Jun 01, 2023 Special Citizens Bond Advisory Committee on 2023-06-01 6:00 PM (AMENDED on 5-30-2023)

Six o'clock, we're going to turn it over to the Chair Pro Tem, Susie, to kick us off. Alright, good evening everybody to the second meeting of the Special Citizens Bond Advisory Committee. I'm Susie Roommore, the Chair Pro Tem of the committee. And I just wanted to thank all of y'all for your continued attendance and engagement and for sharing your diverse perspectives and knowledge and input to help create a bond package that will reflect the needs and the desires of the people of Denton. And with that, it is May, oh it's not May, it's June 1st, 2023. And it is six o'clock still, and we're going to call the meeting to order. The first item on the agenda is, we have items for consideration. Item A, CBAC 23-006, consider approval of the minutes for May 23rd, 2023. This is an action item that we will need to vote on, so I will need a motion. We got one motion for Tim, second for Mendy. Any discussion? Alright, all in favor say aye. All opposed say nay. Motion passes. So then we're going to open up the rest of the agenda all at once to kind of move the meeting along. So I'm going to bear with me for a second while I read through the rest of the agenda. We got item B, CBAC 23-003, receive a report, hold a discussion regarding the scope and processes relating items to be addressed and discussed during the meetings of the Special Citizens Bond Advisory Committee. Item C, CBAC 23-008, receive a report and hold a discussion regarding a demographics report and update. Item D, CBAC 23-009, receive a report and hold a discussion regarding the City of Denton facilities condition assessment. Item E, CBAC 23-010, receive a report and hold a discussion regarding proposed facilities. South Branch Library, Denton Active Adult Center, Senior Center, and Fire Stations 5 and 6. And with that I will hand it over to Kevin. Thank you, Susie, and thank you all for being here for the second meeting of this bond committee. And if you're like me, you pass by the square and you saw that Twilight Tunes was happening tonight and you realize this is such a commitment of ours to come here instead of going to fellowship with our fellow citizens. You know, if you look at the state of politics today, if you look at D.C. national politics or even down in Austin, it can be very easy to get discouraged and ask the question of can we really accomplish things together again in the year 2023? But that's what I love about local democracy is we've got 40 of our friends and neighbors. We've got different perspectives clearly. Local politics can be as messy as national politics, but we're getting together with one focus in mind, and that is to really move the needle forward to make a better Denton. And so what's cool about this particular bond package is in 2023 the focus is quality of life as opposed to 2014, I think, 2014, 2019. You saw 150 million in street projects for 2019, very important for the city, but a lot of like looking deep into engineering of streets and street conditions and things like that. What we get to do here is really think of quality of life issues. And when you think about that task before us and the question that we have to really how do we make a better Denton or more Dentonites, then you really need a large, broad, diverse community of folks coming together to really dig into those questions, to look at things like how do we invest and improve things around public safety, around libraries, parks and trails, public art, affordable housing, infrastructure, city facilities focused on public meetings and gathering spaces. We need a large contingent of folks because at the end of the day, our goal as a committee is to come together around a project that not only we can agree with, but we are a sort of a microcosm of the citizens in here because our big task is when this committee closes and we go out for a few months and sell that which we've come together on and that which the city council hopefully will agree with us that they'll come together on and sell it to a community that hopefully we're reflecting. So think about that charge. But the beautiful thing is it's about quality of life to really make a big impact for the citizens now in Denton, but really for citizens in generations to come. And so as you think about even reaching out to folks now as you're getting feedback, consider even reaching out to kids. I've started engaging my own children on this question of what do they like to see around parks or trails or things in the city? What makes a great city? Is there the ones that are going to live with the beautiful things hopefully we create here? So that's our charge. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Lizzie Johnson to help facilitate my discussion. Good evening. It's lovely to see all of you here. We have a full agenda tonight, but there's some things that I want to talk about before we jump in. We have a few changes. So as in all things, I told you to call me and email me if you had concerns and some people did. And I love that. That's the great thing about this process. And so we've had some concerns about a few things and we are going to adjust a little bit. And that way we can move forward and see how those work. So as you know, you're with different people tonight. That was one thing. We heard that you wanted to meet other people and talk with other people at your table. And so we're happy to do that. We will also move you meeting three and meeting four. So be ready just to meet everybody in this room and get to know them. And that's important. And I'm glad that we're doing that. The questions that are asked at the tables during the question time, we are going to record those and add those to the parking lot document because some people want those in writing. So when you get your parking lot tomorrow evening with your summary email, the questions that were asked at the table and the answers will be added. And some of this is also good for you for when you have people ask you questions, you can go back to those documents and refer to them. And then finally, we had a few people say, you know, I'd like to have some open dialogue. And I agree. I know that that's important in this room. As you can see from our agenda, we have a good amount of content to get through. So in order to make sure we get through that content, the way we're going to do our open dialogue is this. At 8 o'clock, Susie's going to formally close the meeting or Kevin, one of them is going to do it. Okay. And we're going to take a five-minute break. And so if you want to stay after that, you are more than welcome to stay in the room. That's the time where we're going to have some open dialogue. We're going to allow our presenters to be asked more questions. And we will do that till 8.30. And so if that is not a choice of yours to stay during that extra 25 minutes, you don't have to. But it may be that you want to do that tonight. But at the next meeting, you don't feel like it's necessary. We're going to do that for the rest of the time that we're together. So it is an option for you if that is something that you need to do. And we're happy to do that and make sure you get all of your questions answered. We'll still have our parking lot. So for some reason you can't stay and you want to put your question on the post-it note and hand it to your table facilitator, they will still be able to hand those to me so I can add them to the document. And finally, when we do question and answer like we did last time, it doesn't necessarily need to be the table facilitator who asks the question. So if you are asking a question and your table decides that that's one of the questions they want asked and you want to ask it instead of the facilitator, happy to do that. Maybe that way it's translated a little better since it was the question that you came up with. Those are great things that we want to do for you and make the modifications because we want this to be a good experience for everyone. So as you can see tonight, we have our demographic presentation. We are doing our facility condition assessments on four facilities, our South Branch Library, our senior center, and our fire station five and six. You know this information, that's me. You have your charter. We went through this already at meeting one. And remember, we don't take breaks. So if you need a break, go take it. Everything you need there is in front of you. And we have a lot of people in this room that are going to be circulating during table talk time to answer any questions that you may have. The big thing on this tonight is we just need to respect the people that are speaking. During those presentations, please hold your questions. Let's let them get through everything. There's a lot of good content tonight, but we want to make sure that we get through it. So don't interrupt with questions. We'll wait and go through what we do with our table talk and our Q&A time. And here we are, meeting two. And before we know it, we'll be at meeting six. But as you can see, the next few meetings really are about all the facilities that will be talked about in this room. And then our great tour that's coming up, if you haven't RSVP'd for that tour, we have about 14 people who have. So I'm hoping out of 40 that we can get some more people on that list. So if you're available that morning and can come, we want you to participate. If you have to leave early, you're more than welcome to follow us in your car. I know sometimes that happens that you have obligations that you can't go the whole time. So if whatever modifications need to be made, we can do those for you and make sure that as many people can go on those tours as possible. Now, one thing I do want to talk about is this slide before I turn it over to our first presenter. I don't want anyone in this room to think that you have to vote yes on everything, because that's what this might make you feel that you have to do. This is just an example of how people come to gradients of agreement. A lot of us work in silos in our normal jobs, and we don't collaborate with others. And so when I showed this slide last week, I showed it so you would understand that not everybody in the room is going to get everything they want, but everybody is going to get something, and it's because we are working across the table with our table mates. And so at no time in this room would I want you to vote yes on something. When we get to that point, which is a few meetings away, I would never want you to vote yes on something that you had reservations about. You have a yes or a no vote in this room when we get to that point. So I just want to reiterate that, and we will dive deeper into that as we get to that point in our meeting process, which is meeting five and six, okay? So at this time, and I'm not going to go through all of that, and I am going to turn it over to our first presenter, Scott McDonald, and he is going to talk to us about our demographics in the city of Denton. Thank you. Do I need this in the back of the room? Yes, you do. Okay, I just don't want to be hollering at everybody. So thank you. My name is Scott McDonald. I'm the director of development services for the city of Denton. I'm honored to be here this evening. I'm going to tell some of you probably some of what you know, and some of you I'm going to tell some things that you may not know. A little bit about Denton, our current population, at least with the 2021 census, is 148,000 people. We make up a landmass of nearly 100 miles, square miles. We have an extraterritorial jurisdiction of five miles, which equates to about 168 square miles more of territory. That does affect our community. It's important to note Denton is keenly located at the tip of the Golden Triangle, where Dallas, Fort Worth, and I-35 intersects to the north. It provides for a lot of value for people that are looking to come to our community for a variety of reasons, and I'll talk a little bit about that. Of course, I-35 being that road that runs from north to south, from Mexico to nearly to Canada. Ultimately, what we look at from our comp plan, when we did our comp plan just in the last couple of years, we forecasted to go from where we're at today at that 148,000 to 230,000. It's a pretty phenomenal number, and if you look at the graph, you can kind of see where we were in 2010 at 113,000. To say we're 2040, we're at 230,000. We're experiencing incredibly rapid growth. We're experiencing growth that we really didn't expect when we walked through the comp plan. In the next 20 years, our population is expected to grow by 80,000, and quite honestly could be closer to 100,000 based on the latest numbers. The numbers that come out of the North Central Texas Councils of Governments show that the city of Denton is getting an additional 13 people per day. 13 people per day moving into the city of Denton. I want you just to kind of distill that for just a minute. Denton County is seeing 64 people per day. That's a phenomenal number when you think in terms of all we have to provide services for, what we have to do, and what our infrastructure has. That's not necessarily taking into account the 56,000 college students in our community today, that enrollment. It does translate, you know, our valuations continue to go up. Our sales tax collections continue to go up. We're fortunate, even through COVID, to see those increases and to maintain where we're at, and Denton is the place that people want to come to. We're feeling, like many of the North Texas communities, the development pressures. So where we're at, you know, as far as just our census data, at a national level, we are the 14th largest numerical increase in the entire United States, 2020 to 2021. 14th largest in the United States. Denton County ranks as the fourth in the top 10 of counties in the United States from 2021 to 2022. Think about it. Huge growth, unprecedented growth, and it just continues to happen. We've been seeing it here in development services as we're getting our pre-application, pre-construction meetings. Simple graph on your left just shows from 2019 to 2020, 2021, those numbers continue to go up. The number of permits that are issued continue to go up. The development project activity continues to go up. Had some lull in 2020, like everybody else did, but very minimal, and then that reflects in some of the construction values that happened in 2021. But overall, all of the numbers are continuing to go up exponentially. That also translates into why you're here this evening and the work that you're doing as far as the bonds and like the private sector, the public sector. And by the way, I added this slide late and I apologize for that. But as I was just kind of going through this in my head, the development pressures I live with every single day, I don't necessarily live with what has to happen as far as from the infrastructure side of it. But I do have to -- all of this affects the work that we do in development services. But it just made sense to me to understand, or at least to be able to articulate, and you're going to get greater detail on this, I'm sure. But to understand how it is that the private sector is impacting the work that we do and what happens with what is occurring from our municipal side and many municipal sides is construction project fatigue. And currently, from the previous bonds, we have 30-plus projects, $335 million worth of projects on the street being worked on. So a small percentage of that, and you may have heard some of these numbers, 8 percent of that funding is remaining from the 2014 bond, which should be completed this year. 40 percent of it is from the 2019 bond, which is estimated to be completed in 2026. So, you know, certainly the goal is to get those closed out before we start with additional. You know, so with the projects that we have currently underway, we're experiencing much of what the development community is experiencing, is the number of contractors. We compete with TxDOT, the county, and all of the significant projects that are occurring that many of you are not even seeing that TxDOT's got on the books for Outer Loop 428, the bypass for 380, let alone all of the 35 expansions, both east, west, and north. So we feel that when it comes to our capital projects and how it is we're doing our roadway construction, and it really, it turns into the market conditions that we have today. We're experiencing the number of respondents to our bids is really questionable, not necessarily getting those responses. And so it just kind of gives us more of that focus to take it to our quality of life and our aging buildings. So looking at our vertical construction, less of that horizontal, because Lord knows we have plenty of work to complete from here to 2026, and then we can refocus back on that roadway. But we have to make sure that we have adequate facilities to take care of the services that we have to provide for, again, all of the new residents that we're going to see. One other piece that I want to kind of bring into the fold, because it all matters when we talk about Denton, the city of Denton, and the impacts to our infrastructure and the impact to our facilities, is that of municipal utility districts. I'll keep this very brief. Many of you may not be familiar with them. They are a taxing entity. They're able to build in the county. It goes through a state process. The map, which is somewhat small, has some shaded out little lines in different colors. Those are municipal utility districts, and there are currently 12 of them within our extraterritorial jurisdiction. It has a direct impact on our infrastructure. What that boils down to is that we have 6,900 acres of subdivisions that are proposed to be built. That 6,900 acres translates into roughly 120,000 residents that build out. That's 122,000 people. In our ETJ today, we have about 90,000, 95,000. So we're going to have that many more. We don't know how many more lane miles, but we can look at what we have for additional vehicles per household, which is approximately two for another 76,000. Ultimate trips per household and trips per day increase exponentially. That comes into our roadway network. Solid waste considerations for us. We've got 50 pounds of bulk waste that have to be picked up, or 50,000 tons. Where's it going to go? How's that going to happen? And it's on our roads again. Public safety concerns. When we talk about fire, emergency services, 6,900 acres, and what that translates into for calls per year at 9,200 calls per year, 25 calls per day, somebody's got to make those calls. So just need to know or recognize that that ties into everything that we're trying to do as a municipality and how it is that the growth that we see within our corporate limits, but the county impacts what we're doing. Thank you. Great. Okay, let's take about six or seven minutes to talk at our table to come up with some questions and I'll let you know when we get about two minutes remaining. Mr. Chair. This time I move that the committee adopt the standing rule that all question and answer be conducted by the entire room in an open forum moderated by the chair, and I speak to the motion if it receives a second. Can I ask a question? Can we even have a legal representative here? In terms of what's posted for our agenda, or even what the charges for the committee is rethinking the process, rethinking the way this is laid out something that's a charge for the committee to do, which seems to be but. I didn't hear the whole motion motion. My motion is procedural in nature. That's regardless of posting, which I'll mention in the discussion just repeat it sure discussion is in the post. My, my motion is the committee adopt a standing rule. I'll stand for the motion. My emotions at the committee adopt a standing rule that all question answer be conducted in an open forum format with the whole room moderated by the chair. And that's all going forward to speak to the motion if it receives a second, which I think it did. Say discussion agenda there. Okay. Okay, so I do think it is a procedural. I don't need to address the chair. It's a procedural motion in order. So, yes. I guess I guess my question is, is, I think the city council laid out a certain procedure and process for this committee via the charge. Is it within the charge of the committee to rethink that or is this a city council question as to how they prefer us to conduct the meetings. Respectfully point of order, Mr. There's a motion in a second. I can take that up and my speaking to the motion if you like. There's a motion on the floor. It's received a second. I'm asking for some legal counsel. I don't think that a second has been recognized yet. Because the chair has not recognized it. My question is. Okay. So was there a second on that motion from someone. Right. Okay. Mindy there's a second. Again, it's been a while since I've shared a meeting with the Roberts rules of order. Do we just call for a vote at that point or is there time for discussion. Thank you. Any discussion, Tim. I think Jesse wanted to speak to it first and then I'd like to speak to it. Okay, Jesse. I'm supposed to use a mic. I'll be very brief. Y'all know that I was part of the city council that voted on this charge. There's nothing in the charge that says how these meetings are to be conducted. We've hired the city has hired a very able facilitator to conduct the meetings. But these are our meetings. This is our committee. It's not the city councils. They created it. They point and shoot for them. We produce a result at the end that will give them guidance on what they do next. But it's our committee. It's respectfully not Dr. Johnson's committee. This is a worthy process for certain things. But when you're talking about the amount of money that we're talking about and you're talking about the sheer talent we have in this room. Respectfully, as much as I like the folks at my table and as much as the shaking things up at the tables might help, we're going to hear about libraries today. We're going to have a great presentation about libraries from staff. But I want to hear every single question that Eva Poole has, every single one about libraries. When we talk about a senior center, I want to hear every single question and the answers that Leni McAdams has about senior centers because she's the one that got it in our charge. When we talk about affordable housing, we've got Gary Henderson in the room. Sorry, Gary. I want to hear every single question he has as the person most operating in that space about affordable housing, and I want to hear every single answer. The way that we're doing it now is fine. It's fine. Its goal is to move us forward and get us out of here by 8 o'clock. Laudable. But a little discussion time after 8 o'clock doesn't give me Ms. Poole's answers or Leni's answers or Gary's answers. A little discussion afterwards is not what we're here to do. We're here to get into this, and we're not going to do that in the way that Denton expects of us in table groups, submitting one question at a time. As good as our facilitators are, no offense to y'all, that's not going to get the job done. And I'm sorry if that doesn't get us out by 8 o'clock. That's not why I'm on the committee. I hope that's not why you're on the committee. I hope you're on the committee to give the City Council good, solid recommendation that every one of us can be proud to vote for in the end. I think Tim wanted to speak next. So, I appreciate where Jesse's coming from. I've done a lot of these bonds through the years. But there are lots of different ways of getting these things done. There is a process that was set up, and I saw this process on the school bond, and it works, and you get the answers that you're looking for. It also gives people who are perhaps not willing to stand up and ask their question because they're afraid to, in front of a large group, the opportunity in the small group setting to ask those kinds of questions that then get put into the parking lot. The information gets put into places that you can receive it. This process works, and I would want to suggest to you that we need to trust the process and move forward with the process that was laid out in front of us. And it will enable us to get done, I don't mean by eight o'clock, but I mean by August, whatever that date is. In reality, I think if we don't do that, it's not about the eight o'clock. It's about how many more meetings do you want to add, because it will require more meetings. Mr. Lewis? Good evening. I was not here at the last meeting, my first meeting, and I've been, as a former superintendent of schools, I've been a part of many bonded meetings and things like that. I think if we ask the questions, if we write the questions down or you talk at your table, and then every question that she announced earlier was going to be recorded, and every answer was going to be given. So we may have to do a little homework at home to understand the answers to every question, and I think there should be a piece added. If you read the answers to the questions and you still have questions, you can resubmit for questions to get additional written answers. But I don't want to hear ten questions from one person. I don't. And that's just my opinion. So if you're an expert on that, okay, great. But let's hear some questions from somebody else that's not an expert that may have a question. I think the best way to do that is we can write the questions down, you can talk about them at your table, they're going to be recorded. Then we can get those answers in our parking lot binders, and then we can ask additional questions and have those answers before we come back. It's the same way do we do in council meetings, the same way we do in school board meetings, those kinds of things. And I think that process works. Q&A has an evolution. Somebody asks a question, there's an answer. It triggers another question from somebody else. And out of that is where you really get the information you need. This single question, single answer, single question, single answer is not the way to derive the kind of information we need to make recommendations here. Also, the post meeting with staff, if there are more than 15 people there, that is probably a TOMA violation. And while this committee does have some flexibility outside of what boards and commissions and committees that are permanent committees or semi-permanent, this is not one of them. This is a special committee, but it is still bound by TOMA. So I think we need to rethink that and move the open part of that where we can freely ask staff questions and hear each other. And Jesse's right about the experience in the room. We've got bank president, bank vice president, we've got four or five, four past city council members here. We have people with business experience. There's a lot of experience that's relative to this. And part of our charge is how the items on this bond package are going to interrelate with what's already in the community. And these are community voices here. It is our committee. And we need to make the most of it while we can. Ms. Lenny, I think you have your hand up. I think it was a very simple question as to whether or not we wanted to hear all the questions that were asked. And I do. I want to hear whatever people are saying. And I think we've already wasted enough time with this discussion. We could have already gone through two or three questions. So I move that the discussion cease and we vote. Any other discussion? Others can have comments here. Call for the question. So restate your motion. The original motion? No, the new one. You're saying she wasn't making a motion. She was calling the question. Got it. Any other discussion? Then let's take a vote and let's do it by hand so that we can count in case it's close. Restate the motion, please, Mr. Davis. The committee adopted a standing rule. Point of order. I think that you do have to vote according to Robert's rules on the motion to call the question. And if that's approved, then you would vote on the motion. All right. Let's do it. All those in favor? Okay. So there's apparently three folks in here, and you probably know who you are, who've been appointed by council but not yet confirmed by the full council. And just to be clear, if you're one of those three, you cannot vote yet until you're confirmed. Thank you. So let's vote on calling the question. All those in favor, raise your hand. All those opposed? So let's move to the original motion. Mr. Davis, can you please restate that for everyone's benefit? The motion was that the committee adopt a standing rule that all question and answer be conducted in an open forum for the whole room moderated by the chair. Can I ask a clarifying question on the motion? All those in favor of the motion, please raise your right hand. I think we need to get a count. Keep your hands up, please. All those opposed? All right. Here we go. Let's have some questions. I think it's appropriate after each discussion, I think we're going to have to time box this a little bit as well, and I'll take discretion of that as the chair to make sure we stay on task and move forward. So questions anyone has about this first presentation that they'd like to ask Tim? I have a question on the 122 potential homes. I assume that means apartments and single family homes, but what's the timing for that? When will those 122,000 be online? We can only estimate probably 30 years. Any other questions? Yeah, I just had a question about this section that says on the slide about the municipal utility districts background lack of annexation rights area is ripe limited authority. What is that in reference to? What is our limited authority? Is that just for the infrastructure? Municipal utility districts, sorry, MUDs, as they're commonly known, is a product of the state. So there's a couple avenues to go. They are building in the county, the city does not have authority in the county. So the limited authority is that the city has very little opportunity to influence that development, unless the developer chooses to get into a developer's agreement with the city. So, for example, if we could provide water service to them, they would pay for that at their expense. We would get into an agreement. We may have some influence to provide fire protection services. We may charge an additional fee. But beyond that, a MUD has the ability to build or to develop without the city's authority. And just a note, because we want to preserve one of the benefits of the process, some of you guys may, as Tim referenced, may feel timid about asking a question in a large group. Each facilitator at the table has some sticky notes and some other ways for you to be able to write down a question. We can either take that question and ask it ourselves, or we can just save it for the parking lot for future. So please write questions, even if you don't feel free, or for whatever reason, want to just add some additional ones. Do we have another question? Sir? So my question is, what is, within the ETJ, what is the city's, what is the city committed, what services is the city committed to provide? That's a little trickier. I'm going to give you a short answer. The city's not required to provide any services as of today. However, there's a caveat that there is some interlocal agreements that we have with the county as far as some of the services we provide to Platting. And then the fire department, there is agreements between the fire departments on how they provide coverage to each other. But beyond that, we have no obligation to provide water, sewer, roadway, or your typical bonded infrastructure. Any more questions over here? Of all the municipality districts, especially, sorry, the MUDs, let's go there. Of 122,000, I think it was, obviously some of those will be annexed at some point, or that would be the goal of a lot of those. When you look at those numbers, do you look at that as them staying in those special utility districts, separate and apart, and not being annexed, or staying in the ETJ? They are treated as-- Can we get Mr. McDonald, is there another mic we can just give him? 122,000 people is what is forecasted. They are in their own taxing entity, and we do not intend necessarily that they would be annexed in. The city has very little authority or ability to annex someone unless they voluntarily annex, which could be done through an agreement, not necessarily anticipating that. Yes, one of the slides you spoke a little bit about the permits that have been issued and the trends that you're seeing there, I think it would be helpful for us to understand what we're seeing in terms of single-family versus multi-family, owner versus renter-occupied, and then have an idea of our aging housing stock that we have currently versus new construction, because we will be having some conversations in future weeks around affordable housing. And I think that could help frame some of that conversation later on if we have some of that data to look at moving forward, if that's something that your staff would be able to supplement the conversation with. Absolutely can produce all of that. Very weary handing you a mic, but I will. I used to love taking the mic from Councilmember Rhoad and I got to do it again today. It's been a while. So I just wanted to make a statement because some of us may not be that close to it. So we use the phrase ETJ or exterritorial jurisdiction, which forever meant the city could go annex it because it was in their ETJ, which we don't have the power to do anymore. I'm sorry to interrupt you, but this is the question answer time. Yes, ma'am, I'm going to ask a question. Okay, let's do that. Thank you. So, so Scott, would you please explain for everybody, because as we're making our decisions, right, if we're assuming that all of that ETJ is going to become part of the city, that might lead us to one decision. Could you explain, like, is there any thinking on your part, y'all's part in terms of what percentage of that you think becomes part of the city and we have to provide services. Any thoughts on that. Yes. So the extra territorial jurisdiction was created by the legislature. The intent of that was to help for cities or municipalities to be able to have some protections or be able to have some sort of conditions as the county developed to something that the city may annex at a later date. Subsequently, recent legislatures have taken most of the annexation authority away from local government, they're taking all of the tools that local government has away. So it's, it's ultimately, it's not likely the city will annex a great deal of land, unless it's a voluntary annexation. I will tell you along 380 I think the likelihood is greater that some of that could be annexed into the city. When we talk about the hundred and seven square mile or the hundred and 68, 168 square miles of ETJ, a lot of that will not annex into the city of the 6900 acres of muds that are currently under development. It's not likely that half of those would annex into the city. The other half, I don't, I don't know and I can't speculate. And if that were the case, it would be 20 and 30 years down the road it wouldn't be anything that would be immediate or they'd be annexing today. Let's look for two more questions and wrap up this community section. One of the things you talked about was the hundred and 20,000 people, can you speak to the drivers for that. And also can you speak to. If I'm not mistaken, the, the growth in didn't was outpacing the county, the city of them was outpacing the county so if you could speak to, or maybe your own opinion about why that is. I'm sorry, the first part of the question was the drivers to the hundred and. >> Drivers to the growth, like what are the drivers, right? >> Okay, so yeah, absolutely. So the drivers I think are Denton County. Denton County is experiencing incredible growth and Denton County is growing faster than the city of Denton is. So the county development is that it's easier for developers to develop in the county because they're not having to pay all of the fees or they don't have the requirements that the city imposes. So as we make development in the city of Denton pay for development, I can build on the other side of the line and I can save that much more money. That's the bottom line. >> One more question if we got it, Ms. Hayworth. >> While we're talking about growth and especially in Denton County, I have heard Andy Eads over the last three years keep talking about 82 people a day, 82 people a day and yet here I'm looking at 64 people a day. And to me that is not rapid growth, it's slowing down. Can you address that? >> And I wish I could, I cannot. So I don't know what number he was using. I will tell you I'm at least getting this from North Central Texas Council of Governments and that was last year's number. So if it was the previous year or five years ago, I don't know that. >> It was probably two years ago. It was 82 and if it's down to 64, that tells me something. >> Well, and I'll tell you for us here in Denton, the city of proper, we're experiencing the growth continues, so it's not slowing. >> But it's all residential, right? Can you describe the kinds of growth that we're seeing? >> We're seeing growth in every category. You'll see on the west side, you'll see the industrial growth, the commercial growth. I can, of course, provide along with some of the breakdown on what those residential looks like. We can also provide some of the commercial. But it's in all sectors. It's not just residential, but it's largely residential as far as just the number of permits, et cetera. >> Do we have any major economic development programs in the pipeline? >> I don't know what the definition of major is, but there are several that are very good, yes. >> Okay, so at this time, we are going to turn the presentation over to Mr. Tom Grammer and he is going to set us up for our facility assessment presentations from our different folks that are going to be doing that. He's just going to give us an intro and some overview. >> Hi, everyone. My name is Tom Grammer, the director of the Facilities Conditions Center. I'm going to go over and I'm going to explain what the Facilities Conditions Center is doing. >> Testing. Trying again. All right. Got it. Thank you. So I'm going to go over and explain what a facilities condition assessment is and the last one we did for the city and the buildings that are proposed here on the bond and what that means to us. So our condition overview has three criterias. As you can see on the right-hand side with the triangle, we're looking at the FCA, which is the condition assessment of the infrastructure of each facility. Then we have the ADA challenges through the assessment that was provided and adopted in 2022. And then the suitability and operability of each space. So I want to note that all three of these are the criteria that give us an index score. They're compounding results. So just because you see a good condition score does not necessarily mean that that building is in good operating condition for the program that is in it and vice versa. If you see a poor index score, the operation may be sufficient, but their space is damaged or needs repair. So here the condition assessment was completed in 2022 and it provides us an accurate resource allocation for maintenance needs. The FCA identifies infrastructure condition of all of our occupied facilities in the city and how that happens is they go through and they determine what the maintenance cost is in relation to what the building is going to cost to rebuild. At a certain point, you lose the ability to invest in that building because all you're doing is putting in good money into a bad building. That results in a loss of ROI, which we'll explain here shortly. In the condition, they look at the infrastructure, the roof, the interiors, plumbing finishings, all the stuff that you would leave in a building if you were to move. That's what the infrastructure portion is. From our condition assessment, we identified the immediate needs, City Hall, Fire Station 5 and 6, the Senior Center, South Branch Library, the Animal Shelter, and City Hall West. The index score is what we just described being the cost of maintenance in relation to what the building is worth, and eventually you do not want to invest a high amount of dollars into a building that you would use the same money to rebuild, essentially. So if you have a vehicle that's very old, you don't want to put a new motor in an old vehicle that's just going to break down again tomorrow. At the bottom here, you'll notice our index score of 0 to 5%, up to 10% is occupied and operational. That's a well-maintained building. What you're sitting in sits at 0 to 5%. We can see the finishes are well, the HVAC is working, everybody's cool and comfortable. When you start getting into the 20 to 30% of the conditions where we see some routine failures of the infrastructure, we want to begin planning and determine if we're going to keep that building where it is and what it's for, or if we're going to build a new building, which is built to purpose, which is preferred. Once you start getting in the condition of 40 to 50%, any money that you put into that maintenance of the building is basically a loss of investment because that building should be renewed, renovated, or rehabbed. So as you put money into there, two years down the road, that building is going to be in the 60 to 80% range where you cannot live in it anymore. So if you put a new HVAC unit in a building that's sitting at that 40%, well in two years that $10,000 investment means nothing because you put it in there and now nobody's occupying that building because it becomes unsafe and too dilapidated to occupy any program of it. And then we have our ADA assessment. On January 11, 2022, City Council adopted our ADA transition plan. The Americans with Disabilities Act titles 1 and 2 ensures that we have equal access for all of our disabled citizens to all government buildings that provide access. Yes, absolutely. We found that in all of our buildings that are proposed on this bond, we have 64 high, 33 medium, and 119 low conditions that need to be addressed in these buildings to ensure that our disabled citizens have access. These are identified in our 30-year plan. However, if we were able to get these approved on the bond, we would be able to move that timeline up greatly. So citizens that are disabled where this is identified in the 30 years, if we got this done, all these ADA challenges would be addressed in the new build, and we could move that transition plan up ahead and meet or beat the objectives set forth by the adopted transition plan. Any questions? All right, so we weren't scheduled to have a discussion until after, but I'll open up floor because technically this is posted as having a discussion. So if we want to ask questions relating to the presentation, and I have the first one. I know this was a background generally about how we assess buildings. I'm imagining at some point there's a report that will be provided to the committee as to all the particular projects and questions as to how they rank on this assessment. Every building that was completed in the FCA has a detailed report over the next 10 years and identifies at what point in what year things need to be repaired and fixed and at cost. So is there a part of the process that we'll be getting that report in the parking lot after this meeting as a follow up? Okay, perfect. Any questions about this particular presentation? Yeah, I have a question. Is it city employees that assess these buildings or is this independent contractors that come in and assess the level of the status of the buildings? It was a consultant independent contractor that came out to do that. Do the assessments account for historical significance of the buildings like City Hall West or City Hall Main? No they do not. What they do is they account for the infrastructure. If it needs to be repaired, we then we take historical preservation to account that when we're replacing light for light that we're meeting expectations of the historic preservation team. Ms. Price. Can you speak to what the scope is when you talk about a building no longer being inhabitable as in like if City Hall, I understand that it may have some sort of historical designation but if it's uninhabitable are we then just moving everybody out into a different building, building a new building or is it going to get torn down? Yeah well we would hope not to tear it down right. All depends on if you want to use City Hall as a great example. That building, it needs a lot of renovation work and the operability of it is not sufficient and you can note in there are a lot of ADA challenges that come with it. So that building specifically we would not tear down but we would need to repurpose it or provide another location for all staff members. Two more questions on this one. How many buildings does the City of Denton own that's part of this FCI? So we own 206 buildings. We own 206 buildings. So we own 206 buildings however there's only 57 occupied spaces. The rest are fall into tier two buildings which are non-operational day-to-day and then tier three which are storage buildings. How do we make the decisions on what buildings we are going to put into repair? Do you have all of these buildings like in some kind of matrix and as they start to get into the red zone that's when we start considering them? Actually if we could go back one that's a great question. So we have all 57, 64 or so buildings. We picked up a few on the way identified but we do not want to wait until the red zone to make this determination. We want to make sure that we're planning at what would be the end of life cycle of a building and that is all dependent on what the building was built for. So out of all of the buildings that were assessed there is a score associated to each over that 10-year plan and is able to identify when we should start that planning phase. Some of these buildings that you note in the score are already in the almost not occupiable space and/or any money we put into them currently is wasted because we're a little short on planning here. We want to plan at the 20% not at the 80% or 90%. All right, Dr. Johnson, what's next? You have my agenda. Library, South Branch Library. All right, so next up is Jennifer Becker. She's coming up to talk about the libraries. Hello, my name is Jennifer Becker. I'm the director of libraries and I'm here to talk to you about South Branch Library. South Branch Library was built in 1995 as a 10,000 square foot facility. When it was originally built there was nothing out there. It's hard to imagine but imagine driving down Teasley and it was just fields. It was expanded in 2009 and so is just shy of 22,000 square feet today. It serves a service area which we call our service areas. It's a 2.5 mile radius from the location of the building. The service area is just shy of 30,000 households and a little over 75,000 individuals living in those households. The collection size is 71,775 items. Our collection is very, our shelves are very full and it has a staff of 12 FTEs. These are our performance measures from last year and I do want to point out that these performance measures, we are still recovering from COVID. We anticipate these numbers to go up further. So these numbers are just for South Branch alone. We have over 100,000 people visited last year. We anticipate around 150,000 visits this fiscal year. Almost 170,000 items were checked out last year. South Branch comprises 40% of our circulation within the library system. It is small but mighty. It is very busy. Over 7500 computer sessions and almost 10,000 Wi-Fi logins from people bringing in their own devices. Our staff at South Branch answered almost 25,000 questions, everything from where do I find this item to I'm trying to research my family history. We have a brief video. The South Branch Library, built in 1995, and now struggling to meet the demands of Denton's rapid growth. While expanded in 2009 to more than 21,000 square feet, the South Branch Library falls short and adequate space for shelving to house collections, public meeting rooms and children's interactive play space. While truly inspiring imagination, programs and events at the South Branch have the highest attendance of all Denton Libraries. With more than 21,000 square feet, the South Branch Library had 94,600 checkouts. With almost 23,000 square feet, Emily Fowler had 37,000 checkouts. And with 33,000 square feet, the North Branch had 95,000 checkouts. [Music] So we do face some challenges at South Branch. I mentioned that we are small but mighty. One of our challenges is there's only one meeting space. Our program room is used for library in-house programs, which South Branch has the highest attendance of all the locations, as you heard in the video. It is also used for voting, which during voting season, that can take that room out of commission for anywhere from five to 12 months, depending if we have a year of a lot of runoffs. That includes early voting as well as election day. It is also used by the general public. Anybody can rent that room. It is free to use. You can just fill out a reservation form and use that for your HOA meeting or your Girl Scouts meeting. The collection space is at capacity. I mentioned those shelves are very full. You can see in these photos, it is just end-to-end materials. Best practices for library shelving is to have the shelf filled at 50%, but no more than two-thirds full, so that we have space to ship those collections as new items come in and that we can also display materials. There is no storage at South Branch. What I'm showing you here in the back part of that photo is a little bit of storage, and the front part is now a staff station. So I have a staff member working in a closet. There is just no space in that facility. The youth area is very popular. We have an interactive play area that inspires imagination, collaboration, so developing those social skills as well as fine and gross motor skills, and this area, whenever there is voting or the meeting room is out of commission, this is where our story times are. Our average story time is around 50 to 60 attendees. During the summer, it goes up to over 75, so it's not a lot of space for 75 people to hang out. This is our workstation for the reference area. It was originally built for three staff members. It has seven staff members stationed in there. I mentioned there is no storage. Please look at all of the lovely things hanging on the walls and the pillars. It is also the home of the staff restroom, which is super awkward. It is the door in the right corner there, so everybody knows your business. One of our other challenges at South Branch is there is a lack of outdoor space. We love to do outdoor programming, and sometimes we do really messy programs that have to be outdoors. When that happens, we have to shut down parts of the parking lot, which affects who can come to the programs. So if you don't have a lot of parking, then you have issues with how can people attend. It's also an attractive feature to do your programming in a parking lot, so we are always interested in opportunities for outdoor programming space. The location has developed all around South Branch. I mentioned when it first opened, it was just fields. There was development planned, and that development has come in. So it is hard to see if you're driving up Teasley, and if you are trying to make a left to enter the South Branch parking lot, good luck to you. If you are leaving, you will only turn right and just eventually hope to make a U-turn somewhere. So the location is a little challenging. I mentioned there's not really outdoor space. The only green space is actually a drainage area that faces Teasley, and the last thing we want are the toddlers running free out there. Study room demand is unfulfilled. We have our study rooms. There are three study rooms at this location. They are very popular. They have counters built in, so they seat two. There are two extra chairs in there for people who really want to crowd in. They are used all the time, whether it's individuals who are studying or doing businesses or business or groups who are trying to meet and need some quiet. We have a lot of turnaways each and every day for people. We just can't accommodate the need there. We recently updated our strategic plan, and so we did a survey as well as community meetings, and the feedback that we got over and over and over for our facilities were more space. We heard comments such as, "You just need generally more space," as well as, "I would like space for cozy reading nooks. I want to make sure that there's a separate children's area, a separate teen area so my teenager is comfortable and not annoying others or being annoyed by others." We need a quiet space for adults to read or study without hearing the kids during the playtime. So specific spaces, but more spaces. More classes and events. This is a request we get all the time. We would love to do more classes and events. We have no space for that at South Branch, and I have no space for additional staff to perform that. You saw that workroom. It is tight. We also get a lot of requests for expanded hours. South Branch is open seven days a week, 61 hours a week. It is the branch with the lowest number of hours of service, and partially it's because we don't have space for additional staffing. Then I would have to ask for funding for staffing, but we don't have space for that anyway. We get a lot of requests for makerspace. If you have been to North Branch, we love the Forge Makerspace. It is wonderful. We have 3D printing. We have laser engravers. We have a Cricut machine, sewing machines, all sorts of cool stuff, and it is hopping. It is so popular. At Emily Fowler, we have the Legacy Lab. You can bring in your photos, documents, digitize those. You can bring in the old wedding video and watch it and convert it to digital. There is no space for anything like that at South Branch right now, and that is a very popular service that we offer and that we get a lot of feedback. We want this at South Branch. Probably, aside from the space, the next most popular request we get for South Branch is, "Why don't you have a drive-up book drop?" When it's raining, when you have young children that have to be buckled in and out of their car seat, you want a drive-up book drop. You also want a drive-through window for service. Those are some of the public feedback pieces that we got during our strategic plan planning, as well as just the general anecdotal comments that we get on a daily basis at our libraries. All of this was about our services and operation. This is a little bit of what Tom was talking about, our assessment, our facility condition. The facility is actually so-so. It's okay. Our major issue is that it does not meet the service demand or the operational needs for us to succeed as a department. Those are some of our major issues. This is the ADA assessment. We've got some issues in the parking lot, you can see. We do have some, I promise. I will send out the correct slide, I apologize. That is pretty much all about South Branch. Excellent. Okay, and I'm sure we will have questions and start here in the back if there's a mic that we can bring to the back and Dr. Johnson will help field some of those. All right. Looking at your facility assessment, you've got the 10-year when it hits into 24%. I can totally understand the need for space. I'm going to throw out a crazy idea. We figure out rather than spending $42 million, which was what was requested, to build a new facility, there's space that I understand used to be a May company at the Loop 288 in the Gold Triangle Mall. Has anyone considered that the council, the staff, check in with said facility, meaning the mall, and whether or not that could be utilized? I know of a couple of other cities that have got libraries in their malls. Great questions. Thank you. We did look at that came up when we were doing our facility master plan in 2019, and that was a discussion that we had with our consultant also, and in those public meetings. What we found was the size that we needed and the desire particularly for green space and integrating that if possible with parks and trails, so it's a connector piece, was of a higher need. As we were looking at location, we looked at the philosophy of what we were looking to do with Denton Public Library System and where we were going to serve people, and we looked at doing regional-sized libraries that would serve three separate areas in the community. Denton is trisected by 35, so 35 comes up and then there's a pie wedge down. So we've got North Branch towards the top, and then we've got South Branch, which would serve that pie where 35 splits. And we were looking for a regional-sized library that would fit down there that would actually move a little bit south and west from the current South Branch location. Moving it further back up to the mall means that we are squishing in our library locations again and making it more challenging for those community members who live in Robeson Ranch or the bottom part of that 35 pie slice to get to the location. So we were looking at location and future planning to serve the whole of Denton as it's growing, and that's why we were looking at a standalone facility. Any other questions? Sir? Yeah, I have a question. I live in that area, Denton, and you said multiple times about how wide open that area was. It seems like the city is causing its own problems when there was nothing out there. I've been here 30 years and I agree with you. Why did the city not get access to the road and why did the city not buy more land that was undeveloped so that a lot of these expansions could take place and not talk about all the constrictions that we have now? I'm going to say that that's kind of outside the scope of the discussion here. The question and answer that the motion was to address are questions and answers on what's presented and decisions that were made 30 years ago in the past are not part of that. I think it would be helpful maybe to address that in a backup question, just if there's any color that can be shed, because it's a question that other citizens might have as they're reflecting on these things. Thanks for that. Sir? So is there like a library rating system or anything we can kind of talk about that kind of we could say kind of like we did tax rate or anything else like our libraries are a three and you know we want to get to a four or you know what I mean, just some color to that so we can kind of see as we make decisions. You know this getting technology or whatever gets you to this or you know this space gets you that it might help us with making decisions later. There is not a national or state standard like that. We do have some state qualifications for accreditation that we meet. There is also recommendations of levels of service which is a combination from the Texas Library Association and the Texas State Library and Archives Commission. But they have different levels from exemplary to basic, and we fall fall within there so we meet the basic standards for everything but there is not an apples to apples comparison, because every library is very specific to its community, and every community is very different. So a town with two colleges would be very different from maybe a town that didn't have universities and was more rural and their needs are very different. So comparing Denton Public Library to Dallas, you can you can kind of look at well we're busy, they're busy too, but there's not a standard kind of rating or grading like that. Great question. I've got a quick question since I don't know and I'll get to you here in a sec Susie. I noticed the disparity in population served that you showed between the three different libraries. Does the library staff have a working theory as to why that's the case? Is it a geographic issue that are driving more people to South Branch? Is it a demographic issue? And is there, and as a follow up to that, is there something in your strategic plan that's hoping to funnel more traffic somehow through into the other two that that aren't seeing that sort of demand? It's rooftops. So South Branch when you look at an aerial map if you go to Google Maps, it is just a sea of rooftops. And those are all people that we serve. And it just has the highest concentration of households as compared to the 2.5 mile radius out of Emily Fowler or the 2.5 mile radius out of North Branch. It's just very residential. And that is why. Yeah, we do, you know, all of our things are Denton Public Library. We make sure that that is our branding. And so we try to make sure, hey, if you're interested in that program, you know, we offer a similar one at North Branch or we offer a similar one at Emily Fowler. So we try to make sure when people consider Denton Public Library, they're considering Denton Public Library. We are one entity. We just have three locations. My question is, do we, do you have an idea of where you would want to build a new library for South Branch? We are looking at some options. We're working with real estate right now to try to procure some land. And so it would be a little bit further, about two miles south and west from our current location. So nearby, but not too far. And I did want to also point out, I would be remiss if I didn't point this out, and it was on my front page, the fire department projects are also dependent on the South Branch project. Just making that tie in there with that synergy. Mr. Johnson, and then we'll take two more after that. Curious on this on this project, did you guys look at the possibility of expansion with nearby vacant land, meaning like buy land next to it, move the parking across the street and then add on where the existing parking is or anything like that? If we took over the parking, there would be no parking. So we are tied, the only land that we have that tiny bit of green space at South Branch is drainage. No, what I'm saying is if you acquired land that is adjacent, built parking on that land, then you could expand the building where your current parking is. Just didn't know if you guys looked at any of that. This time, all of the land, it's developed, so there's a strip shopping right next to South Branch, and then it's houses to the left, and the fire department and the school district owns the land behind. I own the land next door that's vacant, so I could help you all if you needed it. I have a question regarding, there was a comment made about thinking about the needs years ago about what we needed. Is there a future look into where, not just South Branch, but an additional library, where is that going to be? You guys probably thought about this, but as we think about, okay, do we want to spend the $43 million ask for this one? Are we thinking about where the next one is in that location and what that cost may be? Yes, when we were doing that Facilities Master Plan, that was our consideration. First, we came up with our philosophy that we were going to have regional-sized libraries, because those are cheaper to operate than having lots of tiny neighborhood libraries. So we wanted the larger facility in the regions. So we've got North Branch, we're talking about South Branch. The fourth location would be to the west of 35 in that upcoming Cole Hunter Ranch development, and there is land already set aside there, but that would be way further down the road. We have one more question. I thought there were plans for a library to be built in the park, the large park area land that is off of 377 near the vintage area. Was that no longer under consideration? Yeah, at one point there was discussion to have a smaller library, so keeping South Branch and adding an additional library. But when we were talking about that, the operational costs and the staffing costs to run two small libraries are much more than having one larger library to operate. The other challenge we have is that we would have the small South Branch and the small vintage branch, but they still would be small and they wouldn't have the space for those things that we are getting requests for, such as the maker space, things like that. So we did discuss that, but we found that the long term for operations, it would be better to have a large facility to serve that whole region between the 235s. And just as a follow up, I thought there was plenty of land where that park is to be developed that the city already owns to build whatever size facility you need. Yeah, I believe that that land is owned by the city and I think it's being used for other purposes. I just have to point out as we're closing these questions that one of the justifications used by Mr. Davis for having this format, which is working out great, by the way, was to hear from Eva Poole on all these questions about the libraries. So I'm going to give you, yes, please. If you open the new location, would you have to also increase the staff? And what about your operation and maintenance costs? And would this bond pay for those additional costs? So we would need a little bit of additional staff for the branch as well as for our back of the house service called technical services. And so, yes, we would need a few more FTEs at South Branch, but it wouldn't be double. It would just be a few more. And then we think we would need another 1.5 to 2 FTEs for technical services to order, process, catalog those materials that are coming in. Those costs would be part of the city operational costs, part of the general fund, and not part of the bond election. All right, I'm going to call it there. And Dr. Johnson, I think we got Senior Center, right? Active Adult Center. Thank you. Active Adult Center. My apologies. Okay, can everybody hear me? Good evening. My name is Gary Pack and I'm the Director of Parks and Recreation. We have some of our staff over here, Nikki, Nicole, Megan, and Fensei that may be jumping in to answer some questions during the questions and answer if there's some details. But want to talk to you about our Active Adult Center. Like Jennifer had mentioned, Teasley being undeveloped. I think when our Senior Center was built in 1977, the square was still undeveloped. But it was built in 1977, it was 5,700 square feet, expanded in 1990 to 16, a little over 16,000 square feet, and then again in 2010 to what it is today, a little over 19,000 square feet. The service area is really the entire city. We do have American Legion Senior Center that's in Fredmore Park. It's about a mile away as the crow flies, so they are really close. So that's something we'll talk about here later on in the presentation. We have about 60,000 projected visits to the Senior Center at Quaker Town Park. It is staffed with three full-time employees, a part-time employee that just retired, and about 7,500 seasonal employee hours for front desk programming, that type of thing. As Denton continues to grow, we've heard a lot of this, and trying to keep up with that growth. You can see in the chart to the right that we've recovered from COVID and we're actually growing at a good pace. So while we were shut down for that time period, people have come back, they're doing our programs, and we're bursting at the seams. The generation that's using the Senior Center is changing. And you're seeing from called Senior Centers to active adult centers, there's a brand evolution as our demographics are changing. My grandparents went to a Senior Center, but they were very passive. They would go play bingo, play games, socialize. The seniors that are using our facilities now are very active. They want to go out, they want to travel to Costa Rica. We're going all over the place. They want to go to the casino. They want to go out and kayak. They are active residents of our community. We're still going through that evolution though, so we have a few different generations. There are actually three different generations that we're planning for that our residents are using our facilities that we're trying to program for. So that makes it even more challenging. Okay, current challenges. The building itself is a physical bearer. It's been added on two, three times. There's a lot of hallway space. It's very choppy. We have some elevation changes, and it's not really serving our user groups. We have spaces that are being multitasked and multipurposed based on the program. Our wood shop is an active space. We can only allow six people in there at a time because it's so small, and we don't have any storage. In fact, we don't have storage in any of our rooms for the most part. Our art room, we'll show you some pictures, is extremely busy. We have a kiln that's actually in the closet for that program. In our fitness and gym space, we're using it for concerts, chair volleyball, but we don't have a gym, so it's multitasked space. We had a focus group during our Parks Master Plan, which was approved in 2022, and the number one complaint was parking, especially in the summertime when the Civic Center is open and the park is very active. So we have a real issue with our parking for our senior center users. And I'd mentioned earlier, we have two senior centers within a short distance in downtown. Some of the feedback that we received from the Master Plan, the focus group, our member surveys, our senior advisory committee, walking track, access to green space and trails, larger creative makerspaces. Jennifer had mentioned that as well. We're seeing that as well as at our senior center. Multipurpose soundproof room, we have bands that practice at our facility that really cause some challenges with all the noise. Dedicated event space, I mentioned earlier, dedicated gym space. Exercise room, we've had equipment in hallways because we didn't have enough space. Parking, room for growth is really a challenge, and then also our swimmers are at an auditorium during the year, lap swimming, and we're feeling the crunch there. As DISD has added high schools, they've taken more time for UIL sports, so that's reducing our flat water time for our residents. So that's a desire as well that's been provided back to staff. Potential opportunities, we had mentioned the two senior centers within one mile distance. If we looked at spreading those out, that would give us a little more coverage as the city continues to grow. ALH was rebuilt and expanded to 7,600 square feet in 21. It supports the growth of the city, I mentioned that, and it develops synergy potentially with the South Library. One of the things that we've looked at is if they relocate their facility, could we partner those together and kind of really combine some of those services. Some of the current spaces you can see here, our art room, our fitness area is pretty tight. Facilities have done a great job for us taking care of the building, painting it, making it look good the best we can. We've had some flooding prepared to floors. Last year, I mentioned earlier that the kiln is in the closet. So we are very cramped in regards to our flexibility in providing services to our group. We do have a video to show. The Denton Senior Center is a 19,000 plus square foot facility built in 1977 and expanded in 1990 and again in 2010. With a fitness room, wood shop, game room, library and multipurpose rooms, the center serves as a gathering place for adults age 50 and older. Community happens here with monthly socials and seminars, frequent trips and special events. The Senior Center strives to enhance the lives of seniors while promoting physical and social well-being, community involvement and independence. [ Music ] Again, some of the current conditions, dated, disjointed. It's been added on a few times. There's a lot of hallway square footage that's unusable. Quaker Town right now, actually a few years ago our park board had asked about could we buy more land to expand Quaker Town. Well, one of the philosophies was maybe addition by subtraction. If we rebuild the Senior Center in another location, that would free up park space that could be reutilized and reprogrammed. We're working with development services now to work on a downtown master plan. Quaker Town is involved in that, so there will be a master planning process for Quaker Town. So this would be actually a good timing for that discussion. Focus group number one feedback was limited parking in the summer pool operations creates more of a challenge. And then ADA challenges we'll talk about on the next slide. Lack of storage, you could see it in the picture, you could see it in the video that we have tables and chairs in all the rooms, equipment just like our library facilities. Event space that serves as an exercise room and music rehearsals. We're changing rooms over for multiple different types of programming. So that does create some challenges and some usability challenges. We have no dedicated gym space for program. The wood shop, again, we had mentioned safety standards are challenged. We can only allow six people in there at a time. Lack of storage and then just general program space. ADA assessment mentioned earlier that the ADA transition plan was adopted by City Council in 2022. We have 151 items that need to be addressed in that building that either will have to be addressed through a major renovation or a rebuild at some point in time. So we are at the point of the facility condition where we need to start planning. So we're hitting that year three into that peach area for year three to year five. And then year 10, we really need to be either complete renovation or rebuild. Just some pictures of what some of the active senior centers are looking like today in DFW. Some of these are Grand Prairie, Keller, the one in the middle is the City of Grand Prairies. And then the newest one that's under construction is in Arlington. They're building a 68,000 square foot facility. This one does have aquatics, full size gym, meeting space, outdoor space as well. And these are just some general photos of our facility. Staff has done a great job of programming it and using what they have, making it look good, keeping it as fresh as we can. But at that point in time, I ask for any questions. What questions are there? Mr. Davis, right here. Thank you. Gary, you mentioned flooding and correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the senior center actually in the floodplain for Pecan Creek? And then as opposed to the city hall that's got a little bit of crawl space, it's a little bit elevated. This is just slab on gray, just right there on the dirt in the floodplain. That's correct. The flooding that we have was from the roof, so that was a different, it wasn't from the ground up. But that is a challenge with the park being in the floodplain and dealing with flooding issues. Although, fingers crossed, we haven't had that recently. But that is a challenge. Any other questions? Ms. Hayworth. We're hearing a lot about the problems with the building, but what we're being asked to do is recommend new buildings. Can you talk about what you want in a new building and how much square footage it would be? Because you've got a price on it, so you must have something about that. If I missed it, sorry. No, so we don't have enough just flex space, we don't have open space where we can have large events, very limited. We do not have a gym space. In the grand scheme, it would be great to have an aquatics component, but we didn't think that was going to be feasible at this point in time based on all the needs of the community. But that is something that the seniors want that we have to figure out how to accomplish, whether it's at the senior center or it's at an auditorium or a future pool. Some of the pictures here just expanded quality of space, too. So whether it's a track, a little bit more fitness equipment, more social opportunities for them to come in, hang out, enjoy each other, have food opportunities, special events. So it's a little bit more real estate, better real estate in how it's laid out and utilized, improving that opportunity, that building as well, so it's more functional, and then providing storage as well. Did you guys have anything? Oh, from the square footage standpoint, I'm sorry. So we are thinking around 40,000 square foot, give or take. That would all have to be completely finalized, but that's kind of a rough number that we're looking at. Is there any thought on what you would do with the existing building? I mentioned the Quaker Town Park Master Plan, so I think that would be really the next step for us to see how we want to use that property. It's really a destination for our community. So many activities are held there, and we don't have a lot of green space. So if addition by subtraction, if we moved the senior center to another location, we could then incorporate that back into the park and figure out how we could use that for the community in a better way. Question right here. It sounds like it would be really expensive to renovate it again, and it's not going to be big enough to give you what you're looking for. Am I right from what I hear from you? So do you have looked into some kind of a land or something that you have something? We've looked at a number of locations, two that we have, one that would kind of mirror us as a neighbor with the South Library. So there would be some cohesiveness and efficiency there, so people could go back and forth and really use it as their hub for that area. So we have a number of locations we've looked at. Is there another question back there? Go for it. My one comment in regard to the fact that you've picked about 40,000 square feet, et cetera. When you're looking at your land, please definitely pick enough land. Make sure to phrase into a question. Okay. Well, have you thought of the fact that -- Just like Jeopardy. You need the growth potential. You can build -- whether or not you build it without the pool and then looking to add the pool. You've mentioned an auditorium. What does that do, though, to some of your people who want to come and swim and then partake in the woodworking shop after? So how do you incorporate that together? Thank you. No, great question. The square footage that we were at in 1980 is the same square footage we are at today per resident. So while we added and expanded the building, obviously the community has grown. So we really peaked from our square footage per resident in 1990-ish, and we've gone down since that point in time because we have not kept up with the growth. And that's really all of our recreational facilities. So we're trying to plan now for tomorrow and for 2030, 2040. So we're buying land for future parks. We're looking at where our facilities are going to go 10 years from now, 15, 20 years from now. So we try to anticipate that. So we spend a lot of time in the past few years working through those scenarios and trying to brainstorm as the community has changed, land has come up for sale, land has gotten more expensive, to try to figure out where do we want to be 20, 30 years from now. Ms. White has a question. I have a clarifying question and then two quick follow up questions. It's my understanding that the current senior center is limited to 50 plus. Is that correct? That's correct. In 2017, voters approved a tax freeze for 65 plus, and in 2021, staff estimated that that resulted in a loss in revenue roughly in the neighborhood of about a million dollars per year. I'm curious, number one, if those estimates have held true over time. We're still seeing about that estimated loss in revenue. And then number two, another trend that we're seeing in parks, which I'm sure you're aware you're the professional, is multi-generational centers instead of an active adult center. Is that a concept that you've considered as well rather than shifting the burden to a portion of the population to pay for? Yep. Great questions. The first one, we'll have to get some answers to you on the financing, the 65 plus. I don't know that answer. The second question is complicated, so I'm going to try answering it. If you look at us on a map, most of our facilities are inside the loop. We were a neighborhood based organization. We have the Civic Center, the Civic Center Pool, MLK, ALH, all within almost the downtown area. So we're really neighborhood based. Deena's not that far away. North Lakes is not that far away. Now we're looking outside the loop. So it's creating challenges where we need to go from a neighborhood service provider to a regional service provider, similar to what Jennifer had mentioned. That's a painful transition for the people that have had Deena as their neighborhood rec center. And you want to say you want to flip from a neighborhood to a community, you want to move it to another location. So that's a challenge. My experience, seniors as they are today want their own space. And as I mentioned, there's three different generations that are using these facilities now, and they each want something different. They want all the amenities and they want them for themselves. They feel they've earned it, is what I've been told. So that's a balance of how we need to provide services and try to use our facilities the best we can. Even if it's a senior center until five o'clock and then our attendance drops down, then maybe we open up for some other programming and we use it for something else as well. But a lot of the communities aren't calling their senior centers even senior centers. They're calling them active adult centers or even to something totally different. The summit, the thrive, the rec centers, just giving it a blander name to try to make it a cool space to. I don't know if that helps, but it's a multi-sided question answer, I guess. Any other questions? Everything Gary said. One of those seniors, and we had one person die this year that was 100, was actively driving herself to the senior center. And we lost another one who was 103, about three years ago. So people who come to our center last a long time. Return on investment right there. Longevity, love it. All right. So let's move on to the next topic. Thank you, Gary and everyone. We're moving on to the last topic, which is fire station number five and six. Right, Dr. Johnson? Chief Hedges. Welcome, everybody. So the one you've been waiting for, the last one for the night. My name is Kenneth Hedges, Fire Chief, Denton Fire Department. So what I have for you tonight is two different projects. So let me start off by saying that these are actually sister stations. And this is history I've taken after being here 27 years. So station five, located on West Windsor. It's at Windsor and Montybury. I think everybody should know the location as well. There's a map up the right-hand corner. This building is 35 years old. I'm going to kind of skim down through some of the facts. Every day there's six personnel there. They staff a quint, which is a fire truck with a ladder on top, and then an ambulance. There is also a brush truck and a hazmat unit. We are a regional hazmat responder. Those two units are not staffed full-time. It's actually cross-staffed. If we get a grass fire, we get a hazmat incident. The crew off the quint transfers over to those units and responds. This is something that we've been tracking. In February, I'm proud to announce, we actually became a accredited agency international under the Commission of Fire Accreditation International. With that, it took a lot of looking into our organization, how we run, pulling data. We do have a GIS expert in-house now just by accreditation requirement. We look at total unit responses. This isn't a number of calls for service, but this is how many times one of those units actually leaves the station. For last year, it's over 6,200 times, which averages 17 times a day a unit is leaving that station. And then just looking at GIS also, we did also look as far as location with this station on a rebuild. It'd be better served moving. And per GIS and our response time, looking at four-minute and eight-minute response models is really kind of the ideal scenarios. This is the ideal location for future growth. Station six, like I said, sister station, identical layout with exception from what I was told. In the '90s, they ran short of funding. So instead of three bays, it only has two bays. The difference is now this is creating a back-end bay for our ambulance, and I'll show that here in just a little bit. So it's 32 years old, a little bit smaller because they did cut off one bay. We only have five personnel assigned to that per day, has an engine, ambulance. There's a total responses for 2022, a little bit slower station, 13 and a half per day, same thing. So we did GIS study looking, should this move further to the south down Teasley? I think we know real estate is pretty prime down Teasley. There's not a better site to locate this. And just going back to the north and the response district actually goes up to 35 and around Teasley up to 35 also. So we know that is a very good location. So I think it's video time. Fire stations five and six are important fixtures in the Denton Fire Department, but they're struggling to keep pace, each more than 30 years old. Built in 1988, station five is located on Windsor Drive, and it's just over 8,000 square feet with living and support space about half of that. There are six personnel per shift and it houses the following apparatus, a quint, which is an engine ladder, a medic, a brush and a hazmat. In 1991, station six went into service on Teasley Lane with a back end driveway as the only option. Station six is almost 6,000 square feet with five personnel per shift and is home to an engine and a medic. Makeshift living arrangements are the norm and the list of challenges for both station five and station six is long. [Music] Okay, now let's kind of go in some pictures. I really added a lot because I want you to see this if you are not able to make the tour in a couple of weeks as well. So really the first deficiency is inadequate employee amenities. So this was built in the 90s and is more a barrack style layout. So the picture on your far right is actually the sleeping dorm for the majority of the employees. There is an officer dorm that's separate, but what you see is, and I hope nobody's from the hospitals, but those are hospital sheets they actually use for privacy. So they create lockers as far as walls. Their bed is within that and they created the sheets with binder clips for privacy. And just to be clear, so the way the fire department operates, we have three shifts, A, B and C, and they work 24 hours a day. So they are there for 24 hours. Consider that a third of their life they live in this facility as well. So take that when you kind of go out and consider as well, you know, that it's not just an eight to five job. This is their home for 25, 30, 35 years. So that's the general dorm on the left. They got to have a fan down on the left, left hand side as well for noise reduction. So that is what the person's actually bedroom looks like. Looks like they use the OSB for the bottom of the baseboard. I don't know why they did that. So they have a chair to put the clothes on nighttime. They are allowed to sleep at night. There's lots to come on whenever they get a call. It's all about response times. So everything that go through here, it may not acknowledge it, but we are measured in success down to seconds. So everything we are designing new fire stations is how fast can we get our crews out into the rigs and into the residence. Middle and storm. Far right is actually the barracks style shower. So it's a group shower. We are obviously a mixed gender department. We have, I believe, seven females now. There are active firefighters. So we still have work to do on diversity. But with that, these stations do not accommodate mixed genders. So moving on to the next one is lack of carcinogen and biohazard reduction zones. So in the fire service, they really recognize the influence of cancers having on our firefighters. Diesel has been labeled as a carcinogen. Everyone on our fire trucks does run off diesel. So if you look at the picture to the right, that is a new design. That is an airlock with two doors to remove contaminants coming into the station. On the left here is actually -- I think that station is six. So there's a single dorm. There's no net positive air pressure to keep out the contaminants actually coming into the station. That is actually the dorm. So there's somebody's head that's right beside that wall when you get inside. One thing I want to point out up here on the asterisk is accreditation recommendations. So in October of last year, we had an accreditation team actually come on site. It was four different fire service members from across the U.S. They did a full study of our department and they came out with 20 recommendations. So recommendations is you will work on this, you'll work on trying to improve it. Several components through these deficiencies, you'll see there are recommendations from that peer team. And this is the one. Moving on to PPE storage. So PPE is our bunker gear. So each person is assigned two different sets of bunker gear. You have your primary, you have your backup set. This picture to the right is actually station six. So we have in a back end bay for the ambulance to back in, we have our gear lining the walls. In the '90s, we thought that was okay, but now we're realizing that every time the vehicle starts, it's exhausting contaminants in the -- exhaust, I'm sorry. And then it's pretty much just gas in the entire gear. So as we move towards cancer reduction, we look at what's causing it, we know what's causing it. And this is one way that we're not kind of -- excuse me. We're actually not meeting 1851 compliance. Compliance is the word I was looking for. So this is one fact we actually found from our members that maintain our gear. So UV damage is just obviously sunlight degradation. This gear's position is so close to the bay doors, we've actually lost over $40,000 in gear in the past seven years is what we've been able to track. And then 1851, I'll go over that here in a future slide. And also exhaust ventilation, the newer stations, we actually have air filters built in, whether it's passive or actually direct ventilation systems that captures that exhaust, and it exhausts it outside so the employees aren't breathing it. If you look, both of those are accreditation recommendations I'm correcting. No pictures here, so inadequate adverse bay heaters. What we have right now in these two stations, five and six, are current forced air. So they're in the ceiling, and it works great if the doors stay closed. Once you open the door, all that heat is exhausted. The new design we're building in the station's actually radiant tube heaters. It heats the mass so the heat stays better. Current emergency generators, we have generators, and I think the video said it needs them. We have them, but they're not powered to meet the fire station's needs. They only run a certain portion of the fire station. I know station six, when I was still there as a captain 15 years ago, it didn't run the bay doors. So we lost power, we couldn't raise the doors, so we couldn't even go on the call. So we're working with facilities to kind of rewire some of that, but one of the needs we need to address. And then inadequate parking, especially station five does not have any employee parking. It has some public up front, and the employees actually have to park on the back ramp. It's station security we have. Like any place, we do have fails. Occasionally at the fire stations, they're not secure. Bay doors, something we've been implementing on our station rebuilds for the past 10 years. To the right is a newer model. It is bi-fold doors. They open in less than seven seconds. No springs. They're not weighted whatsoever, so they're rated to operate a million cycles before any issues. On the left is actually station five's doors out on Bonnie Bray. The issue we have with these is the repetitious use you saw 17 times a day on average. We have spring break, doors go out of service, crews are backing in. So we're moving towards the bi-fold doors. And then individually, each station, to be fair, the picture on the left and in the middle was on day one of this last year of Dent High School. I can't tell you what it looks like now, but the crew is standing up front and watching the traffic stack. So our exit ramp actually was going into all that traffic every time we tried to make a call. And for station five's district, I can tell you on the entire department out of eight different stations, that is now the busiest district in the city because that's where the growth is. Station six to the right, Jennifer's talking about when the library opened, there's nobody out there except for the fire station. So they built the fire station and they thought, well, let's put a library right in front of the fire station. So I don't know the reasoning, but anyways, we have one access point out to Teasley. It's a blind exit. So when the crews leave on a mercy call, they actually have to go to the end, stop and capture traffic both directions as well. And for the ambulance, they have to come back in that way and then back in. So NFPA standards, most of them are recommendations. 1,570 recommendations that we try to follow. But I can tell you, 1851 is Ashley in 2013. The Texas Commission on Fire Protection actually adopted that. So that's actually a Texas administrative code now. We are not in compliance. We didn't meet with the director of the Texas Fire Service last year. He came on site. Most fire departments cannot meet this right now, but he's making everybody work towards that. So where we don't meet that is the gear hanging behind the medic and on the sides. It needs to be in its own private room, secured, air ventilation away from exhaust. So that picture on the right is actually what we're building our fire stations today. And this is the facility condition index. You see six is a little bit as far as replacement needs to come sooner than five. And then ADA requirements. Think about both of them. You see 10 high and the majority are in their parking as well. And that is it. Questions, Mr. Daggard? The numbers that you gave us regarding the trips that you take in and out, do they include all of the drills that you have to do with the local schools and other public entities around there? No, that's strictly emergency response calls that we can track in our data system. Other questions? You mentioned several compliance issues. Is there a timeline that you have to meet those regulations or standards? They have not gave one. 1815 is the only one now that Texas has adopted. And as long as you're working in good faith to address that, the commissioner has been very generous with all departments across the state. This is the last two stations that we have in the fire department that this is not in compliant. Any other questions? Let me go. I'll walk around here. In the past, on stations two, three, and four, the city rebuilt basically in the same location or right next door to it. What are the plans? Because obviously six just does not have the space of the access there. Is five considering where we don't have to purchase additional land? Actually, both these projects start at station five through our analysis and the primary four-minute response time. If you drop pin vocation, you go out four minutes on posted roadways by their speed limits. It is in the ideal location, and we're adding station nine to the airport right now. So five needs to be rebuilt from our analysis. It needs to be rebuilt on the exact same location, so no land purchase there. Station six, which is adjacent to South Branch, once again that identified as a prime location to be rebuilt, but where the station is cannot accommodate the new station size we need for growth. So we would actually need some of the parking lot, some of the space where South Branch is currently located to really build a station. And one thing I want to point out, we have rebuilt stations two, three, four, and built new station eight, and new station nine is under construction. We are building these for a 75-year building. So it's not a 30-year building we expected back in Bonkham, and he's saying, "Hey, we need to rebuild these." We're doing them right one time. Thanks. Oh, it's on. So I don't know if you can answer this question or if this is a bigger question, but I'm curious about how we recoup costs in our interlocal agreements for service that we provide in the ETJ and whether that's just recouping our operational costs or whether there's additional fees that we collect to contribute toward the capital costs, like things we're talking about today. Currently, right now, we do have an interlocal agreement with Denton County. We have a very small area we cover. So if you reference back to the mud areas, that's the majority covered by Crum and Ponder. We have a small area to the north, and we go out east on East McKinney as well. There's a set rate. We sign a contract or it goes to council for approval every year on fire and the EMS coverage as well. And it is a set rate by the county. And honestly, I just found this out two weeks ago. This was designed by the Denton County Fire Chiefs Association 15 years ago, and they're increasing the rate every year, like $50 per call. So every fire call we have in the county, it's a $750 reimbursement to the city. Mr. Jennings? Yes, I actually got two questions. One current question is how -- I noticed your manpower at the stations. It seems like it's pretty small. I'm just kind of curious, how is the current fentanyl crisis impacting those stations? We look at -- I mean, when we pull our data, we look at just overdoses. We can drill down further and look at what type of overdose it is. We're not seeing the local impact you're probably seeing on the national level as well. All our employees actually are paramedics, so it's not just firefighter. We are the highest level as far as EMS certifications you can be as well. 65% of all we do is EMS. So we call ourselves a fire department. We do a lot of EMS. Really, we're an all-hazards department. We address a lot of things. So right now, we're not seeing a significant increase. And my last question has to do with the Good Samaritan Society Village. I live on Montecito, and you said that you get about 13.5 calls. I live on the corner house, and I am surprised the amount of disability that is going over there and stuff. So my question is, with the Rhine Project coming up, is it a strategic plan to address how you're going to get in and out of there? What Rhine Project? That particular road, because once the Hickory Project is done, that particular street is going to be done. We work with CAPRA projects, and they give us kind of an insight. They actually bring us into meetings. We talk about this as well. I mean, let me answer your question. I'm going to make another point about Station 6. So we're an extremely busy system. For the size of our department, last year we made over 22,000 calls for service. So I actually saw a comparison where actually 2,400 calls higher than what the Frisco Fire Department is. And they had way more staff, way more resources, way more stations as well. So we're a busy, busy system. You probably see that. If you live on a corner, you know how many times we come by. So to address the construction thing, we get weekly reports. So our crews know what roads are going to be closed and what's going to be open. And then there's still certain workarounds that we do have to work with CAPRA. We work development services. So we know what's coming in as far as the major projects as well. And we plan to the best of our ability. So your point on Station 6, a little funny story offhand. So Teasley obviously was just rebuilt, a textile roadway project as well. We were brought in after the design was almost complete. And they had not even provided a curb cut for Station 6 to go out and go north. They said, sorry, you get to go down to a U-turn and then cut across as well. Well, we pretty much offered, well, we'll just go cut the curb out ourselves after you've done the project. So we got a curb cut, but sometimes it's afterthought. So definitely it's been a challenge there. But with the South Branch Library and all the traffic that creates, it does make it a very dangerous situation. So you're trying to come in or exit that facility. I'm wondering if you're planning to use the same floor plan, basic floor plan that was used in 2 and 4 rebuilds and in new 8. That's one question. What percentage of your calls are out on I-35? And do you really need another station? Is this enough? I'm going to start with the last one first. So these are just rebuilds. So I have a 10-year plan that looks at future growth and where we're at. And we have stations planned in the future based on rooftops and growth. So yes, this won't be the last time you see any of these bond committee meetings. The priority is to get these rebuilt right now so we're not affecting and impacting that new growth on the new stations as well. The data on 35, I can work on that. But are you talking about MVAs? Because we have medical emergencies. We have car fires. We have good Samaritan calls. We go out and now we actually block for if PD is out having to help somebody change their flat tire. We have a blocker. We're protecting everybody there as well. So I can work on that. And then what was the third part? The same plan. Identical same plan. The floor plan, we have that dialing. It works. Everything we design that floor plan is about response time. So where the employees' dorms are, they come out, they go straight outside into the bays to get to the vehicles quick. We have electronic dispatch boards. They can see as soon as they come out where the call is, what type of call it is, so they can start mentally preparing for that as well. It's all about response time. We just saved a lot of money. Yes, you're correct. One more question if there is one. All right. Thank you, Chief. Thank you. I think we have reached the end of our presentations for today. So everyone knows. Way to go, everyone. You guys were very adult about that new format. The next meeting is next Wednesday, I believe. Is that right? Next Wednesday at 530. Same place. Dinner at 530. We'll start at 6. Chair Pro Tem, do you want to close out the meeting? No. RSVP. Oh, yes, thank you. And don't forget, if you haven't yet, to respond to RSVP to the tour coming up. And we made it by 8. And I'll close the meeting at 8.02. You'll have a good night.