they cannot approve them doesn't necessarily prevent you know housing from happening but you know that way you get around all the possible maneuvers of you know around the definition of what's what exactly is a dormitory so when you called apartment buildings yes to determine whether they were SROs or not what question did you ask them we asked if they were leasing or renting the bedrooms individually okay this is the units all right that's what that's the question you asked correct all right okay well I think I just caught the wordsmithing we need if you say rented it doesn't require a lease and that takes care of all other contractual situations so if we we change bed individual bedrooms are rented as opposed to saying least or for consideration you've kind of covered if there isn't a lease in place if it's a oral agreement or something like that without without having it as broad as what offered for consideration this is what just really gets sort of maddening sometimes I'm going to tell you what because what I hear so often is from the public a lot of people talk about the public so I'm going to talk about what I hear from the public is that what they don't like is when staff has so much room for interpretation that it could go one way or the other in other words well you could read that and somebody based upon some situation could say well no you've offered it for consideration based upon these facts and but then other times it's like well no we want it as broad as possible I think the best thing that the public can have is predictability I think that's the best thing developers can have I think it's the best thing that tenants can have that residents can have that neighbors can have because otherwise you're going to have to do a full-blown investigation as far as what people calling it something other than what it is the only reason I don't I'm not too concerned about that because you start talking about partnerships or licensing or something like that I find it difficult that they're going to go through that much links of they're just going to go okay this is the rule if it's a dormitory we can't put it here and we got to have these kind of things so I'm just saying it just seems like sometimes we start out with a very particular issue in mind we're trying to solve and a very simplistic way to do it and by the time it gets down to trying to do it it gets very broad which I don't think help staff quite frankly does that help you I mean does broadness help you or does staff like to be able to point somebody to the code and say here's what it says now if you want to say something any type of financial consideration or any type of financial enumeration or whatever but the point is somebody is paying for an individual bedroom and if you don't have a lease how in the world are you going to prove that without going to court or somebody just admitting that oh you know what yeah I just paid by the bedroom but I split my utilities so however you guys want to do that it's fine with me but it just it's it's like that's okay yeah let's let's see we can get through this and then maybe we can roll come back to this because I think there may be some discussion at the latest slides that can probably help us okay further so the definition we want to make sure again because there was a lot of discussion about other uses that were potentially could be included in the dormitory multi-family specifically obviously that's a big one the way we define dormitories by the individual bedrooms while multi-family we're gonna keep that is offered or leased rented by the unit hotel motel short-term rentals that was another use that was discussed those are limited to 30 days and that are the definition for dormitory is going to be more than 30 days so that's how we're going to distinguish the two types of uses elderly housing potentially could fall under this definition however that particular use requires a state license and that's going to be part of the application and we're going to be able to monitor that boarding and rooming house was another one that we could see potentially fitting the same definition the way it's currently defined is that it's more than four but fewer than 20 and that we would like to include that the owner be present or recited the home that that uses is established so that's that's one way of distinguishing one versus the other and then another definition we want to clarify is that full kitchen means that plumbing and electricity is provided and if it's not provided then it won't be considered a full kitchen so just clarification so this might seem like a tangential question but it actually would help me to understand this definition do we have a definition on record for group home we do we do okay and and I don't expect you to necessarily recite it by heart but you know I'm looking at the definition of dormitory you know I know a group home it doesn't require that somebody live there I mean what would how would you explain you know what's the difference between an SRO and a group home I know it I know it when I see it group homes are are required by state law to provide licensing so that's how we would be able to and it's it's actually covered in the definition that it requires okay excellent so yes very much kind of like the elderly housing it is so that's another use that we didn't think of and I appreciate that okay so a full kitchen is what a room or area that's plumbed or has electricity for kitchen appliances okay which appliances stoves refrigerators typical kitchen appliances that you see okay so you're not including dishwashers or vena hoods or garbage disposals I felt to just do no no I'm saying no no I didn't think about because there's a lot of places don't have dishwashers right you know that they do have a stove and they do have a refrigerator I think the minimum you you would at least have a stove or and or okay as long as we have that somewhere because full kitchen could mean yeah I mean if you're talking about refrigeration and cooking and plumbing for a sink for washing dishes and drainage okay but if you're saying it's got to have a dishwasher and or a vena hood then I think we need to define that somewhere so that we're not still trying to guess what we're talking about Councilmember Briggs my comment was about the hood because if you have a stove I mean the code says you have to have it properly vented right for exhaust and right exactly no oh so we don't have to okay well never mind the intent that it that each each bedroom doesn't have a kitchen and that's the no no I understand that but this is my point when it gets down to trying to enforce it when you have an issue you've got to investigate is how do you come up with you know somebody could say well full kitchen means X X X and X you could think that right somebody else could mean it it thinks it means something else and so that's why it's so important to we're gonna already have enough unintended consequences on what we've left out but the things that we can sort of really get some some definitiveness around and then if something comes up we don't know we simply add it we change it you know scar tissue yeah and that's that's obviously the difficult thing is trying to make sure we we try to address everything but there's gonna be things that we're just gonna understand and that's that's absolutely right so definition of a dormitory I know it's not as clear as it should be but it's what we have we'll deal with that so rented by the bedroom developments we looked at and we surveyed those that are in the city and we identified 33 in total 26 existing and seven that are currently either in development or close to being completed as you can see on this map they are located close to the universities and often served by DCTA so we're working with 33 councilmember bridge how many individual units is that would next I will have that yes so Ron did I think when we had this before I don't know if I asked or somebody asked do we have a list of those did you get that you know that that should be in your backup okay all right I just missed it I apologize go ahead and we'll get to that Councilman Briggs but before we do just another question that the council had was where are they in relationship to zoning and so we craft or we put on our zoning map those 33 rent by the bedroom developments and as you can see from this table dr2 and dcg have the highest amount or most of it while the others have one in each of those zoning districts so again dr2 and dcg and those are primarily in the green the darker green is the dcg the dr2 is the lighter green so as you can see again most of those are in the general area where dcg dcg and dr2 are located and Ron just and I mean do you know of those because my hunch is that a lot of those in the green and dr2 were ones that were what we would consider conventional multifamily that were developed you know back in dr2 which is I don't know is that 30 units per acre or something like that and that converted so if we could maybe if I could get a breakdown of you know those in that system because I know you said you've got the end so you have the individual ones listed in the backup but and I may be able to glean which ones they are because I'm familiar with them but so there were several that have been converted I mean yeah by your yeah yeah yeah okay based on the follow-up that we did after December 4th we were able to determine which ones were converted right so we're going back to Councilman Briggs your question related to the breakdown of bedrooms so we took the 33 we contacted them and there are still a few that we're waiting on information so that's why you see the asterisk there but generally there are 6153 units that are considered rented by the bedrooms and of those that translates to approximately 18,000 bedrooms the breakdown of bedrooms by unit is shown in this table the majority of them you see here are four bedrooms while the others fall between three and one bedroom and again we are still awaiting some information from particular developments but generally this is how they're broken down so the the 2,100 units units converted to rented by the bedroom is 2,092 units that's correct of the 6153 2,092 were converted how many bedrooms does that represent do we know I don't have that information I can certainly get that for you because when you look at that chart on your left our right the four bedrooms those are probably some of the newer ones that have been built specifically for rent by the bedrooms by student housing developers because nobody's really built four bedroom units before prior prior to that so and and a lot of three bedroom units have not you know even we're built so I would probably suspect that most of those in the units count are fairly new yeah they're fairly new I would agree and you see a lot of new developments and majority of them are three to four bedrooms important to note that we currently as a city have approximately 21,899 multifamily units per hour calculation the 6,000 rent by the bedroom units equates to possibly 20 percent of our multifamily total dwelling units okay so we we understand what we have we understand where they are so where and how should they be placed where should they be permitted currently as we look at the definition of using dormitory the development code existing development code has dormitory permitted in these zoning districts the first three by SUP the last three the dr1 I'm sorry dr2 DCN and DCG permitted by right and you all know what specific use permit entails it's obviously requires notification public hearings offers anyone to provide additional more restrictive conditions and a site plan is typically included as part of an SUP what staff is proposing is that if we continue with dormitory as the proposed use and by the definition we add a limitation to the dr2 DCN and DCG that limitation is that any dormitories over proposed be over 45 feet be required a specific use permit this is if again we decide if the council decides to move forward with using dormitory as a way of identifying the use this is where they would be permitted and this is how they would be permitted again as you see here on this slide does anybody have any questions council member Mel sir yeah just curious why you arrived at 45 feet 45 because the dr2's maximum height is 45 so anything above that we felt that it offers an opportunity to address any compatibility as far as the over 45 feet height council member armature how many of the SROs that we currently that we currently have the 33 are under that height I don't have that answer I can certainly find out okay and sorry I hadn't thought of it before it's a kind of thing it's just a good question a curse to curse me now thanks yeah I'd like to know and that's a good question the follow-up to that is if they're already existing and they're over 45 feet under vested in there yeah they'd be concerned this is for new development moving forward a new conversion moving forward correct once or if this gets approved correct we would we would actually keep track of those that have that are existing and we'd have to find out she determined a point to go forward and at that point those moving forward would be subject to whatever requirements yeah I just concur that's a good question just to see you know what would this rule have permitted in without SUP you know we're not right just to help us as an aid to judgment so I guess my this is where I get a little confused about this whole discussion okay not from staff's perspective but as a policy sure because when I look at the proposed limitation within the zoning districts right I'm not quite sure really what that's alleviating so somebody could come in and build a multifamily unit not a dormitory unit three-bedroom four-bedroom lease the whole unit right out by the unit by the unit height this 45 feet maximum height in these zoning districts I believe already is that right correct in some in some zoning districts yes yeah okay but in the ones that you highlighted in green is it 45 in each one of those no dr2 is 45 but DCN is what I believe is a little higher I'm not sure okay but it's higher it's higher than 45 yes so what I guess I'm still trying to understand and I don't have an issue if we want to try to find a way to regulate these but I thought what we were trying to regulate wasn't the height I mean the big issue has been are they in neighborhoods and if it's a four-bedroom and they're renting by the bedroom then the assumption is there's going to be 10 people in there at some point and all the parking and all the traffic and so I don't know how just that limitation really changes anything I think it helps with the dr2 but I can see your point with the DCN and DCG because they are obviously have a higher height limit yeah but again the idea or the thought was that the height would trigger you know the compatibility you know ways of addressing compatibility and to a certain degree sort of identify the density or you know the bulkiness of that particular development so 45 feet was what we were recommending so the thought is then a developer who wants to build student housing they're not if they have to limit their height to 45 feet it's going to probably be a no-go is that I mean they're not going to be able to do it economically and so therefore that's that way of sort of so and I and I I listen my colleagues to help help me understand I mean what what exactly I mean as we're talking about regulating this is this yes councilmember Armitage I mean for me and I said this the last time I'll repeat it again I don't you know see why the height is such an issue since we already have you know height requirements in the built into the different kinds of zoning classifications I would be you know I I think I'd prefer it to have just simply you know dormitories are required to obtain a specific use permit I would feel good with that I wouldn't and I know that's not on the table right now but just I'll just mention I would not be in favor of you know respectfully you know what what councilmember Melter had suggested with extending it to all multi multi-family I mentioned that only to say that's where I would kind of draw the line but for me the height is not so much an issue you know and I could imagine I mean you know somebody you know in a neighborhood a quiet neighborhood at least have a say you know maybe they would still be granted that SUP but to have if somebody wants to take a house a small house and convert it into rent by the bedroom I'm not saying they shouldn't have that right you know but I think something like that should come before council and people in the community should have the opportunity to weigh in in the in the public hearing process well actually I was going to ask if you could move to the next slide because I think that that's more important is what we're looking at moving forward since we're about to move into the new where you talk about MN and R7 yes because these these classifications are all going away in a couple of months of this part really doesn't matter to me at the street here yeah so right okay well again this is a proposed you know recommendation on how you guys want to deal with it we can we can inform with that yeah another possible way to cut it and I don't I'm assuming councilmember Armitage will not agree with this but would be I'm I think I agree with part of what you with you have presented which is you could require SUP for all dormitory and all multi-family over excite let's say 45 feet because that's you know that's a very important shaping element of what it looks like is where we put really big developments so that's why I would propose that yes yeah so I respect that suggestion from you personally and again of course that's not on the table today but I wouldn't I wouldn't support I wouldn't support that so here we are with the new the new proposed DDC update you know we've been working on this for some time and we'll get this to you soon but we recognize that there's going to be a transition between what we currently have to what's coming again in your future the zoning districts that you saw earlier the NRMU NRMU12 DR1 DR2 DCN and DCG are consistent with what we have here proposed in that the R7 are your are you know you DR1 DR2 the MN is your NRMU NRMU12 and then the MD is your DCG so using that as a as a start we would in the if this was to move forward there our code update proposed something similar and in this matter where these zoning districts will require a specific use permit and then again in the MD anything over 45 would require a specific use permit so thank you very it is that I look at this the MD is our downtown area I don't really I mean do we have any right now in that downtown area we don't but and so it's quite unlikely that we will have anybody trying to develop they might develop multifamily but not dormitory size that I personally am in favor of SUP in the MD in the only one that it would be allowed by right would be PF okay public facility so if you're on on the you know the universities want to build them on their own property they can do that oh I'm sorry but this way if if they're under 45 feet they can go anywhere am I only in the MD okay yeah without an SUP without an issue only in the what without a SUP they would be permitted without an SUP without you know they're not over 45 they would be permitted and not require a specific use permit in the MD in the MD use specific standard I've transposed all those words to specific use so I just saw specific okay got you yes Councilmember Meltzer yeah I don't know if it's possible for you to zoom in just I can't quite see exactly where all these places are and I'm specifically bearing in mind that I know we're going to be looking at the Oak Gateway right plan later today and I know there's a specific recommendation that sub area one have no more the dormitory style structures so I just can't tell yeah I don't know if I can zoom in here but you know here's Owsley Park addition here's the area between scripture and hickory or oak you've got the areas north of North Lakes of course surrounding the downtown you'll see more R7s and MNs south of downtown so they can do it in sub area one with but requires an SUP that's that's what you're saying okay I understand oh yeah this is a that was going to be my Mike I'm just gonna have that question too can you I'm just then adding on to what you said can you name the this this the streets that are the boundary or some kind of land you know specific landmarks up to the old gateway no no of the of the MD I mean because that's not all of the oh yeah yes so Carol sorry Parkway okay exposition and sycamore okay thanks so other considerations I know this was brought up in the last work session and I know it would be who has to just just make sure that we understand obviously enforcement is going to be a big consideration if and when we decide to move forward with this particular code update or code amendment what do we do with the conversions what do you do with the alterations how do you manage that and really there's there's no other way unless it's driven by complaint and then we talked a little bit already about the non-conforming uses where if we move forward this any existing rent by the bedroom developments or dormitories would be considered non-conforming we'd be looking at developments moving forward but again offered this slide just to again for consideration purposes the the alteration of multifamily coming in coming in as multifamily converting into dormitories later another consideration I wanted to make sure that the council was aware of or is clear on is single family detached duplexes and townhomes we we did not include this in the definition it is not this is this would not be considered a dormitory because by the definition but we do have homes and this is this example is not in den but we do have some examples in den this is actually of from the city of brian texas where properties are being subdivided from large lots into smaller lots and then converted or developed with duplexes where then the bedrooms are at least are rented by the bedroom creating obviously incompatibility with the neighborhood something that we probably want to discuss later in the future a future discussion but I want to make sure that that was clear as we move forward with this part of what we're proposing well that is kind of happening now currently maybe not in such drastic measures but I think we heard from last week where a single family home was divided into two apartments in a single family neighborhood right and again I don't know if it's part of this discussion or maybe for layered another discussion because obviously we entered this discussion with the single room occupancy in the collegiate housing so but I just want to make sure that it was clear that we are the definition does not include duplexes and single family homes in town so I just looked it up on a map I just and now have a sense of kind of where that the md area is what encompasses so knowing that I would be in favor at least as I understand it anyway of what mayor pro tem ryan suggested and just make it the md and sup as well and again for the reason like I said before having giving the public an opportunity to come and make the case for for compatibility because I think it has to do is so much more than than just height yes councilmember yes no I agree with that too because there's not only is it just like just downtown there's the little houses in the surrounding neighborhoods or or what's left of them sure in that in that area okay so this is my last slide it's really just to recap the definition of dormitory I know we had some discussion between offer for consideration we can certainly get that squared away location as far as zoning districts I repeated the staff proposal here the requirement for sup would be for these zoning districts and then anything above dr2 dr dcn dcg would be offered through a limitation that it really just completes my presentation I'm really here to hear more what you guys want to do and what your direction is with regards to this particular use well I think the discussion again we've got three right now who are in favor of sup's for by right only in a pf if we're going to go that way we might as well as we're making this change under the current code put sup across the board as well otherwise you just have developers trying to go oh well how long do I have until that new code comes in let me slip this in quick it's it's about this is probably the most controversial item that we have built in this town right now is his sros and the most likely to have the public wanting as much input as possible yes they call on the same lines explain real quick exactly what the L sorry I copied that one but it's really the yeah okay got it okay so what I understand is there's a consensus to extend the sup in our current zoning classifications to dr2 dcn and dcg and then when the new classifications come in it's whatever that slide was mn something and make it sup all the way across and the only one by right is in the what you call it pf public facilities which would be city city land state land universities so the city will just kidding just kidding so I do have a question when you talk about non-conforming uses so let's say just for discussion purposes that these recommendations become an ordinance correct and so people who have these already are they a legal non-conforming use or are they still just I mean it's just briefly just for a moment just share talk about that as far as all the apartments that have converted over to the renting by the bedroom concept is that what you're yes they're still considered multifamily and so have they are they have they become a legally non-conforming use not until you adopt the definition that would make it that way okay and then by being a legal non-conforming use then there's other sections of our code that govern those projects in case of some type of casualty loss or modification or something like that that is correct could you when you come back either come back for the ordinance for action just provide a summary of what the ordinances or the rate rules and regulations for legal non-conforming use so that we can so I can know and I think so that people who had this but because they could be a legal non-conforming use but if they go back to a traditional leasing methodology of by the unit do they then become a conforming use I mean they become I mean there's not it's not a legal non-conforming use they would be conforming with the future zoning designation and definition yes okay okay I would also add special exception to that list okay I don't know if any of these developments were permitted before 2002 became non-conforming under the special designation given in 2002 as a special exception so that maybe staff can look at that as well okay if I just to me if I can just let you just summarize I'm gonna quickly summarize yes direction from councils to bring forward an ordinance for code update or code amendment that is to revise the definition of dormitory and to revise the permitted zoning districts in have dormitory be required as with an SUP across the board except for professional yeah yes okay one question I have on the list of rent by the bedroom developments your your excel spreadsheet there's several of them probably about 30% of them you have waiting for additional information were those included in the calculation they were they were we we were just we have the number of bedrooms we have the number of units but we don't have the breakdown you don't know if it's at least by the bedroom or not no they're all all of these are considered lease or ran by the bedroom what we didn't have is the breakdown of the number of bedrooms per unit gotcha okay all right fantastic thank you any other questions on this presentation fantastic thank you Ron thank you so much all right we're gonna move on then to agenda item well to item see we're moving quickly agenda item 3c receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding information current laws and policies which regulate the sale and use of electronic cigarettes including information on age restrictions good afternoon mayor city council my name is Sarah Keekler I'm the director of public affairs I'm here today to do a brief presentation on e-cigarette regulations so this topic was rated highly as an interest for council during a recent work session prioritization so staff is here today to present a brief presentation on what is the city's ordinance for e-cigarettes as well as dsd policies I'll also share with you some research of other municipal ordinances including the city of San Antonio's recent ordinance they passed and also want to share some information in regards to state and federal efforts to combat e-tobacco and e-cigarette use so first I'll start with the city of Denton so the city of Denton first approved a smoking ordinance in December of 2012 that ordinance was revised and repealed in April of 2015 to address e-cigarettes and specifically that new ordinance in April of 2015 added a definition for what e-cigarettes are and it also revised the definition of smoking to encompass using e-cigarettes so basically everything in our ordinance that applies to smoking now applies to e-cigarettes and that includes that e-cigarettes are prohibited in a number of locations throughout the city where smoking is also prohibited so in restaurants bars retail establishments schools public facilities that is all prohibited and then third lastly it also added a provision to make it unlawful for someone to sell or give give e-cigarettes or paraphernalia to anyone under 18 years of age and in addition to this city of Denton ordinance the state of Texas also passed legislation in 2015 that became effective October 1st 2015 making it unlawful for someone under the age of 18 to possess use or purchase e-cigarettes so as an addition to our city ordinance. Councilmember Briggs. Do you have any data from the police department on how many citations or if any retailers have been fined for for selling underage? We did look up that information in regards to our police department violations it is minor so I think there's four violations last year that were given to individuals under the age of 18 for having possession of tobacco or using it as far as the TAVC does compliance checks on the retailers to ensure that they're not selling individuals under 18 I do not have those statistics from the TAVC. I'm going to ask a question you might not know the answer to but do you happen to know if of those citations how many came you know from from a school you know how many were you know a case where a kid was was found at school with it with e-cigarettes? I do not but I'm going to touch on that in my next slide in regards to how DASD enforces their policies. So in addition to the city's municipal ordinance and state law the school districts in Texas by Texas Education Code are required to have policies that prohibit the use or possession of e-cigarettes or tobacco products on school property or in relation to school sanctioned activities that are on or off school property. The Texas Education Code also states in there that school personnel enforce the policies on school property. So we reached out to DASD to get some information in regards to how they handle that. They do have a policy in their student and parent handbook which prohibits the possession or use of tobacco and e-cigarettes on school property or at school sanctioned events. And that's for all students. So even if you are the age of 18 you still can't have it on school property. And this is in their student parent handbook that is signed by the student and parents at the beginning of the school year. Enforcement actions are handled by Denton ISD personnel so according to their student code of conduct they can give discipline to students who are caught with tobacco or using tobacco on school property. There's a number of different actions they can take that may depend on each incident or situation. So if our school resource officers which are in the middle and high schools if they observe a violation of that policy it is reported to Denton ISD personnel and then they handle the enforcement from there. So would that mean that we wouldn't necessarily see statistics on the rate of violations since it's handled by school personnel? Correct. Okay. Councilmember Brueger do you have a question? Not yet. Okay. Alright. So staff has also asked for information on the City of San Antonio's ordinance and this is a recent ordinance that was passed in January of 2018. The City of San Antonio has increased the minimum age for the sale of tobacco products which includes e-cigarettes for retailers from 18 to 21 years of age. What this means is if retailers violate the ordinance and they sell to someone that is under the age of 21 they're subject to a Class C misdemeanor and a fine of up to $500. What the ordinance doesn't apply to, it doesn't apply to individuals under 21. So if you're of the age of 18 to 20 and you're an individual who uses, possesses or purchases tobacco or e-cigarettes you're not subject to any enforcement under the City of San Antonio's ordinance. However, if you're under the age of 18 you're still subject to Texas state law and you can be fined up to $250 and required to attend a tobacco awareness program. When I read this I was curious about that. So what interest, it may be a legal interest, it may be some type of preemption discussion or something, but so you can't sell it to anybody under 21, but if you're under 20 between 18 and 21 you can go in and buy it and you've not violated anything. You as an individual have not as a retailer selling. No, I understand that. We did reach out to the City of San Antonio to learn why. We originally drafted the ordinance to include that 18 to 21 could be subject to enforcement underneath the ordinance. They decided to remove that and that's due to two primary reasons as they described it to us. One, advocacy groups have found that in order to reduce youth smoking it's more effective to focus on sales laws that restrict the age of the sale and that's coming from some of the bigger advocacy groups and other cities that have adopted these ordinances nationwide. They've also removed that provision. Second, San Antonio did reference that they were worried that tobacco industries disproportionately market to minority communities and that any sort of enforcement might disproportionately impact those communities as well. I knew there was a reason. Okay, thank you. Yep. Appreciate that. And so this ordinance did become effective October 1st. They did allow for a nine-month grace period in order for some education for the retailers, training for personnel, to have public hearings, public input, and also to develop an implementation plan in terms of how the City of San Antonio staff would do compliance checks to ensure retailers are complying with the ordinance. Staff also wanted to share that there has been a lawsuit that has been filed against the City of San Antonio. This was filed last month by three small retailer associations. They're challenging the ordinance, alleging that it discriminates against retailers since they're the only ones subject to punishment under the ordinance and that individuals, again, ages 18 to 20, would not face any penalties or enforcement under the ordinance or state law. This is a slide that staff- Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, Council Member. You may not know the answer to this. Maybe the City Attorney would. Are there other instances of similar lawsuits and do they tend to hold up or not? I'm not aware of other lawsuits around the country that have challenged it. I'm only aware of the one in San Antonio. I know that our Assistant City Attorney, Stephanie Neal, has been helping Sarah with a lot of the legal research on this. I don't know if you have anything to add to that, Stephanie? Yeah, if you do, come on. Good afternoon. I'm Stephanie Neal. I have been helping Sarah with the research on this. To date, we've focused primarily on Texas, so I have not looked at lawsuits outside of Texas and how they may have been handled. I'd be happy to do that or assist Sarah with doing that if you'd like more information though. Discussing. Or do you, I don't know if you can even do this, do you have an opinion on the prospects of this lawsuit? Are you succeeding or failing? Well, at this point, I don't have a legal opinion on it. They are pursuing the lawsuit under multiple provisions though. The main provision is that they're saying it's an equal protection violation, so they're saying they're not being treated equally under the law. They're saying that since they took out the portions that pertain to individuals being punished, that it's not equally being applied. They also had an issue with the fact that it was being enforced by code officers. For whatever reason, City of San Antonio has chosen to have code officers enforce it instead of police, so that was a portion of their lawsuit saying it was exceeding the policing powers as a city. They also looked at the fact that there was no exception created for if an individual between 18 and 20 was using tobacco with their parent's consent. If you look at the state statutes, it creates exceptions for that. Part of the lawsuit's arguing it's not consistent with how Texas normally approaches regulations for minors. That's pretty much it. They did have multiple arguments. At this point, I looked, they haven't filed a response yet, San Antonio has not, so it's really too early and too speculative for me to give you a legal opinion on which way it might go. Anybody else? My staff is here. Thank you. Me back. Thank you. I'm going to go to the next slide. This is a slide we added in after the backup was sent out. I just wanted to do some research of other municipalities in Texas to see if anyone else has looked at or raised the age for the minimum of sales. This chart is just showing that San Antonio is the only city that has decided to more strictly regulate the sale of tobacco than state law, and then I just broke out the second column just shows that for the minimum age for the individual use or possession of tobacco and e-cigarettes is 18 all across the board, even in San Antonio. That's that key difference we were talking about earlier. Staff also wanted to give some context in terms of what's happening at the state and federal level. For the state of Texas, legislation has been introduced in the past to raise the state's minimum age. It hasn't been successful in past legislative sessions. However, there's a coalition of organizations called Texas 21, various different organizations, mostly healthcare, that is seeking to introduce and pass legislation. We actually found out on Friday that they have introduced both a House bill and a Senate bill, and we'll be looking to move those forward this session to raise the minimum age for the sale of tobacco and e-cigarettes as well as the possession, use, and purchase on individuals. So it'd be for both those factors where San Antonio only did for the minimum age of sale. Based upon what we just heard from Stephanie, though, since it's state legislation, they probably would follow the policy of having some type of exception if for parental consent or something. I think that's what I heard is that there is an exception for that in state law, whatever the current law is. Sorry. I just want to make sure. Yes. Please do. Yes. I sit in the legal all day, so it's welcome. So the bills that they're proposing are identical in both the House and the Senate. The fact that they've filed two identical companion bills just shows it's probably getting a little more traction. I did look at the text of the bill, and they're basically keeping the state statutes under their health code the same way they are. They're just raising the age. So most of the provisions are going to stay the same, so the exceptions that apply for if you're with your parent would still be applicable under the proposed bills. Okay. Great. Councilmember Hummer. Okay. Can you speak to what authority municipalities have in taxes to raise the tax on cigarettes? The tax for the age. I'm sorry. The tax. The tax. I'm not prepared to answer that today, but I'd be happy to do research on that if that's one that you're interested in. Okay. Yeah, that would be great. Thanks. Anything else? Looks like the mayor said that. So we'll move on with the presentation. Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Stephanie. The last thing we wanted to share is that at the federal level, the FDA has acknowledged that this is a problem, youth using e-cigarettes especially. They've taken a number of actions over the last few months to step up what they'll be doing. Last summer, they did enforcement surprise inspection checks in stores and online. They wrote over 1,300 warning letters and gave fines out to those companies that were selling to minors. In addition to that, in November of 2018, the FDA commissioner came out and said they'll be taking a number of next steps to limit selling flavored e-cigarette products to youths as well as trying to ban menthol and mint in all cigarette products. Some more to come on that, but just wanted to share that the FDA is taking some steps as well. Okay. Council Member Amacher. I'll just say, just put a word in, I don't blame the kids for this. I blame the retailers and I like the idea of focusing on the retailer. Obviously, the kids, they make a decision and they need to be taught about making responsible choices, but as far as the law goes, I think something like this makes a certain degree of sense. I also just want to say just anecdotally, I know this is an issue at my kid's school and it's hard for the schools to regulate it themselves. I think if we focus on the retailer, that might be a good solution. Council Member Brice. I appreciate you bringing this presentation today. It was something that I asked for a while ago, mainly because it was brought to my attention through others and my son, that it's a big issue at school. The e-cigarettes look like little USBs and they're really easy in their design now. Kids are using them. They don't know how much nicotine they're getting. Some kids have passed out at school from too much nicotine. They're using them in class, in the bathrooms, and it's starting to affect the other kids there who are just going to school to learn, who don't want to be near it. I just wanted this presentation to bring awareness because a couple years ago it wasn't an issue and then just all of a sudden, even as someone will tell you, it wasn't in class every day like it is now. I have this statistics here. Among high school students, in 2011, there were 220,000 students who used e-cigs. This is just e-cigs specifically, not regular cigarettes. Today, in 2018, there's over 3 million high school students. That's a really significant increase. When we're talking about middle school, in 2011, there were 60,000 students and today there's close to 600,000 students that are using it. I would prefer, or I would like to ask, because I know that it's an issue and it's not a city thing and there's not a lot, sometimes we can't just regulate ourselves out of the issue. I would personally like to see a campaign for the city and the county and maybe the school district, some partnerships on education, outreach, maybe with our parks department as well on educating because there's over, let's see right now, I think 7,700 individual flavors and the most popular ones are popsicle, blueberry cheesecake, strawberry doughnuts and bubble gum. It's not about, the kids don't really know what they're doing, they're just, so just some sort of education campaign and then partnerships with our other individuals, Texas PTA. I know they are actually supporting the legislation here and so just open, start communicating about what our options are and what we can do to raise awareness for our kids because there's so much nicotine in these things and there's no way for them to know that that's what it is. I do want to note, I did talk to DISD and they said their counseling department is developing an awareness campaign so I can try to get some more details in terms of what that might be or maybe a potential partnership that we could work with DISD on. I asked for this to address a very specific part of the problem which is access in high schools, it's already illegal to use or buy minors or to distribute or give or sell to minors but the access issue is 18-year-olds who can legally purchase but are in high school and then have the opportunity illegally to distribute to younger students so I would be interested in raising the age even to 19 just to cut off that access point. And I would just add that I would like to see as part of the education effort also since some of these kids are getting hooked and I heard it from my kids but they're both in middle school but one of my kids knew a kid who just started precisely because it was banned and I was a kid like that too if you told me not to do something I do but then this kid got addicted and so they can get in trouble for it but does this kid know how to get off it? It's not like having a kid methadone clinic for e-cigarettes but at least to give them the skills especially if maybe their parents are not going to be supportive but sometimes just punishing doesn't help them get off it so to work that in you know to have the don't do e-cigarettes it's not a toy be the main message but also to let kids come to counselors to say look I'm addicted I want to quit and have let them have an opportunity to quit without just being punished for it or as part of the punishment have the quitting be part of the punishment give them the skills. So I too I think that increasing the age just to 19 would help that to Council Member Meltzer's comment. It might be a little bit more difficult because there's for regular cigarettes because people have been buying them for so long and I don't necessarily see that as an issue as it is for e-cigarettes at this moment in time because that but I would be in favor of entertaining that idea to 19 because that has been the issue like seniors come they have it and then they distribute it down and then those kids go home and then they give it to their brother or sister so it's it's the sale of it. What what age I mean right now it's 18 well I know but I think what they're saying I think San Antonio's laws they've moved this the sale age up to 21 but the 19 you're wanting to move up which part is that to sale the sale oh so you're saying you don't want to go to 21 you want to go to 19 oh okay all right okay I misunderstood so I have a question for legal on that if let's say for instance that the current legislation that has been filed and is pending if that passes because sometimes we're preempted and sometimes we're not sometimes we can have stricter laws than what the state has and sometimes we can't. What's the situation here do we know I mean it as far as if that passes and we're able to and you want to know can we go even higher when the new state law might be it can we be more restricted and that it's specifically it has to be provided in the statute I'm not aware of an actual preemption provision in the tobacco section which is in the health and safety code okay now I'm I'm looking at the assistant city attorney there is not one and that's probably how San Antonio was able to raise that as well but as introduced the legislation would be very restrictive it would raise it would go to raising the age to 21 for the sale or the possession use or purchase so it would raise statewide it would be more stricter than what we were if we were to raise it to 19 but that also includes that's just how it's introduced so it may change along the way but that also includes for the people who purchase it not just the seller of it correct for the for the as introduced teenager or young person who who would buy it they they would suffer a they would be in violation of the law whereas the San Antonio ordinance excludes the purchasers from 18 from 18 on up to okay. I thought I I heard sir right now wouldn't look so page 66 student handbook or student code whatever for didn't ISD and parent handbook page six six at the top students are prohibited from possessing or using any type of tobacco tobacco product including e-cigarettes they said all the way out but or any other electronic vaporizing device so while on school property etc so so you're not allowed to have it on school property you're not allowed to use it on school property I'm missing how raising the age of something that's already not allowed helps. It's it's access right because you got to get it from somewhere so and and you know a store can can card you right so if you're 18 you know you can't buy it then even though those other activities are already illegal you know against the rules I mean it doesn't happen but if you want to actually you know affect the reality of the ground if you if you restrict the access you know the the point would be to have less of that activity. So the fix to someone breaking the quote-unquote laws at school is to create more laws that they potentially won't break outside of school. The retailers completely different animals for us your ability to regulate that behavior right. No I mean I just that answers my question I just don't I don't I don't I'm I'm good with helping I'm good with working with DISD but I don't know that more city regulation that that's out of our purview we can't enforce that. It really falls upon us to support the ISD in whatever ways they think are helpful in my eye and in my look at it because again if you're not allowed to have it on school if you buy it and you bring it to school then that's a problem right and so based on how this handbook reads you you don't you can't bring it to school so even if you if you're 18 you can buy it you can't bring it to school and share it with other people currently and so I just don't I'm missing how that gets to the to the meat or to the issue and I've not seen anything from then ISD that says that's solicited or that hits at the the meat of the issue for them or that's helpful to them. I've not seen anything that supports that. Council Member Armatran then Council Member So yeah I would like to see just kind of reach out to the superintendent of schools or the school board to see if they would support us in this. I believe that this would help DISD because it would relieve them of the burden of having to you know police this and it would ideally cut down on some on the the amount of these devices that are coming to the schools because I know you know teachers you know teachers don't sign up to be you know to teach to be in the discipline business they they are there to teach and while you know there's always going to be you know discipline issues this this I think really really helps them do their job which is to teach. Council Member Briggs can I recognize Mayor Pro Tem he had no spoke on this issue if that's okay thank you very much for your accommodation. Mayor Pro Tem. Well if if there's legislation before the state I say we just wait until they decide what they're going to do because when you start doing pockets you have to remember DISD is not just the city of Denton and you have kids I don't know exactly where all their their maps are but you're going to have some kids that are going to a different high school or going to one of the high schools that live outside of the city limits or live in one of the other neighboring small towns where it's still legal and now they become the person that can do the supply it's it's no different than there was had been the argument for years that you know we don't want to go to full liquor where we have liquor stores because you know it's going to increase the alcoholism issue in town well everybody knew that lived in Denton if you needed something you just went out to the edge of town you went to Lincoln Park you went down to Hickory Creek you went here and the students are going to know that if they're 18 years old they can drive to just drive to the edge of town or drive to the neighboring town and pick it up there so it doesn't do us any good in my opinion to try and do an age restriction just within the city of Denton it's it's got to be a statewide type situation so that that's a really good point but what I will also just remind you that Councilmember Hudson kids are bringing it to school they're doing it in the bathroom they're passing around in actually in the classroom and so I don't know how DASD wants to handle that but here here me personally I don't want to start for the district to start turning them over to the the police and then the police giving them citations and already you know having something on their record that's going to affect them the rest of their life something so I just I want a partnership I want to do something that's right to help for education purposes and and I don't want children to get popcorn lung because they are wanting to inhale bubble gum flavor all day long like that's that's just I don't think that that's right and I don't know what the necessarily solution is but I think awareness and what we're doing today is a first step by talking about it yeah and I really didn't hear anybody here saying that I think everybody would share your sentiment about we don't want to see these kind of we don't want to see the kids in high school or any age to be inflicted with those kind of things I think Mayor Pro Tim has a good point I think we can move forward with some type of exploration of a joint just educational campaign and then I think it's a good point to wait and see what the legislature does and we could even take an active role in supporting that legislation and it would be more restricted than what we were contemplating here today and it just would it would help with the confusion plus if we pass something we're going to put a grace period in and that grace period is probably going to be passed when the legislature will know whether this legislature is is going to prevail or not so I'm all for the suggestion let's let's work together with the different entities political subdivisions on you know how can we get more awareness I think we need to be careful sometimes you know obviously the school district has their own jurisdiction and it's across multiple jurisdictions but I think everybody wants to to address the issue it's how do we best do it in an efficient effective manner and I think the educational component with a wait and see on the legislature I think would be would be prudent yes I'd be curious to know whether council would want to entertain a resolution in support of the proposed legislation and possibly to seek a joint resolution with DSD board I don't I don't see I mean council certainly can take up a joint I mean a resolution on their own and then we'll just have to reach out to the to DSD and see and see what they have to say yeah because we've done that before resolutions to support certain sure we can prepare that if that's your direction I'd like to get a copy of the legislation just so I can read through it that would be helpful but sure I mean I think that's something we can move forward on we can share that with you okay great any other questions comments so direction is I'm sorry go ahead councilmember breaks oh yeah just so if we could get some some data on citations issued or speak to the DSD on the the recent issues that they had yeah thanks okay understand the direction got work on a joint partnership education awareness campaign with DSD the county and maybe other partners and then share with you the copy of the proposed legislation and prepare a resolution should council want to consider that for support yes ma'am thank you appreciate yes councilmember Briggs I just say we received a message from the county health director of public health from the county that said they would be in support of that and that they are having an upcoming event on February 7th 2019 and if we could have some way to put that that event on our website I'd like that that's great we'll help to share that through our social media channels and our other channels thank you thank you all right we're moving on to our next agenda item which is agenda item what are we doing three 3d receive report from staff hold discussion give staff direction regarding the funding of a replacement fire technical rescue slash light air vehicle. [Council members discussing] Okay good afternoon mayor city council members Kenneth Hedges fire chief I have a brief presentation so I'm here I also have finance over here to my right hand side the way you follow up the conversation also probably the most important part of this honestly so I'm here to talk about actually two different fleet vehicles uh technical rescue truck this was actually an unfunded budget request in the 18-19 budget cycle and I think you um some terms are kind of skewed it was starting to be called a light air truck so I'll go through this and kind of walk through two different vehicles kind of show what we're talking about we have been working since the budget was approved on this unfunded item with city manager's office and finance and I think we have a potential recommendation for you here at the end. So what is it this is our current unit this is a two-piece unit it's a one-ton truck with a 30-foot trailer so this carries all special equipment for different types of scenarios that are really outside our normal status quo for instance and I'll go through that here shortly also in 17-18 budget cycle this was scheduled for replacement there was 250,000 allotted to replace what you see here current vehicle two different units as well internally we're looking at trying to develop a more efficient and more effective response vehicle so we actually applied for federal grants three different grant cycles trying to ask for a total of 700,000 to fund a one vehicle unit and all three times we came back we got denied for grants there's just they were not really prioritized and what we call a rescue truck at that point there was other vehicles that was prior priority across the US on the grants. So what's this used for I have some bullet points here I'll go through everyone so structural collapse can be very specialized can be very simplistic also I will definitely point to November 2017 we had one in town apartment complex south side of town floor collapse over 100 people in that one apartment luckily that was lightweight wood frame that was easy to rescue this type of vehicle is designed for that it carries especially equipment as well one point add another more prominent one recently is the parking garage class in Irving made on concrete that requires different type equipment to try to mitigate that incident some other couple just different specialties obviously they each take their own equipment very specialized this is not just equipment we keep stored across the city this is one centralized location at our station one central in this one unit. This is probably where we get the most use of this vehicle so with major interstates we always respond to a significant amount of motor vehicle accidents it really depends on whether it's a small passenger vehicle or you're talking about a tractor trailer MVA requires more additional heavy duty equipment. This unit does respond to all aircraft incidents at our airport as well you know I did not have time to pull the data but I know in January 2016 we had three what was called alert three incidents so that's actually technically a crash so this is the primary unit that responds with special equipment any type of rope rescue anything as far as you see the high rises low rises as well that were required to remove a patient or some type of victim all those equipment is located on this vehicle and it's just simply boat operations anytime we have any swift water this unit carries additional supplies this is more kind of context as far as where we're located so the red dot identifies the centralized location of the current rescue truck and as you go out there's our one mile ring increments as well per ISO standards which we just recently went through a resquire of ISO they gauge at the two mile mark that equates to a four minute response time really response time that's what drives us number one we can be effective to our citizens is decrease our response time and get our skilled trained employees there sooner so as we go out and see us like I said this is concentric circles so it's not driven it is just as a crow flies really won't focus on the next map this is really more important this one is developed by GIS and it kind of shows you response based on the current speed limit of the roadway so if you get edge edge of the four minute that's two miles and you get on the very edge of the green which is the eight mile I'm sorry eight minute which equates to four miles so if you look out here to the far left and entire airport industrial area up the northern part of the interstate all the way down to the southwest portion as well that's outside eight minute response time right now why is that important it's the vehicle currently the vehicle as you see the two piece extremely underpowered that vehicle the chassis is not able to pull the trailer effectively with the amount of load we currently have on it inadequate braking we did actually bring in police department and their commercial vehicle division to really speak on this and kind of give us some more insight on you know what are our challenges on this and currently right now can tell you the amount of weight on that vehicle and what it's weighted we're seven thousand pounds overweight on the ability for that chassis to effectively break so we're not even following manufacturer's recommendations at this point it's just the trailer is not really compliant with some standards out there on lighting this is another interesting fact we measure this is actually the two pieces together are is equates to our longest vehicle in our fleet so even though we have a one one vehicle that's 105 foot ladder truck this vehicle combined still takes a greater turn radius than the other vehicle and was just challenges locations in the city it's hard to maneuver this one vehicle this this is interesting also licensing so to drive a fire truck you need a class B exempt license to drive this two-piece unit because it is a towing vehicle rated for over 26,000 pounds you can drive it in a mercy incident with a class B if it's not a mercy event you cannot drive with a class B it has to go up the next class which is a class A so what does that equate we have all our employees can drive it to the scene they only have a few key members can actually drive it back to the station legally as well so one more small challenge there poor communications you see I have some videos here in a second just kind of walk you through what the vehicle actually looks like inside we're out of space we cannot carry actually our fire in the supplies in this vehicle so if this unit's out on a rescue if they need to treat any type of medical incident or even respond to a structure fire they do not have the supplies to carry on board storage we're at capacity we need to look at work it working on kind of reorganization and really making ourselves more efficient and this is kind of strange as far as this is decision to connect the trailer or not I showed you the picture how it's a two-piece unit the biggest challenge we have is do we take just the truck which goes on passenger MVA smaller vehicles as well to get there quicker or is going to require the additional resources in the trailer so I have two different videos I'm gonna go ahead and just apologize up to the other day the videos were working fine and then we got a gremlin in there we cannot get it correct so I have a workaround solution no you'll still be able to see the entire video so what you'll see here is actually simulating this is a simulation so they're walking with purpose they're not running so this is for this presentation so this is under the assumption that the captain walkout knows he's going to take the trailer so he doesn't have to call dispatch get additional notes to verify is the trailer needed or not so at this point employees are going back they're actually making the connection to the trailer and usually utilizes all four crew members to do it effectively and efficiently and that's the glitch so give me just a second so we're about 10 seconds past they're still making the connection now reiterate it seems like they're moving slow but real instant it'd be a lot quicker so we're gonna go ahead and just wait for them to come back and then we'll see what's happening so minute 51 for that one so let me let me show you what it looks like if we had a one-piece unit where they didn't have to work on connection this is a lot shorter I promise so this point they're not having to make the determination whether to connect the trailer or not they know they have all their equipment on board their one-piece unit so simply get on the productive year get on the vehicle and start moving so the clock stopped at 43 seconds so you have over a minute save their own response time I should give you an insight into the back of the trailer I'll just kind of point out this is recruits have done a good job as far as trying to manage storage you'll see here on the on the sides as well as for different racks built out of plywood the biggest issue you see is down the center aisle way that is some of our power plants in our generator units they that's the best location they can store it so if you need anything on the sides on a major instant first thing you're doing is going in removing all this equipment and just pulling it out as well so next vehicle when we talk about lot airs is actually what the department's had for a significant time period this is a 1993 international truck that was put in service as an ambulance why is it that the trailer is not just left attached and why do you have to make that decision each because majority time the one-ton truck goes out more often than the trailer so you try to determine which one generates most of my calls and then obviously reduce that speed on the connection as well so it is lined up the trailer has dropped right over the trailer ball but majority of the calls is just a one-ton going so when we talk about lot air this is a repurposed in 1993 we used it for nine years as a front-line medic back in the 90s early 2000s in 2002 it was actually converted in-house to a mobile lot air unit first one the department's ever had so this actually gives us our refill capacities on-site for SCBA models which is used at any type of structure fire and it has supplemental lighting on on top due to the way this vehicle and just the age and the maintenance has had be poured into this is actually taken out served in 2017 so currently right now we don't have the abilities to refill air on our instance at this point from our usage lighting I mean just you know darkness really creates a secondary hazard for first responders so you can see over here as far as to your right as far as just the illumination difference we actually actually partner with our police department other agencies to provide units to provide additional lighting if they need be also front-line units carry spare air cylinders only a limited amount so this unit's designed to carry an excess of bottles for any longer prolonged incidents and this is probably the biggest benefit of this vehicle is that ability to refill on-site and it is a specialized equipment these bottles PSI the rating PSI is up to 4500 PSI so you get to have a explosion proof chamber when you actually refill so so I'll just grab a hose hook it up it's specially designed one I didn't point out two different times and it's probably notable here so December 2017 the downtown square fire and it just recently in November 2018 we had a two alarm industrial fire on Shady Oaks both times we were depleting our bottles rapidly so we did have to call in the closest unit which was the town of flower mound brought in their air life truck to actually help us refill bottles on-site and then just supply additional electrical support sometimes we have different portable lights we need to use them but go in various locations and this has cord drills that we can supply electricity so we move on no finish my part here pretty soon then we're financed up so recommendation is we take both these units take a rescue vehicle that's going to replacement or lot air and combined into one single piece so what's the goals really is just be safe as we were compliant and where you have good design for employees to reduce risk injury and accidents were effective that's really what it boils down to that's the best way once again we can provide outstanding customer service and we're efficient decrease our response times get there quicker do a better job and I create this little acronym let me copyright this so nobody else use it right now so see okay so my recommendation is we can earmarked the 250 that was a lot for this vehicle last year along with additional 450 to get up to 7000 what a current truck cost and I want to point out that right now these vehicles right now it'd be at least a minimum 15 year lifespan this isn't something we're coming back in five years for and asking for additional funding these vehicles last for extended periods of time or turn over to David finance I just want to show you this is to the in the local area as well this is really what a one-piece vehicle looks like and you can see is the storage solutions on there just really consolidates everything these this has quarter wheels you see the power plants the small parts I showed you earlier in the center of the trailer those have one to two gallon fuel cells so very short life this vehicle running tools which is like a plug-and-play you can go it can rent run it over eight hours without having to refuel so more more effective more efficient at that point I'm gonna turn over to David at this point good afternoon mayors and members of council David gains assistant director of finance so we wanted to take this opportunity as we consider funding for this truck to give to brief you on analysis we're doing throughout the entire city of our vehicle inventory and heavy-duty equipment inventory a few goals of this analysis that we're that we're undertaking are to identify underutilized vehicles and either eliminate those vehicles or reutilize them in other parts of the city look at opportunities to pull our equipment or share our equipment apart across different departments in the city and really have a true justification for each piece of equipment and each vehicle in the city so we're doing this analysis throughout the entire city of our of our total inventory this analysis is ongoing we're at the kind of the mid-stage right now we're meeting with each of the departments to go through their inventory lists to go through each piece of their equipment but we do anticipate savings long term and short term as we go go through and complete the analysis every department's a part of this analysis fire is is obviously a part of the analysis as well they've already looked at their schedule and identified trucks and other pieces of equipment they think they can at least push back and that might be underutilized so we'll bring back a full analysis later in the year as we start thinking through our five-year forecast and gearing up for the next year of eliminations and different options we can do and what those long-term impacts would be on our on our financial model as it specifically applies to this year and options for the truck are the reimbursement ordinance that was passed in October in advance of our debt issuance which should come in May had two point nine million dollars earmarked for a CEO for general fund vehicle and heavy equipment replacements our initial analysis of our underutilized vehicles and where we sit right now we think we can at least save about four hundred fifty thousand dollars of that two point nine that won't be necessary which obviously could be reutilized to the to the rescue truck as we go through the entire analysis we'll look at the five-year forecast in the long-term forecast of what impacts it could have we also will look again at 1819 to see if we could further reduce that two point nine million where it could could be even lower we come back at a lower number for that CEO so as again a full report will come back to council and that four hundred fifty thousand we do believe could be available at this time I'm happy to answer any questions on the before questions yes so first of all say I mean this is obvious major public need so I'm totally for you you know it will make a big difference for public safety I was just wondering I take it that and I'm not sure who this is for because it's a finance question but it's also so you guys can decide I take it that there's you know one major manufacturer who makes this I mean you're in that you know it's not going to be this hugely competitive you know request for comparing comparing prices is that front and work on this and we've shopped around some different manufacturers and vendors and got some of their specifications we do have ability to take this to buy board and that's usually how we purchase all our other vehicles so we are very customized or standardized with our vehicle also so we have those quotes actually in hand right now but a determination has not quite been made yet okay okay so there are then a number of different you know manufacturers that yes so far we have met with three different manufacturers to spec this vehicle similar to it and then receive quotes back okay and that'll be coming back to your council or at least I mean we'll be able to look at the to see what the bids were and all that that would be based on whether we do bids or we actually go on a buy board got it sorry yes the buy board thank you thanks I just want to make clear the buy board that is a joint purchasing co-op where the it's already been bid for us and we're eligible to attach on so just in case we were we had to explain that well yeah yeah thanks for thank you thank you thanks chief could you walk me through the phases of the rescue and and then help me understand where this vehicle comes into play so great example using the Irving parking garage collapse so no one was in the cars by the grace of God but kind of how does this how does that play in so so it collapses fire department roll on this arrive on the scene then what is the phasing that and where this vehicle comes into play let me actually go back and show you a few pictures might help kind of walk you through that also there's what I mean so some this equipment you see right here is actually designed for that exact purpose so we went on incident like that the first thing to do is obviously is to stabilize your area so the items you see on the left the grace that's shoring that's equipment to shore up any type of building components structural as well those center motors that is actually power units that runs concrete saws hydraulic breakers as well so we have all the tools capable on that vehicle right now to make that rescue the most effective we could as well so the rescues dispatch any type of special call it's dispatched with our four-person engine four-person crew from our ladder truck we actually shut down our ladder truck so you don't have staffing for this it doesn't quite qualify for a full-time second at this point they move over to the rescue which you saw them get on board and they take the truck to the scene that type of incident they have reels they can hook their machines to versus these power plants spool off up to 100 feet and be able to use that safely as well versus manipulating these smaller plants generators as well and then even with this you have to keep somebody on site monitoring the fuel usage also you don't cruise inside operating all sudden you now you're running out of fuel i want this unit it runs from the main reservoir of the vehicle itself so you have a 65 gallon tank of fuel you're utilizing for these units that's your question yes sir thank you i say move forward that's what i say that okay yep okay we'll be back in february thank you all right thank you two minutes oh two minute break yeah okay yeah we'll take about a five minute break yeah i didn't know if you wanted to talk for two minutes i thought okay welcome back to this meeting of the denton city council on january the 15th 2019 it is 4 30 we're moving to our last workshop agenda item which is agenda item e receive report hold discussion and provide staff direction regarding activities related to participation in the national flood insurance program's community rating system good afternoon mayor council tot estes city engineer we're talking about the flood plain national flood inflate national flood insurance program sorry about that and the community rating system what role that plays specifically that the city didn't carry prior to october of 2018 a crs rating a classification of a six and it has dropped to an eight as of october 1st so what does that really mean so when you have a lower classification number so a six it's it's ranked from a one to a ten the lower the classification number then the better discount to pros policy owners that live within the denton city limits before we get into too many of the other particulars just a very brief background on what the nfip is so it will sat with the date here i'm about to write it will sound like i'm gonna go through a long history i promise i'm not so the nfip has been around since 1968 it was enacted by the federal government as a way as a means of promoting insurance to help offset costs and defray costs when it comes to natural disasters in the late 90s early 2000s the texas legislature as part of the texas water development board's requirements put a mandate on all communities to adopt some sort of floodplain ordinance to be a member of the nfip so the national flood insurance program was a optional requirement prior to that but if you did not keep pace with what their requirements were then should there have been a flooding event a natural disaster you're limited more on what you can actually provide to those homeowners who actually reside in the floodplain following on that requirement the national flood insurance program also has the community rating system which basically benefits residents within a community that takes extra standards they go above and beyond what the nfip requires as a minimum standard to prevent flood damage so a new parcel or a new developer comes in we say this is the minimum requirement for you to meet the national flood insurance program's requirements as per fema if we require more so we require you to build higher out of the floodplain then that helps in bringing about a discount for our residents so they pay less on their insurance premiums so if you go buy a house you'll most likely if you're in the floodplain or close to it you're going to be required to provide an elevation certificate that elevation ticket basically just tells the tells fema and the national flood insurance program where you are within relation to the floodplain the fdic backing different mortgage brokers if you are buying a property the nfip uh the fdic will require you to get a national flood insurance program insurance policy on that particular mortgage so you'll you'll be required to get it as part of your mortgage where is the floodplain just briefly when we start talking we engineers start talking about floodplains i have a little graphic up here on the top right if you're looking at this entire stretch we would call that just a creek so say i'm in the creek bottom and i'm looking at the creek and i've cut a line through it anytime we build in the floodplain i'm adding additional dirt on the sides i'm reducing the total area that flood waters can go so when it rains and it starts to run off downhill it comes to these creeks and these channels and anytime i start to fill in the floodplain i reduce the total area that that water has to flow so there's a lot of things that can occur one being that water has two options it can go higher which is that one foot rise you see here this is what we would call the floodway that's how far can i fill into the floodplain that i don't increase the water elevation more than one foot so anytime we start working through development one of the requirements we have on developers is they cannot do anything in the floodway at all unless they go through a change they have to physically do something and prove to fema that they can make that change happen so this dark blue area that generally lines up with the bottom of the creek that's the floodway the floodplain there are some limitations in the fill that you can put in the floodplain because there you're impacting less of that water upstream and downstream you're not going to increase the water a foot water can also make the option i can increase all that fill into the floodplain the other option that water has to continue to flow is to go faster so it either gets taller or it goes faster if it goes faster i've done just as much damage because now i'm potentially eroding out channels so it's a tricky balance that we're working through when we start talking about all these terms that will come up here shortly this 100-year floodplain this light blue area or this area out on the sides that's what they call the special flood hazard that area is also the 100-year storm area that's where we talk about the 100-year storm that's where it's going to occur it's where we see it in its banks anytime we start talking about a non-special flood hazard area it's like the 500-year storm it's this striped area on the sides so could you be flooded yes the likelihood that you're going to flood it's much less than the area inside the 100-year floodplain last august and september and going back and looking at the rainfall events we may have had multiple 100-year storm events within those storm events just because of how quickly the water fell at any one given time question on that todd yes so um back to that slide you know we've talked about that the city imposes an additional distance from the fema flood 100-year flood area but this non-sfha that's not what i'm that's not what i'm talking about now this is the fema 500-year flood or is this the hatch part that i'm saying the city goes in and imposes sort of a additional right is our 200 foot buffer doesn't match up necessarily with that non-sfha area the 500-year flood area it's 200 feet off of the 100-year flood but that's that's what we put on there right okay now one of the things that's on the horizon with fema they have not actually made the decision to do it is that they're looking at the 100-year storm is no longer being that benchmark storm that can kind of makes or breaks a difference between like an act of god type disaster and what's something to be planned for they're now looking at the 500-year flood actually being that so our requirement of the 200-year would actually ensure that some of those buildings and structures are outside that requirement down the road okay well yeah we'll talk about that later sure um so you're saying that in august and september when we had the 30 days or whatever how many inches we had 30 we had some that were classified as 100-year rain and if so i'd like to understand just send out something shows the days and the times because i didn't think we had any that because it fell sort of slow and steady part drained off but part of what so there's a misnomer when you start talking 100-year storm right so there's a couple of things when you start talking 100-year storm there's a volume the total around rainfall did we get that no throughout the month though we got a lot of rain right there's also from an engineer's perspective our systems are also designed to handle an immediate amount of rainfall how many we talk about inches per hour right so inches per hour i don't normally see say eight inches per hour which is about 100-year storm here eight inches per hour do you really see that i don't see it over the entire hour but i see it for periods in the storm event so thank you when i'm saying that that's what i'm talking about okay got you thanks yes council member just for clarification does because i know that there's been some talk in on the e.s.a and that there's always some kind of different city map versus fema map is that does is that what's affecting us here is that in the difference not not in this particular case no okay so what are those classifications actually do for our policy holders so in the city we have a total of 455 policy holders who actually have flood insurance within that 455 there's 223 homes that fall in that 100-year storm area so they're they're going to pay more because they're more at risk of being flooded when we were a class six then they were getting a 342 discount annually on their flood insurance premiums well we dropped to a class eight that cut that discount in half so for every level that we achieve a lower ranking on that classification we get a better discount for our residents who are policy holders are most of these homes concentrated in one area one district or this is just all over the city a variety of areas throughout town okay so then in your non-sfha areas the 500-year fringe your we've got way fewer of those homes so discount because the risk is so much less it's actually much less but they're also paying less on their premiums and then we have another category which are called the preferred risk they don't fall in any of these two areas but they're still in a potentially flood prone area they may get two or three inches of water standing for a while they have a policy but it's already so discounted that they're not getting an additional discount on top of that todd what was the purpose what's the per community figure represent dollars what is that so a 223 policy holders if you just take the 86 dollars in a class nine times 223 you come up with 19 000 dollars total savings for the community okay okay that's just if you lumped all the policy holders together okay so our current crs classification we talked about just briefly a little a little while ago that the lower the classification number the better the discount so what does that really mean well it means for staff that we have to have search set a certain set of requirements that we put in place through either our design guidelines drainage design guidelines what we require a development as they come through how we maintain the infrastructure we have how much what kind of planning are we doing emergency planning long-term planning for capital projects those all roll into how you acquire a different number of points and the more points we acquire then we come into this area here which is you get 1500 your 1500 to 2000 you're at a class seven how many of those things did we actually acquire over time fema comes through every five years and audits our participation in the classification in the community rating system so the last audit that we have was in 2016 we spent two years challenging what they had dropped us from a class six to a class eight we didn't get as far as we wanted to because we couldn't go back and reinvent some of the things that cost us points and that came about for a variety of reasons so okay something about to yeah just i'll be listening for like is it do we actually do something different or just not substantiate what we already do good question so prior to 2011 the city had a class eight crs rating and we had held that since we were in crs 2011 we were operating under the i believe it was the 2007 or 2008 fema guidelines for what how do we get these points they have a manual that tells us how do you get these points as we put all that information together submitted fema we've got a class six we had enough points for a class six we were doing everything we had done in 2011 until fema changed the criteria in 2013 and when they changed it in 2013 staff for a variety of reasons we were either inundated didn't keep pace didn't document it well we didn't do a good job of keeping pace with it so when fema came back in 2016 to audit we didn't have the documentation to get a vast number of the points that we could get it's maintenance records it's how do we how well did we document just us going and cleaning out channels maintaining flood plains doing some of the things we're already doing we didn't do a very good job of documenting and then going back and trying to reinvent all that fema basically said too late if you've been doing it all along it's one thing that's my words so is it but you're here in your engineering so is it engine is this an engineering department thing or is it yes okay no it's it falls within the floodplain administrator's duties and it's in the engineering department so yes okay just to give you an overview of where we fall today so there is a believe in your backup there's actually a much broader list of all the crs communities in texas as well as nationally where we fall just to give you an idea where we fall there are only four counties in the state of texas 254 counties in texas only four participate in the crs only 60 cities of 1216 cities participate in the crs in the state of texas so the median classification throughout the states is seven so we've been on both sides of that classification on average throughout the state for communities that are participating in the crs they're saying a 15 percent and a five percent discount for their residents how do we go about going forward and improving our score we just talked about a minute ago there's some things we're already doing we're just not documenting it well we're not documenting in the way that the fema requirements change to require we are doing that now now that it's been brought to our attention and we're fixing that so we have an opportunity as of october 1 of 2019 to go back to fema and say we'd like to be re basically re-audited and prove to you that we're doing these things to at least get us back to a class six so if our goal this year is that by october 1 we're initiating that process with fema to get us back to a class six those things we can do ironically one of the things that we can do to help us get those points is what we're doing today and that's an update they call it activity 510 it's basically updating you on all the things that we're doing so there's a variety of things they're doing we maintain the floodplains we have a bunch of requirements and uh on developers and on development in general on anybody pulling permits on what they're doing with their own home if they're in the floodplain all of those things are at play as part of either that development code our drainage criteria manuals we also participate in several of these items listed here we the better job we do at filling each one of these categories in with points the better we get in improving our classification so today me just talking to you about what we're doing and then you asking questions that gets us about 10 to 15 points it's not a lot but you keep chipping away and that gets us some more points so that's what we're doing so some of the things that we're invested in is making sure that we're initiating in high and moderate hazard dam studies we are doing that we're with parks on several of those right now we have uh participation with the weather radar system our capital projects initiating a stormwater master plan those all play into the points we will accrue as we go into october of next year any questions yes council member melzer i guess it goes without saying but i'd like to hear you say it there's a general public benefit to doing these things not just reducing the cost of flood insurance to the 455 or the 250 whatever you know qualify is that correct yes i mean it ensures that the areas where we have water that needs to drain these hundred-year storms the floods that we saw in 07 or 08 floods we've seen more recently you want to keep those pathways open it tends to become potentially very dangerous for anybody driving in an area with just as much as three to four inches of water flowing over the roadway it will pick up a vehicle and move it off to the side once it gets washed into deeper water other thing can happen the other issue we run into with development is when water gets flowing very quickly it starts picking up loose materials in the floodplain those loose materials start to pick up speed or they get wedged in amongst other things so the damage we see in and around most flood prone areas comes from the items that float down with the water the bigger trees boats cars the variety of things that can come with the flood waters that's where we see the most damage thanks so will the homeowners that have the policies that's going to be increased will they get a notification will they know what what's going on they got a notification in october of 18 and has anybody reached out to us to we've not heard from anybody okay and so if we do make the changes and we do in october of this year and reevaluate how quickly does that manifest back into their policy that reduction it could take anywhere from 90 days to 120 days before female is done with their review two years was us fighting tooth and nail just to get back to a six we don't see that as being the avenue we'll be experiencing going forward because we're working with other communities who are already achieving higher scores and I said what are you doing so that we can make sure we get those scores we want to get that yes a follow-up just because we have the esa and we have everything so I just want to make sure that when we do the alternative esa or we do approvals for development into the floodplain that that's not something that's negatively affecting affecting us in this no okay right now we prohibit any development in the floodplain unless they go through the fema mandated process of making the changes they have to go through that process approval okay thank you as far as your last statement yes sir um but if they somehow show an elevation certificate where the finished floor is it like for a residential then technically the structure is out of the floodplain but they still may require flood insurance the mortgage they could or if they're in a scenario I mean there's even a scenario where they're out of the floodplain but the mapping is wrong right and there's an avenue for that that is free it's just paperwork you send it to fema and they adjust it and you're out of the floodplain okay great all right yes councilmember armature I just want to thank you for their presentation really interesting and relevant um and I just sent you an article you're probably totally familiar already with the content but about about Houston and some of the issues they've been having not to pick on Houston too much I used to live there you know I love Houston but um it's a really good uh in in a lot of ways kind of case to look at for you know things that can go wrong I mean it's very sad but at least you can learn something from it you know when you don't have adequate uh flood protections and why building on floodplains in Texas is really dangerous um so I would just recommend that you know that that people go read up on I know you already know about it but if people go read up on that um and people should be grateful that we do have these laws you know uh protecting protecting these areas any other questions comments appreciate it uh that concludes our work session just want to give you a housekeeping matter before we go into closed session uh I've received news or information or requests however you want to term it the agenda item 5a the applicant has asked for that to be postponed and we'll make the necessary legal processes to make that official and then agenda item 5b the applicant has asked for that to be postponed and then which corresponds to agenda item 6a as well so I think I think I don't know if they were you know to ensure that there's a full council or not I just that's what they asked so we will take the necessary steps and procedures to make that official but I wanted to let the council know about that and then if anybody's listening who may be planning on coming down for those then at least they'll have an understanding of of the status okay we will now move into where's my cheat sheet do I have my cheat sheet I'll just call it never mind I will move into closed session I will now convene in closed session at five or four fifty one uh we will consider the following items uh under Texas government code chapter 551.086 deliberations regarding certain public power utilities under Texas government code section 551.071 deliberations regarding personnel matters [Music] Welcome everybody to this meeting of the Denton City Council on January the 15th 2019 is about 6 30 we do have a quorum so I will call the meeting to order if you would our first item on the agenda is Pledge of Allegiance the US and Texas flag and please stand if you're able to please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. [Music] Okay you know we do a lot of proclamations and resolutions and things such as that so but this is a very special one tonight so I'm going to ask Jennifer Walters to come on up and we're going to be recognizing Jennifer is it okay if I give you a hug for 30 was it 30 34 34 years of service to this great city so thank you so much for absolutely absolutely so as as I was thinking about tonight and and thinking about where was I was it 1987 1987 just sort of waxing nostalgic a little bit about that and so I'm sort of thinking something that comes to my mind and it's supposed to be coming up on the screen about this time. [Music] So that was from a council meeting in 1987 and that was the night that you switched from interim city secretary to officially becoming the city secretary of and my understanding is that was found by accident that they were archiving transforming a lot of the old tapes into digital and so what a great and I'm going to find Billy Matthews later and he's right back and I'm going to thank him yeah no no no no so we've got a couple of things to read and then want to give you an opportunity to say some a few words and sort of want to give anybody on the council an opportunity to say a few words and I'm going to do something we haven't done before okay because this is a special night that I'm going to go ahead and you tell me if this is okay Mr. City Attorney that if there's someone in the audience that wants to say something that's had a special relationship with Jennifer if they if they're able to come forward and do that so only if they're nice only if you are nice to them will they come up okay so and then we'll when I read the resolution we will need to have a a motion in a second as you remind me every time I forget okay yes every time the city of Denton is expresses its gratitude to you Jennifer Walters for devotion and invaluable service to the citizens of Denton serving from November of 1984 through January of 2019 as an employee of the city manager's office employees such as you are a valued asset to our community your contributions to the city of Denton are greatly appreciated there's that you bet and now we have the resolution some of these words I can't say I'm teasing I'm kidding a resolution in appreciation of Jennifer Walters whereas Jennifer Walters has served as at served the city of Denton from November the first 1984 to January 31st 2019 beginning as a senior secretary for the city manager's office and continue continuing her service to the city of Denton as city secretary from February 1987 through January 31st 2019 and whereas the city of Denton has been extremely fortunate in having enjoyed the dedication and outstanding contributions made by Mrs. Walters and her efforts to serve the city of Denton by performing her duties in an exceptional manner and whereas Mrs. Walters performed many essential functions for the city of Denton including serving as the elections administrator for the city of Denton elections the records management officer for the city of Denton responsible for maintaining record retention standards in accordance with the Texas state library library requirements and the public information officer for open records request and compliance and whereas Mrs. Walters received her bachelor of science degree from the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh and communicative disorders with postgraduate hours from the University of Wisconsin Madison and whereas Ms. Walters received her certification from the Texas Municipal Clerk's certification program and holds the designation of certified municipal clerk in the international institute of municipal clerks and whereas Ms. Walters is a member of the international association of record managers and administrators and the Texas municipal clerks association as well as the north Texas municipal clerks association serving as an officer for four years ending with the position of president and whereas in the past and present she has served and as an essential member of the city of Denton support staff has always served above and beyond her duties has earned the full respect of her fellow colleagues and citizens of Denton and the loss of her services will be keenly felt and they will be the therefore the council of the city of Denton hereby resolves that the sincere appreciation of Jennifer Walters is felt by the citizens and staff of the city of Denton be formally conveyed to her in a permanent manner by reading this resolution into the official minutes of the city of Denton and forwarding to her a true copy thereof and be it further resolved that the city of Denton does hereby officially and sincerely extend its thanks to Jennifer Walters for her successful career at the city of Denton and wishes her well on her future endeavors thank you okay so what i want to do is uh if there's anybody in the audience that wants to just say a couple words uh real quick just come on down um this is a a very uh exciting uh time but also one of of sadness uh when carol and i got involved in uh city things uh jennifer really taught us in a very positive way how the city works and uh we're very grateful and uh carol said to be sure and tell you that you're the best civics teacher ever anybody else thank you so much ed for that oh okay yes sir now a couple minutes now i'm going to try long time i've been discussing and cussing uh for several years this city even before you came and uh i remember how you treated me and how i treated you and it was always a an experience that uh i'll never forget and so i want to share with you this these last parting uh moments that we have uh something i'm going to say something that's encouraging to you now i can't do that i don't think jennifer is always she's she just takes she she's like that uh battery you just keep on ticking just like bunny rabbit yeah the uh ever ever energize about bunny that's and you just uh you carry yourself with dignity all the time even though i was at times very difficult to work with uh you uh you you cared yourself very well i just have one bone to pick with you chose to be friends with my son even though he's mean to me so that's the only bone i thank you mr husband thank you anybody else okay council members mayor do you want to do the vote on the resolution first all right then i will call on uh council member husbeth uh move approval and i will second it all right vote on the board and then discussion my vote is uh yay it'd be it wouldn't be unanimous all right fantastic and then the so the first up in the queue is uh council member okay are we supposed to click okay so non-jennifer thank you um for all your service i like the the soaps um i met you as an uh activist who had a lot to learn um and you helped uh teach me so i think that's very well put that you're a good uh excellent civics civics teacher and now i can say now that i'm i'm here uh you treated me exactly the same with that same respect um when i was just uh somebody protesting the gas plant um as you do now when i'm somebody protesting the gas plant but from up here so anyway um i love you and truly um appreciate uh the way you treat everybody uh with respect and and give us whatever information we need and uh and thank you and it's really good to know you i hope i hope we get to see you again and i hope you also come here and tell us all the things you've been thinking all these years you've had to keep to yourself come let us know and and let us serve you because you sure have served served our city so well council member husbeth thank you yes no so i think uh first we'll start with your allegiance to my backup team uh the green bay packers uh one one of these days will get you to be a fan of america's team but you know green bay is pretty good you know but my my uncle used to play for for green bay and was there for a number of years so so he's so i'm with you as long as they don't play each other and so but no and then professionally i just want to tell you um how much i respect your ability to accomplish the task at hand even under the most i mean we've had some some uh significant i guess we just talked about 100 year rains we had some 100 year storms uh recently you know and and you've managed those well be it recall issues to large items to press releases and then also spinning all those plates and then you also have time to to be a great uh quote-unquote supervisor for us to say hey get this in get this turned in you know take a vote on that and so uh your your multitasking skills are something to to behold so thank you very much for your your time and service and and uh for your commitment to to excellence councilman breaks okay so i i don't want to get emotional but i know four years ago um i walked in here and i knew nothing and um you were there and very helpful and um for someone that knows nothing coming into a situation like this it's pretty intimidating and so a smile and a wave and a hug goes a really long way and i want to thank you for that um i also want to thank you for your service to our city um our citizens and to this council for all those years and wish you well on your journey and send many blessings to you and your family and i hope you enjoy them i know you will and uh also i hear that you know every single thing so i'm going to keep your number and i will be calling you council member melzer i'm very heartened to hear uh how others found you to be so respectful i've never noticed you being particularly respectful toward me but i i enjoy your your rye boy and of course you're expert at everything but uh i'll miss you i have a lot of uh little joint face you know selfies we've done the various signings i'll bring them out uh as appropriate to embarrass you in the future jennifer i probably have known you longer than anybody else up on this day i know there's some out in the audience but it first started for me in 1997 uh doing uh what do we call it now the uh presentations from members of the public uh and it grew over the years i've learned a lot from you got a lot of emails last day to get this in time to get this done and i greatly appreciate all you've ever done all you've taught so many people uh i lost track of what the count was the other days to the number of city managers and mayors and council members but it's there it's up there pretty high on all those and a number of hours i think what they say it was about six years of your life you spent sitting over there and we greatly thank you you're greatly going to be best mayor when i asked for a quick break between four and five is because jennifer had written me a note saying that my forum is due by five o'clock oh okay well if i'd have known that i wouldn't have taken a break yeah all right well i just have a couple things to say um well if you start crying i'll start crying you know i've been on council now for a long time with a year break and you know we really don't do the up here we we just sort of make the decisions but for me you were the one that was the glue that really kept me on deadlines you kept me uh on point when we needed a break because i would keep going and we need to take a break but your expertise and your heart for your job and it showed that you loved your job and that you were committed to your job and that you were committed to the people that you serve which are the here on the council and also but more importantly the citizens in this room and the many many citizens who've passed by your desk since you emails of uh of fun good-natured emails and emails that weren't so much so you you took as much flak if not more than some of us who sit up here and make policy decisions and you've always been the consummate professional you've been such a role model for i think just the people that you work with and i really appreciate your spirit because it's your spirit and the spirit like yours that really makes this city was what it is and it makes the city governance and the people who work for the city makes this a great city thank you so much for your service it's a commitment it's been a lifetime commitment to this city uh and i want to thank you for that i will miss you uh i'm glad that you gave me guidance on my last financial report and i don't know who's going to be the person taking over but i sure hope we get as good of service they got some big shoes to fill quite frankly um but wish you many blessings and your retirement and uh spend time with your family and i know you mentioned that your retirement uh get together that you know you might have plans to get a little bit closer to your family and i really really support that because um they probably want that as well so thank you so much and i mean that sincerely i know sometimes we read these things and their words but but seriously that what you've given of your life to this community has just been so exemplary and such a gift of love and dedication so thank you jennifer so much for that and i am going to give you a chance to say some words okay you don't have to but i'm going to give you a chance because okay thank you first of all i like to thank the city of denton um when i say i've been here like 34 years it's like almost an embarrassment because it's like whoa what are you doing here this long but you know life has a way of moving on faster than you realize and before you know it your children have grown up through here and um you're still here and then finally you realize okay it's time to go so um it is with a sad heart that i'm leaving it's going to be very weird uh the last day i walk out of the building and think um i don't belong here anymore at least not work here anymore but um i do want to say one thing to my family especially to my husband barry because um friday when we when we had my little retirement my very very nice retirement party all our children were here were their respective spouses and and significant others and i introduced them all to everyone and i forgot to introduce barry you know we've only been married 30 some years and i forgot about him isn't that awful but i do have to say and i know he's watching but barry was has always been very supportive of me being here when i would say i have to come in on saturday and work or i have to come in on sunday and work or i'm bringing work home don't bother me he's always very understanding and supportive and i probably couldn't have done that without without that kind of love and support so barry i don't know which camera i'm looking at but barry i love you thank you very much and um for everyone that i've worked with and i i got a lot of emails this last couple of weeks from people that i've dealt with over the years and it really kind of blows me away that people are so kind uh what they say to me because i think sometimes i was pretty crusty right willy but um you know i always try to treat everybody as fairly as i could and and do the job to the best of my ability and and i'm looking forward to this next chapter and maybe i'll come up and do some open mic reports but i just wanted to thank all of you for the nice gestures and the words and thank you well i will say you said you know you're gonna walk out of here and say well i don't belong here well let me tell you something you do you're always welcome here um this place is has been changed and gone in different paths because of your presence so thank you so much thank you so much oh absolutely that's all right okay the the best part is because they've archived that very vintage and it will be now you'll be able to look at it on the council website so all your family will be able to see see it when you you came so thank you so much and thank you all for your gracious for your gracious words so okay our next agenda item is presentations from the members of the public if we could review procedures for addressing the city council please the council has adopted rules of procedure including a code of conduct that applies to citizens as well as council members these rules were enacted to promote an orderly process and to preserve decorum here is a brief review of the rules that apply to citizen reports citizens will have four minutes to give a scheduled citizen report and four minutes to give an open mic report there will be an electronic bell when time has expired if the remarks are not concluded by that time the citizen will be asked to stop speaking if the citizen does not cease and a second request is made the mayor will request to have the citizen removed from the council chamber citizens are asked not to approach the dais if a citizen has papers or other materials to hand out to the council please let the city secretary know in advance for scheduled citizen reports the council may initiate discussion or questions following each citizen report for non-scheduled open mic citizen reports the council may listen to citizens speak however because no notice of the subject of the open mic report has been provided to the public in advance the texas open meetings act limits any deliberation or decision by the council to a proposal to place the item on a future agenda a statement of factual policy or a recitation of existing policy citizens are asked to direct all remarks and questions to the council as a whole and not to any individual member please refrain from making abusive personal impertinent profane or slanderous remarks anyone who violates this council rule of procedure may be immediately removed from the council chamber thank you in advance copies of the rules of procedure are available from the city secretary so i need to see if this can be seen okay see what that looks like oh good yes okay shows up good okay all right my name is willy hutchworth i live at 623 newton have two concerns i'm a i'm a person that believes in well i'll be done slide uh no it goes everywhere yes the in the rules if there is a rule i think you ought to you should obey it uh all of us should obey the rules but what i do is i challenge rules and i've learned to challenge them correctly not to be mean and well no no i still i'm mean sometimes but i challenge the rules now here's one rule that i'm challenged not challenging yes i am challenging i'm saying it's a bad rule good people probably had a good idea to figure out what in the world do we do with this trash the trash situation and so they came up with a rule for businesses you have to have a container things cause the smallest you can get is is 75 this was mine the guy came out the new guy in town came out and said you have exceeded the limit of the what you can put in the dumpster and i'm a good stacker so boy i just if i gotta pay 75 by god i'm gonna get my money's worth i don't want to do it anyway so i just load it up i load mine up there that's my dumpster so they said you can't do that so rules guy okay that's what i had to do i took it all off and got it to work and be hauled away now what i don't like is rules that apply to some and it doesn't apply to everyone else you say they do but they don't so i told mr new guy who gave me this packet just full of things that said i'm right and you're wrong and you can't do that it's a big packet and he's new guy he didn't know me he knows me now so uh i said okay it needs to apply to everyone don't just come out here and and give me the ruling you don't do everywhere else and you're not doing it everywhere else yes we are the tall gentleman who is new said to me i said okay we'll see here's what i did he doesn't know me he knows me now saying it's gonna be here tonight because you know i told him i'm gonna be here i went out and took pictures of the ones that i said are not in compliance and you don't treat them the same so here's the one right let me find it right quick uh that's the end results here's the dumpster i think this is it yes this is it come on i'll be dirty here's the dumpster in question uh see it's overloaded and you you know it's the right one because look at the number 42 something something 42 here's that same dumpster and it wouldn't empty mine there it is emptied there there's 42 right there see that for it yeah that's 42 take my word for it okay that's going to be the day and they need sitting on the floor that one there it is empty apply the rules the same don't tell me i have to empty mine and you don't all of them are not empty that's what i don't like about your rules secondly i'm tired of sitting on the floor in those meetings there are no chairs again it's a rule well you can only see there aren't there's one a lady came in and she needed assistance someone let her sit sit down it's not the time is it meet somewhere else someone told me oh that's all the time well next week thank you next speaker is jane popper lunt to now state your name and address and your time will begin i'm jane piper lunt and i live at 1205 north austin according to the national weather service hypothermia is the heat is when heat escapes from body faster than it's produced this can start happening at 50 degrees fahrenheit when it's dry and 60 degrees when wet it only takes 30 minutes at 40 degrees with a 10-mile wind for frostbite to set in when the core body temperature dips to 95 hypothermia begins and you can die in as little as 30 minutes so why is it we don't open monsignor king until it's 32 when that is not when the weather becomes dangerous we had a problem this week sunday evening weather forecasters changed the overnight low from 40 to 29 to 32 unfortunately monsignor king volunteers were not secured and the shelter was stayed closed it's supposed to get 19 this saturday the emergency shelter task force was formed in response to paul asking that we have a strategy in place for all homeless before we hit dangerous temperatures this winter that plan did not happen so i have a plan monsignor king needs two full-time employees so we can open seven nights a week i wondered how this could happen and i came up with this idea i'm challenging each of you council people to donate your council stipend to employ these two people if all of you do this each employee could be paid close to two thousand dollars a month and that's a pretty good deal this is the second plan i've come to you with to protect our unhoused friends now you can say this is a county-wide problem it is an excuse for your inactivity and lack of concern but we are talking people who live in denton and a facility in denton so despite what the rest of the county does or doesn't do it is a dentin problem we advocates only need one more vote on council to get programs through that will start taking care of our unhoused neighbors and to mine well to my knowledge and actually i did survey all the people who are running against you are in favor of a tiny house village um in may and they are for getting people off the street as quickly as possible next to roads homelessness is the most talked about problem we have a few years back when staff recommended council vote against renting monsignor king um the uh the shelter the head of their board stood where i stood and said the following to provoke a 70 vote for the monsignor king i leave you with his words he said you say you care about the homeless either put up or shut up okay thank you all right we'll move on to agenda item four which is consent agenda mayor potem move approval of consent agenda we have a motion do we have a second councilmember armonter i second all right we have a motion and a second let's vote on the board please okay motion carries six zero we're now moving to our public hearings and we've had a couple of changes well not changes but developments for both of the public hearing items five a and five b and correct me mr city manager if i'm if i'm inaccurate the applicants have asked that those be postponed to the next meeting however what we're going to do is go ahead and probably want to have a staff presentation but i'm going to open the public hearing because we'll need to do that in order to uh to postpone to the next meeting and so once i open the public hearing if you are here to speak on those items i certainly welcome you to come down uh and state your name and address and you can speak on those items uh and the question was asked for me if we speak tonight if we if it's continued can you speak again i've not enforced that in the past if we had 200 people here we might have to rethink that but um so it's that's that's fine so i'm going to go ahead and read agenda item 5a and plus i think uh council member briggs um that was on the oak gateway plan wasn't it on the bike okay i'll make that announcement when we get there all right thank you agenda item 5a which is hold a public hearing consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas approving a specific use permit to allow for a multi-family residential use as part of a mixed use development on approximately 31 acre site generally located on north side of windsor drive i will now open the public hearing and so anyone wishing to speak i think we have a couple of cards but you don't need to fill out a card in order to speak but mr ed so filled out a card if you come down state your name and address your time will begin good evening my name is ed soph i live at 1620 victoria drive in denton as documented in the agenda information sheet for this issue the key focus area from denton's strategic plan for this proposed development is quote economic development unquote this economic development is a multi-family apartment complex requiring 629 parking places for 336 dwelling units that's a lot of people this is a community this is a neighborhood it's not just an economic development another long-term key focus area of the strategic plan quote safe livable and family friendly community unquote is not mentioned as being relevant to this development the reason for this is obvious the unacceptably close proximity of active gas wells to a potential community of hundreds of residents and the potential for future drilling in the area scientific peer-reviewed studies continue to indicate that the closer you live to a drilling operation the greater the health risks to you to your family and to the safety and livability of your community denton's setback distances are not based upon such peer-reviewed health data instead they are political compromises between the city and gas well operators and land developers the wells in question are old and grandfathered under the 2002 gas well ordinance they have a high priority inspection schedule because they are 300 feet or less from protected uses such as schools residences and apartments inspections are good but they have troubling limitations especially in heavily populated areas inspections no matter how frequent or thorough cannot predict or prevent accidents such as lightning strikes fires explosions spills or well blowouts all of which have happened in denton the fact is that this development is not simply an economic one but one of a community of residents that demands actions and policies based upon how much potential risk and harm can be avoided not how much should be accepted is a 250 foot reverse setback protective given the reality of the hazards of active wells does the potential of future wells being drilled and fracked in the area with a possible reduced setback from 500 to 250 feet avoid further risk of harm of harm will potential residents potential residents of this proposed development be made aware by the developer or its representative pardon me representative realtor of the presence and hazards of current and future wells this development does not meet the most important of the strategic plans five focus areas and that is the protection of the public health and safety thank you and i'm going to give you a little handout here to be passed out this is called health risks of living near natural gas development it was presented in march 25th 2016 at the 100 percent renewable denton town hall by dr ancy epstein and i'll put that over here thank you very much thank you for your time you bet we have a card wishing not to speak but in opposition is carol stove and this is a public hearing so anybody wishing to speak please come down state your name and address and your time will begin anybody wishing to speak okay uh mayor pro tem real quick question do i close the public hearing no no okay all right yes i move we continue this public hearing until the next regular council session all right we have a motion do we have a second council member briggs i'll second all right we have a motion and a second to continue this open public hearing to uh the next council meeting date certain or how's that phrased okay all right motion carries six zero we'll now move on to agenda item five b which is in a similar situation they have asked for a postponement till at least february the 5th but we're going to go ahead and read the item and anybody who wishes to speak is welcome to come down and state your name and address agenda item 5b is hold a public hearing and consider adoption of an ordinance of the city council of the city of denton texas designating a certain area within the city limits of denton as tyson sales and distribution reinvestment zone number is that 24 or 14 for commercial industrial tax abatement so i will now open the public hearing we do have a card white card which typically indicates that they do not wish to speak but the card is in opposition it's samuel escalante 2565 quail ridge drive but this is a public hearing no card is required so anybody wishing to speak please come down state your name and address and your time will begin and then we'll also have another public hearing on february the 5th anybody wishing to speak one more time anybody wishing to speak okay uh mayor pro tem council member husbeth second we have a motion and a second for continuation till february 5th 2019 let's vote on the board please motion carries six zero uh mr city attorney we we'd now come to agenda item 6a which is an individual item for individual consideration yes and this is directly related to agenda item 5b which has been postponed to the fifth um since it's not a public hearing exactly what's the process for uh for handling that and i will say i do have a card from samuel escalante in opposition on this agenda item as well but uh since it's it's not an official public hearing right and we don't have any blue cards that are typically that's how a speaker uh is it notifies the deus that they want to speak so can uh can we just um go ahead and just make a motion to postpone this one yes uh so i'll read it and then we'll go ahead and take some action whatever the council deems appropriate agenda item 6a consider adoption of an ordinance authorizing the mayor to execute a tax abatement agreement with tyson sales and distribution inc setting forth all the required terms of the tax abatement agreement uh so i've read the agenda item uh chair would um entertain action mayor pro tem i move we postpone this item to february 5th okay council member husbeth second we have a motion and a second to postpone this item till february the 5th let's vote on the board please motion carries six zero we now move to agenda item 6b consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas updating impact fees by amending chapter 26 utilities is the title of section 26-210 through section 26-232 good evening mayor members of the council my name is ken manx i'm the general manager of utilities uh the item before you this evening is the last leg of our impact fee discussion that we've been having over the course of approximately one year um just a real brief recap impact fees are one-time charge for new development and it's designed to cover a portion of cost of capital programs necessary to facilitate the uh growth that is coming with that new development impact fees are authorized by chapter 395 of the texas local government code and are required to be updated every five years as a city council you did appoint a capital improvements advisory committee to evaluate the impact fees and to make a recommendation which was shared with you on december the 18th we did held a public hearing on december the 18th in accordance with local government code and staff staff was directed at that time to adopt the recovery fees as presented and as a result chapter 26 utilities section 26-210 and through section 26-232 was modified in accordance with that recommendation a quick list of prior actions i do want to point out it is not in your backup because of the timing but this item was presented to the public utility board yesterday and received a unanimous recommendation to move forward with the recovery fees five zero uh quick overview of the recovery fees by zone as we've discussed in prior presentations on both the water and wastewater side and that is my presentation well before we go on to questions from staff and the vote i just want to say congratulations because i think and i told him i was going to do this so he's not he had three slides and for the first time ever yes that's the first time ever and i appreciate your hard work and diligence in that i'm really you know i'm just ribbing you i'm really trying yeah i know you really yes sir council member armater yes um so and so uh i just want to kind of state where i stand before um before voting in part in my my voice um the first time this came before us in a work session i believe that the impact fees were were too high at a time where we really need more affordable housing and i was concerned about the effect that it would have on affordable housing in denton and when it came before us again it just so happened it was at the same time as an initiative that that i had proposed for a work session about weight having to do with waiving impact fees and and permitting fees for affordable housing and so the timing of that and the fact that that got direction for staff to go ahead with that with with modifications made me more inclined to vote favorably for this because i thought well that takes care of my one issue but since then you know i i've been thinking about it and feeling in fact really starting that evening i'm thinking that i had maybe voted the wrong way and so i'm going to be voting a no to this this time not because i don't believe in impact in impact fees at all um but i think that you know under our current and i'm thrilled by the way that we have are reducing fees to some extent for affordable housing um but uh we have a uh a cap on that right now it's not across the board and it's also limited to single-family uh housing um and yes there's absolutely demand for affordable single-family housing so i think that's wonderful but i believe we also need single we also need um affordable multi-family housing and all kinds of options so anyway that for now i'm going to be voting no and i just wanted to explain to the public why i'm why i uh i'm flip-flopping like that thanks thank you council member melser as i stated last time we discussed this if you look on home advisor dot com total expenses for well and septic drilling uh drilling installation range between five thousand and twenty two thousand dollars this is a good deal for the developer these are real expenses the city will incur and the developers uh paying for this don't have to take care of any of the maintenance or the upgrades debt and home values are up nine percent year over year and folks seem to be tripping over each other to develop every square inch of debt and i don't see that they need a subsidy i move approval of this item council member hudspeth second all right we have a motion and a second on agenda item six b let's vote on the board please motion carries four to two moving on to agenda item six c consider approval of a resolution accepting divisions goals and recommendations and implementation strategies proposed in the oat excuse me oat oak gateway area plan which covers an area generally located south of panhandle street north of interstate 35 east of bonnie bray street and west of carol boulevard and we do have several cards uh on that and if you're wishing to speak this is an item for individual consideration so you will need to fill out a blue card typically those have to be turned in prior to the agenda item being called but if you can get it in prior to staff completing their presentation we'll go ahead and take that but we will take the public comment after staff presentation any questions from from the council great thank you mayor members of council members of staff i'm excited and proud to be here tonight to share with you the work that the oak gateway area plan steering committee has done if it's okay with the council i like to recognize those steering committee members that are here present if i can have them stand up to be recognized great and ron if um because i know this the presentation is about 35 slides or so so if possible unless it's just so burning you can't you can't stand it if we could maybe hold questions to go ahead and let you get through the presentation because there may be some questions that are answered on through the slides and then we'll we'll go ahead and take discussion after that or after staff presentation uh may go ahead and take the public comments and then we'll take questions is that okay well yep all right just just for a point of um presentation wise uh some of the committee members are going to be making some of the presentation so i thought it was important that they be presenting since they did a lot of the work with this plan so the agenda for the uh presentation is to go over the purpose a little bit of history the background why we're here what started this off uh summary on the steering committee how they reform and where we ended up the committee meetings public outreach and then ultimately the draft visions goals and recommendations which is really what we're asking the council to consider so the purpose is to look at an area a small area it does not look small in in this in this map here but uh per the den plan 2030 one of the goal was to create character and through that create small area plans and this area that we identified here bounded by panhandle to the north carol to the east i-35 to the south and to a certain degree bonnie break to the west makes up that area the oak gateway area plan action um also in the den plan 2030 is to create a neighborhood university compatibility area plan and the neighborhood compatibility area is the area that you see here in the lighter blue is those areas that are designated as neighborhood university areas the the darker blue is unt and then the yellow is the residential existing residential neighborhoods i wanted to show this slide to illustrate that this area really grew from the establishment of the normal college back in 1890 initially started in downtown and moved west and you see that this area has grown since the 1940 there was no highway then obviously we have it now the area that you see to the west it's pretty undeveloped back in the 1950s and we've seen some growth and we're continuing some growth and really that's another reason why we're here today part of that growth we saw a proposed mixed use development as you can see here some of you may remember this development it's off of hickory between hickory and oak just west of fry street at the time the applicant was requesting an amendment to the fry street overlay district to allow a higher floor also increase parking and density through that process there was a lot of citizen concerns related to traffic parking neighborhood compatibility safety and noise that ultimately was never approved it it didn't go further than city council as part of that discussion and review the council had some ideas or concerns about the area and how should we plan for this area so we discussed a update to the fry street small area plan and that small area plan is shown here in red it's a it's a three block city block area we felt that that area needed to expand based on again the future land use and the den plan 2030 and that grew to the area again as i described earlier to the larger area that you see bounded here in the black boundary the study area again primarily the development pressures we don't see development pressures just in the red we see them north we see them west and we see them in south and as well as to the east there's a lot of areas of concern and potentially small area i'm sorry special purpose overlay districts that can be initiated through this exercise so we expanded the boundary and that's why you see this area as large as it is and we know that unt's enrollment is going to grow by 2030 it's going to exceed 43 000 and that's more parking that's more traffic and that's more housing needs so the old gateway area plan started initiated in january of 2016 there was a quite a bit of time between that and when we solicited consultants to help prepare that plan officially the plan started in september of 2017 where we kicked off with stakeholder meetings and meetings with the public on november 7th the council selected a steering committee to help guide the process the planning process in which this plan was requested here listed on this slide our 17 steering committee members we started off with 24 and there were some changes in between we we lost some members we added some new members ultimately these 17 individuals were the ones at the end and i can tell you that as you can see from this list there's a lot of different stakeholders from unt to property owners and neighborhood leaders to residents bicyclists and business owners so we had a number of different stakeholders which represented an array in a diverse perspective so we were glad to see that that was still the case the committee met close to 20 meetings or 20 meetings or more we met primarily at the development services and really started the work in the summer of 2018 a lot of the work prior to that was collecting information data collection meeting with the community held a community workshop but really the work of the committee started in august of this of 2018 we also had some area plan tours and a walking tour which really got us out in the field to really understand those areas as i mentioned earlier there was a community workshop where over 125 attendees came in and provided their input on what they felt were the issues and concerns or what assets which should should be protected in november of 2018 after we put together our goals our visions and our recommendations we shared that with the public again at a public open house we didn't get that high of attendance but we still got 40 people i thought that was pretty good and we heard a lot from what they told us and we incorporated that into the recommendations that you have in front of you so before we get to the vision the goals and the recommendation i just wanted to spend a few minutes here just to state that the recommendations that we have proposed are broken up into five different topics land use community design mobility parking and services and you can see from here that there's it deals with overlay districts for land use park open space for community design mobility has sidewalks and bike lanes parking of course is a big discussion with regards to enforcement in parking districts which we'll discuss in later slides and services which is an area that was something that we didn't consider in the beginning but was brought forward again the intent is these recommendations implement the vision and the goals that you'll hear in a few minutes they're adopted by resolution for reason and it's just to accept the work that the committee has done and these recommendations are required to go for forward with city council direction and decision so it's not the end it's really the beginning these are ideas first steps and options that the committee has identified to help again implement those visions those goals that we identified just by way of example the d-tip white way finding signage and the d-tip cross sections the grand street were recommendations from the d-tip they were approved or they were accepted they weren't exactly what we saw obviously they had changed because council had some further direction so that's an example of what this small area plan is it's recommendations and there will be more discussions moving forward with that i'm going to ask the prior chair of the committee to come up and present the next few slides and ron if i could just interject because i know there's been some discussion about bike lanes and the recommendations in the plan on bike lanes and it's my understanding and council member briggs please chime in if you have a better understanding is that those aren't those are open to modification because they're going to the mobility committee so council member briggs if you could help me with some of that explanation i'd appreciate that just so that the public will be aware because i know several cards that i've got have talked about their concern about the bike lanes as they're represented in the plan so if you could maybe just take a moment to address that that'd be wonderful right so so the plan does have something in there about the um an advisory about the bike lanes but there's a separate consultant recommendation coming to mobility on january 29th and so those options that the consultant has presented will come to us for a pull a full discussion and then it will come back with a recommendation from our committee to council for full public comment on just that section in those areas so i just wanted people to understand so by us approving this plan tonight it doesn't lock in the design for that section or that area of um hickory street so i just i know that that's a um a pretty hot topic and i just wanted to put that out there for everyone yeah and that's not to say that anything about the committee's work on the bike plans it's just to give a little bit additional information so that the people who are here to speak have as much up-to-date information as possible that so i appreciate that was the purpose yes all right thank you all right i forgot ron i forgot how to move the slide just arrows gotcha oh okay patrice like 1109 egan street 2018 chair of the oak gateway small area plan after you know councilmember melzer left us right there okay we've divided as you can imagine this is yes a huge small area we talked about it this summer how large it was we divided up into three sub areas but there are absolutely more things that make these sub areas similar than make them different we have three different draft vision statements for each of the sub areas the sub area one which is the area there we go sub area one is up here it is primarily residential it is primarily single family residential the draft vision statement for that area is of course a stable walkable neighborhood absolutely a lot of people in sub area one work at unt and or work nearby so walk to work so a stable walkable neighborhood in which to live work and play a place in which the area's historical character is celebrated and preserved while allowing for opportunities for revitalization that are contextually compatible in use scale and design the reason that this area is terminated or the small area plan is terminated with panhandle is because that's really the end of the architectural similarities in that area the bungalows and at panhandle so that's why we end our small area plan there you can see that there are hard barriers on the other side the south the east and the west that's sub area one sub area two then is the area that is over in the owsley neighborhood to the west of unt and if you're familiar with the area you know of course that there are a lot of is a lot of multi-family there and a lot of genuinely multi-family there's a lot of families that live in that area our draft vision statement for that area is we're looking for an area that has housing that is affordable to low and moderate income families and students livable neighborhoods that include improved community services multimodal infrastructure and quality green spaces designed to encourage community cohesiveness in that area the there's one small park that is mostly concrete on stela so you know a goal of course would be to increase green space sub area two or three is the area over here that is now to the south and a little bit to the east of unt again an area that is a mix of single family how homes as well as multi-family and this we're looking for an area that preserves and revitalize the mixed use neighborhood for families and students preserves and builds upon existing housing options and incorporates above ground utilities existing green spaces and established canopy and intermodal infrastructure overall that we are looking for a stable walkable area in which to live work and play where existing neighborhoods are protected and enhanced and revitalize revitalization and reinvestment projects are compatible in use scale and design you know you obviously see the threads the walkability the the protection of existing neighborhoods and revitalization projects we this is all of these sub areas have places that need revitalization we're looking for compatibility again in use scale and design neighborhood scaled services in sub area one as ron said we divided up the goals by land use community design goals again these are all things you've taken a look at your backup land use in sub area one we want to protect historical districts potentially identify new historic districts with the area one lu2 looking at creating more businesses along scripture street chris is going to talk about looking at a potential overlay in a couple of our areas to encourage more again neighborhood scale business how are we going to entice businesses to set up shop in our neighborhood again so the walkability is enhanced same thing down here for three in community design goals again protecting neighborhoods looking for that compatibility when we talk about streets with street trees and street cap amenities we really looked a lot at active fronts if you think about walking into a target obviously a target store does not go in a neighborhood but when you have businesses that have active frontages you encourage more walking you encourage less driving it's a safer neighborhood it's a more appealing neighborhood mobility goals in sub area one walkability is enormous being able to get out of your cars being able to safely bike so we looked a lot at sidewalk and filling in the gaps in missing places and sidewalks there are three public schools that are just at the edge of sub area one actually calhoun middle school is in sub area one denton high is just barely to the north of sub area one newton razors just a little bit more to the north so if we increase the sidewalk and the compact and the connectivity there we of course help the school children also parking services goals you know we chris is going to talk more about parking we are seeing some squeezes and parking up in sub area one and it is something that many neighbors are asking that we address and we do have some suggestions for that we'll come up later in sub area two again land use community design goals we want to support existing housing in that neighborhood again if you're familiar with the owsley area you know that there it's not just a student-centric area there are a lot of families in that area when we think about the whole design of the small area plan one of the reasons that we ended up with such a large small area is of course if you start squeezing one use out of an area it's just going to trickle down into another area when we have unt binding all of those neighborhoods you know around there if we squeeze one use out of an area that because we decide oh we don't like that use there it's going to go somewhere else so we need to think about how to direct that revitalization in a way that again protects residents current residents of the area and we have to be really sensitive i believe to sub area too when you're looking at which of course covers all of those mobility goals same thing increasing pedestrian and bike circulation in the area and again better connectivity with multimodal facilities that we also have some parking problems in sub area two we've been thinking about ways to deal with that and finally sub area three one of the things that we agreed on is that we would like to protect some a lot of those single family dwellings in sub area three there are they're still out there so you have to get off fort worth drive you have to get off eagle drive in order to get into them but again there are established neighborhoods in there if you get off those you know arterials and those collectors and we're looking also at trying to create more businesses along eagle drive again there's a lot of beating hearts living in that area you see you know an enormous apartment structure on eagle drive but very few goods and services in that area with the closure of sack and save we lost a lot of grocery opportunities and with the closure of is that was a carriage carriage something a carriage square i can never remember that because it's so incongruous okay so carriage square with the closing of clear of care well the demolition let's call it that of carriage square we lost a lot of goods and services in that area so we're hoping for development that again will support not just the students on campus because the new the dormitory is currently being built is on eagle drive those students that are going to be living on the south side of campus have nothing oh very little over there that they can reach again walking riding their bikes but also the neighbors that are you know just living their lives in the area again sub area three the idea of returning to a sense of community and preserving the character of that area we're looking at mobility goals we'd like to look at some gateway action in that area again so you come into denton and you feel like whoa okay i'm in denton texas i'm near unt i need to pay attention whether these are traffic calming elements or if they're simply again place making activities and that will help with traffic safety in the area help to improve pedestrian safety and circular circulation and same thing over here creating more neighborhood services in sub area three the the more things that we can put close to people the less frequently they have to get into their cars the less pressure there is on parking so overall we're looking at protecting established neighborhood character and enhance whoops chris is that you huh i okay sorry it's just like me to overstate what i'm over do what i'm supposed to do okay no actually it's no how about you go ahead i've been talking long enough really you can't get me away from a microphone okay sorry it's okay hi my name is chris wilkins uh my address if you guys needed a 708 iof street apartment b denton texas i'm just gonna present a little bit over some of the draft goals for all three neighborhoods it's just another set of goals that we're trying to incorporate all three areas of the oak gateway plan so some of the land use goals is excuse me is to protect established neighborhoods and enhance neighborhood character uh and promote economic development in in strategic locations along key corridors and major intersections in within all three neighborhoods uh and also support a diverse land use pattern uh we need to create opportunities for mixed use uh within strategic locations for people to live work and socialize within these neighborhoods um yeah and so some of the community design goals we need we are looking at and we recommend is to improve street the street that enhance the community oh sorry improve streets that enhance the community's image through uh streetscape improvements uh something that's dear to my heart is creating integrated system of parks trails and open space within walking and biking distance for residents especially unt residents uh see there we go uh some mobility goals is to improve linkages between all these different sub areas that we've talked about before and also to continue coordination between all three neighborhoods u and t and the city to identify and develop multiple ways to safely move through and around that those areas uh a major part at least in area three where i live is to reduce congestion and expand transportation options uh i know we're actively working with dcta to uh add bus routes at least in uh sub area two and i believe sub area three as well um some parking goals is develop a comprehensive strategic parking action plan i think chris chris walker is going to be presenting a little bit further in depth in the next few slides about that i believe um and also promote new parking facility designs that support mixed use developments um some service goals we have is to create a comprehensive funding mechanisms funding mechanisms to fund public improvements for the area plan in general and also continue coordination between those neighborhoods unt in the city to identify and enhance neighborhood services to serve the area further coordination between property owners business owners in the city to also figure out how to add services as well uh to we need to improve the area's image and enhance neighborhoods using codes regulations programs and enforcement basically anything the city has to help improve these areas we need to be able to utilize them and also provide a wide range of high quality and affordable housing options um that'll help provide permanent residents within these neighborhoods instead of just leasers and renters and stuff create facilities and programs that serve the study serve the study areas neighborhoods and residents um yeah i just wanted to add um that i live in i've been living in sub area three right next to the cemetery for about two years and i didn't have a car for that most of that time so i got to know the neighborhood very intimately and i was very fortunate that i could walk to certain areas um to serve all my needs but i noticed uh through just walking my dog through those areas that there's a lot of people who don't have access to that and i've gotten to know the neighborhood very very intimately and it's become a part of my character and so yeah these uh all these points are very close to my heart so great thank you you get two christopher w's today my name is just for walker i live at 805 emory street i'm a bicyclist and staff member at unt so i have the great pleasure of presenting some draft recommendations that we came up with as a committee out of the plan uh first one up here the parking benefit district and then a related slide the resident part benefit parking district so what is this this is a designated area and an accompanying agency that we wish the city to establish um under a uh a joint management by both city staff and by community members and relevant stakeholders namely business owners and uh neighborhood homeowners and and essentially a similar-ish makeup to what the committee was itself um what it will do is administer the uh and and regulate the parking in for this draft recommendation the parking around the oak hickory and fry streets around the fry street area and those businesses a lot of the context and history of that came out of um and part of the the culmination of our subcommittee and a couple of the actions in history towards it uh unt relinquished the the management of the the on street parking that was in this area um it then uh by a couple different uh committee and council actions we we it went um to what is stated as two-hour parking but then became unregulated and you have students and and all manner of other people that will just stay there for in uh long periods of time uh this doesn't really serve to the benefit of of uh really most any of the stakeholders in this area and so this is a plan that allows those stakeholders to actively manage and and uh help implement really good parking strategies in this area that then the revenue thereof um will go towards uh paying for itself first and then benefiting and enhancing the streetscapes and the the facilities of the area itself so it's meant to be an entity an agency that will continually improve upon itself in that way uh it would it would be using tags and electronic metering uh whether by cell phone apps or by kiosks in designated areas over certain coverages and work through that similarly with different residential districts uh through in each sub area we're recommending opt in uh parking districts block by block this would mean that it wouldn't be that entire neighborhoods would be just wholesale uh covered in this way but that the homeowners and the the relevant people that live there would be able to vote block by block and say i would like this this my i would like my street managed in a similar fashion i would like to take on parking tags and have application from additional tags if i would host social gatherings and things of that nature and be managed in a similar way as the parking benefit district under those same agencies some uh catalyst projects a couple of overlay districts these are uh districts of additional uh code and development requirements that uh will be in complement and and furtherance of the code and uh zoning updates that are as i understand it imminently uh to be complete and these are since what we have designated as as more sensitive areas um that require just a little bit more careful hand as alluded to earlier to maintain the character and vitality and uh continued growth and progression of these areas this includes uh scripture street uh north of the this normal block uh there uh in which we are looking towards encouraging revitalization of businesses and neighborhood services for this for the sub area one an overday district over oak hickory street that promotes the walkability and ensures the revitalization and reinvestment of projects again uh with uh the mind of scale and and a form-based code to complement uh the new zoning an overlay district um in the collins area bound by fanon avenue a green leon bernard there are a batch of wonderful single-family homes in this area that we believe this is a is a cohesive neighborhood unit that could be seen to be uh more carefully uh preserved with an overlay and then potentially creating a historic conservation district in the sycamore area bound by mulberry bernard prairie and carol you can see there at 719 sycamore street an example of one of the lovely um beautiful homes that uh not necessarily under a full-blown preservation historic district but a conservation district as appropriate uh some ongoing draft recommendations ongoing being uh draft recommendations for things that are constant improvements uh we as part of the larger document of our entire draft recommendations uh we set different scales of uh immediate medium range uh actions longering actions and then ongoing actions among our ongoing actions uh we identify as parking spaces with the non-parking areas and very very clear paint markings um and reevaluating our overall strategy with the den police department to uh better implement uh parking regulations and enforcement so that we can have more things here and the picture to the left as opposed to that on the picture of the right uh in which um that is not a proper use of the paint markings and the parking infrastructure now to the item that i think has the most energy in the room um the recommendations relating to hickory street in between avenue a or i'm sorry avenue b and to welch um i would like to personally preface uh this one in that i i feel some responsibility and then perhaps the continued consternation uh around this this one and i have um what i'll be presenting as a member of the committee uh through this slide and elsewhere and i also have my own personal comments that i think i've filed for later or i can field them from you at the appropriate time the recommendations that came out of our last uh committee meeting and when we were finalizing uh the draft for this document was provided parallel parking on both sides of the street uh signs and paint markers that would that would share the lanes uh reducing the maximum vehicle speed to 20 miles per hour extending curb outs uh at the intersections removing pedestrian obstacles from the rights away relocating the overhead utilities and sinking them underground adding visible textured crosswalks at the intersections and signage and pedestrian scale lighting street furniture and street trees signifying that we are in a pedestrian environment part of the overarching um goals of this entire committee was preserving and enhancing the existing natures of each of these areas small areas the different sub areas and neighborhoods they're in we recognize that this this fry street area and all of its rich history is a primarily pedestrian scaled area um between u and t to the south the businesses and uh thriving entertainment scene to the north and then east towards welch and that you have people crossing mid-block out of intersections uh they're uh found found paths if you're familiar with that term um there there are just natural extensions of human behavior that are reflected in a pedestrian scaled environment in this way and the uh the the draft here was from a a uh an option that was presented to us towards what might be colloquially known as a woonorf style uh street design in which embraced the existing nature of this area uh as a pedestrian scaled and a mixed modal multimodal use of the street itself it's something that excited us at the time um the potential for uh street uh the vehicles pedestrians and bicycles to uh all share the road and what sometimes known as complete street calm street um and and different ways uh that that can be uh uh that can be uh implemented there uh and i'll have my own personal comments on that at a later point um okay no that's fine paul no yeah i'm sorry i should i shouldn't be recognized give us one sentence on what was it woonerf woonerf dutch just don't know what the term means probably others don't either sure give us one um woonerf is dutch i believe for living street um it is it is typically found in residential and uh not necessarily low trafficked but but uh calmly trafficked areas uh in which um the speed the scale the the pace of traffic is compatible no matter if you're a modal of in the mode of vehicle bicycle pedestrian or otherwise i suppose in which um it is it is explicitly designed in a way that each modal use um pays attention to one another and are and can navigate through in a way that does not interfere with each other thank you very helpful sure thank you paul uh one of the big things uh that uh for each of us is enhancing and really completing uh the sidewalk connections in the entirety of uh the oak gateway area uh this includes repairing and leveling uh existing sidewalks and installing sidewalks where there are obvious gaps in the area as identified by the red and yellow lines of high priority missing connections and otherwise missing connections also including rapid flashing beacons at all unsignaled pedestrian crossings or other intersection enhancements perhaps similar to what we find right outside the council chambers here on mckinney street uh repair existing street lights and install street lights where lighting is needed in the area we know of course there's going to be the completion of hickory street from welch to uh carol in its historic capacity for appropriate lighting uh along those avenues um and we really would like to see that carried in that that sense of of of lighting completion carried across all of the areas so that people feel safe and that uh the the use as a pedestrian user is is seen as being safe throughout the entire area um the end all be all of this was that um we as a committee approved this 11 to zero the uh this then was presented to planning and zoning that approved it six to zero and uh staff has complimented with recommendations of approval for the various components there in so i don't know thank you no no my pleasure let's go ahead and take about a five to ten minute break um and then when we come back we'll go ahead and start with the public input and then we'll take questions uh from council all right welcome back to this meeting of the denton city council it is on january 15th 2019 at 8 07 p.m we are on agenda item 6c i believe yes we are now going to take public comment from those who filled out cards i've got white cards that are requesting not to speak charles browning is in opposition with a caveat says option five for the hickory street bike lane should be removed from consideration i think we've we've sort of uh talked about that so hopefully that's helpful uh wendy mccuaid uh is in opposition however but not the versions presented what happened to the dedicated bike lanes uh is in support of the plan except for the hickory street share rows i guess is what they're called so again that's that's addressing the the bike lane issue is it manvela picario anyway sorry if i didn't say that correctly is in opposition however i support the overall plan is is the comment but i'm opposing the plan for the share rows please make sure you will install the bike lane so that's uh some comments that were reflective of some of the things we wanted to try to clarify in the beginning of the meeting so we'll go to the blue cards which are people who are wishing to speak uh garrett ruma i'm sorry i i couldn't i couldn't uh pronounce that so i apologize if you'll state your name and address your time will begin hello i'm uh garrett rumore i live at uh 1700 crescent and um yeah um like the uh people that are have written comic cards um i uh i'm written down as as opposing the the plan but there's a lot of really good really good ideas in it and um my uh my big hang up is is kind of on the uh the details that were laid out for the uh for the the hickory street uh road configuration so during the uh the process a lot of the signaling from uh mock-up design like road designs that that were publicly displayed and were uh featured various configurations of bike lane and um a lot of them were a lot of public uh comments were written in support of it and um so basically just a lot of signaling through the process was very much in favor of bike lanes and then uh when when it was presented a pnz we um the uh wounder concept was was kind of presented and um it was a new term for me as as well doing some google searching for it i i find images of like very quiet dutch roads that really don't resemble hickory street at all and while it'd be a fun picture to have there it'd be great for businesses you just walk across and grab a cup of coffee or you know whatnot from the campus there's so much traffic in there it almost it just seems like a um unachievable design goal and so what i am concerned with now is that it's written up as um we'll just we'll put in some enhanced crosswalks maybe a you know fresh coat of paint or something like that to try to make the area a little bit different and then add some sharos and then declare to wounder and um what i would like to see is uh implementation of a bike lane that actually protects cyclists instead of creating a 1200 foot block of traffic of road where you have to go from a bike lane into the road mixed with traffic and then back out whenever you reach welch it's just it's awkward so um that's kind of what i have thank you very much for your time you bet council member armature did you have a question for the speaker or did you have one i think paul's is a leftover request pause actually okay sure is yours the same okay all right i'm sorry i apologize okay thank you very much thank you very much thank you the next speaker is is alejandro uh orez if you'll come down state your name and address your time will begin okay my name is uh Alejandro Galina Juarez i live at 425 Fulton street i'm currently a student at unt i'm studying to be an english teacher and i say that because i think it's important for you guys to understand where i'm coming from i as a teacher want to be able to teach the future and in the future i mean our kids future kids that will come into my classroom and so i want to be able to create a future where kids can live in a safe environment and i don't know where i'll end up teaching houston denton dallas fort worth but if it's denton i want to be able to make sure there are safe roads for future students from a high school to undergrad to graduate students to have safe roads to use over denton and i currently live like straight away from where hickory is and i used to commute my freshman year from clark hall at unt to olive garden the one in denton that would be some up to 40 miles a week and i depended on the safety of bike roads to make sure i was able to go to work and back every day every week for entire year or entire school year so i want to make sure that other students have that opportunity to depend on the safety of other streets to be able to go where they need to go and right now share roads are not very safe i can't depend on the drivers to be safe i can't depend on them to be able to drive safely and to look out for other cyclists i dependent on that safety that bike lanes provide and we need to be able to provide that to future students future residents and and that should be a symbol of a growing community that respects pedestrians cyclists and motorists right now i drive a car but i still have a mentality of making sure that streets are safe for everyone and by doing share roads i don't think it's very safe and if we're not providing a safe environment for students or for residents then we're not really doing a good job at providing a welcoming environment to the city thank you all right thank you appreciate that the next speaker speaker excuse me is suzanne roemer roemer yes if you'll state your name and address your time will begin hi my name is suzanne rumor and i live at 1700 crescent so on the card i write that i oppose it's really hard to figure out what to write when you overall agree and support most of it except for small pieces so overall i think the okay what area plan is really great and what's all the workshops and input meetings and there's some really good vision in there it was just really fun to see what the committee came up with and i really appreciate all the time that they put into all of this so really my big hold up was that at that the meeting in november that was described where they shared the recommendations with the public the design options for the bike lane were a bike lane a bike lane a bike lane and a bike lane and then so you know i looked at the comment cards that came in from that meeting and overwhelmingly people supported removing parking on the south side or the unt side of hickory street and putting in a protected bike lane on that side so it was kind of strange that the committee on their final meeting came up with a completely new design that hadn't been presented and then voted to recommend it without it being fully vetted so that was kind of odd so really you know i just i overall support the plan of the oak gateway of what everything they've put out but i would like to see a protected bike lane ideally i've seen i've seen the recommendations that have come out recently from the consultants and i agree with removing parking on the south unt side and putting in a protected bike lane thank you thank you appreciate that christopher walker is the next speaker he'll come down state your name and address your time will begin and you're speaking not as a member of the committee you're speaking as your person i am speaking as myself christopher walker 805 emory as i alluded to before i do feel some semblance of responsibility for the consternation related around this item when the opportunity for winner of style design was presented among our last meetings i got very excited because of my past experience in history with these designs and complete streets projects in general you might have been familiar with instances in the past decade in which in two different areas in town actually three complete street projects for a day were were implemented in which like we took over streets and we showed like how this could be implemented and and things like that that very much excited me and i i was incredibly enthused over that however the viability of that is really contingent upon a very explicit design of the the travel lanes themselves in which they are slightly interrupted they're not just straight they're not just straight shots where people can drive and ride and whatnot at speed but they they have small deviations they have jet outs mid-block jet outs and they have things that that really bear attentiveness from all users so they're incredibly aware of what's happening around them ultimately the designs that came for us of this after we had carried our excitement out of the the final meeting of the committee did not really implement those and it was just a share-o in my mind a share-o is is among the most dangerous things we can have having witnessed multiple doorings and whatnot myself so part of what we were within the committee we fully knew and understood not just from our own public hearing and not just from our own open house but from nearly 15 years worth of work predating the bike and pedestrian mobility plan um and everything else has gone and and into crafting a continued energy towards a contiguous protected bike lane on hickory street and i think we as a committee understood that to be the default and that the design goals of the woonarf would be an aspirational goal i don't believe this is i guess now a preview for conversations now further to come i know you were presented with options from the consultants in the last week as a part of city reports of what the city staff is comfortable with going forwards and especially option two in which the the bike continuously protected bike lane on the south side with removed parking is implemented personally i like option one in which it keeps the protected bike lane on the south side as well it also then has maintains a fair amount of parking to the left of the that protected bike lane and also then kind of actually allows for some of those woonarf design options by happenstance of deviating the travel lanes for a little bit and coming back and coming out in a way that allows the latitude for those design options at the intersections so i believe the vast majority of our committee understood and and prefers the in fact actually an elsewhere in the long form of our draft document we insist that hickory street have a continuously projected bike lane there we go thank you appreciate that you bet thank you wendy mccuaid come down state your name and address your time will begin wendy mccuaid nine high view court um you did read a comment card i did i almost chickened out and didn't want to talk i'm a little bit of an introvert but um i did want to make clear that i do support 95 of what's coming out of that gateway plan like the majority of speakers here i do have issues with what's happening on that three black span of hickory street i think that having a dedicated lane to the west and east and then a three black span where you all of a sudden are forced to merge in with moving traffic is a recipe for disaster i think it is extremely dangerous for cyclists i think that motorists are using hickory as a through street to get off of campus particularly at certain times of the day and mixing bicyclists in with those for a three block block span and then kind of jumping in and out of traffic is going to result in accidents and injury and potential deaths so i would love to see a dedicated continuous bike lane spanning all of hickory street and preferably removing the parking on the south side the unt side of the street to make that a safe passage for cyclists and not impeding or throwing obstacles in the way of motor vehicle traffic thank you thank you those are all the cards that we have and since this is an item for individual consideration a card was required so councilmember melser you're first on the queue thank you first i just want to you know express my admiration for the bright creative service-minded people in dentonry are willing to do this sort of thing and the people came to the to the open houses it's just a great effort and i know we had to beat the consultants back to make room for the people to contribute their full value and you really did i'm very grateful one point i'd like to make and ask a question is that you know i concur with councilmember briggs that in the mobility committee which i share we will review this recommendation along with the alternatives you know that are going to be presented by uh you know by mark often i would also ask that we look at the literature of studies that have been done and there are many of them of what the effect is of replacing parking with bike lanes and i would just like in addition to public input to just have some of the data and i think it's not what people assume i think i think people assume that there's a i think there's a bit of a false choice between the idea that you know if it's for a bike lane that it's going to hurt the businesses and that may or may not be true and i really want us to look at the literature and take in that data i have a couple of questions well let me start with the the parking benefit district one point i'm not clear on and ron i don't know if this is maybe for you to answer is what exactly is the problem that the parking benefit district is meant to resolve it seems like kind of a complex uh interesting and complex tool uh is it about the lack of enforcement of the existing two-hour parking and would just actually having better enforcement of that do the trick i'm all ears the parking benefit district and one of the steering committee members actually has experience with it there's one specifically in austin it's really to improve the parking situation of an area but also the surrounding areas so some of the revenues that's generated from that parking district could be used to enhance the sidewalks the lighting and it's again used to improve or enhance a particular area part of it is to address parking you know issues but part of it is also to also enhance the the designated area okay well i imagine we'll have lots more conversation about it it wasn't obvious to me exactly how it enhances it like the name i like the amount of flexibility in the tool but it doesn't create more parking so i'm sure they're you know kind of creative things can be done with it if i can just yeah it could it could create more parking if there were enough funds to purchase or lease a section of the area that could then be used for parking generated generate more and then that even generates even more revenue so create additional parking is a goal or a possible result interesting if you may follow up with a couple others of course yes yeah while you're at the podium there were some interesting comments in the sub area three section about returning a sense of community and creating neighborhood services i wonder if you have any sort of preliminary thoughts on what what that might look like how do you return a sense of community yeah there are create services yeah there are some undeveloped properties and i know they're all privately owned but there's opportunities where maybe the city could look into purchasing certain areas to create maybe a pocket park or maybe create a community center that that area could use think about some of the neighborhoods that we have that have many centers this area is a neighborhood there isn't one there now that's a possibility right so you know looking at creating that that ownership or that that community pride is what i think the intent of those recommendations are for thank you council member armature so thank you for to everyone on the committee for all your hard work and people who spoke today and for staff i know for all the work you did getting together with everybody i'm going to echo the sentiments of a number of people who spoke out to say that i am for 97 percent of this and not just for it really really excited about it i love the overlays i love so much about it i'm nervous about the bike lane issue for for for two reasons and i don't know which one is more important so i'll just take one of them first which is the public safety issue i you know agree with the previous traffic studies that were done in this area and the views of people who use the area on the comment cards and what people from the committee have come forward to say that they felt like they were agreeing to and that is contiguous protected bike lanes on that stretch of hickory in some form or another um i i did see a lot of the you know comment cards that um were really excited about option number two um you know for me um the main thing is having that contiguous uh uh protected bike lane in that area for the public safety issue and and then this is the the second thing i'm nervous about um the procedural aspect of it and that sense that um you know that that for whatever reason um the people who were in that committee and people who filled out comment cards feel felt like um looking at what was on the backup today now they're feeling like oh that's not what i thought i i agreed to um and uh and so i'm happy to know that um this is coming going to be coming forward to the mobility committee and that uh that this is not a done deal and i know that even just looking at the um presentation as it's written you know it says uh a recommendations ongoing or implementation ongoing right so it says that ongoing but i'm nervous about this resolution that we're signing today uh or that that we're voting on um which says and i'm just going to read just a little bit of it a resolution accepting divisions goals recommendations and implementation strategies proposed in the oak gateway plan uh i am proud to sign my name to the divisions which i've read carefully group proud to sign my name for the goals but i feel uncomfortable signing my name to the recommendations and implementation strategies knowing that and it's not that i don't trust the mobility committee i do but there's my name in writing you know saying i agree to this and uh that that makes me nervous so i'm um uh i'm tempted to uh vote vote no um simply because of that i i i would love to see you know um some sort of amendation maybe to get that part of it pulled i realize there's a motion already up so i'll see wait to hear what that you know how that motion is going to be worded but you know i would love to see maybe that part of it um you know postponed to a later date to the next meeting um i guess the you know small area plan committee is is probably adjourned so maybe they can't meet again you know but um i would feel much better about this i'd be able to easily sign my name onto it if if that were not there in writing um in the resolution does that make sense sure sure if if if i can just respond quickly do i kind of give some background yes uh during the public um meeting or open house that we held there were four four options presented and yes there were overwhelmingly a lot of um you know in favor of one or the other the four but it wasn't a consensus and so we went back to the committee with that information we shared with them the comment cards but there wasn't a consensus on which option there were some comments or opinion by some of the committee members that offered a different option and so what this um recommendation it's on on my screen i don't know if it's on your screen it basically says develop a street cross-section it's just to develop it to in order for the council to have another option which i believe mark and his team are going to be presenting to the committee member it will be considered a fifth option so really it's it's not we're not saying this is it we're saying here's more information here's a fifth option that wasn't i know it wasn't presented at the open house but it was thought of after and this is what we are recommending to develop a cross-section which will then be used by the committee or and or the council at a future time can i could i can i just yeah and thank you ron yeah thank you um so you know and there's also the issue that um i forgot who had mentioned it but one of the speakers mentioned you know that you've also got there's the the long the long-term um you know goals for the committee that mentioned the contiguous protected bike lane is that correct there was there was a recommendation for that as well yes yeah yeah um yeah so okay so i understand what you're saying and it's just about you know my my personal comfort level of putting my name to that um uh again i trust the mobility committee i understand what you're saying um but uh i don't want to be i don't want to be regretting this vote later and i hope people people understand how excited i am about the uh small area plan in general um anyway thank you council member breaks hi so i i just want to kind of go over what i what i think this is so by approving the plan we're proving a goal a vision a recommendation overall um from the from the committee and that each individual suggestion will have to come back because when i'm going through this plan i see um sidewalk connections which will have to come back through this council and maybe um you know other for which ones funding mechanisms there's the the parking that will have to come through another committee maybe traffic safety all of these things individually will come through each committee and then back to council for um to follow through on those recommendations and to provide funding for that so by approving this overall plan we're not saying that um this one section has to be this way and so i just want to clarify that and i don't want to get this little area on hickory mixed up with this wonderful plan that many um individuals worked hard on and um just just for that so i just kind of wanted to clarify that and so um for me i have you know several things here that i mentioned the sidewalks and then owsley park was mentioned you know we that will need to come to us hopefully sooner than later to get some green space and some lighting and um so my question here because i'm complete in favor of this plan and in favor of the mobility um hearing the the bike lane options on tuesday the 29th i think um what is the timing of the projects and the funding how will those individually come back to the different committees because there's some really great things here that i think should should start moving do you have a specific recommendation or well i mean i know that the bike the the hickory street is coming to us soon um but like the the parking um the councilor metzler um mentioned the sidewalk connections are those on a list currently they're they're not actually it's pending some of what we are going to hear tonight um with regard to the parking benefit district i hope that we can potentially have a work session and start to have that discussion process because it's something that i think is is something we need for that area and all the other overlay districts the same thing right you know we want to start looking into those and that will take you know staff time and of course council's um decision and direction to move forward as as we do any you know um project or process within the city right and and as development comes through um planning department staff will look at this as well right this plan as well correct well yeah the internal staff you know well our engineering department or obviously our parks department if they're involved all of whom have been given these recommendations solid waste included in dme so they're familiar with these recommendations i've spoken to them prior obviously to the public hearing with the planning zoning commission and so they're they're they haven't said otherwise they're they're in line with some of the recommendation again this is ideas options and first steps right and so you're accepting uh per the resolution the recommendation you're not approving you're accepting the recommendations so with with that we still have a couple oh so i can't make my motion okay is that okay because i think you're going to make a motion if we could take the rest of the council comment uh council mayor pro tem were you were you finished okay thank you uh council member mayor pro tem thank you mayor i do have a couple of questions because we on the parking aspect of it we talk about policing enforcement that type of thing where was our police department because i know we've got areas of town that we have specialized parking uh that it gets enforced for a while it doesn't get enforced for a while has there been any discussion as to what what uh officer boyner actually attended the open house and i believe the community workshop he's he's primarily serves in that area so he's familiar with these recommendations um i'm not uh too specific on how involved um they are going to be but we obviously want to start that conversation because what we've heard from the community and from the neighborhood is that enforcement isn't being done but we we need to work on on getting that clarified and further you know further enforced or processed okay um as far as mobility goes there's a couple of items that pop out at me and in one of them is i didn't necessarily see in this plan but the regional transportation council approved funds last year for uh under the safe routes program that's a eight foot wide pathway down sycamore sigma mall and then down welch yes so that's going to continue um that's not going to change um the um engineering department pre-tim and his team and and the consultants that that we work with are coordinating all these efforts together with other projects that's currently either earmarked or in in in design okay and how do you envision some of the uh mobility aspects of this tying into we're working on a mobility plan i don't know if we authorized it yet but it's it was in the budget for this year to do updated mobility plans this is is this chicken and egg i hope that these recommendations because these came from a public open house a community workshop and ultimately steering committee i hope these recommendations will inform that process with regard to the mobility plan so i hope that that's the case that this is going to help not drive but help inform those decisions thank you councilmember hudspeth thank you mayor um i want to start off by thanking those that served on the committee staff i mean that's a a very long time a lot of bumps a lot of reorganization refocus and and so to have to maintain that focus through that period of time uh it gives me extra uh confidence in the in the value of the data that we're receiving in the feedback you know i think it's uh it's very valuable i think you see the pictures where those events are well attended means a lot i mean it's very difficult to get that that type of uh buy-in consistently over that amount of time so i'm greatly appreciative of that a couple of things that i wanted to try to nail down and help me understand uh one i'll start off with just my suggestion and mr city manager i'll um just to leave it with you i think on the i'd like to see at some point when it's fig when it's drafted the implementation kind of process or or how we're going to rate which projects to start with kind of what kind of takes priority what parts of town and then i i i would suggest we allow the new development at razor ranch to kind of guide that because i'm assuming there'll be impact fees associated with the houses that are going in on the west side of bonnie bray and as that kind of development so then those dollars can be used in that whatever that general region is and maybe we can we can uh seize that opportunity to uh get some short projects done faster in that general area i don't that's just a thought i'll take guidance from you on on how we we phase those things in but i think a few quick wins uh helps validate that time and energy spent that people can kind of see uh things moving forward and see those changes being implemented that's great news thank you and then i and then i want to ask um ron if you can because in the meeting so you and i go way back to when on p and z that one uh development was was hoping to come in and throughout that that entire time um the the conversation has been the business owners want that parking both sides of streets without the meters uh and then so to see the recommendation that the the meters or the parking needs to be more enforced can you just talk to me about that that parking conversation you and you i believe you had a good mix on there of business owners and so it's it's unanimous the the vote was unanimous but i know there's business owners that have businesses there that have been vocal about right not wanting uh to regulate parking as much because it hurts business then there's those that argue that enforcing it moves cars along and then helps business so what have you what brought you to um bringing those two together to come up with one uniform plan that was the challenge right too because we had a number of different stakeholders and a number of different perspectives as to what to do with hickory street and its parking uh conditions of course the business owners are going to want the number of parking that's there to answer your question related to removing the meters i think that came out of uh unt initially and they went to the traffic safety commission and was then triggered to remove it ultimately it was decided that there was going to be a two-hour parking there as a temporary pilot program to identify if it was going to work or not work and staff was charged to make sure that it was monitored and to provide the data that that resulted from that change ultimately we're trying to satisfy everyone and it's going to be difficult and it's not an easy decision right and and i don't envy you guys because that's what you guys do on a daily basis however um we we've got to look at this area and i'm going to bring in my planning you know perspective as chris walker mentioned this is an area of fry street that's well known for its pedestrian um you know environment parking has always been there and retail is sort of needing that parking so i totally understand where those businesses owners are coming from but i also understand where the bicyclists are coming from too so um i guess my answer is i don't have an answer for you because there's so many competing you know perspectives yes sir okay well thank you okay um i've just got a couple comments i don't think it's any secret uh in the beginning of this whole process that my big uh concern has been the size of this and then as the presentation moved forward it started out as let's modify the fry street overlay district then let's look at those that residential neighborhood north of that because of the apartment the two apartment developments that that have been proposed and then it expanded to this i don't even know how many acres is this covered now do you have any idea it's over a thousand just so we go from uh three blocks three city blocks to over a thousand acres so that's my primary opposition first of all i really commend everybody who worked on this because six months or so a year a year and then you've gone through committee members and we've sort of lessened the committee size so that a quorum could be made and then i see that the recommendation was voted on by 11 members and i think we reduced it down to 17 so even since that time it's sort of it's sort of shrunk down so i'm really okay with the concepts and with the work the struggle i have is with some of the recommendations that seem like hard recommendations and there's just a couple of them that uh that i that i'm concerned with one is the overlay districts i mean number one we go from a small fry street plan to a northern neighborhood plan totally get that to a thousand acres um and then an overlay district now in our new development you can attest to this in our new development code in our new zoning map when i came on that committee one of the things i really struggled with and really pushed back on was the city changing zoning classifications for properties most of the time they were upzonings because it didn't provide the neighborhoods the opportunity to have that normal process of public input and that wasn't anything against staff it's just i really struggle with that process i struggle with that process in the reverse here and that is that the city is going to initiate an overlay district on private property owners that may act in the reverse side and that is it may restrict your abilities here when there are normal processes in place for city processes that we can we can bet that out so if i'm going to go one way i've got to go the other way i really trust the process of our zoning processes as evidenced by at least the one on hickory where the rezoning was asked for on the big student housing complex and right and was denied so that's one of my my biggest concerns because it just seems like it takes away and it's an overreach for for the city process the second one is this parking district it's very creative i struggle with to have a citizens group in charge of parking enforcement i don't know where the jurisdiction of north texas parking regulations because they get to regulate a lot of parking around the university now probably up in the neighborhoods in sub area three sub area one they don't but around the university hickory i don't know if north texas regulates that can we even regulate that do you know the answer to that too i believe there they currently have some areas and they're looking to add more but i think that's ultimately going to have to be sure decided on right so that's a that's a concern for me just the parking kind of districts in general because it puts parking regulation and enforcement in the hands of a citizens group instead of our law enforcement agencies and number two if there's money raised from that it stays within this area which to me the problem would be you start regulating parking here guess what people are still going to park they're going to go park somewhere else you're going to push them out into other neighborhoods that don't necessarily have these types of these types of regulations so i like i like the study i like the plan i like some of the the observations my concern is with the recommendations on some of the implementations of the parking and the overlay district and so i won't be able to support the resolution for that reason if those were not in there that could be brought back at some other time that would be great but if i if i approve it then i've sort of tied my hands to future kind of decision making can i just point of certification on the parking as i understand it it is something that is administered by the city so it's not going to be a citizen administration that administers the parking district the city is going to be responsible for that administration just just sure but given that i mean do it what keeps us other neighborhoods from asking for that same thing that have the same kind of parking issues so it's more of an equity question for me and do are we moving a problem just somewhere and when you suggested that we could buy property within the the small area plan and put in more parking i thought isn't that sort of the antithesis of you know trying to create so anyway i think that's what happens when you start developing these things sort of on the fly um no i i would i know but if i do then i've i've not let people in the past so uh if well you were a committee member that presented correct okay so i'm gonna let you come address that yes all right truth like 1109 egan um i want to clarify how parking dis benefit districts work and we wouldn't have to reinvent the wheel and again this is just a suggestion um like uh commissioner council member brig said you can you know adopt the plan and then say no thanks ultimately to a parking benefit district but uh houston uses them austin uses them uh for instance the west side of campus there is a parking benefit district and it has a parking kiosk where it's clearly labeled you know 51 percent of the parking fees after expenses will go to beautification of this area that paid for dedicated bike lanes down new aces on west campus and it's which university you're talking about ut austin okay all right i thought okay it will it but it helps to fund uh street trees it helps to fund uh street furniture but it's something in austin and in houston that is administered by the city i can send you the link to the ordinance sure now part of the parking problem came about in the fry street area is that you know unt and the city used to have an agreement that the unt enforced the parking meters from on hickory fry street and oak street so after expenses were taken out then they split and i don't know what the split was but that was how unt paid somebody to go and remove all those quarters from the meters and issue tickets when people overstayed when unt went to the parking app then the original intent and i'm on traffic safety so that came through us the original intent was to go to a parking app in those exact areas that were using the meters which like i said stretched up into oak but the cost was i don't remember it was high the business owner business owner believed that it was high i don't remember what it was but we've all used apps in other cities and they don't have to be prohibitively high but because of pushback we went to that temporary solution of let's go ahead and see what happens well unt doesn't isn't going to pay somebody to to go ahead and enforce parking the two-hour parking in that area because they're not getting any revenue from that area and my office is facing hickory street i can tell you how long people sit there but i also if the parking in neighborhoods right i'm going over my four minutes well yes if you could wrap it up i'd appreciate it parking in neighborhoods don't conflate that with the parking benefit districts because around smu for instance around tcu there are neighborhoods that have parking permits to for residents once again that does not it's not paid parking and it's not a parking benefit district but it is for residents and again blocks can take it or leave it y'all can take it or leave it ultimately no i understand so and i get parking is a hot button issue but anyway i don't want to see the entire plan i don't want you to throw out the entire plan because i understand parking is problematic no and and i appreciate that that's not what i'm saying what i'm saying is because the resolution calls for record to accept the recommendations and implementations of the plan those are two major parts of the plan that i think could be very problematic in the future and so that that and that's just me there's four or five other people up here so but i that's some good information if you would send me that link i would appreciate that i'll send you all the link thank you okay thank you and i guess too just and this is something that has been coming up almost at every meeting and i think we're going to have to figure out a way to to find some type of standard definition but throughout the the the planet talks about affordable housing and lowing oh and by the way whoever changed the title to uh the west side of the campus i appreciate that um that that uh that was not in our backup so somebody changed that on the fly so i i really do appreciate that um that that when we talk about affordable housing and we talk about low income and modern income so many things now are becoming are being that those terms are being used to either rationalize or justify or give some strength strength to a position when we there are so many definitions of that of what affordable housing is um and so i would hope that as we move forward as a council that when we talk about that that this council can develop some kind of standard because you can use it to represent a lot of different things i mean for some affordable housing is a thousand dollars a month for a one-bedroom apartment for some it's a it's a modular home for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars all in for some it's truly apartment rent in certain parts of that area for seven hundred and fifty dollars for a two-bedroom or something like that so uh it just would be helpful in the future if we can have some common understanding on what that is so no i think the plan uh overall is is great i think it's it's it's really studied this area and it's come up with some some observations and some things that i can certainly get behind i think those are the two major ones that as council member armater said for me to say i'm i am okay with creating overlays uh on private property uh city initiated when i did not and have not taken that same stance when we're looking at the entire rezoning of the city so for me it's just a matter of being consistent it has nothing to do with the work of the committee it has nothing to do with saying that it's right or wrong it's just it's my only personal preference on on you know how i choose to approach these kinds of issues so just wanted to share that uh my hunch is um i'm not going to uh be the deciding factor in this but those are two of the issues that really stood out to me as i as i read the plan in the presentation but as far as you know preserving housing stock preserving these kinds of things but then i hear neighborhood services and i know that if you've got all neighborhood homes even on corridors that if you're wanting neighborhood services some of those homes are going to have to make way for neighborhood services and so i just want to make sure that there's there's that understanding so that's all the comments i have uh council member well i'm going to go ahead and okay let me let me go ahead let me go ahead and recognize the movement and then we'll come back to you council member uh briggs i'd like to make a motion for approval all right council member melser for your comment and then you're also uh yeah well okay we got about three things to cover um i would i'd like to actually understand what from uh from ron what would the process be for uh creating an overlay district how does that happen in general so um i haven't created an overlay here in the city of den but what i understand is that we will have to notify the property owners right because it affects their property uh and we'll have to go through planning zoning commission because it would be part of the ddc the dental development code uh public hearing process through the planning zoning commission ultimately city council makes again the decision on to approve the overlay district and in that overlay district would include you know design standards or whatever it is that we want to include as part of that overlay district so again it is approved by ordinance it goes through planning zoning commission city council so so the residents are notified and they presumably then have input on whether that's correct and property owners surrounding the overlay district would also be notified right okay thank you and uh and then i have a question for uh city attorney if i would like to offer an uh a friendly amendment is that can that happen prior to being seconded or do you second first second first that sounds weird you follow me though right the easiest way to do it is to ask the movement if she would consider amending her written her main motion which was a straight improvement yes so to whatever you're asking okay so council member breaks would would you uh accept an amendment or would you accept a modification of the motion uh to say after the semicolon and before the end and uh at the end there excluding the specific recommendation regarding the street cross section for hickory street between avenue b and welch street pending further deliberation by city council i'm okay with that okay and if if you've got that i second okay all right let me let me pull up the resolution so i can just see what you're talking about so if you go uh five words from the end it says and providing an effective day so uh actually i guess you'd uh stick it in probably with a comma before the semicolon so you know we're considering approval blah blah blah then then the description of what the area is is this in the actual resolution uh it's in the uh because we're voting on the resolution oh you know it's in the plan you're talking about the agenda item yeah okay all right um so it would have to be in the plan itself because the plan is just an exhibit to the resolution so what you're basically asking is that council member armator's objection with it being something that seems to be stated as a recommendation be removed yeah and but i'm you know including uh consciously the language pending further deliberation by city council in other words it's not like struck from consciousness it's just not resolved sure does it do you have enough information on that to or do we need to make a modification to the actual plan i mean i hate to try to craft this thing on the dais but honestly no i'm the motion within then afterwards we we would modify it and um ron mengita and i will modify this to fit what you're saying just if you can just restate it together clearly for our benefit so we can make sure we so do this correctly shall i restate it before you restated that uh yeah my only thought is i mean because typically when we do this we really try to have a really good representation of what we're voting on and so if if it's just sort of an outline and you're going to go uh commensurate with staff and you're going to come up with some specific language i mean that's up to the council members so go ahead make your motion well okay but i mean i'm willing to take another stab at it to you try to satisfy your legitimate desire for clarity so we're considering approval of a resolution accepting the visions goals recommendations and implementation strategies proposed in the okay area plan and and what i have proposed to council member briggs in which i believe she understood and accepted is that we consider approval of a resolution accepting the visions goals recommendations and implementation strategies proposed in the oak gateway area plan excluding the specific recommendation regarding the street cross section for hickory street between avenue b and welch street pending further deliberation by city council okay and that having been accepted i second that motion okay i accept yeah that that's that's clear i appreciate that thank you uh mayor pro tem you signed up to speak thank you mayor um anybody that's been following this along the way has known that i have been opposed in the very beginning on this because of the size of it i don't see it as a small area plan i see it as a large area plan um i've been real torn on on which way to go uh the fact that it's been broken into three districts definitely helps in that that alignment and i think just the the wording of a resolution accepting the vision as opposed to us putting down that we were taking final action that we're you know to move forward with to uh just in accepting because i greatly appreciate all the the work that went into this uh and and i would have much rather it had come as three separate small area plans uh i do look forward to not only conservation districts but historic districts starting to be developed in those areas as well in both both sub areas uh one and three the northern part of three so uh i believe i'm i haven't pressed the button yet but i believe i will be in support come on mayor pro tem we know where you're going councilmember barmiter okay well and thank you um councilmember melzer for making that uh friendly amendment thank you councilmember breaks uh for for um accepting it that um um that makes me feel much better and about it and um you know there's still the issue of the um uh but which which can be addressed when this comes back um to the mobility committee and to council but but i would ask that we keep in mind that in the what's the title of this document the on the um draft the draft implementation strategy um that we have right now says uh to create a contiguous bike lane along hickory street you know which is as um is in in contradiction as somebody mentioned earlier of what we've got in that um recommendation but i'm okay i'm okay now with voting yes to it because that's a contradiction that can be resolved that is if and i'm looking at at the into the eyes of the people who spoke if they um if people feel you know well represented by that i want to make sure that i'm you know representing um the people who put all the hard work into that um but yeah i'll be voting yes with that friendly amendment okay great so real quick question i'm looking at the exhibits and when i went through the exhibits i see the presentation um which i i don't think i missed it but which one of these is the actual plan is it the exhibit nine with the recommendations timing agency catalyst is that the i mean if we were to look at the say this is the plan it's the draft implementation is that is that it that's the plan that's yeah the recommendations the visions and the goals okay all right thanks okay uh see no more people wishing to speak so we have a motion and a second with a friendly amendment as recorded by the city attorney for agenda item six c let's vote on the board please motion carries five to one let's go ahead and take about a five minute break and then we'll knock out the last two agenda items welcome back to this meeting of the dent city council on january the 15th 2018 it 2019 uh first time i've done that it's about 9 16 we're moving to agenda item 6 d which is considered option of an ordinance of the city of dent texas a home-ruled municipal corporation authorizing the city manager to execute a contract with sale construction satay sail construction company for the construction of the north south phase 2 36 inch by 42 inch water transmission line thank you mayor council good evening tata city engineer uh north south water transmission main is otherwise also known it's a critical water project but it's also the initial phase of bonnie bray phase three the roadway project so these two go hand in hand it's approximately 11 000 feet of water line infrastructure that needs to go in it will feed south side of denton and then ultimately tie into a water plant uh water substation and the trans the tower excuse me the water tower at mckenna park we had multiple vendors bid our engineers estimate was 8.4 million the low bid came in at 7.8 million and based on the results of the bid we do recommend having reviewed what was submitted we do recommend approval of the 7.8 million dollar bid with fail construction council member breaks so on the on the bidder um because as we found out uh with tex dot sometimes the lowest bidder isn't always the best one so i assume that not only with the price um being the best you also did some background work to make sure that yes the company is it's a tail construction actually we were benefiting from some of the closer of work they're doing for trent regional water district they just finished 150 million dollar eight 108 inch diameter pipeline project it closed out the end of 2018 they're just finishing up roadway work so that utility crews are available that's partially why we got such a good price here great that's good thank you that's nine feet yes sir in diameter yes sir and it was 11 miles of nine foot pipe with uh 2.2 miles of 84 inch pipe so it's roughly eight feet behind that's moving some water yes sir yeah wow okay uh mayor pro tem move approval council member melzer second we have a motion and a second for agenda item 6d let's vote on the board please okay motion carries six zero thank you yes sir moving on to agenda item 6e get to it consider nominations appointments to the city boards and commissions do we uh madam city secretary do we or interim city secretary or acting city secretary do we have any uh do we have any nominations you're providing yeah on the sheet yeah okay all right so i see that we have a nomination for the airport advisory board from mayor pro tem for mike upshaw council on persons with disabilities mayor pro tem is nominating rex king and then at large council member armature is nominating tamra beckham is that correct okay any others that we don't have on the list for any of the vacancies okay uh chair would entertain action mayor pro tem i'll move approval council member briggs i'll second we have a motion and second let's vote on agenda item 6e please motion carries six zero concluding items council members council member hudspeth oh they just popped off i got you council member armature thank you um so i i had a great meeting with um uh president uh fayton there at uh tw and and uh i'd like to ask staff to explore kind of a uh future um i don't i don't know if it's um i don't know what you would title it but they're they're finishing up their parking garage and it's going to be free parking uh for certain evenings and i think weekends i'd need to double check that or look at my notes but either way uh it's a new parking option it's a little off the beaten path but understanding it's an option i'd like to see how we can um take advantage of that for it be it just uh emily fowler events or jazz fest events whatever that looks like and then begin to create a path so students are there at tw and and are parking there and want to walk to emily fowler want to walk uh here to the park that sort of thing if we can begin to kind of establish uh whatever that walking or that pedestrian plan would be from that structure to maybe they leave it there and and begin to walk downtown and then walk to different businesses so uh whatever we can do kind of planning wise lighting that sort of thing that would understand that there's going to be a new kind of concentration of parking coming on board council member armature okay um several things one i wanted to um to request a staff report about the um uh possibility of as as uh uh miss lunt suggested um donating council you know salaries what might be involved and you know just a little um uh you know notice to us about what you know we'd have to do to get that done including and then this latter part could come separately to me or together um with the rest of the report doesn't matter to me but um because in in my case i um uh don't accept the salary anyway because i i i teach at university of my texas i can't have the two take salaries from two state entities so um you know i i don't know in my case if that means you know do i have a this uh a salary that i could can i do something with that you know um or my guess is it's not mine to give because i've you know refused it um but anyway so just an email on that latter part question um and about letting us know what to do and then just um uh you know to see if um uh i guess i'll add you know just a staff report on this could be brief just a paragraph uh even uh but you know what can be done um to you know expedite um even you know one small part of the uh shelter committee's plans i know that they're looking at a lot of data and looking at the big picture i think that's awesome but as far as just kind of the hierarchy of needs of you know let's get um people need a place to sleep where it's warm and they're not going to die and can we you know can we do something real quick as a stopgap measure because it's it's about to get real scary cold so um uh that um let's see uh uh i wanted to um to ask about um having more seats in the work session room uh you know i realized it would involve um you know some sort of reconfiguration of the uh the table i know you know we've got a semicircle right there maybe some of the negative space inside that semicircle you know could be um compacted to make room for another row of chairs um or maybe there's some other i mean i i'm open to whatever solution yeah um that would be great so so that people don't have to uh sit on the floor um and then finally i would like to propose um uh a uh a test pilot of uh an unlimited of unlimited open mic uh you know seeing you know trying it out for a certain period um you know maybe even a month um two months three months whatever um you know we've got uh you know right now obviously we've got a you know very limited number of people who can come talk um sometimes we don't have any who want to talk you know sometimes we'll have four who want to talk um it used to be more you know years ago and then that got um got whittled down um and i know that some cities just say whoever wants to come and address council can uh i i have the patience to hear that um whatever people have to say uh so anyway it was just like people at least consider some sort of test pilot of that to see how that goes and that's all thanks i've got a question clarification on that are you saying unlimited number of people and or unlimited number of of time oh thank you good question sorry unlimited number of people um yeah so you know three or four minutes is i think good all right thank you um okay uh concluding item would be i think uh in the informal staff report that you're going to be getting out about the request or the ask on uh at the at the open mic uh and on stop gap measures to you know give us an update on the conversations that have been ongoing that i think we've been having to resolve those issues i think people think that somehow nothing's been happening so as we get further clarification of the one question was monsignor king you know if we had additional if they had additional staff and if somehow there's resources to pay for that additional staff is that something they're open to so i think there's been some discussions on that nothing definitive but there's been some discussions long before this conversation so uh if if we could get an update on that that'd be great anybody else okay well oh i'm sorry you just popped up council member melser um i just as an old i don't mean this to sound like deliberation so just as an alternative to consider uh you'd like to include as you consider the unlimited open mic idea maybe it's an alternative one night a month or one night uh you know end period of time just a night that's just open mic come speak to council we'll hear it all right anything else oh mayor pro tem i thought you might mention this on thursday night is our third annual state of the city and over in embassy suites i forgot about it i believe it's 6 30 is that great yes uh just remind everybody to come on out in 6 30 yeah yeah yeah yeah i probably won't wear that one um okay good all right anybody else council member briggs no concluding items okay all right all right we'll stand And adjourned.